Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

— I’ve a surprise for tonight, she says. It’s all planned out.

— All I planned for was two bottles of Mumm’s.

— That’s a start.

It is a warm night. They take the motorcar to the fields outside the village where as a boy Ashley had taken long walks alone. It feels strange to be there with anyone else, let alone with Imogen. They park the car and Ashley leads her along the familiar dirt paths, rough lanes made for horse carts, overgrown with weeds through the years. They sit in a dormant field on the driest patch of grass they can find. From the rucksack Ashley takes the champagne and a pair of teacups wrapped in a tablecloth from the kitchen. He had chosen teacups because he supposed they would be less fragile than champagne glasses, but the handle on one of them had broken anyway.

— Now you can’t take it back, Imogen says. They’ll deduce everything from the broken teacup.

— Even you?

— Especially me.

Ashley shakes his head.

— There isn’t a man alive who could deduce you.

— Isn’t there? You came to the concert, didn’t you? You must have deduced something. Or felt something—

Ashley looks away in embarrassment, but Imogen smiles, running her hand through his hair.

— Darling. What color would you say your hair is?

— Reddish brown? Auburn?

— Nothing so prosaic. Let’s say a dark Venetian blond. Like a Renaissance courtesan, but more sinister. Too beautiful for a young man—

She laughs. — My darling courtesan. Are you ready for the surprise?

— Certainly.

— Back to the motor, then. We’re going to church.

I sleep on the floor of the new house on a pile of blankets and pillows, Christian snoring beside me late into the morning. As soon as I get up I go to my backpack in the hallway and take out the green tin. I pull off the lid and feel the stiff paper of the envelopes, the thin hard twine binding the bundles together.

In the dining room Karin is setting the table for breakfast, moving slowly as she sips from a cup of coffee.

— We’re the only ones up, she says. And my head is killing me. How are you?

— Not too bad. I drank a lot of water before I went to bed.

— I should have done that. How late were you up? You never came to the lake—

— I found something. Let me show you.

I go to the hallway and come back with the tin of letters. Karin looks up at me, her eyes wide. She unties one of the bundles and leafs through the envelopes, shaking her head.

— Where’d you find this?

— Upstairs, in one of the boxes in the bedrooms.

Karin removes a sheet from its envelope.

— And in English, she murmurs. I had no idea there was stuff like this in there. I’ll have to tell my uncle—

She studies the letter for a moment.

— This is from one of your relatives?

— I think so.

She shakes her head. — I’m sorry, but you can’t take them, not now anyway. I have to show them to my family. My father will probably want to see them too.

— Do you mind if I copy them?

— Of course not. But there’s no copy machine here.

— That’s OK. I’ll do it by hand.

As the others bask in the sun along the lakeshore, I sit at the dining table in the new house, slowly transcribing letter after letter. It’s harder than I thought. Some of the letters are so difficult to read that I leave out whole lines. Others are so engrossing that I stop copying and set down my pen.

I chose the shorter route, for it was dark now & I imagined we would be screened by a meager thicket to the east. We had gone 200 yards when the first shot came, then a second, amid cries of ‘Sniper!  ’ The men pulled Cpl. Locke to the shelter of a low hill. I found him spread out atop a dirty shallow puddle, his tunic pulled open as men worked feebly to stop the bleeding. He had been shot in the lungs.

Locke tried to speak. He seemed desperate to tell us something, though we hushed him & begged him to be still, for each time he opened his lips, all that came was blood. The men still wonder what he wished to say. It’s been days now & still they speculate endlessly, as though he’d been privy to some deep secret, if only because he could not share it.

I put the letter down and go outside, watching the wind pass through the trees above. Christian walks by with a large cooler.

— Are you all right?

— Yeah.

— You were staring all funny.

— Just a little hungover.

He grins. — Everybody is.

It takes me another hour to finish copying. The text fills thirty pages. My wrist is aching. I lay the letters out on the table to photograph them, two sheets at a time. I meter the exposures carefully, but I still bracket them anyway, taking identical shots with different settings to make sure I’ll have clear pictures. On their own I don’t think the letters have any useful evidence, but I can’t be sure. Karin tells me to leave the tin on the kitchen table for her father.

Back in the old house I try to put everything the way it was, even the mess downstairs. It takes a long time to move the boxes and tools back to their old locations, and even then I’m only guessing. I leave a path to the staircase and go up one last time to check on everything.

In the upstairs bedroom the notecard from Ashley is sitting on the nightstand. I’d forgotten to replace it in the magazine where I found it. I hold the card in my hand for a moment, looking around the room.

— A bad idea, I whisper.

I slip the card inside my notebook and flip it shut.

We clean up the house and prepare to cross the lake, passing luggage and bags of leftover food into the boats. Christian and one of the girls are already drinking beer again. A garbage bag of empty cans falls into the water and I wade in to grab it, everyone laughing and calling. I go up to the house to get my backpack and change into dry pants.

When I put on my other pair of pants I notice something in the pocket. I pull out a sheet of thin yellow paper. It’s the receipt from last night. In daylight the handwriting is easier to read.

MOISSE

TOILES & TABLEAUX ET COULEURS — ENCADREMENTS—28, RUE PIGALLE

blanc d’argent

jaune de Naples

ocre jaune

terre de Sienne naturelle

vert cinabre

terre de Sienne brûlée

laque d’alizarine

rouge de Venise

bleu d’outremer

bleu de Prusse

noir d’ivoire

siccatif de Courtrai

There are two more colors I can’t make out, another kind of vert and another kind of bleu . The bill is marked Paris, le 11 décembre 1916 and made out to H. Broginart, 18 rue de Penthièvre . The name sounds familiar. I get my folder from my backpack and flip through the papers until I find the photocopy from the Tate Archive.

23 Mar 19

Dear Mr. Devereux,

I received your letter of the 19th inst. and have disposed of the study as directed. M. Broginart was terribly disappointed and offered to double his price for the canvas, until at last he was made to understand the situation. He enquired about the larger picture and is keen enough to buy the painting sight unseen, though he would not tender a figure and I expressed my grave doubts. Has Mrs. Grafton advised whether that painting shall ever be put out?