A Void (21 page)

micron by micron, angstrom by angstrom,
start to grow.
Ignorant

of what his son was up to, Augustus was still playing and would

go on doing so till nightfall; but not for an instant did Haig

abandon his scrutiny of that fascinating dust-cloth, staring at it,

or at a portion of it, as if in a condition of hypnosis; and noting,

as soon as Augustus, running out of inspiration at last, brought

his Dvorakiana to a conclusion with a jarringly atonal chord, that

it now had, not 25, but 26 blank points, an additional point

having burst forth, first as an aura, not so much a point as a hint

of a point, and finally as a rash of whitish grains.

"Papa!" says Haig in a cry of anguish.

"Why, what is it, my boy?" asks Augustus, staring at him.

"Look! Look at that, will you! A Blank inscription on a Billiard

Board!"

"What?" Augustus jumps off his stool. "A Blank on a

Billboard?"

"No, no! A billiard board, on its rim - look, that inscription!"

Crouching to focus on it, his brow knotting, Augustus mur-

murs, softly, dully, "Again! Again! Again!"

"What's wrong?" asks Haig, starting to worry at how livid his

papa is turning.

"You and I must fly, my boy, both of us, right now, straight-

away - pronto!"

1 3 9

10

In which you will find a carp scornfully turning down

a halva fit for a king

Augustus finally thought to acquaint his son of his curious situ-

ation. I was on hand during this discussion.

"Till now I said nothing at all to you about a puzzling con-

undrum accompanying your apparition at Azincourt. Today, if

only I could, I would inform you of just what kind of a Dam-

nation it is that has both of us now in its claws. But a Law (a Law,

my boy, unfamiliar to you) would punish any such injudicious

admission on my part. Nobody, not I, not anybody, would wish

to broadcast that flimsy truth, that X, that minimal unknown

quantity, that total taboo, that is transforming - ab ovo, so to

say — all our talk into poppycock and driving all our actions to

distraction. All of us know of this anonymous abomination that

acts upon us without any of us knowing just how it acts upon

us, all of us know, alas, that, by continually barring our path,

continually obliging us to adopt unidiomatic circumlocutions,

roundabout ways of saying things and dubiously woolly abstrac-

tions, continually damning us to a bogus philosophy and its just

as bogus spiritual comfort, a 'comfort' stifling all our crying and

sighing, sobbing and blubbing - all of us know, as I say, that a

wall far too high for any of us to surmount is now imprisoning

us for good and a malignant wrath is thwarting all our approxima-

tions of that missing sign - quixotic approximations born out of

a natural wish to grasp such an amorphous immaculation in our

hands. So, Haig, my boy, you must know that, from this day

1 4 0

on, as in a not too distant past, Thanatos is in our midst, prowling

all around Azincourt.

' T o start with," said Augustus, "I was optimistic about saving

you from that inhuman fatality to which I was bound hand and

foot. But I know now that I can do nothing for you, nothing.

Thus you must go - for what a miscalculation you would commit,

and I would commit, if, risking your all, you had a notion of

staying on in Azincourt. No, my boy, go you must, and by

nightfall!"

Instandy dismissing this proposition as absurd, and unworthy

of a Clifford, Haig said that his "motivation" was unconvincing

and most probably phony and that Augustus was simply trying

to do away with his son!

Oh, poor Douglas was in a sorry condition, almost touchingly

so. "What! You, too, my own blood! Don't think I don't know

what you want - you want to find my body in a ditch, don't

you? God, I was so trusting, I put my faith in you, I would look

up to you with a truly filial admiration - and now I find you

hatching a plot against your own son — a plot as brutal as it's

stupid! And so goddamn obvious it wouldn't fool a child! Don't

you know what candour is? If you truly want to abandon your

own offspring, cry, shout, pull his hair out if you must, but don't

try to justify your cowardly act with such an idiotic alibi!"

"My boy," said Augustus with a groan, profoundly hurt by

such an insulting slight on his honour and probity. But his words

got lost in an uncontrollably loud burst of sobbing.

That night I found out from him that it was his wish to blurt it

all out - that Augustus, in short, if only for an instant, was willing

to inform Haig of his status as a bastard, inform him of Zahir,

of Othon Lippmann, and of Tryphiodorus in his grubby smock,

and of his lustral baths, and so on, and on. But that took guts,

and his valour would finally fail him.

Without saying a word, Haig took a long, last look at his papa;

and, making an abrupt U-turn, ran off out of his sight.

141

I had to know if Augustus, who stood stock still through all

of this, was going to call him back - or if I should.

"No." It was almost his last word on this unusual family drama.

"Drop it, Squaw. Haig
must
go - thus Haig
will
go."

"And if Haig won't go?"

"Too bad - it's curtains for all of us!"

All that night Haig would go pacing upstairs and downstairs,

along this corridor and that, into this room and out of that,

through library and study, attic and pantry. Till, finally, at dawn,

Augustus and I (spying on him, I admit) saw him go out, sporting

a woolly cardigan and a thick parka and carrying a small bag in

his hand.

First strolling around Azincourt's grounds, Haig found his way

at last to Jonah's pond, stood thoughtfully for an instant on its

rim and got down on all fours, whisding as follows

which was obviously a signal, as Jonah instandy swam up to join

him. Haig had a long talk with his carp, if I may put it that way,

whilst flipping an occasional pudding crumb at it - crumbs idly

ground up in his hand just as you might grind flour.

And at that point, noisily slamming Azincourt's wrought-iron

portals, and without so much as a last backward look at his papa,

or at yours truly, Haig slowly shrank out of sight. . .

Not out of mind, though. Not knowing his son's location or

situation was driving Augustus crazy. Nor did Haig's carp swim

up if any of us thought to approach its pool, murmuring, "Jonah

. . . Jonah . . ." Augustus and I had hit rock bottom.

Until, that August (this was in March), a postman, knocking

at our door, brought us a most curious communication. Slicing

its top with a pair of scissors, Augustus's initial instinct was to

find out who it was from.

1 4 2

"Hmm. Anton Vowl? Do you know of any such individual?"

"No . . . I can't say as I do."

"Nor I. But this Vowl claims to know all about us. Look at

this."

My Lord,

In April I ran into Douglas Haig Clifford on about six

occasions. Having found out, fortuitously, about his taking flight

from Azincourt, giving you no hint as to his comings and

goings, I thought it my duty to furnish you with a handful of

indications which - such, anyway, is my wish - may aid in

mitigating your all too natural anguish.

On his initial arrival in Paris, Douglas's conduct wasn't

at all, I'm afraid, what you would call morally uplifting:

crawling from bar to bar, from clip joint to clip joint, usually

hanging out with a trio of individuals from a notoriously

slummy, insalubrious part of town - infamous blackguards,

outlaws as unafraid of man as of God, with a long and bloody

history of criminal activity. As if finding an almost diabolic

fascination, a sort of kinky charm, in corruption, your son

took part in hold-ups from which all profits would go to his

unscrupulous pals. It almost brought about his downfall: caught

with his hand rummaging in a lady's bag, Douglas's boss, his

Fagin, if you wish, was run in and would languish for many

months in prison.

A poltroon if not a coward, anyway a bit of a milksop,

your son saw a distinct possibility of his also rotting in jail, a

possibility that wasn't at all to his liking. So, moving out of

that casbah of corrupt cops and cutthroat crooks, Douglas took

a maid's room on Boul'Mich. It didn't boast all mod. cons, but

it had a kind of comfort that was, shall I say, succinct. I don't

know what his bank account was at this point or just how such

a capital had grown. Douglas didn't own a car, but ran up

a colossal bill at his tailor's. His famous sports shirt - which

had, as its "mascot", not an alligator but a tiny portrait of

143

Djougachvili - was, as soon as worn, familiar and

ultra-familiar from Parish Quai Conti to its Club 13, from

Pont Sully to Lipp. In addition, Douglas would follow fashions

maniacally, going to talks by McLuhan on sociology, Lacan on

psychoanalysis and Foucault on philosophy, going to films by

Godard, Truffaut and Chabrol, plays by Anouilh, Giraudoux

and Duras.

All this was to last a month at most, until Douglas,

without a sou, saw that things had got out of hand, that his

riotous high-living was taking its toll, that his physical

constitution was going to pot and that his companions thought

of him as a promiscuous good-for-nothing.

It was at that point that, with his customary brio, your

son took as a political goal - a goal just as transitory as it was

radical - that of transforming his country's social status quo

by abolishing Capital and outlawing Profit. Douglas was a

militant in an "ultra-Albanian" (sic) party which, drawing

practically all of its inspiration from a talk by Hoxha in

Shkodra (or, traditionally, Scutari) about four months ago,

would attack, without discrimination, official Communist

policy and unofficial Maoist ravings. This ultra-Albanian

party, though, didn't last too long. To his chagrin, it took

only six days for it to split up.

At that junction it would dawn on him that, in his

childhood, his papa - you, in short - had casually said to him,

"You know, Albinoni's adagio was so comforting to us at cousin

Gaston's burial", and that a basic motivation for having sown

so many wild oats was to damp down what you might call his

subliminal ambition, his truly instinctual goal, in this world -

singing!

And, my, did your son work hard at music from that

point on! It took him just a month to sign up for a class at

Paris's famous Schola Cantorum, which, I must say, was

mightily struck by his gifts.

Today Douglas is living, if you can call it living, in a

1 4 4

tiny, spartan studio flat, six rond-point du Commandant

Nobody.

Thus, straying but an instant from a straight-and-

narrow path, your son is now assiduously pursuing his

vocation.

This information will aid, I trust, in taking a load off

your mind, a load which, from that day on which Douglas took

to flight, has lain so painfully hard upon you.

Tours truly,

Anton Vowl

Without waiting, Augustus thought to forward to his son a sub-

stantial cash sum, dispatching with it a long communication - a

saga of sorts - that would amply justify his conduct. But nobody

would pick up his cash; and, wishing to find out why, both

anxious and suspicious, Augustus paid a visit not only to Paris's

main postal administration, which told him that no Douglas Haig

Clifford was living at six, rond-point du Commandant Nobody,

but also, naturally, to that Schola Cantorum at which Anton