From the expression of shock on his face it was obvious he’d assumed I was long since dead. But the fact that I wasn’t pleased him, I could see, the realization of which gave me hope. Quite what of, I can’t truly tell you.
No. I can try. Perhaps I hoped that our both getting here, to the end of the world as it had been, and to the beginning of what it was to become, courtesy of Johannes Gutenberg, tied us together, for better or worse, for richer, for—
I never finished reciting these silent vows of devotion because one of Hannah’s advisors, sitting next to her on the other side of the table to Quitoon, had seen the look on his face and realized there was a suspicious trace of happiness flickering through his features.
The angel began to rise from its seat in order to better see whatever Quitoon was staring at with such pleasure.
Quitoon was looking at me, of course, looking at me and smiling, the way I was now allowing myself to smile as I looked at him.
Then the angel screamed.
In the beginning was the Word, says John the Christ-lover, and the Word was not only with God, it was God. So why isn’t there a word, or a sentence ten thousand words long, that would come anywhere even near to describe the sound of an angel screaming?
You’ll just have to take it from me that the angel did indeed scream, and that the sound that emanated from it was such that every scintilla of matter in that room convulsed, hearing the cry. Eyes that had been devoted to an obsessive study of the Principals were suddenly jolted free by the violence of the convulsion. And inevitably several of those in the room saw me.
I had no time to retreat. The entities that filled the room (most likely even the matter of the room itself ) were infinitely more sophisticated creatures than I. When their gazes were turned on me, I felt their scrutiny like a bruising blow delivered to every single part of my body at the same time, even the soles of my feet. Their brutal gazes ceased as suddenly as they had begun. The removal should have been a relief but, consistent with the paradoxical nature of the entire room, the aversion of their gazes brought its own strange order of pain, that which comes when the hurt induced by a higher being ceases, and all connection with that being is removed.
But my presence here was not as inconsequential as the removal of their scrutiny might have implied. A quarrel now arose around the table as to whether my presence here was proof of some conspiracy against Gutenberg or his invention, and if so, by which side. There was no attempt to ask my own account of events. They were only concerned that I had witnessed Heaven and Hell’s complicity. Whether I had simply seen the Secret in progress, as they knew I had, or whether I was part of a grand Conspiracy against the safety of the Secret was irrelevant to them. I had to be silenced. The only point of contention, apparently was what to do with me.
I knew that I was the problem under debate, because every now and again I heard a fragment of dialogue relating to me and my dispatch.
“No blood should be spilt in here,” the Angel Hannah decreed.
Later, I heard someone—was it the Demon I’d known as Peter?—opine that:
“There’s no justice in an execution. He’s done nothing.”
Then, from all sides, counterarguments that had the same two words: The Press! The Press! The Press! And as the words were repeated, and feelings ran higher and higher, so the way they expressed themselves grew steadily more unnatural. The din in the room began cacophonous, loud enough to make my mind shake against my skull.
Audible above the roar was one human contribution to the debate, clearer than all the mightier voices simply because it was human: raw and defenseless. It was Gutenberg who spoke.
Only later would I realize what he was saying: that he was voicing his protest at the purpose to which his Press, built to spread the news of salvation, was about to be put.
But nothing he said hushed the vociferous exchanges from around the table. They continued to rise in surges of intensity, until they suddenly quieted. Somebody had made a suggestion that apparently found favor with the assembled company, a decision had been reached. My fate had been decided.
It was no use my attempting to ask for some leniency from this court, if court indeed it was. I was being judged by entities that had no interest in me or my point of view. They just wanted me bloodlessly, guiltlessly silenced.
There was a raveling motion at the heart of the intertwined negotiations: a gathering up, a brightening. I had no reason for thinking it, but think I did, that this was perhaps the final fire of my life, about to be—no, being—unleashed.
I caught sight of Quitoon as the blaze grew; his face was no longer touched by that fragment of pleasure at my deliverance, that little smile that was so sweet a reward I would gladly have endured ten wounds like the one I carried to have it bestowed on me again.
But it was too late for smiles now, too late for forgiveness.
The knotted exchanges of the negotiators had almost solved themselves, and the flame at their heart was steadily growing stronger, drawing in motes of heat from the other angels and demons in the chamber.
Then it burst free and came at me.
In that same instant the door behind which I had been hiding, along with its frame and several of the flawless blocks of stone that surrounded it, all these were dissolved by a fire of their own, leaving me without any protection whatsoever from the blaze of judgment coming from the negotiators’ midst.
It fell about me in blazing veils, preventing me from attempting escape in any direction, even assuming I’d possessed the strength or the will to try. Instead I simply waited, resigned to my death, as the verdict closed around me. In that same moment I heard someone shouting—Johannes Gutenberg again, his voice thick with fury—protesting still, and still unheard.
I had time to think, as the flames rose up around me.
Haven’t I been punished enough?
I ask you now, the same question.
Haven’t I been punished enough?
