by Tim Pears
‘Come on, Dad,’ Blaise said, tugging his sleeve.
Coaches had arrived from Oxford filled with a hundred and fifty employees of the company who ranked in between menial staff and senior management, all costumed in fancy dress: Ezra and Blaise jostled towards their table between merchants in flannel suit and fez; pious women in black purdah, modest men in djellaba; Ali Baba lads, Salome girls, Cleopatra, a number of Yasser Arafats in kaffiyeh headdress and scarf, Bedouin, two Lawrences of Arabia, Roman centurions, a disciple or two, Moses with a plastic clay tablet … It was a time-spanning epic of a film set milling with extras from Isis Water who bustled and thronged in and out of intimate circles.
Being led to the tables, by Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian waiters dressed in impeccable black-and-white service attire, were the guests and executives. Ezra and Blaise found themselves at a table with the President of the Qatar International Bank and his wife on one side; on the other a journalist from The Economist and a budding music producer whose small label imported CDs from North Africa and Egypt.
‘Isis Water,’ he explained to the bank president and the journalist, ‘are sponsoring our research into music in the West Bank and Gaza, with the promise of recording contracts for young artists.’
Ezra was able to speak of this venture from Isis Water’s point of view – as did colleagues of similar plans at other tables; of how the company was dedicated to enriching the lives of their customers in ways beyond the supply of water. To investing in the spiritual as well as the material well-being of the community.
The bank president’s wife said, ‘That is such a fine idea, because music transcends boundaries like no other human activity. Just last year I saw Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra when they performed in Chicago. Have you heard them, my dear?’ she asked, turning to Blaise. ‘Most of the musicians are your age, and drawn from all over the Middle East. Arab and Israeli.’
‘See, what we’re looking for is the exact same thing,’ the young producer said. ‘But from the street.’
On the stage, entertainments commenced, while at the tables falafel, fried tomatoes and mutabbal were served. Artichoke hearts with coriander, pickled green olives. Fallahi, yoghurt and jarjeer salads. Chicken Fatteh, roasted leg of lamb, artichoke musaqa’a. Lebanese wine – Château Musar, Hochar – was poured.
A magic show took place. A flautist made a snake rise out of a box. Tumblers back-flipped and cartwheeled on to each other’s shoulders, creating pyramids and ziggurats. A contortionist lay on her stomach, then lifted her legs behind her, and kept lifting them until she could scratch her nose with a toe.
While the audience ate sweets with tiny cups of cardamom-scented coffee, a dozen musicians came out and sat on one or other side of the stage and began to tune their instruments. Ouds and drone rebabas, according to the programme on the table. A harp and a gourd-shaped kind of lute. Drum and tambourine. Something like an oboe, another like a flute, and a zurna, a Turkish horn.
They played for a troupe of belly dancers in bright, glittering costumes. They danced with cane and sword, with veils and finger cymbals. During the third or fourth number they made a gesture towards the audience, waving their hands with forefingers outstretched. To Ezra’s horror, Blaise rose from her seat beside him and in a few steps crossed the dance area, climbed steps and joined them on stage.
What was she doing? Did she think they really wanted some amateur to share their spotlight? Her naivety was inexhaustible. Couldn’t Blaise have waited just a brief moment, to see if anyone else, anyone older and wiser, was dumb enough to respond to their pretended invitation? To Ezra’s surprise, the dance troupe greeted Blaise with a clapping welcome, which allowed the rest of the audience to applaud their fellow member for her pluck. Though also for her dancing. Because, unless he was rotten with partiality, it was clear to Ezra that his fourteen-year-old daughter was not simply a good sport, remarkably self-confident, and extremely pretty, she was also the best belly dancer up on that stage. All six of the troupe were game, they were doing their best, performing little hip shakes and shimmies they must have practised a million times, and all Blaise did was to get up there and undulate her body in response to the music. But she was the one your eyes wanted to watch. Even the bored musicians perked up. And she smiled at them, as if they were playing something special for her, and so they did, the music lifting with a little fillip, an audible spring in its step.
Leaving their leader and Blaise on the stage, the rest of the troupe descended to the dance floor, beckoning to the audience to join them. Extroverts stepped forward; guests in dinner jackets and dresses, employees in fancy dress.
