The Annals

by Petronius Jablonski

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes, affected by a most pleasing stupor. I could have slept there but in a final sortie against gravity I rose and headed to the inn. The silence of the night kept the approaching dawn a secret.

  Like a trapdoor spider waiting to spring, the clerk lurked behind his desk. “You prefer our parking lot to your bed?” he called with venom in his whiny voice. “You should have said so when you checked in. I could have given you a discount. There’s a dumpster round back you might want to try.”

  “You miscreant,” I said, charging the desk. While seizing his throat I noticed tiny wires connecting to every portion of his anatomy, controlling his every motion. Many were attached to the top of his head, of course intended to signify the contingent nature of his thoughts (even the thought that he is free). The obscene production had the ingenuity of a grade school science-fair exhibit.

  “And this tawdry spectacle is intended to influence my profound and final analysis of free will,” I said in soliloquy. “Just show me someone covered with wires and vwalla, I become a determinist. For this I exchanged my Bonneville? I presume this puerile sign is intended to demonstrate how a man’s actions are caused by things ultimately beyond his control, how they’re nothing more than the last dominos in a long chain. O the banality.”

  (The Reader must excuse my outburst, but the gimcrack display desecrated something hallowed. The preciousness of free will can be summarized thus: it vouchsafes to me full responsibility for my greatness. How may I mock the inferiority of others if I am not accountable for my qualities? Why, if free will were a phantom I could scarcely look upon some ignorant wretch and joyously assert, “There but for the assiduous application of free will go I.” One of the two greatest joys a man takes in himself would be poisoned.)

  “Do we choose the thoughts that cause our actions?” the meat-puppet asked, his mouth opening but not moving in accompaniment to his words. “If so, do we choose to choose those thoughts? If so, do we choose to choose to choose them? If so, do we —”

  “Yes. Most assuredly. The bigotry against infinite regresses has left us defenseless. Most problems in philosophy admit of no solution without it, the ad hominem, and the circular argument.”

  Chuckling, he returned to his lair. Weary, I wandered back to our room and removed my shirt and trunks and climbed into bed and wrapped myself around Sandy’s warm naked body. My last thoughts before hobbling wounded across the bridge to Nod resembled a prayer of thanks. Grateful for the gift of sleep, I blessed the arbitrary, callous, and deranged source that meagerly doled it out, the way prisoners freed after years in the Gulag thanked comrade Stalin. A dream about marionettes riding a train with no conductor curdled my sleep.

  Preparations for Part XI

  Books have different prerequisites, conditions essential for the reader’s derivation of all they have to offer. For most, the ability to read three-letter words and concentrate for up to five minutes at a time is sufficient. Other books, their authors seeking rehabilitation for shoulder chips suffered at creative writing programs, presuppose a tolerance for pyrotechnic narrative styles camouflaging vacuous content. Heretofore my annals have asked for no more than legerity, but now a state of heightened awareness is requested. Just as the foreman would never send his worker down a goldmine with a plastic spoon, I will not let the Reader enter Part XI without the tools needed to retrieve its precious nuggets.

  • • •

  The Reader closes my annals and looks over his shoulder. He turns off the lights and walks to the window. A cloud floats in front of the moon. He contemplates the cold vastness of space. In his heart of hearts he asks, “But who will know if I comply with the prerequisites?” With the malevolent hubris of Leopold and Loeb he asks, “What is to prevent me from ignoring them? Surely I can get away with it.”

  • • •

  Prevent? Get away with? And what became of Leopold and Loeb? Dear Reader, there is no perfect crime. Compliance with my prerequisites is a matter of honor, an intellectual duty, the dereliction of which is a species of the genus theft: the Reader is robbing himself of a sumptuous banquet prepared on his behalf, and he is spurning my friendship to embrace the corpse of sloth. He may just as well throw my annals across the room and pick up his banjo, for our travels together are at an end.

  Before making an irredeemable decision, he should take a moment to compose and refresh himself by returning to the addendum to Part VI.

