Spurious - Lars Iyer [29]
W. keeps his suit very carefully for Saturday night, when he and Sal go out for cocktails.—‘What are you going to wear? You can’t go like that’. My shirt’s unironed, for one thing. W. says he’ll iron my shirt. ‘Go on, take it off’. And then, ‘God, you’re getting really fat’.
‘How dry do you want them?’, the barman asks us of our Martinis.—‘On a scale of one to ten, where ten’s driest, about eight please’, says W. The barman asks us what kind of Vermouth we want. W. tells me they stock three kinds of Vermouth, all imported from America. They even import the salt for their Margaritas, he tells me.
W. likes cocktails which are as close to pure alcohol as possible, he says. Our Martinis are served in frosted cocktail glasses with a curl of lemon rind floating in the clear liquid.—‘When I’m feeling rich, I’ll buy you a Martini made with Navy strength gin’, says W.
‘The trick is not to stop drinking’, says W. In Poland, he drank five shots in a row, stood up, and fell under a table.—‘The Poles pace themselves’, he says, ‘but we don’t’. And then, ‘Where were we? Oh yes: love’.
‘Companionship is very important’, says W. ‘It’s the heart of a relationship. You have to get on. Sal and I get on’, he says. ‘If you’re working class, like us’, says W., ‘you show your affection by verbal abuse. That’s why I abuse you—verbally, I mean. It’s a sign of love’. W. reminds me of what Sal said about a joint presentation she saw us give: we were vague and boring, she said. Vague and boring! It’s great. Your partner should be full of contempt for you. It’s a good sign’.
All evening, Sal berates W. and I.—‘Why don’t you write your own philosophy?’—‘She’s right!’, says W. ‘Why don’t we? You explain’. And then, to Sal, ‘Open your eyes! Isn’t it obvious! Look at us! Look at him!’
Sal thinks W. spends far too much time on revisions. His book was better before he started working on it, she tells me. It’s true, W. admits, he cut so much of it that parts make no sense at all.—‘Still it’s better than your book, isn’t it? You should see his book’, he says to Sal, ‘my God!’
The damp’s worse than he can imagine, I tell W. on the phone. Mould is growing in patches, the damp is blackening, and a fine layer of downy salt covers the plaster. I brush it and it flakes down, salt from the wall. Salt leached from the wall: isn’t it rather beautiful? Above me, the new joists and the wooden boards fastened over them. Dry as a bone now; nothing comes from there, I tell W., the corner from where the leak ran.
But I can still hear the water rushing. Every night I hear it, rushing in the dark as though on an unknown and urgent journey. Every night, going into the bathroom, I hear it rushing beneath the floorboards.
‘Keep it warm’, said an expert on the kitchen damp. And the damp in the bedroom?—‘Keep that warm, too.’ So where do I point my heroic little fan heater? It does a shift in the kitchen, and then a shift in the bedroom. I carry it from one room to the other, over the bits of kitchen furniture that are scattered everywhere.
In the living room, the washing machine on its side as though it were stranded on a beach, covered in black mildew. Then a cupboard, the back of which is greeny-black with damp. I have to keep everything dirty, the expert tells me, to show the original surveyor tomorrow.—‘Keep it mouldy. Then he’ll be able to see’.
I have no idea how to talk to people, W. says. I lack even a basic sense of the reciprocity of conversation. W.’s going to write a book of etiquette for me, he says. The art of conversation, that’s what I’ll have to learn, he says. Give and take. And table manners.—‘You never learned them, did you?’ And keeping myself clean.—‘Look at you! You’re filthy! When did you last wash your trousers?’ And wiping off that morose expression on my face.—‘Why should anyone