Diminuendo

Julie

ONE

The truth of the matter is that after a number of visits to London in early 1983 when I finally decided that I liked the place enough to try to stay a while, I had no idea what horror was in store for me there. It is but fair to say that the first two or so years proved to be pleasant, even though I was on occasions saddened by the idea that my chosen city of abode had seen better days. Vistas came to mind of London when it was proud home to a race of strong handsome folk, vital with confidence and gentle compassion. When thought was lucid, enlightened and its expression shared appreciatively. When the language was spoken well, and written masterfully, to be enjoyed and understood. When music was the very resonance of the spheres and the very language of the cosmos. When the meaning of life revealed itself to the keen-sighted, occasionally in lightning flashes. When humour prevailed and thrived, subtle, novel, potent and truly exhilarating. When public and individual integrity and sense of purpose were taken for granted. It was not Utopia, no, for there never was and there will never be one. It was however simply better than the remnants of past glory I happened to travel to witness there.

It was as if I was actually transported by some uncanny, yet heavenly and benign power to realms and times realised by people of greater stature, loftier souls and superior collective intellect. Whilst I was inclined to assume that such were times and realms that belonged to the past, I could not entirely rule out the possibility that they could after all belong to the future. The former assumption meant that the totality of human experience on earth was taking a turn for the worse, a miserable conclusion decidedly. The latter implied happier days for all, a thought that restored my confidence, and lifted my spirits considerably. I puzzled and brooded for long agonising nights, striving for answers and certainty, alas, to no avail. The only certainty I unequivocally experienced was that the then prevailing times were distinctly abhorrent. The possibility that I may have been hallucinating disgusted and petrified me.

My hosts were naturally oblivious to my arrival save the few that I met at the office and where I took up rooms. Compared to where I had come from, the city appeared to be vast, tranquil, charming and mysterious. Having decided to try to stay a while, I put myself to the task of settling down and to the feat of knowing and understanding what I then considered to be one of the few remaining bastions of contemporary civilised culture. Little did I know.

I started working in an affluent environment for rich fellow countrymen who lacked both the need to and capability of work. They had become wealthy in one gigantic quantum leap shortly before we met and the side effects were regrettably unfavourable. Not long after I started working, I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was not only in the middle of an elaborate farce, but that I was actually playing a part nobody could define; that the offices, along with the sophisticated gear and gadgets they contained, were but extravagant life-size toys for adult play and some of the secretaries were but rented dolls, who came to the office just to be seen there. Play-office for the bosses commenced at the excessively civilised morning hour of eleven only to be broken up shortly after that for lavish, long-winded and high-spirited lunches to which I soon became a regular and essential guest.

The afternoons saw us – the bosses and their large entourage – back in the office, relaxed, genial and slightly incoherent which didn’t matter in the least. The evenings were spent on marathon-long orgies intermingling paid-for sex, drink, food, and gambling some of which extended well into the small hours. While I admit savouring some of the banalities on offer at the time, some of the time, the colossal and routine debauchery began to tire and irritate me. It was not long before I found myself longing for a long holiday of sheer work. Repetition is tiring no matter what it is or how enjoyable it is.

As if sensing that I was beginning to fret inwardly, the Big Bosses suddenly expressed a great wish to acquire a computer system and I was assigned the task of finding a good one. Whereupon I began a wholehearted search for a cost-effective adequate business system, resisting persistent qualms that my hearty efforts would one day be completely wasted. Having chosen and ordered the hardware, my fears were confirmed when I realised that I had to chase Big Bosses all over town coaxing and cajoling them for application details without which the bespoke programmes I was to develop would not see the light. As it later turned out, I spent one-thousand two-hundred hours or thereabouts, coding and testing software that was never put to serious use.

I had met one of the Big Bosses – Big Boss I – some time before – in Lebanon, a dear little country that was then plagued by recurring bouts of civil war and that is now in a state of total collapse. I had been at loose ends as far as work was concerned and I needed to do something to earn my living. After lengthy discussions, we agreed to start a small business which was meant to provide computer services to the country’s shrinking business community. Being the wealthier of the two, he held the majority of shares of the company we started jointly with an even wealthier brother who was living abroad at the time. I had put all my money on the line rather foolishly – as it later transpired – and I started a great effort that involved working exceedingly long hours to get things moving and establish a business of my own. It was the first time I was on my own and I felt both awed and excited because of that. I knew that the challenge was enormous and I had to live up to it and succeed.

