Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (8 page)

They found Herr Doktor Martin Zweijärig sitting on the pavement outside the station. His suit was scuffed-about and dirty, his face was sweaty and contorted. All around him the human flotsam streamed: Turkish guest workers, junkies, asylum-seekers and tourists. There was hardly an ethnic German to be found in this seedy quarter of the European financial capital. Zweijärig was conscious, but barely so. The stroke had robbed him of his strength – he was as weak as a two-year-old child; and quite naturally – he was talking gibberish.

DAVE TOO

‘P
erhaps . . .’ Dr Klagfarten leaves this word dangling for a while – he likes to do that. ‘Perhaps the blackbird is the real object of your sympathy. After all, it cannot leave the room, whereas you can.’

‘Perhaps.’ I don't leave the word dangling. I leave it crashing, falling to the floor between us, like a bull at a corrida, and collapsing in undulations of muscle and dust, crumpling on to the hard, deathly ground.

Dr Klagfarten tries another tack. ‘I'd like to see you again this afternoon, about another matter – you recall, I mentioned it yesterday?’ How typical of the man, that ‘recall’.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ I'm struggling to my feet. I sit facing Dr Klagfarten for these sessions, inhabiting a low armchair of fifties ilk, wooden arms, cushioned base underslung with rubber straps.

Dr Klagfarten sits some way off, behind a white wooden table which does service as his desk. He's a thin man, quite bald, with an expressive, sensitive face. His lips are alarmingly sensual for a middle-aged psychiatrist. He twists them constantly this way and that in a moue of intense, emotive contemplation. He's doing it now. Doing it as he says, rising from behind the table, ‘Well, see you at three this afternoon then.’

And I sort of hunch up, half turn on my way to the door and go ‘Y'mf’ by way of assent.

What does Dr Klagfarten want, in the midst of his carpeted enclave? That's what his consulting room is like – a carpeted enclave. A modern room, cream of wall, thick of pile. And that pile, after a session of curdling monologue, seems in danger of creeping up the walls, providing further insulation, further deadening. What does he want of me? To slide my hand beneath the curiously thick and defined lapel of his jacket? To caress the front of his shirt; unbutton it, bend, slide tongue and lips in; seek out a depressed, sweaty nipple? Is that what Dr Klagfarten wants?

I woke this morning with the radio burbling in my ear. If I'm alone – which I am more and more nowadays – I always sleep with it on, so that the World Service mixes with my dreams. So that I dream of a riot of headscarved Dr Klagfartens, stoning Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. As I came to consciousness a politician was being interviewed. ‘We have to make some terms for the long-term,’ he said, and then later he also said, ‘I'm going to sit down and think about it – I think.’ There's something about these broadcast contexts that does it to people, makes them repeat themselves. It's as if, halfway through their sentence, they lose some sense of what it is to be themselves, they flounder in the very moment of articulation, asking, ‘Who am I? Who the fuck am I?’ And the only answer that comes back is that they are the person who has just said ‘actually’ or ‘term’ or ‘policy’ or ‘whatever’, so they have to say it again. Are compelled to say it again.

Dr Klagfarten's consulting room is in the old administration building. It's a blocky thing of weeping concrete and square, green-tinted windows, which project out, as if the interior of the structure were swelling, slowly exploding. As I cross the car-park I look over my shoulder, once. Dr Klagfarten stares down at me from his window. He lifts a hand and carefully swivels it at the wrist, suggesting the possibility of valediction. And as he does this a great gout of chemical smell, like air-freshener, comes into the back of my throat. I gag, turn, walk on.

Dave is waiting for me in the café – as he said he would. He's a very tall, very jolly man, and I think of him as my closest friend. ‘Howdy!’ he cries as I come in through the door. The café is a long, tunnel-shaped room. Near the back a counter is set on the right, and on the very edge of this a Gaggia huffles and burbles, sending out little local weather systems. Dave is under one of these clouds. ‘Howdy!’ he cries again. Maybe he thinks I haven't seen him, or maybe he's just reminding himself that he's Dave.

I can't blame him for that. It's such a common name, Dave. There are two other Daves who are usually in the café at this time of the morning. Dave and I call them, respectively, Fat Dave and Old Dave, by way of differentiating them both from him and each other. Fat Dave, who's the owner's rather dim-witted brother, mans the Gaggia. He's a barrel of a being with a bucket for a head. He wraps an apron around his abdomen, ties it with a cord as tight as a ligature, and leaves his big white arms bare. These are constantly in motion, scooping, twisting and pulling at the Gaggia. It looks as if he is deftly, but without much feeling, making love to the coffee machine.

