Joanna Kavenna - The Birth of Love

*

Here were more people he didn’t know. They were different from the lunchtime people, different in their particulars, though they were just as bold and loquacious, just as able to hammer out glinting phrases. To him they seemed perfect, some of them in shirts and slacks, and some wearing suits, recently arrived from their offices. The women well into attractive middle age, elegantly dressed, smelling of perfume. They mingled, the perfumed women with their flowing skirts, and the men in their slacks, and they smiled and kissed each other on the cheeks.

‘More wine?’ said someone, and he held out his glass.

*

‘Michael Stone,’ said someone else. ‘I just wanted to say how much I admire your book. I was trying to review it, but alas they had already sent it out.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Michael. ‘But thank you.’

‘I’m Paul Ardache. I’ve written a few novels.’ And the man held out his hand. Perhaps he was forty, perhaps older. He had thick black hair, but his face was creased and folded. Like a much-used handkerchief. He was lean and he looked as if he smoked. And he was producing a cigarette packet now, offering it to Michael.

‘No thank you.’

‘How disciplined of you,’ said Paul Ardache.

There was a pause while the flame was kindled. Paul Ardache breathed in deeply, exhaled. ‘Ah God, I always chain-smoke my way through the launch of a book. But I lack self-control. Anyway,’ he began again, ‘I liked the way you wrote about this solitary man. Furious that he had been forgotten. Railing against everyone.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And I was moved by the story of those poor women, their sacrifice.’

‘You’re most kind.’

‘Then there were these strange moments, when I felt something else was coming through. Were you conscious of it, I wonder? I am fascinated by the elements we cannot control, the narratorial elements which somehow inveigle their way onto the page, seem inevitable to us but then strike others as peculiar and intriguing. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I am not sure.’

‘Well, for example, that ghost-woman Semmelweis saw. Is that documented, did he really see her?’

‘No, I must confess it isn’t a fact. I imagined he might …’

‘And what was her name again?’

‘Birgit Vogel.’

‘Of course, that’s it, Vogel the bird. A bird of peace, or a bird of prey, one wonders?’

‘I just wanted a German name. And not Busch or Fischer.’

‘Yes, well, that is interesting isn’t it? Still, of all the other names you could have chosen, you chose Vogel. The pecking beak. Like something from a Freudian nightmare, do you not think?’

‘I … I don’t know …’ He was stumbling, he wasn’t sure he liked what the man was saying to him. But Ardache was courteous and insistent.

‘You mean you do not know, or you are not sure this has any relevance to your work?’ he said.

‘I think … perhaps … such questions … these things … should remain unanswered … If we are not to delude ourselves …’

‘Of course, these matters are ultimately beyond our power to comprehend. The mind falters, and so on. I just wondered what you really thought. One thing I felt about your book was that you were a veiled presence. You were holding your cards close to your chest. What does the author actually feel about all of this, I kept thinking. The narrator is a study in irresolution, of course. He mustn’t become an ideological tyrant himself, that would defeat the purpose of your book. Sometimes he gets carried away, but he always tries to check himself. “Professor Wilson, I’m rambling on,” he says, and what he really means is, “I must squash my inner ideologue,” does he not? But what about the author, I thought. I felt you wanted to conceal yourself. You were modest, or like Joyce’s conception of the artist, you were indifferent to your creations. Paring your fingernails.’

‘No … it wasn’t that … I wasn’t aloof … At least, I didn’t intend to be …’ said Michael.

‘Perhaps you were forcing your emotions down,’ said Paul Ardache. ‘As if you thought that, unrestrained, they might carry you off.’ And now he inhaled again. He was not aware of the significance of his words. How he was making Michael want to cry and shake. Ardache was simply trying to find something to say, to show he had read the book, engaged with it. Yet suddenly it was very clear to Michael that his book was tactless, quite appalling — he had not thought carefully enough, had been in such a hurry to finish it — but he had inadvertently revealed the fury that drove him on. Ardache was saying, ‘Anyway, perhaps you are just a Blakean at heart. A Blakean trapped in modernity. The birthing of life — the human form divine. The terrible divinity of nature.’

‘I don’t really think … in the way you are proposing,’ said Michael. He was aiming at a lie, while he tried to calm his nerves, slow his heart. ‘I don’t think very clearly … I am not clear at all … But even then, isn’t it rather that we never really get to the heart of any matter, in the end? We get captured by convenient metaphors, or clichés, by other people’s modes of expression … Our real intentions, or thoughts, are lost …’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Paul Ardache. ‘I think it’s amazing how frequently we do manage to say what we mean, or something roughly commensurate. Somehow our words resonate to others, even though they are inaccurate. Something gets through, for all the static and distortions. I find it quite moving, how people do understand, despite our flawed efforts.’

‘In that case, they know it anyway … they don’t need my rambling prose to tell them.’

‘Ah, so are you the narrator? His rambling prose is your rambling prose?’

‘Oh, no, I’m not half as … determined as he is,’ said Michael. He thought he felt better now. When someone poured more wine into his glass, he gulped it down.

‘You mean you are even more rambling?’

‘Quite possibly.’ They were smiling vaguely at each other.

‘Ah, you see, you are an archetype yourself. The humble man,’ said Paul Ardache, flicking the end of his cigarette into a nearby shrub.

‘No, no, but I am not humble … No no, not it at all … I don’t believe … well, no writer is humble, surely.’

‘Well, I know I’m not. But I am handing you the accolade,’ said Paul Ardache.

‘That’s kind of you … But it isn’t true at all.’

They were looking at each other with a kindling of interest; perhaps they might even become friends later, thought Michael. He was wondering if it might be possible, to befriend this interesting man, and then someone else arrived.

‘Mr Stone,’ said this someone else. A boy, not more than twenty-five. Perhaps he was an apprentice, or a prodigy. He was so young, wearing a jacket that looked too big for him, and he said his name was Alistair Madden. ‘I designed the cover for your book. I hope you liked it.’

Michael, who had not particularly liked the cover, smiled and said, ‘I liked it very much. Thank you.’

*

Behind the boy, he saw Paul Ardache grimacing towards him. Michael had a sense that Paul Ardache perceived his discomfort, and his desire to be grateful nonetheless. He didn’t want to look churlish so he said thank you again. And Paul Ardache nodded towards him, and lit another cigarette.

*

It wasn’t much later, but Michael found he was leaning against a wall. He had felt his way towards it, and rested against its solidity. Still he had the stem of a wine glass between his fingers, as if it was attached to his body, the surgical addition of recent days. He was thinking about what Ardache had said, and how he had put his mother in his book, without realising. He had convinced himself he never thought of her and yet she was there, plain for all to view — and he wondered if it could be true, that she was mortal and afraid, that she would die.