The Weaver Fish (2 page)

It is said that as Ta'Salmoud collapsed on the beach, the calm in the bay vanished, replaced in a moment by the most frightening storm the villagers had seen. For Ta'Salmoud, then, the weaver fish was not an agent of disfigurement and pain, but of salvation, providing safe deliverance from the temper of the sea.

Not surprisingly, the news of a fisherman who apparently calmed the sea, walked upon water, and suffered uncomplaining an unspeakable injury attracted the attention of the Church. In 1921, papal envoys visited the Ferendes to investigate the claims and determine a recommendation of sainthood. They declared in the negative on the grounds that, though the events truly occurred, they were not miraculous but explained by natural causes, namely the weaver fish.

There is one known photograph of Ta'Salmoud, taken during that visit, and protected under
lex Vaticani
(it may be viewed but not reproduced). He is at the centre of a small group, standing on the beach with the village behind. The others are bowed, but Ta'Salmoud's head is high, looking not at the camera but into the distance beyond. Almost certainly, he is staring at the sea. The photographer was clearly not a scientist, for what we would like to have had recorded is an image of Ta'Salmoud's feet. But the manners of the time, or ineptitude of the nuncio, have forever denied us this evidence. While his companions' feet are all on view, Ta'Salmoud's are hidden by the tub in which he stands, presumably immersed in his anodyne seawater.

Ta'Salmoud died, from all accounts peacefully, in the following year, 1922. He had never fished again, nor ventured into the bay. All the stories attest to him being treated with the greatest reverence, and after his death his word,
kenijo,
became the main word, the most precious word, and the most protective one, for all his descendants. There is something poignant about a great fisherman who had walked on the sea, thereafter to be made
forever to stand in it, in pots and pans and ignominious tubs, or at the water's edge, half in half out. Half man, half
rinlin.

This is an edited version of an illustrated address entitled ‘Thomas MacAkerman to Josef Ta'Salmoud: A Century of the Weaver Fish', given to the Lindenblüten Society in Nazarene College, Cambridge, by
Dr E O M Tøssentern,
Fellow. The Advocacies referred to can be perused in
Edictum MCMXXI Iesus Solus
—Only Jesus (Walks on Water).

2

To a casual observer crossing New Latin Square, the modest apartment tower at Number 7 would not rate a second glance, unless the eye found pleasure in distinctive drabness. Or unless some private resonance piqued the interest: not for the first time might those paired windows evoke two sorrowful eyes, their feature lintels heavy brows, and the grey, brooding fabric the face of human melancholy returning a stare.

But Oriel Gardens was not always so easily passed over. Sixty years ago, we might encounter a gaggle of excitable spectators, looking, pointing, declaring this and that, approving or disapproving—but whatever the case, opinionated. For a year or so, it was probably the most discussed and photographed building in London.

It is usual to attribute the building design to Howard Prescott, then of the partnership Knight Prescott, but this is an error. For it is this very issue of attribution, indeed of what constitutes a building no less, that placed Oriel Gardens at the centre of a storm. Prescott, the city's most revered architect and shortly to receive a knighthood, accepted the commission under a Royal Assent, a prestigious appointment even for him. He designed the fabric, then unceremoniously passed the project to a junior partner: ‘You do the internals, Enright. I've finished the building.'

Today, that sounds culpably patronizing; we can only imagine Enright's dismay. But that was Prescott's view of the world. Architecture was transformation of the landscape, a building was designed to exist amongst other buildings, to please on an urban scale, and to be admired from the outside.

Fortunately, Lawrence Enright had an interest in the design of ‘internals', and to his credit produced workable plans within four weeks. These were so innovative and adaptable that half a century later the apartments remain works in transformation, a fusion of the continually modern and the period gracious. This capacity for renewal within the fixed structural constraints set by Prescott was a triumph of the imagination, not widely recognized at the time. Enright later established a new practice, more to his philosophic liking, with Rosalind Fitzwilliam, became president of the Institute, and received a peerage after refitting the Royal Yacht. He never criticized Prescott, and was not a party to the acrimonious debates that centred partly on his work, on the two architectures of a building, the inside and the outside of Oriel Gardens.

Most publicly, the antagonists in this controversy were Prescott and Julian Kaldor. Kaldor was not an architect, but an artist and photographer who lived well off private means—evidently power generation in Hungary—and exhibited for pleasure rather than profit. His connection to the debate seems to be his passionate beliefs in the functionality of good design, the pre-eminence of human experience in parametrizing space for work and living, and a temperamental impatience with Prescott's pomposity.

Prescott, accustomed to the respect and admiration of professional colleagues, must have been taken aback at the directness and impertinence of an outsider's criticism. But beneath the superior manners of the knight-to-be was a ready pugilist. Kaldor once described Prescott's architecture as ‘skin deep'. Back came Kaldor's artistry as ‘paper thin' with an informing intellect ‘emulsion thick'. He gave as well as he got.

The dispute can be dated from what should have been a perfectly uneventful dedication ceremony held in late May, 1954, when the building was approaching completion. Proceedings took place in the foyer and the adjoining garden entry, which are easily seen from the main gate. Prescott had given an address of thinly veiled self-adulation, and was about to resume his seat when Kaldor, who was present by reason of being well connected, and had prior knowledge of Enright's contribution, asked loudly
about the principles governing the living space design, and when these were clearly articulated, did the result not naturally subsume the building fabric as a logical determination? Indeed, was not a building's exterior wholly derivative, and was not Mr Enright's solution a work of genius?

A heated exchange ensued, which clearly had the normally sleepy court-circular reporter agog. Then, spectacularly, in the midst of the growing fracas, at their feet in the garden, arrived Miguel Pájaro Lorca, prone and with limbs outstretched in a bizarre caricature of failed flight.

Poor Lorca. A roof carpenter who was known to have demons in his head was instructed by his foreman to ‘try Crome' (a trade sealant of the time). For want of any other explanation, it was conjectured that, in a state of mental imbalance, he heard ‘fly home'. His fate put close to the architecture debate on the day, but hostilities quickly reignited in the press, in professional journals, in the civil courts, and in galleries (Kaldor staged an influential and rather defamatory exhibition entitled ‘Integuments', of apocalyptic, damaged building shells, some echoing quite unambiguously the stare of Oriel Gardens).

By 1963, the
cause célèbre
was all but forgotten. The liberal tide had swept away much of authority, guild mentality and prescriptive aesthetics; individualism, modernity, and the Kaldor ‘statements' were in ascension. Architecture was about people, not buildings. Prescott had begun his slow, choleric retirement. Kaldor was a celebrity
Quartier Latin
stylist, in vogue with the daring as a portraitist, and was about to found FotoZeit, destined to become the foremost European school of photojournalism for a generation. And Oriel Gardens had retreated to a maturing sedateness.

Enter Mingle Lane and walk along the services access passing to the rear of Number 7. From here you obtain a more proportioned view of the building, set in a well-maintained terraced garden, and the windows, rather spooky from the streetscape, look almost charming. You are now standing on the exact spot where began the short notoriety of Mrs Lydia Chalmers and her dog Mordax.

Late one evening in October, 1963, the two were walking along this lane when Mordax broke free of his lead and ran across the terraces to the building, jumping and barking inconsolably. The elderly Mrs Chalmers followed and in the gloom thought she could see ‘a big parcel' hanging from a window, this being the cause of her dog's excitement. (From where you are standing it is the left-most window on the fourth floor.) The general commotion attracted residents and passers-by alike, and it was soon established by better eyes than Mrs Chalmers' that the parcel was in fact the lifeless body of a junior attaché to the Soviet Embassy, clad only in a twisted bed sheet tied around his ankles and by which he was suspended from the window.

The police were quickly summoned, and forced their entry into the apartment. There were found the bodies of Tory moralist Sir Roger Tealady MP, and society heiress Miss Lucy Montague-Tiese, whose property it was. All three were bound together at the ankles by bed linen, being otherwise clothed in rich layers of decaying yoghurt.

Because of the Soviet connection, a joint inquest was conducted with State secrecy, and its finding was cursorily published as deaths by misadventure. Misadventure! How the snigger press loved that. ‘Attaché' was briefly defined to mean connected by the ankles with bed linen. But there was more. Run your eye up to the top-floor window directly above. Across its lintel there still exists a rusty cable, which can be traced over the roof and up the edge of the closest chimney. It was a crude short-wave radio aerial; the top apartment turned out to be a hastily evacuated Russian safe house and monitoring post. Misadventure in the Safe House, they sniggered. But there was more. The name of the hapless aide who misadventured from the window? Yuri Groynyich Kondomov. They should never have sent him to London.

Oriel Gardens has managed to keep out of the news for some decades now. Captain Kondomov is no longer a risqué cocktail, and yoghurt is boldly purchased by any English lady without a trace of self-consciousness. The building has properly reclaimed its place in the history of architecture, rather than of scandal. For a few years during the 1980s a ground-floor apartment was
periodically opened for students and academics with an interest in design history.

In the mid-1990s the entire property was acquired by the Bokardo Trust, renamed Clement House, and extensively refurbished under the supervision of the Enright–Fitzwilliam architectural practice. The ground and first floors were remodelled into professional suites for medical specialists, with a new dedicated entry off Mingle Lane. Residents still access the upper floors using the original grand entrance and foyer off the square.

To see inside these days, you will need to befriend a resident or represent yourself as an interested party when an apartment is contracted for lease. Alternatively, you may wish to make an appointment with one of the several psychiatrists who keep rooms in its lower floors.

There is a small plaque commemorating
Lorca
in the foyer. Though appearing to be soundly fixed to masonry there is a tradition that, from time to time, it falls to the ground.

In an odd parallel,
Prescott
also fell to his death, from a barn roof in Surrey.

Apart from pre-eminence in architecture,
Lord Enright
is an accomplished illustrator, linguist, and historian. His two-volume
Runic Alphabetology
is definitive. Most recently, his poetic translation (with
E Knielsen
) of the Norse epic
The Slaying of the Brothers Orsifal by the Brothers Parsifal
is the most accessible account in English of the invention of dynastic murder.

The author is indebted to the publishers of
FootNotes: A Walking Guide to Unpedestrian London
(Walk No 17) for much of the information given here.

3

HANGING ON, UP HIGH ... WALTER RECKLES IS NOT A HOUSEHOLD NAME, AND AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING DOESN'T RATE AMONG THE WINNING CONVERSATION STARTERS AT A DINNER PARTY. ALL THAT MAY BE ABOUT TO CHANGE WITH THE PUBLICATION NEXT FALL OF
HOW TO WALK AWAY FROM A MIDAIR COLLISION. AR
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT ANNA CAMENES FOUND THE AUTHOR AT HIS DESK IN A CONVERTED HANGAR OUT OF WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO.

I don't think that I have ever seen such an improbable contrast, and felt such an unsettling disjunction, between the inside and the outside of a building. That two vastly different worlds—two realities almost—could co-exist separated only by a thin boundary of pressed steel seemed to defy the Second Law, or something.

Outside, Building B1 looked like any other abandoned, derelict hangar at any other abandoned, derelict airstrip. Dented, rusting, flapping sheet metal, roughly musical, competed with dying long grass and pitted bitumen to advertise the desolation. A cracked concrete plinth with corroded tie bolts that once secured some prized exhibit was now itself a testament to extinction. Closer to the building, near its left-hand end, was an antique gasoline bowser that belonged in an industrial museum as much as in this scene of relics. As we approached, I just made out the designation B1 inside a faded decal high up on the wall. Were it not for that, I would have thought I was being led to the wrong place.

The strange thing is, I can't remember the point of actually
entering or leaving the building, the phase transition, as it were. I just remember being outside and being inside.

And the inside, as they say, was something different. I was guided by a helper called Rory to the centre of about an acre of open-plan offices, some made barely private by low glass partitions. Everywhere were men, women, and not a few teenagers sitting at computer terminals, some with racks of accessory test gear housing flashing oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, and so on. Here and there, two or three would be huddled over a desk or a screen, animated yet hardly noisy. That was a surprising thing: it seemed very quiet for so many people.

And right there, in the centre, in an office like any other, I was introduced to the man I had come to interview: Walter Reckles, President and Chief Executive of all this, as well as the author of a controversial book on disaster survival that had somehow generated a critical industry of its own before being actually published.

As I approached, Reckles was facing away, watching a large screen with a graphic of, I suppose, an aerofoil—though it might equally have been a long section through a chilli. The image was to form a slightly insistent, visually seductive background to our interaction. Several columns of numbers were streaming up the right side of the screen, while the figure to left progressively changed in shape, occasionally drastically. I guessed that some kind of optimization was proceeding, but I didn't ask.

Rory hesitated, mesmerized it seemed, by the screen. I expect everyone there thought that the most interesting, the most important, the most fantastic design work on the whole floor would begin its life on that monitor. Then he said, ‘Dr Reckles, this is Dr Camenes. She has an appointment.'

Reckles almost jumped out of his chair, turning awkwardly in the confined space. It was a complex welcoming gesture combining splayed arms and a large smile, as well as, I suspect, a recovery of balance manoeuvre. He responded warmly, ‘I know. I know.'

It was a broad, beautiful Southern accent. We shook hands, and he gestured me to a chair, at the same time swivelling his own to face me, and moving it to my left. The effect, I came to see,
was that he could turn his head from time to time to glance at the unfolding numerical drama behind him; for me it was just a little distracting.

I would have to say that Walter Reckles, on first impression, is a likeable man. He was tall and clean-shaven, dressed in tee-shirt and jeans, with a certain elegance of speech, accentuated by an intensity of gaze from disconcertingly pale green eyes. I was soon to form the impression that his mind was busy on several channels of concurrent activity, yet his attention to me was almost impeccable. His age was difficult to place, probably midthirties. Even so, from some conservatism of manner, some slight formality, I decided at once that he was to be Dr Reckles, not Wal. I knew I was going to be Miss; I almost expected Honey.

Reckles looked at me with what was surely respect, either for the depth of my understanding or the magnitude of my lie.

I tried to glare the message: I am a woman. I think it worked, because he invited my interests into the explanation.

From where I was sitting I guessed I could see perhaps two hundred computer screens. Triple, say, that estimate for units obscured from view and I was in the midst of a major enterprise.

I agreed it was funny, but I hadn't encountered the name Martin in my pre-reading.

Reckles, Reckleson. I wasn't getting less confused.

He looked momentarily lost—I'm sure it was sadness—and glanced again at the screen behind.

There was another pause.

Passed on, I later discovered, meant being thrust across the lab at high subsonic speed when a wind tunnel malfunctioned.

He gestured over the same shoulder as if the facility were within reach, or at least within sight.

I was genuinely impressed, and said so. I was then invited to visit the wind tunnels (they operate a supersonic one as well) set up in an old Proving Ground laboratory, but my schedule prohibited this.

I was so surprised, I uttered redundantly:

Again, I was so surprised that I barely repressed an inane ‘Submarines?' But Reckles stayed quiet, evidently needing a prompt. I capitulated.

I was silenced by the unexpected emphasis here, almost an impassioning. Then he added:

I was further silenced, examining what I thought were
non sequitur
properties of this assertion. And somehow, in that state of absorption, I became inexplicably and, I knew, unwisely, emboldened.

Well, I had come here to discover what the book was about, and now this man with the multi-channel mind and the green-eyed gaze had told me. It was the good math. With, I suspect, a bit of the good Lord too.

I thought then about the building I had entered. About inside and outside, and the containment of opposites by a millimetre of paradox. About extremes of altitude and two forces of insistent violation, each of the other, stopped dead in a thin wall of metal. I said: