Garden of Forking Paths. On page 22 of Little Heart's history of World War I you
will read that an attack against the Sierra Seri Montalban line by the 13
British divisions supported by 1,400 artillery pieces planned for the 24th
of July 1916 had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th. The
torrential rains, Captain Little Heart comments caused this delay. An insignificant
one to be sure. The following statement dictated, re-read, signed by Dr
Yu Sun, former professor of English at the Hoshula at Qingdao, throws an
unexpected light over the whole affair. The first two pages of the
documents are missing and I hung up the receiver. Immediately afterwards I
recognized a voice that had answered in German. It was that of Captain Richard
Madden. Madden's presence in Victor Rumberg's apartment meant the end of
our anxieties and but this seemed or should have seemed very secondary to
me. Also the end of our lives. It meant that Rumberg had been arrested or
murdered and then on the on the side of this there's an asterisk with a
Edison's note which I'll read to you now. A hypothesis both hateful and
odd. The Prussian spy, Hans Rabiner, alias Victor Rumberg attacked with
drawn automatic the bearer of the warrant for his arrest. Captain
Richard Madden. The latter in self-defense inflicted the wound which
brought about Rumberg's death. And the story continues. Before the sun set on
that day I would encounter the same fate. Madden was implacable or rather
he was obliged to be so. An Irish man in the service of England. A man accused
of laxity and perhaps of treason. How could he fail to seize and to be
thankful for such a miraculous opportunity? The discovery, capture and
even the death of two agents of the German Reich. I went up to my room
absurdly. I locked the door and threw myself on the back of the narrow iron
cut. Through the window I saw the familiar roost and the cloud shaded six
o'clock sun. It seemed incredible to me that that day without
premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death. In spite
of my dead father. In spite of having been a child in a symmetrical garden of
Haifeng I was now going to die. Then I reflected that everything happens to
a man precisely. Precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do
things happen. Countless men in the air on the face of the earth and the
sea and all that really is happening. It's happening to me. The almost
intolerable recollection of Madden's horse-like face banished these
wanderings in my mind. In the midst of my hatred and terror it means
nothing to me now to speak of terror. Now that I have mocked Richard Madden. Now
that my throat yearns for the noose. It occurred to me that that tumultuous
and doubtless happy warrior did not suspect that I possessed a secret. The
name of the exact location of the new British artillery park on River
Anker. A bird's street across the sky and blindly I translated it into an
aeroplane and that aeroplane into many against the French sky. Annihilating
the artillery station with vertical bombs. If only my mouth before a bullet
shattered it would cry out that secret name so it could be heard in Germany. My
human voice was very weak. How might I make it carry to the ear of the
chief? To the ear of that sick and hateful man who knew nothing of
Rumberg and me saved that we were in Staffordshire and who was waiting in
vain for our reports in his arid office in Berlin endlessly examining
newspapers. I said out loud I must flee. I sat up noiselessly in a useless
perfection of silence as if Madden were already lying in wait for me. Something
perhaps the mere vain ostentation of proving my resources were nil made me
look through my pockets. I found what I knew. I found what I knew old fine. The
American watch, the nickel chain, the square coin, the key ring with the
incriminating useless keys to Rumberg's apartment, the notebook, a letter which
I resolved to destroy immediately and which I did not destroy, a crown, two
shillings, a few pence, and the red and blue pencil, the handkerchief, and finally
the revolver with one bullet.
absurdly I took it in my hand and weighed it in order to inspire courage
within myself. Vaguely I thought that a pistol report can be heard at a
great distance. In ten minutes my plan was perfected. The telephone book listed
the name of the only person capable of transmitting the message. He lived in a
suburb of Fenton less than half an hour away by train. I am a cowardly man. I say
it now. Now that I have carried to its end a plan whose perilous nature no
one can deny. I know his execution was terrible. I didn't do it for Germany, no.
I care nothing for a barbarous country which imposed upon me the objection of
being a spy. Besides, I know of a man from England, a modest man who for me is
no less great than girth. I talked with him for scarcely an hour but during
that hour he was girth. I did it because I sensed that the chief somehow feared
people of my race for the innumerable ancestors who merged within me. I wanted
to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. Besides, I had to flee
from Captain Madden. His hands and his voice could call at my door at any
moment. I dressed silently, made farewell to myself in the mirror, went
downstairs, scrutinised the peaceful street and went out. The station was not
far from my home but I judged it was wise to take a cab. I argued that in this
way I ran less of a risk of being recognised. The fact is that in the
deserted street I felt myself visible and vulnerable, infinitely so. I remember
that I told the cab driver to stop a short distance before the main entrance.
I got out with voluntary, almost painful slowness. I was going to the village
of Ashgrove but I bought a ticket for a more distant station. The train left
within a very few minutes. At 8.15pm I hurried. The next one would leave at 9.30pm.
There was hardly a soul on the platform. I went through the cultures. I remember
a few farmers, a woman dressed in mourning, a young boy who was reading
with fervour the annals of Tacitus, a wounded and happy soldier. The
cultures jumped forward at last. A man whom I recognised ran in vain to the
end of the platform. It was Captain Richard Madden. Shattered, trembling,
I shrank into the far corner of the seat, away from the dreaded window.
From this broken state I passed into an almost abject felicity. I told
myself that the duel had already begun and that I had won the first encounter
by frustrating earings for 40 minutes, even if by a stroke of fate, the
attack on my adversary. I argued that the slightest of victories foreshadowed
a total victory. I argued no less feliciously that my cowardly
felicity proved that I was a man capable of carrying out the
adventure. Successfully, from this weakness I took strength that did not
abandon me. I foreseen that man would resign himself each day to more
atrocious undertakings. Soon there will be no one but warriors and
brigands. I gave them this counsel. The author of an atrocious
undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to
impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. Thus, I proceeded
as my eyes of a man already dead registered the elapsing of that day,
which was perhaps the last and the diffusion of the night. The train ran
gently along amid ash trees. It stopped almost in the middle of the
fields. No one announced the name of the station.
Ashgrove, I asked a few lads on the platform.
Ashgrove, they replied. I cut off. A lamp enlightened the platform, but
the faces of the boys were in shadow. One questioned me,
are you going to Dr. Stefan Albert's house? Without waiting for my
answer, another said, the house is a long way from here, but you won't get
lost if you take this road to the left and that every crossroad
turned again to your left. I tossed them a coin. My last descended
a few stone steps and started down the solitary road. It went
downhill slowly. It was of elemental earth. Overhead, the branches
were tangled. The low full moon seemed to accompany me. For an instant,
I thought that Richard Madden in some way had penetrated my desperate plan.
Very quickly though, I understood that was impossible. The instruction
to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common
procedure for discovering the central points of certain labyrinths.
I have some understanding of labyrinths. Not for nothing. I am the great
grandson of that soy peng who was governor of Yunnan and who
renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be
even more popular than the Hongliu Men, which is the dreams of
Red Chamber, which is one of the four classic Chinese fictional
novels like Journey to the West, Water Margin, Outdoors of the
Water Marsh, Hongliu Meng, who renounced worldly power in order to
write a novel that might be even more popular than the Hongliu
Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become
lost. Thirteen years he dedicated to these heterogeneous tasks
but the hand of a stranger murdered him and his novel was
incoherent and no one found the labyrinth. Beneath English trees
I meditated on that lost maze. I imagined it infinite and perfect
at the secret crest of a mountain. I imagined it erased by rice fields
or beneath the water. I imagined it infinite, no longer composed
of octagonal kiosks and returning paths but of rivers and provinces
and kingdoms. I thought of labyrinths, I thought of a labyrinth
of labyrinths of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would
encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the
stars. Absorbed in these illusory images I forgot my destiny
of one pursuit. I felt myself to be for an unknown period of time
an abstract perceiver of the world. The vague living conscious side,
the moon, the remains of the day worked on me as well as the
slope of the road which eliminated any possibility of
weariness. The afternoon was intimate, infinite. The road
descended and forks among the now confused meadows. I high pitched
almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of
the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance. I thought that a man
can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men
but not of a country, not of fireflies, words, gardens,
streams of water, sunsets. Thus I arrived before a tall rusty gate
between the iron bars and made out a popular grove and a pavilion.
I understood suddenly two things, the first, trivial, the second
almost unbelievable. The music came from the pavilion and the music
was Chinese. I wait for you to return. For precisely that reason I
had openly accepted it without paying it any heed. I do not
remember whether there was a bell or whether I knocked with my
hand the sparkling of the music continued. From the rear of the
house within a lantern approached a lantern that the trees
sometimes striped and sometimes eclipsed. A paper lantern that
had the form of a drum and the colour of the moon. A tall man
bore it. I didn't see his face, for the light blinded me. He
opened the door and said slowly in my own language. I see that
the Pai Sui Peng persists in correcting my solitude. You know
that wish to see the garden? I recognised the name of our
consoles and I replied, disconcerted. The garden, the garden
of forking paths. Something stirred in my memory and I uttered
with incomprehensible certainty the garden of my ancestor
Sui Peng. Your ancestor, your illustrious ancestor, come in,
come in. The damp paffet zigzagged like those of my
childhood. We came to a library of eastern and western
books. I recognised, bound in yellow silk, several volumes of
the Lost Encyclopedia edited by the Third Emperor of the
Luminous Dynasty, but never printed. I guess the Luminous
Dynasty would be the Ming Dynasty. Ming means life in
Chinese, so Luminous Ming Dynasty. Good Dynasty. The
record on the photograph revolved next to our bronze
phoenix. I also record a familiar rose vase and another
many centuries older of that shade of blue, which our
craftsmen copied from the Potters of Persia. Stephen
Albert observed me with a smile. He was, as I have said,
very tall, sharp, featured with grey eyes and a grey
beard. He told me that he had been a missionary in Tianjin
before aspiring to become a synologist. We sat down, I, on a
long low divan, he, with his back to the window and a tall
circular clock. I calculated that my pursuer Richard Madden
could not arrive for at least an hour. My irrevocable
determination could wait. An astounding fate that of
Sui Peng, Stephen Albert said, governor of his native
province, learned in astronomy, in astrology, and in the
tireless interpretation of the canonical books, chess
player, famous poet, and calligrapher. He abandoned
all this in order to compose a book and amaze. He renounced
the pleasures of both tyranny and justice, of his
populous couch, of his banquets, and even of
erudition, all to close himself up for thirteen years
in the pavilion of the limpid solitude. When he
died, his heirs found nothing save chaotic manual
scripts. His family, as you may be aware, wished to be
condemned. His family, as you may be aware, wished to
condemn them to the fire. His executor, a Taoist or
Buddhist monk, insisted on their publication.
We descendants of Sui Peng, I replied, continued to
curse that monk. Their publication was senseless. The
book is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts.
I examined it once. In the third chapter, the hero
dies. In the fourth, he's alive. As for the other
undertakings of Sui Peng, his labyrinth, here is
Sui Peng's labyrinth, he said, indicating a tall
lacquered desk. An ivory labyrinth, I exclaimed,
a minimum labyrinth. A labyrinth of symbols, he
corrected. An invisible labyrinth of time. To me, a
barbarist Englishman has been entrusted the
revelation of this diaphanous mystery. After more
than a hundred years, the details are
irretrievable, but it is not hard to conjecture
what happened. Sui Peng must have said once,
I am withdrawing to write a book. And another
time, I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth.
Everyone imagined two works, but to no one did
it occur that the book and the maze were one
and the same thing. The pavilion of the
Limpid Solitude stood in the centre of a garden
that was perhaps intricate, that circumstance
could have suggested to the heirs of a physical
labyrinth. Sui Peng died. No one in the vast
territories that were his came upon the
labyrinth. The confusion of the novel
suggested to me that it was the maze. Two
circumstances gave me the correct solution
of the problem. One, the curious legend
that Sui Peng had planned to create a
labyrinth, which would be strictly infinite.
The other, a fragment of a letter I
discovered. Albert Rose, he turned his back
on me for a moment. He opened the drawer
of the black and gold desk. He faced me
and in his hands he held a sheet of paper
that had once been crimson, but was now
pink and tenuous and cross-section.
The fame of Sui Peng as a calligrapher
had been justly won. I read
uncomprehendingly and would further these
words written with a minute brush by a
man of my blood. I leave to the various
futures, not to all, my garden of
forking paths. Wordlessly, I returned
the sheet. Albert continued. Before
unearthing this letter, I had questioned
myself about the ways in which a book
can be infinite. I could think of
nothing more than a civic volume, a
circular one, a book whose last page was
identical with the first, a book which
had the possibility of continuing
indefinitely. I remember too that night
which is at the middle of the thousand
on one night when Scheherazade
through a magical oversight of the
copyist begins to relate word for word
the story of the thousand on one
nights, establishing the risk of coming
once again to the night when she must
repeat it, thus onto infinity. I
imagined as well a platonic hereditary
work transmitted from father to son
in which each new individual adds a
chapter or corrects with pious care
the pages of his elders. These
conjectures diverted me but none seem
to correspond, not even remotely to the
contradictory chapters of Sui Peng. In
the midst of this perplexity I
received from Oxford the manual
scripts you have examined. I lingered
naturally on the sentence, I leave to
the various futures, not to all, my garden
are forking paths. Almost
instantly I understood the garden
are forking paths was the chaotic
novel, the phrase, the various futures
not to all suggested to me the forking
in time, not in space, a broad
rereading of the work confirmed the
theory. In all fictional works each
time a man is confronted with several
alternatives he chooses one and
eliminates the others. In the fiction
of Sui Peng he chooses simultaneously
all of them. He creates in this way
diverse futures, diverse times which
themselves also proliferate and fork.
Here then is the explanation of the
novel's contradictions. Fang let
us say has a secret, a stranger
calls at his door. Fang resolves to
kill him. Naturally there are several
possible outcomes. Fang can kill the
intruder, the intruder can kill Fang,
they can both escape, they both can
die and so forth. In the work of
Sui Peng all possible outcomes occur
each one is the point of departure
for other forkings. Sometimes the
paths of this labyrinth converge for
example you arrive at this house but in
one of the possible paths you are my
enemy in another my friend. If you
would resign yourself to my incurable
pronunciations we shall read a few
pages. His face within the vivid
circle of the lamp light was
unquestionably that of an old man
or with something unalterable about it
even immortal. He read with slow
precision two versions of the same epic
chapter. In the first an army marches
to a battle across a lonely mountain.
The horror of the rocks and the
shadows make the men undervalue their
lives and they gain an easy victory.
In the second the same army traverses
a palace where a great festival is
taking place. The resplendent battle
seems to them a continuation of the
celebration and they win the victory. I
listened with proper veneration to these
ancient narratives perhaps less
admirable in themselves than the fact
that they have been created by my
blood and were being restored to me
by a man of remote empire in the
course of a desperate adventure on the
western Isle. I remember the last words
repeated in each version like a secret
commandment. Thus fought the heroes
tranquil in their admirable hearts
violent in their swords resigned to
kill and to die. From that moment
on I felt about me within my dark body
an invisible intangible swarming
not the swarming of the divergent
parallel and finally coalescent armies
but a more inaccessible more intimate
agitation that they in some manner
prefigured. Stephen Albert continued
I don't believe that your illustrious
ancestor played idly with these
variations. I don't consider it
credible that he would sacrifice
13 years to the infinite execution
of a rhetorical experiment. In your
country the novel is a subsidiary form
of literature. In Sui Peng's time
it was a despicable form. Sui Peng was
a brilliant novelist but he was also
a man of letters who doubtless did not
consider himself a mere novelist. The
testimony of his contemporaries
proclaimed and his life fully
confirms his metaphysical and mystical
interests. Philosophic controversies
usurped a good part of the novel. I know
that of all problems none disturbed
him more so greatly nor worked upon him
so much as the abysmal problem of time.
