Circumference Nowhere

1 PRELUDE

 

"Russia."

"Don't confuse Mr. Writer, my darling." She turned to Writer and put her hand on top of his. "Those days are long past. People are collecting Comintern memorabilia these days, and all the prices are going up."

Writer pulled his hand out from under hers, to wrap it around his chocolate bar, as if that had to be done in that precise way, and asked: "Do you mean commemorative plates and so on?"

She laughed. "How can there be commemorative plates for an organization that never existed in the first place? Comintern memorabilia, it's mostly documents. They were selling them by the pound in 1990, all those letters stamped Stasi-Stasi-Stasi, KGB-KGB-KGB, but now the cupboard is bare. Demand exceeds supply, and it shall be so forever and ever."

Her husband or boyfriend or boss leaned across the table. "The rumour is that the conference centre has two architectural layouts superimposed on one another. The first is the one in the official guides, with its concert halls and its meeting rooms, and the second contains a huge room, a vast archive, of filing cabinets, acres and acres of them, filled with information obtained or purloined by the Bulgarian Secret Police or the Stasi or the KGB. The first one was built by Bulgaria and the renowned architect James T. Fast, while the second was built with Barents Sea oil money."

Writer laughed lightly and nervously. "Oh, I'm not going to that second one. I'm going to the first one, so all I have to have is the official guide."

This conversation was taking place in the Café d'A, in a particular city in Bulgaria. It was a little after six in the morning, and Writer had ordered chocolate milk and the waiter had seemed to think about it for a moment before going across the street to return with a milk chocolate bar. The couple had observed this comedy and had decided to be civil and help him out in any way possible. They'd come over; they'd sat down. After pleasantries they'd asked him what had brought him to their fair city, and Writer had told them about the conference of tailors. They'd given their advice, and they'd told him a thing or two about the conference centre, true or false, as above.

Writer decided it was time to break open the chocolate bar so he carefully unwrapped it after snapping it to pieces within. The man took an offered piece and continued: "The Official Guide, they are a dime a dozen."

"I'm only after one," joked writer.

The woman said: "In that case, they cost two levs."

"That's more like it. So, where can I get one?"

"Let us see." The man sat back and looked around the café and the street. "Ah! I see Maria. Maria is an agent. She'll help you out with that. Hello, Maria!" he shouted.

Writer turned to see a young lady with dark hair and dressed in archaic peasant clothes. "Ya?" she called.

"This stranger needs your assistance." The man turned to his wife and nodded. They both got up. The man said: "Thank you for the cucolatha. We shall be seeing you."

The couple left quickly.

 

 

1 Prologue

 

The couple left quickly, the evidence above shows, and young Marie threw herself into the chair that had been occupied by the man who alleged that he knew of some hidden archives paid for with Barents Sea oil money. Young Marie flipped her hair from side to side, put her hands flat on the table, and said: "Ya? What can I help you wiz?"

Writer took a couple moments to recover from the storm before saying: "I was told you have some ground plans for the local conference centre for sale, for two levs."

She laughed out loud. "Who told you zat?"

"That couple that just left - your friends?"

"Ha! Zose two? I do not know zem!"

"Okay, well: Do you have guidebooks for the conference centre?"

"Ya."

"Can I buy one?"

"Ya."

"....Can I buy one ... now?"

She laughed. "No! I do not carry zem around wiz me. I have zem now in my boudoir."

Writer was in a foreign land, talking to foreigners. He asked: "Can I pick one up somewhere?"

Marie laughed and took and pulled his hand roughly. "Come wiz me, to my boudoir. Zen you can have one, maybe discount!"

Writer got pulled through the streets of this Bulgarian town that had awakened without knowing it had done so. Everywhere people were going about business. Some were selling wares and some were buying them. Canopies advertised the sales of strange words. They entered a capillary of the lifeblood, a dark and narrow covered passageway that had strange microtonal music coming from somewhere. Writer was still being pulled by her dry passionless hand that dragged him up an external flight of wooden stairs to a door of iron, ash, and oak. She turned the doorknob and entered and the hand pulled him inside.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw. There was a bed in the corner with blankets crumpled up on it, a dresser beneath a mirror, and another door leading possibly into the rest of the house. He nearly tripped over something unseen at his feet and he heard a man's chortle. Writer looked at the bed, and saw that a man was lying in it, under the blankets, who said: "Well, well."

