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From the Teeth of Angels

Page 16

by Jonathan Carroll


  The first time I saw Emmy Marhoun in Vienna, I had just emerged from one of these lapses and my head was readjusting to the world. Jesse and I had left the cemetery after arguing some more about what to do with the powers my dreams gave me. I had no idea what else I was capable of now, but we both stuck to our beliefs, and the discussion degenerated into his anger and my stubbornness. We drove back to the city, with him doing most of the muttering. Back at the hotel, I didn’t want to see Sophie yet and have to explain where we’d been, so I waited till Jesse pulled away and then I went for a walk.

  There was a small pastry shop across the street from the Opera House and the aroma drifting out of it was so delicious that I went right in. The place was jammed but luckily one small table in a corner was free. I ordered my cake and coffee and sat down, feeling happy for the first time that day. No desire to think about anything. I wanted only to be in that hot little shop full of ambrosial smells, surrounded by chattering old women, and eat an echt piece of Viennese torte. Afterward I’d… I know someone who signs all his letters After Words. That’s exactly how it would be now. I was past words and wanted to let my tongue and senses have rein for a little while.

  As if in agreement, my mind went into a full-fledged zone-out and I was suddenly nowhere in particular. It lasted long enough for the waitress to bring my order. Coming back to earth, I blinked a few times at the black cake on the table. Then while my head continued to clear, I looked at the people standing at the counter. Up there waiting for an order was Emmy Marhoun.

  But that was impossible. Emmy Marhoun had been dead for at least three years. I knew her when she worked as an editor at a New York publishing house. My television show was at the height of its popularity then, and we met when she wrote to ask if I’d be interested in doing a book for her company. We had dinner a few times and I liked her. She was smart, witty, and the kind of aggressive, enterprising woman who usually gets what she wants. It didn’t hurt that she was also quite beautiful. If I were straight, I’d probably have fallen in love with her. As it was, I did fall in love to a certain harmless degree, and that was why we continued seeing each other after I said no to the project.

  One day someone told me she had died. Fallen off a horse and been kicked in the head. There are many strange ways to die. As we grow older we become accustomed to bizarre accounts of how So-and-So went. Still, there are times when you hear something like Emmy’s story and your only reaction is “What do you mean, kicked by a horse?” I didn’t mourn because we hadn’t been close, and it was a long time since we’d seen each other. But I had loved her a little, and it was surprising how much I thought about her after hearing the news.

  Today she stood ten feet away and even touched her hair in that showy pat-pat way I remembered. I got up and went over, but she didn’t see me until the last moment. Then she turned away from the counter, and we were face to face.

  “Emmy?”

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, then widened. “Oh, my God, Wyatt Leonard! What are you doing here?” She brought her hands together in front of her face and clapped them quickly like a delighted little kid. I had to touch her to see if she was real. I did. She was.

  “Do you have some time?”

  “Of course! It’s so good to see you! Where have you been? It’s been so many years!”

  While we were sitting down at the table, my shock left, and one word came to mind that explained everything: Strayhorn. Last night’s dream. Knowing the names in the graveyard had been Part One of whatever was going on. This was Part Two. Everything was happening at once. Dinner in a dream with a dead man; breakfast in real life with a dead woman.

  I was astonished, but I knew since last night’s dream that my life had shifted into high gear, at which any speed or event was possible. Now it was up to me to handle it. So instead of running away or going mad because I was sitting down to coffee with a dead friend, I spoke as normally as I could and did okay. Now and then I caught myself hyperventilating or wetting my lips for the hundredth time, but generally I was all right.

  The greatest horror was that she didn’t know. The woman did not know she was dead. We talked like old pals catching up. About mutual friends, evenings shared, what we’d been doing since we last met. She filled me in on everything but what was most important.

  How then did I know for certain that she was dead? Because I had read accounts in different newspapers of her accident. Because I’d actually heard the funeral described by two people who were there and saw her body in the open casket. What other proof was there? The most important of all: she glowed, exactly like Philip Strayhorn. Was I the only one who saw or noticed it? I don’t know. Certainly no one in the café seemed to take any special notice, except for one young man who couldn’t take his eyes off her and was clearly smitten. I wanted to go over to him and ask, “Do you see it coming off her skin? That faint blue? The slight shimmer like a road mirage in summer?” But he wouldn’t have seen it. These things were only mine today because of the Strayhorn dream and because I was dying.

  While working for the publisher in New York, Emmy had met a man and fallen deeply in love. He was the most extraordinary person she had ever known and she was convinced he was the one for her. She lived on the top floor of joy for a few exquisite months. Then this special man told her she bored him and he was leaving. I admired her for admitting that; it would have been easy to say only that they broke up, and left it at that, but she didn’t. “He said I bored him and told me exactly why. You know what the most painful part was? He was right. I was a bore.”

  What followed was a wretched series of exaggerated, supercharged affairs with men she initially welcomed but quickly grew to despise. She slept with them to try to find some kind of replacement for the one she could never replace. She was destroyed and knew it, but because she was beautiful there were always men around who were eager to try, and she let them. She let too many of them try, and their touching enthusiasm and desire only made things worse. She felt that she was suffocating inside her own life; as if it were one of those plastic bags dry cleaners put over clothes. When she breathed, she inhaled herself and her failure. There was no more air.

