Fiction

Jonathan Coe

  Leiden

  ‘Have you ever been to Leiden in the winter?’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see anything as beautiful as that frost on the roofs of the buildings along the Rapenburg; and the stillness you get there, any morning, as you stand and look down the canal. We used to take breakfast earlier than any of the others and then walk, sometimes to the Hortus Botanicus, where the lawns would be white, really white, the cleanest thing you’ve ever seen, or sometimes we’d walk into town, making for where the Nieuwe Rijn is crossed by the Korenbeursbrug, and we’

d stand on that lovely old bridge for an hour or more, not even talking. There was so much just to look at. I don’t mean landmarks or anything, I just mean the bareness of the trees, and the way the buildings faced each other, friendly and handsome, across the water. There’s a gentleness there, and a calm. And then sometimes in the evening we’d go drinking at a place near the Burcht, and we’d try to sit outside even though it was so cold – she’d have that coat, emerald green, wrapped around her – and one evening it even started to snow, and we watched the snowflakes dancing in front of the lantern-light …’

  He stopped, as the doors of the lift slid open and we stepped out into the grey corridor.

  ‘Well –’ he fumbled for his key ‘– here we are.’

  I said, ‘This isn’t at all bad. I was expecting something much worse.’

  He thanked me and said that after a while you got used to the graffiti, the steel and bare concrete, the peeling paint, the broken security locks, the dark, the fear, the smell of piss in the lifts, the walk up the stairs, the voices shouting at each other behind closed doors, the grime and the litter, the cold and the damp, the draughts, the noise of the wind in the lift shafts, the useless light switches, the echo of hurried footsteps. After he had been there a while he got used to all these, and he was just grateful to have somewhere to sleep, a roof over his head. And grateful that the rent was so cheap. He took me inside and straight out on to the balcony and we stood shivering, looking out at the lights and pointing to areas we knew. We had both got to know Birmingham quite well by then. From up there we could see as far as the Bristol Road, a carnival of amber lights sweeping down out of the city, out of view. Over to our left the city centre was glittering, with its tower blocks and flyovers and giant multi-storey car parks. The sight made us feel something, I think, touched us in some way, but it was not exhilaration. He came and stood close beside me.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I feel happy here, and sometimes I wonder whatever drew me to this city and what am I doing here at all.’

  I said, rather stupidly, that there were beautiful places and places which were not so beautiful and the funny thing was that not everybody chose to live in the beautiful ones.

  ‘I’ve been here for five years,’ I said, ‘and I think I will be leaving soon. I don’t know where. I’ve no plans. But I can feel the beginnings of another change.’

  I was being honest when I said this, although I’m not sure that he realized it; probably he just thought it was one of those things that women say.

  We had not known each other for long, and it was a strange friendship. Neither of us had given very much away. It had not been difficult, though, after he had been into the shop a few times, to start talking. I found I had grown used to watching the customers, gauging them, remembering the faces of those who came regularly and sorting out where their interests lay, their particular obsessions. Some are fascinated by the Egyptian mysteries, others are drawn to witchcraft and the esoteric arts, some wish to learn the secrets of divination, astrology, the Tarot and the I Ching, others devote themselves to the purely spiritual aspects of Eastern philosophy. With him, I could tell, it was none of these. This young man – he was less than thirty, I was sure – always made for a certain section on a shelf at the back of the shop, in its darkest corner. It was here that we kept a small number of books concerning the work of the Renaissance magi, the alchemists and the great philosopher magicians. It was my favourite section, this, I had ordered most of the books myself, and so it was only natural that, eventually, we should strike up a conversation. He had obviously applied himself to the study of the subject with some energy. He knew the works of Zoroaster, Pico, Trithemius, Ficino and Giambattista della Porta; he was familiar with the Cabala, and with the principles of numerology and mystical geometry. He understood the importance of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, and knew of Chaldean-Ptolemaic magic and Lullism. And, like myself, he had a particular curiosity about the life and the work of John Dee. That was how we began. He was on the point of buying a book about Dee, a new one, something written by an academic, and I advised him against it, telling him that I thought it was wrong-headed. He started complimenting me on our selection, enthusing about it, saying that he had not expected to find anything so good, here of all places.

