Ned saw with surprise that Hume had taken a seat at the end of the line of notables. He was wearing a suit and tie. There was nothing to complain about in the matter of his grooming, thanks to Nina. Ned was relieved, greatly.
The director beckoned. Ned made his way to the podium. Nina was insane. She had half risen when he got up. She had almost come with him.
He had tears in his eyes even before he began. He gave his name.
He said, “Douglas Delmarter was my friend years ago when I was a student, when we were students, at NYU. When he was young he had the idea he could force the world to be funny, or funnier than it intended to be. I think he needed it to be funnier for his own reasons, or actually for his own needs. I have no idea what those were. He was a secretive person even then. But anyway, as a fixation … it fascinated me. I am speaking for myself here. I allowed it to cheer me up and I was at a point when I needed cheering up. Later he gave up needling the world in this way and switched to trying to figure out the Why side of things, the Why does the world feel so wrong? side of it. In any case, he went on to honorable and impressive acts, deeds, in fact, about which we have heard much today.
“I’m very sorry that my friend is dead, and dead when he was hardly through with what he might have done.
“You may be wondering what the book is that I’m holding. It’s Douglas’s paperback copy of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.
“Douglas loved this book. It was probably the best reading recommendation to us, his friends, that he made, and he made many. In fact he loved the damn thing so much he stopped reading it at page 847 in order to save the experience of finishing it for some celebratory high moment he assumed would come, some moment greater and happier than any so far.
“What I am going to do is read aloud a page or so for the benefit of our friend’s spirit. It may be a little strange because one of Douglas’s many positions was that anyone who believed in the afterlife should be barred from seeking political office. So, my old friend, this is for your soul, whose survival is, as you used to say in Wallace Bray’s philosophy class, highly suppository. I hope you can hear this, Douglas.
“This is where Douglas stopped reading. And these are the words he would have read next. This, of course, is Boswell speaking. I’m starting halfway down page 847:
I had learnt from Dr. Johnson during this interview, not to think with a dejected indifference of the works of art, and the pleasures of life, because life is uncertain and short; but to consider such indifference as a failure of reason, a morbidness of mind; for happiness should be cultivated as much as we can, and the objects which are instrumental should be steadily considered as of importance, with a reference not only to ourselves, but to multitudes in successive ages. Though it is proper to value small parts, as ‘Sands make the mountain, moments make the year,’ yet we must contemplate, collectively, to have a just estimation of objects. One moment’s being uneasy or not, seems of no consequence; yet this may be thought of the next, and the next, and so on, til there is a large portion of misery. In the same way one must think of happiness, of learning, of friendship. We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed …”
Ned pressed the tears from his eyes with a ball of tissue. He hesitated, and returned to his seat.
February 15, 2003
53
He would never forget this day. He felt clean. The march column was twenty-five across and it was disciplined. The column had a sense of itself. A day of streets like rivers of fists was a survivor from earlier wars, earlier protests, but now it was real, in San Francisco, on Market Street. The sun had been a bright smear in the overcast but it had come out, whole, shining brilliantly on their efforts. Thousands of people had come to the city, thousands. He thought again, It makes you feel clean. Whenever the forward movement of the column halted, the marchers spontaneously linked arms and then maintained that as long as was practicable, which wasn’t long, really, because some people in any rank would move at a slower pace than the majority. There were two wheelchair battalions, he knew, somewhere. He wanted to inhale more deeply than it was physically possible to. The lead cohort of the march was a mile or more ahead of where he was, unbelievably. He had been up with the dignitaries and they were going to mention his name at Union Square, at the rally, but he had decided to fade back deeper into the march. He didn’t want to arrive. He wanted to continue to feel the march.
Someone had put an extension ladder up against a first-story overhang above a German restaurant. It looked safe enough. He wanted to be up there where he’d be able to see so much more. There were maybe twenty people on the overhang already, some shaking their signs at a TV truck that was trying to pierce the column at a cross street.
There was no obstacle to mounting the ladder, so he did. He stepped out onto the overhang. It was a fantasy of goodwill. The feeder streets were jammed with participants waiting to join the main body of the march. He shook hands with the other people on the roof. There were Japanese tourists among them, very shy. A black high school step dance group that was part of the march was drawing enormous cheers from the thick crowds along the sidewalks. We never get enough black people out, so we love the ones who do come, he thought. He cheered as hard as he could, himself.
I love every moment of my life that has brought me here, he thought. They were going to stop the fuckers. One of the Japanese had a transistor radio. What was happening here was happening across the world. BBC was saying ten to fifteen million in all the capitals, the greatest march numbers in fucking human history ever. Berlin, Paris, London, had already reported and the numbers had been astounding. He thought, Today we are treading on the corpse of this war.
People in the march were saluting as though the overhang were a reviewing stand. He wanted to shout something juvenile, like Every hand being raised in this march is grasping the hand of a person who will not die because of us. He wanted the march to suck the occupants out of every building as it passed, and leave them empty.
He thought, You can’t control everything. He couldn’t control Nina. She was with one of the Berkeley women’s groups. She was pregnant and he had briefly thought he could get her on one of the ludicrous but earnest floats that were part of the parade, but she had laughed at him. They had their cell phones and would find each other at Union Square. Being on a float was still being part of the march and he couldn’t see why it had been such a bad idea for her.
Everything was good. He had a rising feeling in his chest like nothing he had ever felt. The signs could use improvement. Some of Douglas’s inventions would have made good signs, like War Is the Continuation of Business as Usual by Any Means Necessary, and Strike When the Gorgon Blinks. They were too literary, but still.
Everything was good. Two exile Cuban anarchist groups that had been fighting forever were marching together under a common banner saying Frente Libertario. Go, old men! he wanted to shout. He knew some of them. Maybe one or two of them might notice him there. He waved violently. He went right to the parapet to try to signal his presence. Their eyesight might not be up to it. Racially, everything was okay and looking better. It had been Nina’s idea to contact the step dance teams in the black high schools. There was a huge contingent from McClymonds. He wanted to be everywhere in the march. Except with the drum groups, which were unbearably loud. He felt drunk with gratitude and the conviction of victory. He thought, You can’t control everything … but this we can control. There would be no war. In part because of them there would be no war in Iraq. A few new people had come onto the overhang and he was going to shake hands with them, too. There would be no war. He thought, No war, No invasion, No.