'Have a bit of dignity,' his reversal says.
I don't know whether that's a contradiction or an additional direction. Are they urging me to put on some kind of performance for them? I should be searching for a way to contact the bank. I dodge between the men and tramp alongside the canal.
I'd forgotten the street was so busy. For the last few minutes, which felt as prolonged as a dream, I was aware only of my interrogators. When I glance back they aren't at the machine, and I can't locate them in the crowd. Where am I dashing to? How can I get some money? I feel as if my panic has seized control of my body, driving it helplessly onwards with no goal beyond escape – and then I stagger to a halt and laugh out loud. I mustn't take the men's words as a joke. They've told me the solution.
I'm nearly at a bridge across the jittery water. Several bicycles are chained to the railings that border the canal. How would Tubby play the scene? I don a wide fixed big-eyed grin and prance back and forth in front of the bicycle closest to the bridge. As soon as a few people stop to watch I mime trying to ride. I make several attempts to mount the bicycle, only to tumble each time on the flagstones. I pedal away on the air instead and look back, wondering why I'm not on the machine. I pretend to sit on an inventively rickety seat until I impale myself on it. By now my face is aching with my frozen grin, which I maintain as I strive to pump up a pair of invisible tyres that keep growing unequal and finally burst like Tubby's balloon head. That's my finale, or at any rate all I can invent. I go for a bow without rising to my feet and sprawl face down in front of my audience.
I've been hearing laughter, however muted, and now it's followed by a ripple of applause, unless that's the canal. Were my efforts useless? I haven't provided a container for donations. I seem unable to stop grinning at my idiocy as I turn my left hand over on its back and stretch it out. In a moment a cold object lands in my palm, followed by another. Others clink on the pavement, and one trundles against the edge of my hand.
I don't dare look until my benefactors have moved on, leaving me to count my bruises and my takings. I've earned eleven euros, no, twelve – more. 'Thank you,' I call, which only attracts stares from passers-by who seem to think I have no reason. I drop the coins into my trousers pocket as I wobble to my feet. I have more than enough money to pay my bill at the Pot of Gold, and I mean to retrieve my card. For all I know, the man behind the counter can deduce my number from the way I typed it in.
Once through the alley was enough. I take the cross-street that leads from the bridge. People give me an unexpected amount of room until I realise that it's time to finish grinning. I find it hard to suppress my laughter at that, even when I think of the hole that's my account – a hole in more than the wall. I pinch my cheeks to force my mouth shut, and succeed in achieving silence as I turn left alongside the first canal.
Glittering ripples snag my concentration as I head for the nearest bridge. I didn't realise I had strayed so far from the hotel. I can't see it or the Pot of Gold ahead for the nagging of the ripples, but my destination certainly isn't behind me; it's on this side of the street and past the bridge. I wish there weren't so many people; their toothy silhouettes interfere with my vision whenever I peer ahead. When I reach the bridge I hurry to the middle, and the railing seems to grow soft and clammy in my grasp. Though I can see both ways for at least half a mile, there's no sign of the Pot of Gold or the Dwaas Hotel.
It isn't possible. I didn't cross water to reach the other street. The thick lurid ripples pester my vision, and I'm irresistibly reminded of the optical effect that used to signal a shift of time and space in films. The buildings appear to pinch thinner as if they're about to change before my eyes. How many of them contain sex shops? Are the naked figures on the covers of the videos in the windows really so fat or so young or both? 'You're there,' I assure my destination, and an Oriental couple veers across the bridge to keep out of my way. 'Excuse me,' I blurt, though they're chattering in Cantonese or some other Chinese language. 'Can you help?'
Both of them smile or at least show their teeth. 'Dutch,' the man says. 'Speak Dutch.'
Perhaps I can sufficiently to make myself understood. 'Dwaas,' I say, gesturing around me. 'Dwaas Hotel.'
I haven't finished when the man scowls and ushers his partner away. Have I committed some offence against Chinese etiquette? Three young women talking Dutch step onto the bridge, and I hurry to meet them. 'Dwaas,' I plead, holding out my upturned hands. 'Dwaas.'
How wrong can my pronunciation be? They seem uncertain whether to laugh or to react in some quite different way, but settle for dodging around me. The next person I accost merely grins and nods, and a woman widens her eyes and jerks her head back. I'm beginning to feel trapped in the cell of my solitary Dutch word when I have what I fervently hope is an inspiration. 'Pot of Gold,' I beg a businessman.
He frowns, and I'm wondering if he disapproves of such establishments too much to direct me when he points behind me. 'It is there.'
'No it – ' But it is, on the far side of the next bridge. Could I have overlooked it because I misread the name of the hotel? What kind of name is Sward? I have the unsettling notion that if I get any name wrong I'll be unable to perceive whatever it belongs to. 'Thanks,' I say and sprint alongside the canal before my goal can vanish.
The giant leaf etched on the window of the Pot of Gold unfurls to greet me. It's enlivened by a reflection from the canal. I shoulder the door open and fumble in my pocket as I stride to the counter. 'Here's your money,' I say and plant my fist next to my open hand on the counter. 'Where's my card? I need it to phone.'
The stump of a man shakes his large head, so that my fingers are twitching to grab him by the time he says 'You cannot phone from here.'
'In my room.' I open my fist to let him glimpse the coins. 'My card. I'm buying it back.'
He stares at the fist and reaches under the counter – for a weapon? The old Three Stooges trick will disable him. The first two fingers of my free hand stretch out like a snail's horns, and I'm raising my arm for a poke at his eyes when he produces my credit card. Knowing I nearly attacked him, I'm overwhelmed by panic. I open my hands, and the coins spill across the counter. My hot prickly head feels permeated with all the cannabis I can smell. I snatch the card from him and turn away from the room, which appears to be growing smaller and dimmer. A question stops me, and I turn back to him. 'What does dwaas mean?'
'Fool.'
His stare suggests he's calling me this, and perhaps he is as well. I begin giggling as I step into the night. Is the hotel called Sward or Sword? Is there a gap between the first two letters? I haven't time to check any of this when I need to phone the bank. I fall silent and lurch into the hotel.
The receptionist seems more elongated than ever. I'm reminded so intensely of an image of a fat man projected in the wrong ratio that I can scarcely bear to look at him as I say 'Any word from the airport?'
'There has been no change. We will let you know when they are coming for you.'
I needn't imagine that sounds ominous. I thank him and clamber up the stairs, which can't really have grown even closer to vertical. The enlarged two-dimensional flower borders that are the walls of the corridor aren't stirring in a surreptitious breeze. The slabs in the walls are classified by number, and mine is 14. I pass 12 and slide the card into the slot on the next one and twist the handle, or try to. The key doesn't work.
The number is unquestionably 14, and I sense 13 looming at my back. Who's in my room? Are they holding the door shut? More than one of them is laughing. Perhaps they're amused by my error, because I snatch the card out to discover that I've been trying to open the door with my credit card. I drag the key out of my pocket and shove it in the slot so hard it bends. I withdraw it before it snaps and lean on the handle, which yields at once.
I hold the door open with one foot while I grope into the dark for the slot that activates the lights. The room is as silent as a Tubby Thackeray film, and I can't tell whether the smell of cannabis is
waiting for me or clinging to me or following me in. As I take another pace to reach the slot, a silhouette steps out of a concealed dwarfish entrance to meet me. I stagger backwards and laugh, having identified my reflection in the dressing-table mirror. I jam the card into the slot so viciously the plastic almost cracks.
The room is deserted except for the two of me. No, there's another in the mirror on the door of the narrow wardrobe. The laughter must have been in an adjacent room. I chain the door and sit on the bed while I find my bank card with the details of my account, and then I see that circumstances are on my side for a change. The number for reporting problems can be called free from anywhere in Europe.
A recorded female voice asks me to listen carefully and invites me to select one of half a dozen options with the keypad. Though my extremities, not least my skull, are prickling with frustration, I won't be fooled – I know that any option only leads to another list of more. The voice informs me that it hasn't recognised my response and performs its entire routine again before undertaking to connect me with an actual live human being. The voice that eventually answers the bell may be the same one; certainly it's recorded. It tells me that all lines are closed until tomorrow morning and offers to take a message.
