‘OK, let’s come back to us. When we were together I was really with you — all of me. But you were living a whole other life separate from me. How were you able to do that? I don’t think I really know who you are.’
‘Fina, I think most men want as much sex as they can get; some restrain the urge better than others and some are greedier than others. I never stopped loving you.’
‘Oh well, that makes everything all right then. Great. So what happened after I behaved so unreasonably and walked out? Then it seems you got greedy for men and you backed into our friend Rinyo-Clacton who got greedy for me and now maybe we’ll both end up dying of AIDS. Is that the new place you want to move forward to? Is that the new bond between us?’
That stopped me for a while. The gas fire purred softly, the cat loudly; in the lava lamp red misshapen worlds rose and fell. Purcell and Chance carried on with:
Lord, what is man, lost man,
That thou shouldst be so mindful of him?
‘And yet,’ I said, ‘you were in my arms and you kissed me only a few minutes ago. I don’t think love can disappear just like that, I think you still love me.’
‘Maybe love doesn’t disappear, maybe it just turns to stone, heavy inside you for the rest of your life. Kissing doesn’t mean anything — it’s a reflex that you can still trigger if I forget for a moment how things are. You look the same but you’re so strange to me now! It’s as if I’d been reading a book in English but the next time I opened it the whole thing was written in Transylvanian. So maybe I was out of my mind when I thought I could read it because now the pages are full of strange words that have no meaning for me.’ Her long fingers still caressing the cat as she spoke.
‘That day when we got drunk in the Place des Vosges,’ she said, ‘all of me was with you and it felt so good. I’d never had that before, and you looked at me as if you were seeing the whole Serafina of me and I thought, yes! this is really, really it. Then back at the hotel when we made love it felt as if all of you was with me, no part of you was anywhere else. Then the dream: my God, Jonathan, how many people ever have anything like that — the oasis that showed itself to both of us while we slept, the place of good water where the palm trees grow, and the desert all around. Lots of people wander in the desert all their lives, lots of people die in the desert but we’d crossed that desert and found the oasis in each other.’ She paused.
‘Thrice happy lovers, …’ sang Michael Chance. I stopped the CD player and switched it off. The naked silence rushed in upon us. Leon Trotsky looked down from the wall disdainfully. Little worlds of nothing rose and fell in the lava lamp.
‘Mr Rinyo-Clacton is HIV-positive,’ she said, ‘and now where’s our oasis? Maybe now all we’ve got is the death in each other.’ She covered her face with her hands and wept, then stopped after a few moments, noticed that the tea was ready, and poured it.
‘You see what you just did?’ I said. ‘After wiping me out completely with all that you’ve just said, you pour the rose-hip tea, my favourite kind that you made for the two of us, because life goes on. Look at Germany, look at Japan, for Christ’s sake — after the horrible things they did in the last war and before that we’re still doing business with them and hoping they’ll build more cars and computers and TVs and everything else here because we need the jobs. Because life goes on, it has to. Forget forgiveness — there’s only this imperfect world full of imperfect people to work with.’
‘Yes, Jonathan, but you’re not the only man in the world, are you. And I’ve already quit the job.’
‘I’m the only one for you, Serafina.’
‘You were, Jonathan. But I wasn’t the only one for you and that’s what brought us to where we are now.’
‘Where we are now doesn’t have to be the end of us, Fina: the thing is, do you want to realise our potential or do you want to give up and never know what might have been?’ The words just came out that way before I could stop them.
She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Are you going to sell me an Excelsior Couples Kit now?’
‘Would you buy one?’
‘I don’t know, Jonno, I just don’t know.’
‘You called me Jonno.’
‘It’s hard not to.’
‘Should I take that as a yes?’
‘Take it with a grain of salt.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’
‘It means that I’m scared and confused and whatever I say is subject to change without notice.’
‘Maybe we should just drink our tea and be quiet for a while.’
‘That sounds like a practical suggestion.’
Serafina went to the CD player, removed Purcell, and put on something that began with the chatter of a crowd, then slid into a smoky tango. ‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘Astor Piazzolla — Tango: Zero Hour.’
‘It keeps trying to move forward while pulling itself back.’
‘Like life.’ She put the cat on the floor, switched off all the lights except the lava lamp, and came and sat beside me on the couch. She leant against me and I put my arm around her and sighed a deep sigh. ‘Grain of salt, Jonno,’ she said. ‘It looks to me as if we’ve got some heavy business ahead of us — you can help me make it through the night but all I’m taking is your time, OK? Nothing more than that.’
I buried my face in her hair. ‘OK, Fina, whatever you say.’ So we made it through the night. Nothing more than that.
21. Maybe Loss
In a dream I was looking into a long, long dimness that stretched back to before the beginning of the world. Lost, lost, lost, I thought. There was something before this and now it’s all lost. ‘Maybe’, I said, and woke up as I heard myself saying it, ‘loss is where everything starts from.’
‘It’s where it ends, too,’ said Serafina.
I rolled over and there we were, face to face in a strange bed, under the same duvet. I lifted it a bit: Serafina was in her knickers and a long Minnie Mouse T-shirt and I was wearing underpants and a T-shirt. Maybe all our troubles had never happened? ‘Have they?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Have all our troubles really happened?’
‘Yes, and they’re still happening. Go to sleep.’
So we slept — uneasily.
22. So Many Are
‘Hello,’ said a man’s voice at the Derek Engel number. The word was spoken in a suave and leisurely drawl, with the first syllable stretched out and the second on a rising inflection. ‘Hehh-lo?’
‘Is this Derek Engel?’ I said.
‘Speaking.’
‘Oh. You’re Derek Engel himself?’
‘So far.’
‘Sorry — I was expecting a telephonist.’
‘Would you like me to go away?’
‘No, please — it’s just that I didn’t want to take up your time; I thought perhaps your publicity department could answer my query.’
‘Which is?’
‘Have you got an author named Rinyo-Clacton?’
‘Ah, what are we all but clay!’
‘Odd that you should say that.’
‘Well, Mr …?’
‘Fitch, Jonathan Fitch.’
‘Mr Fitch. The only Rinyo-Clacton I know of is Late Neolithic pottery. You say there’s an author by that name?’
‘There’s a man who uses that name. I thought he might be one of your authors.’
‘An interesting deductive leap. Has he written something you think we should publish?’
‘I think he might be in the process of writing something now.’
‘So many are.’
‘Just one more question and I’ll go away — do you think Dr von Luker might have any connection with Mr Rinyo-Clacton?’