Making history

I didn't listen to the rest.

I grabbed my keys and ran to the hallway.

It was so simple. I knew what it was that I wanted.

So simple. The whole rushing tornado of history funnelled to a single point that stood like an infinitely sharpened pencil hovering over the page of the present. The point was so simple.

It was love. There just wasn't anything else. All the rage and fury and violence and wind of the whirlpool, sucking up so much hope and hurling so many lives apart, in its centre it reached down towards now and towards love.

I remembered a story that Leo had told me once. About a father and son, prisoners in Auschwitz, towards the end. They had each agreed, miserable as the rations were, that they would only eat half the food they were given. The rest they would hoard and hide somewhere for the moment they knew might be coming, the moment of the death march into Germany.

One evening the son returned from labour and his father called him to his side.

'My son,' he said. 'I have done something very dreadful. The food we have been hoarding ...'

'What about it?' said his son, alarmed.

'A couple arrived yesterday. They had managed somehow to smuggle in a prayerbook. They gave me the prayerbook in exchange for the food.'

And do you know what the son did? He hugged his father to him and they wept with love. And that night, which was Passover, as the father and son read from the book, their whole room celebrated a seder together.

I don't know why I remembered that as I hurried to the hallway. I could have remembered stories where sons killed their fathers for a drink of water. Not every story that matters is a weepy, religious tale of goodness shining out in the dark.

It just reminded me of that point. That simple point to which history tends despite its violence, despite itself. Now. Love. That's all there was.

391

In the past it had been fun for me, but no more. That was history. Maybe it wouldn't last, maybe it wouldn't work. But that was the future.

Now. Love.

I had opened the door and was about to charge from the house when I heard the phone ringing.

I stood there for ten seconds undecided.

It could be the hospital. Probably just calling me back using caller ID. Should I answer it?

Maybe he's found out my number, though? It wouldn't be that hard. It could be him ... it might be him.

I raced back to the study and snatched up the phone. 'Yes?' I panted. 'Is that you?'

'It most certainly is me,' said Fraser-Stuart.

'Oh, go fuck yourself in chocolate,' I bellowed and slammed the phone down, disgusted.

'In chocolate!' said a voice behind me. 'You are so weird, Mikey.'

I spun round. He looked a little pale and tired. The hair was longer of course and I noted the beginnings of a small goatee-style beard.

'The door was open,' he said apologetically. I stared at him.

'Well, Mikey? Aren't you gonna say anything?'

I approached him cautiously, afraid that at any moment he might disappear, that the tide that had flung him towards me would reach out and pull him back.

'So where's the Mardi Gras?' he said. 'The bookstores? What are we waiting for? Give me some Ecstasy and let's get out there and dance.'

THE BEGINNING

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