The Pages

by Hugo Hamilton

  They continue travelling, on to France. He loves that mix of Saracen, French, Celtic, German, Roman, Spanish, Jewish and Greek. It reminds him of his own diversity. In the French naval town of Marseilles he feels the welcome. Every onion seller is my uncle, he writes. My mother’s forefathers live here. We’re all related.

  He walks around the Old Port at night. Something in the design of the harbour that reflects his restless heart. The lights on the water. Seven hundred ships at berth. The names carry his imagination away to distant places, to the sand dunes of Africa, to where those vendors on the quays come from, selling dates and spices. He wishes to jump on board one of those ships and step into their travelled lives. He is full of leaving and returning, with a cargo of ideas for new novels that he can never hope to unload in his short life. The smell of fish and fuel and wet ropes, the clanging sounds of chains, full of sadness and longing for places not yet visited.

  He sits in late-night cafés and drinks Calvados. He talks to sailors, he hears their songs, their stories. Their yearning is placed right next to his own. Wishing he could join them and disappear onto the open sea.

  He goes on assignment to Russia. He comes back and writes a novel called Flight Without End. The main character, Franz Tunda, is a prisoner of war in Russia after the First World War and begins his journey home to the woman he loves. Along the way he is taken in by other lovers who delay his return. The story of a vagrant husband. There is no such thing as returning, only going further away.

  Frieda has the manuscript laid out on the bed.

  Who are all these women in his book? she wants to know. Now I know what you were up to in Russia, she says. It’s here on paper, in your own minute handwriting. You slept with them all, didn’t you?

  These women are invented, he replies. They are based on people I have encountered, they do not correspond in a literal way with my life.

  Tunda. That’s a stupid name to give yourself.

  I am not Tunda, he says. The story of Tunda is told to the writer. The writer is me, Joseph Roth, the observer, the reporter. Tunda sends me a letter. He gives me his diary. I put it all down faithfully in the novel.

  That’s a trick, she says. Your clever modernist way of presenting the story within a story. You are this man who leaves his bride waiting while he falls in love with all these other women. It takes him months to get back home. How do you think that makes me feel?

  Every woman I write about is a version of you, he says. Each description is an attempt to get closer to you.

  Ha, she scoffs. That’s so convenient. Hiding behind author omniscience. Trying one minute to pretend you were there in the bedroom to make the reader think it’s real, then telling me you imagined it.

  The book is deliberately written that way, he says, to throw the reader off the idea that it might be invented. It’s mimicking the truth. You can’t take it for real. You can’t be jealous of characters in fiction, Friedl. That’s like shouting at the screen in a movie. That’s what Stalin does. He even calls for actors in a film to be arrested.

  She walks around in a circle and comes back to stand over the manuscript laid out on the bed. She goes through the loose pages and begins to read a couple of lines at random – Natascha. She’s twenty-three years of age. Her arched forehead, the soft skin of her nose, the narrow nostrils, the lips always round and open. She didn’t want to know about her own beauty, rebelled against herself, regarded her femininity as reverting to the bourgeois.

  Who is she in real life?

  If you want to know, he says, she is based on a writer I met on my trip, a woman with the character of twenty men. I thought she would make a good fictional model for the madness of the Russian Revolution. Every man she sleeps with is a conscript in this great struggle. She even apportions a specific time of night to lovemaking, after all her work is done, looking at her watch and giving it no more than an hour to make sure it doesn’t interfere with her sleep. She’s pure fantasy. The dream of socialism taken to the point of insanity.

  Frieda reads more.

  His bride disappeared from his thoughts, like a country left behind. Her photograph was like a postcard of a street on which they had once lived, his old name on some police document, kept for the sake of order.

  Is that me? she wants to know. The woman left behind in the past. Tunda shows that photo of his bride to the revolutionary woman and what does she call me – a proper little bourgeois type. Does she have any idea where I come from, the conditions I grew up in?

  She continues pacing the room, looking out the window, going back to leaf through the pages again. He stands by the door like a man trapped in the witness box, ready to flee back into a world of drink and fabrication. She waves the pages around like a prosecution attorney.

  You’re a hand-kisser. You walk the streets with your little cane and think you know the inside of a woman’s mind. You’re afraid of beauty, isn’t that so? You tell me I look in the mirror too much. You think of love as an act of pity. Listen to your own words. His letter took a long time coming, it got fatter, put on weight. You think I’m going to keep waiting for your letters all my life. I hardly recognize you when you come back. It takes me days to get to know you again. Then you’ll be gone and I will be left once more with the heating pipes and the people whispering in the corridor and your friends in the restaurants talking about me like a woman who is going insane because I love you too much.

  She throws the manuscript back on the bed and puts her hands over her mouth, holding back the tears. She is preparing for a long silence, staring out the window at a country with no meaning.

  Without a word, he gets down on his knees. He turns himself into a quadruped on the floor. A dog going up and down the room barking. From the chair in the corner, he picks up her loose stockings in his mouth and flings his snarling head from side to side, then he drops them at her feet. His tongue is hanging out. He sniffs her shoes. He licks her legs. She pulls back and tells him to get up, this is not helping, he will not get around her like that. He is no more than a thinking animal. An animal full of memory. An animal that knows the future. He continues running up and down the room on all fours, looking out the window with his paws up on the ledge, back to the door, barking at the suitcase, then back to sniff her feet again and look up with sad eyes waiting for love.

