Tomáš Zmeškal - A Love Letter in Cuneiform

“‘In yellow,’ she said. ‘It would be marked in yellow. But it would also be indicated in the legend.’ I asked again if there was any military land in our district. The answer was: no! I guess it was obvious what I was thinking, since without my even asking the lady went on to say that there were very specific laws and rules covering these things and they weren’t required to let me in. What they did there was their business. But everything had to be registered, that was the same all over the country, the laws were very strict on that. I went away satisfied, though at the same time a bit disappointed. I’d been looking forward to an adventure, but having learned there wasn’t actually supposed to be anything there, and having possession of the document to prove it, the risk involved in my operation had greatly diminished. I had proof in my bag that those soldiers had no business being there. I stopped by Steve’s one more time that afternoon and told him what I had found out. He shook his head and said it didn’t sound right to him. He also promised that if Martha called he would make something up, so she wouldn’t get worried. I could tell he was concerned, since he asked if everything was all right between us, meaning me and Martha. I said yes, but I didn’t know how to explain the feeling I had that she was hiding something from me, so I didn’t go into it.

“I left town that afternoon with a rough outline of the military compound drawn in pencil on the map. My plan was to come at it from behind, climb over the barbed wire, and enter one of the buildings. Everything went boringly according to plan. I turned off the road home, just as I had marked on the map, and reached the spot about a half hour after sunset. I was a few miles away from the barbed-wire fence. I drove all the way around the site, so none of the soldiers would see me, till I came to the opposite end of the barbed wire, where I had been with Martha before. I took out my equipment and double-checked it all again. Gloves and a heavy blanket to drape over the barbed wire. A rope, two flashlights, large and small knives in sheathes. Two pairs of shoelaces. Just in case! Two large thermoses of coffee. A camera. Two extra rolls of film. Clean underwear. Three pairs of socks. First-aid kit. I felt like I had everything an averagely competent botanist could need for an expedition like mine. I scoped it all out with binoculars. The perimeter was shaped like a large rectangle, with five elongated structures in the middle. They all looked the same. One of them had a square yellow sign on the corner with the letter H . Near one of the other buildings was some sort of electronic device. The only things I could make out, though, were two helicopters and a couple of antennas. A few men in uniform walked from one block to another while I watched through the binoculars.

“It got dark an hour after sunset. I put everything in a backpack, except for the flashlight and blanket, which I carried in my hands, and set out. When I got to the fence I crouched down, seeing a couple of people walking again from one building to another. The fence was more than ten feet high and topped with barbed wire. It took me two tries to drape the blanket over it. Then I pulled on my gloves and started to climb. It was harder than I expected. Even with the blanket, I ripped my pants on one of the barbs when I swung over the top. It looked easier in the movies. I realized I hadn’t practiced, or done any training at all. I jumped down and tried to pull the blanket off, so it wouldn’t be seen and attract any unwanted attention. In the process I sliced open the skin on my forearm through my shirt, on a wire I hadn’t noticed before. I took a bottle of disinfectant and a rectangular bandage out of my backpack on the ground. I unscrewed the bottle, poured disinfectant over the wound, screwed the cap back on, put the bottle back in the pack, and applied the bandage. Adventure in full swing, I concluded. Even had my first injury. At first I was going to leave the blanket, but then I decided to take it with me. As I sat there trying to stuff it into my backpack, I heard a metal sound. Startled, I pressed myself flat to the ground. A set of floodlights, which I hadn’t noticed till then, began coming on. I was sitting right underneath one of them. If anyone came out right now, I would be totally exposed. The lamps were mounted on the fence at intervals of about sixty yards. I noticed more lights, slowly beginning to shine in the darkness, attached to the faint outlines of buildings in the distance. They were about three hundred yards away. I took off toward them at a sprint. About halfway there I heard voices and dropped to the ground, trying not to breathe. The tension was starting to give me a headache. The voices traveled to the other side of the building. Then came the sound of a door closing and then silence. I got back up and ran to the nearest building. Creeping slowly around it, I noticed the buildings were arranged in a U-shape. I turned a corner and grabbed hold of a door handle. Locked. I tried the next one. The same. I moved on to another building. It had windows made of frosted glass so you couldn’t see in. Finally one of the doors swung open. I stepped inside and found myself in a hallway lined with doors on either side. All of them had an upper panel of clear, transparent glass. The lights were on in the two offices at the far end of the hallway. I tried the handle of the room nearest me. Locked. I moved down the hallway, trying every door. Finally, one of them opened. I went in and sat down on the ground so I couldn’t be seen from outside. I looked around the office. Two desks and a couple of electronic gadgets. On the other side of the office were some monitors with their screens turned away from me. From the hum and the glow, it was obvious they were on. Still hunched down, I crept across the room so I could get a look. At first I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at. Two of the five monitors had no signal, their screens showing just a grainy gray. The other three had what looked like feeds from a few different rooms, captured on security cameras. There was something odd about them. I looked one more time more closely. The first monitor, then the next … then again.

“I’d never seen my house before in black-and-white. At first I didn’t understand, and when it finally hit me, I was so startled I almost stood up. It couldn’t be. What I was looking at was my own home: my bedroom, my living room, my study. That’s impossible, I thought. The pillows on the sofa in the living room looked unfamiliar on the black-and-white screen, since in reality they were green. But I could tell it was them from the pattern. That was my bookcase, too. A monograph on the town of Assisi I had been paging through yesterday and forgot to put back on the shelf was right where I remembered seeing it this morning. Panic. There had to be some explanation for this, it was impossible. Laughter. It’s impossible because it’s unconstitutional. Paranoia. I’m a lousy, bungling adventurer and it’s too much for my brain to deal with it, so it’s throwing hallucinations at me! No, this isn’t possible, this is spying and that’s illegal. How come? Panic again. Pounding heart, sweaty hands, dry throat. How come?

“I started opening drawers. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual office stuff: staplers, erasers, pencils, pens. Some notepads. I crawled over to a long file cabinet and opened a drawer. Folders and binders. I opened one. Information about me. Another. The same. Paranoid visions squeezing my brain. No, it’s too much. Everything about me was in there. The first one had photos of me, the second one copies of my report cards from school. From first grade on. The files fell out of my hands. I was too weak to pick them up. I pulled another file out at random: copies of my scholarly articles on peonies and lilies. I didn’t get it. I opened another: descriptions and drawings to the tiniest detail of toys I played with as a child. I couldn’t take anymore. The air conditioning was turned off and I urgently needed to get outside into the air. I stumbled into the hallway. I didn’t care anymore whether anyone saw me or not. What was it all, anyway? I needed fresh air. I opened the door to the building, stepped outside, and realized I was shaking. I sat down on the ground in front of the door and stayed there like that.