Exchange Place

Because It Was He

The accordion music of the Maigret theme faded. I could feel the Black Rose wearing off and decided to roll another. I keep my stash in a vintage Peek Frean biscuit tin with a bas-relief of a coral reef stamped into its lid, exotic multicoloured fish, sea anemones and urchins, the tin secreted in one of the drawers of the miniature burr walnut chest where I also keep my notebooks; and on top of the chest is a Bose Wave Radio/cD player which I bought some years ago, inveigled by the language of its advertising, reproduced in the accompanying manual, from which I quote: ‘Extensive research in the fields of speaker design and psychoacoustics — the human perception of sound — led to the groundbreaking 901®Direct/Reflecting® speaker system in 1968. Acoustimass® speaker technology reshaped conventional thinking about the relationship between speaker size and sound, enabling palm-sized speakers to produce audio quality previously thought impossible from speakers so small.’ And I thought of music resonating from the big wire grille of John Harland’s EKO radio or from the suitcase-sized Dansette record player. I couldn’t remember when I had last listened to the Bose. I switched it on, and recognized the sound immediately. It was Glenn Gould playing Contrapunctus XIV. I couldn’t remember when I had last been playing it, but the display showed it had been some five minutes into the twelve minutes eighteen seconds of the track when I cut it abruptly short, well before the track itself comes to the staccato stop of its predestined, unfinished ending, followed by a silence like a gunshot. And I recalled how Bach’s autograph of the music bore a note in his son Carl Philippe Emmanuel’s hand saying, ‘At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH (the notes, that is; in English notation, B flat-A-C-B sharp) in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died’ — a claim disputed by modern scholars, some of whom suggest that Bach finished the piece on another sheet of paper, referred to in the literature as ‘fragment X’. But if fragment X ever existed, it has been lost.

When I had rolled the joint I lit it, turned the Bose back to the beginning of the track, and sat down to listen. How often had I listened to this playing of Contrapunctus XIV, ever since I first heard it in John Harland’s studio all these years ago? I have no way of knowing. Many times in the studio itself, no doubt, and again I pictured Harland painting to that music, and tried to remember what might have then gone through my mind, or what had subsequently transpired that day, or on another. I had listened to Contrapunctus XIV many times on the car radio, sometimes immersed in it while I drove on automatic pilot to a destination I had been to many times, sometimes not fully listening as I drove an unfamiliar route; or I would find myself in a reverie prompted by the music, perhaps a fragment of a memory of being elsewhere on a previous listening, a landscape I had forgotten driving through until once more I heard the music I had been listening to then, a dark, nameless avenue without end. By now, after so many listenings, albeit mostly forgotten by my conscious mind, I have a fair enough outline of the piece, and can anticipate to some extent what comes next, and vocalize along with it, somewhat as Gould did himself; and as I do, I think how feeble my memory of the piece must be, compared to that of Glenn Gould, who could sight-read anything — whole orchestral pieces — and memorize on sight. He could read music before he read words, and had only to hear a piece or glance at the page of a score to retain it indefinitely, and I wondered if he could do the same with books.

Certainly, I could not; and, glancing around the shelves of the book-lined room in which I write, I wonder how many of these hundreds of volumes I could trace in my memory to their point of sale. Lately I have bought many books on the internet, but my library has come mostly from physical shops, many or perhaps most of them now vanished. And as I glance again, a ray of sunlight falls upon a stack of shelves, illuminating the many-hued spines of dictionaries, art books, novels, books of science and philosophy, books about books. My memory draws a blank with most of them. But here I see a row of vintage Baedekers in shades of faded red, and I remember, in an alleyway off Charing Cross Road in London, a second-hand bookshop specializing in travel books. On the shelf above is a Robinson Crusoe in an eighteenth century binding which I found in the Excelsior Bookshop in Smithfield, and I remember standing in the smouldering ruins of Smithfield after it had been firebombed how many years ago I cannot tell, remarking how difficult it was to burn books, for between the charred covers they still retained their inner core of text. And sandwiched between Jean Cocteau’s Diary of an Unknown and Paul Valéry’s Idée Fixe is the three-volume Everyman edition of Montaigne’s Essays, translated by John Florio, given to me by John Harland for my fiftieth birthday, or the day after it rather, for he had mistaken the date. From one John to another — Harland to Kilfeather, he had written on the flyleaf.

And I wondered again about the circumstances in which John Harland had vanished so mysteriously how many years ago I cannot tell, circumstances of which I was able to piece together some fragments over those years without ever coming to a conclusion. One thing was sure: he left knowing he was to leave, and never told me a thing about it. I only found out some months later when I bumped into an old school acquaintance — I cannot say friend — who had risen to some eminence in the legal profession, let’s call him Holmes. We exchanged the usual pleasantries of two people who have not met for some time and would not care too much if they ever met again. I cannot remember how Harland’s name came up, I must have mentioned it for whatever reason, and Holmes said, Harland? Yes, we all miss him terribly, said Holmes, took us all by surprise. And as the conversation developed it transpired that Holmes had received a note from Harland the day before he vanished, a note which said, Urgent business, will be away for some time, and that was all, said Holmes. Of course he was rather eccentric, said Holmes, and I nodded, and that was that. I walked for some time not knowing where I was and when I came to I saw that I had come to the door of 14 Exchange Place, which door I had tried many times in the past without success, until I abandoned all hope of seeing John Harland again. I had lost the key.

I lift the three volumes of Montaigne from the shelf, books that had been touched by Harland’s hand. In my memory I undo a parcel of blue cartridge paper, not knowing what it might contain. Harland is looking at me and when he sees me smile he smiles too and it lights up the room. It is a very nice edition, 1928, the green cloth binding yellowed, more so now than then, with the passing of those years. I open a volume at random, and in The Firste Booke Chap. XXVII, ‘Of Friendship’, I happen on this reply given by Montaigne whenever he was asked why he so loved Steven de la Boitie: Because it was he, because it was myselfe.