Mandolin Dreams. Chapter II
Mandolin Dreams. Chapter II
London, 1992.
Part 1: ch.I
Imagination is memory.
- James Joyce
Van looked around, looked at me. He could barely contain himself. "Anthony! Can you believe it? Can you actually fucking believe it? We're here. We made it." We had just exited Charing Cross Station and were walking down a tiny cobblestone street to where the Sherlock Holmes pub was supposed to be. It was a crisp sunny afternoon. There were plenty of cars, and plenty of people. They all shared the road in civilized impatience. Van turned to me, while I shared his enthusiasm, I didn't show it. I hadn't enjoyed my first ever plane ride. My ears were still ringing and I had a headache. I wondered how the hell I was going to survive the drinking we'd planned for the next few days.
"Look. There it is." Van sped up a little. He moved to frame the entire pub's front in the camera lens.
I walked up to the side of the pub, while Van stepped back. "Colour?" I called. We had brought a couple of disposable cameras each, one colour, the other black and white. We needed to plan ahead, if we were going to document this trip properly. He stopped once he had the pub in the tiny viewfinder window of the cardboard-covered the camera.
"Yeah. I'll take one with you on the left and then you take one from the same place with me on the right. We'll cut them together in the photo album." Van took the shot, and I walked up and stood right where he had been. It was always tricky to get that second shot just right.
We would later find, once back home, after developing all the rolls, that I had pulled out the wrong camera and his image was in black and white, while mine was in colour. He thought it made the montage look even better, as the black and white side fit nicely inside the colour image. I wasn’t sure. I felt bad that he was painted grey, while I was in full-colour.
I lifted the camera to my eye.
Van raised his hands. "Give me a sec. This needs to be perfect." Van looked at his reflection in the window, adjusted his black perfecto jacket, rubbed the tips of his black leather biker boots on the back of his jeans, and adjusted his hair a little. He dropped his chin and smiled. ‘Ok. Take it now." Van always had a showmanship that I never did.
"Got it. Let's get in there. I'm starving." I said and pocketed the camera.
Van pushed the double door and stepped back. "After you, brother." I smiled. To this day, I still remember that moment perfectly, it's one of the few memories that I have that I think I can reliably say is true. I walked by him, and noticed his hand on the heavy door, fingers splayed, as he kept it from closing in my face. He had long pianist fingers, that were slightly wider at their ends. I always thought that he had musician's fingers, that he was built for music.
The doors closed behind us as we stepped into the pub. We heard the music, the song, and turned to each other, shocked. We both got that same shit-eating grin as the distinct sound of the Kinks, of Ray Davies' nasally voice enveloped us. "I am a creator / Inventor and innovator / I observe the people / The ordinary people".
"Fucking awesome!" All the pain from the flight, poof. It just disappeared. It was a perfect moment. The kind you knew would never repeat itself.
"Yeah. It was almost like it was meant to be." He put his arm around me and shook me a little.
"Idiot. Don't start with that 'meant to be' business. You know I can't stand it." I said, but I couldn't deny the synchronicity of it all. It was our favourite band, playing "Everybody's a Star". We didn't quite see the irony yet. It had started just as we entered the pub. What else could we think? As much as I hated the idea of fate, I loved the moment more. I looked at Van and waited a beat. "But it does seem like quite the coincidence. Let's grab a seat. Didn't I tell you I was famished?"
The afternoon sun pushed through the blurry window panes and reflected on the brown leather banquettes in between all of the dull permanent body prints. Whatever was left of the light then splayed on the black and white tiled floor. There were just a few people in pub. A couple of tourists in bright shirts talked loudly at a table near the door. There were a couple of older men, sitting in a booth near the back. They were quietly nursing their beers as they watched the tourists expend way too much energy talking about who knows what. The man behind the bar gave us a quick glance and returned to the chess board in front of him. Across from him a small older gent sat in a stool. He was so short, he made the stool look like highchair; his feet were just too damn far from the ground. He looked out of place in his pale blue seersucker suit. He stroked his long beard as he calculated his next move.
"Two pints of Guinness." Van said as we came up to the bar, near the chessboard. I piped up beside him "and menus, please."
"Kitchen doesn't open for another hour." The bartender said.
His opponent looked up from the board for the first time. "C'mon Terry. These boys looked tired, thirsty, and definitely hungry. Surely, you have something left from lunch." He gave me a quick wink.
"Anything you have would be great." Van said.
"Fine." He stared at his opponent. "I know what you're doing Hobson. Just buyin' yourself some time. You won't win, not this time." He turned to us. "Have seat wherever you like. I'll prepare those drinks for ya and I might have a couple of hot roast beef sandwiches left in the back."
"That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much." Van said. I nodded as well and then glanced at the chess board. The match looked pretty much decided, and Terry was not going to win.
We found a small booth at the very back, far away from everyone and got settled. Van looked at me. "I still can't believe it. We made it. I'm tellin' you man, this is the beginning. This is it!"
"I don't know about that. I mean, this is amazing, but not sure it's the beginning of anything. There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about." I hesitated. I didn't know how to tell him. I had naively thought that dropping this bomb while at the pub would have been easier, but now it felt like I was about to tell him his dog had died. Before I could say anything more, Terry arrived at the table.
"Here you go. Two pints."
"Thank you." I said. He started to turn away. "Excuse me. We didn't mean to intrude on your game over there, and I would hate for our arrival to be the cause of your defeat."
"Nah. Dinna worry about it. Hobson always wins."
"I think that if you castle on your turn and then do bishop to F three. You should be able to beat him."
Terry's eyes went wide. "Mate. If that's true, then those and any others you want" he pointed at the beers in front of us "are on the house."
"I think you've just made a friend for life, right there." Van chuckled. "What did you want to talk about?"
I picked up my pint. "I'm moving to Japan next month." I blurted and downed half the glass. Only once the froth settled, did I look up at Van.
"What do you mean, moving?"
"I've got a degree in English lit and no prospects. I figured I would go to Asia and teach for a while. All that matters there is that I speak English and have a pulse."
"Man! You think my degree in history is opening any doors? We had a plan. The master plan! We were going to change the world. The musician and the author."
"We can still be those things, but I'm just not sure I have what it, what it takes, you know, to go all in."
"You mean, you don't think I have what it takes." Van said.
Van did not take it well at all. "You goddamn well know you do. We both do. We need to write that rock opera." He yelled.
"We can still do it. I've thought about it. We have a notebook that we mail back and forth, adding to it when we have it." The internet hadn't shrunk the world yet and I couldn't think of any other way for us to collaborate and work together.
Van shook his head. I knew what he was thinking. We had talked so much of what we would do, what we should do. And that it would be near impossible to get anything serious going while we were so far apart, but he didn't say any of that. He looked into his Guinness. "I always thought I would be the one to move away first, to live abroad." He slammed back the entire pint.
"You will--" I started to say. Van raised a hand to stop me, and used the other to point to the Guinness in front of me, and bade me get on with it. What could I do? I downed the rest of my glass and he took it from my hand, went to the bar and returned with two fresh pints.
He had that look, the one that usually meant we were about to do something that would get us in trouble. "I know what we're going to do. Let's agree, no, let's vow to meet no matter what, no matter where we happen to live, or what we happen to be doing, we get together no matter what."
"No matter what." I echoed.
He looked around the pub. "Right here. Let's meet right here, every... every year."
I stared at Van, at my brother. "Now that's an amazing idea! We can establish our little Factory right here, in this pub, at this very table. It isn't Warhol's studio. You ain't Dylan and I certainly ain't Ginsberg, but it'll do."
The small man, Hobson, from the chess match appeared at the end of the table and interrupted me.
"I hope you're happy." Hobson pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "He is going to be a royal pain in the arse for the next few years." I could see Terry behind the bar, grinning like a fool. "On the house, boys! On the house!"
Hobson rolled his eyes. "Ugh. I need a break, but I'll be watching you two." He tapped his nose with his index finger, turned around and left the pub.
We looked at each other, and broke out into peals of laughter. We laughed for the next few hours, almost non-stop. Terry, as promised, kept the drinks coming, and we didn't talk about the pact again. We didn't need to. It was done.