Travels in the Scriptorium Read online

  When the action resumes, Mr. Blank is stretched out on the bed, looking up at the white, freshly painted ceiling. Now that the murderous toxins have been flushed from his system, he feels drained of energy, half-dead from the savage bout of puking, retching, and weeping that took place in the bathroom just minutes ago. And yet, if such a thing is possible, he also feels better, more tranquil in the core of his debilitated self, more prepared to face the trials that no doubt lie ahead.

  As Mr. Blank continues to study the ceiling, its whiteness gradually conjures up an image to him, and instead of looking at a ceiling he fancies that he is staring at a sheet of blank paper. Why this should be so he cannot say, but perhaps it has something to do with the dimensions of the ceiling, which is rectilinear and not square, meaning that the room is rectilinear and not square as well, and although the ceiling is much larger than a sheet of paper, its proportions are roughly similar to those of the standard eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch page. As Mr. Blank pursues this thought, something stirs inside him, some distant memory he cannot fix in his mind, that keeps breaking apart the closer he gets to it, but through the murk that is blocking him from seeing the thing clearly in his head, he can dimly make out the contours of a man, a man who is undoubtedly himself, sitting at a desk and rolling a sheet of paper into an old manual typewriter. It's probably one of the reports, he says out loud, speaking in a soft voice, and then Mr. Blank wonders how many times he must have repeated that gesture, how many times over the years, understanding now that it was no less than thousands of times, thousands upon thousands of times, more sheets of paper than a man could possibly count in a day or a week or a month.

  Thinking about the typewriter recalls the typescript he read earlier in the day, and now that he has more or less recovered from the exasperating job of peeling off the strips of white tape and returning them to their correct spots in the room, and now that the battle that flared up so violently in his stomach has been quelled, Mr. Blank remembers that he was planning to go on with the story, to map out the tale to its conclusion in order to prepare himself for the supplementary visit from the doctor that evening. Still stretched out on the bed with his eyes open, he considers for a moment whether to carry on in silence, that is, to tell the story to himself in his mind, or else to continue improvising the events out loud, even if there is no one in the room to follow what he is saying. Because he is feeling particularly alone just now, fairly crushed by the weight of his enforced solitude, he decides to pretend that the doctor is in the room with him and to proceed as before, that is, to tell the story with his voice rather than merely think it in his head.

  Let's get on with it, shall we? he says. The Confederation. Sigmund Graf. The Alien Territories. Ernesto Land. What year is it in this imaginary place? About eighteen-thirty, I'd guess. No trains, no telegraph. You travel by horse, and you can wait as long as three weeks for a letter to arrive. Much like America, but not identical. No black slaves, for one thing, at least none mentioned in the text. But more ethnic variety than here for that moment in history. German names, French names, English names, Spanish names. All right, where were we? Graf is in the Alien Territories, looking for Land, who might or might not be a double agent, who might or might not have absconded with Grafs wife and daughter. Let's back up a little bit. I think I went too fast before, jumped to too many hasty conclusions. According to Joubert, Land is a traitor to the Confederation who's formed his own private army to help lead the Primitives in an invasion of the western provinces. I detest that word, by the way. Primitives. It's too flat, too blunt, has no flair. Let's try to think of something more colorful. Hmmm … I don't know… Maybe something like… the Spirit People. No. No good. The Dolmen. The Olmen. The Tolmen. Awful. What's wrong with me? The Djiin. That's it. The Djiin. Sounds a little like Injun, but with other connotations mixed in as well. All right, the Djiin. Joubert thinks Land is in the Alien Territories to lead the Djiin in an attack on the western provinces. But Graf thinks it's more complicated than that. Why? For one thing, he believes Land is loyal to the Confederation. For another, how could Land have crossed the border accompanied by a hundred men without Colonel De Vega's knowledge? De Vega claims to know nothing about it, but Carlotta has told Graf that Land entered the Territories more than a year ago, and unless she's lying, De Vega is in on the plot. Or else—and this is something I didn't think of before—Land bribed De Vega with a large sum of money, and the Colonel isn't involved at all. But that has nothing to do with Graf, who never suspects the possibility of a bribe. According to his reasoning, Land, De Vega, and the entire military are planning to hatch a phony war with the Djiin in order to hold the Confederation together. Maybe they intend to wipe out the Djiin in the process, maybe not. For the moment, there are only two possibilities: Joubert's position and Graf's position. If this story is going to add up to anything, though, there has to be a third explanation, something no one ever would have expected. Otherwise, it's just too damned predictable.