  17

  It’s early evening here in Berlin, so it must be lunchtime where Mike is now. Lena has got herself ready for a video call. She’s put on a small bit of make-up. She’s wearing a blue shirt with yellow dragons, or trumpets, or maybe it’s birds migrating across her chest.

  Mike – is that new?

  Lena – just got it yesterday.

  Cool.

  I like your beard.

  I want to give you one of my bear hugs.

  Come over, she says. You’ll love Berlin.

  Mike is a hard worker. He loves nothing more than getting things done. His work in the area of cyber fraud has made him a contemporary detective. A sleuth who never leaves his desk. He has uncovered some major scams in recent years and been hailed among his colleagues as the new Sherlock Holmes. His knowledge of coding makes him almost clairvoyant.

  At times, Lena wonders how he can know things about her that she has not told him yet. She even wonders if he has hacked into her phone, though she would never accuse him of that. It would break down that level of trust between them to suggest he might be keeping an eye on her.

  My bag got stolen, she says. I lost the book. My precious book. Then, luckily, a very kind young man came to the gallery and handed it in.

  Armin, this guy from Chechnya.

  She changes the subject and tells him about all the historical landmarks in Berlin she wants to show him when he comes over. Mike tells her that when he was growing up in Iowa City, he had the feeling it was one of those cities that had been bombed during the war. Which, of course, it hadn’t. He had rea
d too many stories about the Second World War and began to imagine ruined cities everywhere. He believed Iowa City had been destroyed and rebuilt from nothing.

  I’m here with my mother right now, he says.

  How is she? Lena asks.

  Guess what, Mike says. I get here last night and find all this mail that she’s been sent from a firm of lawyers. She refuses to talk about it. You won’t believe this, Lena. It’s the neighbours, right next door. They’re suing my mother for trespassing. They claim she has no right of access to the parking lot at the back. I don’t know if you remember, we park around there all the time, we come in the back door, we’ve been doing that ever since I was a kid.

  Sure, I remember, Lena says.

  Yeah, so it’s these new neighbours. They want to squeeze my mother out of her legal right to park there. They’ve been living there now for how long, five years, Mike says, not a word. Then suddenly all this legal stuff, like a hand grenade thrown in the door, saying she’s been trespassing on their property all this time.

  That must be so stressful for her, Lena says.

  It’s killing her.

  What’s she going to do?

  She wants to do nothing, Mike says. She wants everybody to be friends and just get along.

  This is the last thing she needs at her age.

  It’s the legal stuff that gets to her, Lena. The language they use. Makes her feel like a criminal. Trespass. Words like desist. Encroaching. Invalid. With immediate effect. Terms she’s never used in her life before.

  Where does she stand?

  Solid. Rock solid. It’s in the deeds. Goes back decades. When the property next door was a bar. I remember growing up, watching people out back from my window, coming into the parking lot, staggering, laughing. I would see couples kissing. Some of them going a whole lot further. Couples arguing and screaming at each other. The fights. The cops coming. It was better than TV.

  Then the premises next door turned residential, people did their drinking downtown, or out of town, who knows, the owners sold up and the parking lot was empty. Only the adjoining residents still had the use of the bays, one each. Three others apart from my mother have all been put on notice.

  Why are they doing this?

  We even have a photograph of my father painting in the white lines.

  They won’t get away with it.

  My guess is they want to build on that lot. She’s a real estate agent, the woman next door. Lydia. She sees a big opportunity here. She wants to build, or maybe she wants to sell up with increased value, vacant possession, no encumbrance, whatever you call it.

  They’re just trying it on, Lena says.

  Exactly, Lena. They’re hassling the neighbours in the hope they’ll run scared.

  She’s got to fight this.

  Well, here’s the deal, Mike says. She doesn’t want to. She’s afraid of going to court. To her, it’s like going into a casino. You never know when your luck might run out, you can’t bank on winning, no matter how good the odds are.

  The other neighbours are fighting this all the way, Mike says. I spoke to one of them at the back, a retired cop. Dan Mulvaney. He says to me – what are these people doing, pushing us out. He’s in his seventies, around the same age as Mom. But he’s much more aggressive. He’s used to the rough side of the world. He’s seen it all. I swear, Lena, he had all this white spittle around his mouth. He was sweating heavily. He’s going to fight this tooth and nail. And if he doesn’t win, he said to me, there are other ways.

  Other ways?

  My mother is freaked out hearing this.

  What other ways?

  He didn’t say, but you can imagine. He says he’s not going to get pushed around by some Russians. He’s got all these guns in the house. We ended up talking about hunting – he goes up to Montana a lot. Said he would love to take me out there. The only thing he hasn’t shot is moose.

  Now he wants to shoot the neighbours.

  We’ll see, Mike says. I’m going to speak to the lawyers now, this afternoon.

  I thought they were so friendly next door.

