‘What are you doing here?’ said Peter.
‘Oh, you know,’ was the drawled reply. ‘Just hanging out, shootin’ the breeze. Watching the grass not grow. Happy campering. What are you doing here?’
‘I . . . I’m the minister,’ said Peter, divesting his hand from the stranger’s. ‘The pastor for the ????? . . . We built a church . . . It was right here . . . ’
Tartaglione laughed, then coughed emphysemically. ‘Beg to disagree, amigo. Nobody here but us cockroaches. No gas, food, floozies or floorshows. Nada.’
The word was released like a bat into the humid night, and disappeared. All of a sudden, a lightbulb went on in Peter’s brain. He wasn’t in C-2 at all: he was in the settlement that the ????? had abandoned. There was nothing here but air and brick walls. And a naked madman who’d slipped through the net of human civilisation.
‘I got lost,’ Peter explained, feebly. ‘I’m sick. I think I’ve been poisoned. I . . . I think I may be dying.’
‘No shit?’ said Tartaglione. ‘Then let’s get drunk.’
The linguist led him through the dark into still more dark, then through a doorway into a house where he was made to kneel and told to get comfy. There were cushions on the floor, large plump cushions that might have been cannibalised from a couch or armchair. They felt mildewy to the touch, like the decaying peel of orange or lemon. When Peter sat on them, they sighed.
‘My humble abode,’ said Tartaglione. ‘Après the exodus, moi.’
Peter offered a grunt of gratitude, and tried to breathe through his mouth rather than his nose. Oasan interiors usually smelled of nothing much except food and the honeydew air currents that continually flowed through the windows and lapped around the walls, but this room managed to reek of human uncleanness and alcoholic ferment. In its centre stood a large object which he’d thought at first was a sleeping crib, but which he now identified as the source of the liquor stink. Maybe it was a sleeping crib, serving as an alcohol storage tub.
‘Is there any light?’ asked Peter.
‘You bring a torch, padre?’
‘No.’
‘Then there isn’t any light.’
Peter’s eyes simply couldn’t adjust to the darkness. He could see the whites – or rather yellows – of the other man’s eyes, a bristle of facial hair, an impression of emaciated flesh and flaccid genitals. He wondered if Tartaglione had developed, over the months and years he’d lived in these ruins, a kind of night vision, like a cat.
‘What’s wrong? You choking on something?’ asked Tartaglione.
Peter hugged himself to stop the noise coming from his own chest. ‘My . . . my cat died,’ he said.
‘You brought a cat here?’ the other man marvelled. ‘USIC’s allowing pets now?’
‘No, it was . . . it happened at home.’
Tartaglione patted Peter’s knee. ‘Now, now. Be a good little camper, don’t lose Brownie points. Don’t use the H-word. The H-word is verboten! è finito! Distrutto! Non esiste!’
The linguist was making theatrical motions with his palms, shoving the word home back into its gopher-hole each time it popped up. Peter suddenly hated him, this poor crazy bastard, yes, he hated him. He closed his eyes tight and opened them again, and was bitterly disappointed that Tartaglione was still there, that the darkness and the alcohol stink were still there, when what should be there when he opened his eyes was the place he should never have left, his own space, his own stuff, Bea. He moaned in grief. ‘I miss my wife.’
‘None of that! None of that!’ Tartaglione sprang up, waving his arms about. His bare feet thumped a mad rhythm on the floor, and he emitted a bizarre ‘sh!-sh!-sh!-sh!’ as he danced. The effort of it triggered an extended burst of coughing. Peter imagined loose fragments of lung swirling in the air like nuptial confetti.
‘Of course you miss your wife,’ muttered Tartaglione when he’d calmed down slightly. ‘You miss every damn thing. You could fill a book with all the things you miss. You miss dandelions, you miss bananas, you miss mountains and dragonflies and trains and roses and . . . and . . . fucking junk mail for Christ’s sake, you miss the rust on the fire hydrants, the dogshit on the pavement, the sunsets, your dumbass uncle with the lousy taste in shirts and the yellow teeth. You want to throw your arms around the old sleazeball and say, “Uncle, what a great shirt, love your aftershave, show me your porcelain frog collection, and then let’s promenade down the old neighbourhood, just you and me, whaddaya say?” You miss snow. You miss the sea, non importa if it’s polluted, bring it on, oil spills, acid, condoms, broken bottles, who cares, it’s still the sea, it’s still the ocean. You dream . . . you dream of newly mown lawns, the way the grass smelled, you swear you’d give ten thousand bucks or one of your kidneys if you could have just one last whiff of that grass.’
