Anxieties of the World Turtle

by Alexander Joy

Простишь ли мне эти ноябрьские дни?

Anna Akhmatova

A:1

         Imagine the scene like this. You are a traveler whose road has led you somewhere far from the place you call home. Perhaps it has brought you to a neon wealth playground, or else has taken you to what was once a remote outpost of an antique land. It does not matter. Wander as your imagination desires.

         You sit alone at a bar on a slow night, drinking whatever brings you comfort, when a figure approaches, asking to join you.

         You see no reason to refuse and signal him to sit. He seems weary as he lowers himself into his chair. Weary, and – you can’t help but think – relieved.

         He needs a moment to collect himself. But then he begins to speak. And he makes you a proposition…

B:1

         This story – if story is the right word for it – came to me through a visitor of my own.

         It happened during one of those dispiriting days in the fall semester when I’d discovered that, once again, I had missed the sunset. Eliot was wrong about April – its cruelties had nothing on November’s. For November bleached the celebrated New England autumn of its pyrotechnic colors; it stripped the trees down to pining claws; its dusty frosts dampened the dry cinnamon crinkle of leaves underfoot. And when it came time for me to teach my long late-afternoon classes in the windowless basement rooms where my rural university confined its philosophy and literature offerings, November played its most mean-spirited prank of all, guiding me to my building in bright cold daylight only to discharge me into darkness at my lecture’s conclusion.

         In those disorienting moments after I’d stepped outside, walking from the yellowing reach of streetlamps into what felt like the depth of the night, I’d look skyward for the steadying familiarity of stars. They’d be stronger than the night before – more visible, more luminous. I’d realize that it was due to the deepening dark around them, as the earth’s seasonal tilt pointed us farther from the sun, and the blackness between each pinprick light represented steadily more sunless expanses of space. Then the thought would arrive, unbidden, that tomorrow’s sunrise would be slow in coming, and the anemic day to follow wouldn’t long erase the sight of those dark stretches; that I would again have to face them as they grew colder and vaster than the encroaching winter night, and more closely resembled an oblivion that my mind lacked the power to imagine. It was a species of darkness, I reflected, that only New Englanders knew; one that, among the American literati, Hawthorne and Lovecraft alone understood. This kind of darkness didn’t isolate you. Not quite. It would be more accurate to say it left you alone with yourself. And both authors grasped the peculiarities that emerged when people were unprepared for their own company.

         All this ran through my head for the umpteenth time one chilly evening as I listened to the wind rattle my tiny office window. Nightfall had ambushed me again, and the black pane threw back a tired fluorescent reflection. I had one more class to teach before my day concluded, but my throat already ached from the previous lecture, and I had only enough downtime before that final class to worry over how it would go. I decided that a cup of cleansing mint tea would help me collect myself. But as soon as I glanced up from my electric kettle, I spotted a visitor in my doorway. A young man, whom I presumed to be a student. I didn’t recognize him, but that was unsurprising. I’d always struggled to recall faces, such that I’d even fail to recognize longtime colleagues if they cut their hair.

         “Excuse me, Professor,” he said, closing the door behind him. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Is now a good time?”

         “Certainly,” I said, though what I really meant was, Yes. Hell yes. Thank you for coming. I’d never shed the performance anxiety that dogged me before teaching, which compounded during these dead intervals where time served no purpose but its own passage. Anything that distracted from it, I welcomed.

         I gestured for him to take a seat while I readied my teacup. He politely declined the cup I set out for him. Settling into the chair opposite mine, he steadied himself on my desk. Or so it seemed at first, until I realized he was drumming his fingertips on it, as if to acknowledge a song stuck in his head.

C:1

         I do thank you for inviting me to share your table tonight. I have an aversion to dining alone in public spaces, you see. Though perhaps “aversion” is too strong a word. It’s simply that, if I wanted to eat in solitude, I’d stay home. Why venture out into the world if not for company? Besides, they say a stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet. Here’s to calling one another “friend” before long.

         No, it’s my first time in this city, too. It’s been a pleasure so far, but I’m afraid I’m here on business. For a conference. No, nothing that exciting. Literature. Comparative literature, to be precise. I’m to give a talk on a pet project of mine that I’ve been pursuing since my undergraduate days.

         The topic? Existentialism and horror. Specifically, a comparative study of Camus and Lovecraft. It’s a subject germane to what I call my “prepositional” courses – the “philosophy of/through/as literature” classes I’m often tapped to teach.

         Well, if you’re as interested as you say, I’ll provide the elevator pitch. In brief: Many Lovecraft stories have an existentialist bent. Two of them (“Cool Air” and “The Music of Erich Zann,” to be precise) even presage Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, dramatizing the notion of the absurd revolt. Where Camus envisions Sisyphus sentenced to push a boulder uphill for all eternity, Lovecraft gives us a doctor who must fight to keep his body chilled, and a musician forced to play his instrument night after night. Yet good old H.P., simultaneously paranoid and perceptive, sees terror in the struggle against the absurd, and allegorizes the drastic consequences of failing to maintain it. Death, both physical and metaphorical; loss of purpose made manifest through loss of bodily form.

         Yes, it’s rather scary stuff if considered from the right (or should we say wrong?) angle. Sometimes I joke – without quite joking – that the absurd revolt in action might resemble superstition or mania or OCD to an onlooker. But that’s how it is. If not how it’s always been. Any sufficiently discerning mind appears damaged until it finds a receptive audience.

A:2

         In the distant land of your travels, the figure at your table says that you strike him as a trustworthy person. A responsible person. Someone who takes the opinions of others seriously. Who takes the lives of others seriously. That is why he proposes to share with you some knowledge of great importance, and teach you a technique revealed only to the few people through the ages who could be trusted with it.

         “You must watch me carefully,” the figure says. “Do it like this. Exactly like this.”

         He runs his thumb along his four fingertips, as if snapping them in succession. Starting with the index finger, he touches them one by one to the table’s surface. Another run of the thumb follows, and another sequence of touches, this time starting with the little finger. When finished, he closes them all in a tight fist held parallel to the tabletop. Then he gives the table a peremptory knock.

         He performs this ritual slowly at first, emphasizing each step for you. When he’s satisfied that you have a handle on them, he goes through the sequence quickly, as if to show how efficiently it can be done. At his speed, it’s percussive and musical, like a measure of folksong practiced to perfection – or, you can’t help but think, like the motorized mania of a complicated tic.

         “From now on,” he says, “whenever you enter a room, you must find a flat surface and carry out this action. Every time, without fail. Exactly as I have shown you. To do otherwise is to invite catastrophe.”

         And why, you ask, should you be charged to do this absurd, this inconvenient, this ridiculous thing for all your remaining days?

         “Because people’s lives hang in the balance,” says the figure. “Everyone’s lives. For, should you fail, the most horrific thing imaginable will happen.”

         He draws his face as close to yours as politesse will allow.

         “The world will come to an end.”

B:2

         At first, my visitor said he had come to see me because of the lecture I’d delivered earlier that day on Lovecraft and Camus. So he wasn’t any old student, I’d thought; he was one of mine. I felt a pang of guilt for not remembering him. The class in question was a large one, and I hadn’t yet internalized its every face and name. I supposed it didn’t help that, on principle, I refused to engage with the rosters that the university distributed at every semester’s outset. As a memory aid, the documents included photos of every student, as copied from their ID cards – an invasive, if not downright creepy, measure that I doubted anybody had consented to when those pictures were taken. Therefore, I insisted upon learning their names and faces organically, even though I’d always had trouble with the latter. Well! Nothing stuck in the memory like conversation. I was sure I’d remember this gentleman after our talk.

         “Did you have any questions, Mr. …”

         “Grewalk,” said my visitor, after a magnanimously short pause.

