He was right, you know. I have no idea of family, parents, ancestry, culture, traditions. No memory of pain or pleasure, of guilt or satisfaction, of failures or accomplishments. No idea of what I am and who I should be. A man with no identity and no purpose. In limbo, as I mentioned to you. “I am flattered by your interest in me, but I am not certain I deserve it,” I told them eventually.
“You are an intelligent man, so you must understand our skepticism. Perhaps you want our sympathy.”
I realized then they were baiting me. They seemed to have some understanding of my condition although the period it encompassed was too expansive. I decided to wait them out in the hope that some familiar gesture might spark a smidgen of familiarity.
“Let’s see if we can shake your memory,” continued Cake. “This Compound is not my home and I will stand apart. They have constructed a world –”
“They have constructed a world,” the imp broke in, “That exists only in my mind...”
And now the person to the right. “My watchfulness will keep me inviolate. My invisibility will preserve my sanity. I will not be a tapeworm in a petri dish, my head incessantly lopped off. I am and will always remain...and so on and so forth.”
I was shocked. Had they read my letters before I regained consciousness? As you well know, this was the opening to one of the letters I had found in my jacket. I believe the letter was addressed to you and I was once more reminded of your complicity in my imprisonment. They may have noted my reaction because Cake, managing to sound bored and admonishing at the same time, said, “You should not be so alarmed. We are merely pointing out that you have never exhibited the symptoms that should be associated with your circumstance. There is an element of calculation in your determination, is there not? I am, I shall, I will, I must and so forth.”
The man on the right almost breathed out the words through his nostrils, “It is remarkable. Remarkable and worrying.”
Cake withdrew a watch from his jacket and placed it on the table. The imp leaned closer to look at the time or the model or just to seem important. “Let’s go through the routine once more. We are obligated to do so even though we know the outcome. What is your name?”
I didn’t like his lecturing tone. I remembered one of the trio remarking I could choose to be a new man and so I told him, a bit spitefully, “Remora the Remorseless.” I have no idea where that name sprung from.
“Do you have any relatives, Mr. Remora?”
“It’s possible.”
“Wife or children?”
“They are not here with me.”
“Do you know the year we are in?”
“One year is just like the other so it does not matter.”
He sighed and continued, “Can you describe your place of birth?”
“I am sure it has changed by now.”
There was a brief pause before he continued, “What of your childhood? Did you spend your time in one of the sanctuary towns? Or were you one of the lucky ones who escaped to a bamboo hut or a stone cottage? There are still these heritage sites, you know. An igloo, perhaps?” The imp giggled at the word igloo but these were questions I had asked myself and for which I had no answers. I still held the hope that some slight clue from that period might spring other answers.
“During a previous encounter, you described a ring of mountains and an overpass. You claimed the mountain was crumbling and the people on the overpass were jumping or falling down the side. Can you add to this?”
When I said nothing, another one continued, “There is an explosion, and light that is solid crimson and aquamarine, falls in globules that attach to the ground and make everything slippery. There are hedges and fields of intersecting burrows and communities of inquisitive animals staring upward at creatures that resemble them. But these creatures are flying and exploding.”
I heard the rustle of pages before another interrogator spoke, “The sky is ablaze with dripping clouds that incinerate everything beneath, the fields and meadows and the furry animals. And from within the blaze there comes the chug-chug of a train. Miles and miles of carriages that are empty but for the group of soldiers in one carriage and the assassins in the other. Or they may be connected chariots rather than carriages. Each assassin looks exactly like the other.”
“But maybe the other carriages are not empty. Perhaps there is a group of madmen trying to escape. Maybe they are running away from their diagnoses. Do you know the train’s destination? Is it perhaps going in a loop?”
The gloomy man leaned over, holding some sheets in his hands, which were very long. Cake stretched his head up like a tortoise as I stood to take the sheets. They were filled with familiar drawings and even with those that were new, that I had not seen in my room, I saw a similar style. “Tell us about these sketches,” Cake said. “How did you arrive at these scenes?”
Here, I must pause in my account to tell you this: People with unreliable memories are more hamstrung than those with useless limbs or impaired senses. Those disadvantaged folks can at least see, or know, what they are missing, but for men and women like me – if others exist – it’s like being forever poised on the rim of a void. We are forever teetering and we retrieve and grieve in granules. We cannot make connections because the synapses spark and sputter and die. This may sound dramatic to you but it’s a helplessness worse than any other kind because you can see neither the beginning nor the end. Tracks pulled away the minute you have crossed them. You have no idea if you are travelling forward or constantly looping back.
