8. The Exchange. This festival story by Nicholas Sporlender has been in X’s possession for some time, but he did not arrive with it. Someone handed it to him, I believe. He has scrawled some notes on the envelope the booklet came in, specifically, “Sporlender hated Verden by the end. But I don’t yet hate Eric. I wonder if that ’echo’ will ever appear, or if it’s simply not a one-for-one resonance.“ X then carefully cut the pages out, glued them to larger sheets, and added his own typewritten notes. (I am also intrigued by X’s insinuation that he met Madnok while in this institution. Again, I don’t see how this could be-no patient by that name ever stayed with us.) Clearly, I should have given X more to do in his spare time.
9. Learning to Leave the Flesh. Although I took this story from X at the beginning of his sojourn in this delightful place, I include it as an item of potential interest, having carefully cut it from X’s collection. I have read the story several times in hopes of deciphering it. It, I feel, far more than even the typed numbers, holds some clue to X’s whereabouts. The story is luminous-it almost seems to glow as one reads it. I must admit to sending it to you mostly to be rid of it.
10. The Ambergris Glossary. This item, received by X via mail the week before his disappearance, is a strange alliance of the original entries from Duncan Shriek’s The Early History of Ambergris and X’s added entries, so intertwined that it will require a detailed comparison to determine the extent of X’s changes. I will leave this analysis in your capable hands since mine are full of such interesting decisions as which sub-department to shut down due to crumbling facilities: farkology or incrementology.
The facts in this case remain the same, my good Simpkin: X gone with no trace of how he accomplished the feat and no sign of where he might have sought refuge. The most telling clue is that he left his beloved copy of City of Saints & Madmen behind. But we’ve certainly made no further progress in our investigations. (Some wags among the long-suffering kitchen staff-who last week resorted to poaching from the nearby zoo for supplies-have noted that X took all pens but one and conclude he must have “written his way out.“ It’s as good a theory as any at this point.) It seems of little use to note that most of these written materials deal with some form of transformation, a common enough concern of those who wish to leave their insanity behind.
As soon as I can buy a new typewriter ribbon, I will of course submit a full report to the Board. For now, however, the Strange Case of X, as it might be termed, remains open.
Sincerely, Dr V.
P.S. I said the notebook I kept is blank, and it is, but on the inside back cover, I found scrawled the following words: “Zamilon,“ “convergence,“ and “the green lights of the towers.“ Could they be a clue, I wonder? The words mean nothing to me in this context.
P.P.S. When possible, please return X’s possessions-for my display.
X'S NOTES
— A writer who is having difficulties with his masterwork-too old or just unmotivated? Read H’s Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, first.
— A writer in a prison. The prison is his own story. How can he make himself free?
— Ask the attendant for a better night lamp, not to mention another typewriter ribbon.
— Tonsure kept two journals, one that he wanted to be found. Why, really, would it be important for a fake account to be found?
— Always exercise when you first get up in the morning!
— Could easily write a biography of Voss Bender while in here. Start with childhood. Picture him this way: in the Truffidian Cathedral, surrounded by people yet utterly alone, sitting in the place of honor at the head of the altar, his left leg crossed over his right, an arm and fist supporting his head-a wild shock of black hair that goes to his shoulders, the olive skin, the darkness under the eyes, accentuating the darkness of the eyes themselves. These are eyes that see a lot without seeming to. The thick lips, the hint of a smile on those lips, while all around the congregation continues to chant. His foot is tapping.
But the tapping foot is not a sign of boredom. Inside his head, he is already, at l2, composing an opera.
Beside him-shriveled, white-haired grandfather, vacant sad-eyed mother, a father to whom everything in the world is cause for indifference. As the ceremony progresses and each of the relatives comes up to say something, most stress that he should “use his skills for good.“ He looks up at them from beneath the wall of black hair as if they were all made from scraps of paper. Throughout it all, his foot is still tapping.
And as he receives the benediction with his parents, their hands placed gently atop his head, he stands with his arms behind his back, his hands clasped together as if he has been shackled… and still the foot taps to the great swelling of symphonies in his head… He will always be this way-half in the real world, half in the next. (How, then, does he go from this idealism to despotism of old age?)
— Don’t forget that the director needs a letter to his superiors about funding.
— In the future, the gray caps will probably have taken over the city no matter what I write-how might the city change as a result? What will be the dangers of writing in such a milieu? Simple incarceration or something much worse? Is it worth the risk? Is it a good staging ground anyway?
— Ask for new books, even if theoretically you wrote them all.
— An encoded message from the future, itself with a message embedded in it?
— Is there more to theMartinLake story? Later years?
— Oxygenated squid blood is blue, not red.
— “His dreams will rise to the surface like bubbles of air, and when they pop open, he will finally remember the one thing he had hoped to forget.“ Bad B-movie material?
— Visions that I am not sure are mine. I’m not quite sure what to make of them. They suggest answers to some questions about the gray caps. It is always underground. And it is dark. There is a machine. The front of the machine has a comforting translucent or reflective quality. You will never be able to decide which quality it possesses, although you stand there staring at it for days, ensnared by your own foolish hope for something to negate the horrible negation of the machine’s innards. Ghosts of images cloud the surface of the machine and are wiped clean as if by a careless, a meticulous, an impatient painter. A great windswept desert, sluggish with the weight of its own dunes. An ocean, waveless, the tension of its surface broken only by the shadow of clouds above, the water such a perfect blue-green that it hurts your eyes. A mountain range at sunset, distant, ruined towers propped up by the foothills at its flanks.
Images of jungles and swamps inhabited by strange birds, strange beasts. Always flickering into perfection and back into oblivion. Places that if they exist in this world you have never seen them or heard mention of their existence. Ever… After several days, your eyes stray and unfocus and blink slowly. You notice, at the very bottom of the mirror, the glass, a door. The door is as big as the machine.
The door is as small as your fingernail. The distance between you and the door is infinite. The distance between you and the door is so small that you could reach out and touch it. The door is translucent-the images that flow across the screen sweep across the door as well, so that it is only by the barely-perceived hairline fracture of its outline that it can be distinguished beneath the desert, ocean, mountains, that glide across its surface. The door is a mirror too, you realize, and after so long of not focusing on anything, letting images run through you, you find yourself concentrating on the door and the door alone. In many ways, it is an ordinary door, almost a non-existent door. And yet, staring at it, a wave of fear passes over you. A fear so blinding it paralyzes you. It holds you in place. You can feel the pressure of all that meat, all that flesh, all the metal inside the machine amassed behind that door. It is an unbearable weight at your throat. You are buried in it, in a small box, under an eternity of rock and earth.