But it was hard to maintain complete calm because what he felt was so vivid. The thought that he might actually be dead occurred to him, and he was filled again with fear. What could have killed him then? You don’t die from looking at a picture.
There was a time of paralysis during which fear retreated, but also all hope. He felt overwhelmed by the strangeness of his situation and reacted to it by withdrawing into himself so that he began to feel like a tiny prisoner trapped in his own body. His legs started to shake and he wondered if he could stand up much longer. This was the turning point. He realised that he had nothing to lose by action, everything to lose by the despairing torpor into which he was drifting.
His first task was to get out of the temple. He tried the bronze doors several times, but they were irrevocably shut and had no handles on the inside. He tried the surrounding walls for secret entrances, or some concealed instrument to open the doors, but found nothing. Evening was coming on apace and the sky visible through the circular hole above the sarcophagus was turning to a star-strewn violet.
One world may have no meaning, but two must have, because a meaning is a relationship. The world in which Jason found himself was somehow contingent on the other one, the one which he still called, with increasing lack of conviction, ‘the real world’. There had been a way in; there must be a way out. At this point in his reasoning, Jason realised that he must try the only way out which was open to him and that was to enter the broken sarcophagus.
For a long while he paused, suspended in the classical calm of his surroundings, knowing that he must not stay, and not wishing to. Darkness was falling and soon he would be barely able to see where to go. The atmosphere oppressed him so that he knew he had to escape; at the same time it weighed him down and kept him from taking action. Fear held him too until he was able to detach himself sufficiently from his feelings to drag his body towards the tomb.
When he had climbed onto the broken sarcophagus he stared down into it. What he saw beneath him was a restless darkness, a blackness in which tides of even greater blackness were eddying to and fro. The air was full of shiftings and whisperings. He leaned over still further in an agony of indecision, then suddenly out of the black came the giant iron hand, seized him and dragged him down into the void.
After the initial shock, Jason became calmer. He was held securely, though not without some discomfort and he was moving. He could not tell in what direction he was moving, only that he was, because he felt a wind rushing against him and presently he saw tiny spots of light moving past, like the sparks of a bonfire on the evening breeze. They eddied and swirled slightly and seemed to be of all kinds of colours, sometimes, small as they were, of many colours together.
After a while he became aware that these sparks had sounds attached to them and that their tones mingled and blended together in a curious harmony whose shape he almost caught, but which remained elusive. Then it seemed to him that the spark sounds were not mere things but animated thoughts and that if only all these fragments could be bound together they would become one single thought. He heard them crying out together for unity, yet never achieving it in the hurrying dark. As he strained his eyes to focus on one of them it seemed to him that these sparks were not near to him but very far off and that the nearest of them had a shape. What shape he could not tell until one of them happened to come by close enough for him to see, no more than a mile or so he guessed. It had a human shape.
Suddenly he was flung down on the ground. It was not very hard, but yielding, almost soft and composed of huge flakes of something. Above him the sparks still swirled and twittered in the cosmic winds while at his feet he was conscious of a faint grey light like the beginning of dawn.
The flakes on which he had fallen seemed to be sheets of paper and he could walk across them with some difficulty. As he looked about him, his world began to take shape. The faint grey light seemed to originate from one source towards which Jason began to walk.
It was a long walk, that was all Jason could say afterwards, because time in this universe had lost its precise meaning. As he experienced it, it could have been months, years or centuries, and in that time he exhausted every thought and memory that he possessed. He wondered if, like those legendary enraptured monks, or the seven sleepers of Ephesus, he would emerge into his world again years after he had left it with everyone thinking he was dead.
Slowly, slowly the light grew until he could see what he was walking on. They were pieces of paper, thousands, millions of them stretching out to the dim horizon in all directions. Picking one up he saw that it had been drawn on, an exquisite little sketch of a rock and two silver birches, their branches intertwined, their leaves blowing slightly in the wind. He held onto it and picked up another. Here was a drawing in sanguine of a valley at evening with a classical temple and some shepherds feeding their flocks, another beautiful thing. He picked up another piece of paper and another, each one of which had a drawing on it of extraordinary excellence. All the drawings showed either fragments of nature, or classical scenes and figures. Jason could have spent hours, years with them, but he felt the need to press on towards the light. He dropped the other drawings, and kept the one he had picked up of the rock and the silver birches, remembering that in some other life Anthony Blunt, scholar and traitor, had called Gaspard Dughet ‘the Silver Birch Master’.
On, on towards the light, and in the light Jason saw a seated figure, the original of the seated figure he had seen at the end of the frieze in the temple. As he sat the figure drew on a piece of paper and when he had finished it to his satisfaction he let it fall and then picked up another piece of paper to draw on. He never stopped; he seemed compelled to draw and draw until time itself had an end. When Jason had come close to him he at last looked up.
