"Then you agree I should go."
"Yes," I said.
"I've got enough money to go anywhere in the world. I've thought of China. I've thought, Where is the least likely place He would be born? A Communist country like China. Or France."
"Why France?" I asked.
"I've always wanted to see France."
"Then go to France," I said.
"'What will you do,'" Fat murmured.
"Pardon?"
"I was thinking about that American Express Travelers' Checks TV ad. 'What will you do. What will you do.' That's how I feel right now. They're right."
I said, "I like the one where the middle-aged man says, 'I had six hundred dollars in that wallet. It's the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life.' If that's the worst thing that ever happened to him -- "
"Yeah," Fat said, nodding. "He's led a sheltered life."
I knew what vision had conjured itself up in Fat's mind: the vision of the dying girls. Either broken on impact or burst open from within. I shivered and felt, myself, like weeping.
"She suffocated," Fat said, finally, in a low voice. "She just fucking suffocated; she couldn't breathe any longer."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "'There are worse diseases than cancer.'"
"Did he show you slides?"
We both laughed. When you are nearly crazy with grief, you laugh at what you can.
"Let's walk down to Sombrero Street," I said; that was a good restaurant and bar where we all liked to go. "I'll buy you a drink."
We walked down to Main St. and seated ourselves in the bar at Sombrero Street.
"Where's that little brown-haired lady you used to come in here with?" the waitress asked Fat as she served us our drinks.
"In Cleveland," Fat said. We both started to laugh again. The waitress remembered Sherri. It was too awful to take seriously.
"I knew this woman," I said to Fat as we drank, "and I was talking about a dead cat of mine and I said, 'Well, he's at rest in perpetuity' and she immediately said, completely seriously, 'My cat is buried in Glendale.' We all chimed in and compared the weather in Glendale compared to the weather in perpetuity." Both Fat and I were laughing so hard now that other people stared at us. "We have to knock this off," I said, calming down.
"Isn't it colder in perpetuity?" Fat said.
"Yes, but there's less smog."
Fat said, "Maybe that's where I'll find him."
"Who?" I said.
"Him. The fifth savior."
"Do you remember the time at your apartment," I said, "when Sherri was starting chemotherapy and her hair was falling out -- "
"Yeah, the cat's water dish."
"She was standing by the cat's water dish and her hair kept falling into the water dish and the poor cat was puzzled."
"'What the hell is this?'" Fat said, quoting what the cat would have said could it talk. "'Here in my water dish?'" He grinned, but no joy could be seen in his grin. Neither of us could be funny any longer, even between us. "We need Kevin to cheer us up," Fat said. "On second thought," he murmured, "maybe we don't."
"We just have to keep on truckin'," I said.
"Phil," Fat said, "if I don't find him, I'm going to die."
"I know," I said. It was true. The Savior stood between Horselover Fat and annihilation.
"I am programmed to self-destruct," Fat said. "The button has been pressed."
"The sensations that you feel -- " I began.
"They're rational," Fat said. "In terms of the situation. It's true. This is not insanity. I have to find him, wherever he is, or die."
"Well, then I'll die, too," I said. "If you do."
"That's right," Fat said. He nodded. "You got it. You can't exist without me and I can't exist without you. We're in this together. Fuck. What kind of life is this? Why do these things happen?"
"You said it yourself. The universe -- "
"I'll find him," Fat said. He drank his drink and set the empty glass down and stood up. "Let's go back to my apartment. I want you to hear the new Linda Ronstadt record, Living In the USA. It's real good."
As we left the bar, I said, "Kevin says Ronstadt's washed up."
Pausing at the door out, Fat said, "Kevin is washed up. He's going to whip that goddam dead cat out from under his coat on Judgment Day and they're going to laugh at him like he laughs at us. That's what he deserves: a Great Judge exactly like himself."
"That's not a bad theological idea," I said. "You find yourself facing yourself. You think you'll find him?"
"The Savior? Yeah, I'll find him. If I run out of money I'll come home and work some more and go look again. He has to be somewhere. Zebra said so. And Thomas inside my head -- he knew it; he remembered Jesus just having been there a little while ago, and he knew he'd be back. They were all joyful, completely joyful, making preparations to welcome him back. The bridegroom back. It was so goddam festive, Phil; totally joyful and exciting, and everyone running around. They were running out of the Black Iron Prison and just laughing and laughing; they had fucking blown it up, Phil; the whole prison. Blew it up and got out of there... running and laughing and totally, totally happy. And I was one of them."
"You will be again," I said.
"I will be," Fat said, "when I find him. But until then I won't be; I can't be; there's no way." He halted on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. "I miss him, Phil; I fucking miss him. I want to be with him; I want to feel his arm around me. Nobody else can do that. I saw him -- sort of -- and I want to see him again. That love, that warmth -- that delight on his part that it's me, seeing me, being glad it's me: recognizing me. He recognized me!"
"I know," I said, awkwardly.
"Nobody knows what it's like," Fat said, "to have seen him and then not to see him. Almost five years now, five years of -- " He gestured. "Of what? And what before that?"
"You'll find him," I said.
"I have to," Fat said, "or I am going to die. And you, too, Phil. And we know it."
The leader of the Grail knights, Amfortas, has a wound which will not heal. Klingsor has wounded him with the spear which pierced Christ's side. Later, when Klingsor hurls the spear at Parsifal, the pure fool catches the spear -- which has stopped in midair -- and holds it up, making the sign of the Cross with it, at which Klingsor and his entire castle vanish. They were never there in the first place; they were a delusion, what the Greeks call dokos; what the Indians call the veil of maya.
There is nothing Parsifal cannot do. At the end of the opera, Parsifal touches the spear to Amfortas's wound and the wound heals. Amfortas, who only wanted to die, is healed. Very mysterious words are repeated, which I never understood, although I can read German:
"Gesegnet sei dein Leiden,
Das Mitleids höchste Kraft,
Und reinsten Wissens Macht
Denn zagen Toren gab!"
This is one of the keys to the story of Parsifal, the pure fool who abolishes the delusion of the magician Klingsor and his castle, and heals Amfortas's wound. But what does it mean?
"May your suffering be blessed,
Which gave the timid fool
Pity's highest power
And purest knowledge's might!"
I don't know what this means. However, I know that in our case, the pure fool, Horselover Fat, himself had the wound which would not heal, and the pain that goes with it. All right; the wound is caused by the spear which pierced the Savior's side, and only that same spear can heal it. In the opera, after Amfortas is healed, the shrine is at last opened (it has been closed for a long time) and the Grail is revealed, at which point heavenly voices say: