Senseless

by Fitch, Stona

  I walked around to the other side of the set and into a smaller, dim room filled with more desks, some overturned, others topped by computer terminals, still glowing. An alien lay slumped at one, his fingers still on the bloody keyboard. Perhaps he had been one of the dissenters, one of the ones who wanted to stop it all. He could have been the voice I heard coming from the ceiling.

  On the screen, I saw my own screaming face and a clock with numbers that revolved. Jours. 40. Heures. 13. Minutes. 7. Seconds… The numbers blurred by, tallying my imprisonment.

  Another terminal showed a large photo of me, taken early in my imprisonment, when my hands were still my own, when I could hear and taste and smell. I was still wearing my white shirt and dark trousers from my last civilized dinner. How long ago this seemed, and how different the man I saw on the screen was from the one that reached toward it. When my finger touched the monitor, words scrolled across. The hands, unfeeling to the needs of the rest of the world. Then a small box appeared on the screen and a movie began to play. I saw the Doctor hunched over my hands, scraping them over and over with the cheese grater. My mouth was open in a silent scream, and Blackbeard sat to one side smoking a cigarette. So this was what the world had been watching. I shoved the monitor off the desk and it shattered on the floor.

  Across the room, I saw a door with Ingang stenciled above it in red. I walked toward it slowly, right eye forward, stepping over fallen desks and scattered files. I walked faster. But at the door I stopped, my hands on the silver bar that would push it open. I turned to look back through the office, the false apartment, abandoned now by everyone but me. Then I turned to look at the door carefully, sure that when I finally opened the door, it would explode and kill me, a fiery, ironic finale, the last laugh. But I couldn’t stop myself from pushing.

  I felt a cold breeze. The door flew open wide and I saw a narrow street. It was dusk and businessmen moved quickly along the sidewalk in their dark coats, legs blurring. I stepped out, wrapping my arms around me. People barged past, not noticing a stunned man with a bandaged eye, wearing only a blood-splotched white shirt and thin trousers on a cool evening. I knew I should seek someone out, should stop them and signal for help. But I found myself on the edge of the crowd with the beggars and children, unable to weave my way into it.

  The businessmen looked so perfect, their dark coats swaying at their knees. Some wore hats or carried briefcases. Others had leather gloves or carried parcels tied in string. Once I would have been among them, walking back to my flat, a paper-wrapped bottle from the wine shop under my arm. Their flow through the city was a silent ballet to me, distant and beautiful. I didn’t want to interrupt it. Or join it.

  I walked past the store windows filled with headless mannequins in expensive suits, past a shop where a bored woman in a black apron measured out cheese on a scale. Behind me stood the dark tower of the central bank, ahead a cavernous train station where people streamed out of an archway. Centrum, one of the street signs read. I found a certain satisfaction at knowing that I was in downtown Antwerp on a cool autumn night. Though anchored in time and place, my mind raced. I stopped at a kiosk lined with posters in Flemish and leaned my left eye forward to read about new plays, art shows, political rallies. That I could stand here and read felt like such freedom. No one was watching me. I could hear no one. If I closed my left eye, the world disappeared.

  I recognized this street as the Meir, the city’s expensive shopping district. I had come here once to buy Maura a pair of diamond earrings for our anniversary. I had spent a morning searching in vain for a legendary chocolate shop tucked in an alley near here.

  It was turning darker, and the lights inside the stores took on an orange glow. As I walked, I held my hand to half-shield my eye. It was impossible for me to look at anything for very long. Streetlights, stores, people – it was all too rich to take in at once.

  On the right, a side street veered away from the crowded Meir and I walked down it, eye focused carefully on the cobblestones in front of me. I savored each breath of cool night air. I shivered for a moment, then smiled. To shiver again after the dead warm air of the apartment was a luxury. I imagined seeing myself from above, a bandaged man walking down a narrow street, one eye taped closed, the other hungry and roving. Certainly I stood out, but no one stopped me, and I had no need to stop them. For weeks I had dreamed of running out of my cell and finding the first person I came to and… and what? Ask for help? On my own, I had survived forty days that might have killed another man. I didn’t need their help.

  I came to a small park, where a path wound past garden beds neatly cut back for the winter. I stood in front of a tall statue of a stout, proud-looking man carrying a sheath of grain. Jan Peeters, Botanist, 1599. I sat on a wooden bench beneath Mijnheer Peeters’ benevolent gaze. Above, the first stars pierced the indigo sky. I leaned back and closed my eye. The cyclops at rest. How few times in my life would there be a time like this, a moment of total freedom?

  For weeks, my imprisonment and suffering had been on display to the world. Now no one knew where I was. I had no responsibilities or fears. I heard nothing, though I imagined there were people walking past the park, low Flemish voices echoing along the cobblestones. I could smell nothing, though the cooling air was surely redolent with earth and leaves. My eye was closed, but I knew that the sky was fading quickly, giving way to night.

  Freed from it all, I discerned the first glimmer of another order beyond the city’s weave of streets and buildings. I perceived, though my eye was closed, a small blue fire waiting in the distance. I would have to walk along the riverbanks and dive into the deep water to find it. I would have to swim to the bottom and push my deadened hands into the burgeoning rot to hold it. But I would feel the heat of that blue fire, closer and closer still.

  An insistent finger tapped on my shoulder. I opened my eye and saw a young blonde woman in a long green coat. When I looked at her, her eyes widened and she gave a silent scream. She waved frantically and shouted. I closed my eye again. It was too late.

  Suddenly I was surrounded by people, their faces peering down at me, some curious, others frightened. The small park turned crowded with businessmen, women, a young boy in a fur hat. More people pressed close, knocking me off the bench. An old man shouted down at me but I shook my head and pointed to my ears. One of the businessmen took out a silver pen and wrote on the brilliant white cuff of his shirt. Are you Eliott Gast?

  I stared at the crowd of faces, my audience, and nodded slowly. Yes, I was Eliott Gast. They nodded, stared at me with concern and surprise, spoke urgently and silently among themselves. Then they lifted me from the ground and carried me down the narrow street on their shoulders – a one-eyed man, a king.

  About the Author

  Stona Fitch’s novels have been published in ten languages and have inspired feature films and graphic novels. Known for crossing genres and challenging assumptions, his work combines the pace of thrillers with the resonance of literary fiction. In 2008, Fitch founded the Concord Free Press and established a new kind of publishing, one based on generosity. He continues to lead the CFP with his wife Ann and a growing community of kindred writers, designers, and editors.

  www.stonafitch.com

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to everyone who believed in Senseless and helped bring it to the world in various languages and versions—Michael Congdon, Juris Jurjevics, Soho Press, Megan Abbott, Chris DeFrancesco, and the Concord Free Press (US); Allan Guthrie, Doug Johnstone, Sharon Blackie, David Knowles, and the Two Ravens Press (UK); Michelle LaPautre, Bernard Cohen, Calmann-Levy, and Livre de Poche (France), Matthes and Seitz (Germany), Raul Allen (Spain); and Urban Jürgensen, Sofia Boda, and Ordfront Forlag (Sweden).

  Senseless was first published by Soho Press in New York City on September 11th, 2001.

  Other Novels by Stona Fitch

  Give + Take
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br />   Printer’s Devil

  Strategies for Success