by Doon Arbus
What is it that your Bible tries to tell us the man said when he returned from being gone and the weeping woman recognized him? Was it, Don’t touch me? Touching is forbidden? Was it, Stop clinging to me? Sounds like a seduction, don’t you think? A challenge in the form of a perverse invitation to transgress. Noli me tangere doesn’t get us any closer, since Latin was not his native language and those could not have been his actual words, but merely a rough translation from yet another language he did not speak, presuming that he spoke at all after he died. We have good reason to doubt everything. The reporter is no eyewitness. He has relied on gossip, twisted, modified and reshaped in accordance with his prescribed agenda: to cow the doubters out there into a state of blind belief. If we know anything at all, we know that different words have different meanings, not to mention the deep-rooted evocations buried in their forgotten histories and derivations. Translators have no choice but to take liberties and make compromises, but no approximation can pretend to be the thing itself any more than an object’s name supplants its physical reality or metaphor can substitute for fact. Words themselves in any language are merely poor approximations of the elusive fleeting thoughts. In the end, the goal is silence. Alas, we may need words to get there.
The letter has consumed the better part of five pages. The writer pauses, then appends a valediction, followed by the symbolic flourish of a signature: Yours as always, in absentia, Charles. But this is not the last word. Apparently there remains a postscript to be written. He observes with the mild interest of a stranger the movement of his left hand. He watches the pen he is holding form letters and the letters assemble themselves into words. Two words: Burn this, it says. And moments later, obedient as always, he does so.
Meanwhile, as the small conflagration savors its ration of crushed paper and slowly, gradually, under the supervision of its creator, consumes it, a broken thing sequestered somewhere up above waits for its redemption.
Centered on the roof of the three-story red brick building that houses the Society for the Preservation of the Legacy of Dr. Charles Alexander Morgan, set back just far enough to prevent it being visible from the street below, to satisfy the requirements of the Landmarks Commission (an agency that despite its vehement opposition to the intrusion of offensive anachronisms, tended to equate the unseen with the nonexistent), stands a rudimentary twenty by thirty-foot rectilinear structure roughly ten feet high sheathed in corrugated metal siding with a narrow door at the rear and a single window on each of its three remaining sides. It had been erected some five years before Dr. Morgan’s death in anticipation of the future necessity of providing the building’s staunchly independent resident with some kind of nonintrusive live-in help, someone who, in the guise of secretary, archivist, or research assistant, could nonetheless be prevailed upon to run the occasional domestic errand, provide a little companionship for a restless semi-invalid, and should the need ultimately arise, do a bit of basic nursing as well. Given Dr. Morgan’s apparently unimpeachable good health, interrupted only by his sudden demise, the structure’s intended purpose as servants quarters had remained unfulfilled — at least, that is, until twenty-four years ago when the caretaker moved in, thereby belatedly supplying a reason for its existence.
As an experienced nomad reluctant to make his own indelible mark on a situation which, even as the days and months and years went by, he continued to regard as temporary, he has left things essentially the way he found them when he first arrived. In spite of the studious application of a fresh coat of paint from time to time, the room remains the same anemic shade of yellow it was then, with the same outdated stove and sink and fridge lining the south wall, a bathroom and adjoining closet to the east, and an entrance consisting of an opening in the floor that resembles a hatch without a lid, enclosed on three sides by a metal railing.
No interior walls intrude upon the space. No pictures threaten to betray the occupant’s personal history or predilections, that is, unless of course you choose to place in that category a series of obscure mathematical notations inscribed in a remote unlit corner near the entrance, or the large detailed map of the city taped up for years beside one window, its surface veined with red and blue and purple intersecting pencil pathways punctuated by asterisks, indications (one might reasonably surmise) of the places where a diligent explorer had once been or had once hoped to go. The map itself is gone now. Only its rectangular ghost — a fresher, paler patch of yellow than that of the surrounding surface — remains behind, the residue of a recent absence.
Lined up against the wall, underneath a succession of hooks for various items of discarded clothing (last week’s workshirt, a wide-brimmed leather hat, a pair of brown corduroys suspended by a belt loop dangling limp, lopsided empty legs) stand four pairs of shoes, toes against the baseboard, as if four docile prisoners awaiting execution had suddenly evaporated, leaving only their footwear for the firing squad.
The furnishings are minimal: a long pine dining table with a complement of mismatched chairs parallels the open kitchen, doubling — according to need — as either desk or workbench, while a monastic iron bed, situated directly beneath a modest skylight, provides the chronic insomniac, who spends most of his nights there, a mesmerizing nocturnal spectacle of infinitely nuanced shifting shades of darkness, punctuated only on rare occasions by a glimpse of moon or of a last surviving pair of fading stars. No moon tonight. No stars. Nothing to temper the intractability of night except whatever happens to issue from the disconsolate streetlamps down below or from the occasional lighted window in one of the surrounding towers, offering its chilly spectacle of intimacy to random strangers across the way.
The caretaker has entered the room, his refuge, and having blindly navigated familiar obstacles, is standing perfectly still in his ill-fitting borrowed slippers, immobilized midway between bed and closet, as if mentally rehearsing that which might come next. At last, apparently satisfied with what he has mapped out, he makes his way over to the closet, opens the door, and feels along the front edge of the shelf, gently insinuating his fingertips underneath a stack of freshly laundered shirts which he removes and, keeping the stack perfectly intact, places at one end of the dining table. The maneuver exposes — beside a couple of leather pouches and various implements of a somewhat surgical nature — a lumpy mound of blue cloth tucked into a far corner of the closet shelf. The caretaker is there to retrieve it.
All this he has managed by feel alone. Only when he has the bundle safely positioned on the table does he reach up and pull the chain to turn on the overhead light and permit himself to examine what lies before him. He unwraps the blue shroud, carefully, reverently, almost reluctantly, peeling back one shabby layer at a time like someone dismembering an origami bird, doing his best to delay what has finally become an inevitable confrontation with his old nemesis. Once uncovered, sharp translucent edges glint at him in a manner easily mistaken for malevolence. The two hundred and forty-seven broken shards of Morgan’s artifact have bit by bit been reassembled and made into a whole again, or if not exactly whole, at least into a single object. Of course, like anything attempting to disguise the scars of time or of experience and emulate that which it once was but is no longer, the restoration has its flaws. Each fragment fits together with its neighbors as it did when they were one, but what had been seamless then, now simply isn’t, quite. Here and there, despite the rehabilitating surgeon’s vigilance, minute vitreous traces of dried glue betray a join. The occasional gap mars previously smooth expanses. Although nearly identical to the original in size and shape, material, and in component parts, the thing sadly turns out to be no better than an imperfect version of its former self, much as Dr. Frankenstein’s doomed creation, likewise assembled out of disparate parts, proved to be, although undoubtedly a living, breathing creature, only very imperfect as a human. In fact, it is precisely the proximity to success in this instance that accentuates the failure. Nonetheless, in spite of these minor, virtually impercept
ible shortcomings, an untrained eye indifferent to such subtleties and unacquainted with the imponderable magnificence of what once existed would probably be willing to accept this fastidiously mended thing as Dr. Morgan’s original unadulterated phenomenon of Nature.
The caretaker slowly circles the table, bending over every now and then with his head on one side as he does so to study the results of his work from all angles, imagining how a prospective viewer might judge it and, thanks to a willful disregard of the tyrannical perfectionist in his nature, finds it good, or more precisely, good enough, at least given the present circumstances and the exigencies of time. He lifts the object to his chest, maneuvering it until he has it balanced, albeit somewhat precariously, across his forearms, secured there by the cradle of his fingers and, while still refusing to relinquish the impediment of the slippers, begins his halting shuffling treacherous progress down the stairs toward the vacant plinth whose emptiness, like a mark of shame, remains half hidden in the shadowy corner on the second floor to which it has been relegated since the incident that robbed it of its prize.
It is a deliberate but unceremonious reunion. With painstaking care, so as not to accidentally undo what he has so painstakingly accomplished, the caretaker, leaving the plinth undisturbed in its place, slowly eases the burden by degrees from his outstretched arms onto the smooth dark surface which gleams enticingly even in the absence of any decent lighting. The small flattened portion of what may be called the object’s underside (although in actuality it has no sides to speak of) — a feature apparently intrinsic to its original formation, as if its ultimate destination had been foreordained — comes in contact once again with the top of the plinth on which it used to sit so proudly and cleaves to it; they cleave to one another. A halfhearted attempt to make adjustments meets resistance. Of course, it may be nothing more than friction holding them in place, or gravity, or maybe some intractable sense of rightness acting as a magnet, insisting that as they are now, they must remain. Or could it be that after the protracted separation they have just endured, coming together once again is enough to reignite the dormant embers of their respective natures, generating sufficient heat to melt the two antithetical solids so that they congeal into a single entity, incapable of ever being sundered without irreparable damage to them both.
At any rate, they have been reunited now: the one wrested from the earth, the other, half celestial. The artifact sits poised at an angle on its perch, inclined slightly forward with the tips of its outer leaves (including the one, now cleansed of blood, that punctured the caretaker’s palm) curled back upon themselves, as if to proffer the intricate crystalline folds of its complex interior for the inspection of anyone who ventures up the staircase to the second floor and gains the landing. Equilibrium has been restored: reality no longer contradicts the promise written on the label. Dürer’s inscrutable woman sees all and makes no judgment.
Little now remains for his final tour of inspection before retiring but to test a few locked doors, set the alarms, close an open window, put objects back where they belong, to finally return things to the way that they were always meant to be. The braided rope with its cautionary one-word proclamation has been reattached, barring access by those who will come later to the private third-floor rooms where the caretaker has gone to complete his mission. As he moves down the corridor between the walls, soundlessly, like a figment of his own imagination, the air makes way for him to pass and closes up behind him, eradicating any trace of his passage. The house submits.
Autumn has come early. The days remain warm and humid, even when the breeze blows hard, and yet already leaves, still green but curling inward on themselves, forsake their branches, littering the gutters and clogging grates. Gulls desert the river and venture inland, their cries sounding the emergency. Three solitary doomed flies, having come in at the open window seeking refuge, regret their achievement and grow desperate, buzzing for a way out, dashing themselves unsuccessfully against the windowpane that lures them with the bright inaccessible image of a world they had just managed to escape.
The caretaker stands naked, a glass in hand, before the uncompromising expanse of Dr. Morgan’s bathroom mirror, in which, on daily visits, he has been observing what he thinks of as his progress, watching himself gradually, almost imperceptibly, changing, growing older, growing old. He makes a methodical study of the reflection, as if committing it to memory so he will recognize it in case they meet again: the naturally unruly hair, colorless as a moth’s wing and usually too wispy for gravity to tame, still furrowed by the morning’s combing and pomaded into place; the convoluted creases of a troubled forehead; the narrow flinty pale grey eyes confronting him with imponderable questions about what it is they see; the patrician angularity of the nose; the almost lipless mouth inclining upward at the outer edges, as if helplessly aspiring to a smile. He lowers his gaze — past flesh sagging from its own weight, past the Adam’s apple (like a peach pit lodged inside the throat), the prominent clavicles — and lets it linger over the rhythmic expansion and contraction of the solar plexus. He runs a finger over his ribs to make certain he exists, tallying up their number (a reassuring twelve in all). The white hairs on his chest encircle each nipple and trace two thin uninterrupted lines joined at the sternum that descend as one, like a harbinger of the coroner’s incision at the commencement of an autopsy, dividing left from right, and bisecting the navel in a downward journey toward the pubis.
