Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

She put the suitcase in a corner.

And Haffner turned round, to discover his interpreter from the Town Hall: Isabella.

— Is you, she said, pleased with this chance meeting.

— Is me, said Haffner.

— So how are things? she asked him. All good?

— Kind of, said Haffner.

— You will be glad to go home, stated Isabella.

Haffner considered this. He said nothing.

Isabella asked him where he was from, in Britain, and Haffner replied that he was from London. Isabella, she told him, had been to London herself. It was many years ago. She stayed at a hotel near Westminster. She told him its name.

— I don't know it, said Haffner.

— He knew it? asked Isabella.

He felt for his forehead. Now he was sweating profusely. He wasn't well: he wasn't himself.

— I don't know it, said Haffner.

And Isabella paused, lost in memories of bygone times.

Sweating, craving rest, Haffner excused himself, turned round, and — refusing the usher — entered the auditorium.

He realised that the reason for the usher's reluctance to let Haffner in — bearing though he did bars of chocolate and tickets, all the normal signifiers of an ordinary spectator — was that the film had started almost twenty minutes earlier. And perhaps, thought Haffner, if he had arrived at the beginning, then maybe he could have followed the plot. Now, it seemed unlikely.

Ahead of him, gigantic, loomed the dead.

He didn't really know, poor Haffner, why he was there. But then, the question of what he was doing anywhere had been posed so deeply to Haffner in the last few days that now he was tired of it. Happy, he settled into his bewilderment.

The film, it turned out, was in French, with subtitles; but Haffner no more understood the subtitles than he understood French.

One thing, at least, was clear. It was a war story. At first, he thought it took place in his war. Gradually he realised that it was taking place in his father's war: the Great War. Often wrongly called a World War. Whereas it was to be distinguished from Haffner's War, which was a truly World War. Though Haffner was increasingly unsure of both the greatness and the world.

Bereft of language, Haffner watched the slapstick. It seemed a reliable guide. Like so many war stories, this film was about escape. Happily, he watched as the prisoners propped a chair against the door, hooked a blanket over the blank window, prised up a floorboard. The alarm system was a tin can pierced by a string.

These escapes repeated themselves.

While, in the occasional background of an occasional shot, Haffner recognised what was left of his youth: sunlight, a horse passing by — its hooves and white ankles — watched by a slumped bored sentry.

How important could a man's life get? wondered Haffner. At what point would it ever become symbolic, or cosmic? Haffner was beginning to get a pretty shrewd idea. He was beginning to understand the abysmal length of the odds.

On the screen, the boredom continued. The prisoners tried to amuse themselves with amateur theatricals. They dressed up as girls, in stockings and heels. And Haffner with approving assent noted the silence, the deep hollowed silence as the prettiest kid emerged on stage in his chemise and stockings and hairband. The parody of the wife you hadn't seen for the last three years. The parody which broke the obvious rule: you couldn't think about sex, not in a war. But you only thought about sex. The last thing you needed was the reminder. And then a singing comedian came up on stage, who could neither sing nor make his audience laugh: a vampire, backlit, in white tie and tails.

And this was Haffner's past. He knew it intimately. The boredom was Haffner's domain — an infinite suspension. One had always lived, during the war, under the illusion that everything would be over very soon. Whereas now Haffner wondered whether both victory and defeat were for ever deferred. Although Haffner could not have said why — because one was endlessly defeated, or simply because the war was never over.

In the life of Raphael Haffner, maybe a truth became obvious: the great illusion — the true schmaltz — was always the illusion of victory.

Above him glowed the tired and blissful face of a French actor, licking his way along the rim of a cigarette paper: a harmonica. And although Haffner was almost happy here, in this cinema, after the initial coolness, the initial comfort of the velvet and the chocolate, he was still finding it difficult to focus.

He looked at the audience instead. It was sparse. The usual collection of misfits, the bedraggled loners: the geeks, the academics.

Then Haffner noticed a tall lean angular neck, with a crest of hair, and seemed to recognise it. Was that Pawel? He couldn't tell. Pawel from the Committee waiting room: Haffner's exposed twin.

Haffner tried to get his attention — coughing, leaning forward — but Pawel simply sat there, entranced in the picture. And then, in Haffner's bored scan of the audience, his heart jolted.

Was that Zinka sitting a few rows ahead of him, diagonally across? He could not be sure. But before he could try to look closer, there sat down, late, a woman whose face was darkly hidden from Haffner, but whose scent clouded towards him: the delicious mixture of perfume and sweat. He had a thing for the imperfectly adorned, did Haffner. For the sorrow and the pity. But not now. Now he only wanted her to move.

He was going mad, he knew this. As if suddenly, in this backstreet backwater cinema, everyone he knew would have gathered, for Haffner's finale.

Concentrate! Concentrate!

And Haffner settled back into his seat, begrudging the cheapness of the velveteen, the dead springs inside.

He was oddly adrift from everything he knew. Haffner, now, had no one. Not even the troubles of his heart. No, not even the women troubled Haffner's thoughts.

On their holidays, Livia always had her little ritual. Happy at their escape, she used to ask him how far they were from the West End — the bright theatres — snug in her couchette above him, as they sped through the mountains of Italy to Venice, or Lake Como. Their daughter, with her husband and their son, was in the adjacent compartment. And the rain fell, wriggling in jerky zigzags down the pane. Against the wall was pinned a bulging net for Haffner's book and glasses. Yes, thought Haffner. She was always intent on putting distance between them and the rest of their known world. So how far was he now from London? He tried to imagine the distances. And in this way, making this calculation, in the full emergence from his chrysalis, Haffner fell asleep.

But maybe, to understand the full happiness of Haffner, I should contrast it with another metamorphosis: for Benjamin had undergone his own metamorphosis, his conversion to a world of pleasure. But this conversion had not led to a happiness impervious to fear.

In his room, the twin buds of his earphones in his ear, he was once more listening to his favourite hip-hop song of the moment, called 'Darkness'. And as he listened, he brooded, darkly.

The song called 'Darkness' was by Saian Supa Crew, rappers from Marseilles. It opened with a sample from the most romantic song: 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' — with an abrupt drum roll and first faint orchestrated crackle, like the oldest radio in the world. And then, almost simultaneously, began the wistful violins. But the words — oh the words — Benji could not understand them. The rap, apart from one moment which he was sure mentioned the metro, eluded him. All he could recite, without understanding, was the chorus.

Ho, c'est le darkness , recited Benji, grandly: adieu a l'allegresse, c'est le darkness, c'est Loch Ness, c'est le madness, la lumiere se baisse.