On the Yankee Station: Stories Read online

  We were at university together for a while, but he was scandalously sent down and went off to America, where he duly made something of a name for himself as a sort of hoodlum art critic, a cultural vigilante with no respect for reputations. I often saw shadowy photographs of him in fashionable glossy magazines, and it was in one of them that I learned of his marriage—after ten years of rampant bachelorhood—to one Joan Aslinger, heiress to a West Coast fast-food chain.

  Kramer and I had grown to become close friends of a sort and I continued to write to him regularly. I’m happy to report that he kept in touch: the odd letter, kitsch postcards from Hammamet or Tijuana. He used to come and stay as well—with his current girl-friend, whoever that might be—in my quiet Devon cottage for a boisterous weekend every two years or so.

  I remember he was surprisingly solicitous when he heard about my operation and in an uncharacteristic gesture of largesse sent a hundred white roses to the clinic where I was convalescing. He promised shortly to visit me with his new wife, Joan.

  It was during one of my periodic sojourns in the sanatorium that I experienced the particularly acute and destructive epileptic attack that prompted the doctors to recommend the severing of my corpus callosum. The operation was a complete success. I remember only waking up as bald as a football, with a thin, livid stripe of lacing running fore and aft along my skull.

  The surgeon—a Mr. Berkeley, a genial elderly Irishman—did mention the unusual side effects I would have as a result of the coupage but dismissed them with a benign smile as being “metaphysical” in character and quite unlikely to impair the quality of my daily life. Foolishly, I accepted his assurances.

  Kramer and his wife came to stay as promised. Joan was a fairly attractive girl; she had delightful honey-blond hair—always so clean—bright blue eyes and a loose, generous mouth. She chatted and laughed in what was clearly an attempt at sophisticated animation, but it was immediately obvious to me that she was hopelessly neurotic and quite unsuited to be Kramer’s wife. When they were together the tension that crackled between them was unbearable. On the first night they stayed, I overheard a savage, teeth-clenched row in the guest bedroom.

  It was the effect on Kramer that I found most depressing. He was drawn and cowed, like a cornered, beaten man. His brilliant wit was reduced to glum monosyllables or fervent contradictions of any opinion Joan ventured to express. Irritation and despair were lodged in every feature of his face.

  It didn’t surprise me greatly when, three strained days later, Kramer announced that he had to go to London on business and Joan and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. She tried hard, I have to admit, but I found her tedious and dull, as most obsessively introspective people tend to be. She came slightly more alive when she drank, which was frequently, and our preprandial lunch-time session swiftly advanced to elevenses.

  I soon got the full story of Kramer’s constant bastardy, of course: a tearful finger-knotting account, leaden with self-pity, that went on well into the night. Other women apparently, from the word go. Things had become dramatically worse because now, it seemed, there was one in particular: one Erica—said with much venom—an old flame. As Erica’s description emerged, I realised to my surprise that I knew her. She had figured in two of Kramer’s visits before his marriage to Joan. Erica was a tall, intelligent redhead, strong-shouldered and of arresting appearance and with a calm and confident personality. I had liked her a lot. Naturally I didn’t tell any of this to Joan, whom—as Kramer predictably rang from London announcing successive delays—I was beginning to find increasingly tiresome; she was getting on my nerves.

  Take her reaction to my own particular case, for example. When I explained my unique problems caused by the side effects of my operation, she didn’t believe me. She laughed, said I must be joking, claimed that such things could never happen. I admitted such cases were exceptionally rare but affirmed it as documented medical fact.

  I now know, thanks to this book I’m reading, the correct academic term for my “ailment.” I am a “bizarre situation.” Reading on, I find this conclusion: “Our language is not sufficiently articulated to cope with such rare and unusual circumstances. Many philosophers and logicians are deeply unhappy about ‘bizarre situations.’ ” So, even the philosophers have to admit it. In my case there is no hope of ever reaching the truth. I find the concession reassuring somehow—but I still feel that I have to see Kramer again.

  Indeed, my condition is truly bizarre. Since the link between my cerebral hemispheres was severed, my brain now functions as two discrete halves. The only bodily function that this effects is perception, and the essence of the problem is this. If I see, for example, a cat in my left-side area of vision and I am asked to write down what I have seen with my right hand—I am right-handed—I cannot. I cannot write down what I have seen because the right half of my brain no longer registers what occurred in my left-hand area of vision. This is because the hemispherical division in your brain extends, so to speak, the length of your body. Right hemisphere controls right side; left hemisphere, left side. Normally the information from both sides has free passage from one hemisphere to the other—linking the two halves into one unified whole. But now that this route—the corpus callosum—has gone, only half my brain has seen the cat. The right hemisphere knows nothing about it, so it can hardly tell my right hand what to note down.

  This is what the surgeon meant by “metaphysical” side effects, and he was right to say my day-to-day existence would be untroubled by them, but consider the radical consequences of this on my phenomenological world. It is now nothing but a sequence of half-truths. What, for me, is really true? How can I be sure if something that happens in my left-side area of vision really took place, if in one half of my body there is absolutely no record of it ever having occurred?

  I spend befuddled hours wrestling with these arcane epistemological riddles. Doubt is underwritten; it comes to occupy a superior position to truth and falsehood. I am a genuine, physiologically real sceptic—medically consigned to this fate by the surgeon’s knife. Uncertainty is the only thing I can really be sure of.

  You see what this means, of course. In my world, truth is exactly what I want to believe.

  I came to this book hoping for some sort of guidance, but it can only bumble on about the “insufficient articulation of our language,” which is absolutely no help at all, however accurate it may be. For example, the door of this café I’m sitting in is on my left-hand side. I clearly see in my left field of vision a tall woman in black come through it and advance towards the bar. I take a pen from my pocket and intend to write down what I saw in the margin of my book. I say to myself: “Write down what you saw coming through the door.” I cannot do it, of course. As far as the right-hand side of my body is concerned, the lady in black does not exist. So which hemisphere of my brain do I trust, then? Which version of the truth do I accept: lady or no lady?

  They are both true as far as I am concerned, and whatever I decide, one half of my body will back my judgement to the death.

  Of course there is a simple way out: I can turn round, bring her into my right field of vision, firmly establish her existence. But that’s entirely up to me. Oh, yes. Unlike the rest of you, verification is a gift I can bestow or withdraw at will.

  I turn. I see her. She is tall, with curly reddish auburn hair. Our eyes meet, part, meet again. Recognition flares. It is Erica.

  It was I who discovered Joan’s body on the floor of the guest bedroom. (One shot: my father’s old Smith & Wesson pressed against her soft palate. I use the revolver—fully licensed of course—to blast at the rooks that sometimes wheel and caw round the house. Indeed, Joan and I spent a tipsy afternoon engaged in this sport. I couldn’t have known.…)

  Kramer was still in London. I had gone out to a dinner party, leaving Joan curled up with a whisky bottle—she had muttered something about a migraine. Naturally, I phoned the police at once.

  Kramer arrived on the first tra
in from London the next morning, numbed and shattered by the news.

  At the inquest—a formality—it came out that Joan had attempted suicide a few months earlier and Kramer admitted to the rockiness of their marriage. He stayed with me until it was all over. They were stressful, edgy days. Kramer was taciturn and preoccupied, which under the circumstances wasn’t surprising. He did tell me, though, that he hadn’t been continually in London but in fact had spent some days in Paris with Erica where some sort of emotional crisis had ensued. He had only been back thirty-six hours when the police phoned his London hotel with the news of Joan’s death.

  And now Erica herself sits opposite me. Her face has very little make-up on and she looks tense and worried. After the initial pleasantries we both blurt out, “What are you doing here?” and both realise simultaneously that we are here for the same reason. Looking for Kramer.

