Oliver Benjamin
Arriving out on the main commercial thoroughfare, Roy coolly
surveyed the masses of eager young bodies, bustling together like
errant molecules in search of coupling, emergent satisfaction to be
found in a film, a meal, a book, or a face. Eight million people in the
greater city, he thought, the same number as there were in the whole
world at the end of the last ice age. He rested his head against the
cool concrete of a storefront wall. A whole world, condensed into one
small space. How happy, how busythey all looked. Was he full of
shit? Could he really believe that there was a demand for simplicity,
a singular elixir in a comfortable spot that they could consider their
own? Or did they really want the flash, the glitz, the synthetic,
multitudinous arrays? Did he feel that he was capable of offering a
remedy to this? Did he have that much love in his heart?
No. No, he did not. Not any longer. There had been a time for
that in Roy’s life and now it was past. He would never be blinded
again. In most stories, love came as a solvent that cut through
illusion, revealed truer things. But if love was blind, then it wasn’t a
champion of truth. Who wanted truth anyway? Madness was to be
eminently preferred. Truth was always dull and inadequate in
comparison.
The ghost of elder Melville had followed him out onto the street,
atavistic echoes sparkling through the electronic spawn of his
progeny. Melville, like so many others, ignored in his lifetime, now
deified. But still misunderstood. Most readers thought Moby Dicka
tragedy, yet to Roy that novel was the greatest love story of all time.
Who could not rejoice at the final union? Ahab and the whale,
matrimonied in death, their terrible separation dissolved under an
unmarked ocean. The only possible ending for true love, because, if
literature was our guide, true love could never last. There existed not
a single great story in which it did. The only solution was for the
lovers to die. Like Ahab and the whale, blent together in the
whirlpool. Agape frappé.
The real tragedy was when one of them lived. Given a choice, Roy
might have preferred a shared plummet to the bottom of the
Marianas trench.
During the first few years of his employment at Biddenbrooks Roy’s
love life had been pathetic. Having made do so long on average
wages, he enjoyed spending his paychecks on fine clothes and
expensive electronic equipment, but it all seemed increasingly
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