Ned Beauman - The Teleportation Accident

‘You mean a sort of carpenter?’

Loeser was about to explain that his work was fundamental to the conception of Lavicini , but then he heard something click behind his head. He looked round. There was Rackenham with his Leica. Another interruption, but this was all right: it would be good if Adele thought he was ringed with cosmopolitan associates.

‘Oh, you didn’t give me a chance to pose,’ said Adele, fussing belatedly at her fringe.

‘I don’t think it would be possible to take an unflattering photo of you, my dear,’ said Rackenham.

‘Certainly not with that particular camera,’ said Loeser evenly.

‘Why don’t you introduce me, Egon?’

‘Fraulein Hitler, this is Herr Rackenham. He’s a very distinguished young novelist.’

‘A real writer! What’s your book called?’

‘My latest is Steep Air ,’ said Rackenham.

‘Oh, I haven’t heard of that. I’m sorry to say I don’t read much English fiction.’

‘Don’t be sorry. You’re very wise. English fiction is dead. It’s disloyal of me to say, because I went to university with so many of its brightest hopes, but it is dead.’

‘Then who am I to read?’

‘The Americans. A critic friend of mine says that deciding between English fiction and American fiction is like deciding between dinner with a corpse and cocktails with a baby; but at least the baby has a life ahead of it.’

‘I love American books,’ said Adele.

Loeser, at present, was reading Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin. Unfortunately, after seventeen months, he was still only on page 189. Achleitner, who had bought it the same day, was about three quarters of the way through page 12. ‘I cannot tolerate this infatuation with the Yanks,’ he said. ‘Rackenham, you’re as bad as Ziesel over there in his new suit.’

‘I think he might have heard you,’ said Rackenham.

‘I hope he did. If you want to understand what American culture really is you should go and look at the new escalators in the Kaufhaus des Westens on Tauentzienstrasse. They’re American-made. Never in your life will you have seen so many apparently healthy adults queueing up for the privilege of standing still.’

‘What about jazz?’ said Adele.

‘Jazz is castration music for factory workers. This band are playing in the right place but they got here too late.’

‘There must be something American you like.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

This was a lie, but it didn’t feel like a lie, because it had only one very specific exception. About a year earlier, he had taken a slow train to Cologne to visit his great aunt, and on the journey he had deliberately brought nothing to read but Berlin Alexanderplatz , on the basis that after six hours either he would have finished the book or the book would have finished him. He lasted one stop before turning to the other man in the carriage and saying, ‘I will give you fifty-seven marks, which is everything I have in my wallet, for that novel you’re reading.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak German,’ said the man in a thick American accent.

Loeser repeated the offer in English. (He had grown up speaking both languages to his parents.)

‘Don’t you care what it is?’

‘Is it by any chance Berlin Alexanderplatz ?’ said Loeser.

‘No.’

‘Then I don’t care what it is.’

The book turned out to be Stifled Cry by Stent Mutton. It was set in Los Angeles and it was about a petty criminal who meets a housemaid on a tram, becomes her lover, and then makes a plan to steal a baby so that the housemaid can sell it to her infertile mistress for enough money to elope. Loeser finished it in less than two hours, which might have represented bad value for money if he hadn’t been delighted to have the chance to read it a second and third time before they arrived in Cologne, and then a fourth time by candlelight in his great aunt’s guest room. The narrator had no name, no history, no morals, and no sense of humour. He had a vocabulary about the size of a budgerigar’s, and yet he had a strangely poetic way with the grease-stained American vernacular. He seemed to find everyone and everything in the world pretty tiresome, and although he rarely bothered to dodge the women who threw themselves at him, the only true passion to which he was ever aroused was his ferocious loathing for the rich and those deferential to the rich. Loeser found all this captivating, but what he found most captivating of all was that Mutton’s protagonist always, always, always knew what to do. No dithering, no procrastination, no self-consciousness: just action. Loeser yearned to be that man. He had soon afterwards sent off to Knopf in New York for all five of Mutton’s remaining books, which were now hidden under his bed beside an expensive photo album of Parisian origin called Midnight at the Nursing Academy .

But he didn’t tell Adele and Rackenham any of this. Instead, he started trying to nudge the conversation back to his impressive work in the theatre. Before he had done so, though, Achleitner appeared. Loeser introduced Achleitner to Adele. ‘I shall enjoy watching you make a fool of yourself with this girl,’ is what Achleitner said with the smile he gave Loeser. ‘Apparently Brecht has just got here,’ is what he said out loud.

Back at the entrance to the factory there was indeed a small crowd of what might have been Brecht’s parasites. But Loeser didn’t see Brecht. He did, however, see Marlene, who had evidently also just arrived. He felt dispirited by how chic she looked. She was even wearing a vogueish monocle. Adele, meanwhile, was standing on tiptoes to try and catch sight of the playwright.

A monstrous thought sank its fangs into Loeser’s brain.

He blurted something to Achleitner about how he ought to tell Adele the story of Brogmann and the lifeguards while he had a word with Rackenham. Then he took Rackenham aside.

‘I know we’ve only just met,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to ask a favour. Brecht will leave after twenty minutes. He always does. Could you just sort of distract Adele until then? Dance with her or something. Take some more “photos”.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m sure even a man of your proclivities can tell that Adele is the most beautiful female at this party. And not only that but she’s new blood. If he sees her, Brecht will go after her like Ziesel after a coffin full of ice cream sundae. And she’s hardly going to say no to him. Even though he doesn’t wash or brush his teeth.’

‘Why don’t you distract her yourself?’

‘My ex-girlfriend’s here.’ He looked around. ‘I’m not sure where she’s gone now, but she is. And if she sees me trying to seduce a naive eighteen-year-old ex-pupil then she may get the impression that my new life without her is not quite the model of mature sexual prosperity that you and I know it absolutely is. I can’t have that.’

‘Loeser, the child seems very lovely, but if I don’t sell the rest of this coke I shall have to hide from my landlady all weekend.’

‘Please, Rackenham. If Brecht doesn’t fuck her then I really think I might be able to. And I know it’s silly but I can’t help feeling that if I did fuck her…’

‘What?’

‘I can’t helping feeling that if I did fuck her, just once, then everything would be all right,’ said Loeser hesistantly. ‘For me. Even if I didn’t fuck anyone else this year. I know it sounds pathetic, but look at her. Look at her eyes. And I’d probably be her first. Imagine that! You and Achleitner wouldn’t understand because you two can just fuck whomever you want whenever you want. But it doesn’t work like that if you prefer women. Unless you’re Brecht.’ Or a Stent Mutton hero.