Cloud Atlas

the city’s music shop, Flagstad’s, where I bought a brick of MS paper to replace the missing bulk from my satchel for benefit of watchful eyes. Coming out, I saw a pair of drab spats in a shoemaker’s window. Went in, bought ’em. Saw a shagreen cigarette box in a tobacconist’s. Bought it.

Two hours remained to kill. Had a cold beer in a cafe, and another, and another, and smoked a whole packet of delicious French cigarettes. The Jansch money is no dragon’s hoard, but God knows it feels like one. Next I found a backstreet church (steered clear of the tourist places to avoid disgruntled book dealers) of candles, shadows, doleful martyrs, incense. Haven’t been to church since the morning Pater cast me out. Street door kept banging shut. Wiry crones came, lit candles, went. Padlock on the votive box was of the best. People knelt in prayer, some moving their lips. Envy ’em, really I do. I envy God, too, privy to their secrets. Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I’ve stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again. Did my best to think beatific thoughts, but my mind kept running its fingers over Jocasta. Even the stained-glass saints and martyrs were mildly arousing. Don’t suppose such thoughts get me closer to Heaven. In the end, it was a Bach motet that shooed me away—choristers weren’t damnably bad, but the organist’s only hope for salvation was a bullet through the brain. Told him so, too—tact and restraint all well and good in small talk, but one mustn’t beat around any bush where music is concerned.

At a prim and proper public garden named Minnewater Park, courting couples ambled arm in arm between willows, banksia roses, and chaperones. Blind, emaciated fiddler performed for coins. Now he could play. Requested “Bonsoir, Paris!” and he performed with such elan I pressed a crisp five-franc note into his hand. He removed his dark glasses, checked the watermark, invoked his pet saint’s name, gathered his coppers, and scarpered through the flower beds, laughing like a madcap. Whoever opined “Money can’t buy you happiness” obviously had far too much of the stuff.

Sat down on an iron bench. One o’clock bells chimed, nearby, far off, interspersed. Clerks crawled out from the law and merchants’ offices to eat sandwiches in the park and feel the green breeze. Was wondering whether to be late for Hendrick when guess who waltzed into the park, unchaperoned, in the company of a dandified stick insect of a man twice her age, a vulgar gold wedding ring on his finger as bold as brass. Right first time. Eva. Hid behind a newspaper a clerk had left on the bench. Eva wasn’t in physical contact with her companion, but they strolled right by me with an air of easy intimacy that she never, ever wears at Zedelghem. I jumped to the obvious conclusion.

Eva was stacking her chips on a doubtful card. He crowed, in order to be overheard by strangers and impress them. “A time is one’s own, Eva, when oneself and one’s peers take the same things for granted, without thinking about it. Likewise, a man is ruined when the times change but he does not. Permit me to add, empires fall for the same reason.” This jackdaw philosophizer flummoxed me. A girl of E.’s looks could do better for herself, surely? E.’s behavior likewise flummoxed me. In broad daylight, in her own city! Does she want to ruin herself? Is she one of these libertarian suffragette Rossetti types? I followed the couple at a safe distance to a town house on a well-heeled road. The man gave the street a shifty once-over before putting his key in the latch. I ducked into a mews. Picture Frobisher rubbing his hands with glee!

Eva returned as usual late on Friday afternoon. In the vestibule between her room and the door to the stables is an oaken throne. In this I planted myself. Unfortunately I became lost in the chords in the chroma of old glass and didn’t notice E., riding crop in her hand, not even aware she was being ambushed. “S’agit-il d’un guet- apens? Si vous voulez discuter avec moi d’un probleme personnel, vous pourriez me prevenir?”

Being caught by surprise like that made me speak my thought aloud. Eva caught the word. “Sneak, you call me? ‘Une moucharde’? Ce n’est pas un mot aimable, Mr. Frobisher. Si vous dites que je suis une moucharde, vous allez nuire a ma reputation. Et si vous nuisez a ma reputation, eh bien, il faudra que je ruine la votre!”

Belatedly, I opened fire. Yes, her reputation was precisely what I had to warn her about. If even a visiting foreigner to Bruges had seen her consorting in Minnewater Park during school hours with a scrofulous toad, it was only a matter of time before all the rumormongers in the city had turned the name of Crommelynck-Ayrs to Mudd!

One moment I expected a slap, the next, she reddened and lowered her face. Meekly, she inquired, “Avez- vous dit a ma mere ce que vous avez vu?” I replied that, no, I had not told anyone, yet. E. took careful aim: “Stupid of you, Monsieur Frobisher, because Mama could have told you that mysterious ‘consort’ was Monsieur van de Velde, the gentleman with whose family I lodge during my school week. His father owns the largest munitions factory in Belgium, and he is a respectable family man. Wednesday was a half holiday, so Monsieur van de Velde was kind enough to accompany me from his office back to his house. His own daughters had a choir rehearsal to attend. The school does not like its girls to walk out alone, even during daylight. Sneaks live in parks, you see, dirty-minded sneaks, waiting to damage a girl’s reputation, or perhaps prowling for opportunities to blackmail her.”

Bluff or backfire? I hedged my bets. “Blackmail? I have three sisters of my own, and I was concerned for your reputation! That is all.”

She relished her advantage. “Ah oui? Comme c’est delicat de votre part! Tell me, Mr. Frobisher, what exactly did you think Monsieur van de Velde was going to do to me? Were you frightfully jealous?”

Her awful directness—for a girl—quite knocked the bails off my wicket. “I am relieved that this simple misunderstanding has been cleared up”—I chose my most insincere smile—“and offer my sincerest apologies.”

“I accept your sincerest apologies in the precise same spirit they are offered.” E. walked off to the stables, her whip swishing the air like a lioness’s tail. Went off to the music room to forget my dismal performance in some devilish Liszt. Can normally rattle off an excellent La Predication aux Oiseaux, but not last Friday. Thank God E.’s leaving for Switzerland tomorrow. If she ever found out about her mother’s nighttime visits —well, doesn’t bear thinking about. Why is it I never met a boy I couldn’t twist round my finger (not only my finger) but the women of Zedelghem seem to best me every time?

Sincerely,

R.F.

ZEDELGHEM

29^th—VIII—1931

Sixsmith,

Sitting at my escritoire in my dressing gown. The church bell chimes five. Another thirsty dawn. My candle is burnt away. A tiring night turned inside out. J. came to my bed at midnight, and during our athletics, my door was barged. Farcical horror! Thank God J. had locked it on her way in. The doorknob rattled, insistent knocking began. Fear can clear the mind as well as cloud it, and remembering my Don Juan, I hid J. in a nest of coverlets and sheets in my sagging bed and left the curtain half open to show I had nothing to hide. I fumbled across the room, not believing this was happening to me, deliberately knocking into things to buy time, and reaching the door, called out, “What in hell is the matter? Are we on fire?”

“Open up, Robert!” Ayrs! You can imagine, I was ready to duck bullets. Desperate, I asked what time it was, just to win another moment.

“Who cares? I don’t know! I’ve got a melody, boy, for violin, it’s a gift, and it won’t let me sleep, so I need you to take it down, now!”

Could I trust him? “Can’t it wait until the morning?”

“No, it bloody can’t, Frobisher! I might lose it!”

Shouldn’t we go to the music room?

“It’ll wake up the house and, no, every note is in place, in my head!”

So I told him to wait while I lit a candle. Unlocked my door, and there stood Ayrs, a cane in each hand, mummified in his moonlit nightshirt. Hendrick stood behind him, silent and watchful as an Indian totem. “Make way, make way!” Ayrs pushed past me. “Find a pen, grab some blank score paper, turn on your lamp, quickly. Why the deuce do you lock your door if you sleep with the windows open? The Prussians are gone, the ghosts’ll just drift through the door.” Garbled some balderdash about not being able to fall asleep in an unlocked room, but he wasn’t