The Stranglers Honeymoon (27 page)

Somebody started up the photocopier in the corridor outside, and the noise reverted his attention to the left-hand side of his brain. Obviously he was not yet the only person in the building. And yet again he felt the physical movement inside his brain. The other reality. Left–Right.

He flushed the lavatory. Stood up and once again, as usual, felt a stab of pain from where the scissors had entered his body. A stab of pain and a reminder.

I must lie low for a while, he thought. I really must.

But that intention was not without its complications. Something had happened to his murky urges after the episode involving the Kammerle women. They were closer to the surface now. He had crossed a borderline, or passed over the crown of a hill. The intervals would have to be shorter from now on; he couldn’t cope with not having a woman’s skin under his fingertips for an unlimited length of time.

And presumably, he thought as he sat down again at his desk, presumably it was precisely those unusual words and images, the unadorned description of reality that started him worrying again.

Worry and unrest.

Dusk was approaching out there in the park, he thought. The red background provided by the observatory was shrouded in darkness.

I liked the girl’s armholes, he thought. I wish it had been possible to preserve one.

He sighed, and decided it was time to go home.

MAARDAM

DECEMBER 2000

24

When it came to men, Anna Kristeva liked to ring the changes.

After an early, childless and painful marriage – plus two or three so-called serious relationships – she had come round to the view that ringing the changes was the best solution.

The solution to a problem that unfortunately existed, no matter how much she might have wished that it didn’t. Men were necessary, that’s all there was to it. First one, then another. Occasionally, but not in too large doses, and not all the time.

And above all: it was not something that needed to be taken too seriously. She tried not to become too deeply involved, or to stir up too many far-reaching emotions – that was what had scarred her when she was in her twenties.

Now she was thirty-five: a free woman with control over her own life and an income sufficient to ensure that she would never have to depend on a man in order to keep her head above water. Or on anybody else, come to that. For just over two years she had been a partner in the firm of solicitors she had been working for ever since she passed her law exams, and which had also borne her name ever since the 1930s:
Booms, Booms & Kristev
. Actual ownership had passed out of the family’s hands for a while – her grandfather, Anton Kristev, had been a founder of the firm together with the Booms brothers: but her father, the next generation, had unfortunately been a child of the times. He became too involved with the lost souls of the 1940s, and at the beginning of the seventies had sold his share in the firm in order to finance his drug habit. Needless to say his daughter felt a certain satisfaction a quarter of a century later when she had been able to put things right again. Even if by then Henrik Kristev had passed away in a thin, blue cloud of hash smoke and remained ignorant of the restoration.

Needless to say it was an undeniable advantage to have a real, flesh-and-blood Kristev in such a reputable firm as Booms, Booms & Kristev – especially as she happened to be a woman, still young, still attractive.

A Kristeva. Jacob Booms, the third generation of Booms in the post of chairman – and with the biggest office in the premises in Zuyderstraat with two genuine Van Dermen oil paintings and a Persian Javel carpet – had suggested that they should change the name of the firm by adding that little feminine ending of ‘-a’, now that joint ownership of the enterprise had reverted to its original state: but Anna had declined the offer.

She knew that she was a woman no matter what. There was no need for a little extra letter on the moiré-patterned glass doorpanel leading into her office. Or in the classic Garamond letter-heading that had been used by the firm since the very beginning.

All that was needed to satisfy this hackneyed PC obeisance to sex roles was a man now and then. Just for a week or two. Nothing serious.

‘The most important difference between men and bananas,’ her friend Ester Peerenkaas had remarked on one occasion, ‘as far as we are concerned at least, is that men don’t grow on trees.’

