Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

And this reminds me of one story from a more decadent empire than our own.

The emperor Elagabalus was emperor when the empire was disintegrating. As if that wasn't obvious. His reputation as a voluptuary was awesome. It might be possible, recorded Elagabalus's historian, that his vices and follies had been exaggerated; had been adorned in the imagination of his narrators. But even if one only believed those excesses which were performed in public, and attested to by many witnesses, they would still surpass the records of human infamy. Of these excesses, the one which I most admire is the way in which Elagabalus — the instigator of a coup — loved to dress up in women's clothes. He preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and distributed the honours of the empire among his male lovers, including one man who was invested with the authority of the emperor — or, as Elagabalus insisted on being known, the empress's husband.

Laughable, maybe — but man! What possessions one could enter into, when dispossessed to this extent!

Perhaps, said Frau Tummel, he simply lacked soul.

This was more than Haffner had expected. Perhaps, she continued, the spirit was beyond him. She was sure that he didn't even know how to cross himself. No, said Haffner, he didn't. This, said a demonstrative Frau Tummel, is how you do it.

Was it only Haffner, he wondered, who was constantly available for education?

Like this? he wondered. No, that was wrong, she said. The forehead first? queried Haffner. The forehead was not important, said Frau Tummel. The forehead was nothing. Why was he worrying about the forehead?

Then there was another knock at the door.

— Don't answer it! cried Frau Tummel.

— Why not? said Haffner, flinging open the door, to reveal a boy bearing a tray.

It was reception, he said. They were sending Haffner complimentary refreshment.

— Why? said Haffner.

— A gift, said the boy.

— From whom? said Haffner.

— I don't know, said the boy.

And he placed on the table an inaccurate planetarium: a galaxy of white chocolates, with seven half-moons of cinnamon biscuits.

Frau Tummel looked at Haffner.

— You mock me, she said.

And, for a moment, he wanted to enfold her in his arms and tell her no, he did not mock her at all.

He was truly a monster, she told him. What right did he think he had?

He could admit, as she said this, that there were ways of finding Haffner guilty. Therefore, maybe it was right that, more and more, his life resembled some bizarre form of punishment, some gonzo idea of karma. But Haffner wasn't one to be abused by ideas of sin. The devil, like all the other gods, was one invention among many, in Haffner's improvised theology: the gods were just decoration; scribbled marginalia. The gods were doodling. He preferred to form the categories himself. If Haffner were pressed, he preferred the more charming and likeable others: the demigods. The infinite fairies: the 33,000 gods of the pagan religions. These were the gods he might have called on when he felt that he was sinning. But the prospect was unlikely, He doubted that, if the gods existed, their concern would be the soul of Raphael Haffner.

— I said I loved you, said Frau Tummel.

She said it, he thought, as if she were in shock.

— It'll be OK, said Haffner. He knew this was not adequate. But there was nothing, he felt, he could say.

Naturally, said Frau Tummel, she would have to consider whether to report the girl. It was only right. This seemed unnecessary, said Haffner. No, said Frau Tummel. It was only right. She had to consider what was right. Would there be anything he could do, said Haffner, to persuade her otherwise? Frau Tummel looked at him. She told him that no, there was not.

And she turned and left, theatrically slamming the door. Or, theatrically trying to slam the door: but the door, on its stiff spring-delay, braked, and softly, slowing, slowly, softly closed itself, in silence.

But what else had she expected? He was a monster, absolutely. A chimera, a griffin: a rabid centaur. Nor was this the first appearance of Haffner's multiple personality, his capacity for metamorphosis.

The night when Haffner proposed to Livia — just before Haffner was due to ship out — he had gone with some friends to the French Pub in Soho. And at that time he did not realise that the man behind the bar, with the Gallic twin-twirled moustache, was Victor Berlemont, the father of Gaston — Gaston, who after his retirement from the French Pub would play golf with Haffner twenty years later, in the other bohemia of Hendon. A man who understood the problematic species of herbs. With a Pernod in his hand — the first time Haffner had ever drunk this strange and continental liquor — he had talked to a girl about the higher things. Many times, Haffner had considered the uneasy fluctuations of one's sense of beauty. In wartime, he discovered, one could find beautiful most women you met. Because you needed beauty, for the desire to feel rational. Whereas the desire you felt in a war wasn't rational, and there was no beauty. She didn't believe, the girl in the French Pub had told him, that adultery was wrong. It was, let us say, a short story: to the side of the novel. He did not quite understand the analogy; he knew, however, what she meant. But that girl and her analogies dissolved into memory — the steep amphitheatre of Haffner's memory which he looked down on from the great height of his longevity, perched on his seat in the gods, looking down at the rabid lions, the dying Christians.

Haffner had left, and gone to meet Livia at the statue of Eros.

It was always like that, he thought. He wanted to be bohemian, and the bohemian eluded him. He had kissed the girl in the French Pub, and then left, before anything else might happen.

He took Livia for a meal on Shaftesbury Avenue. Then they had gone to some film: of which Haffner only remembered that a man spent a lot of time driving. This was, Haffner remembered, the main reason, it seemed, there had been for making a film: the mania for cars. It was so cool to drive that all any one in Britain wanted to see, all any one in Los Angeles wanted to film, was a man getting in and out of a car. And also, remembered Haffner, smoking a pipe. In and out of a car while smoking a pipe. That was cinema. Afterwards, they were in a taxi round the back of Leicester Square. They were taking Livia home. And did Livia know, asked Haffner, how dangerous it would be for him over there, soon, at the front? Livia made Haffner aware that she did. But perhaps, he continued — wishing he could not remember how the girl in the French Pub had kissed him, the thick dry texture of her lipstick, with its waxy faded rose perfume, like the greasepaint of his recent brief theatrical career, which she then reapplied, open-mouthed, after they had kissed, while Haffner watched the taut ellipse of her mouth — Livia did not quite appreciate the magnitude of the danger. The danger Haffner would be in, over there, at the front.

Haffner touched her on the cheek. He was twenty-two. She was twenty. It was very possible, he said, that he would never see her again. He might never come home. So would she, he said — looking down, bashful — consent to make him happy? It would mean so much to him, he said, to know that someone cared. Livia looked at him: and, as she used to tell Benjamin, and everyone else, for ever after, she did not know what else she could do. It seemed rude to say no. So she said yes and — feeling very fast — cuddled him up, and kissed him.

As Haffner silently and helplessly compared her nervous, gentle, motionless kiss to the inspired kiss of a girl four hours earlier, whose name he would never know.