Paulo Scott - Nowhere People

The people who are not on the pavement directly outside the building have positioned themselves across the road on the paved central area of Trafalgar Square. The young black man wearing a white shirt buttoned up to his neck and holding a microphone turns towards the embassy, he says: ‘Nelson Mandela is still in prison, but he won’t be for long.’ The people clap. Paulo is with them now, already feeling the effects of the wine he drank hurriedly at the Pelican. He finds it surreal how explicit they are, these manifestations of belief in the possibility of Mandela being released without bargaining before he dies. It isn’t, for him, a question of witnessing what could perhaps be part of a significant historical process; he is there out of curiosity. As it happens, he lied when he was questioned at the immigration counter, saying he was here as a tourist and that he wouldn’t stay longer than twenty days in the United Kingdom; he did that out of curiosity. He drinks with people he doesn’t know, some of them even younger than him, people from all over the world, he does this out of curiosity. He drinks until things get dangerous, out of curiosity. He hangs out with people who are rich and spoiled, with Turks playing football in Hyde Park on the weekend, people who live it up because they’re in London and then become the domesticated little wives of other people who make a point of complaining nastily and telling their friends that their domesticated little wives can’t cook properly and don’t swallow their sperm when they suck their huge cocks, with couples from Madeira with their totally incomprehensible Portuguese, he does all this out of curiosity. He walks alone, in the early hours, from the centre to the north of the city, to Willesden Green, having dropped home the waitresses from Ireland, or Poland, or Jamaica, whom he has been trying to hook up with, even if it’s only for a week, spending every night at their place, he does it out of curiosity. He goes into Stanford’s, the best map shop in the world, some people say, and looks at the huge maps they have framed on the walls, especially the one that shows the southern hemisphere in the upper part of the mappa mundi , out of curiosity. Curiosity, just curiosity, curiosity is what’s new now nothing matters man and everyone can go to hell cause now I don’t give a fuck and I want to see if this shit catches fire once and for all. Amid excuse me s and sorry s he makes his way over towards the speaker, undoubtedly more emphatic and positive than the middle-aged gentleman who had come before him. He watches him, comparing. It’s as if it were decades ago, as if he had himself never spoken in public, never needed to be charismatic and to convince a group of students, at times in gatherings of more than twenty thousand people, to hate their university vice-chancellors, and members of the Ministry of Education, and foundations run by private universities whose accounts and tax exemptions are never made quite clear enough. He feels odd, not only the dizziness of the wine, it’s the dreams and the hope that he can’t bear. Such haste, his own haste. So much that it made him stagnate. He hasn’t been interested in trying to think. It’s the first time he has stopped and paid attention to something important since arriving in London. He doesn’t know which struggle is worth it. Where, after all, is this nineteen eighty-nine happening if not in London, New York, Tokyo? Life is moving on. He’s in his early twenties and feels like an old man, though not old enough (feeling like an old man isn’t usually the same as nothing matters any more , though it has been). And the wine having its effect, there isn’t a drug that takes you apart in quite the same way. He thinks. She sent him away. Maína’s fragility was never weakness. This inability to feel real passion , the way some people seem to feel it without making the least effort. Now he realises (as he is overtaken by a feeling of nausea, a nausea that will force him to get out of there) or he assumes: however much he does, he won’t be able to get involved again.

