Blackbox

Prolog

 

This story has been told a thousand times already, and the experiences related here are exceedingly common. There's no mystery to it; it happens every day, every hour. Albeit it's common as your momma, it's still a set of facts that are worth pondering, since it's a tale of mortality and decay, subjects which should be pondered by every living cognition. It's a good cure for hubris, it's a humbling experience, it hurts to find it happening, and to know you can never go home again. You may think you have a perfect memory, and maybe in some way you do, if you're lucky, but for every good memory there's probably some three dozen who are not as lucky as you, or your momma.

Bill had heard the record some twenty or thirty times: Senses Working Overtime: I think that was the name of the song. (Look it up, if you want, by XTC.) But Bill couldn't catch the beat. He was hearing the first beat as the second beat, the second beat as the first beat, the third beat as the fourth beat, and the fourth beat as the third beat. He was surprised. How could he no longer hear music? To not 'get the beat' meant something wrong with his cognition, at its most basic level, at the reception. It wasn't just a matter of not remembering the name of a film like 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek'. It was a matter of no longer having your basic senses ... sensing right. Imagine you're some kind of an audiophile, with a precise idea of what stereo division is, and receptive of what ideas the musicians and producers and mixers and cutters are trying to get across in the mix. Bill knew that his miscomprehension was a sign of his general deterioration. (Did I already say that?)

 

Book 1, Part 3

 

A couple months later, Bill wrote an email to his son, who lived about two thousand miles away. It was Bill's son's birthday, so he filled him in on all the 'stuff that's been happening back on the ranch', and how the maternal figure was doing, and she was doing fine, 'as fine as possible in these trying times'. Bill had been writing these kinds of letters to his son for somewhere over thirty years, and it had become a habit. He more-or-less typed them automatically, and he saluted his son in how proud they were of him.

The son replied next day. "Is your spell-check malfunctioning? You've got some odd word in there. I think you should run a virus scan. 'Happening back on the rinse'? 'In the training times'? And you usually 'salute' me rather than 'salami' me!"

Bill fortunately had the email ready to check in the SENT files, so he looked it over. Sure enough, his son had reported correctly, though his son was too polite to refer to more than three mistakes. Really, there were six mistakes. And it wasn't a matter of spell-check or a virus. Bill knew how to run a computer; he'd been using them since he was in his twenties. However, he ran a virus scan, and the results were proper. No issues detected. But still, maybe he'd been tired when he'd written it. Yes, it had been late at night. However, I sleep fine through the night, so that can't be the matter. Yet, he sometimes woke in a state of something like confusion, you know, Where am I? and things like that. Maybe I should give myself a self-diagnosis on my typing skills. There's plenty of typing programs out there. I could measure my proficiency. That would be a good solution.

Bill never got around to it.

 

Book 2, Part 11

 

Bill was far gone. The only situation in which he felt altogether was in his dreams.

He would manage to fall asleep, even though he had no idea where he was sleeping. It was a narrow bed in a narrow room. It didn't matter where it was, from Bill's point of view, though we have no idea what he felt about it.

He managed to sleep, and he managed to dream. Dreaming was not touched be his senility; it was just like it always was.

He wandered from place to place in his dreams. Events from a half-century before were re-created; folks who were undoubtedly dead were resurrected. His grandmothers, his grandfathers. There they were, on a steamship he'd try to cross. People from his college days would walk and talk and give him advice. It was even the case that his old loves would talk to him and tell him they loved him. At times, he'd go off with them, to some secluded spot, and Bill would feel a passion he'd not felt in a dozen years, with the women of his dreams, all hot pussy and soft tits. But, of course, it would all come to nothing: no matter how much Bill tried to fuck and come, it wouldn't happen. Something always turned out wrong. The dream would come to an end when he pissed himself in his narrow bed, and he would return to his confusion. However, Bill had gone through something, something involving the real and genuine materials of fantasy, and though he returned to the world of urine-soaked sheets, for a bit of time, unrecoverable and unremarkable, never to be seen or acknowledged, he had been, despite his senility, in the wonderful world of dreaming, exactly as forever dreams work.

 

Book 3, Part 10

 

Bill was in a room he didn't recognize, at least not at that particular minute. The television was on. Something was going on. Everyone was talking really rapidly, but about what he couldn't catch. Maybe Walter Cronkite will come on and give his personal view of things soon, and then I'll be steady in my head.

A man came into the room with the television and Bill. He was carrying a tray with a sandwich on it. He set it down on a table beside Bill's chair. Was this guy a doctor? Maybe one of those newfangled male nurses? Bill had to figure it out, but he wanted to wait for a clue or two.

The man said: "Here you go, Dad."

Dad? How could Bill be a dad?

Bill asked him, quite politely: "Your name has slipped my mind."

The man said: "Patrick, Dad. I'm Patrick."

Bill thought: Is he illegitimate? Did I miss something somewhere?

"And you're my son?"

"Yes, Dad, I'm your son."

Bill wiped his face. He was so confused. "So, where's your mother?"

'Patrick' said: "She passed away two years ago. Your wife, that is to say."

"Wait. I was married?"

"Yes. For something like thirty years."

This was news to Bill. How could that be possible? For him to not remember any of it? Maybe he was a little too tired to remember. This has been going on for some time, forgetting things. This is just another of those lapses.

"Do you have any brothers and sisters? Patrick?"

"Yes, you have a daughter named June and I have a younger brother named Nicholas."

Bill faked realization. "Oh, right. Sorry! Sometimes I can't remember details. The devil's in the details. I've heard that so many times." He started laughing. "The devil is in the details!"

