Written in Dead Wax

by Andrew Cartmel

  And even then there was one more job I could throw myself into.

  The records were all on the shelves now, heaved there in batches, but in a random order. I had to sort them out. Go through them painstakingly, one by one. It was a blissful, brainless, painless sedative to me. I threw myself into the task. I escaped into it.

  It was a marathon job putting the records in alphabetical order. Looking at them, I guessed it would take me two hours. It actually took twelve, with breaks for meals, and with the cats jumping on each shelf as soon as a cat-sized space was cleared, then being obliged to jump off again as it was subsequently filled with records.

  Finally, at three in the morning, feeling weary and empty but also with something resembling happiness that came out of the weariness, I came to the last few records to file away. There were a handful of them, currently on a shelf at eye level.

  They needed to be moved to other sections of the shelves, in the correct alphabetical positions.

  I had been looking at these records, on and off, for the last ten years or more. The first two were Duke Ellington albums, but not ones I had been in any hurry to play.

  While I loved and revered Ellington, I couldn’t ignore the fact that his choice of vocalists had been, to say the very least, eccentric. True, he had worked with greats like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.

  But the regular singers in his band had ranged from the wonderful to the oddball to the chillingly mediocre. Some people theorised that Duke had deliberately made such jarring choices because he never wanted his band to become associated with, or dominated by, a vocalist.

  Whatever the reason, this odd tradition meant there were some Ellington recordings that were well worth steering clear of. These LPs were two such.

  On a small British specialist label, they were volumes one and two of a collection of air-shots which might have been titled The Duke’s Dodgiest Singers—gathered here for the first time.

  I suppose it was nice to know that someone had preserved them for posterity, but I had never been moved to listen to them and they had remained untouched since the Digital Divine had dumped them on me.

  But as I took them off the shelf I realised that there were actually three records, not two.

  Between the Ellington albums was another LP.

  The record had been stored back to front, so its spine was concealed, rendering it virtually invisible all these years. I remembered Tinkler and I describing this very situation to Nevada.

  I steered my thoughts away from Nevada. I separated the two Ellington compilations and there it was.

  The familiar cover of Easy Come, Easy Go.

  I knew it was an hallucination. I went down the corridor to the bathroom and splashed cold water in my face. I left the water running. Fanny jumped into the sink and bent over so she could drink from the tap. While she lapped at the water, I looked at my face in the mirror. I knew what I’d seen was just the product of fatigue and shock and longing.

  Yet, at the same time, some uncontrollable part of my mind was racing through the options, reasoning and rationalising and weighing up possibilities.

  The clergyman had owned a lot of West Coast rarities. Mode and Tampa and Contemporary. It wasn’t inconceivable that he’d picked up something on the Hathor label.

  Fanny jumped down from the sink, having drunk her fill. I turned off the taps and dried my hands. I went back down the corridor and looked at it.

  The record was still there. I picked it up. The cover was in better shape than the one we’d found in the charity shop. This one had been kept away from the light, so there was less yellowing with age. I took out the record. The vinyl was heavy and authentic. And it was sealed in what looked like the original transparent plastic bag.

  Sometimes, over the years, these bags begin to stick to the records they’re supposed to be protecting. It’s something to do with the petroleum-based plastics used in the bag. In the worst cases, they bond with the playing surface of the record, to terrible effect, leaving permanent irremovable ridges of residue across the microgroove.

  But this record felt loose in the bag. I tore it open along the neatly perforated line at the top. I slid the record out into my hands and looked at it. It might as well have been brand new. In fact, in a sense, it was. It had never been played. I switched my amps on and set the record on the turntable. I set it in motion and felt dizzy as I watched the Hathor label revolve, the little Egyptian symbols spinning around and around at thirty-three and a third RPM. I lowered the tone arm and the music began.

  I sat down on the sofa and listened to it. As far as my life was concerned, I felt like I was sitting at the end of an infinitely long tunnel. As far as the music went, I felt like I was in the same room where they were playing it. The dead came alive around me.

  It gradually came to me that the record was in perfect condition. The world where such things mattered seemed so distant that it was hard to remember it. But still I noted the fact with detached interest. When I got to the end of side one I decided to not even bother listening to side two, except for the song ‘Running from a Spell’.

  And in fact, I wouldn’t even listen to the whole song.

  As I bent over the turntable I felt light-headed. I carefully cued the playing arm so the stylus would land at the right point on the track. As I did so, I distinctly heard a voice behind me.

  “Our old friend Rogue Plosive,” said Nevada. I looked up but of course she wasn’t there and I knew she wasn’t there. It was just the echo of something she’d said once, playing again on some groove of my memory. I was so exhausted I could hear voices surfacing at the very edge of perception, like the subdued mutter of the sea. Fragments of things people had said, scraps of memories from the last few days.

  I shook my head. I’d been up all night. I’d hardly eaten. I was light-headed with fatigue.

  I lowered the needle onto the record. It was a few seconds ahead of the popping sound. Perfect. I went back to the sofa to sit down and listen. I leaned forward into the sweet spot. And it came.

  And with the clarity—and familiarity—of listening to it on my own system, it was obvious what it was.

  A gunshot.

  * * *

  I put the record away and went to bed. I felt my consciousness melt away as I turned my face to the pillow. I was distantly aware that the cats were jumping onto the bed to join me.

  I went out walking the next morning, just as the sun was coming up over the Abbey. It was a strange watery yellow colour. Nevada was walking beside me, holding hands with me. She said, “So you found it, then?”

  I said, “I had a copy all along and I didn’t even know it, because it was lost among all the other albums. It was the classic record collector’s story.”

  She nodded. “So we were searching everywhere and yet it was here. Here all the time. It’s like that appalling novel by Coelho.”

  “I kind of liked it,” I said. “That book.”

  “My god, you couldn’t possibly,” she said.

  We argued about the merits of the Coelho novel until the absurdity of it woke me up.

  I sat up in bed, the cats stirring around me. It was noon and the sun was coming in the window and I was sweating and groggy. My sluggish brain realised with anguish that I had only dreamed that Nevada was alive.

  But what about the record?

  I went into the living room. It was there.

  I looked at it for a long time and then I went looking for a scrap of paper where I’d written a phone number. I thought I’d thrown it out, but I’d found it again when I was installing the heating. Now it seemed like it was lost again.

  Eventually I found it.

  The number with the area code for Japan.

  I dialled.

  18. JAPAN

  I’ve never been able to sleep on a plane, but I’d always suspected this was because I was a tall lanky guy forced to fold himself into a tiny uncomfortable seat. I assumed if ever I got to fly first class, or business or whatever th
ey called it, I would be able to sleep just fine.

  It turns out that this assumption was entirely correct.

  On the flight to Omura I slept dreamlessly—which was a first in recent days. My wrist was a bit uncomfortable, of course, but that was still preferable to the alternative. It felt a bit strange to take the briefcase with me even when I went to the loo but the stewardesses were very nice about it and no doubt had seen similar contrivances before.

  It also, weirdly, gave me a certain cachet among the other passengers. It was difficult to wash my hands, though.

  The briefcase was actually really nice. It had been couriered over to me within hours of my phone call. It was matte black leather, backed with a thin layer of steel and lined with a considerable thickness of what might have been heavy white cotton. There was a big square carefully hollowed out of the cotton, just the right size to accommodate LPs.

  There was very little that could damage a record once it was in there. I suspected that the thick cotton layer would even protect it from some fairly extreme temperature changes.

  It was the ultimate record bag.

  I wondered if they would let me keep it after the transaction.

  Without the handcuffs, of course.

  * * *

  I was met at the airport by a quiet young man in a mustard yellow roll-neck sweater and brown tweed jacket. He was holding a sign with my name on it. I identified myself, but he had already spotted me because of the briefcase. Having shown me his documents, which confirmed him as Atsushi, Mr Hibiki’s personal assistant, he led me to the car.

  Nagasaki Airport is located on an island in the middle of the city of Omura. The airport is connected to the mainland, and the rest of the city, by a long bridge with a two-lane road running along it. As we drove towards the mainland I looked out at islands and clouds in the shadowed distance across the bright water.

  We drove through the city and crossed the Nagasaki Highway onto what my map told me was Route 444, which carried us out of the city and into the countryside with surprising rapidity. We were soon climbing into what looked like parkland. I was surprised that in a country this densely populated I could feel so suddenly out in the lonesome wilderness.

  Just past a little settlement of white houses called Nakadakemachi we turned off onto a secondary road that took us up into the mountains. The roadside was thick with green trees.

  Mr Hibiki’s house lay behind a low rambling wall made of natural stone that seemed to rise organically—or rather minerally—out of the landscape. Beyond the wall there was a slope of white pebbles, then a dense band of trees. Past this there was a large pond full of lilies and the darting orange shape of fish. The tyres hummed as we passed over the pond on some kind of pontoon bridge. Then we were on another pebbled slope but one that was terraced and dotted at intervals by small circles of black earth with glistening green shrubs growing in them.

  It was all very minimal and elegant but I could also see hardware lurking among the shrubs. Garden lights, but other things, too.

  The house was built into the hillside with big picture windows facing out. On the windows there were the cut-out shapes of birds in black crepe paper. These looked elegantly decorative, but I recognised them as raptor silhouettes. They were designed to scare off birds and thereby stop the poor enthusiastic things flying into the windows—thinking the glass was thin air—and breaking their silly little necks.

  Apparently they worked pretty well.

  In the centre of the windows was a heavy slab of handsome wood. I thought it was some kind of reinforcing structure or central pillar of the house, but Atsushi just walked straight up to it and pushed it open.

  It was the front door.

  He stood aside to let me in. We took off our shoes in a sunken white atrium and donned paper slippers then walked up some polished cherry-wood stairs to a hallway and more polished wood, a beautiful shining length of it. It was warm under foot and I thought of my own underfloor heating and my cats happily asleep on it. They’d love it here. And just as I thought this we walked past a room with a grey cat lying in it. Nothing else but a dark bare wooden floor and the small pale cat sprawled in a corner. Maybe it was his room.

