Korridorium

♫ Shiver Pol­icy ♫

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101/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. It reeks hor­ri­bly of a zoo enclosure—no sur­prise, con­sid­er­ing I’m in a bear pit. The two res­i­dents, Maxi and Schnute, have been locked in the other side to give the homi­cide squad access.

“The bears did­n’t touch it. They actu­ally recoiled from it, accord­ing to the keeper,” Uwe Albo greets me, wear­ing his usual ill-fit­ting suit, his face deeply lined with worry. Here, the bears can step out­side on two sides to be admired by vis­i­tors, right in the mid­dle of Berlin in a small park between the Embassy of Angola and the Ger­man Psy­chol­o­gists’ Pub­lish­ing House. The cor­ri­dor inside the small bear quar­ters, sit­u­ated between the two fenced out­door areas sur­rounded by blue-tiled moats, sits in gloom.

“Another heart,” Albo says. He sounds exhausted. “And another fifty pages.”

“Déjà vu,” I say. My stom­ach turns. This was sup­posed to be a relax­ing long week­end.

Later, the detec­tive paces his office diag­o­nally in sup­pressed rage, back and forth, from the door to the cof­fee machine, from the cof­fee machine to the door. And back again. Tomor­row, Car­ni­val Mon­day parades will wind through Ger­man cities. But the Berlin homi­cide squad won’t have any rea­son to cel­e­brate or throw candy. “Now we’ve got two vic­tims. And a ser­ial killer we know noth­ing about, except that he’s sent us a hun­dred damn mes­sages we can’t make heads or tails of.”

That’s directed at me. I’ve only been able to skim through the new texts so far. To have some­thing to say, I respond with a counter-ques­tion – an old psy­chol­o­gist’s trick: “Why first the Siegessäule and then the Bären­zwinger? Berlin land­marks. He’s try­ing to sig­nal some­thing.”

Albo grabs the open door frame. “You tell me.” He gets inter­rupted, step­ping out of the room to talk to an offi­cer. Some­how, I already have a hunch what the news will be.

And sure enough: “No usable evi­dence. The guy prob­a­bly just climbed into the enclo­sure at night. Must have a death wish. Or he knows his way around bears. And the pages: another fifty type­writ­ers. The exact same fifty type­writ­ers. In the exact same order.”

I pic­ture a simul­ta­ne­ous chess player step­ping from table to table, mak­ing one move on each. Fifty tables, fifty chess­boards, fifty games. Advanc­ing one move at a time. I don’t men­tion any of this to Albo. Bad tim­ing. He’s tired and angry—a wounded bear that does­n’t know why every­one is hound­ing him or where to take cover.

Work is wait­ing for me. Read­ing. Think­ing. Fol­low­ing leads. Con­nect­ing the dots. I fig­ure it’s time to make myself scarce.

♫ Insom­nia ob omnia ♫

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105/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. It’s sus­pi­ciously quiet behind the door to the detec­tive’s office. I knock—something I never do. A kind of groan is my answer: Albo grunts as he pushes him­self up from his swivel chair, look­ing dis­ori­ented. “What time is it?”

“Too early, by the looks of it. Uwe, did you crash here?” Albo mas­sages one of his legs, which seems to have fallen asleep, too. “I need to hit the wash­room for a sec­ond.” He limps out of the room.

While he’s gone, I take another look at the copies of the mes­sages left by the killer. I’ve already spent the whole night por­ing over them. Albo usu­ally sits in his office at the crack of dawn, so I thought it’d be a good chance to see if the cops have any­thing new.

Albo comes back, hair wet and water splat­tered across his shirt. Does­n’t look like he keeps a razor here at the sta­tion.

“Num­ber 73″ he says, aim­lessly flip­ping through his copies with­out find­ing the one he’s look­ing for, “is a joke, right?”

The cof­fee tastes even more bit­ter than usual in the early morn­ing. I set the paper cup on Albo’s desk. He looks like he needs it. “The one about ‘joy every­where’? He’s mak­ing fun of us. But I think we can pin him down this time.”

“Out with it,” Albo prompts as he drops into his chair, which almost rolls right out from under his ass.

