Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [168]
“God! But you look scruffy, Grey,” said the Headmaster, puffing irritably on his pipe. “I don’t blame young Lindfield at all. Anyway, he saved your life. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Grey.
“That will be all,” said the Headmaster, in his cloud of scented smoke.
“Have you picked a religion, yet?” asked the school chaplain, Mr. Aliquid.
Richard shook his head. “I’ve got quite a few to choose from,” he admitted.
The school chaplain was also Richard’s biology teacher. He had once taken Richard’s biology class, fifteen thirteen-year-old boys and Richard, just twelve, across the road, to his little house opposite the school. In the garden Mr. Aliquid had killed, skinned and dismembered a rabbit, with a small, sharp knife. Then he’d taken a footpump and blown up the rabbit’s bladder like a balloon, until it had popped, spattering the boys with blood. Richard threw up, but he was the only one who did.
“Hmm,” said the chaplain.
The chaplain’s study was lined with books. It was one of the few masters’ studies that was in any way comfortable.
“What about masturbation. Are you masturbating excessively?” Mr. Aliquid’s eyes gleamed.
“What’s excessively?”
“Oh. More than three or four times a day, I suppose.”
“No,” said Richard. “Not excessively.”
He was a year younger than anyone else in his class; people forgot about that sometimes.
Every weekend he traveled to North London to stay with his cousins, for barmitzvah lessons taught by a thin, ascetic cantor, frummer than frum, a cabbalist and keeper of hidden mysteries onto which he could be diverted with a well-placed question. Richard was an expert at well-placed questions.
Frum was orthodox, hardline Jewish. No milk with meat, and two washing machines for the two sets of plates and cutlery.
Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
Richard’s cousins in North London were frum, although the boys would secretly buy cheeseburgers after school and brag about it to each other.
Richard suspected his body was hopelessly polluted already. He drew the line at eating rabbit, though. He had eaten rabbit, and disliked it, for years before he figured out what it was. Every Thursday there was what he believed to be a rather unpleasant chicken stew for school lunch. One Thursday he found a rabbit’s paw floating in his stew, and the penny dropped. After that on Thursdays he filled up on bread and butter.
On the underground train to North London he’d scan the faces of the other passengers, wondering if any of them were Michael Moorcock.
If he met Moorcock he’d ask him how to get back to the ruined temple.
If he met Moorcock he’d be too embarrassed to speak.
Some nights, when his parents were out, he’d try to phone Michael Moorcock.
He’d phone directory enquiries, and ask for Moorcock’s number.
“Can’t give it to you, love. It’s ex-directory.”
He’d wheedle and cajole, and always fail, to his relief. He didn’t know what he would say to Moorcock if he succeeded.
He put ticks in the front of his Moorcock novels, on the By The Same Author page, for the books he read.
That year there seemed to be a new Moorcock book every week. He’d pick them up at Victoria station, on the way to barmitzvah lessons.
There were a few he simply couldn’t find—The Stealer of Souls, Breakfast in the Ruins,—and eventually, nervously, he ordered them from the address in the back of the books. He got his father to write him a cheque.
When the books arrived they contained a bill for twenty-five pence: the prices of the books were higher than originally listed. But still, he now had a copy of The Stealer of Souls, and a copy of Breakfast in the Ruins.
At the back of Breakfast in the Ruins was a biography of Moorcock that said he’d died of lung cancer the year before.
Richard