City of Saints and Madmen Part 16

c/o Trillian Memorial Hospital

8l8l Sallowskull Avenue

Ambergris Ml4-5l8

Dear Doctor Simpkin: As requested, enclosed please find all personal effects left behind by X, save for his pen, a blank notebook, and that tattered paperback copy of City of Saints & Madmen he insisted on clasping to his bosom like a talisman. I have kept these items for my personal collection. (You may recall that I have an extensive selection of souvenirs from my many years here. If you should ever again visit our humble outpost of insanity, I will be happy to give you a guided tour as I have recently begun to catalogue my collection in antic.i.p.ation of the day when we will receive funding for its proper display. Each item comes complete with an exhibit card explaining the history of the item. If I may say so, the organization and presentation are exquisite. I am lacking only a display case and monies for maintenance.) Most of X's possessions consisted of various writings, which either originated with him or which he acquired during that brief period when he walked the streets of Ambergris a free man. As you requested, I have carefully read through all of these writings, despite the time it has taken away from those other of my patients who have had the courtesy to remain in my care. I now present my findings to you: 1. X's Notes. The notes typed up on the following pages came from crumpled sheets of paper found in the wastepaper basket. They consist of a series of reminders, observations, word sketches, drawings (X has had a lot of free time to perfect his doodling), and a short account of one of X's dreams that I like to call "The Machine." The notes seem self-explanatory. "The Machine," on the other hand, demonstrates an extreme paranoia directed toward the gray caps. One must learn not to read too much into nightmares-- my own nightmares usually concern having to close down vital services due to lack of funds--but I would hazard the guess that X suffers from anxiety about his studies. This would be consistent with his case history.

2. The Release of Belacqua. Although an attached note attributed this ma.n.u.script to Sirin, a secretary at his office a.s.sured us via telephone (ours being broken, I walked five blocks to a colleague's house to use his) that Sirin did not write it. Therefore, we must conclude that X wrote it himself. Nothing in the story sheds light on X's whereabouts, however. If anything, the protagonist is as puzzled about X as we are. The cold little reference to Janice Shriek puts the lie to X's protestations that he felt remorse for his actions. Throughout the story, X communicates to the reader "between the lines" in a rather pathetic manner. Such self-consciousness has clearly corrupted his writing. (Consulting my abridged version of Bender's Trillian, I find no mention of a "Belacqua," although this is a point of curiosity only.) 3. King Squid by Frederick Madnok. At first, I a.s.sumed that this slim pamphlet had been privately printed by X under a pseudonym. However, further inquiries revealed that Madnok does indeed exist and that for a few months he hawked this pamphlet, among other self-published oddities, on the corner of Alb.u.muth Boulevard and Beak Drive . His present whereabouts are unknown. Although our records could be incorrect, it appears he was never a patient here. (You may wish to use the impressive resources at your disposal to verify this fact, as many of our records have been damaged by water seepage. In many cases, your copies should now be considered the originals.) Given that King Squid did not originate with X and there are no margin notes from him, I cannot extrapolate much about X from it. On a surface level, however, one might a.s.sume that X envied the transformative qualities of Madnok's prose. Perhaps he saw Madnok as a kindred spirit. Again, we lack the personnel to perform the kind of a.n.a.lysis necessary to make such a third-party doc.u.ment "speak" to us about X's condition.

4. The Hoegbotton Family History. This doc.u.ment, although fascinating to me personally, seems at best something X may have read as background for enjoyment of item (5), below. It was found stuffed between his mattress and bed frame. There is a possibility it belonged to the former occupant of the cell, a Mr. M. Kodfan.

5. The Cage. I also checked with Sirin's secretary about this ma.n.u.script, given X's scrawled note of attribution. (I wish I had discovered said attribution before having returned to the asylum; as it was, I had to turn right back around to use my colleague's telephone.) This time, she confirmed that Sirin had indeed written the story. She found it remarkable that X had galleys, given that the story is due to be released next month as part of Sirin's new collection. She was most anxious that we return the ma.n.u.script to Sirin. I told her this was impossible until I had secured your approval. As for any connection between Sirin and X, it hardly seems credible--more the case of an "admirer and an admiral," as they say. While X's possession of the story confirms his obsession with the gray caps, I'm not sure that The Cage is otherwise of much use to us. Sirin's characterization of Hoegbotton struck me as perverse. But, then, I am not a fan of Sirin's fiction, although I did much admire his book of verse, "The Metamorphosis of b.u.t.terflies."

