Piranesi(42)

I found:

Other, the, Rituals performed by

Other, the, Discourses on the Great and Secret Knowledge

Other, the, lends me a camera so that I can take pictures of the Drowned Halls

Other, the, asks me to make him a map of the Stars

Other, the, asks me to draw a map of the Halls immediately surrounding the First Vestibule

Other, the, proposes that the Statues form a sort of code, which we might be able to decipher

and on and on and on. Until I reached the most recent entries:

Other, the, uses the nonsense word ‘Batter-Sea’ to test my memory

Other, the, gives me a present of shoes

I skim-read a few entries. I read how the Other had performed various Rituals at which I had assisted. I read how clever the Other was, how scientific, how insightful, how handsome. I read detailed descriptions of his clothes. This was mildly interesting, but in no way helped me with my present problem. Unlike the entries on Stanley Ovenden, Maurizio Giussani, Sylvia D’Agostino and Laurence Arne-Sayles, none of the entries on the Other was new to me. They contained no arcane words or phrases that seemed to pulsate with hidden meaning (words such as ‘Whalley Range’ and ‘doctor’s surgery’). All the events were ones I remembered clearly. And nowhere did the name Matthew Rose Sorensen appear.

I remembered that the Prophet had called the Other, Ketterley. So I turned to K.

There were eight entries. The first was on page 187 of Journal no. 2 (previously Journal no. 22).

Dr Valentine Andrew Ketterley. Born 1955 in Barcelona. Brought up in Poole, Dorset. (The Ketterleys are an old Dorsetshire family.) Son of Colonel Ranulph Andrew Ketterley, soldier and occultist.

Valentine Ketterley was a student of Laurence Arne-Sayles and afterwards a research fellow in Social Anthropology at Manchester. Married Clémence Hubert 1985. Divorced 1991. Two children. In 1992 Ketterley left Manchester and took up a teaching post at UCL. In June of the same year he wrote a letter to The Times in which he publicly repudiated Arne-Sayles, accusing him of deliberately misleading and manipulating students, feeding them pseudo-mysticism and stories of other worlds. Ketterley called on the University of Manchester to dismiss Arne-Sayles. (The university did not do so until 1997 when Arne-Sayles was arrested for false imprisonment.)

In recent years Ketterley has refused to answer any questions about Arne-Sayles.

Question: is it worth getting in touch with Ketterley to see if he will talk to me? Lives somewhere near Battersea Park.

Action point: make a list of questions for Dr Ketterley.

I was back on familiar ground. The entry was the usual mish-mash of words that held a clear meaning and words whose meaning was obscure – always presuming that they meant anything at all. I noted with interest the re-emergence of the mysterious word ‘Battersea’ (and saw that it ought not to be hyphenated).

I returned to the Index to find the location of the next entry and it was then that I noticed something rather strange. The remaining entries – there were seven of them – were all on consecutive pages. The last ten pages of Journal no. 22 and the first thirty-two pages of Journal no. 23 were all about Ketterley.

I opened Journal no. 2 (previously Journal no. 22). The last ten pages – the very pages that I wanted – were missing; just a few torn edges remained in the spine. I opened Journal no. 3 (previously Journal no. 23) and found the same thing. The thirty-two pages with information about Ketterley were gone.

I sat back, mystified.

Who could have done this? Could it have been the Prophet? I knew that he detested Ketterley. Perhaps his hatred would cause him to destroy writing about his enemy? Or could it have been 16? 16 hated Reason. Perhaps she also hated Writing, a medium by which Reason can pass from one Person to another. But that made no sense. 16 had employed Writing to leave me a long message. And in any case how could the Prophet or 16 find my Journals? They are kept (as I have explained) in my messenger bag, which is hidden behind the Statue of an Angel caught on a Rose Bush in the North-Eastern Corner of the Second Northern Hall. It is one Statue among thousands, among millions. How would either of them know where to look?

I sat for a long time and thought. I had no recollection of tearing out the pages. But realistically who else could have done it? And I have known for some time that many things have happened of which I have no recollection. I have done many things of which I have no recollection (such as write these mysterious entries). Which meant I could have torn out the pages.

But if I had torn out the pages, what had happened to them? Where had they gone?

I fetched the scraps of paper that I found in the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall. I took out a few and spread them out so that I could examine them. One – a corner piece – bore the numeral 231. It was a page number from Journal no. 2.

Quickly – almost feverishly – I began to put the pieces together. There were approximately thirty entries covering a period that I had designated 15 November 2012 to 20 December 2012. The longest entry was titled: The events of 15 November 2012.





PART 5


VALENTINE KETTERLEY



The events of 15 November 2012

I visited him in mid-November. It was just after four, a cold blue twilight. The afternoon had been stormy and the lights of the cars were pixelated by rain; the pavements collaged with wet black leaves.

When I got to his house I heard music playing. A requiem. I waited for him to answer the door to an accompaniment of Berlioz.