Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

‘Happy ever after’ –

  As far off as the brutal truth

  is from prose gone purple,

  as far away as death from birth

  unless life is a circle –

  Pluto and the far-off Sun –

  how far you are from me.

  As far as ‘now’ from ‘never’ is,

  philosophically –

  Elf strums and hums a bridge but doesn’t attempt a solo – Jackson’s virtuosity is too fresh in her ears, and she hasn’t written a song on the guitar since joining Utopia Avenue. ‘Insert a Jasper de Zoet solo here,’ she tells the roof-garden, ‘on Spanish guitar, something frisky … with Dean on harmonica, here, maybe –’ Elf gently howls how the solo might go ‘– like a homesick werewolf …’ She glances at Dean who nods back Yer got it. Part two …

  Yet love collapses distances –

  love, and curiosity.

  Love is a kind of telescope –

  love is pure velocity.

  Love ignores the rules of love –

  those rules stamped on the heart.

  Perhaps those rules had reasons, once.

  Perhaps those reasons weren’t so smart.

  Love comes and goes, a feral cat –

  unbound by human vow.

  Humbly, then, I beg of love –

  be here now.

  Elf strums another vocal-less verse and inverts the melody, closing on a stumbled-upon chord she doesn’t know the name of – an oddball F – that leaves a question hanging in the air. People applaud. It works. She looks at these new, brief acquaintances, these strangers, at Janis and Lenny, at Griff – drunk – and at Dean who’s placed a hand on his heart to say, I love it, and at Luisa Rey, her hawkish eyes and faraway smile. No no no – this is too much, too scripted. Elf doesn’t smile, yet: she can’t. She’s too astonished. It’s too corny. You don’t just show up as I’m singing verses written specifically to conjure you. Then Elf thinks, This is New York – the moon is full – why am I even surprised?

  ‘They told me they’d kill me if I didn’t leave the city,’ says Luisa. ‘My editor was warned by his NYPD guy that the threat was genuine.’

  ‘My sweet God, Lu.’ Elf wants to hug her close, and she could if Luisa was a boyfriend, but Janis Joplin’s rooftop is too public.

  ‘The cops told the Spyglass staff to hang up on anyone trying to find out where I was. That’s why you got the brush-off. I’m only sorry my note didn’t reach you. I assumed it would.’

  ‘Stuff that. You poor thing. It sounds … hideous.’

  ‘A story about protection rackets was never going to be popular. We just didn’t think it would blow up so quickly.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ asks Elf. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘I didn’t want to risk it. Dad’s in Vietnam, Mom’s alone. A friend has a log cabin in the mountains near Red Hook, upstate.’

  ‘And yer sure yer out o’ danger now?’ asks Dean.

  ‘I got lucky. A Mafia feud came to a head. Six people were shot dead in New Jersey yesterday. Two of them were the … gentlemen who had threatened me and Spyglass. My editor’s detective reckons we should be out of the woods. I live to write another day.’

  ‘It’s a fookin’ gangster movie,’ says Griff.

  ‘Less fun, more squalid, a lot more real.’

  In Room 939’s tiny kitchenette, Elf makes hot chocolate for Luisa, fresh out of the shower. ‘My mind keeps replaying the last week and a half,’ says Elf. ‘While I was all “Poor me” you were this far from a bullet.’

  ‘You didn’t know.’ Luisa wraps her hair in a towel. ‘I didn’t know you didn’t know. I couldn’t tell you. We’ve survived.’

  ‘Would asking you to stick to restaurant reviews work?’

  ‘Would asking you to write bubblegum pop songs work?’

  ‘Never get so numb to danger that you get blasé. Promise me.’

  ‘My dad warns me against exactly that danger.’ Luisa kisses her. ‘I promise.’ They step onto the balcony and sit in deckchairs with their hot chocolate, like two old people on holiday. Luisa lights them both a Camel. They watch each other, and take a drag simultaneously so the tips glow in unison – and laugh.

  ‘Guess what I’m doing now,’ says Elf.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ asks Luisa.

  ‘I’m sending a mind-telegram back in time to myself. To the night at Les Cousins when Levon and the boys invited me to a try-out. And in that mind-telegram, I’m telling myself, “SAY YES”.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And this: “Because if you say yes, then over the next twenty months, you’ll record two LPs; go on Top of the Pops; play dozens and dozens of shows; earn some money; have a few ups and downs with your love-life; go to New York; be flirted with by Leonard Cohen; share a sister-in-music confession with Janis Joplin; but best of all, you’ll meet a smart, funny, brave, kind, future Pulitzer Prize-winning”’ – she hushes Luisa’s objections – ‘“and very sexy Mexican-Irish-American woman – yes, a woman. You’ll make mad, passionate love with this woman”—’

  ‘God, you sound so English.’

