Halfway through his junior year Simon got a nickname: The Ancient Mariner. His christening derived from an incident in a science class when the professor asked his flock to predict some outlandish development that might change life in time for the new millennium. Simon talked about the possibilities of technology discovering some alternative to fossil fuel or atoms as an energy source. Remembering back to an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Simon predicted the development of solar cells. The professor informed him that tapping into sun power was not exactly a new technology. “If your generation kept up with life beyond ‘Bette Davis Eyes,’ you might know something useful,” the professor said. “And I might get some satisfaction, from my profession. But it’s probably too late for your generation. Or is it degeneration? You’re happily mired in ignorance. The Chinese and Indians are going to cream us.”
That night Simon called home and found out the family’s second hand Britannica dated back to the 1940s.
He explained his obsolete discourse on solar energy to the professor before their next session, not expecting his story would be repeated to the whole class with the professor’s admonition that “There’s an important lesson to be learned here. Built-in obsolescence isn’t limited to washing machines and automobiles. Reference books are subject to the same corruption. Mr. Apple, if you’re interested in harnessing new energy sources, consider how young ladies sitting on stools at soda fountain counters swing their legs back and forth, forth and back. If that potential wattage could be channeled, the entire planet would glow like a Christmas ornament. So what do we do? We replace the soda fountains with shelves for more useless products. How many volts and ohms are being squandered right down the street? Please don’t accuse me of sexism. I’m trying to make a point. Creative is not a synonym for exotic.”
When word of his senile encyclopedia reference got around, The Ancient half of Simon’s nickname was immediately established. The Mariner part came when a girl whose advances Simon ignored told her friends that he gave her hives, that his eyes drifted, that they never made contact, that Simon Apple was like Sinbad the Sailor looking for shore.
Simon was pleased with the Ancient Mariner name tag; it was exactly the image he had of himself—an old sailor weathered by gales, drifting toward some shore or other without hullabaloo. The catchy nickname gave him enough campus notoriety to prove his existence to himself and a few others without the inconvenient startle of flashbulbs.
46
Simon realized how close he’d come to being saddled with another nickname, some terrible label like Ducky Lucky. In his freshman year he’d escaped early death several times from a series of unexplained accidents. Once a gargoyle fell from the chapel roof and missed hitting him only because he’d stopped abruptly to tie a shoelace. Not long after that, a moose head tumbled from its mounting on the wall of the library reading room spearing Simon’s chair with its massive antlers. Seconds before, Simon had left his place to get himself a drink from the water fountain. A week later, an abandoned van rolled down a steep grade and crushed Simon’s bicycle. Before impact, he’d jumped off the bike with the intention of adjusting its seat to protect himself from crotch rash. When flames shot out of a socket behind Simon’s bed and set fire to his mattress in the middle of the night, Simon dodged disaster because he’d fallen asleep in the study room cramming for an exam. After the alarm sounded, and by the time Simon stomped out the flames on his blanket and sheet, his bed and mattress were transformed to a pile of sticks and embers.
An investigation of the fire suggested that the socket showed possible signs of deliberate tampering. The blaze went on record as suspicious. Simon was asked by the police if he had anything against the college or any known enemies. He assured the investigators he felt nothing but affection for the college and had no knowledge of enemies.
Ms. Shelby Spaulding, already a senior, founder and president of the Wicca Society, a sympathetic girl Simon respected for her thoughtful comments in a speech about Affirmative Passivity—The New Feminism, told him his so-called accidents might be the work of a poltergeist. “All the signs are there,” Shelby said, “and we’re ready to help.”
“I’m not big on poltergeists,” Simon said. “Not into Tarot or I Ching or Voodoo, but I appreciate your offer.”
“There’s a full moon tonight. I invite you to join us as we gather to greet her. It’s a nice ceremony and the moon ends up owing us a favor in return for our hospitality. The Wiccans can use that favor to chase away your tormentor.”
“I don’t have a tormentor,” Simon said. “What I have is a series of coincidences.”
