by Jay Fox
“This is not a rhetorical question. Would this serve any purpose?”
“No.”
“Then why should I act like a man plotting his revenge?”
“What do you mean?”
“I speak of brooding. One broods because one feels powerless. He imagines having the power to modify the events that have precipitated his misery. But some things cannot be changed. I am not an idle dreamer, especially when such dreams can only end in fruitless rancor. This is how Nazis are born.” He shakes his head. “Why should I brood over my loss, as though there is some retribution that I will receive? There is no answer. There is no retribution when one is dealing with lives. One cannot be exchanged for another.” He clears his throat. “Now, again, would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black, no sugar.”
“Ah,” with a smile or a wince, I can’t really tell, “A real coffee drinker.”
He walks away, into the kitchen with its hideous wallpaper and avocado tiling. There are flowers on some of the tiles, but it is impossible to discern the species at this distance. There is no television in the room in which I find myself, nor is there anything that could be called digital. A map of the world hangs opposite the mantel. The original was created in MDCXXV. There are hydras as large as islands threatening commerce and discovery. An old lamp and a framed photograph of the Adelstein family sit upon a small end table. There are three boys and a girl. Mr. Adelstein looks to be in his early-forties—robust, healthy, and mustached. His wife is probably only twenty-five. She is a plain woman, the type of person whom you walk past on the street several times a day without seeing. Two of the boys are in their late-teens. Both are somewhat gangly and clearly at home in silence. Their hair and sweaters fix the photograph's date in the early-eighties. The girl and the other boy, whom I assume to be Mordecai, are no older than seven or eight. She is lightly freckled with flaxen hair. Mordecai's ears protrude from his head as if they are being tugged by invisible hands. His face resembles his father's more than his mother's. Against the wall, behind this portrait, sits a framed Whistler print from the Frick Collection.
He calls from the kitchen, but I cannot hear him.
“Excuse me?”
“Why are you here?” as he comes back into the room. “Why did you want to meet him?”
“I don't know. Money, I guess,” despondently.
“An honest man.” He places the two coffees (in cups and saucers) on the table. “I know all about the money from the magazine. Was there anything else?”
“I don't even know anymore. I've been asking myself that question a lot lately. I guess a lot of people just want to know what he had to say.”
“He said all that he needed to say,” dismissively. He notices a look. “You are a fan of Whistler, yes?”
“Excuse me?”
“You were staring at the print. Was this just passive observation?”
“No, no. I’m something of a fan. I guess he just brings to mind someone I used to know.”
“I see. I've always appreciated his understanding of the similarities, the parallels, between painting and music.” He laughs lightly as he sits. “But you are not here to listen to my thoughts on Whistler, brilliant though they may be. You are here to learn what you can of my son.”
“Do you really believe what you just said, that he…said all that he wanted to say?”
“Wanted? No. Needed? Yes. True, Time is man's greatest nemesis, but Time is not necessarily an antagonist. My son accomplished what he set out to do. He never became redundant or boring. I believe one could compare his work to that of a published novel. More could have been added, some themes could have been refined, but this hardly makes his work incomplete or without merit.” He pauses. “You do not agree with this, do you?”
“Look, I don't want to impose. You've clearly been through a lot, and I really feel like I should go.”
“What? I am an old man. I have been around death all of my life. Half of my family failed to escape the genocide of the Nazis—not my mother and my father, of course, but two of my uncles, my Aunt Shayna, and two grandparents—; I served my country in Korea; I have buried two wives. True, it is perhaps the greatest tragedy to lose a son or daughter, but I have come to grips with death. As Nietzsche so brilliantly put it, 'The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity—and now you strange Apotheker-Seelen have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.' Life is something from which one ought not cower, no matter the reason.”
“What does that mean? I mean, I know the word apothecary, but what was the other word?”
“Let me see…Nietzsche's phrasing is always poetic, odd. Apotheker-Seelen. I guess it would mean, literally, pharmacist-souls. Just who are the Apotheker-Seelen? As I've said, Nietzsche's phrasing is often more poetic than one would think, and I'm somewhat at a loss to say definitively just who these individuals are, though I am of the opinion that he is speaking of the weak and fanatically religious types—the women who stand on the corners in the city soliciting Watchtower magazines, provided one can call standing with the magazine held up and looking so solemn and empty-headed soliciting. Regardless, I find myself drawn more to the first aspect of the passage. Death's certainty ought to create a sense respect, a reverence, for life, not only in terms of ethics and the interactions that we have with others, but in terms of our very place in the world. And as hard as it was to lose Mordecai, to lose him to blind chance, one cannot turn away from living; one cannot succumb to resentment. The beauty of the world is in its chaos, its irrationality. The Beautiful is not, as Plato posited, necessarily apposite to the Good or the orderly—the realm of Apollo. It's a certain freedom on which we must not impose limits or moralities—not even values. We have to accept that there is beauty everywhere, even in the tragedy of death.”
I attempt to sip my coffee.
“Patience, young man. You lack patience.”
“Excuse me?”
“That coffee is far too hot. Place it on the table, allow it to cool; sip it when it can be enjoyed. Bah,” he exclaims, though not with enough force to require a mark. “The youth of today: so much energy, so little direction.” He pauses. “And yet such is the perennial folly of youth, I suppose.”
“There seems to be some consensus on the matter.”
He smiles. “Of course you fail to understand that my son said all that he needed to say. You go around collecting experiences as a young boy collects stones at the beach—or, if wandering Coney Island, syringes.” His guffaws are like cluster bombs. “But, joking aside, at the end of the day, nothing is cherished; nothing is enjoyed. You look, but you do not see; you listen, but you do not hear; you touch, but you do not feel.” I nod hesitantly. His posture eases. “This is not the first time someone has made a speech of this nature to you, is it?”
“No, sir. My father still treats me like I'm twelve.”
“Given the way you react to the death of a man whom you have never met, it is no wonder. While I understand that this is difficult, that death is an emotional tempest that one must learn to navigate, I simply don’t see the reason to dwell upon it, or, moreover, to solicit pity on account of my loss. I certainly shed many tears for my son, but it is nothing less than an act of self-destruction and vanity to turn away from the passing of time, of life, because of hardship.”
“It's not that. It's not that I'm…I don't know. I'm just in shock right now. You have to understand that. It's the shock.” He nods sympathetically. “And it's not that I'm…you know…overcome with grief. I'm just not a very talkative person.”
“The shock of one great moment leaves you filled with despair; all else evades your attention.” He smiles. The word mercurial pops into my head. “My, my, my—you are truly young. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
He grunts. “I guess this is my mistake.�
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“What do you mean?”
“You look a few years older. Perhaps because I associate you with my son. He was thirty-four—just thirty-four—when the accident happened.” He repositions himself on the sofa—stretches his legs, crosses left over right, kneecap to ankle. “Death terrifies the young; it ignites the old; it passes over the lost like the wind. The truly lost embrace it for fear of life.”
“It's not something I dwell on,” I respond.
“Spoken like a true child.” He notices a look. “I don't mean to be condescending when I say this. You speak of death as a true soldier, a hero, speaks of death. The Argonauts were children—so, too, were they heroes. And is it not the children of the world who are the heroes? Is it not the most hopelessly quixotic who arouse populations from their slumber? The heroes of the world are the ones with courage, the type of courage that only youth successfully can cultivate. But the term, hero, that has been corrupted, has it not? Corrupted, just as Wagner was corrupted, both in his soul and in his vision.” He takes a deep breath. “You must excuse the musings of an old man, especially one who has recently rediscovered the works of Nietzsche and, what seems almost a consequent of the great Pole, Wagner.
“I only wish to express my belief that there is great depth in every experience, that a man who has the capacity to savor each moment of life will never be tempted to capitulate to despair.” He shakes his head. “You have probably seen much of my son's catalog, but I doubt you can remember each piece with any sense of uniqueness. The young cannot see past the future—a paradox, no doubt, but one that you ought to take to heart.” I squint to him. “Patience, my boy,” he stresses with levity. “Patience.”
The subsequent silence is probably only awkward for me.
“What's that over there?”
“This is what I'm talking about. We have not even begun a conversation, and yet you are looking for new topics of discussion.” He squints as he looks over to the glass cabinet that implores attention. “They are coins. Yes, a Jewish numismatist—who has heard of such a thing!” Bombs away. “Oh, but it is a fantastic collection if I do say so myself.”
He walks over to the case. “Come here, come here,” with a wave of the hand. “I have spent the better part of my life collecting them. There is something very simple, very beautiful in coins. To minters, coins are considered to be of value when they lack uniqueness; to a numismatist, it is the other way around.” He turns to me. “A numismatist is really nothing more than a collector of rarities and errors.”
I approach the cabinet, look down, and finally see that my efforts have not been in vain. This is not a lost cause. The only problem is that it means Coprolalia is dead.
“You are a fan of Roman history, I take it?”
“What makes you say that?”
“The coin with which you are so infatuated. It's authentic, too. I purchased it for an arm and a leg, but it is the crown jewel of my collection.”
“It's not that.” It's a coin with the same inscription on the wall in the Park Slope bar—Herculi Romano Augusto.
“What does it mean?”
“It's very simple,” he begins as he unlocks the case. “You have a standard portrait of the emperor Commodus.” He then reaches for a pair of tweezers at the far end of the cabinet. He grips the coin with them. “On top of having one of the most volatile tempers among people know for tempers, Romans, Commodus could be regarded as the most contemptible emperor of the second century.”
I nod.
“Anyway, this figure is Commodus. He is wearing the lion skin hat of Hercules in his portrait. On the reverse,” as he turns the coin to reveal the familiar text, “is Hercules’ famous club. The club divides the text, which, read left to right, is 'Herculi Romano Augusto'. This conveys Commodus' having the demeanors of both Augustus and Hercules. If one reads only the right side that has been separated by the club from top to bottom, however, one has 'culi ano usto', which means, essentially, 'To the…to the asshole burned up with the club'. The impression is that Commodus uses his club not to beat anyone, which he did fairly regularly, but as a…let's say a sexual toy. For himself.”
