by John Gardner
When he closed his eyes he saw Mabel Garret lying in the dimly lit hospital room on the night she’d seen the ghosts. God bless the Garrets, he thought. They were good people, though possibly unbalanced, certainly not wise. All those children, each of them doomed to at least some small measure of scorn in this world of blind staggers and self-righteous firing squads. Blacks, Orientals, children with handicaps—the Garrets abandoned all sense and took them in. In a mad world, choose a generous madness.
Reagan was now smiling leader of the Reich—Mickelsson hadn’t seen a paper in weeks or heard news on the radio, but someone had mentioned the Great Man’s plans, had mentioned them blithely, as if nothing could be more natural. More nukes; deployment of the neutron bomb to please the Germans; friendly signals to the butchers of El Salvador. Why not? Alles ist erlaubt.
He slept.
A little before midnight he awakened with a shout. He switched on the light and saw that his breath made steam. The windows were white with frost, glittering feathers. He got up and dressed as quickly as he could manage, as if there were something he must do right away, then went down, scratching his head, getting out his cigarettes, and made a fire in the stove. When it was crackling loudly, the stove doors wide open, sending rolling, yellow-orange light over the room, he sat on the couch—the cat came and settled nearby, close to the stove—lit another cigarette and tried to remember what he’d dreamed. For a long time, no matter how he tried to concentrate, nothing would come to him. Then his eye fell on the shotgun by the door and a piece of the dream snapped back.
It was something about a class: Brenda Winburn was there, holding a birdcage with a songbird in it—plump, black, crow-like—and there were others, people he didn’t recognize, in one corner his mother (but too young to be his mother), writing letters in great haste. The room was narrow and extremely cold, a little like the nave of a cathedral, and they were sitting on crates of bright red apples. Nugent was saying something, urgently trying to get some point across, and the class was disgusted, wanting to get on with the course’s more serious business, which had to do with Christmas trees, or someone in hiding. The matter was urgent. The room seemed to be sinking, ice rising inch by inch past the delicate purple windows. Mickelsson, in the dream, had lecture notes strewn on the rough plank floor all around him, words and numbers scrawled on pinkish checkbook paper. He’d apparently brought the wrong set of notes. He stalled, trying to get things clear, blocking Nugent’s voice, trying to block the bird’s bright chatter, stubbornly refusing to grant the floor to Brenda, who was waving her arm, eager to speak, pointing at Nugent’s wide black shadow on the frosty wall, the whole wall glittering, except where the shadow was, like tiny mirrors or bits of bluish schist under torchlight. Nugent was talking about moving vans and had brought with him several wheels, which he held out in display, as if for sale. His eyes themselves were silver wheels. The black shadow at his back was in fact not Nugent’s shadow but an opening, a door to a place Mickelsson hadn’t known to exist. Mickelsson rushed to it, lest the door fall shut, and suddenly found himself lying face up in a grave. The bird sang; Theodosia Sprague looked down at him. Then everything went dark. His frantic fingertips found the padded satin lid.
That was all he could remember. “Crazy dream,” he said to himself, frightened all over again. Nothing in the dream made sense except the wheels. The hubs, which were of wood, reminded him of nuclear reactors. He straightened up a little, glancing at the kitchen door as if someone might be watching—the face in the hex sign, say. Somehow the dream was about his son, he decided. “Dear God, take care of Mark,” he whispered. “And Leslie, Ellen, Willard, Jessie, Geoffrey Tillson …” He was caught again in his trap of ritual, Mickelsson the Magician, and he dared not pull out. Then suddenly, as if taking a great risk, he stopped himself, broke off in the middle of Mabel Garret’s name. He held his breath, feeling his racing heartbeat. His alarm increased. He rubbed his chest.
