Europa

by Tim Parks

  They had taken him out of the cubicle and laid him out on the tiled floor. The face was almost black. The tongue stuck out of the thick lips covered in spittle. The ties he had used were one plain blue, the other striped. The petition was not pinned to his jacket. He wasn’t wearing his jacket. But some sheets of paper were stuffed in the front pocket of his trousers, damp with urine. It was Vikram Griffiths, I said. The doctor pulled out the papers - they were damp - perhaps expecting a note. Instead I saw my signature. And hers and Georg’s. Afraid I would vomit, I asked if that was enough and hurried out, to find her briefing the journalists. And what she was doing was repeating the exact words from my speech: that here was a man who hadn’t slept for weeks because threatened with firing, his salary reduced, a problematic child-custody case to fight. In a foreign country. This was the person who had had the courage and vision to bring our case to Europe, she said. Our only hope must be that the death would not be in vain, that this suicide, in the heart of Europe, would finally draw attention to the urgency of our position. A fat man with long hair and indeterminate accent asked me for a statement, but I had gone to the phone. And it occurs to me here now, gripping my packed bag in the Meditation Room, that there is nothing worse than hearing someone else repeat one’s words, exactly the same. One’s waterwords. One’s frasi di letto. Did I want to be together with her again? I was infatuated. It took me five minutes to get the number from directory enquiries. I remembered her surname was Cenci. I hope this isn’t what you English call a practical joke, she said. I only had five francs to explain. There will have to be an autopsy. She wasn’t sure if she would come. She hated him, she said. As the final pips went I heard a man’s voice shouting in the background.

  I explained I’d called his wife. She had come over to the booth. You’re a fine man, Jerry, she said. Perhaps we are back together, I thought. Certainly she was deeply moved. She spoke emotionally. Her eyes had tears. But suddenly I was thinking how odd it was that we all had just the one child. You know, I told her. We all have one, just the one child, then something goes wrong. Vikram, Georg, you, me. Just one. Martino, Tilman, Stephanie, Suzanne. Then something goes wrong, I said. It seems impossible to have more than one child these days, I told her. I had never thought of this before. She attempted to embrace me, but we had to talk bureaucracy to the doctors and round up the students to get back to the hotel. I must phone my daughter, I thought.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The thing that most terrified the Greeks was that they would be deceived by the gods. They would receive a message. A dream, an oracle. Attack now, Agamemnon. Clearly it was a message. Clearly it came from the gods. But it was the wrong message. It led to defeat. Or they would be invaded by a passion. Phaedra’s for Hippolytus. Clearly it was an invasion. Clearly it came from outside, from the gods. But it was the wrong passion. It led to madness. To suicide. As whole nations can be led to madness and suicide sometimes, on the back of the wrong dream, the wrong passion. Thus Bosnia. Thus Fascism. And sitting here in the Meditation Room, reflecting on what happened in the aftermath of Vikram Griffiths’ suicide, reflecting above all on what finally took place between myself and her on our second night in the heart of Europe, I’m overwhelmed by the conviction that my passion for her was always and ever the wrong passion. For two-and-a-half years I lived in a state of total delusion. My senses deceived me, my emotions, my intellect. They deceived me. How can I explain such a thing? Such an extraordinary mistake. It took Descartes to deduce that God would not wish to deceive us. The world must be as it appears to be, the Frenchman deduced, because a perfect God would never wish to deceive us. Nothing has been explicable since.

