by Jesse Ball
They were in the kjoll room. The walls, ceiling, even the doors were painted over with a crowd of women, all in the process of trying on different dresses. So many there were that the scene itself could not be made out. The detail of the dresses was so finely painted that one could approach to within inches and see perhaps a fly that had landed a moment on a woman's shoulder as she bent to straighten a stocking.
—She was born to a wealthy Swiss family, continued Carlyle. At that time, the official position of the Swiss was that there were no liars in Switzerland. Accepting this as gospel, despite the rigor of her genius, she left at first for parts unknown in her quest to study a population of chronic liars. She next appears on a steamer bound up the Mississippi. She is known to have learned English in a miraculous four days with the use of a half-burned Bible and a volume of Christopher Smart. She made her way east and north, and established in the Adirondacks a large and well-stocked manse. To her then she drew many wits and intellects, and they fell all to helping her in her good works. She wrote a book, the manual you have on the table upstairs, that graces in fact every room of this house. As you know, it holds the rules, all the rules by which life here is conducted. She decided that the difficulty with chronic lying is that at some point it begins to efface identity. The reason for this is that the liar's lies are constantly being approached and rebutted by truth. Then they are destroyed and the liar is left with nothing, not even with the original truth, because the original truth has been forgotten, and in any case cannot be accepted once it is the destroyer of his/her own arrived-at fact.
Carlyle leaned against the window casement and lit a cigarette. He nodded slightly to himself, as though fixing the details of his own continuing narrative.
—Because, said he, the truth is, liars are very rooted in identity. Their passion for identity might even be said to be greater than that of honest folk. An honest man is content with his identity, content with the facts of the world. A liar goes past the world's facts and the world's state and says, I am not as has been seen; what I have done is not what I have been seen to have done. They replace what has been seen with what they have supposed, with what they have hoped for, with divergent accounts of greater or lesser fabulousness. This passion for the assertion of identity is like a vessel at sea that sails with great speed and ability in the open ocean. Fetch it up against rocks, however, and it is torn to bits, it, the crew, the captain. So, the idea was to take a population of chronic liars, put them in an isolated environment, Selm's country house, give them a number of complex and arbitrary rules, no one of which prohibits lying, and allow their lies to go unfettered. Out of unfettered lying, in a structure of obeyed regimens and rules, Selm believed new identities would be constructed that could gain a sort of internal integrity that eventually would pass into truth. After all, the facts of yesterday do not always hold more bearing than yesterday's fictions. So she said.
—Did it work? asked James. Why haven't I heard of it?
—Well, said Carlyle, the manse burned down in a lightning storm. A few studies had been done of the place. They were optimistic but unsubstantiated. Several copies, however, existed of her manual, and also the architectural plan of her ideal country house. Dr. Stark found these, read them, and was fascinated. He thought that the arbitrary rules she had set down were a work of genius, and would bring pleasure to any life. Also, as a psychologist himself, he was interested in the application of the process. So, he had this place built according to her blueprint. He printed many copies of the manual. His mandarin assurance and prowess guaranteed the project some degree of notoriety. Therefore, patients came, not generally of their own free will, of course, but most have been pleased with their stay. In fact, often, they prefer life within our walls.
—The results, though, said James, have shown the experiment to be a success?
—Experiments, said Carlyle, are not ever successful. Or they are always successful. Have it either way. An experiment simply procures information that was hitherto unclear.
—Fine, said James. But does it help cure chronic lying?
—Cure it, no, said Carlyle. But it makes the lives of liars happy, and allows them to live either in the world, or in this closed space as others live in wealth. Stark has theories about the imagination, its prowess, its possibility.
—And you've lived here many years, you and the others who aren't patients, everyone in your family? Here with the rules, the nurses, the orderlies? Is there any countereffect from living in this house? Do you grow used to constant lying?
—Yes, said Carlyle. We do, we do. As I said, lies are often simply stated desires. How can such a thing be untrue? It's untrue only in its reception, not in the manner of its appearance.
He opened the window and threw his cigarette out onto the long green-gray lawn. The sound of laughter and also footsteps on the porch beneath joined them in the room. Carlyle smiled. His eyes met James's.
—Lying is like breathing, he said. When you notice that you're doing it, there's a sudden fear: if I stop, will I die? When I was a child, I had a little wooden boat with a cloth sail. I put a metal figurine of Charlemagne in the cabin, and pushed it out on a lake near the house where I first lived. I held on to it with a long string. Do you know what happened then?
James said that he did not.
—What happened then? he asked.
—A man in a skiff came. I saw him from far away, and thought something bad was about to happen. But I did nothing. Curiosity is often what makes us powerless. I watched as he came closer and closer on the lake. He wore a brown worsted suit and had unkempt hair. His eyes were different colors. He sculled up with a single-minded intensity, right up to my little boat. I stood helpless on the shore, clutching at the string. From his pocket he took a knife. He cut the string, put my boat in his skiff, and sculled away. I was horrified. I stood there, string in hand, and when someone came to fetch me, I could give no answer about what had happened. In fact, I've never spoken of it until now.
