A Clue to the Exit: A Novel (10 page)

‘The fact that we have no idea how a single event could have physiological and phenomenal properties at the same time, no idea how consciousness results from irritated tissue or firing neurons. This mind–body problem is not trivial. A correlation is not a cause. Cerebral activity and consciousness may occur at the same time, but until we know how they interact they will lead parallel lives. I just ask you to appreciate their philosophical isolation.’

‘Of course we appreciate it,’ said Crystal sympathetically, as if she was talking to a child who had cut his finger.

Jean-Paul noticed the ‘we’ more keenly than he would have liked.

‘Oh, look, they’re off,’ said Patrick.

The dark-blue carriages of the royal train slipped into the fog, but still their own train remained immobile in the empty station.

15

I managed to write those last few pages since our lunch at Jean-Marc’s, but now I’ve been taken over by my circumstances and can’t carry on.

Yesterday was my last day with Angelique. I suggested we go to the Grand Large, where we first met, and although she agreed she could barely disguise her impatience with my sentimentality. The casino is only ten yards east of the Hôtel de Paris, where we usually have lunch, and it clearly irked her to be driven dozens of miles in the wrong direction by someone whose credit was about to run out. I was mortified that we were reduced to commenting listlessly on our food, like a couple of alienated pensioners in whom enthusiasm, even for mutual torment, has been entirely replaced by the congealing powers of resignation and habit. In other words, like the rest of the clientele. By the time my
myrtilles Metternich
arrived I was furious.

‘What makes you think that I’m going to give you my last million francs when all you can do is sit there sulking?’

‘We have a contract,’ she said.

‘Yes, but it’s based on passion. Without passion it’s shit.’

‘I know you’re under pressure with your health and everything,’ she said politely, ‘and it’s difficult for both of us that we’re separating tomorrow morning,’ she soldiered on, ‘but I think it’s unfair of you to start threatening me just because you feel bad. You know I have to gamble, so if you’re not going to give me the money I’m going to go to the bank right now before it closes. I’ll leave your bags with the hall porter.’

‘You “have to gamble”. You think you’re so wild and haunted, don’t you? But your life is as routine as a bank clerk’s, except that your mission is to throw away as much money as you can, which isn’t, in some cases, the aim of bank employees.’

‘Fuck you,’ she growled. ‘You have no idea what it means to take risks.’

‘Bullshit! You’re the one who’s playing safe. For you, danger is removed to a world of tokens and substitutes. Why gamble with chips and cards when you can play with your life and sanity? The answer is that you don’t dare.’

‘I know you’re unhappy because you’re going to die soon, but you don’t have to take it out on me,’ said Angelique. She picked her bag off the floor and slid her chair back from the table.

I suddenly felt the chasm of her departure. ‘Don’t go,’ I said, clasping her forearm. I took out my last two 500,000-franc tokens and put them on the table. ‘I’m upset, that’s all. I can’t bear the idea of our parting. It’s…’ I stopped, knowing that we couldn’t have that conversation again. ‘Listen, I’m going to go for a walk now. I’ll see you back home or in the Salle Privée.’

‘OK, darling,’ she said, kissing my hand, and struggling to load her handbag with the huge rectangles of shining plastic. ‘It’s so silly to argue on our last precious day together.’

I left the hotel and set off round the coastal path of St Jean-Cap-Ferrat, feeling overwhelming anguish at the prospect of being separated from Angelique. I had to keep up a hot pace so as to turn the feeling of being overwhelmed into one of being pursued; if I was pursued perhaps I could escape. But I couldn’t escape. The fear was in my marrow.

What was the fear in the marrow? The loss of Angelique and, behind that, the loss of the illusion that she cared for me.

And behind the illusion that she cared for me, the knowledge that my mother had not cared for me, that she had never overcome the feeling that a baby was in bad taste. She spent the first years of my life at a careful distance, her eyes closed and a scented handkerchief pressed to her nostrils. Later on she tried to instruct me in the good taste which enabled her to find me repulsive in the first place. No wonder I had noticed Marie-Louise. Everything was falling into place.

