by Tim Parks
You said you hated him, I reminded her. You said he was a dick. You said money took up too much space in his life for there to be any room for you. You laughed at him. You said he was crass, stupid. You said he had no culture whatsoever. You said the only reason you married him was because you were still young enough to be over-awed by fast cars and business suits. You said living with him was hell.
She said I had said much the same sort of things about my wife, but both of us knew deep down that ! loved my wife and should never have left her. Especially having Suzanne. Suzanne’s so wonderful, she said. And I have Stephanie. It’s good for her to be with her father.
And that was the reason why you couldn’t have been with Georg last night? Because you’re back with your husband.
She nodded.
But you can with me?
It’s different with you, Jerry
I put on my clothes and left. As I dressed she was saying, For Christ’s sake of course it was different with me. There was no need to go to bed with Georg again. Because that had just been fun. Just creature comfort. There had been no hard feelings. But she wanted to take this opportunity to sign off happily with me. I stubbed out my cigarette and found my socks. Don’t be such a baby, she shouted. Georg had loads of women, she said. She wanted to clear things up. You know I love you, she said. I want you, I don’t want things to be so unpleasant. And she wanted to tell me to go back to my wife. You really ought to go back to your wife, she said. We could still see each other if we felt like it. We could still go to bed even, occasionally. Why not? She’s fucking you to tell you to go back to your wife, I thought. I put on my shoes. Hit me, if you must, she shouted. She got up and tried to grab my arm. Frappe-moi! I dressed and left. Nor would I go back to Milan on the coach with them. I found the stairs. Nor would I take any more cigarettes. I crossed the lobby, pushed through the swing doors and caught a taxi someone else had just got out of. It hadn’t meant anything, I thought. The words ‘in vain’ came to mind, sitting in the dark at traffic-lights. The taxi-driver drummed on his wheel. Who had used them? She did. About Vikram. She was going back to her husband, I thought in the back of the taxi. To her husband. All the words spoken over all those months, years of love-making had been entirely in vain. Thucydides and Benjamin Constant and Chateaubriand and Plato, all entirely in vain. My husband is so crass, she used to say, so ignorant. Rheims, in vain. Pensione Porta Genova, in vain. A thousand phone-calls. She was going back to her husband. As if nothing had ever happened. Somethings happened, she said. She was always telling me I had to make something happen in my life. I’ve taken a sensible decision. But what she meant was that nothing had happened, ever. Nothing has happened, she said immediately before I hit her the first time. That was the turning-point. What difference does it make if I went to bed with him? she said. Nothing has really happened. My mind darkened and I hit her. And the moment I hit her I was lost. Turn round, I told the taxi-driver. I’ll show her what it means to say something’s happened, I thought. Retournez. Go back. This morning in the foyer of the European Parliament, I bought a copy of Hie European. The headlines were deaths in Bosnia, the decisions of the Bundesbank, the collapse of the Lira, but on the inside pages it told how Indian Welshman Vikram Griffiths, feckless fragment of British Empire, hanged himself in the lavatories of this very building with a petition pinned to his tweed jacket. And it said: After this tragedy, the Italian Government will have to introduce measures to resolve the position of fifteen hundred European nationals who continue to live in conditions of the utmost precariousness. Assuming it does so, and assuming this brings to light the urgency of such cases in other countries, then perhaps this death will not have been entirely in vain. It was then, in a daze, with nothing in the world to do, that I saw the stylized plastic sign that indicated this Meditation Room, this pseudo-chapel, with its polished quiet, its indifferently dusted redundancy, as if waiting for someone to need it, perhaps with a copy of The European in his hand, perhaps with the words ‘in vain’ ringing in his mind, her words, her briefing, as I looked over Vikram Griffiths’ body on the tiled floor of the institutional toilet. The relationship that entirely changed, destroyed your life, was just a brief hiatus in hers, I thought in the taxi, a brief parenthesis in her marriage to a successful Italian businessman with a small factory producing picture mouldings, perhaps of the very variety that frame mass-produced reproductions of modern masterpieces in cheap hotels. She laughed when we read the Odyssey. I’d forgotten Helen went back to Menelaus, she said. That’s so bizarre, isn’t it? After ten years and all the deaths. As if nothing had happened at all. She laughed her very light, very French laugh. Retournez, I told the cab-driver. I’ll make something happen. Vikram Griffiths’ suicide has nothing at all to do with the lectors’ crisis, I thought, reading The European when I first stumbled