Piranesi(56)

Other people

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

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to show the House to someone. I used to imagine that the Sixteenth Person was at my side and that I would say to him such things as:

Now we enter the First Northern Hall. Observe the many beautiful Statues. On your right you will see the Statue of an Old Man holding the Model of a Ship, on your left is the Statue of a Winged Horse and its Colt.

I imagined us visiting the Drowned Halls together:

Now we descend through this Gash in the Floor; we climb down the fallen Masonry and enter the Hall below. Place your feet where I place mine and you will have no difficulty keeping your balance. The immense Statues that are a feature of these Halls provide us with safe places to sit. Observe the dark, still Waters. We may gather water lilies here and present them to the Dead …

Today all my imaginings came true. The Sixteenth Person and I walked together through the House and I showed her many things.

She arrived in the First Vestibule early in the morning.

‘Will you do something for me?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Anything.’

‘Show me the labyrinth.’

‘Gladly. What would you like to see?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Whatever you want to show me. Whatever’s most beautiful.’

Of course, what I really wanted to show her was everything, but that was impossible. My first thought was the Drowned Halls, but I remembered that Raphael did not love climbing, so I decided on the Coral Halls, a long succession of Halls extending south and west from the Thirty-Eighth Southern Hall.

We walked through the Southern Halls. Raphael looked relaxed and happy. (I was happy too.) With every step Raphael was looking around with pleasure and admiration.

She said, ‘It’s such an astonishing place. A perfect place. I saw some of it while I was looking for you, but I kept having to stop at the doors to write out the directions back to the minotaur room. It got very time-consuming and frustrating and of course I didn’t dare go too far in case I made a mistake.’

‘You wouldn’t have made a mistake,’ I assured her. ‘Your directions were excellent.’

‘How long did it take you to learn it? The way through the labyrinth?’ she asked.

I opened my mouth to say loudly and boastfully that I have always known it, that it is part of me, that the House and I could not be separated. But I realised, before I even spoke the words, that it was not true. I remembered that I used to mark the Doorways with chalk in exactly the same way that Raphael did and I remembered that I used to be afraid of getting lost. I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Is it all right to take photos?’ She held up her shining device. ‘Or is that not …? I don’t know, is that disrespectful in some way?’

‘Of course you may take photos,’ I said. ‘I took photographs sometimes for the Oth … for Dr Ketterley.’

But I was pleased that she had asked the question. It showed that she regarded the House as I did, as something deserving of respect. (Dr Ketterley never learnt this. He seemed incapable of it somehow.)

In the Tenth Southern Hall I made a detour to the Fourteenth South-Western Hall to show Raphael the People of the Alcove. There are (as I have explained before) ten of them and the skeleton of a monkey.

Raphael regarded them gravely. She gently rested her hand on one of the bones – the tibia of one of the males. It was a gesture conveying comfort and reassurance. Don’t be afraid. You are safe. I am here.

‘We don’t know who they are,’ she said. ‘Poor things.’

‘They are the People of the Alcove,’ I said.

‘Arne-Sayles probably murdered at least one of them. Perhaps he murdered all of them.’

These were solemn words. Before I could decide how I felt about them she turned to me and said with great intensity, ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.’

I was astonished, even a little alarmed. No one has ever been as kind to me as Raphael; no one has ever done more for me. That she should apologise seemed to me inappropriate. ‘No … No …’ I murmured and I put up my hands to fend off her words.

But she went on with a bleak, angry look on her face. ‘He’ll never be punished for what he did to you. Or for what he did to them. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing he can be charged with. Not without a lot of explanation that literally no one will want to believe.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I said that this is a perfect world. But it’s not. There are crimes here, just like everywhere else.’

A wave of sadness and helplessness washed over me. I wanted to say that the People of the Alcove had not been murdered by Arne-Sayles (though I have no evidence to support that assertion and the probability is that at least one of them was). Mostly I wanted Raphael to come away from them so that I could stop thinking of them the way she thought of them – as murdered – and go back to thinking of them the way I always had before – as good, and noble, and peaceful.

We continued on our way, stopping often to admire a particularly striking Statue. Our hearts grew lighter again and when we reached the Coral Halls, we refreshed ourselves with looking at their wonders.