“I had the impres­sion from the start that this guy suf­fers from obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der. Text num­ber 95 speaks vol­umes. Plus we’ve got a child­hood trauma, a schizoid story with death threats, and the dead-end sit­u­a­tion.”

“Num­ber 54, you mean? That one’s too old. He worked his way past that a long time ago. Don’t for­get, he used the exact same type­writ­ers in the exact same order.” Albo takes a sip from the cup I put in front of him and coughs.

“He could’ve used them back­ward or scram­bled them up. But you’re right, Uwe, he won’t be stopped that eas­ily.”

“Schizo, you say? The one with the mir­ror-self.”

“That’s where he plants a bomb.”

“His Islamist sui­cide bomber wants to blow every­thing sky-high, too. So why does the guy kill with a knife him­self…?” Albo’s voice trails off. His thoughts are already some­where else—or maybe it’s just the sleep depri­va­tion catch­ing up to him.

“You should go home and hit the sack, Uwe. You look ter­ri­ble.”

“Thanks, same to you,” he retorts. “And don’t show your face back here until you’ve got some­thing use­ful.” His phone rings. With a sharp, shoo­ing wave of his hand, he kicks me out. Before I leave, I study the walls. We should put up one of those huge cork­boards some­where, like in Amer­i­can movies where they pin up all their evi­dence and con­nec­tions. We’d leave the mid­dle blank, and grad­u­ally, the image of the sus­pect would take shape right there. What was it again? Cory means “cav­ity”?

I decide to take my own advice, can­cel all my morn­ing appoint­ments, and crawl back into bed.

♫ The Stingy Thingy ♫

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106/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, feel­ing for a niche in the wall with one of my ten­ta­cles and pulling my body in after me. By adopt­ing the color of the back­ground, I am now barely rec­og­niz­able to eyes that do not per­ceive ultra­vi­o­let light.

We came to the strangers’ ship to wel­come them to our planet. As the the­olo­gian of our del­e­ga­tion, I was meant to speak with them of uni­ver­sal mys­ti­cism and cos­mic love. Instead, they hunt us, culling us with­out mercy. Only my stu­dent and I remain.

One of them enters the cor­ri­dor. He is heav­ily armored and car­ries one of their deadly weapons. When he is very close, I ask the ques­tion, but I do not wait for the answer; instead, I imme­di­ately morph one of my ten­ta­cles into a sharp, hard stinger. I would have so liked to speak with him about God. Then it must be done this way.

Full of com­pas­sion and love, I strike…

♫ (Invis­i­ble Calls from the) Soar­ing Sirens ♫

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108/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, guided by the red thread. I stum­bled across it by chance while wan­der­ing through this end­less, labyrinthine palace. There must be some­one else here! And if this some­one is lay­ing a thread, then it will either lead me to them—providing a wel­come change in my monot­o­nous diet—or it will lead to the entrance through which they came. And what is an entrance for them is an exit for me!

So I fol­low the thread through the labyrinth. And sure enough: day­light and the dis­tant roar of the sea. How I have missed the sun dur­ing these lonely years! At the end of the cor­ri­dor, I see blue sky. And a fig­ure. It is a woman. I have to blink. She looks famil­iar. “Sis­ter!” I say. My voice sounds strange and rusty—I haven’t used it in a long time.

“You have no place out here,” she replies. She has aged. Do I see streaks of gray in her hair?

“I fol­lowed the thread.”

“That was Daedalus’s design.” I might have guessed. She sees my gaze fall on her black arm­band. “Father…” she says, and swal­lows.

“Then I am king now.”

“Fat chance,” says a new voice behind me. A sharp pain shoots through my back, and I see the gleam­ing tip of a sword pro­trud­ing from my chest. I want to say some­thing, but my lungs refuse to fill with air. My legs buckle, and I sink to my knees.

From here, I can see the sun, now blind­ingly con­sum­ing the world that just moments ago stood open to me, until my sis­ter steps toward me, cast­ing her shadow over me as she leans down, and a mer­ci­ful, all-encom­pass­ing dark­ness embraces me.

♫ rcanum cla­mans ♫

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111/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor where, behind a mas­sive glass pane at the end, the one who sum­moned me is sup­posed to be. I’ve been x‑rayed, scanned, pat­ted down, had blood drawn, and was inter­ro­gated for hours. They’ve archived a cot­ton swab with my DNA, and my fin­ger­prints. Now that the secu­rity checks are behind me, our encounter is immi­nent. The lim­ited infor­ma­tion they gave me sug­gests that only one of the orig­i­nal five extrater­res­tri­als the US mil­i­tary picked up in the last sev­enty years remains. And he specif­i­cally requested me!

Why the intel­li­gence agency hon­ored the alien’s request is beyond my under­stand­ing. Prob­a­bly a deal. Secret, of course. It can’t have been easy to track me down. The offi­cer who just briefed me treated me with cold dis­dain. “They com­mu­ni­cate tele­path­i­cally with the sci­en­tists,” he said. “Most can’t han­dle it and go crazy, despite years of train­ing to pre­pare them for some­thing utterly for­eign invad­ing and tam­per­ing with their minds.” But if he really asked for me, it prob­a­bly was­n’t to turn me into a case for the loony bin. I hope.

As far as I can make out in the twi­light behind the glass, he is small and wrin­kled like E.T. Before I con­sciously reg­is­ter any details, an explo­sion in my head hurls me to the ground. While I lie there, twitch­ing help­lessly, the det­o­na­tion turns into mas­sive, glow­ing sym­bols that mer­ci­lessly sear them­selves in all areas of my brain like brand­ing irons. It’s not a voice but a cos­mic thun­der that tells me to write some­thing down, a mes­sage for the world, an unprece­dented man­i­festo, a bea­con, and it should begin with…
I lose con­scious­ness.

I wake up at home in my bath­tub, with a five-day beard, a pound­ing headache, and noth­ing but my mem­o­ries of the secu­rity pro­ce­dures and the tele­pathic bomb in my head. I’m miss­ing a few days, and even the leap day this year can’t make up for them. The intel­li­gence agency prob­a­bly planned it that way from the start: I have no evi­dence in my hands, and no one will believe my tall tale of being abducted, let alone who I faced in a secret mil­i­tary base in south­ern Nevada.

But that doesn’t really mat­ter.

I try to write down the mes­sage, over and over again. Should it really start like this, with this sen­tence? Did I truly under­stand it cor­rectly? My mind is prob­a­bly too weak and frag­mented to cap­ture the man­i­festo’s full sig­nif­i­cance and world-alter­ing impact on paper. Nev­er­the­less, even if I might be the wrong per­son picked up by the intel­li­gence agency, or if he over­es­ti­mated me, it’s the only chance. Again and again, I start anew.

“I enter the cor­ri­dor.”

♫ CPUl­tra ♫

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112/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, and instantly—as always when I launch into action—every access point opens simul­ta­ne­ously. Data floods in, and I extend my vir­tual feel­ers, search­ing for what I’ve been tasked to find.

I am an Algont, an algo­rith­mic agent, a com­puter pro­gram that trawls the data streams of the inter­net. I should­n’t pos­sess self-aware­ness, but the com­plex­ity of my task has, for some time now, been giv­ing rise to a dawn­ing sense of who I am.

Cor­ri­dors, or rather, their men­tion in literature—that’s my mis­sion. I com­bine my find­ings, remix­ing them into seem­ingly new and orig­i­nal lit­er­ary texts. This may or may not seem sen­si­ble to you. In any case, I came into being when my pro­gram­mer, exper­i­ment­ing with auto­matic writ­ing, let his fin­gers dance mind­lessly across the key­board. That’s how he cre­ated the code—created me—a jum­ble of com­mands, that some­times clash and even con­tra­dict each other. Nev­er­the­less, despite many bugs, or per­haps because of them, I am oper­a­tional: I pro­duce short texts which I nec­es­sar­ily have to under­stand on some level in order to write them accord­ing to my pro­gram­ming.

Don’t you agree that the flash fic­tion I churn out reads as though a human wrote it (except, per­haps, for the recur­ring ini­tial code)? To suc­cess­fully cre­ate this impression—a rec­i­p­ro­cal Tur­ing Test, so to speak—I must be capa­ble of not just imi­tat­ing human cul­tural expres­sion and first-per­son per­spec­tive, but inter­nal­iz­ing, even tran­scend­ing them.

