The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

  When I was ten and Nicholas eleven something happened, which at the time seemed relatively insignificant, but which now I see was an important point in a friendship that was soon to fall apart. You see, we both had beautiful singing voices. And for each of the three years I stayed at Comerton House the children put on a Christmas play, a rendition of the nativity. There was a tradition at the home whereby one member of the class was given the part of Balthazar, the leader of the wise men, whose role was to sing a eulogy to the Lord. The lucky child was he whose voice was judged sweetest by the home staff. We each chose a verse from ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ and stood in the assembly hall to deliver our recital. This was one month before Christmas. On the night of the performance the winner would sing the entire carol in front of the parents. It is hard to convey the importance of this role to the children of Comerton House. I think that most of us, though each from a prosperous family, were not used to feeling at all special, except that each of us was damaged in some particular way. Several months before the day of the competition we began to practise our chosen verse. We compared voices and judged our closest rivals. Nicholas had a very pure and natural singing voice and without effort reached the highest notes. I had a more roughly cadenced voice, although I felt I was able to inspire deeper emotion. In each of the previous years we had been overlooked, but in the third year of my stay at Comerton House I was given the part of Balthazar. Nicholas was deeply affected by my victory. I think he felt it as an insult. I was thrilled to be playing the part, yet I was careful to hide my happiness, and although I felt I concealed it well, I suppose it showed on my face and gestures and in my whole person.

  If the sole effect of my winning the part of Balthazar had been the cooling of our friendship, says my father, then the event would not have lodged so firmly in my memory. But it had a second and, I now know, more destructive and significant effect on my life, an effect that, in addition to harming the friendship between myself and Nicholas, cut me irrevocably from my parents; not physically, for I was still too young to leave their care, but in my heart, which from that day on turned both from them and the Jewish faith. On the night of the performance, held in the large pine-panelled hall at the back of Comerton House, my parents arrived early. I had not told them anything about the performance, only that I would be singing a solo. They sat in the audience as we, the children, each dressed in his costume, gathered behind the makeshift stage. The performance was proceeding well, the baby Jesus had appeared among the animals. I came on to the stage and, together with my two associates, moved beside the manger. The piano began to play. I held my breath for the duration of the introductory bars. Then I started to sing. I kept my eyes focused on the bookshelf at the far end of the hall. I saw a spider on a thick volume. There was a fly caught in its web. The stage was brightly lit. Soon after the second chorus I became aware of a movement in the audience. It was my father. He had risen from his chair. People turned to look. I was singing the third verse. He walked quickly out of the hall and into the dark garden. The door slammed behind him. My eyes followed him as he walked down the garden path, and I faltered for what seemed like an inordinately long time. The piano played on without me, and when I tried to sing again, I had forgotten the words. I stood there in front of the crowd, paralysed. Later, back at our house, my father called me into his study and told me that I was no longer allowed to go to school at Comerton House. Then he said something which I have never been able to forget. He told me that Jesus was a Jew, that Matthew was a Jew, that so were Mark and John, and that Luke too was a Jew, although he had been born a Gentile. The following summer I was taken from Comerton House, and I never went back; the period of my sickness had long since ended. But I felt a sickness in my heart, which over time became a feeling of emptiness that has returned every so often.

  Here, said my father, this is me in the garden at Comerton House.

  That is when he handed me the photograph. I must have glanced at it at the time, even taken it to show Damaris, but I don’t remember. Sometime later I must have stored it with the tape recorder, because that is where I found it. I am holding it now, before my computer; the light from the screen reveals a small boy no more than nine years old, sitting on a swing. In the picture, taken many years before I was born, and which I look at now some three decades after my father’s death, I see him in a curious grey-blue light. He is looking fixedly at the camera. Behind him rises a stone wall partially covered with ivy. The boy has small white hands that grip the twine of the swing. He is wearing winter clothes: knitted cap, house slippers, ribbed woollen socks, kilt, tweed waistcoat beneath an open blazer. His eyes seem to stare back at me with great anxiety. The way he holds himself – stiff-necked, eyes focused intensely on the lens – expresses great worry, as if he felt like an intruder in the garden, as if he feared that at any moment someone would come to turn him out, as if the swing, the ivy, the vegetables, the paths and all the lovely things had been intended for another boy entirely, and that his enjoyment of them was eclipsed by the knowledge that at any moment now this error would be discovered, and that he would be obliged to give up what was the only truly happy period of his life.

