Topics About Which I Know Nothing

by Patrick Ness

  Unless.

  ___________ looked into the air and considered. An observer might have noticed a slight smile. Another observer might have disagreed.

  ___________ threw the book in the bin and wheeled it away to the incinerator.

  6

  ‘You what?

  ‘I threw it away.’

  The Head’s glance flitted about the room from a button to a knot in the wood of the table to a chocolate stain on Fortinbras’s lapel. None offered even visual appeal, much less solace or an explanation. The ADWs bunched behind ___________ in a traumatised mob.

  ‘Now,’ the Head said, trying to remain calm. He blew out a long breath. ‘Now. Explain this to me again. De integro.’

  ‘There is nothing to explain,’ said ___________. ‘I threw it away.’

  ‘But why?’ cried the Head.

  ‘It was on the floor, ergo it was garbage.’ The Head wondered for a split second whether he detected sarcasm, but his/her face remained a tabula rasa.

  Ted spoke up from the worried pack. ‘So what do we do?’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Larksley?’ said Albert. ‘He’s in charge of Belgian, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’m here,’ said Larksley. The room parted like a curtain to give him the space should he want to soliloquize. ‘But the funny thing is,’ he said, ‘I’ll be damned if I can remember a word of it.’

  Marmaduke spat one syllable of disbelieving laughter. ‘What do you mean you can’t remember a word of it?’

  The Head moved his considerable mass in such a way that the entire roomed turned to watch. The desired effect. ‘Don’t you people realise what’s happened?’ he said, implying ominously that they did not. ‘Belgian has been incinerated. It no longer exists. Of course Larksley can’t remember it. No one can. It doesn’t exist. It never has, and the people who speak it … Oh, dear God.’

  The whole truth was dawning. ‘How many Belgians are there?’ he asked. ‘Anyone know?’

  Fat bottom lips. Glances to the left. ‘Fifteen, twenty million?’ someone said.

  ‘Doesn’t anybody realise what’s happened?’ the Head Dictionary Writer said. Raised eyebrows. Expectant glances. ‘Those people are gone now. Gone. Kaput. Absconditus. They never existed.’

  The assembled crowd began to murmur. ‘You people write languages,’ the Head said. ‘You know what they do.’

  No one noticed that Archibald, who was partially of Belgian descent, was now a somewhat shorter man named Joshua. No one but the Head.

  And ___________, who noticed, too.

  The Head saw the look on his/her face. Is it approaching? the Head thought. Is it on its way? The fiat lux moment? The fiat lux redux? I’ve put it in motion myself, haven’t I?

  ‘If twenty million Belgians just disappeared,’ said Franklin, ‘then people are going to notice.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joshua, oblivious to his recent change, ‘that’s not the kind of thing you miss.’

  ‘But can anyone seriously say they liked Belgians?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘Ethelred …’ the Head said, warningly.

  ‘I like Belgian waffles,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘We could stretch French over,’ said Norman, in charge of French. ‘Fill in some of the gaps.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ said Montague. ‘The world could do without any more French speakers.’

  ‘We have to do something,’ said the Head. ‘Natura abhoret a vacua. French will do fine as a sort of stopgap. Pemberton!’

  Pemberton was so surprised by the sudden summons he let out a small frightened burp. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said, nervously.

  ‘We’re going to need something dead revived.’

  Pemberton’s eyes glazed over with scarce-believing wonder. ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘Yes, something Germanic that won’t arouse suspicions.’

  Pemberton’s mouth worked like a fish for a moment or two while he thought. ‘What about Flemish, sir?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Marmaduke scornfully. ‘There are good reasons why Flemish is dead. It’s like being stabbed to death with plastic knives.’

  The Head frowned at Marmaduke. ‘Flemish is perfect, Pemberton. Well done. Now, get to work. All of you. We have lives to save.’

  ‘Lives to revive, more like it,’ mumbled Marmaduke.

  ‘But wait a minute,’ said Rowan, ‘the other languages refer to Belgian, otherwise how could we be talking about it now? So it still must exist, right?’

  ‘Belgian the language?’ asked Ted. It was always Ted with the questions. ‘Or Belgian the adjective for all things Belgian?’

  A general confusion. ‘We have a job to do, gentlemen,’ the Head said. ‘The adjective is fine, the language is not. If we leave the language in the other languages, we’re murderers. If we take the references out, nothing has ever happened.’

  A sea of blank faces looked back at him.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ the Head asked, quite sincerely. No answer. He sighed. ‘Never mind. To work, gentlemen.’

  7

  Halfway through the day, Franklin looked up, puzzled. ‘What is it we were doing again?’ he asked.

  8

  It was decided that ___________ would not be fired. By the end of the day, no one could think of a reason why s/he should anyway except for the Head who knew that he would not be believed anyway.

  ___________ had knowledge, but thought better than to mention it.

  9

  Inevitably, night came once more. ___________did not even bother to wheel in the cleaning gear. As the day’s events unfolded, an overwhelming sense of purpose had coalesced in him/her. S/he had always suspected greatness there somewhere, somewhere down with the two sets of genitals, with the breasts and the facial hair, with the voice that wavered with the cruelty of a laryngitic drag queen. Greatness. Why wait for that moment to come to you? Why not come to the moment yourself? Carpe diem, as they say.

  S/he went to the Head’s desk. It contained the Master Dictionary (Unabridged), the book from which all the languages flowed. The Associate Dictionary Writers wrote languages; The Head wrote language. ___________, at the desk where the rules were written, knew that what was written could be rewritten.

  With a pencil and eraser, s/he began.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.’ The Head emerged from a shadowed corner.

  ___________ jumped, startled. Then, with a frighteningly calm look s/he said, ‘Audaces fortuna iuvat.’ S/he took the pencil and crossed out a word. Three fingers from the Head’s right hand disappeared. A surprising spout of blood shot onto the floor.

  ‘A verbis ad verbera,’ said the Head quietly, clenching what remained of his hands together. ‘There’s no way I can stop you. I just thought you should know, even though you might think you’ve won, nothing is forever.’

  ___________ erased. ___________ marked out. ___________ made corrections.

  The Head Dictionary Writer was suddenly in puris naturalibus.

  ‘You’ll try to safeguard against any possibility of an overthrow,’ the Head said, covering his modesty with his bloody hands. ‘You’ll make all your Associates dimwits. You’ll relieve them of their appetites and any trace of introspection. You’ll hermetically seal the room. You’ll do everything you possibly know how. But one day, out of nowhere, you’ll think, “Goddamn, I really want some doughnuts.”’

  ___________ made another erasure. The Head Dictionary

  Writer’s legs disappeared. His body fell to the floor with a muffled clunk. Blood spread out in a surging pool.

  ‘In will come the doughnut man,’ the Head Dictionary Writer continued, pulling himself forward by his arms, his voice shaky. ‘You’ll know what he’s up to, but you won’t be able to stop him, because it will have been written. Don’t you see? It will have been written!’

  ___________ scratched something out, wrote something in. The Head lost his nose, ears and eyeballs.

  ‘I sold them all shoes!’ he screamed, finally panicking in
articulo mortis. ‘Can you understand me? Because I was going to write it, they all wanted shoes!’

  ___________ ripped a page. Blood burst from the Head’s mouth.

  ‘It’s already done,’ he gurgled. ‘You think you’re writing it, but it’s already done.’

  ___________ blew away the eraser residue with a puffed breath.

  ‘Cedo maiori,’ whispered the Head, now only a voice, ‘but someday, so will you.’

  And then the room was silent.

  And, once again, spotless.

  10

  The room’s large bay of windows remained open throughout the day, yet somehow there was never any dust. The Associates, twenty-five of them in their separate cubicles, worked harmoniously. Perhaps it was the bright sunshine or the soothing mood music. Perhaps it was the beautiful navy and white uniforms. Perhaps it was just not in their nature to quarrel. Tranquillity reigned. The Head worked studiously at his desk. He looked up and smiled at the joy of it all. Everyone was perfectly happy and had all that they wanted.

  And that was the way it had always been. Sic transit gloria mundi.

