38
Setzer Relocates
It was too late. The synthesis had already occurred. Whatever nefarious and fiendish plan (desired and designed by whom, it is not certain) was now achieved. There would be little else to do but to watch and wait.
If things could not be any more bizarre in their hidden cluster of coincidences, Anton Setzer sent me an invitation in the mail – an advertisement for his new base of operations, a used book store in Toronto boasting an introductory 40 percent off selected titles in a grand opening customer pull. The ad detailed the five-story building it now occupied, the transport of its entire stock from its former Detroit location, and the fact that it had “books for all types and tastes, popular or obscure.” Without being able to help myself, drawn by both the prospect of a new bookstore and the connection to this ongoing mystery, I paid Setzer a visit.
The storefront sign read: COLOPHON BOOKS: NEW, USED, RARE & COLLECTIBLE – A. Setzer, Licensed Antiquarian Dealer. His facade was back in full force, and so I wasn't all that surprised when I pushed the door open and heard the tell-tale sound of little bells and the smell of old books all used bookstores seem to have. Behind a suspended desk, surrounded by piles of books, Setzer was pricing them with his antique bifocals dangling comically from the end of his aquiline nose. He looked up and smiled.
“Gimaldi! What brings you here? Do you like the new digs? Did you read about my grand opening sale? I can outfit you with anything you like.”
“I hardly think your bookstore has the books I am looking for, or the ones I have become accustomed to reading.”
“Yes, you're probably right... Although, you look like a bird man. You should most definitely peruse the ornithology in history section – some very exciting acquisitions. Picked them up on the cheap from an estate sale.”
He was adamant to shoot the shit with me as if all were normal.
“Anton, I don't think I'll be perusing your ornithology collection today.”
“No? Pity. That's all right, though. I'm sure I'll have something that would pique your interest. I am pretty sure you like libraries, and I have just created a whole new section devoted to the history of the greatest European libraries in the section 'books about books'. Some rather fine facsimiles, too, I might add. They do wonders in those German institutes with faithful reproduction of Boehme's works especially.”
Ignoring his ridiculous sales pitch, I launched right into him: “Is your labyrinth tucked away in here somewhere, or did you relocate that to your new apartment?”
“Labyrinth? Oh, that. Walked away from it, really. Abandoned it, the machines, the works. Not much call for it anymore.”
“So you're just giving up your long war with Castellemare? Seems a bit odd... “
“Gimaldi, could you come with me a moment?” he asked.
Setzer was no longer operating solo, and asked a new employee – an obvious college stereotype of a bibliophile destined to work in bookstores forever – to mind the front while he “dealt with a client.”
Setzer led me to a back office which was more cluttered than the front desk. He hastily moved a few piles of books from off the chairs and bade me to sit.
“Gimaldi,” he began seriously. “There have been some very big changes, and there are certain branches of my operation that I have had to let go of. The artifice plan was just one of the many things I had to set aside. You might say that, in terms of magical libraries and plans of sabotage, I'm out of business. I'm what you would call retired. As for our dear mutual friend, I am sure he would be very pleased to hear that his former employee and thorn in his side has bowed out – not that I am in any way involving myself in anything remotely connected to his operations or the Library.”
“I don't understand, not to mention that I don't believe you.”
“It isn't that you don't believe, but that you don't want to believe. Gimaldi, I think you are getting addicted to this mystery. You will not be able to let it go. You need your phantoms to chase, but I'm afraid I'm out. Out, out.”
“Just like that?”
“Gimaldi, I don't have any obligation in explaining anything to you. My reasons are my own, but I will say that at a certain point a man gets tired. I, like all mortal men, have lost my energy and patience for endless pursuits. I love books. I love to give them new owners and see the joy and satisfaction in their purchase. I am amazed at the Library, too, but it isn't my concern anymore.”
“I think you've fed me lines before, Anton, when I first visited you.”
“This time what I am saying is legitimate. Gimaldi, I like you a little – not enough that we'll be having summer barbecues together or any such thing. I more than welcome you to be a patron of my store, and I'd be inclined to be of extra help and give you much more of a discount than I would regular patrons if only because I respect your tastes and reverence for books. But, I have to insist that you revise your tendency to connect me to the Library or any of its associated events. If you can agree to this, I know we can continue developing a good and prosperous merchant-customer relationship – which is where I want the boundary to be.”
“Pardon me, but this feels like another carrot was dangled in front of my nose and yanked away. Recently, you phoned me and were reciting from a book that was an eerie document on all that I had done and will do... And now you just want me to forget about all that? When you have the clues, you decide to pull out and repose in this farce of being some kindly old book hawker?”
“That's exactly what I'm asking. I've severed my ties to all that intrigue. My only desire is to connect people to books, and books to people.”
“Then connect me to the book you were reciting to me over the phone. Can you do that?”
“You know I can't, Gimaldi,” Setzer said. “That book is gone. I gave it back to the Library. I couldn't tell you where it is shelved, or even if you would have the permission to access it. But, really, why the hell would you want to have such a damning book in your possession in the first place? It would be so defeatist. Life ought to at least appear entirely unscripted because otherwise it is so hard to look surprised. Please, Gimaldi, I know I have been terribly unfair to you... I did indeed drop heavy clues in your path, led you along a little, and am partially responsible for your current obsession. I apologize for that, but I see no better way of apologizing than by breaking my connections with that way of life. I'm out.”
“Could you at least give me a parting gift of some kind, something I can work with?”
“I cannot, and please don't ask me to. This is my clean break. I am free. What you ask of me would only fuel your obsession, and I simply cannot have that on my conscience.”
“It does seem rather abrupt.”
“I know. I know it does, but I was faced with rather abrupt circumstances.”
“Such as?”
“You won't be mollified, will you? Let us just say my rather abrupt circumstance concerns the fact that I am, in fact, a mortal man. Terminally so.”
Setzer leveled his eyes with mine in a way that conveyed unmistakeable and genuine sincerity. I felt suddenly very foolish pestering him.
“I'm very sorry,” I said sheepishly.
“Don't be. The advances in medicine are a marvel these days, and I still have a good deal of time left. It is events like these – real ones here in the now, and not in mystical libraries – that force us to reassess our priorities and what legacy we choose to leave behind. By comparison, these games we have played are so pale, so frivolous. I suppose on some level I deserved this illness for lying about being dead in the first place, and so now the lie will become self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“I am still very sorry.”
“How quickly others rally themselves around pity and pessimism. I understand, by the way, that you are still in hot pursuit of what you believe will be truth in the end. Pursue it no more – that is my advice, for what it may be worth.”
“It seems to be rather common and frequent advice.”
“Well, it should be heeded,” he said roundly. “Really, this goose chase of yours will mostly likely result in you falling into his hands.”
“His hands? Whose?”
“The bulb over your head appears to be dimming. The doctor's, of course.”
“The synthesized man?”
“Yes, yes,” he said with emphatic impatience. “The doctor.”
“What manner of doctor?”
“Psychoanalyst, of the worst sort. The kind that uses the tricks and techniques of the trade to impose a narrative for the ease of manipulation. The synthesis is taking light in him now, if it hasn't already. You will end up in his cruel care before long. Oh, drat... I promised myself that I'd stay out of this, and look at what you managed to do! I have to go back and mind the store. If you are not here to browse or buy, then I'm afraid you should go.”
We left the office, me in the lead, and him closing the little door on the papered chaos within. He took a different tone with me all of a sudden.
“Gimaldi, I would like your opinion about a few books I saw listed for auction. Would it be possible for me to call or email you the titles so you could give a rough appraisal of their value so I am not taken for a ride? - And, no, Gimaldi, there is nothing mysterious about these books, so don't get your hopes up. I just know that you have quite the head for the value of things.”
“Yes, of course, any time. It will depend on their condition.”
“The list says they are in very good condition.”
“Sale Lists have a funny way of taking liberties with fact.”
“That they do. I've had my eyes on these for a while. One in particular: a reproduction of Hervaeus Natalis' De secundis intentionibus.”
“On second intentions? Are all your choices somewhat comically coincidental to current states of affairs?”
“It is purely of interest to me. Don't be such a dot-connector, Gimaldi. It is a sickness to think that everything in this world conforms to some single pattern.”
“The Library -”
“That is quite enough. I am getting tired. Let us keep this to business. I can pay you a modest amount for your time and expertise. If you could also put me in touch with a reputable restorer, there are some rather battered editions I would like to see rebound.”
I agreed to act as a consultant for this one potential sale and to cease pestering him. Of course, I was now left with another irritant: a psychoanalyst? Was I supposed to believe the most evil human being to make his presence felt in this world was someone who read Freud and told people at a hundred dollars an hour that they wanted to sleep with their parents?
Anton Setzer never made good to tap me for my services, perhaps finding that he did not require them or that my obsession was too burdensome for a man undergoing difficult medical treatments. The sad end would come about a year later. When all of this had long come to an end, I had learned that Setzer had died. The bookstore still kept his name, but was now under the ownership of his employee, Peter Ibsen. There was a tasteful memorial in the shop window – a black and white photograph of a pensive Setzer, beneath which were a few of his most favourite and recommended titles. If the news were not sad, perhaps there would have been some comedic value in the fact that Setzer was a fond and closet admirer of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.
The one text he did bequeath to me was posted shortly before his death: another short fiction which was as much a warning lesson as it was an explanation. He sent it in an envelope with a brief note:
Gimaldi: Some while back, I dropped your name to Heinrich Hermann, and old friend, which then resulted in Greg Pickman contacting you about library phenomenon. Hermann passed away last year, but I think you might find this tale as touching as I did. Be well. -AS
Sanscript
The terrible elegance of the guttering fire has now captured my attention since I had attempted to sample my bed for but a fleeting hour or two. It was that fire, riveting orange spumes curling into themselves, that kept me rapt – perhaps my only anchor to that ramshackle port of sanity.
It is an undeniable truism that any number divided against itself will always result in that single digit unity, just as any number subtracted from itself will result in the authority of null. It is into this binary silence I have read, and have since regretted it; and to this style of seeing and reading I have had to forcibly turn from. A one and a zero, a white space and a black one: this is the Manicheanism of reading, but of a hidden variety that was revealed to me at too unripe an age, in Lisbon.
To say that shadows are a thing of fright for me now is to only journey halfway toward the full truth which is equally shadowy. That I have by dint of chance performed some prodigy is something I would have gladly done better without. For now it is only the flame, my fixed and unbroken gaze with it, that spares me from seeing everything in its motley of shadows.
I can safely say that there exists in all texts a tenebrous and invisible world most of us are thankfully spared from ever glimpsing, a terribly secret realm that is entirely visible, but only for the eyes trained to see it.
I feign at being a man of letters with the convenient and implacable mask of scholarship. This, of course, means my work is overburdened with a cleverness it does not attempt to tastefully conceal. It could be worse, and it has been in previous bouts of my pen: I could perform my own exegesis, lauding my work with long-winded explanations on the stylistics and mechanics, the forcibly imported metaphors, the elitist pomp of making classical allusions...But that is the way some people tend to tell jokes, committing the faux pas of laughing at their own wit before it is judged by the laughter of others, and then trying to relive the punchline with boorish explanation and reiteration. But this is not a story about my errors as a failed writer, nor about the allegiances I maintained so that I could gladhand my way toward receiving literary prizes I certainly did not deserve.
At the time, I had been living in Lisbon. I was born into both a German family and that heavy burden known as the German language, and my family decided to relocate to Portugal for rather uninteresting reasons. I had distant relatives in my family tree who had some equally distant connections to Germany's historical shame, but not significant enough to leave any lasting stain on an otherwise mundane family name.
Having left my literary peer group in Munich, I was to be adopted by another in Lisbon, which was quite vibrant at the time. Fortunately, on the strength of an introductory letter written by a man of international well-renown (I will not bring him any shame or embarrassment by revealing his identity here), my passage into the upper echelons of Lisbon's literary elite was secured. It did not matter if what I wrote possessed any merit, but that sort of thing doesn't all that much matter in such circles - just so long as one gains admittance and has some relative degree of shared literary history. We had our meetings in a place called the Chamber.
The Chamber was slightly Bauhausian, the ruthlessly elegant and modernist minimalism that conceals behind its cold facade the fact it had been produced by complicated machinery. Clear glass alternated with frosted glass, silver and black stood at alienated distances. Our salon's decor was proof of what happens when the triumph of aesthetic austerity is mistaken for tastefulness, where opulence is condemned to mere tackiness. This was in contradistinction with the rest of Lisbon's proud architectural pomp - anachronistic holdovers to a bygone Baroque era.
The Lisbon society of letters was very much like societies of their stripe anywhere, filled with amplified and inconsequential intrigues, given over to passionate prejudices of the moment, and concerning itself with myopic discussions on contemporary poetics. The unwritten rules were generally similar as well: new members targeted their flatteries judiciously without seeming like obsequious dandies. Some would undertake to write high-born prose in reviewing the established members that, objectively, would be regarded by history as fatuous puff pieces engineered to curry favour and gain advantage. But there was another new member in the Lisbon clique besides myself, and not once did I ever see him ingratiate himself in any way. Perhaps his aloof comportment, finely threaded by an innate mysteriousness, frozen upon that half smirk permanently etched upon his Mediterranean face was enough to carry him beyond the necessity for baser methods for forging alliances. He was certainly charismatic, affable, and eloquent enough to be quickly held in some measure of esteem. His oratory was tinged with that smooth touch of the exotic, an accent that put me in mind of some Comte de Monte Cristo descending upon us. And, he was certainly a well-bred thinker with a quick-witted creativity. His name was Tariq, and this Lisbon group to which we both belonged was, I would later learn, of middling importance to him compared to the fraternity he pledged most of his loyalty to.
Tariq was a handsome man, with a dark complexion and an ageless face that one felt one could trust - although it was what it visibly seemed to conceal that conveyed he knew much more than he would tell. He participated meaningfully and respectfully to our discussions, in a way that was never too much or too little, contributing just enough to have presence but never fully committing himself to any side in a dispute. He had an objective, clarifying effect when our disputes raged, adding a cool and fresh breeze to any argument. However, to me, it always seemed as though he was just playing, a bit distant and unserious.
It must have been a few months before Tariq took me into his confidence. He was wearing a handsome cut of suit and gingerly sipping a cafe au lait on balmy evening. When I buttonholed him, out of my own curiousity to dispel mystery, he yielded jovially.
“I have tried thousands of times to unwrite my own life,” he began without losing that perma-smirk. “Usually by writing over it, rewriting the past as if the act of writing could abolish the truth of what was, but that is only to multiply and embellish, compounding a lie with an actual event. When this proved to be an artificial act, I sought ways where writing could efface my past without creating a new one in its place. It is a difficult thing to write with the singularly focused aim of removing all traces of oneself. At bottom, it is paradoxical...an enterprise fraught with failure. I could complicate my history, but every word served only to reaffirm its existence. It had to be an act more lasting than a series of scratching strikethroughs...or the denouncement of public record. I began with my family and tried to unwrite them. This proved somewhat easiest, for I could write that I had no relatives - a sure way to remove my lineage, but any persistent researcher could sniff out my lie.”
“This seems counterintuitive to the act of writing,” I said. “Do we not write, in part, for recognition, to leave our fingerprints upon history?”
