‘That boss of yours is a jerk,’ said Anthony. ‘It’s amazing anyone comes back again.’ He was reading something leather-bound, purloined from the college library. Crabbed print, mildewed pages.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, putting down his book. Stretching his limbs out. ‘Well, it’s like this. O’Donovan is a career fool. Churchwood too. Of course we all know that.’
‘And this is what you came to tell me?’
‘No no. I found a letter for you, among Solete’s papers.’
He handed me a tightly packed envelope. I took it from him, noticing how his hands always trembled. Intense nerves. Drug addiction? Bevin was wandering round the café in his malign and unnerving way so I started arranging flowers, taking the dead ones out of the vases, putting them in a pile.
‘Will the fellows find the book?’ I said.
‘Petrovka and O’Donovan are at Solete’s house at the moment. I don’t know what they’ll find there.’
‘Well, that’s reasonable enough,’ I said. ‘Of course, they’ll look in all the obvious places.’
I had to give someone a glass of wine, I had to take away a plate, wipe something, I was darting here and there – Anthony barely noticed – when I got back again he was talking about Pandora’s Box – you know, he said, release of forces, good and bad – mostly bad of course – but then other things come out – depends anyway what you regard as anarchic or corrosive – energy – can be bad and good – Blake and the devil, you know –
‘Better murder an infant in its cradle – you know that,’ he was saying.
‘Yes,’ I said. I thought I did.
‘Still O’Donovan, Petrovka, they’re scholars, you know, they’re paid not to think.’
A group walked towards the door. Goodbye, I said. I felt as if the night beyond was gulping them down one by one.
‘Open your letter,’ he said. He leaned towards me, nodding – his eyes shadowed with black circles, that air of anxiety, and now he whispered – ‘Really – go to the loo, pretend you’re ill – go and read it –don’t you want to?’
Now Bevin was behind me, stamping his foot – I was even relieved –
Really – a gentleman had been trying to get my attention for the last five minutes –
Was I expecting to be paid?
A real gentleman, I wondered? With a top hat, with a cane? But no it was just a larded grockle, no top hat, he just wanted to buy a pudding.
Anthony picked up his book. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘My fault.’
‘Closing now,’ said Bevin, just to Anthony, who shrugged irritably. Bevin too. Irritably, Anthony got up. Bevin watched him as he walked across the room, and paused at the door. I assumed it was a commendable effort to annoy Bevin – but then Anthony genuinely seemed to be wavering, as if he was trying to decide whether to turn around again. Then, evidently, he decided to go through –
The door slammed behind him –
*
By the time I got out of the café everything had finished, the city was closed down. Shivering, I hurried past Pie Hall and the Old Library again, then along the High Street towards the river. Nightingale Hall on the left, its windows blank. A man appeared suddenly, I almost screamed. Oblivious, mist-bound, he faded.
After that I ran up the Cowley Road and all the way to my door. There I fumbled with the key, raged silently. It was that madman Anthony, it was corrosive nerves, I had to calm down –
As soon as I was inside, I slammed the door. Then I opened the letter and before I had even removed my coat or taken off my shoes I began to read:
*
Jonathan Solete, 29th December 2015
Dear Eliade,
I am sorry I am dead. But you understand the strange bond between the dead and the living and so I wanted to pass this on to you. How did I come to be in this situation? Well, you may ask. Your situation is not mine, I understand. But like me, you were born, however many years ago, and you were at that moment consigned to the realm of time.
Wherever you were beforehand, if anywhere, we do not know. However you are here now, and I was once, before I died, and this is why we can communicate with each other in this way.
At least I hope we can.
I began many years ago, decades and decades, with an idea that I would offer a survey of prevailing theories of reality, with the ultimate aim of offering a helpful guide to reality as a whole, to which the reader might refer, as one might refer to a guide to zebras on a safari tour, for example.
Reality, of course, is a more shifting and peculiar thing than zebras (which also in themselves constitute reality) so my wife Asta and I began with basics and then moved on to more elaborate philosophical and existential conundra. There are many varied theories of reality and they often contradict each other – viz, the religious view of reality contradicts the materialist view of reality, the Cartesian dualistic view contradicts the monist, and so forth. We hoped to chart a course through such stormy dialectics and emerge into the calm waters beyond.
The project was vast. It continues to be vast, and I can no longer even try to complete it. It has failed and yet I am glad.
I have stored my work in a safe place and I suspect you are clear-sighted enough to find it. You will form your own judgements of those around you. I am dead and beyond such concerns. I wish you luck. You have been a great friend of mine. Atque in perpetuum, ave atque vale –
Solete
*
‘Well,’ I said to the night. ‘Well!’
I woke shivering. My dreams had been florid, over-definite, and now I tried to banish them, though the daylight realm was imprinted with residual strangeness. I fumbled for my watch. Five-thirty a.m. I tried to go back to sleep. When I woke for the last time or rather gave up trying to sleep, it was too cold to get out of bed, so I lay for a while, huddled beneath the inadequate eiderdown, then I sneezed continuously for about five minutes, and when that stopped I lay there in a certain amount of consternation and stared around the room. Eventually I went to the window and opened the curtains. Still, the city was drowning in mist, and I could scarcely see the college spires. I went downstairs to the kitchen and called, ‘Isabella? Hallo?’ My landlady had already gone. There was a pot of lukewarm coffee on the table and some hard-boiled eggs. I was hungry, so I ate eggs and drank coffee, and then I put on my coat and hat and walked out onto the street.
The mist fizzed beneath the lamps. I tried to whistle but the air was so damp, it seemed to muffle my voice. Everyone was moving swiftly, hunched over, perplexed by the cold.
Solete had lived in a college house, on an island called Mesopotamia, between the upper and lower levels of the River Cherwell. It should have been possible to walk there through the grounds of Nightingale Hall. Yet, I lacked sufficient authority in this cloistered university. I was not a member of a college, and therefore, the porter explained, I couldn’t enter.
‘You need an appointment,’ he said, but kindly. Nonetheless I was rebuffed.
*
I took the longer route, along the side of Nightingale Hall, and through the misty Parkland. It was like twilight out there, like squinting through half-closed eyes. You could look straight at the sun; the mist had doused it entirely. The trees beneath were silhouettes, frozen cobwebs shimmered between the branches. Then, the black shapes of Pie Hall in the distance, a building like an inverted ship. Cold and bleak – I put my face into my scarf. I passed an old chapel, its steeple lost in clouds. I could see the river as it flowed swiftly, curdled by recent rain. The air was full of muffled birdsong. The bridge to Mesopotamia was rickety and glazed with ice, so I slid carefully along, hoping I wouldn’t fall into the tumbling waters below.
On the other side of the bridge was a sketchy patch of land, a slight hill, with bricks underneath, but overlaid with moss and grass. Solete’s house was built in Oxford stone, those clear white blocks that look so beautiful, contrasted with a deep blue summer sky. Today it was fading into the b
lankness, like everything else. There were blue shutters, all of them closed. The garden was planted with variegated evergreens, in pale blue, yellow and red. The colours shone beneath the frost.
I was nervous and so I banged too heavily on the door. My head was aching – the cold air, I assumed. I was trying to peer through the window, when a voice made me jump – and the voice knew my name! It said, ‘Ah, Eliade. About to break and enter?’
I turned so fast I cricked my neck. For such haste I was rewarded with the smiling smug visage of Dr O’Donovan. I was about to apologise for intruding, I was rubbing my neck and uttering bashful social niceties but he was really too ebullient to care. He even slapped me on the back, as I struggled across a flowerbed.
‘You’re completely – er – tainted with the outdoors, it’s all over you – whatever happened? Look at you!’ He pushed a lock of hair from his forehead, so I noticed he was receding fast. In ten years, he would be unrecognisable. Well there was nothing I could do about that! Now he produced a folder from his briefcase, and waved it towards me.
‘Is that the Field Guide?’ I said.
