Authors: Helen de Witt
She said: If you want to leave it with me I can see that he gets it.
I said: But it’s urgent. Mr. Kramer told me to put it in his hands. Isn’t his studio just up the street?
She said: I’m not sure I can give you that information.
I said: Well, call Mr. Kramer’s office and I’ll get it from them.
She dialled the number, and it was busy. She tried a few more times, and it was busy. Some people came up to ask her for help. She helped them and dialled the number and it was busy.
I said: Look, I know you’re just doing your job. But what’s the worst that can happen? On the one hand, Mr. Kramer sent me, and Mr. Watkins loses a million-dollar deal. Or he didn’t send me, and Mr. Watkins gets a strange kid asking him for an autograph. I mean, is that so terrible? Is it a million dollars terrible?
She laughed.
You’re
terrible, she said.
She wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
All right, she said. You can tell me the truth now. Did Mr. Kramer send you?
I said: Of course he sent me.
I pulled an envelope out of my pocket.
See? So I’d better get going.
She said: No, wait, and she handed me another piece of paper.
I ran out the door.
The factory had a big rusting double gate, big enough for lorries to get through, and a little door cut into one gate. It was locked. I rang the bell a couple of times and I banged on the gate, but no one came.
I went up to the side street and turned right, and then I turned right again on the street behind. This had also been bought by a developer and now a wooden fence closed off a row of terrace houses. The name of a security firm was on the fence, but there were gaps in the wood where boards had been torn away; and bushes growing through the gaps. I slipped through. There was a hole where a house had been, and the houses to either side were propped with metal scaffolding. I climbed through to the back. There was the back wall of the factory with glass at the top.
There was an old apple tree at the back of what had been a garden. I climbed up until I could look over the wall.
I was looking down on a concrete-paved yard, with dandelions and grass growing in the cracks. At the back of the warehouse was a metal fire escape, and a lot of broken windows.
The ground on the other side of the wall was at a lower level than on this side—there was probably a 20-foot drop from the top of the wall. But the wall was of very old bricks, and a lot of the mortar had come out.
I worked my way out the branch until it was dipping down on the other side of the wall, and I swung down to hang by my arms and tried to find a toehold in the wall. I found something for one foot, then the other, and then I found holds for my fingers. I worked my way down, going from brick to brick. Then I went over to the building.
Getting in wasn’t so hard. I went up a drain pipe to the fire escape, then went up a flight of stairs and in a broken window.
I was beginning to wonder if I was in the right place. Maybe the girl at the Whitechapel had tricked me after all. I was in a room with a concrete floor, and piles of rubble in the corner. I went from room to room, and all were the same.
I went downstairs. I came into a dark room in the middle of the building. The only light was from the door, so I felt my way toward it. Now I was in another room with broken windows, cold grey light showing more crumbling concrete and rubble. There was a stack of boards along one wall piled almost to the ceiling, all cracked and warped, and on the floor beside them were little mounds of what looked like dust. I went to have a closer look, and they seemed to be heaps of tiny flakes of paint.
Now I heard a noise. It was a regular, metallic noise—the sound of a tool on stone. I followed it through another door into the next room, and the next, and the next, but there were only more piles of board, more silted paint. Then I went through another door and by the far wall a man in a black knitted hat and a faded black boiler suit sat on a milk crate. He seemed to have a chisel, or possibly just a screwdriver, in one hand, and he was chipping paint off the wall. I saw that the walls were painted a kind of shiny black up to a height of about five feet, except that for about five feet behind him, and the whole of the wall before that, which showed bare concrete, and a mound of chipped flakes of paint ran along the floor like the trail of a mole.
I said
Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find Mr. Watkins?
He said
What you see is what you get.
I did not know what to say. I said
Was it lamb’s blood?
He laughed.
Yes, as a matter of fact. What made you think of that?
I said
Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
He said
I didn’t know those were the words, but yes.
I said
Those aren’t all the words. There are two other verses. It goes:
Are you walking daily by the Saviour’s side?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Do you rest each moment in the crucified?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean
O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!
Are you washed in the blood, In the soul-cleansing blood is the chorus.
He said
Funnily enough no one ever thought to ask. Funny, don’t you think? You should’ve seen the look on his face when I asked for it.
He said
It was quite a job setting it up. They’ve not got much—couple pints, maybe—must’ve taken 50 of the little buggers.
He said
I wanted to see what difference a fact about the medium would make to what the thing was about. In the event that seemed banal. I thought well sod it, Rembrandt could start off doing Lot’s wife and turn it into Bathsheba and the Elders, I’ve changed my mind that’s all.
I said
Susanna.
He said
What?
I said
Susanna and the Elders. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was sent into battle by King David so that he could have an affair with his wife.
He said
Whatever. The point being, when I thought about it, it was too fucking much. I mean, I really couldn’t give a toss about religion. I cared about colour. I cared about that bear, I did. I could have killed the wanker who shot him. To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have liked being mauled, but if he’d wanted to do me a favour he’d have shot me and left me for the bear. It would have been more use. Nice meal for the bear, and I could’ve stayed. It was so white there. White drifting about and frozen solid and getting inside your skin.
He put down the screwdriver and took out a packet of cigarettes.
He said
Do you smoke?
I said
No.
He lit a cigarette and said
My manners may be rough but there are limits. Here was someone who’d followed me for two days and saved my life, and anyway I was I admit a little shaken as I’d been planning on freezing to death, I didn’t think I could insist on staying. So I left that white place and when I got back to England I wasn’t thinking too straight. I knew I’d have to go on to red, but I wasn’t thinking straight and I let my thinking get tangled up in a cliché, and while I was still confused I went to the slaughterhouse and set the thing up and got the slaughterhouse to get me the blood of 50 lambs.
He said
Well I realised as soon as I got on with it that it was a mistake. Banal, irrelevant, but I wasn’t going through all that again. I thought of going back and asking for cow’s blood or sheep’s blood or horse’s blood and going through it all again and I couldn’t be bothered.
He said
So I thought I’d just leave that out and see what happened, but if anyone asked I’d tell the truth. I don’t lie about my work. I was sort of surprised no one did twig it, but people aren’t very interested in belief so maybe it’s not so surprising.
He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, picked up the screwdriver and began chipping away at the wall.
He took out the cigarette and ground it out underfoot.
He said
Is that why you’re here? To satisfy your curiosity?
I wanted to say yes.
I could imagine him lowering himself into the bathful of blood, and I couldn’t imagine him sending the boatman down to a pocket of blue. I was glad to have no part of him. But I had come and I couldn’t go away without doing what I’d come to do.
I drew my bamboo sword and raised it.
I said
I came to satisfy my curiosity.
I drew it back in a slow sweeping motion.
I said
I wanted to see you because I’m your son.
And he said
Out of?
And I said weak with relief
Sorry?
And he said
Who’s the alleged mother?
I said
You probably wouldn’t remember. She said you were both drunk at the time.
He said
How convenient.
I said
Never mind.
He said
You came here for money didn’t you? You thought you could stick me. You’d better pick better next time.
I said
It’s not so easy. If you pick a person to whom you could be obliged you may be disappointed.
I said
Have you seen Seven Samurai?
He said
No.
So I explained about the film and he said
I don’t understand.
I said
You sent the boatman down to see the pocket of blue. He said he’d seen pictures and you said it wasn’t enough. I thought you’d see why I want to go by mule through the Andes. I thought it would be worth fighting with bamboo swords.
He said
So I won.
I said
If we’d fought with real swords I’d have killed you.
He said
But we weren’t.
It was true that I was not his son and that it was a trick.
I thought that he probably did not know the film very well.
Kambei tests the samurai who interest him: Katsushiro stands behind the door with a stick.
His first choice is a good fighter and no coward—he comes through the door and parries the blow. He is offended by the trick and insulted by the idea of fighting for three meals a day. But the second spots the trick without coming through the door and he laughs, and he accepts out of interest in the samurai.
I said
You have certainly seen through the trick. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I hope you find what you’re looking for
though I thought that a man with his money who had bought this grey building and its grey light would look a long time for colour here. I thought that he could probably get more money for his chippings.
I turned and walked back through the three dark rooms to the stairs, and went down to the ground floor. I had reached the gate when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.
I fumbled for the lock and turned it at last and pushed the door open, and it caught on a chain and recoiled. I closed it and undid the chain and ran into the street. I began to run down the street.
I heard footsteps behind me and sprinted ahead. His legs were longer. A hand gripped my arm and we stopped.
The sky was now completely grey. The sky was grey, and the street was grey, and a big glass office building reflected grey sky, grey street, grey man, grey boy. His face was leaden and ugly, dead and dry in the nasty light.
He said
Come on then. I’ll take you to Atlantis.
He began running again, pulling me along. He ran through a lot of little streets and then we came out in Brick Lane. He began to run up the street, past the sari shops and Indian sweets shops and Islamic book shops and at last he ran up the steps of a brick building and dragged me through the door.