Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [44]
“Your aunt where? In England?”
“No. She lives in …” This was not the verb Rodney wanted. “She was in, uh, Connecticut. It was all very awkward. I took the train to, to Connecticut, do you see. Now normally I’d have put up with Auntie Jean, but her, her son was there, with his family, and I …”
When he wasn’t talking, which wasn’t often, Pharsin had a stunned look. As if he couldn’t believe he was listening to a voice other than his own. Rodney’s agonizing tale had brought them out on to Thirteenth Street. In the middle distance the Empire State seemed to sway for a moment, and was then restiffened by its stress equations.
“… and that train was canceled too. So with one thing and another I’ve had my hands full all week.”
Pharsin’s expression had softened to something more quizzical, even indulgent. He said, “I see it. I see what you’re doing here, Rod. You’re digging yourself into a situation. You want to read my novel. But it’s like you left it so long you can only see it coming back the other way.” Pharsin tapped his temple. “I understand the mind. I know the mind. Last year I took a lot of—”
He paused as if to listen. Rodney was expecting the next word to be Prozac. But Pharsin went on quickly,
“—psychology courses and I know how we do this, how we set these traps for ourselves and walk right into them. I understand. Rod?”
“Yes, Pharsin?”
“You’re going to read my book next week. Isn’t that right?”
“Pharsin, I will.”
“One more thing. You got to imagine that novel is written in my blood. In my blood, Rod. It’s all there. Everything I am is in that—”
Rodney tuned out for a while and listened to Manhattan. Listened to Manhattan, playing its concerto for horn.
“—the trauma and the wounds. Written in my blood, Rod. Written in my blood.”
That night (it was Sunday, and Rock was out of town) Rodney faced a void of inactivity. He was so at a loss that for the first time ever he contemplated digging out his typescript of The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words. But there turned out to be a reasonably diverting documentary about synchronized swimmers on TV. And he managed to kill the rest of the evening by washing his hair and rolling around in twenty-dollar bills.
“I see her in an Abyssinian setting. Or Ancient Ethiopia. She’s a Nefertiti. Or one of the Candaces. Here’ll do. Actually I think it’s a gay place but they don’t seem to mind me coming here.”
No irony was intended or understood by this last remark, and Rock followed Rodney unsmilingly down the steps.
Rock’s older brother Inigo had known Rodney at Eton; and in his school days Rodney had apparently been famed for his lending library of glamour magazines and his prolific onanism. So Rock sensed no sexual ambiguity in his friend. But others did. For instance, it had never occurred to any of his sitters’ husbands that Rodney was straight. And Rodney himself had entertained inevitable doubts on this score, in the past, in London, lying on his side and apologetically stroking the back of yet another unslain giantess of the gentry.
They ordered their Highballs. The clientele was all male but also middle-aged (woollen, paunchy), and Rodney received no more than his usual deal of stares.
He said, “This’ll amuse you. The first time we, uh, ‘hid the salami’ … No. The first time I revealed the salami—I felt a real pleb. A real cur. Like an Untouchable.”
“How so?”
“I’m a Cavalier.”
“Me too.”
“Of course. We’re English. But over here they’re all Roundheads. It’s posh to be a Roundhead here. Only the hicks and Okies are Cavaliers.” Rodney well remembered Mrs. Vredevoort, wife to the construction grandee: how, when at last she had found the salami (the salami having been located and identified), she gave a little mew of surprised distaste, and immediately came up for air. “Ours look like joints. As opposed to cigarettes. Which is what they’re used to. I bet they’re all Roundheads in Africa.”
“But