Jim Crace - Arcadia

Rook had been careless. He should have let Anna walk the final metres to the Excelsior on her own. But she was nervous — as she had a right to be. Dining with a stranger in a hotel such as this would make the toughest of us tremble. Rook had let her hold his arm until they reached the polished marble steps of the Excelsior.

‘Aha, my dear. You’ve brought a companion?’

Signor Busi was standing at the carpet edge, spying on the women in the street. Anna let go of Rook and, at once, wondered why. She held his arm again.

‘He’s a friend,’ she said, but had the sense to give no name.

Rook was disadvantaged by Busi’s height, his clothes, his age.

‘I was just passing by,’ he said. ‘Have a pleasant evening.’ He walked away, but slowly enough to note how Signor Busi had a voice that was as carpeted and marble as the hotel steps.

Rook would never know what happened between Anna and Busi that night, and she would never learn how Rook had passed his time. Though they, of course, would tease each other with alternatives.

It was quite clear to Rook and Anna that they were tethered to the ardour of the night. As they parted, both were charged with the sexual static implicit in the triangle that they formed — the ageing, elegant seducer; the apprehensive woman in her finery (bathed, perfumed, bangled, silk-dressed in gold and black); the thin-faced breathless lover transformed to thin-faced, breathless pimp as he despatched his paramour on her — on his — assignment; the dining table set and waiting with its single rose, its silver tub of ice, its candlelight and its connivance in the creed that all is fair in love and trade; the hotel bedroom with the balcony and matching lampshades, curtains, bedspread; the salacity of wintertime.

Rook had said to Anna, ‘Do what you can to get a copy of those plans. Do anything. It’s up to you.’ He had not said she ought to sleep with Signor Busi but, then, he had not asked her not to. He was excited, that’s for sure, by the power that he seemed to have. He liked to enmesh her in his intrigues and to allow the notion, if not the fact, that she would sleep with Busi if instructed so. How sensual it was, how riggish, how sportingly loyal, how grandly stimulating that she might do this thing for him. What would she not do, now, with Rook in his own bed, on his own floor, if she could be so dutiful as to serve him with another man?

Anna, for herself, had not contemplated for too long what Rook had meant by ‘Do anything. It’s up to you.’ She took his meaning, but she took it as a joke. She did not want to think that Rook, despite his recent protestations of affection, would use her as a bribe, a trinket. She had no wish to be his representative in Signor Busi’s arms. But Rook had spoken with such passion and such verve about his mission to save the Soap Market that she had redefined herself as a woman who, by surrendering and making servile her love for Rook, could consolidate his love for her.

Of course, she would not, when it came to it, allow the architect to touch a centimetre more of her than the pale, unsensual flesh around her wrist. But she had fooled herself into believing there was no insult in Rook’s evident indifference. She did not say, ‘If that old smoothie has the nerve to try it on with me he’ll get my dinner in his lap,’ or ‘If you’re so keen to get a copy of these plans why don’t you go and sleep with Busi yourself. He doesn’t seem the choosy sort. And nor do you.’ She did not say, ‘I’m not a prostitute.’ She simply let the atmosphere between them stay a little warmed and moist with the licence he had imposed on her to ‘Do what you can to get a copy of those plans’.

So she had bathed and dressed for the Excelsior in clothes which she had brought from her own home to Rook’s apartment. As she dressed before the mirror, arranging belts and tights and underclothes, and testing scents and bracelets on her arm, Rook sat and watched. His breath was shallow, his tongue was dry, his heart beat fast. Not asthma — but an ailment which nearly every man is martyr to, the subjugation of all sentiments and resolutions to the tyranny of sex. He smelt of badger. He felt his penis lengthening inside his trouser leg. He had to shift his leg and readjust his clothes. He was not slow to help her with her zip or take the landlord opportunity to wet her neck with a kiss and press himself into her back.

‘Not now,’ she said, and rubbed his trousers with her hand, proprietorially. He was transfixed, entranced, by the prospect of the night. But he had lost the chance of giving full expression and relief to the promptings and the tensions that he felt. He’d happily see the market torn down, and Victor triumphant and untouched, and Signor Busi left to dine alone, if only Anna would agree to turn around and put her face to his. He’d happily — but for how long? — relinquish mission and revenge for five demented, silken, musky minutes in her arms.

She was putting on her shoes, and smoothing down her dress, and searching for her toothbrush in her bag. And they were descending to the street. And they were walking arm in arm like married couples do, respectably. And Rook was looking up at Signor Busi on the hotel steps and saying, ‘A pleasant evening to you both.’

Rook walked down to the Soap Garden and found an isolated chair where he could sit in privacy and think. And drink. What were the diners doing now? Had they reached dessert? Anna liked sweet things and Signor Busi would insist she had exactly what she wanted. No doubt she bubbled; it did not take much drink to make her gamey. No doubt the old Italian was urbane and courteous, and lightly anecdotal in the way that men who are not young must be if they want to charm their juniors. Rook pictured Busi as he lightly put his hand upon his guest’s bare arm and called the waiter to the table so that his intimacy could pass as etiquette. Perhaps he asked if she required a digestif. A Boulevard Liqueur? Did she stay still? Did she encourage him to leave his hand in place? To stroke her arm, perhaps? To take her hand in his?

Rook shook his head, and rearranged the dinner table once again. This time the architect was silent and Anna was urbane and cunning. She kept the conversation light and tempting. She flattered him, his suit, his taste in wine. He boasted of his fame as an architect, the work he’d done to shape the new Arcadia. She said, I’d love to see those plans myself. He said, They’re in my room. She said, Why don’t you order some nightcaps and we can take them up.

Again Rook cleared his head. He’d conjured up a harpie, out of character. Anna was not a predator. She’d have to be cajoled upstairs, unwillingly, but with her task in mind, to borrow, steal, a second set of plans. Perhaps she’d asked to see the plans. Busi said, You’ll have to come upstairs. He let her know that dinner was not cheap and that Victor would not wish his architect to go without affection in his town. Rook could almost see the plans upon Signor Busi’s bed. He saw the look on Anna’s face as Busi hung his trousers, creases straight, across a chair, and turned to watch the black and gold on Anna loosen, crumple, drop. Rook saw her, Busi watched her, hold her stomach in as she pushed down her tights and underclothes and stood, in nothing but her slip. Signor Busi cleared the plans and elevations from the bedspread and then pulled Anna to him by her wrists. ‘My name is Claudio,’ he said.

Now Rook, if he had been a younger, fitter, more dramatic man, would have run between the Soap Garden and the Excelsior. Not out of anger, nor jealousy. He was not fool enough to be jealous of these chimeras. But out of lust. He wanted sex; he wanted intercourse. He wanted to express himself before he burst from lack of it. He could not hold his coffee cup. He could not halt himself. He walked unsteadily, a little drunk on his imaginings.