Thomas M. Disch

by The Prisoner

  Fifty years old? Sixty? More?

  In short, a nice old man; a bit of a Polonius perhaps, but then Polonius had been a nice old man too.

  The four-foot head nodded.

  “Now, isn’t this much more intimate?”

  The voice, imperfectly synchronized with the movement of the lips, lagged a split-second behind the image.

  “Why don’t you take a chair, Number 6? And we can have ourselves a heart-to-heart talk. Face-to-face. Man-to-man.” “First, my question. It’s very simple: what do you want?” The head showed its profile, as though to make certain that the object inquired after were still there. And turned back, smiling: “Why, the world, of course. Who is really ever satisfied with less?” “What do you wantfrom me ?”

  “Information. Only that. Your friendship, though of inestimable worth, would be almost an embarrassment of riches.” “Go on.”

  “The information in your head is priceless, Number 6. I don’t think you have a proper reckoning of its value.” “Didn’t you—”

  “Didn’t I what?”

  He would have to ask this; it was only a matter of time. He took the plunge: “Have I been here before? In this room? In this Village? When you said that just now, it seemed …” “Ah-ha! Nowthat is a most pertinent question. Yes, Number 6, you have been here before. You remember nothing of it?” “I—”

  “Such a look, Number 6! Such a look! I’ve done nothing to deserve that. In fact, I’ve helped you. I answered your question candidly and truthfully. And I’ll go on helping you, if you’ll just tell me what other things you want to know.” “How long was I away?”

  “Not very long. A month, a year–time is so subjective. May I say, parenthetically, that you seem suddenly much less sure of yourself?” “I was in London.”

  “Were you?”

  “I remember being there. I remember … some things. Other things are vague. And there are areas that are … blank.” “Very nicely put, Number 6. That, in a nutshell, is the process of memory. Since I can’t very well ask you which things you’ve forgotten, may I inquire what you do remember?” “Almost everything that doesn’t interesteither of us very much.” “And that whichwould interest us?”

  “Is blank.”

  “How convenient for you!”

  “Am I supposed to believe that this comes to you as a surprise?” “We suspected that something of the sort had happened. Your behavior today has tended to confirm that.” “Andyou have had no hand in it?”

  “In your brainwashing? As a matter of fact, Number 6, no; we haven’t. We’re not even certain who did. Naturally, your former employers are prime suspects. But on the other hand, all kinds of peoplemight have. The information you possess is, as I’ve said, priceless–and not only to those who, like ourselves, lack it, but equally for those with whom you share it. When you disappeared for your little holiday here, they must have grown quite worried, and when you returned … Well, put yourself in their place. You seem disgruntled.” “It strikes me that you’re being extremely communicative. Which means either that you’re lying, or that you have your own nasty reasons for telling the truth.” “The truth in this case is simply so much more interesting than any lie I might invent. Ihad considered suggesting, as an experiment, that you hadn’t actually left the Village at all, that your little interlude in London was a hallucination induced in our laboratory. In theory that could have been done. With a competent surgeon and a few drugs, all things are possible. Life, as (I think it was) aSpanish philosopher said, is but a dream. Or else he said it’s very short, I don’t recall. One can make a case for either theory. But why should I want to confuse you more than you must be already? After all,this time, Number 6, we have a common cause. We both want to know what it is you’ve been made to forget–that is, if youhave forgotten it and aren’t just malingering cleverly.” “And ifyou don’t already know.”

  “Well, if we did, then you need have no scruples about confiding in us and letting us help you remember the matter yourself. That would be a very altruistic undertaking.” “Yes. I had already discounted the possibility.”

  “Splendid. We understand each other now. And we can begin, just as soon as you like, to recover some of that lost time.” “What makes you believe it’s still there to be recovered?” “The fact that you’re alive at all. Presumably, you’re still considered useful. The surest way to have guaranteed your silence would have been to silence you. And the next surest way, though it would have left you alive, would have–how shall I say?–reducedyou. The reason thatwe never tampered anymore than we did (though we hadmany opportunities) is because, valuable though your information might prove, you, Number 6, are infinitely more valuable. What price can be set on the autonomy of the individual? Isn’t that a fine phrase, by the way–‘the autonomy of the individual’? No, that information will still be there: it’s just been swept under a rug, so to speak. We need only poke about here and there, peeking under the corners, to find it.” “And who is scheduled to perform this poking and peeking?” “As Socrates once said, ‘Know Thyself.’ Or was that Hamlet?” “You’re thinking of ‘To thine own self be true.’ ”

  “Ah! ‘And it must follow as the night the day, thou canstthen be false to any man.’ How Shakespeare understands the human heart! But to get back: no one but yourself can undertake to dive down into the deeper waters of your head. But we can offer you assistance, someone to handle the pump, as it were. Our Number 14 has helped other people who found themselves in your unfortunate situation.” “By what means?”

  “By sympathy! At root it’s theonly means by which one human being can help another. Sympathy in conjunction with some form or other of animal magnetism.” “You’ll find that I’m a poor hypnotic subject. I resist.” “Not always, apparently, or you wouldn’t be in this bind now. I realized when I brought the matter up that you wouldn’t rush into our arms. It’s enough for now that you should know they’re open.” A bell rang in the kitchen.

  A blue finger reached up to pull at a blue ear lobe; the blue smile became a frown of deeper blue. “Now who in hell could that be? Theyknow that I’m—” “It’s an artichoke,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse me. I must poach some eggs.” “By all means. Wasn’t it Bismarck who said—”

  “ ‘You can’t make an omelette without poaching eggs.’ No, it was Jean Valjean.” “Number 6, you’ll kill me.”

  “Not unless you grant me an interview in person, Number 2. Thoughts can’t kill.” “And words can never hurt me. Robert Lowell?”

  “Jean-Paul Sartre.”

  He lifted the artichoke gingerly off the rack, poured the sauce in a small pitcher which he placed above the still-steaming water. Selected two eggs, broke them, let them ease into melted butter.

  “You do that nicely,” the voice said from the living room. Dissociated from the face, it seemed suddenly younger, and at the same time less benevolent. “If you’re serious about establishing a more personal relationship, perhaps I can invite myself to dinner. This Friday, say?” “Sorry. My engagement calendar is filled for months ahead. I lead a full life.” “It does say in your dossier that you’re hard to get to know. But I’ve always held that it’s just such people who end up being most worth knowing.” “That’s too bad. I feel I knowyou very well already.” “You’re depressed, that’s why you’re like this. It’s still your first day back at home, and it’s been a busy, busy day. And then, finding out on top of everything else that someone’s been diddling with your head, that’s the kicker, that’s the unkindest cut of all. You must try to remember the positive aspects of your situation, however.” “I’ll bet a philosopher said that.”

  “Yes, Susan Coolidge. But you didn’t give me a chance to say what it was she said. She might have written it just for you.” “Comfort me, then.”

  “It’s called ‘Begin Again’ and it goes like this:

  ‘Every day is a fresh beginning.

  Every morn is the world made new;

  You are weary of sorrow an
d sinning,

  Here is a beautiful hope for you–

  A hope for me and a hope for you.’ ”

  “Yes, well? The comfort?”

  “That’s it–that’s the wonderful thing about your being back here: that everything that didn’t quite work out the first time can be done over again. The way it should have been donethen .” “Thanks for a glowing opportunity.”

  “Your eggs are ready.”

  “In forty seconds.”

  “I’ll go now.”

  “Don’t feel that you have to.”

  “Tomorrow is another day, Number 6.”

  “And tomorrow.”

  “And tomorrow. Toodle-oo.”

  In the living room the blue face winked and vanished; the speaker barked.

  PART II

  ESCAPE & CAPTURE

  “You’ve been only a few days in the Village andalready you think you know everything better thanpeople who have spent their lives here … I don’tdeny that it’s possible once in a while to achievesomething in the teeth of every rule and tradition. I’venever experienced anything of the kind myself, but Ibelieve there are precedents for it.”

  The Castle, Franz Kafka

  Chapter Seven

  The Delivery of the Keys

  He memorized the Village: each winding street, the shops, the park and sporting grounds, the gravelled access-road to the beach, and the farthest limits he might advance through the outlying meadowland before the Guardians would roll forward to establish the invisible but undeviating boundaries of his microcosmic world.

  He determined, as best he could, the locations of the cameras by which his Arguseyed jailers surveyed the wide expanse of their bucolic jail; he discovered fifty–he might have missed as many more. He also located the various concealed speakers of the public address system, an easier task since Number 2 would at odd moments during these explorations (it made no difference where he might be) address some homely piece of wisdom to him, a stale poem or a grandfatherish admonition not to walk throughthat gate, not to try the handle ofthis door. When he did walk through the gate or try the door, he would find, as often as not, that Number 2 had been having a joke with him, that there was nothing beyond or within that merited special prohibition.

  In that first week he had narrowed the range of his curiosity down to the Village’s two chief points of “interest” (they were the most common subjects on the picture post cards sold at the Stationer’s).

  The first of these was beyond question the administrative center of the Village. Once, as he had stood outside the heavy iron gates staring up at the great gray mass of the place, Number 2 had delivered over the PA system a long appreciation of this building–its functional beauty, its impregnable defenses, the Minoan complexity of its corridors, and the warmth and simplicity of his own suite of offices at the heart of the labyrinth. The encircling fence was a formidable thing, its gates patrolled by armed guards and a beige sphere acting as Cerberus at the single entrance to the building proper. (“We call him ‘Rover,’ ” Number 2 had explained. “He’s unique among the Guardians in that his design allows him to–how shall I say?–annihilatewhoever causes him undue aggravation.”)

  He decided that, for the time being at least, he would not try to breach these defenses. Soon enough, Number 2 had assured him, he would be invited inside, and it was more than likely that even then his satisfied curiosity would not seem worth the price of entrance, whatever it might prove to be.

  The second “point of interest” was the Village church. Twice during that first week he had entered the church in the routine course of his explorations, but though he had been somewhat taken aback to find the interior even more incongruously elegant, even more accurately Lombardic, than its facade, he had not paid it anymore attention than he would have given, just then, to an altarpiece by Cosimo Tura (an example of which, unless it were a forgery, was displayed above the main altar; it was the same, possibly, that had been stolen from the Colleoni chapel in the last days of the war.) It was lavish, it was beautiful, and though it couldn’t be authentic it was entirely convincing. But it was (it had seemed) altogether unimportant.

  On both occasions the church had been empty.

  Then (this had been on the afternoon of that second visit) he had been sitting at his usual table at the terrace restaurant. He had been coming here at four o’clock each day to observe and to be observed. He was not ready yet to approach strangers himself (he wanted to be able, first, to distinguish between the jailers and the jailed) but he was willing they should approach him. As yet the only person who would speak to him was the blond waitress he had so unaccountably upset when he had found her crying in the kitchen. Of course, she had little choice in the matter–he was a customer who had to be served. The tweedy woman was never again at the restaurant, but her companion, the man with goitres, was often there. The goitres would leave his table just as promptly as he came to his, and on this particular afternoon, having nothing better to observe, he had watched the goitres making his way purposefully toward the steps of the church. Shortly after he had gone in at the door two other men, both as lacking in the external signs of piety as the goitres, followed him inside. After another brief interval three different men left the church. So much bustle in and out of a building that had been empty only minutes before suggested that something else was at issue here than could be accounted for by the combined attractions of Cosimo Tura and pious exercise. After he had finished his coffee he walked to the church himself.

  He found it, as he had left it, empty: the nave empty, the transepts empty, the five small side-chapels of the ambulatory empty.

  There were no other doors but the one he had come in at, which he had been watching constantly since the goitres and the two other men had entered.

  From that afternoon he began to make more regular visits to the church. He bought a sketchpad at the Stationer’s and made studies of architectural details: the Tuscan pilasters, the caissons of the arched vault, the fine mouldings (stone, not stucco), the gigantic festooned bucranium surmounting the door–and the three cameras mounted high on the cornice 10ft below the base of the vault and 50ft above the floor, inaccessible. Together they commanded a view of the whole interior of the church, except for the darkest recesses of the first and fifth side-chapels.

  Though the cameras were out of harm’s way, their cables had been strung along the cornice and down the west wall (concealed by some slovenly stucco work), where they disappeared at a point just above the bucranium.

  It was reassuring to find them making such simple miscalculations. This, admittedly, was only a chink in their inner defenses, but if he could discover their first error as easily as this, he would eventually find a way to breach the outer walls. Hewould escape.

  In the meantime, there was this. A secondary mystery admittedly, but the unravelling of it would keep him in trim. The occasion came so soon and required so little effort that he was never able to decide, afterward, whetherthey had not in effect, handed him the keys and written out the password.

  Five o’clock of a heavily overcast day: he was watching from the terrace the high breakers curl in upon themselves with a distant roar, and rush, foaming, up the shingle beach. Two figures came on to the beach at a stumbling run, carrying an orange liferaft between them. As they reached the water, a klaxon sounded. The restaurant’s clientele gathered at the edge of the terrace to watch. They pointed to other figures–guards clambering down the steep descent and cheered when, just as the two fugitives had wrested the bobbing raft to the seaward side of the breaking surf, a pastel sphere bounded into view on the access-road. Perhaps, after all, it was the fugitives they cheered–or (most likely) they were prepared to applaud pursued and pursuer indifferently, so long as either put on a good show.

  The sphere hit the line of the surf at the wrong moment and was hurled back into the frothing undertow, where it spun wildly, a tire trapped in a drift of snow. The two men were in the raft now, rowing out into the heavy
sea.

  The klaxon continued its alarms. Guards were arriving on the beach on foot and by car. More guards were scurrying down the rocky paths. Other rafts were being inflated. It was a grandstand show.

  He counted them as they left the church: a pair of them within moments of the klaxon’s first shriek; then after an interval, the goitres.

  He left his table unobtrusively and walked directly toward the church, relying on the excitement of the escape to provide his camouflage. He approached the camera that eyed the entrance to the church, shinnied up the lamppost on which it was mounted. With the fountain pen from his breast pocket he squirted the camera’s lens, then tamped a bit of paper napkin on the ink-damp glass.

  He mounted the steps to the church three at a time, threw open the door, and leaped up to grasp the splayed horns of the garlanded ox-skull. The stone held his weight as he pulled himself up. Now, if the church were being monitored, he could be observed, but only for–he caught hold the cable above the bucranium, yanked–seconds.

  He was, effectively, alone: the cameras defunct. For perhaps the first moment since his arrival he was unobserved.

  Outside the klaxons still agonized. He wished the fugitives the best of luck–if not (for he was realistic) complete success, then at least a quarter-hour of sustained illusion.

  The high, leaded windows filtered out most of what little sunlight the day offered. Somewhere he had noticed … Ah, there by the door, of course. He flicked the switch up, and a loudspeaker coughed:

  “KRAUGF! Mmmmb. You have come here,” purred a velvety voice from the vault, “seeking comfort. At these moments when the burdens of daily life grew too heavy to be borne alone—”