Having successfully breached Customs, Sphinx and I spent our first Alexandrian day utterly lost in that astounding labyrinth of dusty streets, crooked alleys, and gloomy byways that constitute the bulk of the town. Our goal was to reach Galen Hall, home of the famous medical school, before sundown, in order that I might launch myself enthusiastically on the noble profession my parents had chosen for me. But so unnavigable proved this Brobignagian maze that several times we had no alternative but to retrace our steps down an alley we had just traversed to shout to some townsperson or other, "Where is Galen Hall?" to which he would either reply by a laugh or hurling at us a ripe tomato.
At length we reached an inn, or rather a kennel, with a shabby signboard, where we dined very badly on bread and raw ham. The owner, a more-than-robust fellow, who insisted upon "serenading" us throughout our "meal," drew us a crude map which he said would be sufficient to guide us to our destination. He explained that Galen Hall, as most of the University corpus, was situated between a river and a large canal, this canal separating the campus from the town proper.
Thus equipped, we set off on the remainder of our little journey. In less than the space of an hour, just as the innkeeper had predicted, we reached a wide canal running stolidly east-west, to whose grave stone embankments was moored an occasional boat.
"Hurrah! We are saved!" I exclaimed as I spied the University lying peacefully upon the opposite shore. It is utterly impossible to describe the effect this vista produced on me---the great turrets and bastions of knowledge rising majestically from the fertile plains, the serene walkways where scholars from all nations could stroll among graceful oaks and contemplate the mysteries of nature, as immortal Plato once did in faraway Athens. The thought that I would dwell in these Elysian Fields among the shadows of such giants was almost too much to bear. I thanked God only that the gates lacked the inscription, "None but those who know geometry may enter," for my mathematical knowledge was, and has remained, at a most primitive level.
Several years earlier, Kiril had also passed this way for the first time. "The buildings are impressive."
Like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, we made our way over the canal, though the thunderings of a thousand troops entering Italy in glorious conquest were absent. Rather, it was the formidable duo of myself and Sphinx, who seemed singularly unimpressed by the entire venture, and who said only with some foreboding, "What is this region into which I've come?" Her misgivings infected me when, not a moment later, I noticed an ancient plaque nailed to the footbridge across which we had just walked. It proclaimed in once proud, now rusted letters: "Imbroglio Canal."
In retrospect, I cannot say truthfully, "I came, I saw, I conquered."
The great war which would soon begin between Alexandria and myself would
hold many surprises---but none so decisive a victory as the Argives wrought
against Troy.
At length, Berlioz and Sphinx found Galen Hall, unremarkable in its Gothic architecture but for the large stone heart pedestaled before the entranceway, commemorating Galen's famous discovery. Berlioz held the heavy door open for Sphinx and followed her in. They found the secretary in a small alcove, almost a cave, to the right of the main corridor. In her tiny cubicle she spun around like a virago amidst stacks of crumbling brown paper. Berlioz put down his bags and flinched under her withering gaze. The secretary had no knowledge of Berlioz's existence.
"Ah, but I was accepted by the medical school," Hector countered. "How can there be no record?"
"I am sorry, but there is no record."
"Impossible. I absolutely refuse to accept such an absurd state of affairs."
"Sir," she said with contempt, "you have obviously been shunted to the Oblivion File."
"The Oblivion File!" exclaimed Berlioz. "Wormwood! How does one suffer such a cruel fate?"
"The question you should ask, Sir, is how one avoids it. The paths to the Oblivion File are myriad, the means of escape are few."
"Scylla and Charybdis!"
"The analogy is not far-fetched. In fact I shall report it to the Chancellor of Metaphor at once." The secretary picked up her quill, dipped it in ink and made a brief note. "I should imagine," she sighed, "that in your case a trvial technicality prevented the Registrar from processing your application."
"I was never informed of any irregularities."
"Of course not," continued the secretary, cleaning her nails. "If, for instance, your application fee in ideas sterling is not received, the Registrar, as a matter of routine, will shunt your dossier to the Oblivion File without informing you. This is very likely what happened."
"But then how is one to learn of the mistake?" "Usually one never does. In your case, since you claim to have arrived---"v "Claimed to have arrived? Am I not here?"
"Sir, as I just pointed out, as far as we are concerned, you do not exist." A disgusted pause, followed by a glimmer in the eye and a finger to the lips. "As I was about to say, I would suggest a trip to the Oblivion File in an attempt to retrieve your dossier."
"A trip to the Oblivion File! And how might I find this dreaded place?"
"It is the exact center of the University, not far from here. If you walk out the door, you will see five or six pathways intersecting near the heart. They all lead---well, that is obvious."
"May Sphinx stay here while I am gone?"
"Has she applied for admission to the University?"
"No, I don't believe so."
The secretary smiled fraudulently. "Then I shall give her visitor's papers and she shall exist." The secretary, still grinning in a way that made Berlioz want to strike her, got up and fastened a small parchment around Sphinx's neck.
Sphinx used the opportunity to enquire about Olbers. "I come suppliant with a question: Does your faculty boast a physician, whose tongue betrays a German birth, and who goes by the name Olbers?"
Having certified the sphinx's existence, the secretary felt constrained to answer. "I don't know," she said.
"Surely a register lies within your reach."
"Come back after lunch," the secretary answered, returning to her nails.
At that the sphinx angered. "Your impudence is without limit---" "Sphinx," interrupted Berlioz, "it is time to take my leave of these charming surroundings."
"Of my will, I would go with you," his companion said sharply, flaring her wings.
Berlioz acceded. "Then let's be off." He picked up his guitar, leaving the rest of his belongings in the empty corridor.
"If you do not return in three days, how should these be disposed of?" asked the secretary.
Berlioz refused to answer, slung his guitar over his shoulder and swiveled toward the front door---but not before he caught sight of a notice tacked to the bulletin board:
"Humph," said Sphinx.
As Berlioz walked down the path toward the Oblivion File in a highly splenetic state, he reflected. He had, by this stage in his life, formed many opinions on many subjects: music was a divine gift; love was painful; Virgil was sublime; anatomy was repugnant; parents difficult. There were, as well, many subjects about which Berlioz had rarely, if ever, given a second thought: politics was completely outside his realm of knowledge; of most scientific subjects he was completely ignorant; even the visual arts, despite the immortal Michael Angelo, did not hold for him the same fascination as did music, literature or drama. In addition, he had never considered the consequences of being shunted to the Oblivion File. "When it came to the principles of institutional bureacracy, I was as knowledgable as a vestal virgin. I only dimly realized that such a thing as a bureaucrat existed and my naive vanity thought them to be both intelligent and helpful. Since then my tender eyes have been opened and I am now firmly convinced that the higher in the eschelons a bureaucrat is entrenched, the more feeble his imagination and the less likely he is to be of use to anyone."
Berlioz's youthful reflections plainly add little to the ancient problem of bureaucracies. Kiril refused to discuss the question altogether, being of the opinion that functioning bureaucracies or helpful bureaucrats were absolutely excluded by some basic principle or natural law. "Something like the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis," he conjectured. Several of Kiril's students went on in a vain attempt to experimentally determine what form the law should take; nothing was ever heard from them again.
The Oblivion File, Berlioz could see clearly, was the World's Navel, the prime intersection of all the walkways of Alexandria. From near and far they climbed, descended, wound, circled and converged at this grassy depression---the University's center. Berlioz approached the glen with a great sense of foreboding, although as yet he could not make out anything remarkable about the place. Sphinx remained silent throughout, sniffing the air and trying to judge the auspices. Every few moments, her wings would flutter involuntarily and she would snap her tail like a whip. At each crack Berlioz would flinch and jump forward a step. He found himself whistling Gluck in an unconscious attempt to soothe his nerves. Though the Alexandrian air was still cold his palms dripped with sweat and he wiped them constantly along the length of his coat. He opened a small vial filled with his favorite opium preparation and offered some to Sphinx. She refused. He adjusted his cravate.
The drug took effect as they reached the center of glen. There, Berlioz made out the top of a wide, stone staircase that disappeared directly into the ground. In the Zen Sobor, the File is surmounted by a "small turret, like that found atop a castle, flying a black flag. The stairwell inside, again like that of a castle tower, spiraled down into the earth as far as could be seen. Kyrie Eleison" (ZSCFOF). In other sources the Oblivion File is variously capped by a stepped pyramid, as at Chichen Itza, or ringed by seated bronze Buddhas.
