Two Words.

any attempt to separate us will result in his death

Two words:

  help me

  Her wide stare riveted to the words, Sharon’s breath came frosty as she whispered, “That’s her handwriting, Father.”

  At 9:00 that morning, Karras went to The President of Georgetown University and asked for permission to seek an exorcism. He received it, and immediately afterward went to the Bishop of the diocese, who listened with grave attention to all that Karras had to say. “You’re convinced that it’s genuine?” the Bishop asked finally.

  “Well, I’ve made a prudent judgment that it meets the conditions set forth in the Ritual,” Karras answered evasively. He still did not dare to believe. Not his mind but his heart had tugged him to this moment : pity and the hope for a cure through suggestion.

  “You would want to do the exorcism yourself?”

  Karras felt elation; saw the door swinging open to fields, to escape from the crushing weight of caring and that meeting each twilight with the ghost of his faith. And yet, “Yes, Your Grace,” he answered.

  “How’s your health?”

  “My health is fine, Your Grace.”

  “Have you ever been involved with this sort of thing before?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, we’ll see. It might be best to have a man with experience. There aren’t too many these days but perhaps someone back from the foreign missions. Let me see who’s around. In the meantime, I’ll call you as soon as we know.”

  When Karras had left him, the Bishop called the president of Georgetown University, and they talked about Karras for the second time that day.

  “Well, he does know the background,” said the president at a point in their conversation. “I doubt there’s any danger in just having him assist. In any case, there should be a psychiatrist present.”

  “And what about the exorcist? Any ideas? I’m a blank.”

  “Well, now, Lankester Merrin’s around.”

  “Merrin? I had a notion he was over in Iraq. I think I read he was working on a dig around Nineveh.”

  “Yes, down below Mosul. That’s right. But he finished and came back around three or four months ago, Mike. He’s at Woodstock.”

  “Teaching?”

  “No, he’s working on another book.”

  “God help us! Don’t you think he’s too old, though? How’s his health?”

  “Well, it must be all right or he wouldn’t still be running around digging up tombs, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And besides, he’s had experience, Mike.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, at least that’s the word.”

  “And when was that? This experience, I mean.”

  “Oh, maybe ten or twelve years ago, I think, in Africa. Supposedly the exorcism lasted for months. I heard it damn near killed him.”

  “Well, in that case, I doubt that he’d want to do another one.”

  “We do what we’re told here, Mike. All the rebels are over there with you seculars.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Look, I’ll leave it up to you and the Provincial.”

  Early that quietly waiting evening, a young scholastic preparing for the priesthood wandered the grounds of Woodstock Seminary in Maryland. He was searching for a slender, gray-haired old Jesuit. He found him on a pathway, strolling through a grove. He handed him a telegram. His manner serene, the old priest thanked him and then turned to renew his contemplation, to continue his walk through a nature that he loved. Now and then he would pause to hear the song of a robin, to watch a bright butterfly hover on a branch. He did not open and read the telegram. He knew what it said. He had read it in the dust of the temples of Nineveh. He was ready.

  He continued his farewells.

 

   

 “And let my cry come unto thee…”

 

He who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him…

  —Saint John

 

There is a Certain Amount of Courtesy Involved in These Things.

Foreword to a Fatal Interview

I WANT TO tell you the circumstances in which I first encountered Hannibal Lecter, M.D. 

In the fall of 1979, owing to an illness in my family, I returned home to the Mississippi Delta and remained there eighteen months. I was working on Red Dragon. 

My neighbor in the village of Rich kindly gave me the use of a shotgun house in the center of a vast cotton field, and there I worked, often at night. 

To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after. Here in the village of Rich, Mississippi, working under difficult circumstances, I could see the investigator Will Graham in the home of the victim family, in the house where they all died, watching the dead family’s home movies. 

I did not know at the time who was committing the crimes. 

I pushed to find out, to see what came before and what came after I went through the home, the crime scene, in the dark with Will and could see no more and no less than he could see. 

Sometimes at night I would leave the lights on in my little house and walk across the flat fields. When I looked back from a distance, the house looked like a boat at sea, and all around me the vast Delta night. 

I soon became acquainted with the semi-feral dogs who roamed free across the fields in what was more or less a pack. Some of them had casual arrangements with the families of farm workers, but much of the time they had to forage for themselves. 

In the hard winter months with the ground frozen and dry, I started giving them dog food and soon they were going through fifty pounds of dog food a week. 

They followed me around, and they were a lot of company – tall dogs, short ones, relatively friendly dogs and big rough dogs you could not touch. They walked with me in the fields at night and when I couldn’t see them, I could hear them all around me, breathing and snuffling along in the dark. 

