Authors: Liz Jensen
'I'm not disabled.' The words bump out with each step he takes. 'And nor am I handicapped, or challenged, or differently abled, or a cripple. My legs don't work. So I'm just paralysed, OK?'
'OK, Mrs Paralysed,' he pants. 'Let's get your non-working legs in here.' And he bashes his way through a door.
He settles me on a beaten-up sofa, then straightens his back with a series of shucking movements while I look around. I'd imagined clean lines, a certain cerebral minimalism. Instead, there are desks cluttered with cables, computers, compass-like machines with multiple dials, walls plastered with contour maps, computer printouts. And all set in a miniature indoor jungle: tree-ferns, orchids, palms, succulents, and even climbers that tangle their feelers around desk-legs and lamp-stands. I think of my own suffering spider plant, Joy McConey's legacy, and feel a stab of remorse. I can't even look after a thing in a pot.
When Frazer Melville closes the door, another wall-space is revealed, on which are tacked three van Gogh prints, which I recognise at once as paintings from the most disturbed phase of the artist's life, when he was living in Arles. There is
Starry Night
, the painting Frazer Melville showed Bethany at Oxsmith, writhing with weather and constellations and a fierce crescent moon. I remember he expected a reaction from her, some form of recognition, as though the mental disturbance she shared with van Gogh should make them kindred spirits. He was disappointed by her lack of interest. Below it is
Road with Cypress and Star
, which van Gogh painted before he left the asylum where he spent his last months. A towering tree forms the central image. There's a road to the right, with two figures walking towards the viewer, and to the left a wheatfield under a sky in which hang both sun and moon. The third is
Wheatfield with Crows
, executed shortly before van Gogh's suicide. Because of this, much has been made of the three roads offering different routes through a yellow field, and of the brooding sky, speckled with crows whose buckled forms are echoed by the menacing black clouds pressing down from above.
'Right,' I say, my eyes now accustomed to the sprawl Frazer Melville works in. 'You've got me here. So now explain.'
He points at the wall next to the van Goghs, where there is a large graph dotted with tiny arrows. 'It's called the Kolmogorov Scaling Pattern. It's a formula used by physicists to predict the speed and direction of particles in relation to other particles in a fluid. The kind of swirl you get when cream meets coffee, or smoke comes out of a chimney. There are even some economists who claim to see its patterns in the fluctuations on the foreign exchange markets. Now do you see the comparison between the Kolmogorov Scaling Pattern and the van Gogh skies? And between van Gogh's skies and Bethany's?'
'Up to a point. But a swirl's a swirl. Right?'
Apparently not. They have a structure, he tells me, a narrative: they map a complex dance of currents and counter-currents. And van Gogh had epilepsy.
'How's that a factor?'
'Some years ago a Mexican physicist, Josi. Luis Aragbn, became interested in van Gogh's skies. He analysed them mathematically.' Frazer Melville is shoving a scientific paper at me. I read through the abstract, by Aragon et al.
We show that some impassioned van Gogh paintings display scaling properties similar to those observed in fluids, suggesting that these paintings reflect the fingerprint of turbulence with a realism consistent with the way that a mathematical model characterises this phenomenon. Specifically, we show that the probability distribution function (PDF) of luminance fluctuations of points (pixels) separated by a distance R is consistent with the Kolmogorov scaling theory in turbulent fluids. We also show that the most turbulent paintings of van Gogh coincide with periods of prolonged psychotic agitation of this artist.
'These three were painted when he was suffering from frequent bouts of epilepsy,' says Frazer Melville. 'In this paper, Aragon shows how they actually map turbulence - invisible turbulence -with extreme accuracy. And he goes on to speculate that the delusions accompanying van Gogh's epileptic fits might have given him a unique understanding of the physics of flow.'
'And Bethany's ECT -'
'Those currents are giving her a grand-mal seizure. A similar experience to an epileptic fit. But it's induced artificially and controlled, rather than arriving spontaneously through a brain malfunction.'
'You mean there might be some kind of science to explain what she's predicting?'
'There has to be. At least, for what she's claiming to feel. But as for how she can pinpoint the location and the date - I have no idea. I'm hoping there's a clue in the notebooks.'
I fish them out of the bag and lay them on the desk. Taking the top one, he flips through the pages eagerly, but soon his expression shifts from interest to dismay. 'Christ. It's total chaos.'
'What were you expecting - rational method? But there's probably a pattern in there somewhere. If we can find it.'
'How?' he says, surveying a scrawled-over page despairingly.
'If she writes on consecutive pages, there'd be a chronology to them.'
He continues to flick through. Some pages are chock-a-block with tiny, cramped notes, interrupted by sketches peppered with arrows. Others are devoted to freehand drawings, some of ordinary-looking clouds, others similar to the storm images Bethany made in the studio when she drew the Rio Christ. Ten or twelve pages of the most recent notebook - only a third full - are devoted to a series of what I think of as her 'machinery-in-moonscape' drawings. The style of these is more diagrammatic and observational, less emotionally charged than the others. There is a structure to them, an almost architectural formality that gives the impression of something that has been copied to scale, something that actually exists beyond Bethany's imagination, and has its roots in reality. They make no sense to me but Frazer Melville seems struck by them. 'Interesting,' he murmurs, stroking a page as though it might contain hidden Braille. 'No turbulence. Nothing at all, in terms of air-flow. I wonder what she'd do if I asked her to imagine it. What it would look like.' The scenario is the same in all of them: a rubble-strewn stretch of land and a vertical line - sometimes thin, sometimes thick - descending from the sky to hit a flower-shaped cup or funnel at ground level, which continues underground and then curves, travelling horizontally and ending either in vagueness, or in a wedge shape, or in what appears to be an explosion. On the earth, around the funnel, Bethany has drawn broken rocks, or scree.
'What does this represent?' I asked her once.
'I don't know,' she said. Edgily, as though I'd cornered her doing something shameful. 'But I keep doing it.'
'I'll give you my psychologist's take on these,' I tell Frazer. 'There's no evidence I know of that she's been sexually abused, and she hasn't told me it happened. But I think it did. Or something like it. A violent invasion. Now you tell me your guess.'
'I can't. But I think they're too technical to be symbolic. To me they look like some kind of mining operation.'
'And what about these ones?' I ask, leafing through to show him another Bethany motif: a collection of geometric-looking, five-sided forms packed together in a block. 'A honeycomb? A multistorey car park? Stylised coffins?'
'I'm going to run all this by my ex,' says Frazer, sighing. 'But she'll probably say it's hyessou.'
'What's
hyessou?'
'It's Greek for a load of bollocks,' he says miserably. 'Knowing Melina, she'll assume that my mother's death has unhinged me.'
The routine we now embark on is meticulous. Methodically, for the next two hours, with little talking, we go through the notebooks page by eccentric page, numbering them as we go along, with Frazer Melville making photocopies and taking digital photographs which he transfers to his computer.
'All done,' he says finally, setting the last, incomplete book down on the desk. I pick it up and riffle through the pages. She has used different coloured pens for her drawings, but all the text is in scrawled black. Then I stop. The very last page is covered in handwriting.
'Did you copy this?' I ask Frazer Melville. He looks across, exhausted and puzzled. 'It looks like a list.'
'Let's have a look,' he says, pulling his chair up next to mine. It's a set of dates, places and events. Some are written in black, and others in green, red or blue, as though there's a kind of code to it. The first reads,
February 11th. Volcanic disturbances, Mount Etna, Italy.
'There was some activity back then,' says Frazer Melville. 'Before the big eruption in May. Though I'm not sure of the exact date. I could check it.'
'She could have written it down afterwards,' I say. 'Look at the way she's used different colours. This certainly wasn't all written in one go. What's next?'
'February 4th cylone, Osaka, Japan,'
I read. The list goes on, through March and April: a tornado in southern Spain and new geyser in Iceland, a black cloud formation in Russia, a deadly methane belch from a lake in the Congo. One by one, as I read them out, Frazer Melville looks up the events on the net. In each case, they not only happened, but happened on the dates Bethany has noted in her red and black book. The eruption of Mount Etna on March 18th. An earthquake in Nepal and a typhoon in Taiwan on April 20th and 29th respectively. They too are there.
