Headlong

by Michael Frayn

  Am I frightened that she might not share my opinion? Not frightened, exactly – anxious to avoid the reciprocal disappointment in her that I should feel if she didn’t. I’m as reluctant to lose the remembered brightness of the sky beyond her head in the window of seat 25A on flight LH4565 as she is to lose the remembered boldness of my smile as I offered her my accumulated airline tissues.

  No, I’m frightened. I’m going to need her moral support in the next few weeks, including her agreement to let me back my judgement by borrowing rather a lot of money from the bank, and if she doesn’t accept my identification when the moment comes I don’t know how I’m going to manage.

  I certainly wish I had her practical help right now. Because it’s not iconology that’s at issue here – it’s straightforward iconography. The range of possible interpretations, and the various permutations of them, are bewildering. On the table in front of me I have Friedländer (of course), Glück, Grossmann, Tolnay, Stechow, Genaille and Bianconi. They quote each other freely, together with various other authors not available in the London Library – Hulin de Loo, Michel, Romdahl, Stridbeck and Dvořák – and they refer to the often mutually contradictory iconography used in two breviaries illuminated by Simon Bening of Bruges in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, the Hours of Hennessy and the Hours of Costa; in the Grimani Breviary, also done, a little earlier, by Simon Bening and his father Alexander Bening, although the calendar itself is attributed to Gerard Horenbout; and in our own dear Calendrier flamand, as I think of it, in the Bavarian State Library.

  Which month, for a start, does The Hunters in the Snow represent? According to Hulin de Loo, a snowy landscape is characteristic for February. Tolnay dissents; in the Da Costa Hours the snowy landscape illustrates December, and in Hennessy it goes with January, in which month Hennessy also places hunters, though for hares rather than foxes, which seems to be Bruegel’s own variation on the theme. Glück agrees with the idea of January. But what are those women roasting over the fire they’re tending in the snow outside the village inn? Glück believes it’s corn, which reinforces his diagnosis of January. Tolnay thinks that it’s not corn but pork, which both the Hours of Hennessy and the Hours of Costa show for the month of December.

  So the Hunters might show any one of the three winter months. The Gloomy Day turns out to be just as indeterminable. Among the peasants pollarding the trees in the foreground are three who are not labouring at all. One of them’s eating something flat and rectangular, like a matzoh or a slice of pizza, and holding a piece of it up in the air – perhaps to keep it out of the reach of a child wearing a paper crown and carrying a lantern. Tolnay sees the food as a waffle, which together with the lantern suggests that the allusion’s to Carnival, in February, and Romdahl agrees. This, of course, overlaps with Hulin de Loo’s placing of the Hunters, but de Loo, having set the Hunters in February, believes that the paper crown identifies the child as the Bean King, whose celebration is at the beginning of January – before the Hunters; Michel accepts this. But Glück places the scene in March, and Stechow agrees that in Hennessy (though not in other calendars) March is the month indicated by tree pruning.

  So the possibilities for The Gloomy Day also range over three months – and the two pictures may even be in reverse order. Haymaking is a little more tightly confined, within a range of only two possible readings. For Hulin de Loo, Michel and Glück it’s June, the month clearly established by the baskets full of beans and cherries being carried down towards the valley by the peasant women in the foreground. But in Hennessy and Grimani haymaking itself, the activity which occupies all the middle ground of the picture, is the main theme of July; as Stechow points out, the Netherlandish word for July is Hooimaand, Hay Moon. For Michel and Glück, though, July is the month of The Corn Harvest. But Stechow reminds us that Oegtmaand, Harvest Moon, is August – the month for which Tolnay says harvesting, the peasants’ repast and siesta are all themes in the calendars; though he opens the possibility of a third month here as well when he warns that what appears to be a game of boules in the middle ground could be alluding to September.

  Which leaves The Return of the Herd. This is apparently not a theme that figures in the calendars, but Tolnay believes it’s Bruegel’s adaptation of the return from the hunt, which the Calendrier flamand offers for November. Michel and Glück concur, and Hulin de Loo notes the bareness of the trees, and can somehow feel a cold wind blowing in the picture, both of which also suggest November. But then Tolnay draws attention to the ripe vineyards and nets in the valley below, and points out that both the wine harvest and the netting of birds are traditional for October. Stechow is likewise in two minds here, though at any rate not three.

  So which months do the five extant pictures show? According to the iconography, so far as I can disentangle it, they may show any or all of them.

  Except two. There are two months, and only two months, that are not identified in any of the various schemes, however many pictures are missing.

  April and May.

  For the first time since I set eyes on it, I allow myself to think about … about it, yes, about the unknown substance, the object for identification. The Merrymakers, as the label on the back names it. About my picture, as it’s going to become. About the mud underfoot, the flush of green spreading through the bare brown woods, the little town in the distance, where people must already be sitting outside in squares and on street corners in the fresh warmth of the sun.

  It’s too late in the year for March, too early for June. So, yes, it must be either April or May. And once again I feel the uncontainable tide of excitement rising inside me, the insupportable anguish.

  I have either April or May; it all fits. The only question is which.

  Well, does it matter? One would be as good as the other, and to have found either is a miracle.

  But there’s one possibility that would be more miraculous still, so miraculous that for the moment I daren’t even think about it. I need to know one simple thing first: April? Or May?

  I cast my mind back to the weather in the picture. It’s ambiguous. It feels like April where we’re standing; it looks like May that we’re heading towards.

  What can we glean from the iconography?

  ‘In the calendar,’ I suddenly find I’ve said. Kate looks up. ‘The calendar in a Book of Hours. What are the signs for April and May?’

  She frowns. Is she going to ask me why I want to know? If she does I’ll tell her. The same principle applies, I decide in that instant, with her as with Tony Churt: no lies, no unnecessary truths. But she’s maintaining her policy, too: no questions that might provoke either.

  How do we get into these ridiculous situations with the people we love?

  ‘I don’t know much about the calendar,’ she says warily. ‘I’ve only really looked at the devotional sections.’

  I wait for the cautionary academic smoke screen of disclaimers to clear.

  ‘The signs for April and May?’ she repeats finally. ‘You mean Taurus? Gemini?’

  ‘Not the zodiacal signs … Why, do they have zodiacal signs?’

  ‘In some calendars.’

  I’m trying to remember, now she’s suggested it: are there any bulls or twins lurking in the depths of the Merrymakers?

  ‘I mean, what are the traditional labours?’

  She frowns again. I don’t think she needs to frown for very long to remember something that must be almost as rudimentary to her as the letters of the alphabet. I think she’s trying to work out, without asking me, what I’m up to. She’s guessed that it’s something to do with that last picture at the Churts, the one she didn’t see. Like me, she’s trying to identify it – but at one further remove, with nothing to go on but what I let fall about it. She may manage it, too – may have managed it already, I think in a moment of mixed panic and relief.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘for April you sometimes get planting and sowing.’

  I can’t recall any planting or sow
ing. ‘What about May?’

  ‘Sheep going to pasture. Cows being milked.’

  ‘How about cows going to pasture?’ I’m thinking of that tiny herd in the distance, that will come down again past us in the foreground in October or November.

  ‘Possibly, though I can’t think of an example offhand.’

  But now she’s warming to the work. I recognise the old awkward, diffident eagerness in the way she moves her head as she talks.

  ‘Actually April and May tend to be rather a special case, because they’re often illustrated not by labours but by pastimes. It’s quite striking. All year round the peasants toil – and then when it gets to be spring the gentry suddenly put in an appearance. They own the entire countryside, of course, and now the weather’s more agreeable they come outdoors and start enjoying it for a bit.’

  ‘Like us,’ I say, warming to her warmth.

  ‘Yes, though I can’t immediately think of a calendar where they get the septic tank repaired.’

  ‘Poor souls. So what else is there for them to do?’

  ‘In April they go hawking.’

  ‘Not like us.’

  ‘No, but then they also pick flowers.’

  ‘We’ve picked the odd flower in our time.’

  She looks away. ‘The other thing they quite often do is flirt.’

  ‘I seem to recall something of that sort,’ I say softly, but what I’m actually remembering is the comic couple in my picture, with their two gallant little daffodils and their expectantly protruded lips. ‘All this is in April? I don’t like to think what they’ve moved on to by May.’

  ‘Riding. Maying. Hawking again sometimes. And courting still. Making music.’

  ‘Which reminds me – the mice have eaten through one of the speaker leads,’ I say, but what I’m hearing is the drone of the bagpipes and the heavy pounding of the dancing feet, and what I’m smelling is the choking scent of the mayflowers that the people beyond the dancers are pulling down.

  ‘There’s a lovely one for May by Simon Bening, in the Da Costa Hours,’ she says. Two couples boating on the Bruges canals. One of the men rowing, one playing a pipe, and one of the women accompanying him on the lute. They’re bringing home the branches of may they’ve picked, and they’ve a bottle of wine hung over the side of the boat to cool.’

  Yes, now I think about it there was water somewhere in the middle distance. A millpool, I think, with more merrymakers beside it engaged in some kind of rural sports. I’m still not clear, though, whether the iconography indicates April or May. It seems to be as ambiguous as the iconography in all the others. But then my clumping pretmakers aren’t gentry.

  ‘What about the peasants?’ I ask. ‘Are they playing lutes and floating about in boats? Or are they doing their courting in more peasant-like ways?’

  ‘The peasants?’ She frowns again. ‘I don’t think any of the calendars show peasants courting. It would be against the whole social ethos. Peasants don’t have fun – it’s the gentry who have fun. Peasants labour.’

  We retire into our respective piles of books again. This slight anomaly doesn’t seem to me of any great significance. But as I read on I realize that something’s changed. The pages in front of me have lost their urgency. The bright light of conviction inside my head has begun to fade a little. I have to read each paragraph twice, because what my mind keeps coming back to is these two jarring propositions: all the pictures in the series, as every authority agrees, are based upon the iconography of the Book of Hours – my picture shows activities that have no place in that iconography.

  It’s a trivial point. There could be a dozen explanations. I put it out of my mind.

  It comes back. I begin to feel an old familiar feeling, of a stone growing heavy in my heart. Could it be that I’ve allowed myself to be carried away once again? One of the possible explanations for the discrepancy, it occurs to me, is a painfully simple one: that my picture isn’t part of a series by Bruegel based on the Book of Hours. It’s a scene of Merrymakers in a Mountainous Landscape, just as the label says, and it’s by a follower of Sebastian Vrancz.

  The fact that this explanation is simple doesn’t for a moment mean it’s true. But the balance of probabilities has shifted. I can’t think now why I ever jumped to the conclusion that it was a Bruegel. Not a single objective reason comes to mind. It was just another sudden rush of blood to the head.

  And I say my picture. But it’s not. It’s Tony Churt’s picture.

  Yes, at least sobriety has returned before any irretrievable damage was done. Kate’s given me the chance to think again while there’s still time. She’s offering me a way out from the vertiginous enterprise I’ve got myself into; perhaps all the time I’ve been unconsciously looking for one. I bless Lufthansa yet again. Or at any rate I should. But somehow, totally unjustifiably, I find I’m feeling a little sour about Lufthansa. Next time I go to Munich I’ll fly on some other airline.

  I realize that she’s watching me with another of her little frowns. ‘What’s the matter?’ she says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I reply shortly. ‘Nothing’s the matter. Why should anything be the matter?’

  But I know from the way she’s looking at me that she’s still trying to work out, with the help of the extra evidence provided by my sudden change of manner, what I could have seen when I looked at that last picture. I suppose that now I could simply tell her.

  I say nothing, though. I can’t bring myself to let her know what a fool I’ve made of myself.

  I slide Grossmann, Glück and the rest of them to one side, and press Open File on the laptop. ‘C:nominalism,’ I type.

  A short-lived setback. The truth, the simple underlying truth, comes to me in the middle of the night, somewhere in the dark hours before the six o’clock feed. It’s the time when one tends to wake and find all one’s previous certainties and satisfactions replaced by doubts and dismay. The corollary, I discover, is that if you go to bed filled with doubts and dismay, there’s a chance that the metamorphoses of the night may change them into certainties and satisfactions.

  This is the simple conviction that wakes me: that whatever my picture is, it’s not by an anonymous follower of a painter no one’s heard of!

  It’s not by the school of Vrancz, or the circle of Vrancz, or an imitator of Vrancz. It’s not by Vrancz himself. I know this absolutely, even though I know nothing whatever about Vrancz or his school, circle, and imitators. Here’s the simple reasoning that’s worked itself out in my sleeping brain: if that amazing picture were by Vrancz, or anyone connected with him, then I should know about him, because so would everyone in the entire Western world, down to the parties of excursioning schoolchildren and the American tourists doing seven cultural capitals in seven days.

  Remember Friedländer and his words of wisdom about how we recognize a friend, and with what certainty. The flash of recognition is the primary perception. It’s not to be replaced or devalued by anomalous details – the false beard, the dark glasses, the foreign accent. All these little mysteries we can inquire into later, after we’ve thrown our arms around his neck and wept for joy.

  In fact, now I see it the other way round: everything that seems to cast doubt on my identification really supports it. The question’s not if it can really be my old friend in that red wig, waving his arms about and speaking broken English. The question is who else it could be but my always astonishing old chum. Who else in the world would have had the notion of behaving like that?

  Look at it this way. Let’s suppose that Sebastian Vrancz, or I, or anyone else you can think of, had set to work to paint the changing aspect of the year in a series of pictures based on the iconography of the Book of Hours. When we reached April and May, why yes, certainly, we’d have shown either peasants ploughing and milking, or ladies and gentlemen flirting and courting. But this is precisely why there isn’t an entire gallery in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or a whole row of books in the London Library, devoted to Sebastian Vrancz or
me, and why there is to Pieter Bruegel. Because only Bruegel had the originality and boldness to diverge from the model where it suited him, and freely adapt it to his own ideas. It’s an absolutely characteristic transformation, entirely congruent with his transformation of the traditional winter hare hunters into fox hunters – and unsuccessful ones to boot – and of the traditional autumn return of the hunt into the return of the herd. Now I come to think of it, he shows peasants having fun in two of the other pictures in the cycle! In the snowbound village to which the hunters are returning, the local people are skating and sliding on the ice. In midsummer, in the village beyond the cornfields, they’re swimming, and playing either boules or a rather more savage game called cock-throwing, where people throw sticks at a cockerel or a goose, and win it as a prize if they can grab it before it gets up on its feet again. So letting them enjoy a dance and kiss in spring is all part of the same pattern of adaptation.

  Kate and I are working on this together, in a way, because she’s unwittingly confirmed my intuitive identification. It’s Bruegel, there’s no longer a shadow of doubt in my mind.

  Which brings me back to the same problem as before. April? Or May?

  I turn on to my left side; it’s April. I turn on to my right; it’s May.

  ‘I can’t help you’, says Kate quietly in the darkness, ‘if you don’t tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I whisper back. ‘Just work. Just thinking about something. Anyway, you have. You have helped.’

  Another clue for her to be working on, if she can’t sleep either. I force myself to lie still. We’ll have Tilda awake as well if I’m not careful, and I shan’t be able to explain to her either. April … May … At once I feel I shall go mad if I don’t turn back on to my left side … my right … If only I could be on my left side and my right side simultaneously I could get back to sleep!