Journey to the South by Michal Ajvaz

Author:Michal Ajvaz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dalkey Archive (Deep Vellum)

3. The Sickness Returns

“So it happened that for the years of Hector’s studies the chattering of objects and spaces subsided to such a degree that it practically stopped. Now he was rarely addressed by a piece of wall as he passed it, and seldom did some convoluted story emerge from the stench of the blackened inside of a vase, dissolving before its ripples could form characters and faces. Possibly, the voices would soon have fallen altogether silent. But then came Hella’s blindness and her need for him to tell her a story. At the moment of her request, Hector felt like an abstaining addict offered his favorite drug for free. Deep down, he knew how this would end. He knew that the whisper of things hadn’t ceased at all; it was just that he had learned to ignore it. The quiet hum was still there all right, whether or not Hector was listening to it. It had sunk into his memory, there to generate images like crystals in a supersaturated solution. And these crystals were waiting for the membrane covering the depths to rupture, and the black liquid of memory mixed with dreams and desires to spurt forth. Hector suspected that when this happened the impact of the crystal detritus born in his memory would be enough to demolish his existence. Nevertheless, with Hella’s appeal he was unable to resist the gorgeous well that had been forming so long within him, and with it the longing to submit to childish indulgence and orchestrate the birth of unreal events. And his weakness was supported by a fine excuse: How could he refuse the request of a sick person?

“Hector knew that in starting to tell his story he would be plunging back into the opium smoke that emanated from things, a dubious delight of which he had almost succeeded in ridding himself—but he persuaded himself that he could handle it. As we know, he embarked on his story with caution. As it was necessary to give sick Hella a tale from which she could take heart, he undertook not to poke about under the crust of reality, and to steer clear of story streams that led into darkness. Little did he know—or maybe he refused to acknowledge—that there are no pure story streams; all stories are scary, all come from a single strange-smelling wellspring that seeps into the folds of things and collects in dirty corners of the spaces we inhabit, all trace patterns of desire and fear that aren’t even ours but those of a monster whose dream is our life. And so it happened that after a few sentences whose content he foolishly considered to be innocent, he began to feel the tug of a current well known to him; he knew that his sentences were in the grip of this current and bending to its rhythm, and that words charged with menace were being deposited in their folds. The rest we know. At first, Hector did try to swim

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