-
1 of 10
-
2 of 10
-
3 of 10
-
4 of 10
-
5 of 10
-
6 of 10
-
7 of 10
-
8 of 10
-
9 of 10
-
10 of 10
‘Journey East,’ part four
Archive
Comments
Story
Kiely, Fulbright Scholar in Literature at Boise State, will be serializing the entire story “Journey East” here in The Arbiter
THREE
Percy Fenton devoured a chicken salad with a glass of cider in a pub close to where the seminar would recommence at 2.30 after the morning’s session. For the third time that afternoon he idly glanced through Julian Bone’s letter to Don about a collection of books for sale. “… an offer for the whole library while the purchaser also incurs removal costs to and from my residence at 4 Moanbane View.” Information about buses to Moanbane View was a phonecall away for Percy who listened to the recording and almost said thank you.
Two speakers were each side of the chairperson in the seminar room. Behind their table windows showed shrubbery an artificial lake and mallards padding along on the dry mud bank. In every duck’s plumage a blending of green blue and purple. The chairperson tinkled a bell and welcomed the attendance with neck bending glances. Recalling the morning’s session he praised the piquant arabesques from an illustrious panel of heavyweights concerning Horizon and The Criterion writers. This caused smiling and conversation from the audience who had lunched walked talked read a little and were ready for the afternoon. High on the pinewood wall the clock at 2.41. His chairpersonship introduced Jerzi Kapp who opted to stand at the lectern.
English as spoken by him “was much improving but could be a bit difficult to understand also.” Jerzi Kapp tapped a pencil against the microphone and five people began to walk creepily then quickly out through the double shiplike doors. The speaker watched them with panache. He predicted that his speech would not last the permitted time of ten minutes. It was the great honour to speak for a while about Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski whose father Apollo Korzeniowski translated Shakespeare into Polish. Mystical and revolutionary father. The family was exiled when Joseph was a child of four because of the father’s political activities. The mother Ewa, died when he was eight. The father died when he was twelve. An uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski became his guardian. Will you excuse me, I have no notes, Jerzi Kapp asked for patience and held up his hands as proof of no notes and hoped knowledge or rather memory would not desert him. Try not to be a Korzeniowski! Uncle Tadeusz begged the young Conrad. At Marseilles when he was twenty and in debt due to a crazy life. He invited Richard Fecht, a creditor, to have tea and discuss the debt like gentlemen. Suddenly Conrad shot himself. The bullet went through his body and he survived.
Jerzi Kapp paused staring at the lectern. He became a Master mariner after seafaring on ships with names such as Otago Mavis Tilkhurst Narcissus. Ten years maybe more after the suicide attempt he was disappointed in love. Her name was Eugenie Renouif. He became neurasthenic and began to write, inspired by the ghost of Flaubert in Rouen harbour and worked on a first novel. The death of his uncle was mercifully followed by his meeting Jessie George, his future wife. It seems everything has died in me as though he carried off my soul with him, Conrad wrote after the death of his uncle. Meanwhile he endured nervous breakdown and the long search for a publisher. During the first world war he returned to Poland with his wife and children. Let’s salute Ford Maddox Ford’s help and collaboration and inspiration to Conrad before and after that war, Jerzi appealed to the kind listeners. It is perhaps no cosmic coincidence that Heart of Darkness and Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams were published within years of each other. Africa in an atlas is head shaped. The Congo river flows out of the brain of Africa. When Conrad was a boy he saw the Congo in an atlas. When I grow up I shall go there, he said. Jerzi Kapp’s talk closed after he read a page from Heart of Darkness.
Alright I’ll take a question, the chairperson said after the speaker had sat down.
What did Conrad think of Moby-Dick? asked a man from the middle row sitting down quickly after having stood up.
My answer is long, Jerzi Kapp spoke from his seat.
Well shorten it, the chairperson said.
Portentous mysticism is one answer. A strained rhapsody with whaling for a subject and not a single sincere line in it. This answer received some laughter and some disapproval. To make the reader hear feel and see by the power of the written word. That was his aim, Jerzi concluded. Is the story quite clear to you as it stands? Conrad asked a friend who had read one of his manuscripts.
Francoise Tulle was next up before two Feminists. The chairperson smiled at the writers on his left and reminded the audience of Paul Valery’s phrase: each word is an instantaneous coupling of a sound and a sense that have no connection with each other! He introduced Francois Tulle from Paris. Tulle walked to the lectern wearing eyeglasses below a thick fringe. She carried typed pages.
