No, to say that he lived alone, I reflect, sitting in the tiny Meditation Room of the European Parliament with its thick blue carpet, its disturbing plexiglass mural backlit with neon, its odd white lectern — to say that he lived alone would be as misleading as to say that his first wife was a psychopath. Though he himself liked to use these words. I live alone, he would say, my first wife is a psychopath. He liked their drama. Vikram Griffiths was addicted to drama, I reflect, as he was addicted to drink. And to public meetings. He was addicted, perhaps, to the nervous coercive fervour of drink-inspired drama. His second wife was a witch, he said. And I reflect that it wasn’t so much a good decision, on my part, not to return to Milan on the coach with the others, as a necessary decision. An imperative. You could not have returned on the coach to Milan with the others, I tell myself. It was impossible. You simply could not have climbed up the steps of that modern coach and worked your way down the purple aisle between the blood-red seats to the back. You would have vomited. Barnaby Hilson playing Irish laments on his tin whistle. Or Men of Harlech perhaps. Colin recalling what an extraordinary tottie-man Vikram was. At some point you would have vomited. But then by the same token, I reflect, you could not have not come on this trip in the first place. That too was impossible. To climb on the coach and set out for Strasbourg was an imperative, I reflect, just as now not to climb on the coach for the return to Milan is an imperative. So there was no merit in my obeying this more recent imperative, I tell myself, in my deciding that I would die, that something inside me would die, if I stepped on that coach for the return journey to Milan, to the University, to the Vikram Griffiths Memorial Fund, if I had to listen to Barnaby Hilson’s Irish laments, on a variety of tin whistles, and perhaps some sad cross-reference to the narrative astuteness of the suicide in Dead Poets Society, Or to a further discussion of the spy. The spy! Vikram Griffiths didn’t live alone, I thought, there on the coach driving back to the hotel for another night with Picasso’s lovers. And he certainly didn’t kill himself because Robin Williams had urged him to carpe diem but his parents wouldn’t let him go to drama school. I should never have made that ridiculous speech, I thought. I made a perfectly ridiculous, sublimely hypocritical speech to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, a speech worthy of the very best drama school, and I even felt proud of myself, I remembered, and powerful, and on for it, and this precisely as Vikram Griffiths was knotting two ties round his thick neck. Beneath his stubborn chin. Vikram Griffiths carped the diem every day, I thought. He didn’t live alone. Almost every day he brought someone back to his dilapidated, unheated apartment rented to him by the husband of an ex-mistress (in her late fifties) who couldn’t afford to renovate. Quite apart from the parentheses of his marriages, the safer company of his dog. It was, it is, a beautiful apartment. It has ancient oak beams and the remnants of frescoes, but at the last stage of dilapidation, as only apartments in Milan can be. The only time I visited him there, I remember, after the first wife, before the second, we were drinking beer on sofa cushions and after about half an-hour a tiny girl he had made no mention of emerged from the bathroom in a robe too long for her. A tiny girlie. Plus the grandmother he boasted paid him to shag her. Money helps you get it up, he boasted, when he’d had a lot to drink. But when had he not had a lot to drink? Though on every issue bar women he was political correctness itself. He was the revolution permanente in person, Vikram Griffiths. He would have agreed with her about the children of Bosnia, I thought. And here in the Meditation Room beside my packed bag it occurs to me that his decision to kill himself wasn’t a decision, perhaps, but, like mine, an imperative. For some reason he had to kill himself, as for some reason I knew that I could not step on that coach and face the journey back to Italy, beside Doris Rohr, or Sneaky-tot-tie, or beside Colin saying perhaps that Vikram Griffiths should be remembered not just as a tottie-man but as a tottie-master. There is no merit in choosing to do something, if the decision is imposed upon you, I tell myself. No merit at all. But on the other hand it is ridiculous at the point I’m at to be worrying about merit. To be constantly judging what I do. Why on earth should I care about accruing merit? After making a speech like that. But now I recall that she also said, She couldn’t help herself. He phoned so often, she said, and sent so many flowers, how could I refuse? She also claimed the excuse of the imperative. Perhaps there is merit, thee, it occurs to me, in the kind of imperatives we impose upon ourselves. But it is ridiculous to hear yourself talking about merit after abandoning your wife and daughter, I tell myself. The Greeks, I reflect, understood these things better than us. Only the gods can be causes. Thus Priam to Helen at the Scaean Gate as Troy fell. Only the gods. Unless it’s a question of health, perhaps. Your decision not to go back on the coach, I tell myself, should perhaps be seen as a more healthy decision than hers to sleep with a man just because he insisted so much, than Helen’s to run off with Paris, than Vikram Griffiths’ decision to knot two ties around his thick neck beneath his theatrical sideburns. A more healthy imperative. But how can someone who lives in your state of mind talk about health! Someone whose head is a constant fizz of contradictions. It’s laughable. You promised not to make comparisons, I remind myself. Comparisons are pernicious, you said. Helen of Troy and Vikram Griffiths! As the coach pulled into the parking-lot of the hotel, I asked Doris Rohr how old exactly Vikram was. She didn’t know, but Dimitra in the seat behind said, Forty-five.
Vikram Griffiths didn’t live alone. And the numbers were not for me, I thought. Four five. I saw the numbers, but they were for him. Omens were ever deceitful, I thought. The oracles were always a mockery He told me his life-story one August Bank Holiday, I mean the Italian holiday, Ferragosto, when he came to dinner. That I can use the expression ‘came to dinner’ indicates that this was the period when I was still with my wife. He brought his little boy, apparently abandoned earlier on in the day in the entrance to his dilapidated palazzo by his, as he put it, psychopathic ex-wife, always plunged into the most extreme of depressions by the hot August weather. The boy was about four and disturbingly silent, hugging a fluffy puppy-dog. Perhaps I could at least go to dinner with my wife when I return to Milan, I reflect. The wife was furious about the dog, it seemed, a birthday gift from Vikram. He chuckled. But perhaps I won’t return. We spoke on the phone for some reason and he said his present wife was with relatives, he had nothing in the fridge and all the restaurants closed for Ferragosto. Fucking Italy. Fucking hot, he said. We laughed. For a bloke brought up in Merthyr Tydfil. It annoyed him his wife felt she had to visit her parents, he said. I invited him to dinner. He said his mother had died only hours after childbirth and he had always felt guilty. This was in Coventry, where his father had gone to work. She called him Vikram, after her brother, then haemorrhaged and died. Father took him back to Wales. He knew he wasn’t guilty, but he had always felt he was. That was a strange state of mind. He felt he bore the mark of Cain, he said, he laughed, and this had to be explained to my wife and to Suzanne, who, being good Catholics, know nothing of the Bible. My wife was visibly embarrassed. He meant his colour, of course. She served the meal she always served when we had guests, an excellent