I was only guessing, of course. The truth is that I have no idea why the Colonel did what he did. I would like to think he's begun to pity me, but I doubt it can be as simple as that. Colonel De Vega is hardly a compa.s.sionate man, and if he suddenly wants to make my life less uncomfortable, giving me a pen is surely an odd way to go about it. A ma.n.u.script of lies would serve him well, but he can't possibly think that I'd be willing to change my story at this late date. He has already tried to make me recant, and if I didn't do it when I was nearly beaten to death, why would I do it now? What it comes down to is a matter of caution, I think, a way of preparing himself for whatever might happen next. Too many people know that I'm here for him to execute me without a trial. On the other hand, a trial is something that must be avoided at all costs a for once the case is taken to court, my story will become public knowledge. By allowing me to put the story in writing, he is gathering evidence, irrefutable evidence that will justify any action he decides to take against me. a.s.sume, for example, that he goes ahead and has me shot without a trial. Once the military command in the capital gets wind of my death, they will be obliged by law to open an official inquiry, but at that point he will only have to give them the pages I've written, and he will be exonerated. No doubt they will reward him with a medal for resolving the dilemma so neatly. It could be that he has already written to them about me, in fact, and that I am holding this pen in my hand now because they instructed him to put it there. Under normal circ.u.mstances, it takes about three weeks for a letter to reach the capital from Ultima. If I have been here for a month and a half, then perhaps he received his answer today. Let the traitor put his story in writing, they probably said, and then we'll be free to dispose of him in any way we like.

That is one possibility. It could be that I'm exaggerating my importance, however, and that the Colonel is merely playing with me. Who knows if he hasn't decided to amuse himself with the spectacle of my suffering? Distractions are scarce in a town like Ultima, and unless you're resourceful enough to invent your own, you could easily lose your mind from the boredom. I can imagine the Colonel reading my words out loud to his mistress, the two of them sitting up in bed at night and laughing at my pathetic little phrases. That would be amusing, wouldn't it? Such a welcome diversion, such unholy mirth. If I keep him sufficiently entertained, perhaps he'll let me go on writing forever, and bit by bit I'll be turned into his personal clown, his own jester-scribe scribbling forth my pratfalls in endless streams of ink. And even if he should tire of my stories and have me killed, the ma.n.u.script will remain, won't it? That will be his trophy a one more skull to add to his collection.

Still, it is difficult for me to suppress the joy I am feeling at this moment. Whatever Colonel De Vega's motives might have been, whatever traps and humiliations he might have in store for me, I can honestly say that I am happier now than at any time since my arrest. I am sitting at the table, listening to the pen as it scratches along the surface of the paper. I stop. I dip the pen into the inkwell, then watch the black shapes form as I move my hand slowly from left to right. I come to the edge and then return to the other side, and as the shapes thin out, I stop once more and dip the pen into the inkwell. So it goes as I work my way down the page, and each cl.u.s.ter of marks is a word, and each word is a sound in my head, and each time I write another word, I hear the sound of my own voice, even though my lips are silent.

Immediately after the sergeant locked the door, I picked up the table and carried it to the western wall, placing it directly below the window. Then I went back for the chair, put the chair on top of the table, and hoisted myself up a first onto the table, then onto the chair. I wanted to see if I could get my fingers around the bars of the window, hoping I might be able to pull myself up and hang there long enough to catch a glimpse of the outside. No matter how hard I strained, however, the tips of my fingers fell short of the goal. Not wanting to abandon the effort, I removed my shirt and tried flinging it up toward the bars, thinking I might be able to thread it through, then grab hold of the dangling sleeves, and in that way manage to haul myself up. But the shirt wasn't quite long enough, and without a tool of some sort to guide the cloth around the metal bars (a stick, a broom handle, even a twig), I could do no more than wave the shirt back and forth, like a white flag of surrender.

In the end, it is probably just as well to put those dreams behind me. If I can't spend my days looking out the window, then I will be forced to concentrate on the task at hand. The essential thing is to stop worrying about the Colonel, to push all thoughts of him out of my mind and set down the facts as I know them. What he chooses to do with this report is strictly his business, and there is nothing I can do to influence his decision. The only thing I can do is tell the story. Given the story I have to tell, that will be difficult enough.

Mr. Blank pauses for a moment to rest his eyes, to run his fingers through his hair, to ponder the meaning of the words he has just read. When he thinks about the narrator's failed attempt to climb up and look out the window, he suddenly remembers his own window, or, more precisely, the window shade that covers the window, and now that he has a means of traveling over there without having to stand up, he decides that this is the moment to lift the shade and have a peek outdoors. If he can take stock of his surroundings, perhaps some memory will come back to him to help explain what he is doing in this room; perhaps the mere glimpse of a tree or the cornice of a building or a random patch of sky will furnish him with an insight into his predicament. He therefore temporarily abandons his reading of the typescript to journey toward the wall in which the window is located. When he reaches his destination, he thrusts out his right hand, takes hold of the bottom of the shade, and gives it a quick tug, hoping to engage the spring that will send the shade flying upward. It is an old shade, however, and much of its bounce has been lost, and rather than ascend to reveal the window behind it, it sags down several inches below the sill. Frustrated by this botched attempt, Mr. Blank tugs harder and longer the second time, and just like that, the shade decides to act like a proper shade and goes rolling up to the top of the window.

Imagine Mr. Blank's disappointment when he peers through the window and sees that the shutters have been closed, blocking any possibility of looking out to discover where he is. Nor are these the cla.s.sic wooden shutters with movable slats that allow a bit of light to filter through; they are industrial-strength metal panels with no apertures of any kind, painted a dull shade of gray, with areas of rust showing through that have begun to corrode the surface. Once Mr. Blank rebounds from his shock, he understands that the situation is not as dire as he supposed. The shutters lock from within, and in order to get his fingers on the lock, all he has to do is raise the window sash to its maximum height. Then, once the latch has been unhooked, he will be able to push the shutters open and look out at the world around him. He knows that he will have to stand up from the chair to gain the leverage necessary for such an operation, but that is a small price to pay, and so he lifts his body out of the seat, checks to make sure the window is unlocked (it is), places the heels of his two hands firmly under the top bar of the sash, pauses for a moment to prepare for the exertions ahead, and then pushes for all he is worth.

Unexpectedly, the window does not budge. Mr. Blank stops to catch his breath, then tries again a with the same negative result. He suspects that the window has jammed somehow a either because of excess moisture in the air or an excess of paint that has inadvertently glued the upper and lower halves of the window together a but then, as he examines the top bar of the sash more closely, he discovers something that previously eluded his notice. Two large construction nails, almost invisible because the heads of the nails are painted over, have been hammered into the bar. One large nail to the left, one large nail to the right, and because Mr. Blank knows it will be impossible for him to extract those nails from the wood, the window cannot be opened a not now, he realizes, not later, not ever under any circ.u.mstances at all.

Proof has been given at last. Someone, perhaps several someones, has or have locked Mr. Blank in this room and is or are holding him prisoner against his will. At least that is what he concludes from the evidence of the two nails hammered into the window sash, but d.a.m.ning as that evidence might be, there is still the question of the door, and until Mr. Blank determines whether the door is locked from the outside, if indeed it is locked at all, the conclusion he has drawn could well be false. If he were thinking clearly, his next step would be to walk or wheel himself over to the door and investigate the matter at once. But Mr. Blank does not move from his spot by the window, for the simple reason that he is afraid, so afraid of what he might learn from the door that he cannot bring himself to risk a confrontation with the truth. Instead, he sits back down in the chair and decides to break the window. For whether he is locked in or not, he is above all desperate to find out where he is. He thinks about the man in the typescript he has been reading, and then wonders if he, too, won't eventually be taken outside and shot. Or, even more sinister to his imagination, if he won't be murdered right here in the room, strangled to death by the powerful hands of some thug.

There are no blunt objects in the vicinity. No hammers, for example, no broom handles or shovels, no pickaxes or battering rams, and thus even before he begins, Mr. Blank knows his effort is doomed to defeat. Nevertheless, he gives it a try, for not only is he afraid, he is angry, and in his anger he slips off his right tennis shoe, grips the toe firmly in his right hand, and starts pounding the heel against the gla.s.s. A normal window might give way under such an a.s.sault, but this is a double-paned thermal window of the strongest quality, and it scarcely trembles as the old man strikes it with his feeble weapon of rubber and canvas. After twenty-one consecutive blows, Mr. Blank gives up and lets the shoe drop to the floor. Now, both angry and frustrated, he pounds his fist against the gla.s.s several times, not wanting to let the window have the last word, but flesh and bone are no more effective in cracking the pane than the shoe was. He wonders if smashing his head against the window might not do the trick, but even though his mind is not all it should be, Mr. Blank is still lucid enough to understand the folly of inflicting grave physical harm upon himself in what is no doubt a hopeless cause. With a heavy heart, therefore, he slumps back in the chair and closes his eyes a not only afraid, not only angry, but exhausted as well.

The moment he shuts his eyes, he sees the shadow-beings marching through his head. It is a long, dimly-lit procession composed of scores if not hundreds of figures, and among them are included both men and women, both children and old people, and while some are short, others are tall, and while some are round, others are lean, and as Mr. Blank strains to listen in on them, he hears not only the sound of their footsteps but something he would liken to a groan, a barely audible collective groan rising from their midst. Where they are and where they are going he cannot say, but they seem to be tramping through a forgotten pasture somewhere, a no man's land of scrawny weeds and barren earth, and because it is so dark, and because each figure is moving forward with his or her head down, Mr. Blank cannot distinguish anyone's face. All he knows is that the mere sight of these figments fills him with dread, and once again he is overwhelmed by an implacable sense of guilt. He speculates that these people are the ones he sent off on various missions over the years, and, as was the case with Anna, perhaps some of them, or many of them, or all of them did not fare so terribly well, even to the point of being subjected to unbearable suffering and/or death.

Mr. Blank can't be sure of anything, but it strikes him as possible that there is a connection between these shadow-beings and the photographs on the desk. What if the pictures represent the same people whose faces he is unable to identify in the scene that is playing itself out in his head? If that is so, then the phantoms he is observing are not figments so much as memories, memories of actual people a for when was the last time anyone took a photograph of a person who did not exist? Mr. Blank knows there is nothing to support his theory, that it is only the wildest of wild conjectures, but there has to be some reason, he tells himself, some cause, some principle to explain what is happening to him, to account for the fact that he is in this room with these photographs and these four piles of ma.n.u.scripts, and why not investigate a little further to see if there is any truth to this blind stab in the dark?

Forgetting about the two nails hammered into the window, forgetting about the door and whether it is locked from the outside or not, Mr. Blank wheels himself over to the desk, picks up the photographs, and then puts them down directly in front of him. Anna is on top, of course, and he spends a few moments looking at her again, studying her unhappy but beautiful young face, gazing deep into the gaze of her dark, burning eyes. No, he says to himself, we were never married. Her husband was a man named David Zimmer, and now Zimmer is dead.

He puts the photograph of Anna aside and looks at the next one. It is another woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with light brown hair and steady, watchful eyes. The bottom half of her body is obscured, since she is standing in the doorway of what looks like a New York apartment with the door only partially open, as if in fact she has just opened it to welcome a visitor, and in spite of the cautious look in her eyes, a small smile is creasing the corners of her mouth. Mr. Blank feels a momentary twinge of recognition, but as he struggles to recall her name, nothing comes to him a not after twenty seconds, not after forty seconds, not after a minute. Given that he found Anna's name so quickly, he a.s.sumed he would be able to do it with the others as well. But such, apparently, is not the case.

He looks at another ten pictures with the same disappointing results. An old man in a wheelchair, as thin and delicate as a sparrow, wearing the dark gla.s.ses of the blind. A grinning woman with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, wearing a 1920s flapper dress and a cloche hat. A frighteningly obese man with an immense hairless head and a cigar jutting from his mouth. Another young woman, this one Chinese, dressed in a dancer's leotard. A dark-haired man with a waxed mustache, decked out in tails and a top hat. A young man sleeping on the gra.s.s in what looks like a public park. An older man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, lying on a sofa with his legs propped up on a pile of pillows. A bearded, scraggly-looking homeless person sitting on a sidewalk with his arms around a large mutt. A chubby black man in his sixties holding up a Warsaw telephone book from 1937a38. A slender young man sitting at a table with five cards in his hand and a stack of poker chips in front of him.

With each successive failure, Mr. Blank grows that much more discouraged, that much more doubtful about his chances with the next one a until, muttering something under his breath in such a low voice that the tape recorder cannot pick up the words, he abandons the effort and pushes the photographs aside.

He rocks back and forth in the chair for close to a minute, doing what he can to regain his mental equilibrium and put the defeat behind him. Then, without giving the matter another thought, he picks up the typescript and begins reading again: My name is Sigmund Graf. I was born forty-one years ago in the town of Luz, a textile center in the northwestern part of Faux-Lieu Province, and until my arrest by Colonel De Vega, I worked in the demographics division of the Bureau of Internal Affairs. As a young man I earned a bachelor's degree in cla.s.sical literature from All Souls University and then served as an army intelligence officer in the Southeast Border Wars, taking part in the battle that led to the unification of the Pet.i.t-Lieu and Merveil princ.i.p.alities. I was honorably discharged with the rank of captain and received a distinguished service medal for my work in intercepting and decoding enemy messages. On returning to the capital after my demobilization, I entered the Bureau as a field coordinator and researcher. At the time of my departure for the Alien Territories, I had been a member of the staff for twelve years. My last official t.i.tle was that of Deputy a.s.sistant Director.

Like every citizen of the Confederation, I have known my share of suffering, have lived through prolonged moments of violence and upheaval, and have borne the marks of loss upon my soul. I was not yet fourteen when the riots at the Sanctus Academy in Beauchamp led to the outbreak of the Faux-Lieu Language Wars, and two months after the invasion I saw my mother and younger brother burn to death during the Sacking of Luz. My father and I were among the seven thousand who took part in the exodus to the neighboring province of Neue Welt. The journey covered some six hundred miles and took more than two months to complete, and by the time we reached our destination, our number had been reduced by a third. For the last hundred miles, my father was so weak from illness that I had to carry him on my back, staggering half-blind through the mud and winter rains until we came to the outskirts of Nachtburg. For six months we begged in the streets of that gray city to keep ourselves alive, and when we were finally rescued by a loan from relatives in the north, we were on the point of starvation. Life improved for us after that, but no matter how prosperous my father became in the years that followed, he never fully recovered from those months of hardship. When he died ten summers ago at the age of fifty-six, the toll of his experiences had aged him so much that he looked like a man of seventy.

There have been other pains as well. A year and a half ago, the Bureau sent me on an expedition to the Independent Communities of Tierra Blanca Province. Less than a month after my departure, the cholera epidemic swept through the capital. Many now refer to this plague as the Blight of History, and considering that it struck just as the long and elaborately planned Unification ceremonies were about to begin, one can understand how it could be interpreted as an evil sign, a judgment on the very nature and purpose of the Confederation itself. I am not personally of that opinion, but my own life was nevertheless permanently altered by the epidemic. Cut off from all news of the city, I went about my work for the next four and a half months, traveling back and forth among the remote, mountainous communities to the south, pursuing my investigations into the various religious sects that had taken root in the area. When I returned in August, the crisis was already over a but not before my wife and fifteen-year-old daughter had disappeared. The majority of our neighbors in the Closterham District had either fled the city or succ.u.mbed to the illness themselves, but among those who had remained, not a single person could remember having seen them. The house was untouched, and nowhere in it could I find any evidence to suggest that the disease had infiltrated its walls. I made a thorough search of every room, but no secret was unveiled to me as to how or when they might have abandoned the premises. No missing clothes or jewels, no hastily discarded objects lying about the floor. The house was just as I had left it five months earlier, except that my wife and daughter were no longer in it.

I spent several weeks combing the city for clues of their whereabouts, growing increasingly desperate with each failed attempt to uncover information that would put me on their trail. I began by talking to friends and colleagues, and once I had exhausted the circle of familiars (in which I include my wife's female acquaintances, the parents of my daughter's cla.s.smates, as well as the shopkeepers and merchants of our district), I started reaching out to strangers. Armed with portraits of my wife and daughter, I questioned countless doctors, nurses, and volunteers who had worked in the makeshift hospitals and schoolrooms where the sick and dying had been cared for, but among all the hundreds of people who looked at those miniatures, not one could recognize the faces I held in my hand. In the end, there was only one conclusion to be drawn. My darlings had been carried off by the scourge. Along with thousands of other victims, they were lying in one of the ma.s.s graves on Viatic.u.m Bluff, the burial ground of the anonymous dead.

I do not mention these things in order to put myself in a sympathetic light. No one has to feel sorry for me, and no one has to make excuses for the errors I committed in the aftermath of these events. I am a man, not an angel, and if the grief that overtook me occasionally blurred my vision and led to certain lapses of conduct, that in no way should cast doubt on the truth of my story. Before anyone tries to discredit me by pointing to those stains on my record, I come forward of my own free will and openly p.r.o.nounce my guilt to the world. These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives. In my own case, the flaws in question stemmed from pain, not malice; confusion, not cunning. I lost my way, and for several months I sought comfort in the obliterating powers of alcohol. Most nights I drank alone, sitting in the darkness of my empty house, but some nights were worse than others. Whenever I encountered one of those bad turns, my thoughts would begin to sabotage me, and before long I would be choking on my own breath. My head would fill with images of my wife and daughter, and again and again I would see their mud-splattered bodies being lowered into the ground, again and again I would see their naked limbs entwined among the limbs of other corpses in the hole, and suddenly the darkness of the house would become too much to bear. I would venture out into public places, hoping to break the spell of those images in the noise and tumult of crowds. I frequented taverns and alehouses, and it was in one of those establishments that I did the most damage to myself and my reputation. The incident occurred on a Friday night in November when a man named Giles McNaughton picked a quarrel with me in the Auberge des Vents. McNaughton claimed that I attacked him first, but eleven witnesses testified otherwise in court, and I was acquitted of all charges. It was no more than a small victory, however, for the fact remained that I had broken the man's arm and shattered his nose, and I never would have responded with such vehemence if I hadn't been going to h.e.l.l by way of drink. The jury found me innocent, judging that I had acted in legitimate self-defense, but that did not remove the stigma of the trial itself a nor the scandal that broke out when it was discovered that a ranking member of the Bureau of Internal Affairs had been engaged in a b.l.o.o.d.y barroom brawl. Within hours of the verdict, rumors began circulating that officials from the Bureau had bribed certain members of the jury to vote in my favor. I have no knowledge of any corrupt dealings on my behalf, but I would tend to dismiss those accusations as mere gossip. What I do know for certain is that I had never seen McNaughton before that night. He, on the other hand, knew enough about me to address me by name, and when he approached my table and began to talk about my wife, suggesting that he was privy to information that would help solve the mystery of her disappearance, I told him to go away. The man was after money, and one look at his mottled, unhealthy face convinced me that he was a fraud, an opportunist who had got wind of my tragedy and meant to turn a profit from it. McNaughton apparently didn't like being dismissed in such a perfunctory manner. Instead of excusing himself, he sat down in the chair next to mine and angrily grabbed hold of my vest. Then, pulling me forward until our faces were almost touching, he leaned into me and said, What's the matter, citizen? Are you afraid of the truth? His eyes were full of rage and contempt, and because we were so close to each other, those eyes were the only objects in my field of vision. I could feel the hostility flowing through his body, and an instant later I felt it pa.s.s directly into mine. That was when I went after him. Yes, he had touched me first, but the moment I started to fight back, I wanted to hurt him, to hurt him as badly as I could.

That was my crime. Take it for what it was, but don't let it interfere with the reading of this report. Trouble comes to all men, and each man makes his peace with the world in his own way. If the force I used against McNaughton that night was unwarranted, the greater wrong was the pleasure I took in using that force. I do not pardon my actions, but considering my state of mind during that period, it is remarkable that the incident in the Auberge des Vents was the only one in which I did harm to another person. All the other harm was inflicted upon myself, and until I learned to curb my desire for drink (which was in fact a desire for death), I ran the risk of utter annihilation. In the course of time, I managed to take hold of myself again, but I confess that I am no longer the man I used to be. If I have gone on living, it is largely because my work at the Bureau has given me a reason to live. Such is the irony of my predicament. I am accused of being an enemy of the Confederation, and yet for the past nineteen years there has been no servant more loyal to the Confederation than myself. My record shows that, and I am proud to have lived in an age that allowed me to partic.i.p.ate in such a vast human endeavor. My work in the field has taught me to love the truth above all else, and therefore I have cleared the air pertaining to my sins and transgressions, but that does not mean I can accept guilt for a crime I did not commit. I believe in what the Confederation stands for, and I have pa.s.sionately defended it with my words, my deeds, and my blood. If the Confederation has turned against me, it can only mean that the Confederation has turned against itself. I cannot hope for life anymore, but if these pages should fall into the hands of someone with sufficient strength of heart to read them in the spirit with which they were written, then perhaps my murder will not have been an entirely useless act.

Far off in the distance, beyond the room, beyond the building in which the room is located, Mr. Blank again hears the faint cry of a bird. Distracted by the sound, he looks up from the page in front of him, temporarily abandoning the dolorous confessions of Sigmund Graf. A sudden feeling of pressure invades his stomach, and before Mr. Blank can decide whether to call that feeling one of pain or simple discomfort, his intestinal tract bugles forth an ample, resonant fart. Ho ho, he says out loud, grunting with pleasure. Hopalong Ca.s.sidy rides again! Then he tips back in the chair, closes his eyes, and begins to rock, soon lapsing into one of those dull, trance-like states in which the mind is emptied of all thoughts, all emotions, all connection to the self. Thus trapped in his reptilian stupor, Mr. Blank is, as it were, absent, or at least momentarily cut off from his surroundings, which means that he does not hear the hand that has begun knocking on the door. Worse than that, he does not hear the door open, and therefore, even though someone has entered the room, he is still in the dark as to whether the door is locked from the outside or not. Or soon will be still in the dark, once he emerges from his trance.

Someone taps him on the shoulder, but before Mr. Blank can open his eyes and swivel around in the chair to see who it is, that person has already begun to speak. From the timbre and intonation of the voice, Mr. Blank instantly recognizes that it belongs to a man, but he is perplexed by the fact that it is talking to him in what sounds like a c.o.c.kney accent.

I'm sorry, Mr. Blank, the man says to him. I knocked and knocked, and when you didn't open the door, I thought I should come in and see if anything was wrong.

Mr. Blank now swivels around in the chair and takes a close look at his visitor. The man appears to be in his early fifties, with neatly combed hair and a small brown mustache with flecks of gray in it. Neither short nor tall, Mr. Blank says to himself, but more on the short side than the tall, and from his erect, almost ramrod posture as he stands there in his tweed suit, he looks like a military man of some kind, or perhaps a lower-level civil servant.

And you are? Mr. Blank asks.

Flood, sir. First name James. Middle name Patrick. James P. Flood. Don't you remember me?

Dimly, only dimly.

The ex-policeman.

Ah. Flood, the ex-policeman. You were going to pay me a visit, weren't you?

Yes, sir. Exactly, sir. That's why I'm here. I'm paying you the visit now.

Mr. Blank casts his eyes about the room, looking for a chair so he can offer Flood a place to sit, but apparently the only chair in the room is the one he now occupies himself.

Something wrong? Flood asks.

No, no, Mr. Blank replies. I'm just looking for another chair, that's all.

I can always sit on the bed, Flood answers, gesturing to the bed. Or, if you're feeling up to it, we could go to the park across the way. No shortage of benches there.

Mr. Blank points down at his right foot and says: I'm missing a shoe. I can't go outside with only one shoe.

Flood turns around and immediately spots the white tennis shoe on the floor below the window. There's the other one, sir. We could get it back on you in two shakes of a cat.

A cat? What are you talking about?

Just an expression, Mr. Blank. No harm intended. Flood pauses for a moment, looks back at the shoe on the floor, and then says: Well, what about it? Should we put it on or not?

Mr. Blank lets out a long, weary sigh. No, he says, with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, I don't want to put it on. I'm sick of these G.o.dd.a.m.ned shoes. If anything, I'd rather take the other one off, too.

The moment these words escape his mouth, Mr. Blank is heartened to realize that such an act falls within the realm of possibility, that in this one trifling instance he can take matters into his own hands. Without a moment's hesitation, he therefore bends down and removes the sneaker from his left foot.

Ah, that's better, he says, lifting his legs and wiggling his toes in the air. Much better. And I'm still dressed all in white, aren't I?

Of course you are, Flood says. What's so important about that?

Never mind, says Mr. Blank, waving off Flood's question as of no account. Just sit down on the bed and tell me what you want, Mr. Flood.

The former inspector from Scotland Yard lowers himself onto the foot of the mattress, positioning his body in the left-hand quadrant in order to align his face with the face of the old man, who is sitting in the chair with his back to the desk, roughly six feet away. Flood clears his throat, as if searching for the appropriate words to start with, and then, in a low voice trembling with anxiety, he says: It's about the dream, sir.

The dream? Mr. Blank asks, confounded by Flood's statement. What dream?

My dream, Mr. Blank. The one you mentioned in your report on Fanshawe.

Who's Fanshawe?

You don't remember?

No, Mr. Blank declares in a loud, irritable voice. No, I don't remember Fanshawe. I can hardly remember anything. They're pumping me full of pills, and nearly everything is gone now. Most of the time, I don't even know who I am. And if I can't remember myself, how do you expect me to remember this ... this ...

Fanshawe.

Fanshawe ... And who, pray tell, is he?

One of your operatives, sir.

You mean someone I sent out on a mission?

An extremely perilous mission.

Did he survive?

No one is sure. But the prevailing opinion is that he's no longer with us.

Groaning softly to himself, Mr. Blank covers his face with his hands and whispers: Another one of the d.a.m.ned.

Excuse me, Flood interjects, I didn't catch what you said.

Nothing, Mr. Blank replies in a louder voice. I said nothing.

At that point, the conversation stops for several moments. Silence reigns, and in that silence Mr. Blank imagines that he hears the sound of wind, a powerful wind blowing through a stand of trees somewhere near, quite near, but whether that wind is real or not he cannot say. All the while, Flood's eyes remain fixed on the old man's face. When the silence has become unbearable, he at last makes a timid venture to resume the dialogue. Well? he says.

Well what? Mr. Blank replies.

The dream. Can we talk about the dream now?

How can I talk about another man's dream if I don't know what it is?

That's just the problem, Mr. Blank. I have no memory of it myself.

Then I can't do anything for you, can I? If neither one of us knows what happened in your dream, there's nothing to talk about.

It's more complicated than that.

Hardly, Mr. Flood. It's very simple.

That's only because you don't remember writing the report. If you concentrate now, I mean really focus your mind on it, maybe it will come back to you.

I doubt it.

Listen. In the report you wrote on Fanshawe, you mention that he was the author of several unpublished books. One of them was ent.i.tled Neverland. Unfortunately, except for concluding that certain events in the book were inspired by similar events in Fanshawe's life, you say nothing about the subject, nothing about the plot, nothing about the book at all. Only one brief aside a written in parentheses, I might add a which reads as follows. I quote from memory: (Montag's house in chapter seven; Flood's dream in chapter thirty). The point being, Mr. Blank, that you must have read Neverland yourself, and in that you're one of the only people in the world to have done so, I would deeply appreciate it, appreciate it from the very bottom of my miserable heart, if you would make an effort to recall the content of that dream.

From the way you talk about it, Neverland must be a novel.

Yes, sir. A work of fiction.

And Fanshawe used you as a character?

Apparently so. There's nothing strange about that. From what I understand, writers do it all the time.

Maybe they do, but I don't see why you should get so worked up about it. The dream never really happened. It's nothing but words on a page a pure invention. Forget about it, Mr. Flood. It's not important.

It's important to me, Mr. Blank. My whole life depends on it. Without that dream, I'm nothing, literally nothing.

The pa.s.sion with which the normally reserved ex-policeman delivers this last remark a a pa.s.sion provoked by the sting of a genuine, soul-rending despair a strikes Mr. Blank as nothing short of hilarious, and for the first time since the opening words of this account, he bursts out laughing. As one might expect, Flood takes offense, for no one enjoys having his feelings trampled upon in such a heartless manner, least of all someone as fragile as Flood is at this moment.

I resent that, Mr. Blank, he says. You have no right to laugh at me.

Maybe not, Mr. Blank says, once the spasm in his chest has subsided, but I couldn't help it. You take yourself so d.a.m.ned seriously, Flood. It makes you look ridiculous.

I might be ridiculous, Flood says, with anger rising in his voice, but you, Mr. Blank ... you're cruel ... cruel and indifferent to the pain of others. You play with people's lives and take no responsibility for what you've done. I'm not going to sit here and bore you with my troubles, but I blame you for what's happened to me. I most sincerely blame you, and I despise you for it.

Troubles? Mr. Blank says, suddenly softening his tone, doing his best to show some sympathy. What kind of troubles?

The headaches for one thing. Being forced into early retirement for another. Bankruptcy for yet another. And then there's the business with my wife, or rather my ex-wife, not to speak of my children, who no longer want anything to do with me. My life is in ruins, Mr. Blank. I walk around the world like a ghost, and sometimes I question whether I even exist. Whether I've ever existed at all.

And you think learning about that dream is going to solve all this? It's highly doubtful, you know.

The dream is my only chance. It's like a missing part of me, and until I find it, I'll never really be myself again.

I don't remember Fanshawe. I don't remember reading his novel. I don't remember writing the report. I wish I could help you, Flood, but the treatment they're giving me has turned my brain into a lump of rusty iron.

Try to remember. That's all I ask of you. Try.

As Mr. Blank looks into the eyes of the shattered ex-policeman, he notices that tears have begun to roll down his cheeks. Poor devil, Mr. Blank says to himself. For a moment or two he considers whether to ask Flood to help him locate the closet, for he remembers now that Flood was the one who mentioned it on the phone earlier that morning, but in the end, after weighing the pros and cons of making such a request, he decides against it. Instead he says: Please forgive me, Mr. Flood. I'm sorry I laughed at you.

Now Flood is gone, and once again Mr. Blank is alone in the room. In the aftermath of their disturbing encounter, the old man feels grumpy and out of sorts, wounded by the unjust and belligerent accusations he was subjected to. Still, not wanting to squander any opportunity to increase his knowledge of his present circ.u.mstances, he swivels around in the chair until he is facing the desk, then reaches out for the pad and the ballpoint pen. He understands enough at this point to know that unless he writes it down at once, the name will soon fly out of his head, and he doesn't want to run the risk of forgetting it. He therefore opens the pad to the first page, picks up the pen, and adds another entry to his list: James P. Flood Anna David Zimmer Peter Stillman, Jr.

