Phase 8

Introduction

8 books in 8 years, beginning the 8th
of August 2008, ending on her 88th
birthday, Friday May 13th 2016.

However littered with seemingly facetious multiplicities of fantastical first-person narrative, the woman known as Orit's over-arching premise was that each book should be at first appear to the reader to be a simple instruction manual, for whom it is still unclear, a civil servant or landscape architect or sanitation worker,
Her translucent fingers, at least in Phase 1, as she would term it, in early stages of arthritis, scribbled defiantly: pencil on tissue; fountain pen on brown paper; biro on the corner of the telephone book; eye-liner on a bank statement when nothing appeared more speedily for her to release the contents of her creaking memory.
Each subsequent volume was to be an update of the first, there would be coded messages, some for the learned, others specifically for members of her own family to find an understand her and themselves. Numerological game, some of which could only be understood by those versed in scriptures, others by geologists, birdwatchers, the messages they revealed only understandable by political scientists, historians, coal miners, working together, her books would require widespread collaboration, a vast human project of unifying ambition.
Her daughter Mulualem shopped for her, nursed her daily, making the Minestrone she had enjoyed in her youth. Her grandson Kabede drove her daily to the library to research, his periodic outbursts she always received with calm.
Phase 2 would introduce a different pseudonym from the first. Hiram Liefmann became Leslie Sebastian Charles. Hundreds of pages of Phase 2 would appear identical to its predecessor, detailed reading of the repeated text would reveal occasional discrepancies, new codes, a game of revelation mirroring world events. For those who noticed, the frame of reference would have slipped 100 years into the future, though a reading that ignored this subtlety would still provide the reader with a story, and a message that could not be misunderstood.
Phase 1 was in its draft stage when Kabede was first diagnosed as one of the early sufferers of the condition, now spreading globally. The matrix of contamination, seemingly arbitrary, though attuned to nature’s pernicious circularity, found its way into the structure of Orit’s vision, eventually suggesting new angles to health researchers seeking therapeutic solutions.
Phase 2 saw Kabede bed-bound, Orit also remained at home now without him as escort. Mulualem found it too difficult, learning to drive, now caring for her son and mother. She looked for alternative accommodation, somewhere near the library, a bungalow, with specified amenities for both of them, and affordable with the state benefits she was awarded. Phase 1 had been released through the intervention of a sympathetic benefactor, Henry Millington and had not had a single buyer. It was carried periodically by a handful of local special-interest booksellers and was not reviewed. Orit was certain of the book’s eventual success, she was never disheartened, even by the circumstances under which they found themselves living.
The Phases of her literature were simultaneously analogous to levels of political office, eras in world history, classifications of flora and fauna, using each in forming structures of play, each a new update pack for devoted players, none of which existed. The Phases flowed to the dark rhythms of the disease, its progress across the Earth, its potential futures, its effect on her flesh-and-blood grandson and the undulating grief and guilt that she felt for him.
Phase 3 was written with some interaction from her readers and players. Some were bemused by this impenetrable text, unsure whether Orit was deluded or demented. A pilot, a student of arts, a cyclist, a curate, a shipping magnate, all 13 of her readers wrote back, and all their concern, mockery and curiosity became part of subsequent updates. From her more iniquitous correspondent, Federico Basco, Orit took the pen-name of this third in the series, her opportunity to forgive and understand, perhaps also to alter and improve him through the multifarious portrayals of her narrator.
Amendments to rules became the largest single component of this instalment. In it readers’ responses were developed and their words lent to characters. This excited existing readers, unintentionally confirming their reactions, and word-of-mouth began to spread.
Millington began to see sales, his losses were lessened and in his misguided zeal he thrilled at the thought of his having commissioning a work of genius. He moved her and her family into a new home in the suburbs, more suitable to their needs, near a health centre and a library which Orit would have to spend weeks getting used to. He donated greatly to the charity working on a cure for a new and deadly strain of the illness. She was gracious and did not complain, though her ambitious task was made the more difficult for it.
In Phase 4 Kabede made a startling recovery and a celebratory tone comes through in the text, only to be shadowed by knowledge that such reprisals tend to be short-lived.
Trips to the Synagogue became much more easily achievable for the family and Mulualem began even to socialise. She met Jeremiah Salzmann and the two became close, both widowed the pair would come to spend more and more time together, though Orit declined his offers of help, driving her or cooking. Her dislike for Salzmann, not based entirely on her traditional respect for mourning, was profound, yet as ever her pursed-lipped pride forbade her interject. It all became a part of Phase 4.
Writing as Faye Wayne, Phase 4 eschewed her increasing correspondence as material, preferring a wholly individual illustration of where the game should go. This fourth edition of the manual claimed to be more expansive, open to more possibilities, however singularly it circumvented her own idea.
Blank pages were included throughout Phase 5 for readers’ additional material, for cutting or pasting in ways explained, indirectly, by the many heroes and villains disguised as diagrams and recipes in translation. The text, often suspended between 60 or 70 pages of white, was all collaged from previous books, often so intensely that it was literally unreadable. Code breakers caught on to the works of this woman they saw as mathematical adept, slaved months on the text turning up clues that led nowhere. Others, readers with love for reading saw characters hidden, even in the blank parchment.
A crackpot fan, Mike Harman of Connecticut, wrote Phase 6, without being asked or allowed, within days of the release of Phase 5. Often self-consciously nonsensical, Harman returned to past characters, long forgotten, in an epic fan fiction, killing, curing, plunging into grand adventure between fantasy and the real, placing himself into the action with autobiographical aplomb and pleading zeal in support of the author.
That this grovelling was not in vain, proof was given in the shape of Orit’s ‘real’ Phase 6, titled “Guide to 6” wherein, by her now partially appreciated genius, she wove her own plot, tied to her sixth stage towards celestial unity and the sixth decline of empire, in a slim volume offering an ‘unofficial’ reading of the book written by her admirer Harman. Many of her notes offered comparisons between a real reading and the metaphorical nuance Harman could scarce have seen himself, that told the tale she had always intended to tell.
This more accessible and affordable book became a hit on Campuses in the US, UK, as well as being translated for the first time into Swedish, German and Japanese.
The translators, who had such trouble with her works and spent many long evening meetings with her at dinner wrestling with her concepts, found themselves working closely with her on Phase 7. Here began the critic’s doubts in Orit’s literature, the occasional sensationalist reviewer hinting their belief that her works were no more genius than the rantings of a bedlamite and that her more intellectual, that is to say pretentious readers were doing the work of putting together a picture of her vision on her behalf.
Her Swedish Translator Bibi Olafsson came on one of her long-haul visits and as invited to stay with the family. It was at this time that the grip of the illness took its unexpected turn, Adebe was among those hit, and Olafsson found that she was documenting the family’s struggle more than she was working on the book. Others found that Orit had regressed to speaking in Italian or Tigrinya, necessitating a second and third translator.
Eventually only part 1 and 5 of the 7 parts of Phase 7 were written by Orit in the end. The second was by Bibi Olafsson, largely a tale of Adebe’s death and the society of the disease, including a science-fiction tale of its future. The third by Professor Mitchell, Tigrinya language specialist, contained clues and biographical details not hinted at to the others. The fourth by Gunter Spier brought a selection of Orit’s characters to the brink of self-realisation, hinting at the climax to come. The sixth by Yakamoto Sumito has never been fathomed by translators, scholars, numerologists or the vast pantheon of the pseudo-scientific often called on for a more mystical explanation of her writing. The last part, written by Alezzo Mastini introduced Jeremiah Salzman as a character, and offered, if only from an exterior narrator, a warm and accepting picture of the man who had married Mulualem and eased her through her son’s death.
Each of the 7 parts of Phase 7 corresponded to each of the prior books, except for part 7 which was dedicated to circularity and the potential of infinitely delaying death.
Phase 8 was released posthumously on what would have been her 88th birthday, Friday May 13th 2016. It opened with three dots, was followed by a pressing of a Beech leaf, and seemed to contain nothing more than a scrapbook of odd and ends found lying around the house. Shopping lists, different coloured pieces of paper, empty cereal boxes, fruit stickers, pages cut from magazines. Her severest critics, even in death, cited Phase 8 as proof that her works were a mirage created by exploitative sensationalists. The hard core of dedicated readers have set up scores of internet sites and local societies dedicated to finally interpreting this final part of the story, some desperate to find finality for her characters, others looking for answers only hinted at before, for society, for individuals, for curing the disease, for unifying the cosmos.
Mulualem and Jeremiah Salzman inherited the estate and her works which continue to be reprinted and sell worldwide to this day.


Phillip Edward Johnson
Baltimore, 08/08/18