Daniel James
There are names under things and names inside names.515
I leaned over the sink, gently probing the inside of my mouth with my fingers, as strings of blood trailed down onto the white enamel. The discarded blister packs of painkillers were scattered along the bench next to a blood-stained towel and a bottle of Wild Turkey, the cream and brown label smeared with red fingerprints. I picked up the bourbon and pressed it to my bruised lips. My mouth burned as I tipped it back, the copper coloured liquor washing the blood out. Peeling off my shirt, I staggered over to the bed, limping, and collapsed onto the mattress, where I rolled onto my back, wincing. There was a black bruise on my side as big as a fist, where one of them had caught me with the hammer. In between laboured breaths, eyes opening and closing, I faded in, faded out, faded to black. Isabella appeared in one of those moments, in the half-light, at my bedside, like she had always been there; maybe she had.
‘What did they do to you?’ she said, the tips of her fingers touching my wounds.
‘You should see the other guy,’ I said, my voice slurred.
‘You need to go to a hospital.’
‘It’s not safe…they have people watching…I just need to rest…’
I felt her press a wet towel against my skin, cleaning away the dried blood. I faded in, faded out.
‘I just need to finish the book…and everything will be okay…we’ll go away, leave the city together…’
When I turned to look at her, it was Margot at my bedside instead.
‘Dan, I’m not here…’
My fingers passed through her arm. Light flooded the room and out again, back to darkness, the tide coming and going. Fragments of conversation drifted in and out, voices from another time and place. Different voices from so many different women. Isabella, Margot, Elizabeth, Kate, Julia, Eleanor, Ariane, and all the others, they had come back to me one last time, to say goodbye; all their voices overlapping.
‘You won’t be free to love anyone until you let go. You realise that don’t you?’
‘It’s tearing you apart…’
‘Only you can do it…’
‘I can’t make that decision for you…’
‘It’s not fair on me…’
‘If you don’t know who you are anymore…’
‘The book is killing you…’
‘I can’t spend my life waiting for you to wake up…’
‘I can’t watch you fall…I won’t.’
I tried to reach for them, for her, but my body felt impossibly heavy, like it was weighed down, crushed by gravity. I could hear voices, hers and mine, and those of other people, but our dialogue was out of synch, like there was a satellite-delay between us.
‘Don’t go…’ I heard myself say. ‘There’s something I need to tell you…something you need to know…’
When I stopped talking, I realised I was alone. The woman was gone. They were all gone, lost to the darkness. I didn’t know if she had heard what I had to say. I couldn’t be sure whether she had been there at all. It was only when my head started to clear that I realised, too late, that we hadn’t really been talking. Our conversation hadn’t been taking place at the same time, or in the same space. I had merged different moments, different people, into one, replaying old, unreliable memories. I felt sure now that I had only imagined someone coming into the room, as I had lain there bloody and broken. I had been surrounded by echoes playing out endlessly; echoes of her, of all of them, and yet they did leave some trace behind, something that wasn’t there before, a letter, written in invisible ink, by the ghosts of my life.516
Dear Daniel,
I can’t write this letter without falling into traps. Each sentence reads like a cliché, even though every word is true. I’m leaving this for you on your desk. You should find it when you wake up. It had to be this way. If I tried to say this to your face, my heart would melt the second I looked into those blue eyes of yours. That’s the beauty of a handwritten letter. As soon as you put pen to paper your words have a presence in the world. They become physical and permanent. There is no erase and rewind. Once this letter is in your hands, I won’t be able to take any of this back. That’s the way it has to be.
I always dreamed of finding someone I loved, respected, and wanted as much as you, but you’re not the man I thought you were. I look into your eyes now and I can’t see the person I loved anymore. Maybe he was never there? Or perhaps he’s lost inside the maze you created for yourself. Are you there right now? The longer you spend inside those pages, the further away from life you get. This story can only end one way, but I won’t be around to see it. I loved you once and I refuse to watch you destroy yourself – and for what? A book? So you can play out your fantasies? Do you remember when it was all just a game? A performance? Or was that just a lie too?
I wonder sometimes – did you plan to push me away to spare me somehow? Do you even care? I wonder…if I don’t sign this letter, will you even know who it was from?
They say it’s better to have loved, but honestly…I don’t know.
Yours,
No-one
Everything fell apart after that. They had all left me, but I decided it was for the best. If I was alone now, here at the end, then it was to clear the way for me to finish the book at last. It was almost complete, but I was running out of time. The date was just weeks away now, and I still didn’t know what was going to happen. It could simply be Maas’s return to the world, it could be the unveiling of his final work, or it could be something else. I had searched for the answers out there in the world and I had been left walking in circles, lost in a maze without an exit. There was only one direction left now.
I had to look inside, I had to break down the last walls between myself and Maas; I needed to inhabit his life, every aspect of it, even the lies, false personas, and invented histories, everything, to such an extent that I became him. It was the only way to win. The risks were great. I was already falling apart physically after everything that had happened, and I didn’t have time to let myself heal properly, but what I was about to do was far more dangerous. If I lost myself inside Maas’s world I might never find my way out again, it could break me, destroying everything that made me who I was.
If I crossed the threshold into the locked room inside Maas and couldn’t find the door to leave, the price would be nothing less than disintegration, the annihilation of my soul. I had been promised as much. I had been warned.
But I had no choice. There was too much at stake. It wasn’t about making history anymore, about writing a book like none that had come before it. I had to stop Maas. He was out there somewhere, planning, counting down to the date. Those numbers, they had been there hidden in his work all these years, a date that was almost here.
0100103-6-10102-3-601000-12-3-6-001012-3-6-010012-3-6-12000-3-60010-12-3-600-12-003-6-12-3-6000-12-3-0006-12-3-6010-12-003-6-12-3-6-1002-3-6-00012
I had to know what was coming. The days and weeks that followed bled into each other. Life became a succession of broken scenes. My old life was over. I was changing every second now, hopelessly lost, my world a blur of streets, drinks, bars, violence, art galleries, women, drugs, a blitzkrieg517 of experiences, wiping my mind clean. I became Maas and all of his selves, the romantic artist, the withdrawn recluse, the violent, temperamental genius, the charismatic cult leader, the counterculture icon, the serial womaniser, the drug addict, the experimenter, the intense loner, the passionate collaborator, the painter, the poet, the madman – I brought them all back to life. They raged inside me, tearing me apart, killing me. I was losing control, but the closer I got to death, to oblivion, the nearer I felt to the answers I had been searching for all this time. I saw a door opening, and I walked through it.
END
Notes
515. Susan Howe, poet.
516. Note to reader: According to Daniel’s notes, the following letter was left unsigned and he claimed he did not know who it was from. The evidence suggests it was the woman, or one of the women, he was seeing while he was working on the book. I personally believe this was one woman and he used multiple names throughout the manuscript to conceal her identity. It may be that he was genuinely seeing a number of women, but only he knows the truth. His reasons for including this letter in his manuscript are unclear. It could simply be part of his ‘method’ of opening up his life to the narrative, or perhaps it has been included to represent the price that he, and others close to him, paid, because of his obsession with the book. Whether intentional or not, the letter reminds me of the sub-title to F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, ‘The tale of a man who built himself an illusion to live by.’ – Anonymous.
517. German for ‘Lightning War’.