  All right, Mr. Blank continues, after a short pause to focus his thoughts. Graf has come to two Gangi villages, and the inhabitants of both have been massacred. He's buried the raving white soldier, and now he doesn't know what to think. For the time being, as he slowly wends his way toward Land, let's separate the two main questions he's confronted with. The professional question and the private question. What is Land doing in the Territories, and where are his wife and daughter? To be perfectly honest, this domestic issue bores me. It can be resolved in any one of several ways, but each solution is an embarrassment: too trite, too hackneyed, not worth thinking about. One: Beatrice and Marta have run away with Land. If Graf finds them together, he's vowed to kill Land. Either he'll succeed or he won't, but at that point the story devolves into a simple melodrama of a cuckold trying to defend his honor. Two: Beatrice and Marta have run away with Land, but Beatrice has died— either from the effects of the cholera epidemic or from the hardships of living in the Territories. Assume that Marta, now sixteen, has grown into a woman and is traveling with Land as his lover. What does Graf do then? Does he still try to kill Land, murdering his old friend while his only daughter begs him to spare the life of the man she loves? Oh Daddy, please, Daddy, don't do it! Or does Graf let bygones be bygones and forget the whole thing? One way or the other, it won't wash. Three: Beatrice and Marta have run away with Land, but both of them have died. Land won't mention their names to Graf, and that element of the story turns into a defunct red herring. Trause was apparently quite young when he wrote this piece, and it doesn't surprise me that he never published it. He worked himself into a corner with the two women. I don't know what solution he came up with, but I'd bet good money that it was the second one—which is just as bad as the first and the third. As far as I'm concerned, I'd just as soon forget about Beatrice and Marta. Let's say they died in the cholera epidemic and leave it at that. Poor Graf, of course, but if you want to tell a good story, you can't show any pity.

  Okay, Mr. Blank says, clearing his throat as he tries to pick up the thread of the narrative, where were we? Graf. Graf alone. Graf wandering around the desert on his horse, the good steed Whitey, searching for the elusive Ernesto Land…

  Mr. Blank stops. A new idea has entered his head, a fiendish, devastating illumination that sends a wave of pleasure shuddering through his body, from the very toes on his feet to the nerve cells in his brain. In a single instant, the whole business has been made clear to him, and as the old man contemplates the shattering consequences of what he now knows is the inevitable choice, the only choice available to him from a horde of contending possibilities, he begins to pound his chest and kick his feet and shake his shoulders as he lets out a whoop of wild, convulsive laughter.

  Hold on, Mr. Blank says, raising a hand to his imaginary interlocutor. Scratch everything. I've got it now. Back to the beginning. Part two, that is. Back to the beginning of part two, when Graf slips across the border and enters the Alien Territories. Forget the massacre of the Gangi. Forget the second m
assacre of the Gangi. Graf steers clear of all Djiin villages and settlements. The No-Entrance Decrees have been in force for ten years, and he knows the Djiin will not take kindly to his presence. A white man traveling alone in the Territories? Impossible. If they find him, he's as good as dead. So he keeps a wide berth, confining himself to the vast wilderness areas that separate the different nations from one another, looking for Land and his men, yes, encountering the raving soldier, yes, but once he finds what he's looking for, it's altogether the opposite of what he was expecting. On a barren plain in the north-central region of the Territories, a stretch of country similar to the salt flats in Utah, he chances upon a mound of a hundred and fifteen corpses, some of them mutilated, some of them intact, all of them rotting and decomposing in the sun. Not Gangi bodies, not the bodies of any members of the Djiin nations, but white men, white men in soldiers' uniforms, at least those who weren't stripped naked and hacked to pieces, and as Graf stumbles around this putrid, nauseating mass of the slaughtered dead, he discovers that one of the victims is his old friend Ernesto Land—lying on his back with a bullet hole in his forehead and a swarm of flies and maggots crawling over his half-eaten face. We won't dwell on Grafs response to this horror: the puking and weeping, the howling, the rending of his garments. What matters is this. Because his encounter with the raving soldier took place only two weeks earlier, Graf knows the massacre must be fairly recent. But most of all, what matters is this: he has no doubt that Land and his men were murdered by the Djiin.