6. In the Hours After Death. X tore this story by Nicholas Sporlender out of last month's Burning Leaves, the creative journal enjoyed by so many of our patrons. I can confirm that the pages did indeed originate with our library copy. Several other pages had been ripped from the journal, but none of these pages remained in X's room. I want to discuss the absent pages first because they perplex me. In comparing a complete copy of Burning Leaves with the torn one, I found that X may have absconded with an advertis.e.m.e.nt for women's underthings, an article on the origins of water puppetry, a caricature of the current Truffidian Antechamber, a short, experimental (and completely incomprehensible) fiction by Sarah Beeside ent.i.tled "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo," and yet another advertis.e.m.e.nt for women's underthings. (Sticking to the letter of your instructions, I have not included these items since you specifically asked for what X left behind, not what-he-didn't-leave-behind-but-had-torn-out-at-some-point-from-a-creative-arts-journal. I must note that we often follow the letter of instructions due to lack of funding; anything that deviates, other than our incarcerated deviants, costs money.) "In the Hours After Death" itself sheds no enduring light on X's condition. It points to a simple death wish, by which wish we would expect to have found X's corpse, not the absence of his corpse, in his cell that very interesting morning when I decided, on a whim, to talk with X before the appointed hour.

7. Encrypted story. Several pages, folded and stuck inside City of Saints & Madmen, consisted of a long series of numbers. Rather than bore you with them, I took an amateur's stab at deciphering what appeared to be a code, even though we are really not prepared here at V.B.M.M.I. to interpret encrypted materials. (You will recall that we lost our funding for even such a basic necessity as a frenziologist last year; perhaps you could put in a word with Flauntimer?). After much tortuous experimentation, I discovered that each number series referred to a page, paragraph, line, and word in X's book. I then decoded the ma.n.u.script in some haste, keeping in mind the urgency of your request for the materials to be examined by your investigator at Central Records. Some of the words I have translated seem to make no sense--in my haste I have made errors--but the last paragraph has escaped my efforts completely. It seems to draw on some other type of decryption. What seems clear from what I have decrypted, however, is that X seeks to make a parallel between the gray caps and us, his "captors" at the Inst.i.tute. Such a crude comparison is spurred on by a childish need for revenge. I am sure your expert will have his own theories.

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 inst.i.tution. 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 a.n.a.lysis 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.

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 sc.r.a.ps 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 the MartinLake 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.ses 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 ama.s.sed 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. The worms are singing to you through the rubble. You cannot think. You cannot breathe. You dare not breathe. Your head is full of blood.

There is something behind the door.

There is something behind the door.

There is something behind the door.

The door begins to open inward, and something fluid and slow, no longer dreaming, begins to come out from inside, lurching around the edge of the door. You run you run you run you run from that place as fast as you possibly can, screaming until your throat fills with the blood in your head, your head now an empty globe while you drown in blood. And still it makes no difference, because you are back in that place with the slugs and the skulls and the pale dreamers and the machine that doesn't work that doesn't work that doesn't work thatdoesn'twork hatdoesnwor atdoeswor tdoeswor doeswor doewor dowor door . . .

Patient l9-9-l8-9-l4

Voss Bender Memorial Mental Inst.i.tute

l3l4

Alb.u.muth Boulevard Ambergris Il3-24 THE RELEASE OF BELACQUA.

The shade of the composer Voss Bender himself might have pa.s.sed Belacqua in the back corridors of the opera house; the aging critic Janice Shriek might have half-noticed the stoic humor of his performance, just not thought it important enough to mention in her review.

