The Currency of Paper

by Alex Kovacs

  In the evenings, Maximilian would shuffle back to his room, his clothes and hands covered with ink, his limbs aching from the day’s boredoms and exertions, his mind exhausted and spent. When in this state, he was barely capable of any intellectual activity at all. Slumping on his bed, dejected, he would stare vacantly up at the ceiling, following the elaborate maze of cracks gradually forming there. Lighting a cigarette, he would watch the smoke rise and curl into spirals before him as he attempted to marshal energies he usually found he no longer possessed.

  After spending a couple of months teaching himself how to pick locks, Maximilian began to break into the printing works in the middle of the night. He was working on a private project, a pursuit which kept him almost as busy as his “real” work: learning the art of counterfeiting. It was only through counterfeiting that he saw any likelihood of obtaining freedom. In all, he spent just over a year breaking into the works, entirely between the hours of two and four A.M. on weekday evenings only, hours when he was certain to encounter no one, but which were nevertheless wracked with paranoia and adrenaline. Returning to the building later in the morning, he would fight through waves of exhaustion, doing his best to pretend that he was alert and attentive.

  Once he felt assured of his abilities as a counterfeiter, he began to produce an enormous quantity of currency that he initially kept inside a number of boxes hoarded underneath his bed. Once these had accumulated to the extent that he could afford to buy his own printing press, as well as property in which to operate it, he would turn his back on the premises of Mr. Bradley. However, it seemed to take a preternaturally long time for that point to be reached. His progress was exceedingly, unexpectedly slow and many months of boredom and toil ensued, until it seemed as if each working day was spent sleepwalking, and that there would never be any end to his ordeal.

  It was during this period that Maximilian first found himself drifting into a state of complete solitude. Wary of his pastime being discovered, he no longer allowed anyone to enter his room. Feeling a general contempt for the direction that society was taking, he turned his back on the very few friends that he had, eventually refusing all meetings without exception. After only a few months of this, he could no longer even contemplate any other way of living.

  Finally, in March 1953, he believed that he had printed enough banknotes to resign from Bradley and Co. That spring, Maximilian made a number of preparations for his future. Visiting a tailor in Marylebone, he bought himself his first suit of any genuine quality. Attired thus he began to scour properties all over the East End, paying particular attention to the factor of privacy. Settling upon a warehouse overlooking Hackney Marshes, he soon installed the equipment that he required and began his lifelong task of printing a relentless stream of illegitimate banknotes.

  By paying great attention to every last detail of design, as well as keeping abreast of every change enacted upon UK currency, Maximilian produced replicas that were so exact, so perfect in every respect, that only the most attentive and experienced of cashiers noticed that a given slip of paper being passed between one hand and another was not in fact the authentic work of the Bank of England. No business ever found itself in trouble on account of Maximilian’s actions. For forty-seven years he was entirely successful in using his notes without the slightest problem arising.

  He took many elaborate precautions, of course, with the whole enterprise, not wanting to put the life that he was building for himself at risk. He would always wear a pair of leather gloves when handling the notes, and he was careful to wear only drab, plain clothes, always assuming an expression of bland contentment. His manner and appearance were so ordinary that it was almost impossible to remember him afterwards.

  As a rule, he would never make a purchase in the same shop within a span of ten years. This required an enormous amount of travelling from one part of the city to another, an activity which he pursued doggedly on a regular basis for a number of decades, often passing through the hundreds of forgotten London suburbs, an itinerary that included Wanstead, Ilford, Barking, Bexley, Farnborough, Sidcup, Teddingon, Hayes, Ruislip, Stanmore, Enfield, Wanstead . . .

  He only printed notes of a low denomination because these aroused fewer suspicions. When spent they would generate a great deal of legitimate small change which he would discreetly collect in his briefcase and then take back to deposit in one of the many crates of money that were secreted in his warehouse at Hackney Marshes. If he wished to make a major purchase, he would always draw upon his pile of legitimate currency, most of which found its way over time into one of the many bank accounts that he kept, each bearing relatively paltry sums.

  Maximilian often marvelled that the majority of people pay so little attention to the money that passes through their hands. Few people bother to hold a banknote up to the light and examine just what it is they’re holding. This seemed more and more remarkable to him over time. How could so many manage to be blind to the forms that these slips of paper took?

  Frequently, he found himself admiring the complexity of British banknote designs, particularly those which had arrived after the onset of decimalisation in 1971, an event which had necessitated several months of extremely hard work in order to produce suitable replicas. Only rarely did anyone consider that on the banknotes printed after this date the Queen mysteriously manages to maintain her youth; that on close scrutiny her eyes are revealed to be composed of a series of spirals, making her look like a victim of hypnosis; that detailed illustrations of various historical figures are made up of a complex series of colours, dots and lines; that the paper is thick and waxy, printed on a special cotton weave rarely encountered in any other context in British life; that each banknote has a separate number, a thin strip of silver, a watermark, a shining hologram; that on each side of each banknote a variety of different typefaces are employed—sometimes for the space of a single word alone; and that on each banknote is printed the phrase “I Promise to Pay the Bearer”—an entirely out-dated reference to the origins of paper money as simple promissory notes . . .

  Maximilian often had cause to consider all of this. He came to the conclusion that to even notice such details was to challenge the moral authority of the banknote. Thoughts such as his might potentially move an individual towards the idea that their banknotes could exist in different forms, that, indeed, they did not have to appear in the world at all. Which is not a line of thinking that most citizens want to pursue for very long. Perhaps because it leads in short order to feelings of confusion and anger, to feelings of alienation, to a sense of separation from all of the many other people willing to accept the role of the banknote within their lives. Maximilian presumed that most people were anxious to protect themselves from the cognitive dissonance that might be caused by pursuing the many potential convolutions of thought hidden beneath the surface of the world. Instead, he felt, everyone instinctively taught themselves to ask as few questions as possible, in the hope that this would bring as much lightness and prosperity as they were capable of attaining.

  He never had any qualms about his career as a counterfeiter. Maximilian thought that it was absolutely necessary to challenge the moral authority of money. In his opinion such a system had to be held responsible for many instances of suffering, exclusion, degradation, ignorance, vanity, ugliness, violence, and poverty. In his own oblique way, by behaving as a criminal, he felt that he was staging a protest against this state of affairs.

  Every time that he spent one of his own banknotes, he bought himself a newspaper. Over time he gathered these together on the second floor of his warehouse, arranging them in bundles and rows, carefully labelling them by month and year, keeping the tabloids separate from the broadsheets. The newspapers provided an index to his life. Sometimes he liked to walk from one end of the collection to the other, beginning in 1952 and ending in 1998. As he progressed, the colour of the paper gradually shifted from brown to yellow to white, with hundreds of barely discernible shades of each colour forming a spectru
m of decay. The typefaces, layout and size of the words shifted with the whims of fashion. Photographs gradually took up more space, then became clearer, were eventually printed in colour. Society itself travelled from one era to another and then to another. Entire years and decades raced by in a matter of footsteps. His entire adult life was documented here and the memories that the newspapers provoked were different each time he ventured up to the second floor.

  To enter the newspaper room he had to pass through a narrow trapdoor, his head peeping into the long cone of light thrown from the only window. Atoms of dust would rise in drifting circles, waver softly in the gaseous brown air, settle onto forgotten objects. He spent many hours there alone, idling. Hours when he would trace a finger over surfaces, following patterns and shapes found in the skin of the floors and walls. The smell of ancient paper mingled with the dust and rotting carpets. The room was lit by a single bare lightbulb precariously dangling from a thin length of wire. In odd moments of inspiration he had scrawled flurries of words in pencil on to the dirty beige walls. These were sometimes quotations from the news stories he had read, their dates and page numbers written at the bottom and circled. On other occasions he wrote hurried passages and fragments inspired by literary works.

  His collection of newspapers became a resource that he would consult with regard to a multitude of purposes. If he wanted to generate ideas, objects, or phrases at random he would choose a particular date and then open the relevant newspaper to see what it contained. When, on a given evening, he wished to remember a certain year, he would go upstairs and linger in the attic. He found that it was the incidental details that most stimulated his interest and provoked the most potent memories. The choice of certain words, a particular font, the cut of a dress in a photograph, these could all bring back the look and feel of a particular year or period, evoking the often unconscious textures and attitudes he had absorbed, though not always aware of them at the time.

  He never cut out any clippings from the papers; he found that he preferred the beauty of a complete and untarnished issue. He cherished the illusion of being able to open a newspaper “as if upon the day itself”. This constituted one of his principal and favourite methods of time travel. When he concentrated, he was capable of convincing himself that he had actually taken up residence in a past year. It came down to nothing more than playing some music recorded in that year, looking over some old photographs, reading the relevant newspaper. And there it was, the year existed once more. If he then spent the rest of the day indoors and busied himself with a task that could conceivably have occurred in 1956, then for all intents and purposes he had successfully transported himself to 1956. Once more he would find himself living through its many pleasures and disappointments.

  Surveying the many stacks of paper, Maximilian would often grin. It was a matter of some satisfaction to him that his activities in this one particular, not especially auspicious building had opened into a multitude of other events, stretching far beyond the boundaries of the present moment. From here he had begun to construct his own invisible world. All that he had known after a certain age had found its origins in this location.

  Details of Some Principal Coordinates

  (1953)

  Parliament Hill, NW3

  On five occasions that summer, Maximilian ventured here at night, bringing a deckchair with him, in which he would sit for some hours, gazing down upon the city spread-eagled below, forming a series of irreverent Morse code messages with a heavy torch.

  17 Bisham Gardens, N6

  Where through the front window Maximilian had once seen an enormously obese man, wearing a pink bowtie and white braces, being given a singing lesson by a teacher possessing a rather stern countenance, who was seemingly fond of jabbing his fingers into the air and making many excited remarks in Italian.

  Putney Library, SW15

  One of Maximilian’s principal haunts at this time, where he would often leaf through a standard guide to astronomy of the period, a volume which he had not been able to locate at any other venue and which contained particularly beautiful illustrations of comets.

