Exchange Place Read online

  I turned off the engine. The radio stopped. I sat in the aftermath of the music for some minutes. I felt I had been somewhere else. In a state of fugue as it were, that temporary amnesia in which one loses the sense of oneself and takes on a life as another before coming to oneself again months or years later. Fugue, from Latin fugere, to flee.

  When I got to Caffè Nero I wrote this all down, or what I remembered of it, knowing I’d written or thought of it many times before, thinking this time it might serve as a beginning or preamble to the book I had in mind, and again I try to picture the words I wrote in the missing notebook, but all I see is the rain-spattered page, all illegible splashes, blots and asterisks. And, as I write now in another notebook in 41 Elsinore Gardens, I try to see myself sitting outside the Morning Star, and I hear the rain drumming down on the awning and picture myself hunched over the missing notebook, cigarette in one hand, pen in the other, scribbling whatever words I wrote then. My eyes are wide open but it is as if I am dreaming. I am inside my mind floating outside myself looking down at myself, a disembodied mental eye or camera lens, I find I can pan round and see myself from different angles, and it is as if I see myself as someone else, the way that something I wrote years ago looks written by another; and in any event we never really see ourselves, all we see of ourselves is what we see in the mirror, ourselves reversed, which is not how others see us, we can never walk around ourselves and see what we look like from the back, so I float down and hover at my back and look over my shoulder at what I am writing, or what the other me was writing before the wind gusted a flurry of raindrops over the words, but try as I might the words swim and dissolve into splashes, blots and asterisks.

  I pull myself away and see the other customer two tables away from me sitting before his pint. The brim of his trilby is pulled down so I can’t see his face, but his body language looks familiar and I think maybe that is only because I have tried to picture him many times before, perhaps all I am remembering is a memory of a memory, or a speculation rather. In any event one could posit a relationship between these two figures brought together by whatever happenstance, a previous history in which they met each other in some other existence, that the man who was me, John Kilfeather, had met this man, let us call him Mr X, on some other occasion or several occasions, though I am pretty certain we had never met before. I suppose that at a certain point Mr X will come over to me and introduce himself to me as a stranger, and he will ask me what I am writing in my notebook, and I will not tell him the truth, for that would be too convoluted, and perhaps embarrassing, or seemingly pretentious, and in any event why should I tell him the truth, for the odds are that I and Mr X will never meet again, or perhaps we might, so I make up a story that will suit should we ever meet again. I could even give myself another name.

  Rue des Boutiques Obscures

  He was walking along Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle in Paris, thinking of what had just happened to him in Rue du Sentier. It was cold and dark and foggy and the street lamps glowed dimly through the fog, their light shimmering in puddles on the street. He was wearing a double-breasted camel overcoat, red and white polka dot scarf, grey trilby, navy-blue corduroys, tan brogues and burgundy leather gloves. He was carrying a scuffed briefcase with the initials R.E.M. stamped on the flap above the brass lock. The initials were not his, as evidenced by the passport in his briefcase, which bore the name John Gabriel Kilpatrick and a photograph which did not look like him, taken four years previously. Also in the briefcase were a red, blue and green striped Kenzo scarf, three Muji A6 notebooks, a Muji A5 notebook, three Muji 0.5mm ink gel pens in black, blue and red, a map of Paris, an Eyewitness Travel Guide to Paris reprinted in 2005, and therefore five years out of date, a 1910 Baedeker Paris, and a novel by the contemporary French writer Patrick Modiano: John Kilpatrick was a travel writer and was in Paris for two weeks researching a book he intended to write about Paris which would feature extracts from books, fictional or otherwise, set in Paris, whether by writers living or dead. It was cold and he was glad of the burgundy leather gloves and he liked the feel of the hard leather briefcase handle in the soft leather grip of the glove and the feel of the cashmere lining on his hand within the glove. It was comforting to have that feeling after what had just happened to him in Rue du Sentier not ten minutes ago.

