Submarine - By Joe Dunthorne Page 0,87

mushroom pie. The other name we had for Zoe was Pie. The barmaid puts it in the microwave for a minute and a half. As it rotates, I watch its sides distend and sag, its skin crinkle, ageing a year for every second.

I sit down at an empty table and use a spork to make an incision in one end of the pie. By prodding the lid of the pie, I create a small pyrotechnic steam effect puffing out of the pastry geyser.

While waiting for the snotty filling to cool, I flick through one of the programmes for Ghetto. I find ‘Zoe Preece: sound and lighting director’. There is no photo. On the back page there are black and white pictures from their dress rehearsal. The girls mostly look identical: pretty and straight haired. I try and remember Zoe’s face. I should be able to recognize her but all I can think of is the lid of my chicken and mushroom pie.

The theatre is more than half full. I am the youngest person in Row L.

The play is about a ghetto in Vilna, Lithuania, where the Jews form a theatre company, sing songs and perform them. The songs are deemed to be so good that their deportation to the concentration camp is put on hold for a while. It is lucky for the Jews that the Nazis did not have my taste in music.

The Nazi, Kittel, appoints a Jew, Gens, as ruler of the ghetto and head of the Jewish police. Gens organizes a ball to get into the Nazi’s good books.

During the interval, I stay in my seat. I like watching the people in black jeans carrying the props. As if we can’t see them.

They cover the stage with flowers, rugs, cushions. Four of them carry on a long, rectangular dining table. They set the table with bottles of wine, convincing-looking netted salamis and plastic roast chickens.

As the second half commences, there are twelve performers on stage: a folk band made up of a violinist, trumpeter, guitarist and accordionist, who play an irritating jig, while four Nazis slug wine and watch the Jewish police fuck the pissed-up Jewish prostitutes. They are doing them over the dinner table.

I look across at the parents’ faces in the seats on my row. They look stern, focused. One man rubs the underside of his chin; his jaw is tensed, his mouth rigidly ajar. I imagine the fathers of the actresses confronting the realization that their daughters are comfortable – and quite convincing – in the role of girl-pretending-to-enjoy-getting-fucked-by-drunk-teenage-boy-pretending-to-know-how-to-fuck.

As the sound of rutting grows more intense, one of the fathers turns to his wife and, half-smiling, whispers a joke of some sort. He giggles but she does not laugh or even acknowledge him; she is thinking about the poor old Jews. He is trying to make light of a difficult situation; the second time that he let his daughter’s boy-friend stay the night, he convinced himself that it could have been the creaky radiators or the wind in the back yard – but he wasn’t sure and so stayed up the whole night listening.

At the end of the play, I clap my hands twenty-four times.

Now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now now.

The actors come out and bow. Then they go offstage for a moment – not nearly long enough for the audience to decide whether or not to stop clapping – before they return for an encore. They open their palms towards Zoe, up in her den, her cage: the sound booth. I imagine that they give her extra portions if she makes no mistakes. They applaud her and stare up into the lights.

I flop on to one of the long sofas that snake along the edges of the foyer. The play was not effective. I feel no particular downturn in my emotions, no sudden sadness. In fact, I feel no worse than when the play began. It was getting hot in the theatre and my pie was weighing me down; I may have had a sleep and missed the bit that would have made me care.

I watch sets of parents waiting with flowers. It’s a bit like an airport arrival lounge: an element of competitiveness about who will emerge first.

I’m not sure I will recognize Zoe’s face so I’m going to have to carefully examine other physical characteristics.

The first girl out skips straight towards her parents, swinging