“The film I want to make is based on that idea. It’s thrilling, it’s funny, it’s sad and profound and finally it’s uplifting, it’s got a couple of great lead roles, one for a dad, one for a kid, a boy, and another exceptional supporting female role, plus opportunities for some strong character roles and lesser parts too.
“That’s the set-up. Now let me tell you the story.”
And, too, it begins somewhere else entirely…
“Between the plane trees and belvederes of Aspherje, on this clear midsummer early morning, the dawn-glittering Dome of the Mists rises splendidly over the University of Practical Talents like a vast gold thinking cap. Below, amongst the statues and the rills of the Philosophy Faculty rooftop park, walks the Lady Bisquitine, escorted.”
… like that, it begins like that, too.
And with a slight, stooped, unremarkable man walking into a small room in a big building. He is holding only a single sheet of paper and a small piece of fruit, but he is met with screams. He looks, unconcerned, at the only other man in the room, and closes the door behind him. The screams continue.
* * *
And it begins here, now, at this table outside this café on this street in the Marais, Paris, with a man dropping a tiny white pill into his espresso from a small but ornate sweetener box. He looks around, taking in the passing traffic and pedestrians – some hurrying, some flaneuring – and glances at the briskly handsome young Algerian waiter who is trying to flirt with a couple of warily smiling American girls, before his gaze settles briefly on an elegantly made-up and coiffured Parisienne of late middle age holding her tiny dog up to the table to let it lap some croissant flakes. Then he adds a gnarly lump of brown sugar from the bowl to his cup and stirs the coffee with a studied thoughtfulness as he slips the slim ormolu sweetener box back into a pocket inside his jacket.
He slides a five-euro note under the sugar bowl, replaces his wallet in his jacket, then drains the espresso cup in a couple of deep, appreciative sips. He settles back, one hand still holding the miniature handle of the cup, the other hanging by his side. He has now taken on the air of a man waiting for something.
It is an afternoon at the start of autumn in the year 2008 CE, the air is clear and warm beneath a milky, pastel sky, and everything is about to change.
1
Patient 8262
I think I have been very clever in doing what I have done, in landing myself where I am. However, a lot of us are prone, as I am now, to think we’ve been quite clever, are we not? And too often in my past that feeling of having been quite clever has preceded the uncomfortable revelation that I have not been quite clever enough. This time, though…
My bed is comfortable, the medical and care staff treat me well enough, with a professional indifference which is, in my particular circumstances, more reassuring than excessive devotion would be. The food is acceptable.
I have a lot of time to think, lying here. Thinking is what I do best, perhaps. Thinking is what we do best, too. As a species, I mean. It is our forte, our speciality, our superpower; that which has raised us above the common herd. Well, we like to think so.
How relaxing to lie here and be looked after without having to do anything in return. How wonderful to have the luxury of undisturbed thought.
I am alone in a small square room with whitewashed walls, a high ceiling and tall windows. The bed is an old steel thing with a manually adjustable backrest and slatted sides that can be raised, clanging, to prevent the patient falling out of bed. The sheets are crisp and white, glowing with cleanliness, and the pillows, while a little lumpy, are plump. The linoleum floor gleams, pale green. A battered-looking wooden bedside table and a cheap chair of black-painted metal and faded red plastic comprise the room’s remaining furniture. There is a fanlight set into the wall above the single door to the corridor outside. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows is a small decorative balcony with iron railings.
Held behind these bars, the view is of a strip of grass and then a line of deciduous trees, with a shallow river behind them which sparkles in the sunlight when the angles are right. The trees are losing their leaves now and more of the river is becoming visible. On the far bank I can see more trees. My room is on the second, the top floor of the clinic. I saw a rowing boat glide down the river once with two or three people in it and sometimes I see birds. On one occasion, a high-flying aircraft left a long white cloud across the sky, like a ship’s wake. I watched it for some time as it spread slowly and kinked and turned red with the sunset.
I should be safe here. They will not think to look for me here. I think. Other places did occur to me: a yurt on some endless rolling steppe with only an extended family and the wind for company; some packed and noisome favela spattered across a steep hillside, the smell of shared sweat and the noise of bawling children, bellowing men and beaty music jangling; camping out in some lofty ruin of a monastery in the Cyclades, garnering a reputation as a hermit and an eccentric; underground with the other damaged tunnel dwellers, ragged beneath Manhattan.
In plain sight or secreted away, there are always many, many places to hide where they’ll never think to look, but then they know me and how I think, so perhaps they can guess where I’d head for even before I’d know myself. Then there is the problem of fitting in naturally or assuming a disguise, adopting a role: ethnicity, physiognomy, skin colour, language, skills – all must be taken into account.
We sort ourselves out, do we not? You lot there, this lot here; even in the great melting-pot cities we generally order ourselves into little enclaves and districts where we gain a comfort from a shared background or culture. Our nature, our sexuality, our genetic desire to wander and experiment, our lust for the exotic or the just different can lead to interesting pairings and mixed inheritances, but our need to group, grade and categorise continually pulls us back into set arrangements. This makes hiding difficult; I am – or at least I certainly look like – a pale Caucasian male, and the places I’m least likely to hide are such because I’d stand out there.
A trucker. That would be a good way to hide. A long-distance truck driver, beating across the US Midwest or the plains of Canada or Argentina or Brazil, or at the helm of a multi-trailer road train barrelling across the Australian desert. Hide through constant movement, seldom meeting people. Or a deckhand or cook on a ship; a container vessel plying the high seas with a tiny crew, turning around in twenty-four hours at vast, automated, nearly uninhabited container terminals far distant from the centres of the cities that they serve. Who would ever find me, living so distributed a life?
But, instead, I am here. I made my choice and I have no choice now; I must stick with it. I worked out my route, set up the means and the funding and the personnel with the required skills to aid me on my way into obscurity and unfindability, tested the ways those who might want to find me might set about doing so and worked out methods of frustrating their quest, then – with everything in place – went through with it.
So, thinking, here I lie.
The Transitionary
Others have told me that for them it happens during a blink, or just at random between heartbeats or even during a heartbeat. There is always some external sign: a shiver or tremble, often a noticeable twitch, occasionally a jerk, as though an electric shock has passed through the subject’s body. One person said that the way it happens for them is that they always think they’ve just caught a glimpse of something surprising or threatening from the corner of their eye and – as they turn their head quickly round – experience a distressing burning sensation like a sort of internal electric shock buzzing through the neck. For me it is usually fractionally more embarrassing; I sneeze.
I just sneezed.
I have only the vaguest idea how long I sat outside that little café in the 3rd, waiting for the drug to take effect, sinking into the waking dream that is the necessary precursor to navigating accurately to our desired destination. A few seconds? Five minutes? I trust I paid my bill. I should n
ot care – I am not him, and anyway he will still be there – but I do care. I sit forward, look at the table in front of me. There is a small pile of change sitting on the little plastic tray with the bill clipped to it. Francs, centimes; not euros. So; so far, so good.
I feel a pressing need to rearrange the items on the table. The sugar bowl must be in the exact centre while the drained espresso cup needs to be halfway between the bowl and me, aligned. The bill tray I am happy to leave to the right of the bowl, balancing the condiments carrier. It is only as I rearrange these items into this pleasing configuration that I notice that the wrist and hand protruding from my sleeve are both deep brown. Also, I realise that I have just formed a sort of cross on the little table. I glance up, taking in the design of the cars and trams in the street and the dress of the pedestrians. I am where I thought, in a Judeo-Islamic reality; hopefully, in one particular one. I immediately rearrange the pieces on the table to form what would be called a peace symbol back where I just came from. I sit back, relieved. Not that I look like some Christian terrorist, I’m sure, but you can’t be too careful.
