A Flash of Blue Sky

by Alon Preiss

  Instead, this one-celled organism does what all living things will always be intent on doing as long as life continues to exist: reproducing, so that Life will continue to exist. After a while, this cell’s descendants climb out of the soup, and all this evolving and reproducing leads directly to the creation of three distinct but related creatures: a small tree, no bigger than a weed, pops above the ground a few miles inland of the Chesapeake Bay in 1763; a Galapagos tortoise is born on a small island just off the coast of Ecuador 148 years later; and Daniel has his first good cry in an Upper West Side hospital 44 years after that. His parents smile and stare at the little red mass of wrinkled skin, marvel at the child they’ve always dreamed of and think little of the coincidental chain of events that has led to the creation of this unique being; a left turn instead of a right turn, a misunderstood glance when there happened to be time to kill, a sudden night of passion and one eager, energetic sperm with the energy to outswim all the rest. Whom might the others have become? Daniel’s parents don’t ask.

  The tortoise never wonders why it’s a tortoise and not a porpoise, or why there seem to be no other tortoises on this nearly deserted island; the oak tree never asks why it will live for 500 years while all the other acorns that fell that year will die or be eaten; but Daniel, alone among the three, wonders, and wonders some more, because he has been given a human’s capacity to wonder and die unfulfilled.

  Daniel’s mother, a sentimental type, tries to find God in her own backyard. She might look about at the green of English meadows and breathe in the aroma of cow-shit and insist that she can see and smell God in the pastures. With so many marvels in nature, she tells Daniel, there must be a moral order to the Universe; only later, after being taught biology and evolution, will Daniel realize that his own mother consciously overlooks the immorality of the natural order that her God has supposedly created. Her beautiful vision must ignore the prevalence of carnivores.

  Those with scientific training, such as Daniel’s father, point out that everything developed in just such a way as to support Life, and marvel at the mathematical coincidences that abound in every nook and cranny of the Universe. They will fail to recognize that the Universe might have developed in any number of other miraculous ways; and they will ignore the fact that any Reality with conscious observers must be the result of seemingly miraculous occurrences. ‘Life exists, therefore God exists’; this is not a foolproof syllogism. Daniel, throughout his life, rejects meaning for lack of a foolproof syllogism. His parents die at a young age; the syllogism eludes them.

  The tree eventually wins praise and honor as the oldest oak in the state of Maryland; the tortoise grows large and ever-more patient as the years pass; Daniel lands a lucrative job as an attorney and specializes in industrial waste lawsuits. On the day of Daniel’s marriage to Natalie, the oak tree is declared a national monument, and the tortoise hears bellowing, perhaps a mating call, coming from the other side of the island. Daniel smiles and beams and wonders a bit sadly whether he’s begun to look like his father; the tortoise, even so subtly, changes course; while the oak tree’s sudden fame brings no adjustment to its life-style.

  The day Daniel retires from the firm at some respectable age to face infirmity and death, the tree receives a plaque, which it accepts with its usual stoicism. The tortoise takes a month off to rest before returning to his journey; he does, however, bellow majestically each morning to let his betrothed know he has not forgotten her. She bellows back, tenderly.

  As the life leaves Daniel’s body the tree spouts a new branch, barely even visible. The tortoise spots his first lover off on the horizon, a tiny bellowing dot. And when Daniel is in his grave, as the last ounce of flesh falls from his bones, the oak tree’s new branch makes a hesitant stretch towards the light of the still radiant sphere of gas, while the tortoise finally learns the release of copulation. The next day, he and the female go their separate ways.

  Daniel is remembered occasionally, until only fading photographs remain. A teenage boy playing Dare poisons the tree, and the news of its death appears on national television. (Daniel cannot imagine a Future without the hegemony of television.) The tortoise repopulates the island and leaves an empty shell lying motionless on the very beach where he finally found a mate.

  Years, generations, aeons later, Daniel’s descendants bard space-ships and make the thousand-year journey to the next star; the sun, sometime thereafter, expands to a massive state in which it envelopes the planets; the solar system glows an angry red, and the human race looks back and smiles at all they have escaped. The tortoise’s descendants die in a boiling sea.

  The sun collapses, then gradually cools, leaving behind a cold and charred solar system. The black hole in the center of the galaxy grows, and eventually the entire galaxy coalesces into a massive black hole, at the rim of which may still exist the remnants of civilization. This galactic black hole, radiating more energy than it absorbs, eventually evaporates, and the universe continues to expand, to float outward, pushing at the barriers of nothingness; dead, shrunken stars, electrons and protons and bits of dust float through the emptiness of space. Somewhere, perhaps, a vastly evolved civilization exists in a closed, floating sphere, creating life out of a dead Everything, telling legends about the days before the universe was a cold, forbidding place, and never quite believing any of it. Somewhere, in some forgotten corner of one human mind, may exist some untapped genetic memory of Daniel’s life and of the things that once made him smile.