         Somehow his name was unfamiliar, too. This surprised me. I typically acquired names quickly, reading them off homework and papers. A distinct surname like his should have remained with me.

         “It’s fine,” said Grewalk, politely inclining his head. “You have a lot to remember, I’m sure.”

         I scoured my memory for any trace of the young man. Why wasn’t he there? As I looked at him, a strange thought entered my head: He had a face best described as forgettable. It had nothing unique about it save its pronounced lack of uniqueness. It was perfectly nondescript, like a composite of the most generic faces that human physiology could produce.

         Almost as if, an absurd notion whispered, such a face were designed to be forgotten.

         At the thought, the tea kettle whistled. For the moment, I pushed aside the ridiculous premise that Grewalk resisted remembrance. Yet as I poured the boiling water over the teabag slouched in my mug and tried to disprove those preposterous unbidden thoughts by picturing his face, I found myself unable to summon his image.

         I looked up with a start. He was still there. I took a long whiff of my peppermint tea, the way I imagined a harried 17th-century scholar might inhale snuff.

         “I’ve been turning over one of your remarks,” he said. “When you likened superstition to existentialism, you said something along the lines of… How did you put it? ‘The struggle is not an attempt to make meaning out of chaos, nor an effort to bend the universe to your will. It’s far more modest: It’s asserting a space where you belong.’ That appealed to me. That sense of, ‘I am here. This is what I do.’ Treating it not as a contrarian reflex against the state of the world, but as a statement of fact. Something halfway between acceptance and insistence.” He smiled, forgettably. “I saw… Promise… In that interpretation. That was how I knew to speak with you.”

C:2

         I hate to admit it, friend, but my mind has not been on my talk lately. I’ve been thinking about – of all things – myths. Specifically, the world-bearing kind.

         Now, I don’t mean this in Midgley’s sense. What did she call it? “Philosophical plumbing?” Obviously, hers is a healthy mindset. We should always interrogate the narratives upon which we built our societies and world views, lest we lose sight of the assumptions behind what we do.

         But I’ve not been pondering foundational myths like those. Nor creation myths, for that matter. My preoccupation has been the stories we tell ourselves about gods or demigods or other beings that keep the world intact. By hefting the planet, say, or balancing it on their back, or what have you.

         Yes, it’s an unusual subject. I don’t know why I’ve been fixated on it… What? Have I been under some pressure lately? Ha! Well. You could say that. Though I do suspect our conversation will provide me some measure of relief.

         Let me ask you a question: What do you suppose is humanity’s favorite animal? Oh, the dog or cat, you think? I imagine most people would agree with you, given that virtually every household has one or the other. That said, my money is on the turtle.

         Yes, you heard me correctly. I’m being quite serious, I assure you. I agree, they’re charming, in their fashion. But there’s more to my hypothesis than that. I bet on the turtle because of its place in world mythology.

         You see, not only does the turtle figure prominently in the myths of numerous geographically distinct cultures and societies, it enjoys pride of place in them. Ha! That’s right – turtles all the way down. Or should we say across? In any case, within these mythological structures, the turtle is almost always assigned the same all-important task: carrying the world on its back. This is among the reasons why I believe humanity must be quite fond of turtles. You wouldn’t entrust the world’s safety to a creature you disliked, would you?

         I do wonder whether there’s more to the selection of the turtle than simply liking it, however. They have their virtues, after all. They’re long-lived, for starters, and could mind the world for quite a while – for far longer than our short mortal lifespans, in any event. They’re slow and deliberate, and appear unlikely to upset whatever might be perched atop their shells. Yes, like a cautious waiter! Well put. And, of course, turtles seem at home on land or in water. Such a versatile species would be assumed to have decent odds of surviving whatever unknown substance the ancients believed to lie beyond our world.

         Yes, perhaps the turtle’s selection is a chicken-or-egg scenario, as you say. Turtles are favored because they seem as if they can uphold the world, but they’re also chosen to uphold the world because they’re favored. One of those paradoxes with an inscrutable starting point, whose causal machinery eludes our poor powers of comprehension. We are given only to accept that it is, rather than to understand why it works, or to what purpose. But I suppose that’s what fate always looks like in the end.

A:3

         In exhaustive detail, the figure explains what will happen if you neglect the ritual. You agree that, if all he says came to pass, it would indeed be horrific. Therein lies the point of contention. Why believe that it would?

         You approach the question obliquely. During a pause in his speech, you note that the events he has described have not occurred before. He nods, the weariness reclaiming his face in creases and shadows. The fact of the matter, he tells you, is that someone else used to do the absurd duty he has charged you to perform.

         “But they are now unable to fulfill their function,” he says, elaborating no further on what that means.

         You are left to wonder what became of the last person. Incapacity? Apathy? Decease? Who even were they? Perhaps the man at your table is actually the person in question, desperate to wriggle free of his burden by foisting it upon you.

         The answer, you are given to understand, is unimportant. The previous performer is gone, and you are here. So, by a logic beyond your comprehension, their responsibility now devolves to you.

         The onus is communicable somehow, if your companion is to be believed. Like an idea. Or an illness.

B:3

         “You had some questions for me?” I asked the unmemorable Grewalk.

         “Actually,” he said. “I wanted to discuss an idea with you. A kind of… Thought experiment, of sorts… That I’ve been considering. Because your lecture made me think you’d be receptive.”

         Given that I’d discussed the precarious border between existentialism and obsessive compulsion, I wondered whether he thought me predisposed toward such tics.

         “Call it… An intuition, I guess,” he said. “Or an instinct. I simply think that you’ll… Understand what I have to say. That you’ll take it seriously where others wouldn’t.”

         “If I can be of use,” I said, “then fire away.”

         “For the moment,” said Grewalk, “what I need is a sympathetic ear. No… A sounding board. Someone with whom I can talk through the things I’ve been thinking about.”

         I noticed his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

         “For if we happened to agree about them,” he said, “it would bring me tremendous relief.”

C:3

         Truthfully, friend, I am less interested in turtles as an archetype than I am in the one particular instance of the World-Turtle itself. Why is it carrying the world? Now, I don’t mean for us to approach the question with the smug snark of our advanced era, so the answer shouldn’t be, “Because the ancients had a poor grasp of astronomy.” My aim, idle though it is, is to ascertain why, of all entities within the world of myth, the World-Turtle happens to be the creature tasked with bearing the world on its back.

         Is the World-Turtle’s service accidental? Inevitable? Volitional – by its own will, or by some greater power’s? Each possibility’s implications interest me. Sure, the Kierkegaard approach, if you want to put it that way.

         Perhaps the world comes to rest on the World-Turtle’s back at random, like a pathogen chancing upon a host. In this case, it’s the kind of outcome that’s always possible, but never guaranteed. If so, how does the World-Turtle regard the event? As a blessing, that an ecosystem of such complexity should flower upon it? As a catastrophe, that such a heavy burden should descend upon its shoulders? Or does it not even acknowledge the occurrence, giving it as little thought as it would a bloom of algae on its shell?

         True, it might depend on how sapient we wish to consider our turtle. Well, how mindful do you want it? Ah. So your instinct is to avoid anthropomorphism. In which case, only the apathy option seems viable.

         I do suppose that’s a necessary part of the animal metaphor – a certain lack of understanding on the turtle’s behalf regarding why this fate befell it. But even within that constraint, there is still more of a picture to be drawn. Questions of mechanism remain. How does that turtle come to hold the world? Does it do some inadvertent thing, distinct from others of its kind, that makes it an ideal cradle? Or does the world simply occur on its back as a matter of raw physics, like eventual dust settling upon a flat, untended surface? And this latter option invites further possibilities. Does the world appear on its back because the turtle, by disposition or habit, is naturally supportive of it? Or because the turtle doesn’t have to do anything to be habitable – because it’s there, and that’s reason enough for it to be the site where all these potentialities are realized?

