BrianHowell .sx The vanishing point .sx Dance could not recall exactly when the feeling of being elsewhere descended on him for the first time , except it somehow coincided with a series of odd incidents that would not normally cause him the slightest tinge of worry .sx He could not be quite sure whether the job he did was finally getting to him because of its unremitting routine or because he realized there were actually some aspects of it he did with relish but which he knew would ultimately lead nowhere .sx These thoughts occupied him as the lift , that was to take him to the mail - order department on the fourth floor above the bookshop where he worked , stalled obstinately on the ground floor .sx The lift , it seemed to him , was a metaphor for what he was doing in this building , day in , day out - a metal cage going nowhere which would one day stall in the sweltering well of the building , only finally to spew him out into a limbo , shrivelled , desiccated , used up , yet unused .sx As the lift ascended , he tried to imagine it descending .sx It was a mental game he had started playing recently .sx The only thing to which it was akin in his experience was a realization he had once had as a child that it was impossible to fantasize everyday scenes in his head - where everything was based around vertical lines , as in a film - if he were in a horizontal position and still conscious of it .sx People had to be upright .sx As he walked into the office , it might as well have been a desert , such was the sense of emptiness that suddenly came over him .sx Most of the time it seemed that he could only get through the day by dividing it artificially into twenty-minute or half-hour sections , with usually a coffee , tea , personal phone call , or trip to the toilet to separate the yawning expanses in between .sx There were , admittedly , some interesting aspects to the work , such as scanning the daily avalanche of mail from all corners of the country and globe .sx Strangely , the correspondence from the more eccentric customers gave him the most pleasure , as they at least appreciated his searching for some probably invented title or provided them with a list of books on famous deceased cats .sx The morning frustrated Dance even more than usual , though he didn't trust himself to give too much thought to what 'usual' exactly was :sx a telephone order from an irate diplomat , who wanted the only existing English translation of de Sade's Justine - a trashy American one , Dance almost pointed out , but he didn't want to get drawn into a discussion on this topic in the office - before the diplomat left for Prague ; an author of a famed and much reviled tome on blood sports rang to request that his book be sent to his grandchild for his eleventh birthday ; and another outraged customer , from Wimbledon , wrote to reprimand him for having the audacity to address her by her first name - Daphne , in this case .sx After running around the art department like a headless chicken for a good twenty minutes for an American calling from New York , Dance was suddenly taken by the urge to spend his whole lunch hour in the peace of the National Gallery , only a blessed five minutes away .sx He was glad he was allowed to take his lunch hour at the earliest possible moment , usually twelve o'clock .sx He had been reminded momentarily of the last time he'd felt like going to such trouble , when he had looked for a book on Dutch painting of which nobody in the department had heard .sx He had found it and sent it to a profusely grateful Miss Groenehaven in Amsterdam , his favourite customer .sx He could no longer remember the title .sx As ever , Dance strolled through the Italian Renaissance rooms , almost oblivious to the fact that he was in the Gallery ( only the Titians raised a glimmer of interest ) , until he reached the Early Northern rooms where , as ever , he stopped in front of Holbein's The Ambassadors .sx Though the trick that Holbein was playing with an object in the foreground of the picture - a skull that could only be recognized if the viewer crouched down in the extreme lower left-hand corner , which otherwise looked like a shapeless blotch in front of the two illustrious Frenchmen - had long since lost its original fascination for Dance , he nevertheless always stopped to look at it - from the correct angle , on principle .sx Finally , he reached the first of a series of rooms that contained for him all that he could wish for to keep him occupied , especially as an escape from a sour mood .sx He started off in the smallest room that contained the Dutch genre painters .sx The warden by the doorway smiled briefly in recognition of yet another visit by this young gangly man with the pale skin .sx Dance smiled back , then went on to circle the room , stopping for a while at a painting that depicted the remains of the municipal arsenal that had exploded in Delft in 1654 causing fires and deaths , including that of Carel Fabritius , a painter who had experimented with optical effects , as in his wide-angle View in Delft in another room .sx As Dance passed into the next room , he became aware of a high-pitched squeaking , an almost dog-like sound coming from somewhere outside the room he was in , which , if there had existed such an expression , he would have referred to as d e j a-grave entendu .sx He knew he had heard this sound before , but had forgotten about it until now .sx Would he forget this time too ?sx Going back into the previous room he realized he could hear the sound there as well .sx Was he getting tinnitus ?sx A friend had described the illness .sx Dance scolded himself for being paranoid ; he was oversensitive about his eyesight and hearing , forever afraid of losing the one or the other .sx After pondering awhile over the sublime