Piranesi(57)

Though the Coral Halls are dry now, it appears that at one time they were flooded with Sea Water for a long period. Coral has grown there, changing the Statues in strange and unexpected ways. One may see, for example, a Woman crowned with coral, her Hands transformed into stars or flowers. There are Figures horned with coral, or crucified on coral branches, or stuck through with coral arrows. There is a Lion enmeshed in a cage of coral and a Man holding a Little Box. The coral has grown so profusely over his Left Side that half of him appears to be engulfed in red-and rose-coloured flames, while the other half is not.

Late in the afternoon we returned to the First Vestibule. Just before we parted Raphael said, ‘I love the quiet here. No people!’ She said the last part as if it were the greatest advantage of all.

‘Don’t you like the people in your own Halls?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘I like them,’ she said, with no very great enthusiasm. ‘Mostly I like them. Some of them. I don’t always get them. They don’t always get me.’

After she had gone, I thought about what she had said. I cannot imagine not wanting to be with people. (Though it is true that Dr Ketterley was sometimes annoying.) I remembered how Raphael had wondered which of the People of the Alcove had been murdered and how the simple fact of her posing the question had made the whole World seem a darker, sadder Place.

Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not. Perhaps that is what Raphael means.

Strange emotions

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

I once wrote in my Journal:

It is my belief that the World (or, if you will, the House, since the two are for all practical purposes identical) wishes an Inhabitant for Itself to be a witness to its Beauty and the recipient of its Mercies.

If I leave, then the House will have no Inhabitant and how will I bear the thought of it Empty?

Yet the simple fact is that if I remain in these Halls I will be alone. In one sense I suppose I will be no more alone than before. Raphael has promised to visit me, just as the Other visited me before. And Raphael really is my friend – whereas the Other’s feelings towards me were mixed, to say the least. Whenever the Other left me he went back to his own World, but I did not know that at the time; I thought that he was simply in another Part of the House. Believing that there was someone else here made me less lonely. Now, when Raphael returns to the Other World, I will know that I am alone.

And so for this reason I have decided to go with Raphael.

I have returned all of the Dead to their allotted places. Today I walked through the Halls as I have done a thousand times before. I visited all my most beloved Statues and as I gazed on each one, I thought: Perhaps this will be the last time I look on your Face. Goodbye! Goodbye!

I leave

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

This morning I fetched the small cardboard box with the word AQUARIUM and the picture of an octopus on it. It is the box that originally contained the shoes Dr Ketterley gave me. When Dr Ketterley told me to hide Myself from 16, I took the ornaments out of my hair and placed them in the box. But now, wanting to look my best when I enter the New World, I spent two or three hours putting them back in, all the pretty things that I have found or made: seashells, coral beads, pearls, tiny pebbles and interesting fishbones.

When Raphael arrived, she seemed rather astonished at my pleasant appearance.

I took my messenger bag with all my Journals and my favourite pens and we walked towards the two Minotaurs in the South-Eastern Corner. The shadows between them shimmered slightly. The shadows suggested the shape of a corridor or alleyway with dim walls and, at the end of it, lights, flashes of moving colour that my eye could not interpret.

I took one last look at the Eternal House. I shivered. Raphael took my hand. Then, together, we walked into the corridor.





PART 7


MATTHEW ROSE SORENSEN



Valentine Ketterley has disappeared

ENTRY FOR 26 NOVEMBER 2018

Valentine Ketterley, psychologist and anthropologist, has disappeared. The police have made inquiries and discovered that before his disappearance he made some unusual purchases: a gun, an inflatable kayak and a life-jacket – purchases that his friends all agree were completely out of character: he had never shown any inclination to be waterborne before.

None of these items has been found in his house or office.

The police think that possibly he used the inflatable kayak to travel to a remote spot and then used the gun to kill himself; but there is one officer, a man called Jamie Askill, who has a different idea. He believes that the sudden and unexpected disappearance of Dr Ketterley must be linked in some way to the sudden and unexpected reappearance of Matthew Rose Sorensen. Askill’s theory is that Ketterley imprisoned Rose Sorensen somewhere, in the same way that Ketterley’s one-time supervisor and tutor, Laurence Arne-Sayles, imprisoned James Ritter years before. Ketterley’s motive, thinks Askill, was the same as Arne-Sayles’s: to manufacture evidence of Arne-Sayles’s Theory of Other Worlds. Ketterley became alarmed when the police uncovered the link between himself and Rose Sorensen. Faced with the exposure of his crimes, Ketterley let Rose Sorensen go and then killed himself.