‘Easily enough,’ I said.
‘You know the question was rhetorical.’
‘And did you—buy it?’
‘That image in the evening gallery? Of course not, no—but it was the starting point for something: a new enthusiasm for me: a quest. Do you want to hear?’
‘You’re my oldest friend,’ I said to him: ‘I’m interested in everything you do. You know that. Tell me.’
‘I was methodical. I made my enquiries. I spoke to the usual curators and consultants; contacted galleries. I was more seized by art in those first months than I had been since the days when we were wide-eyed and impressionable and Manhattan graffiti was coming up. Those golden days.’
‘You believe that—and you were actually there!’
‘So cynical! I studied Sugimoto’s output. How he’d started out: his different phases, how each one led on to the next. The work I’d seen was part of a series: a sequence of seascapes, made all round the world, over a stretch of years: the schema identical in each one, only the sheen of the water and the light in the sky differing.’
‘A set of variations?’
‘Exactly: like music made visible. They were from remote coastlines, almost all of them: in the South Pacific, on the Black Sea, the Great Lakes, the wildest seaboards of Japan. I began collecting them: I made a pact with myself that I’d visit all the places where those images had been made.’
‘And did you?’
‘It wasn’t easy. I went first to Cape Breton Island; then Hokkaido, the north coast of Norway, Lake Superior, Rügen on the Baltic, Crete: I became a traveller to places I’d never thought of seeing: empty beaches, barren headlands, cliffs without names. I prided myself on getting to the exact spot where Sugimoto went to make his images: and when I reached my goal I’d feel a great serenity, as if I’d brought the world into alignment with an ideal. And it was that way for me every time—except in a single case.’
Blaize had sped up as he was talking; he frowned, and gripped the steering wheel. We clattered over a level crossing; turned; turned again.
‘You’re going quite fast,’ I said to him: ‘Very, in fact.’
‘You’re not worried, are you? Ease back—enjoy it—we’ve been on much more alarming drives together. And there’s a reason: I want to time my little story and the reveal at the end properly. It has to be like this. It so happens that the very last of the seascapes I bought was an image of the Bodensee—the lake seen from an Uttwil pier—it was the loveliest and strangest of them all—the one that gave least away—and here we are!’
He braked: the car lurched and screeched to a halt in front of a barrier: the pier and the lake were spread out in front of us: the water looked like plate glass, the far shore was shrouded in haze.
‘That was really crazy,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘But beautiful, too! Aren’t you proud to know someone who can make a quick burn down Swiss backroads into art—kinetic art.’
‘I’m proud I’ve survived the friendship so far: I’d like to keep it that way.’
‘And we shall. Let’s walk out—along the pier. All the way into the emptiness. Not that pier, not that broken-down old one: this one—the long jetty with those hooked steel posts at its end and that steel arch that looks like the way down into hell. Ready? Coming with?’
‘Can’t wait.’
We walked out slowly, side by side. There was a shimmer on the lake’s surface: the boundary between sea and sky began to blur.
‘Storms come up when the air’s damp like this,’ Blaize said, then fell silent.
That silence stretched out. I began telling him an involved Pacific island story: the sequel to a journey we’d once made. He cut me off.
‘Let me,’ he said: ‘Let me at least try: try to tell you what I brought you here to tell you. We’ve been here together before: you won’t remember. With my father, when we were at the Lyceum Alpinum: he kept a boat then on the lake. We cruised all the way to Kreuzlingen and back, and put in here. A happy day.’
‘You’re right: I don’t remember. And you don’t often bring him up.’
‘But I still feel a kind of sympathy for him. I made sure to lead the kind of life he couldn’t. I learned from his example. That’s what he did for me.’
‘Are you going back into your past now—reliving it, resurrecting it: doing what you were just complaining about me doing?’
‘Not at all: I don’t revisit what’s been before. On the contrary. I acknowledge it, then leave it in my wake. It’s not the repository of truth and meaning for me the way it is with you. I accept what’s been—and that’s all. I leave a space in my thoughts for events, for people. Like a little memorial: a plaque.’
‘Nothing more than that—ever?’
‘No: nothing more. I see the past in a clear light. I also see there’s a dangerous aspect to it, like a mirage: like a lost love—all it has to offer is nostalgia, and longing for what was, or even worse, what might have been. I don’t give house room in my mind to hopes and dreams that didn’t become real.’
