Beautiful World, Where Are You Read online

  I know that you personally feel the world ceased to be beautiful after the fall of the Soviet Union. (As an aside, isn’t it curious that this event coincided almost exactly with the date of your birth? It might help explain why you feel so much in common with Jesus, who I think also believed himself to be a harbinger of the apocalypse.) But do you ever experience a sort of diluted, personalised version of that feeling, as if your own life, your own world, has slowly but perceptibly become an uglier place? Or even a sense that while you used to be in step with the cultural discourse, you’re not anymore, and you feel yourself adrift from the world of ideas, alienated, with no intellectual home? Maybe it is about our specific historical moment, or maybe it’s just about getting older and disillusioned, and it happens to everyone. When I look back on what we were like when we first met, I don’t think we were really wrong about anything, except about ourselves. The ideas were right, but the mistake was that we thought we mattered. Well, we’ve both had that particular error ground out of us in different ways—me by achieving precisely nothing in over a decade of adult life, and you (if you’ll forgive me) by achieving as much as you possibly could and still not making one grain of difference to the smooth functioning of the capitalist system. When we were young, we thought our responsibilities stretched out to encompass the earth and everything that lived on it. And now we have to content ourselves with trying not to let down our loved ones, trying not to use too much plastic, and in your case trying to write an interesting book once every few years. So far so good on that front. Are you working on a new one yet, by the way?

  I still think of myself as someone who is interested in the experience of beauty, but I would never describe myself (except to you, in this email) as ‘interested in beauty’, because people would assume that I meant I was interested in cosmetics. This I guess is the dominant meaning of the word ‘beauty’ in our culture now. And it seems telling that this meaning of the word ‘beauty’ signifies something so profoundly ugly—plastic counters in expensive department stores, discount pharmacies, artificial perfumes, eyelash extensions, jars of ‘product’. Having thought about it just now, I think the beauty industry is responsible for some of the worst ugliness we see around us in our visual environment, and the worst, most false aesthetic ideal, which is the ideal of consumerism. All its various trends and looks ultimately signify the same principle—the principle of spending. To be open to aesthetic experience in a serious way probably requires as a first step the complete rejection of this ideal, and even a wholesale reaction against it, which if it seems to require at first a kind of superficial ugliness is still better by far and more substantively ‘beautiful’ than purchasing increased personal attractiveness at a price. Of course I wish that I personally were better-looking, and of course I enjoy the validation of feeling that I do look good, but to confuse these basically auto-erotic or status-driven impulses with real aesthetic experience seems to me an extremely serious mistake for anyone who cares about culture. Have the two things ever been more widely or deeply confused at any period in history before?

  Do you remember when I had that essay about Natalia Ginzburg published a couple of years ago? I never told you at the time but I actually heard from an agent in London about it, asking if I was working on a book. I didn’t tell you because you were busy and because, I suppose, it seemed like something small compared with everything that was going on in your life. I’m embarrassed now to admit that I would even make that comparison. But anyway, I was happy about this email at first, and I showed it to Aidan, although he didn’t really know anything about publishing or care very much, and I even told my mother. Then after a day or two I started to feel kind of anxious and stressed about it, because I actually wasn’t working on a book, and I didn’t have any idea what I could possibly write a book about, and I didn’t think I had the stamina to finish a big project like that anyway. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt like it would be really painful and desperate of me to even try to write a book, because I have no intellectual depth or original ideas, and what would I be doing it for anyway, just to say that I had done it? Or just to feel like I was equal to you? I’m sorry if this is all making it sound like you loom large over my inner life. You don’t usually, or if you do it’s in a good way. Anyway, in the end I never replied to the email. It just sat there in my inbox making me feel worse and worse and worse until I deleted it. I could have at least thanked the woman and said no, but I didn’t, or couldn’t, I don’t know why. I suppose it doesn’t matter now. The stupid thing is that I really liked writing that essay, and I did want to write another one, and after I got that email I never did. I know that if I really had any talent I would have done something with my life by now—I don’t delude myself about that. If I tried I’m sure I would fail and that’s why I’ve never tried.

