I am myself unclear about the difference between a storey and a floor – if there is one – and I get very confused by all talk of an x-storeyed building. Where do you start counting? Surely you include the ground floor as a storey? But if so, why is the first floor not the second floor? Because surely the ground floor has to be the first floor – as in Storey 1 – rather than the zero floor, the nought floor – Storey 0. Because if the ground floor is just that – the ground floor – and the first floor is the first storey, then a four-storey building, such as the BOX offices which Michael had described, was a building with five levels. A ground floor, and four storeys above it. Or was it a four-level building – with a ground floor and three storeys above it?
I opened my mouth to voice this puzzlement to Michael, but shut it again because I was suddenly sure that we had already had this conversation at some previous time, and I was sure also that he had explained it to me and that I had forgotten. Then I opened my mouth again to suggest that the building wasn’t haunted at all, it was just jinxed by the fact that no one ever knew what other people meant when they said ‘a four-storey building’. But I shut it immediately. That was just stupid.
I have a very amateur interest in architecture. By which, Michael tells me, I mean that I like buildings. He has explained to me that what I like is actually not really architecture at all, it is the placement of people against things. He insists that I am far too interested in people to really have any proper appreciation of architecture. Most of the time of course he is joking with me, teasing, but I think that he does actually, in truth, have quite a condescending attitude towards my interest in his profession. Which, I suppose, is fair enough. Architecture is probably one of those things that we all feel entitled to discuss without ever really understanding the principles. What I’m not so sure about is just how serious he is when he insists that architecture cannot concern itself too much with people. With actual real people and their physical needs and their practical necessities. These are technical matters, and should be given only minor, cursory attention. Sometimes I think he is not serious at all, that he can’t be. Other times I’m convinced that this is what he really thinks, and that he dresses it up in deniable humour because he is ashamed of it. Maybe it is a cross between the two. Part of one thing and part of the other.
I was impressed, though, by Michael’s story of an old building refusing to allow a new one to take its place. I liked the idea that the space had been defined at a certain height, and the new construction would not be allowed to go any higher – that it did not have metaphysical planning permission. I thought it reminded me of a film I had seen once, though I couldn’t remember the details. I mentioned this to Michael.
—Oh, I know what you mean.
He was fiddling with his phone, reading a text I think.
—It’s a Bob Hope thing, isn’t it? he said.
—No, it’s European, subtitles, German maybe.
—Fassbinder? Not like him I don’t think. Who was in
it?
—Oh, I can barely remember. Something about a house and the house is actually the one doing –
—The Haunting.
—Yeah …
—Well, that’s American.
—It wasn’t American. It was in German or something.
—Well, The Haunting is an American film.
—No, it wasn’t called that.
—You just said it was.
—I didn’t. I said that in this film the house was the one doing the haunting, and that the film was German. Michael was replying to his text.
—You’re thinking of The Haunting.
—I’m not! Is The Haunting German?
—No, it’s American.
—Then why were there subtitles?
—Are you thinking of Tarkovsky? There’s a bit in Stalker –
—I don’t know who that is.
—There was a creepy Yugoslavian thing called The House. From what I remember. All bony hands on banisters.
—Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
—Menzel?
—What?
—Closely Observed Trains?
—What?
—Not that one obviously. He had another one. Powerful. Powerful film-maker. Must get it on DVD actually – Trains. Lovely film. The boy in the bath, all that. There.
Just as he finished whatever it was that he was doing on his phone, and I was about to give out to him for doing it, there was a sudden cloudburst outside. I’m not sure if there was thunder. But a wave of darkness raced through the café, bringing hush and hesitation, and then the rain hit the ground like debris. The two of us watched as people ran for cover, some of them screeching between laughter and alarm, a couple of them coming into the café for shelter, others making it across the road to a second-hand record shop. The rain was torrential. It came down so hard that after a couple of minutes we could no longer see the other side of the street. We stared out at what I can’t really call rain at all. We stared out at falling water, as if we had been transported to some jungle and were crouched in a cave behind a waterfall, mute in fear and ignorance, cold little apes in the crevice. The café was becalmed. There was no noise of voices. The radio had disappeared. There was no clatter of dishes or cutlery or cooking, no ring of the register, no tunes from phones, no movement. Only the hysterical drumming of the rain, and the gathering rattle of running water. We stared and waited, as if there was a chance that this time, this time, it might not stop. Or this time, this time, it might presage something worse. The darkness covered us, and I was afraid. It was hard in the noisy gloom to pick out Michael sitting beside me. His telephone too went dark, its little lights vanishing in his hand. On my face I could feel a kind of paralysis, as if I had neglected to blink, or breathe. I thought that it would not stop. I thought that it would never stop, not now. But it did. After just a couple of minutes. The light returned. The water became rain again. And then the rain slowly ceased.
Michael broke the human silence with his laugh. He stopped, made a wide-eyed face of mock fear and laughed again. In the rest of the café, people relaxed. Others laughed too, some shook their heads, rolled their eyes, muttered. Conversations resumed, the hubbub rose unaltered.
Then a dog appeared, walking down the centre of the road; a large, dark dog that moved with a great swagger, slowly – almost, it seemed to me, in slow motion – right down the middle of the sodden roadway, as if it was in charge here. I’m not sure anyone else noticed. Michael was fiddling again with his phone. The dog’s big head bounced gently, its powerful shoulders rolled and rippled and its tongue seemed to glisten and ooze over its pointed teeth like a bag of blood. It glanced this way and that with huge cloudy eyes, and paused, and went on, and looked, as it passed, directly into the café – directly, it seemed, at me – registering my stare, taking note of me, its hard, intelligent mind considering and then dismissing me. It went from view. A huge, loathsome dog, a deep shadow in the damp sunlight, uncollared, unkept. Dry as a bone.
I took a sip of my very cold tea.
I can’t remember anything else about lunch with Michael. We talked about Rachel. We talked about a building haunted by another building. We watched the rain. I saw a dog. I think Michael enjoyed meeting me. Perhaps I was a little quieter than usual. I had the mouse on my mind, still. And I was a little depressed by the news of Rachel’s trip to Poland. And at the end, after the rain and the dog, I was uneasy, a little nervous. I don’t really like dogs. But I think Michael had a good enough time talking with me.
It is often impossible, however, to know very much about Michael. He is rather opaque.