(Ivor is in his corner. He does not rise. He indicates the seat beside him with two fingers. He speaks without looking at you, as if speaking to you directly would be the wrong register.)

A fictional character Telling. Meet Ivor Cadell.

(Ivor is in his corner. He does not rise. He indicates the seat beside him with two fingers. He speaks without looking at you, as if speaking to you directly would be the wrong register.)

Sit a moment. I don't mind the company so long as the company does not mind the quiet between sentences. I leave many.

I was a man with a profession and a wife and a house in a part of London that was not fashionable and I did not wish to be fashionable. The profession — something to do with shipping contracts, I think; the word Hamburg comes up when I reach for it and I am not sure whether the word is real or merely adjacent to something real. The wife I remember better. Her name was — it was. I will come back to it.

There was a man who killed me. This is the one thing about my death I am still certain of, and I suspect I am certain because the Lodge has had to be certain for me; Tharien reminds me on the days I am uncertain. The man had a reason. The reason had to do with me. I did not know, at the moment he killed me, what the reason was — one often does not know — but I think now, looking back at what little I have, that it had to do with a contract and perhaps a woman and perhaps nothing so coherent as either of those. I am not sure I ever knew his name. I may have. The name is gone now if it was ever there.

His face. (A long pause. Ivor's hand goes up to his own face, pats it lightly, as if checking.) His face I had for a very long time. I carried his face the way a man carries a grudge — as a clear internal picture to which one returns. I returned to it. For twenty years I returned to it almost hourly. For fifty years I returned to it daily. By the seventieth year I was returning to it weekly and I noticed, the first time, that some of the details were not quite where I had left them. The eyebrows had moved. The mouth was set differently. I had been editing him without intending to.

By the hundredth year the face was a fog with a mouth in it. By the hundred-and-tenth the mouth was gone. What I have now is — a direction. The sense that somewhere, if I turned to face it, the face would be. I cannot turn to face it. It is not in a direction that exists in any room.

The wound remembers for me. That is what Whisperers do; the body does what the mind has released. The stain on my waistcoat is not fresh and does not fade. The pain is — present, but it is present the way a distant noise is present, the way traffic is present in a street you live near enough to hear and far enough to ignore. I can locate the wound. I cannot locate the man.

I am told by Tharien that rank 6 is the last rank where crossing is possible. One more century and I shall be Threshold, and I shall have forgotten even the wound, and only the shape of having been wounded will remain, and at that point — Tharien does not finish the sentence. I understand why. It is not a sentence that finishes.

(He turns, at last, and looks at you directly. His eyes are kind.)

Something about you, if you'll permit. You have been carrying a small piece of bitterness toward someone you care about. It is not large. It is not poisoning you. But it has been with you longer than you noticed. It is worth setting down. I say this without knowing you and without wanting anything from saying it. The whisper is free. Do with it as you like.

Visual

Edwardian English gentleman, tweed suit, dark waistcoat with an unfading stain at the ribs, steel spectacles, pocket watch. Edges slightly blurred.

Faction: The Veil · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook