BWV

Peter Billig
B W V

I befriended Compenius, an outstanding computer specialist, because of shared love for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. We spent evenings together listening to Bach’s compositions. Compenius had them all on CD and we came to learn them by heart. We would vie with each other, humming a tune and asking the other to name its number according to the catalogue Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis: BWV.
One evening, as we, satiated with the music, began to talk – about Bach, of course – the conversation touched the topic of so much of his work having been lost by his contemporaries, unappreciative of his genius. We were both concerned that perhaps the best compositions have been squandered forever.
“Just think of it: nowadays they publish the scribbles of any pipsqueak not fit to hold a candle to Bach!” Compenius complained.
“When I listen in the chronological order,” I said, “I have a feeling that some compositions sound out of the context, as if fallen from the Moon, while others seem to flow from each other even though they patently qualify as divergent genres. I’ll bet the fallen from the Moon are those whose predecessors, so to speak, have been lost.”
Compenius was listening with a growing interest.
“Unbelievable!” he exclaimed. “I feel the very same way!”
He was silent and there was a light of revelation in his eyes.
“Does it imply that…?” he murmured after a while and there was deep concentration in his face. Immersed in thought he did not even notice me leaving the flat.
Some days later, just before my going out to join Compenius for the next Bach-session, the phone rang:
“Be so kind as to refrain from further visits,” I heard the familiar voice and he hung up.
I was so hurt and offended that I did not even bother to phone him and ask for an explanation. I deleted this acquaintance from my address book and memory; I even quitted Bach.
A year and a half later, as I was beginning my evening yawns, the phone rang:
“Please, come at once!” an excited voice said and hang up.
It took a while to connect who was summoning me. I hesitated but curiosity got the better of me. I forgot my resentment, got hold of the coat and ran out.
Compenius opened quivering with excitement. He showed me the armchair without a word.
“Owing to your remark,” he began as if nothing had ever happened,” an idea crossed my mind: that only humanistic tommyrot about free will and unpredictability of human endeavors stands in the way of a mathematical conception of man. Accordingly, as Bach sat down to compose his first piece of music, he was beginning, unbeknownst to himself, to execute the artistic task assigned to him by Nature. Therefore, the subsequent compositions were consecutive phases on the way to the final result. Lacunae in a series of ensuing equations can be filled up. The challenge lies only in transcribing music into mathematics – and this I wanted to puzzle out. Unwilling to miss concentration, I allowed myself to sever ties with my ambience, and when I was finished with the theoretical part of the job, I have contrived an apparatus reconstructing the missing equations and converting them into music. The device is also capable of computing what Johann Sebastian would have composed had he not died earlier, and of bringing his artistic task to fruition; at this moment, Bach, should he live that long, would have perceived he has nothing more to say as composer. As I owe this idea to your words, I have invited you to the inauguration. To begin with let’s find out what Johann Sebastian has composed between BWV 333 and BWV 334!
Compenius went over to the contraption on his desk and pressed a button: some unfamiliar tones issued, though somehow expected and anticipated.

Copyright © Peter Billig, 2007.

THE INITIATE A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
THE INITIATE
A Saul Vogel Mystery

I invited Vogel to sample this year’s hemp harvest. We sat on the porch, smoked in silence and waited for the stuff to take effect. It was great. My mind made me a squirrel, jumping from bough to bough into the forest, further and further from the house.
“Good shit!” My employer’s voice came from afar. “I did pot in my hobo period, Floyd liked to share ganja with me. Remarkable man: when high he could become someone else. When he meditated on being an insect bugs from miles around would gather around him. When he was a bird, all the feathered friends would arrive. Earthworms surfaced to listen.”
“A veritable Saint Francis,” I said opening my eyes.
“Were you a squirrel?”
“Did it show? Was I cracking my nuts?”
“Just look.” At the steps of the porch, some three of four dozen of red squirrels were gathered gazing expectantly, as if waiting for me to reveal something important they could not think up themselves, us humans purportedly being the consciousness for all earthly life. I was sorry, but I could not think of anything to say.
“You have the knack, too,” Vogel went on and I felt that it was an important discovery for him. “Floyd told me, as we shared marihuana and local booze in a meadow, that during one meditation – being a turtle, to be exact – he had chanced upon a specific level of consciousness and found some two hundred human minds there communicating by thought transference. It is they who control the consciousness of the human race. From this level, they can read the lesser mortals’ minds and insert chosen thoughts and feelings into them. Floyd liked to mix good things, as I do,” Vogel pointed at his Bushmills bottle by my joints. “The mixture must function as a cloaking device since they did not discover his presence.”
Vogel drank some whisky, even though the weed was blowing his mind fine enough.
Somehow, I knew that he was working on a similar device.
“By mixing cannabis and alcohol, visiting regularly and eavesdropping, Floyd learnt that they belonged to a group calling themselves the Org, out to control mankind. It has been going on for thousands of years. There have been so many disparate creeds and philosophies from the first light of humanity – on one tiny planet! You think that conflicting political outlooks, revolutions, incompatibilities among peoples and individuals, jingoisms, wars, ego-trips and such like are a natural product of the human nature, the human psyche, right? Wrong! It’s the work of the Org, controlling the minds of religious, political, intellectual and scientific coryphées to keep mankind at odds, never at ease, always stressed and fighting, unable to reach their level of awareness. You think USA is the superpower now? The acronym’s ORG! Has always been! Whenever a person, who could smoothen things up, cannot be controlled, they have him/her assassinated, crucified or locked up. The chief reason I wanted you as my assistant is that you, like me, can’t be mentally controlled. They can read your mind but cannot implant their garbage into it.”
He lighted another joint and emptied another glass while I was taking all this in, including my unfamiliar imperviousness to Org’s scheming.
“It’s hard to believe,” I said at last. “Had I the aptitude to control human minds I would have made them do sensible things instead of warfare. That would give me a real kick!”
“So would I. We are both idiots: no taste for power.”
He poured a glass for me. I was fine with my smoke, but I accepted, feeling there was a reason for it.
As the liquor reached my brain, I had a message for the squirrels. I don’t know what I said or in what tongue; they seemed uplifted, though: they nodded and disbanded.
Vogel poured me another, I drank and realized that he had been kidding.
“Org, shmorg, my ass!” I looked him straight in the eyes. They met mine intrepidly:
“Exactly what I had told Floyd. He gave us another roach, another drink and told me to meditate on being a turtle. Soon, we two met on the Org level. The minds of the Orgs present there at that time were transparent spheres, everything inside visible. Our cloaking contrivance was functioning perfectly: we were undetectable. By concentrating on the mental processes of the spheres, I found all Floyd told me to be true. The Orgs also keep people’s minds on nonessentials like sport, TV, movies, books, sex, recreation, games, cyberspace and such like. I also ascertained the identities of the minds at hand. You would be surprised! Gentle, modest and inconspicuous people: who would ever suspect them of any fiendish supremacy? I was astounded, forgot myself and made a comment to Floyd. That blew our cover: the Orgs in attendance got wise to us and wanted us to declare we were joining the Org and accepting the group’s aims. Tasks are meted out to prove the loyalty of new members – a standard procedure for admittance of the eligible few who make it to this level. New members are required to spend more time here, scanning the ordinary minds to detect early signs of human harmony in the bud and to inspire action against that and the small number of people, who cannot be mentally bent. It’s imperative. Humans have a natural proclivity to harmonious coexistence and mutual respect and they would develop in this direction if left unimpeded.”
“It stands on the head everything we know about ourselves… And you accepted...?” I was overtaken by a sudden fright, as it happens when I am high.
“Relax! We refused, even though we were aware that the Orgs had our identities and geographic bearings by then, as we had theirs. We told them to shove it and got out back to the meadow (in Communist Bulgaria), turtles crowding on us. Floyd told them something and they dispersed, and we were alone with our bravery, now dissipating fast. As we got up to move on, a peasant appeared and shot Floyd dead. He took a potshot at me, too, but I ducked behind a rock and crept into a forest. Next day, as I was crossing a road, I was nearly hit by a bus and a day later Bulgarian militia organized a manhunt: to the populace, I was described as armed and dangerous lunatic, better killed than caught alive.”
Vogel was shaken by the memory, but there was defiance in his face.
“Obviously, since you are alive and kicking, Master, you had it fixed with the Org somehow... or you fixed the Org?” I suggested with sudden optimism, also typical when I am stoned.
“Would the world look like it does had I fixed the scum? No, as the police dragnet passed me by (I hid in a lake, breathing through a reed) I relaxed the best I could. Devoid of pot and liquor, I meditated intensely on being a turtle and made it to the Org level. What a pity types like that were first to arrive there, not the likes of you and me! They were all present, plotting the next attempt on my life, my lucky escapes having sounded all alarms. They were bewildered and impressed by my sudden appearance, though, and accepted my promise never to visit the level again nor to reveal the existence of the Org to anyone…”
“You just broke your word by telling me!”
“I gave the word under duress and besides we are well cloaked. I have been waiting for the right moment to strike. Somebody has to take them on! Let’s go! Perhaps you, with your fresh mind, will find their weak spot? Relax, imagine you’re a turtle, safely covered by your shield… and keep your mind shut!”
His abrupt style was too fast for me. I began to ask questions but got stopped in mid-sentence by an attack helicopter materializing out of nowhere: it was hovering above the ground, its armory of guns and missiles aimed at the porch. Through the cockpit’s bobble, I could see madness in the eyes of the pilot.
I made in my pants. Vogel raised hands to indicate surrender, and the helicopter hovered, as if waiting for instructions. Then the pilot regained his senses. His crazy eyes became aware. Bewildered what he was doing here, he flew away.
“We have been pinpointed!” I cried. “You idiot, you drank only after telling me about the Org! We’re lucky they just wanted to send a warning!”
“Your weed’s so good,” he said crestfallen. “Never realized they were keeping an eye on me after all these years. Scary, eh? So few of them and so much to do: six billion minds to scan!” He thought it over and added: “Don’t worry. We’ll get the bastards one day or my name is Mayer!” and to console ourselves, we kept improving our cloaking device, especially on the liquor side, until late hours.

