Europa (19 page)

I sat down, somewhat flushed still with the wine and my choking fit and my inflammatory memories, to find, on the table before me, pork and dumplings abandoned in a stagnant pool of thin broth, and immediately, without mental mediation, I cast the vote that tipped the balance five to four against Dimitra, the spy, whose fiercely powdered glare upon my raising my arm cheered me up, galvanized me, to the point where I was actually paying attention. And the person I paid attention to, of course, was
her
. Because this must be the moment, I thought, that
she
had been waiting for. Unfrocking Griffiths, I thought, with all he had drunk and the way he was behaving, winking at all the girls and putting arms round shoulders and talking about going on the razzle afterwards, trying to translate the notion of razzle for those who didn't understand, and using the sleeve of his tatty blue sweater to wipe the dumpling soup from his chin, had not, for all his apparent political astuteness, been too difficult. And the students understood in the end, despite their groans, despite their no doubt
vraie sympathie
for someone who not only was not quite white but was giving them a cheap meal into the bargain. They' were all from wholesome middle-class families in the end. They understood that Vikram Griffiths' kind of revolutionary behaviour would not impress a major international institution of the variety they themselves would one day like to work for. Why else were they studying for a degree in languages if not to work one day for
a major international institution?
So it is, I thought, sitting down at the table to discover from Plottie that Vikram Griffiths had already been voted out, six to two, in my absence, so it is that while one's sympathies lie in one direction one ends up choosing another, or accepting another, out of a sense of realism, by which of course we mean a sense of fear, a sense of obedience to laws we imagine greater than ourselves. As for example morality, or society, or history. So it is, I told myself, forking a dumpling into my mouth, that one stomachs more or less any mess one's nose is pushed into, in the name of history and common-sense and realism, until the day comes when something inside simply compels us to behave in the least realistic manner imaginable, compels us to fly in the face of all prudence, as when I said on that same narrow bed in Pensione Porta Genova:
I want to leave my wife for you
, or later still when, quite gratuitously, after years of caution and realism, but definitely operating under the strongest of compulsions, I told my wife everything that had happened and destroyed her world for her.

Getting rid of Vikram Griffiths had been easy. Then the hostility Dimitra aroused by speaking against the Indian Welshman, Dimitra of the brick-orange lipstick and solid Teutonic nose under Macedonian black eyes, had been sufficient to prevent her from being elected either. We had elected Dimitra as president of the union on two or three occasions now because on each of those occasions no one else would contemplate doing the job, except Vikram, who again was unacceptable since he would have proposed an indefinite strike more or less every time we had an assembly, and this was something that the German contingent in particular just could not deal with. But when it came to representing us to the powerful institutions of the European Community there were more than two candidates. For this was a brief appointment, and perhaps interesting, perhaps useful. So now it must be time, I imagined, for
her
to put herself forward. As she had no doubt always planned. Or for someone to do that for her.

Amidst the general chatter, having returned to my seat and cast my vote and filled my mouth with German dumpling, I watched her. She was looking across the table at Georg. And I thought, She is still in complicity with Georg. They only made love once or twice, she said. Out of friendliness (this around the time I said, I want to leave my wife for you). Yet she is still in complicity with him, in a way she could never be with me. And quite probably, I told myself, their names were indeed together on that list you so hastily and unwisely signed in the drab offices of the 
Istituto di Anglistica
that morning of three weeks ago. Their names were together, above and below each other no doubt, and written no doubt, for all I cannot rightly recall it, with the same pen. As far as this trip is concerned, they were already and always 
in complicity
. As two people who have briefly been lovers then use that intimacy as a bond, an alliance, a secret society, for all future mutual convenience. And one can't help wondering at the maturity, as
she
would say, of this, the good sense, the fact that there are people who know how to enjoy themselves without coming to grief, without intensity, those lovers who see each other occasionally, when convenience permits, and fuck each other
cordially
, perhaps with a little healthy back-massage to boot, and then are perfectly content if the opportunity doesn't present itself for weeks and even months. And one can't help wondering why you came on this trip, I tell myself now, if their names were together on that list, if they were already in complicity. Why did you come? Why did you insist on this mistake, when you had the perfect alibi of your daughter's eighteenth birthday party, now to take place in your much-censured absence? And the only idea that springs to mind is that you came on this trip, having seen their names together on that list,
to savour defeat once again
, to rediscover intensity. The defeat and intensity, for example, of finding that this trip is precisely one of those convenient occasions when
she
and Georg can get together and,
cordially
, fuck. Now, in this very hotel perhaps. At one in the morning. A few rooms down from your own. Who knows? As yellow headlights pass over some reproduced masturbatory ecstasy by Gustav Klimt. And I am reminded of the time she told me that she had bought an ammonia spray and was keeping it in her handbag. We were speaking on the phone, and she said, So don't say I didn't warn you, but then immediately began talking about the possibility of another night together. It was me who hung up.

Then Georg had indeed just begun to raise his even,
pacato
voice above the chatter, no doubt to propose
her
as our representative, this being part of a pre-arranged plan, when Barnaby Hilson, he of the experimental novels and traditional tin whistle, cut in. And this is what Barnaby said in his rather Irish Italian: that the important thing was for us
to remain united
. He fiddled with his cutlery as he spoke. That there must be no hostility between the representative and other key members of our union. He looked down at his fingers, disarmingly embarrassed. That we must work together to win our rights, with no suspicion that the person doing the representing was in any way acting in his personal interests. He looked up and smiled with impeccable mildness and cleanshaven good nature. He himself could be such a person, he admitted. He had never shown any ambition for power in the union, he said, and indeed was thinking of leaving the University in another year or two, as this was not, as most of us knew, his principal career, he remarked. His tone was apologetic, since the embarrassment, the endearing embarrassment, of superior beings upon their declaring their difference from the rest of us is only another way of foregrounding that superiority, of course. Also, he said - and now his shy wryness was illuminated with a youthful smile — also, an Irish person would never put the backs up the powers-that-be in the Community the way a German, a French, or above all a British representative might. Because Ireland, he said, still speaking in this amiable tone, was a weak member of the Community and a willing member and clearly represented the
oppressed 
rather than the oppressor on
the international world stage
, which was an important advantage, he said, again lowering his eyes to fiddling hands. Thus in the present circumstances, Barnaby Hilson said - and I noticed what exceedingly long and blond eyelashes he had - he was wiling, though only too aware of his limitations, to put himself forward as
a compromise candidate in what was rapidly becoming a delicate situation
.

Barnaby Hilson's modest self-candidature was immediately seconded by Doris Rohr, who had clearly enjoyed their animated
Dead Poets 
conversation, and again by Heike the Dike, who perhaps finds those long eyelashes attractively effeminate, and again by Luis, who, coming as he does from the Basque country, perhaps has a sentimental affinity for the evocative if limited music of dead if not decently buried minority cultures. A vote was thus proposed over what remained of the dumplings in broth and the ten jugs of very poor quality house wine, and there was a definite look of concern on
her
face now at seeing herself about to be pipped at the public post by this charming, experimental and above all Irish novelist, about to lose this role that she had no doubt hoped would lead her to important contacts with figures, preeminently male, in important institutional positions, men with whom she could perhaps profitably have discussed her essay on A 
Future Constitution for a United Europe
. The vote was thus about to be taken, doubtless in favour of our charming philosopher-king Irishman, who I do honestly believe would have made a presentable and conscientious representative, when, out of the complete silence I had maintained throughout, indeed had imposed on myself ever since putting the phone down on my daughter and hearing that the Avvocato Malerba preferred Spinoza to Nietzsche, I suddenly and for no reason I could imagine found myself quoting, in Italian, the same Benjamin Constant I had once read with such pleasure, between fucking and fellatio perhaps, in Pensione Porta Genova:
The mania of almost all men
, I said, leaning across the scrubbed
stube tisch
where two or three of Colin's tottie-directed baguette pellets had fallen into a pool of spilt wine and broth, while another stuck to the fur of Dafydd ap Gwilym, now furiously attacking his hind parts on the seat beside Heike the Dike,
is to appear greater than they are; the mania of all writers, Barnaby, is to appear as men of state
. Benjamin Constant, I added, feeling dazed as one who has blundered into stage lights, or a fly compelled to halogen,
De l'esprit de conquéte et de I'usurpation
.

Immediately I had finished speaking, Vikram roared with laughter. For Vikram Griffiths of course, despite his show of general bonhomie, despite his apparent couldn't-give-a-toss attitude to losing his representative role on a trip which is entirely his own inspiration, loathes Barnaby Hilson. Vikram Griffiths loathes Barnaby Hilson in part because Hilson usurps his, Vikram's, role of
charismatic figure from much-loved ethnic-minority culture
and in part because Hilson has a serious project in life and gets on with it, working hard in the mornings and pursuing an entirely stable and sensible private life with his rather older English wife, who is commendably jovial and practical, and their two small, doubtless delightful children, boy and girl. Vikram Griffiths, understandably, loathes Hilson, and now, quite probably in a fragile emotional state after having been voted out by his colleagues on this trip which was absolutely his own invention, and with a child-custody battle going on back in Italy with his first wife, a woman frequently obliged to seek psychiatric help, not to mention financial claims the second wife is making in their protracted and apparently extremely acrimonious separation proceedings, involving, amongst other things, the ownership of their ugly mongrel dog, he roared loudly with laughter, perhaps drunken laughter, and said,
Compagni!
I propose our English Jeremiah as a candidate! At least he can always quote the bastards someone they've never heard of! Upon which, immediately, without any mental mediation whatsoever, but rather as even a suicide might instinctively grasp at a rope thrown to him in swirling waters, I said okay, I would do it, if people wanted to vote for me. But I would need, I said -and how quickly one thinks when one doesn't try, when one is
possessed
by one's thoughts, rather than possessing - I would need somebody to advise me on what exactly I would have to say. I would need advice and help. From somebody who knew something about Europe. Surprisingly, Dimitra at once and enthusiastically seconded Vikram Griffiths' proposal, remarking that my Italian had a more official flavour to it than Barnaby's, plus I was quite a lot older, which might be useful, she said, in allaying the unfortunately widespread impression that foreign language lectors were, as in some other countries, or should be, mere graduate student teachers on a brief stage away from home. Then, after a moment's hesitation (the Avvocato Malerba being unexpectedly deep in conversation with' the tiny southern girl beside him),
she
spoke out to accept what had so obviously, I felt, been my invitation to her.
She
would advise me, she said. She had done a lot of research on the European issue, she said, speaking not to me, oddly enough, but across the table, to Georg perhaps, perhaps to Dimitra, as if to say, This is an okay solution, we can go with this. Then she was writing an essay, she said, on
A Possible Constitution for a United Europe
, and as far as our own case was concerned, she said, she knew all the pertinent decisions of the European Court of Justice and its exact area of competence. She would assist me in talking directly to people, if I liked. And I was voted in. Eight votes for and only one abstention. My own.

On the square outside the cathedral, the students danced. I can see them again now if I shut my eyes. This is the square where Michelet tells how Saint-Just chained Eulogius Schneider, ex-monk turned revolutionary, to the guillotine for having forced a girl to marry him, pain of death to her whole family. The coach was late. The rain had stopped. Laughing together, the girls began to sing on the wet flagstones in a flapping breeze with the great facade of the cathedral rigorously floodlit behind, and then to dance. They sang the same song the radio had played three or four times during the journey,
Sei un mito
- You're a myth - and they danced in damp anoraks. The dog was sniffing against wet walls. And gazing at the facade as these girls swayed and danced, full of enviable high spirits and with that lightness young women have when they move to music, gazing at the cathedral, as Colin joined in, beside Monica, and Doris Rohr in maroon trousers studied the cosmetics advertisements in luxury shop windows, I reflected, leaning against a post forbidding parking, that every major monument in Europe is now- cleaned and floodlit. Everything ancient and medieval, I thought, as the girls danced, some beautifully - and she was deep in conversation with Georg, by a window full of pipe tobaccos - has been appropriately sandblasted, cleaned and illuminated. It is impossible, I thought, hugging myself in the cheap coat with which I recently replaced the leather jacket
she
bought three years ago, even to imagine these stony martyrs being in the gloom now, impossible to imagine these angels and gargoyles in a dark wind or under moonlight. I should never have told my wife, I thought, as the dog. cocked a leg. Impossible to see them as part of our lives, our nightmares, potent in the gloom, sacred in darkness or starlight. I should never have opened my mouth like that and destroyed her life. Why did this thought come to me now? These monuments have been
neutralized by the light
, I thought, by the light and by carefully researched detergents. They have been made part of the modern city. They have been subtracted from us and made possible for us. I should never never have told my wife that the only person I had ever been truly happy with was
her
. Why on earth did I do that? Squares where people hanged and lynched and guillotined each other and, in general, committed all sorts of irremediable crimes, are now attractive areas of
floodlit public art
, I thought, emptied of their potency precisely by the zeal with which we have focused on them, cared for them, illuminated them, absorbed them into the on-off neon of our intermittent modern night, our world of time-switches and default settings and above all discrete units of measure - I should never have told ray wife that even the smell of her body repulsed me - where nothing is absolute, I thought, nothing is safe from division and subtraction and quantification, where no one sacred facade, or person, or vision looms supreme in the consciousness, singular or collective, but cars pass endlessly, lights stretch out endlessly, and above all at regular intervals, where you count your lovers, all
e
gales
, all
libres
, at regular intervals, each a discrete and equal unit, clasping and unclasping in endless reproduction under intermittent light, this world where Colin says, Orgasm achieved, all tottie is old tottie. How could I tell my wife that the only sex that mattered to me had been with
her?
 I should never have done that. I should never have beaten
her 
across the face. Napoleonic debacle or no. It was the end when you hit her, I told myself outside the floodlit cathedral, when you saw the blood at the corner of her mouth. New pastures, Colin says over the billiards table, new treasures in tottie-town. Onward. The girls are singing, Sei
un mito
. The dog shivers at the end of his pee. They are even holding hands in a circle, wonderful twenty-year-old Italian girls under yellow French street-light, the willowy Nicoletta, the pouty Veronica, the breathy, breathtaking Monica, all swaying together, all apparently unaware of one of the great cathedrals of Europe hugely floodlit behind them on a square where the guillotine once stood. Why on earth did I take that line on the phone with my daughter, as if her choice of reading material could possibly matter? Except that occasionally a girl stops and exclaims,
Che hello! Che bella piazza!
And now they want to draw their teachers in. Now they want to dance together as a group, with their
professori
, whose jobs they've come to save, as young women are always eager to save something or someone far beyond their power to save, singing a song together, something they have heard on the radio, to do with solidarity,
as a group
, and already Vikram Griffiths is clowning with them, a cigarette between his lips, and now
she
has joined them, with Luis, so pleased about the collapse of the Lira because he means to change all his savings in Barcelona into lire to buy a flat in out-of-town Milan. And watching these people dance, together, as a group, in this Cathedral square in the centre of Europe, in many ways a beautiful scene, in many ways a touching scene, I ask myself if I will ever be able to sandblast and floodlight
her
image in such a way as to turn it, like this cathedral, into an attractive decorative landmark in my mental landscape. Will my wife ever be able to do the same with me, with the man who so completely and carelessly destroyed her? The rain falls again. The Avvocato Malerba skips under an umbrella plucked by the wind. The girls are giggling. The dog barks at their heels. Will I ever be able to dance careless of the rain in front of her neutralized floodlit image, having accepted it as a central but perfectly manageable interior monument from a past one may as well remember for the good as the bad, the kind of once sacred place one might choose to visit occasionally, on high holidays perhaps, just to get a feel for how it was, how
I
was, but without any sense of obligation or compulsion? Will I ever be able to do that? Will I ever be able to read a book again? Will I ever be able to talk like old friends with my wife? Until it occurred to me, leaning against a post in suddenly heavy drizzle in the central square in Strasbourg staring at the white light over white sandblasted Gothic figures, as young Plaster-cast-tottie, unable to dance, hobbled up and stood beside me and - after the bold hand on the knee under the
stube tisch
just a few minutes ago - now took my arm and actually leaned against me, as if in need of support - it occurred to me, smelling a perfume so sweet as to be sickly, that perhaps the time has come to start using
her
name. Perhaps I came on this trip to start using her name. Perhaps I got myself elected union representative to the European Petitions Committee to put myself in a position of inevitable attrition, to be obliged to speak with her, to work with her, to start the sandblasting.