As an afterthought he snatched up a postcard with a photograph of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (“Sisi”) and wrote painstakingly on the back: Dear Ralph, This is how it starts out and it has to stay where it starts out until it is ready to end. Regards, P.D.
He sealed the envelope, addressed it, strode storklike to the post office, paid postage for a method of delivery that was a little faster than normal without being exorbitant, handed over the envelope and strode storklike to the street. His head was not at all good but he was not positively stalking down the street saying out loud “When you say you know the work must come first what exactly do you mean?” That was something.
It was also something that he had not written Erbarmung!!!!!! Erbarmung!!!!!!! on the postcard.
It can’t be a good idea to implore an agent with heartrending appeals to Parsifal.
He lit a Marlboro.
Gil sat on the squashy old sofa, legs akimbo, forearms on thighs. He was wearing a very soft faded bluish t-shirt on which dolphins frolicked around the words DAYTONA BEACH Florida and soft faded frayed cut-offs. Rachel sat at the other end of the sofa; she wore the SUDO MAKE ME A SANDWICH t-shirt and soft faded white cut-offs, also frayed. Both were barefoot.
On a battered oak coffee table in front of the sofa were: 20-odd pages of double-spaced type; a basket of bagels with cream cheese and lox; a cafetière of very black coffee; a carton of half-and-half; a carton of grapefruit juice; a few cans of San Pellegrino with orange; a large bottle of Gerolsteiner. Plates, glasses, mugs, knives. Gil had suggested getting together over a late breakfast because he did not feel comfortable drinking vodka in front of Ralph.
A squashy old armchair, brother to the sofa, awaited Ralph. Meanwhile they were alone.
Ralph was late, late enough for Gil to start to hope he would not come.
“This is probably going to sound really precious,” said Gil. “But I’m not comfortable with this.”
“It’s not precious,” said Rachel. “Nobody is comfortable with Ralph. I mean, I only got into coding in the first place to keep myself sane. I would get off the phone after one of these marathon sessions and just tie myself to Boolean logic like a mast. And now that I have Barbara, she’s so professional and businesslike, she’s like a rock. But maybe. He was in an asylum all those years. If he had a whole book he could take it to Barbara, and it could be all right. But he doesn’t have a book. And anyway there would still be the whole thing of getting people whipped up to a frenzy over a Dutch writer, and the whole point of Barbara is she doesn’t do frenzy. So maybe frenzy is the price he has to pay to stay in this place Cissy found instead of an asylum. I mean, it could just be that way.”
“I guess.”
This was what he had always liked, she could sail effortlessly uncomplicatedly through. But he did not think he could tell lies for Peter Dijkstra, and he did not want to find himself somehow underwriting a book in Dutch he had never read as the next 2666.
The coffee was unreproachfully tepid.
Now that Ralph was living one day at a time he would often spend hours talking some poor desperate soul out of a crisis. You would arrange to meet and find yourself catching up on Dinosaur Comics on your iPhone, checking the time, catching up on A Softer World, checking the time, wondering whether there was anything new (please say yes, God, please) on Perry Bible Fellowship, getting a 503 Service Unavailable!!!!!!!, scouring around online to see whether this was permanent or what?????!!!!!!, noticing the time, only to have Ralph walk belatedly in or text or call to explain that Dale or Jane or Andy was suicidal and he had to be there for them. Not that Gil wanted any extra person to be suicidal, but if someone was suicidal anyway and Ralph had to be there for them rather than here for him it would Be. So. Great.
But no, the buzzer buzzed.
Ralph came eagerly down the long room in a glow of happiness, this Tom Cruise “I am a Thetan!!!!!!” kind of glow which, okay, somehow this was less creepy in the days when you knew he was doing drugs? But okay, okay, okay.
He wore a tan polo shirt with a crocodile on the breast, chinos, and sockless Topsiders, because he had never wanted to be a suit.
He took a padded envelope from his bicycle bag. “Here,” he said, eyes ablaze. “I’m sorry I’m late but when you see you’ll see.” He put it at the midpoint of the squashy sofa and sank into the squashy chair. (It was kind of like Joseph Smith presiding over the display of a golden tablet from the Book of Mormon.)
Gil did not touch the envelope. Rachel picked it up and removed a notebook and a pack of some 70 file cards. She handed the notebook to Gil and began reading through the grid-ruled file cards, one by one.
Ralph gave them a lot of space to read in silence. It was weird holding in your hands things that had been in the hands of Peter Dijkstra, as if the Van Gogh Museum would let you take a painting off the wall. It was kind of weird holding them with Ralph expectantly watching — but no, Ralph suddenly noticed the cold thing of coffee and said ruefully “I am late, I’ll make fresh” and went off to the kitchen, so fine. Fine.
It’s true. You definitely got the feeling, holding these objects, that they had been in a room with a crazy guy, or rather a guy with the potential to be crazy who was trying to keep madness at bay. The writing was small and precise and clear, this slightly pedantic European handwriting that you would normally never see. Reading a typescript, you would miss this: it was like hearing excellent English spoken with a foreign accent. You saw the effort that had gone into the excellence. Precision, a bulwark. (The word “bulwark” was in fact on one of the cards.) You could see that maybe the visibility of the effort had to stay there for the completion, or even the continuation, of the work.
Ralph came back with fresh coffee.
Rachel put each file card back at the midpoint of the sofa as she finished it.
Ralph did not return to the squashy chair. He poured himself a mug of coffee and wandered tactfully off to browse bookshelves.
An experience you tend not to have at the Van Gogh Museum is of a security guard wandering tactfully off and rummaging through your backpack while you are staring your eyes out at paintings you have only seen in books and calendars and posters.
In some kind of weird activation of peripheral vision Gil not so much saw as sensed Ralph pausing by the 18 inches of shelving dedicated to Peter Dijkstra. Which was a good 13 inches more than were taken up by the stories and the novellas.
Gil had met Rachel in the gift shop of the Van Gogh Museum in the heat of the hype. She had picked up a paperback, Vincent Van Gogh, een leven in brieven.
He had seen her across a room but kept his distance. If you have never been to Amsterdam before and maybe never will be again you don’t want to smear the paintings with a lot of boy-meets-girl stuff. There were paintings on the walls that had been in a room with a crazy guy, a guy who never sold any paintings; you want to be alone with the craziness. He walked from room to room, seeing her across each room, keeping his distance.
The gift shop did seem like this space designed to ease the transition to the world of men.