‘Why should he?’
‘It’s just another of my deductive leaps.’
‘Dr von Luker’s here now; I’ll ask him.’ He put down the phone. ‘Ernst,’ I heard him say, ‘know anyone by the name of Rinyo-Clacton?’
A second voice said, ‘No.’
‘He says, “No,”’ said Engel.
‘Thank you. Well, I mustn’t keep you.’
‘No, my authors do that, more or less. I shall be on the lookout for Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s effort, Mr Fitch, and if it comes flying over the transom I’ll make sure it gets read. Thank you for this advance notice.’
‘Thank you, Mr Engel.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
As soon as I put down the phone I hurried to the tube station, took the Edgware train to Notting Hill Gate, changed to the Central line to Tottenham Court Road, and headed for Bedford Square. Turning into Great Russell Street I saw Dr von Luker’s face advancing towards me. I had imagined him to be tall and broad, to be, in fact, Mr Rinyo-Clacton without a wig and with a beard but von Luker’s head was on the shoulders of a man about as big as Toulouse-Lautrec.
I caught his eye. ‘Dr Lautrec!’ I said. He favoured me with a cold stare. ‘I mean, Dr von Luker!’
This brought him to a halt. ‘What do you want?’ he said, speaking as from a considerable height.
‘I just wanted to tell you how much I’m enjoying your new book.’
‘Thank you,’ he said without an accent. He nodded and continued on his way. I went back to the corner, crossed Tottenham Court Road, mooched about in the Virgin Megastore for a while, then went home.
Thursday morning, this was, the day after the night when Serafina and I slept together apart.
23. Several Possibilities
Thursday afternoon. The men and women in the waiting room of the John Hunter Clinic, each frozen in single stillness, sat with eyes averted from one another. Although every one of us was in living colour we were like black-and-white portraits by one of those photographers who make everything look worse.
‘IT’S YOUR CHOICE,’ said the sign over a display of condoms on a bulletin board in the corridor outside the counselling room. The unrolled sheaths dangled like the ghosts of passion under labels that identified them as SUPER STRONG, FETHERLITE, LOVE-FRAGRANCED, ALLERGY/HYPO-ALLERGENIC, EXTRA-SAFE and so on. There was a diagram showing how to use them.
‘Both of you with the same man,’ said Mrs Mavis Briggs with an air of scientific interest. Behind her was a colourful array of condom packets and a Van Gogh print of a sidewalk café in Aries at night. All of the tables in the foreground were empty. ‘I haven’t come across that before.’
‘It never happened before,’ I said, ‘with us, I mean.’
Mrs Briggs was a good-looking woman in her thirties in tight jeans and a black sweatshirt that said SHIT HAPPENS in white letters. She had black hair cut short, a husky voice, and the sort of face favoured by rock stars who sing of loves that end badly. Serafina was elsewhere in the clinic talking to another health adviser.
The room was bright and warm; I’d have liked to stay there for a long time. I thought fleetingly of Hendryk, the reality/illusion dog in Van Hoogstraten’s peepshow. ‘There are several possibilities here,’ said Mrs Briggs: ‘maybe you’ll both test negative when the time comes; on the other hand we can’t rule out a result with both of you HIV-positive; or one of you positive and the other not. Have you thought of how you’d deal with either of those last two scenarios?’
‘This is a strange time for us — we’re not actually together right now.’
SHIT HAPPENS said her T-shirt.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘That doesn’t make things any easier, does it. The three months’ wait before the test can be a pretty tough time to get through, and if there’s any possibility of the two of you sorting out your problems this would be a good time to do it.’
‘What about it?’ I asked Serafina later. We were over the road at The Stargazey drinking gin-and-tonics. Dusk outside. Dusk — the word has in it the sound of night impending, descending, owl-light in the city. The place seemed full of darkness. ‘Are we going to get through this together?’ I said.
‘In sickness and in health, eh? You and me together, right, Jonno?’
‘Don’t take cheap shots, Fina — it’s too easy.’
‘I’m not strong enough for quality shots right now, OK? You want clever remarks, try somebody else in your wide circle of acquaintance.’
Where was the Serafina with whom I’d made it through the night? ‘I can’t believe that everything we had is gone,’ I said, recalling Piazzolla’s Tango: Zero Hour that tried to move forward while pulling itself back.
‘I don’t understand you, Jonathan. First you piss all over what we had, then you get yourself buggered and bring this weirdo into both our lives, and now for all we know we’re both HIV-positive; and you reckon this should bring us together?’
‘Tell me what to do, Fina.’
‘Give me some time to get my head around this (pause), Jonno.’
24. Hendryk Not Quite Himself
Thursday night I spent at my flat, alone. I got a fair amount of whisky down my neck to ease the pain of Serafina’s absence and hoped that it would make me sleepy but it only sharpened the pain and made me wakeful; I found that there was no side of me that was the right side to fall asleep on. At first there was too much noise from the street — cars starting up or parking and people chattering loudly; then there came a silence that seethed in a sinister way; then a dream in which Hendryk kept trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear him. ‘What, Hendryk?’ I kept saying until I heard myself and woke up and it was Friday.
In due course I stepped out into a harshly sunlit day, went to the tube station and headed for the National Gallery. As always, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery steps, and the rooms inside were dense with tourists and clamorous with foreign tongues. With scarcely a glance at the masterworks of centuries, I went directly to Room 18. As if by special dispensation it was empty.
I looked through the peep-hole in the near end of van Hoogstraten’s perspective box and there was the skeleton of Hendryk looking at me. ‘Jesus!’ I said. I blinked, and when I looked again I saw nothing but blackness. ‘Give me a break!’ I said. I kept my eye to the peep-hole but there was nothing to see and the room was full of people waiting to peep. ‘I have to go now, Hendryk,’ I said to the blackness. ‘I’ll get back to you.’ The Japanese couple behind me looked at me quizzically and I realised I’d been speaking aloud.
In Trafalgar Square there was no rain to ease the sharpness of the day; the sunlight was coming down like splinters of glass on Nelson and the lions, on the fountains and the tourists and the pigeons, on the pavements choked with people and the cars that choked the road. I hurried to the darkness of the underground and went home.
25. A Useful Idea?
I went to the Vegemania at Serafina’s quitting time, not knowing if I’d be welcome. She saw me through the window and came to the door. The evening was a brisk one, and she was wearing a long dark green homespun-looking skirt, a black polo-neck, and a baggy grey pullover probably knitted by an old woman who smoked a pipe and gathered wool from mountain bushes. She wore a tiger-striped scarf round her neck and her favourite steel-toed anti-rape boots to complete the effect. She had a big leopard-spotted bag slung from her shoulder. A great wave of desire swept over me at the sight of her. ‘Got your head around things a bit more?’ I said.