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The deceased, so fragments of conversation and gossip gathered here and there suggest, apparently swallowed a bottle of poison at the table of an undistinguished restaurant known for its heavy sauces, too rich desserts, and haphazardly placed bowls of unidentifiable spheroids, many of them translucent.

There is the sweet chiming of a teaspoon against a crystal wineglass. The guests break off their conversations, refresh their drinks, and form a loose cluster at one end of the drawing room, at the other end of which, the deceased’s fiancée, looking now quite genuinely masculine, holds up a small painting. It depicts a kitchen window seen from just beyond a wooden fence. Behind the streaked, dirty pane, the blurred figure of a scowling young woman can be descried. She seems to be naked, or partially naked, and with her left hand stiffly held before her, makes a gesture of rejection. The fiancée, whose name is Jeanne Sousa, or Souze, holds the painting higher, and speaks. “Friends,” she begins, her voice low with emotion, or perhaps, feigned emotion.


FIRE


The publisher, Emiliano Soreau, has recently become enthralled by old news accounts of what was sensationally called “the holocausts of books,” “the maniac’s inferno,” and, less often, “the destruction of evidence.” He confides to close friends in the communications-and-media industry, or, as cynics sometimes describe it, the publishing business, that he’d very much like to find a top-notch professional writer—perhaps a cultural journalist turned powerhouse novelist—to do a history of the fire. He’d like someone with flair and intelligence and a respect for the public’s well-defined taste, someone to evoke that day itself, the events leading up to the disaster, the people and accidents and coincidences, as well as, of course, as Mr. Soreau puts it, “the blunders and heartaches, the heroism and the cowardice, the self-sacrifice of so many plain, ordinary people, the laughter, the tears, the joy and the agony, the searing questions and shocking answers, the sober postmortems, the why.” His colleagues nod and smile at the sound of these familiar, comforting words. Once again, they realize what a wondrous business they serve.

So far as Mr. Soreau can ascertain, the fire was set by the admitted maniac, Jonathan Tancred, so that he might destroy the entire inventory of the largest book warehouse in the world. According to Tancred, he felt that he was destroying evidence, destroying what he obsessively and repeatedly called “official memories.” A transcript of his interrogation notes that he said that “there are too many memories already.” In the course of this interrogation, Tancred spoke over and over again of a blue metal laundry hamper, a half-opaque-glass bathroom door which would not close completely, a toy zeppelin, and three young women in luminous white dresses by the shore of a dark lake. He insisted that the razing of the warehouse would allow a new past to be born, a wholly different past.

A photograph taken at the very height of the fire shows a group of firemen fruitlessly battling the terrific blaze. The walls are about to collapse, burying most of them beneath tons of scorching debris. Two of the men, standing on ladders leaning against one of the walls, are surely aware of their imminent doom. In the foreground of the picture, back to the camera, another fireman has a silver bugle slung across his shoulder.

Records reveal that Tancred, when shown this photograph, said that the tunes locked inside the bugle were also official memories, and so he had seen to the disappearance of the horn that very day. As Mr. Soreau reads this, he smiles as the words Day of the Silver Bugle come to him. It is wonderful to publish books that one loves, important books, responsible books, books that make a difference! So he thinks.

A week later, Tancred receives a letter from the Soreau Communications Group (SoreCo) at the Pelepzin Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He knows that envelopes contain memories disguised as scripted messages couched in clever alphabetical codes. He tears the letter into strips, and, somehow, sets it afire.


SNOWMAN


One morning a snowman appeared by the side of the road in front of the country house owned, for many years, by the famous dancer Olga Chervonen. The stark tree behind and to the left of the figure held its usual complement of snow, most of it, not unnaturally, on the windward side of the trunk. Somewhat surprisingly, the snow looked very much like fresh white paint, or, even more surprisingly, like a drawing of fresh white paint, that is, a drawing of, so to speak, nothing. The snowman’s face was somewhat debauched, sinister even, although no one remarked on this. No smoke came from Madame Chevronen’s chimney, although, inside the house were, in addition to the dancer, Edward Carmichael, the bel canto singer; Louis Bill, a charmingly unworldly tool-and-die maker; Isidor Martin, the biologist; and Claude Urbane, the internationally acclaimed polo player. They seemed warm and comfortable as they chatted amiably before a crackling fire. So the lack of smoke was, indeed, perplexing, and remains so.

The snowman, his tiny eyes glittering in the sunlight that slanted through the dead trees, was discovered to be holding a dried branch, which leaned against his shoulder and arm. It may well have been thought of as a rifle or a fishing rod or any number of other things. A staff, for instance. Or a spear. On closer inspection, the snowman’s aspect seemed not so much sinister as demented: the fact that his mouth was fashioned from dried leaves, grit, pebbles, and nameless detritus added to this impression. At certain moments, his eyes closed and then opened again, although this probably did not actually happen.

Inside the house, the group of friends talked over the mysterious letter which concerned certain scattered events of some fifty years earlier. The letter spoke of a woman at a sink, a barren backyard, an empty kitchen, and a voice from behind a door. Other occurrences were also detailed, although Louis Bill was hesitant to speak of them, as, indeed, were the others. There was a rumor at the time that a snowfall was also mentioned in the letter. Mentioned in passing, yet mentioned nonetheless. Isidor Martin noticed the snowman, and everyone crowded to the windows. There he was!