You dedicated half your letter to visions so I will now tell you that when I was returning to the building in which you had set me up, I believed I saw a face behind the shifting curtains in the upper window. It was a bit gloomy and I assumed it was a trick of light or something. Surely, I would have heard some sound to indicate a life above me. Nevertheless, I went to the upper room and knocked on the locked door. There was no answer and I walked down the stairs, believing it was merely my hope I was not alone in this abandoned place that had provoked my vision.
Three days have passed since I saw the ghostly face and my knocking on the door has yet to yield any result. Once, I tried to force open the sturdy door and stopped only when I considered that the presumed watcher from the window may have some good reason for not showing himself or herself. It’s driving me crazy, as you may well imagine, and I have now moved to imagining this person from the style of the window: multi-paned and set off with a protruding arch at the top, and beneath, a narrow ledge, the correct size for a potted plant. The sturdy boxiness of the lower floor suggested the structure could have once housed a shop; a shop specializing in haberdashery with bolts of faded cream and yellow fabric stacked against a dusty wall. Perhaps the proprietor had been an oldish man with forearms made wiry from constant snipping. He may have had a gentle moustache that set off his sad eyes and he wore neat clothes because his customers were mostly middle-aged women. This man, with or without a felt hat, had moved upstairs after the failure of his business or from some tragic event and he now lived alone, surrounding himself with carefully arranged pictures on his mantelpiece. Here my imagination failed and the pictures remained blank: meaningless white pages contained within frames. This omission was distressing and it reduced all I had learned about the house and its occupant.
I focused on the lower floor where he would have once conducted his business. The life-size mirror standing at an angle reflected the dusty trinkets, pale silk flowers – perhaps oriental lilies – and the willowware set at an angle in a deeply stained cabinet. Each time I pass the mirror I glimpse myself and when I notice my skin, which possesses the pallor of the silk lilies, and my face, which seems more aware and confident than my present situation warrants, I am forced back to your letter. One night I had the suspicion that the man upstairs had a tiny peephole through which he was tracking all my movements. I pulled up a stool and examined the ceiling, inch by inch.
The following evening, on my return from exploring the town, I noticed the uppermost leaves of a raggedy mulberry bristling and walked over to see if a tiny animal was burrowing at its roots. I was about twenty yards from the house. The watcher at the window must also have noticed the trembling bush, and because of this shared observation of the burrowing animal, I felt that I could call out to him with a degree of familiarity. “Hello,” I shouted. “I can tell you are watching me.” When there was no response, I took a couple steps closer in case he was like many old people, partially deaf. It then struck me that he might be a man accustomed to privacy and might be annoyed at my attempts at familiarity so I stepped back and pretended I was investigating the mulberry.
Here is a confession. Sometimes I recall trivial events that have no apparent connection with me; and as I was poking about, I remembered someone, somewhere, claiming that old people buried their valuables in view of the front window. (Was it you who had mentioned this?) I wondered if there was some hidden treasure beneath the bush. Perhaps that was why he was keeping his watch. The moon was full or close to full and the leaves, swaying gently, resembled a scatter of coins. Because of this, I was uncertain if a piece of whitish paper had been dropped in the centre of the bush where I could not retrieve it. When I walked away, I considered also that the Watcher – which is how I began thinking of the person – might have feebly thrown some object at me.
The following night, another piece of paper fluttered down immediately after my arrival. I went at once and picked it up. There was a single figure: a date scratched over so many times the final year was indecipherable. I waved in the direction of the window and when there was no response, I felt a bit silly and walked a short distance to a building, which, covered in dried vines, resembled an overturned basket. I assumed the building was abandoned, as the vines seemed to have sewed shut the windows. But there was a cat, tawny-brown as the vines, curled up at the base of the front step. The cat must have sensed my gaze as it got up and stretched, scratching the stone with its impressive front claws. It did this for close to five minutes before it limped off into a tunnel of shrubs and withered twigs. I waited a short while for its return before I walked back to the chapter house.
I stood outside the window for an hour or so and just when I was about to leave, another sheet flew from the window. On this was another set of numbers, 6 x 9, the x suggesting dimensions of some kind. When I got to my room, I placed the pages side by side and tried to make sense of the messages.
During that week, at exactly 6:39 every day, a tiny crumpled sheet fell from the window. A couple times, I waved but there was never any response, as if, for the Watcher, the single word or number, and later, the short phrases – like penalty catalogue and trust deed and power of attorney – were enough. I was confused by his actions. Was he trapped in the house or had he been waiting for decades for someone to pay him some attention? I suspected they could be meaningless words comprehensible only to the aged person who had released them and that I should bother no more, but I could not get it out of my head there was some as yet not understood purpose. I even entertained the hope that I could discover something about myself, but what could a man living alone, at the end of his life, tell me about myself? However, in my situation everything has to be considered.
Every night I reviewed what had been written. I tried to understand at first if there was some stand-alone significance before I placed each addition alongside the others. Sometimes I rearranged the pages hoping to spot an anagram or acrostic or some riddle but I could find no associations.
Soon, as with any unsolvable puzzle, my interest dwindled and I simply collected the bits of paper and placed them in a heap. Each day I wandered farther afield. The town seemed without end but I soon discovered that the maze of cross streets had sent me in a series of loops. The streets are named, but in a confusing manner with letters of the alphabet randomly assigned before the word Tree so that there is an A Tree Street and a K Tree Street and so on. The town was either a neglected prison that had deliquesced into a backwater refuge – holding a pastoral charm perhaps to a normal man – or my lopped-off memory could not yet put all the pieces together. During my explorations I began to pay more attention to details, and also to place a leaf from the mulberry at each intersection to mark my track.
Earlier this evening I came across a concrete wall that seemed to rise higher with each step. There were old signs plastered every ten yards or so extolling the value of solitude and warning about prying eyes. Perhaps as a means of emphasizing these warnings, lower down, a narrow ditch ran parallel to the wall. I followed this ditch for close to two hours until I concluded that the town, as far as I could determine, was completely barricaded. The only interruption in the ditch-and-wall cordon was a dark, forested area where there were lianas wreathed around tall spindly trees that resembled bamboo. Beneath were ferns, nettles and spindly shrubs that looked like mossy crabs. The entire area appeared excavated from some tropical zone and plopped down at the town’s end. While I was wondering if this anomalous patch was an abandoned herbarium that had spread over the years, I heard a frightful cry, a sort of full-throated ululating from within and I hurried away.
Thereafter, I avoided that area. However, I couldn’t help but wonder what lay beyond the wall and each day I tried to approach it from a different direction. That was how I came across a huge gate formed in the shape of a fierce-looking albatross holding an hourglass between its claws. I was excited when I noticed two men stationed at the gate because it was my first direct glimpse of anyone else in this forsaken p
lace. Both were clutching cigarettes that emphasized the arcs of their furious waving and when I placed my hand on the gate, the shorter, a runty man with prickly marsupial eyes told me, “I wouldn’t advise it, buddy.”
Before I could reply, his companion added in a mocking voice, “Entrance denied.” He pumped his cigarette up and down as if he were stamping a form or something.
“What are you guarding?” I asked the pair. “What is inside the wall?”
“Question denied.” The taller one plopped the cigarette between his lips and withdrew a soiled and folded page from his overalls. He made a great show of flapping it open. His companion did the same and they both glanced at each other expectantly. The shorter one backpedalled with a little flourish. “Might we interest you in an elegy? It’s a distillation of our observations over the years. Each year we add a line.”
“I have nothing else to do,” I told him with the hope that he would answer my questions when he was done.
He brought his page close to his eyes and read, “The first man was a superman.”
His friend continued, “The second man was a thief.”
“The third man had a battle plan.”
“And still they came to grief.”
They both did a ridiculous shimmying routine but stopped when they noticed my attempts at remaining serious. The taller one said, “This is most disgraceful. You people will never appreciate refinement. It’s useless. I don’t know why I even try with you people.” He tugged his friend’s ear and dragged him closer to whisper something.
“What do you mean by ‘you people’? There’s no one here but us.”
“You people!” The shorter one screamed. “One, two, three, four.” He pointed to different parts of my body. “And they all came to grief.”
The taller one released his friend’s ear. “You think you can fool us with your new clothes and voice and face, but we can see through everything.”
His friend drew circles around his eyes and squinted as if he were peering into a telescope. “We are the Gatekeepers. Everything must be recorded.” He took out a crumpled notebook from his pocket. “We have been duly designated and empowered.”
“All must be recorded.”
“Did a woman go through these gates?” I asked suddenly.
“A woman?”
The tall man placed his hand over the other’s mouth and bent to whisper into his ear, looking at me all the while. When he was finished, he opened his notebook and told me, “Describe this woman. Spare no detail.”
“Was she lactating?”
“Was she bleeding?”
His lanky friend looked at him harshly, but I had no idea of this woman’s identity, if she existed at all, or from where the question had sprung. “I can’t remember. I guess I forgot.”
“You forgot what a woman is?”
They did their conferencing once more and then stood side by side, their arms hanging stiffly. The taller man coughed into his cupped palm. “A woman is...”
He stepped back and his friend continued, “A woman is a...” He too seemed stuck and his friend dragged him back and took his place.
“A woman is another thing.” He said this with a tremulous flourish as if he were caressing a cactus. His friend applauded. “Now who or what is this woman?”
“Don’t bother. What are you guarding inside those gates?”
He withdrew a box from his fob and held it against his ear. “It’s silly to pretend that you do not know the rules. I have been stationed here for three years. Or six or nine.” He seemed to be speaking to his box. “Oh, I see. You are better than everyone, you say. Do you know how often I have heard that line?” He glanced at his friend as he continued. “And do you know what I always say in reply? I say that you did not create me, so I am my own man. I can choose whoever I want to be.”
His friend, with his hands on his waist and little chest puffed out, the stance suggesting some sort of military posture, glared at me. “We are exempt.”
“Exempt from what?”
“From interference.” The taller man returned the box into his fob and snapped the elastic lining loudly. “Conversation terminated.”
“We have orders to shoot on sight.”
“You better believe it!”
As they were prattling I caught a swift glimpse of a brutish-looking creature beyond the gate and I asked the pair, “Is there someone at the back? A hulking man?”
“Hulking?” The taller man rolled up his sleeves and flexed his hand. The shorter man tiptoed to touch his flabby biceps admiringly. I left them shimmying around one another. On my way back, I was curious as to what the two jokers had been guarding. The walls seemed to enclose a compound of some kind, but it was odd that such a place would be set on the outskirts of an abandoned town. When I was approaching the chapter house, I noticed the usual movement at the curtains. This was curious because my watch showed the time to be 7:06. I walked to the spot where the sheet had landed and another fluttered down. And another. Soon there was a cascade of pages. A couple fell just beneath his window and a few floated over the mulberry to embrace the lamppost. It took me about fifteen minutes before I collected all that I could and when I was finished, I looked up and saw that the curtain was now drawn once more.
The pages I had collected previously were of numbers and cryptic phrases, but the new set seemed different. There were illustrated depictions of tacks of lamplight, wheels and cages, clocks with missing hands, dollhouses, lanterns, brass knuckles and mallets, and items of clothing possibly from a different time. On some of the sketches, there was a figure hunched inside a rectangular box balanced on cogs. Late in the night I awoke and got out of my bed. I went to the table and looked at the pages I had spread there a few hours earlier. I stepped back and saw, unmistakably, a man perched atop some sort of wheel. Beneath the man were empty cages and he was focused on these rather than on the pile of items stacked inside a huge box made of ice or glass.
Here I will confess an idle thought: It is likely that for those with a normally functioning mind, insights arrive after long reflection and consideration, but for me, with less time and fewer resources from which to draw, they are sudden and often startling. (Should it be the other way around?) And, looking at the illustrations, I knew immediately it was a ledger of sorts. I took the illustration to the table and shone the light and I saw clearly an accounting of a life by a man who needed to be certain he existed. He needed this certainty because it was time to leave. (But why had he placed all his possessions in one cluttered area? And were the empty cages representative of the giant gaps in his memory or did they point to his unaccomplished goals?) I could not sleep after this and I paced around my room until the first splinters of light edged through my window. I couldn’t understand why he was throwing everything away and what exactly he wanted me to do with the litter. I noticed a lizard gazing at me from an indentation on the ceiling. It was making an odd clicking sound as if trying to communicate. “Just two of us here,” I mumbled. “Maybe your companion is hidden.”
This was really an act of frustration – talking to this reptile – but it brought the sudden feeling that I had been sharing the house with none other than you, Mr. Letterwriter. It had to be! But why? Unless it was a complicated game whose rules I could not understand, it seemed unnecessarily cruel. I resolved to confront you. So, up the stairs I went, and I began to bang on the door. I decided to continue until you showed yourself. When my knuckles could no longer keep up with my banging, I turned the doorknob.
The man standing at the doorway, less than two feet from me, was exactly as I had pictured him except that he had a thick, grey beard and a full head of hair, also grey. He was of smallish to medium height and his eyes, made smaller by the saggy skin enveloping them, seemed both despairing and hopeful. I had thought to bring along your letter and I shoved this before him. “I would like to return your letter.” He blinked slowly, his attention directed not to the letter but to the intruder standing outside his doo
r. He seemed terribly out of sorts, like a patient with a terminal illness. I felt I had made a terrible mistake, yet I asked him, “Did you write this?” Now he gazed at the letter, at the same time feeling around in his tweed jacket for something. Maybe a monocle, but to be safe I stepped back a bit.
He, too, stepped back as if he was imitating my movement. But he left the door open and I followed him into the most choked room I had ever witnessed. (Not much to draw from with my limited memory, but nevertheless.) On every wall were shelves built at odd angles yet miraculously holding suitcases and briefcases. There were more bags and chests on the ground packed atop each other so they formed fences that seemed impossible to get through. The only items of furniture were a lopsided table and a purple sofa and these, too, were laden with old leather briefcases and portfolios. It seemed he had spent most of his life planning for a trip and I asked the only question that I could think of. “Are you leaving?” He seemed to be nodding, but when I saw his hands shaking, I felt it was the tremor of an old man. He pointed unsteadily to the suitcase nearest to him, a bulky black unit with the remnants of torn-off stickers. “Would you like me to help you move this?” I grasped the metal handle and heard the rattle of the objects within. “Where would you like it?” He walked slowly to the door. “Downstairs?” He did not reply and I took the suitcase through the door, waiting for further directions. But he waved twice and closed the door. I stood outside his door for close to five minutes, and when he did not return I called out a few times.
Eventually, I took the suitcase down the stairs and placed it in the hallway close to the door. I left it there when I departed the house but all the while I was wondering what he had packed inside. Weapons and body parts? Tokens and amulets? Tinctures and bandages? When I returned an hour later, I immediately went to the suitcase and pushed up the metal clasps. Inside, I saw a pair of trousers, an assortment of sewing needles stuck into a sponge, a piece of tailor’s chalk and a couple bolts of black thread. I held up the trousers and noticed that they were marked just above the hem. Beneath the pants was some silky material folded neatly around what seemed to be a cloak’s clasp. At the bottom were nine pieces of fabric on which were stitched insignias of some kind.
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