At the desk in my bedroom, I reached for the page I had typed before. What I had written sounded like an opening to a story about the island. I had no intention of writing such a thing. I have no idea how such an account, if written, would end; and I believe that an ending must have retrospective inevitability, everything leading to it along the way, fate found only in retrospect; and if I did ever write about this island—but I won’t, I know that—how would I fulfill my own requirement of inevitable fate? Dredge up Stanty’s hostility leading to …? Sonya: plant terrible hints that she may betray …? No, no, not her. Paul: the contradictions, the implicit championing of violence that would … All—everything—would have to conclude in an eruption of … quiet violence, explosive violence? And the mysterious island festering with …? All useless considerations. I will never write about this island.
In the library earlier, I had looked for, but not found, a collection that included Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Into the seeming banality of the early pages, she had woven intimations, in the very prose, of the inevitability of the violence. But where are events on this island moving? Everything evolves unexpectedly, and then is forgotten, ignored, relegated to silence.
Clouds are massing outside my window. They’re rent apart in the distance by flashing bolts of lightning followed by moans of thunder. The moisture in the air is thick; the heated lake adds its own moisture. The colors of the intrusive painting seem to swirl about the room.
I sit before the typewriter and write:
He was still gazing in the direction of the darkened island; quietly as if speaking out his thoughts, and almost—and this occurred to me quickly—as if quoting memorized words, he said: “What happens to evil when its flames are snuffed? Does it wait to spring out?” He had been gazing at the shadowed island when he said that.
I took the typed page out. About to rip it and the earlier page into pieces so no one else might read them, I stopped. I put them back in the drawer.