Zadie Smith - NW

They were speaking softly enough, but putting their hands on each other, more and more violently, and pulling them off, and Felix realized it was happening, it was bad as it could be, the dreaded scene that had kept him from this place for months, and the strange thing was how precisely he knew what it was like to be Annie at this moment — he had been in Annie’s role many times, with his mother, with other women — and the more he understood it the more he wanted to escape her, as if losing in the way she was losing right now was a kind of virus and pity the way you caught it.

“You act like we’re in a relationship, but this ain’t a relationship. I’m in a relationship — that’s what I come here to tell you. But this? This ain’t shit, it’s nothing, it’s—”

“Christ, another hideous word! God save me from ‘relationships!’”

Desperate now to leave, Felix played what he believed was his trump card. “You’re forty-whatever. Look at you. You’re still living like this. I want to have kids. I want to get on with my life.”

Annie forced out some approximation of a laugh: “You mean ‘more kids,’ don’t you? Or are you one of these optimistic souls who feels they become a new person every seven years, once the cells have regenerated — blank page, start again — never mind who you hurt, never mind what went on before. Now it’s time for my new relationship. ”

“I’m out,” said Felix, and began walking away.

“What a mealy-mouthed pathetic word, ‘relationship.’ For people who haven’t the guts to live, haven’t the imagination to fill their three score and ten with anything other than—”

Felix knew better than to get into it: he had no more cards and she was anyway playing by herself. When she was like this she could have an argument with a coat-stand, with a broom. And how could he know how much she’d taken before he’d even turned up? Now he turned from her and opened the trap door and made his way down, but she followed him.

“It’s what people do these days, isn’t it? When they can’t think of anything else to do. No politics, no ideas, no balls. Get married. But I’ve transcended all that. Long time ago. Eons ago. This idea that all your happiness lies in this other person. This idea of happiness! I’m on a different plane of consciousness, darling. I’ve got more balls than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I was engaged at 19, I was engaged at 23, I could be moldering in some Hampshire pile at this very moment, covering and recovering sofas with some Baron in perfect sexless harmony. That’s what my people do. While your lot have a lot of babies they can’t afford or take care of. I’m sure it’s all perfectly delightful, but you can count me the fuck out!”

In the hall between the bedroom and lounge, Felix turned round and grabbed both her wrists. He was shaking. He hadn’t realized till now what he wanted. Not just that she lose, but that she not exist.

“You’re lucky that you find life easy, Felix. You’re lucky that you’re happy, that you know how to be happy, that you’re a good person — and you want everyone to be happy and good because you are, and to find things easy because you do. Does it never occur to you some people might not find life as easy to live as you do?”

She looked triumphant. He watched her coke-jaw grinding against itself.

“My life? My life is easy?”

“I didn’t say it was easy. I said you find it easy. There’s a difference. That’s why I like the ballet: it’s hard for everybody. Felix, let go, it hurts.”

Felix let go. Touching each other for so long, even in anger, made the anger unsustainable, and they both softened, and lowered their voices, and looked away.

“I’m in the way, I see that. Well. No harm done. By which I mean of course: nothing but harm done.”

“Every time I come round here, same drama. Same drama.” Felix shook his head at the floor. “I don’t get it. I never been nothing but nice to you. Why you trying to ruin my life?”

She gave him a penetrating look.

“How funny,” she said, “but of course that’s how it must seem to you.”

After that they walked to the door quite calmly, the man slightly ahead. A stranger coming across the scene would have thought the man had tried to sell the woman a bible or set of encyclopedias, with no success. For his own part, Felix felt absolute certainty that this was the last time — the last time of passing this picture, the last time seeing that crack in the plaster — and in his mind he said a little prayer of thanks. He almost wished he could tell the woman he loved all about it, so fine an example was it of all that she had taught him. The universe wants you to be free. You must shake yourself free of the negative. The universe wants only that you ask, so that you shall receive. Behind him now he heard this woman quietly weeping. It was his cue to turn round, but he didn’t, and at the threshold the weeping became a sob. He hurried to the stairs, and was a few steps down when he heard a thud on the carpet above as she went down on her knees, and he knew he was meant to feel heavy, but the truth was he felt like a man undergoing some not-yet-invented process called particle transfer, wonderfully, blissfully light.

Felix inched deeper into the carriage. He gripped the safety rail. He considered the tube map. It did not express his reality. The center was not “Oxford Circus” but the bright lights of Kilburn High Road. “Wimbledon” was the countryside, “Pimlico” pure science fiction. He put his right index finger over Pimlico’s blue bar. It was nowhere. Who lived there? Who even passed through it?

Two seats came free in a bank of four. Felix roused himself and sat down. The guy opposite nodded to a loud break-beat. His friend next to him put his feet up on the seat. Pupils enormous, laughing into his neck every now again, amused by some private delirium. Felix established a private space of his own, opening his legs wide and slouching. At Finchley Road, as underground came over ground, his phone revived, bleeping to register a missed call. His thumb worked hopefully down the list. Same number, three times. It had only one physical referent in the world: a battered public call box, riveted to a wall, halfway down a concrete corridor. He had seen it many times through the reinforced glass of the visiting room. He put his mobile back into his pocket.

• • •

The thing with Devon was you wanted to talk to him, but at the same time, you didn’t want to. It wasn’t Devon anymore, really, but a hard-voiced stranger, who rang and said hard things, hurtful things. Jackie talking, through Devon’s mouth. She was sending Devon letters. Felix learned this from Lloyd (Devon had not said; Felix had not asked). Their mother had a strange power over people — Felix did not discount witchcraft. (Jackie claimed a Ghanaian grandmother. These things were not unknown there.) She surely had a power over Felix, once upon a time. A power over the girls. But she was a person with whom there would always be a “last straw.” Devon would have to learn this, as Felix and the girls had all learned it. The end for Felix was clearly marked. On that occasion it was eight years since her last “visit.” The girls refused to see her. Always sentimental, Felix took her in, cautiously, promising nothing. For moral support, he asked his brother to come round. Devon began the evening at the other end of the room, standing against the wall, glaring. He ended the night cozy on the sofa, accepting Jackie’s sloppy kisses all over his face. Felix softened, too. He brought down the white rum from a high shelf. Foolish. Tia called it early, as did Ruby. Lloyd. Everybody called it. Jackie’s sister, Karen, said, “Listen to me: put her out your door and change the locks.” But at the time it had seemed that Devon’s acquiescence allowed — necessitated — Felix’s. He had suffered so much more than Felix over the years, yet held no grudge.