Lord Byron's Novel (4 page)

I don’t know what to say, what’s important. First of all he was American! Maybe New England or maybe not. He was a small guy with a gray longish crew cut and a short gray beard. He was about sixty, anyway he looked the same age as Derek or your dad, sort of. Why do I think you need to know this. He had a little gold ring in one ear. He had on his overcoat, a long black one, and he never took it off the whole time we were there. The thing was on this glass and gold coffee table in the suite. So strange that everything around was new and it was so old, like an exhibit in a new museum.

A sea chest, he called it. Sailors kept their stuff in them. It was about the size of a backpack lying down, maybe bigger, a baby’s coffin (I’ve never seen a baby’s coffin) or a case of wine, okay? Just hold your hands this way and that way the size of a case of wine, about. I am so tired and weirded out. It had a rounded top and was made of leather or covered in leather, and was rotting in that way that leather does, turning to powder at the edges and flaking up like psoriasis and had that dry sweet smell. And he sort of circled around it without opening it and told us about how he’d come to have it, and it all sounded like a lie to me, and he wanted us not to tell anybody else the whole story—it was a
condition
so I’m not going to, not even you, because I can’t screw this up for Georgiana.

Then he opened it up.

He’d put all the stuff back in that he’d found inside, I guess so he could re-create the moment of discovery for us. He talked and talked, and lifted out this and that. There were seaman’s papers and some letters that proved the trunk belonged to Lord Ockham, Byron’s grandson. Some other papers in a folder tied up with ribbon. And a huge pile of other papers, not in a folder but wrapped up in a kind of shiny or greasy heavy paper; he took them out and opened the wrapping, and it was—well I don’t know what. Somebody had taken a bunch of sheets printed with numbered lines, and filled in other numbers on the printed lines. Hundreds of pages. Beautiful old handwritten numbers. They looked like forms filled out, or test papers, or accounts of some kind. So many.

Something happens to me when I see and touch old papers that people who are dead now used and handled and wrote on, and folded and put away, and took out and opened again, and folded back up. I feel like I have proved that a person who is dead now was really and truly alive once, and to prove that is to find out that the dead live. Georgiana was trembling. Maybe just the cold, I don’t know, or nerves: but I think it was the dead, finding out again that the dead live. Does it feel like finding a proof in math? I don’t know.

Smith

From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: RE:The Dead

thank you for your letter you did not even say if this person sold you the stuff or how much it cost or what the hell it was if anything i will await further whatever

t

From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: RE:Re:The Dead

Thea—

He didn’t know what they were. He said that (I guess this part’s okay to tell) they’d been found in an old building in Bristol that he bought, which used to be a bank long ago—they “came to light” he said when they were doing renovations, in an old vault nobody knew was there. But he was sure they were this Lord Ockham’s. He didn’t know what the papers of numbers were, but the papers tied up in ribbon were apparently something written by Ada. There was a miniature too, in a case, that looked like Ada, and a lock of hair inside the case. He passed it around. It was cold. Georgiana said she would like to have the papers assessed and their authenticity established, and he started getting a little strange. He said that this would be the only chance for the papers to remain in Britain, because he was going back to America very soon, like tomorrow, and would not return. He said that he didn’t want to haggle, that the money wasn’t even all that important, which yeah right. Then Georgiana looked at me—she looked so brave and scared, she had a cigarette held up before her like she was protecting herself with it—and she asked dear, did I mind stepping into the bedroom while she talked to him. That was when the money thing happened. I stayed in the bedroom and I could hear their voices but not what they said. I felt like looking in his suitcases or his closet or his pants pockets but the room seemed to be empty. Huge and empty. I thought of lying on the bed too. Like Goldilocks. I thought about you. Then Georgiana called me in, and she was already putting her coat on, and he was standing by the window so he was hard to see, but I think he was smiling; and she said
Thank you, shall I see you tomorrow,
and he said
Not me, and thank you too
. And we left. The stuff is going to be delivered to Georgiana’s and she’ll trade it for a check, or a cheque.

I think she cried in the cab. This little snuffle. I didn’t dare take her hand or ask why.

Smith

From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: Touched them

Thea, I got to go over the things today, and I even touched them. It was so pathetic and strange. They smell of paper and dust, it’s a very particular smell that’s sad and cold and sweet at once, the smell of a cemetery except cemeteries don’t smell. All harm and hope and life gone out, but something still left. Ghosts would be like that: they might rage for vengeance or justice but their rage would be just like old papers, old papers. The biggest thing is the mathematical work, that got Georgiana very excited: the handwriting might be Ada’s though it’s hard to tell because it’s all numbers. What is it all and why did Ada have it? And why did
he
have it? Lord Ockham I mean, her son. Why did he keep it in this box or trunk? We don’t know.

The story of Byron—I mean this Byron, Ada’s son, Lord Ockham—is strange. I didn’t know it. He apparently hated being a lord. All his life he tried to get out of it. When he was a kid he liked hanging with the workmen on the estate, pitching in with tools. His father put him in the Navy (at 14!!) to straighten him out, but he soon ran away and signed on a ship as just a regular seaman. And later he became a dockworker and shipbuilder, and called himself John Oakey or something, and just lived and died on the docks. He was pretty young when he died. And I guess he never came back for the box, which he’d put in a bank, just like a lord would do. And this was what he had in it, that he cared enough about to save it: this stuff of Ada’s, her writings and her work if it is her work, and the things of his like his seaman’s papers, and something else. Something really puzzling.

