Apparatchika

I remember sitting in a room in a flat in Putney in the early
evening, and I remember it was still light outside so it must have been
Summer, sometime. The party passed in kodak flash : awkward
conversation in a light room between six, seven, eight-nine-ten
strangers ; the muted stereo ; the lost-found-lost-found bottle opener
; drinking, watching the doorway, nodding to new arrivals, checking the
fridge for beer, for wine ; the music ; crowding in the living room, in
the kitchen, by the bathroom, by the stairs ; the boys in the bedroom
watching Match of the Day, the girls in the doorway saying come on,
it's a party ; the night rain against the window panes ; three lads and
a girl shouting up from the street outside, wanting to come in ; the
shifting patterns of people in a crowded room, the migratory habits of
successful people in their mid-twenties ; half-filled red wine glasses,
empty beer bottles, cans, shoes, trainers and coats shoved behind the
sofa, rested upon and under the table, held in hands, defence ; the
music intrudes again, somebody turns up the volume ; the girl talking
loudly about how much she earns ; the blue girl beneath the Picasso
print in the corner ; the people you notice like strangers on a
neighbouring train, flashing by and lost ; conversation flashing by and
lost ; time flashing by and lost.

I didn't see Engels arrive. If I had, it would have made no difference.
Like I said before, he wasn't striking. Part of the reason he could be
so striking when he chose to be is because you don't notice him. He can
insinuate himself. I did see Connie, though. You can't miss Connie. I
was sat not listening to a couple of guys I knew vaguely. She had her
hair up in bunches, then. She was laughing with somebody. Could have
been Engels I suppose. Somebody out of the room. Connie had a filthy
laugh. That was the first thing that struck me. Luminous blue eyes,
even from across the room. Strike two. The other impression was -
curiously - that she stood in an interesting way. Not good posture, as
such. More, cool posture. The way she stood indicated that she enjoyed
sex. Which is purely my interpretation. I'm a bad man. We shouldn't
even think these things, right?

Whatever distracted me from Connie then distracted me for quite some
time. I don't know if she rowed with Engels or felt tired or hated
parties or hated this party or had to get up the next morning. At some
point I took a circuit of the flat - living room, bathroom, bedrooms,
stairs - without finding her. The lesson being that, if you notice
somebody, do something about it. Call it my version of carpe
diem.

Whatever.

I lucked out, felt bummed and sat on the steps smoking. The rain had
stopped and all but the top step where I sat were wet. Drunk, the
combination of cool rain air and smoke sent me dizzy.

Eyes closed, leaning against the jamb, Engels sat besides me. Said
:

- Engels. I fuck shit up.

The way somebody might say Macey, Accounts or Kaufman, Marketing. I
thought I'd misheard. I opened my eyes and sat up a little (having
reclined into a slouch).

- Sorry?

- Don't be sorry.

He patted his pockets for a cigarette, saw my packet and took it.

- I said my name was Engels. At this point, ideally, I should hold my
hand out to you. I think the custom is to shake. I don't like shaking
hands.

- I don't like shaking hands either, I said. I don't like shaking
hands.

I remember Engels moved his head to the side. The kind of gesture you'd
make if you had water in your ear. Told me he didn't give three shits
what principles I had. He was explaining himself. I had no place in an
explanation of himself.

- You fuck shit up?

- I fuck shit up.

He said I fuck shit up that second time like a starter motor or a
toast. I'm sure if there had been a glass to hand he would have held it
up to the night. Here's to the night.

I can't remember what Engels was wearing. Odd gestures and words but
not clothes. Connie tells me this was his Ian Curtis phase. Connie says
he would have been wearing a black or dark brown shirt buttoned up to
the collar without a tie. Black drainpipe jeans. Cheap white trainers.
Whenever he got ready to go out he'd stand, finished in front of their
bedroom mirror and say : here am the young man. Which - if Engels is
reading this - will piss him off. It will piss him off that I know
that. It will piss him that I'm telling you. It will piss him off that
he was ever young enough to be silly.

He looked off, down the street. I followed his gaze and became
distracted again. There were fat moths thumping against the
streetlamps. The rain had left pixels of street reflected light on the
pavement. London was a low hum of night time noise. I was drunkenly
focussing on whatever presented itself to me. Engels scratched his neck
- in the way a bearded man scratches, flexing and unflexing his fingers
- and looked back at me.

- From where I stood watching, it looked like you had something on your
mind.

