by Niels Hammer
Shaking his head Fjodor laughed and sat down to blow his nose and recuperate.
“And what will you do when you find her?”
“I don’t really know yet.”
“I mean will you exact vengeance or will you tell her you love her?”
“I’m in love with her.”
“You incomparably bloody fool. The chance that it will be reciprocal is minute, but you know that?”
“What can I do but take the chance?”
“Of course I understand that. You have to try, regardless of the odds.”
“And I’m not a gambling man like you.”
“But I bet you have enjoyed the chase, the thrill of the game? And the way is perhaps as important as the goal.”
“Of course I have.”
“Activity ought to be an end in itself, there ought never to be ulterior motives, though there nearly always are. Even if it turns out to be a mismatch you will have enjoyed the experience.”
“But she left me with an impression of sensuality and integrity that has not diminished.”
“Christ alive! Beauty, truth and rarity. I do hope it’s not a case of wishful thinking based on too ardent a projection; you know as well as I that there are several well-known examples that could act as deterrents though of course they never do. I agree that there’s something irresistible in the notion of a female burglar, especially if she’s beautiful; but it would be far more likely that a female burglar would exhibit psychopathological characteristics than that she would be the mature and loving wonder you imagine.”
“That configuration has of course kept me awake at night, but the impression of integrity I had is hard to explain in that case, and I’m usually quite alert to such impressions, and have, as you may remember, rarely had to revise them. It’s only that which gives me hope and stamina enough to continue. You see, the impressions of sincerity and emotional awareness I had from the tone, the pitch and the timber of her voice, from the expression of fury in her eyes that veiled though it did not hide her fundamental serenity, made me intuitively conscious of her character traits although subsequent rational analysis could fail to corroborate such a view. She knew herself, she was a law unto herself. She had none of that false mawkish attitude many women, or girls rather, tend to display in order to please, to yield passively to gain an advantage later. She was an honest woman, honest to herself and aware of the flow of her own feelings, way beyond commercial considerations, survival strategies, prostitution, matrimonial or not – ”
“I hope your intuition is right, I really do, and in that case I’ll look forward to meet her, for you have certainly made me curious; but what would have made her chose such a, well, such a vocation if you like, for it must have been a choice so distinct that she would have been left with no choice at all. I’ll get no peace of mind till I know. This is really an adventure. Just as it ought to be. Go home and carry on for you have come a long way already. Anyway, here’s the list, a couple of clubs are still missing, but with the information you have provided I expect that he will have broken through the defences of the remaining clubs sometime to-morrow.”
“Fine, then I’ll hurry back to go through all the names, of which only a quarter are female.”
“You should be able to finish early in the morning.”
“I would have liked to stay, but I’m too excited to think about anything else and hence incapable of civilised conversation, so I hope the exigency of my predicament will excuse my rudeness?”
“Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori.”
“Yes, so noli temere, for in his painting there are no paintings, only sheets of music and books.”
“I trust you’ll always be aware of that.”
“As long as the capricious daughters of Mnēmosynē and Zeus will remain favourable, yes.”
When Fjodor – as usually dressed only in a purple morning gown and embroidered Turkish slippers – had let him out he fought his way back to the subterranean caverns where the light felt dead but glaring. The grimy metal carriage that rattled along on the tracks was packed with briefcase-closed faces full of fragile dreams and suppressed resentment against forced labour. To feel at peace was too difficult here and he had nothing to do but wait at Liverpool Street station till time would materialise the right train. The endurance needed to survive inertia and boredom came from fantasies about a future in Paradise. A dreary journey he had of it – breathing the stale air of common perdition – minute after minute – mile after mile – but survived till the cold night air outside the station and the necessity of personal responsibility on the road saved him as it usually did. At half past eleven he was home. So after carrots en vinaigrette – bread – cheese and a large sustaining glass of Bourgogne he began by going through the first list. The most obvious search consisted in using both the Christian names and the surnames as it would be more expedient for administrative purposes of all sorts including insurance issues to register the full names rather than the initials – but then – if there were no acceptable results – supposing marriage – he would have to try using only the Christian names – but that would be a far more laborious approach. The files on the disk were arranged club by club so he began by typing the name ‘Anderson – Audrey Bernadette’ – but with no result and continued with ‘Barnwell – Jane Elizabeth’ – with no result either. Going through the entire list of names he ended with ‘Wheeler – Marianne Brenda.’ There were no matches there at all but what did he expect? It was the first club. The following list – name after name – gave no positive indication either. To go through the two lists had taken him thirty-seven minutes – but it would be best to go through all the lists first and only in case of a thoroughly negative result continue with ‘Audrey Bernadette’ and ‘Jane Elizabeth.’ The next three files had no matching names either so he had to fortify himself with another glass of Bourgogne for the suspense was now manifested in a current of live needles in his arms and legs. They prevented him from sitting still and from acting calmly and coherently. Gritting his teeth he continued but the next two lists proved to be equally disappointing. To sink with flying rainbow colours – that might be the best he could hope for. The following two lists made him even more despondent though his despondency was numbed by his hollow fear of failure. Stoicism was only an option if all passion had been extinguished. The combination of surnames with Christian names narrowed the possibilities – but sometimes only one Christian name and an initial were given. So the search was incomplete – but without this search system it would have taken days. Another list and another list – name after name after name – but what would he have done without these names which meant so little and so much? Volatile connotations. He began each new list with a verdurous sense of expectancy but ended it with a feeling of bleak frustration. The dopamine circuit. Winning and losing. The Red and the Black – Uneven and Even – but this was not a game from which he could withdraw or even stay detached. It was his life. His humour – his sense of proportion and even his joy of the unexpected had vanished because of this infatuation that quite likely would result in leaving him enraged by his own gullibility. Having been tossed to and fro between the two opposite poles again and again he was left bathed in a layer of sweat so he had a quick shower to let the rain drops from the Sky purify his senses and change his mood so as to give him the courage to continue with his quest – for what if? He did not dare to go further down into that darkness and began again with list number twelve. Let it be this! Let it be this! Loud words and longing of so little worth. Again a negative result. It was now almost four o’ clock. The negative result of list number thirteen – fourteen and fifteen accumulated to give him the sensation of a deep dark hole in his stomach. A glass of Dutch courage – Armagnac – had become a necessity – so he took up her challenge once again as he was destined to do. In list number sixteen a match turned him upside down – ‘Jenny Jenkins’ used a club in Norwich. I
t had to be her. ‘Jenny Jenkins’ from Aberdeen – but her weight at birth had been three thousand and thirty grammes and that did not fit the image he had of her in his memory – still it might have been a premature birth and she could very well have reached her full potential later – and yet he had a peculiar notion that the match was a coincidence. An aerial view might substantiate the possibility. Bowthorpe Road – an urban area with houses packed like cards. It seemed to be incongruent with her vocation. Of course he could be wrong. It could very well be her. It might very well be her. And yet it might not. Anyway he had to finish before he could go to bed and hope to sleep. The seventeenth and then the eighteenth list were equally disappointing. His chances – drops of precious water – were running out between his fingers into the desert sands. As the routine had become automatic he could trawl more quickly through a list but the routine also made it easier to make mistakes and to oversee something – so he had to take his time. The Sky was bright – the Sun was shining and the Blackbird eager to greet the day – and so would he if and only if. At a quarter to six there were thirteen lists left to go through. The possibilities diminished drastically and he began again to be weary. Should he continue or should he wait till he had slept? No – he would not be able to sleep before he knew whether to despair or triumph – although the despair did not have to be final. List number nineteen began as usual with excitement and ended with disappointment – and number twenty arose like a new cloudless dawn only to fade away beneath a heavy nimbostratus layer. Fjodor’s technician had formatted the lists consistently but there was a considerable difference between the number of members from club to club. This could reflect the relative popularity of the clubs – but a small club might have very few but dedicated and skilful members – so it was an indifferent clue. List number twenty-one was as empty of interest as list number twenty – but the preponderance of male members had no influence on the speed of the search. The next list was without a positive result either – but at least he had found Jenny Jenkins. She became more acceptable and familiar as his hope vanished. The wiles of the subconscious were inscrutable and past finding out. List number twenty-three increased the feeling that his search would end on an undecidable note. It would be inconclusive and he would have to begin again with the Christian names. She must have married in spite of his conjecture that she had to be an independent woman. In list number twenty-four the name 'Caitlin – Jean Cushny' appeared in a flash before his eyes. Yes! Yes! It was her. It had to be her. Feverish and with fumbling fingers be began searching for how frequent the name Cushny might be – although he had already done that. It was very rare – one in twenty-six thousand two hundred and eighty-one persons – and combined with Caitlin Jean made it a certainty. She was born in Banff – that fitted perfectly and her weight at birth had been three thousand nine hundred and thirty grammes. That made it all cohere. Having notified Fjodor he escaped the computer window to face the reality outside the door. He had found her. By luck and by pluck. She was the only woman with that name. He had another glass of Armagnac and a cup of tea to take a rest and absorb the consequences of having found her – though he still had to woo and win her. Caitlin Jean Cushny! What a name? he repeated it several times aloud to catch the melody – but it seemed to elude him. He could of course continue but he knew it would be superfluous. It was now eight o’clock in the morning and he sat down to float away in a rosy mist of joy – for he had found her – found her – found her! Hitherto it had been a game – a game played in an abstract realm – but having her name and address made her condense from a cloud of virtual phantasmagoria to the warm-blooded life of pin-pointed individuality. Inhaling the vapour in the glass through his nose he soothed his receptors with the wild-mellow fragrance and saw her again in his mind’s eye as she drew back startled to exclaim Oh hivven nae! though not more startled than having at the same time been able to kick him so that he fell back in the bed – but he had found her because of that – after a search of thirteen long days. Her house was exactly as he had expected it lying all by itself on a rather inconspicuous road – East Lane – though not so small as to be without traffic and not so large as to be busy and she had no close neighbours either. Though wanting to continue he decided to rest for a couple of hours before beginning to investigate the premises – so he went to bed and fell asleep with her name vibrating on his lips.
