Batlava Lake E-Book

Adam Mars-Jones

• Herausgeber: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 159

Beschreibung

Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton, recently divorced, has been deployed as a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. In an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism, Adam Mars-Jones constructs a literary story with a thoroughly unliterary narrator, and a narrative that is anything but comic through the medium of a character who, essentially, is. Exploring masculinity, class and identity, BatlavaLake is a brilliant story of men and war by one of Britain's most accomplished writers.

Leseprobe

‘No one inhabits character as intensely and subtly as Mars-Jones. Batlava Lake is therefore completely convincing as an everyman narrative – we know people exactly like Barry Ashton, and may even be exactly like him – but there’s a larger truth here too, about clashes of cultures and history, that make this an important and highly recommended book.’

— Lee Child

Praise for Box Hill

‘I very much enjoyed Box Hill. It is a characteristic Mars-Jones mixture of the shocking, the endearing, the funny and the sad, with an unforgettable narrator. The sociological detail is as ever acutely entertaining.’

— Margaret Drabble

‘A tender exploration of the love that truly dare not speak its name – that between master and slave. On his eighteenth birthday, Colin literally stumbles upon a strapping biker twice his age, and falls into a long-term relationship characterised by devotion, mystery, and submission. In plain unadorned prose, Mars-Jones shows us the tender, everyday nature of this. Self-deprecating, sad, and wise.’

— Fiona McGregor

‘Box Hill is not a novel for the prudish, but it is a masterclass in authorial control. … Despite its diminutive length, it is rich with detail and complexity, and has plenty to demonstrate Mars-Jones’s well-deserved place on any list of our best.’

— Alex Nurnberg, Sunday Times

‘An exquisitely discomfiting tale of a submissive same-sex relationship … perfectly realized.’

— Anthony Cummins, Observer

BATLAVA LAKE

ADAM MARS-JONES

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEBATLAVA LAKEABOUT THE AUTHORCOPYRIGHT

BATLAVA LAKE

Lake Batlava is beautiful. Deep, not exactly welcoming. I don’t expect the locals think it’s much like Loch Ness, but we did. I did. No legends about monsters, none that I heard of. But how would I get to hear about them anyway? I’d have to speak the language, and the Barry brain doesn’t do languages. Just doesn’t want to know. ‘Gut und Morgen’ is about as much as I can manage in foreign parts, doesn’t get you far in Kosovo. Plus we weren’t there as sightseers, though we saw some sights. We saw some sights.

Batlava Lake isn’t just a beauty spot, civic resource into the bargain. Natural lake but improved. Enhanced. Serves as the main reservoir for a capital city, for Pristina. More than Loch Ness can say for itself, monster or not!

When I first heard the name, like everyone else did, I thought it was the same as the cakey thing. The sticky layers – Greek, is it? Likely Greek. Bit sweet for me, wherever it comes from. Baklava. When I learned the proper name I used it, Batlava, though not everybody did. They stuck with what they knew, came in handy making silly jokes. Jokes about the Baklava Lake being fed by the River Ouzo. And so on – nearly funny. Not quite.

Even if I bust a gut laughing at their jokes wouldn’t make me one of the lads. They were signed-up military and I was only ‘attached’. But still. I had the rank of full colonel, and they were required to salute me. Even if there were no witnesses about, the hand had to go smartly up, recognition of rank. The only snag – my hand had to stay by my side. Couldn’t salute back. Wasn’t allowed to.

Really knocked me off my stride first time it happened. My hand wobbled upwards of its own accord. That’s how it works in films. Never a saluter who doesn’t get saluted. Like when someone throws a ball at you, your hand goes up to catch it even if you weren’t expecting 8the bloody thing to come your way, isn’t that right? Your body decides and your hand goes up all by itself. How are you supposed to acknowledge a salute when you’re not allowed to return it? You can’t say ‘Much obliged, I’m sure.’ You can’t say ‘Thanks very much mate, appreciate it.’ All you can do is behave as if nothing has happened, grow a shell. Gradually turn into the sort of plonker who expects to be acknowledged without giving anything back.

That first time I called on all my reserves, all my resistance, and went all Barry-be-strong. I sent my hand back down again, though it didn’t feel right to be dropping the ball. As if I was breaking the rules, though in fact, being technical about it, I was obeying them. I noticed something, though, funny thing. There was a look in the ranker’s eyes when I was starting to salute back, by that instinct I’m talking about, not being able to stop myself. You’d have to call it a smirk – at how stupid I was being. If I took the bait and showed respect for him, I was a wally plain and simple. If I played by the rules and behaved as if he wasn’t there then, obviously, I was treating him like shit and I was a shit myself.

So when I managed to stop myself saluting before I was committed to the wally option, there was another look in his eyes. Different, but still pissed off. Pissed off in a new way, giving me a sort of dull glare, resentful glare. I didn’t much like either of the looks that could come my way, to be honest, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. I was trapped in the not-saluting side of things, and the lads were trapped in the saluting. None of us happy about it. After a while it seemed to me that when the ranks saluted me, their lips moved, and they mouthed a word, always the same word. I couldn’t say for sure what the word was, but squit would be a strong candidate. 9

Royal Engineers don’t really like being called Sappers. Fine by me. I called them Saps. If they didn’t like it they still had to salute me, and I still had to not-salute back. ‘Saps’ are trenches. They used to have another nickname, the Mudlarks – nobody uses that one any more.

The one thing the lads couldn’t deny was that, civilian or no, I was qualified. This was a fact. It was why I was there in the first place, being an ‘approved person’ five times over. Qualified under the Safety Rules Procedures to inspect premises and equipment and to give the go-ahead for service personnel to undertake their duties. Five tickets to my name: High Voltage/Low Voltage. Boilers & Pressure Vessels. Masts & Towers. Petrol Oil & Lubricants. Confined Spaces. They don’t hand them out like sweets, those certificates. You have to study to get them, and after that you can’t take your foot off the pedal, you have to refresh your knowledge every three years. Separately from your technical expertise, you have to show you can perform consistently and reliably when you’re high up on a mast, or deep underground, or inside a fuel tank the size of St Paul’s, whispering gallery and all – capacity of six million litres. Six million! No fuel in it when you inspect it, naturally, but no-one wants you inhaling those fumes, so you’ll have breathing gear.

To show you can still do Confined Spaces you crawl into narrower and narrower pipes. They’re real bastards with Confined Spaces. You get to do a run-through with a bit of light, without full equipment. Then it’s darkness and full gear, mask, breathing apparatus, the lot. Off you go! Off you crawl. First thing you do is bump into a wall that didn’t use to be there. They’ve changed the layout – of course they have. Breathing speeds up inside the mask. Little bit of panic. Forehead wants to sweat. Then you make yourself think, they wouldn’t put me in this if there 10was no way out. Wouldn’t be allowed to! Slow down. Take your time. You don’t stop being afraid but it goes away a bit and you can think round the problem. Come out of it with a bit of a grin as if you had fun.

For Masts & Towers you step off a higher gantry each time, attached to a rail with a harness – meaning your mind knows you’re safe but your body never quite believes it. Your balls never quite believe it. Message doesn’t reach them. No shortage of masts and towers in the Rugby area, so that’s where they do it. It’s not like a bungee jump. You hardly move – the harness holds you at the level you started. You have to step off into the air, that’s all, but it’s not everyone who can do that. It was the five tickets that had earned those salutes, not me. Not Barry as such.

The lads called me Uncle Barry, which I didn’t mind. It wasn’t a compliment, no, but it wasn’t much of an insult either. I was comfortable with it. They all knew my track record. ‘Little Uncle Barry’ – not so keen on that, though I’d never claim to be the tallest. Don’t often bang my head on ceilings. Little bit of an advantage in the confined spaces category. And maybe a factor in the saluting and not saluting business. More comfortable to be outranked by someone taller.

I’m not the sort to push my luck, though – always said I’d move on before anyone had the chance to call me Grandad. Not retire. I’ve got too much energy to retire, not now and maybe not ever. When I see people doing nothing – I don’t mean workmen skiving, I mean people doing nothing in particular – I don’t think, ‘Get off your arses you lazy buggers,’ I think, ‘Where did you learn the knack of sitting still?’ How did that happen? It’s beyond me. If I’ve done the washing-up I’d rather do it again than put the things away and then find my hands are empty, no task coming up on the horizon. I like a list. 11

I’ve always had lots of energy, which came in handy as a person, five-times-approved person, with plenty on his plate. I was also married in those days, not that energy got me the approval you might be thinking in that area. Not talking about the bedroom! Carol – Mrs Barry as was, Mrs Barry Ashton – got annoyed because I would sing in the mornings. Didn’t even know I was doing it. ‘How can anyone wake up so bloody happy?’ That was the meat of the complaint. I tried to explain that actually I don’t. I don’t wake up happy, I wake up cheerful. There’s a difference, big difference. She couldn’t seem to see it.

These days I’m always saying I’ll build myself a house and find a woman who’ll live in it with me, or else go at it the other way round, find a woman who wants to live with me and then build a house for the two of us – I fancy France. A woman who could handle the language side of things. Buy a dog, why not? Buy a bloody dog. Having said all that, my record with women isn’t that great. Mixed, you’d have to say. I’m better with houses, though after the end of my marriage there was a woman who walked away from me with a nice house tucked under her arm. I hadn’t built it but I’d certainly bought it and fixed it up, only my name wasn’t on the papers. I’d trusted her, and either she saw me coming from the first or else somewhere along the line she decided to skip marriage and go straight for alimony. Her shyster was sharper than my shyster, that’s what it came down to. I went with the first lawyer I found – it’s not my world. How are you supposed to choose? I trusted him. Mistake. ‘Fault on both sides?’ I wasn’t going to say that!

Mains water pressure in France is six bars. Six bars! That’s enough to blow English shower fitments half way across the room – or half way across the garden if we’re talking about English garden hose nozzles. I’d love to 12work with six bars, love to play around with that.

They called me Uncle because I was older. Also because I was there first, in the first wave of civilians. Soldiers need a place to kip, they need lights that work, toilets that flush, filters so the water’s drinkable, staff for the canteen and someone to take care of payroll. People are spoiled – they think infrastructure collapse means not getting a seat on the train to work. They have no idea what the real thing is like, and neither did I, really. Not until I arrived in Pristina. So I suppose I was spoiled too. I’d done my little bit of preparation, gone out in search of a Kosovan dictionary – except there isn’t one, reason being it’s Albanian they speak there. Fell at the first fence! I’ll take an Albanian dictionary, then, thanks. I don’t do languages, never have, but give me a technical drawing or a bit of spec and I can make myself understand it, whatever language it thinks it’s in. Always. Haven’t tried Japanese just yet but I guarantee you I could get there in the end.

Still, a dictionary comes in handy. Keep a dictionary in your pocket and you can point at a page and hope for the best.

Everyone visiting a country for the first time will have questions to ask the military driver sent to pick them up, but maybe my questions were a bit more basic than most.

Which side of the road do they drive here? Shouldn’t you choose one or the other? No law here. Drive where you want. There’s no-one to stop us. Do you see much traffic anyway?

Where’s the city? Just coming into it. If there was electricity you’d see lights. Maybe you’re here to sort that out.

Do I smell smoke? Affirmative. The Serbs set the sports stadium alight. It’s not out yet.

How long has it been burning? Didn’t the war end last summer? Raiding parties sneak back now and then, do a bit13of damage. It’ll burn for weeks yet – no-one to put it out, unless that’s one of your jobs.

Bloody hell – what was that? Why did you swerve just now? Serbs removed all the manholes before they left. Bingo! Instant potholes. Just add boiling water – sorry, no, that’s Pot Noodles. Want me to steer into the next one?

(Little bit of a stroppy bastard. Civilian dealing with military gets used to that.)