Peter Stillman, Sr.

Fanshawe In writing Fanshawe's name, it occurs to him that a second name was mentioned during Flood's visit as well, a name he heard in a.s.sociation with the reference to Flood's dream in chapter thirty of the book, but grapple as he does to recall what it was, he cannot come up with the answer. Something to do with chapter seven, he says to himself, something to do with a house, but the rest is a blank in Mr. Blank's mind. Galled by his own inadequacy, he nevertheless decides to put down something, hoping the name will come back to him at some future moment. The list now reads as follows: James P. Flood Anna David Zimmer Peter Stillman, Jr.

Peter Stillman, Sr.

Fanshawe Man with house As Mr. Blank puts down the pen, a word begins resounding in his head, and for several moments after that, as the word continues to echo within him, he senses that he is on the brink of a serious breakthrough, a crucial turning point that will help clarify something about what the future has in store for him. The word is park. He remembers now that shortly after entering the room, Flood suggested they hold their conversation in the park across the way. If nothing else, that would seem to contradict Mr. Blank's previous a.s.sertion that he is being held captive, confined to the s.p.a.ce in which these four walls surround him, blocked forever from sallying forth into the world. He is somewhat encouraged by this thought, but he also knows that even if he is allowed to visit the park, that does not necessarily prove he is free. Perhaps such visits are possible only under strict supervision, and once Mr. Blank has savored a welcome dose of sunlight and fresh air, he is promptly led back to the room, whereupon he is again held prisoner against his will. He finds it a pity that he did not have the presence of mind to question Flood about the park a in order to determine whether it is a public park, for example, or merely some wooded or gra.s.sy area that belongs to the building or inst.i.tution or asylum in which he is now living. More important, he realizes for what must be the umpteenth time in the past several hours that it all comes down to the nature of the door, and whether it is locked from the outside or not. He closes his eyes and strains to recall the sounds he heard after Flood left the room. Was it the sound of a bolt sliding shut, the sound of a key turning in a cylinder plug, or simply the click of a latch? Mr. Blank cannot remember. By the time the conversation with Flood came to an end, he was so agitated by that disagreeable little man and his whining recriminations that he was too distracted to be paying attention to such petty concerns as locks and bolts and doors.

Mr. Blank wonders if the moment hasn't finally come to investigate the matter for himself. Afraid though he might be, would it not be better to learn the truth once and for all instead of living in a state of perpetual uncertainty? Perhaps, he says to himself. And then again, perhaps not. Before Mr. Blank can decide whether he has the courage to travel over to the door at last, a new and more urgent problem suddenly a.s.serts itself a what might most accurately be called an urgent urge. Pressure has once again begun to build in Mr. Blank's body. Unlike the earlier episode, which was situated in the general area of his stomach, this one appears in a spot several inches lower, in the southernmost region of Mr. Blank's belly. From long experience with such matters, the old man understands that he has to pee. He considers traveling over to the bathroom in the chair, but knowing that the chair will not fit through the bathroom doorway, and further knowing that he cannot execute the pee while sitting in the chair, that a moment will inevitably come when he will have to stand up (if only to sit down again on the toilet seat if he is attacked by another rush of dizziness), he decides to make the journey on foot. He therefore rises from the chair, pleased to note as he does so that his equilibrium is steady, with no signs of the vertigo that plagued him earlier. What Mr. Blank has forgotten, however, is that he is no longer wearing the white tennis shoes, not to speak of no longer wearing the black slippers, and that there is nothing on his feet anymore but the white nylon socks. In that the material of those socks is exceedingly thin, and in that the wooden floor is exceedingly smooth, Mr. Blank discovers after the first step that it is possible to slide his way forward a not with the rasping shuffle of the slippers, but as if he were moving along on ice skates.

A new form of pleasure has become available to him, and after two or three experimental glides between the desk and the bed, he concludes that it is no less enjoyable than rocking back and forth and spinning around in the chair a perhaps even more so. The pressure in his bladder is mounting, but Mr. Blank delays his trip to the bathroom in order to prolong his turn on the imaginary ice by a few moments, and as he skates around the room, now lifting one foot into the air, now the other, or else floating along with both feet on the floor, he again returns to the distant past, not as far back as the era of Whitey the rocking horse or the mornings when he would sit in his mother's lap as she dressed him on the bed, but a long while ago just the same: Mr. Blank in his high middle boyhood, roughly ten years old, perhaps eleven, but on no account as advanced as twelve. It's a cold Sat.u.r.day afternoon in January or February. The pond in the little town where he grew up has frozen over, and there is the young Mr. Blank, who was then referred to as Master Blank, skating hand in hand with his first love, a girl with green eyes and reddish brown hair, long reddish brown hair tousled by the wind, her cheeks red from the cold, her name now forgotten, but beginning with the letter S Mr. Blank says to himself, he is certain of that a perhaps Susie, he thinks, or Samantha or Sally or Serena, but no, none of those, and yet no matter, for in that it was the first time he ever held a girl's hand, what he remembers most keenly now is the sensation of having entered a new world, a world in which holding a girl's hand was a good to be desired above all others, and such was his ardor for this young creature whose name began with the letter S that once they stopped skating and sat down on a tree stump at the edge of the pond, Master Blank was bold enough to lean forward and kiss her on the lips. For reasons that both baffled and wounded him at the time, Miss S. burst out laughing, turned away her head, and rebuked him with a sentence that has stayed with him ever since a even now, in his present abject circ.u.mstances, when all is not right in his head and so many other things have vanished: Don't be silly. For the object of his affections understood nothing of such matters, being but ten or eleven years old and not yet ripened to the point where amorous advances from a member of the opposite s.e.x would have any meaning for her. And so, rather than respond to Master Blank's kiss with a kiss of her own, she laughed.

