The Book of Revelation

by Rupert Thomson

  “It wasn’t like that—”

  “I bet you don’t even remember my name. What’s my name?”

  She was right, of course. And she saw that she was right.

  “Fuck you,” she said, and walked out of the café, slamming the door behind her.

  I looked down at the table. When I lifted my eyes again, Juliette was staring at me in bewilderment.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said.

  She tried to laugh the whole thing off, but the laughter caught on something in her. With a kind of shocked wonder in her voice, she said, “What did you do to her?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “You went out with her, though?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  Juliette looked at me, then slowly shook her head.

  “Juliette,” and I took her hand, “you have to believe me. There was nothing between us. Nothing at all.”

  I suppose I could have used the sudden intrusion of the blonde girl to discourage Juliette for good, but what I learned from the episode, even while it was happening, was that I didn’t want to discourage her. I now felt that Juliette was closer to me than anybody else I knew, and I could not afford to lose her.

  By the time we left the café, I had succeeded in persuading her that I was innocent of any wrongdoing, though I could tell by the look she gave me as she walked away, just one look, over her shoulder, that I was more of a mystery to her than ever.

  •

  Later that week, on my day off, I travelled down to Bloemendaal to visit Isabel. Else let me in, as usual. Isabel was still in remission, she told me, and growing stronger every day. The doctors were cautiously optimistic.

  For the first half-hour, though, Isabel just complained. She thought chemotherapy was barbaric. With all the recent advances in medicine, she found it hard to believe that treatment was still so primitive. She wished Else didn’t fuss so much. Else was always fussing. And as for her doctors, they were tyrants because they had forbidden her to smoke. Then, as the light outside began to fade, she asked if I had ever heard of Nova Zembla. I shook my head.

  In the Middle Ages, she said, if you wanted to travel to China, you had to sail south, past the Cape of Good Hope. It was a long and dangerous voyage. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, however, a Dutch explorer tried to change all that. He sailed north instead, hoping to establish a shorter, safer route. The explorer’s name was Willem Barentsz, and there was a street in Amsterdam named in his honour. There were also streets named after his captain, Van Heemskerck, and Nova Zembla, the island which played such a big part in their story.

  Barentsz’s last expedition had left Amsterdam on 18 May 1596. Some weeks later, his ship became trapped in ice off the north coast of Russia, and Barentsz and his crew found themselves marooned on Nova Zembla. In pictures, the island appeared to have a certain stark beauty. The ice that surrounded it for most of the year was pale-blue, almost turquoise, and sculpted into strange shapes by the elements. The sunsets could be breathtaking—bands of crimson folding into deepest black. To Barentsz, though, it must have seemed like the end of the world. There were no trees, only stones, and, from August onwards, it was dark almost all the time. Using materials commandeered from the ship, the men built a makeshift camp. They called it “Het Behouden Huys,” which meant “The Sheltered House” or “The House That Remains.” They spent the entire winter there, living on a diet of Arctic foxes and polar bears, which they shot with the muskets they had brought with them. Finally, in June of the following year, they managed to row to the mainland. They did not reach Amsterdam until 1 November 1597. Only twelve of the crew survived.

  In 1871 a Norwegian expedition discovered the remnants of the camp where Barentsz and his men had lived for so many months. On the ground were books, tools, clothes, ammunition, cutlery and navigation equipment, all of which had been lying undisturbed on Nova Zembla for almost three centuries. But, to this day, the ship that had been captained by Van Heemskerck, and the grave of Willem Barentsz, who had died on the homeward journey, had never been found.

  When Isabel had finished talking, I sat quite still and stared into the fire. While I was being held in the white room I used to think there was a place inside my body that the women could not touch. I used to see this place as a house. A house inside my body where I lived. Where I was safe. From its windows I could look out over land that was flat and featureless. I could see the women, but they were tiny figures, far away. They were always there, but they were always in the distance, and they never came any closer. Even if they had come closer they couldn’t have entered. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. And now, after hearing what had happened to the Dutch explorer and his crew, I realised that that was how I had survived. . . .

