But I did not. I did not give a damn.
And that in retrospect was my greatest error.
See Michael Montrose, a fool in love, with his starry eyes and stupid grin. Snigger at his ignorance, his inability to see the strings attached to each limb and the top of his head. Marvel at the skill of the marionette-master as Michael dances to a tune, not of his own making, but composed by agents beyond his understanding.
Poor Pinocchio; his head is made of wood, and he’s playing with fire.
***
The lawn that led down to the lake was the first stretch of green grass I had seen in a month. We took off our sandals and felt the fresh, cool springiness of the blades between our toes. We ordered a pot of tea, played a game of cards and smoked cigarettes.
I had toyed with the idea of smoking whilst at university. I had bought the occasional packet of Rothmans, which would usually last a fortnight, during which time I would struggle to get the hang of breathing in the noxious fumes without coughing up bits of lung. I was not particularly successful, and after two weeks would give up and throw away the remaining fags, certain that smoking was not for me. I must have repeated this sequence of actions four or five times. I have no idea why I was so keen to smoke; it
did
seem a pretty pointless activity.
It had come as something of a surprise when on our second evening together, Liana produced a packet of cigarettes over dinner and lit up.
‘I didn’t know you smoked?’ I said, no disapproval in my tone, just surprise.
‘Just occasionally,’ said Liana. ‘I like to watch the smoke curling up into the air. There’s something so transient about it, the uncertainty of the spirals. It makes me think about the passing of time.’
This seemed the least likely excuse for smoking I had ever heard, but from Liana’s lips it had the ring of authenticity. I did not discover until much later that Liana was a confirmed twenty-a-day addict, and that at the time she met me she had been trying to give up. By the time we arrived in Pushkar, I too was smoking like a fool. It didn’t seem to matter; it was just a part of the whole, a fancy, a game. It was as irrelevant as tapping one’s fingers on a table top.
The drinking, however, was another matter altogether.
I come from a family of teetotallers. Neither my parents nor my older sisters drink; not so much as a glass of wine with a meal. This is not, as one might suspect, for any moral or ethical reasons. They do not disapprove of alcohol; they simply don’t like the taste. Consequently I was brought up in a booze-free home, and it was not until I was sixteen that I discovered the potent effect of fermented vegetable matter.
At sixteen I became a hardened cider drinker. I have, it seems, a low threshold to intoxicating substances, and I discovered in these formative years that a pint of Strongbow was enough to reduce me to a gibbering idiot. Alcohol made me popular: I was the best value entertainment in town. If you wanted an amusing evening, all you had to do was take me to the pub, pour cider down my throat, and after half an hour I would sing, dance and tell ludicrous stories for the rest of the night. Friends would happily stand me the price of a pint. While this may sound a bit demeaning, at the time I revelled in it. If girls did not fancy me for my looks, they at least liked me for my sense of humour.
I remained faithful to the sweet, sickly, gassy liquid until I attended Sussex where, as cider was considered “a girl’s drink”, I switched to real ale. In an effort to prove I was a real man, I would drink pint after pint of the disgusting stuff in the vain hope that I would, one day, get to like it. I succeeded only in making myself very sick.
It was sweet, innocent little Jo who introduced me to the pleasures of Scotch and American Dry. It was love at first sight. At last, here was a drink that was sophisti- cated, pleasing in taste, easy to drink, and could get you really pissed if you so desired. Not that I liked getting drunk too often. But there were occasions when I took to the bottle with a sort of madness, determined to wipe myself out. I loved that light, carefree feeling that came at around about the fourth drink, when the tongue was loose but still in control, when everything seemed easy and amusing, and you were under the impression that everyone loved you.
My mistake, like so many drinkers, was in believing that to sustain these feelings one merely had to continue drinking, and I don’t suppose, for all the throwing up I did or for all those dreadful hangovers, that I ever appreciated the fallacy of that particular theory.
There comes a point, as anyone who has ever tried this knows, when reason no longer enters the picture. You are no longer in control, you no longer care. You are drunk and a potential danger to yourself and anyone who dares to come too close. The morning that I woke up to find myself in a crouched position in a strange bathroom, my knees locked, my head lodged in the toilet bowl, I realised I had a problem. Not a drink problem; drink was just the catalyst, the medium - drink was just an excuse. No, my problem was much more serious, and was to do with excess.
I seemed to need
more
of everything than everyone else. More experience, more love, more care, more laughter, more pain. I wanted excess. I wanted not just to do everything, but to
overdo
everything. I wanted bright colours, strong flavours, pungent smells, loud music. I wanted my heart to beat faster. I wanted more respect than everyone else, more pleasure, more beauty. I never questioned whether or not I deserved it; I just knew that I had to have it, that it was necessary for my survival, essential for my well-being.
Perhaps that is why, when the most beautiful woman in the world walked into my life and introduced me to the sensation of euphoria, I did not ask too many questions about whether I was deserving or not. It was what I wanted, what I needed, and that was all that really mattered.
From the depths of her backpack, Liana produced a full bottle of Courvoisier.
‘Where have you been hiding that?’
She smiled mischievously. ‘I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.’
‘And is this a special occasion?’
‘I think so. Don’t you?’
‘My life is a special occasion, since I met you,’ I said. It sounded terribly pretentious, but I felt it with all sincerity.
