#10e10

Three days passed until the first bridge was finished by the Lumberjack, whose favourite child had been stranded on the North side of the Rift. It wasn’t much of a bridge, a few ladders strapped together with tape and rope, but the Lumberjack, in a few of her signature stomps, crossed it easily; then she picked up her child and held him close. Others followed soon after, and so life continued; for the sake of convenience the town was now known as North and South; the Northern swimming pool was regarded by most as superior to the Southern, while the Southerners were lucky enough to possess a far better selection of restaurants, except of course for the well known  oyster bar, Marcella’s, that now, thanks to the Rift, boasted an unobstructed view of the newly created waterfall, and a good panorama of the hills, besides.

The Engineer, affronted by the shoddiness of the first bridge, soon got to work, and before long an elegant arching assembly spanned the narrowest section of the Rift, along the line of the Road to Heaven. The Engineer named it the ‘Bridge to North’: his house was in North. This upset the Southerners, and for the first week they refused to use the bridge, declaring instead that they would build a far superior ‘Bridge to South’ to be designed by the Physicist, whose mind was in all aspects a cut above the mind of the Engineer. The Engineer replied to the insult with a public notice proclaiming that work would soon begin on a guard tower, to prevent the sneaky Southerners from using his bridge after sunset, when, he knew, they had been coming over in swarms, like rats. The Physicist sent out a notice to the effect that of course the Engineer would know a rat, as a member of the family, and so the exchange of offences and the scale of the plans continued, until the Mason and the Lumberjack, fed up with the notices that were beginning to clog their mailboxes, declared that their would be no stone or lumber for any of the projects, that the bridge would be renamed ‘The Bridge’, and that that, with no further argument allowed, would be that. The Engineer and the Physicist both awaited the reading of their notices in response to the Mason and the Lumberjack’s declaration eagerly; when no further notices appeared in the mailboxes of their neighbours, they sent out another set of notices, accusing the Postmaster of purposely losing the previous notices; when these did not appear either, they united, briefly, to accuse the Postmaster in person. The Postmaster shrugged, said she had never seen the notices, and that, as for the sound of fluttering leaves that echoed up from the darkness of the Rift, well, wasn’t it autumn, after all?

It was a long time until the first person fell from The Bridge; a few weeks, a few months, a few years. In the end, to the surprise of the patrons of Marcella’s, who had begun a betting pool as to whom would be the first to go, it was not the Banker—that notorious drunk who had, so infamously, teetered along the left handrail of The Bridge, cackling, coins spilling from his pockets as he swayed. Nor was it the Geologist who, after originally rubbing her hands with glee at the prospect of explaining the phenomenon of the fissure, had now begun to display an exciting sort of madness as she hopped about at the edge of the canyon, alternating between bouts of furious work on her computer models, and bouts of quiet swearing. No; in the end it was neither of these, but instead the Lumberjack, a long outsider, a dark horse whose name, when it was announced to the crowd that had gathered at Marcella’s, brought wails from all except the Lion Tamer, who had, on a whim, put down the cost of a bottle of champagne on the late forester and found herself now in the possession of a fortune that outstripped even the Banker—that notorious drunk who, in a fit of cruelly calculated commerce, had put most of his money down on himself.

It eventuated that the Lumberjack had fallen into the abyss in a thoroughly uninteresting episode that was, nonetheless, recounted by all members of both North and South for some weeks afterwards. She had been on her way back from her weekly expedition to purchase ice from the Ice Maker, the two insulated sacks piled high in her hands, her stomping as confident as ever. On this particular occasion her favourite child had accompanied her, and it was he—his cries, as the sliver of ice he had suckled on slipped from between his lips—that distracted her. She twisted—the child was behind her on The Bridge—and the sacks tipped, toppling momentarily to the side. The tipping, it seemed, was enough to prevent her from seeing her feet, and so it was that as she twisted she stomped not on the empty ground, but instead on the toe of her favourite child, whose subsequent scream, combined with the capsize of the containers in her arms, served to stop her from finding her balance, and led instead to the rolling of that always confident ankle, the bumping of that always confident back against the railing and, a moment or two later, the plummeting of those always confident arms as they followed the leaden weight of the ice vertically, past the elegant arch of The Bridge and down, into the darkness, and out of the world. According to bystanders no scream came out of the pursed lips of the Lumberjack as she fell, but for days afterwards, whenever anyone sat next to the Rift for a while, they heard something like an echo of a sigh.

The hysteria that followed the incident was matched in its extraordinariness only by the utter ordinariness of the event itself. The Banker, wounded by his loss in the betting stakes, pronounced the Rift an Enemy of the People, and employed the Physicist and the Engineer—now good friends—to establish a plan of attack. The Artist created a striking illustration of The Fall, as it came to be known—the ice sparkling in the sunlight—and the Poet wrote a poem that, while less well received than the painting, still served to reinforce the general feeling of insecurity that pervaded North and South alike. The new Lumberjack was employed crafting guard railings for beds, for fear that people might slip into the Rift during their dreams; the Balloonist’s trade boomed as safety balloons became mandatory, and the Designer’s followed, as the ugly grey rubber of the miniature dirigibles was coloured, clothed and coutured, until the streets of the two towns looked, for all the world, like they were celebrating a floating Easter. The craze continued until a demonstration by the Lion Tamer—long known to all as the rival of the Balloonist—showed that the balloons did little but cause the plummeting body to spiral, and thus to be battered against the jagged sides of the chasm on the way down. Not long after the balloons were all, coincidentally, released by their owners at exactly the same time, creating a floating mosaic that covered the sun for half a day and was, by all accounts, quite beautiful.

Not long after the end of the balloon craze the Physicist and the Engineer returned, sheepishly, from their contemplation of the Rift. To the relief of the Geologist, they had not found the answers to the mystery of the chasm’s creation, and in fact had only come up with one, fairly lame, suggestion: that the guardhouse designed by the Engineer be now built, and then built again, that  the Guard and her apprentice be employed to watch over the crossing from these two mirrored guardhouses, and that the crossing be thus controlled, and made safe, by the limiting of passage across The Bridge to only one civilian at a time. The approach was described as ‘eminently reasonable’ by the Banker, who above all valued reason, and in similar terms by everyone else. Only the Mason resisted the plan, but she, deprived of the companionship of the Lumberjack, had fallen victim to old age, and died not long after. The new Mason, eager to gain the approval of two towns still in the grip of hysteria, worked speedily to make up for his master’s reticence; and thus it was that the twin guardhouses were built.

Life went on; the guardhouses were an annoyance—especially for the Southerners, the Guard  and her apprentice both coming from the North—but nonetheless an ‘eminently reasonable’ one, and there were no more falls. It was at this time, after the time of the Fall, and the building of the guardhouses, that the exploration of the Rift began in earnest. Before someone—someone real and human, someone like the Lumberjack—had entered that chasm, the Rift was an abstraction to the populace of North and South, existing even for the Geologist not as a physical entity, but as a metaphor. It existed in the many poems the Poet wrote about it, in the essays of the Philosopher; even in the zeroes of the mathematician, but it did not exist as a ‘something’, that could be traversed, or filled in, or fallen into. Before the Fall the Rift could have been a river of lava, or a pit of spikes, or a puddle of foul mud, without making any difference to the way the people of the two towns interacted with it. Now, though, it was clear to everyone that it was what it was, and what it was was a hole. A pit. A chasm. An abyss. It was a place where the normal world, the world of the ground, ended; it was an ending, a nothingness, and, possibly, it was more than that, because it was now that the Explorer put forward a radical idea: that the Rift could be a doorway to Somewhere Else.

The Astronaut jumped up from where she had been sitting to interject, to say loudly: no! A ridiculous idea, everyone knew that there was nothing down there but magma, mantle, and the asthenosphere—she turned to the Geologist and gesticulated, trying to elicit agreement; the Geologist shrugged and looked tired. The Explorer laughed at the Astronaut and told her she needn’t work herself up; he had no intention of invading her space—unless, of course, it was space that was down there… Again the Astronaut interjected, her face turning red, to yell that it was just like a slimy Northerner to find this sort of loophole, clearly the Explorer was in league with the Lawyer—the Northerners were planning to put her out of business, to—

At this point the crowd that had gathered exploded and arguments began to break out like hives. The Poet jumped up to agree with the Astronaut: the Northerners were trying to put him out of business too, it was the only explanation as to why his poem about the floating mosaic of the balloons—the Floating Mosaic of the Balloons—had failed to outsell the Artist’s latest work, also entitled the Floating Mosaic of the Balloons—which was an inferior product, clearly it was the Banker’s doing, that notorious drunk must have bought all the copies—

The Artist jumped up with a wounded look in her eyes and reproached the Poet, after all, they could be thought of as companion works, the poem was a wonderful accompaniment to the true Floating Mosaic of the Balloons—

At this point the Poet began shouting poetry, as the Banker stood up and accused the Southerners of planning this coup, they were after his bridge, they wanted to destroy the guardhouses all because of a minor inconvenience, despite knowing of the many lives that lives had been saved, despite knowing that the method he had come up with was  eminently reasonable—

The Engineer and the Physicist jumped up to protest: the idea had been theirs, and in fact they still had not received payment from the Banker for their work, he was an imposter, it was just like a Northerner to— By the end of the meeting the air in the streets of the two towns had balled up and turned white, like a fist. The Astronaut had announced that she would no longer go to North; the Artist had announced that she would no longer go to South; the Physicist and the Engineer had announced their intention to dismantle the guardhouses they had helped to build, and the Banker had declared that the entire Southern populace were nothing more than ‘terrorists and violent lunatics’ who must be stopped, ‘at great personal cost, requiring great personal valour, in the name of great personal reason.’ No one paid any attention to him—his speech stank of rum—but nonetheless it was clear  to all that the meeting had transformed the Rift into a wound.

