Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Beneath the party chatter and Sam Cooke singing ‘Lost and Lookin’’ lies a composite hum of engines, cars, trains, lifts, horns, sirens, dogs … Everything. Doors, locks, drains, kitchens, robberies, lovers. ‘It’s like an orchestra tuning up,’ says Elf, ‘except it’s the main show. A cacophony symphony.’

‘She says things like that,’ says Dean to Lenny, ‘even when she’s not on the baccy.’

‘Elf’s a natural-born poet.’ He turns those I-see-your-soul brown eyes on her in the moonlight.

‘You’re a natural-born flirt, Mister,’ thinks Elf, and realises she just said it out loud. Janis’s weed. Hey-ho.

‘I’ve changed my plea to “Guilty”,’ concedes Lenny.

Elf imagines Lenny asking Dean about her boyfriends and Dean telling him, and Dean asking Lenny about Janis, and Lenny telling him. Women share intelligence in the Battle of the Sexes: men, surely, do the same . She misses Luisa more than ever. She is her refuge from all that. Was. Is. Was. Is.

‘Why’d yer leave New York?’ says Dean to Lenny, looking out at the city of their dreams. ‘Once yer were settled here?’

‘I’m not one of life’s settlers. I came here to write The – or just A – Great American Novel. I wince at the cliché. I fancied myself a big fish in a small pond, but I wasn’t even a fish. I was susceptible to distraction. Greenwich Village. Beatnik readings. Folk sessions. I went on long walks, posing as a flâneur , but only the French can get away with that. I watched the boats on East River. Once, I took the elevator up there.’ Leonard nods at the Empire State Building. ‘I looked over Manhattan and was seized by an absurd desire to take it. To own it. Do we write songs as a substitute for possession?’

‘I write songs to discover what I want to say,’ says Elf.

‘ I write ’em ’cause I just bloody love it,’ says Dean.

‘Maybe you’re the purest artist here,’ remarks Lenny.

A stoned voice calls from the Pyramid. ‘Hey, Lenny! We need you to adjudicate.’

Lenny calls back. ‘On what?’

‘The difference between melancholy and depression.’

Leonard Cohen looks apologetic: ‘Duty calls …’

‘He’d be up for it if you are,’ Dean tells Elf.

‘You sound like a pimp. Or a go-between.’

‘Just worried my bandmate’s not getting a lot.’

Is that sweet? I don’t know. ‘Janis tells me he has a kind-of wife and step-kid in Greece. Call me picky, but I’ll pass.’

Dean passes her the joint. ‘Nine months without any action … I’d be going bloody mental.’

‘Action’? Like a military exercise. Elf inhales, lets the smoke out, and warns herself that anything she says about Luisa can’t be unsaid. Sam Cooke has moved on to ‘Mean Old World’ . ‘Men,’ says Elf, ‘ need to get laid. For women it’s less of a “must” and more of a “might be nice” or a “possibly”. We can’t win. If we don’t play the game, we’re frigid or we can’t get a man. If we play the game too much, we’re a slut, the village bike, damaged goods. Not to mention the joy of an unplanned pregnancy sitting in the corner of the room, watching you getting it on.’ Elf passes him the joint. ‘None of which is your fault. But you should know: patriarchy is a stitch-up.’

‘Yer an education.’ Dean flicks the dead joint into the void. ‘My paternity woes’ve shed a new light on casual hook-ups.’

So he wants to talk. ‘Have you decided anything?’

‘The test result’ll be waiting when we fly back, but it ain’t a straight yes or no. If I ain’t the baby’s father, there’s a ten per cent chance the blood groups’ll say so for sure.’

‘That’s hardly conclusive.’

Dean says nothing for a while. ‘I s’pose we’ll wait till the kid’s old enough for family features to show up. Do I pay “Miss Craddock” any money till then, though? That’s the question. If I’m not the dad, and I pay, I’m a bloody mug. But if I am , and I pay nothing, what’s the difference between me ’n’ Guus de Zoet?’

Shouts float up from the street thirteen floors below.

‘If I had three wishes,’ says Elf, ‘I’d let you have one.’

‘When Levon first called me with the news, I’d’ve done anything to wish it away. Anything. But now, even if this kid isn’t mine, he’s someone’s. Yer can’t wish life away. Can yer?’

Elf thinks of Mark and Mark’s tiny coffin.

‘Oh, shit, sorry, Elf. My big mouth. I’m a bloody eejit.’

Elf squeezes Dean’s hand. ‘No. Life’s precious. We forget it. All the time. We shouldn’t wait until a funeral to remember.’

Dean peels the label from his beer bottle. ‘Yeah.’

‘I love you all,’ Janis Joplin stands on a pedestal in the garden, ‘but I’ve a session tomorrow, so I’m volunteering Jackson to play one of his for the road home, and he’s volunteered me to sing it.’

Jackson counts them in, then plays the same descending cascade, ending in a major seventh. The breeze ruffles his hair. Elf recognises the opening of ‘These Days’ from the Chelsea Girl LP, but where Nico sings it with icy Nordic sobriety, Janis scorches the song, varying the colour from phrase to phrase. It’s a trick , Elf thinks, to keep your attention, and she’s really good at it. Jackson improvises a bridge before the final verse and Dean whispers in Elf’s ear, ‘Handsome Pants is a player and a looker.’

Elf whispers back, ‘Worried you’ve met your match?’

Janis serves up the last four lines a cappella.

Jackson emulates a bell on his guitar, chiming ten times:

Please don’t confront me with my failures

I had not forgotten them.

Two dozen people on a rooftop in New York applaud. Janis performs a wobbly curtsy. Jackson bows. Someone asks, ‘One more, Janis?’ She laughs her bronco-bucking laugh – ‘For free ? Get outa here! Maybe Lenny has something up his sleeve.’

The Canadian permits himself to be cajoled to the front and receives Jackson’s Gibson with a smile. ‘Friends. If you insist, here’s a song I first learned at Camp Sunshine, aged fifteen. There, I acquired my trademark sunny disposition, and the rest is musical history.’ He tunes the guitar by ear. ‘Two Free French fighters-in-exile wrote it in London, and it’s called “The Partisan”. And a-one, two, three, four …’

Lenny’s guitar skills are basic compared to Jackson’s and his voice is both nasal and gravelly, but the song gives Elf goosebumps. Its narrator is a soldier who cannot, as ordered, surrender, as the enemy pour across the border. Instead he takes his gun and vanishes into the frontier to survive, somehow, until freedom comes. The lyrics are telegrammatic yet vivid, like instructions for a short play to be staged in the listener’s imagination – There were three of us this morning, I’m the only one this evening … There is no word-play. There are no tricks. The song barely rhymes. Elf thinks how hard ‘Prove It’ tries to impress, and feels embarrassed. ‘The Partisan’ just is. Leonard sings three verses in French, then the song ends in English in a graveyard with a resurrection, of sorts. Elf is gripped and moved. The bearded angel from the lobby earlier, whose arrival Elf didn’t notice, murmurs in her ear, ‘It’s as much a seance as a song.’ The applause is warm. Someone calls out, ‘A surefire smash from Lenny “The Hit Factory” Cohen!’ The Canadian smiles and shushes the applause. ‘I wish to nominate a new friend for the last song, but she only flew in today, so she mustn’t feel pressured. However. Might Miss Elf Holloway bless us with her musical grace?’