A New Folklore

Kurt Weill's ' Surabaya johnny' boomed from the CD player propped against the pillows. Jane swayed around the bedroom, a lurid figure in a spangled crimson minidress and stiletto heels.

A frizz of lacquered black hair rose in a retro-punk blaze from her forehead, above kohled eyes and a lipsticked mouth like a wound.

I sat among the debris of discarded underwear, admiring Jane's stamina and panache. Overwork and pethidine had coarsened her face, and she seemed a decade older than the young woman who had driven me down to Cannes.

'Jane, I love the costume. You look wonderfully… I'd say decadent, if that wasn't so passé.'

'Tarty.' She cocked a hip and pointed a carmined fingernail at my eyes. 'Miss Weimar, 1927.'

'The Delages will love it. You're going out with them?'

'On the town.' She began to bump and grind, and tripped over a pair of thigh-length boots. 'Hell, too many feet in this room. Where's my gin?'

'By the phone.' A full tumbler stood on the bedside table. 'Save it for later.'

'I'm the doctor here.' She swayed and smiled, as if recognizing me across a noisy room. 'Stop worrying, Paul. The human body's capacity for painkillers is almost unlimited.'

'How much pain are you in?'

'None. Wonderful, isn't it? Dr Jane is in control.'

'I hope Dr Jane isn't driving. Where are the Delages taking you?'

'Dinner at… somewhere terribly smart. They'll pretend I'm a poule they picked up in the street. Then an open-air costume party.'

'And you're going as…?'

'Can't you guess?'

She vamped around me, sitting on my lap and moving away before I could embrace her, a dizzying slide of silk and flesh. 'How was the ground-breaking ceremony?'

'Impressive. All the top brass were there. A plane pulling a Green banner dropped a small bomb on us.'

'How funny. And how sad. Nothing can stop Eden-Olympia. Wilder must have been thrilled.'

'A bit subdued. The Wild West phase is over. Life will be a lot quieter here. Any chance of you taking a long break?'

'Paul…' Jane glanced at me through the mirror, sympathetic but distant, like a mother watching a handicapped child. 'Go back to London? For what? Some health centre in Clapham?'

'Why put it like that? We'd be together again.'

'They need me here. The project is expanding.'

'Good. But they need you for other things.'

'Such as?' Jane switched off the CD player. 'Selling stolen pharmaceuticals? Doing female circumcisions for rich Sudanese?'

'It doesn't work like that. They're more subtle.'

'Paul… where drugs and sex are concerned, no one is that subtle.' She walked over to me and placed her hands on my cheeks. 'You've spent too long here. Take Frances to London with you. Now it's my turn to fly…'

I watched her hunt through a drawer and pick out her most garish handbag. She embraced me fiercely before she left. When I winced, uneasy with this bogus affection, she looked at me with sudden concern. 'Paul? Is your knee acting up? Start taking your shots again. You were happier then.'

'That was the problem.'

'Are you seeing Frances tonight?'

'We're having dinner at Tétou. There's some good news to celebrate.'

'Give her my love. And use my car. Sorry about the Jag. All this graffiti everywhere. Alain thinks the wrong people are getting into Eden-Olympia.'

Later, as I drove the Peugeot along the RN7 to Villeneuve-Loubet, I listened to the echoes of Lotte Lenya inside my head and remembered Jane's advice. With or without Frances Baring, I would soon be back in London. As Eden II spread its parks and artificial lakes across the Var plain a more workaday future would arrive. The winding-down of Penrose's therapeutic programme marked a defeat for him and the triumph of the contingent world, the inescapable reality of corridor rivalries and executive washrooms, the relativities of status and success. After a long day at Eden II, the notion of psychopathy would seem almost folkloric in its quaintness.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-07