Woods

IN due time, autumn too vanishes. One morning I awake, and from a glance at the sky I know winter is near. Gone are the high, sprightly autumn clouds; in their place a heavy cloud bank glowers over the Northern Ridge, like a messenger bearing ill tidings.

Autumn had been welcomed as a cheerful and comely visitor; its stay was too brief, its departure too abrupt.

The passing of autumn leaves a temporary blank, an empty hole in the year that is not of a season at all. The beasts begin to lose the sheen from their coats, lose their golden hue, bleaching slowly white. It is an announcement that winter draws near. All living things in the Town hang their heads, their bodies braced for the freezing season. Signs of winter shroud the Town like an invisible skin. The sound of the wind, the swaying of the grasses, the clack of heels on the cobblestones in the still of night, all grow remote under an ominous weight. Even the waters of the River, once so pleasant as they lapped at the sandbars, no longer soothe me. There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself. The short cries of the birds grow thin and shrill; at times only the flapping of their wings disturbs the void.

"This winter promises to be especially harsh," observes the Colonel. "You can tell from the look of the clouds. Here, see for yourself how dark they are."

The old officer leads me to the window and points toward the thick clouds astride the hills.

"Each year at this time, the first wave of winter clouds stations itself along the Northern Ridge. They are the emissaries of the onslaught to come. Light, flat clouds mean mild temperatures. Thicker clouds, colder weather. Most fearsome of all are the clouds that spread their wings, like birds of prey. When they appear, a bitter winter is on its way. For example, that cloud there."

Squinting, I scan the sky above the Northern Ridge. Faint though it is, I do recognize the cloud the old officer has described. Massive as a mountain, it stretches the entire length of the ridge, an evil roc ready to swoop down from the heights.

"Once every fifty or sixty years, there comes a killing winter," says the Colonel. "You have no coat, do you?"

"No, I do not," I say. I have only the light cotton jacket I was given when I first came to Town.

The old officer opens his wardrobe and brings out a dark blue military coat. He hands it to me. The coat is heavy as stone, its wool rough to the touch.

"A little large, but it will serve you well. I procured it for you a short while ago. How is the size?"

I slip into the coat. The shoulders are too wide and the form somehow not right, but it will do. As the old officer has said, it will serve me well.

"Are you still drawing your map?" the Colonel asks.

"I am," I say. "There are some areas I do not know, but I am determined to finish it."

"I will not discourage you from your maps. That is your own concern, and it bothers no one. No, I will not say it is wrong, although after winter is here, you must stop all excursion into the Woods. Venturing far from inhabited areas is not wise, especially this winter. The Town, as you know, is not extensive, but you can lose your way. It would be better to leave your mapmaking for spring."

"I understand," I say. "When does winter begin?"

"With the snow. The first flakes of snow signal the beginning of winter. When the snow melts from the sandbars in the River, winter is at its end."

We gaze at the clouds on the Northern Ridge, drinking our morning coffee.

"One more important thing," the Colonel resumes. "Keep your distance from the Wall and from the Woods. In winter, they take on an awesome power."

"What is this about the Woods? What is it that they have?"

"Nothing at all," says the old military man after a moment of reflection. "Nothing at all. At least, it is nothing we need. For us, the Woods are an unnecessary terrain."

"Does no one live in the woods?"

The old officer lifts the trap on the stove and sweeps out the ash. He then lays in a few twigs of kindling and some coal. "We may need to light the stoves beginning tonight," he says. "Our firewood and coal are from the Woods. Yes, and mushrooms and tea and other provisions as well. So in that sense, the Woods are of use to us. But that is all. Other than that, nothing is there."

"Then there are persons in the Woods who make their living by shovelling the coal and gathering firewood and mushrooms?"

"Yes, a few do live there. They bring their coal and firewood and mushrooms to Town, and in return we give them grain and clothing. There is a place where these exchanges take place weekly, but it is carried out only by specified individuals. No other contact with the Woodsfolk is to be had. They do not come near the Town; we do not go near the Woods. Their existence is wholly different from our own."

"How so?"

"In every sense," says the old officer, "they are different from us. But it is not wise to take an interest in them. They are dangerous. They can exert an influence over you. You are not yet formed as a person here. And until such time as various aspects of you are determined, I advise you to protect yourself from such danger. The Woods are but woods. You need merely write 'Woods' on your map. Is that understood?"

"Understood."

"Then, there is the Wall. The winter Wall is the height of danger. In winter, particularly, the Wall shuts the Town in. It is impenetrable and it encloses us irrevocably. The Wall sees everything that transpires within. Be careful to do nothing that takes you near the Wall. I must repeat: you are as yet unformed. You have doubts, you have contradictions, you have regrets, you are weak. Winter is the most dangerous season for you."

All the same, before winter sets in, I must venture forth into the Woods. It will soon be time to deliver the map, as promised, to my shadow. He has expressly asked that I investigate the Woods. After I have done that, the map will be ready.

The cloud on the Northern Ridge poses, lifting its wings, leaning forward as if to sail out over the Town. The sun is setting. The sky is overcast, a pallid cover through which the light filters and settles. To my eyes that are less than eyes, this is a season of relief. Gone, the days of brazen clear skies. There will be no headstrong breezes to sweep away the clouds.

I enter the Woods from the riverside road, intending to walk straight into the interior, keeping parallel to the Wall so I do not to lose my way. Thus will I also sketch the outline of the Wall around the Woods.

This does not prove easy. Mid-route there are deep hollows where the ground drops away. I step carefully, yet find myself plunged into thick blackberry brambles. Marshy ground thwarts passage; elsewhere spiders hang their webs to net my face and hands. An awning of enormous branches tinges the Woods in sea-bottom gloom. Roots crawl through the forest floor like a virulent skin disease.

At times I imagine I hear movement in the dense undergrowth.

Yet once I turn from the Wall and set foot in the forest interior, there unfolds a mysteriously peaceful world. Infused with the life breath one senses in the wild, the Woods give me release. How can this be the minefield of dangers the old Colonel has warned me against? Here the trees and plants and tiny living things partake of a seamless living fabric; in every stone, in every clod of earth, one senses an immutable order.

The farther I venture from the Wall and proceed into the forest interior, the stronger these impressions become. All shades of misfortune soon dissipate, while the very shapes of the trees and colors of the foliage grow somehow more restive, the bird songs longer and more leisurely. In the tiny glades, in the breezes that wend through the inner woodlands, there is none of the darkness and tension I have felt nearer the Wall. Why should these surroundings make so marked a difference? Is it the power of the Wall that disturbs the air? Is it the land itself?

No matter how pleasant this walk deeper into the Woods may be, I dare not relinquish sight of the Wall. For should I stray deep into the Woods, I will have lost all direction.

There are no paths, no landmarks to guide me. I moderate my steps.

I do not meet any forest dwellers. I see not a footprint, not an artifact shaped by human hands. I walk, afraid, expectant. Perhaps I have not traveled far enough into the interior.

Perhaps they are skillfully avoiding me.

On the third or fourth day of these explorations, coming to a point where the eastern Wall takes a sharp turn to the south, I discover a small glade. It is open space, which fans briefly outward from a tuck in the bend of the Wall. Inexplicably, it is untouched by the surrounding growth of dense forest. This one clearing is permeated with a repose that seems uncharacteristic so close to the Wall, a tranquillity such as I have known only in the inner Woods. A lush carpet of grass spreads over the ground, while overhead a puzzle-piece of sky cuts through the treetops.

At one extreme of the glade stands a raised masonry foundation that once supported a building. The foundation suggests that the walls of this edifice had been laid out with meticulous precision. Tracing the floorplan, I find three separate rooms in addition to what I imagine were a kitchen, bath, and hallway. I struggle to understand why a home had been built so deep in the Woods, why it has been so completely abandoned.

Behind the kitchen are the remains of a stone well. It is overgrown with grass. Would the occupants themselves have filled it in?

I sit down, leaning against the well and gazing up at the sky. A wind blowing in off the Northern Ridge rustles the branches of the trees around me. A cloud, heavy with moisture, edges across the sky. I turn up my collar and watch it move slowly past.

The Wall looms behind the ruins of the house. Never in the Woods have I been this close to the Wall. It is literally breathtaking. Here in this tiny clearing in the Eastern Woods, resting by this old well, listening to the sound of the wind, looking up at the Wall, I fully understand the words of the Gatekeeper: This Wall is perfect. A perfect creation.

It rises as it has risen from the beginning. Like the clouds above, like the River etched into the earth.

The Wall is far too grand to capture on a map. It is not static. Its pulse is too intense, its curves too sublime. Its face changes dramatically with each new angle. An accurate rendering on paper cannot be possible. I feel a futility in my attempt to do so in my sketchbook.

I shut my eyes to doze. The wind swirls at an incessant pitch, but the trees and the Wall offer protection from the chill. I think about my shadow. I think of the map he has asked for. There is not much time left.

My map is lacking in precision and detail. The inner reaches of the Woods are a near blank. But winter is almost here. There will be less and less opportunity to explore further. In the sketchbook I have drawn a general outline of the Town, including the location of landmarks and buildings. I have made annotations of facts I have learned.

It is not certain that the Gatekeeper will allow me near my shadow, even as he has promised to let us meet once the days are shorter and my shadow is weaker. Now that winter is near, these conditions would seem surely to be fulfilled.

My eyes still closed, I think about the Librarian. I am filled with sadness, although I cannot locate the source of these feelings.

I have been seeing the Librarian daily, but the void in me remains. I have read the old dreams in the Library. She has sat beside me. We have supped together. I have walked her home. We have talked of many things. Unreasonably, my sorrow only seems to grow, to deepen. Whatever is the loss becomes greater each time we meet. It is a well that will never be filled. It is dark, unbearably so.

I suppose these feelings are linked to forgotten memories. I have sought for some connection in her. I learn nothing in myself. The mystery does not yield. My own existence seems weak, uncertain.

I shake these convoluted thoughts from my head and seek out sleep.

I awake to find that the day is nearly over, that the temperature has dropped sharply. I am shivering. I pull niy coat tight around me. As I stand and brush off the grass, flakes of snow touch my cheek. I look up. The clouds are low, a forbidding gloom builds. There is a flurry of large snowflakes drifting gently down. Winter is come.

Before I begin my way back, I steal one more glance at the Wall. Beneath the snow-swept heavens, it rears up more stately, more perfect than ever. As I gaze up at it, I feel them peering at me. What are you doing here? they seem to say. What are you looking for?

Questions I cannot answer. The short sleep in the cold has consumed all warmth in me, leaving my head swimming with abstract shapes. Do I occupy the body of another?

Everything is so ponderously heavy, so vague.

I race through the Woods, toward the East Gate, determined now not to look at the Wall.

It is a long distance I must travel. The darkness gathers moment by moment. My balance degenerates. I stop again and again to stir up the strength to persevere, to press the numbness from my nerves. I feel the visit of night. I may hear the sounding of the horn in the Woods. It passes through my awareness without trace.

At last I emerge from the Woods onto the bank of the River. The ground is clothed in blankness. No moon, no stars, all has been subdued by the flurries of snow. I hear the chill sound of the water, the wind taunting through the trees behind me. How much further to the Library? I cannot remember. All I recall is a road along the River, leading on and on. The willows sway in the shadows, the wind whips overhead. I walk and walk, but there is no end in sight.

She sits me in front of the stove and places her hand on my forehead. Her hand is as ice.

My reflex is to push it away, but I cannot raise my hand. For when I do, I feel a sudden nausea.

"You are fevered," she says. "Where on the earth have you gone?"

I find it impossible to answer. I am without words. I cannot even comprehend what it is she asks.

She brings several blankets and wraps me in them. I lie by the stove. Her hair touches my cheek. I do not want her to go away. I cannot tell if the thought is mine or if it has floated loose from some fragment of memory. I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting, away. Which part of me is thinking this?

She holds my hand.

"Sleep well," I hear her say, from beyond a dark distance.

Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev

BIG BOY didn't leave one bottle unbroken. Not one lousy bottle of my collection of whiskeys. I had a standing relationship with the neighborhood liquor dealer who would bring over any bargains in imported whiskey, so it had gotten to be quite a respectable stash. Not any more.

