Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

by Jesse Armstrong

  *

  At seven I woke to her knocking on my door. She’d just read it all over again and wanted to talk outside.

  ‘I’m not sure, Andy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wonder if we should go back to my original version?’

  ‘What the – the . . .’

  She leafed through her file.

  ‘I mean, I like what we’ve done with my stuff. I do.’

  ‘Look, it’s a basis for discussion,’ I said, a panicked swell rising.

  ‘Or we could just do exercises. Tell them ideas and devise something?’

  I’d been suckered. Lured, into creative engagement. More than that: Borislav and Mr Tomic, how would they fare without us? Trapped in a limbo, in a war which, worse than never ending, never even started. We needed to help them, to coax them into life and let them suffer a little, to show the world the meaning of pain.

  ‘I just feel. I like what we did last night. I do. But is it trite? Is it too straightforward, and didactic? Is it intelligent enough?’ she said.

  What I heard was: ‘I like you, Andrew, but are you intelligent enough? Are you just a man from a building site who has read off a layer of Penguins and now you think you’re fucking it?’

  ‘Sure. Sure, absolutely. I share your concerns. I think our new version may very well be truly very terrible. Awful,’ I said.

  ‘Well . . .’ she started to object.

  ‘But your older work, which I think of as the frame, the drive, that still exists? Right? That’s in the bank. Look, we’ve stayed up all night – shall we just give our new one a go?’

  She looked at me for quite a long time. ‘Yes. You know, I am grateful for this, Andy. I’m sorry if I’m freaking out? Am I freaking out?’

  *

  The arrangement was for Mohammed to help us sort out the logistics of rehearsals: copying the play and warding off locals to set up our rehearsal space. After breakfasting on hard baguette and thin strawberry jam we met him outside the flats. He was smoking a Drina. He offered the pack to Penny and me. I took one. His relationship to Babo – and Babo’s relationship to the world – might have been obscure; and how he got these Drinas, who knew? Still, you don’t have to offer a couple of your last ciggies to anyone. He pulled out a lighter. I imagine that tearing a strip of woodchip wallpaper from the most neglected room of a Blackpool boarding house, filling it with workshop shavings and dead woodlice, would taste something like the hairy fume of inhaling one of those wartime fags.

  At the newsagent’s, giddy from the tobacco, I leaned for relief on the huge grey photocopier. Mohammed was doubtful it would work, but it did. It chugged lugubriously, one of the few machines in the world that looks the correct size and seriousness for the magic it can do, sliding our warm copies into its out-tray and stapling them too.

  With lengths of synthetic orange twine and some tent pegs discovered in our apartments, Mohammed and Onomatopoeic Bob marked out a rehearsal space on the parched grass of the town’s central square. Shannon was provided with a plastic director’s chair from the unfriendly bar. Cally sat cross-legged and read her photocopy, mouthing to herself and rocking back and forth from the hinge of her hips.

  She was sitting next to Von with a thumb hooked into the back pocket of his jeans, but eventually he asserted his independence, going off and buying a sugared waffle from a cafe and sitting a way off, making out he was reading the copy of The Magus which he pulled out at times of stress and looked at hard. He’d had it at hospital when I first met him. The leather Winston Churchill bookmark had not advanced noticeably through the pages in the six months since.

  ‘I thought it was very proficient,’ Christian said, approaching Penny and me with his script. ‘I think this is something I can be involved in.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you,’ Penny said, shooting me a look.

  ‘Yeah. I can see what you were trying to do.’ This, I happened to know, was actually high praise. Christian also felt he had a fix on what Pynchon had been attempting, what Flaubert had wanted to pull off and what Joyce had been aiming for.

  Cally and Christian were to be the two leads – the Serb and Croat neighbours. Through the first act they would build their summer house together, while Bob, Shannon and Sara (as husband, wife and daughter) fleshed out our scenes of tender antebellum Balkan domesticity. Von – an incredibly poor actor – was the rueful wise apple who cast a jaundiced eye over proceedings, half professor, half narrator. Penny and I, meanwhile, were bloodthirsty soldiers who, rather brilliantly (perhaps), were sometimes Serb, sometimes Croat. But always boozy and swaggering.