Berlioz halted abruptly at the head of the stairwell and peered down, consumed with fright. It seemed to him that a faint, regular thumping emerged from the depths below, and terrible visions arose in his brain of Hephaestus striking his anvil amidst smouldering fires. He brushed back his disheveled hair and cried, "Good God! What darkness! It's madness to go down without a lantern."
"Fear not," Sphinx replied, "Like frankincense in its fragrance is the blaze of the wings I bear. Come where I lead you." She began the descent. The sphinx was as good as her word: as the sunlight began to fade from above, her great golden wings, as if having stored every vanishing ray, glittered and twinkled and transformed away the darkness of the fearful place.
Berlioz, alarmed that he was counting his footsteps and that his footsteps were the only sounds to be heard, took another dose of laudanum, unslung his guitar and began to play Gluck again. Soon, the stairs ended, opening into a narrow, sloping corridor. By the crystalized light of Sphinx's wings, Berlioz dimly perceived row upon row of skeletons nestled in rough-hewn nitches along the catacomb walls. Some were no more than piles of bones, collapsed into dusty heaps once the souls of their ancient owners had become too tenuous to bind them together. Others, whose masters still hovered nearby, were whole, with patches of mummified flesh stretched across their leering skulls. "Avec quel rire horrible ils saluent en passant!"
The sepulchre continued indefinitely; occasionally an inscription appeared visible on a crypt: "Died in defense of Alexandria, 1137"; "Rector, 1583." Suddenly, Sphinx and Berlioz found themselves standing at the top of an immense cavern whose far walls faded into what may have been an infinite distance. Stalactites as tall as temple pillars hung precariously from the ceiling; equally monstrous stalagmites rose from the floor. The whole was illuminated by a dull red glow, reflections of a stupendous fire which burned in a deep central pit. Mountains of boxes, crates, cartons, caskets filled the cavern from top to bottom. In the center, gangs of workers whose blackened bodies were dwarfed against the backdrop of their surroundings heaved the oldest of the crates into the flames. Berlioz gazed about him. Centuries would pass before these poor wretches disposed of all the garbage.
As Berlioz stood watching these slaves who, in their terrible condition had come to resemble the legendary trolls of the north, Sphinx wandered off in an attempt to locate the missing dossier. All at once, Berlioz, standing alone, was spotted by the workers. There was no time to flee. A dozen of them surrounded him immediately and, struggle as he might, quickly overpowered him. Effortlessly, the gang lifted its victim high and carried him on its shoulders toward the central pit. Berlioz strained and pleaded. To no avail. Reason was useless to the creatures who had long since lost the ability to comprehend human speech. Finally, the matriculate screamed, "Sphinx! Help! I beseech you!"
A great roar of wings filled the air. The gang dropped Berlioz and retreated in horror. Sphinx followed in pursuit, driving two of the trolls over the craggy edge of the flaming abyss. A third she leveled with a single slash of her bared forepaw and, while Berlioz recovered from his dazed condition, Sphinx then treated herself to a hearty meal, claiming she had not been so hungry for a long time.
The young composer got slowly to his feet, brushed himself off, and picked up his guitar. "Ah, my avenging angel, thank you, a thousand times thank you. Without your deliverance, I should by now have been a spitted goose." Berlioz then fell around Sphinx's neck and began to cover her with kisses.
"There is yet work to be done," sang the sphinx, interrupting Berlioz's unbridled passion. "What we desire is still not found."
For an hour they rummaged around in a small trash piles when Berlioz abruptly quit, stood erect, and gazed about himself in despair. "It is impossible. There is not the slightest chance. I am doomed---"
"Do not say it."
But Berlioz was inconsolable. More and more frantically he searched, throwing papers over his head into the air; the great draft caused by the fire snatched them up immediately and flung them irresistably toward the flames. He took more opium. His eyes widened and became bloodshot; his face took on the appearance of a madman who knows the hour has struck.
"Berlioz!"
He turned sharply.
"Berlioz!"