  I came to the European Parliament again this morning to hand in the petition, now re-typed, though still with pages of urine-stained signatures. With nothing to do, I then stumbled across this Meditation Room, this pseudo-chapel, this distant echo of a dead if not quite buried religion whose corpse, like some petrified Atlas, still upholds the ideals on which Europe is built. Though it would be bad taste to mention the word Christianity, as it would be bad taste to have a platform that looked like an altar. One still finds chapels, or pseudo-chapels, in the most unlikely places, I thought, on realizing what the stylized sign must refer to - in conference centres, ships, airports - as one still finds oneself afraid in the dark. The Meditation Room is a small space with a blue carpet and soft cushioned benches along two walls. The neon-lit mural along one side resembles nothing more, I thought, entering the room and sitting down on a wall-bench, than some kind of bacterium enormously enlarged beneath a microscope. There are dark-coloured blotches and tangled threads. Some kind of virus. There are no windows in the Meditation Room. I have been here three hours. Ten minutes ago a young man in jeans came in and wiped down the mural, dusted the strange block of perspex and white plastic in the centre. I asked him how often the place was used, but he didn’t understand my English and I couldn’t be bothered to repeat the question in French. I find it very difficult to speak French these days. The only thing one can meditate on in this Meditation Room, I thought, watching the young man use a sponge on a stick to wipe down the neon-lit mural which shifts from blue to orange to yellow in webs and shadows above bars of neon behind, the only thing one might properly meditate on here, I vaguely thought, is the disappearance of religious art, or perhaps the pressing problem of standardizing religious instruction in schools across the continent. No, the only thing one can meditate on here, I thought, watching the young man flap his duster across the plastic surface - perhaps podium is the word - in the centre of the room, which I now notice has some electrical switches on it, is the disappearance of the cross, the crucifix, the disappearance of any image of the sacred that might genuinely focus the attention. The very amorphousness of this Meditation Room, I thought, this blue carpet, this atrocious neon-lit wall mural, somehow brings to mind the crucifix, more than its presence. We only savour something properly when it’s gone, I thought. Rather vaguely. In the Meditation Room. Our love. Our religion. And I remembered reading a book once that said how the Australian aborigines didn’t even appreciate that the land was sacred to them until it was taken away.

