Blenheim Orchard

by Tim Pears

  ‘Is it good?’ he asked.

  She thought about it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s sad. Daddy,’ Blaise said, changing the subject, ‘does Mum know I may not go to Brazil?’

  ‘If you don’t go, none of us go, darling,’ Ezra told her. ‘Mum believes you’ll want to go.’

  Blaise shook her head. ‘You know what she says: The path of resistance–’

  ‘Is the point of resistance. Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘So she should understand if I resist her, Dad.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what she had in mind,’ Ezra said. He gestured towards the book. ‘You think you might want to be a photographer one day?’

  ‘Maybe, Daddy,’ Blaise said.

  ‘Or filmmaker, maybe. You should see the film Werner Herzog made. I don’t remember what it’s called. Images of the oil fields of Kuwait burning.’

  Blaise smiled up at her father.

  ‘What’s funny?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing, Daddy. Just that you don’t want to listen.’

  ‘Of course I do, darling. I’m interested in what you do and what you think. I mean, can I have a look at this book some time?’

  ‘You can look at it now if you like. I was about to turn off the light.’

  ‘Okay, honey, I will, thanks.’

  Ezra leaned towards his daughter. There was a flavour of tangerines on her breath. He kissed her goodnight, and left the room.

  Blaise had come across a copy of the book in the Westgate Library, browsing for an essay about visual representation of conflict, and she knew within a few pages that a borrowed copy would not be sufficient: despite the price of photography books, Blaise saved up pocket money and ordered a new copy from Blackwell’s. A week after she finished the essay, she was notified that the book was waiting for her at the customer collection point on the second floor: there it was sealed in Cellophane, which, back home, she had sliced open very slowly with Sheena’s Quick-Unpick.

  This evening Ezra sat in his spare-room study and leafed through his daughter’s book, in the light of the Anglepoise, while outside the summer dusk gathered, closing in around his house. Aftermath was a collection of images of bombed cities, by assorted photographers. Mounds of rubble in London during the Blitz, St Paul’s untouched in the background, a beacon emitting its fragile bravado. The awesome obliteration of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, cities turned into the blueprints of cities. Leningrad, a destroyed mausoleum, impossible to believe ten or a hundred people, never mind millions, survived in its cellars through the terrible siege.

  There was not a single person in the book; no human body, alive or dead.

  Apocalyptic cityscapes. Grozny and Vukovar. The bare bones of cities, blasted clean by the breath of dragons. In the book was an essay about the development of explosive material. Gunpowder and dynamite. Nitroglycerine, gelignite, TNT. Chemists in their laboratories, studiously separating elements. The A-bomb, the H-bomb. Plutonium, uranium. Napalm, Agent Orange. The urge towards eradication of one’s enemies.

  Black-and-white photographs: long avenues lined by shells of buildings. They looked pretty; decorative. Buildings gutted by fire: wooden joists, floorboards, roof beams burnt out, leaving hulks behind. Firebombed Dresden. Stalingrad bearing multiple scars, from long-range artillery to the Molotov cocktails and ricochet nicks of hand-to-hand fighting.

  V-2s and doodlebugs. Bazookas and Exocets. Cluster bombs. Intercontinental ballistic missiles.

  Although the book was a compilation of the work of many different photographers, there was some quality the images shared. The lens made sense of what it captured, with a particular lucidity. What was it? Ezra wondered. It felt almost like an avidity. As if a camera – whoever happened to be behind it – adored this spectacle: the destruction of what other human beings had built. As if the photographic frame understood the meaning of this sight; as photographic emulsion, perhaps, understood light, and shadow. Unless, Ezra reconsidered, the avidity was not in the medium, or the apparatus, but in the viewer’s eye, and brought hungrily to each picture. He gazed, in a rapture of devastation. In colour: massive bridges taking off from the banks of wide city rivers, then not there any more, torn limbs. What had once been a bus, mangled in a suicide bombing, an impossible riddle in three dimensions.

  Belgrade: the police headquarters, at first glance intact, until you realised that every single window was missing. Kabul: sandstone dwellings that looked more like the ruins of an ancient civilisation than a residential district levelled by smart missiles. Ramallah: a row of concrete houses whose fronts had been torn off, the rooms baring their contents like dolls’ houses.