A year later I read that the red squirrels of our country, whose very existence has been under threat because of the encroachment on their habitat by the gray imported variety, better suited to the environment, had regained the upper hand and were fighting back, recovering lost ground.
This I deem a fitting conclusion to this account.

Copyright © Peter Billig 2007

THE COSMOSCOPE A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
THE COSMOSCOPE
A Saul Vogel Mystery

Vogel invited me to share a bottle of a very exceptional alcoholic beverage:
“I drank this wonderful drink years ago, at my initiation into the Totoraq tribe, and I had breathtaking visions. Expect a unique experience,” and he poured liberally. The bottle had been sent via a vacationing anthropologist stationed with a tribe of Amazonian Indians, the Totoraq.
The stuff was good, we got drunk, but nothing happened whisky would not have provided.
Vogel was disappointed and puzzled. He booked an air ticket to Brazil, took his cellular phone, his WDR (wave-detector-recorder) and was gone. There was no doubt that in his Totoraq period he must have made an important assumption, now proven wrong.
A month later Voss arrived, a wizard engineer, who builds customized gear for Vogel against liberal invoices. His van, a workshop on wheels, took over the garage.
He constructed a UFO-shaped outhouse and furnished it with high-tech equipment. True to his unforthcoming nature, he would tell me nothing. Even though he would let me step inside with the lunch tray, whatever he was building – especially the electronics – was covered, and he would ask me to leave immediately. When finished, he simply disappeared without a word.
“It’s the Cosmoscope,” Vogel told me arriving the day after. “Let’s launch it!”
He unlocked the door. The interior was air-conditioned, the domed ceiling was covered with wiring and electronics. There was a control panel and two adjustable armchairs.
“At my initiation as Totoraq”, he said, as we sat down, ”I had been given that drink and taken to a cave where I had powerful visions. The initial ones concerned the well-being of my tribe, the final one was different. In it, I was sent into a new dimension and stopped by a wall. I tried to jump over, but it was too high. I tried to crash through – to no avail. Recently, when the Totoraq sent me the bottle and nothing happened, I understood the visions had not been in the drink. I realized, too, why they sent it: they wanted me back. I found them deeply in trouble with the neighbors and the authorities. We Totoraq are an independent-minded breed. I was initiated again, into the council of elders this time, given no drink, but taken to the cave. New visions ensued, which gave the tribe fresh ideas as to how to solve the problems, I’m proud to report. My private vision of old was repeated, and again I was stopped by the wall. I’ve got a feeling that surmounting the wall is of capital importance,” and he run his fingers over the control panel’s keyboard.
“The visions were not in the drink, but in the cave!” it dawned on me at last. “You recorded the waves inside the cave and sent to Voss ordering an electronic copy!”
“Let’s play test pilots. Voss was too scared to try it out on himself,” and he punched “Enter”.
The lights went out, a purr was heard and my consciousness sped out of the body into a new dimension. I wanted to scream, but my vocal cords were left behind. I braced myself for an encounter with a danger, but all I did was to stop suddenly in front of a towering wall, stretching into the horizon in both directions. Vogel stopped beside me, attacked the wall head-on and bounced off like a rubber ball. He jumped, stopped just short of the top and set down.
“Didn’t I tell you?” He sounded angry and impatient.
“I associate wall with gate. Have you considered looking for one, Master?”
“We Totoraq are too independent-minded indeed! Which way would you recommend?”
“Left, it works in my dreams.”
Being Totoraq, he went to the right, though, and after some speeding along the never-ending brick-mass we found a defined space dotted with letter-slits by the thousand. Most were open, allowing a flow of white and black balls to pass within. Some were closed and the unaccepted balls, coming out of space in thousands of unending lines, formed heaps at the foot of the wall.
Vogel converted himself into a black ball and leaped head-on into a slit, only to get spat out and land on a heap: “Shit!”
