The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  •

  The only way William can make all his deliveries in the allocated time is to drive like a lunatic from house to house, and I’d be amazed how often people forget to be at home, and how many of them moan because they’ve been given bananas that aren’t as big as they like their bananas. And some of the shift managers don’t know the first thing about communication. But none of this really matters, because “a great thing has happened.” He was dropping off an order at lunchtime yesterday, in Wherrytown, at an address he’d not been to before. The customer turned out to be a childminder—he had to weave his way past half a dozen toddlers to get to the kitchen. “A lot for you to look after,” he remarked as he followed her, bearing his stack of crates. Her name is Suzanne, he knew from the paperwork. “They’re not all mine,” she answered, and at that moment he entered the kitchen to find himself face to face with his pale and dark-haired woman. Every day he had been hoping to see her again, and here she was, at last. It was clear, just from the way she said hello, that he would like her very much if he could get to know her; which was as expected, of course. On her lap sat a girl, three years old, William guessed, a cute kid, and smart, he could tell from the attention with which she watched him unpack the crates. He gave the girl a wink, and risked a light stroke of the cheek, which was well received by her mother too—it was obvious that the woman was her mother. He is almost certain that she’s unattached: no ring, and she “gave off a single-mother vibe.” On the basis of two minutes in the kitchen, he came to the conclusion that her friendship with the other woman is close. “I’ve got a toe-hold,” he tells me. It would not have been a good idea, we agreed, to tell the woman that he had seen her before, and that he could give her the exact date, time and location of that first sighting.

  •

  Today: ninety-three visitors. A boy, twelvish, in the mirrored room, pointed into the army of duplicates and barked: “You there—what’s your name?” As if somewhere in the infinite ranks of pointing boys there were one who was not the double of all the others.

  •

  At a café on Place de la République, Imogen told me that she had once had lunch there with Antoine Vermeiren, who had revealed that this unlovely part of the city was one of his “holy places.” He had pointed across the square to indicate where the city’s first diorama theatre had stood, the theatre of which Louis Daguerre was the creator and proprietor. Antoine explained how the diorama had worked, with its revolving auditorium and the lighting effects by which the illusion of movement was created. So Daguerre must be regarded as the “grandfather of cinema,” Antoine stated. And that was not all.

  One morning in 1838 or 1839, in Boulevard du Temple, just a few metres from where Imogen and Antoine were sitting, a man had stopped to have his shoes cleaned, and had thereby become the first person ever to appear in a photographic image. On that particular morning, in his studio above the diorama theatre, Louis Daguerre had directed his lens towards Boulevard du Temple and captured forever what the lens had observed. It is known, from Daguerre’s annotation, that the picture was taken at eight o’clock in the morning. The year is uncertain, but the time is not. Boulevard du Temple would have been busy at that hour, and yet the daguerreotype shows a scene that resembles an empty film set. There are no carriages or carts on the road; the pavements are deserted. This is because Daguerre’s process required an exposure time of several minutes; people going about their business would have moved through the frame too quickly to leave any trace on Daguerre’s photosensitive plate; they dissolved into the air. Only one of the many people in Boulevard du Temple on that particular morning stood still for long enough to make his mark.

  The picture is in front of me. There he is, near the lower left-hand corner, with one foot raised to rest on the shoe-black’s box; the shoe-black himself is a less distinct form, so shadowy that he is often overlooked. Some people believe they can see other figures in the picture: two women with a pram have been discerned; there may be a face at a window. But the standing man is the only vivid presence. His legs are as precise as the nearby saplings, so he must have held the pose for some time. Imogen wondered about him: would anyone stand stationary for five minutes or more, on one leg, to have his shoes cleaned? And his position within the image, so discreetly yet conspicuously placed, in silhouette against the whiteness of the pavement—it made her suspicious. Surely the standing man had occupied his place in the scene by design? He was an accomplice, not someone who had merely happened to pause there. This seemingly artless picture, this veritable relic of a morning’s moment in Paris, may not be what it appears to be.

  •

  “I have seized the light. I have arrested its flight,” proclaimed Daguerre. But, just as the body of the standing man has been reduced to bones and dust, decay has reduced the material of his image. Silver and mercury composed the scene on the metal plate; oxidation of those chemicals has destroyed much of the picture. The Boulevard du Temple at which I am looking, I have learned, is a facsimile, a daguerreotype made in 1979, from a photograph of the original daguerreotype taken in 1937 for the American curator and art historian Beaumont Newhall, who had found the picture in the archives of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. It was framed with two other daguerreotypes—a still life and a second image of Boulevard du Temple—which Daguerre had presented to King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1839.

