Cleaver

by Tim Parks

  Dear mr fugitive i imagine us meeting by chance some day at angie’s graveside. Don’t worry i’ll pretend not 2 recognise u

  Cleaver shook his head. She hit below the belt to elicit a response. Angela’s accident, he muttered, could in no way be described as the chronicle of a death foretold.

  Michaels has just phoned AGAIN 2 ask if i wanted 2 do yr job. Little old me! Can u believe it?

  Cleaver didn’t believe it for one moment.

  If u don’t tell me where you are i’ll go 2 the police and tell them u’ve disappeared.

  Every time Cleaver erased, the phone vibrated. There was no end to it.

  I love u. U’re the only man i ever wanted 2 live with, the only possible father 2 my children

  Cleaver wondered if she was drinking.

  Don’t hope i’ll kill myself, she wrote.

  I know u’re only pretending not 2 read these

  I hate u

  Bill white phoned about selling the balkans doc 2 french TV. He wouldn’t tell me about money

  Sleep tight harry wherever you are. Did u remember yr tranquillizers?

  I always said u were a coward

  Still the messages kept arriving. Cleaver’s eyes hurt. Without reading them, he repeatedly pressed the button that opened and then erased the messages, until, after three or four minutes, the phone was still. He turned it off. I won’t reply.

  The BBC was now marvelling over the special effects used in a new film about the paranormal. Apparently the computer graphics were more interesting than the subject. Cleaver turned that off too. There is nothing for it but to lie here, he thought. He took off his leather coat, wrapped himself in the blankets again and placed the heavy coat, folded in four, on his feet. They were aching with cold. What on earth am I doing so far from home and simple comforts? He had brought no drugs. This is stupid. The doll was watching as he turned out the light.

  He couldn’t sleep. Think of nothing, Cleaver told himself, determinedly, of nothing, of nothing, of nothing. Like a doll. The minutes passed. Count all the women you’ve had. That was a reliable pastime. He wearied. Oh, but I should have thought of the trick with the coat before. His feet finally began to warm and before he knew it he was waking in the early hours to find himself too hot. This is fantastic. He went to the bathroom, stripped to his underwear, rearranged the blankets. His feet were glowing now. Welcome to the Südtirol, he told them. He was chuckling. His whole body was wonderfully present, wonderfully comfortable. He couldn’t remember such physical pleasure, such relaxation. What a disproportionate reaction! Lying in the dark now Harold Cleaver enjoyed an enormous sense of well-being. Done it. Escaped.

  II

  THE NAME OF the house is Rosenkranzhof, some two thousand feet above the village of Steinhaus, a ski centre to the north-east of Luttach. But Cleaver didn’t find it at once. The first day he bought boots, warm clothes, toiletries, walking poles, a good waterproof and a backpack. His whereabouts would be evident from his credit card bill, he thought, so he phoned the bank and asked for payments to be made by direct debit. He would inform of his new mailing address anon. Then he did the same with his private mobile contract. Turning off the phone after making the calls, ignoring the new messages that were still arriving, Cleaver decided he would turn the thing on only once every forty-eight hours. Briefly. In the evenings. His work mobile, on the other hand, which was also his flirt mobile, he wouldn’t turn on at all.

  At the Tourist Information Office the girl couldn’t get it into her head what he wanted. Perhaps she hadn’t really understood the word remote. She is pretending to understand, Cleaver thought. Here is our list of farms with rooms to let, she said. Her pretty young hands opened a printed brochure with pages and pages of photos and prices. There were the usual coded descriptions of what was on offer. Five minutes from the ski lifts at Sand in Taufers. Self-catering. It was an English edition. Easy walking distance from the cable car at Steinhaus. Sleeps eight. Parking for two vehicles. I want something remote, Cleaver repeated, high, high up. He made a gesture with his hand. For months, not weeks. Years perhaps, he thought. The girl stared. She wasn’t unattractive: honey blonde, pink cheeks, generous, uncomprehending eyes. Not unlike his younger daughter, Caroline. She went behind a door to call for help. A man in his early forties appeared. Such a place, sir, he pointed out, so far from anything, would probably not have electricity, it would not be easy to live in. That’s what I’m looking for, Cleaver insisted.

