The Alchemy of Happiness: Three Stories and a Hybrid-Essay Read online

  Within.

  Goran found himself in the middle of a small rustic library, aware again of physical corporeal sensations. He wore a Hawai’ian shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts, an outfit he never would have comprehended while he was still alive. But they suited him here, in this place. Apart from the books on the shelves and the carpet on the floor, the room was bare, yet he found it difficult to describe in his mind the objects that were there; adjectives eluded him. The books were neither tall nor short, red nor blue nor yellow; they were simply ... books. The carpet under his feet was not plush, flat, mangy, or comfortable. It just was. Goran glanced at the titles on the shelves in front of him, but could not read them. The letters were standard Roman type, but the words they formed were gibberish, no language he had ever seen, the alphanumerics shifting positions as he looked, constantly changing meaning.

  A door behind him opened, and he turned. Into the room walked a short hairy man, wearing identical clothes. But where the colors and patterns on Goran’s clothing remained static, on the small man they moved constantly, dizzyingly, a hundred lava lamps thrown together. The small man smiled and opened his mouth to talk; out poured what Goran imagined the written type he had seen on the spines of the books would sound like out loud, an innumerable amount of voices all talking at once. Goran winced and the small man stopped talking. He silently beckoned Goran forward with his hands, motioning for Goran to follow him.

  They stepped into the hallway outside the door, and followed it until it ended at an identical door. The door opened onto an identical hallway, which they also took to its end. This door opened onto another identical hallway. Goran and the small man entered hallway after hallway, their path discretely linear, though after forty or fifty doors, Goran began sensing a direction change, a constant turning of rights. Time had no meaning in this place, in this immortal soul; they walked on and on, always another door, always another hallway, until Goran felt he had never been anywhere else. He had always existed in this space, the hallways were all that ever were.

  Goran touched the small man on the shoulder and stopped. He turned around and walked back to the door through which they had just passed, which had closed behind them. There was no reason not to expect that another hallway would lie beyond, but Goran turned the knob anyway. The door emptied into the library in which they had started, but it was different this time, more familiar. The room smelled of the must and leather of his father’s study in Belgrade, and the overhead light shone more softly. When he looked at the books again, he found that he could now read them, tome after tome written in beautiful Cyrillic, and he was momentarily overcome with homesickness.

  “I knew you would figure it out.”

  The small man was smiling again, his teeth slightly discolored. On his clothing, the colors were now still. He emanated a slight fragrance of the clove cigarettes Goran liked to smoke.

  “What did I figure out?” Goran asked.

  “The path to understanding. To travel along the circle, and then to realize that sometimes to go forward, you must go backward.”

  “Circle?”

  The small man nodded. “It is the geometric structure of this place. You felt the right turns as we traveled?” Goran nodded. “If you circumscribe a circle with a polygon of infinite sides, a series of seemingly straight lines can form a curve. The angles between the sides reduce to an infinitesimal number, and in effect can connect in a circular pattern.”

  “Is that why we can communicate? Because we circumnavigated this circle?”

  “Partially. The circle realigns your perception of language.”

  “But this isn’t Serbian we’re speaking. Or English.”

  “That’s right. We’re communicating through logos, what some might call the Word of God. All language is representative, an approximation of the world around us. A book in English will be livre in French, boek in Dutch, buch in German, biblio in Greek, libro in Italian and Spanish, et cetera. So many words to describe one object. Logos is the True language, the basis for what all those other languages hope to translate.”

  The man smiled again, proud of himself. Goran wanted to sit down. He lowered himself into a plush leather chair that hadn’t existed a moment ago. Had he conjured it by thought?

  “Yes,” said the man. “Thought equals action in this place.”

  “So since we’re speaking the Word of God, does that make you God?”

  “Not exactly.”

  And as abruptly as an eyeblink, they were no longer in the library, but on a wharf at the edge of some seaside city, the salt and decay a physical presence in the air. There had been no sense of the time of day in the library, but out here it was nighttime. The moon shone waxy and jaundiced overhead, remarkably free of craters; the lunar illumination that filtered down through a haze of clouds cast a sickly pall on the piers, the few sloops tied to the dock, even the water itself. Goran’s clothes had changed. He now wore a charcoal-grey suit made from a material finer than silk. It fit him perfectly, a second skin.

  Goran’s guide stood next to him on the wharf, still clad in his inscrutable outlandish clothing. Even the colors on his shirt were dulled and dirtied by the diseased lunar illumination.

  “Where are we now?” Goran asked.

  “Borstalle-Purgatoire. A city of lost souls.” He turned away from the wharf, toward the city. “Please, follow me. I will answer all your questions, but I’m craving a chai.”

  “Chai? That is my favorite drink.”

  “I know.”

  The man led Goran off of the wharf and into a warehouse district. Block after block of grey rectangular brick buildings, overgrown with lichen and shelf mushrooms. The smell of decomposition was stronger here, as if the city were rotting from the inside. Acorn-style lamp posts lit their way, casting off a faintly greenish light. The night was humid and permeated by particulates of dust and spores. Goran coughed.