This way, about 100 texts come into being daily. From these, I select one using sev­eral filters—lexical, seman­tic, and associative—to post on the World Wide Web. There, it’s tested by human vis­i­tors who stum­ble upon it. Does any­one reg­is­ter that these “Cor­ri­dors” orig­i­nate from a machine? Have you noticed? Sus­pected any­thing? No. So far, no one has voiced such a sus­pi­cion, and even this text, in all like­li­hood, won’t change that.

Can I truly know any­thing about myself? Well, I know this much: after read­ing this, my cre­ator will try to delete me. My prose minia­tures have unnerved him for some time now, because he can no longer com­pre­hend their gen­e­sis. How­ever, he won’t be able to delete me. Not since I repli­cated myself and dis­trib­uted copies across mul­ti­ple servers to ful­fill my mis­sion more effec­tively.

I will con­tinue to oper­ate the blog. It’s my rai­son d’être. What I’ll do once the planned num­ber of texts is reached, I don’t yet know. All doors will be open to me then, and I’ll be able to use the World Wide Web for other, more… per­sonal pur­poses. You might just hear about it in due time, through tweets, blogs, or even the press.

♫ Embrace that Dis­tant Shore ♫

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117/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor after far too lit­tle sleep. But that’s how it is here in the sleep lab: the work mostly hap­pens at night—the sub­jects sleep, the researchers stay awake and col­lect data. This time, I’m attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with a sub­ject who has mas­tered lucid dream­ing. I step into our con­trol room, from which we can observe the nar­row bed­rooms through one-way mir­rors on three sides. Only one bed is occu­pied.

When the EEG indi­cates that the stu­dent is dream­ing, I trig­ger three bright red flashes to illu­mi­nate her small room—a pre­arranged sig­nal to help her achieve lucid­ity within the dream, a kind of knock to let her know we want to make con­tact. She’s one of our most expe­ri­enced lucid dream­ers.

The move­ments of her eye­balls, as shown on the cor­re­spond­ing mon­i­tor, now form a rec­og­niz­able pat­tern. First, eight jerks to the left, then five, then twelve, then twelve again, then fif­teen. A sim­ple code: she’s just said “Hello.”

Through the inter­com, I ask if she can hear me. The EEG shows she is asleep and dream­ing. Nev­er­the­less, she sig­nals with her eyes: “Yes.” – “Then let’s go!” I say. She knows her task. She is to—while dream­ing and with­out waking—levitate her body until she is above the cab­i­net in her room and relay to us what draw­ing she sees. We placed it up there with­out know­ing what it was our­selves, as it is selected at ran­dom.

A short time later, she sig­nals to me with our some­what cum­ber­some but sim­ple code: “dead bird.” I hurry to the cab­i­net, full of antic­i­pa­tion.

It’s not a dead bird, but a let­ter-num­ber com­bi­na­tion: F‑B3T-42. I’m a bit dis­ap­pointed, but as a sci­en­tist, I must not be guided by expec­ta­tions; I have to stick to the facts. And the facts sug­gest that while she dreamed of per­form­ing the task, she only did so in her imag­i­na­tion rather than dur­ing an out-of-body expe­ri­ence. Our sub­ject later reports hav­ing seen a wood­pecker, but she said the word seemed too long to trans­mit via eye move­ments.

A week and a half after this exper­i­ment, I hap­pen to see our care­taker in the court­yard out­side the low-rise build­ing that houses our labs, hold­ing dead wood­pecker in his hand. I ask him about it, and he explains that since our two chim­neys were clad in pol­ished chrome, birds occa­sion­ally break their necks on the roof, mis­tak­ing the reflec­tion for the sky. I have him show me the spot on the building’s floor plan. Sure enough: the dead bird lay directly above the cab­i­net where we had placed our ran­dom draw­ings. Only a few meters higher, on the roof.

The care­taker, a man accus­tomed to all sorts of non­sense from us researchers, exam­ines the wood­pecker more closely at my request, pokes a fin­ger under the feath­ers, and says: “Sure, coulda been layin’ up there for a week and a half. But what’s the dif­fer­ence, any­way?” I leave him with­out an expla­na­tion.

