The Society of Others

by William Nicholson

  Where did it go? That blithe self-love, fed by innocence and my parents’ generosity? How soon did it go? The world betrayed me as it betrays us all. Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy. But there was a time, by me forgotten until this moment in a lost village in a lost country, when I too was all in all, and wanted for nothing, and was beautiful.

  Eckhard has told Ilona’s family nothing about our recent adventure. He tells them I am English, and that I need to leave the country without attracting attention, and that I will stay long enough to read a poem at the wedding. So now I am an honoured guest in this house, where everyone is preparing for the celebration.

  Ilona herself, assisted by her mother, her sister and her aunt, prepares the food in industrial quantities. Mostly this consists of pies. I am in the land of pies. Meat pies, egg pies, leek pies, onion pies. Also soup, in huge aluminium pans big enough to bath a child. And small sweet sticky cakes, shaped like the hulls of boats. So much food presumes a big party, and I wonder very much where they will all go, in the little rooms of this house.

  In the evening after supper the extended family sits on at table and talks. I don’t understand the words, but it’s clear from their faces that this is real talk, in which people listen to ideas and challenge them and arrive at new insights. At first I find the earnest faces comical, like a parody of a college discussion group; but after a while I’m impressed. They pass round bottles of wine, from which I too drink, and they keep the fire burning with an occasional log. The talk rises and falls in volume, fingers wag, palms slice the air: such animation, as if what they say could make a difference. From time to time a wave of laughter ripples outwards, most often from Ilona’s father, who seems to act as the umpire in the debate. At one point his eyes fall on me, and he speaks to Eckhard, and Eckhard, turning with a friendly smile, speaks to me.

  “We talk about the duties of marriage,” he says. “What to do if your spouse does not please you. Can the person who is not pleasing become pleasing by taking thought?”

  Having supplied this précis in his grave voice, Eckhard returns to the discussion. I’m left thinking what a peculiar puzzle they’ve set themselves. As I turn it over in my mind I realise it’s a question that is no longer asked in my society. If one partner doesn’t please the other partner it’s presumed they’re not suited, and should look for happiness elsewhere. The notion that one can become more pleasing to another by taking thought seems archaic, almost sinister. What is involved here? Calculated pleasantry? Forced attentions? But then as I muse on, obliged to supply both sides of the debate for myself, I remember my father telling us the tale of the Great Petrol Row. Back when Cat and I were little children, my parents had just the one car. Mostly it was my mother who drove it, because my father stayed home and wrote his books. But every time my father drove it, or so he claimed, he found the petrol tank was empty. The amber warning light was flashing. So he would fill it up, and all the time he was standing by the pump he would be thinking, How could she do that? How could she not see the warning light? This happened about a hundred times, according to my father, and every time he filled the tank with petrol he filled himself with anger. He didn’t show how angry he was because actually my mother was doing all the driving, which she didn’t much like, so that he could get on with his great works, which were turning out to be not so great. But the anger went on gushing into him until there was no room left, and then the time came when it all came gushing back out.

  He went out to the car one winter day and found the amber warning light came on, so instead of driving wherever it was he needed to go he came back into the house and yelled and stamped up and down the kitchen and said it wasn’t fair and it was dangerous and my mother was indolent and never thought ahead and if he ever had to fill up the car again he’d explode only he wasn’t ever going to fill it up again and she could damn well run out of petrol on the motorway and damn well walk all the way home. My mother was completely taken by surprise. She said she knew she was on the optimistic side when it came to fuel gauges but she had no idea it was upsetting him so much, and now that she knew, of course she’d fill the tank sooner. And she did. From that day on, she changed her behaviour. The entire problem evaporated. This was the punchline of my father’s story as it used to be, with him as the dope. He should have told her years ago. It just never occurred to him that the solution could be so simple.

  But he still left.

  I never asked him why. After that ride in the Buick, the moment never presented itself again. My father was right in a way. We didn’t notice much difference. The leaving never quite started and never quite ended. He was often away, in Los Angeles, or on film locations. There were no screaming fits, no scenes of high drama: just a little more being away, a little less being at home. A dwindling away of dreams. The place he lives in now began as an office, a quiet flat where he went to do his work, only a short walk from home. But a short walk is much like a long walk if you stop walking it. Don’t ask me what went wrong because I don’t know. It’s only now, sitting by the fire with a glass of warm wine in my hands, watching the earnest faces talking round me, that I feel ashamed not to know. We never talk like this at home. I’ve been too afraid to ask, not wanting to see the shape of my mother’s unhappiness, not wanting to know that somehow it’s all my fault. Vanity, of course. Vanity takes so many forms. With me it’s not the mirror-hunting self-admiration, it’s the vanity of guilt, the vanity of fear, the vanity that forces my own self into the centre of other people’s unhappiness. I see now how ridiculous this is. Why should my father have left home because of me? Why should that shroud of sadness that hangs about him have been woven out of disappointment in me? Surely the only true and potent disappointment is with one’s self. My poor smiley father must have been in very great need of whatever it is that a new, young and beautiful partner can give: something so much more complex than sex. Or so much more simple. Self-belief, I suppose.

