Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [40]
“Um,” said Rodney.
“Three months you been sitting on it, and you don’t even know the fucking title?”
“Um,” he repeated. Like the novel itself, the title, Rodney recalled, was very long. Pharsin’s typescript ran to more than eleven hundred pages: single-spaced. Pharsin said it comprised exactly one million words—a claim (Rodney felt) that few would ever call him on. “It’s very long.” He looked up into Pharsin’s blood-spoked eyes and said, “ ‘The …’ ”
“The what?”
“ ‘The Words of …’ ” Wait. “ ‘The Noise of the …’ ”
“ ‘Sound.’ ”
“ ‘The Noise of the Sound …’ ”
“Bullshit! The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words, man. The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words.”
“Exactly. The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words.”
“Commit the fucking energy, man. I say this because I’m convinced that your effort will be rewarded. The structure you’ll particularly relish. And also the theme.”
After another forty column-inches of reproach, dissimulated threat, moral suasion, and literary criticism, Pharsin wrapped things up, adding, as an audible afterthought,
“Thirteen weeks. And he doesn’t even know its name?”
“Forgive me. I’m stupefied by, uh, ‘amorous excess.’ ”
“That I can believe. You look totally fucked out. Man, take care: you’re going to blow away on the wind. My marriage has survived thus far, but woman action and woman trouble I know all about. What’s her name?”
Rodney murmured some feminine phoneme: Jan or Jen or June.
But the truth was he didn’t know her name either.
“We’ve slimed.”
“Good man. Tell all.”
This time Rod and Rock were to be found in some kind of Irish restaurant high up on Lexington Avenue. They occupied two places near the head of a table laid for eighteen. Their practice on such occasions was to meet an hour early, to chat and drink cocktails, before some Americans showed up and paid for it all. This night, in Rock’s comfortable company, Rodney belied his eight-and-a-half stone. Pared down to the absolute minimum (carrying just two or three extra grams in that buxom upper lip), he nevertheless seemed to share in his friend’s bland rotundity; they both wore the cummerbund of inner fatness conferred by their class. Black Velvet, quaffed from pewter tankards, was their tipple of the hour.
“What’s there to say?” said Rodney. “Frankly, I’m speechless. Words cannot …”
“Dear oh dear. Well describe her body at least.”
“Actually I’d rather not. I mean there’s nothing to say, is there, when things go so gloriously?”
“… It’s Mrs. Peterson, isn’t it?” Rock paused unkindly. “No. Far too swarthy for you. You like the dairy-product type. Raised on curds and whey. They have to look like English roses. Or you get culture shock.”
“How very wrong you are,” said Rodney in a strained voice. “It may interest you to know that my inamorata happens to be … ‘bleck.’ ”
“Bleck?”
“Bleck,” said Rodney with emphasis. It sounded more like blick than black. A year or two ago they might have said bluhck. But having largely shed their class signatures, the two men were now recultivating them.
“Bleck?” repeated Rock. “You mean a proper …? What are they calling themselves these days. A proper American-African?”
“African-American.” As he continued, Rodney’s voice grew drowsy, and it was with a haggard sensuality—slow inhalations, feeding some inner fire—that he relished his nightly cigarette. “Well, African. I sense Africa in her. I taste Africa in her. One of the French bits, probably. Senegal, perhaps. Sierra Leone. Guinea-Bissau.”
Rock was looking at him.
“She moves like an empress. A Dahomey Amazon. Cleopatra was very dark, you know.”
“So she’s posh, too, is she? As well as bleck. Where does she say she’s from?”
Simultaneously ignoring this and rousing himself, Rodney said, “It’s what’s so wonderful about America. There aren’t any good bleck girls in London. All they’ve got there are those squeaky Cockneys. Magnificent creatures,