  Ezra bent forward and lowered the book to the floor. Barely consciously, he slid it under his desk. He switched off the Angle-poise lamp and closed his eyes. For a while Ezra sat in the darkness. In his mind’s eye he saw himself, his body – or could it be Blaise, and her body? – in the midst of scenes in the book. At the moments before the scenes became what the photographs showed, and the people vanished.

  13

  The Phoenix Cinema

  Tuesday 22 July

  One unclouded Tuesday noon, Ezra Pepin and Klaus Kuuzik strode side by loose-shouldered side along Hythe Bridge Street, and on past Gloucester Green bus station, then Worcester College. Although he was wearing a jacket, Kuuzik looked to Ezra a little cooler than Ezra felt, sweating in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. As if the fabric of the ice-blue lightweight suit possessed a chill intelligence.

  ‘So, okay,’ Kuuzik was saying, ‘organisations as we knew them have virtually disappeared. They’re no longer employers, they are yes, indeed, organisers. Of a free agent nation; of mavericks with portfolio careers. Each of us entrepreneur-in-chief of our own service company. This is good. Because we all crave control. Every man hungers for power over his own life. Isn’t that true, Ezra?’

  Kuuzik’s eyes were hidden behind a pair of letterbox ebony shades. The glassy midday light forced Ezra to narrow his eyes, which he suspected gave him the look of steely resolve appropriate to a free and powerful agent. ‘Certainly,’ he agreed. ‘But power is both quantifiable and a state of mind. If you think you’re powerless then you surely will be. Power is not something that can be given to you. You have to take it.’

  ‘Or believe you’ve taken it.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What an organisation has to provide – apart from network coherence, of course – is vision. We can’t give power to people, as you say, but we can offer them inspiration.’

  The men walked along Beaumont Street, between the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel and round into St Giles. Ezra imagined that pedestrians coming the other way had all seen the photograph and read the profile of Klaus Kuuzik in the business section of last week’s Oxford Times, recognised him now and noted the dapper colleague beside him. Authority, and stature.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ Kuuzik continued, ‘says to his people, “We run like mad and then we change direction.” And he’s right. A sense of restlessness with the status quo is necessary to create the conditions for change and opportunity.’

  ‘Always,’ Ezra agreed.

  ‘Do you ever wonder,’ Klaus said, ‘whether teenage alienation is a product of technological society, or whether it’s always existed, and is the true engine of this restlessness?’

  ‘That is an interesting question,’ Ezra agreed. ‘What makes young people break with tradition? It’s something I was studying in tribal culture. Is that drive to be ourselves satisfied by appropriate coming of age rituals?’

  They strolled along the wide boulevard of St Giles, and forked right up Banbury Road. One of the things about talking as you walked was that your every utterance was a projection into the future which you stepped into. As if it was your conversation together that led you forward; that was your direction.

  ‘In classical Hindu tradition,’ Klaus said, ‘there was a trinity of gods: Brahma the Creator; Vishnu the Preserver; Shiva the Destroyer. It
strikes me that we need all these qualities at the head of an organisation. We might call them different temperaments, and of course no one man can hold all three within him. Which is why a team is needed.’

  They passed the first of the ugly scientific institutes in silence.

  Might I embody one of these qualities? Ezra wondered. Is that what he’s saying?

  ‘Last time I was in India, you know,’ Klaus resumed, ‘I was on the train from Delhi to Rajasthan. We were served bottled water. Aqualina – Pepsi’s Indian line. When we got to Jaipur it was incredibly hot, and people had put up small thatched huts, water temples, to give water from earthen pots as a free gift to the thirsty.’

  Ezra nodded. It crossed his mind that on a day like today England could do with a few such temples. Whatever happened to drinking fountains, anyway?

  ‘An ancient tradition across India,’ Klaus said. ‘And right there you have a fundamental clash: water as profitable commodity, water as sacred gift. The question is: where do we at Isis Water stand?’

  Before Ezra was obliged to answer this odd question, Klaus said, ‘Well, here we are. There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  Gees restaurant was in an elegant Victorian conservatory. Air conditioning and ceiling blinds held back the dazzle and heat of the summer day. They were led to a table on which upside-down glasses, reflecting light from the many windows, vied for supremacy of cleanliness with chemical-white tablecloth and napkins. A slight, saturnine man stood to greet them.

  ‘This is Carl Buchannan,’ Klaus introduced him. ‘A hydrologist of rare curiosity. I’ve dragged him here from Vancouver to work with us. Carl, meet Ezra Pepin. I thought they must have been hiding Ezra from me, Carl, but in fact he was hiding from everyone, including himself. Am I right?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Ezra shrugged.

  ‘Ah, they’re too modest, these English,’ Klaus told Carl. ‘The world is full of ambitious men who lack talent. Intelligence. You can’t create these qualities. But ambition you can inspire, even in a modest Englishman.’

  The Canadian fidgeted with his napkin. He had an energy, a restlessness, about him.

  ‘You worked together in Vancouver?’ Ezra asked him.

  ‘Listen,’ Buchannan said, ‘until Klaus appeared, I still kind of agreed with Joe Stalin that water allowed to enter the sea is wasted, you know?’

  ‘You mean that anything is possible? Or was, at least.’

  Buchannan frowned. He gave the impression he’d already had enough of Ezra’s company. ‘Sure,’ he said, abruptly, in a tone which suggested that no, actually that wasn’t what he meant. ‘I mean I came to realise that if the way we use our knowledge damages the world, would it not be better if we hadn’t been born?’

  ‘A Hippocratic oath for engineers.’

  ‘Why not?’ Klaus interjected. ‘Yes, I like that idea. Let us not forget that with every generation we are removed further in time from the Garden of Eden.’

  ‘The Garden of Eden?’ Ezra asked.

  ‘From simplicity, if you prefer, Ezra. From the Golden Age, let us say. “He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” This is the great challenge of progress. But gentlemen, please, an aperitif? Let us relax. I know it’s a little old-fashioned, but I propose that we do not expect too much from our labours this afternoon.’

  They ordered gin martinis and vermouths, which came with olives on sticks, in glasses the shape of windblown umbrellas. The first bitter sip gave Ezra Pepin a taste of illicit decadence all the more potent for being from another, more complicated era. They assessed the menu.

  ‘I can recommend the king scallops to start with,’ said Klaus. ‘Although myself, today I think I’ll try the roast partridge. Here’s a question for you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Is it better to give people what they want but don’t need? Or what they need but don’t want?’

  ‘What they need, of course,’ said Buchannan without hesitation.

  ‘If they need it badly, yes,’ said Ezra, in more measured tone. ‘For survival. Otherwise, what they want. Because this may bring happiness.’

  ‘A consumer’s happiness,’ said Buchannan. ‘The addict’s happiness, which needs to be fed again tomorrow.’

  ‘It depends what we’re talking about,’ Ezra stood his ground. ‘Shoddy products, then you’re right. But –’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Kuuzik interrupted, ‘please, forgive me. It was a trick question. A false dichotomy. Because the answer is both: we have to give people what they want and what they need. Ah, here comes something for us, I suspect.’

  Ezra ate his king scallops, pan-fried to a juicy tenderness, served on a pile of al dente green beans, with a leek-and-shallot vinaigrette dressing. Buchannan had gnocchi, with juicy mushrooms, pine nuts and salsa verde. Klaus refilled their wine glasses with Pinotage. He put his knife and fork on his plate and slid them gently together, like palms to prayer.

  ‘Water,’ he said, ‘is meant to flow. When it’s unable to flow, it stagnates. The same is true of trade. You know our approach to trade, Ezra: we want to offer water to the thirsty. I wonder, does this make us radical or traditional?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Exactly, because the situation today is unique.’

  ‘You’re referring to what? Global warming?’ Ezra conjectured.

  ‘Boof,’ Carl Buchannan exclaimed, dismissing the idea. ‘That’s a technical issue.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Ezra said.

  ‘Rising oceans,’ Carl said impatiently. ‘A hell of an opportunity, wouldn’t you say? Look, there are four methods of desalination.’ He raised his fingers: ‘One, multi-stage flash distillation; two, reverse osmosis; three, electrodialysis. Every one of them hideously expensive.’

  ‘You said four,’ Ezra objected. ‘What’s the fourth?’

