Mobius Dick

by Andrew Crumey

  He asked me, ‘What is your profession, sir?’ And I told him, not untruthfully: a writer. ‘A writer?’ says he. ‘That’s very fine. And what manner of books do you write?’ It was, to cut it short, the conversation you and I and every other writer knows well, including a request from him that I scribble my name so that he could memorize it, for he said he had never heard of me. I then offered him the added name of Mr Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter and other equally fine works, which he said sounded familiar.

  He wanted to know about American religion. I said I had recently published a fat book about belief, available in his country ere my own, though when I described it to him he said, ‘You mean it’s really about whaling?’ As much as is the Book of Jonah, I said to him. Then he told me about Ardnahanish and its simple life. I asked him about the Protestant faction he adheres to like a sour black limpet: it was born of some ecclesiastical rift here thirteen years ago, and the look of bitterness this Disruption brought to his face was of the kind that’s seen in any literary circle when the talk is of other people’s successes. His cause, I guessed, had taken few followers, and so he must console himself with the comical self-belief of one who jousts oblivion and calls it heroic.

  He said to me, proudly, ‘We have a magnificent new fountain,’ and led me along the village’s main street. I found a solid and attractive structure, babbling prettily as it shot a thin jet of water that splashed upon a polished bowl. How like the spouting of a whale, I thought, and soon grew sorrowful again, so that the minister said he had other matters to attend. He left me watching the waters of the fountain, thinking of my failures, and then of my Agatha. What a noble book it will be!

  Tell me, Nathaniel, do you believe in predestination? I do. It was fated that I should stand there beside the fountain, fated too, that I should draw from my pocket two English coins, intending to place upon each of them a wish. I tossed them into the fountain’s bowl, one landed near the rim, the other further down. And then I wondrously beheld that both slid to the bottom in equal time! I saw that the shape of the fountain was precisely one described by me before, in Moby-Dick. ’Twas the famous cycloid – the poetically named Helen of Geometry. In Moby-Dick, you might recall, the magical shape was to be found in the try-pots, where my hero is visited by thoughts of madness and despair after seeing himself transformed in the curved bowl’s reflection. Now here I was, in this Scotch village, finding those same thoughts answered by that same sublime, mysterious shape! Was it not the figure of the universe itself I saw encompassed there? What heavenly hand belayed the pen, when drowsy draughtsman plotted the fountain’s construction, and its fate? Did the same hand steer my own pen when I wrote my Whale, fashioning a tale whose lesson was to be not fame, but failure? There is a divinity that shapes the contours of our lives, then tosses coins upon them, of fortune or of ignominy.

  It made me dizzy to contemplate. How had I been guided here, to discover a message I alone might comprehend? My ancestors brought me: but did they know? Did a thousand generations of Melville shepherds and trawler-men work for this? Looking into the fountain’s gleaming polished bowl, I saw their command to me. ‘Write your Agatha,’ the waters said. ‘And like this fountain, your book will find its way to one who understands it.’

  This was the message of the fountain; yet about me I saw grey clouds – a wind rose up and parried with me as I wrapped my coat about my shivering frame. I felt transformed, as if by sacred or infernal opiate. ‘I must walk into the mountains,’ I heard myself decide. ‘There are other answers there.’

  And so I walked. The village quickly lay behind me, below me, as I trod a narrow path the hooves of mountain sheep had carved. Rough grass and heather gave way to black rock – the clouds still gathered and assembled as I reached a barren peak, unable now to see anything beyond another summit, as dismal and as blasted as my own. There was snow at my feet: it was madness to be here, in a place where better men might perish. But like the coins in the fountain, I was instructed by a gravity beyond reason.

  The clouds shrouded me – the wind grew as if to topple and destroy me. And as I felt the chill embrace of destruction I called out: ‘I will not be annihilated!’ There on the peak, I said Yes to life – to endless, unbounded life!