 

Book 4, Part 4

 

Bill got to thinking about his obvious memory problems. He simply couldn't remember names very well, which could probably be put down to his infinite self-regard and vanity. What's the point of knowing a name? He thought back, way back, to an embarrassing event, and we're talking way back, to when he was nine or ten or eleven. He was a member of a Cub Scout troop, and the whole troop went off to a camp not that distant from where they all lived. Some ten miles or so. (He figured the name of the camp would come to him in time.) They were playing an outdoor game. They were playing Red Light Green Light. Bill was up, because somehow he'd won the last round. He'd turn his back on the other boys and the boys would try to get closer. Bill would call: "Red light!" and turn around and anyone he'd see move would be eliminated. Problem was, Bill drew a blank on all their names, so he was down to simply eliminating people by pointing and calling: "You! You! You!"

He'd never learned how to learn names, that was all.

Bill went out the front of his house. He should apologize to those boys. Now he remembered the name of the camp, and where exactly it was. He thought: I could drive there now, find my Boy Scout troop, and apologize to every one of them. I could even start over, and learn how to learn names. It's a behavioural defect, that's all it is. He went inside to look for his car keys. He looked in several places before realizing it had all happened decades and decades ago. All those boys were as old as he was now. Also, the camp had been shut down.

 

Book 5, Part 8

 

Bill was sitting in his armchair, and his wife was sitting on the couch. They were facing the television set. "Who are all these people? Are they new characters? Some look a little familiar, but they could be from some other show. Maybe it's the actors I'm confusing them with, their characters aren't the actors, unless that's, yes, that's the guy from that cop show, the one with the bald head. Or am I thinking of that other show, the one about the politics? Look, the guy ... the guy with the cup ... he's important. And that woman works for him."

Aloud he asked: "Are all these guys cops or politicians or what?"

His wife smiled at him. "Oh, you know they're C.I.A. agents!"

Bill laughed in reply. "Of course, I know that. They're C.I.A. I must have drifted off for a minute there."

"Sure, you know that...." and here she ran through much of the plot, which had to do with a terrorist attack and a counter-strike that goes wrong and there's a double-agent and a tense scene on top of a building and there's an illicit relationship that frankly seems to be going nowhere but maybe they'll pick up on it in the next episode.

Bill follows along like he's heard it all before when really it's like he's learning it for the first time. It seems they're on the third episode of the third season. Bill knew his wife knew about his mental state. What am I going to do about that? I'm never coming out of this. There's no going back. It's best to go along with everything. I don't want to cause trouble. The guy in the tv show, he's running things. That's obvious. His second-in-command is the one having the affair.

Who is this woman?

Oh, of course!

 

Book 6, Part 5

 

Some time not long after that--four months? five? nine?--Bill went to the huge mall across town. He had to pick up something complex, though our history cannot recall exactly what, such is time's eatery. He had to park quite some distance from the entrance, for by chance and chance alone it was a busy Saturday at a huge mall. In the mall, in some complex shop or another, Bill arranged a complex delivery of a complex thing. He simply paid.

From there, he went into three or four other items, carriageable items, things he'd been meaning to get for some time. Frankly, he was somewhat proud of himself for being of sound-enough mind to remember them, though he had the feeling he was forgetting something.... He tried to recall what that last item was, but couldn't, and didn't, for some time.

With three bags he went out into the parking lot, and he stood at the entranceway. Cars were rushing back and forth. People with struggling shopping carts passed him in all directions. He looked forth upon the ocean of automobiles. Which direction had he come from? Over there, to the left, or over there, to the right? He set off in the leftwardly direction, since he felt that was the right direction, though why he felt that way he was not sure of.

He walked along row after row, looking for his car. He recalled it was blue, or a colour like blue. He didn't know his licence plate number, and none of the licence plates he saw looked familiar. He started his search anew, using a methodical system which broke down after fifteen minutes since there were hidden parking spots everywhere. He eventually got out of his jam, though no-one is quite sure how.

 

Book 7, Part 6

 

Finally, after so long, opportunity presented itself. Bill had to go to his wife's doctor, for he had no doctor of his own because he didn't trust them and he felt it was cheating on Great Goddess Life, to get checked for something far too disgusting to be mentioned in these solemn pages, whereupon at the end of the examination and procedure which involved sterile plastic bottles of various sizes and shapes, all with computer-printed labels applied to them, Bill brought up his recent experiences of forgetfulness and confusion and dis-co-ordination, whereupon the doctor said more-or-less the customer is always right and arranged for a session of a test at a nearby diagnostic clinic. "They'll be able to tell precisely the nature of the problem, if there is a problem, and the results will be sent to myself and myself alone, and I will interpret the results for you, for I am wise and I have complete control over everything in the universe, for I am Yahweh, and I also have control over you, o one who is losing his mind." The doctor's facial features had been smoothing over while he made this speech; his eyes shifted to black, his eyebrows smoothed themselves, his mouth became the mouth of a cartoon character, his hair returned to something approximating youth, and his nostrils and nose because like nostrils and noses in bland Dristan illustrations. Bill refused to show the terror in his heart witnessing this peculiar real transformation, and he turned away to look at a tree outside the building. The mathematics of the tree were incredible. How could such a thing grow? He turned back to the doctor, who was now looking like his ordinary self, apparently. End of medical scene.

