I examined it carefully, unsure how to proceed. Four books had been removed from a row of Encyclopedia Americana, volumes 22 (Photography to Pumpkin) through 37 (Trance to Venial Sin), leaving a gap the size of a post office box. A single book set crosswise kept the portal from collapsing: a hardcover copy of Plotinus’ Ladder by Orson Card Tolliver, cheaply bound in imitation suede. I spun in a deliberate circle, straining to see in the feeble light, then turned to face my father’s book again. Of the countless things embedded in those walls, Mrs. Haven, it alone looked placed there by design.
As the soul grows toward eternal life, wrote Plotinus, we remember less and less.
I gripped its spine, took in a wheezing breath, and pulled it free.
Once the dust had cleared and my fit of hacking had subsided and I’d worked myself out from under the avalanche that pinned me, I saw that half the dome had fallen in. There was barely enough space to sit upright, and the tunnels to either side had disappeared; the way ahead of me, however, was open and clear. It was darker than the tunnel I’d come through, but it was wider as well, and high enough that I could walk upright. Soon, I was guessing, I would reach the turning in the corridor: the one I’d found by accident at seven years of age. It had been that corridor I’d thought of a few hours before, half-asleep in my bunk at the hostel. I’d remembered its darkness, so unlike the darkness of night — as different from night as Enzie and Genny had been different from other human beings. And something else had come to me, Mrs. Haven, as I made my way up to Harlem through the cold.
There had been no mention of that corridor in any of the papers.
* * *
I’d guessed correctly, of course — my father’s book had not been placed at random. It marked the event horizon of this history, the point of no return, and as soon as I passed it I felt C*F*P guiding me in. The tunnel veered leftward, then upward, then plummeted down — or so it seemed in the blackness — then upward and leftward again. I should have been afraid, Mrs. Haven, but what I felt was an ecstatic helplessness. I ended up in the library, or in the place the library had been. The walls fell away from my fingers and the ceiling receded and the air became less thick with dust. The darkness was immaculate, almost viscous to the touch. I knelt and ran my fingertips across the warped parquet: the first thing they encountered was a socket in the floor, and the second was a snarled electric cord. I plugged it in without the slightest hesitation.
A standing lamp next to me stuttered to life, which I’d have wondered at if I’d had any wonder left. I was in another bell-shaped chamber, twice the size of the first, with more than enough space for the armchair and the table it contained. A stack of books sat nearby, though I couldn’t read their spines from where I stood. A length of copper wire curled downward from the ceiling to the chair, ending in a graceful, thumb-sized loop. Even before I’d opened the letter I found on the table, before my eyesight had adjusted to the sudden crush of light, I’d realized what the bell-shaped room was for. It was for me, Mrs. Haven. It was time to bring this history to a close.
DEAREST WALDEMAR! NOW YOUVE ARRIVED.
NOW YOUVE ARRIVED & WE CANT CALL YOU “WALDY” ANY LONGER. ENZIE & I AGREE. YOURE ONE OF US NOW. YOURE NO MORE ONE OF “THEM” FOREVER AFTER.
YOU MIGHT THINK IT CRUEL THAT WE SENT YOU TO ZNOJMO WHEN WE HAD WHAT WE NEEDED RIGHT HERE. PERHAPS IT WAS CRUEL. BUT YOU HAD TO FIND SOMETHING WALDEMAR — TO FIND SOMETHING & LOSE ALL THE REST. THIS WAS VERY IMPORTANT. IF YOU HADNT LOST SOMETHING — EVERYTHING YOU MIGHT SAY — YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE COME.
TO COME HERE WALDEMAR YOU MUST LEAVE YOUR DURATION BEHIND.
WHAT TO DO NEXT IS SIMPLE. YOUVE JUMPED ONCE BEFORE AFTER ALL. REMEMBER HOW YOU DID IT THEN. REMEMBER CLIMBING INTO THE BIN. REMEMBER THE QUIET & THE DARK & THE THINGS THAT CAME AFTER. REMEMBER EVERYTHING FALLING AWAY. FRIGHTENING YES! BUT A JUMP ALWAYS IS. SIT RIGHT HERE AT THIS TABLE & MAKE YOURSELF EASY. THEN CLOSE YOUR EYES. THEN LET IT COME DOWN.
PLEASE TO FORGIVE US WALDEMAR. & PLEASE TO UNDERSTAND. ALL YOU EVER HAD TO DO WAS THIS. TO CLOSE YOUR EYES.
There was no signature, no closing endearment. The words ended where the sheet of paper did. I set it down carefully, as if the letter itself might be a kind of trip wire, and looked around me with enlightened eyes.
My mistake, Mrs. Haven, had been to think of Enzie’s work in terms of science. I’d always viewed that apartment, and even its contents, as a kind of protective exoskeleton around her research — and I’d both been right and missed the point completely. The truth of that non-place was sad and uncanny and beautiful to the exact degree that my aunts’ lives had been.
A fragment of the “Märchen” they’d once sent me came to mind:
What if the Attention of the dreamer, obeying no rules but the rules of association and chance, travels back and forth across the Present/Past membrane at will?
Its meaning was clear to me at last, or clear enough. By tunneling through those rooms in a counterclockwise spiral — the form of certain pharaonic crypts, of the game of tarock, of Oppenheimer’s famous fallout shelter blueprint — and packing them with light-and-sound-absorbing trash, my aunts had created a sensory and symbolic dead zone as effective as any deprivation chamber: an amplification corridor for travels back and forth across the Barrier, a particle accelerator of dreams. The Archive wasn’t simply some whimsy of Genny’s, or a fortress to sequester Enzie’s work: it was the work itself. Which was why, when Haven and his Iterants stole Enzie’s exclusion bin, it did so little for them. They’d taken a potted plant and missed the forest.
* * *
It was 08:17 EST when I dialed Menügayan’s number — not an hour when she was generally awake — and the phone rang sixteen times before she answered. Before she could say a word I told her everything. It was important to me that someone understand.
“Do you understand, Julia? My father had it right when he wrote The Excuse. Your consciousness is all the time machine you need. All that other nonsense — the notes, the calculations, even the exclusion bin — was a heap of pseudoscientific clutter. How on earth could I have missed it all this time?”
“Tolliver,” said Menügayan, “don’t call me again.”
“Don’t you see what this means? I have something to offer — something even Haven himself, with all his money and pull—”
“Is that right, Tolliver? You have something to offer? And what might that be?”
“I’ve just told you,” I said, struggling to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “I’ve figured out my aunts’ secret. I made a kind of half jump myself, it turns out, back when I was twelve. It’s the simplest thing, really. Now I need to tell Hildy. She asked me for a time machine once, but — idiot that I was — I thought she was joking. I just need to explain—”
“They were found this morning. Their jet was, I mean. It’s all over the news.”
“Where?” I stammered, so excited I nearly dropped the receiver.