With mindless urgency, in the small hours of the fourth of the fifth, perhaps fatal, not long after my forty-fifth birthday, I catch myself stumbling out of bed and into my trousers. My shirt I left inside my sweater and I pull them on together. I have no idea what I shall do, only that it must bring some resolution. There is still soft chatter from along the corridor, the occasional giggle. Closing my door I’m aware I haven’t put my shoes on, my hair is uncombed. I stride with empty determination on a coarse synthetic carpet. And two exquisitely disconnected thoughts cross my mind: that I am the University of Milan’s lectors’ representative to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, instituted to set all wrongs to right, and that Nicoletta’s tottie-tag will be Not-So-Sneaky. Or no, Sneaky, for irony. Sneaky-tottie. My mind is in pieces. Each door I pass could be hers.
The lobby-cum-lounge opens up at the end of the corridor: armless armchairs scattered about low tables, cut-glass ashtrays under concealed fluorescent light, great windows polished black behind lace curtains. A low ceiling is supported by thin, square white pillars. Wass the difference, girls, comes a voice from the far side, Wass the difference between fear and horror? Tell me that. There are still ten of them perhaps, sprawled over chairs and carpet round a table full of bottles glasses empty packets of eats and fags the far side of a tropical tree that must be fake. Titter and giggles. Under the table, the dog is again licking his genitals. With loving absorption. Fear, Colin begins, fear is … Lurching round the tree I see that Plottie is sitting on the Avvocato Malerba’s knee…. the first time you don’t make it the second time. Georg is not there. She is not there. While horror is … They are not there. Immediately, I must know who Georg’s room-mate is. Who her room-mate is. I couldn’t give a damn what Plottie’s up to. Are they around or are they in their rooms? I couldn’t even masturbate over Plottie. The quiet rhythm of the dog’s licking makes a mockery of your attempts to masturbate, I reflect. Are they together, or are they not? Horror is … Oh I don’t think I can tell ‘em this, Colin laughs, perched on the edge of a chair with Tittie- to trie’s decidedly grand canyon beside him, and either they have shagged already or have missed out on shagging, perhaps due to difficulties with the experimental Barnaby and the charity-ball party. Jerry, you know this joke. Do you think I can really tell ‘em what horror is?
Who are they sharing with? Why didn’t I make a mental note when the rooms were being allotted? Why wasn’t it obvious that the Avvocato Malerba came on this trip solely and exclusively to tottie, came because Vikram Griffiths coined that expression The Shag Wagon? No, it was Georg coined that expression. Georg. I am suddenly overwhelmed by the need to know if they are fucking now. A matter of absolutely no importance to me. It’s vital. I must find out, I must resolve something. All these years and I haven’t resolved anything! I am still exactly where I was when I first hit her so long ago. Vikram Griffiths, with his arms round Heike the Dike of all people, is splashing whisky on to the dregs of something else. Wine? Grappa? Jerry where did you fuck off to? He offers the glass to me. Full And now I need a cigarette too. Better late than never, he grunts, sucking in catarrh. Or is this the first of the breakfast crowd? He prods his dog with his toe. If I could lick my cock like that I’d never go out of the house. He laughs. You can even hear it, he laughs. Per favore, one of the girls says, per carita. But suddenly I need a cigarette. Who will give me a cigarette? The shameless old shagger, Vikram grins, scratching in a sideburn. If fear, Colin repeats — Colin always has that facetiously patronizing tone to his voice, why do they put up with him? Why don’t they hit him? — is the first time you don’t make it the second time, what do you think horror can be? Heike says she hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about. Somebody grabs the ashtray just before it falls, but sending stubs flying all the same, while I can already see myself going down the corridor and listening at every door. Í must know. It’s an entirely vivid picture. There are only, what, forty rooms. Fifty. And myself with my ear pressed to the brown-pink-painted door of every one, listening for sighs and squeaks. Listening for her Mais oui, mais oui! It’s the blatancy of people like the Avvocato Malerba that amazes me. Man Dieu! Mon Dieu! Not unlike the blatancy of a dog who licks his genitals in public. And of course like every awful, inappropriate and above all humiliating action, this image of myself eavesdropping all along the corridor, listening for her mots sur l'oreiller at every door, is immediately immensely seductive. The blatancy of a respectable professor on the point of retirement stroking a girl’s thigh as she sits on his knee in a hotel lounge. But why not for heaven’s sake! Why not? As when I prowled about outside her Verona flat for hours, chain-smoking tipped Gauloises because they reminded me of her. I must have a cigarette. To catch them at it. To know. To confront. Georges car was there. To achieve some resolution. To suffer. I’m sure it was Georg’s. And Plottie, first with her hand on my knee, then her arse on his. Why not? Why didn’t I take the licence plate to compare it later? Statistics have proved, Vikram is claiming, that people of mixed race shag more and better than their pure-bred counterparts. His laughter is raucous. I cadge a cigarette, having imagined, during what I now see as that masterpiece of self-deception which was my ‘recovery' that I had stopped smoking. Do we expect the likes of Plottie to be faithful? What for? I hate cadging cigarettes. Especially from someone you’ve never spoken to before. A student with red hair. If you have a bad idea, I tell myself, be sure you’ll act on it. How could I ever have imagined I’d stopped smoking? Per l'amore di Dio tell us! says Tittie-tottie. Tell us what horror is. Red-hair lights my cigarette. Cadging a cigarette, it occurs to me, becomes an image of one’s humiliation, of everything one’s been reduced to. She’s called Serena. But then how could I ever have imagined I’d recovered? Horror, says Vikram Griffiths — would I beat on the door if I found them? Would I be able to restrain myself, would I be able to stop myself from becoming