Balzac of the Badlands Read online

  Balzac of the Badlands

  Steve Finbow

  This thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.

  – Abu Yazid al-Bistami

  Where the edges are, we aren’t sure, they vary, according to the attacks and counterattacks;

  but this is the center, where nothing moves.

  – Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

  And it’s already tomorrow, ain’t it?

  It ain’t never tomorrow, not in this fucking movie. Never ain’t nothing but today.

  – Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

  Nature was just there, outside, wherever there wasn’t something else.

  – Elmore Leonard, Killshot

  Some writer somewhere wrote something about never opening a book with the weather. And that’s true if you live where I live. I mean, what would be the point? If I’d looked out of the window at the start of this story, I could have told you about the overcast sky heavy with the threat of rain. I look out of the window now and it’s sunny with a mild breeze. And by the time you read this, it could be a nuclear winter or a globally warmed perpetual summer. But, hold on, you’ll be looking out of your window or your hole in the wall or your gap in the yurk, so god knows what the weather’s going to be like where you are. Anyway, when I woke up and looked out of the window, the sky was light pink and watery blue. And the sun was up there somewhere, inevitably.

  Look. Over there. Across the street. Gobbets of birds strung out on telephone wires, flossed from the sky, particulate, like so many pieces of rotten meat. The birds have started to evolve into memory. Some days you don’t see any. They’ve been replaced by sweet wrappers, Styrofoam cartons, crisp packets. But then, where you live, you might not even know what birds are. What birds were.

  OK, let’s kick off with my name. I have the unlikely moniker of Balthazar Zachariah. Yeah. When you get off the floor and put your socks back on, I’ll tell you again – Balthazar Zachariah. The Balthazar comes from my mother’s obsession with Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. My younger sister’s name is Clea. Thank fuck there aren’t any more of us – I mean, would you want to be called Mountolive? What about the Zachariah? Well, my mother’s name is Justine and her original surname was Case. See? You can’t blame her for wanting a name that wasn’t going to prompt an outbreak of neighbourly mirth or bring on the telephonic guffaws of sarcastic call-centre zombies. During the early seventies, she was into psychedelia, the Kaballah, Herman Hesse, and Westerns, hence a by-deed-poll Zachariah. I’ve looked up the film – from which she stole the title that became our new name – on the IMDb and it does look kind of interesting but Blockbuster doesn’t stock it. By the way, I’ve never read the Durrell. I’ve taken it on holiday three times. There are copies – immaculate, unstained, unthumbed – in Lanzarote, Orlando, and Phuket. So Balthazar Zachariah. Balzac: coined by some nameless, pretentious sixth-former. It stuck. It’s still here. To tell you the truth, I like it. And, yes, of course some other comedians morphed it into Balls Ache and Ball Sack – but that’s another story.

  Enough about my tag. Let’s get this show on the road. We’ve established it’s morning, the weather’s fine, my name is what it is, and I’m hungry as hell and in bad need of a piss. Follow me across the hall into the bathroom and close the door behind you.

  Ah, hold on. On second thoughts, let’s skip the bathroom. I think I remember throwing up in there last night – I made it into the room, then lost all coordination, never one for orienteering – but I did manage a good yomp. A few months back, I could have left it for my cleaner. Filipino, she was. Still is, as far as I know. I interviewed about twenty potential Mrs. Mops until I found Kalaaya. The home-service industry gives you a good idea as to the state of immigration in London – I’ve had Irish cleaners, Bangladeshi, Australian, Polish, Romanian, and Brazilian. Kalaaya was probably the best of the lot – devastating with Dyson, scrupulous with spic, scintillating with span. Had to let her go, though. The Mermaid – my once, sometime, and present partner – popped by when Kalaaya was buffing my toaster. In the pub a week after Kalaaya started working for me, The Mermaid had asked what Kalaaya looked like and I think I described her as a cross between Barbara Bush and Ho Chi Minh – or a frumpy Imelda Marcos. So, when The Mermaid claps her peepers on this tiny beauty, I’m told to give Kalaaya her marching orders before I get mine. I couldn’t just sack her – so to speak – so I thought I’d get her a cushy little job working for people who had real money. I called in a couple of favours and within an hour (and the Dyson as a going-away gift) found her a job with the Eaves brothers, who, no doubt, you’ll hear more about later. I’ve got a thing about Jonathan Eaves – not that sort of thing, no, although I’m not sure Jonathan wouldn’t mind if I did – it’s a jealousy-come-stiletto-in-the-gut thing – while I was away on my travels a few years back, he made his move on The Mermaid – splashed out, flashed the cash, went all posh with the dosh – turned her peepers for a few months, just for a few months mind, she soon saw through him. Anyway, suffice to say, the Eaveses wish to be to the crime world what the Tudors were to establishing England as a world force. Enough of that – no way do I have the stomach to look at let alone clean up that mess. The bathroom, that is, not London crime. I’ll fill you in later in more detail about Jonathan and Martin Eaves. And on our travels, remind me to buy some bleach – preferably lemon-scented. Let’s go to the kitchen instead.

