The Sphere (21 page)

“That man is a disaster!... Yes, I know it doesn’t look like it, but he does live here. Frank... Frank!” Morgan brings her face right up to the glass of the window, which is opaque with dirt. “Frank, are you at home?”

We knock on the door and it creaks open. The inside of the house is revolting; it looks like it hasn’t been aired out in months. I hold the sleeve of my jacket up to my nose. I don’t want to smell the mix of dirt, rotten fish, salt, and sweat for even a single second. Morgan walks right in, determined and calm. In the wreck of the kitchen we find a mountain of pots and pans and plates stacked up to an incredible height.

“How does it stay up?” I ask, intrigued.

“They’re stuck together with grime.”

Morgan leans in closer to inspect the architectural wonder. The house consists of a single room. On the shabby wooden table flies are buzzing madly above a newspaper full of fish heads. Morgan uses her foot to push aside the empty bottles and dirty clothes and pieces of moldy bread that lie on the floor of Frankenstein’s house like some kind of bizarre carpet.

“How can he live like this?” My words are barely intelligible, muffled by my sleeve and hand.

I hit my ankle hard against a piece of furniture and the sharp pain makes me double over. My whole foot throbs. I have to take deep breaths through both my mouth and nose just to recover, which is when I realize that despite what my eyes are seeing, there isn’t actually any smell at all.

“Frank hasn’t been able to get back on his feet since he became independent of the doctor.” Morgan hasn’t even noticed that a few seconds ago I was dying of pain. “Poor devil... he hates the doctor for having created him, but he can’t live without him. Your typical love-hate role. All right, let’s go—nothing out of the ordinary here. We’ll ask after Frankenstein in a tavern just to make sure he’s around here somewhere.”

“You said that the doctor created Frankenstein?” I ask as we walk toward the library.

“Yes—and rather poorly, at that. The stitching is absolutely dreadful, and his mind leaves a lot to be desired. He ought to have used higher quality materials. Of course, the doctor isn’t exactly a genius either, it must be said. Frank isn’t a bad guy. Well, he’s not bad in general. Once in a while he gets into trouble, but it’s only because he doesn’t have the brains for much else.”

“So the doctor you went to look for yesterday was able to create someone, and give him life?”

“No, yesterday’s was Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. This other one is Doctor Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, he’s a scoundrel with hair like a madman. He created Frank and then completely shunned him.”

I can’t believe it. They’re all obsessed with names from books here, too! Just like my parents. Well, at least there’s something here that makes this world seem a little bit more like the regular one.

“Jekyll also gave someone life?” I’m amazed that somebody could create a living being.

“Not exactly. He’s a double. Dorian has his portrait; Doctor Jekyll has Mr. Hyde... doubles, except that Dorian Gray isn’t misshapen, and Hyde is.”

“Okay, I see. Beatrice told me a little bit about him. By the way, what do you think about this Creator that Beatrice talks so much about?”

Morgan lets out a loud sigh and flashes me a conspiratorial smile.

“Superstition. Ignorance. I try to tolerate it and say nothing. As for Holmes, he thinks you must respect the beliefs of others... well, the beliefs of Beatrice, to be more specific. He doesn’t care a bit about the beliefs of any other inhabitants of the Sphere. For instance, it doesn’t matter to him whether Merlin and I practice magic. A lot of other people in The Sphere never stop gossiping, but Holmes doesn’t care about what others do or believe. He ignores it all, except for his most beloved
lovely lady
.”

“Right...”

“It’s inexplicable!” Morgan exclaims, with sudden passion.

“You really think so?” Finally I feel like someone shares the opinion that I’ve been keeping hidden since I met them all.

“He thinks her ignorance is sweet!” we say at the exact same time, and then burst into laughter.

“And it’s not even like she made him drink a love potion! I’ll never understand it,” says Morgan.

She has relaxed so much that she seems like a different person. I even feel like I can relax a little, too. I’ve never been particularly good with people, but I have the feeling that—at least for now—Morgan can be trusted.