Much about him cried out for attention. Above the black shoes: the long red socks, matched only by the outrageous pink-blue chessboard b.u.t.tons of his jacket, mimicked in lazy rural fas.h.i.+on by the green eyes on his yellow s.h.i.+rt. His hair-in a twisted red braid (frayed at the end)-hung down in front like the fuse to the bomb of his head. His made-up face reflected a certain forethought mirrored in the shrewd miscalculation of his clothes. The eyebrows (more than one opera-goer may have thought, attention wandering momentarily from the major players) had been stolen from the flourishes on the body of a violin: they overpowered the small, terrified eyes, melted into the lines of the long, garrulous (fake) nose, which itself loomed over the parrotfish mouth (flanked by vertical lines like gills) and sometimes slid down in mock surrender to gravity by performance's end. This farce was pigmented with sow-pink skin, paler above the rarefied heights of the dueling eyebrows, as overdone in description as in life.

But we would know all of this if we had attended a performance, his costume blaring at us like a bawdy horn. Belacqua, Belacqua, the horns blared-this is Belacqua. See him move across the stage. See him briefly speak, and turning burn his image across our eyes. We could never know that he lives on the fifth floor of a hideous old hotel, in a cramped apartment with indi ferent lime-green wallpaper. Neighbors who move around above and below like blunt objects with a dulled sense of direction. Children who cry in the dark like ragged ghosts. A flutter of wings at the windowpane, delicate as eyelashes, and then gone. The repeated banging of a bedpost like some erotic gunshot aimed at his heart. (Next door, for ease of transition and translation, a necropole awaits those who grow cold in the hotel's embrace.) On weekend mornings, he sits on the balcony, an unlit cigar between his lips. Dressed in a plain white robe, renouncing all make up, he feels the wind move through him as if he does not exist. He watches the people who pa.s.s by on the street below and anoints them all with secret lives, breathes into them qualities to match the golden light that filters down between the rooftops.

Sometimes, his gaze blurs upon the filigreed balcony railing as he remembers his dreams. His dreams are all disturbing jokes with obscure punchlines. In one dream, he sees his father: a dark figure at the far end of an alley, briefly illuminated by the glare of a bulb that cuts through the murk. He hears the sound of running water or beer poured from a bottle. Shards of gla.s.s lacerate his feet as he runs across the cobblestones. But the joke is, no matter how fast he runs, he can never come close enough to read his father's eyes. Motionless, frictionless, his father glides ahead, continually twenty, thirty feet beyond his grasp.

The filigree of the balcony at first seems like protection from the dream, not protection from falling. He drops the cigar, stands up, goes back inside, dresses in subdued pants and s.h.i.+rt, descends the stairs, walks out onto the street, loses himself there, glad to be anonymous. He leaves his opera persona behind him like an abandoned skin: a husk that has as little to do with him as his clothes.

As he walks toward Alb.u.muth Boulevard (possibly to buy a book at Borges Bookstore, possibly just to wander), a black flame burns inside of him-it lights up his eyes and lends his speech (a word to the fruit vendor, a brief exchange with a more talented but unemployed actor) a subdued yet incandescent fury. Each word arrives burnt around the edges, consumed. His mother used to talk that way, as she let her life be created by his father. The Great Actor. The Drowned Man. The Drunkard.

Even now, he cannot completely forget his role in Bender's most popular opera, the last written before his death and staged posthumously under a one-word t.i.tle: Trillian. The opera recounts, in six raucous acts lasting four hours, the reign of Trillian the Great Banker, leaving out nothing, presenting every scene as a painting of the sort in which a thousand brightly-colored details battle for the viewer's attention. His role, as the Great Banker's gray cap advisor Belacqua, consisted of four lines and two hours of pratfalls.

The part was based on hearsay, heresy, and innuendo, for no history he had ever read mentioned Trillian's advisor. Bender had made it up, and he had played the falsehood for ten years now, the opera's undiminished popularity both blessing and curse. His father would never have taken such a role, but he had no choice. He had always recognized both the limitations of his acting style and that he lacked any spark of talent in other trades. Belacqua he was and Belacqua he would always be. Thus doomed to replay this other self night after night, while his father's ghost hooted and howled, besotted, from some upper balcony seat.

The role, though small, required work, if only because the directors could require work of him without complaint. They told him exactly where to stand, and he stood there. They told him when to make absurd little motions in time to the main players pouring out in perfect pitch and tone the words that now to his ears had no meaning, much as any repet.i.tion reduces function and content to a void. He also studied gray caps when he came upon them slumped in alleys or, from a distance, at dusk as they began to waken-observed their hunching gait, their distinctive clothing, their deep, unknowable eyes. He even took lessons on how to project small upon the audience, making his five-foot-six-inch height look like four-foot-four (this last a precaution against getting the boot).