XVI
The instant the Sun was revealed in his eyes he knew he had found her but it was nearly twelve o’clock and anxious of each passing second of her life and of his own he jumped up and shaved carefully – one nivver knew. Equipped with her precious and hard-won address – a mattress – a thick blanket – a thermoflask – tea – sandwiches – binoculars – an ordnance map – telescope and tripod – he drove down the road as if taking off in a Mirage – turned west – sped on and turned south – feeling streamlined by a yearning he had kept in abeyance by focusing on the details of a search that soon would laurel his endeavours by opening up the Gates of Eden or leave him marooned among the Asphodels for years to come. The sporadic patches of summer-blooming woods and the small villages with crooked narrow streets – white or purple Lilacs and thatched houses – which stretched themselves out in the sunlight to display their Edwardian or Victorian graces – and even occasionally to suggest a faint retention of the hidden archetypes of Plantagenet or Viking patterns – all passed before his fervently focused eyes as indifferent pageants of insubstantial shadows – for he had found her – and although he kept saying to himself that his love was bound to be a simple projection of a subconscious wish – of a subconscious Gestalt – as Fjodor had suggested – formed by suppressed desires – forgotten experiences and neuroanatomical idiosyncrasies – all of which had little – if anything – in common with her as a real woman of live flesh and blood – guts and soul – as a women with peculiarities – habits and entire sets of unimaginable ontological characteristics – his felt reality asseverated that their meeting and subsequent interanimation all had been written – not in the sand as his intelligence insisted or even in running water – but in the constellations of the stars above – so that he now merely was engaged in fulfilling not only his own destiny but hers as well. Her house – called The Poplars because of the row of tall Poplars that grew along the hedge perpendicular to the road – lay – as he had seen it in the aerial view before going to bed – all by itself – for nothing seemed to have changed since the picture had been taken two years ago at a height of about three thousand feet – from a Cessna Skyhawk? However – the road appeared to be fairly busy – at least now around midday – but it was only what he ought to have expected for that meant that she could come and go at whatever hour she wanted without giving the neighbours cause to be concerned or even cause for becoming more curious about their surroundings than what would normally have been the case. Hitherto he had been right – but any link in the causal chain of the near future could be brittle enough to prove him wrong. Stopping the car he had a look at the ordnance map and at the print-out. There was almost half a kilometre to the nearest neighbour – a farmer. The ground sloped upwards behind her house and there were three rows of trees – at least – if seen from the road so this would give him a chance to observe the premises without being seen – but it would be prudent – as his watch might extend over a period of several days – to get permission from the farmer – for it was highly unlikely that this large stretch of farm land belonged to the house. He would have to investigate it at the municipal office in Yarmouth – but he could just assume that it did belong to the farm – and if that should prove not to be the case the farmer would be bound to tell him. He drove home to get his membership card. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was as good an excuse as he could expect to get – and armed with proper credentials he drove back and parked at the entrance to the farm. There was nobody around so he knocked at the door and waited while looking around for signs of human activity. As he was on the point of going over to t
he hothouses the door was opened by a thickset elderly man with a worn cloth cap in his hand.
“I’m on my way out now. What do you want?”
“Good afternoon, I’m sorry to disturb you, but it will only take a minute. My name is ‘Ralph Drummond’ and I come from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.”
Garrulous by disposition and tired by work he hated to waste his time for time was money so sheltering his eyes in the shade under the eaves of his trusty speckled peak he began lumbering over to the hothouses.
“When I happened half an hour ago to drive along the road I caught a glimpse of a bird called a ‘Rosefinch’ and it seemed to settle in the small grove over there about one hundred and fifty yards from the road. It is very rare in England. My question is if I may go along the trees here and see if it breeds. If it does it will not be made public in order not to disturb it. Here’s my card and my membership card from the society.”
Taking off his cloth cap he scratched his head and poked at the soil with his clog to look for the answer.
“Hum – as long as you don’t go through the wheat but keep to the fence I can see no harm in it.”
“Thank you very much – but if I fail to see it to-day may I try my luck to-morrow? And by the way, I have parked my car beside the road on the grass. Can I leave it there?”
“Oh yes, but now I’ve got to fix the water, for the pump broke down early this morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you use water from the river?”