“There are no accidents, no coincidences,” Shelby said. “There’s only synchronicity. And powerful forces for good and evil at work all around us. Open your mind to new experiences, Simon. It’s what secondary education is about.”
That night, Simon stood wrapped in a toga made from his fire-ravaged sheet. Except for a few gaping holes and charcoal stains, that sheet was still usable. The fresh linens he’d requested from Rowena hadn’t yet arrived. There was enough left of the burned sheet to cover most of the army cot that replaced the lost bed, more than enough to preserve Simon’s modesty as he went to greet the moon.
Robed in white shifts, the good witches of Celadon College circled a skeptical Simon, their heads thrown back, their voices humming at a star-speckled sky. When the round moon revealed herself, sliding from behind a cloudbank, President Spaulding raised her arms as the Wicca maidens let their togas fall, joined hands, then knelt on the grassy turf. Simon took a quick survey of the variety of bodies surrounding him: thin ones, fat ones, middle-sized ones, each equipped with breasts of amazingly various shapes and sizes. Every moonchild was decorated with a unique tuft of pubic hair ranging from wispy to lavish. Simon had the secular thought that the pudenda might be a viable alternative to fingerprints for identifying unknown victims who happened to be armless.
The sweet natured Wiccans came to embrace him one by one, the last being Shelby who did a dance in the style of Martha Graham, then declared Simon sprite-free. The girls applauded, then dressed and dispersed.
“Was that so bad?” Shelby said. “How do you feel?”
“I feel good,” Simon said. “That’s a nice religion you’ve got there.”
“Do you like my body, Simon?” Shelby said. He remembered Miss Ulman asking a similar question. “You know, men’s eyes are better than mirrors for revealing truth.”
“That’s arguable,” Simon said. “But yes, I like your body, Shelby.” He was pretty sure he remembered which body was Shelby’s, the one with the curly pubes.
They walked together to a small park where a statue of Romulus Celadon stood facing the college he’d endowed. “That sculpture is a Zerminsky,” Shelby said. “You know Voltan Zerminsky? This is one of his first commissioned works. It’s worth a small fortune now.”
“You know everything, Simon said. “You belong on Jeopardy.”
“We could have sex,” Shelby said. “It would probably be a good idea. It might please the moon and add dimension to the ritual. But you can’t fall in love with me. Not unless you’d consider going to live in New Zealand. Because that’s where I’m going. Are you aware that when the terminal war starts, wind currents will carry radiation everyplace but New Zealand?”
“You think there’ll be a war?”
“With all the mental beanbags waiting to press pretty red buttons, how can you doubt it?”
“Well if you’re right, one of their missiles will probably end up in New Zealand. A little miscalculation, something like that. Collateral damage.”
“It’s better than living in a bulls eye. At ground zero. You know we keep our missile silos only a few hundred miles from here. So, tell me, do you want to hold me?”
“Under the Zerminsky?”
“Yes, in the daisy patch.”
“I never thought much about New Zealand,” Simon said, balancing temptation against apprehension.
“You se
em tense,” Shelby said. “Is it performance anxiety? Is it because I’m taller than you?”
Simon wasn’t concerned with his performance or Shelby’s dimensions. His problem was more complicated: Neither Dr. Fikel nor Dr. Trobe could guarantee that he was completely cured of any tendency to postcoital adhesion exaggerated by things metallic. The Zerminsky was solid bronze. There was a definite possibility of repeating the Camaro fiasco.
Because of that uncertainty, Simon hadn’t allowed himself to think about conjugating since his prolonged stay at Glenda Memorial but there was no graceful way to say no to Shelby Spaulding. A woman might choose to reject a man’s advances, but not vice versa.
He did ask Shelby to change her mind about the daisy patch since the Zerminsky looked too much like his father. She was entirely agreeable. They found a nearby pallet of deep grass behind a wall of privet.
Simon Apple and Shelby Spaulding lay together under the huge moon and things went very well. “Are you set on New Zealand?” he said between couplings.