‘That’s because you don’t have any of those,’ I said to him: ‘Your life’s what you dreamed it should be.’
‘Is that what you think? Really?’
‘Well—it’s true you did want to write novels in the style of Dos Passos at one point: on the whole I think it’s a good thing that didn’t happen—and there was the verse-tragedy phase that went nowhere as well.’
‘When you jump off the springboard into life you have to be committed to your choices: stay with them; keep to them always. I did—you’ve watched me, you know it’s true—I live with that knowledge: and with the consequences. We both see what’s happened to me: you see it—very clearly, even if you pretend not to out of kindness: my path to art’s turned into a dead end: all I do now is buy it. I have to laugh: that’s what’s left to me—money buys the fuel for the pyre of my hopes.’
‘You used to say you were as creative in collecting as any artist: only you were working with ideas and affinities, not technique, not form.’
‘The kind of consoling lie I liked to tell myself. How bitter to hear it recited back to me.’
We were close to the pier’s end. He stopped. He looked me in the eye again.
‘I came here a week ago: before Davos. Alone. It was early in the morning: rainy weather: scudding clouds, their shadows moving on the lake. I walked out almost to the jetty’s end, to just a few steps in front of where we’re standing now. Something happened. The light changed: the contrasts between dark and bright strengthened: the far shore was blotted out; there was a pulse in the water, and at the same time a sound: I could scarcely hear it: a hiss, a constant whisper—I shielded my eyes to see—I gazed out—I glanced behind me: I was in the image; the near shore was gone too—no buildings, no cars, nothing, just the pier vanishing into a shining haze.’
He turned away from me, then back. He tried to smile.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘I listened: I strained to hear: the pulsing strengthened: there was an echo in it now, a voice hidden in it: it was coming from the water: it knew me—it was for me—it was speaking, the same thing over and over—it was saying to me: “Dissolve: return—come.” How dark it was in those moments: everything dark; everything gone. I don’t know how it ended: I pulled away—it was so close to me—it was claiming me. It was frightful: death won’t be that dark.’
‘That’s not what you were seeing?’
‘It wasn’t an end—it wasn’t emptiness; not at all: it was something else—more like a sentence being passed: a judgement.’
He put his hands to his eyes, and bowed his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly—I could barely hear him: ‘Forgive me.’
And he sank down on one of the wooden benches beside the ferry landing stage. I sat beside him, and reached my arm over his shoulder.
‘Be still,’ I said: ‘Let your feelings leave you. Let them go.’
He began to breathe mor
e evenly. There was silence—then he lifted up his head: a look of relief came over his face. He turned towards me and began to laugh.
‘How strange it is! I am calmer now. I am. It’s gone. What I couldn’t do for myself you did for me.’
‘I’m glad,’ I said.
‘I have a theory—of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘About what I was seeing, hearing. It was like seeing behind the face of things; seeing for an instant past their surface; listening to the secret at the heart of life. I was overwhelmed at first: swept off balance. It took me a while to work it out: be sure it wasn’t just my own demons chasing me down.’
‘And?’
‘It was something outside me: I know it. There’s a resonance all around us here. It’s far beyond our compass: it comes weighing down on our shoulders: that’s the darkness—that’s the burden. And I know you feel it too. You’ve always felt it: all through this landscape. That’s why you stay so guardedly, so pointedly away. Why I was amazed to see you here.’
He swung round to check my reaction: he was himself again: he sprang up, paced over to the far railing, leaned against it, then turned back to me. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? That’s the reason.’
‘There’s a hundred reasons,’ I said: ‘We should move. See the storm coming—from the far side?’
‘Of course I see it. That’s why we should stay. Storms sweep down onto us to intensify our feelings; to confirm them—they don’t come for nothing. And this one’s well-timed. There’s something else I have to tell you. It came to me when we were talking earlier: something simple: about the way you see the world and your place in it.’
‘Is that so? You’ve told me how I ought to change my life—now you want to tell me how to think as well?’
‘Don’t be defensive like that—not with me. You keep your ramparts up so high, you’re still so aloof: so self-contained—or at least you think you are—but the moment I came over and sat with you in the hotel dining room I realised—I could tell; I could see it in your face.’
‘See what?’
