Читать книгу Narcissus - Paul Sandmann - Страница 11

Tristan cursed as the fifth taxi in a row went roaring past, sending a wave of muddy water on to the pavement. On top of this, the rain was lashing down on him. Snorting with rage, he drew the collar of his overcoat closer round him, shut his eyes tight to keep out the acid rain, and continued on his way to Goodge Street tube station. The sky over London was dull and leaden. A bird flew fast through the cold wet wind, while the rhythmic sound of his leather-soled shoes on the pavement beneath him was drowned out by the hammering of the torrential rain. Why had he insisted on stretching his legs like this instead of sharing a taxi with Marcus?

His friend had drawn the right conclusions from the sudden change in the light conditions, as the brightness had faded to a dark grey and the alley, which seemed to stretch out endlessly in front of Tristan, was beginning to flood. The water dripped down from his long hair into his neck, and he looked in disgust at the rivulets of dirty water running between the pavings. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally reached the entrance to the underground station. He stamped several times on the ground, so as to shake off the rainwater from the leather and cork of the soles of his shoes, then took his mobile out of his overcoat pocket together with the business card on which Isabella had noted down her number the day before. He wiped a wet strand of hair from his face, leaned against the cold wall and waited for her to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hello Isabella. I got caught in a shower of rain and wanted to ring you before your number was washed away.” She must have known he was smiling from the way he spoke. “I’ve just finished brunch and I’m on my way home. And I wondered if you would care to accompany me to the opera tonight.”

“To the opera?” She sounded surprised.

“Yes,” he laughed, “I’ve got a spare ticket and I’d be delighted if you would do me the honour.”

There was a silence. Tristan furrowed his brow. He looked at the light-coloured tiles lining the walls of the tube station and called to mind the delightful image of Isabella in her red dress the previous evening. He went on: “It’s ‘La Traviata’ tonight, the world’s best-known opera. Please don’t say anything ... or ... wait.” He smiled again, “Just say: I’ll come with you!”

He heard her laughing, then – at last – she said: “I’ll come with you.”

Tristan made a triumphant gesture and then, before she could change her mind, quickly said: “Fantastic! I’m so glad. Just tell me where I can pick you up. Shall we say – half past seven, okay?”

“Yes,” she replied slowly and gave him her address. Tristan closed his eyes and committed the street name to memory, before saying goodbye and quickly storing her address in his phone. As he put the mobile back in his inner pocket he was surprised at himself, for he felt his heart thumping. He shook his head, smoothed down his wet hair with both hands and set off to find his tube line. On the steps he noticed that his train had just entered the station. A man jostled him as Tristan rushed to get to the doors before they shut. A woman noticed him running and stopped the train from leaving.

“My second stroke of luck today,” he said, happily, and looked at her as he passed her and got into the train. The door shut behind him, and he saw the happy smile on the face of the woman turn first to surprise and then, as the train departed, to disappointment. The woman looked as though she wanted to say something. Then she disappeared. She wasn’t exactly pretty, thought Tristan to himself, and sat down in a vacant seat by the window.

Through the window he watched the unbroken expanse of shadowy tiled walls race past.

The two women from last week appeared to his inward eye ... Marie and Sam. They writhed naked in front of the concrete pillars of the London underground as they rhythmically flashed past. Love was always fascinating, stunning, bewitching, he thought.

But what if only the women felt it?

Involuntarily, he began to ponder the ideas he used to have about love when he was a small boy. Today these ideas seemed like something handed down from an age long past, perhaps that of Goethe or possibly even Shakespeare. Is it the same feeling that spans the globe today when we speak of love?

A faint smile stole across his features, as the man sitting next to him started to eye him suspiciously. But Tristan took no notice of him. It seems to have got easier, he thought to himself. If I find a woman attractive, I take her – simple as that. The romance seems to have completely evaporated. It seems as though women expect less today – even less than they did in bygone days. He thought back to his childish ideas of perfect love and smiled once again. Once upon a time the air had been heavy with an atmosphere of romance. The man had to pay court, struggle, if necessary make himself a laughing stock, to win the heart of the object of his desire. Spurred on as he was by her exacting demands, and inspired by his own previous achievements, she set his pulse racing and stirred his emotions, Nothing could diminish his ambition, unless he was of a melancholy disposition and was inclined to give up hope when nothing seemed to be happening.

