by Jeff Noon
“More like X the unknown.”
“It’s like this,” she said. “You’re either a tale talker, or a tale stalker.”
“Is this your own idea?”
“Pretty much. But I stole some bits and pieces.”
He rested his head against the back of the chair and said, “Tell me about it.”
“Right then, it goes like this. If you’re a stalker, OK, all you’re ever doing is running around after someone else’s story. And that’s fine, it’s a way of life, but it’s not brilliant. But if you’re a tale talker, well then, your story is your own, you’re making it up as you go along. You see how it is? You’re in charge.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple. Not in my business.”
“Because?”
“Because I’m always following people, I’m always looking for clues, flaws, cracks in the armor. What else can I do but chase after someone else’s story?”
They were speaking quietly, both of them. She looked at him closely in the lamplight.
“I used to think the same about my job, but now, it’s all different.”
“Why?”
“I found a voice,” she answered. “It was my own voice. I didn’t even know I had it. It was hidden away, well hidden. I hid it deep inside myself, ever since childhood. But when I found this voice again, a year or so back, well, it turned into a poem.” She smiled. “One line of poetry, and then another. I didn’t even know what it meant, not really. But the words flowed easily, once I’d started. One poem. Two. Another. I couldn’t stop. On and on it went, like a river flowing.”
“What do you write about?”
Her mouth downturned. “Well, nothing anymore.”
“You stopped?”
“My work was stolen. I used to carry it around with me in my bag, a blue notebook filled with words, scribblings, but then someone took it from me.”
“A man, you mean?”
“Of course a man.” She tutted. “He took the bag and everything in it. Well, he certainly got his money’s worth, that night.”
“And since then?”
“Nothing. Not a word. I mean, I’ve tried and everything, but nothing happens. I just haven’t got the inclination anymore.” She paused. “The pen is dry.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes, isn’t it.”
“So what did you write about, when you were writing?”
“Well, let’s see.” She put a finger to her brow. “First of all, my life, I guess. I’d write about that. What I saw on the street every night, in the dark, and in men’s eyes when they’re lying in my arms.” She thought a little more. “And then sometimes I’d write about dreams, broken or otherwise. And things that people said to me, or that I overheard, the words. But more than that: the things that are left unsaid, when two people get really close, you know? And other times I’d write about the city, the political situation, this side fighting that side, words against words for control over words, endless, endless fighting.” Excitement danced in her eyes. “Other things. Oh, just lots of things, whatever came to mind. Items in the news, for instance, and cats and dogs, funny things I’ve seen in the daylight, people getting drunk or crying in public over their lost love, erm, what else? Cats, did I mention cats, right, right, and the secret words that people use when they think no one is listening, but of course I would never mention any names, or I’d change the names. And then at other times I’d find myself writing about my past, childhood memories, my long lost parents, whom I bless and curse in equal amounts. Oh, and the games that men and women play, and the limits of the city, where the stories drift away, where the terribly sad stories go when there’s no one left to tell them, no listeners, no reciters, only the words themselves drifting away through the trees and the fields. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” Nyquist was astonished.
Zelda caught a breath. “Well, I could go on.”
“You could read me one of your poems. If you can remember one, that is.”
She looked at his face and smiled and said, “Oh. Right then. Yes. I can do that. Maybe. Are you sure? Yes, OK then.”
She steadied herself and took a moment to relax. Then she leaned away a little as she started to recite. Her voice was soft and breathy and tender. And in the half light, in the small humid room, in the echoing space, Nyquist listened to her words.
On the edge of town
where the stories flow away,
they stand alone,
a man and a woman
covered in silence.
They walk alone
with only one word
left unspoken between them
one word unwritten.
Until, on the border
where one breath meets another
a story begins in a kiss –
here, on the edge of town
where the words flow away.
Zelda leaned forward again. She looked nervous. “I’ve never read my work to anyone before.”
“It’s good.”
“You think so?”
The poem spoke to him but he couldn’t explain why; he couldn’t articulate it.
“I’m no expert. But I liked the bit about the borderline.”
Zelda brightened. “Yes, I like that bit as well. But what does it all mean?”
“Well, you wrote it.”
“Exactly. But that’s the problem. It’s like asking a bee about the building of a hive.”
Nyquist finished his drink.
“And anyway,” she continued, “I thought you might be able to work it out. After all, isn’t that your job?”
“Poetry?”
“Like you said just now, looking for clues and secrets and the like.” She came in close. Her voice was filled with the tang of the gin.
Nyquist shook his head. “I think this story’s beyond my reach. As yet.”
“As yet? I like that. It means there might be a time…”
“For?”
“You know, when you might know… you might know what it means.”
He nodded. She smiled. They stopped speaking.
There was nothing else to say.
Their faces were close.
