The thin man asked, "What is earth?"
David looked at him a long moment. "You don’t understand me, do you?"
"Not so much that you’d notice," the man answered. "But I want to. I need to. I think you have many wonderful things to tell us. I’ve got this theory—it’s only a theory, you understand; and what is a theory but guesswork based on logical assumptions?—and my theory has it that we have all lived before." He paused. "No one believes it, of course. Show us the evidence they tell me. But what can I show them? My theory isn’t based on evidence, not in the way that—"
"I have nothing to tell you," David cut in. "Nothing at all." And he turned from the man and walked in the direction of the woman in the hollow. As he walked, he took notice of his bare legs and feet, then that he was wearing shoes and pants, then that there were sleeves covering his arms.
He felt pressure on his shoulder. He stopped. The thin man with the mop of unruly hair was behind him; the dark mask of his face was nodding.
"Oh, but you do have much to tell us. You do. You have no idea. You probably don’t know it, but I’m here to tell you that you do; I’ll lead you along."
"I’m looking for my sister," David said flatly.
"What is that?" the man asked, and his voice was filled with enthusiasm. "What is sister?"
"But you barely speak my language, do you," David said, as if the man’s comment had been proof that there was no hope of communication. "And if I can’t see your face, either—"
"You can’t? I knew it, I knew it. I’ve always thought that you people saw us precisely the way we see you. And that’s something I’ve talked with the others about, too, and you know what they told me—’What difference does it make?’ they told me. ‘What difference does it make?’ Can you believe it? I mean, you people are everywhere. Turn around, and there you are, staring at us through all that . . . stuff." He waved his hands in front of David’s face. "Do you mind if I touch it? I’ve always wanted to touch it." He touched David’s cheek. "Aha, that’s you under there, isn’t it?" He withdrew his hand; it disappeared into the darkness that covered his own face. "Feels the same," he whispered.
"You speak in gibberish," David said, suddenly angry at the man’s rambling talk.
The man would not be deterred. "It’s wonderful, don’t you see? You say that I speak in gibberish, but I can’t say the same thing to you. You are a . . . a teacher. Do you know that?" He was close to incoherent in his enthusiasm. "I have talked to so many of you . . . faceless ones." He paused. "Does that offend you? Tell me. I’ve wondered. Does it offend you to be called faceless?" He shrugged. "I wouldn’t be offended if that’s what you called me. It’s only a matter of perception, after all. Neither of us is actually faceless to the extent, I mean, that we have no face. Each of us does indeed have a face."
David said, looking hard into the darkness that covered the man’s face, "Christ, this is like talking to a goddamned ghost."
"Ghost. Yes," the man nearly shouted. "I’ve heard that word. Tell me about it. Tell me about ghost. And goddamned, too. I’d like to know about that. We have people here who use that word a lot. I mean, they walk around saying goddamned this, and goddamned that—"
David cut in, "I’m sorry. I don’t have the time to be your day’s amusement." And again he turned away and started walking in the direction of the woman in the hollow. She was much, much closer than he remembered; he didn’t remember walking that far. He was nearly one of her crowd of listeners, now. He stopped walking. He looked at her. She grew; the crowd grew, as if he were quickly drawing closer. Then she stopped growing. The crowd stopped growing. It shrank. He was at a good distance again. And he thought, This is like walking in a dream.
"Yes," the man said behind him. "We dream. Do you dream, too?" And David realized that he had said aloud what he supposed he had only been thinking. The man hurried on, "We dream of people we have never seen, and of places we have never been to. Is it the same with you, and with the people like you? Please tell me."
David felt pressure on his arm. He shook the pressure away. "Damn you, I can’t even be sure any of this is real, for God’s sake!"
"Real? Tell me about that. Tell me about real. Does it have to do with reality, and, if it does, then what is reality?"
"Please, leave me alone!" David shouted.
"Alone?" the man said. "Well, we’re all alone, aren’t we? Especially the people who choose to live in underground apartments, which is something I’ll never understand—"
"Damn you!" David whispered. Was it the pain that was making him surly, he wondered, or was it was simply this maddeningly insistent man himself?
He began to weep. He had no idea why, at first. It was a spontaneous thing, as spontaneous as a sneeze, and just as unbidden. But he wept loudly; his tears stained the dry dirt path on which he and the man were walking.
He felt pressure on his arm again. He didn’t resist it. He heard through his weeping and his pain, "Come with me, please. I’ll make you some tea. You’ll feel better in no time."
He found himself walking with the thin man, found himself only half listening—weary, pain-ridden—to the man’s ramblings.
He looked back after a minute. He saw that the woman and her crowd of listeners were far, far behind, that the green mouth of the forest was gone, that the horizon was in a gray/blue turmoil, as if it were a whirlpool that was trying hard to get started.
~ * ~
Christian Grieg, driving on Route 96, ten miles west of Syracuse, remembered a line from a movie he’d seen several years earlier; the line was, "I am standing here beside myself." As he remembered the line, he smiled. He was no longer beside himself, was he? He was whole again. It had been a long battle, but he was whole again and he could, at last, deal with the things that the other side of him had done.
Deal with them.
Cope.
Live with.
He sighed.
Admonishing the other—hidden—side of himself for the things it had done was useless. Such acts could not be admonished—there was too much passion and too much finality in them. It was like shouting at a thunderstorm to be a little quieter.
But some of the things he had done had been what this side of him had done. And he had enjoyed them. Quite a lot, in fact. There was no getting around that bare, distasteful fact. He had enjoyed them. He had enjoyed that vulnerability, that pain, that fear. It had made him feel strong and important.
He jammed a fist hard into his crotch. He doubled over. The Buick swerved to the right, onto the wide shoulder. He swerved left, still doubled over, then looked up, eyes watering with pain. A small car was coming at him. He swerved right, got the Buick going straight, focused on the awful pain between his legs, relished it. "Asshole!" he screamed at himself. "Jerk! Asshole!" Then he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped the car.
When the pain was gone, he opened the glove compartment and took out a map of the area around Oneida Lake. He knew that David had a cottage there, on the lake’s south side, on the Sylvan Beach Road, but he couldn’t remember exactly where. It had been five years since he’d been to the cottage, after all.
He located Sylvan Beach on the map, put the map back in the glove compartment, and pulled onto the road again. He guessed that he’d be there within the hour.
Because where else would David go but to his cottage?
He had privacy there.
Memories.
Time.
NINE
It is ten years later, and Maude, who is living with her husband, Peter, in the house that once belonged to Anne Case, says to her husband, "I saw something in the upstairs hallway today." Her voice is trembling a little. She’s clearly frightened by the memory of what she saw.
Peter gives her a quizzical, amused look. He doesn’t want her to see that he’s amused. She amuses him quite a lot with her "sensitivities" but when he has shown her that he finds her amusing, he’s paid for it with many cold nights and cold glances. "Which upstairs hallway, Ma
ude? We’ve got a couple of them. This is a barn we’re living in, remember."
She purses her lips. She doesn’t like the house referred to as a barn. She likes the house a lot. It was, in fact, only after her weeks of insistence and pleading that they decided to buy it. It had remained empty for ten years, since Anne’s death, but a caretaker had seen to its upkeep, so it was move-in-able.
She says now, "It’s not a barn, Peter. Please don’t call it that."
He shrugs. "Sorry."
"The second floor hallway," she says. "I saw what I saw in the second floor hallway."
"Go on."
"To be truthful, I’m not sure I really saw anything."
"You’re only saying that because you think it’s what I think."
"I know what you think, Peter. Don’t deceive yourself into believing that I alter my thought patterns simply to please you. I’m saying that it’s possible I . . . scared myself into thinking I saw something upstairs. In fact, it’s likely. In my memory, I see something there. In that hallway. But how reliable is that?"
