by Tad Crawford
“What if the staff bathroom is empty? Couldn’t you make an exception in that case?”
“No.”
“Then you should clear the women out of the men’s room!” I shouted.
“That’s not my job.”
“Well, it should be.”
“You blame anyone but yourself.”
“How could I be to blame?”
“You might have planned better. You could have used a bathroom before you came here.”
“What school doesn’t have bathrooms?”
“We have bathrooms.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically, “but you don’t make the women obey the rules. In effect, you have no facilities for me.”
I crossed my legs, uncertain how long I could continue this back-and-forth.
“I could tell you something,” he said with annoyance, “but what good would it do?”
He dipped his mop in the bucket and began weaving it back and forth on the gray cement floor.
“What is it?” I asked, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
He looked at me.
“Why do you always give everything away?”
I shook my head.
“You’re not even aware of it,” he went on.
“But you are,” I challenged defiantly.
“Why does the flow have to go out?” he asked.
“Because I have to pee.”
“That’s what you think. It’s what you’ve always thought. Everybody has good reasons why nothing can ever change.”
I wanted to tell him to get back to mopping the floor, but he didn’t look like a lunatic.
“So … what?”
“What if the flow went in?”
“It doesn’t work like that—”
“In your experience,” he interpolated, to end my sentence. “What if it did? All that energy that wants to pour into the world, and that wants the world to respond and take care of you. What if it reversed itself and flowed into you?”
“Where would it go? There’s only one way out of my bladder.”
“Ah, the physical facts!” He raised a hand to ward off my irrelevant words. “Must everything live within the narrow confines of the physical world? Is that all we are—stomachs, guts, bladders, and the rest?”
“It’s part of who we are,” I insisted.
“But how does it really work? Do you know all the body’s secrets, all our possibilities?”
“No, of course not.”
“And your sperm,” he said.
“What?”
“Your sperm. Why not take that into you as well? Why not keep its energy to feed your deepest desires and needs? The Taoist tradition encourages men to conserve their sperm.”
“How is that possible?”
“By making the ejaculation flow inward.”
“But to where?” I asked.
“‘Where’ in this case isn’t a physical place,” he answered. “It’s a metaphor.”
“But it has to go somewhere. If it doesn’t go out, where does it go inside the body?”
“Literally,” he paused, “it goes backward, into the bladder. But the Taoists believe that unspent semen travels up the spine and nourishes the brain. It builds the good energy that brings health, perhaps even immortality.”
“What kind of custodian are you?” I demanded.
“Are the hallways clean?”
“Yes.” I had to admit that.
“Are the bathrooms well maintained? Are there paper towels in the dispensers?” He gestured about the room. “And soap and toilet paper?”
“Yes.”
“There’s your answer.”
“But … ”
He began mopping again.
“What are you talking about?” I finally got out. “It makes no sense. No one is immortal. And no one will become immortal or even healthy by holding back their sperm.”
“You have proof?”
He looked concerned, and I realized that I might have brought into question one of his deeply held beliefs. Regret overcame me. What right did I have to shake his certainties?
“No, I have no proof, none at all.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said with an injured look. He returned to mopping patterns on the floor.
I heard screams from the men’s room. The custodian continued to mop as if he heard nothing, but I rushed to the door. A teenage boy had appeared from I don’t know where and was kneeling over a slender, red-haired girl who trembled on the floor in some kind of fit. Ignoring the half-naked women, I rushed forward.
“Shall we call for help?” I asked the young man.
He held her shuddering shoulders and studied her face. I saw that he was handsome and well built, his skin smooth and his cheeks pink with the flush of youthful health.
“No,” he said, gently releasing her as the tremors lessened, “she’ll be all right.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Yes.”
He didn’t seem concerned, and I decided that he must know best. The girl, her skin ever so white on the red pillow of her hair, slipped into a peaceful sleep. The woman nearest me was holding up a small mirror and carefully using tweezers to pluck at hairs I couldn’t see. I turned away and exited the room. I didn’t stop when I came to the custodian but hurried forward into the main corridor.
“Where are you going?”
The young man followed me.
“I’m looking for a bathroom,” I said urgently.
“Didn’t you come here to speak?” he asked.
Could he be right? Had I? If so, what topic had I selected? I kept silent and walked at a furious pace back along the corridor. The youth skipped every dozen or so paces to keep up with me.
“I want to hear what you’re going to say,” he continued. “How do you know what to do? How does anyone make a choice?”
“You have nothing but possibilities,” I said, envying him the freedom of youth when nothing is yet shaped or definite.
“That’s not enough.”
He touched me because possibility has such beauty, and yet what he said was true. He couldn’t remain forever in the possible. He had to choose one way or another. He would make choices, and each choice would move him more definitely along a path that would be difficult to erase.