"Hello, darling. I have brought a stranger looking for a guide to the conference centre."

"The conference centre, hum?" said the man. "One of our guides?"

"Yes, zat is what he is after."

"Well then, leave it to me. I think I have just the conference centre guide for him. Just the one."

Marie let go of Writer's hand and said, "Zere, you see? You can get your guide here. My husband is a great one for ze guides. You are in good hands."

She opened the other door and was gone.

Writer said: "I need the guide. The official one."

"Are you sure?"

"Very much so," said Writer.

 

 

2 Prelude

 

Writer said: "Very much so," as has been said, and continued: "Though I suppose I could use the unofficial one too, if it exists."

Maria's husband shook his head. "I don't have that one. I know someone who may have a copy; unfortunately, I haven't seen him or her for quite some time."

Writer smiled. "It's all so very mysterious."

"Mysterious is a misunderestimation." He passionately threw back the covers and got to his feet. Maria's husband was big, hairy, and entirely naked. "Do you mind if I got dressed?"

"I'd prefer it, actually."

Maria's husband went to a dresser and bent over broadly with his back to Writer. As he sorted through socks and underwear, he said: "I suppose you've got the proper credentials."

"I don't know. What would be the proper credentials?"

As Maria's husband sat down to pull on his socks, and only later his underwear, he said: "Some papers. Something saying who you are, maybe why you're here; something official, from a government or an agency."

Writer nervously stated: "I have my passport."

Maria's husband nodded. "That should be enough. Plus, you have some money, correct?"

"Two levs, I believe?"

"That is the official price, for the official guide." He was now wearing dark blue slacks and he was reaching for a white shirt.

Writer noticed a painting on the wall. It was a mountain scene, with dark clouds above and below the peaks, at top and bottom of frame. "That's what I expect to pay; and I guess I'd also like to know how to get there."

Maria's husband slowly shook his head as he pulled up his black suspenders. "I'm afraid I can't help you with that. I have my district all to myself; I'm the only one. I never have the time to leave its borders. Perhaps I can figure out something for you, for a price, of course. Someone must know." He took a big blue jacket from a rack and pulled it on. He adjusted epaulettes with dangling golden chains. Maria's husband had become a policeman putting on his cap. "So, about those papers of yours...."

Writer snapped open the pleather case he carried everywhere and pulled his British passport from one of the flaps on the upper interior and handed it over to the policeman upon whom his eyes never left. The policeman, Maria's husband, took the passport and opened it. He asked: "And what is the capital of Albania?"

Writer was taken aback. "What? I don't know."

"Hmmm. You are a citizen of Albania, and you don't know the capital of Albania?"

"I'm not Albanian."

"Then why do you have an Albanian passport?" Writer didn't answer. A brief silent stalemate. "I kid you." He handed the passport back and opened his bureau to take out a pamphlet. He gave it to writer, saying: "The price is two levs. You'll be able to pay my cashier, my sister-in-law, who is coming up the stairs now and is raising her hand to knock upon the door."

There was a knock at the door.

 

 

2 Prologue

 

The sister-in-law of Marie's husband - meaning Maria's sister - knocked on the door, and her brother-in-law shouted: "Come in!"

Into the room came Maria's sister, a young lady with dark hair and dressed in archaic peasant clothes. Writer thought he was being fooled, because this sister of Maria looked too much like Maria herself. (He never conclusively found out if Maria was actually her own sister. At least, not that day.)

Maria's sister came into the room, as if it was the most normal thing for her to enter the intimate space of her sister and her husband.

She said to her brother-in-law: "You're wanted at the station."

"Oh?"

"A tourist was murdered some fifteen minutes ago."

Marie's husband blushed and said: "That's a serious business! Can you take care of our tourist, this one here? He needs a guide to the conference centre, priced two levs."

She brightened up as she turned her attention to Writer, saying: "I'm pleased to meet you! I have the guides at my office in the geographical middle of town. Price two levs."

Writer said, with resignation: "Then take me there."

Marie's sister, or Marie, said: "It's not far from here. We'll take the Avenue Balzac to Rue Sport, to the right, then down through the arcade of Amusements to First Street. My office - my so-called office - is on First Street. Do you think you can follow me, knowing what you know?"

"What do I know?"

"I mean, knowing now how to get there, can you still go with me there?"

Not wanting to 'get into it,' he said: "Let us go then."

The member of Marie's family smiled breezily and opened the door that led into the rest of the house. Down a flight of stairs and out the front door they went. Writer noticed he and Maria had passed that door on the way to the external stairs. Why hadn't they gone in this door rather than that door? Ah, yet another question to ask, some other time yet.

They went together down this street, turned at that street, then that street. The buildings got taller as they went, as if the entire city had been carved out of a mountain as a sculptural simulation of a city, from the top down. They arrived at last at a busy street, with buses, streetcars, automobiles, bicycles, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, pedestrians, noise, chaos, shops, businesses, and theatres. Writer figured it couldn't be much farther; a clock said it was 11:45 in the morning and he hadn't the faintest idea how much closer he had gotten to getting to whatever meetings he was supposed to be going to.

The woman said: "Here we are!"

Writer looked up at the building. It had a door, and it had windows running up it single-file, and it was possibly the tallest building on the street. The woman smiled at him again, and said, "Don't just stand there gawping. Let's go into my office."

 

 

3 Prelude

 

Whoever-she-was said: "Let's go into my office," and she took Writer into the building.

The lobby was all marble walls with a drop-down glass ceiling, with a couple broad mahogany desks at which sat tidy concierges who looked ready to do almost anything. Writer and the woman went into an elevator that looked like it was waiting for them, but was probably not. The woman pressed the uppermost of all the buttons, an unnumbered button, above 99 and a quartet of other unnumbered buttons. The elevator zoomed up in response, faster than any elevator Writer had ever encountered, and his heels lifted off the ground as it slowed to stop.

The top floor of the building was decidedly plain. The walls and floor were of common spruce and the three doors which lay ahead were unmarked with dusty transoms. She took him through the middle door which she unlocked with a key.

The room inside had a window, and a desk, two chairs (one of which wrapped in plastic), and spruce walls barren but clean. Writer went over to the window and looked down over the city he was in. It spread out for miles, sloping down to fields, and he was again struck with the idea the whole place had been carved downwards through a mountain. He turned back to the interior. The woman was watching him.

"This is quite the building," he said.

She smiled. "It's a pretty special building, yes. One-of-a-kind. You're going to be telling your grand-kids about it. Ah, here," she said, pulling open a drawer of the desk and pulling out a pamphlet, "is the guide you say you're looking for. The price is two levs."

Writer reached into his pocket and pulled out a big coin. A two lev coin, round and with a square hole in the centre. He gave the woman the coin and she gave him the guide.

"I certainly hope you find in it what you're expecting to find."

"Almost entirely. But," and here he went to the window, "in what direction is the centre itself?"

She came over and stood behind him. She said: "You can see it from here."

Writer pointed to the top of a building to the left that was suitably square and modern. "Is that it?"

She said, "No."

He moved his hand to point at a building with rounded edges. "That's got to be it."

"Sorry, that's not it either."

Then he pointed further away, to a couple buildings standing all on their own. "How about that? Is that the centre?"

She laughed. "I've been kidding all along. You may not be able to see it from this window. Where it really is, frankly, I don't know. I have to go. I have some other business to conduct."

"Isn't this your office?"

"Did I say that? No, it's not. Goodbye. We shall definitely meet again."

She left the room and closed the door behind her.

 

 

3 Prologue

 

It's been said: She left the room and closed the door behind her.

Writer took the opportunity - the solitude high in the city - to unfold the pamphlet and study it. The conference centre was on four levels, here mapped out isogeometrically. Each floor was different yet each had two or three large rooms and anywhere from seven to eleven smaller rooms. The entrances and washrooms were marked out plainly. A legend remarked the names of the rooms either by proper noun or key number. Writer folded up the pamphlet and put it in his inner coat pocket. Now it was simply a matter of finding the place.

He went in the hall and down the elevator. Simply a matter. A concierge would know. He went up to one and asked: "Excuse me, but can you give me directions to the conference centre?"

The concierge smiled and said: "Of course. It's easy to find. Go out the front door and walk straight for eleven-and-a-half blocks. It'll be right there on your left."

Writer went out the front door and started walking straight ahead.