  At last I looked away from the fire, and I felt as if my eyes were glowing, as if they were sending beams of bright, pale light into the room.

  “What do you think of the story?” Isabel asked.

  “It would make a great ballet,” I said, surprising myself. The thought and the words seemed to have arrived simultaneously.

  But Isabel was smiling, as if I had given her the answer she was looking for.

  “I think so too,” she said.

  When Else walked in a few moments later, to persuade Isabel that she should rest, we were both still smiling at each other.

  “You should see yourselves,” she said. “You’re like a couple of conspirators.”

  That was exactly what we were. As a result of our various misfortunes, Isabel and I had become inextricably linked, and during the next few weeks, the weeks that led up to Christmas, we began to discuss a project that would bring us still closer together. The ballet would be based on the story of Barentsz, but only in the loosest sense; it would also draw heavily on my own experience. I wanted to use just four dancers—one male, to represent the explorer and his crew, and three female, to represent the various forms of hardship they endured—and Isabel agreed. I had even thought of music: at home, in my apartment, I had been listening to Jean Barraqué’s Piano Sonata, which was like a landscape in itself, with its dramatic storms of sound and its desolate silences. Though we had neither commission nor deadline, though the world knew nothing of our collaboration, we worked eagerly. Isabel took notes, using Labanotation, an old-fashioned method of transcribing movement that she had taught me several years before. I cleared a space around the divan so I could develop my ideas in front of her. I wanted to invent steps that captured the shock of being plunged into the unknown. They would be steps taken in the dark, in other words, steps that sought enlightenment. They would reveal how foreign we are to one another. They would illustrate the paradox that when we are naked we become less knowable, and that our skin is the greatest mystery of all.

  It felt strange, after so long, to be producing choreography again, and I sometimes caught Isabel giving me an oddly satisfied and yet shrewd look, which it took me a while to dissect. I thought she was probably congratulating herself on having lured me back to work. That was part of it. But she might also have been wondering whether she would live to see the ballet finished. Or perhaps that did not matter to her. She had been the impulse behind it, the catalyst, and that was enough; she expected me to see it through on her behalf—or, even, in her honour. For, although she was stronger than she had been in November, she still tired easily. When she needed rest, I would put on my coat and walk out into the landscape I had grown to love, the pine forest that stretched behind the house, or the sand-dunes, and I would return an hour later with my ears ringing from the wind, and nothing in my mind, nothing except the bleakness of the place and the purity of light—the peace.

  •

  That Christmas I flew home to see my parents. We had a relaxing, enjoyable few days together. I was able to talk about my collaboration with Isabel, who was, after all, one of the most famous choreographers in Europe. I told them about Barentsz and Nova Zembla, realising, as I did so, that I was giving them a coded version o
f my own story. I saw once again how much I owed to Isabel. In telling the story of Barentsz, I could give him emotions I had experienced myself—shock, bewilderment, fear, hope, shame. This was as close as I would ever come to telling my family what had happened to me, and perhaps, in the end, it was close enough.

  On Boxing Day I met up with Philip, a cousin of mine who I hadn’t seen for years. Philip was already drunk when he arrived at the pub. As soon as he sat down he started telling me about how he was having trouble finding a girlfriend. It was all he wanted, he said, to be married, to have children, but no one was interested in him. He swallowed a third of his pint, sighed deeply, and then said, “What about you?” Suddenly I found myself talking about Juliette. I talked about how we had met, on the train to Amsterdam, and how sympathetic and intuitive she had been. I talked about the quality she had, of seeming to stand all alone in the world, and how I thought it might be to do with her having been adopted. I talked about her beauty, and how lightly she carried it, as if it was a joke someone had played on her. I had never talked about her before, and though it seemed tactless, in the circumstances, I went on talking about her because I felt I was making discoveries. When I stopped, Philip looked at me, his face quite still for a moment, and then he said, “Well, it’s all right for some,” and plunged forlornly back into his beer. Later that night, as I prepared for bed, I leaned on the sink and looked deep into the mirror. Beyond my face. Into the space behind it. The space where we keep secrets, even from ourselves. It’s all right for some, I thought. And then I said the words out loud: “It’s all right for some.” In that moment something was decided—in a way I felt it had been decided for me—and, two days later, on the flight back to Amsterdam, I could scarcely contain my impatience. At last the plane begin its descent, and the clouds parted, and I caught a glimpse of the North Sea, cold and sluggish, and the strip of palest yellow that was the coast of Holland. Then the runway was flashing by, beneath the wing. . . .

