Finally I left a message with her saying I would be in the neighbourhood at the end of the week. I’d call by and see her, making sure it was early evening, when I knew Wolf would be working at the Cross Keys, a few hours before his evening excursions.
I wanted to see her, I was ready for it, and she, apparently, for me-at last. She had sent me a text saying there was “something” she wanted me to look at as soon as possible. It was “urgent.”
Before I could begin to think about what she might mean-whether she was going to tell me about Wolf, or about something he had told her-I received a frantic call from Miriam saying that Henry had disappeared.
“Where’s he gone? What are you talking about?”
I managed to grasp that she had had one of the dogs put down, at home. During what she called “the ceremony,” Henry had walked out of the house. He had gone to his flat-or wherever-and stayed away for three days, not ringing once.
“Have you called him?” I said.
“I’m afraid to. Well, I did a few times, but I turned the phone off when I heard his voice on the answering machine. I know he hates to talk on the phone. But what is he hiding-is it bad news, do you think? What if he’s been blown up?”
“What? Why should he be?”
“If he goes on a train, like in the Madrid bombings! Two hundred people killed! It could happen here, couldn’t it?”
“He probably has more chance of winning an Oscar.”
“What if he’s left me? It would finish me off.”
“Has he said he’s left you?”
“He only muttered something about not wanting to think about the Dalmatian.” I sighed. She began to cry. “It was bad enough having to have it put down. But it’s that daughter who has put him against me. You know where she lives? I’ll get her address and I’ll have her again-this time for good!”
On my way to visit Ajita later, I called around at Henry’s, not really expecting him to be there. He might have taken off, as he did sometimes, to stroll around some foreign city, like Budapest or Helsinki, for a couple of days, sketching, reading and visiting museums.
But the window opened and his head popped out. He came down straightaway, in his slippers, and was agreeable, indeed excited, not appearing to be in crisis.
“Was it the dog that did it?” I asked as we walked under Hammersmith Bridge, towards the station.
“It was a damn good dog. I walked it often. The ‘ceremony’ was unusual.”
“It was?”
Miriam had invited some of the neighbours, the children, other friends, and of course Henry to be there when the vet injected the stricken dog with the fatal fluid.
Henry said, “As I got down on my knees and took my place on the floor, lying there with my ear at the dying dog’s heart-the dog that didn’t know it was going to die-I enacted the goodbye with love, rolling about with all the shamelessness I could muster, even making appropriately agonising noises. No way can I be accused of shirking on my dog duties.”
“I can’t wait to see the video.”
“But when the others took their turn, it occurred to me that I couldn’t spend any more time with people who want to hug expiring mutts. The abyss of boredom is my phobia. I’m terrified of being enveloped and destroyed by it. I’ve never stopped running from it.”
“Or towards it.”
He was quiet, then said, “Miriam and I had decided to go clubbing later to a new place, the Midnight Velvet.” I must have made a face; he said, “You didn’t like the Sootie?”
“Not at all, no. It made me feel wretchedly depressed, particularly seeing Josephine. I was annoyed that I allowed myself to be talked into going.”
“You blame me?”
“Partly, but mostly myself.”
“I’m really sorry, Jamal. I tend to agree with you now.” He said, “For months I’d wanted to follow my desire to the limit, all along the razor’s edge. But those places no longer haunt or attract me either. Didn’t my own daughter call me a stupid, stoned fool? I hadn’t faced up to its exhausted decadence. I felt unclean, repelled by myself. I had become that dying dog. And there was something in my old life I missed.
“I left Miriam without disturbing her-she was with her loved ones-and went home. The world of bloodied, shredded bodies under Bush-Blair had been making me angry and sick. I’ve been feeling more and more hopeless.
“But on the night of the dying dog, I was up until dawn, reading poetry, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, running from book to book while listening to Mahler, Bach. Isn’t art the still point-a spot of sense-in a thrashing world? I wrote ideas down and emailed actors I wanted to use in the documentary. I outlined my ideas for Don Giovanni.”
I said, “I’d been wondering recently whether you really are beyond one of the more useful male vanities-that of reputation,” I said.
“I do think about it. I want to have been of little harm,” he said. “And of some use. I wouldn’t want to have betrayed my intelligence or my talent, such as it is. Talent exists, you know, and is inexplicable. I used to write, in my end-of-year diary roundup, ‘Thank God, nothing to be ashamed of.’ But this year I’ve done no work at all.”
I said, “Why would it not be good for you to vegetate, to lie fallow for a while?”
“Like some Chekhov character who wants to work but doesn’t know where to start, I believed my artistic ambition had run down. Now some sort of energy has come back.”
“Lucky you, with a surge of new life. Miriam will be pleased.”
“I’ll see her, and try to find some clarity. Will you come by later?”
“I’m going to see Ajita.”
He said quietly, “Is there any hope there?”
“My guess is we’ll meet up for a bit tonight and then she’ll go out.”
“Jesus, Jamal, how terrible. I know now you waited and waited for that woman and then-what? It just didn’t work out?”
“Who said it won’t, in time?”
“But there’s something sad there, aren’t I right?”
“Something impossible.”
We embraced; he went back to his flat. I got on the train, where at least I had the chance to read. Like Henry, I still had some impulse to learn, to understand.
At Ajita’s, the housekeeper wore a crisp white uniform like a servant in the Edwardian children’s novels I used to read to Rafi. She led me to Ajita’s bedroom, right at the top of the house, knocked and said, “Miss-your visitor.”
“Thank you,” said Ajita, coming out and kissing me. She almost knocked my ear off with a thin unmarked box. “It’s only a DVD. But it’ll interest you, I think. I know how much you like to be interested in things.”
“Do I? But I thought you had something to tell me.”
“To show you,” she said. “It’ll certainly surprise you, I know that for sure.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The room took up the whole of the floor and had sloping attic windows which seemed Parisian to me. Visible were a range of Soho rooftops, aerials and chimneys; nearby, a waiter leaned out of a window, smoking.
At the end of Ajita’s bed was a broad flat-screen television and a sound system playing an iPod. My ex-girlfriend was listening to some quiet girl funk, Lauryn Hill or some such, and dancing a little, good-humouredly, in her bare feet and dressing gown, with wet hair.
I asked, “Are you in bed already?”
“Just getting up. I eat late. You know both Mushy and I do.”
“Is he here?”
“Is it him you want to see? He’s gone back to America to try to find help for Alan, who is very ill.” I seemed to irritate her; perhaps she really hadn’t wanted to see me. She said, “Jamal, I’m sorry for being so flaky the last few days. I’ve been busy with lawyers.”