Oops battery’s running out, I knew it would, cord’s back in hotel. I’ll send this so I don’t lose it. God bless wifi

S

From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: RE:Touched them

what puzzling

i did not know you were going to get off on this tangent how longs this going to take i get mizzable alone you know not that i want to lay a trip on you you didnt when i went to stanford i will always be grateful but god last night i went to this dyke comedy show i asked barb to go but she was too depressed well i shouldnt go by myself to things it was funny really but u can get a little tired of tampon jokes anyway i think theres something about being in a big crowd and laughing a lot that makes people horny maybe its the pheromones maybe its me im putting out some heavy chemicals im going to get hit on by some kid with wristlets and a chain for a belt crosseyed with lust dont be surprised if i dont turn her down lol

trixie (yeah shes back yo)

From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: Yo

Thea (oh I mean Trixie)—

I didn’t think you liked those metal butches. I thought you liked the raggedy angry-waif type. Was I wrong? Ooh I’m scared now. Puzzling: The long Ada manuscript (50 pages) in the trunk seems to be about a novel that Lord Byron (the father, the poet) wrote. It, the novel, was lost or stolen, and then turned up, and Ada had it, she says. She wrote these pages about how she learned about it before anybody else and got hold of it. And then there are some pages of sort of rambling notes that I guess are supposed to be about it. It’s all in pencil and it’s faint and hard to read. I’m working on it.

Then there’s another page. It’s not written by her and it’s in ink. One page. On the other side is some printed notice in Italian, which I happen not to be able to read, because I’m not a phd like some people. The handwriting’s even worse. You’d have to be this person’s wife or lover to read this handwriting. I say wife or lover because I think I get what it might be. Georgiana hates to see me touching it so I can’t work with it too much. We’re like people in those movies who find a million dollars of stolen money, along with a dead body, and they can’t tell anybody or think about anything else, and it ruins their lives at least till the last scenes.

I forget—is lol lots of love or laugh out loud

S

From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: RE:Yo

i did not say she wd be my type but i might be hers lol laugh out loud

what is the math stuff can you tell

t

From: “Smith”
To: “lilith”
Subject: Georgiana

Lilith:

Just a quick report on how it’s going with Georgiana. Like I said on the phone, amazing woman. I can see why you thought this was important. She really does want to entirely remake the site and make it the best on the Web for women’s science history. We sat a long time looking at things like the Jewish Women’s Archive and the other sites we get so jealous about, and she kept saying no prob. Well she doesn’t say that, she says things in the English way, like
How delightful
and
Won’t it be such fun,
and she says
Of course
a lot, meaning I don’t know exactly what. I’ll say
What we need to do in the engineering is this,
and she says
Of course,
like she already thought of that and it’s in the works.

I told you I’m not going to talk to her about money, right? I told you. She keeps trying to and I keep putting her off. It would be great if you could drop her a note and say the money is your end. But wow just to have to fight off the bucks being offered is a strange new feeling, huh? Should we be worried? Are we being secretly taken over by a Daddy Warbucks or something? A stalking horse, or a Trojan horse, or whatever?

Meantime she’s very passionate about me staying here and doing some research and assembling materials and looking at stuff, even before decisions get made about changes at the site, and it’s okay with me if it’s okay with you. I might be moving into her apartment, flat as she says, to save money. (See it’s not bottomless pockets just deep ones.) She’s cleaning out a room. Which is not so nice but okay.

So I’ll keep you posted. Say hello to everybody and tell them I’ve got union jack tea towels and queen dolls for everybody.

See ya

Smith

From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: Difference Engine

Thea—

The one page was written by Byron, the poet. I thought it was. You can tell easily if you look at some of his writing reproduced in books. I can’t really read all of it, or even most of it. Remember how long it took me to read those Royal Society letters, and then when I could, you didn’t know how I could, it just looked like scribble to you—well that’s what this looks like to me, scribble. But I know it’s written by him. Why one page, what is it, why is it here.

I don’t know what the math stuff is. Like I said it’s a lot of printed pages, just a page number in the upper right and then blocks of numbered lines in four columns, fifty lines to a column. The lines are for writing in, like a form, I guess; and what’s written is strings of numbers. Could they be mathematical tables? I know that the Difference Engine, that Ada worked on with Babbage, was designed to print out tables of logarithms—that was supposed to be its main job, calculating them and printing them, but as I remember the printing part never got completed. What if this had something to do with the Difference Engine? Wouldn’t that be something?

There’s a museum here that actually has a copy, a newly made reproduction rather, of the Difference Engine. Maybe I’ll go ask them. Subtly.

S

From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: Movie

log tables would be easy to recognize i could tell you just send me a page or two

know what i watched late last night on tv the history channel youre surprised huh they had that movie about the movie company in wherever it was baruchistan or faroukistan or wherever it was in the 1920s grass you remember thats your dads movie right it was weird i fell asleep before it ended

t

From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: RE:Movie

T—

Yeah that was his first film.
Grass
. He wrote that one before I was born. The story is that he discovered this whole old movie, well not whole but hours of film shot in the 1920s in Baluchistan, wherever, by the same filmmakers who made
King Kong;
their film was supposed to be called
Grass
. He wrote a script about the filmmakers making that film, and then used their old footage in it. A big romance story. I never saw it, was it good. Some people seem to know all about it, I meet them. A cult film, somebody told me. Better than the others when he got famous.