Oscar had already reached the end of the hallway. He yanked the door open contemptuously and turned around to face Mr. Grindel. He lifted his hand to his brow, and his thumb and joined fingers pressed against it, as if trying to pluck out the thought buried within via the hand without. When he spoke his voice was expressionless:
‘What...exactly...have...you done for me, Mr. Grindel?’
He slotted on his dark glasses and then he was gone.
The question robbed the old landlord of all his calm and for a moment he looked crushed. He groped around for something to say, some line of attack. But all he could manage was to mutter under his breath, ‘Weasel.’ He scrambled to the door and bawled out into the street, ‘Weasel! Ingrate! No one speaks to me like that! No one!’
But Oscar didn’t hear him.
He stepped back inside his detested house, shuffled off into his womb-like, hermetically sealed maisonette and didn’t leave it for a week.
On the train he peered at the other commuters, searching for some assurance that he was part of their kind, linked to them in a fundamental way, but it didn’t come.
From side to side the train swayed and people swayed with it. As they passed through the decrepit tunnels, joy was garroted and the memory of sweet, effusive encounters, of charm and grace, of silk handkerchief intimacy, shredded. Every face wore the same blankness, apparently struck dumb by some unspeakable catastrophe.
So when Oscar finally emerged at Hammersmith Station, the shopping mall it was housed in seemed like an explosion of life, though ordinarily its metallic odor would have depressed him. He turned into Fulham Palace Road, at once reminded of London’s stylistic incoherence, and as he finally pushed his way through the glass doors of Charing Cross Hospital he was grateful for the fact that a hospital at least was a known quantity, though the presence of the artwork on the walls caused him to re-consider even that, though he welcomed the creativity it was there to honor. Then he thought of Najette and her art and wondered how he would feel about it if it was hanging there beside the rolling escalators and glacial lifts. He asked someone where he could find the Ely Wing and with a growing feeling of dread rode up to the third floor, listening to the sound of the synthetic voice as it intoned, ‘Third Floor, doors opening,’ finding in that voice the incarnation of all that was ominous about hospitals. Because hospitals tried to be like hotels but weren’t. Because hospitals were where people suffered. Where people died. He was getting ready for death as he strode through the double doors and told the nurse at Reception that he was there to see Daniel Bloch and the nurse showed him to his room, but before she rapped gently on the door she told Oscar to prepare himself for a shock, and then he stepped in.
Bloch lay on the bed except it wasn’t Bloch anymore. He was a cluster of matchstick limbs, holding limply onto the bedclothes. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes sunken and cavernous, unseeing, unmoving. A thick tube had been inserted into his nostrils. He made wheezing and gagging sounds periodically and two drips rose from each of his arms like plumbing extensions. The little hair that remained was grey and lifeless. It hung damply to his skull. Lines ran from his forehead to his chin, long, etched lines. Each seemed to denote a strand of suffering. Eventually Oscar began to recognize a pattern in his features that belonged to the past. But this coinciding of images was ghostly and fragile. But what upset him was not so much the physical deterioration of the helpless child-man in front of him, his body utterly enfeebled and stripped of its purpose (a body as useless and intangible as a shadow), but rather the annihilation of Bloch’s spirit, that mischievous energy he used so easily to be able to summon. And as he stepped forward – so tentatively it was as though he feared his movements might give Bloch pain – he finally felt that his heart was breaking.
Bloch tried to pierce the veil of cloudiness through which he viewed the world. At the same time Oscar’s vision grew opaque, since tears flashed and burned in his eyes. And then it seemed as though Oscar was shedding tears for Bloch as well. As though Bloch, incapable of weeping, now wept through him.
There was something between them then which neither could have put into words. A bond of pain, the provenance of suffering. They were like two travelers who’d journeyed through alternate stretches of an Arctic wilderness, ravaged by the cruel beauty of the landscape, and returned, lived to tell their tales, tales which they could only relate to each other, because no one else could possibly grasp the icy desolation they had known.
‘Don’t cry, Oscar,’ Bloch murmured at last.
The voice was scarcely audible and Oscar had to strain to hear it, and yet it filled the room.
‘So...you made it.’
Oscar crept closer and pulled up a chair noiselessly. So pathetic, it was, he thought, to clutch at these niceties in the face of extinction; so truly desperate to try and make life comfortable when life was dying in front of him. The life of this beautiful man.
‘What did you think...what did you think...about those tapes? Trying, was trying to be...something.’
‘They were inspired. Inspired.’
‘You made it then.’
‘I’m here. I won’t leave you.’
‘You will...you...why’s it so dark in here?...Can’t we have some light...Christ...’
‘I’ll switch on the lamp, shall I?’
‘No! No!...Don’t go, no artificial...no, stay, for a moment. ‘Til I nod off.’
‘All right.’
‘It’s been so long since I...since I...it seems so long.’
Bloch looked ahead, wheezing. He started coughing, an agonized cough which peeled the skin from Oscar’s body. Eventually the convulsions subsided and Bloch turned and looked at his visitor, with rheumy, hollow eyes. He began to speak, slowly at first, but then with gathering force.
‘They never learn, people. Always hurting each other...never learn. You’ll see that nature doesn’t give a shit...for us ants...scurrying around, music of the spheres, where’s the receipt? Where’s the fucking...the fucking...the thing...touch of concern sewn in the clouds? Where, where? They. They all put the knife in up to the hilt. You say you won’t leave me, but you did. And she did. She did terrible things. No one should be allowed to do such...such things. Fucked other men, she...oh God...I was...I can’t, I can’t. Oscar, I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be scared, don’t be scared; I’ll take care of you now. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I’ve been so long. I’ll look after you now.’
‘Oscar, I’m scared.’
‘I know, I know you’re scared; but I shan’t leave you, I’m here.’
‘Oscar, I can’t eat. I’m so far down the well, can’t get out, no energy to crawl out.’
‘I’ll give you the energy, I promise, I promise.’
‘Do you...you mean that?’
‘I promise.’
Oscar reached out his hand and took Bloch’s carefully. It felt so slight and brittle. And now he noticed that Bloch’s face seemed to be lit by some ineffable sweetness, some intangible delicacy, his blasted features speaking to him of unsuspected beauties in the world, or of a burnished beach where the crimson hull of the sun sat motionless, splitting the sky in two, prizing open the locked lid of consciousness. He was a good man, a noble spirit.
‘I was,’ Bloch whispered, ‘you were...you were my shadow, now I’m yours...you...we’ve been in a foreign land...all around the seagulls keened...still, I’d like to be young...like to be light-headed, woman’s scent...to be...oh God...Oscar...to feel the grass...under my feet...to feel...but they all go...all those men and women...in the cemeteries...they all laughed and cried...where do they go, where do they go? I don’t get it, where do they go?’
Oscar’s body was taut, all his muscles and joints ached. He couldn’t think of anything to say, couldn’t offer Bloch even hesitant answers. If only he’d had a drink, had something which could loosen his tongue but as it was everything seemed inert, carved out of granite, unresponsive to the ebb and flow of an easy exchange.
>
Beyond, through the window, he could see a jagged skyline. Light had been snatched away, leaving only ashen pallor.
Slowly the room surrendered to shadow.
Rows of houses. People were probably coming home from work around now, getting ready to make supper. The indigestibility of London. The countless lives. Decay.
‘Hey, Oscar,’ Bloch began, ‘listen to me: Get this pipe out of my nose. It’s so fucking awful.’
‘Am I supposed to do that? Isn’t it – ’
‘Look, get this thing out; I’m telling you, I can’t breathe with this thing up my trunk.’
So Oscar leaned over him and, after a struggle, managed to remove the gastric tube. Bloch felt something of the claustrophobia the pipe had induced leaving him.
‘Didn’t have...the energy...what was I saying?’
‘You were talking about – ’
‘It’s getting darker, or is that me?’
‘No, it is getting darker.’
‘I’ve got to get out of here, Oscar. Can’t you get me out of here?’