  ‘Carl doesn’t know yet,’ Klaus joined in, smiling, leaning back to let the waitress take away their plates of half-eaten food. ‘Neither does anyone else. It’s something we need to be the first to discover.’

  The three men laughed. The waitress left, with their dessert orders. Ezra felt light-headed. He wondered what it was he was doing here, exactly, sat between these two men. The restless engineer in a hurry to move on, to get somewhere, and his energy convinced you that he would. The calm executive, who didn’t need to say anything: anyone could tell, he would make happen what he desired, and so you wanted to desire the same thing.

  Klaus turned to Ezra and said, ‘Let me show you something. I mean, forget history. This is now.’ He started moving glasses and cutlery around, clearing a space in front of him. ‘This napkin is the island of Cyprus, okay? The tablecloth itself is the eastern Mediterranean. Over here,’ Kuuzik said, using spoons and forks to draw a looping line of metal, ‘is the north and eastern shoreline.’ He picked up a knife and placed it across the napkin. ‘This, Ezra, is the border: Greek Cyprus in the south, Turkish Cyprus in the north.’

  ‘The Turks invaded in, what, the mid-Seventies?’ Ezra guessed. ‘A pseudo state ever since, right, recognised only by Turkey itself?’

  ‘The whole island’s chronically short of water,’ Carl said, causing Ezra to wonder whether he and Klaus had rehearsed this show for him. ‘What’s the main industry? Okay, we can guess: tourism. Hundreds of hotels are constructed for tourists, who use much more water than locals. The Greeks implement recycling procedures. Desalination. Grey water systems. What do the Turks do?’ Buchannan deferred to Kuuzik. ‘Back to the map.’

  While Buchannan was talking, Kuuzik had been doodling like a child with a magnet pen and one of those drawing boards that contain iron filings: trails of pepper across the white tablecloth now denoted the borders of countries in the Middle East. Ezra felt an urge to take a pen from the pocket of his jacket draped over the chair behind him, to pick up the challenge and further desecrate the fine linen by writing in the names of countries. Israel, Lebanon and Syria were delineated in their entirety.

  ‘Go ahead, Ezra,’ said Kuuzik, reading hi
s mind. Ezra found himself being offered a black marker pen. Kuuzik was smiling at him. ‘What’s your geography like?’

  Jordan, Iraq and Turkey had only partial borders shown, the bulk of their terrain dissolving north and eastward into the tablecloth’s abstraction. Ezra wrote their names, giddy with the liberating glee of a timid boy doing something he shouldn’t, but knowing he was protected by the leader of the group. He saw the indelible black lines fray at their edges as the ink was absorbed into the thirsty white linen – which would have to be thrown away. Would its value be added to the bill? Or would Klaus be expected to cover such a cost in his tip? Or would the matter not be referred to in any way by either party?

  ‘In eastern Turkey, as you know, Ezra, in Kurdish areas, massive dams have been built. There’s one on the Euphrates,’ Klaus said, ‘reducing its flow as it goes into Syria.’ He trickled the route of the great river with salt, which sparkled in the restaurant’s glassy brightness. ‘Another on the Tigris, which flows into Iraq. Now, there are big issues here about rights and responsibilities, about political control over your own dissident population, and your neighbours. But leave all that for the moment. The point is that Turkey is water rich.

  ‘Let’s go back to Cyprus.’ As Klaus spoke he reached over to an adjacent table, from which diners had just left, and picked up a small, empty, transparent plastic bag that had held a hand-cleaning flannel. ‘The Turks decide to move water from mainland Turkey to their enclave on the island, which has an annual shortfall of what, Carl?’

  ‘About fifteen million cubic metres.’

  Ezra made a whistling inhalation.

  ‘A lot, yes,’ Klaus nodded. ‘Their efforts make for a humorous story, Ezra.’ Kuuzik poured water from their jug into the bag he’d just pilfered. ‘They used huge plastic containers, holding ten, twenty thousand cubic metres each. People got very excited as the first of these were towed across the sea. “Turkish water bags will serve Malta, Libya, Egypt.” Unfortunately,’ Klaus said, taking a lighter from his pocket, and holding it to his own water bag, ‘they started melting in the sun.’ His bag was breached, with a sickly smell of burning plastic. Water dribbled on to the tablecloth.