‘Shall we go to the bathroom?’ says the little Portuguese girl who has been clinging to Paulo since he arrived at Sol (she gets all tangled up wanting to talk like the Brazilians, it’s embarrassing after a while). ‘I’ll stick round here,’ Paulo replies without any warmth at all, fascinated by the tall black girl with the big glasses who has been watching him for several minutes and who is standing at the entrance to the corridor that leads to the other bar. Perhaps he would have been intimidated by her determination if he were sober, but that isn’t the case, he has already drunk all the beer he meant to drink, his superego is suitably caged in, he puts the empty glass down on the window ledge, walks over to the girl. ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Hi,’ she replies, stepping closer, because the noise is really loud in that part of the bar. ‘I saw you today’ — taking Paulo by surprise — ‘I was outside the South African embassy two hours ago,’ she explains. ‘Are you involved with the South African cause?’ he asks (he thinks he hasn’t used quite the right term). ‘We all are, aren’t we?’ she replies. And suddenly he feels as though he has seen her before. ‘By the way, my name’s Paulo … What’s yours?’ She holds out her hand. ‘Rener.’ They shake. ‘Tell me, Rener, where are you from?’ he asks. ‘I’m from Paris. You know the one? The city that’s in Paris, you know?’ letting herself smile for the first time. ‘The way London’s in London?’ He tries to go along with it. ‘No, in London it’s completely different,’ and she takes a sip of her soft drink. ‘Typical Parisienne,’ he said. ‘I do like the geography, but I’m not a typical Parisienne, I don’t share the city’s mood, I’m not proud of having been born there … I mean, it doesn’t make any difference that that’s where I was born.’ She pulls him over towards the wall, their conversation is obstructing other people’s passage. ‘You’re not a committed neighbourhood-ist, a nationalist. Is that what you mean?’ he says (there’s always some room for error when two people who speak different languages are using a third language to communicate). ‘I don’t believe in nationalities … Just like I don’t believe in victims … My presence at the pro-Mandela action was just to see how far the speeches by those two guys would go and if they’d resort to the old trick of victimising, in the sense of victimising people and cultures,’ she said, firmly. ‘That’s the kind of answer I need a whole night to understand, and another whole night to come up with an adequate retort’ — he is even more convinced that he’s seen her before. ‘Ok, so I’m giving you a hard time, aren’t I?’ she takes hold of his arm, ‘but I can assure you, I’m a pretty cool person.’ She takes the last sip of her soft drink. ‘I like it when people give me a hard time … ’ says Paulo, flexing his arms and puffing up his chest in an attempt to recreate Popeye the sailor’s pose without, however, remembering quite what Popeye the sailor’s pose was. The joke didn’t work. ‘How about we get out of here, Paulo?’ she suggests, ‘Paulo who caught my eye out there and who, as it happened, showed up here at my party and caught my eye again.’ He looks at her. ‘Coincidences, Rener. Though it’s hard for me to admit, life is made up of them.’ And someone taps his shoulder. ‘You’d better be careful with that black girl, she’s extremely dangerous,’ Drake says loudly, Fabio is with him. ‘Since you’re the type of guy who’ll even read the instructions on a medicine packet — didn’t you read last week’s TNT ? There was a photo of that beauty there that took up nearly half a page of the magazine.’ And Paulo realises where he’s seen her before. ‘That’s right, comrade, my ex-colleague from Sol is an important woman, she was named the boldest of the three leaders of this squatting movement robbing the owners of large south London properties of their peace of mind,’ he goes on. ‘We only occupy properties that are empty,’ she says, ‘and of course homes belonging to the government.’ Drake kisses her on the forehead. ‘I love you.’ And then speaking in Portuguese, ‘I always wanted to fuck her, never managed to do it.’ Then switching back to English, ‘So Paulo, has she told you she’s a huge fan of Nietzsche?’ Paulo shakes his head. ‘Nietzsche,’ Drake continues, ‘the Coca-Cola of intellectualism for the under twenties.’ Rener leans over towards Paulo and whispers: ‘I do like the book Ecce Homo , that’s all.’ Fabio tugs on Drake’s arm. ‘Hey, genius, use all that philosophical stuff you know and score some more beer for your compatriots.’ Drake gestures let’s go on, and they leave. ‘I love you too, Drake,’ she says and, turning to Paulo (and before saying that her problem isn’t that she’s twenty-six and still likes Nietzsche), Rener puts her hands on his face and kisses him on the mouth.