The cafe with five faces, p.13
The Café with Five Faces, page 13
“It made me think, about my twenties.” A rationale for the downbeat mood was just starting to emerge from the fog which had clouded the room for around fifteen minutes. And, as such, increased the likelihood of Jen’s fears being realised.
Jen hesitated, but it would have been rude not to develop the interaction so, with a high degree of negative expectation, she again said, “And?”
“Like most kids from my school, I went to university and, like many young adults entering tertiary education, my mind wasn’t really focused on studying all that much. The first year was OK, and then I hit twenty and my mind became one-track and that wasn’t on history.”
“Sex?” Jen’s question didn’t seem like a question, but actually she was, for once, incorrect.
“Music,” said Jimez. “I bought a bass guitar and then a drum kit, even though I had no idea how to play either. Then I got into a band and started buying keyboards and drum machines. By the time I was twenty-three, I had nine keyboards and two drum machines in my bedroom and an unused drum kit in the cellar.”
“And people lived with you?” There was a tone of incredulity in Jen’s voice.
“My poor long-suffering parents,” said Jimez, “who graded my talent far more accurately than I did at the time.”
“They thought you were far better than you were?”
“No, they just knew I was bad.” Whether Jimez was fishing for compliments or being refreshingly honest was open to question, as neither Jen nor I had any direct evidence from the speaker’s twenties. “But, you know, those were the days of post-punk and did ability really matter?” There was no response to this as we were all perfectly well aware that ability can help a great deal, but that there are sufficient examples of talentless wonders being successful to equally justify an answer in the negative.
“Sounds like an expensive hobby,” Jen commented, rather needlessly.
“As it turned out, yeah, although let’s be honest, hobby was never the goal. So, I basically meandered from being a drummer with a limited sense of rhythm to being an almost tone-deaf keyboard player, all in pursuit of the so-called dream, while at the same time wasting a perfectly good education.” Jen and I tried not to laugh at the chosen adjectives, but it was difficult. “On the plus side, I worked really hard at it and if I was told what to play, I usually managed it, including some piano solos.” Nods of encouragement greeted this surprising development.
“And then what happened?” asked Jen.
“The band evolved from five members to three, changed name, and a fair amount of direction, and eventually played live around the north of England,” said Jimez. “Well, mainly around Halifax,” he moderated. “And then three became two, and the two disagreed too much, so two became one and that was, sadly, the last time I played live.”
“Disappointing,” commented Jen.
“It was actually because, whether it was a big earner or not, it was still fun.” Jimez seemed to be making a fair summary of his musical career. “And that’s when the electronic stuff took over and everything became studio-based, like the song I showed you last time.”
“I remember,” said Jen, and I think she did. “Your record. What name did you record under – Jimez and the what?”
Jimez detected a hint of sarcasm but chose to ignore it. “Symphony in X, actually!”
“Nice name,” Jen replied, with sufficient sincerity to make it believable.
“‘Symphony’ because the keyboard player was classically trained, and ‘in X’ because I wore a lot of leather and still looked a little post-punk.”
“I need to see that picture.” Jen laughed.
Jimez reached into his Bag for Life and produced a record sleeve with the pictorial evidence to support his previous statement. Jen was lost for words, but maybe she couldn’t speak without betraying her true reaction. Jimez seemed quite proud of it overall and I, for one, doubted his confidence needed knocking any further with even the smallest detectable trace of uncalled-for sarcasm.
I poured him another glass of wine, even though one had not been asked for, as Jen decided she needed the bathroom rather urgently.
Even without a sajtos pogácsa in sight, this seems to be a reasonable opportunity to gaze longingly at Hungarian cake – this is one of the displays at Művész in Budapest.
2018: 24: Beirut: Monogamy on Trial
Micky was without Jo for once. Instead he was with Misha. Misha is a male of the species, despite the ambiguous name. It means ‘little teddy bear’ in Polish. He isn’t Polish, although he lived there for a while, but he uses, or has used, the name to appear cute and harmless to his numerous female targets. This made him highly unsuitable, in my book, anyway (and this is my book), to be a companion for the hopelessly unsuccessful-with-women-in-the-flesh Micky. Micky, for his part, seemed to hold Misha in high regard, although how many of the latter’s stories were actually true was up for some debate, unless you were Micky, in which case, you lapped up every word as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.
The fact you rarely saw Misha’s eyes did not help in the believe-or-not stakes. He claimed to be very light-sensitive and always wore dark glasses outdoors and in, to the point many thought he was either posing or trying to cover up a permanent hangover. Both options had potential as fact. There were only slightly suppressed giggles from those of his acquaintance when he tripped over a low step inside some place or other – so I have been informed (I, of course, would not be so unkind – I have public liability to consider). Outside, despite the shades, he was always contorting his face against the sun, and looking permanently puzzled as a result, so disconcerted strangers wondered what the matter was with him and some rather impolite kids with a cruel sense of humour often walked straight up to mimic him. His distressed jeans, so distressed they seemed to be calling out for help, could have been interpreted as a style statement or mutton dressed as lamb; there was no doubting which way Misha viewed them and, by and large, he got away with it.
Accidentally on purpose, Misha had let slip more than once, with no small degree of pride however much he tried to hide it (which he didn’t, in my view), that he had, in a not-so-distant past life, lent his name to a verb. To misha someone: transitive in that it requires an object, namely a human of the female gender, and regular, I believe, in formation (misha – mishaed – mishaed), although of this I cannot be certain. I gather it means to lean unceremoniously against the nearest available wall or doorframe and leer over some poor, unsuspecting female. Apparently, Misha had achieved a remarkable degree of success with this ploy, given the unappetising definition and the regrettable exposure to his armpit. Perceived wisdom has it that both the subject and object in the stated action being inebriated to some extent (I venture to suggest a considerable extent) increases the likelihood of the subject’s success.
Misha was an inveterate wine drinker, a polite way of terming a valued customer a wino, which had no doubt helped with his ‘mishaing’. It was late morning in Beirut but even I considered a bottle of Lebanese red a little too much for the time of day, especially as he wasn’t given to sharing it. Micky, back on the Yunnan Green, didn’t seem to notice or care.
“What’s your opinion of monogamy?” Misha had some trouble with the final word. I doubted this was alcohol-induced slurring at 11.45am.
“One woman at a time?” defined Micky, as though a definition were necessary. “One woman would be fine for me, thank you very much.” There’s nothing like honesty.
“Don’t you think being attached to just one woman at a time is unnecessary?”
“Who are you considering cheating on this time?”
“Is it cheating?” Misha was obviously looking for support for his intentions, rather than justification for how they might not actually constitute a good idea.
“Well, are you currently in a relationship with someone?” Micky, who, as noted some time ago, would not normally say boo to a goose, should a goose ever present itself to him, so this forceful argument took me aback a little.
Misha, unperturbed, took another sip of red. “I suppose so.”
“Well, either you are or you aren’t.” To a man who had trouble having any kind of relationship in person, it could have been extremely irritating listening to someone so cavalier, although in Micky’s case, any anger was tempered by a good dose of unfortunate envy.
“I am, but we’re not married or even serious.”
“Were you born in the wrong age, by any chance?” Micky’s expression was now one of frustrated humour. He changes moods as the wind changes direction.
“The 1960s.”
“Nice to see you’ve adopted the free love principles of your birth age!”
“It’s not that I believe in free love,” protested the accused. “I just like too many girls.”
“All of them half your age, I bet.”
Misha looked slightly offended, slightly smug, but either way, denial wasn’t forthcoming.
“Cradle-snatcher,” snarled Micky, although, again, fun and envy were liberally sprinkled as salt and pepper over any sense of outrage.
“I’m used to people trying to make me feel guilty,” admitted Misha, although it was hardly a confession, given the smile which accompanied it. “I remember once, back in the nineties, showing my passport somewhere, in České Budějovice, I think, the home of the real Budweiser, and then my Polish partner showing hers. The guard tutted like a stuttering Trabant and my girlfriend told me afterwards that it was because of the twenty-year age gap.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Well, once I’d corrected her to it being nineteen years, bloody annoyed, actually,” came the rapid response.
“Nineteen years, eh?” marvelled Micky. “I wonder what they’d think of some of your more recent, erm, acquaintances.”
Misha decided this didn’t merit a response and continued with his own line of thought. “None of his flaming business! But my girlfriend was a little upset – she had to become rather more thick-skinned as time went on.”
“Wow! Time went on, did it? So, you were long-term?”
“A remarkable and very pleasant four years overall, yes,” said Misha fondly. “And that was totally monogamous.”
“So, you do have the ability when it matters?!”
“Mmmm,” reflected the teddy bear.
“Have you ever been out with anyone the same age or even, dare I say, older?”
“Older, twice; both short-term, both American. Same age, once, I think, at university. Otherwise, nine or ten years is as close as it gets.” One tried not to hear pride in this statement, but it was a struggle.
“You might find something more stable if you stick to your own age bracket,” suggested Micky, with a hint of reprobation. Misha did not look particularly amused, although whether this was at the thought of dating in his own age bracket or having a stable relationship was left open to debate.
“Don’t you think that playing the field a bit is better than ending up in the wrong relationship?” Misha wasn’t giving up on his personal preferences easily and clearly wanted to avoid further reference to extended age gaps.
“If you’re nineteen, yes, but at your age?” The goose was well and truly being booed at, so to speak, and Misha looked a little uncomfortable, moving another cushion to support his ageing spine. A further glass from the rapidly emptying bottle seemed an attractive option and that was the one he chose. Micky, realising he had gone beyond his own limits, lay back as low as he was able on the Arabic furnishings and pretended to answer a non-existent text message.
Mobile phones have far more uses than the obvious. So does wine.
As Misha, perhaps understandably, was reluctant to share pictures depicting aspects of his love life, here is a more palatable visual alternative: swimmers by the Corniche in Beirut, heading west from Zaitunay Bay (spot the unfortunate array of plastic bottles in the sea, referred to in Chapters 21 and 39).
