Pitch Dark (9 page)

I look at you for signs of leaving me and find to my despair that one of us has already left. Maybe it’s me. But, if it’s me, I always do come back, or always have. Please don’t go. Writing is always, in part, bending somebody’s ear. As reading is. In the matter of the commas. In the matter of the question marks. In the matter of the tenses. In the matter of the scandal at the tennis courts.

But then, don’t you see, I despaired. I simply, no, not simply, I rarely do anything simply, despaired. And then I despaired.

In the dining room, my place is set, back to the windows, at one end of the table, which is long. Along the wall at the opposite end of the table is a massive sideboard, on which there is a silver bowl of fruit. On the table, to the left of my plate, is a small electric bell. From the kitchen, Kathleen brings in oxtail soup, which is very hot. Before I have finished, she brings in a serving tray with five lamb chops, also mashed potatoes, string beans, squash, all home grown. Five lamb chops seems a lot for a single guest. I eat two, wonder ever so briefly who will eat the others. Kathleen comes in with a crème caramel large enough to serve, I guess, twenty people. When I ask for seconds, having for the first time used the electric bell, Kathleen returns with the immense dish, on which half a single portion now remains. I am really tired, and perhaps slightly crocked. As I pass the kitchen, on my way to the stairs, Celia says, What time will you be wanting breakfast? I say, Don’t trouble with breakfast; I like to go to sleep very early, and get up very early. Kathleen says, We come in at nine-thirty, but you just sleep in late. That subject seems closed somehow. But before I say goodnight, I ask, Is there anything I need to know about the peat fire in my room: I mean, do I just use a match? Kathleen says yes. When I reach my room, there are no matches. I return to the drawing room, find matches beside the grate, go back upstairs to my room, and try match after match against the peat, to no effect. I go downstairs to the kitchen, say, Somehow the matches don’t quite seem to work. Oh well, Kathleen says, of course you need the firestarter. She walks into a room, which, when she turns the light on, turns out to be the study, hands me a packet of brown squares, in color and texture rather like what was served to us in college as scrapple. I take the packet to my room, put one of the squares against the peat and light it. The fire takes, immediately. Soon the room is hot. I open the window slightly, upon the luminous seascape and the tower; I do not shut the drapes against the sky. Putting blankets, pillow, sheets on the carpeted floor, beside the grate, I fall asleep almost at once, coughing slightly, from the smoldering peat perhaps, or the air coming through the windows. I think of the coughing man on the plane, and then, with a smile, of the seriousness with which our night editor, at the paper, regards what his secretary refers to as his little colds. When I wake up, well before dawn, I am warm. The sky is still blue-black; and yet sea, rocks, green verge, and tower are irradiated, clear. I have begun to love the beauty, and the quiet. To begin with, after all, I almost went instead to Graham Island. Not to have to wait for you any more, your call, the sound, as characteristic as your footsteps, of your engine in the driveway, what that would mean. Not to think of you all the time any more. And suddenly I welcomed grey weather, clouds and rain.

What’s new? the biography of the opera star says she used to ask in every phone call, and What else? I’m not sure the biographer understood another thing about the opera star, but I do believe that What’s new. What else. They may be the first questions of the story, of the morning, of consciousness. What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here, says the inspector, or the family man looking at the rubble of his house. What’s it to you, says the street tough or the bystander. What’s it
worth
to you, says the paid informer or the extortionist. What is it now, says the executive or the husband, disturbed by the fifteenth knock at the door, or phone call, or sigh in the small hours of the night. What does it mean, says the cryptographer. What does it all mean, says the student or the philosopher on his barstool. What do I care. What’s the use. What’s the matter. Where’s the action. What kind of fun is that. Let me say that everyone’s story in the end is the old whore’s, or the Ancient Mariner’s: I was not always as you see me now. And the sentient man, the sentient person says in his heart, from time to time, What have I done.

Was it in the contemplation of my ancestors that I should share a guest room, one long weekend, with Mausi Esterhazi? Was it in the contemplation of Mausi’s ancestors. Was it in the contemplation of my ancestors that the sushi chef should say to me, with concern, at summer’s end, You are lose weight? Or that one curator should say to another, in my presence, of a third, He is married, which is very important in Chicago?

You spend too much time alone, says a murmur from the anti-claque; you are like some wet, tousled, obsessed rat or mouse, in a concrete bunker, all the time alone. But also, you spend too much time with friends. Here we have the water colors, here we have the bas reliefs. And these are the oils. This is the sculpture garden. We also have mobiles, in color, that can both make sounds and move. And here, he said, we have the rubble that resulted when the breakthrough came. You remember everything, he said, you remember everything, out of context, and then you brood. Look, you can’t write on a trapeze, and this is not a metronome. Yes, it is. I live with an hysteric and a metronome. I live with a person in despair. I live on a trapeze in a jungle where there is a harpsichord. I’m a pretty persuasive advocate when the cause is just.

When I have dressed and gone downstairs, I find a small pitcher of milk in the refrigerator; on a shelf, nearby, an open jar of instant coffee, two-thirds empty, with a spoon still in it, clearly Celia’s. Everything else is clean, tidy, spankingly empty. In a small, damp pantry, not the one with the wall safe, I find a trash can, full of coffee grounds and egg shells. For the compost heap, I think. No eggs. On the counter, some stale bread. Though the kitchen is very well equipped, with pots, pans, stoves, refrigerators, small devices, even, come to think of it, elaborate hi-fi radio (Celia, I now recall, had, from the moment I met her, been playing loud, incongruous rock), I cannot, for some reason, find the toaster. I know there must be one. I try the oven. After several minutes of looking in vain for the pilot light, with matches, I give up. Fearing an explosion, I turn the oven off, and consider giving a toaster as a house present. I make coffee, with hot water from the tap and cold milk from the pitcher. I decide to try to use the telephone. Having turned the crank, and figured out the switches, I reach an operator, to whom I explain that, once my call has gone through to New York, he must under no circumstances interrupt the call, because to do so would be to disrupt, perhaps permanently, but at the very least for half an hour, my answering machine. Oh, he says, I would never interrupt; I only connect you with the international operator. Then, bypassing the international operator, he puts the call straight through, and abruptly cuts it off. When I try again, having waited the required half hour, I reach the international operator. In response to my explanation, she says, becoming very obdurate on this point, I would never cut into a line, certainly, never. As soon as the call goes through, she breaks in, to say, Go ahead please, your party is on the line. When another half hour has elapsed, I reach her again. I start to say, But this time, operator, please. And she says, with that edge of injury and contempt I am beginning to become accustomed to in all their voices: It was only a recording. The call goes through. No message there.

She was Goldilocks, really, with this exception: when the third bear left, he had taken with him his porridge, and his chair. And the bed? Well, the bed was there, and the prince came and he kissed her. Hey, wait. Look here, this is Medea. This is Eloise at the Plaza. This is Agatha Runcible. Here I am, for the first time, and yet again, alone at last on Orcas Island. You were, you know, you are the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life, and you are gone.

