‘Not now. Not in the past.’
‘Well, there you are then. Whatever happens it’s not your responsibility. I wouldn’t worry about it.’
Another pause.
‘Well,’ said the Other at last. ‘I expect you’ve got things to do.’
‘Many things to do.’
‘Preparing for this inundation and so forth.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then.’ He turned and walked towards the First Vestibule.
‘Goodbye,’ I called. ‘Goodbye!’
ARE YOU MATTHEW ROSE SORENSEN?
second entry for the twenty-first day of the ninth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
My course of action was clear. I must go immediately to the Sixth North-Western Hall and write a message to 16 warning her of the coming Flood!
As I walked I thought about the last message I had left her – the one begging her to leave these Halls. Perhaps in the intervening time she had replied. Perhaps the reply would be something like:
Dear Piranesi
You are right. Today I will return to my own Halls.
Sincerely
16
If that was the case I could stop worrying about her drowning in the Flood.
But deep down I hoped that she had not gone back to her own Halls. Strange as it may seem, I knew that I would miss her if she had. Other than 16, there is only Myself and the Other in the World and (it may surprise you to read this) the Other is not always the best of company. I was looking forward to seeing if 16 had written me another message, even though I would not dare read it. I suppose that what I really hoped for was that she would write something like:
Dear Piranesi
Reading your useful and informative messages, I have come to realise that if only I were to cast off my wickedness then we could be friends. Let us meet and talk. I promise not to make you mad. In return will you teach me how to be not-wicked?
Hopefully
16
I arrived at the Sixth North-Western Hall. The rooks greeted me noisily. On the Pavement I found the remnants of 16’s last message and my own message. But there was nothing new. 16 had not written to me. I was disappointed, but I told Myself that this was only to be expected; if I kept erasing 16’s messages without reading them it was hardly likely that she would keep writing.
I got out my chalk and knelt down. Beneath my last message I wrote:
DEAR 16
IN SIX DAYS’ TIME A GREAT FLOOD WILL RISE IN THESE HALLS. EVERYWHERE WILL BE UNDER WATER TO A DEPTH GREATER THAN YOUR HEIGHT OR MINE.
ACCORDING TO MY ESTIMATIONS THE PERILOUS REGION WILL STRETCH AS FAR AS:
SIX HALLS WEST OF HERE
FOUR HALLS NORTH OF HERE
FIVE HALLS EAST OF HERE
SIX HALLS SOUTH OF HERE
THE FLOOD WILL LAST THREE TO FOUR HOURS AFTER WHICH IT WILL BEGIN TO SUBSIDE.
PLEASE ABSENT YOURSELF FROM THESE HALLS AT THIS TIME OR YOU WILL BE IN DANGER. THERE WILL BE STRONG CURRENTS. SHOULD YOU FIND YOURSELF CAUGHT BY THE FLOOD, THEN CLIMB QUICKLY! THE STATUES ARE GRACIOUS AND WILL PROTECT YOU.
PIRANESI
I considered the message carefully. It was as clear as I could make it except for one thing. ‘In six days’ time’ was only meaningful if 16 knew the day on which I had written the message and how would she know that?
I could write today’s date, but that was according to a calendar of my own invention and it seemed unlikely that 16 had invented the same calendar as me.
POSTSCRIPT: TODAY IS THE SECOND DAY OF THE NEW MOON. THE DAY OF THE FLOOD WILL BE THE FIRST DAY OF THE QUARTER MOON.
All I could hope for was that 16 had not stopped visiting this Hall altogether and that she saw this warning.
Before the Flood comes I need to gather up all my plastic bowls – the ones I use to collect Fresh Water – so that they are not carried off by the Waters. I knew that there were two not far from the Sixth North-Western Hall, in the Eighteenth North-Western Hall on the other side of the Twenty-Fourth Vestibule. I thought I might as well get them now as I was in the Vicinity.
I walked to the Twenty-Fourth Vestibule. This Vestibule is notable for a shallow, sloping bank of white marble pebbles, which partially blocks the Mouth of the Staircase leading to the Lower Halls. The pebbles have been deposited here over time by the Tides. They have smooth, rounded shapes, delightful to the touch; they are a pure white colour with a beautiful, glowing translucency. I have climbed over this bank many times to fish and gather shellfish. Always I dislodge a few pebbles, but never so many that it alters the overall shape of the bank.
The first thing that I saw today was that some of the pebbles had been removed. There was a hollow in the side of the bank where no hollow had been before. I was astonished by this. Who could have done it? I have seen rooks and crows take small stones to break open shellfish, but birds do not move a great number of stones for no reason.
I looked around. Something white was scattered over the Pavement in the North-Eastern Corner of the Vestibule.
I approached. Too late I realised that the pebbles formed shapes. Words! Words made by 16! Before I had time to tear my eyes away I had read the entire message! In letters approximately 25 centimetres high it said:
ARE YOU MATTHEW ROSE SORENSEN?
Matthew Rose Sorensen. A name. Three words that make up a name.
Matthew Rose Sorensen …
An image rose up in front of me, like a memory or a vision.
… I seemed to be standing at the junction of many streets in a city. Dark rain poured down on me from a dark sky. Lights, lights, lights sparkled everywhere! The lights were many coloured and all were mirrored in the wet tarmac. Buildings rose up on every side. Cars rushed past. Words and images were inscribed on the buildings. Dark forms filled the streets; I thought at first that they were statues, but they moved and I saw they were people. Thousands upon thousands of people. More people than I had ever conceived of before. Too many people. The mind could not contain the thought of so many. And everything smelt of rain, and metal, and staleness. This vision had a name and its name was …
But, just as the word trembled on the brink of conscious thought, it vanished and so too did the image. I was in the Real World again.
I staggered and almost fell. I felt dizzy, parched, breathless.
I looked up at the Statues on the Walls of the Vestibule. ‘I need water,’ I told them hoarsely. ‘Bring me a drink of water.’
But they were only Statues and they could not bring me water. They could only look down on me with Calm Nobility.
I am …
third entry for the twenty-first day of the ninth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
16 had found a way to fulfil her dark purpose and make me mad! I had erased her last message and what happened? She had constructed a message I could not possibly erase without reading it!
Are you Matthew Rose Sorensen?
I am … I stuttered. I am …
At first I could get no further than this.
I am … I am the Beloved Child of the House.
Yes.
Immediately I felt calmer. Was any other identity even necessary? I did not think that it was. Another thought struck me.
I am Piranesi.
But I knew that I did not really believe this. Piranesi is not my name. (I am almost certain that Piranesi is not my name.)
I once asked the Other why he called me Piranesi.
He laughed in a slightly embarrassed way. Oh, that (he said). Well, originally it was a sort of joke I suppose. I have to call you something. And it suits you. It’s a name associated with labyrinths. You don’t mind, do you? I’ll stop if you don’t like it.
I do not mind, I said. And, as you say, you have to call me something.
The Silence of the House feels charged with expectation as I write these words. It seems to be waiting for something extraordinary to happen.
Are you
Matthew Rose Sorensen?
How could I possibly answer this question when I had no idea who Matthew Rose Sorensen was? Perhaps the thing to do was to look up Matthew Rose Sorensen in the Index?
I went to the Eighteenth North-Western Hall and had a long drink of water. It was delicious and refreshing (it had been a Cloud only hours before). I rested a moment. Then I made my way to the Second Northern Hall where I fetched out my Index and Journals.
Are you Matthew Rose Sorensen?
The fact that Matthew Rose Sorensen had three names made him tricky to locate in the Index. I looked for him first under S. Nothing. I looked for him under R. There were three entries.
Rose Sorensen, Matthew: publications 2006–2010, Journal no. 21, page 6
Rose Sorensen, Matthew: publications 2011–12, Journal no. 22, pages 144–45
Rose Sorensen, Matthew, bio for Torn and Blinded: Journal no. 22, page 200
The last entry looked most promising.
Matthew Rose Sorensen is the English son of a half-Danish, half-Scottish father and a Ghanaian mother. He originally studied mathematics, but his interest soon migrated (via the philosophy of mathematics and the history of ideas) to his current field of study: transgressive thinking. He is writing a book about Laurence Arne-Sayles, a man who transgressed against science, against reason and against law.
I found it interesting that Matthew Rose Sorensen believed that Laurence Arne-Sayles had denied Science and Reason. In this he was not correct. The Prophet was a scientist and a lover of Reason. I spoke out loud to the Empty Air.
‘I do not agree with you,’ I said.
I was trying to summon up Matthew Rose Sorensen, to trick him into revealing himself. If he really was some forgotten part of Myself, then he would not like to be contradicted; he would argue his position.
But it did not work. He did not rise up from some shadowy recess of my mind. He remained an emptiness, a silence, an absence.
I turned to the other two entries.
The first was simply a list.
‘“Now, here, now, always”: J. B. Priestley’s Time Plays’, Tempus, Volume 6: 85–92
Embrace/Tolerate/Vilify/Destroy: How Academia treats Outsider Ideas, Manchester University Press, 2008
‘Sources of outsider mathematics: Srinivasa Ramanujan and the Goddess’, Intellectual History Quarterly, Volume 25: 204–238, Manchester University Press
The second entry was just more of the same.
‘Timey-Wimey: Steven Moffat, Blink and J. W. Dunne’s theories of Time’, Journal of Space, Time and Everything, Volume 64: 42–68, University of Minnesota Press
‘“The circles that you find in the windmills of your mind”: The Importance of Labyrinths in Laurence Arne-Sayles’s Exploitation of his Adherents’, Review of Psychedelia and the Counterculture, Volume 35, issue 4
‘The Gargoyle on the Cathedral Roof: Laurence Arne-Sayles and Academia’, Intellectual History Quarterly, Volume 28: 119–152, Manchester University Press
Outsider Thinking: A Very Short Introduction, OUP, pub. 31 May 2012
‘Time-travelling Architecture’: article on Paul Enoch and Bradford for the Guardian, 28 July 2012
I let out a long snort of frustration. This was utterly useless! Other than the fact that Matthew Rose Sorensen was interested in Laurence Arne-Sayles (which in no way differentiated him from everyone else in the World) I had learnt nothing. I felt a strong urge to shake my Journal, as if I could somehow shake more information out of it.
I sat for a long time thinking.
There was one person that I had not yet looked up in the Index and that was the Other. I had not thought of it until now. But perhaps if I read about the Other and found Matthew Rose Sorensen mentioned there, then … I paused. Then what? Then perhaps I would be able to judge whether the Other knew Matthew Rose Sorensen, and ultimately whether Matthew Rose Sorensen was me.
There did not seem to be any harm in trying. In fact, of all the names in the World that I might look up, the Other seemed the safest. He and I had been friends for years. I opened the Index under O. I counted seventy-four entries for the Other. I had written far more about the Other than about any other subject. In fact, I had already been obliged to reallocate two pages from the letter P to accommodate them all.
I found:
Other, the, Rituals performed by
Other, the, Discourses on the Great and Secret Knowledge
Other, the, lends me a camera so that I can take pictures of the Drowned Halls
Other, the, asks me to make him a map of the Stars
Other, the, asks me to draw a map of the Halls immediately surrounding the First Vestibule
Other, the, proposes that the Statues form a sort of code, which we might be able to decipher
and on and on and on. Until I reached the most recent entries:
Other, the, uses the nonsense word ‘Batter-Sea’ to test my memory
Other, the, gives me a present of shoes
I skim-read a few entries. I read how the Other had performed various Rituals at which I had assisted. I read how clever the Other was, how scientific, how insightful, how handsome. I read detailed descriptions of his clothes. This was mildly interesting, but in no way helped me with my present problem. Unlike the entries on Stanley Ovenden, Maurizio Giussani, Sylvia D’Agostino and Laurence Arne-Sayles, none of the entries on the Other was new to me. They contained no arcane words or phrases that seemed to pulsate with hidden meaning (words such as ‘Whalley Range’ and ‘doctor’s surgery’). All the events were ones I remembered clearly. And nowhere did the name Matthew Rose Sorensen appear.