  Billions of years after the initial explosion that created all that is, the Universe begins a long decline, eventually collapsing in on itself, squashing all Life in an instant. Everything gone; no consciousness, no heat, no light, no empty space, no Time. Nothing; that anything had ever existed is revealed, for no one to see, as a fluke.

  Some insist, today, that the purpose of existence is to create around oneself a moral order that might continue even if each individual does not; but romantic notions of one’s life, one’s love, the happiness one had once found, all continuing to exist in a meaningful way through a kind of universal or cultural memory that makes the universe a better place can certainly be nothing more than some atheistic attempt to find some solace in the face of impending oblivion; the destruction of the individual, of the human race, of Life itself, of the Universe, of time, of space.

  “That’s all?” Natalie said, smiling. “That’s it? You’re worried that you’re going to die.”

  “Well,” Daniel muttered. “I thought I had put it in a somewhat more thoughtful manner.”

  “But Daniel,” she laughed. “That’s all you’re saying. Everyone dies, OK?” She reached out to pat him on the knee. “Don’t let a thing like that worry you.”

  Daniel grumbled. “The universality of the experience isn’t something that makes me feel any better. If I knew for sure that we would all be hurtling together in free fall, as our sins are judged, then, sure, having you along would make me feel better. But knowing that my ultimate fate might be oblivion and that everyone else will also be oblivious is not comforting.” He blinked, and then he blinked again.

  “First of all,” Natalie said, “I think the collapse of the universe isn’t the current scientifically accepted theory. No big crunch. I think it’ll just keep expanding until the stars are so far away you can’t see them anymore, until the universe is just cold and dead, and so are all of us. And secondly, since I don’t intend to spawn with you, I’m not sure why there’s any genetic memory of you left in that far-future outpost, but it’s a nice thought. A pretty idea. You’ll be even more extinct than you imagine. Gone without any trace.”

  “I guess that’s a good point. More depressing that I had imagined.”

  “But we’re atheists, darling!” Natalie insisted. “Don’t you remember? You and me, we don’t believe in God. On the plus side, we don’t have to daven, but on the minus side, life has no meaning. We’re sort of ... I don’t know, I think we try to be good people, as well as we can within ou
r own personal ethical systems, but if you’re looking for some sweeping, black-and-white, right-and-wrong, angels with harps and puffy clouds sort of philosophy … I mean, I believe in moral relativism, not the sort of – ”

  “Natalie,” he said, “I wanted to sit down and work through a couple of my anxieties, not listen to a treatise on humanism.”

  “Look, Danny,” she said. “For what it’s worth, you have a good job, a nice car. Can you disagree? People say, a beautiful wife, right? This is what you’ve insisted that you want, and you have it. You’re lucky.” Now she grew impatient. “I fell in love with a man who saw a beautiful painting everywhere he looked, a man with a mind like a song. Suddenly you decided to change, Daniel, and you wanted something else. I’ve had to adjust to that. Now that you’ve gotten what you set out to get – well, for goodness sake, be happy when you look at your life.”

  A shadow seemed to fall across his face, but when he spoke again he just sounded more plaintive: “You can’t just tell a person to be happy, Natalie.”

  “How is death relevant to your situation right now? Because someone died, and now you realize that you will die, too? Is this news to you? Well, my friend, you remain rather unlikely to die anytime soon, but completely certain to die eventually. Exactly the same as it was before Henry died. Nothing is different. Why are you trying to pretend otherwise?”

  “You’re an artist,” Daniel said. “I thought you were the person I could talk to about this.” He gestured around the room. “Look, you’re an artist whose subject matter is death.”

  His wife shook her head. “I try to describe inhumanity and destruction and misery. That’s not what I think of when I think of death …. Look, death isn’t clouds and sunshine, and it isn’t fire and pain. It’s sort of a flat ocean, clogged with rotten algae, under a gray sky, and you just float there exactly fifty feet below the surface, and you just don’t care anymore, you can’t feel it, you can’t hear it. There are no fish, no nothing. No light, no air. You just float there, not existing at all, in this wet darkness. That’s where you were fifty years ago, and that’s where you’ll be in another fifty years. You have this little glimmer of light and air, a flash of blue sky, just a little taste of it to enjoy. So enjoy it. That’s the word for how to deal with the tiny glimpse of life you get between these two great dark bookends.”

  He sat there thinking.

  “Don’t try to manufacture a crisis,” she said, “just because you think you should be feeling worse than you really are. Henry was sort of a jerk; in a lonely moment, he was a momentary friend. Not ‘friend,’ I guess. Comradely colleague? Something less than a friend. Then he was gone, and quite naturally you feel less than heartbroken. You cannot mourn every death in the world. Do you know how many people die every second? And with every death, an entire world is destroyed, right? Isn’t that what they taught you in yeshiva? But who can live that way? Apathy is natural. Listen. Maybe next time around you’ll be a paramecium. That sounds like fun, right? Swim around all day bumping into things. Every time you masturbate you have a new friend.”

  He said nothing.

  “Come on, Daniel. I am making a joke, and not laughing is just impolite when you know someone is making a joke. At least try to laugh. No one chose this life for himself.”