In case I have not made this clear, the simple truth is that I have no verifiable recollection of my previous residence. I sometimes dream of frigid volcanoes with caves leading to luminous larval creatures that I also see later mewling and wreathed in silk in a market square or bazaar or circus where men and lithe women are hoisting tramcar wheels above their heads and whizzing through the stalls and alighting nimbly on flagpoles and leaping off and vanishing before they hit the ground. There is blood on the ground or something red in starburst splotches. Someone is always crying in melodious bursts like a medley of plucked bows. And always, there is a child, hovering just within the range of my vision. Sometimes I recall these scenes as if I am hurtling through the air and watching a flurry of misaligned boxes whizzing by in the opposite direction. At other times, I see blue-skinned beings floating above two battalions that seem poised to attack each other. The beings are shedding tears that seem to transform into leaves as they touch the ground.
I was so taken up with my own thoughts that I barely heard Cake prodding me about the source of my inspiration or the gloomy man saying in his gloomy voice, “We are interested in what’s going on inside here.” He tapped his head. “Is it madness or something more?”
“I don’t know if I can help you –”
“Do you know that tapeworms can retain their memories even if their heads are lopped off?” The imp made a cutting gesture and Cake patted him, a bit more roughly this time.
“Ignore my little friend for the moment. Tell us something about yourself.” His tone was almost conversational. “Why, for instance, are we gathered for this meeting? What’s your function here in this Compound?”
As you may well imagine, this is the thought with which I awaken and the last thing lodged in my mind before the dreams begin their drumming. It started, as I mentioned, that morning when I awoke in my room with welts on my legs and a light-headedness that caused me to stumble to the ground as I tried to walk to the minuscule kitchen and, once I got there, realized that I had no idea who had outfitted my cupboard, stocked my closet with clothes that fitted me somehow, left a note on the escritoire. You are in possession of your notebooks and letters and the drawing implements. You need nothing further. I then discovered the letters in my jacket. The letters, twenty-one in all, filled some of the gaps but added to my confusion. Half a dozen were addressed to you and they appeared formal and lecturing, but a few hidden in the inner lining of my coat and addressed to myself posses
sed one common thread: they were filled with warnings of an imposter who takes on a different guise whenever it is necessary and who would pretend to be all things to all people. I will assume that we both know the identity of the imposter. I cannot tell you how often and long I stared at the illustrations on the walls and tried to understand their connections with the dreams or visions or wedges of memories.
I heard Cake saying, “We are waiting.”
I decided to give a neutral response. I told him, “I am here now.”
“That is beyond doubt, but it is not what we asked.”
“I do not believe I wandered here by mistake.”
“Sarcasm aside, we will have to agree. But it does not answer our question.” I told him the truth: that I did not know. They conferred for a while before Cake continued, “And how would you rate your progress?”
“I keep to myself if that is what you are asking.”
“Would you like to describe your interactions with the others?”
“Which others? I just stated that I keep to myself.”
“What about outsiders? Former patients. Escapees.”
“Patients and escapees? What is this place?”
He ignored my questions and repeated his own. “Were there any contacts?”
“With whom? The escaped patients? Why would I want to contact them?”
“Perhaps it is because you consider yourself an outsider,” the gloomy one said. “A man unable to walk on firm ground and forever looking for signs that he belongs.”
“I am just as real as you are.”
“That was not the question, but we are glad you brought it up,” Cake said. “One of the books in the athenaeum contained an intriguing account of a man who believed he had set the stage for a perfect crime by creating an exact replica of himself to take the fall. He foisted all his qualities onto this double but as usually happens in these cases, he soon began to wonder who the real man was. Himself or his double. We are aware you have borrowed this book. Several times, in fact. Do you know the writer?”
For a minute, I felt he had been referring to you. Then I realized this was another trap. I had not borrowed the book in question. Why then did he pose the question? They seemed to be awaiting my response so I said, “Perhaps we all fantasize about discovering someone who reflects all our attributes. A twin or an exact offspring. It grants us a kind of modest immortality. What do you think?”
“What we think is not an issue. Do you still insist that your memory losses are presaged by cephalalgia, vertigo and tinnitus?”
I said nothing. Following another conference, the imp asked, “Do you feel guilt for any of your actions?”
“I believe it’s impossible to attach emotion to events you cannot remember.”
Cake laughed suddenly, and in the enclosed room it sounded like the hollow clatter of coins. For once, his companions did not imitate him. In fact, they appeared confused. “You have answers for everything. But they are not really answers. Riddles stuffed into riddles. It’s like a game to you, is it not?” He still appeared amused. “If our circumstances were different and the universe was an opposite place and I were forty years younger and not in charge of rediscovering what we have lost I might even enjoy our little conversation. It would be one for the books. Yes, one for the books.”
I was a little confused by his change in demeanour. I told him, “I am not the only one speaking in riddles here. I have told you all that I remember. If anyone is withholding information, it’s you all. Perhaps I can answer more truthfully if you speak more plainly.”
“Our function is not to provide information.” This was the gloomy man. “That would be counterproductive.”
“We assess and adjudge and verify. You may consider us remote interlocutors,” Cake said. “But let’s proceed.” He seemed to be thinking of what to say. “You claim to not recall anything beyond three months. I am using the period to which you have referred during our previous sessions. Do you have any sense of your life before this breach? For all you know you may have committed a terrible act before you were hustled to this place. You may have suffocated your wife and young daughter. Wiped out the witnesses. Revealed state secrets. Led an insurrection. Instigated a genocide. Carried a lethal strain of an incurable disease. The sole survivor of a cataclysm. Concocted the perfect crime. Placed innocent lives at risk. A rapist and pillager. Take your pick?”
