Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  ‘Then what else?’ Beede demanded.

  Gaffar scowled. ‘What else? I walk dog. I do hoover. Massage. Even just little-bit chit-chat. Is good. Is enough.’

  ‘You mean you’re working as a kind of…’ Beede frowned, ‘gigolo cum…’ he paused ‘…cum au pair?’

  ‘I work for Kane,’ Gaffar explained irritably. ‘This Kane client. He want for client being happy. He send Gaffar. Gaffar is bring happy…’

  Pause

  ‘…Without all this drugs you so crazy about.’

  ‘Did you hang a bell on the cat?’ Beede suddenly asked.

  ‘Pard?’

  ‘The cat. The Siamese. Did you hang a bell on him?’

  ‘Bell?’

  ‘Ding! Ding! Bell. On a collar. Around his neck.’

  ‘Bell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Beede felt his shoulder tensing up again. He put a hand to it.

  ‘No. No bell.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What for I hang “bel”?’ Gaffar scoffed.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Did you hang bell?’

  ‘Of course not. If I’d hung bell…the bell – then I wouldn’t be asking you about it, would I?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Gaffar scratched his head and then looked away, as if embarrassed on Beede’s behalf –

  Bell?!

  Beede took a sip of his soup. A member of staff approached them clutching a carrier. ‘I think this is everything,’ she said. ‘We took the precaution of wrapping up the greens in a double bag…’

  ‘Great. That was very kind. Thank you.’

  Beede took the carrier from her. She showed him the till receipt.

  ‘Right. Of course,’ he muttered. ‘Do you have any cash, Gaffar?’

  Beede peered over at the Kurd. Gaffar was engrossed in checking the texts on his new mobile phone.

  ‘Gaffar?’

  Gaffar glanced up. ‘Cash? Sure.’

  He delved into the pocket of his new, leather jacket, withdrew an indecently fat wad of mulberry-coloured notes, licked his thumb and peeled one off.

  ‘Lid…Rug…Drugs…Bell…’ he murmured, shaking his head as he passed it over. ‘You need to get out more, old fella.’

  ‘So who’s it by?’

  As soon as he’d finished eating he’d been drawn back to the painting.

  ‘That’s the million dollar question. Medieval artists rarely – if ever – put a signature to their work. It’s meant to be from the Cologne School…’

  She was tidying away the remains of a basic lunch they’d just shared (water biscuits, blue Brie, cherry tomatoes and a jar of huge, home-made pickled onions, bobbing around like apples in a rich and luxuriant, dark malt vinegar).

  ‘German?’

  ‘Yes. Although obviously Germany – as we know it now – didn’t actually exist back then…’

  ‘Obviously,’ Kane parroted.

  ‘I’m hoping it’s a Stephan Lochner,’ she continued. ‘He was a cut above most of his contemporaries – very heavily influenced by the Flemish painters of the time…’

  ‘Which time?’

  ‘1430, 1440. He died of the plague on Christmas Day, 1451.’

  She went over to her desk and opened up a large scrapbook.

  ‘Lochner is best known for his Adoration of the Magi which takes pride of place in the cathedral in Cologne…’

  She turned the pages of the book until she reached a fine, colour reproduction of the painting in question, surrounded by a plethora of comments and observations written in a dark, blue ink.

  ‘Come and look.’

  Kane strolled over. It was a beautiful painting; a triptych. In the middle panel three wise men made offerings to the baby Christ.

  ‘This is Saint Gereon,’ she pointed to one of the side panels, ‘and this is Saint Ursula…’ she pointed to the other. ‘They’ve augmented The Adoration with them because the two saints have a special relevance to Cologne. They were both martyred there.’

  ‘Do you like it?’ Kane wondered, detecting an element of fastidiousness in her tone.

  ‘But of course,’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s magnificent, don’t you think? Finely observed, meticulously finished. A masterpiece of its time – of any time – although not, I’ll admit, what you might call the world’s most “emotionally involving” work of art.’

