The Teleportation Accident

myself.’

‘But you know perfectly well you never would have thought of writing a novel about him if I hadn’t told you about our play.’

‘Yes, like most of us I like to continue my education through conversation.’

Loeser was trying to keep in mind that he couldn’t admit to being offended over the lack of a Loeser character. ‘It wouldn’t be quite so bad if you didn’t get everything wrong!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know where to start. Among the twenty or thirty historical celebrities with whom Lavicini just happens to cross paths in your ridiculous plot is his old friend Leonardo da Vinci.’

‘Yes, he helps with the Teleportation Device.’

‘Leonardo died a hundred and twenty-nine years before Lavicini was born.’

‘Bad timing on his part.’

‘You also have somebody referring to Leonardo as Signor da Vinci. Da Vinci means “of Vinci”. That’s like referring to Joan of Arc as “Mademoiselle of Arc”. “Telegram for Mademoiselle of Arc!” ’

‘All right, I feel a bit sheepish about that one.’

‘And da Vinci carries a pocket watch and calls people “rotters”.’

‘You’re such a pedant, Loeser. It’s a novel, and I wrote it in a hurry. If my public want historical rigour they can refer to the Domesday Book or Wisden.’

‘But for God’s sake, why even bother to write a historical novel if you’re not interested in history as it actually was? Your Venice is worse than Kempinski’s New York.’

‘You must understand, I don’t have much imagination,’ said Rackenham. ‘Every one of my novels is a roman a clef. It’s just a question of whether I bother to hide the clef under a flowerpot. And I was getting bored with doing nothing but changing the names each time. I had a nasty experience with my last one. In Steep Air, when it’s implied that the judge’s daughter goes to bed with three rugby players at once after a party — that story is true in almost every detail. It happened to a university girlfriend of mine. She confided it to me in a tender moment, not long before our untender disunion. When I wish to enact a private sexual humiliation, I’d much rather the girl’s face was buried in a pillow at the time than buried in a book, but since this one wasn’t quite stupid enough ever to let me fuck her again, I had no choice but to use my publisher as an intermediary. And I assumed it would remain private, because obviously rugby players can’t read and obviously my old flame couldn’t complain about what I’d done, even to her dearest friends. When she read it she would have felt so angry, and so powerless, and it would have guaranteed me the upper hand every time I saw her for the rest of our lives. Ideal in every way.’

‘What happened?’

‘One of the rugby players had a chum who knew about the episode and was literate. He told all three of them about the book. They came down to London in search of me. Luckily I was in someone else’s flat that night. It’s one of the chief reasons I ended up in Berlin.’

‘So what difference does it make if you settle your scores in seventeenth-century Venice? It’s still quite obvious who everyone is supposed to be.’

‘Yes, but my theory is that people will feel so absurd about coming to me and saying, “This syphilitic gondolier in a carnival mask is transparently my good self” that they won’t want to do it. History is a sort of fantasy, and fantasy softens the blow. So far it seems to have worked. But of course, whatever precautions one takes, excuses can always be found for fury, as you’ve just demonstrated.’ Rackenham drained his coffee. ‘Anyway, Loeser, I should have thought you’d still be in a cheerful mood after what happened with Adele last night.’

‘Are you taking the piss? It was awful. She called me an apprentice cuckold.’

‘But you kissed her.’

‘What?’

‘You kissed her,’ said Rackenham. ‘I didn’t see it myself, but you came up to me afterwards and told me about it. I’ve never seen you so happy.’

‘I don’t remember anything of the kind.’

‘I’m not surprised. You were as glazed as a sash window. You were trying to hang on to your own wineglass for balance.’

‘You’re sincerely telling me I kissed her.’

‘Yes.’

‘Rackenham, if this is a joke, I will stuff this book so far down your throat that your duodenum will autograph it in bile.’

‘It is not a joke. You said you had just kissed her.’

And then Loeser remembered. He really had.

‘You’re an apprentice cuckold,’ Adele had said in the Fraunhofens’ dining room.

‘And you’re an aspiring joke,’ Loeser had replied.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I estimate you have about three more weeks until this conquering trollop routine loses its novelty and people start talking about something else. After that you will pass out of gossip and into mere signification. The only time anyone will mention your name is when they need a simple way of referring to a specific pattern of social behaviour. You will be living shorthand for something out of date. A ghost. A statue. A joke.’

‘And how exactly can I avoid that fate?’

‘Stop being so predictable. For instance, you might try being old-fashioned just for a night.’

‘That sounds tiresome. What does it involve?’

‘I’ll take you to dinner and there’ll be no absinthe and no ketamine and you can decide whether to sleep with me on the basis of my intelligence and my charm instead of my notoriety and my jawline.’

‘How boring. Where would you take me?’

‘Borchardt’s.’

Adele smiled and raised an eyebrow. ‘What about the Schwanneke?’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘If it’s the Schwanneke, and you’re nice to the waiter and give him a big tip, then I will condescend to eat with you.’

‘Honestly?’

‘Yes. I won’t go home with you afterwards, though. That wouldn’t be very old-fashioned.’

‘But you might kiss me, at least?’

‘I suppose.’ She frowned. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Now you will just spend the whole evening calculating how you can coax me that far.’

‘Probably.’

‘Well, if we get it over with now you shan’t be distracted.’ Adele stood up on tiptoe and kissed him in a way that was both utterly passionless and staggeringly potent. ‘Eight o’clock tomorrow, then?’ she said afterwards.

Loeser wanted to respond but he felt as if both his tongue and his penis were likely to end their days among the shell-shocked in a rural mental institution.

‘Well, anyway, I’m going to find Sartre,’ said Adele. ‘Just because I’m seeing you tomorrow it doesn’t stop me making his acquaintance tonight. Have a nice evening.’ And she was gone.

When all this came back to Loeser in the Romanisches Cafe, he nearly bent down to give Rackenham a hug, but then he reminded himself that the Englishman hadn’t actually had any part in this victory. Instead, he just picked his book, apologised for the interruption, and went over to sit down with Ziesel.

‘Dieter! How have you been?’ he said, and generously permitted almost an entire phoneme to venture out of Ziesel’s mouth before cutting him off: ‘I’ve been pretty fucking well myself, since you ask. I’m having dinner with Adele Hitler tonight. Adele Hitler. And she kissed me last night.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘She said she won’t sleep with me but, come on, we all know her. And after that I feel fairly sure she’ll be my girlfriend. I’ll be the first to tame the beast. You wouldn’t know about this, of course, but there’s normally something a bit distasteful about going out with someone who’s fucked a lot of other men. “If a woman is good at sucking cock, it can only be because she’s sucked a lot of cocks. That is man’s eternal tragedy.” Somebody said that … Goethe, no doubt … And sometimes I think it’s only the replacement of the cells of the body that makes sex even