Lights Out in Wonderland Read online

  Also by DBC Pierre

  Vernon God Little

  Ludmila’s Broken English

  Copyright © 2010 by DBC Pierre

  First American Edition 2011

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pierre, D. B. C.

  Lights out in wonderland / D.B.C. Pierre. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-393-08123-7 (hardcover)

  1. Men—Fiction. 2. Self-realization—Fiction.

  3. Relationships—Fiction. 4. Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PR9619.4.P54L54 2011

  823'.92—dc22

  2011020688

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

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  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

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  Per els somnis d’una nit

  If your ethical model defeats you,

  change the model.

  1

  There’s no name for my situation. Firstly because I decided to kill myself. And then because of this idea:

  I don’t have to do it immediately.

  Whoosh—through a little door. It’s a limbo.

  I never have to answer the phone again or pay a bill. My credit rating no longer matters. Fears and compulsions don’t matter. Socks don’t matter. Because I’ll be dead. And who am I to die? A microwave chef. A writer of flyers. A product of our time. A failed student. A defective man. A bad poet. An activist on the fence. A drinker of chocolate milk, and when there’s no chocolate, of strawberry and sometimes banana.

  In times set up for the survival of the fittest—not the fittest.

  Ah, well. I always avoided mirrors, but here, naked in a room with a basin and a mirror, I steal a glance. Whoosh—the weasel is gone. Suddenly I’m a sphinx with choir-boy eyes, as luminous and rude as a decadent portrait in oils.

  Because nothing matters anymore.

  Rehab isn’t the place for this kind of inspiration.

  By way of celebration I pee in the basin—after all, a porcelain appliance plumbed into a drain—then I flush it with the faucet, which I feel shows refinement. Reason and refinement are shown in my last living hours. Proof that I’m not deranged, that I came from good people. Or, at least, from stories of good people. Dressing quickly, I don’t bother to wash, it doesn’t matter. I only pause to stretch at the window and marvel. My depression’s gone. Whoosh—down a rabbit hole it went. Everything’s whoosh. That’s the rush of this limbo.* Of course, it only works when the decision to die is final. Which mine is.

  The reason is simple: that of the many things I was supposed to be and have and do in life, I am, and have, and have done exactly none of them. I flounder in the wake of modern times, watching them speed away. This may sound pathetic except for one thing: I don’t lack inner forces. I have inner forces, more than enough. But they never found expression.

  Unexpressed force, more pointless than no force at all.

  In the course of this writing it might seem to you that I recommend this fatal path. Well, I do recommend it. Make up your own mind according to what you see, but in the meantime I count you my partner. And I say this to you: everyone regrets leaving a party early, hearing laughter from a room behind them. Death

  must feel that way. But I don’t feel it at all; because this party’s over. Bottles are empty. Kegs are spitting foam. Our empire of shopping is in its last dying twitch. Bye-bye free markets, farewell terms and conditions, ciao bogus laughter, ha ha, whoop, wa-hey. The last revelers are the dregs we see at any free event, now vomiting wine. It’s not regret but pride I feel at detecting the state of things, and bailing out in good time.

  So adieu, Modern Day, adieu. Another chance to prove ourselves capable of self-control, and therefore worthy of freedom, is gone. Deep down we know it too; for over a decade we’ve only reheated the past, glorifying our hundred best moments over and over like old-timers with snaps of their frisky days, unconsciously saying goodbye.

  Now watch the lights dim in Wonderland.

  Whoosh. What a decadence.

  A ball smacks between rackets somewhere outside, and to me it’s a ticking clock, uneven like the real time of nature. I have to vanish from here—quick, before anyone goes to work on my mind. I’m going to live it up for an hour or two. Because I’m worth it, ha ha. As far as the behavior my limbo suggests, just look around. If we’re supposed to follow our peers, we don’t need any greater morals than them.

  It means carte blanche for Gabriel Brockwell.

  First things first—I’ll call on the most accomplished profligate I know: my friend Nelson Smuts, a man always close to wine and debauch. With him riding shotgun we’ll turn my last hours into a perfect miniature of the age I leave behind, nothing less than a last wanton dive to oblivion.

  Ah, decadence. I smile out through the window. The rehabilitation facility sits festering like a family secret in the countryside north of London, England. It has nooks, shrubberies, and empty ponds coated in slime. Inmates—so-called clients—drift around sucking leaf mold—so-called fresh air—and wearing trousers that don’t touch their legs but hover empty over the wrong kinds of shoes.

  My room isn’t locked. The hallway outside is ripe with that mechano-pubic smell of vacuum cleaning. I plunge through it as late sun whacks the building, a golden blast that lights galaxies of dust against the lobby’s dark. Whoosh. The Ancients would call this a good sign. It seems big decisions call for signs from the divine Enthusiasms, those ironic and whimsical energies which a limbo must attract. Who knows if they favor life over death, if they give signs along the path of an adventure, or save their lessons for the end?

