The Angel of the West Window

had long since passed over: everything at once. I was “I” and another, I was John Dee in memory and in immediate consciousness at the same time. It was a dislocation which words cannot put back into joint. Perhaps the best way to put it is to say that both time and space were dislocated, like something seen when you squeeze one eyeball: askew, real and unreal at the same time – which eye is seeing the “real” image? Hearing was as dislocated as vision. Greene’s mocking voice seemed to come both from the immediate vicinity and from the distant centuries:

“Still trotting along, are we, brother Dee? By my troth, thou takest the long way round. And it could have been so straightforward!”

“I” wanted to speak. “I” wanted to find words to ward off the ghost. But my throat was blocked, my tongue tied. I was fully aware of the unpleasant physical sensation, but at the same time I heard a voice “thinking” within me and speaking over the centuries, producing sound waves which my physical ear received; and the words were not words of my choosing, and they said: “Once more you stand in my way, Bartlett Greene, and try to stop me reaching my goal. Desist, and leave the way free for me to join my image in the green glass!”

The red-bearded ghost – or, if you like, Bartlett Greene in person – stared me straight in the face with his milky-white wall-eye. His smile gaped like the yawn of a big cat: “Out of the green mirror, out of the black coal the face of the maiden in the waning moon looks down on you – you know, brother Dee, the good lady who is so concerned about the spearhead.”

I stared at Greene, holding my breath in horror. A welter of thoughts, curses, regrets, incantations poured in on me from outside, but they were held back, turned aside, repulsed by one single recognition, which suddenly galvanised my benumbed consciouness out of its lethargy:

“Lipotin! – – The Princess’ spearhead! – The spear is demanded of me! –”

With that it was all over. But I fell into a dreamlike musing in which my half-awake senses seemed to experience the conjuration of the succubus in the moonlit garden at Mortlake. What I had read about in the notebook now took on an immediate and sharp-contoured corporeality, and what had appeared to John Dee as the hovering figure of Queen Elizabeth was for me that of Princess Shotokalungin; and the Bartlett Greene before me faded before the dream I summoned up of John Dee’s carnal delight in the demonic phantom of Queen Elizabeth. – – –

That is all that I can recall of the mysterious events of yesterday evening. The rest is all hazy with mist – a dream gone out of focus.

John Roger’s legacy has taken on a life of its own. I can no longer play the role of uninvolved translator. I am involved, somehow involved with these – these things here, these papers, books, amulets – and with this Tula-ware box. No, surely not that; the box is not part of the legacy. It came from the dead Baron – – from Lipotin! From the descendant of Mascee! From the man who comes here looking for the spearhead for Princes Shotokalungin! – – It all hangs together!! – But how? Can chains of mist, bonds of smoke waft down the centuries to bind me, to enslave me?

My life here, with all the objects that surround me, is already determined by the “meridian”! I need calm nerves and a cool head. Waves of confusion lap over me. At any moment my reason might go under. It is foolish, it is dangerous. If I lose control over these visions then – – –

When I think of Lipotin and his inscrutable, cynical features, or of the Princess, that magnificent woman – I come out in a cold sweat. I am completely alone, completely without outside help against – – let us say, against these monstrous products of my own imagination, against – – ghosts!

I must pull myself together.

Afternoon.

Today I cannot bring myself to reach into the drawer and pull out a new notebook. It is partly because my nerves are still tingling with the agitation; partly, it is the – pleasurable – impatience caused by the news, that came with midday post, of a surprise reunion.

It is always a tense occasion to meet a friend of your youth, with whom you were once very close but who vanished from view more than half a lifetime ago and who promises to bring back the past unscathed. Unscathed? An error, of course: surely he will have changed just as I have; none of us can preserve the past. That is an error which often causes disappointment. I must keep my expectation within bounds when I think of this evening when I will collect Theodor Gärtner from the station: Theodor Gärtner, the wild companion of my student days years ago, the young chemist whose love of adventure took him to Chile, where he found position, reputation and wealth. He’ll have become americanised, a smooth operator who has decided to spend his booty in the peace and quiet of his native heath.

On thing that irritates me a little is that it happens to be today, when I am expecting this visit, that my housekeeper, who knows all my little ways, had finally gone on holiday to the village where she comes from. I could not legitimately keep her here any longer. When I think about it, she has been due this trip for three years now! Her conscientiousness – or my selfishness – kept making her put it off; in this case it would be the turn of my selfishness again – no, impossible! I will just have to grin and bear it and try to manage with the replacement she has arranged for me who is due to turn up tomorrow. I am