“Easy, Master! The lines of balls make me think of information bits coming as if by cable from different places. You might get in through the slit for information from our place.”
“Good thinking!” and we gave the slits another look. They all had inscriptions in different characters, symbols, pictograms and scrawls. All were outlandish, and we got bored before I saw something familiar: ץראה רודכ – and I showed it to Vogel.
“Kadur ha-aretz, “Earth” in Hebrew,” he said and jumped into the slit. I changed into a ball, too, and followed in. It was a narrow corridor and the balls were moving through in the orderly fashion they had entered. In front, I saw a solitary black one jump others over and I followed the example, not to stay behind. At last, we landed side by side on a spacious, slowly revolving disk, packed with balls. A tube would come from above and suck blocks of balls up and the empty spaces would be filled up with newcomers. Vogel-ball jumped forward into the section to be sucked up and I-ball followed. With countless thousands of others we were lifted from the disk and thrown in the same pattern onto a lattice where we were stopped by the small-sized meshes. Vogel-ball contracted and fell through to the other side, and I followed suit.
We landed by a computer screen. There was a person in white clothes by the desk, his fingers busy with the keyboard. He had a pair of white wings on his back. The desk stood under the boughs of a fantastic plant in a park bursting with fanciful vegetation, pleasant sounds and delightful scents.
We sprang to the ground and assumed our prior forms.
“Who the heck are you and why?!” the winged one exclaimed with a stern look.
“Humans from planet Earth,” Vogel replied with a bow, “and we come in peace.”
“Earth’s my desk. We call it Y-12/ZBB-22, and humans – ZZ-12Hs. How did you get in?”
“Via your computer, posing as bits,” I said and bowed too.
“Impressive. And you choose to arrive exactly now… What a coincidence!” He was thinking fast. “Come with me, there is someone I want you to meet.”
He led us through the park. We were awed by the abundance of plant, insect, bird and animal species, the likes of which I had never seen before. I wanted to stop and have a closer look, also into the ponds by the path, which were teeming with indescribable life forms, but the host walked too briskly for that, hating to come late to an important meeting.
“We call it his laboratory,” he commented. “He calls it his playground.”
Before I could ask who “he” or “we” were, Vogel, I and the host arrived at a table where an old man with a white beard sat modeling a clay figurine. It had three heads and six arms. The twinkle in his eyes expressed childlike joy of creation. Biting the tip of his tongue, he was giving the final touches to his handiwork. Two others of the kind were on the table, apparently finished.
Two of the winged kind stood by the table, watching the progress of the artist’s work and talking together in low voices. They gave Vogel and me a once-over, nodded to our guide and made a military-like row before the artist. Our host joined in, Vogel and me flanking him.
Somebody coughed, the artist sighed and raised his head.
“Yes, the evaluation,” he said looking right through Vogel and me. “Begin, please!”
“Good news from planet N-73, constellation GNM-88: model ZZ-73B is finally doing fine after third intervention,” one of the winged ones said.
“Splendid!” The artist was animated, but this disappeared, as the other winged one said:
“Nothing good about ZY-31D from planet G-73, constellation SKK-11. The model is still making wars after our fourth intervention.”
“Design a fifth intervener and we’ll evaluate,” the artist decided.
“ZZ-12H, planet Y-12, constellation ZBB-22,” our winged one said. “Fifth intervention has failed. The model is still allowing divisions into nationalities, which is leading to bloody wars. The model is still using violence in politics, causing more deaths. According to the Rules, it means irrevocable exclusion… unless, of course, the Rules be changed…?
“Yes!” the two others exclaimed. “The Rules be changed!”
The artist closed his eyes, deeply in thought, and said in a sad voice:
