The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books

by Elspeth Davie

  ‘I must be off in five minutes,’ he said, when he came back, ‘… letters to attend to … a paper to prepare.’ They asked if he could give them an idea what they should look at the following morning. Briefly he outlined a plan and described the things they should see. They asked if they would meet him again. He explained that in a couple of days he might or might not meet them, depending on his work. ‘Do you work all through the holidays?’ someone innocently asked. Renwick made a noncommittal gesture to the sky. At the same time he noticed that the fair-haired girl, who’d been wandering about for some time between their group and the shadowy end of the court, had come forward and now stood with them directly under the lamp. Stunning. Not nowadays a word he was in the habit of using. But what other word for this particular kind of fairness? Straight white-blonde hair, fair eyebrows against brown skin, and eyes so pale they had scarcely more colour than water. A Scandinavian – the intonation was plain in a few words she spoke to one of the women, but she was also that idealized version which, along with its opposite, each country holds of another part of the world – strikingly tall, strong and fair, and no doubt outspoken. Renwick waited for her to speak. She lifted her arm with the back of her wrist towards him. She tapped her watch.

  ‘You have given us your minutes. Exactly five. Your time is up,’ she said. The others laughed. Renwick smiled. So she had seen his clock-watching, heard his work programme, had simply stopped in passing for a laugh. But attention was now turned her way. They were asking questions. And it appeared that in her country the light was different. The sun, they gathered, was very bright, the darkness more intense. Different, she made it plain, though not of course better. They took it in, unblinking, while they stared. It seemed they got the message on light in a single flash and with no trouble at all. The girl left the place soon afterwards, and to Renwick it seemed that his two couples were slowly merged together again, and he with them – all welded into the state called middle-age. No amount of good sense, no bracing talk of God-sent wisdom or hard-won experience, and least, least of all the beauties of maturity, were ever going to mend this matter. There they were. Some light had left them.

  One way or another, this was to occupy him a good deal during the next day. It was not just that at some stage of life the optimistic beam had been replaced by a smaller light, but that from the start even his awareness of actual physical light had been limited. It was hard for him to imagine variations – how some lights sharpened every object and its shadow for miles around, while others made a featureless flatness of the same scene. He tried to imagine those regions of the world made barren to the bone by sun, and others soaked by the same sun to make ground and water prosper from one good year to the next. He thought with relief of white cornfields nearer home and remembered with a shock of hope streams so transparent you could see the fish, leaves and stones shining in their depths.

  The phone drilled at his skull. ‘Tomorrow evening – would it be possible for half an hour, if you can manage to spare the time?’ Both couples were leaving the next morning. Yes, it would be just possible to fit it in. They would meet at the bottom of the street leading from Palace to Castle. They would walk slowly up. Another voice joined the first in thanking him.

  ‘The weather has been disappointing for you today,’ said Renwick as he waited for the moment to put the phone down.

  ‘No, this is how we like it,’ came the reply. ‘Clear, sharp, with a touch of frost.’ This might pass, with those who knew him, as a rough description of himself. Or not so rough. Exact perhaps – though some might put the complimentary touch, others a hatching of black lines. Renwick said he was glad to hear it and replaced the receiver thoughtfully.

  The next evening was overcast with a slight wind which sent the black and white clouds slowly across the sky. They were waiting for him eagerly. ‘A disappointing evening,’ he said, as if to test them again. On the contrary they were enthusiastic. This was the city at its best, at its most characteristic. Renwick saved his disappointment for himself. They walked slowly up, going in and out of closes, through doors and arches. They saw the sea through openings and climbed halfway up stairways worn into deep curves. Renwick led the way through the darker wynds. He answered questions. Apart from that he said little. The street grew steep, crossed a main road and went on up until it opened out to the broad space in front of the church of St Giles with the Law Courts behind. It was growing dark, and from this rise where they were standing they could see down almost the whole length of the street illumined by blue street lights. It was a favourite viewing point for tourist buses and their guides, and there were still a few about. People were roaming around the precincts of the Courts and going to and from the church.