  The sun sawed at us. As it headed towards eleven, Shannon called her players into a tight circle on the wiry brown grass. Penny and I smiled at one another and she reached for my hand and gave it one brief damp squeeze.

  There was an especially nightmarish quality about hearing the play read so soon after its writing. Words and phrases I had thought we’d bettered came tumbling out of other people’s mouths shamingly raw. Self-consciously tantalising plot threads were revealed in the bald sun to have no conclusion. Sometimes I chased the text ahead, looking for the next glob of drama, the next bit that might work. But as I flicked forward in the script, these dashes felt like races into a desert. So I’d return hoping for relief in the present – urging the cast to knit something decent from the depressingly insubstantial, yet still surprisingly coarse, thread Penny and I had spun.

  However, as we came to the end, and a feeling of nausea swung my tummy, it became apparent that the group rather liked it. It had lasted about the right length of time. It started with a situation, things changed, it ended, it appeared to investigate some feelings. God knows, maybe it even did?

  Or perhaps that is all art is: pretending. And I had peeked behind the curtain? If you make people up, say they feel a certain way, then some folk, some dupes, sometimes believe you? When it finished and we clapped ourselves heartily, I think it was the happiest the group had been since above the pub in Manchester. People already had the feeling that their lines were theirs alone, tangible. So that when we discussed changing them, there was a reticence, a tug back for something about to be lost.

  I leaned over and squeezed Penny’s knee. She kissed me on the cheek. Shannon thanked her, and Penny said that I had helped her; indeed, that I had written most of this draft. It sounded, the way she said it, like of course she had done it all, especially when she added another ‘No, really, he did’. The group clapped me lightly and I smiled and raised an arm of acknowledgement. The dependable accomplice, a playwright’s Tubacca.

  We broke for Shannon to do some ‘small group work’ with Cally and Christian. Penny listened from the side, biro in mouth, waist hipped out, her forehead scrunched and thoughtful. I found it powerfully alluring. It reminded me of how rousing I used to find it to watch Helen dance long ago from the balcony of a club: someone utterly absorbed in something else, entirely whole and completely unrequiring of me.

  *

  A little later, I sipped a very low-quality coffee, sitting at the foot of the Red Star war memorial, watching scenes being rehearsed with a satisfaction permitted by the fact that they were beyond earshot. Von had gone off once again to try to make contact with his dad and report on our progress and plans. But however many Deutschmarks he gave to Hasim and however long he spent in his ‘office’ he could never get an international line. He came back pissed off, and went to listen to techno very loud on his Walkman, lying flat out under a plane tree. That was when Mohammed caught me with the letter.

  ‘Will you give this to Penny when she is finished?’

  ‘Thanks, Mohammed. Of course, man. Great. Did you see the play?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah no – I like you guys.’

  ‘OK? Thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, I liked the – the words. There were some good – you know, like when the guy sai
d: “No – no fucking way.” I liked that. Strong.’

  I wasn’t sure who’d said such a thing.

  ‘You’re good people, coming here, you know, some people don’t like it so much, they think English – Americans – no. But I think – yes.’

  ‘Well, I like being here. I like it here. I love the pastries. And the sun. Obviously we have also the sun in our nation, but not so much as . . .’

  I wasn’t concentrating. My heart was quivering its beat, pulsing out to fingers which fibrillated as they held the envelope. I knew the writing, I thought. And there it was: Simon’s address written in spider-quick biro on the back.

  Mohammed retreated, saying he would see me later, yes, for the handover, of Babo’s package? I hardly listened as I nodded yes.

