Post martinos omnia animalia …
‘You said that you once had a mystical experience after drinking a martini. You did say that, didn’t you?”
Domenica was addressing Torquil as she handed him the martini she had just mixed for him. He took it, smiled appreciatively, and replied, “Yes, I did.” And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he continued, “I’m not sure if I should tell you, though. We don’t like to hear about the dreams of others, do we? Perhaps the same goes for mystical experiences.”
Domenica disagreed. “No, mystical experiences are different. We’re not interested in others’ dreams because we know that dreams are unreal. That’s why we forget them so quickly. Have you noticed that?”
He had. “It’s odd, isn’t it? You wake up remembering a dream and then, in two seconds flat, it’s gone.”
“That,” said Domenica, “is because the brain knows that it can’t clutter itself up with useless phantasmagoria.”
Torquil, taking a sip of his martini, looked at her over the rim of his glass. “What a great word.”
“Phantasmagoria? Yes, it is, isn’t it? It was invented by a French playwright to describe magic lantern shows of disturbing images – ghosts and what we would call bogles. People liked to frighten themselves with them.”
Torquil rolled his tongue around the word. “Phantasmagoria …”
“Whereas,” Domenica went on, “a mystical experience is something that really happens, even if it is elusive. So we’re interested in that. And most of us have had one, even if we wouldn’t necessarily describe it as such.” She paused. “All of which means you can speak about it, you know. My eyes won’t glaze over.”
Torquil took another sip of his martini. “All right. It was in New York.”
“Ah. Place is important for such things. It’s easier to imagine having such an experience in exotic locations. Trebizond. Dar-es-salaam. Does New York belong in such company?”
Torquil thought it did. “I know that if you live in New York – work there – then it’s probably just the place you live or work. But if you don’t, then it hits you when you first see it. You can’t be indifferent to it. There it is. Those buildings. The scale of it. The feel. The sounds. The sirens. The yellow cabs. The steam coming out of the subway vents. The smell of hot dogs on street corners.”
Domenica dipped the tip of her tongue into her martini. The alcohol was sharp. A madeleine cake dipped in tea. A bar in London. A man in a fur-lined coat, his hair still wet from the rain outside. A red London bus going past the window. She shook her head. “You were in New York. Go on.”
“It was at the end of my first year at university,” Torquil said. “Two years ago. As a birthday present my parents offered me an air ticket to New York. They said they would pay for my cousin Chris to come too, although we would have to live in a cheap backpackers’ hostel – not that anywhere in New York is cheap.
“I accepted the offer like a shot and Chris and I went off for two weeks. My parents had friends there and they were in touch to ask us to drinks at their apartment on the Upper East Side. We went to the address expecting to find just a … well, an ordinary apartment. It wasn’t. It was massive; on the very top of a building, and with a garden terrace of its own. They had invited other people too – members of their crowd – and these people were milling around making us look seriously shabby, as you can imagine.
“They had a piano on the terrace, played by a small man in a double-breasted blazer and a bow tie. He had an oddly-shaped head – rather like a bullet – and a pair of tiny round glasses. He was playing show tunes, singing some of the lines in a thin, reedy voice that sounded as if it was coming out of an ancient radio. Chris said, ‘That guy is the real Mccoy, you know.’ I agreed. He was. I think he may have overheard us because he turned and said to us in his thin, rather whiny Midwest voice, ‘Thank you, boys. Take care now.’ Then he carried on playing.
“Chris went off to talk to a girl in a green dress. I walked over to the parapet around the terrace. It was topped by an ornate bronze rail, with Art Deco features – the style you see on the Chrysler Building. I looked over the edge, down twenty-six storeys to the street below, which was Madison Avenue. It was early evening, about seven o’clock, and the slanting sun was on the tops of the skyscrapers, making them warm and gold. The sky was empty and I remember thinking it was so pale a blue as to be almost white.
“I turned round. I had just finished the martini I had been given when I arrived. I saw that Chris was on his second, but one was more than enough for me, as it had been generous. I looked at the people there, at these New Yorkers, and I suddenly felt a rush of affection for them. It was very strange – a feeling of love, in the agape sense – a feeling of being with them in a curious way. It was a feeling of tenderness; I suppose you might call it that.
‘Everything was just right. The people, the terrace garden, cars crawling along the road down below,
New York in all extravagant, unapologetic glory’
“And everything, it seemed to me, was just right. The people, the terrace garden, cars crawling along the road down below, New York in all its extravagant, unapologetic glory, was all just right – benevolent and well-meaning and utterly human – not the indifferent, money-making machine it is sometimes portrayed as being, but a place of human tenderness. These were kind, generous people who had just given me, a perfect stranger, a life-changing martini; and now the pianist had started to play As Time Goes By from Casablanca ,and was singing the words, almost under his breath, as if unconcerned whether any of the guests might hear him. A kiss is just a kiss, he sang; the fundamental things of life …
“He looked up. Chris had come back to join me. ‘The fundamental things of life. Remember that, boys,’ the pianist said, from the corner of his mouth.”
Torquil stopped. He put down his glass and rose to his feet. Then he took Domenica’s hand in his. She caught her breath. Then she said, “Perhaps not.” And he looked away. He seemed neither hurt nor surprised.
They started to discuss something quite different – an essay that Torquil was writing on how cruelty is portrayed in the final scenes of Homer’s Odyssey.
“Odysseus was very unforgiving,” said Torquil. “I ended up not liking him at all.”
“Neither did I,” said Domenica. “A very unsympathetic type.”
At seven-thirty he left. Angus came back half an hour later.
“I had Torquil up for a few minutes,” said Domenica. “We chatted for a short while.” Then she added: “We held hands. Very, very briefly. It was his doing, not mine.”
Angus seemed uninterested. “You’ll never guess what I heard from Sister Maria-fiore dei Fiori di Montagna,” he said.
© Alexander Mccall Smith, 2021.
A Promise of Ankles (Scotland Street 14)
is available now. Love in the Time of Bertie (Scotland Street 15) will be published by Polygon in hardback in November 2021.