Piranesi(15)

I almost forgot to breathe. For a moment I had an inkling of what it might be like if instead of two people in the World there were thousands.

The Eighty-Eighth Western Hall

SECOND ENTRY FOR THE TWENTIETH DAY OF THE SIXTH MONTH IN THE YEAR THE ALBATROSS CAME TO THE SOUTH-WESTERN HALLS

The Full Moon declined westwards, the Light in the Hall diminished and the Constellations grew brighter in the Window opposite the Doorway. I made notes of what Constellations and Stars I saw. At Dawn I slept for a few hours and then I began the journey home.

As I walked, I was thinking about the Great and Secret Knowledge, which the Other says will grant us strange new powers. And I realised something. I realised that I no longer believed in it. Or perhaps that is not quite accurate. I thought it was possible that the Knowledge existed. Equally I thought that it was possible it did not. Either way it no longer mattered to me. I did not intend to waste my time looking for it any more.

This realisation – the realisation of the Insignificance of the Knowledge – came to me in the form of a Revelation. What I mean by this is that I knew it to be true before I understood why or what steps had led me there. When I tried to retrace those steps my mind kept returning to the image of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight, to its Beauty, to its deep sense of Calm, to the reverent looks on the Faces of the Statues as they turned (or seemed to turn) towards the Moon. I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.

The sight of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.

This thought led on to another. I realised that the Other’s description of the powers that the Knowledge will grant has always made me uneasy. For example: he says that we will have the power to control lesser minds. Well, to begin with there are no lesser minds; there are only him and me and we both have keen and lively intellects. But, supposing for a moment that a lesser mind existed, why would I want to control it?

Abandoning the search for the Knowledge would free us to pursue a new sort of science. We could follow any path that the data suggested to us. The thought of all this made me excited and happy. I was eager to return to the Other and explain it to him.

I was walking through the Halls, thinking of these things, when I heard the raucous cries of birds and I remembered that the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall was full of herring gulls. I wondered whether or not to take a different Path, but, estimating that any diversion would add seven or eight Halls (1.7 kilometres) to my journey, I decided against it.

I had got halfway across the Hall when I noticed a scattering of white shapes lying on the Pavement. I picked them up. They were pieces of torn paper with writing on them. They were crumpled and so I smoothed them out and tried putting them together. Two – no, three – of the scraps fitted perfectly, forming part of a small sheet of paper with one jagged side. It appeared to be a page torn from a notebook.

I could see that, even when reconstructed, the page would be difficult to decipher. The writing was atrocious – like a tangle of seaweed. After some minutes of peering at it I thought I could make out the word ‘minotaur’. A line or two above I thought I saw the word ‘slave’ and a line or two below the phrase ‘kill him’. The rest was completely impenetrable. But the reference to a ‘minotaur’ intrigued me. The First Vestibule contains eight massive Statues of Minotaurs, each one different from the others. Perhaps the person who had written this had visited my own Halls?

I wondered whose writing it could be. Not the Other’s. Aside from the fact that I was sure he had never ventured as far as the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall, I knew his writing to be neat and precise. One of the Dead then. The Fish-Leather Man? The Biscuit-Box Man? The Concealed Person? Potentially this was a discovery of great historical importance.

Now that I knew what I was looking for I could see more white shapes lying on the Pavement. I set about gathering them up. Beginning in the South-Western Corner I worked my way systematically over the Pavement of the entire Hall, covering every part of it. At first the herring gulls made raucous objection to my doing this, but when they saw that I did not come near their eggs or young, they lost interest. I found forty-seven pieces of paper, but when I knelt and tried to fit them all together it became clear that many more were still missing.

I looked around. Herring gull nests were perched on the Shoulders of Statues and crammed onto Plinths; there was one tucked between the Legs of the Statue of an Elephant and another balanced in the Crown of an Elderly King. Peeking out of the nest in the Crown I could see two white fragments. Cautiously I approached and climbed up a neighbouring Statue to examine it. Immediately two gulls attacked me, screaming their indignation and dashing at me with wings and beaks. But I was equally determined. With one arm I hauled Myself up the Statue and with the other I beat back the birds.

The nest was a ramshackle, untidy thing built of dry seaweed and fishbones; woven into its structure were five or six scraps of paper with writing on them. I dismounted and retreated to the middle of the Hall away from the Walls, the nests and the attacking gulls.

I considered what I ought to do. There was no possibility of retrieving the missing pieces now. The herring gulls would never permit me to dismantle their nests – nor did I want to. No, I must wait until late summer – or, even better, early autumn – when the gulls had abandoned the nests and the young were grown. Then I could come back and get all the missing pieces.