  133 Amhurst Road, E8

  Location of a public house which Maximilian always entered when following a route that he frequently walked that year (a walk that was planned to every last detail, which was circular, and which he only took on Saturday afternoons, the day and time for which it had been expressly intended).

  Brompton Cemetery, SW10

  The place in which Maximilian had decided he would most like to be buried. This was due to the cemetery’s centrality, relative modesty, and the beauty it offered the visitor when approached at dusk in winter.

  314 Grove Green Road, E11

  A junk shop with window displays that Maximilian was often drawn to because of their absolute lack of order and decorum, indeed of any sense of composition whatsoever. Certain fascinating objects remained in perpetual window repertory, and of these Maximilian became particularly fixated upon a wooden figurine of a Japanese dancer, dressed in a navy-blue kimono, one foot lifted, frozen in air, its left hand clutching a pink chrysanthemum.

  12 Caversham Road, NW5

  Maximilian saw the head of one of the residents of this property briefly emerge from a window, an image perceived through a pair of binoculars after an extensive series of rovings through doorways, drainpipes, steeples, and chimneys.

  The Oval, SE11

  Maximilian enjoyed spending the entire day here during cricket matches, being ostentatiously preoccupied with anything other than sport. He would sunbathe, watch the animated faces of the many gathered spectators, eat packets of nuts, and read novels, but only rarely would he pay any attention to the vicissitudes of the cricketers parading in the foreground. As far as he was concerned, their presence was required to provide an ambience that would flavour his other, more pressing activities.

  96 South Ealing Road, W5

  A tailor’s shop, home to a mannequin that Maximilian felt bore a startling facial resemblance to him. He liked to come and visit this individual, almost a perfected version of himself, physically speaking, and compare his own sartorial choices and general demeanour with that of his double.

  6 Isabella Street, SE1

  Final destination of a paper aeroplane bearing a handwritten message whose trajectory commenced within the immediate proximity of an adjacent address, and which, in the event, was encountered by no one other than Maximilian himself, who was engaged in a preliminary attempt at paper aeroplane making and throwing, and was in fact disappointed by the results of his efforts.

  16 Blackhorse Lane, E17

  Site of a café where Maximilian would occasionally dine, amongst clattering chairs, steam risings, stained mirrors, tables which each held a single occupant. He would gape at the void of his reflection, sitting through many dead idle hours.

  8 Ballast Quay, SE10

  Approximate source of an extended chain of considerations arising from the glimpsing of a turtle-shaped ocarina, which Maximilian had seen displayed in the front window of this property.

  43 Roman Road, E2

  Premises to which Maximilian would travel especially in order to communicate with a pair of blue-throated macaws, creatures with whom he felt he had begun to develop an affinity.

  83 Blomfield Road, W2

  Address to which Maximilian sent a mysterious chain of correspondence to an unseen recipient bearing the alias of “Jonah Plinkerton,” an individual who claimed to have once been involved in the manufacturing of fondue-sets. After a prolonged dialogue about eighteenth-century fountain design, their letters eventually turned to detailed considerations of the representation of snails throughout the history of painting.

  Camberwell Baths, SE5

  On the 19th of November that year, a phial of green ink was opened in the swimming pool at this location, an act performed purely to facilitate aesthetic contemplation. Afterwards, a large compensatory cash donation was sent to the council anonymously, with an accompanying
letter of apology and explanation, but the ideas and terminologies employed in the text were found lamentably impenetrable by the relevant authorities.

  Growth Towards the Ceiling

  (1954–1976)

  One of Maximilian’s first major acquisitions was an abandoned warehouse, located on the fringes of the city, in Edgware. At first he had not been entirely certain of the use to which he intended to put it, but a number of ideas occurred to him, and he enjoyed visiting the building regularly and dreaming of its potential.

  Empty for many years now, the space had gradually fallen into a state of dereliction. It had once been a paint factory, but all of the machinery had long since been sold, and the only trace of its previous use at the time of purchase was a vague lingering odour of paint, somehow still embedded in certain pockets of air, from which it never seemed to leave, being clearly detectable for many years to come.

  Maximilian enjoyed observing the forms of decay present in the property, and he spent many afternoons pacing back and forth through the space, often with no definite intentions in mind, sometimes even sitting at a single fixed point for many hours at a time, so that he became intimately acquainted with the building’s atmosphere and dimensions, its many interior vantage points, the uses it presented to him.

  During the daylight hours, cold light would stream down into the expanses of the building through the enormous dirt-spattered slates of frosted glass that were fixed into its high, vaulted ceilings. Black weeds poked through the thick cracks that had formed in the walls, withering and drooping amongst a canvas of scratches and stains. Certain windows had been broken, leaving glass fangs protruding, as well as gouges that invited the entrance of cold drifts of air. Pipes emerged from the walls tentatively, decided on a definite course, curved for some distance in a new direction, and finally disappeared into other walls. Oily-feathered pigeons nested at the top of flaking iron columns, spraying down patterns of white shit that accrued and hardened over time. In one room the floors were coated with a thin layer of orange dust. Traces of the old factory workers were present in the form of short trails of footprints, mysterious tracks which faded away almost as soon as they commenced.