by Mari Reiza
‘Why do you always have to be so horrible? Are you looking to shock me?’ she complains. ‘It pleases you to know that you can.’
‘Just let me have my say,’ he says. ‘Take this as a way of me being myself with you. You always moan that I hardly talk, that you know nothing about me. I thought that you would be pleased.’ He goes on, ‘From a very young age, Ikosians underwent a rigorous training and education regimen, and were widely considered to be the best visionaries in the Mediterranean. It was a tough upbringing but it made them rich, prosperous and influential. This was their reward for their ugliness and a life without love.’
‘Are you wanting me to publish this?’ she asks, pulling herself up from the bed. ‘Do not give up your day job, darling. You are clearly business clever but not temperamentally intellectual.’
‘Big words,’ he says. He is irritated at her constant interruptions but manages a smile from his armchair. ‘Write and you will remember. Invent and you will recall even more exactly,’ he adds. ‘Those were your words, right? Let me continue with my story.’
She nods with a faint twinkle. He listens to her, it seems.
‘Ikosians hated themselves. They were reminded to constantly loathe themselves by their own appearance. Their parents and sisters loved and hated them at the same time. So these unfortunate men focused on being good at their missions. This brought them recognition from very important people and made them feel powerful. It was the closest they got to love. They forged fragile friendships with other Ikosians and grew their own elite, riches and influence. They also felt that they had a duty to their island. Even if they resented their own free people, they thrived on being held as heroes. Liadromites needed and abhorred Ikosians too, especially as Ikosians were allowed to marry free common wives. These wives seldom cared much for their husbands but felt appreciation because they were ensured a life of wealth.’
‘Is this your responsible capitalism coming out?’ she laughs but he ignores her.
‘The scornful man in my story, he was the son of Lykos and Elpis. They were both Liadromites, but their first son-to-be had been elected to become an Ikosian, an honour bestowed upon a Liadromite couple once a year. When Elpis found out that she was pregnant, she asked her husband to save the life of the child. After all her name meant hope. “Let him be a free child,” she had said to Lykos. And when the child was born he was so handsome, Elpis pleaded again and again. Lykos looked at his child and did not see his own beautiful reflection, his unspoilt face, but saw poverty. He also saw another kind of hope, that of becoming something more, of bettering himself and his family. He was torn apart. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to call his son Apollinaris. His heart wanted his child to be beautiful and to be loved. But he did not want him to live as a slave to penury, but as a powerful man. Besides, no elected Liadromite had ever refused the privilege to become an Ikosian before. What would it mean for him and his family? In the middle of the night, he got up, hiding from his wife, and took the innocent creature to the mountains, where he maimed him.’ He pauses, out of breath.
It is June. Four in the afternoon. She hates air conditioning so it is far too hot in the room. She has joined him at the small armchairs across from the tired coffee table and taken off her shoes. Not the best hotel, she thinks to herself. But he does not seem to care, or so he says. This appears unjustifiable to her. She does not know what he does for a living or who he is, only that he was in first class on that plane to Paris. But she can read the signs. The clothes, the shoes, the watch. It was like he had been born there, in first class. He likes to behave different with her though. Maybe he likes to tease her, perhaps he is just tight-arsed. Or maybe seedy places turn him on. He is never very forthcoming. Today is the most forthcoming he has been since we met two months ago, she thinks.
‘I did not want you to maim the child,’ she finally says.
She is wearing a silk dress, Egyptian blue, with short Balenciaga puffed leg-of-mutton sleeves. Her arms bare, tanned. She is moving her ring nervously up and down her ring finger. It is a family ring with a blue crest, midnight blue against a lighter background, the same tone of her dress. He likes to think that it is all intended for him, her fidgeting. He is costing her something, some serenity. It is usually the other way round with him. Women cost him too much money. Her hair is pinned back showing her pearl earrings. She wears thick black liner around her eyes, standing out like Cleopatra’s. Pink lips. Dior’s rose deshabillée. Rose in summer, red in winter, she always says. She is very particular with lips.