  I did not tell the others why I had decided not to return to Milan on the coach. I said I would look after the red-tape to do with Vikram Griffiths’ corpse. I made the decision over dinner the evening after his suicide, but there seemed no point in telling the truth. There is generally no point and above all no merit in telling the truth, I reflect. It was pure madness. to speak like that to your daughter on the phone. It was madness to tell your wife the truth, to have her understand that that evening after Vikram had gone I was thinking, while we made love, of Rheims, to have her understand that we made love that night because of Rheims. That man’s perverse, she said, as we laughed and made love. It was madness for him to tell us all that, the first time I ever meet him. The perversities of the mind are best not discussed, I tell myself. It may even have been, it occurs to me, that your truthful observation to Vikram, in the coach, that he didn’t give a damn about Europe triggered some destructive train of thought which ended in his suicide. Who knows? Luis said we lectors should have dinner together on our own. We should take stock, he said. We should ask ourselves if we could have prevented it, if we were responsible. And in some sort of bistro in the suburbs - four small metal tables pushed together - it was Barnaby Hilson, the Irish novelist, who immediately said that we shouldn’t have just voted him out like that. There seemed to be general agreement. I was sitting next to her, she had chosen to sit next to me, everything was ambiguous between us, and next to Colin, who shook his head. Vikram was totally wrapped up in this Europe business, Colin said. He took some chewing-gum out of his mouth and folded it in a napkin. We were selfish not to see that. Not to see what a blow it would be. The Avvocato Malerba wasn’t there, I noticed, disappeared with Plottie presumably. The wine was red, in two carafes. As Dafydd the dog had likewise disappeared. Dimitra said, We should have looked for some kind of c
ompromise. I mean, let Vikram speak and then Jerry. Jerry was brilliant, Heike said. People smiled at me, wanly. I filled my glass. The waitress brought lamb. But Dimitra said she was the one who had been most determined to get him out. It made her feel terribly guilty now. Perhaps he thought we did it because of his colour, she said. We all felt guilty, Luis said. We had all failed to notice that he was in real difficulty, Heike said. And sitting beside her, wondering at the way she and I seemed to be back together somehow, I felt this was true. You in particular spent the whole of last night obsessed with your own personal problems, I thought, while Vikram Griffiths was preparing to kill himself. Which amounts to criminal neglect, I told myself. It was criminal neglect really, Colin was saying. We laughed at him, Luis said, I spent the whole of yesterday thinking about the exchange rate. Doris Rohr confessed that she had always thought Vikram an insensitive, bullying person, she had never realized how much he must have been suffering. But then the opposite might perfectly well have been true, I reflected, vaguely aware that her leg was touching mine beneath the cramped bistro table. Vikram Griffiths, I reflected, might perfectly well have spent the whole of last night obsessed with his own personal problems while I planned my suicide. Nothing could have been more likely, I thought, now acutely aware of that leg. And even assuming you had understood, I told myself, and certainly you had an inkling, you did see how morose he was beneath the apparent razzle, even if you had understood, how could you be expected to help him with such a deep and long-established misery? How could Vikram Griffiths be expected to help you? And why shouldn’t Luis rejoice over the fact that the Lira has plummeted? It is in his interest. Really, in what way, I wondered, wondering if that leg were touching mine on purpose, is it incumbent on each of us to seek out another’s misery? Or was it just that the tables were cramped? Do I want anyone to seek out mine? Especially if we can’t really do anything to help. Every man is an island, I told myself, sitting at the cramped bistro table, keeping my elbows close to my body. That he is not entire unto himself does not make him part of the main. Terrible, Heike was saying, crushing breadcrumbs with her thumb, I sat on his knee and did nothing but make snide remarks all evening. That is the paradox, I thought, that one is not entire unto oneself, and yet-still not a piece of the continent, still not a part of the main. Psychiatry is the least successful of medical disciplines, I thought. Donne’s was a false dichotomy. Awful, Barnaby Hilson agreed. You could no more have saved Vikram Griffiths, I told myself, than he could have saved you. Heike said, I always thought of him as just a rampant hetero. You know? The others nodded and drank. Always trying to get his hand up your skirt. And looking up at the altar that is not an altar, here in the Meditation Room, thinking back on last night’s dinner, its chorus of mea culpas, then last night’s embraces, I am suddenly convinced that all this collective guilt with regard to Vikram Griffiths’ suicide, with regard to our not having noticed that Vikram Griffiths was suicidal, whatever that might mean, was quite ridiculous, was another piece of theatre, another opportunity for waterwords. One always waits for the bell to toll, it occurs to me, before reflecting that someone was a piece of the continent. When he was missing, Colin said ruefully, I thought he must be off a-shagging. Christ! he said. He clutched some hair in his hands. It is as likely, I reflect now, thinking that any cubic affair in the centre of a quasi-religious space must somehow imply an altar and that every altar implies a crucifix, or a firstborn child, or a fatted calf - it is as likely, I reflect, that Vikram Griffiths committed suicide because we voted him out or because I made some disparaging comment to him on the coach, as that the Son of God was put to death because Judas kissed him on the cheek, or because Pontius Pilate washed his hands. We should have tried to get him to stop drinking, Doris Rohr said, rather than just voting him out. The Son of God was looking to die, I reflect. As was Vikram Griffiths. Most probably the idea came to him - the European Parliament, his suicide - and then he just couldn’t get it out of his head. He felt destined. The point is, we excluded him, Barnaby said, rather than discussing things with him. Most of us are obsessed with the notion we have some destiny or other. We prefer calamity to routine. We should have put it to him frankly, the Irish novelist said. It is ridiculous, I reflect, the way the Bible invites us to share the guilt of Judas Iscariot and- Pontius Pilate, as if they were really responsible. Vikram always got off on referring to himself as damned, on claiming that he bore the mark of Cain. He had the idea, and then it just overwhelmed him. This sense of destiny. If it be your will, Father. He received a message, perhaps he dreamt it, or an intuition, this mise en scene, but the wrong message, the wrong intuition. And he just couldn’t escape it. Despite the excellent company his dog provided. The cup wouldn’t pass. True, we betray with kisses, I tell myself, true, we wash our hands, but that hardly makes us key players. If I kill myself this morning, I tell myself, here in the Meditation Room, so called, she would not be responsible. Not even after last night. Perhaps the problem, Luis said, very earnestly, was that we didn’t explain what we valued in him, and what we did not value. No, especially not after last night, I reflect. We gave him the impression we didn’t value him at all, Luis said. The prime movers are these intuitions, these passions, I tell myself, and for some reason I find this an immensely clarifying reflection. Even if it doesn’t quite solve anything. We pretty well washed our hands of him, Luis said. Dimitra hid her face in her hands and began to cry. She would keep the dog if it was found, she said. Then, sitting next to me, she said, Oh, if only I’d at least kissed him when he asked me to. For God’s sake! If I’d given him a bit of a cuddle. But this was the last straw. Her leg was definitely pressing against mine. I spoke more loudly than I need have:

  You didn’t kiss him because you didn’t want to, I announced. You don’t have to have sex with people to stop them committing suicide. And then you didn’t kiss him because you spent most of the evening screwing Georg.

  I had spoken rather more loudly than I need have. Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps the effect of having her knee against my thigh as she expressed remorse for not having cuddled Vikram Griffiths.

  Were you screwing Georg because he would have committed suicide if you’d refused? I demanded, far more loudly than I need have. Because the mother of his child was dying again? The situation around the four small bistro tables was cramped and intimate.

  Would you fuck me, I demanded, if you believed I would commit suicide if you didn’t? Colin said, Jerry, please.

