“So why do anything? There really isn't much of a reason to even get out of bed in the morning.”
“Of course there isn't if you expand what is meant by 'purpose' or 'meaning' to include the 'why' that existence is, to some, supposed to entail.” What? “Either it's all part of a divine plan, and there's no free will, or it's all meaningless acts of free-will. There's really no middle ground unless you focus. Our actions only have meaning when we remove ourselves from the grand stage of history, when we see ourselves as important to people close to us, to those with whom we share a community.”
“But isn't that a tragedy? Isn't it pathetic that virtually no one from our time will be remembered in a thousand years?”
“No. It's pathetic only if you're conceited and unreasonable. But you have to continue on anyway. You don't have a choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I am able to address you as a conscious being, then you are alive. Even if you choose to die, such a choice is made by one who is living. To be or not to be, young man. All other questions are adjunctive to it. Is it not right there in the Declaration of Independence? Life. One cannot have anything unless one has life. Liberty.” He pauses. “What is liberty, my friend?”
I am silent for a moment. I see myself trying to look introspective. “No one really asks that, do they?”
“That is exactly how James Baldwin responded when asked the same question!” He takes pause to laugh. “But liberty; liberty is not simply freedom. Freedom is the pylon of liberty. But liberty is the acceptance of responsibility, the refusal to be little more than a ward. True reactionaries, traditionalists perhaps, have argued against this, and they have legitimized their claims in myriad ways. Men like Charles Loyseau and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet legitimized the rule of the French crown — while Sir Robert Filmer and those like him, though no one else specifically comes to mind at the moment, legitimized the English one — and the surrounding hierarchy by claiming that order is paramount to both the natural world and morality, that the practices of the ancien régime best embody the Will of God, and, therefore, that God desires certain men to lead and others to follow. Romans was quoted often, though I forget the exact passage.
“Regardless, the Revolution against this system, consequently, took on something of an atheistic, or — according to Anatole France — a deistic, tone. If a cruel system is the system of the Catholic God, then those suffering beneath it will certainly have less than kind thoughts about the nature of this God. Just look at Sade,” he laughs. “But this is a tangent, is it not? What I mean to say is that the fight for liberty is the fight for personal responsibility, for dignity, to cast off the chains of fate. Many people do not understand this. They see responsibility as something that is imposed, liberty as a relief from burden. But it is actually the opposite: Liberty is a burden because it lifts restrictions, thereby leaving man before the world with nothing more than his wits.
“Liberty is dangerous. It is dangerous because it is trust and personal responsibility. A society without trust, a society that believes all people are ultimately irresponsible, will not allow liberty. But we have been granted liberty here, in this country. In fact, if one looks to the words of the Bill of Rights, one realizes that trust is pervasive throughout it. This is a far cry from the days of David and Hammurabi. It is grounded on trust, trust in a people responsible enough to own a firearm, to speak without inciting riot, to write without advocating genocide. This trust, this liberty — it is beautiful. It is beautiful because it is messy, it is chaotic, and it has limitless potential. And this, this my boy, is where the pursuit of happiness comes in. How can one pursue happiness without liberty?”
“But this isn't the eighteenth century any more. A guy with a lot of power and money will just get richer and more powerful at the expense of the people. What I mean to say is that allowing one person to pursue their own definition of happiness will often prevent several others from their own pursuits. And this isn't fair. It isn't just.”
“To think how we've regressed,” he winces. “To think that speaking of liberty promotes the agendas of men who would rape their own mothers for a dollar. Yes, of course they want the freedom to exploit. They want to see every social program gutted, privatized, and left to whither and die. They want to see every roadblock set up to make sure we don't return to the days when a man had no choice but to work for subsistence wages removed. These men befoul the name of liberty in their quest for power and wealth. No, I do not speak of them. I speak of men for whom liberty is infinitely more important than the free market. What seems so odd to me, however, is that the people who trust humanity the least tend to resent regulations the most. Why? If the government steals from you, it's called corruption. If a businessman steals from you, it's called profit. I want more regulations to protect my liberty from corporations, which, contrary to what the Supreme Court may say, are not people.”
“Okay.”
“I apologize for that little rant, my boy,” he laughs. “I asked a simple question and gave you an irrelevant answer.” He sips his coffee. “Let's go back, shall we. Why did you decide to look for my son as opposed to, say, the Holy Grail?”
“There are a number of reasons,” as I look to him. “For one, I thought it'd be a good opportunity—”
“Opportunity!” He smiles. “Thought it may not be my place to play the part of the pedant, I do believe it important to impart this one bit of information to you. Do you know the etymology of the word 'opportunity'?” I shake my head. “It comes from the word opportunus. It means, quite simply, the best way to reach port. Think about that.”
This continues for quite some time. He provides odd pieces of wisdom for which I am less grateful than I appear (which is certainly reminiscent of the night Tomas and I spent with Patrick). He also reproaches me for behaving my age. Repeatedly. I am understandably afraid to seriously argue with him. He is Coprolalia's father after all.
It's something of a disappointment that Isaac was never one for photography. The most recent picture he has of his son was taken four years before the accident, on his thirtieth birthday. It does not take him long to find it.
Mordecai does not look the way I had imagined him — his short, brown hair has a reddish tint to it; his face is somewhat long and thin, lacking in any discernible feature except for the absence of defined cheekbones or a beard or anything that could be called distinctive. His ears are not as big as others have let on, but they do protrude from his head a good deal. His skin tone is a pale, Slavic white. On his body, I can say little — he has hidden himself within that sweatshirt that others have mentioned. As I assumed, he appeared to be about my height.
I can't define the man I had thought him to be. Perhaps I had never taken the time to define him physically, so none of this really changes anything. I guess I thought he was going to radiate something — charisma, afflatus, rebellion. And yet there is nothing alluring about him, nothing that invites suspicions or entertains a mystery. He was just some dude. For all I know, I rode the train with him the day before he died.
Mr. Adelstein provided a lot of biographical information, though most of it was either obvious or not particularly relevant to…well, anything. Mordecai never went to college; he read a great deal; he lived at home until he was twenty-three. After living with Willis Faxo in the City, he moved to Greenpoint. He lived there until sometime in the late-nineties, but Mr. Adelstein cannot remember an exact year. The dowager who rented the place to him either died or decided to move to Florida. He then moved to Morningside Heights for a few years, where he roomed with his cousin, Shayna, who was then enrolled at Columbia. In the spring of 2003, he moved into a studio apartment not too far away from where Vinati currently lives. He remained there until the end of his life.