am home again, home with you & the children, & that I am finally & forever home, out of this bed & this hospital, away from this city & this country, from this hell. But then, of course, I open my eyes & I know I am not home, that I am still here, here in this bed in this hospital in this city in this country, in this hell, that those voices were not the voices of our children but the voices of vermin, of mice & of rats, in the walls & under the floor, muttering & whispering, & then I fear I will never leave this bed & this hospital, never leave this city & this country, that I will never leave this hell, that I will never hear the voices of our children again, will never see their lips move again, never even see their faces again. But I swear to you, Peggy, I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN, I will not let their experiments succeed, I will not let them get away with this.
So, as soon as I am able, I plan to discharge myself & check back into the Dai-Ichi Hotel. I plan to finish the task at hand, to correct all my mistakes, as quickly as I can, so I can then finally, finally put all this behind me & return to you all a new & better man, a better husband to you & a better father to the children.
With all my love, always, Murray.
*
Stamped TOP SECRET
From the Diseased, Infected & Plagued City,
In the Place & Hour of No God,
January 26, 1948
To whom it may concern, but not for the eyes or the knowledge of my wife or my children, or any who have felt or shown affection toward me. A second letter is for their eyes, and only their eyes.
I write this letter here and now, in this laboratory, at the end, not as explanation or vindication of my actions or inactions, but to document, and to warn. For I know now for certain that they have been experimenting on me and that they have been successful, that they are the ones who are behind the mutterings and the whisperings, in the walls and under the floors, that it is their voices that every day mutter and whisper, ‘Get up, Tommy! You still have work to do. Get up!’
They are the ones behind that voice on the telephone this evening – that thick and heavy-accented voice – that voice which said, ‘On your head are these dead.’
These men who never knock, who never introduce themselves, these men who sit and who stare, who watch me and who follow me, on the corners and in the doorways, in their protective masks and rubber shoes. ALWAYS FRIENDLY, VERY FRIENDLY. But I know I will never see their faces, never know their names, for they all wear masks – monkey masks, squirrel masks, but mainly the masks of mice, the masks of rats – white clay masks. THEY ARE THE RATS BOARDING THE SINKING SHIP, testing me, experimenting on me, in this city that has become their laboratory, with its double-plated windows and its paper-covered walls, THIS PLAGUED CITY that is their laboratory of the Apocalypse.
In this laboratory, IN THIS PLAGUED CITY, here at the end, I see the Angel of History and the Angel of Pestilence, and I feel the breath of their wings upon me now, and I close my eyes.
In the history of the world, there have been as many plagues as there have been wars. They rise and they triumph, then they decline and they disappear. But they always return, plagues and wars. They always return, these plagues and wars, to take men equally by surprise. Until now, now men have married plague and war in an unholy, godless matrimony.
And I see visions, visions of plagues, my eyes open / my eyes closed, the same visions. The dead rat on the stair, gray and yellow, the cat convulsing in the kitchen, a bloody red flower blossoming in its mouth. That is how it will start. The rats in the daylight, from out of the walls, from under the floors, they will first come in files, and then die in piles, six thousand dead in one day, burnt in bonfires through the night, and then the rats will be gone and the fevers will start, the swellings and the vomiting, the yellow and the gray, before the asphyxiation and then the