Sleeping in Flame (19 page)

"When she died, she died badly, Walker. Got a cancer that ate right through her. She died too long, and the only thing left at the end was an empty box of anger."

"Couldn't _you_ do anything for her? With your . . . powers?"

"Nothing. Life and death do their own deciding."

That shocked me. "Really? Nothing?"

"Learn what life is, Walker. Dying comes anyway. I couldn't do anything for Nelia -- that was my wife -- because the war taught me to concentrate on life and how to make it better. That was something Nelia and I agreed on because both of us went through that war. Living was more
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important than dying."

"But you just said she died badly."

"She died badly because she didn't learn enough about life. She went back to her other lives again and again, as you're beginning to do, but all she did was look around in them like a tourist in a foreign country. She took snapshots of them so she could show her friends, but not think about them herself. That's why she died badly. The only thing we can really know is what we're experiencing, or what we've already lived. Then we've got to study it like crazy till we understand."

"But you keep asking me after I go back to one of my lives if I felt myself die there. And what it was like."

"Of course I do! Maybe you'll be the one to tell me what I've tried to find out all my life. I told you: I'm as much a student as you are."

"What are _you_ still trying to find out? Seems like you've pretty much _found_ things."

He shook his head. "What it's like right after. What the experience of death is. I know we come back, there's no question of that, but where do we go in between?"

"Venasque, was that girl we saw today really the red woman in my dream?"

He smiled and signaled for the check. "No. I said that to see your reaction. But you will bump into that red woman sometime in your life. That's a guarantee."

"But why'd you say it today? What reaction was I supposed to have?"

"Exactly what you did. You were interested and intrigued. I said it because you've _got_ to start thinking differently about certain things now.

You've got to start thinking different _ways_, too. A man who flies has to believe he has wings.

Or that he can have wings. You know what I mean?"

"Okay, I accept that, but there's something else I want to ask you about, too."

He looked at his watch. "Is it a short question? It's time we got back to the animals. They get nervous when I'm gone a long time."

"You don't have to answer now, but I have to say it now: Do you know how often you're loud and impatient with me? A lot. And bossy? I _admit_ I don't know anything, Venasque.

Whenever you use that tone of voice, it either makes me nervous or afraid of you. Teachers aren't supposed to scare their students."

He got up from the table very quickly and threw some bills down next to his plate. I thought I'd really offended him. He looked at me and rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Ah, you're right. I'm sorry. Since I got old, I don't have so much patience anymore. No matter how much you learn over the years, you can't always use it yourself when you need it most. _Eine Schande_, huh?

Big irony. You can be the best teacher in the world, but still you get scared when it's your turn, and you know you don't have so much time left."

"Why not? Are you ill?" I stood there feeling helpless and wrong for having opened this can of worms.

"Ill? Ha, no, I'm just old! When you get my age, the only things that happen to you are more hair grows out of your ears and you get more and more alone. The night comes everyday to my window. The serious night, promising, as always, age and moderation. And I am frightened . . .'

That's what it's like.

Not so great. You read poetry? You should.

"That's why I got those two animals with me. They're my last company."

"What about your students?"

"Very nice people, but they can't help when I have to die. That's why I'm trying to discover what it's like now. Maybe if I do, I won't be so uncomfortable. I'm good at
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some things, but I still haven't gotten past wondering what'll happen to me when THE END

comes. You think too much about

"The Serious Night' when you're my age. It's natural, but it's a sickness, too. You get nervous.

You want everybody else to hurry up as much as you, and if they don't, you get angry.

"Something else, too: I spent most of my life teaching people, or trying to teach them important things. But I get to certain points and can't take them any further. That's not a nice thing to know about yourself. Especially when you're too damned old to do anything about it. Nobody likes to fail, huh?

"Come on, we can talk more back at the motel."

Again that uncomfortable, thin orange light lay over the restaurant parking lot. Standing by the car, I looked up at it.