  Kane didn’t see fit to comment.

  She turned the page over.

  ‘What’s that?’

  He pointed.

  ‘That’s a reproduction of The Paradise Garden by the Master of Frankfurt. He’s another contender, another candidate on my shortlist. He would’ve been one of Lochner’s contemporaries…’

  Kane drew in closer. It was an exquisite little piece. A fairytale-style walled garden containing eight quaint figures. The Madonna (although she looked more like a princess than a religious figure) sat in the centre of the composition reading a book. Around her a group of servants and a child (he presumed the baby Christ) entertained themselves with a series of innocent (if somewhat mundane-seeming) pastimes.

  ‘Sweet, isn’t it?’ she said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Although these works are never as straightforward as they look. In medieval art the messages are all encoded…’

  He glanced up, suddenly intrigued. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well each figure, each colour, each bird and plant resonates at a symbolic level as well as at a physical one. An important symptom of what I like to call the “Medieval Disease” was that everything generally represented something else. People weren’t encouraged to conceptualise, to question, to range freely. They were boxed in by Christian doctrine. They couldn’t think in abstract forms. Everything was self-referential. It was an intensely restrictive system of thought…’

  ‘Give me an example,’ Kane demanded.

  ‘The whole notion of “a garden”, for starters. Medieval gardens would generally be divided into an inner and an outer area. This is an inner garden. You can see the walls which surround it. An inner garden is a highly formalised space, full of rules and elaborate structures. The outer garden represents “the untamed”: the wild, the pagan, the uncontrolled, the fertile…The inner garden is based around the mead…’

  ‘The mead? Isn’t that a kind of drink?’

  ‘No. Same word, different meaning. The mead you’re thinking of is a beverage of fermented honey and water. This kind of mead is a lawn. In medieval times the lawn was planted with wildflowers because scent was incredibly important to them – here we see the violet, which is quite prominent. The violet represents humility – more specifically the humility of the virgin. She’s referred to again in the roses in the borders. The red rose…’

  She pointed to the rose. Kane nodded.

  ‘That represents divine love. Initially Venus, and then, with the advent of Christianity, Mary. The purple or blue of the iris is traditionally a royal colour…’

  ‘Royal Blue…’ Kane interrupted.

  ‘Exactly. And the Royal Blue represents the Holy Virgin as the Queen of Heaven. The columbine has petals which are shaped – to the medieval mind, at least – like a dove…’ She sketched the approximate shape, in the air, with her hands. ‘For that reason the columbine was taken to symbolise the Holy Ghost. Carnations – which were relative latecomers to Europe – represent the incarnation…’

  ‘But what’s the actual point in all of this?’ Kane wondered, apparently nonplussed.

  ‘The point? The point is to instil everyday objects with a devotional meaning. To underpin the commonplace with a profound sense of the holy. If God created the earth then the earth and everything in it must function simply as an extended homily to Him and His Work.’

  ‘How turgid,’ Kane drawled.

  ‘No more turgid, I suppose,’ she responded (half-smiling at his ready use of this unexpected word), ‘than some of the apparently complex yet equally meaningless ramifications of modernity.’

&nbs
p; He frowned at her. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Uh…’ she gave this question a moment’s consideration. ‘Well how about your trainers, for starters?’

  ‘My trainers?’ Kane looked down at his feet, bemused. ‘What’s so complex about my trainers? They’re just a basic pair of functional shoes…’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she scoffed. ‘When you chose that particular make, that particular design, it was to send out a message. Many messages, in fact. But like the flowers in the border here that message is heavily encoded. Only a very specific kind of person will understand the exact nature of the message you’re relaying. To me – for example – they’re just a rather ungainly pair of white, rubber excrescences, but to someone who speaks the sophisticated dialect of Nike they represent a million different aspirational preferences. These artists…’ she patted the scrapbook, fondly, ‘speak the language of devotion. You speak the language of Capitalism. They’re both equally meaningful on the one level, and both equally meaningless on another.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ Kane debunked her, ‘I chose these shoes principally because they’re comfy…’

  ‘But you’ve been limping since you got here.’