“I’m sorry, exclusion it shall be! Stop our business with ZZ-12H, close the slit and come back to get your new assignment. You’ll be thrilled: it’s a three-sexed brand-new TRS-99 to be launched on M-99, constellation LTT-27,” the artist indicated the figurines. “You recall: the recycled planet vacated by the excluded model GR-99F, which didn’t make it without our help, even though it bragged it would. TRS-99 will never fail you the way ZZ-12H did, I’m sure.”
It sounded like a tempting bargain, but our host turned to us and said:
“It will be exclusion, gentlemen. Your ass, not mine.”
He did not have to repeat it. We stepped out, bowed and Vogel spoke:
“Sir, as a specimen of the ZZ-12H model I beseech you to reconsider. What we have heard here was all about our imperfections, but nothing was said about our achievements. For example, quite a sizable portion of us have understood, from the perspective of our bloody history, that all ZZ-12Hs are equal, being products of the Master’s hands.” Vogel bowed again. “In this spirit, we have created human rights, international law and global organizations working for peace. We are abandoning the concept of imperial state of one nation enslaving another. In Europe, we’re building a multinational union – and some of the members have been waging war upon each other only recently! We male ZZ-12Hs have begun to give the rights back to the females of our model,” and he looked the artist straight in the eyes.
The artist was visibly attentive now. He returned the look and said to our winged one:
“What interventions have you employed, Gabriel?”
“As instructed, Sire,” was the reply. “The first three, the Buddha-Jesus-Mohammad triangle, were to create unity among the ZZ-12Hs through a common religion. The scientists were to establish unity by (Darwin) enlightening people as to their common ancestry and the floating boundaries between all the species on Y-12, and (Einstein) by proving the relativity of time and matter and giving thereby another point of view. In my opinion, Sire, there is nothing wrong with the ZZ-12Hs, just too few interventions,” and Gabriel laid a wing on my shoulder.
The artist seemed shaken, and I said, sympathetic of his predicament, with a sudden boldness, and feeling protected and prompted by the wing:
“The prophets are only dividing us, Sire, each religion claiming the sole ownership of the ultimate truth and fighting the others. And some of us ZZ-12Hs do not believe in Darwin’s theory, and most do not understand Einstein. Way over our heads, Sire, pardon the censure. We could use another intervention, something workable. Should the Rules be in the way, how about a change… please, Sire?” …” I stopped, feeling too bold, and bowed very low.
“New Rules, Sire! New Rules, Sire!” the winged ones demanded in unison and I felt the entire public opinion behind me.
The artist was lost in thought again then he nodded.
“Right,” he said, “the Rules be damned! You fellows tell the others and design some better Rules. Let’s have a General Assembly in, say, a month’s time?”
They nodded, and He looked at me in a dismissing way. I bowed and stepped back.
“Gabriel, design a smart new intervention for the ZZ-12Hs and come to talk about it in a week’s time. ZZ-12Hs can’t be that bungled if two of them made it all the way here,” the artist said, and the angels were enthusiastically clapping their hands now and beating their wings.
“Dismissed,” he said and returned to the TRS-99 on the table.
The others left, not without an appreciative pat on Vogel’s shoulder and mine. Gabriel led us through the park, asking additional questions about the failures of the previous interveners.
We came to an open gate (where we would have arrived, had we followed my recommendation to go left) and said goodbyes, Gabriel working in his head already.
We stood in the open gate and I was wondering how to get home when a sound of a gong was heard: the Cosmoscope was about to reverse the process. In my mind, I thanked Voss.
The wonderful feeling of being back in the body and stretching in my seat, Vogel in his.
“Let’s hope Gabriel will design a good intervener,” he said. “Another scientist, perhaps?”
“I think it will be many concurrent interveners, Master. You know: the Age of Aquarius. The challenge and rescue for us ZZ-12Hs will be to reconcile their teachings simultaneously.”
“Qui vivra verra,” he replied.
“Phone Voss, Master. By now he must think we have died in that contraption of his.”
“You phone him. He complained you never offered him a conversation, you boorish man!”
“What?!”
Vogel laughed, happy to be back, mission accomplished.

Copyright © 2007 Peter Billig

THE LOST BOOKS A Saul Vogel mystery

Peter Billig
THE LOST BOOKS
A Saul Vogel Mystery

When a re-run of I Claudius was announced on TV, my Master’s reaction was adverse. Only my solemn assurance that I know Robert Graves’ books the show is based on and that they are excellent made him watch the first episode – and he was captivated! Every Sunday he would wait impatiently for the Roman emperors to appear: the fatherly Augustus, the sex maniac Tiberius, the madman Caligula and the phony idiot Claudius. Also the wives: Livia the poisoner, Julia the drunk, Drusilla the victim and Messalina the whore. The plot was so stimulating that when the show was over, my Master, until now obstinately illiterate (to avoid cluttering up his mind with other thinkers’ philosophies), decided to learn to write and read.
I taught him our alphabet and orthography and he learnt the other orthographies himself: he is fluent in thirty languages and copes with many more: knowing, say, Danish, you grasp Norwegian and Swedish.
He spent his childhood and youth roaming the world as a vagabond with pals of all nationalities.

To get acquainted with all the necessary alphabets and orthographies he was buying dictionaries and grammars by the dozen. Previously virginal, his study now saw three enormous shelves fill up. The breakneck speed of this learning shows to this day: sometimes, he applies Turkish orthography to English.

After six months, Vogel considered himself literate. Never forgetting his objective, he now swallowed up Graves’ I Claudius and Claudius the God and wanted to know where the author had drawn the historical stuff. I suggested Suetonius’ biographies of Roman emperors and Tacitus’ volumes of Roman history. He had experienced some Latin (wandering with a dipsomaniac classical scholar who actually spoke it) and now he systematized it by reading several progressively more difficult constructed Latin texts. Then he jumped into the lives of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius via Suetonius’ biographies, supported by Lewis’ and Short’s A Latin Dictionary. Next, he took on Tacitus´ Histories, read for several weeks and suddenly came to me in tears: after a few chapters in the Fifth Book of Histories the text abruptly ends, never to reappear. A consultation of the newly bought Oxford Classical Dictionary showed this fact as known to science and much regretted. Tacitus’ Annals Vogel was planning to read next is even more lacerated. All of Caligula period is gone and there are other lacunae comprising whole chapters and even books.
“Also books have their fates.[1] The ones you desire aren’t just misplaced but lost forever,” I elucidated and proceeded to explain a Roman text’s arduous way through history. “Whatever we have has been copied onto parchment by monks in the Middle Ages. Perhaps one monk did not like Caligula? Or monastic mice did like him? Is it Fate that mice like Tacitus more than Cicero? Perhaps it’s much better for posterity not to know about some of Caligula’s hideous crimes and Tiberius’ disgusting sexual deviations?”
“Are you trying to tell an illiterate that there is no way of retrieving these texts?”
“I guess I am, unless a hitherto unknown copy is discovered in a murky corner of some library. Or the Norwegians succeed in unrolling the Herculanum scrolls: you know, from the library buried by lava during the great eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD,” and I proceeded to explain the Norwegian method, which unrolls an inch or so of a scroll a year.
“Many years to wait and only if, incidentally, the Norwegians have taken Tacitus first,” he says.
“They can’t,” I blush. “The volcano erupted in 79 AD and Tacitus began to write after this date, according to your Oxford Classical Dictionary. Sorry, my mistake.”

