The Wall Clock

The wall clock clicked, watching the office, watching him at his shabby desk, where he examined pages, made annotations and corrections and placed the finished copies into a growing paper tower to his right. The others discussed their days off–mostly wasted on board games or solitary trips to the cinema, as none of them were married or had lovers. The editor could never remember his days off, unless a chimerical rain fell on the streets, or he saw a flock of enchanted black birds on the way home from the bookstore or café. The only real entertainment was to smoke in a slow, meditative way, while watching cloud formations pass overhead or the waves of the sea washing the rocks. There was precious little in the world that interested him. As his pen scurried across a page, he wondered how he had come here, into this changeless gray box, always refrigerated in a way that made his cups of black tea futile. He had nothing in common with anyone. He had not wielded a shovel long enough to impress his father; he had wielded it rather too long to be of any use to his sons or colleagues. Shovels had led to reports in work offices, and reports in work offices had led to printing offices. An old dictionary, a cigar box of newspaper clippings and a discarded typewriter led to other offices. And then, like a mouse in a simple but inescapable mousetrap, he had sunken into the endless routine of this last office, where he tried to remember the other, older world, even writing monostichs of memoranda on index cards that ended up in coat pockets or between the pages of the paperbacks he read on the trains to and from work. Once in a while, a seemingly random thing–a red streetlight in the rain or the soft arm of a brunette in a leather coat brushing or pushing against him in the crush on the train–would open a gate into a vague, dark and airy space, possibly something in his memory. For days he would ponder the significance of the omen or symptom of phenomena beyond time. The red light or the texture of the stranger’s body would be noted on an index card, only to be forgotten after nothing else materialized. In the office, the workers had the habit of discussing their mysterious wounds which came from accidents that they could not remember. A hand would have salt burns, a finger would bear minute, blood-red puncture wounds, an arm had thin, parallel cuts, as if from paper. Examinations like this always ended in laughter and words of mutual encouragement. The editor had no external wounds. Generally, he was careful with the staplers and avoided picking salt up off the streets on frozen nights. The only thing that haunted him was a strange, musical tinnitus at night and then the slow, agonizing regrowth of his spleen or other organs by day. At some point in the past, he had lost his spleen, his appendix, his gallbladder, perhaps even part of his liver. There had been years without any phantom pain or inflammation. Then one quiet day, as the office grew colder, the wall clock began to tick loudly and slowly. It was so slow it could not have possibly reflected the actual passage of time. Seconds passed and he noticed a slight prick and mild burning in his right abdomen. The tiny point of heat and pain grew slowly at about 3% an hour, from the size of a lentil to the size of a crab apple, to the size of a large plum. When he was putting on his coat, his head filled with the clicking of the wall clock, the radio static of winter rain outside, the resurging gall of stomach acid and black tea burning his throat, he could barely walk out of the office. The doctor ran tests and gave him hyosine, but the tests were inconclusive. The x-rays depicted a ghostly otherworld that reminded him of that dark and profound space beyond the red street light, beyond the soft arm of the brunette who once leaned against him on the train. Then the pain disappeared altogether, and the editor wondered about the soundness of his mind. Then one evening, the clock began to tick loudly again. A stabbing pain no larger than an asterisk or a comma began to throb in his right abdomen. Once again, it grew by only 3% an hour, until his passage to the train station was a remarkable combination of torture and sleepwalking. Just as a transient asked him for some loose change, he felt a merciless spasm roll through his body; he coughed and coughed until he spat up a plum-dark organ that could only have been his resurrected gallbladder. The blood stains flickered below the station lights, and he felt a great peace enter his body. It was gone–every last trace of pain was gone. Some days later, however, the process started all over again. The wall clock, the pain, and the vomiting of a piece of spleen or liver. Most nights, he took his hyosine and other drugs, suppressing the spasms. It would be shameful to uncover his naked organs at the office, on the train, or even at home. Once everyone was asleep, he could venture into the back alleys behind his apartment or visit the industrial strength lavatory of an obnoxious late night pub and urge himself of blood and inner matter, vomiting until he was empty and pure. One night, however, he came home, and just as he was approaching the dinner table, he began to seize and declaimed a blood splatter of broken spleen all over the cutlery, bone china, an incomplete chess game, his pale wife and his sons. The youngest cried; the older sons cast dark looks of suspicion and judgment. The wife helped him clean up the mess, and sent him out onto the balcony with a glass of rum and a cigar to contemplate the rain dripping from the pines. The second time was similar. The third time saw the beginning of a languid argument amongst the others as to which organ he had coughed up this time–whether it was the gallbladder, spleen, or fragments of liver. A shortage of hyosine prevented him from continuing his futile treatment. The editor could not afford time off; he continued to commute to work, to listen to his colleagues discuss their scars and the progress of their board games, and to scratch his pen against index cards in between spells of marking up the pages on his desk. One day, he found an old book on the life of a saint, who spoke of light beyond darkness and of great silence. It was the silence beyond the red streetlights–he was sure. He bought an icon and an electric candle. At night, the pale light and gold leaf of the icon opened the gate of the great silence beyond everything, the abundant emptiness that washed the edges of the red traffic lights and the contours of her warm arm and dark hair. The revenant viscera did not return, and if they did, it did not matter to him, for they touched the great quiet darkness as well as the missing bottles of hyosine. The wall clock itself froze in incalculable, impermeable silence that fell softly like winter rain.

The Ploughs

The mechanic came up the road of aspens and saw the old man out front with the axe, chopping wood beside a fire. The cold still misted the far mountains. The great shed to the left was open, and a lantern was burning somewhere inside. The old man pointed, and the young mechanic went into the shed, where the broken ploughs had been stored. Midday came, and the sky had cleared to a breathless blue, the white peaks shimmering beyond the empty fields waiting to be worked. The mechanic came out to find the old man, and asked him for his pay. The old man was surprised, but said he would pay when he had inspected the work. They went into the shed together, and the old man almost burst into tears. What have you done? the old man gasped. All of the ploughs are fixed—they’re all the same now, said the young mechanic proudly. It was difficult at first, said the mechanic, since you have ploughs of different sizes and makes. It took me a while to find the four that were similar and correct, and then I just worked from there, using them as models. The old man lit a cigarette and stared into the wreckage. Yes, all ten of them are indeed the same, the old man noted. And yet, only four were broken the day before.

The Days of Dust

In the morning, the silent one gathered with the others by the gate, to receive a punishment if there was one to be had and to hear instructions and curses. Throughout the day, the slave repaired the carriage wheels, swept out the stables, and was ever ready to be berated or whipped. When the shadows lengthened, he meditated on the laws and the sawdust and the spikes and wounds and the laughter of the laundress. In the evenings, the stars shimmered above the olives and cypresses as he wandered amongst their cool leaves, whispering to himself and the great world exclusively in gerundives.

The Anthology

One day, an official saw a shabby youth with large hands reading a book behind an abandoned temple. When he learned that the youth could write as well as read, he offered him a minor but unusual post in the civil service as a calligrapher. The poor youth was content to live alone in abandoned temples eating scraps, but the prospect of having some extra coins to buy books thrilled him, and he readily accepted the position. In that city there was a great courtyard with giant elms where citizens met, sold trinkets, played chess, or discussed the news from the capital or the frontier. The official set up a large bureau, a giant affair of strong, polished wood, equipped with inkstones, ink wells, brushes, bottles of water, old dictionaries, anthologies of poetry, law codes, works of philosophy and various sutras. Morning till evening, the youth—or minor calligrapher as he was now styled—would practice his penmanship and answer any simple questions from passersby. Should there be a disturbance, he would alert the guards. Should anyone need help, he would give them aid. And so the youth set to work, copying out sacred texts or promulgations, drinking tea and water, rolling and smoking the occasional cigarette, and only leaving his post for short breaks or when his shift ended at twilight, the hour of the gathering doves and sparrows. One of his first visitors was his father, who denounced him as weak for accepting such an unworthy position. Others joined in, including his betrothed, who ridiculed his handwriting, and even his brothers. Nothing could be more futile or impractical than to be a mannequin with a brush, a connoiseur of ancient texts nobody read, a mouth for a decayed empire and dynasty that nobody would follow or remember in a short period of time. The years passed, and the minor calligrapher worked among the elms and sparrows, his penmanship hardly improving. Most of his original poems or copied texts would remain unfinished, for he found that he often had to put down his brush to help an old man carry water, to get a doctor for a widow dying with consumption, to summon coroners and guards, to recite a prayer for the idiots and the mad, to write letters to appelate courts on behalf of the blind or illiterate, to sweep up fallen leaves, to clean clogged ditches, to mend sandals, to wash the dust off the pavement, to teach the urchins a few letters here and there so that they might one day read, to console the migrant barbarians begging or looking for work. The more the years passed, the more he felt exhausted and inept. Nothing had really changed; he read his books by lamplight in the abandoned temple before bed, he drank strong cups of tea and ate noodles, he dampened his brush with ink and watched his spidery characters swirl across the various grades of paper while daydreaming of the lost cities and sacred mountains to the northwest where there were said to be hidden libraries. One day, he wondered if he might not just hang himself from an elm tree or thrown his body into a well. As he thought these things, an ancient man in imperial robes approached and demanded to see what he had written in the past few years. Exhausted, embarrassed and nervous, the minor calligrapher handed him a tattered anthology of his best work from the past two decades. The poor brushwork glared off of every page, and the minor calligrapher wondered if he might not be saved from his misery by a swift decapitation. As you see, he said to the high-ranking visitor, I have not improved one whit in the past twenty years. The official looked at him. Have you forgotten me, my friend? the ancient one asked. Suddenly, the calligrapher recognized his benefactor, whom he had not seen for a quarter of a century. Weeping with shame, he bowed deeply. Why do you weep? the official asked, gently touching his shoulder. Since I appointed you, literacy has risen in this city and province, crime has decreased, and the laws of heaven and earth have been honoured by your steadfast work. Every poor character you have written or copied is the face of someone you inspired with your silent work or comforted with your helpful hands. Allow me the honour of keeping this anthology, for its calligraphy surpasses anything I have seen throughout the land.

The Wizard

It was another difficult day. A worker went into the coffeehouse to get a drink, and then stepped outside with his cup to smoke, settling at a cast iron table with two chairs. He smoked and drank his coffee, watching the trains cross the bridge, watching the buses and passengers come and go. A lunatic was leaping and crouching, leaping and crouching along the curb where the buses pulled up. He was dressed in a fine suit and good patent leather shoes. The only thing that marked him was his pallor, wild eyes, indistinct muttering and manner of walking. Not far behind him came the wizard, who looked like an old friend, gaunt and dark and feline in his black raincoat, carrying a book. The worker loved books and could not resist asking what the book was about when he drew near. It is the very book that just drove that stockbroker insane, the wizard sighed, reluctant to open the book. It is a book full of vertigo, whirlpools, circles and angles, moon phases, starlight, questions relating to questions, landscapes of wheat and milkmaids, bone-dry pine trees, unfinished sentences and abrupt silences, keys and locks, locks without keys and keys without locks, labyrinthine pear orchards, rusted wounds, robotic ghosts, and endless rivers. And then, of course, there were the winters, bears and hurricane lanterns. Would you really wish to be mad? the wizard asked. Why not? the worker laughed. The world has been mad for a long time. The wizard handed him the book, sitting down across from him at the cast iron table. The sun digressed; the shadows murmured. The worker read page after page, sucked into the skull of the words, into the very heart of the sentences that gripped him in a bittersweet trance. After he had closed the book, he thought about what he had read. Will you be going mad? the wizard asked, gesturing like a hesitant cat. The worker lit a cigarette and sighed. It was a blue dusk with a comma of moonlight. Not today, he sighed. I have to ride the 8:20 and then stop by the grocery store to bring home milk and bread for the children. Then there’s some leftover paperwork, washing dishes, and a lightbulb to replace, but thank you for the invitation. The wizard asked for a smoke, and they remained seated and awkwardly silent for a while, just smoking.

The Reader

There was a reader with rare tastes, who found the small sum of books that he wanted to read and reread. After working his first job as a youth, he spent his pay to buy these wonderful books. What little remained he used for food and clothes. Work prevented him from having the time to read. Because of his literacy and erudition, he was hired by a library, and this seemed more conducive to his heart’s desire, but there he had to catalogue books, and still had no time to read his own. By and by, he was hired as a teacher, for it was clear that he had a real gift for words. Now, it seemed he would be able to read what he wished, but now he had to read and teach what the curriculum prescribed, and none of his books were in the canon, and none of the students were in the least bit interested in his books. From there, he moved on to buying a bookstore, supposing that with a better income, he would buy himself some leisure time to read. Again, he was thwarted. None of the customers seemed interested in the books he liked; they seemed more interested in hunting for trifles and recommending the commonest things. Moreover, the government required him to read laws, tax forms and other reports that stole his time and energy. The man grew weak and the bookstore went bankrupt. The man retired to a monastery, where he hoped the silence and peace would afford him a reunion with his books, but the abbot forbade him from having his little collection delivered. In despair, he burned down the monastery, and was sent to prison in exile. In the prison, he lost weight and suffered, but the warden, chaplains and other inmates allowed him to have his small library delivered, to read to his heart’s content, and even to read to them. Although he thought the pleasure of this freedom somewhat limited, somewhat short of the glory that could have been, he accepted his lot, and contemplated his books, wondering if he had chosen the right texts, and if the texts were really the same as they were when they had first shone their dark bold ink and soft, bone-white pages.