What I would like is to link each of my objects in a particular way, before throwing them into the fire. For instance, by common function: the feathers, pencils and printer’s set (systems of writing); the railway timetable, the elephant tusk, Father’s bike and the boat setting sail from an Eastern city (transport). Or else I would like to group them by relationships based not on similarity but on opposition, or by some tangential association, the gauzy dress followed by the chameleon skin, fireworks followed by candles and Father’s cigarettes, the machete followed by the mappa mundi, the feathers by the LP Damaris gave me when we lived in Bedouin. It would not be hard to burn my objects according to this system, but it would be nearly useless, for if I leave my objects unsorted and take a pair at random, I can be sure they will have at least three things in common. And does it matter what order I choose? In the end they will all be burned. And isn’t it precisely to do away with order that I have decided to burn my objects?
Forward.
So then, I will simply start a fire and throw everything into it, all the objects I have mentioned, and all those I have not. And if I find the radio I will throw that into the fire too. It will be a happy day. I will think about my history for a final time. I will shake with laughter, an indecent, shameful, helpless laughter. I have lived among this clutter for too long. I shall not put up with it any more. A superb day. A thousand useless possessions – the frightful prodigality of objects – which, undisturbed, might have survived for decades, will be destroyed in a single afternoon.
Will they make a noise as they burn? A great noise! They will burst, hissing and snapping, cracking like crinoline, like sticks, like flags. – And I note here the day in America, with Damaris, in San Francisco, the afternoon we found a ginger dog, and walked it back along the avenue with flags snapping in the wind, an incident Damaris started to relate in her diary, on 26 October 1972, but which she did not finish and whose conclusion I now recall: how when we got to his master’s door we knocked, and an old young man or a young old man with a white quiff answered; how we both began to laugh, as he cried, ‘Brumby!’; how Brumby cowered, and the man came out on to the porch and grabbed the dog by the collar to drag him into the house; how, as he did, we could see the hairs on the man’s arms turning into vines; how I wanted to grab Brumby but I couldn’t, so I clung to the railings; how Damaris clung to me; how the man said, ‘Damn dog’s always running away’; how, as he closed the door, Damaris said, ‘Can we have our reward?’; how the man stopped and looked at us, then stared and smiled, seeing the goodness in us, between us; how he went away, leaving the door open; how Brumby followed him tail down; how, as we stood there, we saw vines trailing from the wallpaper, choking the doorway; how the man suddenly materialized, parting the vines, plucking from them two glowing balls; how he said, ‘Here you go, girls’; how he closed the door; how we weighed the oranges in our hands; how I said, ‘Should we throw them away?’; and how Damaris said, ‘They are our reward’; how we noticed that they were the colour of Brumby’s eyes; how Damaris said, ‘We can’t throw them away’; how we heard the man shouting; how Brumby yelped; how I cried, ‘Brumby! Damaris! Do something!’; how Damaris said, ‘I can’t, he doesn’t belong to us’; how she threw her orange hard and we watched it burst and dribble down the man’s door; how I threw my orange, and it fell short and rolled back down the steps towards us, following us; how we backed away and looked at each other and grabbed hands and ran.
Forward.
The attic. On my return it will be nearly empty. The acoustics will be different, but that will not matter. There will be very little left. My computer, printer, wardrobe door, the volumes, and so on. That is all. That will be all. It is a moment I have been working towards for months. I will rebuild my desk. I will open my computer. I will choose one of my papers and begin to copy. Every now and then, as I work, I will print my transcriptions out and tape them over the skylight. And at the sight of those words which I will look at without knowing what they mean, I will feel happy, happier than I have done in years. A fresh start. I will live in my attic. I will never go out. I will take my supply of beans by delivery. I will sleep on my mattress, unless I decide to burn that too. In that case I will sleep on the floor, under my desk, my heater beside me. Perhaps, on occasion, a few faint sounds will break the calm, a little cry perhaps, a clock ticking. I will hear them. But I will not let them affect my work. The din of myself? It has not gone away, although it has lessened, now that I have begun to transcribe. That is not to say it will always be so. It will come and go, as it has always done. I am still terrified of it. Perhaps I will get to know it better, to understand what it wants. I will feel calm. Happy. Sometimes I will think of the silence. Knowing there is no such thing, I will think of it. I will listen. I will not hear. I will listen. I will listen into the silence, into its centre. That absence too will have to be imagined. There have been times in writing this history when I have asked myself what the first thing was that I ever heard. Once, when I was lying in the elephant grass, I tried to imagine the world before it was made. I was unable. I am no closer now. I will continue to try. I will continue to try to imagine the world as it was before the great noise which formed it, this world which could not have known such a noise because it existed – if that is the word – in silence.
Postscript
This book contains passages, all of them slightly altered, from the following works:
Charles Allen, Tales from the Dark Continent, part of the trilogy, Plain Tales from the British Empire, Little, Brown, 1998.
Isaac Babel, Red Cavalry, trans. David McDuff, Penguin, 2005.
Günter Grass, The Tin Drum, trans. Ralph Manheim, Vintage, 2004.
George Perec, Life A User’s Manual, trans. David Bellos, Harvill, 1996.
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles, trans. Celina Wieniewska, Penguin, 1992.
Joan Sharwood-Smith Diary of a Colonial Wife: An African Experience, Radcliffe Press, 1992.
Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘From a Railway Carriage’.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions of this book.
Acknowledgements
My first debt goes to Natasha Soobramanien. I couldn’t have written this book without her – literally. She was my first reader throughout and consequently knew the book, and Evie, better than anyone else bar me. It seemed natural, then, and wholly in keeping with her contribution thus far, when, on completing the second part, I asked her to write Damaris’ diary. I gave her some dates and a few sketchy plot lines; other than this, she conceived and wrote what turned out to be chapters twenty-five and twenty-six entirely without my meddling.
Enormous thanks must also go to my family, Glenna, Derek, Hilery, Martin, Saul and Thea.
Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency was amazing: enthusiastic, encouraging, patient and a great reader.
Thanks also to my editors at Hamish Hamilton: Simon Prosser, Juliette Mitchell and Anna Kelly.
I am grateful to the Arts Council East and the Charles Pick Fellowship for their generous financial support of this project.
Many others helped in the process of writing, each in their individual ways. Thanks to you all:
Sara De Bondt, Fiona Bowden, Lawrence Bradby, Jon Cook, Andrew Cowan, Owen Dudley Edwards, Oliver Emanuel, Alex Graves, Sara Heitlinger, Sophie Logan, Robert McGill, Richard Misek, Sam Mungall, Paul Nugent, Martin Pick, Chris Power, Max Schaefer, Michal Shavit, Ali Smith, Lucy Steeds, Mada Vicassiau, Yair Wallach and Josh Warren.
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The Echo Chamber Page 34
