Jim Crace - Genesis

“He’s in my office now. He’s hiding underneath my desk, poor little man,” Freda said. She could not stop the sudden smile, the crossing and uncrossing of her legs. “But obviously he can’t stay there.” She put her slender hand on Mouetta’s arm and sighed. Bad theater.

Lix did his best to avoid Freda’s eye. He hadn’t looked her in the eye for years, and with good cause. He did not want to nod, or laugh, or match her sigh with a more ironic one of his own. He was just hoping that he could avoid the implications of the “little man” hiding underneath her desk. That phrase, “But obviously he can’t stay there,” could ruin everything. Freda’s always organizing her revenge, he thought. She still distrusted, even hated, him — and with good cause again. He acted sudden, ironic interest in the wine label, a scene he’d played before to great effect in his third film, Full Swing. He was not as calm as he appeared. What actor ever is? Unless he got lucky, his anniversary — just like the student’s face — would be “spoiled,” no doubt of it.

Lix should, he knew, speak up at once, or all was lost. Freda frightened him. Too tough and beautiful and challenging. His cock never failed to stir itself for her. Even now, with Mouetta’s hand across his shoulder, he could not contemplate the student hiding underneath Freda’s desk without his cock lengthening, without jealously recasting the scene with himself, his younger self, as the protagonist: an armed policeman standing at the open office door, a seated Freda blushing, innocent, her elbows resting on her desk, her earrings swinging, catching lights, the listed student (Felix Dern, as ever, in the leading role) bunched up in the many folds of her black skirt, the audience not knowing whether this was comedy or tragedy or when the kissing — or the beatings — might begin. Good theater.

Avoiding eye contact, however, and dreaming the impossible provided no escape. “My little firebrand needs your help,” Freda had already told Mouetta during Molière and Lix’s final act. And Mouetta had already agreed to offer the sanctuary of their study couch for a week or so, until it was safe to drive the student out of town, until … No one knew the sequel to “until” in those extraordinary times.

“What’s wrong with your place, Freda?” Lix asked finally. “You’ve got a couch to spare while George is in America, I’m sure. He can even sleep underneath your bed, with the cats.” Now he was looking at her, his leading lady for this scene, looking at her piled-up hair, her speckled throat, the clothy, hammock neckline of her top, imagining how he might stage a kiss with her. “This fellow’s very, very dear to you, you say.” His mimicry was faultless.

Freda, though, would not respond. She had no sympathy for Lix. How dare he even mention George? Was he inviting trouble? She smiled at him, an icy smile that said, Do as I want. Otherwise Mouetta will be reminded yet again of what she has so determinedly forgotten or ignored, exactly what went on between us, twenty-five years ago when we were undergraduates ourselves. When I was carrying your child. When you were truly dangerous to know.

She stretched her neck away from him. She’d let him talk. She’d let him huff and puff. She only paid attention once he’d dutifully proclaimed his list of predictable objections — the risk (for him), the inconvenience (for him) — and was prepared to accept what had already been agreed behind his back. There was no need to repeat herself for Lix. He was a spouter nowadays, not a sympathetic listener. Not an activist. She’d already explained herself to her cousin, how her own office and apartment at the academy were “always” being visited by police. Unlike Mouetta, a newcomer who’d “married in” two years before, she’d been a citizen of this “infuriating” town since her own student days. She was a well-known dissident, “a bit of a firebrand” herself. While Lix, born in the town forty-seven years before, despite his posturing, was not — not now, at least — a threat to anyone. The celebrated Lix would not be visited by police, not in a thousand years. His study couch would be the safest refuge in the town. Saving this brave “boy” (Lix winced at her transparent use of words: a cut, an edit, please!) would be a simple matter, then. They’d drive in to the campus, pick the hero up, and take him home to share their anniversary.

So Lix, defeated, left the Debit Bar, not hand in hand with Mouetta as he had planned, but as one of an ill-at-ease threesome and without a suggestion of any intimacy between them. They could be mistaken for little more than casual, frosty friends. The actor, naturally, looked grander and crosser and more thwarted than the other two, but then men always do, actors or not. They are Pierrots by nature. Smiling is for Columbines.

Lix was too irritated — and alarmed (for he was no longer an adventurous man) — even to acknowledge the greetings and congratulations from a couple who had seen his performance, onstage, that evening, a couple who had witnessed his dry kissing and his tremor from the balcony. He contemplated having Freda’s callow lodger, callow lover, in his house. Her “boy.” A week or so, she’d said. That meant three months, minimum. A stranger in the frying pan. His egg with theirs. The staircase always busy with the sound of running feet, the sound of running taps. Worse even than the alternate weekends when his acknowledged children came to stay, descended on his house and his routines, his two adolescent boys, Lech and Karol (the products of his first marriage), and four-year-old Rosa (the unplanned fruit of a short, bizarre, and punishing liaison not quite before he’d met Mouetta). At least their running feet were known and loved. For, yes, despite the evidence so far, the selfishness, the sexual jealousy, the lack of courage, the peevishness on this night of their anniversary, theirs was a house of love. Lix, for all his faults, for all his fickleness, was capable of love. He had been thwarted, though, on this occasion, by the unforgiving first love, second conquest of his life.

As it happened luck was on his side.

The rain was heavy now, disabling and hostile. It beat out its cacophonies on cars and roofs. The police had had to set up shop beneath the water-sagging canopies on the bar’s terrace and were painstakingly checking the identities of anyone who dared to enter or to leave. Their mood was volatile, resentful, tired. They’d welcome the chance — were it not for the journalists present — to burst inside to tip some tables over and to crack some heads. The Debit’s clientele was just the sort they hated most. Toffee-nosed and smart-arsed liberals with cash to spare, their lives ring-fenced by bank accounts abroad and properties at home. Provocative women with skin like confirmation cups and catwalk clothes. Men who never had to take the streetcar, or wear a shirt for three shifts in a row, or work — as they themselves were working now — after midnight, in the rain, for wages that were “held up” by the bank. A daylight robbery. Imagine how the Debitors’ blood would decorate the fancy tablecloths, or how dramatically those clever, brittle heads would bruise and crack if only someone with a bit of spirit and imagination in the government would give permission for the patriots to Proceed. They wanted their revenge for having to be dutiful when everyone else was having fun, for having to be young and unimportant, for being dull and out of place.

Their corporal, a townie boy though not this town, made a corridor of tables through which Debitors must pass. His comrades crowded around to take offense. Now here was someone that they recognized and did not like. Not Lix. They hadn’t seen him yet. But Freda. “Freedom Freda.” The firebrand lecturer whose rants they’d had to endure at far too many public meetings, in far too many television interviews. A critic of the army and the police, indeed. There was no mistaking this giraffe. She was a handsome woman, tall and set, to use the current phrase. Frisking her and requiring her to stretch her arms above her head, her fine teeth biting on her documents, was a duty and a luxury. Even Lix could see what satisfaction it was providing them, could sympathize with their wide eyes, their gaping mouths, caused just as much by how she looked as by what she was saying (for she could still create a din, could shout and curse, through her clenched teeth). They’d never heard such legal threats, such posturing, such statements of intent, such growls. They’d never detained such hair before, such long and capable arms, so willowy a neck, such arrogance, such heavy fabric in the dress, so hectoring a voice. And what good luck! The woman was not carrying an up-to-date ID with her. She’d not renewed. On a point of principle, she said. Well, on another point of principle, a legal principle, the corporal had no alternative but to send her to the barracks for some questioning. If only she would show a little more respect and quiet down, then possibly they would allow her to be taken there “without handcuffs.” The policemen looked — and smiled — at Freda’s narrow wrists, her bangles and her amulets. A pair of extra cuffs would finish her.