Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

In the window, outside, on the hotel veranda, he could see a woman emptying her rucksack — polyester in primary colours — of its crumbs, its lost cellophane wrappers from drinks straws, its crumpled tickets, its creased promotional leaflets to the most inauthentic restaurants.

Haffner contemplated the peaceful scene. There was no one in the lounge. Only Haffner. Everyone else was out walking, or swimming, or lying beside the pools. Or being cured of whatever they wanted to be cured of. But Haffner, instead, was lost in his persistent sense of floating, unattached.

Yes, checked Haffner, as if feeling in a pocket for his passport, the feeling was still there. Haffner was free.

As the soft nocturne continued, Haffner mooched among the CDs. He rejected showtunes from the movies; he rejected a selection of fados from the backstreets of Lisbon. And then, to his excitement, he found the Cole Porter songbook, as sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

If Haffner had an ideal musical form, it was the wordless harmonies of Duke Ellington's scat. But if there had to be words, then he wanted them to be Cole Porter's, with Ella's accent. She sang the songs so precisely, so simply. She confessed to her audience, as she had confessed to Haffner, that time in Ronnie Scott's, that ev'ry time they said goodbye, she died a little. And now, as he read the liner notes, he noticed the weird old-fashioned elision. Ev'ry! He'd only noticed the poetic quality of Cole Porter's title now, after — what was it? Sixty years? He rather liked it.

He was in the mood for preserving outmoded things.

— Benjamin! said Haffner, delighted.

Benjamin paused, and pointed a finger at his cheek, like a tearful harlequin.

— You've got a huge bruise on your cheek, said Benji.

Haffner asked him if he knew this one. Benjamin repeated his sentence; Haffner repeated his. Benjamin replied that no, not really. It was kind of not what he listened to, really. Then he should listen, said Haffner, raising a hand. As for the bruise — as for the bruise: the bruise was nothing, said Haffner.

Together they listened to Ella Fitzgerald explain to her silent audience how ev'ry time they said goodbye, she wondered why the gods above her thought so little of her that they allowed her lover to go. And then, once more, the strings came in, a trampoline for her voice.

— I'm not sure I like it, said Benji.

— How can you not like it, said Haffner, when it's true?

He had always loved this song for the frankness of its melancholy: its admission of being defeated by love. Perhaps this was the real America of Haffner — not so much the happy improvisation, as the stoic openness about pain. The acceptance of vulnerability was what moved Haffner now. He loved the Ella of this song, just as he had been charmed by his meetings with the innovative businessmen in the early seventies: the gunslingers, the white sharks. Sometimes, he had dealings with James Ling: the man who regarded the portfolio as a work of art, providing an escape from real life, and all its attendant risks. With his theory that one could diminish the risk of disaster by betting on everything. Patiently, over the years, Haffner had listened to their jargon — derivatives, risk arbitrage, hedge funds — all of them trying to pretend that these new ideas could diminish risk. And Haffner had listened to them, unconvinced — amazed by their ability to invent the idea of the rational bubble. So frank an oxymoron! So fragile a hope!

But Benjamin, this morning, was euphoric with optimism.

— Have you fixed things? Because I think I'm going to go back, said Benjamin.

— To bed? queried Haffner.

— Home, said Benjamin.

— To that summer school? said Haffner, looking down the song titles.

Benjamin said nothing.

— But this one, said Haffner to himself, is the real marvel.

— No, said Benjamin. I'm going back to her.

At this point, Haffner noticed something.

— You're in the same clothes as last night, said Haffner. You brought nothing else?

— I'm in the same clothes, said Benjamin. And then he grinned. To which Haffner offered a happily sceptical eyebrow.

— When did you arrive? said Haffner. Yesterday? I've hardly seen you.

Haffner had converted him. The legend of Haffner had now created the legend of Benji. For this would always be Benji's great story: the story of how he abandoned the practice of his religion, having slept with two girls in one week: in Tel Aviv, and then an Alpine spa town. Even if Haffner, in the mountains, had a finale all of his own. His story was all about the dismantling of his legend: the sudden zest for abandonment.

And, sultry in the mountainous morning, Ella began again to sing Cole Porter's classic: 'Begin the Beguine'.

— You're going to leave your school? asked Haffner.

— But have you fixed things? said Benji. I won't go if you still need me.

And Haffner considered this.

— No, he said.

— You haven't fixed things? said Benji.

— I don't need you, said Haffner.

— But no, began Benji.

— You ever heard of Artie Shaw? said Haffner, holding up the liner notes. Eight wives. Now let me tell you something, old boy.

But before he could continue Benjamin's education in the art of jazz, before he could continue to praise Benji for his liberation, before he could go on to explain that in fact uxorious panache wasn't what had made Artie Shaw remarkable — that in fact Artie Shaw's talent was his extension of the clarinet's upper range — there was an interruption.

Frau Tummel, clasping Herr Tummel's hand — like exhausted Olympic victors — appeared at the door of the hotel lounge. Like the overcrowded lounge at the end of a Parisian farce, an English murder mystery. Behind the Tummels, there was a man who was wearing his name pinned to his chest.

— He is here, announced Frau Tummel.

— Who? said Haffner.

— You, said Herr Tummel and Frau Tummel, in concert.

He had at least, thought Haffner, brought them back together. If this was the only good he had accomplished in this spa town, it wasn't nothing. Surely someone should acknowledge that?

The man with his name on his chest was the manager of the hotel. It was a pleasure to meet him, said Haffner, welcoming him with a handshake. This handshake was declined with a gentle cough, a gentle incline of the head.

Benjamin busied himself with the neat arrangement of a pile of magazines, dating from two years ago, concerning the niceties of couture.

Then the manager began his speech. He regretted to say it, he said, and he was sure that everything could be explained — just as, he added with what he imagined must seem an engaging twinkle, a teacher had once told him that everything, yes, must have an explanation, a rational explanation. So: he regretted the situation, but there it was.

Haffner watched him, silently.

Benjamin, in an attempt at disappearance, debated within himself the eternal oppositions: between the one-piece and the bikini; the bronzing or the elegance; the virgin or the whore.

So. There had been accusations. There had been comments raised to him of a personal nature, concerning Mr Haffner.

Haffner began to read the songbook's liner notes, with scholarly exactitude.

Yes, continued the manager, these allegations involved Haffner and a member of staff.

Haffner discovered with surprised satisfaction that the record — Haffner's vocabulary was not always modern — not only included Ella's renditions of Cole Porter, but also included a selection of live recordings: so that here, even here, in the least smoky and least cool environs of a spa town high in the backward Alps, Haffner could listen to Ella's improvisation of 'Mack the Knife' — an improvisation she delivered at the jazz festival in Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera with Duke Ellington in 1966. Which Haffner himself had annoyingly missed. An improvisation, he then found out, which was in fact a staged version, since it went back to 1960 in Berlin, where Ella had first improvised these new lines to a song she couldn't remember.