I have listened to this tape many times – in its entirety, I should add, since doing so is a feat requiring almost supernatural patience. On the one occasion I tried to discuss its contents with Chaney (several days after his release from the infirmary, when I believed he could handle the terror of the experience with a degree of objectivity), he protested that I had imagined those contents. He told me he had never recorded the least word in the tape’s running account of The Bachelor’s . . . ‘Metamorphosis?’ he asked. ‘Is that the word you used?’
I promptly played the tape for him. He listened to ten minutes of it, then got up and shut it off. His face had gone unaccountably lean and bewildered, and his hands trembled.
‘Ah,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘An elaborate practical joke, Ben. I made it up because there was nothing better to do.’
‘The sound effects, too?’ I asked incredulously.
Still not looking at me, he nodded his head – even though the circumstance of his rescue belied this clumsy explanation, exploded it, in fact, into untenable shrapnel. Chaney remained mute on the subject. In all of his writings and conversations in those last three months among us, he never mentioned or even alluded to the sordid adventure of his final two nights. I present here a transcript, somewhat edited, of the tape in question.
Chaney’s Monologue: Two Nights in the Synesthesia Wild
PRELIMINARIES
CHANEY [enthusiastically]: Hello all! What day is it? A day like any other day, except that you happen to be along for the ride. I’m going to be leading you on an expedition, you see. How often do I lead you on expeditions?
It’s Day 138, I think, and yesterday The Bachelor returned to the clearing – the first time he’s been back since the huri anointed him, so to speak, with the fecal salve of chieftainship. I’d almost given him up. But he came back into the clearing yesterday afternoon, the huri on his shoulder, and squatted in the center of the assembly ground just as old Eisen Zwei used to do. The reaction among his Asadi brethren was identical to the one they always reserved for E.Z. . . . Everybody out of the clearing! Everybody out! . . . It was old times again, gang, except that now the actor holding down center stage was a personal friend of mine. Hadn’t he saved my life several times? Certainly he had.
After the heat, the boredom, and the rainfalls, my lean-to leaking like a colander, I couldn’t have been more gratified.
Following the pattern Eisen Zwei established on one of his visits, The Bachelor spent the entire afternoon in the clearing, all of last night, and maybe an hour or so this morning. Then he got up to leave.
I’ve been following him ever since. Denebola hovering overhead, I’d judge it to be about noon. The Bachelor permits me to follow him. Moreover, it’s easy. I’m not even breathing hard. [Simulated heavy breathing.] I’m recording as we walk. If this were a terrestrial wood, you could hear birdsong and the chitterings of insects. As it is, you’ll have to content yourselves with the sounds of my footfalls and the rustlings of leaf and twig . . . Here’s a little rustle for you now.
[The sound of a branch or heavy leaf slapping back. General background noises of wind and, far less audibly, distant running water.]
The Bachelor is several meters ahead of me. You may not be able to hear him – he walks like one of James Fenimore’s stealthy Indians. Pad, pad, pad. Like that, only softer. I don’t care to be any closer than I am because the huri’s riding The Bachelor’s shoulder, clinging to his mane. It is not a winsome creature, base-camp huggers; no, indeed it’s not. Since it hasn’t any eyes, you can’t tell whether it’s sleeping – or awake and plotting a thousand villainies.
That’s why, jes’ strollin’ along, I’m happy back here.
Let me impress you with my cleverness. [A heavy thump.] That’s my backpack. I’ve brought provisions for three or four days. You see, I don’t know how long we’re going to be out here. I don’t know where we’re going. But in The Bachelor I trust. Up to a point, at least. This backpack also houses my recorder – Morrell’s miniaturized affair, the one that has a capacity of two hundred forty hours. Or, as Benedict might phrase it if he knew me better, ten solid days of Chaney’s uninterrupted blathering.
I’ve rigged it so my voice will trigger the recording mechanism whenever I speak. The absence of my voice for a ten-minute period automatically shuts it off. That’s to conserve recording time – not that I plan on talking for ten straight days – and to keep me from fiddling with buttons when there might be other things to do. I can always go manual if I have to, of course, countermanding the exclusive lock on my own voice, but so far none of the Asadi have been particularly voluble. Only Eisen Zwei. And his voice would not be apt to woo the ladies . . .
I’ve been thinking. And what I wouldn’t give for a copy of one of those centuries-old works no one reads anymore. The Brothers Karamazov, say. Surely The Bachelor is none other than the Asadi equivalent of Pavel Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son who destroys himself out of his innate inability to reconcile the spiritual and the intellectual in his nature. Such passionate despondency! He cannot escape – nor can he accept – the dictum that the individual is responsible for the sins of all . . .*
THE FIRST NIGHT
I. CHANEY [whispering]: It’s quiet in here, as still as the void.
