by Jonathan Coe
In many ways it was a clumsy and humourless film, and most of the audience were unimpressed. Often they would laugh at scenes which were meant to be taken seriously. But William was blind to both its merits and its defects. A myriad of tiny details – from the exterior shots of the Berlin theatre to the private language of jokes and catchphrases that the lovers invented for themselves – instantly stirred up his memories of Gertrud. Every aspect of the film seemed to hold some special significance for him. Even the musical score (which would eventually, at his instigation, win the best-soundtrack award) had sprung from their shared vocabulary, being based upon themes by Francis Poulenc – mainly the Clarinet Sonata, a recording of which he had once sent her as a gift. William sat through the film in a kind of trance, numb with shock. He would not have believed that any film, any narrative, any work of art, could have transported him so suddenly and irresistibly into the past.
But that was not all. This film may have reawakened him to the past, but it also never allowed him to forget the present. It never allowed him to forget for a moment that Pascale was sitting beside him, closer than ever before but at the same time more distant, with a new tone in her voice and a new meaning in her actions: teasing, now, and reproachful. She faithfully translated every word of the subtitles. All the endearments he had once exchanged with Gertrud were now replayed, and given back to him. All the messages she had encoded for him in this film now reached him through Pascale’s voice. There were a number of sex scenes, and here it seemed that Pascale took an even greater satisfaction in the fullness and literalism of her translation. She repeated every word, every gasp, every broken phrase, her lips almost brushing against his ear but then pulling back, in a mocking parody of physical contact. She leaned into him, her leg against his thigh. He could feel the rise and fall of her breathing. He could smell her body in the pressing heat of the auditorium.
In the very last scene of the film, he could no longer be sure whether it was Gertrud or Pascale that was speaking to him.
Du hast mir nichts zu bieten, said the woman to her ghostly lover. Das sehe ich nun. Es wäre freundlicher, wenn du mich in Ruhe ließt.
The French subtitles said: Tu n’as rien à m’offrir. Je peux le voir maintenant. Ce serait plus gentil de me laisser seule.
And Pascale whispered in his ear: ‘You have nothing to offer me. I see that now. It would be kinder if you left me alone.’
Für dich ist vorsichtiges Benehmen zugleich ein Freundliches. Du glaubst, daß du dich harmlos benimmst. Aber, meiner Meinung nach, bist du ein gefährlicher Mensch.
Pour toi, être prudent et être bon, c’est la même chose. Tu crois que ce que tu fais sera sans conséquence. Mais je crois que tu es dangereux.
‘You believe that by being cautious, you are being kind. You believe that what you do is safe. But I think you are a dangerous person.’
Damals hast du mir beinache das Herz gebrochen.
Tu as failli me briser le coeur.
‘You came close to breaking my heart.’
Bitte, kehr in deine Heimat zurück. Dort wirst du glücklicher sein. Manfred, kehr zurück.
S’il te plaît, retournes d’où tu viens. Tu y seras plus heureux. Retournes-y, Manfred.
‘Please go back to where you belong. You will be happier there. Go back, William.’
He turned towards her abruptly, and said: ‘The character’s name is Manfred, isn’t it?’ But Pascale did not answer. All he could see were her eyes, shining in the dark.
William sat alone in the cinema for some time after the audience had left. He could not collect himself, or will himself into motion. When he was at last able to leave, he drifted around the hotel in a daze, not noticing the people around him, not responding when they spoke to him.
He felt better after some lunch and a siesta. In the middle of the afternoon he went down to the reception desk and asked if he could leave a note for Pascale. He was told that she had checked out shortly after one o’clock. After that he could think of nothing else to do but walk into town, to look once again for the sunglasses he had been meaning to buy all week.
Loggerheads
Sometimes the sun just glares down at you, almost too much to bear, and sometimes the mist will roll in so thick and fast that you can’t even see down to the shed, and it’s only the sound of the waves against the shingle that tells you where you are at all. It’s a lonely spot, really, not what I imagined, but at least you know there’s the neighbours, always someone next door. And of course we’ve got each other.
The road runs straight for miles and miles, along the edge of the beach, straight as a Roman road, and all the bungalows sit side by side and face out across the shingle, and in the distance you can just about see the water, if the tide isn’t low. Sometimes you’ll get silence for half an hour or more, complete silence, not even a car going by, and all you’ll hear is him rustling his paper or flushing the toilet or rummaging around in that cupboard of his. When the mist comes in you get the sound of foghorns from the lighthouse, I don’t know how they make them so loud, it was dark the first time I heard it and it made me think of the all-clear but it doesn’t remind me of that any more, it just sounds like itself.
We both like the silence. We’ve got used to it. There’s no need to talk much any more, we’ve said all we’ve got to say. He knows I don’t like the way he runs the hot water then puts the plates in the sink and just leaves it to go cold, but he does it anyway, so what’s the point. I’ve told him a thousand times and I’m not going to tell him again. There are things that used to get on your nerves, things you thought you’d strangle him for, and in the end it doesn’t matter. What it comes down to in the end is you and him, him and you. Like it or leave it. And we’re neither of us going to leave it, now.