Old Dave is an altogether grimmer figure. He sits, face down to his racing paper, a roll-up made from three strands of tobacco stuck on his lower lip. He never says anything. We only know his name, because from time to time Fat Dave will refer to him in passing, thus: ‘Yairs, Dave there used to . . .’ or, ‘Y'know Dave over there, he could tell you a thing or two about . . .’ It seems that this is the fate of these two particular Daves. To be caught, their sembled identities bookending the café, leaning into one another's being.

My Dave is eating a full English breakfast. The eggs have been turned so that a small skin of white has coagulated over the yoke. It has the aspect of a cast over an eye. Dave looks up at me as I sit down opposite him, smiles, then looks down, spears the yoke with his fork, spears a bit of bacon with same, tucks the whole, gnarled mass into his mouth. ‘Yungf’,’ he says, and then, ‘Have you seen her?’ I sigh. ‘No, yungf'-yungf’, tell me, have you?’

I shrug, inexpressively, ‘Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I have.’

‘And?’ He's sawing at the fried bread.

‘She understands . . . sort of. She, she accepts that maybe I have to . . .’ I can't bear to say this, it's so
trite.
’Have to find out who I really am. I feel so . . . well, you know, we've talked about it. I feel so amorphous, so shapeless, so
incoherent.
I don't feel as if I know myself any more. Especially after a morning like this, when I'm up early and talking to Dr Klagfarten before I'm awake, before I've had an opportunity to, sort of, boot up my identity, become who I really am –’

‘Yes, yes, of course, I know what you mean entirely.’ Dave has set his knife and fork down, he's kneading one hand with the other, he's completely engaged in the matter, abandoning himself to the discourse – perhaps that's why I like him so much. ‘I sometimes feel the same way myself, exiguous, wavering, fundamentally peripheral – ‘

‘And full of fancy words, ha!’ We both laugh, our shared laugh, my wheezing giving a windy accompaniment to his percussive ho-ho-hos. And in the moment of this laugh I'm at one with Dave, I feel a real kinship with him. I feel he and I are essentially similar, that no matter what differences may arise between us, of belief, of intent, we will share the same basic character. It's only with Dave that I feel comfortable discussing Dr Klagfarten – or rather, discussing what Dr Klagfarten and I discuss.

It's odd, because I'm sensitive about the therapy, and sensitive about my relationship with Dr Klagfarten, who far from being a distant or impersonal presence in my life, is actually well known in some of the circles I move in. But predictably, it was Dave who ran into him socially. He was at a party in Davyhulme given by some zoologists. According to Dave, Dr Klagfarten was very jolly, drank deep, and sang revolutionary songs in a fine, warm baritone, much to everyone's enjoyment. I find this clip of Dr Klagfarten at play difficult to reconcile with the benign severity he always evinces towards me. I even find it hard to imagine Dr Klagfarten as being anything but a shrink. How could anybody whisper lovers’ endearments to him? What could they call him? Klaggy? Farty? The mind boggles.

Lovers’ endearments.
Her
endearments. I don't feel I deserve them. Or perhaps worse – I don't quite believe they're directed at me. When Velma looks at me with what are meant to be loving eyes, I see too much comprehension, too much calculation. It's as if she were looking at my face in a spirit of having to do something with it, make it work.

I sign to Fat Dave that I want a double espresso, and turn back to Dave.

‘I am going to see her – this afternoon.’

‘I thought as much.’ Dave bends back down to his breakfast, I am gifted a top view of his head, the island of grey-blond hair marooned on the apex of his skull, like a negative image of a monk's tonsure. ‘I couldn't believe that you'd just let it ride, let her go out of your life.’

‘No, it's true, but y'know, Dave, the same applies –’

‘The same applies?’

‘To her, to Velma. Even when I'm with her, and we've made love . . . Well, no,
especially
when we've made love, especially at that moment when I roll away from her, see her face blanched, emptied by orgasm, wrung out. Then I don't know who she is –’

‘You don't know who you are –’

‘That goes without saying, but I don't know who she is either. She . . . she could be
you
for all I know.’

‘Double espresso?’ says Fat Dave, putting the cup down in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Old Dave light his roll-up with a lighter so buried in his calloused, chipped, yellowing fingers, that the flame seems to issue directly from flesh. ‘Double espresso?’

‘Whassat?’

‘Double espresso?’ Fat Dave is still standing over me. Has he forgotten that it was I who placed the order, from this very seat, not three minutes ago? I scrutinise his face for traces of irony. I know that Fat Dave feels less fondness for me than he does for his namesake. But Fat Dave doesn't have the contrast control necessary to express irony – he's only looking
at
me.

