Sixth segment
What time is it? It's the first thought that comes to me as I wake, but I make no move to look at the clock. I can't even open my eyes. My head aches dreadfully. I fall back on the pillow. What was that crazy dream I had? It was so clear, so vivid, but now it's gone, and behind my closed eyelids I mentally grope for fragments, like an archaeologist reconstructing an ancient temple – which thought immediately suggests Linda; why? Of course – she's studying archaeology. No, anthropology. Well, the two are related.
My God – have I ever, ever had such a headache? Did I drink that much? Helen – Helen was here. She came in a taxi... where is she? In bed beside me? I reach out a hand; it falls limply on the mattress. I am alone. Quite alone. Well, that's a relief. Why? Because, other considerations aside, I believe I am going to throw up. Only not yet – please, not just yet. I can't move. What if the house were to catch fire? Well, let it. No, I would not defy the pain in my head and run for my life. I would not. That is not an indication of the low value I place on my life, but of the helplessness to which the pain in my head has reduced me.
If I lie perfectly still, breathing just enough to sustain life, it is not so bad. I can't move, but I can think, after a fashion. I can maybe reconstruct the dream, or recall what happened to Helen. I can try, anyway. It would help if I could close my eyes, but I can't, because they're already closed. Pinball. Pinball machines. Yes, yes, in the dream I'm in a pinball parlor; lights are flashing, bombs are exploding, and I'm playing, and winning, winning... Who is with me, congratulating me and cheering me on? Man or woman? Friend or stranger? I have never played pinball, I know nothing about it, and that's true in the dream too, but somehow every move I make is the right one... Now I'm in a car, not a real car but steering a car onscreen as it careens along a mountain road; there are no brakes, all I have is the steering wheel, but I am handling it expertly, expertly; I've always been a good driver; I seem to anticipate each curve before it appears, and negotiate it with scarcely so much as a squeal of the tires. Bells ring, a buzzer sounds, lights flash... But who is that with me? That's the puzzle. I simply can't make him out – or her. Not that there's anything subtle about his – or her – presence, which is boisterous and exuberant, as though my victories and triumphs were his – or hers. How is it possible not to know whether it's a man or a woman, young or old, beautiful or ugly? Please, please, no more of this; it isn't good for me in my condition. Oh, for someone to lay a cold cloth on my forehead! "Helen," I groan weakly. Could she be passed out somewhere else in the house? I have no memory of her leaving. What do I remember? We sat in the living room, on the sofa, me drinking straight scotch, she scotch and water; she exclaimed "Oh! Glenlivet!"... Is that all? No, we had a good, rousing, lively talk. We shared old memories, brought each other up to date. The conversation flowed easily, naturally, without awkward silences, and if I can remember so little about it it's not really surprising; there's simply nothing particularly arresting in our lives, either of them. We grew up, older and old doing the usual things, except that in my case I did fewer of them, as tends to be the case with lifelong bachelors. Did I enjoy her company? Yes, yes, very much, and the fact that we talked nothing but banalities in no way dampened my pleasure, or hers. Did we... do more than talk? Did we touch? Hold hands? Kiss? Did we arrange to meet again as we said goodbye? But when did we say goodbye? Did she call a taxi? No – I'd remember that! True, I'm dreadfully hung over, but I'm not drunk, my mind is functioning normally...
She must be in the house. She must be. But... here's another question: how did I get into bed? I'm wearing pajamas, I'm neatly tucked in... Is that her work? Did she undress me and put me to bed?
The question either bores me, or else it reduces me to helplessness. Either way, it puts me to sleep, and I wake up – how many hours later? – feeling better, refreshed; happy, in fact; yes, happy, and it occurs to me in that moment that perhaps there is no greater happiness on earth than that of shaking off a hangover – one feels so buoyant, so alive! I fling off the covers, the sun streams in through the window as though to wish me good morning, welcome back. It draws me to the window, it warms my face as I look out. There's my silver-gray BMW in the driveway, gleaming in the sun. It too seems pleased to see me. Come, it says, let's go for a drive. We can go anywhere, you and I. Anywhere. "We're going to San Francisco, remember?" I call down to it. I'd better get the oil changed before we leave.
Downstairs. Is Helen here? She is not, of course. But there on the coffee table is the bottle of scotch we drank from, and our two glasses. And... what's this? A scrap of paper, a note: "Steve, call me" – and a number, a cell phone number.
"Call me" – what for? So we can "start a relationship"? Become boyfriend and girlfriend? Live together? Play house? Wouldn't that be an interesting dénouement, though: my life that, in a sense, began with the kiss we exchanged when I was six, ending with the resumption of our childhood play... Yes, maybe I will call her. Maybe I will. "You see, my son," I say aloud, indulging in the freedom to act crazy without being crazy, a freedom that is given only to solitaries, "you see, I have remained true to my vocation – to your vocation. My renunciation of it was only temporary, provisional. I am writing the story of my life, and must now choose the ending. What do you say, my boy? Should I call her? Well, you don't have to answer immediately. Take your time, think it over..."
In the kitchen the first thing that draws my eye is the Red Notebook on the table, minus its satellites. Is that where I left it? It must be, since it's there, unless... could I have shown it to Helen? Well, what if I did? I'm hungry. What shall I make for myself – breakfast, lunch or dinner? There's a clock above the window; I can orient myself, as to time, with a glance; but the truth is I rather like this disorientation; I would like to savor it for a while, even if it means preparing the wrong meal... Yes, but deliberately keeping my eyes off the clock is an absurdity I simply cannot sustain. Should I get rid of it? What an intriguing idea – get rid of all the timepieces in the house! What's to stop me? I'm retired, aren't I? I have no appointments to keep; why must I have an awareness of the hour and minute forced upon me every hour and minute?
"'Finally got a ride into Banff in a van with two middle-aged phony hippies.' Those are your words I'm reading to you, my boy, your words. Do you remember them? 'Banff is magnificent – scenery like I've never seen before. But it's such a goddamn tourist hangout. I despise these middle-aged tourists who appreciate scenery only when looking at it through Instamatic viewfinders. Their idea of roughing it is to park their luxury trailers in a park that begins to look like suburbia as more and more suburbanites pull in.' Ah yes, what splendid disdain you had for the middle-aged, the middle-class, the suburban. 'I despise.' You wore your contempt like amour, and sallied forth. Well, good for you." What's that – the phone? It will be Helen, of course, checking to see if I'm alive. Am I? Should I answer? There's something about a ringing phone you're not answering – you are here and not here at the same time. "Here and not here at the same time" – do you ever get that feeling, my son? Is there any mention of it in the Red Notebook? Really, there's something magical about it, it's hard to put your finger on. I'd savor it a bit longer, only – what the hell? It's stopped! For a second or two I'm utterly bewildered... what's that word Helen used? Discombobulated – as if the silence that has replaced the ringing is the strangest, most inexplicable thing that's ever happened to me in my life. The last time she called – the first time, I mean – it rang and rang, she simply would not take no for an answer, and finally, as she must have known I would, I yielded, submitted to the inevitable, as it seemed then, and picked it up. So why didn't she wait this time too, since she knows me so well? Unless... maybe it wasn't her? But if not her, who? Well, it could have been anyone, of course, anyone in the world. A wrong number. A telemarketer. Linda? Maybe it was Linda. No, I haven't lost my mind – I fully appreciate how improbable that is. One: she doesn't know my phone number; she never thought of asking for it, and frankly, at the time I never thought of telling her. Two: there is no conceivable reason on earth why she would be interested enough in me to look it up. Do you think I don't know that? A nineteen-year-old girl doesn't go around phoning sixty-two-year-old men she happens to serve while clerking in her mother's store. What a fool I am, to be suffering this torment when I could so easily have picked up the phone when it rang and... I stare at it, concentrate all my mental powers upon it. "Ring!" It's a game I used to play with myself as a kid. Once, it worked. I was ten or thereabouts. Howie Levine, best friend of my childhood, had a ping pong table in his basement, and I wanted him to call me and ask me over to play. Of course I could have called him, but shyness held me back. My mother never liked to see me hanging around the house by myself with nothing to do. "Phone one of your friend and do something!" she'd say, her tone varying with her mood. Sometimes it would sound like a friendly suggestion, sometimes like an exasperated command. Bubbly and outgoing herself, she simply was not equipped to understand shyness, solitude, introversion. We had a difficult time together, my mother and I. But never mind that. Once, sensing my mother was about to impose herself on me, wanting to get together with Howie but too shy to take the initiative – the odd time I did call him he always contrived to be busy with somebody else; whether he actually was or just said he was in order to humiliate me was a question that occupied a goodly portion of my childhood attention – I played my little game, staring at the phone with all my might and mentally commanding it, "Ring!" And it rang. And it was Howie: "Wanna play ping pong?" I went through a phase after that of being convinced I had supernatural powers. Maybe I did have them. Maybe I have them now. "Ring!"
Is it shyness that prevents me from calling Helen now? "Call her – she asked you to!" I exhort myself, my tone so like my mother's that it is positively eerie. Is tone of voice a genetic inheritance? Or is it just that, as I age, I am evolving into... my mother? As a matter of fact, though I have yet to mention it, my mother is still alive. She's in a home, a withered, demented relic of her former self, showing not the faintest recognition of me when I visit her – which (to my eternal discredit, I know) I have not done once in the past six months. Certainly I must pay her a call. No use asking what for, since she doesn't recognize me anyway. The answer is: because she's my mother. It's not strictly logical, but these things aren't.
Incredible – the phone's ringing! No games this time around, no dazed musings over whether it's my imagination, or a dream; no nonsense: I snatch the receiver. "Hello!"
"Steve?"
"Helen?"
"Helen?"
She is confused, shy. "I'm sorry," I stammer. It's Linda. It is. First I sense it – via telepathy, or whatever – and then she confirms it. She is calling, she explains, because – do I remember the red notebook I was looking for? Well, they've just had a shipment of new notebooks, including one that fits my description of what I wanted to a T. If I'm still interested...
"I am, I am!" I cry, with a joy that must strike her as (to say the very least) disproportionate – but how can she know, how can she understand? "Linda, you have saved my life!" Yes, I really said that. I am not mad, not in a state of demonic (or angelic) possession, I could have stifled the exclamation as it welled up; I considered doing so, then made a conscious and perfectly rational decision to throw caution to the winds, knowing it would strike her as perfectly absurd. The odd thing is, though, it doesn't seem to. If she reacts at all, nothing is apparent over the phone – probably the same cell phone she took from her handbag to call the main store to ask if they had what I was looking for in stock. Is she smiling? If so – is it a tolerant smile, an amused smile, perhaps a fond smile? Oh, how I long to see her face at this moment!
"Well," she says, calmly, neutrally, businesslike, "come over any time..."
"I'll come now, this minute. What time is it?"
If she sees anything strange in the question, again, it does not show. "Ten to three," she says – by which time I have instinctively glanced at the clock over the window (which shows seven minutes to three). It occurs to me to ask her what day of the week it is, but that I do stifle – though suddenly I am aware that I do not know, and I am in fact curious, not that it matters.
"Will you be there for a while?"
"Until four. I have a class at five."
"I'll be right over."
I hang up without saying goodbye and sink into a chair. I am overcome, my head is reeling. I hear myself laugh out loud. "Not Hamlet, to hell with Hamlet – I'll read one of the comedies." I'll go to the library from the store, set things right with the librarian, and take out... hm, which one? The Tempest, perhaps. Aren't I in a tempest now? Should I ask her to dinner after class? No, no – the phone's ringing again! Ignore it, I have no time, she has to leave at four, I'm not here! "I'm not here!" I shout at the ringing phone. It doesn't stop. I have powers, but am powerless to govern them. Or is that true? I can walk out of the house, can't I?
Seventh segment
Linda is serving a customer. She looks up at my entrance, accords me the faintest, the very faintest smile of recognition, and returns to her business. The customer is a young man – how young? Twenty-five, I'd say, rather short in stature, as I am myself, not that it matters, and both his blue business suit and his bushy but neatly trimmed moustache look out of place on him, adult trappings designed to allow him to pass in a world he does not yet belong in. I am glad of the chance to quietly observe Linda in action. How does she carry herself? Well, very well; with the confidence of one who knows her business. The young man's mission is a somewhat strange one: to select a get-well card for his boss to send to a long-standing client who is ailing. Why doesn't the boss select it himself, since it is to be from him? Because he is too busy, or at least seeks to give that impression. But the young man sees a deeper significance (all this I overhear as I pretend to browse among the cards celebrating the birth of a "little gift from heaven," as one of the more cloying ones put it). He suspects he has been set a kind of test, and will be judged according to what he brings back. From the tenor of their conversation, it's clear they know each other, that he has deliberately sought her out because he knows the value of her advice.
"I'll be with you in just a minute," she says to me. I smile and nod to indicate that I am in no hurry. Then, to the young man, she says, "I have just the thing for you." She strides briskly to the rear of the store, her high heels clicking. She's wearing high heels! And a skirt. Last time she was in jeans. A skirt and blouse. How unobservant I am, honestly! To think I've been standing here for – how long? five minutes? – without it registering! Brown-and-black checkerboard skirt, white blouse. And earrings! Tiny ones – pearls? She looks quite a different person – the same, but different. A young woman, poised, elegant. Why is she dressed up? For work? For school? For something she's got planned after school?
"Suppose we ask this gentleman," I suddenly hear Linda say. I look up to see them both smiling at me.
"Ask this gentleman what?" I say, smiling too.
Not at all embarrassed, the young man explains the situation, most of which I'd already gathered, and, showing me two cards, winds up, "Linda says this one, I say this one. What would you say?"
Scarcely glancing at either card, I say, "If Linda says this one, I'd say the same. To tell you the truth, I know nothing at all about this sort of thing. If I were in your predicament, I'd do exactly what you did – ask Linda's advice. And I'd take it without a second thought."
"Settled then!" says the young man – evidently a very good-natured fellow. They go to the cash, Linda rings up the purchase, and the young man takes his leave, saying, "Thanks, Linda, I'll see you later. You too, sir, thank you."
"Who is he?" I ask.
"Oh, nobody. My brother, actually. Your notebook." She bends down, retrieves it from somewhere or other under the cash, and hands it to me.
"Amazing! It's the... the exact replica!" It is. It's identical; you couldn't tell them apart, aside from the evident age of mine. "Where did you...?"
"I can't really claim credit," she says. "It just came in with the last shipment. It seems they're making them again."
"Just this one?"
"Oh, no. You can have as many as you like. They're in the back. I haven't unpacked them yet."
"No, that's fine, just the one will do."
"What would you be planning to write in it, I wonder?"
"I wonder myself."
"Very mysterious!"
"Linda..." I have a sudden urge, an overpowering desire, to say to her, "Linda, I love you." Should I? Is it true? It must be true, or... why else would I want so badly to say it? There are conventional constraints at work here, and I hesitate. But there is not much time; in a moment she'll have handed me my change, and our transaction will be complete; there won't be another chance; how likely, after all, was even this chance? It is a gift from heaven, a gift from God, if you like; am I such a fool as to throw it away? Am I?
"Yes?" she says. What is the expression on her face? I am no expert in this sort of thing, God knows, but it – her expression – seems encouraging. One might well imagine that she knows what I want to say, and wouldn't be displeased to hear it. Yes, but "one might well imagine" anything one wants to. I could duck the challenge and ask her out for coffee, or for dinner; that would be the sensible thing to do; her reply would give me a hint as to where I stand, and I could proceed from there, but... "Linda, I love you." My voice startles me, as if someone else has gained control of it. I had made no decision to speak; the words escaped me of their own accord.
Her face registers no change. Unless... that smile, was it there before? Is she smiling? Does Mona Lisa smile? My God, my God, how little I know of life! The lessons every man learns as he grows up – I never learned them. Where have I been? Asleep – asleep for sixty-two years, and now just waking up! I must speak, it is now or never. "Linda, understand me, I have never... I have never loved a woman. Never. You can see I'm no ordinary man, and you can be no ordinary woman, or else why... Do you believe in fate, Linda? Can you believe that our meeting, our coming together this way, was fated?"
"Steve, really..."
"It's impossible? I'm mad? I know, and I ask nothing of you, nothing! What more could I ask? You have already given me everything. Because, whether you believe it or not, our meeting was fated. I know it now, and you, it may be, will come to know it in years, or decades, to come. Only one thing, one thing, let me ask of you. I said I would ask nothing, but... One thing. Let me, with this finger, this trembling finger, touch your cheek, just... just graze it. Will you? Will you let me?"
"Yes."
Is there revulsion in her tone, in her manner? There is none. In no condition perhaps to observe anything else, I am alert at least to that. There is no revulsion, not a trace. She emerges from behind the counter, we stand face to face, she does not glance behind her to see if anybody is coming, and... I touch her cheek. I touch it, caress it, just my one finger... And then I leave. Calmly, quietly, without hurrying, without looking back, my red notebook in a bag tucked under my arm, I leave. Secretly hoping she'll call me back? No.
***
My mother lives in a home called, for reasons beyond my knowledge and my imagination, the Helen Keller Home for the Aged. I suppose I could ask someone: Why Helen Keller? Helen Keller was blind, deaf and dumb, and rose above her handicaps to accomplish great things. The residents here, most of them, suffer from senile dementia, or Alzheimer's, or whatever the precise technical term is – whatever it is, it is certainly not something you rise above. So what's the connection? An idle question. I have no time for idle questions.
Why have I no time? Because today is May 29. I know that, as I did not when I woke up this morning, because in the bag with my new red notebook was a little cash register receipt immortalizing the transaction – dated, you guessed it, May 29. So what? Well, nothing, except – have you forgotten? – the first entry in the original Red Notebook is dated May 29, and I departed on May 30. Coincidence? You're welcome to think so, but... well, I mentioned fate to Linda. Is there such a thing? I'm no philosopher, but... let me put it this way: if there can be such a thing as gravity, why not fate? If one invisible force, why not another?
The Helen Keller looks like anything but what it is. If you were in a certain mood you'd say it looked like a country house, or a country inn; if in another kind of mood, you'd say a government office, or a bank, or a nobleman's castle converted into a bakery. It is a charming red-brick building, set well back from the street amid a spacious lawn bordered by well-tended flowerbeds. There are trees too. The lilacs and the crab apple trees are blooming lustily. In short, everything is perfectly delightful.
Because it's such a beautiful day, with not a hint of evening cool, though it is getting on towards evening, many of the less debilitated residents are outside, in wheelchairs or lounge chairs, taking the air, passing the time of day with each other, or with family members or paid companions. "Well hello!" a croaking female voice greets me as I approach. Whoever she is, she seems very pleased to see me. Some of these people are not much older than I am. It is a fearful thought. It gives me pause. I don't have to be here. No one is expecting me. If I turn around and leave, my mother will never know the difference. She doesn't know who I am, doesn't know I exist, wouldn't care to learn that I do; if I go into her room, sit by her bedside, take her hand, talk to her, it will mean no more to her than if I don't; my visit will accomplish nothing except to upset me with questions I can't answer, like: where does the boundary lie between life and death? – because her case, as those of so many people here, reminds us that there is such a thing as living death and it is worse, far worse, infinitely worse, than dead death.
"Hey there, big boy!" It's the same croaking female, who has evidently taken a shine to me, either mistaking me for somebody else, or else seeing certain qualities in me that appeal to her. I am suddenly overcome by terror. Terror – is that too strong a word? It is not. A cold-blooded killer threatening to dismember me with an axe could not terrify me more. The next thing I know I am, with difficulty because my fingers are trembling uncontrollably, unlocking the door to the BMW. I slide in behind the wheel and just sit there, just sit. I don't know how much time passes. At last I – as the expression has it – "come to myself." I start the engine, which responds with its characteristic purr – oh, how I love this car!
Home. As I walk in the door the phone is ringing. Surprisingly, I am not surprised; it's as if I had known it would be so. I don't hurry; don't dawdle either; moving at my natural pace, I lock the door, put my car keys on the hall table under the mirror (why there has to be a mirror in the hall is something I never could figure out, but I remember my mother taking great pride in the arrangement), and ease my way into the kitchen. If the phone is still ringing when I get to it, I will pick it up; if not, I won't. It is, and I do.
"Steve?" It's Helen. Where was I? She called and called. I had a few errands to run, I say vaguely. Am I all right? Yes, fine. She was so worried. Why? Because... well... She changes the subject. Am I busy tonight? Would I like to come over for dinner? "I'd love to Helen, really," I say, "but... as a matter of fact, I was just on my way out to pay my mother a visit."
"Your mother?"
"Yes, she's at the Helen Keller Home. In no condition to recognize me, but still..."
"Oh, I'm so sorry! I remember your mother..." Is she going to offer to come with me? No. "What about tomorrow night?"
"Tomorrow? Fine."
"I'll expect you at six."
"Wait..." But she has already hung up. What a stupid thing I've done. Why didn't I tell her? Tomorrow at six I'll be... I don't know where; not here, certainly. "A monolithic blank on which I will inscribe... the story of my life!" Well, that sort of thing is not easy to tell. What would she say? "Oh, Steve, at your age!" Yes, Helen, at my age! At my age I don't want to have to argue, to defend what I do or excuse what I don't do. Haven't I earned my freedom? Or, to put it another way: "at my age," hadn't I better seize my freedom before I lose the strength? Yes, that's the word: "seize!" That's what I'm doing, and neither my mother nor this casual playmate from earliest childhood will stand in my way! "Flies in the marketplace!" That's Nietzsche's expression, isn't it, my boy? Eh? You have inscribed it in the Red Notebook, remember? "'Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you bitten up by venomous flies. Flee to where you can breathe invigorating, bracing air.' ('About the Flies in the Marketplace' – Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)."
Damn, why did I answer it? The phone, I mean. Can I really leave, knowing she'll be working all day fixing a nice dinner... Six o'clock will roll around, then six-fifteen; she'll glance at her watch, wonder what's keeping me, gravitate to the window... six-thirty, seven... And me hundreds of miles away... No, it's unthinkable. I must either call her back and explain, or else put off my departure for a day. It'll mean not leaving on the same day you did, but... But that's the whole point, to leave on the same day you did! Nonsense, I didn't even realize it was the same day until... Yes, but having realized it...
No, I'm not going. My thoughts are too disordered. Before I go anywhere, or do anything, I must... organize my thoughts... My head aches. Is my hangover coming back? It feels like it is. Suppose... well, suppose this: that I have a terminal disease; perhaps I've had it for months without knowing it, and this hangover-like feeling is the first evidence, the first perceptible symptom... Well? What then? I go to a doctor tomorrow morning, and he confirms it: "Mr. Marcus, I'm afraid there is nothing medical science can do for you." Or maybe there is something, but the treatment is excruciating, debilitating, and even then, there's no guarantee. What would I do? Go ahead with the treatment? Reconcile myself to death? If the latter, would I let the disease kill me at its own pace, or... or resolve to be the author of my own death?
Why didn't I accept Helen's invitation for tonight? That way I could be off tomorrow as planned, without offense to anyone. I could call her back: "Is it too late to change my mind? Tonight's fine!" "Oh?" she'd say; "what about your mother?" "I'll see my mother tomorrow." Well? There's the solution. Why don't I pick up the phone and get on with it? What's holding me back? I don't know – but something is. Wait: it's clear. It's that... I don't want to spend the evening with Helen Dahl! That's a reasonable and sufficient explanation, isn't it? I don't want to. Once upon a time I was in business, I had obligations, some more onerous than others, and, onerous or not, I met them. Now? I am no longer in business, I no longer have obligations... I no longer have obligations! I said I have to organize my thoughts; I've barely begun to do so, and already this has become clear, a fact of no small significance. I no longer have obligations!
Very well, then. What follows from that? That I no longer owe anybody anything. Not my mother, not Helen Dahl, not Mrs. Perlman... Mrs. Perlman – why did she have to pop into my head? What a figure I must have cut the other day, bolting when she told me Mark had committed suicide! She's somebody else I should call. "Should" – who says? Who is there to tell me what I should and shouldn't do? Nobody. Nobody on earth. All I have to do is recognize that fact, and act accordingly. Well, I do recognize the fact – but I can't seem to act accordingly; that's the trouble.
You see... supposing I leave tomorrow. I drive hundreds of miles, thousands of miles; Mrs. Perlman has no idea where I am; I'm as far beyond her reach as though I were on another planet, in another universe. But – here's a fact I can't change: however far I go, I've left a piece of myself with her; a ridiculous, absurd, cowardly, abject, shameful piece, which will stay with her; she won't be able to banish it from her mind even if she wants to, and naturally, not maliciously but naturally, she'll take the piece for the whole. She won't say to herself, He's a complex, multi-faceted human being and this is only one side of him, probably a relatively insignificant side at that; she'll say, That's him: cowardly, abject, ridiculous. She's stuck with me – with that caricature of me; and I'm stuck with her – with a caricature of her who's capable of seeing me in only one light. There's only one way to break the tie that binds us, and it isn't to increase the physical distance between us. It is to call her and apologize. Yes, that's the fact of the matter. It's all very well to talk about being under no obligation because I've no responsibilities and there's no one to tell me what I should do – the truth is, it's not that simple.
All right, good. I'm "organizing my thoughts," and certain things are becoming clear, clearer at least than they were. I'll call her. Where's the phone book? Do I even have a phone book? On the top shelf of the hall closet. That's where my parents kept the phone book, and that, no doubt, is where I would have tossed mine, without thinking. Sure enough, there it is. Perlman, Perlman. There is practically a whole column of Perlmans... What was her first name? Lil. Lil Perlman. There's an L. Perlman... But the phone might be in her husband's name, which I don't know. But L. Perlman lives on Sunshine Crescent, which is just around the corner from the library. It might be her. Yes, but... it might not be. It might even be Lil Perlman, but a different Lil Perlman. I'll say, "Is this Lil Perlman?" She'll say yes; I'll launch into my apology, and she'll be thinking: What on earth is he babbling about!
Eighth segment
Amazing – eight o'clock, and still not dark. What's amazing about that? It's perfectly normal, for late May. It's the same every year, and what's the same every year is not amazing. I know, but it feels amazing all the same. The sun rises and sets every day – isn't that amazing? The stars come out every night – aren't the stars amazing, and the universe whose vastness they dimly suggest? Everything, everything we know – the only adequate response to it is sheer, stupefied amazement. Familiarity corrupts us, blinds us. It makes us complacent, and we forget something we never, ever should forget: how utterly astonishing everything is.
I climb the stairs and enter my study. It was my father's before me – a little box of a room, perfectly square, with wood-paneled walls (don't ask me what kind of wood, I've no idea) and a high ceiling, just under which, in one wall, is a tiny window. You have to stand on a chair to see out of it. If you do, what you see is a little vegetable garden belonging to someone I have never seen. The garden is obviously well-tended (not that I know anything about gardening), but I have never seen anyone tending it. Maybe that's not surprising, since I don't look out the window very often; still, I do look out it sometimes, and never, not once, have I seen anyone there.
The walls are entirely bare except for three faded prints on the wall immediately in front of the desk. I suppose they say something about my father's taste in art, though I wouldn't presume to say what they say. One, by Cezanne, is of two bourgeois-looking gentlemen playing cards in a café. Another is a burst of colors – signifying, I think, flowers in a vase – by Van Gogh. The third I believe is by Manet, or Monet – there's no signature; I've seen it elsewhere, identified with one of the two – and shows peasant women in a field at dusk, or twilight, bent double, gathering the harvest. Where the prints came from, or what they meant to my father I don't know. They must have meant something to him, since he took the trouble to mount them; or maybe they just happened to fall into his hands and he figured what the hell. The desk too is his, small, wooden, the sort of desk which suggests a high school student bent over his homework. In the drawers are stray documents – invoices, business letters – related to the business; my father did quite a bit of work here; or at least, he spent quite a bit of time here; I can't really vouch for it that what he did here was work, since the understanding was that when the door was closed I was not to come in; but if not work, what? What else was there to do? Meditate? Maybe. Read? Possibly. About half the books in the cases along two of the walls are his, among them Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. But he would have had to read at his desk, seated on its comfortless wooden chair, since there was no other; the little sofa along a third wall was not there in his time; it is my only personal addition to the furnishing.
Well! Here I am in my study. I switch on the light and lower my bulk onto the sofa. That is the phrase that occurs to me: "lower my bulk," though I am not a bulky man, not by any means, but in a way I can't explain I feel somehow heavy, as after an overly rich meal – though, come to think of it, I have not eaten since breakfast. Still, I am not at all hungry – why not? On the book case directly opposite me sits my father's old Remington typewriter, like a museum exhibit. A few years down the road the computers of today will give the same impression the typewriter gives now, of something from an archaic, bygone, indecipherable age. Hamlet is in that case, in the middle of the middle shelf. Shall I get started? "To be or not to be, that is the question." I know Hamlet said it, but in what context? I can't remember. He was contemplating suicide, presumably. In literature, death is a perpetual presence. Suicide, murder, disease, war... But do you know what's fantastic? That after centuries, millennia, of pondering it, probing it, agonizing over it, philosophizing about it, investigating it scientifically, we are not one tiny fact the richer for our efforts! We know no more about death than our first human ancestors just down from the trees! Will we ever, this side of the grave? Maybe someday our computers will tell us.
Supposing God were to reveal himself to me and say, "Steve, I'm giving you a choice. You can die this instant, quietly, painlessly... or you can live out your normal span, and die a normal death, with all its attendant pain and suffering. Well? Choose! I don't give this choice to everyone."
What would I do? Bargain? Negotiate? "What exactly do you mean by 'normal span'? What 'pain and suffering,' precisely, is in store for me?" He might get angry, and thunder, "I don't bargain!" On the other hand he might not take it unkindly. Didn't Abraham bargain with him, over the destruction of Sodom? "Will you save the city for one hundred just men? How about fifty? Or ten?" Okay, let's say he's willing to humor me. "Normal span? Fifteen years. Pain and suffering? I haven't decided yet, but none of the possibilities are good; each one, in a different way, is excruciating. That's life. Cancer, Alzheimer's, you know what's out there as well as I do, though you have never suffered yourself."
That is true. I am hardly ever ill, and, to be perfectly honest, I scarcely know what pain is. I have never even broken a bone. Cancer – my father died of cancer. And my mother has Alzheimer's. Could I endure what my father endured? Could I go through with what my mother is going through? It's not a question of "could I: if it's visited upon you, you endure it, you have no choice. Yes, but I am being given a choice. Good God! I am sweating, trembling, just as if the choice were real, though I know it is not. In a sense it is, though, since one can always commit suicide. Just the other day I read in the Gazette – it was just before I cancelled my subscription – of a young Japanese girl, eighteen years old – who threw herself in front of a train. Some problem at school – I don't remember the details; whatever the problem was, it was enough to make her decide she would not, or could not, live in this world any longer, and she took her leave, she left. If an eighteen-year-old girl can muster the courage to leap in front of a speeding train, couldn't I? Yes, but hers was the courage of desperation, whereas I am not desperate. Well, but there are painless ways to die. I don't know what they are, offhand, but I could do some research – the Internet is full of information like that. I don't have a computer, but I can go to an Internet café; there's one in the mall, I think.
What's that noise? A strange noise, a kind of humming, or rather whistling. I realize now, as I become aware of it, that it 's been present for some time. It's not loud, no louder than, say, the rising and falling of waves at the seashore, but, unlike waves, it destroys the quiet, utterly shatters it. A kind of machine noise – but what machine? The light? Could the light be making that noise? Some lights do, I know. I raise myself to my feet, switch it off, and listen. The room turns a kind of shadowy, insubstantial gray. It's not quite dark out yet, and the tiny window behind the desk admits some light, dusk having apparently advanced to roughly the stage depicted in the painting by Manet, or Monet. Yes, I think that did the trick. So it was the light – no! There it is again, or rather still. Is it? One second it seems so real; the next, I'm not at all sure it's there. There's no such thing as absolute silence; in the deepest hush you hear a kind of buzzing in your ears... But no, this is something... this is no buzzing in my ears. What the hell? Is it something outside? Damn! Goaded and distracted, I fling open the door, go downstairs, open the front door, and step outside onto the porch. I close my eyes, strain my ears. Nothing. There's nothing. It's my imagination. I go down the stairs, proceed to the sidewalk, stand there listening... nothing.
I go back into the house, and close the door. What to do? Shall I pour myself a scotch? Yes, but better eat something first. All right. I go into the kitchen, turn on the light – there it is again! I turn off the light. It's still there. But now there's no doubt – it's coming from outside. From the back; that's why I heard nothing out front. In the kitchen is a door opening onto a porch above the back yard – very similar, all the houses in the area having been built to pattern, to the porch under which Helen and I played house. The tiny vegetable garden I see from my study window is visible from here. It's one house over, directly behind my next-door neighbor on the right. Is that where it's coming from? Yes, I think... There's no one in the garden, as usual, at least no one I can see, but the house whose back yard it forms is lit up – why, it's practically ablaze with light. What's going on in there? The question no sooner occurs than a kind of fierce resentment surges up in me. What the hell business of mine is it what's going on in there? I don't know them, have never met them, know neither their names nor their faces – why are they on my mind? Why have they imposed themselves on me like this? I was sitting quietly upstairs in my study, thinking my own thoughts... why was I interrupted? A noise – there is no noise! There is no noise, dammit!
I storm back into the house, slam the door, and march upstairs to my study, determined, if I hear something, to rip it out of my consciousness by sheer force of will. There are insignificant little noises everywhere. If you're going to let them distract you, you'll go mad, just as you will if you allow yourself to weep over every person in the world who dies. Sanity means willfully ignoring what does not concern you – and defining what does concern you as narrowly as possible. That's why I cancelled my subscription to the Gazette. I was right to do it. Hamlet! In the middle shelf of the middle book case, the case on which the Remington typewriter sits. I snatch the little volume as though, if I don't make haste, someone will beat me to it. I throw myself on the sofa. "Enter Bernardo and Francisco, two sentinels." Why would two sentinels in ancient Denmark have names like Bernardo and Francisco? Mercenaries? "Bernardo: Who's there? Francisco: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself." It's quiet. There's no noise. You see? You can defeat these things, if you've the willpower. I remember this scene. Soon someone will say, "For this relief, much thanks." It's a line that exercised a curious hold on me when I first read it – I don't know why. I would go around saying it to people, most inappropriately of course, there being few situations it suits today: "For this relief, much thanks." People must have thought me very strange. Even years later – once at our main store I was working late, we were doing inventory, and one of my employees came in to give me a hand. "For this relief, much thanks," I said. How he responded, if he responded, I don't recall. Yes, here it is. "Francisco: For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart." Why is he sick at heart? Bernardo doesn't inquire; he only asks, "Have you had quiet guard?" Why? If someone said to me, "I'm sick at heart," I would naturally say, "What's bothering you?" Did "sick at heart" mean something different in Elizabethan English? Perhaps the bitter cold explains it? Hm! Doesn't the ghost enter around now? Soon. First Horatio comes, Hamlet's skeptical friend: "Tush, tush, 'twill not appear." But it does, and Horatio, gathering his courage, addresses it: "What art though that usurp'st this time of night...? By heaven I charge thee, speak." Brave words! But the ghost will not be commanded; he fades away, leaving his silence behind. What time is it? I don't have my watch on. Anyway, I'm not at all sleepy, I'm sure I can finish it tonight, if I concentrate. Concentrate! That's the thing. Then, a few hours sleep, and tomorrow... there it is again! The noise! "By heaven, I charge thee, speak! If you have something to say to me, say it! If not, this is my house and you're not welcome here!"
It's hopeless. It won't go away. Is it the ghost of my father, come to rouse me to avenge his death? No, wait, I have it! He's reproaching me for not visiting my mother! That's it! And he's right. But dad, father, you saw, I went there today, I went, but... you saw what happened! That woman, that horrifying, horrifying woman: "Hey there, big boy!" I couldn't face it, I couldn't! I’m sorry, I just couldn't!
I really am going mad. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, open the door, walk down the stairs, tiptoe into the kitchen – why tiptoe? Who am I afraid of disturbing? It's dark out now, pitch dark. Without turning on the light I open the door and step onto the back porch. The house in front of the vegetable garden is as brightly lit as before. It might almost be on fire. I stand on the porch, listening, listening. There is no room for doubt. That's where the noise is coming from, an eerie, high-pitched whistling noise, now rising, now falling, but always present. What can it be? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I knew what it was. Can I slip through the hedges and find out? I go down the porch stairs and onto the lawn. I'll have to cut the grass, it's up to my shins and hard to walk through. I don't go in for gardening or that sort of thing, and I can forget for weeks at a time that I even have a back yard. It's very dark. A little sliver of moon hovers just above me. Are there stars? I squint at the sky, but don't see any. But they must be out; the sky is cloudless. Yes, there's one, there's another. The Babylonians, I think it was, looked up at the sky and saw vast celestial dramas unfolding – this god rising, that god falling... In one corner of the sky they read the past, in another the future. What would life be like, with a mental apparatus that allows you to see that sort of thing? Maybe I was there, in a previous life. Maybe I'm still there, if Nietzsche's notion of eternal return is true. What was Nietzsche's notion of eternal return? I don't remember. I'll look it up. I'm suddenly conscious of a chill. I should be wearing a jacket. Well, never mind. Here's the hedge. The noise is louder than ever now; I'm obviously getting close to it. But the hedge is thick, impenetrable; even if I do force my way through it, I'll end up not in the vegetable garden but in the back yard next to it; there'll still be another hedge to get through. What if someone hears me, suspects an intruder, and calls the police? Maybe I should call the police myself – let them deal with the noise. I'd be within my rights, wouldn't I? It's a public nuisance, isn't it?
This is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. Never mind sneaking through hedges in the dead of night, never mind calling the police – clearly the thing to do is to march up to the front door, ring the bell, and say, "Excuse me, there's a strange noise coming from your vegetable garden, it's disturbing me, could you kindly do something about it?" Yes, that's the thing to do all right, only... only what? Well, I don't know them, for one thing, and for another, those blazing lights suggest a most exuberant party in progress; I'd be interrupting... Well, I'll interrupt then! I'm within my rights. Yes, but what if they tell me to go to hell? Or slam the door in my face? A highly unlikely supposition, highly unlikely – this is a civilized community after all, or at least, on the whole, a polite one. People don't go around telling their neighbors to go to hell. If they do – well, then it'll be time to think about calling the police. Then maybe it'll be a police matter. Yes, all right, that's settled. But there's another possibility. What if they – whoever they are – what if they look me straight in the face and say, "Noise? What noise? There's no noise coming from here. Why should there be a noise coming from our vegetable garden, of all places?"
I go back into my house and close the door. What should I do? This is not a major problem, as problems go, and yet it has utterly defeated me. Utterly. I was in business for thirty years. For thirty years I ran a highly successful business operation. Even granted I am not the genius I rather laughably assumed I was in college, I can't be a total fool – can I? As a businessman I made decisions, I dealt with situations as they arose, I was not reduced to jelly by... a noise in a vegetable garden! What has happened to me in the year – less than a year; eleven months – since I retired? Maybe the point is that then, as a businessman, I had a clearly defined position in society; I'd pick up the phone and say, "This is Steve Marcus, president of P. Marcus & Son." Now, "This is Steve Marcus..." Steve Marcus who? Steve Marcus what?
Steve Marcus nothing. Where's the Red Notebook? Where did I put it? I wander through the house, switching lights on, switching them off, finally finding what I'm looking for in my room, on the night table beside my bed. In this very room I wrote the first entry in the Red Notebook: "May 29, 1972. One day before departure. Twenty-odd hours separating me from – what? The next three months: a monolithic blank on which I will inscribe... the story of my life!" Some story! Some life! Shortly after I moved back here the whim seized me to turn this room back into the room it had been in my teenage years. This in fact hardly meant starting from scratch, for the tenants who had lived here in the intervening years seemed to have limited their activities to the kitchen, living room and the master bedroom. They were a young couple with no children, which is basically all I know about them, never having met them, but anyway, my bedroom and the study they seem never to have so much as stepped into, so unchanged did I find them when I returned. The bed I had slept in, the desk at which I had done my homework, the dresser, the night table – all were in place, precisely as I had left them. The walls were the same ghastly pale blue my mother had chosen for them when I was judged too young to have a say in the matter. So when I speak of "turning the room back," all that was really involved was recovering the posters that I'd hung up during that brief poster-mad phase I went through in my middle teens. This, of course, was far from easy. First I had to remember them; then, having visualized them in my mind, to procure them, decades out of print and on the basis of such descriptions as I could manage, for I did not know their titles, if they had titles, or the names of the photographers or artists. Yes, it was quite a chase. There are a surprising number of hole-in-corner poster shops that you'd never in a million years notice unless you were on a quest of this sort, and I went from one to another, even making two special trips to Toronto to scour the shops there. The owners were unfailingly helpful. They understood me – indeed, they existed precisely for people like me, of whom, evidently, there are more than one would suppose at first blush. Aging hippies to a man, these store owners could almost have crawled out of some of the very posters I sought. Many were bearded and, despite sadly thinning hair, pony-tailed, with tie-dyed T-shirts and patched jeans. The immortal sixties! Not to drag this out, with their help, I got most of what I wanted: the Beatles, Dylan, the Doors, the famous one of Woodstock, the even more famous "Up the Establishment" one, and so on, the usual stuff, not at all original, though meant to symbolize originality. Only two were cut from different cloth, so to speak, and yet these too I managed to obtain. One was of the hero of my childhood, Jacques Plante, the Montreal Canadiens' goalie, crouched in front of the net in his face mask. The other was of – dare I say it? – Dostoevsky, looking ill and slightly demented, creativity personified, or so I was convinced on and around May 29, 1972, when I was nineteen and considered myself his heir in embryo – his and Nietzsche's.
Ninth segment
I'm in my car, heading west along the Trans-Canada highway, not altogether sure how I came to be here. Did I momentarily black out? I have no memory of leaving the house. I was in my room, I remember that. I'd gone in there to escape that unearthly, tormenting, undefinable noise – but it penetrated even there, and... What time is it? 10:10, says my dashboard digital clock. 10:11. I assume it's the same night, and that my blackout, if that's what it was, was a matter of minutes rather than days, months, or years. I just passed an exit sign saying Pointe Claire, which means I'm not even out of Montreal yet. Strange. This has never happened to me before. What is the last thing I remember, the very last thing? I'm sitting on my bed, looking at Jacques Plante out of one eye and Dostoevsky out of the other, so to speak... I become aware of the noise, I go to the window... That's all. No mental effort will take me past that point. If I was unconscious, it was a strangely purposeful unconsciousness, for I made at least some deliberate preparations – car keys, wallet... I do have my wallet, don't I? Yes. Patting my right pants pocket I am relieved to feel it there, for, other questions aside, I am dangerously low on gas and will have to fill up very soon; I doubt if I could even get home with what I've got in the tank. Should I go home? I fairly shudder at the thought; the repugnance is absurdly, but undeniably, overpowering. Why? The noise? That's crazy. There are ways of dealing with matters like that. You complain to the people in question, or call the police; you do not, if you are sane, submit to being driven out of your own house! Did I lock up? Pack any luggage? I can't answer the first question; as to the second, there's no luggage in the car, front or back. Maybe in the trunk? Well, it doesn't matter. My quick glance over my shoulder into the back seat revealed a presence that surprises me – my red notebooks, all four of them. So I did think to bring them. Are they more important than clothes and toiletries? Evidently, in whatever state of mind I was in, they seemed to be. What state of mind was it? Calm? Frenzied? Damn! This is positively eerie! Here's a gas station, a blazing, ugly mass of light. I'd better pull in.
What if I set the house on fire or something? The thought is absurd but unsettling. What if I did? Could I have? No, obviously – even given the inclination (and why would I have the inclination?) I wouldn't have the nerve; I am timidity personified. Yes, in my normal state – but am I in my normal state? Was I during the time I can't account for? If it's absurd, why can't I simply laugh at the thought and forget about it? What if I did set the house on fire, and the fire spreads, and engulfs the whole neighborhood?
It's a self-serve station. I pull up to a pump and go through the usual motions, my mind on other things. Where am I going? When I left, was it with the intention of embarking on my journey, the one supposedly to culminate in a reunion in San Francisco with Debi Asher? Or did I just step out for an idle drive, as I often do when I'm upset? The presence or absence of luggage in the trunk should settle that point. I'll check when I've filled up. But even as I think to do this, one thing at least becomes crystal clear. Whatever I may have intended when I left the house, assuming I was sufficiently in possession of my faculties to intend anything specific, I am not going back. Let it be unlocked or not, on fire or not, I am through with it once and for all. I will never see it again. Let my belongings be packed and in the car, or unpacked in the house; let the posters of my adolescence adorn the walls of my adolescence... none of this matters, none of it. Goodbye house, goodbye walls, goodbye adolescence. What matters now is... What matters now is discovering what matters now. Ha ha. Very funny. The tank is full. How much? Good God! $74.37! What I should by rights be doing is not driving but hitchhiking – eh, boy? Eh? Yes, I know the contempt you feel for me – as if you can embark on a real journey in a BMW! Why, all you can do in a BMW is be one of those middle-class, middle-aged tourists you so heartily despised – right? Hm. Should I leave the car here and start hitching? Once I read a novel – a Japanese novel, I think it was – in which an old man – "old," I say; he was probably younger than I am!... his only son had been killed in the war, and, thinking to commune with the boy's spirit, he sets out to climb a mountain his son, an avid mountaineer, had climbed often. He travels to the mountain, hires a local guide, and the journey begins. Journey – that was the title of the novel, I'm almost sure: The Journey. Yes, I remember now – in college I took an introductory-level course in Japanese literature, from the Tale of Genji to... well, to The Journey, or thereabouts. The man starts to climb, but he's old and frail, it's hopeless... What happened then? I don't remember, but I think the point was that in the effort itself, even though the supposed goal proved beyond reach, some sort of communion did occur. I wonder if it's possible to get hold of it somewhere – the novel, I mean. Is it in one of the bookcases in the study? I don't think so. Would it be at the library? An idle question – who cares whether it is or not, since I'm here and the library is in a place I'm never going back to? If my house is on fire, it may even have spread to the library...
I pay for the gas, and am on my way again. Is it possible to go on a real journey in a BMW? The highway at this point is three lanes in each direction, the traffic no doubt almost all local. I picture myself standing by the side of the road with my thumb out. I'd probably still be standing here come morning. On the other hand, you never know.
Yes, maybe you're right. Maybe I should ditch the car and do it the real way – eh? Hm.
Here's Ste. Anne de Bellevue – already? It's the last town on Montreal island; here's the bridge. I know it by heart, I could drive this highway blind. Close it to traffic for an hour and I'll show you. All my life, all my life, in moments of distress, agitation, upset, I have relieved my mind by driving, and my car – all the cars I've had over the years, none more responsive than this BMW – comes here as though by instinct. The Trans-Canada Highway – longest highway in the world. Is it? What about the... what's it called... the Pan-American Highway? From Patagonia to Alaska, or something like that. Hm. Does the Trans-Canada intersect with the Pan-American? There's nothing to stop me. I can drive to Patagonia. Rigaud, 23 km. Am I really gone for good? I can still turn back, if I want to.
Music. I switch on the radio. Modern. Off. Modern's not my style. I'll pull over and choose something. Better still. Just take something at random out of the glove compartment. Whatever it happens to be is what will accompany me. Hey, that rhymes. Whatever it happens to be/ is what will accompany me. There is poetry in my soul. I reach over, take out a CD from among the mass of them in there, and pop it in the player. There's some whirring and clicking, and then... what is it? Not immediately familiar. Nice, though. String quartet. Bach? Vivaldi? I am very fond of music, but not knowledgeable about it. Whatever it is, it takes you back centuries, to the days of ducal palaces and private orchestras. Could I have been there too, once upon a time?
If only this could last forever – this night, this music, and me driving and driving, never stopping, never getting anywhere. What's that – a hitchhiker? Surely not. Who hitchhikes in the dead of night? And yet... it's unmistakable. He – or she? – is standing directly under a light, so as to be visible, and holding out a thumb. I slow down and strain to get a better look, but the figure is oddly muffled, and I can make nothing out. Man? Woman? Old? Young? Whoever it is has noticed my interest, and makes a movement, as if to pick up a knapsack and be ready to spring into the car when I stop. At which something akin to panic seizes me, and I press down hard on the accelerator, speeding past. When, some kilometers further on, I glance at the speedometer, I see I am doing 150 kmh. I lift my foot from the pedal and watch the needle swing back, not a jerk in its movement – 140, 130, 120, 110.
Was that really a hitchhiker? Why didn't I stop? My first intention was to stop, and then... what came over me? Even now, my heart is throbbing unnaturally. He – or she – must be in an agony of disappointment. I had seemed about to stop, and then suddenly... I can imagine how I'd feel. But why would anyone be hitching now? One of two things. Either the person is desperate, and therefore possibly dangerous, or... he doesn't exist, is a figment of my imagination. Here's Rigaud. Suppose I get off here, double back, and see if he's still there. What if he is?
I take the exit, follow the unfamiliar loop of the road, and find myself in a vast black emptiness. There's not a car in sight; the lights of the town must be somewhere, but I can't seem to spot them. I stop. The string quartet is still playing; I switch it off; it seems grotesquely out of place here. As if responding to the silence, the moon sails out from behind a cloud, a three-quarter moon. It puts me in mind of a night watchman making his rounds. What brings you here? he says – not suspicious, just friendly, though unsmiling. Me? I say stupidly. Nothing, just... He shrugs, and sails into another cloud. For a moment the cloud glows, then flickers out like a candle. The car rolls forward, slowly gathering speed. Here's the fork: east to Montreal, west to Ottawa. West it is. But there's no excitement in the decision; more a kind of weary resignation.
***
Hawkesbury. 11:23. No problem finding the hostel this time. Left on Alexandria and up the hill. There it is, the Canadian flag fluttering slightly in what I suppose is a slight breeze. The porch light is on, and as I pull up I see one of the two rocking chairs is occupied. Isaiah, taking the night air, waiting for me, waiting without impatience because he knows my movements as well as I do; better, maybe. That noise. It had nothing to do with the vegetable garden. It was Isaiah, summoning me here, for purposes dark and unfathomable. Is this madness? But nighttime thoughts are apt to be this way, even with perfectly sane people – if anyone can be said to be perfectly sane. I switch off the engine, get out of the car, lock it, and climb the stairs to the porch. "Howdy," he says. And then – "Oh! It's you!"
"You weren't expecting me?"
"I am in a state of non-expectation, open to whatever the universe sends."
"The universe sent me."
"Welcome. Sit down. It's a beautiful night. A night like this, I can spend the whole night just rocking in this chair, thinking nothing, until the dawn comes, taking me by surprise."
"A whole night passes without anything disturbing you?"
"What would disturb me?"
"I don't know – anything. A chill, the call of a night bird, a police siren."
"It happens."
"To tell you the truth, I don't fancy the notion of rocking all night. I'm tired. Exhausted. I was hoping – "
"For a bed? Sure thing." But he shows no sign of getting up to attend to the business of installing me.
"Do you remember the last time I was here? I said, 'Where is everybody?' And you said, 'It's not like it used to be.'" Do you remember?"
"I remember your coming, and us talking, but not that particular exchange, no."
"I was wondering what you meant by 'It's not what it used to be.' What isn't?"
"Well, everything. We were young then, we're old now. We thought we were immortal then; now we know we're not."
"We thought we were immortal?"
"Young people do. Oh, if you'd asked me, of course I'd've said... hm. How does that old syllogism go? All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. But actually believing it? No. Not at that age. You don't. You can't. Yes, for a brief, shining moment in our lives we are immortal because we believe ourselves to be."
"If believing is what does it, then immortality needn't be confined to that one brief moment. We can be immortal now."
"No. We've seen too much of life."
"You have, maybe. Not me. I've seen hardly anything of life."
"Sit down."
I've been standing the whole time, one foot planted on a lower step, one foot on a higher; and he, the whole time, has been rocking gently, his face impassive, his eyes, as best I can make out in the light of the shaded bulb on the porch ceiling, focused not on me but, if on anything, on the garden across the street, its splendors illuminated by a strategically placed street lamp. Tulips in profusion, red, yellow and black. Also waxy white flowers, not tulips. Lilies? I'm not sure. I know so little of flowers. My mother knew. She was an avid gardener. When it came to flowers, there was none she could not identify. At a certain phase of my life, if my mother knew something, I immediately labeled it trivia. Only now, it seems, am I suddenly realizing how childish that is. Too late. Whatever she knows now, she's beyond any point in space or time where she can communicate it to me. I sit. The chair rocks. I close my eyes.
"You've seen hardly anything of life," Isaiah says meditatively, not so much breaking the silence as... I don't know... deepening it. "What do you mean?"
"Forty-three years ago today – on May 30, 1972 – I set out on a journey. I was nineteen years old, and my destination was 'life'. I felt – maybe everyone that age feels it – that 'living' was not something I was doing, not something I'd been doing since my birth, but something I was about to do. The open road was the highway to life. I didn't know what life was, or what living involved, but by the time I got home, I told myself, I would know. Do you see what I'm trying to say?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Of course you do. There's nothing terribly original in it. It's something everybody goes through. Right?"
"Very likely."
"By the time I got home I would know. But... I didn't. And I don't."
"Depends what you mean by 'knowing,' I suppose."
"Are you married?"
"My wife died."
"Children?"
"Four."
"Four!"
"Is that so surprising?"
"No. No, I suppose not. I never married. I have no children."
He says nothing. I wonder if he heard me.
"Where are they? Your four children?"
"One's in Toronto doing cancer research. One's in Ottawa working for the government. One's with the U.N. in Africa, working with refugees. The other, I don't know."
"Don't know?"
"Don't know."
There is neither aggressiveness nor defensiveness in his tone. Should I draw him out on the subject? I'm not sure why I want to, but I do. If I hesitate, it's for fear of being told to mind my business. The silence lengthens, deepens. It is not oppressive, but oddly beautiful. I recall the ghastly noise that drove me from my house – recall that it occurred, but not precisely what it sounded like. I must have dreamed it. "There was this noise," I suddenly hear myself say.
Tenth segment
What noise?"
"At home. In Montreal. I suddenly heard a noise, a noise I've never heard before, not loud, but... intolerably, intolerably oppressive. I fled – and here I am."
No answer.
"At one point, I even had the idea that... that you were causing it – to summon me here. It's crazy, I know."
"Maybe not."
"Maybe not what?"
"Crazy. Who knows? Maybe I did cause it. Maybe I did summon you."
"What are you saying?" As on my first visit, so now – I am suddenly afraid of him. Afraid of him, and afraid of my fear, for it is not rational. One only has to glance at him – an inoffensive old man, frail, showing every year of his age – to see that. I see it, but I am no less afraid.
"There are forces, mental forces," he is saying, "that we know nothing about. Certainly I didn't summon you on purpose. So far as I know you were not in my thoughts at all. But that some impulse may have passed from my brain into yours... well, stranger things have happened."
"Really?"
"'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.'"
"What did you say?"
"Nothing original. It's from Hamlet."
"I know it's from Hamlet. I – " I break off. Some inner caution warns me not to blurt out that I'd been reading Hamlet just before I left. "I wonder," I say. "Do you suppose... I know you're enjoying the night air and I hate to trouble you, but I really would like to go to sleep now, if possible. I'm... my God, I've only driven from Montreal to Hawkesbury, no distance at all, and yet, suddenly I'm just... I don't know... exhausted."
"Sure. Sure thing." Slowly, somewhat reluctantly though not grudgingly, he raises himself to his feet. It seems to take a long time. "It's not sudden; you said you were exhausted when you came. Follow me."
He leads me through the hallway, which I remember seemed so vast to me the first time I saw it – that is, not the first time, which would have been in 1972, and how it struck me then I can't say, for there is no particular mention of it in the Red Notebook; but the last time, last week – no longer does; has it shrunk? Or maybe been tidied up a bit? The roll top desk is still there, its lamp providing the only light in the room and quite possibly in the house, and the old sofa that had looked somehow familiar, with its deep, deep cushions; but the stuffed animals, the bear and the elephant – where are they? The 18-speed bike too is gone.
"What's wrong?" Isaiah, halfway up the staircase, is wondering what's keeping me.
"Nothing. Sorry," I murmur.
We climb the stairs. It's a winding staircase. Something is clearly wrong with my sense of time, because our climb seems oddly prolonged, as though we're ascending not just one floor but many. We reach the landing at last, however, the light, such as it is, now coming from a kind of skylight. There's the little sliver of moon, just overhead. I'd last noticed it in Rigaud. The floor is of wood, and it creaks softly under my feet. It's a long, narrow corridor we're in, with several doors on each side, all closed. "Here's the bathroom," Isaiah says, opening one and showing me. "Help yourself to a hot shower. And here" – he opens the door immediately opposite – "is your room." He switches on the ceiling light, which flickers before steadying and seems positively dazzling, after the darkness of the night and the gloom of the rest of the house. I blink furiously. It's quite a small room, small enough anyway to make the bed in the middle of it appear outlandishly large. It's a double bed, with two plump pillows resting against the bolster. The bed is high, and the mattress remarkably thick. The cover is not a blanket but a quilt, light blue, with some design or pattern worked into it. The walls are pale green; the floor, if I am not mistaken, is of linoleum tile, each tile a perfect square, a brown one alternating with a beige one. There is nothing else in the room; only the bed. It might be a prison cell if not for its perfect comfort; or a little boy's room if not for the size of the bed. Is there a closet? A picture on the wall? No. Nothing.
"Will this do?" says Isaiah.
"Oh yes, yes," I hasten to assure him, as though afraid he might be reading my thoughts regarding its bareness and be taking offense at them. "Yes, it's... But tell me – I don't remember private rooms here in 1972. On the contrary – "
"No, the private rooms are new. As I said" – he grins, and I realize, from my surprise at the sight of a gleaming gold tooth that I'm seeing him smile for the first time – "or as you say I said, 'It's not like it used to be.' No, we remodeled fifteen or so years ago. Do you want to bring your luggage up?"
Luggage – do I have luggage? I remember I'd planned on settling that question at the gas station, but somehow I never got around to it. "Tomorrow morning," I hear myself mutter. "Right now, I just want to crash." Crash. Seventies slang for sleep. I haven't used the word in decades, nor has anybody else, so far as I know, and all of a sudden there it is, rolling naturally off my tongue.
"Sure thing, man," says Isaiah. Is "man" intended mockingly, a sardonic little comment on "crash"? "I'll be downstairs if you need anything."
He leaves, closing the door silently behind him. Where's the light switch? There it is, by the door. For a panicked instant I fear it won't work, that I'll never be able to turn that awful light off. It does work, of course, and the room is plunged in darkness. I shed my shirt, pants and socks, letting them fall where they will, and snuggle under the quilt. At first the sheets are cold against my skin, and I shiver, but only momentarily. I warm them, and then they warm me. The comfort of this bed is beyond anything. The mattress is rather softer than what I am used to; a man with back trouble would not appreciate it; but I don't have back trouble, and... really, it is out of this world. I soon lose all sense of lying on anything solid; I am floating. The darkness is pitch black; is there a window in the room? There must be, and yet I don't recall noticing one. If there is one, it is covered by a very thick curtain – but surely I would have noticed that? Hm. What difference does it make? In the pitch black darkness, the silence is total. Total. Not a car, not a creak, not a buzz, nothing. Is Isaiah in the house? Has he gone outside again? What time is it? I don't know, and, though the question did occur to me, don't want to know. I am in a room on the second floor of a house on Alexandria Street in Hawkesbury, Ontario, a hundred-odd kilometers west of Montreal. Those facts have not disappeared, but their significance has. In 1972 I yearned to break through the barriers enclosing "here and now" and be "somewhere else." I failed – but this? This is nowhere, something I never even dreamed of back then. But I see it now: "somewhere else" is merely a way station en route to nowhere. Here I am, nowhere, having bypassed "somewhere else." Good for me. But wait now. Isn't this a youth hostel? Is anyone else staying here? If so wouldn't there be some noise, however slight, even if everyone was asleep? And why would everyone be asleep? It's late, but not that late. Travelers staying at hostels are generally in no hurry to go to bed; they get acquainted with one another, talk about this and that, where they've been, where they're going... I strain my ears for the sound of voices, but there's nothing, not a murmur. I'm on the second floor, I said. I think it's the second floor. Is there a third? I don't know. I have only the vaguest idea of the shape of the house; I didn't really notice it. Rather big, I remember thinking, and somewhat incoherent, as if different parts of it were built at different times. But that's only a vague impression. After all, I never did see it by daylight.
I drift off into a sleep that is conscious of itself – that is, I am aware of myself sleeping; I hear myself snore, and I think to myself, "That's me snoring." I hear it, but the sound doesn't wake me. I dream, and am aware that I am dreaming, but my awareness does not blunt the vividness of the dream. The odd thing about it, as I realize even while I dream, is that it is perfectly coherent, it makes perfect sense, as dreams rarely do; it could occur in real life with no challenge at all to the laws of reality, whatever they are. I am behind the wheel of my BMW, motionless in a long, long line of cars. Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is flowing softly through the speakers. On my left is a sign that reads, "Please have your passports ready." Mine is on the seat beside me. I observe with some surprise that the number of customs inspectors is ridiculously inadequate, given the vast throng of cars, but I am not impatient; it'll take as long as it takes, that’s all, there's no hurry; the BMW is as comfortable as my living room; more so, in fact; and the quality of the sound is superior to that of my player at home. They can take all day, for all I care.
I fall asleep in the car, and I find myself dreaming that I am sleeping. "I am in a room in a hostel on Alexandria Street in Hawkesbury, dreaming that I am asleep in my car at a border crossing..." That is the last thought I remember as I slowly return to waking consciousness, the light so bright I can't immediately open my eyes. Then I do, and see that it is sunlight. Morning sunlight – but brighter, far brighter, so it seems, than any sunlight I have ever seen. Where am I? In my confusion I remember the border before I remember the hostel – what country have I crossed into, where the sun shines so brightly? But the room takes shape around me, recalling me to myself. So there's a window in it after all – there it is, above my bed; not a large window, in fact more like a ship's porthole than a room's window, but however small, it admits more than its share of sunlight. I close my eyes, stretch out my legs as far in either direction as they will go, and my arms likewise; the bed seems inexhaustibly vast; can I just lie here, I wonder? Or does one have to be up for breakfast at a certain hour? Usually at youth hostels they roust you up pretty early – at least they did forty years ago. You paid fifty cents a night, or whatever it was, and cheerfully accepted the lumpy mattresses, the bad food and the surly superintendents as "experience." You were on the road, you were free, you "paid your dues." If this place is typical of hostels as they are now, Isaiah was certainly right about things not being as they used to be.
I lie there and lie there, not moving, scarcely breathing, the sun shining red into my closed eyes. How much time passes before it strikes me that the silence is as deep now as it was during the night? I strain to listen – nothing. What time would it be? I suppose I'd better rouse myself a bit and start attending to things – what things? Well, things in general. Finding out what time it is, and why it's so quiet. Planning my next move. Getting something to eat – for I am hungry; I had no dinner last night. Last night – was it really last night that I had that business with the noise? It seems ages, ages ago, almost part of another lifetime. Was it real, that noise? Or did I imagine it? It certainly seemed real enough at the time, but now, thinking back, it doesn't, not at all. But what does "real" mean? Supposing, to test the reality or unreality of it, I go back and investigate. I go into my house. Do I hear it? Yes, I do. Does that make it real? It does not. A madman may fancy he hears anything. Fine. So I gather, let's say, ten people, and have them listen. Supposing no one hears it but me. Does that prove it doesn't exist and I am mad? Maybe my hearing is more acute than theirs. Maybe only I was meant to hear it. Anyway, it is real at least to this extent, and I don't have to go back and investigate to know it because it's obvious: it is real enough to account for my presence here. It drove me here. It is a cause, and had an identifiable effect. So? So nothing. I am hungry, and besides, I can't ignore the urgings of my bladder much longer.
***
I open the door of my room and step into the corridor. It is long and narrow. I suppose the doors that line both sides lead to rooms like mine. They are all closed. If anyone is here, no one is stirring. Which door is the bathroom? Strange – I did not even think to pee before I went to bed, and still I slept through the night, undisturbed. That is very unusual. Would it be this door? They are all identical, and I hesitate to try one, for fear of blundering into someone's room. I'm pretty sure this is the one Isaiah pointed out last night. Pretty sure, but not positive. The fact is, I have no sense of direction, either on the road or in strange houses. But really, I can't stand here deliberating forever, and anyway, this is a youth hostel, not a five-star hotel; privacy is not inviolable, you don't stand on ceremony. Very well. The creaking of the door as I open it is slight but startling, a reminder of the depth of the silence. Excellent – it is the right door. No apologies called for. Is there a lock on it? There is – a little key-shaped handle that you turn. I turn it. I was quite alone before, of course, but I feel still more securely enfolded into my solitude now. A hot shower? Why not?
It seems a grotesquely odd lapse in taste to place a mirror directly over the toilet, and yet this instance is not the first I've come across. I can't speak for others, and wouldn't dream of trying to, but the effect on me is to make me turn away in disgust. The shower becomes all the more urgent, because now I feel filthy.
But the shower is wonderful. I close my eyes and let the hot water cascade over me. I could stand here all day. As a child I was never permitted to abandon myself to that pleasure. A certain amount of time would go by, and suddenly my mother would be calling out from outside the bathroom door, "Do you have any idea what we pay for hot water every month?" I blamed her then; I don't now. Hot water is expensive; producing it consumes resources and causes pollution; she was right – and that is why, as an adult, I've always tended to favor baths over showers. You can linger in a bath as long as you like; it's one of life's few free pleasures; but the trouble with a bath is that it's not a shower, merely a substitute for one. This is the real thing, the genuine article, and it won't show up on my hot water bill. I stand there until I feel positively guilty – how long? I don't know. I've lost all sense of time. Long enough, at any rate, for a plan of sorts to take shape in my head, a rather odd plan, perhaps, although... what's odd about it? The plan is simply this: to follow precisely the route I took in 1972, stopping at the same towns, staying, if possible, in the same places. From the unexcited matter-of-factness with which I greet the idea as it occurs to me, I judge that it has been forming in my subconscious for some time. It will mean perusing the Red Notebook more closely than I have up to now – so far all I've done is thumb through it, pausing to read random snatches but strangely reluctant – is it strange? – to read it in a more orderly fashion. For example – where did I spend the second night of my journey, after Hawkesbury? I can't remember. I do vaguely remember a place called Wawa, not so much for anything that happened there as for the weird name, but would that have been the second day? I'll have to check the notebook, and also get a map.
The sight of fresh towels on the rack suggests to my mind a possibility that had not occurred to me before – that there would be no towels, and I wouldn't be able to dry myself. In short, the solution to the problem suggests the problem, and my first response is not relief but anxiety. Strange, how the mind works. Is it a reliable instrument for perceiving the world as it is?