I go into the study, light a peat fire, watch the dawn through the soft rain. From the bookshelves, I take down Samuel Pepys, abridged; I have somehow never read him. I put paper in the typewriter, and begin a friendly note to the ambassador. Shortly after ten, the front door opens. I hear voices in the kitchen. I find Celia, Kathleen, that overfed, moon-faced baby, all three eating fried eggs and ham. I mention that I have had coffee with milk. Was there enough for you? Celia says, perhaps with irony, certainly not in the slightest friendly. Or what would you like for breakfast now. I say I’d like a five-minute egg. And, when Kathleen brings it to me, at my place in the dining room, the egg really is five minutes. Celia had not mentioned toast, nor had I, so I’m startled when, as I eat in silence, toast pops up out of a toaster, which I had simply not noticed on the sideboard. I get up, take the toast and a banana. When I have finished eating, I return to the study. As I begin to type, Kathleen appears, says, Will you be wanting me for your phone calls? I say, Thank you, I think I can manage. About an hour later, a stocky man, in a woolen cap and jacket, comes in, says, How do you do, I’m Paddy. Is there anything I can do for you this morning? He seems marginally more friendly than the others. At the same time, something covertly appraisive in his manner, an almost lascivious shrewdness, makes me think, Is it just that they think I’m the ambassador’s mistress, and that there is something not quite proper in the arrangement; is it my clothes, the faded corduroy slacks, the tennis shoes, my down jacket; or, perhaps outdoors, the damaged fender? But I say, Well, yes, Paddy, could you tell me the best place to go for a walk. How long a walk were you thinking of? he says. I say, About an hour, and add that I don’t have much sense of direction. In some detail, then, he describes a walk. I ask where I would go if I wanted a two-hour walk. In reply, he describes what I realize is the exact same walk. While it’s true I’ve said that I can get lost virtually anywhere, on account of that sense of direction, it seems odd to me, not sinister but odd, that the one-hour walk and the two-hour walk should be the same. As I pass the kitchen, on my way to the front door, Celia asks what I would like for lunch. Remembering the ambassador’s words, I ask whether I might have a picnic. Celia, brightening, says, Now? I look at my watch. It is quarter past eleven. I say, No thank you, when I come back from this walk, I’ll just take another walk and have my picnic then. I set out down the driveway, toward a path along the sea verge and the rocks. When the path turns inland, uphill, the wind subsides, the rain slows to a fine mist, and I see, coming toward me, a small man of middle years, with one of the sad, poetic faces—wisdom there, humor and beauty. From some distance off, he says, Good morning, in such a friendly voice. I reply, Good morning. And, not wanting to lose contact, I go on, Nice day. A bit showery, he says, as he steps aside to let me pass. We continue on our separate ways.

In the matter of solipsism and prayer. It makes no sense, of course, to pray if you alone exist, and there is no world outside your consciousness, unless you think of prayer as just a kind of song. A lonely song. But if you pray to something, and for something, it is also, I think, a solipsistic thing to pray to affect an outcome which, though still unknown, is already quite set. If you are a determinist, of course, then everything is and forever has been set, and all your prayers are songs. Not lonely songs, perhaps, but songs. The sort of prayer I mean, though, is the more ordinary kind: the devout expression of a wish, with a real intent to influence an outcome of some sort. And such a prayer, to be reasonable in a world where there are others, must address consequences that are truly and altogether in the future. It would be solipsistic, for example, to pray that the outcome of a test already taken will be this or that, or to affect the set result of any act already past. Such a prayer, though it has the appearance of reasonable anticipation, is already somewhat retroactive, a prayer for a miraculous revision of the past. While there’s nothing wrong with the miraculous, it always requires an abrogation of the law in one’s own special case: when it is also retroactive, it has an additional, though perhaps unconscious, solipsism at its heart. The tense, the perfected future of it, is the clue. You can pray that things will be other than as they were, other than they are. The forbidden, the solipsistic tense is this: that things
will have been
other than they were. Prayer must be timely and it must be prompt. Not even in a world of miracles, and only if the world is yours alone, can you pray the past away.

And the virtuoso, and the pachysandra, and love long ago, and the awful night of Eva dancing? “The only invitation to leave a road,” Judge Holmes once said, in a famous court decision, “is at its end.” The case involved what is called in law an attractive nuisance, something hazardous, an uncovered blade or well, an unattended piece of machinery, which might tempt a child to stray and hurt himself. The children in the Holmes case were more than hurt, they fell into a lake of chemicals and were dissolved. But the more one looks at the great judge’s words, the more clearly they are an instance of the hollow, perfectly specious aphorism. The one place at which roads normally extend no invitation whatsoever is at their ends. Every road’s invitation seems to lie either on it, as a means to reach a destination, or alongside, where its own destinations, diners, shops, and houses, are. At the end of a road, there is usually, at best, an intersection with another road. More commonly, there is nothing. Or a quarry, or a reservoir.

The Olive Pell Bible, one of the best-selling Bibles of its time though not perhaps in history, was an expurgated Bible. Mrs. Pell had begun by crossing out and removing from the Bibles of her friends any passage with a carnal implication, including, to name just one example, the begats. The result, as it turned out, was a very short, dense text. Her friends soon urged Mrs. Pell to give the public the benefit of all the talent and industry required for such a condensation, and so the Olive Pell Bible went into the first of its many printings. It is very hard to obtain a copy now.