The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

  "Do you believe in it now?" I asked.

  "I believe I've sinned; I don't know if I was born that way. But it's true now."

  "You need therapy."

  "The whole church needs therapy. Old Dr. Batshit could take one look at me and Tim and know we're sleeping together; the whole media-news network knows it, and when Tim's book comes out—he has to step down—it has nothing to do with his faith or lack of faith in Christ: it has to do with me. I'm forcing him out of his career, not his lack of faith; I'm doing it. That cracked old lady only read back to me what I already knew, that you can't do what we're doing; you can do it but you have to pay for it. I'd just as soon be dead, I really would. This is no life. Every time we go somewhere, fly somewhere, we have to get two hotel rooms, one for each of us, and then I slip up the hall into his room ... Dr. Batshit didn't have to be a psychic to ferret it all out; it was written on our faces. Come on; let's shop."

  I said, "You're going to have to lend me some money. I didn't bring enough along to shop."

  "It's the Episcopal Church's money." She opened her purse. "Be my guest."

  "You hate yourself," I said; I intended to add the word unfairly, but Kirsten interrupted me.

  "I hate the position I'm in. I hate what Tim has done to me, made me ashamed of myself and my body and being a woman. Is this why we founded FEM? I never dreamed I'd ever be in this situation, like a forty-dollar whore. Sometime you and I should talk, the way we used to talk before I was busy all the time writing his speeches and making his appointments—the bishop's secretary who makes sure he doesn't reveal in public the fool that he is, the child that he is; I'm the one who has all the responsibility, and I'm treated like garbage."

  She handed me some money from her purse, grabbed out at random; I accepted it, and felt vast guilt; but I took the money anyhow. As Kirsten said, it belonged to the Episcopal Church.

  "One thing I have learned," she said as we left the bar and emerged into the daylight, "is to read the fine print."

  "I'll say one thing for that old lady," I said. "She certainly loosened up your tongue."

  "No—it's being out of San Francisco. You haven't seen me out of the Bay Area and Grace Cathedral before. I don't like you and I don't like being a cheap whore and I don't particularly like my life in general. I'm not sure I even like Tim. I'm not sure I want to continue with this, any of this. That apartment—I had a much better apartment before I met Tim, although I suppose that doesn't count; it's not supposed to, anyhow. But I had a very rewarding life. But I was programmed by my DNA to get mixed up with Tim and now some old skuzz-bag rails at me that I'm going to die. You know what my feeling is about that, my real feeling? It no longer matters to me. I knew it anyway. She just read my own thoughts back to me and you know it. That is the one thing that sticks in my mind from this'séance or whatever we're supposed to call it: I heard someone express my realizations about myself and my life and what's become of me. It gives me courage to face what I have to face and do what I have to do."

  "And what is that?"

  "You'll see in due time. I've come to an important decision. This today helped clear my mind. I think I understand." She spoke no further. It was Kirsten's custom to cast a veil of mystery over her connivings; that way, she supposed, she added an element of glamour. But in fact she did not. She only murked up the situation, for herself most of all.

  I let the subject drop. Together, then, we sauntered off, in search of ways to spend the church's wealth.

  We returned to San Francisco at the end of the week, laden with purchases and feeling tired. The bishop had secured, covertly, not for publication, a post with the Santa Barbara think tank. It would be announced presently that he intended to resign from his post as Bishop of the Diocese of California; the announcement would be coming ineluctably, his decision having been made, his new job arranged for: nailed down. Meanwhile, Kirsten checked into Mount Zion Hospital for further tests.

  Her apprehension had made her taciturn and morose; I visited her at the hospital but she had little to say. As I sat beside her bed, ill at ease and wishing I were elsewhere, Kirsten fussed with her hair and complained. I left dissatisfied, with myself, basically; I seemed to have lost my ability to communicate with her—my best friend, really—and our relationship was dwindling, along with her spirits.

  At this time, the bishop had in his possession the galleys for his book dealing with Jeff's return from the next world; Tim had decided on the title Here, Tyrant Death, which I had suggested to him; it is from Handel's Belshazzar, and reads in full:

  "Here, tyrant Death, thy terrors end."

  He quoted it in context in the book itself.

  Busy as always, over-extended and preoccupied with a hundred and one major matters, he elected to bring the galleys to Kirsten in the hospital; he left them with her to proofread and at once departed. I found her lying propped up, a cigarette in one hand, a pen in the other, the long galley-pages propped up on her knees. It was evident that she was furious.

  "Can you believe this?" she said, by way of greeting.

  "I can do them," I said, seating myself on the edge of the bed.

  "Not if I throw up on them."

  "After you're dead you'll work even harder."

  Kirsten said, "No; I won't work at all. That's the point. As I read over this thing I keep asking myself, Who is going to believe this crap? I mean, it is crap. Let's face it. Look." She pointed to a section on the galley-page and I read it over. My reaction tallied with hers; the prose was turgid, vague and disastrously pompous. Obviously, Tim had dictated it at his rush-rush, speeded-up, let's-get-it-over-with velocity. Equally obviously, he had never once looked back. I thought to myself, The title should be Look Backward, Idiot.

  "Start with the final page," I said, "and work forward. That way, you won't have to read it."

  "I'm going to drop them. Oops." She simulated dropping the galleys onto the floor, catching them just in time. "Does the order matter on these? Let's shuffle them."

  "Write in stuff," I said. "Write in, 'This really sucks.' Or, 'Your mother wears Army boots.'"

  Kirsten, pretending to write, said, "'Jeff manifested himself to us naked with his pecker in his hand. He was singing "The Stars and Stripes Forever."'" Both of us were laughing, now; I collapsed against her and we embraced.

  "I'll give you one hundred dollars if you write that in," I said, almost unable to talk.

  "I'll just turn it over to the IRA."

  "No," I said. "To the IRS."

  Kirsten said, "I don't report my earnings. Hookers don't have to." Her mood changed, then; her spirit palpably ebbed away. Gently, she patted me on the arm and then she kissed me.

  "What's that for?" I said, touched,

  "They think the spot means I have a tumor."

  "Oh, no," I said.

  "Yep. Well, that's the long and the short of it." She pushed me away, then, with stifled—ill-stifled—anger.

  "Can they do anything? I mean, they can—"

  "They can operate; they can remove the lung."

  "And you're still smoking."

  "It's a little late to give up cigarettes. What the hell. This raises an interesting question ... I'm not the first to ask it. When you're resurrected in the flesh, are you resurrected in a perfect form or do you have all the scars and injuries and defects you had while alive? Jesus showed Thomas his wounds; he had Thomas thrust his hand into his—Jesus'—side. Did you know that the church was born from that wound? That's what the Roman Catholics believe. Blood and water flowed from the wound, the spear wound, while he was on the cross. It's a vagina, Jesus' vagina." She did not seem to be joking; she seemed, now, solemn and pensive. "A mystical notion of a spiritual second birth. Christ gave birth to us all."

  I seated myself on the chair beside the bed, saying nothing. The news—the medical report—stunned and terrified me; I could not respond. Kirsten, however, looked composed.

  They have given her tranks, I realized. As they do when they deli
ver this sort of news.

  "You consider yourself a Christian now?" I said finally, unable to think up anything else, anything more appropriate.

  "The fox hole phenomenon," Kirsten said. "What do you think of the title? Here, Tyrant Death."

  "I picked it," I said.

  She gazed at me, with intensity.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" I said.

  "Tim said he picked it."

  "Well, he did. I gave him the quotation. One among a group; I submitted several."

  "When was this?"

  "I don't know. Some time ago. I forget. Why?"

  Kirsten said, "It's a terrible title. I abominated it when I first saw it. I didn't see it until he dumped these galleys in my lap, literally in my lap. He never asked—" She broke off, then stubbed her cigarette out. "It's like somebody's idea of what a book title ought to consist of. A parody of a book title. By someone who never titled a book before. I'm surprised his editor didn't object."

  "Is all this directed at me?" I said.

  "I don't know. You figure it out." She began, then, to scrutinize the galleys; she ignored me.

  "Do you want me to go?" I said awkwardly, after a time.

  Kirsten said, "I really don't care what you do." She continued with her work; presently, she halted a moment to light up another cigarette. I saw, then, that the ashtray by her bed overflowed with half-smoked, stubbed-out cigarettes.

  11

  I LEARNED OF HER suicide by hearing it from Tim on the phone. My little brother had come over to the house to visit me; it was on Sunday, so I didn't have to go to the Musik Shop that day. I had to stand there and listen to Tim telling me that Kirsten had "just slipped away"; I could see my little brother, who had really been fond of Kirsten; he was assembling a balsa­wood model of a Spad Thirteen—he knew the call was from Tim but, of course, he didn't know that now Kirsten, along with Jeff, was dead.

  "You're a strong person," Tim's voice sounded in my ear. "I know you will be able to stand up to this."

  "I saw it coming," I said.

  "Yes," Tim said. He sounded matter-of-fact but I knew his heart was breaking.

  "Barbiturates?" I said.

  "She took—well, they're not sure. She took them and timed herself. She waited. Then she walked in and told me. And then she fell. I knew what it was." He added, "Tomorrow she was supposed to go back to Mount Zion."

  "You called—"

  "The paramedics came," Tim said, "and they took her right to the hospital. They tried everything. What she had done was build up the maximum amount in her system already, so that what she took as the overdose—"

  "That's how it's done," I said. "That way pumping her stomach doesn't help; it's already in the system."

  "Do you want to come over here?" Tim said. "To the City? I would really appreciate your being here."

  "I have Harvey with me," I said.

  My little brother glanced up.

  To him I said, "Kirsten died."

  "Oh." He nodded, and, after a moment, returned to his balsawood Spad. It's like Wozzeck, I thought. Exactly like the end of Wozzeck. There I go: Berkeley intellectual, viewing everything in terms of culture, of opera, of novel, oratorio and poem. Not to mention play.

  "Du! Deine Mutter ist tot!"

  And Marien's child says:

  "Hopp, hopp! Hopp, hopp! Hopp, hopp!"

