All Souls Read online

  'That's all very nice but it's a bit of an overstatement, isn't it?"

  "Maybe it is, but that's what I see in myself and all around me. I even see it in this city where you'd think study left neither time nor space for anything else. And it will always be like that. I know that when I'm old and retired and can do nothing more than receive specious honours and tend my garden, I'll still think about them and stop in the street to admire people who aren't even born yet. That's the one thing that won't change, I'm sure of it. And that's why I think about them so intensely now. I'm manufacturing and storing up future memories in order to create a little variety for myself in my old age. My old age will be a solitary one, like Toby's. You should make friends with him."

  "And what about Clare? Who does she think about?"

  "Oh, I don't know, I was talking about how men, the male sex, think, they're the only thoughts I know well, the only ones I can be sure of identifying correctly, with a few minor variations. I imagine Clare thinks about her husband and about her son and certainly about her father with whom she has, as far as I can make out, an intense, ambivalent relationship: a mixture of resentment and unconditional love, of hope and indignation, something like that. I imagine that for her, as for me, only men count. She spent her childhood in Egypt and India surrounded by women, but on the other hand lacked the principal female figure, the mother. She never talks about her mother or at least she's never talked to me about her; I imagine her mother died when she was very young, possibly even in childbirth. I don't know, she's never spoken of it in my presence. Her father was a diplomat and she saw him only rarely. In her version of her childhood there was always a dark-skinned nanny in a long dress at her side: her eyes still soften when she sees an immigrant woman in the streets wearing the colourful clothes of the country she left behind. She's had a strange life, like that of so many English people for whom their country was only a name until they returned as adults, or visited it for the first time. There aren't that many of them left now, though, they're an endangered species. She came here as a student and ended up teaching here. That doesn't usually happen. Most of our students manage to get jobs where the real money is, in finance or management, even if the only thing they know about is Gongora and Cervantes. That's the advantage of studying here, it's assumed that after enduring our teaching methods and our continual hounding of them, which admittedly lessens with the years, they're fitted for any task, even if all they can do is scan sonnets and stammer out a few incoherent remarks about Calderon or Montaigne in an oral exam. Only the most ill-equipped for life in the world, like myself, come creeping back wearing these silly gowns."

