by Tim Parks
Where’s Vikram? I asked as the actually extremely pleasant Yorkshire blonde secretary of the Welsh MEP was telling Colin that one referred to the European Parliament building, designed as it was, in terms of its right hemisphere and its left hemisphere. Oh, just like the old brain, Colin says, the old noddle, and he started to make jokes about the left hemisphere controlling what the right side of Europe was doing and the right the left, and then quipping, as he put an arm round Tittie-tottie’s waist (and now we were straggling along a curving third-floor corridor padded with green and plastered with posters announcing worthy concerns and complex directives) about this perhaps being why his left hand never knew what his right was up to. Or where it was up. Ho, ho. Biblical, he added, wiping the smile off his face. How’s that for a range of reference?
Where’s Vikram? I repeated.
Not quite, MEP-secretary-tottie said.
What?
The blonde secretary glanced at Colin with that wry humour of the woman, the quietly beautiful woman, who knows all men are pigs, but is somehow resigned to charming them anyway. It was when giving alms that the right was supposed not to know what the left was doing.
I wasn’t doing anyone no ‘arm, Colin laughed, pinching Tittie-tottie, who jumped and giggled.
Then when I asked once again, Where was Vikram, perhaps a little louder this time, Barnaby remarked that most probably he had gone on ahead to the office of the Welsh MEP with whom he had been in correspondence about this trip for some months and who had been instrumental in setting up our crucial encounter with the Petitions Committee, upon which, far more than on the meetings with the London Times and the Italian Euro MPs, it seemed our future careers must hang. I asked the experimental Irish novelist how his child’s throat was and he said, Better thanks, when he’d phoned his wife this morning the antibiotics had begun to take effect, the fever had come down. Had anybody phoned to find out if Georg had got back, I asked then, had he taken the plane or the train or what, but at the same time Dimitra was saying that this was just typical of Griffiths, he’d been voted out as representative but all the same couldn’t stop himself from meddling in the affair, sneaking off like this before anybody else to get a first word in with this Welsh MEP who was Vice-president of the Committee and of course in league with Griffiths because they both came from Wales. It was against the spirit, Dimitra said, and she quickened her pace along the padded corridor, of yesterday evening’s democratic vote.
But Vikram was not in the Welsh MEP’s office. Only the Welsh MEP was in his office, a small, lean, wiry figure with oversize head who did not immediately appreciate who we were. Professionally affable, he sprang to his feet and shook three or four hands vigorously over the polished desk, earnestly demonstrating his goodwill, but perplexed, not knowing who we were, his big head nodding eagerly. Until: Ah, but where’s our young man, he demanded, suddenly realizing. What’s his name, Griffith, Griffiths. Vic Griffiths. The representative? Who wrote in Welsh. There are one or two things still to clear up.
Vic Griffiths!
The leading members of the group were annoyed. Dimitra was annoyed. She was annoyed. Heike was annoyed. By Vikram’s absence, by the notion of his presence elsewhere. By our apparent inability to speak to the Welsh MEP without him. What had been discussed in this correspondence? Did anybody know? In Welsh! But I was thinking of that change of name. How it spoke worlds. Of subtlety and insecurity. Of subtlety bred of insecurity. Unless he had merely been staging a surprise. There was a senseless milling on the office carpet. Vikram loved such surprises. The shock of his foreignness. Why wasn’t he here? There was a loss of direction. Questions flew. Had any of the students seen Dr Griffiths? Or his dog. On the coach? Outside the building? Yes, he would have been savouring the moment when he introduced himself to the Welsh MEP, I thought. Savouring the disbelief. An Indian who spoke Welsh. People turned away from the MEP to talk. In Italian. They had not seen him. Or his dog. Unless he was afraid, it suddenly occurred to me. He had suddenly lost his nerve. Luis went to the door to look down the corridor. Afraid the colour of his skin might ruin things. The lectors huddled together. Might upset this influential man who imagined him pure-bred Welsh. They were nervous. Could he have gone to talk to some other member of the Committee, Dimitra wondered, or some member of the press, and all at once Doris Rohr and Dimitra and even Luis and Barnaby Hilson and above all she became immensely concerned that Vikram might in some way be queering our pitch, might be off speaking to others. Vikram who had dreamed up this whole mad trip himself, researched it, organized it, believed in it, in an attempt to defend the job, call it that, that paid the rent, paid the lawyers who represented him in various private actions, not least the custody case for his seven-year-old son, Vikram was now suspected of ruining the whole thing, with his over-enthusiasm, his lack of restraint, his love of conspiracy. Whereas I wondered if there were any telling, with our charismatic leader, whether pride in his hybrid destiny, or fear, was uppermost. Was he subject to sudden losses of nerve? Had anybody noticed if Dr Griffiths was drunk this morning? someone asked. Had anybody spoken to Dr Griffiths at all? He was ruining everything. First the shouting match, Heike said, with the hotel proprietor, in the early hours, and now this. Doris said, Because he was voted out, no doubt. Immediately there was a hum of indignation with the lectors standing at the front, crowded about the Honourable Owen Rhys’s desk, and the students behind spilling out into the curved corridor of the outer left hemisphere of the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, all asking each other when they had last seen Vikram Griffiths.
