Iain Sinclair - White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

There is an interesting condition of the stomach where ulcers build like coral, fibrous tissue replacing musculature, cicatrix dividing that shady receptacle into two zones, with communication by means of a narrow isthmus: a condition spoken of, with some awe, by the connoisseurs of pathology as ‘hour glass stomach’.

Waves of peristalsis may be felt as they pass visibly across the upper half of the abdomen, left to right, as if conscious of diurnal etiquette. Friends of surgeons have watched mesmerised, gawping, with the empty minded rapture of plein-air sunset smudgers, at this revelation of secret tides. A boring pain recurs, beaks in the liver, even the thought of food becomes a torture; a description that starts at discomfort is refined with each meal taken until it colonises the entire consciousness, then copious vomiting, startling to casual observers, brings relief.

Nicholas Lane, excarnate, hands on severely angled knees, stared out across the dim and featureless landscape, then dropped his gaze to the partly-fermented haddock, mixed with mucus, that poured from his throat, that hooked itself, bracken coloured, over the tough spears of roadside grass. Lumps, that were almost skin, split and fell to the ground. New convulsions took him: his bones rattled with their fury. Patches of steaming bouillabaisse spilled a shadow pool across the thin covering of snow.

‘Toads!’ remarked Dryfeld, ignoring the event. ‘The females carry the males on their backs across these roads. Or die in the attempt. Like Shetland fisherwomen. Wet skirts tucked into their belts. Out through the breakers. Husbands. Drinking all night. Cling to their necks.’

He broke off, scribbled a few lines into his ring folder, in stiff blue capitals; then, unprompted, relaunched his monologue.

‘If the A1 had anticipated itself, Darwin would never have needed to leave these shores. It’s all here, Monsieur. Only the fittest and most insanely determined life forms can battle across that river of death to reach the central reservation — but then, ha! They are free from predators. They live and breathe under the level of the fumes. They stay on this grass spine, leave the city, or the sea-coast, escape, feral cats and their like, and travel the country, untroubled, north to south. The lesser brethren die at the verges. And are spun from our wheels, flung to the carrion. Grantham’s daughter, this is your vision!

‘And when the cities are finished, abandoned, life will steal back in down this protected tongue. The new world will evolve here .’

Nicholas Lane’s stomach having emptied itself he climbed back into the car, found that he still had one cigarette stashed, called for a match. Nobody had one. He sniffed, drew his hand across his nose, and left the cigarette dangling like a piece of torn lip.

To call him thin would be to underdescribe him. His skin was damp paper over bone. Nothing could get into his intestine so he functioned directly on head energy. An icicle of pure intelligence.

The mid-England dark, torpid and thick, a kind of willed ignorance, was wide about them. A heavy but sluggish motorcar facing south, mudded hubs, filthy windows. The kind of car that is common in the antiques game, strong enough to take plenty of potential Welsh dressers. Not so common in the book trade. See one and you see a villain. Call it a Volvo. A case of sealed heats, old smoke, sweats, bags, fears, papers, coffee nerves, sleepless, questing, never willing to call it a day.

They had spent a gentle half-week motoring from London to Glasgow, to Stirling, to Edinburgh, to Newcastle, to Durham, with brief expeditions to Carlisle, Richmond, Ripon and many lesser centres, many a rumour chased, and after nothing more interesting than used books.

The car was indeed filled with them. Elephant folios, loose, sets of bindings, sold by the yard, carrier bags of explosive paperbacks, first editions packed into cardboard boxes, leaflets on fireworks, golf novels, needlework patterns, catalogues of light fittings, vegetarian tracts, anything that could be painlessly converted into money, so that they could get back out on the road again.

Jamie, known to many an auction ring as ‘the Old Pretender’, was at the wheel, for it was his car, asleep, his near horizontal forehead sunk onto his arm. Septic skin, a tropical pallor, old planting family, liver already counted out, and suffering a slightly inconvenient dose of the clap. Useful man. Plenty of relatives with decayed mansions, inhabited by domestic animals and uncontrolled vermin. Be lucky to see his thirtieth birthday. When he wasn’t drunk, he was asleep. And he had not, as yet, been allowed his sundowner; Dryfeld would not permit the car to halt in daylight, until the threat of a lapful of Nicholas Lane’s week-old breakfast, and the vision, across the road, of a phonebox, gave him pause.

Dryfeld sported a camelhair coat, with lumps of the camel still attached, more padded horse-blanket than coat: it was stretched well beyond its limits in accommodating the dealer’s rigid shoulders. His weight seemed all to have been compressed somewhere near the top of his spine, he had no neck. His skull was shaven, deathrow chic, and was so massive and burdened with unassimilated information that it tipped aggressively forward, almost onto his chest. He hunched his shoulders so that they could support the weight, striding at reckless speed, taken for a hunchback. The thick skin of his face stretched into a permanent frown.

It was tragic that Max Beckmann died too soon to have a crack at him: the darkest self-portraits hint at something of Dryfeld’s flavour. But Dryfeld never posed, was never at rest.

His pockets sagged, tormented by the selection of coins needed for his hourly phone-calls. His business was all done through other people’s premises. He would ring his contacts day or night, from every caff, or garage, or railway station where he found himself with a crack of time. So that when he arrived back in London he could immediately pick up more money, cash in his cheques, drop a sack of recent purchases, and leave again.

He lived nowhere, was nobody. Made it his business to stay out of all the files, lists, electoral rolls. He took his name, and he had only one, from St Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel. The promise of an anarchist booksale in Angel Alley had drawn them into the labyrinth, but the sale, being run by anarchists, was naturally cancelled and moved, unannounced, to another location, at another time, changed from books to records. The moment was not to be wasted. Dryfeld plunged into the Whitechapel Library and stormed through the accounts of the eliminated church. Among the list of rectors he found, Tho. Dryfeld, 10 January 1503–2 March 1512 . Nobody was using the name, it became his.

He was as well read as any railway cleaner with his pick of the first class carriages, pockets bulging with slightly corrupted newsprint, thick ink-stained fingers. He absorbed all the information by touch, a kind of idiot’s braille.

Nicholas Lane never read a newspaper, carried no cash. Paid for his tea with a crumpled cheque. He appeared as frail as Dryfeld was meaty. But it was an illusion. He hopped about like a stick insect, at a speed inconceivable to mere mammals. You could be talking to him on the street only to find, in mid sentence, that he had shot off at a tangent, down a side alley, across a road, into a bookshop that looked to all other eyes like a hair-salon or a boot mender’s.

He had a radar that was unequalled. Black skintight trousers displaying thin ankles in white socks, Brick Lane shoes, sharp as chisel points, a bargain, if his feet had been two sizes smaller. Beret, like a fruit-bat, his familiar, always on his head: nobody had ever seen him without it. Subterranean visionary. In this context the word genius could be applied without any fear of hyperbole. Brilliant possession of the martyred self.