CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR


Yeah, the old life. I can't remember exactly how it started, which particular conversation ended with me thinking "Enough". I don't even really remember who the conversation was with. Maybe it was a situation rather than a particular conversation. I don't know. Most likely it was a combination thing. It's strange. You start to think of these things and you think of something that at the time didn't seem death-ray pivotal, but it keeps poking its head into your thoughts. I remember there was this one exchange I had with Catherine ages ago. There were better ones in terms of fire and brimstone. There were funnier ones, sadder ones and ones that were more typical, but this one keeps raising its head. Maybe it’s just because of the stupidity of the whole thing. I don't know.

"Why can't we be more like the Aborigines?"
Ah, yes. The Aborigines. Why weren't we more like the Aborigines? If I was a betting man, I wouldn't have gone for the 66/1 shot that this would be an anthropological question. No, the clever money would be on the 4/1 on favourite. Grief. So, what critical jewel were we going to be treated to now? But that wasn't the real question. The real question was this. How to answer. Dull sarcasm?
"What do you mean? Volunteer to do the work of repressed minorities?"
Dull. A sharp stab with the fabled wit?
"Emigrate to Australia and volunteer to do the work of repressed minorities?"
Dull. A mildly disinterested nod?
"Oh?"
Ease of exit pointed the way to the mildly disinterested nod.
"Oh?"
"The Aborigines didn't have a written language so everything that they knew had to be passed on by word of mouth, by telling each other stories. Everything became a story and if anyone wanted to tell anyone anything or communicate anything they had to talk to each other. They couldn't send each other long, laborious letters full of circumstantial logic and circular truths. They had to talk."

We'd had this talk talk before. I had tried to explain that if we had anything to talk about, we'd talk. That was a stupid tack. It was easy for the row to follow. I had also tried to explain that it wasn't the quantity of your conversation that counted., it was the quality. What I should have done was said that we didn't talk to each other because we couldn't talk to each other because as soon as either of us opened our mouths, the other was gripped by a near murderous impulse. But I didn't say this. What I did was write letters. It had once seemed to be the only way to get a rhythm going, a flow. It was pointless. Rather stupidly, I noticed that I had left a window open.
"I read somewhere that the Aborigines were skilled painters."
I could never resist the dull sarcasm. And that was the end of that.

There were other conversations that came and went, but none of them ever seemed to do anything but confirm that doing what you wanted to do was the right thing to do. There was the work.
"I don't understand you. I mean, of course I understand that you want to travel and explore, but for you to do it now seems really stupid. You're just in the middle here. You've spent quite a bit of time, enough to get yourself known and to have a good reputation, but not long enough to make yourself indispensable. Why don't you reconsider, give it another couple of years. By then, you'll be able to call the shots, you'll be in a position to go away for a while and negotiate terms which will ensure you your job is waiting for you when you return."

Eminently sensible, every word. There was no arguing with the logic. But I didn't want sensible. I wanted out. Now.

"The dudong is fucked. I read only this morning that one was washed up on shore, death by oil. It's only the first one reported, but it can only get worse."
OK, I had a bit of a thing about dudongs. Dudongs and manatees – these beautiful subterranean creatures that, so the stories go, fuelled all those old tales of mermaids. Theirs was a singular beauty, a mother’s beauty, the beauty of age. The only thing was… my thing about dudongs was just another of those things we didn’t share. She considered it one of my strange quirks. I considered it vital.

I kinda knew that invoking the dudong was doomed, but – really, I mean this – it really did make logical sense to me. It was the type of logic that couldn't be argued against, unless you consider "Am I supposed to understand that? You don't want to talk to me? Fine. Don't talk to me." to be an argument.
"Look, I'm just being honest. All I mean is that if you stay too long in one place, you can get caught. If the dudong had kept an eye on the situation and been aware of what was happening, it would have been OK."
"I don't know what a dudong is and I don't suppose it really matters. You're making as much sense as a 4-year-old."
“Well, they say that as we get older we become more childlike.”