  Vikram was just one of life’s victims, I announced, setting down my knife and fork beside the lamb. He was a victim of circumstance and his own psychology. There will always be people like that, I said very loudly. None of us could have helped him, I said. I pushed my chair back. His analyst didn’t help him at all, I said. Just gave him fancy explanations for his state of mind. Vikram Griffiths was on another planet, I said. You all heard him tell his life-story. He was looking to be voted out, I told the party at the four small bistro tables. Otherwise why would he have been drinking so much at ten in the morning? Why did he need to trail his dog around everywhere? I stood up. It’s absurd our baring our hearts like this. Vikram was mad, I said. Likeable, but mad. I liked him, I said, but he was crazy. I walked out. And walking out I was acutely aware that I had been describing myself. You too, I thought, are in a vicious circle of psychology and circumstance. I had described myself perfectly. You too are beyond their help, I told myself. Vikram Griffiths’ death was your own future death, I thought. Perhaps. Perhaps he did kill his fiancee, I thought. After all, I could hardly believe I’d hit her sometimes. Vikram Griffiths was more likeable than myself, though. More the clown. More charismatic. And I told myself, You must change. If the world has changed, if she has changed, then you must change too. You must not go back on the coach, I told myself. That would be fatal. You must not go back to Milan with them.

  She was calling my name. The night was blowy, but not raining. Dark. I was walking at random. She caught up with me. Her arms round me. Her
cheek against mine. I wasn’t with Georg last night, she said. She started to kiss me. She would never have gone with Georg last night. I asked why not. Spend the night with me, she said, and I’ll explain. Please, she said. I thought: The Rheims routine. I’ll explain, she laughed. She insisted, Of course I wasn’t with Georg last night. How could you think that? I notice at least you’re admitting you have been with him, I said. This conversation in French perhaps, perhaps in Italian, though I remember it here in the Meditation Room in English. When we kiss, it is so wonderful, I thought, and yet my resistance is enormous. Why wouldn’t you go with him again? I said. After all, it’s none of my business. Or Vikram’s. However suicidal we may be. For old times’ sake, she said, spend the night with me. I’ll explain. Something’s happened. All this on some blowy suburban street in Strasbourg, France. Very little recollection of the surroundings. We can find another hotel, she said. You are not going back to Milan-on that coach, I told myself. She had a smart velvet jacket, the black dress, the soft glow of her neck and cleavage. I love a woman who loves to be a woman. To play the woman, I thought. I love the things that are dangerous about her. And there was the smell of her breath and the old old cocktail of scent and skin. For old times’ sake, Jerry, she said. Watching pornography, when the knickers come down, Colin invariably says, I can already see my bald spot. Please let’s not let it end so badly. She pulled me into a kiss again. And what he means is, between those legs. Rheims. Please. I can already see my bald spot, he says. He laughs. All whoring surfs on an undertow of melancholy, I thought. On memories of Rheims. We found another hotel. Exactly similar to our own. Small modern rooms with over-size beds. But spared the reproductions of the great painters of our time. Spared Picasso. Mass-produced. Spared Klimt. She showered. Tell me first, I demanded. Why are you doing this? Because I like you. It was you left me, she said. Retrospective jealousy is mad, she told me. Tell me about Georg, about something’s having happened, I said. Tell me first. I showered. She spoke again about not wanting it to end badly. Which were more words taken from myself. My phone-calls, my attempts to arrange happy valedictories that were really new beginnings. But everything is taken from somewhere else, I thought. Tell me, I demanded, between kisses. If you must, she said. It was you said something had happened, I said. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. She broke off. Pulling herself back to sit against the pillows, she fished for her handbag, lit a cigarette, looked at me down its narrow length, inhaled, exhaled. So theatrically, I thought. The big dark eyes. So naturally theatrical. Whereas I just don’t seem able. Except that speech perhaps. What a theatrical gesture it was on Vikram’s part, I thought, to hang himself in the European Parliament. He saw the mise en scene and then just couldn’t get it out of his mind. A sense of destiny IVe made a sensible decision, she said, leaning back on the pillows. I also took a cigarette, and here in the Meditation Room it occurs to me now that one sign of when things have truly changed, when I will have truly changed, will be when I stop taking other people’s cigarettes. For taking it I saw myself taking cigarettes on a thousand other occasions. From drinking companions, from tottie. Whereas before I met her I hadn’t smoked for years. I hadn’t smoked for years before we became lovers. Smoking reminds me of her, that’s the truth. Smoking reminds me of my addiction to her. I must stop taking cigarettes, I thought. She was naked against the pillows. I’ve decided to go back to my husband, she said. I want to have another child. Before it’s too late. It’s the sensible thing to do. Emotionally and economically. Sometimes I can’t understand why we ever split up.