He tried to explain to Katya that he really did not want to touch her. If she didn't mind. He wondered if perhaps they should rejoin the others.
But he was in such a rush, said Katya, sadly. Did she not please him?
He tried to look for Niko, and could see nobody. He was alone with her, in this back room. Of course, he replied, she pleased him.
Visually, it was inarguable.
Then he felt her press her breasts against him. Softly they gave against the protrusion of Haffner's nose. The rough nipples rubbed against the harsher roughness of Haffner's cheeks.
But no, it wasn't Haffner's thing. He tried to explain this to her. Really, she had been very kind, but he ought to be going. And to his unsurprised dismay, Katya seemed to feel wronged by his explanations. Angrily, she upbraided him. Never, she said, had she met such a man.
Helpless Haffner bent his head.
Did he think she really wanted him? she asked Haffner. Dumbly, Haffner shook his head. Did he think that this was her idea of love?
— You're nodding when you're not supposed to be nodding, she said.
— Ah yes, said Haffner.
— You're still doing it, she said.
They were everywhere, thought Haffner: the experts in what was real; the people who wanted to begin, or complete, his education.
Look at him! said Katya. The man was dressed in a cagoule. She could not understand how stupid he was.
And Haffner wanted to assure her that he was capable of stupidity so gigantic that she would hardly comprehend it.
Maybe, thought Haffner, he was going off sex. Once, a Texan friend of his had told him a Dallas proverb. Every time you find yourself not thinking about sex, so ran the proverb, then your mind is wandering. And this had been Haffner's philosophy, in so far as the man could have a philosophy.
My squalid Don Quixote: avid for the higher things. The higher things which Haffner looked for in the lower things: in the lust, and the vanity, and the shame.
The point was, said Katya, that she at least needed to be paid.
It was the second time that day, considered Haffner, amazed — emptying the pockets of his cagoule, presenting her with all the notes he found — when he had paid for sexual services he had never wanted. But Haffner was flexible.
He should never forget his favourite item of vocabulary. When he was in Brazil, when they were leaving the theatre, laughing to themselves at the disconcerted policemen, his counterpart in the Rio bank had tried to explain how one survived in these great times. You could do it, sure, by going underground and becoming a hero. But then you died. Or you could do it by offering up your politics to whatever came along. You preserved yourself through sacrificing your ideals. They had a word for this, he said. It was trampolin-ability. And this immediately became Haffner's favourite word. He could trampoline. Yes, this seemed possible.
To trampoline: the only form of maturity which Haffner ever recognised.
9
Rising back into the air, buoyant against gravity, Haffner made for the exit — where Niko was waiting for him. Was Niko not good to him? asked Niko. Haffner replied that Niko was very very good to him. So what, asked Niko, did Haffner think?
Haffner promised him that yes: why not? If Niko thought he could help. He didn't see why not. And Niko said that this was very good. He had perhaps said this before, but he liked Haffner very much. Now then: the practicals. He knew the snooker club? Of course, said Haffner, he didn't know the snooker club. Well then, said Niko. Well then. They would sort something out. Niko himself would take him there.
Whatever suited him, said Haffner, simply wanting to end the evening: and he walked out into the benighted dawn.
And carelessly, without thinking, the hand of fate or the world-soul nearly placed a man in a bowler hat, Haffner's twin, his arms by his side, like a sentry, at the end of Haffner's day, as Haffner turned the corner into the town's main square. But luckily this world-soul managed to arrange it so that Haffner changed his mind, did not proceed briskly back home, but lingered, looking in the window of a shop which sold domestic cleaning products, ironing boards, Hoovers, dog baskets, plastic and multicoloured clothes pegs; then the window of an adjoining lingerie shop in which was fixed a row of disembodied and cocked legs, like the Platonic ideal of a cancan.
Finally, Haffner reached the hotel. He ignored the greeting of the woken receptionist — clutching a paperback and a serrated freshly burning plastic cup of coffee — walked into the lift, and pressed the wrong button, so that when he turned as normal to the left and tried to move his key in the lock, it would not work. Finally, after three minutes, he realised his mistake — oblivious to the scene he had left behind the door: a man in pyjamas, wielding an umbrella; a woman whimpering in the bed; a marriage teetering.
Haffner went to sleep, dressed in the tracksuit which now doubled as his pyjamas. Commas of white chest hair nestled in the gap above the jacket's open zip. He wanted to talk to Livia. He wanted to tell her about that conversation he had had in Chinatown, twenty years earlier, with Goldfaden. The conversation about sports. And she would turn to him, sleepy in her velvet nightgown, and tell him that of course Goldfaden was wrong. He knew that. For Livia, like Haffner, understood the majesty of sport.
Yes, it was Livia who had watched the 1980 Wimbledon tennis final with Haffner one weekend, in the early morning, in Florida — where they had gone for a summer break: featuring the American kid with the curls, and the Swedish man with the blue-eyed stare. And it was Livia who had pointed out to Haffner the obvious symbolism of the fight: the two versions of machismo. And which one, did Haffner think, was him? He thought, he said, that he was possibly the kid with the curls. And which one, asked Livia, did he think that she would go for?
The likeable kid with the curls? asked Haffner, hopefully.
No, unfortunately for Haffner, Livia's preference was instead for the resourceful and quiet man: whose machismo needed no theatricality. Even though as she said it Livia kissed him on the cheek, and grinned at him. And Haffner was glad that as he looked at her blouse — one button wrongly fastened so that the fabric bunched out and Haffner could see the beginning of a breast, the lace florets of her bra — his lust was unabated.
But Haffner's audience was gone. So Haffner lay there, on his left side, then shifted, to give solace to his heart, so placating the superstitious aspect of his soul. The aspect of his soul which believed in a soul at all.
1
The next morning, Haffner woke up late, to hear Benji in conversation outside his door.
Perhaps it was a bad dream. He tried to wake up further.
He couldn't. The dream was real.
2
— Me, Benji used to say, to his friends, his admirers, I have the greatest breasts of anyone I know. If I were a woman, said Benji, I'd want me. I mean yeah. I mean absolutely.
Yes, Benji was huge.
The hugeness had caused so many miniature aspects of Benji. It was, for example, one reason why he hadn't really had girlfriends. His emotions were distractedly doodled with shyness. Self-consciousness possessed him. This was also a reason why Benjamin was beauty-obsessed. He was always a sucker for the grand beauty. When it came to female beauty, his standards were strict. And finally, the size was why he had been forced to teach himself survival through wit.
— You want to know something? Benji said to our mutual friend Ezekiel: Ezekiel, known as Zeek.
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