This man of an earlier age sang, danced and fought for his heart’s dream. And all this was simply taken for granted by the lady. What was more, she urged him on to greater efforts by rationing the delights she graciously bestowed, making them even more precious. Every flutter of her eyelashes was like a promise; every personal word carried weight. The distance she created made the man idolize the woman. Made her into a higher being. The flame of love that had been kindled within him and which was fanned by one gift after another, had the power either to give new life or to kill. If, after much devoted effort on your part she was graciously pleased to respond, you were ennobled by this woman. She was not a trophy but the greatest conceivable victory, achieved after hundreds of battles. Winning her was the consummation of your self-image and pride in your own abilities. This victory could energize your whole life; it could make a nobody a special somebody, radiating success. Somebody like Marcus. Unfortunately, however, Marcus had evidently forgotten what his wife had made him.

Nevertheless, said Tristan to himself, this kind of love could also kill. If you fought for a dream which, though not impossible, proved, in the event, to be unattainable, a dream in which the woman had been elevated to the status of a saviour of your own soul, and in which nothing other than she was worth anything, then this love could kill. If she was the sun around which every thought revolved – and if the man, in all that he did, became besotted with his goal and completely lost sight of possible consequences – consequences that were no part of the dream – and if she scorned him so that his love was ultimately unrequited, his life would cease to have any meaning. The man would have allowed the image of this woman to drive out everything else in his heart, indeed, to annihilate it. Instead of being blessed with the lady’s favour and basking in the glory of the victorious knight, the man would have become a tragic figure, a fool, the object of the mockery and ridicule of an unfeeling world.

What, then, has become of this love? What has become of the air redolent with music, where looks of devotion were exchanged and the man’s song found a response in a woman’s eyes and in her heart? Where one hand invited the other to dance, and Sinatra was still understood, rather than merely listened to because it was considered cool?

The filthy concrete walls flitted past Tristan’s window like framed transparencies of sentiments he had thought to be long since forgotten, but which now came back to him in vivid new colours. New questions arose within him: Could it be the failure of their parents’ marriages that causes the children to have doubts about the idea of love? They have security, but must this come at the price of waiting and of romance? Perhaps this generation of “parentless” children have lost touch with this dream. This is probably why they content themselves with the left-over scraps of love, fill their stomachs with them and fail to notice that this kind of food is tasteless. Probably they’re no longer accustomed to love, or they never had it, or the memory of it has long since faded. These children, full of fear and deprived of love in their life, grasp the nearest hand held out to them, without real emotional involvement. They take the hand – because it promises that they will never be alone again.

His right eyelid started to twitch nervously. These thoughts threatened to turn against him, but Tristan succeeded in pushing them away. In his eyes he was different and was only waiting for the right girl. He was passing the time with the wrong ones until such time as he found her. He would not let any of them linger too long with him for fear of missing the right one.

Warily, he directed his thoughts back to the world and his criticism of it.

What a wretched game is being played out in the world! If you take a fancy to a woman, you take her, without attaching any significance to what is going on between you. If you fail to devote time to the relationship or give it due respect, it ceases to have any meaning. You just take the woman for yourself, and gorge yourself on the beauty of the outer shell. Then when you are finally sated, your interest wanes. It goes as quickly as it came.

Why did interest fade so quickly these days? He didn’t know.

Tristan sighed, and the passenger opposite stood up to leave the train at the next stop. The man looked back at the young man sitting over there by the window, soaked to the skin, lost to the world and preoccupied with his own thoughts.

Tristan was convinced that what was missing was the courting. If the woman takes the time to get the man interested in her inner being, to make him understand that this – veiled – represents the real gift, then, and only then, she can say to him: “Arise, Sir Knight!” Now he can rediscover his full potential, wrestle his way to new boundaries, and value what he is fighting for. Only now is the true gift of love granted to them both. That which makes them better people: the idea. The idea of love. Once you have received this absolutely essential gift – the gift of a lifetime – everything else is child’s play. Inspired and animated by the love of your life, all the rest seems quite simple.

Tristan felt sick. Beer and schnitzel did not seem to agree with him. He held his stomach and turned his gaze away from the window. He swallowed, so as not to have to vomit there and then. The person opposite had still not left the train. The door opened, but the man remained there for another second, his gaze calmly fixed on Tristan. Now, for the first time, Tristan deliberately looked at him. This man was dark-skinned and old. There were white strands here and there in his frizzy hair, which made him resemble a panther that had gone grey. He was a poor man, that was obvious. Tristan’s gaze focused on the eyes, which gleamed at him jet black and unfathomable. The skin of his face, on which the pores were clearly visible, was loose and wrinkled. Dry quivering lips protruded into the cheeks, trying, as it seemed, to tear them apart. White incisors shone out menacingly, startling Tristan. It was as if a cold hand had grasped his heart and was squeezing it. There was a deep silence between Tristan and the panther, heavy and cruel ... and it seemed to stifle Tristan’s heartbeat.

