by Brian Aldiss
Although I had found it a painful reflection, I could not fit it into my current novel, even as ballast. So I jot it down here. A profound thought while evil gases fill the cubicle. Perhaps I am to die in my own crabby stink… Well, what do you expect?
So I return with feigned nonchalance and a change of underpants to the intriguing lady on the terrace, and my mixed fish dish with capers. A new but empty glass stands on the table; the intriguing lady has refreshed herself with another vodka while I have been away. While I can only respect this opportunism – which will go on my bill – I cannot but wonder if Rosie is on the verge of becoming an alcoholic.
I inform her that my agent has been offered an advance of ten thousand pounds for my new novel. Rosie smiles a gentle and beckoning smile. I find myself leaning towards her across the table, almost upsetting my glass of Chardonnay. And then the pain returns.
But she insists on telling me what she describes as ‘a risky story’. She’s well away. The dimples are deeper. Because of the pain in my stomach, I miss the preliminaries, and cannot determine whether Rosie is attempting to tell me a joke or is passing off her far-fetched story as a joke.
It seems that a cousin of hers, an Australian immigrant, lost an arm in a farm accident. In a beet-crushing process, his arm was caught in the machinery and had to be removed at the elbow. An emergency operation was performed.
In the same hospital ward lay a man who was brain-dead and was shortly going to be taken off the ventilator. The authorities came to a quick decision. They removed the arm of the brain-dead man and replaced it on the living cousin. It was an intricate operation. Nerves had to be connected, as well as veins and arteries, and bones reset. Five surgeons worked on the operation, which lasted for eight hours. At this information, my stomach gave an audible ping!
The operation was successful. It took a few weeks for the arm to ease into full working order. Rosie’s cousin was delighted. Unfortunately, his new arm and hand took on a life of their own. They kept feeling up the cousin at embarrassing moments. Next, they took to masturbating him when he was asleep. A medical enquiry was conducted, in which it was disclosed that the offending limb had originally belonged to a homosexual.
Ultimately, the cousin became so enervated that he underwent a further operation, and had the appendage surgically removed.
Joining her laughter, feigning mine, I made an excuse and ran for my room.
While I was seated on the toilet, there came a knock at the door. Rosie called, ‘Coo-ee! Can I come in and use your loo?’
Compared with my trivial affairs, the Langstreets had more important issues to face. Kathi eventually reached the mouth of the Mesovrahi Gorge. In her weariness, she knelt and bathed her face in the seawater. As she rose, her husband called angrily from the boat, ‘Kathi, what on earth kept you so long? Come aboard at once!’
It was not the welcome she had expected.
She climbed wearily up the gangplank, retorting that she had done what Archie wished and commissioned the ikon.
‘It’s not important now,’ he said. ‘Kathi, we’re in serious trouble. A police message has just come over on the radio. Cliff has been kidnapped.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t believe it. I must sit down.’ She did so. Archie stood over her, sternly waiting for a better response. ‘I need a mineral water, please, Archie. What’s Cliff got himself into now?’
Her thunder had been stolen again. She knew that the ikon had been dear to her husband’s heart; otherwise, he would never have allowed himself to be deflected from the pursuit of the Nentelstam Corporation. Now she had returned from her excursion, not to congratulations, but to find a worse thing had occurred.
Archie had calmed himself. He called to one of the crew for a bottle of mineral water. When it arrived, he poured his wife a sparkling glass full to the brim. As she sipped, he stroked her arm.
‘The police report said Cliff was seized on the quayside. Three men jumped out of a van and forced him into the vehicle. This was after dark last night. Vibe, the Swedish girl, witnessed it. She was with Cliff. She screamed and shouted. No one came to help, and then the van was off… We must pray he is unharmed…’
‘Is this – it’s the war again, is it?’
He nodded, looking grim. ‘Now you’re back, we must return to Paleohora.’ He started shouting instructions to the captain.
Kathi put a detaining hand on her husband’s arm. ‘How did they find out – about us – about you?’
