The Life of the World to Come

by Dan Cluchey

  “Like I said: oldest story on Earth,” he said, gliding his hands down to rest on the folding table in front of him. “Then comes the serpent.”

  “John Jasper,” added Rachel as a point of clarification.

  “In the flesh,” Michael replied. “Now, what you have to understand is, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord had made. The serpent was a beguiler. He was a real smooth operator, he was. Charming; a liar. Every place he went, he slithered. He was a predator, just … slinking, slinking around the garden.”

  Michael’s thick fists were clenched and laid, like dead stones, on the table. He seemed incapable of anything approaching rage; even in his recasting of slick John Jasper, his enmity was dispassionate—tranquil, even. Fists of remembering, of a vestigial fury that had long since been rendered pointless. A frisson of serenity overcame him, and those fists were turned back into hands.

  “So Michael,” Rachel interceded, groping for meaning, “are you trying to tell us that John and Therese actually—in the story, Michael, in Genesis, the snake leads Eve astray. That’s how they lose the garden, right?”

  “Correct you are,” he said.

  “Are you trying to tell us that John … forgive me, Michael, but are you trying to tell us that John Jasper … seduced Therese? We know about his history with patients. A lot of his patients, they came forward afterwards, and—”

  “It don’t matter,” he declared, defeated. “Don’t matter a bit.”

  “It does, Michael,” Rachel reasoned in the face of my silence. “If Therese and John Jasper were involved with each other, it absolutely matters. It’s a motive, Michael. It’s the motive they used to convict you of his murder—that you believed there was something going on. Therese denied that it was true, but if it was true, Michael—if it was true, and it wasn’t just something you believed had happened, like the prosecution claimed in court, then it would be her motive too.”

  “Original sin,” he said. “Everybody wants to talk about original sin. I know what it is y’all want to hear from me, Sister Rachel, I really do. The thing of it is, the sin don’t matter—it’s the fall that matters. I can’t know the truth of the sin; she is the only one who knows about that now. But I know the truth of the fall. We had our little paradise for a spell, and then something happened, and we lost it. That’s all that truly matters, ain’t it?”

  “That,” said Rachel, “and the punishment.”

  “Exactly,” I added. “God punished humanity—no more paradise, no more innocent days. Maybe Michael is right; maybe it doesn’t matter in the end how it came to pass.”

  “The snake, Leo,” she corrected me. “God punished the snake.”

  * * *

  Think of a word that means the opposite of itself—a word that carries two meanings, I mean, that are averse to one another: a contronym. Oversight is one such word; if I conduct oversight, then I am surveying something quite carefully, but if I commit an oversight, then something has been neglected due to my carelessness. Sanction is another, for I can either approve of good behavior by sanctioning it or discipline bad behavior by imposing a harsh sanction. If you wished to escape from me, you’d be wise to bolt—whereas I might bolt the door to keep you safely inside.

  Now think of two people, and all of the damage that words can do. Contronyms carry their inner tension the same way that we carry Ours, hunched on the fulcrum of context—and whatever it is that I might mean to you today, tomorrow I could mean something else entirely. Take Fiona. She cleaved to me for many days (and it meant she held me fast), until a day came when she cleaved us apart (and it meant a separation). The thing about people is: they can always change what they mean.

  Michael Tiegs was about to change his meaning, maybe. For the scant months I’d known him, the words of his name had always been wholly attached to a living person—but here, now, he was poised at any moment to mean the precise opposite of that. Everything I had ever felt and feared about death seemed as though it was advancing on my near-precise location, adjacent to the condemned. As I found myself drawn more and more to his web of ideas—nonsensical though I understood them to be—the rift between Rachel and me grew wider and increasingly unbridgeable.

  “He is offering us nothing,” she told me sternly over dinner back at the chain restaurant in Jackson.

  “It isn’t nothing to him,” I replied. “In fact, it’s pretty obviously everything to him. It’s bigger than what we’re trying to do—in his mind, I mean. It’s a more important endeavor than just staying alive.”

  Rachel dabbed a napkin across her lips, then held it there in contemplation.

  “I think,” she started after a moment, “I think that when we encourage him to live in his head like this … when we allow him to dominate the conversation, and steer it into this place where it’s all about religion, or philosophy, or the afterlife, or other things that—Leo—that have no legal bearing whatsoever…”

  I lowered my eyes from hers—in shame or avoidance, I could not say.

  “All we’re doing,” she went on, “is indulging him in giving up.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Leo, I need to know that you’re with me here. We need to be united here, a united front, because it can’t be two against one the other way in there. Do you understand? If he thinks that you’re taking him seriously on that stuff, it’s only going to … it means he won’t take me seriously—he won’t take the real world consequences seriously. Just the magical, existential, whatever consequences. You know he’s, like, teetering on the edge of the two. You know that. He can’t get the impression that you’re out there with him, or we’ll have nothing. You’re going to have to be a lawyer for a little while. And figure out the other stuff later. Okay?”

