Joel turned to the waiter. 'May I have the bill, please?'
The waiter raised his eyebrow a fraction of a centimetre. Joel looked at him for a moment and decided it wasn't any-thing definite enough to pick a fight on.
But when the waiter returned he smirked.
'Excuse me,' said Joel, 'but didn't I notice you lift your eyebrow in a disagreeable way?'
'I beg your pardon, sir?'
While Joel continued his conversation with the waiter, Bettina looked out the window. She saw a woman in a white linen suit and red shoes. She gave her seven out of ten.
He had always parked his car behind the public toilet in the park opposite Milanos. He had done it for fifteen years, and for fifteen years different parking inspectors had received a yearly present and turned a blind eye.
But today there was a circus in the middle of the park and he had to enter the park from the wrong side, and drive across the grass. He parked, as he had always parked, next to the MENS sign.
Then he walked across the road and up the stairs.
He had always liked Milanos. The walls were the colours of smoked salmon, the tablecloths the same. He was reminded of the inside of vaginas, of peace, and for no good reason, of a large blue lake. He liked the roses and the carnations in their old fashioned silver vases which sat on each table. He liked the mirrors, and the tasteless little shaded lights on the walls, which somehow looked so elegant here. All this, his favourite place in the world, was unchanged and he breathed an almost audible sigh of relief to see Aldo sitting behind the bar as usual, to feel (more than see) the rush of waiters, the rolling chrome marvel of the dessert trolley, the soft exciting noise of a long French cork being drawn, the muted clink of long-stemmed wine glasses.
When he found five people sitting at his comer table, he took his notebook from the pocket of his baggy white suit and began writing straight away.
Aldo, his dark face like a clenched fist, decorated with two intense intelligent eyes, watched him. He was irritated by Harry's apprehensive face, the tentative way he came in, poking his nose around the coffee machine like a rat. Aldo, who was famous for his prickliness, had always been polite to Harry. He had been pleased to see him; he had even liked him. And Harry had liked Aldo without reservation. He had made Aldo feel good. But now Aldo's antennae twitched and he wanted to smash Harry across the mouth. He wanted to smash him across the mouth for even being alive. He sent the new waiter to give Harry a table. It was a provocative act. He watched its effect.
Harry was led to a window table, where he seated himself without protest. The meekness with which he accepted the table irritated Aldo even more. So when Harry looked over and smiled uncertainly Aldo pretended not to see him. He let him wait five minutes and then, as he circulated the room talking to customers, appeared to find him by accident. Harry was waiting for the drink waiter without complaint.
'I cannot keep a table empty for three months as a monu-ment,' he said, watching Harry writing in his book. 'If you tell me you will be here you can have the whole big table and what in the hell do I care that the other five seats stay empty? Did I ever complain? Now you have this table, a good view. Many people ask for the window. Today, in particular, you can watch the elephants. There, see.'
'Hello, Aldo.'
'You are tanned. You are thin. Your operation is over. You should be happy, but look at your face. What do you want to drink? The Meursault again?'
'Thank you.'
'There is no Meursault. How about a Mercury Blanc?'
'And pearl perch with sorrel sauce.'
Aldo shrugged. All his creased dark face showed pain and discontent, 'Let me advise you not to open the window. It stinks of animals' shit.' He pocketed his order book. 'We eat, we shit, we die. I myself have cancer.'
'No, Aldo, that's terrible.'
'Terrible? How is it terrible? It just is, that's all. Aldo will die. They tell me you died once already, but you came back. Maybe I'll come back too,’ he laughed coldly.
'Ah,' Harry said sadly, 'you think so?'
'I think so?' Aldo said. 'I know you did. I know so.'
Aldo retired with the order and sent the Mercury Blanc to Harry's table. When the perch and sorrel sauce passed him on its way to Harry's table he did not, as he should have, send it back to the kitchen, but shrugged to himself and let it go. Harry who had been a mountain had become a pit. Aldo watched him play with his pearl perch and when he had nearly finished he wandered over.
'How was the meal?'
Harry made a see-saw motion with his hand.
'Pah. What was the matter with it?'
'Oh,' Harry said, 'nothing. Don't worry, Aldo.' He suddenly felt very sad, sad either because Aldo had been replaced with an Actor, or alternatively had not been replaced by an Actor and had cancer. In either case it was depressing. He had made notes of both options and put the notebook in his pocket.
Aldo took the plate away. Harry hadn't finished, but Aldo was embarrassed to see it on the table. He retired to his bar and watched Harry drink wine. He was ashamed of himself. He liked Harry. He wanted Harry to smile. He wanted energy from Harry, but Harry sat at his table like a man with his forebrain cut out. So later, when the Mercury Blanc was nearly finished, Aldo came over to the table with a couple of cognacs. He sat down opposite Harry. He tried not to be prickly. He tried to talk to Harry as he remembered him.
'Mr Joy,' he said, sliding the glass across the tablecloth, 'they are giving me chemo-therapy and it makes me ill. So, to prevent the illness which is caused by treating the illness, they give me this.' And he pulled, from his pocket, a little plastic bag full of green herb-like substance.
Harry picked it up and fingered it. It crunched inside its bag. 'Marihuana,' said Aldo. 'Illegal, except for fortunate people like me who are dying of cancer. It is for counteracting the chemo-therapy. Have you ever smoked it?'
Harry shook his head. He had always believed what the city's tabloids told him about marihuana. He clutched the notebook in his pocket. DRUG ADDICT.
'It's not bad stuff,' Aldo admitted, sipping his cognac. 'In comparison with wine, of course, it is definitely below par. I mean: no nose, no colour, no complex taste. But as a euphoric: very good, probably better than wine. I tell you this, Mr Joy, because I see you are not on top of the world for the first time in fifteen years, it probably would not hurt, at your age, to try a little.'
'No thanks, Aldo.' PUSHED DRUG. INSISTENT.
'Come on. What do you think will happen? You will tum into a heroin addict? You will rape little schoolgirls? Have some. Makes you feel nice. Trust me, I wouldn't lie to you. Just mix a little with your cigarette. You roll the cigarette like this, see, so the tobacco falls out the end, then you can put a little pinch inside. It's easy.'
'Why are you talking so much, Aldo? You never talked so much.' V. PERSUASIVE.
'Well,' Aldo paused thoughtfully, 'I am stoned as a matter of fact.'
'Ah,' said Harry and regarded Aldo closely.
'Do I look like I rape schoolgirls?'
'No.' SMALL PUPILS.
'Well take it.'
Harry pursed his lips and then bit his moustache.
'Take it, take it.'
'Thank you, Aldo,' said Harry. He slipped the little plastic packet into the big pocket of his voluminous white trousers.
'You will enjoy it and think of me.'
Harry wondered.
'But,' Aldo went on, 'let me tell you about this cancer business, Mr Joy, there is a great deal of it around and it makes me wonder.' He narrowed his eyes. 'A lot more around than before. My theory is that it is being sent to punish us for how we live, all this shit we breathe, all this rubbish we eat. My theory, if you are interested, is that cancer is going to save us from ourselves. It is going to stop us eating and breathing shit.'
'What shit?' Harry wondered about the pearl perch.
'What shit? You name it. But listen, you know George Bizneris from Shell he has it. You know Betty Glover, she has it. You know, ' and he started counting off names on his fin-gers, 'David McNamara, his wife too, the man who runs the news kiosk downstairs, my own father, and that man there, sit-ting in the comer with the woman with red hair, he says three children at his daughter's school have it. Three children, eh?'
Harry shook his head mournfully, wondering what it all meant.
'Ah,' Aldo stood up. 'I can't stay with you, Mr Joy, you're too depressing. Come and see me when you have a smoke.'
Harry had a weakness for Bisquit cognac and no matter who told him it was not a great cognac, nothing could diminish the pleasure it gave him. When, sitting by the window, he dropped his nose into the brandy balloon it was like the proboscis of some creature whose evolutionary success had been based on its ability to live on the fumes of volatile fluids. It did not matter what they had done to Aldo (there he goes, the dark little man, flitting across the restaurant with his hidden drugs) because Harry was warmed and soothed and Milanos still had its magic, even now, at three o'clock in the afternoon as they set up the tables for evening and one could imagine oneself the first guest rather than the last.
He felt at once brave and (was it possible?) contented. The second-rate table by the window had its advantages: he could watch the Captives limp and struggle along the crowded street below, observe the laughing face of the occasional Actor, and even (once only) the impassive masks of Those in Charge hiding behind the glossy windows of a Mercedes Benz.
On his white map of Hell he was pencilling in marks, crude, inexact, tentative at the moment, but surely even Livingstone must have become lost occasionally and needed some high ground to see the lay of the land.