“I don’t get Sherlock’s thing for Beatrice,” I remark. “She’s very kind, sure, but she’s so sentimental—it’s insufferable! Sherlock is so intelligent. How can he be attracted to someone with such intellectual limitations?”

“I don’t understand it.”

“What do you think about the world? Do you think there was something that put it all in motion?”

“You’re asking me about my cosmological ideas?” A smile as wide as a slice of watermelon stretches across Morgan’s face and her eye sockets start to give off a bright light. A remarkable change is taking place right before my eyes. It even seems like the wood grain of her face is softening. “Well, there are several theories. I certainly don’t believe in any of the theocentric ones... You know, nothing with some sort of all-powerful creator who made everything.” I nod, admiring the glow coming from her empty eyes. “Personally, the theory that I find most convincing is the Big Scratch,” Morgan is getting enthused, speaking quickly, her gestures becoming animated. “That’s the theory of the Great Writing, which offers a scientific explanation for our existence. But I don’t want to bore you...”

“You’re not boring me at all!” I say, with total sincerity. If there is one thing I have always liked, it’s science.

“Really?” Morgan is so pleased that she moves in front of me and starts walking backwards so she can keep me in sight. Her footsteps begin to bounce and the tousled ringlets of her hair dance gracefully. “According to the Big Scratch, everything came from a cloud of ideas that exploded and gave rise to everything you can see here—absolutely everything—isn’t that incredible? The space of creation is an empty space that isn’t empty. It’s fascinating. Merlin and his people explain it wonderfully. It’s an empty space, but it’s full of potential. Just a tiny spark of energy is enough for matter to be produced, for places and beings to take shape. Some say that that happens through the word, but others doubt it. What’s clear is that everything you see here comes from the same space. But of course, we mustn’t confuse the creation space with the use space. They’re related, but they’re not the same. Remember the theory of replication?” I nod, fascinated. “In the use space is an infinite energy that puts into motion everything that has already been created. It causes copies of some of us to be printed. Printing is what some of the scholars call this strange replication process. Like I explained, we still don’t know why some are replicated more than others, but we do know that it has to do with the energy in motion. Isn’t it just amazing?”

“It really is.”

“The copies move through the space. They’re not here with us, but they make us strong, like I was telling you at the hospital. Whew... all right, we’re at the library.”

Morgan lifts her arms and lets them fall loudly to her sides, letting out a big sigh. The giant smile stretched across her face is showing me a part of her I never could have imagined. The light in her empty sockets has grown so strong that they’re spitting white sparks.

“Aren’t you going to finish telling me how this world was formed?”

“There’s time enough for all that,” she answers, taking my hand.

I can’t even believe it. I’ve just witnessed a metamorphosis: Morgan is friendly, joyful. She shines with supernatural beauty.

We go into the library, where Morgan greets the librarian and two boys who are putting books back on the shelves, standing on tall ladders supported by snails. Everyone knows her. I point at the snails, speechless with surprise. Their small bodies are like suction cups that keep the ladders steady.

“I think we should start by consulting treatises on winged beings, and maybe some on dark beings—how does that sound?” Morgan says, her voice a soft whisper.

Did she ask my opinion? Did that really just happen?”

“Sounds good to me,” I say as quietly as I can.

We walk up and down the rows of tall shelves and fill up our little cart in a matter of minutes. Then we sit down at a big table by a window that looks out on the long beach at West Sands. From here it’s hard to see the line between the sand and the sky and the sea, their grays are all so similar. Morgan divides up the books so we each have half. I feel a funny sort of stabbing feeling—my pride at being taken seriously mixes with fear, a fear that has followed me my entire life. I take a deep breath. I’ve never liked books, but for some reason I can’t wait to open the ones in front of me now. I suppose it’s because boring fiction like the stuff my parents are addicted to is one thing, but information and facts are completely different. That makes sense. Anxiously I open the first book and start turning the pages, first one by one, then flipping through quickly. I look up, about to say something, but then I see Morgan sitting next to me, her finger tracing an imaginary line on a totally blank page. All the pages in my book are blank—that was what I was going to say. But what can I say if Morgan’s book doesn’t have any words in it, either? I look around. Everyone else has books with blank pages. I close my book silently and take another. As expected, it doesn’t contain a single word. I flip through the pages slowly. Morgan takes out a little booklet and begins to... take notes? But—on what?

I lose myself in the blank white page. My mind drifts off. I remember Axel’s clear hazel eyes, and his jokes about the way mine changed color. I never thought I could miss seeing a pair of eyes. Ridiculous!

“Look at me,” said Axel.

We were at the library near my school. I was in the middle of exams, and he was in Edinburgh since he had a week of vacation from university. He had insisted on coming to the library with me, even though he didn’t have anything to study. To be together, he said—typical. And that was typical, too—for him to come along even though I told him that spending all our time together was incredibly sappy. I was going out with him. What else did he want? It was a little less than a month after we met in the pub. I’d even admitted to Laura and Marion that Axel was my... well, my
something
special. I’d never call him
boyfriend
, not me. More than once I wondered why I was going out with someone so different from me. Of course, I also wondered why Axel was still staying with me—what could he see in me?

Gothic. Yes. That was the one-word definition for what I’d always liked, the sort of relationship that would have suited me—if I had ever decided to have a relationship. The thing with Axel wasn’t romantic; what was romantic were the two marvelous years I spent secretly in love with Adrian, who didn’t even know I existed. That was really a productive relationship—or
non-relationship
, as Marion liked to call it. The number of drawings inspired by those hours of infinite desolation, sweet pain for my platonic love, my impossible love. Just a glimpse of Adrian’s black hair was enough to make my heart ache in a way that could only be healed by drawing. Drawing until the pain grew, until it took over every one of my cells. That was when happiness came, because I felt as if I had become one with Adrian. That sweet frustration even inspired some poems, which of course couldn’t compare with Adrian’s poems. He was so good that every month the school newspaper published at least one. I drank up his verses with desperate thirst, savoring each of his words, first all in a rush, then little by little. They spoke of loves that lasted beyond the grave, unbreakable in spite of distance and time. Their dark beauty could have convinced me in a second to give myself over to love in the afterlife with Adrian. That is, if Adrian had ever been interested in convincing me of anything, of course. I know that deep down what attracted me was the fact that my story with him was impossible. I was safe. He would never notice me, which meant I would never fall in love, and there was no chance of disappointment. The equation was simple. With Axel, though, everything was so... so easy. So fluid. Things happened and I barely even noticed. Axel was a person with so much light that it was impossible to imagine a love beyond the grave with him. A disaster for inspiring drawings. With Adrian my imagination ran away with me. During my platonic love period, the high point of every week came on Friday. I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt so I could disappear inside it, and then I hid behind a newspaper, which in turn was hidden behind the second-floor window of a café in a music store. Down below in the street was Adrian, dressed head to toe in black, with his hair slicked down so it spread like tar over his shoulders. The most beautiful thing I’d seen in my life, never mind what my friends said. He held onto a large harp that ended in the shape of a woman’s nude torso. Every Friday he set candles out in a circle around himself. His fingers, nails painted black, plucked forth sweet laments that came from somewhere from deep within him. From under languid eyelids he watched the few coins that fell at his feet. The notes floated through the air and up to the café window, where they smashed against the glass and died. I know, not so romantic. Between the window, the street noise, and the music in the store it was impossible to even guess at the melodies Adrian was playing, but of course that didn’t stop me from closing my eyes and wishing I could turn into a harp.

“Come on, look at me,” Axel whispered insistently. “I want to see what color your eyes are today.”

I got up without saying a word to him, and wandered into the stacks, pretending to look for a book. I didn’t even know why I was so angry. It was just one of those days when my bad mood reared its ugly head for no reason. The bad mood that was taking over my life. I grabbed a book at random; all I could think about was how angry I was. I peered through the narrow space between the books and the shelf. There was no sign of Axel. Maybe he’d finally gotten fed up with my rudeness and had left. I felt a little frightened. I turned around, the book still in my hand, and found him standing right in front of me. He took the book from my hand.