"The Depths" by Steve Finbow The river, only so because of what it reflects, normally whiplashes muddy grey and dirty brown through the known landscape; but here, it is merely a mirror of the sky and of the buildings that stand like discarded teeth along its banks; and so the man of this story, only so because of what he reflects upon, is merely a shade among other men, an abstract wisp among flesh and blood. Standing on the far edge of a boat – a punt or a small barge – is another man; he wears a hat and has his back turned away from the shore. Critics have argued that he is a Japanese fisherman, a renegade from the painting from which this artist originally drew inspiration; a refugee from another two-dimensional world; a ghostly figure clothed in influence and effect. He is none of these. He is neither fisherman nor muse. His stance, regardant, assumes he is in the process of hiding something; that, or he is about to use the river for his micturation. The punt is an amputated digit prodding the lapping water. The skeletal masts of the distant boats crosshatch the horizon. Chelsea Old Church sticks up like a thumb, a whore’s thumb, her nail bitten down to the quick and then some, painted a gaudy yellow. The buildings and the lights from the buildings seem to oscillate like unformed phantoms in a phoney séance. The buildings huddle on the shore – rats deserting a sinking ship. The man on the boat, hunchbacked, his head like that of Anubis, regards the buildings with an unseen eye, willing them to disappear among the mist and sparkles. The heavenly bodies in the evening sky become jellyfish surfacing in the river. A shooting star strains to reach the bright and speckled bursts. Caught still, the citrine spurts in the peridot sky double in the river. The river’s colour suggests not the Thames but a river of a distant planet, polluted with lapis lazuli, turquoise, and verdigris. Rising above the river is a bridge, at once solid and unworldly. How did it get here? It could be the leg of a giant crustacean, rising no longer forbidden from the murky water, taking its first step in a primitive quest to depredate London; or the landing gear of a spectacular spaceship, straddling the north and south of the capital, ready to embark on world domination. Better still, a giant Allen key awaiting a hand to turn it and re-activate the city and its inhabitants; or a T dropped by some careless typesetter. The river quivers in expectation at the maelstrom it could become. And the man – or should I say gentleman? – who is the hero of this story shivers, but not in excitement, but not with the cold, but in trembling acknowledgement of the painting he must recreate for the remainder of his days. The gentleman, who shall remain nameless for now, moves down on to steps that lead to the river. The mud, almost gasping in the night air, appears to breathe where the water has receded. Stepping on to the mud, which reaches to his ankles, he walks with exaggerated steps towards the man on the boat. The thick mud containing what was once stones, bronze, iron, and bones, sucks him down, sucks him deep. There, on the exposed bed, he hears the gentle lap of the river, like a great beast licking its lips after a brutal meal, and the slap and gulp of his own footsteps. The man on the boat ignores his advance, and stares out on to the water, stars exploding on the surface as if someone has dynamited a river full of goldfish. The man on the boat turns toward the shore. He shakes his head. The man approaching stops, without a word turns, and retraces his sodden steps back to the riverbank. Swiftly, he is amongst the streets abutting the river, their twisting ways known to him; the cobbles fondling his shoes, the perfume of the gutters, the floppy fringes of the trees. He moves like a blind man in a blind man’s room, fleet and knowing, the obstacles made distinct by the very knowledge of their immovability, of their haecceity. Cats, dogs, rats, and foxes make way for him, rubbing the brickwork and making it shiny with their proximal intimacy. Horses look away, the terrible whites of their eyes cast up to the moon, their yellow teeth chattering with loneliness. At the end of a street, which, at first glance, looks like a dead end, an alleyway runs off at a right angle. Walls, whitewashed to head height and above bare brick, border the alley. The alley is dark, lighted only by lamps from the houses behind the walls. At the end of the alley is a wooden round-top door, it is human in size and has heavy iron hinges and locks. The man pulls a key from the pocket of his coat and opens the door. He looks behind him cautiously, goes through the door, and closes it. He locks the door behind him. A path, a set of steps, a door, and he is in. Closed doors line the hallway. Ahead of him is an opening, darker than the hall. He is swallowed by the gloom. Seconds later, a faint glow can be seen along with his shadow flying across the walls and ceiling until it settles hunched and waiting. He is dressed in his coat still. He sits with an open book, a tumbler of whiskey in his left hand. He thumbs the pages until he lights upon a certain page. The print on the page is of a river scene. He tears the page from the book, holds it to the light. Through the paper can be seen the outline of a huddled beast. He places the tumbler of whiskey on a table beside his armchair, turns the page over and back again, then screws it up into a ball and throws it to the fireplace; it does not quite reach the grate but rolls to a stop against a brass fire-dog. Holding his head in his hands, he looks down at the floor. He places the book on the table alongside the whiskey tumbler, rises slowly from the chair, crosses the room to the fire, bends down to retrieve the page, unballs it, and smoothes it against the wall. As he does so, a figure enters the room behind him. There is a muffled clearing of the throat. He turns. ‘Ah, Simkins.’ ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ ‘Yes. Fine.’ ‘I take it that you had a disappointing evening again, sir.’ ‘Yes, Simkins. Very disappointing.’ ‘Is there anything I can get for you, sir?’ ‘No. Thank you.’ ‘Very well, sir.’ ‘Simkins, where were you when I returned from the river?’ ‘In the furnace room, sir. I was doing what you asked of me.’ ‘And it is finished?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Good. And there is no trace?’ ‘None whatsoever, sir.’ ‘Good. Good man.’ ‘If there isn’t anything else, sir?’ ‘No. No. I will be retiring shortly.’ ‘I have prepared your bedroom for you, sir.’ ‘Thank you, Simkins.’ As Simkins leaves the room, Lord James Ransom, for we shall know him now, pours another tumbler of whiskey, drinks it down in one, pours another and with it ascends the marble staircase to his bedroom. Simkins has turned down James’s bed and has placed his kimono and slippers by the side. Simkins has drawn a bath. Jimmy strips naked and relaxes into the hot and oily water. He drapes his hands over the sides of the enamel bath and sighs. He disappears under the water, surfaces and blows water from his mouth. He could not quite say why today had been such a disappointment. There had been many others like it. This morning, he had felt an almost childish excitement about the evening ahead and he had gone about his business in an ever-increasing state of anticipation, if not presumption. He had felt, as the day wore on, a physical and, who is not to say, psychic rush. He would like to have taken time to collect and collate his thoughts, enabling him to move on to the next stage in his work, but he had taken so long in overcoming this one obstacle that it was all he could do to see it as an end in itself and not merely a means. The bath made his body tremble, like a newly-struck bell, and his thoughts, often nebulous, began to clear at the feel of his own body’s disquiet. This evening should have seen the triumphant end of his work – to turn the monstrous into the marvellous – but it was not to be. As the long day slowly squeezed into night, he could see it all – the complete picture – beauty placed before the peoples of the earth as if fallen from heaven. There was no room for humans any more, he believed, no room anywhere; when they could, they multiplied, and they divided, and they added; they subtracted only from what was never theirs. They gave themselves everything and made stories of what they had and what they had taken. And they transformed everything into something that was base, retarded. Only great artists rose above the ordinary, the common. No one was aware of the light playing on the water, they only saw the lights reflected in the water, and the lights were there only to help the people find their way home to an even more constricted and conscripted life. There was no energy any more, no brilliance. He had often thought that he was the issue of another species, that he was separate somehow from the lives around him. And it wasn't a matter of class, it wasn't a matter of education, and it certainly was not a matter of money; it was something visceral, skeletal, evolutionary. On reaching this conclusion, he realised why he felt this way. He felt this way because of fear, because of despair, and terror in the knowledge and inevitability of that despair and fear ending in what he saw as the perversity of death. His vision was not a vision for humankind, it was a purely selfish act, a sort of madness of the imagination; his vision was purely solipsistic but it would enable him to escape. All of London is changing – the people are Barbary apes, sturgeon, wildebeest, and the streets are rocks, oceans, plains; and then he sleeps. Mundane tasks fill the next day: washing, eating, and drinking. He visits his bank, his club, and a restaurant. Simkins is waiting in the study on his return home at 9pm. ‘Had a good evening, sir?’ ‘Middling, Simkins. Middling.’ ‘Our friend has informed me that your wish will be fulfilled this evening.’ ‘I have heard all this before. I refuse to countenance optimism and I will not anticipate success.’ ‘I believe him this time. His plan may work, sir.’ ‘Our cellars and furnaces are full of failure’s remains.’ ‘I know, sir.’ ‘I specifically asked for animals of the primate order, and he provides artiodactyls.’ ‘You did originally ask for humans, sir.’ ‘I still cannot see the problem in drugging humans for the evening. Most of them drug themselves for pleasure.’ ‘He has made a trip to London Zoo this evening, sir.’ ‘Excellent. Call me should he return with anything remotely suitable.’ ‘Yes, sir. Good night, sir.’ Lord James Ransom climbs, yet again, the stairs to his room. His tread is heavy and the thought of failure is heavier still. He has visions of the drugged and clubbed animals – the pigs, the sheep, the goats. He can smell their bodies roasting in the ovens, smell the singed hair, the burning bones, the metallic reek of faecal matter. Across the city, to the north, the Anubis-headed man crawls on his belly through dandelions and dog roses, stinging nettles and dock leaves. He cuts a hole through the perimeter fence and startles a sleeping bird. He cuts through the wire of the emu and anteater compound and rests behind the bronze statue of a scarab beetle rolling a giant ball of dung. He takes out a reed and fixes into it a slim dart. The zoo is quiet. He runs low and hunched along the paths, skirting the caged animals and birds. It is as if he were moving through time and evolution; and so he passes lemurs and spider monkeys, macaques and howler monkeys, gibbons and gorillas, until he reaches the chimpanzees. The chimps are sleeping, curled around tyres, around logs, around each other. There are nine of them. It is 2am. He places the