Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Are you never off-duty?’ asks Jasper.

‘I want a souvenir. Before your band is famous.’

‘I want a souvenir of you. Would you lend me your camera?’

‘Would you lend just anyone your guitar?’

‘No. To you, I would.’

Mecca passes him her Pentax. Jasper looks through the viewfinder at customers slurping noodles, nodding, joking, sitting in silence. The viewfinder frames Mechthild Rohmer, this unusual woman. She’s staring back like a photographic subject.

‘That’s not the you I want to remember,’ remarks Jasper.

‘What is the me you want to remember?’

‘Imagine you’ve been away for two years in America. Imagine you’re home at last. Imagine ringing the doorbell of your parents’ house. They’re not expecting you. This is a surprise. Imagine hearing their footsteps in the hall …’ Mecca’s face is changing, but it’s still not quite right. ‘Imagine the sound of the bolt being slid. Imagine the looks on your parents’ faces when they realise it’s you.’

Click, scrit-scrit.

Elf’s boogie-woogie roll, Griff’s rim-shots and Dean’s bass go from muffled to loud as Jasper opens the third-floor door marked ‘Club Zed’. The band is playing Dean’s twelve-bar blues monster ‘Abandon Hope’. Mecca hesitates. ‘You’re sure they won’t mind?’

‘Why would they?’

‘I’m an outsider.’

Jasper takes her hand and leads her through the velvet curtain into a spacious room modelled on a Mitteleuropean salon. High armchairs sit around tables under dim chandeliers. Paintings and photographs of Polish military heroes watch from the wall. A Polish flag, riddled with bullet-holes from the Warsaw Uprising, is framed above the smoky-mirrored bar lined with a hundred vodkas. Many an anonymous Soho doorway, Jasper is learning, is a portal to another time and place. Club Zed is a jazzer’s hang-out as well as a Polish one, and it houses a fine Steinway grand and an eight-piece Ludwig drum-kit on which Elf and Griff are playing while Dean wrings howls from his harmonica. The audience of two consists of Levon and Pavel, Club Zed’s owner. They smoke cheroots. Dean notices Mecca and ‘Abandon Hope’ clatters off the tracks. Elf and Griff look up and stop a few notes later.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ says Jasper. ‘I was delayed.’

‘I bet you were.’ Griff’s looking at Mecca.

‘So this is her ?’ Dean asks Jasper.

‘Yes, this is her,’ replies Mecca. ‘You are Dean, I guess.’

Griff twirls his stick and does a thump-thump .

Introduce her , remembers Jasper. ‘So everyone, uh, this is Mecca. Levon, our manager, and Pavel, who lets us rehearse here.’

Everyone says hello, except Pavel. He tilts his Leninesque head. ‘German, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘You are not. To do a wild guess –’ she looks around ‘– you are from Poland.’

‘Kraków. Maybe you’ve heard of it.’

‘Why would I not know Polish geography?’

Pavel makes a hmm noise. ‘It’s the history you people prefer to forget. The Lebensraum glory days.’

‘Many Germans do not say “glory days”.’

‘Really? The ones who commandeered my family home did. The ones who shot my father did.’

Even Jasper senses Pavel’s hostility.

Mecca speaks carefully. ‘My father was a history teacher in Prague. Before the Wehrmacht took him and sent him to Normandy. He did not wish to go, but if he refused, he would be shot. My mother escaped Prague ahead of the Russians to Nuremberg with me. So I know about history. Lebensraum. Genocides. War-crimes. I know. But I was born in 1944. I gave no orders. I dropped no bombs. I am sorry your father died. I am sorry Poland suffered. I am sorry all Europe suffered. But if you blame me … for what I am – a German – why are you different from a Nazi who says, “All Jewish are this” or “All homosexuals are this” or “All gypsies are this”? That is Nazi thinking. You think this way if you want but I will not. That way of thinking made the war. I say, “ Fuck all war .” Fuck old people who start them, who send young people to die in them. Fuck the hate that war makes. And fuck people who feed that hate, even twenty years after. The fucks is finished now.’

Griff fires of a quick volley of drums and hi-hat.

‘I will leave your bar, if you wish,’ says Mecca.

Don’t go , thinks Jasper. Pavel stares at Mecca for a while. Everyone waits. ‘In Poland, we appreciate a good speech. And that was a good one. Would you care for a drink? On the house.’

Mecca stares back. ‘In that case, I would like the very best Polish vodka, if you please.’

‘No, no, no,’ Elf huffs. ‘G, A, D, E minor .’

‘I bloody played E minor,’ protests Dean.

‘No you bloody didn’t,’ says Elf. ‘That was E. Here.’ She scribbles in her notebook, rips out the page and hands it to him. ‘Roll out the E minor at the end of the second and fourth lines, here, when I sing “raft and river” and again on “forgiven and forgiver”. Griff, could you play … featherier?’

‘“ Featherier ”?’ Griff frowns. ‘Like Paul Motian?’

Elf frowns back. ‘Paul who?’

‘Bill Evans’ drummer. Shuffly, breathy, whispery.’

‘Try it. Jasper, could you shorten the solo by two bars?’

‘Okay.’ Jasper notices Levon speaking in Mecca’s ear.

‘From the top, then,’ says Elf. ‘One and two and—’

‘Sorry, folks, sorry.’ Levon stands. ‘Quick band meeting.’

Griff plays a cymbal roll. Elf looks over. Dean lets his guitar hang. Jasper’s wondering what this has to do with Mecca.

‘We’ll be needing band photos,’ says Levon, ‘for posters, for press, for – who knows? – album covers. By a happy fluke, a photographer has landed among us. The motion is, do we commission Mecca to shoot off a few rolls? Right now.’

‘Isn’t Mecca off to the States tomorrow?’ Elf asks.

‘Yes. I shoot you now, develop the film tonight and bring the best shots to Denmark Street tomorrow on my way to the airport.’

‘What about clothes and hair and stuff?’ asks Griff.

‘Mecca’ll shoot while you’re playing,’ says Levon. ‘ In situ. Nothing cheesy. Think of those portraits on the Blue Note album.’

‘You only said “Blue Note” so I’d agree,’ grumbles Griff.

‘You can see into my soul,’ agrees Levon.

‘I vote yes,’ says Elf.

‘I’ve seen Mecca’s work,’ says Jasper. ‘I vote yes.’

‘No offence to Mecca,’ says Dean, ‘but shouldn’t we hire a famous name? Terence Donovan. David Bailey. Mike Anglesey.’

‘Famous names,’ says Levon, ‘charge famous-name prices.’

‘Yer get what yer pay for in this world,’ says Dean.

‘North of two hundred. Per shoot.’

‘I’ve always said,’ states Dean, ‘famous names’re bloody rip-off merchants. I say we vote Mecca. Is it a full house, Griff?’

‘Can you make me look like Max Roach?’ the drummer asks the photographer.

Mecca considers. ‘If we apply much makeup, and print the negative, Max Roach’s mother will mistake you for her son.’

‘Ooo, sharp as a blade and dry as the fookin’ Sahara,’ says Griff. ‘The Ayes have it.’

The Duke of Argyll on Brewer Street opens at six on Sundays. At a few minutes after six, the band plus Mecca shuffle into a nook by the window. The glass is frosted, but for an engraved escutcheon through which Jasper can see passers-by and the chemist opposite. It’s a classy Victorian pub with brass fittings, upholstered chair backs and ‘NO SPITTING’ signs. Griff empties a paper bag of pork scratchings into a cleanish ashtray, and the band and Mecca clink their mismatched glasses. ‘Here’s to Mecca’s photos,’ says Dean, ‘being on our first LP cover.’ He downs half his pint of London Pride. ‘No harm being optimistic.’