Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Somehow, he considered, without him meaning it to happen, his actions became cruel in their effects.

And Haffner was not cruel. The emperors, of course, were not like him. The great dictators enjoyed their torture: but it was never Haffner's way — to throw a party for a father, to make his son's execution go that much more sociably.

Haffner looked at the wood of the bathroom door. It was probably just a veneer, thought Haffner: not a solid oak, or trusty beech. Harshly, he judged its inadequate soundproofing. He cursed this country. He cursed the former Communist empire for its inadequate provision of workmanship. Then he cursed the nascent capitalist transition.

On the other hand, if Frau Tummel could hear everything, thought Haffner, could hear that Zinka's was not the voice of her husband, then why had she not come out? This seemed reasonable.

Oh Haffner! He hadn't considered the depth of Frau Tummel's pride. Nor the intricacy of her sadness.

Zinka lay there, in no apparent rush to dress herself in the tracksuit and vest which formed her sportswear. She lay against the bolster, in a T-shirt, and socks, and panties. She took an apple from the bowl of fruit placed with professional love beside his bed each morning, bit a slim curve out of it, then put it back, on the table. It wobbled; then came to rest. She looked at Haffner.

She hooked a finger under the gusset of her panties. They looked at each other. Then Zinka withdrew her finger, let her gusset move back into place.

In Haffner's memory, this happened with an infinite languor. This was only, perhaps, because the speed of Haffner's thought was now subject to a steep acceleration.

She must like him, thought Haffner. In some way, she must like him. Haffner, after all, did not believe in the maliciousness of reality. This talent allowed him to discover so much solace where other people only saw benightedness, the end of civilisation.

Zinka asked him if he wanted to watch her touch herself.

No, thought Haffner, trying to reason, considering Frau Tummel, considering Benjamin, considering the villa which had led him into this ever more miniature trap: no, if against his better judgement the world was turning itself into a succession of traps, then what did Haffner care? The obvious reasons were there: the many ways in which Zinka might be thinking of repayment. Or she might be acting for reasons which would always remain inscrutable to Haffner. The reasons were beyond him.

And this, I think, was where the story of the villa began to truly become the story of Haffner's finale: at this point, he began to enter a world where all the usual values seemed reversed: a small gymnasium of moral backflips, with the joyful ideas walking on their hands.

He couldn't remember if any woman had ever asked him this at any other point in his history. It startled him with its poise. Usually, the women seemed to expect Haffner to do the action: Haffner was the highest executive, the producer there to give permission to the director in his folding and eponymous chair, with all the lights off and the crew observing him, expectantly, surrounded by vacant lots where the streetlights flickered in their high anxiety. He looked at Zinka. Frau Tummel, sweating, weeping, did not occur to him, not any more. What he wanted, more than anything else, was to see Zinka touch herself.

Again, Haffner nodded.

Then Zinka flipped over on to her stomach. This was not the position which Haffner had expected: his improvised imagination had been more orthodox, more pornographic. But at this point he was not burdened with the responsibilities of the critic.

Then, he realised, there was a small problem involved in Haffner's own position.

Haffner considered sitting down. He worried this might seem too formal. It might seem rehearsed. So he stood: in the appearance of the casual. As if it were nothing more than an ordinary conversation, this exchange between a hotel guest and his spa assistant.

Standing by his desk, at the foot of the bed, Haffner could see her moving her fingers, the red fingertips emerging where she lay.

And that, Haffner suddenly realised, was it. There was nothing more to see. This moved him. It was, he thought, more intimate like this. He would see nothing, not even her face. Everything was in the noises, the small moans and inhalations, the slow exhalations. Her face was squashed against the pillow. The intimacy was musical. Entranced, Haffner stared.

She rested a cheek on the bedraggled sheet, to look back at him. Her cheek was red, as if she were blushing.

Outside, unknown to Haffner, the sun maintained its fixed decline.

Distractedly, Haffner saw once more the Lives of the Caesars , there on his bedside table. Even if this was not quite despotic, it was the closest he had really come, thought Haffner, to feeling imperial. This was Dacia, and Dalmatia. He could understand the euphoria.

No wonder they set about erecting columns, thought Haffner: the camels and the trumpets. No wonder they wanted to parade their spoils, in triumph — the chariots drawn by panthers on their padded paws. No arch, no column, was grand enough to commemorate the few grand moments of desire in a life, the even fewer moments of possession.

Yes, there had been twelve Caesars: and now here was the thirteenth — Haffner Augustus: whose image, if there were any justice in this world, should be carved on a marble tomb, its panels chased with Haffner in profile, leading his jungly train — the leopards, the chubby satyrs — to some screwed-up festival of Bacchus.

The lamps, in their shades, observed Haffner, delinquent.

And Haffner forgot himself. All the characters of his recent history — Frau Tummel, Niko, Benjamin — dissolved like the swoon of a television's closedown. There was only Haffner, in his second best tracksuit: and this figure in front of him, a resting contortionist.

For Haffner was beginning to understand.

That people tended to make other people up, that friendships tended to be formed between two imaginary people: Haffner knew this. What struck him as more poignant and more touching in the friendship of Zinka and Haffner was that it was so much less imaginary than he might ever have predicted. In ways which rather tended to be beyond him, Haffner seemed to offer her some kind of playfulness. And this version of Haffner, he thought, was the truest, the most profound.

When Esther was very young, she used to play with Haffner and their schnauzer. Livia would be in the kitchen, or the garden. In this way, the three of them formed a diminishing series: for Esther would only play so long as Haffner was there, a minor role. Just as Haffner was only happy when he knew that Livia was there, somewhere close, if out of sight. With Haffner in attendance, occasionally called on to settle some argument, or adjudicate some game, Esther played with her seven imaginary friends, while pensively chewing on the blonde curling tips of her hair.

Haffner wondered whether this resemblance perturbed him — between his daughter playing and a girl on his bed. He concluded that it did not. At that moment, he realised, he would accept whatever conditions were imposed, whatever distortions might be demanded. He would do anything: just so long as he could be there, in the sunlit room, with Zinka.

He was interrupted momentarily from this glow of happiness by Zinka reaching a conclusion which Haffner only wished might be a little softer, a little less of a crescendo. And then there was a pause in which the world, sadly, began to right itself. Finally, Zinka sighed, began to move, and then turned round and sat there, on the bed, looking at him, a leg tucked under her waist: a seductive yogi.