The Betrayals(31)
He raises his head and sees, not the library shelves, but Carfax at his desk, chewing his pen, oblivious to the black stain on his lower lip. Carfax lost in a problem, staring at nothing, muttering, ‘I like your variation but it’s not quite right …’ Or writing furiously, so absorbed he didn’t hear the clock strike; or adding diacritics to Léo’s notes with a flourish, as if every one was a plucked string. Carfax, whom he could happily have strangled, or thought he could.
Carfax, who killed himself six months later.
Léo sinks down until he’s crouching, his head bowed. He closes his eyes. He’s here, now. He’s not stumbling to a halt in the scholars’ corridor, to stare through the half-open door of Carfax’s cell at the empty desk and stripped bed; he’s not in the Great Hall, frozen in his seat while the Magister Scholarium clears his throat and says, ‘I’m afraid, gentlemen, I have some very bad news.’ He’s not even in his first government office, opening a police report with clumsy fingers while his private secretary murmurs mutinously about interdepartmental relations. The deceased, a young man of twenty-two … No foul play is suspected … It was a long time ago. It’s over.
If Léo hadn’t … but he won’t let himself finish that sentence. It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t have been. No one ever said it was his fault. Even if they’d known … if someone, anyone knew—
He slaps his own face, hard. It shocks him; it’s the gesture of a madman, or one of the Party’s political prisoners who’ve been in solitary for too long. He’s a grown man; what is he doing, losing control like this, grovelling on the floor like a child? He drags himself to his feet, fumbling with his tie and his cuffs, as if he’s being watched. He wipes his face on his sleeve.
Carfax killed himself. He chose to. His mind gave way. That’s what it said in the police report: while the balance of his mind was disturbed. It was nothing to do with anyone else – with any of it, with Léo or Montverre or even the grand jeu. Carfax was a de Courcy, what did they expect? His father drank himself to an early grave, his grandfather was the Lunatic of London Library … It was almost bound to happen, sooner or later. They were lucky he didn’t murder the rest of the class in their beds … But even to himself, he sounds like a politician under attack, with the shrill slippery tone of a minister caught embezzling public funds; and abruptly he’s filled with an enormous weariness. It doesn’t matter. Carfax is dead, long dead. There are no amends to be made.
The clock strikes, muffled by distance. Faintly there’s the sound of voices crossing the courtyard, yelling and laughing as the scholars sprint through the rain to the doorway of the Square Tower.
He slides the Danse Macabre off the shelf and flips the folder open. He is holding himself steady for the sight of Carfax’s handwriting alongside his own. He can remember pushing his half-complete fair copy across the desk, gesturing to the nodes of maths and music. ‘Fill in the Artemonian, will you? Since you’re so good at it.’ And Carfax giving that wry sideways nod, taking the paper without a word, as if it went without saying that Léo needed his help. But the folder is slimmer than he expects, and the sheet on top isn’t the cover sheet of the Danse Macabre itself but the Magisters’ Remarks. While somewhat over-elaborate, Danse Macabre shows an unusual mastery of … exuberance which is paradoxical but fitting … in the future we suggest cultivating restraint … He slides the papers out and flips through. Behind the Remarks are his rough notes – yes, he remembers now, he sketched out new ones the night before the game had to be handed in, scribbling frantically, because his real roughs were covered in obscenities and stupid jokes, he can still feel his arm aching … And then he’s got to the end of the pile, and the folder is empty. There’s nothing else. The game itself is missing.
He flicks through again, to check. It’s gone. So much for the archives. He pulls out the next couple of folders (MARTIN, Léonard, Prelude, and MARTIN, Léonard, Final Exams) to see if it’s been put in one of those by mistake: but it isn’t there, either. He hesitates. When he burnt his notes he never wanted to see or play or remember the grand jeu again – any grand jeu, but especially his own. He can still remember the fierce pleasure of dumping the canvas suitcase of books into the brazier at his father’s scrapyard, and watching the fire devour it. It was late at night, the summer after he graduated, and the sparks floated up like flags and fireworks into the hot dark. Behind him, reclaimed statues bent their heads together as if they’d moved while he wasn’t looking; opposite, windows were stacked like blind eyes, reflecting the flames. He could taste soot and sweat – and yes, salt, perhaps he was crying, because he’d brought a bottle of brandy with him in the taxi and he was a mess, swearing and yelling into the fractured echoes. His voice bounced back from piles of bricks and broken fountains. That was the real world, where even houses died and were ripped apart; the grand jeu was a gigantic, empty charade. He’d got through his Finals, putting in a lustreless, competent performance that disappointed everyone except himself, and now he was free. Three weeks later the head of the office where he was working came to him and asked if he’d ever met the Old Man; a month later he’d joined the Party. And then … But the point is, the point is – that he burnt his notes. He didn’t hesitate when he threw them into the fire – not for his own games, and not even when he found the Tempest at the bottom of the pile, Carfax’s handwriting as familiar as the smell of his own sweat. He didn’t care if they were the last copies; he would have been glad to think they were. So to be bothered now – to flick back and forth through the file, as if he could conjure the Danse Macabre back into existence – is absurd. Why does he suddenly yearn to see it? What’s he going to do, check the diacritics?