  As soon as I was inside the airport I went to a pay-phone and rang Juliette. She wasn’t there, so I left a message. I’m back. I need to see you. Call me. I rang her again when I reached my apartment, and this time she answered. She asked me what Christmas had been like. I told her that my parents had given me a towel, a tie and three pairs of socks. They had always been hopeless at presents. She laughed.

  “Perhaps you’re a mystery to them as well,” she said.

  “Perhaps.” I swallowed quickly. “That’s why I’m calling, actually. I wanted to tell you. All that’s over.”

  Juliette was silent, and I could see her face, eyes lowered, as she weighed up what I had just said.

  I asked her what she was doing for New Year.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, “there are some parties.”

  “I had an idea,” I said. “I thought we could walk down to the Nieuw Markt, just the two of us. They have fireworks down there, don’t they?”

  “You know, I’ve never done that,” she said, “not in all the years I’ve lived here. Not even when I was a child.”

  “So would you like to?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “What about the parties?”

  “What parties?” she said, and laughed.

  •

  I left my apartment at just after half-past eight on New Year’s Eve. The canals had thawed a few days before, and everything that had been thrown on to the ice had sunk swiftly to the bottom, never to be seen again. This seemed to augur well. It was strange. I had become superstitious for the first time in my life. I was seeing omens everywhere.

  I had arranged to meet Juliette in a bar not far from the red-light district, and I walked quickly, wanting to get there first. As I crossed Marnixstraat I saw somebody aim a rocket out of the window of a passing car and light the touch-paper. For one extraordinary moment the car seemed to be attached to a nearby tree by a frayed bright-orange rope, then the car raced on, making for Leidseplein, and I stood and watched as the tree showered sparks in all directions, like a dog shaking water off its coat.

  When I arrived, Juliette was already there, sitting on a tall stool at the bar. She was wearing a new black leather jacket and a short red mini-skirt with black wool tights. She sat very upright, which gave her a haughty, almost majestic air.

  “I thought I was early,” I said as I walked up to her.

  She looked at her watch, then smiled. “You are early,” she said, “but I was even earlier.”

  Instead of the usual three kisses on alternate cheeks, I leaned forwards and kissed her lips. They were softer than I remembered, and sweet from the hot chocolate that she was drinking. I stood back. She looked both surprised and curious, and yet there was still the ghost of a smile on her face.

  “I’ve missed you,” I said. “I really have. It’s been so long.”

  “Do I look the same?”

  “More beautiful, if anything.”

  I ordered a whisky and stood beside her, aware that my leg was touching hers. All around me people’s faces glowed, as if lit from inside. The last night of the year.

  “What’s in the bag?” Juliette asked, touching the small backpack I was carrying.

  I handed it to her. “Have a look.”

  She undid the drawstring, reached inside and took out a bottle of champagne. “For us?”

  I nodded. “For later. Midnight.”

  She reached inside again. This time she found a small white packet tied up with silver ribbon.

  “That’s for you,” I said. “A present.”

