by Luke Brown
Dani went on: ‘But in the end I became too curious. I wanted to meet this character James Cockburn my agent makes sound like Jim Morrison. My agent exaggerates. It is more easy to have a mystery through a translator, to have a distance. That is also why I wanted to meet the English first, because you always need a translator with the English. And perhaps I worried that distinguished English publishers would speak English so well I would be confused.’
‘¿A que hora llegan los distinguido Ingléses publishers?’
She looked at an imaginary watch. ‘They’re supposed to be here now.’
‘I’m surprised you’ve managed to get away from one of them.’
‘Yes, I had to pretend I go to the toilet.’
I finished my second cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘You’re interesting,’ I said.
‘You’re interesting too,’ she said. ‘“Editor muerto”.’
‘That’s only half of it. What’s Castellano for “murderer”?’
‘El asesino o la asesina.’
‘Soy el editor asesino.’
‘You guys have read too much Bolaño. You need to lighten up.’
I laughed or I would have liked to. She picked a bad night to offer me this advice. The wind was beginning to pick up, there was a chill in the air, the coldest I’d felt since being in Buenos Aires. I shivered.
‘Don’t you want to tell me who you murdered?’ she asked.
‘If I have to. Do you know Craig Bennett?’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘I was with him when he died, it was partly my fault. I murdered my career that night, whatever happened. I murdered myself. Now I’m stuck here in purgatory.’
‘I don’t believe you’re a murderer. And please, as if Bolaño wasn’t enough, now you’re going to do Dante?’
I felt suddenly as if I was choking on the dust of all the unread books I had left in boxes in my aunt’s basement. ‘Oh, God, books, let’s not talk about books, I’m so sick of books.’
‘What should we talk about?’
‘We could always try … not talking at all.’
My reflex attempt at flirtation surprised me, as much as it was in keeping with my normal behaviour, my mid-binge leaps for transcendence. I slowed my voice and held eye-contact with her. She was about my age but her green eyes examined me from years away, and her laugh, when it arrived soon afterwards, was kind but not entirely unhurtful.
It was then that the taxi pulled up and Alejandro leapt out with a shout and came towards us. ‘My young friend, hello!’
He looked suave in a black suit and white shirt. He kissed my cheek and turned to Dani. He had never greeted me with such affection before. ‘Buenos noches,’ he said, offering her his hand and looking to me for an introduction.
‘This is my new friend Daniel Requena, the novelist I mentioned who is about to set fire to the Argentine literary world. Dani, this is my friend Alejandro, friend of writers, muse, entertainer, bon vivant. We had asked him to join us to interpret for you before Lizzie accepted – and before you revealed to me just now that you can speak English very well.’
‘You are not the gorgeous young man?’ Alejandro asked Dani.
‘I suspect I am. I understand why you thought I was a man,’ she said, turning to me. ‘But how did you know I was gorgeous?’
‘A lucky guess,’ I said, and then she began to talk too quickly to Alejandro for me to understand.
Back inside the restaurant it was time to order. I had gone without cocaine for two hours now but any preference for food was still purely abstract. What type of food would a food-eating human prefer? James seemed back to his perkiest but was mainly engaged with the wine list. It appeared Dionysius had already drunk the greatest share of two bottles. There was talk around me of suckling pig, of octopus, rabbit in white wine, unicorn fillet served with figs and soaked in cognac, the thigh of a centaur, slow-roasted with lemon and thyme, salt and pepper gorgon hair, dragon tail and fennel risotto. In the end, with help from Alejandro – ‘What is the best small meal for a man recovering from a daytime cocaine binge?’ ‘You look pale, my friend, you need some red meat in you.’ – I ordered the only steak on the menu, bloody, expensive.