  ‘Have I?’

  Kane stared down at his feet, mystified, then looked up again, with a frown. ‘If you put your mind to it,’ he muttered, ‘it’s possible to transform any basic transaction into a deep and meaningful psychodrama…’

  She smiled.

  ‘I mean for all you really know,’ Kane continued (secretly pleased – and encouraged – by her response), ‘the whole scenario might actually be less complicated than you think. Your artist might simply’ve liked red roses. Or’ve been especially good at painting them. I might’ve bought these shoes because I have unnaturally large feet and they were the only ones in the store that’d fit…’

  ‘Not store,’ she interrupted him, ‘shop.’

  He gazed at her, surprised.

  ‘And you don’t,’ she said. ‘You have perfectly normal-sized feet. And those shoes plainly aren’t comfy. So why did you buy them, exactly?’

  ‘If I wasn’t wearing trainers, but brogues,’ he evaded her, ‘you’d probably decide I was sending out a message of another kind…’

  ‘And you would be,’ she maintained, calmly.

  ‘What? A message that I don’t like trainers, perhaps?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But d’you honestly think I’d be any less of a capitalist dupe for all of that? If I wore Doc Martens, for example, would I necessarily be more “free-thinking” or less constrained by social conditioning? Isn’t that all just a part of the same bullshit conspiracy?’

  ‘Doc Martens are manufactured in the UK,’ she countered. ‘They don’t depend on the exploitation of third world labour…’ ‘It’s entirely possible,’ he speculated, ‘that there may be serious Human Rights issues in the country – or countries – where they source their rubber…’

  ‘Wouldn’t life be so much simpler,’ she deadpanned, ‘if you could just manufacture your own shoes from scratch?’

  Kane’s phone suddenly began to vibrate. He pulled it from his pocket and inspected it, scowling.

  ‘Although if you made your own shoes you’d be a shoe-maker,’ she reasoned (half to herself), ‘and in medieval times people involved in trades connected to the feet were generally ostracised.’

  ‘Why?’ He glanced up.

  ‘Because people’s beliefs were incredibly literal. They thought the devil had cloven hooves and that his followers did too. People who chose to work in trades relating to the feet were often suspected of an involvement with the occult.’

  Kane’s mind turned briefly to Elen: her neat hands, her modest dress, her birthmark.

  ‘That’s insane,’ he said, impatiently stuffing his phone away again.

  ‘I know. Life was insane,’ she concurred. ‘It was brutal, cruel, savage, and yet, by the same token…’ she pointed to the image of the Madonna, ‘breathtakingly beautiful.’ She paused, and then quoted, ‘“So violent and motley was life that it bore the mixed smell of blood and roses.”’

  He scowled at her.

  ‘Johan Huizinga. The Waning of the Middle Ages. I first came across it in my late teens and it completely redefined my take on things. Huizinga’s book celebrates a culture in decline – the end of a historical period – which was actually quite a radical undertaking at the time…’

  ‘Which time?’ Kane asked.

  ‘The 1920s.’

  ‘The end of the Great War…’

  She nodded. ‘Too often – in my experience, at least – history concentrates on the start of things, but why should a period’s decline be any less significant?’

  Kane shrugged.

  ‘Huizinga outlines in the book,’ she continued, ‘why the Renaissance had to happen. How it set people free. How it liberated the mind by replacing the visual…’ she pointed to the picture of the Madonna ‘…this complex medieval conglomeration of minute, self-referential detail – with the conceptual – with actual thought, unmanacled. It allowed people to think outside all of those stultifying ideological restrictions – those empty forms which were – to a large extent – deeply bound up in matters of social etiquette and faith. Central to Huizinga’s argument is the idea that unity and truth were somehow completely lost – almost suffocated – inside this meaningless “aggregation of details”.’

  She paused. ‘Not a million miles away – in many respects – from how we live life today.’

  ‘You think modern life is medieval?’

  Kane was patently going to take some convincing.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Give me one example,’ Kane challenged her.

  ‘Okay…’ she gladly took up his gauntlet, ‘if you ask any expert in the field what the single most notable social characteristic of medieval life was they’d probably say the bells. It might sound strange now, but bells pretty much defined the age. They tolled for every occasion – the start of curfew, the end of curfew, the arrival of a dignitary, the prospect of danger. Quiet was an anomaly. Life was all clamour. And now, after several hundred years of relative social calm and tranquillity, we’ve developed the mobile phone which also chimes – and must be allowed to chime – at every avaliable opportunity. But instead of bringing social unity, instead of connecting us more intimately to our social peers and neighbours, it actively divides us, it isolates us, it encourages an atmosphere of merciless self-involvement parading in the guise of spurious conviviality…’

  ‘Fine,’ Kane smiled, ‘so you don’t like the phone…’

  She shifted her weight, leaned her hip against the desk, then calmly continued, ‘In medieval life the higher echelons of society celebrated levels of cupidity – of excess; their huge feasts, their crazy processions, their ornate costumes – that were, by any historical standard, almost obscene. Here, today, deep inside the belly of the decadent West, we cheerfully do the same. We define our power and our status – just as they did – through meaningless and gratuitous acts of consumption. The phrase all you kids like to use, I believe, is bling.’

  Kane smirked. He opened his mouth to say something…

  ‘And how about their obsession with Courtly Love?’ she demanded, jumping in first. ‘The tournaments, the jousts, the chivalrous knights and all those bizarre and convoluted rituals of etiquette – those fauxhistorical games of form, which weren’t actually historical at all; the cult of King Arthur, for example? All neatly echoed in our present-day passion for, say, Star Wars, or The Matrix…The Lord of the Rings. Harry bloody Potter. All invented mythologies. We inhabit these worlds as if they are real. We respond to them intellectually although they aren’t remotely intelligent. We encourage our children to play computer games which seek to simulate life, to mirror it, because we’re too afraid to let them step outside their own front doors. We allow them to fight violent, artificial wars on screen while we carefully remove ourselves – and them – physically, from the conse
quences of actual conflict, with our long-range warheads and our missiles…’

  ‘But how,’ Kane quickly leapt in, ‘can we be more violent and less, all at the same time…?’

  ‘It’s the perfect medieval mind-set,’ she exclaimed, ‘don’t you see? To experience something so intensely but as a strange kind of denial. I mean it’s tragic,’ she persisted, ‘almost laughable, that our greatest invention – the computer – a device intended to set us free to live lives unconstrained by mindless detail – has actually ended up binding us more thoroughly to life’s minutiae by filling the world with reams of useless – often unreliable – information; with this endless, this empty, this almost unstoppable babble…’

  ‘Perhaps you underestimate normal people,’ Kane said, quite appalled by her diatribe, ‘both back then and now. Perhaps the largest percentage of us just slip under the radar, live life – quite happily – in that outer garden, that pagan garden, but history simply doesn’t see fit to acknowledge our quiet and uncomplicated role in it.’

  As he spoke she idly turned the pages of her scrapbook. ‘Beede has this fascinating theory on language…’ she said.

  ‘Beede?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of theory?’

  ‘It’s complicated, but he thinks that the Renaissance took place – in Britain, at least – because of the evolution of English – that our language grew and developed towards the end of the Middle Ages and functioned as a necessary radicaliser, as a harbinger of the new. Because language won’t be restricted. Because language is uncontainable. Like a fast-running river. It bubbles up and splashes and spills. English wasn’t the obfuscating Latin of the Bible or the exclusive, courtliness of French. It had this unconstrained, grass-roots honesty and power. In effect, he thinks that our native language didn’t just describe change, it actively stimulated it.’

  Kane was staring down at the painting on the page she’d just turned to.

  ‘Is that a Lochner?’