Vivian groaned. He felt his throat.
Oh this body, he muttered. This wheezing jazz band of the soul.
He opened his eyes and laughed.
Flaky, your ceiling, no question about it. But life as music aside, let me tell you straight off this visit has nothing to do with business. I'm here to apologize and I'm just me now, nothing more. Are you hungry at all?
Famished, Viv. I was just getting ready to go out when you knocked.
Good. I've brought some roast chicken along, and also some wine and loquats, to try to help you forget my body-block at the airport the other morning. The chicken's usually quite tasty, I get it from a retired belly dancer up the street whom Ahmad knows from another era. She's also the one who told me about the local hum-job tradition. And the wine should be good, if you can make do with German wine. One of our Long Range Desert Groups plucked it out of Rommel's personal supply van no more than a week ago.
Vivian frowned.
But perhaps you'd like to save the wine for a more important occasion. You wouldn't be hurting my feelings if you did. I'm used to slaps and kicks and punches.
Hold on, Viv, this is the important occasion. Just let me get to it.
Vivian smiled in relief and began singing a popular tune. Joe went to work opening one of the bottles.
Oh by the way, Viv, is your name really Vivian? I ask only because Ahmad chanced to mention he'd never seen or heard of a Vivian around here.
Vivian scowled. He groaned.
Oh he did, did he? Ahmad actually said that?
Yes.
Vivian rolled sideways and gazed sadly at Joe, his mouth nibbling and chewing, never still.
That's a heavy blow, he sighed. Why on earth would you ask me that?
Well I don't know, Viv, the thought just came drifting by. But no offense meant, let's forget it.
Forget it? My name? Please study me carefully and tell me the truth. Don't I look like a Vivian?
The cork popped out of the bottle.
Well maybe not, said Joe. Can't say you do, really.
Did I before? Coming in from the airport?
Yes, maybe so. I guess you did.
But I don't now?
No, maybe not.
Not even a little bit? Isn't there anything in this world but slaps and kicks and punches?
Wait, said Joe, I think I'm beginning to see it. Vivian, you say? Vivian? Of course, it's unmistakable.
There's a startling resemblance, Viv.
There is?
Oh yes, simply stunning. The only reason I missed it at first was because I'm not used to seeing a Vivian.
You don't come across one every day on an Indian reservation in Arizona.
I can imagine, muttered Vivian gloomily. And how about a Vivian McBastion, then?
A what? Is that true?
Yes.
Well now, I like it, said Joe. It has the tang of an aristocratic Scottish fortress hunkering down in the cool mists and repulsing every assault.
On his back, Vivian cast a bleak smile at the ceiling.
Don't leap to conclusions. There's an enormous amount of confusion in the world and I'm afraid I play a part in it. I'm afraid that's only the beginning of my persona. There's more to my mask, much more. Are you ready to hear all of it?
Of course, why not?
You'll see. Brace yourself then. My full name is Vivian McBastion Noël Liffingsford-Ivy.
Jesus, Viv, is that the truth?
Vivian scowled and his voice was gloomier than ever.
Furthermore, I'll tell you why I don't look like a Vivian, let alone all the rest of it. I'm not.
Well there, cried Joe with relief.
I mean that's my legal name, but it's not really me. My father's name was Lifschitz. When my parents came over to England from Germany they wanted something that sounded less foreign, so they did a potter around in a hunt for common syllables and Liffingsford is what emerged, like a new Tory leader in Parliament. The Ivy was an afterthought, meant to add a comfy appearance of having been around awhile. I'm not sure how well they understood English at the time.
I know how that is, said Joe. I didn't understand it myself until I was fifteen or sixteen.
They bought a little shop when they came to England, a cozy thatched-roof affair in the heart of London.
They thought it was the only decent thing to do. Fair play, England my England, a nation of shopkeepers and so forth. Then when I came along they did a hunt through the Sunday tabloids to find a name for me, and that odd lot is what they came up with. Later I disappointed them though. I didn't become a dentist.
I see.
But everybody has always called me Liffy, with the exception of my mother and father and Bletchley. . . .
Blasted authority figures, they always get everything wrong. But Ahmad knows me as Liffy, and everybody else around here does.
Fine, Liffy, that's what I'm going to call you then. And I like the name, because it just happens to recall a river I know.
I suspected it might, said Liffy, and it's always pleasant to remind someone of a river. But I never became a dentist, I have to tell you that right now. I became a clown, a sad clown. That's my problem.
***
Have some wine, Liffy?
Thanks, I will. My liver hurts.
Maybe you ought to ease up then?
No, it can't have anything to do with drinking, I almost never drink. My liver often hurts at night, and I think the reason it does is because the liver was considered the seat of the passions in the classical world, back before barbarians destroyed the classical world and the passions were transferred to the heart. But somehow in my case the transfer never seems to have been made. In other words, Joe, I'm a throwback.
To what?
I'm not sure, that's my problem. But I have an uneasy feeling I may be the Wandering Jew from antiquity.
Everything seems to suggest it.
Have you wandered a lot then?
Oh yes, that's all I did before the war. I wandered around Europe as an itinerant entertainer, making people laugh after dinner. Then I sat in empty railway waiting rooms late at night, feeling hungry and waiting for a milk train to nowhere. The restaurants were always closed by the time I finished work in the evening, and when I arrived in a new place the following morning I'd take a nap in the railway waiting room to save expenses, until it was time to appear in a show that night. So I almost never slept in a bed and I didn't see much daylight either. In those days I lived almost entirely on milk and it made me quite pale. All told, it was a ghostly experience.
Were you really a professional clown, Liffy?
Well it was that general aspect of life. I worked as a clown or a mime or an actor, a juggler or an acrobat or a song-and-dance man, the fat drunken companion of a Shakespearean king of merrie olde England or a not so merry Shakespearean moneylender in gloomy old Venice, sometimes in blackface and sometimes in white, but far more frequently in gray. And more often than not in the end, after giving my all, done in. It seems that in every human drama there has to be someone who loses, and for some mysterious reason that role became my specialty. Occasionally I had to be taken seriously, but in general I was the absurd chameleon of the species, the ludicrous jester and buffo, the all-purpose fool. Making people laugh was my profession. It's a sad way to make a living.
I believe it, said Joe. And what about your work here, Liffy? What do you do?
Little things. Play a role for an hour or two or a day. Anything that might require a disguise and some makeup and a language or two. I'm just a prop really. I do a turn as an Italian general or a Syrian merchant or a Czech peasant, whatever's wanted. When they need a prop they trundle me out and I rage and swagger or skulk and cringe, bending my knees and shifting my weight and detesting kulaks or Jews, Jerries or Tommies, as the case may be. I'm the local illusionist, that's all. A sad clown.