Russell Hoban - Her Name Was Lola

Max says, ‘She said, “Wait a minute — do I smell Lula Mae Flowers again?”’

Max’s mind says, ‘That’s where I told you to deny everything. And what did you say?’

‘“I cheat but I don’t lie,”’ says Max. ‘Then Lola said, “So you’ve slept with her,” and I said, “I’m afraid so.”’

‘Because you don’t lie,’ says his mind. ‘You just kill people with the truth.’

‘Lola said, “Say more,”’ says Max, ‘“I need to know the whole thing so this day can be complete.” So I said, “She’s …” and Lola said, “O my God. Don’t say it. Say it.”

‘“Pregnant,” I said.’

‘Stop already,’ says Max’s mind. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Now I’ve lost Lola,’ says Max. ‘And maybe she’s lost the baby. Lost our child.’

‘I have nothing to say,’ says his mind.

April 1997. ‘Jesus,’ says Lula Mae. ‘You look like you’ve been dipped in shit three times and pulled out twice.’

‘Something like that,’ says Max. They’re at The White Horse again, drinking pints of Bass.

‘Where’ve you been?’ says Lula Mae. ‘I’ve been calling you and getting the answering machine for the last two and a half weeks.’

Max tells her where he’s been, who said what, and what happened.

‘Poor Lola!’ says Lula Mae. ‘Is the baby all right?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been able to talk to Lola or find out anything about her.’

‘So what’s going to happen now?’

‘I don’t know.’ Evasive posture.

‘You’re tiptoeing across that road like a possum caught in the headlights.’

Max lets a What-Can-I-Say? expression appear on his face. High overhead an aeroplane passes, trailing a banner: SAY SOMETHING, MAX.

‘I’ll make it easy for you,’ says Lula Mae. ‘You’re only a little bit in love with me, no more than that. And I’m only a little bit in love with you. We’ve given each other a lot of pleasure. That first time at my place you recited “The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy Bo” while we made love. It was weird and it was wonderful and we hadn’t ever had anybody like each other before but doing it more times didn’t really take us any further. You know and I know that we haven’t got marriage and a family and growing old together in us. What I do have in me is being a single mum and doing my own thing in the place where I feel best, which is Austin.’

‘That was fast. No sooner am I a father-to-be than both my kids-to-be leave me. Is this a record?’

‘“There never was a horse that couldn’t be rode, there never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed.”’

‘True. I guess you did give me fair warning.’

‘This is not a sad ending, Max — we’re simply accepting that you can’t pour out of a jug more than you poured into it.’

‘There’s no use crying over spilt milk,’ says Max, ‘and certainly a stitch in time saves nine.’

‘There you go, and bear in mind that I’ll keep you up to date with letters and photos, plus you can visit as much as you like or even move to Texas if you want to keep an eye on Victor or Victoria.’

‘You’ve chosen a name already?’

‘Well, I believe any kid of ours will be a winner, so I thought Victor for a boy and Victoria for a girl.’

Max sees, as in those stop-motion films of flowers unfolding, Victor/Victoria growing from infancy upward. He hopes the child will have Lula Mae’s looks and her brains as well. Tears seem to be running down his cheeks. ‘I’ll help with money,’ he says.

‘We can work out the details later,’ says Lula Mae. ‘Maybe the next round should be double scotches. My shout.’

‘I hear you,’ says Max.

‘Ah,’ says a nearby drinker as Lula Mae’s going-away view passes.

‘I know,’ says Max.

April 1997. Work has always been the sovereign remedy for Max. Riven as he is by guilt, shame, remorse, doubt and general funk he returns to his Moe Levy pages.

‘You took your time,’ says Moe.

‘My time took me,’ says Max. ‘Be with you in a moment, got to do the epigraph.’ He gets a book from the shelf and copies the following:

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

Willa Cather, My Antonia

‘If I believed that I’d give up right now,’ says Moe. ‘Where are we going with this?’

‘Do you want to put down the dwarf or not?’ says Max.

‘Not if it means living in the past with nothing to look forward to,’ says Moe.

‘Maybe you don’t deserve anything to look forward to,’ says Max. ‘You’re not a good man.’

‘So why bother with me? Why not write a nice guy for your protagonist?’

‘I work with the material that comes to me and I go where it takes me,’ says Max. ‘Anyhow, no more dwarf, he never happened. We’re scrapping whatever I’ve done so far. This thing now has a title: Her Name Was Lulu.’

‘Is that the first line of a song?’ says Moe.

‘No,’ says Max. ‘Chapter One is WHEN MOE MET LULU.’

‘OK,’ says Moe. ‘Give me good things to remember.’

‘More than you deserve,’ says Max.

‘Maybe a little mercy along with your justice?’ says Moe. ‘Even bad guys can have things to look forward to.’

‘All I can promise is that I’ll explore the material,’ says Max, and he starts typing at a pretty good rate of knots. He met Lola towards the end of December 1996 and he last saw her on the 22nd of March 1997. In those three months they spent a lot of hours together so there’s plenty of material to explore for Moe and Lulu. Moe will fall in love with Lulu when he meets her at the Coliseum Shop and they’ll have many pleasant days and evenings before Moe’s wandering eye gets him into trouble.

As Max works, his mind is busy sorting words and pictures along with sounds, smells, and the taste and feel of everything in his times with Lola. Just as witnesses under hypnosis recall more than they think they noticed, Max finds details he hadn’t remembered until now. The memories are fresh and vivid, realer than themselves. Like the ribbon on Mai Dun and the mustard on Lola’s chin. There was the time in St Martin’s Lane when they found the drawings of Heinrich Kley in two paperback volumes in the Dover Bookshop. Turning the pages past elephants and crocodiles on ice skates and showjumping centaurs Lola comes upon a naked giantess who is a luxurious landscape on which tiny men climb up and slide down and variously enjoy themselves. ‘What do you think of that?’ she says to Max.

‘I’ve always known that women are much bigger than men,’ says Max.

‘Discuss,’ says Lola.

‘Have you ever seen the Whitbread Brewery horses parked outside The Duke of Cumberland in the New King’s Road?’ says Max.

‘Are you going to compare women to horses?’ says Lola.

‘In a particular way,’ says Max. ‘I was passing there once while the barrels were being trundled into the cellar. It was raining and those great horses were standing there with the steam coming up off their backs. They have something prehistoric about them, something from before Coca-Cola and McDonald’s and Walt Disney. That’s why people want to be thought well of by horses. They give the Whitbread horses apples and lumps of sugar and they talk to them respectfully. Women have that prehistoric something also. Some men like it, others are scared by it. I like it.’

‘Even though I’m smaller than a brewery horse and I’m not much good at pulling a dray?’

‘You may be small in beer haulage but you’re big with me,’ says Max.