  In one of your emails a couple of months ago you wrote that Aidan and I had never been very happy together. That’s not exactly true—we were in the beginning, for a while—but I know what you meant. And I do wonder why I’ve spent all this time feeling depressed about the end of something that wasn’t working anyway. I suppose on one level it’s just worse to get to the age of thirty without even one really happy relationship behind me. I think I would feel superficially sadder, but less fundamentally broken as a person, if I could just be sad about one break-up, rather than sad about my lifelong inability to sustain a meaningful relationship. But on the other hand, maybe it’s something else. All those times I thought about breaking up with Aidan, and even talked about doing it, why didn’t I? I don’t think it was just because I loved him, although I did, and I don’t think it was the idea that I would miss him, because it never really occurred to me that I would, and to be honest with myself I haven’t. Sometimes I think I was afraid that without him my life would be just the same, or even worse, and I would have to accept that it was my fault. And it was easier and safer to stay in a bad situation than to take responsibility for getting out. Maybe, maybe. I don’t know. I tell myself that I want to live a happy life, and that the circumstances for happiness just haven’t arisen. But what if that’s not true? What if I’m the one who can’t let myself be happy? Because I’m scared, or I prefer to wallow in self-pity, or I don’t believe I deserve good things, or some other reason. Whenever something good happens to me I always find myself thinking: I wonder how long it will be until this turns out badly. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possible straight away, so at least I don’t have to feel anxious about it anymore.

  If, as I think is quite possible now, I never have any children and never write any books, I suppose I will leave nothing on this earth to be remembered by. And maybe that’s better. It makes me feel that rather than worrying and theorising about the state of the world, which helps no one, I should put my energy into living and being happy. When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn’t changed very much since I was a child—a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that’s all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth. What else is life for? But even that seems so beyond me that it’s like a dream, completely unrelated to anything in reality. And yes, when it comes to myself and Simon, two bedrooms please. All my love always. E.

  21.

  The following night, a Wednesday, Alice went out to meet Felix and some of his friends at a bar called The Sailor’s Friend, on a street corner near the pier. She arrived at the bar around nine o’clock, flushed from the walk, wearing a grey turtleneck and tapered trousers. Inside, it was warm and noisy. A long dark counter ran the length of the left wall, and behind it, above the spirit bottles, was a collection of colourful postcards. In front of an open hearth, a lurcher lay sleeping, its long delicate face resting on its paws. Felix and his friends were seated near a
window at the back, in the midst of a good-natured argument about the marketing of online gambling. When Felix saw Alice approaching, he stood up, greeted her, touched her waist, and asked what she would like to drink. Gesturing back at his friends, he added: You know them crowd, you’ve met them before. Sit down, I’ll go and get you something. She sat with his friends while he went to the bar. A woman named Siobhán was telling a story about a man she knew who had taken out a sixty-thousand-euro loan to cover his gambling debts. Alice appeared to find the story very interesting, and asked several specific questions. When Felix came back with the vodka tonic, he sat down beside her and put his hand on her lower back, smoothing the wool of her sweater under his fingers.

  At midnight they walked back together from the bar to his house. Upstairs in bed Alice lay flat on her back, and Felix was on top of her. Her eyelids were fluttering and she was breathing rapidly, noisily. He rested his weight on one elbow, pressing her right leg back against her chest. Did you think about me while you were away, he asked. In a tight voice she replied: I think about you every night. He shut his eyes then. Her breath seemed to come over her in waves, forcing itself into her lungs and out again through her open mouth. Still his eyes were closed. Alice, he said, can I come, is it okay? She put her arms around him.

  In the morning, he dropped her home on his way to work. Before she got out of the car, she asked him if she would see him for dinner that night and he said yes. Do your friends think I’m your girlfriend? she asked. He smiled at that. Well, we have been going around together a fair bit, he replied. I doubt they’re kept awake at night thinking about it, but yeah, they might assume. He paused and added: And people in town are saying it. I don’t care, I’m just telling you so you know. Alice asked what, exactly, people in town were saying, and Felix frowned. Ah, you know, he said. Nothing really. That author lady who lives above in the parochial house is hanging around with the Brady lad. That kind of thing. Alice said that they were, after all, ‘hanging around’, and Felix agreed that they were. There might be a few eyebrows raised, he added, but I wouldn’t mind that. She asked why anyone should raise an eyebrow at the idea of two young single people hanging around together, and he handled the gearstick thoughtfully under his hand. I wouldn’t be known as a great catch, he said, I’ll put it that way. Not the most reliable character going. And speaking honestly, I owe a bit of money around town as well. He cleared his throat. But sure look, if you like me, that’s your own business, he said. And I won’t go borrowing money from you, don’t worry. Hop out now or I’ll be late, good woman. She unbuckled her seatbelt. I do like you, she said. I know, he answered. Go on, get out.

  That morning, while Felix was at work, Alice had a phone call with her agent, discussing invitations she had received to literary festivals and universities. While this phone call took place, Felix was using a handheld scanner to identify and sort various packages into labelled stillage carts, which were then collected and wheeled away by other workers. Some of these workers greeted Felix when they came to collect the boxes, and others didn’t. He was wearing a black zip-up, with the zip pulled right up, and occasionally he tucked his chin under the raised collar, evidently cold. While speaking to her agent, Alice made notes on her laptop in a draft email with the subject heading ‘summer book dates’. After the phone call, she closed that email and opened a text file containing notes for a book review she was writing for a literary magazine in London. In the warehouse, Felix was pushing one of the tall steel stillage carts along an aisle of shelves illuminated by white fluorescent bulbs. Occasionally he stopped, squinted at a label, checked his scanner, and then scanned the item and placed it into the cart. Alice ate two pieces of buttered bread from a small plate, cut up an apple, made herself a cup of coffee and opened a draft email to Eileen.

  * * *

  Felix finished his shift at seven in the evening, while Alice was cooking. On his way out of the warehouse, he texted her.

  Felix: Hey sorry but im actually not gonna be there for dinner

  Felix: Heading out w people from work

  Felix: I wouldnt be any fun anyways bc im in foul humor

  Felix: Might see u tomorrow depending on how wrecked I get

  Alice: oh

  Alice: I’ll be sorry to miss you

  Felix: Not in the form im in right now believe me

  Alice: I like you no matter what form you’re in

  Felix: Well you can send me a love letter on here while im out getting locked

  Felix: And ill read it when I get home

  Alice put her phone away and for a few seconds stared blankly down into the empty kitchen sink. Felix told his friend Brian he could give him a lift as far as Mulroy’s and then he was going to drop the car home and walk in. Alice passed the following few hours preparing a pasta sauce, boiling water, laying the table, and eating. Felix drove home, fed his dog, showered quickly, changed his clothes, looked at Tinder, and then walked into the village to meet his work friends. Between the hours of eight p.m. and midnight he drank six pints of Danish lager. Alice washed up after dinner and read an article on the internet about Annie Ernaux. Around twelve, Felix and his friends got in a minivan taxi to a nightclub outside town and sang several verses of ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans’ on the way there. Alice sat on the living room couch writing an email to a female friend of hers who now lived in Stockholm, asking about her job and her new relationship. At the club, Felix took two pills, drank a shot of vodka, and then went to the bathroom. He opened Tinder again, swiped left on several profiles, checked his messages, looked at the BBC Sports home page, and then went back out to the club. By one in the morning Alice was drinking peppermint tea and working on her book review, while Felix was on the dance floor with two of his friends and two people he had never met before. He had an easy and natural way of dancing, as if it cost him no effort, moving his body lightly into and against the beat of the music. After another drink he went outside and threw up behind a wheelie bin. Alice was lying in bed by then, reading over the messages Felix had sent earlier, the screen of her phone casting a greyish-blue light over her face. Felix took out his phone at the same moment and opened the messages app.

  Felix: Hey

  Felix: You up?

  Alice: in bed but awake

  Alice: having fun?

  Felix: Ill be honest alice

  Felix: I m yipped out of my tree

  Felix: And I did haveto throw up

  Felix: But yea good night so far

  Alice: well, I’m glad

  Felix: What are u doign in bed

  Felix: Weairng anything or?

  Felix: Describe

  Alice: I’m wearing a white nightdress

  Alice: I hope we can see each other tomorrow

  Felix: Yeahhhh or

  Felix: I cojld get a taxi back to yours

  Felix: Now I mnea

  Felix: Mean

  Alice: if you want, of course

  Felix: Yea are you sure?

  Alice: I’m awake anyway, I don’t mind

  Felix: Cool

  Felix: See u soon

  She got out of bed and put on her dressing gown, turned on a bedside lamp and looked at herself in the mirror. Felix called the taxi company, went back inside, got his jacket, ordered another shot of vodka, swilled it around in his mouth, swallowed, found Brian and told him to tell the others he was heading off, and then went to get in the taxi. Alice opened his profile on the dating app where they’d first met, and read his bio note again. On the way out to her house, Felix was having an involved conversation with the taxi driver about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the current Mayo GAA side. When Felix pointed out the house, the driver asked if his parents lived there.

  Nah, it’s my bird’s place, said Felix.

  In an amused tone of voice, the driver replied: Must be a rich lady.

  Yeah, and she’s famous. You can Google her. She writes books.

  Oh yeah? You’d better keep a hold of her.

  Don�
�t worry, she’s fairly keen on me, Felix said.

  They pulled into the driveway then. Turning around, the driver said: She’d want to be, letting you knock on her door at two in the morning. State you’re in. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re calling me again in a few minutes when she’s had a look at you. Ten euro eighty, please.

  Felix handed over the money.

  Do you want me to wait? asked the driver.

  Don’t be jealous now, good lad. You go away and enjoy your Lyric FM.

  He got out of the car and knocked on the door. Alice came downstairs to answer it as the taxi was pulling out of the gate. Felix came inside, kicked the door shut, and put his arms around Alice, lifting her up a little and pressing her back against the wall. They kissed for a while and then he untied the sash of her dressing gown. She held it shut with one hand.