Medusa Frequency (12 page)

You have found me, she said. I trust you with the idea of me.

You, I said.

Yes and yes and yes and yes, she said. Look and know me. Hold the idea of me in you by night and by day, never lose it.

Yes and yes and yes and yes, I said, I look and I know you. I will hold the idea of you in me by night and by day, I will never lose it.

She was gone in the pinky dawn water between the beach and the Island Tamaraca.

I went out of the Johan de Witthuis and looked all around at the unimpeachable objectivity of the Dutch daylight. One would be ashamed to draw badly in that light.

Moving carefully so as not to disturb the unknown idea I had lunch in some sunny windowed place that looked out on the street. Then I walked back to the station, noticed a little hotel opposite with its name in quotation marks,
‘Du Commerce’,
took a room for the hours remaining until the departure of the boat train at 2200, was shown upstairs, lay down, fell asleep, and dreamed of a secret cave behind a waterfall.

It was between four and five in the afternoon when I woke up. Careful not to ask myself any questions, I had a shower, went down to the bar, drank beer, drank gin, brought a second beer up to my room and looked out of the window at the early evening. The light had gone a grainy purple-blue. Beyond the station stood white office blocks, fluorescent-lit against the sky, looking as if they belonged to memory and time long past. Yes, I thought, there were people then; they too were happy and sad, they too looked out upon just such a purple-blue
evening. Through the glass sides of the Pieter de Hooch railway station I saw the yellow carriages slide in and out.

I switched on the overhead room light, it was a little flame-shaped bulb in an electrified oil-lamp. Somewhere such bulbs are manufactured; what does it say on the box? 10 w ETERNA-FLAME DEPRESSION perhaps. Outside the window a double street lamp stood up like a luminous pinky-orange hibiscus. Beyond the lamps the yellow trains arrived and departed with a soft and rapid dinging of bells in the grainy purple-blue evening. Passing under my window was Luise walking slowly away towards the station in a yellow mac the same colour as the trains.

I ran down the stairs and out into the road. She was still there, manifesting herself as ordinary reality and not disappearing. She paused at the sound of my footsteps and turned. ‘Herman,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to see the Vermeer girl but she’s gone to America. What about you?’

‘I’m here with my husband, he’s installing a computer system.’

Time ceased to be an automatic progression: the present moment exploded into millions of sharp-edged fragments and nothing followed. The bells dinged softly, the yellow trains moved in and out, the purple-blue darkened but the next moment did not come. It seemed so little to ask, that the next moment should come. Perhaps if I moved my mouth. I moved my mouth, it said, ‘You’re married then, you finally found the right one.’

‘Yes, I found the right one.’

I had a piece of folded-up paper in my pocket, I always do: yellow A4. ‘Luise,’ I said, giving her the paper and a pen, ‘please write your name and the date on this for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because all of a sudden it’ll be some other time and I want to have something from this time.’

She wrote her name and the date, the piece of paper is stuck on the edge of the monitor screen along with the Vermeer-girl postcard. I was right, all of a sudden it was some other time and the engines of the
St Nicholas
were throbbing as they drew a line across the night from Hook of Holland to Harwich. In my
hand were the postcard and the folded yellow paper on which was written
Luise Nilsen
and the date. She lived in Oslo now, her husband’s name was Lars, he was forty-two, tall and bearded, they did a lot of skiing, they did a lot of sailing, they owned a forty-foot ketch named
Eurydike,
they had a daughter named Ursula who was almost a year old, they called her Ursel, Luise thought of me sometimes, she’d read
Slope of Hell
and
World of Shadows
and recognized herself and incidents from our two years together, that time seemed very far away now. We sat in the bar at the
‘Du Commerce’
and talked as if it was a possible thing to do: there she was, I could have reached out and touched her, and she was gone out of my life for ever. I had no part in her days and nights, she would continue without me as if I were dead.

I went out on deck and walked aft to look at the white wake widening astern in the night. Seeing the actuality of Luise married and gone for ever, was that what the stone had cracked and freed me for? I could feel that something had happened, I could feel the Hermes of it, could feel myself on a night road to somewhere else. One couldn’t ask more than that - to be sometimes on a night road to somewhere else. ‘I have no name but the one you give me,’ I said, ‘no face but the one you see.’

Cleaving the foam like a periscope was a telephone in which crouched the telephonist Lucretia, bellowing above the sound of the engines and the hiss of the sea along the ship’s sides that she had a call for me from Sol Mazzaroth.

