the road to his little house opposite the school. In the garden Mr. Aliquid had killed, skinned, and dismembered a rabbit with a small sharp knife. Then he’d taken a foot pump and blown up the rabbit’s bladder like a balloon until it had popped, spattering the boys with blood. Richard threw up, but he was the only one who did.
“Hm,” said the chaplain.
The chaplain’s study was lined with books. It was one of the few masters’ studies that was in any way comfortable.
“What about masturbation? Are you masturbating excessively?” Mr. Aliquid’s eyes gleamed.
“What’s excessively?”
“Oh. More than three or four times a day, I suppose.”
“No,” said Richard. “Not excessively.”
He was a year younger than anyone else in his class; people forgot about that sometimes.
Every weekend he traveled to North London to stay with his cousins for bar mitzvah lessons taught by a thin ascetic cantor, frummer than frum, a cabalist and keeper of hidden mysteries onto which he could be diverted with a well-placed question. Richard was an expert at well-placed questions.
Frum was orthodox, hard-line Jewish. No milk with meat, and two washing machines for the two sets of plates and cutlery.
Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
Richard’s cousins in North London were frum, although the boys would secretly buy cheeseburgers after school and brag about it to each other.
Richard suspected his body was hopelessly polluted already. He drew the line at eating rabbit, though. He had eaten rabbit, and disliked it, for years before he figured out what it was. Every Thursday there was what he believed to be a rather unpleasant chicken stew for school lunch. One Thursday he found a rabbit’s paw floating in his stew, and the penny dropped. After that on Thursdays, he filled up on bread and butter.
On the underground train to North London, he’d scan the faces of the other passengers, wondering if any of them were Michael Moorcock.
If he met Moorcock, he’d ask him how to get back to the ruined temple.
If he met Moorcock, he’d be too embarrassed to speak.
Some nights when his parents were out, he’d try to phone Michael Moorcock.
He’d phone directory enquiries and ask for Moorcock’s number.
“Can’t give it to you, love. It’s ex-directory.”
He’d wheedle and cajole, and always fail, to his relief. He didn’t know what he would say to Moorcock if he succeeded.
He put ticks in the front of his Moorcock novels, on the By the Same Author page, for the books he read.
That year there seemed to be a new Moorcock book every week. He’d pick them up at Victoria station on the way to bar mitzvah lessons.
There were a few he simply couldn’t find—Stealer of Souls, Breakfast in the Ruins—and eventually, nervously, he ordered them from the address in the back of the books. He got his father to write him a check.
When the books arrived, they contained a bill for 25 pence: the prices of the books were higher than originally listed. But still, he now had a copy of Stealer of Souls and a copy of Breakfast in the Ruins.
At the back of Breakfast in the Ruins was a biography of Moorcock that said he’d died of lung cancer the year before.
Richard was upset for weeks. That meant there wouldn’t be any more books, ever.
That fucking biography. Shortly after it came out, I was at a Hawkwind gig, stoned out of my brain, and these people kept coming up to me, and I thought I was dead. They kept saying, “You’re dead, you’re dead.” Later I realized that they were saying, “But we thought you were dead.”
—Michael Moorcock, in conversation, Notting Hill, 1976
There was the Eternal Champion, and then there was the Companion to Champions. Moonglum was Elric’s companion, always cheerful, the perfect foil to the pale prince, who was prey to moods and depressions.
There was a multiverse out there, glittering and magic. There were the agents of balance, the Gods of Chaos, and the Lords of Order. There were the older races, tall, pale, and elfin, and the young kingdoms, filled with people like him. Stupid, boring, normal people.
Sometimes he hoped that Elric could find peace away from the black sword. But it didn’t work that way. There had to be the both of them—the white prince and the black sword.
Once the sword was unsheathed, it lusted for blood, needed to be plunged into quivering flesh. Then it would drain the soul from the victim, feed his or her energy into Elric’s feeble frame.
Richard was becoming obsessed with