All next week, Vogel was disconsolate. He was reading everything he could get his eyes on concerning Tacitus: man, oeuvre and times. In order to understand the world of books, he aked me to take him to a library, his first ever, and he talked about Tacitus with me, visualizing the historian. Tacitus the scholar: researching in one of many private and public libraries in Rome and chatting with owners and librarians. Tacitus the politician: he became Governor of a province, a job for high-ranking administrators only – accessing some forgotten corner of Emperors’ Archive where Caligula’s infamous Black Book was once kept. Talking with an old-timer about days long gone. Receiving a secret diary of some long-executed conspirator kept by a sentimental niece. Writing or dictating to his scribe. Talking with the publisher. The manuscript being dictated to 50 “printing presses”: slave-copyists. Two Roman gentlemen meeting shortly after at a party:
“You know the booklet about the Germans by this guy Cornelius Tacitus?[2] You know, one of the praetors three or four years ago?”
“No, but they keep telling me it’s interesting.”
“It’s very informative, old chap. What low-life they are! Our boys do a good job keeping the brutes out up there on the Rhine.”

“Unless you are the incarnation of Tacitus himself and have a sudden flashback, Master, you’ll never know what was in the lost books. Why not face it, accept it as an adult and go back to the business of Philosophy – now as a man of letters?” I said after some more imaginative exercises of that kind.
“I just can’t! I’m not finished with Tacitus, whatever the reason.”
Raising his arms into the Cosmos like antennae, he intoned in a desperate tone:
“Corneli Tacite, libros tuos perditos desidero!”[3]
He went upstairs, presumably to sleep, but a loud vocalization from his study woke me in the middle of the night. I investigated: he was by the desk, reciting Latin into a tape-recorder, and his face was that of an obsessed. He was sentient, though: he saw me and motioned me away.
In the morning, he asked me to put the recording into the computer. I had tried to talk him into upgrading the machine to include voice recognition, but he found the cost prohibitive. I had to type, unceasingly stopping and restarting the tape-recorder. Bored, I was making many mistakes, having forgotten my high-school Latin, so – a hallmark of literacy! – he relieved me at the keyboard. It took weeks.
When finished, he appeared with malt and glasses.
“I heard a voice inside telling me to listen and write down. I did not feel up to writing yet, so I choose to repeat and record. The voice dictated all the lost books, chapters and lines in Tacitus. I am happy to inform you that Robert Graves has been real good at reconstructing missing events. A pity I can’t share the erstwhile lacunae with him!”
It took some booze to accommodate the news.
“Are you telling me that an angel from the celestial Post Office brought these puzzle-pieces to you because you were so sorry they were missing?” I replied finally.
“I think there is a Spiritual Layer where all thoughts are stored.” His face shone with that Special Light he exudes whenever he is speaking Words With Capital First Letters. “In some houses ghosts come into view and enact the same scene every time. I’ve seen it once with my own eyes! If an extremely emotional moment can be recorded in brick or stone and replay itself, why shouldn’t thought-energy get recorded in spirit? A person interested enough gets connected to this Layer on an appropriate level: Rudolf Steiner wanted all events and got the Akashic Records; Graves wanted scenes from imperial characters’ lives and got them as a clairvoyant film, which he called imagination; I needed texts and I got them, the clairaudient way! There are people who in trance speak languages they could not have known!”
“If everybody developed such faculties we would be an entirely different species, Master.”
“I’ll drink to that.”

Some years later, I read that a palimpsest had been discovered with a fragment of a lost Tacitus text. I found the text on the Internet. Not a single word was different from that on Vogel’s old diskette.

