Glyph

by Percival Everett

  ephexis

  As a narrator telling my tale and not someone else’s tale, can I arrest the illusion of the tale being a fiction? But since you have come to this under the pretense of the work being a fiction, the book being so classified, then even I am an illusion. I am in exile from my own fiction, which turns out to be my reality, for I may insist on the truth of the telling only if I acknowledge it as fiction. It is perhaps a kind of figurative displacement or a resignation to a kind of self-reflexive, gesturing untruth, which is neither lie nor truth, but functions as an anaphoric hermeneutic.3 Derr we have it.

  I offer no information about society. I offer no truth about the culture. I offer only however many words there are here in the text and the frequency and order in which they are written, along with the marks ruling their starting, stopping, and pausing. I do not love humankind. Humankind does not love me. And though I answer to a couple of names and several descriptions, there is only one name that answers to me.

  To make a liar of myself, let me offer just one truth: The search for the origins of reason, logic, and thinking is as sensible as the search for the origins of the bodily function called defecation.

  causa sui

  From the doorway in which I stood I could see across the courtyard to another building, the door of which was wide open. To get there I would have to pass behind the irises and the ceremony, but there was the promise of cover from a hedge of gardenias. I squeezed through the door and stepped as quickly as I could to hide behind a large terra-cotta pot. I then made a dash for the hedge. The smell of of the blooms was intoxicating. I made my way slowly, hearing the voices of the priests as they offered a prayer of thanks for the irises. Then Jenny Jenson was putting questions to Father Chacón. I came to a gap in the hedge that I had been unable to see from the doorway. I glanced around the bush at the black backs of the priests. I tried to sprint across the opening, but I tripped and fell, face first into the dirt. The priests didn’t turn around, but I felt the eye of the camera seek me out and define me.

  “Do the irises bloom on the same day every year?” Jenny Jenson asked the priest.

  Chacón nodded. “Yes, Jenny. Our bearded irises seem to have a rather precise clock. Regardless of the weather or the amount of rainfall, our irises open this day, every year, like clockwork. We see it as testimony to God’s eternal precision.”

  “Do you do anything special to keep them so lovely? Fertilizer, that sort of thing?”

  “We weed and water, but the loveliness? That has nothing to do with any action of ours. And no, we don’t fertilize.”

  “Do you spray for insects?”

  “Well, yes, we do that regularly.”

  Steimmel put another chopsticks load of fried rice into her mouth, then pointed at the television screen. “Would you look at that fat bastard. Like hell he doesn’t fertilize those plants.”

  Davis sat beside her on the sofa and picked up the carton of sweet and sour chicken. “I hate priests,” she said. “My parents tried to raise me to be a Catholic. I could never understand that. They weren’t even Catholic. They said they thought the structure would be good for me.”

  As the doctors watched the screen, the camera zoomed in on a small form pulling itself from the dirt.

  “Hey, that’s our baby!” Steimmel shouted.

  Colonel Bill and Ferdinand were standing in Big Carl’s Electronics Warehouse in Moreno Valley. Big Carl was showing Ferdinand an impossibly large, portable cassette-playing machine with detachable speakers.

  “This thing gets so loud you wouldn’t believe,” Big Carl said. “It even scares me. Say you want to drive somebody out of a building they’re holed up in. Well, you put a tape of some of that rock ‘n’ roll music in this baby and set up the speakers and crank it up and they’ll be out soon enough. I guarantee it.”

  Marcos ran his finger across the black plastic. “What other colors does it come in? You know, of course, I can buy this for a quarter of the price when I get back to Manila.”

  Colonel Bill had turned away from the sales pitch and was watching a twenty-nine-inch RCA Victor color television. The camera zoomed past a fat priest standing in front of some flowers to a small form pulling itself from the dirt.

  “That’s my fucking baby!” Colonel Bill shouted.

  Eve had just settled in at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and the newspaper. She glanced up at the television on the counter.

  “My baby. My Ralph.”

  supernumber

  THALES: I don’t have time for you today.

  BRUNEAU: You don’t have time anyway. Time is not something one can have. Etic, emic, or otherwise.

  THALES: You’ve been hanging out with that Hall again. I don’t have time for him either. You’d stroll in here and have me believe that time is one-dimensional. Well, let me tell you, you and Leibniz and all who follow, time is not relative. Time is absolute. Lay it out on a line and there it is. You might even go back in it, but I’ll point to the line and say, “How long did it take you to get there?” You might stop it, but I’ll point to the line and say, “How long was it stopped?”

  BRUNEAU: You’re tired. You should rest.

  THALES: Bullshit. You mean I’m old.

  BRUNEAU: Would you like some water?

  THALES: Very funny.

  gesture

  gaze

  genesis

  grouping

  gyve

  degrees

  Mo was leaving the house when Roland Barthes stopped her.

  “I’ve just seen my child on television,” Eve said. “I’ve got to go get him.” Her voice was shaking.

  “You’re in no condition to drive,” said Barthes. “I’ll ride with you.”

  Eve drove the old Saab as fast as it would go down the Pacific Coast Highway.