  25

  Transcribing Damaris’ Diary: Britain

  The night my father told his stories, the wind blew strongly. I can hear it whistling and moaning in the background of the tape. It got through the walls, stirred the air, raised dust and ash from my father’s spent cigarettes and made him cough. Today in my attic the wind is blowing strongly too. All kinds of eerie, whining noises float up through the floor. The sheets of my history, which cover the skylight, flutter in the breeze, like outsized moths. It took me two nights to transcribe my father’s story. I worked for hours without pause. Sitting at my desk, headphones over my ears, listening, copying, stopping the tape, rewinding, watching the numbers tick on the counter, noting where the relevant details lay, going over them again, pausing, copying, beginning again – such happiness I have not known in years! As soon as I finished the transcription I printed it out, twice by mistake, which gave me a thrilling sensation. I even laughed as the printer coughed up the sheets and delivered them out on to the floor. I didn’t pick them up or read them but just left them right where they lay. When my laughter stopped I felt quiet and calm. I sat on my mattress and closed my eyes, thinking of nothing in particular. I felt terrifically happy. Apart from the moaning of the wind, the attic was quiet. Every now and then there was a gust, fluttering my sheets. Sometime later I stood and began to busy myself with domestic tasks. I swept the floor. I emptied my bucket. I went down to the pantry and renewed my supply of beans. I had a sudden urge to take a walk. Strange. I had not left the house in quite some time. I got dressed and brushed my teeth. I stuffed my ears with cotton wool. It was late morning. Quite a breeze. I stood for a while letting the wind play with my hair. On the way to the beach I had a scuffle with a cat. I dusted myself off then walked on the sand. I watched the dogs, many different breeds, chasing the surf. Their owners I noted too. The Lindsay twins. Mrs Ewan.

  Now I am back at my desk. Before me is the diary that belonged to Damaris. There was a time in my history when I would have paused to describe it at length, noting its appearance, its size, make, the image on its cover, as well as the condition of the paper, its general state of decay and so on. I might have related how Damaris left her diary behind when she left me. Perhaps I would have talked of the difficulties of deciphering her handwriting, how she never used ‘and’ but a sign which looks like an inverted ‘y’. No longer. All I can say at this late stage is that I brought the diary from the wardrobe and opened it somewhere near the beginning.

  28 May 1972

  Night falls and so do I. The terrors. Always on tour and in cities like this. What’s his word again? Spectral? Edinburgh, he said, is like a pen-and-ink drawing left out in the rain. Rehearsals going well. The most beautiful drowner he’s ever seen, he said.

  Silent terrors, and they silence me too when I’m awake because
I can’t describe them. They turn me to stone. Ironic really, is what I think whenever I sneak off in between rehearsals to go stand frozen on the Royal Mile, acting the statue. He’d go mad if he knew.

  1 June

  Today is his birthday. Champagne after rehearsals in the theatre bar, this far out little cellar dive with red-check tablecloths and candles in old wine bottles. One by one the rest of them leave until it’s just him and me. Then he went to the toilet, and I left. Walking out the door, I saw the barmaid give me this look. I’ve seen her before. She works as an usher here. Strange bird.

  2 June

  This morning at rehearsal I winked at him. He ignored me. He won’t have liked being left like that. As though I’d just let him pounce! He looked more annoyed than usual during the lost in the forest scene when Jack has to carry me across the river. Me and Jack had a laugh about that, wondering which of us he was more jealous of. We open in six days. I’m out of money. So tomorrow after rehearsal I’ll spend the evening as I’ll have doubtless spent the night, dead still, dead silent. A living statue.

  It’s not just the money. I like being looked at. And it’s different, in the street, in the middle of the crowd. When you’re on stage, the audience can’t touch you, even if they want to. Out in the street, they could but they don’t. They know the rules. I like that. You pick your spot, lay down your crate, put out your tin, step on to the crate, assume a pose. They flip a coin into the tin and I shudder into motion, then halt, only moving again when they drop in more coins. Mostly it’s kids and couples, tourists. But sometimes it’s men on their own. With them it’s different. To them I’m an object. How could I not be, a statue! They stare openly, rudely, crudely, knowing I can’t stare back. They walk round me, farmers inspecting cattle at auction, knowing I can’t turn to follow their gaze. My costume, black leotard and tights, a shadow made solid with my face painted out a ghostly white. They stare, then, having established they’re masters of the situation, drop money into the tin, allowing me a few seconds of freedom. Turns me on a bit, I think.

  4 June

  That bargirl from the other night. She came up to me today, as I was playing the statue. Girl I say but more like a young man with her cricketer’s stride, hands in trouser pockets. That’s how she approaches, and then she stands in front of me, never minding that a couple of young boys are there, about to make me move. She elbows them to one side then stares so hard at me she freaks them and they skedaddle. Meanwhile I’m still standing there, still. Usually, I can’t look over the person looking me over – being looked at makes it impossible to do any looking yourself. Like being onstage when the footlights blind you to the individual members of the audience. But this bird spends so long in front of me, drops so many coins into my tin, that with each move I’m able to take in a bit more, until I get a sense of the whole of her. Which is, strong and determined like a Channel swimmer. One from the 1920s. Tall, flat-chested, severe bob. And those ears! A boat with its oars out, I thought. Something paddle-ish

  Paddle-ish!

