The End of Mr. Y

by Scarlett Thomas

  Very soon I was left alone in the tent with a thin-framed man. He walked over to me slowly and pointed in the direction of the stage.

  'It is certainly an intriguing spectacle,' he said.

  'Indeed it is,' I concurred.

  'And it is my guess that you are trying to find an explanation for it.'

  'Yes,' I said.

  The man was silent for a moment, as if he was making a calculation.

  'For two shillings I will show you.'

  Before I had even had time to protest at the price, I was following the man towards the stage. At first I believed that he was going to show me the mechanics of the illusion, and explain it in that manner : by a simple demonstration. Instead, he led me through a flap in the tent into a smaller canvas structure in which there was a medicine chest balanced on a small table along with a large lamp, a more vulgar example of which I had never seen. Its ceramic base seemed to combine the deep variegated reds of an old wound, and on this base were painted sickly yellow flowers of a sort, I felt certain, not known to nature. From the rim of its ceramic shade dangled several glass beads, clearly intended to refract the light in the manner of a chandelier, but in fact only managing to create an eerie spattering of shadow on the back of the tent. Beyond the table was a slab that looked like a closed coffin, but which I assumed was intended as some sort of bed.

  'I don't believe I caught your name,' I said.

  'You can think of me as the fair-ground doctor,' said he. 'And you?'

  His manner made me reluctant to introduce myself in the proper way and so I simply suggested that he address me as Mr. Y.

  I was suddenly overcome with the peculiar sensation that everyone else had gone home and that I was the only man left at the fair-ground. I could hear the many fists of rain beating on the top of the tent but fancied that I could not hear anything else from outside : no laughter or voices. Even the infernal drone of the organ would have been welcome. I suddenly felt vexed, and I did not trust this doctor. Yet, when he motioned for me to sit on the slab I did as he suggested.

  'You wish to know the nature of the illusion you just witnessed,' said he. 'I can show you this, and more. But—' Here he faltered. 'Perhaps you do not have the constitution for the illumination I am about to offer. Perhaps—'

  'I have two shillings,' I said to him curtly, and withdrew the money. 'Now, do as you promised.'

  The doctor opened his medicine chest and drew from it a vial of clear fluid. From this vial he poured a small measure into a glass which he then passed to me. With his other hand, he motioned to me to wait. He then withdrew another object from his chest : a white card with a small black circle at its centre. He then instructed me to drink the mixture and lie down on the slab, holding the card above my face, concentrating as hard as I could on the black spot. As I did as he asked, I wondered to what kind of trickery I was being subjected. I suspected mesmerism of the crudest sort. Not for one second did I believe that the mixture would have any effect, nor was I aware that the rest of my life would be altered as a result of drinking it.

  By eleven o'clock I have finished the first chapter of The End of Mr. Y. The winter sun is peeping meekly through the thin curtains and I decide to get up. It's freezing. I pick up my jeans from the floor and quickly exchange them for my pajama bottoms; then I put on a random jumper. As I trot down the concrete steps to get the mail, I am suddenly possessed with a feeling that I've forgotten something. Have I locked myself out again? No, it's not that. My keys are in my hand. I note the take-away flyers and taxi cards without picking any of them up, and go back upstairs. What could I have forgotten?

  Porridge. Coffee. A whole day of reading ahead of me. Things could be worse. I already have the sleepy feeling I get when I'm reading a good book: like I want to curl up in bed with it and forget about the nonfictional world. At some point I still have to try to work out how to survive for the next three weeks on five pounds, but that could even be fun. Once I've had breakfast I dig out my packet of ginseng cigarettes and light one. In fact, I'm feeling pretty relaxed when the buzzing sound starts in my bag. It's my mobile phone, which is broken and can no longer ring. At first I think the buzzing represents a call and so I ignore it. But the vibrating only goes on for a few seconds and I realize it's a text message, so I go and get the phone out of my bag. There's a little picture of an envelope on the front and I press the button that metaphorically opens it.

  r you still on for 2day where shall we meet

  Shit. That's the thing I've forgotten. It's Patrick. I think quickly and then text back: Cathedral crypt 5pm. I can't not see him. I cancelled last time, and anyway he'll probably buy me dinner. His text messages aren't very articulate when you consider that he's a professor of linguistics, but then again he's the kind of person who writes his e-mails in lowercase type because he thinks it's the done thing. I've been seeing Patrick for about the last three months, and in that time we have had sex less than a dozen times. But it's good sex; intense sex; the sort of sex you can only really get with an older man who isn't worried about whether or not you will eventually get married; the kind of sex that is had for its own sake, and not as a deposit against something one party wants to gain in the future. Patrick is already married, of course, although his wife has affairs, too, which stops me from feeling guilty about our arrangement. Sometimes I think through the logic of all this and realize that there must be young men out there—the equivalents of me—who want infrequent sex and companionship without the complications of love and commitment. Would I sleep with one of these guys if I could find one? Probably not. There's something too smooth about younger men. And anyway, older men really do know how to fuck. Crude, but there you are.

  I don't think Saul Burlem was married, and maybe it's a good thing he disappeared: I did have a bit of a thing for him, after all. But it is obviously a very bad idea to sleep with your supervisor, and I could have grown to really like him, if his books and online lectures are anything to go by. I would have gone home with him on the night I met him, though, before I'd had a chance to think any of it through. Did he know that? Maybe he knew it would be a bad idea, too. After we'd talked about my Ph.D., I excused myself and went to find the loo. I was drunk and I did get a bit lost, but I wasn't gone that long. I do remember an amazing corridor, though. It was this low-ceilinged, whitewashed space that felt like the inside of an antique telescope: smooth and cold. I must have walked up and down it three or four times, wishing I had a camera, or a better memory. When I got back to the Upper Hall, Burlem had gone.

  By half past four I have had a bath, got dressed again—this time with more sense of purpose—and completed a short inventory of the food items I have in the house. The list isn't very inspiring. It tells me that if I am happy to live on porridge, tinned soup, and noodles, I can do so for roughly one week. Can five pounds therefore stretch to cover the remaining two weeks? I could buy a big bottle of soy sauce for about fifty pence at the market and, say, fourteen bags of slightly out-of-date noodles at twenty pence each. That would leave a bit of change that I could use to buy a large bar of bitter chocolate. But what about cigarettes and petrol? What about coffee? I can't buy bad coffee, but I certainly can't afford the good sort. I could drink tap water and slivovitz for the duration, I suppose. And what about vegetables? How long before I got scurvy? The idea of suffering scurvy and both nicotine and caffeine withdrawal at the same time doesn't give me happy thoughts. Is it all going to be worth it for the book? Probably. I'd make the same decision again in any case.

  Mr. Y, I think, smiling. Mr. Y.

  A mouse runs across the kitchen floor and I instinctively draw my legs up and hug my knees. I've read so little about The End of Mr. Y. All I really know about it is the curse. It's a strange experience, coming to such an old book without the benefit of a thousand TV adaptations and study guides and reading groups. What is it about? What thought experiment of Lumas's does it represent? And what about this question of fiction? It is only as fiction that I wish this wo
rk to be considered. I guess I'll have to finish the book to find out what that means.

  Already, though, the fiction has become blurred. Am I Mr. Y? Do I have to be for the book to work? When I was a kid I always made an agreement with myself never to identify with main protagonists, because bad things or, more troublingly, big things tended to happen to them and I couldn't cope with the feeling that these things were also happening to me, to the self that you project into fiction when you read. So I would decide on a secondary character that I would "be" for the duration of the book. Sometimes I died; sometimes I turned out to be evil. But I never had to take center stage. Now I'm older I read more conventionally. Right now I'm scared for Mr. Y/me and I feel as though it must be raining outside, even though it isn't. How does his/my/our life change as a result of drinking this potion? I remember the missing page and suddenly it means more, now that I am involved in the story. I hope I can work out the bit that's missing. And I hope that Mr Y's end isn't too painful, although I suspect it will be. Lumas's books and stories never have anything like a happy ending.

  I leave the house at about twenty to five and start walking up Castle Street towards the cathedral. In this town you can see the cathedral from almost anywhere. When I was new here, I used it to navigate by. The sun has almost completely set, and the sky behind the pale gold spires is smeared with a cold, waxy pink. As on any other Saturday afternoon in winter, I walk past shops advertising the football scores, and young academics out buying a paper or something for dinner. My breath freezes in the air in front of me and I wonder when the university will be open again. I think of the free heat in my office, and the free coffee in the staff kitchen. OK—the coffee's not really free: You are supposed to pay about five pence a time, I think, but most of us just put in a pound or two when we remember. Will Patrick buy me dinner? I can't see why not. I usually insist on paying half, but I just won't today.

  Only a couple of weeks ago the courtyard outside the cathedral was full of carollers and Christmas shoppers; now the space is virtually empty. The cobbles have taken on a dark, pinkish hue in the sunset and I hurry across them and through the Christ Church entrance. Then I cross the precinct gardens and enter the cathedral. I walk up the left-hand side of the nave towards the crypt and then down the stairs into its pale stone interior. I love the cathedral crypt, despite (or even because of) what happened here, which feels more like a story than a real thing. I love the soft, hollow sounds of the few people walking around, and the single candle burning in the Chapel of Our Lady Undercroft. A while ago it felt like everything in London was being blown up and the prayer desk seemed only to contain Post-it Notes asking for world peace. I would come here just to sit quietly, but I'd always read the prayers first. I remember once imagining a bomb going off in the cathedral itself. But the place is so vast, and the walls so solid, that it would surely have as little effect as a firework.

  Patrick is standing by the Eastern Crypt, so I walk over to him.

  "Hello," he says quietly, kissing me on both cheeks.

  "Hi," I whisper back.

  "This is a rather somber meeting place," he says, raising an eyebrow.

  I smile. "I know. Sorry. I just wanted to light a candle; then we'll go."

