Travels in the Scriptorium (9 page)

–Tomorrow morning, then. I’ve just finished writing my semi-annual report, and my desk is clear.

–Come to the Ministry at nine o’clock for the letter. I’ll be waiting for you in my office.

–Very good, sir. Tomorrow morning at nine.

The moment Mr. Blank comes to the end of the conversation between Graf and Joubert, the telephone starts to ring, and once again he is forced to interrupt his reading of the typescript. Cursing under his breath as he extricates himself from the chair, he hobbles slowly across the room toward the bedside table, moving with difficulty because of his recent injuries, and so plodding is his progress that he doesn’t pick up the receiver until the seventh ring, whereas he was nimble enough to answer the previous call from Flood on the fourth.

What do you want? Mr. Blank says harshly, as he sits down on the bed, suddenly feeling a flutter of the old dizziness whirling around inside him.

I want to know if you’ve finished the story, a man’s voice calmly answers.

Story? What story is that?

The one you’ve been reading. The story about the Confederation.

I didn’t know it was a story. It sounds more like a report, like something that really happened.

It’s make-believe, Mr. Blank. A work of fiction.

Ah. That explains why I’ve never heard of that place. I know my mind isn’t working too well today, but I thought Graf’s manuscript must have been found by someone years after he wrote it and then copied out by a typist.

An honest mistake.

A stupid mistake.

Don’t worry about it. The only thing I need to know is whether you’ve finished it or not.

Almost. Just a few more pages to go. If you hadn’t interrupted me with this goddamned call, I’d probably be at the end by now.

Good. I’ll come round in fifteen or twenty minutes, and we can begin the consultation.

Consultation? What are you talking about?

I’m your doctor, Mr. Blank. I come to see you every day.

I don’t remember having a doctor.

Of course not. That’s because the treatment is beginning to take effect.

Does my doctor have a name?

Farr. Samuel Farr.

Farr … Hmm … Yes, Samuel Farr … You wouldn’t happen to know a woman named Anna, would you?

We’ll talk about that later. For now, the only thing you have to do is finish the story.

All right, I’ll finish the story. But when you come to my room, how will I know it’s you? What if it’s someone else pretending to be you?

There’s a picture of me on your desk. The twelfth one in from the top of the pile. Take a good look at it, and when I show up, you won’t have any trouble recognizing me.

Now Mr. Blank is sitting in the chair again, hunched over the desk. Rather than look for Samuel Farr’s picture in the pile of photographs, as he was instructed to do, he reaches for the pad and ballpoint pen and adds another name to his list:

James P. Flood

Anna

David Zimmer

Peter Stillman, Jr.

Peter Stillman, Sr.

Fanshawe

Man with house

Samuel Farr

Pushing aside the pad and pen, he immediately picks up the typescript of the story, forgetting all about his intention to look for Samuel Farr’s photograph, in the same way that he has long since forgotten about looking for the closet that is supposedly in the room. The last pages of the text read as follows:

The long journey to Ultima gave me ample time to reflect upon the nature of my mission. A series of coachmen took over the reins at two-hundred-mile intervals, and with nothing for me to do but sit in the carriage and stare out at the landscape, I felt a growing sense of dread as I neared my destination. Ernesto Land had been my comrade and intimate friend, and I had the greatest trouble accepting Joubert’s verdict that he had turned traitor to a cause he had defended all his life. He had remained in the military after the Consolidations of Year 31, continuing his work as an intelligence officer under the aegis of the Ministry of War, and whenever he had dined with us at our house or I had met with him for an afternoon meal at one of the taverns near the Ministry Esplanade, he had talked with enthusiasm about the inevitable victory of the Confederation, confident that all we had dreamed of and fought for since our earliest youth would finally come to pass. Now, according to Joubert’s agents in Ultima, not only had Land escaped death during the cholera epidemic, he had in fact falsified his death in order to disappear into the wilderness with a small army of anti-Confederationists to foment rebellion among the Primitives. Judging from all I knew about him, this seemed an absurd and preposterous accusation.

Land had grown up in the northwestern farming region of Tierra Vieja Province, the same part of the world where my wife, Beatrice, was born. They had been playmates as small children, and for many years it was taken for granted by their two families that they would eventually marry. Beatrice once confessed to me that Ernesto had been her first love, and when he later turned his back on her and was betrothed to Hortense Chatterton, the daughter of a wealthy shipping family from Mont Sublime, she felt as if her life had ended. But Beatrice was a strong girl, too proud to share her suffering with anyone, and in a demonstration of remarkable courage and dignity, she accompanied her parents and two brothers to the lavish wedding festival at the Chatterton estate. That was where we were introduced. I lost my heart to her that first evening, but it was only after a prolonged courtship of eighteen months that she finally accepted my proposal of marriage. I knew that in her eyes I was no match for Land. I was neither as handsome nor as brilliant as he was, and it took some time before she understood that my steadiness of character and fierce devotion to her were no less important qualities on which to build a lifelong union. Much as I admired Land, I was also aware of his flaws. There had always been something wild and obstreperous about him, a headstrong assurance in his superiority to others, and despite his charm and persuasiveness, that inborn power to draw attention to himself wherever he happened to be, one also sensed an incurable vanity lurking just below the surface. His marriage to Hortense Chatterton proved to be an unhappy one. He was unfaithful to her almost from the start, and when she died in childbirth four years later, he recovered quickly from his loss. He went through all the rituals of mourning and public sorrow, but at bottom I felt he was more relieved than brokenhearted. We saw quite a bit of him after that, much more than had been the case in the early years of our marriage. To his credit, Land became deeply attached to our little daughter, Marta, always bringing presents when he visited the house and showering her with such affection that she came to regard him as a heroic figure, the greatest man who walked the earth. He behaved with utmost decorum whenever he was among us, and yet who could fault me if I sometimes questioned whether the fires that had once burned in my wife’s soul for him had been fully extinguished? Nothing untoward ever happened – no words or glances between them that could have aroused my jealousy – but in the aftermath of the cholera epidemic that had supposedly killed them both, what was I to make of the fact that Land was now reported to be alive and that in spite of my assiduous efforts to learn something about Beatrice’s fate, I hadn’t uncovered a single witness who had seen her in the capital during the scourge? If not for my disastrous run-in with Giles McNaughton, which had been set off by ugly innuendos concerning my wife, it seemed doubtful that I would have tormented myself with such dark suspicions on my way to Ultima. But what if Beatrice and Marta had run off with Land while I was traveling through the Independent Communities of Tierra Blanca Province? It seemed impossible, but as Joubert had said to me the night before my departure, nothing was impossible, and of all the people in the world, I was the one who should know that best.

The wheels of the carriage turned, and by the time I’d reached the outskirts of Wallingham, the midway point of the journey, I understood that I was approaching a twofold horror. If Land had betrayed the Confederation, my instructions from the Minister were to put him under arrest and transport him back to the capital in chains. That thought was gruesome enough, but if my friend had betrayed me by stealing my wife and daughter, then I was planning to kill him. That much was certain, no matter what the consequences were. May God damn me for thinking it, but for Ernesto’s sake and my own, I prayed that Beatrice was already dead.

Mr. Blank tosses the typescript onto the desk, snorting with dissatisfaction and contempt, furious that he has been compelled to read a story that has no ending, an unfinished work that has barely even begun, a mere bloody fragment. What garbage, he says out loud, and then, swiveling the chair around by a hundred and eighty degrees, he wheels himself over to the bathroom door. He is thirsty. With no beverages on hand, the only solution is to pour himself a glass of water from the bathroom sink. He stands up from the chair, opens the door, and shuffles forward to do just that, all the while regretting having wasted so much time on that misbegotten excuse of a story. He drinks one glass of water, then another, leaning his left hand on the sink to steady his balance as he gazes forlornly at the soiled clothes in the tub. Now that he happens to be in the bathroom, Mr. Blank wonders if he shouldn’t take another shot at peeing, just to play it safe. Worried that he might fall again if he stays on his feet too long, he lets his pajama bottoms drop to his ankles and sits down on the toilet. Just like a woman, he says to himself, suddenly amused by the thought of how different his life would have been if he hadn’t been born a man. After his recent accident, his bladder has little to say for itself, but eventually he manages to dribble forth a few measly squirts. He pulls up the pajama bottoms as he climbs to his feet, flushes, rinses his hands at the sink, dries those same hands with a towel, then turns around and opens the door – whereupon he sees a man standing in the room. Another lost opportunity, Mr. Blank says to himself, realizing that the noise of the flushing toilet must have drowned out the sound of the stranger’s entrance, thus leaving unanswered the question of whether the door is locked from the outside or not.

Mr. Blank sits down in the chair and does an abrupt half-turn in order to take a look at the new arrival, a tall man in his mid-thirties dressed in blue jeans and a red button-down shirt open at the collar. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a gaunt face that looks as if it hasn’t cracked a smile in years. No sooner does Mr. Blank make this observation, however, than the man smiles at him and says: Hello, Mr. Blank. How are you feeling today?

Do I know you? Mr. Blank asks.

Didn’t you look at the picture? the man replies.

What picture?

The photograph on your desk. The twelfth one in from the top of the pile. Remember?

Oh, that. Yes. I think so. I was supposed to look at it, wasn’t I?

And?

I forgot. I was too busy reading that dumb story.

No problem, the man says, turning around and walking toward the desk, where he picks up the photographs and searches through the pile until he comes to the picture in question. Then, putting the other photographs back on the desk, he walks over to Mr. Blank and hands him the portrait. You see, Mr. Blank? the man says. There I am.

You must be the doctor, then, Mr. Blank says. Samuel … Samuel something.

Farr.

That’s right. Samuel Farr. I remember now. You have something to do with Anna, don’t you?

I did. But that was a long time ago.

Holding the picture firmly in his two hands, Mr. Blank lifts it up until it is directly in front of his face, then studies it for a good twenty seconds. Farr, looking very much as he does now, is sitting in a garden somewhere dressed in a white doctor’s coat with a cigarette burning between the second and third fingers of his left hand.

I don’t get it, Mr. Blank says, suddenly besieged by a new attack of anguish that burns like a hot coal in his chest and tightens his stomach into the shape of a fist.

What’s wrong? Farr asks. It’s a good likeness, don’t you think?

A perfect likeness. You might be a year or two older now, but the man in the picture is definitely you.

Is that a problem?

It’s just that you’re so young, Mr. Blank says in a tremulous voice, doing all he can to fight back the tears that are forming in his eyes. Anna is young in her picture, too. But she told me it was taken more than thirty years ago. She’s not a girl anymore. Her hair is gray, her husband is dead, and time is turning her into an old woman. But not you, Farr. You were with her. You were in that terrible country I sent her to, but that was more than thirty years ago, and you haven’t changed.

Farr hesitates, clearly uncertain about how to answer Mr. Blank. He sits down on the edge of the bed, spreads his palms out on his knees, and looks down at the floor, inadvertently settling into the same position the old man was discovered in at the beginning of this report. A long moment of silence follows. At last he says, speaking in a low voice: I’m not allowed to talk about it.

Mr. Blank looks at him in horror. You’re telling me you’re dead, he cries out. That’s it, isn’t it? You didn’t make it. Anna lived, but you didn’t.

Farr lifts his head and smiles. Do I look dead, Mr. Blank? he asks. We all go through our rough moments, of course, but I’m just as alive as you are, believe me.

Well, who’s to say if I’m alive or not? Mr. Blank says, staring grimly at Farr. Maybe I’m dead, too. The way things have been going for me this morning, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Talk about
the treatment
. It’s probably just another word for death.