Currency of Paper. Alex Kovacs

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 of considerations arising from the glimpsing of a turtle-shaped ocarina, which Maximilian had seen displayed in the front window of this property.

       43 Roman Road, E2

      Premises to which Maximilian would travel especially in order to communicate with a pair of blue-throated macaws, creatures with whom he felt he had begun to develop an affinity.

       83 Blomfield Road, W2

      Address to which Maximilian sent a mysterious chain of correspondence to an unseen recipient bearing the alias of “Jonah Plinkerton,” an individual who claimed to have once been involved in the manufacturing of fondue-sets. After a prolonged dialogue about eighteenth-century fountain design, their letters eventually turned to detailed considerations of the representation of snails throughout the history of painting.

       Camberwell Baths, SE5

      On the 19th of November that year, a phial of green ink was opened in the swimming pool at this location, an act performed purely to facilitate aesthetic contemplation. Afterwards, a large compensatory cash donation was sent to the council anonymously, with an accompanying letter of apology and explanation, but the ideas and terminologies employed in the text were found lamentably impenetrable by the relevant authorities.

Growth Towards the Ceiling

       (1954–1976)

      One of Maximilian’s first major acquisitions was an abandoned warehouse, located on the fringes of the city, in Edgware. At first he had not been entirely certain of the use to which he intended to put it, but a number of ideas occurred to him, and he enjoyed visiting the building regularly and dreaming of its potential.

      Empty for many years now, the space had gradually fallen into a state of dereliction. It had once been a paint factory, but all of the machinery had long since been sold, and the only trace of its previous use at the time of purchase was a vague lingering odour of paint, somehow still embedded in certain pockets of air, from which it never seemed to leave, being clearly detectable for many years to come.

      Maximilian enjoyed observing the forms of decay present in the property, and he spent many afternoons pacing back and forth through the space, often with no definite intentions in mind, sometimes even sitting at a single fixed point for