Europa (20 page)

The great Mister Jeremiah Marlowe, said Georg approaching. Georg wears a trilby out of doors, though he is not balding as I am. The coming political man, he said, drawing us under the awning of a bar. I said Vikram had taken it well, being voted out, and Plaster-cast-tottie, detaching herself a little, but not entirely, said how sorry she was for Vikram because he was such a comic and 'simpatic
'
 person, and you could see he cared, she said, but hadn't wanted to show it, Georg shrugged his shoulders. Griffiths is a maverick, he said. Then he began to ask if I genuinely felt I was up to making the presentation of our case, because if not, there was a written speech which he and
she
and Dimitra had prepared for whoever had to make the presentation, detailing the exact nature of our grievance and in particular the legal justification for our claim both to permanent contracts of employment and to salaries equivalent to that of an associate professor, albeit at the most junior level, i.e. two-and-a-half million lire a month after tax. The whole thing was a question, Georg said - and this was absolutely crucial — of 
comparison within the relevant framework
. And while he began to explain then, very seriously, that the point was that all comparisons had to be made within
the reality that was Italy
, rather than allowing myself to be drawn, should there be any open discussion, perhaps with the press, into comparison with legal systems outside Italy, which tended to be less favourable to employees in general and University employees in particular (since European law stated that we should have equal rights
within the system of the country we lived in
, rather than generally across the Community) — while he explained all this carefully and usefully, I found myself recalling, as Plottie gave my hand a squeeze, for the coach had arrived now and people were trooping towards it, I found myself remembering how
she
had once made a comparison which was supposed to be favourable to myself. In response to my continued anguish at her betrayal, she remarked that he, and she meant Georg (though she has never to this day admitted it was Georg), had not been
alla sua altezza a letto
, not
at her level in bed
, as I on the contrary was. She laughed, she was naked, we had made love. She said - no, she sighed - He wasn't really at my level in bed, you know. The way you are. This was perhaps a week or two after the phone-call when she talked about the ammonia spray She sighed again: In the end, we only made love two or three times, she said. And the fascinating thing here was how she imagined this comparison would cheer me up, offering as it did, as she doubtless saw it, a convincing reason for her decision to come back to me, particularly after I had done the honest thing now and left my wife, she said. Whereas what struck me was the subtext that, had Georg proved to be
at her level in bed
, then perhaps she would have stayed with him. Love does not, or should not fall within the realm of comparison, I thought, walking through blown rain across the central square in Strasbourg towards our big modern coach with the pally Plottie to one side and sensible Georg to the other, the latter properly concerned about the source of income that allows him to support the chronically sick mother of his child. Love should lie outside the world of analogical procedure, of comparisons within the relevant framework and discrete units of measure, I thought, climbing on to the coach in a press of girls giggling and singing and with the distinct feeling that Plottie was seeking to appropriate me and was being remarkably straightforward about it. Though of course, I thought, climbing the steps, looked at from another point of view, one is always seeking comfort in comparison. One is always saying to oneself, At least you're not so badly off as so and so, at least you haven't had such an empty life as so and so, or suffered so much as so and so, this person you read about and that person you knew. Or one even catches oneself comparing the bodies of casual lovers with
her
body and saying, This arse is better and younger and fresher than
hers
, this skin is smoother and softer and sweeter than
hers
. One believes, I tell myself here in the hotel room gazing at those clasping Picasso lovers, who would perhaps have looked well against the anodyne facade of a floodlit cathedral, one believes one desires uniqueness, yet one seeks comfort in comparison. One constantly, obsessively, compares one's own story with everybody else's, until, not finding quite the like, one realizes that one's banality lies precisely in uniqueness.

In the crush of the coach,
she
called, Sit here a moment, Jerry, so we can go over tomorrow.

There were Dimitra and Luis in the seat in front, Vikram Griffiths with Heike the Dike behind and the wet dog wagging his wet tail in the passageway At which it flashed across my brain, quite inappropriately, undecided whether I should sit with
her
or not, that I dislike dogs intensely. And particularly wet dogs. I dislike the easy affection people have for dogs, which costs nothing and can never be betrayed. The animal was frantic for some reason, leaping up to paw Vikram and slapping its wet tail in the passageway. I hesitated. People thrust their dogs upon you, I thought in the crush of the coach, undecided whether to sit next to her or not, expecting you to show affection for the creatures, merely because they are dogs, when the truth is you feel no affection for them at all, only a profound sense of irritation, expecting you to respect themselves, the owners, for the relationship they have with their pets, the sacrifices they make on behalf of these representatives of a now vanquished Nature, when you feel nothing of the kind, only dismay that people should find such relationships necessary. All the girls were laughing as the dog pranced. Hey up, Vikram called. He rubbed the creature's nose against his own, so stuffed with catarrh. And suddenly I was aware of a great loathing for dogs, as if they and all they stood for were entirely responsible for my inability to decide whether to sit myself down beside my ex-mistress or not. 1 was furious. We should go over what you have to say tomorrow, she said. The creature slapped its wet tail repeatedly against my leg. There are some important political decisions. Plottie came back along the corridor and tugged at my sleeve. Her smile was warm. Clearly the girl believes she has established some kind of intimacy or complicity with me, I thought, whereas Nicoletta, towards whom 1 thought 1 might have felt something, has disappeared. Where was Nicoletta? 1 should sit next to Nicoletta. And somehow that decided me and 1 sat down next to
her
, without so much as exchanging a glance with Plottie, entirely spurning the girl and her generously open advance.

Ah, the polis! I said facetiously as I sat down, and immediately I was trying to jog
her
memory again, as 1 had tried and failed to jog her memory with Benjamin Constant, tried and failed to jog her memory earlier in the day with Thucydides. A protagonist in the polis at last, I repeated. Thinking óf Aristotle. Thinking of
her
. The dog barked. Of the Pensione Porta Genova. But from in front, her face poking between two head-rests, Dimitra said, The police? Where? She seemed anxious. I would have laughed, but nobody else had seen the joke. For everybody had begun to advise me. I was sitting on the fourth or fifth seat from the front on the left-hand side of a powerful modern coach negotiating the ancient centre of floodlit Strasbourg and I was being advised by five or. six people at once: the Petitions Committee at eleven o'clock, the lunch with the London
Times
, the meeting of Euro MPs, the different approaches required for each, the importance of getting and keeping all the students there to show we had support, the importance of seeming seriously professional. The wet Dafydd now on his lap, Vikram said, With the Italian Euro-MPs you have to stress there's no way out for the bastards in the
Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione
. The legal point we should stress, the Avvocato Malerba said, a little breathless from his exertions, is that the only employees in the Italian state education system who do not have permanent contracts are yourselves, foreigners. This is clearly a case of discrimination.
She
said: The purpose of the Petitions Committee is to set in motion the necessary machinery to right all wrongs presented to it within the Community. That was fair enough. But when she went on to say that as such -and since the president of the commission was French I might usefully remark on this - as such the organization was inevitably founded on the same principles that had guided the French Revolution, and indeed the whole formation of Europe over the last two centuries, to wit,
liberté, égalité, fraternité
- when she said this, my mind froze. You are sitting, I told myself, next to the woman who took you to the furthest extremes of erotic pleasure, the woman with whom you imagined you were sharing serious philosophical conversations in a
pensione
in the Navigli where trams screeched on soft spring afternoons, the woman whom you described, criminally, to your wife, as the only woman to have made you truly happy. You are seated next to her and she is wearing her black chiffon dress, short above black-stockinged knees, which she often wore in those days, to please you, and she is repeating, in your presence, perhaps hoping to impress the Avvocato Malerba, who does not seem immune to female charms, the same banal reflections she has forgotten she once expressed to you on the second floor of the Pensione Porta Genova, and again quite probably on the fourth floor of the Hotel Racine in Rheims, where we did everything and promised everything in an intensity never to be recovered or repeated.
Fraternité
, she was repeating now from three years before, is just an older formulation of the modern ideal of
solidarite
. This is the woman you are sitting next to, I told myself. And I thought how fortunate it was that I was surrounded now by six or seven other colleagues and that Dimitra was once again discussing the question of the
spy
(convinced now that it must be someone from the ever-diffident German department), and in short how lucky I was that there was no danger at all of my suddenly trying to beat some sense into life, to recover some meaning by pounding her chiffon dress with my fists. This is the part she acts, 1 thought, as she went on to say that a proper presentation of our case within a historical perspective could only help. She acts a part. With everybody. How she laughed when I told her Plato wanted people who acted parts to be banned from his Republic. Georg wasn't at her level in bed, she said. She only did it two or three times, out of
vraie sympathie
. I should never have told my wife, never never have said such terrible, destructive words to a woman I had lived with eighteen years. The last piece in a mosaic of friendship, she said. Because he phoned so much and sent flowers. Above all I should never have said I found the smell of her body repulsive. However true it is. And then the business with
the mother of his child
. The mother of his child was so ill, poor thing, and he so heroic to stay with her. How could I care so much
about a fuck or two
, she said. How infantile of me! There was a way in which the English were still barbarians, she said. Why do I care what books my daughter has been reading? No wonder they had trouble with Europe. They lacked the subtlety Catholic cultures had. They lacked the flexibility. Unless Suzanne really is
her
lover? The spirit of compromise, she said. Of
negotiable identity
. It was an expression she had found in a book on psychoanalysis in the period when she was convinced an analyst could save me. People still talk about salvation. Though not my wife. My wife knew from the moment I opened my mouth that there was nothing to salvage. She who had spent all her life pretending old things were new. Your eyes are glazing, I told myself in the coach, speeding out to the suburbs. You are losing your grip. You are no longer following the excellent arguments being deployed by your excellent colleagues with a view to protecting the excellent job you cannot bear. Analysis could save you, she said. It could save
us!
 My wife never talked about saving anything. Give her that credit. This was in the days
she
implored me to go back to her, the days she seemed happy to be slapped about, if it helped me to get over it, she said. Ishould see an analyst. But my wife knew when something had been blown to smithereens. And once
she
said very earnestly: They weren't just
mots sur l'oreiller
, Jerry, the things I said to you, not just
frasi di letto
, pillow talk. I really meant them. But I was appalled, and I was appalled again now in the coach, eighteen months on, to think that there was, there existed, a set and accepted expression in French -
mots sur l'oreiller -
and again a similar expression in Italian
-frasi di letto
- and that she knew these expressions and used them, and that she distinguished, so readily, between the times she meant the things she said in bed and the times she did not mean them. This was Catholic subtlety. They weren't just
frasi di letto
Jerry, she said, and doing so she managed to transform everything she had ever said to me into a
frase di letto
, and I hit her. Perhaps that was the night I finally hit her too hard. The night of the second trip to a second hospital. You are losing your grip, I told myself, sitting in the fourth seat from the front on the left-hand side of this powerful coach now shuddering over at a suburban traffic-light, all the panels trembling. The night of the story about the bicycle accident. The last night. How could you have lain in your bed and told your wife everything? Everything we did. Has
she
used her
frasi di letto
with your daughter? Has your daughter replied with expressions from
Black Spells Magic?
Your eyes are filling with tears, I told myself. You are on the edge of making a major spectacle of yourself. Lick me inside out, baby, the lead singer says to the record producer's wife. You have not a single sound cell in your brain. Just one more moment of this, I thought. One imagines a dog's tongue. Just one more moment. Then Colin leaned over to me from across the aisle, Don't know about yours, he whispered, but my evening's soubriquet is Tittie-tottie. Keeps letting me take a dekko down the Grand Canyon, He meant Monica, And four seats further back Barnaby struck up on his tin whistle.
Whisky in the Jar
. Daffy-dog licking his chin,Vikram began to sing: the Kilkenny Mountains; Captain Farrel;
mushereen m'doran da'
 And he shouted: Who's for the nearest bar as soon as we're back? The girls roared, Barnaby played his tin whistle,
But the devil's in the women, sure they never can be easy, mushereen m'doran da'. To
everybody's delight the dog yowled. Get a grip, I told myself. People were shaking with laughter. No facts, I told myself, only interpretations. The dog yowled again. As if he understood, Vikram clapped. And in the hubbub
she
leaned over and said, with
vraie sympathie
, whispering in my ear, Are you okay, Jerry? I said yes. I laughed. Just feeling my age, I said. Forty-three isn't the end of the world, she told me.