The Secret Knowledge

by Andrew Crumey

  “Send him a recording?”

  “We set up a meeting and you play for him.”

  She can’t believe this is real. “He’d honestly do that? Hear me play?”

  “It’s exactly how he started, Pogorelich heard him at Steinway Hall.”

  Paige can imagine it already, the instrument in front of her and Morrow just out of sight, can feel the pressure as she reaches for the keys. Her whole life resting on a single make-or-break performance, the verdict of one person.

  “Well, Paige? Think you’d be up to it?”

  “Mrs White would never let me.”

  Verrine laughs. “Your teacher? What’s she got to do with it? It’s David who’ll be coaching you through this one, assuming we can find him. Though we won’t tell him the plan, of course. You’ll play for Morrow and if it’s a thumbs up I can guarantee we’ll be negotiating a recording contract within days. Better do something with your hair, though, and think about your wardrobe, I’m obviously no expert on that side of it but you’ve got a good figure, Paige, you should show it off. Bit of cleavage.”

  It’s dizzying, this sudden vision of herself being wanted and admired. “Can I say anything about it to my parents?”

  He shakes his head solemnly. “This is business, Paige, the big bad real world. Not a word to anyone, otherwise we risk blowing everything. What will you play for Morrow?”

  “I suppose it would have to be Chopin.”

  “No way,” Verrine says at once. “Forgive me, Paige, but to impress Paul Morrow with Chopin you’d need to be world class, and no matter how much David rates you, you’re not in that league. We’ve got to be realistic, it’s promise we’re selling, not achievement. It’s got to be a piece Morrow doesn’t already know, in fact I’m thinking it should be a piece that nobody knows.”

  “Klauer?”

  “Right on the money. So we drag David out of wherever he’s sulking, make sure he hasn’t turned the Klauer score into paper aeroplanes or roll-ups, get him to take you through it. You learn the whole thing, start to finish. When Morrow hears it, who knows, maybe a new star is born. Here’s to a beautiful collaboration, Paige.” He reaches across to shake her hand, the same firmness she registered at the start, only now the grip lasts longer, his palm is cool, she thinks hers must feel soft and wet. Then he gives her his card, elegantly printed and embossed, bearing what she assumes must be the name of the agency he works for.

  “So there’s only one small problem,” Verrine adds as she puts the card away in her purse. “We need David. If he calls, as I’m sure he will, you know what to do. Arrange to meet him and tell me about it at once.”

  Paige leaves the restaurant feeling elated at the prospect of playing for Morrow, yet despondent that it all still hinges on Conroy. Verrine calls a couple of times over the following days but on each occasion Paige’s report remains negative. She visits Morrow’s website, gets to know the rugged face she may never meet, Googles Chopin and checks what Verrine said about his heart, his eyes, it all matches, meaning it’s true, or that Verrine got his factoids from Wikipedia. The company name on his card turns out to be some kind of media conglomerate, the fancy site goes on about passion and mission without ever really specifying exactly what they do.

  When Verrine next calls he tells her the meeting with Morrow is scheduled, still weeks away. He’s a busy man, Paige sees the filled diary in her head, imagines the powerful feeling of being acclaimed but feels the balancing weight of failure and rejection: Morrow is as hypothetical and unreal as his website. Again she tells Verrine she hasn’t heard from Conroy, and now his irritation shows. “We’ve got to find the fucker.”

  “If I can’t get the score we’ll need an alternative.”

  “There is no alternative,” Verrine says witheringly. “Get it or the meeting’s off.”

  “But…”

  “We only get one shot, Paige, and it has to be done right. Klauer or nothing.”

  She can’t understand why he’s so adamant, there are plenty more unknown compositions in the world. Mrs White seems pleased with Paige’s progress, but while playing the Scherzo in C sharp minor for her later that week, the picture in Paige’s mind is of decomposing eyes, a rotting heart. During the customary break for tea and biscuits Paige asks with fake casualness about the issue that matters so much to her: has there been any news?

