Tales of Mystery and Truth Read online

  “Ah, you would like to make payment now.”

  She shook her head. “I just want to return it.”

  He peered at her for a moment and then bent below the counter with another creak. He hefted up a second huge volume that was also secured by a chain. The cover was inscribed in gold leaf with the title The Book of What Has Never Been Written. He began to flip through the pages. His long craggy finger passed rapidly across a page and he looked up again.

  “Unmöglich,” he mumbled.

  “What is it?” she asked again.

  “There is no record,” he replied.

  “How can that be?”

  “I am afraid,” he said gravely, “The Book of Zambullo simply does not exist.”

  * * *

  In the dark, like a monk studying a heretical text in his cell of persecution, with only a candle casting a fluttering light on the book, she began to read.

  The first scene described a boy and girl. She thought she once had read the same description elsewhere, but struggled to remember. So strong was this sense of prior experience she could picture the scene vividly in her mind. She thought perhaps she had seen these very children in the park one day, the same scene the author had coincidentally seen and so accurately captured. But in spite of her mental exertions, she simply could not take firm grasp of her flickering memories.

  She set the book aside in confusion and despair. The images conjured by the first page of The Book of Zambullo would not sleep. They swirled seductively through her mind, tempting her, building her desire into a frenzied need. Then with the instantaneousness of a camera shutter, the image of the children flashed clear and complete in her mind.

  From atop her bureau she picked up a tattered photo album and opened to the last page. The photographs calmed her frenzied nerves, and she sat down for a momentary repose. She flipped backward through the pages of familiar sights and memories, enjoying the safe harbor of more innocent times. Those times suddenly seemed so long past, and yet it seemed her loss of that joyous innocence had come only last evening.

  She stopped at the picture so precisely described in the book. She had been told this was she and a boy from the neighborhood. They were sitting on a park bench, and the girl was leaning over, kissing the boy. She squinted, trying to make clear her clouded memory. She had always enjoyed the story of her first love, but recently it seemed nothing more than a myth. She could not remember the boy; she did not recognize the girl.

  She pulled the picture from its sleeve and carried it to the bathroom. She gazed carefully at the picture, admiring the girl’s luminous hair, fine posture, and confidence. Then she looked into the mirror for any sign of that child. She found none, and as she stared into her eyes she felt as far from that girl as possible. Her appearance set them apart, but also her look of innocence. Life had drawn her into that tiny kiss with the boy, and she feared the absence of life was now drawing her toward what suddenly seemed like self-immolation. But as she stood before the mirror searching for those elusive qualities she felt to be essential to her self, she saw that at the same time a child was dying, a new woman was being born.

  If only she knew who that nameless man was, or what The Book of Zambullo meant, she might be able to recapture just a hint of the fleeting beauty of the girl in the photograph. The one possibility she could conceive was that the nameless man was the little boy grown, writing her this book in hopes of reclaiming the past.

  She glanced back at the photograph, suddenly able to reconcile the image of that vibrant child with the languid young woman she had become. The photograph captured a girl the moment before something had smothered the spark of incomprehensible beauty. One night she had fallen asleep wanted, loved, attractive; the next morning she awoke unwanted, unloved, and unattractive. Now, nothing remained but smoldering ruins. A resentment began to pound at her, a resentment for everything that had prevented her from being who she should have been, from realizing the promise in that little girl’s kiss.

  Tears of yearning and desire tumbled down her cheeks and she quickly wiped them away. She would allow nothing to deny and deceive her like her mother’s piercing abandonment, or leave her empty and scared like her father’s crippling disappearance.

  She stepped out the bedroom to get a glass of water. In the hall a shadow swept at her head and she cried out into the engulfing silence. She pressed herself against the wall, listening for sounds of an intruder, and fearful the sounds of her own heart and lungs would give her away. She glanced into the next room and saw the shadow reach long across the wood parquet. It darted up the wall in front of her and was joined by other similar forms on the floor. She stepped cautiously forward and noticed she had forgotten to close the blinds. The light from the lamp outside was sending the branches of an old tree swaying in pursuit of her.

  She reached across the wall to turn on the light, hoping to eliminate the remnants of intrusion that still lingered. As she touched the switch, branches like long bony fingers beckoned her forward. She dropped her hand and hurried with a chair toward the window.

  She sat with her elbow on the splintered sill and her chin in her hand, forehead pressed against the cool glass, enjoying the breeze blowing down her shirt. She took a deep breath of air tinged with the ash of smoldering villages, a welcome relief from the sweet disinfectant of the apartment. Tree branches waved up and down, back and forth, dancing to their own rhythm. Out the corner of her eye she thought she saw a black figure retreat from the circle of light on the pavement. She peered into the darkness, and one red eye from some nocturnal creature seemed to glow back at her. The sound of the constant aria was lifted and carried down her street by the greedy wind.