         Right, that’s the concern: Whether the turtle is specifically selected, chosen at random, or – by whatever mechanism we give the name “fate” – guaranteed to end up as the steward of the earth. I find myself lingering on this question. Because I hope the answer will soften, or at least clarify, an even more troubling question I’ve been asking myself lately: Does the World-Turtle know that it’s carrying the world? That so many others depend on it? That a single lapse on its part might precipitate incalculable loss?

         Of course I’m overthinking matters. I should hope that I am. All our worst decisions spring from places of certainty. The mood of ethics is anxiety.

A:4

         The strange figure’s story – and its attendant warnings – leave you with unpleasant thoughts. You keep visualizing the catastrophe he promises, its squalor and violence as vivid in your imagination as if you were watching them unfold right before you. They nag like a loose tooth. You can’t help but worry them. For you must admit that they are indeed worrisome thoughts. The kind you wish you had never thought in the first place.

         It might not hurt to follow the figure’s choreography, this one time. To engage in the mind-cleaning process of turning thought into action, which has comforted (or at least assuaged) many before you – through the animal satisfaction of putting the body to use, or the conscience-appeasing mechanism of having done what one can to achieve what one must.

         But listen to you, speaking of conscience! What have you to feel – much less be – responsible for? Perhaps you could simply wait for the troubling thoughts to depart, like so many other intrusive nuisances that had seemed poised to haunt you forever. Why let this ludicrous figure, whom you do not know from Adam, dictate the conditions of your inner peace?

         Why give in?

B:4

         “Of course, the turtle is not the only world-bearing myth,” said Grewalk. “You’ve heard of Atlas, I trust?”

         “Indeed I have,” I said. “The titan who shoulders the world, according to the ancient Greeks. Ostensibly as retribution for opposing the Olympian gods during Zeus’s war of reclamation. Though that does lead one to wonder who upheld things before Atlas was sentenced to do it.”

         “I’ve been fixating on the idea that Atlas’s fate is a punishment,” said Grewalk. “Because it doesn’t make sense to me as a punishment. It’s conceptually incoherent.”

         “How do you mean?”

         “Largely, it’s the question of… Enforcement, for lack of a better word. Let me put it this way. If Atlas didn’t care about what became of the world, he could shrug it off. That was Rand’s whole deal, as you probably know.”

         “Regrettably.”

         “But Rand couldn’t fathom the idea of caring for other people – at least, not out of duty, or anything other than selfish interest. In her book, in the matter of hoisting the world, Atlas is only a victim. So go ahead and shrug, she says. Walk away.”

         “I think I follow you,” I said. “Hefting the planet isn’t much of a punishment if he can opt not to do it. And if he doesn’t care about whomever that decision would harm, then what’s stopping him?”

         “Exactly,” said Grewalk. “Then, from the other angle: Suppose Atlas really does care. About the world, or about people, etcetera. In that case, his relationship to the world he carries seems to preclude the possibility that holding it is a punishment. Because if he cares, then keeping the world safe is something he should want to do. For example… Do you have children, Professor?”

         “None that I know of,” I averred.

         “Ah. Well. In any event, I would think that few to no parents would look upon caring for their children as a punishment. A hardship, sure. Parenthood is taxing! It’s stressful and demanding. But it’s not without reward. I strongly suspect that most parents derive satisfaction – or at least something like relief – from seeing their children cared for. There’s a desirable mental state that comes from knowing those you care about are alive and well. The motivation of the parent, then, isn’t that they are saddled with a child in the same fashion that one is issued a sentence. It’s not the negative compulsion to fulfill a punishment’s terms. It’s the positive inclination to provide for something beloved.”

         “I see. If we assume that Atlas cares about the world or its inhabitants, then we should believe that he’d want to provide his support.”

         “Right,” said Grewalk. “And, accordingly, it wouldn’t make sense to assign him that duty as a punishment, because for him, whatever it involves wouldn’t constitute suffering or coercion. It might be a hard task that takes a lot out of him, but it’s one that, on some level, he wants to do. Either because he’s fulfilling a moral duty toward the world, or because maintaining the world’s safety brings him pleasure, satisfaction, relief, or the like.”

         “That’s a fascinating reading,” I said. Despite myself, I felt my imagination ignite, burning through possibilities with interest. “Yes, I could buy that line of argument. Minding the world can be onerous, but perhaps it doesn’t quite rise to the level of punishment. Why, in the proper mindset, it could even amount to a source of Sisyphean joy.”

         “I knew it would click for you,” said Grewalk, behind a strange smile.

         He reclined in his seat like a pardoned wrongdoer.

C:4

         I’ve beheld many unusual things in my travels, friend – as you must have, too, no doubt – but I long ago concluded that there’s nothing in this world stranger than a thought. I feel that strangeness acutely whenever I’m reading. I’ll periodically notice that I have stepped aside to allow a stranger, often a long-dead one at that, to pilot my mind for a while. (To say nothing of what a generally odd practice reading constitutes: Sitting in silence with a string of monochrome symbols inked on the remains of dead trees, hallucinating vividly.) I’m led to marvel at the alchemy whereby an idea, having crawled into someone’s head by whatever means, is thus given flesh – made a presence in the material world by virtue of someone carrying it, and as a consequence, perhaps even granted the capacity to induce concrete changes in the world around it. And the thoughts themselves sometimes materialize out of thin air, or so it seems. To think such potentially seismic forces could align like that for no reason at all.

         Yes, of course you’re right. The actual extent of the idea’s material influence must depend on the thinker – how willing they are to enact it, how able. In that respect, plenty of ideas glance harmlessly off of most people. But every idea awaits its perfect host, who will enable its work in the world.

         Oh, please pardon the tapping. Nervous habit of mine. I’m sure you’ll understand.

         Where were we? Ah, right. This is why I wonder – or worry – about thoughts of the unwelcome variety. The earworm songs that won’t leave your head. The addictive turns of phrase that, once seen, colonize one’s speech and writing. On that same continuum we have those nuisances that enter the mind unbidden – the irrational fear for the well-being of a loved one known to be safe, let’s say, or the sudden intrusion of violent flights of fancy, or repulsive imaginings that recur all the more forcefully as one strives to un-think and forget them. What does it mean to receive – to host – an idea that will not go away?

         Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I mean. These kinds of thoughts aren’t premonitions. A premonition is passive, a view of the world to come that’s received like noise through a radio antenna. A thought, however… There’s something much more active, something self-fulfilling, in it. In this respect, the occurrence of an unwelcome thought is perhaps no different than revelation. For the thought, by virtue of having occurred, is itself the groundwork for its own realization.

A:5

         This, at bottom, is the problem. There is no evidence that you have to carry out the nonsensical task your interlocutor has put before you. Nothing, that is, save his assurances. Yet if you are wrong about his story being a crock of nonsense – in that vanishingly unlikely event his words are true – the consequences are too ruinous even to consider.

         You’ve not lingered on the question for long before the figure addresses you again.

         “Practice what I have shown you,” he says. “Let me see that you have retained it.”

         You go through it all. The brushes, the taps, the knock. Your fingers feel less like they belong to you as you watch each unnatural movement unfold – and notice how they grow slightly more natural by dint of your having rehearsed them.

         You prepare to ask the figure whether he is satisfied.

         But when you look up, he is nowhere to be found.

         No trace of him remains at your table. Not even a ghost of heat where he sat.

         Maybe he fled. Or perhaps he disappeared by magical means, like some kind of demon.

         All you know for certain is that you won’t be able to pose him any further questions.

         What, then, to do?

B:5

         “…And with that,” said Grewalk, “the figure disappears. You are left only with the choice to take up the task he has bequeathed to you. What should you do?”

