The Letter Killers Club Read online

No one moved.

  With a quick flick, the president tossed the notebook onto the coals. As though alive, white leaves writhing in agony, it set up a soft thin hiss; the spiral of smoke turned blue; then, from underneath, a flame leapt up. Three minutes later, having reduced to ashes with staccato blows of the tongs what so recently was a play, Zez replaced the tongs, turned to Rar and muttered, “Go on.”

  Rar did not immediately resume his usual expression; he was clearly struggling to control himself—even so he spoke:

  “You have treated me the way my characters treated Burbage. Well—serves us both right. I’ll continue: that is, since the words that I wanted to read can no longer be read”—he glanced at the fender where the last coals were guttering and smoldering—“I’ll omit the end of the scene. Phelia, frightened by what happened, has gone to Guilden along with the role. The fourth and last position brings us back to Stern.”

  Still in the Kingdom of Roles, Stern is waiting for Burbage. With mounting impatience. Back on earth the performance may already have begun—with the brilliant role playing itself for him. Over the pointed arches flies a noisy flock of clappings.

  “For me?”

  In his agitation, Stern appeals to the Hamlets all absorbed in their books. He is tormented by questions. Turning to a neighbor, he says, “You must understand me. After all, you know what praise is.”

  In reply:

  “Words … words … words …”

  The neighbor closes his book and walks off. Stern turns to another:

  “To all men I am a stranger. But you will teach me to be all men.”

  This Hamlet too gives Stern a severe look and closes his book.

  “Words … words.”

  To a third:

  “Back on earth I left a girl who loves me. She often said to me—”

  “Words.”

  With every question, as if in reply, the Hamlets rise, close their books and, one after another, walk off.

  “But what if Burbage … What if he decides not to return? How will I find my way back again? And you, why are you leaving me? They’ve all forgotten me: maybe she has too. But she swore …”

  And again:

  “Words … words.”

  “No, not words: the words were burned, beaten with fire tongs, I saw it with my own eyes—you hear me?!”

  Rar passed a hand over his brow. “Forgive me, I got mixed up; a gear tooth for a gear tooth. It happens sometimes. Allow me to skip ahead.”

  So then, the succession of Hamlets has abandoned Stern; the colored playbills follow after; even the letters on the bills leap out of their lines and dash away. The fantastic perspective in the Kingdom of Roles is changing every second. But Stern is still holding the book forgotten by Burbage. Now there’s no reason to delay: the time has come to take its meaning by force, to reveal its secret. But the book is fitted with strong brass clasps. Stern tries to pry the covers apart. The book resists, clenching its pages. In a final fit of rage Stern, bloodying his fingers, breaks open the strongbox of words. On the unclenched pages, he reads:

  “Actus morbi. History of the illness. Patient number. Hmm … Schizophrenia. Development normal. Attack. Fever. Recurrent. Delusional idea: some man named Burbage. Stomach normal. Process becoming chronic. Incura—”

  Stern looks up to see: a long, vaulted hospital corridor. Down its length are numbered doors flanked with armchairs for duty nurses and visitors. In the depths of the corridor absorbed in a book, envelb9 oped in a loose white garment, sits an orderly. He doesn’t notice when the door in the depths of the perspective flies opens and two people race in: a man and a woman. The man turns to his companion. “I don’t care how sick he is, you could at least have let me get out of my costume and make up.”

  Glancing around at the voices, the orderly is stunned: the visitors have thrown off their coats to reveal the costumes of Hamlet and Ophelia.

  “There now, you see: I knew people would stare. Why did we have to rush?”

  “Darling, but what if we hadn’t gotten here in time? Because if he won’t forgive me—”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  The orderly is completely confused. But Stern, his face bright, rises to greet the visitors. “Burbage, finally. And you, my one and only! Oh, how I’ve been waiting for you, and for you. I even dared suspect you, Burbage. I thought you’d stolen her from me, and the role too, I wanted to rob you of your words: they avenged themselves by calling me a ‘madman.’ But those are only words, after all, the role’s words. If I have to play a madman, fine, so be it—I’ll play him. Only why did they change the set: this one is from some other play. But never mind: we’ll go from role to role and play to play, farther and farther into the depths of the boundless Kingdom of Roles. But, Ophelia, why aren’t you wearing your garland? You know you need marjoram and rue for the mad scene.* Where are they?”

