The Book of Evidence (4 page)

A n d as if p e o p l e in the outside w o r l d w e r e not e n o u g h , I had inside m e t o o a n e x e m p l a r o f m y o w n , a k i n d o f invigilator, f r o m w h o m I m u s t hide m y lack o f conviction.

For instance, if I w a s reading s o m e t h i n g , an a r g u m e n t in s o m e b o o k or other, and agreeing w i t h it enthusiastically, and then I discovered at the end that I had m i s u n d e r s t o o d entirely w h a t the writer w a s saying, had in fact g o t the w h o l e thing arse-ways, I w o u l d be c o m p e l l e d at o n c e to execute a somersault, quick as a flash, and tell myself, I m e a n my other self, that s t e m interior sergeant, that w h a t w a s being said w a s true, that I had never really t h o u g h t otherwise, and, even if I had, that it s h o w e d an o p e n m i n d that I should be able to switch b a c k and forth b e t w e e n opinions w i t h o u t even noticing it. T h e n I w o u l d m o p my b r o w , clear m y throat, straighten m y shoulders and pass o n delicately, in stifled d i s m a y . B u t w h y the past tense? H a s anything c h a n g e d ? O n l y that the watcher f r o m inside has stepped forth and taken over, while the puzzled outsider c o w e r s within.

D o e s the court realise, I w o n d e r , w h a t this confession is costing m e ?

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1 took up the study of science in order to find certainty.

N o , that's not it. Better say, I took up science in order to make the lack of certainty more manageable. Here was a way, I thought, of erecting a solid structure on the very sands that were everywhere, always, shifting under me.

And I was g o o d at it, I had a flair. It helped, to be without convictions as to the nature of reality, truth, ethics, all those big things — indeed, I discovered in science a vision of an unpredictable, seething world that was eerily familiar to me, to w h o m matter had always seemed a swirl of chance collisions. Statistics, probability theory, that was my field.

Esoteric stuff, I won't go into it here. I had a certain cold gift that was not negligible, even, by the awesome standards of the discipline. My student papers were models of clarity and concision. My professors loved me, d o w d y old boys reeking of cigarette smoke and bad teeth, w h o recognised in me that rare, merciless streak the lack of which had condemned them to a life of drudgery at the lectern. And then the Americans spotted me.

H o w I loved America, the life there on that pastel, sun-drenched western coast, it spoiled me forever. I see it still in dreams, all there, inviolate, the ochre hills, the bay, the great delicate red bridge wreathed in fog. I felt as if I had ascended to some high, fabled plateau, a kind of Arcady.

Such wealth, such ease, such innocence. From all the memories I have of the place I select one at random. A spring day, the university cafeteria. It is lunchtime.

Outside, on the plaza, by the fountain, the marvellous girls disport themselves in the sun. We have listened that morning to a lecture by a visiting wizard, one of the grandmasters of the arcanum, w h o sits with us now at our table, drinking coffee from a paper cup and cracking pistachio nuts in his teeth. He is a lean, gangling person with a wild m o p of frizzed hair going grey. His glance is 18

humorous, with a spark of malice, it darts restlessly here and there as if searching for something that will make him laugh. The fact is, friends, he is saying, the whole damn thing is chance, pure chance. And he flashes suddenly a shark's grin, and winks at me, a fellow outsider. The faculty staff sitting around the table nod and say nothing, big, tanned, serious men in short-sleeved shirts and shoes with broad soles. O n e scratches his j a w , another consults idly a chunky wristwatch. A boy wearing shorts and no shirt passes by outside, playing a flute. The girls rise slowly, two by two, and slowly walk away, over the grass, arms folded, their books pressed to their chests like breastplates. My God, can I have been there, really? It seems to me now, in this place, more dream than memory, the music, the mild maenads, and us at our table, faint, still figures, the wise ones, presiding behind leaf-reflecting glass.

They were captivated by me over there, my accent, my bow-ties, my slightly sinister, old-world charm. I was twenty-four, a m o n g them I felt middle-aged. They threw themselves at me with solemn fervour, as if engaging in a form of self-improvement. O n e of their little foreign wars was in full swing just then, everyone was a protester, it seemed, except me — I would have no track with their marches, their sit-downs, the ear-splitting echoialia that passed with them for argument — but even my politics, or lack of them, were no deterrent, and flower children of all shapes and colours fell into my bed, their petals trembling.