“How did you choose your career?” he asked.
“By accident,” I replied.
“What?” He looked dubious.
I started to walk again but more slowly. The boy kept pace with me as we passed the gray lockers and turned into another corridor, identical to the last.
“I did something for a long time,” I said, not recollecting exactly what but feeling that I spoke the truth, “and that became my career.”
“Didn’t you need training?” he demanded. “Maybe a degree? Or were you an apprentice? Doing something for a long time sounds like … like you didn’t think about it before you started. But you have to know where you want to go. If you don’t think before you start, how can you ever get there?”
What he said, and the innocence and intensity with which he said it, made me believe him. If I had intended to say anything different, I would have been a very poor speaker. It would be just as well if I didn’t speak.
“If you do something long enough,” I answered despite my thoughts, “you essentially give up all the other possibilities.”
“That doesn’t sound like career guidance.”
“Maybe it’s not,” I admitted.
He stopped at a door indistinguishable from all the rest.
“Don’t let them hear you talk like that.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The committee. It has to finish its review before you can give your talk.”
With that, he opened the door to a classroom where a dozen men and women sat at a long table. Abruptly I recalled having been there only a few minutes before, ready to speak, when the need to use the bathroom had overcome me. One of the women, the chairperson, nodde
d to welcome me back and gestured with her hand that I should take a place at the head of the table.
“Please continue,” she said.
I leapt somewhere into the middle of the talk I imagined I’d begun.
“It’s not to seek the goal that we can imagine,” I said passionately, “but to seek what is unimaginable. We can describe innumerable paths to careers, but can we find the secret paths to happiness? If you were to take the most successful among us, wouldn’t they remember a time when anything was still possible? The scientist might have been a teacher. The teacher might have been a doctor. So many opportunities are foreclosed by the very choices that let us climb the ladder of success. Is there a secret antidote for this loss?”
I looked at their faces. They gave no sign of response. Was I speaking only to myself? Yet with or without their encouragement, the stream of words poured out of me.
“Remember the dreams of your youth,” I said, my earnestness causing me to skip much that I might have said. “Remember youthful pleasures. Never give up your imagination. Why should moving forward be giving up? It doesn’t have to be! Whatever your career, hold tightly to the joys of your youth.”
I continued until my flow of words trickled to silence. I glanced from face to face, but they all looked down at their writing pads or fiddled with their pens.
“I like to choose my words carefully,” the chairwoman said after a pause, “and, in this case, brevity has a great deal to commend it. So, in place of my usual detailed critique, I’ll offer one or two carefully chosen words.”
I noticed that her cheeks had flushed. I could feel my voice still vibrating in the room.
“Preposterous,” she said sharply, “and ridiculous!”
Sadness for her came over me. Her professional status squeezed her ever so tightly into herself. It would be futile to remind her of the possibilities that had once been hers or to plead with her to recollect her early dreams and pleasures. The others nodded in approval.
“He shows no grasp of what our students need to hear,” said a portly, balding man who looked over his eyeglasses to his colleagues.
“In fact,” added a tall, intense woman with jabs of her index finger, “his message is the diametric opposite of what we believe. Career success is the result of application and hard work, not fantasy and escapism.”
“All things considered,” observed a heavyset man with salt-and-pepper hair, “he would be best served by listening to exactly the type of lecture he was supposed to give here.”
They went on speaking about me to each other, but no one addressed me in person. They acted as if I had left the room or become the subject of a study. Their conversation absorbed them, and no one objected when I crept out of the room.
“Did you hear any of that?” I asked the youth in the hallway.
“No.”
“I won’t be invited to speak—that’s for sure.”
We began to walk down the corridor, but I lost all sense of direction. The meeting lingered with me, and I wasn’t sure whether we were returning the way I came or going a different way.
“Here’s a bathroom.”
“Staff” was painted in dark letters, at eye level, on the wooden door.
“I can’t use that.”
“Why not?”
I waved at the letters.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll stand guard.”
“What if we get caught?” I asked.
“Maybe they’ll expel me again,” he answered cheerfully.
“Again?”
“Yes, I was missing for quite a while.”
“Missing?”
“I ran away. First they expelled me for poor attendance. Then when months went by and I didn’t show up, people got really upset … ”
“Especially your parents.”
“Sure. My picture ended up everywhere—on posters, milk cartons, TV shows, you name it.”
“Did they find you?”
“Nope.”
I hesitated.
“Okay,” I said.
He smiled and ushered me forward with a wave of his hand. I entered the bathroom, locked the door behind me, positioned myself in front of the toilet, and began to urinate. Well past the moment when the flow would normally have stopped, it simply continued like a flood. I filled the toilet to its brim and had to reach forward and flush it to prevent a spillover, and still the urine poured out of me until I flushed again, and continued until I flushed once more and was finally empty. I kept thinking about the youth waiting outside. I wanted to ask him questions, but I wasn’t sure where to start. Feeling much better, I zipped my trousers and stepped into the hallway.