  Clean-shaven, solemn, chinless, the man spoke with a bureaucratic we. We only advise accommodations that meet our high standards. We inspect them all. That is our boast. As Cleaver turned to leave, the man advised: If you rent a place on your own, you can be as isolated as you wish, even here in the village. The people of the South Tyrol are very discreet. Cleaver hadn’t expected this wisdom, this level of English. After all, the Tourist Information employee went on, and he smiled knowingly, it might be unwise to find yourself too far from essential services. The girl also smiled. They were telling him they had taken note of his age, his weight. I want a remote place, Cleaver repeated. Absurd as it was, his success in warming his feet last night had given him the determination to press on. I want to be one of those isolated lights, he thought, high up on the mountainside at night. When the heart attack strikes, so be it.

  On returning to Unterfurnerhof, as he now saw his guest house was called, Cleaver found there was a quilt on his bed, but when he went down to talk to Frau Schleiermacher she made no mention of this change. Armin, she called, Armin! My mother, Armin translated without enthusiasm, does not understand why you want to find a place so high high up. The boy has blond eyebrows beneath his coal-black hair, pale blue eyes. Today his earring was a triple six. Distorted guitar music drifted from his room along the passageway. I have decided to be alone, Cleaver said. It was hard to eliminate the pride from his voice. Far from being angry, he felt pleased that there had been no quilt last night: I survived my first test. Allein, the boy referred. His mother’s eyes narrowed. She has shrewd, lively eyes. She spoke for perhaps a whole minute. She knows no place, Armin abbreviated. There was a frank sullenness about him. Dying your hair coal black and wearing satanic jewellery was not as radical as deciding to be alone, Cleaver thought, even in the South Tyrol. It’s exactly this supposed rebellion, he had once told Angela when she got heavily into piercing, that confirms your constant engagement with society. Don’t you see that? Frau Schleiermacher was still talking. You’re involved in a battle, which is about as involved as anyone can be. There are many, many abandoned Häuser up on the mountains, Armin interpreted, but if nobody is living in them, it is because they are … He got stuck. His mother had said a word too long and complex to translate. She repeated whatever it was. His puzzled eyes moved from her to their guest and back. Then his face lit up in a smile: Because they are shit.

  Cleaver bought a map and began to walk. Above Luttach the Ahrn valley curves from north to north-east. To get the best of the morning sunshine, he tackled the south-facing slopes. It was strange not to start the day bombarded with information, with e-mails, fact sheets about the next show’s guests, summaries of everything each of them had ever said on every possible issue. What questions are tabled in Parliament today? The name Crossfire had begun to irritate him recently.

  He walked up a narrow road signposted Weissbach, Rio Bianco. Without his glasses he was unable to find these places on the map. Only after seeing the same sign three or four times along the winding road did it occur to Cleaver that these places were in fact the same place – Weissbach, Rio Bianco – one name was the translation of the other. He stopped and stared. One translates a name to appropriate it, he thought. As Amanda always insisted on calling me Harry, rather than Harold. She wanted me to be her Harry. Cleaver knew very little of the history of this part of the world, only that it had changed hands from Austria to Italy at the end of the First War. To everyone else he had been Harold. Imagine them changing all the names, he suddenly thought, and the lang
uage in London! Arc de Marbre! St Johann’s Holz. At a stroke all the popular pundits and celebrities would be impotent, deprived of the power of their masterful voices. Ponte della Torre! Though that might prove a relief in the end, a release. Bäckerstrasse! Cleaver remembered laughing with Giada about the relief that forthcoming impotence would be. Coming at the fourth attempt, you mean, she giggled. She was a bubbly girl. They had been in the Tyrol to ski, not to walk. People like Giada didn’t walk. Find me a ski resort, he had told his travel agent in the King’s Road, where there is no chance whatsoever of anyone recognising me. Just once, though, on the last day of the trip, they had joined a group on a guided hike with snowshoes. The deep silence of the snow-filled gullies had made the chatter of the other hikers all but unbearable. My father’s position on noise, his elder son had written, and on conversation in general for that matter, was that it was only tolerable when he was making it. Perhaps I brought the mobiles in case Giada tries to get in touch, Cleaver wondered. Or various other women for that matter. But no, he hadn’t. Nor would they. There will be no more romancing. The Lord giveth, Cleaver muttered, and the Lord taketh away.

