The Plato Papers Read online

  Plato: What were you about to say? You were going to be indiscreet. You were on the point of telling me that you were acquainted with them at first hand. I knew it. You were there.

  Soul: Please don’t put words into my—

  Plato: You misled me.

  Soul: This interview is now ended.

  Plato: No. Don’t go. I apologise.

  Soul: Promise?

  Plato: Promise.

  Soul: We will pretend we never spoke of such matters. You were asking me about Mouldwarp, I believe?

  Plato: Yes. What if I was wrong or mistaken about the people of that time?

  Soul: Sometimes, you know, I worry about you.

  Plato: Why?

  Soul: You have no perspective.

  Plato: But surely that is your responsibility?

  Soul: Let me put it this way. What if you were meant to be wrong? What if that was the only way to maintain confidence in the reality of the present world?

  Plato: It would be a very hard destiny.

  Soul: It might also be an inevitable one. If every age depends upon wilful blindness, then you, Plato, become necessary.

  Plato: So is that your purpose? To preserve my ignorance?

  Soul: I have no purpose. I am simply here.

  Plato: I do not believe you.

  Soul: What are you saying? You do not believe your own soul? That is impossible.

  Plato: I am confused. I admit it. Help me.

  Soul: I will make an agreement with you. You need to reach the limits of your knowledge and your belief. Am I correct?

  Plato: Of course.

  Soul: Then I will no longer protect you.

  Plato: Protect me against what?

  Soul: I don’t know. It is normally the duty of the soul to defend her charge—

  Plato: I once saw the picture of an angel with a flaming sword.

  Soul: That sort of thing. But if you really wish to discover some truth—

  Plato: That is my desire.

  Soul: Then so be it. I will no longer stand in its way. Good luck.

  Plato: When will I see you again?

  Soul: Have you ever really seen me? Go now. The citizens are waiting for you.

  30

  You see the charred paper before you? Please note that it contains words in an early English script. I have employed square brackets in order to signify a tentative conjectural meaning, and asterisks to denote a tear or burn in the manuscript itself. It reads as follows, and you will forgive me if my accent sounds harsh or discordant. It is considered to be authentic.

  fragments [they] have * ruins

  *ieronymo * * again

  * * Eliot

  It is my contention that ‘Eliot’ here signifies the name of the author or singer of the quoted lines and, fortunately, there is surviving evidence which may lead us to a closer identification. A fragment of prose has been recovered which alludes to ‘the writer George Eliot’, and in a collection of Mouldwarp frescos which can provisionally be dated somewhere between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries there exists a wall painting or wall chart with the inscription ‘The Alhambra. Presenting Our Very Own Eliot, the Chocolate-Coloured Crooner and Nimble Negro’. I have already informed you that in this epoch the earth was divided and dispersed into ‘races’, generally considered to have arisen for climatic rather than spiritual reasons; ‘negro’ or ‘chocolate-coloured’, then, are variants of ‘African’ or ‘black’. In the succeeding Age of Witspell, of course, it was believed that the black ‘races’ were closer to God and had therefore been burned by the rays of divine love. It can be suggested, therefore, that these lines are the work of an African singer named George Eliot. In this there can be no certainty, as I am only too well aware, but the identification has at least the merit of being supported by all the available evidence.

  The text itself has been subject to various interpretations. One historian asserts that:

  fragments = ruins

  and that George Eliot is simply contemplating the remains of some chapel or shrine of an earlier age built in homage to ‘ieronymo’ or St Jerome. But that suggestion has been challenged by another reader, who infers that

  ruins = runes

  and that ‘ieronymo’ can then be reworked as:

  i.e. my roon

  or ‘that is my spell’. I, Plato, have developed this point with the inference that the black singer was in fact prophesying the fall of the Age of Mouldwarp into ruins and fragments. If I may quote my own words on that occasion, ‘Consider the plight of the poets or singers of that epoch who (as we believe) had the role only of entertainers. It is not clear whether they gave recitations in public places or at private gatherings, but their lowly status is confirmed by the paucity of material relating to them and the characteristically melancholy tone of their surviving works.’ It has even been surmised that George Eliot deliberately created a ‘fragment’ or ‘ruin’ of a poem in order to exemplify his despair. There may indeed have been a long tradition of ruin literature of which he was perhaps the last exponent. Excuse me. My light is beginning to fade. You had noticed it already? Please, there is no need for alarm. There is no sickness. Nothing will harm you. I am tired. That is all. This oration is completed.

  31

  Something is happening. Something is coming. I can hear cries and murmuring voices, and now the shadows have started to appear. I feel their presence all around me. Soul! I have certain anxieties. I feel them more strongly than you can possibly imagine. Soul? Where are you? Now I can see a pale young man leaning against a post. There is a girl. There is an animal approaching her. The name becoming visible is Golden Lane. Who are these people walking beside me? There are so many. And they are much closer than I ever knew. Now there is the rushing of a great wind. Soul! Is this why you once guarded me? Were you protecting me against them?

  32

  Sidonia: So you saw him?

  Ornatus: He was standing just outside the crippled gate.

  Sidonia: Curious. That is not his customary spot.

  Ornatus: And there was another peculiar thing: he was talking to himself.

  Sidonia: No!

  Ornatus: I could see him gesticulating, too. He looked very fierce.

  Sidonia: Could you hear anything he said?

  Ornatus: Something about a golden lane. And the crowds all about him. Yet there was no one there except himself. Then he came up to me.

  Sidonia: What did you do?

  Ornatus: I offered him reverence and he bowed in return. We should have remained silent, according to custom—

  Sidonia: Of course.

  Ornatus: But he suddenly asked me if I was waiting for someone.

  Sidonia: What?

  Ornatus: ‘I am not waiting,’ I said, ‘I am simply being still. It is holy to be still.’ Then he laughed.

  Sidonia: And so you laughed?

  Ornatus: Naturally. Then he asked me if I was thinking about anything. ‘Nothing at all,’ I replied. He asked me why not. ‘It is not compulsory to think,’ I told him; ‘it is not like dreaming.’

  Sidonia: Well put.

  Ornatus: Thank you. Then he put his hand across his face and mentioned that he had seen me in the race against the oarsmen of Essex Street. He asked me if I had won—

  Sidonia: What an extraordinary question.

  Ornatus: And I had to explain to him, just as if he were a child, that no one was expected to win. He laughed again. Then he asked me if that was why I looked so sad.

  Sidonia: Can he be losing his mind?

  Ornatus: He did say something about losing his soul, but it was so ridiculous that I pretended not to listen. Then, after a moment, he mentioned that he was going on a journey.

  Sidonia: A journey? You mean—

  Ornatus: When you leave the city.

  Sidonia: Whatever for?

  Ornatus: That is precisely what I asked him.

  Sidonia: And what did he say?

  Ornatus: He looked around and murmured something ab
out other places. Other people. I said, ‘Listen to me, Plato.’ That is how I addressed him.

  Sidonia: Not as an orator?

  Ornatus: No. That seemed somehow unimportant. Or unnecessary. ‘Listen to me, Plato. We have all grown up together within the city. We have obeyed its injunctions. We have been instructed in its mysteries. You yourself were chosen to guide us with your oratory. We spend our lives contemplating its goodness and beauty. We hear you expounding upon its inner harmonies. Why try and discover something else beyond its Wall?’ He gave a curious answer.

  Sidonia: Which was?

  Ornatus: ‘Perhaps, dear Ornatus, I am not travelling as far as you think. Perhaps it is possible to embark upon a journey while remaining in the same place.’

  Sidonia: What did he mean by that?

  Ornatus: I have absolutely no idea. Come. Shall we take a skiff down the Fleet and search for angels’ feathers?

  The Journey of Plato to the Underworld

  33

  There was a cave, and the ground sloped downwards. I sensed the smell of that which was neither living nor dead. I believed that I could hear voices and I began walking towards the mouth of the cave. I admit to a slight sense of fear, but I submit that all of us share some horror of darkness. You tell me that I was dreaming? This was no dream. I was as wakeful and as watchful as I have ever been.

  When I entered the cave the air seemed so heavy that, for a moment, I believed I could go no further. But the ground still sloped downwards and instinctively I bowed my head as I walked into the darkness. I do not know how far I travelled. It is possible that I did not move at all. Perhaps I stood still. Surely you understand? It had grown to such a pitch of blackness that I could not see my own body, or feel aware of any movement. I realised later, of course, what had happened. I was changing dimensions in order to enter the world of Mouldwarp. Who cried out that ‘Plato is impious’? I am not impious! I am simply telling you the truth. The darkness began to lift, very slowly, and I noticed that a sombre radiance seemed to emanate from the stone around me. It was the colour of fire or blood. I was still walking down. Forgive me. I can only express it as ‘up’ and ‘down’. Perhaps I have become like them.

  I knew, somehow, that I was following a circular path. It was growing warmer and I noticed that in the glowing light my body cast a strange shape upon the ground. It was called a shadow, or a wraith created by the false light of their sun. Theirs was a world of shadows. Then I found myself before a flight of broad stone stairs. I had no choice. I stepped upon the first stair. I began to descend, but once more it was as if I were not moving at all; I might have remained in the same place, except that various layers of dark and light passed over my head. I experienced the strangest sensations of stupor, and of anxious restlessness, until I recognised that I was experiencing night and day as they once were in antiquity. The intervals between them grew longer, until I was able to glimpse points of light in the darkness. I looked up. I looked up and saw the bright objects once called stars. There was a firmament stretching above me, and the position of the night sky was very like that which I had studied in the old charts of Mouldwarp. These were the ancient fixed stars, shining below the level of our world!

  Then the noise began. At first it was the merest whispering, but it grew steadily louder until it filled my ears with chiming, and tapping, and rhythmic thudding. There were more violent indistinct sounds, but the path had become so steep that there was no chance of turning back. But why should I wish to return, when I could run towards my vision? I had come into a great cavern extending in every direction. It was impossible to gauge its depth, or its height, although I could see the fixed stars still turning overhead. And there, stretching below me, was London! It was no longer night but broad day and I could see great towers of glass, domes, roofs and houses. I saw the Thames itself, gleaming in the distance, with wide thoroughfares running beside it. The avenues and buildings were more elaborate and extensive than anything we had ever surmised; yet, somehow, this was the city of which I had always dreamed.

  How can I describe to you all the strangeness of my journey among the people of Mouldwarp? They were short, little more than half your height, and even I had to walk carefully among them. You ask if they were alarmed by my appearance, but the truth is that they could not see me. It was as if I were a ghost or spirit. Why do you laugh? I believe that I was not visible to them because I still existed in dimensions other than their own. That is why they were so compact, so densely formed, and why all their activity was curiously restrained. They moved in preordained patterns— sometimes it seemed that they did not know in which direction they were travelling. Their eyes were focused ahead and yet they seemed to see nothing; they might have been wrapped in intense thought, but of what were they thinking?

  I bent over to listen to them; I tried to speak, but of course they could not hear me. I travelled down Old Street and saw that it was once a track in the wilderness. I came into Smithfield and flinched at the anger of those who lived beside it. In Cheapside the city itself had established intricate patterns of movement, and all the activity of the citizens was for its own sake. In Clapham I listened to them talking—have you got the time please he obviously wants the best price but he wants to sell as well I shall be off then shall I he never wants to hear the truth can you possibly tell me the time. And so their lives continued. They had no way of knowing that their earth was in a great cavern beneath the surface of our world. Their sky was the roof of a cave, but for them it was the threshold of the universe. I was walking among the blind. Yet when at night I looked up at the glittering face of the Mouldwarp heaven I, too, was entranced by it.