  • • •

  An original hypothesis of mine posits a connection between the mind and body, from which it follows that to prepare the former, the Reader must first attune the latter. To recreate the discombobulation I experienced during the events described in Part XI, he must abstain from food, sleep, and all drinks save caffeinated ones for a period of three days. Then, while pacing a path of no more than ten feet and no less than five, he should begin Part XI on a street corner congested with traffic.

  Thirty minutes prior to driving to the busy intersection, he should prepare the following recipe and bring it with him in a thermos. Note: this is only a crude approximation of the drink described.

  Twelve ounces frozen strawberries in syrup, partially thawed; eight ounces light rum; three scoops of ice. Combine strawberries, rum, and ice in blender and blend smooth. Do not drink or even taste. Await further instructions.

  XI:

  My Fleetwood is Transformed Into a Tavern, I Receive a Rebuke from Agents of the Venerable Horned One of the Lake, Consume Several Strawberry Zebras, and Introduce My Special Potation Theory

  Following an uneventful day on the road I succumbed to a devastating infirmity. Clutched by talons unseen, I lost the will to drive. A perverse and alien longing stirred within me, a desire to park and take a walk. Desperately I searched my heart for the root of this malignancy, but the pernicious force constricted its grasp and the ensuing restlessness impeded all reflections. In my pitiable state, unadorned conversation would have served as a soothing balm, but my little Burmese cat was busy attaining her mandatory minimum of sixteen hours.

  Signs, gas stations, even trees had long since fled the forsaken road. Despite a starry panorama, I felt confined, as though driving through a big but cluttered closet. Unable to make a musical selection, I drove in silence, a victim of the same irresolution as the starving donkey who could not choose which of two apples to eat. I glanced in the rearview mirror while lighting an Oval and a pair of bleary eyes stared back.

  They were not mine.

  My heart misfired and I seized the wheel with both hands. Electricity surged up my spine, tautening even the muscles of my forehead. I held my foot over the brake and prepared to pound down as hard as I could, my modus operandi being that the sudden destabilization would favor me as it would not take me by surprise.

  While different scenarios raced through my mind like rats in a maze, the voice of Reason demurred through an adrenaline-charged amplifier. “What if he has a gun? He’ll be furious at you after a panic stop. What if he shoots you? Then he’ll be alone with Sandy, and your car.

  I pulled my foot away from the brake and fought to keep it steady on the gas. My heart, having survived the initial shock, pumped so hard my shoulders twitched. I struggled to conceal my disordered breathing, not wanting the intruder to know I was aware of his presence or, if it were too late for subterfuge, not wishing to disclose the rancor his parasitic hitchhiking provoked.

  I tried to pry my fingers off the wheel and recline, to paint the classic portrait of the driver in repose, but I could not maintain the illusion for more than seconds at a time. I stretched my eyes as far as they could move without my head accompanying them. Sandy remained asleep, curled up in a ball that would make a gymnast flinch.

  “Whatever you do, do not look in the mirror,” Reason’s sonorous voice commanded. “He does not know you know or he would have said something. No matter what, keep your eyes away from the thing. Do not, whatever you do, look back …”

  In the mirror, the eyes glaring back were close
enough to be from someone seated next to me. Asphyxiation debarred screaming.

  “Stay focused. All thoughts, all energies must converge upon driving,” Reason said in a tremulous falsetto. “Look straight ahead and concentrate. Do not look back again. Remember that the door to Quietude is always open to a man who has developed his mind in the weight room of philosophy. It is not the menacing stowaway in your backseat who troubles you, but the opinions and principles you form of him. He too is a citizen of the universe, a fellow actor in the gaudy burlesque of life. Breathe. Take little breaths until you can take normal ones. Oxygen is your friend. Keep your eyes on the road. Do not look …”

  In the mirror, the white lights in dark craters were close enough to be my own. Panic struggled with confusion for control of my helm. I listened for his breathing but heard nothing. My nostrils prowled for his scent but caught only a faint whiff of strawberries. The wheel, which normally resembled a slender ring of marble, felt like a rubber hose engorged with hot water. Tiny shards of salt covered its pliable surface.

  “No!” hollered Reason with some semblance of authority before I could look up. “Stare at Shiva. You cannot stop until you are near some remnant of civilization.”

  My beloved hood ornament, discovered in an antique store and soldered onto my car downstream of Mr. Burzinski’s befuddled stare, waved her four arms as though casting a spell and reached above her head to pull down a red, white, and blue-striped screen, which she hid behind. A slender silver pipe protruded beneath it and grew to a height of two feet, creating a Pabst Blue Ribbon tapper.

  The eyes in the mirror retreated, exposing temples stampeded by crows’ feet, pouches two shades darker than pitch, a Neanderthal brow, and an absurdly messy crop of dark hair. My mind flipped through its disarrayed archive of people I knew by face but not by name until I recognized the ogre-like barkeep who served me the night of my dizzy-spell.

  “Enjoying the view?” he said.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, before pulling my fingers away from the giant steaming pretzel that had been my wheel. By gingerly tapping the edges, I kept my car on course. With the presumption that the barkeep possessed a privileged understanding of the situation, I turned to confront him.

  Amidst all the commotion I scarcely noticed his absence. The backseat receded and expanded while a mushroom with a green and rectangular cap sprouted on the floor and grew to enormous proportions. Balls of different colored fungi grew on its flat surface. Through my sunroof, a shaded light descended, suspended from a bronze chain.

  “But my car does not have a sunroof,” I cried.

  The car veered and I turned to straighten it, burning my fingers again in the process. Three tappers now stood where the mighty Shiva once reigned. Given my predilection for simple elegance, I found the new arrangement ostentatious.

  My seat moved forward and I knocked the pretzel aside. It narrowly missed my lap as it fell to the floor. When my elbows rested on the dash, Reason declared that we ought to pull over before the situation became unmanageable. I concurred, but my feet could no longer reach the brake.

  Inch by glorious inch the hood receded. Five tappers passed through the misty shroud of the windshield. Below it, glass buds sprouted from a ghostly garden and grew into bottles. Fury supplanted bewilderment. I could, in Stoic magnanimity, acquiesce to the new hood ornaments. With the aid of Petronius’ Shovel, I could countenance the presence of an unkempt barkeep in my rearview mirror, but not a small car. Too bereaved to speak, I watched the accelerated crystal growth of the reading lamps create Endless Knot lanterns.

  Above two bottles of Stolichnaya and a stocky bottle of Chivas Regal, my reflection stared back wide-eyed and ashen. Next to him sat a little man sporting a Fu Man Chu beard and a condescending smile. Hovering behind the tappers, the rearview mirror grew to the size of a door and the barkeep strode through. A tight Hawaiian shirt wrapped his oil-barrel chest and beach ball abdomen.

  With trembling hands I extracted a cigarette from a fresh box resting near my elbow. A slender flame appeared inches from my face.

  “Was the pretzel too hot?” the barkeep asked, leaning on the other side of the dash. My authentic voodoo doll, quintuple his original size, perched atop a cash register.

  “Do you have any pickled eggs?” I said.

  “Of course. You need a drink, don’t you?”

  I spun around on my stool for a quick appraisal. A long but cozy room led to the bar. On one wall, a rabbit’s head with a rack of antlers loomed above an oil painting of Edward Gibbon. Mounted on the opposite side, two hammerhead sharks, one white, one black, formed a Yin-Yang circle around a portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer by Robert Crumb. The walls, bright orange, combined with the amber wood on the ceiling and the glow from neon signs to convey the impression that the sun had snagged on something while setting, perhaps to suggest it was always five o’ clock here.

  “You do remember me,” said my fellow patron. Silver dragons covered his silk shirt. “Cletus Empiricus, from the book party.”

  “This tavern is not permanent, is it? My Fleetwood will be returned to its original form?”

  “This tavern is transitory. Your car is fine.”

  “Oh, and Sandy, is she —”

  “All things will be returned to their original forms.” He picked up a mayonnaise jar and finished its red slush. The gargantuan drink looked ridiculous in his tiny hand. “Another Strawberry Zebra,” he told the barkeep.

  “And how is the book proceeding?”

  “Mr. Jablonski, for reasons of alphabetical precedence I’m going to dispatch matters of business before matters of pleasure. The Horned One is perplexed by you.”

  “You two work for the Horned One?”

  “That’s not the best way to characterize our relationship. We don’t punch a clock, if that’s what you mean to imply. We don’t have a 401K plan.”

  “Is there a company picnic?”

  They sipped and glared at me. I put my empty glass on the bar. The barkeep hesitated, then attended to it, keeping his steely eyes on me.

  “Very well,” I said, summoning my courage with a dig of my trustworthy Shovel. “What is the nature of his perplexity?”

  “You were sent on a solemn voyage, a consecrated quest. The Horned One didn’t send you on spring break.”

  Given that my conduct had been exemplary in every way, I recognized this vile denunciation as a test and decided to play along, to humor them. “Is there something in particular I am missing?”

  “Let’s just say you’re putting yourself in positions where it would be easy to overlook things.”

  “Like that deeply enigmatic tunnel, that unfathomable meat puppet,” I blurted, unable to contain myself. “Those had the subtlety of dynamite, the depth of puddles.”

  They took synchronized sips from their Strawberry Zebras and observed me as they would a zoological specimen. The red rings around their lips made them look like macabre transvestites. Enunciating each syllable, Cletus said, “Have you considered the possibility that neither of those signs were revelatory?”

  “Those were red herrings?” You mean Theism is the right position? you could have simply mailed me a copy of Plotinus' Enneads."

  “I can’t endorse or reject any interpretation.”

  “How do I know, with any degree of certainty, what is or is not important?”

  “Mr. Jablonski, the Horned One didn’t mince words with you.”

  “How do I even know if something is or is not a sign?”

  “Different answers to that question will give you different groups of signs to sort through. Different groups of signs, once sorted and unveiled, will provide different messages. Perhaps the answer to that question is in the signs. Perhaps not.”

  “Perhaps we could skip the rest: the Horned One returns my Bonneville, permits me to keep my Fleetwood, and we call it even.”

  “Mr. Jablonski, that’s the fatigue talking. The signs and the answers to questions about them are cloaked i
n the thickest robes of obscurity. They aren’t freebies.”

  “Do they mean the same thing individually as they do in a larger context?”

  “Perhaps some only have meaning in a bigger picture; others, individually. Maybe there are several contexts and the signs mean different things in each.”

  “As a Stoic, I am committed to reducing everything to its elementary components and meditating upon them with the humility befitting a mortal. The Horned One may rest assured that hubris will not be my downfall.”

  Cletus Empiricus smiled, making his eyes all but disappear as two little stars replaced them. “Don’t worry Mr. Jablonski. Your downfall will not be from hubris.”

  The barkeep approached to replenish my drink but I covered it with my hand. “I would prefer to try what you gentlemen are having.”

  “A Strawberry Zebra?” he said, furrowing his brow.

  “Is it classified otherwise? Many drinks, perhaps the majority, have more than one moniker.”

  “By no other name,” he said solemnly.

  “And the ingredients are …?”

  “That’s a secret, Mr. Jablonski. He shouldn’t even be fixing them out in the open where you can watch.”

  “What is the appeal?”

  The barkeep grinned and leaned over the bar, not stopping until his face was inches from mine. “They are the stuff that dreams are made of.”

  “One of the ingredients in particular, or does the combination mimic the essence?”

  “Yes,” they said.

  “Good dreams, bad dreams, or is it a coin toss?”

  “Would you like one or not?” said the barkeep.

  “By all means,” I said, afraid of losing my opportunity.

  The barkeep filled a blender with ice and stood in front of the concoction to ensure its sacred ingredients would not be seen by my heathen eyes. On first glance it looked more like red cotton candy than slush. Upon a closer inspection it appeared to be a red cloud confined to a glass.