Russell Hoban - Her Name Was Lola

‘Would that make you feel better?’ says Max.

‘Yes, it would give me the comfort of knowing that at least one of us has behaved correctly.’

‘If you’ll allow a personal question, Lord Bessington, have you ever behaved incorrectly?’

‘Yes. At the age of eight I brought my pony back to the stables without cooling him down and I was thrashed for it.’

‘Thank you,’ says Max. ‘I have nothing further.’

‘Hello,’ says Vicky at the Coliseum Shop. ‘Coliseum Shop.’

‘Hi,’ says Max. ‘Max Lesser here. Any word from Lola?’

‘Only that she’s quit her job and gone away.’

‘Did she say whether she … Did she say how she is, you know, physically?’ says Max.

‘All she said was what I just told you.’

‘Nothing about where she was going or how long she’ll be away?’

‘Nothing. I have to go now.’ She hangs up.

‘Our child,’ says Max to his mind, ‘is it alive or dead?’

‘I can’t help you,’ says his mind.

Max dials the speaking clock. ‘At the third stroke,’ says the clock, ‘the time, sponsored by Accurist, will be fifteen thirty-three and ten seconds. Beep. Beep, etc. Every hour wounds; the last one kills.’

‘You can say that again,’ says Max.

‘Every hour wounds,’ speaks the clock; ‘the last one kills.’

April 1997. Poole Hospital. ‘Ich bin die fesche Lola,’ sings Max’s mind. ‘Tee-tumty-tumty-tum.’

‘Ah!’ says Max. ‘Haunt me, Lola!’

The memory that haunts him is from February, shortly after he and Lola did the I Ching. They’d arranged to meet at his place, and when Lola arrives she says, ‘Excuse me for a moment.’ Then she heads for the bathroom with her Nike sports bag that she uses for an overnighter. In a few minutes she knocks three times on her side of the closed door.

‘Who’s there?’ says Max.

‘Lola Lola,’ says Lola. The door opens and here she is in a black corset, frilly black knickers, suspender belt, black stockings and black high heels. She strikes a pose with feet apart, hands on hips.

‘Wow,’ says Max. ‘Dietrich never looked this good.’

‘Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison. Ich hab’ ein Pianola zu Haus in mein Salon,’ sings Lola, with her upper-class English accent. ‘I am the dashing Lola, the darling of the season. I have a Pianola at home in my salon.’

‘Is that where you got your name?’ says Max.

‘Not really,’ says Lola. ‘I had a grandmother named Lola, but Daddy has always been a big Dietrich fan, and when I was little he used to bounce me on his knee and sing me that song from The Blue Angel. He only knew the first line but he’d tumty-tum the rest and give me a kiss at the end. Actually he still sings it to me now and then.’

‘With the knee ride and the kiss?’ says Max.

‘No, he stopped the knee rides when I was about fourteen.’

‘About time, too,’ says Max. ‘What about the kiss?’

‘Well, you know — fond parent, only child.’

‘On the mouth?’

‘Yes. Have you got a problem with that?’

‘Maybe. I won’t ask about his tongue.’

‘A notable show of restraint,’ says Lola. ‘Would you like to help me out of this corset?’

‘Yes,’ says Max in his bed in Poole Hospital. The essence of Lola is feeding into him as it were intravenously. Never until now has he felt the charm of her, the strangeness, the sweetness and the pathos of her running in his veins like this. ‘Lola, Lola, Lola,’ he whispers.

‘Did you call me?’ says Nurse Laura, approaching on sturdy footsteps.

‘Just talking to myself,’ says Max.

April 1997. Max has no luck with his attempts to speak to Lola on the telephone, nor can he find out anything about her when he tries other people. All he has now is the absence of Lola. This is a presence in its own right, a Lola made up of what he can remember. And Max remembers more than he knew. His mind gives him details of things he hadn’t been aware of noticing. The blue Guernsey, faded jeans and denim jacket she was wearing on the day of their picnic (she hadn’t dressed warmly enough for a cold March day). The hiking boots with the kind of wear that comes from actual hiking. How her hair looked blowing in the wind. A dab of mustard on her chin. An opal ring. A hand gesture. The way she walked going up and coming down. The sky around her. ‘Primula,’ she said when he asked the name of the little yellow flowers by the path. ‘Primula,’ says Max in his hospital bed. ‘Primulola.’

When Max is discharged from hospital he’s not yet ready to leave Dorset. He gets a taxi to take him to Maiden Castle and wait for him while he climbs to where he and Lola had their picnic. First he has a look at the information boards: an artist’s impression of Maiden Castle in the Iron Age; then HILL FORTS; MAIDEN CASTLE (maps of it in successive phases); THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGE PHASES; IRON AGE PHASES I, II, III, and IV; and AFTER THE ROMAN CONQUEST. Max backs away hastily from this glut of information that tries to get between him and the Mai Dun that was Lola’s and his.

Here it is with its green and brown and tawny grasses, its eminence of centuries. Mai Dun does not impose itself on the sky, it lives with it as the sea does. Its stillness is full of life and listening with the ears of all its dead. ‘Absent friends,’ says Max as he (a little weak in the legs) starts up the brown path. He wishes he’d brought champagne so that he could pour a libation to those friends as Lola did. He feels that he needs all their goodwill now. Here are little white daisies and yellow primulas, this year’s new flowering on the ancient earth. The grass smells sweet, like a childhood memory.

He makes his way to the inner rampart where he and Lola had their picnic. Today he doesn’t see the Ark and the raven. The sky is dull and grey. Looking to the south, past the outer ramparts and ditches, he takes in the tree-lined fields and meadows undulating in easy sweeps to the blue distance. Here they sat. Here is the ribbon she tied to the grass stem. It’s blue, fluttering in the same wind. It’s realer than it was when she put it there, it’s more than itself. ‘What is it?’ Max says to his mind. ‘Is it that reality isn’t real to me the first time around?’

‘What it is,’ says his mind, ‘is that you aren’t always real the first time around. Now that she’s gone you’ll know what she was to you. More and more.’

Max knows that he can’t change anything, knows it right down to his bones. But he says to himself, ‘If Lula Mae hadn’t … If I hadn’t … What? And here on Mai Dun, what exactly did I say, what did Lola say?’

‘What’s the use of going there?’ says his mind. ‘Let it be.’

‘We said the names of the seven stars of Ursa Major,’ says Max. ‘We said, “Max and Lola. Lola and Max.” We looked at Hale-Bopp. I said, “You seem to be good friends with the stars.”

‘She said, “Yes. I’m pregnant.”

‘I said, “Wow.”

‘She said, “Say more.”

‘I said, “Speechless.” We hugged and kissed.

‘She said, “So you’re happy about it?”

‘I said, “Like crazy.”’

Max pauses, lies down with his face to the ground. He smells the earth, the ancient grasses, the summer suns, the winter rains, the cookfires of the dead.

‘But then,’ says Max’s mind, ‘in the car …’

‘She said, “You said you’re happy about it but you don’t seem happy.”

‘I said, “It’s a lot to take in.”’

‘Right there,’ says Max’s mind, ‘is where you should have stopped. Skip to the part where the shit hit the fan.’