The Narrator Read Online Free Page A

ways which seem likely to lead me away from all these people who have places in the world. Of course, so do I, but it’s not one I want. I reject it. I would reject it. The Edek ...
    Wherever I turn my head, small panes of glass shoot light spears at me, hunting my eyes. Now I wend along bookstall streets, funnelled in light as air on the wind. Bits of paper hurry around me, in and out of shop doorways and alleys, cross and recross the street in front of me. As paper goes, it’s a busy street. The books stand in neat rows sandwiched in together, and among them sit figures perched atop tall stools within the obscurity of a deep doorway, barely visible in the gloom. My finger etches a groove in the dust that clings to spines patched with gilt titles. Look at this The Seven [dull old] Syntagmas . I had to read that. Here’s a bright new copy I’d buy if I had the money of Séance Paralogia by Hathebeth Huthebie, who used to be my teacher. Perhaps I could trade my Syntax for it.
    I may never be anything better than a journeyman narrator now. If I ever were to write an account of these events, which are in any case written, my narrative would be incoherent and inconclusive; I never know enough to say. Neither buying nor selling, I keep on my walking feet that take me out from this lane of cool dust to brighter streets with shop windows, a blonde square with indistinct people strolling in the shade of a few half-sized trees in the distance. The light recoiling from the bright ground distempers the shadows and makes these people resemble figures in an old and faded picture. I beguile myself enjoying the grimaces of ranks of iron gargoyles, which rise from the gutter all the way to the dizzy steeple above. Crouch and pull faces all day—that’s a good job. They’re well fed and healthy, with bulbous muscles thickly rippling. I wouldn’t half fit in as a woman sails by, the uplit light reflecting from her white blouse barely tints her wan face with its glow. She’s not for you, nor any of them, as you know. That wasn’t a very kind thought. Icy wind blows into the deepest of my spirit’s stiff fractures. Still hypnotized, thinking you can when you know these are impossibilities we’re talking about; known only to me as my vision is clearest—clear, clear as a bell. From the steeple, the bell can see everything in the town. Meet a woman, you will meet another. They always enter in twos.
    Now, how would a callow youth like myself know that?
    Once you see an Edek, or once one sees you, you will see others. Two of them, hooded like hostages, now stalk out of the church with their wan-faced helpers leading them. Edeks are blind to this world, mostly, and see vicariously through their assistants. I don’t know whether or not these helpers all wear the same mindless look because they’ve been put through some sort of procedure, or if an Edek’s presence or influence brings on this condition, but it seems like a mercy to me.
    The foremost Edek wears a long belted black coat, badly faded; she has the air of a wasted invalid just emerging from her sick chamber with an uncanny, almost supernatural new vigor. Her companion is in an officer’s tunic, a long scarf wound round her neck many times. They angle away in the direction I came, taking long powerful strides in near unison, and in near unison they both abruptly turn their puncturing gaze on me, four frigid pools of congealed ink .... They do not pause, their heads reswivel, and they go.
    I search for the mustering point, and the day passes. Now I am in the outer skirts, where the streets swell and contract as they please. Fewer people, and older. A hat in one of the windows catches my eye and I stop to look at it; my eye drifts over wooden heads on stands, past the sill and down to where an anxious cloud of dust is tumbling against the base of the building, in the dry alley. Indirect sunlight sifting down from everywhere illuminates the dust faintly, and I watch the motes