The Secret Knowledge

Chapter Seven

Conroy sits alone in the darkness of his rented flat, place where no one can find him, view through the uncurtained window of purple night clouds scummed with streetlight orange. In a world gone mad he’s the only one who can see the truth. They made Laura disappear, now it’s Conroy himself who must surely be next. Eliminate all witnesses, erase the evidence, already he can feel the breeze of annihilation airbrushing him out of history. That’s why he’s hiding, covering his tracks, making himself a non-person before those bastards can do it to him. If oblivion’s the only option it’ll be on his terms, not theirs.

Art and death: two lines of escape. And another, disappearance. The landlord wanted references, bank details. Conroy gave a false name and a wad of cash and that was sufficient, he’s been here a week and no one has knocked on his door. A telephone squats in a corner on the grubby carpet, Conroy doesn’t know if it’s connected and doesn’t plan on using it. His mobile went in a bin, his laptop is in the house he left.

Conroy refills his whisky glass, the bottle’s nearly empty. The portable TV is perched muted on a cardboard box he hasn’t bothered to unpack, he can see the start of a science documentary, that physicist who used to be a pop star or something, kind everyone can relate to. He’s standing on a mountain side waving his arms, Conroy thinks of turning the sound up but the remote is further away than the Glenfiddich. He couldn’t bring a piano here, not even the upright, enforced musical celibacy is driving him nuts. This is what it’s like, life without art. Wake up, do stuff, watch TV, go to sleep, start over next morning and you’re no different except a day older.

Silent images of scientific authority: that big machine where they smash atoms. The space telescope. An urge to play but no instrument, his final greatest loss, and like all the others self-inflicted. He drove away his lover and his public, his recording label and his students, denied himself everything that was most precious, like he planned to screw up right from the start, planned his own destruction. Like Klauer. The dark demonic rhythm in his skull is the first movement of The Secret Knowledge, he hears its strident chords, feels left-hand leaps he’ll never show to anyone. The performer needs an audience, take that away and it’s God or nothing. Music is truth, the world prefers illusion.

The programme note still writes itself inside his head, critical commentary on an event that will never happen. There is no “secret knowledge”, that surely is the implicit message of a work determined, like the man who made it, to shock. Striking is its quality of montage, the disconnectedness of components sequentially juxtaposed without evident logic. Like getting back from a concert tour and finding your partner has been unexisted. That sudden theme in G sharp minor: where else is it to be found, in the remaining composition or entire universe? Its singularity is guarantor of significance and critical death sentence. When complicity is the only possible success, failure becomes imperative. What Conroy’s telling himself is that the sole available outcome of all this is disaster.

He needs to look up some references but hasn’t brought his books; he tries to recall what Adorno said about the commodification of music. Mass culture replaces critical appreciation with mere recognition: to hear anything often enough is equivalent to liking it. We become nicotine addicts conditioned to think that what we crave is what we genuinely need and desire, the vocabulary of taste reduced to saying that a tune has a good beat. What the artist and philosopher have in common is their apprehension of a future existing unacknowledged within the present. Klauer could foresee the urban masses for whom the iPod would offer essential diversion.

He stretches for the remote and raises the sound, bringing the physicist’s chummy northern vowels into audible focus. Hundreds of millions of light years, and us a single tiny speck. Computer graphics colourfully erupt, dazzling as a stained-glass window. It dawns on Conroy he’s like the average person in one of his own concerts, nagged by desire for self-improvement but motivated more by hunger for distraction. When the TV physicist was a kid he must have been doing equations and reading textbooks same as Conroy was practising scales, not for fun but out of a rare unnameable compulsion that amounted to belief in the future.

Instead of a single universe there’s a multiverse.

And then the phone rings. Takes a moment to recognise the sound that’s startled him, insipid peeping from the corner with a dodgy stain where something maybe had a crap once, goes and lifts the receiver, plastic’s an unnameable colour between beige and yellow, sticky in his stooping grip. Holds the dirty thing to his ear and waits, says nothing, expects a voice but there’s only the sound of empty wires and lonely nights, some jerk like him hoping it’s a woman at the other end, though against his own TV’s low mumble Conroy can’t even hear breathing, a void without background.