  We should all talk more. Television isn’t talk, nor is the internet, nor, contrary to appearance, is the phone. What Eckhard and Ilona and her family and friends are doing round me is conversation. Conversation uses words, voice tones, faces, smiles, silences, hand gestures, leg movements, comings and goings, all the knit and tangle of humanity. Why don’t we value conversation any more? Why do we go chasing after louder sounds, brighter colours, hotter liquor, higher highs? Why do we behave as though talking with friends is for the old, the poor, the sad? This is one of the very few roads out of the land-locked country of vanity. One of the few gates into the society of others.

  The last paragraph of Vicino’s book goes like this:

  If you ask me, What then is the nature of the well-lived life?, I must paint you a picture. In a warm room a group of old friends sit round a table. They have eaten an excellent meal, and now as they finish their wine they push back their chairs and stretch out their legs and the conversation flows. Their subject is, perhaps, What is the nature of the well-lived life?

  The wedding takes place at noon the next day. I am immersed in a world that is so domestic, so familial, that the danger from which I’m fleeing seems unreal. Later I will be guided on my road to the border. This morning, today, we celebrate.

  Eckhard and Ilona have put on their wedding clothes. Eckhard wears a navy-blue suit and looks like a low-paid clerical worker, but for the flower in his buttonhole. Ilona wears an ankle-length dress with a short veil. The effect is peculiar. To my eyes she looks as if she has put on garments that are several sizes too small for her, but everyone else admires her so I suppose this is the fashion round these parts.

  The family is assembled. There seem to be no guests. Who will eat all those pies?

  The strains of a fiddle sound outside the front door. The wedding party all smile and nod at this, and the door is thrown open wide. Outside stand a fiddler and an accordion player, playing a jaunty tune. Eckhard and Ilona step out of the front door onto the village street, and the musicians set off to the r
ight. We follow, all moving at the same jigging step without fully realising it, in time to the beat of the music. The door of the neighbouring house opens and an entire family troops out, dressed in their Sunday best, to fall into place behind us. So with the next house, and the next. The fiddler and the accordion player lead an evergrowing procession that winds up one side of the village street and then down the other, their music sucking wedding guests from every door and alley they pass. By the time we reach the gates to the church, the entire village is lined up behind us, tapping their toes to the chirpy little tune.

  The church doors open and the bells start to ring. The musicians retire. Into the church go the bride and groom, down the aisle to the waiting priest. In flow the people after them, spilling down the pews to right and left. Vows are exchanged, licketyspit, and the couple clasp hands and turn to the congregation, and everyone cheers. It’s all disconcertingly rapid, businesslike, and joyful. And so out we go, Eckhard and Ilona in the lead once more, and the people unloop from the pews like a garden hose being dragged behind us.

  The fiddler and the accordion player are already in position in the village hall, along with a third band member, a bass player. They serenade the wedding party as we arrive. Here too are all the pies, lining the walls like a guard of honour on brightly draped tables. Behind the pies stand bottles of wine, all uncorked, and thick-rimmed wine glasses, and tall jugs of water. Diddle-dee diddle-dee diddle-diddle-diddle-dee goes the band, and Eckhard and Ilona take to the floor. They dance with a funny little bouncing gait, like cock pheasants squaring up for a fight, though this dance ends with arms linked and a swirling spin. Now other guests are dancing, step up, step back, in and out, over and under. I tap my feet and drink my wine and begin to get the measure of it, so that when Ilona’s sister comes up to me, hand outreached, I’m willing to try my chance.

  I muddle my way through with my partner’s assistance, and catch smiles and nods of appreciation on every side. It turns out to be hot work, this dancing, and I pause to unbutton my coat and throw it under a table. My partner is a plain girl but she dances well, and so by some strange slithering of mental categories her spirited dancing makes her pretty. This is also true of Ilona, who looks radiant, as is only proper in a bride.

  After the dancing there’s eating and drinking, and after the eating and drinking come the toasts. I drink throughout and am definitely drunk when it dawns on me that they’re all looking at me and Eckhard is holding out his old blue-bound copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse. My moment has arrived.

  This poem I’m to read, To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe, isn’t about a real woman at all. It’s about a mythic woman, Helen of Troy, the one whose face launched a thousand ships, according to some other poet. They’ve all written about her. She’s anybody’s, a kind of poetic slag. What relevance has any of this to Eckhard and Ilona, who will struggle to make a half-decent life in an impoverished Eastern European country under a state of emergency?

  You tell me.

  Being drunk, I read rather well.

  Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those

  Nicean barks of yore

  That gently o’er a perfumed sea

  The weary way-worn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece

  And the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche

  How statue-like I see thee stand

  The agate lamp within thy hand!

  Ah! Psyche, from the regions which

  Are holy land!

  When I finish there is silence. How many of these villagers understood a single word? Impossible to say. But then there rises up a nodding murmur of satisfaction, and it appears that there is a general approval, even a kind of pride. It comes to me then that this not-very-remarkable poem is a link with the tales, the dreams, the passions that have animated the peoples of Europe for centuries. The light of Helen’s lamp shines even into this village hall, and for a moment this land is holy too. The glory of Greece is here, and the grandeur of Rome. Not tribal attributes, sealed in history, but part of a shared inheritance, kept shining and new by every poet who returns to the treasure chest to add his portion of wonder. So the Helen of Troy becomes the Ilona of this village, and both lives are enriched, and grow in beauty.

  The band begins to play again, and we return to the dance. Nobody is leaving. Outside the day is fading into early winter night. The smaller children are making themselves nests out of coats under the tables, and curling up to sleep. The old folk are sitting down and talking among themselves. But everyone else is dancing, including me. We dance and dance, dizzy with the spins and the swirls, faces red with wine, and I begin to feel there’s no reason why the dancing shouldn’t go on all night, and all the next day, and for the rest of my life.

  Then it seems to me the music has stopped. I look round. The dancers have fallen still. Faces are turned to the door. Through the dull boom of my blood and the smoky haze of the air I gather that something is going wrong. There are bright lights outside the windows. Men in the doorway. The buzz of fearful voices.

  Now hands are seizing me by either arm, and I’m being dragged back into the crowd, a crowd which melts away to let me pass, to a small back door. These are Eckhard’s friends who hold me. They are taking me away from danger. Out through the narrow door into the night, and the cold night air smacks me awake.

  “No!” I say.

  The men with the bright lights have come for me. If they don’t find me, these good people with whom I’ve been drinking and dancing will be made to suffer. I can’t allow this. No courage involved, at no point does this feel like heroism or self-sacrifice: it’s simply the thing that has to be done. Not to do it, to jump and run and hide, to hear the screams in the distance, would be unendurable. No great moral debate, then, just the shock of the icy night and the imperative of pure instinct.

  “They’ve come for me. It’s me they want.”

  I break free and push back through the door. Across the floor to the men who stand framed in light in the open front doorway of the village hall. Some of them wear the uniform of the regular police, others the black bomber jackets of the interior ministry. I hardly see them. My eyes reach past them, out into the street beyond, where an old grey Mercedes waits, its engine running, its headlights blazing, and a man sits motionless in the back.

  I raise both arms in the international sign of surrender. From behind me I hear Eckhard’s voice shouting out. “No! You don’t understand!”

  Oh, I understand. Actions have consequences. Either I take responsibility for what I’ve done or I live my life as a child.

  A policeman shines the beam of a torch onto my face. I shut my eyes against the blinding brightness. Voices shout orders. Once more, hands grab my arms. I am propelled forward, slammed against the side of a car, searched. They find nothing. My coat is under a table in the hall, forming a pillow for a sleeping three-year-old.

  They push me into the police car. I give a wave in the direction of the wedding party. There’s not all that much you can say with a wave other than goodbye. I try to say thanks for the party, and for loving each other, and good luck with the baby. But one of the policemen smashes me hard in the solar plexus and for a while I have to concentrate on learning how to breathe again. Shortly before I die I get the trick back and realise the car is in motion and we’re speeding down the road. The grey Mercedes is ahead of us. I can see the back of its passenger’s head.

  Now I remember with chilling clarity Petra’s words to me. “Only the movement can save you. Alone you will die. First you will suffer, then you will die.”

  TWELVE

  This windowless room in which they have locked me is not like a prison cell. It’s square, with orange-painted walls and blue-grey carpet tiles on the floor. On one wall hang
two paintings which I’ve been looking at longer then they deserve: blodges of mauve and brown, sub-Rothko style, knock-off modernism from the early 1960s. There are also four armchairs with bent-wood frames, upholstered in stained turquoise fabric, and a coffee table made of laminated wood. Above the door there is a red light. These visual clues seem to be telling me something about the nature and purpose of the room, but I don’t know what.

  I have nothing to do but wait. So this is a waiting room.

  I’m afraid. But I’m also strangely detached. Whatever will happen will happen. Only, nothing happens. After a while I curl up as best I can in two of the armchairs, and settle down to an uneasy sleep.

  She’s sitting watching me. She speaks in her own language to nobody. Then she nods, like she’s getting an answer. She’s maybe thirty-five years old, tanned and handsome, very well-groomed, wearing quietly expensive carefully casual clothes.

  “So,” she says, this time in English and to me. “You are awake.”

  I sit up, feeling like shit.

  “Some coffee and some toast will come.”

  I try to straighten my sleep-crumpled clothes. I need to piss, clean my teeth, take a shower, get fresh things to wear, shave. A man can dream.

  “You need the rest room?”

  I nod. She calls out, and the door opens. There are two goons standing outside.

  “It’s down the passage to the left.”

  The goons escort me down the passage to the left. On the passage walls are black and white photographs of smirking men and women, some holding guitars.

  In the rest room, I piss for England. God it feels good. Then I wash as best I can in a basin that has push-down taps and no plug. Why do they do that? Are there people who come in and steal the water? Actually I know the answer. We’re all taught to wash our hands after going to the toilet but none of us ever quite do this, certainly not after a piss. But if you push the tap down and sort of wet your hands it’s a token that you’ve tried, and you can pull out a paper towel and leave. The brief gush of water the tap grants you is your absolution from the demands of hygiene.