Travels in the Scriptorium

What happened?

He had a bad heart.

I'm responsible for that, too, aren't I?

Not really… Only indirectly.

I'm so sorry.

Don't be. Without you, I never would have met David in the first place. Believe me, Mr. Blank, it isn't your fault. You do what you have to do, and then things happen. Good things and bad things both. That's the way it is. We might be the ones who suffer, but there's a reason for it, a good reason, and anyone who complains about it doesn't understand what it means to be alive.

It should be noted that a second camera and a second tape recorder have been planted in the bathroom ceiling, making it possible for all activities in that space to be recorded as well, and because the word all is an absolute term, the transcription of the dialogue between Anna and Mr. Blank can be verified in every one of its details.

The sponge bath goes on for several more minutes, and when Anna has finished washing and rinsing the remaining areas of Mr. Blank's body (legs, front and back; ankles, feet, and toes; arms, hands, and fingers; scrotum, buttocks, and anus), she fetches a black terry-cloth robe from a hook on the door and helps Mr. Blank put it on. Then she picks up the blue-and-yellow striped pajamas and walks into the other room, making sure to leave the door open. While Mr. Blank stands in front of the small mirror above the sink, shaving with a battery-operated electric razor (for obvious reasons, traditional razor blades are forbidden), Anna folds the pajamas, makes the bed, and opens the closet to select Mr. Blank's clothes for the day. She moves quickly and efficiently, as if trying to make up for lost time. So rapid is her completion of these tasks that when Mr. Blank finishes shaving with the electric razor and walks into the other room, he is startled to see that his clothes have already been laid out on the bed. Remembering his conversation with James P. Flood and the mention of the word closet, he was hoping to catch Anna in the act of opening the closet door, if indeed the closet exists, in order to determine where it is located. Now, as his eyes scan the room, he sees no sign of it, and another mystery remains unsolved.

He could, of course, ask Anna where it is, but once he sees Anna herself, sitting on the bed and smiling up at him, he is so moved to be in her presence again that the question escapes his mind.

I'm beginning to remember you now, he says. Not everything, but little flashes, bits and pieces here and there. I was very young the first time I saw you, wasn't I?

About twenty-one, I think, Anna says.

But I kept losing you. You'd be there for a few days, and then you'd vanish. A year would go by, two years, four years, and then you'd suddenly pop up again.

You didn't know what to do with me, that's why. It took you a long time to figure it out.

And then I sent you on your… your mission. I remember being frightened for you. But you were a real battler back in those days, weren't you?

A tough and feisty girl, Mr. Blank.

Exactly. And that's what gave me hope. If you hadn't been a resourceful person, you never would have made it.

Let me help you with your clothes, Anna says, glancing down at her watch. Time is marching on.

The word marching induces Mr. Blank to think about his dizzy spells and earlier difficulties with walking, but now, as he travels the short distance from the threshold of the bathroom to the bed, he is encouraged to note that his brain is clear and that he feels in no danger of falling. With nothing to support the hypothesis, he attributes this improvement to the beneficent Anna, to the mere fact that she has been there with him for the past twenty or thirty minutes, radiating the affection he so desperately longs for.

The clothes turn out to be all white: white cotton trousers, white button-down shirt, white boxer shorts, white nylon socks, and a pair of white tennis shoes.

An odd choice, Mr. Blank says. I'm going to look like the Good Humor man.

It was a special request, Anna replies. From Peter Stillman. Not the father, the son. Peter Stillman, Junior.

Who's he?

You don't remember?

I'm afraid not.

He's another one of your charges. When you sent him out on his mission, he had to dress all in white.

How many people have I sent out?

Hundreds, Mr. Blank. More people than I can count.

All right. Let's get on with it. I don't suppose it makes any difference.

Without further ado, he unties the belt of the robe and lets the robe fall to the floor. Once again, he is standing naked in front of Anna, feeling not the slightest hint of embarrassment or modesty. Glancing down and pointing to his penis, he says: Look how small it is. Mr. Bigshot isn't so big now, is he?

Anna smiles and then pats the bed with the palm of her hand, beckoning him to sit down next to her. As he does so, Mr. Blank is once more thrust back into his early childhood, back to the days of Whitey the rocking horse and their long journeys together through the deserts and mountains of the Far West. He thinks about his mother and how she used to dress him like this in his upstairs bedroom with the morning sun slanting through the Venetian blinds, and all at once, realizing that his mother is dead, probably long dead, he wonders if Anna somehow hasn't become a new mother for him, even at his advanced age, for why else would he feel so comfortable with her, he who is generally so shy and self-conscious about his body in front of others?

Anna climbs off the bed and crouches down in front of Mr. Blank. She begins with the socks, slipping one over his left foot and then the other one over his right foot, moves on to the undershorts, which she slides up his legs and, as Mr. Blank stands to accommodate her, farther up to his waist, thus concealing the former Mr. Bigshot, who no doubt will rise again to assert his dominance over Mr. Blank before too many hours have passed.

Mr. Blank sits down on the bed a second time, and the process is repeated with the trousers. When Mr. Blank sits down for the third time, Anna puts the sneakers on his feet, first the left one, then the right one, and immediately begins to tie the laces, first on the left shoe, then on the right shoe. After that, she emerges from her crouch and sits down on the bed beside Mr. Blank to help him with the shirt, first guiding his left arm through the left sleeve, then his right arm through the right sleeve, and finally buttoning the buttons from the bottom up, and all during this slow and laborious procedure, Mr. Blank's thoughts are elsewhere, back in his boyhood room with Whitey and his mother, remembering how she used to do these same things for him with the same loving patience, so many years ago now, in the long-ago beginning of his life.

Now Anna is gone. The stainless steel cart has vanished, the door has been shut, and once again Mr. Blank is alone in the room. The questions he was meaning to ask her— about the closet, about the typescript concerning the so-called Confederation, about whether the door is locked from the outside or not—have all gone unasked, and therefore Mr. Blank is as much in the dark about what he is doing in this place as he was before Anna's arrival. For the time being, he is sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor, but soon, as soon as he feels the strength of will to do so, he will stand up from the bed and once more make his way over to the desk to look through the pile of photographs (if he can summon the courage to face those images again) and continue his reading of the typescript about the man trapped in the room in Ultima. For the time being, however, he does nothing more than sit on the bed and pine for Anna, wishing she were still there with him, wishing he could take her in his arms and hold her.

Now he is on his feet again. He tries to shuffle toward the desk, but he forgets that he is no longer wearing his slippers, and the rubber sole of his left tennis shoe sticks on the wood floor—in such an abrupt and unforeseen way that Mr. Blank loses his balance and nearly falls. Damn, he says, damn these stupid little white fucks. He longs to change out of the tennis shoes and put on the slippers again, but the slippers are black, and if he put them on he would no longer be dressed all in white, which was something Anna explicitly asked of him—as per the demand of one Peter Stillman, Junior, whoever on earth he might be.

Mr. Blank therefore abandons the shuffling strides he used with the slippers and travels toward the desk with something that resembles an ordinary walk. Not quite the brisk heel-to-toe step one sees in the young and the