Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘What?’

‘Elf just asked if yer feeling any better.’

Jasper frowns. ‘I have my doubts.’

‘Doubts?’ asks Elf. ‘About what?’

‘About what comes next,’ says Jasper.

Dean loses patience. ‘Don’t be such a wet bloody blanket. We’re playing New York. It’s what we’ve always dreamed of.’

Jasper presses 4. The elevator stops. He lets himself out and takes the stairs. Dean slams the doors and presses R again. ‘When he’s in his tortured genius mood he’s bloody impossible.’

Jasper doesn’t have ‘tortured genius moods’ , thinks Elf. She resolves to knock on his door later, after the party.

Camellias in tubs, topiary in planters, cosmos in pots are flourishing. Candles blink green-gold in jars and blue-gold in lanterns. A pyramid-shaped penthouse and a giant slabbed chimney enclose the rooftop garden on two sides, and railed walls complete the rectangle. Two or three dozen people sit around talking, smoking and drinking. Dope flavours the air. A swashbuckling guitarist is sitting on a bench fingerpicking, superbly, with a trio of women at his feet. Mum would call him a dreamboat , thinks Elf. Then she thinks of Luisa. It hurts.

‘Elf.’ Lenny appears, martini in hand. ‘I’m so very glad you’re here, but I’m mortified that I didn’t recognise you, earlier.’

Dean recognises him and blurts it out: ‘Leonard Cohen!’

The singer shrugs. ‘I’ve given up pretending otherwise.’

Dean turns to Elf. ‘Why didn’t yer warn us?’

‘I …’ Elf’s blushing. ‘Lenny, sorry, I feel awful.’ She turns back to Dean. ‘He doesn’t look like his picture on the LP.’

‘Which is my defence for not recognising you ,’ says Lenny. ‘Griff, Dean, I know Paradise . My friend on Hydra plays it constantly.’

‘The number of times I’ve played “Suzanne” in clubs,’ says Elf. ‘Lord, the royalties I must owe you …’

‘For a bourbon on ice, and the chords to “Mona Lisa”, I’ll call off my lawyers. Do you know our hostess, Janis?’

A woman turns around. She wears a pink boa woven through her hair, the gown of a damsel in distress, enough bracelets and chains to open a stall, and is one of America’s most famous singers.

‘Janis fookin’ Joplin ?’ This time it’s Griff who blurts.

‘Utopia Avenue!’ She has a ten-thousand-volt smile.

‘You’re class you are, Janis,’ says Griff. ‘Real class.’ He turns to Elf. ‘So yer didn’t know this was her party?’

‘I misheard Lenny,’ explains Elf. ‘I thought “Janis” was “Janet”.’

Janis Joplin puffs on her cigarette. ‘When Lenny told me he’d met a London Elf, I thought, C’mon, how many Elves can there be? So I phoned Stanley and, lo, the truth was revealed.’

Elf blinks. Janis Joplin knows my name. ‘ Did our aeroplane go down off Newfoundland? Is this Heaven?’

‘Janis’s parties are much more fun than Heaven,’ says Lenny.

‘If fire could sing,’ Elf tells Janis, ‘it would sing like you.’

Janis sighs. ‘I can’t let compliments like that go, y’ know, unanswered.’ Elf loves how her accent turns ‘can’t’ into ‘cay-ant’. ‘I got a copy of Stuff of Life .’ Janis twists a string of amber beads around her little finger. ‘I – lost – my – shit .’

Elf looks at Dean who looks at Griff. ‘We’re still learning American. Is losing shit a good thing or a bad thing?’

‘A great thing,’ affirms Lenny. ‘We dug Road to Paradise , too. It helped me and Janis get through last winter.’

Elf intercepts his glance at Janis. They’re together; or have been. She points to the pyramid. ‘This is where you live, Janis?’

‘It’s from a fairytale, isn’t it? Not the cheapest pad in the Chelsea, but why work as hard as we do if you don’t live a little?’

‘The Pyramid has an illustrious guest-book,’ says Lenny. ‘Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe rented it. Jean-Paul Sartre. Sarah Bernhardt. The one and only Janis Joplin …’

Janis looks around. ‘Where’s Jasper?’ she half whispers. ‘How do you say his family name?’

‘“Zoot”,’ replies Elf. ‘Gone to bed. He and flying do not get on, and our four nights at the Ghepardo begin tomorrow.’

‘Some folks here’d like to meet him. Jackson, for one.’ She nods at the glossy-haired, finger-picking dreamboat. ‘Come inside and try my peach punch. My daddy’s recipe. And I do believe …’ she squints at her watch ‘… it’s reefer o’clock.’

Three guys have made passes at Elf. Each one makes her miss Luisa a little more. Janis Joplin finds her in a corner of the Pyramid and places an opaque cocktail in Elf’s hand. ‘Try this. The Brutal Truth. That’s its name. My cocktail man created it for me. Gin and nutmeg with a dash of damage.’ They clink their Brutal Truths and drink. ‘Holy God above,’ declares Elf.

‘Was the runner-up name.’

‘That could propel missiles.’

‘Here’s hoping, Lady Englisher. Tell me a thing. Have you worked out a method for this?’

The Brutal Truth anaesthetises Elf’s oesophagus. ‘A method?’

‘How to do what we do, as a woman.’

Close up, Elf sees crazed veins in the whites of Janis’s eyes and scars on her face. ‘I don’t have an answer. That’s the brutal truth.’

‘Ain’t it, though? If you’re a guy, it’s easy. Sing your songs, shake your tail-feathers. After the show, go down to the bar and score chicks. But if you are a chick who’s a singer, what’re you supposed to do? We ’re the ones being scored. The bigger the star we are, the more that’s true. We’re like … we’re like …’

‘Princesses in the age of dynastic marriages.’

Janis bites her lower lip and nods. ‘And our fame raises the value of locker-room bragging. Which the guys gain from. “Oh, yeah, Janis Joplin? I know Janis. She gave me head on the unmade bed.” I hate it. But how do you fight it? Or change it? Or survive it?’

The Byrds sing ‘Wasn’t Born To Follow’ on a superb hi-fi.

‘I’m not on your level yet,’ says Elf. ‘Have you any advice?’

‘No advice. Only a fear and a name: Billie Holiday.’

Elf takes a third sip of Brutal Truth. ‘Didn’t Billie Holiday die a heroin addict with no functioning liver, under arrest on her death-bed, with only seventy cents in her bank account?’

Janis lights a cigarette. ‘That’s the fear.’

An American moon is wedged between two skyscrapers, like a nickel fallen down a crack. Elf looks through the railing over the city. The edge of a battlement on the eve of war. Her core is buzzing from the Brutal Truth. Her extremities are buzzing from Janis’s weed. She imagines Luisa appearing like the Virgin Mary in Janis’s rooftop garden, and aches that it can’t happen. Elf remembers feeling grief when Bruce dumped her for Vanessa the Model. Losing Luisa feels more like the loss of a body part. What did I do wrong? It must have been me. It must have been.

‘Is that one’ – Dean points – ‘the famous one?’

Elf has no idea what Dean means. Leonard Cohen replies. ‘The Empire State. The tallest building on the planet.’

‘Where’s King Kong, swatting the biplanes?’ asks Dean.

‘He’s had his hours cut,’ says Lenny. ‘Times is hard.’

In the windows of nearer, lower buildings, a few lamps are still on. Each square light , thinks Elf, is a life as big as mine .

‘Hear that?’ asks Dean, cupping his ear.

‘What are we listening to?’ asks Elf.

‘New York’s soundtrack LP. Ssshhhhh … ’