by Laurie Sheck
We had never spoken about the times I didn’t come. Or even about Myshkin’s epilepsy or Dostoevsky’s. All the nights I read to her and the world came to me more real than before, and I felt I was helping to bring her the real—I hadn’t said a word.
Then I thought of Spratling’s ugly words and read the passage.
Today after work duty Akim Akimitch tells me of a convict he met some years ago in Tobolsk The man lived chained to a wall xxx he had been chained there for eight years The chain was seven feet long and reached from the wall to the sleeping palette and back xxx The man showed him where it attached beneath his clothes and insisted he slept comfortably and even had good dreams But years later upon his release the sky terrified him he flinched at the smallest blade of grass xxx The snow is falling heavily it has been falling for three days xx Conformational influence xx Myoclonic Activity xx Everything is what it seems—
xxxx And now Myshkin is saying If we understand things too quickly maybe we will never understand them as we need to xxx He mocks himself xx Says I am a Prince and of an ancient family! But “he stood, as it were apart, as though he had no share in it, and like someone invisible in a fairy tale”—remember—I can hear your voice reading—and now he thinks he may fall soon and is frightened xxx he is out on the streets alone and I’m looking for him but I can’t find him xxx I don’t know if I’m in the snow in Petersburg or in a room on an island off of Venice xx I don’t know where he is walking xx I try to find him but the streets are unmarked xxx lesions of any nature effecting the vigilance Everything shut tight too secret so how can I possibly find him how can I know what he needs what he is feeling xx And then the light is flooding his cells and the whole nature of the universe says yes…Everything’s terribly clear and there’s such joy…it’s not even love…oh what is here is higher than love…x xxx…the soul could not endure…would vanish…xxx if I could come to you and know you—xxx But I’m still wandering through the streets and I fear that Myshkin’s writhing on the ground or maybe his body is your body…Why are the streets so anonymous so empty Why is no one coming xx xxx How can I find my way without street signs xxx neurochemical alteration of functions that remain to be uncovered xxx Walking back from work-duty today Sokolov stumbled on a rock and injured himself badly xx Now he turns his face to the wall xxx tries to salve his wound with soiled paper xxx
But why is the Commander stepping into our barracks when curfew is still hours away xx xx He never comes to us in daylight xx Are we in danger have we crossed some awful border is there about to be some new punishment beyond what we already know or have imagined xxx Then we see he is beside himself with grief this man who is so hard on us and cruel is sobbing over his dog Trezorska xxx We can hardly believe what we are hearing xxx He says the dog is like a son to him the only reason for his living but now Trezorska’s fallen ill and the veterinary surgeon hasn’t found a way to save him xx x He believes there’s one among us renowned for treating animals in his village xx He commands him to step forward then leads him to the room where Trezorska lies on a white brocaded couch his sallow head on a silk pillow sunlight pouring in through the large window xxx The prisoner knows the proper treatment but pretends that there is nothing to be done xx xxxxx And when you read to me I felt in you abiding kindness Night comes very quickly in the depths of winter xxx No one in the barracks speaks of what has happened xxx
And what does Marei think as he touches me x He is poor and works from sunrise until nightfall in the fields Red lumps of scars on both his arms xxx x I will never know how he got them will never know his thoughts about anything xxx xx I belong to the class of people who call themselves “the best people” xx Marei is not allowed around them he is too dirty even to serve xx he touches me xxx I am given the white death shirt to put on this happens several times each month sometimes I wake screaming xxxx black beetles crawl across the barracks floor xx xxx In Tobolsk a man is chained to a wall for eight years I can feel his chain pulling xx I am in my bunk at the height of winter covered only by my prison coat xx Marei’s hand has come back he is tired from his day in the fields he is touching my cheek he is kind xxx xx but why has this sudden light come into me why has my brain randomly caught fire xx the barracks are burning and the beetles the white shirt are burning x Marei’s hand is safe it touches me the fire doesn’t touch him xx what is the real what is it xxx how does it find a place inside the mind
It is spring again xxx Crusts of ice have melted from the windows Wildflowers bloom in the fields outside the barracks xxx We have adopted a pet goat and named him Vaska xxx He runs up to us when called and jumps wildly on the benches though keeping animals is against the regulations His slender horns are long and curved a pale brown-gray with patches of pale blue xxx I don’t know how he first came to live among us xxx We would raise many creatures if we could xxx Skuratov says if the sergeant finds out he will make us slaughter and then flay him that it is only a matter of time but the sergeant never looks and no one tells him xxx so far we’ve kept our secret xx Each workday he follows us to the brickworks at the riverbank and back xxx Packing up toward sundown we gather willow shoots and flowers Entwine them and place them on his head xxx He walks before us toward the prison in his wreath the only one of us not fettered—
The young convict Sushilov has taken to washing my clothes greasing my boots trying to find me extra bread I don’t know why he does this Each day he walks the prison yard alone with lowered eyes Scars all over his bare back xxx Three years and scarcely any words have passed between us xxx Once I tried to thank him with some coins but tears welled in his eyes and he turned angrily and wouldn’t take them It was the first time I had seen a prisoner crying xxx His mind dark to me I will never know his mind xxx And when you don’t come I fear for you but don’t know what I am fearing xxx x temporal lobe x postictal x My rock ledge bare The wind jarring and scraping xxx Why does Sushilov have so many scars on his back what happened to him before he came here why does he want to take care of me what could he be thinking xxx So much hiddenness inside each single being xxx xxx After I leave here I will never hear his name again or know what has become of him xxx never know why he chose me who he is—
And there is another one who also seeks me out his name is Petrov xxx He has been here for as long as I but always acts in a great hurry as if he must rush back to his real home in town because of course he couldn’t actually live here xxx xx xxx Every now and then he comes up to me and asks me questions Is Napoleon an emperor or a president xxx Is it true as they say that there are monkeys as large as a tall man with arms that hang down to their heels xx What are the Antipodes xx Do people in Sumatra walk on their heads and not their legs Was Danton a real person or invented What happened to Rome after it burned xx I try my best to answer and when I’m done he curtly bows his head then rushes off in silence xxx “And in spite of the most recent progress in sleep research it is still not understood why the hippocampal circuitry begins to fail and can no longer control the flow of information” xxxx
But this chaotic tenderness I feel xx and you in your room where I can’t see you can’t know if you need help or what you’re doing xxx strange facts are before us in abundance Is there joy or has it broken xx This sudden light inside the mind this xxx This distance that engenders thought
If I could bring you a calm tenderness xxx a listening clear as a thin vessel of hurt glass xxx Myshkin’s waterfall far off but it still falls inside his mind xxxxx the watchful place inside the donkey’s eye xxx I still think of the kindness of your voice your hands the turning pages xxx Random words come back to me and hold me The hours so slow within your absence xxx Your window shut across the courtyard xx The twelve trees xxxxx
Sometimes after I’ve fallen, her words seem almost silvery, the faint traces of a vanished metal.
This morning I woke to that same silver. I had dreamed of the book again. It was still covered with black cloth. As soon as I picked it up, I could hear Myshkin breathing from inside the closed pages. I could hear
his heartbeat. Then suddenly the beats lurched forward—tumbling erratically, too quickly. I worried he was having a seizure. I could hear Marie breathing also, the wind moving through her field, the muffled hoof-beats of cattle. When I tried to open the book the black cloth held it shut. Inside they were still breathing. I knew there was no way that I could reach them.
It is the depth of winter xxx xx Darkness comes too quickly xxx Daylight a brief slit in wind xxx For two months an eagle has lived among us It is one of the small kind of the steppes and stands in the prison yard’s far corner dragging its crushed wing in circles xxxxxx At first it refused any food but after three days it took our crumbs but only if we looked away and stood at a safe distance xxxx x Even now it eyes us with mistrust stays only by the farthest fence posts always watching the far steppes it can’t get back to xxx And when you fell I wanted to help you but time grew strange to me x spilled pearls black beetles x and at first I couldn’t move or find you xx x xxx In prison there is always the sound of others breathing xxx And when you fell I wanted to tell you that each time you read to me your words had brought me peace xxx
I am walking across the courtyard to you xx I am carrying a book xxx I want to read it to you the way you read to me I want to bring you Myshkin’s joy I want to bring you Dostoevsky saying “This is realism, only deeper” xx Your window dark above the walkway the twelve trees no more than shadows xx But my legs move so slowly as in blackening water and as I walk I am thinking the scientists say there is no such thing as empty space but Dark Energy Dark Matter xxx Our galaxy our Sun and all we can observe with our finest instruments the barest hint of what exists xxx Dear brother today I was informed I am being sent to Semipalatinsk to serve out the remainder of my sentence as a soldier xx I must beg your forgiveness for the future disorder of this letter Already I am sure it is disordered
This morning the red fire started burning my right arm again, then flared and spread into my chest. When I came to, I didn’t know where I was. Even my name was lost to me, I had no name.
I want to go to her tonight but how can I go to her?
It was night. I was carrying her across the courtyard to him. She held a worn book in her hands. We passed the twelve bare trees.
I was surprised my damaged bones could support her. My body alien in its strength and yet it was still mine.
Why did she trust me to carry her like that? I could feel the brittle softness of her arms, the hollow between collarbone and neck. My hand against her narrow spine. I began to realize that softness and hardness, suppleness and resistance, aren’t separate or contradictory but move within and through each other.
I had never before held another person in my arms.
As we neared the lawn’s far border, I glanced down at the top of her head, her dark brown hair against the still-dark air. I understood I was carrying Frieda.
For a moment I shut my eyes. When I opened them again my arms were empty.
If I could have partly become another, been released into the life and mind of another…
For a moment I thought I heard Frieda’s voice.
But the room was empty, the night air still and quiet.
Titian was dragging a stick through the prison yard’s dry dirt while the eagle sipped from a cracked bowl and pressed its bad wing against the farthest fence post. All the convicts were inside.
Why would Titian speak into such emptiness?—yet he did.
“Though I had no access to the brain’s physiology beyond what I once observed at a dissection, how could I have done a single portrait without sensing the caudal divisions of the solitary complex, its strained synapses and subtle breakages, the periodic desynchronization of its waves.
Take my self-portrait of 1567, for instance, in which my hand looks blurred, unfinished. Many claim this is due to my carelessness, or maybe my impatience, but what if I was trying to convey the brain’s vulnerability, how any grasp is partial and approximate at best.”
For a moment he stayed silent, then:
“As for those who commissioned me to paint their portraits, no matter how much power they assumed they possessed, in truth they were essentially helpless. Though they convinced themselves my rendering would keep them safe and important forever, in fact mostly the opposite is true—what remains is the defiant vulnerability. Annihilation and pain claimed them all. I still feel each thin endangered edge moving through my hand into my brush. Why believe there is such a thing as protection?—though I still treasure the red cloth, the red moments it gave me.”
No matter how much I pace back and forth I can’t tell if it is morning or is it night or where I am But then I remember I am in Semipalatinsk xxx I am a Private 2nd class in the Siberian Army Corps 7th Battalion It is mid-March I have turned 30 my years in prison finally over xxx Loose sand drifts through the streets and sticks to the weatherbeaten houses xxx The town is called The Devil’s Sandbox xx My army coat is red with a gray collar xx For the first time in four years I am allowed to walk without fetters xx xx Sometimes I wonder if freedom is more alien and inaccessible to the human mind than the many forms of bondage xxx Dear Mikhail I have received no word from you in four years I hope to hear from you soon How can I begin to speak of what has marked me xxx A flightless bird A ghost xxxx Everything I am will disappear xx These are the notes of an unknown—
xxx xx And while light has been traveling through space x space itself has been expanding This Dark Energy Dark Matter The days go on very busily here xx there is so much to learn about being a soldier Often I am very tired but at least I can be alone for a few minutes xxx I’ve been having frequent seizures xxx Afterwards my mind deforms the most ordinary facts even the white tents of the Khirghizes grow frightening xxxxx xx Or I try to read but my eyes are weak and scramble the words on the page—“the invisible either” “the volatile because” but then these words seem more interesting and true than the words in their right order xxxxx Lieutenant-Colonel Belikov has assigned me to discuss with him current books and newspapers he is so pleased with our meetings that he has given me his old greatcoat which is ill-fitting but warm xx But my cattle are so cold and I can’t help them xx “And current research shows that the afflicted experience brief intervals of lucidity even in the latest stages xxx In their ongoing sleeplessness agitation and grief are not uncommon xxx Sometimes there are surges of great joy” xxx
Does she remember that I read to her again last night? That finally I was able?
Each time we read, I think of Spratling’s “destroys”—each one a small, meaningless prison secured by electrified wire and the finest technology, strongest metals—but the locked cells can’t keep the prisoners in. The cells are empty.
Dear Mikhail My discharge from the army has been approved on medical grounds as over the last week I suffered four attacks within five days xx After each one my arms and legs grow heavy my mind and heart submerged in thick black water xxx Maybe a specialist in Petersburg can tell me what this is xxx How the body crushes the mind and light is a terrible error pressing in xxx Last week I heard from Nekrasov who offered so little for my work no self-respecting author could accept his terms For some reason he finds this more convenient than overt refusal xxxx He believes my talent is gone that I am finished xxx As I don’t hear from you I wonder if you get these letters—
The final sorting and packing of the library is almost done. All that’s left are a few random boxes, and documents from the vault for Dr. Galzinga at the Archives of the Social and Cultural Emargination Studies Institute at Ca’ Foscari University. They’ve already acquired the records and books from San Clemente, and last year what was left of the old San Servolo Apothecary. But part of me doesn’t want to pack anything up anymore. The official announcement says a team will “conduct a systematic examination of a selection of clinical records to reconstruct the psychiatric apparatus of San Servolo from 1840-1904, from the point of view of both psychiatric practices and clinical nosography.”
Now each time I pack a box of papers an
d folders to be shipped, it’s as if Myshkin’s skin is exposed. The tremor in his hands increases.
Pilate’s mind was filling with red thoughts that pained him, but each time he tried to remember what they were so that maybe he could calm or heal them, he felt only the beginning of a migraine.
He knew he had committed an unforgiveable act, but couldn’t remember what it was. He sat still on his bare summit, his dog sleeping at his feet. They sat this way for thousands of years.
His whole body was the Nucleus Solitarius, that mysterious and most solitary place.
But even though memory failed him, somewhere deep within he understood he longed more than anything for the one he had wronged to draw close and walk beside him.
I, too, think of the Nucleus Solitarius. I was hearing Frieda’s shadow-voice now that her real voice had vanished. A hollow ache spread through my chest. What could be more true, more sad, than those two words? Think of a voice that never touches another, that is unable to ever reach another. The wind is very cold tonight, the water’s surface unbroken.