When I was working in the cabin, they waited on the front porch, and when the moon was full they would sing. Standing baffled in the vast fields outside my cabin in the heart of the night, the sound of breathing all around me, my vision still clouded with the desk lamp, I tried to see what had happened at the crime scene. 

All that came to my dim sight were loomings, intimations, the occasional glow when a retina not human reflected the moon. 

There was no question that something had happened. 

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It’s all there and you just have to find it. 

Will Graham had to ask somebody, he needed some help and he knew it. He knew where he had to go, long before he let himself think about it. 

I knew Graham had been severely damaged in a previous case. I knew he was terribly reluctant to consult the best source he had. 

At the time, I myself was accruing painful memories every day, and in my evening’s work I felt for Graham. 

So it was with some trepidation that I accompanied him to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and there, maddeningly, before we could get down to business, we encountered the kind of fool you know from conducting your own daily business, Dr. Frederick Chilton, who delayed us for two or three interminable days. 

I found that I could leave Chilton in the cabin with the lights on and look back at him from the dark, surrounded by my friends the dogs. 

I was invisible then, out there in the dark, the way I am invisible to my characters when I’m in a room with them and they are deciding their fates with little or no help from me. 

Finished with the tedious Chilton at last, Graham and I went on to the Violent Ward and the steel door slammed shut behind us with a terrific noise. 

Will Graham and I, approaching Dr. Lecter’s cell. 

Graham was tense and I could smell fear on him. I thought Dr. Lecter was asleep and I jumped when he recognized Will Graham by scent without opening his eyes. I was enjoying my usual immunity while working, my invisibility to Chilton and Graham and the staff, but I was not comfortable in the presence of Dr. Lecter, not sure at all that the Doctor could not see me. 

Like Graham, I found, and find, the scrutiny of Dr. Lecter uncomfortable, intrusive, like the humming in your thoughts when they X-ray your head. 

Graham’s interview with Dr. Lecter went quickly, in real time at the speed of swordplay, me following it, my frantic notes spilling into the margin and over whatever surface was uppermost on my table. I was worn out when it was over – the incidental clashes and howls of an asylum rang on in my head, and on the front porch of my cabin in Rich thirteen dogs were singing, seated with the eyes closed, faces upturned to the full moon. Most of them crooned their single vowel between O and U, a few just hummed along. 

I had to revisit Graham’s interview with Dr. Lecter a hundred times to understand it and to get rid of the superfluous static, the jail noises, the screaming of the damned that had made some of the words hard to hear. 

I still didn’t know who was committting the crimes, but I knew for the first time that we would find out, and that we would arrive at him. I also knew the knowledge would be terribly, perhaps tragically, expensive to others in the book. And so it turned out. 

Years later when I started The Silence of the Lambs, I did not know that Dr. Lecter would return. 

I had always liked the character of Dahlia Lyad in Black Sunday and wanted to do a novel with a strong woman as the central character. 

So I began with Clarice Starling and, not two pages into the novel, I found she had to go visit the Doctor. 

I admired Clarice Starling enormously and I think I suffered some feelings of jealousy at the ease with which Dr. Lecter saw into her, when it was so difficult for me. 

By the time I undertook to record the events in Hannibal, the Doctor, to my surprise, had taken on a life of his own. 

You seemed to find him as oddly engaging as I did. 

I dreaded doing Hannibal, dreaded the personal wear and tear, dreaded the choices I would have to watch, feared for Starling. 

In the end I let them go, as you must let characters go, let Dr. Lecter and Clarice Starling decide events according to Their Natures. There is a certain amount of Courtesy involved. 

As A Sultan once said : I do not ‘keep’ Falcons – They Live with Me. 

When in the winter of 1979 I entered the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and the great metal door crashed closed behind me, little did I know what waited at the end of the corridor; how seldom we recognize the sounds when the bolt of our fate slides home. 

T.H. Miami, 

January 2000

VALERIE-X

 

 Valerie

fem. proper name, French, from Latin Valeria, fem. of Valerius, name of a Roman gens, from valere "to be strong" (from PIE root *wal- "to be strong").

 

"I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

X

from V for Vendetta

Written by Alan Moore.

Art by David Lloyd.  

Work It Out

"My Dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. I went out about mid-day to transact some business in Oxford Street. 

As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash. 

I sprang for the foot-path and saved myself by the fraction of a second. 

The van dashed round by Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant. 

I kept to the pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet. 

I called the police and had the place examined. 

There were slates and bricks piled up on the roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. 

Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing. 

I took a cab after that and reached my brother's rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day. 

Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. 

I knocked him down, and the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles away.”

