Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Formaggio came to see him before lunch. ‘Christ, you look terrible. Is it still …’ He rapped his knuckles together three times.

Jasper nodded. Marshalling sentences was like trying to perform mental arithmetic while someone shouted random numbers into his face. ‘Telegraph my grandfather. If I get sectioned in an English hospital, I’ve got no guardian here to get me out.’

Formaggio nodded and went away. More hours limped on under heavy showers of hard knocks. They were getting louder. Jasper felt hairline splits criss-cross his mind. The headmaster arrived with Dr Bell from the town surgery to give Jasper a proper examination: Formaggio’s telegram had reached Grootvader Wim. Knock Knock fired off a cannonade of blows that brought tears to Jasper’s eyes. After testing Jasper’s pulse, reflexes, blood-pressure, vision and hearing, Dr Bell ventured a diagnosis of ‘extreme nervous migraine’ and prescribed sleeping pills and a mild opiate solution. Formaggio returned after supper, but speaking was now nearly impossible. ‘I don’t know if it’s demonic possession or madness or a brain tumour,’ said Jasper, ‘but this is killing me.’

Formaggio asked Matron and the headmaster if Jasper could sleep in their dorm where Formaggio would be on hand if his friend’s condition worsened. The headmaster agreed, and Jasper took two sleeping pills before he lay down on his own bed. In lieu of counting sheep, he listed the ways a schoolboy in Swaffham House could kill himself: a noose made of his school tie; drowning in the River Ouse; slicing his veins with his Swiss Army knife; resting his head on the King’s Lynn–London railway line …

… Knock Knock jolted Jasper back to consciousness. His alarm clock said two. Formaggio was asleep. Jasper’s own body felt unfamiliar, as if his mind had been transplanted as he slept. The knocking was relentless, merciless … Some impulse prompted Jasper to get out of bed and check his reflection in the mirror in his wardrobe. A stranger’s eyes regarded him. The stranger within knocked his knuckles against the inside of the mirror and, for a split second of pain, revealed his true form: a man, older, shorter than Jasper, with East Asian eyes, in ceremonial robes. His head was shaven. He was gone.

Of its own volition, Jasper’s knuckle struck the mirror again and the figure reappeared, possessed Jasper’s fist and KNOCK-KNOCKknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockknockk nockknockKNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK- KNOCK ‘De Zoet! De Zoet! De Zoet!’

Formaggio had hauled Jasper away from the mirror and was pinning him down on his bed. His knuckles were cut and bloody. ‘You were sleepwalking! You were dreaming!’

‘No I wasn’t,’ said Jasper.

Utopia Avenue walk down the gangplank at Hook of Holland. A chopped rainbow rises over the warehouses and wharves. Levon carries a suitcase in each hand. Jasper and Dean carry their guitars. Amps, keyboards and drums will be provided at the TV studio and at the Paradiso, so Griff and Elf carry only their overnight bags. They enter the new Customs area at Hook of Holland port. Jasper is reassured by the design of the place, by the fonts on the signs, by the sound of Dutch and the facial habits of the speakers. He reaches the front of the queue and hands over his Dutch passport. The heavyset officer studies Jasper’s photograph, then frowns at Jasper’s long hair. ‘But it says here you’re male.’ He speaks with a Flemish accent.

A joke. The hair. ‘Yes, I get that quite a lot.’

The officer nods at Jasper’s guitar case. ‘Machine gun?’

Another joke? Jasper shows the man his Stratocaster.

The officer makes an unreadable face and looks behind Jasper to Elf, Griff, Dean and Levon. ‘Is that your band?’

‘Yes. The older one’s our manager.’

‘Huh. Are you lot famous?’

‘Not very. We might be soon.’

‘What do you call yourselves?’

‘Utopia Avenue.’

The officer double-checks Jasper’s name. ‘Are you related to the de Zoets of Middelburg? The shipping family?’

Experience has taught Jasper to be evasive. ‘Only distantly.’

The changing room at AVRO TV boasts four chairs facing four mirrors lit by four naked lightbulbs, a coat-stand, two squashed cockroaches on a floor of broken tiles and a view of dustbins. ‘We’ve hit the big time now, baby,’ mumbles Dean.

‘At least it doesn’t smell of piss and beer,’ says Elf.

‘Relax here for twenty minutes,’ says the assistant.

Jasper looks away from the mirrors. I doubt that.

‘Here, you do preparation,’ says the assistant. ‘Two minutes before your slot, I will deliver you to the studio stage. You will perform the songs “The Darkroom” and “Mona Lisa Sings The Blues”. After, Henk will conduct a short interview. Is there anything that you need in addition?’

‘A ball of opium as big my head,’ says Dean. ‘Please.’

‘This you may buy in the city. After the show.’

Applause washes down the corridor outside as Shocking Blue, a four-piece psychedelic band from the Hague, start the show.

‘I will be back.’ The assistant shuts the door behind him.

‘Bloody Nora.’ Dean turns to Jasper. ‘There’s no holding you wild Bohemian swinging Dutch freaks back, is there?’

Irony, sarcasm or sincere? Jasper does an all-purpose shrug.

‘I’d like a quick word with the Hollies’ manager.’ Levon puts on his blue glasses. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’

‘That gives us plenty of scope,’ says Elf, as tradition dictates.

Jasper slips his jacket over a hanger, hooks the hanger over the mirror, sits down and gets out his Rothmans.

‘But why do mirrors give you the creeps?’ asks Griff. ‘Granted, aye, you’re no oil painting, but you’re not that revolting.’

‘They just creep me out.’ Jasper avoids the specifics.

‘Oooh, hark at Captain Mysterious,’ says Griff.

‘Phobias are irrational,’ says Elf. ‘That’s the point.’

‘The things I’m afraid of are all pretty sensible,’ says Dean, ‘Bee-swarms. Atomic war. Surviving an atomic war.’

‘The plague,’ says Griff. ‘Elevator shafts. Elf?’

Elf thinks. ‘Forgetting lines onstage. Fluffing songs.’

‘If that happens,’ says Dean, ‘just sing in fake Hungarian and when people say, “What’s that?” say, “It’s avant-garde.”’

‘Avant-garde a clue,’ says Griff. ‘I left my sunglasses in the makeup room. I’ll be right back.’ He stands up to go.

‘ That old trick,’ says Dean. ‘Yer just after Miss Makeup Artist’s number, yer old dog. I’ll come along. Want to cop yer face when she turns yer down.’

‘I’d like to see Shocking Blue,’ says Elf. ‘Coming, Jasper?’

Peace, quiet and a cigarette are inviting. ‘I’ll stay here.’

There’s a knock-knock-knock on the changing-room door.

It’s okay , Jasper assures himself. ‘Hello?’

A face with a square jaw, a restless stare and brown hair. ‘Jasper de Zoet, I presume.’ The visitor has a deep American voice.

Jasper knows him. He’s formerly of the Byrds. ‘Gene Clark.’