  Past this, on the other side, was a room with nothing in it but a grand piano, a piano stool and some big cushions. We came to a short stretch of corridor with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, which looked out into a little Zen garden with a cherry tree and a tiny water sculpture.

  It looked very tranquil and peaceful.

  We came out at the end of the corridor into a room that seemed to span the whole back of the house. The walls here were stone. Cement stairs built into the far wall led up to another level. We went up these, our slippers whispering on the rough cement steps. I realised they had to be rough. If the steps were smooth and polished this kind of footwear would see people slipping off the steep staircase into oblivion, Tinkler style.

  At the top of the stairs we turned to our left and found ourselves in an alcove with a painting on the wall. It was the Leo and Diane Dillon portrait of Miles Davis. I had no doubt that it was the original. Through the alcove was a small cosy room. We went in.

  Mr Hibiki had short, cropped black hair streaked with grey. His eyes looked like he was just remembering something that amused him. He was dressed casually but immaculately in moccasins, chinos and a sharp pale blue shirt.

  He looked like a well-heeled preppie hipster who had just got back from Newport, circa 1958.

  He shook my hand, the one that wasn’t handcuffed to the case.

  “Please sit down.” If he had any accent, it was faintly American.

  I sat down on one of the low charcoal-coloured chairs that matched the sofa where he’d been sitting. It was a small, intimate square room with a thick white carpet. The chairs and the sofa were the only furniture. The walls were lined with shelves that were densely but neatly filled with—what else?—records. Above these, the high ceiling was made of wood and rose above us in a graceful curving arch.

  I looked around me. The solid walls of records on all sides were occasionally broken up by an alcove or deeper shelf, discreetly illuminated and containing hi-fi components. I saw a turntable and two groups of very expensive-looking valve amplifiers.

  I couldn’t see any speakers, though.

  Mr Hibiki reached in his pocket and took out the key and handed it to me. I unlocked the handcuffs and gave him the case. While he opened it I massaged my pale, chafed wrist. “Very nice,” said Mr Hibiki, looking into the case. He looked up at me. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Some coffee, please.” I rubbed my wrist.

  Atsushi the assistant went over to another little alcove I hadn’t noticed, which contained a flask and some cups and saucers. He took the lid off the flask and instantly I could smell the coffee. I perked up as soon as it hit my nose. He poured two cups, set them neatly on saucers, then gave one to me and one to Mr Hibiki, who ignored it.

  He had taken the record out of the case.

  I’d sealed its cover in a mylar sleeve, which he now carefully peeled open and removed.

  I sipped the coffee. It was excellent, and fresh. It couldn’t have been made more than a few minutes earlier. Mr Hibiki weighed the cover in his hand, admiring it. “Flawless,” he said.

  “I think it spent most of its life sandwiched between two other albums and never even saw the light of day.” I said.

  He nodded and carefully slid the record out of its plastic bag. He leaned closer to a standing lamp and examined the vinyl in the discreet pool of light it threw. I realised there were no windows in the room.

  His face grew serious as he squinted intently at the label, then he turned the record over and checked the other side, carefully inspecting the label again. Finally he grunted with satisfaction and slipped it back into the plastic bag.

  He fingered the little irregularities left by the torn perforation strip at the top of the bag. He looked at me. “It was sealed when you got it?”r />
  “Yes, sorry about that.” In some ways the ultimate collector’s experience is to get the sealed copy and open it yourself. It’s the holy grail. Any tasteless comparisons to deflowering virgins are to be vigorously avoided. “But I had to open it. To check that it was okay.”

  “Of course.” He smiled to show it was all fine. “What kind of cartridge do you use?”

  “Ortofon Rohmann.” This was a top of the line thousand-pound-plus cartridge that I’d got in a complicated swap including a mint original copy of the Beatles’ White Album I’d found at a boot fair. But basically the thrust of his question was to check that I hadn’t played the record using a rusty knitting needle. He seemed satisfied.

  “Very nice,” he said. He set the LP aside and sipped his coffee. “How was your flight?”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s good.”

  I said, “Do you mind if I look around?”

  He smiled. “No. Be my guest.”

  I went to one of the alcoves and inspected the turntable. It was a Roksan Xerxes, a British machine. I’d heard one at a hi-fi show once. Its rhythmic accuracy was unsurpassed. The cartridge was Japanese, a dizzyingly expensive Koetsu. I went to the alcove containing a set of valve amps. They were WAVACs, also Japanese, using directly heated 833As. The highest of the high end.

  I still couldn’t see any speakers, though.

  I looked through his records. All jazz, of course. There was one shelf that was full of just original Blue Notes. “May I?” I said.

  He waved his hand. “Please.”

  I took out a few albums and looked at them. A thought occurred to me. I said, “What do you do about playing flat-edge LPs?”

  “That’s the flat-edge turntable you were looking at. The regular turntable is over there.” He pointed across the room where, I realised, another alcove housed another identical Roksan Xerxes. Well, why not? If you had the money. In an adjacent, smaller alcove was the small black control box that switched one turntable or the other into the signal path that fed the amps. I examined it. It was a passive unit made by David Heaton.