Night Visions

by Thomas Fahy

  “Low and lively, Larry. How about you?”

  “See for yourself.”

  They both laugh, and Butner smiles awkwardly. Jake had probably been waiting for weeks to deliver a package to Larry, the naked man.

  Butner turns to him as he climbs back into the truck, muttering, “No job is worth this.”

  APRIL 11, 1987

  3:57 A.M.

  From the rooftop of his nine-story apartment building, the city looks peaceful and dark. Another nightmare had driven Butner out of bed—his T-shirt soaked with sweat and cheeks moist from tears. He doesn’t remember getting dressed and walking to the roof. He’s not sure why he’s standing at the ledge, looking out at the quiet with envy and loathing. His bare feet sting, and the cold drizzle makes his face numb.

  Like the people who mocked Noah, Butner watches the blackness for some sign of forgiveness. The tide rises, and there is only one thing left to do—one thing to stop the visions, the sleepless nights, the constant fear of discovery.

  He leaps.

  With arms outstretched, his body arcs over the ledge. For a moment, just the briefest instant, he seems to float, not like a bird but like something lighter…high above the night, free from himself, the past, and a terrible future….

  6:23 A.M.

  Lying beneath the bumpers of two parked cars, Butner wakes up with a headache. He tries to push himself up, but his body tingles as if he is thawing from a deep cold. He looks at his hand, which is smeared with red, and rubs his fingers together—transmission fluid. The strong stench of motor oil makes him nauseous, and the puddles on the moist ground glisten with rainbow colors. Rolling onto his back, he sees a long grassy incline leading from his apartment building to the parking lot. The grass is ripped and matted down in a path toward his body. A deep impression marks the spot where he first hit the ground and started rolling downhill.

  He gets up slowly—his body aching as if he’s pulled muscles all over—and takes an elevator to his room. Nothing feels broken. Only scrapes and bruises. Falling into bed, he looks at the ceiling and, as if in answer to his prayers, falls asleep.

  13

  Other Voices

  Most of the passengers are wearing business suits and reading newspapers. They probably take one of these commuter flights to Los Angeles several times a week, Samantha thinks. They have grown accustomed to roasted peanuts, strained conversation, and the smell of recycled air. She can’t pass as a regular because she doesn’t like sitting so close to strangers and being served by people who are paid to smile.

  Ten months ago, she flew to L.A. to see her father. He had been rushed to a burn unit at UCLA after firefighters pulled him from the house. Decayed wiring had started an electrical fire in the living room just after midnight. Within minutes the entire place was ablaze. Father was asleep until a flaming beam from the bedroom ceiling crashed onto his back, causing second-and third-degree burns. The doctors said he was lucky to be alive.

  When she and Frank arrived at the hospital, Father was lying facedown in a hammock, his face sweating and lined with pain, drool streaming from his mouth onto the floor. His arms were stretched out to his sides. In one hand he clutched a morphine button that released a dose as needed, but only up to once every five minutes. He pushed it incessantly. Blood seeped through the gauze on his back so quickly that it seemed to turn yellowish-brown almost immediately. Every time a nurse came in to change it, gently lifting each strip off his moist, blistering skin, Samantha had to leave the room.

  His back healed, leaving only scars and discoloration, but Samantha’s father said nothing could heal the memory of those long, agonizing moments underneath the flames, waiting for the end. Since then, he hasn’t slept well. He tells her that the fear of another fire keeps him awake. Every night he walks around his new apartment three or four times before going to bed, checking each electrical socket. He still wakes up terrified by nightmares, sweating from the heat of imaginary flames and sniffing the air for smoke. Every time she looks at him, she can see the imprint of that fire, as if black ash were permanently etched onto parts of his face.

  While driving to the campus, she thinks about calling him, but she didn’t even take time to pack. After leaving Catherine’s place, she considered returning to work, but as soon as she got home, Don called. Apparently Goldberg kept a list of monthly expenditures, travel records, letters. And all of these documents were currently housed at the Schoenberg Music Library at UCLA; a musicologist on campus was studying and translating them. Don had already contacted him about getting her access, and she left for the airport immediately. Flights ran every hour.

  “You’re here for the Goldberg papers,” the librarian says as Samantha approaches the front desk. The woman’s dark brown hair is pulled back, and she has a pale, round face.

  “Yes.”

  “Wait here.”

  Samantha looks around the room anxiously. It has been a long time since she was in a library. Other than a few computer terminals, everything looks the same as in her undergraduate years—the metallic gray bookshelves, the scratched tabletops, even the same unimaginative posters. She took music history classes as a senior and spent a lot of time listening to CDs in the library. She also had a crush on the conductor of the university symphony, making excuses to hang around the department. She secretly admired his commanding stage presence at concerts, which made most girls in the orchestra, and even some of the boys, fawn over him. She is fairly sure that he never knew her name, but that just made the fantasy more bittersweet.

  Other parts of campus have been transformed by years of endless construction, to the point where she doesn’t recognize things—new bookstores, coffee shops, athletic fields, dorms—but the music building is stuck in the past. This sameness comforts her, as if she were still part of this place.