‘Yeah – that's mine.’

Dave observes all this with a wry smile puckering up his long, equine face. His visage is really a series of crescent shapes: long, droopy earlobes; large droopy eyes; cheeks nearing jowl; and straight lines, in the form of fine wrinkles, that experience, twiddling his knobs, has Etch-A-Sketched alongside the crescents. Dave's countenance, I realise for the first time with an access of minor dread, is composed entirely of Ds, letter Ds, Ds for ‘Dave’. Dave is, in fact, initialled all over. Like some ambulatory stick of rock, he carries his ascription written on his body. Written
through
his body, for, I feel certain that were I to excavate, dig into one of these fleshly Ds, I would find that it was bred in the bone.

My Dave is, I like to think, a kind of Ur-Dave, a primary Dave. His Daveness, his Davidity, his Davitude, is unquestionable. In a world with so many Daves, Daves running, Daves walking, and Daves standing, desolate, crumpled betting slips at their feet, it's infinitely reassuring to feel that within my grasp is some part of the essential Dave.

But that essential Dave is now talking, wheedling his way back into my thoughts. I tune to this very Dave frequency:

‘ . . . went back with her. She went into the bedroom. To be frank I was a bit pissed. She called me after about five minutes. I'd poured myself a generous snifter. She keeps a bottle of calvados in her desk . . .’ He always speaks in these short sentences. A Moog speech synthesiser – with the ‘Hemingway’ button permanently on. ‘. . . on the bed. She's wearing a red rubber dress. The video is on. A Californian pol of some kind is giving a press conference. She was writhing. He was saying something impassioned –’

‘Dave –’

‘She said, “Come here.” But I was watching the pol, who had pulled out a gun. It was quite clear that this was real. All shot by a live-action news camera. He put the gun in his mouth. Big fucker – long-barelled Colt –’

‘Dave you –’

‘I look from the screen to the bed. She's got her hand up under the rubber dress. She's playing with herself. On screen the pol just does it. Blows –’

‘Dave,
you told me this yesterday! –
’

‘His brains out.’

Silence in the café. I realise I've shouted. A hiss of steam from the Gaggia, a small cloud floats over me, sends shadows racing across the sward of Dave's face. I look up to where a peg board is affixed to the pine cladding. A peg board with plastic letters, detailing the café's fare. I scan the lettering, picking out As, Vs, Es, and of course, Ds.

Why did he do that? Repeat himself like that. It undermines my whole sense of him. The fact that he could repeat himself so comprehensively, sentence for sentence. It must mean that he didn't register who he was talking to. He didn't know that he was talking to me. He does, after all, have a lot of friends, Dave. And it's often remarked upon how sympathetic he is, how warm, how caring. But it's also true that this quality has to be spread about a bit; a margarine of feeling.

‘I have to go now.’

‘But –’

‘No, really. Velma. I'm going to see her. I told you.’

‘Are you sure about . . . I mean that it's a good idea?’ He's half rising. Bobbing slightly in the awkward, rigid gap between banquette and bolted table. With his horsy head, painted-on hair and simian arms, he looks puppet-like to me. He isn't in any sense a real Dave, this Dave. How could I be so fooled? His very posture suggests thick, yet invisible, threads running up, through the ceiling tiles, to the spatulate fingers of a giant Dave, who squats above the café, trying to coax dummy Dave into a semblance of humanity. ‘Are you seeing Dr Klagfarten again today?’ His brow is corrugated with ersatz angst.

‘What's it to you?’ I'm plunking a handful of change down on the table, rising to leave.

‘Oh come on . . . I'm only concerned for you . . .’

He's concerned. Hell,
I'm
concerned. We're all fucking concerned. We're united in concern, wouldn't you say? United like so many Stickle-bricks, pressed together to form a model society. From the door of the café I turn. All three Daves are in the same positions, frozen. Fat Dave, his hand on the big knob of the Gaggia's handle; Old Dave nodded out over the
Sporting Life;
dummy Dave still deanimate, dangling. I raise an arm, and in imitation of Dr Klagfarten swivel a palm.

I walk swiftly, listening to the arguments of my conscience: pro-Dave and anti-Dave. I know I've been stressed recently. Dr Klagfarten says I shouldn't look to anyone of the several therapies we are applying for succour. Rather, I should try and apprehend them as a manifold entity, that cushions and constrains me. But even so – there just is an objective creepiness, a not-quite-rightness about Dave at the moment. Far from finding his very Daveness reassuring this morning, it has instead gravely unsettled me. I can't stand duplication. It
is
replication.