Adjacentland

by Rabindranath Maharaj

  For a couple minutes, no one said anything, then from one of the tables a youngish man with a drooping nose and soft-looking ears that made him appear like a drowsy marsupial came up and told me in a rather dramatic voice, “My name is Knife. I am an amputee and I stabbed my father with my phantom hand. Thank you for asking.” He left a drawing of a floating limbless being.

  When Knife returned to his table, a harassed-looking middle-aged man said, with a trace of irritation, as if he was in a hurry and I was delaying him, “I am Shad.” I nodded and he said quickly, “Shad the Man. I am still trying to discover my power. It has something to do with shadows but I am not sure.” He was followed by a delicately built doe-eyed man who blew into his palms and whispered to his fingers, “I am a trappist.” They both left their own sketches, the first of a man strapped to pieces of junk and the second of a dog lying on its back.

  I realized these were your actors and I wished they would elaborate beyond their roles, but I recalled your note explaining they were not professionals. I saw a woman walking up to me. “I am the Countess Conferrer,” she told me. “People used to stop me on the streets all the time and ask me to do the countess accent from The Ritzy Waltz. I was Clara Carrington in the series.”

  “Your gift. Tell him,” someone shouted.

  “Would you like to hear? I have nothing better to do, anyway.”

  I felt I should return some of her haughtiness so I told her, “You may as well. I have nothing else to do, either.”

  “You are an odious old cotter. But I will grant you your request. Can you see my aureoles?” She fingered a necklace of teeth-shaped beads. I glanced away. “No? Well, they are usually blue but with bands of yellow when there is an illness or grey when there is confusion. But I don’t blame you for your blindness. No one but me is cursed with this gift.” She then proceeded to describe her gift. During her first year on some kind of “oculus” show, strangers came up to her on the streets to tell her how she had changed their lives. At first, she had taken this to be normal fan adulation, but one night a middle-aged woman swore she had recently abandoned her abusive husband because of the show. “You are like a shaft of light,” the woman had told Clara, or whatever her real name was. When the woman departed, Clara came to the conclusion that she had been speaking literally and on the set, she began to visualize a beam of light flowing out of her body. The beam felt limber and hot, like liquid ore poured through a translucent cylinder. “During the three years and three months the show was on, I healed thousands. But who’s counting?” Nevertheless, she confessed that she used to rigorously scan the newspapers for miraculous lyses and she had established connections between particular episodes from her show and these recoveries. Soon, she convinced herself that her aura was not only beneficial to the sick and wounded, but had also provoked acts of altruism from formerly bored celebrities. “Favoured people unflinchingly putting their lives in danger for potty-faced orphans. Building wells and hugging ugly little lepers. Can you believe it?” She examined her long nails. “I shouldn’t take all the credit, though. All I offered was redemption.” She formed a triangle with her fingers and peered within.

  I looked behind her. A little line had formed. A stocky man wearing a hard hat told me, “The name I go by is the Dismantler. I break apart everything that is incomplete. That is all I am prepared to state.”

  He was followed by a man with protruding teeth and tiny narrow-set eyes. “I am the Toeman. I am a proponent of the Theory of Everything. TOE.”

  I decided to ask him about his preparation for his part and he sat immediately as if he had been expecting my question. A watery ripple of worry creased his forehead. “I have spent most of my adult life trying to locate its Cartesian coordinates.”

  “Of your role?”

  “The man before you is a fake.” He unbuttoned his coat and revealed his sunken chest and his pot-belly. “What you see here is but a shadow.”

  He seemed a little worked up, so I told him, “I understand the process of preparing for a role and transforming yourself into a new man.”

  “Right now as we speak, in a parallel universe our doubles are carrying on this exact conversation. My mission, you see, is to locate the real Toeman.”

  I wondered if he was talking of a stunt double and I asked, “Can you describe your part?”

  “I am developing a hole-o-meter. With luck, my travel through that warm and pleasurable tunnel is imminent. Thank you for asking.” He closed his eyes and began to breathe quite heavily. When his eyes opened, he began to bawl, “I am coming. Don’t hold me back.”

  I told him, “There will be enough time for that later on. It’s better if we get to know each other first.”

  A well-built middle-aged woman got up from her table, grabbed Toeman by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his seat. He was still shouting, “Goodbye, my friends. I have discovered the coordinates of the tunnel’s palpitating entrance and I shall soon hurl myself within. Wish me luck.”

  When the woman returned, she gazed at me accusingly before she said, “You shouldn’t be encouraging him to misbehave.”

  “I didn’t encourage him to anything. In fact, I was trying to determine the precise role to which he had been assigned.”

  “Exactly. He keeps shifting from one to the other. This happens to all of us, but his case is extreme.”

  “Don’t you all know who you are supposed to be?”

  “Yes, we do. But the other memories keep stirring in our minds. Even after we have been scrubbed.”

  “I understand. You carry the flavour of your past performances. So sometimes it’s difficult to pull away completely from the old roles and slip into the new ones.”

  She sat. “Yes, that’s it. I never thought of it in this way, but you are right. How do you know all of this?”

  “Well, I am the director. At least I believe I am.”

  A tiny tendril of fear flicked across her face. “What’s our new mission? Toeman mentioned we might be taken to the other side. But he is crazy. That will never happen.”

  “What other side? Another studio? A new location?”

  “What do you have in your bag? Maybe everything is there.” She got up suddenly and walked away.

  She was right, though. I decided to consult the storyboards before any further introductions so I got out the ledger in which they were contained and walked to the last table, which was occupied by a hulking man, his face flat on the surface. I glanced through the illustrations. The man said, “You are a man of many surprises, my friend. I would not have guessed.” The squeaky voice seemed familiar but all I could see from his sleeping position was his impossibly big ears twitching like a dog’s.

  “I was trying to determine the personas of everyone here. Who is the heavy, the ingénue, the villain, the hero, the –”

  “A man’s field of vision is determined one hundred percent by his interests.” He raised his head and I saw his wide forehead and simple smile. “There are others who will be interested in renewing your acquaintance. Ask me who these others are?” When I did as he requested, he got serious and said, “It’s funny that you should say the very thing that is beating around my head. You, my friend, are amazing. The Amazing Acolytes.”

  “What?”

  “Your team. The Amazing Acolytes. Your creation, if I may venture. It would take a callous man to stand aside and not exhibit any concern about his wild and wondrous universe. One of them, anyway. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe you are a man of such callosity.” I was about to explain I was the director rather than the writer when I noticed him clenching and unclenching his fingers. His knuckles were scarred in neat patterns. “It may surprise you to know that I comprehend your indisposition one hundred percent. People look at me and see a sloppy brute lumbering around, but they miss something important. Can you tell what it is? C’mon, make a guess.”

  “I have no idea.”

  He leaned back and folded his arms. I now noticed he had a rugged k
napsack on his lap. “A creator with no ideas. That’s a new one, my friend. It’s crazier than a god who cannot see the future. Or a Timekeeper who cannot tell the time. If you will permit me, I must chuckle a bit.” His chuckle did not seem forced in any way and I felt that he was very convincing in his portrayal of a dimwitted and unpredictable brute. He gestured to the tables. “Look at them. They have been waiting eons.” I could not understand his exaggerated way of speaking and I felt that his proper speech had been arrived at after much practice and coaching.

  They all looked ragged and disconsolate. The man opposite reclined his head on the table and I opened my ledger once more, trying to fit everyone into the story. When the groups saw me consulting the book, those at the far table got up and formed another line. One by one, they walked to my table. Some just shambled before me and said nothing while others spoke in rapid and incomprehensible spurts. A pudgy woman whose dark velvety skin made it impossible to guess her age sat with a prolonged sigh and placed a bulky sequinned fish purse on the table. She fiddled with the handle before she opened the purse and withdrew a piece of paper rolled up and secured with a rubber band. She blew into the cylinder formed by the paper as if she was determining what to do. “I not always so forward but I know you will understand.” She rolled off the band with a snap and passed the page to me. “I could bother you to read this, please?”

  “It looks like the inside cover of a comic book.”

  “Read it, please.”

  “The next issue will feature the long-awaited debut of the Spiritmaster.”

  “You understand now? All the time, I waiting and waiting.” She got up tiredly. “But nobody calling. Why nobody calling?”

  She was followed by a little man who offered his own sheet of paper. I now noticed all of them were holding pages, some of which were folded neatly and others crumpled into balls. He was followed by a man with long dirty fingers. “I am the Bookbinder,” he told me. “I can make a new story with any old book.” He began to shuffle the sheets in his hand. “Voila! New story.” Next, a man who introduced himself as Boing bounded up and claimed to be continuously trailed by tapirs and sloths. “But nothing can harm me,” he said, handing me his own sheet, which contained a cartoon cat perched on a parapet surrounded by a pack of hounds. “Not even a steamroller.”

  When everyone had returned to their seats, the man opposite asked, “Did you pick anyone?”

  “I didn’t know that was my function. Were these extras?”

  He raised his head and stared sullenly at me. “It takes a man of extreme callosity to wind up innocent victims and walk away unperturbed. A Timekeeper without a conscience. I thought I had seen everything.”

  “Am I missing something?”

  I hoped he would shed some light on the nature of the film, but he told me, “You miss all the pain knotting up and embroiling into a giant fungus that forgot it should stop growing. Now, the question you want to ask is whether this pain is friend or foe. The simple answer is that it is both. Before I realized this, I was a raging lunatic. Or should I say before we realized this.” He smiled and his ears popped up.

  I saw him glancing around and I asked, “Are we waiting on someone?”

  He said nothing for a while but just sat looking over my shoulder with a sad smile plastered over his broad face. “We have all been waiting. Patience is not the aphrodisiac some would attest it is. It gets in the way sometimes and then you forget what you are waiting on and remain frozen in a wide-legged stance that leaves you open to any kidney punch coming your way. Easy pickings for every manager in sight. Now ask what we have been waiting for.”

  I asked his question.

  “It’s funny you should ask that, and my answer would be for the right moment. Waiting for that perfect second when you see everything coming toward you in a slow-motion dream. Perfect pitch and rhythm and the air slows for just that moment as if it is holding off for you. In that instant, you become faster than any living thing in sight. It would be remiss of me if I did not point out that it was you who drummed that into our heads. Remember your favourite admonition? Every man has a mission, but to understand his mission he has first of all to understand what he has hidden away and forgotten.” His voice had changed a bit; had become more solemn. This made him sound more deranged.

  I thought of something and asked, “Are you a grappler?”

  “I am what you want me to be. A brute. Balzac the Brute.”

  “And are you all in character? How long have you been practising?”

  “That’s a good one.” He said it as a joke but did not laugh. “You are smarter than that, as you full well know, so I will oblige you by concluding that there must be a reason for this pose. If I may be bold enough to say, a man does not signal his uppercut by crouching low. That would telegraph his intention and his antagonist will load up with a roundhouse right and pummel him straight to the ground. That is the way the world operates.”

  “Should I take that as a yes?”

  He reached into the knapsack hanging on his leg. The tiny round object wrapped in foil paper he brought out looked like a bird with a broken wing. “It took a while before I figured it out. A piece of some substance that is both porous and solid. Light and dense. Weapon and armour. Something and nothing.” He was slowly unwrapping the object as he spoke and when he was finished, I saw it was just a piece of cork. “It was a paradox until I realized that it represented everything. A paradox no more,” he said, lisping severely. “How can something be a paradox if it includes everything? How can a man run away from what has not yet occurred? How can a boy be an orphan if his father is still alive? There’s another. How can a madman see the world in more shapes and colours than a man with a thousand books before him? Is that why we have been probed by every means possible?”

  I assumed these were declarative statements but Balzac seemed to be waiting for an answer. “I would like to help you but I am afraid that all I have is the storyboard in my ledger. To be honest, I had been hoping you all would help.” I tapped the ledger and added, “It makes no sense. There are too many storylines.”

  After a while, he said, “It makes perfect sense. Ask me why.”

  “Why?”

  “Your question reeks of impudence but I will pretend I did not notice.” He turned to his knapsack, unhitching it and plopping it on the table between us. “An erudite man always tries to find the correct answers to his puzzles because he knows that the minute the answers stop, the Brute will return. Sometimes I feel it bubbling beneath my skin.” He reached into his knapsack and brought out a mask. “It allowed a woman who was incomplete to balance out the world. With the mask on, she was able to neutralize everything. The oppressive world she imagined, the people she believed meant her harm and finally, her own frailty. She became sightless and so she could choose whatever vision she wanted to dance in her mind.” He sounded unexpectedly lucid. “Your own words, if I am allowed to quote.” I guessed he was quoting from the script. “Strangely, she was the only one who could tell what was real and what was not. A sightless siren unswayed by visual prejudices,” he said, lisping heavily. Next, he withdrew a piece of crumbled paper. “Placed strategically in the centre of a silver plant. Symbols and allegories and...” He was trying to pronounce hieroglyphics and growing more frustrated with each attempt. Eventually he gave up and closed his eyes. “A man taking account of his life.”

  He brought up other pieces of junk. When he said he also had a Gladstone bag in his carriage, I felt I had to stop him. I opened the storyboard ledger and tried to locate the connection between the sketches and his junk. While I was doing so, I asked him, “Are these artifacts part of the plot? I cannot see any references here.”

  He glanced at my notebook and said immediately, “To be quite honest, I would have once found that question to be rude and callous. I would have gone berserk, as brutes are wont to do. I would have bitten off your ears and chomped on their soft tissue. Did I ever mention that its consistency is similar to g
izzard?” He laughed, three unfocused chuckles. “That’s a joke, my friend. I would have done far worse. But I have changed. I am no longer roused by your pretence about these artifacts, as you put it. The brute inside wants to tear you apart for leaving these mementoes behind. Like in the story you told of the girl who kept reappearing to remind us of our humanity. Or maybe to keep us in check. I can’t remember everything when there are all these voices whistling in my head.” He placed both palms on his chin and twisted his neck. “But a man with a lexicon of two hundred thousand words is patient. It’s an obligation. Now I must repeat my request.”

  “What is it exactly?”

  “Here we go again. Let me point out that a brute never asks for directions because it’s there etched in his thick skull every minute of the day. He knows what he wants and he moves toward it. There is no shame or guilt or remorse. See, want and take. That was my credo. During those dark days, I would not think that a simple request might deflect the carnage.”