Do I look like a Christian terrorist? I reach into my chest bag – I wear the salwar kameez, like most other men and women here, effectively pocketless – and bring out what would have been my iPod a few seconds/five minutes ago. Here it is a cigarette case of stainless steel. I try to look as though I am contemplating having a cigarette; in fact I am studying my reflection on the polished back of the case. More relief; I do not look like a Christian terrorist. I look like I usually do when I’m this colour and broadly like I always do no matter what colour, race or type I may be, which is to say unobjectionable, unremarkable, not bad-looking (not good-looking either, but that’s acceptable). I look bland. But bland is good, bland is safe, bland blends: perfect cover.
Check the watch. Always check the watch. I check the watch. The watch is fine; no problem with the watch. I do not take a cigarette. I feel no need. Obviously I have not incorporated the craving into this new personification. I put the cigarette case back in the bag slung over my chest from shoulder to hip, checking that the little ormolu pill case is in its own internal pocket, zipped. Still more relief! (The pill case has never not travelled, but you always worry. Well, I always worry. I think I always worry.)
My identity card tells me that I am Aiman Q’ands, which sounds about right. Aiman, hey man; hi, pleased to meet me. Language check. I have French, Arabic, English, Hindic, Portuguese and Latin. A smattering of German and also Latter Mongolian. No Mandarin at all; that’s unusual.
I sit back again, adjusting my legs in the voluminous salwars so that they are precisely in line with the X of legs supporting the little table. It would appear that while I have no tobacco habit I obviously do have – once again – some sort of mild Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is arguably just as annoying and distracting, if less health-threatening (though I should care!).
I hope it’s mild OCD. Do I think it’s mild? Maybe it’s not mild after all. (My hands do feel a little clammy, like they might need to be washed.) Maybe it’s severe. (There’s a lot about this café that could do with being tidied, aligned, straightened.) That’s something to worry about. So, I’m a worrier, too, obviously. That’s annoying, that’s worrying in itself.
Well, can’t sit here all day. I’m here for a reason; I’ve been summoned. By Herself, no less. I feel quite recovered from any passing dizziness associated with the transition; no excuse for hesitating. I need to get up and go, so I do.
Adrian
I’ve told people I’m an ex-East End barrow boy, haven’t I? Dad ran an eel stall and mum was a barmaid. But that’s bollocks, a total lie. I only tell them that because that’s what they like to hear, what they want to hear. That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned, isn’t it? You can go a long way just telling people what they want to hear. Of course, you got to be careful, and you got to choose the right people, but still, know what I mean?
Course, any fuckwit can just tell somebody else what they already know they want to hear. The creative bit, the real added-value bit is knowing what they want to hear before they know it themselves. They really appreciate that. That pays dividends. It’s kind of a service industry thing. Anyway I’m really good at the accent. Highly convincing. You should hear me. The East End thing, I mean. Doing the barrow-boy routine. I’m fucking good at the geezah accent, that’s all I’m saying, isn’t it? Keep up.
Truth is I’m from Up North. One of those grim northern cities with all the grime and all. You don’t need to know which grim northern city on account of the fact I’m sure you’ll agree they’re all the same, so it won’t make any difference me telling you exactly which one, will it? So if you do want to know exactly which one, tough. Do what I do. Use your imagination.
Nah, my dad was a miner before they joined the list of endangered species thanks to Saint Margaret (with a little or a lot of help from King Arthur, depending on your outlook). Mum worked in a hairdressing salon. I’m serious about La Thatch being a saint, too, though you still have to be careful who you say that to back where I grew up, which is one of the many reasons I don’t go back there hardly at all, isn’t it? I mean, who the fuck wants to work all their life down a fucking hole in the ground anyway? Nobody in their right mind. La Thatch did them all a favour. They should have statues to her where the pit wheels were.
