The Living and the Dead in Winsford

31

Rain is pelting against the bedroom window, and dawn is the colour of old meat. Castor is fast asleep down by my feet; I wish it were possible to teach a dog how to light a fire, so that I could for once get up without almost freezing to death. We have fallen asleep and then woken up for forty nights in Darne Lodge by this time, and I no longer wonder where I am when I open my eyes in the morning.

I live here with my dog. In a remote, stone-built cottage that was once built for a wayward son who needed a roof over his head. He enjoyed it so much that he eventually hanged himself. I lie in bed for a while, wondering exactly where. There are substantial roof beams both here in the bedroom and out there in the living room: perhaps he hung up there, swinging back and forth, from a beam directly over his bed? In which case the bed must have been located somewhere different from where it is now, which is not impossible. The room is quite large in fact, at least thirty square metres. It is the ridiculously low ceiling that makes it feel smaller: it strikes me that he must have used quite a short length of rope, otherwise his feet would have been touching the floor.

On the other hand, I think eventually. . on the other hand I’ve read about people hanging themselves from door handles and radiators. Nothing is impossible for a chap with an inventive turn of mind. And the fact that no more than two people have hanged themselves in this house in over two hundred years is a circumstance one ought to regard as something positive. Bearing in mind the moor. Bearing in mind the rain, the mists and the darkness.

I get up. Light a fire, sit down at the table and note down today’s weather details in my diary. Tuesday the eleventh of December. Six degrees at a quarter to nine in the morning. A strong wind from the south-west and rain looking as if it’s never going to stop falling.

A group of ponies suddenly appear some way away on the moor as the darkness begins to lift. They seem to have got stuck in the mud. I sit watching them for a while, but they don’t move at all. I go for a shower, then get dressed. My last-but-one pair of knickers — I really must go to Minehead today and do some washing. I lift the cover off Castor and explain the situation to him.

He gives an enormous yawn, and licks my ear. I remind him that I love him. I keep my fear under lock and key.

About ten hours later all the day’s chores have been completed, and I take out the brown suitcase. Maybe this will be the last time. In any case, I must work my way through the rest of the diary this evening. It’s no more than ten pages. I have no idea about the typewritten pages or what is on the computer.

The last I read about Taza was that final act from the twenty-ninth of July: Tom Herold was roaring like a wounded lion and Bessie Hyatt had thrown herself into the swimming pool.

I thumb my way through to the thirtieth.

‘It’s beginning to feel ominous,’ Martin writes.

I can’t help acknowledging that. This morning I discussed yesterday’s events with both Grass and Soblewski, and they are just as worried as I am. Moreover something new emerged which makes the situation even more tense. Soblewski has had a private conversation with Herold and been informed that the great poet is sterile. He’s incapable of creating children, which is why his first marriage collapsed. Which also means. .

He doesn’t go into what that means because it is obvious anyway. Herold is not the father of the child that is growing in his wife’s stomach, Bessie really does have a lover — or at least has had sex with another man. Martin doesn’t believe there is any truth in the suggestion that she was raped by the Arab Ahib, nor do Grass and Soblewski, it seems. It’s too much like a back-to-front Othello, and all three seem to recall noting several loans from that Shakespearean drama in yesterday’s performance.

Martin summarizes the conversation with Grass and Soblewski in one-and-a-half pages, then comes a blank line and the rest of the entry of the thirtieth of July is about what happens during that evening.

Which is not very much, it seems. There is none of yesterday’s drama. Herold and Hyatt act almost like a newly married couple: she sits on his knee for most of the meal, or at the very least extremely close to him, and they caress and kiss each other with a total lack of modesty. Martin writes that ‘they behave like a pair of turtle doves, it seems they just can’t wait to get undressed and crawl naked between the sheets together — I really don’t know what to think.’ The atmosphere seems to be infectious, for Martin notes that Doris Guttmann appears to have fallen for the ever-present Russian Gusov. The evening is characterized by an affectionate, not to say erotic mood, and they leave the table unusually early. Even the French couple seem to be besotted with each other, and the same trio as during the morning — Martin, Grass and Soblewski — are left alone at one corner of the table. They sit there for a while, drinking single malt whisky and chewing olives, evidently disappointed by the events of the evening. Needless to say Martin doesn’t write that he feels disappointed, but I can tell by the tone of what he puts that he is. In his final free-standing line he sums it all up:

‘Our senses never betray us, it is in our heads that we get lost. Always in our heads.’

I read that line over and over again, trying to understand precisely what he means. But I don’t reach a conclusion, apart from the thought that it might well be a quotation, and possibly that it smells of Scottish distilleries.

