McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories

by Michael Chabon

  And if I ever did see anything more, what could I do? Probably we’re irrelevant to them. Most of us. Their motivations are unimaginable, as opaque as brickwork sphinxes’. If they consider us at all, I doubt they care what’s in our interests: I think it’s that indifference that breeds these fears I cannot calm, and makes me wonder what Charles has done.

  I say I heard nothing, after I put up my posters. That’s not quite accurate. In fact, on the fourth of April 2001, five months after that first package, a letter arrived for Charles Melville. Of course, I opened it immediately.

  It was one page, handwritten, undated. I am looking at it now. It reads:

  Dear Charles,

  Where are you, Charles?

  I don’t know if you know by now—I suspect you do—that you’ve been excommunicated. No one’s saying that you’re responsible for what happened to Edgar—no one can say that; it would be to admit far too much about what you’ve been doing—so they’ve got you on nonpayment of subscriptions. Ridiculous, I know.

  I believe you’ve done it. I never thought you could—I never thought anyone could. Are there others there? Are you alone?

  Please, if ever you can, tell me. I want to know.

  Your friend.

  It was not the content of this letter but the envelope that so upset me. The letter, stamped and postmarked and delivered to my house, was addressed to “Charles Melville, Varmin Way.”

  This time, it’s hard to pretend the delivery is coincidence. Either the Royal Mail is showing unprecedented consistency in misdirection, or I am being targeted. And if the latter, I do not know by whom or what: by pranksters, the witnesses, their renegade or their subjects. I am at the mercy of the senders, whether the letter came to me hand-delivered or by stranger ways.

  That is why I have published this material. I have no idea what my correspondents want from me. Maybe this is a test, and I’ve failed: maybe I was about to get a tap on the shoulder and a whispered invitation to join, maybe all this is the newcomer’s manual, but I don’t think so. I don’t know why I’ve been shown these things, what part I am of another’s plan, and that makes me afraid. So as an unwilling party to secrets, I want to disseminate them as widely as I can. I want to protect myself, and this is the only way I can think to do so. (The other possibility, that this was what I was required to do, hasn’t passed me by.)

  I can’t say he owes me an explanation for all this, but I’d like a chance to persuade Charles Melville that I deserve one. I have his documents—if there is anyone reading this who knows how I can reach him, to return them, please let me know. You can contact me through the publisher of this book.

  As I say, there is no ——ford Road in London. I have visited all the other alternatives. I have knocked at the relevant number in ——fast and ——land and ——nail Streets, and ——ner and ——hold Roads, and ——den Close, and a few even less likely. No one has heard of Charles Melville. In fact, number such-and-such ——fast Street isn’t there anymore: it’s been demolished; the street is being reshaped. That got me thinking. You can believe that got me thinking.

  “What’s happening to ——fast Street?” I wondered. “Where’s it going?”

  I can’t know whether Charles Melville has broken Varmin Way, has tamed it, is riding it like a bronco through the city and beyond. I can’t know if he’s taken sides, is intervening in the unending savage war between the wild streets of London. Perhaps he and Edgar were wrong, perhaps there’s no such fight, and the Viae Ferae are peaceful nomads, and Charles has just got tired and gone away. Perhaps there are no such untamed roads.

  There’s no way of knowing. Nonetheless I find myself thinking, wondering what’s happening round that corner, and that one. At the bottom of my street, of ——ley Road, there are some works going on. Men in hard hats and scaffolding are finishing the job time started of removing tumbledown walls, of sprucing up some little lane so small as to be nameless, nothing but a cat’s run full of rubbish and the smell of piss. They’re reshaping it, is what it looks like. I think they’re going to demolish an abandoned house and widen the alleyway.

