Again, Tom bumped into a pedestrian, then apologized politely, took a few more steps and disappeared into the bank’s high-rise office building.
III
Eight hours later Tristan turned the key in the lock to the door of his apartment. Half a turn was enough; the girl from the night before had evidently simply shut the door behind her. The light from the city shone dark blue through the glass walls of his apartment. He put his hand on the switch and turned on the light. He dropped his leather briefcase on the sofa, then went over to the refrigerator and opened it. The sushi was still there. He grabbed it, and dribbled a little of the black soy sauce on the little rolls, so that the rice in them immediately soaked up the liquid and changed colour. Where had he put the wasabi? He went over to the cupboard, but the green paste was not there. He knelt down on the floor and opened the waist-level wooden doors. No luck. No sign of it on the oven either.
“There’s no wasabi in the house,” he said to himself, puzzled, and went over to the cocktail table that stood in the middle of the room. There was something on it that had not been there before. He grabbed the slip of paper. On it were written a few words and a phone number in a big round hand. Marie had taken fifteen minutes to get these words down on paper as she wanted. Tristan read them, emitting a short blast of air, which sounded like a stifled burst of laughter. Then he turned the slip of paper over and in clearly legible writing for his housekeeper Marta jotted down on it the word: wasabi. He raised his head, and in thoughtful mood, as night fell, briefly looked out of the window. Then he continued to write. He urgently needed two bottles of champagne. Marta knew the small shop that stocked his favourite brand. Then Tristan attached the slip of paper to the refrigerator, undressed and went into the bathroom. He had to hurry – in an hour’s time he was due to meet two colleagues in the Sky Lounge.
The waxen moon was just rising behind the pale skyscrapers of the City as Tristan entered the bar. Flanked by his two friends he advanced slowly past the plump floor cushions to the sound of muted conversation. His still damp dark-brown hair covered his face down to his cheeks. He hadn’t had time to shave, with the result that there was a light shadow across his face that presented a fine contrast to his blue eyes. Here in the gentle breeze of the city, which was just coming back to life for the evening, the three men made their way to their reserved table. They sat down. Marcus took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, just as though he was embarking on the second part of his working day, whereas actually all he was doing was ordering a gin & tonic. The other man ordered an absinthe.
“And for you, sir?” asked the waiter, who was dressed in formal attire.
“A rum cola – Cuban rum please.”
“Very good,” said the Indian waiter and turned away. As though on rails, he glided past more guests and disappeared in the direction of the bar. Marcus started to chat to the other man, Cirrus Baker. Marcus knew him from school. Cirrus didn’t work in the City; he was a freelance artist; he had a studio in the attic of an old brick building in Carnaby Street and was making quite good money for an artist. This was due, not least, to his eccentricity, which he always flaunted, whether he happened to be in a golf club or at a fast food outlet. Marcus was just giving him an animated account of the events of the morning.
“Excellent!” snorted the dandy, “That gives me an idea.”
Tristan stayed behind, as Marcus and Cirrus went for a short toilet break. He reached for the drink the waiter had just brought him, took a sip, and directed his attention to the guests who, despite the early evening hour, were already filling up this roof terrace.
A mixed crowd of perhaps a hundred people were milling about in the silvery light of the moon. Here, not three metres away from Tristan’s table, stood two stout businessmen – or at least their expansive gestures suggested that this was what they were. In a sudden onset of false bonhomie, one of them put his hand on the shoulder of the other and addressed him earnestly. At the same time he was waving his martini glass perilously over the heads of a young couple sitting on a chunky red foam rubber cushion. The drink was threatening to spill over at any moment, with potentially disastrous consequences for the girl’s white dress.
Further away, a group of models were standing around a lanky, obviously gay youngish man. He was wearing a strangely shaped hat, which to all appearances he had probably designed himself. But he was clearly a hit with the girls. Tristan rested his gaze for a moment on this little group of lovelies. Then he took another look around and was surprised at how many of these beauties were here today. All of a sudden he saw them everywhere: There at the bar stood an ageing mid-fifty-year-old man, with a tall redhead on his arm. Not far from them, no fewer than four blondes were having fun with two broad-shouldered gentlemen on a row of seats. It looked as though these two had not done badly for themselves either, to judge by their flashing wristwatches, or the forced laughter of the four women every time one of the gentlemen so much as opened his mouth. Tristan smoothed his jacket sleeve and scrutinized the scene before him more closely. The men hardly interested him at all. The models, on the other hand, who thronged about them, made him smile. Models, he thought to himself, are in our time what dancers in the French opera were in the age of Casanova. They were a group of girls of exceptional beauty, who had the dubious honour of being made the mistresses of the wealthy men of their time. When Casanova was alive, the aristocrats went to the opera in order to hear the audience whispering their name when the ballerinas made their entrance on the stage. At that time, as members of the Royal Academy of Music, the ballerinas all belonged to the court. Despite this, their ranks were filled with the loveliest and at the same time the poorest girls in the land, who were not even remunerated for their performances. They were delighted to accept this position, however, as it gave them the chance to be seen by the French nobility and become the mistresses of the men among them. Today, too, the rich and powerful flock round the catwalk models, as once their European predecessors did around the dancers in the theatre. In every country in the world they adorn themselves with the exquisite beauty of these girls. And that, he reflected, in spite of the fact that these days their beauty is measured only by their height and the regularity of their facial features and not by their feminine curves. Thus the taste of today’s industrial and financial aristocracy apparently resembles that of artists who, as Balzac has said, prefer the sketch to the finished painting.
Tristan couldn’t help laughing quietly to himself and had to confess that these days even he was no longer so enamoured of those womanly curves. Of course, once the girl with the cute little face had slipped out of her clothes, the sight that met your eyes was not a pretty one. It was not for nothing that the majority of these sad creatures asked for the lights to be almost totally dimmed, so that their ribs would not be thrown into relief by a shaft of candlelight. By contrast, the breasts on these naked, starving child bodies appeared much larger than they actually were. But how dreadfully bony the pelvises were! You were frightened of crushing them when you made love to these girls. Tristan didn’t believe any of these men when they claimed to be really satisfied in bed. But they evidently consoled themselves with the envious glances that came their way when they appeared in society with these girls. Then their bodies were draped in the latest fashion creations, which were only – literally only – tailored for them and which lent a truly ethereal aspect to their fairylike exterior.
How big their eyes always looked, thought Tristan to himself and felt rather sorry for these creatures. They were striving to achieve an ideal that was promoted in the media. It made them go hungry all their lives. Hungry for food and perhaps also, in the end, hungry for love. Because much as they personified the state of this starving world, they could never hope to be really loved like this, either by the men, who chose them out of vanity, or even by themselves. For Tristan was in no doubt that no one who became as wraith-like as these girls could possibly love themselves. So any compliment on their beauty was worthless in their eyes.
They thirsted for something deeper. But what did they have to offer that could give them hope? Tristan had got to know many fashion models in his life. But he had not been able to pass the time in an interesting way with any of them for longer than one evening. And usually he had had to do most of the talking himself even to fill up that