I cursed the compulsion which had driven me to spend my time soliciting the love of a woman who has no love to give. The reason Angelique had fooled me was that she never attempted to: she had left the deception to me. Had she pretended, I would have seen through her, but what I could not see through was my own deepest longings. How does that happen? How can we choose not to know what we cannot help knowing? How could I write about consciousness without writing about the fear in the marrow, the fear of loveless desolation which was laying waste the last months of my life?

I couldn’t walk fast enough to keep ahead of the vicious panic which filled every cell in my body, and every possible world I could imagine, chasing me round the Cap like one of the
chiens méchants
advertised on every gatepost. I was on the edge, no longer playing with metaphors or describing states of mind, but stumbling along a twisting coastal path, the sea sirening me to slip, or more candidly, to dive, on to the rocks. I imagined my blood mingling with the sea; wondered how little time it would take for the salt and the sun to bleach my corpse. Would the crabs feasting on my brain find themselves, as they sucked the morsels of Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area from their busy claws, troubled by the problem of consciousness, or burdened by the need to finish
On the Train
? It seemed no more likely than my wanting to fulfil the aspirations of the langoustines I had for lunch. But perhaps I was fulfilling their aspirations. Perhaps that’s what made me want to dive off the cliff back into the sea. Mad thoughts. Sparks from the wheel.

I slowed down and tried to return to the thing which these thoughts were scattering from: the fear in the marrow. Is there any negotiation with the feelings stitched into our growing bones, the things we knew before our first set of teeth?

I suddenly saw with a strange clarity, a clarity which took me deeper into confusion, a glass knot, saw that I could only make any difference to the terror of loveless desolation by penetrating its chaotic heart. If I could consciously live what I could not bear I might be able to reshape it. I glimpsed a molten core to consciousness, a protean heat where everything could be reshaped. Yes, a molten core, like the core of the earth, deeper than the deposits of civilization, beyond the complacencies of archaeology. I grabbed the air, closing my fist on this elusive vision.

I remembered that at the beginning of my gambling phase I had only wanted to throw away half my capital. I still had 1.2 million francs in the bank. If I gave another million to Angelique I could buy one more day in her fantastic company. I could annihilate the simulacrum of our intimacy, and return to the truly harrowing intimacy of solitude. First it was Prozac I had to give up; now it was Angelique. I might appear to be acting from panic, like a rabbit dashing under the wheels of the car it dreads, or merely expressing my fear of separation by buying another day, but I would in fact be purifying myself of a fear which distorted everything. I would give away my last million in order to savour the pathology of my motives, second by second; volunteering for the Chinese water torture of an unbearable knowledge.

Indifferent to the jogger who panted his way towards me on the coastal path, I let out a scream of fury. I was swaying with vertigo and blazing with conviction at the same time, knowing that I was taking a mad gamble, but knowing that if I didn’t I would lose everything.

16

Things haven’t worked out quite as I envisaged on Cap Ferrat. What on earth did I think I was doing? Not content with a month of sick love, I have pushed myself to the brink of destitution by insisting on another day. Not only did I give away my last whole million, but instead of the two hundred thousand francs I expected to have left, I found one hundred and eight. I forgot to cancel the direct debits on my household expenses and that scumbag Dai Varey has been on the phone to Australia ever since, with all the lights on and the hot water running. If my doctor turns out to be wrong, things could get very nasty. As it is, I only have just enough for four months. I must stop asking for a quarter bottle of Evian with my coffee. That’ll be a saving. I can’t help being scandalized by an indiscriminate tax like VAT which hits rich and poor alike.

Mind you, inspiration can’t fail to strike under these miserable conditions. I’ve achieved poverty and isolation, the world-famous formula for artistic success, among other things.