  When Kramer left after the inquest he told me he was going to Paris to re-join Erica and make a film on De Chirico for French TV. Apparently unperturbed he had continued to sleep in the guest bedroom, but it was several days before I could bring myself to go in and clean it out. In the waste-paper basket I found several magazines, a map of Paris, a crumpled napkin from the Bar Cercle with the message, “Monday, Rue Christine” scrawled on it and, to my alarm and intense consternation, a semi-transparent credit card receipt slip from a filling station on the M4 at a place no more than an hour’s drive from the house. This unsettled me. As far as I knew, Kramer had no car. And, what was more disturbing, the date on the receipt slip was the same as the night Joan died.

  ***

  Erica is distinctly on edge. She says she has arranged to meet Kramer here tonight, as she has something to tell him. She picks at her lower lip distractedly.

  “But anyway,” she says with vague annoyance, “what do you want him for?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I have to see him as well,” I say. “There’s something I have to clear up.”

  “What is it?”

  I almost tell her. I almost say, I want the truth. I want to know if he killed his wife. If he hired a car, drove to the house, found her alone and insensibly drunk, typed the note, put the pistol in her lolling mouth and blew the top of her head off.

  But I don’t. I say it’s just a personal matter.

  There is a pause in our conversation. I say to Erica, who nervously lights a cigarette, “Look, I think I should talk to him first.”

  “No!” she replies instantly. “I must speak to him.” Speak to him about what? I wonder. It irritates me. Is Kramer to be hounded perpetually by these neurotic harpies? What has the man done to deserve this?

  We see Kramer at the same time as he sees us. He strides over to our table. He stares angrily at me.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demands in tones of real astonishment.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, nervousness making my voice tremble. “But I have to speak to you.” It’s like being back at school.

  Erica crushes out her cigarette and jumps to her feet. I can see she is blinking back tears.

  “I have news for you,” she says, fighting to keep her voice strong. “Important news.”

  Kramer grips her by the elbows. “Come back,” he says softly, pleadingly.

  I am impatient with whatever lovelorn drama it is that they are enacting, and also obscurely angered by this demeaning display of reliance. Raising my voice I flourish the credit card receipt. “Kramer,” I say. “I want to know about this.”

  He ignores me. He does not take his eyes from Erica. “Erica, please,” he entreats.

  She lowers her head and looks down at her shaking hands.

  “No,” she says desperately. “I can’t. I’m marrying Jean-Louis. I said I would tell you tonight. Please let me go.” She shakes herself free of his arms and brushes past him, out into the night. I am glad to see her go.

  I have never seen a man look so abject. Kramer stands with his head bowed in defeat, his jaw muscles bulging, his eyes fixed—as if he’s just witnessed some dreadful atrocity. I despise him like this, so impoverished and vulnerable, nothing like the Kramer I knew.

  I lean forward. “Kramer,” I say softly, confidingly. “You can tell me now. You did it, didn’t you? You came back that night while I was away.” I spread the slip of transparent paper on the table. “You see I have the facts here.” I keep my voice low. “But don’t worry, it’s between you and me. I just need to know the truth.”

  Kramer sits down unsteadily. He examines the receipt. Then he looks up at me as if I’m quite mad.

  “Of course I came back,” he whispers bitterly. “I drove back that night to tell Joan I was leaving her, that I wanted Erica.” He shakes his head in grim irony. “Instead I saw everything. From the garden. I saw you sitting in your study. You had a kind of bandage round your head. It covered one eye.” He points to my right eye. “You were typing with one hand. Your left hand. You only used one hand. All the time. I saw you take the gun from the drawer with your left hand.” He paused. “I knew what you were going to do. I didn’t want to stop you.” He stands up. “You are a sick man,” he says, “with your sick worries. You can delude yourself perhaps, but nobody else.” He looks at me as if he can taste vomit in his mouth. “I stood there and listened for the shot. I went along with the game. I share the guilt. But it was you who did it.” He turns and walks out of the café.

