Geoff Dyer - The Search

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.

He left the hotel early and, with the aid of the map, began to duplicate Malory’s route through the city, trying to pass through each place at the same time that Malory had done. As he did so he was conscious as never before of the number of people with cameras. In the course of the day he would be caught dozens of times in a tourist’s photo.

He saw the things Malory had seen: a cloud idling through the sky, ice-cream sellers, children, couples in T-shirts and slacks, people reading. He saw a pair of sunglasses lying crushed in the road, the darting shadows of birds, cigarette butts in the grass around the ancient walls. He noticed everything and everything he saw was like a memory. Nothing surprised him. What he saw dissolved instantly into memory as if some intermediate stage in the process of cognition had been skipped. He kept thinking of ways to articulate and understand what was happening but knew from experience that it was better just to let it happen, to let everything fall into place as it had to, without his understanding.

The day moved on, morning led to afternoon. He saw the sun congregate in piazzas, grit lying between cobbles; he saw the cool darkness of rooms where lives were going on. He drank a coffee in a bar whose walls were lined with photos of local football heroes. He stared at the brown flecks of foam in his cup. Crystals of spilt sugar. A rind of lemon in a glass. The twisted butts of cigarettes in an ashtray. A crumpled serviette. On the table next to him was an empty cup with a print of lipstick on the rim. Was it possible, he wondered, to reconstruct the identity of the woman who had been drinking from just that smudge of pink? Her life, the way she spent her days, the things she had seen, the men she had loved?

When he came out of the bar the light was turning lemon, preparing to fade. He continued following Malory’s route around the city, passing through a maze of narrow streets until he found himself in front of the cathedral. Clustered round the square, squat homes jostled for space, their needs dwarfed by the vastness of the cathedral’s spatial claim. Walker looked up at the twin towers rearing above him, his eyes dragged skyward. The cathedral leapt upwards, every part of it straining to be higher than every other part. Graceful, full of grace.

The sun slipped behind the other buildings of the town, leaving only the twin towers of the cathedral in sunlight. Walker pushed open the wooden door and walked in. The cathedral was empty, no people and no pews. Walker made his way up the nave, his footsteps disturbing a silence distilled over five hundred years, accentuated by the clamour of vaulting overhead. The air smelt stagnant and fresh, reminding him of the chapel in the country. Flowers blowing by the old walls, brown earth. Purple and yellow petals, moving in the wind.

He looked up at the stained-glass windows where imploring figures blazed with colour: a knight in blue-white armour, a woman clutching a golden cup in both hands as if simultaneously praying and offering it to him. He walked past waving candle flames, the tombs of dead knights.

In front of the altar was a lectern and a heavy Bible. He opened the Bible at the page indicated by a dark ribbon and found an envelope there, crushed flat by the weight of pages, his name written in ink. The sound of ripping paper reverberated around the cathedral as he tugged open the envelope. Inside, folded in three, were the documents Rachel had given to him, signed and fingerprinted. He flicked through the papers and looked inside the packet again, searching for a note of explanation. Nothing.

The whine of hinges made him turn around. Three figures, Carver in the middle, were silhouetted as sunlight squeaked in through the open door. Walker moved into the shadows of the choir. The door swung shut. The three figures made their way towards him.

Walker knew nothing about the layout of a cathedral: if there were other doors he had no idea where they might be. Instead of a door he found himself by the steps leading up to one of the cathedral’s twin towers. Glancing back at the figures moving methodically through the nave, he began climbing up the cold wide steps. The spiral of the stairs gradually tightened. He heard footsteps coming up behind him; he was being forced upwards, his options narrowing the higher he got.

As the footsteps drew closer he waited at a sharp twist in the stairs, his hand grasping the spine from which the stairs spiralled out. A man’s head — Walker recognized him from the roof at Ascension — bobbed into sight. A second later his peering eyes looked up as Walker’s foot smashed into his throat. He tumbled down the steps and Walker charged after him, catching him again full in the face as he scrambled to his knees. He grabbed Walker’s ankle and they both crashed down more steps. He had ended up on top of Walker. His knees were pressing down on his chest, fingers digging into his throat. Shifting his weight, Walker succeeded in toppling him over and down the steps. Walker scrambled to his feet, clutched the rope hand-rail and kicked at him again. The man covered his head and rolled further down the stairs so that it seemed they would go on and on like this with Walker dribbling him back to the floor of the cathedral. He lashed out at him again and this time he became wedged in the curve of the stairs and lay still.

He could hear more footsteps below. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily, unsure what to do, and then moved on up again. Blurs of purple and orange flashed before his eyes. He came to a small recess and a door which was locked shut by age. He kicked at it and the door tore loose from one of its hinges, the late sun blazing red through the gap. He kicked at the door again and it came completely free, a bird’s nest smashing apart as it crashed open, two eggs dropping through the air and smashing on the narrow ledge. He stooped through the door, surrounded by red-tinged sky, his feet slithering in shattered egg. He was on a narrow ledge that ran around the tower. A bird squawked and lunged at his head: the flap of filthy wings, the eye-jabbing beak. He swiped the bird away, thought of trying to move out around the ledge but realized it was pointless — they would guess exactly where he was. He moved back in and ran up a few more steps before crouching silently in the twist of the stairs.

Seconds later he heard someone go into the recess from which he had just emerged. He tried to imagine the man’s movements, pictured him looking at the sun-filled doorway, guessing that Walker had moved out on to the ledge but hesitating for one, two, three seconds before stepping out after him.

Walker, too, hesitated for crucial seconds and then stepped quietly down and back into the recess. There was no one there: he had moved out on to the ledge. Immediately, the figure appeared back in the doorway, black against the red sun. They saw each other at the same moment. Walker ran towards him. Crouching awkwardly, the silhouette braced himself and kicked out. A foot caught Walker on the side of the head but he shoved through the flailing arms and feet until they were both on the far side of the shattered door. He continued shoving at the figure who was pounding at him with one hand and grabbing on to the rusted hinge, trying to anchor himself, with the other. Walker wrenched a hand free and shoved him back towards the edge. He had lost his balance but was grabbing at Walker’s lapels, dragging him as he stumbled out on to the ledge. They were both about to go over. Walker pushed once more, shrugged his shoulders and pulled back so that his jacket came over his shoulders and off. His assailant stumbled back, one step, two, clutching the jacket as if a flapping bird were attacking him. The next second there was nothing there except the sun’s vacant redness.