From out of the City

by John Kelly

  yours faithfully,

  your “old pal,”

  Claude Butler

  P.S. I think that Dublin must have changed? A lot? Do you think so too?

  Schroeder gets off at Lansdowne Road/Bóthar Lansdún, crosses the tracks, and, as if to make the morning’s movie roll backwards on the reel, undoing all harm done, he heads straight back the way he came. As if the letter might be unread. As if the mailman and the Branchman might be un-met. As if life might be un-lived and these towering anxieties un-felt – anxieties which remind him now of difficult music – a torrent of barely recognisable phrases mutating into pure tension, throbbing with the insistent yet uneven pulse of paranoia. He swallows his last miniature like an cormorant downing a pout.

  NINE

  – SCHIPHOL is a thundering bitch!

  And with that doormat declaration, Francesca Maldini dumps her bag in the hall and charges up the stairs. Schroeder shouts after her but the shower has already powered into life and she steps under its several roasting jets. No legal limits for her. She has the Kronos Quartet on her shower-phones and she’ll be there for a while – always the five of them in there together – herself and the strings. Glass usually or Terry Riley.

  Schroeder distracts himself with current events on NB1. King’s visit is now a fortnight away and the crackdown has begun with Gibbons announcing a series of “strong measures.” It seems that anybody considered even the slightest threat to King’s visit has already been taken to the Park and left in the care of the Americans – a full-blown orange jumpsuit scenario. It’s foreigners mostly – teachers, restaurant workers, students and even a few professional footballers who just happen to come from one of several countries engaged in some kind conflict with the US. Cascade is taking no chances here. Nothing will go wrong on his watch. Certainly not some embarrassing hurl of a shoe or, worse again, some actual attempt on the Presidential person.

  I’m watching the same programme and rolling my eyes just like Schroeder. Roadblocks have been set up at all points of entry into the city and long pile-ups of tanks sprouting little tricolours are queuing on the hard shoulder along the inner ring. Search and clear operations are already underway in the most unlikely places and the biggest operation of all seems to be in Ranelagh, named for Lord Ranelagh, Paymaster General to the Forces, where one entire street has been emptied and truckloads of illegal weapons have been found – most of them planted, no doubt, by cuckolded apparatchiks and touts.

  There has been activity in Dún Laoghaire too and military vehicles are now clogging up the roads around the harbour and several restaurants, cafés and hookah houses have been closed down with officials citing “health reasons.” A barbershop has been raided in Glasthule in broad daylight and everybody in it, all Egyptians, have been deported and for no good reason. A mysterious hole has been dug in the middle of a hockey pitch in Blackrock and something similar has occurred in the grounds of the Russian Orthodox church. The final shot in the report is of a tank parked like a rearing horse right on the Glenageary Roundabout. The Glen of the Sheep.

  You OK up there? Schroeder shouts to the landing. No answer.

  He shoves a bottle of Chablis in the freezer for a rapid chill, settles himself on the sofa and speculates. Her eyes will be closed now, her hands clasped about her neck, her mouth half-open, her elbows pressing against herself to make little waterfalls of silver and blue. This is surely the luxurious prelude to one of those perfect nice-to-be-home sessions, fired perhaps by new lacy purchases from the boutiques of the P. C. Hooftstraat. And so he sniffs at his own breath as the shower drones off and wet feet stomp on the floorboards above. Drawers open and close. The sliding doors of the wardrobe whoosh and Schroeder imagines the rustle of paper bags and the brisk clipping of clips. She’s in front of the mirror, reddening her lips, teasing her hair, arranging herself for supreme effect. He leaps to the cupboard and downs a sneaky slug of Stoli. Neat. Anticipatory. From the neck.

  But when Francesca appears at the kitchen door she’s certainly not dressed for sex. She’s wearing an Irish soccer jersey, jeans and a pair of bedroom slippers designed as comic Friesian cows. Her face is grey and her hair drips like kelp as her mouth seems to prepare itself for some deadly announcement. He looks into her eyes. Like chocolate still but no lustre now and certainly no lust. No sign of anything other than business to be done and a grim mission to be accomplished. And just as her lips begin to form the words, Schroeder looks down at the two grinning Friesians and Maximillian retreats like a kicked dog.

  – Schroeder, we need to talk.

  Schroeder wheels away. He has witnessed such scenes in the movies and he knows how this one goes.

  – This is difficult, she says.

  Schroeder clutches a clump of hair on the crown of his head.

  – For you or for me?

  She takes a long slow breath.

  – I’m leaving. I’m sorry.

  Schroeder feels his mouth suck dry and he watches Francesca circle slightly as if to inspect the extent of the wound she has inflicted. Then she takes to the sofa and gazes up at the chandelier, tears now bleeding from the corners of her eyes and rolling into her ears. Inexplicably, Schroeder almost smiles.

  – What are you saying?

  Francesca sits up, hugs her knees and looks to the corner of the room as if to watch the blank television. Schroeder lashes a quadruple measure into a glass.

  – You mean you’re leaving leaving?

  – Yes.

  – Why? What the hell’s happened?

  – Nothing’s happened.

  – So who is it? Do I know him? Schroeder is disappointed by his lines.

  – Stop it, Schroeder.

  – I suppose he’s some tosser with his jumper stuffed into his trousers is he?

  A better line but useless all the same and Francesca rubs her throat with the back of her hands.

  – Don’t, Schro. Please.

  – You’re a dark fucking horse, Fran.

  – So it would seem.

  – Some wanker in PR is he?

  – If you must know he’s a chef.

  – A celebrity chef?

  – Just a chef.

  She’s lying. Schroeder knows it. And I know it too. I am so hopped up on Presbutex that I can spot falsehoods faster than a hawk can clock a viper in a Connemara bog.

  – So where did you meet him? The cook?

  – Chinatown.

  – So he’s a Chinaman?

  – No he’s not a Chinaman. He works in Chinatown.

  – Chinatown?

  – In Amsterdam.

  – Does he do Kung Fu?

  – Fuck off, Schroeder.

  – Cook you some sautéed bullfrog, did he? Or maybe some urinating shrimp?

  – What the fuck does that mean?

  – It’s a delicacy, Francesca. You like delicacies. Dog in a fucking clay pot perhaps?

  – He’s just a guy, Schroeder. No big deal. He’s just a guy.

  – Tell you what Francesca. Fuck it. Just go get your stuff.

  Now, I accept that this might seem like a strange development. That a character so recently introduced would simply arrive home from Schiphol in Chapter Nine and end a relationship without any signs in the previous chapters that such a twist was likely. But then this is precisely my difficulty in writing this. Real people such as Francesca and Schroeder do not behave in any way as required by editors, publishers and readers alike. Yes, I might well have attempted to invent reasons to justify such actions but that is not my purpose here and I have made this clear from the start. And in any case it is the fact of her leaving which is the crucial part. The reason itself is not, at this stage in the narrative, knowable. Or even imaginable. And so if the narrative is not what you, as a reader, might wish for in your fiction, then let me say again, repeating what I said at the very beginning, this is an honest and faithful record and I will not, for the sake of literary convention, make things up. I regret if scenes such as these are unsatis
fying, discombobulating or even fatal to your willingness to persist, but there it is. As I have said repeatedly, real people never behave as expected of them in books and therefore rarely succeed as characters. Indeed it’s entirely possible when the doings and sayings of real people are written down they are immediately rendered incredible. And so, all Francesca says is,

  – I’m leaving because I have to.

  Her exact words and Schroeder actually snorts.

  – You mean because you want to?

  – No. Because I have to.

  And then, with her lips seeming to curtsey slightly, Francesca gathers a few things and walks quietly beneath the skylight of number 28 and closes the door so gently behind her that Schroeder doesn’t even hear the click. But when the deep new silence eventually betrays her absence, Schroeder makes himself a large vodka and cranberry – frozen Stoli with clean shards of ice-cap just to sharpen the kick. But when the drink loses its poke he makes another, a bigger one this time, and without the cranberry. There are many more to follow and later, in the swimming twilight, the shock of Francesca’s leaving hits him like a mountainside of falling rocks.

  Then he mails Walton to break the news. The reply is immediate. (Walton is also plastered and here I have corrected the spelling for them both.)

  – want the loan of something?

  – the loan of what?

  – virtual sex with the stars?

  – are you kidding me?

  – it’ll take your mind off the middle east.

  – no. thank you all the same.

  – it’s interactive.

  – i don’t care.

  – are you OK?

  – grand.

  – there’s this english actress the dead spit of Fran. just won an award for best performer in a group scene.

  – fuck off.

  – she’s the head of her. just trying to help.

  – and again. fuck off.

  Schroeder stays up all night, listening to music, flicking through books and watching his Paula newsflash stash, and when morning comes he rearranges his furniture with extraordinary energy. Then he showers and sleeps, his stomach full of enough mood adjusters to keep him fuelled for a fortnight. When he awakes mid-afternoon, ravenous for spicy soup, there’s nothing but throbbing confrontation on his mind. Beyond his curtains he senses a multitude of challenges and delights, threats and opportunities, all lurking in the streets of Baile Átha Cliath. And he knows exactly what he must do. He must place himself at the very heart of it. Headbutt the psycho, eyeball the Gorgon and pin down the vamp. He must put himself directly in harm’s way. Stride long and hard into Dublin City and take it all on with fearlessness and verve. He can do what he likes now. Within reason and without. It’s either that or lie in bed for a fortnight and cry like a toddler. And so he eats his drugs, drains a tin of soup and exits. I wish I could steady him but I dare not intervene. And here things take a turn.

  TEN

  WESTMORELAND STREET, named for John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the military is evicting skeletal squatters from derelict buildings. The whole place is bottlenecked by rubberneckers hoping for a bloodbath but Schroeder stays well out of it, lurking among the market stalls, sipping a silty Turkish coffee that could kill a horse but which, due to the magnitude of his hangover, is having little effect. Some explosive fission seems to be at work deep within his ribcage and with each new Francesca flashback, Schroeder fears for his heart. Palpato. Palpatas. Palpatat.

  I survey the scene. Ratboys sprout from street lamps, spreading sputum and skin disease as they goad the soldiers and jeer at the miserable wrecks being dragged out onto the street. Such cruel, graceless little shits with their forelocks of grease and I can just imagine Schroeder on a rooftop, settling into a sniper’s pose and picking them off one by one – dropping them from the streetlamps, on their heads, on their backs, on their Ratboy arses. Unregistered for generations, not one of them would be missed. The great unchecked. As pervasive as pigeons. St. Columb’s Columbiformes. The squabs of Columba livia. Up the Doves!

  Schroeder is just about to move off (in search of Paula Viola no doubt) when a girl with red shoulder-length hair sweeps by on an old-fashioned bicycle, her appearance entirely a throwback, her clothes as noir as the bike and a black beret suggesting either a pallbearer from the last century or a smoking chanteuse from his lost Parisienne dreams. The crimson lips suggest more Paris than Provo and Schroeder immediately savours the charge of the entire package – that big black Triumph gliding along the Dublin streets. A woman of style. A woman of confidence. A woman who makes love only on Louis XIV furniture, red velvet always and enriched with galloon in the Galeries des Glaces. And so with Ms Maldini temporarily forgotten and Ms Viola casually postponed, Schroeder names her Chantal. I have never seen her before and this is an instant worry.

  She stops a little further up the street and Schroeder is rendered bloodless as she dismounts and the grey of the shabby thoroughfare is lit by a band of cabaret flesh. He flings his coffee from him and follows, agreeing enthusiastically with himself that such a spectacular stereotype is no more than he deserves. She stalls, turns and yes, she gives him a look – a look, he is almost certain, suggestive of many erotic adventures ahead. But as he begins to catch up, she moves off again, directing her bicycle towards the old Palace Bar, now a strip club called Wilde’s, famous for its slogan “Forty-Nine Gorgeous Girls and One Wagon.” Schroeder calculates quickly, and with growing euphoria, that the bicycle girl must surely be one of the gorgeous ones. She’s certainly dressed for it and why else would she step even a short distance into Temple Bar, an area of such threat and decay, the grass now growing on the streets as it does in the deep American South.

  The Temple Bar zone, named for Sir William Temple, Provost of Trinity, was once considered Dublin’s entertainment district but, in reality, it was never more than a sinkful of slop, the markings of drunks ascending the walls in jagged graphs of piss. Spit hung on the windows, blood rose in the drains and dried up pizzas of puke spread themselves all over the pavements. When they finally closed the place down, it rotted so rapidly that now there’s nowhere in the entire metropolitan area which festers with quite so much danger and disease. The old ruined clubs and bars are now mostly crack houses and the one gang-run saloon that remains open in Meeting House Square specializes only in cheap booze and handguns. Nobody goes near it unless they want to kill somebody, or else have no strong objections to being killed themselves. In short, the place is lethal – murders, beatings, knifings and knee-cappings. Only recently, a gang nailed a teenager to a door and then dragged other teenagers off Dame Street, named for the Church of St. Mary del Dam, to witness the boy’s agony. The military eventually came to free him with morphine and a clawhammer and it didn’t even make the news.

  And yet she turns right, wheels her bicycle right past Wilde’s and walks directly into the actual pit itself. Schroeder finds it quite impossible not to follow and he slips a pill from the plectrum pocket of his jeans and crunches down hard, wondering what the Branch would make of him now, undertaking such a perilous diversion. But he has detected just a hint of sexual invitation and it’s more than enough for any man for whom things have not been going well in life or in love. A man in such circumstances will chance anything for fantasies fulfilled. And so he follows. Right into Fleet Street, named for a street in London, itself named for a subterranean river audible still in Clerkenwell.

  Almost immediately Schroeder senses the junkies skulking in the windowless shells but Chantal leads on and he follows, stalked in turn by a rum scatter of feral cats. The stink gets worse and glancing into the rancid tunnel of Merchant’s Arch he sees an enormous greyhound nose at a corpse. A bus driver by the looks of it. But Chantal’s heels are click, click, clicking. And the bicycle is tick, tick, ticking and its broad saddle is all burnished and smooth and Schroeder follows on. Ahead of him his quarry is all flank and rump, suggesting to Schroeder the African
plains and a haunchy antelope to be taken down by the last of the big cats. Carnal really is the word for it. Of the flesh.

  Schroeder has never once followed Paula Viola in this way. In fact he has never actually followed her as such. With her it’s more a case of his being in the places she is likely to be – which is not quite the same thing. He is not, after all, some class of stalker. He has never once spoken to her or approached her in any way. Even that day in Brown Thomas. Schroeder, let it be known, is no precision pervert with a checklist of fetishes. Nor has he ever been the lonely voyeur or the sad collector of intimate memorabilia, half sickened, half bored. Any suggestion of same would be to do him a great disservice. In my view. And yet here he is following this voluptuous aisling into danger and dare. And in hopes of what exactly? Carnivore. Carnival. Carnations in a bucket. Carnations the colour of flesh. I am very concerned.

  Turn back, Schroeder. Turn back.

  But of course he cannot hear and of course I cannot quite see as the cats scatter like marbles and a half-naked man emerges from a doorway. He is yellow-skinned and toothless and seems no more than a spectre but when Schroeder catches the glint of a hypo, his brain is attacked by a high-pitched tone which he takes to be the very sound of his own fear. Fear in the small of his back. Instinctively he goes for a bluff, reaching for an imaginary weapon, groping in his jacket as if he’s packing something confident. Don’t even think about it, bud. The man’s eyes move to the commotion in Schroeder’s pocket and, without any change in expression, he simply fades away again, taking the hypo with him. Schroeder walks on and the cats circle once more. Christ Schroeder, I’m thinking, get out of there. You will die here. And your death will not be a happy one.

  Chantal is now walking across open space, avoiding the remains of last night’s fires and taking a sharp left towards Dame Street. Schroeder follows, giddy now like a cartoon man in a trance as she enters a laneway which will eventually emerge onto World Bank Plaza at the most shabby corner of the four. She stops halfway up and Schroeder waits as she chains her bicycle to a lamp post all hung with surveillance cameras before entering an internet hub called the Big Star. Illegal. An unapproved venue for sure. Anyone even attempting anonymity these days is considered an obvious risk to the State and raids on these places tend to be brutal. And so Schroeder, not quite knowing what to do next, sits beside two Japanese Goths on a massive concrete boulder and considers his options.