  Mrs White nods. “He sent a resignation letter.”

  “Then he’s all right.”

  “From what I hear, it wasn’t the standard kind of resignation. Said he needed to stay hidden until he could defeat forces trying to destroy him. I’m not sure if he’s getting any kind of psychiatric treatment but he clearly needs it.”

  “Does anyone know where he is?”

  “I don’t think so. But he got in touch and that might mean he’s ready to look for help.”

  A whole week goes by with no word from Verrine, then she gets a call.

  “Paige?”

  “Mr Verrine, I…”

  “This is David Conroy.”

  It’s what she’s been waiting for, though now that it’s happening she feels no relief. She’s been convincing herself that the audition with Morrow would be a waste of time, Conroy’s sick and best avoided.

  “Are you alone, Paige? Can anyone hear us?”

  “I’m on the bus.”

  “Get off now, I’ll call again in five minutes.”

  She’s on her way to a doctor’s appointment but does as he says, getting up in the swaying vehicle and alighting at the next stop, in a residential area she doesn’t know. She waits on a quiet corner, long enough to consider how she’ll handle it. When he rings back she asks at once, “Where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you, it’s too dangerous. And don’t try calling this number, it won’t work.”

  “You should come back to the college.”

  “Everything’s wrong, Paige. Don’t you feel it? Didn’t you notice? The needle jumped, everyone’s mind was on something else.”

  This is what a nervous breakdown sounds like and it’s not Paige’s fault, has nothing to do with her, but he’s trying to make her feel involved, and that’s the trouble, she is. “People want to help you.”

  “I’m in the wrong life. None of this should be happening.”

  “We all have moments like that.”

  “Laura’s gone.”

  “I know,” she says, playing along with the fantasy. “She walked out on you.”

  He shouts, “The whole fucking world walked out!”

  She waits silently until he calms down and apologises. All she wants is the score. “Are you at home?”

  “I can’t go back there.”

  “Then tell me where you’re staying. Or perhaps we could meet.” Immediately she realises this might sound too eager, she switches instead to flattery. “I preferred your lessons to Mrs White’s. Wish I could have seen more of that Klauer work you gave me.”

  “Has anyone contacted you about it?”

  “No.”

  At Conroy’s end Paige can hear a sound she equates with thought, something like an indecisive sigh and the rubbing of his chin, while around her there’s birdsong from empty gardens, an occasional passing car. Eventually he says, “We can’t meet, it would be too much of a risk. The last thing I’d ever want would be for you to come to any harm.”

  “You wanted to perform the Klauer.”

  “It’ll never happen”

  “Then it’s lost again?”

  Another silence, she’s sure he suspects nothing. Right now, Paige feels real pity for this weak man who’s become fixated on her for no reason and is entirely the maker of his own misfortune. It’s not her duty to feel sorry: she owes him nothing.

  “Send it to me,” she says, breaking into his hesitation.

  “The score? But surely…”

  “Mail it to me at the college. Nobody will know I have it. A perfect way to keep it safe. I really want to help you.”

  She hears him strugglin
g to find words. “Paige…”

  “Just send it.”

  “Guard it carefully. Tell no one. I know I can trust you.”

  1924

  Capri

  ONE-WAY STREET

  Asja has gone into a shop to buy almonds but doesn’t know the Italian word; a German gentleman helps her with the translation. Small round glasses; thick, dark hair; intellectual, from a well-to-do background. And clumsy. He insists on helping her with the packages but drops them, accompanying her to the place where she’s staying. His name is Walter Benjamin. He’s been here in Capri for some time, would she mind if he were to call on her? Next day Asja cooks spaghetti; he explains he’s noticed her already some time before, walking across the piazza. This is not how he falls in love with her. This is how he announces the existence of a theoretical notion willing to be made real. Love is the translation of concept into action.

  NO ENTRY

  Benjamin has come to Capri to work on his habilitation thesis which will qualify him to teach in a university. He is to remain here for six months while his estranged wife and their young son stay in Frankfurt. Asja Lacis is a dark-eyed Latvian actress and theatre director who lives in Russia and has been a Bolshevik since before the Revolution seven years ago. She is staying on Capri with her partner and daughter. Benjamin tells her his thesis is on Trauerspiel, a style of Baroque drama characterised by violence and suffering. She asks him why anyone should waste time studying old plays that nobody reads.

  POTEMKIN

  The connection between a battleship and the many workers who hammered its rivets is like that of worshippers in regard to the idols of organised religion; the fetish-character of commodities leads to their being seen as phantoms whose assumed reality supersedes that of the people who made them. Thus our existence within capitalism is a condition of dreaming. Asja awakens him to this. He writes to friends about the interesting communist he has met, and with whom he is having long discussions. He sends postcards to his wife, telling her he is fine. Their relationship was extinguished some time ago; he feels closeness only towards his son, because Benjamin has not forgotten how to see the world with a child’s eye of fear and wonder. He agrees with Baudelaire, childhood is the state closest to original sin, therefore purest. In the streets and brothels of Paris, Baudelaire stirred himself from dogmatic slumber, saw through the illusion, appreciated that modern life is an allegory whose signs can mean anything. Possessions, money, family, home: skeletons of their own contradiction.

  VANITY MIRROR

  Love begins with the contemplation of beauty, yet contemplation is a situation produced by capitalist production. Love itself is therefore allegorical: Asja could be anybody, she is the shape of the particular emptiness Walter brought with him to this Italian island, and it is the exactness of fit that bewitches him, the stencil of an unfulfilled desire waiting only to attach itself to a name. Asja: again and again he inscribes it, admiring the concordance between sound and image. I love you, he writes secretly to himself. I want to be with you, I want to leave my wife and child and live only with you. I want to be living the past that we will jointly remember, reading these words that will have become historical fact.

  Capitalism is a mass narcosis whose ur-myth is the false promise: you can be happy. But love is this same dream, an internalised mythology, and Asja laughs at him: I am not a muse of the bourgeoisie, I am a proletarian and a free woman. I am not an unpaid prostitute who will be told whom I may or may not sleep with; I satisfy my physical needs and desires as I see fit. Free your own mind and heart, Walter, if your marriage is unhappy then get out of it.

  –But what about our son?

  He needs real love, not the illusion of an outmoded institution.

  –How am I to find happiness?

  Only through revolutionary action.

  It is the Copernican turn of his heart; he came here to finish his thesis on Baroque drama but already he is thinking of another project: a book of fragments, epigrammatic or even surreal in character, apparent irrelevancies serving to create new, unintended meaning. And though he will go to Moscow, the centre of his thought will be Paris, the covered arcades where Baudelaire realised he was strolling in Hell.

  Asja, I love you, he writes. I want to be able to look at your face every day; see how, like a mountain beside a lake, it changes with every passing cloud, every fluctuation of pressure and temperature. I want to see your breasts, kiss your belly and that catacomb, place of skulls, your lap where a new dream breaks all fetters and submerges us. I want to be human with you, mortal, slowly ruined by time until we are both dust together. I have never known this certainty of disaster.

  –Walter, you are delightful and I so much enjoy being with you. I can think of no more stimulating companion, with your astute mental faculties, your understanding of philosophy. But you’re clumsy, and things will fall.

  CONSPIRACY

  1. By all means discuss the book you are writing, but do not disclose its essence, any more than you would tell a child how a magic trick is done.

  2. Make note of everything. For example, the conversation with the unusual Frenchman.

  3. Adhere to the timetable of an honest worker. Writing is like engineering, done with the hands.

  4. Think always of the one who is the cause of all this. Keep her image in mind, be faithful to it. Love every sentence as you love her. That is to say, without hope or expectation.

  5. Difference between document and artwork: the former serves to educate the public, the latter discovers truth.

  6. In every philosophical project there is an esoteric quality. Expect understanding no more than you crave applause.

  7. Keep a favourite pen, a well-ordered desk, and dedicate yourself to making ideas surrender themselves to you – for they alone will yield to your advances.

  PLEASE USE ASHTRAYS

  Walter Benjamin is sitting on the terrace of a café overlooking the bay. He knows several Germans staying on the island, and has been busying himself with excursions, social visits, letter writing, conversation. But today he is alone, with only his notebook and his thoughts. The thesis on Trauerspiel is finished; next will be his book of fragments, it will be called One-Way Street, and he will dedicate it to Asja.

  A man comes and sits at another table, a foreigner like Benjamin, of similar age. They greet one another; the man responds in French, and after exchanging a few pleasant words they agree to sit together. Like Benjamin, the Frenchman has been on Capri for some time, has covered much of the same ground, both physically and socially, though neither claims any recollection of the other. They share a bottle of wine and a dish of olives; alcohol creates an air of friendship that might not otherwise have manifested itself so quickly.

  Benjamin explains why he came here; he hopes to get a permanent position at Frankfurt University if his thesis is accepted.

  “Is it a good thesis?”

  “As good as I could make it, though perhaps that will be the problem, since success in circumscribed fields is dependent on adherence to existing categories of thought rather than the creation of new ones.”

  “You speak like a philosopher of art.”

  “And you, if I may say so, have the air of a poet.”

  The stranger laughs. “You mean an eccentric? I adopt certain local habits, my razor is not too sharp, I have no woman telling me how I should look.”

  “Did desire bring you here?”

  “Only for knowledge, I study mathematics. Here is a problem for you, Epimenides the Cretan says that all Cretans are liars: do you believe him?”

  “I know the paradox very well, there is something demonic in its circularity.”

  “It’s a devil of a riddle, that’s for sure. What about the barber who shaves every man who doesn’t shave himself? Or the set of all sets that don’t contain themselves?”

  “Children’s puzzles have always appealed to me, especially visual ones.”

  “To be consistent is to exist, that is the law of mathematic
s, a single violation should be enough to make the entire edifice vanish into non-being. Yet we live in an age of paradox, science has demonstrated it. Time can be slowed or quickened, space is curved, light is neither wave nor particle, or perhaps is both. There are our new categories of thought.”

  SHAKE BEFORE OPENING

  The nineteenth century is when the crowd, the mass, becomes generally recognised as an object of history; it is in opposition to the crowd that the modern concept of the individual arises. Poe’s story, ‘The Man Of The Crowd’, depicts the view through a coffee-house window: real life is what happens on the street, the interior is a place of illusion. The crowd is a reservoir of energy, a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness, creating collision, surprise, chance. Gambling becomes a widespread and socially acceptable bourgeois pastime. The victors of revolution are the speculators. Marx says of Darwin’s theory that it serves as a scientific basis for the class struggle, a death-blow to teleology, a rational-empirical explanation of historical progress; though without the inclusion of proletarian consciousness it is simply a description of capitalism itself. Baudelaire translates Poe’s story, appreciating the revulsion inherent in it. Like Rousseau he reverts to solitary wandering, which is to say savagery. Urban industrialised life is dependent on fear of being alone, yet manufactures isolation. Love is a commodity whose inflated price we must recognise. Like any stock, its value exists only by virtue of shared belief.

  GRADUS AD PARNASSUM

  “I have made an extensive study of Boltzmann’s thermodynamics,” the Frenchman continues. “All of nature, it appears, is statistical.”

  “Nature itself, or our view of it?”

  “Who knows? But since entropy rises inexorably, the universe must fade and decay.”

  “Then physics is a form of allegory.”