“I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not lived wholly in vain," he remarked. "If my record were closed to-night I could still survey it with equanimity. The air of London is the sweeter for my presence. In over a thousand cases I am not aware that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong side. Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible. Your memoirs will draw to an end, Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe."

Grappling : Mental Gymnastics

Favorite scene from "Barton Fink". A Coen brothers film.

THE DEVIL :

Jesus, I did Hurt You. 

I sure do apologise. 

I'm just a big, clumsy lug. 

I sure do apologise. 

You sure you're okay? 

BARTON FINK ;

I'm fine, really. Actually, 

it's been helpful. 

But I guess I should 

get to Work. 

THE DEVIL :

It wasn't fair of me to do that. 

I'm pretty well-endowed physically. 

Don't feel bad, though. 

I wouldn't be much of a match 

for you at mental gymnastics. 

THE DEVIL :

Give me a holler, you 

need anything….

 

W. P. MAYHEW :

If I close my eyes, I can 

almost smell the live oak.

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

That's chicken fat, Bill. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

Well, my olfactory's turning womanish on me... 

lying and deceitful. 

Still, I must say I haven't 

felt peace like this since 

the grand productive days. 

Don't you find it so, Barton? 

Ain't writing peace? 

BARTON FINK ;

Well... actually... no, Bill. 

No. I've always found that 

Writing comes from 

a great inner pain —

Maybe it's a pain that 

comes from a realisation 

that one must Do Something 

for one's fellow Man 

to help somehow ease 

their suffering. 

Maybe it's personal pain. 

At any rate, I don't believe Good Work is possible without it. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

Hmm. Well, me, I just enjoy making things up. 

Yes, sir. Escape. 

It's when I can't write 

and escape myself, 

that I want to 

rip my head off 

and run screaming 

through The Street 

with my balls in a 

fruit picker's pail. 

Hmm. This will sometimes help. 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

That doesn't help anything, Bill. 

BARTON FINK ;

That's True, Bill  -- I've never found that to help My Writing. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

Your Writing? Son, have you ever heard 

The Story of Solomon's Mammy..? 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Barton, you should read this.

 I think it's Bill's finest, or among his finest, anyway. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

So, now I'm supposed to roll over and get my belly scratched? 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Bill. 

BARTON FINK ;

Look, uh... maybe it's 

none of My Business, 

but don't you think a man 

with your talent... 

your first obligation 

is to your gift? 

Shouldn't you be 

doing whatever you have to 

to work again? 

W. P. MAYHEW :

What would that be? 

BARTON FINK ;

I don't know. But with that drink, 

you're cutting yourself off 

from your gift 

and your fellow man 

and everything Your Art 

is about. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

Oh, no, son —

I'm building a levee... 

gulp by gulp, brick by brick... 

Putting up a levee 

to keep that raging river 

of manure from lapping 

at my door. 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Maybe you better, too, Barton, 

before you get buried under 

his manure. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

My Honey pretends 

to be impatient with me, 

but she'll put up with anything. 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Not anything, Bill. 

Don't test me. 

BARTON FINK ;

You're lucky she puts up 

with you as much 

as she does. 

W. P. MAYHEW :

Maybe to a schoolboy's eyes. 

People who know about The Human Heart, though, 

maybe they'd say, "Bill over here, he gives his honey love, 

and she pays him back with pity, the basest coin there is." 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Stop it, Bill. 

Gone are the days 

When my heart was young and gay 

Gone are my friends 

From the cotton fields away 

Gone from the earth 

To a better land I know 

I hear their gentle voices 

Callin' Old Black Joe 

I'm comin' 

I'm comin' 

Oh, my head is bending low 

I hear their gentle... 

W. P. MAYHEW :

The Truth, My Honey, is a tart 

that does not bear scrutiny. 

Breach my levee at your peril! 

Gone are my friends 

From the cotton fields... 

BARTON FINK ;

That son of a bitch! 

.....Don't get me wrong -- 

He's a fine writer. 

Gone from the earth 

BARTON FINK ;

Are you all right? 

To a better life I know 

BARTON FINK ;

Audrey, y-you can't... 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Oh, Barton. 

BARTON FINK ;

You can't put up with that. 

Old Black Joe 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

I feel so sorry for him. 

BARTON FINK ;

What? He's... 

He's a son of a bitch. 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

No. No. He... 

He sometimes just... 

I hear their angel voices... 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Well, he thinks about Estelle. 

His Wife still lives 

in Fayettesville. 

She's... disturbed. 

BARTON FINK ;

Really? 

W. P. MAYHEW :

I'll just walk on 

down to The Pacific, 

and from there 

I'll improvise. 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

He'll wander back when he's sober 

and apologise. He always does. 