I remembered that the Prophet had called the Other, Ketterley. So I turned to K.
There were eight entries. The first was on page 187 of Journal no. 2 (previously Journal no. 22).
Dr Valentine Andrew Ketterley. Born 1955 in Barcelona. Brought up in Poole, Dorset. (The Ketterleys are an old Dorsetshire family.) Son of Colonel Ranulph Andrew Ketterley, soldier and occultist.
Valentine Ketterley was a student of Laurence Arne-Sayles and afterwards a research fellow in Social Anthropology at Manchester. Married Clémence Hubert 1985. Divorced 1991. Two children. In 1992 Ketterley left Manchester and took up a teaching post at UCL. In June of the same year he wrote a letter to The Times in which he publicly repudiated Arne-Sayles, accusing him of deliberately misleading and manipulating students, feeding them pseudo-mysticism and stories of other worlds. Ketterley called on the University of Manchester to dismiss Arne-Sayles. (The university did not do so until 1997 when Arne-Sayles was arrested for false imprisonment.)
In recent years Ketterley has refused to answer any questions about Arne-Sayles.
Question: is it worth getting in touch with Ketterley to see if he will talk to me? Lives somewhere near Battersea Park.
Action point: make a list of questions for Dr Ketterley.
I was back on familiar ground. The entry was the usual mish-mash of words that held a clear meaning and words whose meaning was obscure – always presuming that they meant anything at all. I noted with interest the re-emergence of the mysterious word ‘Battersea’ (and saw that it ought not to be hyphenated).
I returned to the Index to find the location of the next entry and it was then that I noticed something rather strange. The remaining entries – there were seven of them – were all on consecutive pages. The last ten pages of Journal no. 22 and the first thirty-two pages of Journal no. 23 were all about Ketterley.
I opened Journal no. 2 (previously Journal no. 22). The last ten pages – the very pages that I wanted – were missing; just a few torn edges remained in the spine. I opened Journal no. 3 (previously Journal no. 23) and found the same thing. The thirty-two pages with information about Ketterley were gone.
I sat back, mystified.
Who could have done this? Could it have been the Prophet? I knew that he detested Ketterley. Perhaps his hatred would cause him to destroy writing about his enemy? Or could it have been 16? 16 hated
Reason. Perhaps she also hated Writing, a medium by which Reason can pass from one Person to another. But that made no sense. 16 had employed Writing to leave me a long message. And in any case how could the Prophet or 16 find my Journals? They are kept (as I have explained) in my messenger bag, which is hidden behind the Statue of an Angel caught on a Rose Bush in the North-Eastern Corner of the Second Northern Hall. It is one Statue among thousands, among millions. How would either of them know where to look?
I sat for a long time and thought. I had no recollection of tearing out the pages. But realistically who else could have done it? And I have known for some time that many things have happened of which I have no recollection. I have done many things of which I have no recollection (such as write these mysterious entries). Which meant I could have torn out the pages.
But if I had torn out the pages, what had happened to them? Where had they gone?
I fetched the scraps of paper that I found in the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall. I took out a few and spread them out so that I could examine them. One – a corner piece – bore the numeral 231. It was a page number from Journal no. 2.
Quickly – almost feverishly – I began to put the pieces together. There were approximately thirty entries covering a period that I had designated 15 November 2012 to 20 December 2012. The longest entry was titled: The events of 15 November 2012.
PART 5
VALENTINE KETTERLEY
The events of 15 November 2012
I visited him in mid-November. It was just after four, a cold blue twilight. The afternoon had been stormy and the lights of the cars were pixelated by rain; the pavements collaged with wet black leaves.
When I got to his house I heard music playing. A requiem. I waited for him to answer the door to an accompaniment of Berlioz.
The door opened.
‘Dr Ketterley?’ I said.
He was between fifty and sixty, tall and slender. A handsome man. He had an ascetic-looking head with high cheekbones and forehead. His hair and eyes were dark and his skin was olive-coloured. His hair was receding, but only a little, and he had a neatly trimmed, slightly pointed beard with more grey in it than his hair.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And you are Matthew Rose Sorensen.’
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