“What are you talking about, exactly?”
He answered quickly as if he had anticipated my question. “Every three months we meet at this very spot with some new puzzle for me. Do you know that in the dreams of brutes there are things always floating around looking for attachments? Feathers for birds. Gillyflowers for plants. Children for parents. Souls for the purified.” He plonked his hands on the table and I noticed the scars on his knuckles. “And speaking of the soul, what happens to it when all the minds are joined? How can one thing exist when it becomes another?”
“I don’t know who you have mistaken me for but –”
“Nobody is interested anymore.” There was a pinch of menace in his dim-witted smile. He seemed like a man who would commit a reckless act and laugh at, for instance, the spurt of blood or the severed finger. “I, on the other hand, am different. This mysterious substance here, for instance.” He repeated the sentence with an even stronger lisp. “I am interested in the composition of things people carelessly leave around. What can it be? Did you get it from the flood? Could it be from outside?”
But for his childlike squeak, I would have assumed he was mocking me, so I told him, “I have no idea. That’s why I brought it here. I found it in my room. Besides, I don’t know what flood you are talking about.”
He thumped it on the table, leaning in, his face close to the object. Suddenly he bared his teeth and bit into it. He glanced up, the material caught between his teeth and elongating his smile. He spat it out and said, “Now that we have re-established our connection it will be ruinous if there is discord on a simple matter. Agreed?” I noticed his muscular shoulders and arms and nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s proceed. Ask me my name. C’mon, don’t keep me waiting.”
“What is your name?”
“What would you think of a man who asks the same question a hundred times yet expects a different answer each instance? But I will bite. My name is Balzac. Now ask me why I am called Balzac the Brute?”
“Okay. Why are you called Balzac the Brute?”
“My first instinct is to tell you that it’s none of your business and pound you for your impertinence, but we are sitting on opposite ends of the same table, so I will oblige. The simple answer is that I was a brute. I made that up myself, but it was you who put it in my head. Balzac the Brute.”
“Could you explain how that happened?”
He replaced the object on the table and took a deep breath. His chest swelled impressively. “It is not my intention to delve into the past, or the future for that matter, but I will oblige. As you well know, the team you created was the most powerful in the universe, but they were all, in my respectable opinion, demented. All except the Brute. He was brutish when the situation demanded and erudite when he was not provoked. I respectfully submit that he was a man like myself.”
“Can you tell me more about this team?”
“As an erudite man, I will treat your inquisitiveness as a sign of enthusiasm and say that we have undergone our training and have been waiting for eons for the magic word. In the meantime, one has absconded, another has turned invisible, a third rendered helpless and the others have been waiting in the shadows for your return. The longer we wait, the closer the brute gets. I can feel it rippling beneath my skin this very instant.” He was still smiling but the words came out as a threat. “Do you know that at one time men would take one look at people like me and whisper the word to their daughter or wife? It was common. Even if they knew nothing about me. Brr-hoot.”
“Why would they do that?”
“You are kidding me, right? It’s there in all the history books. I read tons and tons of books when I was trying to keep the beast at bay. Let me tell you something. In the beginning of everything, they were unreadable and I wondered what kind of fool would expose all his dark days to perfect strangers. To wit, I will illustrate with an example. A man who created a group of brave heroes to fight all the old gods, a noble mission if I could say so, to pummel these tight-lipped, fossilized miscreants to dust...this man, instead, decides to send his creations to do his own dirty deeds.” Looking at Balzac I felt that people who smiled while talking of violence were unpredictable and dangerous. “But I persevered. Then one night I decided to read the books as a brute would and I realized that the writer, a gangrenous miscreant himself, if you will permit me, had written his books especially for me. We were having a little rap session, just the two of us. Same with the next book. And the next and the next. After a while, I realized that all the books were created by the same person and that made the conversations easier to follow. I gobbled up the library in no time. No time! Where did you find the time to write all these books?” He got up and walked to the nearest shelf. “Bullets and Bloodstains. Soliloquy with a Silent Strangler.”
“Stranger.” I corrected him. “And it’s a library. The books are not mine. Besides, I am an artist, not a writer.”
“I will have to be disputatious,” he said. “One man hides inside another man and pretends neither is either.”
Maybe it was his exaggerated lisp, but I felt like saying it’s the sort of statement made by children. Instead I said, “I have no idea what you mean. Perhaps you can help me?”
“Now that is the kind of request that gets me thinking. Is it innocent or a double-edged sword?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“The only question before both of us here seated at opposite ends of the table is why you wrote these books and then disguised them by switching the covers. Why you have been disguising your own covers. I must conclude that you have been leaving clues that only you can understand. A puzzle with the pieces strewn about. A brute notices these things, you know.” He seemed about to smile but changed his mind and the resultant look was one that made me think somehow of a llama. “If I was still a brute, I would have gone on a rampage and dismantled the entire collection, but in my erudite state, I am more perplexed by your trickery. What would you say if I told you I could read this book in one sitting? The entire thing.” He grinned like a child.
“I would say it’s very impressive. Most people wouldn’t be able to manage it.”
“Remember, I am not most people. I am a brute.” He smiled in a shy manner and continued, “I was joking. Would a brute be able to remember the following? ‘Hear ye, oh faithful. Awaken me not from my slumber, for though the heavens explode when I dream of the wind, when my sleep ends so do the worlds.’ What do you think of that? Dreaming when we are awake and not the other way around. In the nights, I mean.”
“It’s very striking.”
“Striking.” He laughed heartily. “Only old fogeys with chauffeurs use that word. Or boxers. I don’t know why you would bring it up. You are a strange man, if I am permitted to make this observation. I never noticed this before. I am flabbergasted, to put it mildly.”
I did not want to aggravate him, so I said, “Striking is a word just like any other.”
“There you go again! Words are power, my friend. Your book here, for instance. Written thirty years ago and yet I will spend thirty hours of my life with it. Do you think people will remember me in thirty years? Never going to happen. I don’t know why people utter these fallacious things. It drives me crazy.” He twisted his wrists and watched the ripple of muscles on his forearm. “The only thing keeping me from splitting them open is my vocabulary. I ask myself, ‘Would a man with a lexicon of over two hundred thousand words act so precipitously? Would Balzac act in this manner?’”
“Did I also cause you to be named Balzac?”
“What are you talking about?” He was still riled. “That was way back. When I was born, my father took one look at me in the crib and said, ‘Ballsack.’ Then he disappeared. Completely. Well, not completely, as every couple of years there were sightings at the station. Always went looking but he forever managed to escape. I would have chomped his nose off. My mother used to say that he had a kind of sixth sense that allowed him to slip away in the nick of time. She hers
elf was a whore with a knack for humour. Why you ask? She conjured and perjured all the way to this place where she signed off on me. And that is the true and abridged story of Balzac the Brute. But you already know all of this.”
“Is it possible that you have mistaken me for –”
“Before, I used to get mad at everything. Now these same things just want to make me laugh. Why, for instance, would the old whore conspire to deposit me in this place? Why would I remember her with a different face and voice each night? Maybe it’s funny.” He giggled loudly as if to prove his point. “Here’s another rip-roaring question: Why would a man with a noble mission change his directives every three months? Lead us to the ring and throw in the towel before the first bell. Three years ago, I would have already punched you senseless. I was an out-of-control maniac. A raging beast like a hyena or something. My jaw was capable of more bite pressure than any known human. My greatest joy was tearing into bone and gristle.”
I tried to understand his rambling. “I take it you are happy with who you are?”