"This light looks like a UFO is about to land here."

Unlocking his side, Venasque looked up. "It's a safety light. They say it gives a wider arc and covers more ground. Lights up the dark corners better."

I was about to comment, when lines out of nowhere pushed their way to the front of my mind and tongue.

_"The night comes every day to my window._

_The serious night, promising as always,_

_age and moderation. And I am frightened_

_dutifully, as always until I find_

_in the bed my three hearts and the cat-_

_in-my-stomach talking as always now,_

_of Gianna. And I am happy through the dark_

_with my feet singing of how she lies_

_warm and alone in her dark room_

_over Umbria where the brief and only_

_Paradise flowers white by white._

_I turn all night with the thought of her mouth_

_a little open, and hunger to walk_

_quiet in the Italy of her head, strange_

_but no tourist on the streets of her childhood."_

I finished out of breath and shaken, as if coming down from an epiphany.

I knew some poetry, but nothing like that, and not by heart. I also knew I'd never read or heard that poem before tonight, when Venasque had quoted the first three lines in an entirely different context.

When I was finished reciting, we stood there on opposite sides of the Jeep and looked at each other. I no longer needed to be told that part of my education was to accept miracles, to try and leave myself open to whatever wonders Venasque had.

Bending down to get in, he said, "'The Night Comes Every Day to My Window' by Jack Gilbert. I've always liked his poetry. Let's go."

Back at the motel, both animals barely raised their heads when we came in. Big Top had managed to climb his thick bulk onto Venasque's bed and was resting his ass on his master's pillow. Connie lay directly below him, leaning up against the side of the bed.

Venasque walked over and gently moved the dog off the pillow. Adjusted, the bullterrier slapped its tail twice.

"I don't blame him. Better to have your fanny on a pillow than the floor.

"Listen, Walker. I want to do one more thing with you tonight before we go to sleep. I'm going to help you go back one more time to another of your lives. But it's going to be one of the earlier ones. Maybe even the first. I

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want you to feel what it was like then. That'll give you something important to think about when we get to the mountains."

"I've got enough to think about!"

"True, but not your beginnings. You saw some of your last life, and maybe a glimpse of the one right before that in Russia. But to start getting the _whole_ thing in good focus, you gotta have at least a little look at what it was like for you way back when. Get ready for bed and you'll do that before going to sleep."

I reached down for my bag. Opening it, I realized that no matter what was about to happen (in the hands of this flawed but remarkable man), I was excited. My insides were fluttering and squawking like a box of birds that's just been shaken, but I was on my way to discovery, and that was what I had come to him for.

"Venasque, that Jack Gilbert poem is a love poem. Why did you quote it to me before? You made it sound like something sad."

His head was so deep in his suitcase that I almost didn't hear when he spoke. "For _you_ it's a love poem. I don't have any Gianna lying in my bed.

Only Big Top and the night at the window."

Two boys were playing catch with a white ball. Holding my father's hand, I stood and watched enviously as they threw it back and forth, calling each other names when one or the other dropped it. It fell regularly, and I

couldn't understand that because both of them were good catchers.

It was raining hard, so few people were around to buy father's potatoes.

Together we watched the boys, but unlike me, father snickered every time they dropped it.

A man mostly hidden under a cloak, but sweet-stinking of the plague, crept up to our table. He was about to say something when father shook his wooden staff and told him to get away.

The man's eyes were glassy and exhausted by the disease, but held enough energy to flash hatred deep as a rich man's grave.

"I have to eat too!"

"Then eat the dead. Get used to the taste!"

"I have money. I can pay." A long white arm emerged from the folds of the dark cloak and held out several coins.

"Do you really think I'd touch a sweet man's money and get sick too? Go away! You shouldn't even be out on the street."

The dying man stood there as if waiting for my father to change his mind.

I'd forgotten about the boys playing catch until one of them shouted something and their "ball" fell close to the sweet man's foot. I looked and saw it wasn't a ball but the white skull of a small animal. The man looked and reached down slowly to pick it up.

Holding the skull in his hand, he regarded it thoughtfully, then, without any warning, threw it at us.

Father stamped a foot on the ground. The skull stopped instantly and hung suspended in the air.

"How hard it is to play my game!" He stamped again.

Both the skull and the sweet man exploded.

I opened my eyes to the taste of dryness in my mouth. I knew where I was but had no energy to do more than lie there and look at the stippled ceiling of our. motel room. Outside, a truck shifted up a gear and grumbled away across the night.

"Venasque?"

One of the animals gave a small, sad whine. The strong smell of electricity hung in the air, as if some appliance had burned out or a thunderstorm was waiting to pounce.

"Venasque? Are you awake?" He wouldn't have gone to sleep while I moved through a past life.

But it was also possible I'd been out so long that he'd given up, closed his eyes a moment and . . .

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Then there was another smell in the air -- hot, acidic, familiar: piss.

I reached up and clicked on the lamp. Squinting my eyes, I looked through the new glare toward the other bed. He was there, but one glance said everything was wrong. He'd been sitting with his back propped against the headboard, but had slumped over awkwardly to one side and lay there, unmoving. My first thought was he'd been shot.

"Venasque!" I got up and moved to him. Both animals were on the floor between us, looking up at me with the bad news in their eyes. The old man's left eye was wide open, his right, only half. I bent over to listen to his breathing, but only small short grunts came that weren't enough to fuel his big body. I put two fingers to his throat for a pulse. It was there, but as off and out of synch as his breathing. Sliding him down so he lay more comfortably on the bed, I then called an ambulance and gave him artificial respiration until it came.

The flashing blue lights of the ambulance strobed through the orange over the parking lot. The night had been full of strange, vivid colors and total darkness. Nothing in between.

The ambulance had arrived very quickly and the attendants worked with the air of people who liked what they were doing and did their job well. They carefully checked Venasque and asked many questions about what had happened.

All I could say was I'd fallen asleep and when I awoke he was this way. They were sympathetic, but cool. To them, the old man's collapse was just another set of readings, procedures, forms to fill out. That was understandable, but whenever I looked at him and his shot expression, I disliked their too-calm voices, questions, indifference to his condition.

When they were finished with me I called Maris, told her to contact Philip Strayhorn, and tell him what happened. Fifteen minutes later he called and asked about everything. Said he was coming immediately, but asked me to stay at the hospital in Santa Barbara until he arrived.

"How are the animals?"

"Sad. They know something bad's going on. They haven't moved from the floor."

I sat in a white room and half read an article in _National Geographic_

while waiting to hear about Venasque's condition. The room was empty at first, but after a while, a good-looking couple came in and walked over.

"Are you Walker Easterling?"

"Yes."

The man put out his hand. "Harry Radcliffe, and this is my wife Sydney.

Phil Strayhorn called and told us about Venasque. How is he?"

"I don't know. In intensive care, but none of the doctors have said anything more yet."

"Ditto. We asked at the desk when we came in, but the nurses weren't talking."

Sydney pushed long expensive hair away from her face. "We were with him only a few weeks ago and he looked great. We went to a Dodgers game."

"How did you get here so fast?"

"We live in Santa Barbara and would've been here sooner but we were out and --"

"Mr. Easterling?"

A woman stood in the doorway to the waiting room in a doctor's white coat and a clipboard under her arm. "I'm Doctor Troise. You came in with Mr.

Venasque?"

"Yes. How is he? No one's told us anything yet."

"He's in a coma and we're still running tests. But there's something important we need to know before we go on. Certain results indicate that what happened to him _might've_ been caused by a very strong electrical shock to the body. Some big jolt from something. Do you know if he touched either an electrical socket or appliance before this happened? Maybe a plug whose wires were frayed?"