dives into the sea,
swims in the river of Paradise.
The soul moves from earthly bondage
to the kingdom without place.…”
He slipped a blue clothbound volume from a silk bag and said, “Listen:
Seen or unseen, I can pass through a wall
or a mountain as if it were air; I can sink
into the earth, or emerge from it as if it were water;
I can walk on water as if it were solid earth;
I can move through the air like a bird;
I can touch with my hands the sun and moon.…”
“That’s a cocky fellow!” I observed.
“That’s the Buddha,” said Titus. “Cocky as Christ when he walked on water. Or as Rama when he appeared in the water cupped in Valmiki’s hands. Or as Krishna when he told Arjuna, ‘I am the savour in the waters, O son of Kunti, and the light in sun and moon!’”
He reached for another book, but I said, “Wait! Wait a minute, Titus. This sort of thing is all very fine and dandy, but, well, do people really believe it? Do you? I mean, is any of it true?”
He smiled. “Rumi said, ‘To the sane, the words of lovers are nothing but stories.’ And Lao Tzu said, ‘When a man of low capacities hears Tao, he laughs loudly at it—and if he did not laugh, it would not be worth the name of Tao.’”
“But what do you say, Titus?”
He looked me in the eye. “I’m not sane, Gus. I believe in the rivers of living water; I believe our souls swim in that water; I believe Jesus and Buddha and Krishna are the savour in that water; I believe in the Garden World and its Queen. I love the ol’ Whopper.”
I shook my head. “Wish I did.”
“Well,” said Titus, “why don’t you?”
I shrugged. “What’s to love? Where is this Whopper? Or the soul that jumps in the living river—where is it? And where are these sages and buddhas holing up, now that we really need them?”
Titus shot me a look. “Would you know one if you met one? Have you even looked? How hard did you look? How easy should they be to find?” His voice was soft, but his eyes were as piercing as Descartes’s: the questions hit me like slaps in the face—well-deserved slaps. I hid in my teacup. Titus said, “Look, Gus: why can’t a duffer like me catch fish? Isn’t the answer obvious? Isn’t it because at my present level of skill the fish would have to be so damned dumb and easily duped and utterly unelusive that they wouldn’t be worth catching? How much more elusive should a thing so wondrous as the soul be? It’s not a hatchery trout! And are you sure it’s never flashed inside you? What was it in you that loved to watch Thomas Bigeater fish? What healed you and made you happy the night you remembered Bill Bob’s pine knot and our elusive twins? What nearly jumped out of your rib cage and ravaged your brain the day you met the elusive Eddy?”
I made no reply—because at the mention of Eddy my soul began to ache. Like a tooth. I could feel it, filling me from head to toe. Titus said, “Fishermen should be the easiest of men to convince to commence the search for the soul, because fishing is nothing but the pursuit of the elusive. Fish invisible to laymen like me are visible to anglers like you by a hundred subtle signs. How can you be so sagacious and patient in seeking fish, and so hasty and thick as to write off your soul because you can’t see it?”
Again his question hit me where I lived: I pictured rivers—December rivers, mist-shrouded and cold—and thigh deep in the long glides stood fishermen who’d arisen before dawn.… There they stood in the first gray light, in rain, wind, snowfall, or frost; silent, patient, casting and casting again, retrieving nothing yet never questioning the possibility of bright steelhead hidden beneath the green slicks; numb-fingered, empty-bellied, aching-backed they stood, hatted or hooded like rabbis or monks, grumbling but vigilant, willing to pay hard penance for the mere chance of a sudden, subtle strike. What was a fisherman but an untransmuted seeker? And how much longer must be the wait, how much greater the skill, how much more infinite the patience and intense the vigilance in the search for the gift men called the soul? “Titus,” I said, “I’ve been walking around for years with my metaphysical dry fly stuck in my ear!”
He laughed. “Let’s get it out and go fishing!”
And that’s what we did. We drank tea and read and talked all day, and late in the evening I made my first “catch”:
We were getting tired and a little giddy, and words like “pizza” and “beer” were beginning to sound better than words like “beatific” or “immortal”; but the sun was just setting and my lifelong experience taught me never to quit the evening rise. So I asked, “Do you think souls strike harder in the early morning and late evening?”
“Could be,” Titus mumbled.
“How do you suppose I ought to fish for mine now, then?”
“With a soul-pole, I suppose,” he said offhandedly.
“A soul-pole.”
“That’s right.”
“What do they cost, these soul-poles?”
“Whaddya got?” asked Titus, falling into a New Yawk accent.
“Oh, I got some,” I said, patting my wallet pocket. “What do they cost?”
“All ya got,” he said.
“All I got!”
He nodded. “But not all ya think ya got. All ya really got.”
“Hmm. What all do I really got?”
“Nuthin’,” said Titus.
“Ha! Right in my price range! Where do I pick one up?”
He shrugged. “Right here’s fine.”
“You got one here?”
“I got one here,” he said, pounding his heart, “and you got one there,” he added, pointing at mine.
I gaped at my rib cage. “I got to pay all the nuthin’ I got for a soul-pole I already got right here?”
“You don’t know you got it,” he said. “You got to pay to know.”
“OK,” I said. “How do I pay?”
He said, “Repeat after me…”
I said, “Repeat after me…”
“Not yet!”
“Not yet!”
“Never mind. Here goes:”
“Never mind. Here goes:”
“I, Gus Orviston, do here give every last bit of the nuthin’ I got…”
“I, Gus Orviston, do here give every last bit of the nuthin’ I got…”
“to the Creator of my soul-pole…”
“to the Creator of my soul-pole…”
“in exchange for the soul-pole itself.”
“in exchange for the soul-pole itself.”
“That’s it,” he said. “It’s yours.”
I pawed at my shirt front. “Where is it?”
“Shall I show it to you?”
“Can you?”
“By analogy, yes—if you’ll answer a few questions.”
“Fire away,” I said.
“All right. Where is Rodney the Flyrod at this moment?”
“Hanging on my cabin wall—but he’s no soul-pole.…”
“Of course not,” Titus agreed. “He’s your pole. And what do you suppose he is experiencing as he hangs on the wall there?”
“Not a hell of a lot,” I said, scratching my head.
“A little weight and mass, perhaps?”
“Yeah, and a little rod varnish and guides and cork handle—those sorts of experiences.”
“And that’s about it.”
“Yep.”
“So Rodney hangs on the wall until you pick him up, then he bends when you bend him, casts when you cast him, fights fish when you hook them. But the electric jolt in your hands, the line singing through the water, the beauty of the riverbank, the taste of the trout—all these wonders are unknown to poor Rodney, are they not?”
“Yeah. I mean, they’re not.”
“Good. Now, who made Rodney from a nondescript blank into the lovely rod he is today?”
“I did.”
“And who controls his destiny, decides whether he will hang on the wall, ride in the pi
ckup, cast for trout or bluebacks? And who will determine when he is worn out or broken and will one day consign him to the closet, garbage can, or funeral pyre that is his inevitable end?”
“I do, and I will.”
“Yes. Now, who do you suppose made you from a configuration of molecules into the living fisherman you are today?”
“I wish I knew,” I said.
“Excellent!” said Titus. “And who controls your destiny, decides whether you shall be happy or miserable, long-lived or short, infamous or famous, erudite or acrimonious, and so on and so forth?”
“Wish I knew that, too.”
“Very good!” he exclaimed. “And who will decide when your body has become an unfit habitation for that which enlivens it and will one day consign it to a crematorium, river bottom, or wormy grave?”
“Wish I knew that, too,” I said, “but why do you holler ‘excellent!’ and ‘very good!’ when I say I wished I knew? Don’t you expect me to say ‘God does it’ or ‘My soul does it’?”
Titus looked aghast. “Gus! I’m a philosopher, not an evangelist! It’s the ‘wish I knew’ that’s crucial. To say ‘God does it’ and leave it at that is to abandon the search before it’s begun. To really want the truth, to long for it desperately, is to reject every formulation and theory and dogma and opinion right up to the time you see and touch and unite with the Being or Thing itself! Nobody ever discovers truth by barfing up Sunday-school answers to questions… but where were we?”
“We were after my soul-pole.”
“Yes. And we agreed that Rodney is oblivious to everything except perhaps a bit of weight and mass and varnish, did we not?”
“We did.”
“So it follows, does it not, that he is likewise oblivious to the existence of Gus—even though Gus is his maker, the controller of his fate, we might say his very essence?”
“Yeah, that follows.”
“Isn’t it possible, then, that you and I might be just as oblivious to the existence of a maker, a controller of fates, we might even say an Essence—Who wields us even more deftly than you wield Rodney?”
“Sure it’s possible.”
“Well, there you have it,” said Titus. “Rodney is to Gus what Gus is to his Essence. Name the Essence ‘soul’ and you’ve got your soul-pole.”
“Me!” I laughed. “I’m the soul’s pole! I like it, Titus, I like it.”
“Thank you. Swiped it from Plotinus. What do you like?”
“I like the implication that even though I’m hopelessly stupid compared to my soul or Essence, I’m damned useful: I have a profound purpose!”
For once it was Titus who looked confused. “I don’t follow you, Gus.”
“You’re not a fisherman yet,” I said. “But think about Rodney: he may not know much, but I sure can’t fish very well without him. I may lay down the law, but Rodney lays out the line; I may strike, but Rodney’s body sets the hook; I could live and even catch fish without him, but it’s Rodney’s bending and bouncing that makes it fun! Rodney may be dumb, but he’s crucial; he may not be much of a human being, but he’s a hell of a flyrod! So, Mr. Soul or Mr. Essence, wherever you are: I may not be much of a god, but I must be a hell of a soul-pole! And whatever the metaphysical version of fishing is, I know you couldn’t do it as well without me! And even though I’m kind of a dumb blank next to you and owe you everything I’ve got, you have more fun with me than you had without me!”
Titus applauded. “Here, here! A philosopher is born!”
And we went for beer and pizza.
After two exhausting, exhilarating days of Titus’s tea and tutelage I left his flat bearing fourteen borrowed books, a monograph he’d written called “What Is Water?,” a shaky belief in an imperceptible but seemingly inescapable essence called “soul,” and an even shakier belief in an Essence of Essences which I took to calling “the Whopper,” because the word God still brought to mind the glowering white-haired-and-bearded fellow that GG and the Witless so zealously advertised. Titus insisted that God, Allah, Parabrahma, Elahi, Yezdan, and various John Henrys of that ilk all referred to the same Deity, but I insisted that if I was going to learn to respect this Deity I’d have to start by calling It a name I felt a bit of fondness for.
For the first few blocks down the street from the flat I was anxious to get home and read more about the Whopper. But the farther I walked the slower and lower I felt, till I began to wonder whether Descartes’s eyes emitted some kind of microwave away from which I had no interest in anything more transcendent than hamburgers. By the time I reached the bus stop I was wilted and desolate, and as I climbed aboard I realized why: the broken-topped alder had returned to haunt me. It struck me, then, what good pals Titus and his dog were. With them I thought of Eddy only with hope. But without them the thought of her filled me with a gnawing and an emptiness and an ache and an itch and a sore botch of the heart that could not be healed. Knowing I’d best find company fast, I transferred buses and rode to the west-side suburbs to see how my family was doing.
8
Little, But Strong
Consider the waters that run down toward the city. See how clean and clear they are? But as they flow through the city, people wash their carpets and clothes and bodies in them, and stand their animals in them, and the dirt and piss and wastes of all the quarters become part of them. See the waters flowing out the far side of the city? Though they are still the same waters, turning dust into gardens, making the land verdant, vile things have been stirred into them.
—Jalal al-Din Rumi
When I reached my parents’ house I walked right in, then felt like a housebreaker for not having knocked. Strange that so short an absence had erased my ability to call this place “home.” I heard voices in H2O’s study—happy voices, laughing and giggling. Nobody ever carried on like that when I lived here. I went in.
The instant the door moved there was a mad scramble: Bill Bob, Ma, and H2O all jumped up from whatever it was they’d been doing like I was a schoolteacher and they were punks caught grinding garter snakes in the pencil sharpener. “What gives?” I asked, really feeling like an intruder now.
They wore red faces and foolish grins. Bill Bob recovered first: “Mu—mu—musical chairs!” he burbled. “We was playin’ Musical Chairs!”
Ma and H2O nodded idiotically.
“Oh,” I said. “Musical chairs. I see. Well well well.…” I turned to H2O, whose face is transparent as cellophane in the presence of a fib. “So where’s the music?”
Ma started humming the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” H2O chuckled convulsively. “Musical chairs! Heheheh! Silly, huhuhuhuhuhu. Felt foolish heheh. Thought you were one of my high-flown fisher-friends. Hee! er, silly.…”
He was on the verge of hysterics, and mirth in my father was a commodity so unfamiliar to me that I couldn’t tell what to make of it. I looked the situation over. One piece of evidence seemed to corroborate Bill Bob’s explanation: nobody was where he or she should have been. Ma, still intoning the “Battle Hymn,” was behind H2O’s fly-tying desk and there was a fly in the vise; H2O, humming a harmony, was at Ma’s rod-building table and a lightweight spinning rod was under construction; Bill Bob, thumping time with both feet, stood in the midst of a rubble of tools, oil cans, spools of line, and an old surf-casting reel in ten or fifteen pieces. “All right,” I said. “What the hell’s going on here?”
Ma had a tweezers in her hand. She sat down at H2O’s vise singing “Glory-glory-haller-lew-yer,” grabbled the hackles of the fly with the tweezers, ripped them away, and shouted, “How ’bout Musical Sabotage!”
H2O giggled maniacally, grabbed one of the guides on the bait-rod, viciously tore it off, and drowned out the “Battle Hymn” with an operatic “Rule, Britannia.”
Bill Bob stared at the floor, grinning at the uproar till his cheeks must have ached and avoiding my incredulous stare.
What hell had my family fallen into? I shook my head, collapsed in a chair, and muttere
d, “So you wreck each other’s gear for fun now, huh? Well I think it’s pretty damned pathetic!”
“Hell yes,” agreed Ma. “We always was pathetic, Gus, but we’ve got patheticker since you ain’t been ’round to keep us civil.”
H2O nodded enthusiastically. “The Great Izaak Walton Controversy rages on unabated!” he thundered, ripping off another guide. “We didn’t realize what a steadying influence you had on us, son.”
“Me too,” said Bill Bob, smiling placidly. It was his acceptance of it all that sent my heart to my socks.
H2O kept singing, but Ma started out of the room, saying, “But ain’t this some way to treat the projital son. Come on in the kitchen ever’body an’ we’ll fix Gus a sandwich.”
As she and H2O trudged away I noticed that H2O had lost some weight while Ma had gained some; for the first time it occurred to me that they were beginning to look somewhat alike: it gave me a crappy feeling. Bill Bob plugged in his radios and started to follow, but I grabbed him by the wires, disconnected him, and demanded, “All right! Cut the bull and tell me, what the hell is happening around here?”
He shrugged. “Nothin’. Nothin’s happening. That’s all.”
“That’s all, huh! Since when did you start thinking Ma and H2O’s squabbling was funny? And what are you doing with this surf-casting reel? You gonna take up fishin’ and turn vegetable on me, too?”
“Nope,” he said, sitting down in the reel parts and starting to scrub them.
“So what are you doing?”
“I’m takin’ up Airing.”
“Whating?”
“Airing,” he said, pointing to a kite kit in the corner. “I send up a kite with a radio receiver on it, and I let it anchor up there, and I put on my headphones and fish for radio waves. Catch lots, too—’specially on that bald mountain up behind Uncle Zeke’s. Caught some Hopi Indian music from Albuquerque once, and some hockey from Toronto. But that was with a hand line. I can handle four thousan’ feet o’ string on this reel. I’m gonna try for somethin’ from Europe, or China maybe!”
I sighed. At least there was one sane soul in the family. “Let’s go get something to eat,” I said. And we went, but in the kitchen H2O and Ma were already ensconced in a full-blown debate over whether Charles Cotton had ever angled with worms. I gorged down a sandwich and said I was going for a walk. I would have hitched straight back to the Tamanawis, but I wanted to tuck Bill Bob in that night, for old times’ sake. Maybe I could get him to tell me what had really been happening in the study. Musical chairs my ass.
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