Breakfast in the Ruins

18 London Life: 1990: City of Shadows

—It's dawn, says Karl. — At last! I'm starving!

— You're beautiful, says his friend. I want you for always.

— Well...

— Always.

— Let's have some breakfast. What's the time? Do they serve it yet?

— They serve it whenever you want it, whatever you want.

— That's service.

— Karl?

— What?

— Please stay with me.

— I think I'll just have something simple. Boiled eggs and toast. Christ, can you hear my stomach rumbling?

Karl is fifty-one. Lonely. All as far as he can see the ruins stretch away, some black, some grey, some red, outlined against a cold sky. The world is over.

Karl's friend seizes him by the wrist. The grip hurts Karl, he tries to break free. Karl blinks. The pain swims through him, confusing him.

An old fifty-one. A scrawny fifty-one. And what has he survived for? What right has he had to survive when others have not? There is no justice...

-Karl, you promised me, last night.

— I don't remember much of last night. It was a bit confused, last night, wasn't it?

— Karl! I'm warning you.

Karl smiles, taking an interest in his fine, black body. He turns one of his arms this way and that as the dawn sunshine glints on the rich, shiny skin.—That's nice, he says.

— After all I've done for you, says his friend, almost weeping.

— There's no justice, says Karl.—Or maybe there is a very little. Maybe you have to work hard to manufacture tiny quantities of justice, the way you get gold by panning for it. Eh?

— There's only desire! His friend hisses through savage, stained teeth. His eyes are bloodshot.—Karl! Karl! Karl!

— You're looking even worse in the daylight, says Karl.—You could do with some breakfast as much as me. Let's order it now. We can talk while we eat.

KARL WILL BE FIFTY-ONE. His mother will have been dead long-since, of cancer. His father will have been dead for eight years, killed in the Wolverhampton riots of 1982. Karl will be unemployed.

He will sit by the shattered window of his front room on the ground floor of the house in Ladbroke Grove, London. He will look out into the festering street. There will be nobody there but the rats and the cats. There will be only a handful of other human beings left in London, most of them in Southwark, by the River.

But the wars will be over. It will be peaceful.

Peaceful for Karl, at any rate. Karl will have been a cannibal for two of the years he has been home, having helped in the Destruction of Hong Kong and served as a mercenary in Paris, where he will have gained the taste for human flesh. Anything will be preferable to the rats and the cats. Not that, by this time, he will be hunting his meat himself; he will have lost any wish to kill the few creatures like him who will haunt the diseased ruins of the city.

Karl will brood by the window. He will have secured all other doors and windows against attack, though there will have been no attack up to that time. He will have left the wide window open, since it will command the best view of Ladbroke Grove.

He will have been burning books in the big fireplace to keep himself warm. He will not, any longer, be reading books. They will all depress him too much. He will not, as far as it will be possible, think any more. He will wish to become only a part of whatever it will be that he is part of.

From the corners of his eyes he will see fleeting shadows which he will think are people, perhaps even old friends who will have come, seeking him out. But they will only be shadows. Or perhaps rats. Or cats. But probably only shadows. He will come to think of these shadows in quite an affectionate way. He will see them as the ghosts of his unborn children. He will see them as the women he never loved, the men he never knew.

Karl will scratch his scurvy, unhealthy body. His body will be dying much faster now that the cans will have run out and he will no longer be able to find the tablets of vitamins he has used before.

He will not fear death.

He will not understand death, just as he will not understand life.

One idea will run together with another.

Nothing will have a greater or a lesser value than another thing. All will have been brought to the same state. This will be peace of a particular kind. This will be security and stability of a particular kind. There will be no other kind who will have come, seeking him out. But they will only be neither content nor discontented as the time will pass. All things will flow together. There will be no past, no present, no future.

Later Karl will lie like a lizard, unmoving on the flat table, his rifle forgotten beside him, and he will stare out at the ruins as if he has known them all his life, as if they, like him, are eternal.

They eat breakfast.

— It's a lovely morning, says Karl.

— I am very rich, says his friend. -I can let you have all you want. Women, other men, anyone. Power. You can satisfy every desire. And I will be whatever you want me to be. I promise. I will serve you. I will be like a genie from the lamp bringing you your heart's every whim! It is true, Karl! The sickly eyes burn with a fever of lust.

— I'm not sure I want anything at the moment. Karl finishes his coffee.

— Stay with me, Karl.

Karl feels sorry for his friend. He puts down his napkin.—I'll tell you what we'll do today. We'll go back to the roof garden. What about it?

— If that's what you want.

— I'm very grateful to you, in a way, says Karl.

Your father has been to hospital at his doctor's request, because he has been suffering pain in his chest, his stomach and his throat. The hospital has told him that he has a form of rheumatism and prescribes certain kinds of treatment.

You receive a request from your father's doctor to visit him.

The doctor tells you that your father is actually suffering from inoperable cancer. He has cancer of the lung, of the stomach and of the throat. He has at very most a year to live.

The doctor says that the decision whether to tell your father of this is up to you. He, the doctor, can't accept the responsibility.

Your father loves life and he fears death.

Would you tell your father the whole truth?

Would you offer him part of the truth and tell him that he has a chance of recovering?

Would you think it better for your father's peace of mind that he know nothing?