I became angry at Myself, disgusted at my own timidity. This was no way to think! Had I walked for four hours to reach this Hall only to be too afraid to go in? How ridiculous! I told Myself that the fear I had experienced in that Upper Hall was highly unlikely to be repeated anywhere else. I had, after all, entered the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall before. If the Statues had been particularly violent or frightening, I would surely have remembered. Besides, I had an obligation to the Other. He needed to know what Stars were visible from the Door.
But still the Darkness unnerved me. I put off entering it for a while. I sat down outside and ate and drank and wrote this entry in my Journal.
The One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall
entry for the twentieth day of the sixth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
Having completed the previous entry in my Journal I entered the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall. Dark and Cold enveloped me. A little way in (I estimate about twenty metres) I turned to face the Single Door that aligned perfectly with a Window in the Corridor outside. I sat down and wrapped Myself in my blanket.
At first I was acutely conscious of the Darkness at my back and the stares of the Unknown Statues. It was very quiet. The Hall where I usually sleep – the Third Northern Hall – is full of birds and at night I hear the little sounds as they shift and flutter on their perches; but as far as I could tell there were no birds in the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall. They apparently found it as unsettling as I did.
I made Myself focus on the one thing familiar to me: the sound of the Sea in the Lower Halls, the Water lapping the Walls in a thousand, thousand Chambers. It is a sound that accompanies me all my days. I fall asleep to it every night, just as a child might fall asleep, safe on its mother’s breast, listening to her heartbeat. And indeed, this is what must have happened now, because the next thing I knew was that I was waking suddenly out of sleep.
A Full Moon stood in the centre of the Single Doorway, flooding the Hall with Light. The Statues on the Walls were all posed as if they had just turned to face the Doorway, their marble Eyes fixed on the Moon. They were different from the Statues in other Halls; they were not isolated individuals, but the representation of a Crowd. Here were two with their Arms about each other; here one had his Hand on the Shoulder of one in front, the better to pull himself forward to see the Moon; here a Child held on to its Father’s Hand. There was even a Dog that – having no interest in the Moon – stood on its Hind Legs, its Front Paws on its Master’s Chest, pleading for attention. The Rear Wall was a mass of Statues – not neatly arranged in Tiers, but a jumbled, chaotic Crowd. Foremost among them was a Young Man, who stood bathed in the Moonlight, elation in his Face, a Banner in his Hand.
I almost forgot to breathe. For a moment I had an inkling of what it might be like if instead of two people in the World there were thousands.
The Eighty-Eighth Western Hall
second entry for the twentieth day of the sixth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
The Full Moon declined westwards, the Light in the Hall diminished and the Constellations grew brighter in the Window opposite the Doorway. I made notes of what Constellations and Stars I saw. At Dawn I slept for a few hours and then I began the journey home.
As I walked, I was thinking about the Great and Secret Knowledge, which the Other says will grant us strange new powers. And I realised something. I realised that I no longer believed in it. Or perhaps that is not quite accurate. I thought it was possible that the Knowledge existed. Equally I thought that it was possible it did not. Either way it no longer mattered to me. I did not intend to waste my time looking for it any more.
This realisation – the realisation of the Insignificance of the Knowledge – came to me in the form of a Revelation. What I mean by this is that I knew it to be true before I understood why or what steps had led me there. When I tried to retrace those steps my mind kept returning to the image of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight, to its Beauty, to its deep sense of Calm, to the reverent looks on the Faces of the Statues as they turned (or seemed to turn) towards the Moon. I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.
The sight of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.
This thought led on to another. I realised that the Other’s description of the powers that the Knowledge will grant has always made me uneasy. For example: he says that we will have the power to control lesser minds. Well, to begin with there are no lesser minds; there are only him and me and we both have keen and lively intellects. But, supposing for a moment that a lesser mind existed, why would I want to control it?
Abandoning the search for the Knowledge would free us to pursue a new sort of science. We could follow any path that the data suggested to us. The thought of all this made me excited and happy. I was eager to return to the Other and explain it to him.
I was walking through the Halls, thinking of these things, when I heard the raucous cries of birds and I remembered that the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall was full of herring gulls. I wondered whether or not to take a different Path, but, estimating that any diversion would add seven or eight Halls (1.7 kilometres) to my journey, I decided against it.
I had got halfway across the Hall when I noticed a scattering of white shapes lying on the Pavement. I picked them up. They were pieces of torn paper with writing on them. They were crumpled and so I smoothed them out and tried putting them together. Two – no, three – of the scraps fitted perfectly, forming part of a small sheet of paper with one jagged side. It appeared to be a page torn from a notebook.
I could see that, even when reconstructed, the page would be difficult to decipher. The writing was atrocious – like a tangle of seaweed. After some minutes of peering at it I thought I could make out the word ‘minotaur’. A line or two above I thought I saw the word ‘slave’ and a line or two below the phrase ‘kill him’. The rest was completely impenetrable. But the reference to a ‘minotaur’ intrigued me. The First Vestibule contains eight massive Statues of Minotaurs, each one different from the others. Perhaps the person who had written this had visited my own Halls?
I wondered whose writing it could be. Not the Other’s. Aside from the fact that I was sure he had never ventured as far as the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall, I knew his writing to be neat and precise. One of the Dead then. The Fish-Leather Man? The Biscuit-Box Man? The Concealed Person? Potentially this was a discovery of great historical importance.
Now that I knew what I was looking for I could see more white shapes lying on the Pavement. I set about gathering them up. Beginning in the South-Western Corner I worked my way systematically over the Pavement of the entire Hall, covering every part of it. At first the herring gulls made raucous objection to my doing this, but when they saw that I did not come near their eggs or young, they lost interest. I found forty-seven pieces of paper, but when I knelt and tried to fit them all together it became clear that many more were still missing.