  Mr. Blank pauses to emit another laugh, more restrained than the last one, perhaps, but nevertheless a laugh that manages to express both joy and bitterness at the same time, for even if Mr. Blank is happy to have reshaped the story according to his own design, he knows that it is a gruesome story for all that, and a part of him recoils in terror from what he has yet to tell.

  But Graf is wrong, he says. Graf knows nothing about the sinister scheme he's been drawn into. He's the fall guy, as they say in the movies, the patsy who's been set up by the government to put the machinery in motion. They're all in on it—Joubert, the Ministry of War, De Vega, the whole lot of them. Yes, Land was sent into the Territories as a double agent, with instructions to stir up the Djiin into invading the western provinces, which would unleash the war the government so desperately wants. But Land fails in his mission. A year goes by, and when nothing happens after all that time, the men in power conclude that Land has betrayed them, that for one reason or another his conscience has gotten the better of him and he's made peace with the Djiin. So they cook up a new plan and send a second army into the Territories. Not from Ultima, but from another garrison several hundred miles to the north, and this contingent is much larger than the first, at least ten times larger, and with a thousand troops against a hundred, Land and his ragtag bunch of idealists don't have a chance. Yes, you heard me correctly. The Confederation sends in a second army to wipe out the first army. All in secret, of course, and if a man such as Graf should be sent out to look for Land, he would naturally conclude that the Djiin are responsible for that pile of stinking, mutilated corpses. At this point, Graf becomes the key figure in the operation. Without knowing it, he's the person who's going to get the war started. How? By being allowed to write his story in that crummy little cell in Ultima. De Vega works him over in the beginning, beats him constantly for a whole week, but that's only to put the fear of God in him and convince him that he's about to be executed. And when a man thinks he's about to die, he's going to spill his guts on paper the moment he's allowed to write. So Graf does what they want him to do. He tells about his mission to track down Land, and when he comes to the massacre he discovered in the salt flats, he omits nothing, describes the whole abomination down to the last gory detail. That's the crucial point: a vivid, eyewitness account of what happened, with all the blame put on the Djiin. When Graf finishes his story, De Vega takes possession of the manuscript and releases him from prison. Graf is stunned. He was expecting to be shot, and here he is being paid a large bonus for his work and given a free ride back to the capital in a first-class carriage. By the time he makes it home, the manuscript has been skillfully edited and released to every newspaper in the country. CONFEDERATION SOLDIERS MASSACRED BY DJIIN:

  A Firsthand Report by Sigmund Graf, Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau of Internal Affairs.

  Graf returns to find the entire population of the capital up in arms, clamoring for an invasion of the Alien Territories. He understands now how cruelly he's been tricked. War on this scale could potentially destroy the Confederation, and it turns out that he, and he alone, was the match that ignited this deadly fire. He goes to Joubert and demands an explanation. Now that things have worked out so well, Joubert is all too happy to give it to him. Then he offers Graf a promotion with a large increase in salary, but Graf counters with an offer of his own: I resign, he says, and then he marches out of the room, slamming the door behind him. That evening, in the darkness of his empty house, he picks up a loaded revolver and fires a bullet through his skull. And that's it. End of story. Finità, la commedia.

  Mr. Blank has been talking steadily for nearly twenty minutes, and he is tired now, and not only from the exertions of his vocal cords, for his throat was irritated to begin with (brought on by the upchuck binge in the bathroom just minutes before), and he delivers the final sentences of his tale with a noticeable rasp in his voice. He closes his eyes, forgetting that such an action is likely to bring back the procession of figment beings blundering through the wilderness, the mob of the damned, the faceless ones who will eventually surround him and tear his body apart, but this time luck spares Mr. Blank from the demons, and when he closes his eyes he is once again in the past, sitting in a wooden chair of some kind, an Adirondack chair he believes it is called, on a lawn somewhere in the country, some remote and rustic spot he cannot identify, with green grass all around him and bluish mountains in the distance, and the weather is warm, warm in the way summer is warm, with a cloudless sky above and the sun pouring down on his skin, and there is Mr. Blank, many years ago now it would seem, back in the days of his early manhood, sitting in the Adirondack chair and holding a small child in his arms, a one-year-old girl child dressed in a white T-shirt and a white diaper, and Mr. Blank is looking into the eyes of the little girl and talking to her, what words he cannot say, for this excursion into the past is unfolding in silence, and as Mr. Blank talks to the little girl, she is looking back at him with an intent and serious expression in her eyes, and he wonders now, lying on the bed with his eyes now closed, if this small person isn't Anna Blume at the beginning of her life, his beloved Anna Blume, and if it isn't Anna, whether the child might not be his daughter, but what daughter, he asks himself, what daughter and what is her name, and if he is the father of a child, where is the mother and what is her name, he asks himself, and then he makes a mental note to inquire about these matters the next time a person enters the room, to find out if he has a home somewhere with a wife and children, or once had a wife, or once had a home, or if this room is not the place where he has always lived, but Mr. Blank is about to forget this mental note and therefore will forget to ask these questions, for he is extremely tired now, and the image of himself in the Adirondack chair with the young child in his arms has just vanished, and Mr. Blank has fallen asleep.