  This was not something she had been expecting. I watched her untie the ribbon, then undo the wrapping-paper. Inside was a small square box. She lifted the lid off the box and there, lying in a bed of cotton-wool, was a silver chain with a 2 1/2-guilder coin attached to it. It was the coin I had skimmed across the canal, the coin she had led me out across the ice to find. I wondered if she would understand what I meant by it. I hoped she would. I watched her as she looked down at the present, which was now coiled, glinting, in the palm of her hand.

  “You trust me,” she said.

  •

  Though it was only a short distance to the Nieuw Markt, it took us twenty minutes, the crowd thickening as we drew closer. Once, somebody lit a firecracker that must have been at least fifteen feet long, and people scattered in all directions. I felt Juliette tighten her grip on my hand as we backed against a wall. We watched from a distance as the firecracker writhed and twisted and flung itself about, loud as a machine-gun in the narrow street, then the crowd flowed on, laughing, drinking, making jokes, and, all of a sudden, we were in the square. . . .

  The atmosphere was jubilant, chaotic. Bonfires had been built on the cobblestones, using whatever came to hand: cardboard boxes, broken chairs, fruit crates—even a rowing-boat. We passed two men who were wearing giant, painted papier-mâché heads. We saw a girl on stilts stalking through pale, drifting clouds of smoke. Fireworks fizzed horizontally through the darkness, missing people by inches, and the air shook with constant explosions.

  We sat down by the fountain and opened the champagne.

  “I’ve got some pot,” Juliette said.

  She took a joint out of her pocket, lit it and passed it to me. I drew the smoke into my lungs and held it there.

  “Look,” I said.

  From where we were sitting, at the base of the fountain, we could see two transvestites, one dressed in a full-length black ball-gown, the other one in white. They wore extravagant, eighteenth-century wigs, with heavy rolls of hair that tumbled halfway down their backs, and, judging by the way they lurched and tottered across the cobbles, their heels were six inches high. They called out to each other in raucous voices, trading obscene remarks and grimacing theatrically through layers of foundation. Small kerosene lamps arranged in a wide circle marked their territory.

  Juliette was smiling. “They’re wonderful.”

  We stood up and walked over. The transvestite in the black dress was drinking from a champagne bottle. T
he one in white blew smoke rings and winked at men whenever he caught them watching. They took turns lighting the fireworks that were placed haphazardly on the ground all round them.

  As I passed the champagne to Juliette, the transvestite who was wearing black swayed over to her. Up close his dress looked exactly like charred newspaper. I had the feeling that if I touched the fabric it would crumble into dust.

  He raised his bottle and touched it against hers. The weighty clink of thick green glass.

  “So who are you with tonight?” he said.

  Juliette grinned, but didn’t answer.

  The transvestite turned to me. His teeth were gappy and rotten, and his hollow eyes glittered with an almost subterranean light. He spoke to me in Dutch, putting his mouth close to my ear, so close that I could smell the alcohol and tobacco on his breath, and the sickly, sodden perfume of his skin.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said. “Look after her.”

  Then he staggered away across the cobblestones, stooping once to light another firework with the tip of his cigarette.

  “What did he say?” Juliette asked.

  I smiled. “I can’t tell you.”

  “It was about me?”

  I nodded.

  “Was it nice?”

  I looked at the transvestite. He was twenty yards away, flirting with a group of boys who were drinking beer out of cans. His champagne bottle was empty now, and he held it by the neck like a juggler’s club. I let my eyes drift beyond him. The sky flashed mauve and white and crimson above the rooftops as fireworks exploded in the side-streets behind the square.

  “It was perfect,” I said.

  Just then all the clocks began to strike. It was midnight, and we hadn’t even realised. I laughed and took Juliette in my arms and when the last note sounded, a roar filled the square, as if a furnace door had been opened, or a great wind had descended, and we clung to each other, and we kissed for so long, my tongue touching hers, that when I opened my eyes I was dazzled by the eerie silver light that seemed to surround us. I stood back and looked at her and even though I was stoned by now, drunk too, I still had the same feeling of absolute certainty that I had had while I was looking into the mirror at my parents’ house five days before.