by Geoff Dyer
‘That’s England,’ said Luke.
‘Deep England,’ said Alex.
‘The other thing I remember was the television,’ said Nicole. ‘Nothing but snooker.’ This got the biggest laugh of the evening: it was the first time anyone had heard of this game that rhymed with hooker.
Everyone had finished eating. Luke took the plates away and Nicole brought in a bowl of fruit. Sahra undid a banana, badly bruised, ‘just as I like it’. She has perverse taste in fruit, thought Alex. Miles asked Nicole if there might be ‘another drop of wine hidden away somewhere’. There were still two open bottles on the table but he was getting worried. Nicole was reassuring him – there was an assortment of bottles, she said, in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet – as Luke reappeared with seven lines of powder spread neatly on a CD case.
‘Dessert!’ he beamed. We didn’t earn much at the warehouse. Cocaine was an expensive luxury, the kind of thing you kept hidden away if there were lots of people around, but Luke was not like that. Either generosity was not something he had needed to learn or it was something he had learned before I met him, before he came to Paris.
Nicole didn’t want her line which was shared by Alex and Luke (‘yes, always yes’) even though coke sometimes made him jittery. Everyone started gabbling at once. Nicole turned up the music. She and Sally began dancing. Ahmed was flicking through records and when he found one he liked he got up and danced too. Sally had smoked a lot of dope in the course of the evening and had laughed often. She had said very little but she was a terrific dancer. With the music turned up loud it was necessary to shout. Luke began dancing in his seat while talking and then got up to join the others, leaving Alex and Sahra and Miles talking at the table. The music became louder. Alex and Sahra joined in the dancing and Luke turned it up again and then announced – or suggested – a change of plan. Instead of staying in and dancing and annoying the neighbours, why didn’t they go to The Select? Five minutes later he was locking up the apartment while everyone else trooped downstairs.
They walked through the crowds of young people from the suburbs who had come to the quartier for Friday night and were hysterical, drunk. Even the roads were full of people strolling. At one point Luke and Nicole found themselves on opposite sides of the road. A young guy who was walking in the middle of the street looked at Nicole. His eyes lingered on her and then he looked over at the opposite pavement, at Luke – who was yacking away to Miles – and knew, instantly, that they were together. An energy linked them even when they were not standing together or looking at each other.
Miles told Luke he was too old for dancing and slipped off to a bar before they got to the club. The others joined the queue. It was an essential part of the experience, queuing. People were frisked thoroughly. No one was allowed to bring drugs into the club; the only people not expected to were those who had taken them already. You could feel the throb of the bass outside but the music hit you as you went in, as you passed into another world, where the rules of outside ceased to exist. It was packed. The throb felt outside was not simply the bass: it was also the pulse of all the energy confined inside. Everyone began dancing. No one wanted drinks – what a relief not to have to queue for over-priced beer at the bar – and in minutes they were consumed by the music. Luke was a terrible dancer – his arms were too long, he neglected to move his hips; Nicole said he looked like a giraffe having a seizure – but in this environment it was impossible not to dance perfectly. Everyone was a spectator, everyone was a participant. Luke (thought he) was dancing like Nicole who danced wonderfully. Her eyes burned blue in the ultraviolet, her teeth cackled. Luke’s T-shirt was drenched with sweat. They knew some of the tracks, recognized, now and again, the samples that had been used to make these new tracks which were themselves segments of one enormous piece of music, endlessly mixed and remixed, lasting seven or eight hours.
Ahmed and Sally left at about four. Luke, Nicole, Alex and Sahra left later, their ears buzzing with noise. The city was at the quietest point in its day. The only people around were the garbage men and a few other strays who had been up all night. A single car circled the Bastille. It was too early and too late to go anywhere else: Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside Lila’s. Sahra had to go in the opposite direction to the other three. Alex offered to walk her home but she was fine. They waved goodbye. Nicole and Luke said goodbye to Alex at his apartment.
