by John Sladek
XX
The next morning brought Jake Mcllvaney to the door with a package. ‘Terrible thing, your Pa and all,’ he said. ‘Yep, just terrible. Boys over at the poolroom was just saying how –’ the big Adam’s apple shifted, ‘– how sudden it was. Real sudden. And your Pa was real respected in this town, you know that? Real respected. Can’t say as he was liked much, but everybody respected him even when they hated his guts.’
Roderick nodded.
‘Yep, well guess you’ll be gettin’ Wally Muscatine to handle the arrangements, eh boy?’
Roderick nodded. Jake came inside and looked around.
‘Good enough, good enough. Because you know Wally’s a real white man, he’ll do your Pa proud. This the death certificate? See Doc Welby signed it, funny thing he was just now saying as how Pa was strong as a horse, only your Ma would keep feeding him with funny pills and all.’
Roderick shrugged.
‘Yep, that’s the way it goes. Oh, here’s your package. Corner kinda got ripped a little there, so I uh seen what it is, it’s a head.’
Roderick nodded.
‘Looks almost real, what I seen of it. What’s it for, anyhow?’
‘For me. It’s kind of a mask.’
‘Oh?’
‘Guess I can’t wear it for a while. I’m in mourning.’
‘Oh.’ The Adam’s apple bobbed again. ‘By golly I wondered what you was doing with that black paint all over your face. Didn’t like to ask right out, know how coloured folks get so touchy sometimes. Take that new doc, Doc Sam, you met him? Well he is the touchiest coloured boy I ever did see. All you gotta do is sneeze the wrong way and he gets all uppity, you know? Like we was talking about how your Ma keeps baking these here gingerbread boys, I asked him if he hadn’t noticed how a lot of kids around town got sick after eating gingerbread boys, right away he got mad! He got mad!’
‘He did?’
‘Well maybe not right away, but see I asked him if he didn’t smell a nigger in the woodpile somewheres, then he got mad. Okay, maybe I should of said Negro but hell, it’s just an expression. I just don’t understand you people sometimes. Hell I’m not prejudiced. I even buy Uncle Ben’s rice! And look, I’ll shake your hand any time – any time!’ Jake at once drew on a dirty work-glove and shook Roderick’s hand. ‘There, you see?’
‘A difficult time,’ murmured Mr Muscatine. ‘No use making it more difficult than we have to, eh Roger?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, I hope you’ll want the full funeral. No time to pinch pennies, now, is it? See, by rights I ought to remove your beloved father in a quiet, dignified way. I ought to prepare everything real tasteful: I’m talking a rosewood casket, rosewood on the outside over seam-welded stainless steel, silver-plated handles, you got a choice of linings, nylon or pleated silk. I’m talking a full set of casket clothes, nice English worsted suit, Italian shoes, quiet broadcloth-shirt, underwear, socks and garters – he can either wear his own tie or we can provide one, got a nice one here with the message written sideways see, so you can read it when –’
‘But –’
‘Sure a lot of people think it’s corny dressing them up in new clothes but I like to think of it as, well, like getting married. Only for sure you only do it once.’
‘Well I –’
‘Because see our full package includes everything, floral arrangements, music, enhancement of the appearance, watertight vault, plot in a good location, everything right down to a quality deodorant –’
‘Well see, I’m not sure how much money we have. Ma’s too upset right now to –’
‘Then let’s not worry her, eh? Eh? Way I see it, if you really love someone, you just naturally want them to have the very best. Quality, solid comfort, that’s our motto at MFH.’ Seeing Roderick scratching his head, he went on quickly, ‘Think of it this way. All his life that sweet old man worked hard to provide something for you and your Ma. Quality of life. Now don’t you think he deserves a little quality of life himself?’
‘Sure only –’
‘Of course you could get the Economy job, sure. We could come in and drag Pa out of here just the way he is, puke down his pyjamas, neighbours watching his limbs flop around, staring at his dirty toe-nails, how would you like that? Then we squirt in our cheapest embalming fluid, cram his belly full of low-grade cavity filler, pop him in a thin plastic coffin and just dump him in a hole in the corner of the graveyard where it’s all overrun with weeds and crab-grass, ground’s alive with wood lice … but ask yourself: is it really worth it? Saving a few lousy bucks, is it really …?’
