Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  “Someone with the right psycho-acoustics,” says Levon. “Someone who can play organ licks and piano riffs.”

  “I feel like I’m being invited to run away with the circus,” says Elf. “To be clear, you’re not a folk group?”

  “Correct,” says Levon. “You’d be bringing the folk spirit to the picnic. Dean’s got a bluesy sensibility, Griff’s from jazz, and Jasper’s…” They look at him.

  “A bloody handy guitarist,” says Dean. “I’m saying that despite the fact he’s my landlord, not ’cause of it.”

  “Isn’t a landlord someone you pay money to,” Griff ribs Dean, “and not just borrow money off?”

  “Elf,” says Levon. “I can hear how good you’d all sound. All I’m asking is that you jam with the boys. We have a rehearsal space at a bar in Ham Yard. Let’s just…see.”

  “If yer don’t like the circus,” says Dean, “yer can leg it back and be home by teatime.”

  Elf drags on her cigarette. “Do you have a name?”

  “We’re thinking about ‘The Way Out,’ ” says Levon.

  “But it’s not final,” Dean assures her.

  Good. “So if you’re not a folk band, what kind are you?”

  “Pavonine,” says Jasper. “Magpie-minded. Subterranean.”

  “He ate a dictionary when he was little,” explains Dean.

  Elf tries again. “Okay—who do you want to sound like?”

  The three musicians reply in unison, “Us.”

  DARKROOM

  The UFO Club vibrates as Pink Floyd sets the ship’s controls for the heart of the pulsing sun. Mecca’s dancing, watching him. Her eyes are Berlin blue. Jellyfish of colored light breed and smear the dancers and Jasper’s mind is set adrift. Abracadabra, it’s a boy, why not name him Jasper? Why this name and not another? A friend? The stone? A long-lost lover? Only Jasper’s mother knows, and she’s asleep in a box on the seabed, off the coast of Egypt. We come, we see, we hang around till Death snuffs out our candles…Plenty more where we came from. A million per droplet of the stuff of life. Keeping track of each of us would drive God quite insane. Onstage Syd Barrett drags a comb along his Fender’s slack-keyed strings. A pterodactyl vents her grief. Syd’s no virtuoso, true, but stagecraft and Byronic looks make good the shortfall, amply. Meanwhile in the lighting rig, Hoppy throws a switch and Kurosawa’s samurai circumambulate the walls. UFO’s famous light show. Jasper’s hand is drawing 8 and has been for a while: 8 is infinity, sat up. Words reach him, cracked and scratchy, like radio waves at dusk…“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” Who said that? I know it wasn’t me. Knock Knock? Or an ancestor? An azure jellyfish of light passes over Rick. Rick Wright plays keyboards—a Farfisa—in purple tie and yellow shirt. Pink Floyd signed with EMI last month. They spent this week at Abbey Road. Rick told Jasper earlier: “The engineer from Studio B wandered in and said, ‘The boys are on a break next door—fancy saying hi?’ So in we went. John took the piss, George had a toothache, Ringo told a dirty joke.” They listened to a song of Paul’s called “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid.” Mecca circles closer. Her syllables excite his ear: “Ich bin bereit abzuheben.” Jasper’s German’s rusty, though Mecca’s rubbing off the rust with every precious hour. “You feel you’re lifting?” True enough, the Mandrax fuse is lit. The bouncers in the lobby here vend Londinium’s purest gear, and here it comes and here it comes and dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dot…

  * * *

  —

  …AND JASPER’S BODY’S where it was, dancing in the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road, but Jasper’s mind is sling-shooting, first round irrigated Mars, then on and on and on and on to offspring-eating Saturn; then faster, Father, farther out, gaining on the speed of light where time and space solidify and here’s that scratchy voice again: “The glory of the Lord shone round about: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: buckle up, enjoy the trip.” Bible black and starless, now. A comet’s tail, a silver thread, unraveling and unspooling. Knock Knock. Who’s there? No, don’t reply. Let’s think instead of saner things. Nick Mason’s playing drums. Drums were here before we are. The rhythms of our mothers’ hearts. Mecca leaves on Monday night. America will swallow her, like Jonah in the whale. We’re pulsing now to Roger’s bass, a Rickenbacker Fireglo. Roger Waters has a smile that is both cloak and dagger. Mecca’s face becomes concave. It elongates, encircling him. “My vegetable love should grow, vaster than empires and more slow.” Her face reflects his and his hers, and what reflection ever guessed that it is a reflection? Jasper asks, “Do you think reality is just a mirror for something else?”

  Mecca’s answer lags behind her waxy boyish lips: “Ja, bestimmt. This is why a photograph of something is more true than the thing.” He puts her hand against his heart. Her face returns to normal. “Congratulations, I feel him kick. What day are you due?”

  “Did I pass the interview?”

  “Let’s find a taxi.”

  * * *

  —

  A BLACK CAB is waiting outside the club. Mecca tells the driver, “Blacklands Terrace in Chelsea. Opposite John Sandoes Bookshop.” Dark streets fly by. Amsterdam wraps itself around itself: London unfolds, unfolds, unfolds. She holds his hand, chastely. Only a few high windows are lit. Jasper still hears drumming. A little Pink Floyd goes a long, long way. The taxi stops. “Keep the change,” says Mecca. A windy night, a pavement, a Yale lock, stairs, a kitchen, a low lamp. “I’ll take a shower,” says Mecca. Jasper sits at the table. She reappears, wearing a lot less than before. “That was an invitation.” They shower together. Later, they’re in a bed. Later, all is quiet. Later, a truck rumbles by, a street or two away. Chelsea High Street? Could be. Mecca’s asleep. She has a big protruding birthmark on her back. Jasper thinks of Ayers Rock. The past and future seep into one another. He’s on a lookout platform, with a view of a bay over roofs, gables, and warehouses. Cannon-fire. This one must be a film. Staccato thunder bludgeons his senses. The sky swings sideways. All the dogs are barking and the crows are crazed. A stout man, dressed for the Napoleonic era, leans on the railing, looking out to sea through a telescope. Jasper asks him if this is a dream or if the pill he took at the UFO wasn’t just amphetamines.

  The telescope man clicks his fingers. Scrit-scrit. Jasper’s walking along a street. He comes to his aunt’s boarding house in Lyme Regis. His wheelchair-bound uncle tells him, “You left us for a better life, remember? Piss off!”

  Click. Scrit-scrit. Jasper passes Swaffham House at Bishop’s Ely school. The principal stands in the doorway like a bouncer. “Move on, move on, nothing for you here.”

  Click. Scrit-scrit. The Duke of Argyll on Great Windmill Street. Jasper peers in through the engraved glass. Elf, Dean, Griff, himself, and Mecca are sitting at a table. “Half of my friends say ‘The Way Out’ sounds like a suicide textbook,” explains Elf. “The other half say it’s like a hippie going, ‘Hey, way out, man!’ If we were dreaming up a name now, from scratch, what would we choose?” They all look at Jasper’s eye, including the other Jasper inside.

  Click. Scrit-scrit. Dream-lit snow, or swirling blossom, or filigree moths obscure Jasper’s vision. He’s lost in a Soho even more labyrinthine than the real one. He looks for a sign. It emerges slowly, as obscurity sharpens into clarity. A street sign, in London street-sign font, reading UTOPIA AVENUE. Click. Scrit-scrit…

  * * *

  —

  LETTERS SPELL P-E-N-T-A-X, inches from his face. Click. The camera is wound on—scrit-scrit. Mecca’s wearing a cream Aran jumper that falls to her knees. She lines up another shot. Click. Scrit-scrit. Above her is a skylight of soiled sky. Crows tumble like socks in a drier. What else? A blanket. Crusty tissues. An electric fire. A rug. Jasper’s clothes. Black-and-white photograp
hs, dozens of them, pinned to the wall. Clouds in puddles, certain slants of light, commuters, tramps, dogs, graffiti, snow blowing in through broken windows, lovers in doorways, semi-legible gravestones, and whatever figments of London caught Mecca’s eye and made her think, I want to save you. Click. Scrit-scrit.

  She lowers her Pentax and sits cross-legged. “Morning.”

  “I see you start work early.”

  “Your eyes were…” she fails to find the right word “…moving like crazy under your eyelids. Were you dreaming?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Maybe I’ll arrange you as a series: De Zoet, Asleep; De Zoet, Waking. Or perhaps I call it Paradise Lost.” She pulls on navy stockings. “Breakfast is downstairs.” She goes.

