The job of the Committee is to hear about people suffering, I thought. One must impress upon the Petitions Committee that people are suffering. And then identify a guilty perpetrator of that suffering. This was what was in the air, I thought. Not unlike Black Spells Magic.
Let us go on to consider, then,! proceeded, marvelling at how easy it all was, the simple though sly injustice that is being perpetrated at our expense, the subtle discrimination that the Italian state is operating to the benefit of Italian citizens and the detriment of those from other areas of the Community, a Community that the Italian government is always and so hypocritically the first to uphold, as it is likewise always and so destructively the first to flout.
There was silence in the audience now, and, I could sense, genuine admiration, not only on the faces of Sneaky and Plottie, but likewise on those of Luis, whose Spanish pesetas were worth more lire with every moment that passed, and Barnaby Hilson too, and Doris Rohr, who had probably never been more convinced than now that she was a victim of racism. And I remember, here, now, in the Meditation Room, how, as I went on to describe the way we were subject to rules relative to the termination of our employment which no Italian in the state sector was subject to, singled out, that is, for an entirely different and harsher treatment than any other state employee, I remember being overtaken by a sort of exhilaration, a sort of restrained hilarity, as if drunk and dazzled by the facility, the credibility, the power of these words that, though true, in the sense of factually accurate, I nevertheless did not believe in at all, could not believe in, and would never have sunk to speaking save into a microphone and on behalf of my feckless colleagues. Drunk too, and spurred on by her frequent, light touches of my leg. Her approbation. Her encouragement. Was it all about to start again? Was it? I was so excited. Then I had just reached the whole delicate question of salary, entirely convinced that I would have no problem at all in making it appear that we lived a life of extreme poverty, and even toying, at the back of my mind, with the idea that I might conclude by quoting, if only to satisfy Sneaky-tottie, Pericles when he says: As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Yes, I was seriously considering winding up with this remark, however ludicrously inappropriate, in order to explain, to justify, as it were, our extraordinary and dramatic decision to come to Strasbourg, to present our grievance to the highest authority, insisting, I suddenly realized I might then add, on those principles of liberté, égalité and fratenité which more than any other lay at the heart of Europe — and certainly everybody was going to say, for I could feel this, what a talented public speaker I was and why had I never offered to be representative in the past? — I was just about to launch into this preposterous conclusion when Dimitra came rushing back into the auditorium.
Dimitra banged through the double doors, almost knocking over the Welsh MEP’s secretary. Distraught and tight-lipped, she raced down the shallow steps of banked seats, skipping and stumbling, until finally she threw herself against the battleship table at the front.
Ine fovero, she screamed, her voice only half amplified in the directional mikes. Aftoktónisse. O trelos! Aftoktónisse, O theotrelosl
Sobbing for breath, her big breasts pressed and heaving against the desk, Dimitra shouted these words, and ‘others, two or three or four times, apparently not understanding why we didn’t understand, until the tall, lean member of the Petitions Committee in the front row hurriedly pulled off his headset and in a heavily accented English demanded, Who has hanged himself? Where?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vikram Griffiths lived alone in a dilapidated third-floor apartment in Via Pastrengo. But roomy. Thus I describe to myself my colleague, my acquaintance, sitting here with my bag beside me in the Meditation Room of the European Parliament. He did not die with the lectors’ petition pinned to his tweed jacket as this morning’s European claimed. Nor was the petition signed by more than a thousand names. Pastrengo was a battle, as I recall. Another Napoleonic triumph. Unless that was Marengo. Or both. When I phoned his wife — I think both — she asked was this what the British called a practical joke?
But to say he lived alone is to give the wrong impression. Everybody on the coach returning from Parliament to hotel was eager to rehearse, in lower voices than before, though the driver had not forgotten to turn the radio on, their memories of Vikram Griffiths. And for most these focused around the time they had rejected, or in one or two cases accepted, a pass from him. For the men it was a question of recalling times they’d got blind drunk and he had told his life-story before they fell asleep on his floor. Only two men said Vikram made passes at men as well as women. It is inexplicable, I thought, travelling back to the hotel on the coach, how strong my desire for Georg is. How much I wish that he were here. He made a pass at me last night, she said. Most of the women remembered he went quite brutally for the hand up the skirt. And they laughed about it, as if it were a minor and indeed endearing misdemeanour. He’d had a couple of drinks, one student explained. But when had he not had a couple of drinks? And she said, If only I had accepted, last night, perhaps none of this would have happened. She had tears in her eyes, speaking to four or five people, and her accent was more French than ever. The Ys, the Ts. Why on earth didn’t I accept? she said. Because you were fucking Georg, most probably, I thought, before he was called away to the mother of his child. A cordial fuck, I thought. How can I wish so hard that he were here? But I do. I like Georg, it occurs to me now. We were good friends after all, she was saying. What difference would it have made? I should have gone to bed with him, she said, apparently with real remorse at a generous deed undone. Then she said we must make a collection for Vikram’s widow and his orphaned child. We must make a collection. Though the two were not connected. She wanted to find a hat or something there and then and make a collection, in the coach on the way back from the Parliament only a couple of hours after the body had been found. It would be important for her to see she had our solidarity, she said, even though they were engaged in acrimonious separation proceedings, even though the second wife had apparently testified on behalf of the first in their bitter child-custody battle. And she actually began collecting money, holding out a small plastic bag of the variety they put cheese and sliced meats in at. the supermarket. She began to go up and down the aisle of the coach as it drove around the Strasbourg ring road to our remote and cheap hotel with its cheap reproductions of modern masterpieces. Goya’s Executions perhaps. You could see into her cleavage when she bent over. Guernica even. She knew it. Her black dress was quite short above her slim knees. The poor woman will be frantic, she said. Her heels dug the purple carpet of the aisle. It’s the least we can do, she said, bending over Colin with her plastic bag. Everybody was eager to give, as befits people who have lost a friend and leader. But nobody had any currency. What with the collapse of the Lira, the decisions of the Bundesbank. Better to wait till we’re back at the University, Barnaby Hilson said. A student asked where the dog was. We should start a fund, the Irish novelist said. Certainly the creature wasn’t in the coach. Doris Rohr promised to give generously, though she was apparently the only female lector Vikram Griffiths had never made a pass at. He seemed so full of fun last night, Plaster-cast-tottie said. Sitting beside her, the Avvocato Malerba said there were special rules for setting up funds of this kind and he would be glad to sort out the legal side.