Waiting In The Scriptorium

He was awake now, not certain whether it was night or day. He turned in his bed, the movement recorded by invisible sensors and relayed to an invisible monitor. A light in the ceiling blinked on and he squinted at the sudden brightness.

The four walls of the room were white – like blank pages in a book, he thought. There was a door set in the wall furthest from the bed. He watched the door, waiting for her to come in, as if without his expectation that she would enter she might stay on the other side – like an actor in a play who having missed her cue waits forever in the wings.

The seconds, recorded and logged in some unseen file, seemed to stretch taught. He grew anxious when she did not immediately arrive. He felt a hollow nausea overcome him, like vertigo. He recalled as a child standing on a glass floor on the thirty third floor of a tall building and looking down on the streets below, and the busy cars and buses moving like insects on the grey roads; he felt again the panic he felt then, the sense of falling or wanting to fall, or wanting to jump. He watched the handle of the door, fearful that this day no one would come and he would be left alone in this bed.

Then she was there. The racing of his heart was recorded somewhere.

‘Good morning, Mr Escritor,’ she said.

He was glad that she used his name, for he had forgotten it for a moment.

She was dressed in white, like a nurse, with her hair tied back from her face. He thought he recognised her, but was not sure from where.

‘How are we this morning?’ she said.

He nodded, but did not yet speak.

She pulled back the sheet he slept under and helped him sit up. She brushed his coarse grey hair back from his face and began unbuttoning his pyjama shirt. She was close enough that he could smell the perfume that she wore, could see the fine gold hairs on her cheek, the flecks of amber caught in her clear blue eyes. He noticed a badge pinned to her uniform. On it was printed a name: Helen. He assumed it was her name.

‘Good morning, Helen,’ he said.

She smiled at him. ‘Very good,’ she said.

‘The face that launched a thousand ships,’ he whispered.

‘You always say that,’ she said.

‘Do I?’ It had felt new to him.

She helped him to his feet and undid the buttons on his pyjama trousers. They slipped to the floor and she lifted first one foot and then the other, freeing him from the tangle of white cloth.

‘Are we ready?’ she said.

‘Ready?’

‘For your shower.’



When he came out from the shower his bed was made and clothes were laid out for him to wear. Helen dried him with a white towel, and dressed him – as though he was a child. She brushed his hair and straightened his collar. He sat on the bed and watched her ease his feet into a pair of white sports shoes. She adjusted the laces and tied them into loose neat bows.

‘There we are,’ she said getting up from the floor.

‘I think I loved you once,’ he said.

‘You love me still,’ she said, and she kissed him, her lips briefly pressed to his.

It felt like the first kiss, though somehow he knew that it wasn’t.

‘But I cannot remember where we met, or when, or…’

‘I’m not sure that any of that matters now,’ she said.

She lifted a glass of water that sat on the bedside table and handed it to him. Then she dropped two small blue-white pills into his hand and smiled at him and nodded.

He put one pill on his tongue and sipped at the water.

‘What does matter now, then?’ he said.

She waited for him to swallow the second pill, took the glass from his hand and placed it back on his bedside table.

‘What matters now is that you are here,’ she said.

‘And you’re here,’ he ventured.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that’s important, too.’

A table sat in the centre of the room with two chairs facing each other. On the table there was a breakfast tray. It must have been brought in when he was in the shower, he thought.

Helen arranged the dishes on the table and removed the tray. She helped him from the bed to the table and sat him in one of the chairs. He assumed that the second chair was for her, but she left him to breakfast alone, promising to return once he had finished.



He sighed, a drawn out exhalation of air that broke the silence in the room. The sound was recorded, just as his conversation with Helen had been. He replayed it in his own head, what he could remember of it.

‘What matters now is that you are here,’ she had said to him. Now, when he thought about it, he realised he had no idea where ‘here’ was. He wondered if he was free to leave, free to pass through the door that Helen had passed through. He wondered what was on the other side, tried to recall how he had come to be in this room. He thought of the blue-white pills he had taken without questioning what they were for. Perhaps he was ill. He looked down at the backs of his hands. The skin seemed loose and lined and grey; the blue tracks of his blood showed faint just beneath the pale surface. He reached up and felt his own face, traced the furrows lining his forehead, the sharp jut of his cheekbones and the roughness of his unshaven chin. ‘A face like a wedding cake that has been left out in the rain,’ he thought. The words felt like his though they were not. He felt old.