  Jasper wonders if he and Mecca are still lovers, or if last night was their first and last time. He takes his time to dress, and spends a few minutes studying Mecca’s photography.

  * * *

  —

  SHE’S EATING A bowl of Weetabix in a staff kitchen and leafing through a fashion magazine. An electric kettle groans and wheezes. Jasper peers through the blinds onto a Chelsea backstreet. Gusts of wind herd dead leaves, shake a willow tree, and wrench a priest’s umbrella inside out. Across the kitchen is a waist-high balcony. Jasper walks over and looks down at a large studio with an array of drapes, sets, lights, and tripods. A shot has been set up with hay bales and a couple of acoustic guitars as props. Jasper repeats what Dean said on entering the Chetwynd Mews flat: “Pretty cool digs.”

  Mecca asks, “What is ‘digs’?”

  “Accommodation. A flat, or a bedsit.”

  “Why ‘digs’? Like, with a spade? Why?”

  “I’ve no idea. I didn’t design English.”

  Mecca makes a face that Jasper can’t read. “Monday to Saturday, my boss Mike is here, with models, staff, and so on. I do donkey work—I help with shoots, much stuff. My ‘digs’ is free and Mike gives me film and the darkroom.”

  “Your photographs are special.”

  “Thank you. I’m still learning.”

  “There’s a series of shots of a picket line.”

  “Dockworkers on strike in the East End.”

  “How did you persuade them to pose for you?”

  “I just explain, ‘Hi, I am a photographer from Germany, please can I shoot you?’ A few say, ‘Piss off.’ One say, ‘Take a picture of my willy, little Miss Hitler.’ Most say, ‘Okay.’ To have your photo taken is to be told, ‘You exist.’ ”

  “It’s as if they’re there,” Jasper speaks aloud, “staring at the viewer, working out if you’re an enemy or not. Yet, really, they’re just chemical reactions on paper. Photography’s a strange illusion.”

  “On Thursday, at Heinz’s digs, you played a Spanish song.”

  The kettle’s rumbling now. “ ‘Asturias’ by Isaac Albéniz.”

  “That. It gave me Gänsehaut…goosebumps, you say?”

  “We do.” The boiled kettle clicks off.

  “Music is vibrations in the air, only. Why do these vibrations create physical responses? It’s a mystery to me.”

  “How music works—the theory, the practice—is learnable.” Jasper prizes the lid off the coffee. “Why it works, God only knows. Maybe not even God.”

  “So, photography is same. Art is paradox. It is no sense but it is sense. That coffee tastes of mouse shit. Tea is better.”

  Jasper makes a pot of tea and brings it to the table.

  “Where are you going after here?” asks Mecca.

  “I’ve got band rehearsal at two. Back in Soho.”

  “Are you good, your band?”

  “I think we’re getting there.” Jasper blows on his tea. “We only started playing together last month, so we’re still finding our sound. Levon wants us to perfect a ten-song set before we start gigging. He says he wants us springing fully formed from the brow of Zeus.”

  Mecca chews a spoonful of Weetabix.

  “It’s your last day in England, so maybe you have lots of goodbyes to make. But if you’re free, tag along.”

  Mecca’s half-smile must mean something. “Another date?”

  Jasper worries he’s got it wrong: “If it’s not too forward.”

  “ ‘Forward’?” Possibly Mecca is amused. “We just had sex. It’s a little late to be forward now.”

  “Sorry. I never know the rules. Especially with women.”

  “Is it only two days and three nights ago that we met?”

  “Why?”

  Mecca blows on her tea. “It feels much longer.”

  * * *

  —

  TWO DAYS AND three nights ago, Heinz Formaggio opened the door of a flat in an opulent crescent off Regent’s Park. He wore a lounge suit, a tie embroidered with algebraic equations, and stern glasses. “De Zoet!” He gave his old school friend a hug that Jasper endured. “I knew it was you. Most callers do a long buzz—bzzzzzzzzz—but you did a buzz-biddley-buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz. My God, look at your hair! It’s longer than my sister’s.”

  “Your hairline’s rising,” said Jasper. “You’re chubbier.”

