Lust. Geoff Ryman
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one time those eyes would have presided, gone flinty with the hard bargaining and constant politicking of putting on a show. He would have been cagey, cunning, enthusiastic, wise and probably indelibly handsome in an etiolated London theatrical way.
Without meaning to, Michael sketched with his own hands and eyes how the old man would have moved. In the joints of his hips, he embodied the way the old man moved now. Michael felt the bargain he had made with ageing, with the death of colleagues, the death of his world. Michael had seen that bargain collapse, because of him, because of the miracle.
Michael was moved by pity. He suddenly felt that something might be in his power. I know I can make them do what I want. Can I make them do it when I’m not there? With someone else? He stopped the old man and asked, in a low voice, ‘Do you know this place?’
‘Oh. Zoltan? He exhibits me as a piece of camp history, but it is good to receive invitations.’
‘I mean, do you know if there’s a bedroom. You can go there.’
The old face went limp, flesh as confused and blank as his understanding.
‘I mean,’ said Michael, ‘you and he could go there.’
‘What an extraordinary thing.’
Michael felt a full heart. Full of victory perhaps in part and also guilt for hurting Phil, but full of what … abundance, too. These episodes, wherever they came from, were an abundance, a superabundance that ached to be shared.
I create them, Michael thought. I make them. He told Johnny what he wanted him to do.
Tarzan turned and climbed the steps, perhaps without even knowing why. Michael hoisted the old man around and helped him up the steps. Outside the bedroom door, the old man turned still in disbelief, and Michael had to give him a gentle shove. Then Michael stood guard. He sat on the top step, looking over a party at which he did not belong. He wished that he smoked. At least smoking would have occupied his hands.
Someone dragged open the big glass doors to clear the air, and the party moved out into the sheltered garden. Suddenly you could hear air move in trees.
He gave them twenty minutes.
Then the old man blurted out of the bedroom doorway like a coltish teenager. His glass tie was askew; his smile was wet and broad. It was a grin. He looked foxed, as if a shaft of God-light had blazed its way back into his life.
Michael had time to feel happy for him.
Then he saw Tarzan’s face. Tarzan was innocent no longer.
His face had curdled with disgust and outrage. His look said to Michael: I want to kill you.
He gave one animal growl and then hurled himself over the banister of the landing. People screamed. Tarzan landed catlike on his four padded feet. Then he jumped up onto the bar, bounded over the heads of the people.
Don’t hurt anyone! Michael commanded.
Tarzan jumped up into the fig tree, and gave one long backward yodel, the Tarzan cry. He scampered up the branches. The main trunk bent under his weight, then sprang back and he leapt up and over the brick wall. It was as if he were suspended for just one moment, against the stars.
Then he sank from view. Everyone in the room applauded.
Michael tried to leave.
‘But he was magnificent! Who was he?’ the beige woman asked. Michael thrust his way past her and through the crowd.
Billy stood back for him at the head of the stairs. He knew something was wrong. ‘What happened?’ he asked, walking with Michael down to the kitchen.
‘I made him do something,’ said Michael, and heard his own voice: shaken, sick at heart.
Billy’s high heels made a sound like Carmen Miranda, as he ran on ahead to fetch Michael’s coat.
‘Does he have any other clothes?’ Billy asked. ‘He’ll freeze out there.’
Michael stopped and turned and faced him. ‘He’s the real thing, OK? He’s not in costume.’
Michael stumbled out the front door. In the brick street, he could hear the murmuring of the party. It was cold and he felt lumpen and foolish in his leopard skin. It was a bleak place of old brick warehouses and a single closed pub with lights on and street lamps throbbing yellow like the aftermath of a burglary.
Yes, I can make them do what I want. I can violate them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said, to the shadows and street lights. ‘Johnny? I’m sorry.’
‘Not Johnny,’ said a voice. It was fierce with pain, affirmation. ‘Tarzan. Me Tarzan.’
Michael stood and waited. He could see nothing. He walked forward, out of the light, to the side of the house, in shadow. Tarzan stood there. He hugged his arms and shivered and the top of his head was pressed against the wall.
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said again.
Tarzan threw off his hand. ‘Tarzan want woman,’ he said, accusing.
Michael had made Tarzan let himself be sucked off by an 88-year-old man. It would have been the first time he had had sex, the first time in his fictional universe that sex had ever been present. Love for him had been sexless: kindness, tickling and caresses. It had been the sensuality of childhood. Michael felt the full crushing weight of what he had done.
The physical reality of sex is always a jolt. How much worse if it is the wrong gender, with loose jaws and crumpled flesh.
‘Sick. Old. Man,’ said Tarzan. All three things were out of kilter.
‘He loved you,’ Michael tried to explain.
Tarzan snarled in rejection. That? That was not love.
‘It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know.’
Johnny glowered at him. ‘You want that too.’
This was pushing certain buttons from Michael’s past. Those buttons pushed deep. ‘I didn’t touch you. I left you as you were. Did … did you want to do anything with me?’
Johnny/Tarzan considered. ‘I wanted what you wanted.’ He made a cutting gesture with the edge of his hand. Only that. To hold and be held. Johnny’s eyes, fixed on Michael, were now those of an adult. Michael had destroyed any trace of affection in them. That affection could only survive in innocence. Tarzan had grown up. He had wisdom.
Boy looked at Johnny. I don’t know what you are, but you have feelings of your own and a mind of your own and you have a right to be happy. Michael thought of Jane swimming naked in darkness in the jungle of innocence. Maybe, he thought. Maybe I just fancy her enough.
Suddenly, there were many urgent questions to be answered.
Do they have to be male? Can I make more than one at once? Where do they go back to?
The answers came quickly one after another.
There was a blurring of flesh as if reality had been dipped in turpentine. Flesh smeared like paint. Something flowed sideways out of Tarzan’s belly and ribs – skin and bone poured out of him onto the pavement.
Flesh sprouted like a plant in time-lapse photography, growing a leather skirt like leaves, long hair like flowers.
In the time it takes to pipe a musical scale, Jane had risen out of Tarzan. She stood beside him as if fresh from the depths of the river.
She was played by Maureen O’Sullivan. She was tiny, with a face as fragile as china under a mass of wiry hair.
Michael introduced them. ‘Jane, Tarzan. Tarzan, Jane.’
Click. They fitted together. They had been married in spirit from the beginning.
Michael