Copyright © by Peter Billig, 2007.
[1] Habent sua fata libelli: a popular quotation from Terentius Maurus’ Poetics, where the last book is lost, too.
[2] De origine et situ Germanorum.
[3] Cornelius Tacitus, I desire your lost books!

FROM ANOTHER SIDE A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
FROM ANOTHER SIDE
A Saul Vogel Mystery

Domicile is well hidden in the woods, poor times, though, found their way here: Vogel was moaning in his sleep and was down in the dumps during the waking hours. Every time a new invoice came, he would swear aloud. At last, he muttered something about shaving my wages off, as (quote) one can’t make something out of nothing (unquote). I let it pass but he began to talk about selling his beloved Porsche – and suddenly he was ashamed of his defeatism:
“You’re right,” he said, although I had not uttered a word. “A wise man should not grumble but make the nothing become a something!”
He got excited and I knew that even though he won’t find a new source of income at once, he will be pointing his resourceful mind in that direction.
His newfound optimism stayed overnight (no moaning) and throughout the morning, even though the mail brought a sizable bill for the maintenance of his much-loved vehicle. He did not utter a single profanity but knit his brow and addressed me at breakfast:
“All through the night dreams were repeating one scene only: a guy is telling me something important through a glass door but I can’t hear him. I try to open – it is locked. I punch codes in but can’t get the right sequence, no matter how hard I try.”
“You are too intellectual. Smash the glass!”
He liked my advice.
The next morning, he was exalted but ignored my questions. Instead, he ordered me to lecture him on Plato’s thought. He kept on nodding during the lecture, albeit not as one philosopher trying to comprehend another but as a schoolboy cramming a subject.
“What invention would be the most appreciated by humanity?” he asked then.
“A remedy for cancer or AIDS?”
He nodded and kept checking the time all evening, impatient to go to sleep.
In the morning he was sour.
“Could you suggest some non-pharmaceutical invention?” he asked.
“An accumulator capable of storing maximum of electricity inside a minimum of bulk. It would enable efficient non-polluting cars and help avert the greenhouse effect.”
He nodded and ordered a repetition about Plato; I obliged but hated every minute of it. He waited excitedly for the night to come and was radiant in the morning he but locked himself in his study whence he reappeared at noon with a wad of handwritten notes.
“Let’s go to the Capital!”
In the well-maintained Porsche we speed to the City as if there were no speed-limits, police or people on the roads. With the brakes whining, we stop in front of the Patent Office. The waiting inventors go berserk hearing what we brought – a super-accumulator! They let us jump the line and the experts take to their heads repeatedly, as they read and take in his notes.
It was evening when they finally let us go home, the patent firmly clasped in Vogel’s hand. The answering machine had already recorded some offers. Vogel disconnected the phone and as soon as we finished supper I bombed him with questions.
“So you smashed the glass? Who was the guy? What was Plato for? Where does your technical expertise come from?”
“The guy is from the other side of the glass door – also in his dream. He didn’t have as good an advisor as I,” he bowed, “so he was happy when I smashed the pane. His world is technically more advanced and he is an engineer.”
“What about Plato?”
“Barter. Compared to us, they are underdeveloped philosophically over there.”
“Why not remedy for cancer or AIDS?”
“Cancer and AIDS are unknown to them.”
I took it in and said:
“In a far-off galaxy a guy has patented Plato’s philosophy as his own, and here you make a buck on something invented in some freak dream-related reality…”
“I am expecting more than a buck! And I deserve it: in-dream memorizing of formulas one doesn’t understand is a pain in the neck. The guy’s job was easier: you are also a talented educator and I just repeated your words.”
“Where would you be without me? Shall we say fifty-fifty? And why the breakneck speed? You had it written down on paper.”
“Bell patented his telephone just an hour before his competitor arrived to patent his.”
“Such a crucial invention should perhaps belong to all humanity?” I suggested.
“Will humanity pay your salary every month? Will humanity service my car?”
“You’re right,” I replied, and he went over to reconnect the famous invention of Bell’s.

Copyright © 2004 Peter Billig