into the Meditation Room. And it could not be in vain because all it was intended to do was to stop the voice in his head. No other results were intended. I will stop this somehow, I thought, as I stumbled back into the lobby of the hotel, having paid the driver fifty francs to bring me back to where I’d started. Making sure not to glance at the proprietor speaking on the telephone, I headed for the stairs, so as not to have to wait for the lift. Narrow stairs. I was aware that I could not remember which room it was. Which number. The proprietor had given the key to her. I had been in such a daze of scent and skin. I knew it was on the fourth floor. Four panting floors of narrow, carpeted stairs. I am doing something at last, I thought. I am doing something I don’t want to do. But did Vikram really want to kill himself? And sitting here in the Meditation Room, as I have been for three hours now, bowed forward in this attitude so close to prayer, without quite being prayer, as this place is so close to being a chapel, without quite achieving that, going over and over the events of the last two days, as if at some point I might ever be satisfied that they had been explained, going over and over these events, and in particular going over this moment when I started to run up the stairs to the fourth floor of that hotel, not even knowing the number of the room, but knowing that once there I would find it, the last red door on the right, and above all remembering how I told myself, You are doing something that you do not want to do, but madly determined just the same, as Vikram Griffiths perhaps had been madly determined to do something he would rather not have done, in the Meditation Room here with its quiet vocation, however anachronistic, for offering refuge (I could no more go back to the church than I could go back to my wife, I reflect), in the Meditation Room, remembering the charge up the second flight of stairs, the third, remembering the voice whispering, exulting, You are doing something you don’t want to do, it occurs to me now that half of philosophy hangs on this, on this wondering why we did what we did, why we did what we clearly did not mean to do. Myself, Vikram Griffiths. Why hadn’t I said okay two years ago, when she obviously did want to come back to me, when Georg proved not at her level in bed? Why didn’t I accept her offer last night of a return to my wife with continued affair? God knows it’s a scenario I have fantasized often enough. My home, my mistress. Everyone happy. I scrambled up the fourth flight. Had something chemical changed in me? Is that possible? That disillusionment brought about a chemical change in me, making it impossible for me to accept what she had done? Last door on the right, I told myself Responsibility is. a myth, I reflect, sitting here in the Meditation Room. Illusions lost, an enzyme slips. You find yourself charging up four flights of stairs in the heart of Europe, determined to do something you don’t want to do, determined to beat some sense into life. There is no alternative, I thought, perhaps as Vikram Griffiths did. But I had stopped in the corridor. The carpet was crimson. The impetus wavered. Perhaps another, deeper chemistry orders you to consider yourself responsible, I reflect, here in the Meditation Room. Perhaps this is what obsession means. Two chemistries at loggerheads. Two conflicting processes. A negative fizz of implacably opposed substances. Thus my mind, here in the Meditation Room, there in the crimson corridor of a hotel w
hose name I didn’t know, approaching a room whose number I didn’t know, overwhelmed by the notion that all had been in vain, that for her nothing had happened, as mythical figures go back to their husbands after ten years of atrocities and sit happily together at table, in Sparta, in Milan, welcoming guests and telling stories. I would make something happen. Thus my mind, bent on doing something I didn’t want to do, yet still aware that I would be responsible, that I would feel responsible. I would want to be responsible. We seek responsibility even where it is denied to us, I tell myself in the Meditation Room of the European Parliament. Why else the crucifix that somehow presides here despite its absence, why else the mea culpas over Vikram Griffiths, the endless pictures of Rwanda, the self-flagellation over Bosnia? We establish elaborate machineries as if we were responsible, I tell myself. Why else the European Community? Our mental processes are interminably engaged in weighing up our responsibilities. This is no bad thing, I thought. I started to walk along the corridor. I walked with one hand steadying myself against the wall. It is no bad thing to imagine oneself responsible. Yet when the mind darkens, I reflect, when the hand lifts, when the fever of that chemistry is upon us … My hand reached a door frame and I noticed the number. Forty-one. How could I not have fallen in love with her, invented my love for her? Forty-two. How could the structure of marriage hold? I began to walk more quickly. One might as well resist a flood, I told myself. Responsible or not. Forty-three. My dreams were all of seas and floods in that period, I reflect, I remember that. I attributed