by Tim Parks
Then somewhere beyond Lucerne, having finished the whisky and feeling I wouldn’t last much longer on my feet and with the driver complaining to Vikram over the radio, now grinding out accordion-accompanied love, in German, that somebody somewhere was smoking, definitely smoking, and if they didn’t stop, he personally, the driver, would stop the coach and throw them off, because while his arm might be twisted into accepting a dog he would never let people impregnate his nice upholstery with smoke, he hated smoke, I said I would go and sort the matter out. I blundered back along the aisle, banging against the seats, remembering, incongruously, as I turned my head away from her, holding my breath against her perfume, how even on that trip to Rheims which remains for me, as Olympia for the Greeks, the very image of happiness (something past and distant and unforgettable), even on that trip she remembered to visit her childhood dentist for a filling she felt she had lost a piece of. Perhaps I had dislodged it with my fierce tongue, she sighed. She laughed. So that in the end I was granted two more days of paradise to lose because the man decided she needed a root canal.
At the back it was Colin, the tottie-man, smoking, holding a cigarette between finger and thumb, the coal turned inward to his palm, as if this could ever hide the smoke drifting out. I told him of the driver’s threat, at which, enjoying the opportunity to impress with childish transgression, for this is what groups do to people, and above all what they do to people like Colin, who are simply begging for some formal situation in which transgression will be visible, he scuttled to the stairwell leading down to the door just in front of Doris Rohr’s seat - the driver wouldn’t be able to see him there, he said, as if it was a question of seeing - and poking his head round grey-trousered legs, for Barnaby Hilson was now sitting next to Doris Rohr, earnestly discussing the merits of the Dead Poets, he took a pantomime drag with pouting moustache and said, Suck. Di’n’t I say suck was anuvver of me fav’rite words!
While everybody was laughing at this, I took his place, which is to say I took my own place, because it was number 45 again, as I couldn’t help noticing on the oval plastic tag sunk into the luxury red velvet which must not be impregnated with smoke, and exactly as I did so and remembered once again, as if I had ever forgotten, my age and her phone code and my address, I heard Barnaby Hilson, who is Irish and a writer, in his late twenties, objecting to Doris Rohr, who’d felt that the nice boy’s suicide was unnecessary that the film was so good precisely because the boy does die, that is, it was a good film because the director had allowed something to happen, he hadn’t shunned the obvious fact that seizing the day was dangerous. Aspirations are dangerous, I heard Barnaby Hilson say, as I sat down on seat 45, with no other aspiration, it occurred to me, than to get through somehow. To get through what? Just through, I shall get through, I keep telling myself, I must get through, what else can I do but get through, however unlikely that sometimes seems? Whereas Barnaby Hilson of course is a budding novelist, Irish, ambitious, Catholic, young, and he likes to hint at successes by complaining about low publication advances and literary mafias in imperialist London, and the subtext of all his conversation, even this debatable remark on the supposedly courageous narrative structure of a box-office blockbuster, is that he, Barnaby Hilson, a clever, clean-shaven boy from a middle-class family in County Cork, has a real vocation; for him the job of foreign language teacher at the quite atrocious University of Milan is a mere, though always properly discharged (because he has a sense of self-respect), sideline, to pay his way, while the rest of us are really rather sad cases with nothing to do but mark time and cling to our salaries; and my problem dealing with Barnaby Hilson, who has had one novel published in Ireland and more recently one in paperback original in imperialist London, is that I couldn’t agree more, but I hate him for saying it, for reminding me of it, as if I needed reminding. So that when, later on, I quoted Benjamin Constant at Barnaby Hilson across the huge table of one of those irksomely German stube-style restaurants with their long plain scrubbed wooden tischen where strangers are supposed to sit elbow to elbow under hunting trophies and be jolly together, as if belonging to the human race meant we had anything in common - when I quoted Benjamin Constant to Barnaby Hilson, who was offering himself as, as he put it, a compromise candidate in a delicate situation, I did so entirely out of envy and rancour and not with any desire whatsoever to become the foreign lectors’ representative to the European Parliament.
And because I thought she might recognize the book I had got it from.
I sat down in seat 45, wondering if the powers that be, like the script-writer of Dead Poets, would have the wisdom to allow something to happen on this otherwise preposterous and preposterously dull trip, and on my left this time, as I lowered myself on to the big back seat of this powerful modern coach crossing the Confederation of Switzerland, on my left was a new girl with a plaster-cast on her ankle who was deep in conversation with Georg on her other side, and what she was saying, very earnestly, as I tuned out of Barnaby Hilson’s conversation and into hers, was that she didn’t expect she would ever live to be forty. Georg smiled his mature man’s smile and asked her why, and he winked at me across the girl as I sat down wishing I hadn’t drunk Vikram s whisky, or that there had been more of it. These girls are so young, Georg’s wink said, while she - and since I can’t remember her name, can’t remember whether she even told me her name, I’m going to call her Plaster-cast-tottie, as if I was speaking of a conquest to Colin, because that kind of vulgarity cheers me up, if only by reminding me how callous and downmarket I can be -yes, Georg winked while Plaster-cast-tottie, or perhaps just Plottie, explained that she would never get to forty because there were so many diseases and wars and things. Georg smiled again and admitted he was forty-three.