 

Book 8, Part 1

 

Bill went downtown to his old stomping-ground as he did on occasion, to have a drink with his old pals if there were any to be found, and also to get a haircut from his old barber. In the barbershop, for some reason, he simply could not remember immediately the barber's name even though he'd know the guy for fifty years or so. Bill sat in the chair and pretending he was merely being polite, because they were on such good terms for years and years. They talked about their families and what had changed in the ol' neighbourhood. Some buildings had fallen into ruin and had been replaced by more efficient ones, like the place that had the record shop and the dressmaker's place. Bill was reassured at that point, because he'd found the area rather foreign to him. But that's how time works, isn't it? It rolls on, said the barber, and decay sets in. You can't expect to keep all your teeth, or for that matter all your hair, though yours is in pretty good shape for a guy my age. Meanwhile, Bill was reciting the alphabet to himself, expecting to remember the barber's name soon enough or at least before he left the shop. Do you remember that little lady who got whistled at all over the place? You should see her now. White hair, arthritis, hobbling along. Oh, but she was hot back then, and she knew it. ....L-M-N-O-P.... Bill wondered if it would be the same when he got to the bar. Would he be faced with the same dilemma? Perhaps it's better not to go. Pat!

Bill said, "Pat, you've done a hell of a job on the old bean here." They shook hands and Bill left, wondering if he'd ever return ever again.

 

Book 9, Part 2

 

Bill chose to go to the local watering-hole anyway, partly to see if he could recall its décor and habitués, and partly because it was his routine to go for a beer after every haircut. He went directly there, as if guided by what the eggheads call 'muscle memory'. The door looked the same as it ever did, or was he piecing together familiarity on the spot? Like how in a dream you can fill in everything, including logic, to give it some kind of experienced reality....

There was of course the bartender, shining up glasses and mugs with a clean cloth, a while cloth. Did Bill know this bartender? Had he met him last time? A little math said the bartender was too young, and thus the two of them were strangers. Probably. However, sitting at the bar with a small pilsner in front of him, was Harvey Cheshire, phone number 416-690-2564, lives two blocks away to the west, in an apartment with his wife Zooey and two kids who must be something like thirty years old by now. Bill didn't know anything about the two kids. He'd never been told. Bill sat down beside him and they exchanged greetings. Harvey was looking at Bill a little strangely, but Bill didn't know why. Was it the haircut? They talked about old times, back in the day. Harvey was tall and thin and had a beard. Harvey filled him in on the details of his life since they'd last seen one another, must have been eight years ago. Yes, the meeting was tied to an historical event, if only they could remember what it had been. It had been on the television. But what was it? What the hell was it?

 

Book 10, Part 9

 

Some time later--though it doesn't matter, in a personal-perspective biography, the order of events, for personal memory is never naturally in chronological order (thus I've composed one-hundred-and-four chapters so far, in chronological order, though any chapter can come anywhere)--Bill was having that dream again, and it was stronger than ever. His old house was growing stronger in impression day-by-day, and the pictures he created became more-and-more experiential, may we humbly heighten, and he was more-and-more there. When he'd wake up, he'd be confused about where he was. He could find himself sitting in a soft brown chair, to choose one instance, in a room he barely recognized. The milieu of the dream would fade away like one of those fade you see in movies--you know the kind--with the transition taking longer and longer, and it would flutter and progress and regress in a haphazard way, until one image nearly (but not completely) eradicated the other. All that would change, in later chapters.

A person was sitting in a chair near him. Bill couldn't recall her name, but he was almost certain he knew the person well. Perhaps he was even related to her. For some reason, that seemed likely. Yes, it was Sandra. She's my daughter. He said: "Was I asleep long, Sandy?"

She looked up. She looked very happy to be known. "How ya doin', Dad?"

"I'm a bit hungry. What time is it?"

"Two-thirty. You've been asleep for a half-hour."

Bill looked at his hands resting on the arms of the armchair. They looked much older than they should have looked. He held one up to his face and wiped his face with it.

"Sometimes I forget she's gone. How could I ever forget she's gone?"

Sandy replied: "I forget things all the time."

 

Book 11, Part 7

 

After his visit to his wife's doctor, or shortly before the end of his visit to his wife's doctor, Bill decided that, seeing he was in the neighbourhood, quite by chance, he should drop by the toy-store. He only had a nickel and a dime with him, but still he could look around, because Christmas was coming, or his birthday, he didn't know which.

Mr. Jenkins was in the store, standing atop a rickety stool, putting dolls on shelves. He looked down and said: "Ah, Billy, good to see you!"

"Hello, Mr. Jenkins! What's new?"

Mr. Jenkins got down off the stool. "We got in a new Mustang model."

"Sounds fun!"

Together they examined the box. The paint colours to be used were listed on the side. Three different possible recommended styles. Two engines included. But boy let me tell you it cost more than 15¢!

Billy wandered over to the shelves of games. He could hear noisy and dangerous and exciting cars out on Main Street. He'd be driving soon too. He had a driver's licence, but he'd never driven before, which was a little confusing, but the feeling passed. The games were all the same old ones.

In a glass cabinet there were the computer games and stuff. Someday, maybe he'd have enough money to afford one of these expensive things.

He went back to the counter, where Mr. Jenkins was. He picked out fifteen cents worth of candy and handed Mr. Jenkins all his money.

Then Bill recalled something, and chose to voice it. He asked: "Mr. Jenkins, is it true you murdered your wife?"

Mr. Jenkins was shocked. "Heavens no, what gave you that idea?"

Bill awoke, or at least changed his attitude. It wasn't true, was it?

 

Book 12, Part 12

 

Billy was a boy. He climbed trees. Bill was in a tree-house, but really it was little more than a platform and some plywood sides. He was climbing when someone said to no real consequence that fuck he'd shitted himself and people moved around him and Bill at first thought it was funny but then he realized his parents were expecting him home so he said: "I have to go home."