I’m in a
pension
in the red-light district of Toulon. The wallpaper must have been brought here from Oscar Wilde’s death chamber. In this case, however, it’s not clear which one of us will go first. The building next door is being demolished and a ball and chain could easily slip through the emaciated walls at any moment. In the meantime, and what a mean time it is, brown and purple flowers with the texture of warts press in from every side of my tiny room. At the slightest movement my bed twangs like an unstrung guitar.

Outside, the French genius for covering pavements in dog shit achieves its most perfect expression, leaving almost no room for the beggars to display their cardboard autobiographies. As darkness rushes tactfully onto the streets, hideous women, sometimes overweight, sometimes dangerously thin, offer parts of their bodies for rent at understandably modest prices.

I wish I could stay but I’ve heard of a beautiful island nearby where the off-season rates are even more reasonable than they are here. I’ve found a room through an advertisement in the
Var Matin
, looking after the summer house of a Toulon family. I went for an interview and they seemed to think that it was pleasingly romantic to have an
écrivain anglais
caretaking for them. I’ll be living on the wild side of Porquerolles, a carless, unbuilt miracle of preservation, so they tell me. I can walk to the village to buy my supplies and then go home to write
On the Train
. I am hoping my life will be perfectly uneventful, so that I can concentrate exclusively on my novel. My last day in Monte Carlo, by contrast, was far from uneventful and I’ll have to describe it as briefly as possible so my mind is clear enough to carry on with the work.

I returned from my cliffside vision convinced that I had glimpsed a state in which I could become free through the intensity of my self-consciousness, and through being the neutral witness of my pathology. It turned out not to be so easy to pack decades of psychotherapy into one day of deliberate unhappiness. I did my best.

The first thing that threw me when I went back to Angelique’s apartment was the letter waiting for me in the hall from my implacably literary friend Lola.

My dear Charles,

Imagine how delighted I was to hear that you’ve been
spotted
, pen in hand, in the Monte Carlo casino. They’ll have to put up a plaque! I happen to be on Jean-Marc Olivier’s committee for the screening of
Flat
, the Maestro’s unfinished masterpiece (which, by the way, is absolutely marvellous and in some mysterious way better, and truer to itself, for being
unfinished
. One could almost think he died for aesthetic reasons, Maestro to the last). Anyhow, our mutual friend says that you’ve been creating quite a stir by beavering away in the Salle Privée while your engaging-sounding Muse loses huge sums of money at the tables. Please reassure me that you’re not just adding up her losses!

Oh, Charles, how wonderful if you’re finally getting down to the serious work I know you have inside you. One can’t help thinking of Dr Johnson’s famous remark!

If there’s anything I can do to help, you know I’m only too willing. I’ll be staying at Jean-Marc’s all week. Do ring me if you have a moment when you’re quite certain you can’t write another word.

Lots of love and tons of admiration for your courage,

Lola

I was writhing with irritation. How could I be expected to concentrate on the root fear under these circumstances? I wrote a short sarcastic note inviting Lola to be my literary executor and assuring her that if I died before my novel was finished it would not be for aesthetic reasons.

I had scarcely finished when the phone rang. I answered it, in case it was Angelique.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi, baby, it’s Heidi!’

‘Heidi, how did you find me?’

‘Lola told me your number.’

‘What would I do without that woman?’ I muttered.

‘Don’t be grumpy, you silly billy,’ said Heidi. ‘I’m ringing with good news.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘I want you to see Ton Len.’

‘You do?’

‘I didn’t realize you were really ill,’ she said.

‘Did you think I was lying?’

‘I thought it was some kind of English joke,’ she said, laughing as merrily as one of the mountain streams that crowd her native land. ‘You know the way I never got your sense of humour.’

‘How could I forget?’

‘I think it’s important for Ton Len to have some photos of herself with her daddy, and when she’s older we can look at them together and I’ll tell her what a wonderful man you were.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ I said, wondering if things could get any worse.

We made some practical arrangements, and Heidi drew the conversation gracefully to a close. ‘I’ve got a Tibetan monk doing a ritual for you, so you can die more consciously.’