  The librarian returns and places the registry book on the counter. “Sign this and come with me.”

  Samantha follows her down the hall to a door marked Special Collections. Closed cabinets line each wall in the small, windowless room. There is a circular conference table in the middle with five long rectangular boxes on top. She hands Samantha a pair of white gloves and a list of the boxes’ contents.

  “Wear these gloves at all times while working with the materials. Nothing may be removed from this room or photocopied without permission. This box has both original and translated documents. The others have not been translated—so they’re still in German.”

  “That won’t be a problem, thanks.”

  Samantha can’t read or speak German. She studied Spanish in high school and can’t speak that either, but she wants to surprise this woman with the answer, to break through her stoic professionalism. Instead, the librarian smiles at her indifferently and leaves the room.

  According to the catalog, there are a hundred and twenty-five letters. Only fifty-seven have been translated and grouped according to date and addressee. Notated index cards have been paper-clipped to the top left-hand corner of each, and Samantha assumes that they belong to the musicologist Don contacted.

  Goldberg started working for Count Keyserlingk in 1739 and wrote dozens of letters to his brother Carl during the next few years. Several detail a romance with a woman referred to as G—, but most describe the living conditions at Keyserlingk Castle.

  17 November 1740

  Carl,

  It has been almost three months since the count has slept through the night. He calls on us at all hours—demanding meals, companionship, and music, so much music. Sometimes I play until sunrise.

  He wears all black, like one who mourns for himself, a red scarf, and a strange circular pendant around his neck. Even on the hottest summer day, he wears these clothes and walks about like a madman, mumbling to himself. No guests come to the castle, nor does he leave at night.

  His chamber is filled with potions, dried herbs, and exotic plants. I caught a glimpse through the open door and am reluctant to pass by again. Most of the servants walk around like ghost
s, trying not to make noise and incur his anger. This is a strange place.

  I have little time to work on my music and am often too tired to concentrate. I pray things will get better, as I pray for you and Father.

  Your brother,

  Johann

  Several letters describe the restrictions imposed on Goldberg and the other servants. None of them was permitted to leave after sundown, nor could they enter the count’s private chamber under any circumstance. They were also forbidden to leave the castle on Sunday.

  3 January 1741

  Dear Brother,

  The count is furious again. He has taken down all of the crosses in the castle. Remember the one Father gave me before I moved to Dresden? The count tore it off the wall above my bed and threw it in the fire!

  He blames God for his inability to sleep. “God has punished me enough,” he keeps saying, but for what, I do not know.

  I played a new keyboard piece for him last night, and he was very pleased. Sometime before dawn, he interrupted to tell me about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus—a group of Christians who were persecuted for refusing to worship idols. On the eve of suffering the emperor’s wrath, God willed them to sleep for three hundred and seventy-two years to protect them. He woke them to restore the city’s faith in resurrection.

  “What kind of Lord would be so cruel—to deprive some of sleep and will it to others for centuries?” He clenched his fist and shook with rage as he spoke. “Imagine being one of those seven, waking up to find a world that had left you behind. Empires fallen. Friends, family, wives, and children buried. To find yourself forgotten. Yet for me it is worse, Goldberg. I am forced to watch this every hour, every day. Like this circle”—he lifted the pendant from his chest—“I am trapped in a never-ending band without sleep or joy.”

  He turned away, and I left the room as quickly as possible. I have been afraid ever since. Each day I think of leaving, running far from this city, but he watches like a hawk. I must go—

  Yours,

  Johann

  The warm, poorly ventilated room is stifling, and for the first time, Samantha feels uneasy in the quiet. She takes off her jacket, hanging it over the back of a nearby chair. Fluorescent lights buzz steadily overhead, and a low clicking starts to echo in the far distance. It gets louder, and she realizes that someone is walking down the hallway. The footsteps mark time steadily.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Her heart is thudding, and she grabs the edge of the table with both hands. Her neck is damp with sweat.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  She couldn’t see where the sounds were coming from. They seemed to echo in every direction with the steady rhythm of a clock ticking. She had been studying for hours, not aware of the exact time, not aware that the other students around her had left for the night. In her cubicle, notes from her constitutional law class looked as if they had been scattered by a gust of wind. An empty bottle of water and half-eaten bag of almond M&Ms were barely visible above the debris of books and papers.

  The sounds stopped. She looked over her shoulder, scanning a row of uniform stacks.

  Nothing. Just tall shelves casting short shadows.

  She turned back to her work.

  Samantha smelled him just before he grabbed her from behind. Sweat and grease, like the men where she got her car repaired and oil changed. His thick, smooth arm wrapped around her neck like a boa constrictor. She grabbed his wrist and forearm, struggling to breathe.

  In one motion, he seemed to throw her out of the chair and onto the floor. Her head smacked hard against the tile.

  A flash of white. The room drained of color until she saw the sliver blade slice through her yellow cotton shirt.