“I have my reasons, and they are not what you would expect. I do desire recognition, but my effacement will actually achieve this. There was once a story I wrote - one that I have attempted in vain to unwrite - that received praise for the one fantastic element I reported as having occurred at such-and-such street. The street and house I described do exist, but I was asked if that I introduced was also true. I drew from life the house and street, but added that small touch of fabulist fancy that makes for a good tale, to blur that boundary between life and fiction. It concerned a medieval android, a tale peeled from the rumoured accounts of Albertus Magnus. I said it was not true, the android portion, although I had written it so convincingly that it seemed to suggest that it was. My questioner said with a disappointed and derogatory tone, 'Ah, so it's just an invention.' Inventions, it is assumed, have less value than natural and real things. But I would argue that inventions of the mind are as real as the blossoms on the trees of this boulevard. Do not inventions change our way of engaging reality, if not the entirety of reality itself? Not all inventions must be readily and universally useful either; I accord as much value to the inventions of Shelley and H.G. Wells as I do those of Edison or Marconi. But it is this stubborn belief that inventions - especially literary ones - are poor, deficient, and useless that has urged my sad resolve to unwrite myself, as if in protest. I, too, am merely an invention.”
“Or a fantasist. I do not mean this in a pejorative way. There can be much beauty and erudition found in such a genre.”
“I do not take it as pejorative, but I am no longer even this. To unwrite the whole world would be violently arrogant, and I am no Platonist who spurns the terrestrial realm and awaits reunion with the celestial sphere of the Forms. I take responsibility only for myself, and it is myself that I must unwrite, to efface this fiction, this invention. All my memories are merely the ones I choose to keep, or have no choice but to keep. I do not remember every breakfast I've eaten since childhood, every caress every lover has ever given me, or every object I have seen on every street I have traveled. Yes, to remember everything would be madness, and so we abstract from the world and keep the kernel of meaning. Is this not also a form of invention, of fictionalizing? Selection and omission. All my perceptions are merely forged by larger cultural and historical prejudices and my own experience (which is flawed). I inherit a world that is already a historical fiction, and I continue along to make ever more fictions that future generations will also inherit. Nothing I think, remember, or see is entirely real or free from my tainting them with that natural function common to all people - to fictionalize. Even this language we speak, this linguistic inheritance, is an arbitrary way of designating the world and communicating with one another.”
“Would not those who devalue invention also suffer using inventions themselves?”
“Yes. They invent their own system of values that devalues inventions. But so do those who highly value inventions hold an invented opinion.”
“Then there is no right or wrong. All is illusion,” I attempted to clarify.
“To say ' all is invention' is itself an invention. To say that inventions are good or bad, useful or useless, is again just an invention. But I wish to push toward the conclusion of my efforts, how my own invention was embroidered by a special knowledge that perhaps, if you are willing, I can share with you. Because it pleases me, and because you are not so rigid in your way of thinking yet since you are still young and malleable of mind, perhaps this would benefit you - or it may be the source of much hardship.”
I listened intently, not breaking the spell with any premature utterance.
“There is more than one way of reading, yes?”
“This I freely grant,” I said. “Interpretation is variable. There are many levels of reading.”
“But all of them play on one side of the black and white.”
“I do not understand.”
“Do you believe in unconscious writing? I do not mean this so heavily on the side of psychoanalysis.”
“Stream of consciousness writing, you mean?”
“No, a truly unconscious style of writing, the kind that unwrites all that we write by adding a layer that we are not aware of. All who write, write double. We inscribe a different writing in the white shadow.”
“White shadow?”
“Look at any text. Black on white. We form each letter, but at the same time, we are carving out the negative space of an entirely other alphabet. I have learned how to read the spaces between letters as being an alphabet of its own, rendering what we actually write the space between the letters that are actually printed, albeit in negative.”
“What you say puts me in mind of steganography,” I said. “Porta had published a book on the subject in 1606, but the practice is much older... Demaratus used to inscribe important dispatches on wooden tablets and cover them with wax so that the receiver need only remove the waxy layer to obtain the message. Porta himself recommended various methods such as using gum-arabic on glass, and of course those methods of invisible ink that only come into view with the aid of fluid or fire.”
“You might say this is somewhat similar, but it is still misdirected. I speak of the unconscious writing that appears between what we consciously inscribe. Once one comes to realize what the unconscious writes, one can take the reins upon it, one may even read the great canonical works fresh since the act of writing is always effectively double. There are always two books to every book, and what we see are but the shades of what is written...The letters we come to visibly recognize our but the cast shadow of a truer writing.”
“A truly remarkable idea, to read between the lines, or, rather, between the letters themselves. How did you become acquainted with this fashion of reading?”
“That in itself is a long story, a story I know to have its own double should it be written in the conventional manner. I belong to a cadre of those who have mastered this art of reading and writing space, and it is by means of the spaces I leave between my written words that I will choose to be remembered. That is the only method to efface myself and, in turn, glorify myself by the only writing that matters.”
“How does one train to read in this way, especially given that we are so accustomed to shape of letters and the way they interconnect?”
“One must learn to understand an entirely different alphabet. Of course, everyone already knows it for it is the alphabet of the unconscious. So, one must learn how to tap into one's own unconscious, for it is always at work, always writing in its own hand as our conscious writes with the other. It is similar to those visual puzzles where we may focus on a picture of a vase in black or see its invert, two facial profiles in white.”
“And what of this cadre of readers you mention?”
“Our principles are partially derived from the learned Galen in that we spurn the accidents of fortune and pay no heed to noble birth, for both are not earned by merit.”
Tariq and I would continue along in this way, me with my curiousity and he with his philosophical generalities. We traded pleasantries often, not merely keeping to the topic of an invisible writing. We grew close in the way two men who frequent the same cafe under a pendulous sun can become. That spring we spent much of our spare and idle hours talking until the evening instead of writing, and by summer he had invited me to stay with him for a month at his summer home in Spain. Again, pleasantries and occasionally deep conversations on poetics and philosophy dominated the humid hours, and it would not be until that following autumn that Tariq would take me into a more personal circle of confidence.
In retrospect, I ought to have been more alert to the way our conversations were designed to prepare me for initiation into that reading rite. I had merely taken our exchanges as something of an innocuous series of novelties, merely being happy as a youth to engage a limber and seasoned mind on topics most others tired of easily. By autumn, however, I would soon regret being taken into Tariq's confidence.
By this time, my family had fallen on hard times after father had made some very rash and poor speculations. It was decided that I would stay on in Lisbon while my parents, younger brother and older sister would return to Munich. I was able to eke by on a small salary acting as a secretarial member of the Lisbon society of letters, much to my shame and humiliation. Most often, my duties would prevent me from attending the soirees in the Chamber, and when the season drew to a close I found myself out of work. Tariq and I continued to spend time when we could at the local cafe, but my once ebullient talk had been occulted by the dark grey of my financial predicament. Sensing my distress, Tariq inquired on my affairs, and I was only too willing to unfurl my flag of difficulties. It was in late October that Tariq offered to take me to see the head of that other group he belonged to. In no mean terms, he assured me that my financial predicament would find its proper resolution. So would begin my tutelage among the group named, with some cheek, Sanscript.
Tariq took the proper pains in priming me for my initial meeting. I was to be dressed in sombre attire and stay silent unless spoken to. He also gave me his facsimile copy of Emanuelle Swedenborg's Summaria Expositio Doctrinae Novae Ecclesiae, the same copy – he said – that he had been initiated with. He would act as my sponsor.
I cannot remember the exact location of their meeting house, but I knew it was tucked deeply in some poor urban pocket amidst buildings with no names and of uniform appearance. It was night when we arrived, and I had my borrowed copy of Swedenborg held nervously in my right hand. We left the cab we had hired and we would enter through a white door set inside a drab tenement. Tariq issued a complicated rhythmic knock, and the door opened a crack so that the inhabitant could safely confirm identity. Once the door was opened, I was met by dimness and an overwhelming scent of burning incense. There were a few candles at the front of a large room, and chairs lined up against the walls. Tariq instructed me wordlessly to take a seat next to him.
“Why,” I whispered, “would a reading club conduct its affairs in such poor light?”
The whites of Tariq's eyes, made more animalistic by the candlelight, nearly bade me to swallow my question, but he said, “It is easier to see the hidden alphabet under these conditions. For now, stay quiet, and all will be revealed.”
