Chapter 36
Out There
Except for Louis, who exited in 1927, they expect fancy machines, sparks, coils, switches and similar B-series props. They expect to be placed in a crystal cylinder and to be teleported to the world outside, the familiar Hollywood-TV rigmarole.
But it isn’t at all like that. They’re sent out in a gadgetless dry bureaucratic fashion. Long-winded fine print in triplicate disclaims all administrative responsibility for any accidents that might befall the Transferred during the trial run. I affirm that I have read and understood the above. Signature.
They don’t bother reading the eight paragraphs. They sign, their hands trembling with excitement and fear. The little libidinous man with the filthy beret, Henri, bangs the first of the four sheets with a rubber stamp. The sheet is unimpressed by his repeated bangs. He has to rummage about for another, freshly inked, stamp-pad before he can impressively bang the forms plus their two carbon copies. With the final bang the rubber stamp splinters.
These technical hitches, although minor, aggravate the malaise of the Four Administratively Suspended.
Henri drops the rubber stamp fragments into a wastepaper basket and looks around fearfully. In a whisper he begs Seymour to bring back a Camembert, nice and runny. He’ll do him lots of little favors in return. Seymour promises and seconds later forgets his promise. Who needs favors in return in a place he’ll never be returning to?
Turnkey, accompanied by Henri, leads the four of them through another maze of corridors. They stop before a padlocked iron door. Turnkey carefully shields the lock from them with his gaunt body. He clicks the combination, scrambles it thoroughly and pushes the door open.
They find themselves in another corridor with a series of nondescript numbered doors. Seymour has been informed three times that his door is number 6 but, like the drunk technician, he confuses it with number 9, Louis’ door, and Louis vice-versa, maybe because their minds are topsy-turvy too. Turnkey sternly corrects them. Attempted period-exchange is another offense punishable by instant exit.
It was a mistake, they explain, and of course that’s true. Louis doesn’t want meaningless future 1951 and Seymour doesn’t want antediluvian 1900, twenty-seven years before the birth of his sweetheart. Period-exchanges are strictly forbidden and are punished by immediate exit, Turnkey repeats, like a carbon copy duplicate of an administrative document.
Before he turns his back on them, Turnkey commands: “When you hear a buzz you will open the second door, step out and you will be there. Failure to step out within ten seconds of the buzz will result in instant exit.”
The little man with the filthy beret repeats his request for a ripe Camembert. Seymour again says he’ll try and for the second time instantly forgets his promise.
He steps inside a tiny bare cubicle with a wooden seat facing another shabby door with no knob on it. A bolt is shot in the door behind him. It’s exactly like the setup in a hospital, waiting to be summoned by a buzz for an X-ray. He sits down and waits, concentrating, as instructed, on where he wants to be and it’s not Napoleon’s Tomb or Eiffel’s Tower. Waits and waits, thinking intensely of it, trying to summon up the original color. Waits so long that he dozes off and dreams of that place he wants to be and now is, in unsatisfactory black-and-white.
A buzz wakes him up. The knobless door is ajar.
Preparing his eyes for the dazzle of color in his darling’s street, Seymour pushes the door open and steps out into a rocking world of intense cold, gray blur and crazy perspective. The planes are cockeyed like a cubist painting and shifting.
He looks about for focus and stability and finds a little of that at his feet. He’s standing on what seems to be a floor plan of a church. No, not a church, simply a hopscotch diagram, what the French call a marelle, childishly chalked on the sidewalk.
He staggers forward a step. The rubbery buildings shrink squat as toads and then leap up into beanstalks. Dizzy, Seymour halts to make it stop. If he’s careful not to budge his head everything settles into static distortion. It’s as though he were imprisoned in a huge sphere of deformed glass.
He’d viewed Paris through glass during all of his second lifetime in the phantom Prefecture but at least the glass there had been clear. The glass here must be ribbed and pitted and scratched and full of flaws and milky swarms of tiny imprisoned bubbles, covered with burst blisters that magnify or minimize objects.
Why glass here, outside? How is that possible? How can his feet propel him if he’s standing inside a glass sphere?
He reaches out to feel it. His hands encounter void. With that void comes a terrible thought involving greater void.
