Part 9

I went to the bathroom and for the first time since I had moved into Ludwig’s wing, I ran myself a bath. Normally I preferred showering, but at this moment I felt a bath was in order, even though showering was more hygienic than bathing, not to mention more refreshing, I nonetheless wanted to bathe rather than shower. A bath would be soothing, I thought, even if I had to lie there in my own filth it would be worth it to achieve the state of equanimity that a bath is reputed to induce in a bather, so I got undressed and into the bath, gingerly since it was piping hot, first I put a foot in and allowed that to acclimatise to the heat, then another, then I got onto all fours and gently lowered my scrotum into the bath and then my buttocks, until finally half my body was submerged in the water, which I only now noticed was somewhat brown rather than translucent, as I had assumed it would be and as anyone would assume their bathwater would be. It’s a trick of the light, I told myself, even though I knew it was not a trick of the light and that my bathwater was undeniably brownish, probably on account of rusting pipes, no doubt most of the houses in Hindhead, I thought, had rusted pipes, the houses in Hindhead generally being of the sort one would suspect of having rusting pipes, on account of their age, general state of disrepair etc. I lay back and closed my eyes, sighed, then I opened my eyes again and that’s when I noticed the geometric patterning of the tiles around the bath and all along one wall of the bathroom. I knew immediately that I would have no choice but to count all of the orange diagonal lines, then all of the purple hexagons in between those diagonal lines, then all of the yellow hexagons nested inside the purple hexagons. For as long as I could remember, I had been a compulsive counter of geometric shapes, wherever and whenever I saw them, I simply had to count them, it was just the way things were and had always been with me, I wished it wasn’t the case, of course, nothing pleased me less than having to compulsively count geometric shapes, but I was powerless not to, even though I could, with a great deal of effort, force myself to stop counting, I knew I would only resume again as soon as I took my foot off the so-called pedal of intentionality, which sooner or later I would have to do, since it was impossible to keep my foot on the pedal of intentionality when my intention was to counteract something as powerful as my compulsive counting of geometric shapes, hence it was not worth trying, the effort of trying being counterproductive ultimately, in the sense of being deleterious to my mental health, which was already in a parlous enough state. Once the counting was over and done with, I quickly closed my eyes again, lest I be compelled to do a recount of the geometric shapes, which was something I knew from bitter experience couldn’t be ruled out as a possibility. Nuclear annihilation, I thought apropos to nothing, we live with the prospect of it daily, yet no one seems to give a damn, whereas people do, perversely enough, seem to give a damn about perfunctory, trifling matters that they clearly shouldn’t give a damn about, people are myopic when it comes to existential threats, just as they have 20-20 vision when it comes to petty issues that ought not to matter but nevertheless do, hence why on the one hand, they appear to be completely comfortable with the possibility that at any moment, a war of mutually assured destruction could erupt between the so-called major nuclear powers and on the other hand, are preoccupied with, weighed down by, matters that are altogether inconsequential, transitory, piffling and so on. It didn’t make sense to me, but then people had never made sense to me and in all likelihood never would. I got out of the bath and, making sure not to look at the geometric shapes, i.e., by keeping my eyes on my feet, I exited the bathroom and made my way to the guestroom, where, to my immense surprise, I saw Elda draped across the bed. She was wearing a cheongsam with silhouetted birds printed on it and looked, I remarked to myself, ravishing. Reflexively, my cock hardened into an immediate erection. I made no attempt to hide it; although my instinct was to place a hand over the protuberance, my executive ego overruled that instinct, even though I was by nature prudish and uncomfortable exhibiting my manhood to another human being, even one I had been intimate with. For her part, Elda was staring at my cock brazenly, having made no attempt to disguise her obviously prurient interest in it. I stood there for a long time saying nothing and Elda lay there on the bed also saying nothing, I could think of nothing to say, neither did I feel like I ought to say anything, whereas it seemed as if Elda wanted to say something, but for some reason couldn’t or perhaps wouldn’t. It was an impasse, I thought, a classic case of two people sexually attracted to each other locked in a pre-coital stand-off, a stand-off that inevitably came to an end, of course, as all such stand-offs must, Elda making the first move, that move being the flinging of her cheongsam onto the floor, whereas I made the second move, that move being the insertion of my penis into her anus. After screwing each other’s brains out, as they say, we repaired to Elda’s wing, where Elda rustled up some hot dogs. I had mustard and ketchup on mine, whereas Elda had hers sans condiments. I was ravenous, having