Everyone has their tales of glory, their tales of woe. "He's an ordinary geezer, doesn't seem to have any grief". But it's not true. Everyone has their grief. Well, everyone here does anyway. Everybody everywhere does. Family grief. Parental grief. Boy grief. Girl grief. Body grief. Mind grief. Grief grief.

I knew how I'd got there. It was more or less the same story of why I was leaving. I don't mean the cold, I mean the unnecessary agg. It wasn't just the woman thing. There was also the other woman thing. Names are so unnecessary at this stage. They merge into one more often than not anyway. And then there were the times when there wasn't a Kate or a Karen – fictional, of course - to give the grief. Maybe that was more grief.

The road out was ridiculously easy. It was just a regular meal out at a regular place with a regular mate, but it was one of those days. Biorhythms or something.

"I'm pissed off" I said.
"You're pissed off? You should sit in my office for day. Then you'd really know about pissed off."
"Why should I sit in your office? I sit in my office. I know about pissed off."
"And the woman grief?"
"The woman grief you know about. The woman grief's the woman grief which is the woman grief."
"Doesn't help, does it?"
"Is it meant to help?"
"No. I don't suppose it is. I don't know. I just don't know."

“You know something,” I said. “Do you ever get to feel that something’s passed you by?”
“Sure. What was her name last week? Emma. She passed me by, and as quickly as her little legs would carry her.”
“No, I mean it. Do you ever feel that something’s passed you by? That the world has changed and you’re not there.”
“Are you going to get serious on me here?”
“I think so. Listen. Switch on the telly and it’s all Ibiza this and Ibiza that. Go into any record shop and all you see is kiddie music, smug middle-aged music and dance compilations and I’m not a kiddie and the thought of listening to the Eurythmics greatest hits…”
“And?”
“And do you know the difference between underground garage and progressive trance? Have you ever danced all night off your head on E? Have you ever been to The Big Chill and tripped till morning?”
“The Big Chill?”
“Never mind. I read a review in the paper a while back. Burning Man.”
“Look. I know what you’re talking about, but it’s called life. You do things, you get older and then you do other things.


This went for, I don't know, maybe three double espressos. And then...
"So what are we doing here?"
And that was it really.

You always feel that you're alone in your grief, that other people don't know. What do they know? What can they know, with their dinner parties and their Clariss Cliff pottery? But they know. In their own ways, they know. It's quite at shock at first, but then when you hear them say "So what are we doing here" in exactly the same way that you've just said it, the shock goes. All it takes is another few doubles and then you say it. "Let's go." You say it and they say it and neither of you really believe it. If you were that type of person, you'd have done it years ago. If you were that type of person, you wouldn't be needing to say it now. But then the word gets around and then they all laugh and then you think "fuck them."

I remember my old man said that once. "Going's easy. It's staying that's hard." But then again, what did he know? He was the one who said my life was too easy. "The trouble for people like you is that you've got too many choices."

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

I was exactly the kind of guy who’d be seen at a place like this. It's 4.15pm and it's Sunday. Limbs ache, wishing they were 22 and not 32 and I feel like whatever it is I've been doing, well maybe it's about time I stopped doing it. The grief is that I know that if I feel like this next week, it will be a bonus. A right result, as we might have once said. The coffee I've been waiting for still feels like the first of the day, even though it's the third (or maybe fourth) cup of the day. Or maybe not even the first. Next comes the toast. It was only an idea to eat. Sustenance. As far as ideas go, it wasn't a bad one. Ideas.

“Did you order me a coffee?”
Alison. She looked how I felt. Actually if I looked how I felt I’d be happy.
I stopped writing and looked up. Good. She looked how I felt and though I probably also looked how I felt, it made things seem so much better. Loneliness is a terrible thing.

