Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel by Tom Stoppard

Author:Tom Stoppard [Stoppard, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780571104192
Google: FsJfQgAACAAJ
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 1968-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

FOUR

Spectator as Hero

I

IT TOOK MOON a long time to write his journal of the day. He sat in the kitchen typing. Jane did not come home.

He had to keep stopping, sometimes for many minutes between sentences, trying to reassemble forgotten conversations but able only to trace an outline of events in which he hardly believed any more. Lord Malquist had instructed him that the journal should conceal its commercial inspiration and be ostensibly a private diary in which the ninth earl’s part was coincidental, if dominant. But Moon decided not to mention his bomb or Marie’s death or the General. He supposed that the General was dead too. The bomb sat by his elbow as he typed, watch-ticked contentedly, the metal key recessed into its flat bottom turning slowly as an hour-hand towards oblivion. Moon had not noted the exact time when he pressed the plunger but he calculated that he had until ten or half past in the morning. There was no hurry.

* * *

When the flames of his notebook had guttered out, Moon had stared in disbelief at the three bodies on the carpet (the Risen Christ was the only one to show any sign of life: a sudden gabble of obscure protestation) and had gone to sit half way up the stairs in the cubic centre of the house, hugging his bomb to him, and he had sat quite still until the water from the overflowing bath blotted its way down the stair-carpet and reached him over an hour later.

The damp seeped into his trance and woke him. He was cold. He got up and felt the cold on the soles of his feet. Water was pressed out of the carpet and soothed his stiffening wound. On the upstairs landing he had to paddle. When he turned off the taps he experienced again the illusion of silence being broken by stillness.

In the bedroom he dressed himself very consciously as though dressing someone else who was himself. His grey suit (his best one, put on to go calling on the aristocracy) was a wet heap on the floor. He chose at random one of the three pairs of trousers and one of the two jackets hanging in the wardrobe. Dressed, he limped downstairs holding his bomb. The cuts on his hand and face had dried into crusts. His foot was still tender but he had managed to squeeze it into its shoe without unwrapping the handkerchief and the ears of the knot flapped against his bare ankle. He was hungry.

In the kitchen the tap-water splashed into the sink but there was no overflow. Gas jets flared and the geyser roared softly. Moon put his bomb on the table and quietened the kitchen down. The bomb ticked quietly with flat flannelled softness. Moon tried to imitate it making small man-to-horse sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

There was an untidy heap of tins on the table-pork ‘n’ beans. Moon opened two tins and emptied them into the frying pan to which were stuck some old cold greasy beans from another time.

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