Jim Crace - Arcadia

He found a girl — not more than seventeen. A country girl who’d never kissed a man she loved. She took him to a third-floor room two streets behind the house where he was born. She pulled her blouse apart. She pulled her denim skirt up to her waist. She wore no underclothes. She was as thin and unprepared for city life as Anna was mature. Rook said to her, ‘My name is Claudio.’ There were two grey patches on the mattress of the bed, where ten thousand knees had been before. Rook put the money on the chair, and did as he was told.

‘Undress,’ she said. Then ‘Wash.’

The water on his penis sobered him, but he was drunk again when she came to him with a sheath and rolled it on. She lay down on the bed. She removed her watch and chewing gum and, pressing the gum onto the watch face, dropped them to the floor.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘It’s up to you.’

She might have been a country girl, but she was as nonchalant and passive in her work as any city labourer or clerk or factory hand. It paid the bills. She held a steady course between professional cupidity and personal disdain. She was wise enough to forge a little interest in the man who paid. The bread won’t rise without the yeast. She shook her head or nodded as required. She matched a dozen groans of his with one of hers.

They always looked the same, these men, when they were done — a little disappointed, eager to depart. She retrieved her chewing gum. It was still moist and almost warm. She watched him search his trouser pockets and then the pockets of his leather jacket. He found his handkerchief and wiped his nose. He pressed a spray into his mouth and sucked on it, as if he wished to blast away the taste of her with Pine-’n’-Chive. His face was red, but weren’t they all, and with good cause? But this one did not rapidly turn pale. His breathing was not free. His chest was quivering as if his orgasm was trapped and heading for his lungs. She did not care. He’d only paid for fifteen minutes and time was up. Another girl would want the room. She picked his trousers up and put them in his hand.

‘You’d better get some fresh air,’ she said.

She waited by the door until he put his spray away and pulled his trousers on. She went alone down to the street where she had friends and where her face and chewing gum could stretch and soften in the darkness.

Rook had cleared his mind at last. He left the street and market area. And as quickly as he could — in other words not speedily at all, but chin upon his chest and hands upon his lungs and phlegm upon his lips — he returned to his apartment.

He lay on his bed and shut his eyes and could not disentangle Anna, Signor Busi, the prostitute. They coiled like anglers’ worms so that it was a puzzle where they ended or began. He slept and trod the waters of a shallow dream. Too much nebulizer. Joseph wore the uniform of a commissionaire. He threw Rook out of doors, apartment doors, office doors, and doors to gloomy bars. He slept with Anna, and Anna slept with Victor, and Signor Busi slept with Rook until the bed became a market stall turned to leaf and root. The prostitute was in his bed and would not leave, and Anna’s feet were on the stairs. And she was not alone. Now someone joined them in the bed and put a hand upon his chest. ‘You don’t look well,’ she said. Her breath was garlic and cigar. Her perfume was Boulevard Liqueur.

She sat in front of the mirror and let him wake. She took her bracelets and her earrings off and started on her eyes and cheeks with cotton wool and rose oil.

‘How did it go?’ he said.

Anna was too satisfied to tell the truth. How easy it had been, with Signor Busi keener to secure her admiration and her rapt attention than to lure her to his bed. He had not touched her once. He seemed afraid that he might go beyond the point where he impressed her. He was adept with wine lists and cigars. Waiters were polite with him. The chef — a fellow Milanese — came up and shook his hand. He thrived on conversation. He could talk and eat and drink as neatly and amusingly as a juggler with five balls. He flattered Anna charmingly. He could let her go without seducing her and do his reputation not a jot of harm. But if he tried his luck with her? What then? At best he’d take her to his room and she would see how papery he was beneath the suit and how his posture — tall, erect — was aided by a spinal truss. It took him minutes to remove his jacket. He had to shake his shoes and trousers off. To see him climb onto his bed, undressed, was (he admitted it himself) to watch a scene from Marat/Sade or witness anti-ballet of the kind danced by the chorus of the dead in Przewalski’s Crematorium .

So there they stayed, at table, in public safety. He was, he said, excited by the prospect of spending a few months in town. His junior partners were good at seeing ideas through, but not so good at nurturing the building itself. He was the old-fashioned sort of architect, he said. He liked to have a love affair with everything he built. He let this slogan do its work, and then he threw it out before it did him harm in Anna’s eyes: ‘Excuse an old man his absurdities. I promise I’ll be less extravagant at the press conference. No gibberish, I think, for journalists.’

‘Ah, yes, the conference,’ said Anna. ‘Victor will need another set of plans … before the conference.’

‘Of course, my dear.’ (He had not used her name or even asked her what it was.) ‘I’ll send them over to him by courier.’

‘I’ll take them now, if it’ll help. That’ll please Victor. I’ll feel I’ve earned this splendid meal.’

‘They weigh at least ten kilos.’

‘I’m stronger than you think.’

Signor Busi was not keen to go with her to his room, or, indeed, to do the round trip all alone. It was too far. He was too tired and full. He called a bell boy to the table. He handed him his key. ‘Be so good as to go up to my room and fetch a yellow file. It’s this thick and so high.’ He mimed the file. ‘You’ll find three of them leaning up against the window bay. Just bring me one.’ He gave the boy a hundred note, and then embarked upon an anecdote about a client’s file that he’d once lost in New York, in a cab. The telling of it tired him. He lost the thread, and was relieved when the boy came back with the yellow file. He could not fight a yawn.

‘I’ll let you get to bed,’ Anna said.

Signor Busi stood and slowly straightened. His stomach squalled. He took her hand. ‘Good night, my dear,’ he said. ‘It has been a great pleasure.’ He watched her leaving for the line of taxis in the street, the bell boy and the file of papers at her side. She walked triumphantly.

She really is the most enticing woman, Signor Busi thought as he began the journey to his room.

Rook was now sitting up in bed. ‘How did it go?’ he asked again. Anna pointed to the bedroom door. A yellow file, fat with plans and papers, leant against the frame.

‘Have faith in me,’ she said. Why should she tell him any more. Let him imagine what he wished. Rook did not betray his lack of faith in her. His conscience was not clear but smudged with two grey marks where he had placed his knees.

They sat in silence for a while, Anna at the mirror, Rook in bed, each with secrets to preserve, but only one of them felt sure enough to smile.

ROOK SMILED AT CON. ‘Let’s talk,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Because, unless we talk, your market stall will fall to bits.’ His arms were up and stretched. ‘All this will disappear.’

‘Get lost.’ Con smiled at Rook, but his smile was lipless. It did not crease his eyes or pack his cheeks. It was tight. It elevated ‘Get lost’ from curt indifference to chilling malediction. The smile dismissed Rook as a man not worthy of contempt. But Rook was not dismissed. He put his hand out to stop Con packing for the night. He had counted on Con’s hostility. He’d hoped for it. It would not do if Con was a conciliator who preferred What’s done is done to the bald Get lost . Rook rubbed a finger and a thumb to mime the crumbling of a solid into dust.