And because I thought she might recognize the book I had got it from.
I sat down in seat 45, wondering if the powers that be, like the script-writer of Dead Poets, would have the wisdom to allow something to happen on this otherwise preposterous and preposterously dull trip, and on my left this time, as I lowered myself on to the big back seat of this powerful modern coach crossing the Confederation of Switzerland, on my left was a new girl with a plaster-cast on her ankle who was deep in conversation with Georg on her other side, and what she was saying, very earnestly, as I tuned out of Barnaby Hilson’s conversation and into hers, was that she didn’t expect she would ever live to be forty. Georg smiled his mature man’s smile and asked her why, and he winked at me across the girl as I sat down wishing I hadn’t drunk Vikram s whisky, or that there had been more of it. These girls are so young, Georg’s wink said, while she — and since I can’t remember her name, can’t remember whether she even told me her name, I’m going to call her Plaster-cast-tottie, as if I was speaking of a conquest to Colin, because that kind of vulgarity cheers me up, if only by reminding me how callous and downmarket I can be — yes, Georg winked while Plaster-cast-tottie, or perhaps just Plottie, explained that she would never get to forty because there were so many diseases and wars and things. Georg smiled again and admitted he was forty-three.
Colin was stubbing his cigarette on the fire extinguisher and with his curling lip beneath thin moustache he asks, What diseases? Wass the problem, luv?
AIDS, she says demurely.
Oh, AIDS, Colin says, climbing out of the stairs, ‘ow’s a nice girl like you supposed to get fuckin’ AIDS, fuckin’ Ada? and everybody laughs. Or perhaps around Italians one should say fuckin’ Aida, he adds. And everybody laughs again. Nicoletta in the seat in front laughs and Maura beside her laughs and Georg laughs and says, avuncular, in Italian, to the girl beside him, between us, If Colin hasn’t got AIDS it can’t be that ubiquitous, can it?
The girl laughs.
Who says he hasn’t got it? I suddenly join in. It’s the whisky speaking. And I add, in English: AIDS aids for the man who’s got everything, which is the kind of joke I crack when we’re talking tottie over billiards.
Oh speak for y’fuckin’ self, Colin says, swaying in the aisle. Oh thank you very much, Mr Jeremiah. And for stealing my seat, cunt. He winks and taps his nose. Anuwer fav’rite word.
All the girls laugh, because people in groups do laugh at this kind of thing; sometimes it seems there is nothing that people in groups will not laugh at, or rather giggle about, as on other occasions it seems there is nothing people in groups will not do to other people in smaller groups or no groups at all, and Plaster-cast-tottie, who I’ve now noticed has a low-cut sweater and generous breasts though on the kind of stocky body that could only make itself desirable between say thirteen and thirty, Plaster-cast-tottie says, unasked, that she doesn’t believe in God, but she doesn’t disbelieve, she is searching, Plottie says. This girl is very earnest, but very flirty too, with a sort of bold, glassy stare that demands to be exchanged. Perhaps she knows that her attractions are only the attractions of youth. Perhaps she knows she has to use them now. There is something very glassy and very bold and very hyper about Plaster-cast-tottie’s stare and she keeps pushing a page-boy fringe from her eyes. So then I ask her, because suddenly it seems I'm talking to people, I'm talking to everybody, I've given up all hope of hiding away in books I don’t want to read, i've given up all hope of cultivating aloofness and dignity, I ask Plottie, what does she mean, she is searching? What does it mean when people say they are searching? Where do they look, how do they look, what do they actually do when they are searching?
Nicoletta appears from above the seat-back in front and smiles at me from her big eyes and the girl is faintly reproachful, as if to ask why I have neglected her so long, staying at the front talking to Dottor Griffiths and then not even acknowledging her a moment ago when I came back and flopped into my seat. As if there were no intimacy between us. I smile back, and I’m aware that I like this girl who cocks her head to one side and smiles reproachfully, as though at a puppy that’s misbehaved, I like her because she is so different from her, and at the same time Plaster-cast-tottie is telling me-she has a blue bead necklace she is winding round a finger- that what she is searching for is something that will give her an equilibrio interiore. She’s twenty-one and she still hasn’t achieved an equilibrio interiore, she says, and this time Georg lets a very broad smile cross his face.
You bastard kraut, Colin shouts. I saw that smirk. Don’t laugh at the little girl as if you were so fuckin’ superior. An equilibrio interiore is fuckin’ important, Colin says, standing in the middle of the back passageway right in front of us, enjoying his theatrical belligerence.
Georg only smiles the more.
Unwisely, I throw in, I'm forty-five and I've never achieved an equilibrio interiore.
Colin says: Oh, aren’t we sturm und drang! Not bad, eh, he adds, elbowing the attractive Monica of the slim jeans and the cousin who wants ex-boy-friends to feel sorry for her, Not a bad range of cultural reference, what eh? Very Euraufait, no? Euraufait. J for joke. He shakes his head. Shove up a bit, love, this sod has stolen the seat I stole from him.