  Within her safe, enclosed apartment existed a world of books and studies where nothing threatened her; but neither did anything challenge or inspire her. Her plastic plant did not wilt or wither. The unused electrical outlets were capped. The door was bolted and chained. She had hoarded her food coupons and filled her pantry with canned goods to last a lifetime, a stockpile against any official rationing. But something had gained entrance, and shaken her poorly constructed world to its foundations. Now nothing was the same, could ever be the same again. Her soul had awakened and been left brutally exposed in the center of her sheltered world. The Book of Zambullo seemed to offer the only chance to escape the ordinary existence into which she had wandered in her sleep.

  * * *

  She jumped atop the bed, took a deep breath, and allowed the calm assuredness of the pretty young woman in the painting to overcome her. With great care and anticipation, she opened the mysterious book and read ravenously.

  The written words rang true in her heart, and seemed so familiar, as if she had lived each thing. The book described a great old tree, and she felt the tree’s roots growing winding inside her. The book described a bird, and she saw the bird take wing, and felt it flying through her. With each page her fears retreated, replaced with an aching desire to do nothing but read the next page. The story absolutely captivated her. Every free moment of every day had become filled with thoughts of the book and the nameless man.

  The story brought her an inexplicable exhilaration. The words echoed through her mind and resonated through her body. The indifference of her existence was swept away by the same feeling she had the moment she had looked up and seen the nameless man standing before her in the bookstore: a disconcerting mixture of joy and sorrow.

  She tried to recall every tiny detail of that flashing moment. She told herself the story of the encounter over and over again until it became a creed of her new life. She had never felt as alive as in that moment, when the nameless man had stood before her, and in this moment, when she read the book. She understood how much emotion could be found in life, if she would only embrace it. The nameless man must have seen what the book now revealed to her, something that she had never believed to be there, which all along she had thought lost with her father, or stolen by her mother.

  Ordinary time had ceased.
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  She turned back to the book, reading with wonder and awe, with fear and comfort, taking from it little meaning but great understanding. Each word seemed to carry with it forgotten memories and unimagined dreams. Between the two leather covers of the book she explored a whole world of living which she had never thought possible, and yet found strangely familiar.

  Though she read to experience that new wonder and awe, she also suffered a growing sense of emptiness. Perhaps the nameless man had been but a first step, and the book had led her further along a path of rebirth, and now she was prepared for the next part of the journey.

  The end was near. She turned the second last page and a tiny slip of paper fluttered to her chest. She stared at it for a moment, as if expecting it to move, then turned it over to read what was written on the other side: a series of numbers.

  Someone rapped on the door and she realized the perpetual accompaniment of the nearby aria had ceased.

  She leaped up, her intuition trembling at the danger outside her apartment. She looked down at the book and paper held meekly in her hands. Instinctively she stuffed the paper back in the book and set it atop her bureau.

  Another heavy knock.

  She scurried to the entry and paused. With a deep breath she cracked the door just as another knock began.

  In the dimly lit corridor stood three men in black overcoats. The one closest to the door held his identification for her to read through the opening: “Ministerium der Kultur, Unterkommissar.”

  Before she could step away, the men poured inside, forcing her backward. The first stood before her looking at the floors, walls, and ceiling while the other two nosed around the apartment.

  All her fears were realized. To run would be foolish. To claim innocence would be useless. Her fate was already sealed; they had but to locate the mysterious book.

  The kommissar stood directly before her but looked beyond her. “You know why we are here.”

  A cold heavy net of resignation fell over her. “Nien.”

  She remained where she stood, unable to move, unwilling to raise her eyes. She could feel the kommissar’s cold expectant stare going right through her. She could hear the other men rummaging through her belongings.

  To her surprise, the kommissar turned and slowly wandered about. He perused several books stacked on a shelf. He took down Kafka’s The Trial and flipped the pages.

  She could no longer watch, so she stepped to the window. Through the blinds and bars she thought she saw a black form fade back into the shadows on the street below. The protection her apartment had always afforded, the feelings of security and contentment it had always provided, faded away. Like a wolf weary of its lovingly constructed zoo enclosure, she paced aimlessly round the room that seemed inexplicably cluttered with emptiness.

  “Your card,” said the kommissar, without looking at her.

  She padded lightly to the bedroom. One man was turning out the linens in her bureau. She wanted to grab the book and throw it at him, shout, “Here! Take it!” But she could not even breathe while she waited for the inevitable. She retrieved her identification card and brought it dutifully to the kommissar, who had taken her place at the window, glancing at the deserted street below.

  He returned the card between two stumpy fingers and said loudly, “She’s a student.”

  His lips maintained their rigid line as he spoke, as if his words came from somewhere else. She was suddenly unsure what was happening. The whole moment seemed detached from reality.

  The two other men met at the door. The only reason she could imagine that they had not noticed the book was that their search was purely arbitrary. They did not know what they were searching for.

  She held her breath as the kommissar strolled past her. He paused as if in thought in front of her favorite painting, hung opposite the door. From behind she saw his head tilt slightly. He turned slowly and for the first time looked directly at her. With furrowed brow he studied her face. The embarrassment she felt was surpassed only by the horror of knowing she had somehow, at the moment of her exoneration, provoked in the kommissar the more wary, individual scrutiny she had at first feared.