  Steimmel drove while Davis read the map. They were in Melvin’s yellow BMW 2002, rolling down Interstate 405.

  Colonel Bill’s Hummer was humming along down I-215 to I-15. Ferdinand sang along with Aretha Franklin.

  I was now in the the chapel of the mission, a scary cavern of gaudiness and mawkishness. The only thing understated was subtlety. I crawled down the thin red carpet of an outer aisle toward the altar. I heard the faint sound of the kind of muttering I had come to associate with prayer. As I approached the shining, gilded mess of gold and stained glass, I wondered if any kind of appreciation of the spiritual might come over me. But all I could think was, wow, I bet this cost a bundle. There were golden birds and golden angels, which looked a little like me, on the walls. The place was lighted to best effect, I suppose, but I found it hard to believe that so much gold needed help from decisively placed spots. Tall candles stood unlit.

  I made my way through a doorway to the left of the altar and sat in a corner of a room that seemed relatively unused. There were cobwebs all about and a layer of dust was undisturbed on the table and chairs.

  “See, I told you I saw a baby,” a man’s voice said.

  I must have been lost in thought or perhaps even asleep, because I hadn’t heard anyone come in. The voice belonged to one of the camera crew and he was walking toward me. I got up and tried to run, but the man scooped me up.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, little fellow,” he said. He was hairy with big hands and he smelled of some kind of food.

  Jenny Jenson was close behind him. “So, it’s a baby. Big deal.”

  “So,” the man said to me. “Who do you belong to?” He bounced me on his arm as if that would improve my mood.

  The fat Father Chacón then came into the room. “You’ve found him!” he said. “Thank the Lord!”

  “Whose baby is this?” the cameraman asked.

  “He’s the devil’s baby,” the priest said. The other priests were now behind him in the doorway.

  The man who held me laughed. “What are you talking about? He’s just a little boy.”

  “We have to exorcise him!” Chacón shouted more forcefully than he seemed to intend. “He’s
possessed.”

  I put on the sweetest, most innocent face I could muster and the cameraman refused to give me up. He said, “I’m not giving this child to you. You’re crazy. Where’d he come from? Tell me, where is the child’s mother?” He took a step as if to get by the priests.

  “I must have that baby!” Chacón said.

  “No,” said the cameraman.

  “Get him!” Chacón shouted.

  The cameraman dodged O’Blige and managed to kick O’Boie to the side. Jenny Jenson stood in Chacón’s way and the cameraman pushed by O’Meye. Soon, we were outside the room and the clerics were inside. Chacón shouted for the others to “stop the heathens and get the devil-baby back!”

  Jenny Jenson led the way up the center aisle of the chapel, the cameraman who held me close on her heels. The other members of the crew were standing at the door to the outside looking confused and lost. The priests sprinted up the aisles to the left and right of us. Father O’Blige came from the left and threw a body tackle into the cameraman. I flew from his arms and rolled forward onto the legs of Jenny Jenson, causing her to lose her balance, stumble, and fall.

  “Don’t let them get that baby!” the cameraman shouted to his crew.

  The crew put down anything they were holding and a huge fight began. Priests threw punches and Jenny Jenson’s nose was bloodied. Chacón was thrown by the soundman through some thin wooden doors. O’Meye tried to hurt a man with holy water, but was clocked with a right.

  I rolled away from the fray, out the double doors, and into some bushes. From there I could see Mauricio and Rosenda looking on, puzzled, but unwilling to approach the excitement.

  Are Meanings in the Head?

  (Ralph’s Theory of Fictive Space)

  An appendix within the text for the purpose of serving the last sentence

  A) What is is what is and all that is is all there is.

  A.A) All that is is and the things therein are all there is therein, in the world, the world itself, fictive space.

  A.AA) The world is what it is, the things therein having existence only so far as perception allows their being.

  A.AB) All that is determines plot and characterization and all that will not happen as well, what is said, what is not said, what cannot be said.

  A.AC) The world is what happens and the fiction is what is and only what is, not what has happened, but what must happen.

  A.B) The world divides into chapters, and all that is divided also factors and so the world, the fiction, is fecund and at once final, dying without consequence.

  A.BA) Each word that is the world lives in each space of logic with separate life and so, meaning; therefore meaning nothing beyond its place.

  B._A) Story is not fiction, but a state of affairs that occupies fictive space, the logic therein being its own logic and true only to itself.

  B._AA) The essentiality of events of the story, the actions, the reactions and pre-actions of fictive space are pieces of the world and each, at every turn, whole unto itself, identical to every other piece and the whole.

  B._AB) In fictive space, no event is without inferential import, no event yields meaning arbitrarily, no event appears without breaking a twig or disappears without a trail.

  B._ABA) No event exists untethered in fictive space, but any event may have tethered to it, accidentally or not, metaphoric or metonymic import that may itself finally exist untethered in the space of the fiction.

  Though logical rules of actual space need not apply in the fiction, the logic of the fictive space is incorruptible and therefore, whereas in a fiction there can indeed be P &~P, there is less that is actually possible and probable than in real space.

