When it became dark, I walked to my house, and I found that a note had been left there. The mother had written a note, and the note explained there was to be a funeral. The funeral for Rana was set, and the note explained that it was a very small funeral. There would be people there, but what was meant by very small funeral was that I was not to come. I was not welcome at the funeral, I told the interlocutor. I gave myself up entirely to tears there, before the interlocutor, and I wept outright. He was totally silent, watching, and then he spoke. I don’t know how much time passed, or had passed, as we sat there, all the while that we sat there. When did all of this take place? he asked. And the funeral, when did the funeral happen? It has been going on, I said, these hours while we sat here. It is probably finished now. The interlocutor inclined his head and said quietly, then she has had two funerals, I think, and one of them has been here, in your speaking. You have spoken long, and given her a funeral of sorts, and I have also been in attendance. I have been a witness there, a witness of a kind. I wiped at my face with the cloth he had given me, and sat inertly in the chair. He sat, waiting. I said, finally, I don’t want to live anymore. Then, he took from his desk a piece of paper, encased in lines — a formal piece of paper. He handed me a pen. I didn’t read the paper. I found its outline on the desk, and he pointed to where I should sign and I signed it. I wrote, Clement Mayer, on the sheet, and he took the sheet. He put the sheet into a metal box on the wall. Then he took out of his desk a little brown case. He opened it and removed a single yellow slip. The paper was very finely grained. He handed it to me. He said, this is how it will be. These will be sent where they need to go. They do not now have your name. These are not the ones that will be sent. The ones that will be sent will be exactly like these, save that they will bear your name. The paper will be of the same weight and color and grain. I held the yellow slip and felt it between my fingers. He took another box out of the desk and opened it. This drawer he had to unlock with a key. He did so, using a key that was on a cord around his wrist, like a watch. He took the box out and set it beside the desk on a short table. He knelt by the little table, on one knee, and all his motions became sharply practiced. There was a little bottle, and a syringe. There was a rubber cord. He manipulated them, set them carefully by. He asked me to pull my sleeve up. I drew my sleeve up. He paused. I will tell you something, he said. I always say this last. I believe it is a comfort, and so I say it last, said the interlocutor. He knelt, holding a needle in his hand, and he said, a quote from the founder, Groebden, Everyone wants life — everyone wants as much life as they can get, and as bright a life. He is reported to have said that, the great man himself. It is often misinterpreted. He was not saying this was the case, that everyone actually wants life, you yourself know that’s not true, but rather that it should be. If animals excel us, defeat us in one thing, it is this: they all want their lives. Life is given to each one of them separately, and they all want it. We do not. And why? Your life has been made up of chambers, a series of chambers, so the interlocutor said, his hand on my arm — and in each chamber it is difficult to remember exactly what it was like to be in the previous room. You can remember that certain things happened when you were a child. But, what it was like to be there, to be a child, it really is lost to you. Our world is a difficult succession of losses, vaguely remembered, vaguely enshrined. The Process of Villages has improved upon it. I say this to you, the Process of Villages is also a world. It is an improvement on the world. It is a house, a series of houses, a system of many series of houses. That which is essential about human habitation and human nature has been boiled down to its core, and repeated until the proportions are exact. In these places, you will slowly get better. I promise you that. There will be people there who will love you, and people who will deceive you. There will be people who struggle on your behalf, people you will never know. All of this has been set in motion long ago. But, it is only now, at the very last, that you go to join it. You can imagine it that way — there are people whose entire purpose is to help you, just you, and only now do you go to join them.
Come, now, incline your chair at this angle, please. I drew my chair over. Your arm, now. He tied the rubber cord around my bicep. He drew the liquid into the needle, and set the needle against my arm. I waited to feel it, waited, but I didn’t feel it go in. We’re done, said the interlocutor. He unbound the rubber cord, and helped me to my feet. Two men, orderlies, came in the room. I was dizzy. He nodded to them, and they helped me along, one on each side. We went out into the hall, ponderously through the doorway. My feet were under me and it felt strange. I felt that I was standing on the sides of my feet. I could feel my weight in my ankles, but nowhere else. I had been sitting so long, and now I was standing, standing outside of the office. The corridor was long. It seemed to go on endlessly, and where it went, the end was invisible. It was completely dark at the end. Back the other way, where I had come from, was there light? Where the building entrance was, there must be light. I couldn’t remember anymore which direction was which. The way we were going, I could make out nothing. The orderlies must know the way, I thought. They walked surely, surefootedly, one on each side, supporting me, their powerful hands gripping me, holding me up as we walked, on down the hallway, on and on, on and on, into the darkness.
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the
train
was
traveling
THE TRAIN WAS TRAVELING on a line of track stretched like black thread through the waste. It rattled and rode the line uneasily, its wheels crying out now and then as if goaded. The train was mostly empty.
Examiner 2387 looked in the windows of the compartments as she passed through the train cars one after another. One empty compartment after another. Almost no one here at all. But, her instructions had said…