Ring, ring, said the telephone when I got home.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Herman Orff?’ said Lucretia, flicking her whip against her boot.

‘Yes.’

‘I have a call for you from Sol Mazzaroth.’

‘Thank you.’

A little advance silence came out of the telephone like ground meat out of a meat-grinder. I wrapped it neatly in white paper and tied it with string.

‘Herman?’ said the voice of Sol Mazzaroth.

‘That’s me.’

Sol’s hands came out of the telephone and rubbed themselves together briskly. I offered them the neatly wrapped silence.

‘Herman,’ said Sol, ‘tomorrow’s the editorial meeting for Vol. One, Number One. Where are we with Orpheus?’

I saw my current account rolling its eyes like a steer in the slaughterhouse. If you had balls you wouldn’t be a steer, I said as I lifted the hammer.

Look who’s talking, said the current account. If you had balls I’d have been dead long ago. Go on, kill me, let’s see you do it.

I put down the hammer. Maybe we can work something out, I said. After all, they’re even doing Shakespeare in comics nowadays. And I’m sure it’s what Shakespeare would’ve wanted, he was a popular writer in his time.

Shakespeare was what he was and you’re what you are, said the current account: you’re a miserable no-talent coward.

One day you’re going to push me too far, I said.

That’ll be the day, it said.

‘Herman?’ said Sol. ‘Are you there?’

‘Sol, I haven’t been able to get started on Orpheus yet.’

‘Herman, what are you telling me? Just the other day you
said, - hang on, I’ve got it right here - you said, “GNGGX.” You said, “NNZVNGGGG,” you said, “NNVLL.” And you said you’d have something for me to look at on FNURRN, which is today in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Sol, there’s a lot more to this Orpheus thing than you might think.’

‘Please, spare me the song and dance. When can you have something for me?’

‘Can I ring you up tonight?’

‘I’ll ring you. Tell me when.’

‘Late. Round about midnight.’

‘Right, talk to you then.’

What I like about you, said the current account, is that you’re reliable. You can always be relied on to have no balls.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do, I said. I’ve got to think about it.

Right, said the current account. We’ll talk again soon, OK? We’ll have lunch.

I rang up Istvan Fallok. ‘I’ve just come back from The Hague,’ I said. ‘I ran into Luise there.’

‘Luise! What’s she doing?’

‘She’s married, big bearded husband named Lars. They go skiing and they have a forty-foot ketch, it’s called
Eurydike.
They have a year-old daughter named Ursula. They live in Oslo and Lars installs computer systems. How’s that grab you.’

‘You needed me to know about it, right?’

‘Right.’

‘OK, I know about it. Bye-bye.’

‘Wait. Did you know about Luise and Kraken?’

‘Yes, I knew about that. Bye-bye again.’

I sat there with the telephone in my hand thinking of Melanie. No, I thought, wait a little.

I put on the tape of the Blue Note Thelonious Monk Volume One that begins with ‘Round about Midnight’. Beyond my window the grey wind rattled the brown leaves and two boys ran past kicking a football that thumped and skittered among the parked cars. Sheltered in Monk’s midnight dome, his caves of nice, I typed on to the screen:

THE STORY OF ORPHEUS

Something hit the front door with a sodden smack. I opened it and the head of Orpheus leaped up and fastened its teeth in my arm. Filthy and battered, its features flattened as if it had been rolling through the streets for years, it hummed and buzzed its blind rage.

‘Nice to see you again,’ I said. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’

The head continued biting. Blood was running down my arm.

‘Something’s bothering you, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘Is it anything I’ve done?’

The head jerked itself towards the monitor and THE STORY OF ORPHEUS.

‘Is that it?’ I said.

The head nodded.

‘I’ve told you that Sol Mazzaroth wanted something in the Orpheus line,’ I said. ‘I was about to see what I could do with it.’

The head shifted its jaws and got a better bite.

‘You’d rather I didn’t. That’s a bit dog-in-the-manger, isn’t it? You won’t finish your version and you don’t want me to make up my own.’

The head opened its mouth to speak and I caught it as it fell. ‘You keep making me appear,’ it said, ‘and I’m so tired.’

‘You’re
tired? What about me? Life wasn’t hard enough so I had to go to The Hague and find Luise with a big bearded husband and a daughter and a forty-foot ketch.’

‘Wide Justice,’ said the head.

‘What do you mean, “Wide Justice”?’

