Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  The psychiatrist takes the journal. Jasper guesses he looks pleased. ‘May I borrow this, and transcribe anything of interest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He opens the first page. ‘An excellent habit.’

  ‘My friend Formaggio says, “What isn’t carefully recorded is gossip and guesswork.”’

  ‘He’s right. Are you still in touch?’

  ‘Yes. He’s studying the brain at Oxford.’

  ‘Remember me to him. He’s a smart boy. I take it you’ve heard nothing from the Mongolian since Knock Knock’s – what shall we call it? – “reawakening”.’

  ‘Correct. The Mongolian is long gone.’

  ‘At Rijksdorp, you told me he was just passing through, like a “barefoot doctor”.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And you still believe now … that he was real?’

  The clock’s pendulum thinly sliced half a minute.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jasper. ‘I do. Unfortunately.’

  ‘Why “unfortunately”?’

  ‘If your theory is correct, and the Mongolian was a mental sheriff I created to lock up my psychosis, there’s hope I could do it again. But if I’m right, and the Mongolian was real and came to Rijksdorp by fluke, my prognosis is not good.’

  Outside a woman shouts, ‘Watch where you’re going!’

  ‘You must feel like a nightwatchman, Jasper, who knows only that danger is coming, not when or from which direction.’

  ‘That’s not a bad simile.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’ Dr Galavazi sips his green tea. ‘I’d like to read this –’ he holds up the notebook ‘– review the facts and conduct a fuller interview than we have time for this evening. For now, I’ll give you a prescription for Queludrin. Take it to a chemist before you return to England so that if a full relapse does occur you’ll have a little breathing space.’

  Say ‘Thank you.’ ‘Thank you.’

  The psychiatrist thinks. ‘One thing more. In Boston, I met a psychologist based at Columbia University in New York. He’s an odd fellow, with unorthodox methods, to say the least. But I’ve come to respect him greatly. He’s curious about AHPs in general – and the patient JZ in particular. May I share tonight’s conversation with him?’

  ‘Yes. What’s his name?’

  ‘Dr Yu Leon Marinus. He’s Chinese. To look at. But that’s not the whole story. Most people just call him Marinus for short.’

  The long solo in ‘Purple Flames’ grows ever longer as Jasper finds a secret passage deep inside. The high roof, vaulted murk, arches and windows evoke the Paradiso’s origins as a Nonconformist house of worship. Worship still happens here, thinks Jasper. Not of us four, but worship of music itself. Music frees the soul from the cage of the body. Music transforms the Many to a One. The Marshall stacks vibrate his skeleton. We touch something divine. His Stratocaster speaks of ecstasy and despair. We’re not gods, but we are channels for something that is god-like. Jasper could die here and now and not feel short-changed by life. He looks at Dean who knows that the end is nigh. Jasper closes with a flashy bend of the top two strings and Dean rips into the final verse like a blowtorch. His vocals are twice as powerful as they were a year ago, in part thanks to Jack Bruce from Cream, who appeared backstage after their McGoo’s gig in Edinburgh and gave him some pointers about singing while playing bass. He has also taken some formal singing lessons and now has an extra half-octave at either end of his comfort zone. Elf is in no mood to be upstaged, and slams into a particularly pyrotechnic Hammond solo. Jasper wonders if Guus de Zoet or his half-brothers are out there in the Paradiso. Unlikely. Wouldn’t they have got in touch? Who knows? If normal people are difficult to read, the de Zoets are cryptic crosswords …

  Backstage, Jasper loses the others in a merry-go-round of faces who appear to know him. Sam Verwey is one of the few he can name. ‘So, de Zoet. You left Amsterdam a nobody and come back a fully fledged pop star. My pupils think you’re God. When I tell them we used to busk together in Dam Square, they think I’m bullshitting them so I’m taking this picture of us … Smile!’ A flash explodes in Jasper’s eyes and brain.

  ‘A triumph!’ roars Big Smiler. ‘A coronation! An apotheosis!’

  ‘Need any uppers, downers, out-of-towners?’ asks a pinstriped Mr Toad. ‘’Shrooms, dope, Bennies, bombers? You name it, I got it.’

  Big Smiler becomes Loud Laugher. ‘Why the hell have you stayed away for so long, eh? Amsterdam needs you …’

  ‘They’ll be shitting cold puke now at De Zoet HQ,’ remarks the Queen, who can’t possibly be on the balcony, smoking a doobie.

  ‘Thijs Ogtrot from Hitweek,’ says an undertaker’s face. ‘Is it true you spent two years at Rijksdorp asylum?’

  From the balcony Jasper spots the Paradiso’s manager talking with Levon and Elf in the bar below. How do I get to them?

  ‘So the question is, Jasper,’ says Backslapper, ‘can your current management take you up to the next level?’

  Jasper finds the wrong stairs. ‘His only friend was his guitar,’ a teacher at the Conservatory explains. ‘His graduation piece was called “Who Shall I Say Is Calling?”. It dripped sound …’

  ‘Coke, weed, Dexy, Purple Hearts,’ murmurs Mr Toad, by Jasper’s ear. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed. Ever tried acid?’

  ‘Or will they be puking cold shit?’ asks Queen Juliana. ‘The skeleton in the family cupboard – on Fenklup! Priceless!’

  ‘You and I made love on Monday.’ A woman’s painted her face like a Rorschach ink-blot test. ‘Astrally. Yes. It was me.’

  Jasper’s in the Gents, washing his hands. He tells Miss Rorschach, ‘Perhaps it was Eric Clapton.’

  ‘Now you’re famous,’ begins Big Smiler, down in the bar, ‘all sorts of leeches’ll come crawling out of the woodwork …’

  ‘Thijs Ogtrot from Hitweek,’ says an undertaker’s face. ‘You wrote “Darkroom” in the same acid session where John Lennon wrote “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. True or false?’

  ‘… and they’ll want favours or money,’ adds Big Smiler. ‘You’ll need to get better at saying “Rot op!”’

  ‘The question is,’ says Backslapper, ‘how long can a solo genius like Jasper de Zoet prosper in the confines of a band?’

  ‘Who did you score off?’ Mr Toad’s face is knitted up. Anger. ‘Not a podgy little Belgian fuck with a quiff like Tintin?’

  The Lecturer offers him a joint. ‘So, the dean wants you to give a lecture for Founders’ Day …’

  ‘Bloody Nora.’ Dean staggers up. ‘In the bogs just now was these two blokes snoggin’ ’n’ gropin’ each other! Uuuuuugh …’

  ‘… about anything you like,’ says the Lecturer. ‘“Art, Love and Death”, “Despatches from Soho”, “Counterculture” … Do say yes.’

  ‘Thijs Ogtrot from Hitweek,’ says an undertaker’s face. ‘Your father wants you cut out of your grandfather’s will. True or false?’

  ‘So all I need is five hundred guilders up front to pay for the studio,’ says Big Smiler. ‘Cash is best.’

  Jasper sees the Rorschach woman with her hand inside Griff’s shirt. ‘On Monday we made love astrally, but tonight …’ she whispers in Griff’s ear, and burrows her hand downwards.

  ‘Take your producer’s fee from future sales,’ says Big Smiler. ‘Big bucks, guaranteed. What have you got to lose?’

  The March night is coal grey, indigo and starlit. The air is crisp and cool along Prinsengracht. Spring’s nearly here. A bicycle bell rings. Jasper steps out of the way: the cyclist leaves a low ‘Taak’ as he passes. A song from long ago and a delicious whiff of bitternbollen fried meatballs leak from an amber-lit bar. Jasper pauses at the corner of Amstelveld and holds up his thumb to test the half-moon’s blade. It’s comfortable being an Amsterdammer again. The English distrust duality. They equate it with potential treachery. In the Netherlands, having a German, French, Belgian or Danish parent is no big deal. The city’s bells begin their midnight round. Iron boom by bronze
chime, stroke by stroke, the proud houses and the churches fade away. The conservatory and the poky room above the bakery in Raamstraat, where Jasper lodged for three years, vanish. Going, going, gone are the squalid brothels, shipping offices and scruffy cafés; the venerable hotels, fussy restaurants and concert halls; the Paradiso, the Rijksmuseum and the ARPO studios; Dam Square, the shuttered-up souvenir shops and the Anne Frank House; maternity wards and cemeteries; Vondelpark, its lake and chestnuts, lindens and birches, not yet in leaf; the city’s sleepers and the city’s insomniacs; even the bells in their towers that weave this impossible vanishing act melt out of reality until all that remains of Amsterdam’s ancient future is a brackish marsh, swept by gales, home only to eels and gulls, hut-dwellers with leaky boats and hungry dogs …

  Grafgraversgracht is an oddity among Amsterdam’s waterways for being a cul-de-sac canal. Tourists blunder in only by accident in search of a short-cut to the zoo. Born-and-bred Amsterdammers have told Jasper to his face that no such canal exists – that its very name, ‘Gravediggers Canal’, is proof of a prank.

  Yet here it is, complete with street sign, legible in the light of a half-moon. Its respectable residents are asleep, but at the far end, in the triangular attic window of 81 Grafgraversgracht, is a dab of sky blue. Jasper walks the length of the short canal to the door below the lamplit window. He presses the top bell to the rhythm of a Dutch nursery rhyme: ‘Boer wat zeg je van mijn kippen …’ a pause ‘… Boer wat zeg je van mijn haan?’ Jasper waits.

  Maybe she’s asleep, and forgot to switch the lamp off.

  Jasper waits. I’ll count to ten, then slip away …

  Four floors above, the window opens. A key chimes on the cobbles. Jasper picks it up. It’s attached to a Superman key-ring. Quietly as a burglar, he lets himself in and climbs up to the fourth storey past bicycles, cooking-gas cylinders and a roll of old carpet. At his approach, the door at the very top opens …

  The one-bar electric fire is lava red. It bleeds into the light of the sky-blue lamp to make a purple glow. Helen Merrill’s muslin-and-silk voice is singing ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’ on the record player. Trix stands in a furry bathrobe embroidered with Il Duca Hotel, Milano. Thirty, slender, a dash of Javanese, steamy from the bath, hair up. ‘Good heavens. It’s Mr Platypus.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Trix lifts her eyebrows. ‘Lovely to see you too.’

  I should have said hello. ‘Sorry. Hello. It’s lovely to see you.’

  Trix stands aside and shuts the door behind him. ‘I was about to go to bed and cry myself to sleep. I thought your groupies must be feasting on the bones of my poor red fox.’

  Jasper hangs his coat on the antlers. ‘Irony.’

  ‘My, my, haven’t we gotten clever in London?’

  Jasper slips off his boots. ‘Sarcasm?’

  ‘Don’t get too good at normality.’

  ‘There’s not much danger of that.’

  Trix prepares two glasses of rum and ice.

  The clock on the shelf says it’s five o’clock.

  Jasper’s watch says it’s three minutes to midnight.

  ‘It wound down months ago,’ says Trix. ‘Time’s noisy.’

  They each take one end of the sofa, drawing their feet up, and sit facing each other. ‘Proost, Mr Platypus.’

  ‘Proost.’ They drink. Rum burns Jasper’s oesophagus.

  ‘How was the Paradiso?’

  ‘The show went well, but the party afterwards was too much. I slipped away when nobody was looking.’

  ‘Your album’s selling like fresh herrings. The de Zoets of Middelburg are having an emergency board meeting about you now. Your father will be there, addressing his shareholders: “The family skeleton in the cupboard is playing guitar on Fenklup! What is our official policy on this?” Your bassist is dishy.’

  ‘Dean’s smaller in real life than he is on television.’

  ‘The four of you look very close.’

  ‘If you’re in a band with someone, you get to know them well.’

  ‘Like family?’

  ‘I’m not an expert on the subject but maybe, yes. I live with Dean. He looks out for me, I suppose. He makes sure I don’t forget things. Griff is fearless. He doesn’t worry. He’s good at living. Elf is like a sister. I imagine. She’s good at understanding what people mean. Like you. All three of them – and Levon, our manager – know about my emotional dyslexia, I think. We don’t discuss it. They just cover for me, when I need it.’

  ‘How very English of them.’ Trix lights a Turkish cigarette. ‘What’s it like? Stardom?’

  ‘People kept asking me that at the Paradiso, and when I said, “I’m not really a star,” they became … hard to read.’

  Trix considers this. ‘They may think you’re holding out on them because you think them unworthy of illumination.’

  ‘The reality isn’t at all like the fantasy.’

  ‘When did that ever matter?’

  Jasper finishes his rum and peers through the base of the glass at the candle flames, the sloping walls, draped fabrics, the electric fire, the incense-breathing Indian goddess. ‘I’ve missed your anthropology classes, Trix.’

  ‘You’re the one who crossed the English Channel to find his fortune and left me tearing my hair out with misery.’

  Did I? Was she? No – she’s smiling. ‘Irony.’

  She biffs his calf with her foot. ‘Give the boy a prize.’

  The half-moon shines in through Trix’s window onto her home-made four-poster bed. A celestial body never dies, Jasper tells the moon, but you never get to curl up with another body, either. ‘It’s lucky you played at the Paradiso this side of April,’ says Trix. ‘I’m moving to Luxembourg. For good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To marry a Luxembourger. You’re my last fling.’

  You say, ‘Congratulations.’ ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘On my marriage? Or about you being my last fling?’

  ‘I meant’ – was she joking? – ‘your marriage.’

  ‘Well, it’s about time. I’m not getting any younger.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Trix’s torso twitches. She’s smiling.

  ‘What? Was that funny? Why?’