‘How caught you are; how lost. You’re at the midpoint of your life. You should be master of yourself—it’s the time for control, for clarity: but they aren’t with you. The past’s fading from you, it can’t guide you anymore, and the future’s veiled, you can’t see its shape, you’re not even sure it’s there.’
‘To me that sounds very much like you,’ I said to him: ‘You on this pier—a week ago. You’re projecting.’
‘Am I? Really? Yet here you are, like me: circling back to your beginnings.’
‘It’s pure chance I’m here. A chain of accidents. Nothing more meaningful than that.’
‘Always an answer for everything. Words for everything. You’ve known so much, you’ve spent so long searching, looking, watching—reading every clue and pattern you can find around you—but your eyes look out, not in. It’s just the way you said it: you don’t see the simplest things about yourself.’
‘You always go too far, don’t you, Blaize,’ I said: ‘You always have.’
I turned to leave him. He held me back.
‘Let me,’ he said: ‘Let me reach you. There were times when you reached me, before—by being a friend to me, by not judging me. You helped me—more than you could ever know. Don’t be proud and hard—not with me—not now. Let me give you something: just this once.’
‘So give, then. Give, if you can—go ahead.’
‘Remember when we first met?’
‘The nostalgia card. You’ve got nothing else?’
‘Do you? Do you even know where it was?’
‘It was in prehistory: why should I? I suppose it was at school in Zuoz.’
‘You’re wrong. It was before that—it was at the Rosenberg in St. Gallen. And Serghiana Ismailovna was with you: she brought you. You didn’t want her to leave you there. She knew my father somehow: she spoke to us—she took me aside; she told me to look after you. “Keep an eye on him,” she said to me: “Keep him on an even keel: stop him from running away.” I’d never met a grown-up quite that fearsome and commanding. “I’ll try,” I said. “Don’t try,” she snapped at me: “Succeed—promise it.” And off she swept.’
‘And you failed. On both counts: spectacularly!’
‘I’m still trying now.’
‘And the point of your excursion into childhood memories?’
‘The point is that this morning when I was sitting with you I brought up your great-aunts: at once your face contorted: it was as if I’d stabbed you. And suddenly I saw how much you still miss them: both of them: what an ocean of sadness there is inside you.’
‘Of course I miss them: and there are other figures I miss just as much—as you know well—more. I’d be inhuman if I didn’t feel that way. But you think they’re with me, in my mind, haunting me constantly. That’s not the way it is—they’re not.’
Back he leaned against the railings, silhouetted by the storm clouds, and gave me a long look, as if weighing me on some unseen balance scale. I waited for a fresh blow to parry. None came. His face became gentler.
‘My poor friend,’ he said: ‘You really don’t see what I’m leading up to, do you?’
‘Enlighten me, then. And skip the lesson: jump through to what you’re trying to say.’
‘You write constantly—you probably do it in your sleep. You spend your life travelling to torn, dark places and describing them. You write whole books about the lives of others; you waste your time imagining new worlds and new dramas—you make them up to hide what’s there inside you: your golden grief, your secret story of the ones you’ve lost. Serghiana; Palafay; the death closest to you we won’t speak of. But everyone suffers like you. Everyone has to lose the people they most love. Those before us die to lead us on: that’s the way of things. It’s ordinary.’
‘Did I ever suggest otherwise to you?’
‘You never said or suggested anything at all—about any of this.’
I gave a theatrical sigh.
‘You’re not on stage,’ he said then: ‘The pen you hold; the words you write; the mind that makes them—what good are they to you the way you use them? What’s the point to them when there’s a silence inside you that rules everything? What? Tell me.’
I raised my eyes to him. He returned my look.
‘You glare back at me like a trapped animal, run to ground—cornered and trying to get away. Like one of those wild dogs in the desert that gnaws off its leg to break free from a trap.’
‘Quite an image for a banker to come up with!’ I said to him.
His face was calm. ‘Not one of your finer efforts. You can hurt me more than that and still not make me flinch!’
‘Are you really saying what I think you are?’
‘I am,’ he answered: ‘And you know I am. I’m saying that the moment’s come. The key to that trap’s in your hands. Tell the story that’s burned into you, the one that means the most to you. Don’t be a writer who writes everything except the thing that matters. Leave fiction behind you. Give breath to the ghosts inside you. Tell the story you know best.’
Nicolas Rothwell is the author of Quicksilver, which won a Prime Minister’s Literary Award, Belomor, and five other books. He lives in northern Australia.
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