  “I took them off, Stern.”

  “You did? Or perhaps you’ve drowned and don’t know that you are not, and your garland is floating on the ripples among the reeds and lilies, and no one hears …”

  “I think I’ll leave off there. Without any unnecessary flourishes.”

  Rar rose.

  “But allow me to ask,” Das’s round glasses bore down on Rar, “does he die or not? And then it’s not clear to me—”

  “It doesn’t matter what’s not clear to you. I stopped all the pipe’s vents. All of them. The pipe player doesn’t ask what happens next: he should know himself. After every gist comes the rest. On this point I agree with Hamlet: ‘The rest is silence.’ Curtain.”

  Rar went to the door, turned the key twice to the left and, bowing, disappeared. The conceivers departed in silence. Our host, retaining my hand in his, apologized for the “unexpected unpleasantness” that had spoiled the evening, and reminded me about the next Saturday.

  Issuing out into the street, I caught sight of Rar far ahead; he soon disappeared down a side street. I walked quickly—from crossroad to crossroad—trying to untangle my feelings. The evening seemed like a black wedge driven into my life. I had to unwedge it. But how?

  [1] History of an illness. (Lat.)

  3

  THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, toward dusk, I was again at the Letter Killers Club. By the time I arrived, they had all assembled. I sought Rar out with my eyes: he was sitting in the same place as before; his face looked somewhat sharper; his eyes had sunk deeper in their sockets.

  This time the key and the floor belonged to Tyd. Upon receiving them, he inspected the key’s steel bit, as though searching for a theme in its scissure. Then, shifting his attention to the words, he began carefully extracting them one after another, inspecting them and weighing them. The words came slowly at first, then faster and faster, all jockeying for position; Tyd’s sharp cheekbones bloomed with ruddy blotches. All faces turned toward the storyteller.

  The Feast of the Ass.* That’s the title. I see it as a novella, I suppose. My theme is found some five centuries before our time. Place? A small village somewhere in the south of France: forty or fifty hearths; an old church in the center, vineyards and fertile fields all around. Nota bene: it was in this period and these places that the custom of celebrating the Feast of the Ass arose and took root, the so-called Festum Asinorum: the Latin name belongs to the church with whose blessing the festival wandered from town to town and hamlet to hamlet. It arose as follows: on Palm Saturday the peasants would reenact events from Christ’s last days; for greater edification, they would lead an ass into church; meant to recall the animal glorified in the Gospels, the ass was chosen for its providential role once all its points had been checked against passages in the Bible. One imagines that at first the donkey showed only confusion and a desire to return to its stall. But the Feast of the Ass soon became a sort of inverse Mass, a riot of sacrilege and debauchery: surrounded by a crowd of cackling peasants, amid hoots and a hail of cane strokes, crazed with fright, the ass brayed and kicked. Lay brothers would grab it by the ears and tail and drag it up
to the altar while the crowd howled, singing cynical songs and screaming curses to droning ecclesiastical motifs. Censers gorged with all sorts of rot swung devoutly to and fro, filling the church with smoke and stench. Cider and wine flowed from holy chalices, parishioners scuffled and blasphemed and roared with laughter when the exalted ass fouled the altar flags. Then it would all stop. The feast would roll on and the peasants, having blasphemed their fill, would go back to crossing themselves piously as they stood through long Masses, contributed their last coins to the church’s magnificence, lit candles before icons, did meek penance, and endured life. Until the next asinaria.

  My canvas is primed. Now then:

  Françoise and Pierre loved each other. Simply and dearly. Pierre was a strapping lad who worked in the vineyards. Françoise looked more like the women inscribed in gold nimbuses along church walls than the young girls who lived in the cottages next to hers. No gold nimbus encircled her delicately delineated head, of course, for she was her mother’s only helper and it would have hindered her in her work. Everyone loved Françoise. Even ancient Father Paulin, whenever he met her, always smiled and said, “Here is a soul aglow before God.” Only once did he not say “here is a soul”: when Françoise and Pierre came to say that they wished to be married.

  The first publication of banns was made after Sunday Mass: Françoise and Pierre waited together in the vestibule, their hearts pounding; the old priest slowly climbed the pulpit stairs, opened his missal, and searched at length for his spectacles; only then did the two standing side by side hear their names said—through the incense and sunlight—one after the other.

  The second publication took place during the evening service on Wednesday. Pierre could not be there, he had to work; but Françoise came. The dusky church was empty—except for a few beggars by the entrance—and again decrepit Father Paulin, causing the steep pulpit steps to creak, labored up to meet the arches, took out his missal, fumbled in the pockets of his soutane for his spectacles, and joined their names: Pierre-Françoise.

  The third publication was set for Saturday. But that day coincided with the Feast of the Ass. On her way to church, Françoise heard countless shouts in the distance and a wild wailing rushing toward her. She stopped at the porch steps, wavering like a flame in the wind. In the open doorway, the Feast of the Ass was raging and braying in animal and human voices. Françoise was on the point of turning back when Pierre arrived: the good fellow didn’t want to wait any longer: his arms, used to hoe and mattock, wanted Françoise. He found Father Paulin, who had shut himself away from the riotous church, and asked, abashed but insistent, that he not delay by even one hour the last publication. The old priest listened in silence then looked at Françoise standing in the corner; he smiled with just his eyes and, again without a word, hurried to the open church doors—followed by groom and bride. On the threshold Françoise tried to wrest her hand from Pierre’s, but he wouldn’t let go: the roar of the milling mob, the howls of hundreds of throats and the donkey’s half-human cry of suffering stunned Françoise. Through the censers’ fetid fumes her wide pupils saw first only arms thrown up, mouths agape, and bulging bloodshot eyes. Then, ascending the pulpit steps, the priest appeared, his face calm and wise. At the sight of him everyone fell silent: Father Paulin, standing above the sea of heads, opened his missal and slowly put on his spectacles. The silence continued.

  “The third publication. In the name of the Father and …”—a dull droning, as from a covered cauldron coming to a boil, wrestled with the priest’s weak but clear voice—“we shall join in holy matrimony God’s servant Françoise …”

  “And me.”

  “And me. And me.”

  “And me. And me. And me,” the raucous crowd began to bellow. The cauldron boiled over. Its contents, gurgling and burbling up with bubbles of eyes, brayed, yelped, and moaned, “And me. And me.”

  Even the ass, turning its foam-covered muzzle to the bride, opened its jaws and joined in: “Mee-hee-haw!”

  Françoise was carried out onto the porch in a dead faint. Frightened and dispirited, Pierre set about trying to revive her.

  Then life resumed its normal course: the lovers were married. This would seem to be the end of the story. In fact, it was only the beginning.

  For several months Françoise and Pierre lived in perfect harmony, body and soul. Work separated them by day, but the nights returned them to each other. Even their dreams, which they told each other in the morning, were alike.

  But then late one night, before the second cockcrow, Françoise—the lighter sleeper—was awakened by a strange noise. Resting her palms on her pillow, she listened: the noise, at first dull and distant, gradually grew louder and nearer; through the night, as if on the wind, came an unintelligible jumble of voices punctuated by a beast’s shrill shriek; a minute later, she could distinguish separate clamoring voices, another minute, and she could make out the words: “And me—and me …” Suddenly cold, she slipped quietly out of bed and—barefoot, in just her nightshirt—went to the door and pressed her ear to it: yes, it was the Feast of the Ass, Françoise knew it. Hundreds and thousands of bridegrooms, come like thieves in the night, were begging and demanding: “And me—and me.” Myriads of wild weddings whirled around the house; hundreds of hands banged on the walls; stupefying incense streamed through cracks in the door along with someone’s soft, suffering plea: “Françoise and me …”

  Françoise did not understand how Pierre could sleep so soundly. A mortal horror seized her: what if he were to wake up and find out: everything. Just what that tormenting and sinful everything was, she didn’t yet know—the heavy latch gave way, the door opened, and she walked out, nearly naked, to meet the Festival of the Ass. Instantly, the din ceased about her but not in her. She walked on, barefoot over the grass, not knowing where she went, or to whom. Soon she heard a clopping of hooves, the jingle of a stirrup, and someone quietly calling her: a knight-errant, perhaps, who had lost his way in the moonlessness, or a passing merchant who had chosen a darker night for the smuggling of contraband. A nocturnal bridegroom has no name—on a dark night he takes what is darker than all nights: he steals the soul; having come like a thief, so he goes. In short, the stirrup again jangled, the hooves clopped, and in the morning, seeing Pierre off to work, Françoise looked into his eyes with such tenderness and held him for so long that he couldn’t stop grinning and, swinging his mattock on his shoulder, whistled a merry tune.

  Again life seemed to resume its old course. Day-night-day. Until again it descended. Françoise vowed not to give in to the delusion. She knelt for hours on the cold flags before the blackening faces of icons, twining prayers around her rosary. But when, rending her sleep, the frenzied Feast of the Ass again began to dance, swirling around her in ever closer circles, she, again losing her will, got up and set off—not knowing where, or to whom. At a pitch-black crossroads she met a beggar who had gotten up off the ground for the white vision floating toward him through the darkness; his hands were scabrous, the stench from his rotten rags revoltingly acrid; neither believing nor understanding, he still took her hungrily—and then: the coppers in his sack tinkled, his crutch-stick tapped, and, skulking like a thief, the nocturnal bridegroom, frightened and bewildered, vanished in the gloom. When Françoise returned home, she listened for a long time to her husband’s even breathing and, bending over him with clenched teeth, wept soundlessly: in disgust and happiness. Months went by and perhaps years; husband and wife loved each other still more dearly. And again, as suddenly as ever, it happened. Pierre was away that night, ten leagues from the village. Called by voices, Françoise went out into the darkness between the hazy shapes of trees; skimming the ground like a large yellow eye was a flame; keeping her eye on that eye, Françoise went to meet her fate. In a minute the eye had turned into an ordinary glass-and-metal lantern; clasping the handle from under a soutane were bony fingers and, a bit higher in the flame’s turbid gleam, the withered face of Father Paulin: past midnight he had been call
ed to a dying man and, having promised his soul heaven, was returning home. On meeting Françoise in the middle of the night, naked and alone, Father Paulin was not surprised. He lifted his lantern up to illuminate her face, peered at her trembling lips and glazed eyes. Then he blew out the flame, and in the blind blackness Françoise heard: “Go home. Get dressed and wait.”

  The old priest plodded on with shuffling step, often stopping to catch his breath. Walking into Françoise’s house, he saw her sitting motionless on a bench by the wall: her palms were pressed together, and her shoulders shuddered only rarely under her clothes, as if with cold. Father Paulin let her finish crying; then he said, “Surrender, soul, to what has inflamed you. For in the Scriptures it says: only on an ass, a foolish and stinking beast, can one reach the broad streets of Jerusalem. I say unto you: only thus and through this can one enter the Kingdom of Kingdoms.”

  Françoise looked up in amazement, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Yes, the time has come for you too, my child, to learn what not everyone is given to know: the Secret of the Ass. Flowers bloom so purely and fragrantly because their roots are manured, in mud and stench. The way from small prayers to great supplications lies through blasphemy. The purest and the highest must fall, if only for an instant, and be besmirched: how else shall one learn that pure is pure and high, high? If God has assumed flesh and the law of man, even once in eternity, how can man despise the law and flesh of an ass? Only by abusing and insulting what one’s heart loves and needs most can one become worthy of it, because on this earth there are no roads without sorrow.”

  Old Father Paulin rose and proceeded to light his lantern. “Our church has opened shrines to the Festival of the Ass: the Church, Christ’s bride, wishes to be mocked and abused: because she knows the great secret. Everyone enters into the festival, into the joy, with merriment and laughter—but only the chosen go farther. Verily I say unto you: there are no roads without sorrow.”