Pitch Dark

by Renata Adler

  In the matter of solipsism and prayer. It makes no sense, of course, to pray if you alone exist, and there is no world outside your consciousness, unless you think of prayer as just a kind of song. A lonely song. But if you pray to something, and for something, it is also, I think, a solipsistic thing to pray to affect an outcome which, though still unknown, is already quite set. If you are a determinist, of course, then everything is and forever has been set, and all your prayers are songs. Not lonely songs, perhaps, but songs. The sort of prayer I mean, though, is the more ordinary kind: the devout expression of a wish, with a real intent to influence an outcome of some sort. And such a prayer, to be reasonable in a world where there are others, must address consequences that are truly and altogether in the future. It would be solipsistic, for example, to pray that the outcome of a test already taken will be this or that, or to affect the set result of any act already past. Such a prayer, though it has the appearance of reasonable anticipation, is already somewhat retroactive, a prayer for a miraculous revision of the past. While there’s nothing wrong with the miraculous, it always requires an abrogation of the law in one’s own special case: when it is also retroactive, it has an additional, though perhaps unconscious, solipsism at its heart. The tense, the perfected future of it, is the clue. You can pray that things will be other than as they were, other than they are. The forbidden, the solipsistic tense is this: that things will have been other than they were. Prayer must be timely and it must be prompt. Not even in a world of miracles, and only if the world is yours alone, can you pray the past away.

  And the virtuoso, and the pachysandra, and love long ago, and the awful night of Eva dancing? “The only invitation to leave a road,” Judge Holmes once said, in a famous court decision, “is at its end.” The case involved what is called in law an attractive nuisance, something hazardous, an uncovered blade or well, an unattended piece of machinery, which might tempt a child to stray and hurt himself. The children in the Holmes case were more than hurt, they fell into a lake of chemicals and were dissolved. But the more one looks at the great judge’s words, the more clearly they are an instance of the hollow, perfectly specious aphorism. The one place at which roads normally extend no invitation whatsoever is at their ends. Every road’s invitation seems to lie either on it, as a means to reach a destination, or alongside, where its own destinations, diners, shops, and houses, are. At the end of a road, there is usually, at best, an intersection with another road. More commonly, there is nothing. Or a quarry, or a reservoir.

  The Olive Pell Bible, one of the best-selling Bibles of its time though not perhaps in history, was an expurgated Bible. Mrs. Pell had begun by crossing out and removing from the Bibles of her friends any passage with a carnal implication, including, to name just one example, the begats. The result, as it turned out, was a very short, dense text. Her friends soon urged Mrs. Pell to give the public the benefit of all the talent and industry required for such a condensation, and so the Olive Pell Bible went into the first of its many printings. It is very hard to obtain a copy now.

  An hour later, I am back, from my walk, in my own room at the castle. On the rug, in the hallway, outside a room two doors from mine, I have noticed a pail, an empty bottle of Evian water, and a towel. In discussing the routine of the castle, the ambassador said, I now remember, Kathleen will give you bottled water. There was no bottled water in my room, and the water, not just from the taps, but also in the glass beside my plate at table, I have also noticed, is distinctly brown. I don’t mind brown water, having used it on visits to friends in South Carolina and Georgia; I had even rather liked the sulphur smell. Nonetheless, there is now something disturbing, something in the nature, can it be? of a statement, or declaration, about that empty Evian bottle. I hear Celia’s voice and Kathleen’s nearby, and I think, It is nothing, jet lag maybe or a hangover. They are cleaning out a room. What could be more normal than a pail, an empty bottle, and a towel. I look around my room, rearrange a few things in the closet, put on a dry pair of shoes and socks. In the basket which holds the peat beside the fireplace, I now notice several spent, old, yellowed cigarette stubs. Though they are clearly remnants of some earlier visit, I wonder whether it will somehow be thought that they are mine. Not wanting to be thought that sort of guest, and also from an innate sense that they just don’t belong there, I start to rummage in the peat and pick them out. When I have gathered the first handful of these crumpled objects, along with their bits of loose tobacco, I become aware of what I begin now to consider a distinct air of growing conspiracy. I hope that the ambassador will remember, even on the basis of our few and short encounters, that I do not smoke. Perhaps this is the moment when the fantasy, or paranoia, or whatever it is, sets in in earnest, only in reverse, as a form of faith: faith that the ambassador, when he sees or hears about these filthy cigarette ends, will recall that I am not a smoker, and therefore cannot be to blame for them. So, getting the hang of this castle war, if war it is, of stubbornnesses; not knowing, anyway, where else to put them; and having more difficulty than I thought extricating all the remaining stubs and stray remnants of tobacco, I rebury them now among the peat.

  When I go downstairs, the kitchen is empty. On the table, I find the picnic lunch box—rather like the pails, with buckles, which we used to take our lunch to school in. I set out again on my walk. Where the path veers uphill from the sea, I continue along the sea’s edge. Though I am damp and chilled, I find a large flat rock, sheltered from the wind by other rocks. From the cup of the thermos I drink soup, the same oxtail soup they served last night at dinner, but so hot that it burns as it goes down. Good, I imagine, for what remains of my slight cough. The sandwiches are white bread with ham, the same ham they were frying with their eggs at breakfast. There is also a tomato sandwich, an orange, a hardboiled egg. I eat and drink all this hunkered among the rocks. In a corner of the kitchen, when I first met Celia, there had been a tall, stooped man, whom I took to be Pat. He did not speak, and we were not introduced. Now, on my return, this silent man is working, with a power saw, under Paddy’s supervision, just inside the gravel circle. He pauses, smiles at me, waves, and resumes his work. I mention to Paddy that the Waltons have invited me to dinner, and that the Captain said to ask Paddy for directions to their house. Paddy thinks, says, I can’t, starts to give directions, breaks off, says, I can’t, you see, I’ve lived here all my life. This makes a kind of sense. Many people find it hard to give directions, when they are too familiar with the way. At the same time, it seems odd, since both the ambassador and the Waltons have designated Paddy as a guide. I know, he says, why don’t you ask Kathleen. Her boy is at school not far from there. You can follow her when she goes to pick him up. I ask when that will be. Late this afternoon, he says; but then adds, very slowly and firmly, You must go and ask her now. I go upstairs, where the pail, the dirty white towel and the empty Evian bottle are still on the hallway rug, and I walk into the room where Kathleen and Celia are. They don’t look up. When I ask, Kathleen says she picks up the child half past two, quarter to three. Paddy’s idea, perhaps, of late afternoon. As I lie down, in my room, to rest and perhaps read a bit, I begin to review whether these can really be what I must regard as a virtual campaign of intransigences. The business of the firestarter and the matches, the immense then suddenly diminished dessert, even the question whether I’ve known the ambassador long, now range beside the lack of bottled water, the unlighted lamps, the resistance, when I arrived, in the matter of the phone. I think, It’s absurd, it is just that I’ve been too long alone. My sense that there is something wrong in the course of these events begins, after all, with the small matter of the car; and, in the matter of the car, it is I who am at fault. I look toward the grate. No matches. No firestarter. Crumpled cigarette ends. I hear a car start, go to the window, see behind the wheel a sweatered bosom, assume it is Kathleen. As I walk downstairs, and see that the car is already at the far end of the driveway, I think, I am going to leave this country and this house.
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br />   When the clouds shift, for one moment, or for several moments, and there is a possibility for action with absolutely no ingredient of reluctance—any action, shopping, playing tennis, getting out of bed—when there is a sense of the capacity to act, without any equal and dialectical incapacity to act, or desire not to, when the urge to move is, for a moment, some moments, freed of the urge to move another way, or not to move at all, or the drag of a rock, a doubt, a paralysis; then it is as though clouds did part, briefly, in a place where the climate is always and always inimical. There are, of course, sadnesses that appear to consist of a stillness heaped upon a stillness, layers of apathy, over a base that is despair and lack of hope. Despair and lack of hope, because lack of hope is by no means incompatible with the cloudless and the free state. Witness Ben and the swami, and the people at the ashram, without hope but in a state of bliss. But if the state, the condition, the zone, the tenor of spirit, where no light shines lacks any ingredient either of calm or of expectation, there are also depressions of which the appearance is jaunty, counterdepressive. That is, the degree to which the creature is able to act, or to permit itself to be seen, reflects such a surface play of the energy, which, in its perfect conflict, has brought to the paralysis an almost convulsive force, that the energy appears active, liberated, even cheerful. Analysis has no access to this condition. It poses very radically, however, the question of what it is to be sincere.

  You can see it from here; but just try to get to it.

  What you want, don’t you see, what you want is, under the conscious pressures, a surprise within the rules.

  We all find we cannot take on any more patients. We are all waiting for calls from superiors, pick up the phones each time hoping it is one of them, then find it is only another patient. The superiors of course think of us as patients and dread our calls.

  Is it always the same story, then? Somebody loves and somebody doesn’t, or loves less, or loves someone else. Or someone is a good soul and someone a villain. And there are just these episodes, anecdotes, places, pauses, hailings of cabs, overcomings of obstacles, or instances of being overcome by them, illnesses, accidents, recoveries, wars, desires, welcomings, rebuffs, baskings (rare, not so long), pinings (more frequent, perhaps, and longer), actions, failures to act, hesitations, proliferations, endings of the line, until there is death. Well, no. I have a wonderful, fond memory, about love and trust and books. I mean, a dog wrote back to me. I mean, the book ended with an invitation to write letters to the dog, and contained, on its inside back cover, a packet of three sheets of paper and three envelopes. I wrote to the dog three times, and three times he wrote back. I also wrote again, and was a little disappointed when the days passed and no answer came. But it was explained to me, or I somehow understood it, or perhaps expected that someday, when he had time and got around to it, I would hear from him again. And of course by the time I realized I had not heard and would probably not hear again, I understood completely and also I had grown up. The contrast, after all, with Tom McDermott, the swimming instructor in Palm Beach who used to call himself Tom McDermowitz, which I, never having heard of Jews or knowing that we were Jews, did not understand; his writing me a note that enclosed an Intermediate card, which I already had in any event, and why, come to think of it, did he write to me at all, or why not send what he promised, the Junior Life Saving, or, looked at another way, why did he not realize that my parents, if they had been that sort of parents, might have made trouble for him at that Florida hotel. My father always said that it is a reasonable expectation of life that no one will go out of his way, against his own interest, to break his word or to hurt another person. And this turns out, not just in obvious cases, for example haters, pathological people and institutions, sadists, but in everyday life itself to be plain untrue. I wonder why. A reasonable expectation of life, I have found, is hardly ever quite borne out.

  As I walk downstairs, and I see that the car is already at the far end of the driveway, I think, I am going to leave this country and this house. Maybe things will be better, though, at dinner. Maybe the Waltons will change the apparent course and character of these events. I intend, however, to ask them about ferries out of Dublin (as opposed, that is, to my return flight out of Shannon); I have begun to think steadily now, in other words, of escape. I consider, too, whether to use a wet towel, that towel for instance lying upstairs on the rug, to remove the rental sticker from the rear window of the car. Whether this has to do with what I might be charged at a repair shop, or simply with becoming inconspicuous, in case I should be followed, is not yet clear. I return to my room, pack the smaller of my bags, and take it downstairs, hoping to put it quietly into the car. In the front hallway, however, I encounter Kathleen. I was just coming to look for you, she says, I’m leaving now. So I put my suitcase on a hallway chair. As soon as I get in my car, and turn the key in the ignition, Kathleen takes off, racing down the castle driveway. When we turn into the public road, she hits speeds over sixty miles an hour. The road has many curves and intersections. I try slowing down, to lag behind. She speeds nearly out of sight. So I give up, and race along, to follow closely, on flat open stretches, at crossroads, on narrow curves. Perhaps, I think, it is only high spirits, perhaps she always drives this way. Suddenly, without any signal, she veers left and screeches to a halt at what appears to be an unattended gas pump. Needed fuel, she says. I wait, while she tugs at the hose and fills the tank. She roars off, accelerates further, then, abruptly, not even pulling over this time, stops. I stop. She gets out of her car. It’s up there, she says, gesturing vaguely toward a small crossroad, leading off the highway. It has no distinguishing features, so far as I can tell, except perhaps for a No Dumping sign, which faces the opposite way from the way I shall be coming from. How will I ever find this in the dark? I ask. I wondered that, she says. A silence. She says, We passed a little bridge back there. Where? I ask. Back there a bit, she says. It’s the first crossroad right after that little bridge. She gets in her car, and speeds along her way.

  I return slowly along the road, and find the almost imperceptible overpass which she calls a bridge. I notice, too, that it is where the painted road divider stops. I watch the mileage, from that bridge, until I reach what becomes for me a landmark of a sort, a rundown service station, with signs for Exxon and Toyota. I wonder briefly whether this might be the place to have my car repaired. From bridge to service station: 1.9 miles. Then, eight more miles to the Cihrbradàn turnoff. Even by daylight I scarcely find it. At the castle, I wonder whether to call the Waltons and ask them to come and get me, think they must be old and frail and that is why they have not offered. In my room, I start to pack in my second, larger bag, all the things but those that would most badly wrinkle. I become aware that all the lights are off. I turn on a few lamps, wonder whether to have a drink, decide not to. There is no note, from Kathleen or Celia, about locking up. The house seems particularly silent. The pail, with the towel and the empty bottle, is still in the hallway, two doors from my room. Everyone has apparently left for the night, and I become aware that I’m alone. I go downstairs, take my suitcase from the hallway chair, and go outside to put it in my car. As I lean over the back seat, I look more closely at the rental sticker, which is affixed to the inside of the rear window. It had already, dimly, crossed my mind to use that hallway towel, soaked, but now I pull tentatively at the transparent edge of the sticker, and find the whole thing peels right off. I fold it, roll it up and put it in the pocket of my slacks. I become aware that this move at last is irreversible. The sticker now adheres to itself. I think how I might explain it: worry about overcharge in a repair shop, based on a mistake about insurance. I rehearse a little speech; it sounds all right. Maybe, at this point, it is still true. On the way back to my room, I pass through the study, pick up my unfinished note to the ambassador, close the typewriter, go upstairs to take a little nap. Through the window that looks out on the tower, I notice a man in a yellow raincoat, walking in the general direction of
the gatehouse. Paddy, I know, lives in the gatehouse, and it crosses my mind that he may have reported the peeling and removal of the object now rolled up and stuck together in my pocket, and that the man in the yellow raincoat may be a local policeman, coming to check. I can hardly throw the thing away, with them both out there; and it can hardly be illegal to have a car rental sticker temporarily upon one’s person. I decide, after all, to have a drink. I go downstairs, and find the Bushmills still on the sideboard in the drawing room. There is no ice, of course, but there is also no water in the pewter pitcher, no fire in the grate, and no fire-starter in the basket. My cough returns. I become aware that I have not been feeling well. As I sit on the fender, near the slightly smoldering peat, which I have managed to ignite with matches, I wonder whether it would after all be best to pack my remaining things, put them in the car, and set out for the airport that night, directly from the Waltons. I think not. Maybe, if they are nice, for instance, or can give me advice about repairmen, I won’t leave at all. At least, I think again, I have at last done something. I have come this far; maybe everything will still be well. If not, it would be best to set out very early in the morning, after a few hours’ sleep. But I am still uneasy. So I go to the phone room, and begin to call the airlines. I have already confirmed my flight from Shannon, Friday, the return flight on my ticket. I now book another flight, out of Dublin, giving a different first initial with my name. I call British Airways, Dublin; and without giving any name at all (but, of course, all calls on this phone go via the local operator; and the ambassador had said to me, half joking, Don’t try to discuss any private matters on that phone, they’re listening in), I ask what flights there are on Thursday. Which, I suddenly realize, is tomorrow. There are four flights, two British Airways, two Aer Lingus. I imagine flying the Irish national airline may make one more clearly subject to the laws of Ireland, and its jurisdiction. I prefer to avoid the Irish flights. I ask whether the British Airways morning flight is open, am told it is. I make no reservation on it, thinking I now have two Friday reservations, one from Shannon, one from Dublin. If they look for me, they will be looking for me Friday. Meanwhile, I intend to make that open Thursday morning flight.