Yet ordinary terrorists have a distinct advantage over romantic terrorists, the fact that their demands (however outrageous) do not include the most outrageous demand of all, the demand to be loved. I knew that the happiness we were enjoying that evening in Paris was illusory, because the love that Chloe was displaying had not been given spontaneously. It was the love of a woman who feels guilty for the fact she has ceased to feel affection, but who nevertheless attempts a display of loyalty (as much to convince herself as her partner). Hence my evening was not a happy one: my sulk had worked, but its success had been empty.
Though ordinary terrorists may occasionally force concessions from governments by blowing up buildings or school children, romantic terrorists are doomed to disappointment because of a fundamental inconsistency in their approach. You must love me, says the romantic terrorist, I will force you to love me by sulking you or making you feel jealous, but then comes the paradox, for if love is returned, it is at once considered tainted, and the romantic terrorist must complain, If I have only forced you to love me, then I cannot accept this love, for it was not spontaneously given. Romantic terrorism is a demand that negates itself in the process of its resolution, it brings the terrorist up against an uncomfortable reality – that love's death cannot be arrested.
19- As we walked back towards the hotel, Chloe slipped her hand in my coat pocket and kissed me on the cheek. I did not return her kiss, not because a kiss was not the most desired conclusion to a terrible day, simply because I could no longer feel Chloe's kiss to be genuine. I had lost the will to force love on its unwilling recipient.
19
Beyond Good and Evil
Early on Sunday evening, Chloe and I were sitting in the economy section of a British Airways jet, making our way back from Paris to London. We had recently crossed the Normandy coast, where a blanket of winter cloud had given way to an uninterrupted view of dark waters below. Tense and unable to concentrate, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. There was something threatening about the flight, the dull background throb of the engines, the hushed grey interior, the candy smiles of the airline employees. A trolley carrying a selection of drinks and snacks was making its way down the aisle and, though I was both hungry and thirsty, it filled me with the vague nausea that meals may elicit in aircraft.
Chloe had been listening to her Walkman while dozing, but she now pulled out the plugs from her ears and stared with her large watery eyes at the seat in front of her.
'Are you all right?' I asked.
There was a silence, as though she had not heard. Then she spoke.
'You're too good for me,' she said.
'What?'
I said, "You're too good for me."
' 'What? Why?'
'Because you are.'
'What are you saying this for, Chloe?'
'I don't know.'
'If anything, I'd put it the other way round. You're always the one ready to make the effort when there's a problem, you're just more self-deprecating about your . . .'
'Shush, stop, don't,' said Chloe, turning her head away from me.
'Why?'
'Because I've been seeing Will.'
'You've what?'
'I've been seeing Will, OK.'
'What? What does seeing mean? Seeing Will?'
'For God's sake, I've been to bed with Will.'
'Would madam like a beverage or light snack?' enquired the stewardess, choosing this moment to introduce her wares.
'No, thank you.'
'Nothing at all, then?'
'No, I'm all right.'
'How about for sir?'
'No thanks, nothing.'
3. Chloe had started to cry.
'I can't believe this. I just cannot believe this. Tell me it's a joke, some terrible, horrible joke, you've been to bed with Will. When? How? How could you?'
'God, I'm so sorry, I really am. I'm sorry, but I . . . I . . . I'm sorry . . .'
Chloe was crying so hard, she was unable to speak. Tears were streaming down her face, her nose was running, her whole body shaken by spasms, her breathing halting, gasping. She looked in such pain, for a moment I forgot the import of her revelation, concerned only to stop the flow of her tears.
'Chloe, please don't cry, it's all right. We can talk about this. Tidge, please, take this handkerchief. It'll be OK, it will, I promise . . .'
'My God, I'm so sorry, God I'm sorry, you don't deserve this, you really don't.'
Chloe's devastation temporarily eased the burden of betrayal. Her tears represented a brief reprieve for my own. The irony of the situation was not lost on me – the lover comforting his beloved for the upset betraying him has caused her.
4. The tears might have drowned every last passenger and sunk the whole aeroplane had the captain not prepared to land soon after they had begun. It felt like the Flood, a deluge of sadness on both sides at the inevitability and cruelty of what was happening: it simply wasn't working, it was going to have to end. Things felt all the more lonely, all the more exposed in the technological environment of the cabin, with the clinical attentions of stewardesses, with fellow passengers staring with the smug relief others feel in the face of strangers' emotional crises.
5. As the plane pierced the clouds, I tried to imagine a future: a period of life was coming brutally to an end, and I had nothing to replace it with, only a terrifying absence. We hope you enjoy your stay in London, and will choose to fly with us again soon. To fly again soon, but would I live again soon? I envied the assumptions of others, the security of fixed lives and plans to take off again soon. What would life mean from now on? Though we continued holding hands, I knew how Chloe and I would watch our bodies grow foreign. Walls would be built up, the separation would be institutionalized, I would meet her in a few months or years, we would be light, jovial, masked, dressed for business, ordering a salad in a restaurant – unable to touch what only now we could reveal, the sheer human drama, the nakedness, the dependency, the unalterable loss. We would be like an audience emerging from a heart-wrenching play but unable to communicate anything of the emotions they had felt inside, able only to head for a drink at the bar, knowing there was more, but unable to touch it. Though it was agony, I preferred this moment to the ones that would come, the hours spent alone replaying it, blaming myself and her, trying to construct a future, an alternative story, like a confused playwright who does not know what to do with his characters (save kill them off for a neat ending ...). All this till the wheels hit the tarmac at Heathrow, the engines were thrown into reverse, and the plane taxied towards the terminal, where it disgorged its cargo into the immigration hall. By the time Chloe and I had collected our luggage and passed through customs, the relationship was formally over. We would try to be good friends, we would try not to cry, we would try not to feel victims or executioners.
6. Two days passed, numb. To suffer a blow and feel nothing – in modern parlance, it means the blow must have been hard indeed. Then one morning, I received a hand-delivered letter from Chloe, her familiar black writing poured over two sheets of creamy-white paper: