I am not very much bothered by the dark, as such, and in fact, under normal circumstances, I am really quite comfortable in it. I have passed many pleasant moments in the dark during my life and, if stray lines of light are capable of stimulating certain memories, so are dark closets and dark eyes and bands of curved, dark shadow and couches set in the center of completely dark rooms. So it was that, far from being disturbed by the fact that the lock turned behind her when she left, and that the room was pitch black so that it made no significant difference whether or not I continued to wear the blindfold (after attempting to check my surroundings I did), I felt quite comfortable and after a time lay down on the bed with my legs slightly spread and my hands behind my head and thought of nights gone by and the latter part of my career and my undeniable skill at certain aspects of it and my undeniable weakness at others. Before long I fell asleep. Once or twice as I lay in the dark room, I woke and, instinctively, listened for other breathing, but heard none. Then I did. Or so it seemed. A small tremor shook my skin and for half a second the hair on the backs of my hands lifted slightly. But then, after applying considerable directed attention, and with a sense of mild embarrassment, I realized that I had been listening to myself breathing, a sound no doubt much distorted by memories and dreams. Neither of which, at that moment, could be called pleasant. The breathing—I continued to listen to it—could similarly not be called pleasant and in fact seemed somehow awful, like something to be dealt harshly with, and I wished I had a gun. A few moments later, however, my breathing had come to seem normal to me again and even, strangely, to seem quite sweet or pretty, or at any rate, kind of nice and certainly useful, and I found myself turning to thoughts of the not altogether unenjoyable interaction I had had with the woman and to otherwise diverting myself in the gloom.
It was still dark or dark again when finally I rose, took off the blindfold, tried the door, and found it open. The rest of the little house was brightly lit and completely empty and after using the facility I sat a moment in the kitchen and nibbled at some fruit. It was a good thing that I did so, as it was only after I had sat there a moment that I noticed the note taped to the window above the sink. It read:
Arrangements have been made—the night after tomorrow—your tour.
My tour. After all those years I was finally having one of my own. The view of the city from the battlements surrounding the eminence was very pleasing—a curiously nervous opalescence as far as the eye could see. I ran my fingers over the old stone and found that, far from smooth, it was coarse and pitted, which, if I remember correctly, was a consequence of several decades of pollution and acid rain. This put me in mind of the story about the individual who, for having stolen something, gets hammered to a rock. And as I thought of it, it was not so much the idea of the large birds that came each day to eat certain of his organs that bothered me, it was rather the thought of what the sun, wind, rain, etc., not to mention cellular decay, were doing—I ran my hands over the pitted stone—to his skin. Or to my skin. I touched it. This was depressing. But at any rate, for hours, I say, I wandered, climbing over rubble to weave in and out of columns and step through massive doorways into vaulted chambers or into chambers without roofs. Once or twice as I wandered into those starlit rooms, I thought of my recent blindfolded incarceration, if you could even call it that, you could call it that, it had been dark and the door was, at least for a while, locked, and because I didn’t understand yet, and had been given no further information on the matter, I found myself slightly annoyed. Perhaps not surprisingly, such thinking brought me to my fairly recent, and far less pleasant, interlude at the bottom of the well. My legs had been further injured by the fall—despite the mud and water at the bottom. Also there was the bullet wound. So there had been pain to go along with the discomfort and hunger. On her bed in the room in the dark there had been no pain, no discomfort, only the business about the breathing and the incomprehension. Up among the illuminated columns with the view of the city and the gentle breeze, however, I found myself close to experiencing a sense of peace. Close, I say. Because just when this feeling was beginning to assert itself—I was remembering, with a small smile, certain embellished incidents from my childhood—I suddenly registered that the investigation had begun. I became convinced of this when my eye was caught by something shining among the rocks—nothing special, just a bottlecap—which reminded me of the photograph I’d found the day before in the hallway outside my door. I had come home late and, as I was pushing the door open, saw something flat and shiny and picked it up. Actually, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. When I opened the door, or had partially opened it, I saw something shining a little in the light cast out into the hallway by the always illuminated handsome floor lamp and bent to pick it up, a process which took some time as I have lost a good deal of the feeling in the tips of my fingers and am far from nimble when it comes to bending over and doing things. Once or twice, I have put myself into such a position, perhaps to pick up a set of dropped keys, and have lost my balance and keeled over. On this occasion, I did not keel over, but it did take a certain amount of focus not to do so. In the end, having neither keeled over nor fainted, I picked up what I discovered was a photograph. But it wasn’t until I had gone inside and shut the door and sat down directly beneath the lamp that I saw what it was a photograph of.