  Cromer-Blake removed his gown as he said this and I took the opportunity to take mine off too, for I never felt comfortable wearing it in private, seeing in it a suspicious and unpleasant reminder of the traditional short cloak - ridiculous but now, happily, abolished - worn in my own country. Cromer-Blake carefully hung up the black gown on the back of the door and sat down again. He was still drinking port and followed the first cigarette he'd purloined from me with a second, which he was at that point drunkenly attempting to light in the middle. He filled the air with smoke (unfiltered by his lungs), a far showier, denser pall of smoke than the (filtered) cloud I exhaled from time to time. Cromer-Blake was drunk, probably much drunker than I was, but he spoke as decisively and fluently as on the occasions when he wanted to confound some visiting colleague from another university who'd been invited to the weekly seminars that took place in the library at the Taylorian (he was particularly cruel to hagiographers of Garcia Lorca, a writer he classified as a nincumpoop - he delighted in showing off his knowledge of dated slang - and a fraud). 'Clare's case is different since she's perfectly capable of looking after herself in the real world and could easily have had a career as a diplomat like her father, who would gladly have helped her. I don't know why she's ended up here really, since she isn't exactly passionate about teaching, maybe it's just because of Ted. Despite the fact that we've been friends for years, get on magnificently well together and have a great deal in common, I don't think I know her very well. There's something odd about her, something opaque and turbid, as if her foreign past prevented you from seeing her clearly and made her ultimately incomprehensible. With most people, after a certain age you know or you can guess what they want or what their intentions are, what they're really interested in or at least how they like to spend their time. With her I don't really know, not for certain. But then, I realise, my thoughts are completely taken up by my young men, past, present and future. In fact that's all I think about, although my activities and my profession would seem to indicate that I'm also interested in Spanish literature (which doesn't interest me in the least or, at any rate, no more than that of anywhere else, in fact less than that of some other places) and promotion up the academic ladder (which only half-interests me, not out of ambition, but in order to avoid risks to myself and to be able to get on with my work more easily) and in the plots constantly being hatched in this city. The latter do interest me rather more, I must confess, but I don't dedicate myself to them body and soul, the way so many others do. When it comes down to it, the ultimate aim of all these plots is financial, it's all a question of money, but the huge sums that the colleges shift around are always institutional funds, no one can get their hands on them or profit from them. I myself have a lot of money at my disposal in the form of grants for study, research and travel, but I only have it in usufruct, as do the bursar and the Warden. There've been cases of bursars with sole responsibility for millions of pounds which, through their good management, they've been kind enough to increase, and yet, when it came to paying their funeral expenses, a collection had to be made. As soon as you retire or die the money you administer and share out, distribute and assign, the money you see and touch and nurture disappears, leaving you without the least personal gain, the least trace of its existence, and passes to another temporary keeper. The only things that count here are the institutions, and whilst you can achieve considerable power as a member or representative of one of those institutions, you can achieve nothing without them or outside them. That's why it always pays to be on good terms with the Warden, and even more so with the bursar. Everything we have, everything we enjoy, including our influential contacts in London, both political and financial, lasts only as long as our post, our activity and our life, no longer than that. One of the things Toby misses most is that now he hardly ever gets anyone in London phoning up to consult him. Destitution is possible but not inheritance. I think that's one of the reasons why there are so many bachelors here. It doesn't really encourage one to have a family knowing that, after a life of discipline and sacrifice but also of authority and wealth, one will have nothing to leave that family but the miserable pension of an obscure university lecturer. Despite all that, I still hope one day to be bursar of this college. I know it won't grieve me that much to give up the money when called upon to do so. Above all I know there'll be no ill-mannered, spoiled child to reproach me for it, I mean for the extreme poverty that would await us after the years of pomp. There's no risk of my having a family."

  "Cromer-Blake doesn't want to talk to me or tell me anything about Clare," I thought. "He's quite capable of speechifying for hours on any subject in the pretence that he's talking to me about Clare, but he still hasn't told me anything it would be in my interests to know; he's capable of revealing his most intimate desires, his most deep-seated ambitions, of making all kinds of confessions I haven't asked for in order to avoid telling me anything concrete about his friend Clare. If what he wants is to distract me, to dissuade me and protect her from any attempt on my part at seduction, he's going about it the wrong way. The more he avoids and delays telling me what I want to know, the greater, more urgent, exclusive and all-embracing that interest becomes. I'm even beginning to forget about the girl on the train as being too hypothetical, too young, too autonomous, too unconscious of her own presence. Clare isn't like that. Clare is possessed of mo
re self-knowledge, which is the kind of knowledge that makes people attractive, the kind that gives them their worth: the fact that they can shape their lives, plan and carry through their actions. The interesting thing is to act knowing that what one does or does not do has weight and meaning. There's nothing interesting about chance and the only promise innocence holds is the manner of its loss. Clare must have lovers, although Cromer-Blake doesn't want to tell me so, probably more out of friendship and respect for her husband than for reasons of discretion (according to what he's told me, Cromer-Blake needs, appreciates and indeed relies on indiscretion). What do I care about a husband I don't even know nor, if I can help it, ever will know? What do I care about the long-established marital ties of a city where I neither belong nor have any? How can anything that happened before me have any possible influence or weight? I'm free of the responsibility of having been a witness here, I've witnessed nothing. This static city was set in motion the day I arrived, only I didn't realise it until this evening of disquieting thoughts and events. And once I'm gone, what importance can whatever happens next possibly have? I'll leave no trace. This is just a stopping-off point for me but I'll be stopping long enough to make it worth my while finding what people call 'someone to love'. I can't let myself have all this time at my disposal and not have someone to think about, because if I do that, if I think only about things rather than about another person, if I fail to live out my sojourn and my life here in conflict with another being or in expectation or anticipation of that, I'll end up thinking about nothing, as bored by my surroundings as by any thoughts that might arise in me. Perhaps Cromer-Blake is right, at least in part: perhaps the most pernicious, and furthermore impossible, thing is not to think about women, or in his case men, about a particular woman, almost as if there were a part of our brain that could only deal with that kind of thought, thoughts that other parts of the brain flee from or perhaps despise but without which they cannot function fruitfully, properly. As if not thinking about someone (even if that someone were more than one person) could prevent you from thinking about anything. At least that's what happens to people who aren't serious. I'm not serious, I should not in fact be taken seriously, my thinking is erratic, my character weak, but few people know that and, more to the point, no one here knows that and I very much doubt anyone has given the matter much thought. So I'm going to ask Cromer-Blake directly, taking advantage of the fact that we're both drunk and that questions asked during drunken conversations always get an answer, I'm going to ask him now if Clare has or has had lovers, if she's in love with her husband, and whether he thinks I have any chance of success should I try to make her the person I'll spend my two years (already less than two years now) thinking about. Two years that will be permeated by this sense of unease. Since he's destined to be both father- and mother-figure to me, I'm going to ask Cromer-Blake for his advice and I'm going to ask if during this time I can have Clare in usufruct, with no hope of personal gain, leaving no trace once I'm gone. I'm going to ask him right now, without bothering to lead the conversation back to the subject, I'm going to ask him now point-blank, as one never asks anything in England but as one does in Madrid, even though Cromer-Blake has just repeated the word 'bursar' several times and appears to have steered the conversation right away from what I want to know. I'm going to ask him straight out and he'll have no alternative but to answer yes or no. He must know, although he could always say that he doesn't."