  Sydney is a city of jaywalkers

  I

  It was on the sixth day of a planned nineteen (days one through nine in Sydney, nine through thirteen shuttling between Alice Springs and Ayers Rock, fourteen through nineteen in Cairns, which was probably too much time in Cairns but this was the first vacation he had ever planned and he was by himself so who cared? then a flight back to Los Angeles to arrive, courtesy of the international dateline, eleven hours before he left), that Drew Becker, our young American on holiday, saw, sitting in a coffee house off Oxford Street in Paddington, drinking tea and reading the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter, his brother, who had been dead for five years.

  ‘Well,’ said Drew, stuck to the spot on the sidewalk, looking through the plate glass at Peter, who continued to read his paper, oblivious. And why shouldn’t he? He obviously thought he would never have to answer the questions currently pending in Drew’s brain (an incorrect assumption, Drew would remember). Five years. Even in his calm shock, even through the impasse the brain reaches when faced with something that, despite all physical evidence to the contrary, just was not possible (like Jesus on a tortilla, like the moon), Drew could realize that Peter would have long lost the need to feel furtive.

  ‘Well,’ he said again. Well, indeed.

  * * *

  To be honest, from where we’re standing, running into Peter is a bit of a shame. Up until now, things had been going so fluidly well. It was October, the first blooming of the Australian spring. The weather had not cooperated on the first two days, but no matter. Drew walked the city in the rain. Southern Hemisphere Rain, he thought, falling up towards the ground. The euphoria left him a little dopey (obviously), but he had never been anywhere, not even Mexico. (Can you believe it? Living in Los Angeles? Strange, but it happens.) Here he was, halfway ‘round the world in the one country that all Americans say they want to visit and never do. Even more amazingly for an American, he had done it himself: saving money eternally, working a full-time job through the last couple of years of college, not buying compact discs or books (well, charging them, which wasn’t really money), not buying a microwave, not going skiing, then dropping the entire wad for nineteen days in Australia. He deserved it, he told himself, and who are we to question?

  On that rainy first day, arriving at the unholy half hour of six thirty a.m. Sunday after the taxi had dropped him off in the wrong suburb, which Drew discovered had an entirely different meaning here, and he’d had to walk a mile in the rain with his suitcase, he still smiled. He smiled at the girl at the desk who cheerfully told him that she was terribly sorry but his room wouldn’t be ready until noon and of course he could leave his bag there while he got himself some breakfast and welcome to Australia by the way and there’s a McDonald’s just down the street.

  ‘Okay, I’ll be back in a few hours,’ Drew smiled.

  ‘No worries,’ she lobbed right back.

  The wattage of Drew’s smile upped (it’s all right to look briefly away); he hadn’t believed they actually said that.

  An aggressive atomizer of rain misted down. Drew drifted through it like an expensive yet tasteful scent. He ate breakfast at the McDonald’s, felt a twitch of guilt, then wondered if there was such a thing as Australian cuisine. His hotel was in Paddington on Oxford Street (a scant three blocks from the café where, in six days’ time, he would see his dead brother). Sydney’s own Hyde Park was just ten or so blocks away in the neighboring suburb of Darlinghurst, and it was here that Drew wound up that first morning after satisfying himself with a Southern Hemisphere Egg McMuffin.

  A wide lawn led to a walkway between two rows of giant trees which had grown together some twenty feet up, making a towering, natural hallway. It wasn’t quite an escape from the rain - there were now random large drops of water instead of the steady mist - but it was momentary respite. Sydney was all but deserted at this hour, all good Sydneysiders at church or at home or at leisure far away from downtown, and Drew had the park nearly to himself. A man in an overcoat on a bench nearly thirty yards away and a female jogger with her Great Danes were his only company. Scratch that, there were also the ibises: fat, squat, dirty birds with long curved beaks. Drew saw at least five stalking around the park, looking for scraps. They played the role of the pigeon, Drew supposed, except they were alarmingly large, a good two feet tall. No matter, on that morning (and on that morning alone; Drew eventually made the discovery that the birds were a widely berated irritant) they were as glistening as the rain.

  Apart from the obvious large-scale, forefront (and currently still imminent) memory of seeing his brother and the actions that followed, it was this moment, sitting in Hyde Park in the taffeta rain, watching the ibises, and just soaking that Drew would remember most clearly. He had landed in a foreign country and been given the courtesy of a few minutes to himself. The sense of displacement was as intoxicating as it was profound. He could not believe he was here yet here he was. He could not believe he was here yet here he was. He could not believe he was here yet here he was in the rain in Hyde Park in Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Here he was. Here he was.

  That night he went to a movie. No judgments, please, at least not here; most everything was closed and Drew was exhausted. He made sure it was an Australian movie, though, one that wouldn’t reach the United States for months or maybe not at all. By chance, it turned out to be wonderful, but it was still day one, and it would have been wonderful even if it wasn’t.

  Drew shifted from foot to foot. He crossed his arms and uncrossed them. Australians moved politely around him on the sidewalk. He stared and considered. It had become a tableau.

  We apparently have time for another story.

  * * *

  As the sighting of his brother colors Drew’s hindsight for much of the first days of his vacation, we, in an effort to show those days objectively, present them to you as they happen …

  Day #2, Monday and still dreary and wet: Spitefully, Drew spends most of the day on a walking tour of Sydney. Down Oxford Street with its cafes, restaurants, bookstores, and scores of homosexuals; past Hyde Park again, and on into downtown. He stops at Victoria Station Mall, buying the Australia Tourist Troika: an opal, a boomerang, and a T-shirt, before making his way to Circular Quay and buying a three-day pass for public transport. He takes a picture of the Opera House from across the Quay. On the advice of his tour book, it’s up onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge and into the viewing tower. From here, he takes another picture of the Opera House. Back down from the Bridge, back towards downtown, through The Rocks, crossing Circular Quay again and actually going into the Opera House itself (but not before taking another picture from the front). There seem to be operas running continuously, so he purchases a ticket for a Thursday performance of Don Giovanni, because it is the only one he has heard of. By now, Drew has walked about six miles and is still a good three miles from
his hotel. He could take the bus, but presses on valiantly by foot through the Royal Botanical Gardens, snapping a quite wonderful picture of a grouping of birds-of-paradise he will forget about completely until the film is developed. And then the world’s worst jet lag, which has been lurching behind, out of breath but dogged, catches up with a vengeance. Drew takes a bus back to Oxford Street, eats dinner and is asleep by six-thirty.

  Day #3, Tuesday: Sunshine for the first time (and rain will turn out to have disappeared completely). Drew loves zoos and so is off to Taronga Park. After waking up at 3:30 a.m. and killing time until breakfast, he takes a bus to Circular Quay and a ferry across the harbor to the zoo. As zoos go, it is a very good one, but still a zoo and so the day passes pleasantly without much detail required. He decides to make it a completely zoological day and takes another ferry to the Sydney Aquarium. It is an incomprehensibly depressing experience. The aquarium is nice enough, but the underwater viewing conveyor belt trip seems only to offer morose sharks in harshly lit pools. The lighting in the rest of the aquarium is intended to be dramatic, but succeeds only in being dark. Drew leaves feeling frankly horrible. He takes a complete-loop ride on the Sydney monorail and is surprised to see that it doesn’t seem to stop anywhere useful. An Australian rider tells him he is not the first person to notice this. Drew manages to stay awake until eight.

  Day #4, Wednesday: Bright sunshine today and Drew decides to go to Manly and North Harbour. Another bus ride to Circular Quay (he is becoming an expert), then a hydrofoil to Manly. Manly, wonderful Manly, gives Drew his first beach-sitting opportunity. After taking a very brief dip in the Harbour (even though he’s within the shark net, he still feels a little nervous, and more importantly, the water is still post-winter temperatures), Drew tans for an hour. A quick trip to the much smaller, but much happier, Manly Aquarium, then a long, long walk up to the cliffs at North Head, the entrance to Sydney Harbour. It’s beautiful and huge. On the way back, something pulls in his knee, and he limps the last half mile to the hydrofoil. Dinner, shopping, and a beer in a bar on Oxford Street. He is feeling less of a stranger to his surroundings, and so far, if he may say so, he feels he has been the best kind of sponge: experiencing and gathering. No interpretation, not yet.