Triple Bagger

by Mari Reiza

  He tells her that he wants to be buried amongst lemons because their fragrance and energy are cleansing. He is looking on his laptop at a field of citronniers somewhere on a hill in France, a small stone church at the back of the field. ‘I am sure there are many lemon trees in Alonissos,’ he adds. He would love a box of teak, Burmese teak, from seasoned wood from old colonial villas, like they use for the sitars, decorated with arabesque inlays in mother of pearl. He feels like a poet today, a romantic. He wants to honour the beauty of the world and the way humans can vivify it. ‘Like how you bring your silks to life and give them the energy to cry out your emotions,’ he says to her. This is why he understands the fascination with women’s clothes and jewels, without their muse they are worth nothing, they are dead, soulless and inanimate. ‘We enliven beauty and beauty gives back to life,’ he insists. ‘Look at a boat, isn’t its charm that it becomes a friend of a man against the vast force of the sea?’

  She can’t take this anymore. ‘I have come to finish your story,’ she says.

  ‘Why the rush? Torment loves company. Are you going to leave me so soon?’ There is a touch of anxiety he tries to keep hidden.

  ‘The blind girl, she will leave him,’ she says.

  ‘You know that she can’t. He will put her in a convent. He will do something terrible to her. You know that he will not help himself,’ he replies.

  ‘Maybe he will not dare,’ she adds. She wants to believe that.

  ‘But it would be the right thing, because if she challenges him and his power, she needs to understand that there are consequences. For harmony there needs to be symmetry, there needs to be consequences. He can only offer her his help, to deal with what is to come. He is not really the one inflicting it. It’s the law,’ he says.

  ‘But you know that she will take a spade and kill herself in front of him,’ and as she says that, she knows that it has happened, and that there is no way back. She will never see this man again.

  ‘What do you think I am? A professional narcissist?’ He is angry. ‘And who are you? So arrogant, so proud. You, who never gives in. You think that you have the right to judge people as if you understood the world.’

  She is trying to remain calm.

  ‘What is it that affronts you so much from me. The lack of grace? The abuse of power?’ He is struggling to contain himself.

  ‘The important things of life are not just things, they are sacred,’ she says. ‘I hate the way that you treat them like commodities. I hate the way you rush these things as if they are undeserving of your time, the way you replace love and hate and good and evil with insipid intermediaries that apparently have nothing to do with you, but result from an unquestionable method. You talk and talk about happiness and success but you are so far from what’s real, you understand nothing at all. You could never love me, because you do not know what it means.’

  ‘I cannot think about much else than you lately,’ he says, having struggled to regain his composure. ‘But you are right, loving you is different. It takes time. I never have time. I cannot concentrate on it. But then that is what you want me to say, right? My misanthrope, waiting for me to fail you, to prove you right. You should know that you need to believe in people to get the best of them. Is that why you have had no children? You do not trust yourself to procreate? You do not trust them to be good enough for you? You need to trust me. You think I will get over it when you go?’ he asks.

  ‘You are a vindictive little bastard,’ she answers back with force. ‘You will not be able to stop yourself from hurting me, because you want me to know that you are boss. For all your influence and power, you are such a small man. You think, because you open up to me occasionally, that we have some kind of relationship and I owe you. And what will you do when I refuse you? Will you send some letter to my husband with lies? Oh, how much you wish that I had a husband. And how much would you enjoy being the one who crushes me down, taking the moral high ground because you had the truth and you did only as I deserved. And then once you have flattened me, will you offer me your help?’ She is holding her head in her hands. ‘In my heart, I hoped that you would not be capable of something like this,’ she continues. ‘I denied it to myself even when all the signs were there,’ she says. ‘Listen carefully. I hope that you rot in hell slowly, and in a lot of pain. Crush me if you wish but you will not win. You may go on to bigger things, I am sure. But you will have failed in the small things of life, which are more than things, they are all that really matters.’

