Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  The knocking stops, too. But I heard it. He’s awake.

  Jasper was told this day would come. The agony of uncertainty is over, at least. I was only ever on remission. He glances at Griff, to his right, decked out in an improvised wedding suit. His hands are drumming, softly, on his thighs. To his left, Dean’s trying to make one index finger turn clockwise and the other anticlockwise. I like playing with these guys and I don’t want it to end.

  Perhaps Queludrin could slow the onset.

  Perhaps.

  * * *

  —

  JASPER WAS FIFTEEN. Cherry trees around the cricket field blossomed wedding-dress white. Jasper lacked the body mass for rugby and the stamina for rowing, but he had the coordination, speed, and patience for the First XI cricket team. Jasper was fielding in the outfield as Bishop’s Ely took on Peterborough Grammar. The grass was fresh-cut and the sun was raw. Ely Cathedral sat above the River Ouse like Noah’s Ark. The captain, a boy named Whitehead, ran up to the wicket and delivered a yorker. The batsman smacked the ball in Jasper’s direction. Shouts rang out. Jasper was already running to intercept the ball and scooped it up in mid-stride only a few feet shy of the boundary rope, preventing a four. His throw to Whitehead was accurate and earned a few seconds’ worth of applause from the home supporters. Behind, or inside, or over the clapping, for the very first time Jasper heard the knock-knock, knock-knock, knock-knock that would change, redefine, and nearly end his life. It was like knuckles on a far-off door, down a corridor…Or a little hammer on the far side of a wall. Jasper looked around for its source. The spectators were all on the far side of the pitch. The nearest boy was a classmate, Bundy, about forty paces away. Jasper called out: “Bundy?”

  Bundy’s voice was nasal with hay fever. “What?”

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That knocking sound.”

  They listened to a Cambridgeshire morning’s unscored music: a tractor in a nearby field; cars; crows. The cathedral bells began their count to twelve. Underneath, a Knock-knock…Knock-knock…Knock-knock…

  “What knocking sound?” asked Bundy.

  “That knock-knock…knock-knock…”

  Bundy listened again. “If you lose your marbles and the men in white coats come to take you away, can I have your cricket bat?”

  A fighter jet unzipped the horizon. Over the boundary rope, a chalk-blue butterfly grazed on the Queen Anne’s lace. Jasper felt what you feel after someone leaves the room.

  Whitehead was beginning his long run-up. The knocking had stopped. Or gone. Or maybe Jasper’s hearing was especially acute and he had heard someone chopping wood. Or maybe he had only imagined it. Whitehead bowled. The wicket leaped from the ground. “Hoooowwww-zzzzzzaaaaaaaaattt!”

  * * *

  —

  “GIFTS CAN BE treasured for a lifetime or forgotten the next moment.” The vicar of St. Matthias Church sounds, to Jasper, a lot like Prime Minister Harold Wilson. His voice is flat and buzzing, like a bee trapped in a tin. “Gifts can be sincere, or manipulative. Gifts may be material. Gifts may be invisible—a favor, a kind word, the end of a sulk. A sparrow on your bird table. A song on the radio. A second chance. Impartial advice. Acceptance. The gift of gratitude, which allows us to recognize gifts as gifts. Life is a continuum of giving and receiving. Air, sunlight, sleep, food, water, love. For Christians, the Bible is the gift of God’s word, and buried within that vast gift, we find these treasured lines about gifts, given by Paul to a struggling church in Corinth: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then we’ll see God face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ ”

  Jasper, his ear pressed against a stone pillar, hears a heart.

  The vicar continues: “ ‘The greatest of these is love.’ When faith turns its back on you, the Apostle advises, just try to love. When hope is snuffed out, just try to love. I say to Lawrence and Imogen that on the days when marriage does not resemble a rose garden—and they, too, happen—just try to love. Just try. True love is the act of trying to love. Effortless love is as dubious as effortless gardening…”

  Jasper looks at the flowers around the altar. So this is a wedding. He’s never been to one before. He thinks of his mother, and wonders if she ever dreamed of having a wedding like this. Or if, when she discovered she was pregnant, that dream withered away. If you believe stories, romantic comedies, and magazines, a wedding day is the happiest day of a woman’s life. A Mount Everest of joy. Everyone at St. Matthias Church looks quite serious. In a church, in West London, on a ball of rock, hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour…

  * * *

  —

  “AHA, THE MYSTERIOUS missing diner.” The man in the banquet hall at Epsom Country Club is too big for his chair. “Don Glossop, Dunlop Tires, an old pal of Lawrence’s father.” His handshake is a hand-clamp.

  “Hello, Mr. Glossop. I remember you.”

  “Oh?” Don Glossop juts out his lower jaw. “From where?”

  “I saw you in the church.”

  “Glad we got that cleared up.” Don Glossop releases Jasper’s hand. “This is Brenda, my better half. I’m told. By her.”

  Brenda Glossop has sculpted hair, prominent jewelry, and a sinister way of saying, “Enchanted.”

  “Tell me something,” says Don Glossop, then sneezes like a donkey braying. “Why do so many young men nowadays choose to ponce around looking like girls? It’s got so bad, I’m no longer sure which is which.”

  “Maybe you should look more closely,” suggests Jasper.

  Don Glossop frowns as if Jasper’s answer didn’t match his sentence. “But the hair! Why in God’s name don’t you get a haircut?”

  Griff and Dean were with Jasper on the coach from St. Matthias Church. Jasper wishes he hadn’t lost them.

  Don Glossop peers into Jasper’s face: “Cat got your tongue?”

  Jasper rewinds. Why in God’s name don’t you get a haircut? “I like my hair long. It’s that simple, really.”

  Don Glossop squints. “You look like a ruddy nancy-boy!”

  “Only to you, Mr. Glossop, and—”

  “Every—single—person in this banquet room’ll take one look at you just now and think, Nancy-boy! I guarantee it.”

  Jasper avoids the onlooking faces. He sips water.

  “I think you’ll find that’s my water,” declares a voice.

  Concentrate: “If every homosexual on Earth—if that’s what you mean by ‘nancy-boy’—had long hair, your statement might be logical. But long hair’s only been fashionable for a few years. Surely, the homosexuals you’ve met were short-haired.” Don Glossop looks blank so Jasper tries to help with examples. “In jail, or the Royal Navy, or public school, perhaps. One master at Ely was famous for interfering with boys, and he wore a wig like yours. Your logic is flawed. I suggest. Respectfully.”

  “What?” Don Glossop has turned pale maroon. “What?”

  Perhaps he’s hard of hearing. “I said, ‘One master at Ely was famous for interfering with boys, and he wore a wig—’ ”

  “My husband means,” Brenda Glossop says, “he has spent no time whatsoever consorting with ‘types’ like that.”

  “Then how could he be an expert on ‘nancy-boys’?”

  “It’s common knowledge!” Don Glossop leans forward, dangling his tie in his food. “Nancy-boys have long hair!”

  “Those awful Rolling Stones have long hair,” says a woman with a frizzy halo of mauve hair. “And they’re a disgrace.”

  “National Service would’ve sorted them out, but that’s gone too now, of course.” The
new speaker wears a regimental tie and a medal. “Another nail in the coffin.”

  “My point exactly, Brigadier,” says Don Glossop. “We didn’t smack the Nazis for six just for a mob of guitar-twanging oiks to turn Great Britain into a land of yeah-yeahs and ooo-babys.”

  “That Keith Jagger’s father worked in a factory,” says Brenda Glossop. “Now he swans about in a Tudor mansion.”

  “And thanks to The Evening News,” says Frizzy Halo, “we now know exactly what goes on inside, don’t we?”

  “I hope Judge Block makes a proper example of ’em,” says the brigadier. “No doubt you think they’re the bee’s knees.”

  Jasper remembers he’s here. “I’ve never met them. Though I’d chance my arm and say their best music will outlive all of us.”

  “Their primitive mating calls aren’t ‘music,’ ” scoffs Don Glossop. “ ‘Strangers in the Night’ by Frank Sinatra is music. ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is music. This ‘rock ’n’ roll’ is a poisonous racket.”

  “Yet to Sir Edward Elgar,” says Jasper, “ ‘Strangers in the Night’ might have been a poisonous racket. Generations pass. Aesthetics evolve. Why is this fact a threat?”

  “Jasper.” It’s Elf’s sister Bea, the one who’s got into RADA. “Um, you’re sitting at the wrong table.”

  “You can ruddy well say that again,” says the brigadier.

  “Oh.” Jasper stands up and gives the guests at the wrong table a slight bow. Be polite. “Well, it was lovely to meet you all…”

  * * *

  —

  AT THE CORRECT table, Jasper survives the prawn cocktail and the coq au vin, but by dessert he is drowning in dialogues. Levon is discussing changes to the tax system with an accountant from Dublin. Dean is discussing Eddie Cochran with Lawrence’s best man. Griff is whispering into a giggling bridesmaid’s hot-pink ear. Look at them all. Question; answer; witticism; fact; morsel of gossip; response. How effortlessly they do it. Jasper speaks fluent English and Dutch, good French, passable German and Latin, but the languages of face and tone are as impenetrable as Sanskrit. Jasper knows the tell-tale signs that he’s failing to engage: the diagonal head-swivel; a gluey nod; narrowed eyes. He can disguise it as eccentricity, but after an hour, he crumples. Jasper doesn’t know if his facial and tonal dyslexia is a cause or effect of his emotional dyslexia. He knows what grief, rage, jealousy, hatred, joy, and the normal spectrum of feelings are—but he experiences them only as mild changes of temperature. If Normals learn this about him, they mistrust him, so Jasper is condemned to act like a Normal and to fail. When he fails, Normals think he’s shifty, or mocking them. Only four humans and one disembodied entity have ever accepted Jasper as he truly is. Of these, Trix is in Amsterdam, Dr. Galavazi is retired, and Grootvader Wim is dead. Formaggio is in nearby Oxford, but the Mongolian will never pass his way again.

  Mecca, who might have been a fifth, is lost to America.

  A person is a thing who leaves. Jasper estimates the time required by dessert, coffee, and further speeches. His watch says 10:10. That makes no sense. He holds it to his ear. Time stopped. Unable to concoct a plausible lie, Jasper slips away. He finds himself in a hallway lined with inoffensive English landscapes and carpeted with swarms of dots. A party of golfers spills through the front doors. They are talking at baffling speeds and volumes. A flight of stairs offers him a way out…

  * * *

  —

  THE ROOFTOP TERRACE has a bench, flowers in pots, views over a golf course and the roofs and trees of Epsom. The afternoon is drowsy and pollinated. Jasper lights up a Marlboro and lies on the bench. Rudderless cloud-wrecks float, unmoored. Breathe it in and breathe it out. Jasper remembers summers in Domburg, at Rijksdorp Clinic, and in Amsterdam. Time is what stops everything happening at once. Jasper remembers last Thursday, looking out through the window of Levon’s third-floor office. Garbage fumes ebbed in. On a flat roof a couple of streets away, three women sunbathed in bikinis. Possibly it was a knocking shop, Soho being Soho, and the women were between shifts. Two had black skin. One turned up a transistor radio and Jasper caught a faint whiff of Ringo Starr singing “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

  “Care to join us, Jasper?” It was Levon.

  “I’m here.” Jasper turned around.

  “So what did they say?” asked Dean. “Have we got a deal?”

  “Your second question first,” said Levon. “No. We don’t have a deal. All four labels turned us down.”

  For a moment nobody spoke.

  “Hallelujah,” said Dean. “Praise the Lord.”

  “You could’ve told us that on the phone,” said Griff.

  “What did they say?” asked Elf.

  “Tony Reynolds at EMI liked the demos, but they already have one underground band in Pink Floyd.”

  “But me ’n’ Elf sound nothing like Pink Floyd,” objected Dean. “He did listen to all three demos? Not just ‘Darkroom’?”

  “Yes. I sat with him. But he wasn’t budging.”

  “What about Vic Walsh at Phillips?” asked Elf.

  “Vic liked the general sound but he kept asking, ‘Who’s the Jagger? Who’s the Ray Davies? Who’s the face?’ ”

  “Who’s the face of the fookin’ Beatles?” asked Griff.

  “My words exactly,” said Levon. “Vic said, ‘The Beatles are the exception that proves the rule,’ and I said, ‘No, the Beatles prove the rule that every great band is an exception.’ He said, ‘Utopia Avenue’s not the Beatles.’ I said, ‘That’s the whole point.’ ”

  “What was Pye’s fookin’ excuse?” asked Griff.