  We are in new times. Perhaps the Viae Ferae have grown clever, and stealthy. Maybe this is how they will occur now, sneaking in plain sight, arriving not suddenly but so slowly, ushered in by us, armoured in girders, pelted in new cement and paving. I think on the idea that Charles Melville is sending Varmin Way to come for me, and that it will creep up on me with a growl of mixers and drills. I think on another idea that this is not an occurrence but an unoccurrence, that Charles has woken ——ley Road, my home, out of its domesticity, and that it is yawning, and that soon it will shake itself off like a fox and sniff the air and go wherever the feral streets go when they are not resting, I and my neighbours tossed on its back like fleas, and that in some months’ time the main street it abuts will suddenly be seamless between the Irish bookie and the funeral parlour, and that ——ley Road will be savaged by and savaging Sole Den Road, breaking its windows and walls and being broken in turn and coming back sometimes to rest.

  THE FABLED LIGHT-HOUSE at VIÑA DEL MAR

  by JOYCE CAROL OATES

  2 NOVEMBER 1848. This day—my first on the fabled Light-House at Viña del Mar—I am thrilled to make my first entry into my Diary as agreed upon with my patron Dr. Bertram Shaw. As regularly as I can keep the Diary, I will—that is my vow made to Dr. Shaw, as to myself—tho’ there is no predicting what may happen to a man so entirely alone as I—one must be clear-minded about this—I may become ill, or worse. . . .

  So far I am in very good spirits, & eager to begin my duties. My soul, long depressed by a multitude of factors, has wonderfully revived in this bracing spring air at latitude 33° S, longitude 11° W in the South Pacific Ocean, some two hundred miles west of the rockbound coast of Chile, north of Valparaiso; at the realization of being—at last, after the smotherings of Philadelphia society— thoroughly alone.

  (Though I am accompanied by my loyal fox terrier Mercury, an exuberant & agreeable companion ever at my heels, I cannot consider him society. )

  (Ah! I will admit, quite frankly in this Diary for any who wish to read it at a later date, my pride was deeply wounded, to learn, obliquely, of Dr. Shaw’s initial doubts as to my ability to manage the light, owing to the fact that my reputation is that of a purely literary sensibility; & secondly of his difficulty in securing the backing of the Philadelphia Society of Naturalists to offer me the position, & what it entails of participation in an experiment in pure science; what these specific doubts were, on the Society’s part, I cannot imagine. . . . Apart from my admitted melancholia of these past two years, since the tragic & unexpected death of my wife, V., that has had no effect upon my rational judgment; as all who know me can confirm.)

  This fine day, I have much to rejoice in, having climbed to the pinnacle of the tower, with good-hearted Mercury leaping & panting before me; gazing out to sea, shading my dazzled eyes; all but overcome by the majesty of these great spaces, not only the ever-shifting lavalike waters of the great Pacific, but the yet more wondrous sky above, that seems not a singular sky but numerous skies, of numerous astonishing cloud formations stitched together like skins! Sky, sea, earth: ah, vibrant life! The lantern (to be lit just before dusk) is of a wondrous size quite unlike any mere domestic lantern I have seen, weighing perhaps fifty pounds. Seeing it, & drawing reverent fingers across it, I am filled with a strange sort of zest, & eager for my duties to begin. “How could any of you have doubted me,” I protest, to the prim-browed gentlemen of the Philadelphia Society, “I will prove you mistaken. Posterity be my judge!”

  One man has managed the Light-House at Viña del Mar from time to time in its history, tho’ two is the preferred number, & I am certainly capable of such simple operations & responsibilities as Keeper of the Light entails, I would hope! Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Shaw, I am well outfitted with supplies to last through the upcoming six months, as the Light-House is an impressively sturdy bulwark to wit
hstand virtually all onslaughts of weather in this temperate zone not unlike the waters of the Atlantic east of Cape Hatteras. “So long as you return to ‘rescue’ me, before the southern winter begins,” I joked with the captain of the Ariel; a burly dark-browed Spaniard who laughed heartily at my wit, replying in heavily accented English he would sail into the waters of Hades itself if the recompense was deemed sufficient; as, given Dr. Shaw’s fortune, it would appear to be.

  With this, any phantom doubts I might have entertained of being abandoned to the elements were put immediately to rest; for I acknowledge, I am one of those individuals of a somewhat fantastical & nervous disposition, who entertains worries where there are none, as my late beloved V. observed of me, yet who does not sufficiently worry of what is. “In this, you are not unlike all men, from our esteemed ‘leaders’ downward,” V. gently chided. (V. took but fond note of my character, never criticizing it; between us, who were related by cousinly blood as by matrimony, & by a like predilection for the great Gothic works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Von Kleist, & Jean Paul Richter, there fluidly passed at all times as if we shared an identical bloodstream a kindred humor & wryness of sympathy undetectable to the crass individuals who surrounded us.)

  But—why dwell upon these distracting thoughts, since I am here, & in good health & spirits, eager to begin what posterity will perhaps come to call The Diary of the Fabled Light-House at Viña del Mar, a document to set beside such celebrated investigations into the human psyche as the Meditations of René Descartes, the Pensées of Blaise Pascal, Les reveries du promeneur solitaire of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, & the sixty-five volumes of Jean Paul Richter.

  Except: the Diary will provoke universal curiosity, for its author will be Anonymous.

  4 November 1848. This day—my second upon the Light-House— I make my second entry into the Diary with yet more resolution & certainty of purpose than the first. Yesterday evening, promptly in the waning hours of day, Mercury & I climbed to the great lantern, & dealt with it as required; ah! There is indeed wind at this height, that tore at our breaths like invisible harpies, but we withstood the assault; I took great pleasure in striking the first match in an imagined procession, & bringing it to the tonguelike wick so soaked in a flammable liquid, it seemed virtually to breathe in the flame from my fingers. “Now, that is done. I declare myself Keeper of the Light at Viña del Mar: that all ships be warned of the treacherous rocks of the coast.” Laughing then aloud, for sheer happiness, as Mercury barked excitedly, in confirmation.

  Now, in an attitude of satisfied repose, I have broken off from my morning’s routine of Plotinus & Jeremias Gotthelf, the one purely investigative, the other for purposes of translation (for the Swiss-born Gothic master Gotthelf is all but unknown in my native country, & who is more capable of rendering his vision into English, than I?) to record these thoughts in the Diary; that never would be thought, in Philadelphia:

  Unexpectedly, in my forty-first year, how delighted I am, to at last being “helpful” to my fellows, however they are strangers to me, & utterly unaware of me except as the Keeper of the Light-House at Viña del Mar; not only to be helpful in this practical way, in aiding the princes of commerce, but to participate in Dr. Shaw’s experiment, in that way providing a helpfulness to scientific knowledge, & simultaneously to fulfill my great yearning, since V.’s death, to be alone. Ah, what pleasure! Plotinus & Gotthelf; no companion but Mercury; a task so simple, a ten-year-old might execute it; vast sea & sky to peruse as figures of the most fantastical art. To live immersed in society was a terrible error for one of my temperament. Especially as I have been, since the age of fifteen, susceptible to cards, & drink, & riotous company. (By my agreement with Dr. Shaw, my debts of some of $3,500 were erased as by the flourish of a magician’s wand!) Yet now I am privileged to be alone, in a place of such solitude I have passed hours merely staring out at the ocean, its boundless waters quivering and rippling as with restive thoughts; here indeed is the true kingdom by the sea, I have long yearned for. “Dr. Shaw, I am indebted to you, & will not disappoint you, I vow!”

  5 November 1848. This day—my third upon the Light-House—I make my third entry into the Diary in somewhat mixed spirits. For in the night, which was a night of rowdy winds keeping both master & terrier uneasily awake, there came hauntingly to me, as it were mockingly, an echo of alone: strange how I never observed, until now, how ominous a sound that word has—alone. In my lumpy bed I’d half fancied there was some perversity in the stony composition of these funnel-like walls—but no!—this is all nonsense. I refuse to become nervous about the very isolation I had so wished for, since V.’s piteous death; and that will never do, for I have given Dr. Shaw my promise, & could not disappoint that good man.

  Alone I will hear as music, in the way of the legended Ulalume: that melancholy so sweetly piercing, its effect is that of pain exquisite as ecstasy. Alone I consign to mere shadows, as my perky Mercury has done; & take pleasure in observing the vast domain of the sky, so much more pronounced at sea than on land. Alone I observe the curiosity, remarked upon by the Gothic masters, that nature seems but a willed phenomenon, of the imagination: the sun ascending in the eastern sky; a vision of such beauty, even the crudest of cumulus clouds is transformed. Yet without the Keeper of the Light, which is to say “I” (“eye”), could such beauty be revealed, let alone articulated?

  I will rejoice in this, the supremacy of “I”; though the more languid breeze of afternoon smells of brine & somewhat rotted things, from a pebbly shore of the island, I have yet to explore.

  7 November 1848. Exploring the Light-House, with my faithful Mercury. Aboard the Ariel, I was told conflicting tales of its history, & am uncertain what to believe. The claim is that the Light-House at Viña del Mar is of unknown origin: discovered on the small rockbound island as a tower of about half its present size, constructed of rough-hewn rock and mortar, before the era of Spanish dominance. Some believe that the tower is centuries old; others, more reasonably, that it must have been constructed by a tribe of Chilean Indians now extinct, who had a knowledge of seafaring.

  It is true, the primitive tower yet remains, at the base of the Light-House; beyond twenty feet, the tower is clearly “new”— tho’ we are talking still of at least a century. This most hazardous stretch of waters west of the coast of Chile, looking as if the treacherous Andes had intruded into the sea, has long been notorious to sailors, I have been told; the need for a light-house is obvious. And yet, such a lofty structure!—you might almost call godly.

  (Yet I could wish that such godliness had been tempered by restraint: these circular winding stairs are interminable! Nearly as exhausting, & yet more vertiginous, descending as ascending! Within these few days at Viña del Mar, my leg calves and thighs are aching, & my neck is stiff from craning to see where I am stepping. Indeed, I have slipped once or twice, & would have fallen to crack my skull if I had not reached out immediately, to seize the railing. Even frisky Mercury pants on these stairs! Initially my count of the stairs was 190, my second was 187, my third, 191; my fourth, I have put off. The tower would appear to be about two hundred feet, from the low-water mark to the roof above the great lantern. From the bottom inside the shaft, however, the distance to the summit is beyond two hundred feet—for the floor is twenty feet below the surface of the sea, even at low tide. It seems to me the hollow interior at the base should have been filled in with solid masonry, of a keeping with the rest of the sturdy tower. Undoubtedly the whole would have been thus rendered more safe—but what am I thinking? No mere sea, no hurricane, could defeat this solid iron-riveted wall—which, at fifty feet from the high-water mark, is four feet thick at least. The base on which the structure exists appears to be chalk: a curious substance, indeed!)

  Well! I take a curious pride in the Light-House, of which I am sole Keeper. I did not linger belowground, for I have a morbid fear of such dank, confining places, but prefer to tramp about in the open air at the base of the tower. Gazing upward I declared, as
if Posterity might be listening: “Here is a construction of surpassing ingenuity yet devoid of mystery: for a light-house is but a structure designed by men for purely commercial, hardly romantic or esoteric purposes.” At my heels, Mercury barked excitedly, in a frolicsome sort of echo!

  And now, the restless terrier is larking about in the boulders, & on the pebbly shore, where I am not happy he should venture; the poor “fox” hunter cannot quite fathom, there are no foxes in this lonely place for him to hunt & bring back in triumph to his master.

  10 November 1848. I am late making this Diary entry, having slept poorly & withstood a curious floating cloud, or mist, bearing stinging locustlike insects from the mainland; thankfully, a sudden gale-force wind bore upon us, & swept these harpies away! I have worked out my ideal schedule, however, & record it here:

  Waking, precisely at dawn

  Ablutions, shaving, et cetera

  Breakfast, while reading & note taking

  Exercise/meditation/“exploration”

  Diary entry

  Midday meal, while reading & note taking

  Further meditation/note-taking/exercise et cetera

  Evening meal, while reading & note taking

  Lighting of the lantern

  Bed & sleep

  Ah, you are shaking your head, are you! That this schedule appears to you confining as an imprisonment. But, I assure you, it is not so. I am not a creature like poor Mercury, roused to terrier exuberance & frustration by these balmy spring mornings (November in the southern hemisphere, recall, is April in the northern), as if seeking not merely prey but a mate; I am perfectly at ease with aloneness. As Pascal observed in the 139th Pensée: