Kronk

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Utterly traumatized, and without knowing how he accomplished it, Gabriel managed to make his way back to the apartment in Shepherd’s Bush. Eustace was dead, and Camilla was dead, but P 939 went marching gaily on. It was all a joke. Dead funny. A monstrous joke conceived perhaps by some perverted supergitt upstairs to provide a few moments of divinely infernal amusement.

Gabriel wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to want to bang his head on the wall, cut this throat, destroy hordes of nameless prepubes. He could do nothing — because he was traumatized and insanely tranquil and horribly alone.

He began to drink. He did not eat, but he began to drink. Daylight came, then darkness, then more daylight, then more darkness. He went to sleep on the floor only when he was too drunk to stay conscious. He went to the bathroom only to pee or be sick. He went out of the apartment only to buy more vodka, gin, brandy or whatever.

He looked like a zombie. People avoided him in the street. The charlie at the wine shop wondered whether to call the procs, but Gabriel, a bleary-eyed automaton, dropped enough folding money to pay for the booze ten times over. The wine charlie did not call the procs but merely prayed for another visit soon.

Returning from one of his whisky forays, Gabriel literally bumped into Dr. Slink, returning bright-eyed, uplifted, renewed, purged and dedicated from a P.U.L. service personally conducted by Brother Peter who had emerged like a butterfly from the Karamazov caterpillar she had formerly known to become the Son of Man. The butterfly no longer seemed to have any connection at all with the caterpillar. Brother Peter was no more, no less than Brother Peter — the way to Perfect Universal Love.

Horrified by Gabriel’s appearance, Dr. Slink managed to steer him into her apartment. She decided that he, too, could use a shot of Perfect Universal Love. At first Gabriel would not talk, or perhaps he had been struck dumb. Dr. Slink tried to get his wife, but there was no answer. So, intending to call the meds, she put Gabriel to bed after a fashion and tried to clean him up.

He was dirty and hairy and he smelled of sweat and urine, and he would not be separated from the whisky bottle clutched tightly in his hand. But Perfect Universal Love gave Dr. Slink the strength to cope.

She nursed him against her ample breast like a baby, while the whisky slopped over them both. Presently, miraculously, Gabriel began to speak. It was an act of confession — a drunken addendum to Supergitt’s monstrous joke.

In slurred, barely comprehensible words, Gabriel told all. He told her about Eustace and the animals, and about P 939, and St. Paul’s and Epping Forest and InSex and the great crusade.

He told Dr. Slink how he had deliberately infected her, and how the disease of non-aggression was spreading across the world. He told her how he and Camilla had gone for a walk in Kensington Gardens and how it had ended in the dirtiest most perverted joke Supergitt could devise.

Dr. Slink listened to his ramblings with a growing sense of wonder. Even exhilaration.

There was a pattern — a divine pattern in it all. There had been purpose even in Dr. Perrywit’s dismissal of Professor Greylaw. There had been purpose in Dr. Slink’s chance encounter with Peter Karamazov in the park (she still did not know it had been Ilyich). There had been purpose also in Dr. Perrywit’s sexual attack, and even in the ignominious dismissal from MicroWar. There was purpose in the never to be forgotten ecstasy she had experienced with Gabriel. There was purpose in everything. Suddenly she felt radiant with knowledge and wisdom and divine truth.

She stroked Gabriel’s hair and pressed his face to her breast. And her eyes shone.

“Gabriel,” she said softly, “you have told me terrible and horrible and wonderful things.

You and Brother Peter have shown me how our lives — how all our lives — are bound together.

And now, despite all these frightening events, the world is being conquered at last by peace and by love. The age of miracles is not past. God moves in mysterious ways.”

Gabriel hiccupped and clumsily caressed her nipple without any enthusiasm at all. “God,”

he announced heavily, “is a Supergitt. God is a cosmic fart.”

“God is Love,” said Dr. Slink serenely.

“Crap!” retorted Gabriel, slopping more whisky down his chin and Dr. Slink’s breast. “God is a noise in your head and a bug in your vagina… All I know is that when I found something to love, it had to be taken away… God’s balls! Camilla is dead, you big bitch! Camilla is dead!

Stopped, smashed, finished, kaput, gone!” He clutched Dr. Slink convulsively and began to sob. Her breast and half her body became drenched in tears and whisky. Presently, Gabriel slipped into unconsciousness.

But Dr. Slink did not call the meds. She had found compassion. With deadly dedication, with ruthless patience and with Perfect Universal Love, she set about nursing Gabriel back to health.

For three days he was too weak to resist. Then, on the fourth day, while Dr. Slink was out purchasing good, wholesome health foods, he crept out of her apartment, out of Margot Fonteyn House, and out of her life for ever.