But this was hardly important, Dimitra now suggested to MEP Rhys in her execrable Greek English. Surely the important thing now was to be on time for our appointment with the no doubt busy Petitions Committee, and get our case across to them. This with the implication: Before Vikram has time to do untold damage; though it was clear from the Honourable Rhys’s polite confusion that he had been rather looking forward to meeting his fellow-Welshman, He still hadn’t registered the name Vikram. Unless, Colin laughed, there’s a young lady missing likewise! Know what I mean? But I was suddenly struck, at that moment, by my sense of distance from it all. Not that he wanted to suggest that Vic Griffiths, he grinned, was notorious, nudge, nudge, but such an eventuality would offer a hint of an explanation, would it not? A soupçon, Colin laughed. Why do you feel so distant sometimes, I asked myself, even at moments of drama, and I heard Heike whisper to Luis that Vikram had made a pass at at least half the women in the group yesterday evening, her lesbian self included. Especially at moments of drama. I was a million miles away In vain! she laughed. He went to bed with his tail between his legs. Like his dog.
The situation, as students and lectors, having only just arrived in this decidedly executive office, began counting each other to see if one of their number could be imagined to be having sex with another, must have been disconcerting for the Welsh MEP. Marooned behind two metres of polished vice-presidential wood, he must now be aware that the person he had been corresponding with, in Welsh, and to whom he had granted the favour of an audience with the powerful Petitions Committee of the European Community, was actually considered a liability, a drunk and a rake by many of his fellow-petitioners. So that I became distinctly aware, even from the immense distance from which I suddenly found myself obliged to observe events, that the matter should be taken in hand, at once, and that I, as official representative, should immediately step forward to introduce myself to the Welsh MEP as Jeremy Marlowe, the recently elected spokesman of the University of Milan’s Foreign Lectors’ delegation, and on shaking hands vigorously should engage the man, who was doing his best to be pleasant, though no doubt he had matters more pressing on his plate, in some discussion as to the desirable length of the speech I should give and the desirable tone to adopt with the Committee of which he was so fortunately, for ourselves, and no doubt deservedly, Vice-president. But I did not step forward. Just as previously I hadn’t spoken out either for or against the Euro-
chat in the foyer. And the reason I didn’t was perhaps the bromazepam again and perhaps an intense bewilderment, partially due to the immense sense of distance I was experiencing (so reminiscent of the distance I felt between myself and my wife in recent years), but above all to the fact that at this very moment I heard Doris Rohr suggest that perhaps in the end it had been Vikram who was the spy. Perhaps Vikram had always been in league with the authorities to make us look ridiculous. We would claim too much, we would be seen to be greedy, the Petitions Committee would turn down an appeal which the University and Vikram already knew to be legally inadmissible, and they would fire us all. Thus Doris Rohr, muttering, to no one in particular, at just the moment when I should have stepped forward and spoken sensibly to the Honourable, the Right Honourable, is that how they call them here? Owen Rhys. Pure-bred Welsh. Two girls began to shout that Valeria was missing. Valeria being last night’s Peppy-tottie. They couldn’t find her. Where was she? Colin began to laugh. Didn’t want to say I told you so. Perhaps Vikram was the spy, Doris Rohr repeated rather louder. Valeria, who’d flashed her tits. Nothing new under the bum, Colin laughed. But how could Vikram be the spy? I thought. How could anyone even imagine Vikram was the spy? The Welsh MEP had at last been engaged by the Avvocato Malerba in a discussion as to the exact executive powers of the Petitions Committee and in particular the relative areas of jurisdiction of national and Community law. All the same, he must have been aware of a general tittering and muttering vis-a-vis the absence of Vic Griffiths and now Peppy-tottie. He shot a nervous glance at his secretary, who was examining her watch with studied