Friday Fiction: The Case of Chambers the Memoirist

 

THE CASE OF CHAMBERS THE MEMOIRIST

 

     Mr. Rutherford Moss, an under clerk to the chief clerk to the Secretary of the Senate, had finished his first annual visit to the Department of Extranatural Affairs, and Mr. Frobisher, the head of that clandestine arm of the government, was treating him to an elaborate supper in a private booth in one of the best hotels in town. It was not quite in the nature of a bribe, as the main inspection had been a smooth and painless operation, but the old lawyer knew from experience that it never hurt to grease the wheels of bureaucracy before they started to squeak.

     Mr. Moss seemed to be a very satisfied man. With heroic vigor he had gone through the poached salmon, the turtle soup, and the roast chickens that swam with potatoes and gravy, aided by deep drafts of wine, both white and red. Right now he was slowing down during the pumpkin custard, and Frobisher wondered if that was because he was at last getting full or if he was just gathering his strength for a final push. The under-clerk's broad, honest face was a bricky color that would have been alarming in an apoplectic attack, but he was smiling heartily, and though he had slowed, he was showing no sign of stopping. He paused to pour more heavy cream on his pie.

     "Well, sir," he said, "You certainly must have seen some unusual things in your time, Frobisher, if even half of these reports are true. Ghosts, monsters, witches. They read like some book of fireside tales." The clerk scooped up a spoon of pie, looking up at the lawyer from under a dark thicket of eyebrows.

     "Yes," said Frobisher. He took a modest sip of wine. "But most of what I know is by report, via the acquaintance of an acquaintance, you might say. But we have good men out there sifting fraud and fancy from irreducible fact. Men whose experienced character I trust, not credulous zealots, but ready to look at what's in front of their noses. There are some odd things out there that fall in no familiar category."

     Moss's face went blank.  In contrast to his constant joviality, it was almost a frown.

     "Ah," he said. He took two quick bites and wiped a little stray cream from his lips.  "So, nothing you've personally witnessed."

     A tiny icicle jabbed through Frobisher's brain. He had misread the signs. Usually at this part of the procedure an inspector wanted to be assured of the serious nature of the business, and of the man they were dealing with. The old lawyer wondered if he might be losing his touch at last, getting forgetful, or worse, careless.

     The big man wanted to be entertained.

     Frobisher took another sip of wine. He smiled.

     "Oh, I didn't say that. I've seen many an odd occurence.  But the oddest thing that ever happened to me was in my student days, before the Bureau even started. You might say it set me on my way down this peculiar path of life. Oh, it's not in the files. I have no scientific explanation for it, just another man's wild theory, though rather a remarkable man, at that. Matter of fact, I've never even mentioned it to anyone else, before now."

     "Indeed." The spoon lay still, half-way buried in the squelching dessert. Moss leaned forward. "And what exactly happened?"

     Frobisher rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as if he were considering whether to tell. Inside he said to himself, got him.

     "It was more than forty years ago now." He sat back, his lantern jaw sinking into his collar, and his hands sliding under his wide lapels. "Back when the Revolution was just a rumble of distant thunder, if you can imagine that, and our country just a forming dream. An even harder stretch might be picturing me as I was then, lean and fiery and with a magnificent head of chestnut hair on which I spent almost an hour every day, getting it just so. A vanity from which Nature has since relieved me." Frobisher passed a rueful hand over his balding crown.

     "I was at the time attending New College in pursuit of the knowledge of Latin and Greek that was designed to fit one for a ministerial life, but already strongly fixed in the habits of debate and hair-splitting that have served me so well in the lawyering line. It beckoned me, even then.

     "The College was, of course, founded in emulation of the English plan of higher education, and one of its inheritances is the tradition of shared student quarters on campus. At the time, they were assigned as and when vacancies fell and new men arrived. So it was completely by chance that I found myself rooming with Roger Chambers.

     "I must admit, at first I resented his sudden appearance. By a fluke I had been occupying the residence alone for some months and grown used to my privacy. To return from lectures one day and find a lanky teen with a half-dozen trunks crowding in on me was not the most pleasant surprise.

     "But, as time went on, I found his person and demeanor were so mild, so ethereal, that if it were not for his occasional meditative passages tootled on the cor anglais, I could go for hours when his presence was no more to me than a spider spinning patiently in the corner of the room. And every now and then he could be very useful.

