The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  Back upstairs I typed and printed two invoices for Jeremy, no VAT for charges from Germany to the U.K., my very great pleasure old chap. And off I went to bed.

  DAY 9

  I packed my luggage and took it down to the car, hung two suits and two jackets in the back. I fetched Mr. Brown and we went for a short walk, sunny sure enough but still a bit fresh, and we came back to Monika's for breakfast. I love poached eggs as Monika knows and she has good coffee as well, Illy, as good as my Lavazza. I smoked a cigarette on her terrace while Mr. Brown ate a rare and unhealthy breakfast; namely the other half of the chocolate, I hadn't forgotten about it.

  "I'll miss you Peter," she said as she always did, "drive carefully and don't forget to come back."

  "How could I ever forget?" I said with a smile, "You know I would never abandon Mr. Brown."

  "Brute," she said and kissed me very close to the lips, avoided them by about a millimeter the clever lady, and the squashing was definitely a trial, as it always is when I leave, I'm sure she could feel me. One day I am not going to be able to shove nature back into its dark and murky cave, I know it. The effort required is too vast, too excruciatingly overpowering to be permanently resisted by a normal male equipped with his normal allotment of hormones. Lust is more powerful than sensitivity in the long run. Don't blame me the day it happens, Monika.

  I gave my buddy Mr. Brown a big, big hug and then I was off. I stopped at the petrol station, tanked up and purchased a carton of cigarettes and the IHT. The IHT is very important on a Saturday. This is the day of the chess column and the day of the difficult Sudoko compared to the easy ones during the week.

  I headed up to Hattersheim and onto the feed road for the A66. Fewer trucks on Saturdays, I should be in London by around 7 p.m.—or 6.pm. U.K. time. This feed road is quite a long one and about half way along it there was a hitchhiker. I checked it out, it was a female, a fairly young one. Now, as you know, hitchhikers are something of a rarity these days, particularly female ones, particularly unaccompanied female ones. But there she was, a real-life female hitchhiker. I slowed down but I didn't stop, kept my eyes on the mirror. You know what happens, some burly asshole of a boyfriend jumps out from behind a bush and he hasn't showered for a year and he's got their luggage, ten tons worth of rucksacks and the like.

  But no-one jumped out from behind a bush or anything else and so I stopped about 50 meters further on, eyes still on the mirror, some of these guys are experienced. She'd seen my brake lights, she'd seen I'd stopped and she was walking toward me, hesitantly, perhaps I would drive off again. But under no circumstances was I going to drive off, no sir, there was no boyfriend on the whole landscape, and a lone young female hitchhiker happens to you maybe once or twice in a lifetime or maybe never. I lowered the passenger window as she came up to the car.

  "Good morning sir," she said to me in English, the language of the world, "are you possibly going somewhere in the direction of Paris?"

  I had three reactions to this, blitzartig. The first one was SHIT, I'll be turning off onto the A3 in a few minutes, and on up to Belgium, nowhere near Paris. The second one was wow, her English has a French accent, she's French, and if you want to categorize women by nationality, which I admit you shouldn't, a French woman to me is like having caviar on your toast instead of marmalade, even if the marmalade is Chivers. And that, not illogically, triggered my third reaction, those neurons up there in my skull accelerating to cosmic speeds within milliseconds. If I were to drive in the direction of Paris, I could take her as far as, say, the E17. From there she could hitch on into Paris on the E50, and I could simply drive on in a virtually straight line up the E17 and the E15 to Calais. It would take me an hour or so more, maybe even two, but the neurons had already performed their Cost/Benefit analysis. A young French female in the car for a few hours was a major benefit. I could also try to pull her. I would in fact try of course, an inevitable consequence of one of the fixed laws of nature, no harm done. Possibility of success unknown, but attempted seduction is one of life's delights. Yessir, even if you fail, which happens. And the cost? A couple of hours extra travel time. Laughable; even if it were going to cost me an extra twenty hours, there was no need for further evaluation. No need at all.

  My good old neurons had achieved all of this in approximately 2.3 seconds, bless their clever little hearts.

  "More or less," I said, "I can take you about two thirds of the way there if that is of any help." In fact I'll take you all of the way there I thought to myself, if things work out. Postpone my meetings and spend a few days there even.

  "Oh yes," she said, "that is fantastic, thank you very much."

  I climbed out of the car, took hold of her rucksack, quite a heavy one for a girl, and put it into the trunk. I got in some good glances at her. Not one of your world's beauties. But pretty. She had a small chip out of the corner of a front tooth, erotic, nice blond hair, dark blond, tied in a ponytail at the back, also erotic, a slight figure but nice breasts, also erotic. And—hugely erotic—she wore glasses, they made her look waifish, shortsighted. I couldn't see her legs, she was wearing jeans, but her figure told me they would be great legs, they couldn't possibly be any of those thick ones which are a real turn-off. And not of Scandinavian design either, those formless goalpost-type things. She was much shorter than me, about 5' 6" I would guess. Wearing a green and red pullover, old but clean. And no rings, I noted, not that that means anything these days, one way or the other. Noted, however, nevertheless.

  We both got into the car and I started off again, reprogramming the neurons into their French modus. "Allons-y donc," I said.

  "Mais tu es français?" she asked, "avec une voiture allemande?"

  "No," I replied, carrying on with the French "I am English, but that wasn't my fault."

  "So you were somebody else's fault," she laughed, "but one of them must have been French, you speak perfect French."

  "Not really, my French is good but you'll begin to notice the foreign accent here and there before long. And the odd grammatical mistake."

  "Well I'm very lucky today, you are giving me this lift and you speak good French as well."

  "My pleasure," I said. Little did she know how much.

  I stayed on the A66 past Wiesbaden and headed off onto the A63, direction Kaiserslautern. It's easy for you to prove to yourself just how stupid a large percentage of the human race is—all you need to do is drive your car for a few hours, anywhere, particularly at the weekend. The weekend is when all of the spastics are out, they can't judge speeds, they can't judge distances and they have the reflexes of a dying snail. Really dangerous, some of them are. The weekend road death statistics do not lie. I say no more, I rest my case.

  So I was concentrating on the driving instead of the talking. She wasn't talking either, not the born and bred conversationalist obviously. She had this habit of frequently pushing her glasses back up on her nose. Don't ask me why, but I find glasses sexy on women, I really do. And when they keep pushing them up, it makes them even sexier. I have no idea why. If I were interested enough, I could ask a sexologist. There are plenty of those nowadays, doing whatever it is that they do. They are apparently very necessary for the current generation. Or so they say, and so I have read.

  She spent most of the time looking out of the window, occasionally looking around the car as if she wasn't used to big cars, good big cars. I can remember that feeling from way back. Maybe she was of a shy nature, a bit of an introvert perhaps. Or maybe she was just a little nervous, could be, sitting in a big car with a man you didn't know. He could turn off the autobahn at any time and take you down a lonely road to anywhere, and the best thing that could happen to you would still be very bad. Whatever, I would have to go very carefully with this one, bring all my 'good guy' skills into play, no flirting around except maybe with the eyes, keep off all ambiguous subjects, no risky jokes. Hey, I'm just a normal sincere kind of bloke, I like your company, I am not interested in sex. Not at all. Not even in my dr
eams.

  "My name is Peter," I said, putting on my number one non-suggestive smile.

  "And I am Céline." A small smile but that was it. She had nothing to add.

  "And where have you come from?" I asked.

  "I spent a few days visiting Prague. It's a city I always wanted to see and now I am on my way back home."

  "And which part of Paris is that?"

  "Oh, it's not Paris, it's Rouen."

  Rouen? But that's way over the other side of Paris. In fact it's a long way over, it's on the way to Le Havre.

  "And you expect to get there tonight?"

  "Oh no, I am staying overnight in Reims and will finish my journey tomorrow."

  Hah, Reims! Dead on the A17 which takes you in the direction of Calais. My chances of winning the lottery have just risen from the 50% starting point to around 55%. No more, but 55% is not to be sniffed at.

  "Reims," I said, "well I can take you right the way there, it's on my route."

  "Oh really? That is fantastic," she said, "thank you, it's really my lucky day, I am very grateful."

  "Not at all, you're welcome."

  And then there was silence again. She kept looking out of her window, sunny day, green countryside, obviously wanting as little eye contact with me as possible. She wasn't interested in where I'd come from or where I was going to, or why, or anything else. She was a nice, clean, friendly girl, otherwise I might have classified the silence as a bit of impoliteness. After all, if you get a lift right to where you want to go, and it would obviously cost me an extra hour or so getting into and out of Reims, then it doesn't hurt to be a little sociable, it doesn't cost anything.

  So what was my plan now? Well, let the silence hang for a while, that's the first phase. She's clearly more comfortable with that, she might even be appreciative of me deciding not to rattle away all the time. Then I'll wait until we get into France, stop for lunch—which I wouldn't normally do, I usually drive straight through on trips like these—and, Step Two, invite her as well. It will make me seem like a really nice guy. Which of course I am, albeit with ulterior motives with a 55% success ratio.

  We crossed the border at Saarbrücken. I know a little restaurant with a pond literally two minutes away and you can sit outside. "Lunch," I said as I turned off the autoroute. "You don't mind? I feel a bit hungry and I still have a long drive ahead."

  She looked at me and smiled and nodded, the ponytail bobbing nicely. Wow. But not a word.

  I pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car, waited for her to get out as well. But she remained inside. So I went around to her side of the car, politely opened the door.

  "Hey," I said, "aren't you coming as well?"

  "No," she said, "no thank you."

  "No? But aren't you hungry? You must be hungry as well, come on and join me," I said with my nicest smile, the one which makes me look as innocent as a eunuch, an ancient eunuch.

  "I have some sandwiches with me, thank you," she said. Well, how about that? Or maybe she just didn't have much money and didn't want to say so.

  "But I am inviting you, no problem. Got paid my bonus last week," I said. The latter was intended to strengthen the impression of a pleasant, disinterested sexless neuter of course. God and Allah both forbid that she might think the lunch offer to be an investment of mine for possible future returns, dividends required, oh yes. Which of course it was, we males do it all the time, there's nothing wrong with it. And we also take the risk of a zero return, so who's to complain?

  "No thank you," she said, not really looking at me, "the sandwiches are fine and I'm not that hungry."

  Damn. Down from 55% to maybe 30%, no point in kidding myself.

  "O.K., a pity. Eating alone is not much fun, but never mind, I'll see you later. In about forty minutes, O.K.?"

  She nodded. I reached past her to take the IHT from the back seat and I could smell her. It stirred me up, it's one of life's persecutions. If you are a man, that is. I went through the restaurant and out onto the terrace at the back and I took a seat and lit up a cigarette, one of the much needed ones.

  I ordered a chicken salad and a glass of Chardonnay and picked up the newspaper. Suicide bomber kills 43 was on the front page. Not too much space wasted on the item, interest is limited these days, what's new? And does it bother us whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Sudan or somewhere else? Not really, we read it all out of a kind of inertia. So the mentally diseased bosses got hold of another mentally handicapped person, or a poor child, explosives in the rucksack or around the waist, or else it was some moron who believes (believed) the shit they told him about the 72 virgins waiting for him in the sky (waiting for him personally, they have a boundless supply of them up there) if he blows himself up. What's new? The bosses themselves of course are in no hurry to get to the virgins, they can wait for later. Neither was Hitler, he had plenty of young soldiers to do that for him—except that they weren't dying for a god, oh no, and they weren't going to get any virgins either, or even any non-virgins, they were dying a personal hero's death for the Führer himself, no less. The human species is certainly an interesting spoecies, right enough.

  But I didn't get to read anything else at all because she came and sat down on the other side of the table. A cheery smile. But still shy, not looking directly at me, maybe she'd decided it was impolite to let me eat on my own. Which would mean she had been well brought up, good manners, great news.

