Tommy Wieringa - Little Caesar

‘And what about you, Ludwig? she asked during lunch. ‘Tell me, how are you getting along there with your friend. .’

‘Cameron.’

‘Cameron, I don’t believe I know him, do I?’

It was a senseless question, she didn’t know any of my friends, the people I went around with. I told her about the graciousness of Paula and Ashley Loyd. That I sometimes went to visit Warren and Catherine and, irrational as it might seem, to see whether the house was still there, whether I hadn’t awakened from a dream to find that everything had remained unchanged.

She turned her head away when I told her that I had seen two bulldozers on the beach after the storm, scraping together the debris and dumping it into the bed of a truck. The remains of the house were skimpier than you would have thought. A chimney with chunks of wall attached to it, a large, broken sheet of concrete. Sections of walls, roofing tiles. Shards. Wreckage. I had watched from up on the cliff, and it felt as though I were the one being swept together down there, a ragbag that would never again be whole. No trace of our possessions — tribute, carried off by the hostile army. I stood up there watching the bulldozers’ dance and, in almost mystic fashion, knew myself to be a part of history; in exactly the same way I stood there, with the now innocently cooing surf in the distance, countless others before me had let the destruction of their lives sink in and weighed their possibilities.

That same evening I took the train back home. It got dark early, I bought a single to Darsham. The fact that I had taken a single to London that morning had apparently escaped her. I had assumed that I would spend the night in the city, but her buoyant I’ll just walk you back to the station had set a different scenario in motion.

As the train bored its way through the darkness, I knew that I hadn’t got through to her. I looked at my reflection in the window, a boy closer to tears than to laughter.

I left a note for Cameron, thanking him for his hospitality and explaining that I had found a room of my own. We would see each other at the club. The little apartment I moved into was beside the Readers’ Room, on the esplanade. It was usually vacant in winter, so I could rent it for two months before the season began. My clothes were permeated with the caustic smell of smoke, and I was glad to be able to leave that hopeless mess behind. I was my own master now, and things were in the offing. It wouldn’t be long before I would hand over to Julie Henry that which she wanted so badly. Her sexual aggression repelled and excited me. The difference in our ages was considerable, and then there was also the imbalance of power; factors charged with eroticism. There had been moments when things could have happened. A hotel consists of many spaces perfectly outfitted for love. One time, when I passed her in the kitchen between two stainless-steel counters, she positioned herself so that I couldn’t get by.

‘Sorry, Miss Henry,’ I mumbled, and squeezed past.

Her body, its imprint glowed against mine as though we were naked. For the first time I was exposed to the sexual appetite of the female of the species, and realized that it essentially differed little from that of the male. That was a lesson I would remember. The moments after work, the staff sitting together in the bar, tired and satisfied; the collective fatigue lent the alcohol added wallop. Julie Henry remained commandingly close, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with it. Drunkenness seemed a safe enough strategy, it was like handing over the tiller to a more experienced pilot than yourself. This, all this, was nothing but a misunderstanding. That misunderstanding continued out on the street, where I waited for Julie Henry after she had closed the bar and the night clerk had locked the glass door. After asking where I lived, she said, ‘Then that’s where we’re going.’

Her heels clicked down the hollow street, clenched together inside me were the cold and warm hands of fear and excitement. There was a glistening at sea and the lights of ships in the distance. The trembling of my hands was something I noticed only after having bounced the key off the sides of the lock a few times. She stepped into the hallway behind me and closed the door. Then she pushed me against the wall and kissed me. Concerning the rest I can say that I was not coerced into making any decisions. Her body was a command.

Next morning she was gone, and that seemed to apply to what had happened as well: the body bears no memories of lovemaking, there is only the river racing between the darkened banks. But one walks down the street like a different person, the world has revealed to you a few of its secrets, you alone know what that smile means.

Worth recounting perhaps is that, that evening in the Whaler, I thought I needed to act like a lover — as though required to publicly account for what had happened. That Ludwig Unger had lost his virginity to Miss Julie Henry. Hear ye! Hear ye!

‘Act a bit fucking normal, Ludwig!’ whispered the woman whose anus had shortly before been suspended above my face.

It was all very confusing.

I phoned my mother at the only number I had for her, the Belfort in London. The receptionist said she had checked out a few days ago.

‘You must be mistaken,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but Mrs. Unger is no longer a guest at this hotel.’

I hung up. The helpless feeling, as though a loved one were on their deathbed on another continent and would die before you could get there. Disgust at the prima donna facet of her character, the irresponsible whims, the way she took for granted that the world would forgive her her fickleness; the way she acted like a little girl.

‘A bit irresponsible at that, yes,’ Paula Loyd ventured.

Ashley was humming. I looked at the cell phone in my hand, the screen that had stayed black for days.

‘What will you do now? Wait till she calls?’ Paula asked.

‘I don’t even know if she still has my number.’

‘Would you like to take a cut of something or other along with?’ Ashley asked.

‘I can’t remember her ever calling me at this number.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be in contact soon. Maybe she’ll try to phone here, or to the Feldmans. She’ll always be able to find you. As a mother, believe me.’

I was ashamed of these things, around the Loyds, the impression of coming from a poor social environment. But the need for comfort, for reassurance, was stronger.

Yet another day. In principle, nothing special about it, like so many other days it disappears beneath your feet like a treadmill. It assumes meaning only later on, when you think back on it in the knowledge: that was the last day.

It starts in the dressing room, where Samuel Titterington says, ‘Did I tell you lot that I swallowed a 5p piece last night?’

And then the rumor that John Davies, our club Negro, had fucked Harriet Tooke in a beach cabin. John remains silent, smiling beatifically. We’re playing against the second XV from Lowestoft & Yarmouth. A low, cold sun is shining on the grass. I’m flanker, a nice position, you hang at the edge of the scrum so that you’re the first one off when the ball is scrummaged. There’s always a great struggle amid the forwards, it’s physical and aggressive. Bodies, shoulder. I pick up the ball from a ruck and charge a hedge of opponents — sometimes the wall gives, sometimes it doesn’t. Then you’re knocked to the ground with six or seven men on top and every last bit of air knocked out of your lungs, this is the end, the grass against your lips, flesh and swathes of sport tape in your field of vision — they don’t notice! Not enough air to scream for them to get off you!

So you drown in that sea of bodies.