"And what are you saying you saw, Maude? A ghost?"
She sighs. "I don’t know. Something. It had a big . . . head. A very big head." She smiles self-consciously.
"Like E.T., you mean?"
She thinks a moment. "Maybe. Something like that. Not so pleasing as E.T., I think—"
"E.T. was hardly pleasing, Maude."
"I thought he was. I thought he was cute."
"Uh-huh. Well, you probably would have. You were probably a pretty perverse little girl."
She sighs again, in annoyance. He says, "I’m sorry," and she continues, "A big head, and large eyes. Very large eyes. I think you could use the word ‘bulbous’ to describe his eyes."
"It was a man, then?" He stifles a smile.
She nods. "Yes. Someone . . . stocky. Mannish."
"With a very big head and bulbous eyes? Sounds charming, Maude."
"He was crying," she says.
~ * ~
"You used the phrase ‘the earth’," the man with the unruly light brown hair told David as they walked together. "Do you mean by that ‘the ground’? I don’t believe you do, and that’s why I ask. I’ve encountered the word before, in writings, and I’ve decided that it has meaning. And I must know how you came to be here, too, and where it is that you will go when you’re no longer here. I’ve seen others like you. Others without faces. I’ve spoken with them, but they haven’t told me a thing, so . . . "
"Please don’t talk," David said.
"Of course," said the man. "I understand that. People are always telling me that: ‘Please keep quiet,’ or ‘Please don’t talk,’ but what can I do? I think that I’ve been talking forever." He paused only a moment. "Forever, did you hear that? I’ll tell you something; it happens all the time. I use a word like that, and I don’t know what in the heck it means, but I’ll use it like that, like forever—"
David decided to let the man ramble. Clearly, there was no way of stopping him, and just as clearly it gave the man pleasure to talk.
Ahead, halfway to the turbulent blue horizon, the particular geometry of a city was visible.
~ * ~
Christian Grieg turned his five-year-old Buick LeSabre onto a one-lane dirt road which, the man at the gas station had told him, would take him to Sylvan Beach Road; it skirted the south side of the lake. But it was a small lake, Christian reminded himself, and if he had to search its entire south shore until he came upon David’s cottage, it would take him no more than an hour. That was no big thing.
David was his friend.
He and David had shared much, and would, doubtless, share much more.
He wanted to talk to David. He wanted to find out what David knew. He wanted to find out what David was doing and why he was doing it. He wanted to find out who David had talked to, what he had been told, and what he intended to do with what he had been told. He wanted to find out if it had any bearing on him—Christian—and, if it did, he wanted to find out how serious this whole matter really was. And, if it was serious . . .
He braked hard as a small white dog crossed in front of the car.
The dog scurried off and was gone, hidden by the high grasses to the side of the road.
Christian pushed the accelerator.
He did not want to run over a dog.
He braked again. The big car came to a bouncing stop.
He pushed his door open, got out, stood quietly on the dirt road. The afternoon was warm, pleasant. There was a little breeze and he liked it. It tickled him.
He called, "Here, doggie." But there was no response from within the tall grasses.
He walked off the road and into the grasses, calling to the dog as he moved, "Here, doggie, doggie, doggie; here, doggie doggie!"
He did not want to run over a dog today.
He found himself well off the road, found that the ground he was walking on was soft, a swamp. He did not want to walk in a swamp today. He turned and started back to the car.
Had he left it running? he wondered. If he had, perhaps it had been stolen. He peered over the tops of the weeds. He couldn’t see the car. Damn. If it had been stolen, he would have to walk.
"Here doggie, doggie," he called. But he no longer hoped to find the dog. He knew better. The dog was, without a doubt, afraid of him. That’s why it had run off. It didn’t want to be run over any more than he wanted to run it over. The dog was looking out for itself, as did all natural things.
