Korridorium

♫ Mare Chronium––Contemplating ♫

31/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, car­ry­ing a tray with two meals. It is Coq au Vin, and it smells deli­cious.

Our guest has requested that I serve it five min­utes past mid­night. He is a nice older gen­tle­man with gray stub­ble, who has already paid for every­thing in advance. “K. K. Korian­der” he wrote on the reg­is­tra­tion form and repeat­edly con­firmed that the recep­tion at our small coun­try hotel is indeed staffed around the clock and that room ser­vice is absolutely punc­tual. The night­time recep­tion­ist and room ser­vice, that’s me, and it’s pre­cisely five past mid­night. I knock on the door of Room No. 27.

The door opens: “Come in. That smells deli­cious.” Mr. Corian­der isn’t alone. There’s a young man there, per­haps thirty years old. He’s wear­ing a suit, and his hair is slightly disheveled.

Mr. Korian­der ges­tures toward the table. I place the plates in front of them, set down cut­lery and nap­kins, and pour two glasses of still min­eral water. The young man smiles at me. I feel some­what pecu­liar. How did he get in here? I was stand­ing at the recep­tion the whole time. Or did he arrive in the min­utes when I was in the kitchen get­ting the Coq au Vin?

“Please stay,” Mr. Korian­der tells me, “in case we need any­thing else.” I nod and step next to the bed. If some­one were to unex­pect­edly need some­thing from me at this hour, there’s a call but­ton at the recep­tion.

The two men clink glasses of water, and while the young man eagerly tucks into his chicken, the older one starts ask­ing ques­tions. They con­verse in Eng­lish, and Mr. Korian­der’s guest is appar­ently Amer­i­can. As far as I can under­stand, they’re talk­ing about Mars and some life forms there.

“Tweerl?” Mr. Korian­der asks, or at least that’s how it sounds. The young man laughs and says that humans can’t pro­nounce it, so he can’t either. Mr. Korian­der is quite inter­ested in some­thing he calls non-human con­scious­ness. It’s all very strange, the way they’re talk­ing

It’s very strange what the two of them are talk­ing about — the young man, who keeps chew­ing and swal­low­ing before answer­ing, and Mr. Korian­der, who does­n’t eat at all, but makes notes in a small note­book.

They talk about this crea­ture with the unpro­nounce­able name as if it were in the room.
Mr. Korian­der wants to know how it evolved and what hap­pened to the other “Thots.” I’m quite con­fused because, on one hand, they seem to be talk­ing about some sort of bird – with a “beak” in its lit­eral mean­ing – and on the other hand, about an Egypt­ian god who is said to have taught the ancient Egyp­tians how to read and write.

The young man tosses the last gnawed bone back onto the plate and wipes his hands with the nap­kin.

“I would have liked to dis­cuss Venus with you as well,” Mr. Korian­der says regret­fully, “and the intel­li­gent plants there.” It seems very eccen­tric, what the two of them are dis­cussing in the mid­dle of the night. The young man shrugs. “Yum­mie,” he says and wipes his lips, which must mean he enjoyed it.

Mr. Korian­der turns to me: “We’re fin­ished. You can clear the table.” So, I do. I leave them the water.

It’s strange, I think, as I ride our aging ele­va­tor down­stairs. “Tweerl” goes through my mind once more. What­ever it is, it must be a very pecu­liar crea­ture that thinks quite dif­fer­ently from ordi­nary peo­ple. But then again, those two weren’t exactly ordi­nary peo­ple.

A short time later, Mr. Korian­der approaches the counter and hands me his room key. “Would you like to go out?” I ask, bewil­dered because at this hour, every­thing in the vil­lage is fast asleep. But Mr. Korian­der wants to check out. He leaves a gen­er­ous tip on the counter. I thank him and watch him with aston­ish­ment. It’s just past one in the morn­ing.

And only then do I remem­ber the young Amer­i­can. But some­how, I already know that he’s no longer in the hotel. He must have dis­ap­peared the same way he appeared.

The Coq au Vin, which Mr. Korian­der had not touched, still tastes incred­i­bly deli­cious, even when cold.

♫ Metaphrastes ♫

32/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor between the cells. A great honor! How I have asked, begged, and prayed to have the chance of speak­ing with the old mas­ter poets, to seek their advice, to ben­e­fit from their wis­dom! Finally, after lengthy nego­ti­a­tions, I am granted admis­sion to the Akasha Palace. Here, not only are their time­less works are safe­guarded, but also their per­son­al­i­ties from that time remain in per­pet­ual pro­tec­tive cus­tody. Noth­ing fades, not even the spirit of our ances­tors who stand ready to answer us—if we can find the way to them.