  “Still a master of tact. You’re right about my waistline, alas. Oxbridge fellows, I’m discovering, eat like kings.” Party chatter and John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” spilled into the corridor. Formaggio put his door on the latch and slipped out. “Before we go in, how are you?”

  “I had a cold in November, a little psoriasis on my elbow.”

  “I’m asking about Knock Knock.”

  Jasper hesitated. He hadn’t dared voice his suspicion to anyone in the band. “I think he’s coming back.”

  Formaggio stared. “Why do you think so?”

  “I hear him. Or I think I do.”

  “The knocking? Like before?”

  “It’s still faint, so I can’t be sure. But…I think so.”

  “Have you been in touch with Dr. Galavazi?”

  Jasper acted a headshake. “He’s retired now.”

  Laughter rippled out of Formaggio’s flat. “Do you have any of that medicine ready, in case you need it?”

  “No.” Jasper’s gaze wandered down the curving corridor of the crescent building where Formaggio’s uncle had his London pied-à-terre. There was an unpleasant number of big mirrors. “I’d need a referral to a psychiatrist. I’m worried about where a consultation may lead. If I get locked up here, I’ve got nobody to get me out.”

  “Dr. Galavazi could pull strings for you. Surely?”

  Jasper was unconvinced. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Do.” His friend’s frown unwrinkled. “Now, come in. Everyone’s eager to meet a real live professional guitarist.”

  “I’m more semi-professional at present.”

  “Don’t say that. I’ve been boasting about you. There’s an itinerant German photographer here. She’s a She, rather a striking She, at that. I’m reliably told she’s a Wunderkind. I had the devil of a time working out who she reminds me of before it hit me—you, de Zoet. She’s a female you. And, she happens to be unattached…”

  Jasper wondered why Formaggio was telling him this.

  * * *

  —

  HEINZ FORMAGGIO’S DINNER party was high-brow, academic, and free of drugs: the opposite of the musicians’ gatherings that Jasper had been to since arriving in London last November. By midnight the caterers had gone and only five overnight guests remained. Jasper had intended to walk back to Chetwynd Mews, but the icy weather, the brandy, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, gravity, and a sheepskin rug had changed his mind. He semi-snoozed as wine-oiled voices discussed the future. “I give late capitalism twenty more years,” predicted the seismologist. “By the end of the century we’ll have a Communist world government.”

  The philosopher issued a corvid rattle of Scouse
laughter. “Bollocks! The Soviet Empire’s morally bankrupt since we learned about the gulags. Socialism’s a twitching corpse.”

  “Damn right,” agreed the Kenyan. “Pinko-gray humanity will never share power with the rest of us. You all think, What if they do to us what we’ve done to them?”

  “The Bomb lengthens the odds on any future,” said the climatologist. “The future’s an irradiated wasteland. Once a weapon’s been invented, it gets used.”

  “The H-bomb may be different,” answered Mecca the photographer. Jasper liked her brushes-on-cymbals voice. “If you use it, and if your enemy has it, your children die also.”

  “A right bundle of laughs, you lot,” said the economist. “How about Martian colonies? TV-telephones? Jetpacks, silver clothes, robots who say ‘Affirmative’ instead of ‘Yes’?”

  The Kenyan snorted. “I’m betting on intelligent robots who see that Homo sapiens is breeding like rabbits and killing the planet, who do the sensible thing and use our weapons to wipe us out.”

  “What does the musician say?” asked the climatologist. “Whither the future?”

  “It’s unknowable.” Jasper forced himself upright. “Fifty years ago, how many foresaw Hiroshima, Dresden, the Blitz, Stalingrad, Auschwitz? A big wall dividing Berlin in two? Television? Decolonization? China and America fighting a proxy war in Vietnam? Elvis Presley? The Stones? Stockhausen? Jodrell Bank? Plastics? Cures for polio, measles, syphilis? The Space Race? The present is a curtain. Most of us can’t see behind it. Those who do see—via luck or prescience—change what is there by seeing. That’s why it’s unknowable. Fundamentally. Intrinsically. I like adverbs.”

  The song “Flamenco Sketches” finished. The LP clicked off. Silence was lush and lapping.

  “A bit of a swizz, Jasper,” said the philosopher. “We asked for a prediction and all you said was ‘No idea’ in an impressive way.”