After two or three weeks he was bone-weary from his nocturnal experiences. One afternoon when he was lying on the sofa in his study and closed his eyes, already afraid of a new inexplicable dream, he realised that all his dreams until now had been about women, that the concept ‘home’ always played a part, and that that went hand in hand with a kind of counterpoint in which the women played an oppressed or submissive role.
That shocked him.
He had always considered himself a modern man, the kind who hadn’t been persuaded by feminism because the social equality of man and woman struck him as no more than logical. His relationships mightn’t have lasted very long, and he had only lived with anyone a few times, but when it had happened his partner had always discovered she was on to a good thing. He cooked, he washed, he mended clothes and ironed. He was in every respect the emancipated man that the feminists of his generation dreamed about.
But he didn’t dream about feminists. He dreamed about a drowning woman that he could bring back to life, a Japanese girlfriend, women who crept like circus animals through the town, a babysitter and a neighbour.
And then, lying on the sofa in his study, his brow beetled, his left forearm thrown over his eyes and his right hand on his chest, he thought of Chaja.
He saw her. It was as if he was sitting in a dark room and someone turned on the slide projector and suddenly his whole field of vision was filled with the picture of her face, and as he stared at it–her black curly hair, her clear jawline, her deep brown eyes–he heard himself, in a voice halfway between a groan and a sigh, saying her name.
A quarter of an hour later he was sitting on the floor by his archive, looking for school photographs that he didn’t have. It was a peculiar sort of stupid obstinacy with which he opened boxes, took out folders and inspected envelopes. He knew that he never kept photographs, that one day he himself had thrown away all his old photographs. And yet he looked for them now. Somewhere in his head something told him that he was behaving very oddly and he heard himself agreeing, but he couldn’t stop. He was like a smoker who decides in the middle of the night that his cigarettes have run out and, in the certain knowledge that he has no more at home, still opens all the cupboards and drawers to see if there might be something he himself doesn’t know about.
That afternoon he had a deadline for an essay on squatting as a form of political engagement and not as a way of easing the housing shortage, and he missed the deadline. That same evening he failed to appear at a premiere at the theatre for a must-see play, and when at the end of the evening the phone rang he sat at his desk staring at the tinkling object and didn’t even feel an urge to pick it up. It hadn’t been comprehensible at that moment, because at eleven o’clock that evening he was well on the way to getting drunk.
Although Marcus could drink, he had only been properly plastered three times in his life, and the last time was now ten years ago. Drunkenness, all loss of control and decorum, was something he profoundly abhorred. It was also the reason he had never drunk too much again. At the time of his last binge he was still living in the little town in the north and had, with his friends, Harry the painter and Albert the photographer, buttonholed a group of people from the paper. It was a Friday afternoon and at five o’clock someone had suggested drinking a genever. They had all done so. At six o’clock, when everyone had knocked back about four glasses, they had moved fraternally to a pizzeria, where they had eaten and drunk. Where eating was concerned, Marcus remembered only that he had eaten a pizza con cozze and drunk house white wine, and that at a table in a corner a lonely old man had sat with a glass of wine and a bowl of spaghetti, which he stared at in amazement. He was a man who didn’t feel at home in these surroundings. Marcus watched him, his gaze passed through the eating and shouting crowd, the smoke and the flickering candles, and he had felt a violent emotion rising up in his chest. There sits old Vandenbergh, he thought, his wife is dead and he’s eating alone. He had no idea why he thought that, how the name came into his head and why he was so moved by the thought. But he could barely choke down a mouthful of food, and although he kept his companions amused with lapidary one-liners, he couldn’t take his eyes off the man he had called Vandenbergh, and who made his innards churn with misery.
After dinner they had gone into town. They drank whisky in the bar of an expensive bistro, went to a bar in a basement, appropriately called ‘The Grotto’, and there, as he was explaining to the local blues legend what music really was (an intricate account of the molecular composition of music, and that the important thing was to find the molecule), he fell backwards off his stool, climbed back up again and imperturbably went on talking. That was the moment when the painter and the photographer took him outside and looked for a taxi.
As they stood waiting, he threw up on his shoes and got angry with the people laughing at him from behind the windows of the cafés. ‘Bastards,’ he roared, swaying on his new and now spoilt shoes. ‘Have you never seen anyone drunk before? Have you no sense of culture? Peasants! Louts! Cottage-dwellers!’
And then he went deaf. He stood swaying and looking with rolling eyes at the lights of the town and suddenly understood that he couldn’t hear a thing. It was so quiet that he was nearly oppressed by it. The silence consisted of the din of ten goods trains thundering soundlessly along.
The next morning he woke up in the corrupt air of a locked bedroom. He threw open the windows, showered, put the previous day’s clothes in the wash and threw his shoes away. He had a cup of coffee and a piece of toast for breakfast and looked out of the window opposite his desk. There was a vague, far-off roar in his head, but it actually coincided nicely with his hangover. What was worse was the feeling of losing control. He still remembered his walk through the town, but he also knew that parts of that journey were missing, while the memory of his loss of hearing, the laughing faces behind the café windows and his drunken rant was bright and clear. It wasn’t so much shame that made him, sitting here behind his desk with his coffee and half-nibbled piece of toast, decide never to drink like that again. He knew that drunkenness would only reinforce the village myth that had already grown up about him and he had absolutely no qualms about that. No, it was fear. He had, when he stopped being able to hear anything and instead of the raging of the world heard the roar of the silence itself, he had been…frightened.
As far as he could remember, he had never been so frightened before.
Now, ten years later and in another place, after a long search for photographs that didn’t exist, he no longer felt that fear. He poured one glass after another from the bottle of mescal that someone had given him a while before and the tide of his drunkenness slowly swelled. His movements grew heavy and listless and in his head one melancholy scene followed another.
When he finally went to bed, at one or two in the morning, he had to creep up the stairs on all fours. He could still walk, but he couldn’t remember how to climb a flight of stairs. And so, giggling idiotically, he went up on his hands and knees, undressed carelessly, staggered to the bathroom and went and stood under the shower. About twenty minutes later he woke up on the tile floor, while the cold water (the boiler was already empty) rained down on him. His body was hard and cold and his teeth chattered so mercilessly that he was afraid the enamel would shatter.
Once in bed he quickly felt warmer. Just before he fell asleep, curled up like a little child and smiling at the warmth that embraced him under the duvet, he heard himself muttering.
Just as he fell into the pit of sleep, he knew what he was mumbling to his pillow and that he was speaking to one person alone and that there was nothing for it, after so many years of fruitless repression, but to go in search of her.
What in God’s name is so special about Chaja, Marcus wonders, now that he is half-heartedly chasing after the shadow of Jacob Noah and at the same time, just as half-heartedly, looking into the grey faces of the crowd in the hope of spotting hers. What is actually so special about her? As he slaloms through the slow
stream of people he draws up a little list in his head, just as he always did: pros on the left, cons on the right. He is a man of order and structure.
For: …
Against: …
But nothing comes to mind. He sees the two headings floating on an imaginary white sheet of paper, ready to bring order where there is now nothing but vague thoughts, but those two headings are not followed by the rows of concepts, qualities, defects and shortcomings that he is hoping for.
Why can’t he think of anything? For heaven’s sake, it’s not as if she’s a Woman Without Qualities, or the fleshly manifestation of Freud’s famous rhetorical Was will das Weib?
What was he in love with?
Why has he never tried to make such a list before?
‘Marcus…’
A hand falls on his shoulder and as he looks round he already knows, before he sees his face, who it will be. That voice is the hoarse, ironic growl of Johan van Gelder, editor of the local newspaper, the man under whom he published his first articles.
Even as they are shaking hands the journalist’s who-what-where-and-when questions come.
‘In God’s name, Marcus, what are you doing here? Are you here alone? How long have you been here?’
The stream drags them back towards where Marcus had just come from, and even before he has managed an answer to the third question, they are standing in the big Koopmansplein, where from a music tent there comes the chaotic noise of a locally world-famous band.
‘Christ alive,’ says Van Gelder. ‘Let’s get out of here. Noah has hired some premises to a shady Latin character who, according to the voice of the people, is exploiting it as a hostess club. An article demands to be written about it. Shall we go? It seems like something for you.’
And they turn off to the right, into Oudestraat, where they have only to shuffle a few steps with the other shuffling people before they see a warehouse on their left on which, in strange contrast with the rustic exterior of the premises, the word ‘Baccara’ flickers in red and pink neon.
Although a little cloud of hot-blooded figures swirls outside the doors of the club, and no one is allowed in, Van Gelder’s press card performs the miracle on which he and Marcus were banking. They are even welcomed by the proprietor, dressed entirely in a white suit with wide legs, a red pocket handkerchief, with a champagne coupe and a perfumed hand. He is flanked by two ladies in tight evening dresses, with long silky black hair and glances so languid that Marcus wouldn’t be surprised if they started purring.
‘The gentlemen from the newspaper!’ whispers the proprietor with a crazy irony that surprised Marcus. ‘Welcome. My name is Alessandro. Caviar?’
‘Alessandro Caviar?’ says Marcus.
His host rests a hand on his shoulder and laughs amiably, as he guides him, with Johan van Gelder in his wake, towards the holy of holies, where the light is faint and reddish and the black walls glow as if built of smouldering charcoal.
Alessandro Caviar must have given a sign as they came in, because they aren’t even sitting on one of the many semicircular white sofas with red plush cushions when a blonde usherette comes tripping over in a costume made of a very small quantity of material. She is carrying a tray with a bowl of ice, in which there balances in turn a smaller bowl of caviar. She sets down her wares, flashes a terrified-looking smile at her employer and vanishes almost unnoticed.
‘Caviar,’ says Alessandro.
‘So I see,’ says Marcus. ‘No one could deny the fact. You are aware that these black pearls are being set before swine?’
‘On the contrary, Mr…’
‘Kolpa.’
‘Mr Kolpa…On the contrary. I spread my favours, but not without consideration for the individual.’
With a barely perceptible nod of the head, he guides Marcus’s eye to the semicircular sofa next to their own, where Johan van Gelder is sitting between two floral procession queens, engaged in deep conversation with alderman Roodhosen, whose nose glows almost as powerfully as the lights along the walls. On the smoked-glass coffee table there is a bowl of melba toast and brie.
Marcus smiles.
‘And how, Mr Alessandro, have I deserved this honour?’
On the stage, under light that looks like a rain of blue and white and silver sparkles, a young woman stands performing an intricate dance. It is a while before Marcus sees that her complicated movements are caused by the snake that has wrapped itself around her body and is following a different choreography from its wearer. Sultry, indefinable music sounds, to which the dancer responds with winding, tottering motions. The stage light glitters on her dress, a bodice of iridescent chain mail, from which pointed tatters hang by way of a skirt. In the quicksilver light it is as if water is streaming over her body.
‘It’s an act that I’ve been trying to find for a long time,’ says the host.
Marcus turns round. ‘I can’t imagine you found her in a Drentsche folk-dancing club.’
Alessandro smiles like a blind man who’s just successfully threaded a needle.
‘Tell me, Mr Kolpa. What brings you here?’
Marcus sips at his champagne and discovers with surprise that it isn’t the sweet women’s rubbish that he was expecting.
‘Here?’ he says.
‘To Assen. To my club.’
‘Ah. To Assen.’
He gains time by taking out a cigarette and accepting a light from his host’s gold Cartier lighter and calmly inhaling. Why, he thinks, as he blows out the smoke and looks through the red gloom at the people in the room, why do I think I have to gain time? Because I have to reply? And why should I reply? Who is he that I have to explain the reason for my visit to this hole in the ground?
He has no idea, but he still feels a strong urge to be honest.
‘Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Mr Caviar?’
‘Call me Alessandro. Surnames don’t count here. Certainly not wrong ones.’
The tone is mild and friendly, but with a barely audible counterpoint of menace. Marcus inclines his head slightly.
‘Of course. Where do you come from that you bear such an illustrious Christian name?’
The host brings the glass to his lips and moistens them. ‘There is a time for everything, and this is not the time for that. I remember asking you something. I have a feeling you haven’t travelled to the arse of the world to write an article about my nightclub.’
It’s as if a spark of light passes across the face of the man on the other side of the semicircular sofa, as if for a very short moment Marcus sees him more clearly than before.
The arse of the world…Did he really say…Yes, that’s what he said.
‘You’re right. That wasn’t my goal. I came here for the same reason as the one for which Orpheus went to the underworld.’
‘You’re looking for your Eurydice?’
Marcus nods.
‘But I take it that this beloved is still the very picture of health?’
Marcus laughs. In the seat next to him he sees Johan van Gelder looking up with a piercing expression.
‘Yes. That is: I assume so. But I haven’t spoken to her for a long time. And for one reason or another I’ve decided that this is the evening, or the night, to do it.’
‘Because this is the night of nights.’
‘And a strange night. When you come back to the place of your youth after ten years, it’s as if…as if you’re a shade in the land of the living. Nothing seems real any more. In the place you left life has carried on and now you come back with the knowledge and feelings of long ago.’
‘I understand.’
‘Really? You know that experience?’
Alessandro Caviar looks at him expressionlessly. For a few seconds Marcus yields to the inclination to read his face line by line, the slightly curly, stiff, deep black hair that falls on the vaulted brow, the unnaturally tanned face which was powerful once, but now shows the beginnings of the kind of flabbiness that is the sign of too much drink, too litt
le exercise and too little sleep. His eyes are almost almond-shaped, but not in a feminine manner. They are dark brown, intensely dark brown like Swiss chocolate with a high cocoa content. His clean-shaven cheeks gleam in the coloured light and his mouth is broad and fleshy. His nose sticks out in the middle of all that as the only thing that looks one hundred per cent natural, a kind of relic from better times, when money wasn’t important and life was simple. It’s a whopper of a crooked nose, the kind that would enable its owner to smoke a cigarette in the shower.
The stage is bare and there’s an indefinable jingling sound, interval music. Somewhere behind the sparkling cloths that form the back wall something falls and Alessandro Caviar’s face springs into life. A brief sequence of repugnance, boredom and weariness sweeps across it and in the brief moment in which it is visible Marcus suddenly feels great compassion for this ageing playboy who, in this hole in the ground, this anus mundi, has opened a bloody nightclub in which an ungainly girl dances with a reluctant snake, the staff drop things and difficult guests try to be worldly-wise with melba toast and brie.
‘Please excuse me,’ says Alessandro Caviar, glancing at the stage. ‘The master’s eye…’
He rises to his feet and nods to Marcus. Then he disappears into the gloom of the nightclub.
The soft murmur of background music lays a blanket of calm over everything. Every now and again someone laughs, but the only sound is the hum of conversation. Johan van Gelder is by now talking to an artist, a man in tennis whites whom Marcus remembers from his youth, when he saw him nearly every day on the tennis court. He has, apart from Alessandro Caviar, never seen anyone so impossibly suntanned.
In a Dark Wood Page 21
