Where There's Smoke by Black Inc.

be. Here it is. As we age, every part of the body deteriorates or suffers entropy, down to the very cells. That what ageing means, from a material point of view. Even in cases when they are still healthy, old cells are touched with the colours of autumn (a metaphor, I concede, but a dash of metaphor here and there does not add up to metaphysics). This goes for the many, many cells of the brain too.
    â€˜Just as spring is the season that looks forward to summer, so autumn is the season that looks back. The desires conceived by autumnal brain cells are autumnal desires, nostalgic, layered in memory. They no longer have the heat of summer; what intensity they have is multivalent, complex, turned more toward the past than toward the future.
    â€˜There, that is the core of it, my contribution to brain science. What do you think?’
    â€˜A contribution, I would say,’ says her diplomatic son, ‘less to brain science than to philosophy of mind, to the speculative branch of that philosophy. Why not just say that you feel in an autumnal mood and leave it at that?’
    â€˜Because if it were just a mood it would change, as moods do. The sun would come out, my mood would grow sunnier. But there are states of the soul deeper than moods. Nostalgie de la boue , for instance, is not a mood but a state of being. The question I ask is, Does the nostalgie in nostalgie de la boue belong to the mind or to the brain? My answer is, The brain. The brain whose origin lies not in the realm of forms but in dirt, in mud, in the primal slime to which, as it runs down, it longs to return. A material longing emanating from the very cells themselves. A death drive deeper than thought.’
    It sounds fine, it sounds like exactly what it is, chatter, it does not sound mad at all. But that is not what she is thinking. What she is thinking is: Who speaks like this to her children, children she may not see again? What she is also thinking is: Just the kind of thought that would come to a woman in her autumn. Everything I see, everything I say, is touched with the backward look. What is left for me? I am the one who cries .
    â€˜Is that what you are occupying yourself with nowadays – brain science?’ says Helen. ‘Is that what you are writing about?’
    Strange question; intrusive. Helen never talks to her about her work. Not exactly a taboo subject between them, but off bounds certainly.
    â€˜No,’ she says. ‘I still confine myself to fiction, you will be relieved to hear. I have not yet descended to hawking my opinions around. The Opinions of Elizabeth Costello , revised edition.’
    â€˜A new novel?’
    â€˜Not a novel. Stories. Do you want to hear one of them?’
    â€˜Yes, I do. It is a long while since you last told us a story.’
    â€˜Very well, a bedtime story. Once upon a time, but our times, not olden times, there is a man, and he travels to a strange city for a job interview. From his hotel room, feeling restless, feeling in the mood for adventure, feeling who knows what, he telephones for a call girl. A girl arrives and spends time with him. He is free with her as he is not free with his wife; he makes certain demands on her.
    â€˜The interview next day goes well. He is offered the job and accepts and in due course, in the story, moves to this city. Among the people in his new office, working as a secretary or a clerk or a telephonist, he recognises the same girl, the call girl, and she recognises him.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜And I cannot tell you more.’
    â€˜But that is not a story, that it is just the groundwork for a story. You have not told a story until you say what happens next.’
    â€˜She does not have to be a secretary. The man is offered the job and accepts and moves to this new city and in due course pays a visit to relatives, to a cousin he has not seen since they were children, or a cousin of his wife’s. The cousin’s daughter walks into