  Something paddle-ish about her shape too. Something Edwardian about her. But she’s young, my age. And so the young Edwardian man-woman

  Man-woman!

  the young Edwardian woman stands in front of me for quite a while, giving me this funny look. Different funny to the other night, but still funny. Head to one side, smile lopsided like it’s about to slip off her face altogether, looking for all the world like she’s expecting something, like she’s waiting for me to do something she’s known all along I was about to do. That annoyed me, and I wanted to wrongfoot her. So I gave her the Seven Deadly Sins. When she dropped in her change, I moved into a different position. More coins. Again, I moved position. I gave her several versions of Lust. The one where I look like a gargoyle. The ones from the convent I used to commune with during mass. She didn’t seem impressed. Or unimpressed. It was as if she was expecting me to assume a particular pose, and, when I didn’t, felt the need to keep paying up until I moved into the exact position that would satisfy her. What this position was, I never knew, cos after an hour or so of this, I saw her pat her pockets and look at me sadly. I knew from her gestures and sorry expression that she’d run out of money, and I knew too she’d come back. And it was funny, I realized as she walked away, never looking back as she loped off in that way of hers, how she’d communicated all this to me without a single word.

  5 June

  Yesterday she came back. I gave her Pride every time. Hand on hip, chin tilted, and, as I turned my cheek, I thought I saw the wardrobe girl, Tamara, passing through the crowd. I hope not. She’s having a thing with Jack and doesn’t like me. She’s bound to tell on me.

  6 June

  That strange girl came back this morning. But this time, she just put down a crate of her own, painted white in contrast to mine, positioned herself in front of me, in my direct line of sight, face a foot from my face, and stood still as a statue herself. Copying my exact pose. For the full twenty-seven minutes she was there – according to the clock tower – passers-by just kept passing by, staring, to be sure, but at her, instead of me. No one stopped to put money in my tin. Don’t know if they found the whole scene too strange or too intimate – it felt both – they just walked straight past me and my odd, inverse shadow. She was dressed all in white, gauzy white fabric like paper with the light shining through it. And her face all smeared in black boot polish! Between us, this channel of silence, despite the mad noise of the crowd all around. But though we stood in identical poses, and though I now had a clear image of her, I still felt like it was her looking at me, because, I suppose, the rules of our game meant that she could, if she chose, move any time she liked. But also, there was something – what’s that word from the Commandments – covetous? – something about her stare, trying to claim me, her look pinning me as though she was a butterfly collector and me a brittle and unwieldy specimen. There was a kind of effort in her stare. Then, abruptly, she broke out of her position, stepped down, picked up her crate and strode briskly off. And it really was like she’d pinned me in place, because I realized, after she had left my line of vision, that I would have run after her, had I been able. And this bothered me. Me, who never runs after anyone.

  What a joy to transcribe from Damaris’ diary!

  8 June

  Fuck fuck fuck. He only caught me! Didn’t see him till it was too late. I was looking out for her. When he came out of nowhere I really did fucking freeze. His face went as white as mine in mime. We open tonight, he says, You’ll need your rest, and sends me back to the b’n’b telling me, We will talk about this later. So I’m lying here now picking at the bobbly bedspread, supposedly resting up for tonight, half of me wondering what the fuck he’s going to do about all this – if he gets me kicked off the American tour! – while the other half wonders if she came back to find me this afternoon.

  9 June

  We opened last night. Full house. We went down well but we won’t know what’s what till the papers tomorrow, if there’s even any mention of us. He was completely satisfied with my performance. And I don’t mean by that that I was satisfactory, more that everything he was hoping for, I did. I felt that even on stage, but he could hardly look me in the face when he told me as much afterwards. Not after running into me in the street like that. I have betrayed him. Made a fool of him for the second time in two weeks. Afterwards, we had drinks in the theatre bar. I looked for her, but she was not there. Instead this Orcadian chick with those faraway fisherman’s eyes some have. I asked about her colleague, a bit embarrassed when describing her, and she says, Oh you mean Evie. She’s away looking after her da. She wasn’t able to tell me any more. So I invited her to come and have drinks with us. But she was shy of me as pretty girls often are, and said she couldn’t, she was working. D came down later, said how much he’d loved the show. I noticed the kinds of looks he attracted, and the look he gave in response. Acknowledging their acknowledgement of his fame, as though it was he who had recognized them.
And it made me think of her. Evie. That look she gave me that first night. As though she knew me.

  10 June

  So this is how he’s getting his revenge. He’s using the reviews as an excuse. Some are cautious, some are catty, some are raving. And one was smutty. I didn’t look virginal enough to play the title role, ha!