Travels in the Scriptorium (2 page)

Mr. Blank reaches out for the next page on the pile and discovers that it is a typed manuscript of some sort. The first paragraph reads:

The moment I started to tell my story, they knocked me down and kicked me in the head. When I climbed to my feet and started to talk again, one of them hit me across the mouth, and then another one punched me in the stomach. I fell down. I managed to get up again, but just as I was about to begin the story for the third time, the Colonel threw me against the wall and I passed out.

There are two more paragraphs on the page, but before Mr. Blank can begin reading the second one, the telephone rings. It is a black rotary model from the late forties or early fifties of the past century, and since it is located on the bedside table, Mr. Blank is forced to stand up from the soft leather chair and shuffle over to the other side of the room. He picks up the receiver on the fourth ring.

Hello, says Mr. Blank.

Mr. Blank? asks the voice on the other end.

If you say so.

Are you sure? I can’t take any chances.

I’m not sure of anything. If you want to call me Mr. Blank, I’m happy to answer to that name. Who am I talking to?

James.

I don’t know any James.

James P. Flood.

Refresh my memory.

I came to visit you yesterday. We spent two hours together.

Ah. The policeman.

Ex-policeman.

Right. The ex-policeman. What can I do for you?

I want to see you again.

Wasn’t one conversation enough?

Not really. I know I’m just a minor character in this business, but they said I was allowed to see you twice.

You’re telling me I have no choice.

I’m afraid so. But we don’t have to talk in the room if you don’t want to. We can go out and sit in the park if you’d prefer that.

I don’t have anything to wear. I’m standing here dressed in pajamas and slippers.

Look in the closet. You have all the clothes you need.

Ah. The closet. Thank you.

Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Blank?

I don’t think so. Am I allowed to eat?

Three meals a day. It’s still a bit early, but Anna should be coming around pretty soon.

Anna? Did you say Anna?

She’s the person who takes care of you.

I thought she was dead.

Hardly.

Maybe it’s a different Anna.

I doubt it. Of all the people involved in this story, she’s the only one who’s completely on your side.

And the others?

Let’s just say there’s a lot of resentment, and we’ll leave it at that.

It should be noted that in addition to the camera a microphone is embedded in one of the walls, and every sound Mr. Blank makes is being reproduced and preserved by a highly sensitive digital tape recorder. The least groan or sniffle, the least cough or fleeting flatulence that emerges from his body is therefore an integral part of our account as well. It goes without saying that this aural data also includes the words that are variously mumbled, uttered, or shouted by Mr. Blank, as with, for example, the telephone call from James P. Flood recorded above. The conversation ends with Mr. Blank reluctantly giving in to the ex-policeman’s demand to pay him a visit some time that morning. After Mr. Blank hangs up the phone, he sits down on the edge of the narrow bed, assuming a position identical to the one described in the first sentence of this report: palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor. He ponders whether he should stand up and begin looking for the closet Flood referred to, and if that closet exists, whether he should change out of his pajamas and put on some clothes, assuming there are clothes in the closet – if indeed that closet exists. But Mr. Blank is in no rush to engage in such mundane chores. He wants to go back to the typescript he started reading before he was interrupted by the telephone.He therefore stands up from the bed and takes a first tentative step toward the other side of the room, feeling a sudden rush of dizziness as he does so. He realizes that he will fall down if he remains standing any longer, but rather than return to the bed and sit there until the crisis passes, he puts his right hand against the wall, leans the full brunt of his weight against it, and gradually lowers himself to the floor. Now on his knees, Mr. Blank pitches himself forward and plants his palms on the floor as well. Dizzy or not, such is his determination to reach the desk that he crawls there on all fours.

Once he manages to climb into the leather chair, he rocks back and forth for several moments to steady his nerves. In spite of his physical efforts, he understands that he is afraid to go on reading the typescript. Why this fear should have taken hold of him is something he cannot account for. It’s only words, he tells himself, and since when have words had the power to frighten a man half to death? It won’t do, he mutters in a low, barely audible voice. Then, to reassure himself, he repeats the same sentence, shouting at the top of his lungs: IT WON’T DO!

Inexplicably, this sudden burst of sound gives him the courage to continue. He takes a deep breath, fixes his eyes on the words in front of him, and reads the following two paragraphs:

They have kept me in this room ever since. From all I can gather, it is not a typical cell, and it does not seem to be part of the military stockade or the territorial house of detention. It is a small, bare enclosure, measuring roughly twelve feet by fifteen feet, and because of the simplicity of its design (dirt floor, thick stone walls), I suspect that it once served as a storehouse for food supplies, perhaps for sacks of flour and grain. There is a single barred window at the top of the western wall, but it is too far off the ground for me to get my hands on it. I sleep on a straw mat in one corner, and two meals are given to me every day: cold porridge in the morning, tepid soup and hard bread in the evening. According to my calculations, I have been here for forty-seven nights. This tally could be wrong, however. My first days in the cell were interrupted by numerous beatings, and because I can’t remember how many times I lost consciousness – nor how long the oblivions lasted when I did – it is possible that I lost count somewhere and failed to notice when a particular sun might have risen or another might have set.

The desert begins just outside my window. Each time the wind blows from the west, I can smell the sage and juniper bushes, the minima of those dry distances. I lived out there on my own for close to four months, wandering freely from one place to another, sleeping outdoors in all kinds of weather, and to return from the openness of that country to the narrow confines of this room has not been easy for me. I can bear up to the enforced solitude, to the absence of conversation and human contact, but I long to be in the air and the light again, and I spend my days hungering for something to look at besides these jagged stone walls. Every now and then, soldiers walk below my window. I can hear their boots crunching on the ground, the irregular bursts of their voices, the clatter of carts and horses in the heat of the unattainable day. This is the garrison at Ultima: the westernmost tip of the Confederation, the place that stands at the edge of the known world. We are more than two thousand miles from the capital here, overlooking the unmapped expanses of the Alien Territories. The law says that no one is allowed to go out there. I went because I was ordered to go, and now I have returned to give my report. They will listen to me or they won’t listen to me, and then I will be taken outside and shot. I am fairly certain of that now. The important thing is not to delude myself, to resist the temptation of hope. When they finally put me up against the wall and aim their rifles at my body, the only thing I will ask of them is to remove the blindfold. It’s not that I have any interest in seeing the men who kill me, but I want to be able to look at the sky again. That is the extent of what I want now. To stand out in the open and look up at the immense blue sky above me, to gaze at the howling infinite one last time.

Mr. Blank stops reading. His fear has been replaced by confusion, and while he has grasped every word of the text so far, he has no idea what to make of it. Is it an actual report, he wonders, and what is this place called the Confederation, with its garrison at Ultima and its mysterious Alien Territories, and why does the prose sound like something written in the nineteenth century? Mr. Blank is well aware of the fact that his mind is not all it should be, that he is entirely in the dark about where he is and why he is there, but he is reasonably certain that the present moment can be situated sometime in the early twenty-first century and that he lives in a country called the United States of America. This last thought reminds him of the window, or, to be more precise, of the window shade, on which a strip of white tape has been attached bearing the word SHADE. With the soles of his feet pressing against the floor and his arms pressing against the armrests of the leather chair, he swivels right by ninety to a hundred degrees in order to have a look at said window shade – for not only is this chair endowed with the ability to rock back and forth, it can turn in circles as well. This last discovery is so pleasing to Mr. Blank that he momentarily forgets why he wanted to look at the window shade, exulting instead in this hitherto unknown property of the chair. He spins around once, then twice, then three times, and as he does so he remembers sitting in the chair at the barbershop as a young boy and being spun around in a similar fashion by Rocco the barber both before and after his hair was cut. Fortunately, when Mr. Blank comes to rest again, the chair is more or less in the same position as when he started going around in circles, which means that he is once again looking at the window shade, and again, after this enjoyable interlude, Mr. Blank wonders if he shouldn’t walk over to the window, pull up the shade, and have a look outside to see where he is. Perhaps he’s no longer in America, he says to himself, but in some other country, abducted in the dead of night by secret agents working for a foreign power.

His triple revolution in the chair has left him somewhat dizzy, however, and he hesitates to budge from his spot, fearing a recurrence of the episode that forced him to travel across the room on all fours some minutes ago. What Mr. Blank is still unaware of at this point is that, in addition to being able to rock back and forth and turn around in circles, the leather chair is further equipped with a set of four small wheels, which would make it possible for him to journey over to the window shade without having to stand up. Not knowing that other means of propulsion are available to him besides his legs, Mr. Blank therefore stays where he is, sitting in the chair with his back to the desk, looking at the once white but now yellowing window shade, trying to remember his conversation the previous afternoon with the ex-policeman James P. Flood. He casts about in his mind for an image, some hint as to what the man looks like, but rather than conjure forth any clear pictures, his mind is once again overwhelmed by a paralyzing sensation of guilt. Before this fresh bout of torments and terrors can build into a full-blown panic, however, Mr. Blank hears someone rapping on the door, and then the sound of a key entering the lock. Does this mean that Mr. Blank is imprisoned in the room, unable to leave except through the grace and good will of others? Not necessarily. It could be that Mr. Blank has locked the door from within and that the person now trying to enter the room must undo that lock in order to cross the threshold, thus sparing Mr. Blank the trouble of having to stand up and open the door himself.

One way or the other, the door now opens, and in walks a small woman of indeterminate age – anywhere between forty-five and sixty, Mr. Blank thinks, but it is difficult to be certain. Her gray hair is cut short, she is dressed in a pair of dark blue slacks and a light blue cotton blouse, and the first thing she does after entering the room is smile at Mr. Blank. This smile, which seems to combine both tenderness and affection, banishes his fears and puts him in a state of calm equilibrium. He has no idea who she is, but he is nevertheless happy to see her.

Did you sleep well? the woman asks.

I’m not sure, Mr. Blank replies. To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember if I slept or not.

That’s good. It means the treatment is working.

Rather than comment on this enigmatic pronouncement, Mr. Blank studies the woman for several moments in silence, then asks: Forgive me for being such a fool, but your name wouldn’t be Anna, would it?

Once again, the woman gives him a tender and affectionate smile. I’m glad you remembered it, she says. Yesterday, it kept slipping out of your mind.

Suddenly perplexed and agitated, Mr. Blank swivels around in the leather chair until he is facing the desk, then removes the portrait of the young woman from the pile of black-and-white photographs. Before he can turn around again to look at the woman, whose name appears to be Anna, she is standing beside him with her hand poised gently on his right shoulder, looking down at the picture as well.

If your name is Anna, Mr. Blank says, his voice quivering with emotion, then who is this? Her name is Anna, too, isn’t it?

Yes, the woman says, studying the portrait closely, as if remembering something with equal but opposite feelings of revulsion and nostalgia. This is Anna. And I’m Anna, too. This is a picture of me.

But, Mr. Blank stammers, but … the girl in the picture is young. And you … you have gray hair.

Time, Mr. Blank, Anna says. You understand the meaning of time, don’t you? This is me thirty-five years ago.

Before Mr. Blank has a chance to respond, Anna puts the portrait of her younger self back on the pile of photographs.

Your breakfast is getting cold, she says, and without another word she leaves the room, only to return a moment later, wheeling in a stainless steel cart with a platter of food on it, which she positions alongside the bed.

The meal consists of a glass of orange juice, a slice of buttered toast, two poached eggs in a small white bowl, and a pot of Earl Grey tea. In due course, Anna will help Mr. Blank out of the chair and lead him over to the bed, but first she hands him a glass of water and three pills – one green, one white, and one purple.