When one looks at the illusions of the world, one sees only the world. For where does illusion end? Indeed, what is there in life that is not a conjuring trick? From the petrifactions that men find on the seashore to the Geissler tube recently seen at the Royal Society, all about us seems filled with fancies and wonders. As Robert-Houdin has built automata with which to produce his illusions, I shall here propose to create an automaton of mind, through which one may see illusions and realities beyond; from which one, if he knows how, may spring into the automata of all minds and their electricity. We may ask what illusion is, and what form may it take, when it is so easy to dive into its depths, like a fish into a pool, and when the ripples that emerge are not ripples of illusion nor ripples of reality but indeed the ripples made by the collision of both worlds; the world of the Conjuror and the world of His audience.
Perhaps I mislead the reader by talking of the Conjuror in this manner. Let the creator become curator! And we creatures who live on in the dreams of a world made of our own thought; as we name the beasts and barnacles who creep on and cling to this most precious and mysterious earth; as we collect them in our museums, we believe ourselves curators. What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon. And beyond this is not truth but what we have made truth; yet this is a truth we cannot see.
Can this place – this place where dreams and automata are one, where the very fibres of being are conjured from memories no more real or unreal than the dream in which we may observe them, and fish with noses and jaws and skin made only of thought play on the surface of the pooled fancies of our maker – can this place be real, created as it is in Aristotle’s metaphora? Indeed, for it is only in the logos of metaphora that we are to find the protasis of the past, that glorious illusion which we call memory, that curtain of destiny, drawn tightly over the conscious mind but present in every fibre of being, from sea-creature to man, from pebble to ocean, as Lamarck and E. Darwin have maintained. Can this place be real? Perhaps not. For this reason, it is only as fiction that I wish this work to be considered.
T. E. Lumas, July 1892
I see ahead a time-wrought shore;
A fishing boat lifts on a wave;
No footprints on the sandy floor,
Beyond – an unfamiliar cave.
Or – forest tree’d with oak and yew
A dark mare waits to carry me,
Where nothing stirs yet all is true,
A cabin door and here – the key!
Perhaps I’ll wander in a field,
With poppy-flush on carpet green:
However thought has been concealed
No sleeper’s eye can now undream.
In any place that I take flight
The dark will mutate into light.
I finish reading the preface at about nine o’clock. ‘It is only as fiction that I wish this work to be considered.’ That’s how the preface ends. What does that mean? Surely anyone would read a novel as fiction, anyway?
The main narrative begins with a businessman, Mr. Y, visiting a fairground in the rain. But I don’t read properly now. Instead I skim the first couple of chapters, reading the odd sentence here and there. I like the first line: ‘By the end I would be nobody, but in the beginning I was known as Mr. Y.’ I keep flicking through the book until I reach the end (which, of course, I don’t read), mainly just because I like the feel of the pages, and then I turn back to the first chapter. It’s while I’m flicking backwards that I see it. There’s a page missing from the book. Between the verso page 130 and the recto page 133 there is simply a jagged paper edge. Pages 131 and 132, two sides of one folio page, are missing.
I don’t quite believe it at first. Who would want to rip a page out of The End of Mr. Y like this? Is it simply vandalism? I carefully check the rest of the book. There are no other missing pages, nor any other obvious sign that somebody wanted to damage it. So why rip out a page? Did someone not like that page? Or did they steal it? But if you were going to steal a page from a book, why not steal the whole book? It’s too confusing. I shiver, wishing it would heat up in here.
Downstairs, I hear the squeal of the main door that suggests Wolfgang is back. Then, a few seconds later, there’s a soft tap at my door.
‘It’s open,’ I call, putting The End of Mr. Y away.
Wolfgang is small and blond and was born in East Berlin. I don’t think he ever washes his hair. Today, he’s wearing what he always wears when he plays at the hotel: a pair of pale blue jeans, a white shirt and a dark blue suit jacket. When I first met Wolfgang, on the day I moved into this flat, he told me he was so depressed he couldn’t even get the enthusiasm together to kill himself. I became worried and started doing small, life-enhancing things for him, such as making him soup and offering to bring him books from the university library. For ages he said yes to the soup and no to the books, but recently he’s been asking me for poetry: Ginsberg and Bukowski mainly.
As Wolfgang walks into the flat, I keep thinking of Lumas’s words: ‘Of life, as of dreams.’ Shall I tell Wolfgang about the book? Perhaps later.
He grins at me sadly. ‘Oh, well. I’m rich in one universe. Are you cooking baked potatoes for me?’
The ‘rich in one universe’ thing is something I told him. It’s what the Russian physicist George Gamow said after he lost all his money in an American casino. It means that, as usual, Wolfgang has gambled his tips away in the hotel casino. In a parallel universe, perhaps, some other version of him has won thousands of pounds.
‘Mmm,’ I say back. ‘Potatoes with …’ I look around the kitchen. ‘Olive oil, salt. Um … I think I’ve got an onion somewhere.’
‘Great,’ he says, sitting at the kitchen table and pouring some slivovitz. ‘Gourmet.’ This is a joke between us. Very gourmet is worse, and implies a meal costing almost nothing. I can do something very gourmet with lentils; Wolfgang’s very gourmet meals usually include fried cabbage.
I open the oven and take out the potatoes. ‘I suppose you could say I’m rich in one universe, too,’ I say, through the steam and heat. I put the baking tray on the counter and smile at Wolfgang.
He raises a blond eyebrow at me. ‘You’ve gambled also?’
‘No.’ I laugh. ‘I bought a book. I’ve got about five quid left until the magazine pays me at the end of the month. It was … it was quite an expensive book.’
‘Is it a good book?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes …’ But I still don’t want to tell him about it just yet. I start slicing the onion. ‘Oh – the university fell down today as well.’
‘It fell down?’ He laughs. ‘You blew it up? No. How?’
‘OK, well, it didn’t exactly all fall down, but one building did.’
‘A bomb?’
‘No. A railway tunnel. Under the campus. It all kind of collapsed inside, and then …’
Wolfgang downs his drink and pours another. ‘Yes, I see. You build something on nothing and then it falls down. Ha.’ He laughs.