The Grey
Life, Chapter XIV
Salvatore
and Anne did not get along. Not that I was surprised. I knew both of
them well enough to have guessed that their strong personalities
would clash. I think it was out of deference to myself that each
refrained from haranguing the other too openly. They both derived a
dire sense pleasure from the practice of declamation, and they were
also quite good at it. But Salvatore was on his happy pills that
evening at Liberty reservoir, and Anne was quickly coming to the
conclusion that if she was not to isolate herself completely from my
friends then she was going to have to behave a bit more personably.
Canine,
on the other hand, was unseemingly shy around her. It was something
that bordered perhaps on fear, depending on how you viewed my old,
black friend. He was polite whenever she spoke to him, but the
interaction between them rarely transcended the trivial. I can
perhaps count on a single hand the number of times he had initiated a
conversation with her. But that was Canine. He was still coming into
himself, even then, and had not yet reached that critical crisis in
his present existence. It would change his whole outlook on life
forever.
So
that evening, somewhere towards the end of January before classes
began, Lee, Canine, Salvatore, Nicholas, Tom, Anne, and I drove up to
Liberty reservoir with nothing more in mind than starting a fire and
smoking some really good pot. We parked Salvatore's car behind Tom's
Chevy pickup, beside the small, winding road off which sprouted a
number of good hiking trails, and passed through the quickening
forest, the soft boughs and the murmurs of life as we used to know
it, long ago before humankind learned to build cities. Lee, Tom, and
Nicholas walked in front chattering comfortably. Behind them were
Antonius, Salvatore, and Canine. Bits and pieces of their tattered
conversation came to Anne and I, following not too far behind them.
Antonius was talking to Canine about love. Occasionally, Salvatore
would jump in with some smart remark and the three of them would
laugh. That was, of course, one of the reasons why I needed them so
much. They were the only ones with whom I could laugh at such simple
things.
But
I was not really paying attention to whom was ahead of me or what
they were saying. Anne was next to me for the first time in years,
matching my solemn gait in the cool darkness of the forest, huddled
in a great, grey sweater she had brought from France and trying not
to shiver. At first, we walked in a muted silence, forced, like
thunder in its own way. We waited for the others to drift farther and
farther ahead, until finally their voices carried dimly through the
sleeping air only in splendid snatches. The dark forms had been lost
in the full, black canvas of the shadows draped across the branches
of the crooked trees. And still we did not utter a word.
I
opened my senses to the forest, felt the ancient yet subtle power of
the earth around me, knew that it was slumbering - had been, for
several long ages - and that one day it would awaken. But my dull,
human organs were incredibly blunted when it came to the exploration
such ideas, and I knew that much remained hidden.
After
a short while, Anne spoke from the splotched darkness, as if she were
answering a question. "It's been a long time."
I
was calm, finally. Somehow, I found the strength in the irony of the
situation to answer her. "It could have been sooner."
She
looked at me, taken aback perhaps that I spoke what I meant. "You
have changed, you know." A sarcastic smile directed deep within
herself overcame her face, and she dropped her eyes. "I have
changed, too." Now she laughed, in much the unfettered way that
I had once known, when we were children. "But things are so
different now. You have Shanai." She was trying to gauge my
commitment to her, I knew.
"And
I'm sure there is someone back home." Somehow, we had lapsed
into French. I always enjoyed conversing in that language, if only
because certain things were easier to say.
"There
was," Anne began, but she chose not to finish.
"Is
that why you came back?"
"No!"
she answered sharply. She did not speak for a few moments. We walked
beneathe the slender dome of life, together in mute agony. I tried
for even a glimpse of voices, but they had wholly receded now. When
she realized that there was nothing yet I had to say to her except
that one unspoken question, she asked, "Is that what you think
of me?"
I
shrugged with indifference. "I don't know what to think."
"Hey,
look, David, you aren't the person I was expecting either."
"How
am I different?" I could not help but ask.
"When
was the last time you played the piano?"
The
question struck me firmly. "Not since I left New York."
"Six
months?"
"A
little less." A remember thinking detachedly how amazing it was
that all this had only spanned a few, recent months. Then how was it
that I couldn't remember anything that had happened before?
"And
you spoke pot, snort cocaine. I don't know what else."
"Eat
mushrooms," I reminded her.
"Yes,
and trips. Are you proud?"
"No,"
I replied. I hesitated then, trying to capture my feelings into words
and having great difficulty. "You can't explain to someone who
hasn't tried. I do it because otherwise I'd pass through life without
ever understanding so much. Revelation, you know?"
But
she didn't know. "You're crazy, David," she answered me
bitterly. I don't think she knew how much those words affected me.
"How can you call false euphoria true knowledge? It's not even
natural."
"Pot
is a fucking plant, Anne."
"We're
not just talking about pot!" She stared at me wildly for a
moment. "Don't you realize you're living a fake life, that all
you're emotions are artificial, and - and -"
"And
what?"
"I
don't know!" She was practically screaming at me now. "I
don't do drugs!"
"Did
you have my child?"
The
sudden bluntness of the question must have taken her aback. Her steps
lurched to a halt. I think she just remained there, head cocked to
one side, staring at me with such hollow hurt that for a moment I
thought I had actually struck her. I turned and faced her in the dark
forest light. "Did you?"
"David."
Was she asking me to stop? I do not know. It does not matter.
"Did
you?" There were unspoken accusations in the air, millions of
them, hidden beneathe the dead leaves on the forest floor. If I had
wanted to I could have railed against her and felt justified. But I
did not. The need for restraint was critical.
"Yes."
Her answer was spoken so softly I could barely hear it through the
rustling of the wind racing through the bare branches. It took a
moment to register, but when it did I felt rising within such a
mordant passion that all I could do was turn on my heels and walk
swiftly away, like a mute denial of everything that had been. Of my
child who was almost four whose face I had never seen. Anne followed
me with her eyes, but she made no move to come after me. The vaguely
individual sounds of the forest were suddenly loud in my ears, and in
the veiling nightlight I felt that anything was possible. Stumbling,
I fell to my knees somewhere ahead and vomited off the trail. I
continued until there was nothing left except that bitter liquid
which scorches the throat. But somewhere I felt that such ludicrous
pain was befitting. And so after I had finished I remained kneeling
where I was, my hands desperately covering my face.
"Stand
up." Anne was insistent behind me. I had been so caught up in my
own dismay that I had not heard her approach. The words she threw at
me were bitter and torn, at once hard and strong as they were
intended to sting. But what more could she have expected of me than
rejection? I had been foolish enough to believe once that things
would always remain as they were.
Wearily,
I climbed to my feet, and we continued on our way.
"A
son?" I asked simply, with as little inflection as possible.
"Yes."
Her reply was equally as inscrutable, bedecked with the echoes of
great boulders dropping into place.
"When
was he born."
"In
May. The fifth." Our conversation must have sounded much like
clockwork it was so mechanical.
Soon
the voices of my friends impressed themselves upon the crippling
silence that had drenched the two of us. I couldn't have been happier
for it. Anne's presence was making me uncomfortable, and I wasn't
getting the answers from her I wanted. I couldn't even bring myself
to ask her all the questions. "I'm glad it was not a daughter,"
I told her as we came into view of the sandy beach by the shore of
the reservoir.
Anne
threw me a stifling glance out of the corner of her eye. "Why?"
"Because
this is such a cruel world for women to grow up in."
I
do not think she understood what I meant, and I did not care. As she
began to phrase the question she stopped, for at that moment we
emerged under the open sky, onto the soft plateau of silicon and my
friends.
"David!"
Lee called to me from where he sat next to Nicholas on a great rock
to my right. Part of it jutted into the dark, lavish water. The body
of the lake lay sprawled under the splendor of the unyielding and
sharp winter heavens. The trees were mirrored across the still
surface at disjointed angles. Not even the breath of a wind stirred
the crisp air. The cold was intolerable. Nearby, Tom and Antonius
were trying to light a fire with some of the wood Tom had brought
with him in the back of his pickup. They were both shivering.
Already, a space had been cleared out in the sand, and they were
placing rocks around it. Canine and Salvatore stood behind them,
still except for the continuous trembling of their bodies, each with
a bit of wood in either hand. Anne immediately approached the
impending fire. Without comment I went to the rock where Lee and
Nicholas were sitting.