  Because of the camera, which has gone on taking one picture per second throughout this report, we know for certain that Mr. Blank's nap lasts for exactly twenty-seven minutes and twelve seconds. He might have gone on sleeping much longer than that, but a man has now entered the room, and he is tapping Mr. Blank on the shoulder in an effort to wake him. When the old man opens his eyes, he feels entirely refreshed by his brief sojourn in the Land of Nod, and he sits up immediately, alert and ready for the encounter, with no trace of grogginess clouding his mind.

  The visitor appears to be in his late fifties or early sixties, and like Farr before him, he is dressed in a pair of blue jeans, but whereas Farr was wear
ing a red shirt, this man's shirt is black, and while Farr came into the room empty-handed, the man in the black shirt is carrying a thick bundle of files and folders in his arms. His face is deeply familiar to Mr. Blank, but as with so many of the faces he has seen today, whether in photographs or in the flesh, he is at a loss to attach a name to it.

  Are you Fogg? he asks. Marco Fogg?

  The visitor smiles and shakes his head. No, he says, I'm afraid not. Why would you think I'm Fogg?

  I don't know, but when I woke up just now I suddenly remembered that Fogg stopped by around this time yesterday. A minor miracle, actually, now that I think about it. Remembering, I mean. But Fogg came in. I'm certain of that. For afternoon tea. We played cards for a while. We talked. And he told me a number of funny jokes.

  Jokes? the visitor asks, walking over to the desk, swiveling the chair by a hundred and eighty degrees, and sitting down with the pile of dossiers on his lap. As he does so, Mr. Blank stands up, shuffles forward for several feet, and then sits down on the bottom edge of the mattress, settling into roughly the same spot that Flood occupied earlier in the day.

  Yes, jokes, Mr. Blank continues. I can't remember them all, but there was one that struck me as especially good.

  You wouldn't mind telling it to me, would you? the visitor asks. I'm always on the lookout for good jokes.

  I can try, Mr. Blank answers, and then he pauses for a few moments to collect his thoughts. Let's see, he says. Hmmm. Let me see. I think it begins like this. A man walks into a bar in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon and orders three scotches. Not one after the other, but all three at once. The bartender is a little puzzled by this unusual request, but he doesn't say anything and gives the man what he wants—three scotches, lined up on the bar in a row. The man drinks them down one by one, pays the bill, and leaves. The next day, he comes back at five o'clock and orders the same thing. Three scotches all at once. And the day after that, and every day after that for two weeks. Finally, curiosity gets the better of the barman. I don't mean to be nosy, he says, but you've been in here every day for the past two weeks ordering your three scotches, and I'd just like to know why. Most people take them one at a time. Ah, the man says, the answer is very simple. I have two brothers. One of them lives in New York, one lives in San Francisco, and the three of us are very close. As a way of honoring our friendship, we all go into a bar at five in the afternoon and order three scotches, silently toasting one another's health, pretending that we're all together in the same place. The barman nods, finally understanding the reason for this strange ritual, and thinks no more about it. The business goes on for another four months. The man comes in every day at five o'clock, and the bartender serves him the three drinks. Then something happens. The man shows up at his regular hour one afternoon, but this time he orders only two scotches. The bartender is worried, and after a while he plucks up his courage and says: I don't mean to be nosy, but every day for the past four and a half months you've come in here and ordered three scotches. Now you order two. I know it's none of my business, but I just hope nothing's gone wrong with your family. Nothing's wrong, the man says, as bright and chipper as ever. What is it, then? the bartender asks. The answer is very simple, the man says. I've stopped drinking.