“I am stable. That in itself is a major accomplishment. I have banished the brute. Do you know how I have accomplished this astounding feat? I think of the child I once was and all the miserable little children swarming around with no hope in their eyes. I am afraid of them, but they keep me sane. Go ahead. Pick up your book and record it. It may come in useful when the lights stop flashing and you are wondering who and what you are.” He seemed to be waiting for a reaction, but I was trying to understand his flow. “I don’t care what you think of me, cause one man’s opinion is as good as another. I could walk out from here in a straight line until I arrive in the closest suffocating camp and by the time I take the first bite, the attendant, who resembles a rundown mole cricket if you ask me, will have seen straight inside me. This poor brute has been granted a stay of execution to participate in a groundbreaking experiment, he would think.”
Once again, I decided to say nothing. He too seemed a bit confused by his last statement, but eventually he said, “Free will. Remember the story you wrote? With this very world sitting next to others and the big man, the Timekeeper, the beardman, the dozing bugaboo, getting so old and absent-minded, he forgot which ones needed winding? There was a child in the story, too. A girl hopping from world to world. Poor thing couldn’t understand why the beardman stopped listening to her prayers. Do you do that sometimes?”
“Pray?”
“Why would you do such a thing? Why should the beardman rouse himself only for you? I am talking about setting things in motion.”
“We all do that sometimes, I guess.”
“I was afraid you would say that. I really was. I think it’s fundamentally wrong to think you are God, coiling up innocent people to suit your own ends. What if they decompress years after you coolly walk away? What then?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Relax. I am not going to chew your ears off. Who would hear your screams? Not a soul. Not even the Managers. It seems as if you are inviting some dislocation.”
“There is a Manager?”
“Don’t play games with me, my friend. For all I know, you might be in cahoots. Managers and Timekeeper. A neat little group winding us up and setting us like simple playthings on the train hurtling to nowhere.” He considered me for a while and added, “If it’s true that God set his clock then it’s also true that he set forth his Timekeepers. His interlocutors.” He looked at me sullenly before he returned his gaze to the object on the table. “Have you ever noticed you can change the shape of an object by adjusting one small detail? This object here, for instance, is shaped like a bird. Now it’s a snake. You can trick an erudite man with fanciness but never a brute. An erudite man will try to see every fallacious thing with his soft-focus eyes, but a brute can get to the jugular in no time. He cannot be distracted with loops and spirals spun by a fakir because to him they are just patterns. Nothing more, nothing less.” He thumped the table and I jumped back. “People are putting things in my head. It’s not right.” He raised his shoulders and twisted his neck this way and that. He seemed to be trying to recall something and the expression on his face was suddenly painful. “I spent the first half of my life looking for my father. Sad to say he escaped. Now ask me how I spent the second half.”
“How?” I asked cautiously.
“Even though your question is impudent I will oblige. I shifted my search to my creator.”
“How did that go?”
“All these questions. It would be remiss of me if I did not point out that each time a man gives away a secret he hollows out a part of his soul.” He reached down to retrieve the object and when he straightened, he said, with what appeared to be genuine sadness, “I know this is your profession but I don’t know how you could live with it. Hollowing out people one scoop at a time until they become spare ghosts. You and your three friends.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“Credit for time served. I cannot tell you how often I heard that when I was strapped. It gets my blood boiling just to think of it and I get a hankering for gristle.” He got up abruptly and walked over to the nearby shelf. He plucked out a book and sent it spinning against the wall. “Lies and porky-pies,” he said, lisping heavily. He did the same with half a dozen books before he finally calmed down. “There is too much violence in this world. Can I tell you what the biggest vice in the world is? I will tell you if you promise not to interrupt. Do I have your word?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“I am glad we settled that. If you will permit me, there is too much mendacity in the world today. This is why I keep to myself. In a rathole, if you want to know. My fortress of solitude. Apart from the remaining team members, I avoid everyone like a concussion. Everyone packed in here and screaming of blue lights.” He grinned amiably and walked over to the table. “The brute is gone for good. Inside I am as soft as baby blubber. I am smiling here but deep inside I am like the saddest person you can imagine. Now I am going to open up my soul to you and tell you something special. It is not rage that drives a brute but sadness. Yes, you heard correctly. Sadness at the circumstances that brought two living beings into this situation. Brute and prey. What do you think of that? No matter the outcome, they will be joined till death. This world is filled with sadness and there is nothing we can do to change that because the clock has already been set. I figured out that on my own.” He twisted his neck and I flinched at the loud crick. “When the clock is already set the only thing left is patience. The Manager cannot comprehend this elementary truth so I am always one step ahead. One step ahead of the Timekeeper and Fakir and –”
I decided finally to put a stop to his maundering. I told him that I knew nothing of his Manager and really, I did not care. Perhaps this Manager, if he existed, was an expression of the beast threatening his composure; perhaps he was some security official with whom he had some dealing. Regardless, the Manager was a spectre not dissimilar to the father he had never seen. The members of his imaginary team most likely served some similar function. While explaining my assessment, I watched him cautiously; watched the way his fixed imbecilic smile conveyed so many contradictory emotions. It was like peering into a dark mangled kaleidoscope; and when something new stiffened his smile for just a second it was too late.
It happened so quickly, the shuffling of anxiety for rage and hurt; and in the moment before I passed out, the stark distress on his face.
When I came to, he was gone. It seemed that he had made an attempt to repair his damage as my chair had been pushed back to allow me to lean forward on the table and a bloodied handkerchief was next to my face. When I stood up, I felt a lancing pain in my jaw. I was certain he had broken it and I looked around to see if he was still about. He was gone and so was the piece of cork I had brought with me. I walked out of the library, shading my face with my hand. Everyone seemed to be staring at me. Alone in my room, I bandaged my jaw with an old sock and when it slipped, I lay on my bed and tried
to block the pain by slowing my breath. But there was a more pressing discomfort. I was certain that Balzac’s last words to me were, “Forgive me, Father.”
4 THE WET NURSE
I spent the following three days mostly locked in my room, nursing my broken jaw and watching fearfully through the window. Early in the mornings, I sneaked into the canteen and hurriedly brought my food to my room. There was no doubt Balzac had mistaken me for a writer with whom he had some previous issue. Maybe this writer had pointed out his brutishness and for that reason, father and writer were joined in his mind. Now, you may understand why I suspected your hand in his mistake. First of all, he had demonstrated a faulty memory of my appearance. And secondly, I am an illustrator, not a writer. Even at this very moment, recording this is torturous. Quite frequently, I struggle with my expressions and wonder if there is, perhaps, an idiom from some other language that might work better. (I imagine you chuckling at the thought of someone who remembers nothing of his life yet is able to simultaneously write and possibly translate – albeit in a stilted language. Over the past days, I have wondered whether this, too, is part of your game: watching me struggle in an unfamiliar milieu; annotating all my missteps.)
Once again, I am confused by the trouble you must have gone through to carefully set up this parallel universe populated with people pretending some familiarity. But your motives aside, my encounter with Balzac introduced more immediate concerns. He had mentioned a Manager with whom he felt I might be aligned, yet I had no knowledge of his own accomplices who could very well be roaming around the Compound. My room, as you already know, is equipped with a wooden door and iron bars on the single window, neither of which would deter a steadfast interloper. Certainly not Balzac with his bulging, almost cartoonish muscles. Picturing him in this manner reminded me of someone or something and I went to the sketches in the onion-skin envelope. There, I found an illustration so exaggerated it could have been drawn by a child. The upper body was too huge; the lower ridiculously tiny. The man’s forehead was big and his neck thicker than his waist. The books in the background looked like bricks and the walls seemed to be collapsing on each other. I took out a pencil and tried to improve the sketch, idly at first, by shadowing the background and pencilling in the details of the foreground. When I was finished, I saw that I had modified the drawing to create an accurate representation of Balzac standing by the table. But I had gone further. Between the two aisles I had pencilled zigzagging patterns.
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