A year later, the remainder of what had once been a cultured little country, was subjected by enemy and associates to a spate of sustained barbaric destruction that lasted for nearly four months. The business community we’d set out to service, dwindled and shrank further still along with the grocers’ stocks of tinned sardines and boiled chick-peas, broad beans or whatsoever.

I stayed long enough to witness the arson and destruction that the besieged country was subjected to from the sea, land and sky which incidentally did not spare my hard-earned flat, its contents and much else for that matter. My office turned into a bedroom for a homeless family and I soon found myself on the streets of a smouldering city clutching travel documents of ill-repute, a little money and a flimsy suitcase of personal effects. A week later, I joined my partner in London, at the smart offices where everyone was ailing from large daily doses of dolce vita. Big boss I introduced me to his brother (Big Boss II) who, I later learned, was an extremely rich man, far richer than I had imagined.

A life of pure leisure must be a dangerous one for I soon realised that I inadvertently allowed myself to develop a passion for gambling that was coming closer and closer to total compulsion. My life in the absence of meaningful work and sense of purpose and accomplishment, was reduced to a series of daily vulgarities compared to which gambling was a grand hobby. Even though I was on the whole breaking even, I had to admit to myself that I was in effect losing much of my manners and, on occasions, all of my composure. I knew I had to do something to break away from the ominous circle I found myself in, but the dizziness of daily and nightly spins weakened and diminished my resolve. I was adrift for a while, haunted at times by horrid memories of the carnage and misery I had left behind: bodies of people I knew so well strewn on the streets of a town I knew so well. I often felt shameful for having left, but then I considered that even though I felt quite attached to the country, it was not my home-country; not really, and that set my mind slightly more at ease.

The situation I found myself in was a curious one. What I found most intriguing was the apparent lack of motive behind my benefactors’ continuous eagerness to keep me, pay me a salary I did not earn, wine and dine me at the most expensive – not necessarily the best – restaurants and even encourage me (initially) to indulge in a bit of paid-for gambling; albeit on a small scale.

I considered the possibility – though not the probability – that they were a warm-hearted kindly lot who, being so exceedingly rich, wanted, at a negligible cost to themselves, to help me stand on my own feet financially. This reasoning however clashed with the fact that they were firmly opposed to help me raise the minuscule down payment that was needed to buy my own small flat. They chuckled and rejoiced instead when they heard of my struggles and squabbles with Corvalo over the only bed in the tiny room at the back of the smart offices. Corvalo, let me hasten to explain, was a floating kitchen boy who was repeatedly evicted from his room at his employer’s residence – one of Big Boss II’s friends – at the latter’s behest, surrendering it immediately to a sudden staying guest.

I cringed at the probable scenario that I was actually hired – along with the many dolls manning the office – simply to play the witty entertaining ‘harlequin’ whose job at the office was but a sham. I shuddered at the notion that I was procured by Big Boss II while on a spending spree with the intent that I be displayed at dinner parties and make-belief business meetings.

It was not long before I was overcome by the terrible feeling of not only being lost in space but also of being denied the means of manoeuvring myself in any direction. To my mind, at the time, only Big Boss II, with his immense wealth, could provide me with the necessary propulsive tools to break away from the ghastly state of limbo I was in and perhaps head somewhere that provided a frame of reference; any frame of reference. But Big Boss II was not only averse to any form of distraction from the very good life he was living day in day out, the sight of a poor wanderer in space must have provided him with an additional source of amusement.

Big Boss II had an assortment of diversified business concerns going on at the time and new ones were constantly being considered and discussed. Yet pleading with him in the course of the many meals we had to rekindle the defunct company I had slaved so much to start in Beirut, was repeatedly met with reluctance that threatened to turn into flat rejection. His attitude seemed to spell and pronounce the limit of my ambitions if I were to stay and belong to their prosperous circle. Time and again I sought what I hoped would turn into a serious and sober meeting with him to discuss the matter but the only decision we reached, at the end of the few I managed to arrange, was that day’s choice of restaurant.

At long last my fears were confirmed: I was playing the fool for an agreed price and I was foolish enough not to have been aware of the arrangement in the first place. I gave the matter ample thought only to arrive at the grim conclusion that I did not have many options: I could stay and carry on with what I could only describe as a high-life charade or go back to the wilderness of the previous year. I was suddenly struck by the disheartening realisation that, in theory we live a life rich in possibilities and permutations while in reality we somehow entrap ourselves in stifling situations offering few alternatives. Options, options; what good is there in having a great many options in the sure absence of having as many time passages to be able to compare and contrast the various endings? Doubtless Big Boss II would have banned me from the office and indeed his entire life altogether, if I were to present him with a sample of such pensée. In the end I resorted to the little – not so little by now – gambler in me for advice and the man spelled out for me the course of action to follow: ‘Salvage whatever sanity you are left with and leave; you will be none the worse!’ When I informed Big Boss II of my decision to resign my ‘post’ there was a look of acute discomfort on his face and he shifted and moved uneasily in his expensive leather chair. He thought for a while or appeared to have done so, then suggested to me – with the casualness of someone suggesting that I have a hair-cut – that I immediately be in charge of ‘international film productions.’ This, he pointed out to me, was infinitely better than wandering around in the office looking like a lost sheep. Whilst I wholeheartedly agreed with him about the state I was in, I was less inclined to agree to his choice of the creature he likened me to. In any case I was hardly in a position to dispute or protest, so I simply sat there slowly digesting the ludicrous implications of his last words.

Movie-making, let me hasten to explain, was a business whose glamour had always attracted Big Boss II and in which he occasionally dabbled, especially when encouraged by an ever enthusiastic Big Boss I. To be assigned the task of running a business concern in film-making immediately after having spent all of my professional life loitering in the drab, dull and introverted world of computer programming sounded so ill-advised that inwardly I opted for the role of the lost sheep. The expression on my face must have betrayed a great deal of the amazement and incredulity I was feeling, so I dared voice my concern then sat there awaiting his angry response. Big Boss II, who was ceaselessly reminded of his might by his invariably posh surroundings, fumed at the thought of my mere controversy. He fumed some more then managed to tell me in a strenuously calm voice that all, he was sure, would be well and that I should at least ‘have a go at things!’ Dazed and a little confused I agreed.

It was not long before it became quite clear to me that my decision to accept Big Boss II’s appointment had been unwise. Scripts, treatments, books and scripts in need of further scripting were merrily flung at me daily and in large quantities to assess their potential for major film productions. Producers, co-producers, authors, smartly dressed beggars and plain fortune-hunters, poured into the premises to be promptly ushered into my office armed with dizzy-making proposals, to puke strange jargon into my face then disappear with enigmatic smiles on theirs assuring me of further meetings in the future. Telephone calls from the four corners of the earth converged onto me from people I had not heard of before, who whispered figures and facts into my ears then hung up promising to ‘pursue the matter further.’ Strange mail referring to meetings I did not know of, among persons completely unknown to me, found its way to my desk expressing hope that I write and confirm things that made no sense to me at all. Big Bosses bombarded me with questions that rang hundreds of irreconcilable bells in my ears which soon started to ring spontaneously with totally imagined sounds.

Decisions as regards to what to consider and what to discard out of the myriad confusing proposals at hand were made by Big Boss II first thing in the morning – about mid-day – over endless cups of coffee which helped to dispel part of the embarrassment brought about by our combined ignorance. They were his decisions by and large, for he made it quite clear to me from the beginning that he alone had the final say in those important matters. Decisions made by Big Boss II, as it would emerge later, were never final. Decisions to go ahead with this or that venture that had taken long harrowing weeks and dozens of cups of coffee to reach were retracted in the evenings after a large meal. Decisions were made, retracted and postponed, with amazing ease and frequency. I as a result found myself the subject of a flurry of unkind, yet quite justified, emotions expressed by those serious of our business associates. The desperate last minute attempts I made at coherent effective liaison were methodically thwarted by Big Boss II’s unrelenting flippancy. The volatility of my new surroundings soon proved to be too much for the iota of sanity left in me to withstand the pressure of serious professionals and the maddening whims of my dilettantish employers. At long last, I felt ready and willing to bid my benefactors a final and irrevocable farewell. Slaves could still rebel and I did just that. What remained unsettled however, was Big Bosses’ stake in the beleaguered computer company. I ran around in a frantic desperate effort to raise the necessary funds to buy them out.

Gazi, an old school friend, who happened to be in town at the time, promised to try to raise the required sum which amounted incidentally to Big Boss II’s expenditure for about 48 hours. It took my gallant friend a week to make funds available through his equally gallant employers, which he must have done under the duress of his noble character. I say this because I found out later that the group were in financial difficulty. They agreed to buy Big Bosses out, to modestly refinance the company and to start a new computer-vending division to be part of the diversified company they owned in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The meeting with Big Boss II was scheduled for late one afternoon to which he came inevitably an hour late. When I presented him with my proposal, he readily accepted, feigning premeditated indifference and airing rehearsed calm. Of course I knew that he was kept abreast of my movements through one or more snooping sycophant in the office. Underneath I could sense that he was seething at the insolence of his rebellious slave and at the colossal cheek I’d suddenly turned into. The actual transfer of shares however went through smoothly much to my relief.