  Of course, she was right about the fact that we were gaining nothing of legal value from our conversations with Michael; our prospects for saving him grew bleaker by the day. Could he save himself, I wondered, just by thinking it? Just by arriving at a peaceful understanding? I came back from our second trip to Georgia with little to show apart from an impending sense of terror: I didn’t want to have to see this man die. This was too big for me to grapple with alone, and so I took it to the person you take it to when you need to devise a plan to keep things just as they are. Nobody did static better than Sona.

  Over the precious din of a populous café, I asked her: “Have you ever known a dead person?”

  “What are you talking about?” she replied. “What does that mean—‘know a dead person?’ How do you know a person who’s—”

  “I meant,” I said, “have you ever known a living person who then, later, died. Do you—did you, I guess—did you know anybody who has died?”

  “Like, have I ever gone from knowing someone to … knewing them, on account of their death?”

  “Knewing, yes.”

  “Well,” she reckoned soberly, “hasn’t everybody?”

  “Known a dead person?” I said. “Maybe. I mean, my grandfather died, for instance, and of course I knew him. But he was of age for it, and he went gradually; that’s not really what I’m looking for. I guess what I mean is: have you known anyone who was younger, who went from completely alive to completely not? Someone who just switched, like that.”

  She fretted and frowned, then sighed at me pityingly.

  “Why are you asking me about this, Leo? You’re not going to die, you know. Not yet. You don’t have stomach cancer, and you don’t have an enlarged or shrunken heart, and you don’t have whatever else you think you have. Jesus, why are you asking me about this?”

  “It’s not for me,” I protested.

  “If you say so.”

  “Honest. I’m asking … for a friend.”

  “Are you now?” she whimpered.

  “Actually, I am. Not really for a friend, though. For a client.”

  “Ah. I get it now. This the Georgia one?”

  “Yes,” I responded. “The Georgia one. We have nothing, and
he seems … okay with it all. And I don’t understand—I can’t understand that. How can a person be okay with the fact that they’re going to just … be gone? It’s looking very much like they’re going to execute him, and it occurred to me that I’ve never really known someone who’s gone out like that.”

  “By execution?”

  “No, I mean … unnaturally. Someone who died even though they didn’t really … have to, I guess. I thought it might be good to talk about it, if you’re up for it today.”

  Sona looked quite insistently into my eyes—she often did this, with everyone—and cradled my whiskered chin with one small hand.

  “You’re very sensitive,” she said.

  “Come on; stop it.”

  “I mean it—you’re a very sensitive young man,” she went on, wagging my jaw twice to each side before releasing me from her grasp. “It reflects well on your character that you think about these things. That’s an honest compliment. Savor that.”

  “I was just asking,” I said, “because I’m not sure, if it happens … I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it. I was just asking for a little perspective, if you’ve got it. I just wanted to know in advance how it feels. How it will feel, I mean.”

  “It’s okay. That’s okay.”

  “So?”

  “So what?” she rebutted.

  “So you didn’t answer me,” I said. “Have you ever known a dead person?”

  Her body demurred suddenly, and her dark eyes dipped. “Ah,” she uttered. “Ah! Uhh … yes. Yes, I … think I have known one, as a matter of fact.”

  She began to nod, and almost immediately was nodding so vigorously that I thought that she might be approaching the verge of a panic attack.

  “You don’t have to—” I began, but:

  “No! It’s fine,” she blurted, steadying herself. “It’s okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “So,” she started, now looking east, now west, now east again, now west again of the apparent tennis net of my face. Now east again. “So,” she started once more, “I had this friend back in college—you remember I was an art history major?”

  “I actually didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “I guess it’s never come up? I always figured you studied … I don’t know, molecular biology, or international diplomacy, or something. Nuclear fission. I have a hard time picturing you as an art history major—it seems like the sort of thing you’d consider to be too frivolous for you.”

  “Well, I was,” she said. “And so was my friend. So was Charlie.”

  She coiled up into her chair, a posture of defense, and blew daintily for four or five seconds onto the sheeny roof of a coffee that had long grown cold.

  “So Charlie, he was a sweet kid; I remember the first time I noticed him he was sitting in front of me in this class—it was called Rococo to Realism, or something like that—and he was just sitting there, sketching these immaculate portraits of people in the class onto notebook paper. The likenesses were just incredible. They were perfect. He was a terrific artist—I can’t even … tell you. This was sophomore year, in the fall. Anyway, he didn’t seem to talk much, but I started talking to him a little, and we had other classes together too, and we sort of became friends.”

  Across the room, a crashing of glasses startled us. Sona lowered her cup to the table with tremendous care, dipped her slender middle finger into the depths of the cool black swill, and, annexing my napkin, swabbed that digit clean.

  “He tried to kiss me once, that spring,” she continued. “Why do you always have to do that?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Men. Guys. You always have to ruin everything that’s good, and it’s always by kissing.”

  “We do not.”

  “You do,” she insisted.

  “I’ve never tried to kiss you,” I reminded her.

  “Only because you’re scared that I’d push you away, or, worse, laugh at you. Which by the way is exactly what I’d do—laugh at you. But just because you haven’t tried yet doesn’t mean you haven’t thought about it. You’ve come close. I know you have.”

  “I have not,” I lied.

