The End of Mr. Y

by Scarlett Thomas

  Chapter Eight

  Yvonne is upset about the number of books in the room.

  "What do you think, Roger?" she asks.

  "Well," he says. "You're not going to fit any more shelves in here."

  "No. That's what I thought."

  While they're having this conversation, I'm clearing out Burlem's desk drawers, something I should have done much earlier. I've already filed a few loose documents relating to his Literature and Science course, and now I'm on to the general debris. There's a teaspoon, presumably stolen from the kitchen, which I hide before Yvonne can see it. There's a bag of filter coffee, unopened, which I also hide, thinking something along the lines of "finders keepers" but also that Burlem probably wouldn't mind me having his coffee in an emergency. But there's nothing else of interest in Burlem's drawers: just lots of pencils and board pens. Oh! And an electric pencil sharpener. I'm having that as well.

  "What do you think, Ariel?" says Yvonne.

  "Sorry?" I say. I've been so carried away with looting Burlem's drawers that I've somehow managed to tune them both out.

  "We're just saying that Professor Burlem's books might as well go in storage, too. If I bring down some boxes, do you mind packing them up? We'll finish the rest tomorrow morning."

  ***

  By four o'clock I've packed most of the books. Or, at least, I've packed most of the books that I think I won't ever want to use (mainly literature classics that I also have copies of, also in this room), and I am alarmed to see that they have only filled two of the five boxes I've been given. The shelf space they've left behind is minimal at best. I look again. There's no way I'm sending all Burlem's theory books into storage. I need all those. And the Literature and Science textbooks have to stay because I'm teaching the course in a couple of weeks' time. What about the nineteenth-century science books? I suppose I do have a lot of them at home. Shit. What am I going to do?

  While I'm contemplating the situation further, the phone rings.

  "So..." It's Patrick.

  "So." I say back, playing along.

  "Guess what I've got?"

  "What have you got?"

  "Keys."

  "To?"

  "The Russell study bedrooms. So I was thinking..."

  I laugh nervously. He wants to fuck on campus. That's new. There's something in his voice I haven't come across before. He sounds bitter, as if he was angry a while ago but now he's resigned to whatever it is.

  "Patrick," I say, as though I'm about to explain to a kid that you shouldn't play with matches. "What if...?"

  "There's no one around," he says. "Why don't you bring that thing I sent you?"

  Can I tell him I've got to pack boxes instead? Probably not. What about investigating Burlem's computer files? I open my desk drawer and look down at the object he wants me to bring. And then that's it. Desire bites me hard and I feel its warm poison creep through my body. I ignore the fact that Patrick's voice is weird, and that this is a stupid idea, and, after agreeing to meet him in a remote corner of the Russell Building, I pick up my bag and go over there, looking behind me a couple of times in case anyone is watching. I'll do the boxes later. And how long can this take? A quick fuck might be just the thing to break up the afternoon. And other people have tea breaks, don't they?

  Afterwards, at six o'clock, still sitting in the small, slightly sordid room after Patrick has left, I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything, but I'm still looking for the definitive proof. It turned out that Patrick's voice was odd because his wife is in the process of leaving him—not because she found out about me, but because she has fallen in love with one of her toy boys. Patrick had been angry; that was clear. And it wasn't as if he'd called me up so he could take it out on me—he's usually a nice guy. But once we were in the room his fantasy world somehow collided with the violence and anger he'd built up in the real world and made everything more intense, more desperate, and a lot darker than usual. Had he known that this was the turn it would take? He'd asked me to bring the vibrator he'd sent, after all. But he'd also brought rope (not the usual silk scarves). But surely he hadn't meant to go as far as he did? Did he want me to tell him to stop? I don't know why I didn't. Except ... I didn't tell him to stop because I didn't want him to stop, because, well, maybe I like the darkness and violence, too. Maybe I need darkness and violence like food, like cigarettes. Maybe ... Maybe I should stop thinking about this.

  After a couple more minutes I leave the room and, after walking down a dingy hallway with posters telling the students not to leave their windows open because pigeons fly in and lay eggs, I descend the steep staircase to the main part of the building. I walk through the white corridor under the white lights only to find the side door won't open. They don't usually lock it this early. Shit. I kick it a couple of times but it definitely is locked, so I have to walk all the way around again, my eyes moving nervously like a thief's, knowing that if I bump into anyone now it will look odd, and I can't even claim to have been to the vending machines because I'm not carrying any sweets or crisps. Am I walking strangely? After what I've just done it wouldn't be surprising. But the porter just nods at me as I escape through the main entrance and I glance blankly back at him. Back in the English Building I go and make coffee in the small, deserted kitchen, and then I take it down to my office, first ignoring the fact that I am now very hungry, and then deciding to eat the last chocolate bar.

  I sit cross-legged on the floor for a while, just looking at the boxes while I drink my coffee and eat the chocolate. Then I examine the small rope burns on my wrists and ankles. There's something interesting about the grazed areas of flesh; something pleasingly symmetrical about them. But I probably won't see Patrick anymore. I'll do anything once for the experience, but that doesn't mean I'll necessarily do it again—even if at the time I enjoyed it. For a moment I think about Yvonne, who is probably at home now making tea for the kids in a bright kitchen with yellow lights everywhere and a dishwasher and a big TV ready to pump out brightness for the rest of the evening; I wonder at what point my life swerved to avoid that, and if that life would have been nicer than the one I've got.

  It's dark outside the window as I start putting more books into boxes. They are dusty from being on the shelves for so long, and my hands are soon almost black with the grime from them. Ignoring this, I fill the first box with as many of Saul Burlem's nineteenth-century science books as I can bear to part with, although it takes a long time because I keep stopping to touch the pages, and to read the odd line here and there. I linger for longer than usual on Transcendental Physics by Professor Zollner. Burlem's copy of it is a small brown hardback from 1901. I randomly open it and read a short section about Kant, God, and the fourth dimension, which is opposite a picture of some knots. Another plate, farther on, shows a small, freestanding table, with a wide, solid top and bottom, with two solid wooden loops encircling its thin single stem. It's clear that if the table and loops are both solid wood, the loops would have had to have always been there; but they haven't been. They've been conjured onto it somehow. I turn the page and read about the strange lights and the smell of sulphuric acid that preceded these loops being placed onto the leg by unseen, possibly higher-dimensional forces.

  Somehow I manage to clear one whole bookcase via this method of selecting a book, reading a bit, then, slightly sadly, placing it in the box. After that, I try to arrange all my books, plus the ones I'm "borrowing," onto one bookcase, but they won't fit. I look again at Burlem's books. If I boxed up his four volumes of the 1801 edition of Zoonomia, Erasmus Darwin's book, that would leave a bit more space, especially if I boxed up some of his Aristotle as well. But Zoonomia is one of my favorite of his books, and one I was definitely planning to use for the Ph.D. Except ... Actually, I won't be using it anymore, since Burlem persuaded me not to include it. I remember his words. Forget about Mr. Y. And forget about Zoonomia, as well. He said 1801 was too early and that I should
stick within my time frame. Well, I suppose if I change my mind there is a copy in the library. So they're going in the box. I have to stand on a chair to reach them and I try not to get too absorbed with touching their wide green spines, then opening them and running my fingers over the thick, pulpy rag paper that still seems to contains tiny bits of tree. Perhaps it's because it's the end of a strange day, or because my arms are tired, but I'm not as careful with the books as I usually would be, and the thick pages flap about as I lift each volume off the shelf. In fact, the volumes don't seem to be in the best condition, because as I take Volume IV down, one of its pages actually falls out and flutters down onto the carpet like a leaf.

  When I get down off the chair and pick up the page, I see that it isn't the right size, or thickness, for Zoonomia. It doesn't have that blotting paper feel, or the thick black type with the long letter s that looks like an f In fact, I realize, it's not a page of Zoonomia at all. The small, thin typescript is familiar to me, however, as is, in some unconscious way, the jaggedness of the tear in its edge. It also has a very faint crease: the result of having once been folded into four. This isn't a page that's simply fallen out of Zoonomia. This is the missing page from The End of Mr. Y.

  For about five whole minutes I just stand there looking at it; not reading the words, just touching the paper and allowing the circuit in my mind to be completed. The book was Burlem's. The whole box of books from the shop was Burlem's. And it was Burlem who, for some reason, tore out this page and hid it. It must have been him. He must have left the page here. No one else has a key to this room except me, and if someone else had taken the page out of the book, surely they'd have hidden it in their own things, not in Burlem's. And I don't actually know anyone else who has ever even heard of The End of Mr. Y, except Burlem. But why would he hide a page of a book? And how on earth did the rest of the book end up in an auction? I can't work out how all these things could possibly fit together. Apart from anything else, the book would have been so valuable whole that it must have taken something mind-boggling to make him remove a page. And why not simply put the whole book on the shelf?

  Forget about Mr. Y. Sorry, Burlem. That's not going to be possible now.

  And, I now wonder, did he really want me to forget? He connected these two things: Mr. Y and Zoonomia, because he knew he'd left the page there. He connected them in language long before I connected them in the real world.

  I can't read the page here, although it is difficult to stop myself. Instead, I tuck it carefully inside the Zollner book, which I've decided to take home with me, and, as quickly as I can, I finish packing the boxes and leave.

  An hour later, after a cold, dark walk down the hill, I sit down on my sofa in the kitchen with a large cup of coffee. This feels like a ritual, but perhaps it should be a ritual. I never thought I'd read The End of Mr. Y, and then I found a copy of it in what appeared to be the most improbable circumstances. I never thought I'd find the missing page, but now here it is. And every one of these events is connected. But not by luck: It's pure cause and effect. The only piece of luck involved in all of this was the university starting to collapse and creating the cracks of chaos out of which these things could emerge. Of course, I still have no idea of what happened to Burlem, but I know that whatever happened to him is the real cause for what's happening to me now. Why did he disappear? It must have been something very bad if whatever it was meant that his most precious book ended up in a box in an auction. And the books in the box are definitely his: I flicked through them as soon as I got in and found some marginal notes in his pointy, up-and-down handwriting that proved it. I take a big gulp of coffee and, as a train clatters underneath my window, I read the first line on page 131, the remainder of the broken-off line on page 130.

  the darkened room with its single lamp. I bade him good evening.

