The End Of Mr. Y. Scarlett Thomas

is all the money I have,’ I told him. ‘I was not about to allow it to be stolen.’

      ‘Indeed not,’ he replied.

      Presently he motioned for me to sit down at the table, and he took the opposite side, as if a consultation were about to take place. I handed the money to him and felt a profound sense of emptiness puncture my soul. Would this fellow even give me what I wanted? I have to confess that at that moment I half believed that the next thing I would see would be a puff of smoke, and then the trick would be complete. However, there was no puff of smoke and the doctor continued to regard me across the table.

      ‘I have transcribed the recipe for you,’ he said. ‘It is quite simple and requires no special preparation. The ingredients are common, as you will see.’

      I realised then that he was holding in his left hand a sheet of tattered blue note-paper. There was the information I had been searching for all this time! I did not understand why this man was sitting there in this pose, simply holding on to this knowledge, this most precious thing. Why did he not simply give me what I had paid for? All at once I felt some demon seize possession of me, and I was overcome by an urge to reach across the table and rip the paper from his hand. I confess that I further imagined wrestling him to the ground and taking back my money. Yet all this only happened in my mind, and in reality I did nothing but sit there meekly awaiting my prescription.

      ‘This mixture,’ I said. ‘It will have the same effect as … ?’

      ‘You wish to know if the mixture will enable you to telepath?’

      ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘If that is indeed what took place in Nottingham.’

      The doctor’s thin smile returned.

      ‘This mixture will most certainly enable you to telepath, if that is all you require of it.’

      ‘If that is all I require? What in heaven do you mean?’

      ‘The mixture will take you on many curious journeys, Mr. Y, I can assure you of that.’ For a second or two the doctor looked as if he may continue in this portentous vein, but then something queer seemed to happen to him. His whole body appeared to grow limp, like a marionette placed in a cupboard after a performance, and for a full minute he did not move; nor did he say anything else. When he did come back to life it was with a little jerk, as if someone had once again taken hold of his strings. He looked at the piece of note-paper in his hand as if puzzled by it and then, without saying anything else, he handed it to me.

      I had only the merest opportunity to glance at my treasure before he rapped the table twice with the knuckles of his left hand and made to stand up.

      ‘Well, then, good evening, Mr. Y. You have what you came for.’

      I hesitated, understanding that this would be my only chance to ask the question that so burned on my lips.

      ‘Before I leave,’ I said, ‘I have one question to ask of you.’

      The doctor lifted one eyebrow in response but said nothing.

      ‘I wish to know how many other people have this recipe,’ I said.

      ‘You wish to know how valuable is this knowledge you hold in your hand,’ said the doctor. ‘You wish to know how much power you now possess, and how it has been potentially diluted among the rest of the population. Well, I can answer your question quite easily. You are the only person to whom I have sold this recipe. Not everyone is as willing as you were to lie in a tent and imbibe a stranger’s medicinal concoction simply for the purpose of knowledge. For pain relief, this is common. For pleasure, also. But you can rest assured, sir, that you are my only customer to date.’

      I had more questions, but the doctor made it quite clear to me that our business was concluded and I walked out into the cold, murky hallway. In a parlour on my right I saw a child trying to light a fire. The result of this was a low, persistent, hissing noise and enough smoke to make my eyes sting. When I was certain that no one was looking, I rubbed the grime from my eyes and briefly examined the document in my hand. It only contained four lines, written in an untutored, unorthodox hand, in pale violet ink.

      Make the tincture in the following way:–

      Combine one part Carbo Vegetabilis, that is, vegetable charcoal, in the 1,000th centesimal homoeopathic potency, with 99 parts holy water in a glass retort or flask and succuss the mixture ten times.

       FD 1893

      Then I slipped the blue paper into my shoe and made my way for the door.

      I finish reading the missing page of The End of Mr. Y with a dry mouth and my heart beating as if it’s trying to get out. I just can’t believe it. I immediately reread the page, trying to recreate the sensation I felt when I got to the recipe, rather in the same way you queue up to take a fairground ride that has just terrified and excited you. But it doesn’t quite work in that way. This isn’t a ride you can take again, but one, I am guessing, that is simply impossible to get off. And then I find that I can’t sit down any more. I get up and pace the room, feeling as though I should do something bigger, much bigger, to express the emotion I feel, but not knowing what that would be. Laughter? Tears? My brain is hysterical, but I don’t do anything to show it in the end; I just pace and smoke and think. I think about the strange preface, and all the hints that The End of Mr. Y contains something real. I think about the trouble someone, probably Burlem, has taken to conceal this page, which contains nothing of any interest apart from the instructions for making up the tincture. I think of Lumas’s strange allusions to telepathy, and I remember this section about the ‘automaton of mind’.

      As Robert-Houdin has built automata with which to produce his illusions, I shall here propose to create an automaton of mind, through which one may see illusions and realities beyond; from which one, if he knows how, may spring into the automata of all minds and their electricity.

      And when I’m certain that I understand why the page is important, and the potential reason it was hidden, I sit down and finish the rest of the book, distracted by my own desire to find the ingredients and make up some of this tincture for myself.

       PART TWO

      The matters of which man is cognisant escape the senses in gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether. Now, we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that which we attach to the luminiferous ether. When we reach the latter, we feel an almost irresistible inclination to class it with spirit, or with nihility. The only consideration which restrains us is our conception of its atomic constitution; and here, even, we have to seek aid from our notion of an atom, as something possessing in infinite minuteness, solidity, palpability, weight. Destroy the idea of the atomic constitution and we should no longer be able to regard the ether as an entity, or, at least, as matter. For want of a better word we might term it spirit. Take, now, a step beyond the luminiferous ether – conceive a matter as much more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than the metal, and we arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at a unique mass – an unparticled matter. For although we may admit infinite littleness in the atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the spaces between them is an absurdity.

      Edgar Allan Poe, The Mesmeric Revelation

      As material things prove all to be connected and parts of one thing; as the pebble at our feet and the most remote and profitless fixed star are still united, so ‘Does it rain, my dear?’ and the most dreary metaphysical inquiry are still closely connected.

      Samuel Butler, Note-books

       NINE

      YOU