All that was left was hedonism and acquisitiveness; all that was left was the self. For the first time in history, it seemed to him (watching the rain drop as the family departed) that for the thinking man, absolutely nothing credible existed; or rather, as he had said to Connie, nothing that could not be readily discredited. And he just wasn’t sure the self was up to it. The self much preferred to be selfish.
Worst of all, though, with a third part of himself, he suspected that he was thinking about all this as a deliberate distraction—a means whereby he might cloak his inability to sort anything out in the secular-holy robes of some spurious and self-deceiving faux humanitarianism. Unbelievable: yet more horseshit. Which in turn made him feel guilty. To add to the plain and simple guilt that he already felt—and here the cycle began again—about how he was treating the women in his life whom he sincerely loved…Both of them. Yes, both, Ma: two at the same time. Which was the immediate point. And stop dodging it, Gabriel…
The veil of rain thickened.
He put down his chopsticks.
Oh Ma, I am the torturer in chief. I am the double traitor with two lives hollow. I am the counterfeiter. I am the simulacrum. I am the one with a shard of ice in his heart. They throw open the secret chapels of their hearts, I walk in, plant my monitoring devices, and leave; they come to me with open eyes, I tweak out their tears. Or else I am hidden, Ma, I am closed off and locked away. Where am I, Ma, where am I, your son? In what lead-lined bunker did you leave me? For what reason? And who… who am I? This director of propaganda. This creature never present. This looking-glass man.
But for something like seven seconds a month, the power failed, the burning spotlights were all extinguished at the same time, the noise was roundly silenced, his heart slowed its battering, his breathing deepened, and he glimpsed the naked truth stealing across the darkened stage of his mind between costume changes.
And now at last the decision came, not like a butterfly or a ray of celestial light but in the shape of a fat pigeon beaking its way through the daily jamboree of the fallen Chinese.
Leave her. Leave everyone. Do it now. Start it now. Give yourself no choice.
And he set off at a run through the rain like a man chasing a thief that only he could see.
40
A Raw Day
When the call came, she did not recognize his voice. She stood in Susan’s hall with the children running this way and that and tried to make sense of what Gabriel was telling her. But she could not process the words—she felt instead as though listening to a stranger describing the actions of a supposedly mutual friend that she wasn’t actually sure she knew. “I’ve left Lina.”
“What?”
“I’ve taken a room. In Chalk Farm.”
“What?”
“I’m there now.”
“Gabs?”
“In a shared house. There’s a guy from work—they were looking for someone. I’ve given them a deposit. I had to do it straightaway, Is. I’ve been…”
She clutched the receiver closer, hoping that might help her understand. “Gabs—what—what are you talking about? What have you done?”
“I keep on feeling it all from—” He interrupted himself. “It makes me so angry for every… About me, I mean. And sad.”
“What—what have you done?”
“Sorry. I have made a decision, Is. No idea if it is the right one. But I couldn’t carry on. The whole thing was killing me. Trying to think my way through it all. Seeing it from all the different angles. I just got sick of thinking. It’s like the way Mum used to say that Kasparov would beat his opponents: he would complicate it and complicate it until they just got sick of thinking about the problem. Then, eventually, their stamina went. Well, I’m beaten. That’s it. I’m moving out.”
“Jesus, Gabriel, you’re moving out of your flat? You’re splitting up with Lina? Are you… Where are you?”
“And—and I need you to help me. I have to go back and talk to her now—she’ll be worried about me, she keeps calling my mobile—but I… I need you to help me move my stuff out. I’ve hired a van. I’m picking it up in King’s Cross at eight. I’ll do the first run tonight—as soon as—or it will be too late. Sort the rest tomorrow.”
“Gabriel, where the hell are you?”
“Grafton Terrace.”
“Where’s that?”
“Chalk Farm.”
“That’s just around the corner.”
“I know.”
“I’m coming… I’m coming now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Tell me where exactly.”
When she arrived, his behavior was the most unnerving she had ever known, odder even than when she had discovered him earnestly playing charades with total strangers on the heath during one of his boyhood disappearances. He was being grotesquely normal. And yet only she seemed to be able to see through the threadbare ordinariness of his manner. His dark eyes danced with his intelligence and yet they were ringed with tiredness as if with tar; his hair was straggled dry from the rain and smelled of smoke; his jeans were still soaking at the bottom where he’d obviously drenched himself in puddles. And he would not shut up.