Now we’re back in November 2001. Max is on his way home from Grace Kowalski’s as the memory of that first date bursts into his head ten times more vivid than it was before Apasmara took it away. And it hurts. It hurts like a head full of double-edged razor blades. ‘Shit!’ says Max as he realises that Apasmara’s thing isn’t only forgetfulness – it’s whatever hurts the most.
‘Oi!’ comes a loathsome whisper behind him. ‘Have I got to writhe all the way back to Fulham or are you going to take me aboard?’ There he is in his run-over-dog mode.
‘Get lost, Napasmara,’ says Max. ‘You’re nothing but a whole lot of emptiness.’
‘That makes two of us then,’ says the dwarf, ‘because I’m whatever you are and that denial shit only works when you’re with Kowalski. Come on, pick me up. I ain’t heavy, I’m your brother.’
So Max picks him up. Apasmara’s weight and smell are just as bad as before but somehow Max feels more … what? More complete with the dwarf demon on his back as they near Oxford Circus. ‘I suppose,’ says his mind, ‘it’s better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.’
‘Except that he’s inside pissing in,’ says Max.
‘Anyhow, I’m getting used to it,’ says his mind. ‘What an evening that first date was. What a memory. It hurts like hell but it’s a beauty. Those stars over Charing Cross Station! The feel of Lola’s hand squeezing yours!’
‘Don’t distract me,’ says Max. ‘I’m reviewing the situation. Lola put Apasmara on to me with this CD. Could she have been the one who put it through the letterbox?’
‘You think she’s still in London?’ says his mind.
‘Hang on,’ says Max as WHAM, another memory lights up his brain: Trafalgar Square the Monday evening a couple of days after Die Winterreise. The Coliseum Shop closes at six on Mondays and it’s only about half-past now. The National Gallery also closes at six so people from there have joined those already in the Square. Gentle rain coming down. Max and Lola in macs and broad-brimmed canvas hats, one of which Max bought for Lola this afternoon. ‘Do you buy a lot of hats,’ she says, ‘for women?’
‘First time,’ says Max. ‘I thought you might like to walk in the rain without an umbrella.’
‘I do, and you got the size right too. Well done.’ She’s on his arm and the two of them are the little village of each other in the winter night. Under the lights and the rain the lions are gleaming, the fountains are sending up their white spray, the passing sightseeing buses are juicily red, and Nelson, as in all weathers, keeps watch from his column.
‘I’ve been thinking about Die Winterreise,’ says Lola.
‘Me too,’ says Max. ‘Some of those songs seem to describe exactly where I am in my own Reise.’
‘Same here,’ says Lola. ‘In that very first song, “Gute Nacht”, the second verse keeps singing itself in my head. I did my own translation with the help of the Fischer-Dieskau CD text: “I can to my journey not choose me the time. I must myself the way find in this darkness. It goes a moon-shadow as my companion. And in the white fields seek I the wild animals’ tracks.” That got to me: “I can to my journey not choose me the time.”’
‘Nobody can,’ says Max.
‘But what if you’re not ready for the journey?’
‘I think maybe nobody’s ever ready for the big ones,’ says Max.
Lola says nothing, she presses closer to him.
‘What a memory,’ says Max’s mind. ‘But those razor blades!’
‘She’s in London,’ says Max. ‘I can feel it.’
‘What year are you in?’
‘This one, right now.’ He turns on his heel and heads for Trafalgar Square.