  "I thought I would join you for a coffee while you eat," she said, "I discovered that I am really not hungry at all."

  I would guess that she was hungry. There probably weren't any sandwiches. I would bet that she just didn't want me to pay for a meal for her, didn't want to feel in my debt. Who cares, here she was, chipped tooth smiling away, green and red pullover, the body behind it. And the sun was shining, it was getting hot, and the goldfish were swimming around in their pond and I had the feeling there was nothing else I would rather be doing on this planet than sitting here with this amazing girl and enjoying my lecherous thoughts. Even if my lottery chances were moving in the direction of zero. Zero, yes, but a nice feeling, an unreal feeling, where is the cynic, where is the male on the hunt who loses interest as soon as the fox has gone down its hole? Don't ask me; it was just great to be around this girl, just to be able to look at her, just to be able to be with her, and it wouldn't have mattered if lottery chances had never been invented. Temporarily of course, you understand.

  My meal arrived and I ordered her coffee. I reminded myself not to look at her breasts, NOT ONCE, it could destroy the remaining 30% chance or whatever it had become by now.

  "And what exactly do you do in Rouen?" I asked. "Studying, or perhaps working?"

  "I am a schoolteacher," she said, flicking her ponytail and pushing up her glasses. "My main subjects are English and art."

  "But it's not school vacation time, is it? How come you are travelling around?"

  "No, it's not vacation time," she said, smiling, and that chipped tooth started to drive me crazy again. "But the school is closed for two weeks. An epidemic, we're not allowed to go anywhere near it until a week on Monday."

  So she's got another week free! The guy on the hunt was back and he noted this down in his neuron cupboard under the filename 'Potentially Useful Information'.

  "Hey, that's a piece of luck," I said, "And what do you plan on doing for the remaining week? Maybe help out your Mum with the gardening?"

  Yes, a bit lame I agree, but it fishes for two important pieces of information, two birds with one stone.

  "Oh no," she replied with a laugh, "I have my own apartment. My parents live way down in Biarritz. No, I'll just be preparing some work for my classes next week. We're doing some poetry at the moment, very modern stuff, very weird, excellent for enhancing creative critique skills. And we're also doing some old stuff like Coleridge, not weird exactly, but…well, let's say different."

  The waitress appeared and I ordered a coffee. Céline didn't want anothe
r one or anything else, she didn't want me to be spending any money on her, one coffee was the limit. I lit up a cigarette.

  "Coleridge," I said. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Some say he wrote it as a result of some conversations he had with Wordsworth."

  "You know a bit about poetry?" she asked, her eyes brightening and looking straight into mine for the first time.

  English Literature, a major finding, a useful weapon, noted down accordingly under the neuron filename 'Very Valuable Information'.

  "I did some at school, but to be truthful I've forgotten most of everything. 'Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs—upon the slimy sea'", I quoted with a smile, just to show that I was not only knowledgeable but modest about it into the bargain. In fact I was neither. Those two lines were my favorite schoolboy ones and are the only Coleridge lines I can nowadays quote. Not that Céline has a need to know that.

  Her smile broadened, the chipped tooth melted my spine again, and she leaned across the table and gave me a look which I can only describe as adoring; like I was some kind of a guru, but perhaps I was kidding myself.

  "You are a literary person, Peter," she said. "Literary people are people who have feelings. And people who have feelings can be very happy sometimes and they can be very sad sometimes. And that's because they live more intensely, things affect their feelings more deeply than they do with other kinds of people. Tell me, has a novel or a poem or a movie ever made you cry?"

  This was all very good news indeed. While the lottery chances weren't exactly increasing much, there was at least a clear strategic direction for me to follow. To which can be added the fact that she had actually used my name. I will be using hers soon, but not just yet—extreme caution was still the only viable tactic. Like playing the Cambridge Springs Defense as black—it might get you there in the long run but you need to be extremely patient and careful or you might get killed. A boring defense, nothing empirical about it, I don't play it.