Father O’Bride sounded upset. ‘What do you mean, say a few words? Am I supposed to be a toastmaster or something?’
‘No but Father, I just thought you could –’
‘Nuts. Nuts! Look the poor crud wasn’t even Catholic, first of all. You don’t need a priest. Get a minister, maybe the guy over at that new motel church, yeah? The Little Olde Church O’ Th’ Interstate, yeah?’
‘But Father, I just thought, maybe he had like a baptism of desire or –’
‘Great, kid. Terrific thought there. You know it’s never too late with God, you can get sent into the game in the last minute of the last quarter and still score … Listen, I’ll try to fit him into my prayers, okay? I’m pencilling him in on the roster right now, okay? Now how about getting off the line, I’m expecting a top-priority call from Thailand.’
‘Yes, but couldn’t Father Warren maybe –?’
‘Father Warren is sick. Goodbye.’
The long hands, now bulged about with tape and gauze like a boxer’s weapons, rummaged through old xerox copies of Philosophy and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. At times he would stop, outwardly appearing to rest or perhaps to try to remember what he was looking for. But inwardly the wheels never stopped, never slowed.
Zeno would say it was impossible, motion. For before a wheel can make a full revolution, it must make a half-revolution, before that a fourth, before that an eighth, before that a sixteenth … faced with an infinity of infinitesimal movements before it can move at all, the wheel gives up.
Father Warren sighed. How easy now to smile at Zeno’s simple paradoxes! Now with the two-handed engine at the door, waiting to crack the very hinges of the universe!
Mrs Feeney opened the door a crack. ‘Won’t you eat anything, Father? Just, even a glass of milk?’
He waved a lump of bandage. ‘Too busy, too busy here.’ Milk! To build bones, no doubt. As if that were any kind of solution but a calcium solution, calcium being a metal sure, but can these metal bones live? Let her answer that, yes or no. He lifted the glass, praying inwardly:
‘Father if it be Thy will, let this cup pass away, but if it be not Thy will, then let me take this cup and throw the dice therein.’ He felt a sudden coldness within, and saw the glass was now empty. ‘For Thou playest not dice with the universe,’ and even Pascal said it was a safe bet. So give the wheel its turn, and roll the bones.
But what did Luke say? Not Luke, Lucas, Lucas … something about Gödel’s paradox was it, where … The hands pawed wildly for a moment – or an hour – was he looking for Gödel or J. R. Lucas, now, ‘On Not Worshipping Facts’ was it? But the article is a fact itself, is that a para … here, here now to get it down once for all time. Holding the pen awkwardly, he began:
Gödel’s paradox shows that within any mathematical system it is possible to write formulae representing statements outside the system. Then if a certain formula is true, its corresponding meta-mathematical statement is true, and vice versa. Moreover
Moreover what? Gödel equals GOD + EL, stop it, stop it!
Moreover one can write a formula Z corresponding to the meta-mathematical statement: ‘The formula Z is unprovable in the system.’ If the system proves Z, Z is true and therefore the statement is true, making Z unprovable: a contradiction. Therefore the system cannot prove Z, so the statement is true. But that means that Z is true, but unprovable in t
he system.
Thus for every mathematical system (without internal inconsistencies) there must be one formula which is true but unprovable.
Lucas goes on to show that all machines are mathematical systems of this kind, since all of their operations can be written into formulae. Thus for every –
‘Father, did you want anything else, a sandwi –?’
‘GO AWAY DAMN YOU DAMN YOU GO AWAY!’ Damned interfering old biddy sticking her nose in the door just when he was getting to the, where, where was it, yes:
Thus for every machine there must likewise be a formula Z representing the metamachine statement: ‘The formula Z cannot be proved in the machine.’ In other words, there is one thing the machine cannot do. This reduces the mind-machine debate to a simple contest: The mechanist first presents Lucas with a machine proposed as a model of the mind. Lucas then points out something the mind can do but the machine cannot (prove Z). The mechanist can now alter the machine so it can handle Z, but then it is a different machine. There is now a different unprovable formula Y to baffle it. And so on. The contest continues until the mechanist either produces a machine for which there is no unprovable formula at all – which he can never do – or admits defeat. The mind must win.
Father Warren paused a moment, then added: HA HA HA HA HA!
But –
But what if the machine could alter itself? What if every time Lucas pointed out a gap in the machine mind, the machine simply plugged it? What if the machine could learn and change? So that it begins by saying ‘Gee Father I don’t know …’ and before you know it, it’s inside your head yes inside your head, twisting the controls, stop it, stop it!
Lucas’s bright paradox began to look tarnished already, like Zeno’s whirligig, only an amusement, a game the game position – stop it! – only a trivial, a puppy chasing its tail, that was it, a puppy chasing its own, but if, but what if …?
He looked up, but there was no one at the door.
But what if the machine caught up with Lucas, what if it surpassed him and turned the tables? What if it began setting formulae Lucas could not prove, what then? Write, he commanded his hand. Anything, write. And after a moment the hand moved, writing A.M.D.G., A.M.D.G., faster and faster, trailing a glory of gauze:
A.M.D.G., They have pierced my hands and my feet they have numbered numbered all my bones I believe in God the Fact the
And he saw the whirling puppy snap up its tail, then its hind legs, front legs collar and head snapping up its tail and so on, damn him, and so on!
‘Now, you good sisters been doing a darn good job here,’ said Father O’Bride. He stood with one shoe up on the desk, scraping mud from his cleats. Points of light glancing from his 30-function sports watch danced in the corners of the office behind Sister Filomena, who stood with downcast eyes. ‘As I see it, you gave that Wood kid every chance. Every chance. Not your fault if he fumbles instead of running with the ball, is it? Nope. And boy does he fumble! Let’s just run over his track record, okay?’ He swaggered to the little portable blackboard and erased a football diagram. Then he stood, one fist on the hip of his SHAM OCKS uniform (from which the erroneous C had been removed), the other hand flicking and catching a piece of chalk as though it were a decision coin. Finally he wrote 1.
‘One,’ he said. ‘Discipline. The little creep fouled up Sister Olaf’s religion class, but good! Then I tried to have a man-to-man rap with him, where did I get? Zilchtown, that’s where. Kid’s not even in the same ballgame, can you dig that?’
‘Yes Father. We –’
‘So I says to myself fine, okay, I’ll bench him a while, give him a couple hard workouts with Father Warren, he’ll come around. Only what happens? Father Warren hits into the rough and stays there! And that’s what hurts. Sister, that’s what really hurts. I see him sitting there day after day, busting his … his brains over these dumb games – how to read a robot’s mind, crud you wouldn’t believe, a book called The Soul of the Robot, another one Computer Worship – and all the time his faith is just winding down, winding down … That really makes me sick, you know? I want to reach out a hand and – by the way, you see his hands? I got Doc Sam to look at him, he says it’s just some local infection, clear up in a minute if he could only stop scratching – but like I said I want to reach out to him, help him, only he won’t help himself! Like yesterday I took him my rowing machine, figured if he won’t come outa the study at least he could get in a little workout, you know what happened? He went all to pieces, started moaning how it wasn’t fair, I couldn’t show him the instruments of torture until I at least asked the question! Instruments of torture! My old rowing machine!’
‘Yes, yes Father.’
That ain’t the worst end of it.’ He wrote 2, hesitated and added 3. ‘He hasn’t said Mass for two weeks, that’s what hurts. That’s what really hurts, Sister. I have to take morning Mass every day and six times on Sunday, double confessions every Saturday – when am I supposed to get down to my own darn commitments? I got no time for the team, no time for planning, firming up dates for the league play-offs, nothing! Not to mention a few business commitments, sure I could scratch them now but then next season how do we get a deal on uniforms? Same with the devotional items, how else we gonna build the new stadium?’
Sister Filomena said nothing, but he seemed to feel her silence as criticism.
‘Sure, okay I spend a lot of time on these things, yeah and a lot of time at the country club too, but Sister, it’s all an investment. It’ll pay off for the school, the kids, everybody! Only now … and all because of one rotten kid, it makes me sick.’
‘Father Warren’s sick too,’ she reminded him. ‘And I think we ought to do something about him. I think he needs hospital care.’ ‘Hospital? Oh no you don’t. I’m not having our record dragged in the mud like that, not when I’m that close to Monsignor. All we gotta do is play it cool and hang in there, this place’ll be a Deanery next Fall. Isn’t that what we all want? The Deanery of Holy Trinity? Or do we want it to be known as “Holy Trinity, yeah, where that priest went bananas”. Besides, he’s not that bad. He’s just, it’s just that kid, having that kid around. Get rid of him, and Father Warren will be –’
‘I was thinking of the scandal, Father. I suppose you know already Mrs Feeney thinks he’s a saint, and she’s not the only one, half the older women in the parish are saying he’s got the stigmata, the sacred wounds –’
‘Hey!’ Father O’Bride didn’t look at all distressed. ‘They could be right, you know? Who are we to –’
‘Father!’
‘Yeah okay but it’s worth thinking about. Now about this kid. I want him out of our hair now. Right away.’
‘Expulsion?’
‘Nope, too messy, too many explanations. Look, since he’s a smart kid, why don’t we just graduate him? Yeah? That’s it, we’ll graduate him!’
Sister Filomena cleared her throat. ‘I ought to remind you, Father, that while I respect your opinion, I am the principal of this school. We can’t just –’
‘If we don’t,’ he said, ‘we’re all washed up. You, me, the school, the good sisters, and especially Father Warren. Whole team.’
‘I see,’ she said, after a moment.
‘Great. Terrific. Now you just jog on and fill out a diploma for the kid, hand it to him when he comes in, and that’s that. Okay? I gotta coupla phone calls to make …’
XXI
‘… him being an inventor and all,’ Mr Muscatine finished. Roderick was staring out of the window. The rain outside the mourners’ car fell in sheets (as he knew it always did at funerals), probably flattening the young oats, and certainly cancelling the big game against the St Theresa Terrors. Over the hiss of tyres, the squeak of windshield wipers and the taped sounds of Sereno Benito’s Strings, it was hard to make out what the little funeral director was rambling on about. ‘No charge of course.’
Ma wasn’t listening, either. She stared out at (or past) billboards advertising Quebec beer, Fin
nish toilet paper and Turkish cars, and she kept humming that same aimless tune from the Bow-wow Symphony. Probably still couldn’t realize that Pa was dead. He turned to the window again. A rainbow ran with them briefly, the end of it ploughing across Howdy Doody Lake and then apparently dropping back to linger at the new Welby-Bangfield Corporation property development.
Wally Muscatine carried on. ‘My nephew Cliff knocked it together. You know, a bright boy like that gets itchy just setting around all day out there at the junkyard. Has to keep busy, see? So anyway I just thought we’d give it a little run today, see how she goes. Like to think your Pa would want Cliff to have his chance.’
Ma looked around. ‘What was that, Mr Muscatine?’
‘Oh just telling the boy here about my new set of pallbearers. Fully automatic,’ he said, winking. ‘Patent Applied For.’
‘Patent –?’
‘Hope we get some sun, though. Brought the old camera along, thought we might get a publicity shot or so. Like to help young Cliff along.’
The humming commenced again.
*
Ma had been acting strangely – even for Ma since the night of the raid. Roderick had expected tears for Pa, anger at the stupid million-dollar gas bill, anything but this quiet smile, this constant humming. Every now and then she’d wander into Pa’s workshop and rattle some tools, as though looking for something. At other times she seemed to think Pa was only upstairs, lying down after dinner.
‘Bless his heart, he will overeat,’ she’d said yesterday. ‘Chicken and dumplings, chicken and dumplings. Do you know, he likes them so much, I’ve cooked them three times a day for the past forty-odd years?’
‘Ma, listen.’
‘To what?’
‘To me. Listen, Pa is not upstairs lying down. He’s dead.’
‘Pshaw!’ she said, spelling out the unpronounceable word. ‘He’s no more dead than – than I don’t know who than John Keats!’