Time passed, and the wound festered. For many life went on as it always had; perhaps the Baker no longer chatted to the Librarian as they waited in the line at The Bridge; perhaps the Brewer watched the Mathematician walk down the street without calling out a greeting; perhaps even the Pianist forgot to announce his concert to the Waiter—but what did that matter? The Waiter never came to the concerts anyway; the Baker was known for his failings when it came to small talk; and the Brewer and the Mathematician, well, they had never been close—and that was putting it lightly. So for most it was a small thing. They muttered about it; blaming Northerners for this; blaming Southerners for that, complaining when the Guard and her apprentice became stricter—they needed papers, now—but that was all. They muttered about it, but they muttered also about their aches, and the ants, and the weather, and so, for many, life went on.

For some, though, life had changed. The Rift had become a wound, certainly, but it was more than that. It was no longer just an obstacle, no longer just a ‘something’, but also, now, a concept, or perhaps, even, a paradigm. It was a way of understanding the world, and at the core of that understanding was the concept of the Rift as a boundary. Not a hurdle, not a hole, but a line, on a map. It had become a boundary that marked the end of Us and the start of Them, the place where ‘I’ ceased and ‘they’ started, an idea that cut out ‘here’ and ‘there’—because the map was not just a piece of paper, but an illustration etched onto the inside of the skull, and the Rift was not just a component of a definition, but the enabler of definition itself. To these people—the Poet, the Banker, and the Engineer were among them—the Rift had become a concept just as basic as the shoreline, that separated sea from land; the horizon, that separated earth from sky; and even the skin, that separated world from self. To these people, difference was now an absolute. And so it is to these people we can look, now, for an explanation of how the war began.

In the end it was the feud between the Explorer and the Astronaut that did it; it could also have been the feud between the Poet and the Artist, or the Engineer and the Banker, or, indeed, the Brewer and the Mathematician—their relationship had degenerated—but in any case it wasn’t, and  we are interested here in what was. For some time the Explorer had been working on a TV special—alongside the Producer, who lived in South but had refused to take sides in the feud—on his ongoing journey, further and further down, into the Rift. The show had largely been a failure, as so far all that been discovered was that the Rift was very deep, and that the walls were made of a different type of rock lower down to the type of rock they were made of higher up. Nonetheless, the show had made the Astronaut very angry. She had begun to stand follow the Producer to The Bridge in the mornings, yelling very loudly through her spacesuit that the Producer had betrayed them, the people of South, and that she, the Astronaut, would not stand for it any longer. The Producer would smile as she walked, and try to explain, and ask the Astronaut if she would like to talk things over, and that would make the Astronaut much angrier, and she would continue to yell until the inside of the visor of her space suit was covered in tiny flecks of spittle. For some time this continued—occasionally the people in the line on the Southern side of The Bridge would yell at the Astronaut, while at other times with her—until the day when the Astronaut found herself with more to say than usual, and tried to follow the Producer onto The Bridge. The Guard—who always sat in  the Southern guardhouse (her apprentice sat in the North)—stopped her. The Astronaut redirected her yelling towards the Guard, who calmly repeated that the Astronaut had no papers, and the Astronaut continued to yell and she yelled that she shouldn’t need papers, that the Guard was a  pompous Northerner who had no right to stop her, no right to tell her anything, after all wasn’t it a Southerner who had built The Bridge, and now the Guard chuckled and reminded her that the Engineer had been a Northerner when he built The Bridge, and the Astronaut chuckled back and yelled that of course this was evidence of the superiority of the Southern people, and the argument continued and the spit continued to coat the inside of the spacesuit until the Brewer, who had been next in line, and who had sampled too much of her own product the previous evening, finally pushed past both the Astronaut and the Guard and stepped out onto The Bridge.

The Guard scrambled after her, but now it was the Astronaut who blocked her way, and as the Guard’s apprentice scrambled to block the Brewer, and the Artist scrambled to block the Poet, and the Banker scrambled to climb the side of the bridge to pronounce them all ‘terrorists!’ the scramble became a brawl, and then the brawl became a fight, and then, when the Explorer produced the pistol that he carried during filming to toughen up his image and aimed it, shakily, at the Astronaut’s heart, it became a battle.

And thus, war. The two towns chose their colours, erected their fortifications, imprisoned those they suspected and conscripted those they did not. People fled, only to be banished; people were banished, only to flee; the shots from the cannons echoed down the walls of the Rift and the bodies were tipped into it, by the cartload. It was dull; it was awful; it was war.

And it lasted a long time. To understand how long you need to know only that we are leaving,  losing, drifting onward to a time when the Astronaut and the Explorer had long been forgotten; when the Banker was no longer a notorious drunk but a thin, cold Merchant of War; when Marcella’s was dust, beneath dust, beneath rubble. It was a time when the war had been going on for so long it was known only as The War, and it was all that was. There was no Poet, then; no Philosopher, no Geologist or Lumberjack or Mason; there were only those who made The War possible, and those who fought it. And forever, now, they had done nothing but.

There was a reason The War had lasted for so long; indeed, it was the same reason The War had begun in the first place. The Rift. The Rift ruled out any possibilities of positioning; it made strategy impossible; it reduced each skirmish to nothing more than the grinding of teeth against teeth, bone against bone. At the start of The War there had been attempts to build bridges in the dead of night, shooting grappling lines and whispers over the taut air of the chasm. The end of each attempt had been the same, as the screams of Soldiers pierced the darkness and were swallowed, beyond the starlight, by the darker darkness, below. Later there had been the maverick Generals who had led their forces out in wide arcs, hoping to ford the Rift at some imagined narrow point in the east, but when they arrived they found that the point was no narrower than anywhere else, and that, moreover, the enemy was waiting for them.

It was this, ultimately, that confounded the Strategists of North and the Tacticians of South, that saw each brilliant plan tumbling and flapping and screaming, down, into the chasm: the Rift was the ultimate high ground. It was always too wide, always too exposed, always too impossible. Three twitchy conscripts could hold any section of it against a thousand hardened veterans; ten daring kids could bring down an entire army; in short, any attempted crossing always resulted only in failure. And so the war continued.

Which brings us to the moment we have been brought to; the moment when the race between the Hero and the Hero began. The war had been going on forever. The people in North who suggested peace were hung from the walls as turncoats; the people in South who proposed a ceasefire were thrown into the Rift as traitors; the war had been going on forever. All attempts to cross the Rift existed only in the stories of the grandmothers, whose fathers, as little boys, had seen their aunts fall to their doom. The war had been going on forever. And then the idea of the Hero was born.

In North they said that the first Hero was a Northerner; in South they said the first hero was a Southerner; in both towns the truth was extinguished long ago. Who was first and who was second is not a matter we concern ourselves with: the fact is that there were two heroes, and they were both known only as the Hero. The Northern Hero was a woman with short silver hair and eyes that were always in shadow; she rode a pure black stallion. The Southern Hero was a woman with short silver hair and eyes that were always in shadow; she rode a pure black stallion. They were both known only as the Hero because they were both going to make their town the only town that remained; they were both known only as the Hero because they were both the only real Hero; they were both known only as the Hero because they were both going to find the end of the Rift, and thus give their army the ultimate advantage, and thus end The War.

They both began at the same time on the same day, a Wednesday in October, and they both set off in the same direction, heading east. From the beginning they were the fiercest of rivals, and as they watched them ride away both towns were in awe of their Hero’s skill: the Hero would jump her horse forward and fire an inescapable barrage from her carbine; the Hero would drop her horse below the volley and let off a deadly round from her pistol; the Hero would twist her horse round the bullets and lob a grenade with impossible accuracy; the Hero would fling the grenade back with unparalleled finesse; the—

And so it went on. The Heroes moved eastwards, still fighting, until they were beyond the hills and beyond the two town’s sight. They fought like dancers, and then they fought like killers, and then they fought like fighters and each moment of the fight was more incredible than the last because both were unbeatable; both were unmatched. They fought in the dust at sunset; they fought in the fog at dawn; they fought in the burning heat of the midday and their short silver hair glinted gold in the light of the sun and they fought on and on until their horses, both at the same time, collapsed from exhaustion, and then they fought over the bodies of their horses as the sun burned their scalps and the sweat dripped into the earth that was the colour of blood and they went on, leaving their horses behind, rolling and firing and grunting and sprinting along the line of the Rift until their guns, both at the same time, broke apart in their hands, and then they fought on with the shards of the metal from the barrels, the slivers spinning through the air and whistling like death, and when the metal was gone they fought with the sticks from the trees that they hurled like spears and that splintered into shrapnel in the places where their heads had just been, and when the forests ended they fought with the the stones that they tore from the earth and that they launched as if they were meteors that left craters in the dirt where their heads had just been, and their silver hair whipped in through the air, because it was longer now, and they fought on.

At last they came to the desert, the long desert, where there was nothing but nothing and sand, and even here they tried to fight, tried to sling it into their eyes and cut themselves apart with the grains, but it was sand, and the wind took it, and now there was no way to fight any more. And then they both collapsed and slept.

When they both awoke at the same time they both stared at each other, their gazes unknowable behind the shadows of their eyes. They were both in pieces. Their thighs had been battered by the horses; their hands had been torn by the metal; their shins had been smashed by the rocks, stomachs gashed by splinters, necks burned by the sun. They were both in pieces. They both began to run at the same time.