“This bread… it’s something else” I said to her. “It’s your worst white slice nightmare. It looks like a real loaf of bread but there’s nothing there. It’s air and water. Where’s the flour? Where’s the yeast? Where’s the…”

“The soul. Go on, say it. Where’s the soul. Then, when you say that, you can have a bit of a rabbit about how it’s a reflection of Japanese society. Looks good, contains nothing.”

“And bread is the food of life and… “

“Yeah yeah. Bollocks bollocks bollocks. Did you order me a coffee?”

“Of course I ordered you a coffee. You asked me to order coffee, so I ordered coffee.”
“Good. I guess it’s that empty cup there.”
I smiled and she smiled. A familiar scene.
“If I order myself another one then you can have it. We’ll be quits then.”
“OK. So if you do that, I’ll order you another one and you’ll still owe me. You know I like it that way.” We’d talked ourselves into a corner neither of us knew much about and neither of us cared about and there wasn’t anything to do but drink the coffees. Somehow on a day like this, writing gibberish letters to people who’d know nothing of their contents seemed a suitable task.

Our coffees came and the relief that they brought dried up the conversation. Part of the relief. So we drank our coffee and looked at the toast which seemed no more appealing now than it had done when it was first brought over. Big thick lumps of bread. Sometimes the idea of food is better than the food. Maybe one day I’ll find a restaurant where you can order food and you don’t eat it and you don’t pay for it. You could order wild vegetable dishes or exotic and body distressing local specialities without having to endure the eating or the next day grief. A few coffees later and we’d got no further.

So now the rain was coming down. The rain in Tokyo is different to the rain anywhere else. It creates a mirror everywhere. The cars, all clean and shiny reflect against the shop windows which are all clean and bright and they both throw back the reflection of the garish neon which exists in even the sidest of side streets so that everything reflects on everything else and into everything else. Vetrification they call it in the floor cleaning game. You know those floors made of marble slab tiles that are impossibly shiny and sparkly? That’s vetrification. They lay ordinary marble and take the top layer off it with a major wire wool rotating brush so that it all clean. Like a reptile constantly shedding its skin. Like Tokyo.

One slice, maybe two inches thick and cut into three pieces, like cubes of hot bread or angular doorsteps. I tear into it lethargically - biting is impossible. My mouth is the wrong shape.

Around me in the cafe, people were sitting reading the papers. And the scene was the same as everywhere else in the world. They’re turned to the sports pages, checking to see how their boys have done.

Another cigarette. Having another cigarette wasn’t so much a decision as a move designed to put off having to make a decision because you know any other decision will probably be wrong and definitely not really worth the effort.

I’d probably go through the old Apocalypse Now thing if Alison hadn’t beaten me to it.
“Tokyo. Shit” she said.
I was just thinking that. Martin Sheen and helicopter fans. Tokyo. Shit.
“When I was there I couldn’t wait to get out. When I was out, all I could think about was how to get back there,” I said in my best Martin Sheen voice. His own mother wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if she’d had been sitting in her own bedroom. My mazel, it would probably turn out that she lived somewhere closer than Japan.
“What?”
“Apocal ... nah, doesn’t matter. You just got up?” I said.
“If I’d had got as far down so I needed to get up I wouldn’t have been able to get up at all.”
I only knew what that meant because I felt the same way myself. That old ACE feeling.
“So what’s the story then. Letters day?” she said. “Yeah, it’s important to keep in touch with the old life.”

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO


It was clear from the off that they knew Graham. Whoever these people were, and there were a lot of people in this place, whoever they were… they knew Graham. And they were steering clear.

I could see them looking. I could hear them talking. Some just turned away. Others pretended not to have seen anything. Others were more upfront.

“You’re back, are you? Didn’t think I’d see you again.”
There were a few like that. A couple of faces said “What you got? I’m in Room 24.”
Mostly though, people said stuff like “Hi” or “Good to see you” or “You stayin’ long?” and all the time they all meant “Just leave me alone, please. Just leave me alone.”

