In the evenings, I resume my observations before I head to the huge library that is different from every other part of the Compound I have seen so far. Its sorting room smells of blue cheese coated with rat dropping and dusted with magnolias. Perhaps for this reason, the library is always empty, although this could also be because someone had taken the time to pluck random chapters from a variety of novels, memoirs and manuals and glue these between bogus covers.
For instance, there was this paragraph in one of the fantasy novels, The Model Monkey. “It was in the year 2075 when it was first observed that the fusion of man and machine into a unified consciousness, a singularity, had gradually eroded the ability to speculate. Patterns and coincidences had been decoded, mysteries solved, enigmas demystified, puzzles resolved. There was no need to dream or reflect because everything could be predicted through algorithmic interpolations. And because there were no mysteries, the imagination was seen as a vestigial reflex. In time, it was viewed as worse.”
Yet in the same novel I saw this segment that had been plucked out, I suspect, from a romance novel and placed in The Model Monkey. “She sat on the bed, packing photographs and sewing needles and pieces of fabric on which were stitched a variety of insignias. ‘So you are really leaving?’ he asked her and when she did not reply, he added, ‘If you really intend to go to that place I should warn you that it’s pure madness. You will be surrounded by rogues and vagabonds.’ She zipped her bag and got up. ‘They celebrate craziness and worship tricksters. What do you expect to find there?’
“‘Chaos,’ she replied sweetly as if it were a special brand of chocolate. ‘It’s the gift we all have been looking for. Haven’t you?’ She blew away a tuft of hair above her almond eye, spread her arms and sang, ‘I cannot live like this anymore. I want tohubohu and bedlam. I want freedom.’
“‘Please. We can –’
“‘You believe memory is a tattered thing that can be stitched and joined but what’s gone is gone. Wouldn’t you say?’ He remained silent, wondering what exactly she was talking about and she repeated her question, watching around as if she was addressing a hidden audience.”
Book after book followed this pattern. Overblown romance novels shifted in my hands to manuals detailing the diseases of farm animals and handbooks on brain surgeries diverted to fairy tales fluttering with genies and swooning princesses. Religious tracts, consuetudinals, devolved into advice on fashion accessories. Who, I wondered, would take the time to rearrange these books and for what purpose? The violations were even more confusing when chapters from the same books were rearranged because there was no sense of time advancing.
Three days ago, I was forced to adjourn my visits to the library. In a reading room, I saw a tiny, naked man squatting on a stool. He was shivering but there was a celebratory grin on his blubbery baby face when he looked up from his knitting. He seemed crazy with his bamboo needles in one hand and a mess of yarn in the other. I was certain of this when he leaned forward and said, “Lolo still want a cuddle.”
“What are you doing here?” I managed to ask.
“Waiting all the time. When are we leaving? I must finish this.” He held up his knitting that looked like serpents looping into each other. As I hurried away, he shouted after me in a topsy-turvy voice that sounded like a litany of crazy names. His appearance there was unfortunate. Every night, before I departed the library, I would tiptoe on the same stool on which his aged testicles had been dangling and stare through the lancet window at the town outside the Compound’s towering wall.
I have to tell you that I used to look forward to the view of the shingled housetops that all seemed to be slanting at odd angles as if the ground had curled beneath the foundations and the walls were balanced on roller bearings. Later and alone in my modest room, I would try to picture this old town outside the gate but could only come up with scenes from the illustrations on my wall: dungeons with spike traps that led to perfectly furnished kitchens with wide-eyed women sitting around a table and not seeing the toddler wandering into the garden, mauve with poison. Beyond the garden, I pictured lopsided streetlamps swaying in the breeze intermittently casting their aureoles around capsized lorries frozen in steely blue ice. The trucks were always decorated with bright stickers and decals and there were stiff tufts of fur embedded in their carriages and wheels. At first, I imagined the town to be a facade with nothing beyond the front walls, but in the nights, I heard a choppy wailing as if the wind was fretting against the gables and alcoves and once, I saw beams of lights that appeared to be gambolling across the sky. I can think of no other verb.
Here is a confession: I believe a man who does not know if he is a prisoner is worse off than someone whose status is less ambiguous. The prisoner becomes habituated to his limited space as his glances retract while the deluded man or woman, inventiveness fuelled by threadbare hope, constantly gazes outwards; constantly adds to his horizon. And so, locked in my room, the noise outside withering to a single and prolonged squall, I envision the slow passing of winter bringing ribbons of mist that obscure the supple hills behind the town, giving the place a liquid appearance. It always ends as an underwater scene, and when I awake in the early mornings and fall into the realization that I am in a place not of shimmering and indolent sea creatures but of deformed and slouching brutes with lips of unacceptable angles and eyes that shift from blank to hostile; men and women given a last gasp of life by their inquisitiveness, I wish I could hightail it to a region a thousand miles away. But where? Where, I ask you? What else is out there? And what if the world of which the might-be-prisoner dreams is just as malformed and incomplete as the one in which he is trapped?