"You're home now."

Bill saw the house he had to get to. (It's too distant for me to describe.) "I have to go home now."

"Bill, please, you're home now."

Billy couldn't believe it, not much. He was in the house, upstairs downstairs and cellar. Why did I end up being sent down into the cellar? Sure, Gary Wagner and me smoked dope down there and wrote a comedy skit on my electric typewriter. I think it was some spy parody. I'm still alive, if anyone is wondering. I remember Julie Kerr. I got her to take off her shirt and everything. My sis, my sister, came to show us..... Man I love Kelly McGaughhin. I should have gone up with her to her apartment. Has that time happened yet? Did that happen in the last, or is it yet to happen? I can't keep track of anything anymore. How to get home? Maybe if he could find a significant street, then everything would fall into place. He knows all the streets. He can read signs, too. His mother taught him about how to find his way around. I even know the phone number. Maybe if I could find a phone.

He looked around the room. There was no sign of a phone.

Maybe if I can find a phone. Mommy could pick me up. Sure. She'd want to pick me up!

 

Epilog

 

It was a bed in a room. The colour of the walls of the room seemed a creamy off-white. Bill was in the bed, facing the ceiling. He hadn't said anything in about twenty-four hours. All he knew was that he was tired, and that he would be sleeping soon. He was finally going to return! It had been quite a journey getting there to that there bed. Time would go on, but he couldn't. He bid a farewell to the ceiling. He was lucid for a moment. Well, yes, this is my moment.

The Story of the Book of the Doll

I

 

The entirety of this story concerns three, or perhaps two-and-a-half, subjects. Firstly, it is about a curious book I discovered recently, and, secondly, it's about an evil doll, and thirdly, and halfly, it is about myself.

The book is naturally the place to start. On Blood Street, in a second-hand shop, I found it. I'd been quite idle that day, being as I am an old man with little purpose in life. The store was one which I had never visited before, despite my well-earned reputation as something of a know-it-all, or at least a read-it-all--or, rather, I used to be considered so in my earlier days. Frankly, I don't think I'm very considered at all anymore. The book was a paperback. It appeared to have been read only once, by someone who knew how to read a book without breaking its spine or dirtying its edges. The title? "The Book of the Doll."

I read the summary on the back of the book, and that's where this whole tale starts. It described the main character, and that he'd acquired a doll early in his life, and the doll did terrible things to the people the subject cared about. It was framed as something of a thriller or horror story. I opened the book to the publication information. Copyrighted twelve years ago, and published in Australia. I turned to the back of the book again and read the summary again.

I felt the summary was entirely consistent, at least from a distance, with my own experience. I'd had roughly the same experience as the protagonist of the book. I felt a little dizzy at that point, standing at a shelf in a shop on Blood Street. I believe it's called vertigo, though dictionaries might tell you otherwise. All I can tell you is that the book's purchase was imperative.

I sat down to read it that evening, in my tiny apartment above a humid laundromat on Geoffrey Street. I don't suppose you know where that is or what it looks like, so let me tell you all four blocks of it consisted of former bourgeois homes which had over the years had their ground floors converted to shops. In almost every case, the shops' proprietors lived on the second floor; however, there were some exceptions to this, and I was one of them. Two rooms, a kitchen, and a bath, with outdated furniture in every corner. In any case, I kept it neat. It was not a 'dive' by any means. It was an apartment for an elderly gentleman such as myself.

So: I started to read the book, and apart from some flowery descriptions of a particular suburban milieu not unlike the one I had grown up in, the first part of the tale was of a boy and his family, very much like my own. The boy had parents, and a brother and a sister. The descriptions of the house's layout much matched the layout of my own. But, then again, all suburbs are made to the same pre-fabricated design, so I didn't attach much to it. It seemed a coincidence and nothing more.

However, I wasn't prepared to find myself reading a book that so matched my own experiences I wondered if the author had based it on myself. I checked the editorial apparatus again: I didn't recognize the name of the author, and the colophon very clearly stated that the work was a work of fiction, with no resemblance to anyone living or dead. That's all standard for works of fiction, even the ones that originate in Australia.

 

For his seventh birthday, the boy received, as a gift from his uncle who'd travelled the seven seas three times, thus twenty-one seas in total, a Singaporean doll. How precisely it had come into his possession was never known except to himself. The doll was rather an ugly thing, reed thin and with big eyes, black as coal, and with angry teeth. Somehow, he thought this little thing would delight the boy and also his parents, who pretended to like it, because they were tolerant parents and always in favour of discoveries and inventions for the boy. The boy's reaction was not all that different. What is this hideous thing? How can it possibly get along with his Johnny West and Chief Cherokee dolls? He foresaw the three would not get along with one another; for the tensions between West and Cherokee were already apparent, and bringing in a new friend for them from Southeast Asia could cause a great deal of trouble.

Later that day, he introduced 'Singapore' to his other two dolls. Singapore was a sailor who'd sailed the seas and had now come to North America for some reason. 'Howdy, I'm from Singapore!' said Singapore, and West and Cherokee were wary of him, but they did their best Prairie Hospitality. There was no room in the bunkhouse for Singapore, so he'd have to sleep out under the stars. Singapore was all right with that; he'd slept outside plenty of times. There was a name for such sleeping rough back in Singapore, but for some reason Singapore couldn't recall it.

The next morning, the day after his birthday, the boy noticed little improvement in his dolls' attitudes to each other. West was mighty suspicious of the newcomer. Cherokee a little less so, for he felt a certain kinship with the dark-skinned stranger.

