“Something’s not right with me,” I said to him.
“You’re a good man,” he said to me.
“Everything hurts,” I said to him.
“I’ve got you, Tom,” he said to me.
“I can’t move,” I said to him.
“Don’t try to move,” he said to me.
“I want to see Jane,” I said, sniffling.
“Jane loves you,” he said to me.
“I need to go to the hospital,” I said.
“Sshhh.”
“Will you take me to the hospital?” I begged my father.
“I will.”
“Do you promise?” I asked.
“I promise.”
And with that he lifted me up and tossed me in the air, he threw me into the air and, throwing me, let me go. His arms released me, and I released Rebecca’s hand, and I was free.
“Goodbye, Tom,” said the girl with the dog on her neck, as I flew above the aquarium and the tables and chairs.
“Goodbye, Rebecca,” I said to this girl whose father I had probably — no, certainly — stabbed.
“So long, Tom,” said Bernhardt, his load lightened, his arms empty of their night’s burden.
“Goodbye,” I called to him.
“We’ll be seeing you later, Tom!” called another voice. This sounded an awful lot like Peter Konwicki — the old adversary transformed, after a night out, into my pal. Or was it Sherwin making a hoarse, fatigued, postcoital adieu? These were my friends saying sad farewells at the end of our supper.
“Feel better!” they all called to me from below.
“Goodbye,” I cried back at them. “Goodbye.”
I was sorry that Dan was not out of the men’s room. What was the problem? Had he accidentally locked himself in? I would have liked to say goodbye to Dan.
“Goodbye,” waved Bernhardt and Maria and Manuel. They’d been my booth mates.
“Goodbye!”
“So long!”
“Farewell.”
“A bientôt!”
“Goodbye,” one last time. “Goodbye.”
And this time, when I passed through the roof, I really and truly passed through the roof. It was easy. It happened just like that. I did not, as I knew I would not, feel a thing.
The air was freezing cold outside. Light from above spilled everywhere. We were going to have a frost for sure. What had happened to spring? What would become of Jane’s tulips blooming beside our driveway?
I could see the Pancake House roof with its neon sign rigged over the entryway. I heard the thunder from over the river. I saw the parking lot with its towering trees surrounding everyone’s cars, the poplars throwing long shadows across the neighboring fields, all the trees and the bushes beneath the trees like a lit-up and windblown train-set forest seen from on high; and I could see, off in the distance, the broken airport.
What about that light cascading down to make the stormy night into day? Need I say that it came from the hospital? It came from the hospital. The hospital had come for me. It was my beacon and my home. It shielded me from the rain. It waited above me.
Before I got inside the hospital, I looked toward the north. I searched this direction and that across the nighttime horizon, to see if I might chance to make out, through the light and the mist and, beyond the awful light, against the outer darkness, any cars on Eureka. And, you know, I did locate, through one brief, tiny opening in the clouds, a small automobile creeping up the steep hill that rises to a flat peak before plummeting like a roller-coaster ride past the book factory, into the covered bridge.
It was good to know that Jane was taking her time, driving safely in the foul weather. I always remind her to buckle her seat belt. To be honest, I sometimes yell at her about this. I’d have to leave it to Manuel or somebody else on earth to tell her, after she arrives at the Pancake House & Bar, where to find me.
In the meantime, and until I felt, for want of a better way of putting it, like a man — until such time, up I went, up, up, into the ICU, with its shiny new beds draped in spotless white sheets. And it occurred to me to wonder whether, had I been able, in my panicked flight from Bernhardt’s arms and my own body — had I been able to travel, as I had wanted to travel into the unknown, infinite universe, out past the moon to the farthest stars and beyond — well, I asked myself, then, if the things I might have seen and felt there, out at the edges of space and time — would these things, whatever they might have been (whatever they might be), the things that I might have seen (that I might see) — might they, I wondered, possibly look or feel to me anything like this ascension into light?
And would Jane, finding me naked on a metal bed on a cold ward, would she crawl into the bed and hold me for a minute, and stroke my head, and whisper sweetly in my ear, over and over again, telling me that, after all, we are married, and she doesn’t mind?
PRAISE FOR THE VERIFICATIONIST
“Edgy, fantastical, absurdist, Dionysian, visionary … not to mention hilarious … Antrim’s virtuosic technical skills are everywhere apparent. Rarely has such a serious-minded book provoked so much laughter.”
— Newsday
“[Antrim] weds highbrow rumination and goofy humor, cinematic extravagance, and magical realism.”
— The Denver Post
“Witty … [and] hilarious.”
— The Boston Globe
“Wild, silly, funny, confusing, fantastic, challenging … Donald Antrim is a clever and polished writer, and he brings his readers along his strange trajectories with ease and élan.”
— The Raleigh News & Observer
“[Antrim] writes wonderfully in a funny, poignant, supple prose style … [with] full-bodied characters, each abuzz with anxiety, self-doubt, and lust … The Verificationist is terrific.”
— The Providence Journal
“Remarkable … a great treat … this novel is satisfying beyond almost all expectations.”
— Rocky Mountain News
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DONALD ANTRIM is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the American Academy in Berlin. He lives in New York City.