Martin doesn’t describe the others present in much detail, apart from the French couple whom he hasn’t met before. He compares the novelist Maurice Megal to a short-sighted goat, but he also calls him ‘an over-cultivated snob who is careful never to say anything comprehensible, and so it is not possible to comment on it or oppose it’. His wife Bernadette, who is a good twenty-five years younger, is a ‘dark-haired, slim and mysterious woman who plays with Tarot cards and has a reputation as a hypnotist’. She demonstrates her latter skills one of the first evenings she is present, when she persuades Doris Guttmann to undress and in her naked state to perform some kind of snake dance for the rest of those present, convinced that she is a harem lady from the fourteenth century.
‘It’s also entirely possible,’ Martin notes, ‘that she wasn’t hypnotized at all but didn’t want to miss an opportunity of dancing naked before an audience.’
I assume Martin must have felt both stimulated and somewhat embarrassed in this company, even if he never admits to either of those reactions. He tries to make it sound as if it is nothing very unusual, in the early days at least, but as time passes (he devotes at least four pages of text to each day) his account acquires a special focus: Bessie Hyatt. On the morning of the twenty-eighth of July he has his first (and only, I think) private conversation with her, and what she says to him in one way strengthens Grass’s case, but in another way it demonstrates how extremely dependent this young American woman is on her husband. She swears that she worships him, literally worships. She laughs and cries indiscriminately, behaves ‘with a level of controlled hysteria that is so close to the surface that you can detect it even when she is sitting still and saying nothing. Like a bridge over dark water, her face is.’ (sic!) Obviously Martin can’t ask her outright about her pregnancy, about who is the father of the child she is expecting, but the question is answered as loudly as a trumpet call as early as the following evening. In the play Evenings in Taza, we have reached the first highlight — even if that term is inappropriate in every respect as far as those present are concerned.
To sum it up: thanks to a combination of potent recreational drugs and the efforts of the hypnotist Bernadette Megal, Tom Herold, in full view of all present, has a vision in which he discovers the rapist Ahib, who has clandestinely placed an unwanted olive-coloured bastard foetus in Bessie Hyatt’s swelling stomach. Ahib is clearly possessed by a demon, or several demons, and must die. It is a duty to kill him, and more especially it is a duty to kill him before the child has grown too big and strong inside Bessie. This performance is enacted with a series of remarkable pirouettes and poetic outpourings over twenty minutes: Madame Megal accompanies it all on the bongo drums and some sort of native stringed instrument, and the drama ends with Tom Herold howling in pain and anger like an injured lion, and Bessie throwing herself into the swimming pool.
I stop reading after this description. Martin has three more days in Taza, but a thought has suddenly occurred to me: what is there to indicate that he wasn’t sitting in a hotel room in Copenhagen or Amsterdam, making up the whole story? What proof is there that the whole rigmarole is not an invention?
None, so far as I can see. Why haven’t I heard anything about all this before? Why has he kept quiet about these bizarre happenings for more than thirty years? Why hasn’t he written about it? I decide to check that there really is a place in Morocco called Taza. That will have to be the next time I go to the Winsford Community Computer Centre — I realize that it’s over a week since the last visit, so it’s presumably high time.
But then I recall that e-mail from G.
Have always felt an inkling that this would surface one day.
And the promise to Bergman and the conversation with Soblewski in his big house that night. . No, there must be a reality behind these notes, I have to accept that. It actually did happen.
Which of course doesn’t necessarily mean that every word is true. I decide to put the whole business on ice for a few days, put the notebooks back in the suitcase and the wardrobe, and think that if nothing else I should try to get hold of Bessie Hyatt’s two novels. For reasons I don’t really understand I haven’t read either of them: they are no doubt on the shelves in Nynäshamn, but those shelves are a long way away. Perhaps that nice lady in the second-hand bookshop in Dulverton can help?
I look at Castor, lying there in front of the almost dead fire. Ask him if he wants to go for a walk. He doesn’t answer. Through the window, on the other side of the wall, I can see a whole herd of Exmoor ponies grazing in the gathering dusk. At least twenty of them. In an hour we shall be swallowed up by darkness, both us and them.
28
The seventh of December, a Friday. Rain during the night, but fine the next morning. A cloudy sky, but no mist. A south-westerly wind, hardly stronger than five to six metres per second.
I have been sleeping badly for several nights, and during the day have felt restless, neglecting the usual routines. The lack of sleep has left me feeling sluggish whenever there is still a bit of daylight: I lie in bed, try to read, but instead end up in a sort of semi-torpor. If I didn’t have the obligatory daily walk with Castor to think about I would probably allow dawn and dusk to merge, and thus sink into a state of absolute lethargy. But our walks become shorter for every day that passes, and when I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, I had the impression of a woman on the downward path. I have also drunk two of the bottles of red wine I bought in Dunster, and half a bottle of port. All I have managed to do is to buy the basic necessities at the general stores in Exford. No excursions, not to Dulverton, Porlock nor anywhere else.
In the afternoon, after a short stroll down towards Tarr Steps, I pulled myself together even so: took a shower, washed my hair and had a complete change of clothes. Wrote in my notebook that I really must drive to Minehead on Monday to see to some laundry. I persuaded Castor to jump into the passenger seat of the car and drove down to Winsford and the computer centre.
It was already five o’clock by the time I got there, but there were lights in the windows and Alfred Biggs immediately bade me welcome. At one of the tables towards the back of the room were the two young girls I’d met on my first visit — or at least, I thought they were the same ones. Castor went over to greet them, they asked what he was called and spent some time playing with him before returning to their screens. I felt a surge of gratitude towards them.
‘It’s pretty bleak at this time of year,’ said Alfred Biggs.
‘You can say that again,’ I said.
‘How are things going for you up there?’
‘Not too badly, thank you.’
‘It must be hard, being a writer. Keeping tabs on everything.’
‘Yes, it’s not always all that easy.’
‘I mean, all those words and people and things that happen.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ I said. ‘Not all that easy.’
‘But I assume you keep a notebook?’
‘Yes, I do. You have to keep making notes all the time.’
‘I must say I admire you. For keeping tabs on everything. But forgive me, I mustn’t distract you with my chit-chat.’
He indicated where I could sit down, and went to make tea.
E-mail from Gunvald to Martin: