While they ate and drank, Gismonti continued in the living-room and the bedroom waited upstairs for what would come later. Klein tried to stop the pictures in his mind but couldn’t. ‘What’s the domestic routine going to be?’ he said to Melissa. ‘Will you be cooking?’
‘Hello, hello, are you there, Harold? This is 1998; unisex cooking has been going on for quite a while. What did you do until now?’
Over the years Klein had become a reasonably good cook, even essaying such advanced dishes as beef Stroganoff and goulash. He rebelled, however, at becoming the housewife of the group. ‘I mostly bought frozen dinners at Safeway or I ordered in various kinds of takeaway,’ he said. ‘What did you do until now?’
‘Sometimes we ate out; sometimes Leslie cooked.’
‘Leslie, you’re a real all-rounder,’ said Klein.
‘Some of us have to be. If I’m going to do the cooking here you and Melissa can do the shopping — I’ll write out a list for you tonight.’ To Melissa he said, ‘We still have to get everything hooked up.’
While Leslie and Melissa organised the website room Klein went to his desk and put the last unfinished Klimt page up on his computer screen. Then he made it go away and put up a blank new page. He sat with his arms folded across his chest, looking at the wordless screen. He remembered an old Jimmy Durante song and typed:
Sometimes I think I wanna go,
And then again I think I wanna stay.
He needed music but wasn’t sure what kind. He put on Piazzolla Classics. The first track was ‘Three Minutes with the Truth’ which always sounded to him like something struggling to move forward while being pulled back. The second track was ‘The Little House of My Ancestors’ which made him see it on a hillside under a flat blue cloudless sky, children playing in the dusty road. He listened through the disc, going where the music took him while staring at the words of Jimmy Durante on the computer screen.
‘Beddy byes,’ said Melissa, and kissed him. To his questioning look she said, ‘Soon,’ and went upstairs, followed by Leslie who said, over his shoulder, ‘Sleep well, Harold.’
‘No doubt in his mind about where he sleeps,’ Klein muttered to himself. He went to the window, looked out at the street where the parked cars were frosting up under the unblinking stare of the pinky-yellow lamps. The winter night, sensing his attention, came up to the window, pressed its bleakness against the glass, mouthed You and me, sweetheart.
You’re a pathetic fallacy, said Klein, and turned away. He went through his video collection, chose The Passenger, fast forwarded to the scene near the end when Jack Nicholson, having stolen another man’s name, his passport, and possibly his destiny, lies on a bed in the Hotel de La Gloria on the Spanish border. In the stillness of late afternoon the camera, like his departing spirit, moves slowly out through the window and the grille to look across a dusty space towards the Plaza de Toros where there is nothing happening today except a trumpeter sending a solitary paso doble into the ambient silence. Little distant figures by its wall speak in diminished voices. The faint passing wail of a far-off train is heard, then the labouring engine of the little Auto Escuela Andalucía car. Maria Schneider, the unnamed Girl, appears walking slowly towards the bullring. The car of the driving-school comes and goes; a small boy runs across the window’s view, throws a stone, is shouted at by the little distant figures. A white Citrën drives up; two men in light suits get out. There are church bells, car doors slamming, the roar of a motorcycle starting up and fading into quietness. People come and go in the dusty space, some of them look up at the window, some don’t. A siren announces the arrival of a black-and-white police car; the policemen order the driving-school car to leave. Somewhere a dog barks. Other uniformed men arrive in a patrol car, perhaps they are border guards. With them is the wife of the man on the bed. He is dead now.
‘Did you recognise him?’ the wife is asked.
‘I never knew him,’ she says. The man on the bed is left behind as his story moves on without him.
The last shot in the film is outside the hotel at that time of media luz, all delicate pink and violet, when the sky is still luminous but the lamps are lit, first outside the hotel, then inside. The little Auto Escuela Andalucía car drives off under the music of a thoughtful guitar playing something uncredited that Klein had heard elsewhere: Julian Bream? He put on La Guitarra Romantica, searched patiently until he found it on Track 15, ‘Canco del lladre’, ‘The Thief’s Song’.
‘“The Thief’s Song”,’ said Klein. ‘He stole the identity of another man. This one that I have now, where did it come from? And the learner in the driving-school car, did he or she ever pass the driving test?’ Then he realised that he was speaking aloud. He sighed and went upstairs.
Lying wakeful in the back bedroom he listened for sounds on the other side of the wall. There was some murmuring and he opened his door to hear better. The door of the front bedroom, he noticed, was now slightly ajar. There was laughter, more murmuring, then he heard Melissa say, ‘No, Leslie, no power games tonight!’ Leslie laughed, there were sounds of a scuffle, Melissa cried out twice, then there was only the creaking of the bed. Klein closed his door. Welcome to the ménage à trois, said Oannes.
What am I going to do? said Klein.
We’ll think of something.
48 Loomings
Klein was accustomed to the looming of buildings and buses and he could handle it up to a point; he was troubled, however, by what seemed to him the unknown messages encoded in the 14 buses, the old Routemasters like the one that towered over him now as he headed for Safeway with a rucksack slung from one shoulder and a shopping list in his pocket. The 14s were definitely redder some days than others. ‘“The poor dead woman whom he loved,/ And murdered in her bed,”’ he muttered.
You didn’t murder Hannelore, said Oannes. She topped herself.
Blood and wine and buses are red, said Klein as the 14 puttered past him. Love me, whispered its diesel pheromones.
Everyone except one old lady on two sticks was walking faster than Klein. The morning was hot, the Fulham Road was full of traffic, the little green men on the crossing lights grudgingly allowed pedestrians a tenth of a second to get from one side to the other while the cars crouched, ready to spring. The sun was bearing down on the pollution to keep it within easy reach of anyone who happened to be breathing in; an examiner of early entrails would have found little to say for today. Another 14 bus appeared, possibly a male responding to the one ahead.
OK, said Oannes, let’s get into this 14 bus thing, shall we?
I don’t like the way they loom, said Klein.
Naturally — that’s your guilt looming. Everybody’s guilt looms or climbs on their shoulders or crawls up their asses or whatever. The looming is normal so don’t let it bother you.
There’s more to it and I don’t know what it is.
We’ll get to that. First let’s look at what we’ve got here.
A big red in-your-face 14 bus.
A doubledecker, right?
Right.
What’s the essence of a doubledecker bus?
They have an upstairs and a downstairs.
Like your mind.