The Search

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nemesis was a medieval town built on two low hills, dominated by a vast cathedral and, for five months of the year at least, by tourists who swarmed all over it. It was the last day of August when Walker arrived and all the hotels and pensions were full. After a morning’s trudging he found, at an inflated price, a room in a hotel high up on one of the hills overlooking the cathedral and the red-tiled roofs crowding around it.

Walking through the city he became certain that the search would end here. Maybe the trail didn’t stop here but he lacked the will to pursue it any further. In the past he had always found something that urged him forward — or at least he had had a strong impulse to move on. Relying on the same logic — on the same lack of logic — that had brought him here, the fact that he had no urge to go any further meant that the trail ended here, in Nemesis. There had been times when he had longed for the search to be over with but now, faced with this becoming a reality, he was aware, sadly, of the sense of purpose it lent to everything. A bee hovering over the petals of a flower, trees twisting in a gale, water dripping from a faucet. . Overlooked in the normal routine of his life, the search filled such details with possibility. In Despond he had almost given up and in other places he had been unsure where to go next but this was different: this time there was nowhere else to go. He had followed a trail by inventing it and now there was nothing else to follow, nothing left to invent. There was no more to discover — or what remained to be discovered would be discovered here.

He was sitting on a curved metal bench in a busy piazza: his second day in the city. He scrawled ‘Imbria’ on the back of the postcard he had found there and addressed it to Rachel. Picturing himself arriving back and seeing the card again made Walker think of what she had told him the night they had first met: dreaming of a garden where you pick a rose, waking to find your bed strewn with petals.

Seeing Walker seal the envelope a small boy offered to post it for him. Walker handed over a few coins and the boy ran to the other side of the piazza. Through the pigeon-scattering crowd Walker saw him stand on tiptoe and slot the card into a yellow letter-box.

The man who had been sitting at the other end of the bench, meanwhile, hauled himself to his feet and left. Lodged between the metal slats where he had been sitting Walker noticed a leaflet which he picked up and read, vacantly, in the way you read nutritional information or special offers on the sides of cereal packets. It was a letter, written by a local film-maker named Marek. He was making a film of the city and the people who visited it, the letter explained. It would be a new kind of film, made up entirely of photographs, snaps, videos and Super 8 films taken by residents or tourists who were in the city on 9 April. He would then combine the diverse material into ‘a narrative montage of the city’. The success of the enterprise depended largely on the co-operation of the people themselves and he asked any visitors to send copies of the snaps or films they took that day in Nemesis. Obviously he would reinburse them for the cost of the developing. This had been made possible by the generous sponsorship of. . Walker skimmed the list of participating film-manufacturers and moved on to the bottom of the letter where he had set out the titles of his previous films, a few laudatory quotes from the press and the address to send material to.

Walker looked at the date: 9 April, The ninth of the fourth. He had assumed that the date in the book in Imbria had meant 4 September, the fourth of the ninth, three days from now; but if the dates had been set down American-style with the month preceding the day, then the date in the book was the day on which the film was being compiled.

He hurried to a pay-phone, half expecting it to ring, like a dog warning him not to approach, and dialled Marek’s number. Engaged. He waited a minute and dialled again. This time the phone was answered almost immediately, by the film-maker himself. Walker explained that he was a journalist interested in Marek’s work and wondered if it would be possible to do an interview. When there was silence on the other end Walker reeled off a list of the publications he wrote for, mentioned a book he was writing. Marek sounded sceptical but he agreed to meet with Walker ‘for a quick chat’.

‘When would be a good time?’ said Walker.

‘Would it be possible to come today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you come soon?’

‘That would be fine.’

‘In about one hour?’

‘Perfect.’

Walker replaced the receiver and caught a taxi. He was full of anticipation and paid no attention to his surroundings until the cab dropped him near the docks in the warehouse district. He found the right building and jabbed the bell. The intercom cleared its throat and Marek told him to come up.

The studio was a large loft space, screened off into separate areas. Marek came to meet him and they shook hands. He was shorter than Walker, wearing an old sweater and jeans. Espresso stubble, dark eyes ringed by insomnia circles. Walker formed an impression of a man who returns from dinner at midnight, makes himself coffee and settles down to work until dawn.

They waited for the coffee to drip and then walked to the back of the studio, to what Marek called his office. It was partitioned off from the rest of the studio and contained a desk, table, telephone, two chairs, graphics instruments. Walker set up his dictaphone on the edge of the desk and asked Marek about his films. He had no interest, apparently, in talking about his past films but, to Walker’s relief, was eager to answer questions about the new film, the city montage.

‘We printed five thousand leaflets — you’ve seen the leaflets, yes? — in five different languages. So, twenty-five thousand leaflets. We left them in bars and restaurants, galleries. Then, from dawn of the ninth we handed them out in the main tourist parts of the city.’

As Marek talked he reached up to a shelf behind him and took down a snow-storm of the city’s cathedral. He shook it up and let the snow swirl around the model’s twin towers.

‘We had no idea what the response was going to be. At best we expected to get, I don’t know, maybe two thousand replies. There were so many things that could go wrong. You know, people just chuck it away without reading it, others read it and aren’t interested. People intend doing it but lose the leaflet or the address or just don’t get round to doing it when they get home. Or they see their photos and think nobody could be interested in these. It all hinged on this initial response but for a week there was nothing. Then a few things from local people but after three weeks it looked like it hadn’t worked.’

The snow had settled, the cathedral was plainly visible. Marek picked it up again, shook it and placed it on the table. Walker kept glancing at the silent swirl of flakes.

‘Then it started pouring in. Stuff was arriving from all over the place, Germany, Greece, Japan, Australia. Photos were still coming in up until a month ago — by now it’s just about dried up. Then the real work had to begin. The response was almost too good. The amount of material we had to get through was so daunting. And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of months.’

‘So what form is it taking?’ asked Walker, nodding like a journalist.

‘First we needed to arrange everything in chronological order. That’s actually much easier than you think. The individual snaps on a film are all in order and then there are other indications — shadows, light. Sometimes there’s even a clock. We’ve taken copies and now have everything broken down into quarters of an hour. At the same time we’ve been filing everything by place, all the shots at Piazza San Pietro, for example. That way it can all be cross-referenced. It will make the assembling easier later on but, you know, it’s taken a lot of time and it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees.’

‘You have no idea of the form it might take?’

‘Some kind of form will emerge but with a mass of material like this that doesn’t happen until you start nudging it a bit. Besides, there are all sorts of technical problems. How to integrate the snaps and the moving footage, how to get a kind of narrative.’

Marek waited for the next question; they both looked over at the snow-storm which had almost settled.

‘I wonder,’ said Walker, shifting in his seat. ‘Perhaps it would be possible to follow an individual through the day. I mean, the person featured in one picture would crop up in the corner of another, and a third and a fourth. It might be possible to track someone’s movements through the day.’

‘That’s something I hadn’t thought of,’ said Marek. ‘But it might be possible, yes.’ Walker could see that the idea instantly attracted Marek. He was silent and Walker sensed that he was already working through the inherent possibilities and difficulties of such a project. He picked up the snow-storm and turned it over in his hands, looked at Walker. The dictaphone continued running, measuring the silence between the two men.

‘Maybe you had this idea before you came to speak to me,’ said Marek finally.

‘Not exactly.’

‘But you are more interested in this idea than you are in. . What was the name of the book you are writing?’

Walker smiled, ‘I am looking for a man named Malory. I believe he was in the city on 9 April, on the day of your filming.’

‘That is a coincidence.’

‘The more I think about that word the less sure I am of what it means. I sometimes think it means the opposite of what it’s meant to,’ said Walker.

‘The inevitability of coincidence,’ said Marek and waited for Walker to continue.

‘I wonder if it would be possible to find this man in your film, to discover what his movements were.’

‘It would certainly lend an element of suspense to the film.’

‘Yes.’

‘And what is your interest in this man?’

‘That is hard to explain.’

‘Has he committed some crime?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘He is not wanted by the police?’

‘Possibly. No.’

‘And you are not with the police?’

‘No.’

‘A finder?’

‘No.’

‘Tracker?’

‘No.’

‘So what are you?’

Walker shrugged.

‘And you have a photo of this man?’ Marek asked.

‘Yes.’

‘May I see it?’ Walker pulled the photo out of his wallet, unfolded it and passed it over.

‘Do you have any idea of what time he was at a particular place? Otherwise it is difficult to know where to start.’

Walker shook his head.

‘It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ said Marek.

‘Well, maybe not as simple as that,’ said Walker.

They started their search that afternoon. Reasoning that Malory must almost certainly have passed through the Piazza de Repubblica, the main square, they went through that pile, one of the biggest, first. On the assumption that he hadn’t posed for any snaps they discounted the people featured in the photographs and concentrated on figures in the margins, people who had strayed unintentionally into the picture-frame.

It was painstaking, frustrating work and by two in the morning their early enthusiasm had been overwhelmed by the drudgery of unrewarded labour. They still had two-thirds of the pile to go through but decided to call a halt and resume in the morning. Marek searched around the studio for a camp bed and then they sat by the desk drinking beer. They were bleary-eyed, half-stupid with looking, so addicted to the task that, even as they spoke, they continued to pick up odd snaps, glancing at them. Walker drained the final drops from his can, picked up one last snap — and there was Malory. The picture showed a Japanese girl smiling at the camera, a handbag over one shoulder. In the foreground the photographer’s shadow groped towards her. To her right a couple were sat on some steps, eating, and to her left, walking towards the camera, was Malory. Walker reached for the magnifier and immediately Malory’s face, blurred and grainy, loomed into view.

‘I’ve found him.’

Marek came round the desk and looked over Walker’s shoulder. ‘You’re sure it’s him?’

