I tracked him down to the Music Section. He was a little hostile at first (you know how territorial these people can be), but after a brief conversation he admitted that he actually had his very own copy of Tales of the Jesters at home which he’d ‘found’ in a second-hand bookshop in Rye (this might’ve just been sheer bravura on his part – that whole ‘journalists v academics’ hornets’ nest. Or maybe not).
The last section (in brackets) had been hurriedly crossed out.
Anyhow,
Kane continued reading:
I asked if I might borrow it some time (or even just make a copy of the relevant chapters) but he got a little prickly at this point and said he was still in the middle of using it, but that he would definitely call me when he was done ( I gave him my number, although I won’t be holding my breath). Then he told me some stuff over coffee (I bought the Madeira cake – it was a little dry) which you might find interesting. Will inform you in person.
The quality of the copy is poor (at best). This is because it was reproduced from a microfile. But I think you’ll get the basic gist…
W.
PS If you need anything else – anything at all – you know you can always reach me on my mobile…
A number followed.
Kane cocked his head for a while – as if deep in thought – his eye returning, repeatedly, to the phrase ‘I bought the Madeira cake – it was a little dry,’ and then to the signature (‘W’).
Eventually – but somewhat hesitantly – he moved on to the text, proper. ‘W’ was right: the quality of the copy was very poor. And it was written in an ornate typescript (real migraine territory), which made the letters look like so many black ants dancing a woozy conga. After several minutes he succeeded in battling his way through The Prologue (his eye lingering, for a while, on a small rhyme at the bottom of the page): –
I Have heard fay that Scogin did come of an honeft ftock, no kindred, and his friends did fet him to fchool at Oxford, where he did continue until the time he was made Mafter of Art,
where he made this jeft,
A Master of Art is not worth a fart, Except he be in Schools,
A Batchelour of Law, is not worth a Straw, Except he be among fools.
Kane’s brows rose slightly. He closed the manuscript and reopened the envelope. He peered inside, then smiled and shoved in his hand, pulling out another (smaller) sheet of paper which he hadn’t noticed there before. This was a receipt from The British Library, and detailed the costs of the photocopying. At the bottom of the receipt he observed – with a small start – the credit card details of one Winifred Shilling –
I knew it
The fucking Madeira cake –
Damn her
‘Why?’
Kane jerked out of his reverie. Gaffar had twisted around on his chair and was now staring at him, quizzically.
‘Sorry?’
Kane hurriedly shoved the manuscript and the receipt back into the envelope, licking the seal this time and pressing it shut.
‘A look of thunder,’ Gaffar exclaimed, helpfully providing both vocal (and visual) dramatisation of his words.
‘Oh…’ Kane’s face rapidly showcased a disparate mish-mash of emotions (Picasso’s cubist masterpiece Woman Crying seemed like traditional portraiture by comparison). He struggled to get a handle on the play of his features. ‘It’s…uh…nothing,’ he almost ticked.
‘Okay.’ Gaffar nodded (registering Kane’s inner turmoil, but taking it all with a pinch of salt: I mean, how hard could life be for this spoiled, flabby, Western pup?).
‘I lost something,’ Kane muttered, suddenly pulling himself to his feet (his hair falling across his face), ‘that’s all.’ He glanced around him (through the lank mop of his fringe), not entirely certain what he was searching for –
Beede?
‘Is lid?’ Gaffar asked patiently, a small chipolata suspended delicately between his mouth and his bowl.
‘Pardon?’
‘Lid?’ Gaffar indicated towards the Tupperware beaker on Beede’s reading table.
‘Lid?’ Kane stared at the beaker, frowning.
‘Ah, fuck it…English,’ Gaffar murmured, turning back – resignedly – to his meal.
Kane placed the brown envelope onto Beede’s reading table (next to the contentious item of Tupperware), carefully balanced his cigarette there – its smouldering tip suspended over the carpet – and then kneeled down to inspect his pile of books. If there was one thing he could be certain of: Beede’s books would speak (a-hem) volumes…
On top of the pile (and it was a large pile) was what Kane – smilingly – took to be a real ‘Beede classic’: Derek Johnson’s Essex Curiosities; Hardback. 1973. He picked it up and opened to the front flap –
Ah yes
‘A representative collection of the old, curious and interesting objects that abound in Essex…for all those who cherish the heritage of the past and wish to preserve it for the future.’
Lovely
Kane put the book aside, with a grin.
Next up –
Ha!
Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World.
Brilliant!
Inside flap:
Ta-dah!
‘A startling and constructive blueprint for human survival by a professional designer who accuses the Industrial design “establishment” of mass negligence.’
(Oh God. The word ‘establishment’ stuck into those two, accusing little inverted commas…How right! How po-faced! How deliciously sanctimonious! How typically fucking Beede.) Kane sniggered, furtively, then laid the volume down, almost fondly, turning – for a brief moment – to take a quick puff on his cigarette –
Okay, okay…
He deftly returned his cigarette to its former position –
Soooo…
Third in the pile, a very new-looking paperback called –
What?!
The Yoga of Breath: A Step-by-step Guide to Pranayama by Richard Rosen.
No
Kane picked up the book and stared at it, scowling (as if the mere force of his disapproval – and incomprehension – might make it disappear. But it didn’t. It remained a steady weight in his hand; a neat 3lb tome of ridiculously incongruous NewAge hokum).
He slowly shook his head as he flipped it over and speed-read the sales pitch –
Blah blah…life energy…
Blah blah…self-transformation
Blah blah…breath and body awareness
Nuh-uh!
Beede? Reading a book about yoga? It made absolutely no sense (this strangely fashioned block simply wouldn’t fit inside the box of traditional shapes Kane had painstakingly carved out for his father). He cast the book aside, hissing under his breath. It was a red herring. A blip. Some ditsy woman at work had loaned it to him – or that damn chiropodist with her stupid verrucas –
Hysterical?
Yeah
Ha bloody ha
The next book in the pile was larger and more traditional. Kane grabbed it –
Oh yes…
That was better: a thick, smart paperback (with illustrations) called A History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World. He opened it, randomly, to a black and white reproduction of a small painting of a hairy youth (naked) from the fifteenth century, under which was written: ‘The bear showed great affection for the child and suckled it for an entire year. Because of this feeding the child became as hairy as a wild beast and ate raw meat: Valentin et Orson.’
For some arcane reason Kane felt strangely comforted by this caption (something – however weird – translated from Latin. That was him, that was Beede: obscure, marginal, bookish, inaccessible…).
He sneered (feeling the comforting re-emergence of all his former prejudices), and turned back a few pages, his eye randomly settling on a small sub-heading entitled, ‘The Frantic Search for the Father’. He started, slapped the book shut, and threw it down.
Paranoia
He clo
sed his eyes (pushing back a sudden panic –
Push
Push)
– swallowed hard and tried to focus his mind again –
Tramadol
Yes
He imagined a small blister-pack in his pocket, rested an illusory hand upon it, heard the neat click and the tiny rattle –
Ahhh
It worked just like magic.
Righty-ho…
Next up: three neat paperbacks, all by the same author: a Dutchman called Johan Huizinga. These had been exceptionally well-thumbed (even by Beede’s standards – and he was nothing if not thorough). The first was entitled The Waning of the Middle Ages (a historical classic, it claimed on the back). Numerous pages had been turned over at their corners (approaching a third of the total), and there was still one of Beede’s red pencils jammed rudely inside it (Beede liked to underline relevant words and sentences as he read – a strange quality in someone usually so circumspect – showing very little respect, Kane always felt, for the integrity – and binding – of a book).
He opened the text to its pencil marker and read (underlined with great zeal): ‘So violent and motley was life that it bore the mixed smell of blood and roses.’ ‘Smell’ had been circled and then asterisked. Underneath that: ‘After the close of the Middle Ages the mortal sins of pride, anger and covetousness have never again shown the unabashed insolence with which they manifested themselves in the life of preceding centuries.’
Next to this, in the margin, in block capitals, Beede had written: ‘UNTIL NOW!’
Kane shut the book with a snort. His search became more impatient.
Another Huizinga book: Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, was tossed on to the floor, followed by – uh – Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture –
Eh?!
– with its lovely cover (red and black, the kind of graphics favoured by the best casinos in 1950s Vegas). Sample quote: ‘The human mind can only disengage itself from the magic circle of play by turning towards the ultimate.’
Wha?!
He sniffed. This was getting him nowhere, but that was okay, because it was pretty much where he wanted to be…
Right
A.R. Myers, England in the Late Middle Ages; Mary Clive, This Sun of York: A Biography of Edward IV; Joseph and Frances Gies, Life in a Medieval Castle –
Hmmn…
Was there some kind of theme emerging here? Kane frowned. It was a little strange, perhaps – this intense level of focus on such a particular time-frame – but –
Aw heck!
– the history he could take. It was bone-dry, like Beede. The history made sense to him. It was old and silly and wonderfully unthreatening. It didn’t shock or unsettle or confound. It was dead. It was done. It was after.
Phew
Next up –
Ay ay –
Shakespeare: The Complete Plays (markers in all of the Henries and Richard III), followed – hard-upon – by another ridiculously hefty volume: John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins. Kane lugged it aside, with a small grunt, boredly. Under that, Robert Burchfield’s far more svelte and shapely The English Language. He flipped it over and ran his eye across a brief spiel on the back about how the mother tongue was so ‘resilient’ and so ‘flexible’…
‘The English Language is like a fleet of juggernaut trucks,’ he read, somewhat perplexedly, ‘that goes on regardless.’
Really?!
Well, uh…Okay…
Under that –
C’mon, c’mon…
– a hardback: Art of the Late Middle Ages (purchased from Abebooks.com – the invoice shoved inside – from its original source of Multnomah County Library – at £29.50 – with shipping) –
Huh?!
Beede buying books on the internet?! Kane gently yuck-yucked – Is this an end to the world as we know it?
In this particular instance the front flap had been employed as a marker within the belly of the text. Kane opened the book to this place, casually. He inhaled sharply as his eyes alighted upon the stark, photographic reproduction of a sculpture entitled Death Disguised as a Monk. The sculpture consisted of an eerily animated skeleton – in wood, exquisitely carved – the bony skull and arms of which peeked out, ominously, from the sumptuous folds of a monk’s cowl. Its expression was at once delirious – the gaping smile, the hollow eyes, the pointing finger – and…and poignant, somehow.
As he held the book several more pages flipped over, revealing a small, black and white illustration of a woodcut (1493) in which a group of skeletons performed a macabre jig over an open grave. Next to this image, in Beede’s characteristic red pencil (that creepy, teacher-y, bloody pencil), he had written:
‘DEATH –
He said it was a dance.’
Burning
Kane sniffed, then frowned, then shook his head –
Don’t be ridiculous
He put the book down. He was at the bottom of the pile, now, with only one volume remaining:
The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by Russell Hope Robbins.
Kane picked it up. It was a heavy tome (old, hardback, the fine cover preserved in plastic). He looked for a book-mark and found one (of sorts), pulling it out as he turned to the spot. It was a business card for a company called Petaborough Restorations (no address, just a number). On the back of thecard, in very shaky writing, Kane read: ‘Peter’s exactly what you need (Did an absolutely superb job on Longport for the Weald and Downland Museum). J.P.’
Kane gazed at this card for a minute, half-frowning, then casually pocketed it.
Good
He glanced down at the text. He found himself in the segment entitled ‘Possession’. It consisted – in the main – of a series of lists. His eye settled, arbitrarily, upon one of them: a treatise (Rouen, 1644) which detailed the eleven main indications of true possession. Next to each item on this list Beede had inserted a series of tiny, red marks. Item One: ‘To think oneself possessed’ carried a minute question mark. Item Two: ‘To lead a wicked life’ had a minuscule cross –
etc
Point Nine: ‘To be tired of living [s’ennuyer de vivre et se désespérer]’ had been strongly underlined –
Burning
Kane sneezed, hard, as he slapped the book shut (a sudden interest in the wonders of Satanism? Well this was definitely a turn up). He blinked, winced, inhaled…
No. No. Hang on – it was burning. For sure. He quickly glanced behind him –
Shit!
A cat! A fucking Siamese cat. Just standing there, its blue eyes boring into him, unblinking, its grey tail twisting up like a plume of smoke. He looked down and saw his Marlboro burning a hole in the rug. The cat lifted its head and then coughed (with just a touch of fastidiousness).
‘Fuck!’
Kane lunged for the cigarette. The cat pranced away. Gaffar jumped up, with a hiss (Gaffar hated cats).
‘You bastard!’ Kane yelled, snatching up the still-red-embered stub and observing – much to his horror – the ugly, black hole in Beede’s Moroccan rug.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’
Beede loved his rug. Kane thought of it as Moroccan, but it celebrated – in words and pictures – some kind of crazy, phallic-shaped public monument in Afghanistan, surrounded by tiny planes (which looked like birds) with MINARET OF FIAM written on the periphery, semi-back-to-front. It was a ridiculous object. Kane remembered it – almost fondly – from his boyhood –
No –
Perhaps that’s a false memory
Gaffar had already bounded over. He was staring down at the spot in dismay. He seemed to instinctively appreciate that this unsightly burn was a big deal for Kane (and Kane instinctively appreciated his awareness of this fact).
‘Smoking could seriously damage your health,’ Gaffar announced portentously, his accent almost cut-glass.
‘You’re not wrong there,’ Kane murmured despairingly. ‘Beede loves this stupid rug.
’
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