  “Mr. Elliot told me—I quote—boys won’t ‘get tribal’ about the band because of Elf while girls won’t ‘cream their knickers’ over Dean and Jasper because Elf’s in the band.”

  “That’s…absurd, insulting, and kind of incest-y, all at once,” objected Elf. “What a limp reason for not signing us.”

  “Mr. Elliot hinted that if we ditched Elf and turned Utopia Avenue into Small Faces clones, he might be interested.”

  Elf did a hfff noise as if somebody had punched her.

  “Obviously,” said Levon, “I told him to take a hike.”

  “They take all of us or none of us,” stated Griff.

  Dean lit a cigarette. “What about Decca?”

  “Derek Burke,” Levon leaned back in his creaky chair, “saw you at the Marquee. He likes your energy, but isn’t sure enough about the hybrid of styles to invest Decca’s money.”

  “That’s us snookered, then,” said Griff. “The Big Four’ve given us the bum’s rush. What now?”

  “I won’t deny it’s a setback,” said Levon, “but—”

  “I’m skinter than I was in January,” groaned Dean. “Half a year I’ve been living on solid air, and what’ve I got to show?”

  “A great band,” said Levon, “three great demos, a small but growing cohort of fans, five or six great songs. Momentum.”

  “If we’re so fookin’ great,” growled Griff, “where’s our record deal? Chas Chandler got Hendrix his in three weeks.”

  “And what about them?” Dean pointed at the posters of Dick Sposato and the Spencer Sisters. “They’ve got deals.”

  Levon folded his arms. “Hendrix is freak-out guitar R&B. Dick’s an older crooner I’ve taken on as a favor for Freddy Duke. The Spencer Sisters sing arias for the masses and the Songs on Sunday audience. They’re all easy to pitch. Utopia Avenue is not. You are unclassifiable: people will reject you, at first. If this upsets you—or if you think I’m not busting my ass—there’s the door. You’re free. Go. I’ll have Bethany send the release documents.”

  Griff and Dean looked at each other and didn’t move.

  Jasper watched the clocks above Levon’s head. One showed the time here, one the time in New York, one in Los Angeles.
<
br />   “I was a bit out of order,” admitted Dean.

  Griff breathed in and out. “Aye. I might’ve been too.”

  “Half-assed apologies accepted,” said Levon.

  Elf tapped her cigarette. “What’s our next move?”

  * * *

  —

  FOUR MEN SIT around a low table: a shaven-headed abbot whose face is engraved on Jasper’s memory; the abbot’s acolyte; the magistrate of the city; and his trusted chamberlain. Dream-lit screens are adorned with chrysanthemums. The acolyte pours a glassy liquid from a gourd as red as blood into soot-black shallow cups. Birdsong is chromatic and glinting.

  “Life and death are indivisible,” declares the magistrate.

  The four raise a cup to their host’s strange toast.

  The abbot drinks only when he sees the magistrate has drunk first. A few pleasantries are exchanged before Jasper realizes that a fifth guest—Death—is here too. Dabs of odorless poison were smeared inside the rough-hewn cups before the guests arrived. The poison dissolved in the rice wine and is now in the blood of hosts and guests alike. To ensure the abbot drank the poison, the magistrate and his secretary drank it too.

  The abbot understands. This script is written. He reaches for his sword but his arm is stiff and wooden. All he can do is swing his fist at his cup. It skips across the empty floor. “The Creeds work, you human termite!” he tells the magistrate. “Oil of Souls works!” They speak of revenge, justice, buried women, and sacrificed babies until the chamberlain topples forward, quivering, scattering black and white pieces of the game of Go. He is followed by the acolyte. Spit and blood foam on their lips. A black butterfly lands on a white stone and unfolds its wings…

  Knock-knock…Knock-knock…Knock-knock…

  “Look at you, Sleeping Beauty.”

  * * *

  —

  JASPER OPENS HIS eyes and sees Bea, inches away, gazing down at him. She leans in and kisses his lips. Jasper lets her. Her fingers rest on his face. It’s nice. Birdsong is chromatic and glinting. They’ve met twice: once when Elf brought her to see the band rehearse at Pavel Z’s, and once at Les Cousins, where Utopia Avenue played a semi-acoustic set. Bea pulls her head back. “Don’t tell Elf.”