Michael Hoffman

Following is the 31st (and concluding) installment of the serial novel Withdrawal.

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Birnbaum: A Novel of Inner Space http://imcbook.net/MoreFiction/FICTION1.html

Expat Literature from Japan http://jpgsonline.com/leaflets-travelbooks/MainBooksCat.htm

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Epilogue

I didn't marry her. I vanished. When I got off the phone with Sonia, I slipped out of the house - not to disappear, merely to take a walk. It was a starry, moonless night. There was not a soul about. The very cars seemed to be sleeping. On their windshields was a thin film of moisture. There was a decided nip in the air. Winter was coming. I wondered if the Four Corners would be open. It would be so pleasant to sit there sipping... not scotch, no; Irish coffee. I had a sudden yen for Irish coffee. Well, I would walk in that direction. There was just the barest chance that it would be open. I didn't have my wallet on me. Never mind. Bill, or whoever was on duty, would lend me the price of a drink.

It is interesting the way the mind works: when I passed the Einstein en route to the Four Corners, I was momentarily surprised, as though its being there represented a shift in the natural order of things, as though I hadn't known perfectly well where the Einstein stood in relation to the Four Corners, the past six months of my life having unfolded with morbid exclusivity in this not very geographically complicated corner of Nectar. Lights shone through the windows. I drew closer. The corridor was as brightly illuminated as at mid-day, and though the scene that presented itself was not as lively as I was accustomed to, it wasn't deserted either. I could see the man who had once scared the pants off me by demanding of me in the elevator why he was born a Jew. I had seen him several times since then, but he had never accosted me again. Indeed, come to think of it (only now did it strike me), I had never seen him say a word to anyone, as though his outburst to me was the very last thing he had to say on earth.

Withered Beauty was also there, lounging in her wheelchair. From a distance she looked asleep and at peace, less withered and more beautiful than I had ever seen her. And there was Madame de la Dangling Tongue, also in a wheelchair, her eyes wide open, her mouth equally, and her tongue hanging out as usual. One didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, the effect was so grotesque. And yet she too, even she, must have been young and pretty once, a little girl growing up, looking to the future with hope and expectation...

The autodoor opened for me as if inviting me in. "Len! Why, Len Fishman!"

My friend Roberto, as wide awake as ever. Was I dreaming? "What are you doing here?"

"I'm on night shift this week. What are you doing here?"

"Damned if I know. I just got sucked in somehow."

"By the way, did you hear? Anette's gettin' married."

"No! Really? Wonderful! Anybody I know?"

"Don't think so. My brother. He's visiting me from the Philippines. They met, and... well, you know how it is."

"No, Rob, I haven't a clue how it is. Well well. I'm really happy for her."

"You coulda had 'er. She coulda been yours."

"She's better off his. Believe me." I turned to go.

"Where you going?"

"That's a good question. I don't know. Look." I turned out the pockets of my pants, showing him their contents. "No wallet, no passport, nothing but the key to my mother's house. Where am I going, you ask. Where d'you think I'm going?"

"Your mother's house?"

I pocketed the key. "Catch you later."

"Why not say hi to... well speak o' the devil! Mr. Fishman, we were just talkin' about you."

Dad, accompanied by Mrs. Wallenberg, shuffled over. They were both dressed in the home's baggy turquoise pajamas and white bathrobe. They were holding hands. Paying no attention to me, dad fixed a determined gaze on Roberto and said, in a tone of voice I knew so well, suggestive, though without arrogance, of a capacity to see just a little farther than the person he was dealing with, "I think it's a big mistake."

Roberto winked at me. "I'm sure you're right, Mr. Fishman. A big mistake."

"All right then." His hand still in Mrs. Wallenberg's, he turned and walked towards the elevator, which - unheard of during the daytime - was empty and waiting. I watched the door close on them.

"Rob, I'm scared."

"Scared! What of?"

"I don't know. It's not scared of anything. It's just scared."

"The elevator can take them to one of two places: up, or down. Nowhere else. Don't worry."

"I'll see you, Rob."

"Ciao, Len."

***

My mother received my announcement with surprising calm. She would miss me, she said. But my place was not here. Even my confession that I didn't know where I was going failed to shake her firmness. (I had actually planned on naming a destination at random, a purely fictitious destination that would at least give her the comforting impression I had a goal, a purpose. But when the time came I couldn't somehow; it was as though I had ceded control of my tongue to someone less intelligent than myself. No matter. "Your destination will grow clear to you as you proceed," she said. "Len - I see a great future for you."

I could have laughed out loud. A great future! Mother, mother... But I held myself in check. I smiled wanly. "Well, you never know."

"You'll write?"

"Of course."

"Often?"

"Often."