  Renwick looked round and stared pointedly at the large, lit clock of the Tolbooth, big as a harvest moon. Further down the street were smaller clocks. Automatically following his eyes, the others stared too. They got the message. Time was important even to citizens of an historic city. Things must move on. Turning back again, Renwick saw the blonde girl a few steps away. She had been looking at the church. Now she was making a beeline for his group. So he had been watched again, scrutinized no doubt as an exhibit of the place, one worth remembering perhaps, but remembered with a good deal more amusement than respect. She had reached the group now and stood waiting until the couples wandered off to make the most of their last minutes of sight-seeing. Then she remarked: ‘You have very few angels inside. I have seen the churches. Some of them are very beautiful and very bare.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Renwick. He lectured her gently on the reasons for it. ‘Any angels we do have are mostly outside,’ he added, ‘hidden away in cemeteries.’

  And if it came to angels, it was true enough the blue light had given her own face a marbly shine, her hair a touch of green. But her eyes had neither the exalted nor the downcast look of churchyard angels. They were too direct, too challenging for an angel’s eyes. She was not the kind to be hidden away. He was going on to an explanation of the spot where they were standing when something struck him. He stopped in mid-sentence. ‘I am not a guide,’ said Renwick.

  ‘Well, I think you are,’ said the young woman. ‘You keep them all together. You keep the time. That is important – how you keep the time. Clocks are important, very important indeed. Clocks are – how do you say? – they are very much up your street.’ Saying this, she made a quick survey of the street from top to bottom as he had done some minutes before. Her performance managed, miraculously, to be both amiable and derisive. She made way genially for the others when they came back, and after some talk with them, went off again.

  There was nothing to take him out the following evening. Nobody demanded his time. Yet the next night after supper, he was out trudging up the High Street again. The place was still crowded and he made his way around groups at corners and through lines of people who were spread out across the width of the street. This time he felt the need to look about him with the eye of a stranger. Many times he stopped to stare at familiar things, and once in a while, as if from the corner of his eye, managed to catch some object by surprise. It was a warm night, Far above him he saw rows of elbows upon windowsills and shadowy heads staring down, and above the heads a rocky outline of roofs and steep, black gable walls blocking the night sky. Sometimes he turned back for a closer look at the scrolls on archways, or to search for some small stone head over a door. He had become a tourist among tourists, staring at persons and buildings – critical, admiring, sometimes bored, sometimes amazed at what he saw. He grew tired. His own feet looked strange to him as he stepped on and off the kerb or dodged the slippery stones on uneven bits of pavement. He plodded on. His face confronted him, unawares, in dark shop windows, and different from the conscious face in the bedroom mirror. This person looked distraught, looked lonely, battered even, and hardly to be distinguished from some of the down-and-outs who wandered in and out of nearby pubs.

  Renwick had come a long way. The Castl
e was now in view and it was giving all of them the full treatment. He had seen this often enough – illumined stone and black battlements against a sky still red with sunset. To crown all, a huge, white supermoon breaking through clouds. Renwick found himself in the midst of a large group, all turned that way, all staring as if at a high stage. They were a long time staring. Suddenly, as if at a warning buzz in the brain, Renwick resumed citizenship. He was proud yet impatient of the wide eyes around him. He glanced at his watch, heard his own voice repeat familiar words:

  ‘Yes, that’s often how it is – very dramatic, very spectacular. Illumined? Yes, very often. The full moon? Yes, don’t ask me how – it seems often to be full and very well placed, though more romantically speaking than astronomically I would say. You must remember though – we are not only a romantic city. Far from it. Yes, yes, of course there’s stuff coming down, but have you seen the new things going up – the business side of things. In other words, we are a busy people. Time moves on, you see. It moves on here as in every other place.’ He looked a man of some consequence, a very busy man with a full timetable to get through. They made way for him. He wished them goodnight, passed on.