  ‘Venture yourself. Take the plunge! Try me!’ He is now shouting at the top of his voice, ardent, with a wicked smile as if he were possessed. And there is a sweetness to this ardour, almost a naivety. ‘You are scared? Don’t you think I am scared too? You know that I am your victim and that you chose me to prove yourself, to prove your point. You wanted me as an accessory to your own crime of not believing in people. Kahneman the God of Loss Aversion!’ he shouts. ‘If you never give in to love you can’t lose it. Is that it?’

  What drives rage? Is it love or is it hate? she thinks. And she hopes in vain that his anger is unsustainable and unsustaining, and that it does not feed him but it empties him, leaving him more ready to love. ‘Peter,’ she mentions his name, ‘you have cornered yourself, churning away at success, emotionally detached from any living soul. You fail to understand what makes real people tick, and you misjudge them. Some may not bend to your desires despite all that power, and when you quash them, you may hurt yourself more than you hurt them. Good wrestlers go through the trouble of knowing their opponents, that’s half the game.’

  He seems lost.

  He can’t, she thinks. He can’t be looking at me with those eyes and be capable of hurting me. But it does not matter anymore because I will win. Because gentle is stronger than firm, and water prevails against marble, and love is more powerful than force.

  He still doesn’t understand the root of the force that has possessed her.

  ‘I hate to fuck up farewells,’ she whispers, ‘but life defends itself,’ and as she has said that, she wants to run away, far and fast.

  Peter is right. She is too afraid to lose him. She doesn’t know what he will do when she is gone. Maybe he will roll those sleeves down, rearrange his Pegasus cufflinks, look at his briefcase on top of his roller case, and take his laptop bag out. A bag inside of a bag on top of another bag, all black. He will prepare for another day, the weight of all that vanity, fear, control.

  He must be so tired, half-drowning in the strong tides of life.

  21

  Lucy to Peter, September 2014

  Peter,

  I am trembling as I write this. I realised, although Nuria didn’t. But she may have by now if you are receiving this letter. You didn’t recognise her because she is so much more beautiful than me.

  I am certain that it’s a coincidence. No, it is more like God’s miracle that you are handed another chance. Had the God of Coincidences decided to stop working that day you met in first class, it would have changed everyone’s story. Does this make you and Nuria more or less special? I don’t know.

  I want you to know that I do not hate you. I truly believe that what you did to me was born of love, that there was love at some point in our story, the natural affection that bonds and imparts meaning to our lives and makes us truly human. We both need to hold on to that.

  Take care of Nuria, your roommate of strange hotels, for me, because there is nothing more beautiful than being together.

  Lucy

  22

  Ends are invariably treacherous

  Peter was the last man standing at Enterprise on that final day in early March 2015, after the movers had carried out the grand piano.

  Some rumours circled that Bianca had stayed too to see the devil escorted out. She had been haunted by devils for a while. Maybe she had carried a You Need to Die banner, and shouted energetically at the top of her voice.

  On that same day, one of the tigers at Regent’s Park Zoo had
escaped overnight, and specialised police squads had closed most of Soho, some of Regent’s Street and Leicester Square, following the last sighting of the animal. Animal activists had descended en masse into the area to protest against zoos, against security forces harming the tiger, and against cruelty to animals in general. People like to protest.

  The air was strange that morning. Peter, ten floors up in the office building, must have been wondering what it was all about. Or maybe he didn’t. Bianca, with the banner at the bottom of the building, outside the entrance, may have got mixed with the protesters who thought that she was shouting about killing animal oppressors. Or maybe she didn’t.

  The end of Peter, humiliated by middle managers, legal assistants and removal men rushing across the tenth floor, surrounded by animal protesters running in the streets below, with Bianca waiting under the building’s porch trying to trip the cursed longhorned bull for the first and last time, whilst a tiger lingered in the surroundings. That was the end of the man.