“If it gets too crowded, there’s Tasmania,” Shelby said.
Later, back in his dormitory, ready to gloat, Simon called Dr. Herbert Trobe long distance to tell him about the poltergeist business, his submitting to the Wicca brigade, and mostly about his multiple mergings fairly near the statue of Romulus Celadon. “I didn’t even pick up a splinter,” Simon said, “Not so much as a bottle cap.”
“Frankly, you sound too excited,” Dr. Trobe said, then doubled Simon’s daily dose of Xanelul.
After Shelby graduated, Simon was celibate for the next three years. The Xanelul aka Harpacinimon kept him free of carnal thoughts. He couldn’t swear it was the moon but he remained accident free.
47
In the balmy spring of his senior year, on the night Daylight Savings Time went into effect, Simon prepared for the time change by going to sleep an hour earlier than usual.
Because of Xanelul he’d become addicted to his dream life. One bonus of the drug was to transform the theater of night into a house of magic; he’d been having a series of delectable dreams in the deepest dark and did not want a whole hour gouged from that pleasure. An extra sixty minutes of daylight was hardly an acceptable tradeoff, even for one sleep cycle.
That particular night of time’s abrupt advance was destined to become mythic in the history of Celadon College.
At three—formerly two—a.m. Simon found himself zipping like a darning needle across the artificial border that fractures the unity of all places, people, things. His Xanelul dreams allowed him to explore the infinite spectrum of time and tide. Each dream presented him with a stunning challenge he’d have to overcome before being allowed the privilege of another morning.
Simon usually settled on an identity and a quest within seconds after sleep, but on the night in question he hovered in a cloud of indecision, hesitant to commit, impatient, and frustrated by his reluctance.
The choice of a suitable role was made for him, very different from his usual exotic creations. He was himself, sitting alone in a huge concert hall looking down at an empty stage lit only by a single hanging bulb. An unknown man came striding into Simon’s dreamscape, disrupting its expected symmetry. Simon sensed that the stranger was some kind of undefined threat. Dressed in a formal outfit, the man removed a curious musical instrument from a case covered in alligator skin. Simon winced when he realized that the instrument’s strings were alive, twitching and swaying like stretched snakes.
The man announced that he was called The Minstrel and had been called to play and sing for Simon’s exclusive enjoyment, then began to pluck at the writhing instrument. The Minstrel tweaked reluctant strings that made amazingly sweet music despite their constant squirming, snapping and loud whispers of complaint. Then The Minstrel sang a ballad about a brutal, endless war between two nations whose people were identical images of one another. The lyric explained that the enemies were actually mirrors with flesh of fragile reflecting glass.
Gray, smoky clouds left The Minstrel’s mouth as he sang. Those clouds filled hollow space between the ceiling of sky and the hard, polished wood of the concert stage. The clouds gave way to The Minstrel’s song; his words and music hung like a curtain.
The Minstrel’s song of epic battles, with riffs that told of grand heroics, suddenly changed from a hymn of praise to a nonsensical cacophony of comical couplets. The Minstrel grabbed at his throat trying to silence himself but his rebel voice persisted in making a mockery of victors and vanquished, the wounded, dying and dead. The runaway voice flailed at the stupidity of even the most heroic and noble foot soldiers, the cupidity of their leaders, the ridiculous architectural arrogance of castles crumbling under withering cannon fire while kings and queens fornicated in puddles of blood that glowed in green phosphorescent light from catapulted flares.
Now the helpless Minstrel was attacked by the wriggling strings of his own instrument. He was being slowly strangled center stage.
Simon had enough of that performance. He struggled to find a quick exit from a dream that had become a nightmare, an especially disturbing turn of events since he’d gone to bed early with opposite expectations.
He left his aisle seat and dashed for the nearest door, rushing toward what he gradually recognized as his room lit by dawn’s early light. Relieved to be done with such feral entertainment, Simon yawned, got up and pissed a bucketful.
