Mobius Dick

by Andrew Crumey

  He went back to the main street. There were a couple of shops, but their displays of tinned peas and cornflake boxes didn’t attract him. He wondered if he should try looking for Mr McCrone.

  Then suddenly he saw her. A figure in the corner of his eye, making him turn his head to look. A woman, walking swiftly, already reaching the other side of the road and disappearing round a corner before he could fully comprehend.

  At once he pursued her, going to the lane she’d followed, ready to discover there someone who, on fuller inspection, would bear only a passing resemblance to the person he was sure he had just seen. Ringer was surprised by what he found. The lane was a cul-de-sac lacking any sign of life. Almost as soon as she had appeared out of empty space, Helen had vanished back into it.

  HARRY’S TALE

  ‘Interesting,’ Priscilla Morgan was saying as she examined Harry’s completed pages.

  ‘And you’re telling me I was scribbling this stuff only a few minutes ago?’ Harry asked her.

  She looked at him over the page she held and gave a nod that shook her carrot-coloured hair. ‘I couldn’t stop you,’ she said. ‘You were writing like a demon and didn’t even seem to notice me watching you. Then all at once you snapped out of it.’

  Harry remembered nothing; but at least he had now carried out the creative writing exercise Priscilla demanded of him.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Harry asked. ‘Any good?’

  She was swiftly scanning his work with the look of someone who did this kind of thing a great deal, and only when paid for it. ‘Intriguing,’ she said.

  ‘Is the therapy working?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is there any indication to you, as a professional in the field, that this will help improve my condition?’

  ‘It’s not that sort of therapy, Harry.’

  ‘Not the sort that cures anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what sort is it?’

  ‘It’s writing therapy. That’s all it is. It’s meant to make you feel better about yourself.’

  The exercise had instead made Harry feel considerably worse, having proved to him beyond doubt that something very strange was going on in his brain.

  ‘I can’t find any mention of the objects I gave you,’ she said, leafing through pages whose contents were completely unknown to him. ‘The key, for instance. It came from an old jewellery box belonging to my mother.’ Then she began to describe the role it had played in one or two of her seventeen published stories. ‘And what about the ring?’

  ‘I expect it’s in there somewhere,’ said Harry.

  ‘There’s a character named John Ringer,’ Priscilla told him. ‘But I’d call that cheating. Still, as long as you’re writing something, we shouldn’t complain. And you certainly have a fertile mind. You know, Harry, all you need is a feel for language, character, setting and plot, and you could even turn out to be a decent writer.’

  Harry thanked her for this compliment, but said that creative writing appealed to him no more than the thought of training to be a consultant metaneurologist. Skilled and specialized fields should be left to those willing to give up all their time and energy to doing the job properly. Though without having actually seen any of Priscilla’s seventeen published stories, Harry still couldn’t be sure she wasn’t merely an actress performing a role of Dr Blake’s scripting. And even if he were to read Priscilla’s stories, he probably still wouldn’t be able to decide.

  She said, ‘Might John Ringer be someone you once knew?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Sounds symbolic, though. Loops and circles. Does it “ring a bell”?’

  They were back to Flow-Bear and Penis Man. Yes, Harry decided, Dr Blake must be pulling the strings. Maybe that was why Priscilla kept jangling so much whenever she moved.

  ‘And what about Schrödinger?’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Another name in your tale. Is he real?’

  Harry wasn’t listening; he had suddenly recalled walking out of a shop with a book in his hand, preparing to cross the road. Schrödinger was a name from the book; he felt sure of it.

  ‘It’s an anagram of “chord singer”,’ Priscilla noticed. ‘Could that be significant?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Harry.

  Then, feigning sudden insight, she cried, ‘Hang on. Isn’t Schrödinger the name of the First Minister?’

  ‘No,’ Harry replied confidently. ‘The First Minister is Alexander Macintyre.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she nodded, ‘that’s right, of course.’ And with equal implausibility she added, ‘By the way, do you remember the seventh article of the Constitution?’

  Harry admitted he had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘The articles?’ she said incredulously. ‘Didn’t you recite them at school?’

  The change of topic was forced in a way that showed Dr Blake’s ever-guiding hand; it was another step in her experiment of strategically fertilizing Harry’s memories in order to see how they blossomed. But now that they had arrived at the nation’s constitution, Priscilla spoke with a conviction he was sure could not be falsified, even if she really were the author of seventeen published short stories. ‘Go on,’ said Harry, ‘remind me.’

  ‘It is the duty of every citizen,’ she began, ‘to uphold the Constitution and its articles, except where this may be contrary to the security of the Republic.’

  Even as she spoke, Harry found himself dimly recalling a distant classroom scene. Wearing short trousers and needing to go to the toilet, he was standing to attention with all the other children, reading aloud what was written on the blackboard while the teacher (a stern woman in a tartan skirt) rapped each word with a wooden pointer.

  ‘Why yes,’ he said, ‘I think I remember.’

  He noticed Priscilla jotting something down in a notepad she’d brought from her pocket. She only gave this therapy because she had to, until her next writing residency came along; but he was grateful for the little spark she’d set glowing in his mind. He started remembering other things too. A boy standing at the front of the class, about to be beaten for misbehaving. Above him, on the wall, the sombre black-and-white photograph of a balding man, kindly yet terrifying. Vernon Shaw.

  ‘Was there ever a First Minister called Vernon Shaw?’ he asked Priscilla.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was leader of the Party.’

  ‘Which party?’

  ‘The one that kicked out the Germans and ran this country until fifteen years ago.’ Then she added disarmingly, ‘I’m probably not meant to tell you that.’ She made another note, and Harry wondered if he’d just been given a false memory.

  He said, ‘Will Margaret be here soon?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware you had one. You’d better ask Dr Blake about that when you next see her.’

  ‘And when will that be?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But she sees you every day, doesn’t she?’

  Harry tried to work out when the doctor had last visited, going back through meals and bowel movements, the cycles of waking and sleeping, and even allowing for time lost to the trance-like state in which he must have produced his story about a chord singer. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen Dr Blake for at least a week,’ he said.

  Priscilla smiled. ‘You’ve been here three days, Harry. Your sense of time must be affected by AMD. I’ve heard it can make a second seem a lifetime, or a lifetime like a second.’

  Harry was startled. ‘Just as well that in my case it’s the former.’

  Then she resumed her cursory inspection of his writing, having presumably by now reached the next part of her own pre-rehearsed script. ‘I see a few recognizable scraps of reality here, but much of it is evidently invented. For example, you mention a writer …’

  ‘Flow-Bear?’

  ‘No, Thomas Mann.’

  ‘I might have known.’ />
  ‘You even cite particular books by this imaginary author. That does show a certain flair, Harry.’

  He could feel himself blushing with pride.

  ‘Though on the other hand,’ she said, ‘writing about writers is best avoided. I’m sure if you think hard enough you’ll find a memory of being treated badly as a child – that’s more promising ground.’

  Again he saw the boy about to be beaten, his arms outstretched, palms held upward, as Miss Flynn raised the leather belt in readiness. Whether real or fabricated, the memory was becoming stronger.

  She continued, ‘You say in your story that Thomas Mann wrote a book called Doctor Faustus. I bet you were thinking of Goethe’s Faust.’

  ‘Was there a real writer called Goethe?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Priscilla. ‘I’m no expert on all that classic stuff – none of it’s relevant any more and the attitudes are so dated – but I do remember a film about one of Goethe’s love affairs, based on a novel; it was very popular during the Time of Restructuring. Now what was it called … ?’ She thought hard, or pretended to, the effort appearing as great as the one that had brought the Constitution back to Harry. ‘The Angel Returns,’ she declared. ‘That was a lovely film – it had Grace Rutherford as the old woman, and Audrey Milbank as the young one in flashback. There’s a beautiful scene where she first meets Goethe …’

  Harry’s mind wandered as Priscilla gave what sounded suspiciously like a period-costume version of one of her own short stories. There was no kitchen sink or oil rig, but it nevertheless climaxed in the same obligatory epiphany that brought a tear to Priscilla’s eye, followed by a loud jangling as she wiped her cheek dry. All he wanted to know was how this bit of genuine information had filtered itself, by way of AMD and a bump on the head, into his own tale about an invented writer.