reed in his mouth and aims at the largest chimp – an old male. The male’s hands twitch and point. The dart makes a dull thud as it hits. The chimp’s eyes flicker. He watches as the chimp’s muscles contract as it relaxes into a deeper unconsciousness. The man moves around the enclosure and darts the rest of the troop. The last one is difficult to hit and he has to climb the fencing to get a decent shot. The shot nicks the chimp and it wakes angry and scared. It looks around to find its fellows unconscious. It heads up into the outer reaches. He follows it with his eye and his mouth and eventually shoots it as it dives for a rope. It falls and he hopes it isn’t hurt. He takes bolt cutters from the bag he has been carrying. He cuts through the metal. He has ten large sacks. He bundles the chimps into the sacks and heaves them to the outer perimeter. This takes him a good part of an hour. He then drags them along Broad Walk to the Outer Circle where he and another load them into a white van. There is a knock on the door of the house on Whistler Avenue. Simkins answers. It is the Anubis-headed man's assistant. He is mute, whether by excitement or nature, Simkins cannot tell, but he is gesturing wildly in the direction of the river. Simkins slips the man a £5 pound note, crosses the lobby, and climbs the stairs two at a time. He is too overcome with excitement to knock, and bursts in on his master. Lord James Ransom lies asleep in his king-size bed. The Egyptian cotton sheets are pushed to one side and Simkins can see that his master’s cock, not long ago tumescent, is now flaccid, weeping, and shiny. Faint music plays from the television. Simkins gently pulls the sheets across his master’s naked thighs. He coughs, quietly at first, and then again, more loudly. Lord James Ransom stirs amidst dreams of leaving, dreams of change. He rubs his nose with his left index finger. Lord James Ransom sleeps like a home-sick child. He stirs. ‘What is it, Simkins? What time is it?’ ‘3:30, sir.’ ‘What is it, man? Speak up.’ ‘It is done, sir.’ ‘Are you, sure? You woke me last night for no reason.’ ‘I am sure, sir.’ Springing from his bed, Lord James Ransom hurries from the room. Simkins follows him through the door and down the stairs, attempting to dress his master, as if Jimmy were a petulant and unpunctual schoolboy. Rushing out into the yard and through the streets down to the river, Lord James Ransom is aware that here, in this city, he is able to witness all of humanity: the punks (still), bikers, messengers; the geeks, the nerds, the homeless; the desperate, the fetishists, the lonely; German, Japanese, French; Muslims Taoists, Jains; Samuel Johnsons, Bobby Moores, Pocahontases; Margaret Thatchers, Dick Whittingtons, Abu Hamzas; terrorists, priests, drummers; the sick, the rich, the idiotic. Whoever you are, you are here, and because of this he wants to be elsewhere and he yearns for the chance to escape, once and for all, and if tonight is not to be the night, he can feel rising in a bilious wave the possibility of a violence, a violence at once of this time, ancient, and alien. On reaching the river, he sees the Anubis-headed man descending the slippery steps. The man takes up his customary position on the small boat. Lord James Ransom looks up. Slumped over the bridge parapets are nine vague figures, mostly and ghostly human in shape. In this instant, the bridge soars above him, defying and denying perspective. He hears the white van pull away at speed into the riverside roads. Fireworks streak the sky, some hang there as if suspended in time, others open like night-blooming flowers and fill the sky with the scent of burning paper and gunpowder. The lights of Chelsea are feeble in return. The sky is turning. The sky is periwinkle, agave, and peacock. The water, too, brown and primeval, now Prussian blue and cadmium yellow, takes on the hues and lights that flicker there, as if daubed fresh with buttercups, doubloons, and nasturtiums. He wades into the river. The water smacks around him as the fireworks crack above. The Anubis-headed man punts out into the river. Lord James Ransom looks back and sees Simkins on the shore. Simkins turns and steps back into the dark beneath a sooted lamp and disappears. Lord James Ransom is beneath the bridge, lost in the ultramarine bath of the Thames and he is unsure if the sky reflects the water or the water the sky, and his body is one with both. The drugged chimps blot the bridge and he can hear their vague snores. From this position, he can see the blue and silver lights of Chelsea and Cremorne Gardens and, as the river overwhelms him, the lights begin to recede and the sky becomes a negative of its own scintillation, the blackness even brighter. He feels he is entering the medulla of the river. And, although the creation is for him and him alone, he realises this is a realisation of art as life, and is a transcending therefore of life, and of transformation into matter, and then pure thought; and, at the very last minute, he wishes the city and the city’s inhabitants could share this with him, to be with him. But the city turns its back. The people do not come. The city herds them, absorbs them into its own body, their voices lost in the city's hum, their bodies lost in the city's tremor, lost in the city, as Lord James Ransom slowly drowns beneath Old Battersea Bridge. About the Author: Steve Finbow lives in London. His fiction, essays, short plays, poetry, and stuff is in, or will soon be in, 3am Magazine, The Beat, Big Bridge, Dicey Brown, The Edward Society, Eyeshot, The Guardian, InkPot, Locus Novus, McSweeney's, Pindeldyboz, Tattoo Highway, Tin Lustre, Über, Word Riot, Xtant, Yankee Pot Roast, and Zacatecas. He writes the bi-weekly cultural column Pond Scum for Me Three. He is currently working on a novel. (Yeah, right). Email: stevefinbow@yahoo.com