‘I think I loved you once,’ he’d said to Helen. And she had kissed him. He tried to guess her age and thought her no more than thirty – maybe younger. He thought he remembered her, pictured her beside him on a bleached white beach under a clouded sky. In the picture she was the same, but he was different; he was younger. It made no sense to him. He would have to ask Helen when she returned.

He drank black unsweetened coffee from a plastic cup and ate one half of a buttered croissant that left flaked crumbs in his lap. There was fruit too, peach coloured slices of melon and strawberries hulled and cut in two like tiny red hearts that dripped juice like blood onto the plate. He did not touch the fruit.

His attention was drawn to a small blue leather bound notebook on the table beside his breakfast. It was held closed by a thick elastic band. He tugged the band free and opened the book at its first page. There were three words written in pen across the top of the yellowing paper: Waiting in the Scriptorium. The rest of the page was blank.

He sipped at his coffee. There was a list of girls’ names on the second and third pages arranged in alphabetical order from Anna to Ursula. They were all crossed out except one: Helen. And next to Helen was written ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’. The handwriting was his own.

‘The face that launched a thousand ships,’ he said out loud.

‘You always say that,’ she’d said.

On the next page there was a description of her undressing him and helping him into the shower. It wasn’t quite the way it had happened, the details altered slightly, but it was familiar and some of their conversation was written down with crossings out and annotations as if he was perfecting their performance.

He looked at the door, looked at the walls and the bed. He wondered how long he had been there, how many mornings they had gone through the same routine of undressing, showering and dressing again. He wondered, too, how many times she had kissed him and set his breakfast out for him.

Suddenly the door handle turned. Mr Escritor shut the notebook and prepared to greet Helen with some of the questions that played over and over in his head. But it was not Helen who entered. Instead a young man dressed all in white and carrying a clipboard and pen stepped into the room.

‘Good morning, Mr Escritor,’ he said.

‘I was expecting Helen,’ said Mr Escritor.

‘I know,’ said the young man.

‘She said she’d return when I had finished.’

The young man nodded and made a note on his clipboard.

‘She promised,’ insisted Mr Escritor.

‘You must be patient.’

The young man produced a tray – it might have been the same tray that Helen had taken away with her – and he began clearing away the breakfast things. Mr Escritor sat in silence, scowling at the man and breathing through his nose. The young man asked him if he wanted another coffee. He did not answer.

He watched the man carry the tray away and then return.

‘Why am I here?’ said Mr Escritor at last.

‘I don’t think I can answer that,’ said the man.

‘Am I ill?’

‘Do you feel ill?’

‘She gave me pills.’

The man nodded.

‘Blue-white pills.’

‘Perhaps you would like to get up and walk for a bit,’ said the man. He laid his clipboard on the table and slipped his pen into his breast pocket. Mr Escritor noticed that he did not wear a badge as Helen did.

‘I don’t even know who you are?’ said Mr Escritor.

The young man came round to his side of the table and supported Mr Escritor as he pushed himself into a standing position.

‘Don’t you remember?’ said the man.

‘Is that what’s wrong with me? Have I lost my memory? Is that why I am here?’

‘You’re here because you choose to be here.’

‘Then I can choose to go?’ said Mr Escritor.

‘I’m Paul,’ said the young man. He pushed the chair back from the table and gestured towards the empty space that stretched between the table and the door. ‘We’ll just walk to the door and back. And then see how you are.’

Mr Escritor moved forward, one slow step followed by another. He leaned heavily on Paul’s arm. The young man did not complain.

‘Have I been in an accident? Is that what has happened?’

At the door Paul turned Mr Escritor so that he was facing back towards the table.

‘Take your time. There’s no hurry,’ coaxed Paul.

‘Do I know you from before?’ said Mr Escritor.

‘From before?’

‘From before this room. From before being in here.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Paul. ‘I think I was known to you a very long time ago. But I don’t think you knew what to call me until very recently.’

When they reached the table, Paul lowered him into the chair and then wrote something on his clipboard.

‘Good,’ said Paul. ‘Better than yesterday. We’re making some improvement.’

He placed the blue leather bound notebook in front of Mr Escritor and laid his pen beside it. He nodded and then left. Mr Escritor watched him go, tried seeing beyond him through the open door. He listened to the door close, listened for the turn of a key or the sliding of a bolt. There was no sound.

In the notebook he found mention of Paul, a detailed portrait in words again written in his own hand. He also found notes on some of the questions he had asked. He added an amendment or two from today’s conversation. Then he read over what he had written. He had referred to himself in the third person, so that what was written between the covers of the notebook seemed to him to have happened to some fictional ‘him’.

He skipped forward several pages without reading what was written there until his attention was caught by Helen’s name. She had re-entered the room and it was later in the day. She was still dressed like a nurse, only now her hair was loose and hung down below her shoulders. She had brought him some more pills.

‘What would happen if I did not take these?’ he asked her.

‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But these are for your own good. We are here to help you.’

‘By ‘we’ you mean you and Paul?’

‘All of us,’ said Helen.

This time she sat in the chair opposite him at the table. ‘It’s all written down,’ she said. She tapped the blue leather bound notebook that lay on the table between them.

He watched her watching him. She smiled at him.

‘The face that launched a thousand ships,’ he said.

‘You always say that,’ she said.

‘I do, don’t I.’

She took his hand in hers.

‘What if I wanted to leave here,’ he said.

‘The door is not locked,’ said Helen.

‘Then I could?’

‘I would not advise it,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t like it out there.’

‘Why not?

‘Out there I don’t exist.’ Helen pointed to the door. ‘None of us do. Out there you are unhappy and alone. You chose to come here. It’s perhaps better if you stay.’

She leaned across the table and reached one hand towards him, her fingers brushing lightly against his face.

‘And here?’ he said.

‘You’re safer here,’ she said. ‘Here anything is possible.’

The pages that followed were blank with possibilities. He took up his pen and began writing.



Later, as she slept in his bed, he crept free of Helen’s embrace and moved towards the door. The effort caused him to snatch at the air and the sound of his breathing was recorded somewhere. He rested at the table. The blue leather bound notebook lay open in front of him. The last words he had written said that ‘he rested at the table’.

He regained control of his breathing, felt his heartbeat steady. Behind him Helen slept and dreamed. Using one of the chairs to lean on, he continued his journey towards the shut door. Every half step that he took was an agony that he suffered in silence. The chair supported him as Paul had done, but his progress was much slower, as if the door itself withdrew from him a little with every step.

Then he was there and the door handle cold in his grasp. He tried the door. It was not locked, just as she had said. He was not a prisoner. He opened the door and looked outside. Behind him he heard Helen moan in her sleep, or maybe it was himself that had moaned. He blinked back tears and tried to focus on what was beyond the door. There was nothing to see. ‘Out there I don’t exist. None of us do,’ she had told him. A grey emptiness pressed towards him, like a dense mist or fog. Unformed shadows crossed in front of him and he thought he heard someone calling out, a sharp warning or a threat. He stepped back from the door, losing balance a little and suddenly frightened of what was out there.

‘You’re safer here,’ Helen had said.

Maybe she was right. He closed the door and slowly retreated through the darkness to the bed. He lay down in the warmth beside Helen and waited for sleep to come.



*



Time passed. Time always passes, though sometimes it passes so slowly that we do not really notice it. Mr Escritor was awake again, not certain whether it was night or day but certain that he was alone again. He turned in his bed, the movement recorded by invisible sensors and relayed to an invisible monitor. A light in the ceiling blinked on and he squinted at the sudden brightness. He did not immediately know where he was, or who he was.

The four walls of the room were white – like blank pages in a book, he thought, and it seemed to him like a new thought.



(scriptorium – a room, esp. in a monastery, set apart for the writing or copying of manuscripts.)