The Dark Domain

by Stefan Grabinski

  I wanted to forcibly stop him, but he slipped away and disappeared beyond the door … .

  In the sky, the sunset was dying out. I sat alone in an empty room … .

  * * *

  Since then, Tempus did not show up at my home anymore. Accomplishing some mission, he withdrew, never to return. But his words gave me no rest and rang in my ears with the intrusive refrain:

  ‘You will find me in the city.’

  What did this mean? Was it a call to battle? Meanwhile, articles dealing with time were appearing in the newspapers, their pointed arguments apparently directed against me. All were signed with the mysterious initials S.S. They dwelled on the profoundness of the notion of time, and endlessly underlined time’s efficiency and its usefulness in regulating life. In a word, they were paeans of worship for my visitor.

  Irritated by these sallies, I collected and studied them, while strengthening my treatise with new proofs and arguments. I was preparing myself, while I waited for my opponent to run out of ideas; at that point, I would publish my response.

  Simultaneously, I was searching for my antagonist. I roamed about the city until the late evening hours, peeking into cafés, striking up conversations with acquaintances, drawing people into discourses on the subject of time. In this way I became introduced to several professors, to learned philosophers, and to some dozen or so various eccentrics and characters. But I always left dissatisfied from the debates with these gentlemen. Admittedly, the problem seemed to absorb them on a rather high level, but even so, one didn’t sense the same ardour which emerged from the newspaper columns. These were not opponents; not one person took the issue so personally, with so much passion and belief, as that unknown one.

  Gradually I’m becoming convinced that I’ve fallen on a false trail, that the sphere in which one should look for him lies a little ‘lower’ … .

  * * *

  It seems that I’m finally on the right track. As of yesterday evening … .

  After roaming about all day, I am returning home. I’m going by the old section of the city that stretches up from the river in a system of rough little streets. I cut across them, struggling up the incline. Above me, patches of evening sky, marred by chimney smoke, look over filthy tenements. Pale, consumptive faces and the unkempt heads of old hags lean out of windows; the stagnant, bleary eyes of the aged stare at me … .

  Stumbling over the holes and bumps in the pavement, I turn into a narrow street and glance down to its end. There, far in the distance, the river bleeds under the agony of the sunset, its water glittering with melancholic waves. Somewhere overhead, from some crumbling ruin, a flock of crows takes flight and, forming a heavily patterned arch, disappears beyond the roofs of the buildings. I lower my gaze and my weary eyes survey forlorn windows. My glance stops on some sign – on the black letters of someone’s name set against a faded green background. I look blankly, unable to combine the words. Suddenly I formulate them: Saturnin Sektor, Watchmaker.

  Most certainly! It is he! I’ve found him at last!

  A great peace fills my soul, and slowly I start to return home … .

  A strange thing! I live close by.

  It even seems that here, next door – only I’ve come up to my home from a different direction than I usually take, a direction I haven’t ever taken until now. After thirty years of residence in the city! Remarkable! And yet it happens at times that a person returns home one way for many years, walking continually the same route day after day, until finding himself on a different path at a certain moment, he discovers with amazement that it also leads to his home – the amazement of a person who has been dreaming for many long years, until one day he awakens on an unknown road leading to his own interior … .

  So this is the name of my opponent, and he is a watchmaker. Of course it is he, only he and no one else. I only wonder why I haven’t come upon him before. The name is known to me from somewhere; it is so familiar. I cannot, admittedly, recall from where – but this doesn’t in any way affect my deep, firm conviction that I know this person. I realized immediately that he is my oppressor, the mysterious stranger whom I’ve been seeking for so long.

  The very name is significant! It says so much about itself! Let us first analyse his forename. Saturnin! Doesn’t it strike a clear connection with Saturn-Time? Doesn’t this name immediately cast a vision of the old man with the scythe and hourglass? So the name is obviously symbolic.

  And the surname Sektor – it’s odd, isn’t it? No, it’s exquisitely chosen! Sektor – in actuality Sector – that’s something cut up, shredded into sections, segments, divisions. How much hidden self-irony is in this nickname! But does it not perfectly suit his work? Indeed, he has deformed the wonder of Duration into mathematical abstractions; he has chopped up the flowing, undivided wave of life into a multitude of dead divisions. Sektor – a symbol of years, months, days, minutes, seconds. He has enclosed in two words the essence of his untruthful, negative activity. A dangerous person – a symbol! As long as he lives, mankind will not shake off the fallacy of time and follow me. That’s why one should erase this name from the memory of the living and replace it with mine. Mine?! … What a remarkable thought! My name! … My name … . What is my name? … I cannot remember … . This is funny, this is very funny! This is humiliating! … I’ve forgotten, completely forgotten my name. I am anonymous – yes – anonymous – as a wave in the ocean – a wave that is eternally flowing into another wave – and another wave – and another … .

  * * *

  After a long, sleepless night, I am on my way to meet him. Rotting, squeaky stairs, their boards full of holes, lead me on. I open the door and enter.

  The snug old room murmurs with the voices of clocks. And there are an endless number of them: black ebonies creeping along the walls like large scarabaei, round antiques on ivory columns, French baroques under glass bells, playful, loudly ticking alarms. In a niche covered with green fabric whisper the half-century prayers of small ‘pocket-watches,’ golden, marvellously enamelled ‘turnips,’ silver, inlaid ‘repeaters,’ expensive miniatures adorned in ruby and emerald.

  In the middle of the room is a small table with a watchmaker’s tools: a chisel, pincers, a group of screws, springs as thin as hairs, ringlets, metal plates. On a patch of green woollen cloth lie a pair of damaged watchcases, several newly-extracted diamonds … .

  On a stool, leaning over some clock, he sits – the master of time. Through the dust whirling in the shaft of sunlight falling through the window, I can make out his face. It is somehow well known to me. I’ve seen it somewhere, where – I can’t remember. Maybe in a mirror. A grey, old head with ginger side-whiskers and sharp, vulture-like features.

  He raises his bright, piercing eyes, and he smiles at me. A strange, strange smile.

  ‘I would like to have a watch repaired.’

  ‘You are lying, my friend – you haven’t used a watch for ten years. Why these subterfuges?’

  His voice pierces me to the core; I’ve heard it somewhere, and I know it well – the voice is very familiar.

  ‘I know why you have come. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.’

  Now, I smile.

  ‘If so, then the matter is greatly simplified.’

  ‘Naturally. Before you fulfil your purpose – sit down. We’ll have a talk. Why, we have plenty of time.’

  ‘Of course. I’m in no hurry.’

  I sit down and listen intently to the conversation of the clocks. They run uniformly to the minute, to the second.

  ‘You’ve regulated time perfectly here,’ I remark casually.

  Sektor is silent, his eyes fixed on me.

  I take up the thread of the conversation with difficulty. ‘So you are prepared for everything?’

  ‘Yes. I will not defend myself.’

  ‘Why? You have a right to, as does every person.’

  ‘It would be pointless. I feel that shortly your era will arrive, no matter what. As an ideal symbol o
f an age about to pass, I yield before inevitability. An unpicked fruit eventually falls off a tree by itself.’

  ‘Therefore you acknowledge me?’

  ‘No. This is different. Even you will one day have to yield to a new symbol. Let us not forget about the relativity of ideas. Everything depends on one’s point of view.’

  ‘Exactly. Even so, where do you get that certainty that runs through your articles?’

  ‘It springs from a deep conviction about the usefulness of what I proclaim.’

  ‘Ah, that’s true. You belong to that generation whose ideal is practical reality.’

  ‘Yes, yes. You, on the other hand, reach beyond it; at least it appears so to you. And you fall into a hazy mare tenebrarum. For people of flesh and blood this is not enough; they need reality and everything that confirms it.’