"A spectre beckoned me, like Hamlet's ghostly father on the parapets of gloomy Elisnore. I knew that Fate was at hand. 'Cohortes infernales, sonez vos trompes triomphales! Il est a nous!' Yes, I was their's. The hideous apparition, resembling distantly the secretary above, but with a face that of a decaying corpse, bent its gnarled finger in my direction and turned away. As if in a trance, I followed. I have not the slightest doubt I would have plunged myself headlong into the yawning furnace had my supernatural captor so commanded. It led me to the edge of the pit, pointed its bony finger downward. I was about to jump and then---I spied the missing file lying at my feet intact! "'My dossier!' I exclaimed in joy. 'Miracle of miracles! Grim spectre, I thank you! Someday I shall write an opera about this adventure!' Thereupon, I ran back to Sphinx, tears of joy streaming down my face. I embraced her exhuberently and we broke into song, singing, 'Remonte au ciel, ame naive.'"
The pair left the Oblivion File via the main entrance. The ascent proved to be uneventful. Berlioz happily strummed his guitar and sang "Che far' \`o senza Euridice." At a leisurely pace they strolled back to Galen Hall. A new notice had appeared on the bulletin bord:
They found the secretary in the same position they had left her;
spinning around in her crucible piled high with papers, a miniature
Oblivion File, screeching at an invisble enemy. So astonished was she at
the return of doomed pair that she instantly suffered a heart attack. The
only medical student in the immediate vicinity fainted at the sight. The
secretary died within moments. Sphinx was offered the job but refused.
In the folklore of Alexandria, the Oblivion File assumes a commanding position, with tales stretching in humility and awe back to the earliest days of the Barometz and beyond. The construction of the edifice---and is not the construction of emptiness the supreme achievement of Man?---must have been a project that dwarfed the building of the great pyramids at Gizeh and Teotihuacan. According to Quan Lo, the First Administration's plan had merely been to create a repository for the records of Alexandria, and work started sometime in the 3rd century B.C.. Pliny the Younger tells us that construction was still not complete in A.D. 79 when he sailed to Alexandria after the destruction of Pompeii. He writes that batallions of workers descended daily beneath the University to carve out the monumental void with picks and axes. One imagines the crack of whips, the creak of wheels, the collapse of rock and the groans of slaves. Thousands failed to return and mated with salamanders.
Unfortunately, Pliny and his contemporaries based many of their pronouncements on hearsay and second-hand evidence. Where are the great caverns and storerooms, the bones of workers and serfs, the machinery of destruction and torture? Modern excavation has revealed none of these. The rubble hides only more rubble, a few subterranean chambers (one in the style of Louis XV), a ratcheted machine whose function remains unknown, stagnant pools, dripping water.
The failure of the digs to illuminate the source of mankind's
emptiness
has led naturally to the alternate view that the Oblivion File is a
primitive metaphor for the Inferno, Purgatorio, the visions of Hell that
have shadowed civilization for the last two thousand years. One must,
however, distinguish the infernal---the infinite state of torture (as in
Byron's cloven foot)---from the purgatorial---a temporary trial of
purification (as in Christ by St. Patrick)---to see that the Oblvion File
stands in the latter category. Indeed, the very name Oblivion File
suggests nirvana, literally the "going out" or "extinguishing" of a flame.
The construction of the Oblivion File is thus a tale of the acceptance of
the physical world's impermanence. According to this interpretation, the
journey through the fires of Oblivion is a western allegory for the
traversal of the Eightfold Path, whereby the initiate eliminates the fuel
on which the flames of craving feed, and so eventually finds the emptiness
he fervently desires.
As Berlioz and Sphinx watched eager medical students haul off the body of the late secretary, Hector felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to see a tall, lanky fellow who held out his hand in greeting. "You must be a new arrival. My name is Q.K. Robert."
From the first moment on, Berlioz was at a loss to decide whether it was Q.K. Robert, K.Q. Robert, Robert Q.K., or Robert K.Q.. Those who knew him used the four forms interchangeably and K.Q. himself seems never to have settled on a particular variant.
Q.K., as it turned out, also claimed to be new student seeking a roommate with whom to board. Berlioz writes: "Having no other plans, I thought it expedient to join forces with this queer fellow in finding suitable accomodations. I first required of him the condition that he should not mind having Sphinx sleeping at our doorstep. He replied, 'Your pets are no concern of mine,' in such severe tones that I stepped back a pace. Without the slightest trace of enthusiasm I accompanied K.Q. on the search for a flat and let the matter fall fully into his able hands. Fortunately, our efforts succeeded within hours. K.Q., as if following some inborn instinct, found a 'suitable' place overlooking the Quandary Canal on the extreme western edge of the town proper. This canal, a dark, somber little stream, flows gloomily northward several kilometers until it joins the larger Imbroglio, with which I was already familiar.
"Q.K. methodically went about thumping the walls of our two prospective rooms and finally flung open the window shutters. Peering strangely into the canal, he pronounced, 'Yes, this is exactly what I had in mind.'
"The next days were spent outfitting our palace. I hung framed pictures of my musical dieties on the walls and presented myself with a copy of Moore's {\sl Loves of the Angels}. Robert, who was as clever as a monkey with his fingers (which is a very poor simile, for monkeys can only destroy) spent his spare moments manufacturing all sorts of ornamental and useful trifles. He made us each a pair of well-conditioned clogs out of some of our firewood; and in order to vary the monotony of our frugal repasts he contrived a net and a decoy bird, with which he caught quails as they flew by our window.
"Through all this I pondered, in a minor key, my coming fate. Become a doctor! study anatomy! dissect! witness horrible operations! instead of throwing myself heart and soul into the glorious and beautiful art of music. Foresake the empyrean for the dreary realities of earth! the immortal angels of poetry and love and their inspired song for filthy hospitals, dreadful medical students, hideous corpses, the shriek of patients, the groans and death rattle of the dying!... It seemed to me the utter reversal ofthe natural conditions of my life; horrible and impossible. Yet, it came to pass.
"Hours upon hours I sat in the gloomy lecture theatres of Galen Hall,
upon rock-hard benches, as doddering, senile professors prattled endlessly
about the amorous exploits of their youths---when they should have been
occupied with the equally fascinating subjects of chemistry, anatomy, and
physiology. And thus, I, with K.Q. Robert, gave myself up entirely to the
career which had been forced upon me, and faithfully kept the promise given
to my father at our parting."
Shortly, Berlioz had reason to regret his fidelity. The event occurred only a week after his arrival when Robert solemnly announced the time had come to find a subject.
"A subject?" asked Berlioz, who put aside the anatomy text he had been studying by the flickering light of the fireplace.v "Yes, yes, let's be off." Without a moment's hesitation, K.Q. snatched his cloak from the nail hammered into the door. He sniffed the air. "Curious," he evaluated as his cape swept up a cloud of parting dust. Jumping to his feet, Berlioz grabbed his coat and hat, fumbled with his key and, once having secured the door, stumbled behind Q.K. down the narrow staircase. Sphinx was nowhere to be found. As likely as not she had gone off exploring the new territory on her own. "You seem to know what we're about," said Berlioz, struggling to keep up with his taller companion in the back alley.
Q.K. did not respond, which at oncce made Berlioz suspicious of the undertaking. Indeed, Robert rapidly traversed the sidestreets and footbridges with a singlemindedness of purpose that Berlioz found frightening. After about fifteen minutes, Robert abruptly halted at a door near the intersection of the Quandary and Indeterminate Canals. He knocks.
"Yes, who is it?" comes the hushed reply.
"K.Q. Robert."
"Quickly then."
"Wait here."
Pacing in the cold street, Berlioz hears three voices engaged in earnest dispute.
"Where's the subject?"
"In the church."
"What!"
"These things do get around."
"You can't keep it quiet forever."v "Services will be held tomorrow at 8 A.M. sharp."
"We'll have to act now."
"Right."
"Let's be off."v Three figures sweap out of the house carrying Berlioz along in their torrent. With all the crafty caution of a cat on its nocturnal prowl, they make their way to the church at the corner of St. Germain and Alvensleben. The door is on the bolt.
"What will we do?"
"A sharp rap will take care of it."
"No force. We're not criminals you know."
"Then the window."
"Up you go."
A moment's anxious wait and then---success. The door swings open, a shadowy finger beckons.v "Hurry, no time to lose."
Burning tapers, smouldering with incense lead the way. Cologne mingles with the scent of the newly dead.v "Ah, here he is, pleasant fellow."v "How appropriate."
"A more fitting subject couldn't be found in Alexandria."
"Hup, easy there. Got him?"
"Let's go."
"Berlioz, you stay."
"Stay? You can't mean it. I'll be found out."
"Here. Just for an hour. You'll be our decoy while we escape. In case someone comes, no suspicions will be aroused."
The next hour was easily the most frightening of my life. There I lay, in that hideous casque, surrounded on all sides by flickering shadows whose sepulchral forms continually transformed themselves into the most horrible apparitions. The scent given off by the candles proved so sickeningly sweet that I thought I would surely die of suffocation. More terrible though, was the absolute certainty in my mind that I would be detected and the ruse exposed. More than once the dreary footsteps of the nightwatchman or a lonely priest echoed toward the catafalque, only to recede into the murky distance, evidently having assured himself that the deceased had not lowered the standards of funereal decorum by vanishing into the night. At length I was overcome by a morbid detachment from my predicament and sank into a deep reverie. Ah, fatal peace! Was this what it meant to be buried alive? How many heroes of antiquarian novels had found themselves in similar circumstances?
I awoke to the sun's morning rays. I can assure you, my surprise was no greater than that of the devout clergymen surrounding me who were, at that moment, singing the praises of my brilliance in the social sciences. So panic stricken was I at the thought of my impending interrment, that I could not even point out to them the mistake in identity. I managed only to croak, 'Good-day, Gentlemen,' as I jumped from the bier and bolted to the nearest exit.
I was sorely tried when, later that day, Robert nonchalantly asked me to accompany him to the dissecting room at Galen Hall. When I entered that fearful charnal-house, littered with fragments of limbs, and saw the ghastly faces and cloven heads, the bloody cesspool in which we stood, with its reeking atmosphere, the swarms of sparrows fighting for scraps, and the rats in the corners gnawing at bleeding vertebrae, such a feeling of horror possessed me that I lept out of the window, and fled home as though Death and all his hideous crew were at my heels. It was twenty four hours before I recovered from the shock of this first impression, utterly refusing to hear the words anatomy, dissection, or medicine, and firmly resolved to die rather than enter the career which had been forced upon me.
Robert wasted much eloquence in combating my disgust and demonstrating the absurdity of my plans. But he finally induced me to make another effort, and I consented to return to Galen Hall and face the dread scene once more. How strange! I merely felt cold disgust at he sight of the same things which had before filled me with such horror; I had become callous to the revolting scene as a veteran soldier. It was all over. I even found some pleasure in rummaging in the gaping breast of our unforunate {\sl subject} for the lungs, with which to feed the winged inhabitants of this charming place.
"Well done!" cried K.Q. laughing, "you are growing quite humane! Aux petits des oiseaux tu donnes la pature."
"Et ma bonte s'entent sur toute la nature," I retorted, casting a
shoulder blade to a great rat who was staring at me with famished eyes.
And so I went on with my course of anatomy, stoically, if not
enthusiastically.
The next few weeks were to Berlioz a time of displaced anguish. Stoicism constantly disintegrated into despair. "Show me a true stoic," pronounced Kiril at a later date, "and I'll show you a corpse." Berlioz did not need to be shown a corpse. He watched impassively as the other medical students rummaged about cheerfully in theirs. He could not summon a drop of enthusiasm. Soon, he abandoned the lecture halls and lapsed into the indifferent life of a wanderer, aimlessly drifting about Alexandria, occasionally sipping acetic wine at a cheap cafe or fishing with the derelicts in the canal. He never caught anything. Nights he attended the Opera, but to his ears the arias spoke only of his guilt. "Thy studies are neglected," Oberon warned in the second act. The dilemma he faced, the choice between Art and Science, reached dangerous proportions one crisp morning when he poured out his soul to a passing undergraduate. The young victim listened with attention and sympathy as Berlioz railed at the gods and at his father. "My bent is irresistable! How can he oppose me? I shall die if I succumb to his desires. Anatomy! It is abominable, absolutely impossible. The voice of Nature calls me! Nothing in the world can force me to change, nothing!"
As he finished, the student said, "I understand, you're having trouble finding a subject as well."
"One subject too many!" Hector cried and, with hardly a pause, launched himself at the student and began to strangle her by the neck.
"Help! Help!" she screamed. "The fellow is mad."
Hearing the shouts, three passing students dashed to the rescue. After a brief scuffle, they hoisted Berlioz onto their shoulders and hurled him into the nearest canal. The terrific splash brought the possessed to his senses. Crawling out, tired and defeated, he offered his abject apologies to the girl. He was sick for a week and prayed only that pneumonia would soon bring an end to everything.
During his dejected peregrinations, Berlioz did learn that the bulk of the University was indeed situated north of Imbroglio Canal and south of a large river, known as the Malachite. Playing fields, including the huge Colosseum, lay north of the river altogether, and several of the science faculties actually lay situated on an island in the middle. Walking by the Colosseum, Berlioz wondered what carnage took place inside.
If there were gladitorial combats, he would participate---without a weapon. If Christians were to be martyred, he would be rebaptised and serve himself up for the slaughter. "My mood was so horribly black that one day I took it into my head to purchase a ticket to the spectacles just to see if there was not some way by which I might honorably dispose of myself."
The line to the Colosseum had wrapped itself fully twice around the stadium, insinuated itself among the vine-entangled portals, and then thrashed its disorderly tail into the river. The queue was survived. Berlioz bought a ticket at the gate, passed between ancient stone archways whose mortar peeled off in flecks, and climbed stairs worn to roundness by uncounted predecessors. There, high in the stands, he took his place among the crowd.
The first event was a barbaric and unidentified game. Two teams, intent on murder and mutilation, collided again and again in an attempt to manuver a ball from one end of the stadium to the other. The crowd cheered wildly and their thunderings rolled across the Alexandrian caldera. The noise only increased when one of the players was taken out due to exhaustion or injury. "Good-God," Berlioz cried to himself. "Filthy dregs of humanity. A hundred times worse than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo!"
In Alexandria a story is told of a group of spectators who visited the University to cheer on their own team at an important match. Not knowing the plan of the University or the way to the Colosseum, they simply decided to follow the crowd. The visitors soon found themselves at the Library. On that day Berlioz sat high among the masses, a group of students, having shunned the frivolity of the Colosseum, was indeed making its way to the natural habitat of Library. Suddenly, one of the sentinels stationed about campus on Colosseum days shouted, "Beware! Take cover!" The students, trained to react instinctively, flattened themselves on the embankment or cowered next to the nearest wall. The shock wave from the stadium rolled past. Books were scattered, papers blew into the air. An embankment tree toppled into the Imbroglio. The sentinel alone remained standing, chained to his post.
The window pane in Kiril's chamber shattered. "Something will have to be done about this," he said.
After intermission, Berlioz witnessed what he considered a more civilized event. Two philosophy professors, the first an objective naturalist, the second an objective non-naturalist, had become such bitter enemies that they had agreed to end the doctrinal conflict on the gladitorial field. The short swords clanged and blew sparks flew with each blow. Through the roar of the crowd Berlioz could not hear the imprecations they hurled at each other, but the dispute on the absolute truth of ethical principles was resolved when the two antagonists simultaneously plunged their swords into each other's breasts. The crowd went wild. "That really was superb," said Berlioz to his nearest neighbors. "All philosophical transactions should end thusly."
The Grand Finale of the afternoon consisted of no fewer that 150 students being fed to starving lions. Berlioz saw immediately his opportunity for oblivion. He quickly got up and rushed out of the stands. Soon, he had circled the stadium and spied the lion keeper. Just as Hector was about to offer himself for the sacrifice, a voice called out.
"Is life so heavy, Sir?"
I turned to see a stranger leaning easily against the nearest archway. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. He was tall to excess, wore a black button-down vest and black boots, both of which gave him the most sinister of appearances---which was not diminished by the position of his arrogantly crossed arms---his absolutely bald head, nor by the pistol which he spun on his finger. I could not even attempt a guess at his origins, unless they were the wilds of the American West, which I had read many stories about. The few living Americans I have met all shared a common streak of violence and rashness and talked loudly. Their ignorance I have often found irritating, but their energy is admirable enough and I have often thought that the American West is where a man should search for adventure.
"How about a drink?" the stranger asked.
We adjourned to the nearest cafe, which happened to be a student hovel in the basement of the Department of Lepidoptery. {\footnote Berlioz seems to be mistaken here. Excavations have uncovered no student pub in the Department of Lepidoptery, but one has been found nearby in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. } As we each nursed a pint of the foulest beer imaginable, my man introduced himself as Vincent Wallace, born in Ireland but recently returned from an expedition down the Mississipi. He has carried off women, he has fought several duels that turned out badly for his opponents, and he has been a savage---yes, or pretty nearly one---for sixth months. He told me, with a strange impassivity, how on an English frigate he sailed to New Zealand to put down a native tribe which had looted a whaling ship the year before and ate the crew members.
"Never in my life have I seen so many canoes. They kept coming at us from the land, the sea, the bushes, the rocks, everywhere. We let ourselves be surrounded like men unable to offer any resistance. But when the canoes, which were divided into two groups, came within half pistol range, and so closely packed that they could not turn, a slight push of the tiller made our frigate wear and turn its beam to the flotilla, whereupon our commander shouted: "Battle formation, all hands! Open the ports! Broadsides for the vermin! Port and starboard guns, simultaneously poking their muzzles out of the ship's sides just like inquisitive folk putting their heads out the window, began to spit on the tattoed warriors a regular hailstorm of up-to-date grapeshot, ball, and shell. Our four hundred soldiers accompanied this concert wih a well-directed fusillade. The wounded yelled, the runaways drowned, while our commander stamped about, shouting through his speaking trumpet: "One more broadside! Give them bar -shot! Shoot that chief with the red feathers! Out launch, out cutter, out yawl! Finish off the swimmers with your handspikes! Knock them on the head, my lads! God save the Queen!"
Wallace continued the narration in the same strange, impassive tone for hours. I listened to his story eagerly. How often had I wished to live among the natives in some far away paradise! to throw over the cares and worries of everyday life in what is laughingly referred to as civilization! Ah, misfortune to be bound hand and foot to the modern world! When Wallace had finished recounting his hair-raising adventure, he asked me why I had so rashly decided to throw myself to the lions. As we drank that odious beer, suitable only to poison music critics, and brushed away annoying butterflys, I explained to him fully my predicament.
"Come come, lad, there's no cause for alarm. A medical diploma should be easy enough to fix."
"Fix?"
"For a minor fee. Twenty-five alexanders should we say?"
"I am baffled."
"Really, M. Berlioz, do you want the brains or the certificate?"
Berlioz began to follow. Could it be pulled off? Could the clever entrepeneur arrange for the detested diploma---leaving Berlioz to puruse the noble art for which he was destined? The attempt must be made. But 25 alexanders! Almost half a month's allowance! Nonetheless, there was no escaping the risk. Hector paid up. Wallace said he would be in touch, gulped down the last of the beer, and vanished.
After several weeks, Berlioz began to realize that he had been duped.
"I vowed to exact the finest revenge from Wallace but in my naive
stupidity, I had not even gotten from him an address. I cursed myself over
and over again as I stoically went about my medical career and
rummaged around in my subject for a ripe spleen.
Berlioz's Alexandrian career could not have received a more auspicious start. He had not yet even fully learned the lay of the land--- the location of the shops, the detailed plan of the University, the intricacies of town and gown---before he had blundered into the twin adventures of the Oblivion File and the Subject's Procurement. He had hardly received two week's respite when the Colosseum Catastrophe followed on their heels. At the same time, a memorandum appeared on the Chancellor's desk requesting authorization for a routine watch to be placed on a new student who had survived the Oblivion File and probably stolen a corpse.
The sum of these escapades moved Monk to write in the Zen Sobor(ZSCFR23): "Glory to the Creator and to all his works." Kiril found that statement too perfective which led Monk to add(ZSCFR67): "I believe the spectacular advent of Berlioz and his later conjunction with Kiril and Tamara would lead ultimately to the downfall of Alexandria." Scherezade would attribute it to the stars. Others would question whether a downfall ever took place, pointing out that a downfall presupposes a higher state of existence.