  “Of course you have. All guys have about basically all women. It’s fine. Remember when Boots set you up with that chick who used to play bass in his band? And we were all getting drunk at that roof party? Your bass lady was dancing with Emily and Boots, and you and I were talking about—I don’t remember, but we were probably talking about Fiona—and for half a minute we were accidentally holding hands—hands of platonic friendship, I might add. You were definitely thinking about kissing me.”

  “Oh please,” I scoffed, though she had me dead to rights.

  “It’s cool; it’s not your fault. You’re just an idiot. You know perfectly well—you knew then, even—what a terrible idea it would’ve been, how rapidly we would’ve destroyed each other. It isn’t your fault; guys have, like, one spiked eggnog and they get so bold—so utterly romantic. It happens every time. You’re just a moron sometimes. Anyway, it isn’t important.”

  “Can we get back to your friend?” I pleaded, smiling bashfully.

  “We can,” she granted, smiling back, adding another point to the ledger between us.

  “Grand,” I said.

  “So Charlie tried to kiss me, and because I’m me, I turned away and, you know, played it very coy. He was wonderful—don’t get me wrong—but I would’ve destroyed him too. Trust me.”

  “I fully do,” I said.

  “Good. By senior year, we’d gotten much closer, and we used to take long walks through the woods in town—there were these great bike paths and walking paths close to campus. We’d talk: heavy things, sometimes, the way that you and I do occasionally. Only darker, if you can imagine. He wasn’t anything like you, or anything, but one thing you had in common with Charlie is that he liked to discuss big things—the biggest things. Life and death and art. He was a phenomenal artist, like I said. That year, he started working on his thesis. His favorite painter was Gustave Courbet. Do you know him?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “Nineteenth-century French realist. Charlie was writing his thesis on him, and got it in his head that he wanted to accompany the written thesis with a painting—which was all he really cared about. He didn’t have to do this, didn’t get any credit for it or anything; he just wanted to paint. And Courbet—you don’t know him, but he was incredibly successful in France before being exiled to Switzerland, I think. I remember he died there. Drank himself to death in Switzerland, or wherever. Anyway, one of his most well-known works was this self-portrait: it’s of a man staring directly out of the canvas at you, the viewer, with these sad, wide eyes, both of his hands clutching at his tousled hair. It’s called The Desperate Man, and it was Charlie’s favorite. He decided to paint himself in the style of that Desperate Man—in the style of Courbet—and pretty soon he was painting more and more and we were walking and talking less and less. He became obsessed with it, really. I tried—a lot of people tried to talk with him, and he just seemed to grow more inside himself, more internal than ever, over the course of that year. He’d sit in his room, touching it up for hours, but he was never satisfied. Never just done with it. And you’d try to get him to come get lunch, or take a walk, or go see a show or whatever, and he’d just say: ‘I’m working. I need to work.’ I’d go to visit him, and I’d see the painting—it was beautiful, honestly, but it always looked the same to me. In December, in February, in April—it always looked the same. It looked like a completed work to me, so I don’t know what he was doing, just touching it up, constantly. We stopped hearing from him for days at a time, but nobody was too worried; he was an intense guy, you know? It wasn’t out of character for him to get sucked in, especially when it came to his art. The day we were all supposed to hand in our theses, a group of us went over to his room—we wanted to go celebrate. And he’d—I never know if it’s ‘hung’ or ‘hanged’—we found him
there. He hanged himself from the pipes on the ceiling.”

  Sona breathed in and out a few times (“One second,” she told me), then sipped from her cold coffee.

  “The painting was there, on an easel, and it was beautiful, like I said. It was him—a perfect likeness—in the exact pose of the Desperate Man. There was a piece of notebook paper scotch-taped to the bottom of the painting. And the only thing it said was: ‘I’m finished.’”

  I waited a while, then weakly said, “Jesus.”

  “I know,” she said, cracking just an ounce. “Pretty heavy, right?”

  “I mean, Jesus, Sona.”

  “I know. It was chilling. I’ve figured out how to think about it less and less, but sometimes…”

  “Yeah,” I offered.

  “Yeah,” she breathed, then uncomfortably giggling away the onset of a tear, said louder, “Yeah!”

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  “I didn’t tell you.”

  “‘I’m finished?’”

  “Yep. Spooky, right? It was like the portrait was, I don’t know—”

  “It was attached to the painting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “’Cause then it could mean—”

  “I know,” she said. “I thought about that for a long time after it happened. ‘I’m finished’ could mean—”

  “Two things,” I interrupted.

  “Yep.”

  “Perfected…” I said.

  “Or destroyed,” she whispered, finishing the thought.

  “Right. God. Right. Maybe it doesn’t matter, in the face of everything, but do you ever wonder which he really meant?”

  She leaned back, slacking the weight of the conversation off of her narrow shoulders.

  “Maybe both? I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it, but there it is. That was someone I knew, and he died. Like you asked. Does that help? That can’t be helpful, right? I don’t have any suggestions; there wasn’t any lesson. It was only awful. Death is a monster.”

  “It helps,” I said.

  “How?”

  “It helps me brace for it—I mean, you saw something nobody should have to see, and here you are.”