The Betrayals(30)

The attendant beckons Léo up a little corkscrew of a staircase, and through another door. Léo never knew that the archive was so big; the room stretches the whole length of the main library beneath, cabinet after cabinet, shelves and shelves of books and files. The assistant says, ‘Do ask me if you need anything,’ without meaning it, and scurries away.

There are desks set between the cabinets, a long way apart from one another. A few are piled with papers and books, but most are empty. Léo chooses one in mahogany with green leather and gold tooling, next to a low, round window. Rain patters on the glass, and a damp draught slides like a blade around the edge of the central casement. He leans forward and wipes the pane with his sleeve, but all he can see is louring sky and – if he bends at an undignified angle – a glimpse of treetops.

It’s as good a spot as any. He sits down. The desk has paper in one drawer, pen and ink in another. He wipes the leather with his sleeve until it gleams, sets the blank paper out and lays the pen neatly beside it. He rests his chin on his fist and looks down at the page. It’s very empty.

The theme of the Bridges of K?nigsberg stutters into life. It’s so loud he looks round, ready to complain, before he understands that it’s inside his head. It has a reedy, whining timbre to it that makes his jaw hurt.

He gets to his feet again. He rattles the change in his pocket. Enough for a train ticket to somewhere else. Anywhere else.

But if the Party heard he’d escaped … Maybe they’re still watching him, somehow. Any one of the servants could be a spy – or an archivist, a scholar, a Magister … The back of his neck prickles. There have been too many accidents: a car crash, the Minister for Business and his mistress; another minister dragged from an icy river after rumours that he was going to defect; a journalist found in a ditch with a smashed skull. He remembers the man who was watching him, on the path to Montverre, the day he arrived; he shuts his eyes and tries to recall whether there was the tell-tale bulge of a weapon in his jacket. No. Yes. Perhaps it’s his imagination. But his mouth is dry. The Bridges of K?nigsberg mocks him in 7/4 time. He can’t leave.

And since he’s here, he might as well do something. Read a game. Make notes. It doesn’t matter what. Blindly he strides to the card index, opens a drawer at random and stares at the rank of dog-eared cards, packed tight. He pulls one out and forces himself to focus. It’s handwritten, in a thin looping script that has faded almost to invisibility. CORNIER, Gaultier. M. Corporeum MV. (1816), sch. MV (mat. 1801) … He replaces it without reading any more. There must be centuries of names, here, most of them unknown; and every one has a file somewhere. He’d never realised the archive held so much material. He glances up, imagining the ceiling joists bowing under the weight. How much of it will ever be read? Then, before he admits to himself what he’s looking for, he slides out a different drawer. MAB-MAS.

MARTIN, Léonard. Sch. MV. (mat.1926) Gold Medallist. Notable games: Reflections (GM, 1.1927. 2.17.1). Other games: 2.1926.17.1.1. (Danse Macabre, c. A.C. de Courcy), 2.1926.17.1.2 (Prelude, F.G. 2.I). Papers: 2.1926.17.2, 2.1926.17.3.

It’s like looking at his own tombstone.

He turns the card over, checking for a thumbprint or a bent corner where someone has jammed it carelessly back into its place. But it’s pristine, neat and white, every edge sharp. No one but the archivist has ever touched it. Ten years, and not one glance … Deliberately he twists the edge until a deep crease spreads like a root across the typed numbers. Then he slips it back between MARTIN, Lazare and MARSH, Philip, and shuts the drawer with a bang.

He stands still for a long breath; surely he hasn’t come here to moon over his own games, like an old woman brooding on aged billets-doux … But it’s one way to distract himself. Section 2 is at the far end of the room, where the glass-fronted cabinets of Midsummer Games and Layman’s Prizes and Gold Medals give way to shelf after shelf of bare foolscap files, crammed so tightly he can’t read the labels. He turns left into a little windowless alcove, counting back the years. He pulls a folder out to see the whole number, but it’s 2.1926.11.1.3 (FALLON, Emile, The Mask of Tragedy), and the next one he chooses is 2.1926.16.3.3 (LANTZ, Friedrich, Final Exams). For a fleeting moment he’s tempted to see what idiocies earned Freddie his third – was it a third, or a lower second? – in his Finals, but even as he’s wondering he replaces it and moves on. And with a jolt, as if he never truly believed it would be there, he stares at his own name. MARTIN, Léonard, c. DE COURCY, Aimé Carfax, Danse Macabre.

The Danse Macabre. His throat tightens. He has never reread it. He burnt his old games – and his notes, textbooks, everything – after his final exams; this must be the only copy in the world. Or, no, one of two; it’ll be filed under Carfax’s name as well. There are moves he can still remember: the chime of a bell, the swell of a melody, the algorithm dying while the breathless tune went on … But time has broken the threads which held it together. In his head it’s in fragments: the clicking of dancing bones, flowers and rigor mortis and worms. A feast in a catacomb. A poet being painted in his shroud.

The thought of it fills him with contempt, and something else, an elusive unease that flickers away if he tries to identify it. It was clever, he can remember that – overflowing with ideas, baroque with excess, like a body teeming with rot. English revenge tragedy, Ars Mori, lullabies, superstitions. And Carfax’s melody, that brilliant jaunty allegro that made you consider the human body, the echoes and hollows of it. And the maths that Léo discussed without ever admitting that he didn’t entirely understand it. Words, images, abstractions. A dark tapestry. Yes, it was clever. But what did any of it have to do with death? Not a scythe and a skull, but – death?