They were running to a point they had both seen as soon as they had awoken, a distant part of the Rift. They were running towards that distant point because it was different to all of the other parts of the Rift, and its difference was important, because its difference was that it was narrow. They sprinted, both broken, both faster than any other, both destined to get there first. Their silver hair streamed behind them; their feet barely touched the sand; they were both the fastest, both arrived first, both leapt before the other, both struck a deadly blow in mid-air, both dodged a clumsy strike, both landed, both turned, and both realised that they had now changed sides.

They stared at each other again. It was not possible for one of them to jump; with the other prepared, a jump would have been the same as a suicide. They stared at each for a moment longer. Then the Hero began to run, and the Hero began to jump. The Hero glanced back; the Hero  landed; the Hero continued running; the Hero began to pursue her enemy; the Hero ran faster than ever before; the Hero ran faster still; the Hero noticed a kink in the Rift; the Hero noticed a kink in the Rift; the Hero prepared to duck and send her enemy flying into the Rift; the Hero prepared to jump and kick her enemy into the Rift; the Hero kicked; the Hero ducked; the Hero flew over her enemy; the Hero watched her enemy fly over her; the Hero continued to fly and reached out her arms; the Hero swore as her enemy reached out her arms; the Hero grabbed the other edge of the Rift; the Hero prepared to jump after her enemy; the Hero lifted herself up from the edge; the Hero  began to jump; the Hero began to run; the Hero glanced back; the Hero landed; the Hero—

And thus it went. The Hero would become pursuer; the Hero would become pursued. With each leap the distance they soared grew ever more extraordinary; with each leap they would change sides again. Occasionally they stopped and fought with fists and knees and teeth; the Hero would gain the upper hand; the Hero would dodge the killing blow and run; the Hero would grunt and the pursuit would continue. It wasn’t long until they lost track of which side was which; the Rift was like a seam, now: all they did was follow the stitches.

Eventually the Rift grew wide again. They slept. When they woke their hair was very long, and they were hungry. They killed lizards and threw the tiny bones like darts. It was as they were eating the lizards that they began to speak. The Hero, realising she couldn’t defeat her enemy with strength alone, had decided to employ psychological methods—to that end, she began to tell the stories of her past deeds, to instil in her enemy a fear just as deadly as any wound. The Hero, in turn, had realised that what was necessary was distraction, a tiny slip, and so she began to tell the stories of her past deeds, to disturb her enemy, to create a moment of inattention that would become as fatal as the drop to the bottom of Rift itself.

And so they began to tell their stories, and they travelled, and when they could, they fought. When the Rift was narrow they were pursued and pursuer, changing sides and roles like the sand that shifted with the wind. When the Rift was wide they told their stories and tossed the poisoned needles that they made from their ever-growing silver hair.

The day came at last. Their hair trailed behind them, like two silver rivers. It was thin, and dirty. They were thin and dirty too. They were telling the stories of their past. For a long time now the Hero no longer told her own stories, but instead told the stories of her enemy, in an effort to confuse her. The Hero, in turn, did the same—though sometimes she told her own stories again, to further confound her rival. The Hero had long cottoned on to this particular trick, and employed it herself, alternating between stories that were hers, and stories that were the stories of her enemy. They both knew all the stories by heart; when they slept, it was the stories that made up their dreams. The Hero was telling of how she, the Hero, had once climbed the mountain to the south of North, and the Hero—who knew that her enemy was attempting to confuse her, because in fact it was she, the Hero, who had climbed the mountain to the north of South—was laughing, when she saw it. The Hero saw it at the same time, and at once they both began to run and their hair rushed like a torrent behind them and the Hero howled and the Hero roared and they both ran faster than they had ever run towards the reason they were howling and roaring and running and the reason they were howling and roaring and running was the end of the Rift.

‘You have nowhere to run now!’ shouted the Hero.

‘You can no longer escape me!’ the Hero called.

‘I will end this at last!’ yelled the Hero.

‘It will finally be over!’ the Hero screamed.

‘I will bring victory to…’ and the Hero frowned.

‘A triumph to…’ and confusion seemed to flicker behind the shadow of the Hero’s eyes.

‘I don’t remember…’

‘I can’t recall…’

‘North…?’

‘South…?’

And then the end of the Rift came, and the Heroes stared at each other, and instead of fighting, they were overcome by something they had never before experienced. Fear. They had no doubt that they could defeat their enemy; it was not a fear of death that gripped them, nor a fear of failure. It was the fear that, in winning, they might lose—that they might destroy themselves, by mistake, and walk away with the wrong self, return as the victor for the wrong side, and die, even as they triumphed. They were still absolutely sure of their abilities; they were no longer sure of the identity that commanded their use.

‘I’ll kill you…’ said the Hero, slowly—but she was no longer sure who ‘I’ and ‘you’ were.

But suffering is a thorny thing, and to hack our way through its tangles now would take more time than we have, so instead I thought we’d talk about ice cream. I went to the ice cream factory—you know the one, though it is old now, the chrome has become tarnished, and it no longer shines in the sun, as it did then. “Then”—it is perhaps worth mentioning that I, had she not been called I, would have been—though of course she still was—000 101 023 843. So, though a long way from where our time will take us, her time was not so far from our time. Now ice cream is nothing, but when the factory first came there were many who travelled to the factory to try it there, to see how the cream was iced, and to taste it. I was among those who travelled, with her class mates, on a Sunday, in the summer.

The ice cream factory was also the marshmallow factory, its location chosen for the mallow that hung down in thick sheets from the branches of the nearby forest. It was through this forest that I and her schoolmates walked that Sunday, laughing, spooling the mallow around their palms and tossing the wads at the birds, who scattered, only to be drawn back once the party had passed, to continue their feast. I didn’t join in the laughing and the tossing; she was twelve, and serious. She walked at the front of the party, alongside 000 101 023 847; he who would go on to be the fiercest of soldiers—this was a time of honour, and later there would be many soldiers—but who was, for now, a young boy, pulled in by her seriousness, and her strangeness. I never reciprocated his adoration, and we may be tempted to speculate that the bitterness of unrequited adoration led 000 101 023 847 to the sword, the mud, and, one day, the heart of the king—but that would be outside of our role, and we will not venture there. Our role is simply to say this: that the two walked at the head of the party, past the mallow trees, in silence. His mouth was open; hers was firmly shut.

I was feeling something like excitement as they approached the factory. It’s important, that ‘something like’, because again the way that I understood excitement was nothing like the way her classmates understood excitement. She had begun to notice this herself; when she did speak, which was not often, it was almost always to ask someone how they were feeling. Her interlocutor—normally the boy who clung so desperately to her side—would respond with something like “OK”, or “alright”, and she understand no better than before. In turn the boy, aware of the interest the object of his adoration had in feelings, would try to respond with better answers, concrete details, like the butterflies that somersaulted and dive-bombed through his stomach. But these in turn would only deepen the frown on his beloved’s brow, and in the end they would both be back to where they started; silent, frustrated, unsure.

It may be tempting to postulate that this early exposure to the difficulties of one being’s relationship to another—that is, the problem of expressing one’s self to another’s self—that is, the failure of the lingual in addressing the non-lingual; that is, the impossibility of all communication—turned the young man away from these complexities and towards the simplicity of honour, respect, and violence; that the unwitting alienation of I by her parents led in turn to the unwitting alienation of 000 101 023 847; that this, in turn, led to the young man’s love of the physical, the muscular, the simple joy of power; and that this, in turn, pushed that famous blade through the arteries of the king, cut the tendons of the neck, and tore that head—the same age as I, who died only three days after—from the royal anatomy that had borne it so beautifully, for so long. But to postulate in this way would, as has been already mentioned, be outside the realm of our duties, and so we will not venture there.

The question came to him on this particular day as they entered a clearing, recent, the ragged stumps of the mallow trees between the dirt-caked undersides of the newly upturned boulders. It was the same question as always, coming out of I’s mouth in the same way the words always came out of her mouth, as if it was the next question in a long line of questions their non-existent conversation had been following for the last, silent half-hour. How are you feeling, she asked, and he swallowed and jumped a little, prepared as he had been for her question but not, never, for her, for her words, the audible confirmation of her physical presence alongside him and simultaneously her confirmation of his presence which, for some time now, seemed to him to be nothing but an extension of her presence, a period at the end of her sentence, or perhaps not even a period, but only a comma. Once he had recovered himself he told her, biting his words as they rushed out of him, that he felt like a box full of ants with no lid, or, no a box full of fleas—but the moment was gone, she had frowned and turned her head to study the upturned boulders and the flattened scraps of mallow strewn around them. 000 101 023 847 swallowed again, this time swallowing the hot bitterness of disappointment, anguish, self-loathing; at the last minute he had decided that it was ants that he felt, not fleas, but now he saw that of course it had been fleas all along, ants didn’t get the point across at all, it was the fleas that made it come together…

I didn’t care about fleas or ants. Her excitement was something far off, existing for her only in the word ‘excitement’ and even in that word only barely, as if the letters were half-translucent, built out of smooth, small pieces of clouded glass like the shards she picked from the sea shore, every autumn. She had hoped, against hope, that 000 101 023 847 would say that he was just a little excited, or, better, yet, that he wasn’t excited at all, or, best, that he didn’t know excitement, hadn’t an idea of it, hadn’t known and had never known—but ants? Something so intense, wriggling and squirming and alive, a real feeling—that was beyond her, and always had been.