  B._ABB) It is not true that simply because a thing can be imagined as a part of a state of affairs with other things that that thing can necessarily be imagined outside any state of affairs or the possibility of such combinations with other things.

  B._ABC) If Joseph loves Mary, then must I also know what it would be for Joseph to love Maggie or Damara or Ruth? If I know what this love is, then must I know it in all its possible combinations within the world? Or with Joseph alone? Yes. But I cannot know the thing, love, as a thing unto itself, without relation to Joseph with Mary, Damara, or Ruth or to Joseph alone.

  B._ABCA) If I am to know what this thing, love, is then I must know that it cannot exist without a lover and a loved, that it has no internal properties without its association, that it is nothing without combinations and associations.

  B._ABD) If all love is understood, then all lovers and all loved objects must be understood, all combinations and permutations of associative relations.

  B._AC) Each word is complete within the fictive space it occupies. I can erase the word, but the space is there regardless. However, the space is always filled; even when empty, the space is not empty.

  B._ACA) A word must be located in relation to other words in fictive space. Fictive space has no bounds, but it is inwardly infinite.

  A sound in the fiction may not be a word, but is a word necessarily, a unit of the fictive material, meaning what the fiction requires of it. Whatever properties the real world assigns a word untethered in real space mean nothing in fictive space.

  B._AD) Words contain the possibility of infinite meaning, together or alone, in or outside of the fictive space.

  B._ADA) Every word weighs what every other word weighs. Context is absolute authority.

  B._B) Every word is simple, a simple unit, completely without meaning.

  B._B_A) Every use of a word has a direct influence on the word itself and the meaning, and an indirect influence on the reception and interpretation of the meaning, but not the use.

  B._BA) Sentences, though constructed of words, cannot be composites, but are the constituent and most simple components of the fiction. Sentences, however, are not the substance of the fiction or the fictive space.

  B._BAA) If the fiction had no substance, then the truth of it would depend on the veracity of the sentences and so, would be dependent on the sentences having spatial location or orientation outside fictive space.

  B._BAB) If such were true, then fictive space could not be drawn true to its own inherent logic.

  B._BB) Fictive space must share some property or quality (though a quality cannot exist as a thing without a home) or form with actual space, that it might be understood as a world. But if there are no living things that move or communicate and no physical laws or negations of those laws to govern the behavior of bodies, animate and inanimate, then is fictive space suddenly collapsed?

  B._BC) Is only one real thing necessary to make fictive space imaginable? A chair? Anger? Or is the word, or the sentence, that transcendent tie, the only thing required to validate the space?

  B._BCA) Material properties of the fictive space do not require an appeal to actual space. The substance of the fiction is dependent on the tie to the real world, but has no constituent parts that are necessarily identical to anything real.

  B._BCB) Simply speaking, words are just words, sentences are just sentences, meaning is nearly everything and nothing is as it seems.

  B._BCC) If two worlds, different fictive spaces or a fictive space and actual space, have the same logic, then the only distinction between them is that they are different.

  B._BCCA) A thing that occupies a position in fictive space cannot rely on the uniqueness and singularity of its spatial position as an essential distinguishing feature, as fictive space need not adhere to the laws of actual space.

  B._BD) Story is what subsists autonomously, self-sufficiently, and independently of the form, logic, or any quality of the fictive space that contains and defines it.

  B._BE) Story is story.

  B._BEA) Particular character, plot, tone, voice, and time are bound to story within a particular fictive space.

  B._BF) There must be character, plot, tone, voice, and time if fictive space can support story and so create an unalterable world.

  B._BG) Particular
story subsisting in various fictive spaces is at once, selfsame, identical, and different.

  B._BGA) The conception of character, plot, tone, voice, and time (storiemes) is contingent not of conception, but on complete understanding and acceptance of the fictive space and the story.

  B._BGB) Storiemes produce the fictive space.

  B._C) In the story, the storiemes are the connective tissue, the ligaments and cartilage, but also the skeleton and musculature of the fictive space, but the story does not depend on storiemes.

  B._CA) Storiemes are inextricably bound to each other for substance and fictive mission. Meaning is bound to story, but is subject to alteration by the occupation of different fictive spaces and configuration of storiemes.

  B._CB) Storiemes are not self-generating.

  B._CC) Logic is the possibility of story.

  B._CD) The structure of the story follows from the possibility of the form and the inward focus of the storiemes.

  B._D) The world is all that is possible within a particular fictive space.

  B._E) Story is self-determining and therefore conceptually finite, but fictive space has no boundaries and only boundaries.

  B._F) The world, story and, by extension, fictive space make up reality.

  B._FA) Realities are dependent on fictive space.

  B._FB) Fictive space contains, controls, and contributes truth in reality.

  B.A) A story cannot be seen at once.

  B.AA) A story exists in logical space, fictive space, real time and imagined.

  B.AB) A story is a likeness of a world.

  B.AC) In a story, storiemes represent corresponding and noncorresponding conceptions, objects, and subjects of a world within fictive space, and become reality.

  B.ACA) In a story the constituent parts depend on the representational import of a world.

  B.AD) What constitutes a story is that the parts, the storiemes, are not only associated in function and sense, but in necessary logical movement.