  Earlier that day Kilpatrick had risen early in his hotel of choice, Hôtel Chopin in Passage Jouffroy off Boulevard Montmartre. The rooms were small but comfortable and the location was exceptional. Passage Jouffroy was one of the first such glass-roofed arcades in Paris, built in 1847, and contained an array of small retail outlets, among them Boutiques des Tuniques, selling blouses, shirts, robes, kimonos, scarves; Segas, walking-canes and theatrical antiques; Au Bonheur des Dames, embroidery; and Cinédoc, specializing in cinema books, posters and memorabilia. There was an entrance to the Musée Grevin, the waxworks museum on Boulevard Montmartre, though Kilpatrick had never ventured beyond its doors. Waxwork figures disturbed him.

  After breakfast he went out for the day. It was a pleasant October morning, bright with a frosty nip in the air, and the soles of his brogues clacked musically on the hard pavement. He walked at random. Yesterday he had put in a good stint of research, visiting the Musée des Arts et Métiers and writing detailed descriptions of some of the architectural models on display, miniature simulacra of actual buildings in Paris, wonderful in the precision of their construction. He felt he deserved a break. Towards midday he found himself on the Rive Gauche in Le Bon Marché department store, designed by Gustave Eiffel and opened in 1852. It was warm indoors and he took off his red, blue and green striped Kenzo scarf and put it into the briefcase he was carrying. As he did so he thought this was an opportunity to buy a new scarf. He liked to buy at least one item of clothing in any location he might be visiting, items which would serve as souvenirs or aides-memoire, tangible connections with the past, redolent with association. The Rome shirt, the Berlin hat, the New York wingtip shoes which every time he put them on reminded him of the manhole covers of New York, massive antique cast-iron shields embossed with their makers’ names, Abbott Hardware Company Ironworks, Marcy Foundry, Etna Iron Works, Madison Ironworks, Cornell’s Iron Works, the words making themselves felt underfoot when he walked on them.

  He proceeded to Soldes Mode Hommes and after a perusal of the neckwear department chose a heavy silk red and white polka dot scarf with a cashmere backing. He had just left the store when he thought of the other scarf he might have bought instead, a blue and gold paisley that might have gone better with the camel coat, though it cost somewhat more. He put the thought behind him. He put on the red and white polka dot scarf.

  That afternoon, at Librairie Jean Tuzot on Rue Saint Sulpice, Kilpatrick bought a book by Patrick Modiano, Rue des boutiques obscures, and leafed through it before buying it, as he knew he would. He had first come across Modiano some time ago and had since bought four of his books from online French booksellers. Though they all seemed to be versions of each other, he was attracted by their fugue-like repetition of themes and imagery, their evocation of a noir Paris in which the protagonists were endlessly in search of their identities. He put the book in his briefcase.

  Towards nightfall he was walking vaguely in the direction of the hotel, up Rue du Sentier in the garment district, when the thought of the scarf came to him again, and he pictured himself wearing the paisley silk, seeing it gleam against the soft wool and cashmere of the camel coat. By now it was cold and dark and foggy and the street lamps glowed dimly through the fog, their light shimmering in puddles on the street, and as he pictured himself in the scarf he saw a man walking down the other side of Rue du Sentier. The man was wearing a double-breasted camel overcoat, blue and gold paisley scarf, grey trilby, navy-blue corduroys, tan brogues and burgundy leather gloves. He was carrying a briefcase.