  •

  William told us about his recurring dream. He found himself in a town that he recognised immediately from other dreams: he was on a cobbled road, and in front of him rose a high wall, built of large yellow stone blocks, with an archway in it, spanning the road that he was on. Through the arch, the cobbled road led to a church with a tall spire. Halfway along, he could turn left into an alleyway which ended at a terrace; if he turned right, another alley, wider than the first, wound down to a place where cars and coaches were parked. From the car park a road curved up to the church, passing a shop that had a mannequin in armour outside. Every time this dream occurred, everything was in precisely the same place, so he knew that he was not making it up—he must have been to this town. But he had no memory of ever having been in such a place. Perhaps he had been there with his parents, when he was a child. If that were the case, it was odd, he thought, that his parents never appeared in the dream. He was always alone, looking up at the spire, with birds and clouds above it. But in the dream he was very happy, and he was happy when he woke up, for as long as the atmosphere of the dream town persisted. He would love to go back there, he said, but he had no idea where it was, other than inside his head.

  Imogen responded in kind: sometimes she had a dream that bore some similarity to William’s. It involved her mother. The setting was not constant: it might be a city street, or woodland, or a room at home. What defined this dream was that Imogen and her mother were talking to each other, seriously, at length, and the conversation would culminate with her mother using a word that sounded French, but which Imogen had never heard before. Her mother might point to something and say the word, or it might be that the word signified something abstract, such as a mood or a quality of light at a particular hour of the day. However it was used, the word always struck Imogen, in the dream, as being a sound that fitted the idea or the object perfectly, just as the song of a bird belongs to the bird. When she woke up, however, the word was no longer there. She had only the sense that something wonderful had been revealed to her, momentarily.

  William nodded deeply; he understood, as a pupil understands a master. They looked at me. “Sometimes I dream that I’ve become the director of the British Museum,” I lied, playing my part.

  •

  “Our entire history is only the history of waking men,” wrote Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. The private life of this brilliant man is scandalous to us, yet it appears that for the people of Göttingen it was a subject for gossip only. In 1777, in his thirty-fifth year, Lichtenberg met Maria Dorothea Stechard, a “model of beauty and sweetness.” She was twelve years old. She lived wit
h him from 1780 until her death in 1782. Her death affected him, “like nothing before or afterwards,” but in the following year he began a relationship with his housekeeper, Margarethe Elisabeth Kellner, seventeen years his junior, whom he married in 1789. Always in poor health (severe scoliosis of the spine), he felt that his death was imminent and wanted to ensure that Margarethe would receive a widow’s pension. His death was not imminent: he died in 1799. Margarethe, having borne six children, outlived him by almost half a century.

  •

  This evening, a moment in which Imogen was acutely absent. The rain stopped, and a crack opened in the aubergine-coloured sky, uncovering the sun. The pavement gleamed, and for some reason the gleam brought to mind the sand at low tide, late in the day, shining pale green and pewter, and Imogen stopping, seizing my hand, amazed.

  •

  William made another delivery to Wherrytown today, a couple of hours earlier than the previous delivery. There were just three children in the flat with Suzanne. “Things a bit quieter today,” he remarked. Suzanne smiled; the invasion was due in an hour, she told him. “Same crew?” he asked. The answer was positive. “That explains the crisps,” he said; the delivery included a substantial quantity of crisps. No further information was volunteered, and William was content to leave it at that. The nameless friend is a regular visitor, he deduces. “Softly, softly,” we agree.

  •

  In the hospital, after the last operation, Imogen raised the gown to reveal the stoma. I can see her face: the fear and helplessness. It was as if we were comrades and she had suffered a mortal wound. I had brought a card from Francesca and Geraint; they had enclosed a photo of themselves, waving at the camera, at Imogen. “It would be good to see her again,” she said. She would never see Francesca again. She looked down at the bag. It was like a cross painted on the door of a house in which the plague had struck, she said.

  •

  We were talking about Charles Perceval, one day during the making of Devotion, and Imogen said that it was not difficult to imagine that, as a doctor, he would have found solace in the experience of Mass, whether or not he truly believed. Participation in the chorus of the faithful would have been a release from the terrible privacy of his work. The burden must be intolerable at times, she said: knowing that a patient will soon die, no matter what the treatment; carrying the weight of the patient’s faith; having to temper the truth, according to the patient’s strength of mind. “No patient wants to know the absolute truth,” I have read. But Imogen demanded to know everything that the doctors knew, unmitigated.

  •

  Today—sixty-three visitors.

  •

  Val’s thought for the month: when two people are falling in love, they learn about each other by listening. “We talk about ourselves—‘This is who I am,’ we tell the newly significant person.” This process of listening and learning is “key” to the thrilling early weeks of the relationship. And from this process, if we are fortunate, arises a special and enduring intimacy. But this intimacy is not without its dangers. Familiarity might not necessarily breed contempt, but it can entail a loss of respect. We need to be on our guard, Val adjures us: “I and You must not be lost to We.” In order to prevent the loss of I and You, we should take measures “to keep alive the sense of discovery” that brought us together in the first place. Val has a method to recommend. It is simple, but effective, she promises. All that is required is for the long-term couple to set aside ten minutes each week to listen to each other. Yes, ten minutes is enough, it seems. Person A talks for five minutes, about whatever it seems important to talk about, and Person B listens, without interrupting. After five minutes, they swap roles. Easy. The sofa is the recommended venue for these relationship-sustaining monologues. The ambience must be comfortable, relaxed. “There should be no element of confrontation,” we are told.