Jason wanted to speak but could not. His eyes met those of the Silver Birch Master—Jason was sure it was him—and rested for a long time in them. The man’s eyes were infinitely tired and Jason felt a wave of pity for him so strong it seemed to be both inside and outside him at the same time. It blew like the wind and as his compassion raged, the million drawings which carpeted the landscape were swept upwards into the surrounding air like a blizzard. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
As Jason’s passion subsided, so did the turbulence. The drawings fell to the ground and the air became brighter. The Old Master whom Jason knew to be Dughet rose up from his seat. There seemed to be a new gleam of purpose in his eye. He pointed to his right and there through the white mist Jason could see the scene which he had originally entered, the picture In Arcadia. Then the Master pointed to his left and there, dim, very distant, Jason could see the living room of his absurd little Fulham flat.
The Master seemed to be offering him a choice: to go back into the glow of Arcadia, or to return to his flat, flat in more than one sense of the word. Jason did not hesitate, however; he turned right towards Fulham. Once he looked back and saw that the Master had left his seat. Where he had gone he did not see.
Many years later it seemed to Jason that he was awake once again in his own London room, seated in front of the painting, and the clock had only ticked on half an hour or so. He would have believed that he had experienced little more than a peculiarly vivid dream. That was what he urgently wanted to believe, but he was prevented from doing so by the fact that he found he was still holding a piece of paper on which was an exquisite drawing of a rock and some silver birches.
He decided at that moment that he must return In Arcadia to its rightful owner as soon as possible.
**
The only question was how. Eventually he took the simplest, most cowardly course. He wrapped the picture up, wearing gloves the whole time, and sent the parcel off to Sir Ralph Gauge at Charnley Abbey from a busy post office in North London, far from his Fulham flat. He even put on a light disguise to do so. Together with the picture he had included a note written in capitals on a blank sheet of paper.
‘I found this at the Abbey and am return
ing it to you. It is a fine example of the work of Gaspard Dughet—sometimes known as Gaspard Poussin—1615-1675.’
On receiving his picture back, Sir Ralph immediately put it up for sale at Christie’s where it fetched a handsome price, as it recommended itself to potential buyers both by its artistic merit and by the publicity which it had attracted. A good deal was made of its mysterious discovery and return in the newspapers. THIEF WITH A CONSCIENCE read one of the headlines, though some more cynical commentators thought that the thief was returning the picture because he couldn’t sell it. Suspicion fell briefly on the academic who had been filmed at Charnley Abbey talking about Walpole, but no action was taken as no crime had been reported at the time. Jason was neither mentioned, nor interviewed by the press, as he was an unknown actor and obviously ignorant of everything except acting.
With the money he got from the picture Sir Ralph bought a steeplechaser which broke a leg in the Grand National and had to be destroyed. But Jason’s career flourished after a fashion. The small success of his Horace Walpole convinced the casting directors (an unimaginative breed) that he was an expert at eighteenth century roles. Consequently, the following year found him playing Sir Joshua Reynolds in a Channel 4 film about his alleged rivalry with Gainsborough.
While researching for the role Jason read Reynolds’ Discourses to the Royal Academy. In the famous ‘Sixteenth Discourse’ he came across the following passage written in Reynolds’s typically lumbering, Johnsonian prose:
. . . or like the celebrated Roman artist Gaspard Poussin, who believed, not solely that his fame would be immortalised in his work, but that he himself, soul and body, might mysteriously live for ever in it. He assured himself that, by means of certain occult operations, his spirit might enter one of his own sylvan idylls, and there dwell through all eternity, pleasantly enjoying the fruits of his artful imagination. It is credulously believed by some that he achieved this, for the death of this Master was indeed attended by no little mystery, and there is said to be a work in which he eternally resides, though no man has determined which. I am obliged to that learned virtuoso, my friend Sir Augustus Gauge Bt., for this curious legend.
EVIL EYE
A week after he had returned from the States Alex invited me out for a drink at Freek’s, the wine bar nearest our office. Alex was a high flyer and one of the youngest art directors in DH Associates; I was just a humble copywriter, but we got on, sort of. I don’t mind being patronised.
When we got to Freek’s Alex ordered a bottle of Bollinger. It was not that unusual: Alex tended to go over the top. Work hard, play hard, he used to say and it showed. Not that he was bad looking; according to some of the girls in the office he was definitely fanciable. He was dark—very shiny gelled black hair—and dressed sharp in dark suits. Big brown eyes with long lashes which the girls liked; but he was a bit podgy. He was pale and puffy and sweated a lot. On the other hand he was smart, no question, and everyone predicted a brilliant future.
I could tell at once he was worked up, bursting to confide in someone, and I suppose I was the nearest available dumping ground. For a few minutes we talked about the States where he’d been for six months working with DH’s parent company, learning management strategies, new marketing techniques, all that stuff. I could see he was just delaying the inevitable. At last he revealed what was on his mind:
‘You remember that video surveillance system we did a campaign for last year?’
‘Hidden Eye?’
‘That’s the one.’ I remembered it well. As copywriter, I had come up with literally hundreds of different lines for them, all to do with eyes, though ears came into it as well. I won’t embarrass you with the results. Hidden Eye was the very latest in home security. It was a state-of-the-art ‘intelligent’ surveillance system which could be programmed just like an alarm. Movement, light or noise acting as the trigger, as soon as something in the room changed, it would start recording. It would only stop when the thing that had made it start, stopped and then after half an hour of immobility. The sound system had the intelligent capacity for editing out background and traffic noise and concentrating on the human voice. The pictures it produced were of high quality, even in dim light, and it had a number of Unique Selling Points. One was that the images were immediately transmitted to a computer, thus providing an almost infinite and totally silent storage capacity, since there was no need to keep switching over DVDs or videotapes. Another USP was that the whole system had its own back-up power reserve in the event of a power cut. Once it had picked up the moving object it would track it round the room maintaining focus on it and picking up its sound with directional microphones. Above all, it was so miniaturised that the camera—just a tiny lens on the end of a fibre optic cable—could be easily hidden. When you wanted to access the recordings, you simply did so by watching them on your personal computer. Alternatively you could make your own discs and watch them through a DVD player.
‘Well,’ said Alex, ‘they liked the ads so much I managed to wangle a freebie out of them. I got them to set one of their systems up in my flat. Said I wanted to test drive it, that sort of crap.’
‘Whereabouts in your flat?’
‘Guess.’
‘Bedroom?’
‘Got it in one.’ Alex smiled, then wiped the sweat off his face with a handkerchief. He looked at me almost nervously, as if he was unsure how I would react. I was unsure how I should react. ‘Then came the call to America. Quite unexpected. Apparently several people in the office were up for it, but I got it. So I was going to be away for six months and I thought I’d let the flat out. So I did.’
‘Who to?’
‘This girl called Carol. I saw quite a few before I decided on her. Twenties, blonde, gorgeous legs, nice pair of tits. Nice face. She was just a temp somewhere, but she had this lah-di-dah accent. Very Cheltenham Ladies. She sort of took my fancy. I dropped the rent quite a bit for her.’
‘You don’t mean—’
‘That’s right,’ said Alex looking away and pouring himself another glass, ‘I left the Hidden Eye on.’
‘Did you tell her about it?’
‘Good God no!’ Alex managed to dig up some moral indignation from somewhere. ‘No. I mean, I don’t want you to think that this was just some sort of sleazy voyeurist trip for me. No. It was more like research. A unique insight into another life.’
‘If she ever finds out . . .’
‘She won’t. I haven’t seen her since I came back. She’d left the place immaculate, rent paid, bills paid, everything. I wish I could always have a tenant like her. I’m glad now I lowered the rent for her.’
‘You lowered the rent because she had nice tits.’
‘Yes. Well . . . I mean, I really wanted to find out. What do they do when no-one is looking; or rather, when they think no-one is looking? I could really get inside the psyche of this person. Could be useful for business. The insights you get. You know the Heisenberg principle: the presence of an observer alters the course of an experiment? That may be true in physics, but in human experiments it only counts if the humans involved know they’re being observed. Don’t you see? This is the real thing. All these fly on the wall docu-soaps are rubbish compared to this.’
‘Bollocks. You just wanted to see her tits.’
‘Do you have to be so crude? Anyway, aren’t you just a little bit curious to know what I found out?’
‘What did you find out?’
‘You’d be amazed. I haven’t looked at it all. Christ, there’s hours of the stuff, but you would be amazed.’
‘In what way?’
‘Come and see for yourself. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t walk over red hot coals to see it.’
‘Well . . .’
‘We could analyse it together. What d’you say? Friday evening after work. We’ll pick up a take-away and make a night of it.’
I wish I’d said no. Jesus, Christ, God! I wish I’d said no.
**
Alex’s flat was
in a converted warehouse at Canary Wharf. It was one of those apartments that people like Alex chose to refer to as a ‘pad’, all black leather and chrome and sliding doors, with the clutter of everyday life kept firmly out of sight behind them.
The evening seemed potentially an enjoyable one. We had bought a lavish Chinese takeaway which we spread out on the low coffee table in front of the television and there were plenty of cold beers in the fridge. Our entertainment promised to be both titillating and psychologically fascinating. I wish I could say that I felt guiltier about the intrusion we were making into a private life. Now, it seems horrible that I could have consented to participate, but perhaps that is because of what happened. I did feel uneasy, which may not be very much to record in my favour, but I did. I asked Alex why he had chosen me to watch with him.
The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories Page 6