unconcern. You are the official representative, you should take the situation in hand, I told myself, but vaguely, distantly, through a haze of bromazepam. It was irresponsible of you to take so much bromazepam, I told myself. And then to get up at six in the morning and take so much again. It was one thing taking bromazepam at two-thirty a.m., I told myself, to get to sleep, but quite another to get up at six in the morning and take so much again. The secretary pointed at her watch. Totally irresponsible, I told myself. It would have been better not to have slept at all. Or at least not to have slept after six. Doris Rohr was saying something to Barnaby Hilson and Luis, along the lines of her having always thought him schizophrenic. Presumably Vikram. These people, I told myself, though aware that really I should be taking the situation in hand, that really I was behaving irresponsibly, these people, who only yesterday evening were laughing and drinking and joking with Vikram Griffiths, and even following his rolling gait and his dog through the rain in search of a place to get drunk, many of them showing, despite the problems vis-a-vis his electability as our official representative, a genuine affection for him, even joining in his singing of The Green Green Grass of Home and Men of Harlech, these people are now suspecting him of every possible villainy and betrayal. And mental illness. This was irritating. And yet Vikram’s behaviour was irritating too. I began to suspect him myself. Could it be that he had proposed me, knowing I would be hopeless and that he would disappear at the last moment leaving all of us to the fate we had amply deserved when we had voted him out? There was something schizophrenic about him. My colleagues were right. Even if his Indian Welshness gave every excuse. Betrayal is the norm, I told myself. None of us had the guts to get stuck in politically like Vikram Griffiths did. But perhaps he had lapses. Mental illness is the norm. Not even she had the guts, so-called. Vikram Griffiths, I thought, was perhaps the only one who was willing to expose himself, to throw himself into things, heart and soul. Because crazy. But likewise equally capable, again because crazy, of stabbing us in the back. Or perhaps because not so crazy. He’d called himself Vic Griffiths, after all. And while I did nothing, said nothing, the Welsh MEP was clearly embarrassed by the fact that he knew less about Community law than the Avvocato Malerba did. Much less. The Avvocato Malerba, in dapper suit and Euro-flag tie, was leaning across the desk now speaking in the most extraordinarily clipped and intimidating Italian tones, explaining the complications of Italian labour law in the public sector. If there is one thing Italians love, I thought, it is complications. Could the Petitions Committee, the Avvocato Malerba asked, really be expected to appreciate these nuances? He preferred Spinoza to Nietzsche, I thought. It explained so much. And perhaps Plaster-cast-tottie to both. The blonde secretary explained to some students where the bathrooms were. Colin pulled out a packet of cigarettes, then realized he would have to put them away again. Quite a girl, he was laughing. I take my hat and scarf off. And still nothing clear had been said about my speech, due to take place now in five minutes’ time. Our whole expedition, I thought, is foundering ‘on this animosity between Vikram Griffiths and the others, this dis-orientation brought about by his absence, the absence of the person who arranged everything, the absence of the only appropriate, despite the shock of his colour, interlocutor for the Honourable Owen Rhys, MEP and Vice-president of the powerful Petitions Committee. Or perhaps it’s just that he hasn’t been able to enter the Parliament building because of his dog, I thought. I suddenly thought. For of course he would be looking forward to the moment when the Honourable Owen Rhys saw the colour of his skin as he greeted the man in Welsh. What warmth and handshaking! Ridiculous to imagine him afraid. As official representative, I thought, you are unfortunately too full of bromazepam to take matters in hand. The whole thing was going to pieces because of a dog. A mongrel. A man’s excessive concern for his dog. And although I had never cared even minimally about saving our jobs, and indeed on more than one occasion had expressed the ardent desire to be fired, to have the decision, that