And now, suddenly, as I stood holding the crushed blue bottlecap—I had not keeled over in this case either—I realized what I had seen. The man in the photograph, or someone dressed like a man in a long dark trench coat and shiny leather or mock leather shoes, whose face, if face you could call it, was a pale blur, was the one I was looking for, the one I had to find. I went home and made a phone call. To them, I mean. It has started, I said. Are you asking or telling? Both. So do you need an answer? Yes. Then, yes. Is the guy in the photo the one I’m looking for? What photo? The photo I found in the hall. I was put on hold. I do not like being put on hold. After what seemed like a long time and was, I had timed it, the voice was back. Yes, it said. Good, I want a gun, I said. What kind? Large. I’ll see what I can do. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. It was the young woman from the first day. You have a lovely figure, young woman, please sit down, I said. She said, what the fuck did you just say? I apologized. She told me to apologize again. I did. She sat down. She then took a small gray box out of her bag and set it on the table in front of me. What’s this? I asked for a gun, I said. Maybe it is a gun. It is not a gun. Today, I’m just the messenger. And other days? She smiled. I opened the box. In it I found an almost impossibly tiny dagger made out of a single piece of silver with the image of a lion carved into the part of it, about two inches long, that was meant to represent a handle. What is this? I said. It looks like a bladed instrument that would probably fit nicely in someone’s kidney or throat, she said, taking it from me. Or maybe into someone’s eye. Or nostril. She grinned and jabbed the knife around. Interesting, I said. I kind of gave her a looking over. She winked and tossed the knife onto the table in front of me. Then asked if I had anything to eat. Aren’t you the one who fills my refrigerator? I said. She didn’t answer so I told her to help herself. While she was gone I looked at the knife. It really was very small. After a few minutes, she came back with a cold cut rolled tightly around a piece of cheese. Is there anything else I can do for you? she said. You can get me a gun. Or a flamethrower. Or at least a bigger knife. She swallowed then put the rest of the meat and cheese into her mouth. She left. I shut my eyes and tested the small blade against my palm, finding it worked admirably.
The next morning over a breakfast of meat (not the cold cuts—something substantial, with a little bone and fat in it) and warm bread I tried to think, now that things had started, about how best to proceed. I had slept tolerably well and the dream I could remember, if not exactly pleasant, couldn’t quite be called unpleasant. In it, I had stood on the side of a rocky slope and watched as heavy dust rumbled down through a wooden sluice that seemed to have no beginning and no end, or at any rate it seemed that the beginning and end existed outside of the dream. Which did not seem, something told me, like such a bad place for them to be. I once recorded a fair amount of drivel about beginnings, pretending as I did so that I was transmitting remarks made to me by a friend. That particular friend would never, I am fairly sure, have made any comments about beginnings. He could conceivably have spoken about endings, as they were his business, and as I sat there thinking about it, about my dream and my investigation and the possibility of his having spoken about endings, the following anecdote / observation came into my head. In book III of a certain important individual’s meditations, one can find the following proposition: It is one of the noblest functions of reason to know whether or not it is time to walk out of this world. A second individual, in a tract entitled, intriguingly, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (a title and precept that my former friend would have greatly admired), invites us to interpret with him that the first individual, who if I can remember correctly was an emperor, was referring to a knowledge of whether or not it was time for others to walk out of the world. He then goes on to suggest, and the reasoning seems persuasive, that murder committed in such a context is a form of philanthropy, i.e., amen, or something to that effect. Which would certainly apply in my own case. My own imminent ending. A little amen dosed with a little good riddance is what this anecdote / observation led me to think. But at any rate the dust. Pouring through the sluice in my dream. And my breakfast. And the small dagger. And the photograph. The background (a path, blurred foliage, a gleaming car bumper) looked familiar, or at least I had the feeling it did. Personally, I have never committed an act of philanthropy. That’s not true. Even that isn’t true. One had one’s day. One’s accomplishments. I looked at the knife. Amen. One might still have one or two accomplishments ahead of one. Along with one’s instances of absurdity. So you can see I was thinking about it. And in this roundabout way was beginning to get somewhere. Even if only gropingly. Just like an old man, one who probably craps his pants occasionally, a typical one. Actually I don’t know any old men who crap their pants, and I’ve certainly never done so. I’m a very neat old man. I have a full head of hair and over half of my original teeth. I always wear pressed pants and appropriate colors, don’t talk too much, and can, when asked, sing at dinner parties. I have even been called presentable. Although not when they pulled me out of the well. A less-convincing form of philanthropy. Mine or theirs? The old woman—here it was—why had she blindfolded me?
