Notes from Underground
The first note was in the box of books I was unpacking. I don't know how Ivo missed it when he packed my things. That long thin slanting scrawl so unlike any other.
I'd know Danny's hand anywhere.
At first I thought it was one of his letters, that maybe Ivo had found it amongst the things I'd taken, meant to place it elsewhere and then gotten distracted.
But, no, Ivo doesn't get distracted. A herd of stampeding wildebeest couldn't deter him from a task. He had carefully selected which books to take, knowing my tastes better than I. He wanted me to have comfort reading - books I read and reread when it was dark and stormy outside and I liked to sit in my father's chair, snuggled up in a cover my grandmother had knit so very long ago.
And why would Danny's letters be in Aldeburgh? I'd left them in Ivo's flat. He had returned them to Isabel, not wanting to keep them but unwilling to destroy them either.
Next I decided I had brought the note with me, tucked into my bag when I moved. But Ivo had packed me for the move. What was the likelihood that he had overlooked it then?
It was the contents of the note that rattled me. It was nothing of Danny's I had ever read and I was pretty certain I had seen all surviving traces of him. It wasn't a letter at all. It was a curious short writing, almost like a book review of sorts. But not even a real review. Just four sentences on a piece of yellow legal pad paper. An arcane philosophical statement that rendered me greatly disturbed.
Dostoevsky's Underground Man was conscious of his problems and understood that his acts were not just. Yet he did nothing to change his life, preferring inaction and avoidance rather than resolution.
Many reject the notion that things happen for a purpose because man does many things without having any purpose and this is what dictates the course of human history. Do you think your actions stem from a need for revenge, some irrational desire to inflict suffering on others?
Why did I have the uncanny feeling that Danny was addressing me?