Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  He remembered arriving in New York, still deluded enough to believe that he was going to be, simultaneously, a Greenwich Village Baudelaire-in-exile, a beatnik folk singer, and author of the Great Canadian Novel. Ten years on, the only part that smacked of any truth was “exile.” Propelled by an impulse he hadn’t felt in years, Levon turned to the last page of his accounts book.

  * * *

  —

  LEVON’S WATCH INSISTED that ninety minutes had passed. From the five pages of scribblings and crossings-out, four simple verses emerged. He made a neat copy on a fresh page.

  Love found me when I was young.

  A tent, a lake, a shooting star.

  I built Utopia in my head, where

  We could be the way we are.

  They beat me up, they kicked me out,

  They fed me to their godly flames.

  “Pervert,” “monster,” “deviant”

  Were just some of the nicer names.

  Conform, conform, or be cast out.

  The dogma is intense.

  To build your own Utopia is

  A criminal offense.

  What is plotted will unravel.

  What is built slip out of joint.

  Good intentions get forgotten.

  Makes you wonder, what’s the point?

  Levon knew it wasn’t Robert Lowell or Wallace Stevens, but it had passed the time. Self-pity can lift one’s mood. The landscape now was as flat as a prairie but wet, crisscrossed with wide ditches and drainage channels. A cathedral floated into view. Levon wondered which one it was. Lincoln? Peterborough?

  “Ely.” Jasper yawned. “Where I went to school.”

  “So that’s Ely. Fond memories?”

  “Memories,” replied Jasper.

  Levon closed his notebook.

  “You wrote a poem.”

  If Elf or Dean had asked, Levon might have lied. “Yes.”

  “Please can I read it?”

  Levon was curious about Jasper’s curiosity. He acted on instinct, said, “It’s just verses,” and handed over the notebook.

  Jasper’s eyes flickered down the lines.

  Then he read it a second time.

  The train jolted out its own rhythm.

  Jasper handed it back. “It works.”

  * * *

  —

  THE TRAIN STOPPED at a country station, but as it screeched away, it jolted to a halt. The light in the compartment went out. The driver informed the passengers of a “mechanical situation.” Levon wiped an eye-slit on the fogged-up window and read the station name: GREAT CHESTERFORD.

  “A notorious spot for breakdowns,” said Jasper.

  Half an hour later, the driver announced that “A mechanic had been dispatched to investigate the mechanical situation.”

  “Love the tautology,” said Elf.

  “Bloody British Rail,” groaned Dean.

  A hailstorm swept over the Fens. The stuffy compartment got stuffier. Three babies bawled at once. Sneezers seeded the air with germs. Levon had aspirins, but when he poured tea into the cup-lid of his Thermos to wash the tablets down, he found it laced with tiny shards of glass from the interior of the flask. Levon pooled saliva in his dehydrated mouth to swallow the chunky pills. They lodged in his esophagus. He sucked a Polo mint and finally got the pills down. He blurted out the truth: “We need a hit single. Urgently.”

  “We’d all like one o’ them,” said Dean.

  “No. We need a hit single. Or it’s over.”

  “What d’yer mean, ‘it’s over’?”

  “Our deal with Ilex.”

  Elf looked uneasy. “They’re dropping us?”

  “Says bloody who?” asked Dean.

  “Says Günther Marx. And commercial logic.”

  “But you saw Griff,” said Elf. “Mentally, physically, spiritually, he’s not ready to come back.”

  “That is true, Elf. And so is this: if we don’t put out a hit single and promote the shit out of it, there’ll be no band to come back to.”

  “Griff’ll be on his feet again soon.” Dean sounded scornful. “And if Ilex don’t want us, screw ’em. We’ll switch to a label that does.”

  “Name one.” Levon’s headache was getting worse. “The last single flopped. Paradise is not selling well.”

  “So are yer saying we get a new drummer?” asked Dean. “Screw that too. If Ringo Starr got hit by a bloody great truck—”

  “The Beatles have millions in the bank and a back catalogue that shits out money every hour. Utopia Avenue have fuck-all in the bank, Dean, and we have no back catalogue.”

  “Hang on, Levon,” said Elf. “Hang on. Are you saying you want to sack Griff because his brother just died in a horrific car crash and he’s too full of grief to play? Seriously?”

  “I am laying out the facts. Because somebody has to. Or there is no band. Of course we give Griff time. Of course. But you heard Griff. You saw him. It is entirely possible he won’t be back.”

  “Drummers like Griff don’t grow on trees,” said Elf.

  “You think I don’t know that?” asked Levon. “I chose him! But a drummer who can’t drum isn’t a drummer. Jasper. Speak.”

  Jasper drew a spiral on the steamy glass. “Eight days.”

  “Speak English, not Cryptic Crossword. Please. I have a headache as big as East Anglia.”

  “My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ”

  Dean asked, “Why eight?”

  “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.”

  Without warning, the train shuddered into motion.

  The passengers raised a weary ironic cheer.

  * * *

  —

  THE APPLAUSE FOR “Waltz for Debby” dies down. “Thanks,” says Bill Evans. “Thanks a lot. So, uh, this next one I wrote after my father’s passing. It’s called ‘Turn Out the Stars’ and…uh, yeah…” The taciturn American balances his cigarette on the ashtray and leans in low over the keyboard. He half shuts his eyes. His hands take over.

  Levon recalls Elf playing her freshly composed “Mona Lisa Sings the Blues” on this very Steinway in a well of sunshine half a year ago. He thinks of Griff in his hospital bed. All that work, those meetings, phone calls, letters, the favors I cashed in, the crap I took from Howie Stoker, from Victor French, from everyone—all to get Paradise recorded and released, all turning to shit…

  Shut up and listen. The greatest jazz pianist in the world is playing ten yards away. Pavel appears and places a glass of vodka on the little table. He gives Levon’s knee a consoling pat in a way no straight man would and withdraws, exposing Levon to a neighboring patron’s stare. The man saw. Levon’s unease and involuntary guilt is calmed by the man’s sympathetic expression and cocked eyebrow. Levon knows that roundish, storied face. Late fifties, a gray quiff, almost cherubic, had things gone differently…

  Francis Bacon. Archly, the painter nods. Levon looks to his left and right—me? Francis Bacon’s lips twist into a pert smile.

  * * *

  —

  BILL EVANS’S UNFOLDING rendition of “Never Let Me Go” washes Levon in memories—intimate, painful, vivid. What was; what never was; what should have been; and what is, right now, on the first weekend of the New Year. The extended Frankland clan and favored members of his father’s congregation will be gathering in the family home in Kleinburg, outside Toronto, to welcome in 1968. The Christmas tree will still be up. Levon hasn’t been a welcome guest for ten years. He was not invited to his sisters’ weddings. I’m used to this…I got over it a long time ago. Christmas and New Year’s are hard, though.

  “I’m Fr
ancis. Might I intrude?” Francis Bacon is leaning in. “You see, my friend Humph lured me along, describing Mr. Evans in rapturous terms—but frankly, I’m what’s called ‘lost at sea.’ ” The artist speaks queer English with a terse Irish underlay. “I saw how transported you were, so I’ve plucked up my courage to ask you for a pointer or two.”

  Is Francis Bacon hitting on me? wonders Levon. “I’m hardly a jazz buff, but…sure, I’ll answer the best I can.”

  “You’re buff enough for me. So, would ‘Why doesn’t he just play the damn tune the way it goes?’ be a silly question?”

  “Only if ‘Why doesn’t Van Gogh just paint the damn sunflowers the way they look?’ is a silly question.”

  Francis Bacon performs a chortle, then looks mock-coy. “You must think me an awful old dunderhead.”

  “No. People who don’t ask are dunderheads. To pianists like Bill Evans, what matters is less the melody itself and more what the melody evokes. Like Debussy. When Debussy’s Preludes appeared, he had their titles—“Des pas sur la neige,” “La cathédrale engloutie,” so on—printed at the end of the score, so the music could speak for itself, free of textual interference. For Mr. Evans there, a hummable tune is interference. The tune’s the vehicle, not the destination.” A few people move away, giving a view of the square-jawed, heroin-gaunt pianist. “I don’t know if you’re more at sea than you were before I started talking.”

  “You’re saying he’s an impressionist?”

  Have I strayed into a French novel, wonders Levon, where characters talk about art for page after page? “Correct.”

  “Yes, that helps.” He eyes Levon up. “Are you a Soho habitué? Or am I succumbing to wishful thinking?”

  “We’ve not met. My name’s Levon.”

  “My. I’ve never met a Levon in the flesh. Your accent’s a long way from home. Canadian?”

  “That’s impressive. Most people guess American.”

  “You have a cultured, civilized air.”

  “You flatterer, Mr. Bacon. I’m a bit of a gypsy, really. I left Toronto at nineteen. For various reasons, I’ve never made it back.”

  “I’m from darkest Wicklow and I have no intention of making it back.” Francis Bacon makes a shuddery face. “Your glass is empty.” He looks around like a spy in a melodrama before producing a hip-flask. “Care for a little bone-warmer? Fear not, you shan’t wake up naked in my garret. Unless you absolutely insist.”

  Only in Soho. “Why not?” Levon remembers topping up Dean’s Coke with whisky in the 2i’s basement. That, too, was a seduction of sorts. “I must be honest—I won’t be the best of company tonight.”

  Francis Bacon pours. “And why would that be?”

  “A business matter. I won’t bore you. I’m only here because Pavel, the owner, bullied me into coming out.”

  “Here’s to friends who know when to bully us”—the artist clinks his glass on Levon’s—“and to a speedy resolution.”

  “Here’s hoping.”

  “Ah, Humph.” The painter addresses a man in his forties wearing a cable sweater. “Pull up a pew, as they say. Humph, meet my newest friend, Levon. We haven’t reached the surname stage yet.”

  “Levon Frankland.” Levon holds out his hand.

  Humph has a kind face and firm handshake. “Humphrey Lyttelton. So you’re a fan of Bill’s?”

  “Yes. Even more after tonight. Humphrey Lyttelton the jazz trumpeter, by any chance?”

  “I have been known to torment unfortunates with that instrument, yes. Levon Frankland the manager, by any chance?”

  Levon’s surprised. “That’s right.”

  “Then I know about your drummer. I’m a friend of Wally Whitby’s, your boy’s old mentor. How’s he holding up?”

  Where do I begin? “His brother’s dead. He was driving. He blames himself. The whole thing’s hit him very hard.”

  “Once I knew a stable-boy,” says Francis Bacon. “He used to say, ‘Grief is the bill of love, fallen due.’ I can’t recall his face or even name, but I remember that line. Isn’t it odd, what sticks?”

  * * *

  —

  THE WALLS OF the Colony Room Club are slime green. Thirty or forty faces, drink-flushed, drink-ravaged, and purgatorial, hover in the narrow enclosed space. A pianist is playing “Whisper Not” on an upright piano in the corner. Christmas decorations and stories crisscross the bar. A Scottish voice crows: “So the judge looked down at me from on high and asked, ‘Didn’t you think it peculiar that all the men were dancing together?’ I told His Honor, ‘Milord, I’m Inverness born and bred. How would I know what you southerners get up to of a Saturday night?’ ” Ornate lamps are reflected in the liver-spotted mirror. Unusual bottles and watchful eyes gleam; gossip bubbles and froths; the fallen and fading stare from framed photographs; aspidistras stand in bronze pots; and Muriel Belcher, steely empress of the Colony, is perched on a stool at the end of her bar, sipping a pink gin and stroking a white poodle. “Utopia Avenue?” She owns a sixty-a-day rasp of a voice. “Sounds like a field of four-bedroom houses at the edge of Milton Keynes.”

  “I’d be a shit of a lot richer if it was.” Levon drains his glass of something thick and Turkish. He’s uncertain what liqueur he’s drinking because the fiery liquid stripped away his taste buds.

  “I thought management was a one-way street to fame, fortune, and free shank ’n’ loin,” says George the Cockney. “Francis’s manager’s coining it and all she does is throw a party now ’n’ then.”