He took a deep breath of air, closed his eyes and heard the beating of his heart. Then he looked towards the door again. But there was no one there. He looked through the window, but the man was walking past as if nothing had happened. Tristan leaned back against the plastic of his seat and felt the nausea gradually abating. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply – in and out again. No one else in the compartment seemed to have noticed his brief dizzy spell. Even the woman next to him was calmly reading her paper as though nothing had happened. And, after all, nothing really had. Tristan looked out of the window again, but the slide show had finished. Only concrete and dirt could be seen as they sped past. The frame remained empty. At the next stop he stood up and got out. He quickened his pace, reached the exit of Southwark underground station and turned towards Blackfriars Road. He strolled along Paris Garden until he finally reached Upper Ground, near where he lived. It was chiefly business people and their families that resided in the twelve-storey building in which his apartment was located. Bankers did not live here, preferring areas like Chelsea, Redcliffe Gardens and Sloane Square. But Tristan liked it here. He loved the view of the Thames and the distance that he was able to put between himself and the other men in his line of work. As he went up in the lift, the floor of which was wet and dirty from those who had arrived home before him, his phone rang.

“George, it’s you,” said Tristan.

“Hi there, mate,” called George, whose voice already seemed slightly slurred, “I’m in the pub with Steve. He’s been telling me about the coup that our bank has pulled off...”

Tristan did not want to know. “Please, George, not now. It’s the weekend.”

“Okay, okay, let’s talk about something else. How was your evening yesterday? I heard that you and Marcus were out together.”

“Yes, I’m just back from brunching with him. Yesterday we had a few drinks in the Sky Lounge. In this weather you could probably go swimming there.”

“We were down at our favourite club,” said George, adding, in a high-pitched voice, “It was simply divine, old chap.” By this time Tristan had arrived at his floor and was opening the door of his apartment as George told him about the previous evening. Tristan switched on the light in his apartment. Oh my God! The smell of Sam’s perfume had still not dissipated. Tristan felt rather disgusted with perfume manufacturers who were incapable of making a product that would dissolve into air in half a day. Yes, their product should cover the woman’s skin for the whole day, but Tristan found it intolerable that the fragrance, however exquisite, should linger in the air for hours afterwards. Equally, he could not bear the thought that the taste of a woman’s scent could remain on a man’s tongue for such a long time. Perfume fragrances should evaporate, he thought to himself with some irritation, otherwise they’re no better than sweat.

He opened the door that led out to the terrace and enjoyed the fresh breeze of the early evening, breathing it in deeply. The rain had washed away London’s city dust and had now stopped. Tristan stood by the window for a few minutes and enjoyed the taste of a new night on his tongue.

“All right then, so much for our amazing evening,” said George by way of conclusion. “All four of us plan to meet up again tonight. The others are bringing a few girlfriends with them. Do you fancy joining us?”

“Some other time, George. I’ve already got a date for tonight. I’m going to the opera. But you could ask Marcus,” replied Tristan.

“Marcus? Has he finally got over his ex?”

“They’re still married, but you’d better ask him that yourself.”

“I’m not bothered! Those who marry too soon have only got themselves to blame,” was George’s rejoinder. “She’ll make him pay dearly for the divorce. I’ll ask the lads if we can take good old Marcus with us – I’ve got his number.”

“See you on Monday then,” said Tristan.

“Yes, see you on Monday,” replied George, and Tristan hung up.

For a few seconds more he contemplated the darkening face of his phone and tried to remember what George had told him previously. He found it amusing to witness him expressing his coarse humour in actual behaviour towards the opposite sex. But George’s account the next day bored him.

Every evening George, as befitted an Englishman, resorted to massive amounts of alcohol – whether it was bottles of champagne or glasses of sparkling ale – to help him relax after the stress of the job – and he was extremely good at his job. He was one of the best bankers that Tristan knew, bursting with energy, and was possessed of the right touch of caution when things got serious. When they went out it was always George that set the pace of the orders, and when the others began to ease off a bit he ordered more drinks, even when his companions were building up a backlog. He simply loved it when the alcohol befuddled his brain, that moment when it was only functioning at half its capacity. At the same time, one of his skills was crafting witty remarks, which could hit their target with greater precision the more inebriated he became. Frequently he was able to target his companions one after the other with ironic remarks, so that eventually they were all like butterflies pinned to the corkboard in front of him. Yet this didn’t stop the victims from sharing in the general hilarity right up to the final humiliating put-down.