  “It was becoming all bad, Wyatt, so I decided to cut everything loose and travel a while. That’s when I came to Europe.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I’m embarrassed to say. Almost three years ago.”

  I needed a moment to let my heart slow before I asked the next question. “Emmy, what was the last thing you remember doing in America before coming over here? The very last thing.”

  “I remember very well. I went horseback riding with my brother Bill. Why do you ask?”

  Smiling, I tried to think of something logical to explain the question but couldn’t think of anything. Luckily she made a little face of dismissal and sipped her tea. “Not that it’s been much better here. I just don’t have any urge to go back to America. Does that make me an expatriate? I need to be something these days.”

  “What have you been doing since you got over here?”

  “I take a job when I have to. Nothing spectacular. You glide over the days and from city to city and nothing much happens, but you’re basically all right. You live in this strange state of okay most of the time. You get by. There aren’t a lot of highs or lows. Nothing really memorable or perfect ever happens, but nothing bad either. Livable. Halfway between blah and hooray.”

  “Are you with anyone?”

  “No, not for a long time. That’s what I mean—I’m not closed off to men, but I haven’t met one I want to be with. It’s all right, though; I’m content being alone.”

  “And you live in Vienna? What do you do here?”

  For an instant, half a second, it was plain she didn’t know. Her face went blank. She didn’t know because there was nothing but memories and vague shadows left.

  “Um, I’ve been working as a secretary at the American embassy. It pays the bills.”

  I have never read Dante�
�s Inferno but vividly remember looking through an illustrated copy and seeing a picture of two people floating in the air, reaching out desperately to touch each other. As I remember, their sin had been that they were illicit lovers in life and were now condemned to this situation in Hell—close enough to see, smell, hear the other, but never for eternity allowed to join again.

  Emmy Marhoun was in exactly the same place. For whatever reasons, in death she was damned to existing so close to life that she thought she still was alive. Never again allowed to touch the fullness and pulse, the body of real life, she nevertheless recognized and remembered it completely. Hell for her was walking around in life almost alive but not knowing the difference anymore.

  Is that what Death would be, not knowing? Strayhorn had said nothing about that, but Jesse insisted Death wasn’t to be trusted. My mind was exhausted, overflowing. I could no longer sort or decipher, and it wasn’t even noon yet. I had raised the dead and met the dead and had hundreds of new questions, but now I had no more energy and felt close to collapse.

  As calmly as I could, I told Emmy I had to go. I asked her to call me at the hotel so that we could meet again while I was in town. She said I looked washed-out and should take it easy. I paid the bill and we left together. On the sidewalk we kissed, and her cheek on that summer day was neither warm nor cold.

  Luckily there was a taxi stand nearby and I was home in a few minutes. When I asked for the key to my room, the concierge handed me several messages, which I ignored. It was time to rest, and if that meant seeing Philip Strayhorn again, fine. But at the moment sleep was more important than answered questions.

  I am running across a bridge. I know this bridge but cannot remember why. It’s very long—goes straight into the horizon. I know I’ll never be safe unless I get to the other side. But the wolf is very fast and is catching up. This wolf which comes after me so many nights. It does not have eyes but, rather, two large X’s where eyes should be, like the ones you make in a tic-tac-toe game. It’s mouth is gigantic, full of white pointy teeth, a rubbery red tongue that goes up and down and around its lips in circles. When not drooling, the wolf grunts and growls or laughs like a hyena, because it’s getting closer and closer. When it catches me it’ll kill and eat me. It’s wearing orange overalls that are buttoned across one furry shoulder; the other flap is broken and jumps wildly as the wolf comes full killer-speed at me. He also wears a black stovepipe hat that slides back and forth across his head as he runs. Behind me are big brown puffs of dirt to show how fast I’m going. Both of us make the sounds in a cartoon—screeching, bells clanging, brakes screaming—but none of this is cartoon for me. It’s real and terrifying, my world when I was seven years old, scared awake night after night by the same dream: the wolf chasing me across the endless bridge, me always knowing I’d be caught. The moment that happened, he would whip out a cannibal’s pot and logs from some deep pocket, start up a snarling fire, and throw me into the pot, now magically filled with water. I usually awoke, petrified, just as the final water started to burn me. I can’t begin to express how frightening it was even though I knew the dream by heart, having had it over and over again.

  I awoke this time too, engulfed again by the identical terror in head and heart I’d known as a boy. The churning gut, my fingers clawing, my tongue too enormous in my mouth. Exactly the same. A middle-aged man knowing seven again as it truly was.

  “It’s not the way you remembered, is it?”

  I turned my head and saw Philip Strayhorn sitting on the corner of the bed. It took time to regain my senses, but he seemed content to sit and wait. I looked blankly around the room and finally realized where I was—the hotel room in Vienna.

  “It was so clear! I remember the dream. I’ve always remembered it, but never this vividly. It’s frightening!”

  “No one remembers what childhood was really like. They only think they do.”

  “Phil, what are you doing?” I sat up, leaning back on my elbows. “Is it allowed? Can you be here like this?”

  “Don’t worry, this is still part of your dream. But, yes, I can go over to the real world if I like. It’s no big deal. No one sees me there but the dead, and you.”

  I fell back onto the bed. “I can’t get over that dream. How incredibly strong! I don’t remember its being anything like that. Not that intense. Were things really so frightening when we were kids? How did I survive night after night?”

  “You didn’t—the kid died and became an adult. Life isn’t learning; it’s forgetting. That dream’s just a small example. You needed to know that.”

  “Speaking of forgetting, will you tell me about Emmy Marhoun?”

  He wrapped his hands around a knee and cleared his throat. “Is that a formal question, Wyatt? You know the rules.”

  “Yes.”

  I went everywhere and saw astounding things, always accompanied by Strayhorn. He was my guide and instructor. I thought I understood his answers. He always appeared pleased with me and, as reward for my understanding, gave me more and more insight, perception, powers. He called them “gifts.” For a while I felt like a prodigy and was supremely hopeful. Why did other people have such a hard time understanding Death’s answers? To me they seemed logical and down to earth. I could not talk to Jesse Chapman or Ian McGann about what I was learning, but I secretly began to feel that perhaps they were both dense.

  My health stabilized, and so did theirs. With Strayhorn I visited wars and weddings; I walked through people’s minds as it they were museums. I walked through my own, alternately aghast and delighted. Did I live here? Is this how it really was?

  Besides being shown sides of life I knew few had ever seen or experienced, I was given more and more information as well as answers to my questions. I understood and ingested as much as I could, but taking it all in was impossible. There was too damned much.

  Outwardly, I made it look to Sophie and Caitlin Chapman as if I’d grown keen on Europe and, because I was feeling so much better, wanted to stay a while before returning to America. Jesse was reassured to hear I’d be around and found me a good, reasonably priced pension. He was also heartened to hear that Strayhorn said it would be all right for him to return to his job.

  One night Sophie and I went out to dinner alone. Afterward we walked to the Volksgarten and sat in the warm dark. We talked a long time. She asked me to fill her in on what had really been going on since we’d arrived. I said as much as I could, but after a while she knew I was holding important things back. Her silences became longer and longer. “Sophie, don’t be mad at me. You’ve got to understand—this stuff is so far beyond me and I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing or taking one wrong step. You know me; I’d tell you everything if I could, but I can’t.”

  “Is it good or bad that I got you involved in it, Wyatt? I worry about that all the time.” She put her head way back and closed her eyes.

  “I honestly don’t know. I think it’s good, but when I was first sick and had a remission after the early chemotherapy, I thought I was going to get well then and didn’t.”

  “ ‘How Much Can a Rabbit Pull?’ ” She brought her head slowly down and looked at me gravely.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My friend’s daughter is in fifth grade and had to do a science project. She made a kind of little wagon that fit onto the back of her pet rabbit, and kept putting more and more stones into it and giving the rabbit a pinch to see how much it could pull. That was her project. Now it’s yours. How much can Wyatt pull? I don’t know what I’ve done to you or whether I did anything at all. My brother’s back and is all right, but you’re staying here because now you’re having the dreams. God, I wish we were back in Switzerland together. I want to be on that hill we climbed, watching those skiers fly by.” She sighed and took my hand. “I love you, Wyatt. I want you to live a hundred years.”

  In life, Strayhorn had been the most well-informed person I’d ever known. In death he continued to be, but now he was also terrific
company. Brilliant yet easygoing, he was happy to talk about anything. My general impression was that he most liked just hanging around and chatting. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, but his calmness seemed proportionate to my understanding the answers. So long as that continued, both of us could take it easy for the time being.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  His casualness threw me off and lulled me into thinking things were somehow going to work out. His friendship, gifts, and frequent wonders sometimes let me not see the real circumstances of my life in the gloss and glare of all I was experiencing. His cosmic show-and-tell stopped me from remembering what was important or being vigilant about essential matters. He seduced me with charm, and like the most innocent, greedy child, I fell for it one hundred percent.

  Until I learned Ian McGann was dead.

  I had spent the night on Santorini, or rather my dreaming self had. At sunset Phil and I sat at an outdoor restaurant, drinking ouzo and eating freshly fried calamari, entertained by a staggeringly beautiful view over the purpling sea. The view was as rewarding as I had always imagined. My friend spoke of the volcano that had exploded here long ago, what it had done to the people, and how it had affected the way of the world for centuries afterward. My dreams were now so all-encompassing that I could smell the spicy evening air and feel rough pebbles under my bare feet. Strayhorn seemed as content as I to sit there silently and listen to the only sounds around us—the clank of silverware on plates, the sad faraway call of a single gull out over the water.

  As we were finishing, our waiter came up and spoke quietly to Strayhorn. I thought he was asking who should be given the bill, but Phil said nothing, just nodded once, and the waiter walked away.

 

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