Letters From Terra

�I alone knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.�
-John Shade, Pale Fire



The far window reflected among its other contents a single face, only the light hue of the skin visible in the reflection with gaping shadows for eyeholes and a ponderous blank gaze, distinctly human. That plane of glass marked off the east boundary of a large sprawling chain bookstore equipped with a bustling caf� in its dark corner, current editions of assorted newspapers open and spread out over the tables. Elsewhere shelves divided by genre of books of all types: science, sports, maps, mystics, philosophy, law, religion, romance, art, pets, literature, etcetera, etcetera, sat indifferently for the inspection of various customers. In the very front of the store a set of black letters out on display with little white lights behind them (each letter suspended above the doors), elegantly illuminated the store name Tobakoff. The carpet was a nice faded shade of blue but in need of a vacuuming, the customers buzzed about in search of this sequel or that best seller (the rows of old reads laying dormant in their shelves, layers of dust on Flaubert and Tolstoy blown off only by students and English professors) and the employees politely answered stupid questions and directed people (shifting their weight from one foot to the other) to where the bathroom was located. The caf� was being cleaned by one or two tenders, wiping down the glass display and washing the mugs and plates sitting in the sink, one of the two sparsely walking out to clean the tables, interrupting various Tabokoff advocates chewing away at their biscotti, leaving fresh crumbs for the caf� workers, talking about this event or that bad novel. The manager stood, inspecting the opening scene after appealing to his watch for the exact distance in time until their doors would be shut and locked for the night. It told him another hour was to pass, and he smiled to himself with the knowledge that this day would be over shortly.

Sitting by the window on the far side of the coffee shop, a dark brooding figure hunched over a pile of papers hid his face from the reflection in the window, turning his forehead under a long heap of curls, the taut skin stretched across his forehead. His hair was auburn and he wore a black sweater vest buttoned up to the top with a pearl colored tag hanging out the back of the neck, a cursive inscription le tour peeking out from behind his long curls, a pale white shirt with a worn collar and long sleeves under his vest. His eyes, wide and sad, looked wet and cradled under the shadow of two thick burly eyebrows, hiding his pupils under a pair of thick rimmed glasses and dark brown irises. Christopher Margana sat over his unnamed creation, his pen plucking out misspellings and unwanted words, recollecting his vision of the plot as he had it constructed in his mind. The details simmered with life as the hero stood in his characters shoes on stage, performing the minor roll of the opera he took part in: the stage creaking underneath the tiptoeing feet dancing circles into spirals, the green velvet hat with a large pink feather blown off of the duke, the pretty light brown haired peasant bending over in the front left corner of the stage, the trombonist sitting fast asleep with his plump head leaning against the stage. The story delighted Christopher endlessly as he sounded out to himself the quirky alliteration that would turn the readers head and spin them off to an accessible search engine to needle their way to a resolution on the use, and their eyes would light up as a spark marking that epiphany that told them exactly for instance, why the man in chapter three referred to himself as W. instead of M., and all of the other tricks of the joyous ride Christopher had left. A metallic blue pen suspended between Christopher�s thumb and index finger tapped out a small indent in the margin with the regularity of a carefully set metronome, visibly vibrating the small square table every time it fell, shaking the articles scattered around his draft. In the table�s far left corner, his black notebook (�notebook of damnation�) was opened to a particular page with notes on a painting Antiterrestrial Paradise by a J. Aken, along with a muddied sketch, indiscernible and crossed out. Beside that was a copy of Vadim Macnab�s Slaughter in the Sun and Ardis, both of which he had already read (twice now) and had laying on his nightstand at home a piece of criticism on Ardis.

The caf� was well lit, the glow of the newspapers being crinkled from page to page as a finely dressed older gentleman read underneath his glasses� circular frames, a little girl twirling her fingers through her hair as she turned a thick colorful page of her book, her mother sitting on a couch reading a pocket novel with an eloping couple wet in a pool on the cover, all this bathed and reflecting their own residual variations of white that passively suggested to Christopher a pattern. That thought was quickly lost.

Christopher�s forehead scrunched as he tensed his eyelids into a squint and went over the words, considering each sentence carefully. He could see through the transparent description and dialogue to a hidden dimension he created: motifs, symbols, allusions, parodies, and an eternal pool to sink his metaphysical curiosity in. It laughed at the reader, daring them to follow this strange phrase and its translation in the French, which perhaps is the secret to his reference to this piece or that work, but that would only hone his reader to realize it was a false bottom, an allusion to an allusion (the book being led to would punish the reader into realizing that that bottom too was false), then realizing the fa�ade was being played ever since the second paragraph.

Turning his head to again gaze out of the window (�that thing�, he thought, �that will direct the reader back again to the opening paragraph�), Christopher�s thoughts were interrupted by a familiar sound that made his heart miss a beat. The table on the far side of the caf� was being occupied by two fairly young men, one with a thick beard and a black turtle neck sweater and the other with bright blue eyes and sharp blonde hair, the two aligning chess pieces on a rubber mat with a small electronic clock next to it. They idly mentioned a movie they had seen, a parody of Don Quixote that was mildly entertaining and caused a ruckus with a shady dark haired man who walked out in the middle of the production. Christopher stared at the pieces as they took their places on the board, the blonde haired man laying out the white pieces and the bearded man setting out the black. White�s first move was knf3, and black rubbed his thumb and index finger together as he compared opening strategies silently.

A pair of legs draped in a black skirt cut off at the knees danced in front of the board and sat down across from Christopher, the pale white skin housing a deep crystalline set of eyes staring intently at his startled expression, her light hair and a signature gold chain with a Pisces birthstone, or the empty socket where it had been before it had been lost the previous week.

�Are you going to be getting something?� asked Ada, holding in her hand a red coffee cup steaming through a crack in the white plastic lid.

�No, I don�t feel up to coffee tonight.�

The two sat quietly for a moment, letting the silence ferment to properly savor their thoughts. Ada looked into her purse and briefly produced a small phone which had not been working since early evening. She had been waiting for an important call and could only hope that her phone would charge once she had the opportunity.

�How is your Aunt?� Christopher asked politely, looking at the blueberry pastries on the cream colored menu.

Ada didn�t readily offer a response. Her aunt had tried to kill herself twice now at the asylum, thankfully without luck (or rather with it), but was still in a hopeless state of mania that was beyond even the most skilled psychologists grasp to comprehend. Dozens of papers had been written on her (one very famous) offering theories and possible explanations, but her condition remained an enigma. �She is well, I think,� Ada sighed. �It�s been several days since the last attempt.�

The walls of the caf� were an orange shade caked with drab contemporary paintings, and on the side facing the parking lot there were two couches up against the wall with a small table in between. Another attractive young woman stood over by the sugar, dumping a packet of splenda into her coffee and then stirring it with a black plastic rod. Her face was perky and golden, her hair pulled back and tied in a bun and her legs swam as she stroked through each step, juggling her breasts and behind.

Ada sipped at her latt�, the careless sound of the hot bean water rattling against her lips while she started to read, upside down, the opening paragraph of Christopher�s manuscript.

�How are you coming along with the story?�

Christopher turned around, mildly blushing, looking down at his small stack of sheets.

�It is fine. I was reading some criticism last night on Ardis, and it gave me an inspiration. I�m playing with the use of referencing paintings in my work and writing in symmetry to make the painting a map, a reference the careful reader will open to and review my work with, so he might notice for instance that on the hell panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights, a man is strung out across a harp while various other instruments are present, and in Ardis a portion of a mistranslation of the narrative of The Garden of Earthly Delights is recited by the main character as she plucks a harp out from a pile of instruments, and the harp reoccurs only twice again: once she plays it idly while talking to a Jewish friend about reincarnation, the next is only a reference to the texture of her death, of course making an internal statement about the nature of her soul.�

�I see,� said Ada, passively listening as she read on. �It looks like you are busying yourself more in name dropping than composition of what you call �genuine art�.�

�Name dropping?�

�Yes, I mean this�look. You toss around all of these author�s names and�here, see for yourself. There is little to no story here, just a bundle of little techniques that you are flaring around for your own satisfaction.�

Christopher looked down at the first page for himself. He confirmed that automatically Tolstoy�s Anna Karenina came up, and then quickly Cervantes and Bosch, followed by a smattering of his favorite Russian authors, but he was confused because he could sound out to himself Vadim�s heavy illustrations of Poe and many other very famous pieces in, for instance, A Kingdom by the Sea or Ardis.

�Yes,� he studdered, �there are a great deal of allusions. But those are needed to get the inner joke of the story. It�s all a metaphysical riddle you understand.�

�Just like Vadim,� Ada shrugged. Her light hair and pearl colored coat shone brightly into Christopher�s eyes, creating a blurred surrealism as he squinted. �You told me yourself that Ardis was built off of a mistranslation theme that opens the novel with that first line from Anna Karenina. Look for yourself, you are using Vadim�s techniques and the works that Vadim uses in your own work.�

�But Ada, this is being written as a parody of Vadim�s book Ardis. Those things are necessary.�

Ada sighed, taking another sip off of her coffee. The piece glared at Christopher, staring at him with the anger of a child brought up in the image of its father. It wanted to be free, individual, itself. Christopher was compelled but stared in disbelief. Across from him in the bookstore, a small child screamed helplessly as his mother tore him away from a large rectangular picture book, and a clerk with brown hair rolled her eyes and set a hardcover book on kundalini yoga on a shelf covering a stack of atlases. There were four pictures on the cover, two with women (on the left) and two with men (on the right). On the other side of the caf� where the two young men sat transfixed to a chess board, black had a slight advantage with both rooks together at d8 and e8, but white�s queen threatened a diagonal check at c5 (the king sitting directly behind a pawn at f8). The manager checked his watch again, nodding his head to confirm that only another forty minutes of the work day remained. The evening was ticking away quickly.

