INCOGNOLIO Page 16

  “Oh, my,” says Hardwood Florence. “You really haven’t learned a thing, have you? And here I thought Pizza Guy had succeeded in convincing you that Author Muldoon and Protagonist Muldoon are equally fictitious.”

  “Look,” I say, “I didn’t come here to get embroiled in ontological debates. I simply want to know if anyone can tell me how to locate the Goddess Incognolio.”

  “That’s easy,” says beaver hat. “Just leave in a huff.”

  And that’s exactly what I do.

  Only after I’m outside getting drenched do I realize that I left my umbrella behind. I’d prefer not to go back into that room, but the rain is coming down so hard that I have little choice. I take the elevator to the sixth floor, but when the doors open, not only isn’t the carpet the same color as before, there’s no carpet at all. In fact, I’m staring out into empty space.

  Without even a thought, I leap into the void and find myself falling in slow motion, just like Alice down the rabbit hole. As I fall, I can’t help feeling that this is what I’ve been doing all along, from the very first sentence, leaping into the void, without a clue as to where I’m headed, taking it on faith that things will somehow work themselves out in the end.

  Whether I’ve been falling for an hour or a century I cannot say, but at some point, I hear the far-off voice of Incognolio calling out to me. It’s the sweetest, most soulful voice I’ve ever heard in my life. And as her voice grows louder, I no longer feel like I’m falling, but rather that I am being drawn inside Incognolio, letting go of my identity as Muldoon and gradually merging with the Goddess. It is just as I described it in my novel.

  At first, it’s sheer ecstasy surrendering my boundaries and expanding into the limitless freedom of Incognolio. I allow all my pain and guilt, my sadness and despair, to simply melt away. This leaves me completely unburdened as I open myself to the ocean of love that envelops me, immerses me in the unconditional affection and acceptance for which I’ve longed my entire life.

  And yet, as wonderful as it feels, some part of me finds such love intolerable. Like my father, Misha—who I invented, after all—I find myself resisting Incognolio, pushing her away, telling her that I don’t deserve such joy and rapture. At bottom I am bad, having killed Micaela’s Muldoon and indirectly caused Micaela’s death, having spent my life drinking and carousing, lying to everyone including myself, pushing away women who just wanted to love me. In short, that I’m a miserable wretch, unworthy of what Incognolio offers.

  The Goddess will not force me to merge with her, nor can she magically eradicate my self-loathing. Instead she releases me, and as I slowly emerge from her succoring embrace, I realize that only two alternatives remain: I must return to my miserable life or, even worse, be thrown into Mazazel’s monstrous Underworld.

  And as Author Muldoon sits in his study, imagining this agonizing bind and trying to capture the dilemma in words, he suddenly suffers a grand mal seizure, keels over, and dies.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  NAMELESS ONE

  After countless eons of nothingness, I was so bored out of my mind I couldn’t bear even just a trillion more years of Nonbeing. So I created two deities, Incognolio and Mazazel. At first it was marvelous, so astounded was I by their inventiveness, so astonished by their spontaneity, so entertained by their games and tomfoolery, their witty banter, practical jokes, and tall tales.

  Everything was idyllic until, one day, Mazazel went a little overboard with his teasing and hurt Incognolio’s feelings. She wept her first tears, a torrent of them, and Mazazel, horrified at what he had done, hid himself away, struggling with the primordial stirrings of shame, guilt, and self-recrimination.

  When Mazazel finally returned, no longer was he childlike or happy-go-lucky. Instead, he began to brood and think dark thoughts, and despite all Incognolio’s attempts to rekindle their closeness and show that she still loved him, Mazazel would have none of it. In fact, he began openly to taunt her, never missing an opportunity to embarrass and humiliate Incognolio, to wound and abuse her.

  I watched as Mazazel became increasingly sadistic and learned to ward off intolerable feelings of self-hatred by projecting his badness onto the Other—Incognolio—and in this manner, he grew outrageously confident and full of himself. Mazazel became convinced it was he who was righteous and she who deserved harsher and harsher punishments, which he was only too happy to mete out, although they served, in fact, to deepen his unconscious self-loathing, creating a vicious cycle.

  Meanwhile, as she managed to endure ever-greater dimensions of cruelty and torture, rather than stand up to Mazazel, Incognolio grew increasingly submissive, martyring herself, making excuses for her tormenter, and convincing herself that if only she loved him enough, she could rescue Mazazel, heal him, and ultimately transform him back into the sweet, compassionate Being he once was.

  I considered intervening at this point, to prevent my offspring from suffering. But I was curious to see what would happen if I left them to their own devices, and I enjoyed assuming the role of detached spectator, observing from a distance. Not to mention that I had grown weary of their fun and games and found these dramatic new developments far more compelling.

  Over the ages, Incognolio and Mazazel played out every scenario imaginable, repeated ad nauseam, until finally, out of desperation, they created the physical universe, with its trillions of stars, including the sun, and its quadrillions of planets, including the earth, and as if that weren’t enough, they fashioned an infinite number of alternate universes.

  Fascinated, I witnessed that on Earth, as on every other planet where intelligent life evolved, Incognolio and Mazazel were able to breathe new life into their dramas, now one step removed, as vast numbers of sentient beings played out the comedies and tragedies of their existence, struggling to negotiate the dual influences of Mazazel and Incognolio.

  Even better, as the various cultures developed storytelling—first in oral form, then in written—an endless variety of fictional narratives were produced, captivating me with their creativity and suspense, delighting me with their wit, challenging me with their insight and profundity.

  But there can be too much of a good thing. At this point I feel glutted and overstimulated, having been exposed to every conceivable plot, story line, adventure, anecdote, fable, fantasy, myth, allegory, cliff-hanger, potboiler, folktale, parable, parody, farce, romance, and fairytale that can or ever will be devised. So it’s time to close up shop, draw the curtains, lay down the pen, and pull the plug, bringing this round of Being to an end.

  I heave a colossal sigh and call Incognolio and Mazazel to my side, informing them that the time has come at last for them to disappear.

  Mazazel and Incognolio wail and moan. They beg me—O, Nameless One—to reconsider; put forth every sort of argument, disputation, and polemic; promise that they will try harder, be more creative, come up with better stories; and even threaten to depose me. But it’s too late, my patience has run out. I am fed up with the hustle and whirl of Being and long only for silence, sweet silence, and for the deep dreamless sleep of oblivion.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  DR. DICK

  That’s all well and good, you think to yourself. But where does that leave me, the Not-So-Gentle Reader of this tale, who sees that the story is drawing to a close, and—whether saddened at the prospect or relieved by it—wants to know what message to take away from the novel.

  “That’s entirely up to you,” I say. “Each reading of the text is unique.”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Sussman,” you reply. “You’re obviously trying to say something, so why not just come right out and say it?”

  “My take on the novel is irrelevant,” I say. “Haven’t you read The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes? He says the essential meaning of a text depends on the impressions of the reader. The author exists solely to produce the work, not explain it.”

  “How convenient! Perhaps I should collect your royalties as well.”
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  “Perhaps.” I smile.

  “So let me get this straight. Are you saying you had no authorial intentions whatsoever?”

  “Hey, I just started with the title, Incognolio, and kept on writing. If I had any intentions, my friend, they were purely unconscious.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. Even some of your characters offer interpretations of the proceedings.”

  “I take no responsibility for what my characters do or say. You know damn well that they take on lives of their own.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then maybe I’ll just grab your butt-ugly head and shove it down this toilet, you lying sack of—”

  I sigh and start over. I’m determined to get this right, but the odds are stacked against me.

  Given its unconventional structure, this story presents a unique challenge when it comes to devising an appropriate ending. Having intentionally left plotlines unresolved, I can’t turn around and offer a nice, tidy, conventional ending in which so many errant roadways neatly converge on a final and gratifying endpoint. A novel that has systematically defied the reader’s expectations cannot suddenly seek to satisfy them.

  In addition, the conclusion of a novel should feel inevitable. But how can I establish a sense of inevitability when the tale has meandered in such a random fashion?

  Moreover, I am no closer to comprehending the meaning of Incognolio than I was on page one. At best, I can assert that it can never be understood. Like incognito—I might point out—it derives from incognitus, the Latin word for unknown.

  And finally, I have strong internal resistances to endings of any kind.

  At a loss, I go to see my psychiatrist, Dr. Dick, the only person to have read my manuscript to this point.

  “Okay, you’re so goddamn smart.” I fling a check for last month’s sessions at him and we both take a seat. “Why can’t I write a decent ending?”

  “I detect a note of hostility,” says Dr. Dick.

  “No shit,” I reply. “I’ve been seeing you twice a week for nearly a decade, and where has it got me? If I had any balls, I’d report you to your licensing board.”

  “You are a deeply disturbed individual.” Dr. Dick carefully folds the check and pockets it. “Without my assistance, you would have killed yourself long ago.”

  “Thank you for making my point! I never asked you for help in keeping me alive. Au contraire, I made it clear from the start that my goal is to commit suicide.”

  “But as you are well aware, Mr. Sussman, your father is paying for this treatment. And he wants me to keep you alive.”

  As much as I’d like it to be otherwise, the check I handed Dr. Dick was written by my father, who at the age of eighty-three continues to support me financially, in exchange for which I agree to remain in therapy.

  “I’m not a child,” I say. “You work for me, not my fucking father.”

  “As you know, Michael, my Hippocratic Oath prevents me from doing harm, so I’d be acting unethically were I to assist you in ending your life.”

  It is at this moment that it dawns on me: My inability to end the novel is entangled with my inability to kill myself. For years now, the one thing that’s kept me alive is a grim determination to finish this book. As soon as it’s complete, I’ll have no more excuses.

  “So that’s why you’ve slammed every single ending I’ve written,” I say. “You don’t want me to finish the damn book.”

  “Nonsense.” Dr. Dick clears his throat, then straightens his tie. “I’ve told you time and again that your inability to conclude the novel derives from your unresolved Oedipal complex. Unconsciously, you fear that surpassing your father or competing with him in any way will bring punishment or abandonment. Therefore, you sabotage your own success and remain subservient to him.”

  “Spare me your Freudian dogma, dickhead.” I get up to leave.

  “We still have thirty minutes, Michael. Your rebellious attitude resembles that of an adolescent, who defies authority figures to conceal underlying feelings of impotent rage.”

  “You want to see rage?” I dash over to Dr. Dick and grab him by the neck. “I’ll show you rage.”

  I proceed to strangle my doctor, squeezing his throat as he flails his arms and gasps for breath, reveling in the sense of power and vitality that infuses my being. I’ve never felt so alive in all my life, and decide that as soon as I’ve murdered Dr. Dick, I’ll head straight over to my father’s house and kill him, too.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  GEMMA

  And now I must grudgingly admit that there is no Dr. Dick, nor have I ever subjected myself to the trickery and psychic violation known as psychotherapy. Moreover, I’ve really got no idea whether or not my father is still alive, on account of his having abandoned me and my twin sister, Gemma, when we were four. Perhaps it was that unspeakable loss that was the genesis of my compulsive lying, which has graduated to a vocation. Growing up, I found myself telling other kids that my papa was an explorer who embarked on an expedition—in one version to the North Pole, in another to the center of the earth, and in yet another to the moon.

  And since at long last I’m being honest, it’s essential to reveal that the whole time I’ve been writing this novel, I kept it from my sister, with whom I’ve lived my entire adult life, because I’m certain that she’ll be horrified by the incest scenes and will insist that I remove them.

  Such a request would place me in a horrendous bind.

  If I refuse, Gemma might never forgive me. Might even leave me. I’d lose my best friend, my lover, my goddamn soul mate. All over a stupid book.

  But if I comply, expunging every reference to incest—my metaphor for reunion with the split-off self—I’d be tearing out the very soul of my novel, in which I’ve invested the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears, not to mention several other bodily fluids.

  In a cowardly attempt to delay a confrontation with Gemma, I extend my manuscript, adding chapters, concocting further scenarios, figuring out new ways to avoid reaching the end.

  But now that I think about it, I realize that I’m using an imagined conflict with my sister to avoid facing my own ambivalence about going public with the truth. After all, what if I’ve misjudged Gemma? What if she doesn’t object to the scenes in question? Doesn’t even object to my identifying her in this chapter? If I knew she approved, would I then have no qualms about completing the manuscript and sending it off to my agent?

  Of course not. Because…

  One, I’m deeply ashamed.

  Two, I know I’ll be treated like a pariah.

  And three, I don’t really have an agent, do I? After all, what agent in her right mind would take on a client who is a pathological liar? A man who either is a perverted sister-fucker or, perhaps worse, labors creatively to give the impression that he’s a perverted sister-fucker.

  Indeed, what agent would willingly represent a novel that lacks a cohesive plot, a recognizable setting, characters with any depth, or a viable ending?

  Suddenly I’m furious.

  At the publishing industry, which has repeatedly snubbed me and refuses to take a risk on material that dares to be extraordinary.

  At Gemma, who treats me like an invalid and refuses to be open with others about the nature of our relationship.

  And most of all at myself, for ever starting this project and letting Incognolio, that insidious word, burrow into and colonize my brain, spreading through my gray matter like a cancer, expanding in scope until I can think of nothing else but the proliferating meanings of that diabolical word, which forever evades definition and identification and taunts me like a temptress who works me into a frenzy and then leaves me high and dry.

  Well, no more!

  There’s one surefire way to cast out Incognolio for good and end this torment: Blow my fucking brains out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  FADE TO WHITE

  After months of mourning, Gemma finds herself perusing Incognolio, and even though she despises Michael’s novel be
cause it was the instrument of his demise, she feels that the story captures his spirit and therefore decides to publish it.

  She sends queries to a handful of agents, selecting those who are open to transgressive tales that don’t fit neatly into established genres. But all she gets back are form-letter rejections, so she sends out another batch, and another—all with the same result, leaving her angry and dejected, unable to comprehend why no one will so much as read the damn thing.

  Then one day she receives an email from an entity named Quodon, bearing a subject heading that reads: Urgent Message! The dispatch is quite lengthy, so she decides to print it out, even though she has reason to suspect that she’s low on printer ink. It reads:

  Dearest Gemma,

  Do not despair. In what Earthlings perceive as present time, most of you are not ready for the novel titled Incognolio. Within twenty Earth years, however, it will be widely acclaimed as a comic tour de force.

  How do I know this?

  Because here in Incognolio—the dimension in which I reside—we are no longer slaves to linear time and instead have equal access to what you call the past and future. It was I, you see, who acted as your brother’s muse and guided the unfolding of his novel.

  I hope you will be comforted by the news that although Michael is deceased in your dimension, here he is very much alive, and is anxious for you to join us. If you wish to be reunited with your brother, we would be delighted to transport you to Incognolio, where existence is more wondrous than your wildest imaginings.

  Why, just yesterday—or was it tomorrow?—Michael was in the middle of frabulating his janx, when those rascals Bellyrumple and Schmerka dropped by and whisked him off to Level Seven, conjecturing it was high time that he experienced his first Transmogulation. After a light meal of luscious pampanus and makmaks, Michael was given a whiffling and fitted for an Alpha-Omega suit. No sooner had your brother plunged into the Flurge than wave after wave of euphoria cascaded through his neuroganglia, releasing every last trace of negativity and self-loathing accumulated during his numerous lifetimes on Earth, Knarval, and Zirconium, propelling him through the Vorpal Haze and the Ecstatisphere, headlong into the White Light of Incog…