  ‘Who wrote The Angel Returns?’ he asked.

  Again Priscilla thought hard, doubtless trying to repeat in her mind the experience of sitting in a darkened cinema, watching the credits roll and waiting for the part saying Based on a story by … Or else it was simply taking her a while to remember what Dr Blake had instructed her to say.

  ‘Heinrich Behring,’ she announced at last. ‘Silly of me to forget. He was really famous – a hero of the old times.’

  Perhaps Harry was only being fed misinformation; yet as soon as he heard the name, he felt sure of its authenticity. He could even see it on the cover of a book. It was the one he held as he prepared to cross the road, failing to see the car that hit him.

  Priscilla said, ‘I think the old woman was called Bettina. But The Angel Returns isn’t only about her and Goethe. If I remember correctly, it’s also about her friendship with a composer.’

  ‘A real composer?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It might have been Schubert.’

  To Harry this definitely sounded false. Shoe-Bird. It was too close to Flow-Bear to be anything but the same sort of misplaced pencil Dr Blake had warned him about.

  ‘He went mad,’ said Priscilla.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The composer. Bettina went to visit him in an asylum. I think it might have been based on a true story. It wasn’t Schubert, though.’ She was gazing at the pages in her hand as she tried to remember. Suddenly she cried out, ‘Here it is: Schumann!’

  Shoe Man, Penis Man. Was Dr Blake – by way of Priscilla – trying to explore the symbolic meaning of Harry’s dreamworld by throwing in a few dreams of her own? Plenty of men in them, that was for sure.

  ‘Look, Harry, you mention Schumann in your story about John Ringer.’ She held the page under his nose, but all he saw was a swimming blur on which his eyes were unable to focus. ‘And here …’ she leafed through the pages again. ‘One of the books Thomas Mann is supposed to have written: something about Goethe’s lover. I think we’re starting to see where you got your inspiration, Harry. Your Thomas Mann is a fictional version of Heinrich Behring. And I’ve thought of something else. I’m sure Behring wrote a novel called Professor Faust! So that’s where you got Doctor Faustus from. Incidentally, you’ve spelled Doctor with a k.’

  Such infuriating attention to detail revealed her as genuinely being the writer she claimed. In her analysis, Thomas Mann and his imaginary oeuvre fell rapidly to shreds: a fragile collage of half-remembered facts. As she gathered up Harry’s completed pages for further inspection, he found himself seeing even more vividly the scene as he emerged from a bookshop, carrying a copy of Professor Faust and hardly looking as he stepped into the road. Both his hands, he now remembered, were full. What was in the other?

  ‘I’ll be off now,’ Priscilla was saying. ‘No need for me to suggest another writing exercise; you’re doing perfectly well as it is, thanks to AMD. I almost wish I could catch it too. You know, some people reckon it comes from mobile phones.’

  That was it: a phone in one hand, Professor Faust in the other. Priscilla went out, and the scene continued to assemble itself in Harry’s mind like a scene from a movie. Yet each time he played it, the weakness of its details became more manifest. Was the book in his right hand or his left? Each was equally plausible, equally untrustworthy. Harry realized that the memory was probably false, its components seeded by Priscilla.

  She had left more blank paper for him. He stared at it, soon losing himself in the snowy expanse. He wanted to get out of bed but found himself unable to move; instead the whiteness grew, spreading beyond the pages, filling his entire field of view so that at first he was startled, then understood that such hallucinations must be a normal aspect of his condition. Snow was falling all around him. He shivered as he watched the flakes descend.

  On his outstretched arm, white powdered jewels began to heap themselves, glistening over his frosted limb. Through the tumbling curtain of icy crystals he could see the wasteland that surrounded him. A harsh breeze stung his cheeks as he discerned a barbed-wire fence, picked out amidst the swirling snowfall by the play of a searchlight, to the fearfully resonant accompaniment of a barking guard dog. It was all becoming clearer to him, this terrible whiteness. On the hard ground lay a line of frozen corpses awaiting burial.

  He blinked, and woke to see the pages filled.

  A NATURAL EXPLANATION

  Ringer stood looking down the lane where Helen had disappeared. No, he couldn’t have seen a ghost; such things do not exist. Surely it was a woman who only resembled Helen, and who had retreated into one of the houses lining the cul-de-sac.

  He heard a male voice behind him.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Ringer turned and saw a short man in minister’s garb; a thin, elderly fellow with a mottled scalp. Ringer guessed at once who it must be.

  ‘Mr McCrone?’ he asked.

  ‘I am he,’ the minister confirmed. ‘Have we met?’

  Ringer introduced himself.

  ‘Professor Ringer! What a surprise!’ They shook hands. ‘Well now, I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow. I hope there hasn’t been a mix-up.’

  Ringer told him he’d decided to stay here in Ardnahanish, rather than at Craigcarron. The minister looked concerned. ‘I have to tell you,’ he said solemnly, ‘that our church funds are very meagre, and only extend to your speaking fee. I’m so sorry we can’t undertake to pay your accommodation costs.’

  Ringer was glad he hadn’t thrown himself onto Mr McCrone’s charity after all; but once he assured the minister he wouldn’t be claiming expenses, Mr McCrone’s face brightened and he was keen to find out where Ringer was staying. ‘Ah, Mrs Moffat,’ he said when Ringer told him. ‘You’ll be well looked after.’

  The night was gathering. ‘Are there any guesthouses in this street?’ asked Ringer, pointing down the lane.

  ‘There’s Mrs McFarland at number eight; she takes guests. Has one at the moment, I believe.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘That’d be right, I think.’ The minister spoke with the air of one who knows all, and worries only about whom he shares it with. ‘Have you seen the
kirk?’ he said, changing the subject.

  ‘The church? Yes, quite impressive, from the outside.’

  ‘Why not come and have a wee look at the interior?’ he suggested. It was an invitation Ringer was in no position to refuse, so they walked there together, and the minister unlocked a side door.

  ‘It dates from the middle of the nineteenth century,’ Mr McCrone explained, switching on the lights as Ringer followed him inside. ‘Not long after the Disruption.’ Then he gazed up at a Victorian stained-glass window, presumably wishing Ringer to do the same, though the window, against the darkness outside, seemed to Ringer no more than an indecipherable jumble of lead outlines and mud-coloured panes. The minister looked round at him. ‘I take it you’ve heard of the Disruption of 1843? No, perhaps not. It was when the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland fell into grievous disharmony. Many ministers resigned their livings and formed the Free Church of Scotland.’

  ‘Which is different from the Church of Scotland?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And what about the Episcopalians?’ Ringer had heard the name but had no idea what it meant.

  ‘Never mind about them,’ said Mr McCrone.

  ‘But at least you all follow the same God.’

  Mr McCrone smiled sweetly. ‘Yes. And since there is one true God, there can only be one true church that worships Him correctly. To a physicist such as yourself, the arithmetic must be pretty straightforward.’

  All Ringer could discern was a process of division. ‘I’d better go now,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I promised Mrs Moffat I’d return within the hour, and I’d like to unpack.’

  ‘Of course,’ the minister said. ‘I’d invite you to my own home for dinner, but unfortunately my wife has trouble with her wrist. I believe the Pepperpot does good bar snacks, very reasonable. I don’t go there myself, you understand. Shall I show you the way?’

  ‘No need,’ Ringer told him. To be lost in a village as small as Ardnahanish would require the navigational ineptitude of a shopping trolley. He said goodbye and after only a short walk arrived back at his B&B.