19
An old man, with his beautiful daughter on his arm, walks through a park, along a street, emerges from the smoke of a dream and into some light that falls from a shop’s window. Behind the window, laid on a black fabric, are beads of gold and silver. Seated inside, sidelong to the window, is an old man, his face bent earnestly over the open workings of a watch. I gazed with little or no interest at the gears and springs.
I am not a man of science. I am not proficient in any branch of nature study. I do not know the difference between an amphibian and a reptile. I have no yearning for hard knowledge about the hard world. And yet I have no affinity for anything spiritual. In fact, I have a pronounced, conspicuous, and striking absence of an affinity for anything spiritual.
I know but one hard thing about the hard world and it is this: from the sum of all theories, as arranged in accordance with ascertained facts, we make a few assumptions, that we have actually ascertained facts, that we are actually here to ascertain them, and that there is actually a here.
20
So you are a writer, Billy had once said to me as we sat at the picnic table on the lawn.
Apparently.
How come I’ve never heard of you?
Your poor education?
He laughed.
I’ll bet my daughter knew your work. She was a real reader. And not that romance stuff or just detective books. Real stuff like Goethe and Joyce.
That’s wonderful.
What kinds of things did you write?
His use of the past tense bothered me, but at our ages everything seemed to be in the past tense. I wrote some novels.
If I could see worth a damn I’d ask to read one of them.
Thank you, Billy.
I was just a simple accountant.
I nodded. I had heard this before and the punch line that would follow.
Everybody likes an accountant with no balls. Not your tax man, you want your tax man to have balls, but not your accountant. He looked at his thumbnail, slowly raised it to his mouth and tried to bite it. My daughter was an angel. She had knock knees.
You don’t see too many girls with those anymore.
Do you have a middle name?
I do. And you?
It’s Virgil.
21
Thanks ever so much for the footnote, said he,
Thanks ever so much for the plug.
Thanks for the roses and very strong tea,
And for business swept under the rug.
Remember the pudding we dined on last night,
The wine and that stinky bit of cheese,
And jot down the names of those still all right
And tuck them away with the keys.
Dream of a place under the evening star
And of pigeons all lined in a row,
Of asphodels, lilies, and blooms without scent
And the tugging of the undertow.
Recall the pudding we dined on last night,
The wine and rather rank cheese.
Jot down the names to be read in the light
And tuck them away with the keys, the keys,
Tuck them away with keys.
22
When you kick out for yourself, my dear, and you will, remember, whatever you do, to find good people to be your friends. Billy had regained consciousness but not his complete senses. I was both his daughter and myself, it seemed. He was in a bed in a room in the hospital building of Teufelsdröckh. He then said, You know, we are as old as we feel.
How old do you feel, my friend?
I am a mountain.
I asked the doctor, a man not as old as a plumber’s new watch, how Billy was doing.
He’s ninety, the doctor said.
Immediately I had renewed respect for his judgment and his profession. I nodded.
Always build one door opposite another so that birds, bats, and the wind have a way out. It will also allow your house to become a flute, if it so chooses.
23
Were I to begin this all again, here and undeferred and noncircuitously, I might begin: The river runs past Eden, from the sag of the shore to the bend of the bay, delivering us back to where we first set about. But I cannot begin this all again and, what is more, I would not, will not, shall not. Never keep all of your allusions in one basket. And never assume there is not a fish at the end of your line.
Why are you talking like that?
I thought you were asleep.
How can I sleep with you spouting that gibberish and with all these hellish machines beeping and screaming every few seconds?
Are you feeling stronger?
Billy ignored the question. Tell them they don’t need these machines. I’ll let them know when I’m dead. Or you’ll let them know. They might not trust you at first, but they’ll finally believe you. He lay back and closed his eyes. Have you ever contemplated the meaning of life?
The meaning of life is the purpose of life. I’d settle for any meaning at all.
Is it going to rain?
The photograph is fine, a little wrinkled, but fine.
Billy nodded. Give them hell. Say something else crazy, like you were saying before.
I don’t have any more gibberish.
Of course you do. You’re full of it.
Once upon a time, Billy, once upon a time.
He spoke with his eyes shut, his lids fluttering. I don’t believe in god and so I don’t believe in heaven, but still I hope to see my little girl’s face.
I know just what you mean.
Come now, just a wee bit more from the fountain of nonsense?
Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost his job.
I knew you had it in you.
And so Billy ceased breathing and stopped his blood from circulating, though I believe his brain was still doing brain things. His unsympathetic, attendant machines announced his resolution in concert monotone. The doctor and a nurse clogged into the room to stand motionless at the foot of the bed. He’s gone, I said, and to my surprise they believed me.
No Living Word
24
Once upon the middle of a story — in the remote distance dense plumes of smoke mingled with jets of flame that gushed forth from an immense pile of earthly dividers — the multitude of common spectators sent up an ecstatic shout and clapped hands with an emphasis that made the welkin echo. Throughout that room there was the same obscurity as before, but not the same gloom associated with Billy’s loss. No flame had vanished and the whole scene remained.
That night I brought in the keys from the hole behind the azaleas beneath my window, removed them from the plastic bag from the Rite Aid pharmacy, and sorted them by size, then color. Keys. Blades and bows. I again paused at the very old-looking one, so primitive and so strange.