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

Risen Christ following. On the table was a jumbled pyramid of tins identically labelled with a picture of a cowboy holding a tin with a picture of a cowboy holding a tin with a picture of a cowboy, and the words, ‘Western Trail Pork ‘n’ Beans.’ There were about twenty of them.
    ‘Pork ‘n’ beans?’
    ‘Well, I – ah – is it the pig with the cloven hoof?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Yes, well sir, that bears thinkin’ about.’
    Moon asked, ‘Is it the animals with a cloven hoof you can’t eat or the ones you can?’
    ‘You’ve got me a bit confused there, sir. But I think it’s the pig I should keep off.’
    ‘No, that’s Moslems,’ said Moon. ‘You’ll be all right.’
    It was starting up again and he tried to concentrate on the tins but it got away from him. There was a pig and butchers and knives (who made the knives? the butcher’s apron?) and a packing factory, packing millions of tins, and a printing works for the labels, printing millions of labels, with machine-minders and foremen, all of whom lived inhouses and travelled by bus and bicycle made by other people (and who looks after the coolies on the rubber plantations for the tyres?) and they all got given money and had children (and who makes the bricks for the schools and suppose they couldn’t find anyone and it all just stopped?) He was sweating again and he had cut his finger.
    ‘Ah that’ll be a feast, no more yer honour.’
    He had opened five tins. He tipped them all into a frying pan and turned on the gas and lit it, trying to keep his mind off the big power station across the river, which might have been for electricity for all he knew but it was a constant threat to his peace of mind for it sat by the river, monstrous and insatiable, consuming something – coke or coal or oil or something – consuming it in unimaginable quantities, and the whole thing was at the mercy of a million variables any of which might fail in some way-strikes, silicosis, storms at sea, a broken guage, an Arabian coup d’etat, a drop in supply, a rise in demand, a derailment at Slough, a faux pas at a British Council cocktail party, a toothache in the wrong man at the wrong time – and at any time, for no reason (if there were a reason one could do something about it) people might stop deciding to be dentists (why after all should anyone want to be a
dentist
?) and there would be no one to kill the agonising pain in the back teeth of black shiny-skinned miners who dig the coal which is put on the train which is derailed at Slough (yes and who will promise to go on milking the cows for the children of those who make the rails for the underground trains packed with clerks who take dentists for granted?).
    Moon squeezed tight his eyelids against the returning accumulated fear which he could not separate into manageable threads. All he knew was that the sight of a power station or a traffic jam or a skyscraper, or the thought of a memory of the sight of them, gutted him like a herring. The technical and human complexity of the machine shook on the edgeof disintegration, held together only by everyone else’s un-awareness of the fact. It was an obvious fact and Moon did not know why he alone should have to bear the burden of it. He only knew that it was so. In a film cartoon when someone runs off the edge of a cliff he goes on running in mid-air for a few yards; only when he looks down and becomes aware does he drop. Moon had looked down and seen the abyss.
    He opened his eyes and saw nothing but steam and smoke, smelled charred beans.
    ‘Is it burning at all, sir? It won’t have to be too well done for me at all, don’t you worry now.’
    Moon took the pan off the flames. He found a fork and stuck it into the beans and put the pan on the table. The Risen Christ rubbed his hands together three times (it might have been an abridged grace for his own use) and began to eat.
    ‘You wouldn’t be havin’ a bit o’ bread by any chance?’
    Moon found