To emphasise his point, Tartaglione sniffed deeply, a stage sniff, a sniff so aggressive it sounded as if it might damage his head.
‘Everyone at USIC is . . . concerned about you,’ said Peter carefully. ‘You could get transported home.’
Tartaglione snorted. ‘Lungi da me, satana! Quítate de delante de mí! Haven’t you read the USIC contract? Maybe you need help translating the lingo? Well, I’m your man. Dear highly skilled misfit: We hope you enjoy your stretch on Oasis. There’s chicken tonight! Or something very like it. So settle in, don’t count the days, take a long view. Every five years, or maybe sooner if you can prove you’re batshit insane, you can have a trip back to the festering scumhole you came from. But we’d rather you didn’t. What you wanna go back there for? What’s the point? Your uncle and his goddamned frog collection are gonna be history soon. Everything’s gonna be history soon. History will be history.’ He paced back and forth in front of Peter, his feet scuffling the dirty floor. ‘USIC concerned about me? Yeah, I’ll bet. That fatso chink dude, forget his name, I can just see him lying awake at nights thinking, I wonder if Tartaglione is OK. Is he happy? Is he getting enough vitamins? Do I hear a bell tolling, has a clod been washed away by the sea, is a piece of the continent gone, am I just a little fucking diminished here? Yeah, I can feel the love. Who’s on love duty today?’
Peter dipped out of consciousness for a second or two. The flesh of his brow was contracting tight against his skull, pushing in on the bone. He remembered once having a fever, some sort of forty-eight-hour flu, and lying helpless in bed while Bea was at work. Waking in the middle of the day half-deranged and parched with thirst, he was puzzled to feel a hand on the back of his head, lifting it from the pillow, and a glass of iced water raised to his lips. Much later, when he was better, he found out that Bea had travelled all the way home to give him that drink, and then all the way back to the hospital, in what was supposed to be her lunch break.
‘I would have survived,’ he’d protested.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I love you.’
When Tartaglione spoke again, his tone was philosophical, almost apologetic. ‘No use crying over spilt milk, my friend. Let it go rancid and live for ma?ana. The unacknowledged USIC motto, wise words, wise words, worthy of being tattooed on every forehead.’ A pause. ‘Hell, this place ain’t so bad. I mean this place I’ve got here: casa mia. It’s more cheerful in daylight. And if I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve had a bath, you know. Maybe trimmed the old barba.’ He sighed. ‘I had everything here once. Tutte le comodità moderne. Todo confort. Torches, batteries, shaver for my pretty face, paper to wipe my ass on. Pens, too. Prescription glasses, magnification 3.5. The world was my mollusc.’
‘What happened?’
‘Moisture,’ said Tartaglione. ‘Time. Wear and tear. Conspicuous absence of a multitude of people working round the clock to keep me supplied with goodies. But!’ He rummaged about, and there was the clatter of plastic, followed by a glotch of submersion into the liquid-filled crib. ‘But before they vamoosed, the little fairies in the bathrobes did teach me one of their secrets. The most important secret of all, right? Alchemy. Turning boring old plants into booze.’
There was another glotch. Tartaglione handed Peter a mug, took a slurp from his own, and continued raving.
‘You know the most wacko thing about the USIC base? The one, single, most sinister thing? I’ll tell you: No distillery. And no whorehouse.’
‘That’s two things.’
Tartaglione ignored him, fuelled now. ‘I’m no genius, but I comprehend a few truths. I understand nouns and verbs, I understand the labial fricative, I understand human nature. And you know what people immediately start looking for, five minutes after they arrive someplace new? You know what’s on their minds? I’ll tell you: How are they gonna get laid, and where are they gonna find some mind-altering substances. That’s if they’re normal. So what does USIC do, in its infinite wisdom? What does USIC do? It scours the entire world to dig up people who don’t need those things. Needed them once upon a time maybe, but not anymore. Sure, they crack a few jokes about cocaine and * – you’ve met BG, I take it?’
‘I’ve met BG.’
‘Three hundred pounds of bluff. That guy has killed off every natural need and desire known to mankind. All he wants is a job and a half-hour under the big yellow umbrella to flex his biceps. And the others, Mortellaro, Mooney, Hayes, Severin, I forget all their damn names now, but who cares, they’re all the same. You think I’m weird? You think I’m crazy? Look at those zombies, man!’
‘They’re not zombies,’ said Peter quietly. ‘They’re good, decent people. They’re doing their best.’
Tartaglione spluttered fermented whiteflower juice into the space between them. ‘Best? Best? Take your cheerleader pom-poms off, padre, and look at what USIC has got here. What’s the score on the vibrancy meter? Two and a half out of ten? Two? Anybody offered to teach you the tango or sent you a love letter? And how’s USIC’s maternity wing going? Any pitter-patter of piccoli piedi?’
‘My wife’s pregnant,’ Peter heard himself say. ‘They wouldn’t let her come.’
‘Of course not! Only zombies need apply!’
‘They’re not – ’
‘Cáscaras, empty vessels, every single one of them!’ declared Tartaglione, rearing up with such righteous vehemence that he farted. ‘This whole project is . . . nefasto. You cannot create a thriving community, let alone a new civilisation, by putting together a bunch of people who are no fucking trouble! Scuzi, pardon me mama, but it cannot be done. You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed. The people who build it have got to be egomaniacs and lunatics, they’ve gotta want it so damn bad they’ll trample you underfoot, they’ve got to be charismatic and charming and they’ve got to steal your wife from under your nose and then sting you for a loan of ten bucks. USIC thinks it can assemble a dream team, well yeah, it is a dream, and they need to wake up and smell their wet pyjamas. USIC thinks it can sift through a thousand applicants and pick the one man and the one woman who’ll get along with everybody, who’ll do their job without being a pain in the ass, who won’t throw tantrums or get depressed or freak out and spoil the whole damn thing. USIC is looking for people who can feel at home anywhere, even in a big fat nowhere like this, people who don’t care, they’re not fussed, no sweat, keep cool, hey ho, hey ho, it’s off to work we go, who needs a home anyway, who cares if the house where you grew up is burning down, who cares if your old neighbourhood is underwater, who cares if your folks are being slaughtered, who cares if a dozen scumbags are raping your daughter, everybody’s gotta die sometime, right?’
Tartaglione was panting. His vocal cords were in no shape for such heavy use.
‘You really believe the world is coming to an end?’ said Peter.
‘Jesus fucking Christ, padre, what kind of a Christian are you? Isn’t this the whole fucking point for you? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for for thousands of years?’
Peter leaned back, allowed his weary body to sink into the rotting cushions. ‘I haven’t been alive that long.’
‘Oooo, was that a putdown? Did I detect a putdown? Is this a ruffled godboy I see before me?’
‘Please . . . don’t call me godboy.’
‘You one of those decaffeinated Christians, padre? The diabetic wafer? Doctrine-free, guilt-reduced, low in Last Judgement, 100% less Second Coming, no added Armageddon? Might contain small traces of crucified Jew?’ Tartaglione’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Marty Kurtzberg – now he was a man of faith. Grace before meals, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, none of this Krishna-has-wisdom-too crapola, always wore a jacket and pressed pants and polished shoes. And if you scratched him deep enough, he’d tell you: These are the last days.’
Peter swallowed hard on what tasted like bile. Even if he was dying himself, he didn’t think these were the world’s last days. God wouldn’t let go of the planet he loved so easily. He’d given His only son to save it, after all. ‘I’m just trying . . . just trying to treat people the way Jesus might have treated them. That’s Christianity for me.’
‘Well, that’s just fine and dandy. Molto ammirevole! I take my hat off to you, if I had a hat. Come on, godboy, have some booze, it’s good.’
Peter nodded, closed his eyes. Tartaglione’s rant about USIC was starting to sink in. ‘So . . . the reason why you guys are all here . . . USIC’s mission . . . it’s not trying to extract . . . it’s not . . . uh . . . finding new sources of . . . uh . . . ’
Tartaglione scoffed more lung fragments into the air. ‘All that is over, palomino! Over! We’ve got the trucks but no depot, capisce? We’ve got the ships but no harbour. We’ve got the hard-on and the jism but the woman is dead. Pretty soon, all the women will be dead. The earth has had it. We’ve mined all the mines, we’ve exploited all the exploits, we’ve eaten all the eats. è finito!’
‘But what about here on Oasis? What’s supposed to happen here?’
‘Here? Didn’t you get your Happy Pioneer T-shirt? We’re supposed to be creating a nest, a nursery, a place where the whole shebang can start over again. You’ve heard of the Rapture? Are you a Rapture kind of godboy?’