City of Saints and Madmen Part 15

I: And you wrote them into your stories?

X: Yes, I'd given them both "parts" in stories of mine, and they'd been delighted. Janice even helped me to smooth out the art history portions of "The Transformation of MartinLake."

I: Did you feel any animosity toward Janice Shriek or her brother?

X: No. Why would I?

I: Describe Janice Shriek for me.

X: She was a small woman, not as small as, for example, the actress Linda Hunt, but getting there. She was a bit stooped. A comfortable weight. About fifty-four years old. Her forehead had many, many worry wrinkles. She liked to wear women's business suits and she smoked these horrible cigars she got from Syria. She had a presence about her, and a wit. She was a polyglot, too.

I: You said in an earlier interrogation that "sometimes I had the feeling she existed in two places at once, and I wondered if one of those worlds wasn't Ambergris." What did you mean?

X: I wondered if I hadn't so much written her into Ambergris as she'd already had a life in Ambergris. What it came down to was this: Were my stories verbatim truths about the city, including its inhabitants, or were only the settings true, and the characters out of my head?

I: I ask you again: Did you feel any animosity toward Janice Shriek?

X: No!

I: You did not resent her teasing you about the reality of Am bergris?

X: Yes, but that's no motive for . . .

I: You did not feel envy that, if she indeed existed in both worlds, she seemed so self-possessed, so in control. You wanted that kind of control, didn't you?

X: Envy is not animosity. And, again, not a motive for . . . for what you are suggesting.

I: Had you any empirical evidence-such as it might be-that she existed in both worlds?

X: She hinted at it through jokes-you're right about that. She'd read all of my books, of course, and she would make references to Ambergris as if it were real. She said to me once that the reason she'd wanted to meet me was because I'd written about the real world. And once she gave me a peculiar birthday gift.

I: Which was?

X: The Hoegbotton Travel Guide to Ambergris. She said it was real. That she'd just ducked into the Borges Bookstore in Ambergris and bought it, and here it was. I got quite p.i.s.sed off, but she wouldn't say it was a lie. Hannah said the woman was a fanatic. That of course she had created it, and that I'd better either take it as a compliment or start asking lawyers about copyright infringement.

I: Why did you doubt your wife?

X: The guidebook was so complete, so perfect. So detailed. How could it be a fake?

I: Surely a polyglot art historian like Janice Shriek could cre ate such a work?

X: I don't know. Maybe. Anyway, that's where I got the idea about her.

I: Let us return to your foray into Ambergris. The manta ray had become an opening to that world. I know your memory is confused, but what do you recall finding there?

X: I was walking down Alb.u.muth Boulevard . It was very chilly. The street was crowded with pedestrians and motor vehicles. I wasn't nude this time, of course, for which I was very appreciative, and I just . . . I just lost myself in the crowds. I didn't think. I didn't a.n.a.lyze. I just walked. I walked down to the docks to see the s.h.i.+ps. Took in a parade near Trillian Square . Then I explored the food markets and, after awhile, I went into the Bureaucratic District.

I: Where exactly did it happen?

X: I don't . . . I can't . . .

I: I'll spare you the recall. It's all down here in the transcripts anyway. You say you saw a woman crossing the street. A vehicle bore down on her at a great speed, and you say you pushed her out of harm's way. Would that be accurate?

X: Yes.

I: What did the woman look like?

X: I only saw her from behind. She was shortish. Older than middle aged. Kind of shuffled as she walked. I think she was carrying a briefcase or portfolio or something . . .

I: What color was the vehicle?

X: Red.

I: And after you pushed the woman, what happened?

X: The van pa.s.sed between me and the woman, and I was back in the real world. I felt a great heat on my face, searing my eye brows. I had collapsed outside of my writing room, which I had set on fire. Soon the whole house would be on fire. Hannah had already taken Sarah outside and now she was trying to drag me away from it when I "woke up." She was screaming in my ear, "Why did you do it? Why did you do it?"

I: And what had you done?

X: I had pushed Janice Shriek into the flames of the fire I had set.

I: You had murdered her.

X: I had pushed her into the fire.

We faced each other across the desk in that small, barren room and I could see from his expression that he still did not understand the crux of the matter, that he did not understand what had truly happened to Janice Shriek. How much would I tell him? Very little. For his sake. Merciless, I continued with my questioning, aware that he now saw me as the darkness, as his betrayer.

I: How happy do you feel having saved the life of the woman in Ambergris in relation to the sadness you feel for having killed Janice Shriek?

X: It's not that simple.

I: But it is that simple. Do you feel guilt, remorse, for having murdered Janice Shriek?

X: Of course!

I: Did you feel responsible for your actions?

X: No, not at first.

I: But now?

X: Yes.

I: Did you feel responsible for saving the woman in Ambergris?

X: No. How could I? Ambergris isn't real.

I: And yet, you say in these transcripts that in the trial that resulted from Shriek's death, you claimed Ambergris was real! Which is it? Is Ambergris real or isn't it?

X: That was then.

I: You seem inordinately proud that, as you say, the first jury came back hung. That it took two juries to convict. Indecently proud, I'd say.

X: That's just a writer's pride at the beautiful trickery of my fabrication.

I: "That's just a writer's pride at the beautiful trickery of my fabrication." Listen to yourself. Your pride is ghastly. A human being had been murdered. You were on trial for that murder. Or did you think that Janice Shriek led a more real existence in Ambergris? That you had, in essence, killed only an echo of her true self?

X: No! I didn't think Ambergris was more real. Nothing was real to me at that point. The arrogance, the pride, was a wall-a way for me to cope. A way for me not to think.

