Six Meetings

by Andrew Nightingale

Six Meetings in the Blue Book
The "Blue Book" is a journal that the author kept over several weeks prior to his death that has brought to light a mysterious young man who visited the author a number of times without explanation.

1.
I was sitting by the lake today when a young man appeared and sat down on the rock beside me.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Nichtigall," he answered.
"Nacht," I mused, "and galan. A lover of nachtmusik."
"No," he said. "If my name were a riddle it would be nichtmusik."
I told him I thought the universe was created by the names we chose.
"Do you think so?" he said. He stood up to go.
"Do you know who I am?" I asked.
He didn't reply. I had my old leather briefcase between my feet. I lifted it up a little to give some impression of its weight.
"In here, young man," I said, "is all you need ever read about your soul."
He smiled.
"I have no soul," he said.

2.
The young man was waiting on my doorstep this morning.
"It's good of you to see me," he said, when I opened the door, "I have something for you."
He handed me a glass jar.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Volcanic ash," he said, "from Italy. Etna. You made me think of Empedocles. So here you are."
I took the jar and turned round to place it carefully on the sideboard in the hall. I inspected it for a moment in order to gather my thoughts.
"I respect your…" I said, turning back to the doorstep, but I could see the young man was already at the end of the footpath closing the garden gate.

3.
When the young man next called I took care to invite him inside without taking my eyes off him. We both sat in the leather armchairs in my study. It was just after seven in the morning. I had a visitor due at nine.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" I asked.
"Not at all," said the young man, "I'll join you."
He took a slim cigar from a fine silver case he had in the inside pocket of his jacket.
"Just a cigar," he said.
I laughed but decided to leave off my pipe until later.
"Would you care for one?" he asked.
At that point I recall the lights flickering and going out. We had been having terrible high winds. I heard the maid calling out.
"That will be the wind in the pylons," the young man said.
"'They have built the concrete that trails black wire…'" I quoted.
"So will you join me?" he asked again, holding out the silver case to me.
"Not this time, thank you," I said.
I remember the lights came back on shortly after.

4.
"I've brought you an essay," the young man said to me.
"What essay?" I asked.
"My essay," he said, "on the practice of burial."
I took it from him, cursorily scanned it and handed it back to him.
"I don't care for it," I said.
In order to explain my initial rather brusque reaction, I continued, "There are some things for which only poetry will do."

5.
"What have you for me, today?" I asked the young man as soon as he arrived. I was eager to get to the bottom of his visits.
He handed me a blank square of paper.
"Fold it once," he said.
"How?" I said.
"However you like," he said.
"Now what?"
"Fold it again."
We carried on like this until I had made six folds.
I handed the folded sheet to the young man and he opened it, smoothing it flat and examining the folds.
"So?" I said.
He produced a little notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket.
"A manual of my own devising," he said, as he started to search through the pages in the notebook.
I nodded.
"It lets me read your folds in the sheet of paper like I was reading a palm."
"So what do they say?" I asked.
He pored over the folds a while longer, counting how many times each fold was crossed by another, estimating angles. If a system is complex enough, I thought, it will yield results.
"Your reading," he said. "'You have come to believe in this reading but it's a reading that cannot be unfolded.'"

6.
I said to the young man, "Do you know who I am?"
He was silent for a long time.
In the end I asked, "What have you brought me this time?"
We were stood on the veranda and it had just started to snow. He caught a snowflake on his palm, closed his fist and proffered it.
"A kind of mandala," he said.
"Unusual," I laughed, "to have six facets."
Then, seriously, I added, "But it has no meaning, how could it be a mandala?"
"You're right," the young man said, "it's meaningless."
He opened his hand.
"It's the mandala of death."
I haven't seen the young man again.