Alejandro was making a useful impact on the table, helping to diffuse the resentment brewing between Cockburn and Arturo, between Arturo and Lizzie. He poured water on Arturo’s jealously by showing him a fascinated attention while simultaneously shunning Cockburn. Cockburn was trying to court Alejandro, perhaps thinking of the important role he could play to Bennett’s biographer. His tactic to win Alejandro over was to talk without interruption about his, James Cockburn’s, lead role in Craig Bennett’s history, in long, excitable sentences which confirmed my suspicion that he would not be eating his dinner.
‘Liam,’ Alejandro asked me, pretending not to hear another of Cockburn’s questions, ‘why did you not bring Arturo to the bar when you came to annoy me? Then I would have been much happier to be annoyed by you.’
Arturo was not the sort to refuse flattery from man or woman. He sat back, amused, enjoying James’ rejection and talking to Alejandro in quick bursts of Spanish which he would, with his instinctual good manners, alternate occasionally with slower English to keep me in the conversation.
I was grateful for that. As I receded from the conversation, I was happy just to watch his face. I could see no sign that he was the man who had kissed me in the alleyway, and I found this an enormous relief. There was at least one other man at this table who played the roles he chose to, and he had done me the kindness of letting me, and perhaps me alone, see this. I smiled at him and watched him almost imperceptibly purse his lips at me before he resumed speaking to Dani, having spotted Lizzie laughing at one of Cockburn’s jokes.
At the other side of the table Dani was contributing more and more in English but still seemed to enjoy having Lizzie translate to James for her. From the way they smirked at each other I suspected they were conducting a private conversation about James.
As the evening wore on, all of the flirting in which I was hardly involved made me feel alone. If I would only take my medicine I could happily impose myself on others and not notice I was unwelcome. But I was determined to eat some of my dinner and to look the waiter in the face when he came to collect my plate, determined for once to behave with some manners. Cockburn too had begun to flag and fall out of the conversation, and as he took time to breathe the conversation switched to Spanish between the rest of the table. Cockburn’s eyes met mine and travelled to the other two men at the table. Alejandro had his hand on Arturo’s arm and was leaning in to tell him a story close to his ear that was making Arturo laugh steadily, economically, as though to preserve his energy for what was to come. It wasn’t just Arturo who was attractive: some girls would certainly have preferred Alejandro, who, though fifteen years older, with his well trimmed and silver flecked beard, presented a more classically masculine picture of beauty.
James and I, pasty-faced, red-eyed, with droopy hair and dishevelled faces, were not obviously well-matched opponents with the Argentines. But, as usual, if they had the skill, beauty, underhand tricks, we Brits would hope to win the day through sheer doggedness. James raised a non-existent cigarette to his lips and we left the table for a team-talk outside the restaurant.
‘Not very friendly this Alejandro, is he?’ said James.
‘I don’t think he likes you,’ I said.
James spread his arms with the mystified innocence of an Argentine defender receiving a yellow card.
‘You’re going on about Bennett too much. I told you he’s touchy about him. Every question you think you’re asking him is prefaced by such a long anecdote about one of the classic adventures of Cockburn and Bennett that it’s a direct challenge for Alejandro to prove his stories are as good as yours. He’s not interested in competing.’
‘Oh, well, thank you for reassuring me.’
‘I worry about you in that office without having me around to offer advice.
’
‘I really wouldn’t worry on that count, Liam: there’s no shortage of people left who are happy to point out my shortcomings.’
‘How many more lines have you had?’
‘None! Well, one. And to be frank, I need another.’
‘No one likes Frank. At least wait until after dinner.’
‘Dinner. How unedifying.’
We went back in and James tried once again. ‘So, Alejandro, Liam tells me you and Craig used to get up to all sorts of trouble.’
‘Well, we were friends and we were young and brave and stupid,’ he said and turned back to Arturo.
‘Well, go on, please tell us a story,’ James persisted.
‘I am afraid,’ said Alejandro, ‘that it was always Craig who told the best stories, certainly in public. I am shy, you see.’ He turned again to Arturo and said. ‘I need more intimacy to tell mine.’