After a while, I told them, “Everything is possible but if that were true you would not be so comfortable with me in this isolated room.”
“We are not as defenceless as we appear.”
“Nor am I.”
I said this as an act of bluster but it got their attention. There was a little conference before Cake said in an almost conversational manner, “I suppose you are right. You must be resourceful to function in this place with just a three-block unit of memory to play with.”
“I manage.”
“That is admirable.” I hoped he would elaborate but they grew quiet. The room now seemed brighter than when I first entered and I saw Cake licking his fingers. I waited for him to withdraw a sheet from the folder but he continued licking.
The man on the right swivelled his chair so that he now faced me and I saw that he had a rather large forehead. He looked like someone on the verge of making an unfunny joke. He began speaking. “The mind, in isolation, is a funny creature. It is eternally leaping, snarling, stretching and crouching. Sometimes it rolls over and pretends it is dead. For what purpose, we may ask?”
I considered his question. “It’s interesting that you have equipped the mind with a form and shape.” It really was, you know. I added, “Maybe it just wants to survive.”
I thought the trio would be satisfied with my response but Cake’s frown spread on either side until all three were all gazing at me in exasperation. Because of their advanced years, this expression made them appear grumpily senile. I may have grinned. “You may find this amusing,” Cake began, “but we do not. We do not.” His companions nodded in agreement. “Imagine, if you will, a holding tank filled with the softest, most amiable creatures extant. Or a rustic pond, for that matter. Now consider what will happen if an alien species, some troublesome nettle-like creature, finds its way there.”
“A tapeworm,” the gloomy man said, prompting a smile from the imp.
I ignored both. “These pleasant pond dwellers will lose their torpor and find a way to survive. They will adapt. Are we now concerned with aquatic life?”
For the first time the gloomy man smiled. “Perhaps they will all get along? The benefit of one becomes the benefit of all.”
I didn’t know what he was getting at. “Maybe,” I said.
“What you are saying is that sterility, though good in the short-term, closes the door to progress and adaptation. Very interesting. Yes, very interesting.”
“If you say so,” I said.
“Yes, yes, very interesting,” Cake continued. “So we need the tingle of madness. Yes, yes.”
I couldn’t understand why he was so excited. The gloomy man said, “The dreams that inflame us.”
I waited for him to complete his sentence, but it was Cake who spoke. “Tell us of your dreams. Use as many adjectives as you choose. Colour them whichever way you like.”
The imp produced a notebook and a pen. “Begin.”
I knew they were trying to trap me. “My dreams are no different from yours.”
“Oh, we doubt that,” the gloomy man said. They did their conferencing once more. And as they did so, they recited a litany of questions, not giving me an opportunity to answer any. Would you leave the Compound if the opportunity presented itself? Do you maintain a journal? Do you relate everything to an accomplice? Or to acolytes? Is there a routine that you follow? Are your dreams only of the previous three months? Are you afraid of pools of water? Do you only believe the last person with whom you speak? Is it easier to remember to forget or to forget to remember? What happens when an agitated mind merges with anoth
er that is stable? Can some approximation of immortality be achieved by preserving our consciousness in an external source? Do you blame anyone for your situation? Do you blame us? Where would you go if you were allowed to leave the Compound? What would happen if everyone stopped dreaming?
I suspected they were trying to get through a list of prepared questions with the hope that I would choose one. Then I felt they were trying to rattle me. I said nothing. Not even when they said, in tandem, that they were aware of the various stages – the word they used was incarnations – I pretended to go through and that they had learned to prepare themselves for any contingencies.
“It may interest you to know that the worse type of criminal is not the man who gloats in his darkened room but the man who is blind to his felonious acts. Why, you ask? Because he feels no remorse and will repeat his actions over and over and over. There are men like that, you know. Men, who in pursuit of a presumed obligation, have sent hundreds to their death.” I did not like the gloomy man’s magisterial, lecturing tone and would have departed then but I wanted to understand their interest in me and determine the nature of our prior familiarity. “They were only performing their duty, you may counter, or maybe there were special circumstances, but do you truly believe either should guarantee absolution?”
“You seem to be having an argument with yourself,” I told him. “Again, I will say that if you speak more plainly I might be in a better position to tell you what I believe or disbelieve.”
“Well, let me be as plain as possible. Are there others here you may have tried to influence? To get them back on board? This is very important. Very important.”
“I manage by myself. I already mentioned that a dozen times. And I have no intention of forming friendships in this place.”
“Because you are superior?”
“Because I value my privacy.”
“What privacy? Have you not maintained that you have lost and continue to lose all your memories? So tell me this: how can one value something that does not exist?”
Adjacentland Page 3