That was, of course, a perfectly correct observation. Even if they were only interested in satisfying an occasional need, it was naturally an advantage if the fruit was tasty. The men available in restaurants and bars and other slightly dodgy plantations were easy to pick; but the outcome, the satisfaction provided by the arrangement, was seldom all that great. Both Anna and Ester had reached that conclusion after a few years of half-hearted indulgence. The aftertaste was generally much more sour than the sweetness of the fruit itself: it was hardly ever a matter of more than just a rather anxious one-night stand, and neither of them was very interested in continuing to plough that furrow.

‘Sleazy,’ Ester had commented. ‘It’s so bloody sleazy. He came after only twenty seconds, then lay there crying for two hours. We really must find some other way of going about it.’

Ester was even more hardened than Anna when it came to men. Or so she used to claim, at least, and it was difficult not to agree with her.

At the end of the eighties Ester Peerenkaas had met an Egyptian man, as handsome as a young god, at a conference on international economics in Geneva. She was twenty-five years of age, had just completed her studies, and had been appointed to work on a project in the Ministry of Finance: her life lay before her like a sun-kissed dawn. She fell in love, they married and had a daughter – all within the space of a year. They settled down in Paris, where he had a job at the Egyptian embassy. After three years she found her young god in bed with one of their French female friends. They were divorced within two months. Ester was granted custody of their daughter and moved back home to Maardam; but as her former husband had certain rights of access, she eventually allowed Nadal to spend a month with him one summer. The girl was five at the time, and since then Ester had never clapped eyes on her again. There was no longer a secretary by the name of Abdul Isrami at the embassy in Paris, and Egypt is a big country.

So Anna didn’t use to protest when her friend occasionally seemed to be somewhat cynical with regard to their sex lives.

So what other way did they find of going about it? Of making sure that they could occasionally enjoy a little of the sweetness that a damaged fruit still had to offer?
How?
It was Ester who came up with the answer.

Advertise.

At first it was not much more than a joke; but even jokes can become serious with the passage of time. It didn’t cost anything to try, and one warm, promising Friday in May 1997 they placed their first advert in the Contacts section of
Allgemejne
. The love market was considerably bigger and broader in
Neuwe Blatt
, but that was all the more reason for plumping for
Allgemejne
: in so far as there might be a promise of a little sophistication and class in this as yet untried area, it was of course important to explore those possibilities. Worth having a go.

Written responses required. Age, brief biography and photograph. Preferences with regard to art, music and literature. There was no need to make do with conceited idiots or introverted stay-at-homes. On the contrary, this was all about intellectual, cultivated and stimulating experiences.

There was also a proviso written into the advert to the effect that what was being proposed was not a possibility of spending their lives together: they had been very careful about the wording, but once they had got that right they didn’t bother to vary it from one advert to another. Nor was there any reference to the fact that two women were involved: but as both Anna Kristeva and Ester Peerenkaas were talented, well-educated and outgoing women aged about thirty-five, there was no question of any attempt to deceive. Not at all.

The first advert produced sixteen responses: they spent an extremely stimulating evening at Anna’s with cheese and wine, allocation of marks, eliminations, and drawing of lots – a process which eventually resulted in five meetings (three for Anna, two for Ester), and on the whole a very enjoyable summer. With no especially unpleasant aftertastes in the mouths of any of those involved, males or females – with the possible exception of an excessively possessive doctor’s wife who was apparently incapable of understanding details of the conditions.

So the method worked. Or at least, it was more satisfactory than many others: and when Anna Kristeva called in at the
Allgemejne
’s office in Rejmer Plejn that Friday afternoon at the beginning of December 2000, and collected a bundle of responses from hopeful candidates, it was the fifth time of asking.

In other words, a little jubilee. They had agreed to celebrate in style at Ester’s place with a lobster and a bottle of Chablis.

Twenty-three responses.

After the first so-called elimination of the idiots (those who hadn’t understood that it is not possible to submit a handwritten response using a computer – or the ones who were obviously only interested in showing off their muscles or beards before masturbating inside a woman), there were fourteen left. Plus one wild card: it was Anna who had invented and introduced that device – on pretty good and, it would transpire, foresighted grounds – after their third fishing expedition exactly a year ago.