The rebuff lingered for days afterward, causing such pain in his soul that one morning, noticing her son's grim demeanor, his mother asked him what was wrong. Mr. Blank was still young enough to feel no compunctions about confiding in his mother, and therefore he told her the full story. To which she replied: Don't worry, there are other pebbles on the sh.o.r.e. It was the first time Mr. Blank had heard the expression, and he found it curious that girls should be compared to pebbles, which they in no way resembled, he felt, at least not in his experience. Nevertheless, he grasped the metaphor, but in spite of understanding what his mother was trying to tell him, he disagreed with her, since pa.s.sion is and always will be blind to all but one thing, and as far as Mr. Blank was concerned, there was only one pebble on the sh.o.r.e that counted, and if he couldn't have that one, he wasn't interested in any of the others. Time changed all that, of course, and as the years went on he came to see the wisdom of his mother's remark. Now, as he continues to glide around the room in his white nylon socks, he wonders how many pebbles there have been since then. Mr. Blank can't be sure, for his memory is nothing if not defective, but he knows there are dozens, perhaps even scores of them a more pebbles in his past than he can possibly count, right up to and including Anna, the long-lost girl of so many years ago, rediscovered this very day on the infinite sh.o.r.e of love.

These musings fly through Mr. Blank's head in a matter of seconds, perhaps twelve, perhaps twenty, and all the while, as the past wells up within him, he struggles to maintain his concentration so as not to lose his balance as he skates around the room. Short as those seconds may be, however, a moment comes when the bygone days overtake the present, and instead of thinking and moving at the same time, Mr. Blank forgets that he is moving and focuses exclusively on his thoughts, and not long after that, perhaps less than a second, two seconds at most, his feet slip out from under him and he falls to the floor.

Luckily, he does not land on his head, but in all other respects the tumble qualifies as a nasty spill. Pitching backward into the void as his stockinged feet struggle to gain a purchase on the slippery wooden planks, he thrusts his hands out behind him in the vain hope of softening the impact, but he nevertheless. .h.i.ts the floor smack on his tailbone, which sends forth a cascade of volcanic fire through his legs and torso, and given that he has also fallen on his hands, his wrists and elbows are suddenly ablaze as well. Mr. Blank writhes around on the floor, too stunned even to feel sorry for himself, and as he wrestles to absorb the pain that has engulfed him, he forgets to contract the muscles in and around his p.e.n.i.s, which he has been doing for the last little while as he skated into his past. For Mr. Blank's bladder is full to bursting, and without making a conscious effort to hold it in, as it were, he is on the verge of producing a shameful and embarra.s.sing accident. But the pain is too much for him. It has pushed all other thoughts out of his mind, and once he begins to relax the aforementioned muscles, he feels his urethra give way to the inevitable, and a moment later he is p.i.s.sing in his pants. No better than an infant, he says to himself as the warm urine flows out of him and runs down his leg. Then he adds: Mewling and puking in his nurse's arms. And then, once the deluge has ceased, he shouts at the top of his lungs: Idiot! Idiot old man! What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?

Now Mr. Blank is in the bathroom, stripping off his pants, underwear, and socks, all of which have been drenched and yellowed by his involuntary loss of control. Still rattled by the blunder, his bones still aching from the crash to the floor, he flings each article of clothing angrily into the tub, then takes the white washcloth Anna used for the sponge bath earlier and wipes down his legs and crotch with warm water. As he does so, his p.e.n.i.s begins to swell from its present flaccid state, rising from the perpendicular to a forty-five-degree angle. In spite of the multiple indignities Mr. Blank has been subjected to in the past minutes, he can't help feeling consoled by this development, as if it somehow proved that his honor was still intact. After a few more tugs, his old companion is sticking out from his body at a full ninety-degree thrust, and in this way, preceded by his second erection of the morning, Mr. Blank exits the bathroom, walks over to the bed, and climbs into the pajama bottoms that Anna stowed under the pillow. Mr. Bigshot has already begun to shrink by the time the old man pushes his feet into his leather slippers, but what else can be expected in the absence of further friction or mental stimulation of some kind? Mr. Blank feels more comfortable in the pajama bottoms and slippers than he did in the white trousers and tennis shoes, but at the same time he can't help feeling guilty about these sartorial changes, for the fact is that he is no longer dressed all in white, which means that he has broken his promise to Anna a as per the demand of Peter Stillman, Junior a and this pains him deeply, even more deeply than the physical pain that is still reverberating through his body. As he shuffles over to the desk to resume his reading of the typescript, he resolves to make a clean breast of it the next time he sees her, hoping she will find it in her heart to forgive him.