He stood up, purposeful, a little flame of anger leaping in him, and walked through the dark house to his study, where he snapped on the lights. He heard a rattle of mice scattering, but his eye wasn’t quick enough to spot one. On his desk his electric typewriter sat half buried in mail. He took his old gray sweater from its hook in the closet—the room was ice-cold—pulled it on, then sat down at the typewriter, pushed the mail out of the way, bunching it up, letting some slide to the floor, found a sheet of paper, and inserted it. He flipped on the switch. Dear Mark:
He stared at the paper. He could cover all the rallies, visit all the sites, maybe that would do it; he seemed to have given up on his teaching anyway—his teaching, friendships, love, even his enmities. Sooner or later, driving around the country from rally to rally and reactor to reactor until the Jeep ran out of gas, then hitch-hiking or simply walking like some wet-brained bum, he would spot his son’s top-hat and blue-eyed, pink face, smiling thoughtfully, taking pictures with the ridiculous Instamatic, or wiring some “device,” as the truth-benders called it, then folding up his dollar-fifty toolkit and running like hell. …
You must be very proud.
I am.
It was that that he would write to his son, if he could write. But no words came, only pictures, visions. “Society,” “the Establishment“—those fat, hollow words became a sea of drab faces, dutiful bent-backed Mormons like stalks of wheat, hurrying obediently, meekly across an endless murky plain toward increasingly thick, dark smoke. There were thousands of them, millions—timidly smiling beasts, imaginationless, good-hearted, truly what they claimed to be, the saints of the world’s latter days. In the dream or vision, whatever it was, they moved in perfect silence, like mile after mile of obedient Russian peasants, drab-coated, dim of eye, pitifully eager to be of use. The sky at the horizon, at the rim of the vast, moving horde, was gray-white, smouldering, the color of dawn in old, fading films. “Here now,” one might say to one’s students, “is the real. Who could dream, having seen this grisly vision, of any possible ideal?” And the colorless accepters of what their betters decreed—Mickelsson’s Mormons—were the least of it. To the east (he would have written) I saw an eager-hearted army as vast as the first, moving swiftly in a direction that would intersect the first where the smoke billowed thickest, but the men of this army wore loud-checked suits, all comically similar, and on their bright, fat faces little moustaches, and they carried attaché cases, lawbooks, and rolled-up sheafs of plans. Some walked on two feet, apparently for their health’s sake; some came in Cadillacs, Chevies, and Toyotas. A thousand thousand came hurrying with their bald, smiling heads uplifted, as if seeing in the clouds above them some great light; as many more came bent double, like scurrying ants, all urgently reading what appeared to be ticker-tapes, press releases, leatherbound stock reports—elegant, thick volumes with pages as thin and as closely covered with small, smudged print as fine old Bibles. And behold, from the north, blowing trumpets and beating drums, loud and dazzling as the whole history of Bayreuth, came an army of Congressmen and Public Ministers, Sheiks and Emperors, ragged-bearded Terrorists, and a miles-wide contingent of Women with their breasts bared, triumphantly throwing gold coins in the air, and beside them another great contingent of Children shouting curious slogans—smiling like children in soap commercials and waving blood-red banners saying WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN or marked with the letters KKK or with fine, dark swastikas. And behold, I saw an old crooked man at my left who was picking up cigarette butts and candywrapper papers with a pointed stick, putting them in a brown plastic garbage bag, and I said, knowing this man would by profession be familiar with such things, “Old man, tell me, who are these?” And he said, “My son, those are the People Who Believe.” And he smiled, showing square yellow teeth.
“Here,” one might say to one’s students, “is the world as it is.”
He turned off the useless typewriter and stood up. It was not the case, of course, that Michael Nugent had killed himself because he’d read too much philosophy, or too little. It was true
that Martin Luther and Jake Finney were correct: the world was shit.
He walked, as if aimlessly, back to the livingroom and stood with his hands on his hips, looking at the gun. Those who commit suicide, he had read, condemn their children to suicide. Very well; he had no intention of doing it. But now he felt as well as knew the wisdom of the age-old question: Why not?