  "Does Clare Bayes have any lovers?" I said, and the truth is that I wasn't really prepared when I asked the question, it just slipped out.

  "What?" said Cromer-Blake. "Yes, I mean, no. I've no idea."

  WHEN YOU'RE ALONE, when you live alone and live, moreover, in a foreign country, you take more notice than usual of the rubbish bin, because at times it may be the only thing with which you maintain a constant, no, more than that, an ongoing relationship. Each black plastic bag, new, shining and smooth, waiting to be used for the first time, evokes a sense of absolute cleanliness and infinite possibility. When you replace the plastic bag each night it signals the inauguration, the promise of a new day: everything is still to come. That bag, that bin, are sometimes the only witnesses to what happens during the day of a man on his own, and it is in that bag that the remains, the traces of the man are deposited throughout the day, the half of himself that he discards, everything he has decided not to be and not to have, the negative of what he's eaten, drunk, smoked, used, produced and received. At the end of that day, bag and bin are full, the contents confused, but the man has watched them grow, become transformed, seen them shape themselves into an indiscriminate jumble of which, nonetheless, he knows the explanation and understands the order, for that indiscriminate jumble is itself the order and explanation of the man. The bag and the bin are proof that this day existed, has been added on to all the other days and that, whilst slightly different from the previous day and the next, it was also the same, the visible nexus between the two. They are the one record, the one proof or assurance of the passing of that man, the one task he has truly brought to completion. They act as both connecting thread and clock. Each time he goes over to the rubbish bin and throws something in, he again sees and has contact with the things he threw away before and that is what gives him a sense of continuity. His day is measured out in visits to the rubbish bin; there he sees the empty pot of fruit yoghurt he had for breakfast and the cigarette packet which, at the start of the morning, had contained only two cigarettes, the envelopes from the post he received, now empty and torn, the cans of Coca-cola and the shavings from the pencil he sharpened before starting work (even if he was going to use a pen), the screwed up sheets of paper he judged unsatisfactory or wrong, the cellophane wrapper that had contained three sandwiches, the cigarette stubs from numerous emptyings of ashtrays, the cotton wool balls soaked in the cologne with which he refreshed his brow, the discarded fat from the cold meats that he ate distractedly while he worked, the useless reports picked up at the faculty, a sprig of parsley and one of basil, some silver paper, bits of cotton, nail clippings, the darkened peel of a pear, the milk carton, the empty medicine bottle, the paper bags made of strong, coarse paper favoured by second-hand booksellers. It all gets packed down, concentrated, covered over and fused together and thus traces the perceptible outline - material and solid - of this sketch of the days of the life of a man. Closing and tying up the bag and putting it outside, the simple act of throwing out scraps and peelings, the act of dispensing with, selecting, discerning what is useless means condensing and bringing to a close the day of which those acts may well have been the only distinguishing features. The result of that discernment is a task that dictates its own end: only when the bin is overflowing is it finished and then, and only then, are its contents rubbish.