Anyway, by the time I came along that stuff was all ancient history. Well, it was as far as I was concerned. It might as well have happened yesterday from the way everybody around me kept banging on about it constantly. We lived in a semi so there was a family right next door, obviously, right? Well, we weren’t allowed to acknowledge they even existed because the guy, who’d been one of dad’s best mates apparently, had joined the Democratic Union of Miners of Britain or whatever and so he was a blackleg as far as my old dad was concerned and seemingly that was worse than being a paedo or a murderer. Only time my dad looked like he might hit me was when he caught me talking to the twins next door.
Anyway, it wasn’t anywhere that I wanted to be. I was off down the motorway soon as I could escape from school, heading for the big bad city, and the bigger and badder the better. I sort of hesitated around Manchester for a month when it was just getting interesting but I didn’t bother staying. I went on south. M6 to London. Always liked the bright lights, I have. London was the only place for me. Only place this side of the Pond at any rate. Suppose New York would have been all right, but then thanks to people like yours truly London eventually became better and cooler than NYC anyway.
Thing is, I sort of understand people wanting to stay where they were brought up, if they were raised in a big city anyway, I mean why would you want to stay in the country? You might want to stay where you grew up for sentimental reasons and your mates being around and so on but unless it’s a really, really great place that’s really, seriously going to add something to your life, you’re kind of being a mug, know what I mean? If you stay in a place like that when you know you could have a go somewhere bigger and brighter with more opportunities you’re giving more to it than it’s giving to you, aren’t you? You’re in a net loss situation, know what I mean? I mean, if you like feeling like an asset to your local community or something then fucking yahoo for you but don’t pretend you aren’t being exploited. People talk a lot about loyalty and being true to your roots and suchlike but that’s just bollocks, isn’t it? That’s one of the ways they make you do things that aren’t in your own best interest. Loyalty’s a mug’s game.
So I moved to sunny London. Was sunny, too, compared to Manchester or where I come from. Bought my first pair of Oakleys day I arrived. I say bought. Anyway, London was sunny and warm and balmy even and full of totty and opportunities. Moved in with a mate from back home, got a job behind a bar in Soho, got a girlfriend or two, met some characters, started making myself useful to the sort of people who appreciate someone with a bit of sharpness about them and the gift of the gab. Thinking on your feet, like th
ey say. Landing on your feet. That’s useful, too. Better still, landing on somebody else’s feet.
Long and short, started providing the high-flyers with the means to get them high, didn’t I? Full of creative types, Soho, and a lot of people in the creative industries like to powder their nose, indulge in a bit of nasal turbocharging, don’t they? Very big thing with the Creatives, certainly back then. And amongst said Creatives I would most certainly include the financial wizards and their highly exotic Instruments and Products. Plus, of course, they have the funds to really get stuck into it.
So I worked my way up, in a sense. And along, sort of. Along in the sense of east, where the dosh is. East of Soho, to the City, to be precise, and Canary Wharf, where a lot of them highest of high-flyers perched. Follow the money, they say – well, I did.
See, I had a plan, right from the start. A way to make up for my lack of what you might term a formal education and letters after my name. (Numbers after my name, that might have been a different story, but I managed to avoid that.) Anyway, what do people do when they’ve had a toot or two? Talk, that’s what they do. Talk like fuck. And boast, of course, if they’re especially impressed with themselves. Which would cover just about everybody I provided for.
And of course if you spend all your time working, concentrating, making money, taking risks, being financially daring and so on, you’ll talk about that, won’t you? Stands to reason. Fizzing with testosterone and their own genius, these guys, so of course they talk about what they’ve been up to, the deals they’ve done, the money they’ve made, the angles they’ve got coming up, the stuff they know.
So a person who happened to be around them when they were talking about this sort of stuff, especially somebody who they knew wasn’t one of their own and so not a threat, not a competitor, but somebody they thought of as a mate as well as an always available deliverer of their chosen leisure-enhancing substance, well, that person could hear a lot of interesting things, know what I mean? If that person acted a bit thicker and even less educated than they actually were and kept their eyes and ears open and their mind sharp they could hear some potentially very useful things. Potentially very lucrative things, if you know the right people and can get the right bit of information to them at the right time.