Derek tried not to squirm or blurt an immediate defense. He couldn’t very well compound Eli’s mistrust with lies.
“But underneath all your scorn, you do believe, and wisely fear the truth in what I say. Beneath your superficial rationality, your skin of skeptical calm, I believe you are hysterical with fear. It lends you perfectly to their errands….”
“Please, Elias!”
Eli bowed his head and growled, “So… they brought you to me. They needed someone to take the ledgers, someone who can… enlarge their following. I’ve carried their words as far as I can, fighting all the way. All I’d done for them, until I met you, was preserve the skin and the books. It would be futile for me to destroy the ledgers, after all, when they’d simply find someone weaker to corrupt, another life to ruin. I would not wish that on the world. It seems clear now. They put your books in my path and perhaps even clouded my mind, so that for a time I perceived your words as full of truth and light. I am often clouded and confused from the medications I take. They made you seem understanding, a sympathizer, an ally, when the truth may be otherwise. It’s not too late to fight them, though, Derek. If you will only face these things in yourself which have delivered you into their service.”
A slow sickness began to pervade Derek. God, how the old man must loathe him! Seen in such a light, the whole discourse, the story of the mandalas, might easily be taken as a hoax, a cruel fable thrown in his skeptical face.
He had never felt at such a loss. Accused, yet unable to plead his own case, which was after all founded on lies.
“I don’t know what to say,” he whispered.
“Tell me what you think is the truth.”
“I… I would never hurt you.”
“Evangeline held a knife to her own throat. Do you think that was her will at work, or theirs!”
Derek leapt from the sofa. “I think I’d better leave,” he said. “If you distrust me so much.”
“It’s not you, for God’s sake. I don’t distrust you—no more than I distrusted Evangeline! But how can you resist telling my story, putting it out into the world—spreading their words, so that many more may learn to pay them the filthy respects they so desire?”
“Publishers aren’t interested in that sort of thing.”
“There—you see? Already you’re wondering how to do it. You’ll find a way to pitch it, Derek; that’s your talent. People believe what you sell them; I believed you myself. That’s why the mandalas wanted you. I was a fool not to see it sooner.”
“There are a million other books I can write.”
“You think that now. But one day you’ll find yourself staring at a blank page; the words you need won’t come. It will seem as if the only ideas left in the world are the ones they put in your head—the ones I’ve given you. You will write that story, believe me. I cannot stop you. I’ll be dead soon enough myself. All I can do is limit the damage.”
He sensed Derek’s curiosity.
“Yes, limit it. What if I told you you’d have nothing but the memory you bring away tonight? What if I asked for the return of your tapes?”
“You can have them.” Derek dug into his case and thrust a handful of the rattling cassettes at Eli. But the old man swept them aside, sent them scattering over the carpet.
“What if I said I’m burning that box tonight? I should have done it ages ago.”
Derek found himself unable to speak. Something hot and choking burned in his throat, something he couldn’t name.
“You see?” Eli said. “The idea frightens you, doesn’t it?”
Derek spat out the words: “If it meant so much to you, I’d burn them myself.”
Eli straightened in his wheelchair. “Would you really? No matter what happens to me? Can you swear it?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“No? Then why do I feel like an empty vessel, now that I’ve told you what they wished?” He stared around the room, eyes bulging. “It was their doing all along, wasn’t it?”
“Old man, you’re crazy!” Derek knelt to reclaim his tapes. He would record over them, destroy all these records, leave Eli alone to his madness, anonymous and unremembered. “But you’re right about one thing,” he said from the floor. “I don’t believe any of this. I made up all my damn books—they’re garbage, cynical trash. No one with any brains believes them. I don’t believe them. And I don’t believe in your thirty-seven astral jellyfish. I think a heart attack killed your wife. We’re all going to die eventually, but it won’t have a thing to do with these mandalas. That’s bullshit, all of it.”
Eli’s voice remained deep, unshaken, as if he had been expecting this. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes I do. I’m trying to reassure you, Eli. I want you to get in touch with reality.”
Eli said nothing. Derek began to pace the length of the room, clutching his case, starting toward the door and then turning away again and again.
“You—you’ve been cooped up in here, an outcast your whole life, taking hold of any fantasy that offered itself. Now you’ve found the flip side of escapism. It’s like some nightmare where you can’t wake up, isn’t it?
“You need help, but not from me, not from someone who feeds your fears by nodding and taking notes and agreeing with you. You need someone to tell you honestly that you went over the edge somewhere in the past, maybe when you were a kid; someone who can bring you back to reality while there’s still time. But I’m not that guy, Eli. Maybe you should talk to your children, your family, people who know you. I’m just… just a hack, okay? I’m not going to hurt you, but I can’t help you either. Except by refusing to write your book. From this point on, I’ll be out of your life, Eli. I’ll leave so you can get in touch with people you trust.”
Eli’s eyes were dark hollows. Derek scarcely dared to glance at him. His hand was on the doorknob and he turned it, aware of that distant bone chime chattering somewhere out there, in a dry wind that made no sound in the skeletal trees. The sound of an ambulance crept in as he opened the door. Eli stiffened as if he heard the banshee coming for him.
“Good night, Elias,” Derek said. He had to get out; he was close to weeping.
Eli didn’t answer.
Walking out, closing the door, continuing on to his car: These were among the hardest things he had ever done. He started the engine, looking over at the house. With the shades drawn, it seemed lifeless, empty. All up and down the street were dozens exactly like it. No comfort there. Madness mushroomed in the rows of stucco and Spanish tile bungalows. On Blackoak Avenue, sanity had gone the way of the black oaks themselves.
He flew home toward the city, anxious for its noise and disorder, the reassuring sounds of fermenting humanity. Cars swerved in a high wind among the gray girders and whistling cables of the Bay Bridge, cutting each other off with blaring horns; a wino hurled a bottle on the sidewalk when he was locking up his car, splashing the cement with shattered glass and wine that smelled like vinegar; arguments brewed in the walls of his building, while somewhere above or below him, or out in the street, a woman cried rhythmically, her voice a pulse of sexuality. The sanity here was impossible to ignore, and the insanity was all standard issue. This was a world for humanity: They filled it to brimming with their sweat and their swearing, their wars and their anxious arts. No room here for invisible things, myths of dread, or acts more sadistic and improbable than the ones humankind already encompassed. The skies were empty; even the stars hid in fog.
I’m not afraid, he told himself, wondering why he should lie awake feeling fear and shame coursing through him in waves, thinking of Eli, the mandalas, of May and the cold shadow of the freeway.