by Mari Reiza
Nal was looking at me as if I needed to be urgently transferred to Broadmoor Hospital.
There are usually three branches of management workers (we thought we were God’s disciples but we were only management consultants): advisors, business school academics and gurus. Nal didn’t know of any of them mowing lawns and had no fucking idea who Nicholas Barker was. What was I talking about? He was flabbergasted, the personification in real flesh of Munch’s Scream.
Maybe I was too sharp for this parish, I thought. Perhaps I had been over-educated, which fuelled my delusions that the world had a great deal to offer for me, greater than management consultancy. Perhaps, I was so clever above everyone else around me that I was a fool. Nal said something about me having come to a punctuation in my life.
‘No, Nal. It’s a full stop,’ I replied. ‘My life has been over-egged.’ I had outdone myself. I was shipshape and I had sunk. I was sure of it. ‘I don’t think I understand the world around me anymore,’ I continued, ‘so I need to retreat to my own imaginary place of words where I can make things up again as I go along.’
‘Vittal,’ Nal wasn’t letting go, ‘you will come back. Everyone comes back to the system.’ And our system was the best of them! ‘Even the Google kids sold their soul to the devil!’
‘Well, the difference, Nal, is that I already know the devil. I know him very well. I need to play that to my advantage, I guess.’
Nal wasn’t buying that.
‘Can’t you understand? I really want to be perched in the monumental chaos of manuscripts, boxes, plastic bags and books that may seem an indoor skip to you, but mean something to me, my Versailles. You see, poetry (there I had said it, the dirty word!) is born of the quarrel with ourselves. And after fifteen years at Enterprise I have a lot of material!’
Nal’s clueless expression was driving me to the edge.
‘Maybe I am driven by the fantasy that my world will be rescued in the ecstasy of a different creation,’ I continued before losing it, ‘helping me to ejaculate far and beyond!’ I immediately regretted that last line. I couldn’t believe I had said it and thought Nal would surely fail to grasp its significance. I had tried to mark the moment with grand words from my favourite books, knowing well that Nal could hardly relate to them. What was the point? ‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘I can’t do much about putting things right, but at least I want to use what I know to make obvious what is wrong. It is a small step, but maybe that is all I have to give. Have you ever seen fifty rooms of pictures representing seventy years of a man’s life? That is Picasso. That is achievement for you. What am I going to show for my last fifteen years of crap?’ I wasn’t going to give Nal time to answer this one. ‘It may have felt beautiful to you like La Grande Bellezza,’ I said in a tone of finality, ‘but I do not want to have to walk back through my whole life and feel that lack of fulfillment. For one, we did not even have a decent fucking party, in fifteen years!’ I added. And as I said it I knew it. I had slotted myself all those years ago into a place within what looked like very civilised society, but I had to confront whether conformity in the end had brought me happiness. Enterprise conformity certainly hadn’t and I was extremely confident of this conclusion now. ‘Are the happy happy?’ I asked Nal again rhetorically. ‘Well, I am not happy, Nal. I have grown accustomed to doing things I dislike, and that only became a kind of happiness because it was gold-plated with some made-up purpose.’
‘Take some time off and think about it,’ Nal said deflated but still fighting. And I suddenly really wanted him to listen and acknowledge and get me, the real me, someone different in Enterprise.
‘I want to create in my head,’ I said, ‘where I am king of infinite space, and to break free of what feels like the false constriction of Enterprise. I want to be emperor of a planet with my own imaginary subjects, and I will not tell them what they want to hear, and I will not be scared if they disobey me. I want a job that really gives me London, the UK and the world top to bottom. I want real characters with feelings, an endless supply of humanity, without having to talk to or trust any of them for the rest of my life.’ I knew it sounded mad, but I thought it was genius. ‘I want to go big because colossal is bold, and it screams louder,’ I continued. ‘So, I am leaving Enterprise, and this is big for me. This may be the big mistake of my life but it will be the mistake that becomes reality. I want to imagine another journey for myself.’ I finally took a breath. ‘At least writers don’t have to be pin-ups,’ I tried to joke, ‘I never had the imposing figure for a CEO, let’s face it,’ I added.
Nal wasn’t laughing. ‘So what?’ he finally said, ‘are you going into seclusion, to cut yourself off from the world?’
Haven’t we cut ourselves off from the world already? I thought, but I made an effort to be gentle with him. ‘I do not profess to be so perfect that I have nothing more to learn from anyone,’ I said. ‘It is only that for over forty years, I have been a listener and seen everybody's side, and pleased everybody, never formulating or standing by my own position, never even knowing if I had a position. The time has come to turn the tables.’ There was silence. ‘I have been ecstasised (or was it enslaved) to death by influences, and now something has to be born and grow, and to bloom. A personal thing with a pulsating heart.’ Another very long, uncomfortable silence. ‘Nal,’ I said with exhaustion, ‘I am numb. My family means nothing to me, my money means nothing to me, my life means nothing to me. I feel a pervasive kind of disenfranchisement, of disassociation from my own work, from my father’s wishes, from my life circumstances. I feel like I don’t know how to feel. I want to be alone. It is not that I do not believe in people. They have to be the best thing that makes this planet. But when they don't live up to it, it is so disappointing. I want to surround myself with characters who mean something, even if I need to make them up in my head. I want to rebuild my own fictional world with people who feel and stand for something real.’ It made no sense at all but I was going to do it.
That was it. I was not responding to the name of Enterpriser anymore. It was that easy, and the world had not collapsed. In fact, as I got further away from the building the unpleasant dreadful sensation that had oppressed me for so long began to abandon me. And I thought of Lucy and how proud she would have been.
Dear Lucy, I cannot live without you. Does this suffering instigate my love? I feel like I am love and anything could happen now. The sweet smell of onion... I would have run after you from that petrol station lost at the end of your dreams because you smelled of grass and wild and broke every mould. Under the heat. I would have run and run. Without shoes. Until I got to you. And I would have hugged you and never let you go, your skirt flying in the hot wind. Nothing in sight, other than a huge sign of the Osborne bull with big balls.
Carlo once said that the best ones were always the first ones to go, and that they left us without instructions. And now all I could hope for was to sing to Lucy every night, before succumbing to sleep, before my substance burnt in darkness. Because it is at sunset that one must think of the most beautiful, of drinking Lucy’s blood and writing her name with mine, suffocating in her skin.
'I am leaving Enterprise for you, Lucy. For you, because I want you to be my days.’
At a high level there had been Enterprise, where left had become right and right had become wrong. Yearn for achievement, build power and image, worship self-restraint. Looking more closely there had been a woman whom I had loved, and whom maybe Peter had loved. Lucy. And she was dead. We had killed her. And somewhere there had been another woman, in whom Peter had found some solace, confronted his fear, and for whom he was losing his mind. Wherever this woman was in the world, I had not yet realised that one day I would be the only one left to tell her that Peter had loved her enough to leave everything, to let his head go. That is my reconstruction now of events then. But of course, you, Reader, may have concluded something totally different.
I had once heard the Dalai Lama, at some Enterprise event, say that men were wha
t surprised him most of humanity; because they sacrificed their health in order to make money; then they sacrificed their money to recuperate their health; and then they were so anxious about the future that they did not enjoy the present, the result being that they did not live in the present or the future. They lived as if they were never going to die, and when they died they had never really lived.
As I looked back it dawned on me. For fifteen years I had not been myself. I had not lived. Years had passed by, but they had not been lived.
How was it possible?
And I would have to carry all the corpses, the missed moments, around me like ghosts strapped to my back. Building up corpses when I should have been gathering flowers. Who was to blame? Who kept the till? It didn’t matter anymore. I knew what was next: all steps were gone and I was back to the start, to the bare fibres of my heart.
How on earth was I going to tell Dad, though?
‘Dad, I am leaving Enterprise.’ Odd silence.
Anyone a sweet? Dear Reader. I’m so much running out of sweets that we may have to wrap-up the book soon.
‘I am sure, if you think that it is the right thing, then it is,’ said Dad. ‘Change is often good, and it is the only constant. There can be pride in every job, just make sure you do it at the top of your game.’
Was that it? Dad could feel my incredulity almost turning to disappointment.
‘Son, I want to tell you a story of the Mahabharata,’ Dad said.
That book again...
‘Duryodhana's wife Bhanumathi and his close friend Karna were playing a game of dice,’ he started. ‘The stake between them was substantial. As the game progressed, it was evident that Karna was winning and Bhanumathi was losing. Just then Duryodhana entered his queen's chamber. Karna had his back to the door while Bhanumathi was facing it. Seeing her husband coming, she was about to stand up. As she was just rising, Karna, thinking that she was trying to get away from the embarrassment of certain defeat in the game, snatched at her drape, studded with pearls. Tugged at by Karna's powerful hands, the thread snapped and all the pearls rolled on the floor,’ Dad paused to breathe. ‘Queen Bhanumathi was stunned and did not know what to say or do. She was afraid that, for no fault of hers, she would be misunderstood by her husband because of Karna's offensive and insensitive behavior. Seeing her shocked state and sensing that something was wrong, Karna turned round and saw his friend Duryodhana. He was also deeply shocked and distressed beyond words. Here he was, in the royal chamber, playing a game of dice with his friend's wife and he caught her clothes, thus embarrassing and endangering her chaste reputation. He stood dumbfounded and transfixed. Surely, Duryodhana would not tolerate such immodesty. He readied himself for the inevitable punishment.’ I kept listening to Dad’s words attentively. ‘As both she and Karna look down sheepishly, unable to meet Duryodhana's eyes, Duryodhana only asked, should I just collect the beads, or string them as well?’
That was the end of Dad’s story.
I smiled.
‘Son, this is to tell you that I have implicit faith and great love for you,’ he added.
My eyes were moist. Dad was becoming a classic, full of eternal freshness for each new encounter. Telling him had been so much easier than I had first thought. Sometimes you do not know what's in people's hearts, but as long as there is love things seem to turn out all right. The fact is, we are often prepared to give up our lives in the search of recognition and admiration. But recognition and admiration aren't love, and love does not need them. And when you see love, you understand and you recognise it straight away.