After the next rather more careful run-through – after the lobster and the Chablis, but before the coffee and cognac, concentrating on such simple but important criteria as graphology and the ability to put thoughts into words – the number of possible candidates was down to four. Plus the wild card.

They took a break. Put on a Nick Drake CD and did the washing up. Prepared a tray with coffee and cognac glasses, moved into the living room and settled down in armchairs. It was ten o’clock, and time for the final round.

‘What about this one,’ said Ester, ‘what do you think of him? I must say he appeals to me much more than any of the others.’

‘Read it out,’ said Anna, leaning back in the armchair and sipping her cognac.

Ester started reading.

‘“I have to say I’m not a regular reader of these Contacts pages, but your advert attracted my attention – and why not. I’m a pilot and spend most of my time roaming around the world, but I have a base here in Maardam. Two marriages have stolen my youth, two children have ruined my finances, but at forty I’m too young to die. My first wife taught me to read – Maeterlinck, Kafka and the great Russians; my second wife took me to the opera. I still burst into tears when I hear the duet from
The Pearl Fishers
, but why should I sit sobbing to myself ? I have a house on a Greek island, but even Greece is lacking in charm at this time of year. I suggest a dinner and
La Traviata
instead: that’s on until the New Year.”’

‘Hmm,’ said Anna. ‘He certainly has a point, no doubt about that. If half of what he says is true he has a lot going for him. Can I have a look at his photo again?’

Ester handed it over. A powerfully built man, smiling, half-length. White shirt, open-necked. Thinning hair and his eyes perhaps a bit too close together – but what the hell? There surely can’t be any doubt that he must be one of the chosen two.

They had changed the rules of the game after the second advert, so that there were now just two finalists: one each. It would have felt wrong in the long run to have more than that, simply in order to have back-ups. Neither Ester nor Anna had been attracted to that model – it would have been cowardly, to put it bluntly. Too vague and not sufficiently uncompromising. You needed to play this sort of game with a certain elan, to take a few chances in order to achieve a romantic outcome – otherwise there was a risk of everything being watered down, something neither of them could have tolerated. A yawning Amor? No thank you. Certain rules didn’t need to be spelled out, but they were there even so.

‘Okay, the pilot is one of them,’ said Anna, handing back the photo. ‘Nothing to argue about there. Do you have a number two?’

Her friend said nothing for a while, just read the submissions and studied the pictures.

‘Not really,’ she said eventually. ‘Possibly this journalist, but it’s up to you.’

Anna took over the documents and glanced through them.

‘I’m a bit doubtful about him,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’m just biased, but that editor I wasted two months on last spring was really no Richard Burton. Even if he did knock back a few glasses.’

‘Richard Burton?’ said Ester with a laugh. ‘If he’s the one you’re after I suggest that bloke from Wahrsachsen, whatever his name is. At least he has the right sort of impressive-looking facial expression.’

Anna picked up the photo of Angus Billmaar, a forty-four-year-old with a steel business of his own. And she also burst out laughing.

‘Good God no!’ she snorted. ‘I mean Richard Burton before he became an old-age pensioner. Are you really telling me that this bloke is forty-four? I have to say I very much doubt it – he must have chopped a decade off when nobody was looking. How the hell could he get through to the last round?’

Ester shrugged.

‘Lack of competition,’ she suggested. ‘Unfortunately. Who do you suggest, then?’

Anna contemplated the remaining two photographs, holding one in each hand and weighing up first one, then the other, several times. Checked their write-ups as well, before putting everything down on the table in front of her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t find any of them uplifting.’

‘Nor do I,’ agreed Ester. ‘Mind you, I do have my period at the moment – but I don’t think I’d find any of them inspiring under any circumstances. Not in the best of worlds. So what the hell do we do?’

Anna thought for a moment.