“Time
flutters between the girls like the strings of a saz; Tahabes
stands between Nityez and Kumap, whose hands she holds, like the silent melody of time.”
The sky was closing in rapidly with heavy rain clouds. As they arrived at the bathhouse door, Autrom pulled the reins to bring the carriage to a halt. Without letting go of the reins, he bowed his head as if trying to recall something. Driven by the disquiet of a failed memory, he held onto the iron handles on the side of the carriage and stepped down.
The door opened, and Tahabes stepped out with a single child. A child neither black nor white… Wearing a black dress patterned with hazel-grey flowers, her braided black hair extending from both shoulders down to her chest, she was holding the hand of this single girl. Tahabes’s other hand was still warm, and despite this warmth, the emptiness of that hand made her feel as though she had forgotten something. The girl turned her ice-colored face toward Tahabes and asked:
“Who are you?”
Oahc removed his black gloves from inside his smoky top hat, tucked them under his arm, and placed the hat back on his head. Suddenly, he winced his ash-colored face as if trying to remember something and looked at the passengers. Neven and Natan were hastily counting the bouquets in their hands—roses leaning toward anthracite; Autrom was quickly grooming his black and white horses; and from the top of the carriage, the thick, graphite-colored hair of a corpse wrapped in a dun blanket spilled down its side.
Opposite the arched slate gate of the bathhouse, the dense marengo grove dispersed a rustling melody with the gentle wind. Mockingbirds, nutcrackers, and grey hummingbirds perched on different branches joined this melody, while an owl bearing every shade of grey flew up as if disturbed by the noise, circled the carriage once, and settled upon the corpse. An arsenic-colored fox, poking its head curiously through the bracken and autumn vines before darting back into the grove, imparted an agile command of silence upon the entire woods.
Tahabes released the hand she was holding, took a step back, and looked at the girl who had questioned her. While trying to dry the sweat in her palm with her mantilla without letting anyone notice, she wondered who this girl was whose hand she had held just moments ago—and indeed, who all these people around her were. She was trying to recall what she was doing there, why she was traveling in this mail coach. Yet the girl had asked first, and under the weight of everyone’s eyes gathering upon her, Tahabes felt compelled to answer:
“Tahabes,” she said, and after sweeping her eyes over everyone, she could not stop herself from continuing: “And who are you? What am I doing here?”
Autrom saw the apprehension on everyone’s face and understood that no one remembered anyone else. In a heavy, deep, and weary voice, he said:
“I believe none of us remembers one another, nor how we came together. I think we should stay calm and lay out the last things we recall to find a clue. To begin, let everyone introduce themselves.”
As each raised a hand to introduce themselves, they examined their surroundings with a restless curiosity, trying to make sense of where they were.
When the first drops began to fall, Neven and Natan moved simultaneously toward the door of the bathhouse. Oahc followed the children. In the lobby, the darkened silver frames hanging on the walls held no paintings; nor was there a statue atop the pedestal that stood there to bear one.
Following the sound of water, they all entered the bathhouse. Nitsirk, lying stretched out upon the navel stone, addressed Oahc as his metallic voice echoed off the bathhouse walls:
“Welcome back, Illustrated Man.”
Oahc felt a movement beneath his skin; the pictures on his body were shifting positions, trying to remind him of something he had forgotten, yet failing to do so.
“Do you know him?” asked Tahabes.
Rather than answering Tahabes, Oahc chose to look at her with vacant eyes.
Neven and Natan placed their bouquets on the navel stone before Nitsirk like an offering, with a respectful silence. Indifferent to those around them, they undressed and sat beside the marble basins along the walls.
Taking off his tall top hat and holding it at chest height, Autrom spoke in a sheepish tone:
“I carry a letter inside me, but though I remember not a single sentence of it, every line hurts. I remember who left the letter; I do not remember what happened to them, why it happened, or when. Inside me, there is an incomplete outcome. An outcome without a cause.”
Autrom was looking at Nitsirk, unable to control the tears flowing down his face carved with sorrow. He had poured his heart out under the helpless pain of a cause-less effect.
“To forget is a grace; not to remember is a curse. When there is no cause, Autrom, there is no time either. All the causes of what came to pass reside in me. When the causes are taken away, what remains of you is this,” he said, pointing to Neven and Natan playing with water at the basins. “A lump of naked flesh.”
“Is that why we remember nothing?” asked Oahc.
“Before you, time was divided; causes and effects were divided; colors were divided; seasons were divided; destiny was divided. You saw it all. I granted you this grace when you first arrived.”
Oahc trembled with fear as he looked at Tahabes and the girl standing beside her. Images began to flicker in his mind; he was remembering the journey, if only a little. He turned back to Nitsirk.
“Nityez and Kumap did not step down from the carriage… instead…” he said, pointing his finger at the girl beside Tahabes, indicating Nasus.
“Where there is no cause, there is no time, Oahc; where there is no time, there is no fate! Nityez and Kumap showed you different realities; Nasus will show you the price of causelessness. Thus, when your journey in this world ends and you meet Tahabes in the other world at the very same moment, you will draw toward each other as two nothings attract, intertwining, exploding, and scattering into pieces.”
Tahabes stepped toward Oahc, wanting to hold his arm, but she could not. Instead, she went to the girl’s side and firmly took the little girl’s hand.
Before Nitsirk’s metallic voice echoed off the bathhouse walls for the final time, he said:
“Everyone will forget everything backward once more; everyone will be imprisoned in their childhood.”
*
19:74
On a rainy June morning, after delivering Chao into the arms of the nurse who would hand him over to his mother, Mortua sat on the driver’s bench of his carriage. Before snapping his whip to return the other passengers back to time, he opened a yellowed envelope he drew from his inner pocket and gazed at the photograph he carefully took out:
Oahc, Tahabes, and before them, almost erased—Natan, Neven, Nityez, and Kumap.
Neven and Natan with their heads resting against the carriage windows; Tahabes with her hand on her mantilla, her thoughtful eyes gazing outside; Nasus’s eyes, laden with grief and pain, humming a song into the void…
With Autrom’s command of “Giddy-up!”, the mail coach set off toward 19:92.
