Couch

by Benjamin Parzybok

  A stunned silence in the room. The sheepish looks of college kids who haven’t done their homework.

  “See how it’s drawn? Mountains here and river valleys as if the whole damn continent wasn’t buried under several miles of ice? Those mountain ranges reflect the mountain ranges we discovered under the ice in just 1959. The mountains on this map are accurate. When was Antarctica discovered? 1820. Not until 1820!”

  Per fell into a great fit of coughing. His face had turned red in the excitement. He started again quietly. “Do you have any idea what I’m suggesting? I’m suggesting . . . No, I’m not suggesting, I’m telling you”—Per raised his voice—“educating you. I’m making you understand that Antarctica was mapped accurately before it was covered in ice. This map of Piri Reis is not his map. It is an anonymous gift from the past. Its longitudes are perfect. We didn’t know how to determine longitude until the Renaissance. It uses spherical trigonometry—you studied that, Thom?”

  Thom nodded.

  “Then tell your friends what it means.”

  “It . . . uh. It’s a math . . . they use it to map coordinates on a sphere. They started using it in the seventeen hundreds. Usually used in mapping the globe or calculating the positions of star systems.”

  “Yet this map says 1513! This isn’t too long after Europe’s Dark Ages, a time in which much knowledge was lost. What I’m trying to say is that the world had a great civilization in the past, perhaps several of them, and either they made some grave error, completely changed the world’s climate, changed it so severely that it all but destroyed them—any of you read the news lately, follow climate trends?—or they murdered each other, or they did any of the countless other things this species does to suicide itself, or perhaps they were simply unlucky. The earth reshaped. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Per downed and refilled his glass again. He was breathing heavily, and a vein stood out on his forehead. His voice dropped dramatically, low and sinister.

  “The remnants of humanity plunged into a dark age, a fear of knowledge, a desperate struggle for survival. Perhaps one of the great civilizations was based on the island of Atlan, what you know as the fairy tale of Atlantis. Another history turned legend turned myth. Plato mentions it, says the island, the continent, was destroyed in a day and a night. The few Atlans who did not drown fled, losing more or less everything they’d created. Some integrated with the Mayas. There’s new evidence of a great sunken city off of Cuba, very close to the old Mayan territories. Some Atlans went east, others west. I believe there are strains from them still, or from other ancient civilizations, lost and isolated, more cities like Keulap, perhaps, with impossibly precise stonework, and perhaps still advanced, having scavenged bits of technology from the wealth they once had. Just think of what was lost. If you were the last of your civilization, could you make electricity? Paper? Craft a boat? Do you have the faintest idea what goes into making a silicon chip, a radio wave? Do you know how to farm?

  “The earth’s size is still inconceivable to humans, too small and yet so large. You will never know the street kid’s suffering in Myanmar; you will never taste whale meat off of an Icelandic spear. Yet look at the information available to us. We think we know everything. We’re misled. We don’t deserve what we have, and our arrogance guarantees we’ll never really understand it anyway.”

  Per picked up a handful of solid one-inch glass spheres, turned them around in his hand. “Who knows what these are? Found this one when I dug a well. This one a friend gave me from his place. Pure crystal. I’ve heard all kinds of theories—decorations, like Christmas-tree ornaments, information-storage devices—know what you can store in crystal? Light refraction. There’s been evidence of solar energy use in Atlan. Sure, it sounds unbelievable.” Per waved his hand dismissively. “But to make a crystal sphere itself requires very advanced technology—no evidence of metalworking on these either. Something else. Diamond drills? They’re perfect spheres. Maybe they were made by the culture that was here before, or maybe their ancestors, or their ancestors’ ancestors. Maybe they are gifts from an untraceably distant past.”

  He waved his cognac hand around, spilling drops among pottery jars. “But that’s not the only time we’ve lost everything. Between the Romans and the Christians, the Library of Alexandria was burned. The early world’s greatest repository of information: a million books. They burned it sixteen hundred years ago. Know who the Copts were? Precursors to today’s modern policemen. They were the violent monk patrolmen who roamed Alexandria, stamping out anything or anyone even resembling knowledge. And then the world was flung into the most recent dark age—that is, if you don’t consider this age a dark age. Knowledge was mistrusted. People believed bathing was evil. The bubonic plague struck, killed thirty million—and even I, I still mistrust knowledge. What can you trust? There are two parts to knowledge. Understanding it, and understanding how to use it and not kill yourself. The Western world, with its nuclear bombs and genetic engineering—you have a great understanding of technology but very little concept or concern for its eventual effects.”

  “Okay, Per,” Alma said. “They’ve had a long day.”

  “Mmm,” Per said and hobbled around, looking for something among the artifacts. “It took us this many years to relearn what was lost—though we don’t even know what we lost! Look at this!” Per held up an intricately carved figure, an iridescent metal. “This is platinum, from the northwest coast of Ecuador, La Tolita. Several thousand years old, I don’t know. The technology for melting and forming platinum was discovered in the 1850s—just after the discovery of Antarctica!” Per said sarcastically. “And I use the word ‘discovered’ the same way I talk about Columbus discovering America. Platinum requires extremely high temperatures to melt. Know how high? About two thousand degrees Celsius; probably about three thousand five hundred degrees Fahrenheit to you. How in the hell did they do that? It’s difficult to know what to believe anymore. You can’t believe me! An old Swedish conspiracy theorist, I base all my facts in legends, it’s true, but they make more damn sense. . . . Since moving here, so many of my beliefs have reversed. I . . . don’t even go to the doctor anymore.” Per faded off, swallowed the rest of his cognac in a great gulp.

  Thom glanced at Erik, wondering what the last bit meant.

  “Curandero,” Alma said. “Witch doctor. Per had cancer. I finally talked him into going.”

  “It’s hard to give up on the belief system you were raised with, and half the shit I hear here is utter bullshit. The old medicines mixed in with cheap showmanship and used for so long that I don’t think they even know which is the showmanship and which is the medicine. But after it works, you just give your mind over to it, just say to hell with it, not caring which is which. A guy puts his hands on you, hurts like hell even though his hands are just resting, and then you don’t have cancer.” He shrugged. “For all I know, it was the witch doctor’s secretary who cured me. Your damn country”—pointing at Erik—“exporting its efficiency culture, consumerism, fantasy, sexuality, everything a glossy, irresistible brilliance. I’ve given in. I have all the newest stuff. Temptation, desire, greed.

  “We’re losing a culture a day. We’re losing our history faster all the time. The Romans stamped out hundreds of cultures to impose their own. Same with the Incas, the Spanish, English, Americans, Japanese, Chinese. And the thousand cultures we’ve lost repressed the million cultures before them. Ecuador and the oil companies are killing cultures in the Amazon, destroying belief and custom until a great culture that’s existed for hundreds, thousands of years knows nothing about itself, a whole race roped into building the pipeline of progress. It’s going to take science the next five hundred years to track down the curing properties of the jungle plants that the natives have used for the last five hundred. How many of those cultures think of cancer as petty and curable as a scraped knee? The knowledge is lost because science came in like a blind rhino at a domino tournament.

  “So what about th
e couch? Another magic thing maybe, something hidden in it? Here.” Per pointed to a three-foot stone sculpture of a man on his knees, a crescent moon upturned on his back in the form of a seat. “That’s an ancient chair, five or six or seven thousand years old, two hundred generations of people, and yet there is no knowledge of the culture that made this. I wouldn’t have said so ten years ago, but if you’ve got something like that and the owner is still around, you better damn well return it. As you can see, I’ve been a collector. Stolen most of what’s here, because humanity is too stupid to reflect, too shortsighted to survive.” Per’s eyes glazed over, and he leaned heavily against a shelf filled with what looked like stone engine cogs. The room was quiet but for Per’s rasping breath.

  “Come on, amor, let’s let our visitors sleep.” Alma took Per’s arm and led him from the room.

