I rang Ralph straight away.
‘You got your erection, eh?’ he said.
I insisted on seeing him. He was rehearsing. He made me go to the college canteen during his tea break and wait. When he did turn up, he seemed preoccupied, having had an argument with Ophelia. I didn’t care. I told him what had happened to me on the street.
‘That shouldn’t have occurred,’ he said, with some concern. ‘It’s never happened to me, though I guess I’ll start to get recognised when I’ve played Hamlet.’
‘What is going on? Don’t they do any checks first?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But the world’s a small place now. Your guy’s from LA.’
‘Mark. That’s his name. That’s what they called me.’
‘So? How can anyone be expected to know he’s got friends in Kensington?’
‘Suppose he’s wanted by the police somewhere?’
He shook his head. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he said confidently. ‘The chances of such a repeat are low, statistically.’
‘There have been other weird occurrences.’
‘For example?’ He didn’t want to hear, but he had to.
‘Tell me, first, how did he die, my body, my man?’
Ralph hesitated. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Why, are you not allowed to tell me?’
‘This is a new area.’
I went on, ‘In bed, I was aware of these twinges, or sensations. There were times in my Oldbody life, particularly as I got older, or when I was meditating, when I felt that the limits of my mind and body had been extended. I felt, almost mystically, part of others, an “outgrowth of the One”.’
‘Really?’
‘This is different. It’s as if I have a ghost or shadow-soul inside me. I can feel things, perhaps memories, of the man who was here first. Perhaps the physical body has a soul. There’s a phrase of Freud’s that might apply here: the bodily ego, he calls it, I think.’
‘Isn’t it a little late for this? I’m an actor, not a mystic.’
I noticed a lack of respect in Ralph. I was a puling twenty-five-year-old rather than a distinguished author. It hadn’t taken long before I was confronted with the losses involved in gaining prolonged youth.
I said, ‘I need to know more about my body. It was Mark’s face they were seeing when they looked at me. It was his childhood experience they were partly taking in, not yours or mine.’
‘You want to know why he snuffed himself out? I’m telling you, Leo, face it, this is the truth and you know it already. Your guy’s going to have died in some grisly fashion.’
‘What sort of thing are we talking about?’
‘If he’s young, it’s not going to be pleasant. No young death is a relief. The whole world works by exploitation. We all know the clothes we wear, the food, it’s packed by Third World peasants.’
‘Ralph, I am not just wearing this guy’s shoes.’
‘He was definitely “obscure”, your man. There’s no way I’m going to let them give you shoddy goods. Anyway, it’s impossible, at the moment, to just go and kill someone for their body. Their family, the police, the press, everyone’s going to be looking for them. The body has to be “cleared”, and then it has to be prepared for new use by a doctor who knows what he is doing. It’s a long and complicated process. You can’t just plug your brain into any skull, thank Christ. Imagine what a freak show we’d have then.’
‘If he’s been “cleared”, I think that at least you should tell me what you know,’ I said. ‘I presume he was homosexual.’
‘Why else would he be in such good shape? Most hets, apart from actors, have the bodies of corpses. You object to homosexuality?’
‘Not in principle, and not yet. I haven’t had time to take it in. I’m at the beginning here. I need to know what all this might mean.’
Ralph said, ‘As far as I know, he was nutty but not druggy. A suicide, I think, by carbon monoxide poisoning. They had to fix up his lungs. I looked into it, for you. Adam — Leo, I mean. I asked them to give you the best. Some of those women were in great shape.’
‘I told you, I’m not ready to be a woman. I’m not even used to being a man.’
‘That was your choice, then. Your man had something like clinical depression. Obviously a lot of young people suffer from it. They can’t get the help they need. Even in the long run they don’t come round. Antidepressants, therapy, all that, it never works. They’re never going to be doers and getters like us, man. Better to be rid of them altogether and let the healthy ones live.’
‘Live in the bodies of the discarded, you mean? The neglected, the failures?’
‘Right.’
‘I see what you’re getting at. “Mark” might have suffered in his mind. He might not have lived a “successful” life, but his friends seemed to like him. His mother would like to see him.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘What if I —’
‘Don’t think about pulling that kind of stunt in front of his mother,’ he said. ‘She’d go mad if you walked in there with that face on. His whole family! They’d think they’d seen a fucking ghost!’
‘I’m not about to do that,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where she lives. That’s not quite what I mean.’
Ralph said, ‘My guy was struck by lightning while lying drunk under a tree. Nothing unusual about my man, thank Christ, though I keep away from AA meetings.’
There wouldn’t be much more I could get out of Ralph. I had to live with the consequences of what I’d done. Except that I had no idea what those consequences might turn out to be.
Ralph said, ‘You will come and see me as Hamlet?’
‘Only if you come and see me as Don Giovanni.’
‘Yeah? Is that what you’re going to do? I can see you as the Don. Got laid yet?’
‘No.’ He gave me my new passport and driving licence. ‘Listen, Ralph,’ I said as we parted. ‘I need you to know I’m grateful for this opportunity. Nothing quite so odd has ever happened to me before.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now go and have a walk and calm down.’
I was, I noticed, becoming used to my body; I was even relaxing in it now. My long strides, the feel of my hands and face, seemed natural. I was beginning to stop expecting a different, slower response from my limbs.
There was something else.
For the first time in years, my body felt sensual and full of intense yearning; I was inhabited by a warm, inner fire, which nonetheless reached out to others — to anyone, almost. I had forgotten how inexorable and indiscriminate desire can be. Whether it was the previous inhabitant of this flesh, or youth itself, it was a pleasure that overtook and choked me.
From the start of our marriage I had decided to be faithful to Margot, without, of course, having enough idea of the difficulty. It is probably false that knowing is counter-erotic and the mundane designed to kill desire. Desire can find the smallest gap, and it is a hell to live in close proximity to and enforced celibacy with someone you want and with whom contact, when it occurs, is of an intimacy that one has always been addicted to. I learned that sexual happiness of the sort I’d envisaged, a constant and deep satisfaction — the romantic fantasy we’re hypnotised by — was as impossible as the idea that you could secure everything you wanted from one person. But the alternative — lovers, mistresses, whores, lying — seemed too destructive, too unpredictable. The overcoming of bitterness and resentment, as well as sexual envy of the young, took as much maturity as I could muster, as did the realisation that you have to find happiness in spite of life. I became a serial substitutor: property, children, work, raking the garden leaves, kept the rage of failure at bay. Illness, too, was helpful. I became so phobic of others I couldn’t even have a stranger cut my hair. My daughter would do it. This is how I survived my life and mind without murdering anyone. Enough! It was not enough.