  I began taking a day-to-day interest in the rubbish bin and its progressive metamorphosis about a year after the night I've just described, at a time when, for a variety of reasons that I will discuss later, I was seeing Clare Bayes less than I wanted to (and had not yet found a replacement) and, were such a thing possible, my workload in the city of Oxford had dwindled still further (or perhaps it was just that I performed my tasks ever more mechanically). I was more alone and at more of a loose end and the excitement of the discovery phase had long since faded. But even before that, right from the start and especially at weekends, I'd always taken a lot of notice of the rubbish bin, for Sundays in England aren't just ordinary, dull Sundays, the same the world over, which demand simply that one tiptoe through them without disturbing them or paying them the least attention, in England they are, as I believe Baudelaire described them, Sundays in exile from the infinite. During the rest of the week, even though my teaching duties remained minimal, there were more distractions, and one distraction in particular, which was never lacking in Oxford (it may turn into the only distraction if you become an addict), was the search for the kind of old, rare, out-of-print books that give pleasure to the morbid or eccentric collector. For those with a
taste for them, England's second-hand bookshops are a dusty, sequestered paradise, frequented, moreover, by the most distinguished gentlemen of the realm. The variety and abundance of these shops, the limitless wealth of their stocks, the rapidity with which those stocks are replenished, the impossibility of ever exploring every corner of them, the circumscribed but vigorous and vital market they represent, make them an endlessly surprising and rewarding territory to explore. During my two years of scouting out and hunting down such books with my gloved hands, I obtained many apparently unobtainable marvels at quite ridiculous prices, such as the seventeen volumes of the first and only complete edition of the translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night by Sir Richard Francis Burton (better known to booksellers as Captain Burton), which began to appear more than a century ago in a limited edition of a thousand numbered copies of each volume, available only to subscribers of the Burton Club on the understanding (which they honoured) that it would never be enlarged or reprinted: in fact that exuberant Victorian text has never again been reprinted in its entirety, but only in selections or in bowdlerised editions, which, whilst apparently complete, were in fact expurgated of everything considered at the time (or by Lady Burton) to be obscene. The hunter of books is condemned to specialise in subjects related to his main prey, which he tracks down with the greatest eagerness, and at the same time, as he becomes infected with the unstoppable collecting bug, he grows irremediably and increasingly more generous and accommodating in his enthusiasms. That's certainly what happened to me and, seeing my interests grow ever wider and more disparate, I decided to restrict the prime objective of my systematic searches to just five or six authors, and my choice of those authors was based as much on the difficulty of finding them as on any actual desire to read or possess their books. They were minor authors, who were all in some way odd, ill-fated, forgotten or unappreciated, known only to the few and not even commonly reprinted in their country of origin; the most famous (but much more famous in my country than in his own) and the least minor of them was the Welshman Arthur Machen, that fine stylist and strange narrator of subtle horrors, who, in a survey carried out during the Spanish Civil War amongst fifty British men of letters, was the only one publicly to declare his preference for Franco's side, perhaps merely as an affirmation of his affinity with purest terror. Despite his reputation, his books are not easy to find in English, particularly in the old editions greatly prized by collectors, and when I saw the difficulty I was having finding many of the titles I lacked, I contacted several booksellers and asked them to put by any that came their way and even to seek them out for me.