Patrick Flanery - I Am No One

‘I appreciate it. Thank you very much. It’s — no, I don’t think you’re wrong.’

I turned the corner and scanned the street ahead to see if there was any likely person, but 59th was curiously deserted and I hurried through the cold to the subway, looking over my shoulder as I walked, feeling certain that the man, whoever the watcher might be, had waited for me to pass and was now tailing me, ducking into doorways the moment he noticed me starting to turn. Though the black man outside the liquor store was certainly not crazy, I began to feel my own mind beginning to fray at the edges, or rather it would be more accurate to say that I began to be conscious, perhaps for the first time in my life, of the boundaries of my own sanity, such that I felt I was walking a border and could see another, wilder territory just within reach. The most alarming thing about this experience or realization or epiphany was that there was no discernible barrier between sanity and insanity, all it would take is a single step across the demarcating line and yet I knew, just as clearly, that while it is all too easy to defect out of sanity, just as simple as taking a step, to go back in the other direction and regain the territory of sanity, to leave the realm of insanity, which totally encompasses its more rational neighbor, a kind of perforated state where insanity is the largest of the two territories and sanity merely the unaffiliated enclave within it, a Vatican or San Marino of the mind (or indeed a West Berlin surrounded by the menace of the German Democratic Republic), would require an effort only the superhuman might be capable of achieving. Allow myself to step over the border and leave the kingdom of sanity and I might never manage to return.

The question I faced was who to tell. I feared telling Meredith and Peter, worrying they would think I had lost my mind until the results from the scan came back and even then it might take going to a psychiatrist to convince them I was not suffering from any class of delusion.

Having returned home, I sat down at my desk and tried to think as clearly as possible about the events of the previous few days and to look at my own psyche, if such an act is possible, so as to assess whether I might be going crazy. The boxes of paper containing a history of my recent life online, all the sites visited, all the emails sent, seemed to militate against any conclusion that I might be insane, but I wanted nonetheless not to rule it out. Was it possible I had sent the boxes to myself? Was it possible I had somehow saved the complete browsing histories of all my computers over the past several years, dumped those histories into a single word-processing document, printed it out in the department, boxed it up, addressed it, and arranged with a courier service to deliver the boxes to my apartment without now having any memory of such actions? I could, I suppose, find a surveillance record of the time I had spent in my university office — security camera footage, card access records, etc. If it could be proved that I had spent long hours there in the previous week, say on Friday night, and if I had no memory of putting in such long hours at my office then it is possible that I did this myself. Or, and here was another possibility: my memory of looking at the pages and seeing their contents was itself a fabrication.

I returned to the papers, which I had repacked in their boxes, to be certain they were not, in fact, blank. With both relief and horror I confirmed they were as I remembered them being, though that still left me with the possibility I might have generated them, that I — another I from the I now writing, from the I who sat at his desk on the day before Thanksgiving — was either presenting them to myself — the myself that is the me now writing, some weeks later, the me I call myself at my desk puzzling over the contortions of my life — as a kind of record keeping, or a taking stock, or a warning, or a reminder of that which I have tried, actively, to forget. As I stared at one of the densely printed pages, an image began to emerge, a fragmentary arc, two arcs, a strong dividing line, the rolled silk of a mouth, but when I held it up and stood at arm’s length from the image I could no longer see the face that had been there a moment earlier.

Turning away from myself, trying to ignore the possibility that either I was going crazy or someone was persecuting me, I listened to the headlines on the radio. An Egyptian prosecutor had charged two activists for protesting against the anti-protest law, while a number of others had been detained. Further revelations from American whistle-blowers suggested the NSA has been gathering information about the online sexual habits of a number of Islamist leaders in the hopes, one suspects, of demonstrating to followers of these men that because they have a taste for pornography they should not be taken seriously, though it remains unclear whether the NSA has attempted to use the information they have discovered. Meanwhile, the United Nations is moving forward with a resolution drafted by Germany and Brazil asserting that all citizens have the right not to be subjected to the unwarranted surveillance of their own or any other government. How, I wondered, would ‘unwarranted’ be defined? In strictly legal terms, meaning that a warrant would always be required? Or in a broader sense, as in unjustified or unfounded as well as being unauthorized by a court? Where does the authority of a court stand in a country that has allowed its intelligence services to operate outside the law?

It was late afternoon when the phone rang from the front desk and Ernesto, who was then on duty, told me a package had arrived. Not another one, I thought, but I went downstairs and with a sickening shudder in my heart saw a box just like the first two.

‘Can you tell me who dropped it off?’ Ernesto was slumped behind the reception desk. I have to admit I have trouble keeping these young men straight, Ignacio and Rafa and Manu and Ernesto, they are so much alike to my eye, except for the few very fat ones, Jorge and DeJuan, all of them polite and respectful, all of them unfailingly pleasant and friendly, so much so that on my loneliest evenings I am sometimes tempted to come sit in the lobby, little seating though there is, and spend an hour or two shooting the breeze with whoever might be on duty, if only I could be assured that none of my colleagues or graduate students might chance to see me there, appearing both needy and grateful for the conversation of a doorman. ‘Was it a bike messenger? I think the last package I had was a bike messenger delivery.’

Ernesto shook his head. ‘This guy, he just comes in and puts it down on the desk without even saying nothing. Really rude. No hello and no goodbye. I mean that’s just weird, ain’t it? I was all, “have a nice day,” but dude didn’t even look back, just ran out the door.’

‘Did he actually run?’

‘You know, in a manner of speaking. He was walking fast, I guess, but it’s cold, so. .’ He paused, as if there might be more.

‘But?’

‘Nah, I don’t know. It’s just, this day and age, you don’t drop a box like that in a lobby and not say nothing. How do we know what’s inside? And if the guy looks like he’s in a hurry and there’s no return address and no postage, then you kinda wonder. That’s why I phoned you.’

‘You mean it might be a bomb.’

Ernesto sat back in his chair as if the idea had not occurred to him until I said it.

‘You think we oughta call campus police?’

I lifted the box and considered the possibility that it might blow up in my face. It was the same weight as the first two packages, more or less, and when I shook it — rolling on the casters, Ernesto pushed his chair away from me — there was nothing to suggest it contained anything capable of causing physical damage.