  The man in question stopped at a shop window under a streetlamp as if window-shopping. Kilpatrick stopped too. The man turned and looked at Kilpatrick. His fac
e was half-hidden by the brim of his hat. Then, with the gesture of a magician who has come to the end of his stage act, he swept off the hat, made a low bow, and vanished into the darkness beyond the oasis of lamplight. Kilpatrick walked over to the window. There was no-one there. The glass was dusty and the only item on display was a mannequin dressed in the fashion of the Sixties – slim-cut Prince of Wales windowpane check suit, tab-collar shirt and narrow knitted tie, a snap-brim trilby at a tipsy angle on its head. Its arms were thrown out and one leg had buckled under it. It was the kind of shape one might cut in a sixties dance, thought Kilpatrick. The Frug or some such. Several dead flies lay at the mannequin’s feet and Kilpatrick wondered who had last set foot in the place. He looked at the impassive features of the mannequin, and thought of the face he had just seen. Kilpatrick thought of the face of his erstwhile friend John Bourne, who had vanished some years ago, and had not been seen since by anyone of Kilpatrick’s acquaintance. Kilpatrick entered the shop doorway and tried the handle of the door. The door was locked.

  Opium

  As I write, I have notebooks strewn on the desk, on the sofa, on the floor, and I refer to them from time to time, or rather I flit from one to another, skimming, flicking through the pages from back cover to front and back again, foraging for I know not what, a glimmer of a memory, a phrase, a string of words, something jotted down a week, a month, a year ago, that might be germane to this present moment, something that is in my mind or on my mind now as it was then. One of the problems with the notebooks is their fundamental lack of organisation. Some are dated on the cover, others bear a title which might indicate their contents or preoccupations, some are both titled and dated, and some individual items are dated, but many are not. Consequently, although the cover of a notebook might be dated, there is no guarantee that a particular passage will have been written around that time, for in practice I sometimes pick up any notebook that is at hand rather than the current one.

  Some entries are neatly written, some are scribbled, some are so scrawled as to be illegible, so that the writing seems the product of several hands, written by different people. Some entries are quotations from other writers, though many have no quotation marks, and sometimes I am uncertain as to whether a particular entry is my own work, or the work of another, or an amalgam of the two. Whatever the case, I like to think of that other work as being written by myself. Indeed, some of the notebooks carry my name, John Kilfeather, on the inside cover, and my address, as a form of security. A proof of my identity. Then again some entries which must have made sense to me at the time of writing make little or no sense to me now. You might say that I am faced with a jigsaw puzzle. But this is not a jigsaw puzzle. There are no straight edges or corners to help with the framing of the picture; and the picture or the story I am trying to piece together does not yet exist.

  I open a notebook at random, and come across this: ‘Dublin train 11.00/13.20 JULES VERNE Cocteau 80 days’. The cover of the notebook is dated Dec. 2009, and I now remember what I had forgotten, that I first read Jean Cocteau’s Round the World Again in 80 Days (Mon Premier Voyage) on the Belfast–Dublin Enterprise Express. 11.00/13.20 must refer to the train times, though I cannot remember which train I took, or on what day, or why I made the journey, for the entry is undated. Cocteau was inspired by a stage production, at the Châtelet Theatre, of Jules Verne’s novel, as indicated on the first page of Cocteau’s book. ‘Never for me,’ writes Cocteau, ‘will any real ocean have the glamour of that sheet of green canvas, heaved on the back of the Châtelet stage-hands crawling like caterpillars beneath it, while Phileas and Passepartout from the dismantled hull watch the lights of Liverpool twinkling in the distance.’

  In 1936, at the suggestion of his then lover Marcel Khill, Cocteau undertook to duplicate Verne’s adventure, securing financial backing from the evening paper Paris-Soir, to whom he would send a series of instalments along the way. He soon discovered that Phileas Fogg’s journey in 1873 was indeed a fiction, and that even in 1936 it was barely possible. The practical arrangements were made by Khill, whose real name was Mustapha Marcel Khelilou ben Abdelkader, born of an Algerian father and a Norman mother. Throughout Cocteau’s account Khill is referred to as Passepartout, the French for a master key, skeleton key, or picture mount, rather than passport. Khill was also Cocteau’s opium supplier, and one of the features of the book is their constant and frequently rewarded search for opium dens. Much of the book reads like an opium dream.