He didn’t yet know that he was the only resident of Celadon College who’d managed to get any rest that night.
At the precise moment The Minstrel made his debut in Simon’s head, other sleepers on the Celadon campus were wakened by ethereal, high-pitched music unlike any they’d ever heard. It was discordant but oddly compelling; there was no perceptible melody, no easily traceable tune, no obvious association with any familiar source.
The eerie concert began gently with chimes carried like snowflakes and feathers on the gentlest breeze. Chords entwined into a harmony subtle as the echoes of fermented fruit in the finest wine. Soon the music changed to a piercing organic wail like the howl of famished wolves. Then came booming drums that vibrated the ivy-covered bricks of Celadon’s gothic buildings. Branches of the maples, oaks and dogwoods that shaded its paths, swayed and bent like the limbs of modern dancers.
Lights blazed in window after window where students and faculty members, their own dreams disbursed, peered into the darkness seeking the phantom orchestra that wandered onto the college grounds. The security guards who patrolled Celadon’s perimeters began a search for perpetrators of what they believed to be a colossal practical joke. When they found no sign of any pranksters, they looked for hidden loudspeakers or suspicious wires inside clusters of rhododendrons, creeping carpets of hostis, hedges of yews, and banks of puff ball hydrangea.
The music stopped abruptly at sunrise.
48
The next day, that music was the subject of every conversation between sleep-deprived citizens of Celadon College as they staggered between classes. Simon overheard several of those conversations and—not atypical for a Liberal Arts major—actually found himself participating in a few without having the slightest idea of what caused all the commotion.
He quickly picked up on the fact that some errant nighttime noise had roiled students, instructors and professors. Simon wondered if that same interference had corrupted his formerly soothing and indulgent dream life though he’d heard nothing.
“I can’t believe you slept through all that,” Gerald Warren, a bassoonist with Celadon’s marching band whose room was across the hall from Simon’s, said, “You missed an incredible experience. It must have come from some mix of wind chimes, a Moog Synthesizer, maybe a Theramin. It was beautiful and strange, entirely global, an amalgam of liturgical, klezmer, baroque, folk, and Sousa. The kind of sounds you might expect if a Marilyn Monroe was singing Happy Birthday, Mr. President from inside a garbage disposal. Authentic, eerie, hypnotic, slightly disgusting, and you could say a trifle upbeat.”
�
�Maybe it came from a troubled owl,” Simon said. “Or what they used to call the Music of the Spheres. Planets rubbing together, something like that. Maybe a hot rod flying saucer cruised over Celadon with its portholes open. You should have taped it.”
“I tried. My batteries flaked out. Wouldn’t you know it.”
“There might be an encore,” Simon said.
“It was loud enough to wake a corpse,” Gerald said. “I can’t understand how you didn’t hear anything. You better have your ears checked. ”
What had been dubbed The Windchime Concerto repeated that very night; the music began at the identical ungodly hour of its first performance. This time, Gerald Warren had his tape recorder ready. He ran across the dormitory hallway and pounded on Simon Apple’s door.
“Ancient Mariner, your prediction was right on target,” Gerald roared. “We’re being treated to an encore. What the fuck does it take to wake you? Get the hell out of the sack. Stick your head out the window. Get with it. Feel the vibes.”
Simon was glad to be jolted awake by Gerald’s thick voice. In his dream, The Minstrel had materialized again. This time, Simon found himself bottled inside The Minstrel’s skin. It had the plastic texture of a Xanelul capsule. Gerald’s yelling split the wall that held Simon captive and let him break free. Half awake, he shook off leftover dream lint and went to the door where Gerald was pounding. “What encore?”
“It just stopped cold,” Gerald said. “Only a second ago it came on like gangbusters. I caught the overture. Gorgeous. Then the minute you came to the door, nothing.”
“Could I go back to bed now?” Simon said. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Which is really peculiar because it sounded to me like Rampal, Spike Jones and the Borah Minovitch Harmonica Rascals were having a convention in your room. Are you up to some shenanigans?”
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