Now then the latter is the only problem
that does not come does not figure in
the pages of the garden. It does not
even use the word that signifies time.
How do you explain this voluntary
omission? I propose several solutions
or unsatisfactory. We discuss them
finally. Stephen Albert certainly. In
the riddle whose answer is chess
what is the only prohibited word?
I thought for a moment and replied
the word chess. Precisely said Albert
the garden of forking paths is an
enormous riddle or parable whose theme is
time. This recondite cause prohibits
its mention to omit a word always
resort to omit a word always to
resort to inept metaphors and obvious
paraphrases is perhaps the most
emphatic way of stressing it. That is
the torturous method preferred in each
of the meanderings of his indefatigable
novel by the oblique Soy Peng. I have
compared hundreds of manuscripts. I
have corrected the errors that the
negligence of the copyists had
introduced. I have guessed the plan of
this chaos. I have reestablished. I
believe that I have reestablished the
primordial organization. I have
translated the entire work. It is
clear to me that not once does he
employ the word time. The explanation
is obvious. The garden of forking
path is an incomplete but not false
image of the universe as Soy Peng
conceived it. In contrast to Newton
and Schopenhauer your ancestor did not
believe in a uniform absolute time. He
believed in an infinite series of times
in a growing dizzy net of divergent
convergent and parallel times. This
network of times which approached
one another forked broke off or were
unaware of one another for centuries
embraces all possibilities of time. We
do not exist in the majority of these
times. In some you exist and I not.
In others I and not you. In others
both of us. In the present one which
is a favorable fate has granted me
you have arrived at my house. In
another while crossing the garden you
found me dead. In still another I are to
these same words but I am a mistake
a ghost. In everyone I pronounced not
without a tremble to my voice. I am
grateful to you and reveal you for
your recreation of the garden of
Soy Peng. Not in all as you remember
with a smile. Time forks perpetually
forward in new time forks perpetually
towards innumerable futures and in one
of them I am your enemy. Once again I
felt the swarming sensation of which
I have spoken. It seemed to me that the
humid garden that surrounded the house
was infinitely saturated with
invisible persons. Those persons were
Albert and I. Secret, busy and
multi-form in other dimensions of time. I
raised my eyes and the tenuous
nightmare dissolved. In the yellow and
black garden there was only one man but
this man was as strong as a statue. This
man was approaching along the path
and he was Captain Richard Madden.
The future already exists I replied but
I am your friend. Could I see this
letter again? Albert rose standing
tall. He opened the drawer of the
tall desk. For a moment his back was
to me. I had read the revolver. I
fired with extreme caution. Albert fell
uncomplainly immediately. I swear his
death was instantaneous. A lightning
stroke. The rest is unreal,
insignificant. Madden broke in,
arrested me. I had been condemned to
the gallows. I have won out
abominably. I have communicated to
Berlin the secret name of the city
they must attack. They bombed it
yesterday. I read it in the same
papers that offered to England the
mystery of the learned synologist
Stefan Albert who was murdered by a
stranger, one named Yu Sun. The chief
had deciphered this mystery. He knew
my problem was to indicate through
the uproar of the wall. The city
called Albert and that I had found no
other means to do so than to kill a man
of that name. He does not know. No one
can know. My innumerable
contrition and weariness. Some of
these words are hard to pronounce.
As I said English is not my first
language. Hope you enjoy.