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Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2014 Text © Will Wiles 2014 Will Wiles asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work ‘The House of Asterion’ by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by James E. Irby, from Labyrinths, copyright © 1962, 1964 by New Directions Publishing Corp., reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.; and by permission of Pollinger Ltd. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Cover design by Jarrod Taylor Cover photograph © Robert Dant/Alamy Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at Source ISBN: 9780007545551 Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007545568 Version: 2015-01-28 For Hazel and Guy, with my love The house is the same size as the world; or rather, it is the world. ‘THE HOUSE OF ASTERION’, JORGE LUIS BORGES CONTENTS The bright red numbers on the radio-alarm clock beside my bed arranged themselves into the unfortunate shape of 6:12. Barely four hours since I went to sleep, I was abruptly awake. I remembered that I had been in the bar, and that I had seen the woman again. Apart from the red digital display – 6:13 – the room was dark. And the preceding day was clear: I had seen her again, and I had spoken to her. Over the years I had come to believe that my memory was steadily enhancing this woman. Our first encounter was so out of the ordinary that it took on a completely unreal complexion in retrospect, and I suspected that I might be elaborating on it, on her, to make the whole bizarre incident more exotic. But there she was again, matching perfectly what I had assumed was an idealised vision. Her Amazonian height, and her pale skin and red hair – even in the flesh, there was something about her that didn’t quite match up to reality, as if she was too high definition. Just hours later our reunion had already taken on the qualities of a dream. One that had been interrupted before it was complete. Maurice. Maurice had ruined it. A return to sleep seemed unlikely and unwise. It was less than an hour until the alarm would go off and I had no intention of oversleeping and being forced to head to the fair without a shower and breakfast. The hotel room was well heated, the carpet soft and warm under my feet. It was quiet, almost silent, but the air conditioner hummed its low hum, and there was something else in the air – a kind of electromagnetic potential, a distorted echo beyond the audible range. Or nothing, just the membranes of the ear settling after being startled from sleep. Outside it would be cold. I opened the curtains but could see little. The sullen orange glow of the motorway to one side, an occluded sky untouched by dawn, and on the level of the horizon a shivering cluster of red lights that suggested, somehow, an oil refinery. Maybe the airport – radar towers, UHF antennae. I switched on the room lights. Latte-coloured carpet, a cuboid black armchair, a desk with steel and wicker chair, a flat-screen TV on the wall and of course an insipid abstract painting. It was like every other hotel room I’ve stayed in: bland, familiar, noncommittal, unaligned to any style or culture. I once read that the colour schemes in large chain hotels were selected for how they looked under artificial light, on the understanding that the business people staying in the rooms would mostly be there outside daylight hours. And that principle must also apply to the art on the walls – and again I remembered the woman in the bar, what she had said about the paintings. The indistinct background hum seemed a little louder – it had to be the air-con, or the minibar under the desk. It was a benign sound, almost soothing, a suggestion that I was surrounded by advanced systems dedicated to keeping me comfortable. Showering took the edge off my tiredness, and allowed me to ignore it. I put on a Way Inn bathrobe and returned to the bedroom, drying my hair with a Way Inn towel. The TV was on, but only showed the hotel screen that had greeted me on my arrival in the room last night. WELCOME MR DOUBLE Above this was the corporate logo, a stylised W in the official red. A stock photo of a group of Way Inn staff, or models playing Way Inn staff, smiled up at me. Room service numbers and pay-TV options were listed underneath. Today’s special in the restaurant was pan-seared salmon. The weather for today and tomorrow: fog and rain. Temperature scarce degrees above zero. I picked up the remote and found the
