antiquities. At one time or another half the Middle Eastern market’s passed through his hands.
“Point is,” Harley continued, “they left everything in place. Took one small box of worthless crap formerly of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Mubarak’s in a state. Can’t get past the fact there was nothing valuable in the box.”
“So what was in the box?”
“Quinn’s book.”
For a moment I didn’t speak. Suffered a second dreary surge of pity and irritation. Painful to see how far Harley was willing to reach. “Harls,” I said, gently. “Please don’t be ludicrous.”
Quinn’s book, if it ever existed, was the journal of Alexander Quinn, a nineteenth-century archaeologist who had, in Mesopotamia in 1863, allegedly stumbled on the story of the authentic origin of werewolves and written it down in his diary. “Allegedly” being the key word. Neither Quinn nor his book made it out of the desert. A hundred years ago tracking this document down had been an idiotic obsession of mine. Now we might as well have been talking about Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy.
“I’m just telling you,” Harley said. “It’s a possibility. You’ve never been the only one looking for it.”
“I’m
not
looking for it. I haven’t been looking for it for years. I don’t
care
about any of that stuff anymore.”
“Right. You don’t want to know how it all started. You don’t want to know what it all means.”
“I already know what it all means.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Silence again. The bulging insistence of the real and Harley’s palpableeffort to ignore it. This was how it would be between now and the end, him covering his eyes and stopping his ears and holding in the words until it was absolutely beyond denial that we were
at
the end. And then what? What could he say to me except Good-bye? Or I to him except Sorry? Sadness went through me like a muscle relaxant. So many moments bring me to the conclusion I don’t want any more moments.
“Call me when you get to Cornwall,” he said, then hung up.
9
A MILE FROM the village of Zennor, south of the promontory known as Gunard’s Head, the Cornish coast concertinas in a series of narrow coves and jagged inlets. The beaches—it’s a stretch to
call
them beaches—are shingle and stone and even a full day of sun leaves them literally and figuratively cold. The onyxy water would be mildly amused by you drowning in it. Local teenagers stymied into near autism or restless violence come here and drink and smoke and make fires and work with numb yearning through the calculus of fornication. The rocks go up steeply on either side.
“The Pines” is a tall house overlooking one of these coves, backed by a hill of coniferous woodland that gives it its name. It sits at the seaward end of a deep valley, accessed by a dirt track (no through route) down from the B road that links the coastal villages for ten miles in each direction. A former cattle farm, now equestrian centre, lies a mile inland, and the nearest domestic household is out of eye- and earshot on the other side of the woods where the track leaves the road.
This place ought, given what I’ve come here for, to have special significance, but it doesn’t. I wasn’t born here. I didn’t become a werewolf here. I’ve never killed anyone here, though a victim might scream his brains out unheard by all but spiders and mice. There have, over the years, been valuables (liquidated this last half century) but none stashed here, no Holbein in the attic, no Rodin under the stairs. I acquired the property because I had nothing in the southwest and because these devilish wriggling inlets are ideal for Harley’s outs by sea. For all that, I’ve used it maybe three or four times in twenty years.
Yet here I am. Mailer famously labelled writing the spooky art. He was right. There’s a lot of frontal lobe blather, a lot of pencil-sharpening and knuckle-cracking and drafting and
chat
, but the big decisions
“Point is,” Harley continued, “they left everything in place. Took one small box of worthless crap formerly of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Mubarak’s in a state. Can’t get past the fact there was nothing valuable in the box.”
“So what was in the box?”
“Quinn’s book.”
For a moment I didn’t speak. Suffered a second dreary surge of pity and irritation. Painful to see how far Harley was willing to reach. “Harls,” I said, gently. “Please don’t be ludicrous.”
Quinn’s book, if it ever existed, was the journal of Alexander Quinn, a nineteenth-century archaeologist who had, in Mesopotamia in 1863, allegedly stumbled on the story of the authentic origin of werewolves and written it down in his diary. “Allegedly” being the key word. Neither Quinn nor his book made it out of the desert. A hundred years ago tracking this document down had been an idiotic obsession of mine. Now we might as well have been talking about Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy.
“I’m just telling you,” Harley said. “It’s a possibility. You’ve never been the only one looking for it.”
“I’m
not
looking for it. I haven’t been looking for it for years. I don’t
care
about any of that stuff anymore.”
“Right. You don’t want to know how it all started. You don’t want to know what it all means.”
“I already know what it all means.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Silence again. The bulging insistence of the real and Harley’s palpableeffort to ignore it. This was how it would be between now and the end, him covering his eyes and stopping his ears and holding in the words until it was absolutely beyond denial that we were
at
the end. And then what? What could he say to me except Good-bye? Or I to him except Sorry? Sadness went through me like a muscle relaxant. So many moments bring me to the conclusion I don’t want any more moments.
“Call me when you get to Cornwall,” he said, then hung up.
9
A MILE FROM the village of Zennor, south of the promontory known as Gunard’s Head, the Cornish coast concertinas in a series of narrow coves and jagged inlets. The beaches—it’s a stretch to
call
them beaches—are shingle and stone and even a full day of sun leaves them literally and figuratively cold. The onyxy water would be mildly amused by you drowning in it. Local teenagers stymied into near autism or restless violence come here and drink and smoke and make fires and work with numb yearning through the calculus of fornication. The rocks go up steeply on either side.
“The Pines” is a tall house overlooking one of these coves, backed by a hill of coniferous woodland that gives it its name. It sits at the seaward end of a deep valley, accessed by a dirt track (no through route) down from the B road that links the coastal villages for ten miles in each direction. A former cattle farm, now equestrian centre, lies a mile inland, and the nearest domestic household is out of eye- and earshot on the other side of the woods where the track leaves the road.
This place ought, given what I’ve come here for, to have special significance, but it doesn’t. I wasn’t born here. I didn’t become a werewolf here. I’ve never killed anyone here, though a victim might scream his brains out unheard by all but spiders and mice. There have, over the years, been valuables (liquidated this last half century) but none stashed here, no Holbein in the attic, no Rodin under the stairs. I acquired the property because I had nothing in the southwest and because these devilish wriggling inlets are ideal for Harley’s outs by sea. For all that, I’ve used it maybe three or four times in twenty years.
Yet here I am. Mailer famously labelled writing the spooky art. He was right. There’s a lot of frontal lobe blather, a lot of pencil-sharpening and knuckle-cracking and drafting and
chat
, but the big decisions
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