  I walked over to a park bench to make my decision. The only possible reason not to open the envelope was that it was the wrong thing to do. But if I didn’t? I couldn’t see that anyone would ever know I’d done the right thing. Whereas the wrong thing? No one would ever know I had done that either, and it would be much more . . . interesting. Besides, the airmail gum barely tacked the envelope flap down. It was stuck with the adhesion of the driest desert lips closed before a kiss. It was so very simple to untack it. If a rip had been required, then maybe not. That would have felt violent. But this little finger sliding under and gently along? Almost tender.

  I scanned the letter to the end without really connecting the sentences, racing ahead to the next paragraph, looking for the emotional protein.

  Dear Penny

  I don’t know how to say what I want to say. I tried to say it so many ways. I must have written this fucking letter a hundred times, a thousand counting the unfinished drafts in my head. But I can’t seem to get it straight in prose, so, forgive me. I’ve taken the cowardly (brave?) option and composed a small something for you. That last night at your home, I felt very close to you. Anyway, before I betray myself, I’m going to stop and simply say: read the enclosed, read by lamplight, read by gaslight, but read in the full light of knowing this is how I feel.

  Avec un certain regard,

  Simon

  On a separate sheet, there it was. He had only gone and written her a fucking poem. A carefully targeted, emotion-tipped arrow. This was nuclear escalation. What could I possibly do to respond to a poem? Paint her a picture? Write her a symphony? Choreograph a dance? I unfolded the A4 and my first hope was that it would be so overreachingly erudite as to be unintelligible. Just plain clunky would also be great: too truthful, blunt and fat-fingered – that would surely fuck him.

  But when I read it, it was horrible. It opened with this:

  When the War with the Robots comes

  I would like it recorded

  that I never much liked the humans anyway

  But I do like you.

  And then it got better. And better. It was short, sweet, direct, and touching. Ironised enough to protect itself and its author, open enough to lay himself bare. It was, I thought, as I read it a fourth time, pretty much invulnerable. A sweet cherishing love poem straight from the heart. Fuck. It was so fucking lovely it almost persuaded me I should leave them to it; that I wasn’t worthy of the love affair I had wandered into.

  Penny looked up towards me from the rehearsal area, in her shirtsleeves, offering a wave and a thumbs up. I waved back.

  Some things that you do which are terrible don’t feel so bad at the time. This one did. I crumpled the poem. Then thought better of it. And instead ripped it across and across and across, carefully but with a heavy heart, as if I were tearing up some instruction booklet necessary to my own safe functioning. I did it deliberately and quickly, and scattered it in three separate municipal waste bins. Then I sought out a piece of notepaper and a pen from our unfriendly bar.

  I could pocket the letter, and make a whole night’s work of my shitty smear, but then there would be the danger that Mohammed might mention the letter’s arrival to Penny and reveal me? So I found another bench a good distance from her and the troupe and settled down to work, quickly; roughing out a couple of drafts, before putting together the final version in careful anonymous block capitals, to ensure it wasn’t obviously in a different hand to the letter.

  Before the final fold into the envelope, I read it back one last time:

  How like the summer hours are thee?

  Sighted, clothe-clad, sad and yes, to me,

  Not mad, but glad-ening,

  To my very core, my swelling ‘root’,

  That once would have wished to find a ‘route’ into you

  I wanted, ’tis true, to make a love so savage,

  My nights were filled with dreams of havage.

  But I must give my ‘root’, sad to say, ‘the boot’.

  For while your mind is so teeming –

  With little thoughts, like clever fish

  Of which you are rightly proud,

  I must off to wrestle the Whale of Truth.

  See, I must plash on, to the mountain far,

  on my lonely journey, whale at my back, staff in hand,

  A monk of the mind, unrooted, pushing onwards,

  To the grand summit, the high peak of human endeavour: the sea.

  & I cannot carry you on my shoulders there, dear,

  I am weighted enough with: my

  Talent, my whale, my knapsack and blank road map in hand.

  They make for a heavy load, and believe

  Me, if I could

  But make room for you, strapped to my whale of endeavour,

  Clasped in my knapsack of gathering fame,

  With my crampons and trunks,

  So I would!