I remembered Awa had once said to me, not long before she died, that her greatest achievement was that she had been unashamedly who she was: ‘You have to trust what you see and what you feel, and react to what is there,’ she had said. ‘You can’t stay totally ignorant to your heart, unless you are an elected politician,’ she joked. And when I thought of that I remembered Lucy’s smile, and how she used to shout, ‘I am not going to apologise for being my own woman!’ Well, I was not planning to apologise for being Vittal anymore.
Mum had always filled me with the confidence to do anything I wanted. And I had done that, and more. I had done all the stuff that I had not wanted as well. I just had not known that I had not wanted it. And for the first time in a long while, perhaps the first time ever, I could now see something that had been dormant in me, the glimmer of a very real sense of possibility, like a vibrant world was travelling at full speed around me again. I felt that, like Calliope Helen Stephanides, I was to be born twice. (And to clarify, both times I was a man, in case you, Reader, are searching for a hidden meaning.) First on a rainy day in Harrow, outside London, in April 1974, as JC, an aim-to-please, intelligent gentle boy, ashamed of being anything short of the impossible, generalized view of the successful man. And then again, on another rainy day in Harrow, outside London, in December 2014, as Vittal Choudhary Vivo (Alive), an oldish, hardened, reclusive cynical writer, hoping to erase that shame of being a real man of body and blood. There is that African saying that a seed has to die to grow. JC had to die for Vivo.
I couldn’t help but wonder whether more deaths and births would come, more seeds, more stories. Life is long.
18
Nuria Friedman to Vittal Choudhary, March 2021
My dear Vittal,
Don't you like clouds? They surprise you every day.
In the same way that it takes ten kilograms of the best olives to make a litre of Gargano oil, you now know the pain that goes into making three hundred pages of fiction. Fiction is never real fiction, it is shredded life out of one’s original seed. But, is it not a treat when for once, between the covers, life can be made to march to your tune? Because unlike real life, art is not indifferent to our screaming.
I have enjoyed the phantasmagorical backdrop in which you have projected turmoil and suffering, and had your characters suspending judgement of what is real, to help yourself ponder on what ultimately means freedom and success. I have savoured the final step in energy, the chaos, like the last minutes of a dying animal.
Yes, Peter-Moses is a character full of contradictions, lovable and hateable at the same time. Should he have been saved? Should he be redeemed? I did not seek to bring Peter down, but for him not to destroy me. I did not destroy him, Vittal, Enterprise did. You know as well as I do, that he went through life without really living it, offering flamboyant short sketches, beautifully rehearsed, of someone he didn’t feel for, someone he was not. We know nothing of the real Peter, but you chose to make him into a man who might have cared. I feel that could be quite accurate, or maybe it is not, and that this is all we can conclude as things stand.
Then you have stretched yourself to portray your feelings of devotion for Lucy, and you can’t understand how much your love for her reassures me.
I know now that I should have started this story like a fairy tale. Once upon a time, there was a little princess who lived on a planet and fell in love with a prince who had hurt many princesses before her, some very close to her, and she got scared. Then, she realised, once she had denied him and he had gone, that her planet was deserted, and she couldn’t smell any flowers. This story would have been closer to the truth, to my story, Vittal. I think you had seen this one through the box and I thank you for believing in me.
You may be right that there are scattered stars in the sky but your finale brings a hope of sorts, and a return to love. It had to be a love story, because the act of love is the true religion, because that is fundamentally the essence of life. And even when there is only darkness, there is hope. Darkness illuminates love, which can bring light, so that all these things exalt each other’s meanings.
You are trying to convince me that life gets better, that I can believe again in men and love. Living seems more considerable to those whose thoughts are with the dead. If I was Lucy the fortune teller, would I guess that you are falling in love with me?
I can confirm, my dear Vittal, that you have
opened all doors and now hold the key, and that I will be forever yours.
Your devoted correspondent,
Ms. Nuria Friedman
IV
FINALE
19
Lucy to Nuria, September 2014
Nuria,
Whatever happens, do not blame yourself. It has been such comfort to me to have you by my side all these years, and now, to think that you could take care of Peter. I hope that he can bring you happiness because you deserve it, and because there is nothing better than sharing your dreams with someone. I can now feel that somehow there will be some trace, and that death is not the end of my story.
Nuria, I love you.
Your sister
20
The Triple Bagger 4. Kensington Close Hotel, London, September 2014
It has taken long to choose this morning’s dress, but Altuzarra makes her feel like she can do it, like she has the upper hand. Everything has changed. She can get rid of him today. This is the last time that she will be weak for his sake and she is already feeling guilty and disgusted with herself. A trouser suit, to feel like a man, strong like a man.
She knocks on the door. She knows that he is there already. Another day, another pantomime. But today he looks healthy and radiant, with his sleeves rolled up, as if he is about to change the world. He looks wonderfully blinding but she knows that she needs to keep herself together.