The light then in the kjoll room bore the shape of a mansard. Six leaves blew one by one through the window and landed at the feet of the two men.
Should I reach down and pick one up? thought James. If I did so, what would it mean?
A moment, then another moment.
Carlyle shut the window.
—Let's go find the others, he said. Hours of evening are ahead.
James stood on the landing outside of his room. Another note had come. He read it and dropped it into the basket on the floor.
He went into his room. No one was there. There was a note in the pillowcase. He set it on the table next to the bed and did not read it. He went over and shut the window, which was still open.
There was a kind of odd efficiency to his movements. He marked it in himself, but could do nothing to prevent it. What will happen next? he thought.
He changed into a nicer suit, looked at himself in the mirror for a moment, then went back out into the hall. Grieve was standing there. She had been there all along.
—Let's go, she said. I know a shortcut.
Ansilon said something unintelligible.
—What did you say? asked James.
Something I'd forgotten, said Ansilon. I said it in the old language owls used to use when we took the shapes of men and became at times kings and kings' counselors, beggars and troubadours, ladies and saints, viziers and villanelles.
—Did you then? asked James.
He scratched his ear and shifted his weight from right to left.
They were under the pier down at the harbor, and small shafts of light sliced down through the rotting wood. James's pant legs were rolled up, and his feet were in shallow water.
Not I, said Ansilon. That was before my time. But my father did. He sired a family in ancient Rome and died with them. Owls can do that, you know.
—I don't understand, said James. If he was dead in antiquity, then how could you have been born in the Middle Ages?
Where, said Ansilon, does a boy like y
ou get words like antiquity? My mother was pregnant a long while, that's all. She carried me with her for twelve hundred years. That's why I'm the wisest of all.
—What was your father's family like? asked James.
A sailboat could be seen running by in the distance along the surface. Its sail was full with wind, and though it is true that there is nothing in nature that hurries, everything happening of its own accord and in its own time, in this case James felt the wind was hurrying the boat out to sea.
What will it find there? he wondered, and he dreamed of shipwrecks.
Not special, said Ansilon, but he loved them all the same. My mother would come to the window and try to call him away, but he would never come. He told his wife the truth of the matter, and she took to throwing stones at every owl she saw. Her children threw stones. Even my father, yes, he threw a stone or two.
—That's awful, said James. What happened then?
They put a bounty on owls in the neighborhood, and my mother was forced to leave forever. I wish you could have heard the song she sang when she came to his funeral, dressed as the shadow of a gypsy. The gypsy himself had gone away. Only the shadow was there, moving across the grass to the place where my father lay.
The supper was not as expected. No one was there. The table was set, the food had been put out, but only James and Grieve had come. Even Carlyle was absent. A sign had been put on the door.
COME IN, it said. BEGIN WITHOUT US. MY APOLOGIES.
They ate in silence. James's mind kept running back over the cipher book. Things did make more sense now. They had been right about that. But he didn't believe; he wasn't sure that what Stark intended was what ought to be. Had the time come for such a thing? He didn't know. Who could be responsible for so large a decision? he thought.
For he had figured out the cipher. It was simple, really, a substitution. The only difficulty was realizing what the substitution was. The key had been present at the beginning, in the unciphered epigraph.
Now, passages from the book floated here and there in James's head.
* * *
A major fact cannot be avoided any longer—man does not learn from small mistakes, but only from large ones. Man learns only by trial of disaster. History is not clear on this fact because history is the science of looking at events in only one kind of looking glass. The danger of this vagrant causality is that we are blind to other ways that things may have occurred.
* * *
James drank a sip of the wine. It was, of course, quite good, and cold. A sweet white, to go with the first course of smoked fish. He ate with his left hand only, a peculiarity that others had always commented on. But Grieve said nothing. Perhaps she had already noticed this, in the diner.
Trial of disaster . . . what could the disaster be?
In the book, Stark explained his theory. Mankind had grown to be so skillful in controlling his own environment, in managing his affairs, that nature could no longer govern him as it properly had in the past. Disasters, object lessons on a grand scale, had once been nature's preferred method of lecture. But now they were mitigated, averted. Man had grown to swell the borders of states and lands. There was a chaos of meaning. It was difficult to say for sure what might be learned from this lesson or from that. And through it all, the primacy of certain nations, and their oppression of others.
* * *
What must be done is that an artificial catastrophe must be made to take place along with a specifically stated explanation. The method of this explanation must be biblical. Men are used to taking such instructions. Biblical too must be the disaster. The nation that must be humbled is the nation in which the most had once been possible, in which the greatest chance had been squandered. To Deafness, we must send a plague of Deafness, that the world learn the need to hear.
