“How very interesting,” she murmured.
“Why would he be doing this?” Kate asked. “I mean, I can see how a fool would want to help the homeless and I could sort of see the appeal that the seminary might have for him, but what is he doing here, dressed like a suburban refugee, risking arrest or worse—surely he must occasionally misjudge just how far he can push people before they explode? Dean Gardner said Erasmus had been hurt last November, and I assumed that he’d been beaten up in the street, but now I wouldn’t be surprised if it had happened here.”
“You are quite right. Fools have never been content unless they were putting themselves at risk—from violence, from cold and starvation, whatever edge they were near, they would go closer. A medieval court fool would insult the king; the early Christians embraced martyrdom-. It’s all a means of courting madness.”
“It is a kind of mental illness, then?”
“Oh no. Well, I couldn’t say in this case, not having studied your friend Erasmus, but for a true Fool, a Holy Fool, the madness is always simulated. It is a tool, not a permanent state. I should perhaps qualify that by saying that there were some Holy Fools who had, in an earlier period of their lives, undergone a period of true insanity, but they came out of it, through conversion or enlightenment, and then later, if they returned to it, would only do so deliberately. You might say that they would choose to lose rational control.”
“I don’t understand why. A tool for what?” Other than a means of establishing an insanity plea for murder, she did not say aloud.
“For teaching. A fool who has relinquished control, who has submitted to chaos, is in a sense no longer a person, not an individual with a will and a mind of his own. You saw how Erasmus deferred to the staff he carries. Typically, even an inanimate object has more will than a fool. And because he is not his own person, he can be all people,- he can be a reflection of whatever individual he is facing. That is why a fool is so troubling,- he’s a mirror, and mirrors can be frightening.”
Kate waited until she had negotiated Geary Street before she spoke. “I’m sorry, it’s a pretty theory, but I can’t see what it has to do with the man Erasmus.”
“I am putting it in theoretical terms, perhaps. I should apologize for my airy-fairy academic language, which makes the process sound theoretical, but I assure you it’s quite real. Why do you think your fool so angered that young man? Not just because he was irritating him. Erasmus was reflecting the boy’s own ugly face back to him, showing him that he, a strong, a powerful young man, what you would call ‘macho,” would stoop so low as to hit, not only a frail young woman but even an old, feeble man. Judging by the behavior I have witnessed in the past by experienced fools, I would speculate that Erasmus, left alone, would probably have defused the lad’s anger by carrying it to exaggeration, by actually lying on the ground and inviting the young man to savage him. And then, having shocked the fellow into immobility, he would have brought the lesson to a close by identifying himself, Erasmus, the near victim, with the girl, the man’s perpetual victim. Now, that is teaching, and I suspect that even in its interrupted form the lesson will not cease to niggle at the man for some time. Every time he looks at the young woman, for a while.“
“If you’re right, it’d be a clever thing to teach in our domestic violence program—lie down and let the husband boot you before arresting him.”
“Of course, it isn’t quite that simple, is it? It’s not a technique at all; it’s a response from the fool’s inner being. And, seeing the effect this fool has had on one far-from-gullible police officer, I must say I am quite looking forward to meeting him.”
♦
At first it looked as if the professor would not get her wish, because when Kate drove past the place where Erasmus had been performing, he had obeyed the patrolman’s order and was no longer there. Nor did they spot him anywhere along the strip of shops and shows, all the way up to the Maritime Museum. Along the drive, however, there had been various tantalizing smells, french fries and onions and grilling hamburgers, topped off by a waft of chilis and onions that lay over Ghirardelli Square.
“I haven’t had any lunch,” Kate declared. “Do you mind if I stop off and get something, then we can do another drive-by?”
“That’s quite all right with me.”
Kate drove around into Fort Mason and stopped as close to Greens Restaurant as she could get, ran in and bought a juicy sandwich of eggplant and red peppers and cheese, a bag of fruity cookies for the professor, who had said that she’d already eaten lunch, and ran back out. She pulled the car back out into the Marina and parked, and they ate while watching the joggers and Frisbee players and people lying with their faces turned to the winter sun. Professor Whitlaw ate one cookie and then opened the door and got out to stand and gaze over the grass to the waters of the Bay and the tracery of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kate gathered up sandwich and car keys and went to stand with her.
“You have a very lovely city here,” said the professor. “A jewel in a golden setting. Do you know, London is built on one of the most active rivers in the world, and yet in most of the city you’d never know the river was there. I’ve often thought that would be the definition of a modern city: One has absolutely no idea of the natural setting.”
“It would be hard to ignore the Bay and the hills here.”
“Yes, I fear San Francisco is doomed never to achieve modernity. What a blessing. Do you suppose that is a kite that young man is wrestling with, or a tent?”
“God only knows. We’ll have to wait and see if he gets it in the air.”
The results were inconclusive. The winged dome with the dragon stitched on one side was briefly airborne but hardly aerodynamic. Kate crumpled her sandwich wrapper and tossed it into a nearby can.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yes,” Professor Whitlaw said, and turned back to the car. “I really must do this more often. It’s ridiculous, to come to a magnificent place like this and see only the insides of walls. I believe I’ve seen more of the city in the last hour than I have the entire three weeks I’ve been here.” She turned to Kate and humorously half-inclined her head. “Thank you for the tour.”
“Any time.”
In the car, they rolled down the windows. Kate turned back toward Fishermen’s Wharf.
“Are you from London, then?” she asked.
“Oh no, dear. Rural Yorkshire originally, then Cambridge, followed by several years teaching in London. I hated it there. So insular and gray. Chicago seemed wide open, bracing after London. That is where I first came in this country, to a teaching job. Although I admit California seems like a different country entirely. I first got to really know the Fools movement in Chicago and on the East Coast, Boston and New York.”
“Even though they started in England.”
“Yes, ironic, wasn’t it? I knew of them in England, of course, but they were of peripheral interest to me then—a friend who later became a colleague had a passion for them. Eventually the passion proved contagious. My actual field is the history of cults, but there’s so much that is depressing in cult behavior, I found Fools a refreshing change. They are one of the few groups who understand that religion can be not only joyous but fun. He doesn’t seem to be here, does he?” She sounded disappointed as Kate drove slowly past the place where Erasmus had been two hours earlier.
“No, but we’ll try farther up. One of the vendors said he’s usually there in the afternoons.”