Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

Schroeder works the levers on the handlebars. I continue to walk. “Give me my gun back,” he says.

  I pull it out and offer it to him, holding it between pinched fingers in disdain.

  He stops the bike and takes the gun. Stuffs it into his belt. “Did she tell you everything?”

  I ignore the question and resume walking.

  “What did she tell you?” He pulls alongside again, pedaling the ground with a dirty boot.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Why should I leave you alone?”

  “Because you’re an asshole.”

  “You going to turn me in?” He sends a wad of spit arching high in front of us, leans an elbow on the enormous gas tank, pedaling.

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “Because you’re an asshole.”

  “You tell on me and I’ll kill you.”

  I ignore him, keep walking.

  Schroeder lifts his foot from the road, kicks the machine into gear, and roars ahead. Then he swerves to the right and turns so that he is blocking the road, straddling his bulky machine like some grand iron horse.

  As I draw near he yanks the gun from his belt and levels it.

  I continue toward him.

  “Tell me where Sylvia is.”

  “No.”

  He keeps the gun leveled. “Tell me where she is!”

  I walk straight at him. And pass by. He revs up the machine and blows by me, then swerves and blocks the road. Again he levels the gun. “Where is she?”

  I walk straight at him.

  “Bang!” he shouts. “Bang bang bang!” He tucks the gun into his pocket, laughing, then revs up the bike and blows past. I slow my pace, expecting him to turn and repeat the charade. But he doesn’t. He just keeps going. Headed on his noisy machine in the direction of the interstate.

  Boethius, my parakeet, is singing loudly when I come home. He is always tuneful this time of day. Today his tone seems sweeter than usual. When I look into the cage I see that his seed dish is empty. Who says birds are dumb? Jane, the vet, gave me the parakeet as a present. Originally I wanted a crow. Then, for about a day, I considered getting a dog—until I realized that I couldn’t bring a dog with me to the library. Crows don’t make very good pets, Jane told me over the phone. A few days later she brought the parakeet. It’s yellow and speckled with white and has a touch of purple. Can I let it out of the cage? I asked. Not unless you want it to escape, she told me. Thus the name: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius—not that I expect the bird to discover the consolations of philosophy. Remaining alive will be fine.

  I fill the seed dish and water bottle. The cage hangs in a window, and Boethius has a nice view of the woods behind the house, brilliant now with autumn yellows and reds and browns.

  It’s Saturday. I have taken Mrs. Entwhistle’s old job at the library. She hired me for it after a little arm-twisting in the form of a small fund I established, the Mohr Trust. Any guilt I may have had for buying myself the job has disappeared. Mrs. Entwhistle and I work very well together. She moved into Mohr’s office one week after his funeral. Redecorated it. Hung curtains and potted plants. I preferred Mohr’s chaotic jungle of boxes and paper, but Mrs. Entwhistle has put her own imprimatur on the place. She has turned out to be quite a good head librarian. I have no complaints.

  I occupy the circulation desk five days a week, Tuesday through Friday, ten until six. Saturday from ten until two. It’s busy work, but I have come to like it. What I especially like is knowing what people are reading. It never occurred to me that I might come to know the town so intimately—the quiet, unseen, reading life of it, that is. I have even infiltrated it in my own small way. A shelf of my own favorite reading stands near the circulation desk, where I can watch people browse. It took some time to catch on. People were wary. But now the books are being borrowed (and returned!) at a fairly decent rate. Even Claudian’s Rape of Proserpine was finally borrowed, though it came back within a week and I have now returned that work by the last great pagan poet to obscurity in the classics section.

  I go into the kitchen, put some rice on to cook, uncork a 1989 Gevrey-Chambertin that Anderson got in last week. Two cases, one for him and one for me. The wine is as big and grand and robust as Anderson promised it would be. I sip it slowly; the strong bouquet opens my sinuses. The days, it seems, evaporate up my sinuses. I drink. I eat. I pretend I was never here. But the voices in my head dissuade me.

  Lucian?

  Yes.

  Horace?

  Also yes.

  William Blake?

  Him too.

  I reach for the telephone, dial a number. Then Boethius erupts in a chitter, and I put the telephone down and wander over to look at the bird. He cocks his head; a tiny bead registers my presence. I put my finger in the cage and he pecks at it for a moment, then loses interest.

  Huc omnes pariter venite capti

  Quos fallax ligat improbis catenis

  Terranas habitans libido mentes,

  Haec erit vobis requies laborum,

  Hic portus placida martens quiete,

  Hoc patens unum miseris asylum.