  He soldiered on to Weissbach. The name sounded more believable than Rio Bianco. He smiled. But after twenty minutes steady climbing he was exhausted, overheated. I’m carrying two stone too many, at least. He took off his jacket and stuffed it in the backpack. Three perhaps. He grabbed a fold of flesh on his belly and squeezed. It’s got to go.

  Breathing hard, he sat on a log and surveyed the scene. Named, he now saw, after the stream that tumbled by beneath a low, wooden bridge, Weissbach amounted to four shuttered guest houses, converted farms by the looks, their owners holidaying off season, in the Seychelles perhaps, or perhaps London, Maifoire even. To spend a whole day, Cleaver suddenly and surprisingly found himself thinking, really grasping a fact like that, a scene like this: these old houses, half wood half stone, built at an altitude of some four thousand feet, used for centuries to store hay and shelter cattle; then their recent transformation, under altered economic circumstances, into hotels, mainly for skiers, the old names repainted in fancy Gothic script on timber facades. Yes, to master the obvious, he thought, shifting his fat hams on the rough log beside the path, there was an ambition: without making a documentary, or even planning an article; to stare and stare at something real, solid, uncompromising, not a photograph, not a clip, not something you could edit and reorganise, to get a sense of its smell, its gritty presence – the wood smoke in the air and the rush and gurgle of the water – until you felt quite sure you had really got the thing fixed in your stupid head, hammered home hard, once and for all, like a long nail in an old beam. That is what I must do. That is what I have come here for.

  Disturbingly, it took two attempts to get back on his feet. For Christ’s sake! He was only fifty-five. Cleaver crossed the road, pushed open a door under the painted sign, Unterholzerhof, and found himself in a large shabby bar. But already the word Stube seems more appropriate. These places mustn’t be confused with pubs. No one was about. The light is gloomy. Every day, Cleaver reflected, lowering himself down again on a bench that resembled a pew, every hour even, news bulletin after news bulletin, for years, decades, one revised one’s opinion on Thatcher and Reagan, on Blair and Bush, on genetically modified foods, corporal punishment, Afghanistan, the never-ending pathos of the Lib Dems, idea after idea after idea coming at you through words and pictures, but without anything ever being nailed home. Once again there was a crucifix in a corner. Everything could always be edited, reorganised for a different public. This seat is very hard, he thought. Nothing was ever settled and resolved. He looked around. There was a brooding quality to the grey light. When am I going to get served? he wondered. He was thirsty.

  Aside from the crucifix, the dark, timber-clad walls were hung with what Cleaver was already beginning to recognise as the standard South Tyrolese bric-a-brac: antique farm implements, shotguns, a stuffed hawk, flowers dried decades before, a troll with an axe. These are other things one might easily spend days contemplating. The curtains were a dusty red. Not to mention, Cleaver returned to his thoughts of a moment before, constantly rearranging your position on privatisation, homosexual marriage, cloning, rap. It was a stream of ever varying phenomena, a frenzy in a sorting office. Still, it was curious, he noticed now – his calf muscles were aching – that despite the fact that he was in no hurry at all, absolutely none – he nevertheless felt rather impatient to be served. Where is everybody? It had to do with the dynamic, he supposed, of entering a place whose function is to serve you things. I could be dying of hunger, he thought. You walk into a place that serves food and at once you’re locked into the logic of exchange: you want things to get moving, food one way, money the other, despite the fact that actually you’re in no hurry at all. On the contrary, you could do with a rest. Cleaver frowned, bending down to massage the backs of his legs. I should remember to carry a flask of water in future, he thought. If there was one thing, his elder son had written, that my father wouldn’t be seen dead drinking, it was water: My contribution to the conservation of vital resources, he would say, uncorking the customary bottle of Bordeaux.

  Bitte? a quiet voice enquired. Looking up, Cleaver found an old man had materialised. Tall, bent, with incongruously long ears, he wore a leather apron. Trinken, Cleaver told him. Bier? The man asked. His gnarled hands held a dishcloth. Nein. There was a pause of some seconds. The waiter’s watery old eyes made no attempt to focus. Apfelschorle? he proposed. Cleaver hesitated. He hadn’t understood. Das ist Apfelsaft, the old man said. Okay, ja. Cleaver lifted a hand above the table to indicate the size of the glass he wanted. Big. The man gave no sign of acknowledgement. He walked stiffly to the bar and busied himself, quietly and very slowly, behind the counter, washing glasses, wiping surfaces. He has no concept that I might be in a hurry, Cleaver reflected. Eventually, in a slow shuffle, wrists tense, face concentrated, the waiter returned with a tall glass of some cloudy yellow liquid, wobbling on a tin tray. Danke, Cleaver took a sip. It was fresh, sour. Bitte schön, the old man said quietly.