  But literature is the analysis after the event, the physical quality of life is living. And I will never know how the last minutes really went, if there was pain and tears and anxiety, or peace and quiet and finality, and whether Peter managed to secure his last performance. I am guessing that he did, and that the beautiful never looked so damned. TREACHEROUS.

  Peter died a few months after he had entered that circle of acknowledged ruin. A fatal stroke. Quick. At least nobody had to see his fucking face slowly hollowing and waxing. He knew grace even in death.

  There was no one willing to take care of his funeral. No family came forward to go through his small personal possessions, after the lawyers had sorted out the big stuff. I can still see all those suits, those hung men, hanging forever.

  I have got to know that he was transferred to Limon eventually, a small town in the South of France, not too far from Nérac near Bordeaux, where someone cleans his tomb and lays fresh flowers once a month. I know that it is a woman because women have known for centuries how to mourn men. I have travelled to that hill. The silence, the peace, surrounded by a beautiful countryside of vines and lemon trees. It made me think of Bernières’ Valledupar, where the natives hang pineapples in lemon trees to confuse the stupid tourists. But there were no pineapples in Limon, only the lemons and the dead. And in summer, Peter’s blank stone gets very hot; there is no inscription on it, not even ‘to an exceptional man’. Nothing.

  I feel close to Lucy there too, close to her ashes scattered in the Mediterranean Sea.

  I tell them both (Peter and Lucy) in my head, that the words have been written, and that if Nuria is as good as she says, they will live forever. Oh, Peter, my dear triple bagger! what a recipe for happiness: vanity, fear and control. A life without love.

  I can imagine Nuria kneeling at the blank stone yearning for Peter, swimming in lemony light, physical and emotional, tender and full of desire, wistful and content, nature and nurture: an image not immediately forgettable. I am sure that she keeps her tears back, and promises to herself that, once my book is out, she will never let herself cry over this man again.

  I can also close my eyes, over her same spot, and yearn for Lucy, thinking how life is long, sometimes too long, and others not long enough.

  23

  Publication of the Triple Bagger from Alonissos, September 2021

  Vittal opens an envelope from Nuria. Inside, he finds a final published version of The Shortest Way to Happiness and of another work, The Triple Bagger from Alonissos by Nuria Friedman with a dedication: For my sister, Lucy.

  24

  Vittal Choudhary to Nuria Friedman, September 2021

  My dear Nuria,

  I send you a final letter to thank you for The Triple Bagger from Alonissos, and to put our houses in order.

  I feel a fool that, all this time, I suspected you were seeking to re-live Peter, when you were instead looking to reason your sister Lucy. I should have noticed from the start, from the half wheel of pearls on your wrist, that you were the other half. Would it have changed my story?

  In my Shortest Way to Happiness, I have argued that Peter fell in love with Lucy, which was a supposition. I have then contended that his attraction to her was to break her, to turn her into Enterprise, which was pure guesswork. I have finally suggested that when she tested him, he became mad with rage and had to overpower her, which was presumption. As you see, Nuria, nothing is certain and I fear my guesses may have been of the self-comforting sort, or maybe I have been looking to help you in your quest for a villain or a hero.

  The only thing that I know for sure is that Lucy believed in Peter, as you know yourself, and that she believed that she, or you, could turn him, take him out of the system and make him feel again. I wish that she had believed in me instead.

  Lucy was a force. She was not a coward like me. She did and said and felt every day as if it was her last day on earth, as if her life depended on it, and she paid for that with her life.

  I will never match Lucy’s courage, but pointing out things that are wrong, even after they have happened, is my little addition, and this is what I can do. In this world where efficiency and technology govern, and queues at mobile shops make you think that they are selling souls, but still the music sounds and the tear forms and falls with gravity across our faces, I write about the tear and I listen to the music, and I am thankful that I can be hopeful again. I do not triple my net worth every three to five years, but I make up people and stories that I like and that may be read by other people so that, if they have time, perhaps they can think and feel something. And if my hands were cut tomorrow, I would sell flowers which stand for human pointlessness and frailty better than sim cards. As to all the other stuff I once had, I have finally understood that it wasn’t of much use to me and I’m glad that it is gone.

  Nuria, I am fully aware that I am not the real author of my latest creation, that it has yours and Lucy’s hearts all over it, guiding the moving fist. Was this a game to you? No, you were serious. Would Lucy be happy that Peter is dead, I wonder? And I think not, that they both wanted each other alive.

  Life is so unfair. Lucy believed in Peter and she died. You were resigned to him failing you, and he died. And you are still alive, haunted by guilt for Lucy? for Peter? As much as I am, for letting Lucy die. And if only Peter and I could have exchanged lives! What then? Me and Peter, you and Lucy. Are we the same characters with alternative endings?

  You helped me to confront my self-imposed amnesia and to laugh at this catastrophe in my biography. I hope that I helped you laugh at yours. You have been my Madame de Pompadour, forcing me to invest in that failing Sèvres factory and pushing me to try those new colours and forms, until I became a master of precision.

  ‘And the pleasure of porcelain is that you can do anything,’ I hear you say. Like with words.

  Nuria, all that you made me do, because you believed in me. You actually have believed in me. You saved me! You gracefully disarmed my revolution. You have taken the poison out of me so that I can laugh in its face. Did Lucy make us write this to be together? It’s no coincidence. I have a strong hunch that meeting you and meeting Lucy are two events that were written in fate; it affords me some absurd feeling of control and the hope that we can close a circle.

  Now, you can choose to believe what you want about what happened in that room when we first met against the backdrop of Elena Arzak’s Mead and Fractal Fluid. Because people, at least people like you and me, are free to believe whatever they want. But I am certain that we fell in love, out of the lust from our common brush with death revealing our fragile hold on life, and that a new story began. But feel free to choose your own beginning. It would be good to have different beginnings. I just beg you for a common end.

  Nuria, it feels like I love you, and yet I fear that you will leave me with a bowl of dead ants by my door, or a roughly severed, yellow-complexioned, vulture-munched hand with ragged fingernails. I’m stepping into dangerous territory, I know. But I h
ave to take what I can when I can still get it, even if it’s not really mine. I am fully unprepared for what’s to come, so let it come. I want to give myself to fate. I am the new Vittal C. Vivo, and I am not going to fuck up this time. And if I do, it will be fine.

  To you who took my life and sculpted it into meaning, who made sense of time and made it want to flow afresh, to you who reacquainted me with the art of dreaming and risking, and made me feel so scared to ever miss love again. To you, Nuria: I rest myself in your hands where I think that I have been from the beginning, and where I wish to remain.

  NOT getting The Prize was wonderful, and I was delighted to see we were both as good as we thought we were. So, what about going out for a drink now? Odd silence?

  There you go. This is my last sweet.

  Your personal poet,

  Dr. Vittal Choudhary Vivo

  25

  THE END

  You know it, dear Reader. I have asked Nuria out for a drink. What’s life worth if I don’t answer to my dreams.

  I do not want to feel lonely anymore. I suspect Nuria doesn't either; no more living our intelligent bitter loneliness, comfortable yet desperately abandoned.

  I once saw a Korean film about renewal. It happened in a beautiful lake. The title was Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring. Everything renews. It was a sad evening, me and Miriam, in the days when I was working in Milan. It has helped me think. Maybe Lucy is gone but some of her is with me, and with Nuria. Peter is dead too but some of him is with Nuria, and with me. And Nuria and I are here and it is now up to us. I feel that perhaps everything can just not repeat itself, but that we can be released from the cyclical consequences of harmful actions and inactions, and make something new; that at the end of our exploring maybe we arrive where we started and know the place for the first time?