     "Chambers was a genius of language. Imagine it: at six he knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and at ten he had read every surviving fragment left from Classical times. Now at sixteen he was only passing through the college until he could obtain a degree, sheer ability not being enough for respect in the circles of learning. You must have that scrap of parchment! Well, I was no slouch in Latin, but every now and again I'd run across a knot of Greek that he would untie for me with the ease of slipping a ribbon out of a girl's hair. To me, language was a tool, but to Chambers it was a musical instrument. And how he played it! For you must not think he was simply sitting idly about.

     "He wrote. At lectures, while learned doctors droned along with rules he had learned before he had got his last milk-tooth, during the evenings when most fellows were amusing themselves at the nearest tavern, in the silent mornings while the pious attended chapel and the riotous nursed swollen heads, Chambers would be found scratching pen across paper with hardly a pause.

     "At first it was annoying to me, like listening to a fly buzzing busily but pointlessly against a windowpane, then I heard it no more than rain on the roof on a lazy Sunday, and then I came to miss it on the rare occasions when it was absent. Many was the time I went to sleep to the sound of his writing, like a lulling stream flowing into the night. But for a long time I never ventured to ask him what it was he was writing.

     "In fact, we seldom spoke at first. Apart from initial introductions, there was little to say. People imagine that preachers and lawyers are a nosy lot, but I always conceived that whichever calling I chose, discretion was the better part. Why would I seek to burden myself with the destiny of another, when my own was so absorbing? So it was months before I asked the burning question."

     The big man opposite Frobisher pushed his plate back and reached for an apple from the fruit bowl.

     "What was the deuced fellow writing all the time?"

     "You've hit the nail on the head, Mr. Moss. What was the deuced fellow writing?"

     Moss began peeling the apple, and as the tale unwound he sectioned the fruit into bits and chewed it thoroughly, swallowing huge gulps as if in punctuation.

     "You may not credit it, Mr. Moss, but in the beginning, I never thought to ask. I assumed, with all his erudition, that it was some abstract treatise, and, to the uninitiated, no doubt as dry and dull as dust. As time passed, I thought no more of it, as simply one of the data of existence, like the sunshine or the dreadful nature of college meals. It was only when Peawhistle cornered me one day on campus that it really came to my attention.

     "I can still see his watery red eyes and gobbling Adam's apple as he came, black robes flapping like an offended raven, to where I sat under a spreading maple, enjoying the first cool breeze of September, a volume of Aquinas slack in my hands. He pounced on me without preamble.

     "'Look here, Frobisher,' he said. 'What is Chambers up to?'

     "'I don't know as he's up to anything,' I answered, 'Unless killing time in college has become a crime now.'

     "'You know very well what I mean. What is he writing? What's he scribbling on all the damn day? You should know, you share rooms with him.'

     "'That's some language, coming from a future minister of the church, Peawhistle. How should I know, and why should you care?'

     "'Because he's some kind of prodigy, and a goddam golden boy to all the professors. Every time one turns around it's Chambers knows this, and Chambers does that! Frankly, we all want to know what he's doing so we can get a handle on him and take him down a peg or two. If he's working on some novel scheme or new heresy or other, or just threshing old straw, we want to be ready to jump him. Take the shine off Mr. Golden Boy.'

     "'Thus making our own mediocrity less obvious,' I said, shutting the book I had been pretending to read. 'A noble, Christian attitude. Oh, don't look so self-righteous, Peawhistle! I'll find out for you, not that I think it will help one whit. But I remind you of the old adage about cats and curiosity.'

     "'And I, you, about pride and falls,' he snapped. 'Let me know by breakfast tomorrow, Frobisher. And use your cunning, sir; don't let him have a clue that we care to know what he's up too. We don't want him forewarned.' He flapped away, no doubt to spread his ... sunshine elsewhere around campus.

     "I came into our room later that evening, rather mellow from the tavern, and feeling well-disposed to all mankind. Chambers was, as usual, sitting at his desk, dipping and chasing his pen across paper. I sat down on my bed.

     "'So,' I said. 'What's that you're always writing on, eh?'

     "The boy looked up, mildly startled, like any other sixteen-year-old who suddenly realizes that someone has actually observed that they exist.

     "'It's not that I'm really curious,' I said. 'But there's a cabal of jealous sholars who want to know what the great prodigy is up to, so they can fall on him and pick it apart. But, shh! You're not supposed to be put on guard!'

     "Chambers laughed. 'Well, if that was part of your mission, you certainly failed there.'

     "'You don't annoy me, they do,' I said. 'If they think I'll be their catspaw for the asking, they are sadly mistaken. So what are you writing?'

     "'Well, they needn't be alarmed about that. I'm writing a romance.'

     "'A romance! Like Pamela or Tom Jones?'

