—Well, what did you think of the exhibition?
The man in the black poloneck answered for the group.
—Fine. It was very fine. The tone was contemptuous, an exaggerated aristocratic sneer. The American called to the woman at the bar.
—A bourbon, honey. A double. He gestured towards the men. And another bottle of wine. His voice, though loud, was surprisingly high and feminine. One of the footballers glanced up, nudged a mate, and they giggled. Another footballer flapped his wrist and the whole team broke out into laughter. But it stopped immediately when a tall red-haired woman dressed simply in an olive-coloured strapless dress entered the bar.
Her hesitation, on seeing a room crowded with men, was brief. She moved purposefully to the bar and sat beside Zivan. All eyes were on her. She had a small, round face and her shoulders and back were pale and freckled. I understood immediately why the men in the bar had fallen silent. She was alive. Unlike them, she was life. The woman ordered a gin and tonic in an accent that was foreign to me. She looked straight ahead. The fragrance on her skin was sweet, the whiff of summer, but there was a darker pungent smell emanating from her. She was bleeding. My cock was immediately erect, my stomach churned and twisted, and I swivelled my stool towards the bar to hide my erection. I could see Zivan’s mouth move, I knew that the American was arguing with the queens and I could sense the yells and laughter of the footballers. I could hear nothing but the sound of her blood, trickling, coursing, calling.
I turned to Zivan.
—I think I’m possessed.
He nodded, not at all thrown by my ridiculous statement.
—I am, I insist. Do you believe in possession, Zivan?
—What do you believe you are possessed by?
—I don’t know.
—What can I do to help?
His eyes were concerned, warm. He was calm.
—Come, I answered; and taking my glass, I headed into the toilets.
One of the footballers was throwing up in a cubicle. I looked at my face in the mirror. In the strong fluorescent light of the toilets it appeared strangely white and I noticed I was thinner than I had been in years. I was immersed in my reflection and promptly forgot Zivan. I combed back my hair. It was damp from sweat and my hands were shaking. There was a loud fart from the cubicle. The toilets were drenched in the fetid stink of shit. Zivan screwed up his face but I breathed it in deeply, aware that there was the trace of blood and flesh in the diarrhoea. The footballer lurched towards the sink, washed his hands, gargled and spat out water into the basin.
I waited till the footballer banged the door shut behind him, then I raised my glass and smashed it against the porcelain basin. It broke cleanly into three pieces; I took the longest and sharpest and turned to Zivan. I took his right hand, brought it close, and drew the shard of glass across the top of his index finger. The blood formed a minute balloon and I brushed the thick warm flow across my lips.
The blood enters my mouth and at once my eyes are sharp and my senses concrete. I can hear the buzz of the innards of the hotel all around me. I can hear Zivan’s nervous heartbeat. I can hear the individual muted voices of everyone in the bar. I am not greedy. I suck enough to feel my stomach loosen, feel it become calm, and I drop Zivan’s hand. He runs cold water across his finger, then asks me calmly for a handkerchief. He tightens the cotton square around his finger. He grabs my hand and pulls me towards him. This will satisfy you for a matter of hours only, he whispers to me, you will soon need to feed again. His voice is that of a boy’s, insistent and childish, he is speaking in my father’s tongue. London is a large city, find your way there. His lips have not moved, Zivan’s smile is constant and tender. What shall I do there? My own lips do not move. Feed, the voice orders me, feed till we are satisfied. In time, only with time, the need will be less.
How do you know this?
Zivan’s smile vanishes. This time his lips move.
—Do you really believe that you have seen more than I have?
I have not heard this tone in Zivan’s voice before. It is brutal and full of hate. Without his smile, his face is cruel. He detests me.
—No, Isaac, not at all. Zivan is smiling again. The glimpse I had of him disappears, he is again the handsome hotel porter. I do not hate you. Why should I hate you? He brings his bandaged finger to my lips. My lips move towards the specks of red. He pushes me away.
—I have to return to work.
