Tim Parks - Europa

Getting rid of Vikram Griffiths had been easy. Then the hostility Dimitra aroused by speaking against the Indian Welshman, Dimitra of the brick-orange lipstick and solid Teutonic nose under Macedonian black eyes, had been sufficient to prevent her from being elected either. We had elected Dimitra as president of the union on two or three occasions now because on each of those occasions no one else would contemplate doing the job, except Vikram, who again was unacceptable since he would have proposed an indefinite strike more or less every time we had an assembly, and this was something that the German contingent in particular just could not deal with. But when it came to representing us to the powerful institutions of the European Community there were more than two candidates. For this was a brief appointment, and perhaps interesting, perhaps useful. So now it must be time, I imagined, for her to put herself forward. As she had no doubt always planned. Or for someone to do that for her.

Amidst the general chatter, having returned to my seat and cast my vote and filled my mouth with German dumpling, I watched her. She was looking across the table at Georg. And I thought, She is still in complicity with Georg. They only made love once or twice, she said. Out of friendliness (this around the time I said, I want to leave my wife for you). Yet she is still in complicity with him, in a way she could never be with me. And quite probably, I told myself, their names were indeed together on that list you so hastily and unwisely signed in the drab offices of the Istituto di Anglistica that morning of three weeks ago. Their names were together, above and below each other no doubt, and written no doubt, for all I cannot rightly recall it, with the same pen. As far as this trip is concerned, they were already and always in complicity . As two people who have briefly been lovers then use that intimacy as a bond, an alliance, a secret society, for all future mutual convenience. And one can’t help wondering at the maturity, as she would say, of this, the good sense, the fact that there are people who know how to enjoy themselves without coming to grief, without intensity, those lovers who see each other occasionally, when convenience permits, and fuck each other cordially , perhaps with a little healthy back-massage to boot, and then are perfectly content if the opportunity doesn’t present itself for weeks and even months. And one can’t help wondering why you came on this trip, I tell myself now, if their names were together on that list, if they were already in complicity. Why did you come? Why did you insist on this mistake, when you had the perfect alibi of your daughter’s eighteenth birthday party, now to take place in your much-censured absence? And the only idea that springs to mind is that you came on this trip, having seen their names together on that list, to savour defeat once again , to rediscover intensity. The defeat and intensity, for example, of finding that this trip is precisely one of those convenient occasions when she and Georg can get together and, cordially , fuck. Now, in this very hotel perhaps. At one in the morning. A few rooms down from your own. Who knows? As yellow headlights pass over some reproduced masturbatory ecstasy by Gustav Klimt. And I am reminded of the time she told me that she had bought an ammonia spray and was keeping it in her handbag. We were speaking on the phone, and she said, So don’t say I didn’t warn you, but then immediately began talking about the possibility of another night together. It was me who hung up.

Then Georg had indeed just begun to raise his even, pacato voice above the chatter, no doubt to propose her as our representative, this being part of a pre-arranged plan, when Barnaby Hilson, he of the experimental novels and traditional tin whistle, cut in. And this is what Barnaby said in his rather Irish Italian: that the important thing was for us to remain united . He fiddled with his cutlery as he spoke. That there must be no hostility between the representative and other key members of our union. He looked down at his fingers, disarmingly embarrassed. That we must work together to win our rights, with no suspicion that the person doing the representing was in any way acting in his personal interests. He looked up and smiled with impeccable mildness and cleanshaven good nature. He himself could be such a person, he admitted. He had never shown any ambition for power in the union, he said, and indeed was thinking of leaving the University in another year or two, as this was not, as most of us knew, his principal career, he remarked. His tone was apologetic, since the embarrassment, the endearing embarrassment, of superior beings upon their declaring their difference from the rest of us is only another way of foregrounding that superiority, of course. Also, he said — and now his shy wryness was illuminated with a youthful smile — also, an Irish person would never put the backs up the powers-that-be in the Community the way a German, a French, or above all a British representative might. Because Ireland, he said, still speaking in this amiable tone, was a weak member of the Community and a willing member and clearly represented the oppressed rather than the oppressor on the international world stage , which was an important advantage, he said, again lowering his eyes to fiddling hands. Thus in the present circumstances, Barnaby Hilson said — and I noticed what exceedingly long and blond eyelashes he had — he was wiling, though only too aware of his limitations, to put himself forward as a compromise candidate in what was rapidly becoming a delicate situation .

Barnaby Hilson’s modest self-candidature was immediately seconded by Doris Rohr, who had clearly enjoyed their animated Dead Poets conversation, and again by Heike the Dike, who perhaps finds those long eyelashes attractively effeminate, and again by Luis, who, coming as he does from the Basque country, perhaps has a sentimental affinity for the evocative if limited music of dead if not decently buried minority cultures. A vote was thus proposed over what remained of the dumplings in broth and the ten jugs of very poor quality house wine, and there was a definite look of concern on her face now at seeing herself about to be pipped at the public post by this charming, experimental and above all Irish novelist, about to lose this role that she had no doubt hoped would lead her to important contacts with figures, preeminently male, in important institutional positions, men with whom she could perhaps profitably have discussed her essay on A Future Constitution for a United Europe . The vote was thus about to be taken, doubtless in favour of our charming philosopher-king Irishman, who I do honestly believe would have made a presentable and conscientious representative, when, out of the complete silence I had maintained throughout, indeed had imposed on myself ever since putting the phone down on my daughter and hearing that the Avvocato Malerba preferred Spinoza to Nietzsche, I suddenly and for no reason I could imagine found myself quoting, in Italian, the same Benjamin Constant I had once read with such pleasure, between fucking and fellatio perhaps, in Pensione Porta Genova: The mania of almost all men , I said, leaning across the scrubbed stube tisch where two or three of Colin’s tottie-directed baguette pellets had fallen into a pool of spilt wine and broth, while another stuck to the fur of Dafydd ap Gwilym, now furiously attacking his hind parts on the seat beside Heike the Dike, is to appear greater than they are; the mania of all writers, Barnaby, is to appear as men of state . Benjamin Constant, I added, feeling dazed as one who has blundered into stage lights, or a fly compelled to halogen, De l'esprit de conquéte et de I’usurpation .