‘Wonderful, Holy. But are you sure your sleeping creature sees all the details in this picture? What you see depends on where you’re standing and the angle you’re looking from.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Take the sky. The sky you see in Norway is just the same as the one you see in Australia. But because now you’re down under, you’re standing on your head compared with being at home, aren’t you. So you see the stars upside down. If you don’t know you’re standing upside down you get confused and make mistakes.’
Harry looked at Andrew. ‘Upside down, eh?’
‘Yep.’ Andrew puffed on his cigar.
‘At school I learned that the sky you see is quite different from the one we see. If you’re in Australia the globe covers the view of the stars we see at night in Norway.’
‘OK then,’ Andrew said, unruffled. ‘Nevertheless, it’s a question of where you view things from. The point is that everything is relative, isn’t it. And that’s what makes it so bloody complicated.’
From the stage came a hissing sound and white smoke. The next moment it changed to red and violins were heard from the speakers. A woman wearing a plain dress and a man in trousers and a white shirt stepped out of the smoke.
Harry had heard the music before. It was the same as the drone he had heard in his neighbour’s headphones on the plane, all the way from London. But it was only now he understood the text. A woman’s voice was singing that they called her the wild rose and she didn’t know why.
The girlish timbre was in sharp contrast to the man’s deep, sombre voice:
‘Then I kissed her goodbye,
Said all beauty must die,
I bent down and planted a rose between her teeth . . .’
Harry was dreaming about stars and yellow-and-brown snakes when he was awoken by a light click of his hotel-room door. For a moment he lay still, aware only of how contented he was. It had started raining again, and the drainpipes outside his window were singing. He got up, naked, opened the door wide and hoped his incipient erection would be noticed. Birgitta laughed with surprise and leapt into his arms. Her hair was soaking wet.
‘I thought you said three,’ Harry said, pretending to be offended.
‘The customers wouldn’t leave,’ she said, lifting her freckly face to him.
‘I’m wildly, uncontrollably, head over heels in love with you,’ he whispered, gripping her face between his hands.
‘I know,’ she said.
Harry stood by the window, drinking orange juice from the minibar and examining the sky. The clouds had drifted away again, and someone had stuck a fork in the velvet sky several times so that the divine light behind shone through the holes.
‘What do you think of transvestites?’ Birgitta asked from the bed.
‘You mean, what do I think of Otto?’
‘As well.’
Harry thought. ‘I think I like his arrogant style. The lowered eyelids, the displeased expression. The world-weariness. What should I call it? It’s like a melancholy cabaret in which he flirts with all and sundry. A superficial, self-parodying flirtation.’
‘And you like that?’
‘I like his couldn’t-give-a-stuff attitude. And that he stands for everything the majority hates.’
‘And what is it that the majority hates?’
‘Weakness. Vulnerability. Australians boast that they’re a liberal nation. Perhaps they are as well. But my understanding is that their ideal is the honest, uncomplicated, hard-working Australian with a good sense of humour and a touch of patriotism.’
‘True blue.’
‘What?’
‘They call it being true blue. Or fair dinkum. It means someone or something is genuine, decent.’
‘And behind the facade of jovial decency it’s easy to hide so much bloody crap. Otto, on the other hand, with all his outlandish garb, representing seduction, illusion and falsity, strikes me as the best example of sincerity I’ve met here. Naked, vulnerable and genuine.’
‘That sounds very PC, if you ask me. Harry Holy, the gay man’s best friend.’ Birgitta was in teasing mode.
‘I argued the point well though, didn’t I?’
He lay down on the bed, looked at her and blinked his innocent, blue eyes. ‘I’m bloody glad I’m not in the mood for another round with you, frøken. As we’ve got to get up so early in the morning, I mean.’
‘You just say things like that to get me going,’ Birgitta said, as they launched themselves at each other once more.
19
A Pleasant Prostitute
HARRY FOUND SANDRA in front of Dez Go-Go. She was standing by the kerb scanning her little queendom in King’s Cross, her legs tired from balancing on high heels, her arms crossed, a cigarette between her fingers and the Sleeping Beauty eyes that are both inviting and repelling at once. In short, she looked like a prostitute in any part of the world.