When he has left, I look again at my face in the mirror. I cannot believe how handsome I look at this moment. Colour has returned to my face. I am aware of the powerful muscles around my neck, aware of the glowing sheen of my skin. I touch my hands, my cheeks. I wet my face and go out to the bar.
Zivan has been called over by the man in the black clothes. He is nodding, and the man is touching Zivan’s shoulder. The touch offends me. His desperate whining desire is clearly etched on the man’s face; he stinks of it. It is a rancid dirty smell. He writes a note to Zivan, and Zivan, at first hesitating, finally accepts it. He turns and walks out of the bar. As soon as he has left the four young men break out in cackles of ugly laughter. I wish I could tear them all apart, extinguish their lives instantaneously, and throw their worthless carcasses out onto the street. For dogs, for waste. I know, I am sure of it, that this is what men descend to at the end of all empires, this whimpering effeminate posing. They disgust me. The ignorance and deliberate stupidity of the footballers also appals me but at least they contain within themselves a spark, a glimpse of past dignity. The enervated men sitting at this table are spent. They are at the end of time, awaiting their extinction. I am gloriously alive with an incredible sense of truth, of clarity. They are obscene, a final limp turd squeezed out by history. A fire, just and swift and magnificent, should rage through all of Europe.
The American is at the bar talking with the woman in the strapless dress. They are discussing a conference. I take a seat beside them and order another whisky. He refuses her offer of a drink and tells her he is driving back to London tonight. As soon as I hear his destination, I lean across.
—Excuse me, I say, smiling broadly, is it possible that you could give me a lift to London?
He is, of course, taken aback and eyes me suspiciously. I make up a quick and ready lie. I tell them that I have missed my last train and that I desperately need to be in London for the morning. I am polite, but firm, and eventually he nods.
—I have to head off soon, he warns.
—I’m ready. I offer to pay part of the petrol costs. At that he laughs, and shakes my hand. Out of the question. He asks me to meet him in the foyer in five minutes. I agree, finish my drink and head off to find Zivan. He is by the lifts, two suitcases in his hands. He is behind an expensively dressed young couple. The man is talking on his mobile phone and the woman is inspecting her long scarlet nails. Zivan sees me, and motions for me to wait. The bell rings, the couple enter the lift, and Zivan follows with their luggage. When he returns he is smiling and it is as if he has forgotten the madness of what occurred in the bathroom. But his amiable kindness shames me and I blurt out, quickly, Zivan, forgive me. He waves my objection aside. He has placed a small pink plaster on his finger.
I tell him that I am going to London but I promise to return the following evening. He shakes my hand. Behind us there is laughter and more of that damned cackling. The five queens are heading towards the exit. The older man turns and winks at Zivan. He mouths something to him, and slowly Zivan nods in agreement. The young man turns. There is envy and spite in his lean heron-like face. He turns and whispers loudly so we can all hear. Pretty, but I’m sure she’s dumb. There is more laughter as the doorman swings them through. I’m not in it for the conversation. More laughter, and the doors swing shut. I wish them death. Through the glass doors I think I see a shadow cleave to them. They disappear into the English night. I wish them death, I whisper it, and Zivan can hear me. We both look out through the glass door, to where the shadow has descended around the
men, attaching itself to them, caressing them. I have to go to work, Isaac. Zivan turns abruptly and leaves me in the empty foyer.
The American comes out of the lift and with him is a younger man. The American introduces himself to me as Robert James, but he wants me to call him Bob. Just Bob. His friend is called Nikolai. Nikolai is short, squat, with a flat handsome face and his body is clothed in an ill-fitting acrylic suit. The fabric stretches across his paunch. He blinks at me, shakes my hand furiously, and then stumbles past me into the foyer. He is staggering, pissed, but Bob James is unconcerned. The bill has been paid, he tells me, and I follow him through the doors.
The car is a wide metal-blue Saab and I move to get into the back seat.
