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Authors: Martin Amis
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mustache. She is small but she is big: four-feet-eleven in all directions. She’s like a baby herself. I have read widely on the subject of schizophrenia. Or, if you prefer, I have read narrowly but with intensity. I have read Dr. Slizard’s influential monograph, Schizophrenia , forty or fifty times. I never leave home without it. Slizard doesn’t say much about schizophrenic sexuality because, apparently, there isn’t that much to say. It’s not a hot scene, schizophrenia. Hardly anybody gets laid.
Behind the comfortable shacklike house there is a forest where, tomorrow, I may go walking. For the time being the forest looks too callow and self-conscious. The greenery is so green. So wooden is the wood. With its glitter-sizzle and the proton play of the waterskaters on its surface, the lake—the lake is like an explosion, in the last split second before it explodes.
Ned’s Diary
July 19. Although Dan is no problem and continues to be quite manageable, I have to say that, on occasion, he comes close to straining our patience. But that’s all right. Patience is an activity, not a state. You can’t just expect to be patient. You work at it. You beef it up. Mealtimes is when we seem to need our patience most. We need all the patience we can get. Poor Dan, he has difficulty eating. His mouth appears to be painfully dry. He chews slowly, and forever. There is a kind of leaden suspense over the table as we wait for the disappearance of each epic mouthful. Give him a slice of vividly juicy cantaloupe and it turns to bark between his jaws. Fran and I find ourselves lurching into the craziest conversations—we talk about anything —just to cover for the kid. And despite his extra medication, his grief pills, Dan is no zombie. I sometimes wish he was, but he’s not. He knows. His blushes are really something to see. This morning I called Dr. Slizard at the Section. He said that Dan is sure to improve in a couple of days and will start to communicate. Fran worries about the way Dan looks at the baby. My anxiety about Harriet is more general. If you can believe—or absorb—what you read in the newspapers, it is apparently open season on babies and children. People seem to have gotten the idea suddenly that they can do what they like with them. She’s safe here of course, but then there’s the crib-death gimmick, dreamed up to ensure that parents get no peace of mind at all. Every morning when I hear Hattie crying or babbling I think—Great. She made it. Fran worries about the way Dan looks at the baby. I tell her he looks at everything that way—at me, at the walls, at the dragonflies, at Flame Lake.
Dan’s Notebook
Days are hot and endless.
The fish do their fish thing. They swim with their shimmy, then rise to gulp the waiting bugs. The bugs oblige: they go along with the deal. Ned does his Ned thing, and so does Fran. As for the baby, as for Hattie , well, I withhold judgment for the time being.
Last night I made a distinguished addition to my vast repertoire of atomic dreams, my dreams of nuclear supercatastrophe (you could hardly call them nightmares anymore). The last civilian is running across the last plain pursued by the last pilot in the last aircraft with the last warhead. These last two actors are moving at the same speed—an interesting departure from the usual crux (escape, weird retardation), with the aircraft experiencing all the human metal fatigue of nightmare. The last civilian runs with a ragged and desperate stride. The last pilot stalks him heavily through the smoke. I cannot tell whether I am the last civilian or the last pilot or simply the last observer, and it doesn’t matter, because all will vanish in the last flash-boom and glitter-sizzle, in the last pouring insult of light.
Uncle Ned was twenty years younger than my father. On the other hand, he is twenty years older than Francesca, this new wife of his. She watches television for hours, or at least she is present while it’s
Behind the comfortable shacklike house there is a forest where, tomorrow, I may go walking. For the time being the forest looks too callow and self-conscious. The greenery is so green. So wooden is the wood. With its glitter-sizzle and the proton play of the waterskaters on its surface, the lake—the lake is like an explosion, in the last split second before it explodes.
Ned’s Diary
July 19. Although Dan is no problem and continues to be quite manageable, I have to say that, on occasion, he comes close to straining our patience. But that’s all right. Patience is an activity, not a state. You can’t just expect to be patient. You work at it. You beef it up. Mealtimes is when we seem to need our patience most. We need all the patience we can get. Poor Dan, he has difficulty eating. His mouth appears to be painfully dry. He chews slowly, and forever. There is a kind of leaden suspense over the table as we wait for the disappearance of each epic mouthful. Give him a slice of vividly juicy cantaloupe and it turns to bark between his jaws. Fran and I find ourselves lurching into the craziest conversations—we talk about anything —just to cover for the kid. And despite his extra medication, his grief pills, Dan is no zombie. I sometimes wish he was, but he’s not. He knows. His blushes are really something to see. This morning I called Dr. Slizard at the Section. He said that Dan is sure to improve in a couple of days and will start to communicate. Fran worries about the way Dan looks at the baby. My anxiety about Harriet is more general. If you can believe—or absorb—what you read in the newspapers, it is apparently open season on babies and children. People seem to have gotten the idea suddenly that they can do what they like with them. She’s safe here of course, but then there’s the crib-death gimmick, dreamed up to ensure that parents get no peace of mind at all. Every morning when I hear Hattie crying or babbling I think—Great. She made it. Fran worries about the way Dan looks at the baby. I tell her he looks at everything that way—at me, at the walls, at the dragonflies, at Flame Lake.
Dan’s Notebook
Days are hot and endless.
The fish do their fish thing. They swim with their shimmy, then rise to gulp the waiting bugs. The bugs oblige: they go along with the deal. Ned does his Ned thing, and so does Fran. As for the baby, as for Hattie , well, I withhold judgment for the time being.
Last night I made a distinguished addition to my vast repertoire of atomic dreams, my dreams of nuclear supercatastrophe (you could hardly call them nightmares anymore). The last civilian is running across the last plain pursued by the last pilot in the last aircraft with the last warhead. These last two actors are moving at the same speed—an interesting departure from the usual crux (escape, weird retardation), with the aircraft experiencing all the human metal fatigue of nightmare. The last civilian runs with a ragged and desperate stride. The last pilot stalks him heavily through the smoke. I cannot tell whether I am the last civilian or the last pilot or simply the last observer, and it doesn’t matter, because all will vanish in the last flash-boom and glitter-sizzle, in the last pouring insult of light.
Uncle Ned was twenty years younger than my father. On the other hand, he is twenty years older than Francesca, this new wife of his. She watches television for hours, or at least she is present while it’s
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