Giving him back the copy, I said with a sarcastic voice, ‘I’ve already read the book so there’s no need for you to lend it to me.’
That only made him more predisposed against me.
‘Really?’ he said, genuinely surprised. ‘So, tell me, Mr Thomson, what exegesis do you make of it?’
I didn’t know what exegesis meant. Hardlington laughed.
‘Which concept did you like best?’ he said with an evil smile. ‘The redemption of the two brothers? The sublimation of the cook, Garvey? Or perhaps the superiority of the English race over the Semitic threat?’
That threw me off. ‘What redemption are you talking about? Both of the brothers were soulless degenerates! The book shows that well enough.’
‘You see? You are incapable of understanding the internal keys hidden behind all great works. The two noble Englishmen, very possibly, had committed some social offence. Naturally, the battle in the Congo redeems them.’
I was getting worked up. ‘But they were saboteurs! Garvey’s the one who saves the world. Both the brothers, especially William, do everything possible to impede him!’
Hardlington had foreseen my response, because before I had even finished speaking he said, ‘That is the sublimation I was referring to. Even a simple cook, if guided by the example of two English noblemen, ends up acquiring the English race’s nobility of spirit.’
‘But Garvey is half gypsy!’ I said. ‘What racial spirit are you talking about?’
Hardlington struck a pose of feigned resignation. ‘Oh, my little friend. I see you haven’t understood a word. It’s clear that this book was written in symbolic code and has to be interpreted. Do you really not see that the depths from which the Tectons come are a metaphor for the great threat that hangs over our times?’ Hardlington crossed his arms on his chest ceremoniously and asked me, ‘Let’s see, Mr Thomson, what race hides in the sewers, waiting for the opportunity to attack humanity’s collective interests?’
‘But the Tectons aren’t a symbol of international Judaism!’ I replied. For a few moments I felt like the book’s author again. With a rigid finger I tapped on the book’s cover as if I were trying to perforate it, while saying, ‘The book says what it says and that’s all.’
‘Bravo!’ said Hardlington, applauding me sarcastically.
But I paid him no mind and continued, ‘‘The Tectons are the Tectons. And the two English noblemen are an exact copy of the Tectons. Or vice versa. That is the problem!’ I pointed to my chest with both thumbs, ‘We are the Tectons.’
Hardlington clicked his tongue in a particularly annoying way. It made him seem like a kangaroo trainer. He refused my interpretative pretensions, waving his finger like a pendulum.
‘No, my little friend, no. Your naïveté stuns me.’ He paused and asked, ‘According to aspiring staff writer Thomas Thomson, what is the fundamental core of this masterpiece?’
I had never challenged Hardlington so decidedly. Maybe that was why I now had the attention of all my colleagues, who had stopped working to follow the controversy as spectators. Ten typewriters that stop at once create a very loud silence. Hardlington was waiting for my reply. My colleagues were waiting for my reply. I was waiting for my reply. After interminable reflection I said, ‘That Garvey and Amgam love each other. And that love, as an indirect consequence, saves the world.’
Hardlington’s eyes swelled like two billiard balls. They grew so big that for a moment I thought they would fall to the ground, like ripe fruit falls from the trees.
‘Are you trying to tell me that such a sophisticated narrative structure’s only objective is to tell the story of the flirtation between a half-lame gypsy and an ugly, milky woman?’
I hesitated. ‘Actually, yes.’
My response made him laugh so hard that all the other employees were astonished that Mr Hardlington, usually so serious, would devote his lung strength to such a gratuitous activity as laughing. Then he came even closer to me, he gave me three pats on the back with his palm, apparently friendly, although the real intent was to use my jacket to wipe his dirty hands, and he said, ‘You are reducing a cosmic conflict into a wild love affair. No, my little friend, no. High literature is not the patrimony of the simple.’
The most unpardonable thing about Hardlington was that he really enjoyed mocking me. I was just a lad, and Hardlington’s systematic pressure made me begin to have doubts. About what? About everything?
I wasn’t even sure what my true contribution to the book had been. The real protagonist of the story was Marcus Garvey. And his guardian angel, Edward Norton. Without them there would have been no story. They, both of them, had been indispensable to the book. I wasn’t. There were plenty of writers capable of writing Marcus Garvey’s story. But there was only one Marcus Garvey. There were plenty of barristers. But barristers that would have handled the Garvey case as Norton did, only one. Everything was becoming confused, dry and grey.
As far as Hardlington was concerned, I didn’t yet know that mediocre souls like to surround themselves with even more mediocre people. That way it was easier to blame their failures on cosmic injustice. It was as if they were saying: compare my intelligence with that of the person next to me, isn’t it obvious that I deserve a situation more worthy of my character? The most curious thing was that I was affected by almost the opposite limitation: I could never prove the truth to Hardlington, so I didn’t even bother to state it. Besides, Hardlington’s presence filled me with as much grief as Amgam’s absence.
The mere possibility that in those same moments she was somewhere in London tormented me. I couldn’t get the image out of my head of that back, so tall and thin, so black and so fleeting. My fingers had been about to touch her, and this time it hadn’t been a hallucination induced by military gas. Why had she run from me? Most offended women, in those circumstances, would have reproached me for having brought two insolent fingers so close to their face. But she had chosen to run.
This war on two fronts was too much for Tommy Thomson. The following days a strange apathy took hold of me. Outside office hours I lay in my bedroom, or in some corner of the boarding house, and I did nothing unless I was directly asked to by someone. It was the stupefaction of someone who comes up against a wall at the end of a dead-end street. Everything in the world provoked tremendous indifference in me. I soon became a kind of discoloured imitation of Mr Modepà, with the difference that he, at least, smiled all day. Often Mr Modepà and I would meet in the small dining room of the boarding house. He would smile, that stupid happy smile that was so characteristic of him, and I couldn’t do anything but smile back in mute dialogue. Every once in a while Mr MacMahon took us out of the house. We all three went to an Irish pub two blocks away from the boarding house and we drank beer with MacMahon’s gang of Irish friends that frequented the place. Modepà was as passive as ever, with that silent smile on his lips. What a contrast we two made, amongst all those Irishmen, cordially shouting insults at each other behind a cloud of smoke.
Well, at that point I was filled with a new drive by the person I least expected to do so. The ineffable Mr Hardlington.
I don’t know why I speak so ill of Hardlington. In his own way, he occupies quite a relevant place in our story. The book’s fame grew, and the torture it inflicted on me eventually made me react. In the end what did it was Hardlington’s adoration of the book. At first he praised its contents. Then he pontificated daily on its literary virtues, claiming to be the only man on earth capable of correctly interpreting the work’s meaning. ‘The word ‘reader’ has no plural form,’ he declared. In fact, the text’s faults ended up making him change his attitude: ‘Well, we have to recognise that I would have polished up some of the paragraphs,’ he said. And he proceeded to add and subtract paragraphs in a copy with his caustic pen. I could no longer contain myself and I attacked him.
‘If it’s so easy for you to correct the mistakes of a masterpiece why don’t you write one yourself?’
He answere
d me without lifting his eyes from the book and with an exquisite self-sufficiency.
‘I am in no hurry to expend my work. These days usury dominates everything. The Jews have made themselves the heads of the publishing world and have excluded anything that isn’t profitable. But I do not aspire to make myself rich, only to make myself immortal. I do not mix art with financial interests.’ He moved an instructive finger in the air and said, ‘The difference between literature and the literary industry, Mr Thomson, is that the first one moves among letters and the second among numbers.’
That gave me a lot to mull over. Quite a lot. I had never stopped to think that a successful book could make so much money. But someone like Norton had. That idea shattered the image I had of Norton and the Garvey case. It was like seeing a familiar landscape from a different angle. The more I thought about it, the more wounded, angry and exploited I felt, and on the third day I headed off towards his office. I went there in the evening, I had left the Times of Britain very late. It had been a particularly hard day. Hardlington had been on top of me the whole time, castigating me every time I made a typographical error. It was better that way. That way he was activating a bomb. The bomb was me.
Norton wasn’t expecting me, of course. He was wearing house slippers and a silk dressing gown. But he had me go into his office. I didn’t give him time to sit down. I still had my last visit to the prison, which had been very recent, in my head, and I began like this: ‘You have to do something for Marcus. That boy can’t take much more. He’s becoming a lunatic.’
Norton was a very intelligent man. I hated that intelligence. I had meticulously prepared my speech, but as soon as I opened my mouth he had all the fuel he needed to frustrate my plans.
‘You didn’t come here to talk about Garvey.’
After a few flustered seconds I reacted, raising my head to the ceiling with my fists tightly closed. I had never imagined myself that way, with my fists above my head.
‘Yes and no!’ I shouted. ‘You tricked me!’
He made a strange face with the help of his eyebrows and his little moustache. That made me even more furious. A man with both fists in the air is demonstrating that he is at war with the world, but when he only has one, tightly closed, and at nose height, he is demonstrating that he is at war with the person in front of him. I said, ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! If there is one sharp-witted person in this office, I am quite sure it is not me. And if there is some fool here, we can be sure it’s not you!’
Norton didn’t lose his calm. He just redirected the situation. ‘Would you like a glass of cognac?’
And with one hand he pointed me towards the door that led to his private chambers.
We entered an inviting little room. There he had two armchairs and a small fireplace. It felt very strange to me to have a man like him pouring me a brandy. And the change of scenery definitely had its desired effect. We sat on either side of the fireplace and I was more calm, although not less angry. But Norton didn’t want me to shut up; with the glass of cognac at his lips he made an indulgent gesture with his free hand that said: explain yourself, please.
‘I believe you have betrayed us,’ I began. ‘Marcus and me! I believe that you never thought of me as an assistant in your legal task. I think that you never thought that my efforts would help Marcus.’ As I spoke I got more worked up. I pointed at him with an accusatory finger. ‘I believe that your actions, from the very first moment, were driven by an opportunistic and corporate mentality, and that Marcus and I were stuck in the role of exploited proletariats. Proletariats of the pen and of the shackles, but proletariats, when all is said and done!’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘What else could I think? You realised Garvey’s story was very promising, but you’re not a writer. That’s why you hired me, a poor devil, only nineteen years old. If the book hadn’t been bought by any publisher, you wouldn’t have lost anything. But if it ended up becoming a bestseller, and all signs pointed to that, you would stand to make a lot of money!’
I snorted and took a very large sip. I did it more to rein myself in than for the pleasure of drinking. But I continued.
‘You got me out of the way with an insignificant compensation. Since we never signed any contract, who could I complain to about it? If I did object, who would believe that a young, inexperienced author had written such a book? Ever since we met that day in the cemetery, you knew that Doctor Flag would never give me his support. So there was only one other witness: Marcus. And Marcus will be eliminated by the gallows. A perfect crime!’
Norton followed my logic, making slight affirmative movements with his head.
‘Yes, of course, I’ve always thought that perfect crimes are committed within the law,’ he joked. But he soon added, in an iron tone that I had never heard from him and which left me speechless, ‘Do you really have such a low opinion of me, Mr Thomson?’
Norton was much more of a man than I was at that point. More mature, more self-assured, quicker. I had trouble holding my ground. I didn’t speak, but I didn’t move either. He relaxed. It was as if the spongy armchair had sucked him in a bit.
‘You’ve put me in a difficult situation, Mr Thomson. Whatever I tell you, you won’t believe me. As they say in court, I have the burden of proof. Which is to say, that I am the one who has to prove my innocence.’
I couldn’t help admiring the way the man bound his personality and his character. I had made an effort to show up at his house dressed as elegantly as I could afford. Even so, my outbursts had already dishevelled my clothes. He, on the other hand, even though he wasn’t expecting my visit, looked like a dandy: black silk socks, immaculately pressed trousers, his dressing gown also silk. And his baldness, which was always magnificent, was now powerful. That bald head proclaimed to the world that between its clean, convex walls there hid an intelligence it was best not to challenge.
Norton was deep in thought, and I knew that he enjoyed ignoring me, showing that in order to put a stop to my wild impulses all he had to do was begin meditating with a cognac in his hands. While he reflected, Norton swirled his glass, holding it with his thumb and index finger like an expert. Was he thinking about the Garvey case or the cognac? I was sure that Norton knew as much about cognac as the Tectons did about astronomy. All of a sudden he looked up from those liquid depths and he exclaimed in an almost high-flown voice, ‘Very well, Mr Thomson, this is what we’ll do. You have arrived at just the right moment. You should know that because of its success the publisher is about to print a second edition. But before they do it I will send them a note to be added to the first page. I’ll write it right now.’
He left me in my armchair, alone with the cognac. The walls of Norton’s house were also painted the colour of cognac.
Norton returned and put a page in my hands. I read it. It was impeccable. In less than forty lines it explained my relationship with Norton and with the book, without alteration or distortion. Norton apologised for having taken my name. At first he hadn’t given it much thought, the use of a ‘ghost writer’, but once the book had gone beyond the legal realm it seemed only fair to make public the name of its real author: Thomas Thomson. He had only served as the liaison between Garvey and Thomas Thomson, a fact that filled him with extreme pride. Starting with that edition he would remove his name and request that young Thomas Thomson be considered forevermore as the real and only author. Norton ended by asking for justice for Garvey.
The critics won’t approve of these lines, because books are immortal and men merely have one life to live. And legalcases have an even more limited time period. But I am not the author of this book and I never should have been listed as such. Therefore, now I can resume my private function and judge it with foreign eyes. That allows me to state an obvious fact: that the artistic heights that this book reaches are directly proportional to the underground depths that Garvey arrived at, and that both voyages have a noble purpose. One, to elevate Bri
tish literature to heights previously unattained; the other, to save all humanity. And here is where I implore the reader to ask himself the following question: wouldn’t it be incredibly lovely if our reading contributed to making the world a little bit more just? When an innocent is condemned, part of our innocence as a people dies with him. Let’s prevent that from happening.
I was left with my mouth agape. Norton declared, ‘To literature what belongs to literature, and to law what belongs to law.’ And he added, ‘From this moment, and retrospectively, all rights derived from the book will belong to you, Mr Thomson. That includes the artistic glory and the economic benefits.’ He smiled and added slightly contentiously, ‘Have I changed your opinion of me in any way?’
What could I say? A simple ‘yes’ would have been grossly insufficient. Norton had not only dissipated my suspicions, he had even satisfied pretensions I hadn’t yet formulated. I was very young. I still didn’t know that calculating men are often generous.
‘In effect, my strategy in regards to the Garvey case is extralegal, Mr Thomson. But not in the sense that you believe,’ he said when we parted.
In the following days that strategy became clear. The book leapt from the literary critics’ pages to the general press. Garvey was here, there and everywhere. One day, at the newspaper, I was carrying a pile of papers in my arms, a pile so large it reached up to my chin. I was chasing Hardlington’s back, who had me loaded down with files that he was selecting from some old bookshelves. I was carrying so much weight that I began to identify with the bearers in the Congo. We were halfway to our desks when a voice demanded that Hardlington go to the editor’s office. I followed him, borne by that mule instinct.
‘Hardlington!’ shouted the editor before we had even crossed the threshold. His head vacillated between two papers, to which he alternately directed his attention.
‘What should we devote the cover of the next issue to? The Bergström case or the Garvey case? By the way, does anyone know exactly what it’s about, this Garvey thing?’
Pandora in the Congo Page 32
