Piranesi(31)

Sylvia D’Agostino’s entry was less informative, but judging by the description of her film, The Castle, she too had visited these Halls.

The word ‘university’ occurs three times in the entry about Sylvia D’Agostino and three times in the entries about Stanley Ovenden. Two weeks ago I hypothesised that I was able to ascribe a meaning to this seemingly nonsense word because I have seen Statues of Scholars in the House. At the time I was inclined to dismiss this theory as weak, but it seems more plausible now. It occurs to me that there are many other ideas that I understand perfectly, even though no such things exist in the World. For example I know that a garden is a place where one can refresh oneself with the sight of plants and trees. But a garden is not a thing that exists in the World nor is there any Statue representing that particular idea. (Indeed I cannot quite imagine what a Statue of a garden would look like.) Instead, scattered about the House are Statues in which People or Gods or Beasts are surrounded by Roses or Strands of Ivy, or shelter under the Canopies of Trees. In the Ninth Vestibule there is the Statue of a Gardener digging and in the Nineteenth South-Eastern Hall there is a Statue of a different Gardener pruning a Rose Bush. It is from these things that I deduce the idea of a garden. I do not believe this happens by accident. This is how the House places new ideas gently and naturally in the Minds of Men. This is how the House increases my understanding.

This realisation is very encouraging and I no longer feel quite so alarmed when a nonsensical word in my Journal gives rise to a mental image that I cannot account for. Do not be anxious, I tell Myself. It is the House. It is the House enlarging your understanding.

All the Journal entries contain names. I have made a list of those I have found so far. There are fifteen of them. Assuming that ‘Ketterley’ belongs to the Other and that another belongs to the Prophet, then thirteen remain. This is the exact number of the Dead in my Halls. A coincidence? After careful consideration I am inclined to think it might be. While fifteen people are named, several more seem to be implied in the text: people such as the friend to whom D’Agostino said that she wished to study ‘Death, Stars and Mathematics’; ‘the police’ (who are mentioned in all the texts); the woman who cleaned Laurence Arne-Sayles’s house; and the young men whom Laurence Arne-Sayles picked up on Saturday nights. It is impossible to say at this juncture how many of these people there are.





PART 4


16



I retrieve the scraps of paper from the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall

ENTRY FOR THE FIRST DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH IN THE YEAR THE ALBATROSS CAME TO THE SOUTH-WESTERN HALLS

I had not forgotten the scraps of paper that I found in the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall, nor the ones that remained there, woven into herring gull nests.

Two days ago I gathered together supplies for the journey: food, blankets, a small saucepan in which to heat water and some rags. I set off and reached the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall about the middle of the afternoon. The gulls must have been out searching for food because there were none in the Hall, though fresh deposits of excrement on the Statues showed that it was still their roosting place.

Immediately I began work extricating the scraps of paper from the nests. The ease with which this could be accomplished varied. In some nests the seaweed was dry and fell apart at the first tug, but in others the paper scraps were cemented to the seaweed by the gulls’ droppings. I made a fire using dry seaweed from the old nests; I heated water in the saucepan; then I dipped a rag into the water and applied it gently to the paper that was stuck in the nests. It was delicate work: too little hot water and the hard droppings would not soften; too much and the paper itself would dissolve. It took me many hours of labour, but by the evening of the second day I had recovered seventy-nine scraps from thirty-five nests. I examined every nest again and satisfied Myself that no more remained.

This morning I returned to my own Halls.

I spent some time trying to assemble the writing. Eventually, after an hour, I had part of a page – perhaps as much as half – and a few smaller sections of other pages.

The writing was very bad, full of crossings out. I read:

… that he has done to me. How could I have been so stupid? I will die here. There is no one coming to save me. I will die here. The silence [piece missing] no sound, only the pounding of the sea in the rooms below. There is nothing to eat. I rely on him to bring me food and water – which only underlines my status as a prisoner, a slave. He leaves the food in the room with the minotaur statues. I indulge myself in long fantasies of killing him. In one of the destroyed rooms I found a jagged piece of marble about the size of a roof tile. I have thought about crushing his head with it. This would give me great satisfaction …

This was the writing of a very angry and unhappy person. I wondered who it had been? I wished that I could reach through his writing to comfort him, to show him the fish that abounds in every Vestibule, the beds of shellfish just waiting to be gathered, how with only a little foresight he need never go hungry, how the House provides for and protects its Children. I wondered about his persecutor, the man who had made him a slave. I felt very sad to think that there had existed such antagonism between two human beings, perhaps even between two of my own Dead. Had the Concealed Person tormented the Biscuit-Box Man? Or the other way round?

Very carefully I turned over the scraps and examined the reverse. The writing here was even worse.