‘But you’re so...so frail...how could we – ’
‘I don’t want to die here; I want to die in my flat.’
‘You’re not going to die. I won’t let you speak like that.’
An iron rod sprang up and held his words. The necessity of strength sharpened him. But Bloch’s tumult turned to hostility.
‘Won’t you? Won’t you, I’m....Did you come here to spar with me? You pest – pest – come here to spar with me. Oh, I’m tired, so tired.’
Then language slumped into redundancy, having settled there in the ongoing oscillation between validity and emptiness. The drab room was home to some mystical communion, and the teachings of silence. In the empty shell Oscar sank through Bloch’s memories. He saw a young woman, smiling, her hair swept by a breeze from a sea somewhere in time. A young woman who mocked with her smile, walked through a gilded drawing room and injected into it a massive influx of charisma which lingered like perfume after she had left. She mocked everyone and everything. She used humor as a merciful anesthetic, an adhesive, and as a dagger, hurling abuse at whoever hung around long enough to hear it, and self-importance, pomposity and arrogance were shredded in her orbit.
‘I was in a foreign land,’ Bloch mumbled. ‘I was knocking on doors, no one would let me in. I was so thin, I thought perhaps people couldn’t see me. I was floating. I would shout at people, shout so hard it hurt. They couldn’t hear. Now I have no breath. I would touch...touch, they wouldn’t feel it. I came to a ruined church, a chapel, there was someone at the far end, I couldn’t see his face. He blessed me, he blessed me. I could live again. Do you know what I mean, you: sea urchin, hedgehog, eunuch? You and I who waft through the sea, who stand a little to the sides, the fringes?’
Oscar nodded slowly. Bloch’s eyelids were struggling to stay open; Oscar knew he would sleep soon. He would stay, watch over him, protect him.
‘You can leave if...if you want to. I know the bells are ringing. Perhaps a carriage and horses await?’
‘No carriage and horses await, Daniel.’
‘I don’t like you to see me like this, in the soup. You should go back to your carriage and horses, your powders and rouges; you need to do your toilette, howl at the moon, gnash your teeth. Need to let the wine breathe, sample the finer things in life. I’d like to, too, like to, too. Like the dinner gong to tell me it’s time, like to dab on one or two drops, like to...hear a bedtime story. Give me the glass slipper, the fairy tale, I want the fairy tale back, I wrote it, and you promised it to me. You owe it to me; you promised I’d be young.’
‘It’s true, and I meant it. I won’t break my promise.’
‘No, you won’t...you won’t...’
The waning voice became still. His eyelids closed heavily. Oscar watched him sleep.
Later, when the nurse looked through the window, to check up on Bloch, she noticed that the gastric tube had been pulled out, but Oscar’s eyes so moved her that she postponed the moment when she would replace the tube, and just stood and watched this tender vigil.
27
When he came out of the hospital there was a chill in the air, the chill of autumn, and during the moment in which he felt its cold breath all memories of summer fled. He noticed that approaching strangers were huddled up, shielding themselves against the approach of other strangers. The fallen leaves held his attention, suggesting feathers spilled from a broken pillow. In a few more weeks, he reflected, the leaves would be everywhere, as the parks and gardens of London turned golden and orange, as trees were transformed into wiry, venerable webs. Leaves piled high in playgrounds, clustered like iron filings around gutters, concealing mounds of excrement on pavements (which was both blessing and curse). He wondered whether nature’s coming apart at the seams had any connection with the way couples tended to part at this time of the year.
