by John Gardner
Mickelsson frowned. It was his paranoia, he knew, that made the two of them seem conspirators. Obviously, Tim was just helping her out, driving her around during her visit. Mickelsson said, “I wanted to tell you, by the way, I’m very grateful for the way you came down in price. I was amazed, really—”
“That was because of the Mormons, of course,” she said.
No doubt he showed his surprise. Tim explained with a wide grin, “They wanted it real bad. There’s more and more of ’em arownd here these days. They pay tahp dahller.”
“You didn’t want to sell to them?” He studied the doctor’s face.
“I know it’s terrible to be prejudiced,” she said, “but I’ve always gahtten on so well with my neighbors. Right or wrong, I knew they’d just hate me if I sold to those people. How would they have liked it if I’d sold to the Mormons and they’d turned the place into one of their synagogues? Thank heavens I was able to find Tim, and Tim fownd you!”
“I see,” Mickelsson said. It was a slight exaggeration. Yet he felt oddly cheerful. The visit had done him good. “Well,” he said then, “I’m glad you could stop by.” He opened the door for her. “Have a nice trip back.”
She smiled again. “I will, I’m sure. I always do. Thank you!” Carefully she put her right hand on the doorframe, preparing to step out. “What a beautiful, beautiful day,” she said.
Just as they stepped onto the porch, Mickelsson steadying the doctor’s elbow, a small yellow car came down the mountain and, approaching Mickelsson’s place, slowed.
“Company?” the doctor asked.
Mickelsson ducked a little, trying to see the driver. “I imagine it’s one of your friends,” he said. “No doubt they’ve recognized your car.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s Tim’s car.”
“Maybe somebody who’s lost, then, or some friend of Tim’s …”
Taking pains to ignore the cold, he walked down the porch steps with her, still helping to steady her, Tim walking on the other side, then down the shovelled path toward the road where Tim’s dark blue car was parked.
Directly in front of the house the yellow car stopped, sliding a little, and he realized with a start that the driver was his student Alan Blassenheim. The boy rolled down the window, grinned, and gave Mickelsson a mock salute. “Hi, Professor,” he called. Over on the passenger side, beyond him, Kate Swisson waved and smiled foolishly.
Depression washed through Mickelsson’s body like a drug. “Hello,” he called to both of them. He scowled then, looking down, and returned his attention to helping the doctor down the poorly shovelled steps from the high, snowfilled yard to the road. Alan waited while Mickelsson and Tim walked the doctor to Tim’s car, Tim going to the driver’s side, Mickelsson holding the passenger-side door while the doctor got in.
“Drive carefully,” he said, leaning in on the window as if to keep them a little longer. He added, trying humor in spite of his gloom, “Watch that temper now, Doctor—don’t make him drive too fast. Could be snowmobiles out.”
She laughed lightly, letting her head fall back. “Isn’t that the silliest thing!” Tim started the engine, waved and ducked his head, then drove off, fishtailingat first, then steadying.
When they were out of sight, Mickelsson pushed his freezing cold hands into his trouser pockets, drew his head into his collar as well as he could, and walked to Blassenheim’s window. “Out sightseeing?” he asked.
They both answered at once, then both backed down, each deferring to the other. It was finally the boy who spoke. “The Swissons are looking for a place in the country, and since her husband’s away I told Mrs. Swisson I’d, like, drive her around.”
“Ah,” Mickelsson said. He studied first Blassenheim, then the woman. At last he nodded and, against his will, asked, “You have time for a cup of coffee?” He was smiling his wide, crazed smile.
Kate Swisson tried to mask panic with a heavy-flower bend of the head and a vast, limp smile. For all the biting cold, Mickelsson felt a strange sleepiness coming over him. He knew pretty well what it was: crushed rage. Alan Blassenheim’s cheeks somewhat darkened.
“I guess we better not,” the boy said. “We’re supposed to get over to Montrose.”
“Montrose,” Mickelsson said, correcting him.
“Whatever,” the boy said, slightly surprised by Mickelsson’s tone.
Mickelsson caught the Swisson woman’s eye. “Montrose,” he said, and smiled. “I can see you’ve got real taste—nothing but the best, and the cost be damned!”
“Well,” she said, smiling, raising one hand to her collar as if to protect her frail, white throat from the cold, “we thought we’d look at it.”
“Incredible town,” he said, “all white and green, quiet, dignified, wonderfully kept up—most of us don’t get to live in such a place till we’re dead.” He laughed. “Well, give my love to Brenda,” he said, and gave Blassenheim a friendly little punch on the arm. Blassenheim looked startled. “Well, see ya,” Mickelsson said, and gave his student another little punch.
Blassenheim drew his arm back and reached around with his right hand, as if unaware that he was doing it, to rub the punched place. “Well,” he said, and at the same instant Kate Swisson said, “Well—” They laughed. The boy shifted into drive. “I guess we better get going,” he said.
Mickelsson gave a mock-salute.
“See ya!” Kate Swisson said brightly, and waved.
He gave another mock-salute, somewhat sharper. As soon as the car started up he turned, shuddered violently once from the cold, and hurried up toward the porch.
6
The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. Philosophy leaves everything as it is.
What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
Monday morning. He awakened suddenly, tearing himself from a dream and staring, half awake, at the white wall opposite, gradually realizing—the life draining out of his arms and legs—that he must finally face the world: drive in and teach. He’d already missed the beginning of the new semester. It was perhaps not so bad. Students often came back late. Outside his window, the valley was as white as ever, deeply drifted. White and empty, perfectly silent, frozen, spring still far away. When he closed his eyes he saw in his mind the crowded university hallways and heard the ocean roar of talk, merry greetings, infinitely repeated dully echoing phrases, wave after wave of them, all mind-boggling, philosophical: “Hey, man, what’s happening?” “Jesus, I thought you transferred!” He saw himself standing in the corner of the mailroom, cowering like one of Miss Minton’s naughty boys, his elbows drawn close to his sides, eyes averted, avoiding eager glances from students and colleagues whose names he no longer remembered. If he were wise he would leer, bob his head, play crackling madman. But who had strength for that? His oversized mailbox would long since have overflowed into cardboard boxes in the departmental office, armload on armload for him to carry down to his own office and, closing his eyes, dump into his file drawers. “Gosh, Pete,” Tillson would say when the drawers no longer closed—his moustached grin trembling, meaning no offense—“isn’t this getting, you know, out of hand?” (Perhaps he would say nothing, defeated, bowing to things as they are.) He saw Jessie striding up to meet him, smile wide, hand outstretched—surely she would brazen it out; or would she snub him, say not a word—silent as Cosima to poor Fritz’s obscene, mad cries—then Alan Blassenheim sheepishly grinning, not sure what expression he ought to wear, keeping himself out of range of a friendly punch. “Did you hear about the kid in our class that killed himself?” He saw Brenda Winburn, looking angry and haggard, maybe numb from the pretense that she didn’t know a thing, because by now Blassenheim would certainly be dropping in from time to time at the apartment of Kate Swisson when her husband was away, or stopping in at the practice room, because in the wide-open sea, goodness of heart was not enough. Maybe nothing was enough. “Hi, there,” Blassenheim would say,
grinning and slouching. “Hi, Alan!” Batting eyelashes. He’d go in, slightly reddening, astonished at his luck, and Kate Swisson would jump up happily and close the door. “Look at you!” adjusting his collar, just to touch him. What might he have said to the boy that would have protected him? More careful attention to the Symposium, perhaps? Beware of fly-bottles! Mickelsson saw Brenda Winburn sitting—her long, muscular legs crossed at the knees—in the learner’s seat at his office, dark fire in her eyes, Mickelsson at the window, stretching his deadweight arms out to the sides, palm up. “What can I tell you? It’s a stupid world.” Phil Bryant drawing him aside in the cafeteria: “Pete, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Jessie. Things look bad. Did you know?” “Things are bad,” Mickelsson would say; “things are crap.” It wasn’t true, of course. Only here in the swirl of things. Only if one was, like Mickelsson, a sore-head. “Denn bei dir ist die Vergebung.” (Herr Bach.) He imagined John Pearson, upright as a figure of stone, the dog sitting six feet away, watchful, patient of the wasted time, his mind still on rabbits. It was of course true that he had no real choice but to get up, go to work, earn the money he owed the I.R.S. or had given away in advance to Ellen, who scorned and hated him. (Not true either. More rant. Hatred was an achievement of the will none of them was up to.)
