Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

“That’s what I explained to the other one,” Etcher answered.

“Did you take them?” the priest said. Something was funny in his voice.

“We’ve gone over this,” Etcher told them, shifting in his chair to indicate the priest he had spoken to in the other office, who was now standing behind him in the doorway. “Didn’t we go over this?” he said. The priest in the doorway wrung his hands in response. “We went over this,” Etcher said to the head priest with impatience.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” the head priest said.

“Yes. I’ve taken the books.”

“Where are they?”

“I have them.”

“The police are on their way to your unit at this very moment, to find the books.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t keep them there, would I?” Etcher said.

“We’ll check the unit where you used to live with your wife,” the priest said. “We’ll check the Hurley woman’s residence as well.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Etcher snapped. “The books aren’t in any of those places — you can turn them upside down for all I care. I would have expected,” Etcher said to the head priest, “that at least you had figured it out. I would have expected that at least you knew there’s been a change.”

“You don’t know what those books are.”

“Of course I don’t know what they are. Who’s more dangerous, a man who knows he’s carrying a bomb or a man who doesn’t? The man who knows, and has to get rid of the bomb as soon as possible, because he realizes that any moment it’s going to go off? Or the man who doesn’t know and is walking around without a concern in the world, while the bomb ticks away in his suitcase? The chaos of the situation lies in his ignorance, because he doesn’t know enough about the situation to get the hell out before it’s too late, to give up his control of the situation before it’s too late. Look.” He took his glasses off and put them on the crescent table. He raised his fists above his head and brought them down, smashing the glasses.

The priests sitting around the outer rim of the crescent table cried out, covering their faces with their arms. Their white robes sparkled with slivers of glass and blood. Etcher raised his hands to his face; in the blur of his vision he could make out only the smear of red on his fingers. He lifted his eyes to the white of the room, to the vibrating hum of the sea: it was the light he’d been running for, here in front of him. He could barely make out the priests; the white blur of them wasn’t nearly as impressive as the smear of red. Reaching across the table he wiped his hands on the head priest’s robes.

In the heat of their shock, which he felt on his brow, he heard the gasp of history. He heard history open its mouth and silently gape, no sound coming from it, only the silence that consumed everything around it. If there had been a sound it could have been a cry, it might have been a laugh, most likely it would have been the utterance in which a cry is indistinguishable from a laugh. In a city that lay outside of history, in a church that presumed itself unthreatened by the collision of time and memory that named its own truth, it was the joke of their arrogance that they presumed history might be locked away in a room without a single guard. They presumed their power was such that no one would ever turn a key and walk in and carry history out under his arm. What they now wouldn’t have given to have placed a guard by the door. What they now wouldn’t have given to have put on an extra padlock. What they now wouldn’t have given for a bell that rang in alarm, or a whistle that blew; and what they wouldn’t have given to have entertained a single thought that once told them, Perhaps our hold on history is not so secure or inviolable. Perhaps our confidence in God isn’t so justified. None of them said anything at this particular moment. Maybe they tried to say something and Etcher simply couldn’t, in the blur of his new freedom, see the contortions of their shock or insult.

“I have to go,” he explained, turning to leave. It was almost an afterthought when, pausing in the doorway, he said, “I’ll be back when Sally’s better. When I think it’s the right time, I’ll return the books.” He walked down the hall, took the lift to the lobby, and left the Church and the rock behind him.

He found her alone when he got home. The doctor was gone. As far as he could tell, no police had searched the premises. She was alone in her bed, just barely revived by her terror. The curtain of the window was cracked, the sun had shone in her eyes all afternoon; she hadn’t the strength to move where she lay, let alone get up and close the curtains. Now Sally, sensing a presence, barely raised her head from the pillow to see who else was in the room. Etcher knelt at her side. Her yellow eyes, circled in black, welled with tears. He had to lean very close to hear her, putting his ear to her lips, when she whispered her first words in days. She said, “I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid,” he answered.

She said something else. He leaned so close he was afraid she’d smother beneath him.

“What?” he said.

He could hardly hear her when she asked, “Am I going to die?”

“No,” he told her.

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Am I going to get better?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I’m going to get better.”

“I promise.”

“Are you sure?” she cried, the smallest of cries.

“Yes.”

He went to the window. Outside he could see the blur of Cecilia and Polly playing in the circle. Polly looked up just as Etcher was peering out the window. She ran to the door; Etcher opened it. The little girl stood in the doorway awhile and looked at the woman on the bed who was her mother. She was afraid to approach, and then Sally turned slightly, slightly raised her hand to her little girl, slightly called her little girl’s name. Polly ran to her side. Tears ran down Sally’s face. She thought she remembered something somewhere far in the past when she was a little girl herself, a dying mother in a house far away, beckoning her children to her. But she didn’t see how she could have a memory of anything like that, other than in a dream.

When Polly had gone with Cecilia, Etcher drew the curtain closed. He went to the door and bolted it. He piled all the furniture in front of it — the dresser and table, the chairs, Polly’s toy chest. The night came. Etcher took off his clothes and got in bed next to Sally and put his arms around her.

Come on then, he said to the door in the dark. Come on, he said in the dark, where he was freest of all, his phony vision left behind him in shards of glass, caught in the robes of phony priests. He no longer needed to see her to know who she was, the woman in his arms. He no longer needed to see her to know she was beautiful or afraid. Come on, he said to whoever would come through this door, to priests and police, to her child or the father of her child. He said it to the city and to history, to memory and the future. He said it to God, he said it to Death. Come on, and try to take her.

This continued the next night, and the next and the next. It continued through the fever, through the horrible chills and the flashing heat. It continued through the wet sheets that Etcher washed and hung to the obelisk in the center of the circle, along with Polly’s chartreuse and purple dogs. It continued through the sirens, morning and twilight. It continued for five nights, until finally someone knocked on the door. For some time the knocking continued and Etcher didn’t answer. He didn’t rise from the bed until, from the depths of her delirium, Sally cried out, “He’s here.”