Howard Jacobson - No More Mr. Nice Guy

They correspond. She writes to his flat. He writes to Gloria, poste restante, Cheltenham. Just to be on the safe side. When a partner moves in with him she writes to Errol, poste restante, Trafalgar Square. Also to be on the safe side.

Sometimes he tells her he has someone living with him when he hasn’t, just so that he can go on collecting her letters from the post office. He loves the palpitating tube ride under London. Has she, hasn’t she? Loves coming up out of the smoky underground, like Don Juan returned from hell. Bearing his exceptional secret through the crowded square. Joining the itching queue of aliens watching as the clerk goes through the mail. Striped envelopes worn thin with distance, queer brown paper packets done up with string and wax, the same ones there week after week after week, stale news from Kingston, Auckland, Izmir — Ibrahim. War over. Come home — Cape Town, Lima, Kabul, maybe Cheltenham, maybe not. The sting of disappointment. Another day of waiting.

For what? They no more than gossip to each other. Make jokes. Try out popular philosophy. Pass on hearsay, tidings, tittle-tattle. Films, books. What Kurt’s up to. No reason not to mention Kurt, is there. Love, Liz. Love, Frank. Not even much love, or lots of, or all my, or undying. Or you. Love you.

One day he receives a letter in which she tells him of a dream. He knows this is the one. Last night I dreamt I.

Steady. Hold steady.

Normally he rips open her letters and reads them where he stands, stock still like a hare in the middle of the post office floor. Not this time. This time nothing is still. His hands do battle with his eyes. Last night I dreamt I … No, not yet. He snatches the page from his own scrutiny. Strikes his thigh with it. Anyone watching must assume he has received the most appalling news. War raging. Family wiped out. Stay where you are.

Should he have stayed where he was?

Liz!

He puts the paper back into its envelope and conveys it through the crowds into the great squirting square. Holds it tight against his chest, so that the pigeons can’t steal it. But the pigeons don’t come near him. They can sense his agitation. They can hear his heart. His kishkes going klop. He stands under a lion and reads. Skipping the preliminaries, the night, the moon, the poplars, the symbolism. He knows what he’s looking for. Knows it’s in there. And then I dreamt… It’s here, this is it. And then I dreamt… He turns his head away, as though to look back down the corridor of his old life one last time. Then he plunges in.

And then I dreamt you fucked me.

Silently, all the Trafalgar Square pigeons converge on him.

Back in Kilburn he carefully folds the letter over and over until he has a little parcel, almost a cube, the uppermost face of which reads ‘fucked’. The u of ‘you’ is just visible, as is the m of ‘me’, but they aren’t distractions. ‘Fucked’ pure and simple is what he wants and ‘fucked’ pure and simple is what he gets. How long does he sit and stare at that single word? One hour. Two hours. He undresses. How many times does he come reading it? Three times. Four times.

What he feels is a mystery to him. He has wallowed in sperm for half his life. He has waded up to his eyes in cunt. What can a little word like fucked hold for him?

They decide against Kilburn as a sacred site. If they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it well. They arrange a long weekend in Paris. She tells Kurt she is going away with a girl friend. Needs a break. Kurt understands. More time with the mistress, Frank thinks. They stay in a hotel in Montmartre. Why shouldn’t they? Are they not, in every sense of the word, tourists? Just visiting.

They don’t wait to unpack. The view their room enjoys of Paris is an intrusion of sexual outrage in itself, but they don’t have eyes for it. They stretch out alongside each other on the bed, their toes touching, their bellies touching, their foreheads touching. How long have they known each other? Five, six years?

‘Been worth waiting for?’ she asks him.

‘This,’ Frank says, ‘is the fleshly experience of my life.’

He means it. He can sense every particular hair on her body. Give him the time and he could count them with his eyes closed. There is a fibrous magnetic field between them. He feels he is floating a couple of centimetres above her, and she above him. Some rare phenomenon of temperature variation is also at work. Wherever they meet they are five degrees hotter or colder than each other.

‘You know what I like,’ he says. ‘The way we don’t meld.’

‘Aren’t we supposed to meld?’

‘No. It’s a fallacy. You can mix but you shouldn’t meld. You don’t want to feel that you’re fucking yourself.’

‘You’ve told me that you like fucking yourself.’

‘Not in company, Liz. And not any more. I won’t be fucking anyone any more who isn’t you.’

He means it. He has never experienced a more exquisite penetration. One way or another, penetration itself is usually a let down. The word flatters the deed. Either it’s a bruising struggle to enter or you are swept in like a salmon awash in a waterfall. Today it is like cutting into a gateau.

The moment he begins to cut she raises her hips to him, brings her feet up, and locks him into place with her ankles. That’s how you know if you belong together — if the cake cuts and the ankles lock.

They walk hand in hand to a restaurant where a gypsy violinist plays to them and an Algerian sells them a rose. Why shouldn’t they? Are they not tourists?

On the way back to the hotel he drapes his arm around her shoulder, then brings his hand up to her neck.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I like that.’

He tightens his grip.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘do that.’

They walk along in silence, the wind blowing her skirt, her heels sparking the cobbles, her neck hot under his fingers. Everything smells foreign.

They go out on to their balcony to breathe in the view. The entire sighing city submissive to their contemplation. Submissive but not meek. She raises her skirt from behind. And inclines towards the city. He moves into position.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Use something.’

He dithers. Use something? He hasn’t used something since he was sixteen. No one uses them any more. And he has already come into her twice today without.

‘In my bag,’ she says. ‘My hair brush.’

He finds her hair brush and returns with it. She is further forward than before, one hand on the the balcony rail, the other clawing at her buttocks, pulling herself open. She hasn’t bothered to remove her pants. They’re nothing. Not to be respected. Nothing is to be respected. In the distance he can hear Paris roaring. Closer to home, all is silent.

He eases the handle of the brush into her.

‘Not the handle,’ she says.

He wonders if he has it in him to go through with this. But he only wonders for a second. You’re a sadist, Frank. He reverses the brush, bristles first, and pushes.

‘Harder,’ she says. ‘Rougher. And hold my neck. Hurt it.’

She doesn’t moan. Women only moan in Mel’s novels. She grimaces. She bites her lip. She grunts, yips, coughs, makes a series of rasping sounds from the back of her throat.

‘Harder?’

‘Mm.’

‘Harder what?’

‘Harder please.’

‘Please who?’

It doesn’t come naturally to him. He isn’t at his ease. But he’s read the literature.

And so has she. ‘Please sir.’

‘Do you love me?’ he says.

She falls quiet.

He pushes violently. Twists the brush. ‘Answer me.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I love you.’

He could throw her off the balcony. She wouldn’t stop him. He could replace the brush with himself, fuck her and throw her off. Does he want to do that? No. But it’s academically interesting that he could. Academically interesting that she would let him. Who is she? What is she playing at? And another question: does she do this — did she do this — with Kurt?