2018: 25: Cape Town: How to Become a Comedian in Just Two Words
Although still frequenting their favourite places propping up the bar in Cape Town, Mike, James and John were feeling patriotically European and had ordered lunch from the Granada menu. Distinctions between the five menus had evaporated as early as my opening week when I realised the futility of trying to get couples to sit apart in different rooms just because one wanted a manouche and one a plate of fish. These three, however, had all placed identical orders, so there were three half-empty glasses of Cruzcampo (or should I say ‘half-full’ to give a false impression of positivity?) and three wooden boards, each with half a baguette, neatly sliced (even though I prefer roughly torn, so long as the tearing is done by my own fair hands), and portions of my highly recommended jamón serrano, Queso Manchego and Queso Cabrales. I had to have a nibble myself while I was making these up, although not off their boards, I should add. In case you were wondering.
Lunchtime it may well have been, but coming the day after the American president had been openly and derisively laughed at by fellow world leaders for telling outrageous porkies and making a general fool of himself at the UN, politics was somewhat inevitably the focus of discussion.
“These days,” Mike pronounced with unerring certainty, “to be a stand-up comedian, you only need to say two words, those being ‘Brexit’ and ‘Trump’ – most people roll around in hysterical laughter!”
“Particularly if you are in the rest of the world; most people in Britain and America fall about crying!” added James, not unreasonably.
“Well, you can pretty well guarantee it’s one or the other,” John concluded. “And yesterday, it was open laughter at the UN!”
“Yeah,” said Mike, with a strange mixture of sadness and satisfaction. “Donald Trump: the man who said he would make America great again and has instead transformed it from being fairly great already into a worldwide standing joke.”
“A standing joke many Americans haven’t yet noticed or appreciated for some reason,” James mused.
“What did the sane Donald say to the insane Donald?” asked John, rhetorically, as the Donald Tusk ‘joke’ was an old one. “Dear America, appreciate your allies; after all, you don’t have that many!”
“And they’re getting fewer by the day.”
“Soon to be none, unless Americans realise how their status in the world is being reduced to that of laughing stock.”
Cruzcampo glasses were now indisputably empty and there was a brief exchange of eye contact before three fingers suggested three more. I relocated myself to Granada to oblige. The topic of conversation hadn’t changed one iota by the time I returned with three full glasses two minutes later.
“I mean,” Mike was saying in exasperation, “remember during the summer, if I have possibly got this right, he criticised Theresa May behind her back and then supported her to her face; he sided with Putin against his own country’s intelligence services and backtracked as soon as he got home. Is he just a pathological liar? Actually, don’t even bother wasting your breath on an answer.”
“Well, Trump is just your archetypal bully,” reasoned James. “If he spots a weakness in Theresa May, and let’s face it, that doesn’t pose too great a challenge now her own party, particularly the right, have torn her apart like a pack of ravenous dogs, he’s in for the kill and does as much damage as possible in as short a time frame as possible. He even tried the same with Merkel over the summer when she had a bit of a wobble. On the other hand, if he doesn’t see a weakness he can exploit for his own personal ends, such as with Putin or Duterte, then he capitulates like a badly constructed house of cards.”
“It makes you wonder what kind of drugs some Americans are on, doesn’t it?” Mike seemed to be tweaking the topic.
“Who knows? Why?” John hadn’t followed the tweak.
“Don’t you remember,” Mike continued, although how anyone could have predicted what he was thinking was unknown to anyone other than him, “on the very same day, the Trump asked why anyone would impeach anyone who is doing such a great job, apparently, if unbelievably, referring to himself, one of the very few people on the planet dumb enough to believe such crap, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that’s the one who hasn’t broken ranks and told the truth, stated that impeaching Trump would lead to a people’s revolt in America? I mean, the only people standing up would be the multi-millions dancing in joyful celebration. What kind of delusional drugs do people have to be on to say such things?”
“Beggars belief,” John agreed, which was one of his favourite phrases, especially after a Mike-rant.
“He actually had the audacity to say the UK was in turmoil!” Mike hadn’t stopped yet so John’s ‘beggars belief’ was premature. “He should know; he’s part of the cause! And possibly deliberately if, as we hear, he wants to weaken the EU by splitting us away from it. And what was that other stupid comment he came out with? ‘Rivers of blood’ in London’s hospitals? I know London knife crime is no laughing matter, but for a foreign leader to try to politicise it just isn’t on, I’m afraid.” Mike’s latest Cruzcampo was almost drained in one. “Honestly, failed reality TV show host and a complete joke!” I had to question the former statement here, as there was substantial evidence in the bank to suggest otherwise, but I nodded sagely at the latter.
“Aw, poor guy,” said John, jokingly, I assumed. “He’s only trying to deflect attention from the fuck-up he’s making of his own country.”
“True enough,” agreed James. “The great isolationist.”
There was an unexpected lull in the storm, during which Mike indicated he would like a longer and stronger beer, a request I quickly fulfilled. The lull promptly ended.
“My training world is full of anticipated problems and solutions,” Mike went on, after two sips of his currently favoured South African craft beer. “Adolf Hitler had many problems but seemingly only one final solution. I wonder if that’s the way Trump is going.”