An infinite number of possible worlds and alternative realities.

The caller’s holding, this is almost entertaining, Conroy walks back across the room, dragging the phone unit that dangles from the end of the handset cable like a wounded animal, lifts the remote from the chair arm and kills the volume, lets his attention fall fully on the absence at his ear, the black hole of non-being. A tease he won’t give in to, the crackle of static is a symphony, a constellation of diamonds on a velvet cushion of silence, he rests his head against the softness of endless stars. The line goes dead.

They’ve got his number. He needs to move on, find another safe house, though he’s so tired he wonders if it might be better to surrender. Slumped in the armchair once more he gazes at the television, prefers it without sound. Closes his eyes and when he opens them can’t tell if he’s seeing the programme or an advertisement, whatever it is he won’t buy it. Closes again then suddenly it’s morning, the sky white as bird-shit, mouth like sandpaper, limbs stiff and his head aching.

Later he’s in the park, sitting on a bench spilling milk from a carton on his chin and overcoat while cold sunshine burns his eyes. He’s thinking about Paige, whether to send the score like she asked.

“Hello, David.”

Startled, Conroy turns to see beside him a haircut and zippered jacket he recognises. It’s the police inspector.

“What do you want? Put another bug on me?”

“Those students, the ones your neighbour saw.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Give me their names.”

He has to protect Paige. “I never saw them.”

“They were at your house. And you’ve been making abusive phone calls.”

“I don’t live there any more.”

“Wishing our soldiers dead. Inciting violence. We have to think of public safety, national security.”

“I’ll give you any help you want as long as you tell me where Laura is.”

“This was never about her.”

Conroy drains the last of the milk and wipes his lip. “I’ve been trying to remember the assignment she was on.”

“Let’s stick to the point.”

“Some big corporation.”

“How many others were involved?”

“New technology. Does something to your brain.”

“They posted those messages from your computer. You do realise you could go to prison for this, David? Unless you decide to co-operate.”

The reality is startling; Conroy looks at the inspector’s profile beside him and sees a man confident of his own power, a man like a particle accelerator. “What messages?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. I’ll give you time to think about it, but not long.”

“Why not arrest me now?”

“Give us what we want and I’ll make sure you get the help you need.” The inspector stands. “Do the right thing.” He walks away.

Conroy places the empty milk carton on the bench beside him, reaches into his pocket and searches until his fingertips find what he expects, the device that he pulls out, gleaming in the sunshine. He hurls it away across the grass and it makes his head feel clearer, there’d been a buzzing before but no longer, he can hear birdsong. In the distance, near some trees, a man stands watching him.

He doesn’t know anything about those messages but needs to find out, he leaves the park swiftly, trying to lose the guy who’s tailing him, though as he nears the library he sees him again, a figure on the opposite street corner facing the other way in a poor attempt at concealment. Inside the library Conroy finds a row of unused computers, he’s never been before and expects to be able to log on freely but when he sits down at one of the screens he finds it prompting him to enter a number. Types a few random sequences but nothing works, then a woman with a false name badge interferes, says he can have temporary access if he shows proof of identity. He leaves immediately.

Outside there are closed-circuit cameras disguised as lighting fixtures. If our every movement is monitored and recorded then how can there possibly be time for anyone to watch it all? The accumulated information is greater than life itself, a paradox that follows him to the high street and an electronics store where he jabs at the keyboard of a display laptop and is again required to enter a password which a looming gangly assistant quickly supplies, leaning past Conroy to type, his nylon shirt exuding cheap deodorant. The assistant wants to know what sort of machine Conroy is looking for, whether it’s for gaming or general surfing, for individual or family use, wants to know everything except who Conroy is, so Conroy says he’d like to try the internet for a few minutes and is left alone to play.

Only way the policeman could have connected those seditious messages with Conroy was if his name was on them. So he searches for himself, just like he did with Laura, and the result is the same. He isn’t there. A thousand near-matches, namesakes from all around the world: dentists, lawyers, accountants advertising their existence and expertise, but the pianist is gone, wiped like his lover. Conroy hurriedly extinguishes the page as the assistant returns, tells him he’ll think about it, but what he’s really considering is his own non-being, the impossibility of proving innocence when all evidence of supposed guilt has been removed.

He returns to his flat, only a matter of time before they come for him there. Climbing the bare common staircase that smells of piss and cider he reaches his front door, dented by pursuers of a former resident. The lock feels loose when he turns the key, as though someone might have tampered with it. Stepping inside he immediately senses another presence, and in the living room he finds it. On the battered sofa sits an elderly lady.

“Hello, dear,” she says.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“My Pixie can’t keep herself out of mischief, always roaming about.”

“Your cat?” Conroy drops onto the armchair and looks at the genial silver-haired woman in her pale blue cardigan and large-beaded necklace. “How did you get in?”

She smiles. “You left the door wide open, I suppose Pixie came to inspect.”

What’s he supposed to do, offer her tea? “Where’s Pixie now?”

“Gone back upstairs, I expect,” the lady says unconcernedly, then from the pocket of her cardigan she takes a pack of playing cards, larger than normal so that at first he doesn’t recognise what they are. She fans and holds them out in her tremorous hand. “Take one.”

“What the hell is this?”

“Go on.”

He does as she says, slides out a card and looks at it. The picture is like an old woodcut, hand-coloured, with the word Pyramide printed elegantly beneath a picture of an Egyptian monument.

“Show me what you picked.”

He turns it towards her. “Are you going to tell my fortune?”

“It signifies wisdom.”

“Who are you? This is about those students, isn’t it?”

“Ancient knowledge, a great secret.” She holds out the pack again so that he can choose another card. It shows a naked man and woman, Adam and Eve, with the inscription Jardin.

“A couple, a meeting,” the lady explains. “Perhaps a fall.”

Next he must take two cards, he consents with increasing bemusement but that changes instantly when he sees what they are. A pair of figures in mediaeval costume; one a stonemason, the other a glass-blower. The titles are Pierre and Verrier.

“Who put you up to this?”

“Stone denotes strength and fortitude, glass stands for great prospects or an auspicious discovery.”

“Where did you get these cards?”

“I suppose I should go and see what Pixie’s up to now…”

“How do you know about the secret knowledge?”

“Oh, I don’t know any more about it than you do, dear.”

She passes him the rest of the pack and Conroy begins to look through the cards. From their condition they seem recently made though the style of illustration is archaic; he supposes them to be a sort of tarot deck. One card shows a simple leather shoe and is called Oeillet, another that attracts Conroy’s attention has a rose bush in full bloom; he gazes at the blood-coloured flowers and a memory stirs in his mind.

“Rosier.”

“Usually it means faith and purity.”

“The people Laura was investigating.”

“I’d really better go and see what that little rascal of mine’s up to, would you like to keep the cards a while longer?”

Conroy nods silently, dumbstruck by revelation, while the lady tries to raise herself from the sagging sofa, making the effort several times until Conroy notices and reaches to help lift her, then she totters away, muttering to herself about the cat. Conroy hears the front door close and stares at the cards piled in his hand. The Rosier Corporation, that was what Laura called it. He needs to find out more but if he leaves again he’s sure to be spotted by the man who’s been following him, too risky even going to the window to check. So Conroy waits, immobile like an insect beneath a stone, watching the slow change of daylight and feeling the empty hours push shadows slowly across the walls of the room.

Must have fallen asleep because now it’s dark, his body wooden like the old lady’s, wrecked and invisible. The cards are gone, they aren’t in his hand or lap or on the floor at his feet, as if she came back for them. He strains upright, sways with sleep still clinging to him, the sky outside livid again with night colour, purple and orange. He goes and looks down from the window and no one’s there, they’ve given up. Safe to go out and find food.

Half an hour later he’s walking in drizzle eating chips by the handful, throws the half-full container in a skip. Two women are having a drunken argument in front of a kebab shop, it stands next to the pallid glow of a place calling itself an internet café, white-walled room where a couple of foreign-looking youths sit staring at screens as a refuge from boredom. Conroy goes inside, buys a coffee from the machine, takes a seat and pays the access fee. The police can easily find him here but he doesn’t care.

“Hey, darling.” It’s one of the women, standing unsteadily in the doorway and leaning on its frame for support, tits palely bulging like old lard. His stare unnerves her, a reminder of the state they’ve both let themselves fall into, though it doesn’t sink in at first, instead she simply looks puzzled. Conroy imagines the scene if she was beautiful and sober, he anything but a loser, imagines it so clearly that he feels transfigured, wants to tell her about his secret mission, take her on the run with him. Instead he stares until she sneers back at him, “Fuck off,” and waddles out of sight.

He wants to find out more about Rosier, begins typing but is soon interrupted.

“David?”

Must have been standing silently behind Conroy for some time. Dark jacket and tie, shirt a deep shade of burgundy, immaculately trimmed hair, olive skin. A neat, theatrical appearance like a stage hypnotist.

“You’ve been following me.”

No one else in the internet café, the two slouching youths have left while Conroy was staring at the screen. There’s only himself and the guy.

“Who are you?”

“Call me H.”

“Are you with the police? The Corporation?”

H says nothing, draws up a chair, the only sound the whirring of computer fans and a distant siren outside.

“You’ve come to erase me, same as you did to Laura.”

“You shouldn’t have stopped taking your medication.”

“That’s not how this started.”

H nods thoughtfully. “Who can say where anything begins or ends?” He reaches into his jacket pocket, brings out a fine silver chain, holds one end and lets it hang for Conroy’s inspection.

“Laura’s.”

“Something I found.” H twirls it in his fingers. “Where’s the first link? Top, bottom, somewhere in the middle? Is what happens today caused by whatever occurred yesterday; or might events be explained by something still to come? You’re a musician, you understand how everything leads to a final chord, a cadence, perhaps a resolution.”

Conroy looks round towards the door and sees only darkness and emptiness beyond, as if the city itself has been obliterated. “You’re not real. None of this is real.”

“For example, think of some of your favourite piano compositions. Where does Kreisleriana end? Not the final note, that’s for certain, it’s still playing inside your head. Or the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata? Beethoven finished the whole thing and sent it to the publisher, then at the very last moment he decided to add a single bar at the opening of the slow movement. We hear it in the middle when really it’s the conclusion — or beginning.”

“What happened to Laura?”

“She never existed.”

“Then why do I remember?”

“Mistakes happen.” H smiles, crumples the thin chain in his fist and returns it to his pocket. “What if Beethoven’s letter hadn’t arrived at the publisher’s in time, and the extra bar wasn’t added? Would anyone notice? If things had gone a little differently, might we now rate Spohr over Schubert, or Hummel over Mendelssohn? If history could be altered…”

“It can’t.”

“Think of any piece you play: a fixed score, yet every performance is unique. Physical reality is like the score, existing outside of time. History is performance.” H reaches again into his pocket and brings out something else that Conroy recognises.

“The old lady’s cards. You broke in and took them.”

H shuffles the deck without comment, then fans them, just as the lady did, and holds them out, face-down, for Conroy to make his selection.

“Why should I play this game, you’ve already made the choice for me.”

H appears amused, even pleased. “A performer knows all about the tricks of persuasion. Yes, the game was rigged, you were always meant to lose, but go on, take a card, see what you get.”

Conroy places his finger on one then immediately changes his mind and touches another.

“Are you sure?” H asks.

Conroy opts for a third, pulls the card from the man’s grip and turns it to see the picture. A corpse dangling in a gibbet. “Suicide,” he murmurs, reading the legend.

“What Klauer did and didn’t do. The thing every artist yearns for.”

“Death?”

H shakes his head. “Immortality. Forever sacrificing yourself, yet surviving.”

“This was always about Klauer.”

“It’s about what he stole.”