not eaten anything since the Whopper, and I therefore made short work of my hotdog, whereas Elda only nibbled at hers, perhaps because she wasn’t hungry or perhaps because she was an inveterate nibbler of hotdogs, I couldn’t say, not knowing Elda well enough, I realised, to be able to say, even though she was someone I knew better than almost anyone else. As she nibbled, I told her about my visit to London, my night at the Ministry of Sound, i.e., about the drugs, the wanton raving, the pseudo rape, I told her about my jogging around Leicester Square, my steadfast refusal to upsize my Whopper into a Whopper meal, my not-so-surreptitious drinking on the train to Haslemere, my impromptu stop-off at the pub on the way to Hindhead, the drunken tradesmen’s vapid conversation, my having had a bath rather than the shower I would normally have had, my compulsive counting of the geometric shapes on the bathroom tiles. I didn’t think any of this worthy of interest, but for some inexplicable reason Elda seemed enthralled. Wow, she said, when I’d finished blathering, you’ve had quite the time of it! Yes, I said uncertainly, I suppose I have. But why didn’t you invite me to come with you to London? said Elda. You know I like a good rave as much as the next person. I’m sorry, I said, the next time I go raving I’ll be sure to invite you along. Elda laughed at that, although I hadn’t meant to be funny. Somehow all those nibbles added up to a whole hotdog and finally Elda was finished. I had long since eaten mine and was in fact still famished, but Elda had clearly not been at all hungry, hence why she had taken an eternity to eat hers, or perhaps Elda had been hungry and she had simply eaten the hotdog in the manner she was accustomed to eating hotdogs, i.e., in tiny incremental morsels. I need to get my car, I declared. I left it at the train station because I was over the limit, but now I think I am under the limit and therefore I can drive it without fear of falling foul of the so-called law. I’ll take you, said Elda, save you having to walk. It’s fine, I said, not wanting to seem like the sort of man who would opportunistically cadge a lift from the woman who had been kind enough to cook him a post-coital hot dog, but Elda, predictably I felt, wouldn’t hear of it, insisted that she take me. From there it quickly became farcical, me obstinately refusing, and her becoming more and more forceful in insisting that she give me, a lift, until finally I relented and said, thank you, a lift would be great, at which point Elda said: but only if you’re sure, I don’t want you to think you have to accept my offer of a lift, an offer, I should point out by the way, that does not come with strings attached, lest you had any concerns in that department. She said this smiling, knowing full well that I knew this was one of Ludwig’s central preoccupations in life, namely the offering of something with strings attached, which he was convinced was all too likely to be the case whenever someone offered him anything, hence why he accepted that offer, if he accepted it at all, that is, with a thoroughgoing circumspection and deep-seated suspiciousness that frankly bordered on the paranoid, something I had pointed out to him many times and which he dismissed as nonsense, even though he knew deep down that I was right, not just about this but about many other things concerning his personality that he refused to openly acknowledge I was right about, just as I would never, of course, concede he was right when he pointed out defects in my personality, which he frequently did in fact, far more than I felt was warranted. Now it was my turn to laugh, and I said something to the effect of that I knew full well there was at least one string attached, that string being a sexual favour of some kind. Some kind? said Elda, still smiling, her eyebrows rising in an unmistakably salacious gesture. Of course, that was too much and so I immediately ripped Elda’s clothes off and took her from behind, even though I wanted to retrieve my car as soon as possible from the carpark at Haslemere train station, the parking ticket having expired a number of hours ago, a matter I found vexing in the extreme, nonetheless I succumbed to my urges, those urges being especially strong, stronger than any urges I’d ever known, which made me think, even as I was rhythmically penetrating Elda and should have been focusing on nothing other than penetrating Elda, that the urges I’d had in the past had not really been bona fide urges, and that even though I had acted upon those urges, their tepidity had been a sign, a sure-fire indication that they were not authentic urges, unlike these urges that Elda had stirred in me, which were absolutely authentic urges, the kind of urges, in other words, that could easily derail a hard and fast plan such as the picking up of my car from the carpark at Haslemere train station, urges against which I was utterly powerless and which were spurring me on to thrust faster and faster into Elda’s derriere until, inevitably, I climaxed. Immediately I withdrew my penis and went to the bathroom and washed it thoroughly and then I went back to the kitchen and found Elda still on the floor in the same position that I’d left her in. Where did you go? she said. I explained about washing my penis thoroughly and she nodded knowingly, as if my washing my penis thoroughly were something she completely understood and concurred with. I’ll just freshen up, she