CHAPTER 4

Unless the feeling I have is mistaken, someone is following me up the stairs to my apartment, always staying the same distance behind.

Now he is climbing the worn stone stairs and stepping out onto my landing, with its floor of red brick.

Now he is feeling his way along the wall, and now, right now, he must be reading my name on the door-plate, laboriously deciphering each letter in the dark.

I positioned myself in the middle of the room, looking towards the door.

Without knocking, he came in.

He took only a few steps towards me not saying a word.

That was the way one behaved when feeling at home.  Oddly, I found it quite natural that he acted as he did.

He put his hand into his case and took out a book. He spent a long time leafing through its pages as though saying goodbye.

The cover of the book was of metal, with indentations shaped like mystical symbols filled with enamel and small stones.

I could make out the title: IBBUR.

I automatically looked over the cover. Half of it was taken up with the large initial “I” in red and gold which was damaged at one edge.

He passed the book to me.  I was to repair it.

The initial was not attached as I had previously seen in old books; rather, it seemed to consist of two thin pieces of gold leaf welded together in the middle with their ends wrapped around the edges.

I opened the book and without thinking, began to read. I read on and on.

 The book was speaking to me, just as dreams can speak, only more clearly.

Words streamed from an invisible mouth, took on life and came towards me. They twisted and turned, changing their shapes like dancing girls in brightly colored dresses made of tissue paper. Each word, in turn, sank into the ground or turned into an iridescent haze in the air and vanished. Each hoped I would choose it and not bother to look at the next one. Some words strutted around like peacocks in shimmering garments, and their steps were slow and measured.  Others were like aged and tired drag queens, their eyelids painted purple and their wrinkles covered with an thick layer of greasy paint.

I looked past them to four grey figures with faces so ordinary, so devoid of expression, that it was impossible to remember them. I could only see them as my own eyes.

They accompanied a woman who was naked and the size of a bronze colossus. For a moment the woman stopped and bent down to study me.  She quietly pointed to the pulse in her left breast. Its throb was like an earthquake, and I sensed within her the life of a whole world awakening.

From the distance a wild, drunken procession was charging towards me. Among them was a man and a woman with their bodies clasped in ecstasy.  As I watched the entwined couple they transformed into a single figure, a hermaphrodite, male and female, sitting on a throne decorated with mother-of-pearl. The hermaphrodite wore a wooden crown with a red square at the front into which a worm had eaten a mysterious icon.

In a cloud of dust, a herd of small blind sheep trotted behind the hermaphrodite. The majestic creature kept the animals to feed the dancing horde.

Shapes came streaming from the invisible mouth which had arisen from graves, shrouds hiding their faces. They halted before me, suddenly letting their drapes fall to the ground. Fixating greedily on my heart they sent an icy shock through my brain that dammed my blood like a river into which huge boulders have fallen.

A man floated past. I could not see his face, but he was wearing nothing but flowing teardrops.

Strings of people danced past, laughing, ignoring me. An oddly dressed old man gave me a thoughtful passing look, then stepped back to stare at me as if I were a mirror. There was an eerie force in his contorted face that filled me with an irresistible urge to imitate him, to wink as he did, to shrug my shoulders and turn down the corners of my mouth. This man smelled of camphor and had the word, Randy, tattooed on his neck. He took me by the chin and shook me as though the oldness in me needed to be eradicated.  I was sad when he was pushed aside by other figures impatient to show themselves to me. 

The final display was a squadron of soldiers that I can only describe, based on the their dress, shields and spears, as Roman. They marched in a tight formation lead by a solitary figure.  He was a handsome man no more than 25.  He stopped before me and cupping my face with his hands, kissed me deeply. All fear dissolved from my being. His message was that I was home, that he would always protect me.  Looking into me with his green eyes, he said his name was Argol.

The parade had been like a strings of pearls slipping along a silk thread, notes of a melody pouring from the invisible saxophone. It was no longer a book speaking to me, it was a chant. A chant that wanted something from me which I could not understand, however hard I tried. A chant that tormented me with burning, incomprehensible questions.

I had read the entire book and was still holding it in my hands, and yet I felt as if I had been searching through my brain rather than through a book.

I understood everything the book revealed within myself all my life, only it had been obscured and forgotten. My knowledge had kept itself hidden from my conscious mind until this day.

I looked up. Where was the man who had brought me the book?

Will he return when it’s repaired? I could not remember him saying where he lived. I tried to recall his appearance, but failed.

What had he been wearing? Was he old, was he young? What had been the color of his hair?

I could not remember anything. Every image I tried to conjure up disintegrated, even before it properly fixed in my mind. I closed my eyes and pressed my hand against my lids in an attempt to catch just one tiny scrap of his face.

Nothing, nothing.

I glanced at the book on the table and tried to remember the hand that went with it, that had taken it out of his case and handed it to me. I could not even remember whether it was a young or old hand.

I no longer remembered who I was. A priest seemed to hold me and I wanted to touch him with my hand, but my hand would not obey me. Instead it reached for the book, it touched IBBUR.

-

Then, without warning, I was shocked to discovered I was myself again, Charles Bobuck. What a strange name.

I was shaking with terror, my heart was pounding and I knew that fingers had been poking through the crevices of my brain. Those fingers were gone now, but I could still feel the chill of their touch at the back of my head.

I realized that man was a negative, an invisible mold into which I could slip.

In the drawer of the desk I kept a safe box for valuable jewelry I was repairing. I decided to lock the book away and only take it out again when this uncomfortable mental derangement had passed. Only then would I set about repairing the broken “I.”