by Flynn
"You awake, Fynn?"
"What's up, Tich?"
"Full up!"
"Oh."
A little sob brought the guards tramping up my chest in order to size up the situation.
The sniffs lasted a few moments longer while I thumbed through the events of the last day or so, trying to figure out the possible reason for the tears.
"Did you put it in the middle?" she asked at last.
"Did I put what in the middle?"
"That bit at the end, when you undid it."
"Oh yes, I remember. When I unsoldered the circuit."
"Yes. Did you put the box in the middle?"
"Yes," I said, getting the drift of the conversation, "I suppose it was like putting it in the middle. Why?"
"Well, it's funny."
"Hilarious," I admitted. "But how is it funny?"
"Like church and Mister God."
"Oh sure, that is funny, that is."
"But it is. True. It is."
At two o'clock in the morning my brain cogs are apt to be a little slow in reacting. Obviously this was one of those times. Fueling up to meet this situation meant getting up, and it was too darn cold, so I lit a cigarette. The fumes hit my brain and I coughed awake my engine. I put my brain into bottom gear, church and Mister God being like repairing a radio was obviously going to be a tough hill to climb, and at that time in the morning I wasn't at all sure where my brakes were. Nothing was going to stop it, so resigning myself to the inevitable, I invited her to proceed with, "All right, so going to church is like mending a radio. I agree. I agree, only tell me about it slowly—nice and slowly."
"Well, first you put the box outside, then you put the box inside. That's like people in church: they keep outside and they ought to go inside."
"I wish you'd tell me exactly what's happened. Thin it out a bit so I can understand."
Her body relaxed as her mind sorted out suitable and simple phrases, easy enough for an adult to understand.
"When you first done it with the box. Why?"
"To measure the voltage."
"Outside?"
"Of course. You measure voltages outside the circuit."
"Then the last time you done it?"
"That was to measure current."
"Inside?"
"Yes, inside. You have to get inside the circuit to measure current."
"That's like people an' church, ain't it?"
She knew full well that I hadn't got it, so she continued.
"People," she paused to let this sink in, "when they go to church," another lengthy pause, "measure Mister God from the outside." She hacked at my shins with her toes in order to stress this point. "They don't get inside and measure Mister God."
She waited patiently, waited to see if these ideas had caught fire somewhere.
Out in the night the continental express hurtled its way toward Liverpool Street Station and bed, its whistle shrieking out its desire for sleep. Flashing past our bedroom window, it dropped its whistle a couple of semitones, acknowledging my presence, hissing and laughing at my confusion. Sleepy Pullman cars chanted their lullaby—diddle-didum, diddle-di-dee didde-di-dee, suck it and see, suck it and see. Everything was having a go at me this night. I did suck it and see. At least a couple of brain cells rubbed together and nudged the firefly of my imagination awake. Not enough to really see by, but something was there. I'd been reading Aquinas recently and he'd made no reference to "making a radio" so I asked him to move over a bit and make room for Anna. I asked a question here and there, and the answer gradually got pieced together.
As a supposed Christian you can stand outside and measure Mister God. The meter doesn't read voltages, it reads loving, kindness, all-powerful, omnipotent, etc. You have a nice lot of labels to stick about the place. So far so good. Now what's the next step? Oh yes, now I open up the Christian circuit and pop me, the meter, inside. Seems simple enough, nothing to it really—Hey, wait a blessed minute! Who was it that said, "Be like your heavenly Father"? Quiet that man, I've nearly solved the problem. If I'm inside the Christian circuit, then I'm a part of, a real part of Mister God, a working part of Mister God.
"You mean I can think I'm a Christian. I can measure God from the outside and say he's all-loving and all-powerful and all that, but really I'm a dead duck?"
"Them's just people's words."
"Sure, but I'm people."
"So you ought to know."
"What?"
"Them's just people's words."
I pressed on with, "So if I get into the circuit and measure Mister God that way, then I'm a real Christian?"
She waggled her head sideways. "How come I'm not then?" I asked her. "You might be like 'Arry boy." "He's a Jew." "Yes. Or like Ali."
"Here, hold on a bit, he's a Sikh."
"Yes, but it don't matter, if you measure Mister God from the inside."
"Slow down a bit. What the heck do I measure then, if I'm on the inside?"
"Nuffink." .
"Nothing? How come?"
" 'Cos it don't matter. You're like a bit of Mister God. You said so."
"I never did say such a thing."
"You did, too. You said that the box is a part of it when you measure it from the inside."
It was true. I had said so.
So far as Anna was concerned, one thing was absolutely certain. Mister God had made everything, there was nothing that God hadn't made. When you began to see what it was all about, how things worked, how things were put together, then you were beginning to understand what Mister God was.
