Walker was passing by a broken statue when, through the arches of an arcade, he saw the figure again, by the quay where he himself had been standing. Again there was a pause, a lingering surprise, and then they moved on, both looking back once. Later — time was as difficult to judge as distance — it happened again: on this occasion the figure was standing by the broken statue.
Each time they occurred the mood of these encounters changed, imperceptibly, until they were virtually stalking each other round the city. The figure had a similar realization simultaneously, for now he looked at Walker with suspicion. Walker felt the first twinge of unease and the figure’s movements immediately acquired an edge of urgency. Walker began sweating; he had an impulse to run and saw the figure trot across the piazza and disappear from sight.
He continued walking through the bewildered city, uneasy now. He glanced round and saw the figure looking at him. Walker ran across the piazza and into the darkness of an arcade. When he emerged into sunlight the figure was silhouetted, his back to Walker. Immediately, he looked around and ran off. So a pattern was established with Walker alternating between fleeing from the figure who would suddenly appear behind him and surprising this same person who would run from him.
The situation petered out exactly as it had begun. Walker felt confident he could outrace the figure who simultaneously reacted less nervously when Walker came up on him unawares. As their sense of mutual alarm diminished, so did the frequency of these encounters until they spotted each other rarely, harmlessly, at a distance, and Walker resumed his stroll through the city.
Later, lodged in the stone fingers of a statue, he found a card showing the piazza he was now walking across. He pocketed the card and walked on. At the top of a tower a flag fluttered in the absent breeze. In the distance a train steamed silently into the station. A cloud drifted over the train as if it had always been there. The light remained suspended between late afternoon and early evening, the sun never quite setting, the city receding all around.
Walker found himself once again by the quay, the sea lapping green and clear, the statue gazing calmly, the book still lying there, the cane propped by the wall. He picked up the book and leafed through it. On each page, blurred and smudged by spray from the sea, was written the name of one of the cities he had passed through, in the order he had visited them. Imbria was the second last name in the book. The last city, the only one he had not been to, was called Nemesis. Next to it, was what he assumed to be a date, 4.9.—, with the year an illegible blur of ink: five days from now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nemesis was a medieval town built on two low hills, dominated by a vast cathedral and, for five months of the year at least, by tourists who swarmed all over it. It was the last day of August when Walker arrived and all the hotels and pensions were full. After a morning’s trudging he found, at an inflated price, a room in a hotel high up on one of the hills overlooking the cathedral and the red-tiled roofs crowding around it.
Walking through the city he became certain that the search would end here. Maybe the trail didn’t stop here but he lacked the will to pursue it any further. In the past he had always found something that urged him forward — or at least he had had a strong impulse to move on. Relying on the same logic — on the same lack of logic — that had brought him here, the fact that he had no urge to go any further meant that the trail ended here, in Nemesis. There had been times when he had longed for the search to be over with but now, faced with this becoming a reality, he was aware, sadly, of the sense of purpose it lent to everything. A bee hovering over the petals of a flower, trees twisting in a gale, water dripping from a faucet. . Overlooked in the normal routine of his life, the search filled such details with possibility. In Despond he had almost given up and in other places he had been unsure where to go next but this was different: this time there was nowhere else to go. He had followed a trail by inventing it and now there was nothing else to follow, nothing left to invent. There was no more to discover — or what remained to be discovered would be discovered here.
He was sitting on a curved metal bench in a busy piazza: his second day in the city. He scrawled ‘Imbria’ on the back of the postcard he had found there and addressed it to Rachel. Picturing himself arriving back and seeing the card again made Walker think of what she had told him the night they had first met: dreaming of a garden where you pick a rose, waking to find your bed strewn with petals.
Seeing Walker seal the envelope a small boy offered to post it for him. Walker handed over a few coins and the boy ran to the other side of the piazza. Through the pigeon-scattering crowd Walker saw him stand on tiptoe and slot the card into a yellow letter-box.
The man who had been sitting at the other end of the bench, meanwhile, hauled himself to his feet and left. Lodged between the metal slats where he had been sitting Walker noticed a leaflet which he picked up and read, vacantly, in the way you read nutritional information or special offers on the sides of cereal packets. It was a letter, written by a local film-maker named Marek. He was making a film of the city and the people who visited it, the letter explained. It would be a new kind of film, made up entirely of photographs, snaps, videos and Super 8 films taken by residents or tourists who were in the city on 9 April. He would then combine the diverse material into ‘a narrative montage of the city’. The success of the enterprise depended largely on the co-operation of the people themselves and he asked any visitors to send copies of the snaps or films they took that day in Nemesis. Obviously he would reinburse them for the cost of the developing. This had been made possible by the generous sponsorship of. . Walker skimmed the list of participating film-manufacturers and moved on to the bottom of the letter where he had set out the titles of his previous films, a few laudatory quotes from the press and the address to send material to.
Walker looked at the date: 9 April, The ninth of the fourth. He had assumed that the date in the book in Imbria had meant 4 September, the fourth of the ninth, three days from now; but if the dates had been set down American-style with the month preceding the day, then the date in the book was the day on which the film was being compiled.
He hurried to a pay-phone, half expecting it to ring, like a dog warning him not to approach, and dialled Marek’s number. Engaged. He waited a minute and dialled again. This time the phone was answered almost immediately, by the film-maker himself. Walker explained that he was a journalist interested in Marek’s work and wondered if it would be possible to do an interview. When there was silence on the other end Walker reeled off a list of the publications he wrote for, mentioned a book he was writing. Marek sounded sceptical but he agreed to meet with Walker ‘for a quick chat’.
‘When would be a good time?’ said Walker.
‘Would it be possible to come today?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you come soon?’
‘That would be fine.’
‘In about one hour?’
‘Perfect.’
Walker replaced the receiver and caught a taxi. He was full of anticipation and paid no attention to his surroundings until the cab dropped him near the docks in the warehouse district. He found the right building and jabbed the bell. The intercom cleared its throat and Marek told him to come up.
The studio was a large loft space, screened off into separate areas. Marek came to meet him and they shook hands. He was shorter than Walker, wearing an old sweater and jeans. Espresso stubble, dark eyes ringed by insomnia circles. Walker formed an impression of a man who returns from dinner at midnight, makes himself coffee and settles down to work until dawn.