He dived into a restaurant and ordered a cold beer. The crowd outside had been overcome and buried for the time being but its sketched reality — its hang-dog or hanged man face — rose up before him within Knife who had followed him into the restaurant and stood by the door like conscience itself ready to steal, ready to kilclass="underline" features pitted like a beehive into which miraculously the army of flies on the street had crawled and vanished. Knife hesitated at the door, then having made up his mind went straight to Goodrich’s table and laid a folded piece of paper upon it in order to levy a charge for the beggars he had consumed with a stroke of the pen, so to speak: Beehive Knife, Goodrich thought reflecting on his unfinished sketches.
He unfolded the paper, flattened it out and read the following: “Dear patron, I am the father of many children. I cannot find work. Unemployment is higher than it has ever been. I beg. I am ashamed to speak to you and ask for help. Please help me. I will stand here at the door and you can pass something to me as you go out. Don’t say a word, just give me whatever you can.”
He took a dollar from his pocket, folded it into the man’s letter and slipped dollar and letter under a bowl on the table. He raised his glass to his lips. A faint shadow snaked towards him and before he could say “Jack Robinson” the dollar bill and circular letter levitated from the table and vanished with Knife into the street….
*
“You are mistaken,” said Knife. It was the first time he had spoken after what seemed a long pause in the Edinburgh sitting-room. “I have never been to Jamaica.”
“You have never been to Jamaica …” Goodrich began in astonishment.
“Never.” Knife sat back in his chair beside Marsden. It was a similar chair and belonged to a rich suite — divan and armchairs. Goodrich sat on the divan. Black Marsden chuckled and sipped his whisky with a disconcerting wry flicker of a smile on his lips. Goodrich wondered was Marsden drunk? And he was stricken by a certain thought but ashamed of it immediately — the feeling or thought that Marsden would never scruple to slip into his bedroom and read the contents of his private diaries. That morning the pages had seemed to be somewhat out of order as if someone had cleverly ransacked them but slipped up somewhere along the line….
“Why of course … of course …,” he cried to Knife (trying to blot out or stifle his suspicions of Marsden), “the man I saw was black. And yet I could have sworn when I first set eyes on you…. I remember sketching him in my diary as Beehive Knife. His face was all pitted … a graveyard … a beehive. It seems an incongruous comparison. But there it is. That’s how he seemed to me. And I don’t really mean that you look like that. God forbid. You are quite elegant in fact. I must confess I cannot account for the resemblance between him and you….”
“All elegance,” said Black Marsden drunkenly, “is a pit of fashion under big brother devil or big beggar god or big trader devil god. There are affluent actors or beggars in affluent societies to play poor beggars acting out poor societies. What an apotheosis of elegance is involved in such a transformation or translation of techniques. I am sure Knife appreciates with tongue in cheek of course (how else?) the new suit on his back which you have given to him, Goodrich. And the shoes too.”
Knife’s white face remained expressionless. He was tastefully dressed in a lounge suit of greyish or brownish material and in sharp boots of Japanese circulation. “Yes,” said Knife seeing Goodrich’s eyes on his boots. “They came from America to Regent Street, London, but were made in Japan.”
“Apparition of poverty,” said Black Marsden cryptically.
“Poverty?” Goodrich was bewildered. “Aren’t they among the richest societies on earth?”
“Quite so. But we need riches to make Knife play poor beggar elegantly and well. He must achieve a marvellous apotheosis. Bless the rich man for the crumbs from his table! Bless the poor man for the opportunity and role of a lifetime! I want Knife to play poor beggar as if he embodies the storehouse of the devil. Not only crumbs but exceptional blood and talent. Not only crumbs but fantastic masks and costumes. Fabrics from all over the world. We may need to open a few graves. And that costs money. A silken thread of blood here, a wasted bone or button there. A shoe-string of muscle worth a fortune elsewhere. Even a fly or two that may cost a diamond or two. Think of the glue in his eyes.”
“Mardie, Mardie,” said Jennifer coming into the room suddenly. “You know you shouldn’t drink at this time of the day.” She came in with a large tray of sandwiches. “Mrs. Glenwearie is a dear.” She deposited the tray on a table; then with the facility of an expert at bridge flicked plates and napkins towards the men in the room. Each plate had dwarf insignia — a crucifixion, a knight, a king, a queen, jack of spades, diamonds, hearts etc. “There’s chicken and cheese and tomato and cucumber. And ham I think. Yes, delicious.” There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Glenwearie appeared with coffee which Jennifer took from her and deposited on an extra table in the room. Soon they were eating Mrs. Glenwearie’s sandwiches and drinking Mrs. Glenwearie’s coffee.
Jennifer was dressed in another French tunnel. But this one made him realize how wide and shapely her hips were. She had seemed to Goodrich slim even fragile before. He glanced without appearing to look at the upper half of her body and recalled his dream of her breasts into which were set large beautiful coins. She passed him a cup of coffee and their hands touched.
“When you came into the room, Jennifer,” said Black Marsden, “we were discussing Knife’s role as poor beggar in my global production. It’s high time we review the whole matter from as many sides as possible. Goodrich has been a great help. He is a patron of vision….”
I looked bewildered. “Oh yes,” he said, “the way you recognized and identified Knife.”
“Recognized? Identified? Not at all. I made an error.”
“A very evocative error.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mardie likes you, Clive,” said Jennifer, “for your scarecrow eye. He thinks you are one of us.”
“One of you? Scarecrow eye?”
“Yes,” said Marsden, “in raising issues of memory and non-memory….”
“I confess I am out of my depth.”
“How marvellous,” said Jennifer, “to swim — to be out of one’s depth.”
“It’s simple,” said Marsden and his beard bristled at Jennifer and Goodrich. “There are two species of beggar with which Knife must swim into his act. Goodrich has reminded us. First there is the beggar of memory. Here we are in apparently safe waters. Like tying a knot into your beard to remind you of something. If you are a Catholic, for example, you wear the cross as if it’s god’s bank note.”
Jennifer leaned forward and filled Goodrich’s cup again; her fingernail absentmindedly grazed his knuckles. “Oh I am so sorry. How clumsy of me.”
“It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”
Black Marsden laughed. His teeth looked perfect and even. “The beggar of memory resides within an order of solipsis into which we are all securely tied. He represents us and reminds us of ourselves. He is our infallible initiate, our infallible intimate. We are already inside, so to speak, the particular economic dress or religious dress or sexual dress he plays.”
“I see,” said Goodrich rubbing the red line Jennifer’s nail had left in his skin.
“But,” said Black Marsden, “we face a different proposition with the beggar of non-memory who represents our most fallible identity kit, vulnerable correspondences, irrational caveats and relationships. Memory …” he pushed aside his coffee and sandwiches—“is a storehouse of initiations. As such it is enormously useful but it may inculcate a hubris of mind or partiality cloaked in scientific determinisms which need to be shattered if we are to come to our senses about those areas of the human sphinx in which millions are eclipsed (beyond economic memory or ritual for all practical purposes) at starvation point; or vanished (beyond sacramental memory or ritual for all sane purposes) in Hiroshima, for example; or shamed (beyond living memory or ritual for all historical purposes) within other theatres of conquest or violation. Thus written into the hubris of self-determined orders or intelligences are contrasting unknowns or self-corrective intuitives we ignore at our peril….”