I have been allowed into the cor­ri­dor of poets—there isn’t one for short prose writers—and for those who weren’t con­fined to poetry alone, their cells are said to open onto other cor­ri­dors: tragedies, epic poems, come­dies, choral odes, astro­log­i­cal trea­tises…

But this is just a spec­u­la­tion, not a cer­tainty. The keep­ers here aren’t very forth­com­ing. In any case, it seems that the cri­te­rion for admis­sion to the inmates is the kiss of a muse. Here, per­haps, it was Euter­pe’s. I read names on the name­plates on the doors, names like Mil­ton, Dante, Bolo, Orpheus, Nei­d­hart, Brant, Shiki, Bukowski, Vergil, Yeats, Tyr­taios, Tao Yuan­ming, and many oth­ers I have never heard of. Euterpe was dili­gent. Or was it Erato?

Who should I ask here? I don’t have much time. I am allowed to ask one of the poets behind the heavy wooden doors a ques­tion. For years, decades, I have been able to con­tem­plate this one ques­tion. I know it inside and out. It is the ques­tion, the key to the answer behind all answers.

The guard already looks impa­tient. From Bukowski’s cell, a howl seems to come, but maybe it’s the wind of time trapped in these end­less, twist­ing cor­ri­dors. My gaze falls on the name­plate Rumi. Yes! He will be the one! He will know the answer and gladly tell me. Inter­nally, I rejoice as I slide the small wooden panel in the door to the side. Yes, who could give me bet­ter infor­ma­tion than the Per­sian mas­ter poet and vision­ary of mys­ti­cal love and spir­i­tual ecstasy!

“Jalalud­din?” I call into the dark­ness of his cell. Dimly, I see a man wear­ing a tur­baned dervish cap, spin­ning in place with out­stretched arms. He radi­ates an infi­nite seren­ity, beyond all descrip­tion, and at the same time, an unspeak­able joy shim­mers out from him in spi­rals, pierc­ing deep into my heart.

 don’t know if I stood there for a sin­gle breath or an eter­nity. The hand of the guard pushes the small wooden hatch to Rumi’s cell shut. He guides me back. When I finally stand out­side again and the guard has closed the gates of the palace behind me, I begin to spin, slowly on my axis, with out­stretched arms.

♫ Push’em Up! (Year of the Goat Mix) ♫

33/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor that the set design­ers have con­structed in pla­s­ticky bright col­ors on the game show stage, bathed in the hot glare of the spot­lights. The stu­dio audi­ence holds its breath. But it’s always the same: one door hides a lux­ury limousine—the rest, a goat each. And as always, when I’ve made my choice, the game show host opens one of the other doors, and as always, there’s a goat behind it. Of course, whether I recon­sider my choice or insist on it, just like always, I never man­age to win the grand prize.

You know, I don’t want to bleat, but: What am I sup­posed to do with all these goats?

♫ Keep the Focus ♫

34/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor of slid­ing plas­tic walls. The researchers start their stop­watch. They want to test if I know some­thing I should­n’t: if so-called mor­phic fields form from the learn­ing expe­ri­ences of indi­vid­u­als, which other mem­bers of the same species can then access.

I, for my part, do not know the way through this maze. But count­less other rats wan­dered through it until they could mem­o­rize the short­est route to the food. Some of them are now dead and dissected—they accom­pany me invis­i­bly with their knowl­edge, help­ing their unwit­ting com­rade, giv­ing me impulses to go right here, left there, or to ignore forks in the path.

At the end of the course, I savor the canned meat—my reward—while the researchers record their results in a table.

All liv­ing beings have ances­tors who help them. Even the researchers. It’s just that, much like they must pro­tect their hair­less bod­ies from the cold with skins and fab­rics, they also keep all inklings at a dis­tance. Their brains have likely swollen so much for this pur­pose that none of these faint inklings can pen­e­trate into the sen­si­tive depths within.

So they often go astray, again and again, before—if they are very lucky—they reach the des­ti­na­tion of their desires.

