Read Online Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles - Free Book Online Page B

Laura. I had met her only that once, when she came to dinner, and I had taken an instant dislike to her. She worked for a large American firm of auctioneers, and made extravagant amounts of money overseeing the transfer of fine art masterpieces between members of the superrich. A perfectly legitimate line of business, but my muddy leftism caused me to regard it as somehow discreditable. She drank spirits, Oskar said (neat vodka, perhaps), and Ihad the strong impression that she did not think very highly of me, that my dislike of her was reciprocated. But my impression of her was fair, of course, and hers of me was a monstrous error based on snobbery.
    A discreditable profession, exhibit A: she had described herself as an ‘oil trader’ when we met. Commodities, I assumed, but it was her idea of a joke. Not an icebreaker – it was a ploy to put me off balance and seize the initiative. The art of conversation according to Sun Tzu.
    It didn’t help that this exchange took place just inside the front door of my flat, an area that reeked of chemicals from the bleach onslaught I had deployed in the bathroom. The bathroom was next to the front door, as is strangely common in small London flats carved out of Victorian terraces. Welcome to my home – it may smell like a gassed trench, but that’s preferable to it smelling like a latrine. When I consider the placement of that loo, outhouses at the bottom of the garden start looking like a smart move.
    Oskar’s toilet did not smell of chemicals or latrines. His bathroom smelled slightly of soap, but mostly it smelled of water. Not the marshy, damp smell that sometimes builds up in bathrooms. Water, the smell of a pristine glacial stream splashing onto rocks, the smell of ice. What is one actually smelling when one smells that smell? Ozone or ions or something. Perhaps if I paid more attention to shampoo adverts I would know.
    I ran water over the plate and the paring knife and left them in the sink. Then I drained my glass, hovered over the taps, and turned back to the kitchen table. Againwithout allowing my actions much thought (
another
glass? And not yet 1 p.m.?), I took the wine bottle and thumbed the cork out of its neck. With my glass recharged, and my spirits recharged by its contents, I decided to take another look at Oskar’s study as a prelude to maybe doing something constructive, something worthwhile. It drew me because it was so perfect an environment for work.
    It was as I had left it, of course; it was almost exactly as Oskar had left it. There was a subtle, near-imperceptible change in the air in here, the smell of paper, of newspaper clippings slowly turning brown (the printing press autumn), the smell of dust. I could hardly see any dust, but it had left its infinitesimal aroma, a ghostly trace in the air. Those motes in their lazy but restless diurnal migration of convection. A dust diaspora, banished from the surfaces. But Oskar had been away, now, for two days – it was settling. The finest sprinkling could be seen on the lid of the baby grand piano. The cleaner would be coming soon to move it along again. Cleaning products often have violent names – Oust, Raid, Purge. One could easily be called Pogrom.
    I set my glass down on the blotter on the desk and drew my finger across the top of the piano. It trailed a path in the traces of dust. Next, I attempted to write my name amid the particles, but there were too few to make it out clearly, and I wiped it away. It’s a strange instinct, to want to sign one’s name in misty windows, wet concrete, snow. It is like animals marking their territory, particularly in the case of men inscribing snow. But I do not think it is a possessive, exclusive act: ‘This is mine, keep out.’ When wewere a young species, the world must have seemed so unlimited and trackless, and to leave traces of oneself must have been to reach out, wanting to connect with others, strangers who would always remain strangers. To make one’s