Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

For Cesare, he said to Viko, it was everything he wanted. This girl of his wore leather; she rode a Honda bike. She was an assistant lecturer at the university. Could anything be more alluring? At the time, Cesare was editing a journal of revolutionary sociology. He made Simonetta his deputy editor. Cesare was a man of the world, said Haffner. A Communist, yes: but a Communist who loved the shops in the Quadrilatero d'Oro. A Communist who bought himself handstitched shirts, or shoes made from a single piece of leather. He loved his life. He was happy.

Then this girl wanted a baby. It made Cesare pause.

— I would love one, he said, absolutely love one. But first I must divorce my wife.

Dutifully, Viko chuckled.

In revenge, continued Haffner, unbeknown to Cesare, she stopped taking the Pill, and got pregnant. But Cesare didn't care about this difficulty. He simply got her sacked from her deputy editorship of the journal; and also from her job at the university. But then, a year later, when Cesare was in the process of manoeuvring for the university rectorship, the Italian Communist Party issued a list of approved yet not affiliated intellectuals. These were the kosher ones, though not confirmed. Cesare was duly admitted as being ideologically pure. But Simonetta campaigned. Using her contacts in the women's section of the Communist Party, she held meetings, she published denouncements.

Of all the intellectuals duly nominated by the Communists, said Haffner, only Cesare failed in his bid for election.

But the greatest moment of all, he concluded, was when Cesare told this story to his mentor at the university in Rome — who, on being told by a mournful Cesare the full dossier of the facts over a lavish dinner at a restaurant in a side street off the Spanish Steps, asked him if this was really how it would be from now on. Were they, said his mentor, to be ruled now by their mistresses?

Haffner! So sure that he was charming! So intent on making conversation — even though, of course, Viko was not interested in his anecdotes about Communism. He didn't care about Haffner's urbane distaste for all the politics.

The anecdote, therefore, did not receive the applause which Haffner thought it was due. A little shocked, perhaps, he tried another conclusion.

That, said Haffner, was the best he could say for Communism. But before Haffner could gratify himself with a murmured smile — as he remembered Cesare ruefully saying that the whole adventure had at least produced one benefit, because his wife, having found out, had finally made him a free man — Haffner felt a moment of alarm. It felt to Haffner's worried senses that Viko might be going too far.

The range of Haffner's body available to massage seemed to be becoming more expansive.

Haffner was lying on his stomach: a warm towel over his back. He was naked. At first, he had toyed with the idea of wearing the briefs he usually swam in. But then had thought that really he should not care. They were hardly the most comfortable of items. The important thing, he always thought, was a comprehensive massage. As if he needed to be worried about his modesty! No, not here, not with a man.

But now, he felt Viko let his hands splay and drift with the oil further up his thighs. At first, as Haffner chatted, he had interpreted this as invigorating. Then he began to wonder. But he was too confused to make a sign, to tense his thigh muscles in the ordinary mute gesture of irritation. He could not be sure how European this was — how much to do with the health spa, and how much to do with something else entirely.

His penis was trapped there, under his thigh, its squashed head protruding under his testicles.

And then he felt the man's hand flicker on to the head of his penis. He really could not be sure if this were still an accident. These accidents, felt Haffner, were becoming so much less accidental than he had first imagined.

He was rarely successful in his active search for what he considered to be bohemian. Whenever Haffer metamorphosed into the bohemian, it tended to be the result of someone else's choice. He strayed into it. He had understood the streets in Soho — but he had never felt quite at home on Wardour Street, or Frith Street. He went to the French House sometimes. But not the Colony Room, not the Gargoyle Club. Never had the wisecracking hostess Muriel Belcher eyed him from behind the bar, admiringly, as he went promiscuous with a male prostitute who came from the satellite towns around Glasgow. Nor had he drunk with Francis Bacon, vomiting into the gutter, each supporting the other's bent body, wildly applauding.

No, thought Haffner: bohemia, when it came to Haffner, always came in such strangely bourgeois costumes: a moustached man in a tracksuit, say, surrounded by candles.

This confusion was one instinct which he had inherited from Papa. Early on in Haffner's career, in Haffner's marriage, they had sat in the rose garden, in the pale sunshine, a police siren tumescing and detumescing in the background, and Papa had expounded on life. The thing was, a man could either waste his life or live his life. And in the end it was better to live it than to waste it. Did he understand this? Haffner answered that he thought he did. But what was wasting, and what was living? Was it Livia, or not Livia? A marriage, or not a marriage? It was hardly as if Papa had been an expert in distinguishing the living from the wasting — in knowing what was a place of safety, and what was a place of harm. In Haffner's opinion, these terms had a habit of turning themselves upside down. He seemed isolated in this uncertainty. The only other person who shared his bewilderment, in the end, was Livia herself. More often, it led to arguments like the one which had occurred the day of Livia's funeral: sitting in his kitchen with his daughter and her husband, Esmond.

He was, Esther told him, simply impossible. Haffner tried to disagree. She interrupted him. He was impossible. Like an infant. Haffner did not try to disagree.

He cared for nothing, said Esther. And angrily Haffner had replied that in fact it was he, her father, who was the only person in this family to think about other people. Yes, let him speak.

No one was more conceited than Haffner, said his daughter. No one cared more about himself. Did he know what Mama used to say? She had married a Greek god, and had left a Roman emperor. A monster of ego.

— Humble! roared Haffner. I am the humblest person I know.

No one could think what to say next. The chutzpah of it dazzled them. So no one spoke. Haffner simply glared at Esmond. Esmond silently glared back.

It amazed him, thought Haffner, how vanquished this man was: the absolute son-in-law.

Esmond wore the steel rectangular spectacles sported by fundamentalist spokesmen and the vice presidents of Midwestern software companies; but Esmond was neither a vice president nor a fundamentalist.

He admired Esmond for only one thing, did Haffner: his hair. This, he conceded, was splendid — the way it flowed and oozed, a miracle of liquidity. But nothing else. Not the liberal moral certainties; nor the obsession with football borrowed from the newspapers. Yet this was the man who had made Haffner's daughter into a meek provider: who had seduced her into the temptations of Orthodoxy. This was the man who had made his grandson rabbinical.

He still saw no reason, said Esmond, why that other woman should have presumed to come. Barbra, Haffner interrupted, was a very dear friend. Esmond ignored this statement. If that was what Haffner wanted, then he was welcome to continue this friendship, he said. He looked at Esther. She was arranging the cutlery in front of her — which had been laid for a breakfast no one, now, except Haffner, would eat: the rustic basket of pains au chocolat before him, the snorting coffee machine on the counter behind him. But there was no reason, Esmond said, for them to have to witness this. He saw no reason why they should have to deal with Haffner's, with his — but Esmond had no word for Haffner's delinquency.