Read Online Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel by Tom Stoppard - Free Book Online Page A

hair.
    Finally the ninth earl straightened up.
    ‘Heart seems all right,’ he said.
    ‘It’s not my heart,’ said Jane, ‘it’s my breast.’ She sounded very serious.
    ‘I couldn’t feel a thing.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Oh yes, you mustn’t run away with these ideas you know. There’s too much indiscriminate reading nowadays, that’s what I put it down to.’
    Jane stood up, swung her bra round her like a belt andhitched it together back-to-front. Moon once more studied the vertical effect of her nape-length hair, her shoulder blades, her blue and white-flowered breasts, her bottom, legs and heels. The breasts slithered round the side of her body into position.
    Jane was on the edge of tears.
    ‘I’ve got cancer of the breast,’ she said to Moon.
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘This one. I felt a lump.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ said the ninth earl.
    ‘I’ll have to have it off,’ she wept.
    ‘One off, both off,’ said the ninth earl. ‘An asymetrical body is vulgar both as body and as art.’
    Jane laughed merrily – ‘Oh Falcon, you’re awful!’
    I don’t care, I simply don’t care.
    Jane picked up her dress and ducked her head into it.
    ‘Excuse me,’ said the Risen Christ.
    Jane shrieked and pulled the dress down over her.
    ‘Sorry,’ said the Risen Christ, retiring.
    ‘Who was that little man in the nightshirt?’
    Lord Malquist opened the door and brought the Risen Christ back into the room.
    ‘Do not take his name in vain,’ he said. ‘This is no little man in a nightshirt. This is our Saviour returned. In a nightshirt.’
    ‘Really?’ She looked at him uncomprehending. ‘He seems to have had hard times.’
    ‘Some of the hardest,’ said the ninth earl.
    The Risen Christ said to Moon, ‘Find it in your heart to forgive for I say unto you there will be a great reckoning, aye and a great cataloguing of sin and a great paying-off beyond understanding in this worldly vale.’
    Moon stood shaking in his own blood. He hit the Risen Christ in the mouth. The Risen Christ fell on the bed and bounced across it onto the floor.
    ‘How long have you been a voyeur?’ Moon screamed at him. ‘When did you last wash under your arms? Why do you follow me around – who do you think you are!’
    ‘My name is Jesus,’ said the Risen Christ. ‘You may scourge me if you wish …’
    ‘May I! I’m not having any perverts in here! What is the meaning of this imposture? how long have you been a masochist? what made you impotent? Who asked you here in the first place?’
    ‘I’m the Risen Christ,’ said the Risen Christ.
    Moon jumped on to the bed and leapt across it with his hands grasping for the Risen Christ’s neck. His weight sent them smashing against the wall. The Risen Christ made no sound at all as Moon shook him by the throat, shouting, ‘Fake! Fake! Do you expect me to count on
you
– a man of my experience?’
    ‘Don’t you listen to him, Jesus darling,’ said Jane. ‘He’s had no experience at all, take my word for it.’
    Moon let him go but crowded him against the wall with his body, and whispered, ‘I am betrayed at every turn. I do not believe in Man, and you expect me to believe in God.’
    When Moon stepped away from him the Risen Christ slid down the wall with blood coming from his nose.
    ‘My poor fellow,’ said Lord Malquist handing Moon his scented handkerchief, ‘come now, dry your eyes and stop taking it all upon yourself. We all have the right to a refuge and you must not begrudge him his.’
    Moon stuffed the lace into his mouth, bit into it and ground it between his teeth, releasing its sharp musk. The fumes choked him and he snorted them out through his nose, sneezed attar of rose leaves.
    ‘Bless you!’ congratulated Jane. ‘Now I must ask you all to go so that I can get dressed into my punting outfit – unless you promise not to look.’
    ‘My honour would forbid me to promise any such thing,’said Lord Malquist. ‘Get up, Your Highness, stop indulging