 

That excerpt, from the fifth page of the book, took me back to my childhood, for I had a vague memory of having a 'Western' doll named Johnny West, and I also recalled I had a companion doll, a red Indian doll (though I'd forgotten the name Chief Cherokee). I quite strongly remembered the other doll, the one from Singapore, but I'd forgotten where it had come from. If I'd got it from some sailor-uncle, that uncle disappeared from our lives from my seventh birthday on, for he was never seen or even mentioned again. Needless to say, I don't remember how the dolls related to each other, since it was all fantasy play. Who remembers the playthings of the imagination sixty years after the fact?

The book goes on, plausibly enough, with a detailed description, too detailed to verify, for childhood amnesia.... It seems memory, a functioning memory, only begins at about the age of five. I understand that the brain and nervous system are up to that point too busy learning the rudiments of existence: how to control your excretory functions, how to walk, how to speak, etc. Only after those rudiments are acquired, can the human organism begin to arrange and 'memorize' its experiences. In any case, the organization of memory develops from the age of five, soaking up information, but not soaking up information it cannot connect to information already memorized. Thus, I can remember the dolls much more than I can remember where they had come from. I got the dark doll from somewhere, and since my uncle vanished from my life, I had nothing to connect the two.

The details of the disappearance of Johnny West, however, as they are recounted in the book, differ from my memory of the event--for it was a rather traumatizing event.

I remember losing my Johnny West doll. I couldn't find it no matter where I looked. I turned the house upside down looking for it, and it was nowhere to be found. I asked my brother, my sister, my mother, my father: no-one had seen it. I recall crying myself to sleep about it: about a plastic doll.

However, the book gives a different story. As it happened, in the days after Singapore arrived at the bunkhouse, the hostility got to be too great. Singapore, pretending friendly and let-bygones-be-bygones, lured West out of the bunkhouse and out of the house. They crossed the driveway, down to the sewer grating. Singapore was saying: "You won't believe what's down there. It's a goldmine!" West, who was frankly kind of stupid, took Singapore at his word, and followed at a swift pace. They climbed down the curb to the grating. West leaned over it, and looked down through the thick iron bars. He drawled: "I don't see nothin', pardner." "Lean in a bit more," said Singapore. West leaned further in. He was on his stomach, he head down between the bars. He leaned as far as he could without falling in. "I don't--" but that was all he had time to say before Singapore pulled up West's boots and feet and legs and let him fall down, down, down, into the sewer! West cried: "Help me, I'm drownin'!" He repeated it and repeated it until he was gurgling and then was heard no more, while Singapore watched and listened and enjoyed the sounds and sights. He stood up, wiped his hands, returned to the house, and his cardboard bunk. He became master of the ranch. Chief Cherokee, understanding what had happened, lived the rest of his days in terror of the doll from Singapore.

 

 

II

 

Part Two of the book jumps ahead a number of years, to 1986 precisely, to a time when the protagonist, and incidentally myself, were both attending Righterton College, some fifty or sixty miles away from the milieu of Part One. I recall the days of moving from the former to the latter, though Part One skips over those bits, jumping rather right into the heart of the action, namely to a day which the book brought to mind as I read it, and as I read it, I found it to be plausible, with details its little memory-nudge made vivid again. Part Two starts with a day in a celestial mechanics class, on a Tuesday morning (and I clearly recall Tuesday mornings in a celestial mechanics class, since Tuesdays were pub discount days).

The protagonist meets a fellow student in that class, and not just any student. She is described as 'the first true love of his life,' and I cannot argue otherwise. She receives quite a physical description which sounds plausible. (I have no photographs from that time with which to compare it.)

A week later, after the class, the protagonist and the woman go to the pub discount day, where they talk for well into a third hour. They are getting along, and they like one another. (The narrative is clear about this, as if it had access to her inner self. I, however, had no such access.)

A couple weeks later, they can't think about much other than their objects of mutual affection. And so, as is the course of nature, they wind up at his apartment a bit of the way off campus. He apologizes for the mess of the place, although it's not all that messy. Perhaps some plates on a shelf, and cigarette butts in a saucer.

I remember. I'd brought Singapore with me to my place near Righterton College, and I had it on a shelf beside my hi-fi speakers. It was like she noticed it immediately. She picked it up and said in amazement: "What the hell is this?"

I explained that it had come from an uncle; an uncle I'd never seen since.

She said: "It's pretty grotesque. What's with the teeth? You could cut your hand on them."

I told her I thought they've been carved from ivory, or maybe some shark teeth or something like that.

"Are you trying to ward off evil spirits? Is it a talisman? Does it prevent uglier things from coming at you?"

I told her I thought so. Nothing had come at me since!

She put it back on the shelf, whereupon it flopped over backwards, hitting its head on the wooden shelf.

"Oops! Sorry, doll," she said. "Didn't mean to hurt you!"

I told her that Singapore had been with me a long time.

"Singapore. Is that where it's from? That's something I find pretty easy to believe."

She pulled him upright, and set him straight. "There, there," she said.

We were still standing in the middle of my room. I said: "I got a couple beers in the fridge."

"Only a couple?"

I confessed there were six.

"I think we should get started, then. Lay one of those puppies on me."

I got the beers from the galley kitchen's refrigerator, and I put on some music--REM maybe--and we drank our beers and talked about this and that. Then another, and then I folded out the couch to make it into a bed and we got in and had sex and then we slept.

 

He could see she was disturbed by the doll with its sharp teeth and over-sized eyes. It was like she was afraid of 'getting off' in its presence. He 'got her off' regardless, but it was an uphill battle. They had a restless night and a restless sleep. She seemed to be looking at the doll all night long. The thing was definitely an obstacle, and he had to make a decision before he invited her over again, for sex.