  Come hither all you that are bound,

  Whose base and earthly minds are drown’d

  By lust, which doth them tye in cruell chaynes.

  Here is a seat for men opprest,

  Here is a port of pleasant rest;

  Here may a wretch have refuge from his paynes.

  I forget about the telephone and return to the kitchen to finish preparing my dinner. Boethius, my exemplar, has nearly persuaded me to do away with telephoning altogether. But I still feel an occasional cramping. He has also persuaded me of something else, namely, that the elements that go into the making of a full life—food and drink and a modicum of sanity and the slow accretion over time of the tiny facts that define us—are easy enough to come by, but never to the full satisfaction of that shadowy self that lurks underneath all experience and that seeks its definition apart from and sometimes in contradiction to the world of facts. Some call it spirit or soul, but I think of it more concretely as an eponymous self: that entity within from whom we borrow our name and take our identity.

  I host these philosophical visitations less and less frequently these days. Boethius is my stand-in. I like to think of his little cage as my anteroom, where Lady Philosophy is received and detained. I run everything by the little bird first. It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

  Mrs. Entwhistle thinks she knows what I need. She doesn’t mind telling me either. Over the course of the last few months she has become bolder and bolder in her assertions. It started out with lessons on the organization of my work and proceeded, gently but with a certain preordained vigor, to encompass areas of my private life as well. Lately she has told me that I need to find a woman and marry. She can’t believe I can live alone as I do and be fulfilled or happy. I don’t invite her observations, but I don’t forbid them either. The other day I suspected her of trying to set me up.

  A woman came into the library with two young children, a boy and a girl, both of them somewhere between five and ten years old. I’ve never been a good judge of children’s ages. The woman sat the kids down in the children’s reading room and then went straight to my reserve shelf and began a thorough perusal of it. I watched her from the corner of my eye as I checked in the previous day’s returns and stacked them on the cart. The circulation desk—the heart of the library—is an apt metaphor. Everything passes by and through it. I now understand the peculiar obsession of librarians that nothing escape their notice.

  The woman selected a book from the shelf and hurried back to the children’s reading room. A short time later she appeared at my desk with the young girl.

  “Tell the man what we read,” she coaxed, then flashed me a broad smile. “This is Estelle. My aunt said you’d appreciate her gift.”

  I was only slightly surprised and beamed indulgently at the little girl. People, I’ve learned, are comfortable with and will confid
e almost anything to a librarian—all their eccentricities and obsessions. It’s one of the more fascinating aspects of the job. I leaned over the desk. The little girl gripped her mother’s hand, hung her head shyly.

  “Come on, Estelle, it’s okay. Remember what we talked about?”

  Estelle nodded.

  “She’s a little shy,” the mother said.

  I can see why, I wanted to say.

  Suddenly the little girl looked up at me—looked me straight in the eye. And began to recite. Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici—the entire first stanza of Horace’s epistle! Word for word in her little girl’s voice! No stumbling. No backtracking. Her pronunciation was awkward, but she didn’t seem self-conscious in the least. Then she finished the Latin and, without so much as a pause, recited the English. I immediately recognized the translation. It was my old copy of Horace. I had donated it to the library to put up on the shelf with all my other recommendations.

  Not to be awed to a stupor, Numicius, is almost the only

  Notion conducive to winning and holding mankind to a happy

  State of existence. This sun, and the stars, and the seasons in cyclic

  Changes: there are people who, in the face of these things, are not stricken

  Speechless with terror. What value, then, ought to be placed on the wealth of

  Earth, on the sea that enriches the farthermost Arabs and Hindus,

  or on the ludicrous games of applause and support of the voters?

  How do you feel we should look on such things and how ought we to treat them?

  Anyone dreading their opposites fares very nearly the same as

  One who is greedy to get them; his fear is distressful in either

  Case, and abrupt confrontation with either is vastly dismaying.

  Happy or sorrowing, dreading or coveting, what does it matter,

  If upon seeing things better or worse than he hoped, he just hangs his

  Head and does nothing but stand there dumbfounded in mind and body?

  Even a wise man is really insane, and the just man is unjust,

  Seeking for goodness and wisdom in quantities more than sufficient.

  When she finished she became shy again and looked away.

  “My daughter has a photographic memory,” the mother began, as if explanation were necessary. “My aunt told me you had one too.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “Mrs. Entwhistle. I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself.” The woman’s face colored slightly and she put her arm across her daughter’s shoulders and drew her near.

  I don’t know what the expression on my face communicated, but by the woman’s look it must not have been the benign, charmed look she had been expecting. Was it astonishment? Bewilderment? Disgust? I don’t know. “Thank you,” was all I could bring myself to say.

  The little girl peered up at me.

  “It’s all right, Estelle,” the mother said. “You can go play now.” The little girl detached herself and ran back to the children’s section.

  “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” the woman said. “I only meant …”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “I just thought …”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s fine. Really. I’m just a little surprised. Astonished.”

  “I hope you don’t think I go around showing her off.”

  “No. I didn’t think that.”

  “We’re here visiting my aunt. The kids and I.”

  “I see.” There was nothing I could think of to say. The woman stood there, somewhat awkwardly, for another minute. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something; just stood there, her fists jammed into the pockets of a bright red nylon windbreaker. She had an air of sporting good humor about her that apparently, I had just undermined. She seemed both delighted and bewildered by her daughter’s precocity—didn’t strike me as the sort who would exploit or show it off.

  “Did she pick it out?” I asked.

  The woman shook her head. “Not exactly. We picked it out at random. The poem. It wasn’t my idea, really. My aunt said you liked Horace.”

  “Does she understand the words yet?” As I spoke Mrs. Entwhistle walked past the reading-room door, waved at us with a knowing smile, and started upstairs.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised how much she understands,” the woman replied.

  They stayed in the children’s section for another half hour or so. Then came to say good-bye.

  “Say good-bye,” the mother instructed them, placing the volume of Horace on the reshelve pile.

  “Good-bye,” they chimed together.

  “Good-bye, Estelle.” I picked up the volume of Horace and offered it to her. “This is for you.”

  “Say thank you,” Mother chirped and took the book from me on her daughter’s behalf.

  “Thank you,” Estelle said.

  “Are you sure?” the mother asked me, hefting the book in her hand.

  I nodded.

  I was sure.

  A sharp wind picks up outside, a cold front moving in. Before she left the library this afternoon, Mrs. Entwhistle told me that a snowstorm might be on the way. She was worried about it, worried that snow would fall and winter would come upon us even before the leaves had fallen. It’s something I have come to like about her. That she worries. There’s a war brewing in Africa, and she worries about that. A two-year-old in California has been missing for a week. Weapons-grade uranium has been stolen from a facility in Russia. She has worried to me aloud on each of these topics, buttoning up her overcoat, wrapping her scarf around her head. Whenever she does, I try to imagine someone in China doing exactly the same thing, putting on an overcoat, preparing to go home, worrying about things beyond the horizon.

  I eat, finish the wine, and sit at the kitchen table for a time. Before going upstairs to bed, I cover Boethius’s cage.

  Someone is flying a kite up on the mound. It is a bright, windy Sunday morning. No snow. Not even a threat. The kite is flying high on the breeze, so high that it is hard to tell what color it is. Just a dark speck in the sky. The university van is parked at the base of the mound. I follow the path to the top and find Dr. Norris, the big-bellied archaeologist. He waves to me, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his beard.

  “Couldn’t resist,” he says.

  “It’s up there pretty high.”

  “Five hundred feet,” he says, indicating the empty spool of string at his feet.

  “You’re back to dig?”

  “Start tomorrow. Came up to make some measurements. Got distracted.” He plucks the cigarette from his mouth, drops it on the ground.

  “Still expect to find something?”

  “Besides a dead body, you mean?” He grins, fishes a cigarette pack from inside his down vest, shakes one out, and offers it to me. I accept, put it in my mouth.

  “Here. Hold on.” He hands me a short stick around which the kite line is wrapped. I take it, surprised by the force. The kite seems firmly anchored to the sky. I watch it, mesmerized, while Norris hunches over to light his cigarette. I return the line to him and he gives me his lit cigarette. I puff my own cigarette to light, return his. Norris plants it in the corner of his mouth and concentrates on flying the kite.

  I sit down in the grass, remembering a dream I had during the night in which I turned into a border collie after flying under the great arch in St. Louis.

  “What are you looking for?” I ask after a while. “More pipes?”

  “Maybe. It’s impossible to predict.”

  “You must have some idea.” The wind seems to be getting stronger. “What do you expect to find?”

  Norris turns his head so that the ash is blown from the cigarette in his mouth. The wind begins to blow in strong gusts. Norris squints up at the tiny speck sailing against the sky. Then, suddenly, he lets go. Line and stick are jerked from his hand. He watches the tiny kite float away, then turns to me. “Clues,” he says, indicating the ground at his feet. “All the way down.”


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