The hulk started with two bottles of Wild Turkey, moving next to one Cutty Sark and three I. W. Harpers, then demolished two Jack Daniels, the Four Roses, the Haig, saving the half dozen bottles of Chivas Regal for last. The racket was intense, but the smell was worse.

"I'm getting drunk just sitting here," Junior said with admiration.

There wasn't much for me to do but plant my elbows on the table and watch the mound of broken glass pile up in the sink. Big Boy whistled through it all. I couldn't recog-nize the tune, supposing there was one. First high and shrill, then low and harsh, it sounded more like a scraping violin bow. The screech of it was insanity itself.

Big Boy was methodical with the meaningless destruction. Maybe it made sense to them, not to me. He overturned the bed, slit the mattress, rifled through my wardrobe, dumped my desk drawers onto the floor, ripped the air-conditioner panel off the wall. He knocked over the trash, then plowed through the bedding closet, breaking whatever happened to be in the way. Swift and efficient.

Then it was on to the kitchen: dishes, glasses, coffeepot, the works.

Junior and I moved our seats to the living room. We righted the toppled sofa, which by a freak stroke of fortune was otherwise unscathed, and sat on opposite armrests. Now this was a truly comfortable sofa, a top-of-the-line model I'd bought cheap off a cameraman friend who'd blown his fuse in the middle of a thriving commercial career and split for the back country of Nagano. Too bad about the fuse, not so bad about the sofa I'd acquired as a result. And there was a chance that the sofa would be salvageable still.

For all the noise that Big Boy was making, not one other resident of the apartment building came to investigate. True, almost everyone on my floor was single and at work during the day—a fact apparently not lost upon my visitors. These guys were thugs, but they weren't dumb.

The little man eyed his Rolex from time to time as if to check the progress of the operation, while Big Boy continued his tour of destructive duty with never a wasted motion. He was so thorough, I couldn't have hidden away a pencil if I had wanted to. Yet, like Junior had announced at the beginning, they weren't really looking for anything.

They were simply making a point.

For what?

To convince a third party of their attention to detail?

And who might that third party be?

I drank the rest of my beer and set the empty can on the coffee table. Big Boy had gotten to the food: salt, flour, and rice went flying everywhere; a dozen frozen shrimp, a beef filet, natural ice cream, premium butter, a thirty-centimeter length of salmon roe, my homemade tomato sauce on the linoleum floor like meteorites nosediving into asphalt.

Next, Big Boy picked up the refrigerator and flipped it door-side down to the floor. The wiring shorted and let loose with a shower of sparks. What electrician was going to believe this? My head hurt.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the destruction stopped. No ifs, ands, or buts—the demolition came to an instant halt, Big Boy standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, very nonchalant.

How long had it taken him to total my apartment so exquisitely? Fifteen minutes, thirty minutes? Something like that. Too long for fifteen, too short for thirty. But however long it took, the way that Junior was proudly eyeing his Rolex suggested that Big Boy had made good time. As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.

"Seems like you're gonna be busy cleaning up," Junior said to me.

"And paying for it too," I added.

"Money's no object here. This is war. Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the cost."

"It's not my war."

"Whose war don't matter. Whose money don't matter either. That's what war is."

Junior coughed into a white handkerchief, inspecting it before putting it back into his pocket. Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb.

"Now listen," Junior got serious, "not too long after we leave, the boys from the System will be stopping by to pay their respects. You go ahead and tell them about us. Say we broke in and busted up the place hunting for something. Tell them we asked you where the skull was, but you didn't know nothing about no skull. Got it? You can't squeal about something you don't know and you can't fork over something you don't have. Even under torture. That's why we're gonna leave empty-handed as when we came."

"Torture?" I choked.

"Nobody's gonna doubt you. They don't even know you paid a visit to the Professor. For the time being, we're the only ones who know that. So no harm's gonna come to you. A Calcutec like yourself with a Record of Excellence? Hell, they got no choice but to trust you. They're gonna think we're Factory. And they're gonna wanna do something about it. We got it all worked out."

"Torture?" I choked again. "What do you mean, torture?"

"You'll find out soon enough," said the little man.

"What if I spilled the whole works to the folks at Headquarters?" Just thought I'd ask.

"Don't be dumb. You'd get rubbed out by your own fellas. That's not an exaggeration. Think about it. You went to the Professor's place on a job, you didn't tell the System. You broke the freeze on shuffling. And worse, you let the Professor use you in his experiments. They gonna like that? You're doing a very dangerous balancing act, pal."

Our faces met from either end of the sofa.

"I have a question," I said. "How do I stand to benefit from cooperating with you and lying to the System? I know zero about you guys. What's in it for me?"

"That's easy," Junior chirped. "We got the lowdown on what's in store for you, but we're letting you live. Your organization doesn't know nothing about the situation you're in. But if they did, they might decide to eliminate you. I figure your odds are way better with us."

"Sooner or later, the System is going to find out about this situation, as you call it. I don't know what this situation is, but the System's not so stupid."

"Maybe so," said Junior. "But that's later. This is now. If all goes according to schedule, you and us, we're gonna have our problems solved in the meantime. That's your choice, if you're looking for one. Let me put it another way: it's like chess. You get checked, you beat a retreat. And while you're scrambling around, maybe your opponent will screw up.

Everybody screws up, even the smartest players." Junior checked his watch again, then turned to Big Boy and snapped his fingers. Whereupon the hulk blinked to life, a robot with the juice switched on. He lifted his jaw and hunkered over to the sofa, positioning himself like a room divider. No, not a room divider, more like a drive-in movie screen.

His body blocked the ceiling light, throwing me into a pale shadow, like when I was in elementary school and all the kids held up a pane of glass smoked with candle soot to view a solar eclipse. A quarter of a century ago that was. Look where that quarter of a century had gotten me.

"And now," he resumed, "I'm afraid we're gonna have to make things a little unpleasant. Well, maybe you're gonna think it's more than a little unpleasant. But just remember, we're doing it for you. It's not like we wanna do it. We're doing it because we got no choice. Take off your pants."

I did as I was told. As if I had any choice.

"Kneel down."

I kneeled down. I felt funny doing it in my sweatshirt and jockey shorts, but there wasn't much time for meditation as Big Boy swooped in behind me and pinned my wrists to the small of my back. Then he locked my ankles firmly between his legs. His movements were very fluid. I didn't particularly feel tied down, but when I tried to budge, a sharp pain shot through me. I was immobilized, like a duck sitting in a shooting gallery.

Meanwhile, Junior found Big Boy's knife. He flicked the seven-centimeter blade open, then ran the blade through the flame of his lighter. This compact knife didn't look like a lethal weapon, but it was obviously no dime-store toy. It was sharp enough to slice a person to pieces. The human fruit is always ripe for peeling.

After sterilizing the blade, Junior let it cool slightly. Then he yanked down the waistband of my jockey shorts and exposed my penis.

"Now this is going to hurt a little," he said. A tennis-ball-sized lump of air bounced up from my stomach and lodged in my throat. Sweat beaded up on my nose. I was shaking.

At this rate, I'd never be able to get an erection.

But no, the guy didn't do anything to my cock. He simply gripped it to death, while he took the still-warm blade and glided it across my stomach. Straight as a ruler, a six-centimeter horizontal gash, two centimeters below my navel.

I tried to suck in my gut, but between Big Boy's clamp on my back and Junior's grip on my cock, I couldn't move a hair. Cold sweat gushed from every pore of my body. Then, a moment after the surgery was over, I was wracked with searing pain.

Junior wiped the blood off the knife with a kleenex and folded the blade away. Big Boy let me drop. My white jockey shorts were turning red. Big Boy fetched a towel from the bathroom, and I pressed it to the wound.

"Seven stitches and you'll be like new," Junior diagnosed. "It'll leave a scar, but nobody's gonna see it. Sorry we had to do it, but you'll live."

I pulled back the towel and looked at the wound. The cut wasn't very deep, but deep enough to see pink.

"We're gonna go now. When your System boys show up, let 'em see this little example of wanton violence. Tell 'em when you wouldn't tell us where the skull was, we went nuts. But next time, our aims won't be so high, and we might have to go for your nuts, heh heh. You can tell 'em we said that. Anyway, you didn't know nothing, so you didn't tell us nothing. That's why we decided to take a rain check. Got it? We can do a real nice job if we want to. Maybe one day soon, if we have the time, we'll give you another demonstration."

I crouched there with the towel pressed against my gut. Don't ask me why, but I got the feeling I'd be better off playing their game.

"So you did set up that poor gas inspector," I sputtered. "You had him blow the act on purpose so I would go hide the stuff."

"Clever, clever," said the little man. "Keep that head of yours working and maybe you'll survive."

On that note, my two visitors left. There was no need to see them out. The mangled frame of my steel door was now open for all the world.

I stripped off my blood-stained underwear and threw it in the trash, then I moistened some gauze and wiped the blood from the wound. The gash throbbed pain with every move. The sleeves of my sweatshirt were also bloody, so I tossed it too. Then from the clothes scattered on the floor, I found a dark T-shirt which wouldn't show the blood too much, a pair of jockeys, and some loose trousers.

Thirty minutes later, right on schedule, three men from Headquarters arrived. One of whom was the smart-ass young liaison who always came around to pick up data, outfitted in the usual business suit, white shirt, and bank clerk's tie. The other two were dressed like movers. Even so, they didn't look a thing like a bank clerk and movers; they looked like they were trying to look like a bank clerk and movers. Their eyes shifted all over the place; every motion was tense.

They didn't knock before walking into the apartment, shoes and all, either. The two movers began immediately to check the apartment while the bank clerk proceeded to debrief me. He scribbled the facts down with a mechanical pencil in a black notebook. As I explained to him, a two-man unit had broken in, wanting a skull. I didn't know anything about a skull; they got violent and slashed my stomach. I pulled my briefs down.

The clerk examined the wound momentarily, but made no comment about it. "Skull? What the hell were they talking about?"

"I have no idea," I said. "I'd like to know myself."

"You really don't know?" the bank clerk probed further, his voice uninflected. "This is critical, so think carefully. You won't be able to alter your statement later. Semiotecs don't make a move if they have nothing to go on. If they came to your apartment looking for a skull, they must have had a reason for thinking you had a skull in your apartment. They don't dream things up. Furthermore, that skull must have been valuable enough to come looking for. Given these obvious facts, it's hard to believe you don't know anything about it."

"If you're so smart, why don't you tell me what this skull business is supposed to be about," I said.

"There will be an investigation," the bank clerk said, tapping his mechanical pencil on his notebook. "A thorough investigation, and you know how thorough the System can be. If you're discovered to be hiding something, you will be dealt with commensurately. You are aware of this?"

I was aware of this, I told him. I didn't know how this was going to turn out, but neither did they. Nobody can outguess the future.

"We had a hunch the Semiotecs were up to something. They're mobilizing. But we don't know what they're after, and we don't know how you fit into it. We don't know what to make of this skull either. But as more clues come in, you can be sure we'll get to the heart of the matter. We always do."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Be very careful. Cancel any jobs you have. Pay attention to anything unusual. If anything comes up, contact me immediately. Is the telephone still in service?"

I lifted the receiver and got a dial tone. Obviously, the two thugs had chosen to leave the telephone alone.

"The line's okay."

"Good," he said. "Remember, if anything happens, no matter how trivial, get in touch with me right away. Don't even think about trying to solve things yourself. Don't think about hiding anything. Those guys aren't playing softball. Next time you won't get off with a scratch."

"Scratch? You call that a scratch?"

The movers reported back after completing their survey of the premises.

"We've conducted a full search," said the older mover. "They didn't overlook a thing, went about it very smoothly. Professional job. Semiotecs."

The liaison nodded, and the two operants exited. It was now the liaison and me.

"If all they were looking for was a skull," I wondered out loud, "why would they rip up my clothes? How was I supposed to hide a skull there? If there was a skull, I mean."

"They were professionals. Professionals think of every contingency. You might have put the skull in a coin locker and they were looking for the key. A key can be hidden anywhere."

"True," I said. Quite true.

"By the way, did these Factory henchmen make you a proposition?"

"A proposition?"

"Yeah, a propostion. That you go to work for them, for example. An offer of money, a position."

"If they did, I sure didn't hear it. They just demanded their skull."

"Very well," said the liaison. "If anyone makes you an offer, you are to forget it. You are not to play along. If the System ever discovers you played ball with them, we will find you, wherever you are, and we will terminate you. This is not a threat; this is a promise. The System is the state. There is nothing we cannot do."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

When I was alone again, I went over the story piece by piece. No matter how I stacked the essential details, they didn't lead anywhere. At the heart of the mystery was the Professor and whatever he was up to. If I didn't know that, I couldn't know anything. And I didn't have the vaguest notion what was whirling around in that old head of his.

The only thing I knew for certain was that I had let myself betray the System. If they found that out—and soon enough they would—that'd be the end, exactly as my smart-ass bank-clerk liaison had been kind enough to point out. Even if I had been coerced into lying like I did. The System wasn't known for making exceptions on any account.

As I was assessing these circumstances, my wound began to throb. Better go to the hospital. I rang up for a taxi. Then I stepped into my shoes. Bending over to tie my laces, I was in such pain I thought my body was going to shear in two.

I left the apartment wide open—as if I had any other option—and took the elevator down.

I waited for the cab behind the hedge by the entranceway. It was one-thirty by my watch.

Two and a half hours since the demolition derby had begun. A very long two-and-a-half hours ago.

Housewives filed past, leek and daikon radish tops sticking up from supermarket bags. I found myself envying them. They hadn't had their refrigerators raped or their bellies slashed. Leeks and daikon and the kids' grades—all was right with the world. No unicorn skulls or secret codes or consciousness transfers. This was normal, everyday life.

I thought, of all things, about the frozen shrimp and beef and tomato sauce on the kitchen floor. Probably should eat the stuff before the day was out. Waste not, want not. Trouble was, I didn't want.

The mailman scooted up on a red Supercub and dis-tributed the mail to the boxes at the entrance of the building. Some boxes received tons of mail, others hardly anything at all.

The mailman didn't touch my box. He didn't even look at it.

Beside the mailboxes was a potted rubber plant, the ceramic container littered with popsicle sticks and cigarette butts. The rubber plant looked as worn out as I felt. Seemed like every passerby had heaped abuse on the poor thing. I didn't know how long it'd been sitting there. I must have walked by it every day, but until I got knifed in the gut, I never noticed it was there.

When the doctor saw my wound, the first thing he asked was how I managed to get a cut like that.

"A little argument—over a woman," I said. It was the only story I could come up with.

"In that case, I have to inform the police," the doctor said.

"Police? No, it was me who was in the wrong, and luckily the wound isn't too deep. Could we leave the police out of it, please?"

The doctor muttered and fussed, but eventually he gave in. He disinfected the wound, gave me a couple of shots, then brought out the needle and thread. The nurse glared suspiciously at me as she plastered a thick layer of gauze over the stitches, then wrapped a rubber belt of sorts around my waist to hold it in place. I felt ridiculous.

"Avoid vigorous activity," cautioned the doctor. "No sex or belly-laughing. Take it easy, read a book, and come back tomorrow."

I said my thanks, paid the bill, and went home. With great pain and difficulty, I propped the door up in place, then, as per doctor's orders, I climbed into what there was of my bed with Turgenev's Rudin. Actually, I'd wanted to read Spring Torrents, but I would never have found it in my shambles of an apartment. And besides, if you really think about it, Spring Torrents isn't that much better a novel than Rudin.

I got up and went to the kitchen, where I poked around in the mess of broken bottles in the sink. There under spears of glass, I found the bottom of a bottle of Chivas that was fairly intact, holding maybe a jigger of precious amber liquid. I held the bottle-bottom up to the light, and seeing no glass bits, I took my chances on the lukewarm whiskey for a bedtime nurse.

I'd read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev's old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws.

Not that Dostoyevsky's characters don't generate pathos, but they're flawed in ways that don't come across as faults. And while I'm on the subject, Tolstoy's characters' faults are so epic and out of scale, they're as static as backdrops.

I finished Rudin and tossed the paperback on top of what had been a bookcase, then I returned to the glass pile in the sink in search of another hidden pocket of whiskey. Near the bottom of the heap I spied a scant shot of Jack Daniels, which I coaxed out and took back to bed, together with Stendhal's The Red and the Black. What can I say? I seemed to be in the mood for passe literature. In this day and age, how many young people read The Red and the Black?

I didn't care. I also happened to identify with Julien Sorel. Sorel's basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any standard, a tragedy. It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom.

Walls.

A world completely surrounded by walls.

I shut the book and bid the last thimbleful of Jack Daniels farewell, turning over in my mind the image of a world within walls. I could picture it, with no effort at all. A very high wall, a very large gate. Dead quiet. Me inside. Beyond that, the scene was hazy.

Details of the world seemed to be distinct enough, yet at the same time everything around me was dark and blurred. And from some great obscure distance, a voice was calling.

It was like a scene from a movie, a historical blockbuster. But which? Not El Cid, not Ben Hur, not Spartacus. No, the image had to be something my subconscious dreamed up.

I shook my head to drive the image from my mind. I was so tired.

Certainly, the walls represented the limitations hemming in my life. The silence, residue of my encounter with sound-removal. The blurred vision of my surroundings, an indication that my imagination faced imminent crisis. The beckoning voice, the everything-pink girl, probably.

Having subjected the hallucination to this quick-and-dirty analysis, I reopened my book.

But I was no longer able to concentrate. My life is nothing, I thought. Zero. Zilch. A blank. What have I done with my life? Not a damned thing. I had no home. I had no family. I had no friends. Not a door to my name. Not an erection either. Pretty soon, not even a job.

That peaceful fantasy of Greek and cello was vaporizing as I lay there. If I lost my job, I could forget about taking life easy. And if the System was going to chase me to the ends of the earth, when would I find the time to memorize irregular Greek verbs?

I shut my eyes and let out a deep sigh, then rejoined The Red and the Black. What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

I wouldn't have noticed that the day was over were it not for the Turgenevo-Stendhalian gloom that had crept in around me.

By my keeping off my feet, the pain in my stomach had subsided. Dull bass beats throbbed occasionally from the wound, but I just rode them out. Awareness of the pain was passing.

The clock read seven-twenty, but I felt no hunger. You'd think I might have wanted to eat something after the day I'd had, but I cringed at the very thought of food. I was short of sleep, my gut was slashed, and my apartment was gutted. There was no room for appetite.

Looking at the assortment of debris around me, I was reminded of a near-future world turned wasteland buried deep in its own garbage. A science fiction novel I'd read. Well, my apartment looked like that. Shredded suit, broken videodeck and TV, pieces of a flowerpot, a floor lamp bent out of shape, trampled records, tomato sauce, ripped-out speaker wires… Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy novels spattered with dirty vase water, cut gladioli lying in niemorium on a fallen cashmere sweater with a blob of Pelikan ink on the sleeve… All of it, useless garbage.

When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn't make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you?

I went back to the kitchen to try to salvage a few more sips of whiskey, but the proverbial last drop was not to be found. Gone down the drain, to the world of the INKlings.

As I rummaged through the sink, I cut a finger on a sliver of glass. I studied my finger as the blood fell drop by drop onto a whiskey label. After a real wound, what's a little cut?

Nobody ever died from a cut on his finger.

I let the blood run and drip. The bleeding showed no sign of stopping, so I finally staunched it with kleenex.

Several empty beer cans were lying around like shell casings after a mortar barrage. I stooped to pick one up; the metal was warm. Better warm drops of beer than none, I thought. So I ferried the empties back to bed and continued reading The Red and the Black while extracting the last few milliliters out of each can. I needed something to release the tensions and let me rest. Was that too much to ask? I wanted to nod out for as long as it took the earth to spin one Michael Jackson turnaround.

Sleep came over me in my wasteland of a home a little before nine o'clock. I tossed The Red and the Black to the floor, switched off the light, and curled up to sleep. Embryonic amid devastation.

But only for a couple of hours. At eleven, the chubby girl in her pink suit was shaking me by the shoulders.

"Wake up, please. Please!" she cried. "This is no time to be sleeping!" She pounded on me with her fists. "Please. If you don't get up, the world is going to end!"