Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  Mohr falls silent for a moment. He lifts his glass to his lips and considers his response as though taking up a challenge. “Six months ago I was. Yes.”

  “And now?” Since I have broken the ice I want to see how far I can pursue the conversation.

  He holds his glass in his lap. “When I thought the clock was running out, was set to stop on a given day, in a given month. In a given year. It was much easier.”

  “When limits were set, you mean?”

  “They gave me seven months to a year. Of course, they hedged and said anything was possible. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Doctors will make a prognosis and disclaim it all at once. Anyway, the general opinion was that I wouldn’t last more than a year.” Mohr grins the same way he did out on the porch. “And now they say I’m in remission. So in a way, it’s like it was before I was sick. Except I’m still sick. I don’t think I can explain it very well.”

  I refill my glass and offer to refill Mohr’s. He pauses to consider, then slides his tumbler across the table. “I don’t drink.”

  “I’ll get you some water if you like.”

  “No. The wine is,” he sips and smiles so that his face flushes red, “delicious.”

  It is close to midnight. Mohr is asking me questions.

  “You live here alone?”

  I nod.

  “I live alone too. Now …”

  A pause hangs between what he has said and what he would like to say. He drinks. I imagine the secrets that are contained in his silence and decide not to pry them out into the open. My intuition will fill in the blanks, as his will have to fill in mine. It’s a civilized arrangement. I would never have settled for it on the telephone, that wonderful blunt instrument. But I can’t put aside my curiosity about his condition. His affliction.

  “How much longer do you think you have?

  Mohr thinks for a moment. “I don’t know. The doctors say it’s a miracle that I’m alive and that I can still take care of myself. I’ve had a place reserved in a hospice for months. But I can still get around on my own. So why hurry?”

  “But what do you think?”

  “I can’t say. I’ll just keep going for as long as I can, and then I simply won’t be anymore. If I were religious, maybe I’d think otherwise. Religious people are supposed to have a leg up on death. I guess it’s because of their faith that something exists beyond it. I think it’s exactly the opposite.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s their fear that inspires them. I believe that fear of death is an expression of a sort of contempt for the world, for nature.”

  “How so?”

  Mohr clears his throat and recites, “And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defense / Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. And I never bred. So there.” A long pause ensues that features the battering of flying insects against the screen door. “I don’t believe in God—not the Christian one anyway.” He waves his hand to dismiss the topic, then sips more wine and continues in spite of himself. “Heaven, being saved, the afterlife, fear of death, danse macabre, and all that kind of thing. It’s medieval.” His mouth makes a clacking sound, a labial, dental, skeletal blend of noises as he talks. “In my humble opinion, the modern, scientific, atheistic sensibility is a great improvement over that squalid medieval frame of mind.” He pauses for a moment, then adds in a stuffy, stoic British accent, “It’s a damn shame we have to go. Rather a waste of time, don’t you think?” He pauses to drink, then resumes his normal voice. “Do you watch television?”

  “No.”

  “How we worship life and the body today!” Mohr grins. “You see these young, healthy, strong people leading young, healthy lives. No fear, no thought of the end. Just infinite, sunny optimism. A wonderful illusion, a world like that.”

  “A banal world.”

  Mohr waves away the remark, lifts his glass. “I love it. The illusion! Television! Especially the advertisements.” His head bobs slightly. “They promise everything, and they deliver. In this world, here, not some other. And it’s a wonderful, beautiful illusion.”

  “What about all the violence?”

  “Violence?” He laughs and waves with a theatrical flourish. “It’s all fake! Nobody dies. It’s a pageant. A danse macabre! A world riddled with corpses—and death is entirely absent from it.” He pauses for another grin. “I find it—wonderful! All illusions are wonderful.”

  “Except the illusion that there is a God and life after death.”

  “Exactly. That’s a dirty, rotten, nasty illusion.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  “You want to know the difference between religion and television?”

  “Is there one?”

  “Television you can turn off.” He laughs.

  I refill his glass. “I’ve never talked to a dying person,” I confess after another silence.

  Mohr holds his glass in both hands, eyes alight with wine. “Nor have I,” he says. “Of course, there are all these groups you can join and therapies designed especially for people in my condition. But I don’t bother with any of it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because dying is not a personal problem.”

  “What is it if not personal?”

  “I don’t know. But I am compiling a bibliography.”

  “How practical! Of what?”

  “Of death. I have over one thousand titles.”

  “Sounds like therapy to me.”

  Mohr shrugs. “It’s something to pass the time.”

  “Will you publish it? As a form of transcendence, I mean.”

  Mohr chuckles. “I hadn’t thought to. But I like the idea.” He tilts his glass and peers into it. “Tell me something, Quintus Horatius Flaccus.” He fixes his eyes straight on me. “How did you become such a morbid asshole?”

  There are four Schroeders in the telephone book: E. C, Frank and Thelma, J., and Schroeder’s Shoes. Reflecting on the pros and cons, I decide to take Mohr’s advice to recover the notebook myself. It’s a matter of principle. Mohr convinced me of it last night before he passed out.