  My notebook contains five pages of notes with page references to Cocteau’s book written with a Muji 0.5mm black ink gel pen written at my table seat on the Enterprise Express. They are followed by a pencilled entry, most likely written at a later date: ‘cf. Notebooks of Robert Frost, p. 89, Every thing that is a thing is out there and there it stands waiting under your eye till some day you notice it, p. 127, The strangeness is all in thinking two things at once, in being in two places at once. That is all there is to metaphor.’ And when I read Cocteau’s book I was indeed in two places at once. I do not know how many times I have been on the Dublin train, but the journey is so familiar to me that were I blindfolded I would have a good idea of where I was at whatever time, at whichever point on the line. Lisburn – Portadown – Newry – Dundalk – Drogheda – Dublin. I might well have been in Lisburn, a nondescript market town, I might have glanced out the window at a row of backyards – washing lines, pigeon lofts, sheds – before writing, ‘8, I owe much to the Rome express’. I stretch my hand up to the bookshelf on the wall above my desk in 41 Elsinore Gardens and take down Cocteau’s book, which has languished there unopened for I do not know how long, open it at page 8, and begin to read these words I now transcribe:

  ‘I owe much to the Rome express. It cleared my mind of cobwebs, the befuddlement of one who after many years of sleep is woken with a start; it resolved the difficulty I had found in living on my own resources instead of suffering the lot of a somnambulist walking precariously along the edges of a roof … Now at last I was submerged – how marvellous it was! – in simple, human sleep, dense and opaque, broken by lucid intervals when I rose to the surface and saw between my feet the landscape scudding past, framed in the carriage window. Trains play Beethoven symphonies. Memories of their themes float up, and automatically blend into the breathless rhythms of speed. It is as if the deafness from which they sprang were akin to the silence of the railway carriage, a complex silence made up of innumerable noises. The throbbing pulse of blood through its dark metronome of arteries, echoes of triumphal marches, glimpses of nightbound stations and, by day, of white, almost Moorish cities, with minarets, square-built houses and lines of fluttering linen hung along the foreshore of a sea dyed laundry-blue – all compose the intervals of a dream theatre where dramas inexpressible in words are played.’

  I came to the end of Cocteau’s Round the World Again in 80 Days as the Enterprise Express pulled into Connolly Station in Dublin. I know this because the last note in my sequence reads, ‘Read in 2 hrs 15 mins – pulling into Dublin.’ I had been in another world. The translation I read is by Stuart Gilbert and appeared in 1937. Gilbert also translated Georges Simenon and Jean-Paul Sartre, and assisted in the French translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. As I write these words it occurs to me that I should read Cocteau in Cocteau’s French. I order the book online from the cryptically named Tgl Harmattan 2, Paris, France, thinking of myself in Paris, thinking of Joyce blinding in Paris, naming, for his party-piece, the shops along O’Connell Street.

  Pilot Light

  It was night. He was walking along Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle in Paris when he glanced up and saw the blue and white enamel sign that read Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle. I’ve taken a wrong turn, he thought, and doubled back along the boulevard in the direction of Hôtel Chopin, walking until it became Boulevard de la Poissonière, which in turn became Boulevard Montmartre, the same line of boulevard under different names. He walked until he came to Passage Jouffroy. It was night and the iron gate was locked.
He pressed the intercom button under the words Hôtel Chopin. He heard a hiss as if of static. Kilpatrick, he said. He heard the gate click and he pictured the night porter at reception. He opened the gate and stepped over its threshold and the gate clanged shut behind him, echoing in the empty arcade. The closed shops were dimly lit from within. Night light. What was the word? Veilleuse. He walked past a window in which stood a headless mannequin wearing a dressing-gown of blue and gold silk brocade and he thought again of the blue and gold paisley scarf he had not bought in Bon Marché knotted round the neck of a male bust, its generic face blank under the grey trilby. He fingered the red and white polka dot scarf at his throat and thought of the man he had seen in Rue du Sentier. It seemed long ago.