He said, impatiently, ‘How do I know? Maybe it was something Cliff said. These bastards – they never forget…’ He turned from her and went to secure the gangplank. The captain cast off and in a moment they were away.
‘Is Vibe all right?’ she asked, into the breeze.
‘Vibe? Yes, I suppose so…’ He stared forward. ‘It’s Cliff I worry about.’
Once they were out of the bay, a freshening wind met them. The sea today was blue under a blue sky. The sun shone on the brisk wavelets. Langstreet and his wife stood in the stern, arms linked, saying nothing, but unable not to feel a little better in the spanking surroundings, with progress being made as they headed westwards along the coast.
‘You’re all right – bodily?’ she asked, rubbing his back.
‘Fine. No bones broken. And you? How was the monk-artist?’
She thought. ‘They’re so poor. That tends to give them long memories. Otherwise – no events. I mean, a life of poverty spells a life without pleasurable diversions such as we enjoy.’
He frowned at that, but she continued.
‘For that reason, events such as occurred during the war stay present in the mind. Also, the old monk has a false leg to help keep them in mind. A curious thing Kostas said – talking of the West – “You have the watches, but we have the time”. Maybe having the time isn’t so good for you, if you’re stuck in it.’
‘Yes, poor fellows…’ He spoke vaguely, his mind on other things. ‘I assume they will not kill Cliff. This is their way of getting at me through him. Maybe they’ll exchange me for him…’
‘No, Archie! Please. Don’t think it. Get in touch with the British Embassy, or whatever they have here. Pay them the ransom. Don’t let them get you!’
He put a hand over his eyes. ‘Oh God, you can never be free of it, can you? The past clings like mud. What have Cliff or I done to deserve this?’
They were silent. The cliffs peeled by to starboard. The boat sliced through the sea.
‘I do pity them,’ he said, his mind turned back to the invasion. ‘It must have been a ghastly time… Airborne invasion…’
Kathi could think of no way to console him, except by wrapping her bare arm around his waist. He gave no sign. In a while, she went below to wash herself and change her clothes; after which she lay, tired and disconsolate, beached upon her bunk.
Sleep overcame her. She roused when the captain called that he had sighted the peninsula of Paleohora ahead.
Chapter Four
I read in today’s TLS, the literary newspaper, a review of a new translation of the writings of Heinrich von Kleist. It mentions one of von Kleist’s most striking essays, ‘On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking’. It is many years since I first read this essay, but I remain impressed by what I take to be its main contention, namely, that, during a conversation, one says things which one would never have thought to say when silent and alone. This is one of the benefits and pleasures of good conversation.
So that when at length I opened my hotel room door to Rosie de Vere, and she said, sniffing, ‘What a nice smell of coffee!’ I responded unpremeditatedly, ‘The hotel does not provide a deodoriser in the toilets. So I quickly switched on the percolator to drown the stink. I’m sorry, Rosie, but I have an attack of diarrhoea.’
I had not intended to admit it. But, in obedience to von Kleist’s rule, I suddenly decided to be honest with a nice woman who, as it turned out, was not ultimately going to be honest with me.
‘My stomach is upset to
o,’ she replied. And then she kissed me.
Externally, there was nothing wrong with her stomach – or, indeed, with the rest of her body. It was all a bit sudden but, in the excitement, I did not bother to ask myself why she was in such a hurry.
So there we were, the coffee percolating, and both of us naked on the bed, mouth to mouth, genitals to genitals: a very happy position. We began on our sides and then, as pressure mounted, I rolled on top of her. She had me in such a grip, suddenly tearing her lips away to gasp for breath, for her orgasmic breath.
The thought of what she was undergoing brought me on too. And in that bliss which reigns over the mindless short sharp strokes, I released something more than semen. An obscure muscle reflexed, and once more my stomach evacuated itself of the stuff that plagued it. It splashed down our conjoined bodies, brown lava on white flesh, thus fulfilling von Kleist’s dictum that ‘it is not we who know things but pre-eminently a certain condition of ours which knows’.
