McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories

by Michael Chabon

  Charles,

  In haste. So sorry I could not reach you sooner—obviously phone not an option. I told you I could work this out: Fiona was only on-site because of me, but I modestly listed her as principal for politics’ sake. Charles, we’re about to go in and I’m telling you even from where I’m standing I can see the evidence; this is the real thing. Next time, next time. Or get down here! I’m sending this first class (of course!) so when you get it rush down here. But you know Varmin Way’s reputation—it’s restless, will probably be gone. But come find me! I’ll be here at least.

  Edgar

  {At the end of this note is appended, in the same handwriting as that of the package’s introductory note: What a bastard! I take it this was when you and he stopped seeing eye-to-eye? Why did he cut you out like that, and why so coyly? The leaflet then continues:}

  Initial investigation shows that the new Varmin Way–overlooking walls of the houses now separated on Purrett Road are flat concrete. Those of Rippolson Road, though, are of similar brick to their fronts, bearing the usual sigil of the VF’s identity, and are broken by small windows at the very top, through the net curtains of which nothing can be seen. (See “On Neomural Variety,” by H. Burke, WBVF Working Papers no. 8.)

  Those innards of Varmin Way which can be seen from its adjoining streets bear all the usual signs of VF morphology (are, in other words, apparently unremarkable), and are in accordance with earlier documented descriptions of the subject. In this occurrence, it being short, FR and EN were able to conduct the Bowery Resonance Experiment, stationing themselves at either end of the VF and shouting to each other down its lengths (until forced to stop by externalities). [Here in Edgar’s hand has been inserted, “Some local thuggee threatening to do me in if I didn’t shut up!”] Each could clearly hear the other, past the kinks in this configuration of Varmin Way.

  More experiments are to follow.

  {When I reached this point I was trembling. I had to stop, leave the room, drink some water, force myself to breathe slowly. I’m tempted to add more about this, about the sudden and threatened speculations these documents raised in me, but I think I should stay out of it.

  Immediately after the report of the sighting was another, similarly produced pamphlet.}

  Urgent—Report of an Aborted Investigation.

  Present: FR, EN, BH. [Added here is another new comment in Charles’s nameless contact’s hand. It reads: “Dread to think how gutted you were to be replaced by Bryn as new favourite. What exactly did you do to get Edgar so pissed off?”]

  At 11:20 p.m. on Saturday, 13 February, 1988, from its end on Rippolson Road, an initial examination was made of Varmin Way. Photographs were taken establishing the VF’s identity (figure 1). [Figure 1 is a surprisingly good-quality reproduction of a shot showing a street sign by a wall, standing at leg height on two little metal or wooden posts. The image is at a peculiar angle, which I think is the result of the photograph not being taken straight on, but from Rippolson Road, beyond. In an unusual old serif font, the sign reads varmin way.]

  As the party prepared for the expedition, certain events took place or were insinuated which led to a postponement and quick regrouping at a late-night café on Plumstead High Street. [What were those “certain events”? The pointed imprecision suggested to me something deliberately not committed to paper, something that the readers of this report, or perhaps a subgroup of them, would understand. These writings are a strange mix of the scientifically exact and the imprecise—even the failure to specify the café is surprising. But it is the baleful vagueness of the certain events that will not stop worrying at me.] When the group returned to Rippolson Road at 11:53 p.m., to their great frustration, Varmin Way had unoccurred.

  {Two monochrome pictures end the piece. They have no explanatory notes or legend. They are both taken in daylight. On the left is a photograph of two houses, on either side of a small street of low century-old houses which curves sharply to the right, it looks like, quickly unclear with distance. The right-hand picture is the two façades again, but this time the houses—recognisably the same from a window’s crack, from a smear of paint below a sash, from the scrawny front gardens and the distinct unkempt buddleia bush—are closed up together. They are no longer semi-detached. There is no street between them.}

  {So.

