Piranesi(60)

I thought that in this new (old) world the statues would be irrelevant. I did not imagine that they would continue to help me. But I was wrong. When faced with a person or situation I do not understand, my first impulse is still to look for a statue that will enlighten me.

I think of Dr Ketterley and an image rises up in my mind. It is the memory of a statue that stands in the nineteenth north-western hall. It is the statue of a man kneeling on his plinth; a sword lies at his side, its blade broken in five pieces. Roundabout lie other broken pieces, the remains of a sphere. The man has used his sword to shatter the sphere because he wanted to understand it, but now he finds that he has destroyed both sphere and sword. This puzzles him, but at the same time part of him refuses to accept that the sphere is broken and worthless. He has picked up some of the fragments and stares at them intently in the hope that they will eventually bring him new knowledge.

I think of Laurence Arne-Sayles and an image rises up in my mind. It is the memory of a statue that stands in an upper vestibule, facing the head of a staircase (the one rising up out of the thirty-second vestibule). This statue represents a heretical pope seated on a throne. He is fat and bloated. He lolls on his throne, a shapeless mass. The throne is magnificent, but the sheer bulk of the figure threatens to split it in two. He knows that he is repulsive, but you can see by his face that the idea pleases him. He revels in the thought that he is somehow shocking. In his face there is mingled laughter and triumph. Look at me, he seems to say. Look at me!

I think of Raphael and an image – no, two images rise up in my mind.

In Piranesi’s mind Raphael is represented by a statue in the forty-fourth western hall. It shows a queen in a chariot, the protector of her people. She is all goodness, all gentleness, all wisdom, all motherhood. That is Piranesi’s view of Raphael, because Raphael saved him.

But I choose a different statue. In my mind Raphael is better represented by a statue in an antechamber that lies between the forty-fifth and the sixty-second northern halls. This statue shows a figure walking forward, holding a lantern. It is hard to determine with any certainty the gender of the figure; it is androgynous in appearance. From the way she (or he) holds up the lantern and peers at whatever is ahead, one gets the sense of a huge darkness surrounding her; above all I get the sense that she is alone, perhaps by choice or perhaps because no one else was courageous enough to follow her into the darkness.

Of all the billions of people in this world Raphael is the one I know best and love most. I understand much better now – better than Piranesi ever could – the magnificent thing she did in coming to find me, the magnitude of her courage.

I know that she returns to the labyrinth often. Sometimes we go together; sometimes she goes alone. The quiet and the solitude attract her strongly. In them she hopes to find what she needs.

It worries me.

‘Don’t disappear,’ I tell her sternly. ‘Do not disappear.’

She makes a rueful, amused face. ‘I won’t,’ she says.

‘We can’t keep rescuing each other,’ I say. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

She smiles. It is a smile with a little sadness in it.

But she still wears the perfume – the first thing I ever knew of her – and it still makes me think of Sunlight and Happiness.

In my mind are all the tides

ENTRY FOR 30 NOVEMBER 2018

In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless procession of them, the intricate pathways. When this world becomes too much for me, when I grow tired of the noise and the dirt and the people, I close my eyes and I name a particular vestibule to myself; then I name a hall. I imagine I am walking the path from the vestibule to the hall. I note with precision the doors I must pass through, the rights and lefts that I must take, the statues on the walls that I must pass.

Last night I dreamt that I was standing in the fifth northern hall facing the statue of the gorilla. The gorilla dismounted from his plinth and came towards me with his slow knuckle-walk. He was grey-white in the moonlight; and I flung my arms around his massive neck and told him how happy I was to be home.

When I awoke I thought: I am not home. I am here.

It began to snow

ENTRY FOR 1 DECEMBER 2018

This afternoon I walked through the city, making for a café where I was to meet Raphael. It was about half-past two on a day that had never really got light.

It began to snow. The low clouds made a grey ceiling for the city; the snow muffled the noise of the cars until it became almost rhythmical; a steady, shushing noise, like the sound of tides beating endlessly on marble walls.

I closed my eyes. I felt calm.

There was a park. I entered it and followed a path through an avenue of tall, ancient trees with wide, dusky, grassy spaces on either side of them. The pale snow sifted down through bare winter branches. The lights of the cars on the distant road sparkled through the trees: red, yellow, white. It was very quiet. Though it was not yet twilight the streetlights shed a faint light.

People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realised I knew him. He is depicted on the northern wall of the forty-eighth western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd.