Read Online The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua - Free Book Online
Authors: Matthew De Abaitua
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petard. If you’re going to play with fire, you’re going to get burnt.’ Raymond banged it out; he was snapping,
crackling and popping. As the car sped downhill, adrenalin poured down the tributaries of alleyways and side streets.
‘It’s like I am coming out of a long boredom. It’s an upper case revelation. WHAT IS HAPPENING BEFORE MY VERY EYES? The counter-cultural prophecies have all come true. A
fundamentalist Christian business culture? Check. Mass surveillance culture? Check? Identity cards? Check. Robots? Check. An overwhelming, vertiginous terror that the real world has slipped its
moorings and is blipping in and out of the quotidian and into some deranged power fantasy… CHECK CHECK CHECK. I am meant to be baby-sitting a robot containing Alex Drown’s personality
and she has the gall to look at me like I’ve messed up, when we’re just standing there in the middle of her mental meltdown. All her psychological baggage unpacked, like a suitcase
thrown from an aircraft.’
The window was open to the swirling halitosis of the city. Florence averted her face from it.
‘We should think about quitting. All we wanted was a little money. Monad demands too much. It’s not good for us.’
Having purged himself of his hatred for her, Raymond was mining his sympathy for Alex Drown.
‘You have to divide people from who they are and what they represent. I hate the house in Highgate. I hate the attitude, the superiority, the power. But, equally, you see someone when
they’re vulnerable, in their pyjamas with a baby, and you realize, they’re just another middle-class martyr.’
Florence said, ‘You make some accommodations to power. But it wants more. It’s not a relationship you can dictate. We have to quit. Alex made me feel both incredibly immature but
also weirdly right. Sure, motherhood has opened up emotional territory for her that I have never explored. But also she’s working very hard to perpetuate the system that torments her. She
might say to me, oh you don’t live in the twenty-first century, with your third-hand clothes and bohemian idealism. You don’t live in the real world. But how can she stamp her foot on
the earth and say, with any confidence, that this is a solid and reliable reality?’
So the shouting continued until the couple were dropped off at their Hackney flat. Neither felt like going straight to bed. Florence made sandwiches for work the next day. Raymond listened to
her move around the kitchen, opening cupboards and jerking out drawers. At her request, he twisted off the stiff lid of a jar of her homemade pickle, and then returned to his chair. He set himself
the task of putting on suitable music to help them wind down but nothing in his collection was appropriate. It was all wind up music. So he set himself another chore: auditioning cigarettes for the
honour of being the last fag of the evening.
She should stop it with the sandwiches, and come and lounge for him on the sofa. He went to say this then stopped. What to say then? He wanted to talk about something other than Monad, but the
first three things that occurred to him were work-related, and the fourth was not worth mentioning. When he first moved in with Florence, their domestic life took on a languorous rhythm. Florence
was a lotus eater. She set the standard, and at first it was an easy one to meet. Chores were performed in batches at weekends. They wandered the supermarket side-by-side, stupidly sharing
everything, a regime of you-wash-and-I’ll-dry, even in the launderette, watching their underwear leap and swim together, until they were confident enough to admit that all they were sharing
was boredom, and so the terms of their domestic life were silently renegotiated, after which Raymond was even capable of cleaning up when he was home alone.
The change in the rhythm of their home came gradually. It was hard to shake off the tempo of the red men, and their needs. Working with Monad accelerated
crackling and popping. As the car sped downhill, adrenalin poured down the tributaries of alleyways and side streets.
‘It’s like I am coming out of a long boredom. It’s an upper case revelation. WHAT IS HAPPENING BEFORE MY VERY EYES? The counter-cultural prophecies have all come true. A
fundamentalist Christian business culture? Check. Mass surveillance culture? Check? Identity cards? Check. Robots? Check. An overwhelming, vertiginous terror that the real world has slipped its
moorings and is blipping in and out of the quotidian and into some deranged power fantasy… CHECK CHECK CHECK. I am meant to be baby-sitting a robot containing Alex Drown’s personality
and she has the gall to look at me like I’ve messed up, when we’re just standing there in the middle of her mental meltdown. All her psychological baggage unpacked, like a suitcase
thrown from an aircraft.’
The window was open to the swirling halitosis of the city. Florence averted her face from it.
‘We should think about quitting. All we wanted was a little money. Monad demands too much. It’s not good for us.’
Having purged himself of his hatred for her, Raymond was mining his sympathy for Alex Drown.
‘You have to divide people from who they are and what they represent. I hate the house in Highgate. I hate the attitude, the superiority, the power. But, equally, you see someone when
they’re vulnerable, in their pyjamas with a baby, and you realize, they’re just another middle-class martyr.’
Florence said, ‘You make some accommodations to power. But it wants more. It’s not a relationship you can dictate. We have to quit. Alex made me feel both incredibly immature but
also weirdly right. Sure, motherhood has opened up emotional territory for her that I have never explored. But also she’s working very hard to perpetuate the system that torments her. She
might say to me, oh you don’t live in the twenty-first century, with your third-hand clothes and bohemian idealism. You don’t live in the real world. But how can she stamp her foot on
the earth and say, with any confidence, that this is a solid and reliable reality?’
So the shouting continued until the couple were dropped off at their Hackney flat. Neither felt like going straight to bed. Florence made sandwiches for work the next day. Raymond listened to
her move around the kitchen, opening cupboards and jerking out drawers. At her request, he twisted off the stiff lid of a jar of her homemade pickle, and then returned to his chair. He set himself
the task of putting on suitable music to help them wind down but nothing in his collection was appropriate. It was all wind up music. So he set himself another chore: auditioning cigarettes for the
honour of being the last fag of the evening.
She should stop it with the sandwiches, and come and lounge for him on the sofa. He went to say this then stopped. What to say then? He wanted to talk about something other than Monad, but the
first three things that occurred to him were work-related, and the fourth was not worth mentioning. When he first moved in with Florence, their domestic life took on a languorous rhythm. Florence
was a lotus eater. She set the standard, and at first it was an easy one to meet. Chores were performed in batches at weekends. They wandered the supermarket side-by-side, stupidly sharing
everything, a regime of you-wash-and-I’ll-dry, even in the launderette, watching their underwear leap and swim together, until they were confident enough to admit that all they were sharing
was boredom, and so the terms of their domestic life were silently renegotiated, after which Raymond was even capable of cleaning up when he was home alone.
The change in the rhythm of their home came gradually. It was hard to shake off the tempo of the red men, and their needs. Working with Monad accelerated
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