The Society of Others

by William Nicholson

  I have stopped because I have seen all this before: the avenue of trees, the church, the man with the dog. I tell myself this is the experience called déjà vu, which is no more than a kind of crossing of wires in the brain. The thing you think you’ve seen before is the same thing you’re looking at now, only your brain has diverted the message via its ancient memories store, and it reaches your conscious mind labelled “past experience.” This keeps happening to me: one of the symptoms of disorientation. A creepy feeling.

  I set off once more towards the town. There are others out on the road ahead of me. No sounds: no bells or voices or passing cars or laughter. Everyone is afraid. Before Bruno left me, at the point where the farm track met the road, I asked him what it is the people fear, the terrorists or the police? Everyone, he answered. Everyone is afraid of everyone. It’s not only the cold and the snow that keep people in their houses. Out on the streets anything may happen. Safety lies in not getting involved. Even witnessing one of the anythings is dangerous. The active parties don’t like witnesses.

  Bruno can read. That is, he can form the words represented by letters, moving his finger carefully across the page. He saw my book and read the name VICINO and recognised it. His teacher has a book with the same name on its cover. He admires his teacher greatly, he is brave and clever and wears glasses. His name is Eckhard. It is this teacher who taught him his English.

  In the course of our early-morning trudge across the snowy fields I became quite impressed by Bruno. His solemn eyes turned towards me again and again, and I felt within him a quiet steady yearning for knowledge. Not knowledge of anything in particular, or for any purpose, just a reaching out of his young mind. He made me feel he was like a prisoner in a cell with one very small window, out of which he gazes all day in hope of building a picture of the great world.

  He knew I was not from his own country. So where was I from? I said England. England! I might as well have said Eldorado. His eyes grew wide with wonder.

  “What is it like in England?” he asked. “I hear it’s a very beautiful country where all the people are happy and free.”

  What can I say? Two out of three? So I tell him it’s good in England, but it has its downside like everywhere. He doesn’t believe me. If he could go to England he would be happy for the rest of his life.

  “What would you do in England, Bruno?”

  “I would walk in the park and drink tea and watch television.”

  Not a bad plan for a life. I’ve known worse.

  The avenue leads me into a narrow street, and the street leads me into a small square. Here is the church before me now, unexpectedly large. There’s also an inn, which seems to be closed, and a long tile-roofed arcade that I take to be the market place, and a square stone building at its far end that I take to be the school. All this following Bruno’s careful instructions. The school has stone steps covered by a wooden porch, leading to an arched doorway.

  Under other circumstances the scene would be charming. Due to the poverty of the region, the little town has not been developed since its last period of prosperity, which I guess to be some time in the seventeenth century. The effect, especially under snow, is picturesque. There are travellers who pride themselves on discovering unspoiled destinations, rather like men who like sex with virgins, so they can be the first to spoil them. They’d like this place. They’ll be here soon. Then the inn will be turned into a small but luxurious hotel, and there’ll be living statues performing under the arcade.

  No signs of bomb-wielding terrorists or men in black nylon jackets. I feel invisible in my long coat and fur hat. My sole objective now is to escape the men who pursue me, who have information, who are well trained, and to leave this country and find my way home to England, where I can walk in the park and drink tea and watch television. To this end I now cross the brushed snow of the square and climb the stone steps beneath the wooden porch of the school.

  The door is ajar. No lights are on inside, and I can find no light switch. Blinds are drawn at the windows. Winter daylight creeps through cracks, and as my eyes adjust I find I can see well enough.

  A small lobby, its walls lined with coat-hooks. Two doors, leading into classrooms. A staircase, with worn shiny metal edges on its treads. I push on a door and go into one of the classrooms, where a light is on. Long tables with benches, lined up facing a blackboard. On the blackboard, columns of words neatly written in pairs. The words are in English.

  give gave

  meet met

  take took

  go went

  come came

  say said

  Without stopping to think why I do it, I read the words out loud. Maybe it’s because I’m homesick.

