Somewhere East of Life

She ran out of things to say, to stand there looking downcast, half turned away from him. A silence ensued in which Burnell felt he could have crossed the Gobi Desert.

He managed to make himself say, ‘But I’ve not remarried – I mean, as far as you know?’

Stephanie attempted to laugh at the idiocy of the question, then sighed. ‘You’re always travelling the globe on your World Heritage errands … You never wanted to go any place glamorous. You liked the tacky dumps where no one had heard of American Express. Well, you were always the self-contained type, didn’t like shopping. Life’s just fine for me in Santa Barbara. Lots of friends, lots of fun …’

‘Do you realize how self-centred you sound? Is that what spoilt things between us?’

‘You’re being superior again. I must go. I have to protect myself, don’t you understand that? The divorce …’ A shake of the head hardly disturbed her elegantly styled hair. ‘Of course I’m sorry about – you know, what’s happened to you, or I’d not be here, would I? I don’t mean to sound unkind but I don’t wish to know about you any more. What’s past is past.’

‘Oh, no, never!’

‘Yes, and for you especially. Start again, Roy.’ Now she was half laughing. ‘You keep sending me postcards from some of these dumps you go to, you know that?’

‘Postcards? What postcards?’

‘Sure. Draughty old churches some place or other. Town squares. I don’t need them. The kind of dumps you used to drag me into.’

‘You can’t beat a draughty old church.’ He forced a smile, which was not returned.

‘It happens I’ve a couple of your cards along in my purse.’ She placed her handbag on the window sill and began to rummage through it. As she did so, he thought, ‘She must care something for me if she takes these cards up to the Orkneys with her …’ He said nothing, conscious of his own heartbeat.

She produced a card, glancing at it before handing it over between two outstretched fingers, as if she suspected amnesia was catching.

She caught his eye as he took it. ‘Too bad. Just the one card. Arrived the morning I left home. The others got torn up, I guess.’

Steff didn’t have to say that, he told himself. Either she was protecting herself or being deliberately cruel – to hold me off? What if I grabbed her and kissed the bitch? No – I’m afraid to do so …

The postcard carried a colour picture of a church labelled as St Stephen’s Basilica. Something informed him that architecturally it was not a basilica.

He turned it over as she watched him intently. ‘You don’t recall mailing that?’

He recognized his own handwriting. The card was addressed to Stephanie Hillington in Santa Barbara. He had known. The memory had been stolen.

The postcard bore a Hungarian stamp. His message had been written only sixteen days before. It was brief. ‘Budapest. Brief visit here before returning to Frankfurt. Making notes for a lecture. As usual. Need some florid Hungarian architecture. Trust you’re well. Have met ghastly old friend here. Just going round to Antonescu’s clinic to do him a favour. Weather fine. Love, Roy.’

He jumped up and kissed Stephanie.

Stephanie found her way back to the car park and climbed into the Protean she had hired, startled to find how upset she felt. She sat grasping the steering wheel, unable to do anything. To her disgust, tears welled up in her and poured forth.

Why am I crying? What could have provoked it? My life has changed. I’ve grown away from him. I feel nothing for him any more. I live in an entirely different climate.

Of course he looked awful.

EMV must be a new thing in this country – we’re freer in LA. We’ve got everything. Everything. Humbert goes for it, says he’s lived a hundred lives, shooting EMV.

Yet she was angry and could not understand her own mood. While the divorce was pending, she had flown out to California, hired a camper, lived in Palm Beach with a stud of whom she soon tired. She hated the memory; perhaps it meant she had hated herself at the time. Sex may be the cure for many things but it is no cure for misery; not in my case. Oh, no, Steff – cease this soul-searching. You know it’s sick.

But her recent freer past – her past since the divorce – rose up against her as if in accusation. There seemed no way of stopping it.

In a seafood restaurant in Santa Barbara one day, she had come across an older woman called Ann Summerfield, tanned like everyone else at the white tables. They drank margaritas together and talked. Ann had divorced and not remarried. She had a lover who was on the fringe of the film world, Sam de Souto. Ann too was English, despite her American accent. She and Stephanie became friends. Initiating her into West Coast ways, Ann taught her to sail.

Only a block away from Ann and Sam’s apartment lived Ann’s younger sister, Jane Barrieros. Jane was undergoing a divorce of unusual bitterness, and fighting for the custody of her son.

When Stephanie was introduced to Jane, the latter was a pale worried creature dependent on a then fashionable shrink, plus every known drug. She was, however, well established in a software company, Micromanser. Neuroticism fuelled her drive to excel. When at last she won her battle in the courts on grounds of cruelty, and collected several million dollars, Jane bought into Micromanser and married the boss.

Stephanie and Ann looked on in admiration – and cared for Page, the disputed son – as Jane’s fortunes spiralled upwards in truly Californian fashion.

Jane bought a small computer company, building it up rapidly with the latest technical advances, slanting it towards the greying end of the population, and producing a revolutionary new game series, Loveranger, laced with plenty of VR sex. Loveranger soon became the leading trade name across the nation. The ladies lived a life of sun, fun, and success.

Loveranger computers came in tough ceramic cases. It was during a party at Ann’s new place that Stephanie met the ceramics designer, blue-jowled Humbert Stuckmann. And fell for his line of talk … Humbert, too, with a name practically synonymous with quality fabrics, was also a part of the good life of sun and success. That he had already run through three wives seemed to Stephanie, at the time, to be a part of Humbert’s charm.

They were married in Hawaii the next New Year’s Day.

Humbert flew in his favourite group, Ceren Aid, to sing at the wedding.

And poor scholarly Roy has nothing to do with all that. I’ve just left him behind, as I’ve left England behind. Everything over here seems so small and drab. I ask myself how I ever …

She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, staring out into the deserted car park.

Why am I going on at myself like this? I need to get back to the sun and the beaches. I must lose a pound or two – I’m getting too hefty for those glittering shores. Roy – I don’t know him any more. It’s a different life …

Then a traitorous thought, unexpected. And do I know myself any more?

But she swiftly negotiated that thought, not wishing to remind herself how she had once been a tidy little English housewife, doting on her husband and her house … She had even enjoyed ‘doing the ironing’. The old-fashioned phrase came back to her with emetic force.

Shit… She started the car engine. All that was a different lifetime. Could it have been an EMV experience – what they called ‘lietime’? Her Now was real, with the sun blazing above their air-cond beach hut. And Humbert standing naked on the bed with a great erection, one of his scuzzies coming on. Ceren Aid playing over the 8D. Humbert’s fave disk.

Dance and screw, get the bug so fine.

Screw and dance, yee-hew, surf the style

Surf then dance, shed it, shed your mind

He shouting at her, roaring, kindalaughing. ‘Kid, you and I we are the future, know that? The future in flames, all experience open to us. We’ve inherited the globe, it’s our fruit to squeeze and drink right up, down the throat, right down your gullet like champagne.’

She lapped up this stuff from him and his friends. Gleeing, it was called. It turned her on, drove her crazy, made her wet between the thighs, gleed her right up, all the way.

‘We’re the high, the privileged, every day’s one long sunfuck. One long motherfucking sunfuck. What’s our duty? What’s our duty? What is it? To rejoice, kid, that’s what. You realize America grows enough food to feed the whole planet twice over? Well, let me tell you, kid – that goes for semen too!’

Why had she then said – except to prompt him on – that if there was so much abundance, how come thirty million Americans were on the bread line?

Of course Humbert had an answer. He said there were always winners and losers. That was just good old Nature’s way. Starvation was just a way of telling someone they had better get lost and make way for good men. If the losers didn’t like it – why, they could go and live on Mars! He roared with laughter. Was still laughing when they played his game of Animal on the bed.

She was at a loss to understand why she now recollected those days of merriment with so little joy. Damn Roy Burnell! She should never have come to see him. She popped another upper from her purse, put a foot on the accelerator, and rapidly left the hospital behind, on the start of her journey back to California and happiness.

But she remembered a quiet rabbi friend in New York, who had said to her, ‘Have a little happiness while you are young – but never forget how trivial happiness is.’ Or had he been a part of someone’s lietime?

Burnell ran Monty Broadwell-Smith to ground in a bar in Pest. Monty was drinking with a few cronies and did not see Burnell. Which was hardly surprising: every line of sight ran up against gilded statuary or supernumerary columns. This nest of rooms, given over to most of the pleasures of the flesh, had been somewhere wicked under an earlier regime, and in consequence was well – indeed floridly – furnished. The posturing plaster Venuses consorted oddly with the group of tousled heads nodding over their glasses of Beck. Burnell stood in an inner room and told a waiter to fetch Monty, saying a friend wished to see him.

Monty was still wearing Burnell’s sweater. When he saw who was awaiting him, he raised his hands in mock-surrender. Burnell put a clenched fist under his nose.

‘Pax, old man. No offence meant. Honest Injun.’ He put a hand up and lowered Burnell’s fist. Barely ruffled, he explained that since he had lost his job in England he had had to find work in Europe – like thousands of other chaps down on their luck. Eventually, he had found a job acting as decoy for Antonescu and his illegal EMV enterprise. His role as an Anglophone was to lure in innocent foreigners who arrived in Budapest to take advantage of low Hungarian prices. It was economic necessity that drove him to it. His eyebrows signalled sincerity.

He knew, he said, it was a bit of a shady enterprise. ‘Rather like wreckers luring ships on the rocks in the old days.’

‘So you’ve fallen so low you’d even prey on your friends.’

‘Be fair, Roy, old man.’ He breathed alcohol over Burnell. ‘I have to pick and choose my clients. You’ve no idea, no idea, how uninteresting some people’s memories are, all through life. Mine wouldn’t be worth a sausage. But yours – well, perhaps you don’t remember, but I met you and your wife at university. She was a real stunner, so I knew your memories would be worth having.’

‘You little bastard! You had your paws in the till at university. Now you’ve had them in my mind. Stealing memory is a form of murder.’

Wincing slightly, Monty agreed. ‘Wreckers again, you see. Poor old mariners … Look, come and have a drink with my friends. No doubt there will be tighter legislation in Hungary when e-mnemonicvision becomes less than a seven days’ wonder. Until that time, Antonescu earns a modest dollar from his bootleg memory bullets and tosses me the occasional crust. Now then, let me stand you an aperitif. It’s almost lunchtime.’

‘It’s three in the afternoon, you boozy git!’

Monty put a persuasive hand on Burnell’s arm. Burnell wrenched his arm away. ‘You’ve poisoned my life, you bastard. You’d probably poison my drink. Now I’ve got you, I’m going to turn you in – you and your precious Antonescu.’ There was canned music in the room. Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ was playing, dripping away like a tap.

Monty drew himself up and smoothed the sweater down. ‘Don’t threaten me. You have a contempt for me. Fair enough – you always were a supercilious bastard. But just think how I might feel about you! I’ve had to edit ten years of your stupid life down to make a presentable bullet. It wasn’t too edifying, old sport, let me tell you. A ten-year plod down the recesses of your memory! A bit like looking down into a sewer at times – no offence meant.’ He elaborated on this in some detail, concluding by saying, ‘You ought to be glad to be rid of stuff like that. You’re free of it – Free Of All Memory!’

‘Oh, I see, Broadwell-Smith. The FOAM theory of history: never learn anything … Just bloody forget, is that it? Have you ever heard that saying about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it? Why do you think the world’s in such a fucking mess?’ With a quick move, he twisted Monty’s arm and had him in a half-Nelson. ‘It’s retribution time, Monty, and a stinking Hungarian cell for you.’ He gave Broadwell-Smith’s arm an extra wrench, till the man howled. A waiter came to watch, without interfering.

‘God, that’s no way to treat … Listen Roy, Roy, look, stop this. Do you really want unpleasant publicity? This is what I’ll do. I’ll make a deal. A generous deal.’

‘No deals, you sod. You caught me once – you aren’t going to catch me again. Out of that door.’

‘Wait, wait. Ouch! Listen, you sadist, here’s the deal. Just let me go, savvy?’

‘Don’t let him go,’ advised the waiter from the sidelines.

‘Let me go and I will nip straight round to the clinic. It’s locked but I’ve got a key. I’ll nip straight round to the clinic and I’ll steal the master-bullet and bring it back to you. Where are you staying? The Gellert again, I suppose? You plutocrats … I’ll bring you back the memory bullet we made.’

Burnell twisted the arm again. The waiter said, appreciatively, ‘This man, he never pays a round.’

Another twist, more details. ‘There are two bullets, to be honest. I’m being honest, Roy. Ow! I’ll bring them both back to you. And you can then go somewhere – England, Germany, France – and get those squalid years of yours reinserted back in your noddle, if that’s what you want. What do you say?’

Burnell relaxed his hold. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Straightening, Monty regained confidence.

‘No, you won’t. There’s a guard on the clinic door these days. He’d kill you. I’ll get the bullets. Promise. Bring them to the Gellert without fail at –’ he looked at his watch ‘– give me two hours. Say six o’clock, OK. I think I can swing it.’

With some reluctance, Burnell agreed to this plan. He let go of Monty entirely. Recent sessions with Rebecca Rosebottom had made him, he felt, unusually alert to fraudulence. Accordingly, he watched to see what Monty might do when he left the bar.

Monty performed somewhat as expected. The moment he was in the street, he started to run. Burnell ran after him. Monty dodged along a side alley, down some steps, and into a main thoroughfare. A tram car was approaching. As Monty rushed to get on, Burnell’s hand fell on his shoulder.

Only for a moment did a look of anger cross Monty’s face.

‘Oh, Roy, dear old feller – how glad I am you’re here. Thanks so much.’ The tram sliced by within a few inches of them. He fell into Burnell’s arms. The latter fended him off but, before he could speak, Monty was babbling on, eyebrows shooting up and down.

‘Roy, I have such trouble. As I left that rotten drinking establishment, the ghost of Charles de Gaulle was waiting outside for me. You know, the French chappie with the big conk who made it to President? Charles de Gaulle – an airport named after him outside Paris. There he was again! Right in the street, in broad daylight. Did you see him? I ran like billy-oh. Thank God you saved me! Sometimes he follows me into the old W. Never knew a case like it.’

Burnell hailed a cab and bundled Monty in.

At the Gellert, Burnell paid off the cab and heaved Monty, now in a collapsible state, into the ornate foyer.

‘All right, Broadwell-Smith, now let’s have the truth. No bloody ghost stories. I have every reason to beat you up, so vex me no further. How do I get my memory back? How do you get it back for me?’

Pulling himself upright and tugging his little beard, Monty said, ‘Please don’t threaten me in a place I’m well respected. Besides, I’m feeling unwell after all the exertion. Let me be honest with you, Roy, your last ten years were crap. Full of crap … There, I don’t want to be too hard on you. Everyone’s last ten years were probably full of crap. I ought to know – I’ve edited enough of Antonescu’s silly symphonies in the last few weeks. What utter shits men are … Now I think of it, I feel sorry for you.’

Burnell stuck his knuckles between the other’s thin ribs.

‘Stop bullshitting me, you little cheat. You robbed me. You buggered up my life and then had me dumped on Salisbury Plain.’

Shaking his head, Monty looked out miserably across the Danube to Pest with its dense Magyar thoroughfares where fat profiteers of many nations were sweating over their calculators. ‘You were lucky. Believe me. As a compatriot, as an old friend far from home, I interceded for you. Generally our victims – well, patients, let’s say – get dumped outside the city, still drugged, on a refuse-tip twenty kilometres away from here. And what happens to them then? Peasants rob ’em or kill ’em.

‘You’ve had an easy time of it. You should be grateful. Your pater was always well heeled, not to mention being a bit of a crook, eh?

‘In your case – Roy, old chap, I shouldn’t be telling you this. It puts my very life in hazard. In your case, I interceded. “Cedo, cedere, cessi, cessum”, to beg or something. A flight was being planned to deliver arms to the UK, to the BRI. British Revolutionary Islam, savvy? Totally secret of course. A secret arms drop on Salisbury Plain, paid for by Muslims over here. I pulled a few strings and got you flown over too. Drugged. You were dropped along with the weaponry. Better than the refuse-tip, admit it. You owe me a big favour.’

‘I owe you nothing. You’re going to give me back those memory bullets right now.’ Knuckle in deeper. A passing sheikh, wafting perfume, looked surprised, but not extremely surprised.

‘You’re hurting me, Roy. I don’t feel well. The drink in that place was poisoned. I need to go to the Gents. I am about to be sick.’ He writhed realistically, and made appropriate noises in his throat.

Burnell got him up to his room. He bound Monty’s hands behind his back with a tie.

‘This talk about a master-bullet in Antonescu’s clinic. Are you lying? You’d better tell me, Broadwell-Smith, or I’ll lock you in the wardrobe and leave you there to die.’

By this time, Monty was the same shade of trampled grey as the carpet. ‘Really, old boy, you can work that one out for yourself. Antonescu runs an illegal operation. Is he going to leave evidence lying about? He might be raided any day – not by the police, of course, but by a rival gang. From the master-bullets we make about five hundred copies. Not much profit in it, really. As soon as these are sold to a dealer, they’re off our hands and the masters are destroyed.’

‘Five hundred copies? You made five hundred copies of my precious memories?’ He was almost bereft of speech. While he knew nothing of his recent past, the whole world could be laughing over it.

‘You weren’t exactly in the Casanova league, old chum, let’s face it. We had a Pole in the clinic a couple of months ago … He was in the two-thousand-copy bracket, because—’

‘Never mind the Poles. You said you made two bullets. Was that also a lie?’

Presenting an expression of blameless honesty, Monty explained that Mircea Antonescu dealt in more than one market. He extracted all Burnell’s professional knowledge, editing it from the ten-year period. That knowledge was reproduced in an edition of maybe a hundred copies. A limited scholarly audience existed for such things, and paid well. Lazy students of architecture, teachers needing a short cut – such people formed a ready market. Pausing to gather courage, Monty added that Burnell’s store of learning made up one bullet; his love life made up the other. All skilfully edited, of course – by himself.

‘Oh God!’ Burnell sat down and hid his face in his hands. ‘You swear this is truth, you little chiseller?’

‘Would I lie? Read my lips.’ He started to go into details of what he referred to as ‘the choice bits’, but Burnell interrupted him.

‘So where have all these copies of my memory – my life – gone?’

Monty declared that that was up to the dealer to whom Antonescu sold. Antonescu was naturally secretive about such matters, but he had heard that the dealer traded the bullets on promptly to Eastern Europe and beyond, where they could not be traced. ‘Buchuresti is one market. Bootleg EMVs move from there further East. All the old nations and raggle-taggle once coerced into the Soviet Union are avid to feed on porn.’

‘Porn! You call my sacred memories porn, you little skunk?’

‘It’s a matter of terminology, Roy, old boy. They want to know how the West performs in bed. Insatiable. Untie me, please. A drink wouldn’t come amiss after all the excitement.’

Privately, Burnell agreed. He untied Monty and took some slap, inhaling the designer drug through a short plastic tube. Monty helped himself to a generous neat gin from the mini-bar.

‘So where is this dealer?’

‘Ahh … I’ve always liked gin. Reminds me of my childhood. I’d end up on the aforesaid rubbish-tip if I gave away his whereabouts. Honour among thieves, old pal. Generally enforced at gun-point. Besides, he’ll have shifted all the copies by now. Incidentally – this’ll amuse you – I heard over the grapevine that President Diyanizov has a fabulous collection of Western EMV “love” bullets. He may be plugging in to you this very moment.’

Monty’s laughter involved coughing circumspectly. Seeing Burnell’s expression, he added, ‘Diyanizov. The current boss of Turkmenistan. Far enough from here.’

‘Never heard of him. I suppose he’s a ghost, like Charles de Gaulle!’

Monty looked pained. ‘That was just a joke, dear boy. Tell you what I’ll do. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll contact this dealer and see if he’s kept a couple of your bullets for himself. Stephanie’s a pretty sight in the altogether when she’s worked up … He might have hung on to them for his own entertainment.’

‘Phone him from here.’

Another idea occurred to Monty. Antonescu had just put together an anthology bullet he called ‘European Peasants’. Monty knew from what he had seen that Burnell was a sport. He could have a copy for a thousand. It featured country men and women who had done disgusting acts with every animal on the farm.

‘Phone,’ ordered Burnell, pointing to the instrument.

Burnell stood listening as Monty dialled and made an oblique and muttered call. He replaced the receiver and smiled. Burnell was in luck. The dealer had the spare bullets, and would send a minion round with them on a BMW bike. Instructions were that Monty had to be by the memorial in the park behind the Gellert Hotel in half an hour, when the package would be dropped off.

The arrangement sounded genuine. Burnell paced the room while his Dapertutto was away. Like Hoffmann, whose shadow was stolen from him in Offenbach’s opera, he was living a half-life and would do so until his memory was restored.

At least the Gellert management had been helpful. When Burnell disappeared, the hotel had collected his belongings from his room and handed them over to the police. After he had settled his outstanding bill, the manager had retrieved his belongings. His electronic diary yielded useful information. The address of his apartment in Frankfurt-am-Main, near the offices of World Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, was no longer a mystery. He could resume his job immediately, provided Monty Broadwell-Smith returned as promised.