We don’t even argue about the name any more, though we used to, all the time. Ours is the only house without one, but we couldn’t decide. He used to sit at the front table all day, looking out at the beach, and then he’d give me lists of things like Sea Symphony and Saltaire and Plain Sailing and Stone’s Throw. It’s nice to give a house a name, if it’s something you’ve been waiting for all your life it shouldn’t just be a number, but I didn’t want any of that flowery stuff. Why don’t we call it Loggerheads, I said once, because we’ve been living at Loggerheads ever since you retired, but he didn’t see the joke. I still think it was quite a good name.
We do laugh about it sometimes, though, and that’s the important thing. Just the other day the mist was worse than it had ever been, but we went out for a stroll anyway and we were halfway across the beach and we couldn’t see more than a yard ahead of us, it was like the whole world had just upped and disappeared and I said, it’s a good job we didn’t call it Sea View, isn’t it. And we both had a laugh at that, but that was the day I heard the foghorns again and then out in the distance, it must have been miles away, there was an answer from one of the ships and it took me back, made me think of something, it sounded like the pedal on a church organ and I could remember crouching there, tiny I must have been, and her legs, it must have been Mum’s legs, her legs in stockings when she played, I’d forgotten all about that, hadn’t given those days a thought, not for years, but that sound made me think of them, brought it all back, and for a moment what with all the mist and greyness I had quite a turn, didn’t know where I was, thought I might have died or something, but then I heard him breathing next to me and I remembered and it was all right.
Leiden
‘Have you ever been to Leiden in the winter?’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see anything as beautiful as that frost on the roofs of the buildings along the Rapenburg; and the stillness you get there, any morning, as you stand and look down the canal. We used to take breakfast earlier than any of the others and then walk, sometimes to the Hortus Botanicus, where the lawns would be white, really white, the cleanest thing you’ve ever seen, or sometimes we’d walk into town, making for where the Nieuwe Rijn is crossed by the Korenbeursbrug, and we’
d stand on that lovely old bridge for an hour or more, not even talking. There was so much just to look at. I don’t mean landmarks or anything, I just mean the bareness of the trees, and the way the buildings faced each other, friendly and handsome, across the water. There’s a gentleness there, and a calm. And then sometimes in the evening we’d go drinking at a place near the Burcht, and we’d try to sit outside even though it was so cold – she’d have that coat, emerald green, wrapped around her – and one evening it even started to snow, and we watched the snowflakes dancing in front of the lantern-light …’
He stopped, as the doors of the lift slid open and we stepped out into the grey corridor.
‘Well –’ he fumbled for his key ‘– here we are.’
I said, ‘This isn’t at all bad. I was expecting something much worse.’
He thanked me and said that after a while you got used to the graffiti, the steel and bare concrete, the peeling paint, the broken security locks, the dark, the fear, the smell of piss in the lifts, the walk up the stairs, the voices shouting at each other behind closed doors, the grime and the litter, the cold and the damp, the draughts, the noise of the wind in the lift shafts, the useless light switches, the echo of hurried footsteps. After he had been there a while he got used to all these, and he was just grateful to have somewhere to sleep, a roof over his head. And grateful that the rent was so cheap. He took me inside and straight out on to the balcony and we stood shivering, looking out at the lights and pointing to areas we knew. We had both got to know Birmingham quite well by then. From up there we could see as far as the Bristol Road, a carnival of amber lights sweeping down out of the city, out of view. Over to our left the city centre was glittering, with its tower blocks and flyovers and giant multi-storey car parks. The sight made us feel something, I think, touched us in some way, but it was not exhilaration. He came and stood close beside me.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I feel happy here, and sometimes I wonder whatever drew me to this city and what am I doing here at all.’
I said, rather stupidly, that there were beautiful places and places which were not so beautiful and the funny thing was that not everybody chose to live in the beautiful ones.
‘I’ve been here for five years,’ I said, ‘and I think I will be leaving soon. I don’t know where. I’ve no plans. But I can feel the beginnings of another change.’
I was being honest when I said this, although I’m not sure that he realized it; probably he just thought it was one of those things that women say.
We had not known each other for long, and it was a strange friendship. Neither of us had given very much away. It had not been difficult, though, after he had been into the shop a few times, to start talking. I found I had grown used to watching the customers, gauging them, remembering the faces of those who came regularly and sorting out where their interests lay, their particular obsessions. Some are fascinated by the Egyptian mysteries, others are drawn to witchcraft and the esoteric arts, some wish to learn the secrets of divination, astrology, the Tarot and the I Ching, others devote themselves to the purely spiritual aspects of Eastern philosophy. With him, I could tell, it was none of these. This young man – he was less than thirty, I was sure – always made for a certain section on a shelf at the back of the shop, in its darkest corner. It was here that we kept a small number of books concerning the work of the Renaissance magi, the alchemists and the great philosopher magicians. It was my favourite section, this, I had ordered most of the books myself, and so it was only natural that, eventually, we should strike up a conversation. He had obviously applied himself to the study of the subject with some energy. He knew the works of Zoroaster, Pico, Trithemius, Ficino and Giambattista della Porta; he was familiar with the Cabala, and with the principles of numerology and mystical geometry. He understood the importance of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, and knew of Chaldean-Ptolemaic magic and Lullism. And, like myself, he had a particular curiosity about the life and the work of John Dee. That was how we began. He was on the point of buying a book about Dee, a new one, something written by an academic, and I advised him against it, telling him that I thought it was wrong-headed. He started complimenting me on our selection, enthusing about it, saying that he had not expected to find anything so good, here of all places.