Colin was stubbing his cigarette on the fire extinguisher and with his curling lip beneath thin moustache he asks, What diseases? Wass the problem, luv?
AIDS, she says demurely.
Oh, AIDS, Colin says, climbing out of the stairs, ‘ow’s a nice girl like you supposed to get fuckin’ AIDS, fuckin’ Ada? and everybody laughs. Or perhaps around Italians one should say fuckin’ Aida, he adds. And everybody laughs again. Nicoletta in the seat in front laughs and Maura beside her laughs and Georg laughs and says, avuncular, in Italian, to the girl beside him, between us, If Colin hasn’t got AIDS it can’t be that ubiquitous, can it?
The girl laughs.
Who says he hasn’t got it? I suddenly join in. It’s the whisky speaking. And I add, in English: AIDS aids for the man who’s got everything, which is the kind of joke I crack when we’re talking tottie over billiards.
Oh speak for y’fuckin’ self, Colin says, swaying in the aisle. Oh thank you very much, Mr Jeremiah. And for stealing my seat, cunt. He winks and taps his nose. Anuwer fav’rite word.
All the girls laugh, because people in groups do laugh at this kind of thing; sometimes it seems there is nothing that people in groups will not laugh at, or rather giggle about, as on other occasions it seems there is nothing people in groups will not do to other people in smaller groups or no groups at all, and Plaster-cast-tottie, who I’ve now noticed has a low-cut sweater and generous breasts though on the kind of stocky body that could only make itself desirable between say thirteen and thirty, Plaster-cast-tottie says, unasked, that she doesn’t believe in God, but she doesn’t disbelieve, she is searching, Plottie says. This girl is very earnest, but very flirty too, with a sort of bold, glassy stare that demands to be exchanged. Perhaps she knows that her attractions are only the attractions of youth. Perhaps she knows she has to use them now. There is something very glassy and very bold and very hyper about Plaster-cast-tottie’s stare and she keeps pushing a page-boy fringe from her eyes. So then I ask her, because suddenly it seems I'm talking to people, I'm talking to everybody, I've given up all hope of hiding away in books I don’t want to read, i've given up all hope of cultivating aloofness and dignity, I ask Plottie, what does she mean, she is searching? What does it mean when people say they
are searching? Where do they look, how do they look, what do they actually do when they are searching?
Nicoletta appears from above the seat-back in front and smiles at me from her big eyes and the girl is faintly reproachful, as if to ask why I have neglected her so long, staying at the front talking to Dottor Griffiths and then not even acknowledging her a moment ago when I came back and flopped into my seat. As if there were no intimacy between us. I smile back, and I’m aware that I like this girl who cocks her head to one side and smiles reproachfully, as though at a puppy that’s misbehaved, I like her because she is so different from her, and at the same time Plaster-cast-tottie is telling me-she has a blue bead necklace she is winding round a finger- that what she is searching for is something that will give her an equilibrio interiore. She’s twenty-one and she still hasn’t achieved an equilibrio interiore, she says, and this time Georg lets a very broad smile cross his face.
You bastard kraut, Colin shouts. I saw that smirk. Don’t laugh at the little girl as if you were so fuckin’ superior. An equilibrio interiore is fuckin’ important, Colin says, standing in the middle of the back passageway right in front of us, enjoying his theatrical belligerence.
Georg only smiles the more.
Unwisely, I throw in, I'm forty-five and I've never achieved an equilibrio interiore.
Colin says: Oh, aren’t we sturm und drang! Not bad, eh, he adds, elbowing the attractive Monica of the slim jeans and the cousin who wants ex-boy-friends to feel sorry for her, Not a bad range of cultural reference, what eh? Very Euraufait, no? Euraufait. J for joke. He shakes his head. Shove up a bit, love, this sod has stolen the seat I stole from him.
Colin sits on Monica’s legs even before she has a chance to move and starts to explain his Euraufait joke for the benefit of the young Italians who haven’t understood, while I’m thinking, Why can’t you be like Colin? Would you like to be like Colin? What on earth do the girls think of him? Beating someone across the face is irremediable, I tell myself. Much worse than anything Colin does. Until with a sudden determination to participate at all costs, to escape at all costs the Furies pressing, their faces against the wet coach windows where hills are massing again now under a heavy shower surreal with doodlings of afternoon neon, I ask, Hands up those who have achieved an equilibrio interiore, come on, hands up! And of all those sitting in the back two rows, to wit Margherita in the extreme left corner, Georg, Plaster-cast-tottie, silent, pouty Veronica on my right, Graziano, Monica, Nicoletta and Maura, and Colin on Monica’s knees, of all these only Graziano and Nicoletta half put up their hands.