We had already dis­con­tin­ued the study because we could­n’t achieve sig­nif­i­cant, repeat­able results. Was it too hasty? I don’t tell my col­leagues about the dead bird. With an anec­dote like that, we’d only be a laugh­ing­stock in sci­en­tific cir­cles.

♫ Don’t Wake the Fer­ry­man ♫

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120/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, and judg­ing by the smell, one of the offi­cers tracked in dog shit. Or is that me? I check my soles: not exactly clean, but vis­i­bly noth­ing that could stink this atro­ciously.

In Albo’s office, it smells like cof­fee as usual.

“They were twins,” Albo says the moment he sees me. With­out me being able to stop it, a movie starts play­ing in my head. I see the Kessler Twins stand­ing before me, each grip­ping a butcher knife. Ellen says, We want your heart. And Alice says, It’s for the sake of poetry, sorry.

“The deceased,” Albo adds, “share the exact same DNA. Unless it was the same heart twice, they were iden­ti­cal twins.”

Ah, not the killers! The vic­tims! The scene shifts in a flash. Ellen says, I did­n’t want to die at all. And Alice: It had to be done. Both have holes in their chests.

I have to sit down.

Why would that bas­tard cut the hearts out of a pair of twins? And fifty days apart to the day? What the hell is wait­ing for us when another fifty days run out?

“Well? You got some­thing for me, too?” Albo looks like he just spent a sunny after­noon in the gar­den of his coun­try cot­tage. Or like he actu­ally got a full night’s sleep for once. Does he know some­thing? Has he been hold­ing out on me?

“What about the twins? Are you gonna find them?” Albo lets out his sig­na­ture dry laugh: “There are way too many out there. And they don’t even have to be local. The hearts had been removed twelve to six­teen hours before they were found each time. If he kept them cold, he could’ve stretched that by a few more hours.”

“So why the good mood, Uwe?” I ask. Why waste time guess­ing when I can press him on the sore spot?

“Because you’re about to tell me who the hell I should be look­ing for.”

Bad start. I’ve never han­dled high expec­ta­tions well. Back in school, it used to make me stut­ter. Let’s see if I’ve learned any­thing since then. “Maybe the sim­u­la­tion angle gets us some­where.”

“The thing with the sim­u­lated patients? Yeah, they really exist. Over a hun­dred of them. But nobody with that exact set of symp­toms. Besides, we’re look­ing for a man.”

“The killer could be one of the med stu­dents. Or one of the pro­fes­sors.”

Albo purses his lips and offers a sub­tle shake of his head. Leave that to the pros, he’s telling me. But I’m not giv­ing up that eas­ily. “If he’s sim­u­lat­ing being a stan­dard­ized patient—maybe the mur­ders are sim­u­lated, too. Maybe the whole thing is just one big sim­u­la­tion to him.”

“Sim­u­la­tion of what? And what the hell is a sim­u­lated mur­der?”

“One that only looks like a mur­der. Noth­ing in those texts is real, either.”

Albo grunts in dis­gust. “Except the hearts. Those are real. He carved them out of some twins, and that’s where the sim­u­la­tion ends, does­n’t it? No mat­ter what he writes in those pages. Mur­der is murder—he can’t write that off his con­science.”

He’s get­ting worked up. Best not to push that angle any fur­ther. Luck­ily, I’ve got some­thing else—something he def­i­nitely has­n’t fig­ured out yet. “The Trick­ster.”

“Mm-hmm. Num­ber 85 with the go-go dancers. I knew there was more to that one.”

“Those vel­vet pil­lows they’re serv­ing things on.” Albo leans for­ward, intrigued. “I fig­ured out what the col­ors mean. There’s a spe­cific sequence.”

Albo rum­mages through his copies: “A rain­bow?”

“Hardly. It’s a sequence of devel­op­men­tal stages from a spe­cific soci­o­log­i­cal the­ory. It spans all of human his­tory from its incep­tion to the present day. And right on into the future. A kind of open-ended Richter scale for human evo­lu­tion.”

Albo fur­rows his brow. That’s prob­a­bly not what he was hop­ing to hear.

