The Music of Erich Zann

A poor student takes a room in a crooked house on the Rue d'Auseil, a steep street that appears on no map he can later find. Above him lives Erich Zann, a mute viol player in a theatre orchestra, who makes strange music alone at night. The old man befriends him, then grows terrified when the student mentions the view from the garret window.

Zann does not play for pleasure. He plays to hold something off, night after night, a formless power that answers from the dark beyond the window, where there should be a city and there is only black infinity. The story ends with the window open, the music a frenzy, and the street itself gone from the world. A tale about unearthly music is the Archive's natural subject. Here it becomes a figure that will not resolve.