I didn’t get it really. OK, he was a bit mad, a bit of a loose canon, but people reacted to Graham like he was a serious bad man. Dunno. He was OK with us. He sorted out a room for me and Ben “Listen, I’ll get you a room, be OK if I just leave my bags there for a bit, yeah?”

“Yeah, OK. Sure.”

Looking back, we were so stupid it was almost funny. We knew he was a drug dealer yet “Sure we’ll look after your bags and if the place gets busted, course we’ll take the rap. No problem. Fancy a tea?” It was like we’d turned from hip, smart, media players into Forrest Gump.

I went for a walk. There were two floors. A big kitchen and a lounge area with a few beat up chairs and a telly. The Kirk Douglas film Spartacus was on and maybe there were six people hanging around.

It was like a student nightmare – The Young Ones, maybe – but there was a different vibe, a lack of care. It was a nonchalance borne out of displacement. Mostly if you’re not playing the game, you can measure your personal rebellion against your peers and your culture. I’ve never been in prison but I’d imagine it’s the same sort of thing. You’re all just passing through, you’re here but not here. And here was like some ‘holding tank’, somewhere you were waiting. But the thing here was that everyone was from some other culture so there was no ‘home’ to measure yourself against. And your peers were the same as you and the ‘home’ culture was Japan and that was so weird that you could be some green thing from Mars and you’d still be more normal than them.

He sorted us out a room. A room. It’s a curious word really because if you asked anyone what that place had, the last thing they’d say would be ‘room’. The rooms at the Palace were either three mat or six mat. A mat – a tatami mat – was about one metre wide by two, so a three mat room had room for a mattress and not a lot else. Me and Ben were sharing a three mat room. That was cosy and there’s nothing like cosy for getting to know people well.

Later that first night we were settling down. It was late. Cheap Japanese whisky had been drunk. Cheap god knows from where dope had been smoked and the night was done. And then all hell broke loose.

The noise came from the kitchen. I walked out into the hallway to see what the commotion was about.

“I’d steer clear of that” someone said.
“Oh, I’ve got to have look” I said like a tourist.
“It’s gonna be messy. I’ve been here before when Graham’s been in town and, believe me, it’s gonna be messy.”

Messy was one word. Graham was chasing some blonde bloke round the kitchen holding the biggest knife. I don’t know what he’d done, but I was glad I wasn’t the blonde lad. What can I tell you? It didn’t end well.

I’d love to say that was the last time I saw Graham. But it wasn’t. He came back a few times – different stories – but it had all changed. It didn’t take me long to turn into one of those people I saw on my first day in the Palace, one of those faces that said “Hi. Good to see you” and shuffled along.

What’s he doing now? No idea. Really, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Odds on he’s dead now. I heard some story from Pauly about Manilla and you don’t fuck about in Manilla. Still, bless him. He brought me here.

Anyway that was all a long time ago. Now it’s today and today’s a grey miserable day. One of those days when even the rain can’t be bothered…
“Aren’t we supposed to be falling today?”
“Nah, stuff it. I’m going to stay in the cloud today. Watch a bit of telly.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. No one ever thanks us for falling anyway. Fancy a beer?”

One of those days

It's one of those 'kill someone' days. I do remain convinced it would improve things. The main question is not whether I'd do it, but how I'd do it. I would run them over, but can't. The car is out of MOT. I would hit them with my hoover, but can't. It's already broken. I would smother them with the health insurance, but can't. It's expired. I might hit them over the head with Lily's gravestone, but can't. It hasn't been ordered yet. The obvious answer was - curiously - given to me by the kids. I could kill by hitting my victim with the Nintendo Wii. Of course the small print detail is that we haven't got a Wii but - and this is where the kids were really inspirational - we could get one. Actually they said we must get one, but that's just semantics. You know something. There's probably a Wii game I could use, like Wii Fit but more Wii Hit.
It's probably John & Edward's fault.