Rosie was remarkably forgiving. We showered together and called the housekeeper to restore the bed to its pristine condition.
Dining together that evening, she confided that she was to meet her sister, Claudia, and Claudia’s little daughter, in two days’ time. Perhaps I would like to join the party, if I was still in Piraeus? I hastily assured her I would remain in the hotel and would love to meet her sister; and thereby I sealed my own downfall.
I spent much of the following day alone in my room – Rosie had mysteriously disappeared – writing notes. A writer lives by notes. I wrote a little sketch of our love affair so far, taking care to make it more romantic by omitting any mention of stomach upsets. Already a plot for a light romance was forming in my mind. I could work Agia Anna into it somehow.
Suitable thoughts would flow in earnest once I embarked on the actual novel. A novel is, in von Kleistian terms, much like a conversation one has with oneself. Ideas are generated in a surprising way as one goes along; it is this pleasing experience that keeps one writing. For whom does one know as amusing as oneself?
On the morning of the day following, I was in my room, selecting the best clothes to wear when accompanying Rosie and Claudia, when the phone rang. It was Rosie.
Rosie had bad news to tell. She had just met Claudia and her child off the ferry from the neighbouring island of Aegina. Claudia was emotionally upset. Her husband had left her without warning for a young bimbo. Rosie had always said that Cyril was too wealthy to be decent. He owned Idaho Instruments. So Rosie was going to put her sister to bed in her room. Unfortunately, Claudia was also unwell and running a temperature. It looked like malaria, she said.
‘What rotten luck!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you could catch malaria in the Med.’
‘It only looks like malaria. Perhaps it’s meningitis.’
‘Where is Cyril now?’
‘What does that matter?’ Rosie asked, sharply. ‘I’m in trouble, dear, and I need your help. Claudia’s little girl is very sweet, but she’s in the way. She can’t play here, while her mummy’s trying to sleep. Could you possibly be a darling and look after her for an hour or two?’
Silence. ‘I’m not much good with children, Rosie, to be honest.’
‘This one is properly behaved. You’ll hardly notice her.’
I asked, ‘How old is this child?’
‘I’d really be most awfully grateful, darling. She’s getting on for three – an angel. You could go over to Aegina on the ferry – she’d enjoy that – and play on the beach. Please, sweetie! Come to a poor lady-love’s aid.’
‘Well, I don’t know…’
‘Oh, thank you so much! You’re a brick!’
Did she say brick?
And by eleven o’clock, I was on the ferry with Violet Herbage Potts. Certainly the child was well-mannered and docile. At first she said ‘I want my daddy,’ rather too frequently; understandable enough, if she had been told that daddy had run off with a young bimbo. But a ride in a horse-and-carriage along Aegina front seemed to please her.
I bought her a spade and pail and a little bathing costume and paddling shoes. That also pleased her. We then took a taxi out of town to a beach called Marathonas. There I was able to sit in the shade of a tree and sip retsina, while the child larked about in an aimless way, in the water, on the sand. At one point, she pulled off her costume and ran about naked; but no one was going to worry about a naked three-year-old, least of all the Greeks.
Some sort of a photography competition was in action a little way off. I asked a waiter, who said it was organised by the municipality. Young men were photographing near-nude young women. I watched that with some interest until dozing off.
Violet roused me with a complaint that she had a stone in her paddling shoes. ‘And it hurts my poor ickle toeses.’ So I knelt down in the sand. Managing to remove the shoe, I shook out a pebble about the size of a well-built flea. The child then rushed back to the infant waves on the water’s edge.
What misery my well-meaning care of that child brought me! I handed her over to Rosie on the terrace that evening. She seemed only moderately grateful for my self-sacrifice, whisking the child off for a bath, saying she had a headache and would retire early to bed.
Next morning, a chance remark made by a waiter to Rosie in my hearing revealed that she’d had not a sister to visit her on the previous day, but a male visitor. I challenged her immediately. Oh, he was just an old friend, nothing more. I did not believe her for a moment.
She took my arm and suggested I bought her a drink.