He turned into Shepherd’s Bush Road and walked through the Common where shadowy figures pursued various illegalities, and reached the roundabout, loaded as usual with cars and trucks and coaches, managing somehow to adhere to the laws of the road, making way, slowing, co-existing. He negotiated an intricate line through the wide, dangerous lanes, having to sprint at times to avoid oncoming lorries, until he reached the safety of Holland Park Avenue. He glanced at the Hilton on his way up. The plush world within seemed barred to him, which was fine by him since he no longer cared for it. As he shuffled past delicatessens and patisseries the grand girth of the avenue cloaked him. He had no idea of his destination; he just needed to walk. Outside the Gate Cinema cineastes were queuing to see a foreign film. He pushed on toward the Bayswater Road, peering at the cards posted in the phone booths promising to cater to every sexual taste, airbrushed goddesses locked in silicon lasciviousness. A couple of beggars, crumpled in their blankets, asked him for change and he gave them as much as he could spare. When he reached Queensway he was assailed by its crass liveliness. He shared the pavement with rollerbladers, backpackers, and local residents, all paddling along the street in a cosmopolitan gyration. Inside Chinese restaurants people dipped their duck and pork into bowls of soy sauce; outside Bayswater station a party of American tourists blocked the entrance with real dedication. He walked through Whiteley’s, which was full of men in suits munching sandwiches, and turned into Westbourne Grove, then into Chepstow Road, whose uniform rows of houses struck him as continentally elegant.
He emerged into almost liturgically calm backstreets, rows of antiques shops reverentially lit. At length he stopped outside a bar off Talbot Road. It was called The Lips and its gaudy exterior promised that its interior would embody the apogee of kitsch. Sure enough, after he had got past the bouncer, Oscar found the statues painted with fake verdigris, the small cocktail tables decorated with esoteric symbols (and altered to blend into consumer consciousness), the magic lanterns, the sickly music, and the gigantic illustration on the far wall of three sheep dogs wrapped in bath gowns to be as kitsch as anyone could have hoped. But despite, or perhaps because of the transcendental levels of vulgarity, he didn’t leave. He was now so wretched and exhausted that all he wanted to do was to drink himself into unconsciousness. He ordered two double whiskeys at the bar. The barman obliged him with slick efficiency and soon he was sipping at his drink in a corner, where his dark melancholy immediately aroused the attention of a brunette in a party of four.
When Oscar turned a minute later, bleary-eyed and already a little drunk, to look at her table he found that more people had crammed around its small circumference, including women decked in peacocks’ feathers, clicking castanets and men in cowboy boots and Stetsons. Clearly their party depended on the best that money could buy for its life, and the women were used to champagne cocktails, designer sports cars and toxic levels of affluence. Then the group received a further injection of life as through the double doors came a statuesque, soaringly tall individual in a black cape, a vermilion scarf tossed around his neck, his appearance completed
by the two dollybirds draped on either side of him. This spectacular entrance was greeted with squeals and cheers. He was the person everyone had been waiting for, the star of the evening and its catalyst. And now an endless round of greetings was kick-started. Manly handshakes were administered, kisses bestowed on outstretched hands; hectic embraces dislodged feathers, all accompanied by the rattle of the castanets. The tall man, whose mane of flowing black hair gave him an air of central European grandeur struck his arms akimbo and boomed heroically, ‘I am free, my dear friends, I am free; the chains have fallen from me!!’
There was a tremendous roar and then everyone in the group was rushing for the bar, and champagne bottles and ice buckets found new homes, perched on any even surfaces which presented themselves. The energy issuing from this table was so prodigious that it allayed any possible irritation that may have laid in its wake and even those who were not part of the celebration found themselves won over by it. The tall man started to hold forth, in a deep, rasping Hungarian accent. He spoke ecstatically of the fact that he was now legally severed from his wife with whom he had had – as he put it – ‘a marriage as unsuccessful as that between capitalism and communism.’ Oscar watched the group with interest; he didn’t think he had ever seen such an extraordinarily incongruous and yet colorful collection of people in his life.
The Hungarian instructed the two dollybirds to buy everyone in the bar Black Russians. Then he made some jibe at Russians on account of their excessive sentimentality. Oscar’s drink arrived in due course and he looked over in the Hungarian’s direction. For a second they seemed to make some kind of connection and then his benefactor winked at him and looked away again. It left Oscar strangely troubled; as though in that wink there was an acknowledgement of Oscar’s sadness; as though the wink seemed to say the Hungarian already knew all about him, and Oscar could conceal nothing of his inner life, no matter how hard he tried.
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