Of course, George thought too highly of Tristan to include him in this sport. He secretly envied him for his good looks and knew very well that he would be so offended by any barbed comment that he would drop him like a foul smelling fish.

The high point of every such evening came when together they visited one of the many overpriced clubs where the only girls present were those who were pursuing their own agenda. Here it was George who took centre stage for the evening. No one could deny that this coarse-mannered banker did not exactly convey the impression that he was stinking rich. As the undisputed alpha male of the group, he had no hesitation in following up his act, which sparkled with brutal comedy, by making advances to any girls he fancied. They would let themselves be pampered but – later in the night – would pay for the VIP status accorded them with some of the most humiliating treatment a man can inflict on a woman. Tristan didn’t know what exactly George did with the two or three women that he would arbitrarily pick out and take home with him. All he knew was that as long as they were being spoilt and plied with champagne by George and thought they were the queens of the night up on the stage, they were really happy, laughing hysterically all the time. It was as if all the wishes and fantasies encouraged by the media had been fulfilled in one go.

But if Tristan chanced to see them in the street the next day, he almost felt sorry for them as they had such a hangdog appearance and couldn’t even look him in the eye. When questioned about it in the office, George had tried to put him in his place with one of his thoroughly malicious cracks. Tristan had refused to dignify it with a laugh. He didn’t find it funny and was not going to feign amusement. He never did get a proper answer – something that at times made Tristan uneasy, although he usually let it pass as George was such an entertaining companion.

Anyway, he felt that he had to actually be there with George on those evenings. The stories he told about what happened when Tristan was not present sounded meretricious and utterly uninteresting to anyone who, like him, lived for the moment.

At that point Tristan began to shiver. The wind across London had strengthened. So he turned around, shut the door behind him and found the room cleared of all memories of the previous night. He sighed with contentment, slipped off his jacket, which he locked away in his walk-in wardrobe, and began to undress. A bath would be just what he needed at that moment. Accordingly, he bent over the black metal monster that could fill his apartment with sound, and put on the only possible music for this evening.

Tristan turned up the volume for Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Almost immediately his whole body began to tremble. It was as if he was encountering a kindred spirit. Never before had he felt anything like this, but at this instant the feeling was very real. It ran through him like the eerie sensation of a long-awaited release, enveloped him and nearly caused him to stumble. He closed his eyes and smiled. A thousand violins burst into life, their strings screeching in wild career, yet forming only the vanguard of a fearsome chariot harnessed to snorting and frenzied steeds, whose every breath was like a thousand trumpets. Tristan lost himself in the growing turbulence of the moment, as the sound of the music swept him up to dizzy heights, untrammelled by the laws of gravity.

Then, when he thought himself at the zenith of his ride to the sun, and was about to turn towards it, all the other stars around him faded, and he saw only the deep blue of the cosmos spread out around him and his sun. It was at this moment of supreme ecstasy, when it seemed that the whole world was burdensome and mediocre and that nothing existed but himself and this moment of fraternal unity, that he opened his eyes. The trumpets and trombones blared and fell into dust about him, the drums made the air vibrate, and he was again struck with awe as his eyelids slowly lifted, revealing his dilated pupils. In that instant he was overcome by the most profound and terrible disappointment that could befall a man like him, who had no equal on earth. For amidst all this stirring music he saw only himself. Naked and beautiful he stood on the cold marble floor of his room, with nothing but the mirror image of his own body in front of him. He felt that he had been struck by the force of the dying sounds, which had smashed the wings that had just borne him aloft to meet his likeness and which now brought him to earth, angry and despairing, back to unutterable mediocrity. Back to the grasping tentacles of hideous creatures on the ground, lying deep in the morass of their own inadequacy and trying to drag him down. The music died away – and the stillness that filled the empty room was more than he could bear.

Tristan shivered. He stretched out his arm and supported himself against his own image, the face starting to blur from the sweat of his hands. The piece had finished and Tristan was gasping for air. Shaking his head, he looked down at himself and gained new confidence. Slowly, with each inch of perfect beauty that he beheld, it returned. The hideous creatures around him dissolved, and the charnel ground that he had sensed around him just before vanished into the void. He alone stood there, and what a picture he was: With every breath he drew himself up a little taller, until he stood facing himself, upright, thrusting out his chest. His dark hair hung in ringlets around his features. His lips were fuller than ever. Beneath them, his cleft chin cast a haughty shadow. Lost in thought, he knelt down once more to change the music, then went into the shower and finally began to enjoy the feel of water on his skin.