The livingroom was warm now—at least the chill was off. The rest of the house was still freezing. He picked up the shotgun, for no real reason, simply for the comforting heft of it, and noticed again with a start how much his hand was like his father’s. All at once—it must have been the memory of his father’s hand that triggered it—a great swoosh of revulsion rose up in him, a taste of bile, and he put the gun down. He was sick to death of unhappiness, ugliness, imprisonment. What was the question he must rephrase—buried metaphor he must penetrate—life-problem he must heal? Why was it that he was one moment almost serene in his despair, as he’d been when on the phone with Jessie, and the next moment drowning in guilt and dread?
If the wall were physical he would slam through it, crash through it in the Jeep. But it was not; more insubstantial even than the scattering of atoms that he would carry to the grave with him—though he lived to be a hundred—the image of Jessie and Tillson on the couch. Because even before that there had been no hope. “The Fall!” Mickelsson’s grandfather would cry, shaking his finger but looking as if he knew no cure for it, for all his fine theories, all his talk about redemption. Sunlight filled the old man’s wild, white hair as if all the energy of his life were flying out.
“Infantile,” Rifkin had said. “The cry of the child who remembers his omnipotence in the womb.”
“Why,” Mickelsson had asked, holding both hands out, sublimely reasonable, “why should people settle for anything less than the absolute happiness of the womb?”
“No reason, if you can get it,” Rifkin had said, and laughed.
It was clearer now than ever that no one could get it, it was not to be had, the problem of life would not “vanish.” He was defeated, wasted, miserably unworthy (according to some standard); and on the other hand nothing available on earth had even a faint, tarnished glint of the perfection he demanded, golden ear for his lutany. The idea that he ought to be reasonable, wake up, made his cheeks redden and his scalp prickle. Sublimieren.
He turned, a moment before the phone rang, to start toward the phone.
“Hello?” he said.
Though it was feathery soft, he recognized Donnie Matthews’ voice instantly. “Hi, Pete. It’s me.”
“Donnie,” he exclaimed, hunching his shoulders in, clenching the receiver in both hands. “When did you get back?”
“I’m naht hahrdly back.” Her laugh was as carefree as a ten-year-old’s. “I’m in Califorrnia!”
“You’re kidding! What time is it there? Are you all right?”
“Naht so fast,” she said, and laughed. “I’m fine.”
“Listen,” he said. “Jesus, I’m glad you called, Donnie. I was worried about you, and—” He bit his lower lip, then rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, as if to wake himself. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“You should see me! I gaht a tan.”
“That’s swell,” he said, paying no attention. “Listen, I’ve been wanting to tell you … I’ve been thinking, and … I want you to have that abortion if you want it. I was wrong. Forgive me for all those things I said.”
“I already did,” she said, and laughed. “Have the abortion, I mean. And forgive you. That’s why I wanted to call you. To tell you …”
“You already had it,” he said. He knew he’d heard her right. Why he dumbly repeated it he had no idea.
“Yeah,” she said. “I had to, Pete.”
“Sure. I know. That’s good—that’s wonderful. You did the right thing. I hope it didn’t hurt much.”
“Actually it hurt like hell, but it’s over now.”
He shook his head, narrowing his eyes. “I should’ve been with you.”
“It’s OK, don’t yell at yourself. My brother’s wife, I mean my sister-in-law, was with me. They’re where I came to.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.” For some reason it astonished him that she did.
“We never even met each other till a while ago. He’s my half brother, really. He’s almost as old as you are! Anyways, can I tell you why I called?”
“Sure. Go ahead, Donnie. I’m sorry I keep jabbering.” He looked up at the wall, waiting.
“I wanted to tell you, you’re a really swell person, and I didn’t treat you right at all, so now I’m sorry. What you did for me—I mean, I know how awful it was for you. When I saw your face that night you looked like you’d just died or something, and then you didn’t even keep any of the money for yourself. It was dangerous, what you did, and scary, and I guess sort of terrible for you, I mean really really terrible, like giving up your life for—” She paused a moment to get her voice in control. “So anyways I want you to know I’m a whole different person now. I’ve changed. I’ve been saved—I go to church every Sunday—and I don’t do any of those things I used to, and … well, I miss you.”