Over the last few months it had begun to dawn on me that Anna's real concern had very little to do with properties. Properties had the rather stupid habit of waiting upon circumstances. Water was liquid except, that is, if it was ice or steam. Then the properties were different. The properties of dough were different from the properties of bread. It depended on the circumstances of baking. Not for one moment would Anna have relegated properties to the dustbin. Properties were very useful, but since properties depended on circumstances, the roadway after the pursuit of properties was unending. No, the proper thing to pursue was functions. Being outside Mister God and measuring him gave you properties, seemingly an unending list. The particular choice of properties that you made produced that particular kind of religion that you subscribed to. On the other hand, being inside Mister God gave you the function, and then we were all the same: no different churches, no temples, no mosques, etc., etc. We were all the same.
What's the function, did you say? Oh, the function of Mister God is another one of those simple things. The function of Mister God is to make you like him. Then you can't measure, can you? As Anna said, "If you are, you don't know, do you? You don't think Mister God knows he's good, do you?" Anna's opinion of Mister God was that he was a perfect gentleman, and no gentleman could possibly swank about being good. If he did, he wouldn't be a gentleman, would he? And that would lead to a contradiction. It stands to reason, doesn't it? I know that daylight brings questions with it, that it's easy to accept these things at night, in bed with a miniature angel by your side, but stay with it. The function of Mister God is to make you like him. The various religions merely measure the properties, or some of them, for you. It doesn't really matter what color you are, what creed you subscribe to; Mister God shows no preference in his function.
We didn't sleep any more that night, we just chatted about this and that.
"Miss Haynes."
"What's wrong with Miss Haynes?"
"Do-lally-tap. She's barmy."
"Can't be, she's a school-ma'am. You can't be a school-ma'am if you're do-lally."
"She is."
"What makes you think?"
"She said I can't know everything."
"Guess she's right."
"Why?"
"Suppose your noodle's not big enough."
"That's the outside."
"Pardon me. I forgot."
"I can know everything inside."
"Ah!"
"How many things are there?"
"Squillions."
"More than numbers?"
"No, more numbers than things."
"I know all the numbers. Not the names, that's outside; just the numbers, that's the inside."
"Yes, I guess so."
"How many squiggle waves on that 'cilloscope?"
"Squillions."
"You know how to make squillions?"
"Yes."
"That's inside."
"Suppose so."
"You seen them all?"
"No."
"No, that's the outside."
Bless the child, I couldn't tell her that she had just framed the question that had for so long bothered me: "Why can't I know everything?" Because it's obvious that no man can know everything, so why try? All the same. . . . We went on chatting. As the time trickled on, things began to happen to me. Certainties and doubts stacked themselves on top of each other. Questions were formed and discarded. I felt I was right, but I was afraid to let go. I juggled words into sentences, but each sentence made me vulnerable, and that wasn't good. If my guess was right, Anna would have to take the responsibility. The church clock down the road clapped out six o'clock. The question was there and I had to know the answer.
"How many things don't you tell me about?"
"I tell you everything."
"That the truth?"
"No," she said quietly and with some hesitation.
"Why's that?"
"Some of the things I think about is very—very—"
"Strange?"
"Um. You're not angry, are you?"
"No, I'm not angry a bit."
"I thought you would be."
"No. How strange these things?"
She stiffened up beside me, dug her fingers into my arm and defied me to contradict her.
"Like two and five equals four."
The world came undone at the seams. I'm right. I'm right. I knew exactly what she was talking about. With as much calm as I could muster, I gave away my secret.
"Or ten?" I asked.
For a moment or two she didn't move. Finally she turned her face to me and very quietly said, "You too?"
"Yeah," I replied, "me too. How did you find yours?"
"Down the canal, the numbers on the barges, in the canal. How'd you find yourn?" "In a mirror."
"In a looking glass?" Her startled surprise lasted for about one second.
"A looking glass, like water, yes." I could almost hear the chains falling off me. "Did you ever tell anyone?" Anna asked. "A couple of times." "Wot they say?"
"Not to be silly. Not to waste time. Did you ever tell anybody?"
"Once. Miss Haynes." "What she say?"
"I was stupid, so I didn't say it anymore." We giggled together, both free, both now unfettered. We shared the same kind of world. We were warmed by the same kind of fire. We both stood on the same spot, on the same road, going the same way. Our relationship was now clear to me. We were fellow searchers, companions, like spirits. To hell with the profits, to hell with the gains! Let's go and have a look, let's go and find out. We both needed the same kind of food.
We'd both been told that five meant five and nothing else, but the figure 5 reflected in the water or a mirror was the figure 2. And this fact of reflection would produce some pretty curious arithmetics, and this is what fascinated us so much. Perhaps they were not of any practical use, but it didn't matter. Five meant what is usually meant by five only by usage and convention. There was nothing at all special about the figure 5. You could allow it to mean anything you liked as long as you stuck to the rules once you had made them, and you could go on inventing rules forever—well almost. So you see, we were wasting our time, but we didn't see it that way; we saw it as an adventure, something that had to be explored.
Anna and I had both seen that math was more than just working out problems. It was a doorway to magic, mysterious, brain-cracking worlds, worlds where you had to tread carefully, worlds where you made up your own rules, worlds where you had to accept complete responsibility for your actions. But it was exciting and vast beyond understanding.
I wagged my finger at her.
"Five plus two is ten."
"Sometimes it's two," she replied.
"Or then maybe it's seven." Who the heck cares! There's squillions of other worlds to look at. We gasped to a stop.
"Tich," I said, "get up. I've got something to show you."
I grabbed the wing mirrors off the dressing table and we crept into the kitchen. I lit the gas. It was cold and dark but it didn't matter. Our inner fires were working overtime. I found a large sheet of white cardboard and drew a long, thick, black line on it. I hinged the two mirrors together and stood them upright like an open book. Between the open mirrors was the thick black line. I peered into the open mirrors and adjusted the angle.
"Look," I exclaimed, holding my breath.
She looked but didn't speak. I began to close the angle of the mirror very slowly and I heard her gasp. She looked some more and went on looking, and then all hell broke loose. Her boiler burst. I remembered well the feeling when I had first seen it. I got the mirrors flat on the table before it happened. She hit me like an express train. Her arms around my neck nearly strangled me. Her fingers dug holes in my back. She laughed and cried and bit me. We were a million years past the use of words. There wasn't one that fitted, anywhere near fitted that moment. We were both physically exhausted. Mentally and spiritually we hadn't touched down. We never did.
* * *
six
Over a cup of tea we made plans. As soon as it was open we'd go to the market and buy a whole stack of mirrors from Woolworth's.
When we got to the marketplace the shops were still closed. The stall holders were assembling their displays under the flaring carbide lamps. The street was crisscrossed with shafts of good-humored abuse, instructions, and speculations as to the course of the day. Feet were stamped as if to kill the creeping insects of the cold. Oil-drum braziers stood on their bricks bringing the tea water to the boil. The coffee stall breathed its perfume of hot dogs and coffee over the marketplace.
"A cuppa, two o' dripping and a cheesecake, guv," said the taxi bloke.
"I'll have a cuppa and a couple of sausages," said his mate.
"What's for you, cock?" It was my turn.
"Two cuppas and four hot dogs."
I slapped the money on the counter and got back the change, along with a handful of tea from the dripping counter. Anna stood grasping her mug in both hands, nose buried deep. Over the rim of the mug two smiling and blazing eyes sucked in everything. She couldn't hold her tea and the hot dogs at the same time, so I stuck them between the fingers of my left hand ready when she wanted them. There was a space on the next stall to put my mug down while I jiggled out a cigarette one-handed. I tried to light a match by scraping it with my thumb. I never managed to learn that trick. The nearest I ever got was when the match head came off and stuck under my thumbnail. It lit then. It wasn't supposed to do that, and it hurt. Anna lifted up her foot and I lit up. The tempo was hotting up.
"Mind yer backs please! Mind yer backs!" Like the bow wave from a passing ship, we all washed into the curb and washed back again as a horse and cart sliced its way through the mob, the horse steaming in the morning frost.
"Ernie!" yelled the lady in the leather apron. "Where the 'ell's them ruddy cabbages?" To anyone who cared to listen she added, "He'll be the death of me; he'll put me in my grave."
"Fat chance!" said someone.
The sandwich-board man arrived, announcing to all and sundry that the end is nigh, and asked for a cup of tea.
"Blimey, the 'erald angel's here!"
"Here you are, Joe. Have a cup of wet-and-warm, with me."
It was the taxi bloke.
"Fanks, guv," said the herald angel.
"Wotcha, Joe. Wot's the good news for today?"
"The end is nigh," moaned old Joe.
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"You give me the flippin 'orrors."
"What was it last week?"
"Prepare to meet thy doom!"
"How the hell do you get all them messages?"
"He gets a telegram from St. Peter."
From the end of the counter a voice like a clap of thunder menaced all the company with, "Which of you sodden baskits pinched me sausages?"
"They're under yer flippin' elbow."
" 'Arry, mind yer language, ther's a nipper here!"
'Arry pushed away from the counter with a fistful of sausages in one hand and a pint-size mug in the other. The mug looked like an eggcup in his hand.
" 'Ullo, nipper. Wot's your name?" said 'Arry.
"Anna. Wot's yourn?"
" 'Arry. You on yer own?"
"No. With him," she nodded at me.
"Wot you doing down the road this time of the morning?"
"We're waiting for Woolly's to open," explained Anna.
"Wot you buying at Woolwerf's?"
"Some looking glasses."
"That's nice."
"Buying ten of them."
"Wot you want ten for?"
"So's we can see different worlds," said Anna.
"Oh," said 'Arry, none the wiser. "You're a proper caution, ain't yer?"
Anna smiled.
"Would you like a bar a chocklit?" asked 'Arry.
Anna looked at me and I nodded.
"Please, mister."
" 'Arry," corrected 'Any, wagging a couple of pounds of forefinger.
"Please, 'Arry."
'"Arfer!" yelled 'Arry over his shoulder. "Chuck us a couple a bars a chocklit."
'Arfer chucked and 'Arry caught.