The crazy distortions he sees must be the result of inner warp, fatal symptoms of that possible incompatibility with the outside world that Advocate had referred to. Which means he’s on the verge of exit, the permanent void he’s all too compatible with.
Sudden intense pain rescues him from it. Practically no pain is involved in exit, Advocate had assured them. Seymour moans and tries to be thankful for the torture of interstellar cold biting him all over like bloodthirsty piranhas.
Quick, sunshine, sunshine. He staggers out of the biting shade into a cannibal Congo sun. More blessed unbearable pain. He thinks he smells singed hair. He forces himself back into the contrary agony of shade.
Soon he learns to zigzag into quick mutually nullifying alternations of roast and deep-freeze. Out here for only a minute, he’s already devised a better-than-nothing technique for living with pain.
But where is out here? He’s certain it’s not the celebrated Tomb or Tower. Is it the longed-for street where his ponytailed sweetheart lived, still lives? He thinks he’s standing a little beyond a heaving corner building. If it’s the Rue du Regard in the 6th arrondissement then that buckling shop window over there must be full of familiar antiques.
He struggles over to it. The displayed objects are distorted and out of focus. He pictures his black-and-white wall drawing of the contents of that window and tries to superimpose them on those blobs.
Isn’t that blurred circle there the decorative dish with the peasant lass and the border of thirty-odd roses? But if so, shouldn’t those roses show up, even blurred, as a red circle? There’s no color there. There or anywhere else. He looks up at a sky that should be blue, what with ferocious sunshine a few steps away. The sky is dark gray.
He zigzags forward. Magnified by a flaw, a giant fish leaps at him, jagged jaws agape. It vanishes back into blur. It’s frightening but a good sign. He mentally refers to his wall-drawing again. Yes, the fish store is next to the antique shop.
He relies totally on his memory of the wall drawing to guide him now. There, isn’t that the crèmerie? A freak flaw of correct vision confirms it with those circular boxes of Brie and Camembert.
Next to the crèmerie, even though he can’t make out daffodil-yellow or pansy-blue or rose-pink in the fog, that must be the flower shop. Now in another split-second of narrow-angled clarity he gets further encouraging confirmation: a bouquet of white roses and he mysteriously knows it’s the very bouquet he’d offered his sweetheart’s marvelous mother one day back then, a back then that is now.
And there, the penultimate landmark, a big shop-sign. It has to be the horsemeat butcher’s golden horse head even if it’s wobbly, battleship gray and looks more like a hippopotamus head than a horse head. But the French don’t eat hippo steaks. Focus and perspective improve a little. Yes, unmistakably, the horse head neighing down at the pavement.
And next to it, at last, after so long, separated a lifetime from it, the porte-cochere like the entrance to a fortress, badly distorted but unmistakable. Behind it, he knows, is the paved courtyard and the shop with the faded scrolled Tailleur pour Messieurs et Dames and maybe his sweetheart waiting for him in front of it.
He peers at the door and recognizes the pattern of scratches. Everything is intact like the neighing horse head and the bouquet of white roses. Why marvel at it, though? No ti
me has gone by. He himself had gone by, unfaithful to it in his first lifetime, but back to it now, back to that original time, everything ageless like the things in the mid-century street, no time for the white roses in the florist’s window to lose a single petal.
His rigid finger approaches the door button. Poorly focused, it resembles an excited nipple.
Instead of contact and the massive door clicking free in welcome, he finds himself back to starting point, standing on what he’d taken for the chalked church diagram. But the cold isn’t as intense. The focus is better. The buildings don’t heave as badly. There’s a hint of color now. Technical adjustments back there must be improving things here. Finally, he’s grateful for the replay. He wants Marie-Claude sharply focused and in color.
He moves forward in the sharpening Rue du Regard, happy at the sight of the peasant lass bordered by almost-red roses. He goes past unmistakable eels and heaped mussels with sprigs of almost-green parsley. The happy cows on the Camembert lids are visible. Now the golden horse head, not quite true gold yet. Now the porte-cochere.
He touches the doorbell. The heavy door buzzes open a fraction of an inch.
Push it and he’s certain to see her there framed in the doorway with her shiny ponytail and large brown eyes and gold crucifix and her modest blouse with a round white high-buttoned collar, long satiny white sleeves buttoned at the wrists, the bodice covered with black lace.
He reaches out and finds himself back to the marelle again with no technical justification for it this time. Color and focus are no better. If anything, a little worse.
It goes on and on like that. He hears the responsive buzz of the bell and the liberating click of the lock. His hand moves toward the massive door to push it open on her and he’s returned to the marelle. Then he pitches forward again in diminishing hope past the blurred antique shop and fish store and crèmerie and flower shop and horse head to the door clicking open. Then back again in despair to the Marelle.
Finally he decides to stop. He discovers he can’t, no way to stop the torturing shuttle. He’s lost control over his body except for a few seconds of freedom in the marelle. He tries to keep standing there. But it’s as though invisible strings are attached to his limbs and a giant hand manipulating him into jerky puppet movements forward: antique shop, fish store, boxes of cheese, white bouquet of roses, horse head, button, door clicking open, back to the marelle.
At what must be the thousandth repetition, going past the crèmerie, less distorted on this trip, he has a confused memory that somebody back there will do him a favor if he brings back a nice ripe Camembert. Do me a favor, do me a favor now, let the door open for me. He grabs the round wooden box with a cow on the lid.
No favor. The pendular journey to nowhere and back goes on and on. Before the door he tries to cry out to his sweetheart: open the door, open the door, I can’t do it. His voice is tiny and squeaky, the ghost of a voice. The voice of a ghost?
Everything starts flickering like a silent film. The time-compressed alternations of night and day? It seems to him that days then whole seasons are going by in acceleration as he shuttles back and forth from the marelle to his sweetheart’s door. He imagines forsythias blooming yellow in public squares and fading; July rockets bursting and fading too; riverside trees rusting; shop-windows celebrant with tinsel. The neighing horse head comes and goes like an unmerry-go-round horse.
When he pictures the tipsy imbecilic crowd celebrating the same old New Year another idea occurs to him (it’s about time): a way to stop the unmerry-go-round. The idea begins with questions.
Why is he always plunked down on the marelle?
Why is he always granted two seconds of control over his limbs before the twitching strings force him forward?
Doesn’t it have a hidden meaning?
By now he knows the marelle by heart. First, corresponding to the entrance of a church, the half-moon marked Terre on which he stands for two free seconds before the puppet strings yank him away. Then the row of single numbered squares (1, 2, 3) forming the nave. Then two numbered squares (4, 5) side-by-side forming the arm of the cross, the transept. And then the apse, the part of the church with the altar where the holy mysteries are performed, capped by an arc marked Enfer (Hell) bordering dangerously on another arc, even narrower, marked Ciel (Heaven)
What are the rules of the game? He recalls an old photo of his sweetheart, heartbreaking at seven, in a summer frock, hopping serious-faced on her left foot on the Ciel segment of a marelle, her thin bare arms flung out gracefully for balance. He distinctly remembers having kissed the photo, seventeen years later, and saying to her: “I wish I had known you then.” But half a century after, he can’t salvage her explanations of the rules. All he recalls is that you have to hop from square to square without touching a line, skip over Hell and end up in Heaven.
Jerked away again, his two seconds of free will on Terre over, pulled past twisted blurred antiques, eels, cheese, bouquets, etc, he thinks he understands that if he can hop correctly in all of the numbered squares without touching a line, skip over Enfer and land in Ciel, somehow he’ll be rewarded by the door opening to him on Marie-Claude, prelude to the supreme reward of Marie-Claude herself opening to him. It’s like a parody of one of those redoubtable challenges testing the mettle of a mythological hero with a princess as recompense. But instead of coping with multi-headed dragons or endless shitty stables, he, Seymour Stein, no mythological hero, is supposed to hop successfully on a marelle.
In a way, though, it’s a more daunting challenge than dragon slaying. The squares, as he can see, had been obviously traced by a child’s hand, to fit a child’s small agile foot. With his number 12 gunboats, he’d have no more than a fraction of an inch leeway between the lines. And he’s weak and dizzy. What’s the price of failure? He’ll soon find out.
His features intent, elbows jutting out like chicken-wings, gripping the Camembert, he launches one-footed onto Square 1.
Miracle! Success!
Arms flailing to maintain balance, he aims himself at Square 2.
Waterloo.
He’s yanked away from the marelle.
Back, he hops and hops and is yanked and yanked.
He tries hundreds, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of times but he never gets further than Square 3, not until the miraculous apparition.
That happens maybe years later, for seasons have gone by, he thinks, marked by the changing bouquets of the flower shop as he hops and hops, shuttles and shuttles, Square 2, April daffodils, hop hop, Square 1, the door, Square 3, May tulips, hop hop the door, the horse head round and round, Square 1, hop hop, June roses, high summer, no Rs in the months, no more oysters in the fish store, hop hop, Square 2, All Saints Day chrysanthemums, hop hop, door, holly-wreaths now, the door, always the same, the door he can never open, hop hop hop hop, no hope, hope, hope.
Finally, blubbering and delirious in front of that heaving door, he begs Marie-Claude to help him, meaning by Marie-Claude his firm-breasted sweetheart on the other side of the door, meaning by help that she should open it for him.
That doesn’t happen.
But back on the marelle he feels the presence of the earlier version of her, his bare-armed seven-year-old darling. Now he actually sees her (the old photo real) standing on Square 2 looking over her shoulder at him stranded on Terre. She leads him on, encouraging him by her example, hopping expertly from square to square. Miraculously he follows in her sure footstep.
She stands graceful and triumphantly one-footed in the safe middle of Ciel, smiling at him, urging him on.
In his hurry to join her (but will there be room for the two of them in Ciel?) he slips, on sudden dog-shit probably, and sprawls, body violating all those lines, his palms and face squarely in Enfer.
He calls out to her to help him but she’s gone, her task completed, he understands, having lured him into Enfer with the perspective of reunion with her in Ciel.
With that rea
lization he suffers dissociation. One Seymour Stein remains prostrated on the Marelle while another Seymour Stein, the unwilling half-block commuter, is yanked to his feet and manipulated into the pendulum journey again.
He realizes that there’ll be no end to the approach to the massive door, which will never open on her. He realizes that Advocate has lied, the Review Board has ruled on his case and that he’s been exited, not to blessed void, but to Hell. After a quarter of a century in the antechamber to it he’s squarely in the inner circle of Hell, a private Hell of course, as all Hells must be, no communal bonfire affair, but custom-tailored to the solitary sinner.
He understands now why he’s made to see the street as through distorted glass and will go on seeing it that way for all eternity. Yes, the warp is inner, producing a hyperbolic metaphor of his distorted vision of things back in that distant first life when he’d sacrificed his flesh-and-blood darling for shrunken black-and-white reproductions processed through glass three times: her image belittled and reversed by the Zeiss-Tessar f3.5 lens of the Voigtländer reflex, bounced off the flip-up mirror onto the ground-glass view-finder. He’d left the real Marie-Claude in France to try to peddle her one-dimensional and colorless to publishers in New York and had lost her that way. In his memory she’d been reduced to a dead faded butterfly beneath glass.
The cold intensifies, turns fluid like liquid nitrogen, penetrating him to the bone. Absolute zero for an absolute zero. At any moment won’t he freeze into a vitreous statue of futility, topple and smash into a thousand glass fragments?
While one Seymour Stein shuttles to and fro, the Seymour Stein sprawled facedown on the marelle rolls over on his back and appeals to the empty gray sky for mercy.
An instant merciless voice booms from above. “YOU!”
It is the Almighty Himself, about to give vent to His ire and pronounce judgment on him. Seymour quakes as the celestial voice thunders:
“You! YOU dumb bastard. You’ve fucked it up!”
Oh he knows that, knows that! Fucked up everything in his first life and this one too. But isn’t that peculiar language for the Almighty? And conveyed by a proletarian Paris accent.
Now another voice, truly Godlike in intonation despite a pronounced Corsican accent: “Imbécile! Crétin! You are exiting them! Bring them back instantly!”
In extreme mental confusion, Seymour Stein wants to tell the Almighty that yes, he’s an imbecile and a cretin and worse and that yes he fucks up everything, always has, but that he’s not exiting anybody, isn’t guilty of that at least, has no power or will to do that, no cruel power or will either to bring anybody, not even his worst enemy, back from the enviable dead.
Before he can voice his defense he’s dunked into void.
Good Americans Go to Paris when they Die Page 37