  Hold on a sec. I’ve tried to piss in the sink before – can’t reach, on tiptoes and I’m likely to piss down my leg. Da-da, dum-dum, da-dum, da da. Yeah, that’ll do. A milk carton. Slip the lad out of me Jockeys and we’re off. Dum-da-dee. Phew. Lager, a touch of vodka and Diet Coke, maybe a kebab, definitely onions. Hold on, there can’t be more than a pint. Shit. Hold it in. Pour some down the sink. Ah, that’s better. Shake it. Ah! Dribbled some down my leg. Never mind. Pour carton contents down sink. Splash a bit of hot water. Dump carton in overflowing bin. Job done. JD. Right, where’s my blood-sugar tester? Here it is. Bit mouldy from being in my wash bag. Ow! 8.5. Not bad considering last night. Pen in fridge. 20mg. Needle a bit blunt. Can’t be arsed to change it. Mind the pubes. Some nice bruises there, Balzac. Ow! Ow! I put the pen back in the fridge.

  A paragraph entitled: My Fridge and its Contents. To tell you the truth, I’m embarrassed by the lack of food and drink that should, as it would in most households, reside there. In a real fridge, milk, cheese, eggs, bacon, sausages, and fruit juice would stand proud, maybe some salad things crisping in the crisper. In the icebox: Ben & Jerry’s, fish fingers, Stolichnaya, and ice cubes. What’s in my fridge besides a month’s supply of insulin? Three white polymersomethingorother-coated tubular shelves, two empty egg trays – conjuring up the image of constipated chickens – a clouded and cracked crisper not crisping, and a formidably glaciered icebox Roald Amundsen would have balked at, mushing his dogs back to the relative rolling meadows of the South Pole.

  Cupboards? Old mother. Bloody hell. OK. Bread bin? Success. Couple of slices of wholewheat. No sugar. Slow releasing. They’re the same colour as the Statue of Liberty but toasting them will cure that. Slip ‘em in. Butter? Sort of. Marmite? Now, where’s that emergency jar? Under the sink? No. Come on. Come on. Think, Balzac, think. In the cupboard where the unemployed Hoover and broom live?

  The Hoover looks like a squat sentry, the broom its halberd. ‘Marmite’s mine, mate. You can fuck off and get your own,’ I say to the Hoover. Yeah, yeah. I know. There’s no one else to talk to. I close the door and leave the two of them to their claustrophobic love affair.

  I eat my breakfast, make a cup of black coffee, and drink it while I sluice my face in cold water. I drag my fingers through my hair – still thick
and all mine – and dress in the clothes I had on last night, pub-tanged and wrinkled but, hey, I’m not going for a job interview, am I? I’ll buy some mints on my way. I’m going for a walk around the park and then I’ll nip into the bookies, the cafés, and no doubt several watering holes before I track down my partner Mr. Homo Sapiens Sapiens Jones, and when I find him, I’ll tell you all about his specialities – interesting and numerous. Oh, and I’ll explain his name’s various acronyms and diminutives and, when we have time, its curious derivation. Here’s a clue – before I met HSSJ, no way, in a million years, would I have been able to construct a sentence like the last.

  ‘Rather than traipse all over North London, why don’t you call him on his moby?’ I hear you all ask. It’ll save you shoe rubber.’ Because he never has the thing turned on – ex-partners, ex-friends, the bailiffs, the bookies, me… But I need him today. Need his brains but not his sarcasm. Need his insights but not his black moods. I’ve got a git of a job on. A missing person.

