Tim Parks - Europa

With mindless urgency, in the small hours of the fourth of the fifth, perhaps fatal, not long after my forty-fifth birthday, I catch myself stumbling out of bed and into my trousers. My shirt I left inside my sweater and I pull them on together. I have no idea what I shall do, only that it must bring some resolution. There is still soft chatter from along the corridor, the occasional giggle. Closing my door I’m aware I haven’t put my shoes on, my hair is uncombed. I stride with empty determination on a coarse synthetic carpet. And two exquisitely disconnected thoughts cross my mind: that I am the University of Milan’s lectors’ representative to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, instituted to set all wrongs to right, and that Nicoletta’s tottie-tag will be Not-So-Sneaky. Or no, Sneaky, for irony. Sneaky-tottie. My mind is in pieces. Each door I pass could be hers .

The lobby-cum-lounge opens up at the end of the corridor: armless armchairs scattered about low tables, cut-glass ashtrays under concealed fluorescent light, great windows polished black behind lace curtains. A low ceiling is supported by thin, square white pillars. Wass the difference, girls, comes a voice from the far side, Wass the difference between fear and horror? Tell me that. There are still ten of them perhaps, sprawled over chairs and carpet round a table full of bottles glasses empty packets of eats and fags the far side of a tropical tree that must be fake. Titter and giggles. Under the table, the dog is again licking his genitals. With loving absorption. Fear, Colin begins, fear is … Lurching round the tree I see that Plottie is sitting on the Avvocato Malerba’s knee…. the first time you don’t make it the second time. Georg is not there. She is not there. While horror is … They are not there. Immediately, I must know who Georg’s room-mate is. Who her room-mate is. I couldn’t give a damn what Plottie’s up to. Are they around or are they in their rooms? I couldn’t even masturbate over Plottie. The quiet rhythm of the dog’s licking makes a mockery of your attempts to masturbate, I reflect. Are they together, or are they not? Horror is … Oh I don’t think I can tell ‘em this, Colin laughs, perched on the edge of a chair with Tittie- to trie’s decidedly grand canyon beside him, and either they have shagged already or have missed out on shagging, perhaps due to difficulties with the experimental Barnaby and the charity-ball party. Jerry, you know this joke. Do you think I can really tell ‘em what horror is? Who are they sharing with? Why didn’t I make a mental note when the rooms were being allotted? Why wasn’t it obvious that the Avvocato Malerba came on this trip solely and exclusively to tottie, came because Vikram Griffiths coined that expression The Shag Wagon? No, it was Georg coined that expression. Georg. I am suddenly overwhelmed by the need to know if they are fucking now . A matter of absolutely no importance to me. It’s vital. I must find out, I must resolve something. All these years and I haven’t resolved anything! I am still exactly where I was when I first hit her so long ago. Vikram Griffiths, with his arms round Heike the Dike of all people, is splashing whisky on to the dregs of something else. Wine? Grappa? Jerry where did you fuck off to? He offers the glass to me. Full And now I need a cigarette too. Better late than never, he grunts, sucking in catarrh. Or is this the first of the breakfast crowd? He prods his dog with his toe. If I could lick my cock like that I’d never go out of the house. He laughs. You can even hear it, he laughs. Per favore , one of the girls says, per carita . But suddenly I need a cigarette. Who will give me a cigarette? The shameless old shagger, Vikram grins, scratching in a sideburn. If fear, Colin repeats — Colin always has that facetiously patronizing tone to his voice, why do they put up with him? Why don’t they hit him? — is the first time you don’t make it the second time, what do you think horror can be? Heike says she hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about. Somebody grabs the ashtray just before it falls, but sending stubs flying all the same, while I can already see myself going down the corridor and listening at every door. Í must know . It’s an entirely vivid picture. There are only, what, forty rooms. Fifty. And myself with my ear pressed to the brown-pink-painted door of every one, listening for sighs and squeaks. Listening for her Mais oui, mais oui! It’s the blatancy of people like the Avvocato Malerba that amazes me. Man Dieu! Mon Dieu! Not unlike the blatancy of a dog who licks his genitals in public. And of course like every awful, inappropriate and above all humiliating action, this image of myself eavesdropping all along the corridor, listening for her mots sur l'oreiller at every door, is immediately immensely seductive. The blatancy of a respectable professor on the point of retirement stroking a girl’s thigh as she sits on his knee in a hotel lounge. But why not for heaven’s sake! Why not? As when I prowled about outside her Verona flat for hours, chain-smoking tipped Gauloises because they reminded me of her. I must have a cigarette. To catch them at it. To know. To confront. Georges car was there . To achieve some resolution. To suffer. I’m sure it was Georg’s. And Plottie, first with her hand on my knee, then her arse on his. Why not? Why didn’t I take the licence plate to compare it later? Statistics have proved, Vikram is claiming, that people of mixed race shag more and better than their pure-bred counterparts. His laughter is raucous. I cadge a cigarette, having imagined, during what I now see as that masterpiece of self-deception which was my ‘recovery' that I had stopped smoking. Do we expect the likes of Plottie to be faithful? What for? I hate cadging cigarettes. Especially from someone you’ve never spoken to before. A student with red hair. If you have a bad idea, I tell myself, be sure you’ll act on it. How could I ever have imagined I’d stopped smoking? Per l'amore di Dio tell us! says Tittie-tottie. Tell us what horror is. Red-hair lights my cigarette. Cadging a cigarette, it occurs to me, becomes an image of one’s humiliation, of everything one’s been reduced to. She’s called Serena. But then how could I ever have imagined I’d recovered? Horror, says Vikram Griffiths — would I beat on the door if I found them? Would I be able to restrain myself, would I be able to stop myself from becoming totally violent , from seeking to resolve the situation once and for all? — horror is a wet afternoon in Swansea with no booze and your girl-friend with the Red Army in. He laughs loud, squeezing an arm round Heike the Dike’s shoulders. But it’s forced. I suddenly see that now. Vikram Griffiths is morose from hours of drinking. I’m suddenly aware of that. Then I ask myself, could it be that her room-mate is Heike and Georg’s Vikram? Could it be that these two, Vikram and Heike, are only here in the lounge so late to give the others some time in bed, their own jokey arm-in-armness a sort of comic reflection of the others’ embrace? Perhaps they wish they’d gone to sleep hours ago. They’re only staying up to do the others a favour. Horror is English Three, says Plottie, when Ermani sets the dictation. Incredibly, I’ve managed to sit down, rather than set off along the corridor. Incredibly, somebody actually giggled at Plottie’s unimaginative remark. How could I ever have wanted to sleep with her? Tubby, dull, silly. The Avvocato Malerba is playing with the beads of her blue necklace. I’m on the floor. She’s pushing her fringe back. I’ve got the whisky in my hand and I’m on the carpet with my first cigarette in weeks between a certain Valeria, small and peppy, tousled black hair, boyish body, and the belligerent Maura, who sat beside Nicoletta, sorry Sneaky-tottie, on the coach, saving her very occasional remarks to further the cause of the moderate Left. Nah, nah, Colin says. 1 can’t tell them. Too adult. Three of the girls are pulling at his clothes and pinching him to get him to finish his joke. You can’t just leave a joke hanging in the air! But I’ve seen him do this trick once before. In a bar in Sesto San Giovanni. No, I can’t be responsible for corrupting a group of nice young women, Colin protests. He smoothes his moustache in a pantomime of serious reflection. It was the first night I slept with Psycho-tottie. Which resolved nothing. He finds a Queen’s English: You are acquainted with my moral values, I’m sure. Plottie watches from Malerba’s knee, though somehow they’re not quite together. The truth is I admire their blatancy. My vocation, says Colin, for the preservation of innocence. Comes a shout: I'll strip off my top if you don’t tell us inside one minute! It’s the peppy Valeria. Exactly one minute, she shouts. That’ll show him who’s innocent! Peals of laughter. Go on then! One minute, she shouts. And counting. Now where were me reading glasses, Vikram Griffiths says, ‘orror … Colin begins again, again pauses. Sorry, horror. Where are your aitches? Mum always used to say. He has a huge teasing grin on his face. Then he whispers something to Tittie-tottie. Laughter. You don’t believe me? Valeria stands up. I’m counting. Cinquantuno, cinquanta , you don’t believe me but I’m going to take my top off, quarantanove . Whoo-oo-oo-ooh! Vikram Griffiths shouts on a rising note. But still obviously morose. Nobody, I suddenly tell myself, sitting on the floor observing the Indian Welshman, pretends to enjoy themselves more than the sullen, the morose, the defeated. Our respective ages were definitely the crucial factor in our affair. I see that now. Quarantasei . The girl untucks herself. Clearly