The following day, the thirty-first of July, is dominated by a visit to Al-Hafez. The Belgian artist Pieter Baertens has delivered a large oil-painting they have commissioned and Martin describes in detail how the canvas is unrolled, spread out, gaped at, admired and commented on. It depicts Salome with John the Baptist’s head on a dish, and is at least six square metres in size. Baertens is accompanied by his wife, ‘or mistress or whatever she is’: she is Japanese and it is obvious that she posed as Salome. By all accounts Baertens is quite a famous and successful artist, and Grass states in an aside for Martin’s benefit that a commissioned painting like this would certainly cost around 100,000 dollars.

But then Herold has never had a reputation for being poor. Needless to say they indulge in an especially extravagant dinner during the course of the evening — the anonymous servants really deserve their wages, ‘whatever they may be’ — and no serious incidents occur. As midnight approaches they all go skinny-dipping in the swimming pool, apart from Megal whose excuse is that he’s too old, and Bessie who is reluctant to display her widely discussed stomach.

This would have been an appropriate point at which to reflect on swollen stomachs: back home in Stockholm there is one in Folkungagatan — much larger than Bessie Hyatt’s, if I’m not much mistaken — but it doesn’t occur to Martin to make any such comparisons.

Instead he states that he simply went to bed with a mysterious hypnotist and an extremely pleasant Japanese lady in his mind’s eye. In his mind’s eye, note. .

One day left. Only four pages, thank goodness.

*

The first of August begins with the sentence: ‘I ought not to write about this.’ As I understand it, he is sitting in his room and doing just that. In which case it is about five o’clock in the morning, and hence the second of August in fact, and he is sitting there because he is waiting for dawn to break.

This is because at first light he will embark on a short walk into the desert-like countryside that begins immediately outside the walls surrounding Al-Hafez. He will do so along with the other five actors of the male sex. I’m the one who uses the word ‘actors’, not Martin, because at this stage the thought that the whole procedure is pure theatre seems very obvious. I read twice over everything that Martin writes about the day and the evening, to make sure that I haven’t misunderstood anything.

In broad outline, this is what happens. The Belgian artist Baertens takes his Japanese Salome with him and leaves the stage at some point in the afternoon. Martin allows himself an hour’s siesta in his room, and soon afterwards the usual group is sitting round the table on the terrace. Martin states that Bessie Hyatt ‘is having one of her dark days’. He describes her appearance as that of ‘a wounded hind’ and ‘a bird that has flown too close to the sun and burnt itself’. (I decide not to write any more ‘sic!’s, and continue.) She also leaves the party after less than an hour — and does come back again a little later, but only to say goodnight, and wish the men good luck.

At this point Martin doesn’t yet know why she is wishing them good luck — but later he remembers this and realizes that she must have been involved, or at least known what was going to happen. When the meal can reasonably be considered over and done with, Tom Herold explains that he expects the men present — as a gesture of appreciation and thanks for the hospitality that has been lavished upon them — to take part in a scientific experiment. He goes into no detail about what the experiment involves, nor what its purpose is — that will become obvious later. He assumes they will all trust him and behave like upright and civilized gentlemen. When they have all said that they are willing to accept these conditions — only Gusov tries to wriggle out of it for some reason or other, but is soon talked round — Herold produces three hookahs which they divide among themselves, two by two. Martin is sitting next to Soblewski. It is not clear from Martin’s text what the ladies present get up to while these preparations are taking place.

And so they light up a mixture of tobacco and something else. Martin tries to describe what happens inside his head, but isn’t quite up to it. In any case, he must have fallen asleep after a while because he writes that he wakes up at about two o’clock, still on the terrace but now, like the others, lying on the ground. Lanterns are still burning here and there, but the three ladies are no longer present. Tom Herold and Grass are awake, the others are just regaining consciousness. When they are all back in the land of the living they are offered water to drink. Martin writes that he feels more thirsty than he has ever done in his life before. When they have all drunk their fill of water and returned to their places around the table, Herold produces six revolvers from a black box on the table in front of him. He asks how many of the gentlemen present are familiar with guns. It seems that everybody is apart from Grass — Martin assumes that the others, like himself, have undergone some sort of basic military training. Without actually firing a shot, Herold demonstrates how a revolver functions. Martin notes that all six seem to be identical and are evidently of the same make. When everybody says they understand how the pistols work, Herold loads them, with six bullets in each revolving chamber. ‘Some of these bullets are live, the rest are blanks,’ he explains. ‘It’s not easy to distinguish between them, as they all sound equally loud. Unless we look into the effect they have had, of course.’

Martin repeats that last sentence, and underlines it in his text. Unless we look into the effect they have had, of course.

When the explanation and demonstration are completed, Tom Herold wonders if anybody has any questions.

Nobody does.

That really is what he writes. Nobody has any questions, and Martin doesn’t even comment on that fact. I assume that the brains of both him and the others are overfull of what they smoked, and what sent them to sleep.

‘Okay,’ says Tom Herold. ‘We shall go out into the desert at dawn. You will be collected from your rooms at exactly six o’clock.’

And that is where the diary from Taza ends.