  Oh, to share a tent with you, and to whisper sweet

  Words and push my sea urchin into the clam of yourself under the stars

  But it cannot be!

  I must climb the highest peak,

  Alone, save for my whale, and staff

  Farewell, then, small fish I never caught,

  I shall fire my harpoon tonight to nought!

  I laughed like a villain as I read the last lines over, then went back and entitled it ‘The Fish and the Whale’. I slipped it back in with its letter and licked the remaining gum enough to tack down the flap.

  When rehearsal broke, I gave it to Cally to deliver into Penny’s hand. Then I sat as if reading War and Peace. But the words were hard on the page, entirely resistant to my eye. I watched Penny open the envelope, wander to a spot on the grass and read. The first time she attended to the pages so briefly I hardly believed she’d read them. One scan of the letter – I felt irritated at her on Simon’s behalf – then a quick read of the poem. If her face betrayed anything, it was bemusement. She tucked everything away in the envelope and into her back jeans pocket. Then, a couple of seconds later she pulled it all out again and read it over more carefully. My skin prickled, feeling she might turn to me and, like in a horror film, issue a finger-pointing, curdling denunciation across the park. But no, it went away into her pocket again, and as she headed off to talk to Shannon I felt like the constellations were aligning. My covert operations were preparing the way for my gathering forces – ready for the big push.

  Chapter 25

  THAT AFTERNOON WE packed up from the flats and Penny paid ponytailed Hasim with a folded bundle of marks. I was watching him count them seriously on the bonnet of his Mercedes, scared that I would be asked for a further contribution out of my thinning money belt, when Mohammed showed up and asked if he could speak to me. He led me off, asking how things had been going and what I thought of Velika. We were a little way out of town and walking along the riverbank when he got down to the matter in hand. There was a shift in the atmosphere, like a dense cloud looming across the sun on a bright afternoon. Things felt cooler and flatter. He explained to me about the package for Bihac.

  Babo did not want to trust the women, Mohammed said. He did not trust the hairy driver, Onomatopoeic Bob. But they liked the look of me. Mohammed was checking I c
ould be trusted. With an attaché case. It would come from Babo, to be delivered, so ran the precise instructions, only into the hand of Hamdo Abdic, commander of the 502nd Brigade of the 5th Corps of the Bosnian Army in Bihac. Did I think I could be trusted to deliver it? Would I accept the consequences if it did not make it through?

  ‘I think you can trust me, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, I think I’m the sort of person who tries to do what he says he’s going to do.’

  I liked talking about myself like this, as if I was merely an extremely well-informed observer. It made me feel more substantial, a less wobbly entity.

  ‘I tend to come through, for a friend,’ I noted. ‘But why does Babo want to send something to Bihac, to the 5th Corps – aren’t they the enemy? Aren’t you fighting those guys, to stay out of the war?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Yeah? We are all Bosnians. There are links. It is complicated. Don’t worry. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Mohammed said. ‘If you make it through, straight to Abdic.’

  ‘If? “If” we make it through?’

  ‘I’m sure you will, but if you do.’

  ‘Well, OK. Yes of course. “If” though?’

  ‘OK, when you make it through. You should. You will,’ he said.

  ‘No, sure, I’d be pleased to – and if there’s anything else I can . . . I mean, Mohammed, is that like a 98 per cent chance of a safe passage, or more of a 51 per cent likelihood?’

  Mohammed laughed and patted me on the back. ‘You will be fine. I promise.’ That was reassuring. It would have been more reassuring if he was an omnipotent God, not a man in a pair of knock-off Levi’s and an ‘Indiana Yacht Club Superior Nautical’ T-shirt. But still.

  ‘Would you think of coming? Of going, Mohammed?’

  He laughed again. ‘They would kill me.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Mohammed’s jeans were thick enough to protect him from the thorns and nettles that grew at the sides of the path. In my khaki shorts, I was more of an Edwardian lady picking my way through behind him, stumbling to keep up as he talked over his shoulder.