Excuse Me While I Disappear

by Joanna Scott

Genres: Short Stories

Synopsis

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and "greatly gifted and highly original artist" comes a masterful collection of stories about the timeless universal struggle to connect (New York Times).

Joanna Scott, the critically acclaimed author of ten novels and two collections, turns her “incandescent imagination” (Publishers Weekly) back to the craft of the short story, with breathtaking results. Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.

In Venice in the Late Middle Ages, a painter's apprentice finds a way to make his mark on canvases that will survive for centuries. In the near future, after the literary canon has been preserved only on the cloud and then lost, a scholar tries to piece together a little-known school of writers committed to using actual paper. In present day New England, a radio host invites his electrician to stay for dinner, opening up new narrative possibilities for both men.

Written in prose so naturally elegant, smooth, and precise that it becomes invisible, Excuse Me While I Disappear asks what remains of our stories—as individuals and civilizations—after we are gone.

Release date: April 20, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 304

Sample

The Limestone Book

I only call it a book because he called it that. He said it was the greatest book ever written, and he was sorely sorry he didn’t have a copy to share with me.

He was the old man who had taken up residence in an abandoned encampment alongside the tracks. How long he’d been there, no one could say. Sanitation workers found him one morning after a night of heavy snow. With his eyes hidden behind the frosted glass of his Wellsworth spectacles, his arms rigid on the chair rests, he gave the appearance that he would never move again. One of the workmen reached out and poked the figure, producing from him a sharp inhalation. Startled by this unexpected evidence of life, the men reacted by lurching backward, tripping over the gravel ballast, and falling into a heap, one on top of the other.

The stranger, obviously alive, said nothing. He didn’t need to speak. He presided over the workmen like a judge, giving them the impression that within the span of a few seconds they had been found guilty and just as promptly pardoned, leaving them forever beholden to the stranger for their freedom.

Once on their feet again, they took turns asking the stranger questions. Who was he? Where was he from? Had he been left behind when the police cleared a band of vagrants from the area in December? The stranger refused to explain himself, though he did not resist when the sanitation workers lifted him by his elbows. Stiff as a mannequin, he let them carry him the few hundred yards to their truck. He made no complaint as the men fussed over him, lifting him into the passenger seat, draping him in a blanket, blasting the heat in the cab, and setting out in the direction of the hospital.

Once his spectacles had thawed, the pale green of his eyes glistened like pond water reflecting the noon sun. The black cashmere of his ragged coat—Italian made, we would learn from its label, with fine flannel fabric for the pocket bags—gave off the scent of damp fur. Between the satin of the lapels peeked a red bow tie, neatly knotted.

At the hospital he was undressed and clothed in a gown, poked with needles, infused with saline, and then added to the duties of the financial counselor, who, failing to extract any useful information from him, not even his legal name, was pleased to learn from a nurse about the existence of a wallet.

The wallet, discovered in the inside pocket of his coat, was of a vintage metal kind. Inside were more than enough large bills to cover the patient’s hospital expenses. General care for the patient was ramped up. The attending physician called in specialists, and a neurologist diagnosed Wernicke-Korsakoff’s psychosis due to excessive alcohol consumption—this despite the fact that no trace of alcohol showed up in his blood tests.

I was assigned to his case after the patient had been transferred to the rehabilitation facility and installed in a room of his own. It was determined that he did not match the description in any active Missing Person report. A short article about him ran in the local newspaper, but no family came forward to claim him. We assumed that he was alone and had fallen on hard times. My job was to assess his needs and place him in a permanent residence.

When I first saw him he was standing by the window. His room looked out on the frozen lake. At a later time, he would call my attention to the view, noting that between the thin ceiling of clouds and the snow-covered ice there was no differentiation. The added tangle of leafless branches along the shore reminded me of a drawing I’d once seen—I don’t remember the artist—of penciled lines scrawled on a huge gray canvas.

He was clean-shaven, with a head of silky white hair cut in a side-sweep style. His suit, in a Scotch plaid pattern, looked like it was made to fit a much larger man. There was a yellow stain above the top button of the jacket. I noticed that the leather of one loafer had cracked open at the toe. I was surprised he hadn’t suffered from frostbite.

He had his coat folded neatly over his forearm, as if he were preparing to leave. He announced in a voice that was surprisingly strong, given his emaciated condition, that he had been waiting for me. I explained that we weren’t going anywhere and asked if I might hang up his coat. He used the word “cordially” when he accepted my offer.

I surmised from his bearing and polite manners that he was far more cognizant than the report had conveyed. I began to suspect that his amnesia was, at least in some part, feigned. My approach changed within a few minutes of conversing with him. I saw that earning his trust would be a delicate process requiring patience. He was an educated man with a philosophical disposition. Initially, he preferred to discuss anything other than himself. He wanted to know what I thought about Facebook and electric cars. He asked if I had ever been to Disney World (yes), and whether I was married (no). He was interested to hear about any books I’d read that had a lasting effect on me. His interrogation of me continued through several meetings. In this way, Guy Fraiser prepared me for his own story: only after I had nothing left to tell was I ready to listen.

