was cold and the darkness smelled of rain. But no rain was falling. He looked up at the sky, which that night was a mantle of darkness shrouded in turn by an even greater darkness. The beginning of all things. Visible and invisible. The nothingness of all things. Audible and inaudible. He listened to the darkness in the hope of hearing the echo of the great cosmic bang, the residual wave that had been spreading through the dark matter of the universe since the time of creation. The sound was imperceptible to the human ear, but Homer had heard of two young radioastronomers who had picked it up on an unusual kind of radio antenna.
Their names were Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias. At first they had mistaken the signal for interference caused by the droppings of pigeons that nested on their horn-shaped antenna. But when not even cleaning eliminated the…
A scream. Someone had let out a scream like the ones he himself hurled up at the skies on those nights when he lay on the riverbank. For an instant he thought he had screamed himself, without being aware of it. Is this what all those years of forced sleeplessness have reduced me to? he asked himself. But before he could answer…
Another scream spread through the dark matter of the night. He was sure now that it hadn’t been him. The scream came from the North Aberdeen Bridge, which was at least a hundred yards from where he was standing. A call, he thought. Someone - or something- was trying to draw him toward them. Was it a trap laid by the differents?
He stood there, a statue cast in dark matter, wondering what to do. Caution advised him to keep well away, but his eye fell on one of those anti-change graffiti. It was written with a black marker on a post owned by the local electricity company:
GOD TAKES IT IN THE ASS
For some inexplicable reason the slogan seemed propitious. He decided to chance his luck, and set off in the direction of the scream. Toward the North Aberdeen Bridge. He moved slowly. Step by step the darkness became a cryptogram of shadows. Homer tried to decipher its content as he walked. For about thirty yards the forms wavered between pure abstraction and ghostly vision, until, under the planks of the bridge, he was sure he saw the makeshift camp of a young bum and, sitting with his face to the river, the young bum himself.
Homer stopped behind the figure and peered at him, holding his breath. He seemed to be fishing, but it was impossible to say for sure. It was dark. Maybe he was just looking at the river. Or maybe he was admiring the darkness, which there under the bridge smelled not of rain but of rot. Seconds passed. The sound of running water. The young man sitting on the shingle and Homer standing behind him, both of them motionless, as in a painting where people are more inanimate than things and the air is nothing but a veil of transparent varnish. This might have gone on indefinitely had the young bum not turned around. They stared at one another, though the darkness prevented them from looking one another in the eye. Then Homer spoke. He had to speak. He felt he had no alternative.
‘You screamed.’
After a moment’s pause the young bum said:
‘I was doing some exercises to strengthen my vocal cords.’
Homer didn’t know what else to say. Maybe there wasn’t anything else to say. He said nothing and didn’t move.
‘Are you going to stand there all night?’ asked the young bum.
Homer thought this might be an invitation to sit down, but wasn’t sure. Nor was he sure if he could trust this person. But something impelled him to trust him. He wanted to trust him.
‘God takes it in the ass,’ said Homer as if giving a password, which in fact wasn’t far from what he intended.
‘You said it, man. Shit.’
This didn’t sound like a coded reply.
‘Anyway, yeah. I’m the one who writes that stuff.’
Homer said nothing and didn’t move.
‘I’m Kurt.’
Homer racked his brains for something to say next, since it was clearly his turn again. Finally he thought of something.
‘Homer B. Alienson.’
This was an extremely rare occurrence for him. It usually took him far longer to break down the barrier that he put between himself and others.
‘Homer B. Alienson,’ repeated Kurt. Then: ‘What does the B stand for?’
‘Boddah,’ said Homer, astonished at his own ability to reply without hesitation.
‘I used to have a friend called that. Boddah.’
Was this a pure coincidence? Homer wasn’t inclined to believe in coincidences. Life had taught him that they were very rare. There was always a design. Or almost always.
Kurt had turned away and resumed what he had been doing before.
‘Are you fishing?’ asked Homer.
‘I’ve got to eat something. Eating fish is okay. They don’t have feelings like other animals.’
‘They’re poisonous.’
‘Nah. You’re confusing them with snakes.’
‘The fish in this river are as poisonous as snakes.’
‘I’ll make sure I don’t get bitten, then.’
‘You’ll die anyway. The problem’s the water. It’s the water that’s poisonous,’ Homer said. ‘You can’t eat those fish.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Kurt, addressing the fish, or maybe the water. Or maybe Homer, who knows.
‘Is this where you live?’
‘Temporary accommodation. I got kicked out of my home. Sometimes I sleep in a friend’s van, other times I come here.’
‘What do you do in the daytime?’
‘I go to the library.’
‘The Public Library?’ Although he had stopped working there, and Aberdeen only had one library, to Homer this was a coincidence that required verification.
‘Sure. I read and take notes. Sometimes I go to sleep.’
Whenever he heard the word ‘sleep’, Homer couldn’t help shuddering, with a kind of cosmic regret. ‘What books?’ he asked.
‘What books what?’
‘What books d’you read?’
‘I like writers whose names begin with B.’
‘Like Boddah,’ said Homer on an impulse.
Kurt smiled. A smile that was more of a grimace than a smile. ‘Yeah, like Boddah.’ He had turned around now. There under the bridge, with the damp seeping out from every dark corner, Homer saw that the boy’s shadow was a shivering mass, a variegated repertoire of nervous tics and muscular twitches.
‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah,