‘Maybe I could change it,’ he ventures. ‘I would do it just for you.’
‘No,’ she replies. ‘The word has been written.’
He changes tack, slightly uncertain. Perhaps he should not have upset her. ‘Where are you supposed to be?’ he asks.
‘Editing. Remember, I am an editor.’
‘That is not what I meant.’ He means what else is he costing her. Maybe a lie? ‘When can I see you?’ As he speaks, a welcome breath of air enters through the window.
It is amazing how you can still open the windows in these old buildings, despite being on the twentieth floor, she thinks. It is unsafe, with all the wackos wanting to take their own life nowadays. And then to him, ‘You are seeing me now,’ she says.
‘Don’t be like that. Tell me when,’ he replies eagerly.
She is still sweating, ‘You are the one who is always busy. The thirty-minute man. I do not know yet,’ she adds.
‘Sometimes you do not like me very much,’ he laughs. ‘You should get a lover, in New York. Then you would have an excuse.’
‘Very funny but my lover would be jealous of you,’ she replies. ‘And you would think that I like him better.’
‘And would you?’ he has to ask.
Next she puts her shoes on, takes her small neon pink bag and leaves the room with a little wave and a broad, mocking smile. The thirty minutes were nearly over anyway.
He lies on the bed and glances over his inbox on the laptop.
His eyes are sad. He thinks back to the story. They should not have maimed the child. He closes the laptop with a loud snap. He puts it in his laptop case, then into his briefcase, then on top of his rolling case; a bag in a bag on another bag, all black. He suddenly looks tired, as if his energy has left the room with her. He rolls his shirt sleeves back down, looking at his watch.
He puts on his jacket and his sunglasses and leaves the room, rolling his luggage out.
4
The Shortest Way to Happiness. Of the year 2000. Don’t know what’s in my heart
If only men looked up to the sky, they would see God, telling them to say what they mean and do as they feel. Or maybe they would only see the clouds, contortions of dough spelling out a different meaningless thing every time.
I was thinking too hard, a mind habit. Me, Vittal Choudhary. A London-born Shaggy Rogers look-alike from Pondicherry, now Puducherry, thanks to the Indians’ mania for renaming everywhere. A boyish mouth, big eyes and a pronounced chin. Lots of hair, parted on the side but worn close to the skull to tame the volume, stuck with the occasional shine of extra-strong hair gel. At least I knew that I would never go bald… Don’t knock it, my look had its appeal amongst certain kind of women in England. And men, occasionally. The proof was that I had recently married, or as Dad put it, I had committed an act of total foolishness. It was not like I had decamped in Tijuana to wed an eighteen-year-old chick that I had known for the better part of a week, after meeting her at the doctor’s surgery when I went to have my urine checked. In my defence, it was a bit better than that. But that is another story.
In those days, I was blessed with a university flatmate who made the best espresso north of Milan, and my mornings would not start without one. Despite having been recently hitched to Miriam, we had kept to our own flats, and not only for the sake of Carlo’s coffee. There were practical reasons, given our move back to London was imminent. And notwithstanding this temporary spatial separati
on from my wife, I still considered myself a romantic. I spent plenty of time loving life and discussing the properties of the sublime. I was known for having an eye for the beauty in things, which Mum said existed in the mind that contemplated them. And girls. Beauty in girls. Women in love could ache with beauty. I would have been a poet had I only been born in Rome. I cried easily and was immediately ashamed, another clue. Men should not cry.
