Adjacentland

Chapter 4-1

Nine days ago, I awoke with a hum in my left ear that sounded like the steady strum of a bass guitar. I must have lain still for half an hour, fearfully watching the door and the jalousie, trying to establish some familiarity with my environment, passing my fingers along the two tiny bumps at the base of my skull, wondering at my situation. My neck and limbs felt as if I had been pressed into a tiny box. When I got up, I immediately fell to the floor and it was another half an hour before I was stable enough to fully appraise my surroundings. I noticed an unevenly stained closet stocked with clothes and a sum of money in the slim drawer of an escritoire with teeth marks on the right corner. Beneath the escritoire, I discovered two wicker baskets, one with an assortment of fountain pens, well-used pencils and some sort of boomerang-shaped bamboo totem nestling in a circle of incomplete illustrations and the other stacked with spiral notebooks and hard-bound sketchbooks with oilcloth covers. Between the books were three envelopes, each stuffed with onion-skin pages.

When I first opened the envelopes, I saw that the pages were filled with scratchy charcoal drawings of men and women frozen in a moment of action or just standing with their arms folded over their muscular chests and gazing heroically at the silhouettes of devastated cities. On one of the sketches I saw the word Adjacentland. I cannot say if this is a real place and if, in fact, these illustrations are representative of actual cities. Nor have I been able to confirm their authenticity from the inked versions of these sketches, some of them framed, on each wall. Beneath every illustration was the same phrase: Today is a new day but yesterday was the same day. On one of the odder drawings situated above a locked cast-iron safe with a sturdy knuckle-shaped handle in the middle of a spiral of fingers was the declaration: Nothing exists until we deliver our verdict. This sketch, in watercolour, seemed out of place in that it depicted a scene that, on the surface, appeared serene and normal. A mother is holding a child in her arms. The child, a girl of around three or four, is frightened and the mother, well, her expression – and her gaze – changes from day to day. I have tried to understand what is so terrifying in the foreground but all I can see are fallen leaves that are so detailed I can count all the nested loops. Each day I have returned to the vaguely familiar patterns on the leaves before I turn to the scribbles at the bottom of the sketches. So far, I have been able to distinguish just one; this, attached to a watercolour painting of a child, her back turned, gazing at the air. At either side of the drawing, which seems to be cropped, are two pairs of feet and beneath, a scribbled line that is also cut off: The child –

I will add here that although there is some familiarity about the drawings and their subjects, I can feel no real connection with either. Nor, initially, with the clutch of letters I discovered hidden in a jacket hanging in the closet. They all instruct me to record my impressions and “my range of emotions” but there was one that described a relationship characterized by manipulation, bullying, jealousy and, not surprisingly, betrayal. The tenuous relationship, I worked out, was between a writer and an artist. It took a full week before I worked out the identity of the artist and that of the writer and decided to record what I have learned. This may sound desperate but a man with little to remember is forced to remember everything.

But you, my friend, already know all of this.

Are you disappointed that I am, here, referring to you? If so, you will be even more distraught to know that I have determined – from your manner of evoking accusations in an abstract and indirect way – that you are secretive and sly. Here is this sentence from one of your letters, for instance: “Once we shared the same thoughts and beliefs, complimented each other’s views, made fractions whole but all of that was ripped in half. We each went our separate ways, walking away from ourselves, never looking back.” In another letter torn into six pieces and scattered within the inner lining of my jacket were these cryptic instructions. “Look to the drawings. I have disguised my writing and it is my hope that by the time you determine my identity you would have understood enough to forgive me. We are the only ones left. Trust no one. Least of all yourself.”

I have gone over that last injunction several times, trying to understand your meaning. Did you leave me here? Will you soon return and explain everything, elongating my recollections beyond the nine days since I have found myself in this place; beyond my only memory of the unstable world outside? Or maybe it’s the memory that is unstable. I am in a single-carriage train. Or perhaps it’s a bus with a high, sloping roof, I can’t be certain. In this reconstruction, I am gazing through the oval window of the vehicle. The clouds are lower than usual, forming a latticed ceiling that resembles a drooping cobweb. I feel I can touch it if I stick my hand outside. The vehicle comes upon a row of derelict buildings – theatres, casinos and an abattoir – with billboards turned the wrong way. A flock of iridescent birds with scabbed wings have perched on all the eaves and they seem to follow us into the night, which falls suddenly. The moonlit night sky is a mellow greyish-brown and this tint, repeated in the fields beneath, makes it look as if the melting sky is rippling downward. We pass a child standing alone and when she shrinks from the vehicle I hear a shuffling behind me and realize there is another passenger.