I remember few of them with any precision, when I think of them I see a sort of hybrid, with this one's hands, and that one's eyes, and yet another's sobs. From those days, those nights, only a faint, bittersweet savour remains, and a trace, the barest afterglow, of that state of floating ease, of, h o w shall I say, of balanic, ataraxic bliss — yes, yes, I have 19

U L LIL11 I. I.I.IJ.I.fWWW

got hold of a dictionary — in which they left me, my muscles aching f r o m their strenuous ministrations, my flesh bathed in the balm of their sweat.

It was in America that I met Daphne. At a party in s o m e professor's house one afternoon I was standing on the porch with a treble gin in my hand when I heard below mc on the lawn the voice of home: soft yet clear, like the sound of water falling on glass, and with that touch of lethargy which is the unmistakable note of our set. I looked, and there she was, in a flowered dress and unfashionable shoes, her hair done up in the golliwog style of the day, frowning past the shoulder of a man in a loud jacket w h o was replying with airy gestures to something she had asked, while she nodded seriously, not listening to a w o r d he said. I had just that glimpse of her and then I turned away, I don't quite k n o w w h y . I was in one of my bad m o o d s , and halfway drunk, I see that m o m e n t as an e m b l e m of our life together. I w o u l d spend the next fifteen years turning a w a y f r o m her, in one w a y or another, until that m o r n i n g when I stood at the rail of the island steamer, snuffling the slimed air of the harbour and waving half-heartedly to her and the child, the t w o of them tiny below me on the dockside. That day it was she w h o turned away f r o m me, with what seems to me n o w a slow and infinitely sad finality.

I felt as m u c h foolishness as fear. I felt ridiculous. It was unreal, the fix I had g o t myself into: one of those m a d dreams that s o m e ineffectual fat little man might turn into a third-rate film, 1 w o u l d dismiss it for long periods, as one dismisses a dream, no matter h o w awful, but presently it w o u l d c o m e slithering back, the hideous, tentacled thing, and there w o u l d well up in me a hot flush of terror and
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shame — shame, that is, for my o w n stupidity, my wanton lack of prescience, that had landed me in such a deal of soup.

Since I had seemed, with Randolph, to have stumbled into a supporting feature, I had expected it would be played by a comic cast of ruffians, scarified fellows with low foreheads and little thin moustaches w h o would stand about me in a circle with their hands in their pockets, smiling horribly and chewing toothpicks. Instead I was summoned to an audience with a silver-haired hidalgo in a white suit, w h o greeted me with a firm, lingering handshake and told me his name was Aguirre. His manner was courteous and faintly sad. He fitted ill with his surroundings. I had climbed a narrow stairs to a dirty, low r o o m above a bar. There was a table covered with oilcloth, and a couple of cane chairs. On the floor under the table a filthy infant was sitting, sucking a wooden spoon. An outsize television set squatted in a corner, on the blank, baleful screen of which I saw myself reflected, immensely tall and thin, and curved like a b o w . There was a smell of fried food. Seiior Aguirre, with a little moue of distaste, examined the seat of one of the chairs and sat down. He poured out wine for us, and tipped his glass in a friendly toast. He was a businessman, he said, a simple businessman, not a great professor — and smiled at me and gently bowed

— but all the same he knew there were certain rules, certain moral imperatives. O n e of these in particular he was thinking of: perhaps I could guess which one? Mutely I shook my head. I felt like a mouse being toyed with by a sleek bored old cat. His sadness deepened. Loans/ he said softly, loans must be repaid. That was the law
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1 which commerce was founded. He hoped I would understand his position. There was a silence. A kind of horrified amazement had taken hold of me: this was the real world, the world of fear and pain and retribution, a serious place, not that sunny playground in which I had frittered away fistfuls of someone else's money. I would have to go home, I said at last, in a voice that did not seem to be mine, there were people who would help me, friends, family, I could borrow from them. He considered. Would I go alone? he wondered. For a second I did not see what he was getting at. Then I looked away from him and said slowly yes, yes, my wife and son would probably stay here. And as I said it I seemed to hear a horrible cackling, a jungle hoot of derision, just behind my shoulder. He smiled, and poured out carefully another inch of wine. The child, who had been playing with my shoelaces, began to howl. I was agitated, I had not meant to kick the creature. Senor Aguirre frowned, and shouted something over his shoulder. A door behind him opened and an enormously fat, angry-looking young woman put in her head and grunted at him. She wore a black, sleeveless dress with a crooked hem, and a glossy black wig as high as a beehive, with false eyelashes to match. She waddled forward, and with an effort bent and picked up the infant and smacked it hard across the face. It started in surprise, and, swallowing a mighty sob, fixed its round eyes solemnly on me. The woman glared at me too, and took the wooden spoon and threw it on the table in front of me with a clatter. Then, planting the child firmly on one tremendous hip, she stumped out of the room and slammed the door behind her. Seiior Aguirre gave a slight, apologetic shrug.

