Europa (14 page)

Vikram Griffiths laughed as he spoke behind his whisky flask and the coach lurched to avoid some miserable humpy machine from backward Eastern Europe where they never learnt to build cars the way we did, and clutching at a seat-back for balance as the driver switched lanes, finger-nails slipping on the synthetic red velvet that looks so plush, that promises such luxury, the way all that is modern promises such luxury, invites such complacence, such sitting back in this world of paved roads and metalled directions, gleaming surfaces, reclinable seats, this world where everything is ready for us, technically, to be happy, I was completely disorientated, as I am so again now in this narrow bed in this suburban hotel, watching the light flit over and over Picasso's lovers, completely and utterly disorientated, thinking of the
important responsibilities
 I have accepted for tomorrow; and which somebody like myself should never have accepted, thinking of all the half-truths I shall have to tell if I am to do my job well, if I am to be loyal to my feckless colleagues (and really only the feckless attract my loyalty), and thinking once again of the way Vikram Griffiths so blatantly sought to establish a complicity with me, a complicity directed against Colin Mattheson, who he knows is my present drinking companion, by making this disparaging remark about Colin's not caring for his students. For Christ's sake! As if I cared for mine! And what amazes me, going back now over this conversation with my drunken but endearing colleague, Welsh of Indian extraction, as I seem to be condemned to going over and over all my conversations, so that if I'm not engaging in a conversation you can be sure that I am going over one and generally wishing I hadn't engaged in it - what amazes me is how I have never been able to be either an earnest supporter of good causes, or a manipulator, as Vikram Griffiths is somehow both, never an idealist and never a pragmatist, as
she
is somehow both, so idealistic in her love and so pragmatic in its distribution, but always as it were almost an idealist, yet not quite ingenuous enough, almost a pragmatist, yet too romantic, too scared perhaps, until at some point I fell into this role of the eternally rancorous detractor, but dreaming of some unimaginable commitment, some unimaginable propriety, which I almost achieved with
her
, but never properly believed in, until the day she made it impossible.

Then somewhere beyond Lucerne, having finished the whisky and feeling I wouldn't last much longer on my feet and with the driver complaining to Vikram over the radio, now grinding out accordion-accompanied love, in German, that somebody somewhere was smoking, definitely smoking, and if they didn't stop, he personally, the driver, would stop the coach and throw them off, because while his arm might be twisted into accepting a dog he would never let people impregnate his nice upholstery with smoke, he hated smoke, I said I would go and sort the matter out. I blundered back along the aisle, banging against the seats, remembering, incongruously, as I turned my head away from
her
, holding my breath against her perfume, how even on that trip to Rheims which remains for me, as Olympia for the Greeks, the very image of happiness (something past and distant and unforgettable), even on that trip she remembered to visit her childhood dentist for a filling she felt she had lost a piece of. Perhaps I had dislodged it with my fierce tongue, she sighed. She laughed. So that in the end I was granted two more days of paradise to lose because the man decided she needed a root canal.

At the back it was Colin, the tottie-man, smoking, holding a cigarette between finger and thumb, the coal turned inward to his palm, as if this could ever hide the smoke drifting out. I told him of the driver's threat, at which, enjoying the opportunity to impress with childish transgression, for this is what groups do to people, and above all what they do to people like Colin, who are simply begging for some formal situation in which transgression will be visible, he scuttled to the stairwell leading down to the door just in front of Doris Rohr's seat - the driver wouldn't be able to see him there, he said, as if it was a question of seeing - and poking his head round grey-trousered legs, for Barnaby Hilson was now sitting next to Doris Rohr, earnestly discussing the merits of the Dead Poets, he took a pantomime drag with pouting moustache and said, Suck. Di'n't I say suck was anuvver of me fav'rite words!

While everybody was laughing at this, I took his place, which is to say I took my own place, because it was number 45 again, as I couldn't help noticing on the oval plastic tag sunk into the luxury red velvet which must not be impregnated with smoke, and exactly as I did so and remembered once again, as if I had ever forgotten, my age and
her
phone code and my address, I heard Barnaby Hilson, who is Irish and a writer, in his late twenties, objecting to Doris Rohr, who'd felt that the nice boy's suicide was unnecessary that the film was so good
precisely because the boy does die
, that is, it was a good film because the director had
allowed something to happen
, he hadn't shunned the obvious fact that 
seizing the day was dangerous
. Aspirations are dangerous, I heard Barnaby Hilson say, as I sat down on seat 45, with no other aspiration, it occurred to me, than to get through somehow. To get through what? Just through, I shall get through, I keep telling myself, I must get through, what else can I do but get through, however unlikely that sometimes seems? Whereas Barnaby Hilson of course is a budding novelist, Irish, ambitious, Catholic, young, and he likes to hint at successes by complaining about low publication advances and literary mafias in imperialist London, and the subtext of all his conversation, even this debatable remark on the supposedly
courageous narrative structure
of a box-office blockbuster, is that he, Barnaby Hilson, a clever, clean-shaven boy from a middle-class family in County Cork, has a real vocation; for him the job of foreign language teacher at the quite atrocious University of Milan is a mere, though always properly discharged (because he has a sense of self-respect), sideline, to pay his way, while the rest of us are really rather sad cases with nothing to do but mark time and cling to our salaries; and my problem dealing with Barnaby Hilson, who has had one novel published in Ireland and more recently one in paperback original in imperialist London, is that I couldn't agree more, but I hate him for saying it, for reminding me of it, as if I needed reminding. So that when, later on, I quoted Benjamin Constant at Barnaby Hilson across the huge table of one of those irksomely German
stube-style
restaurants with their long plain scrubbed wooden
tischen
where strangers are supposed to sit elbow to elbow under hunting trophies and be jolly together, as if belonging to the human race meant we had anything in common - when I quoted Benjamin Constant to Barnaby Hilson, who was offering himself as, as he put it,
a compromise candidate in a delicate situation, I
did so entirely out of envy and rancour and not with any desire whatsoever to become the
foreign lectors' representative to the European Parliament
.

And because I thought
she
might recognize the book I had got it from.

I sat down in seat 45, wondering if the powers that be, like the script-writer of
Dead Poets
, would have the wisdom to
allow something to happen
on this otherwise preposterous and preposterously dull trip, and on my left this time, as I lowered myself on to the big back seat of this powerful modern coach crossing the Confederation of Switzerland, on my left was a new girl with a plaster-cast on her ankle who was deep in conversation with Georg on her other side, and what she was saying, very earnestly, as I tuned out of Barnaby Hilson's conversation and into hers, was that she didn't expect she would ever live to be forty. Georg smiled his mature man's smile and asked her why, and he winked at me across the girl as I sat down wishing I hadn't drunk Vikram s whisky, or that there had been more of it. These girls are so young, Georg's wink said, while she - and since I can't remember her name, can't remember whether she even told me her name, I'm going to call her Plaster-cast-tottie, as if I was speaking of a conquest to Colin, because that kind of vulgarity cheers me up, if only by reminding me how callous and downmarket I can be -yes, Georg winked while Plaster-cast-tottie, or perhaps just Plottie, explained that she would never get to forty
because there were so many diseases and wars and things
. Georg smiled again and admitted he was forty-three.

Colin was stubbing his cigarette on the fire extinguisher and with his curling lip beneath thin moustache he asks, What diseases? Wass the problem, luv?

AIDS, she says demurely.

Oh, AIDS, Colin says, climbing out of the stairs, ‘ow's a nice girl like you supposed to get fuckin' AIDS, fuckin' Ada? and everybody laughs. Or perhaps around Italians one should say fuckin' Aida, he adds. And everybody laughs again. Nicoletta in the seat in front laughs and Maura beside her laughs and Georg laughs and says, avuncular, in Italian, to the girl beside him, between us, If Colin hasn't got AIDS it can't be that ubiquitous, can it?

The girl laughs.

Who says he hasn't got it? I suddenly join in. It's the whisky speaking. And I add, in English: AIDS aids for the man who's got everything, which is the kind of joke I crack when we're talking tottie over billiards.

Oh speak for y'fuckin' self, Colin says, swaying in the aisle. Oh thank you very much, Mr Jeremiah. And for stealing my seat, cunt. He winks and taps his nose. Anuwer fav'rite word.

