“Sometimes you have to unpack everything anyway.” The driver handed her a ticket of a higher denomination than the one she’d paid for. “Now you can go much further.” He winked. “Perhaps you should have flown.”
“He won’t fly.” She made a grateful, apologetic face.
“Oh, that’s always such a problem. Are you married?” He pulled the lever and the doors hissed shut. “Here on holiday?”
He was flirting with her. Why do the children play? A strange tune to come into her head at that moment. Was he looking for a hardheaded woman?
She had to admit she admired his Turkish looks. What was it about those big Mediterranean noses?
1971: Friend of the Devil
Time and order? What could we do without them? The theatre wasn’t what it was. In the current climate, they could never have a successful revival of The Jew’s Bargain. Which was a stupid thing to say, he thought. Was it true the image always preceded the actuality? I have seen your skull covered in filth, he told Mengele. I have seen you dead. You have no idea what great good will come of our suffering. The State of Israel will rise from our ashes. He had been able to look into Mengele’s face and see the attempt to control the contractions of terror there. Was it unseemly to congratulate himself for bartering his good life to save one young woman from the creature whose bones were now displayed at the Nazi Remains show in Munich? I am not man enough for this, he thought. But it was too late. I had made my bargain with God. It was unbreakable. He would not release me from it. I wish I had known that at the time.
He was reading from his own journal.
But, best of all, I had proved there truly was a God. I need never despair again. Never carry that burden Nietzsche had put on me. Yet, if you had a past and a present, why could you not have a future? Or a number of futures? He had spent so long trying to work out the consequences of radiant time. Too many equations. Too many adventures. Too much of everything. Accretion challenged complexity.
There was a long way to go yet.
Jerry wondered how much hotter things would get, before they started cooling down again. He wetted another towel and stretched it over his sister’s pale forehead. He checked his watch. In a couple of hours, the world would know for certain. How much time had he waited so long ago, as his child bride sweated out her memories?
So long. So long at the border. Could they sweat this out too? Now he understood why Benjamin had given himself up to despair. The world could no longer be manipulated or persuaded. At last, he began to understand the codes. It really shouldn’t have taken this long. Too many pictures. Far too many words. And ghosts! Those ghosts.
What the fuck had happened to the action? The mystery?
“Wake up, old chap.” Major Nye’s voice was distant and encouraging. “Our truck’s arrived at last! We’re on our way! Another four decades and we’ll be in Syria. Or Lebanon, at any rate. What do you think of that?”
“Saladin’s still in charge, isn’t he?”
“The Kurds seem to think so.”
Jerry got up slowly adjusting his cap. “Has anyone seen my launcher?”
1984: Momma Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
When in Galveston, Jerry habitually took his breakfast at the Waffle House on 25th and Broadway. It was the least infected of the joints. Here, it was impossible to catch even a glimpse of the ocean. He was beginning to regret buying the Bishop’s Palace. When had he last eaten so much bacon? Really, it was time to stop. He was growing weak again. He reached into the darkness and found her long, soft hand. Now he could only love.
She reassured him with her grasp. He was grateful for this small, deliberate kindness. When he first came to the island, he had so much wanted to find some kind of purpose. He felt certain he would come across a sign of Leadbelly or maybe one of the other Texas bluesmen here. But, leaving not so much as a playbill behind, they had gone north and east. They had no interest in time. From the brochures, quantum physics and m-theory seemed to fit well with the Moorish Gothic of the Bishops Palace. As a result, he had bought the great pile with its pointed roofs, minarets, and Persianate beaux-arts. There had even been a touch of early Tiffany art nouveaux. It once provided the most accurate understanding of the style, why so many modernists rejected it, confusing complexity for fussy pre-modernity. Sometimes he hated to see the look of disappointment disturb the firmness of some poor mod’s features. Twenty years earlier, all that had mattered was that you had a pocket full of purple hearts and a willingness to stay up all night at the Flamingo.
“Is there something wrong with the music?” She looked out at the driving rain. “Why isn’t working any more?”
“Rock and roll died the day Hair opened in New York,” he murmured, glancing around to see if he was overheard. Reactionary debased versions of Viennese Light classical with extra bass. Queen sang the dirge at the funeral of American black music. Then country wasn’t country any more. Looking up from his Big Triple, Shaky Mo Collier pushed at greasy hair with greasier fingers and gave Jerry a thumb’s up. His attention wandered.
Catherine glared in his direction. Beside him, Miss Brunner watched Mo vaguely checking the action of his slick little Colt. “She was getting ready to settle down. I felt sorry for her.” He kissed the air and said something under his breath. He looked around for his grits.
“Perfect.” Miss Brunner prepared herself for prayer. By increasing the population so successfully, religion again showed its relevance to modern times.
This had turned into fun. A neat little running backwards race. He panted. “Religion has done a great job keeping pace with the times. Or was it always an arm of consumerism?”
Mo looked up from his Colt. “Is that like water over there? What’s it? Tidal wave?”
“Oh, bugger!” Jerry had left his guitars in his hotel.
1985: The Dream Police
Portobello Road was not the road it had been. It led north into the shabby limbo of the Harrow Road and Kilburn, where everything became grey and indistinct. To the south, the colours grew brighter and eventually less garish, the closer you got to Notting Hill tube station.
Didi Dee, doctor to the stars, stood at the intersection of Blenheim Crescent and the market, looking up and down in the hope she would see the original Body Shop or Rough Trade records. She was disgusted by her own nostalgia for a past her customers had wiped out. She had very little choice, as she saw it, of maintaining so much sentimental romanticism balanced by so much actuality. “Too many pictures,” she murmured. “Too many voices. Too many voices.”
The pleasure of the suburbs was that they presented a simplified narrative. The city had far too many narratives.
She repeated this complaint, gathering the white cotton dress around her like a disappointed bride.
“What could I have done about it?” Jerry was surly. After all, he had grown up on this very street. “Some of us enjoy complexity. Some of us can’t live without it. It’s meat and drink to me.”
“Well, it drives me crazy.”
“This was never designed for upper class, black professionals. You can’t blame me for that.”
“I just said it drives me crazy, that’s all. Is this a good place to find a taxi?”
Until the music studios, like Island, started establishing themselves in the area, Jerry couldn’t remember seeing a taxi anywhere in the neighbourhood. Even the whores had to get out at Westbourne Road and walk.