Cars were all jumbled up at the first section, with traffic stopped in all directions. A fender-bender! However, this did not deter Writer. He went a little down the avenue, crossed between the bumpers of two automobiles, regained the proper street, and went on.

Two streets later, a block was cordoned off. He asked a woman in a mac what had happened, and she said: "Someone has murdered the grocer Emmanuel."

"That name sounds familiar." Writer allowed himself some interiority at this point in time. Had these murders - two of them - have to do with his presence in the town? For a moment he felt he was somehow the centre of everything. What if I, how did I?

It seemed impossible, so it was impossible.

He went around the cordoned block.

He figured, all things being equal, he was somewhere about halfway to the centre. So, on he pushed, past the cordon, to the next stretch of road.

Two blocks later, going, as you recall, in the direction the concierge had sent him, Writer was caught in a lockdown. He had to pass through a check-point, and show his identification. This narrative is about real life.

Whoever these guys were, they looked carefully at Writer's passport. They looked at him, then at the picture. At the picture, at him. Back and forth, back and forth. Unexplainedly, they let him pass.

"Thanks," said Writer.

He'd gone through ten blocks, or maybe nine. Surely the centre should have been apparent by now. But yet he still saw nothing blaring out Conference Centre to him. He was about of the right distance, so where was it? He spotted a codger squatting in the road. He asked the codger: "Is there a conference centre around here?"

The codger said, the Voice of Wisdom said: "Is this a joke? Do you have the proper plan? Do you know how my uncles died? What do you know of prisons and torture?"

 

 

4 Prelude

 

The squatting codger asked Writer some questions that appeared so nonsensical that he (Writer) decided to find someone else to ask, and that someone else turned out to be a nearby handy woman in a short skirt. He asked her: "Is there a conference centre around here?"

"Which one, honey?"

He consulted his guide. "It's called The Ł Centre."

She laughed. "You're entirely on the wrong thide of town."

"A concierge told me it with here somewhere."

"Don't you know not to trutht conciergeth? They're notoriouth liarth."

"Since when?"

She smiled. "It's alwayth been that way around here. They're kind of upthide down people. You went in the wrong direction."

Writer sighed. "It appears my day is ruined."

"Oh no, oh no. I can get you there. I have an automobile."

"And you know where it is?"

"Yeth, I know precithely where it ith. Give me a couple minuteth to get mythelf together."

She went into a nearby building. Writer leaned against a post and eyeballed the squatting codger who was eyeballing him back. Writer went over to ask: "So what was that about your uncles?"

The codger spat thickly. "I asked you if you know what happened to them."

"The answer to that question is no."

"I figured so." He spat again. "It was a terrible time we had, here, thirty years ago. It's hard to believe it actually all happened."

"What was it that happened?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. If I told it to you straight."

"I've got some minutes to spare, if recent history has anything to say about that," which seemed a rather witty thing to say, though the wit had the potential of being utterly lost on a complete stranger. An inside joke, with one insider, so to speak.

"There was a war here," began the codger, "a generation-and-a-half ago. It was a small war, but a war nonetheless. Everything changed overnight, and few knew the whole event had even taken place. We were invaded by a gang of dimensional designers."

"Oh? And what's a dimensional designer?"

The codger pointed to the sky, yet at nothing. "They add spaces to space. They do not take away space - that would be impossible ‑ but they add space. It's why the universe seems to be expanding. Spaces are being added hither and thither everywhere. It's also why things appear to get smaller and smaller year by year. It's because spaces are being added between yourself and your objects. Perspective."

Writer showed him the brochure. "Is this accurate?"

The codger studied it. "It is true, so far as it goes. You would do well to use it. But it is not, as they say, the whole story."

"Someone else told me much the same thing this morning. He told me that there's another layout. Secret hidden spaces, like."

The codger enigmatically handed the brochure back. "Who told you this?"

"I didn't catch his name. He was with a woman who might have been his wife. He also knew a woman named Maria."

"This Maria: does she have dark hair?"

"Yes."

"Does she dress funny? Like an historical interpreter?"

"Yes."

The codger nodded. "You're on the wrong track, I'm afraid."

 

 

4 Prologue

 

The codger said, and this really happened: "On the wrong track you are, I am afraid."

The lisping woman in the short skirt returned and jangled some keys in the palm of her hand. "All thet to go."

"We're driving?"

"You've never been in a car before?"

"I suppose I have. Yes."

The car was a small car with a powerful engine. The woman driving said: "There's a thortcut we can take, even though the thentre is directly acroth town, through the thentre. However, the traffic geth rather complex in the thentre, so it'th betht to dethcribe as betht ath we can a parabola with the focal pointh ath the thentre and the outthkirth perpendicular to the axith."

"What's on the outskirts, may I be so bold as to inquire?"

"The Thouthern Gate, naturally."

So it was three blocks toward the centre, then a block north, two blocks east, one north, three east, one south, two east, one south, and three east.

She stopped the car.

"We're lotht."

Writer looked out the windows. It didn't look quite like they were lost. A large building was straight ahead. It had no markings on it, but it certainly looked like it could be a conference centre. He said: "Isn't that it right ahead?"

She checked it out carefully. "I've never theen it looking like that. However, maybe it ith the plathe."

Writer said: "I'm willing to bet it is. Can we get closer?"

She rolled her fingers over the steering wheel as if she was pensively musing. "I don't think I thould. There'th thomething fithy hereabouth."

"I have to find out. So, I'm getting out of the car."

She sighed: "Suit yourself. See you Saturday."

Writer got out of the car and walked the two blocks it took to get to the conference centre. It loomed up large and bleak in the late afternoon's decline; a solid face of concrete looked down upon him blindly and without a single solitary speech-act. He consulted his brochure, smoothed out a bent corner, and tried to orientate himself. There was a wall on the map in the brochure that had no features, so Writer deduced in a preliminary way that this wall was that wall and that going to his left and around the edge would bring him to an entranceway official or otherwise.

He went to the left and around the edge and surveyed the wall. There was no entrance there, but there was evidence of an entrance that had been plastered over, which corresponded to the entranceway marked in the brochure. From this Writer concluded that the brochure was a little, or a lot, out-dated.

According to the map, there was another entrance just around the next corner, and it was signified as being larger than the door that used to exist. Writer went around the corner, and found no entrance along that plane either.

 

 

Entr'acte

 

There was no entrance around the second corner either, and how many sides did this thing have? He went around the next corner, and saw an entrance there.

His goal was finally in sight. He went to the entranceway, and a grand entranceway it was, and pulled at the door to find it was locked tight.

There had to be another entrance, of course. No building, especially one so large, could have only one exit. Then Writer remembered he was in a foreign country, and that people do things differently in different countries. Nonetheless he felt he had to see what was around the next corner.

He went around the next corner and yes indeed there was another door there. It was a much smaller door - really a rather ordinary steel door - and he opened it and went inside the conference centre only to find another door and sitting in front of this door a small man in a blue cap, who said, "Sorry, the conference centre is closed for the day."

"Really? So early?"

"It's after six. We close up shop at six. You'll have to come back in the morning."

"What time do you open up in the morning?"

"Six."

"Mmm." He showed the brochure to the blue-capped man. "Which entrance am I at now?"

The man studied the brochure, turning it this way and that. He almost made a decision, then stopped and said: "This picture adheres to the general out-line and in-line of this building, but there's much in it that's wrong."

"Is it outdated?"

The cap said: "I don't think so. The building was never like this. There's a cupola missing."

"A what?"

"A pointy thing in the middle, like a covered tower. It's taller than the tallest building in town."

"So where did it go?"

"I guess the brochure-makers decided to cut it down. There's a lot of rivalry in this town, between the centre and the periphery. Even on paper, in brochures, there's espionage and cold-blooded murder. I'd give you a proper one, but they're all gone."

"Will you have more tomorrow?"

"It's doubtful."

Writer though for a minute, adding up hotel and flight expenses with a huff. "Will this door still be here?"

The cap didn't want to commit. "It's pretty likely. It's almost certain. I plan on being here. But you know what they say about plans."

"What, they gang aft agley?"

"No, that's not it."

"That it's the first step in failing?"

"Not it either. In any case, something is said about it. Ah, me. Maybe I've been dealing with too many carpenters today."

"Isn't this a tailors' conference?"

"Oh yes of course. Did I say carpenters? I must be tireder than I thought."

Writer chose to leave it at that. He expected to have better luck on the morrow. Things are prone to fall apart anyhow, and time heals all wounds. Yes. It was true. "Tomorrow is another day."