is, whether to stay or to go taken peremptorily out of my hands, I now experienced - perhaps it was the bromazepam fading, perhaps that was the problem - a sense of impending disaster, even disgrace, at the thought that everything was going to go wrong and that this would be my, together with the dog’s, fault. But perhaps this was inevitable really, I thought, on the fourth of the fifth for a forty-five-year-old man who lived at 45 Porta Ticinese and whose ex-girl-friend’s ex-phone number began with 045. I began to look for the numbers in the room, in the Vice-president’s office. Certainly everything had gone wrong during that disastrous conversation with my daughter yesterday. Whose birthday it is, I now remembered. Today. I must phone her. But there were no numbers in the Welsh MEP’s office, aside from a list of dates indicating when the canteen would be closed for renovation. Not the fourth of the fifth, as it happened. I must phone her as soon as I have a free moment, I thought. Above all, everything had gone wrong inside my head from the first moment I set foot on that coach. It was a terrible mistake, I told myself, for you to come on this trip. You knew that. And yet more than ever now, wondering when I would be able to phone my daughter, and what on earth I would say to the Committee, and again whether anything at all of any seriousness was going to pass between her and myself, whether anything would be allowed to happen, that is, as Barnaby Hilson had so curiously put it, on this farcical trip, I was aware that this was a mistake I was born to make. This was me. This is the kind of thing you do, I told myself. You come on a farcical trip that you don’t for one moment believe in, you get yourself voted into a position of power for all the wrong reasons, and then you let everybody down quite miserably. Very nice. I thought: If only Georg were here. Yes, I remember now, sitting head bowed in the Meditation Room of the European Parliament, this obvious and anodyne surrogate for a chapel, embarrassing reminder of our old yearning for some kind of metaphysic, but amorphous, shapeless, to avoid the old contentions, no altar, no cross - I remember very clearly that I began to wish Georg was here. My rival. Georg would have taken matters in hand. Georg has an immense composure, I thought, which he has earned somehow, probably through the business with the mother of his child, her sad illness. In fact, it would be wonderful if Georg could be here now in the Meditation Room with me. It would be a great comfort. There is a strange decency about Georg, I suddenly thought. Despite The Age of the Courtesan. I feel ludicrously close to Georg now, here in the Meditatio
n Room, there in the Welsh MEP’s office, as I felt ludicrously close to Vikram Griffiths when we stood together at the front of the coach and I told him, he told me, that he didn’t give a tinker’s shite for Europe if they didn’t give him what he wanted. Vikram Griffiths was honest. He had no fine words. Or rather, he had them, of course he did, when he needed them, but recognized them for exactly what they were: words. He recognized that he manipulated words. That he charmed and seduced people. Whereas she was now saying to Dimitra how typical this was. As soon as he lost his leading role, he lost interest. What a prima donna! He didn’t give a damn about the group, just stayed at the hotel to sleep with whichever scrubber would sleep with him. She said this in Italian, otherwise how would she have communicated with the Greek Dimitra, her French Italian with its overaccented Ys and underaccented Ts, but I remember it in English, as I remember everything in English in the end, films, books, horror stories, in that great dubbing process my mind must be. And I remember thinking: These two women are so indignant that they are even forgetting to ingratiate themselves with the Welsh MEP, Owen Rhys, upon whose goodwill so much depends. Unless now they were here they were suddenly nervous. Maybe you should go forward, Barnaby Hilson whispered in my ear, and introduce yourself. Don’t you think? You’re the official representative. But already the Yorkshire secretary, the demure, amused and I’m beginning to find extremely attractive blonde MEP secretary, was herding us out of the office, to meet our tight schedule. Nice tits, Colin was laughing. Not in your league though. This to Tittie-tottie. Incredible nobody missed them on the coach, I thought.