The Getaway continued
On a coke-fuelled roll Citizen Kohen decides to give up under-underground film making and write a novel instead. Semi-biographical, picaresque Gertrude Steinish novel with lots of Joycean fragmentation. He'll write the reviews as well, put them in the back of the book as an appendix along with the manifesto and a list of telephone numbers of coke dealers in fifteen major cities worldwide (not to mention some decidedly un-major cities like Durban and Goteborg). Even if the book's lousy, it should sell because of the coke listings. Citizen Kohen smiles to himself, winks. Sits down in front of his computer. Starts typing…
"Good evening. My name is Citizen Kohen. I am 35 years old. I live in Sea Point, Bomb Bay. I write these notes by hand in a journal I stole from the Rotterdam Hilton Hotel. It is past 3am on Sunday 12 February 2000; the Year of the Dragon. The gulls cry incessantly in the midsummer heat. An occasional police siren etches the night with rumours of war. There is a poster on the inside of the door to my little room which advertises an art event in Holland called "Loneliness in the City". The poster seems pertinent to my lifestyle. On it I have attached with sticky tape a piece of paper on which I have hand-written in neat block capitals a paragraph by Yukio Mishima. The paragraph reads: "When the lovers set out on their michiyuki, the final pilgrimage to death, the tone and brilliance of their language is heightened, and the lovers themselves seem to grow taller. Two people who until then had been ordinary citizens, a pitiful man and woman, suddenly attain the gigantic proportions of a tragic hero and heroine." Opposite me, in the cheap pine bookcase is a large format trade paperback book which consists entirely of photographs of Mishima's house. When I compare his living conditions with mine I shudder; but it is foolish to compare one's own life with that of another man. Was it not that wise Jewish patriarch Simon Gamliel who said that "a rich man is one who is content with what he has"? To the right of me, in the window ledge, a Penguin paperback copy of the Hagakure annotated by Mishima sits neatly wedged between Kant's One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God and Bataille's Story of the Eye. All three paperbacks are well-worn, their spines showing evidence of many years of reading and re-reading. I dip into the Hagakure often. It guides me. On the wall opposite me are three pictures; a red postcard with the famous iconic image of Che, a cd-cover sized painting of Charlie Manson done in the style of a postage stamp of the Third Reich, and a small painting of a rather thick-legged woman in a corridor with her back to the viewer. All three images were sent to me by different women. Che's portrait from Cortado when she was in Buenos Aires; Manson's from my first love Mary-Jayne Someone, still living in Durban; and the self-portrait of the perversely shy woman in the corridor from my Alaskan Angel, accompanied by a note imploring me to remember her by way of the painting. I would have remembered her anyway, but it is a lovely painting."
Citizen Kohen stops typing. Does another line of lunar essence. Reads back to himself what he's just written. Reads it again out loud. Thinks to himself that it's all too boring. Too pedantic, like a piece of writing by Sebald. Dull dull dull. K reflects on his many abuses and lies, his calculating manipulations. Does so in the third person, tries to depersonalise the process. Lessen the sharp burning sensation of shame that sours his stomach when he thinks about what he's done to Cortado, how he's treated most of his "ladies". She phones him at the office at 4:30am, on this, his last night in Amsterdam.
"Where are you?" she asks.
"What do you mean where am I, you're phoning me?" but he knows full well what she means. He wants to avoid the subject. She invites him to join her. But he needs to shower before catching his train to Brussels at 6:24am from Central Station. He invites her to join him instead.
"Have you got drugs?"
Her question irritates him. He lies.
"No."
"Pity."
He's angry that it should matter whether he's got drugs or not, wants her to be content with him. "How are you doing?"
He doesn't really care.
"Not so good."
An awkward silence. It's not useful for him to know this right now.
"Goodbye sweetie."
There's a lot of cracked pain in her cracked voice but he can't give her anything. Has nothing to give her. Never had anything to give her.
"Goodbye."
The click of the receiver. A sharp concentrated wave of regret rushes into the place that was once open before the defences were erected. He glances down at the page of semi-autobiographical fiction and chops himself a line. Snorts it. Feels bad about himself. Chops a much bigger line, this one fat and long like an albino eel, licks the wrapping paper clean, wipes his gums with it. Does the final line. Excruciatingly sharp sensation as the mucous membranes burst under the attack of the acidic powder. A stream of bloody snot oozes out of his left nostril. He walks to the bathroom, looks in the mirror, notices many pimples cropping up in clusters under his mouth and around the chin. Blows his nose. Squeezes a couple of the riper yellow pustules. Has a huge diarrhetic shit. Coke always moves his bowels. When he's all done he puts the lights out and locks up the office, checking to see that he's brought his semi-autobiographical diskette with him. Walks from the Keizersgracht to the Tichelstraat. Showers. Packs his bag. Watches a bit of CNN. The walk to Central Station takes him 20 minutes. He buys a single ticket to Brussels International Airport Zaventem. Sixty five guilders and fifty cents. Chuckles to himself. He's had this ticket paid for twice by ample-bosomed Swedish Camila, once by his producer and once by the Rotterdam Film Festival. Perhaps he should stick with under-underground film making after all, it certainly pays well. He sleeps until Rotterdam, wakes up to see dawn exposing herself. Holland is the future. A paradigm of rational construction and planning. Belgium is a nightmare version of the past by comparison, but this morning the sun and the sky are so bright that even the platforms at Brussels North seem almost pretty. The airport express takes another twenty minutes to get to Zaventem, then it's the lift up to the third floor, check in, passport control, boarding and takeoff. He isn't stopped at the security desk for not paying his taxes - thanks the goddess for Belgian bureaucratic inefficiency. Those blonde Dutch Nazis at Schiphol wouldn't be so kind.
END