And also, perhaps, a sanctuary like this where one could momentarily forget the tribulations and terrors of the unknown continent.
He heard coarse laughter. It came from the bar. It was not Milanos-type laughter. It was the laughter of street spruikers and early morning markets, not the laughter of crystal glasses and pink tablecloths.
He cocked his head on one side, watching carefully; Aldo pointed towards him. Then he led this other person (this wrong-laughter) towards him. It was a big red-faced sandy-haired man. He had huge bushy sandy eyebrows and large sandy-haired arms sticking out of a dirty yellow sleeveless sweater.
'Found you at last,' the stranger shouted to Harry when he was still only half-way across the restaurant. 'It's extraordinary.'
'This is wonderful,' Aldo said. They came and sat at his table without being asked and Harry had to put his notebook away again.
'This is Mr ...?' Aldo began.
'Mr…Billy, Billy de Vere,' said the sandy man holding out a hand which felt like it had been stored in a bag of unwashed potatoes.
'From the circus,' Aldo explained. 'Mr Joy.'
'Harry.'
'Pleased to meet you, Harry.' Billy de Vere placed a fistful of notes on the table. 'If you'll allow me,' he said, 'what will be your pleasure?'
'No, no,' AIdo said, 'this is on me,' and he waved a waiter over and whispered in his ear.
Harry sat motionless. His flicking eyes didn't miss a thing, not the nod to the waiter, the wink of Mr de Vere, the removal of the notes from the table, or the faint aroma, like wet dog, which came from the direction of the yellow sleeveless sweater.
'Alright, alright, Mr Joy, don't worry, cheer up,' Aldo said. 'Cheer up, cheer up, it's just an accident. A funny story…'
'What happened?' Harry asked thickly.
A bottle of Grande Armagnac was placed on the table and they all watched the waiter take his knife and break the green-wax seal on the cork and then pour the dark brown liquid into three brandy balloons. The bottle was left on the table.
'Drink first,' Mr de Vere said, clapping his hands together like a hungry man. 'Or you'll think I'm lying.'
Harry and Aldo shared a momentary comradeship, a shared astonishment as Mr de Vere downed his Armagnac in one fast disrespectful swallow.
'Good brandy,' he said, 'very smooth.'
Aldo giggled (out of character) and poured him some more.
'A drink for a man,' said Mr de Vere.
'This must be some story,' Harry said nervously.
'It is almost the same as the original story,' Mr de Vere said, placing his empty glass on the table with an appreciative sigh, in spite of which gentle compliment it was destined to remain unfilled for longer than he had hoped. 'It's like lightning hitting the same place twice.' He picked up his glass and looked at it. 'Which,' he said, his huge eyebrows rising, 'I've heard can actually happen, in spite of what they say.' He looked at Harry inquisitively as if he might prefer to discuss lightning for a while. 'This is almost the same as the original story,' he said.
'No,' Aldo said, 'certainly not. In the original story it was a red Volkswagen.' ·
'What story?' Harry said.
'No,' Billy de Vere said, 'it was a Fiat. I remember distinctly. A Bambino. A Fiat 500, the same as Mr Joy's.'
'I think you're mistaken, Mr de Vere. But, in any case…' Aldo relented and gave him a little more Grande Armagnac, 'in any case…close enough.'
'Life,' Billy de Vere raised his glass, 'imitating art. Or should I say,' he lowered his voice and winked, 'life imitating bullshit?'
'Do you know the story about the Elephant, Mr Joy?' Aldo said. 'Because very soon you are going to have to tell it to your insurance company.'
Aldo and Billy de Vere roared laughing.
'Go on…' Harry said, all the pleasure gone, only watch-fulness and suspicion left.
'It was trained to sit on red boxes.'
'Big red boxes.'
'Big for a box, small for a car. It's what you might call an apocryphal story.'
'It never really happened,' Billy de Vere said. 'This elephant was trained to sit on red boxes, see, and one day someone came and parked near her.'
'In a red Volkswagen,' Aldo said. 'Surely you've heard it?'
'Or Fiat.'
'And she sat on it.'
'An elephant sat on my car?' Harry said glumly. 'You're laughing because an elephant sat on my car.' He had never heard the story before. He was not interested in precedents. All he could see was that he had suffered an outlandish misfortune and that these people were sitting there laughing at him because of it. In Milanos!