  He was alone now and walking in a quiet side street. The moon and the red sky were behind, the illumination blocked out by high office buildings. He was making for home. Once he stopped in passing for a word with an acquaintance, until they reminded one another of the time and quickly separated. Five persons made up on him and passed, talking animatedly, and Renwick recognized the cadence of this tongue. The blonde girl was walking with three others and a young man. The man was native to the city. The rest, he noted, were all tall, all fair, all dressed with a flair and colour that stood out even in the dark street. If this was the northern myth it was coming over in style. The girl gave him a wave as they went by. ‘A fine night,’ said Renwick.

  ‘Yes,’ the girl called back. ‘And how about your moon tonight? Have you looked yet? Has it turned into a clock for you?’ He heard her answering the young man, heard her say in a voice – low, but audible to touchy ears: ‘No, no, not moonstruck. He is a time-keeper. The man is clock-mad!’ She made some remark to the others in her own language. They laughed, looked back over their shoulders and gave him a friendly wave. All five went on their way, noiseless, in rubber soles, and disappeared round the next corner.

  But Renwick’s shoes were loud on the paving-stones, the footsteps rang in his ears like a metronome. But what were they counting out? Minutes or stones? He stared round once, then turned his back again. This moon had looked cold and white as a snowball. Yet his moonlit ears burned as he walked on.

  Concerto

  ABOUT HALF-WAY THROUGH the concerto, some of those sitting in the organ gallery, facing the rest of the audience and overlooking the orchestra, become aware of a disturbance in the body of the hall. The seats in this gallery face the conductor, who for the last few minutes has been leaning out over the rostrum whacking down a thicket of cellos with one hand, and with the other cunningly lifting the uncertain horns higher and still higher up into a perilous place above the other instruments. Behind him the whole auditorium opens out, shell-shaped, its steep and shallow shelves, boxes and ledges neatly packed with people. The sloping ground floor and overhanging gallery have few empty seats and the place has a smooth appearance – a sober mosaic of browns and greys flicked here and there with scarlet.

  At last the horns make it. But there is a quavering on the long-drawn-out top note which brings a momentary grimace to the conductor’s mouth as though he had bitten through something sour. The horn-players lower their instruments and stare in front of them with expressionless faces. At any other time some eyes in this audience might have studied the faces closely to discover which man had produced the wavering note – whether there was a corresponding wavering in the eyes of one of them or a slight wryness about the lips. But not tonight. Tonight all eyes have been directed to another spot.

  The disturbance comes from the middle stalls. Down there a man has got to his feet and is leaning over the row in front. He appears to be conducting on his own account. He too entreats, he exhorts. He too encourages something to rise. Now a small group of people are up on their feet, and just as the horns extricate themselves, this man who is conducting operations down in the stalls manages to persuade the group to lift something up out of the darkness between the narrow seats. It is a tricky business, but at last a man is pulled clear and comes into view in a horizontal position, his long legs and his shoulders supported by several persons who have started to shuffle sideways with their burden along the row. Everyone now seems anxious to support this thin figure. Each leg is held by at least three people and the arms are carried on either side by two men and two women. Someone cups his head. Another handles the feet. Even those who are too far away to be actually supporting any part of his body feel it their duty to stretch out a finger simply to touch him, as a sacred object might be touched in a procession. He moves, propelled by these reverent touches, bouncing a little in the anxious arms. It is almost as if he were bouncing in time to a great pounding of drums. For since the horn-players lowered their instruments the music has grown violent in tempo and volume.