Now there is a town ahead. In the front yards of the stuccoed mansions are alabaster statues haloed with rings of dull light. The hands of the figures are raised to the sky and from the bus, the scene looks like a conjuration of frozen ghosts. There is an odd intimacy to the positions of the statues and I think of a city destroyed so swiftly its residents were preserved in their last acts. The trees seem to be afflicted with an infestation that renders the leaves cottony and pale. In the distance, the headlights illuminate a black speck. We get closer and I see it is a child, dressed in dark green, standing alone. She is holding a bow-shaped toy with which she swings as if to strike the vehicle.

I hear a low, melodious chuckle at the back that eases into words I only decipher as we enter a tunnel, its sides glistening like freshly cut tissue. “Let it be known, brethren, that the unknown is simply a place not yet visited.” The walls of the tunnel seem to be closing in. The other passenger does not appear concerned. I hear him singing, “You cannot hide it any longer. We know what you have and we shall pluck it out one fibre at a time. And yea, we shall hold it up to the morning light and when a newborn witnesses it, mysteries shall live and die in the span of a single tingle. You have brought this upon yourself, brethren. You have taken the fire with you and there’s no stopping it now. A great turbulence is before us.” The voice gets closer and I am seized with panic. “They know what they are searching for but cannot recognize it. Advantage is yours.”

I have used the word reconstruction because this retrieval has the quality of a vivid dream. I am recording all of this with the hope that, as I write, I will eventually come to some greater understanding of the man I once was and will understand my condition not from disconnected episodes, but will grasp eventually a complete life. Perhaps this is what everyone wants at the end. A quiet understanding. But there are more immediate concerns.

The room I now occupy is devoid of mirrors – or any type of glass – so I cannot describe any new disfigurements that may have altered my appearance. The wrinkles and spots on my mustard-coloured limbs and my shallow breathing suggest I have passed the point of middle age, though I cannot tell how far along. It’s not simple vanity that causes me, each morning, to examine the visible parts of my body but rather a curiosity about the extent of the shrouded years that have slipped by and the portion remaining. Since I cannot see you, too, I am unaware if you are surprised or simply amused by this ignorance, this darkness about my prior life. But here’s something that might surprise you; it’s more than darkness because each time I recall an event, another, of equal importance, is lost. My mind is a leaking crucible and sometimes this image is so stark I instinctively feel my forehead and the back of my neck for some discharge. I awoke nine days ago, as I mentioned, so I am certain that my memories are relatively stable for this duration, at the least. The flashes of non-sequential events and pliant faces from the preceding period might as well be interpretations of overheard conversations because I can feel no connection with them. Furthermore, these random, recurring retrievals are puzzling because they cannot be placed into any context and, more significantly, because the emotions associated with these memories constantly vary. The slices of déjà vu are confounding, too, because I often get the sense that I can affect the outcomes; as if my memory is one aspect of a reality waiting for completion. Perhaps this is a form of overcompensation and all those who share my condition might assume they possess this odd power. My condition. Forgive me for using this word but I can think of no other that is so vague and all encompassing.

In spite of what I have mentioned so far, I would like to assure you that I am not completely without resources. My loss of personal memory has not affected my ability to think, plan and write. Moreover, the retrievals to which I referred show glimpses of a shy but imaginative man. Imaginative: the word brings an unease, or rather, a bubbling fear that is puzzling to me. In any event, I would like to believe I am this man.

To preserve my sanity, I have tried to establish a routine. In the mornings, I spend an hour looking at the sketches on the walls, another hour gazing out from my jalousie, memorizing my observations of the Compound, a sprawling structure with three or four dozen wretched people roaming about. There may be fewer or many more, I can’t recall counting. In spite of everything, the Compound is an intriguing place. Consider the view with which I am presented each morning.

It never varies. There are two groups marching until they are alongside each other. Sometimes I imagine they are marching to the tune of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It’s odd that I should remember something so obscure but nothing of myself. The group assembled by the sage sandbush is dressed in military blue and the other, coming from the direction of the sentry box, is orange-clad. They could be going to a parade but once they are alongside each other, they stop to engage in an odd choreograph of imaginative salutes and little pirouettes that give the sense of taunting buffoonery. Both groups seem oblivious to either the jeers or the encouragement of the loiterers. They keep this up for an hour or more and when my eyes begin to burn from the glare, I shut my slit jalousie. When I reopen the slats a few moments later, I notice the teams seemed to have exchanged some of their players and a couple of the loiterers are now leading the charge with mops and brooms. Sometimes I feel the marchers are doing this only for my amusement, like auditioning actors. At other times, I imagine that some of them are familiar, particularly a tall man whose height and heft is disguised by his slouch and another jumpy man in a long overcoat, but I have concluded that my faulty memory is stringing along arbitrary addendums, elongating details and events and faces to fill in the gaps. Maybe the mind creates meaningless distractions to fill the gaps and breaches. Or perhaps it’s like the intricate nested loops I observed on the painting of leaves.