Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

The lovemaking and the talk had drained some of the disquiet out of me; I kissed Katerina and fell asleep and dreamed that I was approaching the oasis with Mr Rinyo-Clacton.

I woke up when I felt Katerina’s absence. Hearing watery noises from the bathroom and expecting a few more minutes alone I found a scrap of paper in my pocket and wrote a note which I slipped under the pillow with fifty fifty-pound notes:

Dear Katerina,

This money is for a digital piano. You can play it late at night with headphones so no one can hear it and they won’t bang on the door. Don’t give me an argument about this.

Love,

Jonathan

When Katerina made her next appearance she still looked troubled. We kissed and hugged and said nothing more than ‘Good morning.’

I smelled bacon and eggs and coffee when I came out of the shower. Grapefruit juice, too, I saw when I went into the kitchen. ‘Do you ordinarily have bacon and eggs for breakfast?’ I said.

‘No, but I’m a no-bullshit modern psychic and clairvoyant, remember? I think this is what you like when you have time for it, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and thought of Serafina.

On the way out I went into the front room for another look at Melencolia. It was really very hard to tell whether she was smiling or scowling. Had some winged male abandoned her and the sulking child and left all his tools behind? Or had she thrown him out?

When I left, Katerina hadn’t yet made the bed so I didn’t think she’d seen the money and the note. I imagined her lifting the pillow and smiled to myself.

The morning was bright and cold. Considering that I had only a year to live I felt pretty lively. Crazy but lively. I noticed that I was singing to myself, to the tune of a Haydn symphony the number of which had slipped my mind:

Nur die FülleführtzurKlarheit,

Und im Abgrund wohnt die Wahrheit.

About the money I gave Katerina — to be honest I have to say that it wasn’t only that I wanted her to have a piano; I needed to break the lump of that million pounds to convince myself that there was no turning back. Weird, yes? I’ve already said I was feeling crazy.

‘One does something and perhaps has no idea what it was that was done. Then much later there comes suddenly the understanding — Aha! So that’s what it was.’ Katerina had put it very well. I recognised that my night with her had been only incidentally a sexual matter; obviously she represented to me some kind of female power that I wanted on my side; I didn’t know what I was to her and could only hope that her needs had in some way coincided with mine.

Trying not to think too much about my deficiencies I headed for the Vegemania, hoping for a sighting of Serafina. The shop opened at ten, the restaurant not till twelve; it was quarter to eleven now and she’d be getting ready for the lunchtime rush.

As I walked through the faces coming towards me and past me I noted again how many of them seemed eager to get to wherever they were going. This morning I too was eager to get to where I was going but not only because I expected to see Serafina; no, I was just eager to get to the next part of the first day of the rest of my life. Odd, how exciting and vivid and valuable my contractually short life seemed now. All of my senses were sharpened and crossing over from one to another — I tasted the Octoberness of the day in my mouth, saw the colours of passing footsteps and the other sounds around me, heard in my vision the approach of November, smelled possibilities that swarmed like golden bees, held in my hands … what? Ah! I said to myself, be patient and you’ll see.

Yes! She was there. Through the window I saw Rima, one of the waitresses, setting tables. Beyond her I had brief and partial glimpses of Serafina passing and repassing the kitchen doorway. She was in jeans and a mauve jumper with the sleeves pushed up, her black hair held back by a leopard-spotted scarf worn as a headband, her whole throwaway manner wildly erotic as always. The scarf was one we’d bought in the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the day we drank the sauvignon in the Place des Vosges.

With my heart pounding I went through the hallway with its bulletin board of mental, physical and spiritual opportunities, through the empty stripped-pine tables and chairs of the restaurant, and into the kitchen where the luncheon menu in various stages of readiness was deployed in pots and bowls and dishes and on boards and trays. Zoë, the other waitress, was chopping tofu. Patsy Cline was coming over the sound system with ‘Crazy’:

Crazy — I’m crazy for feelin’ so lonely,

I’m crazy, crazy for feelin’ so blue.

I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted,

and then someday you’d leave me for somebody new.

Serafina, with her look of howling into the wind on a bleak northern strand, was peeling onions with tears running down her cheeks. I would have liked to kiss them away but knew better than to try. When she saw me she fired off a black-browed glance that warned me to keep my distance. ‘What?’ she said.

‘What a warm and friendly greeting!’

‘You’ve had all the warm and friendly you’re getting from me, mate. This is a small kitchen and we need your space.’

‘I don’t know where you’re living now.’ When I said that, Zoé glanced up from her tofu and I remembered that she’d been looking for a flatmate a few weeks ago.

‘You don’t need to know,’ said Serafina. ‘You can forward mail and messages to me here.’

‘Are you going to stay angry for ever?’

‘When you say “you” you’re talking to the woman you used to live with. She’s not around any more. This woman you’re talking to now is somebody else who hasn’t got time for your whingeing.’

She was a proud person and I could feel how humiliating it must have been for her to find those letters. How would I have felt if she’d had such letters from another man? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I’d be full of the same rage and disgust that was coming from her in waves. Still, she was the woman I’d had the oasis dream with and we both knew nothing could change that. ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘how you’d feel tomorrow if you were to hear that I was dead.’

She’d done with the onions for the moment; she wiped her eyes, took a knife and slit open a plastic bag of peeled potatoes. Her hands were strong and shapely, with long nimble fingers; whatever she took hold of she held in a good-looking way and her cooking was pleasing to the eye at every stage: the peeled onions, the bag of flour, the pot of salt, the box of eggs, the chopping board, tablespoon and little black-handled knife were a choreographed still-life that changed from moment to moment. ‘I’d probably feel about the same as I do now —’ she said, ‘cheated because I’d been giving all of me while you were giving only part of you and now my honest time would be gone with your lying time. If you were going to be a shit you should have let me know in advance.’

‘I didn’t know I was going to be a shit.’

‘Then when you felt it coming on, you should have told me so I could leave while I still had good things to remember. That would have been simple enough; if you’d found out that you’d got AIDS from someone you knew before me you’d have had the decency to tell me. I’m the woman you dreamed the oasis dream with, the woman you said was your destiny woman, but that wasn’t enough for you. Can you tell me why it wasn’t enough? I really would like to know because that’s a great big gap in my understanding. Tell me, Jonathan — speak.’

I tried to think of something useful to say but I couldn’t.

‘Nothing to say, Jonathan? In one of those letters in your pocket one of your bits on the side said, “What we have between us is something special, Jonny.” Well, now you can have a special thing with as many as you like without having to lie about it.’