  “Give, gave. Meet, met. Take, took.”

  A voice behind me chimes in:

  “Go, went. Come, came. Say, said.”

  I turn to find a bony man of maybe thirty with a face like a skull and round black-rimmed spectacles. He is sitting at a table in one corner, at work on some papers. This has to be Eckhard.

  “You are English, I suppose?”

  He speaks like someone who has read a great deal but has never heard the language spoken. The emphases fall in the wrong places.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “I love your language. Please speak some more.”

  I stare at him like I’m stupid.

  “I’m not really much of a speaker,” I say.

  “Ah.” He sighs with pleasure. “I’m. That is the elision of I am, which is from the verb to be. Be, am. No structural connection at all. I am, you are, he is. All quite different word forms, yet all the present tense of the verb to be. Your language refuses to conform to any laws. This is why it has much moral beauty.”

  This is quite an opening. His goggle-glassed eyes shine with enthusiasm.

  “Right,” I say.

  “Right! You say, Right. This word I think signifies: maybe, okay. But this is also the word that signifies, one, correct meaning, and two, that which by common custom is due to a person. The rights of man, yes? So this word has no secure meaning, or rather, no single meaning. Would you say that the task of the auditor is to identify the one intended meaning from the context, or that all meanings are present each time of use, enclosed one within another, but as it were in changing orders of priority?”

  I have no answer to this. I feel unable to say “right” again.

  “For example,” he pursues earnestly, “your first meaning is: yes, okay. Your second meaning is perhaps that the reasoning in my statement is correct. But do you also mean to tell me that I have a right to my opinion? Not consciously, I think. But the language carries this possibility. Can you avoid it?”

  This has gone on long enough.

  “Would you be Mr. Eckhard?”

  “Would I be? This tense that you use, it is the conditional. Would I, if I could? You allow me the option of choosing to be someone other. So courteous, even permissive. And yet I must answer you in simple solid words, being a foreigner to your language, yes, my name is Eckhard.”

  Progress.

  “I need help, Mr. Eckhard.”

  His face clouds with caution.

  “Help of what nature?”

  I explain my dilemma, leaving out any details that might make him nervous, such as my alleged assassination of the chief of the security police. I have wandered into this country by mistake. I seem to have attracted suspicion. I wish to leave as quietly as possible.

  Eckhard finds none of this surprising.

  “These are bad times,” he says. “People keep to their homes.”

  “I need a guide to the border.”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  He understands but he does not volunteer to help. I don’t blame him. Stick your head over the parapet round here and you’re liable to have parts of your face removed.

  “I have money. English money. I can pay.”

  He shakes his head. Either he’s not the acquisitive type or it’s not clever to be c
aught dealing in hard currency. I try another approach.

  “When you walk with a stranger you travel further than when you walk with a friend.”

  He goggles at me as if I’ve just developed supernatural powers. “You have read Leon Vicino?”

  I produce the book.

  “Ah!” He takes the book and fingers it lovingly. “You have the English edition. It is well translated?”

  “I think so.”

  “By Vicino himself, of course. He speaks six languages. This book is much beloved. It is beloved by you too?”

  I’m about to correct his use of the word when I realise I have nothing better to put in its place.

  “It’s getting to be quite beloved by me, yes.”

  He beams and embraces me. His breath smells. I guess not being a fully developed consumer society they haven’t reached toothpaste yet.

  “A friend of Vicino’s is a friend of mine. I will help you.”

  So that’s settled.

  He gazes at me, and taps his teeth with one fingernail. He is running through the options open to him. You can always tell when people are processing like this, it’s almost as if a little symbol appears on their face, an hour-glass or a spinning disc, like on a computer screen.

  “They know you are here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You fear them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? You are English.”