I
remember the way I regarded Nicholas then. Entirely untested,
cushioned by the fat of our complacent society, he was as naive as he
was provincial. His life had been planned out for him before he was
born, and he wasn't fighting it. Why bother? His parents had painted
him a pretty picture, and he subscribed to the fantasy because it was
much more attractive than the reality. Two years later, during the
summer between my junior and senior years, Nicholas got a job at
Baltimore Country Club in Roland Park, where all the old money gets
together so that it can think rather highly of itself. It is a social
circle that gathers behind closed doors, and even in those times
there was mostly blond hair and distinguished names with Roman
numerals attached. The only black member was the mayor of the city,
one of the benefits of his office, and there was an unspoken
agreement that he would refrain from exercising the priviledge except
for those occasions where protocol demanded his presence, in which
case his peers would behave respectably towards him.
Nicholas
applied to be a lifeguard. His father thought it would be a great way
to make contacts. There were several olympic-sized swimming pools,
but he told me later that most of what he did had nothing to do with
them. That was why he wasn't worried that he didn't have his
certification. It was something he never mentioned, and they never
asked. They offered him the job a couple of days after the interview.
"After all," he told us, "I figure all wealthy people
know how to swim. You know how to swim, don't you, David?" I
assured him that I did.
But
not all wealthy people did. Priscilla Patson, to be sure, was one.
Priscilla was the daughter of William Patson the Fifth, who, I
imagine, considered himself in the old style to be the king of his
family. His blood went back to one of the people who had signed the
Declaration of Independence. The same relative who had blessed that
sacred document with his name two centuries before purchased a vast
plantation in western Maryland where he greatly augmented his fortune
growing tobacco with slave labor, and whose descendents greatly
augmented the ranks of the work force by fathering tens of
illegitimate children by those same slaves. When slavery was
abolished in 1863, the ranking Patson was able to keep most of the
slaves working as indentured servants. The Patsons have always prided
themselves on their philanthropic tendencies. "Those little
animals need us," William Patson the Second is reputed to have
said once. "We're the ones who put the food in their bloody
mouths." And William Patson the Fifth is reputed to have agreed.
"If it weren't for us, they'd still be running naked about the
African continent chasing butterflies."
"I
don't understand why they are all so lazy!" Samantha Patson once
remarked at one of those remarkably tedious dinner parties they were
apt to throw for their important friends. I know; Drusus once dated
Priscilla. "If they are so unhappy, I don't see why they don't
just pack up and leave." Perhaps even then there were a few too
many recessive genes floating about the aristocratic families of
America.
Regardless,
Nicholas had no idea who Priscilla was when he started working at the
club, just that she was extraordinarily good looking and that she had
an ass that waved at him slyly whenever she walked. It was the same
ass that caught his attention one afternoon by the pool when he
realized that she was drowning. Much to his horror he saw her
flailing about in the rich blue water of the deeper end.
Panic-stricken, he looked about himself. There were others present,
but no one had noticed that one of their own was dying not fifty feet
away. Such is the twisted silence that accompanies drowning. But
Priscilla's splashing was loud in Nichlas' ears, and in vain he
searched for one of the other lifeguards, or his boss.
He
could see that Priscilla's struggling was weakening. Had she already
taken in too much water? Someone was shouting to him. Then there were
hurried voices, running steps. One voice in particular cut through
the haze of paralysis. "- the fuck is the matter with you?!"
It took a moment before he realized it was directed at him. He looked
up and saw a middle aged man, well groomed, gesticulating wildly at
him, his smooth mouth hopping frantically about his manicured face
with words that were entirely lost upon Nicholas' numb ears.
He
looked back at the girl, saw her floating meaninglessly in the water.
How could this be happening?
Then,
miraculously, someone had dived into the pool, was there next to her
and now had brought her head above water. Carefully the man brought
her to the edge of the pool. Someone helped him get Priscilla's limp
body out of the water, place it dumbly on the cement all dripping and
wet and numb of life. How still she seemed, how captivating. Snatches
of voices still hit him, but they were lost in the image of crime he
chose for himself. He knew that there was something he should be
doing, but it was impossible. The only thought running through his
head was what would happen to him if she were dead.
She
was not. Fortunately, there was a man at the pool who had once been a
doctor and managed to get her breathing again. Needless to say,
Nicholas was told not to come to work the next day, and the Patsons
even filed a lawsuit against him and hired a team of lawyers for the
case.
