by Bruno Noble
‘Of course not,’ I replied and increased my pace, side-stepping quickly around some pedestrians who were slowing us down.
Having given our names at our client’s reception, we sat in the dingy waiting room of a Japanese insurance company that, clearly, did not consider it a good thing to have one’s shareholders witness the spending of capital on opulent office space. I watched Sebastian leaf through a newspaper on the coffee table and was unexpectedly filled with a sense of missing Taka and David, men with whom I felt more certain of myself. Normally fluent and collected in our client meetings, I stumbled and added little value, conscious that Sebastian was understanding so much more of my and my client’s preambles, and yet uncertain of just how much.
Our meeting over, we considered it too late to return to the office and wandered westward instead, past St Paul’s Cathedral and then along Fleet Street to Covent Garden and the West End, the sun in our eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said in reply to my observation that he enjoyed his work. ‘That’s true. I love my side of the business. Without meaning to sound corny, it’s just that with options, your options really are open; you retain a degree of choice, if not quite control, at all times. In fact, you buy choice and freedom, both the freedom to choose and the freedom that owning insurance gives you. Come to think of it, it’s like life. I like to run my options book like I like to run my life.’ He looked at me a little smugly, but also as though he’d said too much.
‘So you’re saying,’ I said, in order to say something, ‘that your business somehow mirrors your life?’
‘Well, you could say that. I think that one has choice always, and to ignore that is to deny whatever element of freedom is open to you.’
‘But not everyone has a choice,’ I replied incredulously.
‘True, some have more choice than others. Wasn’t it Spinoza who said that even a jailed man can exercise the choice to walk into his prison cell willingly rather than allow himself to be thrown into it? That to act freely is to act as you must, to act according to your essence?’
Not knowing who Spinoza was, I kept silent, but his words, the ideas they signified, gave me a thrill in the challenge they presented. The crowds of pedestrians we moved against were like so many ideas in counter-current to mine, and I struggled to keep pace with Sebastian; literally and intellectually, I felt I was plodding.
‘But, more pragmatically, I guess I’m saying that we have more choice than we think we do. I mean, if in the evening I set my alarm clock to go off at six the following morning, and get up at six the following morning, it’s not because I said I would get up at six the night before but because, that morning at six, I chose to get up. I think that was Sartre,’ he added as an afterthought.
I needed quiet and time to consider his arguments and grew irritated by his name-dropping. ‘But what’s that got to do with options trading?’ I shouted after him.
‘I have no idea!’ He swung his attaché case high in the air.
‘Watch it!’ A pedestrian ducked and stepped off the pavement and into the street to avoid it.
‘Sorry!’ He gave a smile and received a frown in return. ‘Actually, I suppose it has more to do with the fact that options allow you to formulate a decision and to delay its execution, if not to postpone it indefinitely, and to manage its consequences better.’
We walked on in not uncomfortable silence for a while, the rush hour commuters and noise of buses now making it difficult to sustain a conversation.
I recalled hearing Sebastian explaining the difference between American and European options to a group of male new joiners at the bank one day. ‘American options and European options are different in one thing only,’ he had said. ‘American options can be exercised at any time while European options can only be exercised at expiry.’
The faces around his desk had remained blank.
‘Let’s put it this way. If I buy an American three-month option to buy a bond, I can buy the bond at any time before the end of the three months. If it is a European option, I can buy the bond only at theend of the three months.’
There had been a shuffling of feet and a shifting of body weight to accompany the increased level of comprehension and one of the young bankers had said, to a murmur of agreement, ‘How do you remember which is which? It’s like those binary Trivial Pursuit questions. Which foot did Neil Armstrong place on the moon first? I can never remember!’
‘That’s easy.’ Sebastian had looked straight at the speaker. ‘In my experience, you can exercise an American girl at any time while, with a European girl, you will get there… but only in the end!’
It hadn’t occurred to me to ask myself then, amid the chauvinist laughter, what I asked myself later, namely, And Japanese girls?How long had he been made to wait before he had exercised them?
I glanced at Sebastian now as he strode insouciant against the stream of ambulatory traffic, his blond hair bobbing in the setting sun and his arms swinging easily from his slightly sloping shoulders and thought, was that it for him? Was it all just about his keeping his options open? Was I a call option that would come to him when beckoned, or a put option he could discard once it had served its use? The sun lit a canine tooth that rested on his lip. I took six steps to his four to keep up with him. He dodged pedestrians, I noted, as adeptly and elegantly as he dodged personal questions; despite our time spent together in airport and hotel restaurants and in cafés, I knew little about him. Equally, to be fair, he never asked such questions; never asking them was, I realised, a good way of never inviting them. Which wasn’t to say our time together was dull and awkward; quite the contrary, because, rather than ask after family, siblings and personal history, he would ask about favourite books (that he was very interested in) and films (that he was less interested in) when he wasn’t answering my questions on finance, economics and politics – subjects he had taken over from David in my ongoing education. And then there was art. Art, I had come to realise was his ‘thing’, up there with literature and with options.
We stopped on Long Acre across the road from Covent Garden tube station where he squinted into the low sun and said, ‘That was a good meeting, by the way. We have some follow-up to do.’ He paused and I found myself hoping, for the first time, that he might suggest a drink or a bite to eat in what would have been our own time and not the bank’s. Instead, he said, ‘Well, see you tomorrow.’ Did that ‘well’ betray a degree of hesitation?
‘See you tomorrow.’ How hard would it have been for me to propose a quick drink?
Isabella
I had proposed we get together for dinner before the club opened and Sharon had recommended a restaurant called Lo Scoglio so there we went, Frederica, she and I, choosing to huddle around a table for two for the greater intimacy it provided. Frederica continued to dress like the music student she no longer was, in jeans, casual shoes and a baggy jumper. Sharon had come straight from the office and wore a tight secretarial suit and her hair pulled behind her in a bun, her green laser eyes scanning her life ahead in the evening’s half-light. She was greeted by the restaurant’s Italian proprietors warmly; they brought olives, bread sticks and water to the table unbidden and offered us aperitivi on the house.
‘So, what’s this about?’ asked Sharon excitedly and then, before I could answer her question, ‘Where’s Melanie?’
Frederica rolled her eyes. ‘With her fiancé. Where else? She’s not much longer for our world. I mean, if you ask me, she’s going to take over his business.’
‘I’ve found a new club,’ I announced.
‘Have you?’ exclaimed Sharon.
‘I’m giving up music,’ said Frederica.
‘Are you?’ repeated Sharon.
‘That’s news to me!’ I said.
‘I’ve just decided,’ said Frederica. She inspected an olive between her thumb and forefinger before placing it slowly in her mouth. ‘No money in it. Maybe later, when I’m older, I’ll go back to it.’
I waited to be asked a
bout my new club.
‘What about you, Sharon?’ asked Frederica, swallowing and reaching for a packet of grissini. ‘Any earth-shattering news from you?’
Sharon giggled. ‘Not from me. Ever!’
‘What about Wanda and Pierre?’ suggested Frederica.
‘What about them?’ Sharon shrugged.
‘What about your ex being back?’ persisted Frederica.
‘He’s been back ages!’ exclaimed Sharon. ‘And he’s just that. An ex.’
‘You knew that, Freddie, that he’s been back a while,’ I said, a little put out.
‘Well? Might you get back with him?’ Frederica kept her eyes on Sharon and reached for another olive.
Sharon replied with a slow, ‘No,’ and looked down at the floor.
‘I thought you liked him?’ Frederica wasn’t giving up.
‘I did,’ said Sharon wistfully. ‘But it seems he didn’t like me, not enough to take me to Japan with him.’
‘Send him to me,’ I stated simply, in an effort to be central to the conversation.
‘Well! That was then!’ Frederica sucked on a grissino before biting onto it.
‘No.’ Sharon shook her head. ‘It’s like I’ve moved on, finally, you know? It’s like’ – she looked up for inspiration – ‘we’re no longer the people we were before he went away, like we’d be trying to stick a broken plate back together with some of the pieces missing. Or something.’
‘Is he the really hunky blond? I remember your talking about him. Have him back! Until you find someone else. Unless you have someone else?’ Frederica arched her eyebrows knowingly.
‘No!’ replied Sharon to Frederica, and turned to me. ‘Did you say to send him to you? What a nice idea!’ She laughed.
‘Signorine!’ said the Italian waiter, notepad and pen in hand.
I felt peeved at my friends’ seeming indifference to my announcement but at some point, after we had been served, Frederica looked pointedly at me and said, ‘Go on, then. Tell us about your new club,’ and I understood that she, in turn, had been vexed at my not telling her sooner, at having clearly made a big decision without sharing the process with her – my longest-standing friend and flat-mate.
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Sharon. ‘Please do! And why?’
Mie
Taka’s marriage had ended so, on his third visit to London, he came on his own. I was curious as to whether or not a spark would kindle between us, given this second opportunity. It didn’t and, with some relief, we learnt to enjoy each other’s company safe in the knowledge that we would be just good friends.
It was with Taka that I had stood before paintings in the Tate and in the National Gallery and it was he, whose interest had moved from the moving image to the still, who had taught me to consider paintings critically. The dissolution of his marriage had given him a quality of introspection that, to my mind, had found its counterpoint in his discovery of art and painting. It was as though, no longer certain of his life’s trajectory, he no longer wanted the world to move before his eyes, as it did when he watched a film, but to stay still, so that he could better grasp it, examine it and understand it and, ultimately, make sense of his marriage’s wreckage. I had suggested this to him but he had only shrugged and encouraged me to visit London’s free museums more frequently.
So it was that one Sunday, not long after Taka had returned to Japan, I was standing in front of a painting in the Tate when I heard Sebastian’s voice over my shoulder. ‘Well, well.’
‘Hello,’ I replied in greeting. Blushing, as though caught in some illicit act or, perhaps, intuiting the painting’s extreme yet corrupt intimacy that it would embarrass me to share immediately with him, I didn’t turn to face him.
The label to the bottom left of it read, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Autumnal Cannibalism 1936 Oil paint on canvas. The painting, about 50 centimetres high and as wide, is of two grotesque, near androgynous figures, of two legless, featureless, plasticine torsos in a heads-together loving embrace (‘her’ extended, bulbous, distorted head supported by a crutch) in which she gently sinks a knife into his butter-like shoulder and he lovingly spoons some of hers while raising a fork to her head and, with his third hand (he has gained the hand she has lost) he squeezes a fistful of her fleshy, creamy waist. She, to the left of the picture, resides in a shallow earthenware dish; his chest is a drawer (with another fork and spoon protruding from it) on top of what appears, in the very foreground, to be a desk that morphs, as it recedes, into a desert landscape with a house and rocks and mountains on the horizon.
‘What do you think?’
What did I think?
‘Do you like it?’
My critical faculties, when it came to Western art, were muted relative to literature and to cinema. I struggled for context, for history, for points of reference or, having them, they were useless to me. We studied the painting in silence, me aware that that I still hadn’t turned to look at him and feeling silly for it. When I did, I was startled to note that this was the first time I had seen him not wearing a suit and I had to make a mental readjustment as I spoke – uncertain, in the immediate moment, as to whether I found him in his jeans, trainers, T-shirt and bomber jacket, in what appeared to me to be an imitation of Japanese trendy teenagers’ dress, endearing or exciting.
‘I do like it,’ I said.
He looked at me for more.
‘It’s beautifully executed and, although the two forms are engaged in a most horrible act of eating each other –’
‘There’s a tenderness in their embrace.’ He finished my sentence for me.
‘Yes, it’s like love consumes the lovers.’
His fair hair was relatively unkempt, and it occurred to me that he added something to it on workdays in order to bring it under control and make himself presentable. I fought against the impulse to run my fingers through it and to pat it down.
‘Yes!’ He appeared delighted. ‘I’m so glad you like it. I love Dali. Art critics tend to dismiss him because he’s occasionally sensationalist or scatological or’ – he sought a word – ‘vulgar in other ways but, in doing so, they do his composition, his brushwork and his palette no justice.’
We left the Tate and rambled, with the sun in our eyes, along Millbank and then turned onto Vauxhall Bridge and crossed the Thames. A long way ahead of us, on the other side of the bridge, was another couple, two people of indeterminate sex (from this distance), side by side like two inverted commas; we must have looked the same to them, and the bridge a long equivocal statement between two pairs of quotation marks.
‘Are you in a rush to get home?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I replied, turning to look at him. The sun was low in the sky and the light bright so that his face, framed in its halo of fair hair, remained in shadow; my eyes couldn’t adjust.
‘Let’s go there,’ he said pointing down the road to a lonely, tired-looking Georgian house that appeared out of place amid the jumble of building works that were going on around it. ‘It’s a strange place. A mix of architectural salvage and café.’ We toured rooms full of reclaimed chimneypieces and fire grates, dining tables and chairs, lamps and chandeliers, glass and brass door knobs, kitchen dressers and obsolete kitchenware, pots, jars and cracked porcelain and old paintings and carpets before settling down and ordering tea and scones. He said, ‘It’s ironic, really.’
‘What is?’
‘Our meeting in front of Autumnal Cannibalism.’ He pronounced the last two words distinctly.
Well, it was autumn. Still, I said, ‘Why’s that?’
He uncrossed his legs and leant forward. ‘What is the only developed country in the world not to have outlawed cannibalism?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘Go on. Guess.’
‘Japan?’
‘Yes!’
‘That’s simply not true!’ I retorted, uncertain of what my confidence was based on.
He held his hands up. ‘Okay, not the only country. I was be
ing facetious. Still.’
‘Still what? Where’s the irony?’ Even if what he’d said was true, the fact that I was Japanese and had been looking at the painting didn’t register as worth commenting on, in my view.
‘Okay, maybe there’s no irony,’ he said and then, as though to justify himself, he added, ‘But, you know, there’s a long history of anthropophagy in Japanese literature. And I’ve long had this thing about cannibalism and Japan.’ He stopped talking as tea was brought to the table, and allowed the waitress to pour once he had checked that it had sufficiently brewed. By way of explanation, he continued, ‘My mother had a friend who studied in Paris, where she befriended a student who was murdered and in part consumed by a Japanese student.’ He paused as though to gauge the effect this had on me. ‘The police found parts of her body in his fridge. Anyway, he confessed to the murder. You must have heard about this.’
I had.
‘It was in all the papers. They called him The Paris Cannibal. He never served much of a jail sentence and was acquitted on a legal technicality.’
I blew on my tea.
‘You know, it’s strange,’ he conceded. ‘My knowing the woman second hand, as it were, makes the story feel so much more immediate. I only later read about it. The man was clearly crazy, but this idea he had that someone could absorb some of the qualities of another by eating them – well, that’s just mad.’
‘There’s this expression, that you are what you eat.’
‘Yes,’ he laughed, ‘but I think that refers to food quality and provenance.’ He held up a scone and said, ‘I am a scone!’ before biting into it. He offered me one. ‘And then,’ he said, having swallowed, ‘there’s another story –’