A hallucinatory ride through the 20th century
An excerpt from Jonathan Meades' 'gargantuan' forthcoming novel Empty Wigs
I’ve worked with Jonathan for more than 20 years — we’ve done eight books together — but this is the first time I’ve published his fiction. It was worth the wait.
In its heft and ambition there is nothing to match Empty Wigs in the modern English novel. It contains multitudes, a huge cast of characters spread through eighteen chapters that link, clash and chime across 1,000 pages, each brimming with his trademark erudition and fearsome articulacy; his forensic obsession with death and decay — both moral and physical; his scorching disdain for ideologies and religions; his encyclopaedic knowledge of 20th century history and popular culture; his libidinous enthusiasm for the details of food and fashion. Empty Wigs is a gargantuan pitch-black comic masterpiece that will offend, enrage, excite and dazzle its readers – in other words, it’s Peak Meades (and Peak Unbound, too).
John Mitchinson
Founding publisher of Unbound
*content warning: the following extract includes scenes of explicit sexual situations and violence.
Before we fled there was work to do. There were selective tasks to be undertaken. There was a legacy to be created. I was almost sixteen years old. There is no such thing as a gratuitous action.
Parc Guerland – they’ve changed the name. Of course they’ve changed the name. Parc de la Liberté! The dusty public garden off rue Michelet – also changed: now named Didouche Mourad, one of their sacred fucking murderers. Everyone knew about this park. A roofless house of assignation, which I had never previously wished to visit. Now I needed to.
Late afternoon. I sat on a stone bench beneath contorted dragon trees, argans, planes. The hard, fissured ground was littered with leathery seed pods and sloughed bark that was holed and pocked.
Twenty minutes. There were occasional footfalls and indeterminate figures on the terrace above. I wondered if that was where I should be. Was this the right part of the gardens? Anticipation is a stimulus. My body was taut with excitement.
A further twenty minutes. There was a breath in the stiff leaves. A shadow cast against the sheer wall, veering and bending against the terrace’s balustrade. There was a gust of fairground scent – Maderas de Oriente, say, and sweet kif smoke, assassin smoke. A keba whore stood before me. In those days I used to believe that they were all whores. If they looked good enough. The others were failed whores, masked to conceal their faces. I waved a deck of banknotes then held it away from her. She stood over me and raised her skirt to reveal a deep forest of glistening hair in the midst of which was discernible a red sunset. She stroked it raspingly. A liquid, coloured version of the monochrome studies in my father’s library of venereal shame. She moved towards me and put her hand on the part of my jeans that enveloped M’sieu Zob.1 I realised, to my bemusement, that he was erect. She blew smoke at me, showed me a full horsemouth of bluegreen teeth stopped with gold. She asked me what I wanted. I gestured her onto the ground in front of me. She knelt, her tongue pushed out of her foul mouth. She was swift with my zip. My worry was getting blood and tissue on my ice blue jeans, on my punched toecap chisel toes. That was the last thing I wanted. Almost the last: more than anything I did not want any part of her to penetrate my clothes and touch my flesh.
The pistol was in the inside pocket of my cobalt chamois blouson. A Beretta M1951 that, when he had passed it to me with his indecently leathery, almost woody pelota-hardened hands, Bébé called ‘one of our little Egyptian friends’.
I shot her through the head just as he had instructed me. Diagonally: entry above the left eye, exit behind the right ear. A clean, neat strike. A selective task expertly prosecuted. She looked surprised. The last thing she did was to implore me with her eyes to undo what I had done. Too late. Yooyooyoo. An urgent sensation of warmth surged through my very core.
Even silenced, the report was cracking loud. Maybe my fear accentuated it. No, it was loud. The suppressor was not worthy of the name. Yet if anyone heard, there was no reaction. Such was the frequency of shots in the city.
I realised that I had ejaculated.
It was quite interesting in a way to watch her go from life to death. An experience to learn from, no doubt. Hot semen trickled pleasurably down my left thigh. Keba blood nourished keba soil, the soil to which they claimed exclusive right. I wouldn’t say I felt elated. Satisfied, yes. I did up my zip and stamped out her drugged cigarette with my foot. I checked thoroughly that there was no embarrassing old person’s damp patch visible.
A special occasion merits the best. Ennio Conti was open. I celebrated the loss of my virginity with a lime sorbet.
Empty Wigs will be published by Unbound on February 13th and is available to pre-order now
The word zob derives from zeb and zubb. It is a borrowing, by way of the Zouaves, from Arabic. The ecumenical chose it over the more usual French zizi as an egalitarian gesture.