For a whole week he couldn't decide, but then it came down to the crunch. On Tuesday morning, before Celestial Mechanics 101, knowing, as he did, that he wanted her to come over after class, for sex, he picked up the doll, apologized to it verbally, and slipped it into the dresser drawer in which he kept his socks. He told it the solution was only temporary. The doll, of course, had nothing to say. It hid its abilities from him, as all good dolls do. He closed the drawer. As he carefully washed and dressed for the day, he stole the occasional glance at his sock drawer. There was something melancholy to the whole event.

She came over, of course, after the class. Perhaps she didn't notice the absence of Singapore, or perhaps she noticed but didn't want to draw attention to that fact. Regardless, she was much more relaxed for their afternoon delight that day, and after a couple hours they went out to a nearby bar to get a bite to eat. After that, still in states of heightened intimacy, they went back to his apartment and continued more-or-less where they'd left off. They exhausted themselves that day. He could have exhausted himself more if only he could not have looked at the sock drawer so often, but it was exhausting enough. After all, you don't want to damage your health.

 

I know it happens all the time, but we were both damaged when it came time to break up. As it turned out, we didn't have enough in common, and we simply couldn't sustain the feelings. I started looking afield, and so did she. It's not possible to pinpoint when the end happened; instead, we simply slowed down with the phone calls and the meetings, so when she finally broke it down by saying: "It's not really working out, is it?": I replied with only a shrug. Neither of us knew how it had happened. We'd simply gotten bored or something. We were both fooling around with others, so it had to end. We were civil to one another for about another year, and then it all stopped. It stopped.

I brought Singapore out of my sock drawer, and returned him to his rightful place beside my hi-fi speakers. It didn't matter much to me, but I did it anyway.

Some time later, I tried to contact her, but she was gone. Where to, I didn't know, nor did anyone else. She stopped going to classes, according to the registrar, and her parents or someone cleared out her apartment. She was a genuine Missing Person. However, by that time, I merely thought it curious she'd vanish like that. I imagined at the time she'd been swept off her feet by a brave knight--she was pretty, you see--and she'd said goodbye to everything, and moved to Europe. I had nothing to tell the police when they came a-calling; we'd had no contact for quite some time, and they left me alone. (They gave me a contact card, which I no longer have. I must have thrown it out at some point.)

Part Two ends with a shocking and terrible event. I don't believe it happened at all.

According to the book, Singapore had become aware of his powers of hypnotism. (He recalled experimenting with Chief Cherokee, back in the cardboard bunkhouse.) His abilities had increased because he'd been a sock drawer that had acted like a sensory deprivation tank. He climbed out the slightly-ajar window, climbed down into the street, and started for her house, the address of which he'd learned from overhearing the two talking.

He found her, in her dorm room. He stood atop her like an incubus and gazed deeply into her eyes. She responded, though she didn't awake. He made her choose her sharpest and strongest knife, then, with him hiding in her pants, they travelled by bus to the Teflon factory on the other side of town.

Singapore searched the factory until he found the hydrofluoric acid vats. He got her to roll one of them to the seldom-travelled road behind the factory. He made her take out her knife. Not a word had been spoken, nor would any word be. He made her cut off her left leg and dump it into the acid vat, where it fizzled and bizzled. Then she cut off her left arm, and into the vat it went. Singapore meanwhile constructed a staircase of sorts up to the rim of the vat. She got onto the top step, and sliced off her remaining leg, and into the vat it went. She looked small enough, so he pushed the rest of her into the vat.

A day passed, and it was all over. Singapore dumped the goo, now neutralized by its overdose of carbon, into the ditch beside the road.

Then he went home.

I don't believe it because I would have noted Singapore's absence.

 

 

III

 

In the third part of the book is recounted a painful and tragic episode, and again it quite paralleled my own in many ways, though it differed because of the introduction of some ridiculous material that simply could not have happened. In fact, I found it somewhat frustrating to find a fly in the ointment--namely, its recourse to absurd fantasy.

We pick up the protagonist of the story in his early middle age. There are not many connections to the previous parts. The episode with the Johnny West doll is not referred to, nor is the disappearance of his college sweetheart. Rather, it begins with him at his job. He is taken for granted, and he resents it. He wants to get fired so he can start anew. It's a dead-end job, in other words. However, he is not alone in any of this (which is a conclusion I came to when I was the protagonist's age); almost to a man or a woman they all feel like life is passing them by: "So long, life." And yet they banter and talk meaninglessly, incapable of facing or communicating the dread they feel at the steady approach of the grave.

I think I'm putting thoughts into the protagonist's head.

Anyway, he is also not alone, in that he is married and he has two children. He loves his wife, and he loves his children. He thinks about them often. They are the cause of his continued employment. They keep him there, and they keep his nose to the grindstone--and he doesn't regret any of it, all in all and in the end.

They live in the suburbs, and he drives there after work. He parks his car beside his wife's slightly smaller car. He gets out and trudges through the snow. (It was winter, I remember.) He goes into his house, his home, his hearth (whatever a hearth is). His wife, whom he finds in the kitchen making dinner, tells him that his workplace called. That there is an emergency. That he's been told to go somewhere that night, and he'll have to be there overnight. She doesn't know all the details.

He telephones his boss and gets the details. There's a serious problem at one of the distant warehouses. He has to fly to another province to sort it out. The ticket is waiting for him at the airport. (I remember all these details, every one of them. They keep me awake some nights. The dialogue is almost word-for-word.) The boss says: "You can fix it. No-one else can. It's an emergency."