But of course having thought things through I had to wait until dark before I could do anything. I passed the time sitting next to the radio. Also, I paced for a while. The apartment is not exactly what you would call spacious, but there is adequate room to make a large enough triangle or even diamond if one is given, as I have long been, to geometric pacing. When I had had enough of the radio and walking out approximations of complex shapes on the floor, and you might be surprised by how long I am able to engage in such activities, I lay down on my bed and dozed and thought some more, or, rather, engaged in repetitive thinking. I thought, over and over, and with several accompanying composite images, one of which involved small blue crabs piled in a bucket, then said crabs blackened and piled on a large plate: I should have asked for something else; I should have asked for nothing; or not nothing, but not quite something either. Frankly (and I thought this even as I attempted to gather myself), I had begun to suspect that it might not happen—that they would skip the whole thing as too expensive, too tiresome, too much. But not as too complicated—complicated they didn’t mind, they had proved this time and again. And anyway it wasn’t. In fact, in the end, as far as their part was concerned, it was quite simple. It is quite simple. Really. Or will be.
The old woman wasn’t home. I had pocketed the dagger (imagining, as I did so, the reaction I would get if I presented it at a tricky moment—smiles, a punch in the mouth, no more teeth) and the photograph and set off through the dark streets. Without the old woman to guide me, it hadn’t been easy finding the little house. It sat at the end of several tricky turns, and I think I spent the better part of an hour negotiating them. Darkness, of course, complicates any route, even the simplest one—say from bed to bathroom; actually that’s a poor example; interiors are often more complex than exteriors; even the most intimate ones; I had an apartment once that seemed always to be shifting around me; or at any rate I kept banging into walls and furniture; usually with my shoulder; I’m not sure what is at the heart of this phenomenon; possibly the darkness; certainly not the walls and furniture; likely myself; but also the darkness; the darkness has some role; fucking darkness; even if I also love it, etc. At the end I did find it, as I’ve already made clear. I tried the door, found it open, and went in. Little had changed. A packet of crackers, which I ate, had appeared on the kitchen counter, and there was a similar assortment of fruit on the table. The bedroom, which with the exception of the toilet, was the only other room in the house, seemed much neater than it had when I had lain there in the dark, but that was really just speculation. I wanted, insofar as it was possible, to avoid speculation. The business at hand, my last assignment as it were, seemed to merit more. I would, I said aloud to myself rather pompously, restrict myself to the evidence in making my final determination. Or course, leads were different. The pursuit of leads seemed to admit some degree of speculation. And what beyond speculation could have brought me back to the house of this old woman? I was momentarily at a loss. Fortunately, at that very moment, as I stood with my hand in a drawer full of undergarments, a voice, hers, said, don’t turn around. Hi, I’m sorry about this, I said. It’s just I’m making an investigation and wanted to ask you some questions. I’m hungry, she said. You can ask me your questions over dinner. This seemed reasonable, even civilized. I took my hand out of the drawer and started to turn around. Don’t turn around, she said, and put your hand back in the drawer. I followed both her instructions. She gave me the name of a restaurant, told me to wait five minutes before following her, then left.