it to Jung. Ground giving under foot and animals tossed on the surf. People have the dreams they read about, I reflect. That fatuous period when I imagined myself an interesting subject for analysis. Forty-four. The European Community would be helpless against such a passion, I tell myself. When the mind darkens and the hand lifts it will be pointless to talk about negotiated identity and pooled sovereignty. We don’t plan to do what we do, I tell myself, here in the Meditation Room with no idea where I shall go when finally I get to my feet. When will I get to my feet? I have been here four hours. No political solution could have stopped Vikram Griffiths from killing himself, I reflect. I saw the room number was 45. What message could be clearer than that? Even if it was the wrong message. Vikram’s age a red herring. Our passion was always the wrong passion, I told myself. That’s clear now. The handle turned. All that remained was to end it. The door was unlocked, as I had left it. 45. Determinedly I pushed. She wasn’t there. I looked in the bathroom. There was nothing of hers in the room. But then we had brought nothing. I lay on the bed. She would come back. Ten minutes, half an hour. If she had checked out, the proprietor would never have allowed me to come up. An hour. At least there were no modern masterpieces in the room, Nietzsche went mad at forty-five, I thought. Whereas she was serenity itself. Our passion has left no mark on her. She has gone back to her husband. I could no more go back to my wife, I reflect, than I could go back to the church. Or live in the natural state, swinging from tree to tree. Footsteps approached along the corridor, I stiffened. She never left the church, throughout our long adultery. They slowed down. Perhaps she never really left her husband. They stopped. This was her. But it wasn’t her. There were keys in the door across the passage. Perhaps she wasn’t coming back, I thought. Suddenly I felt relieved. Perhaps she isn’t coming back. Suddenly, very slightly, the chemistry shifted. I should call my daughter, I thought. I felt a growing sense of relief. It’s her birthday. And I actually began to dial. Until it occurred to me that my daughter would be enjoying her eighteenth birthday party, a big party, taking place in my no doubt much-censured absence. And I did not want to spoil my daughter’s coming-of-age party with stories of suicide and unhappy passion. God knows how my voice would sound. Let Suzanne have a happy birthday party, I thought, wondering should I stay here, in this hotel room, or should I go? Wondering why I had come. Perhaps I should have made love to her and enjoyed it, I thought. Why do you never do the sensible, practical thing? Had she left and paid? In which case why had the proprietor allowed me to cross the lobby and set off up the stairs? Why was the room unlocked? I turned on the TV. The mind produces its own tranquillizing effect sometimes. I got into bed with the remote control. The mind decides when you’ve had enough. I found a football match. It grants a lull. Watch football, I told myself. You always loved football, and as always I began to root for the losing team. There were two beers in the small fridge. You swore you would never use physical violence, and then you hit her, I told myself, watching someone from my own team being sent off. Paris St Germain nil, Bayern Munich one. Yet what could have been more creditable than my good intentions? What could be nobler than the project of a United Europe, I thought, watching players exchange insults? Had she managed to leave without checking out? What more splendid than the dream of a perfect love? The referee was pushing someone in the chest. Even if you don’t believe in such things. I opened the second can of beer. Did I have enough to pay? Would they take my credit card? Was I creditworthy? You have no better religion to offer than Christianity, I thought. A man made the sign of the cross as he stood up to take a penalty. You would never wish for Rheims not to have been. The European Cup. Perhaps one should subscribe to such things, even in scepticism, I thought. We should enchant ourselves with such things. Thus Socrates, on myth. As I recall. We should enchant ourselves even in scepticism. And I remembered the students dancing together in the main square by the floodlit facade of the cathedral, singing Sei un mito, sei un mito, You’re a myth, you’re a myth. I saw Sneaky-Niki’s face. Tittie-tottie’s face. The extraordinary promise that men and women hold out for each other, I told myself, is the opportunity for inventing a myth together. For enchanting ourselves, reciprocally. All invented and all dissolved, I said out loud with remarkable equanimity, and remarkably I fell asleep in front of the television, to be woken eight hours later by the sound of jets over Bosnia. Perhaps three seconds passed, waking in this strange hotel room to the sound of the TV, three passable seconds, before the nightmare returned like a hammer, it returned like a flood, it returned like the roar of aero-engines sudden over the brow of a hill. It filled my whole mind. She has gone back to her husband. The whole thing, my whole life, was a farce from beginning to end.