May 21st. Rock falls in the Alps
: we both remember that story in the news. A Swiss village was destroyed, because of permafrost thawing below the mountain slope, and unleashing its grip on the granite. Something churns inside me uneasily as I recall the footage.
'No need to check out this one,' murmurs Frazer Melville, pointing to the next entry. July 29th.
Hurricane in the southern Atlantic. Rio de Janeiro.
'Or the next.'
August 16th. Northern Pakistan and Kashmir. Earth tremors.
'That rings a bell,' says Frazer Melville. Googling it swiftly, he shoots me a confirming glance. My chest tightens.
'Read me the rest.'
'August 22nd. Istanbul. Earthquake.
'September 5th. Bangladesh. Heavy rains, massive flooding.
'September 13th. Mumbai. Cyclone.
'September 20th. Hong Kong. Storms leading to fires.
'October 4th. Volcano. Samoa.'
The next event is dated October 12th. It says, simply, Tribulation. There's no indication of what this means, or how it will be triggered. Or where it will happen.
Frazer Melville doesn't speak for a long time. 'For the sake of argument, let's say she did predict all these events accurately. Not just Rio and Istanbul, but all the previous ones. Which we can have no way of confirming. But let's assume it.'
'OK. Then what?'
'Then such a high number of correct predictions - and note, not a single false one. You can't call this coincidence. Or even lucky guessing.'
'Which leaves us where?'
'Looking for a scientific explanation.' He breathes in deeply and exhales. 'It's quite a long shot, but it's a hypothesis. In the absence of anything else . . .'
'Go on,' I say, urgently interested. Bethany's list has unnerved me more than I'm prepared to admit.
'None of these events happen out of the blue. The day the volcano erupts, or the hurricane hits, or the earthquake strikes, or the geyser appears, is the climax of a process that will have begun some time before. In some cases, years previously. We have to look at meteorology and geology quite differently, of course, in terms of timescale. Weather can be brewing for a week or more before it becomes violent, for example. Whereas the Istanbul quake has been on the cards for years, with the pressure building up along the faultline. So let's hypothesise that Bethany is picking up otherwise undetectable signals - let's call them vibrations - relating to events that are already on their way to happening. Let's say that in each case, she's sensing the beginning of a build-up of pressure, whether it's atmospheric or underground. And then let's hypothesise that she's somehow been able to imagine very accurately the time it will take to develop into an event, and where it will manifest itself. She knows the globe pretty well, for someone of her age. But in any case I'd suggest it's more about instinct than knowledge. It's known that the pressure along the faultline that led to the Istanbul quake has been moving steadily east. But it's basically a question of the deeper earth structures shifting along a timeline. And Bethany somehow picking up the pressure changes.'
'Just instinctively?'
He shakes his head. 'No. There has to be a reason. A physical connection between Bethany and these. . . phenomena. Perhaps a kind of magnetism, or even something sonar.'
'Go on.'
'There's a kind of directional magnetism that enables birds to know which direction to fly in when they migrate. It's well known that animals pick up a lot.' I remember Dr Ehmet using a parallel with cats and dogs, to explain Bethany Krall's need for ECT. 'If there was an earth tremor fifty kilometres away, many species would sense it. Let's imagine that in Bethany's case, the ECT gives her extra sensitivity to energy fluctuations. Or just an awareness of when natural flows are disrupted enough to trigger some radical event.'
'It feels quite far-fetched. But as a theory, I certainly prefer it to the notion that Bethany's some kind of New Age eco-psychic. The question is, how far does it go? And what's it for? And where does this biblical stuff about the Tribulation fit in?'
Frazer Melville shakes his head. My mind's racing. Joy seemed to think Bethany's father held a clue. If I went along to one of Leonard Krall's sermons, might I get an insight into the genesis of her visions?
But first, there is a question I need to ask Frazer Melville, a question that has been nagging at me since the day he met Bethany. It's delicate. Is now the time to ask it? Maybe we are not ready for personal confessions. But the particular circumstances demand a particular kind of honesty. Frazer Melville takes my hand and squeezes it. A tiny gesture of closeness that reassures me.