Ezra Pepin, however, remained gazing at his daughter, who was working less hard than the woman striving beside her, who might have been dancing her entire life and would never have the poise, the delicacy, the power of this girl who’d started dancing to this music for the first time five minutes earlier.
Or maybe not, Ezra acknowledged. Maybe Blaise had been taking belly-dance classes at school or out of school for the last year or two or three. When it came down to it there was a lot about what Blaise did and how she spent her time of which he was ignorant. And if that were so for her physical existence, how much more so for her interior world? The private realm of his offspring, of his flesh and blood, of which he knew next to nothing, Ezra mused, watching Blaise dance beside the troupe leader with a radiant smile upon her lovely young face. And wasn’t that inevitable, of course, but still so odd, how he and Sheena mated and gave birth to a child with a mix of their genes, and from the very beginning she inhabited, she owned, her own inviolate autonomy? The secret world of our own children. We provide for them, try not to hurt them, give them our love. And guidance? Sure. Even me, thought Ezra, even me; at least, I stand full square in the centre of civilisation, demonstrating to our children that there’s a space here for them too whenever they wish to claim it. It was easy to be cynical or take it for granted. But this was important, he figured, whatever anyone said. There was a space for each individual whose shape they would have to define for themselves. Blaise, Hector and Peanut Louie Pepin.
Blaise was joined by Chrissie Barwell, and Merry Sever from Sales, who practically adopted her for the evening like older sisters: they danced a while, then took her to their table near the back of the room. On the way, Blaise waved to her father with a kind of ‘I’m okay’ reassurance. He also saw her stop at Klaus Kuuzik’s table. Klaus rose gallantly to his feet, and they conversed with ease before Blaise moved on to rejoin the women.
Ezra danced with the short wife of the Jordanian ambassador. They shook and shivered in a disco jive, with the occasional vague nod to Arabic moves. He was relieved that the dancing was informal, since he’d never been taught the waltz, polka, Charleston. How nice it would be, though, to get hold of a woman, he thought, as he shimmied with the plump wife of the MD of Goldberg Green; to hold her sweaty hand, place your other hand on her back and glide together. There was the rave, of course, where you sought oblivion in company with indispensable others, each person’s energy feeding the atmosphere. The uncomfortable hybrid here – with all sorts of winks and twinkles from carousers trying hard to convince themselves and their partners that they were dancing together, and having a great time doing it – Ezra could only manage for limited periods. After he’d kissed the bony hand of the wife of the President of DeutscheWasser, this chivalric Englishman, he made for the bar. He’d been standing there a while when he realised that Lawrence of Arabia hovered at his shoulder. Ezra turned.
‘I’m a dreamer,’ Lawrence said.
It took a moment to recognise Roger Slocock, his red hair hidden beneath the turban. ‘Hi, Rodge,’ Ezra said.
‘I’m a dreamer of the day, Ejra. I’m a dangerous man.’
‘Hit the sauce early, eh? Take it easy, now.’
‘I may act out my dream with open eyes, Ej, to make it possible.’
‘You’re gibbering, old son.’
‘I’m i
n character, Ejra,’ he explained. ‘How often can we say that?’ Roger grinned, glassy-eyed with this insight. ‘Nice costume,’ he muttered, and stumbled away.
Ezra stood and observed the scene. A little giddy from dancing.
Perspiring some of the alcohol that had given lightness to his feet. One of the most pleasant aspects of dancing was taking a break from it. All he needed was a cigarette.
Through the crowd he noticed Klaus Kuuzik, sitting at the side in one of the alcoves, lounging on the cushions like some Ottoman pasha, conversing with another man. Klaus was listening to the man with a tender concentration; then he responded, leaning towards his interlocutor with that peculiar intimacy which, Ezra knew, meant the other man would be oblivious to everything else that was happening in the room. He recognised that intensity, and envied the other man for experiencing it this moment while he, Ezra, merely observed. Then Klaus became distracted by someone else who had approached him from the other side. A woman. Her gloved hand touched Klaus’s shoulder, in a gesture of gauche familiarity that Ezra wanted very much not to see, and keep seeing. The first man smoked from one of the hookahs with flavoured tobacco that had been laid on. Klaus spoke now with the woman who’d approached him, looking up, inviting her to join them. She moved forward into Ezra’s line of vision: Blaise reached towards Klaus, he took her hand, and she sat down beside him.
‘What a beautiful daughter you’ve got, Ez.’
Ezra turned. ‘Thanks for looking after her, Chrissie,’ he said, raising his glass.
‘You’re joking: it’s a pleasure. So composed and grown-up. I can’t believe she’s fourteen. When I think what I was like then. And it wasn’t much more than ten years ago.’
‘You’re saying my kid’s precocious?’
‘Sophisticated.’
‘I tell you,’ Ezra said, ‘it seems to me like she’s shifted generations tonight. Which must mean I have, too. And her mother.’ Ezra laughed, and mimed a train engine bumping a carriage along tracks. ‘Blaise has just shunted us along.’
‘What I always tell you, Ez. Middle-youth is the new black.’
‘Chin-chin.’
‘Cheers.’
Ezra circulated, was introduced to odd people, made introductions himself. Blaise appeared and dragged him back to the dance floor. The musicians had been replaced by a DJ playing Middle Eastern pop. Blaise wiggled her hips and Ezra copied her as best he could. In response to her uninhibited gyration, he let himself go. He swung his shoulders, pumped his arms, and she took the moves and elaborated upon them, improved them; in then copying her, Ezra felt the improvement, and smiled, and realised that his delight was genuine. Maybe the galabeya helped: beneath the outline of the cloak itself, his body and limbs knew gratitude at the lack of restriction. My daughter, Ezra acknowledged, is teaching me to dance at the disco. So this is why people pretend it’s fun – because it is!
Time must have streamed by in the world beyond the Palm Court. Around midnight the first guests started leaving. Ezra was seeing the President of the Bank of Qatar and his wife out when he noticed Blaise taking hold of Klaus Kuuzik’s hand and urging, pulling, him towards the dance floor.
Ezra accompanied his guests to the lobby of the hotel. After they’d left, he fell into conversation with some of the Oxford crowd, who were gathering, in their fancy dress, for the first of the coaches home. The English men and women, in their costumes for desert bedouin and ladies of a palace harem, sat and stood around in various states of tired dishevelment: already returned to the quotidian from their flight on a magic carpet.
When he returned to the banquet room, Ezra decided on a final brandy. Standing at the bar, he inhaled its fumy threat, knocked it back in one punitive gulp, then strolled one last time around the room. Carl Buchannan nodded to him. Gideon Juffkin said, ‘Wiggy, Ez. Wiggy.’ Jim Gould squeezed his shoulder. Ezra felt like a Steadicam shot, and imagined the reverse shot back at him, dreamy, tipsy, a middle-aged fool entering his prime.
Blaise was no longer on the sparsely populated dance floor. Neither was Klaus. Ezra continued to dawdle, but the camera gradually took on a definite quality beyond simple recording: that of scrutiny. Ezra’s eye was a hunter’s. He tried not to admit it to himself, but he was actively searching now. He looked in the alcoves along one wall. Perhaps they’d each gone to the loo. They’d reappear at any moment. Ezra walked slowly back down the other side of the room: they weren’t there, either. Neither of them, the pair of them. There was nowhere left to look. He stood, clenching his diaphragm, suppressing the insects that were breeding in his stomach. Inebriated inanities floated into his ears from the mouths of those departing past him.
‘What a bash, eh?’
‘It was a riot.’
‘A mash.’
‘Hey, that dancer!’
‘The kid in the gloves.’
Ezra walked slowly up the many stairs, to the second floor. He knocked on Blaise’s door. There was no reply.
‘Blaise?’ He knocked again, loud enough to surely wake her. Nothing.
In his room, Ezra sat on the end of his bed. What in God’s name was he supposed to do? He tried to invoke an authority outside himself that might issue guidance. None appeared. It was his, Ezra Pepin’s, problem, and no one was going to help him. Somewhere in the hotel – in his room, presumably – Klaus Kuuzik, the man who’d single-handedly launched Ezra’s life on its true path, was having sex with his fourteen-year-old daughter.
Ezra put his head in his hands. Was Blaise a virgin? Of course she was. And Kuuzik, the miserable, hypocritical bastard, was screwing her. Only wait. Scanning back over the evening Ezra forced himself to acknowledge that not once, or even twice, but three times he’d seen with his own eyes Blaise approach Kuuzik. If anything, she had seduced him.
It occurred to Ezra that he had no idea whether Kuuzik was married still. Was his wife alive? Had she been in the banquet room? Did the three daughters reside with their father? Did they even live in England? Perhaps they had been on that day at work on a fleeting visit from some other country. Ezra didn’t know. In all the friendly conversations of these last months, Kuuzik had given little of himself away.
If Ezra was trembling with rage, or maybe fear, as he stood in the middle of his hotel room, these, he understood, were atavistic emotions growling in the primitive depths of his being. They were directed at Klaus Kuuzik. Was it possible to imagine a girl of fourteen seducing a man of forty? Of course not. She was testing, teasing, feeling her way with her new body, into the murky waters of sexuality. She’d gone so far without thinking, without thought, following her immature instincts, not knowing where it would lead. Any man who found himself being clumsily flirted with by such a girl understood what was going on, and what his responsibility was. Because that was what had happened, wasn’t it, Blaise discovered herself in a hotel room with an aroused man, and though she must have realised she’d gone much further than she wanted, it was too late. He took advantage of her. It was rape.
But Klaus? Impossible. Whatever the temptation of a gorgeous girl, even if she’d offered herself with such seductive generosity, how could he possibly screw his, Ezra’s, daughter? Could Klaus not see what a betrayal, a dishonour, was being inflicted? What was Ezra supposed to do in response? Act as if nothing had happened? Seek out Kuuzik’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Marianne, and fuck her? Perhaps that was what was going to happen next: Kuuzik would offer his girl to him. Not humiliation after all, but an archaic male bonding that took place amongst the financial elite, sacrificing their daughters’ maidenhood for their own powerful futures, as the royal houses of Europe had once done, and certain tribes still did.
Oh, nothing had changed. Everything had changed.
Do something, man. Let it be.
Go there. Stay here.
The options banged against each other inside Ezra’s skull. He was confounded. Exhausted. He barely noticed he’d lain down; maybe he was already falling asleep, and swooned backwards.
Ezra
awoke with a jolt. The room was bright. Between his skin and gallabea he was covered with a prickly, sour sweat. He sat up. His head throbbed, one heartbeat after another drumming against his cranium. His watch said 3.47 a.m.
The gloomy corridor was too bright for that hour of the night. The lift descended in its own good time.
The Palm Court had been cleared already. The tables and chairs, the alcoves with all their cushions and drapes, the temporary bar, even the stage. And the floor must have been washed. Because two young men, Albanians possibly, one in jeans and T-shirt, the other wearing a tracksuit, seemed to be sweeping the wooden floor for mines. Guiding large circular polishers in front of them, swooshing them to and fro across the smooth floor with a calm, mechanical patience.
At Reception Ezra asked for the number of Klaus Kuuzik’s room. When the night receptionist hesitated, Ezra told him that he had important financial information for Mr Kuuzik from Beijing. The man was confused sufficiently to glance around and then write the room number on a piece of paper, as in a film scene in which bugs were everywhere, before folding and handing it over.
Walking away from the desk, Ezra wondered whether the time difference accorded with his story. Then he stopped walking, and stood still in the middle of the empty lobby. It occurred to him that just because they’d left the banquet room together, it didn’t mean they’d gone straight to Klaus’s room. Perhaps they’d not gone deeper into the hotel at all. No, they’d gone outside, and were even now wandering the streets of Soho, talking. Why, Ezra realised, berating himself for his depraved suspicion: that made much more sense.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Klaus might have suggested to the girl whose idealism had so impressed him. ‘Let’s go somewhere we can talk, just the two of us.’
‘Yes,’ Blaise would have said, to the first important adult who’d taken her seriously. Flattered and proud. They’d ambled through the summer night, that’s what they’d done. Looking at the dreams and the realities of life from each other’s point of view. Stopped in some seedy all-night café for a coffee, and who knows, even emptied their hearts. That made sense, it really did. The high-flying philanthropist, the teenage girl: they’d recognised a lonely innocence in each other. Wasn’t that a romantic thing for two distinctive people to have done?