When the battle with Corvalo over the bed intensified sometime before my severance from the riches and lunacy of the lecherous league, I resigned myself to finding independent rented accommodation disregarding the fact that my finances were meagre and prohibitive. I was fortunate enough however to come across a reasonably priced basement flat in a quaintly prestigious area. My landlords turned out to be a family of uncommon fairness and warmth. Returning ‘home’ to my quaint little flat soon proved to be sheer bliss for it did not involve any dreaded wrangles with Corvalo, added to that the luxury that my pillow case was innocent of the stench of breathed out curry. My hosts appeared on my little screen and I had the chance of absorbing a stunningly rich culture of profound depth and astounding variety. My night-clubbing with Big Boss II became less frequent and when it happened brought me little joy. He was rapidly changing into a despotic tycoon given to ill-mannered megalomania and constant pointless irritability. The damage done to some through the sudden and facile acquisition of immense wealth is slow but certain. He was running his affairs like a hat-shop and his business management deteriorated to a succession of often contradictory whims. The once witty, lively and confident man I had once known was no more: I was left with a little rich man who was constantly expecting and sometimes demanding fondness and respect from people simply on account of the money he had. I felt a little sick and a little sad.

TWO

Peter, my landlord, having allowed the inevitable few months to pass, asked me to drinks and I had the chance to meet the rest of the family. I remember having been both flattered by and surprised at the invitation, on account of my hosts’ supposed inclination to aloofness. Their light-hearted comments of the way I dressed, expressing disappointment that I did not turn up in flowing robes went down well and we soon started warming up to each other. Presently we struck up a friendship that I shall always cherish.

Down in my basement flat, I started spending long hours in front of my small telly where the factual and dramatised life of my hosts poured out in torrents of subtly conceived, splendidly produced and masterfully presented art. I gradually began to visit then frequent venues of true recreation out of which I could look back with some disdain at the ghastly synthetic fibre of my previous moments of joy. Those remote days, it had been almost sinful to be part of an audience where a play was unfolding or a concert was in progress. It had been sacrilege to go to a pub for a drink and watch hunched figures turn into jolly people as they sipped on their pints. To go to museums had been considered an act of unseemly defection. There was a lot to see, hear and experience in the vast City of London, and I started to lead a life that was much more in harmony with my basic elements. The public in public houses fascinated me and I watched the drama from a corner, like a man in the corner, wondering whether or not I will one day become a patron of a specified drinking establishment: my local! I had started the arduous task of looking for somewhere to buy, in the manner of someone window-shopping. Big Boss II had, sometime before the end of our spectacular relationship, twice or thrice hinted at his readiness to advance me a small loan for the purpose. It was my first time ever experience at dealing with my hosts on a professional basis. Our various encounters were cordial and smooth, save the odd gazump. I met the asking price on a property not very far from where I was staying only my offer was accepted after I had abandoned the riches of my benefactors. Once more I found myself in the disadvantageous situation of having to raise blasted money I didn’t have. This time, a well-to-do Indian gentleman I barely knew offered to help me and help he did, for he advanced me, by my standards and probably his, a large sum, profusely declining to accept the receipt I pressed onto him. It was agreed that I pay him back in regular monthly instalments which I later kept up even at times of extreme hardship. His generosity and trust still cheer me up when I find myself running out of friends.

Peter and Janet, his wife, asked me to meals upstairs several times while I was a tenant and I reciprocated in a modest bachelor way downstairs in my basement flat. He made me change my views that spirit and wine taste-testers and connoisseurs were but well-versed charlatans who exploited other people’s ignorance, for he was well and truly an expert. Joan, Janet’s old friend who frequently cycled up the steep road to see her, wanted to know whether I spoke French, expressing surprise and disappointment when she learned that I didn’t. I was asked to the Christmas party that year and met many of the family’s friends who didn’t mind telling me how lucky I was to have such nice people as my landlords. At the time, I thought the remark a trifle cheeky and ill-considered, though not later. I was also asked to the open-air party held every year in the square’s garden. I remember turning up equipped with my elaborate camera-gear slung on my shoulder to commence a self-conscious, painstaking, hair-splitting session of professional photography. In contrast, Peter’s daughter had a simple old camera, which she occasionally raised to her eye, and clicked rather carelessly. I also remember we had an informed and serious chat on the subject of photography and we both felt that I was the one better informed. Everyone wanted to have a look at my masterly