‘Oh, please,’ said James, and Lizzie and Dani joined in to ask Alejandro to tell us more.
‘Yes, tell us a story,’ said Arturo.
Alejandro swatted an invisible fly. ‘Must I? It really was the usual shit. Heroin, cocaine, fraud, extortion. Young boys’ games.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘I do not know how to tell it without cliché. Liam? Perhaps you have found a way?’
Everyone looked at me.
‘Has he not told you, Cockblock, that he is researching the life of Craig Bennett in Buenos Aires and writing a novel about him? I have watched him writing it next to me at the bar. You write quickly, Liam. I have read it over your shoulder. There are some sentences I quite enjoyed.’
Cockburn had sobered up suddenly and was looking at me. Dani had become more alert too.
‘How do you do it, Liam?’ Alejandro continued. ‘How should I tell our story? Any tips?’
I mumbled something glib about avoiding sex scenes and lyrical descriptions of taking ecstasy.
‘That doesn’t leave us with much,’ said Alejandro.
Dani spoke and Lizzie translated: ‘You never tell a story about someone else, only yourself.’
‘What about biographies?’ asked Cockburn. ‘Don’t you believe in them?’
‘I believe in their existence,’ said Dani through Lizzie. ‘I have seen them in the biography sections.’ She looked up at the unicorns on the wall. ‘They are not mythical creatures.’
‘Homosexuals,’ said Alejandro.
‘Pardon?’ James asked.
‘It’s something we started at school. No women around then. It’s what wrecked the friendship in the end. I didn’t have as much trouble believing in it as a category of existence as he did.’
‘He never did settle down for long,’ mused James. ‘But it was always Amy he talked about.’
‘Amy’s a friend of mine,’ I said. ‘He was talking about Amy on the night he died.’
‘You never write about someone else, only yourself,’ said Dani, this time in English.
‘Oh, I know Amy,’ said Alejandro. ‘I am sure you will want to tell it like he did,’ he said, looking at me sadly.
The starters arrived – not for James or me – and I appreciated their quality as abstractly as I would that of a well-made violin bow.
Alejandro and Arturo went out and came back giggly and red-eyed from a cigarette break. Dani was increasingly having to interrupt James in English as she realised interrupting was the only tactic available to take part in a dialogue with him. Lizzie, however, was still contributing clarifications and explanations in English and Spanish, and I began to feel jealous. As James got into his flow, selling the imprint, his ambitions for the book, for her, for the future of modern letters, Lizzie, with her pithy summaries and asides, came across as his new, improved, more-talented lieutenant. While I knew this was only for tonight, I knew too that there was someone in London just like her, my real usurper.
Even surrounded by friends, I experienced the usual Buenos Aires loneliness, the unbelonging, the fear of waiters. As I watched Alejandro and Arturo giggle like children under the skulls of legendary beasts, I felt as if it was me who had just smoked a spliff.
I could have done some coke, one can always do some coke, and that’s exactly why I didn’t.
Instead, I slipped out of my seat, out of the restaurant and round the corner onto the busy main road. Here I found a quiet neighbourhood bar, bought a beer, found the darkest corner and called my father.
I woke him up. I heard murmurs from a woman in the background before he promised to ring me back in five minutes. He had mentioned a new girlfriend before. In the minutes while I waited for him to ring me back, the bar’s darkness began to oppress me and I walked outside to the street again. I leant back against a wall and looked out at the traffic flying past, so far from the woman I loved, and I tried to imagine the insensible vastness of so many other roads, so many versions of myself in every country staring at cars rushing past and seeking something other than fragments of their reflection in electric windows. I wanted home and I did not know where it was. Then Dad rang back.
‘Liam, how are you?’ he asked. ‘It’s nice to hear from you, even if it is so late.’ He sighed the type of bone-weary sigh he had sighed on the phone shortly before and after he had disappeared for three years.