Luke and Nicole showered and lay in bed. ‘It’s so lovely to go to bed and not have sex,’ Luke whispered. ‘Isn’t it?’ Nicole was already asleep. He lay on his back, unable to sleep, drifting. There will come a time, he thought, when I will look back on this night, when I will lie in another bed, when happiness will have come to seem an impossibility, and I will remember this night, remember how happy I was, and will remember how, even when I was in the midst of my happiness, I could feel a time when it would be gone. And I will realize that this knowledge was a crucial part of that happiness . . . The same thought went through many remixes as he lay there, drifting, alert, sort of asleep.
They woke late but not late enough to feel rested. It began to rain. Nicole had to work. Luke washed up and meandered to his apartment. He passed a fountain he had not noticed before, struggling to hold its own in the rain. Alex came round in the late afternoon, miserable about Sahra.
‘I can’t work her out,’ he said to Luke.
‘Nor me.’
‘I mean, what does she want?’
‘Who knows?’
They were playing records, taking it in turns to flick through Pariscope, convinced that if they went through it one more time, there would be a film to go to.
‘This is the best city in the world for flms—’
‘Correct.’
‘—and there are still not enough films on.’
‘Also correct.’
‘In fact it’s useless for films.’
‘The truth is we probably spend too much time at the cinema. If we went less there would be more to see,’ said Luke. ‘Pass me Pariscope, could you?’
‘There’s nothing left to see,’ said Alex, handing it over. ‘We’ve reached saturation point.’
‘I can’t believe Strange Days isn’t on. Have you seen it?’
‘No.’
‘Now there’s a film for you, there’s cinema.’
‘I thought it was just a rehash of Blade Runner.’
‘Are you kidding? It’s the ultimate. The last word in cinema.’
‘Right up there with Chariots of Fire, yeah?’
‘That’s what I’m in the mood for this afternoon. Something English.’
‘You’re right, it’s the kind of afternoon that makes you wish you were back in England, watching telly.’
‘What would you watch? Ideally. Apart from Chariots of Fire, I mean.’
‘Good question.’ Alex paused. ‘Colditz, I think.’
‘Any particular episode?’
‘They were all great episodes.’
‘Basically you can’t go wrong with that genre.’
‘Albert R.N.’
‘The Wooden Horse.’
‘The One That Got Away.’
‘Which one’s that?’
‘The one about the German fighter pilot escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in England or Scotland.’
‘I remember asking my dad about that. About why so many English prisoners-of-war tried to escape and only one German. He said it was because they liked it in England. Good food, pleasant scenery.’
‘They’re always idyllic, POW camps.’
‘Especially Colditz, the TV one, I mean.’
‘The place in The Great Escape, that was the real Club Med of POW camps. There was so much to do there: tunnelling, getting rid of the sand, choir practice to cover up the noise of digging . . .’
‘Forging papers, making escape suits out of blankets.’
‘Growing vegetables in the thin soil outside the hut.’
‘And footba
ll, always football.’
‘Elaborate systems of knocks, folding newspapers, whistling and tapping pipes to warn of approaching guards.’
‘Goons. Not guards, goons.’
‘Goons, right.’
‘Red Cross parcels.’
‘The commandant: basically a good sort.’
‘Studied in Oxford before the war. Hence his good English. Editions of Goethe on his bookshelf. Emphatically not a Nazi. Considers Hitler a vulgar little corporal, a man with no culture.’
‘The Geneva Convention.’
‘Simply a loyal officer of the Wehrmacht. Doing his duty but already resigned to Germany losing the war.’
‘But always, in the background, the shadow of the SS: the snake of threat in this carceral paradise.’
‘Still pretty nice though: a public school with the officers as prefects—’
‘The escape committee.’
‘And the odd Welsh—’
‘Taff!’
‘Or Scot—’
‘Jock!’
‘Or chirpy Cockney—’
‘Blimey!’