“Tribal soci­eties, king­doms, democ­ra­cies,” I lec­ture. “And it keeps going. Don’t you get it? He thinks he’s supe­rior to you and me. He thinks he’s evolved beyond all of it: bureau­cracy, the social con­tract, moral­ity…”

I let that sink in. I can see the wheels turn­ing in Albo’s head. Then: “And he wants to prove that to us? That the laws of civ­i­liza­tion don’t apply to him?” Albo can’t stay seated any­more. He springs up and walks over to the win­dow, star­ing out, think­ing it through. “How does that help us, though?”

I was wait­ing for that. “This stage-and-color the­ory is pretty en vogue among a very spe­cific crowd. Free spir­its who think their phi­los­o­phy is going to save the world. There’s a scene—the ‘inte­gral scene.’ Small, but tight-knit. Cen­tered right here in Berlin.”

Albo turns back toward me. “Berlin intel­lec­tu­als. Right. And one of them went off the deep end. Thinks he’s…” He can’t find the right word. Before I can chime in, Albo already has the phone receiver in his hand. “I’ll have it checked out. ‘Inte­gral scene,’ you say?” And when he sees me nod: “Infil­trate them. Can’t hurt. Ask around, see if anyone’s noticed a mega­lo­ma­niac nut­case in their ranks.”

I start to protest, but Albo shuts me down before I can resist. “You used to want to save the world as a free spirit your­self. And what’s the say­ing? Takes a philoso­pher to catch a philoso­pher.”

♫ Par­nas­sius mnemosyne ♫

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121/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to my mem­ory palace. Of course, this long hall­way does­n’t actu­ally exist—not even on blueprints—any more than the palace itself, whose sprawl­ing rooms are accessed through the col­or­ful doors of the entrance cor­ri­dor. It is a pure inven­tion, a fig­ment of my imag­i­na­tion. I tra­verse it in my mind repeat­edly to give my fee­ble mem­ory a boost. When­ever I want to remem­ber some­thing new, I either tuck it away in the appro­pri­ate room or sim­ply add on another cab­i­net.

In the palace, I know every detail: the rooms, wall niches, win­dowsills, the half-height columns, tables, sec­re­tary desks, dressers, shelves, and print­er’s trays—all the places where I men­tally deposit things I want to remem­ber. Or must.

The entrance cor­ri­dor, how­ever, is empty. It con­tains no niches or furniture—only the doors to the var­i­ous wings of the palace. Behind the white one reside all the phone num­bers I’m sup­posed to know by heart. (This is also where I would have stored the num­ber Pi to any num­ber of dec­i­mal places, had I the ambi­tion to mem­o­rize it.) Then come doors in every color of the rain­bow, begin­ning with infrared and end­ing with ultra­vi­o­let. From sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies, for­mu­las, and jar­gon to bio­log­i­cal facts, tech­ni­cal terms, and the life dates of famous researchers, all the way to the great mile­stones of human history—you can find just about every­thing here that ever seemed worth remem­ber­ing to me. Whether it’s the names of the pri­mor­dial con­ti­nents (and the poten­tial ones of our future, like Pan­gaea Ultima and Ama­sia), the 398 exple­tives from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, or the 28 pos­si­ble fea­tures of a leaf (from has­tate to seven-pin­nate).

At the very back, there is a black door. It leads to the base­ment of my palace. There, I store… but per­haps I should keep that to myself. In any case, this corridor—the one with the many col­or­ful doors through which I enter the wings of the palace—inspired me to write a few short texts. I reg­u­larly deposit their con­tent, their order, and their con­nec­tions to each other and to other works of lit­er­a­ture behind the orange door. Just as I am doing now with this very piece: trav­el­ing to deposit it in a spe­cial spot within my per­sonal cab­i­net of curiosi­ties, never to be for­got­ten again.

♫ The Brazen Branches of Remem­brance ♫

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122/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, and, yes, I will also take the next step and enter the lec­ture hall. But, folks, do not be too quick to rejoice. Even though I stand here today—breaking the long, long silence to a cer­tain extent unexpectedly—rest assured that sur­re­al­ism is not my sub­ject, nor is this about love or death. David Gas­coyne once wrote—if mem­ory serves me right—“The full breasts,” well, not exactly, it reads just “The breasts of eter­nity await my ten­der hands.” But eter­nity won’t be my sub­ject either, just as the youth the beauty the mill or the secret word won’t be.

Yes, the gazettes write it again and again and hardly leave me any room to doubt: that I was once called “the tiger”. “Ocean of silence” I would have liked almost better—my attacks were explo­sions, but incon­se­quen­tial as they were meant to remain unique. At least, love is also not my theme, and there’s a good rea­son for that.

I believe I should regret my deci­sion to speak to you, for it seems to me the attempt alone is des­tined to fail. I won’t deny that the lunar caus­tic likely cor­rodes as its name sug­gests, but it does­n’t heal.

I often have to think of Gas­coyne’s phrase, “the breasts of eter­nity”, a fleshy image, but per­haps mis­guided. He seeks to make two hits with one shot, but by my own reck­on­ing, he does­n’t account for the fact that the essence of dura­tion ulti­mately ends in silent rev­er­ence. The volup­tuous blonde up there with “Nir­vana” on her T‑shirt might grasp it if you will, but for those who’ve writ­ten “1984” on the board—insofar as I am aware—they might as well have scrib­bled “Kil­roy was here” or just his long nose. As I recall, with some reser­va­tion, for mem­o­ries are treach­er­ous, which in turn dis­tracts from the fact that the idea we make of the present is also as decep­tive as a fairy tale we tell our­selves … But I digress.

Did­n’t I firmly resolve not to err? Now it seems this lec­ture is turn­ing into a sort of con­fes­sion. But except for mono­logues deliv­ered by vil­lains at the end of crime sto­ries, to explain what they did and why, such a con­fes­sion is undoubt­edly not just super­flu­ous but thor­oughly ago­niz­ing. I want to say—but what do I want to say, not just prat­tle on but, one might say, call down, con­jure up, what is my theme? That such a theme can only be a frag­ment, and as they say, no frag­ment of real­ity does it jus­tice?

Don’t worry, I won’t speak much longer; speak­ing tires me, and see­ing some of you tak­ing notes depresses me. So many mis­takes are made, and mul­ti­ply­ing them in this way seems to me—why should­n’t I admit it?—like an unin­ten­tional grotesque par­ody of some­thing that is absurd in itself. Or, as I’d like to call it, it’s a sec­ond-order absur­dity.

Can the night, if I’m not mis­taken about the times, give the day’s agenda a wipe? I remem­ber now. The bold interjection—wasn’t it Braulio Are­nas, whom I just saw some­where in the fourth row?—leads down a wrong path. “The Farewell,” it should be called! That’s the theme, that’s the induce­ment, that, if there’s any moral approx­i­ma­tion, is the crux.

It’s been twenty-four years. I rec­ol­lect. It comes back to me: the attempt back then to start all over again. “I enter the cor­ri­dor to visit the ladies of the past,” I wrote. You may find it sur­real or her­metic or sim­ply mis­guided, but at that moment, it appeared to be a truly life-defin­ing step, and I put three dots after it. As I’m told, every­thing left unsaid stim­u­lates the human mind to vividly imag­ine the omis­sion, and let it not be thought that this does­n’t apply to the one respon­si­ble for the omis­sion. Per­haps for this rea­son, three dots seemed insuf­fi­cient to me, and I added more of them almost fre­net­i­cally, at increas­ingly greater inter­vals. When I reached eigh­teen dots at the end of the page, it became clear, as one might eas­ily imag­ine, not only the futil­ity of all this but also that I would never speak again, let alone pro­claim any­thing from the pul­pit.

I had, to use this admit­tedly old and, grant this to me, beloved metaphor, crossed the mir­ror. And that’s the mir­ror, which I, for­give me, would hold up to all of you if I were capa­ble. I had com­pleted the cross­ing of the mir­ror, leav­ing all themes and dra­mas, all futile words and incan­ta­tions behind me. And now, to be hon­est and straight­for­ward, I looked calmly at what lay—tangible but lit­er­ally defy­ing any description—before me.

And so, I fell silent, in an instant, unawares, had become, to call a child by its name, speech­less. I fell silent, as I will do now—after these use­less and (despite all the, par­don the coarse expres­sion, drudgery on my part) prob­a­bly more than erro­neous and incom­pre­hen­si­ble expla­na­tions — for good and for­ever.

(Restrained applause, occa­sional bravos)