You were led to expect a road, a river, a boat, a gate, a guardian. All were supplied, though none was what you’d imagined. The road was indistinguishable from many of the sidewalks you’d so often trudged along: poured concrete, dirty in the usual way—weathered chewing gum, fresh spit, the odd dog dropping. Your feet were tired—whose shoes were you wearing?—but there was no place to sit down. The river, when you came to it, was a canal, stagnant with algae and floating plastic bags. A shabby houseboat was moored there, but no path led down to it. Instead the sidewalk took you across a massive iron bridge, painted grey. After that came a red brick wall that went on for a long time. It had posters stuck onto it—a play was being advertised, or else a film—the same poster, over and over. They showed a woman’s face with a surprised expression, her hand raised as if in self-protection, with big lettering in blue and orange and lines of smaller print: favourable quotations from the newspapers, no doubt, but somehow you couldn’t read them. In addition to the posters there were names spray- painted on the brick—no one you knew—and hot-pink symbol-writing that suggested the twisted-balloon animals made by clowns at children’s parties.
At last came the gate. It had a door, a steel door set into the brick wall. It was dented, as if people had been kicking at it with heavy boots. The guardian was leaning against it. He had the look of a man who’d been sleeping rough for some time. Old jeans, stubbled face, broken sandals; a torn rucksack by his feet.
You got here at last, he said. These are your things. I’ve kept them for you.
My things? you said. You inspected the rucksack. It didn’t look familiar. What did he mean by things? A toothbrush, underwear?
Things you saved up, he said. For this occasion.
You lifted the rucksack. It was very light. You wondered if there was a sandwich in it. You weren’t hungry, but you might be later. You examined the door. There were no windows in it. There was no lock.
I’m supposed to go in here? you said.
I have to ask you some questions first, he said. Think carefully before you answer.
All right, you said. You had an idea about the questions: you’d be asked to give a good account of yourself, and to admit to your misdeeds, such as they were. You thought you were ready. You hadn’t been perfect, but then, perfection wouldn’t be expected. Surely not, or who would ever get in?
Here are the questions, he said. What is your favourite colour? Did you love your cat? Did you ever find a coin on the pavement? Were you happy?
Suddenly it’s the present tense. The first question baffles you. Do you have a favourite colour or not? You can’t remember. Everything you’ve been meaning to say in your own defence has gone right out of your head. Now a wind has begun to blow: ripped posters whirl along the street, open mouths, hands, eyes. Perhaps you should open the rucksack. You never had a cat. What do coins have to do with it? There must be some mistake.
BOTTLE II
Bring your ear down closer. Put your hand over the other ear. Think of seashells. There. Now you can hear me.
It must be a surprise for you, the discovery that there’s a voice inside this bottle. You thought you were buying a curio, which is what most people would call a round-bodied glass object, ornate, dusty, out of date, filled with layers of coloured sand, purple-pink-orange-green-beige. A sort of ornament. A sort of souvenir, from a place you haven’t in fact ever visited.
Then you saw the sand moving, in a bottle with the cork in. At first you thought it might be an earthquake, a small one, the kind that rattles teacups. But no. You watched closely. You were not mistaken: yes, there was a rippling, a shivering, a wavelet of purple sand. Some sort of insect life, perhaps. You took out the cork.
That was when you heard the voice. My voice, to be precise. It was a small sibilant voice, like the rustling of old corn husks in a breeze, or of dried leaves kept for eons in a cave. It was a hissing, like steam escaping fitfully from a fissure in damp mud. An underground sound, hinting of unknown pressures, of unknown powers. It was an enticing whisper.
Ask me what you need to know, this voice—my voice—promised. Ask and I’ll tell you. Your car keys? They’re under the bed. Your stock holdings? I see gold, but is it yours? Your death, when and where? This voice offered you knowledge, but also fear. Fear is synonymous with the future, and the future consists of forked roads, I should say forking roads, because the roads are forking all the time, like slow lightning. A road is a process, not a location. I can put my fingertips on this road, on these roads, on this trembling branchwork, my fingertips that are now so fine and spidery.
How did it come to this? My present arachnid state. I was young once, I was beautiful, I was sought after, I had picturesque robes and exceptional talents. I uttered portents in caves: there were lineups, there were waiting lists for them. How did I come to be so tiny, so translucent, so wispy, so whispery? How did I come to be shut up inside this bottle? It’s an unusual story, an incredible story, a story that could not take place today. I’m not sure I still believe it myself, though I’ll tell it to anyone who’ll lend an ear.
Right now that means you. I am not a curio, my friend. Or rather I am a curio, but you’d have to say the curio, the best one of all. Only the very curious acquire curios like this. And you are a curious person, you look into the medicine cabinets in the bathrooms of people you hardly know, you’re an avid listener, you’re driven to listen, you’ll listen to anything. I understand you: I too was curious once, like you. We are both the kind of person who takes the corks out of bottles. Not bottles of wine: bottles of sand.
II.
WINTER’S TALES
Once upon a time, you say, there were germs with horns. They lived in the toilet and could only be defeated by gallons and gallons of bleach. You could commit suicide by drinking this bleach, and some women did.
The young look up at you, wide-eyed. Or maybe they look down at you: they’ve become very tall. How young are the young, these days? It varies. Some of them are quite old. But they are still credulous, because you were there, once upon a time, and they weren’t.
Not only that, you say—you’re enjoying this—there were no bare midriffs, and only sailors and convicts had tattoos. There were no telephones, there were no vaccinations; so you couldn’t call the doctor when you were dying, of burst glands, of stagnant intestinal bloats, of webs inside your throat, of brain fever. If you had unprotected intercourse your nose dropped off, a lot sooner than it does now.
The young are still listening. Do they believe you? Have you been sensational enough for them? You certainly hope so.
If you were a married woman, it was all over at thirty, you say. You were doomed to put on a print dress and a rubber girdle and sit in a rocking chair on the porch—there were porches, back then—fanning yourself, because there was no air conditioning, and talking about your flat feet, your sciatica, your varicose veins, and the snoring habits of your husband, whose shirts you had to iron, every Tuesday—mountains of shirts. All of these were metaphors for unsatisfactory sex.
At this there are a few giggles. But you don’t want the past to be taken lightly: it cost too much. It deserves respect. So now it’s time for the serious artillery.
Let me tell you about meat loaf, you say, lowering your voice, as the already pale faces around you turn ashen. Yes—meat loaf! Meat loaf, and enemas, and bulb-headed syringes used for what they called “feminine hygiene”—the three are not unconnected, you say, in a thrilling whisper.
By now the young are staring at you with fascinated horror, as if you’re about to pull off one of your legs,