Can you see me in your mind’s eye. You can, can’t you? Surrounded by fires both demonic and divine, dancing coils of heat that climbed up through the trench of my wound to invade my throat and face, their advance relentless, transforming the nature of my meat and blood and bone.
And again I say to you:
Haven’t I been punished enough?
Please answer yes. In the name of all that’s merciful, tell me you’ve finally come to understand how terrible the cruelties that I’ve had visited upon me have been, and that I deserve release from them.
No, don’t even say it. Why waste a crumb of energy speaking when you could be using it to do the one thing this burned, cut, and clawed beast you have in your hands deserves.
Burn this book.
If it’s the only thing you do in your whole life that’s truly compassionate, it’ll still be enough to open the paradise gates to you.
I know you don’t want to think about it. No living creature is eager to talk of its own demise. But it will come. As sure as night follows day, you will die. And when you’re wandering in that grey place that is neither Heaven nor Hell, nor any place on this earth Humankind likes to imagine it owns, and some spirit approaches you in robes of mist and starlight, and from its barely visible face comes a voice that sounds like the wind through a broken window, and says:
“Well now. Here’s a quandary. By all rights you should go down to Hell for having dealings with a demon called Jakabok Botch. But I’m told there are extenuating circumstances that I should like to hear you speak to me about in your own words.”
What will you say?
“Oh yes, I had a book that was possessed, but I passed it on.”
That’s not going to win you passage through the Paradise Door. And don’t waste your time lying. They know everything, the spirits at the Door. They may ask you questions, but they already know the answers. They want to hear you say:
“I had a book that was possessed by one of the vilest demons in Creation, but I burned it. Burned it ’til it
was flakes of grey ash. And then I ground out the ashes ’til they were less than dust, and the wind took them away.”
That’s your key to the Paradise Door, right there.
I swear, by all things holy and unholy—for they are two parts of one great Secret: God and the Devil, the Light and the Darkness, one indivisible mystery—I swear that this is the truth.
What?
All that and still no fire? I offer up the Mystery of Mysteries, and still my prison is cold. Cold. And so are you, page-turner.
You’re cold to your marrow, you know that? I hate you. Once again, words fail me. I sit here with my hatred, devoid of the means to express my fury, my revulsion. To say you are excrement insults the product of my bowels.
I thought I was teaching you something about the workings of evil, but I see now that you don’t need any education from me. You know evil, all too well you embody it. You are one who stands by while others suffer. You are in the crowd at a lynching, or a blurred face in my memory of people watching slow death pronounced upon some poor nobody by the rule of law.
I will kill you. You know that, don’t you? I was going to do it in one swift cut, across your throat from ear to ear. But I see now, that’s too kind. I’m going to treat you with my knife the way you’ve treated my pages with your merciless eyes. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Whether it’s slashing or reading, the motion’s the same. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.
If the job’s done well, life comes pouring out, doesn’t it? Hot, steaming life, pouring out, splashing on the floor at your feet.
Can you imagine how that’s going to look, page-turner? Like a vessel of red ink dropped by a clumsy creator.
And there’ll be nobody to cry out on your behalf. Nobody in the brightness of the page (it’s always day when the book’s open; always night when it’s closed); nobody to voice one last desperate plea as you’re stripped naked—naked and bloody you came into the world, naked and bloody you will leave it—and I wallow in the sight of your gooseflesh, and in the flickering terror in your eyes.
Oh, my page-turner, why did you let it come to this, when there were so many times you could have lit a match?
Now it’s all cuts. Backwards and forwards, across your belly and breast, across the place of love; from behind, across your buttocks, opening them until the bright yellow fat parts from its own weight and sags, and before the blood has run down the back of your thigh, I’m slashing your hamstrings, backwards and forwards. Demonation, how that hurts! And how you scream, how you shriek and sob! At least until I come back around the front and finish the job with your face. Eyes.
Backwards and forwards. Nose. Off with one stroke. Mouth.
Backwards and forwards, opening like a cretin’s mouth, as the poor creature tries to beg.
Is that what you want? Because it’s all a putrid, fraudulent, heartless pig like you deserves: a long, agonizing death and a quick shoving-off into oblivion in the cheapest box your loved ones could find.
Does that sound about right?
No? Do I hear you protest?
Well, if it doesn’t feel right, maybe you should just grab this one last chance. Go on, take it; it’s here; the last, the very last, chance to change your destiny. It’s not impossible, even now, even for a putrid, fraudulent, heartless pig. You just need to stop your eyes from moving, and I’ll stop my knife from doing the same.
Well?
No. I didn’t think so. All my talk about knives and eyes doesn’t touch you, does it? I could keep promising the hard, dark stuff until my throat was so raw I was talking blood, and you’d not be moved.
You just want me to finish the damn story, don’t you? It’s as if telling it is going to make sense of your senseless life.
Let me tell you how: It’s not. But for what it’s worth, I’ll give you what’s left and you can pay the price.
The penultimate fire.