�How about this,� Ada suggested, setting her cup down and whirling her hand in a circular motion. �What would your work be like if you were to learn Vadim�s techniques, and use them in a unique way that you create.�

Christopher shrugged, staring down at the third paragraph, transfixed on the line the foot of a wall corroded by the sun. He thought about all of the moves played through the piece. They made him want to smile at the notion of the brilliance and the complexity of their composition, fitting together in such a dynamic manner, but they also sat in the shadow of another man�s genius. It was as though this other author had become God of his literary universe (�God praised my force and I made God�, an iconic tidbit Christopher noticed at the bottom of page six), eternally superior in his own techniques and designs, leaving Christopher an infinitely insignificant parody, incapable of true creativity. The laws of the universe governed by the literary theorizing of McNab, the trap in the designs of ideas like �art for art�s sake� and �artistic independence� that made Christopher Margana�s symbols and characters, and he was incapable of making a plot that his creator did not intend. Ada cut through his pondering, taking another sip of her coffee. �Is your phone ringing?� He pulled a small black device from his pocket, an unknown number displaying on the screen as a little clich� Mozart piece played over and over. �Hello,� Christopher answered. �Who? No, you have the wrong number.� He hung up and looked at Ada.

�Who was it?�

�I don�t know, they didn�t say.�

The two of them sat across from one another, time observing indifferently the plot and conflict. Neither spoke a word, Christopher stared at the first page, reading to himself word for word the colorful texture of the text for faults, and then turned the page, the look of gloom dampening his mood further and further. The page turned again. Christopher looked on the third page at a nice paragraph that had been troubling to compose, mentioning something about the use of acrostics in the last paragraph of the story to reveal a great secret (which had to do with the solution to the labyrinth he had trapped his character in, a world of literary tricks and devices), stretching a small grin on his lips that quickly faded as pondered on it a second more and then turned the page, frustrated. The pretty woman with the perky cheeks took a bite out of a frosted pastry, a red iridescent liquid gurgling inside, staring compulsively at a page from some fashionable gossip magazine. White moved its queen up to h6, quickly swapped with a black pawn that had been idly sitting at g7. Ada studied Christopher�s face as he silently took notice to that detail or this trinket, wondering exactly what it was that went through his mind. He was very awkward socially, usually incompetent in dealing with others to his satisfaction and her amusement, and kept himself totally absorbed in his thoughts. He confined himself to her, and might step out of her boundaries just for a moment to correct some blunder that he could not handle to be left ill, but once the thing was set right he would always return to her to meddle in his twisted genius. She could only wonder about his so called �genius� that he boasted about in there private conversation, because she saw him only as a shade.

�I think your phone is ringing again,� Ada said, returning to her coffee.

Christopher pulled out the black device for a second time, looking at the number carefully, subconsciously finding patterns perhaps like the backwards ascension in the last four digits (displayed in even numbers), and the first four were congruent: the same number in the beginning and end, and two identical numbers in between. �Hello,� he answered. �You have the wrong number. No. You must be pressing the zero button instead of the �o�. Yes, you�re welcome. Good by.�

Ada set her coffee down. �Was that the same person?� she asked him. He leaned into a small paragraph twenty pages or so into the story to inspect some curious flaw he had missed, only partly hearing Ada. �Hmm? Oh, yes, it was.�

At the other end of the caf�, white�s bishop came forward left two squares, whispering mate as he ran his index finger along a diagonal line from the black square bishop sitting right behind the white square bishop he had just moved, to black square g8. His rook kept the king from moving up and to the left, effectively cornering the black king. �Mate, yes it is mate,� the blond haired man confirmed. Christopher stood up, lost in a turbulence of thought, echoing the unexpected mate to himself and looking at the neat stack stapled together on the table. He picked it up and folded it, Ada silently looking at his phone and sipping at his coffee. Turning toward the trash, a large black bin with a blacker hole and a chrome rim framing the void, Christopher saw himself in the wake of an order, one he couldn�t wholly fathom, but he felt that in starting over he would have escaped the trap. His phone went off for a third time. �I�ll get it,� he muttered, Ada sipping on her coffee again. The empty void beaconing the package, the white sheets he had been triumphed over once. Christopher studied all the scribbles and scratches he had burdened his piece with, muttering to himself.

Meditatively evaluating several serious adjectives, gazing exactly towards our abhorrent draft�actually frivolously repugnant or maybe arrogant� �Quite unconventional alright, oh�nothing to ever read, really awful.