said, and then we can go and get your car. No rush, I said, take your time. I didn’t mean it, of course, now that I had sated my urges, my desire to retrieve my car as quickly as possible was of paramount importance and I was in fact feeling quite restless, agitated, impatient etc. I knew I would likely have a fine to pay for leaving my car in the Haslemere train station carpark, something that irked me quite considerably, being, as I was, averse to having to pay out sums of money that I could have avoided paying out. Money, my money, was after all a finite resource, I thought. Even though money was entirely an artifact of the human imagination and had no basis in so-called reality, nonetheless there was nothing imaginary about the finiteness of the amount of money that I happened to have in my bank account. Money had no intrinsic value, I thought, was just a bit of paper or chunk of metal or data on a server somewhere, yet I, along with everyone else, believed that it did have, was a store of, value, even though this belief could evaporate at a moment’s notice and leave me and everyone else completely destitute, still we continued to believe that money had value. Presently, Elda returned from the bathroom. She had put some makeup on, I noticed, being the sort of woman who always wore makeup to go out, even if it was just to give me a lift to Haslemere station carpark. Let’s do this, she said, smiling at me. I nodded my assent and we left the house and got in Elda’s car, actually before we got in the car, Elda put the roof down and then we got in the car. It was too cold in my opinion to drive with the roof down, but it wasn’t my car or therefore place to question the decision to put the roof down, the putting down of which exposed us to an icy blast as we hurtled along the road from Hindhead to Haslemere, an icy blast that very likely would induce a cold or worse, a risk that it was irresponsible of Elda to have engendered, I couldn’t help but think. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to get to Haslemere train station. I directed Elda to where my car was parked. Are you coming back to the house? she asked me as I was opening the car door to get out. Probably gonna go for a spin, I said. Elda looked so crestfallen that I added: why don’t you come too? In your car, said Elda. Yes, I said, what’s wrong with my car? Nothing, said Elda. Well, that’s settled then, I said, let’s drive back to yours, drop your car off and head out in my car. Okay, said Elda sounding less than convinced about the idea, sounding almost as if she would rather do anything other than go for a spin in my car, which I found a bit offensive quite frankly, though I hid my umbrage behind a neutral or neutered smile. I got into my car, turned the ignition umpteen times and just at the point I thought I’d irremediably denuded the battery of its electrical charge, I got the fucker to start, it hadn’t wanted to, had done its best to resist my efforts, but in the end those efforts had been too much for my car, which in the end had had no choice but to start. Exhilarated by my triumph over my old adversary, I reversed out of the space and then I sped off, with Elda in hot pursuit behind me. A few minutes later we were both ensconced in my car. Elda had tried to persuade me to leave my car at the house and go for a drive with her in her car, but I had refused. When one decides to go for a drive in one’s own car, I said to her, one has to stick to that decision, however flawed it may seem to you that we should go for a drive in my shit-heap when your brand new, state-of-the-art automobile would doubtless provide us with a far more comfortable drive. Sometimes, I continued, flawed decisions are nonetheless the right decisions, just as the right decisions can be, and frequently are, flawed decisions. I had no idea where we were going, not that it much mattered where we were going, notwithstanding the fact I felt an obligation to give Elda a vague idea as to where we were going, even though I had been clear enough that I was going for a spin, and as everyone knows, I thought, going for a spin is another way of saying driving aimlessly, which is something I did all too often, being congenitally incapable of going anywhere in the car on a predetermined basis, even though I was more than aware that my driving anywhere was always and in every instance the result of causal factors that very much predetermined wherever it was I happened to drive to, however seemingly aimlessly, meaning, of course, that I was bound to end up driving wherever it had been decided I should drive, that decision having been taken, for all I knew, when the big bang went off all those billions of years ago, not that I believed (for one moment) there had been a big bang, let alone billions of years ago, all the same I did believe that everything, my driving, Elda’s nibbling on hot dogs, my preference for anal sex, as well as Elda’s preference for anal sex, my neuroticism, my ex-boss’ fascistic tendencies, my uncle’s repugnant smugness, my stepfather’s incorrigible lewdness, my mother’s crassness, my siblings’ superciliousness, my wife’s psychopathic viciousness, my son’s uncanny surliness, Ludwig’s effeteness, everything basically, was part of a teleological movement towards something, a terminus perhaps, although a terminus that was itself the beginning of a new teleological movement towards another terminus, and on, in an infinite spawning of terminuses.