  But suddenly, without warning, the violent music stops. There is a second of stunning silence. Then the solo violinist, who has stood patiently for some time letting the waves of sound crash over his bowed head, begins a series of scales which climb very quietly, one after the other, up onto a note so high that the silence can also be heard like a slight hiss directly above his head. This silence and the icy note of the single violin comes as a shock to those whose eyes are riveted on the scene going on down below. For it is no longer merely a mimed scene floating in the middle distance. The silence had shifted it nearer as though the protective membrane which sealed it off has been abruptly ripped. Now there are sounds coming up – ordinary sounds which in the circumstances sound horrible. There is a dull bumping and dragging of feet, a rustling and breathing, low voices arguing. Obviously the thing is beginning to get the upper hand. It is attracting more and more interest. Heads are turning and the people in the organ gallery can see the round, blank listening faces on either side change suddenly to keen, watchful profiles. There are even heads peering from the plush-covered front row of the dress circle – the silver heads and craning necks of elderly ladies, long-trained never to peer and crane.

  But there is one head which, shockingly, has not turned at all after the first glance behind. It is the man who is seated at the end of the row immediately in front of that from which the invalid has been lifted. Everyone else in his row is up ready to help. The man must have skin of leather and iron nerves. Eyes which might have scrutinized the horn-players now study his face to see whether he is going to relent, to find out if there is about him the slightest flicker of an uneasy conscience. But no. What kind of man is this? Is this the sort of man who might see his own mother carried past on a stretcher without shifting his legs out of the way? He does not turn his head even when the horizontal figure is moving directly behind his seat. At that moment, however, the man and woman who are holding an arm, suddenly let it go – the better to support the fainting man’s back while manoeuvring the awkward turn into the middle aisle of the hall. The arm swings down heavily and deals the man still seated in front a clout over the ear. It is an admonitory blow, as though from his deepest unconscious or perhaps from death itself, the invalid is aware there is still someone around who is not giving him the same tender attention all the others have shown.

  There is now a fervent longing for the music to gather its forces again and crush the disturbance before it gets out of hand. But there is no hint of this happening. The violinist is still playing his icy scales, accompanied as though from remotest space by the strings and woodwind. A man of fifty, he is tall and exceedingly thin, with a bony hatchet face and fairish-grey hair brushed back from the brow. This brow gives the impression of being unnaturally exposed, as though his skull, and particul
arly the bone of his temples, had resisted a continual pressure of music which would have caused most other skulls to cave in. His eyes are deep-set and give him a sightless look while he is playing. Strangely enough, he is not unlike the man who is being carried out up the aisle. One is narrow and vertical with huge hands like an elongated Gothic cathedral figure – grotesque or splendid, depending on how the light might fall from a stained glass window. The other is stiff, horizontal and grey like the stretched-out figure on a tomb. The prostrate man has his own look of dedication, though in his case it is not to music, for by his collapse he has destroyed any possibility of listening.

  These two figures, the vertical and the horizontal, in their terrifying absorption, their absolute disregard of everything else, seem somehow related. Both have their supporters, though now it seems that the horizontal has the greater following. The devoted, inner circle round him have made sure of that. Great, ever-widening rings of curiosity ripple out towards him, interlinking with the rings still concentrating on the violinist and causing even there a shimmer of awareness. The conductor of the devotees in the stalls is now walking backwards up the aisle on his tiptoes, well in front of the others. With his right hand he beckons reassuringly to the group coming up after him, and with his powerful left he attempts to quell any sign of interference from those sitting on either side of the aisle. But those nearest the door, paralysed till now, suddenly spring to their feet and fight for first place to heave their weight against it. The doors crash outward and the heaped figures pitch through.

  This crash has coincided to a split second with the quietest bars of the concerto – that point where not only the soloist, but all other players have lowered their instruments – all, that is to say, except the flute. This flute has started up as though playing solely for the benefit of the group just outside the door, visible in the brilliant light of the vestibule. As though involved in a ritual dance, they crouch, rise, bend, and kneel beneath the hands of their leader who is now signalling to invisible figures further out. Someone carrying a jug and tumbler appears and kneels, and a chinking of glass comes from the centre of the group. It is a light sound but clear as a bell, and it combines with the flute in a duet which can be heard to the furthest corners of the hall.