When they got to the factory they were greeted by a large woman with a larger moustache that extended beyond the boundaries of her head and gave the impression of something looming, something about to strike—though these impressions were lost on I, who thought only that the woman had a moustache much larger than was the fashion for the time. The woman led the school group through the various chambers of industry in single file, I having now moved to the back, 000 101 023 847 moving, like a shadow, just behind her. Visible in the woman’s silhouette as she was illuminated by the soft blue light that was at that time a byproduct of the marshing process, the ends of her moustache moved with her voice, as she rattled off the volumes of mallow marshed by the factory, the flavours with which the cream could with current technology possibly be iced, the many achievements of the conglomerate responsible for the factory’s origins, and so on. I considered asking her shadow if he had feelings towards the moustache but, unsure of the importance of that impressive sculpture of hair and wax, she kept her mouth shut. 000 101 023 847 did not have feelings towards the moustache of their guide; in fact, he was unaware that the thing existed, having focused exclusively, for the entire duration of the tour, on the mole that rose so faintly from the soft brown underside of I’s arm. Possibly it was that mole that he thought of, as he led the final charge on the castle; possibly that mole occupied him as he fell, bloodied and exhausted, to his seat on the broken throne; possibly it was that mole that filled his final thoughts, as the counter-revolutionaries spat at him, demanded he beg for mercy, and then, disgusted, tied the rope around his neck. All of these possibilities are, of course, just that, and nothing more.

When the group came at last to the tasting room the reason for I’s subtle shift from front to rear of the column became obvious: she wanted everyone else to taste the ice cream before her. Marshed mallow was too valuable to at that time be tasted by any 12-year-old other than the king himself, and so it was to ice cream that they were confined, and this, too, in only one flavour, the cheapest to produce which, when questioned by an eager brunette near the front of the group, the moustached guide described as tasting similar to the night time, just after the rains. The brunette nodded and asked in turn if it mattered, with such a flavour, if one ate with a spoon or directly, with just the fingers, to which the moustache quivered with a snort, and the brunette reddened, ashamed that her query had been so obvious to the others who now chuckled in time to the wobbling of the moustache. I frowned and waited to see if a spoon was indeed the correct method, which, of course, it was.

Here are some of the things that I heard from her classmates, when she asked them how they felt, as they ate the ice cream:

like the ice cubes that stick to your fingers like the music they play on the radio in the early morning, while you sleep like the cherry trees in winter when the leaves are already shrivelled and white like the last toothpick like the moon

Good. Here’s some coffee—though I’m afraid it might be a little cold. Today I’m going to tell you about the Pianist’s hand. You’ve noticed his missing hand, I suppose? You haven’t? That is concerning. You must notice it, the next time you see him. It’s very important for the storyteller to notice things—especially the rude things, like the way the Golfer’s trousers—but you haven’t noticed that either, I see. You mustn’t avert your eyes from these things—you must stick your nose in it all, let your curiosity take the reigns and wash your propriety down the sink, along with the rest of your coffee. I’m sorry it was cold, but of course if you’d gotten up earlier—but enough of that. Be nosey! Eavesdrop always—you are a spy for all the world’s experience. Here’s your breakfast. Now sit and listen.

The first Pianist to crush their hand was 000 000 032 437. 000 000 032 437—we remember her well. She appears in quite a few of the early tales—perhaps that feeble brain of yours recalls, at the very least, the teapot incident of that time? Good; you aren’t quite so useless as you make yourself out to be. Well, it was 000 000 032 437 who first suggested the movement of the handle, to the side—but we don’t have time for that now. I doubt we will ever come to that story, if you continue to sleep until such an hour as this every day! The teapot incident occurred in 000 000 032 437’s youth; it is her old age—long after she had stopped being known as 000 000 032 437 and was known instead as the Pianist—that we are interested in today.

Of course it was an accident, the hand-crushing. I hope you have learned by now that all important things begin with accidents. 000 000 032 437, the Pianist, was sixty years and three days old. She had finished her morning practice and was on her way to the café to meet her apprentice. Now it is worth lingering for a moment on this apprentice—000 000 032 588. In fact it is easy for me to reveal the character of this apprentice, this 000 000 032 588, because I need only say that he was very similar to you, and at once you understand that he was lazy, disinclined to the practicing of his art, a serial forgetter, unorganised, uncaring, uninterested, and conscientious only in his attempts to avoid the duties to which he was bound. In short, he was your spitting image, and in every way the most typical of apprentices.

The Pianist was fed up with carrying, on her able but aging shoulders, the burden of such an apprentice, and as she walked to the café she put her hands in her pockets and considered—but of course you must understand that it was an accident. On no account are you to tell it any other way. She only considered how she might shift onto the shoulders of that slob, 000 000 032 588, a little of the responsibility it was his destiny to carry. The accident, when it happened, was just that—an accident. You understand? Don’t chew with your mouth open.

So. Where was I? You see, already my memory is beginning to slip—such little time is left to us! And yet you don’t even listen—you’ve forgotten too, didn’t pick up so much as a word—not that I’m surprised, over the sound of those masticating molars. What’s that? She was considering? So you do listen—you just choose not to communicate? A storyteller who fails to communicate?! It would be better, indeed, if you were deaf! And we have such little time!