‘As fags, running errands. A little microcosm of England where everyone knows their place but all the classes, all ranks, muck in together.’
‘So why bother escaping? They’re home already.’
‘It’s the duty of every officer to escape.’
‘Thereby diverting troops that might otherwise have been used at the front.’
‘Plus the obligation to escape reinforces the pleasantness of being there. Without that there’d be nothing to do. Time would weigh as heavily on your hands as tunnel dirt. The purpose of escape is to make you cherish your time there, like last orders in a pub, to make you realize it’s not going to last for ever, this little public-school Eden.’
‘To escape. It’s an existential need.’
‘Plus it’s not really home. There are no women for a start.’
‘That’s not a problem. All sexuality is sublimated in the act of tunnelling. No women and no gays.’
‘There’s no boozer.’
‘Basically it’s not Civvy Street.’
‘Exactly.’
‘When I was young I used to think Civvy Street was this street in London where everyone worked and then went drinking afterwards.’
‘The border. Switzerland.’
‘Neutral Switzerland.’
‘Heading for the border, for neutral Switzerland, on the train.’
‘Sweating in your escape suit. Double-breasted, pinstripe. Trilby pulled down over your eyes, trying to hide behind your newspaper.’
‘Praying you don’t bump into that old bore Charles Bronson.’
‘Banging on about all the tunnels he’s dug. A real one track mind. Either that or throwing a tantrum about being claustrophobic.’
‘Half the passengers on the train are escaped POWs.’
‘Rush-hour on the Switzerland Express. Standing room only.’
‘The Gestapo getting on the train.’
‘Brown leather overcoats. Buttoned up. A creaking sound as they move up the carriage, checking documents, peering.’
‘Sweating even more in your escape suit, so much so that the makeshift dye is forming a small blue pool at your feet.’
‘Clutching your forged inter-rail pass.’
‘Wishing to God you hadn’t flunked German O level.’
‘And he says to you in his Rommel German: “Guten Morgen, can I see your papers?” Trying to catch you out by throwing in a bit of English.’
‘You’re about to make a run for it —’
‘Then you realize he’s an escaped POW as well, disguised as a member of the Gestapo, winding you up.’
‘Hissing at him as he sits next to you: “You’re a damn fool Hargreaves!”’
‘Ah, I feel better.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Me neither.’
Alex got up and looked out of the window. It was still raining.
‘I can’t make her out,’ he said.
‘More to the point,’ said Luke, ‘you can’t make out with her. Ho ho.’ He had his feet on the coffee table. No lights were on in the room. It was growing dark. The streetlights were on. Neon squirmed in the street.
‘Maybe we should go to a film,’ said Luke, picking up Pariscope again.
‘Maybe we should dig a tunnel.’
‘You’re right. We’re wire happy.’
‘Are you seeing Nicole tonight?’ said Alex.
‘Yes. Do you have plans to see Sahra?’
‘I guess I’ll call her.’
The music started, drowning out the rain.
It was still pouring when Luke set out for Nicole’s. Just outside his building he bumped into Miles.
‘How lovely to see you, Luke!’ he said, unperturbed by the rain. He was taking his Labrador for a walk.
‘Shit, Miles, you look like you’ve been tramping round in the rain ever since we said goodbye.’
‘Not at all. I was tramping round at home until half an hour ago. How was the dancing?’ They stood talking in the rain. Miles asked Luke where he was going, said he’d walk with him part of the way, show him a shortcut.
‘I’ve often wondered where this led,’ said Luke as they came to an alley.
‘That was your mistake,’ admonished Miles. ‘In this world there is one unique path which no one but you may walk. Where does it lead? Don’t ask: take it.’
‘You always sound like you’re quoting, Miles.’
‘Nonsense! Anyway, I must be getting on,’ he said, holding out his hand to say goodbye.
‘You don’t want to come to Nicole’s for a drink?’
‘Must go. Phone me. Turn right at the end of the alley and you’re there.’
