jona xhepa

Cock tale

Bernard looks a lot like Andrew Scott, the actor who portrayed Moriarty in the BBC modern adaption of Sherlock. However, since I first wrote this story, Scott has surged in popularity from his role as a sexy priest in a cult television show, so I won’t refer to the comparison, not wishing to imbue this story with ecclesiastical flutters. I mentioned the similarity the first time I met Bernard, but he hadn’t a clue who the actor was, nor the eponymous Sherlock—Bandernitch Cunningsnatch, or whatever his name is—although the latter played the titular Patrick Melrose in an adaptation of Edward St. Aubyn’s novels, around the same time Bernard was lecturing on said novels. 

I told him his accent wasn’t as nice as Andrew Scott’s, or Brumblewich Crambleband or whatever it is, and Bernard patiently observed my presence in the intervals of sipping his cocktail, heeding my ramblings as if gleaning for signs of madness. I’ve noticed it’s best not to show signs of neurosis with people who write about them academically. 

I decided to stop talking altogether, and eventually he began to smile, and I made a joke where I’d forgotten the word for “toes” so instead said “foot fingers.”

Before a second inner pledge to stop talking, I rumbled through vodka courage to declare I wasn’t really sure if he liked me. In response, he grabbed my glass to sip from it while offering his own to me, which gesture I took as an affirmation of sorts. He kept watching me later, at least that’s what I assumed, making out only the white bed in his hotel room where he was silhouetted. Why did you think I didn’t like you? he mumbled with extreme courtesy. 

We had observed a prolonged silence climbing the stairs of our hotel, which made me think I’d done something disappointing. There were seven other beds in the room, which seemed excessive considering there was a homelessness crisis, and I clutched my stomach with the pain of having disappointed somebody who had done me the courtesy of not knowing me very well.  One day, he told me he made it a point to fall in love on or around January 25th if it could be helped to emulate a diary entry by Tolstoy which had resurfaced among literary circles’ social networks. It wasn’t even winter yet, so, confused, I said my ex-husband’s birthday is in January. 

Yesterday, I received a message from him to ask: was I still in the city? He was back for a few days; would I meet him for a drink? I hadn’t seen him in five years. He was nursing a hangover with dignity as a patient unwilling to burden others with his convalescence. Scrutinizing his face while our thighs touched on the camel back sofa, I couldn’t help blurting out: it’s nice to be rendezring with vous again. 

<>

 Once when he was travelling to Bristol for a symposium on trauma in bronze age civilizations, I had the distinct feeling that he would be the victim of a terrorist attack. There’d been a bit in the paper about a recent attack in a train station, and something in the pit of my stomach told me it would happen again, this time on Bernard’s train. I briefly entertained the notion in my head that this would be like the terrorists’ difficult second novel, which made me even more anxious; the pressure on the terrorist cell for a successful follow-up attack would render the operation clumsy, and Bernard would end up limb-torn and traumatised rather than simply dead. When he nervously laughed at my notions, I grew flustered at the implied snobbism that a terrorist would be incapable of a novelist’s sensibilities.

The next morning, fatigued from the remainders of concern, I went through Bernard’s things he’d left out on the bed ready for packing while he was in the shower. The surge of excitement I experienced upon seeing the envelope with delicate handwriting, often an epiphanous moment for the female protagonist in novels and films, meant that I could use this event as a talking point for future lectures. It was a shame because this betrayal didn’t really fit with the subject of any upcoming lectures; it would have been splendid if I’d discovered the letter and subsequent text messages from the other woman in November when I was lecturing on Flaubert’s use of epiphany: it would have been good fodder then. 

Carefully replacing the letter and mobile phone under the grooves of his good shirt, I announced to the open suitcase that I would endeavor never again to be embarrassing. 

He announced he was married, a year now, had met the woman in India over three years ago. Is she from India? I asked, because it seemed like the thing to say. From England, he said. You married an Englishwoman? I half-coughed and then laughed for a bit at the ghost of my joke. Whoever the woman with the nice handwriting had been had probably evaporated from his mind much earlier than from mine. 

I decided without much thought that this was going to be a big celebration between the two of us, a private, belated celebration of his happiness. While he went to the toilets, I ordered a slightly more expensive cocktail for myself, though it came with egg whites which I hate, and a drink with whiskey in it which I held out for him when he returned with his vacant assurance. In the middle of the salon where we sat was a steel spiral staircase leading nowhere, whose only purpose seemed to be for the waiters to clear past with an upward flourish of their trays. This salonscape made it impossible to change the subject he alighted on. 

His face looked like an abandoned bedroom. She’s sleeping with someone else, he said. He lunged on his side of the couch, and just in time I wisely reconsidered a half-second comical, mid-sip projectile spit of the cocktail. Having nothing else to say, he sat slumped on the couch and sipped his cocktail in surprising intervals, so I had time to watch him. With surprise, I noticed his jacket and trousers were the same as they’d always been. In fact, his clothes were the only things unchanged about him. How do you not change your clothes in five years? I snickered at his unchanging but much altered face. I made room for him between us on the couch, which he aggressively filled with his demeanor. 

Finally, Bernard took a sip that was unlike the previous ones, then downed the glass like someone about to meet his fate, bidding the waitress over. I felt the need to snicker again, say something like, Isn’t the waitress pretty? Those black tights really suit her. But I stopped myself. He ordered another one for himself and a gin cocktail for me, as if taking inventory, managing a smile in the proceedings. In deference to his state, I put an end to my inner mirth, to make things easier for him somehow.

Imperceptibly, the rain that had begun in the morning, and had briefly stopped in the afternoon, began to fall on the metal rooftop and intensified throughout Bernard’s brooding. Pretty soon, a vibrato howl like a cosmic snort was heard throughout the city, and lashings of thunder followed the storm jousting in the streets. A trio of guests at the table behind us gathered their things in a hurry and left. We stayed put. 

Because his wound had become such a steadfast canticle in such a short time, I decided it was time to be serious and offer advice, just for something to do, like writing your name on a dusty car window you’re boredly leaning against, waiting for a companion to come out of the petrol station shop. 

How about writing a letter?

No, he said, I don’t want to embark on a solution because I don’t want to manifest this into a problem.

This wasn’t a solution, but a maneuver for me to cathartically appease my phantom wound. 

Here’s what you do, I said, trying to take command again. Here’s what you say…you say: 

“Dear,          ”

What’s her name?

No response.

“Dear cuntface,”

No, no, said Bernard. He waved his hand, which wafted the smoke I was blowing. I’m not angry with her, I’m just very, very sad and upset. You can’t use offensive terms like that if you’re not angry. He laughed a little, inclining into his drunkenness. 

He’s so beautiful when he’s properly drunk.

Well, I’ve just made up this term, I said, and I’m not placing any proscriptive criteria on its use. 

You did not make up “cuntface,” he said.

 It was the subtext that hurt, that I couldn’t possibly come up with original expletives.

Holding the cocktail close to my face and crossing my legs to embitter my announcement further, I announced I did make up the term, but for another instance of betrayal from my…from the past. 

His face turned too slowly while I sipped on the cocktail, copying the stance of women who elongate their bodies when posing for photos. I feigned enthusiasm to shift the focus, and he forgot his remembering, dismissing the whole effort with a Nevermind.

Before we realized we were shut in for the night, like those bottle-nose or bottle-neck, or whatever, episodes of television shows, there was a pause in our conversation during which we took big glugs of our drinks, and I searched my mind for a memory or set of events I could impart in the most boring way possible. Bernard had gained weight (not physically—physically, he remained slimmer and more elegant than me) but like his spirit had gained weight, an avoirdupois visible only to the eye that knows you and has seen you before. 

This made me think of my own eating habits, which led me to give a detailed description of the production and consumption of my breakfast. I emphasised how strenuously I hated eggs that weren’t vehemently scrambled and slightly overcooked while he looked on bemused, an emphasis I overplayed to see whether he remembered or had ever noted this peculiarity of mine. He carried on looking bemused, my emphasis arousing no recognition in him. His indulgence goaded me into a longer soliloquy to the point where I started inventing additional details, like exotic fruits and smoothie concoctions that I had no kitchen utensils to supply. 

I ordered two more drinks and leaned back on the couch to better eavesdrop on the conversation at the next table and let Bernard stew in his misery. The two men and one woman, the only other patrons who hadn’t left, were playing a fun alphabet game and I mentally joined in until I forgot about the storm. I think I was waiting for my thoughts and Bernard’s to be flattened to the same moment, until he checked his phone and immediately replaced it in his coat pocket with a dashing elbow flick. His relentless commitment to the drink made me suspicious of his intention to be courteous in his cuckoldry. I allowed him his solitude and watched the room turn hazy with smoke and drunken laughter. 

Around four in the morning, the storm subsided. The last trio began filing out languidly through the front door into the brutally insipid half-dawn. The waitress had stayed overnight and the bartender had sectioned off a table in the smoking section, and they were flirting warmly, their delectable legs foregoing any command of their roles. 

Bernard had woken up for a spell and started talking about New York of all places. With renewed charm, he beckoned the waitress over just by holding her gaze while I blew air into my cupped hand to ascertain the putrescence of my breath. I whistled a made-up tune toward the room as Bernard managed to order two more drinks and we found ourselves on the other side of sober.

New York is one of those concepts I find disgusting, commensurate eggs. It sure looks beautiful in pictures, or sounds beautiful from what people have said, but it leaves me cold to my breeches. It makes me sad to hear its name being uttered. I went on a barrage of anti-New York sentiment with the last cells of consciousness.

What are you talking about? Bernard mumbled. Anyways, this new work, I was saying...

Ah, I said, slightly embarrassed. 

Around eight or so we made our bodies wiggle as if to leave. Bernard looked again at the waitress who this time returned his gaze with a hushed reverie. He walked over to her and talked for some time while the bartender collected empty glasses and ashtrays. 

I had slumped into a mixed sobriety when he returned and said, How about some coffee? shortly after which the waitress came to our table with two cups of coffee and a ceramic jug of milk on a tray, thanking Bernard by name and then leaving.

So this letter, I started, after we’d ascertained that we might as well have another drink as the coffee wasn’t doing it.

What letter? Oh never mind that, it’s nothing really, he said. I’ll talk to her, it’s all just in my head I think. 

A letter for a letter. I muffled my sound with coffee glugs. 

What? he said.

Nevermind. 

Copious morning light turned us back to ourselves. Bernard spoke at length about his new paper to be presented at a conference in Latvia a few months hence, on Laurence Sterne. It was to be called Tristram Bysham, he said.

“Really?” I aberrantly looked up at him, because on our rainy cobbled walk outside the pub and into daylight I had begun to slowly shrink and struggled to keep pace with him.

“No, not really, it doesn’t have a name.”

In the smog under which the city capitulated following the deluge, my figure contracted into minutiae, and our two moving figures lacerated the smoke with comic assertion. Bernard picked me up and put me in the canvas of his suede jacket. He shuffled on in the hazy ordeal with me in the lining, as if we were unaware of our mounting insignificance—luckily, he didn’t start on any claims about wanting to be a better man, or anything like that.