  “Thou shalt not badmouth Valerie from the Gallery,” says Francis. “It’s biting the hand that feeds the hand that feeds you.”

  “I was under the impression”—Lucian the artist has a fox’s eyes—“that screwing your artists is a perk of the job.”

  “ ‘Screw’ as in ‘screw’ or ‘screw’ as in ‘screw’?” asks Gerald with the windswept white eyebrows.

  “Neither,” replies Levon. “The boys are straight and I don’t have what it takes to cheat them.”

  “Levon’s father is a reverend.” Francis rolls the Rs.

  “Someone’s going straight to Hell, then,” says Muriel.

  “Exactly what he told me the last time we met,” Levon hears himself saying, and blames the Turkish liqueur. “Verbatim.”

  “My father’s last words to me,” says Gerald, “were, and I quote, ‘If you set foot on this estate again I’ll string you up and flog you until you’re crow meat’—unquote.”

  “By ‘I don’t have what it takes to cheat them,’ ” Lucian the artist asks Levon, “do you mean, ‘I don’t know how to cheat them’? Or do you mean, ‘I’m too honest to cheat them’?”

  “The latter,” replies Levon. “I wanted to see them as a long-term investment.” Or as a sort of family, now I think of it.

  “So ’ow would a manager rip off a band,” says George the Cockney, “if yer weren’t so full o’ bloody scruples, like?”

  Levon’s glass is mysteriously full again. “Some managers cook the books and pocket the difference between declared and actual earnings. There’re crooked contracts, where you get your client to sign away copyrights for a bowl of soup or a shitty percentage. From then on, the goose is laying its golden eggs for you. There’re complex tax scams. Charity gigs that aren’t really for charity. Lots of ways.”

  “Why don’t yer clients cotton on ’n’ stomp yer skull in with a length o’ lead piping, say?” asks George the Cockney.

  “Often, the talent doesn’t want to believe it, because that would prove they’re gullible morons. They prefer to look away. I know one manager who gets the talent so hooked on drugs, they’re too fried to ask about the money.”

  “But wouldn’t that strategy kill his clients?” asks Gerald.

  “Exactly. The dead do not sue for fraud. I know another who got his band to sign a blank page over wh
ich he typed a power of attorney. He cleaned them out. When they finally scratched together the money to sue him, he produced a second affidavit they had all signed, forfeiting their right to sue him, in any circumstances—including the forging of affidavits.”

  “A twisted sort of genius,” announces Muriel the owner. “So why, exactly, do you believe honesty pays?”

  “A small slice of a big pie is more pie than a stolen half of a small pie,” replies Levon. “Is what I thought.”

  “Fraud is tawdry,” says Jerome, a regular. “I pass state secrets to my handler at the Soviet Embassy. That’s treason. A proper crime.” The others roll their eyes. “One can be hanged for it, you know.”

  “What do you think, Francis?” asks a random voice.

  “What I think is, we ought to mark our first colonization of nineteen sixty-eight in style—Ida?” The barman looks around. “Champagne all round! Unleash the Krug!”

  The bar cheers. Momentarily, Levon panics—he only has a couple of quid—but Francis tosses a bundle of banknotes to Muriel. A few flutter to the floor. “Will this do the trick, Mother?”

  Muriel does the maths at a glance. “I’d say so.”

  “Donate any surplus to the Soho Home for Geriatric Poofs. Jerome’s going to need a roof over his head.”

  Jerome pretends to find this droll as he retrieves the fallen notes. Levon notices him stuffing a few into his pocket. Champagne is uncorked and glasses are filled. The piano falls quiet. “Queens, queers, stiffs, straights, squares, givers, parasites, mediocrities, fellow artists, hypocrites, crooks, honest souls, old friends”—Francis catches Levon’s eye—“dark handsome strangers, and Muriel, who maintains this enchanted outpost of Utopia. For a brief spell, we share a stage. Others are coming to kick us off. But while you’re here, write yourself a good part. Act it well.” He looks around the bar. “Act it well. There’s nothing else to say because there’s nothing more to say. Wisdom is platitudes gussied up.”