‘No!’ He was still smiling. ‘But it’s altogether better than before! We’re in luck!’
He was fingering the papers with a rapturous expression, but it all seemed a little staged. As he opened the door, and ushered me inside, he said, ‘Well, personally I think they’re really very helpful. At times, anyway. Moments of potential help! Stroke of great luck!’
‘Moments?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t want it to be facile, insulting, now would you?’
We were in an art deco hall, full of Indian wicker furniture. The walls were adorned with photographic evidence of Solete’s past. Deserts, Alpine mountains, ships, tundra wastelands, photographed in black and white or, later, adventurous incursions into colour. Solete with his wife, Asta, or at times alone. Through warped windows, I could see the snaking silvery river. Everything was age-distorted, dreamlike. The floorboards creaked, the ceilings sloped. The plaster was cracked. I followed O’Donovan into a sitting room. Old ash lay untended in the grate. I crossed to the fireplace and examined the painting. Another river, the Cherwell not the Isis. A female figure was standing on the bank, half-facing the water. Silvery-black hair pulled back to reveal high cheekbones, a strong chin. In line with the sartorial conventions of the time, she was wearing a crinoline and holding a parasol. The sky was white, the branches were skeletal and it seemed intriguing that the painter had chosen to depict her in the natural severity of mid-winter.
The picture was unsigned, and there was a two-word legend, ‘At Mesopotamia.’
*
O’Donovan handed me the folder, took a pipe from his pocket, stuck it into his mouth and struggled to light it. I was about to examine the great revelation but there was a clatter at the door and now Anthony Yorke and Sasha Petrovka emerged into the room. Anthony was looking exhausted and this supplied the perfect contrast to Petrovka, who nodded in a brusque and determined way and went upstairs. ‘Know your way around, Sasha?’ O’Donovan was shouting as she receded. ‘Ah well,’ he said, shrugging furiously, then becoming charming again.
‘So, a folder. Anthony, a development. Conspicuous.’
‘Conspicuous what?’ I said.
‘What folder?’ said Anthony.
O’Donovan smiled and sat down by the empty fireplace, smirking as he fiddled with his pipe. I opened the folder and read the contents. It didn’t take long. They were comprised of a list. The list read:
1 – Boomerang prophecies
2 – Happy Clue, hope it relics you fine
3 – I am a pig and I like to emanate
4 – Monument of Serenity
5 – Id It Oh
6 – No matter it was nothing
7 – Lives in Trivium
*
When I looked up, I saw O’Donovan was laughing. He spluttered on his pipe and said, ‘Well, you know. They sound like fucking fortune cookies. I told you, he was a trickster. The whole thing, it’s just a joke. Cruel. In a way. But we deserve it.’
There was no one to be angry with, except possibly Solete. And he was nowhere. Or elsewhere. O’Donovan was producing a steady stream of apposite remarks, and I noticed that he was wearing an expensive green shirt, a matching handkerchief in his pocket. And then I thought, it was really hardly relevant whether O’Donovan, whoever he was, had a green handkerchief in his pocket. Ruination. Wreckage. Fraud! Anthony was bemused, so I handed him the list and he remained bemused but now his bemusement was laced with anger as well. While Anthony struggled with his emotions I sat on a venerable sofa, and watched the cold river flowing beyond the window. A cushion had spilled feathers everywhere, and I kept finding them in my mouth.
‘Well,’ said O’Donovan, standing and smoking. ‘I’ll be off. Nothing else remains. I’m going to the pub.’
‘Your charm is incessant,’ said Anthony. His hand trembled as he rubbed his forehead. He was leaning for support on the mantelpiece. His body seemed to revert naturally to a hunched position. ‘And I don’t even believe you. I bet you’ve been scouring this place for hours.’
‘That’s fucking slander,’ said O’Donovan.
‘It’s almost certainly the truth,’ said Anthony.
‘You’re a futile tosser. You need to get a grip,’ said O’Donovan. With that, he went. I followed him to the door and watched him sauntering away, puffing out smoke. ‘O’Donovan! O’Donovan?’