Suddenly his eyes, too, were swimming. “I miss you too, Donnie.” After a moment, when he was sure of his voice, he said, “I hope you’re doing something worthwhile with the money.”
“I did. I threw it in the ocean.”
Mickelsson closed his eyes.
“It was blood-money, Pete. It saved my life, but I just couldn’t have it around me. If you could see this new life I have, these people … Let somebody find it that doesn’t know. Maybe it will save their life.”
“You threw it in the ocean,” he said.
“Yeah. Crazy, huh? I threw away my whole suitcase, everything I had. It was the bravest thing I ever did in my life.”
He listened to the soft, mindless singing of electrons in the line.
“Are you mad at me again?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. No, of course not. How is somebody supposed to find it in the ocean? You’re not kidding me, are you? You really threw it in the ocean?”
“Splash.”
He was still shaking his head.
“Well, I guess I gahtta go now. Be happy, Prafessor.”
“You too, Donnie. Write me sometime.”
She hesitated. “I dunno,” she said at last. “See, I’m tryin ta stahrt over. …”
“OK,” he said, tears welling fast now. “Good-bye, then, Donnie.”
The pause was long, this time, before she said, “G’bye.”
California, he thought. He’d walked with Ellen along the edge of the Pacific, on the beach down below Seal Rock and Sutro’s, the pastel houses of San Francisco on their left, far to their right a faint suggestion of the planet’s curve. As in another new life he’d sat on dark rocks with his daughter and son, looking out over the seemingly endless gray churning of the Atlantic. Toward Iceland. Toward Germany. The collision of stone and waves made him remember drums.
California. He imagined Donnie Matthews timidly walking out, her face turned sideways, into the breakers.
Sublimieren.
God be with her.
When he bent down to throw more wood into the stove, he remembered another dream he’d had. It was this same house, but the walls had been stone. His mother had come in, still young and beautiful, at least in Mickelsson’s eyes, leading by the hand his dead sister, who was not dead after all but had been sewn up and patched like a cloth doll. There had been other people too, quite a number of them, but he couldn’t make out who they were. It was cold in the house, and Mickelsson, happy to see his family safe and sound, made a fire in the woodstove. After they’d talked awhile—he could remember nothing of what they’d said; his sister kept smiling and nodding like one of those dolls with a weight in it—they’d all gone to sleep. The stove burned warmer and warmer, heating the stones. Something stirred beside him, and in his dream he awake
ned to find the whole room crawling with fat, slow-moving rattlesnakes.
When he’d put the wood in and closed the stove doors, he went back to the couch and lay down and let his eyes fall shut. He dreamed the same dream again.
It was morning when he awakened. There was someone gently knocking at his door.
7
He registered the car down by the road only as one he ought to know but didn’t, perhaps because his emotions were still clouded by the nightmare; and then, with suddenly changing emotion—half guilty discomfort, half delight and surprise—he saw Lawler. Mickelsson smiled and drew the door open farther. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Professor Lawler! Come in!”
Edward Lawler smiled shyly, not quite meeting Mickelsson’s eyes but clearly pleased to see him, perhaps timidly congratulating himself on having driven all this way and found the place. He stood a little to the right of the door, his leather-gloved hands folded in front of him, his many-chinned head bowed, eager to give no offense. He wore a fur hat but with the flaps up, nothing on his ears, a white silk scarf wrapped twice around his neck and tied in front, and a formal, no doubt once-expensive black coat that considerably increased his already prodigious bulk. He looked more impressive than comic—a graying Russian prince on a formal visit. In the coat he seemed almost literally as wide as he was high; the top of his hat came to the middle of Peter Mickelsson’s chest. “Buon giorno,” he said, and moved his left hand in the faintest possible suggestion of a wave.