Chapter 1 #26
Let me go with you (was the gist of my charge’s plea). To visit those others like us. Who have sinned against the earth and find themselves at the point of death. And, with you, urge them to repent. As you, honorably, urged me to do.
All of us (charge, Frenchman, Jill, non-Jill) were there messily within one another, our minds abuzz with one another’s thoughts.
A change was coming over the Frenchman. He had despised my charge, been frustrated by him, had at times wished him harm, did, indeed, consider him monstrous.
But the transformation my charge was undergoing was reminding the Frenchman of the transformation he himself had undergone all those years ago, at his end, or, more precisely, just after it, while lying in his coffin in a stifling Parisian parlor, surrounded by his wife, children, and scientific colleagues, all of whom had loved him dearly and were still trying to grasp that this great man, who, through his genius, had altered the world, removing the necessity for so much dehumanizing toil, was now leaving them forever.
In that moment, amid sounds of praise and weeping, time had stopped and he had been flung forward by some irresistible force through the decades and shown the potential comprehensive effect of that which he had invented.
With that, his peace had ended and his all-consuming quest had begun.
You are wrong to be so hard on yourself, I said. You were, after all, inevitable. An inevitable occurrence. Who else could you have been but who you—
No, the Frenchman said crisply. No, no, no. That rubbish is not for me.
And turned his attention to my charge.
Do you have any idea of where we might profitably go first? he said, still bent at the waist, head still within the head of my charge. To whom?
My charge cocked his head, as if surveying the entire world. Nodded.
The Frenchman and I instantly knew who he had in mind: a former competitor of his in Santa Barbara, with less than a day to live and many things for which to atone.
So, we go, the Frenchman said. Allons-y.
My charge rose from his knees and, dressed as he’d so often dressed for work (black suit, white shirt, green tie), began patting his pockets frantically, as if searching for his wallet.
He tightened the knot of his tie, checked the time (but was wearing no watch), all of this communicating an urgent desire to be about his business, then looked down in consternation at his feet (which were bare).
Now, as if trying to divest himself of all memories of this time and place that might inhibit him in the next phase of his activities, he gave his head a brisk shake, as a horse will do, and started off at a fast clip (the way he used to when leaving his office, so as not to be detained or interfered with by mere underlings) along the road before his house, and then began to walk faster, then jog, and by the time he reached the margin of the forest bordering the neighborhood and swerved off into it, he was running at a full sprint, faster, by far, than he had ever run in life, even when young, strong, and at his best, wincing at the pain this extraordinary pace was causing his bare feet (and would continue to cause them into a vast, interminable future, hundreds of years long at least, likely longer, possibly forever).
While the Frenchman flew supportively along above.
Then they were gone.
No matter how many of the dying these two might convert, the effect on the world would be, I knew, negligible, since the dying were over, their potential for doing anything at all essentially nil.
And yet, what else was there for them to do, but whatever they felt they still might?
—
With no charge in my care, I began, as usual, to wane.
Gravity became ever less compelling, my clothes began to fade, reappear, fade away again.
My hearing grew acute, allowing me to track my charge’s progress through the forest by the rustling sounds made by the various animals (a white-tailed deer, two gray foxes, a rafter of wild turkeys) he startled in passing.
Becoming ever less substantial, thereby less bound to any one place, I extended myself outward and saw that, yes, even this, this humble swath of Texas forest, was less, less than the forests of my bygone days: dead trees leaned against sick trees popping with fungal blooms, the forest floor repellently thick with mounds of dry pine needles.
Underground, the strands of the root system ran black; the canopy above was perilously thin; the leaves of the ashes and dogwoods seemed brittle, as if they might shatter at the slightest touch.
Oh, it was true, all true, what Mr. Bhuti had said, and discouraging beyond measure:
This lovely old place, ruined forever, maybe.
—
One last time I shot up, then passed through the second-story wall of the death room (farewell bed, weeping wife, stunned daughter; farewell corpse, hands newly wife-crossed upon the (no-longer-heaving) chest) and blasted up through the ceiling.
Ascending to the tip of the tallest of the five cupola-topping finials, balancing atop it on one foot, I regarded the nearly empty wedding-yard below (wineglass in a flower bed, napkin in the pool, besotted couple slow-dancing to no music at all), the sleepy neighborhood, the flat, flat, light-flecked city of Dallas.
Something was bothering me.
I had perhaps overstepped by my intervention vis-à-vis the Mels.
I’d been, tell the truth, pretty darn rough on them.
And weren’t they also inevitable? Inevitable occurrences?
Upon which, therefore, it would be impossible, even ludicrous, to pass judgment?
And hadn’t I just passed judgment on them?
Quite harshly? By lacerating them into sections, hollowing them out, then filling them with concrete, and all of that?
Well, sure.
I mean, I guess I’d kind of dropped the ball on that one.
Therein lay the danger of existing out of elevation.
Of retaining even a trace of one’s former self:
One’s pity became constricted.
One judged, one preferred; one acted and, in acting, erred.
One screwed the pooch, felt crappy about it later.
So:
The time had come for me to be frank with myself, with that dual we; to say, to that sweet, treasured-but-harmful Jill-portion that lingered within me still, that we were finished, and I must go on without her.
Yes, yes, she seemed to say, I get it, I get that. But just don’t forget me.
But forgetting her was exactly what I meant to do.
—
Centralizing my considerable strength, I exploded upward, holding in my heart the intention of returning to that distant place to which those of our ilk must return when in need of a fresh beginning.
And soon enough was there:
Hurtling toward “Paul Bowman,” who was, as always when I sought a fresh beginning, luminous, spectral, celestial, the size of a mountain, seated at that same (football field–sized) metal table, nervously smoking.
It was, each time, a fresh gamble.
One ran the risk of being rebuffed, and finding oneself consigned to that realm from which no further positive action would ever be possible.
(It had never happened to me yet.
But one never knew.)
Passing directly into this mountainous spectral Bowman, I came, again, to know rather too much about him:
Over me washed a feeling that no one got me, no one liked me, I could always tell from the first minute I met someone, by that snot-assed look on his or her face, like, Ugh, no no no, get away from me, dirtbag, pronto.
And so on.
And then:
Gradually he came to seem, if I may say it this way, inevitable.
An inevitable occurrence, upon which, therefore, it would be impossible, even ludicrous, to pass judgment.
Who else could he have been but who he was?
At what moment could he have become other than he became?
I felt a familiar, powerful truth being beamed into me by a vast, beneficent God, in the form of this unyielding directive:
Comfort.
Comfort, for all else is futility.
Blessed by this, I fell.
Willed myself to fall.
Fell farther.
Acquiring, as I did, arms, hands, legs, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second.
Below, it was winter.
Yes: dark night, dead of winter, a silent valley, and, on a small rise, a neat little cabin, orange-lit from within.
I observed all this as I plummeted past and then my feet pierced a snowbank and I continued down through the ice-crust of a frozen pond and found myself upright and vertical, ten feet or so below the surface.
There were fish in this pond, even now, in winter, swimming, but slowly.
Interesting.
I found myself both fully and consistently clothed:
Beige skirt, pale pink blouse, black pumps.
Not unthawed in the least.
Well, that would come. I need only wait.
I waited.
A woman was dying in that cabin. Somehow I knew it was a woman.
I felt again the old, familiar, generalized fondness:
She had not willed herself into this world and was now being taken out of it by force, the many subsystems within her that had always given her so much satisfaction shutting down agonizingly.
Soon it would come, accompanied by disbelief and panic, and she would find herself on the wrong side of a rapidly closing door, everything she had ever known and loved out of reach, over there, beyond it.
At such moments, I especially cherished my task.
I could comfort.
I could.
Thank you, thank you, I whispered.
And vowed to seek elevation forevermore.