I
can almost hear Samantha Patson and her husband William as they
spoke, reclining in the back of their summer cottage on the Eastern
Shore, she pouring a wine cooler down her throat from a glass and he
sipping a strong gin and tonic. "There's no need to sue the
club, darling. That just wouldn't be right. I'm sure that nasty boy
tricked them into hiring him, just so he could be around people like
us." Samantha shivered dramatically. "Why once," she
whispered conspiratorily, "I think I caught him staring at my
breasts."
William
Patson the Fifth grunted. "Well I should hope so! They cost me
ten thousand dollars a piece!"
"I'll
bet," Samantha Patson continued with a click of her tongue, "he
wanted the job so that he could do it to our young women."
"It?"
William Patson the Fifth, pondering the stocks, couldn't keep the
boredom out of his voice.
"You
know -" His wife rolled her eyes when she saw that he did not
catch her meaning. "The act!"
"Of
procreation, you mean."
"William
Patson the Fourth!" With reverence I know she made the sign of
the cross and stole a glance at heaven, as if to see if anyone
important had heard.
"That
was my father," her husband responded sullenly.
His
wife cupped her chin with a hand and agreed rather dourly. "Yes,
so it was."
Needless
to say, William Patson the Fifth did not sue his precious club. "But
I am going to break that man's family!" Nicholas' father, in
turn, quickly went and filed suit against the Baltimore Country Club,
and soon after there were all sorts of counterlawsuits and the like.
I never was exactly able to get it right. But Nicholas' father had to
pay a lot of money in the end, and as wealthy as he had once been,
his resources were no match for the coveted Patson fortune. Nicholas
had to leave Johns Hopkins and finish his senior year at a state
school.
"What
were you lagging behind for?" Lee teased as I climbed onto the
rock with them. I winced. Nicholas shuffled over to make room,
feeding me a searching glance - as if he were comparing what he
observed with some crude and new knowledge.
"Nothing."
I was unneccessarily sullen, I think.
"It
must have been something," said Nicholas.
"Yes,"
agreed Lee, a wicked grin spreading over his face like a bleeding
wound. "It must have been something."
"We
talked," I conceded after a moment.
"I
see," Nicholas said.
"About
the way things were."
"How
were they?" Was that a dark tear in the fabric of his eye that I
saw? Ah, but perhaps that is just my memory, coloring where it will.
"About
the way things aren't."
"How
aren't they?"
"The
way things weren't," I answered.
There
was an odd moment of silence. The three of us remained still, eyeing
each other, reconsidering. The darkness, I noticed, had been tainted
with a dim, yellow, whispering texture, and I was suddenly aware of
the crackling of the wood that Antonius was throwing into his growing
fire, as it stabbed the air with its piercing cries.
"I'm
thoroughly confused," Lee said then.
"Me,
too," smirked Nicholas.
"You're
an asshole," I told him, wondering distantly what had come over
him.
"I
know," he agreed.
Another
moment of encapsulating silence, keen and eerie like the night. These
were like resting stops.
Lee
seemed shaken, I noticed, awkward in the midst of one of our various
forms of miscommunication. His face was twisted in painful confusion.
I realized that he and Nicholas, like Anne, were all so suddenly
foreigners from a place I had once known intimately. Like most
people, he had never quite experienced or understood the breakdown of
the human mind in its ability to interact successfully with others.
"It's
cold," I said, throwing the words at him like an exigent flurry
of appeals. "We should go get Salvatore and Canine and smoke a
joint by the fire."
"Or
two." Lee laughed, and I knew that everything was alright. He
followed me from the rock. Nicholas scrambled after us.
"You're
ex-girlfriend is pretty hot," Nicholas told me as he came up on
my left. Lee was calling out to Canine. He hadn't heard.
Something
in my chest tightened, even though I knew it shouldn't have. My
vision dimmed momentarily, and for a fraction of a second everything
around me was vivid with steamy blackness. "Yeah," I tried
to agree calmly. "I guess so."
"But
you're going out with Shanai now." We came to a stop beside
Antonius, Tom, and Anne. The three of them were seated in a crescent
around one side of the fire, enveloped in speech. Something about the
scene struck me as odd, but I was forced to focus elsewhere.
Nicholas' voice reeked of malice, warning that I should be wary.
"Why,
you interested in her?" I did not try to mask the bluntness of
the question.
Nicholas'
head tilted just a bit to one side. "Why," he answered
coolly, "would you be jealous if I were?"
For
fear that I might strike him, I turned to the seated trio. Nicholas
remained only a moment before walking off toward Lee and the twins of
darkness. Hot anger brewed in my veins. It was only after a moment
that I heard what they were saying below me.
"Yes,
yes!" It was Tom, crying out with hushed enthusiasm. He seemed,
in fact, to be just bursting with excitement, as if always he were
just barely able to contain it within his human flesh. "It was
just amazing. Beautifully amazing. Perhaps," he added with an
easy wink of an eye, "the most beautiful and amazing thing I
have ever seen in my life!"
"That's
what you said about the rainbow," Anne pointed out.
Tom
looked momentarily puzzled. "Well, yes. I suppose it was."
"You
climbed the outside or the underside?" Antonius asked him,
ignoring Anne. She threw him a furtive glance, I noticed, but
refrained from speaking. I was rather surprised, I remember.
"What
do you mean?"
"Did
you climb the outside of the arch or the underside?"
"Oh,
the outside of course."
I
kneeled down, across the fire from them, and spoke through the
flames. "You climbed what?"
Tom
looked over at me. The fire shattered the serenity of his delicate
features, seemed to be bringing his flesh to the verge of melting. As
if he were made out of peach chocolate in the immediate heat of the
alluring flames. But he smiled, and my perception seemed to shift
slightly.
"He
climbed the Arch in St. Louis," Antonius told me. "Over
Christmas break."
"I
had suction cups, attached to my hands and feet." He indicated
both his hands and feet, as if I hadn't the slightest idea what those
were.
"And
he took pictures," Antonius continued.
"Black
and white," Tom told me proudly.
"And
then he parachuted down," Antonius added.
"Yes,
yes!" Tom laughed gleefully and pressed his hands together. "And
got away before a judge could put me in an institution!"
Anne
was staring at me again, the way she used to when I sat after sex
staring into the trees. We made good use of the acres of open forest
at the camp in Maine. After release, especially out there in the
steady calmness between the trees, I had always been haunted by the
ghostly spirit of time. For some reason, I have always likened the
emptiness after coming to death.
And
as I sat there with her, I couldn't help but think of Shanai and how
much she meant to me now. The thought was a revelation, something
that had not been apparent to me before, and it felt good because
suddenly there was some solid ground where there had been none
before. I preferred Shanai, no doubt about it.
Canine's
voice raw with mirky passion was suddenly nearby, loud and insistent.
I looked up and saw him with Salvatore and Lee sitting in the space I
had left between myself and the others. "I think," Canine
was telling Salvatore, "that people are just animals. Gifted
with a special intelligence perhaps, but still just animals. We can
reason, but so can most other species. At heart we are nothing more
than the beast we are trying to forget ourselves to be. I think
that's why we are breeding more madmen. In ancient times man was
closer to nature. He spent most of his time outdoors, and the passing
of the seasons had great impact on his life. You know, the weather,
too. So he was sensitive to the mood of the earth. But now people are
locked away in their houses, or at work, or inside their cars. People
don't know any more which are the stars and which are the planets. No
longer can we perceive just how small and trapped we are within
ourselves, and so we have created this story to explain why the
universe revolves around us. We have lost ourselves to the primal
unity that lies behind all of this." The last statement rang
hollow with a challenge I had never known in him before.
Salvatore,
at whom his words had so deliberately been directed, returned his
clear gaze with nothing but and unreadable and cold granite, hordes
of the stuff, even - as if there were nothing that could make even
the slightest impression in him in all the world. The sudden silence
struck Canine, and he looked up in dismay to find that the rest of us
were looking at him, as if waiting for him to continue. Because we
knew that what he had said had been so starkly true, and at a time
when clarity was in such high demand. He raised an eyebrow, cocking
his head to one side, and almost I saw that he would drop his mouth.
But he did not. Something was hardening in him after all, and it
wasn't a bad thing.
"What
are you talking about?" Antonius asked Canine when the latter's
eyes passed over his own. Canine replied with a frown, as if could
not determine whether Antonius really wanted to know or if he was
being mocked.
"I
don't know," he finally answered.
"Of
course you know," Nicholas was quick to remind him. He was
seated deliberately close to Anne, I saw. And I - trying not to feel
what I felt. One of his smooth hands rested dangerously close to
grazing her thigh. But Anne was hardly aware of him. I saw it on her
face that something had upset her. Hardly perceptible beams of
intensity sprang from her in all directions. Briefly, I wondered what
was going on in her head - briefly, that is, because I also knew that
soon enough she would let us all know.
"I
think you're full of shit, man," Salvatore told Canine.
"I
know what I know," Canine muttered, lowering his eyes to the
vague sand. He was upset by the audience, I could tell. The night
seemed to be closing up around the perimeter of the firelight.
"We
are not animals," Salvatore insisted.
"That
is all we are. And animals are just computers. We receive input from
our senses about the environment, we process it, our brains construct
a model from it, and we respond. Just like every other animal on
earth." Canine's voice was low, cautious, as if he were even
fearful of his own strength.
"We
choose to respond," Antonius told his timid companion. "The
difference between people and animals is that people can make
decisions."
"We
have a more complex cognitive programming. Our reasoning skills are
sharp, that's all. And the decisions we make, they are the only
decisions we could have made. Programs make decisions all the time.
Animals make decisions all the time."
Anne,
I saw, was looking even more troubled. She wanted to speak but caught
herself, a new question taking over her face.
"I'm
no animal," Antonius told him.
"David
is an animal," Nicholas said.
"I
think we're animals, too," Lee interjected almost apologetically
to Canine. My ancient friend looked over at him, perhaps shocked that
someone might agree with him, but I could see that his gaze was full
with so many emotions that the expression there was meaningless. At
once he seemed so happy and sad and delerious and excited, as if he
could be everything at once. Never have I seen so much confusion on a
man's face, except perhaps when they are born.
"Hey,
David, are you an animal?" Nicholas asked me with leaden eyes.
I
noticed then that Tom had reached into his backpack and pulled out a
small thermos. Of apple juice, of course. "You want some,
David?" he asked me when he saw that I was studying at him.
"Sure."
I reached across Lee and took the bottle. A moment later I handed it
back to him.
"Well,
what does he think?" Anne finally managed to ask. Strangely
enough, she directed her words at Canine.
"Who?"
"Him."
She nodded her head at Salvatore, but would not look his way.
"He
believes that we are nothing." Salvatore answered for himself,
his voice thin and cutting, self-mocking even. But he was on his
happy pills, and the paranoid phychotic delusion was, at least for
the moment, banished. "He believes this is all a waste of time,
a cruel joke played by the gods to amuse themselves. And after they
have tired of us, we die, and the mind ceases to exist."
"Ceases
to exist!" Canine exclaimed. He threw his hands into the air
like new tools. "Just like that. Ah, I pity you."
"Don't
you believe in God?" Anne flung the words at him as if they were
excrement, indignant. But we were all smart enough to avoid answering
that question. I was aware even then that some people need God far
too much.
"I
don't know, man," Antonius uttered, shaking his poor head. I had
never seen him daunted before. Slowly, as if he had actually been
battered, he brought two long joints from his coat pocket. It was his
usual answer to dilemna. He stood up and dropped one of them in my
lap, over the fire. I guess it was my answer, too, even back then.
"Yes,
you do know," Nicholas chided. The condescending tone of his
voice was irritating me once again. What had gotten into him?
"Shut
the fuck up!" I snapped at him. I couldn't help myself.
"I
don't know," Antonius repeated, lighting up his joint. "I
guess I never think about that shit." But I knew that he had,
that he was afraid because he didn't believe anything, and that's the
most frightening place to be in the whole world. The smoke from the
end of my joint mingled with his soft features, was completely
obscured by the whispering peril of the flames.
Nicholas
wanted to say something more, but Salvatore interrupted him. His face
was hard and bitter, like acid. He delivered his words as if he
intended them to sting. "No, really, Nickly. You all know
nothing."
There
was something reprehensibly loathsome to his words, in the twisting
of his mouth, as if the happy pills had suddenly let him down. As if
he so suddenly found himself back in his nightmare world of a
thousand different hells and a thousand useless ways out. As if he
had suddenly realized that there was nothing, anymore, that would
provide him even a moment's rest from the pain of his spiraling
madness.
Ah,
Salvatore. I would say more, but the time has not yet come. It was
from the stolid firmness in the midst of his hell that he found the
answer I so desperately stole away.