  While Cleaver drank, the waiter drifted over to the window, mottled hands folded over his apron, pale eyes staring between the curtains at the wooded slopes. Although his bench was facing the other way, towards the counter and the crucifix, Cleaver could not help but be intensely aware of this silent presence. While he is hardly aware of me at all, he realised. Certainly he is not thinking of me.

  Twisting his head, Cleaver sneaked a glance. There was a fantastic painted stillness to the man, standing with one hand in a pocket beneath his apron, his wrinkled face blank, waiting for his customer to go. He doesn’t care, Cleaver realised, whether I take five minutes or fifty. It makes no difference. For some reason this made him feel anxious to be on his way. Again he twisted his neck to look at the bulbous nose, long ears, pale closed lips. There was something doll-like about his steadiness. He wants and expects nothing of me, Cleaver thought. At the same time he felt irritated. Why? He drained his glass. Why should I want him to want something of me? But when he stood up to leave it turned out that what the old man wanted was an exorbitant five euros. Five euros for a glass of apple juice! The waiter pocketed the coins with the smallest of bows. Aufwiedersehen, he muttered.

  A hundred yards beyond the settlement the road came to an end and Cleaver had to start using his walking poles in earnest. That was what I bought them for. He felt pleased with himself. Norwegian walking poles, apparently. He shook his head, smiling. A steep path zigzagged up into thick pine woods. It was nice to thrust the poles into the ground, nice to look through the shadowy light beneath the trees, not unlike the quiet, timeless gloom in all these Stuben. The larches have begun to turn, Cleaver told himself. How else would he have guessed they were larches? Do I want to start filling the vacant mental space by naming everything here, he wondered, now that there are no more briefs, no more e-mails, no more newspapers: the twigs, the brambles, the mosses, all the little plants wit
h their different leaves? The insects. Cleaver has never known the names of plants or flowers. Never mind toadstools. He never had much time for the countryside. When my father bought flowers to placate my mother, his elder son had written, he would just go into the florists and say: ten o’ them red uns – he liked to fake a lower-class accent – five o’ the yeller, three o’ the pink, oh and some green stuff for background, you choose. Not quite, mate, Cleaver objected. I used to say roses, actually. Amanda only liked roses. Green stuff, perhaps. But what were you supposed to say? Foliage? He distinctly remembered waiting to be served, impatiently, in the muffled damp half-light of the florist’s near Edgware Road Tube, holding the twins by the hand. Daddy only buys flowers when Mummy’s angry, Angela told the girl as she rang up the price at the till. Certainly I never scrimped, Cleaver thought. Oh really! the shop-girl laughed, Well I think I’d make a point of being permanently furious if it meant getting lovely presents like this. Sometimes there were pleasant flashes of complicity, Cleaver remembered now, at the florist’s. Why did I never take advantage? He remembered eyes glancing up brightly while practised fingers tied knots of twine round stiff green stems.

  Cleaver rested and pushed on. No danger of not losing weight if you keep this up every day. Again, it was strange, he thought, how sweet and resinous the mountain air was, and at the same time how loudly, even after walking so far, the noise of the traffic still rose from the main road in the valley far below. No, it isn’t really loud, he decided, but insistent, ensnaring. I want a house above the noise line, Cleaver told himself. He has no idea how he is going to find such a place. At a certain point, seeing four abandoned walls in a hollow below the path, he decided to explore. Almost at once his foot slipped into a hole full of leaves and slime. He banged his knee painfully on stone flagging. So much for the Norwegian walking poles. When he pulled his boot out of the mulch, it stank. The purpose of this retreat, he reminded himself – he had to sit and nurse his knee for some minutes – though I really don’t like the word retreat – the purpose of this whatever it is, is to extricate my mind from all that has bound it, for too long. I will learn to be free.