  I walk over to the small altar and pick a small tea light candle from the box underneath it. I put forty pence in the collection slot. I'm not sure why I am even lighting a candle: It's not something I've made a habit of in the past. There's no breeze in here, but I watch the small flame of my candle flicker uncertainly for about half a minute before it seems to decide not to go out and starts to glow, uniformly, along with the others. I look at it for a moment and then turn away, wondering what happens to all the energy generated in places like this. It's as if we make God ourselves out of all that energy. Is God made from the thoughts of people, or are people made from the thoughts of God? I'm sure I came across that idea in my research, but I can't remember where.

  Chapter Five

  Patrick has booked a hotel somewhere over by the ring road. We walk through town to the underpass and then, once we come out from that, down the main road towards the hotel. This is a nighttime space, with neon signs hanging off take-aways, video shops, late-night supermarkets, and nightclubs. We check in and walk up a broad wooden staircase to our room, which is airy and clean, if a bit shabby with age. While Patrick changes, I stand in the bathroom contemplating myself in the mirror. Am I cursed? I don't look cursed. I look as if I have caught myself unawares, washed out and dazzled in the fluorescent light.

  Would you read a cursed book if you had one? If you heard that there was a cursed book out there and you found it in a bookshop, would you spend the last of your money on it? If you heard there was a cursed book out there, would you go searching for it, even if no one thought any copies existed anymore? I think about my conversation with Wolf last night and wonder if life is as simple as "there is a book." But again I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book." Once upon a time there was a book. That makes more sense. There is a book. And then what happens? There is a book and it contains a curse and then you read it and then you die. That's a proper story.

  I come out of the bathroom and find Patrick wearing expensive-looking blue jeans and a pale pink shirt. He doesn't look bad in jeans, but I preferred Burlem's look: the black shirt, the dark trousers, and the trench coat. But Burlem's not here, and Patrick is. After flirting for a while we go for dinner and have a strange conversation about nineteenth-century poetry, during which I go on and on about Thomas Hardy, and how the best bit of his poem "Hap" is his invented word "unblooms," as in: "And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?" The whole poem is about wishing for evidence of a vengeful god—since there certainly isn't any evidence of a benevolent one—because a higher power, even a cruel one, gives us meaning in a way we can't give meaning to ourselves. This ends up with us talking about structuralism and linguistics (Patrick's specialism) and then Derrida (one of mine).

  "How can you read Derrida?" Patrick asks me at some point.

  "How can you not?" I say.

  We've finished dinner, and I realize that I am now having the conversation as if I were a robot taking part in the Turing Test. I can probably convince Patrick that I am human and listening to him, but really I'm thinking about Mr. Y.

  "Are you OK?" he asks.

  "Yeah," I say. Perhaps I should try harder. "Have you ever listened to any of Derrida's lectures?"

  "No."

  "You should. I've got one on my iPod. In it, he says that praying is 'not like ordering a pizza.' I love that. I love the little image of Derrida spending an evening praying and ordering pizzas to prove they're not the same thing. Not that he would have done. I mean, I can't see him praying, or trying to prove something by experiment. I bet he ordered pizzas, though."

  Patrick is grinning again. "It's unbelievable," he says.

  "What, Derrida praying?"

  "No. The fact that I'm about to sleep with someone who owns an iPod."

  Our roles in bed are quite simple. I am the eager young student, and he is the slightly sadistic professor. We don't go so far as to actually act out our parts, and his slight sadism doesn't extend further than occasionally tying me up with silk scarves, but I like it when he tells me what to do.

  By the time I wake up the following morning, Patrick has had breakfast and left. There's a card on the bedside table thanking me for a wonderful night and explaining that there's been some sort of "crisis" at home that he needs to attend to. I wish I'd brought my book with me. I have a large room-service breakfast and read a complimentary newspaper before getting up and making the most of the hot water. The water in my flat never seems to get anywhere beyond "fairly" hot, but I like water with which you can actually burn yourself.

  As soon as I am washed and dressed I walk back into town and along the dilapidated city walls towards my flat. The ring road runs next to me on my left, and the landscape I can see is a con
fused mess of cars, shops, road signs, bollards, a petrol station, some cranes in the distance, a pub, a roundabout, and a pedestrian bridge. At some point a train goes past, emerging from behind a billboard advertising shiny cars and disappearing again behind a nightclub. Every kind of urbanity seems to exist in this space, from the city walls themselves to the remains of the Norman castle and the ugly red blocks of flats that have gone up next to it. Beyond the castle there's a subway under the ring road and if you go through it you can walk along the river towards the motorway, passing the gas tower and the encampment of homeless people who live in tents. I walked that way once, curious about the local countryside. There was a smell of gas all the way.

  When I get back there's no sign of Wolfgang's bike, so it looks as if I'm going to be on my own with the mice. When I look, I've got two full traps, so I take them downstairs and release the mice out the back by Luigi's bins. Back in the kitchen I reload the traps with stale biscuits and put them back under the sink; then I put coffee on the stove and arrange all my things around the sofa: The End of Mr. Y, cigarettes, notebook, pen. As soon as my coffee is ready, I curl up on the sofa and begin reading where I left off yesterday morning.