  And as rain began to rattle around me, all at once the scenery was transformed. From beyond the mists and clouds, a flash arose. It was not lightning, but a rosy globe that swiftly grew and sped, like a fireball, illuminating the mountain side, rending the clouds asunder. A brilliant, blue-white sheet of light, hurling itself past me like a locomotive and speeding on across the valley.

  So bright was the vision, that for a moment I was blinded. Then, as my stunned eyes regained their strength, I saw the mountain anew. Far off, a fine castle stood, surrounded by other buildings and girt by a great road on which a carriage moved without horse to pull it. In an instant the mirage was gone; but now, closer to hand, a more wondrous sight arose. Rubbing my scorched eyes, I beheld beside me – a woman! I knew at once who she was. It was Agatha, the heroine of the novel I am to write, which will be my salvation. She hovered like the spirit she was, reaching towards me an inviting hand. Was I to go with her already? Or was I to climb down from the mountain, spend days and years among the living, before meeting her again?

  I hesitated, and I lost my chance. She was gone, the vapours of madness were clearing. The storm had passed, and though I was drenched with rain I knew the meaning of all that I had witnessed. You refused to write the story I offered you, and your refusal was just. Yet I allowed it to sour our friendship, and the rancour I harboured made me give offence to you and your family.

  My vision on the mountain told me that I must complete the story of Agatha. It will be a better tale than I could ever have made it, had I not seen before me my own doubt and jealousy personified, my fear and anger made flesh, my love and hope made female and forgiving. I shall finish my book, Nathaniel, and we shall be friends again – I feel sure of it.

  Will I even send this letter? It would further arm those who say philosophy has robbed me of my senses. Damn them, then! What worth is a book, if it be not aflame with madness? Are the scriptures not filled with divine folly? And if my words offend you, then you have not understood them. There is a wisdom that is madness: I have seen it here in Ardnahanish, in this ancestral land of ghosts and spirits. Hail, friend!

  H. Melville

  When Schrödinger finished the letter, he noticed that the moaning next door had ceased. That poor woman, Clara, was being incorporated by Hinze into the neurotic visions and fantasies of a few writers and artists. This was ‘universal mind’! A chain of chance associations. To Schrödinger, it showed only how easy it is for imagination to invent connections where none exists.

  He laid the letter on the desk, then reached for the red curtain and drew it aside again to reveal the painted door. Hearing no further sound from the next room, he suddenly decided to give the door a mild rap, three times, loudly enough that Clara would hear. There was no response; so a moment later he tried again, gently, as if requesting admission. And this time, after he finished knocking, he saw the doorknob turn in reply. Clara was trying to open the door.

  ‘Hello,’ he said softly. The doorknob stopped moving. Schrödinger reached for it, then as he began turning it, he felt the resistance of her grasp on the other side. ‘How strange,’ he said for her benefit, providing some refuge for himself in assumed casualness. ‘At first I thought this was only a cupboard, but the door appears to connect our rooms. Is there a key on your side?’

  Still she gave no answer.

  He said, ‘Perhaps I might come and have a look. Would that be too bold a suggestion? It would be best after all, would it not, if I were to verify that the door cannot be opened. Then we both could sleep soundly, without fearing that a visitor in the neighbouring room might inadvertently—’

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’ Suddenly she’d decided to be a whale again. Schrödinger was dismayed.

  ‘Do y
ou have to keep doing that?’ he asked. ‘As you realize, the door is not a good barrier to sound. Why don’t we both agree to place a wardrobe, let’s say, on each side of the door? I could come now and help you shift it.’

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’

  He’d had enough of this weird performance. Schrödinger got up and went out of his room, stood before Clara’s door and knocked hard on it. ‘Hello? Might I come in?’

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’

  ‘If we’re to have any rest tonight, we really ought to talk.’ He tried the door, and it opened, Hinze having left in too much hurry to lock it.

  She was sitting on the floor, wearing a faded dressing gown, cross-legged like a Hindu sage. Her back was to him, but a mirror on the dressing table she faced allowed Schrödinger a full view of her. Her arms were held angled and aloft so that her hands met horizontally before her breast. Her eyes were closed in transcendental contemplation.

  ‘Ooooo—!’

  She stopped, opened her eyes and stared, by way of the mirror, at Schrödinger, looking as though she had suddenly been woken from a dream.

  ‘Do you mind if I come in?’ he said, closing the door behind him. He quickly scanned the room, which was an exact though transposed replica of his own. She too had a red curtain, drawn back, behind her desk. He went to the sealed door and tried its handle. The lock, as on his side, was covered with a wooden flap that had been painted solid.

  ‘Would you like me to move the wardrobe?’ Schrödinger asked calmly. She gave no reply, and he sat down at her desk, which was just like his. In fact it was as though, in reaching her room, he had himself passed through a mirror, arriving in a world whose rules of conduct, as well as its geometry, were reversed. There were some papers on the desk, which he examined one by one.

  ‘Your drawings?’ he asked. The first sheet was covered with circles of varying sizes, some having crosses or stars inscribed within them. Schrödinger guessed they were part of Hinze’s therapy. The second sheet was a portrait of a man, done with evident care but so lacking in skill that it could have been a picture of anybody. Then he looked at the third sheet, which bore lines and curves, like crude symbols. One was a semi-circular arc pierced by a straight line, resembling a devil’s pitchfork. Rotating the page, Schrödinger saw it as a letter of the Greek alphabet.

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’ She was off again, moving not a muscle save those of her face as she moaned and gasped.

  ‘Where are you?’ Schrödinger asked, deciding to try Hinze’s method.

  ‘Waves,’ she said immediately. He was startled and intrigued.

  ‘Where are the waves?’ Schrödinger asked.

  ‘Everywhere.’ Her eyes were closed again now, her body still immobile.

  ‘Are you swimming?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes.’

  Then he said to her, ‘Are you naked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He had a sensation of terrible power. He could will her to submit her body to him, as she did to Hinze. Yet his own body was already sated by the abrupt copulation with Frau Schwarzkopf, which Clara must have heard. Schrödinger’s desire now was purely abstract.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said to her. He reached out and stroked her hair. She appeared not to notice. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Agatha,’ she said.

  ‘Not Clara?’

  She paused. ‘Helen,’ she told him.

  ‘Well, you’re a lovely woman, Helen,’ Schrödinger said. ‘I’m sure you could launch a thousand ships.’ He looked again at the portrait she must have drawn. ‘Who is he?’ Schrödinger asked. ‘The man in the picture?’ There was no answer. ‘And what about this?’ He was contemplating the other sheet, with its Greek letter like a pitchfork.

  ‘Waves,’ she said. ‘Stories.’

  Schrödinger asked, ‘Are there stories in the waves?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of stories?’

  ‘Everything at once. Real, imaginary.’

  ‘And you’re swimming in them?’

  Slowly, she swung her head, opened her eyes, and looked at him. ‘You too,’ she said. The words chilled him; it was the first time she had addressed him directly. She used the familiar du, but Schrödinger could not tell if it was truly meant for him. She had the same vacant expression he’d seen in the dining room, like that of a somnambulist, unaware of her surroundings and instead inhabiting a landscape of dreams while fixing her blue eyes, almost accidentally, in his direction.

  ‘Are we both swimming in the waves?’ he asked. ‘Why should we be doing that?’

  ‘Because the waves are everywhere.’

  It was what he had come here to Arosa to ponder. Waves. And now this strange, disturbed woman was talking about them. Suddenly it was as if he were in mystical consultation with a fortune-teller in a fairground tent.

  He said to her, ‘Will I find the equation I’m looking for?’

  ‘You already have.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  She turned her head back to its former position, closed her eyes, and at that moment, Schrödinger realized he did indeed have it. Looking at the sheet of paper on the desk, he saw that there was not one pitchfork, but two, and that the symbols could be read, with only a little effort, as a crudely scribbled formula, like one copied by an uncomprehending child. Hψ=Eψ.