And so, on the morning of October 17, traces of an overnight fall of unusually early snow still visible on the green lawns of Nectar, I set forth, my pack on my back and my heart torn in two. Why should that be? Did I miss my mother? My father? Linda? No. At least I didn't think so. I don't know. At the corner I turned, and saw my mother watching me from the window. I waved. She waved back. I turned the corner.

***

Jan. 15

Dear Mr. Bloom,

What, I wonder, will I do with this letter, having written it? Stick it in an envelope addressed to "Mr. Bloom, India"?

Here's a coincidence: I'm in India too. It's a long story. Or rather, not long at all. Very short. On the bus to the airport an elderly woman in a sari asked, just making conversation, where I was going. I looked at her and said, "India."

There's an enormous crowd visible from my hotel window, and the odds are very strong you are in it. I mean, think: is it likely that you, having come to India on a spiritual quest, would miss the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious festival, or festival of any kind, anywhere in the world? This is the place where two rivers meet - the two rivers: the Yamuna and the Ganges, whose holy waters cleanse the faithful of sin and potentially liberate them - us? - from the endless cycle of birth and death. So it was explained to me. By who? By a travel agent in Bombay. So here I am.

I have traveled extensively in India. I have even lived here, if staying six months in one residence is living in a place. I hate it - the crowds, the noise, the dirt, the heat. I hate it - and yet, having the world at my feet, free to go anywhere, it was here that I came, of my own free will, unless the woman on the bus was a witch who cast a spell on me. Do you think that's possible?

I was going to say that, having traveled extensively in India, I should be beyond being astonished, bewildered and nonplussed by it, but I am not. India makes beginners of us all. The sheer scale of the things that happen here is... well, astonishing and bewildering. Last month in Gujarat the earth shook for forty-five seconds. Thirty thousand dead in forty-five seconds. Here in Allahabad, I step out of my hotel and mingle with a crowd, so the local newspaper informs me, twenty-five million strong. Twenty-five million! That's the entire population of Canada, Ron! Twenty-five million people, all come to wash away their sins! I look into the Ganges and see filth. They look into it and see holiness. What does holiness look like, to those who have eyes to see it?

Once I thought of religion as something quiet, interior. Now I know better. It is noise, din, tumult, pandemonium. Megaphones blare Hindu scriptural chants. Radios blast religious songs. Is this ecstasy or despair swirling around me? I swear I don't know.

Yesterday I fell into talk with a Japanese journalist covering the festival. There are holy men, he told me, who live at the cremation ground. I followed him there. He got his tape recorder out. A young sadhu in a loin cloth, a human skull dangling from a string around his neck, approached us. "God is everywhere," he said, in English.

"I'm sure of it," I said.

"Why the skull?" asked the journalist.

"Why the ring?" retorted the sadhu, indicating the gold ring on the journalist's finger.

"Why do you live at the cremation ground?"

"Nobody bothers us. We can meditate in peace."

"Is it true you eat excrement?"

"No."

"Drink urine?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Everything is a gift from God."

"Why not excrement, then?"

The sadhu smiled and said nothing.

The journalist is an old India hand, keen to show it. "I know a man," he said, "who stood on one leg for six years."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Transcendence."

Frankly, Mr. Bloom - Ron - I can't handle any more of this transcendence. I'm pulling out tomorrow. It is not the craving for a night's sleep that keeps me here overnight, for if last night is any indication, and I'm sure it is, sleep will be impossible, what with the dancing, the wailing, and the car horns celebrating whatever it is car horns celebrate - life, perhaps. No, it is merely the sparsity of bus service. I'll keep my eyes peeled for you. By the way, did my brother pay you a visit? He said he was going to. He said he had a score to settle with you. I'm curious to know how it went - but not curious enough to ask him. I know we'll meet again some day, you and I. If not here, somewhere else. In the meantime - thanks, Ron. Thanks for everything.

***

Mother died that spring. Suddenly. Of a heart attack. The Einstein, alarmed at her absence and at her failure to answer the phone, contacted Adam, who discovered her hunched over the kitchen table, a half-full (or half-empty) cup of coffee, slightly lipstick-stained at the rim, undisturbed beside her.

I didn't go to the funeral. Adam and I discussed that briefly over the phone. I was in Japan, lodging in a Zen temple in Kyoto, though merely as a guest, not as an acolyte. Adam had no trouble reaching me - though he certainly would now, if it should ever occur to him to try. "What do you think I should do?" I asked. "Follow the promptings of your still inner voice," he said. His way of saying he couldn't care less.

Three years have passed since then, three restless, purposeless years, spent roaming three continents among whose teeming millions there can be few more rootless and unattached than I. How did I come to this, I who was raised for such a different destiny? Mother, God rest her soul, wanted her sons to be professional men. The professional man stood in her book at the very apex of humankind. The professions she had in mind were three: doctor, lawyer, chartered accountant. Such a man was self-employed, therefore master of his fate, and forever in demand, therefore busy, productive and wealthy. Dad would have been a professional man, she used to say, if he had had the opportunities in his youth that we were being given, at the cost of some sacrifice, in ours. Although perhaps, she would add thoughtfully, dad's failure was not entirely due to lack of opportunity. Uncle Al, after all, was similarly disadvantaged, but rose all the same, because he had a certain quality - determination, grit, call it what you will - which enabled him to seize the bull by the horns. That quality is what dad, an easygoing man content to settle for second best along "the path of least resistance," was deficient in, though intellectually, she added with the barest trace of sarcasm, he was Al's superior. She hoped we would take our father's example to heart, and set our sights in accord with our potential. In her dreams, I was a doctor and Adam a lawyer. Poor mother!

Sometimes I would settle down in a place and take up my old occupation of English teacher. I did this not out of financial necessity but simply out of the need to have an occupation, which is to say, an identity. The work bored me and I never stayed long - just long enough to recover the feeling of belonging to the planet, and then, reanchored, so to speak, I would move on. You will naturally wonder why I didn't turn my hand to serious work, useful work. Since I was financially independent, why didn't I volunteer at a refugee camp somewhere? God knows there are enough of them, and no lack of work to be done there. Millions, millions of people were suffering and dying to no purpose. I could have helped them, eased their sufferings, prolonged their lives. Why didn't I?

It's a perfectly valid question, one for which I have no satisfactory answer. Will I be understood if I say that I wanted to, but couldn't? Probably not. I scarcely understand it myself. I don't understand it, but I can state as a fact that I am a man of deep sympathies - whose sympathies fade in direct proportion to the physical proximity between me and the object of my sympathy. At close range, my sympathy is transformed into disgust. Self-disgust as much as anything. I imagine myself ministering to the hungry, the thirsty, the ill, the ravaged - offering them food, water, medicine, comfort - and immediately I see a picture in my mind's eye of Rabbi Yanovsky singing to the inmates at the Einstein: "Zum gali gali gali, zum gali gali..." My respect for Rabbi Yanovsky is boundless, and his ideas, as best I understand them, are a perpetual inspiration - but his is not an example I can follow. I'm sorry. I just can't.

His ideas. I would give anything to have his book in my possession. Give anything, I say - and yet I could very easily write him and ask him to send me a copy. Yes, but that would mean getting in touch. Getting in touch is another one of those things I simply can't bring myself to do. Why? Because... shall I be blunt? I don't want to hear news of my father. I don't want to know if he is alive or dead, or, if alive, how far his condition has deteriorated, or, alternately, how strong he is physically, how the doctors are considering him as a candidate for immortality. I can't explain further. I know - this is not being a good son. I don't want to be a good son. I don't want to be a son, period. To the extent that I have an ambition in life, that is it: to free myself of sonship.

And of brothership, and cousinship - for, after months and years of forgetfulness, I have lately remembered that they too, my brother and my cousin, may no longer be alive. If they actually followed through on their suicide pledge, they would have died two and a half weeks ago - though there is no hint of autumn in the air where I am now. I don't know whether they did or not. The likeliest possibility is that they forgot all about it long ago - or perhaps they got together on the planned day, October 31, Adam's birthday, to laugh about Len, wherever he might be, mourning their death.

Supposing Adam dead and dad alive - who would be taking care of the Einstein's monthly bills? I don't know. But my mother was a practical woman, and I can only presume that some arrangement would have been made.

I mentioned Rabbi Yanovsky's ideas. I've no doubt my understanding is very superficial; nor can I be sure to what extent I have crossed his ideas with Mr. Bloom's, or my father's. In any case, what I retain of them is this: God is a fiction, but can be believed in all the same, given a sufficiently strong will to do so. A sufficiently strong will to believe breathes reality into fiction, and God lives. It is up to us. Our first task, then, is to strengthen our will to believe. We do this, Rabbi Yanovsky taught, by grasping the futility, baseness and emptiness of life without God. There are moments when I actually think I have done this - none more intense than when in some strange place I go for a walk in the dead of night, as I often do, for the sake of the cool night air (I dislike the heat but roam mostly in hot countries because only there can one live homeless and independent), and, pausing before house lights visible through an open window, overhear family members talking animatedly to one another in a language I understand not a word of. The bottomless loneliness that comes over me then is more than I can describe. Sometimes it is more than I can bear.

But the longing I feel at such moments is not for God, Rabbi Yanovsky - not for God but for... Viv. It is not a sexual longing. I do not want to kiss her, or touch her. Only to see her, to see her smile, and to hear her talk - about the weather, bugs, her kids, whatever. That's all. Can such strength of longing be poured into so banal a vessel? Perhaps the answer is yes - or perhaps the answer is that my longing still isn't strong enough and I must plunge deeper, deeper into futility and loneliness. I don't know if I can, Rabbi. I don't know how much deeper I have it in me to go.