BARTON FINK ;

Okay, but that doesn't 

excuse his... 

Silence upon the hill

BARTON FINK ;

... behavior. 

In Darien! 

AUDREY TAYLOR, 

His 'Secretary' :

Empathy requires understanding. 

I'm comin' 

BARTON FINK ;

What? What don't I understand? 

I'm comin' 

Oh, my head is hangin' low 

I hear their gentle voices 

Callin'

Old Black Joe 

6000

'So, What Happened?'

Holly told him about the cadmium II radiation leak; how the crew had been wiped out within seconds; how he'd headed the ship pell-mell out of the solar system, to avoid spreading nuclear contamination; and how he'd had to keep Lister in stasis until the radiation had reached a safe background level.

'So ... How long did you keep me in stasis?'

'Three million years,' said Holly, as casually as he could.

Lister acted as if he hadn't heard. Three million years? It had no meaning. If it had been thirty years, he would have thought 'What a long time.' But three million years. Three million years was iust ... stupid.

He wandered over to the chair opposite the console he'd seen Kochanski operate.

'So, Krissie's dead,' he said, staring at the hummock of dust. 'I always...'

His voice tailed away.

He tried to remember her face. He tried to remember the pinball smile.

'Well, if it's any consolation,' said Holly, 'If she had survived, the age difference would be insurmountable. I mean, you're twenty-four, she's three million: it takes a lot for a relationship with that kind of age gap to work.'

Lister wasn't listening. 'I always thought we'd get back together. I, ah, had this sort of plan that one day I'd have enough money to buy a farm on Fiji. It's cheap land there, and, in a half-assed kind of way, I always pictured she'd be there with me.'

This was getting morbid. Holly tried to lighten the atmosphere.

'Well,' he said, 'she wouldn't be much use to you on Fiji now.

'No,' said Lister.

'Not unless it snowed,' said Holly, 'and you needed something to grit the path with.'

Lister screwed up his face in distaste. 'Holly!'

'Sorry. I've been on my own for three million years. I'm just used to saying what I think.'

For some time now, well, the last two hundred thousand years to be exact, Holly had grown increasingly concerned about himself.

For a computer with an IQ of six thousand, it seems to him he was behaving in a more and more erratic way.

In fact, he'd long suspected he'd gone a bit peculiar. Just as a bachelor who spends too much time on his own gradually develops quirks and eccentricities, so a computer who spends three million years alone in Deep Space can get, well, set in his ways. Become quirky. Go a little bit ... odd.

Holly decided not to burden Lister with this anxiety, and hoped his oddness would eventually sort itself out now he had a bit of company.

Another slight concern which he tried to put to the back of his RAM was that, for a computer with an IQ of six thousand, there was a rather alarming amount of knowledge he seemed to have forgotten. It wasn't, on the whole, important things, but was nonetheless fairly disturbing.

He knew, for instance, that Isaac Newton was a famous physicist, but he couldn't remember why.

He couldn't remember the capital of Luxembourg.

He could recall pi to thirty thousand digits, but he couldn't say for absolute certain whether port was on the left side, and starboard on the right, or whether it was the other way round.

Who knocked Swansea City out of the FA Cup in 1967? He used to know. It was a mystery now.

Obviously none of this missing information was absolutely vital for the smooth running of a mining ship three million years out into Deep Space. But technically he was supposed to know more-or-less everything and, frankly, there were some worrying gaps. He could remember, for instance, that in the second impression, 1959 publication of Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov, printed in Great Britain by the Shenval Press (London, Hertford and Harrow), page 60 was far and away the dirtiest page. But was Nabakov German or Russian? It totally eluded him.

Maybe it wasn't important. Of course it wasn't important.

Still, it was for Holly a source of perturbation.

It's a source of perturbation, he thought. Then he wondered whether there was such a word as 'perturbation', or whether he'd just made it up. He didn't know that either. Oh, it was hopeless.

…Story of My Life, that is.

Bugs: 

Okay. My Name is “Bugs”. 

As in, “Bunny.” 

And Tech, that Listens. 

Do you know 

This is a Modal?

Agent: 

What’s A Modal?

Bugs:

 It’s A Simulation used 

to evolve programs. 

Do you understand that 

You are… Digital Sentience?

Agent: 

I know What I Am. 

Just like I know 

My Job is to 

Hunt Down and Destroy Synthients. 

Like You. 

And yet…

Bugs: 

…Here we are.

Agent: 

…Here we are.

Bugs: 

The other Agents don’t know about this room…? 

How’d you find it?

Agent: 

No one was ever in The Key Shop,

 so I started looking….

Bugs: 

…the more You Looked, 

the more you found. 

…Story of My Life.

Sir! I - I !riS