  His open hand pressed forcefully against her throat. Her stomach felt warm and sticky, and she imagined sinking into the floor as if it were quicksand. A thick heaviness covered her.

  “I’ve marked you.” His voice was deep and steady. “You’re mine now.”

  She remembers his pitted face close to hers. Yellow-green eyes and thick purplish lips. Hot breath. The smell of grease.

  Then darkness.

  A young man and woman were kneeling beside her when she woke. Another had run off to call the police and paramedics. Samantha found out later that they were law students too. The woman had accidentally left her reading glasses in one of the cubicles and returned with two friends on their way to a bar.

  The man attacking Samantha must have run at the sound of their approaching voices. None of them had seen him, just Samantha’s body lying on the floor. Her shirt black with blood. Pools of red on the white tiles.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  The footsteps come together and stop outside the door. Everything is still. Her face flushed and warm.

  “Hello?” Samantha’s voice is deadened in the soundproof room.

  The footsteps start again, moving in the opposite direction. They aren’t hurried, but steady and deliberate. Samantha exhales slowly and tells herself not to be afraid. She breathes again. The sounds in the hall fade to silence.

  She turns back to the letters and the next index card.

  Goldberg’s terror seems to lessen somewhat when Bach visits the castle several months later. His fear is replaced by fascination, a newfound curiosity about the count’s alchemical practices.

  5 October 1741

  Dearest Brother,

  The great J. S. Bach was here at the castle a few days ago! I introduced myself before G—showed him to the waiting room. My hand is still shaking with excitement.

  The count has commissioned a piece to help him sleep. It sounds absurd, I know, but the count is earnest. And Bach has agreed to try. In the meantime, the count summons me daily to assist with his work. He has become too ill to manage on his own.

  Yesterday he pointed out several potions in his chamber and said: “This is how it began, Goldberg. With a search.”

  “For what?”

  “Everlasting life. It is what God promises the righteous, those who can wait a lifetime for judgment.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was impatient. Afraid of oblivion, of not knowing. Let me live forever, I prayed. I will suffer whatever pains and torments, just leave me here—where I know what to expect.”

  He was quiet after that, and we continued to work.

  At first I thought of the miserable Struldbruggs, in Swift’s book, who live forever but never stop aging. Watching their bodies and minds decay, they become dejected and melancholic, lamenting at every funeral—envious of those who die. But the count is not like this. He is a victim not of fate but of his own deeds.

  I’m learning of a world I never knew, Brother. There are powers here that you can’t imagine. Be well and write soon,

  Your brother,

  J

  Before returning to Leipzig in early November, Bach delivers the Variations. This is the last letter Goldberg writes for the next six months.

  16 November 1741

  Carl,

  Bach composed a set of miraculous variations for the count. His performance was sublime. So much so that I began to feel spiteful—as if its beauty ridiculed me, laughing at the excuses I have made for my own failures. Why am I chained in servitude to this embittered man? If only I had the time and freedom to compose. I am capable of so much more, of a kind of greatness, yet I have grown comfortable with my own failings.

  The count’s manner has only gotten worse, and the servants become more frightened every day. As my animosity toward him grows, so does my sympathy for him. We are bound together now, like brothers. For the first time I understand his need for something more, something beyond this life.

  Stay well,

  Johann

  Samantha searches for the next letters, the ones from six months later, but can’t find them. They are still with the untranslated documents in Box C. According to the catalog, three more were written in the last week of May, but after that, nothing. As far as documented history is con
cerned, Goldberg disappears after May 30, 1742. She sets these letters aside, hoping that Don’s German is as good as he says it is, and walks to the door. She leans close, listening for any noise on the other side, then opens it quickly.

  She is relieved to feel the cooler air as she returns to the front desk. She asks the librarian to copy the letters left out in the Collections room and walks upstairs to the stacks, searching for a score of the Goldberg Variations. It’s on a dusty shelf in the far corner of the building. A thin shaft of light from a streetlamp pours through the porthole-shaped window facing the parking lot. The pages are yellow and fragile with age.

  Samantha takes it to the listening library, checks out a copy of the 1981 Glenn Gould recording, and sits at one of the listening stations. As the music starts, she lets herself feel tired from the morning, the flight, the loose ends of this case. Folding her arms, she leans back and closes her eyes.

  …The white porcelain tub feels colder than the water covering her face. Strong hands press her down as she struggles for air. Blood suddenly appears in the water like a cloud. She breaks above the surface and breathes furiously. He pushes down again. She wants to scream, but her voice sounds distant, as if she were falling….

  “Miss? Miss?”

  She jumps back with a start and looks up at the librarian, who is tapping her on the shoulder, then at the CD player in front of her which reads “Stop. 32 tr. 0:00.”

  “Sorry. We’re closing the listening library for the night. The main library will be open for another three hours.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven o’ clock.”

  “What?” Samantha checks her watch.

  “Seven o’clock. You’ve had a bit of a nap.” She smiles faintly, then hands Samantha a folder. “Here are the photocopies you requested. Do you need anything else?”

  “No, thanks.”