the transcendentally analytic mind of Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, the first redeemer into significance of these markings in the cave of man’s dark history.
There were even a few stills from John Huston’s film Freud. Montgomery Clift trembled with intelligence and insight as the dark backward and abysm of time opened itself to him alone, then the lame and the halt started to walk again.
By the evening I’d calmed down, though I hadn’t changed my views. We sat on the sofa. Some music, nondescript but passable, was seeping from the radio. Symmetric violins and cellos.
‘But how do we even know there is an unconscious?’ I said. ‘What is it?’ My hand had slipped inside her blouse. I was stroking and squeezing her flesh. I did this so often that I seldom noticed it was happening.
‘A signature detectable in the manoeuvres of consciousness,’ she said, ‘a passage in the psyche you only know exists because of the distorted evidence it leaves elsewhere.’ I unfastened another button. ‘A symptomatic reading, if it’s intelligent and persistent enough, might just divine it. You always reach for a breast when you’re confused, Sean. Why do you mock Freud for trying to make a map in the dark when you spend most of your waking hours pursuing some chimera called the School of Night?’
‘It’s not a chimera.’
‘You’re always looking outside yourself for something you think is hidden in the dark. Why not look inside instead? There’s no shortage of darkness there.’
‘Wait a minute. I just want to get something straight,’ I said. ‘You say that the unconscious recognises no law except its own desire. That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But the desire is normally repressed and that makes us ill.’
‘If desire had to choose a career for itself, wouldn’t it be crime? The realm where no inhibitions apply? So if that’s the logic, then we’re all either criminals or ill.’
‘Or both,’ she said, as I coaxed the last button from its hole.
2
Daniel arrived one evening unannounced, as we were ladling spaghetti from a large white bowl. He handed me a bottle and sat down at the table, without waiting for an invitation.
‘I’m famous,’ he said and threw a copy of the Telegraph and Argus at me. ‘Court Section.’ I read the article. It seemed that one of Dan’s lorries had been used for highly illegal purposes.
‘The boy was a brilliant mechanic,’ Dan said, helping himself to some pasta. ‘The best I’ve ever had, so I let him keep the vehicles over the weekend. I knew he was probably up to something, but I didn’t really mind. He was so reliable with his maintenance work that if he wanted to do a bit of moonlighting to make a little extra, that was all right with me. He always clocked the speedo, so I didn’t know how far he was driving. But I’d no idea he’d been doing anything like this.’
I started reading the article to find out precisely what he had been doing. The writer began by describing a world unknown, he said, to most respectable inhabitants of Britain. A world in which vehicles would set off to Essex or Wales or Liverpool, collect their legal freight then bring it back up north, waiting till nightfall to start making other journeys, not to ports with customs officials hovering about clutching clipboards and tipping their peaked caps, but to empty lanes and disused airfields, to vacant lots by derelict factories or the edges of out-of-season caravan sites. And there, with no pro forma invoices or shipping manifests, men of few words in something of a hurry would unload cargoes from one vehicle and stack them smartly into another. Then they would drive off in different directions. It was still the transport business apparently, but this was its nocturnal side, manned by anonymous legions.
Dan’s boy Simon had such an affinity with vehicles that he could hear the sound of a sick motor and tell you straight off what was causing its
There were even a few stills from John Huston’s film Freud. Montgomery Clift trembled with intelligence and insight as the dark backward and abysm of time opened itself to him alone, then the lame and the halt started to walk again.
By the evening I’d calmed down, though I hadn’t changed my views. We sat on the sofa. Some music, nondescript but passable, was seeping from the radio. Symmetric violins and cellos.
‘But how do we even know there is an unconscious?’ I said. ‘What is it?’ My hand had slipped inside her blouse. I was stroking and squeezing her flesh. I did this so often that I seldom noticed it was happening.
‘A signature detectable in the manoeuvres of consciousness,’ she said, ‘a passage in the psyche you only know exists because of the distorted evidence it leaves elsewhere.’ I unfastened another button. ‘A symptomatic reading, if it’s intelligent and persistent enough, might just divine it. You always reach for a breast when you’re confused, Sean. Why do you mock Freud for trying to make a map in the dark when you spend most of your waking hours pursuing some chimera called the School of Night?’
‘It’s not a chimera.’
‘You’re always looking outside yourself for something you think is hidden in the dark. Why not look inside instead? There’s no shortage of darkness there.’
‘Wait a minute. I just want to get something straight,’ I said. ‘You say that the unconscious recognises no law except its own desire. That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But the desire is normally repressed and that makes us ill.’
‘If desire had to choose a career for itself, wouldn’t it be crime? The realm where no inhibitions apply? So if that’s the logic, then we’re all either criminals or ill.’
‘Or both,’ she said, as I coaxed the last button from its hole.
2
Daniel arrived one evening unannounced, as we were ladling spaghetti from a large white bowl. He handed me a bottle and sat down at the table, without waiting for an invitation.
‘I’m famous,’ he said and threw a copy of the Telegraph and Argus at me. ‘Court Section.’ I read the article. It seemed that one of Dan’s lorries had been used for highly illegal purposes.
‘The boy was a brilliant mechanic,’ Dan said, helping himself to some pasta. ‘The best I’ve ever had, so I let him keep the vehicles over the weekend. I knew he was probably up to something, but I didn’t really mind. He was so reliable with his maintenance work that if he wanted to do a bit of moonlighting to make a little extra, that was all right with me. He always clocked the speedo, so I didn’t know how far he was driving. But I’d no idea he’d been doing anything like this.’
I started reading the article to find out precisely what he had been doing. The writer began by describing a world unknown, he said, to most respectable inhabitants of Britain. A world in which vehicles would set off to Essex or Wales or Liverpool, collect their legal freight then bring it back up north, waiting till nightfall to start making other journeys, not to ports with customs officials hovering about clutching clipboards and tipping their peaked caps, but to empty lanes and disused airfields, to vacant lots by derelict factories or the edges of out-of-season caravan sites. And there, with no pro forma invoices or shipping manifests, men of few words in something of a hurry would unload cargoes from one vehicle and stack them smartly into another. Then they would drive off in different directions. It was still the transport business apparently, but this was its nocturnal side, manned by anonymous legions.
Dan’s boy Simon had such an affinity with vehicles that he could hear the sound of a sick motor and tell you straight off what was causing its
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