“And thus we are faced with the simple question,” said Dad. “Is man’s destiny determined by the vicissitudes of environment or free will? I argue that it is free will, because what we think, what we dwell upon in our heads, whether it be fears or dreams, has a direct effect upon the physical world. The more you think about your downfall, your ruin, the greater the likelihood that it will occur. And conversely, the more one thinks of victory, the more likely one will achieve it.”
Dad always paused here for dramatic effect, staring across the room at the trite little daisy landscape hanging on the wall, or the pattern of horse heads and riding crops running up and down the faded dining room wallpaper. Dad adored all Suspensions and Silences, so he could feel everyone’s eyes madly running all over his face like Mongol armies in 1215 sacking Beijing.
“Obviously,” he continued with a slow smile, “it’s a concept that has been bastardized of late in Western Culture, associated with the runny-nosed Why-Nots and How-Comes of self-help and PBS marathons that drone on into the wee hours, begging you to pledge money and in return, receive forty-two hours of meditation tapes one can chant to when one is mired in traffic. Yet visualization is a concept that was once considered not so frothy, dating back to the founding of the Buddhist Mauryan Empire, around 320 B.C. History’s great leaders understood it. Niccolò Machiavelli tipped Lorenzo de’ Medici off to it, though he called it ‘prowess’ and ‘foresight.’ Julius Caesar understood it — he saw himself conquering Gaul decades before he actually did so. Who else? Hadrian, Da Vinci certainly, another great man, Ernest Shackleton — oh, and Miyamoto Musashi. Take a look at his The Book of Five Rings. Members of Nächtlich, The Nightwatchmen, also followed it, of course. Even America’s most dashing leading man, the circus-educated Archibald Leach, understood it. He is quoted, in that funny little book we have, what is it, the—”
“Talk of the Town: Hollywood Heroes Have Their Moment,” I chirped.
“Yes. He said, ‘I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.’ In the end, a man turns into what he thinks he is, however large or small. It is the reason why certain people are prone to colds and catastrophe. And why others can dance on water.”
Dad obviously thought he was one of the ones who could dance on water, because for the next hour or so, he went on to discuss his premise in meticulous detail — the necessity of discipline and reputation, the curbing of emotion and feeling, modes for quietly implementing change. (I’d sat in the wings during so many performances, I was a natural choice for the understudy, though Dad never missed a show.) Although Dad’s concert was filled with sweetness and light, none of his melodies were all that groundbreaking. He was pretty much summarizing the French ghostwritten La Grimace, a funny little book on power published in 1824. His other ideas were cherry-picked from H. H. Hill’s Napoleon’s Progress (1908), Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche, 1886), The Prince (Machiavelli, 1515), History Is Power (Hermin-Lewishon, 1990), obscure works like Aashir Alhayed’s The Instigations of a Dystopia (1973) and The Con Game (1989) by Hank Powers. He even referenced a few folktales by Aesop and La Fontaine.
Our dinner guest was nothing more than a cavity of reverential silence by the time I served coffee. His mouth was always open. His eyes resembled harvest moons. (If it’d been 1400 B.C. there was a chance he’d have crowned Dad leader of the Israelites and asked him to lead the way to the Promised Land.)
“Thank you, Dr. Van Meer,” he said as he was leaving, vigorously shaking Dad’s hand. “It’s been a — a pleasure. Everything you talked about — it — it was informative. I’m honored.” He turned to me, blinking in surprise, as if he was seeing me for the first time all evening. “It was a privilege to meet you as well. I look forward to seeing you again.”
I never did see him again, nor any of the others. For these colleagues, the Van Meer dinner invitation was like Birth, Death, the Senior Prom, a once in a lifetime event, and though there were enthusiastic promises of some future rendezvous shouted into the cricketed night as Teaching Assistant to Poetic and Narrative Forms dizzily lumbered to his car, in the ensuing weeks, Dad’s kind always withdrew into the concrete corridors of the University of Oklahoma at Flitch or Petal or Jesulah or Roane, never to emerge again.
Once, I asked Dad why.
“I don’t think the man’s presence was titillating to the degree that I wish to put myself through a repeat performance. He was neither dope, money nor jiggy with it,” he said, barely glancing up from Christopher Hare’s Social Instability and the Narcotics Trade (2001).
I found myself thinking about the story of Tobias the Damned quite often, in particular, when Jade drove me home after the Christmas Cabaret. Whenever anything strange happened, even the most trivial of occurrences, I found myself sort of going back to him, secretly afraid with just a little heave-ho I might turn into him — by my own fear and nervousness, setting off some awful spiral of misfortune and misery, thereby severely disappointing Dad. It’d mean I’d missed every one of the principles of his beloved Determination Theory, with its extensive section on handling emergencies. (“There are very few men who have the shrewdness to think and feel beyond the commotion of the present moment. Try,” he commanded, recapitulating Carl von Clausewitz.)
As I walked up the lighted path to our porch, I could think of nothing I wanted to do more than forget Eva Brewster, Charles Manson, everything Jade had told me about Hannah, and simply disintegrate into bed, in the morning, maybe curl up next to Dad with The Chronicle of Collectivism. Maybe I’d even help him trek through a few student essays on future methods of war or have him read aloud The Waste Land (Eliot, 1922). Normally I couldn’t stand it — he did it in a very grandiose way, channeling John Barrymore (see “Baron Felix von Geigern,” Grand Hotel). But now, it seemed like the perfect antidote to my gloom.
When I opened the front door and walked into the foyer, I noticed the lights were still on in the library. I quickly tucked the Blackbird book into my backpack, still slumped next to the stairs where I’d heaved it Friday afternoon, and hurried down the hall to find Dad. He was in his red leather armchair, a cup of Earl Gray tea on the table next to him, head bent over a legal pad, doubtlessly scribbling another lecture or an essay for Federal Forum. His illegible handwriting tangled down the page.
“Hi,” I said.
He glanced up. “Know what time it is?” he asked pleasantly.
I shook my head as he checked his watch.
“One twenty-two,” he said.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I—”
“Who was it that dropped you off?”
“Jade.”
“And where is Joe Public?”
“He’s — well, I’m not sure.”
“And where is your coat?”
“Oh, I left it. I forgot it at the—”
“And what in God’s name did you do to your leg?”
I looked down. Blood had crusted around a cut on my shin, and my stockings had seized the opportunity to Go West, Young Man, ripping all the way up and around my leg, staking a claim somewhere in my shoe.