  ‘Shush –“You’ll make mad passionate love in the Chelsea Hotel, and drink hot chocolate, and you won’t ask yourself ‘Am I a lesbian now’ or ‘Am I bisexual?’ or ‘Was I repressed before?’ or ‘Am I now?’ or any of that. No. You’ll feel true and right and … you’ll run out of words for how good you feel. So for your own good … SAY YES.” Here ends my mind-telegram. STOP. Send.’

  ‘I love your telegram,’ says Luisa. ‘Though it’s turned into a letter, really, hasn’t it?’

  Elf nods, smokes, sips her hot chocolate, and holds her lover’s hand. Nine floors below, a yellow cab prowls West 23rd Street by the Chelsea Hotel, looking for a fare …

  Who Shall I Say Is Calling?

  Jasper was eighteen. Queludrin was failing. Knock Knock was resurgent and eroding his mind. His resistance might last weeks. It wouldn’t last months. Three mornings after Heinz Formaggio had embarked for his American future, Jasper decided that a quick release was better than being reduced to mental rubble. Jasper got dressed, washed his face, brushed his teeth and went down to breakfast. The auctioneer from Delft narrated his dream in a quick-fire mumble. After breakfast, Jasper went to the dispensary, as usual. The ink of ‘J. de ZOET’ on his pill-tray label was fading. Jasper took his two pale-blue Queludrins. Dr Galavazi was away at a symposium.

  Up in his room, Jasper put a note inside his guitar case: ‘For Formaggio, if he wants it.’ He put on his coat, retrieved a dusty rucksack from the top of his cupboard, went to the main entrance and asked for a morning pass. The junior psychiatrist on duty was surprised by the shy agoraphobe’s request. Jasper told a plausible lie about the benign influence of his friend Formaggio. The duty-doctor asked if he wanted a companion. ‘I want to conquer my demon myself,’ said Jasper. ‘I won’t go far.’ Satisfied, the psychiatrist wrote out the pass, noted the time in his logbook, and signalled to the gatekeeper that the young patient had permission to leave …

  Outside the walls of Rijksdorp, Jasper found everything different and everything the same. The morning was muted. The sky was veiled. The woods smelt of autumn. Dead leaves drifted on the liquid wind. Pines shushed and soughed. Crows hatched plots. Faces surfaced from tree trunks. Jasper didn’t meet their stares. The path twisted upwards. The wood petered out. Dunes fell and rose. Surf pounded the shore, not far off. Grass whiplashed. Gulls cried. The sea looked dirty. A sign warned would-be swimmers: ‘GEVAARLIJKE ONDERSTROOM. VERBODEN TE ZWEMMEN’. The tide was in. Waves shunted shingle up the beach: the undertow sucked it back. Scheveningen cluttered the southern distance. Katwijk lay five miles to the north-east. Mud greys, sandy greys, pale greys. Slimy groynes sloped into the surging water. Jasper filled his rucksack with big pebbles. This was less messy than razors, he told himself, more reliable than pills, less Gothic than a rope, with no witnesses to shock and scar. Jasper strapped on his rucksack. It felt as heavy as him. Jasper went
over his instructions one last time: walk into the sea; keep walking; when the water is up to your chin, fall forwards, with the weight pressing you down. Open wide. Everlasting Queludrin. Milly Wallace was buried at sea. The Only Sea. The Ceaseless Sea. The Last Sea.

  Jasper asked, ‘Are you still sure?’

  Jasper replied, ‘A person is a thing who leaves.’

  Jasper strode into the sea. It filled his shoes.

  It wrapped around his knees, his thighs, his waist …

  Don’t, said a voice. All noise ceased. No sea, no wind, no gulls. You can’t undo that ending. A voice speaking Dutch with a foreign accent, inside Jasper’s head, as if heard through headphones. Get out of the water, said the voice. It wasn’t Knock Knock.

  The sea swirled around Jasper. ‘Who are you?’

  First, get out of the water.

  Jasper deployed Formaggio’s strategy of isolating known facts. One: this voice communicated in direct language. Two: it didn’t want Jasper dead. Three …

  Three, it said, would you please get out of the water?