This close…
Only silence held them apart now, and even that was breath-filled, enough for each to feel the warmth of the other, the life of the other, on their faces, their skin, a message passed across the tiny gap between. And for a moment he felt his lips moving towards hers: it was a movement stolen from a dream, or from the poem she had just recited.
Passion in slow motion.
Now they touched.
The kiss was held sweetly between them, equally shared, and for that one long moment it felt to Nyquist as though the shadows had drawn back, further into the corners, to let a little more light into the room.
And then they parted once again, he from her, both of them looking embarrassed. Zelda stood up awkwardly. “We still haven’t been introduced properly,” she said, putting on her poshest voice. “Whatever shall I call you?”
“Nyquist.”
“No first name?”
He couldn’t help but cover up his feelings. “Read it in the papers,” he said, “when they arrest me.”
She grinned. “Nyquist. I like it. That’s a name with a past.”
“You think so?”
“It sounds a little like night quest. A journey through the darkness.”
“You don’t know how close you are to the truth.”
“The truth? Oh, I left that behind years ago.”
It was a strange thing to say. He wondered what had happened to her, to bring her to this place in life, but he didn’t ask.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Dayzone.”
“Oh my. The place with the strange mist and all that, the dusklands? You poor man.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“Now you’re lying to me.”
His lips still tasted
of her. “Why do you call them lovers?” he asked.
“That’s the character most men want to play.”
“Of course. And in this city…”
“In this city you’re nothing unless you’re in a story.”
Nyquist finished his drink. “Trouble is, I’ve only been here a short while.”
“I know. I can tell.”
“Zelda. How do you know I’m not a cold-hearted killer?”
She thought for a moment before answering; “Because I’ve met those types of men. Or at least men heading in that direction. And you’re not like that, Nyquist. It’s in the depths of the eyes…” She touched his face with her hand. “And yours have hope in them, even now, a little bit at least.”
Her sight engaged with his in the soft lamplight. She was older than he’d first assumed. He could see the lines at the corners of her eyes, the crinkles above and below, which the makeup didn’t quite hide. The long tresses of her blonde hair were dark at the roots. The skin tightened over her cheekbones whenever she smiled. Each mark on her face was a symbol on a treasure map.
Zelda knew that she was being examined. She looked at him with the same intensity.
Quietly she asked, “What brought you here?”
He told her. He told her as much as he knew, the whole sorry tale. How he’d been given the case by Antonia Linden, a woman who ran a top-flight investigative agency; how he’d followed Patrick Wellborn for four days and nights, and how he’d ended up here, in Melville Five, with his subject matter dead, dead by his own hand.
“It seemed like easy money, when I took it on.” His eyes stared ahead, seeing nothing.
“You’re scared. I can tell.”
“I’ve killed a man.” He looked away. “I need time to think, that’s all.”
He took the piece of manuscript paper from his pocket and placed it under the lamp. He had a feeling the paper was important. Wellborn had been carrying it, perhaps bringing it to the bedroom of apartment 67, where the other papers rested on the table. And he’d been so pained when he’d seen that Nyquist had torn one of the sheets in two.
There was a page number at the bottom: 49. So he had assumed there were many other such pages, all belonging to the same manuscript.
Nyquist started to read. He saw again Wellborn’s name and the line about someone telling a crooked story, but beyond that it was a muddle, so many phrases stuck together with neither rhyme nor reason. Sentences started and then broke off, and other sentences of unrelated subject and style took over halfway through. He was reading his way through the maze in a puzzle garden. But the crooked story phrase gave him an inkling: the writing itself was crooked in some way, broken apart and scattered.
“I can’t make head nor tail of it,” he said. “Everything’s jumbled up.”
“Let me read it.” She took the paper from his hands and gazed at it without speaking. He thought she might be under a spell.
“Zelda?”
Still she stared at the words, her eyes darting from one to another, filled with longing. She started to murmur to herself, and to make little cries of delight.
Nyquist took the paper off her.
“No.”
Her fingers clung to it. The paper actually started to tear.
“Zelda!”
She breathed again and relaxed. And her hand opened up. He folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket.
“What happened to you?”
Now she looked confused. “I don’t know… I don’t know…” And she looked around in a daze, as though waking from a dream.
“Where do you live?” Nyquist asked. “Which part of town?”
It took her a moment to answer. “Christie.”
“That’s not too far away. Come on.” He stood up and was already moving toward the door. “We need to get out of here.”
But she sighed and said in a whisper, “I feel so lost.”
Nyquist wavered, standing on the threshold of the room. He looked at her face, half in gloom, half aglow in the lamplight. Her voice was so resigned, so adrift on other realms, he didn’t know what to think. Doubt triggered his heart. It was bittersweet. Zelda was on his side, he felt that. He had to believe that. She was all that he had, right at this moment, his only connection to simple human kindness. Her story enfolded him, his story in hers – he was already tangled up in it, he could feel the words pulling at him.
“There’s something going on here,” he said, almost to himself. “Beyond what I know. I just need to work it out.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’ll find out why Wellborn attacked me. I’ll prove myself innocent. Self-defense.”
Zelda sighed, and then held her breath. “Shhh! Do you hear that?” she said.
The shadows whispered around them.
Words were forming.
Neither of them moved.
And then he came to her, close once more. “What is it?”
“Voices.”
“More than one?”
“Yes. Many of them.”
“Where?”
She squeezed his arm and she led the way, following the sound. They went into the hallway. Nyquist stopped at the open bedroom door and peered within at the darkness. It seemed to move – the darkness moved. There was no other way of describing it. The darkness trembled and whispered and the voices called to him.
He entered the room. The shadows hunched in the corners and clung to the ceiling. The voices called from the center of the space, from the air, disembodied. He walked forward a few more steps, expecting at any moment a hand to reach out and touch him, or to strike him, even. But the room was empty. And still the voices called, they swirled around, calling from one side and then another. He tried to listen, to discern one voice from the many, to follow the words, the exact meaning of what was being said. But the voices merged together, male, female, young and old, adult and child, and nothing could be made out, not clearly.
Zelda stood in the doorway, not daring to enter. Her voice was as soft as it could be: “What are they saying?”
He didn’t answer. The voices held him in their spell.
“It’s the ghosts,” she said. “The ghosts of all the people who have lived here over the years, lived and died.”
Her very words disturbed the air around him, and the voices fluttered madly before settling back again. It was enough to set him free from their allure, their magic charm, whatever it was. He moved back to the door and said, “We should leave.” She nodded in agreement and turned away. But Nyquist stood at the bedroom door one last time and looked back into the solid dark. Again he had the sense of the darkness waiting for him, wanting to pull him closer, to claim him. He would be one more voice lost in the tangled air, a story told forever until the great silence fell upon the Earth. The thought of this troubled him deeply and he was about to move away when one voice in particular called out, and he stopped and stared ahead.
Zelda watched him. “Let’s go,” she said, her voice as quiet as all the others.
But he remained as he was, frozen, listening. His eyes held such a look of pain that she had to stand near him and listen also. And then she heard it.
…Nyquist… Nyquist… Nyquist…
It was a woman speaking, soft and tender; calling, calling to him. Now another joined with her, this time a man, and this time whispering a different name:
Zelda… Zelda, we’re here… We’re waiting for you…
Now she too was entranced. They stood close together, not daring to move.
…We’re here… Zelda, Nyquist… We’re waiting for you… Join us…
Zelda held his arm tightly and felt his body tense up with fear. The words batted against their faces and hair and clothing, living creatures, like moths in the night air.
…We’re here… we’re waiting…
Other People’s Stories
NYQUIST WAS the worst affected. He could still hear the voice in his head, his own name being called. Zelda to
ok charge. She pulled him along. The corridor was empty but she kept looking around nervously, this way and that, expecting at any minute to see the three pursuers, whoever they might be. Wordless sounds came from Nyquist’s mouth and when she glanced back at him she could see that his eyes were glazed. His feet were dragging on the carpet. It was so bad, Zelda didn’t know what to do to help. And then a door opened a little way down the corridor and she stopped where she was, with Nyquist alongside. A man came out of the doorway. He looked to be in his thirties, with a closely shaved head and a wine-colored blemish on one side of his face. He stood there in silence, his dressing gown hanging open over striped pajamas.
“I’m sorry,” Zelda said to him. “Did we wake you?”
The man made no reply, he didn’t even look at her. He bent down to place a tin bowl on the floor just outside his door, as he made a clucking noise with his tongue. He called out, “Here, Peterson. Come on, boy.” Straight away a tabby cat darted from behind a potted plant further down the corridor and started to wolf down whatever meat or fish the bowl contained. The man smiled and patted the cat’s head. Zelda decided that both man and cat were harmless. She pulled Nyquist along until she reached the door of the elevator. They were in luck, the car was at the floor already. She pressed the button to open the doors and she and Nyquist went inside. Nyquist leaned against the wall rubbing at his face and eyes. His mouth felt dry, his throat irritated by a ticklish sensation. He wanted to gag. The voices were now inside him, he could hear them whispering in his skull.
“Which floor?” Zelda asked.
“Ground.” The one word took him an effort. “The outside.”
Zelda examined the panel. “I’m not sure which it is.”
He leaned away from the wall and almost toppled over but she caught him and held him upright. “You feel like a drunken man who still thinks he can perform.”
Nyquist glared at the wall panel, willing the buttons to come into focus.
“What floor are we on now?”
“The fourth.”
“Press the button.”
“There is none.”
“No button?”
“Not for the ground floor, no.”
Nyquist narrowed his eyes. He saw that Zelda was right: there was no button for the ground floor, only a gap below the first floor.