  ‘You are mistaken. I only wish the deepening of life. Life flows in wide, dense waves, in occurrences tied together so compactly that their division into years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds is absurd. Your notion of time is simply a fanciful concoction drawn from imaginary theories.’

  ‘Isn’t time a beautiful idea? Have you read The Time Machine by that famous English author?’

  ‘Certainly. In fact, I had it on my mind. It is the best example as to where the imagination can lead. The very idea of a “time machine,” doesn’t it offend life’s virginity with its abundance of constant surprises? These are the results of the vivisection you perform on it. This is an example of how one mechanizes life.’

  ‘A fabulous story. The quintessence of the mind and its majestic might.’

  ‘You are the fool, my dear sir. Rest assured – no one will ever travel into the past or the future in a machine.’

  ‘We will never understand each other. A peculiar circumstance! Even though our beings are so intertwined.’

  At that moment a terrible chill ran through my body. The watchmaker’s words came to me as if from my own self.

  ‘Hmm, indeed. At times I feel this too.’

  ‘If it weren’t for the fact,’ continued the old man in a crestfallen voice, ‘that your thoughts are like new seedlings planted in a barren field, if I didn’t have a presentiment of their blossoming in the immediate future … .’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I would kill you,’ he coldly replied. ‘With this instrument.’

  He extracted from a plush box of wonderful workmanship an ivory-handled dagger.

  I smiled triumphantly:

  ‘Meanwhile the roles are reversed.’

  The old man lowered his head in resignation:

  ‘Because you’ve overcome me in yourself. .. . Now go. I still want to write my last will. Come back in the evening. Take this as a memento.’

  He handed me the dagger.

  I mechanically took the glittering, cool steel, and without a word of farewell, I left. As I walked down the stairs, I heard a cackling sound coming from the workshop. The old man was laughing … .

  - - -

  The evening papers of W. gave the following information in their columns:

  Murder or Suicide?

  A mysterious incident occurred last night at 10 Water Street. This morning Rozalia Witkowska, a widow of a private official, discovered the dead body of a watchmaker, Saturnin Sektor, when she entered his workshop. The body, seated by a window, was covered with blood. An antique dagger of delicate workmanship was buried in the victim’s chest.

  At Mrs. Witkowska’s screams the neighbours rushed in, then the police. The medical examiner, Dr. Obminski, confirmed the death, which most probably occurred during the night as a result of blood loss. There were no signs of robbery. Instead, on a table near the body, Policeman Tulejko found the dead man’s will and a sheet of paper on which the watchmaker maker had apparently jotted down the following words:

  ‘Do not look for any assailants. I die by my own hand.’

  The incident exhibits many mysterious and unclear features. Already various rumours are circulating about the deceased. Apparently Sektor spent a few years in an asylum, from which he was only recently released. The director of the institution, a Dr. Tumin, was summoned as a witness in this puzzling matter and stated that the watchmaker had long been suffering from periodic bouts of madness, which grew stronger at every recurrence. This statement is supported by the testimony of Sektor’s neighbours and co-tenants in the apartment house. He had the reputation of being insane. None the less, at periods of lucida intervalla he devoted himself to his professional activities, fulfilling a watchmaker’s function excellently. His acquaintances even considered him a brilliant watchmaker.

  An interesting light is thrown on the matter by the deceased’s will. Sektor bequeaths all of his substantial fortune for the endowment of an educational fund, with the special stipulation that it be used exclusively by those researching the problem of space and time, as well as any related issues.

  Simultaneously with the mysterious incident at Water Street, a couple of sensational facts were reported to police headquarters and the municipal clerk. Strange placards and announcements have been found on the walls of the city in the form of obituary notices, bearing the following message:

  The Death Of Time

  On the night of November 29th of the current year, Tempus Saturn died, never to return, yielding his place to perpetual Duration.

  The second, equally puzzling aspect is that all the tower clocks of our town have stopped for no apparent reason. The hands halted last night at eleven.

  A general agitation and some peculiar, superstitious fear reign in the town. Frightened crowds gather in the public squares; voices are heard connecting strange manifestations with the death of the watchmaker.

  THE GLANCE

  It had begun then – four years ago, on that August afternoon when Jadwiga left his house for what proved to be the last time. That day she was somehow different. She was quite nervous, as if expecting something. And she held onto him more passionately than ever before.

  Then, suddenly, she quickly got dressed, threw over her head her distinctive Venetian scarf, and, kissing him forcefully on the lips, departed. One more time the hem of her dress and the slender outline of her shoe whisked by the threshold, and everything ended forever … .

  An hour later she perished under the wheels of a train. Odonicz never found out if her death was accidental or if Jadwiga had thrown herself under the speeding engine. She was, after all, an unpredictable person, that swarthy, darkeyed woman.

  But this was not the issue. Truly, it was not. The pain, the despair, the inconsolable grief – all of this was quite natural and understandable. Therefore, this was not the issue.

  What struck one was something completely different – something so ridiculously trivial, something so secondary … . Jadwiga, upon leaving him that time, had left the door open.

  He remembered that he had stumbled while escorting her through the room, and that, irritated, he had bent down to straighten out a folded corner of the carpet. When he raised his eyes a moment later, Jadwiga was no longer there. She had departed, leaving the door open.

  Why hadn’t she closed it? She was usually such a conscientious woman, at times meticulously so … .

  He remembered that unpleasant, that most unpleasant impression which the open door had made on him, fluttering its black, smoothly lacquered leaf like a mourning banner in the wind. He was annoyed by its restless movement, which intermittently hid before his eyes a portion of the square in front of his house, to then reveal it in the afternoon sunlight. As he stood there, it suddenly crossed his mind that Jadwiga had left him forever, leaving behind some complex problem to be unravelled whose outward expression was the open door.

  Seized by this ominous premonition, he had sprung to the swinging door and looked to his right, in the direction she would have probably taken. There was no trace of her. Before him, spreading out to the railroad embankment in the far horizon, was a golden, empty square, scorching-hot from the summer’s hea
t. Nothing but that golden, sun-intoxicated plain … . Afterwards came a long, dull ache lasting several months and a silent, heart-wrenching despair born of loss … . Then everything passed – somehow it went away, withdrawing to a corner somewhere … .

  And then came this. Stealthily, imperceptibly, from neither here nor there, as if by mere chance. The problem of the open door … . Ha! ha! ha! The problem! A mockery, indeed! The problem of the open door. It’s difficult to believe. Yes, it is. And yet, and yet … .

  For entire nights this stubborn nightmare revolved in his mind; he saw the door during the day whenever he momentarily closed his eyes; it appeared in the midst of bright, sober reality – illusive, distant, yet seemingly real.

  But now it wasn’t tossed about by the wind, as it had been in that fatal hour. Now it moved slowly, very slowly, away from the fictitious doorframe – as if someone on the outside, the side unseen by his eye, was holding the doorknob and carefully opening the door to a certain angle … .

  It was precisely this carefulness, this very cautious movement, which chilled him to the bone. One dreaded the angle becoming too great, the door opening too wide. It seemed the door was playing around with him, not wanting to show what was hiding beyond it. Only the edge of the mystery was revealed to him. He was given the knowledge that there, on the other side, beyond the door, a mystery existed, but any greater details were jealously concealed.

  Odonicz fought against this frustrating suggestion with all his might. A thousand times a day he convinced himself that beyond his front door there wasn’t anything alarming, that beyond all his doors nothing was lurking. He constantly tore himself away from his work, and with a quick, predatory step, the step of a stalking panther, he would spring to each door, and, nearly ripping off the lock, open each one and glance into the space beyond. Always, of course, with the same result: not once did he find anything suspicious. Before his eyes, which sought out with terrified curiosity any trace of mystery, there unfolded, just as in the good old days, only an empty, barren square, only the banal fragment of a corridor or the quiet and still interior of the adjoining bedroom or bathroom.