  Daniel stood up. He picked up his overcoat from the floor. “The hell with it.”

  Natalie stood up also and followed him to the door. “Wait.” She ran to her purse and hunted through it. Finally she extracted a business card. “This is my friend who runs the gallery. Give her a call She goes to see this guy, he’s not a psychic, really.” She glanced up at Daniel. “OK, look, I don’t believe this for a second, but it seems like maybe he would be the only kind of person you could talk this problem out with. A psychiatrist wouldn’t give you any answers, because psychiatrists aren’t supposed to bullshit us. Even a rabbi wouldn’t have the balls to promise you eternal life anymore, and I know that’s what you want.”

  “So who is this guy?” Daniel asked. “Who’s going to solve all my problems?”

  “Well,” she said, nervous. “He’s a sort of psychic who communicates with the spirit of Jack Benny.” She stopped him before he could interrupt. “You always liked Jack Benny. As a little kid, remember, you watched Jack Benny on television, and you fell asleep to his voice. Remember, when you went down South and everyone beat you up, you watched Jack Benny on TV because he was the only Jew around and because that was one thing that was the same as New York. Jack Benny. He helped you when you were a little boy, maybe he can help you now.”

  “But that’s not the point...”

  “I don’t personally believe it,” she said again. “But I’m satisfied with ambiguity. You’re the one who needs to be spoon-fed somebody’s idea of paradise because, I don’t know, your knees ache or something these days. Maybe he’ll convince you. Maybe he’ll talk you into believing, and then you’ll have faith, and you’ll be completely happy for the rest of your life.”

  “That stuff,” Daniel said. “It’s like a cult.”

  She touched him on the cheek. “Oh, Daniel. Anything that makes you feel better is OK, so long as you don’t crash afterwards or have a sudden heart attack. I don’t want answers; I don’t want to know the point of things, because I am quite sure there isn’t one. But if suddenly you want answers and a point to your life, you won’t get that by being rational. Give him a call, OK? And snap out of it.”

  Where was he now, and where had he come from? Susan found herself wondering over the course of the next week; she found herself often thinking of Joren. He had seemed hardly human, supernaturally beautiful and supernaturally calm. Susan could not believe she had met him and forgotten; she could not believe he had met her and remembered. When she shut her eyes, she saw Joren’s face, his kind, nearly laughing eyes. He had seemed to know something that comforted him all the time. When she went to sleep at night she dreamed of Joren, this man with whom Susan now thought she had fallen in love. Perhaps at first sight. Could she have fallen in love with Joren in the bar, or earlier, in the movie line, or even earlier, at that party she barely remembered attending? Somehow (and this theory she couldn’t understand at all) she thought she had fallen in love with Joren, anonymously, the first night that Daniel had shared her big bed. Perhaps that was why had she followed Joren though the night against all her best city instincts, and why her irrational hatred had melted so suddenly into such unadulterated tenderness. But had he really been at the restaurant that night, and at the movies, or had ethereal Joren somehow been with always?

  She needed to discuss this with a friend, and she made an unlikely choice. On Wednesday she called Daniel at work. She heard him shouting at his speaker-phone. Tell her I’m not in, he said. Tell her I’m at a meeting in New Jersey.

  That night, she sat in the library, plowing through books with an unusual intensity, thick treatises filled with unfamiliar words and absurd, complicated ideas. Around midnight, tired and hungry, she wandered across Amsterdam Avenue to a little deli, where she witnessed a peculiar scene. This is what happened:

  The one-eyed Arab who worked the night stretch was there all alone. Susan ordered a chicken salad sandwich. He said, all right, professor. He called her “professor.” She didn’t know why.

  A young, unwashed man entered the deli and stood immediately behind Susan. I would like boiled cabbage, the man said, and he burst into laughter. The Arab looked up nervously. Then he looked down and chopped some lettuce for Susan’s sandwich.

  You are the best grocer in the world, the man said. You know that? The best grocer in the world. And you know the funny thing? the man added, beginning to laugh again. The funny thing is, you don’t even know it.

  The man continued to laugh. The grocer nodded.

  I would like boiled cabbage, the man said again.

  “I am not the best grocer in the world,” the Arab confided to Susan, handing over her sandwich. That will be $2.50, he added. He scratched his eye-patch, the
n glanced back at the young man.

  What of André, the Arab asked suddenly. What has become of André?

  The young man laughed.

  André is dead, he said. And you are the best grocer in the world.

  The Arab’s face froze for a moment in horror. Then he handed Susan her change. She thanked him and left the store, went back to her apartment, ate her sandwich, then lay in bed and watched the news on cable TV for a while. A Latin American leader had declared war on the United States, a white supremacist group had successfully letter-bombed an American judge. Susan said, “I wish I could find proof positive that there is no God.” The phone rang, and the answering machine clicked on. “You know,” said Rachel, on the answering machine. “I think maybe I’ll start up with Joe, if it’s all the same to you.” Susan turned up the television volume. United States backed terrorists had killed eleven Nicaraguan farmers, and Nancy Reagan had just published a new book.