  He started to turn back, paused, his eyes peering directly into hers, and finally faced the painting again.

  The pretty young woman in the painting seemed to smile at her over the kommissar’s shoulder. A notion of understanding flashed through her mind and, before she could interpret it, disappeared.

  “In the name of the People,” the kommissar announced, “I must confiscate this.”

  He lifted the painting from the wall and strode out her apartment.

  * * *

  Each morning she awoke to repeat the same meaningless day, ever since the day of her father’s inexplicable abandonment. She had been unable to find joy after that, and though she knew the processes of her existence continued, she also knew that her father’s unexplained action left her feeling as if she no longer lived.

  Then the book had appeared in her possession. And she was slowly beginning to realize she had not been irreparably damaged by her father.

  After careful consideration, she determined The Book of Zambullo existed only for her. The Ministry had not noticed it; Callimachus had denied it. And if the book was meant exclusively for her, she assumed only she could understand what the numbers on the slip of paper meant.

  She tried for a moment to recall the important numbers of her forgotten past. She felt certain none of them were correct, the ones she needed now; and she believed every number she could think of was correct: her childhood address, her mother’s identification, so many dates of birth. Then, in a desperate instant, she believed with heartbreaking sorrow that this was the solemn date of her father’s crippling abandonment.

  She looked at the numbers as if she had found a mathematical solution to the question of life. They were simply numbers, and yet, as she read them in sequence to herself, she was convinced they held some power, some magic.

  Once more she sought some explanation in the mirror in the bathroom. The image she saw did not match the image she had of herself, or even the image she had seen the day before. She looked in the mirror as if at a stranger. Then, as she peered into those deep weary eyes, she remembered the seductive woman in black and her inexplicable words: “Don’t call him.”

  She hurried back to pick up the slip of paper, excited beyond measure. She lay back in bed with the telephone on her stomach and the numbers hot between her fingers. As long as she had the numbers and the telephone she could make the call any time she wanted. She was in control. Yet she wanted to make the call now. The images running through her head made her dizzy with desire. She wanted the promise to be made true. She wanted to play a part in the events of the book, to see the written words transformed into reality.

  The light from the morning sun leaped into her bedroom and blanketed her legs. She dialed the numbers.

  The telephone rang once and released butterflies into her stomach. The nameless man seemed to promise a love that led to the impossible infinite.

  The telephone rang again, sending a current of electricity through her lower body. She had always found it easier to secure herself away safely where she could never be hurt—hurt could come only from leaving that security to strive for the unattainable. But she could not go on the same any longer. She would either have to be reborn or die.

  The telephone rang again, and she quickly hung up. She would not fall for the trap.

  Alone, the infinite was nothing more than an abyss. She had no reason to expect love. And then, even if she found it, what could stop any man from disappearing, like her father, from the life they enjoyed together?

  She would burn the book and those numbers with her hope attached to them, repair the walls around her heart, and return to her safe life, where she would not be harmed, but, she knew, too, she could never be healed.

  But something had changed within her. She could no longer stand to observe emotions and experiences through a pap
er screen across an author’s window. She needed to live and breathe emotions and experiences for herself.

  She closed her eyes. Before she could take another breath, the telephone rang. In surprise she picked up the receiver immediately.

  “I’ve been waiting for your call,” he said.

  She started at the sound of his deep voice. His unexpected familiarity seemed normal, and made her feel special.

  “I wasn’t sure—”

  “You have nothing to fear,” he said. “I’ve seen to every detail. You need only tell me when you are ready.”

  His voice sounded intimate, like the voice of her soul. He had come to the gate of her wall and slipped within. Then from the inside he had thrown wide the gate, he had torn down the wall and left her heart raw and exposed. She knew that if she hung up, he would only call back. She had to risk this once-in-a-lifetime experience, or be buried alive under her own ruins.

  “I think I am,” she replied, her own voice sounding cramped.

  “You must be certain.”

  She was silent. She did not fear an unknown, for he made her feel as if everything was already arranged, and she had read it all in the book, she had played it all in her mind. And she did not fear him, concerned he was a stalker or psychotic; he had given her a book and nothing more. She had made the decision to call; she did not feel pursued or threatened; she still felt in control. And yet part of her feared she had lost all control, that now everything was inevitable, there was nothing she could do to change the path. The moment of her departure had arrived, and as she imagined any adventurer might feel, she was experiencing her last doubts.

  “Are you certain?” he asked.

  The bright flash of her emotions blinded her, washed out all space, time, and sensation. She blinked, and her vision became sharp, aided by the explosion of this flare over the no-man’s-land of her life. The gray solitude surrounding her faded into the shining silvery light. Time dissolved with the eerie illumination. The dreamlike image that filled her sight felt so familiar, so intimate, it rendered her safe and secure existence a mere illusion. What had been shuttered outside now shone with clarity in her heart. Air rushed to her lungs clean and bracing as pure oxygen. Her body pulsed with a new rhythm, the sign of its own awakening.