Andrew Crumey - The Secret Knowledge

“I can’t explain it, Jessie. I wanted to tell Yvette but never had the chance. We went on the big wheel and were whirled up into the air, it was beautiful. I asked her to marry me. She said yes.”

“You must both have been so happy.” Jessie feels stiff within his grip.

“We came off and toured the fair, I was jubilant but at the same time doubtful, fearful. I had a great decision to make, a terrible choice. There was not one life that lay before me but many, a junction of possibilities, a test. There was something I had to do. I told Yvette to wait for me. It was only a small piece of business I had arranged with a friend, a task of a few minutes.”

“Could she not have come with you?”

“No, that was the test I put her to. A moment alone, then a lifetime together.”

“Did you tell her where you were going?”

“I said I’d explain afterwards. You see what a simple thing I asked of her, this woman who not long before had agreed to love me forever! Yet she refused.”

“It’s not polite to make a lady wait,” Jessie says.

“But this was about trust and faith. I gave her the key to my writing desk, something very precious and important to me, and insisted she stay holding it while I attended to my business.”

In Paris, thinks Jessie, everything is so different; the people are like costumed actors on a stage, yet more real than anything here in Kenzie. She can see the drama of the key, can almost feel its metal as though it were she who was made to wait. Yes, she thinks, if I truly loved a man then I would wait for him not minutes, but years, an eternity.

“So I left her standing there, I remember the place so well, near a tent where an acrobat was performing. I went, and after only a short time the task was finished.”

“What exactly was this business of yours?”

“I told you, Jessie, it was a test, nothing more.”

“You mean you only wanted Yvette to wait? What about the mission you mentioned?”

“This was my mission, right there in the park. A new world, transformed and radiant, made pure by love and faith. I prayed, Jessie. I went to a place near the boating pond and prayed. I asked myself, what is this life? What is the future? What is our place in the universe? And it was like an earthquake in my heart. Out of so many paths, I chose the one I knew must already have been chosen for me, there could be no other, I had only to take it and see what it was like. I hurried back, ran so fast that people stared, wondering if I was mad, I expect a few thought I must be chasing a thief or was being pursued by one. I reached the spot — and she was gone. I couldn’t believe it, I called out for her, and then to the gods who’d tricked me, I dropped to my knees and clawed the grass, searching for what I knew I must eventually find. And there it was, gleaming in the sunshine, the little key.”

He falls silent and Jessie feels the grave-like stillness of the moonlit night, the desolation of solitude. Her dull and dirty town is reborn, crystalline, hard yet fragile as the ice in her blood. “If you wish, you may kiss me now.”

His lips burn against hers. This was what Yvette refused to wait for, this new life of faith he discovered in himself, this animal breath and bitter tang of tobacco, this rub of stubble and rising excitement — his fingers searching for her.

“Stop.” She pulls away.

“Forgive me.”

“It’s not your fault, only we don’t do that here.” There is a void of cold air between them. She wants him to hold her hand but is unable to reach for his. “Did you ever see her again?”

“Her message was clear. I never wrote or contacted her. My old life was finished and I had to begin a new one. So I came to Britain, then the war started.”

“John told me you were interned. How sad you must have felt in prison, how desperately lonely. I imagine you thought of her every day.”

“I decided not to.”

“Was it really so easy?”

“No, but it was possible. I knew that whatever I did must be right, somehow. Even if it didn’t appear that way at the time. Jessie, I want to kiss you again, properly.”

“Not now.”

“You make me so glad I lost Yvette.”

She can’t tell if it’s blushes or tears she feels rushing to her face. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“But it’s true. You’re a sweet and beautiful girl.” He reaches for her hand and she cradles his fingers on her lap.

“I would have waited.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“The way you told me about Yvette, and what you said at the meeting — you’re so honest and open. You truly believe in people, that’s what I feel. You believe in them because you believe in yourself. But you can get hurt that way, like with Yvette, aren’t you worried it might happen again? With the workers’ campaign, for instance. You could get into trouble for what you said.”

“I don’t care.”

“Even if you finished up back in gaol?”

“That can’t happen.”

“The man you mentioned in your speech, the rebel, he spent most of his life in prison. You surely don’t want that.”

“Blanqui never feared the consequences of adhering to his principles, I admire that.”

“He hardly saw his wife and son, how must it have been for them?”

“You’re right, it might have been kinder had he never married.” He looks back along the path as if expecting to see someone, but it remains quiet. “The meeting will soon be over.”

“We should return.”

“Or we could walk a little further. I could even take you home.”

“John will be wondering where we are. Let’s go as far as the monument, then turn back.”

They walk hand in hand, Jessie’s fingers immobile and stiffening. Soon they reach the granite obelisk that is like a polished tomb; Pierre tries to see its inscription in the weak light. “I’ve passed this before but I’ve never read what’s on it.”

Jessie knows and can decipher it for him. “ On 31st December 1860, during severe flooding, James Deuchar, 20, a divinity student at Glasgow University, leapt into the river near this spot in an attempt to rescue George Laidlaw, 5, and Mary Laidlaw, 7, who had fallen in. Having saved the younger child, Mr Deuchar returned to search for the girl, who was washed up alive further downstream. Mr Deuchar, however, perished in his noble endeavour. This monument to his heroism was erected by public subscription, 3rd January 1863.”

“Nearly sixty years ago,” Pierre calculates.

“He could still have been alive, an old man now.”

“Better that he died doing good. Think of all those men buried beneath the battlefields without even a wooden cross to mark them. History has become a factory, its heroes no longer have names.”

“Would you like your name to go down in history, Pierre?”

“That’s a foolish ambition and if Deuchar had thought that way he would never have jumped in. He cared only about saving life, even if it meant losing his own. As I said in my speech, Jessie, it’s what capitalism can never explain nor comprehend. The industrialists made no sacrifice in the war, only profit, through making others sacrifice themselves.”

Jessie is shivering. “Let’s return.”

They walk with hands pushed inside their pockets. He tells her, “After the Paris Commune fell, when Blanqui had been in solitary confinement so long he could barely speak, he wrote a remarkable book. It says the same arrangements of atoms must come up again and again throughout space, in every possible variation. There must be a planet with another you, another me.”

“He was a romantic after all,” says Jessie.

“On one of them right now I’m making the speech in the meeting hall. On another I’m…”