He sat up, as tired as if he hadn’t slept at all, put his legs over the side, and set his hands on his knees, momentarily baffled by how cold it was. The fire in the woodstove must have burned away, and the furnace had failed to switch on because the oil had run out. He’d bounced four checks on Benson Brothers; they probably wouldn’t refill his tank until he paid. “Too much,” he said, and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Be reasonable!” He scowled. Today the talking-with-God game was not funny. When he touched his chin he felt bristles days old. He lay back in the bed, too weak of will to stand, and pulled the covers up over him. What could they do if he didn’t go in? There could be no doubt that he was slipping. Unable to feel, unable to function; living, as if there were nothing more mundane, in a house inhabited by ghosts more vital than himself. He listened for some sound from them, the old woman on the everlasting treadmill of her rage, the old man everlastingly baffled by it. Mickelsson too was trapped in it: he had dreamed again of how the old woman had shot the old man and he’d slid slowly down the roof, bleeding. His buttons made a scraping sound on the shingles, and as he fell he was mumbling. In the dream, the old woman had turned and looked at Mickelsson.
It was three in the afternoon when he opened his eyes again. The phone was ringing. He let it ring several times before it came to him that it might be his son; then he got up, crossed the icy floor in his bare feet, and took the phone from the hook. “Hello?” he said, guarded.
“Pete? Is that you?” It was Jessie. The softness of her voice shocked him, as if she were calling from a house full of burglars.
He nodded but said nothing, trying to think. It crossed his mind that he really might, if he wished, say nothing—as she perhaps had done, that time when the phone had rung and the caller had chosen not to speak. If he said nothing she would be hurt, maybe shocked, would perhaps send someone out to see him, or even come herself (not likely; none of it was likely). In the long run, would it really be all that bad? It was not true, from a certain perspective, that he was crazy. He was saner than anyone—had fallen out of the world of illusion: love, interesting work, hope for the future. … He felt that he was beginning to freeze already, standing naked in the ice-cold room. They would find him standing on one foot, a statue, his right foot tucked behind his left knee.
“Peter?” she asked.
“Hello, Jessie,” he said. It surprised him only a little that he spoke. Habit of good manners. These things die slowly. His voice had tears in it.
“Peter, are you all right?” She sounded downright gun-shy. No doubt she knew, then; whether or not she was aware of it.
“Not so good, I guess,” he said. “You?” He breathed very carefully.
“I’m fine.” She paused. “Not so good, I guess. I guess you must’ve heard that they’re firing me.”
“No I hadn’t.” The shock took a moment to register. He tried to imagine her face. He was biting his lips hard, tasting blood.
“Well, not exactly firing me,” she said. “Blickstein made a deal. I had to yell at the president and threaten to sue the state before he’d knuckle. He’s putting me in adult education—giving me a raise to take the sting away. And of course there’s the appeal.”
“Ah,” Mickelsson said, “you’re appealing!”
“Not me, really.” She gave a laugh. “Committee of my friends. Actually, Dan Levinson’s running the thing. I guess I have you to thank for that.”
“No, that’s—” He faltered. “It’s good that you’re appealing it.” He struggled against guilt. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
“Don’t be silly. You know they’ll get away with it. It’s just a formality, proof that ‘we care.’ ”
“Maybe it will work, though.”
“Maybe.”
His feet ached from the cold. He was shivering all over.
After a long moment Jessie said, “You missed your classes again today.”
He thought of telling her all that had happened since he’d seen her last—the fire at the Spragues’, Dr. Bauer’s visit, the insanity of the Reich’s good dog diSapio; but one fact stood out for him above all others—the town’s suspicion that he was a murderer—and he knew it was impossible to say anything at all; to mention any part would be to commit himself to telling all of it. And what that would lead to he hadn’t the strength for. Nor had she, probably. He got a mental image of the two of them struggling to stay afloat, far apart, in a dark, night sea, too weary even to call to one another. The image was not quite accurate, he realized. She, at least, was still making the attempt. But it wouldn’t last. For all its furor—the valiant struggle against death one saw even in Mayflies—the life-force could hold out for only so long. It gave him a kind of serenity, this realization that despair was not all it was cracked up to be, back in the days of archangels and kings, when one drifted from catastrophe to catastrophe on ceremonious barques. Despair was not, as the world had once dreamed, the most terrible and dread of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was simply a part of the natural entropic process.
He felt what seemed the beginning of a change coming over him. If it was a noble thing to see life from the mountaintop, as Collingwood liked to say, there was something to be said, too, for the calm at the bottom of the sea. Jessie, weakened by successive blows, having been nearly destroyed once before, or rather, twice, was going through what he was, though she hadn’t yet reached—this time around—his stage in the process. Like an old man watching his grandchildren crying their hearts out in childhood’s immeasurable, brief sorrow, he felt not anger at the bitterness of life or dismay at his inability to help, but only cool sympathy, a guarded Boethian amusement.
She had asked him something and was waiting for his answer. He remembered at last what it was: “Will you be coming in tomorrow?”
He said, “I’m not sure yet.”
Again she was silent. At last she brought out, “I see.”
“If not tomorrow, then one day soon,” he said. Something not himself added quickly, “We’ll have a drink, take in a movie, maybe drive to New York!”
“Are you getting someone to cover your classes?”
“I should, shouldn’t I,” he said.
That too she seemed to find too queer to deal with. After a time she said—one last cry across dark waters—“I would like to see you, really.”
“We’ll get together.”
“I keep pacing and pacing, sort of yelling and yelling inside my head. I think the strangest thoughts.”
He thought of Finney’s idea—nobody out there, nobody, nowhere, nothin.
“Keep the chin up,” he said.
When the conversation finally ended, or withered to stillness, a perfunctor
y good-bye, he knew that the next time the phone rang, he wouldn’t answer. He went back to stand beside the bed, reasoning with himself. He should at least call the oil company, try whining and cajoling; otherwise the pipes would freeze. And anyway, it was a bad business—theoretically at least—letting himself give up. He should eat, drink a cup of coffee. As his body got going, his spirits would revive. (Well, something like that. Descartes was behind every tree.) He should listen to the radio, start up a fire in the stove, maybe go down in the basement and make something—more picture frames, why not?—or the rolltop desk he’d been meaning to make for his daughter. But already he was leaning down over the bed, already half dreaming, drawing the covers back, preparing to crawl in.
Behind him, the phone rang again. Mickelsson looked down at his gray, loose stomach—how long had it been since he’d touched the weights?—and tried to decide what to do. The stomach was slimmed down by his forgetting to eat, but lifeless, toneless. The hairs running down toward the genitals were silver. He thought of how when he was drunk he liked to tell young women of his years as an athlete.
He climbed into bed, rolled onto his back, and pulled the covers up tight around his chin. The phone at length stopped ringing. He thought of how Jessica had said, when they made love, “Wow! Wow!” Poor creaturel Poor race! He smiled, vanquished. In his mind he saw the viaduct, the color of wheat in the late-afternoon sun, arch after arch crossing the river against dark blue mountains. It was a splendid creation, each stone hand-cut, hand-fitted, built when the river could still remember Indian canoes and drum music, and the people of the thriving town of Susquehanna looked forward to a time of even greater prosperity—the dazzling white restaurant rising above the depot; mansions precariously raised on the steep, dark hillside, reflected in the water; and up on the crest of the hill the red brick church, spire gleaming like a sword.
God damn the government, he prayed. Destroyers of railroads, thieves and liars in cahoots with the brainless, heartless bankers, oil men, nuke men, auto men, men of the Pentagon; freezers of patents for wind, solar, geothermal, and the rest; poisoners of the earth, poisoners of people’s minds … But the curse trailed off, he’d lost interest. There seemed to be no stopping them, and nowadays, thanks to their computers, not much chance of avoiding their sweeping, witless eye. Voice of the people. That was a comfort. It was the people, all America, all the world, that were insane.