No, you’re fine. Don’t listen to me. Why are we stopping? We’ve arrived.

Where’s the hotel? Just over there.

That’s the Grand Hotel? (Dark space no different from what was either side.) Didn’t I just say so? If you’re in luck they’ll have a generator inside.

They did have a generator, dinky little generator – would give you a lovely old laugh if you saw it in Argos. Who’s that drinking in the bar? Kate Adie. Having a tipple while the light came and went. Nice lady, and we had a friendly little chat. Quite a soft face – apple cheeks, you might say. Not what you’d expect in such a tough lady, but maybe it’s a good thing, seeing she’s telling people things (let’s be honest) they don’t really want to hear. She didn’t ask me anything I wasn’t allowed to answer. Official Secrets Act, she’ll have caught on. When a famously fearless telly journalist, and she was hardly ever off the screen in those days, is drinking in the bar of your hotel, you don’t expect too much from room service. You’re lucky to have walls! A lift would have been nice but there wasn’t one – well, there was a lift but it wasn’t working. Tote your kit up the stairs. I was hoping for curtains, but I would have preferred windows without curtains to what I got. Curtains without windows. Curtains don’t do the same job as windows, it’s a fact. I slept wrapped up in everything I’d brought with me bar the passport. 14

Strictly speaking, to pick hairs, Kate Adie isn’t fearless. Scared of motorbikes – won’t get on one. Someone in the bar heard her saying so. Those things are dangerous.

The whole of Kosovo is some sort of funnel, sits in a ring of mountains, pulls cold air down in winter and stops it from getting out. Then come summer, the funnel fills up with unbearable heat. Kosovo is hell. Hell two ways – hellish hot, hellish cold. They used to bring jugs of water on bitter winter mornings at the ‘Grand Hotel’, and that’s the way they were too, one day scalding hot, another freezing cold. There was never one of each! Which would have let you mix something to a human temperature so you could wash and shave to a civilized standard. By the time the scalding jug had begun to cool down I would have to get off to work. And the freezing jug, of course … never warmed up.

There was no water in the taps. If there was, if the city had the infrastructure basics, it would be coming from Lake Batlava, of course. There’s a dam and a funnel in the middle of the lake, so the overflow gets led off to supply Pristina (and Podujevo, if you’re interested). Including the Grand Hotel. Where there weren’t even any plugs for the basins. For a moment I thought – what, they took the manholes and the plugs too? How did they have time? Normally I’m bright in the mornings, I catch on fast, everyone says so, but I’d had a rough night. Why no plugs? Turns out it wasn’t sabotage, wasn’t even supply failure by the hotel. Turns out it was more of a matter of principle, Muslims being supposed to wash in running water. If you want to be impure, bring your own bloody plug! We’d had no end of briefings but nothing about a plug shortage – I might even have stayed awake for that.

We were guests in this country. That was something that was said to us, early on, more than once, and I tried 15to believe it. Bit of a struggle. You don’t invite guests in when the house is on fire! We were something different, emergency services or clean-up crew. Or pre-clean-up crew, cleaning up before the cleaning up could start, setting up some sort of basic support system for the Royal Engineers. It was really Sappers who would be doing the dirty work, and some of it was very dirty, but they needed something in place before they could start. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? An old riddle, but Barry here’s worked out the answer. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? What comes first is the nest. Bit of wisdom there.

Second night in the Grand Hotel I took the curtains down and wrapped myself up in them, but it was like the optician banging on at you with fiddly changes of lenses, wanting to know is this better or is that better. Can’t decide. Is this colder or is that colder? Couldn’t decide. They were both colder.

Our first nest was in VJ headquarters – the barracks of an army base before the Americans bombed it. We built a little camp inside the wire. Some things had been thought about and some things hadn’t. Approved Persons? Present and correct, in decent numbers. There were a few of us. Competent contractors? No such luck. Hardly a one. Electricians were a special headache. They’d arrive in batches of twenty or so from Britain, flew ’em in to Skopje, bussed ’em down to us, but no screening in advance so most of them had no idea. Hopeless!