  I see I’m going to have to tell him a little more. So I explain about Marker and the burning of the books. Eckhard keeps nodding as I talk. It seems he knows part of this already.

  “They found a list,” he tells me. “It is very terrible. Many good people now hide.”

  However this seems to have done the trick, because all at once he comes to a decision.

  “There is a border crossing,” he says, “where the guards may be bribed. It’s far from here, at least four days’ journey, because you must go by the back roads. You will need a guide.” He thinks some more. “I will guide you part of the way myself. Then others will complete the journey.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “Today, you had better stay at my friend’s house. You will be safe there, and we can talk. I will take you.”

  When he says he’ll take me he turns out to be speaking metaphorically. His spirit will take me, maybe. Meanwhile his body will take damn good care not to be seen within half a mile of me. He draws me a little map. The main street of the town, a right turn, a longish walk, a house with a brick archway and red shutters that will be closed.

  “You must knock on the door. You ask for Sabine, yes? You go through the front room to the room at the back. Yes?”

  Not hard to follow. I tell him I’m with him every step of the way.

  “The front room, it is not important. You will go to the room at the back. I will be there.”

  He leaves first. I am to wait until he’s well gone, then I’m to follow. I feel like I’ve been told to shut my eyes and count to forty. When I’m done maybe I’ll shout out, Coming! Ready or not!

  I’m beginning to feel hungry. Bruno and I left the farm at first light, but it was a long walk to the road, and a longer one down the road to the town. Already the time is past noon. I resolve to try to buy some bread or sausage as I pass through the town. Then I remember yet again that I have no local currency. So I walk faster, to arrive sooner at the house of Eckhard’s friends. They will feed me.

  All the houses in the street turn out to have brick archways over their doors; or, to be precise, red brick alternating with blocks of whitish stone. Many of the houses also have red shutters. Only one seems to have its shutters closed at this hour of the day. Its outer door stands open.

  I look in, uncertain. The door opens onto a passage, which leads to a courtyard. I go through the passage, past a closed door. The courtyard is very clean, paved in cream-coloured brick. A broom lies on the ground, its bristles bound together with white cord, beside a wooden bucket. No one in sight. I go back out into the street, and look again at the closed red shutters.

  I know this red. It’s a soft dusty red, somewhere between earth and sunset. My mother took forever picking it out from a stack of colour cards in the Historical Colour Range. It’s called Etruscan Red, and it’s the colour of our front door. What is happening to me?

  I go back into the passage and knock on the inner door. After a moment it’s opened by a middle-aged woman wearing an apron and holding a coffee-jug in one hand. She lets me in without question. The room I now enter is quite dark. The woman with the jug precedes me, and then stops and turns to me with an indulgent smile, and points with her free hand. She’s showing me the only other person in the room, a much younger woman, who wears a red sleeveless jacket over a rumpled white blouse. She sits on a chair, her head on her hand, her elbow on her knee, asleep.

  The jug woman says something to me in her language, and laughs. Behind the sleeper is a bar. I look towards the bar and know I will see a cat. The cat has crept up onto the bar, and is stealing food left unguarded on a plate: a cold chicken, only its neck is too long to be a chicken. The wooden-boarded floor is painted in faded black lozenges, like a chessboard. I have known all this before. The woman sees the cat, and swipes at it, and puts down her jug with a bang. The sleeper wakes and yawns, and looks up at me without surprise or enthusiasm.

  “Okay,” she says sleepily. “Okay, okay.”

  I say, “Sabine.”

  The jug woman raises her eyebrows and glances at the door behind her, then looks quickly away, as if she has heard nothing. The younger woman shrugs and settles back into her sleeping posture. I go through the door.

