But I shall not be Adam, I shall be God and the Serpent rolled up into one, starting the day as God and ending it as the Serpent, with the chance to begin the next day another story, a new galaxy, another Garden and another Exile, until the end of time. I can rewrite and recapture the whole of human history. We can be each of the past’s lovers, each character in each novel: and it will always be my narrating her, a thousand and one times if that is necessary.
How glad I would have been, that Sunday, to have scoured her forever, to have explored her transitory day-being and that more permanent nocturnal self inside, her one day-mind and her forever-body. But that urgency in me, Doctor, that fear that she might disappear from under my hands at the next moment … I have been a watcher for too long not to know that inside each cell there is a voyeur, in each stump of her blood, that other Oriana was watching me through the keyhole eyes of all my own Orianas, the hard holes of those pretty eyes that I have now claimed, preparing herself to come out and take from me that childhood that I was always denied.
It was that sense of urgency, that haste to kidnap her for all time, the fear that time was running out, the cloudy photograph forming in my mind of someone inside who is searching for her, somebody’s hand caressing a report on her; that was what drove me to go to the office that day. I still did not know, that same Sunday morning when I decided to keep her forever, that I would eventually turn to you, Doctor. I thought that my files would be more than sufficient to accomplish my purposes, to find the minimalinformation on Oriana’s identity, the data that would allow me to reactivate my network.
But let me make one thing clear. If I finally decided to obtain some sort of intelligence on the woman Oriana had once been, it was as a preventive measure, not as a road toward her true being. Who knows better than I that those mediocre reports are of no consequence compared to the fierce probe of one of my photographs? I concluded that it was important to use this imperfect substitute to explore Oriana’s past, because I have no other way of reading what she once was, because I have no other way of protecting her from the ghost she carries inside. I needed clues, I thought, however inconsiderable, to understand the outlines of her previous existence and to sketch out the references I must drastically elude in the future. I have read that some casual allusion to a past incident could restore her memory, restore her to the rattrap from which she had enabled herself to escape. This was my way of assuring her an unperturbed and blissful captivity.
What I did not expect, on the other hand, was that my key would not fit into the lock on the back door of the Transportation Ministry. Someone had changed it. I tried to go in through the front door. It was barred. Naturally, when the porter arrived, sleepy and ill-tempered, he didn’t recognize me. I showed him my identity pass. He looked at the name and then, with all brazenness, he put it away in one of his pockets.
“That’s right,” he said, yawning. “They told me you’d be coming by. I’ve got a signed order—from Pompeyo Garssos. Here it is: you don’t work here, anymore.”
I did not bother to discuss the matter with him.
If this had happened to me a week before, it would have had no effect upon me. It would merely have been a matter of returning there in another hour. The idiot would not remember me, and I would easily persuade him to let me in under another name. Or if that didn’t work, the very next day, a Monday, I could pass under his blind and bleary eyes, mixed in with the crowd of other employees. Once inside, I could slip among the papers like a phantom, gathering Oriana’s data and the other reports I needed to reconstruct my empire without anybody so much as realizing I was there.
I had always done things slowly. Prudence suggested it. So did
How glad I would have been, that Sunday, to have scoured her forever, to have explored her transitory day-being and that more permanent nocturnal self inside, her one day-mind and her forever-body. But that urgency in me, Doctor, that fear that she might disappear from under my hands at the next moment … I have been a watcher for too long not to know that inside each cell there is a voyeur, in each stump of her blood, that other Oriana was watching me through the keyhole eyes of all my own Orianas, the hard holes of those pretty eyes that I have now claimed, preparing herself to come out and take from me that childhood that I was always denied.
It was that sense of urgency, that haste to kidnap her for all time, the fear that time was running out, the cloudy photograph forming in my mind of someone inside who is searching for her, somebody’s hand caressing a report on her; that was what drove me to go to the office that day. I still did not know, that same Sunday morning when I decided to keep her forever, that I would eventually turn to you, Doctor. I thought that my files would be more than sufficient to accomplish my purposes, to find the minimalinformation on Oriana’s identity, the data that would allow me to reactivate my network.
But let me make one thing clear. If I finally decided to obtain some sort of intelligence on the woman Oriana had once been, it was as a preventive measure, not as a road toward her true being. Who knows better than I that those mediocre reports are of no consequence compared to the fierce probe of one of my photographs? I concluded that it was important to use this imperfect substitute to explore Oriana’s past, because I have no other way of reading what she once was, because I have no other way of protecting her from the ghost she carries inside. I needed clues, I thought, however inconsiderable, to understand the outlines of her previous existence and to sketch out the references I must drastically elude in the future. I have read that some casual allusion to a past incident could restore her memory, restore her to the rattrap from which she had enabled herself to escape. This was my way of assuring her an unperturbed and blissful captivity.
What I did not expect, on the other hand, was that my key would not fit into the lock on the back door of the Transportation Ministry. Someone had changed it. I tried to go in through the front door. It was barred. Naturally, when the porter arrived, sleepy and ill-tempered, he didn’t recognize me. I showed him my identity pass. He looked at the name and then, with all brazenness, he put it away in one of his pockets.
“That’s right,” he said, yawning. “They told me you’d be coming by. I’ve got a signed order—from Pompeyo Garssos. Here it is: you don’t work here, anymore.”
I did not bother to discuss the matter with him.
If this had happened to me a week before, it would have had no effect upon me. It would merely have been a matter of returning there in another hour. The idiot would not remember me, and I would easily persuade him to let me in under another name. Or if that didn’t work, the very next day, a Monday, I could pass under his blind and bleary eyes, mixed in with the crowd of other employees. Once inside, I could slip among the papers like a phantom, gathering Oriana’s data and the other reports I needed to reconstruct my empire without anybody so much as realizing I was there.
I had always done things slowly. Prudence suggested it. So did
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