Digging deeper, I found maps for philosophers who had died or were to die after Michel’s death. What was so terrifying was that all the predictions proved to be true, although Michel couldn’t possibly have known that. There was a chart for his longtime acquaintance Jacques Derrida, who would die from the effects of pancreatic cancer in October 2004, four months after I first discovered his map, at the same age as his father, who had died of the same disease. Richard Rorty, whom Michel had met and befriended during his frequent visits to Paris in the early 1990s, would die from the same disease as Derrida on June 8, 2007. Michel’s maps seemed deadly accurate.
Six maps remained unread. I knew all the names and they were all still very much alive and a few of them were close friends of mine.* Mine was fourth in the pile. My throat dried, but my mind was crystal clear. I made sure I was alone. As I put the magnifying glass to my eyes, I felt strangely exhilarated rather than afraid. I also suddenly recalled very clearly that when I’d met Michel in Perugia, as usual, in 1994, he’d asked me for my birth details, exact time and place. He was very insistent about the accuracy of the information I provided. I had to call my mum to find out (Saturday, 27 February 1960. 1500h. My dad was at the footbalclass="underline" LFC/YNWA). I remember saying half-jokingly to Micheclass="underline" “What, are you going to make my astrological chart?” He smiled.
I peered through the magnifying glass at my destiny. The detail was fascinating. Working through the concentric circles, I moved among briefly noted events in my life that Michel couldn’t possibly have known about: my father’s apprenticeship at Camel Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, his job as a sheet metal worker, my mother’s breast cancer in 1971, his infidelities, their divorce, the industrial accident in 1978, the names of the bands I played in, the dates of my university education, my ex-wife’s name, my son’s date of birth, the facts of our separation and estrangement, even the job in New York, followed by another job in the Netherlands, apparently beginning in 2009. In the inner circle was a list of works beginning with The Ethics of Deconstruction in 1992 and Very Little … Almost Nothing in 1997, both of which I had given to Michel. I don’t think he read them. No matter. The list continued with perfect accuracy until 2004 and then on into the future. It appeared that I would publish a book on Wallace Stevens in 2005 (weirdly, this was already largely written); something called Infinitely Demanding in 2007, dedicated to my mother (I laughed); and The Book of Dead Philosophers in 2008 (or was it 2009? Hard to read). After that, the handwriting became nearly illegible. There was something written in German on mysticism, and then some final titles. Illegible. Did that say “tragedy”? Maybe. There was the name “Hamlet” with a question mark beside it. I had no idea. Funny, there was no mention of the text that you are now reading.
I tried to resist looking through at the center of the circle, with the date of my death. But there it was: “le 13 Juin, 2010, 1551h, Den Bosch, hémorragie cérébrale.” Cerebral hemorrhage. OK. I was expecting lung cancer. But where the fuck was Den Bosch?
* These individuals have been informed. After correspondence with them, it became clear that none of them were known to Michel’s family, which possibly explains why the boxes were sent to me in 2004. The charts are in the special collections room in the University of Essex library along with Michel’s other works, but they are sealed until the time of my own death.
~ ~ ~
Initially, the news didn’t affect me much. Rather like Wittgenstein receiving word of his terminal cancer with great relief, I found some solace in knowing exactly when I would die. I simply decided to put the whole incident out of my mind. It worked. I spent the next days packing my books and emptying my office. I met with Robert twice and was evasive when asked about the memory maps. We arranged for a small Michel Haar archive to be established at the university, and I would write an introductory text for the library website. I took my memory map and a handful of Michel’s manuscripts with me and returned to the gloriously suffocating heat of my first summer in New York City.
At first, everything was fine. I told no one about the map, for shame at taking seriously such superstitious nonsense. It was my dirty little secret. I decided to commit myself quietly to fulfilling my fate. It was all terribly easy. The writing of books and papers flowed in exactly the sequence that Michel had predicted without even willing them into being. I slept well. I had a series of enlivening and transient relationships. I did my job well and was popular at work. I lived contentedly in my spacious one-bedroom apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. I did a wonderful job at concealing the anxiety which unconsciously consumed me. Time passed.
In 2007, I was awarded a fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and spent the year in the comfortable sterility of Brentwood, just west of the 405 freeway, on Sunset Boulevard. I drove a silver Volkswagen Passat and had an office overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a compliant research assistant, and the use of the UCLA library. In seven months, I had written my book on how philosophers die. It was funny, full of impressively wide reading, and utterly shallow. Prior to the financial collapse of 2008 and the withering of the publishing industry, I made decent money on book deals and rights sales. Pleased with myself, I returned to New York for another round of teaching, commitment-free relationships, and vacuous socializing. I even started doing yoga. I thought about writing a book on happiness. My newly acquired agent thought it would be a great idea. Thoughts without a thinker. Cool.
~ ~ ~
In January 2008, during a bitterly cold day when it was almost too painful to inhale the winter air, a box was delivered to my place by UPS and left in the hallway. When I got back that evening, I saw that it had been sent by Barbara at Essex. It was clearly the missing box, Taurus. Smaller than the others. It sat on my desk all night. A strange fear ran through me, preventing the beautifully dreamless sleep I had enjoyed since getting back from Los Angeles. I called Barbara the next morning and she said that the box had just turned up unannounced, addressed to me as before, with no letter or explanation.
I got back from work that evening around 7:00 p.m. and began to drink freely, staring blankly at the box. I inspected it carefully, handling the box gingerly. Something shifted when I turned it on its side. I slit the wrapping tape very carefully with a Stanley knife and opened the box. Underneath a pile of Alsatian newspapers was a circular wooden object, about a foot and a half in diameter and eight inches high. The top lifted off to reveal a tiny auditorium full of painted figures on seven elevated rows with the amphitheater divided by seven tiny gangways. It was a maquette of Giulio Camillo’s memory theater. It was exquisite. I retrieved my copy of The Art of Memory and began to look at the illustrations. Was this the original model that Camillo had used to persuade the king of France to become his patron?
My landlady’s family owned an antiques business, mainly importing repro stuff from Italy. Business was bad. I showed her father the theater some days later. Any suggestion of antiquity was quickly dismissed. He disassembled the base of the theater to reveal the carpenter’s mark, the initials “D.M.” and a date, 1986—the year after Mongin had completed Michel’s memory map. The maquette was a reproduction, probably assembled in Paris from descriptions in Yates and some drawings in the Bibliothèque Nationale. I’d seen some of the latter in an obscure edition of Camillo that I had bought from Rudi Thoemmes Rare Books in Bristol.