“And I thought Catullus was dirty.”
“You're familiar with Catallus?” in disbelief. “I was under the impression that such men had gone the way of phrenology and the scholastics.”
“I met a man who was in the midst of translating one of his poems.”
He says nothing. He simply nods in a fashion that could be described as captious or dismissive, perhaps even a conjunction of several other things that I can't translate all that well.
The coin is returned to its case. The case is locked. We return to our original positions. I pick up the coffee. I blow on it. I sip on it. I then return it to its saucer. The air conditioning hums a monotone tune in a time signature that may have once been utilized by Ornette Coleman. I can't think of anything to say, except, “So he really was Coprolalia.”
“You clearly had your doubts.”
“Of course. I've encountered no small number of people who claim—”
“The mental patient? Ah, yes; Mordecai always found that one amusing.” He smiles. “But these doubts? Am I to believe they no longer trouble you?”
“Not after seeing that coin.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“It was the inspiration behind a piece he created at a place on Fifth Avenue—right around the corner from that one house where the First Battle of Brooklyn was fought.”
“The Old Stone House. Also known as the Vechte-Cortelyou House.”
“I always forget that first name. What was it again?”
“Vechte.”
“Well, anyway, no one could ever explain the meaning of the piece in the bar. But that coin…”
“Mordecai found it especially funny. He said it was the only coin in the collection that wasn't worthless. That was his sense of humor.”
Another pause ensues. This one is less awkward, as we are both able to sip from our coffee without scalding ourselves.
“So why did he never come forward?”
“He liked the idea that he could talk to people about his work with honesty.”
“What do you mean?”
“People are rarely honest with an artist, especially when it concerns the artist's work.” He notices a look. “Yes, it was that simple; but, at the same time, this is far more complex than it appears. The primary point that you should keep in mind is this: He wanted the art to stand alone to be judged by critics and laymen alike. Perhaps 'laymen' is the wrong term, as it is carries a pejorative connotation. Regardless, he wanted to know if people appreciated his work. Everyone. And an artist cannot approach a man on the street with a canvas and ask for an evaluation. The artist, Mordecai felt, must remove himself from critical discourse. And, for the most part, he was successful in this.”
“And he never wanted anything for what he created? I mean, he could have been a very wealthy man.”
“How? Once something is put on a piece of canvas it becomes both art and a commodity. It can be appreciated, true, but it can also be bought, sold, exchanged. If a person creates something to hang in their home, it still has the potential to be taken and placed upon a different wall. Its environment is (caesura) interchangeable. However, if it becomes a part of the wall, it is given a more definitive context; it is a part of the environment or community. It can be scraped from the wall and it can be painted over, but it cannot be transplanted—unless, of course, one wishes to remove the portion of the wall that contains the illustration. This was something that Mordecai could never get around, but he felt it was an objection that failed to seriously draw away from the larger point he wished to make.”
“So he never wanted to be famous? He never wanted to be known as Coprolalia?”
“He would not have been able to accomplish as much had people known his identity. More importantly, he never would have been able to carry out his work without being constantly bothered. And he never
wanted to have his art hung up in a gallery or a museum. His choice in medium was no accident.
“The oldest form of artistic expression, as well as the oldest form of written communication, is to be found on the walls of caves; and they express more than what they let on. While I may run the risk of overextending the importance of such illustrations, I do feel it necessary to point out that the Ten Commandments were not written upon papyrus; they were written on stone. Perhaps the creation of a mural is something similar—an expression of both art and communal values.”
“But Mordecai's work isn't a manifestation of some communal ethos. It's abstract and, to be honest, kind of esoteric. How do you create a sense of community by sharing something that means one thing to you, something completely different, sometimes even nothing, to someone else?”
“If you take out the you, then that leaves only the community.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“You are over-anxious.”
“Yes, I am. I have been all over this city trying to find a dead man. And I have absolutely nothing to show for it.”
“Why did you do it?”
My own words resonate within me. “Dead man.” The trampoline is no longer there. The mats are gone, too. The gymnast is left floating. Forever. There's no longer any space, so there's no time; she is neither falling nor rising. She isn't even moving.
“Because I needed something to do.”
“You could have done anything, then. Even nothing is something.” I nod.
“So why do anything? There really isn't much of a reason to even get out of bed in the morning.”
“Of course there isn't if you expand what is meant by 'purpose' or 'meaning' to include the 'why' that existence is, to some, supposed to entail.” What? “Either it's all part of a divine plan, and there's no free will, or it's all meaningless acts of free-will. There's really no middle ground unless you focus. Our actions only have meaning when we remove ourselves from the grand stage of history, when we see ourselves as important to people close to us, to those with whom we share a community.”
“But isn't that a tragedy? Isn't it pathetic that virtually no one from our time will be remembered in a thousand years?”