Even now this strikes me as an unusual way to start a dialogue. Adults
don't admit anything. You don't admit what hurts you or what helps you.
You adopt stances and faces and poses. The private and the party you.
It becomes second nature. You don't play. You don't act the fool. You
learn to behave. Success is knowing how and when to draw the line.
Success is realising that the line changes depending on who you are
with. People don't speak their minds. People hold their tongues,
communicating with the priveleged over pints after work. What I would
have said if. The circumstances are never right for confrontation of
any kind.

I know that part of his opening gambit with me came about because he
was bored. He wanted to be interested. Saying all of that, it sobered
me somewhat. I looked at him. He'd taken his bottom lip into his mouth
and screwed his eyes up a little, as if he was glancing into bright
light. Perhaps my silence indicated that I had been thinking about
something. He was waiting.

I'd spent the better part of the Saturday before the party re-reading
Death in Venice. For whatever reason, I'd decided to read it a second
time. The book is about a hundred pages long and I read it in about an
hour and a half. Second time around, it bothered me a great deal. I
don't know if you've read it. I won't spoil it for you.

I started to talk but before I tell you what I said, I need to say this
: what followed has a dream-like quality. It didn't feel real then and
it doesn't feel real on the page. I know because I have written this
out - the conversation we had - seventeen or eighteen times now, and
every time I write it out it sounds fake and phony. Engels pre-empted a
lot of what I had to say in a way that beggars my belief.

Still.

He asked me what was on my mind. I told him that I had been re-reading
Death in Venice (I made a point of saying re-reading, for whatever
reason) that afternoon. I was going to say that the last line bothered
me but before I had even finished, Engels said :

- By nightfall a shocked and respectful world learned of his
decease.

I said yes. Turned more toward him. Lit another cigarette. Said :

- Can you be both shocked and respectful? Doesn't shock deny the
possibility of respectability? If the world greets death respectfully,
they greet it without shock. The combination of words suggests this
terrific falseness to me. People saying how shocked they are, how
unexpected the end was. I find this really terrible. It makes me angry.
The real meaning of the book - the result of the fucking tragedy - is
that nobody gives a fuck. The death doesn't surprise anybody. They're
glad he's gone. When the shocked respectable people get home, they
don't think about him at all. Either that or they're glad the dirty old
cunt is dead.

He asked me what I thought Death in Venice was about. Which I felt was
quite insulting. As if he thought perhaps I didn't understand what I'd
read. I said that I thought you couldn't say. I said it was a stupid
question. He said no. It wasn't a stupid question. He said you could
read Death in Venice and say it's about an old man who becomes obsessed
by a young man. You could interpret everything. The relationship
between the old man and the young man is that between an artist and his
muse. More interestingly, you could see everything as some kind of
Faustian retelling. I asked what did he mean. Engels said Aschenbach
doesn't like travelling. Out walking one day he spies a mysterious
ginger haired man and becomes agitated with a desire to travel. He
doesn't like travel. Even more bizarrely he has a vision of a rank
smelling alluvial plain. Aschenbach travels. He gets it wrong. He
should go to Venice, a place he visited thirty years earlier, a place
he was struck ill in. He changes his destination, is led by a
hunch-backed sailor to a goat-faced captain, signs his name and is
taken to Venice. Ginger hair, goats and deformity are all evil portents
of one kind or another. He doesn't like travel and he doesn't like
Venice. In Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus, Faustus sells his soul for
the knowledge contained in empty books. Aschenbach does the same.

Engels paused, carried on.

You could read the book as a ghost story. Aschenbach is already dead.
He is a character straight out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The
novel starts in a cemetery. Aschenbach is a writer who has lost his
joy. He eschues crowds. Everywhere he goes is deserted. People appear
and disappear. He relives the final months of his life again, the
descent into a green fog.

The Venice he dies in is rotten, Engels said. Rotten with some kind of
- he held his cigarette up in the air looking for the right word and
failing - rotten with some kind of sick-making fog. Tourists are
dropping dead left, right and centre. Aschenbach is just one more
casualty.

Just goes to show that nothing means anything very much.

The last sentence though - I feel like it's - Thomas Mann wants the
reader to think, shit - shit! - the whole world is diseased. It isn't
just Aschenbach. It isn't just Venice.

It isn't just Aschenbach. It isn't just Venice. Just look upstairs.
Take a walk around this fucking party.

I ground the cigarette out between my thumb and index finger and
flicked it like a sordid letter off towards the gate. Both of us sat
quietly, watching the moths, watching the light, listening to the
hum.

Engels said : I have seen all the works that are done under the sun ;
and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

I didn't know what he was referring to. I'm not religious at all. Now I
know. I gave my heart to know his wisdom, and to know madness and
folly. Now I know. In much wisdom is much grief. He that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow. Now I know.