  Their destination was the Café of the Asphyxiated Borough, a smallish coffeehouse and bar on the edge of the warehouse district, decorated by a sign in blockish script next to a woodcut of two disembodied hands strangling a donkey. Inside, the café was filled with customers who spoke in melancholy whispers. The air was thick with defeat and resignation.

  The guide ordered two chais at the counter, then he and Goran sat at a table in the corner. On the walls around them were displayed shelves after shelves of old books, leatherbound, spines cracked, dusty and disused.

  “So what exactly is this place?” Goran asked.

  “A café.”

  “No, the city.”

  “This is the place we go who are killed or fundamentally changed by the elementals.”

  “Blue ... she was from the elements?”

  The man nodded. “Water. She is a trickster, the first Trickster, in fact. She can change her appearance to serve her needs, even change her gender. She sprang forth from this place, where all the world’s magic originates. It encompasses a vast terrain, and Borstalle-Purgatoire is just a bump on its surface.”

  “So we are not ghostly balloons connected to our killer’s head in the real world?”

  “We are, but we also exist here. The afterlife doesn’t constitute a single place. Look,” he said, “look at those six men over at the bar.” Goran looked. They all seemed haggard and withdrawn, as if they had suffered enormous hardship, six different versions of Job.

  “All of these men were blighted by the Trickster, as was everyone in this place. These six were the most recent before you.”

  “So how am I supposed to be of help?” Goran asked.

  “We, all of us,” the guide said, “are able to pool our energy and send one person back to the real world. The elementals are on their way right now to a used books store, and it is this place where we will send you. They are far too strong to fight, so instead you will trap them.”

  “How?”

  “There is a book, one capable of sending them away forever. It has been there, among its brothers and sisters, for some tim
e, glamoured so that no one else will ever pick it up. You will know it when you see it, and you will know what to do with it.

  “The catch is that you will no longer be able to die. You will banish them, and set all of us free, but will never be able to see Milena again. As guardian of the book, it will never leave your side, not even when all the stars have burned out.”

  “Quite a price for being a hero,” Goran said.

  “It is,” the guide said. “Which is why no one else has been brave enough yet.”

  Goran gazed at the assembled patrons of the café, broken down, miserable, trapped in this limbo against their wishes, in despair, the apotheosis of depression. He thought about that first magical meeting with Milena, the way she fit so perfectly into his life for the relatively short time they were together. He remembered his rage at her death, and how his anger fueled his rebellious activities against Milosević. That rage, that anger was sparked anew by his recent murder. How could Blue have done that to him?

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “You understand the costs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? There is no turning back.”

  Goran took a breath, held it, let it out.

  “I understand. Do it.”

  The guide leaned forward, stared into Goran’s face, and began speaking, softly and rhythmically, barely above a whisper, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat...” Chanted, a mantra, the words, the nonsense words filled his body, his brain. The sound was coming from all around him now, and he could see every man and woman in the café, all turned in his direction, all speaking in unison, eyes wide, desperate, pushing their words into him, permeating the air with language. Goran’s vision doubled, trebled, multiple images of the mass of humanity overlapping, intersecting, growing bright, intense, so intense, their internal light blinding him, transforming him, transporting him, a cacophony of hope and longing, a dissonant polyphony, a beautiful destruction—

  Goran blinked. The café, the voices, the damp atmosphere were gone. He stood before a massive bookshelf in his tailored grey suit, his hand resting, lightly, on the spine of a slim hardcover book at his eye level. He pulled the book from the shelf, and it felt powerful in his hand. No author name adorned the cover, but the title proclaimed, in bold white letters, In Jurong. He felt as if he was always meant to hold this book.

  A quick glance around, at the tall bookshelves, the narrow aisleways, and he knew where he was. The Strand. Manhattan’s block-long book haven. He had visited several times, always able to find obscure books as presents to friends, to lovers. He was now in the basement, among the miles of advanced reading copies, sold by book reviewers who no longer had use for them. The hardcover in his hands, in its pristine untouched condition, felt very out of place down there.

  He cradled In Jurong in the crook of his arm, and made his way upstairs. On every previous visit to the Strand, he had barely been able to move, pressed in on all sides by the multitudes of book lovers, but when he now emerged from the basement of the store, to the main level, it was nearly empty. He slowly tracked his way through the aisles, seeing only a becapped teenager in the Science Fiction section, and an attractive redhead in Art History. Goran made three careful circuits through the store before remembering the Occult section.

  Blue and her brother Dane pored over a large dusty-looking tome, their backs to Goran. If Dane was given time to react, Goran knew that the store would go up like kindling, the dried paper and adhesive glue of eighteen miles of books the perfect fuel for the blaze.