  ‘It’s an eigenvalue problem!’ he murmured. ‘The answer is no more complicated than that!’ At once he understood the ultimate form that the equation for De Broglie’s matter waves must take. All that was left was for him to find a way of deriving the correct answer he knew he must reach. He was like a crafty pupil, peeking at the back of nature’s book where every problem is solved.

  Had Clara already seen the last pages of that great book? Was she the oracle of universal mind after all? Schrödinger, examining her wondrous scrawls, convinced himself they could be interpreted in countless other ways. What he had seen in them, he would later decide, was an equation already written in his own imagination that had been waiting for the right moment to emerge from its secret cocoon into rational thought. In Clara’s random scribbles, a poet might find an elusive rhyme; a lover might see his beloved.

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’

  She was still swimming in her endless Platonic ocean. Might De Broglie’s matter waves likewise exist everywhere? What would it mean, to say that an electron is borne on waves extending across galaxies? The flotsam of this cosmic sea is the Maya we call reality. Schrödinger realized that the falling of a single quantum of light, in the room where he sat, might be instantaneously linked to some hidden event among the stars. Then there could be no meaningless coincidence in the world; everything would be correlated, everything would have significance. This, perhaps, was the real basis of Hinze’s universal mind.

  Schrödinger rose. He would leave Clara to her mental roaming, across distances he could not contemplate. At this moment, she might be visiting the sick man she had told Hinze about; giving him a message from the unwritten book of the future, like the one she had offered Schrödinger. And in this same moment, the young Friedrich Nietzsche was seeing the same sick man, finding in the vision his own message. And through some strange juxtaposition of time and possibility, Clara was simultaneously materializing on a Scottish mountain, where an American writer was consoling himself over his failure.

  ‘OOOOO-AAAHHH!’

  Schrödinger left her, closing her door as he emerged into the empty corridor, then turning to his own adjacent door, likewise closed. From the salon below, he could hear voices, and music. A violin and piano, linked in a lyrical duet that seemed to be moving towards a final cadence, driven by the tonal logic that makes every bar somehow dependent on the one that is to be the last.

  Schrödinger swung open the door to his room. And what he saw was not his room. The floor was smoothly tiled, the bed steel-framed, the furnishings brutish in their functional simplicity. On the floor, their faces hidden from his view, a man and woman lay slumped and entangled as if in the afterm
ath of sexual congress.

  Schrödinger blinked, and in an instant it was gone. He was tired, that was all. Now he would spend the night deriving the equation he felt sure would make his name. And down below, the music faded to its conclusion.

  Note

  * English translation by Celia Carter. Cromwell Press, British Democratic Republic, 1954

  ARRIVAL

  He woke to see a white-uniformed nurse – stocky, overweight and perspiring – standing beside his bed.

  ‘Where am I?’ he said to her.

  ‘You’re in Burgh House Hospital,’ she replied. The name meant nothing to him. He had surfaced from a dream that still clung to his senses, deadening them. All he could remember from it was some music playing in another room. And the nurse. Had he seen her in his dream, making love in a kitchen? How could he possibly have been aroused by such a loathsome sight?

  ‘It’s Wednesday,’ she said. ‘You took a bad turn and they brought you here from Craigcarron.’ She could see puzzlement and incomprehension on his face. ‘Craigcarron. Village up by the coast. Can ye no remember any of it?’

  ‘I was at the villa,’ he told her. ‘My name is …’ He fell silent.

  ‘You’re called John Ringer,’ she told him, exuding a locker-room odour as she reached above his bed to attend to a part of the world beyond his gaze. ‘You were lucky you fell ill so near here. Anybody loses their memory, this is where they come. Fly them in by helicopter frae as far away as Edinburgh, so they do.’

  It was hardly worth trying to make sense of it. He had passed from one dream into another, and his progress through this latest illusion could be equally unhindered by curiosity. Lying on his back, staring at the nurse’s grotesquely enormous bosom as she fiddled with whatever it was that occupied her, it was as if he were floating on a raft of indifference.