You must phone your daughter, I thought, standing up quite suddenly from my seat in the Meditation Room. One sits down for hours, I reflect, and then inexplicably one stands up, without having decided to stand up. My time in the Meditation Room was over. The coach would be somewhere round Geneva by now. You were very lucky last night, I thought. Last night could have gone a great deal worse than it did. I phoned from the foyer of the Parliament. She answered immediately. I apologized for not having phoned on her birthday. Not to worry. She spoke in her childish English, which is so endearing. We missed you at the party. Something terrible happened, I said. And I explained that Vikram Griffiths had killed himself. Vikram Griffiths, I repeated. He hanged himself. You remember he came to dinner once, ages back. There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. I watched a franc slip by. Our phone-calls can be measured in any currency, I thought. It was a very long silence and, afraid somehow I might not be believed, I started to say how awful it was and how it had put it quite out of my mind that it was her birthday. I had forgotten to call. Everybody had been so upset. There were so many practical arrangements to make. Especially seeing that the wife didn’t want to come and handle it herself. They were divorcing, I explained. But now I realized that my daughter was speaking. I saw him last week, she said. She spoke in Italian. Her voice was choking with shock. Standing in the foyer of the European Parliament with its expensive polished woods and marbles, its news-stand, its messages of solidarity, I jammed the receiver to my ear. What? I often used to see him, she said. She could barely get the words out. Baby-sitting Stephanie. He used to drop by. With Dafydd. Or in the Tre Arche. She named a bar. I can’t believe it, she said. There was another long pause. She was fighting back tears. He was so funny. He always cheered me up. Oh, I
can’t believe it, my daughter was weeping. This year’s been such shit, Papá! O Papa! I ran out of money. Suzanne, I said, but the line had gone. My daughter had been seeing Vikram Griffiths, I thought, leaning against a pillar of the European Parliament. I couldn’t believe it. There was only one reason why Vikram saw women. There is only one reason why I see women. Your daughter’s very beautiful, she said. She bought her underwear for her eighteenth birthday. The kind of underwear she removed herself to take a shower last night. Razzled though she may very well be. Her tottie-tackle. I shook my head in bewilderment. Papa! Suzanne hadn’t called to me like that since I left eighteen months ago. What shall I do, I asked myself, standing in the great foyer of the European Parliament? What shall I do, now I have decided not to go back on the coach with them, now I have decided not to return to my job? For I suddenly realized that I had decided not to return to my job. How do these decisions happen? I asked myself. I felt completely disorientated in the busy foyer of the European Parliament. I was leaving my job. Suzanne had been seeing Vikram Griffiths. Half philosophy hangs there, in the chemistry of decisions, I thought. She had gone back to her husband. In understanding volition. What shall I do? Wait for some enzyme to shift? For a moment I was seized by anxiety. Could it be I’d left my bromazepam in the hotel? I opened my bag, then and there on the polished wood floor of the busy foyer. Where? My clothes spilled out. Underwear, crumpled shirts. In my washbag? Yes. But did I need any? Make a phone-call first, I told myself. Phone Georg. I bought another phonecard at the news-stand, but Georg was out. His wife was better, the mother said. Crisis over. Opera-tottie was out. My wife’s phone was engaged now. Who was Suzanne calling to tell of her lover’s death? No, his suicide. I did need a bromazepam. At least it might be possible for us to talk now, I reflect. At least my daughter is definitely in life, up to her eyeballs. At least we don’t need to speak about Black Spells Magic and such-like silliness. Unscrewing the child-proof cap, I called the Welsh MEP’s Yorkshire secretary-tottie. Had she seen the petition? I’d brought it earlier. She had. I was staying behind to look after the red tape, I said. Perhaps she knew of a better hotel, cheap, central, near the main police station, the town hall? The death had to be registered. She’d look one up, she said. Call back in half-an-hour. But there was something else, I said, swallowing the bromazepam. Immediately I took it, I regretted having taken it. It’ll sound crazy, but I’d like to have a chat about the possibility of working for the Parliament. I find the whole thing so exciting. I waited. Perhaps, I don’t know, perhaps we could eat together this evening. Seeing that I’m here. Amazingly, she said yes. Yorkshire-tottie and I like each other, I thought. We like each other. Sneaky-Niki would already be somewhere south of Geneva, I regretted taking the bromazepam. She would be safe and sound, watching a video perhaps. It wasn’t impossible, Yorkshire-tottie said, to find work in the European Parliament. I liked her accent. Particularly if you spoke a few languages and were willing to accept lousy conditions. Nobody will give you a permanent contract here, she laughed. Forget that stuff. I liked her laugh. Not to mention the pay! A lot of MEPs’ staff were taken on on an entirely temporary basis, she said, depending on how many people anybody needed at any one time. Your speech was very good, yesterday, she said. Very personal and professional at the same time, if you know what I mean. Owen noticed it. She meant the Honourable Owen Rhys. She laughed. Perhaps he could speak to somebody on the Petitions Committee. Perhaps you could spend the night with her, I thought. She was telling me to call back in half-an-hour for the name of the hotel. Perhaps the rest of your life. All invented, I thought, putting down the phone, and looking around the grand sweep of the foyer: the languages, the flags, the brave inscriptions, brave waterwords. Safe and sound on the way back to her husband, I thought. Beyond the glass and concrete, the flags flapped bravely in alphabetical order. Europe. As yesterday, the sky was a liquid drift of clouds and stabbing light, changing changing. Such a scandal. And a speck of dog was barking at the wind. One woman’s worth another, I thought. One man. Egalite. I wish I could speak to Georg now. I wish I could talk to Vikram. What had become of Dafydd? Of Welsh poetry? But tonight might be fun. Then it occurs to me I don’t even know her name. You don’t even know the name of the woman you are inventing, I told myself. Inventing your night with, your life with. I laughed. It’s quite a privilege to laugh out loud on your own in a public place. Not Christine again, I hope. Not Christine.