Anna watched him as he dressed, in a way feeling glad that she did not yet have to leave the comfort of
the blankets, yet sorry that she may be left alone for much of the day.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I must go to work," Amphelios replied, he did not look at her as he buttoned his dress shirt.
"Your clothes look different than usual," the girl observed. "What sort of work do you do?"
"I am going to a place where such clothes are the custom, where I do what I am told. It is a matter of
sameness, of belonging and duty and guilt" he said wearily. The words sounded very childish in his
mind. Sameness and difference were trivial in themselves and belonging and duty were important to
him as a means and not an end. It could be said that he saw them a light of disdain at times.
Moreover, doing certain things for their own sake did not bring much good, so he believed in a
careless fashion, for axioms and statistics delighted him. In his youth he fancied the pursuit of
knowledge, but as he got somewhat older he settled for statistics on what is probable and observable.
Grandiose aspirations were well trodden territory and seemed to him unsustainable in the realm
outside the Castle, to which he was bound. Of course to this belief, too, guilt was attached.
"You do not like to answer questions directly," said Anna, rather displeased by such a reply.
"Yes," he said. "That is because I know very little. As soon as I say something I begin to dread that
perhaps it is not true."
"That must be an awful lot to dread, as it accumulates," the young woman sat up and adjusted her
night gown.
"Indeed, I am in a constant state of dread," he said earnestly in a sardonic tone as he did when he
spoke of something he believed was particularly likely to be true.
"And guilt, of course?"
" Why yes, how did you know?"
"The two fit well together."
"So they do," he nodded, putting on his socks.
"Tell me more about your work," she tried to smile.
"Very well," the Keeper paused to think for a moment, the words did not come readily to him and the
longer he thought the more he wished to leave the question unanswered. "It is rather unimportant
really – it would not interest you," he said at last.
"Oh but surely it does! I would not have asked otherwise," she forced a bit of laughter.
"Well then, it does not interest me," he replied more honestly this time.
"I see," Anna sank back into the bed. She did not feel like herself very much. The conversation seemed
strange to her, a thing distant and forced, like her laughter and his manner of speaking.
"I am sorry if I seem unhappy, I truly am glad – about you, that you are here," he spoke to break the
silence that had fallen over them. Amphelios turned to look at her, admiring her beauty in a
surreptitious manner, as though he were not meant to gaze too long at that which is in some unknown
way forbidden and in a plain way tempting. He felt that such a gaze would reveal too much of the
shameful or unwanted emotions that may or may not yet be.
"I did not think that exactly, that you were unhappy. Do you think that you are?" she asked, hoping
that the question was not too prying.
"In some sense I know that I am and always will be."
"I thought that you did not let yourself know many things, of all the things that you may choose to
believe that you know, why choose such an awful one?" she asked, disappointed that he had marked
himself down among the unhappy when there was so much mystery left within the Castle and outside
of it.
"Because I am too afraid to do the things that I imagine would make me happy," he answered, sitting
down beside her, telling himself that he did not mind being late for work, but minding.
"Why?"
"Because I am more afraid that if I decide to do them I will discover that they would not make me
happy after all. I am deathly afraid of disappointment, but that is not to say that I am not
hardworking, I fervently peruse a great many things for the maintenance of my pride. I am quite
accomplished in the real outside of the Castle, and as for within it, I am practically a god. Here I have
the power to make imperfect things that will worship me, so that I may fret over them and meddle in
my own haphazard way," he smiled with mock satisfaction.
"Do you mean all of the things that you say?"
"The more pithy, the more I think that I mean them at a given moment, and the more likely I am to
forget them – lest you listen to closely to them. Then I would worry and worry to no end that you
may have believed me!" the Keeper laughed.
"But it is true isn't it - that you're afraid of disappointment?"
"Why certainly, is there such a person who is not?"
"How dismal to answer fear with fear. But what if they would make you happy, those things that you
so dread will forsake you?"
"Oh but I must not take the hope away, that somewhere there is a light, I cannot take that risk. It is
like the moon, you look up at it and wonder and dream. If ever we were to stand on it, touch it,
measure it, and mark it as our own - then it would lose all of its holiness. It is the unknown that is
powerful," Ampehlios told her, quite proud of his aphorism, regardless of whether it were true. Already
he could think of many examples to support it; the mystique of actors and actresses, governments and
lovers, diseases and weather.
"Still, I think it is very cowardly of you," she said bravely, no longer feeling as intimidated by him
now that she knew him somewhat better. Anna wondered if such was really the case, about the power
of not knowing.
"I agree wholeheartedly," he said nonchalantly, a part of him took a certain pride in his surrender.
"One day I will tell you a story and it will make more sense to you, be patient for now."
"Do you have to go to work soon?" asked Anna, hoping that he would stay with her for much longer
still, wanting to know more and hopefully hear the story.
"I ought to have left already, but as I am terribly late I shall not go, it will probably be worse to go at
this point – I will tell them I am ill, for soon I shall be," he explained, in his usual manner.
"Ill! In what way?"
"I am awfully sad and soon I will start to bleed and feel nauseous," he laid back in the bed with his suit
on, not yet entirely decided whether or not to stay or go.
"Is sadness an illness? Why will you bleed?" her face appeared quite distressed.
"To the first question: a broken mind is as troublesome as a broken body, even more so," he stressed.
"And to the second, because my body, as my mind, is broken."
"Is there any chance that you are exaggerating the state of things?" she asked, thinly veiled was the
implication for the case against his view of things.
"Certainly not, have you no sympathy, shall you not entertain by bouts of self pity?" he scowled.
Feeling rather ashamed of himself, he fixed his displeasure on her.
Turning away he ruminated about his thwarted expectations for the morning, how he had hoped to
present himself and how it all truly unfolded. Things never went as he planned them, he wished to say.
"I do, I'm sorry," she deeply regretted her words, feeling that she had been unkind. "Please forgive
me."
"Such forgiveness is only for your benefit and not for mine, I am left as the fool," he covered his face,
letting himself go all the more so.
"How are you a fool?" she did not know if she understood him.
"I made a fool of myself with you, blabbing the first thing that came to mind in a sequence of ghastly
confessions intermingled with nonsense," he sighed, wishing that he could start over, wondering if
perhaps he might.
"It's okay, I am a fool too, everyone is, in their own way."
"It is banal phrases of that nature that I truly abhor, unless it is I who had said them," he dared not to
look at her, such was his shame. "Must we argue already?"
"Are we arguing?" she touched his shoulder and he moved away closer to the edge of the bed, feeling
ever more so like a child.
"This is not me, you must believe me," he urged her, wishing to shake the memories from her of the
conversation that had taken place between them.
"If it is not you then where are you really?"
"Be gone!" he wished to slap her and the wish brought him more shame and guilt. Amphelios got up
from the bed, forcing himself not to look at her, and left the room. Anna was left alone and confused,
feeling as though she would cry, him feeling likewise. Neither fully knew what had happened.
Such was the conversation that Amphelios imagined that night, unable to fall asleep. He tried to force
his mind to stop thinking of scenarios of such a sort in place of ones that were perhaps more
satisfying, or none at all. The latter would at least lead to a better night's sleep and the hope of more
fruitful dreams. He looked at the slender form of the young woman lying in the bed beside him,
finding the darkness of the room to be a peaceful thing, and her presence ever more so if he allowed it
to be, yet he could not stifle the sense of dread that had fallen over him.