  Trix twirls Jasper’s hair around her finger. ‘No jealousy, no “How could you, how dare you?” You’re nearly an ideal man.’

  ‘Not many women agree.’

  Trix makes a noise that may mean skepticism. ‘You didn’t teach yourself that trick with your tongue, did you?’

  Jasper thinks of Mecca and her room above the photographer’s studio. It’s still yesterday in America. ‘What’ll happen to the shop when you’ve gone?’

  ‘I’ve sold it to Niek and Harm. They’ll still get obscure LPs from Brazil and poor Conservatory students will still get a discount.’

  ‘Amsterdam won’t be the same without you.’

  ‘Bless you, but Amsterdam won’t notice a damn thing. The city’s changed since we stayed up late redesigning the future and crashing the royal wedding.’ Trix traces her forefinger along Jasper’s clavicle. ‘Remember the free white bicycles? Nobody repairs them now. People think, Why can’t somebody else do it? Or they paint them black and lock ’em up. Provo is winding down. New revolutionaries have grabbed the megaphones. Humourless ones. The ones who quote Ché Guevara like he’s a close personal friend. “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” They’ll say, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” as if a demonstrator’s spine, or a policeman’s skull, or an elderly widow’s window is only an egg. Time for us Utopianists to clear the stage for the Molotov-cocktail brigade. I want no part of it.’

  ‘Who is the future Monsieur Trix van Laak?’

  ‘A horse-breeder. He’s a little older, and not exactly Adonis, but he’s rich enough to be my last best suitor, smart enough to value a clever wife, and worldly enough to let my past stay in the past.’ Trix tapped the tip of Jasper’s nose. ‘H
is mother disapproves. She called me a social climber. I called her an Alpinist with oxygen tanks. I’ll win her around.’

  An ember eats an incense stick. Sandalwood.

  ‘You’ll ride horses every day,’ says Jasper.

  ‘I’ll ride horses every day,’ agrees Trix.

  Dr Bell of Ely wasn’t sure about Jasper going on a twelve-hour sea-crossing in the grip of a nervous breakdown with only Formaggio to mind him, but the headmaster was adamant. He had been an army cadet when he was sixteen, and a blast of sea air might be the very medicine young de Zoet needed. Jasper was too battered by Knock Knock’s campaign against his sanity to express an opinion. Telegrams had been sent to Jasper’s grandfather, who would be waiting at Hook of Holland. Later, Jasper worked out that his school’s concern was to ensure that he lost his marbles as far away from Swaffham House as possible, ideally in another country. There was a car to Harwich. Dr Bell had entrusted Formaggio with a few pills to give to Jasper if his condition deteriorated. Before the car was halfway to Harwich, Jasper’s condition deteriorated. The knock-knock-knock-knocks were merging into one solid impact. The pills softened it, a little, but didn’t stop the assault. Jasper and Formaggio boarded the Arnhem. It was a choppy crossing. The boys sat in the second-class lounge, Formaggio only leaving him to throw his latest sick-bag over the side. Some soldiers bound for West Germany laughed at the vomiting Formaggio and pasty-looking Jasper in their poncy uniforms before, eventually, taking pity on them. ‘Have a mouthful o’ this, you poor bastard.’ An army flask. Tea and gin, to settle their stomachs. The Arnhem docked under a late sky. The squaddies bade them good luck and were swallowed by the world. Grootvader Wim waited in his Jaguar, where the new immigration building stands. He spoke English to Formaggio. ‘I shan’t forget your kindness. Jasper, I’m taking you directly to a clinic near Wassenaar. All will be well. All will be well. You’re in the Netherlands now …’

  Jasper walks back down the stairs from Trix’s room to Grafgraversgracht. By the tenth or twelfth flight of steps, he works out his body is in Trix’s bed, far above, yet the steps carry on until the dreamer arrives at an earthen passageway. An old woman is expecting him. She places a finger on her lips – Hush! – and points to a spyhole in the wall. Jasper looks through. Beyond is an ossuary, or a prison cell, or both. Knock Knock, dressed in his ceremonial robe, sits on a whale’s jawbone holding a knife in one hand and a shinbone in the other. The bone is inscribed with notches. Like Robinson Crusoe, thinks Jasper, keeping track of days on his island. Knock Knock’s gaze meets Jasper’s. A mechanism is triggered. The two swap places. Jasper is now a prisoner in the deepest under-cellar of Knock Knock’s mind, with no hope of rescue or escape. He cannot even die his way out. The eye at the spyhole – Knock Knock’s eye – vanishes. Jasper is left alone for eternity to draw the blade across the notched shinbone, like a violin bow …