Пит Таунсенд - The Age of Anxiety

I had either lived for years in denial, or been unconscious of what I had done to Floss, Selena, and Ronnie with my stupid drug sharing. Either way, if it happened the way it seemed, it was the worst thing I had ever done to any human being, even if my godson’s wife, this young woman I had groped and tried to kiss in drugged insanity, might never remember it.

I felt at least Selena knew the worst of me, and was forgiving me. Selena, who had stabbed her brute of a father to death, was forgiving me for what she had taken to be a terrible sexual assault against her best friend. I had to forgive her in return, otherwise the scales would collapse.

And so it must be clear now why this narrator felt the need to tell this story. It must also be obvious why I have struggled to keep Walter at the heart of it, and to bring the heroine of my tale—the beautiful Floss who it seems I so brutally abused one way or another—to the finale in all her glory as a mother reunited with her lost daughter. For I knew that as Walter and Floss moved on to their next chapter, my entire relationship with both of them would probably end. I hope readers of this story will understand even if they cannot forgive. This story is my penance to Floss, to Walter, to Pamela, to Rain, and to all the angels, entities, and bed-head ghosts and drug-induced apparitions that had haunted my relationships with my most precious friends and family.

Yet all this insanity swirling around in my world had made me rich. The premiere of Walter K. Watts’s Apocalyptic Soundscapes in Hyde Park was dedicated to the memory of Walter’s mentor, and the founder of Hero Ground Zero, Nikolai Andréevich. It would help sell many pictures.

I come to the end of my story. Bingo is getting restless. Selena is calling from downstairs; she has made some lunch for us both. This house of ours in Grasse, that she looks after so beautifully, is a wonderful place. It has sunshine, breezes, and in the distance a view of the sea. From the hills comes the smell of fir trees and pinecones. I suppose I am hiding here. Selena’s version of what happened at the wedding will certainly become widely known. One day the police may turn up. Floss may visit to gaze into my eyes and try to see the truth. Or Walter will come to beat me up. Or Molly will want to meet the man who for a moment—before Ronnie interceded—was apparently willing to put his hand up to being her long-lost father and perhaps still could be a good godfather to her. The waiting is the worst part, not knowing. But I am not hiding from Walter or Floss, or from anyone else in my story. Neither am I hiding from angels or faces in the clouds or the bedhead. Not anymore. Remember what I said at the beginning? I don’t want to be forgiven; I want to sense some balance. I can’t change the past, but neither can I allow a misunderstanding of the past to change the future. After you’ve heard my story, you will be able to make up your own mind.

You will now make up your mind, and I am afraid. Before we set off to come home to Grasse, Walter sent me a copy of the completed lyric he wrote before the show, the one I had found him writing. It seems to fit this moment.

Today I am hiding from normal people like you, who will read my account of the life and career of my godson Walter Karel Watts and his second wife Florence Agatha Spritzler, and you will judge me. You, who constantly feel fear and apocalyptic anxiety that cannot be described; you, who need Nik and Walter—indeed me as their narrator—to foretell your future.

You must learn to wait. The moment will come. Waiting is the black art of creativity, not inspiration. Be ready. Be alert. Always. And then when the moment comes, you will be waiting, and you will have nothing else to do, nothing better to do than to fall in love all over again. As I once was, you are the mirror of everyone around you. You are their conscience and their voice. Look to the future, whatever you see will come about, good and bad, it is inevitable. Look to the light.

Iam Selena Collins. Dealer in angelic miracles. I bring you the epilogue. Yes, yes, yes, Louis. Yours could have been a very nice ending. Very neat. Very high-toned. But let me complete the book. I remind everyone: without me none of this would ever have taken place. After the concert, which I admit was a wonderful event, and the chaos I caused at the aftershow party, I was left with you. Sweet Louis. Rich Louis. Stupid Louis. I love you so much.

Louis, you drip, the police will never come. Floss will never come. Molly may indeed come. We have to wait for the DNA test after all. Walter may knock your teeth in one day, but it will do you good. You men can preen. See the “Harvest.” Hear music. Make great art. Sell it. Sell your very souls if you wish. It is we witches who know the truth. We see what we see, and we see everything. What I can see, and know, and do, is beyond your understanding. You men.

The police will never come, the drug story is already old news; but even if the DNA test proves Ronnie is her father, one day Molly might come and may want you—my beloved Louis—to be a godfather again. Because poor sick Ronnie won’t be able to do what you, who are so rich and influential, could do for her. Did I lie? I saw what I saw. Yes, I saw you try to have sex with Floss at the wedding, and she would have done it, she was so smashed. Ronnie says you fell in a heap and he took your place. I believe you couldn’t have fucked an inflatable doll let alone a real woman. Apparently Ronnie believes that too, that you could never even have gotten it up. But perhaps you could have done it. I don’t know for sure, and you certainly don’t know. The question of whether you fathered a child is less important than the fact you plied us with your drugs, and lost your mind and your moral compass. I still hold so many cards.

So you see this is my story, not yours, Louis. Floss is more my creation than yours. Floss was my ghostly twin; I was inside her all the way.

Why would I do all this? At the end of it all, surrounded by a hundred thousand angels that only Old Nik could ever see, I wanted to hold at least one good mortal man. I couldn’t hold Walter, or Frank, or Crow, but I could hold the man called Louis Doxtader—and my darling I have held you. Louis, you addled your brain; Nik, you saw the Harvest; Crow, you listened to just six vinyl albums; Walter, you heard the anxiety of your peers.

I have dangled you all on strings.

This book was finally finished in May of 2013. I am sixty-eight years old. The world wobbles slightly on its axis, and even the most cavalier of us are a little anxious. I hope that this tortuous tale will one day form the basis for an opera, as Selena promised me. In the future, opera may look more like art-installation, or son et lumière, all wired into a global network of feedback and evolution. In that case—once the play is finished, the music ended, and the racket is quiet—I hope that the appeal planted here for optimism, hope, and appeasement among all the people of this fragile planet will begin to take root. The story is ended, but the idea behind it will continue to unfold and grow and hopefully conclude. We should not be afraid; we can have faith in our species.