I reminded myself that I was forty-nine and wondered how old this woman of the wood might be: about twenty-seven, I thought. Beauty that passes! Transience! Was I going to be foolish? It looked as if I was. I didn’t want to be old and wise, wisdom seemed unsporting; I wanted to be more foolish than when I was young, I’d never been foolish enough. What is it but foolishness that brings the giant squid and Eurydice together? Non-giants also are subject to it.
From far off in the blackness came a moving light, the wincing of the rails ran towards us ahead of the rumble and clatter of the train. Doors opened before us, closed behind us, we swayed and shook as one in Transports of Darkness by Herman Orff; Caverns of Iron by Herman Orff; Upward the Light, a trilogy? NOTTING HILL GATE, said the sign outside the window. Doors opened, we got out. Ahead of me with forms of walking world between us she clip-clopped through that buskerless corridor to the Central Line escalators. No pipes, no timbrels; only the pattering clock of footsteps measuring multitudes of separate mortalities.
Her quiet reading face replayed itself in my mind as her legs beckoned before me, descending to the platform where we stood and looked into the tunnel for a light. ORPHEUS TRAVEL, said a poster in pseudo-Greek lettering. I will, I answered in pseudo-Greek.
Again we shook together, swayed together, were entranced together in our space of light that rumbled through the darkness. We both got off at Oxford Circus. On Argyll Street I saw her before me, umbrellaless and vivid in the greyness and the rain. What a pleasure it must be for her to walk around in her body, I thought as I watched the glisten of the street flashing at her swift dark heels. She crossed Great Marlborough Street, went into Carnaby and over to Marshall which was the way I was legitimately going: Hermes Soundways was off Broadwick Street round the corner from Cranks Wholefood Restaurant. The rain intensified the colours of the present and called up the past that always waits, the colours of it unremembered, the light of it strange on my eyes. Luise and I used to drink rose-hip tea at Cranks.
This new woman of the rainy afternoon continued ahead of me to the alley where Hermes Soundways was. Very Soho, the little alley of Istvan Fallok. Full of little businesses looked in upon by dusty windows. Little hidden businesses in the rain, in the greyness, ledgers and invoices unknown, services unrecognized. There were many gaunt and angular scaffoldings suggestive of Piranesi’s prison fantasies, dark against the grey sky. Dark pipes and planking in the rainlight of Soho, in the greylight of Istvan Fallok’s little corner of the world where she was obviously going.
A flight of steps led down to his place, through the windows I could see a shadowy interior glowing with illuminated dials and little eyes of red and green and yellow light; she clip-clopped down the steps ahead of me without looking round. When he opened the door I heard, veiled and flickering, the same music I’d heard on the telephone; this place lived in the half-light of its music and in the music of its half-light, it swam in sound like a long-drowned city in a sea of dreams.
Here sleeps the Kraken, I thought:
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
The music was part of the look of the place and of Istvan Fallok; the music and the half-light clung to him like the smell of the roll-ups that he used to smoke continually when he and I were working on Hermes. He didn’t look like his name, didn’t look dark and eastern. He was forty-three, tall and thin, with lank red hair and a long white face and pale hard blue eyes with dark circles under them and he looked awful. He’d never been a very robust or healthy type but now he looked haunted. He was twisting a piece of red insulated wire in his hands. Maybe he’s just stopped smoking, I thought, nothing more than that. ‘Hi,’ he said and kissed the young woman, then he saw me and said ‘Hi’ again and we shook hands.
‘Nice to see you again,’ I said.
‘It’s been a while. You two know each other?’
She turned around, looked at me and smiled. ‘No.’ I SAW YOU STARING AT ME, said her eyes.
YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT, said my eyes.
‘Melanie Falsepercy; Herman Orff,’ said Fallok.
‘Hello,’ she said. For a moment her hand lay in mine. IT’S POSSIBLE, said her hand. Her face looked intently at my face. ‘You don’t look like your jacket photo.’
‘Time passes,’ I said.
‘I’ve read your books,’ she said. Her voice was the one that had answered Fallok’s telephone, breathy and shadowy and there was something heartbreaking in it: youth with the world before it; youth and the world passing, passing; stay yet awhile! She’ll be alive when I’m dead, I thought, but never mind, it’s a sporting proposition, go in to win. Was I in shape for it? Film stars ten years older than I ran lightly up the stairs but I’d found it hard to keep up with her walking from Oxford Circus to Fallok’s place. Was I going to need a rope for the Mountains of Orgasma? What about the Cliffs of Angina? Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to be born twenty years later? On the other hand, when I was twenty-nine I hadn’t yet written the books that had aroused her interest. Could I have been interesting at twenty-nine without the books?
‘I read World of Shadows three times,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I knew this was going to be a good day.’
‘I can’t stay,’ she said to Fallok, ‘I only wanted to drop off the tape.’ She gave him a cassette. I wondered what was on the tape, I wondered what was between them. ‘See you,’ she said to him. ‘Nice meeting you,’ she said to me, and her legs took her up the steps and away into the rain.
I LOVE YOU, I transmitted with my mind. I PROMISE TO BE FOOLISH.
YOU’LL BE SORRY, said her departing legs.
‘The place looks about the same,’ I said to Fallok as we went into the studio. ‘A little more technological maybe.’
‘Did her legs say something to you just now?’ he said.
‘I wasn’t really listening.’
‘That’ll be the day.’
‘Strange name, Falsepercy. Is it from the French: Fauxpercé, the false pierced?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t speak French.’
‘What does she do?’
‘She’s a reader at the Avernus Press.’
‘What a small world it is.’
‘And crowded,’ he said.
All around in the dusk of the room watched and waited the little eyes of coloured light. An Anglepoise lamp on a drawing table in a corner made an island of bright warmth. Pinned up among notes, announcements, posters and photographs on an expanse of corkboard was a large print of Head of a Young Girl. There was a Melanie Falsepercy look in her eyes.
On a table near the door was something that looked like a piano keyboard. On top of its housing sat a computer keyboard; to the right of it was a visual display unit from which hung a lightpen. Under the table was a box for the computer works and the double disk drive. On the screen in luminous green letters was a double row of names beginning with ORPHEUS and EURYDICE.
‘Is that a music computer?’ I said.
‘Yes, it’s a Fairlight.’
‘And ORPHEUS and EURYDICE are voices you’ve got loaded into it?’