The members were already beginning to file in and take their seats on either side of the room, on the same folding chairs lined up against the walls. The centre was covered with an elaborate carpet, but the lighting was too dim to make out the precise pattern. The front of the room had a raised and ornate lectern, and behind were a few guttering candles. The room was deathly quiet, and I had not noticed the head of the group until I heard him shuffling dry sheets at the lectern.
“Lux e tenebris,” the shadowed speaker uttered, followed a chorus of echoing mutters.
“That is our hierophant,” Tariq whispered in explanation.
“I will read from our book of the spaces,” the hierophant announced. “I will read from the first chapter so that we may never forget our chief purpose. 'The eye cannot see until the heart understands. He who sees only in black reads with Ahriman, while those whose hearts the eye gifts unto shall read with Yazdan. We who read in the light know the rites of the consecrated fire. We who read in the light do not share the emblem of ignorance given solely to the blind, those who read with Ahriman. All who now read the in the light with Yazdan have followed the Rite of the Fifty Days, as was instructed by Yazdan for all aspirants. Thereafter, each member enters into apprenticeship to the Sanscriptorium for a period of three lunar months by three lunar months by three lunar months. After the apprentice has mastered the light of the demotic, and then the light of the hieratic, and finally the light of the hieroglyphic, may he come to be fully embraced as a member. Afterward, he is accorded with the esteem and privilege of his brothers.' Let us now stand and recite the pledge.”
All the members stood. Tariq gently urged me to stand as well. I heard the strangest kind of glottal burbling issuing in unison from the throats of all in attendance, a language sounding more guttural than mystical. I could not, of course, take part. I would come to realize that this pledge was spoken in their language, the language of the visible yet hidden alphabet. The seemingly Masonic overtones of the meeting were not to my taste, but I would learn that there had been no real converse between this order and that of the Freemasons despite the appearance of some shared phrases.
After a half hour or so of further recitals and spoken hymns, the meeting disbanded from its formality and the members were then allowed to mingle freely. However, each of them spoke that bizarre guttural dialect, so I could not ascertain what was being said. Tariq, in making his proper social rounds, led me to the hierophant and, presumably (they were speaking in that language), my case was discussed.
Tariq turned to me and asked, “Would you consider joining our order? You need not answer immediately, for this is a serious commitment.
“I'm sorry, Tariq, but I do not know enough about this order to commit myself to joining.”
“What I have told you is all that any of us who elect to join know before being admitted to the Mysteries.”
“The eye cannot see until the heart understands,” said the hierophant. “And the heart can only understand if it is open and free. You are under no compulsion to join. Brother Tariq has told me about you, and it is my belief that you would make a good aspirant, that you are ready.”
What I was, was broke. What I was, was young and listless.
“Tariq, I am genuinely intrigued by all of this, really, but I feel that I must pledge my time to finding gainful employment,” I said.
“Your plight is known to me,” the hierophant spoke. “You are young, and the young can be feverish, and worry about matters that should not be of such concern. All aspirants are well tended, and afterward have the knowledge to fear no more. This heart of yours trembles, and is enchained by fear, and so is not yet open.”
“He will be open and ready,” Tariq defended.
It seemed as though I were being rejected even before I made a decision either way.
“Look,” said Tariq. “As an aspirant, you will have fifty money-free days. You will be properly boarded. Do you not wish to read what the many cannot read? See here this Swedenborg...We all begin with this text, yet I do not know why...Every chapter has its preferred initiation text.”
“What will my initiation entail?” I asked the hierophant.
“The initiation will teach you how to truly see. As you are now, you cannot see. You are among the blind.”
After a few more unrevealing and somewhat cryptic allusions, I was beginning to consider the possibility...although I did not know then what I was getting myself into. I felt dizzy and flush with the dimness of that place and that incense which was now beginning to make me feel nauseous. I felt drugged, but not in any elated. I consented to join.
With my consent, I was led by the hierophant up a flight of stairs in darkness. Tariq issued his parting words that I would not see him for fifty days. I had no idea then what this meant. The hierophant opened a large door and led me into a cell that seemed even darker than the stairwell.
“Here,” he said, “will be your home for fifty days. Each of us has spent his time here. You must be plunged in complete darkness so that you may see the light.”
I was about to protest, change my mind, but it was too late: the hierophant had already closed the cell door and had left, leaving me in complete darkness.
By the first morning, I heard the cell door. It was a slot just big enough for a tray with what smelled like food. By touch and smell, I could tell that the fare was modest, but hearty: stew, bread, and fruit. The slot opened three times a day, but never did light come in with the food, everything being conducted in the dark. By the third meal, a voice spoke to me from beyond the cell door.
“You will find your garments at the far end of the wall, furthest from this door. You will also find that we have equipped you with a stall for showering, which you may do at your leisure. Please place your soiled garments on the dinner tray once you are finished eating, and they will be laundered. You have been allowed to keep the book by Swedenborg, and are allowed to read it.”
I had known about the stall, but did not dare risk using it in the dark. I had already paced the dimensions of my cell which was not too small nor too large. I wanted to voice my protest, to be let out, but some inexplicable urge within me bade me to stay. I found it laughable that I was permitted to read given that there was absolutely no light in my cell.
By about the 14th day, boredom had overtaken me. I had given up cursing Tariq for ever bringing me here, and stopped accusing myself of so weakly consenting to this cultish imprisonment. Instead, I became resigned to my predicament. On a lark, I decided to try – and presumably fail – reading. Whether my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, or some other change was taking place within me, I was able to discern letters, but they were not the letters of the alphabet I could recognize. However, certain flashes of recognition were beginning to stitch patterns of meaning in what I saw. The more often I attempted reading in this impenetrable shadow, the more I came to understand what I was reading. It was not the Swedenborg I had ever read before, but I knew it was him, a different him, a him writing something from a source unseen despite his knowledge. In my reading, from what I was able to glean since it was rather patchy, he was far more prophetic in his work than what he had written on the page. There was a daring kind of theorizing in those pages, and I would come to understand that subconsciously he was aware of certain histories that do not go recorded, but that influence our lives regardless.
It was the 33rd day that I was finally able to read the text through without interruption by my intransigent eyes trying to read the black text rather than the spaces between them. All of my senses became keen and sharp in that darkness having inhabited that space for so long. I had become so accustomed to my way of life that, by day fifty, I was more than reluctant to leave the safe confines of my silent and solitary education. Upon my release after those long fifty days in isolation, I was able to see differently.
I will not record all that transpired afterward beyond a few gestural sketches. I was made an apprentice and continued learning how to read in the fashion of the Sanscript. I was admitted to them officially and as well into their inner mysteries that my oath prevents me from relating. I was not well-to-do, but I was not wanting either, having taken up a service in the order. These details mean very little to me, for all this education and this new-found ability to read what others could not merely multiplied my horror. I was incapable of reading any text without seeing the hidden text so visibly apparent before me, and all reading became a double reading. I discovered secrets and ideas unfit for consumption, the shrieks and torment of the buried madness of authors and thinkers. I became privy to a history entirely shadowed by that protective layer those who are not among the Sanscript will ever witness. I bear the burden of my reading, but cannot relate it to anyone without betraying the oath and confidence of my confreres. Tariq had all but disappeared shortly after my admission to the order, and when I did chance upon him, he greeted me with the formal cordiality he extended to the other brothers; gone was the warmth of our conversations. It became obvious to me that Tariq had engaged in a long courtship with my intellect, waiting for that fateful time when I would be in need, and then predating upon me to convert. Of our order, there are some who bear the burden of our way of reading with resignation, and others – like Tariq – whose hearts are malicious and would spread the misery they feel to the innocent. I, for one, could never subject anyone to it...I wish that I never had learned to read this way, to see this way, to know what I know. I am what can be called 'damaged goods', and the brunt I have borne from my reading has made me reclusive as I do all I can to stave off the madness that comes of this particular kind of sight. I hereby renounce my obligations.
Impossibilium nulla obligatio est,
Heinrich Hermann