  'Good evening to you, Mr. Y,' said he, a cold smile spreading itself thinly across his face. 'Shall we immediately begin this business? I trust you have the money?'

  I reached down and withdrew the money from my shoe, almost losing my balance as I did so. This had the effect of thinning the doctor's smile yet further.

  'I must say your purse is a little queer, Mr. Y.'

  'This is all the money I have,' I told him. 'I was not about to allow it to be stolen.'

  'Indeed not,' he replied.

  Presently he motioned for me to sit down at the table, and he took the opposite side, as if a consultation were about to take place. I handed the money to him and felt a profound sense of emptiness puncture my soul. Would this fellow even give me what I wanted? I have to confess that at that moment I half believed that the next thing I would see would be a puff of smoke, and then the trick would be complete. However, there was no puff of smoke and the doctor continued to regard me across the table.

  'I have transcribed the recipe for you,' he said. 'It is quite simple and requires no special preparation. The ingredients are common, as you will see.'

  I realised then that he was holding in his left hand a sheet of tattered blue note-paper. There was the information I had been searching for all this time! I did not understand why this man was sitting there in this pose, simply holding on to this knowledge, this most precious thing. Why did he not simply give me what I had paid for? All at once I felt some demon seize possession of me, and I was overcome by an urge to reach across the table and rip the paper from his hand. I confess that I further imagined wrestling him to the ground and taking back my money. Yet all this only happened in my mind, and in reality I did nothing but sit there meekly awaiting my prescription.

  'This mixture,' I said. 'It will have the same effect as...?'

  'You wish to know if the mixture will enable you to telepath?'

  'Yes,' said I. 'If that is indeed what took place in Nottingham.'

  The doctor's thin smile returned.

  'This mixture will most certainly enable you to telepath, if that is all you require of it.'

  'If that is all I require? What in heaven do you mean?'

  'The mixture will take you on many curious journeys, Mr. Y, I can assure you of that.' For a second or two the doctor looked as if he might continue in this portentous vein, but then something queer seemed to happen to him. His whole body appeared to grow limp, like a marionette placed in a cupboard after a performance, and for a full minute he did not move ; nor did he say anything else. When he did come back to life it was with a little jerk, as if someone had once again taken hold of his strings. He looked at the piece of note-paper in his hand as if puzzled by it and then, without saying anything else, he handed it to me.

  I had only the merest opportunity to glance at my treasure before he rapped the table twice with the knuckles of his left hand and made to stand up.

  'Well, then, good evening, Mr. Y. You have what you came for.'

  I hesitated, understanding that this would be my only chance to ask the question that so burned on my lips.

  'Before I leave,' I said, 'I have one question to ask of you.'

  The doctor lifted one eyebrow in response but said nothing.

  'I wish to know how many other people have this recipe,' I said.

  'You wish to know how valuable is this knowledge you hold in your hand,' said the doctor. 'You wish to know how much power you now possess, and how it has been potentially diluted among the rest of the population. Well, I can answer your question quite easily. You are the only person to whom I have sold this recipe. Not everyone is as willing as you were to lie in a tent and imbibe a stranger's medicinal concoction simply for the purpose of knowledge. For pain relief, this is common. For pleasure, also. But you can rest assured, sir, that you are my only customer to date.'

  I had more questions, but the doctor made it quite clear to me that our business was concluded and I walked out into the cold, murky hallway. In a parlour on my right I saw a child trying to light a fire. The result of this was a low, persistent, hissing noise and enough smoke to make my eyes sting. When I was certain that no o
ne was looking, I rubbed the grime from my eyes and briefly examined the document in my hand. It only contained four lines, written in an untutored, unorthodox hand, in pale violet ink.

  Make the tincture in the following way—:

  Combine one part Carbo Vegetabilis, that is, vegetable charcoal, in

  the 1000th centesimal homoeopathic potency, with 99 parts holy

  water in a glass retort or flask and succuss the mixture ten times.

  FD 1893

  Then I slipped the blue paper into my shoe and made my way for the door.

  I finish reading the missing page of The End of Mr. Y with a dry mouth and my heart beating as if it's trying to get out. I just can't believe it. I immediately reread the page, trying to re-create the sensation I felt when I got to the recipe, rather in the same way you queue up to take a fairground ride that has just terrified and excited you. But it doesn't quite work in that way. This isn't a ride you can take again but one, I am guessing, that is simply impossible to get off. And then I find that I can't sit down anymore. I get up and pace the room, feeling as though I should do something bigger, much bigger, to express the emotion I feel, but not knowing what that would be. Laughter? Tears? My brain is hysterical but I don't do anything to show it in the end; I just pace and smoke and think. I think about the strange preface, and all the hints that The End of Mr. Y contains something real. I think about the trouble someone, probably Burlem, has taken to conceal this page, which contains nothing of any interest apart from the instructions for making up the tincture. I think of Lumas's strange allusions to telepathy, and I remember this section about the "automaton of mind."