  KRAMER IS LYING. It is a lie. The sort of mad impossible fantastic lie a desperate man would dream up. I know he is lying because I know the truth. It’s locked in my brain. It is inviolate. I have my body’s authority for it.

  Still, there is a problem now with this lie he’s set loose. Mendacity is a tenacious beast. If it’s not nipped in the bud it’s soon indistinguishable from the truth. I told him he didn’t need to worry. But now …

  He is bound to return to this melancholy bar before long. I know the banal nostalgia of such disappointed men—haunting the sites of their defeats—and the powerful impulses of unrequited love. I will have to see Kramer again; sort things out once and for all.

  I signal the waiter for my bill. As I close my book a sentence at the bottom of the page catches my eye:

  Many logicians and philosophers are deeply unhappy about bizarre situations.

  A curse on them all, I say.

  Gifts

  We land in Nice. Pan Am. I go through customs without much trouble and stand around the arrivals hall wondering what to do next—if there’s a bus into town; whether I should get a taxi. I see a man—black hair, white face, blue suit—looking curiously at me. I decide to ignore him.

  He comes over, though.

  “Tupperware?” he asks unctuously. He pronounces it tooperwère.

  “Sorry?” I say.

  “Ah, English,” he says with some satisfaction, as if he’s done something clever. “Mr. Simpson.” He picks up my suitcase. It’s heavier than he expects. He has tinted spectacles and his black hair is getting thin at the front. He looks about forty.

  “No,” I say. I tell him my name.

  He puts my suitcase down. He looks around the arrivals hall at the few remaining passengers. I am the only one not being met.

  “Merde,” he swears softly. He shrugs his shoulders. “Do you want a ride into town?”

  We go outside to his car. It’s a big Citroën. The back is filled with plastic beakers, freezer boxes, salad crispers and such like. He puts my case in the boot. He shovels stacks of pamphlets off the front seat before he lets me into his car. He explains that he has been sent to meet his English opposite number from Tupperware UK. He says he assumed I was English from my clothes. In fact, he goes on to claim that he can guess any European’s nationality from the kind of clothes he or she is wearing. I ask him if he can distinguish Norwegians from Danes and for some reason he seems to find this very funny.

  We drive off smartly, following the signs for Nice centre ville. I can’t think of anything to say, as my French isn’t good enough and somehow I don�
�t like the idea of talking to this man in English. He sits very close to the steering-wheel and whistles softly through his teeth, occasionally raising one hand in rebuke at any car that cuts in too abruptly on him. He asks me, in French, how old I am and I tell him I’m eighteen. He says I look older than that.

  After a while he reaches into the glove compartment and takes out some photographs. He passes them over to me.

  “You like?” he says in English.

  They are pictures of him on a beach standing by some rocks. He is absolutely naked. He looks in good shape for a forty-year-old man. In one picture I see he’s squatting down and some trick of the sun and shadow makes his cock seem enormously long.

  “Very nice,” I say, handing them back, “but non merci.”

  He drops me in the middle of the Promenade des Anglais. We shake hands and he drives off. I stand for a while looking down on the small strip of pebble beach. It’s January and the beach is empty. The sky is packed with grey clouds and the sea looks an unpleasant blue-green. For some reason I was expecting sunshine and parasols. I let my eyes follow the gentle curve of the Baie des Anges. I start at the airport and travel along the sweep of the coast. The palm trees, the neat little Los Angeleno-style hotels with their clipped poplars and fancy wrought-ironwork, along past the first of the apartment blocks, blind and drab with their shutters firmly down, past the Negresco with its pink sugary domes, past the Palais de la Méditerranée, along over the old Port, completing the slow arc at the promontory of Cap St.-Jean, surmounted by its impossible villa. I see the ferry from Corsica steaming gamely into harbour. I stand looking for a while until I begin to feel a bit cold.