The traveller found the empty room because she was looking for somewhere to sit.
This seemed, later, an appropriate beginning.
She had been walking since morning.
The city was quiet.
Not silent.
She had learned that silence was difficult to find there.
Even the quietest streets contained footsteps, voices behind walls, the movement of shutters, the distant closing of doors.
But the city was quieter than usual.
Perhaps it was the weather.
A pale mist had settled between the buildings, softening their edges.
The traveller had lost sight of the river.
She had lost sight of the towers.
She had even, for a while, lost sight of the end of the street she was walking along.
Then she saw the door.
It was open.
That was all.
No colour.
No number.
No inscription.
An ordinary doorway in an ordinary wall.
Beyond it was a room.
She entered because it was there.
The room was empty.
She stopped.
There was nothing remarkable about it.
No furniture.
No window.
No picture.
No fireplace.
No dust.
The walls were white.
The floor was stone.
The ceiling was low.
There was only the door through which she had entered.
She stood for a while.
Then she sat down.
The floor was cold.
She leaned against the wall.
For several minutes she was grateful for the room.
It asked nothing of her.
There was nowhere to go.
Nothing to examine.
No voice from the other side of a door.
No strange inscription.
No corridor leading somewhere she had not intended to go.
Just a room.
Empty.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, someone was standing in the doorway.
It was the innkeeper.
The traveller was not surprised.
She had stopped being surprised by the people of the city.
“You found it,” he said.
“Yes.”
He did not enter.
She looked around.
“It is empty.”
“Yes.”
“Has it always been empty?”
The innkeeper considered this.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“No.”
“But you know about the room.”
“Yes.”
“Then surely you know whether there has ever been anything in it.”
The innkeeper smiled.
“That depends what you mean by anything.”
The traveller sighed.
She had hoped that even the city had limits.
“What do you mean?”
He looked into the room.
“There is something here now.”
She looked around.
“No, there isn't.”
“There is a room.”
“That isn't what I mean.”
“No.”
He stepped inside.
The traveller moved aside.
He stood in the centre of the room.
“There are walls.”
“Yes.”
“A floor.”
“Yes.”
“A ceiling.”
“Yes.”
“A door.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
“So it is not nothing.”
The traveller frowned.
“Of course not.”
“Then what is it?”
“Empty.”
“Of what?”
She opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
The innkeeper waited.
“Of things.”
“Which things?”
“Any things.”
“Any things?”
“Yes.”
He looked around.
“Then you are here by mistake.”
She laughed.
“I mean other things.”
“Which?”
She pointed vaguely.
“A chair. A table. A bed.”
“Why those?”
“Because rooms contain them.”
“Not all rooms.”
“No.”
“Then what is this room empty of?”
The traveller looked around again.
She had thought the question simple.
It no longer was.
The room seemed to be empty of whatever she expected to find there.
But she had not expected to find anything.
That was why she had called it empty.
The innkeeper sat down beside the wall.
“Did you come here looking for nothing?”
“No.”
“Then how did you recognise it?”
She looked at him.
“I saw that there was nothing here.”
“But you had never been here before.”
“Yes.”
“So how did you know what was missing?”
The traveller looked around.
The room had become uncomfortable.
Not because anything had changed.
Because she could no longer see it as she had before.
She had thought emptiness was simply the absence of things.
But absence from where?
And absence of what?
She stood.
“Perhaps the room is empty because it contains nothing.”
The innkeeper nodded.
“That is one way to say it.”
“And?”
“Perhaps nothing is what you call the difference between what is here and what you think ought to be.”
She stared at him.
“That would mean emptiness depends on expectation.”
“Perhaps.”
“That cannot be right.”
“Why?”
“Because the room would still be empty if no one came here.”
The innkeeper smiled.
“Empty of what?”
She looked towards the door.
The mist outside had thickened.
For a moment she could see nothing beyond the threshold.
The doorway seemed to open directly into whiteness.
She walked towards it.
The innkeeper spoke behind her.
“Be careful.”
She stopped.
“Of what?”
“Of calling something nothing.”
The traveller turned.
“What else should I call it?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why warn me?”
“Because once you call something nothing, you may forget to ask what has gone missing.”
She looked back at the doorway.
The mist moved slowly.
There was no street.
No wall.
No city.
Only white.
She stepped closer.
“Is there anything out there?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“The city.”
“I can't see it.”
“No.”
“Then, from here, there is nothing.”
The innkeeper shook his head.
“From here, you cannot see the city.”
She looked at him.
“That is different.”
“Exactly.”
The traveller returned to the centre of the room.
She began to walk around its edges.
Four walls.
Four corners.
One door.
She touched the stone.
Cold.
Solid.
She counted her footsteps.
Twelve along one wall.
Ten along another.
The room had dimensions.
It occupied space.
It excluded the city.
It contained her.
Nothing, she thought, could do any of those things.
She stopped.
The thought seemed obvious.
And yet she had never quite thought it before.
A room was not nothing because it was empty.
It was something arranged in such a way that something else could be absent.
She turned to the innkeeper.
“Can nothing have a place?”
He looked pleased.
“Can it?”
“I don't know.”
“If nothing were somewhere, would that somewhere not be something?”
“Yes.”
“Then where would nothing be?”
She looked around.
“Nowhere.”
“And where is nowhere?”
The traveller laughed.
“You're doing it again.”
“What?”
“Turning questions around.”
“Only because they have handles.”
She sat down.
For a while neither of them spoke.
The room became quiet again.
The traveller began to think about beginnings.
She remembered the house with the courtyard.
The tree older than the house.
The room that had become possible.
The door that had not existed until she had approached it.
She thought of the city before the corridor.
And the city after.
Then she thought of the question she had once taken for granted.
What was there before there was anything?
She had always imagined the answer.
Nothing.
It seemed unavoidable.
If there had not yet been something, there must have been nothing.
But now she saw the difficulty.
Before what?
Before there was anything, there could be no place in which nothing was.
No time during which nothing continued.
No boundary between something and its absence.
No room.
No outside.
No before.
She looked at the innkeeper.
“Can there be nothing before there is something?”
He was silent.
She continued.
“If there is truly nothing, then there is nowhere for it to be.”
“Yes.”
“And no time for it to last.”
“Yes.”
“And nothing for it to be the absence of.”
The innkeeper smiled.
She looked towards the walls.
“Then perhaps nothing only becomes possible when there is something.”
He did not answer.
She waited.
At last he said:
“That is a dangerous thought.”
“Why?”
“Because people become attached to beginnings.”
The traveller laughed.
“So do doors.”
“Yes.”
He stood.
She looked at him.
“Where are you going?”
“Elsewhere.”
“Is there somewhere else?”
“Usually.”
He walked towards the door.
Before leaving, he stopped.
“Do you know what this room was called?”
The traveller shook her head.
“No.”
“The Empty Room.”
“That seems obvious.”
“It was not always called that.”
“What was it called before?”
The innkeeper looked around.
“There was no before.”
She frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“It was not a room before someone entered it.”
The traveller stared at him.
“But it must have been here.”
“Must it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at the walls.
She wanted to say that the room had existed before she entered it.
Of course it had.
It could not simply have appeared because she needed somewhere to sit.
And yet the city had already taught her caution.
Perhaps the question was not whether the walls had been there.
Perhaps the question was whether the room, as a room, had.
A room was not merely four walls.
It was a distinction.
An inside.
An outside.
A place one could enter.
A place from which something else was excluded.
She looked at the innkeeper.
“When did it become a room?”
He opened the door.
“When there was somewhere else.”
Then he left.
The traveller remained.
The room seemed larger now.
Or perhaps smaller.
She could not tell.
She walked to the doorway.
The mist had cleared.
The street was there.
Buildings.
Windows.
A dog sleeping beside a wall.
Someone carrying a basket.
Somewhere in the distance, a bell.
The city had returned.
She looked back into the room.
For the first time, she understood why it was empty.
Not because there was nothing there.
But because it had become possible for something to be absent.
She stepped outside.
The door remained open.
She turned to look at the room.
The walls were still there.
The floor.
The ceiling.
The cold air.
The space.
She almost closed the door.
Then she stopped.
If she closed it, the room would still be there.
Wouldn't it?
She smiled.
The city had taught her better than to answer.
So she walked away.
After a few steps, she turned around.
The wall was blank.
There had never been a door.
There had never been a room.
Or perhaps, she thought, there had only been one after she had left.
She continued walking.
The street opened before her.
A child ran past.
The child was carrying a wooden box.
He stopped.
“Have you been somewhere?”
The traveller considered the question.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
She looked back at the blank wall.
“The empty room.”
The child nodded.
“What was in it?”
She smiled.
“Enough.”
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