She wrenches herself into the present. She looks away and he draws himself up, both of them shaking off whatever has just happened. ‘I’ll dig out some old exam papers for you, if you want,’ she says, determinedly brisk. ‘Stop you mouldering over old games. It’ll be more rewarding than trying to match the glory of your past attempts.’
‘No need to be sarcastic,’ he says, with a faint gleam of amusement.
She gives him a narrow smile, but she doesn’t reply. She goes out into the corridor. But she doesn’t close the door behind her; and some unfamiliar demon makes her hum the main theme of the Danse Macabre, pushing against the sharp knot in her throat, barely loud enough for him to hear.
13
Three weeks to go till we hand it in
Two o’clock in the morning. Woke up, then didn’t want to go back to sleep. A dream about a net that was also the grand jeu. Thread getting tied round my fingers. Not a net, a web. Ugh.
It’s snowing outside. Lamplight from my window catching on the sweep of it. Another window further along, too. Could be Carfax’s. Not sure. Wide darkness, darks of sky and trees, white-in-dark of snow and slope. And against it all two patches of gold, mid-air, flickering as the flakes thicken. Uncanny. Nothing here is the same as in my dream and yet it is, whatever story my brain was telling me, it’s this. Not making any sense, am I? I’m afraid of what’s waiting at the heart, lurking spider, something that wants to suck my insides out. But worse than that, afraid of getting stuck. Afraid of the sticky filaments, afraid of a cocoon. Safety and death.
What am I talking about? Shut up. Waste of paper. Rambling.
So tired. Tired but not sleepy. Wasn’t like this last year, this is new. My appetite’s gone to pot, too, most of the time I’m not hungry and then late at night I’m famished. Tonight – last night – I came back to my room after working with Carfax until nearly midnight, and devoured all the chocolate Mim sent yesterday. Maybe that’s why I had a nightmare.
Danse Macabre. Everything’s the Danse Macabre. I look at snow and see bone. Trees and skeletons. Beds and tombs. Saw Carfax asleep the other day, when I knocked and he didn’t answer. On his side, face half in his pillow, unguarded. Thought of Juliet. Asleep only she’s dead only she’s not. Worms as chambermaids. How sweet that is, like a kid’s story, like the footmen-rats in Cinderella. Sweet and disgusting. Chambermaids that burrow into you. Consumed by your underlings. Supper not where you eat but where you’re eaten. Stood there staring at him thinking all that, and then went back to the door and knocked again until he woke up. Strange feeling of not wanting to leave him at a disadvantage. Unfair to look when he can’t look back. (Death, I suppose, being the biggest disadvantage of all. But he wasn’t. Luckily.)
His tune. Found myself picking it out on the piano the other day when I was trying to practise a prelude. Death waltzing with the lovely young girl. It’s suggestive. Does he mean it to be? Later I wanted to ask but I couldn’t. Your little melody, Carfax – it gives me a metaphorical hard-on, and I wondered whether you meant it to? No? Oh well, it’s probably only me. Perverse, as usual.
Glad no one can see inside my head. Especially glad Carfax can’t.
At least I hope he can’t. Argh, what if he can?
He’s so inscrutable. No, not inscrutable. Most of the time I know how he’s feeling, or at least I can guess. But underneath it all, there’s that constant unknowability. Keeping everyone at a distance. Superiority. Looking down at us, refusing to be on the same level. Always holding something back. It’s why it feels like such a triumph when I make him laugh or swear at me. Breaking through. Showing him he’s human, after all. His lamp’s still burning. Wonder what he’s doing now? With any luck he’ll turn up in the library tomorrow with something clever. Oddly pleasant to know he’s there, awake.
Watching the lamplight glimmer gold on the falling snow. My shadow, flickering in mid-air.
His light’s gone out.
Maybe it wasn’t even his. Could’ve been Jacob, or Felix, or Dupont. Don’t know why I care. It’s Montverre, getting under my skin. This blasted place. There are times when you feel more alone here than if you were the last person left on earth.
Two weeks, two days
Letter from Mim. Wish she’d stop. Wish I could send a telegram home: TOO BUSY TO REPLY STOP SEE YOU AT NEW YEAR … She’s worried about Dad and his heart. A good thing I don’t have time to answer or I’d be saying, ‘Dad’s heart? What heart?’
Business is thriving, though. Apparently the stock market crash, all the people losing their jobs, all the suicides, depression, austerity (etc., etc.) are a Good Thing for the scrap business. Who’d’ve thought?
I’m glad I’m out of all that.
Two weeks
Nearly got thrown out of Historiae. I got into an argument with Jacob which turned into an argument with the Magister. They were basically saying that civilisation was buggered up, that technology and weaponry and industrialisation mean we’re all doomed. Normally I wouldn’t care – or at least I wouldn’t rise to it – but for some reason I got angrier and angrier. How dare they sit there smugly discussing the imminent destruction of society? Looking gently rueful about the economy and the people starving in the streets. And the grand jeu, too – accepting that the Golden Age is over and that there’s nothing we can do. Such apathy. Everything around us can go down the drain, but we’ll stay here in our ivory tower, riding the last melancholic wave of truth and beauty before the end of the world. Looking down on real people. Who do they think they are?
I think I might have said that. That’s why the Magister told me to be quiet or leave the room. It made everyone stare at him, and then at me. No one’s ever been chucked out of a lesson before – not in our class, anyway. I was choking on my words already so I shut my mouth and sat down. But the arrogance of it! And no one else seemed to notice or care. I didn’t dare look at Carfax; somehow, if he hadn’t understood, that would have been worse than anything.
Later
Wrote that at lunchtime, when I was still raging. Now it’s nearly dinner time. Feeling calmer, but a bit … strange. We had Factorum this afternoon. I was still fizzing when I went in, but I got out my sketchbook and pencil and sat down to draw my still life, as per usual. Two bottles and a glass. I could draw them in my sleep. The Magister used to hover over my shoulder and say things like, ‘How about drawing something else, today?’ and ‘Or perhaps a change of medium …?’ but he finally gave up a couple of weeks ago. It’s not quite as good as a nap, but at least it’s undemanding. (Everyone uses Factorum as a way to stop thinking, I’m not the only one.)
So I was sitting there, trying to draw, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why – maybe because I was still seething from the Historiae lesson, or because the others were sneaking looks at me as if I might explode at any moment. I flipped through my sketchbook: dozens of bottles and glasses. All more or less similar. All more or less competent. Not even bad. And I thought: I’ve never even looked at the stupid bottles. I draw them how I think they should look. I draw my mental image of them. Pictures of pictures.
I got to my feet, left my sketchbook where it was and wandered away, winding through the tables and benches. It’s the only thing I like about Factorum, the long classroom with all the cupboards and tools and models, crazy paper-and-wire frames hanging from the ceiling … Everything’s a bit dusty, shadowy, a kind of cave where you can find a corner to be unobserved. There’re bits everywhere, rooms off to the side with printing stones and pottery wheels and carpentry tools, but I’ve never seen anyone use them. At the beginning of last year the Magister tried to encourage us to experiment, but somehow we all knew that the done thing was to sit in a circle around a still life and pretend to take it seriously. Even the people who disappear off to do their own work – Carfax and Paul and Freddie – don’t ever actually make anything, as far as I can see. There’s so much equipment, so many mouldering projects (paintings, papier-mâché sculptures, collages, faces in plaster-of-Paris) that it can’t always have been like this. There must have been scholars who entered into the spirit of it. But not us.