  Some guy calls me a few days ago and tells me his 26-year-old daughter has disappeared and the police won’t do a thing about it. Would I look into it? I tell him she’s of legal age, she can do whatever. But he’s distraught. He tells me there were no suspicious circs but she didn’t tell anyone where she was going – not him, not his wife. Very, very unlike her. She’d recently split from her boyfriend. The father had called him – the ex-boyfriend knew nothing. She’d just vanished, no note, no text, no call, nada. So, I tell him I’ll look into it. Agreed a fee. He gave me photos, bank details, and a few ideas as to where she might have buggered off. So, a day passes, I’ve got a couple of leads but nothing solid, so I phone him to say I’ll give it a week and after that he’s wasting his time and money. Hold on a sec, something’s vibrating in my trousers. Ah, Mr. Beckford himself. Maybe they’ve found her and this will be the shortest novel in history. Well, no, actually, thinking about it, it would be a short story, wouldn’t it? And not a particularly interesting one.

  ‘Mr. Beckford, what can I do for you?’

  ‘–––-’

  It’s Mrs. Beckford. She’s in tears and I can’t make out a word she’s saying. She’s either got the waterworks on because her daughter’s been found and these are tears of joy or she’s been watching Lassie Come Home. I’ll move the phone away from my ear a bit, see if I can translate the blurting into English.

  ‘–––-’

  Shit.

  ‘OK. Mrs. Beckford. Look, I’ll look into it. No problem. You sit tight. I’ll call as soon as. Maybe you should call the police.’

  ‘–––-’

  ‘Yeah, they would say that. Call a friend or relative to come stay with you and I’ll call you back. I promise. Yeah. Bye.’

  Bollocks. Mr. Beckford popped out this morning to get a paper and hasn’t come home. No note, text, call, nada. Déjà vu. Déjà bloody vu. I told her not to worry. I’ll find H and we’ll take it from there. The silly old sod’s probably gone looking for his daughter himself. Find one. Find two. Now it’s a missing persons. Plural.

  Just remembered something about last night. No wonder I woke up at home on my high lonesome. Supposed to go out with The Mermaid for an Indian and got lumbered in the boozer with some geezer. I bell her and say I’m going to be late and to start on the poppadoms without me, I’ll be there as soon as, and would she order me the usual: rogan josh, keema naan, and two pints of Lal Toofan – one for when I get there, second to wash down the lime pickle. She prattles on with threats that she’s going out with her friends – no doubt Spaghetti Monster and The Bush – and that it’s about time I started putting her before the bloody job. I try to placate her by saying I’m not on the job, I’m in the pub, but she says something that sounds like the Bombay duck’s off and hangs up. So, I settle in for a few jars and a couple of packets of dry-roasted peanuts. Last thing I recall is near heaving at the smell coming from some homeless bloke puking and shitting himself locked in one of the toilet cubicles.

  ***

  From somewhere he can make out a light. Hurrying along the road, minding his own business, his daughter the only thing on his mind. He thinks it’s coming from behind him. Trying to get to the car before he gets soaked in one of those instant tropical downpours London is experiencing more and more these days. Or above. An immense tiredness. Not that he wants to sleep. When he’s grabbed from behind. Far from it. He needs to escape. His face pushed unceremoniously into the wet and jagged bark of a plane tree. If they have gone this far with him, how far will they go with his daughter? A bag placed over his head, and he’s bundled in to the back of a van. But waves of it. A suffocating, eye-drooping torpor. The van smells of chips, tomato sauce, and Red Bull. The light, what there is of it, if it is real, illuminates only the edge of things. On his hands and knees, the floor of the van ridged and greasy, he feels like a dog awaiting execution. He cannot fathom the space. If it is a space. Where did that come from? Consciousness? There’s a liquid noise – he’s not sure if it is water. All he wants is his double bed, his gloriously upholstered wife, and his daughter back to give him grief and joy in equal measure. Thicker maybe. What else would it be? Experimentally, he pokes out his tongue and finds it cannot proceed further than the edge of his lips. Some form of material covers his mouth, maybe hessian or sacking. And the smells. So familiar. Like home. But not. Never. The blindfold slips down and rests on the bridge of his nose. His hands are tied behind his back. He tries to turn his head. He cannot. A giant lizard, still slow from the morning chill, trapped in a cave, a pit, jaws locked and bloody. He can move them – his hands – just. His feet are also bound. But he cannot move his body. He can’t move. He can move. Can he? His body – saurian – frozen deep in the earth. Not forward. Not back. He wriggles. He tries to move. Bones aching. Bruises blooming. Cuts oozing. The binds cutting into his wrists, his ankles, excruciating. Open like smiles. Mouth ripped out of flesh recently agile. He grinds his shoulders and feels cold and flaking metal. Rust. His eyes shut tight. So how can he see? Filtered through his eyelids, the light has a pearly sheen. Mother-pink. When he throws his head against the side of the container, it makes a hollow ring and the sound comes back to him as a low boom, slowed down and deeper as if encased in a bell submerged underwater. Petrol. Is that it? Oil? He tries to squint but it’s like folding rock. Where’s the animal strength? Pulsed with blood. His nose is blocked and he can hear a slim whistle of air forcing its way past something sticky. He’s trussed up like a pig at a banquet, his tongue – the apple, the orange. He cannot move his hands. He cannot move his feet. He cannot. Move.