  I stopped for a bit. I had to stop. And then I had to read on again.}

  {A single sheet of paper. Typewritten again apart from the name, now on an electronic machine.}

  Could you see it, Charles? The damage, halfway down Varmin Way? It’s there; it’s visible in the picture in that report. [This must mean the picture on the left. I stared at it hard, with the naked eye and through a magnifying glass. I couldn’t make out anything.] It’s like the slates from Scry Pass, the ones I showed you in the collection. You could see it in the striae and the marks, even if none of the bloody curators did. Varmin Way wasn’t just passing through; it was resting, it was recovering, it had been attacked. I am right.

  Edgar

  {I kept reading.}

  {Though it’s not signed, judging by the font, what follows are a couple of pages of another typed letter from Edgar.}

  earliest occurrence I can find of it is in the early 1700s (you’ll hear 1790 or ’91 or something—nonsense, that’s just the official position based on the archives—this one isn’t verified, but believe me, it’s correct). Only a handful of years after the Glorious Revolution we find Antonia Chesterfield referring in her diaries to “a right rat of a street, ascamper betwixt Waterloo and the Mall, a veritable Vermin, in name as well as kind. Beware—Touch a rat and he will bite, as others have found, of our own and of the Vermin’s vagrant tribe.” That’s a reference to Varmin Way— Mrs. Chesterfield was in the brotherhood’s precursor (and you’d not have heard her complaining about that name either—Fiona, take note!).

  You see what she’s getting at, and I think she was the first. I don’t know, Charles, correlation is so terribly hard, but look at some of the other candidates. Shuck Road; Caul Street; Stang Street; Teratologue Avenue (this last I think is fairly voracious); et al. So far as I can work it out, Varmin Way and Stang Street were highly antagonistic at that stage, but now they’re almost certainly noncombative. No surprise: Sole Den Road is the big enemy these days—remember 1987?

  Incidentally, talking of that first Varmin occurrence, did you ever read all the early cryptolit I sent you?)

  The Clerk entered into a Snickelway

  That then was gone again by close of day

  Fourteenth century, imagine. I’ll bet you a pound there are letters from disgruntled Britannic procurators complaining about errant alley-ways around the Temple of Mithras. But there’s not much discussion of the hostilities until Mrs. Chesterfield.

  Anyway, you see my point. It’s the only way one can make sense of it all, of all this that I’ve been going on about for so long. The Viae are fighting, and I think they always have.

  And there’s no idiot nationalism here either, as

  {And here is the end of the page. And there is another message added, clearly referring to this letter, from CM’s nameless interlocutor. “I believe it,” he says, or she says, but I think of it as a man’s handwriting, though that’s a problematic assumption. “It took me a while, but I believe Edgar’s bellum theory. But I know you, Charles, ‘pure research’ be buggered as far as you’re concerned. I know what Edgar’s doing, but I cannot see where you are going with this.”}

  Urgent—Report of a Traveller

  Wednesday, 17 June, 1992

  We are receiving repeated reports, which we are attempting to verify, of an international visit. Somewhere between Willesden Green and Dollis Hill (details are unclear), Ulica Nerwowosc has arrived. This visitor from Krakow has been characterised by our comrades in the Kolektyw as a mercurial mediaeval alleyway, very difficult to predict. Though it has proved impossible to photograph, initial reports correlate with the Kolektyw’s description of the Via. Efforts are
ongoing to capture an image of this elusive newcomer, and even to plan a Walk, if the risks are not too great.

  No London street has sojourned elsewhere for some time (perhaps not unfortunate—a visit from Bunker Crescent was, notoriously, responsible for the schism in the BWVF Chicago Chapter in 1956), but the last ten years have seen six other documented visitations to London from foreign Viae Ferae. See table.

  {There is a thick card receipt, stamped with some obscure sign, its lefthand columns rendered in crude typeface, those on the right filled out in black ink.}

  BWVF COLLECTION.

  DATE: 7/8/1992

  NAME: C. Melville

  CURATOR PRESENT: G. Benedict

  REQUESTED:

  Item 117: a half slate recovered from Scry Pass, 7/11/1958.

  Item 34: a splinter of glass recovered from Caul Street, 8/2/1986.

  Item 67: an iron ring and key recovered from Stang Street, 6/5/1936.

  {This next letter is on headed paper, beautifully printed.}

  Société pour l’étude des rues sauvages

  20 June 1992

  Dear Mr. Melville,

  Thank you for your message and congratulations for have this visitor. We in Paris were fortunate to have this pretty Polish street rest with us in 1988 but I did not see it.

  I confirm that you are correct. Boulevard de la Gare Intrinsèque and the Rue de la Fascination have both stories about them. We call him le jockey, a man who is supposed to live on streets like these and to make them move for him, but these are only stories for the children. There are no people on these rues sauvages, in Paris, and I think there are none in London too. No one knows why the streets have gone to London that time, like no one knows why your Importune Avenue moved around the Arc de la Défence twelve years ago.

  Yours truly,

  Claudette Santier

  {There is a handwritten letter.}

  My Dear Charles,

  I’m quite aware that you feel ill-used. I apologise for that. There is no point, I think, rehearsing our disagreements, let alone the unpleasant contretemps they have led to. I cannot see that you are going anywhere with these investigations, though, and I simply do not have enough years left to indulge your ideas, nor enough courage (were I younger . . . Ah, but were I younger what would I not do?).

  I have performed three Walks in my time, and have seen the evidence of the wounds the Viae leave on each other. I have tracked the combatants and shifting loyalties. Where, in contrast, is the evidence behind your claims? Why, on the basis of your intuition, should anyone discard the cautions that may have kept us alive? It is not as if what we do is safe, Charles. There are reasons for the strictures you are so keen to overturn.

  Of course, yes, I have heard all the stories that you have: of the streets that occur with lights ashine and men at home! of the antique costermongers’ cries still heard over the walls of Dandle Way! of the street riders! I do not say I don’t believe them, any more than I don’t— or do—believe the stories that Potash Street and Luckless Road courted and mated and that that’s how Varmin Way was born, or the stories of where the Viae Ferae go when they unoccur. I have no way of judging. This mythic company of inhabitants and street tamers may be true, but so long as it is also a myth, you have nothing. I am content to observe, Charles, not to become involved.

  Good God, who knows what the agenda of the streets might be? Would you really, would you really, Charles, risk attempting ingress? Even if you could? After everything you’ve read and heard? Would you risk taking sides?

  Regretfully and fondly,

  Edgar

  {This is another handwritten note. I think it is in Edgar’s hand, but it is hard to be sure.}

  Saturday, 27 November, 1999

  Varmin Way’s back.

  {We are near the end of the papers now. What came out of the package next looks like one of the pamphlet-style reports of sightings. It is marked with a black band in one corner of the front cover.}

  Urgent—Report of a Walk

  Walkers: FR, EN, BH (author)

  At 11:20 p.m. on Sunday, 28 November, 1999, a walk was made the length of Varmin Way. As well as its tragic conclusion, most members will be aware of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding this investigation—since records began, there is no evidence in the archives of a Via Fera returning to the site of an earlier occurrence. Varmin Way’s reappearance, then, at precisely the same location in Plumstead, between Purrett and Rippolson roads, as that it inhabited in February 1988, was profoundly shocking, and necessitated this perhaps too quickly planned Walk.

  FR operated as base, remaining stationed on Rippolson Road (the front yard of the still-deserted number 32 acting as camp). Carrying toolbags and wearing council overalls over their harnesses and belay kits, BH and EN set out. Their safety rope was attached to a fence post close to FR. The walkers remained in contact with FR throughout their three-hour journey, by radio.

  In this occurrence of Varmin Way, the street is a little more than a hundred metres long. [An amendment here: “Can you imagine Edgar going metric? What kind of a homage is this?”] We proceeded slowly. [Here another insertion: “Ugh. Change of person.” By now I was increasingly irritated with these interruptions. I never felt I could ignore them, but they broke the flow of my reading. There was something vaguely passive-aggressive in their cheer, and I felt as if Charles Melville would have been similarly angered by them. In an effort to retain the flow I’ll start this sentence again.]