  I had thought that, when each night followed day, there would be silence and stillness; instead there was continual sound. When I walked in any direction, trying to find its source, it retreated from me with every step. It was then I heard it; this was the whispering and groaning of London itself. Neither was there any true darkness, since the horizons of the city glowed beneath the darker levels of the air. Beside the streets there were vessels of glass, or frozen water, which contained the radiance of the stars. Could I have invented such a place? The citizens wore close-fitting garments of many colours. I had expected them to be uniform in appearance, but instead they seemed to mock and parody each other. They seemed to delight in difference and to believe that there was no distinction between outward and inward. Does this surprise you? Only then did I begin to understand the nature of the Mouldwarp era. Of course they could not escape the tyranny of their dimensions, or the restrictions of their life within the cave, but this afforded them extra delight in contrast and discontinuity. Within the precincts of government and of business, of living and of working, they derived great pleasure from reversals and oppositions. The air was tainted by the inhuman smell of numbers and machines, but the city itself was in a state of perpetual change. No. Do not laugh. Listen to me. I soon discovered that they always wished to communicate in the shortest possible time; the most simple piece of information seemed to amuse them, as long as it could be gathered instantaneously. There was one other aspect of their lives which, I admit, I ought to have anticipated: the faster an action could be reported, the more significance it acquired. Events themselves were not of any consequence, only the fact that they could be known quickly. Now you are silent. Again I ask you: how could I have invented such a reality?

  When the citizens were young they tried to leap into the air; when they were old they stooped downwards to the earth, which they believed to be their final home. They did not know that they lived in confinement, and many were content. Perhaps they were happy simply because they fulfilled their form, but I also saw those who were tired and careworn. They were continually building and rebuilding their city. They took pleasure in destruction, I believe, because it allowed them a kind of forgetfulness. So the city continued to spread, encroaching upon new ground. It was continually going forward, forever seeking some harmonious outline without ever finding it. I tell y
ou this: Mouldwarp London had no boundaries. It had no beginning and no end. That is why its citizens also seemed so restless. They were consumed by the need for activity, but it was activity for its own sake. There may be a further explanation. It is possible that they continued at their fevered pace in the belief that if the pattern was interrupted they, as well as the city itself, might be destroyed. So there was a time for eating, a time for sleeping, a time for working. There was even a band of time strapped to their wrists, like a manacle binding them to life in the cave. They lived in small divisions or fragments of time, continually anticipating the conclusion of each fragment as if the whole point of activity lay in its end.

  Their time was everywhere. It forced them to go forward. When I saw them walking in great lines, it was time itself that was moving. But it was not uniform. I had expected it to be forever racing, never ceasing, but in fact it proceeded at different speeds according to the variable nature of the city. There were certain areas where it moved quickly, and others where it went forward reluctantly or fitfully— and there were places where it no longer moved at all. There were narrow streets in the city where I could still hear the voices of those who had passed through many years before. Then I made another wonderful discovery. There were some citizens of Mouldwarp who seemed to live in a different time. There were ragged people who wandered with dogs; they were not on the same journey as those whom they passed on the crowded thoroughfares. There were children who chanted songs from an earlier age and there were old people who already had the look of eternity upon their faces. You laugh at me. But I, Plato, have seen and heard these things. May I continue? They could sometimes glimpse images or ghosts of the spirit, but they would look away in disbelief or consternation. On occasions I noticed that one of them would intercept a brief look from some unknown citizen—both would glance at each other, and pass on, as if nothing mysterious had occurred. I knew then that their souls were trying to communicate, even through the fog and darkness of Mouldwarp. The ancient forms of speech and prayer were still in existence, but barely able to stir beneath the burden of this reality. So I heard words which the citizens could not hear, and observed moments of recognition or glances of longing which they never saw.