We must continue at once: she was on her way to the café, hands in pockets, considering the possibilities of change—a coincidence, nothing more than a coincidence—when the accident occurred. A momentous occasion, destined to ripple through the long channel of our history, and, at the same time, the simplest thing: she fell. Tripped. Tumbled, toppled, keeled, collapsed. It has never been clear what it was that caused her to fall, but fall she did. And—the crucial detail, of course, for where were her hands? Just so. The smallest of details, you see, for, in the sudden rush of downward movement, she had no time to remove both hands from where they lay. Only her right hand, the fluent hand, the hand that makes the Pianist’s art—only it emerged from the waistband in time. While the left struggled uselessly against the fabric, the right was drawn: the sabre from the oiled sheath, the pistol from the cowboy’s holster. It was drawn; it’s wrist rotated; it’s palm faced downwards and—crack.

In fact, it was not immediately obvious to her, to our mellifluent master, the importance of her injury. Indeed one could say she resented it: it was not only the wrist that was shattered, but the palm, too, and indeed some say no less than six of the fingers. What? Good! You’re still listening—and I hope you see that I have inserted, here, a lesson for you. You must be critical at all times, ever vigilant against the silly, and more than that, the stupid. And now we must continue.

Our Pianist protagonist finds herself frustrated: she has been made quite useless. For months she attempts to go on as before. And so she calls upon the Machinist, to machine for her a hand, one that might replace that useless right, that broken tool, that mangled mitt. And create for her a hand she does, our Machinist, and a fine thing it is, too. For three weeks the Pianist learns the device, learns the strangeness of the feeling of the metal as it couples to her nerves, learns—what? What do you—yes, of course she cut off her hand! How else would the Machinist’s instrument have functioned? And have we not spoken, not just a few ago, of the missing hand of our own Pianist, to which this tale is an explanation? No more interruptions! We have no time for your stupidity now! And you must not anger me further: this story is too important to be told rashly. Do not interrupt me again.

For three weeks the Pianist learned to work the device. On the Sunday of the fourth she gave her recital—her apprentice, for the three weeks preceding, having been forced to perform. As I believe even one so stupid as you would understand, the recital was a failure. It was no fault of our peerless Pianist, nor of our masterly Machinist: both were, at the ages of sixty and sixty-five respectively, the pre-eminent practitioners of their professions. In fact it was a simple matter of art. For the Pianist needed a Pianist’s paw to play; our maker, of course, could create only the Machinist’s metacarpus.

Ah—now you are awake, I see? You noticed, did you, that number? No? You didn’t want to interrupt? And how do you propose to learn? Well? Exactly! You will never learn if you don’t ask questions! What? I never did. It is a moot point besides—I’m sure you didn’t notice the number at all. Really? What was it, then? Don’t speak with your mouth full!

But, good—you are not so dull. Yes. Sixty-five. Just so: sixty-five. Five years the Machinist had worked, beyond the bounds of the age at which we cease today. Five long years! For she, too, had an apprentice quite typical, quite lazy; an apprentice who had refused to take up the tools that were his duty, who would have, as had so many before him, let his Machinist master work and work and work, until the day she died.

I said to you before that this story served as explication, as to the missing hand of our present-day Pianist. It is also an answer to this second mystery: how it was that these negligent neophytes were able to force their masters to work, long after the duties of their profession should have been passed on. And perhaps you see the answer before you. For while the Pianist was thwarted in her attempts to bring her automated appendage to bear, it was her apprentice who was forced to play. For, despite all of his indolence, all of his indiscipline, and all of his incessant objections, there was no other. His handless master could no longer fill the role.

And so, he did. He had little choice. The master, no longer able to perform, became the teacher; the apprentice, feet dragging in the metaphorical mud, became the practitioner. And, in time, our old friend the Pianist began to appreciate her uselessness. In it she found a freedom never before afforded to her, a license to curiosity, to indulgence, and to that greatest of all vices, entitlement. No longer was she the Pianist; she was 000 000 032 437, again. And so time passed, her life was lived, and she was buried amongst the stars with a smile on her face.

A good ending to our story would be that line—but there is of course an addendum. It comes in the form of our friend, the reticent reciter—the Pianist’s lazy apprentice, 000 000 032 588. He it was who was forced into service, before his time; while his friends continued their lives of languor around him he it was who worked, practised, performed and, in time, learned the frustrations of an apprentice of his own. And so his life went, until, suddenly, he too was sixty years and three days old, finished with morning practice, on his way to the café to meet his apprentice, and, hands-in-pockets, considering.

But this time it was not a fall—this time it was no accident. Our new-old Pianist was, in his way, a straightforward character, and his approach was, thusly, simple. His solution was neither ingenious, nor delicate; neither artful, nor dramatic; in fact, it’s qualities do not extend beyond the simplicity I have ascribed to it, here. In short: he smashed his hand with a rock.