It was easier to forgive a sigh like that now. I hoped it wasn’t how I had sounded to Sarah in the weeks before I left England.
‘Are you all right, Dad?’ I asked.
As usual, he began to tell me about his work. After he had crashed out of teaching, he had become a freelance copy-editor, and now we were in the same industry he was always keen to talk shop. As I listened about his deadlines for Sandra and Jonathan and the problems with Indian typesetters I found myself patting my pockets for a cigarette despite already having a lit one in my hand. Dad had become old without the support system, without the almost-paid-off mortgage, the wife, the salary. What could be passed off as light comedy for a younger man was dark and threatening to him. I see now he was looking to me for reassurance, for tips I could never give. But all his talk of money reminded me of my own dwindling resources and I couldn’t help interrupting him.
‘Can we talk about something else, Dad?’
‘I’m sorry, Liam,’ he said, sounding hurt. ‘What?’
‘It’s not that I’m not interested,’ I lied. ‘It’s just I rang because I really needed someone to talk to and I haven’t done any talking yet.’
‘Well, talk.’
‘Um …’
‘Where are you right now, for instance?’
‘I’m walking up and down a street outside a bar. It’s about half-ten. Round the corner is a fancy restaurant I ran away from twenty minutes ago. I was having dinner with my old colleague James Co –’
‘I saw him on the telly last night discussing the future of the book.’
‘Really?’ I was disappointed but not surprised. He loved being on TV. ‘How boring of him. Anyway, I was having dinner with him and the new Bolaño –’
‘The new Bolaño! What’s he like?’
‘She. You sexist. She’s all right.’
Dad chuckled. He had a good chuckle, stronger, more plausible than his sigh. He should have sounded like this a lot more. It was easy to make him laugh. He liked my stories, about my friends, about women I met, and especially about publishing. He envied me for getting to meet novelists while he got to email academics. He would have liked me to spend more time telling him stories about them so he could relay them to his friends from the pub. We had a good time together in the pub. He wanted to be proud of me. We put on a show for each other. His friends would keep congratulating us on how close we were to each other.
‘You sound like you’re having fun out there.’
‘I’m losing my mind, Dad, that’s what I’m trying to say. I’m not joking. I’m losing it this very minute. I’ve got no one to talk to. Everyone’s young and annoying or incomprehensibly Argentine. I miss Sarah. God, I miss Sarah.’
‘I’m sor
ry, Liam.’
‘Oh, I’m all right really.’
‘I bet you tell yourself that a lot.’
‘All the time. Always with a manly swig of a drink or pull on a cigarette.’
‘Ah, cigarettes. I’ve had to give up smoking.’
He’d been giving up for years, it was almost his hobby.
‘I just can’t seem to get my blood pressure down,’ he continued. ‘The doctor says I need to do more exercise, but when I do …’ Dad’s voice was tired out. He hadn’t meant to cause all the pain he had. He just hadn’t thought hard enough. My heart went out to him. I didn’t mean it to, but it did. I wanted to tell him I understood. Subtract at least that from your sadness. You are forgiven.
‘I don’t do much exercise here, either,’ I said.
‘I’ve been getting DVDs, magazines, Men’s Health, I’ve even started running. I can’t do it. It’s shown me how knackered I am. Really, Liam, I am.’
‘Perhaps you just need to try to accept you’re slowing down. Tell me, is there any point after thirty when you stop comparing how knackered you are with how much less knackered you used to be?’
‘Is there? Let me think. Certainly not after thirty-five. No. No, there isn’t. It gets worse and worse.’
‘I thought it might.’
He laughed again. ‘Don’t tell me you’re worried about how old you are.’
‘Sometimes. But no, not really. I’m more worried about how young I am and what I’m going to do for the rest of my life now I’ve fucked up everything that mattered to me.’
I had tried to say that lightly. The line went quiet for a few seconds and then Dad spoke. ‘I don’t think that hurts less when you get older.’