* * *
What did that mean? James had read and reread this section. He had gone to the library and checked to be sure he remembered it correctly, a thing he had never done before, for his recall was perfect, his confidence perfect.
* * *
To Deafness, we must send a plague of Deafness, that the world learn the need to hear.
* * *
What could it mean?
The door opened. McHale entered, along with Carlyle.
—She's back, McHale said.
Grieve sat up straight. Her expression changed.
—How can that be?
—She's upstairs. She's been up with him all day.
—But did she . . .
—No, said McHale. She's alone.
—What's going on? asked James.
—Nothing, said Carlyle. I'm sorry to be just a terrible host. I've invited you for supper, and here it is, the day when you learn the truth, and then I come late, and you've already eaten the first course.
—You said, my friend, to begin without you, interrupted Grieve.
—And I meant it, said Carlyle.
An odd environment was being perpetrated, thought James.
—I meant it, he continued.
He looked at James.
—Stark will see you first thing tomorrow. He wants you to come by at seven A.M. There's much to be said, and little time.
—Certainly, there's little time, said McHale.
Grieve kicked James under the table. He looked up at her. Her face was concerned.
Don't worry, he thought. Worry is a thing for those with agency. We who have none of the one can have none of the other. But he did not believe it.
As soon as he returned to his room, he lay
down flat on the floor; flat on his back.
Grieve came in. She saw him lying there.
—I don't like this new James, she said. I didn't want to meet him ever, and now here he is in my bedroom.
—This isn't your bedroom, said James. It's mine.
—The whole place is mine, said Grieve.
—I broke the cipher, James said. I read your father's book.
Grieve looked at him carefully.
James got to his feet. He pulled off his suit coat and threw it over a chair. He took off his vest and his shirt. The window that had been open earlier, that he had closed, he reopened. The air was cold on his chest and arms. Grieve came up behind him, just as he had come up behind her earlier in the day. She put her arms around him.
—No one else has managed to read that particular book, she said. But we have all heard him talk of it. The ideas are in his speech, in his manner.
She breathed slowly in and out. He could feel the curve of her breasts against his back.
—What do you think? she said at last. Please don't judge. Not until he's spoken to you. It's different, I'm sure, when he talks to you.
—I know, said James, that the world is complicated. I know there are problems. I just . . . I've never tried to think, How can they be solved? I feel instinctively that they can't be. I don't believe we are moving towards any eventual philosophical end. I don't think anything will be perfected. The world has always been chaotic. Suffering is a fact. I don't see a perfect future anywhere. I can't. People like your father, they act out of some enormous stock of hope. I was never given this. I feel only . . .
He tried to think of how to say it.
—You live your life, you try to live compassionately, and that's the end of it. You do a little more than you should have to in order to be a good person, but you don't go making big changes in the world, trying to fix things. It presumes too much to do so. There's only this: if everyone acts quietly, compassionately, things will go a little better than they would have otherwise. But people will still suffer.
—Come to bed, said Grieve.
She took his hands.
James opened his eyes. It was completely dark in the room. That didn't make any sense. The blinds were drawn. Who had drawn the blinds? James turned on the light. A woman was sitting in a chair pulled close up to the bed, looking at him. In the darkness he couldn't see her at all, just a vague outline.
—W
hat are you doing? he asked.
At the sound of his voice, there was a stirring beside him. He looked over. Grieve was still next to him in bed. He looked at the vague figure in the chair, then at the one in bed.
—Grieve, he said, and shook her awake, keeping his eyes on the woman in the chair.
Grieve sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes.
—What is it, James? she said.
And then she noticed the woman. Her voice changed, became harsh.
—You've come back. They told me, but I didn't believe it.
—Oh, believe it, said Grieve's sister.
—So, said Grieve. Has he told you?
—Yes, she said. He told me. I don't like it, but he told me, and he told me too not to try to leave, or that bull of his, Torquin, will sit on me for a week.
—You'd better not, began Grieve.
—Oh, don't worry, said her sister.
She took a cigarette out, lit it, and took a long drag.
—I never like to miss anything big.
She smiled at James.
—Where'd you find him? she asked. He's not so much to look at, is he?
—Leave him alone, said Grieve.
To James she said:
—She always starts that way, insulting boys to get them to like her. Don't pay any attention.
Grieve's sister stood up and moved away towards the door. James still couldn't see her face. She seemed thin, and about Grieve's height.
—I'll see you tomorrow, she said.
—Don't count on it, said Grieve.
The door closed. Grieve leaned across James and turned on the light.
—You can't imagine, she said, what my sister can be like.
—You never told me you had a sister, said James.
—I pretend that she doesn't exist.
day the sixth
—I don't understand, said James. Your father orders these men to kill themselves, and they do?