  They were, Mike says. That’s what I can’t get my head around, Lena. Christmas, they came around with a gift for my mother. They celebrated the New Year with her. The most perfect neighbours you can imagine. Always greeting her in the morning, asking if she needs anything. Lydia, her father is a good handyman, he fixed the washing machine for my mother, he mows the lawn for her.

  Like they’ve been trying for five years to get close to her. Not a word. Everything is fine, he carries out her garbage one evening and next morning, wham. The legal letter arrives. Like a punch in the stomach.

  Tell your mom I’ll camp out in that parking lot day and night with a big protest sign.

  Let’s see what the lawyers say.

  You’re going to win this, Mike.

  How’s your art going?

  Not bad, she says.

  Listen to this, Mike. You know what I saw yesterday. I was in this café, right, and there’s a wedding going by on the street. A big stream of cars with ribbons attached, all of them honking. And then, guess what, they stopped. For no obvious reason, like there was a sudden traffic jam.

  I saw the bride getting out, Lena says. She looked amazing. People with their shopping bags were staring at her standing in the middle of the street. And I’m thinking – why are they getting out here, this is a big shopping street. I couldn’t believe it. The wedding guests all started dancing, Mike. Right there on this busy avenue, with a couple buses held up behind them. The car doors were left open so they could hear the music, a solid beat, these woofers going, it’s like a nightclub. What a sight! The entire wedding party dancing in a wide circle. Big men in black suits linking up with their pinkie fingers in a chain. Some of the women were shrieking, she says. It was like a wedding taking place in a small village somewhere in Turkey, everybody standing by to watch. And the traffic was backed up all the way down the street.

  Try that on Fifth Avenue, Mike says.

  Nobody was complaining, she says. No cops. No sirens. Like they had permission for this street performance, in front of all those shoppers with their bags standing by. It lasted for about two or three minutes, then they got back into their cars and drove off again. Racing away with the tyres squealing. All honking at once. One of the women was riding shotgun with her butt out the window.

  No, Mike says. Can’t see it taking off here.

  It’s a regular thing here, Lena says. They even do it on the autobahn. Everything comes to a standstill. There’s not a whole lot the cops can do. Or maybe even want to do. A joyful act of civil disobedience, that’s what Julia calls it. All the inhabitants of Berlin forced to join in that moment of happiness before it’s gone again.

  18

  The balcony door of Julia’s apartment is open. A car door is heard ripping along the cobbled street. Some hammering too, and the voices of men coming from scaffolding being erected against the façade of a neighbouring building. The morning sun reaches across the floor, throwing an oblong shape onto the blue rug at the centre of the living room. A light breeze comes in, lifting the leaves of a standard plant in the corner.

  On a table, there is a column of large-format art books, one of which has been opened on a stand. It’s part of Julia’s routine, displaying a different page each morning, like an inspiration for the day. Today it’s the image of the young woman turning to look behind her. Or is she turning her face away, not wishing to be seen?

  What else? Some unopened mail, including a letter from Amnesty International asking for support to free a human rights lawyer in Iran.

  In the kitchen, Lena and Julia are talking. One of those late-morning conversations with Lena still in her dressing gown, her bare knees up and a cup cradled in both hands. Julia is wearing a loose shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. She pours some more coffee
and says – we should be out on the balcony. But they decide to stay where they are in the kitchen because of the hammering outside.

  Julia says to Lena – I have a studio for you.

  Wow. Thanks.

  It’s a nice place, Julia says. A loft, at the top of a building, no lift though. An artist friend of mine, he’s gone to live in Melbourne for a year, so the place is free.

  That’s amazing.

  There’s a small kitchen. Enough to boil up soup, that kind of thing, Julia says. Lots of space. Worktables. You’ll love it. There’s a small daybed as well. That’s where he brings all his lovers, so I believe.

  Sounds a bit like Lucian Freud.

  Exactly, Julia says. He was asked how come he had two children in the same year by two different women and he answered – I had a bicycle.

  What do I owe him?

  No way, Julia says. He doesn’t want money. He’s happy to have another artist use the place while he’s away.

  The woman in the painting on the stand is not turning around to look at anything specific. The space behind her is empty, indistinct, nothing more than a pale grey distance. She is caught in that backward glance, looking around at the past, unable to return to the present. That’s what you are given to think. She may come from somewhere else. She’s looking around at something that has gone blank, something she has left behind.

  Julia begins to tell Lena about a man she met at the gallery recently. It’s been keeping me awake at night, she says. Something really stupid. He was in my class in school. The boy in front of me. I used to poke him in the back with my pen and he never complained. I would never have remembered his face. I knew him only from behind. His broad back. Why was I so obsessed with hurting him? Some jealousy, maybe, printed in red marks across his back.

  He’s a highly successful lawyer now, Julia says. He was very friendly. He gave me his card and asked me to contact him if I ever needed any help. I should have said sorry for making his life a nightmare in class. I wondered if it was those jabs that helped to make him such a success? Or was it the opposite? He became a successful lawyer out of some determination to get even with all those times I poked him. Every case he wins takes back one red mark at a time.