Explain, I say, determined now not to be left alone with myself for one more minute of this trip, determined to talk, to be the centre of attention - so that now lying here on my narrow bed in this Strasbourg suburb, whether to north or south or east or west I neither know nor care, it occurs to me that this must have been the moment when I consciously changed plan, or rather became conscious of having unconsciously changed plan, having opted in a complete and bizarre swing of temperament, not for silent reserve, but for a virtuoso performance. From now on you will perform nonstop, I told myself. For the next forty-eight hours and with the help of a little whisky perhaps and enormous reserves of nervous energy you will be deeply ironic and sparklingly witty, and she will see you being brilliant and crackling like a firework and she will imagine that you have got over her entirely and she will be intensely jealous of the young women you’re talking to and will deeply regret…
Explain, I demand.
Graziano, in the second seat from the back on the left-hand side, has an open, boyish face whose patchy unshavenness suggests how young he is. He shrugs his shoulders and smiles shyly Cost, he says.
But you feel you have achieved an equilibrio interiore?
He smiles.
Georg says smoothly, Leave off, Jerry.
I just want him to explain how he does it, I said. With the best will in the world, I asked the boy, What do you do? I mean, how do you fill the time? Let’s see if that gives us the clue.
Wanking, Colin suggests.
Only Plaster-cast-tottie laughs. That gave a naughty little girl away, didn’t it? Colin says. Don’t we know a lot of naughty words?
Colin! Georg says. For Christ’s sake!
So then Graziano tells us that he plays the guitar, classical guitar and folk songs, that he attends meetings of Rifondazione Comunista and delivers leaflets for them because he believes they’re the only political party who seriously want to help poor people. He reads a lot for his exams and helps his father on their grandfather’s smallholding near Lodi which they work Saturdays and Sundays and sometimes in the evenings in summer. They grow salad greens and aubergines and peppers.
Rifondazione Comunista! Maura, beside Nicoletta, protests, and it’s the first thing she’s said that I’ve registered. How can you support Rifondazione Comunista when it’s them prevented the Left coming to power?
But I suggest we leave aside the politics. The last thing we need is an argument about politics. No, what we want to establish, I say, is whether there is anything profoundly similar to each other and different from ourselves in the lives of those claiming to have achieved an equilibrio interiore. Something that might indicate how the rest of us can get there. No trouble with women? I ask Graziano.
The unshaven boy smiles, embarrassed, pouts, shrugs.
Have you got a girl-friend? Monica asks. Squeezed next to her, Colin makes a face.
Graziano says he goes out with two or three girls now and then, on and off, but he hasn’t got a girl-friend.
Blessed state, I tell him, but Plottie says why, she is unhappy because she hasn’t got a boy-friend, or rather because the boyfriend she had was an idiota.
Exactly.
And Colin says, What’s this with the indefinite article in front of boy-friend/girl-friend? The singular crap. When the girls smile, he says in his most Brummie Italian, False presumption of binary opposition.
Georg says: We can’t all be as emancipated as you, Colin. Which is such a beautiful piece of hypocrisy, coming from Georg. He turns to the girls and is smiling especially warmly, I’ve noticed, at the small red-head Veronica with the swollen lips, though in a very quiet and correct way. Colin is avant-garde, he says, forerunner of the new man.
When Georg smiles his face takes on such an expression of wry wisdom, of one who’s been there and come back, one who knows what he knows; it’s as if in his case the whole of self had been transmuted into the Brahminic bird, not a small part of one’s identity observing the whole, but the whole observing a mere shadow, an efficient routine put on for his own amusement, and it occurs to me now that when he sent those flowers, when he made those phone-calls and insisted so much, and later when he explained to her how the mother of his child suffered from an incurable disease, which she then explained to me as if this somehow made what she had done not only perfectly reasonable but generous, towards a man in a difficult predicament, her vraie sympathie pour les autres, yes, it occurs to me that when he did all these things, which he has done, I happen to know, with scores of women: the seduction, the sad story that excuses him from any involvement, and then the gift, in this case The Age of the Courtesan with the neat calligraphy inside to write down an expression he imperfectly remembered from her, or more likely she imperfectly remembered from me, The taste of triumph, it was all a game to Georg, or rather it was pure form in which he had no investment at all. Or there was investment, there is, but only in the form, the motions, the image of himself he projects, and not in whoever happens to be the object of those formal motions on any particular occasion. Which may be why he is so convincing. Certainly little Veronica is warming to him, doubtless thinking how mature he is. And he is. And the galling thing for me, one of the many galling things for me, the many many galling things, is that even now, even after marriage and separation and eighteen months’ shiftless shagging around, or amour amok as Colin always says, even now I can’t behave like this, like Georg, wi
th the tottie I meet, I can’t observe the traditional formulae, I can’t tell my sad story to advantage. And somehow this makes me less, rather than more convincing. You are less convincing than everybody else, I tell myself. For example, everybody thinks now, as I ask Graziano these questions, that I am playing, I am teasing, I am being cruel. But I am not playing. I am not teasing. And I am not being cruel. I really do want to know how someone can achieve an equilibrio interiore. Then everybody imagines, when I can’t become heated about my rights, about my salary, when I can’t undertake a battle for the job that puts bread in my mouth, that I am merely flippant. Or cynical. But I am not flippant. Or cynical. I’m lost.