Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Jasper remembers Knock Knock in mirrors. ‘It is.’

David Bowie crunches an ice cube. ‘I worry it’s ticking away in me, too. Like a time-bomb. These things run in the family.’

I know it’s ticking in me. ‘I’ve got two half-brothers. So far, they’re fine. The de Zoet side of the family blame it on my mother.’

‘How did you get it under control?’

‘Psychiatry. Music helps. A …’ what to call the Mongolian? ‘… a kind of mentor.’ Jasper drinks his punch and lays out his theory. ‘A brain constructs a model of reality. If that model isn’t too different from most people’s model, you’re labelled “Sane”. If the model is different, you’re labelled a genius, a misfit, a visionary or a nutcase. In extreme cases, you’re labelled a schizophrenic and locked up. I’d be dead without Rijksdorp sanatorium.’

‘Madness is a label you can’t peel off, though.’

‘You write about it, David. Or atypical states of mind. Perhaps your phobia will make you famous.’

David Bowie’s nervy smile comes and goes. ‘Got a ciggie? Lennon cadged my last one. Like the Scouse millionaire he is.’

Jasper gets out his packet of Camels. ‘Is he still here?’

‘Yes, I think so. He was in the cinema.’

‘What cinema?’

‘Anthony Hershey has a cinema in the basement. How the other half live, eh? Down that corridor, past that big Ming vase thing’ – he points – ‘there’s a door. You can’t miss it.’

The steep stairs descend at right-angles. Posters of films line the glossed walls. ‘ Les Yeux sans visage ’. ‘ Rashomon ’ . ‘ Das Testament des Dr Mabuse ’. The stairs continue for longer than is likely. They end in a small lobby that smells of bitter almonds. A woman, absorbed in her needlepoint, occupies an armchair. Her head is hairless. ‘Excuse me, is this the cinema?’

The woman looks up. Her eyes are voids. ‘Popcorn?’

Jasper sees no sign of popcorn. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Why do you play these games with me?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That’s what you always say.’ She pulls a cord. Curtains part to reveal a slab of darkness. ‘Enter, then.’

Jasper obeys. He cannot see his own hand. Another curtain touches his face. He steps into a tiny auditorium of six rows of six seats. Each one is occupied except for an aisle seat on the front row. Through the cigarette smoke, a title is projected onto a screen: PanOpticon. Jasper’s shadow hunches low as he makes his way to the free seat. If John Lennon is here, Jasper fails to recognise him. The film begins.

In a black and white city of winter, an omnibus shoulders its way through a crowd. A careworn middle-aged passenger looks out at busy snow, newspaper vendors, policemen beating a black marketeer, hollow faces in empty shops and a burned skeletal bridge. Jasper guesses the film was shot behind the Iron Curtain. Getting off the bus, the man asks the driver for directions. By dint of reply, the driver nods at the enormous wall obscuring the sky. The protagonist walks along its foot, looking for the door. Craters, broken things, wild dogs. Circular ruins where a hairy lunatic talks to a fire. Finally the man finds a wooden door. He stoops and knocks. Knock-knock. No reply. Knock-knock. A tin can is hanging from a piece of string vanishing into the masonry and the man speaks into it. ‘Is anybody there?’ The subtitles are English, the language is all hisses, slushes and cracks. Hungarian? Serbian? Polish? ‘I’m Dr Polonski. Warden Bentham is expecting me.’ He puts the can to his ear and hears what sounds to Jasper like drowning sailors. Knock-knock-knock. The prison door opens. A hood of tiredness gathers around Jasper’s head. He submits …

… and wakes in a tiny cinema, lit by the mercury sheen of the vacant screen. Jasper looks around. Everybody’s gone. The film’s over. ‘Sorry for your loss,’ says a cultured voice next to him.

Jasper swivels and sees a face from an album cover: Syd Barrett. Pink Floyd’s ex-singer is printed in black and white on the glowing dark. ‘How was the film? I nodded off.’

Syd Barrett runs a Rizla along his tongue. ‘People who never set foot beyond the Land of the Sane just don’t understand.’

‘Understand?’

Syd Barrett taps the long joint on its filter. ‘How indescribably sad it is, here on the outside. Got a light?’ Jasper finds Grootvader Wim’s lighter and holds up the flame. The big spliff in his lips, Syd leans in. He fills himself with smoke and offers the spliff to Jasper. The hit is instant. It is not just cannabis. Syd’s words arrive late and fragmented, as if bounced off the moon. ‘We think we are a One, but you and I know an “I” is a “Many”. There’s Nice Guy Me. Psychopath Me. Wife-beater Me. Narcissist Me. Saint Me. I’m-all-right-Jack Me. Suicidal Me. The Me Who Dares Not Speak My Name. Dark Globe Me. I is an Empire of “I”s.’

Jasper thinks of Knock Knock. He wonders if a whole minute ever passes when he hasn’t thought of Knock Knock. Only inside music. He asks, ‘Who is the emperor, Syd?’

Syd Barrett stares back through black holes, opens his mouth and puts out the joint on his tongue. It hisses.

Another film begins. The screen glows blue. Stippled sea, glazed sky, a bandage-coloured coastline. Onscreen, a White Star liner fills the shot. Its horn blasts three times. A caption reads ‘ OFF THE COAST OF EGYPT, NOVEMBER 1945’.

Cut to – deck of the SS Salisbury . The captain squints at the prayer book: ‘ Lord God, by the power of your Word you stilled the chaos of the primeval seas … ’ The man is a northerner not given to theatrics. He recites the prayer as if reading nautical protocol: ‘ You made the raging waters of the Flood subside, and you calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. ’

Cut to reveal – the deck . Passengers and crew stand around the coffin. A haggard nurse holds a three-day-old baby. The baby is crying. The captain pushes on. ‘ O Lord, as we commit the earthly remains of Milly Wallace to the deep, grant her peace … ’

Cut to – Two English ladies look down on the service from the railing of the first-class deck. ‘A tragedy,’ remarks the first lady.

‘My maid heard from Mrs Davington’s girl that she ’ – the woman points a gloved finger at the coffin – ‘was no “Mrs” Wallace at all, but an unmarried “Miss”.’

‘Servants are such incorrigible gossips.’

‘As if they’ve nothing better to do. Apparently, Miss Wallace was originally a nurse who went out to Bombay on “the fishing fleet”, if I may use the vulgar term. One of those young women who go to India with the purpose of netting themselves a better catch than they might at home. Miss Wallace, it seems, overestimated her talent as an angler. She got “hooked” by a Dutchman, who,’ she whispers, ‘ already has a wife and family in Johannesburg … ’

The first lady’s eyes open wide. ‘ Is that so? Was he brought to any kind of justice? Couldn’t the governor intervene?’

‘Once the U-boat menace was over, the scoundrel high-tailed it to South Africa. Miss Wallace was left alone, in that state, in Bombay, with nothing but a third-class passage. What with the delays at Bombay and Aden, however, and nature taking its course earlier than expected …’

‘While it takes two to tango,’ the first lady fans herself, ‘one would need a heart of stone not to feel for the poor woman.’

Zoom in on … the coffin, and Jasper at three days old.

Second Lady voiceover: ‘Look at the sorry mite. Motherless, illegitimate. Hardly the best start in life, is it?’