Eleventh segment
The shower seems, if anything, to have sharpened my appetite. What's for breakfast? Do I smell anything cooking? I do not. I feel a sudden craving for bacon and eggs, which I've not had in donkey's ages. Who used to say that – "donkey's ages"? It's certainly not my expression. It just popped into my head, and it vaguely suggests someone – who? Aunt so-and-so? Uncle whosis? My mother comes from a large, close family; they were constantly dropping over; if not one branch, then another. My coldness towards them used to cause my mother genuine distress. She could not understand that to me they were strangers, while I failed to understand that to her they were family, the brothers and sisters under whose wings she, the youngest, had grown up. Morris, the eldest, had been born "over there," in "the old world"; he was fifteen years older than my mother and, when their mother died (the father had been dead for years) had taken her to live with him and was as strict with her, my mother recalled fondly, as any "old world" father. Morris' wife, my Aunt Dorothy, was a cow, physically and intellectually. "Donkey's ages" must have been hers; it sounds rather like her; her entire vocabulary consisted of clichés and ready-made phrases, which, judging from the triumphant air with which she brandished them, must have seemed to her a mark of culture and refinement. Well, never mind. Where are my bacon and eggs? No cereal and milk for me this morning! I'm hungry as a bear! I could eat a horse! Etc, etc. Also, I need a shave. Mustn't let myself go. Here's another vague memory: on the road at nineteen, trying to grow a beard; giving up in despair after two weeks.
Sunlight is everywhere. The staircase glows with it, the hallway with the Charles Dickens desk seems enclosed in a vast candle flame. What the hell? There, on the sofa, lies Isaiah. So breakfast is not on the fire after all. The depth of my disappointment surprises me; for an instant I feel almost shattered. Relax, I tell myself. I'm on the road, there's no hurry, no schedule... But seriously, what time is it? Why don't I have my watch with me? There must be a clock around somewhere. For all I know it's mid-afternoon or something. Maybe Isaiah had breakfast ready for me hours ago, and is now enjoying an afternoon nap. It rather looks that way. He's fully clothed. Is he wearing a watch? I go over to him. His arms are folded across his chest. No, no watch. Time itself has been banished. What to do? At moments like that you feel an almost desperate desire for something to happen – the doorbell to chime, the phone to ring. Nothing. Not so much as the buzzing of a fly. His mouth is open – how come he isn't snoring? How come, come to think of it, his chest isn't rising and falling? For it's not. "Isaiah!" I call out. "Isaiah!" I shake him. "Isaiah! Wake up!"
It's incredible. He's dead. Is it possible? Stupid question. Of course it's possible. He's an old man, old enough to die any time, though he seemed healthy enough the night before. A sudden heart attack or something... do I know? Am I a doctor? Is there anybody in the house? This is mad, this is insane. What difference does it make whether anyone is in the house?
***
Here's Alfred. Alfred, Ont. What a name for a town. What would it be like, when asked where you're from, to have to reply, "Alfred?"
Is there a place in Alfred where a hungry man can pull over for a bite of breakfast? For I am now oriented as to time, thanks to the car's digital clock, which says 10:37; rather late for breakfast but not outlandishly so. It's either breakfast in Alfred, or, failing that, lunch in Ottawa.
Here's a place, a gas station that's more than a gas station, it's a "rest stop." Good. We'll stop and rest. Have a bite to eat. Fill up the tank. Get a road map. An oil change – yes, I've been meaning to do that. Well, here's my chance.
Two mechanics come forward, one young, one middle-aged. My glance favors the latter, who bursts into a sprint, so eager is he to be of service – or maybe it's his consciousness of the distinction conferred upon him. A BMW – my BMW, anyway – needs experienced hands. Let the young practice on lesser vehicles. That settled, I nurse my first cup of coffee and contemplate the menu. If I still want bacon and eggs, they are available. Also ham and eggs. Or sausages and eggs. Fried eggs, or scrambled? Toast, or fries? Hm.
The waitress is morning sunshine personified. Hair the color of egg yolk, eyes like eyes in a child's drawing, smile that says nothing's wrong with the world and nothing ever could be. I want to ask her if she's from around here, from Alfred, but cringe at the thought of the impression I'd make. How can a man my age strike up a casual conversation with a girl hers, without seeming to have an ulterior motive? "Bacon and eggs," I say, and to my distress my voice sounds sharp, cold, resentful of her youth and happiness. "Fried. Toast."
"Can I bring you some more coffee?"
"Yes, please. Listen..."
"Yes?"
"Do you know the... the youth hostel in Hawkesbury, on Alexandria Street?"
"The Rhyme and Reason?"
"Rhyme and Reason? Is that what it's called?"
"Isaiah Gibson's place."
"Yes."
"Well, I know it exists. I've never stayed there or anything. Why?"
"No... no special reason."
They'll find the body, word'll get around, and she'll remember that I asked about it, for "no special reason"; she'll remember I seemed nervous... Do I seem nervous? I know I am, but how I seem depends as much on her as on me, and she doesn't seem bothered, or even capable of being bothered. "Are you always so happy?" The words come out of my mouth, but hardly seem mine; or rather, they are mine, but I hadn't meant to utter them. What is the matter with me? Well, if I am agitated there is some excuse, after all. I've just been through an experience which might be classed as traumatic – my host lying dead on the sofa... Why did I fly, though, as if I were afraid of being accused of murder? Why didn't I call the police? Should I now? Of course I should. The body will still be lying there, and might lie there for days, even weeks, before it is discovered. True, it's a youth hostel, supposedly open to the public, but certainly I saw no sign of any business going on there.
The waitress is no longer there. Did she answer my question? Or flash me a smile that spoke for itself? Or take offense and is now conferring with the manager, telling him she is paid to serve customers, not to put up with their senile impertinence? Who else is around? Not very many people – not surprisingly; it's between breakfast and lunch. The few who are here are all solitaries, occupying widely scattered tables; the only sounds to be heard are the occasional faint clink of coffee cup against saucer and the rustle of newspaper pages. Men, mostly; truckers, probably.
Here's my food. No, the waitress is not angry; her smile is as radiant as ever. "Is there a payphone somewhere?" I ask her. Just outside, she says, pointing. I nod. "Enjoy your meal," she says, and leaves me to myself.
For company I have a map, purchased at the little station shop, and the red notebooks, all four of them, for just before turning the car over to the mechanic for the oil change (which presumably is underway at this very moment) I reached into the back seat and, without anything particular in mind, took them with me. Well, my boy. Well, my son. The question now is, where did you spend your second night on the road, eh?
***
The BMW purrs more gently, surges more powerfully, grips the road more tightly than ever. It's the clean, fresh oil coursing through its circulation system. What a privilege it is to command such a vehicle; a privilege that puts the absolute power of ancient kings – of God Himself, for that matter – to shame. It says something for our social system, no doubt, that even an ordinary man like me can aspire to such... such what?... such elevation. Hm. I'm not sure if that's the word I want, but... Look at this, now: I'm doing 150 kmh, and the engine isn't even straining; I'd had no idea I was going so fast. How fast could I go, I wonder? Ever so slightly I increase my pressure on the accelerator. 160, 170... Better go easy. Trouble with the police I don't need. Here's Rockland. I'll be in Ottawa in a few minutes. And in a very few minutes more I'll be past Ottawa, for I certainly have no intention of stopping there.
Wawa is six-seven hundred kilometers past Ottawa, on the north shore of Lake Superior, and I spent not my second night there but my fourth; in between were stops at North Bay and Sudbury. At North Bay I slept not at a hostel but at a cheap, filthy hotel which inspired the following notation: "I love these slummy rooms, with the door handles broken off, the bed and chair springs loose and broken, the door hinges creaking eerily, curtain rods disengaged..." Did I really love them, or was I trying to talk myself into loving them? Maybe I really did love them, for being the diametric opposite of everything I was used to at home. But the question I must now ask myself is this: At the present rate I will reach North Bay by two in the afternoon or thereabouts; is there any point in stopping there, just because I stopped there forty-three years ago? I could make Sudbury easily by evening; in fact, if I wanted to, I could make Wawa. At Wawa I seem to have ended up at a commune for the type known at the time – and maybe still, for all I know – as "Jesus freaks."
Over breakfast at Alfred I renewed my acquaintance with a "Jesus freak" named Chris: "He was a tall, gawky, vacuous kid, with short black hair and eyes that bulged like those of a frog. He talked in a very soft, slow voice, settling into long silences occasionally, as if waiting for inspiration. He kept looking at me with his eyes wide, as though he was measuring my reactions (which I kept to a minimum) and smiling in a stupidly ingratiating way. He said he had been on mescaline, and suddenly saw the ugliness of it all... etc., etc. The usual spiel. It was the worst half hour of my life..."
It brought back no memories, none at all. I try to visualize this froglike Chris – in vain. Nothing. Did this encounter really occur? Did it occur to me?
Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I here? A horn blast startles me. I'm in the fast lane, but I've unconsciously slowed to sixty, and in my mirror I see this giant truck bearing down on me, headlights flashing, as if to say, If you don’t get out of my way I'll sweep you out of it. I speed up, and in no time he's a respectful distance behind. Ottawa, 10 km. Why am I edging right? Am I going to exit at Ottawa? Yes, I think I am. I think I am. For all I see ahead, just now, is an awful hotel room at North Bay and a frog-eyed kid named Chris in a place named Wawa intoning, "I'll pray for you. I'll pray that Jesus shows you the light."
***
Just past the exit is a Holiday Inn. I pull into the parking lot and switch off the engine. Do I have luggage? The time has come to settle that lingering question. What a strong sun. Is it really only May? Well, the end of May, May 30, almost June – but this is a July sun. Anyway. I get out of the car, open the trunk... No, no luggage. I'll have to do some shopping. First things first. Let's check in, get settled, and then... we'll see.
I am checked in, settled. It's not a room, it's a palace. Two of everything – two beds, two desks, two chests of drawers, even two television sets. I can watch the hockey game and the baseball game at the same time. Are there two bathrooms too? I haven't gone that deep into the premises. I will reserve that pleasure for later. For now, I throw myself face up on one of the beds, fold my hands behind my head, stare up at the ceiling, and... and nothing. Ottawa. The nation's capital. I came here once on a school trip – elementary school? High school? I don't remember. We toured the Parliament buildings. Where are they, the Parliament buildings, relative to this Holiday Inn? I have no idea. My room is on the fifteenth floor. Quite possibly I could see them from the window, through which the light of the sun hits me full in the face, so that, if I close my eyes, I could easily imagine myself on a tropical beach somewhere. Maybe that's what I should do – leave the car here and fly to a tropical beach. I could be stretched out on one in a matter of hours. White sand, blue sea... I'm a pretty fair swimmer, too. I remember how envious Howie Levine was when I passed my Senior Red Cross swimming test and he didn't. Only three kids in the class did – a class of thirty. How old would we have been then? Thirteen? Yes, probably, for the memory is associated somehow with our Bar Mitzvahs. My mother kept all my little badges and trophies and awards and prizes, such as they were, so that one too, the Senior Red Cross certificate, or badge, or whatever it was, must be in the house somewhere. In the bottom drawer of the old teak wood bureau in the parental bedroom, if I'm not mistaken.
Should I? Go to a tropical beach, I mean. The idea is oddly attractive. I've never been to a tropical beach. I have a credit card, so money is no problem. Unfortunately, I have no passport. Never have had one. Never been abroad. Never wanted to go. It would be more accurate to say it never occurred to me to go. Which is strange, I suppose, in this age of everybody traveling everywhere at the drop of a hat. Which is harder to account for – everybody's insatiable wanderlust, or my placid, not to say bovine, lack of it? The only foreign country I've ever set foot in is the U.S., the United States of America, and even there only on business, which occasionally took me to New York. The Red Notebook is, therefore, though I certainly couldn't have conceived it at the time, not only the account of one journey, undertaken at age nineteen, but the sum total of my life's travels – until now, when I find myself in Ottawa via Hawkesbury.
Hawkesbury. The Rhyme and Reason. First I ever heard of that name. Is Isaiah still there, still lying on the couch? It's horrible to think of. Why, horrible? It was lying peacefully enough, not the faintest sign of a death agony either in his face or his body, like a man who, "old and full of years," as the Bible says somewhere in connection with someone, lay down for a nap and just never woke up. A better death this world does not offer. So, why horrible? And why didn't I call the police, which is obviously what the situation called on me to do? Why don't I call now? Well, now it's dicey. They would naturally wonder why I didn't call before. It would be suspicious. True, no suspicions would arise that I could not, in short enough order, clear myself of, to the satisfaction of all concerned. But... There is always a but, even if you can't articulate it. If I had a passport, would I fly to a tropical beach? What would you say to that, my son, eh? No need to ask. The question is, would your contempt prevent me from doing it? It's an academic question, but an important one, like another, related question: If I had a gun in my possession, would I shoot myself?
Ah, but why all this talk, why these morbid thoughts? I have no passport and no gun, but I have two TVs at my disposal. Why not see what's on? Or call room service and order a drink? Or find the bathroom and have a hot shower? Though none of these possibilities is sufficient to rouse me, it is oddly pleasant to lie there contemplating them. Yes, I've come to the right place.
Twelfth segment
An idea that is sufficient to rouse me comes after a time – how much time I can't say; maybe a minute if I didn't doze off, or an hour, perhaps two, if I did. It is to go to a bookstore, find a book, bring it back to the room, shut the curtains, and read until I have absorbed everything – everything – the book has to impart. If it takes a day, I'll stay here a day. If a week, then a week. If longer, longer. What book? I don't know. Hamlet, maybe. Or Spinoza's Ethics, or Plato's Republic. Let's get to the bookstore first. We'll see what they have, browse until a cover blurb or a random bit of text makes the right impression, and then act on that basis. I am surprised at my excitement. Maybe I should enroll in university, take a few courses – not for credits or a degree, just for the chance to think deeply, really deeply, for once in my life – once in my adult life, I should say, for in my youth, of course, I did go to college, and was as serious a student as my age and inexperience permitted me to be.
On my way to the door I am arrested by my image in the mirror over the desk. It is me, and yet not me. It is me, and yet – for the first time in my life it dawns on me that I am a handsome man. I look away and look again, look long and hard. It is true. And what transformation can I have undergone in the last few days that permits me to see myself in this new light? For "new light" it certainly is; my appearance has, if anything, generally tended to disgust me, not that there's anything specifically repulsive about it, unless blandness and featurelessness are repulsive. My hair, though gray, is thick and wavy; my face unlined, the skin taut and firm. I am sixty-two years of age – do I look sixty-two? I don't think I do. Supposing I had asked that blonde sunny waitress at the rest stop in Alfred, "How old do you think I am? Guess." And supposing, instead of rolling her eyes and moaning, "Why me, Lord? Why do You send all the creeps to me?", she had humored me and played along. What would she have said? I'm tempted to go back and try. If she says forty, I'll go back home and enroll in university; if she says fifty, I'll proceed with my journey. And if she says sixty? I will shoot myself. There. That's settled.
But I still cannot tear myself away from the mirror. It is as if I am seeing myself for the first time. One thing: my face is stubbled with two days' growth of beard. There must be a razor in the bathroom. But I have always used an electric shaver. Well, besides the book, whatever it turns out to be, I have some shopping to do – a few items of clothing and what not; I'll pick up a shaver too.
The elevator takes me down to the ground floor, and I pause at the front desk. A large party is checking in and the clerks are busy, but one young woman, who might almost be the sister of that Alfred waitresses, disengages herself to accord me a Holiday Inn smile and take possession of my key. "Have a great day!" she says.
"What time is it?" I ask.
She turns to glance at a wall clock which is, of course, perfectly visible to me, though I hadn't noticed it, and says, with no perceptible irony, "Three fifteen."
"How far are we from downtown?"
"Not far. Are you driving?"
"Could I walk?"
"In about fifteen minutes."
She reaches under the counter and takes out a street map, which she proceeds to unfold. With an apparently unconscious movement of her left hand she pushes a stray lock of golden hair behind her ear. Then, with a pink marker, she outlines my route. "It's a little tricky here," she says, leaving a thick blot to mark the spot, "because the road forks. Be sure to bear right."
"I see," I say. "I'll be careful."
She hands me the map, renews her smile, which had faded slightly but not left her face, and says again, "Have a great day!"
The automatic glass doors part at my approach, and I pass into the bright sunshine. It's dazzling; I have to close my eyes against it, and even later, when I open them again, I find I cannot look straight ahead, but only at the ground. How strange. If it's like this in Ottawa, what must the tropical sun be like? It would fry the likes of me to a crisp in no time.
Shimmering in the light, the buildings seem as insubstantial as a desert mirage – as what I imagine a desert mirage would be like, for I have never, of course, experienced one. Following neither the clerk's directions nor the map clutched in my hand, I walk at random, as exhausted as though I have been crossing a desert, an endless desert... This looks like a shopping area. I don't know if it's downtown, but there are shops all over the place. Why shouldn't one of them be a bookstore? Hamlet – yes, I'll buy Hamlet, and hole myself up in my palatial, air-conditioned, lamp-lit room until I've understood it – and then... hm. Here's a grocery store, or convenience store, or whatever it's called; maybe I can buy myself a drink, some bottled water or something; I'm parched. A bell tinkles as I enter. "Hi," says a clerk I can barely see – because now it's dimness, or at least interior lighting, my dazzled eyes must grow accustomed to. A black girl, hair in braids like electric wiring. "Do you have bottled water?" I ask. "Sure," she says. "Right back there in the cooler." I go to the cooler, rummage about, find something that looks like it'll do, take it to her, and realize, as she's ringing it up, that I've forgotten my wallet.
"I'm sorry," I say, and explain. Am I blushing?
"Oh, that's okay," she says. I offer to replace it in the cooler, but no, she says, she'll take care of it, I am not to worry.
"By the way, do you happen to know if there's a book store in the area?"
"Yes," she says, "there's a Chapters just two blocks down. Turn right as you leave. It's a fine store. I buy all my books there."
"Thank you," I say. The bell tinkles as if to say "Have a great day!", and I am outside again.
Where's the Holiday Inn? The sunlight, the heat, the surging crowds are disorienting me. What if I were to suddenly collapse from a heart attack or something? They would search me for identification, would find none... And if I died? Who, or what, would I be taken for? What would they do? Wait for someone to claim the body, or to report me missing? They'd wait a long time! How would my mortal remains be disposed of? Cremation? There was a story in the Gazette not long ago about a man who'd been pronounced dead in a hospital and taken to the morgue, where he suddenly woke up. And what if he'd remained comatose, or whatever the condition is, a few days longer? He would have been buried – if not cremated – and then what? Imagine waking up... in a grave! My God!
Here it is – Chapters. I have been walking without realizing it, drawn by the crowd like a fleck of foam on a wave, and here I am at the bookstore. Doors open to admit me before I make up my mind to enter. I pass through them... but what for? I have no money. To my dazzled eyes everyone and everything look like shadows, or like film negatives, if you're old enough to remember the time when cameras used film. Solidity returns after a time, and I am among stacks and stacks of books, and what seems a surprising throng of people browsing among them, standing quietly, lost in their thoughts, books in hand... They say people don't read nowadays. Does this scene prove them wrong? A sign on the shelf in front of me says "Parapsychology". Advancing a few steps, I come to "History," then "Political Science," then "Cybernetics." What is cybernetics? I take up a thick hard-covered book and open it at random to a diagram. A glance at it assures me of one thing: whatever it is, the life that remains to me is too short to enable me to get very far in it. I close the book and replace it on the shelf.
"Anthropology." Linda. What's this? "The Mind of Primitive Man", by Franz Boas. Would she have read this? Franz Boas – I've heard the name. If even I've heard of him, he must be very famous. If he's very famous, she must have read it, given her lifelong interest in the subject. Linda. What would she be doing right now, right this minute? Perhaps studying this very book! She may have an exam in it tomorrow, and is reading it with particular intensity. Which might explain why this book, of all the books in the store, chanced to fall into my hands, why I was drawn to it. It might explain why I'm in the store to begin with, for how likely was it, after all, that I would end up here, of all places? My God. What is happening to me? Buy it, says a voice. All right, I'll buy it – but I have no money. Steal it, says the voice. Steal it? No, I'll go back to the hotel, get my wallet... There's no time for that! the voice cuts me off sharply. You're mad, I say. No answer. Listen, I say. Stores are monitored by security cameras. I'll be caught, seized, arrested... No answer. Where is the literature section? Here's a young fellow arranging books on a shelf. He must work here. Full-time? Part-time? "Excuse me." He turns to me with a nervous smile. He must be new; maybe I'm the first customer ever to approach him with a question, and he's thinking, What if I don't know the answer? "I'm looking for the literature section." Relief floods his face. "Just over there, to your left, where the man in the red t-shirt is." "Ah." The man in the red t-shirt is unmistakable; he is big enough to be two men. "Thank you." I make my way as directed. The man in the red t-shirt is thumbing through The Brothers Karamazov. Of all books! I feel an urge to engage him in conversation, to say, "To get the real Dostoevsky you have to read him in Russian." This is most unlike me. I do not as a rule approach strangers unless it's absolutely necessary, and even then grudgingly – or rather, not grudgingly, but... I mean to say that I am not a misanthrope, only shy. I stand beside the man, a step or two behind him, feeling utterly dwarfed in his massive presence. Is his total unconsciousness of my existence a measure of my insignificance, or of his absorption in his reading? I can make out the chapter title at the top of the page. It is Cana of Galilee. I know it well. Alyosha, the youngest brother, the monk, is going through a religious crisis, his faith assailed by the worm of doubt; and his doubt is laid to rest, not by rational argument but by an ecstatic vision. I can see nothing of the reader's face, but his bullet-shaped head, topped with thinning wavy reddish-blond hair, rests awkwardly on his grotesque bulk, as though placed there as an afterthought. In short, there is nothing of the intellectual, or even of intelligence, in his outward appearance, what I can see of it, anyway, and yet here he stands, to all appearances deeply absorbed in a book – I might almost say in the book – that, when I was very young, still in high school, revealed to me – or at least suggested to me – the presence, the existence, of a universe vast beyond conception, and the possibility that I, inching my way from insignificant youth towards insignificant adulthood in an insignificant suburb, could be – was – part of such a universe.
Suddenly the man seems to rouse himself. He glances at his watch, shuts the book, replaces it on the shelf, and hurries away. Without thinking I follow him. Where would he be going? Has he just remembered an appointment? Moving with surprising agility he makes his way among the shelves and through the crowd, sailing out the door as it slides open at his approach, me right behind him. He turns left; so do I. An unaccustomed excitement surges in me. The sheer absurdity of what I am doing is breathtaking – trailing a perfect stranger along a strange street in a