Piranesi(59)

‘A lot of missing people turn up at seaside places,’ he muses. ‘It’s the sea, I suppose. It has a soothing effect.’

‘It certainly did on me,’ I say.

He smiles cheerfully at me. ‘Excellent,’ he says.

Matthew Rose Sorensen has reappeared

ENTRY FOR 27 NOVEMBER 2018

Matthew Rose Sorensen’s mother and father and sisters and friends all ask me where I have been.

I tell them what I told Jamie Askill: that I was in a house with many rooms; that the sea sweeps through the house; and that sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.

Matthew Rose Sorensen’s mother and father and sisters and friends tell each other that this is a description of a mental breakdown seen from the inside; an explanation they find reasonable, perhaps even reassuring. They have Matthew Rose Sorensen back – or so they believe. A man with his face and voice and gestures moves about the world, and that is enough for them.

I no longer look like Piranesi. There are no coral beads or fishbones in my hair. My hair is clean and cut and styled. I am clean-shaven. I wear the clothes that were brought to me out of the storage in which Matthew Rose Sorensen’s sisters had placed them. Rose Sorensen had a great number of clothes, all meticulously cared for. He had more than a dozen suits (which I find surprising considering that his income was not large). This love of clothes was something he shared with Piranesi. Piranesi frequently wrote about Dr Ketterley’s clothes in his journal and lamented the contrast with his own ragged garments. This, I suppose, is where I differ from both of them – from Matthew Rose Sorensen and Piranesi; I find I do not care greatly about clothes.

Many other things were delivered to me out of storage, the most important being Matthew Rose Sorensen’s missing journals. They cover the period from June 2000 (when he was an undergraduate) until December 2011. As for the rest of his possessions, I am getting rid of most of them. Piranesi cannot bear to have so many possessions. I do not need this! is his constant refrain.

Piranesi is always with me, but of Rose Sorensen I have only hints and shadows. I piece him together out of the objects he has left behind, from what is said about him by other people and, of course, from his journals. Without the journals I would be all at sea.

I remember how this world works – more or less. I remember what Manchester is and what the police are and how to use a smartphone. I can pay for things with money – though I still find the process strange and artificial. Piranesi has a strong dislike of money. Piranesi wants to say: But I need the thing you have, so why don’t you just give it to me? And then when I have something you need, I will just give it to you. This would be a simpler system and much better!

But I, who am not Piranesi – or at least not only him – realise that this probably wouldn’t go down too well.

I have decided to write a book about Laurence Arne-Sayles. It is something that Matthew Rose Sorensen wanted to do and something that I want to do. After all, who knows Arne-Sayles’s work better than me?

Raphael has shown me what Laurence Arne-Sayles taught her: how to find the path to the labyrinth and how to find the path out again. I can come and go as I please. Last week I took a train to Manchester. I took a bus to Miles Platting. I walked through a bleak autumn landscape to a flat in a tower block. The door was answered by a thin, ravaged-looking man who smelt strongly of cigarettes.

‘Are you James Ritter?’ I asked.

He agreed that he was.

‘I’ve come to take you back,’ I said.

I led him through the shadowy corridor and when the noble minotaurs of the first vestibule rose up around us, he started to cry, not for fear, but for happiness. He went immediately and sat under the great marble sweep of the staircase; the place where he used to sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the tides. When it was time to leave, he begged me to let him stay, but I refused.

‘You don’t know how to feed yourself,’ I told him. ‘You never learnt. You would die here unless I fed you – and I can’t take on that responsibility. But I’ll bring you back here whenever you want. And if ever I decide to come back for good, I promise I will bring you with me.’

The body of Valentine Ketterley, magician and scientist

ENTRY FOR 28 NOVEMBER 2018

The body of Valentine Ketterley, magician and scientist, is washed by the tides. I have placed it in one of the lower halls accessed from the eighth vestibule and I have tethered it to the statue of a half-reclining man. The statue’s eyes are closed; he is possibly asleep; thick snakes and serpents entwine themselves heavily with his limbs.

The body is contained in a sack of plastic netting. The mesh of the netting is wide enough for fish to poke their mouths in, and birds their beaks; it is fine enough that none of the small bones will be lost.

I estimate that in six months’ time the bones will be white and clean. I will gather them up and take them to the empty niche in the third north-western hall. I will place Valentine Ketterley next to the biscuit-box man. In the middle I will place the long bones tied together with twine. On the right I will place the skull. On the left I will place a box containing all the small bones.

Dr Valentine Ketterley will lie with his colleagues: with Stanley Ovenden, Maurizio Giussani and Sylvia D’Agostino.

Statues again

ENTRY FOR 29 NOVEMBER 2018

Piranesi lived among statues: silent presences that brought him comfort and enlightenment.