I know I sound hysterical and my excuse is that one of my retrievals unspooled a universe in distress. I glimpsed, ever so briefly, men who resembled each other attempting to erase this resemblance with every type of weapon. Maces, clubs, hammers and glistening armours that shot firebolts that resembled sprigs of marigold. I saw other men with flowing beards heaving out roaring machines they claimed would stop the flow of time and children scurrying into caves to escape the flashes in the sky and young women lying on brown, flattened fields. I saw transparent walls being built, rising higher and higher as if they were ladders to heaven and beyond the walls, ragged women throwing their screaming babies in the air. I saw a flood that was replenished not from the storm above but from the water surging from every vent and rathole on the ground. I saw gods cavorting among their creations and forgetting they were gods. I saw the beginning of time and its end.
I have to tell you that I have struggled with these visions or dreams or whatever they may be. One of the books in the library had advised, before its transposition into a diary of a widowed farmer’s account of his mutated livestock and tractors rejigged into weapons, that what is gone is gone forever and it was just as pointless to peer into the probable future as to glance backwards. We favour our memories like a wayward uncle, long dead and of no use to us, was one overwrought description. It was utter nonsense, of course, this early section, but this is how I measure my retentiveness. Moments, instalments and episodes, boxed-in sequences that spring from nowhere and lead to nowhere. Think of tracks that are pulled away the instant the carriages roll over them. I have determined that for me, there is no simple return voyage. I say this because I cannot determine a starting point.
As silly as this sounds, there are moments when I wonder if I am as real as the people shuffling about. Sometimes I have to touch things, to feel pain, grate my fingers along a rusted iron railing or the nail dents on a wall to assure myself that I am not trapped in a dream. I listen to the snuffling on the roof at nights and in the mornings, I inhale the acrid aroma of vitriol and dead trees. I must admit that I have not entirely convinced myself. This, I believe, is why I have recorded the beginning of each day with the phrase I saw on the day of my awakening. Today is a new day but yesterday was the same day. Beneath, I affix the phrase Day One and Day Two and so on. My last entry, earlier th
is morning, was Day Nine.
In assessing my condition, limbo is the most charitable word that comes up. Limbo, a word that suggests flexible tunnels, interlocked caves and vast empty spaces that lead to nowhere. I know it’s not an exact definition, but this is how I measure my life, or the little that I remember of it. You may wonder why I do not stop here; why I am recording and relating an account that does not promise a resolution. No one wants to hear of jumbled memories and capricious experiences. What is the significance of recording my misery, you may well ask? It’s a valid question and I will use an analogy you might remember. “My thoughts seem to take their cues from my visions; they are like moths circling a gloomy room. It is only when I record that I can trace their arcs and glimpse their trajectories. I record so I might stumble upon some connection.” I have no idea when you mentioned this to me and if your face was thickened by some shared distress or if there had been a mischievous smile when you noticed my confusion. I even wonder sometimes if we spoke in English because, in recording this, I feel as if I am translating my thoughts from another language. I cannot recall – or I can recall only fragments of – colloquialisms and slangs and farcical expressions and nips of tart humour and I am aware that this formal account might be stilted and whinging to you as it is to me. I feel that I was once gifted with a humorous manner of transcribing events, but unfortunately that is gone now and I can only describe my situation with the tools left to me.
This evening I decided I would not avoid the library because of a naked old man so I placed the boomerang totem into my jacket and headed in that direction. Midway there, I discovered the same craziness that had led to the creation of the hybrid books in the library had also incited the recent placement of contrary signs and directions along the pathway. I ended up in a room that was, in a manner of speaking, new to me. This room, tilting to the left and smelling vaguely of brine and camphor, does not belong here, I thought at the exact moment I stumbled through the canting doorway.
“Come in, come in, come in.” The voices, though different in pitch, seemed to harmonize with each other and the blended effect was not unlike the throbbing purr of a damp and dangerous cat.
2 THE THREE HEADS
There were three old men wedged around a grey pedestal table. The table was undersized and for a moment, it seemed as if their heads possessed a single stalk. They glanced up all at once and I noticed that the light reflecting on their ripened faces came not from the humming bulb on the ceiling but from its reflection on the tabletop. The light was dull and fat and it softened the cobwebs on the rafters and made the walls seem flabby and viscous. It also gave the table the illusion of rotating. “I am sorry,” I told them. “It was not my intention to interrupt.” I should have added that they might have properly locked this room for their conference or whatever was going on, as it was indistinguishable from the line of abandoned office cells that seemed to be lined with a prefabricated corklike material.
And I now saw how these three old men, curious about my intrusion, were also calculating if I might be trusted to apologize for my mistake and simply walk away. “Have a seat,” one of the heads said and all three gazed at me while I was deciding how to frame my refusal. Then their gaze shifted to the wall on my right and I saw what seemed to be a Hitchcock armchair.
“You all seem to be busy so I will go my own way.”
“To the athenaeum?” This was the middle man and he spoke in a suffocating manner that gave his voice a ponderous quality, as if he dutifully weighed and apportioned each painful word. “We understand you have been frequenting the place. I am speaking of the library, in case you did not understand.”
“I am not stupid,” I snapped. “But I am confused by your interest.”