  Goran opened the book.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen. At the very least, he’d imagined a sudden rushing of wind, a micro-tornado right there in the aisle, howling, a disarray, books flying off the shelves, hair blasted back, perhaps some lightning, Blue and Dane turning to Goran simultaneously, eyes unbelieving, mouths open, screaming, “Noooooooo!” a primal shriek, barely heard over the roar of the windstorm, incredulous, in shock at the fact that not more than an hour before they had seen, absolutely seen his body engulfed in green flames, aghast that he had found the only way to defeat them, knowing they were trapped, tricked, doomed forever to their own purgatory, their bodies losing cohesion, molecules sucked into his book, their screams amplified to godlike intensity, the sound bursting Goran’s eardrums as they were pulled, drawn into the book, the wind, the wind—

  But none of that happened. He opened the book, heard a pop of displaced air, and then Blue and Dane were gone, vanished, disappeared. That was it. He was a little disappointed.

  Goran retraced his path to the front counter and paid for the slim book. The cashier, a young man wearing a Hawai’ian shirt, unusual for this temperature, this time of the year, familiar though Goran couldn’t place where he might have met him, this cashier rang up the book, took Goran’s money and said, “Thank you.”

  As Goran was about to exit the store, to step out into his new immortal life, he felt a hand on his arm. The beautiful redhead from Art History smiled up at him.

  “You’re that guy, aren’t you? Goran something? From that reality show?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m not that guy. You are thinking of someone else. I’m sorry.”

  He turned from her pretty and disillusioned face, his new book resting comfortably in the interior pocket of his suit jacket, opened the door, and stepped out onto the crowded streets of New York.

  In Jurong

  A cage, spacious, the size and shape of a fútbol end zone, open to the sky with a roof of thin netting. But at the same time it feels insular, filled with a stifling and oppressive heat. There’s something of the tropics in this place, a location close to the equator, the heat and humidity a way of life. The walls of the cage are crosshatched mesh, the kind you’ve seen at zoos, or animal parks, the mesh providing some illusion of freedom, no bars here, the weave open enough to allow a breeze, like the one that caresses your naked skin, but too small for disease-carrying insects, or anything bigger. The jungle beyond the enclosure is open, limitless, free. And everywhere is the raucous sound of birds.

  On the floor of the cage rest dozens of empty exoskeletons, the remains of crustaceans larger than the biggest crabs you’ve ever seen, pecked apart by a powerful beak, left shattered on the concrete floor.

  There is someone you need to find. It is your purpose in this place, to look for this person. Only, you can’t remember whom you’re meant to locate. You can’t remember much of anything. Your quarry might be female, though there’s no way to be sure. When you plumb the depths of long-term memory, you find experience and identity gone, as if your existence has spontaneously generated itself. The space where those memories should be is now replaced with water, an overwhelming sense of water, flowing around you, within you, through you. It is an unsettling feeling, this profusion of water.

  As you continue to lean against a thick and ancient banyan tree (so it’s not just a matter of losing all knowledge, since you can recognize the tree by the feel of its bark against your back, and you do know the names of things, so it’s more of a selective removal of identity, which is even more disturbing), as you sit against this tree, the patch of grass surrounding it coarse under your naked buttocks, you feel not so much like a person as an assemblage of sensations. Faculties of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind, all aggregated into ... what? Not a soul, certainly, nor an identity.

  From above, a cringe-inducing shriek: —Son of a bitch!

  So lost in reverie you were that you didn’t think to look upward, to the other denizen of this cage. A great fuliginous bird in the banyan tree, its plumage dark as the deepest shadow, tipped on the ends of its wings and the top of its head with a splash of red, the color of dried blood. Its rheumy eyes glare at you. The wings extend twenty feet from tip to tip, and flap twice, sharply, t
he produced wind cooling the sweat on your dark hairless skin.

  —Son of a bitch! it cries again.

  You stand on shaky legs, the posture of a newborn colt, or a giraffe. The concrete is cool under your feet, remarkable in such blistering heat. Above, in the tree, the bird seethes with intelligence. Standing before it in your nakedness, you ask: —Who are you?

  You are momentarily surprised by the deepness of your voice.

  —I? it squawks. —I? It asks of I? There is no I, only us. We are the Great Tocsin, and it is an interloper!

  It flaps its wings again, a gust that nearly blows you off your feet.

  —I apologize, you say. —I didn’t realize I was trespassing.

  —Trespassing-trespassing-trespassing! it tics, Tourette-like. —It must pay the penalty!

  The bird swoops down faster than human discerning, one swift movement that brings it right to you, tackling you onto your back, the bird above, talons extended, its great long beak stabbing down in quick strikes. You struggle, but the bird outweighs you by at least fifty pounds, and it opens a gash on your shoulder, stabs deep into your thigh with its beak, tears furrows into your chest and your face. You roar in pain and anger, and to your complete astonishment, a low green fire sprouts from your skin, licking from fingertips to feathers, igniting the bird like a bonfire. It pushes itself off of you, flaps wildly, trying to extinguish the preternatural flame, hobbling, hopping, lifting into the air several feet before crashing down again. A high unnatural screech fills the air, a cry of knowledge and impotence, against the unfairness of the world, and before you can question any of what is happening, you reach down to grab one of the many giant crab claws on the concrete floor, and plunge it into the heart of the giant bird. Purple blood spurts over your hands, a final death cry from the beak stained with your blood, a rattle, a shudder, and the bird is still.