No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Novel (32 page)

Frank wonders why she holds herself so gravely, so inexpectantly, given that she has had her way, been rid of him and all his noise for so long, and has effortlessly got him to return on her terms.
If you think you can be quiet
… She is mistress of all sound now, she is sole queen of the night. So why isn’t she rampant with happiness?

Of course he may not have her right. She may only look like a woman grieving to
him.
This is a discredited act of the imagination, he knows. Anthropomorphism, it is called. Attributing the thoughts and feelings of a man to what is not a man. It is held to be unscientific, emotional, and presumptuous. But what can he do? Anthropos is all he is. He can only feel as a man. And what he feels is that she is sorrowing and sad.

But that’s what Frank thinks about all women – isn’t it? – that they are sorrowing and sad. That they exist for him to pity. Once, to fuck and pity. Now, to pity full stop.

He goes downstairs and steps out into the garden. And shivers.

She doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t move. He is so sorry for her. She is so frightened of what he will do. Try a joke. Attempt a justification. Essay something sexual. He knows how little of a threat he is to her. So her fear smites his heart.

There are no candles or garden torches burning. He cannot see how she is, or what she has done to herself while he’s been away. How she is wearing her hair. Whether she even has hair. No Castro’s beard, he is confident of that. She’s been writing, not sprouting. He would love to put his hand out to touch her, to coax her up out of the soil, straighten her rounded back. But what if she were to say, ‘What now? Are you mad?’ Could he take it? Would he be able to bear it? Never mind on her account, would he be able to bear it for
himself?

He must risk it. He has no choice. He drops his fingers lightly on her shoulders, as on a keyboard. Pianissimo.
Con amore lamentabile.
Tell a butterfly to land more considerately and it couldn’t do it. But the cold in her bones still rises up to him.

How thin she is, he thinks. Is it possible she hasn’t eaten since he left? Or has she upped the number of hours she
spends hanging over the bath? She doesn’t return his touch, but she receives it. He feels her take it in, collect it, as a debt that’s owing to her.

Is she right? Is this her due? Or is what he believes right – that his touch is a gift, freely given?

Not a word has been spoken but they are arguing already.

There’s a fox out. Screaming for sex. When a fox screams for sex you think its being killed. You can smell the blood. Foxes do it in reverse order – murderousness
then
love. Frank isn’t screaming for sex. Frank isn’t screaming for anything. Frank’s going quietly. He would just like what’s given freely as a gift to be accepted as a gift. That’s all. And while he’s on the subject of going quietly, since the game is Mel’s, since she has won, since he’s back emptied of all noise, and since there is a fat envelope oozing juicy pornoscript on the hall table, why this continuing tragedy? Why the grief? Why the garden of fucking desolation, Mel?

If he had a free hand he’d be smiting the side of his head with it. Woman – mouth – droop; man – forehead – bang. For two pins, if there were somewhere worth going, if there were some other war worth fighting, if this field of blood were not the most transfixingly interesting place on earth to him, he’d be gone.

Howard Jacobson is the author of eleven novels and four works of non-fiction. He won the Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing in 1999 for
The Mighty Walzer,
and the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for
The Finkler Question.

Copyright © 1998 by Howard Jacobson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Jonathan Cape
First published in paperback in Great Britain in 1999 by Vintage
This paperback edition published in the United States in 2011 by Bloomsbury USA

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2011
Electronic edition published in October 2011

www.bloomsburyusa.com

E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-735-4