  Jasper waded back to shore and sat on a driftwood log.

  Empty the stones from the bag, said the voice.

  Jasper obeyed. ‘So who are you?’

  A hesitation. I don’t know.

  ‘How is that possible?’

  I don’t know that either.

  ‘So … what do you know?’

  About myself?

  ‘About yourself.’

  I’m a mind without a body of my own. I’ve existed for five decades in this form. I may be from Mongolia. I transfer between human hosts by touch. When Formaggio shook your hand, I transferred to you. My Dutch is poor, as you heard, so … The voice had switched to English. Like I said, I don’t know much.

  ‘If you don’t know who you are, what are you?’

  ‘Spirit’, ‘ghost’, ‘ancestor’, ‘guardian angel’, ‘noncorpum’, ‘incorporeal’. I’m not prescriptive.

  ‘Why are you in my head?’

  I found you in Formaggio’s memory, and hoped Knock Knock might offer clues to my own origins. I’ve been sifting.

  ‘So it’s only chance you’re here now?’

  ‘If you believe in chance, yes.’

  A stranded jellyfish gleamed in the pale morning. ‘So you’ve spent the last day rummaging in my memory, uninvited?’

  Do you ask a book for permission before you read it?

  ‘I’d ask the book’s owner.’

  From ‘Goodbye, cruel world’ to ‘What about my privacy?’ in only two minutes.

  A trawler slid into a patch of silver light, a mile out.

  Jasper asked, ‘What do I call you?’

  If I pluck a name out of thin air, I fear I’ll jinx my hopes of discovering who I really am. Mongolian feels like my mother tongue, so call me the Mongolian.

  Far-off seagulls, tiny as close-up sand-fleas, hovered behind the trawler. ‘Did you find the clues you were searching for?’

  No. Knock Knock’s another incorporeal, but we have little else in common. He wants you dead. I don’t know why.

  ‘Have you communicated?’

  Certainly not. To wake him from his Queludrin stupor would be unwise. If— From nowhere, a giant black dog rocketed over the lip of the dune and Jasper fell off the log. The dog barked, barked and barked – but without a soundtrack, as if on a silent film. Jasper felt his own lips, tongue and vocal cords activated, saying, ‘Zail! Zail!’ The dog’s tail dipped; it crouched low; its head tilted. Jasper’s hand back-slapped the air and the dog slunk off.

  Jasper’s heart pounded. ‘You can control your hosts?’

  If I have no other choice.

  ‘You have a way with dogs.’

  I told it to go away. In Mongolian.

  ‘Why would a Dutch dog understand Mongolian?’

  Don’t underestimate dogs.

  A mile out on the marbled sea, a yacht dived and rose.

  ‘If you can take me over – like just now, with the dog – why didn’t you force me out of the sea? Or stop me before I went in?’

  I hoped you would stop yourself.

  Jasper lies on the shingle. ‘I just … got tired.’

  I would have fished you out, if you hadn’t listened to me. I’m in no hurry to discover what happens to me if my host dies. I’m glad of this conversation, however. I’m a solitary soul.

  ‘Lonely? You have hosts to talk to.’

  It’s dangerous. Most hosts would mistake me for insanity.

  ‘I guess I’m inoculated. Or insane already.’

  You’re not insane, Jasper, but you are host to a long-term lodger who does not wish you well. Knock Knock has damaged you already. Shall we walk as we talk? The young psychiatrist who let you out will be worrying, and you need dry clothes …

  Over the following hours, Jasper’s disembodied confessor helped him analyse his position in ways that Dr Galavazi, who ‘knew’ Knock Knock was a psychosis, could not. The Mongolian’s perspective harvested a fresh crop of insights that, Formaggio-like, Jasper arranged in a list. One: Knock Knock must be unable to transfer between hosts, or he would have left Jasper at Ely. Two: Knock Knock’s goal appeared to be Jasper’s death. Three: Knock Knock’s powers of coercion must be weaker than the Mongolian’s, or he would have thrown Jasper arranged in a list the SS Arnhem on the crossing from Harwich. Four: Queludrin was choking Jasper’s thyroid gland and eroding the cervical nerves in his spine. ‘So if Knock Knock doesn’t get me,’ said Jasper, ‘the Queludrin will.’

  The Mongolian hesitated. If you stay on this path, yes.

  ‘What other path is there?’

  I could, so to speak, operate.

  ‘You can cut out Knock Knock?’

  No. He’s too integrated. But if I cauterise the synapses surrounding Knock Knock in your brain, he would, effectively, be entombed. You should no longer need Queludrin. It’s not a cure. Once you’re off the medication, Knock Knock will awaken, detect his entrapment and begin to graft new synapses. But this would take him a few years. A safer drug might come along, or a stronger ally. In the meantime, you could go out into the world. Live a little, as my American hosts might say.

  Jasper found a dice in his pocket. White dots on a red plastic cube. He had no memory of it. ‘What are the risks?’

  I’m inducing a localised stroke. It’s not a risk-less thing to do. Compared to spinal erosion, however, or a dead thyroid, or a hostile mind-visitor or wading into the North Sea, the risks are manageable.

  Dutch rain beat at Jasper’s dark window. ‘When can you carry out this operation?’

  Jasper woke to blustery sunlight on the ceiling.

  How do you feel? asked a Mongolian spirit.

  ‘As if an object the size of an acorn, or bullet, is embedded in my brain. It doesn’t hurt. But it’s there. Like a benign tumour.’

  Benign on the outside, malign on the inside. That’s the cauterised barrier I’ve cut around your guest. His cell, if you like.

  ‘So I can stop taking Queludrin … from today?’

  That’s the point. Knock Knock can’t get at you.

  ‘Persuading Dr Galavazi that I’m cured won’t be easy.’

  I disagree. Your recovery is his medical triumph. Shake hands with him after breakfast. I’ll transfer over and plant an idea or two. He’s a good man.

  ‘Why not announce yourself to him, like you did with me?’

  I don’t want him to lose his faith in psychiatry. The world has too many mystics and too few scientists.

  ‘What should I tell him?’

  The Mongolian thought. Everything except the suicide attempt. Just say I came to you on your walk.

  ‘If I do, he’ll definitely think I’m crazy.’

  Yet here you are, healthier and happier. I predict Dr Galavazi will interpret your recovery and ‘the Mongolian’ in psychiatric terms. Who knows? Good may come of it …

  Knock-knock on the door of Room 777 in the Chelsea Hotel. Jasper wakes. The sleeping
pill dug him only a shallow grave. Knock-knock. Maybe it’s Elf or Griff or Dean. Jasper doubts it. Knock-knock. Jasper gets up, goes to the door and looks out through the spyhole.

  Nobody.

  He’s back. It’s official. My remission is over.

  Knock-knock. Jasper opens the door. The yellow corridors stretch in both directions, punctuated by brown doors.

  Nobody.

  Jasper shuts the door, attaches the chain and—

  Knock-knock. Jasper senses him. The prey senses the predator. He goes to the bathroom to take another Queludrin. Twelve remain. Only six days’ supply. I’ll have to get more, and soon.

  Knock-knock. Since the party at the Roundhouse for Stuff of Life, Jasper has heard these bleary nearby knockings.

  Knock-knock. On the aeroplane, the knocking was loud and clear. Did Jasper’s dread of flying somehow empower—

  Knock-knock. Jasper’s watch says 12.19 a.m. He took two Queludrin only six hours ago, when the aeroplane was circling over New York. At Rijksdorp, they lasted twelve hours, easily.

  Knock-knock. Jasper tips two pale blue pills onto his palm and washes them down with half a glass of New York water. Pages of The Times are taped over the big mirror. ‘AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 1611 CRASHES INTO SEA OFF NICE WITH LOSS OF 95 LIVES’. Jasper cleans his teeth while the Queludrin penetrates his brain. After three or four minutes he puts his toothbrush in the glass, and—

  A slow, mocking knock … knock.

  What if it no longer works at all?

  Jasper knocks loud and hard on the door of Room 912 until Levon’s bleary face appears over the safety-chain.

  ‘I have to call the Netherlands,’ says Jasper.

  ‘What?’ Levon blinks.

  ‘I have to call the Netherlands.’

  ‘It’ll be six in the morning there.’

  ‘I need to speak with my doctor.’

  ‘They have doctors in New York. I’ll ask Max, in—’

  ‘Do you want me to perform tomorrow or not?’

  This works. Levon opens the door and gestures him inside. His pyjamas are canary yellow. Jasper gives his manager a scrap of paper with Dr Galavazi’s number on it. Levon calls down to the switchboard, reads out the number, confirms the call, agrees, ‘Yes, I know it’ll cost me,’ and hands Jasper the receiver. ‘Make it quick. Please. We aren’t filling stadiums yet.’