“All set?” he asked
“Yes, thanks.”
“Come on.”
He pointed down the corridor, and we started walking again.
“Where did you travel?” I asked.
“Mexico to start. Then I went south—Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica.”
“Was there a reason?”
“To run away?”
“Yes.”
“For fun.”
“But people worried. Your parents must have worried.”
He shrugged.
“Was it?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure. I mean, of course it wasn’t all fun.”
“No?”
“When I got bored, I came home. So here I am.”
“Why Mexico?” I asked.
“I could get there. No way could I get to Europe or someplace like that.”
We reached a main entrance with three revolving doors.
“Here you are,” he said.
“Do you play ball?” I asked, not wanting to let him go.
“Sure,” he smiled.
“Baseball?”
He nodded.
“Let me guess. You’re the third baseman.”
“Close, shortstop.”
He seemed perfectly willing to stay and chat with me, but I worried that he might be missing a class.
“So long,” I said after a few more questions and answers.
“Adios,” he answered, and turned to walk down the corridor.
I wanted to call him back. Was there something more to say or do with him? He never looked back. Rounding a corner, he left my sight. I lingered in the hallway, although I had no reason to believe he would return. I didn’t know how long I would wait. Why hadn’t I called to him? I felt so … incomplete.
21
I had been living with Pecheur for nearly two years when his health began to decline. Not long after visiting with his daughter in Rome, he complained of pain in his hands and feet. I didn’t feel it a burden to take him to doctors’ appointments and keep track of his medications. He hadn’t lost his acuity and could have managed the pills by himself, but I wanted to help in whatever way I could. I took him to the hospital for a series of tests, but the inconclusive results were followed by several more stays during which the causes of other discomforts remained equally mysterious. He suffered from dizziness that came and went, and would remain in bed on those days with books piled up around him.
By this time I had learned a great deal about his life and interests. If he needed to spend the day in bed, I would bring him his breakfast on a tray. I would comb through his collection of old records and play his favorites, such as Britten’s opera Billy Budd and Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
Despite the difficulties with his health, Pecheur set to work soon after his return from Europe. In the third-floor gallery, I helped him take down the panorama of the coastline that resembled Holland. We stored the physical pieces in a large room off the basement workshop, where I could see the covered shapes of other projects that had been completed and put away before I became his assistant. To me the magic had been in the computer programming that made the seas surge and fall back, and I wondered what animated the models that he made without computers and advanced electronics. In any event, we soon cleared the gallery and began the construction of the island of
his dream.
“It’s a stratovolcano,” he told me, “with magma of high viscosity. Its explosive force is immense. The volcano itself is tall and steep, because the lava is brittle and molten rock is forced up and hardens on the slopes. Judging from the angle of incline, this island was formed by multiple eruptions that finally drove the tip of the volcano above the waves.”
“Could it erupt again?” I asked.
“It certainly could.” He pointed to the peak of the volcano. “Here is the magma cap. It’s created by the slow extrusion of magma from the core. These volcanoes occur in chains as tectonic plates collide and slide over one another. The Ring of Fire comprises a thousand volcanoes that rim the Pacific Ocean. The volcano on our island is unusual because it’s solitary.”
Pecheur selected and scaled his materials with a care that bordered on obsession. He had sources that supplied him with pumice from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. From elsewhere he gathered the two common types of lava, one smooth and flat like a roadway surface and the other made of jagged individual rocks. He ordered some lava flecked with olivine, a semiprecious stone. He also located sand made from the wearing away of this lava. The sand, which he used for the island’s beaches, had a greenish tint. I wondered whether his dream had such specificity, or whether he simply used his imagination to create the barren, volcanic outcrop that rose in the gallery. He took pains to build a vent within the volcano where the magma would rise, and he worked the stony slopes to create the strata layered by eruptions over millions of years. He surrounded the island with jagged reefs like a serrated crown.
“It’s coral,” he replied when I asked what he used to make the gleaming pink and black of the reefs. “Coral reefs form around these volcanic islands. The islands rise up because of the magma and ash, but later they settle as the oceanic crust adjusts to the weight. If the islands sink enough, the reefs enclose lagoons.”
At this critical juncture, with the physical setting complete but the programming hardly begun, Pecheur stopped work because of his worsening health. He suffered shortness of breath, vertigo, and weakness. At some moments he felt that he would lose all control over his body. At his instruction, I employed nurses around the clock. Occasionally he would walk with a cane to survey the island, but on most days the nurse on duty would roll him around in a wheelchair to gaze at the work that had halted.