And
so I heeded the words of the great prophet Canine, passed the joint
and laid back in the sand, looked up at the immense heavens. Canine
was saying that Salvatore was right but that he was missing
something, missing something important, but I didn't care to listen
to what it was. Staring up at the sky I suddenly felt peaceful. I
felt plugged into the earth. I thought for a moment of the horrible
pulsing that had come out of the infinity to stone me, but that had
been a different place. The sky was awesome, beautiful, neutral. It
didn't care for us one way or the other. The universe is involved in
something much more important, on a much grander scale than the
existence of our species alone will encompass. Looking back I know
that Canine was right. We have lost contact with the primal unity of
which we were borne. Even though I didn't know it I could sense it. I
gained a gift that night, a rare and priceless prize that perhaps
lended me the foul strength to destroy everything that I had ever
held dear to myself.
The
ceaseless flow of words carried on around me unheeded, but the rhythm
and timbre of their voices sounded a sort of universal symphony,
providing a background for the immenseness of the exploration as I
lay staring up at the most beautiful and awesome goddess there is.
And soon they were no longer voices but the actual living breath of
the cosmos in all its infinite grandeur. I could hear them from out
of everything.
At
first, I could understand them. Anne was objecting with something
like obsession in her voice, irrational, as if she couldn't be wrong
even though it were obvious- as if she were defending the stability
of her mind, not merely the existence of God. She was trying to
explain the necessity of God, the necessity of some sort of strict
and fervent and carefully observed control over human existence, how
neither Salvatore or Canine could ever rationally believe what they
said. Her words were raping the savage air around me, and for a
sudden moment I was terrified, as if I could see the heavens being
torn apart by the independent wills of Canine and Salvatore alone,
and the promise of eternal paradise removed.
"Salmon
Rushdie wrote a clever book," Salvatore was saying, "that
offended many Muslims. He ridiculed their most holy of religions. Now
clerics want to kill him. It's funny, I think -" his voice
sounded strangely nasal - "how incredibly intelligent those
clerics are. Because their religion makes slaves of the people, and
they are the masters."
"What
are you talking about?" Neatly tucked away behind her eyes there
were tears.
"God,"
he told her savagely, "is for people who don't have anything
better."
No
one responded. But I was no longer aware of them. The meaning had
already bled away into the milky space beyond time. "My God,"
I gasped, somehow bringing to bear the mystic powers of speech. The
others for some reason all turned their attention toward me, as if I
were a beast laid out for the sacrifice, or a dead prince, or a
rotten old log infested with termites. For I had suddenly found where
I had been going, what I had been destined for, and the sheer beauty
of that state of being was so complete that there couldn't have been
any fear, or uncertainty, or any other emotion, in fact. Nothing
truly exists except the stars and the planets and the condensing and
shattering of great lumps of matter. "We live in so much space!"
They
must have turned and looked at me with some astonishment, lying there
on the ground with my eyes closed, and also, I'm sure, with some
disdain as well. They, taking themselves all so seriously. As if the
course of humanity depended upon their slightest whims and fears.
Yes, disdain, because I've always appeared rather strange to everyone
who has ever got to know me. Even Anne used to laugh at me. I used to
think it was simply that I had not yet met the woman who would be my
mate, but looking back I know of course that after Drusus there could
never have been anyone else. Which makes me sadder still, because I
know that Drusus never loved me nearly as much as I him.
Yes,
they must have been looking at me, but what did I care? What they
thought of me made little difference to the importance of my
discovery. Revelation is a private issue, a question of man's own
personal madness.
Once,
perhaps, when the animal was still in the busom of the kind and cruel
Earth, he understood of himself what he required, and there were no
unanswered questions. Those he had were simple and pragmatic beliefs.
But today we know so much more about ourselves. We know what the
heavens above us really are, how incredibly vast! Did you know a
young boy could fly in an airplane through empty space, far away from
anything, and he wouldn't have noticed even the slightest movement of
any of the stars when an old man he died? as if he had never even
moved? Aren't we more like stars, who are born from the swirling
depths of the universe and then give themselves back when they die?
Yes, we are like stars, and each of us can shine for a time in our
own way before we are extinguished, and give up our matter so that we
are nothing, as to an ancient debtor.
This site and all its
contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one
Adam Wasserman.
All rights reserved.