hands uncover something by Voltaire, titled Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, but on opening the volume he finds it to have been printed in French, so it also finds a home on the unreadable pile. Does Eliot think he understands French?
And the next one follows suit – incredibly old and held together by thick rubber bands: Lettres juives, by the Marquis Boyer d'Argens and printed in 1737. Dante carefully places this one on the coffee table, frightened to even have such a delicate thing in his hands. After glancing across the other spines, the dull knot of futility expands behind his eyes. There is Leventhal, Gallini, Goulemot, and something called the Gnoptik Fragment with no author cited. Eliot called this 'the first batch', but even the ones he can read will consume at least a month of concentrated effort.
He can see the reason: Eliot wants him to read the influential works of other scholars, dilettantes and explorers of the unknown – men who inspired his longing for change and adventure. But these titles seem especially archaic and obscure. None of them is even cited in Banquet. Perhaps it is a test, or an academic exercise to induce the right state of mind in the man selected to assist Eliot's biographical second book. Nonetheless, he expected handwritten journals, old photographs, press cuttings and stories told around open fires – things more vivid and immediate. Eliot only ever published Banquet for the Damned, creating an overnight sensation in 1956 before a scathing critical backlash saw it out of mainstream print. And no one is more familiar with the book than he, but Eliot dismissed it and made him feel stupid, maybe even a little resentful. And why was Eliot so vague about the new project? Does he not trust him? They'll never get started if this reading list is merely the beginning of what he has to pore over. If only there were a faster way to catch up. But who is he to argue with Eliot Coldwell? Every book will have to be read, carefully. If he hadn't been invited to Scotland and provided with the flat, he'd be tempted to suspect delaying tactics on Eliot's part.
Dante shakes the notion from his head, wondering if his ingratitude can be measured.
Gentle strokes of a plectrum against the strings of an acoustic guitar slip beneath the door of Tom's room, and become a distraction before he's finished a cursory flick through the Richard Burton tome. As his eyes stare down at a yellowing page of cramped text, he imagines the onyx neck of Tom's guitar cradled between his friend's supple brown fingers. Instinctively, he wants to rush through and play the rhythm to the seductive lead. It is the arpeggio for Black Wine he can hear. A bluesy ballad from Sister Morphine's first album, with a dreamy country quality throughout the chorus, evoked by Tom's winsome harmonising and slide guitar. Tom is singing now, in a hushed tone, and the song sounds especially sad as it drifts through the flat.
They wrote that song together, huddled around the electric fire in Dante's room in their house in Northfield: he, Tom, Punky the drummer, and Anneka, the last bass player. Sprawled between overflowing ashtrays, and huddled around an empty Jack Daniel's bottle, the song came to them like a gift. Dante remembers how they looked in the flickering light from the four black candles that some Goth girl had given Tom after a fling: lank hair and gaunt faces; silk shirts hanging over ribs with too much definition; a blue-grey pallor to their skin in the dim light; flesh unused to sunlight. Rock'n'roll orphans lost to melody, legs clad tight in leather, drunk and stoned, but absorbed in the song someone began in D. Content together.
A bit of speed, coke if it floated for free, and plenty of skunk to help them along in those days. Time never mattered and neither did poverty, an empty fridge or signing on in Selly Oak. Everything seemed easier back then, with something special pulsing between them, whispering that it could go on forever.
Dante sighs and decides he will read the books, as much as he is able. After all he loves to read novels. But not today, with the sun out and the town to explore on a late summer's day. Eliot will understand; he and Tom need to settle in. The dusty minutiae of occult histories can wait.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
'Leather jeans. What were we thinking?' Dante says. 'What kind of