A Clue to the Exit Read online

  I was too tired to go on, but before I fell asleep I felt the relief of writing a third-person narrative. It is so much more personal than a first-person narrative, which reveals too flagrantly the imposture of the personality it depends on.

  As I lay on the bed, spiralling into sleep, I realized that I couldn’t grab at anything any more. I couldn’t even grasp the simplest idea. Nothing would take hold. The chains of cause and effect were heaped uselessly at my feet. Maybe that’s what freedom is like, only less drowsy.

  5

  Yesterday I doubled the dose of Prozac and despite my unhappy situation I feel quite violently cheerful. My mind is busy, busy, busy. I just don’t see how I’m going to fit dying into my packed schedule. In December I’ll be writing a deathless work of art. January’s no good, I’m having a reconciliation with my ex-wife. The spring’s out – it’s the cherry season, for God’s sake. The summer’s not looking good either: my daughter is coming down to the coast to say a last farewell; I wouldn’t miss that scene for all the world. We’re going to have to reschedule this thing for next autumn. I know it’s a whole year, but what can I do? I’m sorry.

  Busy, busy, busy.

  This morning I realized that my true subject – at least, for the purpose of getting an advance – is not death, but consciousness. It was Patrick going to that conference that gave me the hint. I rang Arnie’s secretary and made an appointment for the next day, then I went to Brentano’s and bought all the books on consciousness I could lay my hands on.

  Luckily, I’ve done a speed-reading course and by the time I arrived at Mi Casa Ti Casa I had been able to scan twenty-six books with the word ‘mind’ in the title, as well as a rogue volume called Now and Zen. Unluckily, I am only able to retain for a few hours an impression of the material I read at this punishing pace, and the first dozen books had already faded on the drive over. Still, I was unlikely to forget the central point: nobody has a clue how consciousness works. That’s why it’s such a fertile field for fiction, unlike the steam engine, for instance, which is relatively well understood.

  I found Arnie ripping the shell off a lobster and pouring a little battered tin of melted butter over its quivering body.

  ‘This is better than sex,’ he commented. ‘You got that treatment for me?’

  ‘I’m not writing about death any more.’

  ‘You’re just like my wife,’ he said, and chuckled. ‘She goes to the doctor every day. It’s an illness: hypochondria. She thinks she’s dying. I have to work my ass off so she can afford to be hysterical. So what’s the new project?’ he asked, expertly lowering the entire lobster down his throat like a sword-swallower.

  ‘It’s a novel,’ I said.

  Although he had a claw sticking out of each corner of his mouth, Arnie’s indignation allowed him no pause.

  ‘An ovel!’ The claws appeared to become animated as he mumbled. ‘What the fuck you writing an ovel fo? Ovelist is the schmuck gets aid peanuts for the wights if, ig if, he finds a poducer.’

  ‘It’s about consciousness,’ I persisted.

  Arnie spat out the claws. They clattered onto the plate, the flesh sucked from their shattered exoskeletons.

  ‘What’s the story line?’ he mocked. ‘Consciousness meets consciousness, they become super-conscious and live consciously ever after?’

  ‘You must be psychic,’ I said.

  ‘Sure I’m psychic,’ said Arnie, reluctant to refuse a compliment. ‘Listen, Charlie, first you tell me you can’t get death off your mind; now you tell me you can’t get your mind off your mind. Sounds like you oughta sack your therapist and write a sequel to Aliens with a Human Heart. Don’t you have any sense of social responsibility? Fifty-three million people are waiting for that sequel. Now, Charlie,’ said Arnie, all avuncular, ‘I know consciousness is a hot topic on the campuses. Did you read Mind Matters?’

  ‘I must have done,’ I said, feeling the memory of another dozen books slide down Lethe’s greasy banks.

  ‘How about Mind Your Language?’

  ‘I … I think so.’

  ‘That was a nice deal. The man who represented that book is a personal friend of mine. You wouldn’t believe what some of these academic boys get paid. But a novel, Charlie, a novel. You gonna put synapses in a novel?’

  ‘I don’t have to put them in, they’re in there already. My synapses are totally committed to this project,’ I gushed. ‘That’s the beautiful thing about it, talk about “the medium is the message”, this is the big one. Medium–message, form–content, they just kind of make out with each other the whole time.’

  ‘You’re writing a pornographic novel about consciousness?’

  ‘I could,’ I said obligingly. ‘I was going to set it at a conference.’

  ‘All they ever do at conferences is screw, right?’ said Arnie, chucking back a double espresso.

  ‘Lecture and screw.’

  ‘Drop the lectures; just go right into the passion,’ he advised.

  ‘They could have thoughts about the lectures while they were screwing and thoughts about the screwing during the lectures. It would be a metaphor for the total interpenetration…’

  ‘Total interpenetration, there’s a market for,’ said Arnie with a wink.

  By now I was floundering. All I could remember from my reading was a couple of lines from Now and Zen.

  ‘Listen to the wind moving through the pines,’ I stammered.

  ‘What fuckin’ pines? This is Third Avenue. You having a psychotic episode? You think you’re in the Pokanos?’

  ‘The sound of the traffic, then,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What d’ya mean, it doesn’t matter? You have any idea how much it costs to rent in this neighbourhood?’

  ‘In the sound of the wind moving through the traffic is all the teaching we’ll ever need…’

  ‘Right,’ said Arnie, cocking his ear towards the door. ‘It’s telling me I’m late for a meeting.’ He heaved himself up from the table and left with a marked lack of ceremony.

  I think I blew the pitch.

  6

  I’m back in St Tropez. Arnie is right: there’s no real market for death or consciousness. I’m going to have to go it alone on this one. I’ve taken a last handful of Prozac and thrown away the bottle. My whole New York trip was a Prozac mirage. Thank God I didn’t get the deal; this way I’m free, free as the wind, the open road. I’m going to get rid of this house and spend the last few months of my life in a hotel.

  The estate agent who sold me the house for four million francs, a Welsh windbag with bright orange hair called Dai Varey, says that if I put it on the market for three million he can get rid of it ‘in a jiffy’. He arrived wearing a blue blazer with heraldic buttons and a humorous tie with pink elephants trunk-to-tail from neck to navel.

  ‘What I tell my clients,’ he said, ‘is forget the Alpes Maritimes and come to the Var. The air’s like champagne, the sea’s as clean as a whistle, and the natives are friendly.’

  ‘I remember,’ I said.

  We walked to the end of the terrace and looked at the small valley in front of the house, still agricultural, like a streak of cortisone in the psoriasis of development.

  ‘That’s breathtaking,’ said Dai. ‘Those red leaves are an absolute knockout. May I ask, if it’s not too personal a question, why you’re leaving in such a hurry?’

  ‘I’m dying.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Dai, relieved. ‘It comes to all of us in the end, doesn’t it? Only, I had a very nasty experience with a molto presto sale that fell through because the vendor turned out to be involved in activities which were of more than casual interest to the boys in blue, if you know what I mean. You can imagine how interested the gendarmerie were in my commission. Fortunes of war, eh, fortunes of war.’

  True to his word, Dai got rid of the house in a jiffy and sold it later that afternoon.

  ‘That was quick,’ I said.

  ‘I bought it m
yself,’ he explained, standing on the chimney stack and admiring the sea view. ‘It seemed such a bargain. I couldn’t believe my luck, a house like this coming on to the market at three million francs.’

  Why would I regret leaving this sanctuary, with its Vietnam-movie soundtrack of choppers overhead, gunfire from the scrap of woodland that’s left standing, the drone of a low private plane, the whistle of a higher jet, the chain-saw whine of the circling motorcycles, and the frantic honking of adulterous wives racing home through crowded lanes?

  One of the great things about dying is that if you liquidate all your assets you can really pump up your monthly income. With half a million francs a month, I can move into the Hôtel du Grand Large in Villefranche-sur-Mer. My daughter will be all right; her mother kept our house in Belsize Park, although she says that her ‘real home’ is Tibet.

  As I was leaving the house for the last time, the phone rang. It was my ex-wife, Heidi.

  ‘I was just thinking about you,’ I said.

  ‘So what?’ she said. ‘How many times have you thought about me without getting a call?’

  ‘Thousands,’ I said, admitting the justice of her argument.

  ‘Is that all, you stingy bastard?’

  ‘Let’s not argue,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ve been told that I have only six months to live.’

  ‘Don’t forget that death is a crucial moment in your spiritual development,’ she said.

  ‘How is Ton Len?’

  ‘Oh, she’s so sweet at the moment. She’s obsessed with levitation. You’re missing her at her most adorable.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘One day she’ll realize that these fancy tricks are all very well for impressing simple people at country fairs, but they are nothing compared to the joy and compassion that spring from the realization of emptiness.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I said. Heidi gets very touchy if I question her grasp of Tibetan culture, and so I just agree to everything. ‘Any chance of seeing her?’ I asked, opening the old wound.

  ‘None at all,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to be dead soon.’

  ‘All the more reason not to get her overexcited. It’s typically selfish of you trying to get your child attached to something so ephemeral.’

  ‘I just want her to know that I love her,’ I said, beginning to cry.

  ‘Was it very loving to fuck that chambermaid when you thought I was out skating with Ton Len? Was it very loving to cut me out of a co-producer’s credit on the Aliens deal? Was it…’

  I put the phone down on a cushion and went outside. I knew the speech off by heart and knew that I had between six and seven minutes to sob uncontrollably in the garden.

  When I picked up the phone again, Heidi was saying, ‘I sometimes wonder if you listen to a word I say.’

  ‘I thought you were committed to loving-kindness,’ I said wearily.

  ‘I am,’ she protested. ‘Except when I hate somebody. Like all Tibetan-styled people I’m basically happy and giggly. If you get reborn as something cuddly and snugly, we might adopt you. A bouncy puppy,’ she suggested, ‘or a little kitty cat. There are monks who can follow you into the Bardo consciousness and out the other side. It’s awesome. You wouldn’t believe what some of these guys can do. It’s so cool being Tibetan.’

  ‘Far out,’ I said. ‘But no chance in this lifetime.’

  ‘None at all,’ said Heidi. ‘Ciao, baby. See you round the universe.’

  7

  Sometimes when I arrive in a hotel room I feel free, and then I remember what I’m free from, and I slide down the wall, staring at the mini-bar. After that, I like to get my bearings, check out the public rooms, scout for places to write.

  Walking through the garden, testing the benches and the views, I saw a figure familiar to movie-lovers the world over. He walked pensively along the gravel path, in shoes thinner than tightropes, flanked by two top models dressed in nurses’ uniforms.

  ‘Charlie,’ he drawled in his fabulous Italian accent, ‘it’s good to see you, my friend.’

  ‘Maestro,’ I said, kissing his hand.

  ‘No, no, please,’ he said, aspiring to embarrassment.

  ‘How are you, Maestro?’ I asked.

  ‘At the moment I feel very flat,’ he said.

  The way he said ‘flat’ opened up vistas of choking richness, indomitable classicism and mischievous wit.

  ‘In the Sixties,’ he said, walking over to the railings at the edge of the sea, ‘there arose around Godard a group of directors who asked the question, “Qu’est-ce que c’est le cinéma?’ Now that the world is flooded with audiovisual imagery, I do not think that this question can be asked any more.’ Unimpeded by the sable overcoat that dangled from his shoulders, he spread his hands despairingly, as if to offer the Mediterranean as evidence of this cluttering deluge. ‘I have always been half inspired by cinema and half by life, but the young people today don’t know anything about the history of cinema. If I make allusions, they don’t pick them up.’