     "No, I mean a real romance, a romance like they wrote in the olden days, a tale of adventure, magic, mystery, and love that was love, not simple tumbling in the sheets between two hot bodies. A romance like Amadis of Gaul.'

     "'I understood that Cervantes rather put paid to tomes of that ilk in Don Qixote, my boy.'

     "'He spared Amadis itself, though, as you may recall. It was not the type of book that was objected to, it was what it had become. Endless sequels, each more degraded than the last, written by hacks without a tenth of the talent of the originals, like wine watered again and again, and the readers left thirsty trying to get drunk on the lees, chasing that first pure draft! Well, what I want to do is restore the original vision, adapted for modern minds, perhaps exceeding what was done before, and that is what I am writing.'"

     The old lawyer dropped out of his reverie.

     "You must realize, Mr. Moss, that I am summarizing and paraphrasing. Chambers actual speech was far more ... poetic, shall we say. I couldn't begin to recall his actual words. Have you ever heard a stirring speech in Shakespeare, and come away from the theatre trying to say it yourself, and perhaps clutching a few phrases like leaves plucked from the wind? It is like that. If I could speak like he spoke ... well, I don't think I would have ever lost a case in court.

     "'It is certainly an ambitious project,' I told him. 'To ennervate a moribund genre, dormant for five centuries. How did it ever enter your mind?'

     "'I came across the volumes themselves, neglected and despised, during my studies of more classical works. I picked them up in curiosity, and read them first for relaxation. There was a peculiar flavor in them, elusive, that I chased from book to book, trying to track down. I realized that even the best of them were not living up to the promise of that tang, and I wondered that their writers seemed half-asleep to the possibilities, the implications of it. I wondered if I, wide-awake, could fulfill the promise.'

     "'I must say, you have aroused my interest, Chambers. How about you read some of it to me, eh?'

     "Now he looked bewildered.

     "'Read? To you? Out loud?'

     "'As I understand it, most books are written with some such goal in mind.'

     "'But it's not finished!'

     "'Nevertheless. Please.'

     "'But where shall I start? There are five thousand pages and more!'

     "'Start at the beginning, come to a likely place, then stop.'

     "He looked doubtful, but he went over and pulled open a chest in the corner of the room that I had always assumed held his spare wardrobe. I craned my neck a little to look. The box was about five by three feet, and almost a third of it was full of neatly inked pages. After a moment of shifting paper, he came up with a handful of sheets.

     "'I haven't really looked at this since I began. I think I have done better since,' he said.

     "'I like to hear the start of things. Go ahead, read, please.' He took a breath, cleared his throat, and began.

     "If I cannot report his exact speech, it is ten times harder to describe his writing, sir. It was a spell, a literal spell, and it took me by surprise. It swept me up, out, and away, into a land that had all the freshness of my own country, all the complexity of the old world, and all the mystic deeps of antiquity. The hero, a simple man whose sufferings and strivings were leading him to heights unguessed; a heroine whose strength and noble nature did active battle against fate; a villain of such complexity that my baser self wondered if he were not, after all, correct: all were present here, in the beginning, on the first simple steps that started to reveal their character.

     "'When he finished reading, I fell with a bump back to earth. I blinked my eyes and looked around.

     "'Yes? And? Then what happened?'

     "'That is the first chapter,' he said. 'What did you think?'

     "There was a muffled chiming from the hunter in my pocket. I drew the watch out. It was just midnight. He had started reading at a little after nine, and three hours had sped in the blink of an eye.

     "'I think you will have to keep reading to me, or lend me your manuscript," I said. 'That was most incredible! You have stumbled on a marvelous new vehicle of literature; you are creating a work of genius!'

     "Chambers frowned. 'I don't know,' he said 'Now that I read it aloud I see some things that may be improved...'

     "I waved a hand, overcome. If it could be improved, I thought, I might do nothing night and day but read Chambers' story.

     "'Look,' I told him, 'I consider myself, for my years, already something of a tough old boot, and you've "haled me out of my body" with this version. Why tamper with it?'

     "'Well, I'm not satisfied. I'm going to work on it. But I will read you more if you insist. This reading out loud does reveal the flaws, and therefore is quite useful.' He put the pages away and shut the chest. 'So what will you tell the cabal?'

     "I laughed. I had quite forgotten Peawhistle and his cronies.

     "'I will tell them the truth, such as their brains can take. I'll say you are working on a romance, and they will consider you a trifling idler, and their jealousy will be satisfied to dismiss you as such. But my, won't it knock 'em in the eye when they see the full truth!' I went to bed, chuckling, to the sound of Chambers scratching away, beginning his revisions.

     "Then began a time that I passed in a trance. I did inform Peawhistle, and thereafter the student body was content to look down on him as a dreamer. But I knew better. Every day I left the tavern earlier and earlier to drink a more heady brew from his pen, going to sleep with Chambers' tale whirling in my brain, thinking of what had happened, and what might yet be. So engrossed was I that I didn't noticed when his daily quota of new writing slowed down more and more, and his notes and re-writing became more frequent. But what cared I, as long as I could pursue the story as writ?

     "But at last came a day early in November, when I entered our room and instantly knew something was wrong, but could not place what. I looked around. Chambers was at his desk. The fire was going well, the clock wound and ticking. What was it? Then it struck me. It was the absence of a sound.

     "Chambers was not writing.

     "He sat at the desk, paper before him, pen in hand, ink at the ready, and was simply staring. Staring, in despair, at a blank page.

     "I went up and shook him.

     "'Chambers, me dear fellow, what's wrong? Are you ill?'

     "'I don't know,' he whispered. 'I don't know how to proceed.'

     "I was stunned. He might as well have told me he didn't know how to breathe. 'Should I fetch a doctor?' I asked 'Some brandy? Maybe a drop or two of opium to get your fancy started?'

     "'No, it's nothing physical, Frobisher. I'm just ... stymied. It's as if I were on a journey, with a thousand miles yet to go, and I know where I am headed, but ... I can't think where to put my foot to continue.' He rubbed his forehead. 'This has never happened to me before.'

     "I was dumbfounded, yes, and frightened. Frightened that with Chambers locked up, I would never hear the end of the adventures, never know if the hero would prevail, the lady's love be fulfilled, the villain vanquished or redeemed. I scrambled around in my brains, thinking of any remedy that might be applied to his dilemma. A thought struck me.

     "'Listen, listen,' I said, 'Perhaps this would help. Whenever I'm stuck in a problem and don't know how to proceed, I take a break, a complete vacation from the conundrum. I do something as diametrically opposed as I can, and then while I'm busy with that, the answer sneaks up behind my back and taps my brains for attention. What do you say we ... I don't know, go to the tavern, maybe?'

     "He made a wry face. "The only things that engage me are writing and reading. And I've read everything available on campus and in town.'

     "'Then write something, something as far away from these fancies as possible. What do you remember of your childhood?'

     "He looked at me blankly. 'Everything.'

     "'Of course you do; it wasn't that long ago. Write that! Write a memoir of your life. I'm sure once your great work comes out your readers will be wondering about you and your life. Write the facts, and your fancies will come crowding back, following the track that led you to conceive them.'

     "'Do you really think so?'

     "'Why not? It beats glaring at a blank page, doesn't it?'

     "He dipped the drying quill once more into the ink. He stared at the page. Then slowly, slowly he started forming words, then quickened, then was as busily skritching away as ever, if not quicker. I smiled and quietly went to bed at the sound of the familiar torrent, unaware of what I had innocently unleashed."

     Frobisher sighed, finished his glass, and poured another. He looked at Moss, who took a gulp of his own wine, and whose pursed lips and raised brows urged him on.

     "'I awoke the next morning to find him at his desk, writing in full flow. 'You're started early,' I said smiling. 'Problem fixed?'

     "'No. I never went to bed,' he said.

     "I jumped up and hurried to his side. On the desktop next to him, in a neat pile, was a sheaf of fresh-inked paper, more than an inch thick. As I watched, he finished a page and turned it face down on the pile and began a new one.

     "'Ye gads,' I said in disbelief. 'How far have you gotten?'

     "'I am just finishing,' he said distractedly, "my first week of life.'

     "'Your first week of life!' I cried. 'What can possibly have happened in your first week of life that can justify so much --' I gestured at the manuscript. '--so much to-do, kerfuffle, and tohu-bohu?'

     "'I can't help it," says Chambers. He never stopped writing as he spoke.  'I told you. I remember everything.'

     "'Everything!'

     "'Yes, everything. From what I ate for New Year's breakfast when I was two, to the last syllable of Dr. Powers' rather mediocre lecture last Sunday, and all that was before and beyond. I don't know how I remember it all. I just always have.'

     "'Well, can't you skip, edit, summarize at all?' I asked incredulously.

     "He frowned. 'I don't think so. It's how it comes to me, and I have to put it down. That's the way it works. I can't tell what detail might be significant: a very small thing might lead to big consequences later on.'

     "'And the romance?'

     "He paused, stared out into space, then shook his head, continuing writing.

     "'No, nothing. We'll just have to see how this plays out.'

     "I sat down on his bed next to the desk and watched blankly. The tale went through my head. The magic, the miracles, the mystery--lost cities, and strange beasts, and most of all the working out of the souls of the main characters-- all must be put on hold for weeks of nappies and milk-pap, and the pain of a first tooth! I covered my face with my palms and tried to shut the idea out.

     "'A-a-and ... Done.' I raised my head hopefully. He looked at me proudly. 'With the first week.' He looked around the room vaguely, then collapsed in on himself like a marionette with cut strings.

     "I caught him before he hit the floor, and moved him gently into his bunk, taking off his shoes but otherwise leaving him as is. I tucked him up and was considering what to do next when the nine o'clock bell rang. I had to hurry off to class, but not before giving the porter a shilling and instructing him to look in on Chambers every now and then. When I returned slightly after three, he was again perched at his desk, writing away, in rumpled clothes and stocking feet.

     "'The romance?' I asked.

     "He shook his head silently and wrote on.

     "Thus began a pattern for the next few months. I woke up. He was writing. I went to bed, he was writing. I asked him about the book, and he shook his head. After a week, I asked no more, but kept grimly hoping to myself.

     "He missed lectures, and I made excuses, pleading he had an unusual health problem, which with little equivocation was the truth. The professors were willing to give their pet wide latitude. He missed meals, and only took whatever hand foods I could get him to accept. He lost weight. The Peawhistle contingent shook their heads with happy gloom and talked about bright candles that burned out soon. My own studies began to suffer, and my spirits drooped. I wanted the tale.

     "But the tale was getting buried in the big chest, under more and more of the memoir. I looked at the new work now and then. Every new place visited, every new person met, every new food tasted, every new book read (and he was reading already at two!) was introduced and described so that I felt I had tasted or met or read them myself. I had to give it up. The memoir was in its own way as entangling as the romance, and from the samples I read I could feel its own fascination starting to tug. To quash it, I applied myself assiduously to my studies again, but still kept one wretched eye on Chambers.

     "It all came to a stop one day, deep in December. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew something had changed. There was an absolute silence. Chambers was not writing.

     "I sprang from my bunk, almost shouting. My heart leapt. The memoir was done, the romance could begin again. But the shout died on my lips. Chambers' desk was empty.

     "I rushed over to examine it, fearful that the frail boy had fallen by his bedside out of sight. No Chambers. On the desktop was another pile of manuscript, and a page half full. In empty curiosity, I scanned it. It was a description of me, suggesting he write the memoir. The pen lay dropped to one side.

     "I made a quick search of the room, then poked my head out for the porter. 'I say,' I asked him, 'Where has Chambers gone?'

     "'Nowhere's as I knows,' he says. 'An' I been on duty all night.'

     "Well, I grilled him pretty well, because it's a rare porter that's been awake the whole time, but he called his friend in who had sat with him behind the door, playing cards through the watches of the night, and he vouched for him. So I was left with a mystery. No way out save the door, windows barred on the inside, nowhere to hide. I even looked up the chimney, in case some rare madness had overtaken him. Nothing.

     "Now I had a case on my hands. I looked around one more time, gathered up his last pages, and put them in his trunk. The blasted thing was seven-eighths full. I clicked it shut and went to report to the board of governors.

     "Now it was my turn to be grilled, and to a turn, too. What had he been doing? What were you doing? Where were you? Where do you think he might go? Why didn't you stop him? It was pretty plain that they suspected me of some mischief, but as it became clear that I was his only friend and that he had nothing that anyone could possibly want, I was let go. They advertised his disappearance and asked for any intelligence of his whereabouts. It was a nine days wonder, but as no reward was forthcoming, the case was soon forgotten by most.

     "But not by me. I searched the entire campus inch by inch, questioned everyone about their whereabouts that night, and came up with theory after theory that one by one broke down. It was then, I think, that my penchant for investigation and inquiry began. I certainly became an expert at cross-examining at the time.

     "The point came when Chambers' disappearance was formally acknowledged, and the fact he would not be returning. He was duly stricken from the college rolls, as if that final ritual erased him from the official slate of existence, and the semester ended. I was instructed to move Chambers' belongings and prepare the room for a new occupant come the New Year.

     "When my replacement roommate arrived, he could not have been more different than Chambers. Burly, bold, and brash, a drinker and a sportsman, and a mighty puffer of cigars. He had two hounds that he insisted sleep in the room with us. Garriger was his name, but it might as well have been Gargantua for all the bellowing he made, as he went to and fro. I wondered what his discipline could be and found to my wonderment that it was Mathematics. I knew the fellow could hardly tot up his tavern bill.

     "I learned then that there was a contingent of students, quite the opposite of Peawhistle and his gang, called 'hearties,' whose rich parents only sent them to New College so they could add the boast of attendance to their names, without needing to say that they had ever graduated. Garriger had selected Mathematics as being the manliest option.

     "'Don't want anyone to think I want to be wearin' a Church frock, eh, Frobisher? Present company excluded, eh? I bet you know your way around another type o' frock, eh? You dog!' And so on, and on.

     "And so January wore on, and into February. He trailed mud in, got back roaring drunk at three in the morning, got sick everywhere, and habitually forgot to let his dogs out, with the concommitant mess that ensued. He constantly asked my help with his work if he needed it, even offering to pay me to do it for him entirely. That took a lot of my time, I can tell you, convincing him that he didn't need my help to fail and get sent home. He never stinted in borrowing my clean college gown when his went missing, taking my cigars when his ran out, or using my necessary when his was overflowing. In short, what's mine was his, if he needed it.

     "It all came to a head February the ninth, I recall. It had been a bitter night before, and Garriger had piled our scanty wood most liberally high in the chimney, so that the room was like a roaster. I had gone to sleep, almost choked to insensibility in the heat.

     "I awoke in a chill sweat and looked around blearily. Garriger was sitting by the fireplace, poking the blaze back into life and half-humming a bawdy song about some girl in an alley. I focused my eyes, and saw that the lout, in lieu of other fuel, had dragged Chambers' chest of writings from my corner and was now feeding the fire with bundles of wadded manuscript.

     "'Morning, Frobie,' he said cheerfully. 'Cold night, weren't it?'

     "I don't remember crossing the distance between us. The next thing I knew my hands were around his throat, there was a loud swearing voice that I acknowledged vaguely as mine, and Garriger, despite his superior size and brawn, was trapped beneath my avenging grip and turning a shade of purple that was very pleasing to my sudden fiendish aesthetic. Pages scattered from his nerveless fingers.

     "'Animal!' I yelled. 'Beast! Brute! Blockhead! You are destroying'- (a bash of his head to the bricks)- a work- (bash)- of a transcendental- (bash)- genius- (bash)- the likes of which- (bash)- you're doltish mind- (strangle)- could never conceive--'

     "I might have gone on the kill the man if there wasn't a sudden sound, a whump as if a whale had suddenly drew in its vasty breath and then shut its mouth with a snap, and a splintering crash behind me. I turned and dropped Garringer in amazement. He sat whooping for air. There, tumbled in the wreckage of the desk chair, was Roger Chambers.

     "I rushed over and examined him. He looked much as I'd last seen him, pale and weak, to be sure, but alive. I pulled him with gentle wonder from the ruined seat, looking around to see where he had come from, half-expecting a hole in the roof. There was none.

     "'Chambers! I said. 'Chambers, my poor man, where have you been?"

     "'Do not ask me,' he moaned. 'Please, never ask me. I pray God for the ability to forget.' He looked around shakily, and his eye fell on Garriger.

     "'Is this the man that burnt the manuscript?' he asked.

     "'It is,' I answered grimly, expecting dire reprisals and execrations. Instead the trembling fellow staggered over, threw himself weakly on the recovering hearty and embraced him, calling him savior, blessed, hero! Even trying to kiss the protesting Garriger.

     "He extricated himself from Chambers' hugs and stared at us wildly. 'You're both mad,' he proclaimed, and grabbing his hat and calling his hounds after him, he marched straight to the nearest bar and got most toastily drunk. So much so that hours later when he returned, he was willing to proclaim me a capital fellow and had completely forgotten my aborted attempt to murder him.

     "Meanwhile back in the rooms I had settled Chambers in my own bed, rung the porter for a double breakfast, and held back a thousand questions until his spirits could regain some kind of calm. After the food arrived and he had eaten it all with a relish that had been all too rare during his last bout of composition, I could refrain no more.

     "'Now Chambers,' I said. 'You must tell me. Where have you been in the past three months? What happened to you? How did you come back?'

     "'I can tell you a little,' he said, after a long pause. 'I don't think I can fully put it into words; I shall try. But you must promise me to do as I ask when I'm finished. Anything I ask.'

     "'Anything, my friend.'

     "He sighed, closed his eyes, and laid back.

     "'The last thing I remember in the mundane world,' he said, 'was writing. I was nearing the end of the memoir, getting to the moment that I knew to be the climax, the moment when the story -- my story -- turned in on itself. I could feel something growing, like a bubble in my brain, some answer rushing in upon me. Then I put the final period down, a stab of ink on the paper, and ... the bubble popped, and I was gone from the earth.

     "'Where was I? It seemed to be some limbo at first, no up, no down, neither left nor right. Then I found myself traveling without moving any limb, as if I were just a pair of eyes, flying through a world something like ours, but with a flat sky and not a breath of wind. I saw everything, but there seemed to be no light or shadow at all. I could see the sun, but it cast no beam, and the moon no ray, and fire, when I found it, shed no light. But I saw everything clearly by a kind of darkness made visible.'

     "'I flew down to a house quite familiar but transformed to an otherworldly quaintness by this strange atmosphere. It was my childhood home. I entered a room, and there was my mother, lying in bed, and gathered about her was a doctor and a gaggle of aunts, all familiar faces. I cried out and tried to greet them, but they were insensible to my presence and focused on my mother's struggle. In a moment, I witnessed myself being born.'

     "'My vision blurred, and then I found my point of view had changed. I was in my infant body, crying out with the cold and sudden shock of the darkly bright world. Once more I tried to protest, to question these familiar but distant figures, but my efforts were in vain. And so my exertions remained, useless, in all my visit to this weird mode of existence.

     "'For I was forced to thus re-live my life, not once, but over and over again. No sooner would I reach the fatal event of the final period, that it would start again, and I helpless to change a jot. I lost track of how many times it happened, every incident clear as a bell but flavorless and lacking substance, all under a flat sky and a windless world.

     "'Though my attention was forced to consider every event, still in the back of my mind a piece of me was free to think, if only in broken fragments. And over the many times I lived the unchanging events of my life in endless turn, I came to a theory of what had happened, a theory that set into a certainty as time cycled past me again and again.'

     "'What was it, Chambers?' I asked, almost whispering. 'What do you think happened? It sounds like you were in some kind of Purgatory!'

     "'I think -- it sounds mad, Frobisher, and sinfully proud -- but I think that I had written my memoir so well, that when it reached its terminus, it and my life became one, and I was somehow, in response to an inexplicable law of equivalence, transposed into its pages!'

     "'That is insanity!' I protested, drawing away. 'And how horrible if true! What proof do you have of this?'

     "'Imagine my horror when I came to this conclusion, Frobisher,' he said wearily. "I had deduced that my continued existence was due to your preserving the manuscript of the memoir, and I contemplated with terror the thought that if you decided to publish it, my revolving course might stretch out to an unforseeable, unbroken eternity. For it seemed to me the only way for my return was the destruction of the perfection of the memoir. The balance then might tip, and I return to the real world, the world of time, and life, and light.'

     "'I was reading through Plotinus for the nth time -- an experience that I had found singularly tedious the initial time in my real life --when suddenly there was the first tiny herald of my release. To my surprise, the dreary world seemed to warp, like the flexion of a mirror before it breaks, then bounded back. My body continued driving my eyes across the book's tiny print, but my soul was startled by the first change in an eternity. I thought initially that my trapped mind was starting to shatter. Then a wave of heat washed over me, a wave that grew in intensity second by second and filled my tortured consciousness.'

     "'My mind shrieked at the pain, while my seeming body sat as calmly as ever. The book in my hand burned up page by page, the flesh on my bones charred and peeled, my clothes burst into flame and withered away. You might think I was afraid, but I was not. I only felt a manic exultation. This might be the end of my life or my salvation; either way, it was release from the Ixion's Wheel of my torment. I gave myself up gratefully to the holocaust of immolation. And then...'

     "'Then I had weight again. There was an up and a down, as I instantly proved by falling into my old chair. I felt cold, and pain, and the hardness of the floor, and I blessed it all, for it proved that I had a body once more. I looked up and saw the man you call Garriger feeding the flames, and I went mad with joy, for here was a new human being, a creature fresh as if just sprung from Eden, a person I had never seen in all my life before! And when you confirmed it was he that had burned the memoir, I felt as if he were my second father, who had somehow granted me life again.'

     "'Now, Frobisher, you must fulfill your promise. You must do what I ask.'

     "'Anything, my friend.'

     "'You must burn whatever is left of the memoir. I must rest and sleep and seek the true balm of slumber, but I don't think I can, while a fragment of it remains on the earth.'

     "'Of course. If what you think is true, I'll burn it now and with a good will, and grind the ashes so that not a letter survives!'

     "Good, good. Thank you, my friend. And Frobisher, you must burn the romance, too.'

     "'What!' I cried, and drew away. I had, unrealized even to myself, been harboring the thought of him once more resuming the story whose consummation my soul craved, from the moment he had reappeared. I balked as the hope, half-formed, was crushed even as I came to the consciousness of its being.

     "'Don't be a hasty fool, Chambers! Where would be the sense in such an action? Why destroy a thing of such wondrous beauty? There is no balance, no equivalence here to be swallowed!'

     "'Are you so sure, Frobisher?' he asked me sadly. 'In the light of what has happened, can you be so sure? This writing -- my writing! -- has demonstrated a strange power to affect the reality of things. This time it was just my life. What if the romance were completed -- and you know how fascinating it was even to you, you "old boot" -- and it sucked its readers, one by one, into a never-ending story that bit its tale into a circular, repeating trap? Or even worse, what if it enveloped, not simply single readers, but the whole world itself?'

     "'I can think of worse things,' I grumbled, remembering the glory and the mystery of the romance. Then I thought to myself, that that was when it was unfolding. What if it were done, finished, complete? What if every bare bone of one's destiny (no matter how great) was known, and there were no new worlds to see, just the same path to tread ever and again? I looked at his wan face. I shuddered.

     "'You are right, Chambers,' I said quietly. 'It shall be as you say.' There before his red-rimmed eyes I fed every last page in the trunk to the flame, and as the last puff of the greatest story I had ever known went up the flue, his tired lids and lanky limbs settled finally into a deep and dreamless peace."

     Frobisher sat back and took up his wine again.

     "And that was basically that. Chambers quietly returned to his paternal home in New Jersey, foreswearing all efforts of writing composition, and even avoiding any new reading, lest the urge to create grip him again. He married, had three children, and took to keeping an inn, where I visit him now and then when I'm in the area. His enjoyment of the simplest tasks and his good cheer at meeting new people have made him a favorite in his town.

     "As for me," the old lawyer said, waving his glass to encompass the restaurant of the hotel, the remains of the meal, and his own well-filled waistcoat, "I got my scrap of parchment, studied law, and now here I am, serving the public and ensconced in solid comfort. My odd experience has set me down, as I said, a very peculiar path. But at least it has never crooked back in upon itself. 

     "Even so," he sighed. It was the deep, deep sigh of a man more than half-way up the hill. "Even so, every now and again, I wonder how that romance might have ended. Throughout my life I have sometimes fancied myself as the hero, and sometimes knew myself to be the villain, and always, always in my more wistful moments, I have held the forlorn hope that I might yet meet that unparalleled, valiant young lady on some April morn, coming through the dewy grass, under a glorious sunrise."

     Rutherford Moss leaned back in his chair and stretched his spine. He had the air of a man well satisfied with both food and wonders. He took out a fresh cigar and absently patted his pockets in search of a match.

     "This Roger Chambers sounds like a remarkable fellow. I'd like to meet him."

     "I can supply you his address, but I doubt you could pry any reminiscences out of him. He won't even talk about it with me."

     "A remarkable fellow," Moss mumbled around the stogie clenched in his teeth. "Scholar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, a perfect memory, a skilled writer, and threw it all over for the safety of the world." He took the cigar out and pointed it at Frobisher. "But there's one point where fellows like you and me have it over a genius like him."

     "Oh? And how is that?"

     "Why, we never let ourselves be consumed by our work."

     The old lawyer's eyes bugged in disbelief for a second. Then he burst out with an exaggerated wheeze of laughter. He produced a match, lit it, and bent over to light the impish official's smoke.

                                      --July 10, 2017, 3 AM

Notes

Mr. Frobisher began as a sort of framing character in A Grave on Deacon's Peak, way back when I wrote the first chapter in about 2005. There he and the chapter remained for at least a decade, until I started (in desperation) to really tuck into the tale. He returned in the last chapter, along with the concept of The Bureau of Shadows. In an excess of creativity I began producing many Tales from The Bureau of Shadows, in which Mr. Samuel (Ballentine) Frobisher featured as a character, most often off to the side, to act as a witness to the telling of a tale, and to the development of the Department of Extranatural Affairs. But he was never just a device to me, but a character in his own right.

In Chambers the Memoirist, Frobisher takes center stage for once, not only as a narrator of the story, but as one of the main characters. We see into his mind and character, at least as much as he chooses to reveal (and there is some indication that he is being a little crafty) and into the ultimate origin of the Bureau of Shadows. Even in Bureau stories that take place long after he has passed on he retains a presence, as a portrait in 'Capitulation' or in chiseled initials in 'Lovett's Last Task'. 

As for the origins of the story idea, I can't exactly recall how I developed it, except from the natural desire many people feel to enter into a well-written narrative and live there. How it might actually be to enter into an existence predetermined from the start and relive it over and over knowing how it would unfold (as pleasant as a re-read is after enough time to erase some details).