  ‘I wish it were better,’ I said. ‘So many of the books we’d like to have can’t be found any more. Some of them, of course, have not been reprinted for centuries.’

  He asked me whether I had contact with anyone who dealt in the older and more obscure items.

  ‘Yes, occasionally,’ I answered. ‘Why, is there something which you’d particularly like to find?’

  ‘For some years now,’ he said, ‘I’ve been hoping to find a copy, an original copy, of the Monas Hieroglyphica.’

  It was as soon as I heard him speak these words, the peculiar, restrained fervour he imparted to them, that my suspicions began. But I bought time by saying, casually:

  ‘There are translations available. We had one here, not long ago.’

  ‘No. It must be the Antwerp edition.’

  I looked steadily into his eyes. He had very large, dark brown eyes.

  ‘You won’t find one in any shop,’ I said.

  He returned my gaze, but did not answer. Finally, the words were drawn out of me.

  ‘I know of a copy.’

  Almost without expression, and after several seconds’ silence, he said: ‘Where is it? Would it be possible for me to see it?’

  There was something about him which I trusted, something which made me certain, in an unthinking way, that I was doing the right thing. So I told him to come back the next day, just before we closed.

  It was almost dark when he arrived, and there were no other customers by then. I wasted no time in locking up the shop and pulling down the shutters. Then, with only the reading lamp on the counter for light, I reached into a drawer and fetched out the book. It was in a plastic carrier bag.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Open it.’

  He removed the bag, and laid the book carefully on the counter.

  And he stared, not in surprise exactly, but in a kind of wonder: the awe of recognition. I watched him, watched the steadiness of his eyes in that half-light; and despite the sound of the homeward-bound traffic, outside in the High Street, it felt like silence that I was breaking when I said:

  ‘The binding – it’s not original. It was done much later. Probably early in the eighteenth century.’

  ‘I know.’ He turned to the title page, where you can see the hieroglyph itself, but he seemed not to be looking at it.

  ‘It’s the same,’ he said. ‘The very same.’ His voice was low, not quite a whisper; perhaps to hide his agitation. ‘I have seen this copy before. This same copy. Does it belong to you?’

  I nodded. ‘When have you seen it before?’

  ‘Several years ago, and not in this country. 1 would recognize it anywhere, though. Tell me, how did you come by it?’

  ‘It was given to me,’ I said, ‘by a friend.’

  He asked quietly, ‘What was her name?’, and I smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was Thea.’

  He closed the book, and picked it up, and held it to his chest. He was hugging it, with a sort of gentle passion. His eyes were closed. He took a few steps around the shop, and then stopped, quite hidden by shadow. I don’t know how long he stood there, probably no more than a minute; but when he turned and approached me, there was already something new in his expression. A revival had taken place.

  ‘Where is she now?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you know her well? Were you close friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She mentioned someone once: a woman. She used to talk about someone called Jennifer.’

  ‘Yes. That was me.’

  He put out his hand impulsively, and then could think of nothing to do with it except lay it briefly on my shoulder. I did not move; it was not a g

esture that invited either welcome or resistance. He laughed nervously, released me from his touch, and opened the book again.

  ‘Somewhere in here,’ he said, ‘there is a page with a mark on it.’ It did not take him long to locate. ‘There.’

  He pointed to the corner of an even-numbered page, near the beginning of the book; it was disfigured with a small, rust-coloured stain.

  ‘What do you suppose that is?’ he asked.

  I peered.

  ‘It looks a bit like ink,’ I said. ‘Or possibly … is it blood?’

  He smiled, his first smile, and shook his head.

  ‘No, not blood. It’s barbecue sauce.’

  It was his idea that we should go out and eat. I protested that there were no very good restaurants in the area, but he said that he already had somewhere in mind. It turned out to be McDonald’s.

  ‘Surely we’re not going in here?’

  ‘Don’t you normally use this place?’ He pushed open the glass door, and I followed him in. ‘You really should. It’s quite clean, and very quick.’

