Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

– Stand up, remove the various items that have accumulated on my desk — cups, pencils, rubber bands, books, the tape recorder, Damaris’ diary, paperclips, keys, a hair slide, a lamp, a vase, some stones — and place them on the floor

– Lift the wardrobe door and lean it against the attic wall

– Take the topmost volume of the relevant leg (Vol. 24, back-right) and place it on the floor

– Take the next volume (23) and place it on top of the first (24)

– Repeat the process with the succeeding volumes (22 on 23, 21, on 22, and so on), until the volume I wish to consult (18) is exposed

– Take that volume and, by the light of the computer, locate and read the relevant entry (MORESCHI, Alessandro)

– Enough!

26 June

Oxford. A golden crust, hot from the oven. Me and Evie wander the city, hot and golden ourselves. My skin, her hair (lemon juice, like I told her) in love, why not, and, in a week’s time, with nothing to do for the rest of the summer. She’s coming to London with me. She follows me everywhere. She came to our show last night. He was not surprised to see her. He made a bitchy comment. A chick this time? Too quietly for her to hear. But then, this afternoon, she mentions it. Comes to meet me after rehearsal and we go down to the river. Lying on the grass, my head on her belly as usual. She has a horror of lying on mine, sensitive as she is to the sound of me. Her fingers twining the roots of my hair, as though her fingers themselves were trying to take root in my scalp. Lightly she says, So the last one was a boy? I say, Yeah he was, the boy in the play. Or the chick now. She said he was handsome and what was it like with a boy. Told her me and Jack would show her sometime. I asked if she was jealous (seems that’s always a rhetorical question). No, she says, just curious. I ask if she gets jealous when I’m on stage. What with everyone watching me. She said, No. Then she gives me this big speech, not really looking at me. About how when I’m miming, the audience, strangers to her, to me, to each other, all of them, and her, are looking at me. She says, We forget ourselves. We forget ourselves, and one another. Only you exist. And you? she says, You are oblivious to everyone except yourself. I imagine you to be moving in a different element, a heavy silence, the kind one might experience after a loud and sudden explosion, in the seconds before one’s ears begin to ring. Or some such scat. Then, to herself, Hiroshima after the bomb, what were the first sounds made after that? She went on. She couldn’t say she was jealous at these times cos I was trapped. Trapped in my own silence, or my illusion of it, up there on the stage, with everyone looking at me. She said that at those times she felt nothing but pity for me. For me! That made me angry and I pulled her fingers out of my hair so roughly it hurt, and still hurts. Can’t say exactly why I was angry, but as I write now, I think perhaps it was fear, fear that she was right. Fear of the loneliness that gets me sometimes. I went apeshit on her. Pity for me? You pity me? Look at yourself! You’re trying to dress like me, you follow my hairstyling advice, you’ve started to put on make-up now to make yourself more attractive to me, but you look like a monkey in a wedding dress! You know nothing about life, modern or otherwise, you don’t know what’s hip, you’ve got no sense of humour, no idea how to speak to people, how to behave, how to move or even how to fucking fuck for fuck’s sake! And YOU pity ME?

Here was the silence after the loud explosion. She sat staring at her hands with her pebbly eyes wide open, shining with tears that she would not allow herself to shed. I had no idea, she says. If I am so … pitiful (electric blue mascara now starting to run), why are you … with me?

I thought about the poor swallow and wondered why anyone loved anyone. Because I realized then that I loved her. I was in love with her. I just wanted to take the poor lost freak in my arms and kiss her and that is what I did and as I did I said, Why Evie Steppman, can’t you see, it’s because I pity you. She made a good job of trying to laugh then. Later that night, after we’d fucked she said, puzzled, No sense of humour? How could you say that? I am always laughing. Yeah, Evie, but at things no one else can dig.

27 June

Today we went to Botley cemetery to visit Evie’s mother’s grave. She has never been before. Her mother was from Oxford, she told me this morning when she announced the trip. I invited myself along. To protect you from your sentimental excesses, I said. She told me I was rude but she said it like it was a compliment. The chapel was one of these buildings that look like a toy-sized building built to human scale. It was squared off by cherry trees. After we had found the gravestone I left Evie crouching by it and wandered the grounds. As I did I felt as though I were looking for something, but wasn’t quite sure what until I came across the grave of a woman named Virginie, born in the same year as me. I realized then that I was looking for some sign of myself. Damaris X. Born 1950–Died 5 Minutes Ago. All this time I was breathing in the ashes of the dead, since the crematorium next door was in use. Those great ostrich plumes of smoke seemed extravagantly Art Nouveau and gave me an idea. I ran back to where Evie was kneeling, tugging up weeds, dandelions which looked rather pretty, I thought. So now a flowerbed, as well as a deathbed (and to the French, Piss-in-Bed). Oh Evie, you are a sentimental old boot, I said, pulling her up to her feet, just how she was pulling up the weeds, How can you cry for a mother you never knew! I never knew my parents. Do you see me weep for them? No. They should weep for the loss of me. Besides, it’s too hot for manual labour today. I know somewhere lovely and cool.

And that is how we came to visit the Pitt Rivers museum. To be wandering in that dusty Victorian half-gloom on a hot summer’s day — what a treat! We walked around together until I got impatient cos she lingered too long by each case. Me, I was keen to see as much as I could, moving on quickly from whatever didn’t interest me. Stayed until the guard announced the museum was closing and we were reunited outside. On the walk back to the boarding house, through the long slants of light and the lengthening shadows, I counted off all the things I had seen. Let me try to remember:

A cabinet of benevolent charms entitled, Sympathetic Magic.

A cabinet of objects occurring in nature which had been collected because they look like something else in nature (a seed pod which looked like a snake; a rock which looked like a monkey’s head, etc.).

A cabinet called Treatment of Dead Enemies, which included a skull that looked like it had sharpened pencils sticking out of its nose.

A huge, swishy-looking Hawaiian ceremonial cape in a striking black, yellow and red pattern that looked as though it were made of fur, but when you looked closer you realized it was made up of feathers, thousands and thousands of hummingbirds’ feathers.

A charm with a label written in tiny, tiny writing which stated matter-of-factly how/where it should be displayed (I forget) its particular powers (I forget), and its ingredients, some of which I remember. They included:

Earth from the grave of a man who has killed a tiger.

Earth from the grave of a woman who has died in childbirth (except I misread the label and saw, at first, Earth from the grave of a man who has killed a tiger that has died in childbirth).

A letter in some ancient Eastern pictographic language on a very long strip of palm leaf that looked like silvery skin which had been rolled into a tight neat coil.

A display on the West African communication system based on the exchange of those tiny cowrie shells that look like Sugar Puffs. A single shell sent to someone conveyed the message: I consider you less than nothing and have no wish to ever see you.