He brought the manuscript back to the workbench and deposited it there, brushing off the top sheet gently, then pausing to reread a few opening lines.
“You have done no less than create — with just ink and scraps of cheap, horrible paper — a totem. Do you know what that is, my child? You may well. I would put nothing past you. Not after reading your art. Think of this. In just three days, without study or planning. Without help or advice or a mentor who might have steered you along your course. Without an aesthetic skeleton. Without an envelope filled with a lifetime of notes. Without the slightest indication that there was a single reason to even do so, you have created a bomb. That’s what this is, my love. That is exactly what we must call this messy pile of paper. A bomb. A bomb that goes off, again and again, an explosive device whose trigger is the eyes of any and every reader to pick it up and take in the first words. It is an epiphany bomb. Are you familiar with this word, child? No? No matter.
“We could talk of an idiot savant. But I know this is not the case. Your extraordinary talent was not given at the expense of normality. This is self-evident to me. You are a beautiful young rose that has grown in the midst of the sewer heap that is the Schiller. You were put here, “in all your beauty,” his finger pointing out at her, in all your innocence and your wisdom, to make me into an everlasting symbol. Because of you, I will always be here, unadulterated in my darkness.
“I don’t mean to be melodramatic, my friend. But surely the moment calls out for it. You have created from nothing a world of written language, ink on paper, a cosmology of symbols, the sum of whose parts is entirely greater than the graphic signs themselves. You have forged the manifestation of reality through your little story. How proud you must be, child. How proud your family and friends, your whole community would be, if only your story had never taken place, yes? It’s an awful irony. Even a paradox — if they exist, there is no story to be proud of; if they die, there is no one to be proud.
“But I will be proud for them, young lady. I will do your masterpiece justice. You must trust me on this. I could show you my own best work, but it would pale in comparison to your triumph, believe me. I would be embarrassed just to parade my paltry craftsmanship before the eyes of such genius. And besides, past work does not really ensure success in the future, because each project is a job unto itself. We never know what the result will be like. But we will do our best. This is all we can do. Don’t you agree? We give what we have, not what we have not. Our doubt is our passion, as someone once said.”
From one cabinet Meyrink took a wide and deep roasting pan, something you might use to cook a holiday turkey. From another cabinet he took a plastic bleach bottle topped with a blue twist cap. The brand label had been peeled off the jug and in its place, printed in black marker, was the word RESTORATIVE. He carried them both to the floor near Alicia’s feet, uncapped the jug, and filled the pan about halfway. The basement filled up with a chemical smell, a nauseating cross between dentist’s office and reformatory boys’ room.
Meyrink moved back to a workbench, took down a small bottle of bluish liquid. He unscrewed the cap, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket. He poured a small amount of liquid onto the rag and quickly recapped the bottle.
He came back to Alicia from behind and forced the wet cloth against her face, covering her nose, holding the back of her head steady.
“It won’t be long now,” he said.
In a moment, he was back in her line of vision, though already fading a bit, gauzy, seen through a panel of lightly rippling water. He was holding the manuscript again, placing it inside a plastic bag. His mouth moved.
“In case there’s more spray than I anticipate.”
The weight of her body seemed to increase, pulling on the wrists bound inside the manacles. The sense of balance began to dissipate. Time moved closer to its state in sleep, a wavering, unfixable condition of varying speed and depth. The sound of his voice appeared almost detached from its port of origin, the mouth moving in a somewhat different pattern of motions than the noise reaching her ears would have implied. And yet, despite this discrepancy, she completely understood the last words she heard. The words were not original. No words are. But this particular grouping had a persistently familiar ring to it. Someone with a clearer perspective might have labeled it a paraphrase.
Though the words were not from Alicia’s specific tradition, her native history, or her culture, she was acquainted with them. She had been, after all, in the end, maybe more than anything else, a reader.
“In the beginning,” Meyrink said, “was the word, and the word was with the author, and the word was the author …”
He pushed the blade of the scalpel into the soft enclave below the neck and opened the body to the exterior world.
For how many hours did he work on the girl? Do we need to be mindful of the passage of time? As in the Bible, where we are told that God made the whole of the universe in a specified interval?
How intense his concentration must have been, cutting sheet after sheet of epidermis. How satisfactory, finally, when he could pull away the entire jacket that covered the torso.
There is no need to dwell on how the body was disposed of. The deputies had handled errands of this nature before, of course. And what was one more body when we consider that this took place at the height of the pogroms collectively known as the July Sweep?
The tanning process you might find somewhat more interesting. The way he dried Alicia’s skin and worked it obsessively into a binding material, into a unique hide that would forever gather and house the pages of Alicia’s story.
But what I really want to leave you with, Gilrein, at this late date, is the fact that Meyrink’s book was stolen from him. At some point in the end, during those frantic and confusing days following the Erasure of the Schiller, when the Censor of Maisel was of no more use to the state. Alicia’s book was taken from Meyrink before he fled to America. Or, perhaps, just after he arrived. One more wretched outcast yearning for the new Eden that could give him sanctuary.
There is a myth that the book was taken by a survivor of the Erasure. An Ezzene who was not present on the final night. But I find this hard to believe. How could such a person live with himself? How could he survive a guilt of this magnitude?
Gilrein walks to the Checker carrying the manila envelope given to him by Larry the security guard. The envelope contains Otto Langer’s personal belongings. When Gilrein asked, “Don’t you want me to sign for it?” the guard just ignored him and went back to reading the mutant virus exposé.
Stopping at the rear of the cab, Gilrein unclasps the package and slides a worn brown goatskin wallet onto the trunk. He opens the wallet, fans through the billfold, counts off thirty-nine dollars. He flips through a series of cellophane photo sleeves that contain business cards, a hack license, a driver’s licence, a citizenship card, an expired inoculation card, and a biloquist permit issued by the city of Maisel and valid only during the carnival season.
And a single photograph. It is a picture of an almost-beautiful young girl with deep circles under her eyes. Maybe seventeen years old, she’s dressed in a sweater and she has a pencil lodged behind her ear, pushing the hair back on the right side of her head. Carefully, Gilrein slides the photo out of the sleeve and makes himself turn it over in his palm. Makes himself read the inevitable words
FOR PAPA,
WITH ALL MY LOVE FOREVER,
ALICIA