A Closed Book

by Gilbert Adair

‘He’s badly shaven. There’s bristle on the whole lower half of the face. But no, there’s no single tuft of hair. Not the way I think you mean.’

  ‘God, my memory. Go on.’

  ‘His hands are splayed.’

  ‘Splayed?’

  ‘It’s hard to say because the painting’s so dark it’s almost murky, but he seems to have his two palms outspread on his knees. One on each knee.’

  ‘The hands aren’t clasped?’

  ‘No. Why, did you think they were?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I thought I did, but I – I just don’t know any longer. He is looking straight into the spectator’s eyes, I trust? A sad, serene, self-sufficient sort of gaze?’

  ‘That’s right. Quite hypnotic. You feel it would be indecent to get too close. Just as though he were a real person in front of you.’

  ‘That’s well put. Pity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pity the eyes are precisely what’s going to disappear when you do the jigsaw puzzle.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Eyes, you know, John – the artist’s eyes scrutinizing the subject’s eyes, when artist and subject are one and the same – eyes are what self-portraiture is all about. You could paint a fine and moving and lifelike self-portrait that dispensed with every single facial feature except the eyes.’

  ‘I’ll go on, shall I? His hair, which is grey, billows out on either side of his head. He’s wearing some sort of soft suede beret.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why thank Christ?’

  ‘Because that at least I do remember correctly.’

  *

  ‘You’re smiling again, John. Please don’t smile at me behind my back.’

  ‘You really are good. I did smile, it’s true. I smiled at the idea of your thanking Christ he was wearing a suede beret. There was no malice in it.’

  ‘I know. It’s just me showing off. Let’s see if I can identify the last piece of the puzzle myself. He’s wearing a beige jacket, probably also suede, buttoned up in front. And it’s got a fur-lined collar. Am I right or am I right?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Nearly?’

  ‘The collar isn’t fur-lined. It’s of the same material as the jacket. And, yes, it does seem to be suede.’

  ‘Oh God, oh dear God.’

  ‘Why, what’s the matter, Paul?’

  ‘Can it be my memory I’m losing now?’

  ‘Paul, they were just details. Trivial little errors. Nothing serious.’

  ‘For me that fucking fur-lined collar is serious! It’s deadly serious! If I can’t even remember my own favourite painting!’

  ‘You said yourself you hadn’t seen it in years.’

  ‘John, when I lost my sight, I lost the present. Utterly. All right. I’ve learned to live with that loss. Just about. But if I start to lose my memory, it means I’ll lose the past as well as the present. Which leaves only the future. And, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, what a future!’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

  ‘I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. A fool’s hell, rather.’

  ‘But, Paul, as long as I’m here, you haven’t lost the present. Let me be your present from now on. And your past.’

  ‘Now that sounds like a kind proposal, John, but since we both know you won’t be here for ever, why bother making it at all? If there’s one thing in this world I loathe, it’s the sort of generosity that consists of extending offers both parties know will never be taken up.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, I was only trying to –’

  ‘I believe I’ll go and lie down now.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘If you could have a look at the Rembrandt puzzle, I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘Of course. And don’t think too hard. Try and get some rest, too.’

  ‘I’ll see you later.’

  I know now I’ve taught myself nothing, memorized nothing. All those years and nothing to show for them. I’m helpless, helpless – and, save for John, completely alone in the world. Sightless, eyeless, faceless andalone, autistic, visually autistic, exiled from the humdrum vibrancy of the world. Oh, has anyone ever, ever been in such desperate straits? What is the world to me now but a blank sheet of paper, a blank black sheet of paper from which every trace of text is fading fast. What I would give – my right arm, my left arm, my legs, my nose, my fingers, my cock, everything! – for one more glimpse of that world!

  ‘Well, make sure you dope him to the eyeballs. I recommend lots of Beechams and Lemsips.’

  *

  ‘They’re good too. Make him sweat it out.’

  *

  ‘Uh huh.’

  *

  ‘No, no, not at all.’

  *

  ‘Don’t you worry, it won’t be a problem. I’m not a half-bad cook, you know. I should be good. I’ve had to fend for myself for long enough.’

  *

  ‘His little ways? Oh yes, I’m getting used to them.’

  *

  ‘Well, then. Why don’t you just take the week off?’

  *

  ‘I mean it. In fact, I insist.’

  *

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll speak to Sir Paul about it myself, but I know he’ll agree. And of course you’ll get your pay in full, so don’t let that worry you.’

  *

  ‘No, don’t bother calling in. If there’s anything I need, I’ll ring you.’

  *

  ‘That’s right.’

  *

  ‘That’s – yeah, yeah, of course.’

  *

  ‘Good. Well –’

  *

  ‘Well, look after yourself. And be sure to give my very best to Joe.’

  *

  ‘Right. Bye.’

  *

  ‘Yeah.’

  *

  ‘I will. Well, bye now.’

  *

  ‘Bye.’

  *

  ‘Oh, Paul, it’s you. I didn’t notice you standing there.’

  ‘I take it that was Mrs Kilbride you were talking to?’

  ‘That’s right. She rang to say that Joe was ill. He’s come down with flu.’

  ‘If I heard you right, you gave her the week off?’

  ‘Well yes, I did. He seems to have it bad and –’

  ‘That’s all very well, John, but didn’t it occur to you to consult me first? Before dispensing with her services?’

  ‘Look, Paul, you told me – more than once you told me – not to stand on ceremony with Mrs Kilbride. That she’s here for me just as much as for you. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘True. When it’s a matter of making coffee or serving up the apple crumble. As for not coming in for a whole week, well, I’m still the one who pays her wages and – I’m not angry, mind you, I really am not, but I do feel I should be consulted on her comings and goings.’

  ‘You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep. And couldn’t it have waited till I was awake?’

  ‘What are you saying? I was wrong to tell her not to come in?’

  ‘Not wrong, exactly. I might well have told her the same thing. I just believe it is my job to tell her.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’d certainly have made some sort of alternative arrangement before so cavalierly burning my boats. Now what are we supposed to do about meals? Place an ad for a cook in the Post Office window, I suppose. God knows what that’ll draw out of the woodwork.’

  ‘I told you before I’d be delighted to cook for us both. This evening, if you like.’

  ‘If I like? This evening it’s got to be. If we’re going to eat at all.’

  ‘Listen, Paul. Why don’t I do some shopping in Chipping Campden today and tonight I’ll serve us up something a bit special. What do you say?’

  ‘Well … well, all right, I don’t deny a change from Mrs Kilbride’s perennial stodge would be welcome. But will you be a
ble, and willing, to cook every day for the next week?’

  ‘I enjoy cooking for two. It’s not a chore, it’s a pleasure.’

  ‘In that case, it’s settled. All’s well, etc. Have you had a look at the jigsaw puzzle?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Completed all the square bits. The outside edges.’

  ‘You have? Why, that’s wonderful, John. Half-way there, in my experience of jigsaws.’

  ‘Puzzles.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jigsaw puzzles. Remember? The jigsaw is the saw?’

  ‘Yes, John, in my experience, you’re already half-way there. Just as with poetry. I don’t suppose you knew I’d published a volume of poetry?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I’m not much of a reader of poetry.’

  ‘Juvenilia, just juvenilia. The slimmest of slim volumes.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘As Cyril Connolly almost said, inside every fatuous man there’s a slim volume struggling to get out. Eh?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t get it.’

  ‘Oh, never mind, never mind. Lots do. Anyway, it was rhymed verse, pretty putrid stuff, I fear, I haven’t looked at it in years. Thank God it died the death. There’s no worse enemy of promise than success, as the same Cyril Connolly almost said. I do remember, though, that I invariably began with the rhymes just as you began the jigsaw puzzle with the straight edges. That was my point. It was nothing.’

  ‘I’d like to read them. Your poems, I mean.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t, and you won’t. We’ve better things to do with your time. Like writing my book, for example. Shall we set to it? The morning’s all but gone.’

  ‘I’m sweating again. How long have we been at it?’

  ‘Let’s see. It’s nearly half-past five now and we started at twelve, just as the church clock chimed. An hour off for lunch and half-an-hour, say, for coffee. That makes four hours in all.’

  ‘Just four hours? Not enough, not nearly enough. Oh well. Read it back to me, will you. Then we’ll unwind with a glass of whisky.’

  ‘Read what we did today?’

  ‘Just what we did today.’

  ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

  ‘Just read it, please.’

  ‘“Let us now consider the case of Rembrandt van Rijn. This man – this artist at the close of his earthly existence, old and unlovely, yet also serene and self-sufficient, whose last self-portrait hangs in the National Gallery, his two hands splayed upon his knees before him as if to say to the spectator, accept me as I am, as with age I have become – this man looks out at us from the canvas with the same two eyes with which he, the artist, looked at that same canvas three hundred years ago. He is only four months from his own death – or, should I say, from his immortality. His eyes, though, those eyes we feel it would be indecent to approach too closely, as indecent as though he were a real person in front of us, his eyes are what the painting is about, are what it is a painting of. For it is less a self-portrait than a study of eyes, a study of the eyes which saw first what we see now and which appear to gaze at us gazing at them, making eye contact with us across an abyss of three centuries.

  ‘“With us, I say. But I, I have no eyes to gaze at Rembrandt’s. I cannot make eye contact with him or with anyone in the world. And yet I do continue to ‘see’ those eyes of his even if I have been unable to see the portrait itself for several years. I see them with that so-called inner eye which has remained unscarred through all the trials and travails of my recent existence. Rembrandt’s eyes have gone; and mine, too, have gone. Yet those four spectral eyes, his and mine, continue to make contact, his by virtue of representation, mine by virtue of memory.

  ‘“Let us imagine, now, his ‘Self-Portrait at the Age of 63’ as a jigsaw puzzle on a tabletop. No, why imagine it? It exists. The National Gallery sells just such a puzzle in its souvenir shop. Imagine it, though, complete save for those few pieces, no more than three or four, that would fill in Rembrandt’s eyes. What would we see? The landscape of a human head and torso. Or, rather, straight-edged and rectangular as it would be, the map of such a landscape, with, at its centre, a table-top-textured, jigsaw-shaped space, as amorphously curvate as a Hollywood star’s swimming-pool, where the eyes would normally be.”’

  *

  ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s all we did?’

  ‘’Fraid so. It’s not too bad, considering. I’ve just done a word count. Four hundred and seventeen.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘We can always continue.’

  ‘No. No, let that do for now. But I wonder. Does it actually mean anything?’

  ‘In my opinion, it means quite a lot.’

  ‘Thanks for the kind thought, John, but I can’t help wondering if it’s a load of guff. Now if I could only see it, I could judge it.’

  ‘The painting?’

  ‘The text!’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That business about the inner eye. The inner eye? What crap it is, really!’

  *

  ‘Oh well. Heigh-ho. Tomorrow’s another day, as someone said.’

  ‘The plate’s very hot.’

  ‘Well, John, whatever this is, I can already tell it most certainly isn’t à la dear old Ma Kilbride.’

  ‘Pheasant at noon, sautéed potatoes at three, French beans at seven.’

  ‘Mmm. How delicious it all smells. Even though “Pheasant at Noon” sounds like the title of some dreadful well-made play by Rattigan or N. C. Hunter. Is there bread sauce, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Bread sauce at, let me see, I know you prefer me not to be too finicky about these things, but I’d have to say it’s at about ten-past ten.’

  ‘Ten-past ten, eh? You know what time that is?’

  ‘Sorry? I’m filling your glass, by the way. Chambolle-Musigny 1990.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The wine. You were saying?’

  ‘Was I? What about?’

  ‘Ten-past ten?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, it’s the time you’ll always find on advertisements for wrist-watches. Always.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It has the effect of making the watch-face “smile”, you see. Thereby rendering the watch more attractive to a potential purchaser. So the argument runs.’

  ‘Really? However did you find that out?’

  *

  ‘Paul? Is there –’

  ‘Is your notepad on the table?’

  ‘Naturally. Why? Have you thought of something?’

  ‘The watch-face. Ten-past ten. Like a blind man’s face, don’t you get it? What I told you before? About a blind man having to turn himself into the salt of the earth? Always smiling – always smiling – his face is always set at ten-past ten, just like a watch-face – making it easier for him to – to – ingratiate himself with those – with those acquaintances whose help he might have to rely on one day. Jot it down, will you.’

  *

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s not bad, don’t you think? And I fancy I know just where I can put it.’

  *

  ‘You’re smiling, John.’

  ‘Sorry, it was the way you said, “I fancy I know just where I can put it.” It sounded almost ribald.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I get that.’

  ‘You really are amazing, though. You’re like Sherlock Holmes. You catch me out every time.’

  ‘Well, you know, John, I probably ought not to be divulging the tricks of my trade, but I have to tell you there’s nothing supernatural about it. When you smile, you crease your lips and you smack your tongue – very faintly, very faintly, but you do – and you release a sort of funny nasal sigh. To a blind man it’s all perfectly audible. I really can hear you smile.’

  ‘Rather a scary thought.’

  ‘That depends on why you’re smiling, doesn’t it? Now, I’m sorry, but I’ve been so
very absorbed by this delirious chit-chat of ours you’re going to have to tell me again what time it is on my plate.’

  ‘Pheasant at noon. Potatoes at three. French beans at seven. And bread sauce at ten-past ten.’

  ‘Thank you. Incidentally, that’s quite an opulent aftershave.’

  ‘Jazz. Saint-Laurent. Not too overpowering, I hope.’

  ‘Not at all. Discreetly pungent is how I’d describe it. It might have overwhelmed one of Mrs Kilbride’s insipid concoctions but this – well, my congratulations, John, this pheasant is delicious, yes, really very delicious.’

  ‘My pleasure. Literally. It’s been so long since I’ve cooked for two.’

  ‘So you already said. But –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why, John?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why is it so long since you’ve cooked for two?’

  ‘You know why. I live alone.’

  ‘But that’s what I mean. Why do you live alone?’

  *

  ‘You’re still young. You appear to be relatively well-off. And you’re clearly personable, more than personable. You told me yourself, on our first day together, that you’d admit to being good-looking. Now I don’t wish to pry, but I can’t deny I’m curious and you after all have come to know rather a lot about me. So why is it you’ve never married?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that.’

  ‘Don’t you like women?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you like women?’

  ‘Do you mean, am I queer?’

  ‘“Gay” I think is the word nowadays. Is that what I meant? I imagine it was. You understand, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to our collaboration.’

  ‘No, I’m not gay.’

  ‘Then why is it you’re alone? Forgive me, John, but you’re living in my house and I know next to nothing about the existence you led before you came here and, freak I may be, but I’m no less inquisitive about my fellow creatures than any normally constituted human being.’