  ***

  I like this part of the park. Along by the canal. Not too many walkers. Not too many dogs. Have I told you about me and dogs? No? Well, we’ll save that for later. I’ll explain about dogs once I’ve dished the dirt on HSSJ. There’s a half-deflated, red-and- white chequered ball floating in the water. A duck paddles by and pecks at it enquiringly. Two drakes squabble under the rusty water pipe running across the canal. I like to sit up there, straddling the pipe, and watch the sun set over London. The muffled traffic jazz mixes with the shuffle of leaves. Trains whisper in the distance, ‘Where’s Kings Cross? Where’s Kings Cross? Where’s Kings Cross?’ I can see two gas silos. And over there, the building that used to be The Rainbow where I saw Iggy Pop supported by The Vibrators. It’s now a mosque. Or is it a church? Jehovah’s Witness? Seventh-day Adventist? Ku Klux Klan? I can’t remember. That doesn’t say much for my observational skills, now, does it? But I can see what’s not twenty yards ahead of me. An old woman.

  An old woman with her pet pooch. Shit. You’re gonna get your explanation sooner than I thought. Sooner than you thought. Or wanted. I really hope you’re not eating breakfast, or lunch, or dinner for that matter. I look up and the dog is sniffing the air. The thing is a mongrel. Looks like a cross between a mastiff and a Yorkshire terrier. Big head shaped like an extruded traffic cone, pointy ears, no body, legs too skinny, brindled fur of tobacco and ash. It sni
ffs in my direction. I look away but it’s too late. The dog sees me. Freezes. I know I didn’t wash this morning. Not properly. I didn’t dust my armpits with talc. I forgot to clean my teeth. I put on yesterday’s kit. But there’s no need for what’s going to happen next. The owner – bless – looks down at her dog standing rigid, staring at me.

  She leans down, pats its head, and says in a baby voice, ‘Is the nasty man scaring you?’

  I take my hands from my pockets, make a nodding gesture and, in order not to pass the now sphinx-like mutt, walk back the way I came. But then it starts. The howl comes from the dog’s innards, along its throat catching bubbles of saliva on the way, and then, almost taking the poor creature’s teeth with it, out into the park, loud and deep, drowning out the traffic, the trains, the planes overhead. At the same time, the dog evacuates its bowels, its bladder.

  The old woman looks at me and says, ‘What have you done?’

  I say, ‘It wasn’t me, missus. Something must’ve spooked him.’

  And she says, ‘You. It was you. You spooked my Wilfy.’

  And I say, trying to make a joke of the matter, ‘Bet you haven’t had your Wilfy spooked in a long while.’

  She puts one hand to her mouth and with the other shoos me away as if I were a bailiff-headed mosquito. The dog is drooling. Its eyes red with the pain of that howl. It’ll be OK in a few days. Nothing long-term. May go off its kibble. Kick a bit in its sleep. Hide under the stairs.

  I walk behind a tree and pretend to pee and let the old woman, who now has the stupefied animal in her arms and is nuzzling away at its trembling mouth, pass. I shake my imaginary, zip up what remained zipped, and carry on with my walk. So, and I know you’re dying to ask, how come our canine brethren react in this way? I’ll tell you. It’s about time I let you in on a few things. Secrets.

  They don’t lose control if we don’t exchange looks. Once we eyeball each other, then comes the howling and the drooling, the shitting and the pissing, the turned-to-stone stance and the boggle-eyed stare. You should see the look on a pug’s face. Not to mention the concerned and puzzled gaze of the owner. And I don’t. Mention it, I mean.