I: How did you get certain members of the jury to believe in Ambergris?

X: It wasn't easy. It wasn't even easy to get my attorney to pursue the case in the rather insane way I suggested. He went along with it because he believed the jury would find me crazy and re mand me to the psychiatric care I'm sure he thought I needed. There seemed no question that I would be convicted-my own wife was a witness.

I: But you convinced some of the jurors.

X: Perhaps. Maybe they just didn't like the prosecuting attorney. It helped that nearly everyone had read the books or heard about them. And, yes, it proves my imagination is magnificent. The world was so complete, so fully-realized, that I'm sure it became as real to the jurors as that squalid, musty backroom they did all their deliberations in.

I: So you convinced them by the totality of your vision. And by your sincerity-that you believed Ambergris was real.

X: Don't do that. As I told you before we began, I don't believe in Ambergris anymore.

I: Can you describe the jurors at the first trial for me?

X: What?

I: I said, describe the jurors. What did they look like? Use your famous imagination if you need to.

X: They were jurors. A group of my peers. They looked like . . . People.

I: So you cannot remember their faces.

X: No, not really.

I: If you made them believe in Ambergris so strongly that they would not convict you, why can't you believe in it?

X: Because it doesn't exist! It doesn't exist, Alice! I made it up. Or, more properly, it made me up. It does not exist.

X was breathing heavily. He had brought his left fist down hard on the desk.

"Let us sum up, for there are two crucial points that have been uncov ered by this interrogation. At least two. The first concerns the manta ray. The second concerns the jury. I am going to ask you again: Did you never think that the manta ray might be a positive influence, a saving impulse? "

"Never."

"I see it as a manifestation of your sanity-perhaps a manifestation of your subconscious, come to lead you into the light."

"It led me into the darkness. It led me into never never land."

"Second, there was no trial, except in your head as you ran from the scene of the crime. Your jurors who believed in Ambergris-they represented the part of you that still clung to the idea that Ambergris was real. No matter how you fought them, they-faceless, anonymous-continued to tell you Ambergris was real!"

"Now you are trying to trick me," X said. He was trembling. His right hand had closed around his left wrist in a vice-like grip.

"Do you remember how you got here?" I asked.

"No. Probably through the front door, don't you think?"

"Don't you find it odd that you don't remember?"

"In comparison to what?" He laughed bitterly.

I stared at him. I said nothing. I think it was my silence, in which I hoped for some last minute redemption, that forced him to the conclusion my decision would not be favorable.

"I don't believe in Ambergris. How many times do I have to say it?" He was sweating now. He was shaking.

When I did not reply, he said, "Are there any more questions?"

I shook my head. I put the transcripts back in my briefcase and locked it. I pushed the chair back and got up.

"Then I am free to go. My wife is probably waiting in-"

"No," I said, putting on my jacket. "You are not free to go."

He rose quickly, again pounded his fist against the desk. "But I've told you, I've told you-I don't believe in my fantasy! I'm rational! I'm logi cal! I'm over it!"

"But you see," I said, with as much kindness as I could muster as I opened the door, "that's precisely the problem. This is Ambergris. You are in Ambergris."

The expression on X's face was quite indescribable.

As he locked the door behind him and ascended the staircase, he realized that it was all a horrible shame. Clearly, the writer had lost contact with reality, no matter how desperately that reality had struggled to get his attention. And that poor woman, still unidentified, that X had pushed into the path of a motored vehicle (he hadn't quite had it in him to tell X just how faulty his memory was)-she was proof enough of his illness. In the end, the fantasy had been too strong. And what a fantasy it was! A place where people flew and "made movies." Disney, tee-vee, New York City, New Orleans, Chicago. It was all very convincing and, within limits, it made sense-to X. But as he well knew, writers were a s.h.i.+fty lot-not to be trusted- and there were far too many lunatics on the streets already. How would X have coped with freedom anyhow? With his twin fantasy of literary success and a happy marriage revealed as a lie? (And there were X's last words as the door had closed: "All writers write. All writers edit. All writers have a little darkness in them.") They had found no record of him in the city upon his arrest, so he had probably come from abroad-from the Southern Isles, perhaps-carrying his pathetic book, no doubt self-published by "Spectra," a vanity operation by the sound of it. He knew those sounds himself from his modest dabbling in the written arts. In fact, he reflected, the only real benefit of the session, between the previous transcripts and the conversation itself, had been to his fiction; he now had some very interesting elements with which to compose a fantasy of his own. Why, he could already see that the report on this session would be a kind of fiction itself, as he had long since concluded that no delusion could ever truly be understood. He might even tell the story in first and third person, to both personalize and distance the events.

When he reached the place where he had plucked the rose, he took it from his b.u.t.tonhole and stuck its stem back in the crack. He regretted having picked it. But even if he had not, it would have been doomed to a short, brutish life in the darkness.

Out on the street the rain had stopped, although the moist rain smell lingered, and the noontime calls to prayer from the Religious Quarter echoed through the narrow streets. He could almost taste the wonderful savoriness of the hot sausage sold by the sidewalk vendors. After lunch, he would take in some entertainment. The Manzikert Opera Theater had decided to do a Voss Bender revival this season, and with any luck he could still catch the matinee and be home to the wife before dinner. With this thought uppermost in his mind, he stepped out onto the street and was soon lost to view amongst the lunchtime crowds.

APPENDIX.

Voss Bender Memorial Mental Inst.i.tute 1314 Alb.u.muth Boulevard Ambergris I13-24 Doctor William Simpkin

Central Records Office

Psychiatric Studies Division