The scholar in me would read anything back then, not necessarily of quality, preferably whilst tucked up in bed. I had a terrible memory for names but persisted in quoting extensively, many authors passing my lips un-or mis-acknowledged. The lists of self-help books and classics had been endless. Thanks, Dad. He thought all that made the gentleman included an interminable catalogue of difficult things, and a good shave. That was his checklist. On the other hand, Mum exclusively hid poem anthologies and sitar master biographies for me to find under cushions and mattresses at home. She thought all that made the gentleman was being able to make music. Miriam had also contributed to my education as an artist of the heart: Almodóvar, Jeunet, Carax, Sorrentino, Klapisch. This was despite Carlo’s efforts to lure me towards crime fiction – ‘what a terrible waste of time unless you wanted to become a forensic scientist.’ Dad’s plans for me were never far from my mind, there was nothing else in his. The thought that he was watching me was more powerful than the idea of the Almighty.
University days had come and gone in a daze. Was that not what university was for? I had attended some meetings and run (gruesome) experiments when strictly necessary, and rarely applied myself to books after 6 pm, when Carlo, whose Spritzes were as good as his espressos, would insist on his aperitivo in exchange for my dinner. I still killed for favourites cooked by Mum, but had become a self-reliant deli-hunter and decent enough chef myself, courtesy of bad hall lunches and chronically hungry friends like Carlo, who begged. I loved to oblige.
Life was easy, the farthest away I had ever been from home. Still, I could not help but feel that I should have studied music rather than science. It was not like I was a Brahma for nothing, the creative aspect of the universal consciousness. Single malt, aka the juice, drove inspiration for my sitar, for those lonely notes and the verses that failed to be songs. My inner world was made of dancing words, not proved facts. I could have settled there comfortably had it not been for Dad. He wanted science and numbers to save me from the debauchery of art. I could have wallpapered my life with song lyrics instead. I could have spent time understanding that a rhyme is like a kiss, and letting my lips prove it.
No point in regret. ‘Could one study music at Oxford anyway?’ I would not have changed being there for the world. It had been life affirming in ways that I never could have imagined, like making me understand that if you were born rich or befriended the rich you really were so far ahead of the game. And some people thought they came for a degree! Still, sometimes I was certain I had been born a couple of thousand years late and in the wrong shoes. ‘Apollo, hold on to your lyre awaiting my reincarnation!’
But here I was, a gentle soul pretending to be tough. ‘Keep it up, Vittal. You are moving in with the big boys now.’ Dad was always cheerful.
At the time it felt like something hanging upon me, to be heading to London to join noble, money-making outfits that September. Advisories, law firms, investment banks, take your pick. I was not going to be less than any of my friends; I didn’t intend on becoming the first loser to be dismissed at the five-year reunion. I am a superb young scholar expected to overachieve, and I am planning to do just that.
That was why Dad and I (or was it mainly Dad?) had benchmarked my every score, each tiniest achievement, and constantly squeezed profitable experiences and acquaintances for the past twenty years. For as long as I can remember, I had read everything that anyone we knew had read in their lifetime. I had attended every possible motivational seminar, played every social sport and been to every imaginable networking event. At university, I had even rowed despite getting sick on boats, because dad had said that the son of someone high up at BCG, a big consultancy company, was in the club, though he was obviously on the professional boat. (Nathe was from a family of rowers and must have been rowing since he was three.) I had forever been mentored and advised by everyone who had been suggested by anyone, who was known to any member of my extended family. We had traveled extensively throughout Europe’s sights, two weeks every summer, Dad giving me homework after each cultural visit. And I had spent at least a week every July on intensive French courses at Aunt Anita’s place in Geneva, and later boarded for a time at my cousins’ Catholic bilingual school. At fifteen, I had been made to apply for summer language courses in Barcelona because Spanish was the language of the future, and before I left for university, we had visited Aunt Nanda in New York to tour the East coast for top US back-ups, in the catastrophic event that I would not get in to Oxford.
And none of it had really been my choice. Would it ever? I was destined to become a self-and-dad-made man.
Mum called it blooming. Aunty Nanda and her mystic ball called it Solare, a word that she had learnt on her trip to Rome in 1958. It meant radiating like the sun and resulted in being at the centre of the universe, with everyone looking up to me. Awa called it the JC-needs-to-please-everybody curse. JC stood for Jesus Christ (and she was being ironic). We had apparently been one of the few Indian Catholic families left in Pondicherry. Dear Pondi, the home of renegades, alternative types and controversy, later better known for Life of Pi. Would I need fiction to cope with my life as much as Piscine Molitor Patel had?
When it finally came, Enterprise’s job offer was unsurprising given I had been groomed for it all my life. Still, I should have experienced some joy. Did it not put all my anxieties at bay? Was it not proof of who I was, what I had become and where I was heading? Was I not happy to have landed a job at one of the most exciting global companies of all time and which was widely recognised as a leader in its field? Not a job, but a welcome into a vocation, handed a worthwhile life mission!
I could not let Dad down again. I had already married below his expectations, in an uncontrolled burst of passion and a need to (unsuccessfully) show him I was boss. A simple Miriam. My superstition had told me that it was the right choice. Miriam with M for mother, matter and Mary, a Lithuanian editor for a medical journal. Only until I would start earning shitloads of money and she would open a dance school or an internet boutique, or start a beauty magazine. ‘They all do!’ I was told. I could not deny my parents any more dreams. It would be too much heartache from an only son.
Dad said that I would like it, Enterprise. Then he said that I should not worry if I did not, that it would be temporary. ‘One day, you will run your own corporation,’ my fortune written in the stars.
5
The Shortest Way to Happiness. Of years 2000-2008. Desire (I)
In which Vittal is welcomed to Enterprise and men have been chosen, for a mission.
Welcome
First day in the office, September 2000. The charmless broken quadrilateral of Leicester Square, bars and theatres still sleeping at that time in the morning, remnants of the night before on the dirty pavement. GRIM.
I felt the urge to plant some roots in this new home. I immediately looked for a good coffee shop. Coffee Plantation sounded independent and had a queue. I settled for first impressions and was immediately reassured by a blonde, heroin-chic, thin Polish woman, whose pleasant face withstood 5 am starts better than mine would ever do. She wore leggings under leg warmers, as if she had just come out of overnight dance rehearsal, a tartan shirt over the top.
I looked around. The other shirts behind the bar were definitely also stuck in the eighties. So was the background music and the old-fashioned ‘Drinks Here’ sign hanging from the ceiling with a little pointing hand. There were quirky quotes too, taped to the back of what looked like an original Italian coffee machine: ‘a smile is a curve that makes everything straight’; ‘excuse me, my brain is full’; ‘h
ard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy’.
Forward advanced a thin, short young boy, with stubble, looking like a dreamy IT student just landed in from California, where he had spent the last three months coming up with the next Google. He wore shorts with colourful trainers, no socks, a printed T-shirt munched by some unknown animal, probably a London rat, and thick-rimmed glasses. He announced he was there to make my coffee. That morning I needed a coffee badly, something about Miriam making me go through thousands of flats to rent the night before. Next thing I knew, the geek packed in some coffee, caressed his machine and devoted himself to milk-frothing with nerdy obsession for a long minute, making me the best coffee I had tasted so far in London.
At the till, a thin ‘urban’ (meaning dark-skinned, but I was about to enter the word of corporations, where euphemisms would be an everyday requirement), tall guy, with a small head of black curls moving graciously, beats running through his veins as if he was still at the weekend’s milonga, handed back my change.
The whole place seemed founded by the kids of Fame. It was the Fame baristas. You could be sure that they lived Saturday Night Fever after they had closed for the day, my Polish heroin-chic and the African Joaquín Cortés dancing on the counter, and the geeky guy doing the lighting. Welcome to ‘The Coffee Plantation Show’! Could they ever suspect, at that precise moment, that they were becoming my official lifeline extenders for the next fifteen years? It was hard to pull myself away from the fascination of that coffee spot which was holding me hostage. But I had to.