‘Oh, Ludwig, but you’ve never even tried! Of course you can. I’m so sure.’
I grimaced.
‘I’m afraid your being sure doesn’t mean much. I’ve told you before, I talked to Mr. Fisk about it. He thought I would be admitted to the first year, but after that, he said, that’s when it really starts. And no, he didn’t think I would make the grade after that.’
‘What does a man like that know about it? He never made it any further than piano teacher in some country town. Everyone always thought you played so beautifully, that counts too, doesn’t it?’
It must have been that she had suffered so miserably under her own lack of talent, which she’d had to compensate for with hard work. The semi-talented need so little confirmation to continue down the beaten track. An encouraging nod, an applause that lasts a fraction of a second too long — that was enough to evade self-insight for yet a little while.
A shadow fell across the table.
‘Hi, girlie,’ Rollo Liban said. ‘Hello, Ludwig.’
I said nothing, I still didn’t know how to deal with him.
‘You ready to roll?’ he asked her.
She dabbed at her lips with the napkin and nodded. The top buttons of Rollo’s shirt were open, showing a mass of gray chest hair. He was tanned and about thirty kilos overweight. The fat had accumulated around his torso, the white canvas trousers flapped loosely around his legs. When he looked down, his head rested on a pedestal of two or three chins. She stood up.
‘Please think about what I said, Ludwig. It’s up to you. Will I see you this evening? Will you be there?’
‘I’ll leave a message.’
‘Do you have enough money? Here, I’ll give you. .’
‘That’s not necessary.’
‘Take it, sweetheart. And now we really have to go, I believe. An interview with, what’s his name again, Rollo?’
‘Jay Leno.’
She giggled.
‘Well, we can’t make him wait.’
A kiss on my forehead, Rollo Liban was already halfway to the door. She followed him, people turned their heads and watched them go. Before me on the table lay a packet of dollars. My economy would become entangled with hers, with the money she earned with her body — that was my bread and butter as well. I put it in my pocket, it seemed warmer than the things around it. The waitress came up to me with a black leather notepad.
‘Could I ask you to sign here, please?’
I climbed the stairs to the next level of the hotel, where I had seen a piano. My fingers slid across the keys; it was tuned. I did enjoy playing, but the love and ambition my mother hoped for were things I didn’t possess. I could earn my keep with it, which seemed better than a life in which you had to call someone ‘boss’ or sat in a conference room with four hundred men and women under the supervision of a painfully facile moderator.
Behind the reception desk was a photo of the hotel manager, Berny Suess. One day soon I would look him up, but first I went outside, into sunlight, in search of the queen of my night before.
The journey went from bus to bus. My fellow passengers were, with the exception of the occasional Latino, black. It was very hot, I had the astounding sense of being on a journey that that would never end, that the bus drivers would forget to warn me of my stop and no-one would ever ask for my ticket, like a forgotten article of clothing, a glove slid down between the seat and the backrest. There were lots of traffic jams, we stood idling for a long time. Blacks entering the bus looked up in surprise, as though I were a white man who had come to claim his seat at the front, a Rosa Parks in reverse. The final bus took me into the shady hills, it was cool there, snippets of fiefdoms amid the trees. I climbed out at the campus gates, the terminus; from here the bus drove back into the city, the heat and the grime.
I walked onto the grounds, which had the eminent air of an old park. Eucalyptus trees raised their pale arms to the sky, piles of bark lay at their feet. Under the trees students were sitting eating their lunches, their books beside them; others were wandering across the soft lawn and talking quietly to themselves, perhaps learning a role by heart; this was a spot for the elect, here you could become whatever you liked, and be the best at it. The things were veiled with a remarkable calm, the nervous haste had remained behind in the city; in these gardens the tone was set by time and reflection. It took hold of you easily, just as the neurosis of mass society did outside these gates. For a moment I reflected favorably on my mother’s suggestion that I go to college; I would be able to spend a few years of my life in a sheltered space like this, with its calm heartbeat. Gray squirrels ran across the lawn, climbed the trees, the kind Selwyn Loyd had referred to during the hunt along Bunyans Walk as an exotic species. The faculty buildings were connected by pillared walkways and broad paths, I saw a Moorish palace, something that looked like the Roman Senate, libraries in the style of the Italian Renaissance with cypresses in front, and everything so clean, so sparklingly fresh that it seemed as though it had all been put there just before I arrived. I followed the trail of students with pre-packaged sandwiches and cups of soft drinks, and entered a covered shopping mall. In the restaurant I was prepared for the shock of reunion, I had imagined seeing her bent over a table, wiping crumbs and rings off the Formica top, but the only personnel I saw were sitting at cash registers or handing out food from behind the display cases.
Once again I found myself wandering through the eclectic architectural gardens inhabited by young people from all corners of the world, like in the color tracts handed out by evangelical Christians, with lions and lambs lying down together at the feet of an Asian girl, who is looking up in rapture at a perfectly symmetrical young Caucasian man with blue eyes: the born-again Arcadia.
At last I located the next cafeteria, where the customers took their food from trays piled high for them along a runway of display cases and heating lamps. It was busy. Espresso machines were running at full speed, the hammering of filter holders against waste containers reminded me of the joy of Trianon. Then I saw her. She was wearing a white cap, like a nurse’s, it was pinned to her hair. She was nice to the people whose tables she cleaned. She was someone who believed in reciprocity, someone who might say things like what you give comes back to you, but I wouldn’t let that irritate me, I wouldn’t let it come between us.
I shook myself awake from the daydream. She vanished through the swinging doors, toting trays full of cutlery and dishes. The girl from Augusta. The girl who demonstrated for mountains and trees one day, and the next wore a white uniform and shouted as she came back from the kitchen, ‘Number 28!’
She glanced at the tray.
‘Meat loaf and potato salad!’
At one of the tables, hands fly up. Two careless boys, they take their own presence here completely for granted, they have never lacked for a thing — if one day they should discover that they have some filthy disease, they will be incredulous, they will feel betrayed. Selwyn was like them, I used to envy him the good fortune to which he seemed born. And also for his parents, their hospitality, the orderliness they had created. They had made sacrifices to get that far. Considerable sacrifices. They had done without things, limited themselves. They had offered themselves up with no prospect of personal gain. Their children had parasitized upon the flesh of that sacrifice, and it had made them big, strong. They lived in the certainty that, in principle, life would be good to them. The investment of time and effort on their parents’ part expressed itself in that basic conviction, which would not be easily shaken. Life without sacrifice is a mess of shards, a ruin. It was because of his parents that Selwyn had become what he was, a person who didn’t ask himself what his place in life might be, but who claimed the room he needed calmly and unbendingly, like a tree.