Andrew Crumey: The Secret Knowledge

“Yes, I know that.” Her mind focuses on that comforting word: always.

“I’ve begun writing a symphony.”

“How wonderful!” It means nothing to her except a sudden vision of being seated in a grand concert hall wearing an exquisite dress bought specially for the occasion, diamonds glittering on her skin. She sees herself bathed in the admiration of the elite.

“Of course it might never be heard,” Pierre adds. “It’s a private commission.”

“From one of your new friends?”

“Never mind.” He takes her hand and leads her away from the tent with a sudden light-hearted swiftness in his step that makes her giddy with relief. “Let’s laugh and enjoy ourselves, Yvette. Let’s celebrate the future!”

“Yes!”

He wants to try throwing hoops and wins a ridiculous rosette that has them both giggling. They go to the little boating lake where there is a long queue that makes him impatient, perhaps they should have candy floss instead. “And what about the big wheel?” Yvette keeps asking. “When do we go on it?” He says they must save it for the right moment.

They walk along the tree-lined avenue, and Yvette playfully demands to know more about the new music, the new friends. “Are they artists?”

“A variety of people. Dreamers and scholars; an intellectual fraternity.”

“I only hope you won’t keep disappearing to be with them.”

“I promise you, I won’t. I want us to be together, Yvette.”

“You said you were staying with them; where exactly?”

He speaks breezily. “Here and there…”

“Where?”

He can see she demands detail. “Mostly at a place near Compiègne. A quiet, peaceful house with a good piano, perfect for composing. The owner’s a man of great power and influence.”

“What’s his name?”

“I can’t tell you that, Yvette. He wants me to write the symphony, he’s paying me for it, but he doesn’t wish his involvement to be known.”

“Not even to me, your… your… friend?”

“I’m sorry, Yvette, I hate to be so secretive. Eventually you’ll understand the reason.”

“Then can you at least tell me about your music?” All her doubts are crowding back: the fine house with its wealthy owner, the colony of artists inhabiting it, even the piano and the music supposedly written on it, all seem like mirages meant to hide the single female fact that stands, a mighty odalisque, against her.

He tells her he has nearly finished composing the symphony on the keyboard but still needs to do the orchestration. “It’s called The Secret Knowledge .”

“A secret you can share with me?”

“Later.”

“But why?” She stops and grips both his hands. “Pierre, I have qualms about this.”

“Don’t be foolish…”

“I know that you do, too, I can sense it. I thought you might have found another lover, but no, that’s not what’s wrong. You’re afraid.”

“Nonsense.”

“I am too. I don’t trust your mysterious patron or your intellectual friends. What does your father think?”

“It’s better for him not to know.”

She swings away wondering which possibility is more distressing: that he has been unfaithful, or that he could have fallen in with bad company. Yvette knows about the men who want revolution through violence rather than art. “You have to leave these friends of yours.”

“Why?” He is behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders, she can feel herself flowing into his touch.

“Unless you can tell me exactly what’s going on I can only fear the worst. I read the newspapers, Pierre, I know about the problems in the world. Only the other week there was that bomb that went off and killed so many people.”

“It was in Serbia.”

“How do I know your secret club isn’t an anarchist clique?”

“I can assure you it isn’t any such thing.” He makes her turn and in his face she sees a childlike radiance. “I suppose you could say I’m a utopian, dreaming of an ideal world. Is there anything wrong in that?”

“Of course not.”

“I want us to be together in that world. Forever.” When he holds her close to his chest she thinks she feels rising inside him the great announcement he wants to make, his proposal of marriage. Not yet, though. Releasing her he says, “Let’s go to the big wheel.”

What he means is that she should stop asking questions, but while they walk to join the queue she finds it impossible. “You’ve always been lost in your ideas, Pierre, yet never so mysterious.”

“It’s only temporary, and for the best. When the time is right I’ll tell you everything.”

“And when will the time be right?”

“Soon.”

They stand waiting in line with the families, couples, excited children and quietly curious grandparents. Pierre pays at the desk they reach and receives two blue tickets he holds aloft as though perusing their authenticity. “Let’s keep these as souvenirs,” he says.

“Of what?”

“Of this moment, right now, that will never come again for us.”

She looks at them in his hand, small scraps of coloured paper, and the bad feeling is in her throat and chest, the nauseous sense of foreboding. At the head of the queue, people are being assisted into a waiting carriage, and to Yvette’s eye there is something in all of it that resembles the herding of livestock. She watches the door being locked on a mother and father and their two children. Life is weightless, a falling through an endless void she can’t quite picture or put a name to, but she senses it right now, in this moment that can never return.

She grips him suddenly. “Let’s not.”

“What?”

“I’m scared of it.”

He laughs. “It’s perfectly safe, Yvette, just look at everyone else.”

“I don’t care about everyone else, only us. Let’s go back.”

The bearded gentleman in front can be seen listening to the little crisis; his wife is speaking to him from under her broad hat but he isn’t listening, instead his head is cocked to catch the drama played out behind.

“I paid for the tickets, Yvette.” There is the faintest note of petulance in Pierre’s voice.

“I’ll pay you back.”

“I didn’t mean that. Are you honestly frightened of going up? I’ll hold your hand, it’ll be beautiful, I promise.”

“It’s not the ride I’m afraid of.”

“Then what? Please let’s do it, Yvette. It’s how I planned it in my mind. How I’ve imagined it. You know there’s something very important I want to say to you. Something that will affect us for the rest of our lives…”

She silences his lips with her fingertips. “All right. Enough, darling. Only promise me again, promise me with all your heart that it will be beautiful.”

“I do.”

Their turn arrives. The couple in front are shepherded into the empty wooden cabin that swings to a halt before them, then Pierre and Yvette are invited too, as well as two young men behind. It all happens so swiftly and easily, Yvette thinks, watching through the glass window while the attendant bars the door firmly shut. She grips Pierre to steady herself when with a sudden lurch the cabin moves in an upward arc, making the passengers laugh nervously. It stops again for the performance to be repeated below, and before long they have all become accustomed to this new form of transport, giving them a slowly widening view of the surrounding park with each stage of the ascent.

“Aren’t you glad?” Pierre whispers, and she nods. Did he always imagine there would be four strangers riding with them?

“I’m not afraid any more.”

The remaining compartments are eventually filled; the wheel begins to rotate at a smooth and graceful pace, bringing the enraptured riders past a summit that makes them gasp with awe.