He spread his chubby hands and looked to his left and to his right. The man on the right, hunched, lanky and gloomy looking, said, “We are always interested. That is our function.”
“Our prime function.” The man on the left, who had the posture and size of a scholarly imp, emphasized his point by raising and then flicking his index fingers in the direction of the chair.
I did not fully trust them, skulking around in a gloomy room. “I prefer to stand here by the door if you don’t mind.”
“I insist,” he said with a petulant frown.
“And I decline.”
They looked at each other for a while before the head in the middle asked me in his rustling wheeze, “Shall we begin, then?”
“You can do whatever you want. It’s your room.” Even as I said the words, I knew that my curiosity would prevent me from leaving. “However, if you insist, I can delay for a short while.”
“Excellent. That’s an excellent first step. We prefer to do things the simple way. It’s less messy.” I walked over to the chair if only to confirm which of the three was speaking. The chair’s sloping seat was glass-smooth and I crossed my legs and grasped the armrest to avoid sliding. From this angle, I noticed that the person in the middle was fleshier than his companions and in the gloom, this made him seem more important. His features were flatter and when he popped something into his mouth and swallowed, he resembled a picture of a basking amphibian I had seen somewhere or other. The other two swallowed with him, their jaws seeming to hinge and unhinge in unison. The fat one opened his mouth and tucked his head this way and that. It was a remarkable display and I wondered if he was trying to unsettle me. “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” he said. “You are one of our...how shall we put it...one of our special guests. Some have been lost, unfortunately, but we are happy you are still here. You have tested us more than anyone in recent memory, but that is...”
He turned to the lanky man who said, “Outweighed by your ability to continually fascinate us.”
“Why should I be nervous of three old heads?” In the small room, my question seemed too provocative, so I added, “But I am pleased by the status you have accorded me.”
The man in the middle looked to both sides and said, “Good, good. Let us begin once more. We understand you have been frequenting the library. Researching books on memory loss. Is that correct?”
“Is that so?” I certainly was not going to reveal my activities to these three.
“Let us refresh your memory, then.” He leaned to his left and the man there passed him a book. “Here is one of your favourites. It deals with the loss of episodic memories.” He flipped through the pages and read. “Here is a subset on what you must have surely memorized. Autobiographical memory discrepancies.” He flipped again and I wondered how he was able to read in this dark room. “And another on procedural memory.”
“It sounds very interesting.”
“Interesting, you say. But it’s not part of our –” The middle man placed his hand abruptly before the imp, cutting him off.
“Of our what?” I asked.
They glanced at each other before the man in the middle said, “Let’s not concern ourselves with that. Do you know why you are here?”
I hesitated before I answered. And, during my moment of silence, I thought that if I had known more of you and your motive in consigning me to this place my answer would have been more straightforward. You will understand that I felt I had no choice but to tell them, “I cannot say.”
He reached for the book and held it before him like a fat praying mantis examining its prey. “Would we be wrong in asserting that it is from these books you got the idea your autobiographical memory has been damaged? But not your procedural memory. Very convenient, would you not agree? You can remember everything once it’s not connected to you?”
“Why would that be convenient to me? Or to anyone for that matter?”
The impish man leaned forward and I saw that his chin was so pointed it looked like an inverted triangle. “Because it’s a perfect escape hatch.”
The man in the middle said, “At first, we were not convinced, but your research in the library, your solitary walks, your –”
“Am I under surveillance?”
<
br /> The gloomy man fluttered his fingers as if he were a sleepy magician. “We try to keep on top of things.”
“That is an admirable attitude, but I cannot see how it involves me.”
I was trying to keep my cool but the imp slammed his tiny hands on the table. “Inspector Instant or the Legendary Legerdemain or whatever comic book name you have given to yourself this month, we are not here to play games.” But his puckish appearance and his diminutiveness made it seem as if he was doing exactly that. I may have smiled a little.
The middle man placed a hand on the imp’s shoulder and patted him gently as a father would a child. “Do you still hold on to your claim that you recall events only from the previous three months?” He seemed to be asking his friend the question, his tone curious yet chiding.
“I never claimed any such thing. And I never called myself any of those names, either. I believe you have confused me with someone else.” Even as I said the words I knew how ridiculous it must have sounded to these three who were somehow apprised of my amnesia.
“Ah yes,” the middle man said. “According to our calculations, your new cycle” – he made an air quote as he said “cycle” and I felt that to a child he would appear the perfect monster – “your new cycle began a little over a week ago.” The gloomy man whispered in his ear. I heard the word cake and I felt this was the centre man’s name. Cake added, “My apologies. My apologies. Nine days.” He emitted a sigh and his partners did the same. I felt I was in a pantomime. I would have left at that point, but I wanted to hear them out. In an odd way, it was interesting. It became even more so when he continued, “If we are made singular by our memories then you can be a new person four times in a single year, just like that. Anyone you want. No guilt, no regret, no apologies, no lessons learned. Just a new man. A new model, maybe. Very convenient. It’s perfect. Perfect. Is there anything you want to say?” When I did not reply, he added, “We are waiting.”
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