Russell Hoban: Her Name Was Lola

Once in the studio, Max gives her the vodka. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘ Two bottles!’

‘Belt and braces,’ says Max as she finds two glasses and pours for them both.

‘Here’s to form and emptiness,’ she says.

‘Whichever,’ says Max.

Grace takes her drink to her workbench which is in a corner of the room. It’s littered with tools, rolls of wire, and boxes of sparkly things lit by an Anglepoise lamp. There’s a salty sulphurous smell mixed with the smoke of her last cigarette as she makes herself a Golden Virginia roll-up and offers the tobacco and papers to Max. He declines. She lights up and gets back to work on the brooch she’s finishing. It’s a figure set with red and blue and yellow stones.

‘The Hanged Man,’ says Max. Grace shows him the card she’s working from, XXII Le Pendu in the Marseilles Tarot. ‘Very popular,’ she says. ‘We’re all of us in suspension.’

‘Do you believe in the Tarot?’ says Max.

‘I don’t believe in anything,’ says Grace. ‘You?’

‘I believe in this dwarf I’ve been carrying around.’

‘We’ll get to him in a moment,’ says Grace. ‘Bear with me.’ She’s been using tweezers very delicately. ‘There,’ she says, and puts the tweezers down. ‘It’s finished.’ She leans back, rolls another cigarette, lights up, and refills their glasses.

‘It looks good,’ says Max.

‘It better, I’m going to get a lot of money for it. I have a select clientele for this kind of thing: Tarot, Zodiac, I Ching.’ She moves gracefully off the chair and sits on the floor almost in a lotus position. ‘Join me,’ she says, ‘and tell me what’s happening.’

Max gets down on the floor (non-lotus) and tells her everything. ‘Do you want to listen to the CD?’ he says.

‘I don’t need it,’ says Grace. I’ll be working from your end. I have this one thing I can do. Maybe it’ll help, maybe not. First listen to this.’ She takes a folded piece of paper from her shirt pocket and reads:

‘Here, O Sariputra. Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.

How does that grab you?’

‘Works for me,’ says Max. ‘Are you a Buddhist?’

‘I’m not anything but if form and emptiness are the same then so are Buddhism and non-Buddhism and the Heart Sutra should work for me, which it does. I’ve never even read the whole thing. Istvan showed me the book and that part leapt out at me. All of a sudden my head seemed to open up in all directions and I knew I could do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Get with the form of emptiness and the emptiness of form.’

Maybe it’s her voice, maybe it’s the words, maybe it’s the whisky and vodka on an empty stomach: Max feels as if he’s far away and high up, standing on the edge of something. Grace’s haggard face, the light of the lamp, the tools and things on the workbench, the smell of the place — maybe they’ll stop being there.

‘Don’t look down,’ says his mind.

‘How do you do it?’ says Max to Grace.

‘I just let myself be with it, and I can get you to be with it if you want. Do you want to do it?’

‘Yes,’ says Max.

‘OK,’ says Grace. ‘Close your eyes and we’ll both say the name of Apasmara until you see the form of him. It could take a while but we’ll do it until he shows up. When you see him I’ll see him too. Then we change his name a little to deny him recognition. We’ll call him Napasmara until his emptiness appears. When that happens maybe we’ll see where he’s coming from. This’ll take a lot of juice from both of us, so move your mind away from all interference and let the energy rise up in you.’ Grace’s voice is low and husky. Her words enter Max as if she’s a priestess and he obeys. His mind becomes clear and immensely deep as the energy rises up in him.

‘Apasmara,’ he says. Grace is saying it with him, he can feel her voice becoming big and far away, his own with it. They sound like the vocal chording of Tibetan monks. ‘Apasmara!’ How many times have they said it? Max feels himself moving slowly apart as the room disappears. After a long time here is the huddled form of the dwarf demon. Apasmara writhing and glaring with burning eyes. Apasmara hissing and spitting with the rage that’s in him.

‘Napasmara!’ Grace and Max and others chant hugely. What others — absent friends? ‘Napasmara!’ Again and again they voice the name that denies the form of the dwarf. It seems hours before he begins to scatter like ashes in the wind as emptiness enters him. Apasmara has become not there. Now there is a fresh dimness like the mist over a waterfall, moving aside to disclose blue eyes, direct and unfathomable. Now appears a woman’s face with chiselled features, sweet mouth, rose-petal lips, delicate pink tongue. ‘Lola!’ whispers Max. ‘Lola Bessington!’ Ridiculously, he finds himself singing:

‘Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl,

With yellow feathers in her hair

And her dress cut down to there …’

‘Lola!’ says Max. ‘I didn’t even remember that she was gone until just now. Not only is she gone, she’s even sent Apasmara to take away all memory of her.’ Sitting on the floor, he hugs his knees and rocks back and forth, weeping.

December 1996. Lola Bessington was beautiful but she was not a showgirl. When Max met her it was cold and crisp, the air sharp with Christmas. Pavements bulging with burdened shoppers. Fretful eyes, rosy cheeks, clouds of breath. Doorways fully staffed with homeless. Max comes through Cecil Court, crosses St Martin’s Lane, passes the Coliseum entrance, goes into the Coliseum Shop. It’s bright and warm and festive, buzzing with customers doing their bit for the economy. Lola’s reaching up to get something off the shelves for a customer. Short skirts! Max’s heart leaps like a salmon jumping a waterfall. The music on the speakers is Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo . A good omen, he thinks. That’s the opera he’s come here to buy.

He follows Lola and her customer back to the counter. She has elegant legs and Max knows instinctively that her mind is equally elegant. While he waits his turn he hears L’Orfeo as if for the first time. His thoughts about Lola have naturally been carnal, he’s hard-wired for that, but now the music is getting to him. As Lola completes the sale he notes that her eyes are blue, direct and unfathomable. Her voice is a clear stream in a dappled wood, her accent is patrician. ‘If I can have her,’ he thinks, ‘my love will never die.’

‘Hi,’ says Lola. ‘Can I help you?’ The salary she earns in the shop just about pays for taxis and lunches but it gives her a feeling of independence. Her father is the Rt. Hon. Lord Bessington, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. Lady Bessington is on the Board of Trustees of the Royal Opera. Lola lives with them in a big house in Belgravia and the Bessingtons also own a villa in Tuscany. Lola’s been to Roedean and Cambridge where she got a first in Anthropology. Max’s situation, some might say, is not unlike that of a minor-league baseball player hoping to get to the big show.

Lola, twenty-five, has had a few inconsequential romances in her first years at Cambridge and in her last year she met Basil Meissen-Potts. He was like a specimen out of a Mr Right catalogue. At thirty-five, he was a QC and very silky. Tall, handsome, charming, good sense of humour, a judo black belt, an accomplished cricketer and keen yachtsman. Lola’s parents look on the couple as practically engaged. Lola doesn’t quite. Two things are against him: one, Mummy and Daddy approve of him; two, he’s never really lit Lola’s fire.