‘You deceived me, didn’t you? You used me. Don’t deny it.’
‘What else could I do?’ She looked helpless, waved a hand a little to show how weak she was. ‘He needed to see me on business matters. I needed some time with him, that was all.’
‘Business matters? You must take me for a fool. He was here when I delivered Violet back to you, wasn’t he? I believe he stayed overnight with you on these business matters.’
‘No, no, please… It was not what you think.’ Her dimples came into play.
Really, what do you expect? I stood up. I said I would discover at the reception desk if there had been a man with her all night. If they did not know, then I would ask a maid, or a night porter. I was determined to get at the truth.
She shifted from helplessness to anger. ‘Do what you like, you fool! Do you imagine you own me? You had your turn! Find out what you like. Why should I care?’
It was that phrase, ‘you had your turn’ which I found so damaging, then and for a long while after.
So I too changed tack. ‘Why should I care who you chose to sleep with? You can sleep with the night porter for all I care. It’s the deviousness that disgusts me. If you had said that you had a lover visiting you, I’d have kept out of your way. I’d have understood. Why not be honest?’
She made a moue of contempt. ‘Oh yes? If I had told you, you’d have started a row. You know you would. Because you were in love with me, or so you claimed.’ She lit a cigarette with a grand, if rather dated, gesture. ‘We went to bed together. Isn’t that enough? Why always this talk of love? Love puts a claim on you. Why not simply the pleasure of it?’
A theatrical pause, then, ‘Not that I gained much pleasure from you. You made so much noise about it. I was almost deafened. Does the entire hotel have to know when you’re having a bloody orgasm? I hate all that.’
Like many a man in similar circumstances, I saw I was defeated.
‘Rosie, you’re an ungrateful bitch. I took care of your child, you hardly thanked me. You got us both out of the way all day. It was a mean trick. Don’t you feel at all ashamed of deceiving me?’
She raised her eyebrows and blew smoke from her pretty lying lips. ‘You told me you were glad to have Violet’s company. If you weren’t glad, then you were deceiving me! It was a convenient arrangement, that was all. Now let’s stop discussing it, shall we?’
Of course, I was far too angry to stop discussing it.
Yet to g
o on would plunge me deeper into defeat. I hated her at that moment. I got up from my chair and headed for the outer door.
That was when she shrieked, to complete my humiliation, ‘Besides, you shat over me, you bastard!’
I fled without a word. My cheeks burned as never before. Everyone in the foyer must have heard that final taunt. I walked along the front, that crowded front, full of people, baggage, buses, coaches, taxis, and Flying Dolphins. I could have flung myself into the sea – filthy though it was.
I sat myself down outside a small taverna, trying to recover my equilibrium. A waiter appeared at my elbow. I ordered an ouzo and a coffee. While I was sipping my drink, I watched without interest a man coming slowly through the crowd selling newspapers. He finally arrived at my table.
‘English, mister?’ he asked. No doubt I looked so uncomfortable that he knew of which nation I formed part: the poor beleaguered race inhabiting the island anchored on the north-west of Europe.
He offered me the English-speaking newspaper, Athens News. I bought a copy rather than endure the possibility of a hassle. I set it by my elbow. As I tipped the last of my ouzo down my throat and turned to call for another, I caught sight of a headline about the popularity of Aegina beaches. Beneath a photo was a line explaining that there had been a photographic competition on Marathonas beach yesterday. ‘A father enjoys himself with his daughter on the beach’.
The picture was of me, kneeling by the naked Violet, fiddling with her shoe.
My first thought was: thank God I’m not her father. Then I could not help grinning. I didn’t realise how close my face was to her little wee-wee. Lucky me that she had not taken it into her head to pee at that moment, as small kids are prone to do. I hadn’t realised my danger.
Nor did I realise a greater danger.
I returned to England in time for the publication of my latest novel, New Investments, to encounter the worst trouble of my career. But you will remember the case. It is no fun for me to rake up the details again now. So we’ll return to the Langstreets. They also had their troubles. Well, it wouldn’t be a novel if they didn’t.