BEAST OF THE WOODS

Chapter 23

Perhaps it starts with the writers' convention in Blackpool, England, where a dozen or so of us writer-types - Liz Williams, Jay Caselberg, Neil Williamson, Jeffrey Ford, and others - wound up trapped in a small woodpaneled room at the butt-end of a couple of spiral staircases and a maze of corridors. We were there for a reading, but found no audience, so Gwyneth Jones told us the uplifting story about how she walked downstairs one night to the sounds of a frog screaming as a cat disemboweled it.

That was the first time I felt my world shift in a way that signaled potential cataclysm. I mean, there were less personal harbingers, like 9/11, the war in Iraq, and any number of other calamities. But for some reason, sitting there next to Jeffrey Ford in that town that seemed like a combination of hell and a carnival, where the next event slated for the convention hall was a double bill of Engelbert Humperdinck and David Cassidy - somehow that moment signaled a downward spiral. I remember thinking, Is this what being successful is going to be like? Trapped in a closet with a bunch of other successfulpeople? Somehow, even though the rest is murky, I can see the connection between that moment and this one - sitting here, drinking vodka and talking to a penguin.

I've tried giving vodka to the penguin, by the way. She doesn't like the taste. The seals, on the other hand, seem designed to imbibe the stuff. Clearly, they are Russian, while the penguin is not. Ed explained Juliette to me the first time he came over. An escapee from a passing circus. In love with an Antipodes or Falklands that she (he? sexing penguins is one skill level beyond me) will probably never see. Far from home, just like me and the man in the freezer.

he Third Beast

"When you get to your room at Lake Baikal, you'll find a box on the bed in your room. There will be a pair of pearl-handled revolvers in the box," James told me after he'd sent me the plane ticket.

"Guns?"

"That's what I said."

"What the f**k will I need guns for?"

There was a pause. Then: "Nothing to worry about, Jeff. If you need to hunt game or anything."

"Hunt game? With pearl-handled revolvers?" I asked, incredulous. "Isn't that a bit...I dunno...fancy? Do I just run out into the forest with my pearlhandled revolvers, or do I invite some deer to a cocktail party and then g*n them down?"

But it wasn't until I actually reached Lake Baikal and brought up the subject again over the phone that James told me the truth. "Actually, I should be honest. There are people who would like to see us fail."

For the first time, my bullshit detector went off. I realize now it should have gone off much sooner. "Fail at what? Writing a short story?"

A pause. Then, "It's more complicated than that. You'll have to read everything I left you in your room to understand."

"So there's someone after me?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know. It could be one of several people. Let's just call him `Gradus' for now."

"That's f*****g hilarious," I said. "Should I start calling myself Shade? Perhaps I can call you Kinbote?"

"Call me whatever you like," James said. "I know you're bitter. You're selfhating - and you have every right to be. But don't worry - when you truly take in what Lake Baikal has to offer, all of that will change. Now, go up to your room on the second floor. Everything you need is there."

And he hung up.

Leaving me to worry about a faceless shadow named Gradus that might one day, one night, appear in the seal-choked lobby and force me to use those pearl-handled revolvers. From that moment forward, I could not rid my dreams of him: a silhouette, a too-white glint of eye, a swift and certain death.

When you truly take in what Lake Baikal has to offer, all of that will change.

Mark Sergeev, an Irkutsk poet, once wrote:

If you are stopped suddenly by a penetrating blue and your heart pauses, as it sometimes happens only in childhood, from astonishment and delight... if all petty worries, all the vanities of the world, fall away like autumn leaves, and the soul takes wing and is filled with light and silence. If, suddenly, the real world holds back, and you feel that nature has its own language and that it is now clearly understood. If a simple earthly wonder has entered your life and you have felt ennobled by this encounter - it means, this is Baikal.

And that's how it was for me from my first glimpses of Lake Baikal, in the back seat of the world's most ancient and rusty cab, to the truly stunning view available at my condominium digs. (And such interesting facts! Did you know, Jeremy, that twenty percent of the world's fresh water can be found in Lake Baikal? Or that it would take all the rivers of the world one year to fill its basin? I was still absorbing these facts as we pulled up.)

Of course, Jeremy, you have to understand: such a feeling, such a state of grace, can be destroyed by the wrong context, the wrong events. Like being surrounded by seals and a displaced penguin. Like having to put a dead body in a freezer. That kind of thing can kill your ability for wonder, no matter how much you wish to retain the feeling that the world as we know it is fundamentally sound.

I ask Juliette for advice sometimes. "Juliette," I say. "Is Ed for real? Is the Book for real? Is James for real? Is this really going to work? Or is it a form of madness?"

"I dunno," Juliette says. "I'm just a penguin. But I can bring you some fish, if you'd like."

"That would be nice," I say, "because this Russian beef jerky tastes like it's made from a mixture of Beast and rubber."

Lake Baikal is nearly a mile deep. If Juliette could dive deep enough, she could bring me fish that had never felt the light upon them. She could bring me treasures rarely seen by humans. Mysteries long unsolved, brought into the sun.

Correction alert. I'll feed you these slowly, so you don't get stuffed.

The siege #2: "The Telephone," Zoran Zivkovic, issue three

I put the receiver to my ear and said sharply, "Hello!"

"Good evening!" said someone at the other end of the line. I'd been certain it would be a younger person, most likely under the influence of a substance that had put them in a very happy mood. Instead, I heard the deep, serious voice of a middle-aged man, so my hackles came down a little. I'd been ready to deliver a tirade on bad manners to the unknown young caller, but now I just replied, "Good evening," although still in a surly tone.

"This is the Devil," said the man evenly, just like one of my friends who was calling.

I sat there speechless for several moments and then hung up the telephone.

should read:

I put the receiver to my ear and said sharply, "Da?"

"Guten evening," said the person on the other end of the line. The connection crackled and popped as if I were hearing grease dance on a stovetop.

I'd thought it would be a young person, most likely under the influence of vodka. Instead, I heard the deep, gravelly voice of an old man. The voice had an undertone I can't describe except to say it sounded like the spring loam of deep forest, the glimpse of sky through thick branches. Which doesn't make sense, but there it is.

The man's voice made my hackles come down a little. I'd been ready to deliver a tirade on bad manners to the unknown caller, but now I just replied, "Good evening," although still in a surly tone.

"This is the shaman," said the man unevenly, the inconsistency of his tone oddly calming. "Have you ever envisioned a better world? A world where silence is a blessing and snow is like peace?"

For a moment I was held by a terrible fascination, and a glimpse of a half-formed image of immense power, but with a shiver I managed to deny it and hang up the phone.

And so on, Jeremy, substituting "shaman" for "the Devil," with frequent allusions to snow, ice, the frozen north, etc. I don't have the patience or attention span to set it out right now. If that ruins everything, so be it. But I rather think at this point that any decision I make is the right decision.

The old shaman in Zoran's story certainly was right. It gets bitterly cold up here in the winter. The locals tell me that waves freeze in mid-crash against the shore, that you can see every individual ripple and striation in the resulting ice sculptures - and they have the photographs to prove it.

At what passes for the local bar (the only business within miles: a tin shack a mile down the road), the owner sells these photographs to the rare tourist, along with a local myth that "in the extremest cold words themselves freeze and fall to earth. In spring they stir again and start to speak, and suddenly the air fills with out-of-date gossip, unheard jokes, cries of forgotten pain, words of long-disowned love." That's not how the bartender put it; that's a quote from Colin Thubron's In Siberia, which was left on my bed along with the pearl-handled revolvers. The quote makes me sad and hopeful at the same time. It speaks to my mission, such as it is.

But, then, everything has been speaking to me in that way, lately. The day I left Tallahassee, Florida to come here, my stepdaughter Erin gave me a kind of anarchist's handbook called Days of War, Nights ofLove: Crimethink for Beginners.

"I don't need it anymore," she said, "but I thought you might."

At that point, she had no reason to give me anything other than a black eye, so I was touched. "I'll read it," I said. But the truth is, I read one page and just haven't gotten around to the rest.

That first page (page 126) was titled "The Concert at Baku" and related the events of November 7, 1922, when the Russian experimental composer Arseny Mikhailovich Avraamov ascended to the roof of a tall building and directed a concert of factory sirens, steam whistles, artillery, and everything else in the city of Baku capable of making loud noise; for the c****x of the piece, the entire fleet of the Caspian Sea joined

in with their foghorns.

Of course, the book tried to make it logical, part of the people's struggle: "a moving demonstration of what is possible when art and cooperation are considered integral to social life, rather than quarantined to our private lives and leisure time."

But even then, before I truly knew what James meant to do, what Argosy meant to him, I saw Mikhailovich Avraamov's act differently. I thought about all of the people who participated in his experiment. Surely some of them sought more from it than just music. Surely some of them saw it as transformative, as a kind of liberation. I saw it as his attempt at change - to find the right sounds and symbols to alter the world at its core, to split it open and reform it. To, in an odd way, heal it.

After all, Jeremy, do you really think James sent me all the way to f*****g Lake Baikal to write a short story? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. Not now.

I should probably tell you what I found when I got here. After paying the Mongolian cab driver