Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

— They look at my penis in the urinals, continued Benjamin, and they can't see it. It's like I'm pissing from my belly, you know?

— You shouldn't be too hard on yourself, said Zeek. It's not so bad. I mean, you're not circumcised, are you?

— No, said Benji.

— So you've never tried to masturbate when you're circumcised? said Zeek.

— How could I try it? said Benji.

— So then. The thing is this, said Zeek. It needs a lot of Vaseline.

— Vaseline? asked Benji.

— Or something similar, said Zeek.

— I don't need Vaseline, said Benjamin.

— But you're not circumcised, said Zeek.

— Yes, I know, said Benjamin. I told you that.

In the grey dawns after parties, we would sit out in the garden and talk: while in the living rooms, the bedrooms, the girls dozed in each other's arms, the junkies talked to themselves.

The issue of circumcision used to worry Benjamin. Once, Benjamin had talked to a girl whom he dearly wanted to kiss. As so often in the imperfectly Jewish life of Benjamin, the conversation had turned to penises, and their foreskins. She really did think, she said, that circumcised penises were preferable. They lasted longer, she smiled at him. And Benjamin, with his yarmulke, his deep knowledge of archaic law, wondered if by this she meant to flirt with him. It was possible. Come on, kid, it was possible, he said grimly, to himself. Even if, as only he knew, her hope was utterly misguided. He had to be honest. Sadly, Benjamin admitted to the intact nature of his penis, its shroud of flesh: its headscarf. It was the only way in which Esther had resisted Esmond's Orthodoxy: the practice of circumcision, she used to say, was barbaric. She couldn't countenance it for her darling son. But of course, Benji's girl then added, the circumcised penis had its own charm too. She looked at Benjamin. Confused, he looked back at her, and was quiet.

This was the boy whom Haffner could hear outside his room: while Haffner struggled to extricate himself from the placid dreams of his sleep, into the more unnatural dreams of Haffner's Alpine existence.

Haffner picked up the phone. He was sorry, said the receptionist to this newly bedraggled version of Haffner: his whitely blond hair awry, uncombed; his beard sprouting. Haffner asked him what he was sorry for: the receptionist explained that his grandson had said that his grandfather should be expecting him.

— No problem, said Haffner, exhausted. No problem.

And it was nearly lunchtime, added the receptionist, pedantically.

It could hardly get worse, thought Haffner. But then, as he struggled with the sheets, his shoes, the elongated dimensions of his washing routine in the bathroom, he was interrupted by the realisation that it was, in fact, worse. Benjamin, Haffner suddenly realised, was not talking to himself. Though why he had thought the boy would be talking to himself, he didn't know. No, there wasn't just Benjamin. There was also Frau Tummel. They were engaged in conversation outside his door.

And why not? thought Haffner, in dismal jubilation. Why wouldn't Frau Tummel be here as well?

It was as if the farce of his life were repeating itself, just on a diminishing scale. The interruptions of the real — the unwelcome real — which had marked his life continued even here, when Haffner was nowhere.

In the corridor, Frau Tummel was telling Benjamin that such devotion to a grandfather was rare in his generation. It was admirable, she said.

— Uhhuh, said Benjamin.

He had just arrived from the airport. And as he made himself known to reception, he had been interrupted by this woman whose appearance Benjamin felt he knew all too well, from the mothers of his schoolfriends: she was stern, and extravagant, simultaneously. When she discovered who Benjamin was, she was delighted, she said. She was ravished. She knew his grandfather, she assured him, very well. She was just on her way to see him.

He would never understand what the women still saw in his grandfather, thought Benjamin, resigned. No, he wouldn't even try. There was no point. It was part of the whole mystery of sex: a mystery which he felt was way beyond him. Though why the mystery of sex was not by now beyond his grandfather seemed an injustice too cosmic to be contemplated.

Frau Tummel asked him if he was here for a holiday as well, like his grandfather. He replied that sort of. Yes? she said. He was more here on business, said Benji. Like his grandfather.

He really did look very like his grandfather, she said. Absolutely handsome.

Benjamin simpered.

If only, thought Benjamin, she were about thirty years younger. It was always like this. If only women said this whom Benjamin thought of as girls.

Frau Tummel thought that he must admire his grandfather very much. And Benjamin replied ruefully that he could be quite different at home. Frau Tummel queried this. No, said Benjamin: it was true.

In the window, the Alpine mountains were blankly beautiful.

Well, said Frau Tummel, she had to admit that maybe there was something in what he was saying. Herr Haffner had his complications. This she would admit. But that, she said flirtatiously, smiling at Benjamin, was, after all, the signature of a man! She had no idea, said Benjamin sadly, how difficult he could be. Difficult didn't cover it.

But he did not expand on this to Frau Tummel. No, Benji was loyal. He did not tell her what he was now remembering — how once they had discovered Haffner on the island of Malta. He was with a dancer from a cruise ship. Another time, in Florence, Haffner simply wandered off; and was found two days later, in a bar on the south side of the river.

She could not believe it was true, said Frau Tummel. She had not seen this difficulty in Herr Haffner. Herr Haffner, she would at least accept, was a man with his own sense of himself, said Frau Tummel. That was one of the problems, agreed Benjamin. But there were others.

Benjamin was an expert on his grandfather. Observations of his grandfather had formed his education. Once, he had idolised him. Now, perhaps, his idolisation had become inverted: a strange form of love, which was inseparable from dislike.

Haffner opened his door.

— You're here? said Haffner to Benji. How?

— Surprised? asked Benji.

— Not really, said Haffner.

It was true. Nothing surprised him when it came to the decisions of his grandson, the wayward passions to which he was subject.

— Shouldn't you be in school? asked Haffner. Shouldn't you be learning something? The cultivation of forelocks? The possibility of prayer?

— You see? said Benjamin to Frau Tummel.

Anyway, said Benjamin: he had told him. Haffner questioned this.

— On the phone? said Benjamin, with his American fall and rise.

— You never told me, said Haffner.

They paused, in this silence of disagreement.

— Are you really wearing that? said Benjamin.

Yes, said Haffner, he was: refusing to explain this unusual wardrobe choice of pink hiking T-shirt and his familiar sky-blue tracksuit.

There was another pause.

— It is so wonderful, the devotion! exclaimed Frau Tummel, beaming on Haffner.

Haffner looked at her, then at Benji. He could do, thought Haffner, curtly, with losing some of that weight. But there it was. He had always been spoiled: by Esther, and then by Livia. Who always cooked the kid steak. Who made hand-cut, hand-fried fries: a treat which Haffner, in fifty years of marriage, never got for himself.

— You had breakfast? Haffner asked his grandson.

— On the plane, said Benji. Plane food.

— Hungry? asked Haffner.

— I'm hungry, said Benjamin.