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Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271099.
Fandom: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Rating: General audiences
No warnings
Published 2021-02-07 for the Chocolate Box exchange
Words: 1,100
“We can't keep rescuing each other,” I said to Raphael.
It was meant as a joke. I did not want her to return to the House for too long and forget herself there. I could not promise to take supplies to her in the way Valentine Ketterly had done for me. I cannot bear the thought of playing such a role for anyone.
Having once had that thought, I cannot shake the question of who she would be, if she remained long enough in the House. It is as daunting a question as who I am myself. I answer to Matthew Rose Sorenson’s name; I live among his family; I retain, in a very broad sense, his understanding of the world and how to move within it. But that person is gone.
Natural processes, as I seem to remember knowing, are generally irreversible. They may be repeated—many larvae may mature into insects—but a butterfly cannot reverse its life cycle. A leaf, or a tree, or a forest, cannot be un-burned. And a statue eroded by a saltwater tide cannot gather back to itself the microscopic fragments of stone carried away by the water.
Because the loss cannot be reversed, and because I cannot properly feel it, I don’t mourn for Matthew Rose Sorenson. But I would mourn for Raphael, if she were to change. I do not know who she would become. The only example I have for comparison is myself. It is possible that not everyone becomes more trusting, after long years in the House; perhaps some would become more suspicious. Raphael is accustomed to difficult situations, to talking with people with questionable motives, to needing to be brave. Perhaps, if she stayed, her appreciation for the House’s beauties would be outweighed by her fear of its dangers.
That might not happen. She might become joyful there, might thrive in a world where the dangers were known and the beauties were infinite. Imagine if I were to visit her in the House—if I brought her a pair of shoes. Imagine she didn’t call me Matthew, or Piranesi, but some name according to how she would then know me—the Provider, the Friend. If I found her there, happy, surviving, attentive to the wonders of the House, and forgetful of everything she now knows—could I see it as other than a loss? Would I grieve?
When I left the House, I put on the ornaments that I had found or created for myself: my coral beads and pearls, my fishbones and shells. They came with me, and then I put them away. Matthew’s mother seemed to want to ask me a question about them, but she didn’t find the words. In the end she simply asked me if I was sure about cutting my hair. I said that I was. At the time, it seemed important to regain the ability to blend in. A trace of Matthew Rose Sorenson sighed at that thought, as if I were assuming a harness that for a time he had put off.
I saved my ornaments in a bureau drawer. As far as I know they are the same as they ever were, but that seems impossible, since I am not.
I have considered at some length Arne-Sayles’ explanation of the origin of the House. He seemed to find it very simple, a matter to be derived from first principles: the contents of the House corresponded to what was lost in the World. I accepted this at first, not knowing otherwise. I still do not know otherwise.
But Arne-Sayles spent very little time there, out of caution and, I have to suspect, a lack of insight. A lack of devotion. There are statues in the House of people I have seen in London. There are birds there, living birds, belonging to species that persist in this world. If these things are forgotten, I do not know what that means. Perhaps it is true that lost things—lost powers—escape from the World, through the House, to wherever they go afterward; that does not account for the presence that the living have there. And then—what Arne-Sayles alleges we have lost, we may never have had. He did not find it. Nor did I. Not did Valentine Ketterly, despite how intent he was on trying.
I should like to offer an alternate explanation, but my mind falters on this point. There is too much of Piranesi with me still. You cannot explain the House, he tells me, by calling it the leavings of this world. It is both less and more than that. There is much in the House that persists in the world; there is much the world has lost that I did not find in the House. I still know its Halls intimately, encyclopedically, but I do not have any special insight into their origin. Perhaps no person has ever both known the House and understood it.
Once, when I was troubled by questions, the statue of the Satyr seemed to say to me, Hush! Be comforted!
I visited him the last time I was in the House. “Is comfort all I can hope for?” I asked him. “Shall I not seek to understand?”
The Satyr regarded me with an expression of humour and patience.
I recalled how I had once thrown myself into his arms, dazed with confusion and fear. I used to consider myself the Beloved Child of the House, and the quality of belovedness still seems to me to hold a kind of truth. I believed that the House wanted inhabitants, to bear witness to its beauty and wonders. That might yet be true. And yet: whatever I can witness, whatever I can tell upon return, is not the same as what the world forgot.
Raphael found me in front of the Satyr. “Lost in thought?” she asked. She is respectful when I do not wish to speak, but I could tell she was anxious about me.
“No,” I said; I was in thought, but I was fairly confident I was not yet lost. She raised her eyebrows slightly, and I remembered that we had established a protocol for the days we spent in the House. “You remember your name?” I asked her.
“Sarah Raphael,” she said. “Do you remember yours?”
“I remember several, none of them mine,” I told her. She nodded, for this was, as best we could establish, the correct answer. We guided one another out of the House, knowing little more, but also no less, than we had known when we arrived.