Hendrickje Stoffels , Rembrandt's companion and common-law wife till his dying days , Dance reached his favourite room that contained Vermeer , de Hooch , Metsu , Ter Borch , Fabritius , and many others .sx Dance was forever trying to work out what was going on in these scenarios , so often implying illicit liaisons and assignations .sx Reluctantly , Dance looked at his watch , knowing that he would have to dash back .sx What he saw at first filled him with a sense of relief , only to be almost immediately supplanted by one of terror .sx It was only 12.07 , the exact time he had arrived at the Gallery almost an hour ago .sx Either his watch had stopped the moment he had arrived in the Gallery or he had left for lunch an hour early ( surely he would have been given a few odd looks , going out with his satchel and ) .sx He had stopped at a painting he had not seen before .sx The painter was anonymous , but the scene both totally familiar and yet intriguing .sx A young man and woman are seated either side of a table covered by an Ottoman carpet on which lies a book of sheet music .sx He is playing a theorbo and she a lute .sx Standing behind them is the music teacher , a gentleman of noble appearance in his early fifties .sx On the table are a flask and three glasses of wine .sx As the man turns the page , an unmistakable look passes between him and the woman , to which the teacher is oblivious , so much is he concentrating on the woman's playing .sx The three figures occupy the centre of the painting , whilst a tapestry is hung over the back wall .sx A dog sits by the edge of the tapestry next to the door .sx The foreground is dominated by a grid of floor tiles which obviously extend beyond the plane of the picture .sx The way Dance viewed the painting , the closer the tiles came , the more distorted they seemed , as if shot through a wide-angle lens .sx This effect was heightened by the two bays of windows to the left of the room , whose receding lines contributed to the claustrophobia of the painting's background .sx Almost unconsciously , Dance fell into his usual habit of positioning himself as near to the artist's original position as possible .sx He had read that in certain cases , where the artist had used a camera obscura - a dark room with a peep-hole and lens - it was possible to calculate the exact position of the artist's eye .sx The image , it seemed , would be thrown through the hole , inverted , onto the back wall of the dark room , where the artist would trace over it .sx Dance decided to return to the Gallery at the next possible opportunity , but it couldn't be tonight as he'd arranged to play tennis with Matthew .sx Back at work , after a few disapproving looks from his colleagues at his tardiness ( mercifully , Banks , the supervisor , was out of the office , so he couldn't know how late Dance had been ) , Dance remembered his watch .sx He barely took in the fact that it said 1.13. How could it be ?sx Was his watch having its own lunch break nowadays , resuming work only when its master decided to ?sx He must have had a temporary lapse .sx He'd imagined it was 12.07 when it was 1.07. It was true he was prone to temporary lapses of perception or interpretation , but this had never been a serious problem , more a source of amusement for his friends .sx He laughed inwardly when he remembered how a few days earlier , whilst crossing the zebra to go into Sloane Square Underground station , he had prematurely drawn out his travel pass and waved it at the car waiting for him to go across .sx Fortunately , the driver had either not noticed this bizarre action or was too dumbfounded to react .sx Dance's mind was soon ambushed by the usual spate of after-lunch telephone queries .sx The first was indeed a shock .sx It was Kim .sx Where had he been ?sx Hadn't they arranged to meet at lunchtime ?sx It was true .sx Dance had completely forgotten .sx He made a series of feeble excuses , only for her to hang up on him .sx The explanation would just have to wait until later tonight .sx Dance's resulting bad mood was only relieved when Miss Groenehaven rang from Amsterdam .sx After the niceties were over he told her about his most recent discovery in the Gallery .sx He knew Miss Groenehaven liked to be kept informed about any recent developments , as she came regularly to London .sx Dance knew nothing about her , except that she specialised in translating from English into Dutch , mainly art books , and that her father had recently died .sx She must be about thirty-five , he guessed from her voice , a deep voice that had a husky flavour to it so pleasurable that Dance invariably found himself not concentrating on what order he was writing down for her , so that he always had to ask her to repeat it .sx Dance harboured the desire one day to meet Miss Groenehaven , but could not as yet think of a way of indicating this without embarrassment .sx It was true he could not know for sure what she was like as a person , whether she was attractive in the flesh , but he was forever fascinated by the possibility that a certain compatibility between people who found each other attractive could be intuited , even across a distance such as this .sx To Dance it was a question of alignment , the formation of a regular pattern through a seemingly arbitrary agglomeration of components .sx Miraculously , at mention of this new enigmatic picture in the Gallery , Miss Groenehaven informed Dance that she was coming to London for the weekend on Friday , in two days' time , and would make a point of searching it out .sx Would she like him to set the books aside so that she could call in and pick them up ?sx Dance felt his heart leap when she acquiesced to his offer .sx Now he had no need to make a clumsy invitation to her on the phone to go to the Gallery with him .sx