Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

‘Maybe you can make it a onesome.’

‘Your trouble is that you don’t know how to loosen up and enjoy yourself. Actually, it’s your uptightness that makes you so sexy — if you’re not careful I’ll have your trousers down right here.’

‘It could damage your health, Thanatophile.’

‘Why? Have you picked up something since the last time?’ His mouth was laughing but his eyes were hard. ‘Jonny, Jonny, you’d like to kill me because you’re afraid of me, and you’re afraid because you recognise in me an aspect of yourself that scares you. You’ve surrendered your life to me but you’re trying to keep a tight sphincter. And of course, now that you’ve had the million you can’t help thinking how nice it would be to go on living.’

‘It’s always a pleasure to talk to you,’ I said. ‘We’ll be in touch. Bye bye.’

He mouthed a kiss as I turned and went back to Serafina. ‘What were you two talking about?’ she said.

‘He likes to wind me up, that’s all. He needs to be noticed.’

‘You shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction.’

‘He’d have had more satisfaction if I’d tried to avoid him. Now that he’s had his fix it’s even possible that he won’t turn up again until we’re home.’

We took the Métro to Bastille, bought two glasses and a corkscrew in the Rue St Antoine, acquired two bottles of Cêtes de Beaune in the Rue de Turenne, and arrived shortly at the Place des Vosges which was only sparsely peopled now. I had a couple of carrier bags in my rucksack and I put them on the wet bench for us to sit on.

‘I’m not trying to bring back the past,’ I said as I poured; what a pleasant gurgle. The wine looked full and red and juicy. ‘It’s just that this is my favourite drinking spot. Here’s looking at you, Fina.’

‘Cheers.’

The wine tasted as good as it looked. How marvellous it is, I thought, when something is what you expect it to be. Of course sometimes it isn’t marvellous. No oasis this October.

‘I was just thinking’, said Serafina, ‘of the Kris Kristofferson song where he says, “I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday”. I can’t believe anyone would really say that unless he was about to be stood up against a wall and shot. Would you trade all your tomorrows for a single yesterday?’

‘No — I think we’ve still got good tomorrows up ahead, don’t you?’

‘I’ll answer that after we’ve been HIV-tested.’

I was looking past Serafina at one of the four fountains. The trees behind it were artfully massed as in a drawing by Claude Lorraine; against this golden backdrop the water cascaded from the rim of the upper bowl to fill the lower one, and from vents all round the lower bowl it spurted in silvery streams to the basin below. Like time, I thought — my minutes, hours, days and weeks falling, falling, but not recycled like the fountain water. Beyond the golden trees were dark ones, their trunks black in the grey light. Around the square the elegant houses stood and looked historic.

‘The Place des Vosges dates back to the seventeenth century,’ said Serafina. ‘I looked it up in the guidebook. It’s perfectly symmetrical.’

‘That’s a relief Our glasses were empty; I refilled them. ‘Did the visit to Victor Noir do what you wanted it to do?’

‘I don’t know that I can explain the Victor Noir thing — somebody tells you about something and you get a picture in your mind and a feeling. I’d never been to Père Lachaise and I thought of his tomb as being on a little hill away from the others. I was expecting something to come to me there — I don’t know what. And then there he was, lying on top of his tomb in a long row of tombs as if he’d just been dumped there. I thought, Jesus! he’s so dead! Somebody killed him and that was the end of him. It was strange that a statue should make death suddenly so real. It made your death terribly real, your death that you’ve sold to Mr Rinyo-Clacton. Just think — if only you’d never met him! If only you hadn’t sat down on the floor in Piccadilly Circus tube station!’

‘Nothing to be done about that now; “the past is action without choice”.’

‘That’s deep. Who said it?’

‘Krishnamurti; it’s the one line I remember out of the ten pages I read.’ Our glasses were empty. I divided what remained in the first bottle, then opened the second and topped up the glasses.

‘I’m glad we got two bottles,’ said Serafina. ‘This is not a one-bottle situation.’

‘I hope two are enough. Bottles seem smaller than they used to be.’

‘It’s because the universe is expanding — it’s a relative thing.’

‘Did anything come to you at Victor Noir’s tomb other than the reality of his death and mine?’

‘I don’t know yet, maybe I’ll know later. What about Au Tonneau?’

‘It’s empty.’ I refilled both glasses.

‘We knew that before. What else?’

‘It’s full of absence.’

‘Go on.’

‘Like me.’

‘What absence is that, Jonno?’

‘The absence of you and the absence in me that made you asbent. Absent.’

‘What absence is that, the absence in you that made me asbent? Absent, that made me absent, what?’

‘I don’t know if I have the worods for it. The woordos.’

She moved closer to me and put her hand on my arm. ‘Find the worods and the woordos, Jonno. You were always good with worms. Words.’

The sky was getting darker and there was a little chill in the air. Our glasses were empty and so was the second bottle. ‘What made you absent,’ I said, ‘was the absence in me of what would have made you stay.’

‘What was that? What was absent in you?’

‘A real understanding of what was between us, Fina, and what there was to lose. You’re my destiny-woman and I behaved as if you weren’t. I wouldn’t have wanted you to treat me the way I treated you.’

‘Took a lot of woordos to get there, Jonno.’ She squeezed my arm. The day was completely gone; the sky gave itself over to evening. The park attendant came out of his kiosk, blew his whistle several times and began his gate-closing round. ‘Fermeture du soir!’ he said as he passed us.

We packed up the glasses and the corkscrew and dropped the empty bottles into the litter bin. Serafina took my arm and we found our way to Ma Bourgogne by the corner of the square, where after a short wait we were given a table in a corner. The place was crowded and noisy and the conviviality and good cheer around us made me feel suddenly alone and lost. All through dinner we were mostly silent; I knew that Serafina was thinking, as I was, of the coming night and morning and the rest of our lives.

We were lying in our separate beds wide awake in the dark. After a while Serafina said, ‘Can I come in with you?’

‘Sure.’

‘I don’t want to do anything except just be with you, OK?’

‘OK, Fina.’

When she crept in under the covers I hugged her and she hugged me back. ‘Jonno,’ she said, ‘I’m so scared.’

‘I know.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes and no. I’m worried about the HIV test but all we can do is wait. About the other — I’ll think of something.’

She evidently found that a workable answer, because she snuggled up to me and fell asleep.

We returned from Paris Wednesday morning, once more leaving the daylight behind us and speeding into the darkness of the tunnel. On yesterday’s train to Paris, Serafina, though beside me, had not been really with me. On the way back she was with me but the weather between us seemed always on the point of changing from moment to moment; nothing could be taken for granted. What did you expect? I said to myself. At least she called me Jonno most of the time now.