Due to the timing of the flight, he doesn't have to leave for the airport for an hour, so the four of them have dinner together. None of those present in the dining room know it's to be their last meal together.

"How was your day?" "How was your day?" "School good? School okay?" There's nothing much to report on, except for the facts in the case of what happened the night before, which is something that had been uncovered in the last hour or so. His wife had been dusting, and she noticed that Singapore the doll, which was kept on a shelf in the living room, was missing one of his front teeth. She took the doll to the boy's room to see if he knew anything about it. What happened to Singapore's tooth? The boy said he didn't know anything about it, because he didn't play with dolls and he thought Singapore was ugly.

 

She went to her daughter's room, doll in hand. The daughter was looking guilty, but the mother still wanted to hear the words from her. She held out the doll and said: "Did you get carried away some time recently? Were you playing with your father's monster doll, the one he'd gotten from his aunt the brave female sailor?"

The girl nodded slowly and said: "It was fighting with my Barbies, and he fell against the table and he broke his tooth. I'm sorry, Mommy."

"Maybe you shouldn't let your Barbies play so rough, young lady."

"I'm really very sorry."

"Where's his tooth?"

The girl reached under her pillow and showed the tooth. "I was gonna try and fix it with some glue."

The mother took the tooth in her hand. She looked it over, then fitted it into the doll. It was possible it could be fixed. It wouldn't be too difficult, really. Maybe she and the girl could fix it together on the morrow. No, it was not something to hide from her husband. He'd have to be told.

"Okay," she said: "We're going to fix it, but your father can't be kept in the dark about it. You're going to have to apologize to your father."

"I'll apologize."

"And you'll have to swear you'll never roughhouse with his doll again."

"I'm never even gonna look at it."

Mother kissed daughter on the forehead.

So, it was all settled. She could tell him at the dinner table. She had to go make pork chops and potatoes and carrots then. It was getting pretty late in the day. It was five-thirty, and he usually got home at six. That didn't leave her much time. She went downstairs and put the doll back in its place.

 

I wasn't a witness to their discussion, so I can't say if it really happened or not. However, I can say the gist of it is true, because at the dinner table I heard about what had happened. I pretended to be very disappointed in my daughter for letting her play get out of hand, but really I wasn't. I loved that little girl, and I would have done anything for her, given time. I told her: "You have to get some self-control. Not everything in your life is going to go your way. You'll make mistakes. Some will be irreversible. All you can do is pull up your pants and get on with it. However, be certain you'll get a little happiness out of it." Or words to that effect. All this took place some time ago.

After dinner, I packed up a little overnight bag, kissed all goodnight, drove to the airport, and flew to another province.

At around three o'clock a.m., while I was asleep in a hotel room in said other province, something went wrong with my house's gas-powered furnace. I don't recall the details, but it started leaking hydrogen monoxide. As I'm sure you know, hydrogen monoxide has no smell, or taste, or anything. All our windows were sealed up for the winter, with plastic wrapping all over the place. As I understand it, hydrogen monoxide bullies oxygen in some way or another. Takes it out of service. I took an airplane back to my city and drove to my house. An ambulance was outside, which I thought was curious. A little conversation with a bystander gave me all the information I needed. A woman and her two children had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. They'd died sleeping, and probably peacefully.

It had been a mishap.

Everyone was so sorry for me at the funerals. Family gone, he'll take to drink, nothing left to live for, etc. But I soldiered on nonetheless, and got back on my feet. And frankly I felt a bit more free. I had a second chance, though in the end I'd blow it all to hell.

According to Part Three, it hadn't been a mishap. I'm sure you saw this coming.

Singapore was angrier than ever that evening after having his tooth knocked out. He spent the afternoon plotting his revenge. He recalled something he'd heard somewhere, something about hydrogen monoxide. Whole families can be wiped out with the stuff, because it's a narcotic or at least a soporific.

When the house was quiet, he crept down to the basement, to the heater. The manual he read upside-down: instead of reading how to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, he reversed the sentences to read about how to create carbon monoxide poisoning. His missing tooth bothered him terribly. He had been mutilated by that little bitch. The whole place stank. The hypocrisy of it all made him wretch. What did they know about anything? They had all this stuff and they'd always had all this stuff, but he himself had been created from slavery pure and simple. I'm doing the universe a favour.

He located the proper switch. He opened a valve. He opened the safety valve. Once they were dead, he'd return to set them all up proper again.

He went to the daughter's room, to watch her die. She died first, in just three hours. A trip to the boy's room to see that he was dead, and he was, good. Then the woman's room. She was asleep, but gasping. Soon the gasping stopped and all was serene.

He went down to the basement and returned the settings to their proper places.

 

 

IIII

 

I have to go down to the cellars in a little bit, but I thought I would catch up before doing so. I have read Part Four, and it's shocking.

The character in Part Four is again much like myself, and I can't say there are many noticeable differences. I went to funerals, down-sized my life to this little apartment, and retired from my job. For fifteen years I've lived here, and I am an old man now. Elevators are a godsend. All my meals are modest meals, and I go to bed early though I get up at two or three to putter around hopelessly. Even so there's not much doing, I get along. I play cards with friends on a regular basis. Some days I don't say anything to anyone.

I put into storage in the cellars several boxes of things from my past. I've meant to go down there one of these days to sort it all out, but I haven't had the time. I think I've only been down there to retrieve a photograph of my family from some time around 1973. Other than that, I think, I haven't bothered. The past is a painful thing, and no-one wants to court pain. (Also, the cellars are bleak and dreary and there's dust everywhere.)

