by Lars Jerlach
I ran my fingers through my hair and scratched at my beard.
It was evident that I wasn’t gaining much information about my incarceration from my feathered visitor. Instead I ran my finger over one of the scribbles on the wall next to the window.
the stars look very different today
“Do you know who created all this?” I asked, gesturing behind me.
“You did,” said the raven.
“That’s not possible. It was all here when I arrived. I couldn’t possibly have made all this in the short time I’ve been here.”
“You are here and it is here.”
“That’s just another ambiguous statement. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” the raven said. “Everything is here.”
Although I could feel myself getting frustrated by the inanity of the bird’s statements, I refused to enter into an argument about the improbability of it all. Instead I inhaled deeply and surveyed the bird while it cleaned its feathers. Each time it dragged a feather through its beak and released it, there was a gentle swishing sound, that reminded me of the ebb and flow of the sea.
I looked into the horizon, but saw nothing but the dense fog.
“When did I arrive?” I asked after a while.
“For as long as I can remember, you have always been here.”
The raven looked at me with its inky eye.
“That’s preposterous,” I said, promptly forgetting not to get myself worked up by the bird’s answers. “Look around. It must have taken a considerable amount of time for one person to construct this.”
“Time is never waiting,” the raven said. “It’s script-less and senseless. It’s never hanging around for anyone to catch up. You are dancing an eternal waltz to the sound of your own beating heart. When the music stops, time has already moved on.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, not mentioning the blatant triviality of the bird’s last declaration. “Are you saying that I am trapped in this cell like a prisoner and that I have made all of these?” I gestured with my hands to the walls around me.
“Is that of importance?” the raven asked, with its head cocked.
“Of course it is. It’s as important as the difference between being locked in this cell and freedom.”
”I see,” it said, and flapped its wings. The sound vibrated in the stillness of the night.
“What do you see? I asked with exasperation. “What exactly do you see?”
“Everything that is here,” the raven replied.
“Where are we exactly?”
“We are here,” the bird replied genially.
I walked back to the table and sat down on the stool.
I picked up the pipe and stuck the black tip between my teeth and reached for the box of matches.
I removed the last match, held it between my thumb and forefinger and stroked it against the side of the box. A small brilliant flame shot out from the end of the stick. I carefully placed it over the pipe and looked at the flame gamboling through the tobacco strands. When the pipe was well lit, I blew out the flame and placed the match on the table next to the candle.
The billowing smoke hovered above me like a hazy sea.
I looked up at the languid undulations, before I stood up and walked back to the window, where the raven was looking at me searchingly.
“We are here, until we are not,” it said. “Before now, there was nothing, and after now there will be nothing. All there is is here.”
It turned its head to one side then the other, looking at me expectantly.
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“I am here because you are here.”
“We are going round in circles,” I said. “I am not any closer to finding out what I am doing here.” I shook my head, then I looked up. “Although, if you are here because I am here, we must surely have met before.” I looked at the raven. “Why can’t I remember?”
“Look in the mirror,” it said. “Perhaps you will find the answer to your question.”
“What mirror?” I looked closely around the room.
The raven motioned with its head to the window pane next to me.
It was dark and I could see very little, so I walked over to the table, laid the pipe on the tabletop and put my hand around the candle. It made a muted popping sound when I gently pried it off the table.
I held my hand protectively around the flame, as I slowly walked back to look at my reflection in the glass.
I almost let go off the candle and had to steady it with a shaky hand.
An aged version of myself was looking back at me.
I leant towards the glass to examine my reflection.
My beard was peppered with silver specks and my longish wavy hair was almost white. A deep swell of furrows were running over my forehead and the lines around my eyes were spreading their leafless crowns across my temples, like sharply defined miniature trees. My grey violaceous lips looked shrunken and my skin was ashen and withered like a piece of discoloured parchment.
The most astonishing transformation was the colour of my eyes. The right eye was as black as the bottom of a well and the left was the colour of an iceberg.
I gazed at them silently, utterly perplexed by the transfigurement.
“When did this happen?” I asked, after I had regained my composure.
“What do you mean?” the raven said, looking at me intently with its dark eye.
“When did I get to be like this?” I asked, pointing at my face.
“You have always been like that,” the raven said.
“That cannot possibly be true,” I retorted. “I can’t have been like this forever. I have aged and my eyes have different colours. In fact they are exactly the same colour as yours.”
“You have always been like that,” the raven said again, jumping from one side of the sill to the other.
“Even if that is the case, don’t you find it extraordinary that we have the same colour eyes?” I asked.
“We have the same colour eyes because we are the same.”
“That’s yet another of your bizarre statements,” I said, irritated.
“Don’t you see that’s completely illogical?” I shook my head and walked back to the table to replace the candle.
I dripped a bit of wax in the already established hollow and pushed the base of the candle into the molten mass.