  We proceeded slowly. We walked along the unpainted tar in the middle of Varmin Way, equidistant between the street lamps. These lamps are indistinguishable from those in the neighbouring streets. There are houses to either side, all of them with all their windows unlit, looking like low workers’ cottages of Victorian vintage (though the earliest documented reports of Varmin Way date from 1792—this apparent aging of form gives credence

  {To my intense frustration, several pages are missing, and this is where the report therefore ends. There are, however, several photographs in an envelope, stuffed in among the pages. There are four. They are dreadful shots, taken with a flash too close or too far, so that their subject is either efaced by light or peering out from a cowl of dark. Nonetheless they can just be made out.

  The first is a wall of crumbling brick, the mortar fallen away in scabs. Askew across the print, taken from above, is a street sign. VARMIN WAY, it says, in an antiquated iron font. Written in Biro on the photograph’s back is: “The Sigil.”

  The second is a shot along the length of the street. Almost nothing is visible in this, except perspective lines sketched in dark on dark. None of the houses has a front garden: their doors open directly onto the pavement. They are implacably closed, whether for centuries or only moments it is, of course, impossible to tell. The lack of a no-man’s-land between house and walker makes the doors loom. Written on the back of this image is: “The Way.”

  The third is of the front of one of the houses. It is damaged. Its dark windows are broken, its brick stained, crumbling where the roof is fallen in. On the back is written: “The Wound.”

  The last picture is of an end of rope and a climbing buckle, held in a young man’s hands. The rope is frayed and splayed: the metal clip bent in a strange corkscrew. On the back of the photograph is nothing.}

  {And then comes the last piece in the envelope. It is undated. It is in a different hand from the others.}

  What did you do? How did you do it? What did you do, you bastard?

  I saw what happened. Edgar was right, I saw where Varmin Way had been hurt. But you know that, don’t you?

  What did you do to Varmin Way to make it do that? What did you do to Edgar?

  Do you think you’ll get away with it?

  That was everything. When I’d finished, I was frantic to find Charles Melville.

  I think the ban on telephone conversations must extend to e-mail and Web pages. I searched online, of course, for BWVF, “wild streets,” “feral streets,” “Viae Ferae,
” and so on. I got nothing. BWVF got references to cars or technical parts. I tried “Brotherhood of Witnesses to/Watchers of the Viae Ferae” without any luck. “Wild streets” of course got thousands: articles about New Orleans Mardi Gras, hard-boiled ramblings, references to an old computer game and an article about the Cold War. Nothing relevant.

  I visited each of the sites described in the scraps of literature, the places where all the occurrences occurred. For several weekends I wandered in scraggy arse-end streets in north or south London, or sometimes in sedate avenues, even once (following Unthinker Road) walking through the centre of Soho. Inevitably, I suppose, I kept returning to Plumstead.

  I would hold the before and after pictures up and look at the same houses of Rippolson Road, all closed up, an unbroken terrace.

  Why did I not repackage all this stuff and send it on to Charles Melville, or take it to his house in person? The envelope wrongly sent to ——ley Road was addressed to ——ford Road. But there is no ——ford Road in London. I have no idea how to find Charles.

  The other reason I hesitated was that Charles had begun to frighten me.

  The first few times I went walking, took photos secretively, I still thought as if I were witnessing some Oedipal drama. Reading and rereading the material, though, I realised that what Charles had done to Edgar was not the most important thing here. What was important was how he had done it.

  I have eaten and drunk at all the cafés on Plumstead High Street. Most are unremarkable, one or two are extremely bad, one or two very good. In each establishment I asked, after finishing my tea, whether the owner knew anyone called Charles Melville. I asked if they’d mind me putting up a little notice I’d written.

  “Looking for CM,” it read. “I’ve some documents you mislaid—maps of the area, etc. Complicated streets! Please contact:” and then an anonymous e-mail address I’d set up. I heard nothing.

  I’m finding it hard to work. These days I am very conscious of corners. I fix my eyes on an edge of brick (or concrete or stone), where another road meets the one I’m walking, and I try to remember if I’ve ever noticed it before. I look up suddenly as I pass, to catch out anything hurriedly occurring. I keep seeing furtive motions and snapping up my head at only a tree in the wind or an opened window. My anxiety—perhaps I should honestly call it foreboding—remains.