  There were few other people there – just two groups of noisy teenagers, with their bright jackets and their ceaseless, edgy cheerfulness. They did not seem happy, and I wished there was somewhere better for them to be. I don’t eat meat so I was unable to order anything other than a cup of tea and a wedge of hot apple pie in a cardboard packet. He bought himself a huge bun with two thick slices of meat and a lot of salad in it. We did not talk at first, he was too busy eating and I was watching the cars go past outside, their headlights tracing patterns on the wet road. The rush-hour traffic was starting to abate. When he had nearly finished his meal, he began to tell me about Thea.

‘We were there for two weeks, the six of us, staying at a guest house on the Witte Singel. It was to the south of the town, one of its most beautiful quarters. A short walk down the Kaiserstraat brought you to the Rapenburg and straight into the heart of old Leiden. I find it hard to remember how I spent my time, that first week. You see, I didn’t really know any of the people, apart from Thomas, who had organized it all. Part of the idea was that we should all do some work – most of us had exams to go back to at the beginning of term – but it was too cold to read outside and too nice to stay indoors. I suppose I did the usual things, looking around the university and the museums. I know I went to the Rijksmuseum, because she was there, on the first floor, looking at the Egyptian collection. We didn’t talk much though.

  ‘That was on the second day. Nobody seemed to know her very well; in fact I was never even sure who had invited her along. She was older than the rest of us, she belonged to a different college and a different faculty and I don’t think any of us really knew what she was meant to be researching. She was talkative and friendly, but there was also this – reserve, I suppose. No, that’s not the right word. It was as if she enjoyed our company, but the things which most interested her, or which she considered most important, were things that she couldn’t share with us. That was the impression I had. So I’ll never know why she chose me. Perhaps just because I was the one she ran into.

  ‘It was in the afternoon, about two or three o’clock. There was a pale sun and I had just been into the Pieterskerk. I used to go in there every day – not because I’m religious, you understand, but because it seemed pointless to walk past something so lovely and not go inside. Inside, the brick, it has the colour and the texture of a rose. I don’t know how long I stayed sitting in there. Now I was walking back and I had stopped on the Nonnenbrug to look at the canal again. It was a view you could never grow tired of. And I was about to move on when I saw her approaching in the distance. I knew it was her, long before I saw her face. It wasn’t just the emerald green, or the blackness of her hair – which she wore quite long, in those days: I saw a photograph of her once where it was much shorter. She had a whole way of moving, of making her progress through the world, which was quite distinctive. I had only known her a few days, but I could have picked her out of any crowd. It had to do with determination – but diffidence, too. Humility. You could see it in the way she carried herself. Anyway, you must know what I mean. She hadn’t come much closer before she spotted me and started waving. She speeded up and joined me on the bridge. She was clearly in high spirits: I mean, she was always cheerful, but today there was this extra glow, and she was slightly out of breath – not with the cold, and not with the haste. And she was carrying this brown-paper parcel, holding it quite close to her body. So I said, “What have you got there?” and she said that she would tell me, only we would have to go somewhere warmer. We were both hungry, too, so we decided to walk up towards the Galgewater and see if we could find somewhere to eat.’ He laughed. ‘And this is what we found.’

  ‘This?’

  He indicated our present surroundings.

  ‘This. For some reason you wouldn’t expect to find one in a place like Leiden, would you? But there it was, and in we went. She seemed a bit surprised that I’d suggested it, I must say, but she played along readily enough. I forget what she ordered. I had a quarter pounder with cheese, regular fries and a Coke. And that was how the book got stained.’

  I was shocked. ‘How angry was she?’

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she would be furious? To find something like that – something beyond value – and have some idiot ruin it in a matter of seconds. But Thea wasn’t like other people. She shrugged it off. It almost seemed to amuse her. In a way I think it confirmed her feelings about me. There were all these differences between us – she was older, she knew more, she’d seen more, she’d done more: it’s funny, I can see this clearly now, but I think I was scarcely aware of it at the time. I must have seemed naive, and yet it can’t have stopped her wanting to confide in me. She took out the book as soon as we sat down, and showed me the title page. “Does it mean anything to you?” she asked, and I said no. So then she started to explain.

  ‘She had found this copy of the Monas Hieroglyphica only an hour ago, selling for a fraction of its real value, in a small antiquarian bookshop just off the Haarlemmerstraat. It had been rebound, and the title of a different work, some minor eighteenth-century medical handbook, had been put on the spine: so perhaps the bookseller hadn’t bothered to look at it properly, and had no idea that a treasure had fallen into his hands. You know all about the book, of course, so I won’t bother to repeat everything she told me, even though I can still remember most of it with absolute clarity. Nothing about that afternoon has started to fade yet. The ideas were new to me, and difficult at first. I wanted to ask her how she had started to find out about all this, whether it bore any relation to her research, but instead I just got caught up in her excitement. I always found, with her, that this zest, this appetite for things, it drew me in: I had no choice but to share in it. I do remember her saying one thing in particular. She was showing me the hieroglyph, pointing out each individual symbol – the sun, the moon, the sign of Aries – and I kept saying, “Yes, but what does it mean? What does the whole thing mean?”, and she told me that it was an image of unity, that it was intended to show the whole meaning of the universe. And she said: “Imagine that, if you can. A man, a scholar, magician, philosopher, mathematician, is engaged upon work which might, he feels – just might – explain the meaning of the universe. Can you imagine the excitement that man must have felt? The feeling of living always on the edge of such a revelation?” And when I suggested that, from a modern point of view, it might all seem rather foolish, she answered, “Yes, but imagine how he must have felt.”

  ‘It made a great impression on me, that conversation.’

  He crumpled up his carton and his paper cup and threw them into the waste bin. I had been picturing him sitting with Thea on that bright winter’s afternoon, their meeting on the bridge, the flush of pleasure on her cheek as she spoke, and now his sudden action recalled me to my surroundings: the shabbiness of a fast-food restaurant on a dark, rainy evening in Birmingham.

  ‘You became friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, in a way. We spent most of our time together, for the rest of that holiday, and then we had to come back to England, and term began, and we continued to see each other, I suppose, but quite infrequently. It’s odd, too, that in all that time I never became – I know this sounds strange, but I don’t think I ever once felt at ease with her. Not completely. Part of me was always on edge, always afraid that in some way or other I would let her down.’ He looked away. ‘But I don’t know what I mean by that.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ I said.

  His tone changed, now, as he asked, ‘Why did she give you that book?’

  I shrugged. ‘One day, some time ago, she decided to give away most of her books. Nearly all of them. She was giving this one to me, she said, because it was special; but it no longer meant anything to her.’

  He seemed taken aback.

  ‘So where is she now? What happened to Thea? You must have kept in touch.’

  I merely shook my head and said, ‘No. I don’t know.’

  It was not pleasant, lying to him, but it had to be done. After we had said goodbye I returned to the shop, unlocked the door, and passed silently between the bookshelves without turning on any light. At the back of the shop was another door, which opened on to a steep flight of stairs. I climbed these slowly, still in the dark, walked past the door of my own room, and entered the bedroom where Thea was lying.

  Her bedside lamp was lit, but at first I thought she must have fallen asleep. Then she turned round carefully to look at me; I could tell that she was in pain again.

  ‘Hello, Jenny,’ she said.

  ‘How are you feeling? How are your eyes?’

  ‘The same.'

  ‘Should you not turn the lamp off? Isn’t the light hurting them?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t seem to make much difference.’

  ‘Can you see me?’

  ‘Yes, quite well.’

  She began to sit up in bed, thinking hard before moving each limb, raising herself with slow deliberation. I helped her with the pillows until, after a minute or two, she was settled. As soon as this was done, she asked me whether I had shown him the book, and I told her everything about our conversation, about how well he remembered her and the first afternoon they had spent together. She smiled faintly and for a while she too was lost in recollection.

  ‘And what is he doing now?’ she asked. ‘Is he happy?’

  ‘He lives near here,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think he has a job, at least not one that he gets paid for. He doesn’t seem happy, no. He seems to think about those days a lot. He’s been searching for that book, high and low, for years now. He attaches great significance to it.’

  Thea shook her head.

  ‘Poor boy. I could tell, from the very beginning, that he was in love with me, but he never realized, or never admitted it to himself, and perhaps he hasn’t still. He was so young, younger than all the others. But then he never realized that, either.’

  I told her that it was time she slept, because tomorrow she should get up, and do some walking. So I kissed her, and got her to lie down, and left her in the darkened room, her eyes wide open.

  We left the balcony, turning our back on Birmingham’s lights, and went into his sitting room. It was getting late. Soon I would have to leave, and it was time to do what Thea had asked.

  He was talking about her again – when did he ever do anything else? – questioning me, as he had often done before, as to when I had last seen her or heard from her. My answers had always been evasive: I am sure he had begun to suspect that I knew more than I had told. And today, at last, I was able to say:

  ‘I have not been telling you the truth.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She is near. She is close, very close.’

  ‘You mean you’ve seen her? Recently?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then I admitted that she had been staying with me for some months now, never leaving the flat above the shop. I told him of how I had first heard about her illness, and how I had contacted her at once and offered to look after her for as long as she needed me.

  ‘Is she very ill?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She is weak, now, and sometimes in pain, but it comes and goes. She finds light painful, and sometimes she finds it painful when you touch her. Her skin burns, and she finds it hard to move. The doctors have come up with some long words, but no cure. Photophobia, hyperaesthesia, diplopia. Disseminated sclerosis: that’s what they say she has. But doctors are no use, they never have been. And we’ve tried other treatments, other approaches, but nothing seems to make her any better.’

  ‘But she’s young.’

  ‘It came upon her quite suddenly, about a year ago. Since then, she’s had periods of good health, but they haven’t lasted. You’ll find her changed, though. I don’t mean by the illness: she had already changed by then. She’s older, you see. You can’t carry on for ever, being so enthusiastic and hungry for life. She grew calmer, more accepting, and that has been a great help. She doesn’t complain, she doesn’t rail against life or fate or God or chance. She assumes there is a reason why it has happened, and she waits to be told what it is. She doesn’t even read or see people any more. She never goes out.’

  ‘How long can she carry on like that?’

  ‘Not much longer, I think. Not here, at any rate. That’s why she’s going to leave soon.’

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘Yes. She’s been invited up to Scotland by another of her friends: a dearer friend than me, I suppose. A man she met several years ago. He’s older than she is, and he has a large house up there. So she’ll be well looked after. She says that it will be a relief for me, but she knows how much I will miss her.’

  ‘How soon is she leaving?’

  ‘Quite soon: a few days. But don’t worry –’ I laid my hand on his arm, I think for the first time ‘– she wants to see you first.’

  I took him to see Thea the next day. He was nervous – I don’t know whether for his own sake, or because he was afraid of finding her dreadfully altered. I followed him up the steep staircase and showed him to her bedroom door.

  ‘Are you not coming in with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. You should be alone, at first.’

  He opened the door and went inside, while I lingered, in spite of myself, on the landing, listening for their voices. But I heard nothing. When I joined them later, he was sitting beside her on the edge of her bed, and she was propped up against the pillows. His hand was on hers, the curtains were drawn and the room was in near darkness. I closed the door quietly behind me and stood silent in the corner. They took no notice of my arrival. Thea was talking in a low voice, quite rapidly, earnestly. He listened, but did not look at her: his head was bowed. And Thea was saying:

  ‘Please don’t give in to this nostalgia. Don’t let it flatten you, or hold you back. I don’t think you ever understood what you wanted from me, and if you had, you would have seen that I could never have given it. And in any case, that’s not what you long for today. Not really. What you long for is the chance to feel that way again: that feeling of being poised on the edge of a revelation. If that was how I made you feel in Leiden, I’m glad; but it means that what you’ve been looking for, all this time, isn’t me at all – just a version of yourself, a younger version, that’s gone and can never come back.’ She stirred beneath the bedclothes, and a flicker of pain crossed her face, but still she was calm. ‘All nostalgia,’ said Thea, her skin burning from the touch of his hand, ‘is a longing for innocence.’