  •

  In his seventieth letter to Lucilius, Seneca writes: mere living is not a good, but living well. Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. In the same letter we read: You can find men who have gone so far as to profess wisdom and yet maintain that one should not offer violence to one’s own life, and hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature. But one who says this does not see that he is shutting off the path to freedom. The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one entrance into life, but many exits.

  •

  As might be expected of a graphic designer, Loïc was “an intensely visual person,” as he told Imogen. And yet the visible changes that had been inflicted on her body were not of paramount significance to him, he insisted, on the night of his confession of inadequacy. The scar was discreet, and barely troubled him. She was still an immensely attractive woman, he reassured her. What troubled him, he admitted, was the “inner destruction.” Though he loved her, he was conscious that he had begun to withhold something of himself. He was ashamed of this. It disturbed him, that he should be so disturbed by the “alteration” that her body had undergone. It was a deplorable weakness, he knew; a weakness that was especially contemptible when regarded in the light of Imogen’s courage. And he did regard himself with contempt. He hated himself, he insisted; by way of demonstration, he wept a little. But he had an obligation to be truthful. Sexual energy had ebbed out of the relationship. The body cannot lie, he told his lover; this nugget of wisdom, she sensed, had been used before, in other terminal discussions. In conclusion, his love had changed; it had not waned, but it had become something else.

  For Imogen also, the sex was very much not what it had been, she informed him. She was tired; areas of sensation had been lost; and there was pain. Loïc understood. But in time the pain would disappear, he told her. Of course she was tired; the tiredness too would go. Recovery would take time. “You are always impatient,” he told her, as if this had been a major aspect of her allure. He had done some research into the experiences of women “in the same situation” as Imogen was now in. Many of them, he had discovered, reported that sex was better than ever.

  A doctor—a male doctor—had told Imogen the same thing, she told Loïc; she found it hard to believe.

  The research was unimpeachable, insisted Loïc. Problems were common in these situations, of course, but their resolution was often “a matter of psychology.” What she needed, he said, was a new relationship, with a better man. So Loïc contrived to place himself again in the centre of the stage. It was as though he regarded her cancer as a test of his mettle, and he had failed the test. He would still be her friend; he insisted on it, though he had let her down as a lover. Loïc did not stint on the self-accusation. The self-scourging made him feel better about himself. But the penitent garb would soon be discarded, Imogen knew, as she cast him out.

  Loïc had been pleasing to the eye, and talented, but now it dismayed her—amazed her, even—that she had failed to discern the feebleness of the man. “So now I’m on the lookout for someone with a post-surgical fetish,” she said.

  •

  Another Wherrytown delivery for William, mid-morning; again, the three small children are there, but not the alluring friend and her daughter; again many packets of crisps. Today, because the weather is so good, they are having a picnic, Suzanne tells him. One of the children claps his hands; another yells her approval. “That’ll be great, eh?” says William to the kids; it can do no harm to advertise his niceness. As he sorts the paperwork, he scans the photographs that are stuck to the fridge with magnets. He sees a picture of the friend and her little girl, sitting on thrones of sand; both are laughing; this is definitely a woman he could love, William tells me. He nods at the photo and remarks, as Suzanne signs the invoice: “She seems like a terrific kid.” Suzanne glances at the picture, then at him, then at the photo again. “Oh yes,” she answers, “Tilly’s a star.” A small smile in her eyes suggests that he has given himself away. He leaves still not knowing
the name of Tilly’s mother, but he is getting closer, says William. “The arrow is on its way.”

  •

  Some months after we were there together, Imogen returned to the maison de maître, for what would be the last time. She decided it would be the last time as she was leaving the house. Her body had lost much of its strength and appetite, she told me, but this was not the principal reason for her decision. The principal reason was the loneliness, which was more intense than ever. Only once had she not left the maison de maître in a state of something like desolation.

  •

  Encounter with Samantha and Val, outside the bank. They are going to Berlin at the weekend; Conrad and Katrin are playing there, Samantha tells me. A recording contract has been discussed. I offer my congratulations. Samantha is glad to hear that William’s life is on track. I commend Val’s new glasses: retro black horn-rims, with big lenses. She seems amused by my ingratiating performance. It’s a strong outfit, I almost tell her. She does look good: the bold black frames and wild grey hair; the burgundy sweater and pitch-black coat. “Well—have fun,” I say. “We will,” Samantha promises, as Val takes her arm.

  August

  “How’s the research going?” Samantha asked, some time after Imogen had left. It was assumed that, in the apparent absence of any new relationship, I would now immerse myself in the Perceval project. A new tangent had opened up, I told her: Cornelius Perceval, it appeared, had been in some way involved with Thomas Beddoes’ experiments with air-based therapies. The story of the Percevals was of no interest to Val; as if the subject were of some intimacy, she disengaged herself. We were sitting outside, and Val cast onto the street her look of benign and mellow wonderment. When I said that I thought the Percevals book would take two or three years to write, Val turned back to me and smiled. In her eyes, for a second, appeared a nuance—the very slightest nuance—of pity. A few years on, still no book. Credit where credit is due.