He found himself back at the road. The car was still there. It was running. No one had stolen it. Perhaps he had been overreacting to think that someone would steal it. The road was all but deserted, after all. Still, there were evil people everywhere. He knew that.
He went to the car and got in. He had left the driver’s door open. He closed it, turned the ignition. The engine shut down.
He smiled. Well, wasn’t that stupid! He had wanted to turn the car on, thinking it was off, but he had known—somewhere deep in his brain—that it was on, though he didn’t know it consciously, so he had turned the ignition off. He’d done the same thing with light switches in lighted rooms—flicked them off thinking he had to turn them on when the light was on already.
He started the car again.
Someone was honking a horn behind him.
He turned his head, stared through the back window.
A middle-aged woman with round dark eyes and a crown of black hair was honking furiously at him to get moving on the one-lane road. He was blocking her way.
He didn’t want to block anyone’s way today. Nor did he want to be honked at. It was a puzzle. The two needs fought each other. To which one should he respond? he wondered.
He thought about it for a minute, while the woman in the car behind continued honking.
At last, he pushed his door open slowly, got out of the car, stared at the woman behind the wheel of the car in back of him.
She continued honking her horn. He thought he heard her curse.
He didn’t want to be cursed at today, the day of his self-realization, the day he was no longer standing beside himself, the day of his naturalness.
He didn’t want to be honked at, either.
He strode very quickly to the car, leaned over and looked at the middle-aged woman. The driver’s window was open. He concentrated on the middle-aged woman. He didn’t much like her eyes. They were shallow and meddlesome, even in anger. The inside of her car smelled of perfume, too. It was an unpleasant perfume. Lilac. It mixed with her nervous sweat and made the inside of the car smell like a place that was unsanitary.
He had written about such women as this, he remembered.
She said, "You’re blocking my way. Could you please move." Her voice was sharp, hard to listen to. It was the voice of an unattractive bird—a crow, a starling. It was controlled and raucous at the same time.
"You’re disturbing me," he said.
"I’m disturbing you?"
"And on this, of all days,"
he said.
"I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about—" She stopped. She peered intently at him for a moment. Her expression of annoyance changed to fear as she looked into Christian’s eyes. The words "Oh, my God!" escaped her in a breathy whisper and she began to furiously roll her window up.
Christian reached out and held the window two-thirds open.
The woman shook her head quickly. She was confused, he knew. And she was afraid.
"I’m sorry," he said to her. "I really am. I’m very, very sorry."
~ * ~
"Is the whole city like this?" David asked the thin man in the gray sports coat and tattered white pants and unruly brown hair. They were walking a narrow street made of bricks; the close-packed two- and three-story houses all were made of wood.
Some of the houses bore the effects of several architectural influences—Victorian, Georgian, Romanesque, Modern—gingerbread and austere lines and flourishes lived together on the same house. The effect was jarring. The only unity was in the narrowness of the street and in the closeness of the houses; beyond that, there were long, rectangular windows and round windows and arched doorways and glass doorways; there were bare octagons on white walls, and fluted columns holding up nothing at all. It was as if a child possessed of too much time, too many different kinds of building blocks, and an anarchic imagination, had put the street together.
There were no people on the street, and no animals, either. David expected one or the other, or both. He expected, dimly, that there would be an open sewer on either side of the brick roadway, and garbage strewn about, flies buzzing in the warm, still air (because, if the street was reminiscent of one period and place more than another, it was of nineteenth-century London).
There were no smells, either. The air was clear and odorless.
"No," answered the thin man. "The whole city isn’t like this. There are many neighborhoods.”
“But where are the people?"
"In their houses, I imagine," the man said. "I think they’re probably in their houses. Making love, playing games. Or they could be picnicking; do you picnic? Don’t answer, let me guess. I’d say you do. Put together a little basketful of goodies and take it out to some green spot and fill up the tummy. People do that quite a lot here—"
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