He smiled again, twinkling. What was my opinion of the island women? I hesitated. C o m e come, he said gaily, surely I had an opinion on such an important matter. I said they were lovely, quite lovely, quite the loveliest of their species I had ever encountered. He nodded happily, it was what he had expected me to say. N o , he said, no, too
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dark, too dark all over, even in those places never exposed to the son. And he leaned forward with his crinkled, silvery smile and tapped a finger lightly on my wrist.

Northern w o m e n , n o w , ah, those pale northern w o m e n .

Such white skin! So delicate! So fragile! Y o u r wife, for instance, he said. There was another, breathless silence. I could hear faintly the brazen strains of music f r o m a radio in the bar downstairs. Bullfight music. My chair made a crackling noise under me, like a muttered warning. Senor Aguirre joined his El Greco hands and looked at me over the spire of his fingertips. Y o u r whife, he said, breathing on the word, your beautiful whife, you will come back quickly to her? It was not really a question. What could I say to him, what could I do? These are not really questions either.

I told Daphne as little as possible. She seemed to understands She m a d e no difficulties. That has always been the great thing about Daphne: she makes no difficulties.

It was a long trip home. T h e steamer landed in Valencia harbour at dusk. I hate Spain, a brutish, boring country.

T h e city smelled of sex and chlorine. I took the night train, j a m m e d in a third-class compartment with half a dozen reeking peasants in cheap suits. I could not sleep. I was hot, my head ached. I could feel the engine labouring up the long slope to the plateau, the wheels d r u m m i n g their one phrase over and over.
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washed-blue dawn was breaking in Madrid. I stopped outside the station and watched a flock of birds wheeling and tumbling at an immense height, and, the strangest thing, a gust of euphoria, or something like euphoria, swept through me, making me tremble, and bringing tears to my eyes. It was from lack of sleep, I suppose, and the effect of the high, thin air. W h y , I 23

wonder, do I remember so clearly standing there, the colour of the sky, those birds, that shiver of fevered optimism? I was at a turning point, you will tell me, just there the future forked for me, and I took the w r o n g path without noticing — that's what you'll tell me, isn't it, you, w h o must have meaning in everything, w h o lust after meaning, your palms sticky and your faces on fire! B u t calm, Frederick, calm. Forgive me this outburst, your honour. It is just that I do not believe such moments mean anything — or any other moments, for that matter. T h e y have significance, apparently. T h e y m a y even have value of s o m e sort. B u t they do not mean anything.

There n o w , I have declared my faith.

Where was I? In Madrid. On my w a y out of Madrid. I took another train, travelling north. We stopped at every station on the way, I thought I would never get out of that terrible country. O n c e we halted for an hour in the middle of nowhere. I sat in the ticking silence and stared dully through the w i n d o w . B e y o n d the littered tracks of the up-line there was an enormous, high, yellow field, and in the distance a range of blue mountains that at first I took for clouds. T h e sun shone. A tired crow flapped past. S o m e o n e coughed. I thought h o w o d d it was to be there, I mean just there and not somewhere else. N o t that being somewhere else w o u l d have seemed any less odd. I mean — oh, I don't k n o w what I mean. T h e air in the compartment was thick.

T h e seats g a v e o f f their dusty, sat-upon smell. A small, swarthy, l o w - b r o w e d man opposite me caught my eye and did not look away. At that instant it came to me that I was on my w a y to do something very bad, something really appalling, something for which there would be no forgiveness. It was not a premonition, that is too tentative a word. I knew. I cannot explain h o w , but I knew. I was shocked at myself, my breathing quickened, my face
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