  The back room is small and crowded. Two middle-aged ladies sit whispering and drinking, on either side of an old man who has fallen asleep sitting very upright on a high-backed chair, his hat still on his head. Further into the room, at a table covered with a red-and-black rug, sits a grave round-faced man, reading aloud from a book he holds open in one hand, while a round-faced woman listens, a stringed instrument on her lap. It’s a mandolin, or a lute. Eckhard himself stands behind the reader, his eyes tracking the words as they are spoken. The mandolin woman plucks the strings softly, ping-ping-ping. Not a mandolin, a theorbo. I wonder briefly how I know this arcane name. On the floor, left over from some earlier game of cards, lies an ace of spades.

  Eckhard hears me come in and looks up, and gives a smile of pleasure. He comes over to me and pumps my hand.

  “You are here! So good!”

  He introduces me to the others with a small speech in which I recognise the word “England.” They all clap, and the old man wakes up and takes his hat off. One of the middle-aged ladies pours me a glass of whatever it is they have been drinking. I seem to be a hit.

  “These people,” Eckhard explains, “their names are on the list. The police wish to interrogate them.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “The activities of the society concern them.”

  The others in the room look so inoffensive, so utterly respectable, that I find this hard to believe.

  “Are you all part of the resistance movement?”

  “No,” he replied. “The movement, no. But we are educated. We know that matters are arranged differently in other countries. We think for ourselves. We are members of the Society of Others.”

  “That’s enough?”

  He stares at me.

  “Don’t you know? It is enough to question the need for the state of emergency. It is enough to be the friend of one who has questioned the need for the state of emergency. It is enough to have your name in the address book of a relative who has a friend who has questioned the need for the state of emergency. They will interrogate you for that.”

  He adopts the fierce demeanour of an interrogator, punching questions at me.

  “Do you understand how great is the danger from terrorists? Do you agree that any measures, however extreme, are justified in the fight against terror? If not, you are yourself a ter
rorist! You are part of the thought-climate which makes terrorism possible! You are part of the rot that must be cut away!”

  He speaks so vehemently that his pale cheeks become blotched with pink. What am I supposed to say to all that? Defensively, I drink my drink. Apple juice.

  “Forgive me, please. These things make me angry. You have eaten?”

  No, I have not eaten. They bring me food, slices of ham pie and cold boiled potatoes and pickled cabbage. It turns out the others all speak a few words of English which they’re eager to try out on me, so as I eat I do my best to respond intelligently to a series of surreal statements.

  “Please tell me where is the railway station.”

  “I wish this bus to go to Piccadilly.”

  “If the day is rain, I will have umbrella.”

  “Will you to dance with me kindly?”

  No actual answer is required, only my acknowledgement that the sentences are more or less correctly formed and have meaning. At the same time, I hear the unseen outer door open and close. I hear voices from the front room, followed by footsteps going up a staircase. Whoever it is has gone into the room directly above us. Shortly there comes the unmistakable sound of bedsprings creaking to a mounting rhythm.

  Eckhard meets my eyes with another of his wry shrugs.

  “This is why the police don’t look here,” he explains. “They have other interests.” A glance up at the ceiling.

  I am in the back room of a small brothel favoured by the security police. There are three girls who work here regularly, all former students of Eckhard. One of them is the woman with the theorbo. Only now do I discover I have a pre-existing notion of the women who wait in brothels to give pleasure to men. I’ve never been in a brothel before, but I have this very clear image of a naked woman lying on a couch, before a red velvet drape. She’s on her side, with her back towards me, so there’s nothing on view that the censor would consider unacceptable. Even so, the curve of her naked back, the swell of her naked bottom, and in particular the dimple at the top of her left buttock, is seriously arousing. I would pay money to cuddle up to that. However the picture I have retained so fondly in my memory is not a whore at all but a goddess and a famous work of art; to be exact, the Rokeby Venus by Velázquez. She’s looking in this mirror, her face is kind of smudgy, but it’s definitely looking out at me. This is supposed to be Venus reflecting on her beauty. You go with that if you want to. I say she’s looking at me with that smudgy face and saying, You want to fuck me, right? I should know. I’ve jerked off to her in my time.