‘OK. Bye Miles.’
‘Ha!’
Nicole had washed her hair, was wearing her toothpaste-striped robe, sitting cross-legged on the floor, pulling apart a book of sepia-tinted photographs of the New Mexico desert. She had salvaged the book from a skip full of water-damaged books. One by one she held up the pictures and tried them in a frame with a circular picture window.
‘What about that one?’ The circular mount made all the photos look as if they were of the same brownish planet.
‘It’s OK.’
Luke saw Nicole and himself in the Belgrade mirror. She sipped from a mug of tea, yellow, and tried some more pictures. Eventually she chose a photo of the wind-filled sierra, clouds in the distance. She taped the frame together and held it up. She was in a dreamy state.
‘Lovely isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’
‘It is. You see, I love things that are disappointing.’
‘Is that why you like me?’
‘Probably.’ She kissed him. Luke moved behind her and kissed her neck.
‘I bumped into Miles as I was walking here. He had his dog with him, a lovely Labrador.’
She turned her head and kissed him. ‘And?’
Luke kissed her neck again and pushed the robe up her back, to her shoulders. ‘I stroked its head. I looked in its eyes. And I remember thinking: if I concentrate hard now I will learn the difference between a dog and a human being. Imagine that. All I had to do was concentrate. But of course I didn’t bother, because of the rain. But something came out of it: a kind of residue of ungrasped illumination.’
‘What a stupid story.’ Luke knelt behind her and licked down her back. She lay still, looked at the mirror, waited. He bit her buttocks lightly, licked up her back again, almost as far as her shoulders, and then down again. She lay still, waited. He traced the valley between her buttocks with his tongue, not pressing. She moved, almost imperceptibly. He licked more deeply between her buttocks, almost touching her. She pushed up at him. His tongue brushed her anus. She opened her legs more, pushed herself at his face. He touched her again with his tongue, wetting her. He stiffened his tongue, waiting, until she eased back on to it. His hands were on her buttocks, pulling them apart. He pu
shed his tongue into her and then, when she was wet, circled her arsehole with his finger, slid it into her.
‘Wait,’ she said. She stood up and walked into the bedroom. Luke undressed. She came back and passed him a pot of moisturising cream. She felt the cream on her, cool; in the mirror she saw him dip his fingers into the pot, watched them disappear between her buttocks.
‘Is that too cold?’ he said.
‘Even here,’ she said, ‘he has to regulate the temperature. It’s cool. It’s nice. Look at the mirror.’ Everything they saw lagged fractionally behind what they felt. He slid his finger into her more easily, began masturbating her arsehole. He felt her tense, relax, tighten, relax. She reached back, pushed her own fingers into the pot and smeared cream on to him.
He moved towards her, began pressing gently. In the mirror she was still rubbing lotion on to him. His penis slid up between her buttocks. She reached back and guided him. He pressed. She gasped.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. Shall I stop?’
‘No, try again.’ She pulled her buttocks apart. He could see her arsehole, dark, smudged with white cream. He leaned forward, pressed.
‘Yes, there . . . No, there. Yes.’ She felt him enter her. ‘Ah, gently. Wait, wait.’ His prick was in her now. ‘OK.’ He pushed a little more, could feel the head of his prick inside her, gripped tight. In the mirror she saw him pressing, not yet inside her.
‘Yes.’
‘Is that nice?’
‘Yes, yes. Do it harder, deeper,’ she said, touching herself.
‘I’m going to come soon.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wait.’
‘Come, come soon.’
‘Yes, now, yes.’
Luke collapsed on top of her. In the mirror they were still locked together, tensed on the brink of coming. They lay as they were, not speaking, then Luke moved on to his side.
‘Is it . . . is it clean?’ said Nicole. Luke looked down at his penis.
‘Yes.’
‘What a relief.’
‘It wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t,’ said Luke. ‘But I’ll go to the bathroom anyway.’