paper gradually shifted from brown to yellow to white, with hundreds of barely discernible shades of each colour forming a spectrum of decay. The typefaces, layout and size of the words shifted with the whims of fashion. Photographs gradually took up more space, then became clearer, were eventually printed in colour. Society itself travelled from one era to another and then to another. Entire years and decades raced by in a matter of footsteps. His entire adult life was documented here and the memories that the newspapers provoked were different each time he ventured up to the second floor.
To enter the newspaper room he had to pass through a narrow trapdoor, his head peeping into the long cone of light thrown from the only window. Atoms of dust would rise in drifting circles, waver softly in the gaseous brown air, settle onto forgotten objects. He spent many hours there alone, idling. Hours when he would trace a finger over surfaces, following patterns and shapes found in the skin of the floors and walls. The smell of ancient paper mingled with the dust and rotting carpets. The room was lit by a single bare lightbulb precariously dangling from a thin length of wire. In odd moments of inspiration he had scrawled flurries of words in pencil on to the dirty beige walls. These were sometimes quotations from the news stories he had read, their dates and page numbers written at the bottom and circled. On other occasions he wrote hurried passages and fragments inspired by literary works.
His collection of newspapers became a resource that he would consult with regard to a multitude of purposes. If he wanted to generate ideas, objects, or phrases at random he would choose a particular date and then open the relevant newspaper to see what it contained. When, on a given evening, he wished to remember a certain year, he would go upstairs and linger in the attic. He found that it was the incidental details that most stimulated his interest and provoked the most potent memories. The choice of certain words, a particular font, the cut of a dress in a photograph, these could all bring back the look and feel of a particular year or period, evoking the often unconscious textures and attitudes he had absorbed, though not always aware of them at the time.
He never cut out any clippings from the papers; he found that he preferred the beauty of a complete and untarnished issue. He cherished the illusion of being able to open a newspaper “as if upon the day itself”. This constituted one of his principal and favourite methods of time travel. When he concentrated, he was capable of convincing himself that he had actually taken up residence in a past year. It came down to nothing more than playing some music recorded in that year, looking over some old photographs, reading the relevant newspaper. And there it was, the year existed once more. If he then spent the rest of the day indoors and busied himself with a task that could conceivably have occurred in 1956, then for all intents and purposes he had successfully transported himself to 1956. Once more he would find himself living through its many pleasures and disappointments.
Surveying the many stacks of paper, Maximilian would often grin. It was a matter of some satisfaction to him that his activities in this one particular, not especially auspicious building had opened into a multitude of other events, stretching far beyond the boundaries of the present moment. From here he had begun to construct his own invisible world. All that he had known after a certain age had found its origins in this location.
Details of Some Principal Coordinates
(1953)
Parliament Hill, NW3
On five occasions that summer, Maximilian ventured here at night, bringing a deckchair with him, in which he would sit for some hours, gazing down upon the city spread-eagled below, forming a series of irreverent Morse code messages with a heavy torch.
17 Bisham Gardens, N6
Where through the front window Maximilian had once seen an enormously obese man, wearing a pink bowtie and white braces, being given a singing lesson by a teacher possessing a rather stern countenance, who was seemingly fond of jabbing his fingers into the air and making many excited remarks in Italian.
Putney Library, SW15
One of Maximilian’s principal haunts at this time, where he would often leaf through a standard guide to astronomy of the period, a volume which he had not been able to locate at any other venue and which contained particularly beautiful illustrations of comets.
133 Amhurst Road, E8
Location of a public house which Maximilian always entered when following a route that he frequently walked that year (a walk that was planned to every last detail, which was circular, and which he only took on Saturday afternoons, the day and time for which it had been expressly intended).
Brompton Cemetery, SW10
The place in which Maximilian had decided he would most like to be buried. This was due to the cemetery’s centrality, relative modesty, and the beauty it offered the visitor when approached at dusk in winter.
314 Grove Green Road, E11
A junk shop with window displays that Maximilian was often drawn to because of their absolute lack of order and decorum, indeed of any sense of composition whatsoever. Certain fascinating objects remained in perpetual window repertory, and of these Maximilian became particularly fixated upon a wooden figurine of a Japanese dancer, dressed in a navy-blue kimono, one foot lifted, frozen in air, its left hand clutching a pink chrysanthemum.
12 Caversham Road, NW5
Maximilian saw the head of one of the residents of this property briefly emerge from a window, an image perceived through a pair of binoculars after an extensive series of rovings through doorways, drainpipes, steeples, and chimneys.
The Oval, SE11
Maximilian enjoyed spending the entire day here during cricket matches, being ostentatiously preoccupied with anything other than sport. He would sunbathe, watch the animated faces of the many gathered spectators, eat packets of nuts, and read novels, but only rarely would he pay any attention to the vicissitudes of the cricketers parading in the foreground. As far as he was concerned, their presence was required to provide an ambience that would flavour his other, more pressing activities.
96 South Ealing Road, W5
A tailor’s shop, home to a mannequin that Maximilian felt bore a startling facial resemblance to him. He liked to come and visit this individual, almost a perfected version of himself, physically speaking, and compare his own sartorial choices and general demeanour with that of his double.
6 Isabella Street, SE1
Final destination of a paper aeroplane bearing a handwritten message whose trajectory commenced within the immediate proximity of an adjacent address, and which, in the event, was encountered by no one other than Maximilian himself, who was engaged in a preliminary attempt at paper aeroplane making and throwing, and was in fact disappointed by the results of his efforts.
16 Blackhorse Lane, E17
Site of a café where Maximilian would occasionally dine, amongst clattering chairs, steam risings, stained mirrors, tables which each held a single occupant. He would gape at the void of his reflection, sitting through many dead idle hours.
8 Ballast Quay, SE10
Approximate source of an extended chain
