Piranesi(41)

16 had found a way to fulfil her dark purpose and make me mad! I had erased her last message and what happened? She had constructed a message I could not possibly erase without reading it!

Are you Matthew Rose Sorensen?

I am … I stuttered. I am …

At first I could get no further than this.

I am … I am the Beloved Child of the House.

Yes.

Immediately I felt calmer. Was any other identity even necessary? I did not think that it was. Another thought struck me.

I am Piranesi.

But I knew that I did not really believe this. Piranesi is not my name. (I am almost certain that Piranesi is not my name.)

I once asked the Other why he called me Piranesi.

He laughed in a slightly embarrassed way. Oh, that (he said). Well, originally it was a sort of joke I suppose. I have to call you something. And it suits you. It’s a name associated with labyrinths. You don’t mind, do you? I’ll stop if you don’t like it.

I do not mind, I said. And, as you say, you have to call me something.

The Silence of the House feels charged with expectation as I write these words. It seems to be waiting for something extraordinary to happen.

Are you Matthew Rose Sorensen?

How could I possibly answer this question when I had no idea who Matthew Rose Sorensen was? Perhaps the thing to do was to look up Matthew Rose Sorensen in the Index?

I went to the Eighteenth North-Western Hall and had a long drink of water. It was delicious and refreshing (it had been a Cloud only hours before). I rested a moment. Then I made my way to the Second Northern Hall where I fetched out my Index and Journals.

Are you Matthew Rose Sorensen?

The fact that Matthew Rose Sorensen had three names made him tricky to locate in the Index. I looked for him first under S. Nothing. I looked for him under R. There were three entries.

Rose Sorensen, Matthew: publications 2006–2010, Journal no. 21, page 6

Rose Sorensen, Matthew: publications 2011–12, Journal no. 22, pages 144–45

Rose Sorensen, Matthew, bio for Torn and Blinded: Journal no. 22, page 200

The last entry looked most promising.

Matthew Rose Sorensen is the English son of a half-Danish, half-Scottish father and a Ghanaian mother. He originally studied mathematics, but his interest soon migrated (via the philosophy of mathematics and the history of ideas) to his current field of study: transgressive thinking. He is writing a book about Laurence Arne-Sayles, a man who transgressed against science, against reason and against law.

I found it interesting that Matthew Rose Sorensen believed that Laurence Arne-Sayles had denied Science and Reason. In this he was not correct. The Prophet was a scientist and a lover of Reason. I spoke out loud to the Empty Air.

‘I do not agree with you,’ I said.

I was trying to summon up Matthew Rose Sorensen, to trick him into revealing himself. If he really was some forgotten part of Myself, then he would not like to be contradicted; he would argue his position.

But it did not work. He did not rise up from some shadowy recess of my mind. He remained an emptiness, a silence, an absence.

I turned to the other two entries.

The first was simply a list.

‘“Now, here, now, always”: J. B. Priestley’s Time Plays’, Tempus, Volume 6: 85–92

Embrace/Tolerate/Vilify/Destroy: How Academia treats Outsider Ideas, Manchester University Press, 2008

‘Sources of outsider mathematics: Srinivasa Ramanujan and the Goddess’, Intellectual History Quarterly, Volume 25: 204–238, Manchester University Press

The second entry was just more of the same.

‘Timey-Wimey: Steven Moffat, Blink and J. W. Dunne’s theories of Time’, Journal of Space, Time and Everything, Volume 64: 42–68, University of Minnesota Press

‘“The circles that you find in the windmills of your mind”: The Importance of Labyrinths in Laurence Arne-Sayles’s Exploitation of his Adherents’, Review of Psychedelia and the Counterculture, Volume 35, issue 4

‘The Gargoyle on the Cathedral Roof: Laurence Arne-Sayles and Academia’, Intellectual History Quarterly, Volume 28: 119–152, Manchester University Press

Outsider Thinking: A Very Short Introduction, OUP, pub. 31 May 2012

‘Time-travelling Architecture’: article on Paul Enoch and Bradford for the Guardian, 28 July 2012

I let out a long snort of frustration. This was utterly useless! Other than the fact that Matthew Rose Sorensen was interested in Laurence Arne-Sayles (which in no way differentiated him from everyone else in the World) I had learnt nothing. I felt a strong urge to shake my Journal, as if I could somehow shake more information out of it.

I sat for a long time thinking.

There was one person that I had not yet looked up in the Index and that was the Other. I had not thought of it until now. But perhaps if I read about the Other and found Matthew Rose Sorensen mentioned there, then … I paused. Then what? Then perhaps I would be able to judge whether the Other knew Matthew Rose Sorensen, and ultimately whether Matthew Rose Sorensen was me.

There did not seem to be any harm in trying. In fact, of all the names in the World that I might look up, the Other seemed the safest. He and I had been friends for years. I opened the Index under O. I counted seventy-four entries for the Other. I had written far more about the Other than about any other subject. In fact, I had already been obliged to reallocate two pages from the letter P to accommodate them all.