  

He admitted at the start that Guy Fraiser was a pseudonym. He wouldn’t reveal his real name. He kept other secrets, more minor, such as his age and the name of the village where he was born. He insisted that these things weren’t important.

His family raised goats and manufactured a crumbly cheese that was famous in the region; it was Guy’s chore to gather the stinging nettles that his mother would boil down to make the rennet. He described how he liked to go into the mountains to search for the nettles. One day, he climbed up to a narrow shelf below a limestone outcrop where he had never been before. A mound of soft Aeolian sand offered him a tempting place to rest and take in the view of the distant sea, and he had begun to level a seat for himself when the sand gave way beneath his hand, creating an opening to a hollow interior. He dug at the hole and soon was peering into a cave so deep that he couldn’t see to its end.

He went home and returned the next day with a lantern and two friends from the village. The girl, Pilar, and the boy, Matteo, were siblings and belonged to a large extended family that had made pottery for generations. Guy secretly hoped to marry Pilar, and so he put up with her older brother, though Matteo was known for his bad temper and the body odor that wouldn’t wash off, no matter how much soap his mother used on him.

Though it’s not exactly relevant, I don’t want to leave out anything Guy told me, so I will mention that though he had known Pilar all his life, he first realized she was beautiful when he saw her standing in the village square, holding the hand of a little cousin. The two girls had stopped to watch a traveling musician play his accordion. Pilar’s hair was pulled back in a single braid; she wore loose trousers colored a blue that matched the sky, and a cotton blouse, white and frothy like a cloud; her cousin wore a polka-dot dress. Both girls wore patent leather buckle shoes without socks. They stood facing the musician, listening intently as he squeezed the bellows of his instrument. Guy, who was just eight then, watched Pilar from the side and knew he would love her forever.

When, four years later, he convinced Pilar to explore the cave with him, she invited Matteo to come along. Matteo carried the pole of a broken broom to use against any bats that dared to swoop too close to them, and to smash the scorpions he predicted would be nesting in the crevices.

Matteo was a bully and a jughead, and Guy couldn’t hide his resentment when the boy proved right about the scorpions. The children saw them glistening red against the brown of sand and dust, their pincers waving, just inside the entrance. Guy tried to convince Pilar to continue past them, but she wouldn’t budge, not until Matteo took charge. He attacked with his broom, grinding the end of the pole against the nest. When he was done, the scorpions had been smashed to confetti.

The children pressed forward—Guy first, carrying the lantern, then Pilar, then Matteo. The dome of the cave gave them ample room, enough to stand at their full height, except where clusters of waxen stalactites hung low. The steady drip-drop of seepage echoed through the hollow space. In the rear of the cave, they saw evidence that other people had been there before them. Pilar found a piece of hammered metal that looked like a spearhead with the sharp tip broken off. Guy found a short length of rope that turned out to be made of leather.

They had grown up hearing legends about pirates who had buried treasures in caves and never returned; their three young hearts pounded hard at the thought that they would find a chest full of gold. They kicked and scraped at the floor, but the limestone was hard beneath the crusted sand. Disappointment replaced hopefulness as their efforts resulted in nothing but bloody knuckles and bruised toes. What good was a cave if it didn’t contain gold! Matteo swung the broomstick, knocking Guy hard on the knee—on purpose, Guy was sure, though Matteo claimed it was an accident. Guy held back his tears so as not to reveal himself to be a coward in front of Pilar. Matteo’s fury grew, his greed insatiable. He banged the broom against the wall, releasing a loud stream of crumbling stone. Guy thought the cave was collapsing around them, and he threw his arms around Pilar to protect her. His lips touched the back of her soft neck. Even as he cursed himself for putting his beloved in danger, he believed he would die happy if he died right there, with Pilar in his arms.

She wasn’t ready to die and pushed him away. The limestone stayed intact above them, and Matteo, who gave off a stink of rotten eggs, howled with laughter at Guy’s fearfulness. Guy was pleased when Pilar told her brother to shut up, and then he was brokenhearted when she said she wanted to leave that stupid cave and never return.

Guy lifted the lantern, preparing to light the way back toward the entrance. But then, behind a cloud of settling dust, he saw a new hole in the cave wall, opening to a separate space. He held the lantern closer to the hole and caught sight of a smear of rosy color on the slanting surface of an interior wall: a secret room—the perfect place for pirates to leave their treasure! He let Pilar hold the lantern so she could see for herself. Matteo pushed in front of her and began clawing at the hole, Guy joined him, and soon they had an entrance wide enough for the three children to squeeze through one after another.

The chamber where they found themselves had a vaguely rectangular shape, with walls slanting to a peak. The low ceiling was free of stalactites, the floor as smooth as polished marble. In the light from the lantern, the ochre color Guy had seen through the aperture slowly gained definition, revealing identifiable shapes. Circles became eyes, the joint in the stone formed a nose. Lines connected over a boss of rock into a hulking body of a bull. On the wall ahead of the bull were forms stained red, shaded with chalky white and yellow, with lyre-shaped horns, their legs tapering to delicate. . .