In his pocket, he kept a crumpled piece of paper. On the paper he had scribbled stage directions and The Lines.

BELACQUA approaches the front of the stage, holding the b.l.o.o.d.y knife. When he reaches TRILLIAN, he sternly sings: What you cannot know and will not trust Will find you here because it must- I fly away now, the night to bring Down upon Trillian's head, and then? No-thing.

Below this, he had written what he thought Belacqua felt in that moment: "Everything that had been building up for so long-dissipated in the pool of blood bubbling up from X's body."

He knew how Belacqua felt, but he didn't know what the lines meant, even after ten years. For ten years, he had been saying these lines, show after show, and they were incomprehensible to him. He didn't even believe the lines were particularly relevant to the opera. They seemed to have arrived from some other opera, confused in Bender's mind, glittering darkly and spun into Trillian on a whim. Not that it should bother him as much as it did-he hadn't actually written the lines. Although he would have liked to be a writer, he had always been written.

Late one afternoon, he brought home a loaf of fresh bread, a squid pie, and a bottle of red wine imported from Morrow. As he entered the apartment, the telephone rang. He froze at the sound, did not at first recognize it. Phones did not often ring in such an old and sleeping city. Then, as if awakened from dream, he dropped the bag. He walked into the kitchen, picked up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo?" he said. "h.e.l.lo?" No response, only a low splas.h.i.+ng gurgle of water in the background, so he said, "Who is this?"

Like an imperfect echo, refracted by the corrosion of static, a voice replied, "h.e.l.lo. Is this Henry? Henry, is that you?"

A vague disappointment settled into his stomach like a smooth, gray stone. "No. It's not. I'm sorry-you have a wrong number."

"But I have no other number. This is the only number." A distressed tone had entered her voice. Such an achingly beautiful voice even without the new element of loss, even through the background interference.

"I'm sorry," he forced himself to say. "I'm not Henry." I wish I was, Belacqua thought to himself, but I'm not even sure I'm Belacqua.

The static raged, faded, raged, as the woman said, "Can you connect me to Henry?"

"I don't know Henry," he said, a hint of desperation in his voice, "but if I did, I'd gladly connect you."

The woman began to weep. Such lovely weeping. He felt himself start to reach out through the phone line to comfort her. The whine of static stopped him. Now he listened to her and did not dare to interrupt.

"We've run out of time," she said. "There is no time. I can't call again. They're coming now. I have to give you the message and leave here. It's very important . . . They come up through the floor. If you've got metal floors, they come up even through the steel. They sneak around in your rooms at night. If they don't like you, you're dead, Henry."

"But-"

"Please. Don't say a word. I know what you want to say, but please don't say it. You shouldn't say it. Here is the message: I delivered the last package to X last week. I'm to explain the writing was fine and the lock has been picked. He can find me if he tries. Make him try."

"I'll make him try," he said, resigned to his role. "I have the message. But tell me one thing. What is your name? Please tell me your name. Maybe I can help you. Please . . . "

Any answer she might have given was drowned out by the maniacal grinding of unseen engines of the night. The lapping of water against a dock. The clacking of keys against paper.

For a long time afterwards, he sat in semi-darkness, puffing on a cigar. The bag with his dinner in it lay forgotten by the open apartment door, the broken wine bottle leaking red wetness into the hall. It was the longest telephone conversation he had had in months. With a complete stranger. He watched the spark from the tip of his cigar. His skin felt tight, uncomfortable. His head was a mortar balanced atop a pestle. His fingers around the cigar were thick and slow. And yet, his heart beat as delicately as that of a stunned thrush he had once found on his way to the theater.

He could make no sense of it, all through the night. What could he do? Why should he do anything? But in the morning he left a message for Henry and the woman on a note card at the central telephone exchange. So many lines got crossed that they had set up a special series of bulletin boards devoted to chronicling that very problem. He left the note card impaled on a thumbtack, a white moth lost amongst all the other white moths. When he looked back after having walked several paces, the message had disappeared into the blur of all the other distressed signals of miscommunication.

The very next day, he became Belacqua again and stalked the stage as if he owned a very small portion of it. He opened his mouth and out leapt The Lines, crisp and insignificant as ever. As he gazed through the sparkling glare, past the frantic insectile movements of the orchestra, he wondered if the woman sat in one of those seats, or had attended some past performance. He felt helpless, lost, alone.

The next weekend, he visited the message board. His message was still pinned there, writhing in the wind. No one had written a reply.

One day the city froze over, the snow falling in m.u.f.fled flakes. The lizards turned white, developed protective skin over their eyes, and grew thick fur. Lit by holiday lamps even on sunny days, the hotel took on an odd glow, a blanched light usually found only in paintings. He and Belacqua both thought it sad. He imagined the surprised gasping of the fish as they drowned on snow, their scales tipped with frost. The screams of the swans on the river, their legs trapped in the ice. (His silent screams at the sight of the unchanged message board.) The seasons had become strange in Ambergris. The seasons did not know how to change, just as the telephones did not know how to connect.

In the midst of this, he came down with a fever that burrowed into his head like the most terrible word for torment. His limbs on fire, he trudged to the theater and donned his ridiculous costume. All through the performance, which he remembered only as a blur of sequins and song, his head ached and his eyes smoldered as if with smoke.

Afterwards, mumbling his lines under his breath, he put his street clothes back on and drifted out the theater's back entrance. The snow came down in clumps and clots. Not a single leaf had survived on the trees lining the avenue. The lamps had frosted over, trapping the light inside them. The sky resembled a writer's idea of the worst kind of gray: streaked with shadow, shot through with darker shades. He trembled in the cold, breathed the sting of it into his lungs. The fever had worked so far into him that he had succ.u.mbed to a fatigued restlessness. He could not return to his apartment. He could not stand still. The message board. He would check it again, although only a day had pa.s.sed since the last time.

As he set off down the avenue, the fever lent everything he pa.s.sed a terrible clarity. The polished bra.s.s of a lamp post shone so brightly it hurt his eyes. A boy dragged a wooden wagon past him and the dirty wheels revealed the inner mysteries of their polished grain to him. The pink faces of pa.s.sersby ate into his mind with a cruel precision. He refused to grant them a secret life; he could forgive none of them for what he had done to himself. Yet he allowed himself this lie: he decided as he walked that he would never give up his quest to find the woman. He would return to the message board again and again until the thrush that was his heart could no longer bear it.

His sense of despair so deep he would have drowned had he not already frozen, he approached the snow-flecked bulletin board. He found his message readily enough, faded around the edges, gray with ash, ink smeared but legible: THIS MESSAGE IS FOR HENRY AND FOR THE WOMAN WHO CALLED ME. HENRY: THE LAST PACKAGE HAS BEEN SENT. THE WRITING IS FINE BUT THE LOCK HAS BEEN PICKED. TO THE WOMAN: I TALKED TO YOU ON THE TELEPHONE. I'D LIKE TO TALK TO YOU AGAIN. PLEASE GIVE ME SOME WAY TO CONTACT YOU. YOU HAVE A VERY BEAUTIFUL VOICE.

A chill slipped over him, extinguis.h.i.+ng the fever. No one had written on it. No one would ever write on it. But then his roving gaze found another message on a card next to his own. It was new. It had no snow on it. The ink was still bright with the memory of forming words.

HE IS NOT A CHARACTER. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN A STORY. NOW THAT WE HAVE FILLED HIM UP, WE RELEASE HIM. LET HIM BECOME WHATEVER HE WILL BECOME. LET HIM NO LONGER BE WRITTEN. X.

He stood there, looking up at the message. Was it meant for him? It could have been pure coincidence, as peripheral to his existence as the telephone call. It could have meant nothing. But even knowing this, he felt something loosen within him, thawing, as he read the words. He is not a character. This has never been a story. "Belacqua" began to fade away, and with him the lines, the costume, the opera. His father's face. The woman's voice.

He blinked back tears as he read the message over and over again, memorizing it. His fingers curled around the crumpled piece of paper in his pocket. The edges cut against his palm. Somehow he knew that when he took the paper out of his pocket, the words written there would be utterly, irrevocably transformed.

KING SQUID.