‘That’s what the Greek name Eurydike means.’

‘I can handle Wide Justice; it’s the forty-foot ketch that gets up my nose. I can see the husband all bearded and fearless at the helm, his name is Lars. The boat’s name is
Eurydike.’

‘Bastard.’

‘Indeed. I travelled over land and sea to find the Vermeer girl and what did I get for my trouble? Bearded Larses and forty-foot ketches and Gösta Kraken.’

‘Who’s Gösta Kraken?’

‘He’s one of the Luise old boys. He did a film called
Codename Orpheus.’

‘Ponce. Who’s the Vermeer girl?’

I told the head about the Vermeer girl.

‘She’s another Eurydice,’ said the head.

‘What else is new?’

‘You can’t go looking for Eurydice.’

‘Look who’s talking.’

‘My perceptions and my understanding change from moment to moment,’ said the head. ‘What I mean is that you don’t find Eurydice by looking for her.’

‘I found the Vermeer girl gone,’ I said. ‘I found a dark wood, I found the Island Tamaraca, I found Medusa. And I found Luise definitively gone. Standing before me and gone for ever.’

‘You found Medusa?’

‘Shimmering and luminous above the pinky dawn water.’

‘I never found Medusa,’ said the head.

‘Were you looking for her?’

‘Every man is, I know that now. Do you know what the idea of her is?’

‘No.’

‘Behind Medusa lie wisdom and the dark womb hidden like a secret cave behind a waterfall. Behind Medusa lies Eurydice unlost.’

‘Let it be, you’re wording it to death.’

‘Perhaps you don’t need me any more,’ said the head, as my arms began to feel leaden. ‘Don’t be offended, please, we still have the story to finish.’

‘I wonder if I can sing now.’

‘Please don’t. When you tried to sing that first morning by the river the silence was awful, I don’t want to hear it again.’

‘Don’t be so delicate. As long as I have any kind of being I have to keep trying.’

‘Surely there’s a time for singing and a time for silence.’

‘My business is singing, not discretion. Be quiet and listen. What time of day is it now?’

‘Afternoon. Hang on, if you’re going to sing I might as well record it this time.’ I put the head on my desk and plugged a microphone into the tape deck.

‘I’ll sing an evening song,’ said the head. Just as the mouth opened an aeroplane passed overhead. The lips and tongue moved but again I heard nothing. I touched the head but
wasn’t sure whether I felt any vibration or not. After the plane had gone the mouth continued to move in silence for quite a long time, then it closed. There was a little pause, then the head said, ‘Well?’

‘I didn’t hear anything, although it’s hard to be sure, there was so much noise from the aeroplane.’

There was a boy’s face at the window. His hand appeared, pointing at the head of Orpheus on my desk. I went to the front door and found two boys on the steps. ‘Can we have our football back?’ said the first one. ‘We didn’t mean to kick it at your door.’

‘I haven’t got your football.’

‘Yes you have. You picked it up and took it inside and it’s on your desk now. We’ve been ringing your bell for a long time.’

‘The bell’s disconnected.’

‘We’ve been knocking as well,’ said the second boy.

‘I never heard it.’

‘Well, anyhow, give us back our ball,’ said the first boy.

‘What did your ball cost you?’

The first boy looked at the second boy. ‘Ten quid.’

‘There’s a sports shop in the Broadway near the bus stop; you can buy another ball there, OK?’ I gave him ten pounds and both boys disappeared.

‘Where were we?’ I said to the head.

‘I’ve sung for you twice,’ it said, ‘and both times you’ve said you haven’t heard me.’

‘This time the microphone was listening too; let’s see whether it heard anything.’ I rewound the tape, put on headphones, and played it back. It was surprising at first to hear the head speaking in my voice but there was of course nothing extraordinary in it; if it could use a football for manifesting itself there was no reason why it shouldn’t use my voice to speak with. When it said on the tape that it was going to sing I turned up the volume and watched the level meters. There went the aeroplane. The cooling fan of the Apple II was audible, and above it there was a faint high-pitched humming that went up and down in a halting and uncertain tune that was just loud enough to move the luminous bars on the level meters a stroke or two past the –20 decibel mark. Faint and distant it struggled to reach me like some broken melody coming round
the ionosphere through the storms and surges of the shortwave night to my lost outpost in Fulham. It was of course my own voice but I hadn’t remembered humming at the time; it sounded as if I might have been trying to follow something that I was straining to hear.