♫ New in the Area ♫

35/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Once again. It’s almost as if I do it anew every day, step­ping into the same cor­ri­dor repeat­edly: the one lead­ing to the phi­los­o­phy fac­ulty. But is that even pos­si­ble? No. It just seems that way. The self is no longer the one from yes­ter­day, and even less so from last year. And although the cor­ri­dor looks like the one I know and is very famil­iar to me—complete with the scuff marks left by the metal fil­ing cab­i­nets on the tiles when the sec­re­tary’s office moved, and includ­ing the stale smell from the time when smok­ing was still allowed here—it also can­not be the same one as yes­ter­day.

The illu­sion is per­fect. I could swear that I’ve already taken these exact steps here before, that these exact thoughts have crossed my mind. Even at gun­point, I could not be forced to per­ceive all of this as new and unspoiled. Although: in a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion or know­ing that I am enter­ing this cor­ri­dor for the last time and will lose my life in a few moments, maybe then?

For, as the ancient say­ing goes, “One can­not step into the same cor­ri­dor twice. Even the souls rise, as it were, from the cor­ri­dors by exha­la­tions.”

♫ Jiǎ Píy­ǐngxì ♫

36/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, which was once an air duct, to reach the multi-story shop­ping dis­trict we built inside Tai He Dian, the Hall of Supreme Har­mony. Here, spread across many lev­els, mil­lions of us live. The young peo­ple in these streets and on the curved bridges regard me with a cer­tain rev­er­ence: an old man. They may sus­pect that I am a relic, belong­ing to the very first gen­er­a­tion of New Chi­nese, the pio­neers of the Great Recon­struc­tion. The idea that the For­bid­den City could accom­mo­date nearly three bil­lion of us moved into the realm of tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­ity back then; indeed, I was one of the sci­en­tists who pro­posed to the National Peo­ple’s Con­gress that we shrink our peo­ple to con­serve our con­ti­nen­t’s resources and allow our nation a long, happy future of pros­per­ity.

Although we com­pleted the New China project with great grav­ity and metic­u­lous care, I am no longer cer­tain today if that large-scale minia­tur­iza­tion was a good idea. While we—now mea­sur­ing only a thir­ti­eth of our orig­i­nal size—consume barely a hun­dredth of our pre­vi­ous resources, our plan to set a noble exam­ple for the other nations of the world has failed. With the most hon­or­able inten­tions, we have turned the giant empire of China into a king­dom of dwarves. Quite apart from the rat prob­lem we have here in the For­bid­den City—which, though hushed up, per­sists despite the pro­tec­tion of our 13,844 ancient carved dragons—not only did no other coun­try wish to join our Com­mon March to True Great­ness, but we are no longer respected or taken seri­ously. In the eyes of the world, we Chi­nese have shrunk to an insignif­i­cant and, at best, cute curios­ity.

♫ Si on n’a pas ce qu’on aime ♫

37/398

“I enter the cor­ri­dor” sim­ply isn’t a good first sen­tence, or so many of the rejec­tion let­ters claim—even and espe­cially those from pub­lish­ers with a more artis­tic bent. I don’t quite see it. This sen­tence is a) sim­ple and unam­bigu­ous, b) full of move­ment, c) evokes an image in the reader’s mind, and d) stirs expec­ta­tions of events to come. Doesn’t it possess—or am I mistaken?—even more poten­tial than, for exam­ple,

That leaves d), and with it the hope of maybe find­ing res­o­nance some­where after all…

♫ Lime­light Hogs ♫

38/398

“ ‘I enter the cor­ri­dor.’ Pri­vate?”
“Yes, Colonel. You enter the cor­ri­dor.”
“Don’t play stu­pid with me.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Well?”
“Uh, what? Colonel.”
“ ‘I enter the cor­ri­dor.’ ”
”…is a main clause, Colonel.”
“In a com­plete sen­tence, damn it!”
“ ‘I enter the cor­ri­dor’ is a main clause, Colonel.”
“And what else? Do I have to drag every lit­tle thing out of you?”
“ ‘I enter the cor­ri­dor’ is a main clause with­out inver­sion, fea­tur­ing an accusative object and a pred­i­cate in the first per­son sin­gu­lar, present active indica­tive, Colonel.”
“Is that all, Pri­vate?”
“Or it con­tains…”
“The! Whole! Sen­tence!”
“ ‘I enter the cor­ri­dor’ could, depend­ing on the con­text, also have its verb in the sub­junc­tive mood, Colonel.”
“Now was that so dif­fi­cult, Pri­vate?”
“No, Colonel.”
“Dis­missed.”
“ ‘Dis­missed’ is a past par­tici­ple serv­ing as a ver­bal imper­a­tive—”
“Dis­missed!!!”
“Yes, Colonel.” Salutes and exits.

♫ Mis­nomer ♫

39/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor and am—supposedly—overwhelmed by the choice of doors, or so “usu­ally well-informed cir­cles” claim. As if they knew any­thing! (Besides, to avoid con­fus­ing fact with hearsay, they really should have used the past sub­junc­tive: “as if I were enter­ing”…)

♫ Mal­trä­tar­ium ♫

40/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Its walls are com­posed almost entirely of book spines. (Not like Matej Krén’s instal­la­tions or Ish­wori Sap­ko­ta’s book­store in Kath­mandu, where books are seam­lessly stacked hor­i­zon­tally, some­times even mir­rored to cre­ate end­less, walk­a­ble tun­nels, but densely packed ver­ti­cally.) Tilt­ing my head, I study the titles in bewil­der­ment. Some­one seems to have made a self-ref­er­en­tial joke here.

Back to back, there are, among oth­ers,

• • Im Kor­ri­dor der Sterne by Alexan­der Kaiser,
• • Le deux­ieme couloir by Georges Bar­guet,
• Cor­ri­dor of Storms by William Sara­bande,
• The Cor­ri­dors of Time by Poul Ander­son next to
• Cor­ri­dors of Time: 1,700,000,000 Years of Earth at Grand Canyon with an intro­duc­tion by Carl Sagan,
• Har­lan Ellison’s Dream Cor­ri­dor Vol­ume 2 (where is vol­ume one?),
• Kor­ri­dor der Blicke by Camill Leberer,
• Cor­ri­dors of Light by Eleanor G. Brown, Ph. D.,
• Petits bruits de couloir by Philippe Guil­lard,
• Il dec­imo cor­ri­doio by Marco Meini,
• L’ul­tima stanza in fondo al cor­ri­doio by Alessan­dra Brisotto,
• Cor­ri­dor de Vie by Camille Sabatier,
• Cor­ri­dors of the Mind by Car­o­line Lupfer Kurtz,
• The Locked Cor­ri­dor by Mar­i­lyn Ross,
• The Cor­ri­dors of Fear by Clarissa Ross,
• Der lange Kor­ri­dor – ein Arztro­man by Cather­ine Cook­son,
• The Sil­ver Cor­ri­dor by Har­lan Elli­son (here per­haps? No!),
• The Golden Cor­ri­dor by Jody and Ric Hornor,
• The Smoky Cor­ri­dor: A Haunted Mys­tery by Chris Graben­stein,
• La mist­ica nel cor­ri­doio by Luis Casasús Latorre,
• the comic Sun­set Cor­ri­dor by Régis Franc,
• Der dun­kle Kor­ri­dor – klas­sis­che Erzäh­lun­gen aus Rus­s­land by Hanjo Kest­ing,
• Yao ye hui lang by Julian Lee,
• Night Cor­ri­dor by Joan Hall Hovey,
• Cor­ri­dors by Can­dle­light: A Fam­ily Album with Words by Anna Clyde Plun­kett,
• The Black Cor­ri­dor by Michael Moor­cock,
• Flucht aus dem Grauen Kor­ri­dor by Clark Darl­ton,
• Les couloirs de l’e­spoir by Corinne Vom­scheid,
• The Cor­ri­dor of Mul­lah-Kajar and Other Sto­ries by J. M. DeMat­teis and Roy Thomas,
• Tumithak of the Cor­ri­dors by Charles R. Tan­ner,
• Il cor­ri­doio del flaminio by Aldo Tof­foli,
• Le cor­ri­dor des inven­dus by Bernard A. Cheva­lier,
• Cor­ri­dor of Whis­pers by Edwina Noone,
• Dans les couloirs du labyrinthe by Emmanuel Matateyou,
• Echoes Down the Cor­ri­dor by Arthur Miller,
• L’En­fant dans le cor­ri­dor by Yves Thibault,
• L’homme assis dans le couloir by Mar­guerite Duras,
• The Ladies of the Cor­ri­dor by Dorothy Parker,
• Série X numéro 122: Dans le couloir de l’amour by Tracy O’Toole,
• La fille au bout du couloir by Jacque­line Remy,
• Ma princesse dis­parait dans le couloir by Brigitte Smadja,
• Mon père s’est perdu au fond du couloir by Philippe Gar­nier and
• La vérité est au bout du couloir by Sam Richez,

in between are the scripts for

• Kor­ri­doren by Bengt Bratt, Bengt Forslund and Jan Halld­off,
• White Cor­ri­dors based on a novel by Helen Ash­ton,
• Cor­ri­dor of Mir­rors after a novel by Christo­pher Massie,
• Les couloirs du temps: Les vis­i­teurs 2 by Chris­t­ian Clavier and Jean-Marie Poiré,
• Whis­per­ing Cor­ri­dors by In Jung-ok and Park Ki-hyung, as well as
• Shock Cor­ri­dor by Samuel Fuller

plus a video­cas­sette with the hand­writ­ten label

• En el corre­dor de la muerte,

then more books:

• Cor­ri­dor Ecol­ogy: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Link­ing Land­scapes for Bio­di­ver­sity Con­ser­va­tion by Jodi Hilty et. al.,
• Cor­ri­dor naar de Rijn by Hen Bollen,
• Ost­preussen und der Pol­nis­che Kor­ri­dor by Wil­helm Deuticke,
• Club és folyosó: Poli­tikai ötletek és raj­zok by Kálmán Mik­száth,
• The Per­sian Cor­ri­dor and Aid to Rus­sia by T. H. Vail Mot­ter,
• Le couloir de Dantzig by Général Gomer Cas­taing,
• Der Gansu-Kor­ri­dor: Bar­baren­land dies­seits und jen­seits der Großen Chi­ne­sis­chen Mauer by Sabira Stahlberg,
• L’île au bout du cor­ri­dor by Marie-Antoinette Liaudet,
• Cam­era e stanze – Il cor­ri­doio rac­conta by Lucio Tisi,
• Kubis­mus im Kor­ri­dor by Susanne Friedli et. al.,
• a pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tion Cor­ri­dors of the World — Places of Arrival and Depar­ture,
• Au-delà du couloir by Mar­ion Brodeau,

even a vol­ume titled

• Analy­sen der Verkehr­swege zwis­chen dem alten und neuen Bun­des­ge­biet dargestellt am Kor­ri­dor Rhein-Main und Thürin­gen-Sach­sen,
• from Die Span­nen­den Geschichten Nr. 71, Deutsche Panzer durch­brechen den Kor­ri­dor,
• Le cor­ri­dor des Panz­ers (Vol. 1 et 2),
• Kory­tarz śmierci by Perry Moore,
• Through the Cor­ri­dor by Daniel Pear­son,
• Run­ning Through Cor­ri­dors: Rob and Toby’s Marathon Watch of Doc­tor Who by Robert Shear­man and Toby Hadoke,
• Im Kor­ri­dor geht der Mond by Elis­a­beth Alexan­der,
• “Cun­ning pas­sages, con­trived cor­ri­dors”: Unex­pected Essays in the His­tory of Lex­i­cog­ra­phy by Michael Adams,
• Voci dal cor­ri­doio del­l’an­ima by Trotti Nardo,
• Le couloir de la pieu­vre by Olivier Descosse,
• Meine Fre­unde ziehen mit einer fahrbaren Plas­tik­maus über den Kor­ri­dor by Thomas Böhme,
• God in the Cor­ri­dors of Power by Michael Ryan and Les Switzer,
• Mes­sages de vie du couloir de la mort by Roger W. McGowen,
• Memo­rias del corre­dor de la muerte by Joaquín José Martínez,
• Chimeri­cal Cor­ri­dors by S. Vasuki,
• El entre­namiento del corre­dor de ori­entación by the Span­ish Min­is­te­rio de Edu­cación,
• Por­tals and Cor­ri­dors: A Vision­ary Guide to Hyper­space Travel with a fore­word by Ter­ence McKenna,
• Cor­ri­dor of Uncer­tainty by Paul Hill,
• Para­nor­mal n12: Le couloir sans fin by Engle, and finally
• 100+ Stairs and Cor­ri­dors from the 100+ Tips, Ideas series by Fer­nando de Haro and Omar Fuentes.

I should­n’t have curi­ously pulled that last one off the shelf; it unex­pect­edly gives way, col­lapses, and buries me beneath it.

After I’ve finally extri­cated myself from all these cor­ri­dors, I decide (since I’m already here) to arrange the fallen books alpha­bet­i­cally by author. (Maybe, while I’m at it, I could tran­scribe some pas­sages and pub­lish them online—perhaps as a daily blog?)