  The foundation of a friendship seems to have been laid between Mohr and me, which is strange since neither of us seems much inclined toward making friends. “I was born a morbid asshole,” I told him. “I don’t know anything else.” He laughed until a bout of coughing overtook him. I opened another bottle, and the conversation veered toward the intimate—then crashed there and exploded into the quaintly restrained maudlin. “Don’t call me gay,” he said with put-on indignation. “I’m too old to be gay. I’m homosexual.” Then he told me that he had lived with someone in town for years, a man named Bill.

  “What happened?”

  “He moved to Chicago. We used to visit each other, but over the years we’ve drifted apart. He has his life and I have mine.”

  “You aren’t sick with AIDS, are you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just good old-fashioned cancer. And a touch of emphysema. I used to chain smoke.”

  “Why didn’t you go to Chicago with Bill?”

  “I didn’t want to live in a big city, and I liked my job here.” Then, 71 a pause, “In spite of everything I am actually comfortable living here. I know it’s hard to believe. I’ve lived here twenty-five years.”

  We went out on the front porch. I offered him the rocker, but he declined, so I took it. He walked to the far end of the porch, holding the almost empty wine bottle by the neck. With his wig askew and leaning against the corner post for support, he cut a quaintly pathetic figure. We didn’t speak. His happy delirium made words unnecessary. A short while later he staggered inside and collapsed on the sofa in the front room. “Don’t leave it to the cops,” he muttered before passing out. “Get the notebook back yourself. And give the boy a good thrashing.” I covered him with a blanket and left him to sleep. This morning when I came downstairs he was gone.

  I dial the first Schroeder. Three ring
s. “Hello?” An old man.

  “Is this the residence of E. C. Schroeder?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m looking for Tom.”

  “Tom?”

  “Tom Schroeder.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “Are you any relation to Frank and Thelma?”

  “Who?”

  “Frank and Thelma Schroeder. On Ivy Street.”

  “Never heard of ’em.”

  “They’re listed in the phone book.”

  “You trying to sell me something, mister?”

  “No. I’m trying to locate somebody. Tom Schroeder.”

  “Let me give you some advice, son.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You want Tom Schroeder? Call Tom Schroeder’s house. Listen to me, son. You want Thelma? Call Thelma. Did you say Fred?”

  “Frank.”

  “Call Frank. I’m Earl. Now, you want to talk to me, fine. I’ll talk to you all goddamn day long. But don’t go calling Earl when Tom’s the one you want to talk to.”

  “Thanks, Earl.”

  I dial Thelma and Frank. No answer.

  Next I get a machine. “Hi. This is Jerry. Leave a message and I’ll call you riiiiiight back.”

  I hang up. Schroeder’s Shoes is last on the list.

  “Schroeder’s Shoes can I help you?”

  “I’m trying to locate Tom Schroeder.”

  “Tom?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s not in today. You want to leave a message?”

  “No. That’s all right. Will he be in tomorrow?”

  “He’s usually here every day.”

  “Oh? How long has he worked there?”

  “He’s the owner.”

  “The owner? How old is he?”

  “Tom? I don’t know. I never asked him.”

  “Does he have a son named Tom?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Never mind. Does he have a son named Tom?”

  “Look, mister. I have a customer on the floor. I can’t talk.”

  In the kitchen I fill a glass with water and go outside onto the porch to sit in the rocking chair. The morning sun has already pushed the temperature from comfortable to warm, and I am hung over. I close my eyes, feeling the seismic waves of headache at the back of my brain. Getting drunk with the head of the local library now feels a little unseemly, a prelude to future embarrassment.

  I go inside for a second glass of water. The phone beckons to me from its cradle.

  “You want the definition of illusion?”

  “Just tell me what you think in your own words.”

  “An illusion?”

  “Yes.” I watch a fly bang against the window screen trying to get outside. The noise is like that of a poorly resonating harp string. Does it crash against the screen eye first? Is it trying to break through to the outside? Does it see the screen? I walk over for a closer look. Cradling the phone on my shoulder, I raise the screen. The fly sails out.

  “An illusion is something that isn’t there, but you think it is.”

  “Okay.”

  “That all?”

  “Go on if you like.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Horace.”

  “Horace who?”

  “Quintus Horatius Flaccus.”

  “Very funny. Why did you call me?”

  “To ask you a question. That’s all.”

  “You don’t think it’s a little weird?”

  “Weird?”

  “Yes. Calling up complete strangers and asking what illusion means.”

  “I ask other questions too.”

  “How broad-minded of you.”

  “And I didn’t ask what illusion means. I asked what you think an illusion is.”

  “And I just told you. Something you think is there and isn’t. Wait a minute, I’ll go get the dictionary.”

  I lower the screen and stand looking out the window into the back woods. The woman returns to the phone. “Here. It says, ‘illusion: (a) an erroneous perception of reality; (b) an erroneous concept or belief; 2. The condition of being deceived by a false perception or belief.’ Just like I said.”

  “How can a belief be false?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A belief. How can it be false?”

  “That’s a pretty dumb question.”

  “Then tell me what a false belief is.”

  “Something you think is true but isn’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like ghosts. You can believe in them all you want, but it doesn’t mean there are such things.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because there just aren’t. Everybody knows there aren’t.”

  “But if you believe in them and, say, something wakes you up in the middle of the night and you believe it was a ghost. What woke you up?”

  “A noise. The cat maybe.”

  “It wasn’t a noise. It was just a feeling. I was scared. Can a feeling be false?”

  “Are you saying that if you believe in ghosts, then ghosts exist?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m just wondering what a false belief is. Or a false feeling.”

  “It’s an illusion. A false belief is an illusion.”

  “A false feeling too?”

  Sure.

  “Is a dream an illusion?”

  “Of course. They only exist in your head.”

  “So an illusion is something that can only exist in your head?”

  “Yes. And an illusion of yours sure can’t exist in my head.”

  “Says who?”

  “Listen, who’d you say you were again?”

  “Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Horace.”

  “Listen, whoever you are. Don’t you think you should get a little help?”

  “Help?”

  “Yes. You sound disturbed, bothered. Maybe you should go talk to somebody.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “I don’t mean calling people up and asking them stupid questions. I mean professional help.”

  “Did I ask a stupid question?”

  “No, it was a very interesting question. But I think you might have a problem.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. Why else would you call up a perfect stranger?”

  “You’re right about that. I do have a lot on my mind.”

  “So you agree.”

  “Agree to what?”

  “That it’s a little weird calling people up to ask what an illusion is.”

  “Sure it’s weird. But it’s interesting. Ever hear of the Oracle of Delphi?”

  “What?”

  “The Delphic Oracle.”

  “No.”

  “The ancient Greeks used to go to Delphi and ask the oracle questions.”

  “And I’m the oracle?”

  “No. The telephone is.”

  “Oh, how fun. You’re weird, Horace. Get help, and good luck. I have a tennis game. Bye.”

  She hangs up before I can ask what number I’d dialed. Too bad. I would have called her back. Despite the cheerful optimism that put her squarely in the camp of those sunny positivists I so despise, I would have liked to talk to her some more.

  I reach for my Selected Philosophical Essays and thumb through it. I’ve always bridled at the notion that “help” is available for every human predicament. I won’t say “problem” because the word belongs to a vocabulary I prefer to steer clear of. There is no arithmetic of human emotions—problem + help = solution. And I’m suspicious of the “happy consciousness” that is the desired outcome of so much help. My instincts tell me something is wrong. If life is guided by the reality principle, it seems to me that serenity is a more appropriate goal than mere happiness. Happiness is fleeting and too easily confused with pleasure—which elevated to a principle creates the seesaw of discontent that Freud had all of civilization teetering on. Why make life so complicated? S
erenity is a state achievable only when all contingencies have been dissolved. A completely autonomous life is free of contingency and requires nothing to sustain it.

  So I’m a morbid asshole. So what?

  I put the book away.

  The sun is shining directly onto the porch. My headache seems to be getting worse despite my efforts to rock it gently away. I go inside for some aspirin. The bathroom mirror reflects a gaunt-faced stranger, blank and bloodshot.

  I strip and climb into the bathtub. There is no shower nozzle, just a handheld rubber attachment. A blast of cold water, a quick, shivering lather. I rinse quickly, washing the soap from my tightened skin like a thin film of white paint. I climb out, toss my clothes into the tub, and begin to wash them. A sudden mania for laundry sends me through the house gathering more clothes and sheets and towels to wash. Kneeling over the tub, I try to pretend I am by the side of a clear, rock-strewn stream on Horace’s farm outside Rome two thousand years ago—sun shining, world twittering over my head and all around.

  Out in the backyard I try to fit all the wash onto the clothesline. I am bare chested, wearing a pair of cut-off shorts. The ground is cool against my feet, the sun directly overhead and shining strongly from a deep blue, cloudless sky. I hang the sheets up first. They shiver on the line and bring to mind backyard images of domestic life that are soothing in a folksy sort of way. The picture is framed by the woods at the bottom of the yard; the little yellow clapboard house; the chain-link fence that encircles the neighbor’s property, dividing the citadel of discarded appliances and toys from who knows what; a rusty red-and-white reclining lawn chair set like found sculpture in the middle of the yard—three tattered, procumbent planes ratcheted into odd but supple angles. And the laundry going up on the line.

  My hands swollen white with detergent and water, I wring each item before hanging it up, trying to get the last drop of water out, straining my pectorals with each squeeze. There are no clothespins, so I have to balance everything carefully.

  “Heard you had a visitor last night.” The voice startles me. I turn to see Detective Ross standing almost directly behind me. He breaks into a sweaty grin. “Sorry if I made you jump.”

  I step back from the line, wipe my detergent-swollen hands on the back of my shorts, and glance at the detective. He is wearing the same blue seersucker I saw him in last time, the same inquiring grin, and a panama hat. “What can I do for you?”