  When Per and his wife had hobbled out, the room was eerily silent. The roommates looked at each other in amazement, befuddlement. Thom felt as small as an acorn. An intricately carved cup Erik had picked up suddenly came apart in his hands, cracking, bits of it turning to dust, disintegrating. He yelped, tried to catch the falling pieces.

  “Per is smart,” Tree said and stared at the space the man had vacated.

  The tools and weapons and cookware and instruments felt alive, no longer like dead museum pieces, but belongings their owners were about to come and reclaim. The pieces seemed to hum in anticipation of use. Erik tried to hide the pieces of the cup he’d pulverized.

  “How did that happen?” Thom scooped dust into his palm.

  “I don’t know! It just came apart.”

  “There goes more history, bud.” Thom elbowed Erik playfully.

  Tree had one of the crystal spheres in his hand.

  “For fuck sake be careful,” Erik said with alarm.

  “Information storage,” Thom said and stared into the sphere Tree held. “Maybe from holograms? That’s cool. It could be a million books in there, all the secrets there were. Would the information be on the surface or be inside? With CDs aluminum is burned, I believe, but to burn information on a crystal?” He pulled it from Tree’s hands and held it up to the light, a broad rainbow appearing on the opposite wall. “I guess you’d need the right wavelength of light and angle to project what’s inside. A lot of angles in a sphere.”

  “Hey, there’s another room.” Erik was on his knees. “There’s a blue light under here.” He tapped the wall, and it sounded hollowly. “It’s a secret door!” Erik was hyperventilating with excitement.

  “Listen, I don’t know if we should . . .” Thom started, then stalled when the door slid into the wall and revealed a room lit by a computer monitor’s blue light. “Hey, he’s got a computer.” Thom strode past Erik, the gravity of silicon electronics pulling him on. He sat at the keyboard, found no password was needed, and was online within the minute. Maybe he had an email from Jean. Erik and Tree were behind him fussing over something in the background. Annoyed, he turned around and saw the walls were covered with sketches of machines, cities, tools, pottery, advanced mechanisms. One that was without a doubt flying, but motionless, a helicopter’s pose with no propellers or blades. Is the guy a UFO nut too? A Mayan-like pyramid structure with a giant crystal on top, a rainbow fanning out from it creating what appeared to be holograms on the ground.

  “Per knows more than he let on,” Erik said. “Or he’s off his rocker. Or he’s a New Age fanatic. Where’d he get all these?”

  Tree pointed to an edge of one of the sketches where there was a tight-scripted notation, a city suspended among trees, obelisks that seemed to float above the forest floor, cocoons. The notation read:

  SACALACAS JUNE 1974 0 N 68 W (KXLNNTMTDXERKKAWS).

  “You don’t think he’s really seen this?” Tree said. Thom studied the notation. “Those are coordinates. I’d bet anything that last bit is encrypted coordinates of better accuracy. Zero north is the equator. Do you think he’s been in contact with ancient civilizations that are still existing?”

  “Nah,” Erik said, “look at these.” He pointed to a bookshelf full of fantasy and science-fiction books. Architecture, history, technology, folklore, legends, and survival.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a dreamer, maybe not. Nothing wrong with having a couple of sci-fi books in the house.” Thom studied another sketch of a machine that seemed to be doing something with the tides: a giant gear or waterwheel, a pipe back to land. Energy generation? Water desalination? “This one just says rendering from scroll B-28. The hell? So maybe he’s found some writings?”

  Another wall was covered with photos of real places Thom had seen in TV shows, giant stone ruins, notes taped under the photos, Palenque, Tikal, Macchu Picchu, Uxmal, Easter Island Moai, Egyptian architecture, Olmec heads, Indian temples, Minoan, Mycenaean, Stonehenge. Thom shook his head, feeling swamped in possibility, the earth wasn’t flat, the sun didn’t spin around them, the universe was infinite.

  He turned back to the computer and retrieved his email.

  to: thom@sanchopanchez.net

  from: jean@sidklowski.net

  You bastards can’t ever keep a date, can you. So I moved on to Cuenca, Ecuador, town in the South, to work on another story. Did you make it here? Are you in the country? Would still love to meet up if you’re still up to meet.

  Funny thing, I was hanging out in a very nice part of colonial Cuenca, a place where you can get a cappuccino, and I saw what looked exactly like your couch being moved into somebody’s place. You do have the couch still . . . tell me you have the couch. Made me miss you. Anyway, you name the time and place this time. I’ll be there. Maybe you will too . . .

  -Jean

  p.s. I’m staying in a hospedaje named La Casa.

  “Read this, guys, read this.” Thom waved them over toward the computer.

  “The couch is in Cuenca,” Tree said. “We’ve got to go. Let’s go right now.”

  “Wow.” Erik scratched at his face. “Good old Jean.” He raised an eyebrow at Thom. “Pretty damn coincidental though.”

  Thom ignored Erik’s look. “I don’t know, Tree, maybe we should leave first thing in the morning. It’s, you know, night out? Maybe Per will help us, or maybe it wasn’t our couch.” Thom skimmed through the rest of his email, disappointed to find nothing else worth reading but a letter from his mother. He steeled himself.

  to: thom@sanchopanchez.net

  from: bmarga379312@aol.com

  Do you remember Jim and Ellie Samway? He said he has some kind of computer job for you.

  I’m having them to dinner this weekend. You should come up and talk to Jim—you’d be welcome to stay here for a while and catch up. Jim and Ellie look forward to seeing you.

  I love you,

  Mom.

  to: jean@sidlowski.net

  from: thom@sanchopanchez.net

  Jean—what a coincidence! The couch was stolen

  “Dude,” Erik said, hovering over Thom’s shoulder, “you’re not going to tell her we don’t have the couch, right?”

  “Why not?”

  “Think about it. If that’s what she’s after, and she finds out we don’t have it, we’ll never hear from her again, and then we definitely won’t find the couch.”

  “Erik—I trust Jean.”

  “Happy for you, thinks-with-his-dick.”

  “Shut up, Erik.” Thom pushed Erik away and out of reading distance.

  Erik threw his hands up, but Thom deleted the line. He put his head in his hands and tried to think of an innocuous message.

  It just so happens that we’re coming to Cuenca. Stay where you are—We’ll stop by your hotel. I look forward to seeing you.

  Thom

  He returned the computer to the state he’d found it. “We should get out of here, gents. It’s spooky. For some reason, he’s hiding all this information. He could be filthy rich, I’m guessing, with some of this stuff he’s found.”

  Erik nodded, looked around the room for something he could take. Real
ized he still had a pottery shard, pocketed it.

  At breakfast, Per looked as if the effort of the previous night’s speech had aged him ten years. Eye avoidance was a high priority. Thom focused on his toast, coffee, the window just above Erik’s left shoulder with the steamy view of banana Ecuador.

  Alma and Tree were unaffected and chatted idly about portraiture. Tree, finished eating, worked Alma’s profile with wire and pliers.

  “I would have liked it for my collection.” Per stared at a piece of pancake on his fork, dripping syrup.

  Thom studied Per’s fork, swirled the orange juice around in his glass. He knew Per was talking about the couch. Knew he’d known all along. “I don’t think it works like that. If we get it back, we’re taking it home, where its . . . whatever . . . won’t affect the outside world. You know all this, don’t you?”

  “I would have liked to have it, to see it at least. If you find it again, if you manage to take it there, if if if, then my life will change here. That’s what they say. Look.” Per gestured with the loaded fork, waving it in the direction of his house, splashing syrup. “Look at this place, full of expensive things, cooled to a comfortable temperature against the sweltering outside by energy-sucking apparatus. I’m on the line, I don’t live like I preached last night. I take advantage. This was the comfortable thing, the easy thing to do. You come all fired up, and then look what happens. You get lazy. You want nice things,” he said, a tone of regret and defensiveness in his voice. “As a foreigner, it was too damn easy to get ahead here.” He tapped the bite of pancake against the side of his plate. “I’ve looked for where you’re going. Looked and looked. You saw my room last night?”