The Archivist

So what, then? Did Chiesa dream one night that the capo of the benandanti pressed his tall military snare into his hands, and then bowed away from him? That he himself then rallied round him all the creeping, fluttering souls of the benandanti and led them into the night sky? The seeds of that weighty dream must have been sown long and deep; others must have been reading Chiesa like an oracle for years, finding the answers they were looking for in him.

But Chiesa isn’t faring well these days. I know the signs too well myself: he’s sick of others and of the bargains he’s struck, sick of the very skin he inhabits. I wonder what he will do now. The mayor will die without his intervention, never mind that it’s all autosuggestion, pure voodoo—and Chiesa will be forced out of the library. He’s going to let it happen, stymied by an imaginary duty that will demand as well that he be gratified at such an outcome. But what will he do with his grief over the loss of his archives, his despair at the ruin of his career? I doubt there’s room in either of Chiesa’s claustrophobic worlds for these toppling, precarious structures.