All the girls laugh, because people in groups do laugh at this kind of thing; sometimes it seems there is nothing that people in groups will not laugh at, or rather giggle about, as on other occasions it seems there is nothing people in groups will not do to other people in smaller groups or no groups at all, and Plaster-cast-tottie, who I've now noticed has a low-cut sweater and generous breasts though on the kind of stocky body that could only make itself desirable between say thirteen and thirty, Plaster-cast-tottie says, unasked, that she doesn't believe in God, but she doesn't disbelieve, she is searching, Plottie says. This girl is very earnest, but very flirty too, with a sort of bold, glassy stare that demands to be exchanged. Perhaps she knows that her attractions are only the attractions of youth. Perhaps she knows she has to use them now. There is something very glassy and very bold and very hyper about Plaster-cast-tottie's stare and she keeps pushing a page-boy fringe from her eyes. So then I ask her, because suddenly it seems I'm talking to people, I'm talking to everybody, I've given up all hope of hiding away in books I don't want to read, i've given up all hope of cultivating aloofness and dignity, I ask Plottie, what does she mean, she is
searching?
 What does it mean when people say they are
searching?
Where do they look, how do they look, what do they actually do when they are 
searching
?

Nicoletta appears from above the seat-back in front and smiles at me from her big eyes and the girl is faintly reproachful, as if to ask why I have neglected her so long, staying at the front talking to Dottor Griffiths and then not even acknowledging her a moment ago when I came back and flopped into my seat. As if there were no intimacy between us. I smile back, and I'm aware that I like this girl who cocks her head to one side and smiles reproachfully, as though at a puppy that's misbehaved, I like her because she is so different from
her
, and at the same time Plaster-cast-tottie is telling me-she has a blue bead necklace she is winding round a finger- that what she is searching for is something that will give her an
equilibrio interiore
. She's twenty-one and she still hasn't achieved an
equilibrio interiore
, she says, and this time Georg lets a very broad smile cross his face.

You bastard kraut, Colin shouts. I saw that smirk. Don't laugh at the little girl as if you were so fuckin' superior. An
equilibrio interiore
is fuckin' important, Colin says, standing in the middle of the back passageway right in front of us, enjoying his theatrical belligerence.

Georg only smiles the more.

Unwisely, I throw in, I'm forty-five and I've never achieved an
equilibrio interiore
.

Colin says: Oh, aren't we
sturm und drang!
 Not bad, eh, he adds, elbowing the attractive Monica of the slim jeans and the cousin who wants ex-boy-friends to feel sorry for her, Not a bad range of cultural reference, what eh? Very Euraufait, no? Euraufait. J for joke. He shakes his head. Shove up a bit, love, this sod has stolen the seat I stole from him.

Colin sits on Monica's legs even before she has a chance to move and starts to explain his Euraufait joke for the benefit of the young Italians who haven't understood, while I'm thinking, Why can't you be like Colin? Would you like to be like Colin? What on earth do the girls think of him? Beating someone across the face is irremediable, I tell myself. Much worse than anything Colin does. Until with a sudden determination to participate at all costs, to escape at all costs the Furies pressing, their faces against the wet coach windows where hills are massing again now under a heavy shower surreal with doodlings of afternoon neon, I ask, Hands up those who have achieved an
equilibrio interiore
, come on, hands up! And of all those sitting in the back two rows, to wit Margherita in the extreme left corner, Georg, Plaster-cast-tottie, silent, pouty Veronica on my right, Graziano, Monica, Nicoletta and Maura, and Colin on Monica's knees, of all these only Graziano and Nicoletta half put up their hands.

Explain, I say, determined now not to be left alone with myself for one more minute of this trip, determined to talk, to be the centre of attention - so that now lying here on my narrow bed in this Strasbourg suburb, whether to north or south or east or west I neither know nor care, it occurs to me that this must have been the moment when I consciously changed plan, or rather became conscious of having unconsciously changed plan, having opted in a complete and bizarre swing of temperament, not for silent reserve, but for a virtuoso performance. From now on you will perform nonstop, I told myself. For the next forty-eight hours and with the help of a little whisky perhaps and enormous reserves of nervous energy you will be deeply ironic and sparklingly witty, and
she
will see you being brilliant and crackling like a firework and she will imagine that you have
got over her entirely
and she will be intensely jealous of the young women you're talking to and will deeply regret…