He didn’t hear me. Or, he was pretending not to hear me. Either way, he didn’t turn round.
*
Winter trees reflected in the water. It was a strange island, with the cold river flowing onwards, the banks layered with dead reeds. I imagined Solete, dreaming in his garden, a hat over his eyes, his thoughts unknowable now. Besides, our relationship had been cordial, there had been a basic affinity but I had never really understood him deeply, never would – my thoughts were interrupted by a phrase – boomerang prophecies!
Why?
*
Petrovka was still hunting around upstairs; I could hear the floorboards groaning above when I went inside.
‘You look tired,’ I said to Anthony. He was sitting on the ruined sofa, feathers wafting around him.
‘I’m tripping my head off. All this week, I’ve been having dreams, about something far below . . .’ Shadows under his eyes. Really the man looked out of sorts.
‘But we often have such dreams,’ I said. ‘Burial dreams. Something about the unconscious, so much is half-concealed, the rest.’
‘Oh yes, that’s all very well, but I was scratching in the dirt.’
‘Why?’ I said, looking at his fingernails.
He clenched his fists. ‘I was in college this morning, trying to remember. I was certain I’d been on the ground. And there was something speaking to me – I don’t know where that was coming from.’
‘In your dream? You mean?’ I said.
‘Yes. What else would I mean?’
‘You’re under strain.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘No, not all. Some of us have virtually dispensed with ambition. That reduces the stress levels substantially . . .’
Petrovka came downstairs, looking flushed and disappointed.
‘No luck?’ said Anthony.
‘He was a clever man, Solete, given certain contexts. I mean, if you kept him confined within rubrics.’
‘Specific rubrics?’ I said.
They paused and looked at me. ‘So, he went mad,’ said Petrovka. ‘He burnt his work. Like Kafka.’
Anthony and Petrovka looked at each other, stalled by mutual ambivalence. Or mutual yearning. I really didn’t know.
‘Kafka wanted to burn his work, or claimed he did, and told Max Brod to effect the order. But Brod refused. And perhaps Kafka knew he would,’ said Anthony.
‘You mean, he asked him to burn the work, but secretly hoped Brod would fail to execute his request?’ I said.
‘No n
o. Kafka issued the order but imagined it not being enacted. And so, Brod proceeded in line with Kafka’s imagination, not with the written reality.’
‘Christ, he was just old and trashed,’ said Petrovka, impatiently. ‘Solete, not Kafka. And so, he gave up. He really slumped. Cerebral decay. Come on Anthony, he was raving mad the last few times you saw him.’
‘Depends on your definition of mad.’
‘He put his toast in his pocket and before he left the table he asked you if you had ever loved the Warden’s wife.’
‘That’s fairly mad,’ I said.
‘Actually, within the precincts of your average college, it’s really not so outlandish,’ said Anthony.
With that, Petrovka explained that she had sifted through all the available evidence – notebooks, foolscap, orts, fragments - and there wasn’t much else to do. ‘He was harmless. I’ll come back and try again tomorrow. But I’m not hopeful.’
Anthony looked crushed, briefly. ‘Fine,’ he said. Gathering himself. ‘You go.’
Petrovka nodded at me, nodded at the room, then departed. Through the warped glass we saw her crossing the icy bridge and fading away.
*
Yorke and I moved from room to room, in silence. The house was gelid, condensation massed on the walls. We went up a spiral staircase to the upper floors, the walls painted white. Battered chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling. Family portraits glared from the walls, and chipped statues posed beneath, semaphoring with stone hands.
‘This was Solete’s room,’ said Anthony, pushing open a door. We moved into a light blue room with a large painting of the English countryside, Romantic-style, and a four-poster bed. There was a bay window, overlooking the frosted landscape. I imagined – Solete, sinking onto the bed. His hands weak and clammy. He wanted the old world to consume him but he couldn’t focus his mind. Too many worlds and moments. Consoled, always by the fluid view, the light reformed by ancient glass. Reality altered.
A Field Guide to Reality Page 4