  Come, though—we’ll see.

  A long-faced girl slumps behind reception. She watches me, hoping I won’t approach. Whoosh—I swirl through the light toward her. My shyness is gone. The secret that I will die makes it irrelevant, so I go up till her face is in shadow, and ask for a pen and paper. We’ll take notes—yes!—while everything’s so clear. As the girl fumbles around, I see checkout forms behind the bench, and reach for one. She recoils, as if my arm has some stunning force field. But then I see she’s a person who flinches at everything. All movement is a slight surprise to her. She puts down a notepad, arranges a pen beside it, and stands back while I square the checkout form on the bench, frowning with intent. With a flourish I take up the pen:

  “All happiness not derived from intoxicants,” I write, “—is false.”

  Her mouth opens slowly: “O-kay. I might just get David, or Rosemary—who have you been seeing—David, or Rosemary?”

  Her face seems to grow longer, melting toward the bench with every word. This is a Salvador Dalí girl, s
omeone to fold over the branch of a tree.

  “Neither one,” I say, and continue to write:

  “All self-knowledge, courage, and resolve not attributed to intoxicants—are false.”

  “I’ll call David.” She reaches for a handset.

  I settle into my stride, spilling out of the Reason(s) for Discharge box, into Mentor Comments. “The notion does not stand up,” I write, “that those few dropouts susceptible to the wealth of sensitivities that make them human, traits and passions even celebrated by their peers—”

  “David West, David to reception.”

  “—should, for their failure to harmonize with mediocrity and automatism, be shut away with passive-aggressive profiteers who spend their hostilities passing off manipulation and dogma as some kind of curative therapy.”

  “David to reception, please.”

  “The need of this assortment of new-age ano-extremists to patronize, wield authority, and lord false compassion over others is a more breathtaking and sinister disturbance of character than anything I could aspire to. If one thing convinces me to stay out of rehab it is this shocking realization: not that such a hoax could find allies—but that the allies it finds should be so menacingly installed in one place.”

  Dalí Girl twitches. She straightens flyers. “Who knows where David is? Shall we find you a seat in the Quiet Room? While we—figure things out?”

  “No,” I say.

  She blinks, nodding slowly. “The thing is—this isn’t your form that you wrote on. Your form is in our files. So we’d have to write this out again.”

  I stand watching her for a moment. “Then why don’t we copy my registration details from the form you have, onto this one?”

  “Well, no, but—this isn’t the form we have on file for you. You see? Really you’re not meant to write on the form anyway.”

  I level my gaze.

  “Also your form will have comments and—”

  “No, it won’t. I haven’t attended anything.”

  “Well, yes, but it still will, because—well, that’s your form.”

  “Then why don’t you get that form?”

  “I’m afraid it’s confidential.”

  “Hm.” I shift my weight.

  “I’m sorry—it’s just that, for example, clinical notes will be there, and of course your payment details—”

  “Would you even charge for a half-night stay?”

  The girl stiffens. “Well, the course is prepaid. You see? The terms and conditions—”

  “No, no—the term and condition in the existential world is that I arrived during the night, and now I’m leaving.” I don’t say it unkindly. I even leave my mouth open, smiling. The tuft of my chin beard bobs up like a squirrel.

  Dalí Girl squirms.

  Ah, well, well. Even here we find profit picking over the bones of the fallen. I take a step back. Dalí Girl shuffles papers while I try to accept the facts.* “I don’t know where David could be.” She frowns down the hallway.

  “Well, it’s an outrage.” I calmly pocket the notepad and pen.

  “David West, urgently to reception, please.”

  My stare passes over a potted palm beside the desk, then over some letters at the back that spell “Hope.” I muse how much better a word like “Smashing” would look. Or even a sign from a Chinese supermarket, “Excellent Soiling” or “Hymen News.”

  “The thing is”—Dalí inflates with a new idea—“you’ll be wanting your personal effects? Your wallet, phone, and what have you? I’ll need a senior staff member to sign them out, I can’t just do it. That’s the thing.”

  “Look—in the space of three minutes your reasons for not helping have been: that I’ll have to write on a different form; that I’m not allowed to write on any form; that I’m not allowed to see the form; and that you need professionals to open a locker.”

  “That’s the thing,” she says, happy to just leave the topic. “I can get you some mineral water? While we wait for David?”

  That’s the Thing. I see in her face the power to call people who come quicker than David, and with medications. Whoosh. I just take the water, frankly, whose fizz crackles noisily around a slice of lemon, and mope down the passage to the Quiet Room. This is a vacuum of passion overlooking the yard. Just where you’d expect to Wait for David. It smells of paint and damp. I find it empty, and sit on a pus-colored sofa facing a window through which trees thrash their bristles in the wind, a pummeling wind choked with dead leaves.

  I should’ve just walked out. Reception was a mistake.

  A chessboard sits on a side table with some magazines on relaxation and breathing. Light from a table lamp glares off their covers. The organism who needs tips on breathing, I muse, should probably be allowed to die. And I wonder if light would bounce as well off a copy of Bacon Busters or Fisting Wives. We’ll never find out; that’s why these out-of-town rehabs cause discomfort. Because a once-voluptuous mansion where waltzes were danced, where the air churned with fragrance and with the barks of beloved children and dogs, now a monument to shame, condescension, and bean sprouts—will have either a copy of Fisting Wives or a row of corpses under the kitchen garden.

  It won’t have both.

  I switch off the lamp and soak in a violet glow. The chessboard sits waiting for a game; I inspect the rows of pieces. Pawns line up to die, knights ponder doglegs, rooks measure straits. With one imperious swipe I take the white queen and plow through both camps, batting the black king to the floor. This is the kind of attitude we’ll need this evening. Whichever odyssey we’ve embarked on, you and I—and I feel it is an odyssey, if only a brief one—should show the same disregard for life and nature which they have shown for us. We’ll chase pleasure without restraint.

  Go out like animals. Like capitalists!

  Ah, this moment before death is a virgin arena. Not to say I’m the first to discover suicide, even you’ve surely cradled the idea, lifted its flap in a certain dark moment, sniffed it, sized it up. Not that you’ve planned it like me; but still you must sense, in the combinations of chance already in play around you, at least one outcome where the price is your death.* I wonder if that’s where we get a sense of being lucky, watching destiny’s fingers whirr past our triggers, watching other people’s triggers being hit. Surely this is what makes news so profitable.

  Anyway—mine were hit.

  My mind drifts to Nelson Smuts. What a party we’ll have. What a bacchanal. Last I knew he was just back from Brussels, in a private kitchen down south. A while ago, this was. A year ago, maybe. Ah, Smuts.

  In the middle of this reflection, the Quiet Room door opens. A thin young man looks in. He wears a skinny sweater and has a pale, unformed kind of face, like the fetus of a horse. He just stands looking at me.

  Then after a while he points at my shoes:

  “That’s leather,” he says.

  Not sure where he’s going with this, I look back for a moment and, after he offers no more clues, raise a finger at his top and say, “That’s wool.”

  “Yes, but the lamb survived,” he says.

  I turn away, blinking.

  After more silence he says: “Aren’t you coming?”

  “No,” I say.

  Another few seconds pass. Then he goes out and shuts the door behind him. Other murmurs pass in the hallway, and as they fade, a set of footsteps approaches.

  “Gabriel Brockwell?” a man says at the door. He says it without effort, in a tone that won’t leave him looking stupid if there’s no answer.

  I ignore him. I’ll wait here till all’s quiet, then run. I sense him looking stupid behind the door, but feel no stress in ignoring him, or any care at all. Those tensions are gone now, because I could kill myself at any moment.

  “Gabriel?”

 
As he says my name, I write it on the notepad.

  A title appears: The Book of Gabriel.

  Then a subtitle: Anything—for Monkeys, Dogs, & Poets.

  I put Anything rather than Everything because it seems all things arise in the same way.* In order to support a mass of pseudo-industries, markets have led us to believe that every fragment of life is highly specialized, and therefore in need of goods and services to control it; whereas in fact all nature has a predictable and pretty boring character, whether you’re a bug or a radiographer, escaping a bird or scanning a breast. As for the creatures in the subtitle, I feel they’re ambassadors of human spirit, motifs from where charm and self-loathing are born. They might even have their own heaven—why not?—if Swedenborg says there’s a special paradise for Turks and the Dutch.

  With the notepad officially open, a spirit of research prevails in limbo. Our notes should therefore be clear, and you’ll forgive me if the language seems formal—surely to throw light on a decadence we have to step away from its lingo, twisted as this has been to sanction outrage. Because isn’t language the buttress of civilization? Honed to explain quirks and crimes in all subtlety, without margin for error or escape?* With this decisive stroke I get up off the sofa. My belongings can stay at reception, Smuts will have money, Smuts will have food and wine.

  But as I reach the door, new shuffling sounds approach.

  A man’s head pokes into the Quiet Room:

  “Ah—there you are,” he says

  2

  David West is a sallow man who would bruise easily. His eyes are like boiled eggs, without sheen, and a shadowy yolk even looms under their whites. Sockets like egg cups hold them in place. I don’t warm to him.

  “You’re not an easy man to find,” he says. “The session’s started, won’t you join us?”

  “No,” I say.

  He leads me from the Quiet Room, frowning and smiling at the same time. “You look rough. I wondered if you’d even wake up.”

  “It’s nothing. I just need some cakes.”