‘Take a look.’ Marek looked from the magnifier to the original and back again.

‘We’re in business,’ he said and cracked open a bottle of vile-tasting spirits to celebrate. Grimacing, they took a shot each.

Within ten minutes of waking they were back in the office, swallowing dark coffee, munching croissants.

‘OK. Now this is where the months of cross-referencing pay off,’ said Marek. ‘The first thing we do is find a copy of this photo in the sequential piles.’ Walker followed him out of the office and into the studio where trays of pictures were stacked up against the walls. Marek pulled out a couple of trays until he found a copy of the photo. ‘OK, so it was taken at about quarter to eleven. Good. Now we can try to guess where he’s going and look at the relevant stuff — but if he doesn’t crop up there we can resort to the sequential piles, look at every picture from eleven o’clock onwards.’

Marek moved along the rows of photos and pulled out four bulging trays. ‘OK, he’s walking towards Via Pisano. Let’s assume he continues down there, so the next place to look for him is probably the Piazza Venezia.’

Marek’s hunch was right. Within an hour they had found Malory again, blurred, recognizable only by his clothes, on the edge of a snap of a boy feeding pigeons. From there Marek reckoned he would have headed down towards Via Salavia. Finding no trace of him there they resorted to the sequentially arranged piles and found him, at 12.15, on the corner of two small streets.

So it went on and by mid-afternoon they had built up a stack of photographs. Walker was amazed how often he had strayed accidentally into the camera’s gaze. The camera was a god, nothing escaped it.

They continued to track Malory’s progress through the city. Marek pinned up a street map and marked out the route Malory had taken with approximate times. They came across him on the edge of a carefully composed shot of the Piazza San Pietro. After Repubblica this was the busiest and most intensely photographed spot in the city and two more photos followed his track from the north-west to the south-east of the piazza. Next he could be seen in the perfectly focused middle distance of a snap showing a hopelessly blurred young couple. This was followed by a sequence of video footage which, in the process of tracking across a piazza, showed him walking down an alley connecting Via Romana to Via Del Corso — where he was duly picked up in the margins of a shot of a statue of Garibaldi framed by a heavily polarized sky. In a photo of a girl in a white dress, stooping down to examine the sandals and belts being sold by patient Africans, Malory was seen walking towards the edge of the frame. In Via San Marco he was snapped inadvertently stepping between the photographer and his intended subject. For a moment he could be glimpsed in a sequence of Super 8, shot on the move as the cameraman walked through a crowd of people.

Then he disappeared for almost an hour. When they picked up his trail again he was in a wide-angle shot of the cathedral steps.

‘What time was it taken?’ asked Walker.

‘Early evening. Look at the shadows. It’s one of the last photographs before the light went. Soon after it got dark there was an incredible thunderstorm.’

This was the last photo of Malory they found. Looking through the remaining photos took little time: only specialist or exceptionally careless photographers continued snapping into the fading light of evening. By nine o’clock there were only a few photos showing the cathedral illuminated by green spotlights or streets filled with the volcanic ghosts of red and yellow car lights.

Walker took copies of the photos and map. Back in his hotel he spread them out on the floor. He levered open a beer, took a swig from the bottle and poured it into a glass. He sat on the bed, drinking, staring at the pictures on the floor. Always his attention was drawn to the photo of Malory on the cathedral steps. Marek had blown up the portion showing Malory walking into a full-length 8 x 10. The fact that it was the last photo of Malory lent it an automatic fascination but there was something elusively familiar about it too. Walker glanced back at the other photos, rummaged through them until he came to the first picture of Malory he had seen, the one cabled through to him at Kingston. It showed just his head, looking off to the right. Placed next to each other the two pictures were strikingly similar. Blocking off everything but the head and shoulders of the cathedral snap, he saw that it was a mirror image of the original photo. Successive enlargements had rendered details as coloured smears in one and grey smudges in the other, but these background blurs coincided. Both pictures had been printed — one the right way, the other the wrong way — from the same negative.

Walker stared at the images, not attempting to fathom the consequences or meaning of this discovery. He picked up the dictaphone and tossed it on to the pillow. Poured another beer and drank it carefully, noticing the taste of each sip, the way the cold glass felt in his hand, the beads of moisture on the bottle.

It had started raining. The blinds rattled in the breeze. On the writing desk was a phone that looked like it had never rung. He lay back on the bed and pressed the Record button of the dictaphone, heard its slow whirring. The faint murmur of traffic outside. The cathedral bells chiming damply through the rain. He tried not to think of anything, only the details of the room: bedspread, wallpaper, wire hangers in the empty wardrobe, sachets of coffee and sugar on the dresser.

He went into the bathroom where blue towels hung on a rail. He stood under the shower and got out only when the water began running cold. He dried himself and climbed between the cold, starched sheets. On the bedside table was a clock showing the time in thin green numbers, a lamp which he flicked off and on and off.