—No, you take the front. Nikolai can have the back. A thin dark-skinned attendant opens the doors for us and Nikolai stumbles into the back seat. The car smells of pine and detergent. The interiors are clean and freshly polished. The American manoeuvres himself behind the steering wheel and his large frame is squashed up against the wheel. With a loud expletive, fucking cunt, he forces the seat back and Nikolai groans. The American apologises. We speed out of Cambridge.
Bob James explains that he is originally from Lexington and assumes I know where that is. From some of the details he drops, I assume that it somewhere in the mid-west of the United States of America. He works for AGFA, the photographic company, in marketing, in Chicago, and he tells me that Nikolai also works for the company, in Minsk. At this Nikolai leans over the back of the seat; I smell the chemical wash of the alcohol. He is searching his pockets and eventually finds his wallet. He hands me a card. I glance at it. In the dark I can make out the AGFA logo and a Belarus address underneath. He pats my shoulder. When you come to Menske, I look after you. My wife. Best cook. He slumps back on the seat and looks out into the darkness. Where we go?
—London.
—Fuck London, he spits out, shaking his head furiously. Fuck London, cold, cold London. No one talk to Nikolai in London.
He reels forward.
—Alcohol? There is pleading in his voice.
The American points to the glovebox. I open it and a bottle of Johnnie Walker falls into my hands. I hand it over to Nikolai, who clutches it to his chest.
Bob James starts bitching about the conference. I look out into the night. I am at complete ease, and I am satisfied. I am conscious that my appetite is momentarily asleep, but that it is coiled deep inside me and will possibly awaken at any moment. I am ready for it. I have my orders, I am prepared. I tell myself to relax, I take breaths. I am on my way to London.
The conference, apparently, was a failure. As part of their activities they had organised an exhibition of photographic art from the company’s collection in one of the Colleges. As I had overheard, the exhibition had not been a success with the Cambridge critics. I almost ask which photographers were exhibited. I almost ask about the price the company pay for the artwork. I almost ask for a job. But Bob James smells of toner and offices and the noxious sting of airconditioning ducts. He smells of commerce. I look out into the darkness instead. He isn’t perturbed by my silence. He keeps on talking, his shrill voice bitching and moaning. The conference had been a failure; nothing had been accomplished. The Asians hadn’t participated and he was sick of always carrying the Eastern Europeans. He speaks nostalgically of a decade earlier when he had first come to Europe. It was the Wild West, he chuckles, money to be made everywhere. He had worked in Bucharest. The most compliant whores in the world, he tells me, but also the dirtiest. Prague. Over-priced and over-praised. Warsaw. The most stuck-up whores in the world. And Moscow. He had loved Moscow. He’d been treated with deference and respect. He had made a killing for AGFA in 1992. A killing. But all pissed up against the wall when they put the Russians in charge. Fucking Russians. Fucking lazy dogs.
In the back seat, Nikolai, who has drunk half of the contents of the bottle which he is nursing tight to his body, is issuing short rumbling snores. The passing headlights of cars flicker across his face. He is drooling.
—He’s going to kill himself.
—What do you mean?
—Alcohol. It’s going to kill him. There is a smugness to the pronouncement. The American reaches back and grabs the bottle, takes a swig. I look at Nikolai’s bloated red face. Alcohol is poisoning his looks. But it has not destroyed him yet: there are still traces of charm and sweetness in that face. There is still life left in him, real and sensual. My cock stirs.
I don’t have to go to London. I can make the American stop here on the motorway. I can turn over the sleeping senseless Nikolai, rip down his trousers, fuck him, bite him. Feed off him. I realise without emotion that there seems no trace of morality left in my appetites. I don’t care. I feel grand. That’s the word for it. I feel grand. Ontopofthe-fuckingworld, man. I feel alive. I turn away from Nikolai and look out into the black world ahead. I can sense the American watching me. There is a lewd smirk on his face, as if he knows all about my desires, as if he knows exactly what I need.
Bob James places a CD, the Wu Tang Clan, their first album, into the car stereo. To the chop-chop of the hip-hop beats, we enter London. The city just crept up on us. We were on the silent motorway, darkness all around, then a flitter of suburbia, and then we were in the city. Noise and light and cars and neon. I am ready for this city. I can smell the grime and the pollution, the stench of a million bodies. I can smell mould and rodents, rancid breath and foul, unwashed bodies. It is the putrid, accumulated odour of tense, neurotic bodies and it is the obscene effluence of the murky Thames. It is a charged, chemical stench and it hangs like a mutant nimbus over the sprawling city. I am ready for it.
Bob James and Nikolai are staying in a hotel in Earls Court. What the fuck is an Earl, queries Bob James, but he is laughing as he says it. Fucking Brits, fucking useless faggot Brits. The hotel is small and tucked unobtrusively between identical-looking Georgian terraces. A small gold laminated plaque is the only clue to its purpose. An attendant pushes open the swinging glass doors and comes out to greet us. Bob James throws the keys at him.
—Can you park it?
The African youth nods.
The American starts to pull Nikolai from the back seat. He stirs and starts searching for the whisky bottle. Still half-asleep, he pitches forward. Bob James slaps the Russian across the face.
—You fucking Russian cunt. Forget the fucking bottle.
Nikolai is rolling his head, his eyes closed, he is dribbling Russian words. I help Bob James get him out of the car and between us we walk him into the hotel.
A young woman in orange lipstick behind the reception desk glances at us nervously, but the American flashes a key-card and she immediately calls for a porter.
Struggling, the three of us carry the drunk man to the lifts, take him to a room on the second floor and drop him on the bed. Bob James hands a ten-pound note to the porter and asks him to retrieve the bags.
The American looks down at Nikolai, who is moaning softly to himself. He has pissed himself in the corridor and the left leg of his trousers is wet. The brutish reek of the urine is intoxicating. I can smell that he has also shat himself: there is the rich flavour of blood. The American tears the pants off the Russian, and discovers the trail of watery shit. He throws up his hands in disgust.
—That’s the fucking Russian entrepreneurial class for you.
There is a knock at the door and the porter enters with the bags. Apart from a slight flinch on first encountering the stink, he shows no alarm at the sight before him. Bob James presses a twenty-pound note in his hand.
—Can you clean things up for me in here?
—Certainly, sir. His accent is flat, dull. He bows and leaves the room. Bob James turns to me.
—Are you going to stay?
I want to rip the Russian apart. Throw my face deep into the shit and piss, inhale him, pour my tongue into him and through him and rip my teeth into him, cover myself, sate myself in his stinking shit, his pulsing blood, his
sweat and piss. The American is watching me, his arms crossed, his large bearish body standing in front of the lamp, blocking out the feeble light and casting the room in shadow. I shake my head. I must have thanked him, I must have left the room. I must have taken the lift to the ground floor and I must have walked through the lobby.
Shaking, hungry, awash in lust, I find myself on the cold streets of Earls Court sometime after midnight.
I can hear the sounds of traffic, I can hear shouts in the distance. I have no fear as I walk the deserted streets. London, with the English language everywhere, has always felt comfortable and safe. I draw sharply on the oily squalid air. It is thick with layers of sediment. Layers and layers of shit. History, manure, blood and bone under my feet. The dust of death, life, death, life, endless death and life, repeating repeating, this is what my body is propelling itself through, this is what life on this dirty soil means. I want to be home, in pure, vast Australia where the air is clean, young. I was not fooling myself. There was blood there, in the ground, in the soil, on the water, above the earth. I am not going to pretend that there is not callous history there. Everywhere the smell of the earth is ruthless but I want to be looking up into a vigorous, juvenile sky. The sky above me now is cramped and petty. I can’t see the stars, I can’t see the edges of any universe. The dome of London reflects back on itself. Europe is endless Europe. No promise of anything else.
I turn into Warwick Road. There are prostitutes outside the closed gates of the Earls Court tube station. I sniff. Rats and sewage, shit and piss and blood, it is all coursing beneath my feet. I approach the women. There are four of them, walking up and down their short strips of the main road. A boy jeers at them from a speeding car. I can see the blinking lights of an off-licence. I can hear the thump-thump of music.
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