‘Looking back, he called it the first crow flying across the sky.’
A day or two later Christopher said, ‘Tell me about the feeling over there.’
‘Well I did an event the other night. And for once you could mention America without the room freezing over. Instead you got a wave of sympathy and fellow feeling. I think it’s like that all over Europe. Even in France.’
‘It’s worldwide. There were candlelit vigils in Karachi and Tehran. Both Shia of course. The Shias having always been slightly cooler than the Sunnis.’
I said, ‘Quite a bit cooler…America’s in Britain’s good books for now. But of course the softening of mood doesn’t extend to Israel.’
‘Mm. Are they saying that all the Jews who worked in the Twin Towers called in sick on September 11?’
‘No. That’s conspiracy stuff, that is. In England, as you know, anti-Semitism is just another chore of snobbery. Though it does lend spice to their anti-Zionism.’
‘It’s the same here. I seem to be surrounded by people who think…They think that Osama would take off his trunks the minute there’s a country called Palestine. Or the minute we lift the sanctions on Iraq. Et cetera. They don’t understand. I think Osama probably does lose sleep about those GI “devils” polluting Mecca and Medina. But inasmuch as it’s secular, his casus belli is about the end of the Islamic ascendancy. What bothers him is that the Muslim host was defeated at the gates of Vienna. The year was 1683 and the date was September 11.’
Later in the week he said,
‘Mart, what do you hate about America? I don’t mean its wars. I mean internally.’
‘Oh, there’s no end of things to hate. America is more like a world than a country – attributed to Henry James. And it’s the best starting point. You can’t say you love a world…Generally, what do I hate?’ And I started out on the usual roster. Racism, guns, extreme inequality, for-profit healthcare…Oh yeah, and the Puritan heritage. I can’t bear the way they love to say “zero tolerance”. It means zero thought.’
‘So all that. But what Osama hates about America isn’t what we hate about it. It’s what we love about it. Freedom, democracy, secular government, emancipated chicks driving around in cars, if you please.’
‘And plenty of sex.*5 I was reading…in Islam, apparently, Satan, Shaytan, is first and foremost a tempter. Whispering to the hearts of men. They’re tempted by America. Because a side of them fucking loves it.’
‘Yeah, that’s certainly in the mix. How dare America have the arrogance to tantalise good Muslims? Osama didn’t include that in his list of wrongs.’
‘With Osama I sometimes think fuck it, it’s all to do with birth order. I mean, seventeenth out of fifty-three – that’s a notoriously difficult spot.’
‘And living proof that his dad, the illiterate billionaire, wasn’t at all opposed to fornication. In Islam there’s no free love till you’re dead. With the virgins.’
‘With the virgins. And on that cool white wine that makes you drunk without any impairment or hangover.’
‘Mm, I sure could use a little of that. Yes, rightly did Khomeini call life, actual life as we know it, the scum of existence. Ah, Christ. This is a fight about religion, Mart. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. And those fights never really end.’
Equinoctial
It was September 26, and he was vainly pleading with his wife. Elena had not weakened in her determination to go to Manhattan (and to Ground Zero).
‘Don’t do it yet awhile, El. Any day now they’re going to start fucking up Afghanistan. And then we’ll have another Walpurgis Night in New York. I hate it when you fly anyway. Don’t do it yet awhile.’
She said, ‘What’ll they do there after they kill Osama?’
‘Uh, kill Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric, and so get going on the Taliban.’
Elena and her husband, for their part, were walking at dusk along Regent’s Park Road, heading for Camden Town and Pizza Express. Eliza and Inez would be waiting for them (minded by their faithful nanny, Catarina)…He looked around and sniffed the air. There was an instability in the weather, moist, brisk, rich, with a seam of something unsettling and arousing, like a welcome but careless embrace; the taste of it was familiar, too, though for now he couldn’t tell why or how. It would come to him. Elena said,
‘Well I’m off the day after tomorrow. Sorry, mate, but there it is. I have to.’
After a couple of moments he made it clear that he would accept this without much further complaint. At the same time he dimly consoled himself with the thought of a night or two of snooker and poker (and perhaps a night of darts with Robinson).
She said, ‘Uh, how did it work itself out with Phoebe? You know. After you got back from your quid pro quo with Lily. Up north.’
‘Oh.’ They turned into Parkway and there across the road were the outdoor tables and the milk-bar lights of Pizza Express. ‘Oh, we got past it somehow.’
But now they were within (and he could see the back legs of Inez’s highchair just round the corner). There were greetings and hugs and kisses, and it was almost the same – almost the same as before.
‘Four Seasons, me,’ he said. ‘And you?’
‘American Hot,’ said Elena.
As he drifted in and out of the small talk, doing more gazing than listening, his thoughts gingerly and discontinuously returned, not to the night of shame with Phoebe but to what followed it: i.e., the month of shame with Phoebe. During that time he very closely resembled Humbert Humbert in Part Two of Lolita.*6 As you get older you can of course remember what you went and did when you were younger; you can remember what you did. What you can’t remember is the temperature of the volition – of the I want. You can remember why you wanted what you wanted. But you can’t remember why