I don't fling the phone at either of my wildly grinning reflections. I read the details from my card and tell the bank that it has turned my balance negative. I add my email address and Natalie's phone number before exhorting the bank to put the problem right and let me know. 'The name's Lester,' I say in case I omitted it. 'Simon Lester. That's Simon Lester.'
My reflections mouth it, which feels less like support than a threeway dissipation. I hang up the phone and wish I had a laptop to work on my book. The thought fills my brain with undefined ideas about Tubby and his collaborator, but for some reason I prefer not to examine them just now. I fetch the remote control and sit against the headboard of the bed and switch on the television that's squatting on a corner of the dressing-table. It hasn't many channels, and not a single one in English.
Although people are laughing on all of them, the jokes aren't visible to me. What's comical about footage of riots, for instance? I can only take the programme as some kind of satire. When a presenter starts to laugh directly into camera as if at my confusion, I've had enough. I switch off the set and wish I could switch off my equally electric skull. Perhaps I can doze if I lie in the dark.
I shouldn't have brought Tubby to mind earlier. Each time I attempt to follow a chain of pleasant memories – working with Natalie, befriending Mark, moving in with them – in the hope that it leads to sleep, I end up with Tubby's pallid luminous face swelling close to mine. Too often it jerks me awake, such as now. What time is it? Still dark. I raise my wrist towards my eyes, which feel shrunken with exhaustion. At first I take the roundish object that's hovering above me for my watch.
It's on the ceiling. Before I can focus, it slides down the wall and under the bed. It must have been light from the road, but how is that possible? Headlight beams beside the canal wouldn't reach up here. I must have overlooked a side road or an alley opposite the hotel. While I resent having to confirm this, if I don't I'm even less likely to sleep. I throw off the quilt and stumble across the narrow strip of carpet to yank at the cord of the blind.
There's no opening across the canal. The buildings stick together without a gap as far as I can see in both directions. Staring at them only gives me the impression that the ripples on the water are invading my skull. Did somebody in one of the houses train a spotlight on my room? The notion makes me feel watched, all the more relentlessly since I can't identify from where – and then I realise that a boat must have cast the light. I close the slats of the blind and turn away with a laugh, and step on the object that has emerged from under the bed.
My mind struggles to present me with the idea that I'm on a beach and have trodden on a jellyfish. The intruder is cold and rubbery enough, but the similarity doesn't work even before I look down. In some ways it does indeed resemble a jellyfish; it's flattish and as good as round, and pale, and glistening. It widens its eyes and its grin at me before slithering under the bed.
THIRTY-TWO - I'M IN MOTION
I know where I am now. I'm really on my way home. If the Frugojet staff at the departure gate are wearing red pointed floppy hats, that simply proves it's real. The drug is losing its hold on my mind; in fact, it must have worn off hours ago. I didn't actually see Tubby's flattened face crawl across the floor of my room, even if I can't forget how the cold puffy substance felt under my bare foot. I seemed to feel the cheek quivering with gelatinous mirth, but it has to have been the drug.
I couldn't convince myself then. I almost fell headlong in my haste to switch on the light and to avoid anything that shouldn't be on the floor. I grabbed my toiletries and threw them in my suitcase before realising I'd left it open while I was in the cupboard that did duty as a bathroom. I pawed fearfully through the contents and shook my clothes to establish that they weren't harbouring an intruder. As soon as I was dressed I hauled the case out of the room and barely prevented it from tumbling me head first down the precipice of the stairs.
The receptionist or night porter or whatever occupation had been compressed into his spindly form was at the desk. 'I have not called you yet,' he said, no doubt thinking that I didn't trust his promise or possibly his English. I mumbled to the effect that I preferred not to risk hurrying down those stairs, and slumped in a chair, jamming my wrist through the extended plastic handle to keep my luggage safe. He looked affronted by the gesture, and I could only pray that he wouldn't leave me on my own.
At some stage he did. I kept nodding off even though it took me back to the hotel room, where I crouched on the bed in an attempt to stay clear of the faces that swarmed from beneath it. They glided snail-like up and down the walls or poised themselves on the ceiling as if they were preparing to drop on me, a prospect that made them grin more widely still. When I lurched awake and found the counter unattended, I grew afraid of seeing the replacement's face. The next time I regained consciousness, however, the squeezed man was back. 'They are coming for you now,' he said with no expression at all.
The van had barely enough space for my luggage and me. The seven passengers stared hard at me as I clambered in, and the woman beside me edged away, waving one wrinkled hand like a farewell she wished she could make. As the burly driver slid the door shut he gave me a grin so secret I couldn't tell whether I was expected to share it. All the way to the airport I clung to a handhold on the door. I was ensuring that I didn't loll against my neighbour, but I felt as if I was clutching at the moment so that the room infested with Tubby's face didn't recapture my mind.
It can't now. The departure hall is loud with announcements, and every row of seats around the departure gate features children squabbling or wailing or both. To help keep me awake I have the twinges of my wrist, which I must have scraped on the handle of my suitcase. Nobody appears to understand the new delay, including the Frugojet staff, but one of them is reaching for a microphone. She lets go of it to do up the top button of her blouse, on which FRUGO is emblazoned in increasingly large capitals apparently emitted by the rear of a toy jet, and then she picks up the microphone, producing a magnified clunk and an electronic squeal. 'Thank you for your patience,' she says. 'Flight FRU 2012 to London Heathrow is now ready to board.'
This receives a standing ovation not far short of hysteria. She halts the stampede to the gate by inviting the disabled and anyone burdened with small children to board first. Families with larger children take advantage of this as well. Her invitation to all remaining passengers to board is as good as redundant, since everyone stays crowded around the gate. The protracted seconds her colleague takes to check my boarding card and passport make me feel as if time is congealing around me again. As I tramp down the temporary corridor it shivers in the wind. I grin at the pilot, since a pointed red hat trimmed with white is drooping on his head. Once the crowd lets me reach the first empt
y aisle seat I sit next to a woman who sneezes in greeting. Neither this nor her girth augurs well for the journey, but passengers are pushing by me, and changing my seat would be impolite.
At last everyone's seated, having crammed the magically capacious lockers with items bigger than the cabin is supposed to accept. By this time I've examined the contents of the pocket on the seat a child has tilted within inches of my face. I ask him if he really needs so much space, but either he and his mother are deaf or they're ignorant of English. I feel as if I'm in the cheap seats. The pocket contains a vomit bag stuffed with sweet papers, a dog-eared copy of the airline's magazine Flies in which the margins are full of incomprehensible scribbles, and an extensively chewed safety instruction card. The tooth marks look unappealingly fresh, but a steward gestures me to hold onto it. It's time for the safety demonstration.
I want to believe he's serious, but the wagging of his red hat that would barely fit a pixie doesn't help. Nor does his grin, which is too close to fixed. I could imagine that he's using it to communicate with his colleague behind me. He enacts the action of the seat belt with a relish that suggests he's binding a captive and only reluctantly letting them go. He stretches his arms so wide to indicate the emergency exits that he might be parodying a crucifixion, especially when his fingers wriggle in the air. He drops into such a sudden crouch to point at the emergency lighting concealed in the floor that the boy in front of me flinches, jolting the seat nearly into my face. Of course the steward doesn't actually fancy that he's using an oxygen mask to hang a victim, but there's no mistaking his imperfectly suppressed mirth when the recorded voice to which he's miming warns passengers not to inflate their life-jackets inside the aircraft. Is he tempted to yank the toggle on his jacket and block the aisle with his ballooning self?
During the performance the plane has crawled backwards and then forwards while my neighbour sneezes into a succession of tissues pulled out of a box. At first the tarry darkness outside the dwarfish windows seems to retard the wings, and then they slice through it as they gather speed. I feel the ground vanish, and the windows turn blank as dead screens. 'They've gone,' the boy cries in front of me. 'The wings have fallen off.'
The Grin of the Dark Page 22