It had hold of me, inside and out, seizing my skin, my muscle, my bone and marrow. It had my memory and my feelings. It had my breath and my excrement. And it was turning them all into a common language. It was more like an itch, deep, deep down in my being. I lifted up my right hand, and saw the process at work there: light tracing the whorls in my fingertips, and in the layer below the intricate patterns of my veins and nerves: like maps of some secret country hidden in my body, finally made visible.
But, in the instant of seeing them, the power that had uncovered them proceeded to unmake them. The roads which these maps traced were eroded from the landscape of my body, the whorls untwined, and the tracery of throbbing veins beneath unbound. If my body had indeed once been a country, and I its despot King, then I had been deposed by the conjoined labors of Heaven and Hell.
Did I cry out in protest at this sedition? I tried to. Demonation, how I tried! But the same transforming forces that were at work unmaking my hands snatched the sounds from my lips and turned them into sigils of bright fire that fell back against my upturned face, which was also decaying into signs.
Nothing was being stolen from me. It was simply that my nature was being changed by the forces that had judged me.
I stumbled backwards out of the Negotiation Chamber and down into the workshop. But, as above, so below. My feet were no longer able to make commonplace contact with the ground.
Like my hands and arms and face, they were being transformed into marks of light.
No, not marks. Letters.
And from the letters, in certain arrangements, words.
I was being turned into words.
God might have been the Word at the beginning. But at the End—at least my end (and who else’s does anyone really care about? it’s only our own that matters)—the Word was with Mister B. And Mister B. was the Word.
This was the Negotiators way of silencing me without having to spill blood in a place where holy and unholy had met, upon this most propitious of days.
I didn’t need my legs to carry me. The forces that were undoing my anatomy bore me back towards Gutenberg’s printing press, which I could hear in motion behind me, its crude mechanism seized by the same engines, demonic and divine, that were carrying me towards it.
I could see with these word-eyes of mine, and I could hear in the dome of my word-skull the rhythm of the press, as it prepared to print its first book.
I remembered that Gutenberg had been laboring on making a copy of Ares Grammatica, a little grammar book he’d chosen to test his creation. Oh yes, and a poem, too: the Sibylline Prophecies. But his modest experiments had ceased with the death or the flight of those who’d been working on the press. The sheet I’d seen earlier was now on the floor, casually pulled off the press and tossed aside. A much more ambitious book was about to be created.
This book, the one in your hands.
This life of mine, such as it was, told by me in my own flesh, blood, and being. And this death, too, which was not a death at all, but simply a sealing-up in the prison where you found me when you opened this book.
I saw for a moment the plates that were being made from me hanging in the air all around the press, like ripe, bright fruit swaying gently from the branches of some invisible tree.
And then the press began its work, printing my life. I will say it one last time: Demonation! The feeling of it! There are no words—how can there be?—to describe what it feels like to become words, to feel your life encoded, and laid out in black ink on white paper. All my love and loss and hatred, melted into in words.
It was like the End of the World.
And yet, I live. This book, unlike any other that came from Gutenberg’s press, or from the countless presses that have followed after it, is one of a kind. As I am both in the ink and in the paper, its pages are protean.
No. I’m sorry. That was a mistake in the printing. That whole sentence a few lines above, beginning “As I am . . . ,” shouldn’t be there. I spoke out of turn.
Ink and paper, me? No, no. That’s not right. You know it isn’t.
I’m behind you, remember? I’m a step closer to you with every page you turn. I’ve got my knife in my hand ready to cut you the same way—
the same way you read these pages—
backwards and forwards. Backwards and—
oh the blood that’s going to flow. And you begging me to stop, but I’m not—
I’m not—
I’m—
not—
DEMONATION!
Enough! Enough! There’s no use telling any more lies, trying to convince you of what things I want to half-believe myself, all in a pitiful attempt to get you to burn the book, when you knew (you did, didn’t you? I can see by the look on your face) that I was lying to you all along.
I’m not behind you with a knife, coming to cut you. I never was, never could be. I’m here and only here. In the words.
That part wasn’t a lie. The pages are protean. I was able to rearrange the words on the pages you had yet to read. They are my only substance now. And through them, I can speak with you, as I am speaking now.
All I ever wanted you to do was burn the book. Was that such a big thing to ask? I know, before you say it, I know: I was my own worst enemy, telling you stories. I should have scattered the words in all directions so that not a sentence, except for my plea to Burn the Book, would have made sense. Then you might have done it.
But it had been so long since I’d had eyes looking down at me, ready to be told a story. And I had such a story to tell: this life I’d lived. And had no one else to tell it to but you. And the more I told, the more I wanted to go on telling and the more I wanted to go on telling, the more I wanted to tell.
I was divided against myself: the part that wanted to tell my life and the part that wanted to be free.
Oh yes, free.
That’s what I would have won myself if I’d played a better game, and persuaded you to set fire to these volatile pages, and they would have gone up in smoke.