I was standing by the table, when I heard a sharp sound behind me. The raven was now sitting on the other side of the glass, repeatedly tapping on the pane with its beak.
I turned around and walked back to the window.
Though it was dark, I could see the raven was moving its head back and forth, looking at me studiously.
“What do you see?” it asked.
“I see you.”
“What am I?”
“You’re a raven.”
“Now look at you.” It beckoned.
I searched for my own reflection in the glass.
“What do you see?”
The raven gazed at me with its obsidian eye.
Aside from myself, I believed I saw a hazy prismatic spiral move far
beneath the shiny blank surface.
“A raven.” I replied.
I awoke standing by the window in the watch room, looking into the darkness of my right eye that was reflected in the small mirror I was holding in my hand.
I was dressed in my long underwear, undershirt and a pair of woolen socks. It was late in the afternoon and quite cool in the room. Outside it was hard to disassociate the sea from the sky. Only the tiny dark strip in the horizon separated the leaden surfaces from one another.
I looked behind me. On the table stood a solitary white candle. The light from the flickering flame flowed like a slow moving rivulet over the exterior of a small pile of paper lying on the table next to it. I walked over to the table and picked up the papers and flicked through them. Every single page was empty. I put the pile bac
k down on the table. They spread out like a monochrome fan on the table top.
I am at a loss to the meaning of any of this. I don’t know, if what I saw in the glass was merely a dream or by some means a premonition. I believe a great amount of matter is swirling around me and that I am somehow trapped in the center, like an involuntary accomplice in a complex schedule of inexplicable events.
It disturbs me that I couldn’t recall much in the cell and that the things I could remember seemed impalpable.
Although it is difficult for me to understand what is happening in my dream state, I am convinced that I have always been and will always be of sound mind and that my somnambular disposition is nothing but a minor inconvenience.
He turned over the last piece of paper to see if there was anything written on the back, before he put it down on the pile on the left.
The back of the sheet was blank.
He removed his fingerless gloves, rubbed his hands together and stared at the space in front of him. He wondered if the story he just read was the last or whether Soule had continued to write down his dreams, but for one reason or another, hadn’t included them in the pile.
He unraveled the scarf from the teapot, wrapped it around his neck and put on his gloves.
The chair made a loud scraping sound on the floor, as he got up and walked over to the window.
The light had changed dramatically.
The sun had begun its ascent and its proliferating rays were spreading out like a dynamic fiery blanket on the surface of the ocean.
He had been gazing into the distance for quite some time, when he noticed a tiny movement in the horizon.
It was like a small black particle of dust suspended in the air.
He didn’t quite know what to make of it and half expected it to disappear, but it grew in size and he finally realized that it was a bird flying towards the tower.
He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked at the advancing bird.
The morning sun made it difficult for him to see, so he crossed the room to retrieve the binoculars. He then walked back to the window to search the horizon.
He located the bird almost immediately.
It was slowly closing in.
He observed it through the binoculars. He didn’t recognize the flight pattern. The movements of the wings were too brisk to be a seagull and the bird didn’t glide at all, which ruled out any of the seafaring birds with which he was familiar.
He abruptly lowered the binoculars.
A cold sweat appeared on his forehead and he suddenly felt nauseated. He removed his gloves and pulled at his scarf to let in the cold morning air.
Above the sound of the sea below, his shallow breath sounded wheezy and exaggerated in the otherwise quiet room. His palms were sweating and his hands shaking as he again lifted the binoculars.
The bird had made considerable progress; what he saw only confirmed what his instinct had already told him.
“You,” he said.
He let the binoculars drop. They hung heavily around his neck, resting on his chest like a dead weight, as he stared at the approaching bird.
It was close now.
He thought he could hear the sound of wings pushing against the air as the bird neared the tower, although that was absurd.
The raven landed on the windowsill and looked at him through the glass. It turned it head to one side then the other and his suspicion was affirmed.
The right eye was dark as ebony and the left like a brilliant gem lying on a piece of black velvet.
The raven stared at him through the glass.
When it finally spoke, it was as if the sound emanated from all around.
“Do you know who you are?” it said.
For a moment he just stared at the bird, then he threw back his head and laughed.
He laughed until his patulous laughter lay siege to the room. He stopped laughing and looked at the raven. “I know who I am,” he said. “I know who I am.”
Dear S,
I hope that this letter finds you well and that you have settled into your new position in a satisfactory manner.
I understand that you are most likely engrossed in work, so you will have to forgive me if you find this letter and the dreams of ES to be an encumbrance. However, I have a strong desire to share these tales with someone who, perhaps better than anybody, understands the instability of the human mind.
I hope you recalled the conversation we had, when we met in B and I encouraged you to read the dreams before you read this letter. I do hope that you followed my advice, so as to enter into the narrative of ES with an open and immaculate mind.
As you know, the subject of ES has given me great concern and weighed heavily upon my shoulders during these past two decades. You are of course aware that I share with you the belief that there is a point of some importance to the ease and comfort of the person, who is so unhappy as to be deprived of their normal reason, and that we must see to it that adequate provision is offered to those who cannot help themselves.
I have, as you also practice, endeavoured to provide a place of confinement, where the unlucky soul can be attended by physicians who believe that the miserable can someday have their reasoning restored.
However, before I give you a brief account of the life of ES before he came into my care, it saddens me to say that he is no longer a patient of mine. By some extraordinary coincidence, he passed away only the day after I posted the package containing his writings and this letter to you.
An orderly passing his cell heard him laugh rather loudly and persistently. When he suddenly stopped, the orderly slid aside the door hatch to check on the patient. He raised the alarm, when he saw the patient on the floor in the cell. When I finally arrived on the scene, it was unfortunately too late. ES was lying on the floor with his arms spread away from his body. His mouth looked like it was formed around a word and his eyes were blankly gazing at the ceiling.
Two weeks yesterday, I had him interred within the institutional grounds. Besides the priest, my wife and I were the only people present. It was a short but emotional ceremony and I thanked the priest profusely for his thoughtful and enlightened eulogy. Befitting the occasion, the lowly cemetery was blanketed in a thick fog, that made us all appear as if we were instruments in one of ES’s peculiar narratives. I had asked our carpenter to make a small wooden cross upon which he, per my behest, had inscribed the words ‘The stars look very different today’ on the crossbeam.
I expect you might find it to be a rather sentimental gesture from a professional physician to allow such a personal pennant, and you would normally be correct, but I believe ES deserved something from his own remarkable fantasies to accompany him in the hereafter, whatever that might be. He died alone and although I realize that that statement will be countered by the rationalist with the fact that we all do, I do however find his exceptional tale most tragic and hope that my supplicatory benefaction will somehow find its way to him.
I remember not giving you much information about ES and his particular condition when we last met, so for your information I have included a short and rather incomplete description so that you might have a better perception of his affliction.
ES was brought to my institution some twenty years back (the exact date and time is unfortunately not recorded). He had been found in B, sleeping on a pier in the harbor in early November. The night before, he had been observed by a first mate on a ship.
Apparently ES had been standing on the pier the entire night looking out over the sea. When the first mate had seen him lying on the pier in the morning, he had gone to see if he was still alive, as the weather was abnormally cold for that time of year. When he discovered that ES, who was barely breathing, was dressed in a lighthouse keeper’s uniform, the first mate had fetched the harbor police, who in turn called upon the coast guard, who eventually brought ES into our care. At the time it was not known how long ES had been in B, but by piecing together the scant information I subsequently
received, my educated guess would be that he had been in B for about six to eight months. He was in a most terrible physical state. He was awfully emaciated, his matted hair was filthy and his dirtied fingernails looked like the claws of an animal. He was apathetic and non-communicative, but accepted our help and allowed an orderly to undress and bathe him without incident. Besides the tattered uniform and a dirty woolen scarf he wore wrapped around his neck, we found only the cover of a small book in his possession. All of the pages had been torn out and although I might have speculated to their content many a time, it is however impossible to say what they may have contained. I was not yet the physician in charge of him and although the patient’s progress was often discussed amongst the staff, there were many other souls that required my assistance and I did not see him for quite a considerable amount of time. Roughly a year must have gone by, before we were finally introduced.
Before I enter into a professional explanation of the patient’s symptoms and general conduct, I would like to inform you of the known details that seemed to have caused the breakdown in his reasoning and in his ensuing behaviour. As far as I am aware there are two major factors associated with his rapid declension. Firstly the horrific and unexpected death of his wife and his two daughters and secondly his long and lonely imprisonment in the confines of
the lighthouse. We know that the two separate events coincided, however we are not aware of how he came to know about his family’s tragic demise.
What is known is this: It appears that ES’ s wife and daughters had planned a surprise visit to P and that they had secretly purchased tickets on the ill-fated steamship leaving B destined for P. As you are well aware of the terrible fate of that ship, I shall spare you the details. Suffice it is to say that a considerable number of lives were lost in that historic gale. However, it has been impossible to verify the deaths of ES’s wife and daughters, as the only known passenger list went down with the ship. We can only assume by their continued absence, that they did indeed succumb to the waves that night, and that ES, by some inexplicable means, was informed of their demise. The gale that wrecked such havoc on the Eastern shore and killed countless people, also effectively trapped ES in his tower. From my conversations with his employer, the U.S. Coast Guard, he was alone in the lighthouse for at least fifty three days, perhaps even longer. After the disastrous effects of the gale, most people had been concerned with repairing the extensive damage caused and no one had thought to bring him new provisions, and although his supplies were running low at the end, he had enough kerosene left to heat the stove in the galley and to light the lens. To our knowledge he continued to perform his duties and subsisted on a diet of oats, beans, dried pork, tea and sugar, which was all that was left in the pantry, before help finally arrived.