A phalanx of some two dozen pill bottles, like an army of toy soldiers on the march, interrupt the view, occupying much of the marble vanity that runs the width of the mirror, their contents — at least according to the labels bearing Dr. Morgan’s name — already decades out of date, calling into question the efficacy of what they have to offer. The caretaker whispers the names aloud, so much Latin, so much less Greek, as if the sounds alone might be intoxicating. There are those with only modest goals, intended to do no more than help maintain the body’s status quo or help postpone the next calamity it might be prone to; those whose only purpose is to counteract unwanted side effects. Others foster sleep or wakefulness, even euphoria, while several merely dull the pain, wherever it may be, thereby making way for new sensations, or the new experience of feeling almost nothing. Some, of course, are even more ambitious, precipitating altered states of consciousness or implicitly promising to resurrect the past by restoring the power of weakened faculties or of those threatening extinction. As a patient, the Doctor, full of curiosity like most committed men of science, had clearly been an adventurous consumer of medications, eager to use his body as a private laboratory in which to explore whatever new experience it might be artificially induced to undergo.
Various implements of personal grooming keep the drugs company on the counter: an unsanitized toothbrush and crimped toothpaste tube resting in a tumbler, an ancient safety razor, sharpened blade intact (“the very blade that grazed the Morgan cheek morning after morning for so many years,” the caretaker might have said to his assembled visitors had they ever made it this far), along with an assortment of jars containing creams or gels, a shaving brush, a loofah sponge, and a tortoiseshell handled hairbrush with three wavy silver hairs entwined in its genuine boar and nylon bristles. The scene resembles a stage set for some future audience come to witness a drama whose last act may be already over.
He removes the childproof cap from one of the pill bottles and empties half its contents onto the bathroom counter, orange and white capsules that roll about together playfully before they come to rest. Separating the two halves of a capsule, he pours out the tiny orange pellets housed inside, retrieving some with a moistened fingertip that he sucks clean, rolling the remains around inside his mouth. He opens a second bottle, then a third, a fourth, and so on, spilling out what each one has to offer until the marble surface displays a dizzying array of choices: round pink tablets scored through the center, blue ones shaped like footballs or like hexagons, oblongs of a whitish hue; translucent loz
enges of various sizes; more glistening capsules, each half a different color (red and blue, clear bottoms with black tops, or those made up of two contrasting shades of green or yellow). The caretaker tries one of the tablets, followed moments later by a capsule. He waits, pensively savoring each like a gourmand assessing an appetizer. He is in no hurry. He scoops up a small random handful and, aided by a quick slug of the amber liquid in his glass, swallows the whole handful all at once, repeating the procedure a few times at regular intervals until at last the glass is empty and he has had his fill.
The view from Dr. Morgan’s baroque king-size bed consists almost entirely of an Expressionist painting on the opposite wall some eight feet tall and ten feet wide, depicting not only the bed itself with its voluptuous nest of floral pillows, but its two original occupants, the now absent Doctor and his absent Mrs. as young newlyweds, both barefoot and clad in silk pajamas, hers in a jungle pattern, his of a peculiarly acrid shade of emerald green. The Doctor reclines at the foot of the bed, propped up on an elbow with one leg cocked, while his wife leans back against the headboard behind him, her arms outstretched, cradling a pillow on either side as if she were embracing as her prized possessions an unusually adorable, if somewhat recalcitrant, pair of twins. Thanks to a deliberately skewed perspective the bed tilts downward at an impossible angle that threatens to pitch the foreground figure off the bottom of the picture even as the woman looms above him like a dark portentous angel. The portrait had been a wedding present from the artist whose career was in ascendance at the time and whom the couple had been fortunate enough to count among their closest friends. Although the picture would undoubtedly have fetched a hefty sum even then, its value had since increased tenfold as a consequence of the celebrated painter’s untimely death, not to mention the more recent death of its primary subject, another well-known figure with some cachet to his name. At this point, the painting must be doomed to wind up at auction within the year, having now become worth too much for the Foundation to refrain from selling it.