1. The High Life
WAKE UP! (Not now, not now…) NOW!
From the darkness of sleep ignites a flicker of life.
A helpless cry of despair: “Neeeeuuurgggh.”
The head is a ball of agony, brain not working – a thoroughly dismal state of consciousness. There is a noxious creeping in his veins: like the signalling of something that’s about to happen. The body simply lies there, any movement may upset the equilibrium for good.
Lord Antoine Florentino, Executive President of Six Continents awoke one morning in disarray.
Eyes pressed tightly shut, he listened to his mouth: “Not now, not now…” then wheezing: “Oh God, where am I?”
Something mumbled beside him. A woman. Another woman. Only then did he dare to open those sore eyes; dare to let the light permeate his blood cells and stab into his brain. Reality gained access. Sleep’s over.
Here lay Lord Antoine Florentino, in the same situation as every other day. Longing for just a little more rest than sleep had ever consigned him, but not wanting death – not just yet. Perhaps, if he could just die temporarily, if he could somehow cancel his life for the next few weeks; a holiday from the deafening rush of this unwinding mortal coil… perhaps then he would be able to clear his mind. And afterwards, perhaps there could be a State Resurrection. He could imagine all his peers and senators stood in ceremonial costumes, grave faces as his majestic body was gratefully exhumed.
Such were the thoughts of Florentino’s flittering mind on this autumn morning. He stretched out, considering the option of deep-freezing – all it would take was a quick phone call to the Secretary, she could find someone who could do it. Hold on. No. His mind was playing tricks again: this was another path to madness. He’d be like his Uncle in no time, and all the other lunatics in his family.
The equilibrium was now dangerously unbalanced, Florentino was traversing stormy seas of nausea in an attempt to regain control. Calm down, calm down. In vain he tried to moisten the parched throat with thick, dry spittle. It was no good wrestling with this monster. He writhed on the unforgiving mattress for a short time, his body so unwilling to surrender itself to the day. Then he reached over and slapped the explosion of golden hair on the pillow adjacent to his.
“Wake up! Wake up! You! Can you hear me? I need water!” his voice scraped like talons in his skull. “Ahhaaaa….” He began to sob like a child.
So she, whoever she was, rolled obediently from the ruinous bed, from the meagre section she had been forced to allocate by the sprawling, long-legged form of Florentino, and stumbled naked towards the bathroom with bleary, unquestioning eyes.
“No, no, NO!” he roared: “Where are you going? Use the kitchen water! The water from the bathroom is filthy! It’s better fetched from the kitchens. Purer. Go there now. Water from the bathroom is for washing, and not drinking. Do you want me to catch dystentry? Cholera? Oh Christ. Besides, there are enough poisoners out there. Er…WHERE ARE YOU FROM? And, in fact, WHO ARE YOU ANYWAY?”
It was true. There were so many poisoners out there. He’d heard the warnings; seen the signs. Only two days ago his Secretary had reported that two Senators had wound up dead – poisoned – in the run up to the bi-annual Senate. No one knew who was doing it. It didn’t matter he supposed, there was always some assassin waiting somewhere, some sinister fucker with a political agenda. It was always political. Personally, he never really saw the attraction of ideology. But it was only a matter of time before they got to him. Perhaps it had already happened – perhaps this foul temptress was an expert of poisons. Had the toxins already taken grip? Oh god. He should order her to be killed immediately. No, no, no – equilibrium, equilibrium – this was a hangover; just a hangover.
The nameless woman grimaced and slung on a silk gown from beside the bed. Florentino quietened a little as he surveyed her body and tried to trudge up some memories from the previous night, remembering inclinations of degradation. However, the crapulous mind couldn’t cope with these high levels of concentration, and as she traipsed out from the room without answering his question, he soon found himself questioning and proposing notions of the most absurd calibre. He began thinking of hedgehogs, as he so often did, and how it was a good thing that their spines pointed outwards. Instead of inwards….
Then he began to contemplate the wallpaper. He wondered why he had chosen his lavish bedroom quarters to be decorated white, of all colours. Such an uninspired decision, he thought: did I make it? Was that really me? So unkind to the eyes. It glares. On the other hand of course, black painted walls would have had a detrimental effect on such a state of cerebral instability – it stood to reason. The only colour left open to him, give or take a few other options of no consequence, was green. It was obvious.
“I want it GREEN!” he yelled. “Make it all green! WENCH! Where’s that poisoner woman gone now? Somebody – anybody - fetch paint and make it all green for me! These walls need to be green! Arsenic green to match my death!”
She eventually returned to these frenzied sounds, the water in a gilded glass, which, like everything in the household, boasted the standardised flourish of the ‘A.F.’ logo. Florentino realised he had fallen asleep once again.
“What’s that you’re shouting?” she inquired, a little bemused. “I lost myself in those corridors….”
“Tell someone to make my room green…oh, but not yet.” He was immediately subdued. “I am unwell, for the present. I must be unwell: I dreamt that I fell in love! And with a ghost! Ha! Take your leave now. You have done your service well…I think.” He placed a tanned hairless leg on her slender behind and shoved her gently towards the exit. She snatched a case of clothes as she left Florentino’s rooms, and after catching her breath in the soundproofed corridor outside, abandoned Florentino to his madness.
Meanwhile, the President was staring with bloodshot stupefaction at a life-sized marble statue of Tiberius at the foot of his bed. It wore a Panama hat, placed upon its stone head in a moment of luxuriously trivial genius. The dead Emperor stared back at him blankly, a half-smile gracing its cold pale lips.
“Clearly concerned with matters of higher status,” Florentino mumbled. “Tiberius. You fucking old lunatic.” This strangely profound moment lasted for some time, before he realised that this alabaster being had extended its influence over his audience: Florentino felt a similar sensation as he had when studying television snow. The sound was there, too.
“This won’t do, Antoine,” he asserted. “No, no, this won’t do at all. You have a world to run. There’s a war on, don’t you know. Blah blah blah, etcetera.”
There was a drinks cabinet ensconced in an oak sideboard some distance from his four-poster bed. He padded over to this now. The thick carpet waived the need for slippers, and any glass that happened to smash was gathered by one of many housemaids, they were forbidden to use gloves, and their white hands were patterned with crimson streaks.
Deftly he poured himself a generous gin martini, instantly draining a fair portion of the bitter drink. “Necessary,” he nodded.
So there he stood, his gangly legs poking out of his dressing gown, in a corner of this magnificent Palace in Wiltshire; somehow dragging the world’s business along with a headstrong policy of accident, fluke, and wilful opportunism. And, of course, treating himself to whatever miracles his addled head conceived. It made him wonder. Well, he did have some positive qualities, he had to admit; he voiced precisely those opinions that others dared not say, committed to speech the most astonishingly profane thoughts that entered his mind, he answered questions put to him by the house, by critics and commentators, with such baffling simplicity that his interrogators fell silent in frustrated confusion. For example, what exactly was wrong with the Three Day Week policy? “It has slowed down production and the economy nearly two-fold,” they had shouted.
“Well let it,” he had shouted. “Let’s produce less and see what happens. We don’t need all this rubbish. Let’s work less. What is progress, if not a hastening to the end?”
As long as they produced what he wanted, they could stuff their workaholic morals.
But this was not the real reason for his success. That lay in his social ability, which he naturally directed to people of only the highest standing, patronising those that mattered, and saving for the serfs the harshest, most relentless, and indulgent abuse. Yes, those serfs who had once tried so hard to ruin his soul, spreading their infectious licentiousness like a disease. He ensured he would not let them do that again. Because once upon a time, he had spent time in their world, while he waited for that awful uncle of his to pop his clogs, whereupon the hereditary position of quasi-world leader would be relinquished to one obnoxious, pimply nephew – who, unfortunately, held the sole claim to the throne. In the midst of those grim times, he had been forced to live a life that he detested: mixing with the mind-numbing ordinary workingman who discussed such things as football as if it mattered to anyone; sticky-fingered talk that almost led him to pass an outright prohibition. Those dreadful, weaselly men who sat in cliques in public houses where they talked intimately of women that they would never possess; of the capacities of cars they could never afford. It disgusted him! Unashamedly he begrudged them their existence - often pondering why he let them live and proliferate at all. It disgusted him as a youth and it disgusted him now – now, when he could finally avenge them their depressing ignorance; and good God did he enjoy it. Now they could sit helplessly on their flaccid male egos while he merrily fucked their wives and women. And furthermore, they would applaud him for it.
In a perverse way (and Florentino was no stranger to the perverse), he did enjoy thinking of them, albeit with a splash of vitriol. He enjoyed it because when juxtaposed with their acrid lifestyle, he shone like a burning star. Compared to the odour of rotting bedsitting rooms and walls softening with damp, his was a world perfumed by the smell of peach incense and the clean aniseed scent of pastis. Contrasted with their balding scalps, their loose, ageing skin and damp, trimmed moustaches, he could always, as he did now, cast a glance at his own chiselled, angular features in a tall, gold-framed mirror wherefrom his reflection glared haughtily back with piercing silver eyes.
Fifteen years ago he had been what can only be described as dashing, and the publicity photographs that dated from this period were still in circulation – in fact these images constituted the official presidential press portfolio – though the likeness had diminished to the level of cariacature. Although he was tall, his vociferous diet of food (vegetarian, of course – for what kind of barbarian would want to feed on the flesh of an innocent creature?) and particularly drink, meant that his face was padded with fat, and a paunch had developed at his belly from which his long limbs poked out incongruously. Florentino’s complexion was often termed sandy; his features topped with thin, colourless hair that only really came alive after a meticulous grooming.
As he surveyed the victorious work of his creator in the looking glass, he was suddenly quite overcome, taken captive by a wave of euphoria - unexpected in the harsher lands of his hangovers, but possible. It often happened like this: a little smirk of realisation - the realisation of a dream dreamt by a thousand men - spreading over his whole being, until he could see nothing beyond his own contentment. He was on top of the world, though he failed to comprehend that, relatively speaking, so was everyone else. He felt like Jay Gatsby without the sentiment, and with a damn sight more booze. Radiant and sparkling, he drained his alcohol and slipped a gleaming disc into his central music system.
“Time for a bath, I think.”
No ordinary bath could suffice for a man in Florentino’s position.
In adherence with the golden rules that indulgence equals happiness, and wealth means choice, there had been a black marble bathtub of immense proportions specifically constructed for the soaking of Florentino’s battered but grateful skin. The bath had been built to accommodate up to fifteen persons and indeed, parties had been held within that vessel lasting for entire evenings, carelessly spilt cocktails clouding the water and shimmering like oil, while the air filled with bubbles of soap and vodka. Placing a large snowflake-white towel over a gold rail in a corner of the bathroom, Florentino slipped from his gown into three feet of deliciously warm water until his aching frame came to rest against a sloping corner of the gigantic tank, his back obscuring the carefully carved gilt flourish of his own initials. His hand moved to a small switch on the wall beside him and the purring of warm air bubbled forth from several disclosed jets. He remembered the baths of his youth: three inches of lukewarm water as tepid as urine, a melted cake of Imperial Leather scraped from the tray. But now he sighed contentedly as the music system piped up a reverberating I’ll Never Be The Same, performed by Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. And now Florentino pictured his long-departed soul gliding over some distant horizon. Melodies intertwined in beds of sympathetic chords, the violin flirting with a plaintive flatness it never wholly entertained.
Or did it?
And there it was – the incredible realisation that something was amiss. The music was corrupted by some technical glitch. The music system (that BASTARD!) suddenly made a hideous scraping sound as some internal malfunction proceeded to loop the track between two obtuse points within a melodic phrase.
Made furious with the intangibility of paradise, Florentino erupted from the bathtub like an angry Neptune, inadvertently sending a towel plummeting into the water, which lay afloat like a bloated jellyfish. As the perfumed towel drowned in the bathwater, his reaction translated itself into a cry: “neeeeearrrrgghh”. His muscles tensed spasmodically. There must be someone, anyone, nearby that needed to be killed. Somebody must pay for this cataclysm. If the universe can allow such an intolerable, and cruelly insignificant performance by inanimate objects, inscrutable by their very nature (this attack on harmony by dumb objects!), he would make someone else pay. If God were responsible, He would reap His reward by seeing one of His children suffer! One of those inhabitants of this planet, who, by virtue of Chaos Theory or some other obscure reason, must have helped this insufferable crime to occur. He wouldn’t even pay someone to do it for him. He wouldn’t give money to one person to take another person’s life, as he so often he had. Bring him man, woman or child and he’d hammer the towel rail into their skulls. Batter them repeatedly until the brains fell out. Oh Christ, he’d extract an apology from them then.
There was a knock on the door like a slap in the face. No, no, no, he must never let himself think like that – that way madness lies. He must try and reign in these thoughts – more trouble than it was worth.
It was The Secretary. “Your painter’s arrived, Sir!”
He didn’t respond but instead picked up a clean towel and dried himself completely. He began to dress.
A long pause.
“Lord Florentino, Sir?” Another voice. The intonation was Northern.
“Whaaaat?” he grimaced, elongating the vowel like a child in a tantrum.
“Ah’ve come to make your room green, Sir. Er… with paint.”
“Yes, well. My hangover’s cleared up now. Piss off, will you.”