Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

‘Thrice happy lovers, …’ sang Michael Chance. I stopped the CD player and switched it off. The naked silence rushed in upon us. Leon Trotsky looked down from the wall disdainfully. Little worlds of nothing rose and fell in the lava lamp.

‘Mr Rinyo-Clacton is HIV-positive,’ she said, ‘and now where’s our oasis? Maybe now all we’ve got is the death in each other.’ She covered her face with her hands and wept, then stopped after a few moments, noticed that the tea was ready, and poured it.

‘You see what you just did?’ I said. ‘After wiping me out completely with all that you’ve just said, you pour the rose-hip tea, my favourite kind that you made for the two of us, because life goes on. Look at Germany, look at Japan, for Christ’s sake — after the horrible things they did in the last war and before that we’re still doing business with them and hoping they’ll build more cars and computers and TVs and everything else here because we need the jobs. Because life goes on, it has to. Forget forgiveness — there’s only this imperfect world full of imperfect people to work with.’

‘Yes, Jonathan, but you’re not the only man in the world, are you. And I’ve already quit the job.’

‘I’m the only one for you, Serafina.’

‘You were, Jonathan. But I wasn’t the only one for you and that’s what brought us to where we are now.’

‘Where we are now doesn’t have to be the end of us, Fina: the thing is, do you want to realise our potential or do you want to give up and never know what might have been?’ The words just came out that way before I could stop them.

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Are you going to sell me an Excelsior Couples Kit now?’

‘Would you buy one?’

‘I don’t know, Jonno, I just don’t know.’

‘You called me Jonno.’

‘It’s hard not to.’

‘Should I take that as a yes?’

‘Take it with a grain of salt.’

‘What does that mean exactly?’

‘It means that I’m scared and confused and whatever I say is subject to change without notice.’

‘Maybe we should just drink our tea and be quiet for a while.’

‘That sounds like a practical suggestion.’

Serafina went to the CD player, removed Purcell, and put on something that began with the chatter of a crowd, then slid into a smoky tango. ‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Astor Piazzolla — Tango: Zero Hour.’

‘It keeps trying to move forward while pulling itself back.’

‘Like life.’ She put the cat on the floor, switched off all the lights except the lava lamp, and came and sat beside me on the couch. She leant against me and I put my arm around her and sighed a deep sigh. ‘Grain of salt, Jonno,’ she said. ‘It looks to me as if we’ve got some heavy business ahead of us — you can help me make it through the night but all I’m taking is your time, OK? Nothing more than that.’

I buried my face in her hair. ‘OK, Fina, whatever you say.’ So we made it through the night. Nothing more than that.

In a dream I was looking into a long, long dimness that stretched back to before the beginning of the world. Lost, lost, lost, I thought. There was something before this and now it’s all lost. ‘Maybe’, I said, and woke up as I heard myself saying it, ‘loss is where everything starts from.’

‘It’s where it ends, too,’ said Serafina.

I rolled over and there we were, face to face in a strange bed, under the same duvet. I lifted it a bit: Serafina was in her knickers and a long Minnie Mouse T-shirt and I was wearing underpants and a T-shirt. Maybe all our troubles had never happened? ‘Have they?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Have all our troubles really happened?’

‘Yes, and they’re still happening. Go to sleep.’

So we slept — uneasily.

‘Hello,’ said a man’s voice at the Derek Engel number. The word was spoken in a suave and leisurely drawl, with the first syllable stretched out and the second on a rising inflection. ‘Hehh-lo?’

‘Is this Derek Engel?’ I said.

‘Speaking.’

‘Oh. You’re Derek Engel himself?’

‘So far.’

‘Sorry — I was expecting a telephonist.’

‘Would you like me to go away?’

‘No, please — it’s just that I didn’t want to take up your time; I thought perhaps your publicity department could answer my query.’

‘Which is?’

‘Have you got an author named Rinyo-Clacton?’

‘Ah, what are we all but clay!’

‘Odd that you should say that.’

‘Well, Mr …?’

‘Fitch, Jonathan Fitch.’

‘Mr Fitch. The only Rinyo-Clacton I know of is Late Neolithic pottery. You say there’s an author by that name?’

‘There’s a man who uses that name. I thought he might be one of your authors.’

‘An interesting deductive leap. Has he written something you think we should publish?’

‘I think he might be in the process of writing something now.’

‘So many are.’

‘Just one more question and I’ll go away — do you think Dr von Luker might have any connection with Mr Rinyo-Clacton?’

‘Why should he?’

‘It’s just another of my deductive leaps.’

‘Dr von Luker’s here now; I’ll ask him.’ He put down the phone. ‘Ernst,’ I heard him say, ‘know anyone by the name of Rinyo-Clacton?’

A second voice said, ‘No.’

‘He says, “No,”’ said Engel.

‘Thank you. Well, I mustn’t keep you.’

‘No, my authors do that, more or less. I shall be on the lookout for Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s effort, Mr Fitch, and if it comes flying over the transom I’ll make sure it gets read. Thank you for this advance notice.’

‘Thank you, Mr Engel.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

As soon as I put down the phone I hurried to the tube station, took the Edgware train to Notting Hill Gate, changed to the Central line to Tottenham Court Road, and headed for Bedford Square. Turning into Great Russell Street I saw Dr von Luker’s face advancing towards me. I had imagined him to be tall and broad, to be, in fact, Mr Rinyo-Clacton without a wig and with a beard but von Luker’s head was on the shoulders of a man about as big as Toulouse-Lautrec.

I caught his eye. ‘Dr Lautrec!’ I said. He favoured me with a cold stare. ‘I mean, Dr von Luker!’

This brought him to a halt. ‘What do you want?’ he said, speaking as from a considerable height.

‘I just wanted to tell you how much I’m enjoying your new book.’

‘Thank you,’ he said without an accent. He nodded and continued on his way. I went back to the corner, crossed Tottenham Court Road, mooched about in the Virgin Megastore for a while, then went home.

Thursday morning, this was, the day after the night when Serafina and I slept together apart.

Thursday afternoon. The men and women in the waiting room of the John Hunter Clinic, each frozen in single stillness, sat with eyes averted from one another. Although every one of us was in living colour we were like black-and-white portraits by one of those photographers who make everything look worse.

‘IT’S YOUR CHOICE,’ said the sign over a display of condoms on a bulletin board in the corridor outside the counselling room. The unrolled sheaths dangled like the ghosts of passion under labels that identified them as SUPER STRONG, FETHERLITE, LOVE-FRAGRANCED, ALLERGY/HYPO-ALLERGENIC, EXTRA-SAFE and so on. There was a diagram showing how to use them.

‘Both of you with the same man,’ said Mrs Mavis Briggs with an air of scientific interest. Behind her was a colourful array of condom packets and a Van Gogh print of a sidewalk café in Aries at night. All of the tables in the foreground were empty. ‘I haven’t come across that before.’