“The room was plunged into blackness. I did not understand what had happened; I thought something had gone wrong with the lamp. This did not explain why the hall light was not visible at the bottom of the study’s door — or, for the matter, what had become of the city lights outside the window. The blackness was so complete, we might have been in a deep cave. I stumbled around, searching for the lamp, crashing into my desk and spilling books and papers onto the floor. A kind of panic was wrapping its hands around my throat; I was finding it difficult to breathe in this darkness.
“Then Wilhelm Vanderwort spoke a second word, and light, wonderful, rich, creamy light returned to the study. You will have guessed the word: it was ‘light.’ We had disagreed about the placement of the stresses in it, but it appeared Wilhelm’s interpretation was correct. As soon as the study had become dark, he had apprehended what I had not, that the word that had passed our lips had done this. This was no language such as we had known, in which a word points in the direction of its object. Instead, this was a tongue which was woven into — into everything,” Rainer sweeps his hands around him, “so that to name something was to call it forth.
“To you, who was part of the business with the Fisherman, this will not sound too strange. To us — well, you can imagine. This was more, much, much more, than a pair of university scholars had expected, ever. Our aspirations had been for a certain, limited fame within our community — to be one of those figures who excites the admiration of his juniors, and the respect and envy of his peers. Now…”
They’ve reached the place where the creek swings to the right. Rainer leaves the bank, heading for the rows of trees in front of them. He and Jacob walk in amongst their ranks a good fifteen, twenty yards, until they arrive at a low wall of the kind common in these parts, flat stones of assorted dimensions dug from the earth and layered together. Rainer turns and seats himself on it. Jacob remains standing. Rainer says, “Through the merchant who had provided the books for me, I made inquiries. Eventually, Wilhelm and I were put in touch with a small group of men who were familiar with the language we had begun translating, and more, besides. They were impressed with what we had achieved on our own, enough to accept us as…apprentices, you could say. There was a great deal to learn. There were other tongues, more ancient — and more powerful — still. There were histories of the peoples who had employed these languages, their beliefs, their customs, their rises and falls. There were maps of places that lie beside, below, the one we inhabit; there were accounts of their denizens.
“In our new passion, Wilhelm and I were as competitive as we had been in our previous one. Each of us did his best to show up the other. We spurred one another forward, faster, ever-faster, till we were standing in front of a large door set in the wall of a deep basement in one of Heidelberg’s newer buildings. You would have recognized the fellow with the iron ring in his mouth: we saw his likeness on the door of the Fisherman’s big house. One of our instructors took hold of the ring and pulled the door open. The basement was at least twenty feet underground, but when we looked through the doorway, we saw an alleyway. Wilhelm strode out of the basement into the alley as if it were the most natural thing. Trying to act as if I shared his calm, I crossed after him. We had come to…
“There are cities built along the shores of the black ocean. This was one of them. It was neither the largest nor the oldest of these places, but it was of sufficient size and age for our instructors’ purposes. They had set us to a task — a kind of examination — to determine if Wilhelm and I were ready to proceed to the next stage in our learning. Our mission was simple: we were to make our way to the other side of the city, where we would find its necropolis. There, we were to locate a certain grave, and pluck from it a flower we would find growing in its soil. This was not as easy as you might suppose. Not only was the flower rare, it was regarded by the city’s populace as the soul of the priest who was buried under it. To remove such a plant was considered a mix of heresy and murder. The streets were full of police, tall shapes dressed in black cloaks and wearing masks fashioned to resemble the curved beaks of birds of prey; they were armed with long, curved knives, which they would use without hesitation on any they caught engaged in a criminal activity such as ours. The geography of the city was strange, contradictory. Streets ended unexpectedly in blank walls, or climbed bridges which came to a stop high in the air; they arrived at circular courtyards from which a dozen alleyways branched out. We had to guide ourselves by the stars burning overhead. These were not arranged in the familiar constellations. Here, the images they drew had been given names such as the Rider, the Staff, and the Garland of Fruit.
“We succeeded. It was a difficult journey, which brought us frightfully near the figures in the bird-masks, but we found the plot of earth and the moon-colored flower rising from it in a slender arc. I removed it, Wilhelm concealed it in the folds of his jacket, and we navigated back to the alley whose end returned us to the basement in Heidelberg. We were exhausted, triumphant, and we passed what few hours remained of that night in celebration with our mentors. One of them had left with the flower, but the others were happy to share an assortment of very fine liquors with us. As dawn was breaking, we staggered off to our homes, shouting old songs, flushed with self-importance.
“By the afternoon of the next day, our triumph had turned to disaster. Wilhelm was on time for his scheduled lecture on Ancient Greek, but from the start, the students noticed something wrong with him. He did not speak with his usual gusto; instead, his voice was measured, even pained. He was well-known for moving around while he talked, pacing the front of the hall, gesturing dramatically with his hands. Today, he did not leave the lectern. A student said he appeared to be propping himself up on it. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, his hair a mess. Of course, all of that could have been attributed to the consequences of mixing considerable quantities of potent liquors. It never fails to astound students that their teachers may fall prey to the same lapses in judgment as they do, with the result that they might mistake a bad hangover for a terrible illness. But there was no confusing the black lines that had started to snake across Wilhelm’s cheeks, his forehead, as if some hidden artist were tracing them. Nor could the darkening of his tongue, his teeth, escape the notice of the students seated nearest him. Not long into his remarks, Wilhelm began coughing, and it seemed to some of the closer students that, with each spasm of his lungs, the black lines spread over more of his face, until it resembled a porcelain mask whose surface was a network of cracks. His coughing continued, doubling him over. When he raised his head, there were little pieces of his cheeks, his forehead, missing, as if the porcelain mask was falling apart. Where the skin had been, there was no muscle, no bone, only blackness. Before the horrified eyes of almost one hundred students, Wilhelm Vanderwort collapsed in a shower of dust and darkness, leaving nothing of himself behind but his clothing and his shoes.