‘Stiiiiiv!’ Come and see how much money I’ve won!’ and more applause.
He took a few steps towards the chemin de fer tables.
Cary Grant. Really him.
And Alfred Hitchcock.
And the blonde from Rear Window.
Sitting down, surrounded by his court of whores and lackeys, that fucking oriental midget.
And standing up, fists raised above his head in a gesture of jubilation, Shithead. In front of him a mountain of fiches.
‘Look at this, Stiv! I’ve won a pile of money! The Chinaman has given up, and Winston Churchill wants me in his film!’
Winston Churchill? What the fuck?
‘What do you make of the Italian, Jo?’
‘I don’t know. He’s got balls, I’ll say that. We’ll see.’
‘What are you thinking about’
‘I’m feeling a little sad, Toni. It happens to me when I see fireworks. Look how magnificent they are, over the sea.’
‘I like them too, cough! Cough! Cough! Up they fly, no one can stop them, then they explode and fill the sky with colour, and everyone looks at them. A beautiful way to go: flying and colouring the sky. You know what, Jo?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want to die of tuberculosis.’
‘What are you on about? You just need a bit of rest.’
‘Rest? Rest your arse. But do you think I can be fooled like that? I’ve hardly got any lungs left, my mouth is always full of blood. The illness is consuming me, and I don’t want to die like this. I want to die in action.’
‘In action?’
‘Yes, Christ alive, in action. Against the flics, against the darkies, against the Marseillais or the Italians, against whoever, what does it matter? But I want to die like a fucking firework, pal. I didn’t choose this way of life to go out like a light, I didn’t spend years in prison to die like a wanker.’
‘You want to die like Jean Fraiger? Attack a police station, throw yourself against a wall of cops, all by yourself?’
‘Christ, Jean Fraiger! Cough! Cough! That was one hell of a robber with guts. Haven’t heard that story in a long time. When would it have been, ’49?’
‘That’s right, he burst into a police station all by himself and opened fire on the cops, shouting “Shoot at my cock!” And they did, they shot at his cock two or three times.’
‘Why the hell did he do that?’
‘It’s a long and complicated story, something to do with a woman.
I was told the story in the minutest detail, but I’ve forgotten it. In short, Toni, do you want to be shot in the cock like Fraiger?’
‘Hmm, not in the cock, no! But I do want to die like a firework.
That sense of déjà vu. That thought that you hadn’t quite grasped. Frances. Frances Stevens. The character played by Grace. A blonde called Frances. Frances Farmer. The ghost that torments you and Archie. Your friend Clifford. Joe McCarthy. The Cold War. A mission. Your mother. Your mother in the mental hospital. Frances Farmer in the mental hospital. Bristol. Passing through Bristol. Straight to Yugoslavia. Tito. The island. The shooting match. The world has gone mad today. Don’t ask yourself too many questions, Cary. Don’t ask too many questions, Archie. Don’t brood. You’re back, Cary. Sleep will cover everything, and tomorrow there’s the film. You’ll walk on to the set with a whistle. This Frances isn’t that Frances. This Cary isn’t that Cary. This world is changing, but it wants to take you with it. The explosions of the latest pyrotechnic display, remote, faint. Sleep will cover everything. You’re back.
Chapter 24
3 June
He was woken at dawn, a good idea before a long journey. The sun was yawning in the east. He turned his head and let the light glide over him.
A sandy wind had swept the clouds away. It smelled of burnt grass and clay. A thousand other smells filled his nostrils, but some of them, pollen and fruit, were not new to him. The same ones blown round by the sun at home in the early morning.
Gulliver knew it was time to go. The sky was serene.
He sniffed the air once more and felt he was up to it.
When Garibaldi gave him the first big shake, he barely noticed it. It was only with the second that he lifted his head and looked vacantly at him.
‘Hey, son, wossup? Your mutt popped its clogs?’
‘What?’
‘I said, what’s wrong? Has your pet dog passed away?’
Pierre gave a vague wave of the hand that could have meant anything.
Garibaldi sat down slowly, carefully set down his glass of wine and pushed it towards him.
‘A face like that can mean only one thing: women.’
Pierre gave him a forced smile, the best he could do.
‘Are you going to give me some old and sage advice?’
Garibaldi stretched out his arms. ‘Please! I wouldn’t even consider it. Even at my age I haven’t worked women out, let alone give you advice on the subject.’
‘Nice consolation that is.’
‘But it must mean something, don’t you think?’
Pierre rested his head on his hand again. ‘What would that be?’
Garibaldi lowered his voice and bent over the table as though to confess a secret. ‘That we aren’t as intelligent as we like to think.’
This time Pierre really did smile.
‘How do you get a woman out of your head, Garibaldi?’
The old man took a deep breath and nodded seriously.
‘Sure you want to know?’
‘If you know, tell me.’
The old man tried to find the right words: ‘Time. Time’s a great healer. At your age you don’t think it’s possible, because you think you’re going to have to do everything at a great rush, all at once, or else it’ll all slip out of your hands. Then, one piece at a time, you begin to understand. That time is the solution to everything. And there’s so much time, son, it doesn’t seem like that to you at the moment, but when you reach my age and you look back, you’ll become aware of how much time has passed and everything that’s happened to you and then you work it out all by yourself. That time is the only capital we have.’
Pierre frowned, and straightened his head slightly. ‘I feel rotten right now, what do I know about what’s going to happen to me tomorrow?’
‘Oh, I know you feel rotten. And I know that you’ve got to keep going, because they haven’t got round to inventing a medicine for the thing that ails you. But let me give you one piece of advice: don’t let your worries get the better of you.’
‘Worries?’ said Pierre.
The old man nodded. ‘Yes. There are two things in the world that have no solution: death and sex. You’re only lucky if they don’t come at the same time. When you’re dead, women stop complicating your life. So you’ve got to learn to let time take its course. If you get worried, if you try and find a solution to everything, because you’re feeling too awful, you’ll get even more bogged down, and there’s an end to it.’
‘I’m going round the bend, Garibaldi. I’m afraid of losing everything, I’m afraid of getting everything wrong, I can’t think straight,’ said Pierre hoarsely.
Garibaldi sat back in his chair. ‘Don’t do anything. You know what Mao Tse-Tung says? There are times when the revolutionary has to sit on the riverbank and wait for the enemy’s corpse to drift by.’
‘Well, if Chairman Mao says it. ’
‘And he’s not the kind of guy to fool around: first of all he’s a communist, and he’s also Chinese. And the Chinese are the wisest people in the world, everyone knows that.’