The only drinking vessels in the room were a pair of rather unlovely glass tumblers. I washed them out as best I could, dried them on Liana’s towel (which I felt was probably cleaner than my own) and returned to the bedroom, where Liana had already lit the candles, taken off her clothes, and wrapped herself in a bright, trans- lucent
lungi
. She uncorked the cognac, put her nose to the neck of the bottle, and drew deeply on the volatile aromas. Her eyes closed momentarily. She smiled. I held out the glasses and she poured two large measures.
I handed her the less unpleasant of the two tumblers and we raised them to just below eye-level.
‘What shall we drink to?’ asked Liana.
The candle flames flickered in the cross breezes, throwing dramatic shadows across the walls and ceiling. ‘To us?’ I suggested. ‘To a world that awaits us?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s lovely; I like that.’ We clinked glasses.
I watched Liana sip from her glass, savouring the fine brandy. As I lifted the glass to my lips, Liana suddenly threw back her head and emptied the glass in one.
‘Fantastic,’ she said, then, seeing me standing there nonplussed, started to laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I love this stuff. And I don’t believe in treating it with any reverence. Cognac is nothing more than good hootch in my books; the best. Come on Michael, don’t just stand there gawping; we have a bottle to finish.’
By the third glass I was already feeling light-headed. Liana, however, whilst in a perfectly good mood, seemed not the least affected. I had never seen anyone drink like that. She evidently enjoyed it, but it might just as well have been grape juice for all the effect it had on her. At least, that’s how it seemed at the time.
By ten o’clock the bottle was three-quarters empty. Liana was now very giggly, as indeed was I. We fooled around a little - just sexual play - but did not make love. We recounted stories of drunken debauchery; Liana said she loved getting drunk on wine and brandy, but that anything else made her sick. I told her that everything made me sick, and she thought this hysterical and laughed continuously for ten minutes until, the tears streamed down her cheeks.
A small, barely perceptible change came over Liana after that. It wasn’t just that she seemed to lose interest in the sex games - this didn’t bother me at all, since by that time I was incapable of anything more than some rather inept fumbling - she also appeared nervous. By the time the bottle lay empty on the floor, she was looking quite distressed.
‘What’s wrong?’ I whispered. ‘What’s the matter? Liana?’ She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger, someone who shouldn’t even be in the same room as her.
‘Don’t hurt me, Michael...’
Her face took on that terrible expression again. For a moment I thought my heart had stopped beating; surely this wasn’t happening again! I had made no sharp movements, there had been nothing threatening in my tone or in the content of our conversation. There was no way she could interpret my actions as violent. This time I decided to nip this absurd idea in the bud.
‘I’d never hurt you Liana. Not ever. Do you understand?’ I was pretty smashed, but the urgency, the terror in her eyes had a strong sobering effect. I didn’t move, I didn’t reach out. Nevertheless, she shrank away from me. She looked like a small, frightened child.
‘You’re drunk,’ she said, accusingly. ‘I know what you’re like when you’re drunk.’
This confused me still further. ‘What do you mean? You’ve never seen me drunk. This is the first time . . .’
‘Don’t get angry,’ she interrupted. Her voice had that desperate, pleading tone to it. ‘Please, I’ll do anything. just don’t get angry.’
‘Liana, I promise you.’ I wasn’t sure what else to say, what else to do. I thought about getting up and leaving the room so that she wouldn’t feel threatened by my presence, but I didn’t like to leave her alone. I figured that if I just stayed completely still and talked to her gently, she’d see that there was nothing to worry about. It took a supreme effort of will not to reach across and put my arms around her; she looked so scared, so pathetic, all I wanted to do was hold her.
It is always on occasions such as this that the cosmos decides to show its true nature, to tease us, to make a mockery of our efforts, of our lives. After just a few minutes, with all that cognac swirling around inside me, I had a desperate need to take a leak. I knew that if I didn’t do something about it swiftly, I’d probably wet myself.
‘Liana, I need to use the toilet. I’m going to stand up, go to the bathroom, and then come straight back. Okay? Liana, is that okay?’
She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, then nodded.
I moved as slowly as I could, pushed myself on to my feet and tottered to the bathroom. The relief I felt was lost however beneath the hurt I felt at the indignity of the situation. My world was falling apart and all I could do was piss into a toilet bowl.
When I returned to the bedroom Liana was as I had left her. I stood in the bathroom doorway for a few moments, trying to collect my thoughts.
‘Liana, I won’t hurt you,’ I said again. ‘I couldn’t hurt you. Why don’t you come and sit beside me? I promise everything will be okay.’
Another rash promise. My life, sometimes, appears a frail stuttering thing, with the main protagonist lurching from one feeble oath to the next, like a spastic frog desperate to land on something real but finding only fragile lilies that will not hold his weight.
I held out my hands towards her and tried smiling. Liana just stared at me and made no efforts to reach out to me.
‘What’s this all about Liana? Why do you think I’m going to hurt you? I won’t hurt you. I love you.’
As the words left my lips, Liana’s face contorted into a snarl. ‘It’s always the same thing,’ she spat. ‘Love. I know all about your sort of love; you can’t fool me with your clever words. They mean
nothing
.’
There was such hatred in her voice; it was as if I had just been run through with a sword. I felt a sharp pain slice through my chest, and then a dull ache invaded me, as if part of my soul had just died.