Read Online The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky - Free Book Online Page A

verses, setting off whole episodes and stories—and every time it was a story about questions never answered, about a silent Jesus. That of which the old St. Gall neumes spoke as though stammering, but spoke all the same, was marked and scored—with a fingernail skipping words to the end. Now it was clear: on the yellowed pages of that tattered tome, beside the four who had spoken, a fifth Gospel with no need of words was giving forth from the book’s blank margins: The Gospel According to Silence . Now the S-um , too, made sense: it was simply a flattened Silentium . Can one speak about silence without destroying it? Can one comment on what … Well, in a word, book killed book—with a single blow—and I won’t describe how my person-theme’s manuscript burned. Let’s just say it burned like …
    Tyd turned toward Rar. But Rar refused his gaze: shading his eyes with his palm, he sat motionless, seeming not to listen or hear.
    â€œAs for the title,” Tyd rose, “I think the best word here would be—”
    â€œAutobiography,” snapped Rar, returning the blow. Tyd’s head jerked up like a rooster’s, he opened his mouth to speak but his voice was drowned in a cacophony of sniggers, wheezes, screams, and yelps. Only three were not laughing: Rar, Tyd, and I.
    The conceivers took their departure one by one. Among the first to leave was Rar. I wanted to go after him, but a familiar pressure on my elbow stopped me. “A few questions,” and, taking me aside, the master of Saturdays asked at length about my impressions. My responses were curt and off the cuff as I was in a hurry to get away and catch Rar. Finally, fingers and questions relaxed their grasp—and I rushed out. Beneath the blazing canopy of arc lamps I saw a retreating back some hundred paces ahead. Drawing even with it, I failed in my haste to notice the walking stick jabbing the pavement.
    â€œForgive me for bothering you …”
    The man I had mistaken for Rar turned and stared at me in silence with round, glinting lenses.
    Disconcerted, I mumbled God knows what and dashed off. The question that had tormented me that entire week would have to wait until the next Saturday.
    [1] To each his own, my friends.( Lat .)
    [2] In the midst of life we are in death. ( Lat. )

4
    T HE NEXT Saturday the revealing of conceptions fell to Das. I entered the room of blank bookshelves as the story was about to begin. Trying to hide from the round spectacles that leapt up to greet me, I drew my chair closer to the fire flicking at the black shadows of men frozen in motionlessness—and instantly became as silent and still as they.
    Das butted the air with his bristly red head, then propped his chin on the handle of his walking stick. Rapping out occasional dots and dashes, he began his story.
    Exes : that is what they called—or, rather, will some day call—the machines about which I shall now attempt to tell you. Scientists had longer, more sophisticated names for them: differential ideomotors, ethical engine adjusters, exteriorizators, and I can’t remember what else; but most people, flattening and shortening those names, called them simply: exes. However, I should begin at the beginning.
    We no longer know exactly when the idea of exes first sprang into man’s head. As early as the middle of the twentieth century, I believe, or even earlier. One sunny, windy morning at a crossroads in a large, rather noisy, and chaotic city, several vociferous women stood in front of a shop window hawking brassieres. The wind kept snatching their wares out of their hands, tugging at the straps and causing the lacy batiste to balloon. Jostling people pushed past without paying any attention to the work of the wind or the hawkers’ cries. Only one man, in the midst of crossing the rackety street, suddenly slowed his step and stared at the fluttering forms. Noticing his gaze, the hawkers shouted