Each apartment gets a small cage down there, for storage purposes. When I put my boxes there, in my cage, I didn't encounter anyone. Many of these will be cleaned out by the landlord, I suppose. The things down there, Lord, they're abandoned and worthless for the most part. And the time I went down there for the photograph, again I encountered no-one. It's a place for things you think may be worthwhile, while they are mostly not.

Part Four has two narratives running alongside one another. The first one, fractured into sections, is the story of the protagonist, who leads a life very much like my own. (There are perhaps some differences, but I can't put my finger on them. Perhaps it has something to do with style.) The other narrative is about--you guessed it--Singapore, or the book's version of Singapore. (I will be able to let you know in a while if these two are one and the same.) Apparently, Singapore, whose analogue is down in the cellars in some box or other, is having a grand old time. He has the run of the place, and with such bric-a-brac to mess around with and control, he's been up to no good, let me tell you, as the book reads. He has discovered many other dolls in other boxes in the other cages. There's a lot of dolls to choose from, at least one in every cage, sometimes eight or nine in musty cardboard boxes. Unfortunately, he has trouble relating to them, since they're much older than he is. Sometimes as much as fifty years older, and the age gap is too great, though he had some fun torturing three of them by pulling at their seams and stuffings. It wasn't until he found, quite hidden away at the back of one cage, a box of special metal toys, wind-up toys, obviously of some value, some with 'Made in American Sector' embossed on them. What could be done with these self-propelling automatons? He didn't spend long puzzling over it. He gathered them all together in his home cage and studied their mechanisms and properties. All of them objected, some in extreme distress, because toys can tell what motives other toys have.

 

Down in the cellars, in the cages, in his own cage, Singapore had control over each and every mechanical metal wind-up toy he could ever desire. How could it be he'd never before seen such creatures? He must have been travelling in the wrong circles!

He wound each one up beyond its spring's capacity and glared at them as they squeaked and squealed in agony. Then he would release their keys and watch them get relief as they scurried around the floor or sang crazy Mozart melodies.

After a while, he realized he could pull parts of this one and parts off that one and combine them into monstrous creatures never before seen. He especially enjoyed the pulling apart; he liked how they groaned in agony as he dissected them. A pile of metal and rubber parts would remain: wings, wheels, beaks, fenders, springs, keys, tines. Then he would guess haphazardly which pieces could go where. Could this leg be attached to this cylinder? How about making this eye roll in this claw? The possibilities were not endless, constrained as he was by the non-plasticity of the metallic parts. However, it delighted him to see the terror in their hearts as he made his mutations.

He had taken nine or so of them and made them fit together: a leviathan of battling creations! He laughed to see it try to navigate from one corner of the cage to another, hobbling and squabbling as it crawled and rolled along. He felt insane with delight as if he'd made some defiance to all creation, a release of all the bitterness that was at the bottom of his black heart.

He was now the doll-maker; he was now the God of his dominion.

 

Part Four continues with the protagonist, on an ordinary day, on an ordinary street, wander quite at leisure into a used book store he'd never been into nor even seen before. What is this place? he wondered. A few rounds of the shop kept taking him back to a particular book, appealing to him in its design. He picked it up, recognizing his whole life was about to be changed in an instant. He read the back cover, the publisher's advertisement, honed and perfected throughout an editorial department somewhere, and, oddly enough, it echoed his own life. An uncle gives the book's protagonist a doll. He suffers some tragedies. And the doll is always with him, leading to a 'horrifying conclusion'.

Meanwhile, as he doesn't know, as he stands reading the back of the book, but is going to find out, the doll is down in the cellars doing terrible experiments to mechanical toys.

He buys the book and takes it home. He writes up his own reflections as he reads the book, part by part. He is thrown back into his past, parts of which he never wanted to think about again. Finally, he reaches the part about the doll, Singapore, in the cellars, in the cage, and he begins to think that maybe, just maybe, the book is more true than his own memories. After all, so much happens to us of which we are unawares, for life is long and we only have five or so senses to take care of us, isn't that right? He sees it's possible that he has been cursed his entire life, with an evil doll that made his most terrible experiences take place. He can hardly believe it, but by an act of will he decides it is time to find out what's been going on down in the cellar of his apartment building.

He leaves his apartment, to go down into the cellars.

And that's the end of Part Four!

That's it! The last paragraph!

Well, I know this can't stand.

The story was going along so well, and then ... nothing.

I don't know if it's a co-incidence, or co-incidental, or what have you. It was coming along so nicely, then ... deliberate ambiguity.

I guess you can see how upset I am about the whole thing. I mean, the tale itself is ludicrous. Do you mean to tell me that, right now, right this instant, my doll Singapore down in the cellars has been fucking around with wind-up toys, pulling them apart, putting them back together in crazy ways? First of all, the idea is absurd, to think you can pull apart metalworks and put them back together harum-scarum and they will function? The world of metals doesn't work that way. It's like saying you could combine a television set, a toaster and a lamp and be rewarded with something that worked.

And on top of all that, the earlier bits in the other three parts don't make any sense either. Johnny West was alive in some way? Singapore hypnotized my ex-girlfriend and took her to a Teflon plant--a Teflon plant, for God's sake!--and made her dismember herself? That he somehow managed to get a furnace to emit carbon monoxide, enough to kill three people in a matter of hours? Everything about it is gonzo!

I have not led a life with fantastic elements included. It's simply not the case.

And so, now I am going to go down into the cellars. I'm going to find Singapore in a cardboard box, and not dissecting and recombining other gizmos.

I'll be back!