The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss
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There are sequences from old-fashioned wars, when the processes of corruption sometimes had a presynchronicity to moribundity, and a shot of a nuclear bomb detonated underground, with a whole sparse country rumpling upward into a gigantic ulcerated blister and rolling outwards at predatorial speed towards the fluttering camera. There are sequences in shuttered streets, where the dust lies heavy and onions rot in gutters; not a soul moves, though a kite flutters from an overhead wire; somewhere distantly, a radio utters old-fashioned dance music interspersed with static; sunshine burns down into the engraved street; finally a shutter opens, a window opens; an iguana pants out into the roadway, its golden gullet wide.
After this came the Gurdjieff Episode, taken from a coloured Ukrainian TV musical based on the life of Ouspenski and entitled Different Levels of the Centres.
A is a busy Moscow newspaper man, bustling here, bustling there, speaking publicly on this and that. A man of affairs whom people turn to; his opinion is worth having, his help worth seeking. Enter shabby old Ouspenski with an oriental smile, manages to buttonhole A, invites him along to meet the great philosopher Gurdjieff. A is interested, tells O he will certainly spare the time. G reclines on a sunny bedstead, derelict from the mundane world; he has a flowering moustache, already turning white. He holds onto one slippered foot. In his shabby room, it is not possible to lie: nonsense is talked but not lies – the very lines of the old dresser and the plaid cloth over the table and the empty bowl standing on the deep window sill declare it.
The window has double casements with a lever-fastener in the centre. The two halves of the window swing outwards. There are shutters, latched back to the wall outside. The woodwork has not been painted for many years; it rests comfortable in morning sunlight, faded but not rotten, seamed but not too sear. It wears an expression like G’s.
G gives what is a grand feast for this poor time of war. Fifteen of his disciples come, and some have an almost Indian unworldliness. They sit about the room and do not speak. With lying out of the way, presumably there is less to say. One of the disciples bears a resemblance to the actor who will play Colin Charteris.
In comes O, arm-in-arm with A, and introduces him with something of a flourish to G. G is very kind and with flowing gestures invites A to sit near him. The meal begins. There are zakuski, pies, shashlik, palachinke. It is a Caucasian feast, beginning on the stroke of noon and continuing until the evening. G smiles and does not speak. None of his people speak. A politely talks. Poor O is dismayed. We see that he realises that G has set this meal up as a test of A.
Under the spell of hospitality, soothed by the warm Khagetia wine, A sets himself out to be the public and entertaining man who can enliven even the dullest company. The chorus takes the words from his moving lips and tells us what A talks about
He spoke about the war; he was not vague at all; he knew what was happening on the Western Front.
He gave us word of all our allies, those we could trust, those we couldn’t, and had a bit of innocent fun about the Belgians.
He gave us word of Germany and how already there were signs of crumbling: but of course the real enemy was the Dual Monarchy.
And here he took more wine and smiled.
He communicated all the opinions of the public men in Moscow and St Petersburg upon all possible public subjects.
Then he talked about the desiccation of green vegetables for the Army: a cause with which he was involved, he said: and in particular the desiccation of onions, which did not keep as well as cabbages.
This led him on to discuss artificial manures and fertilisers, and agricultural chemistry, chemistry in general, and the great strides made by Russian industry.
And here he took more wine and smiled.
He then showed how well he was informed upon philosophy, perhaps in deference to his host
He spoke of melioration and told us all about spiritism, and went pretty thoroughly into what he called the materialisation of hands.
What else he said we don’t remember, save that once he touched on cosmogony, a subject he had somewhat studied.
He was the jolliest and certainly the happiest man-in the room. And then he took more wine and smiled and said he must be off.
Poor O had tried to interrupt this monologue but G had looked at him fiercely. Now O hung his head while A heartily shook hands with G and thanked him for a pleasant meal and a very interesting conversation. Glancing at the camera, G laughed slyly. His trap had worked.
Afterwards, G jumps up and sings his song, and the disciples join in. Gradually, the whole screen is choked with whirling bodies.
While the film was being pieced together, a French actor called Minstral was engaged to play Charteris. Because France had been neutral in the war, Minstral was one of the few prepsychedelic men left in Brussels. He played tough roles. When not filming, he kept himself apart, ate tinned food sent from Toulouse, meditated in a Sufic way, occasionally visited two young Greek sisters in the suburbs, and looked at volumes of beautiful photographs published by Gallimard.
Boreas’s script director, Jacques de Grand, made his way out to the motorcamp on the lunatic fringes of the city with a haircut full of gentian hairoil. He wanted to get some background for the messiah’s life, him and his success-drive both.
When de Grand arrived at the smokescream, the messiah was sitting on an old bedstead, picking his toes; from his two women he had only bad images; they would not yield to his healing power and he was feeling several things at once, that nothing could be done on any level unless women were involved in creative roles, that they were trapped in a history jelly, that he was a discarded I, and that the world was on the whole perched on the back of a radioactive tortoise.
‘We’re very fortunate to have you here at the early stages of your career, Mr Master, and witnessing the first miracles. How you like Belgium? Planning to stay long? Planning to resurrect anyone in the near future? My card!’
The card held a hand in it on a detachable body materialising in rubber smokelp.
‘It was the vision I had in Metz. That’s what betrayed me on my adjourney north up the web of photofailures, fleeing that Italian camp.’
‘I see.’ Quick application of more refreshing hairoil, head chest mouth. Nom, but the PCA was thick here and all hair growing whispers on it. ‘You say photofailures, I gather from reports you enlarge Ouspavski’s thought?’
‘Well like Ouspavski I dig the west got too hairy with everyone and so the Arabian nightmare was just a justice and on the ill-painted poser the near-nordic blonde grew a moustache like a shadow across her force. …
‘And so how about some more erections in the near future? Please speak clearly into the visiting card.’
The whole mesozoic mess-up of the best west pretensions going themselves with the buns turning to gutter and silence is golden but a Diners Club card gets you anywhere. It was the whole city of a ruined version I had, he told de Grand. ‘Now Europe’s bracken up from a basic oil-need-greed and beggars can ride so even Gelina and Marta and me can’t get along in a harness and all clapped out of the big ambushes of Westciv, eh?’
‘I see. You think the bill’s at last been paid?’
‘Yes, the treadbill, trodden back to low point X and the city open to the noman. My friend, that was a short round we trod, less than two hundred degenerations the flintnapping cave-sleepers first opened stareyes and we break down again with twentieth sensory perception of the circuit. …
‘I see. More hairoil quick, and you think we’re back where we squirted?’
‘… which bust be the time for real awakening from machinality and jump off the treads into a new race that I will lead.’ And the new animals falling out of new trees on the old beaches of stone.
‘Yes, I see, Master. So you have no definite pains to insurrect anyone in the near future?’
‘Angelina