‘I wish it were better,’ I said. ‘So many of the books we’d like to have can’t be found any more. Some of them, of course, have not been reprinted for centuries.’
He asked me whether I had contact with anyone who dealt in the older and more obscure items.
‘Yes, occasionally,’ I answered. ‘Why, is there something which you’d particularly like to find?’
‘For some years now,’ he said, ‘I’ve been hoping to find a copy, an original copy, of the Monas Hieroglyphica.’
It was as soon as I heard him speak these words, the peculiar, restrained fervour he imparted to them, that my suspicions began. But I bought time by saying, casually:
‘There are translations available. We had one here, not long ago.’
‘No. It must be the Antwerp edition.’
I looked steadily into his eyes. He had very large, dark brown eyes.
‘You won’t find one in any shop,’ I said.
He returned my gaze, but did not answer. Finally, the words were drawn out of me.
‘I know of a copy.’
Almost without expression, and after several seconds’ silence, he said: ‘Where is it? Would it be possible for me to see it?’
There was something about him which I trusted, something which made me certain, in an unthinking way, that I was doing the right thing. So I told him to come back the next day, just before we closed.
It was almost dark when he arrived, and there were no other customers by then. I wasted no time in locking up the shop and pulling down the shutters. Then, with only the reading lamp on the counter for light, I reached into a drawer and fetched out the book. It was in a plastic carrier bag.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Open it.’
He removed the bag, and laid the book carefully on the counter.
And he stared, not in surprise exactly, but in a kind of wonder: the awe of recognition. I watched him, watched the steadiness of his eyes in that half-light; and despite the sound of the homeward-bound traffic, outside in the High Street, it felt like silence that I was breaking when I said:
‘The binding – it’s not original. It was done much later. Probably early in the eighteenth century.’
‘I know.’ He turned to the title page, where you can see the hieroglyph itself, but he seemed not to be looking at it.
‘It’s the same,’ he said. ‘The very same.’ His voice was low, not quite a whisper; perhaps to hide his agitation. ‘I have seen this copy before. This same copy. Does it belong to you?’
I nodded. ‘When have you seen it before?’
‘Several years ago, and not in this country. 1 would recognize it anywhere, though. Tell me, how did you come by it?’
‘It was given to me,’ I said, ‘by a friend.’
He asked quietly, ‘What was her name?’, and I smiled.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was Thea.’
He closed the book, and picked it up, and held it to his chest. He was hugging it, with a sort of gentle passion. His eyes were closed. He took a few steps around the shop, and then stopped, quite hidden by shadow. I don’t know how long he stood there, probably no more than a minute; but when he turned and approached me, there was already something new in his expression. A revival had taken place.
‘Where is she now?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you know her well? Were you close friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘She mentioned someone once: a woman. She used to talk about someone called Jennifer.’
‘Yes. That was me.’
He put out his hand impulsively, and then could think of nothing to do with it except lay it briefly on my shoulder. I did not move; it was not a g
esture that invited either welcome or resistance. He laughed nervously, released me from his touch, and opened the book again.
‘Somewhere in here,’ he said, ‘there is a page with a mark on it.’ It did not take him long to locate. ‘There.’
He pointed to the corner of an even-numbered page, near the beginning of the book; it was disfigured with a small, rust-coloured stain.
‘What do you suppose that is?’ he asked.
I peered.
‘It looks a bit like ink,’ I said. ‘Or possibly … is it blood?’
He smiled, his first smile, and shook his head.
‘No, not blood. It’s barbecue sauce.’
It was his idea that we should go out and eat. I protested that there were no very good restaurants in the area, but he said that he already had somewhere in mind. It turned out to be McDonald’s.
‘Surely we’re not going in here?’
‘Don’t you normally use this place?’ He pushed open the glass door, and I followed him in. ‘You really should. It’s quite clean, and very quick.’
There were few other people there – just two groups of noisy teenagers, with their bright jackets and their ceaseless, edgy cheerfulness. They did not seem happy, and I wished there was somewhere better for them to be. I don’t eat meat so I was unable to order anything other than a cup of tea and a wedge of hot apple pie in a cardboard packet. He bought himself a huge bun with two thick slices of meat and a lot of salad in it. We did not talk at first, he was too busy eating and I was watching the cars go past outside, their headlights tracing patterns on the wet road. The rush-hour traffic was starting to abate. When he had nearly finished his meal, he began to tell me about Thea.