         His fingers joined in a steeple at his chin.

         “That concludes my thought experiment,” he said. “What do you think of it?”

         “Of the story?” I asked. “Or the question it poses?”

         “Neither. I’m curious about your response to it. What would you do?”

         “I’m not sure,” I admitted. The teacher in me had no desire to discard a problem that must have taken him a long time to concoct – and some courage to share, at that. “I want to say that I wouldn’t go through with the task the figure would give me. That I’m not susceptible to something that could simply be an elaborate hoax or prank. And yet…”

         I sensed a presence at the center of his story – a weight, a pull – suggestive of a hard and discomfiting truth beneath its surface. The kind of thing that, once noticed, is not easily ignored. Or the kind of thing that someone like me, who had spent a lifetime teasing meaning out of tales and texts, could not help but fixate upon.

         “I was right,” said Grewalk. “I knew you’d follow. It’s not so easy to dismiss, is it? You’ve thought through all the premises with me. You agreed with all my propositions about doing whatever absurd task is needed to hold the world together – something like what the figure described. Someone should do this thing. It’s good to do this thing. And it can’t be called a punishment to take it on. So.” He lowered his voice, as if divulging a dangerous secret. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

         “Yes,” I said, more than a little ashamed. “I suppose I would, in the end.”

         Grewalk leaned back in his chair. A deep sigh slithered out of him like a long-held breath.

         Then it gave way to laughter – the delighted, manic laughter that escapes a body delighted with its own lightness after shedding a great weight.

         “I knew it! I knew it!”

         His forgettable smile parted his lips.

         “I hope you’ll forgive me, Professor,” he said, “but I haven’t been completely honest with you. I told you this whole story was a thought experiment. But that… That was a lie. Or, rather, it was the truth.”

         Whatever had been lurking within his story seemed poised to heave into view, and it made my stomach clench.

         “You see,” Grewalk continued, “it’s not an experiment at all. It’s a statement of fact. An instruction manual for keeping the world in one piece. Everything the figure in my story said – the catastrophe, how it might be prevented, why the listener must be the one to keep ruin at bay – is true. All of it. And the responsibility described…”

         He laid placid hands on my desk as I glimpsed myself forgotten in his unmemorable gaze.

         “…Is now yours.”

         His expression frightened me. I had to look away. I reached for my teacup and drank, deeply, as if to will it into something stronger. The teabag emerged hunched and spent.

         And by the time I raised my eyes, Grewalk had disappeared.

         I hadn’t heard him leave, nor seen him move. The divot in his seat was the same as it had been before his arrival. My hands, infused with my tea’s secondhand heat, couldn’t detect any warmth in his seat.

         And when I made for the door to check whether he’d darted down the hallway, I found it locked from within – as I sometimes left it in those dead, anxious moments between classes.

         Yet he had been there… Hadn’t he? Then what of his story – of his demand? That vivid telling, with such explicit instructions, whose pull I’d felt from the first…

         My fingers drummed themselves on the door’s flat handle. I wondered what to do.

         But some part of me – perhaps the same part that Grewalk had found receptive, that had been primed for his story all along – already seemed to know the answer.

C:5

         With that, friend, my story is complete. Alas, I fear this means our time together is drawing to a close. I have other places to be, other things to do. But take heart. Although my story has come to an end, yours… Yours is only beginning.

         Truly, I cannot thank you enough for sharing your evening with me. Talking with you, I feel lighter than I have in years. I imagine this is what people envision when they speak of kindred spirits – this sense of being on the same wavelength as someone else. Sharing the same mindset. Shouldering the same mental load.

         That’s right, friend. I knew you’d understand sooner or later. After all, you’ve been receptive from the first.

         I trust, then, that you recognize what must be done.

         Before I go, however, let me make sure of one last thing.

         Hold out your hand for me.

         Good.

         Now run your thumb along your fingertips— Yes, exactly like that…