  It will break you, I thought, if you keep this up. The little boy assembling a model airplane and not understanding: double horror, and both happening to me now.

  "I'll come over there," I said to Tim. "As soon as I can find someone to take care of Harvey."

  "You could bring him," Tim said.

  "No." Reflexively, I shook my head.

  I got a neighbor to take Harvey for the rest of the day, and, shortly, I was on my way to San Francisco, driving over the Bay Bridge in my Honda.

  And still the words of Berg's opera percolated obsessively through my mind.

  "The huntsman's life is gay and free,

  Shooting is free for all!

  There would I huntsman be,

  There would I be."

  I mean, I said to myself, George Büchner's words; he wrote the damn thing.

  As I drove, I cried; tears ran down my face; I turned on the car radio and pressed button after button, station after station. On a rock station I picked up an old Santana track; I turned up the volume and, as the music rebounded throughout my little car, I screamed. And I heard:

  "You! Your mother is dead!"

  I narrowly missed rear-ending a huge American car; I had to swerve into the lane to my right. Slow down, I said to myself. Fuck this, I thought; two deaths are enough. You want to make it three? Then just keep driving the way you're driving: three plus the people in the other car. And then I remembered Bill. Dingaling Bill Lundborg, off in an asylum somewhere. Had Tim called him? I should tell him, I said to myself.

  You poor miserable fucked-up son of a bitch, I said to myself, remembering Bill and his gentle, pudgy face. That air of sweetness, like new clover, about him, him and his dumb pants and dumb look, like a cow, a contented cow. The Post Office is in for another round of their windows smashed, I realized; he will walk down there and start hitting the great plate glass windows with his fists until blood runs down his arms. And then they'll lock him up again in one place or another; it doesn't matter which because he doesn't know the difference.

  How could she do it to him? I asked myself. What malice. What abysmal cruelty, toward us all. She really hated us. This is our punishment. I'll always think I'm responsible; Tim will always think he's responsible; Bill likewise. And of course none of us is, and yet in a sense all of us are, but anyhow it is beside the point, after the fact, null and moot and void, totally void, as in "the infinite void," the sublime non-Being of God.

  There is a line somewhere in Wozzeck that translates out to, roughly, "The world is awful." Yes, I said to myself as I shot across the Bay Bridge not giving a fuck how fast I drove, that sums it up. That is high art: "The world is awful." That says it all. This is what we pay composers and painters and the great writers to do: tell us this; from figuring this out, they earn a living. What masterful, incisive insight. What penetrating intelligence. A rat in a drain ditch could tell you the same thing, were it able to talk. If rats could talk, I'd do anything they said. Black girl I knew. Not rats with her; it's rats for me—for her, she said, it was spiders; viz: "If spiders could talk." That time she got the runs while we were up in Tilden Park and we had to drive her home. Neurotic lady. Married to a white guy ... what was his name? Only in Berkeley.

  Viz, a short form of Visigoths, the noble Goths. Visitation, as in, Visitation from the dead, from the next world. That old lady bears some real responsibility for this; if any one single person done did it she done did it. But that's killing the Spartan runners; now they have me doing it myself, after all the warnings. WARNING: THIS LADY IS NUTS. Get out of my way. May you all be fucked forever, all of you in your washed big cars.

  I thought: "Destructive War, thy limits know; here, tyrant Death, thy terrors end. To tyrants only I'm a foe, to virtue and her friends, a friend." And then it says it again: "Here, tyrant Death." It's a great title; it's not a parody. That's what did it, Tim using my title and, of course—in his usual chickenshit fashion—not bothering or remembering to tell her. In fact, telling her that he thought of it. He probably thinks so. Every valuable idea in the history of the world was thought into being by Timothy Archer. He invented the heliocentric solar system model. We'd still have the geocentric one if it hadn't been for him. Where does Bishop Archer end and God begin? Good point. Ask him; he'll tell you, quoting from books.

  No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up, I thought. That's how it should have been worded. I'll suggest that to Tim for Kirsten's gravestone. Teaching school in Norway, the Swedish cretin. A million nasty things I said to her, in the guise of play. Her brain recorded them and played them back to her, late at night when she couldn
't sleep, while Tim snoozed on; she couldn't sleep and took more and more downers, those barbiturates that killed her; we knew they would: the only issue was whether it would be an accident or a purposeful overdose, assuming there is a difference.

  My instructions required me to meet with Tim at the Tenderloin apartment before going on with him, then, to Grace Cathedral. I had expected to find him red-eyed and distraught. However, to my surprise, Tim looked stronger, more powerfully put-together, even in a literal sense larger, than I had ever seen him before.

  He said, as he put his arms around me and hugged me, "I have a terrible fight on my hands. From here on in."

  "You mean the scandal?" I said. "It'll be in the papers and on the news, I guess."

  "I destroyed part of her suicide note. The police are reading what's left. They've been here. Probably they'll be coming back. I do have influence but I can't keep the news quiet. All I can hope for is to keep it retained as speculation."

  "What did the note say?"

  "The part I destroyed? I don't remember. It's gone. It had to do with us, her feelings about me. I had no choice."

  "Guess so," I said.