tipsy. Quarantacinque . Age was the colour of our affair, you might say. Quarantatre . Nobody, I tell myself, throws themselves into life more determinedly than the terminally ill. Clearly drunk. How on earth could I have been so blind as to envy Vikram taking two girls under his mac and then singing Men of Harlech of all things? Men of Harlech! With those ridiculous sideburns. To end up the evening in a drunken embrace with a woman renowned only for her many economically advantageous affairs with women older than herself, and most notably with the appalling Professoressa Bertelli, who gave her her job. A man obliged to keep a dog in order to have someone or something around who will not betray him. Trentacinque . Perhaps age is the key to everything, I tell myself, drinking my whisky. The Avvocato Malerba shifts Plottie on his knees to get a better view around the tropical tree. Sixty if he’s a day. Trentadue . From the carpet below I’m looking up at a solid young butt in jeans and at bitten fingers beginning on bottom blouse buttons. Perhaps none of us are truly ourselves, it occurs to me, but only ourselves at a certain age. Whoo-oo-oo-ooh! shouts Vikram. The dog looks up from his genitalia. We have no identity apart from our age. And now it occurs to me that all day Vikram Griffiths has never been anything but morose. That all day what 1 took for cheerfulness, for high spirits, was just a vain attempt to defend himself from his melancholy. I see this now. A depression perhaps even greater than my own. Otherwise why would he trail around with a shaggy dog, with a whisky flask? Am I going to listen at the doors or not? They must be fucking. Ventinove . Heike the Dike shakes her head. Pessimo gusto , she says, with her heavy German accent, but watching. You imagine somebody is happy, 1 tell myself, and instead they are choking with despair. You imagine somebody wants to seduce you and instead they want to tell you about their father’s cancer. You imagine somebody finds complete fulfilment in you and instead they’re completing a mosaic of friendship with someone else. Ventiquattro . This kind of thing doesn’t happen with dogs, I reflect. Ventidue . For example, it would not be beyond her , it comes to me (how fertile my mind is when everything is going wrong), first to fuck Georg, now, cordially as ever, in the room with the Modigliani reproduction, and then (penti) to fuck Heike, if fuck is the appropriate word, equally cordially, in the room with the Gustav Klimt reproduction. And why not? Why shouldn’t people do these things?. Why shouldn’t my daughter do just whatever she wants? It’s her eighteenth birthday tomorrow. Today. Why shouldn’t she read trash? And why couldn’t 1 just have gone to sleep without thinking about all this? Quindici . Or just got drunk without thinking about all this? Tredici . Georg’s woman, after all, is crippled with muscular dystrophy. Undid . It’s quite reasonable for him to want to shag around. Not much point if you’ve got a bra on, Plottie says, wriggling on the knees of a sixty-year-old who prefers Spinoza to Nietzsche. The mother of his child, as he always describes her. Horror is Berlusconi becoming president for life, says Committed-moderate-left-tottie. Why do 1 hate the word committed? But the peppy Valeria is making that beautiful gesture women have of arching their backs to enable their hands to get up to the bra fastener, so that their tits, and 1 remember remarking on this to her and getting her to do it over and over in front of the mirror of some hotel or other, so that their tits are pushed forward and upward, foregrounded a modern grammarian might say, at precisely the moment nakedness is promised, the sudden give when the fastener is released more dramatic and more exciting than if you had undone it for her. Nope, otto . She raises the tone of her voice. The accent is Roman. All this abundance of beauty, 1 tell myself, watching Peppy-tottie pull her bra out through a sleeve, is somehow more present to me now than it ever was, and more unavailable. Sei, cinque . Nothing could better convince me, Colin gloats at the now bra-less girl, that what fragments of innocence remain to this fallen child must be preserved at all costs. I’m afraid I really cannot reveal the end of this joke. Plottie has started to croon strip music. What a prick you are, Heike says in her Austrian accent. I’d never forgive myself, Colin gloats. And will somebody please get that disgusting beast out of here! Tittie-tottie tries to cover his eyes. A skirmish. Though her own must be altogether more impressive. Quattro, tre . Peppy has a curious grin on her face, there’s a gleam in her eyes. As if removing her shirt were an act of terrorism. I'll do it, she shrieks. You don’t believe me, but I will do it. Whoo-oo-OO-OH! Thus Vikram Griffiths. Morose. Promptly echoed by his lyric hound.