  ‘But, Maestro,’ I said, ‘there’s still room for passion and intelligence. You of all people—’

  ‘There is passion and intelligence,’ he interrupted, ‘but there is no language for expressing them.’

  ‘English,’ I suggested.

  He laughed. ‘Charlie, I always liked your sense of humour. You are still young,’ he said, clasping my arm: ‘find that language, express that passion.’ He started to cough violently. ‘Excuse me,’ he sighed. The two nurses, frowning at me significantly, guided him back indoors.

  I stood alone for a long time, as if touched by destiny. I had been given my instructions by the Maestro: ‘find that language, express that passion.’ What perfect timing. I was alone in a hotel, where nobody knew how to get hold of me, and I could feel that last handful of Prozac evacuating my depressed body, like children in the Blitz. There was nothing to stop me writing until I dropped.

  That evening in the dining room, with its panels of Zuber wallpaper disclosing a tropical landscape, as I sipped the best potage de légumes jardinières I have ever tasted, I felt myself slide into a more lugubrious rhythm. I started to write a note about the continuation of On the Train, when I was interrupted by a lively old countess with blue-rinse hair and wrinkles as fine as anything in a Holbein portrait. When she found out that I was a writer, she asked me if I used a pen or one of these new computers she had read so much about.

  I told her that I cut open my wrist and collected the blood in my cupped hand and, using a six-inch nail, scratched out my sanguine words on the hides of snow leopards.

  That shut her up.

  8

  This morning a funeral hearse arrived at the back of the hotel.

  ‘Madame la comtesse est morte,’ explained the concierge, drawing the side of his hand slowly across his throat and letting his tongue hang out, in case I didn’t understand French.

  I was overwhelmed with guilt. Why had I been so unfriendly to that vivacious old blue-rinse? Now she was dead and it was no use offering her a Kir royale before lunch. It’s not enough to live each day as if it’s your last, unless you remember that it’s everybody else’s last day as well. The grief a loving son would feel, and of which I had no inkling when my own mother was lowered into her flinty grave, tornadoed through me at the news of the countess’s death.

  ‘All one can do is set an example,’ my mother used to say.

  ‘Or make an example of someone else,’ my father would add.

  And it was all they could do.

  Sometimes wild ideas were in the air. ‘People did things with tremendous style in those days,’ my mother occasionally remarked, but it turned out that these stylish people simply travelled with an unusual amount of luggage, or had allowed themselves to take a favourite terrier on a military campaign, and that, in any case, ‘those days’ were hopelessly remote from life in our Tudor farmhouse in Staffordshire.

  I once dared to complain that I had been brought close to breakdown
by my parents’ exemplary deadness.

  ‘You seem to have turned out perfectly all right,’ said my mother tranquilly.

  ‘Perfectly all right,’ said my father, in a tone which suggested that ‘all right’ was all wrong.

  As I wept in the garden of the hotel, I realized that I was not crying for the countess or for my mother, but with frustration at not having had a mother who deserved my tears. I dread the prospect of the pressure of death roaming through my psyche like a wildcat prospector and producing these eruptions of unwelcome insight. I wish my mother had been right when she accused me of not wanting to ‘make a contribution’. It would be so lovely to be good at doing nothing, but nothing is the one thing I cannot do.

  Later, I saw the Maestro leave for Rome in a black Lamborghini. I couldn’t help noticing that his chauffeur was dressed as one of the charioteers in Ben Hur. There’s nobody quite like the Maestro. My helplessness prevented me from saying goodbye, but his departure added to the determination of my melancholy.

  Feeling too upset to write, I made the brave decision to write about feeling too upset. At that precise moment when I was majestically uncapping my pen, a strikingly beautiful woman walked into the bar, where, despite my liver condition, I had just finished my seventh espresso.

  Her hazel eyes threw out sparks of green fire from behind the loose spirals of her golden-brown hair. We looked at each other with unassailable hunger, knowing that sex would only usher us into an Ethiopia of desire where we would taste even more keenly the tragic knowledge that true intimacy cannot be shared.