The man took a sip from a cracked mug of coffee. ‘You might have some trouble. Stores like this can’t carry books like that. Anything “deemed flagitious by general consent”, you got to take your chances with the international mail. Might be a few copies in private collections but that’s probably about all.’
‘Private collections?’
‘Yeah. Plenty around. But people don’t tend to advertise them. There’s a few everybody knows about, like the Gorge library, but those ain’t a hell of a lot of use.’ He had one of the most brutally cacophonous American accents Loeser had ever heard; no one who spoke like this, surely, could ever have any success in life.
‘What’s the Gorge library?’ said Loeser.
‘Wilbur Gorge. The automobile-polish guy. His collection’s supposed to be the biggest in the country — maybe the biggest in the world. Up at his mansion in Pasadena. I don’t know anybody who’s ever seen it, though. Might be bullshit. But if anybody has your book, he probably has it.’
‘I see. Thank you for your help.’ Loeser was about to depart when he noticed a copy of
‘Very popular with our customers.’
‘What’s his latest?’
The man took down a title called
‘What about Rupert Rackenham?’
‘Nothing by him, no.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ It wasn’t yet noon, but Loeser hadn’t had breakfast, so he said, ‘In addition, I want to try an American hamburger sandwich. Which is the best?’
‘The best in Hollywood or the best in Los Angeles?’
These two designations were not yet quite distinct in Loeser’s mind, but he had an idea that the latter was more comprehensive. ‘The best in Los Angeles.’ Should he have said the best in California?
‘For my money, that’s Nickel’s over in Pacific Palisades.’ The man took a business card out of his jacket pocket, wrote on the back with a pencil, and handed it to Loeser.
‘12203 Sunset Boulevard,’ Loeser read. ‘And I’m on Sunset Boulevard already. So it’s just further on west from here?’
‘Yeah, it’s a pleasant drive.’
Drive! Loeser had heard about this: the bizarre American hatred of travelling anywhere on foot. They would think nothing of getting in their car even if their destination was on the very same street. ‘I shall walk,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t do that. It’s a long way.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m from the Old World. I’m used to walking.’ As he strolled whistling out of the shop, Loeser heard the proprietor shout something after him, but he ignored it. The business card was still in his hand, so he turned it over to read the other side: Wallace Blimk — Bookseller. Before he had lunch, he thought, he would work up a decent appetite. Four hours later, he collapsed by the side of the road.
As a result, no doubt, of some bureaucratic oversight, Sunset Boulevard had a beginning and a middle but no end. The coast was not far now, but Sunset Boulevard probably just rolled on down the beach and into the water and onward to Shanghai. Quite early on, Loeser had realised that the numbers he could see on the buildings were nowhere near 12203, but since they seemed to rise every block in random increments, that hadn’t, unfortunately, been enough to discourage him. So he had carried on, more determined with every step to eat the best hamburger in Los Angeles, and by the time he fainted, just next to a sign advertising a pet cemetery, he had already walked further than he’d ever walked in his life. For long stretches, there had been houses but no pavement, or not even houses, just orchards and an occasional petrol station or diner, and he’d trudged over grass or gravel, as cars zoomed mockingly past. The sun beat like a gin hangover, and on his right the mountains had caught the afternoon light, dandled it, and released it again. Who had designed this set and why had no one told them they were going much too far?
‘Are you all right?’ A spaniel-eyed woman in a gingham dress was touching his shoulder. ‘Do you need a glass of water? My house is just here. I think you dropped your book.’
Embarrassed and unsteady, braised in his own brine, Loeser got to his feet, picked up
‘Where’s your car?’ she said when he was gratefully seated. As well as the glass of water, she’d brought him a chocolate chip cookie.
‘I don’t drive.’
‘You lost your licence?’
‘No. I never learned.’ She gave him a look of concern as if she were wondering whether he was defective or just poor, so he added, ‘I’m from Germany.’
‘Oh. How do you like America?’
‘It’s preposterous.’
On his forced march, Loeser had realised that the great advantage of living in this senselessly stretched-out place would be that you would never bump into anyone ever again. Years before, as an optimistic recent university graduate, he had thought that the best thing about Berlin was that you couldn’t so much as go out for a coffee without coming across half a dozen people you knew. Within a few months, he had concluded that this was actually the worst thing about Berlin. There, if you humiliated yourself trying to get someone to go to bed with you, you would then have to see them twice a week for the rest of your life — a welt on your world. Here, they would just vanish. Every ex-girlfriend, rival, creditor, parasite: avoiding them would only be a matter of not specifically seeking them out. It would be such a secure, logical way to live, fortified by dispersion against coincidence. He was proud enough of this observation that he had begun to compose a paragraph about it for his next postcard to Achleitner. Unfortunately, it was about to be ruined. ‘Is that a Stent Mutton you’ve got there, by the way?’ the woman said. ‘I’m nuts for Stent Mutton.’
‘Me too!’
‘My husband knows him a little. They met at the Athletic Club. I hear his wife is awfully pretty. Their house isn’t far from here.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure. Down there just this side of where the canyon meets the beach. You can’t miss it. Looks like a sort of greenhouse.’
Loeser didn’t know what he expected to find at Mutton’s house, but just visiting the holy site would be enough to justify the day’s ordeal. He drained his glass of water and looked out to sea.
The sun was in Loeser’s eyes as he walked west, so it wasn’t until he was quite near by that he got a good look at his destination, and beheld an implausible snag in the ontology of this foreign land. There, on a rise that sloped affably down to the beach, was the Blumstein residence in Schlingesdorf — tugged all the way from Berlin, it seemed, by some tireless amphibious cousin of the lorry he’d seen stuck on Sunset Boulevard. In every dimension it was identical, and yet the weird light of this land had done something to it, parsed it as a homonym, the same structure with a different result: back in Berlin, even in summer, the house was a jar for pickling clouds, but here in the glare the glass walls looked aqueous, unsolid, a cage of refraction. On the patio, next to the swimming pool, a blonde woman sat at a redwood dining table writing a letter. She looked up as Loeser approached.
‘Is this Stent Mutton’s house?’ he said.
‘That’s right. I’m his wife.’
‘My name is Egon Loeser. I’m from Berlin. I’ve come to see Mr Mutton.’ Which was not quite a lie, thought Loeser, because he would very much have liked to meet the author, but was also not quite honest, because it rather implied he had an appointment, perhaps that he had crossed the Atlantic expressly for this long-scheduled colloquy.
‘You should have called ahead. I’m afraid he’s not seeing anyone today. He’s resting inside. We just got back last night and the journey was a horror.’
‘Got back?’
‘From Moscow.’ Mutton’s wife took off her sunglasses in an interrogative sort of gesture. When the woman in the gingham dress had said she was awfully pretty, that had been an almost slanderous understatement. And there