We are asked to select the greatest writer of this century, Tulle’s gravelly voice nasalled. Can I put myself forward as the greatest writer of the twentieth century? After a lot of chuckling from the floor Tulle praised Proust to the high heavens in ten minutes. Then the chairperson refused any question insisting that after the last two panelists had spoken he would take plenty of questions.
The first Feminist choose Virginia Woolf. Her colleague put forward Margaret Yourcenar as the greatest. Percy Fenton, three rows from the back, felt he had got his money’s worth and made a quick decision to skip question time. Outside he walked a few streets and waited for a bus which came into view among heavy traffic around four o’clock.
FOUR
When Julian Bone opened the front door he saw the man outside as if he had stepped out of a foretell.
Hello there. It’s a warm old day, Percy Fenton was in cheery form after the bus journey to the suburbs and then got to the point as he looked closer at the laconic moustachioed occupant of 4 Moanbane View with one hand on the half-opened door. Are you Julian Bone? asked Percy taking out the letter.
I am.
I got your letter from Don Bishop of Bishop’s Bargain Bookshop.
Yes? asked Julian with interest and impatience.
I’d like to see the books. If it’s possible?
Why? he asked suspiciously.
As I’ve said, Don Bishop got your letter and asked me to drop out.
Yes that’s the shop on, Julian named the street.
He directed Percy to the rear garden and shut the front door. Percy passed a window with the blind down to the sill and turned into the passageway along the gable of the bungalow. Past another blinded window then two small frosted windows and he was halted by the wooden garden door.
Julian opened this door some moments after Percy knocked on it and then Percy passed in smiling politely. He walked paving stone pathways which ingeniously led to the nine sheds. In one shed books were in clusters fallen off a small hill of books at the back. The other eight sheds had shelves along the side walls and in the middle of the floor a double shelf, back to back. Having surveyed every shed he decided on a systematic book search and a book buying spree. A crude sign nailed to a shed-door declared: “any two books for the price of one further reductions on 100 or more.”
He fingered his way around the little heaven of books, planning to buy a minimum of a hundred. He found books he had always wanted to read. His movement inside the shed was restricted. Often trying to dislodge a book from a tightly packed shelf, he had to keep the elbows pressed against his side. Reading the titles and authors along shelves up high, strained his eyes and low down also. The shelves which were back to back in the middle of the floor forced his chin onto his chest as he read the words on spines myopically.
The sheds smelt older than they looked. He inhaled dampness book dust weathered wood poisoned by creosote and the asbestos roofs blasted from years of rain frost ice snow chaffing gales and bird droppings. Cobwebs clung stickily in the angles of roofs and corners and windows and untouchable corners of shelves. The grimed insides of windows halved the daylight.
With his mind happily racing due to the miraculous draught of reading matter for future months, years? He saw himself becoming the uncrowned king of the Reading Circle in his native town which met seasonally above Rattners small bookshop. In the pleasure of the presence of so many books the enchantment was broken by Julian Bone whom he had forgotten for an hour and a half. Now he blocked Percy’s way along the uneven maze of pathway as he came from browsing in the seventh shed. They faced each other walled in between slatted brown boards of sheds.
I thought you’d take the lot, Julian accused him and picked up a book off the high stack leaning against a shed below window level.
I don’t work for Bishop’s Bargain Books, Percy smiled gently.
Bishop sent you as a valuer I take it? inquired Julian icily while some swallows flew over the grassless treeless shrubless flowerless garden.
Don is a good friend of mine but I’m just an ordinary bookbuyer. I hope to take a substantial quantity, he became more precise on seeing the other’s bad mood, perhaps a few hundred. I presume the going rate is open to me?
It’s open to the whole world and his wife, Julian said putting down a Hutchinson hardback The Vanished Library Luciano Canfora Translation Martin Ryle. Take a shedful and I’ll throw in the shed for free. Sign me a cheque and just get that lot out of here, his voice was tired and desperate and Percy saw the moustache like a sprig of heather below the nose of the stormtossed face.
There’s more books in any one shed than I want, Percy admitted humbly. Besides I have no means of transporting them to my home in Carlinwood.
O, Julian’s tone of suspicion and mild aggression ended and he looked at the paving stone that he stood on while rubbing his stubbly chin and thumbing his moustache. Are you from Carlinwood? he asked with a soft expression.
Yes I am, Percy’s mouth opened with puzzlement.
Carlinwood, the other repeated and he turned and walked out of sight between the sheds as if disappearing, so Percy followed but couldn’t find him.
KEVIN KIELY
Special to the Arbiter