I pondered that during the next couple of weeks. Bill (he told me) had no major friends; he lived alone in a rented room in East Oakland, eating his meals at a Mexican café. Perhaps, I said to myself, I owe it to Jeff and Kirsten and Tim—to Tim, especially—to straighten Bill out. That way, there would be a survivor. That is, of course, in addition to myself.
Indubitably, I had survived. But survived, as I had for some time realized, as a machine; still, this is survival. At least my mind had not been invaded by alien intelligences who thought in Greek, Latin and Hebrew and used terms I could not comprehend. Anyhow, I liked Bill; it would not be a burden on me to see him again, to spend time with him. Together, Bill and I could summon back the people we had loved; these were the same people we had known, and our pooled memories would yield up a great crop of circumstantial details, the little bits that made of memory the semblance of the veridical ... which is an ornate way of saying that my seeing Bill Lundborg would make it possible for me to experience Tim and Kirsten and Jeff again because Bill, like me, had once experienced them and would understand who I was talking about.
Anyhow, we both were attending Edgar Barefoot's seminar; Bill and I would run into each other there, for better or worse. My respect for Barefoot had climbed, due, of course, to the personal interest he had taken in me. I had warmed to that; I needed that. Barefoot had sensed it.
I interpreted Bill's statement that the bishop had been interested in me sexually as an oblique way of saying that he himself was interested in me sexually. I pondered that and came to the conclusion that Bill was too young for me. Anyhow, why get involved with someone classified as a hebephrenic schizophrenic? Hampton, who had had traces—rather more than traces—of paranoia and hypomania had been enough trouble, and it had been difficult to rid myself of him. In fact, it was not demonstrable that I had gotten rid of him; Hampton still phoned me, complaining aggressively that when I kicked him out of my house I had kept certain choice records, books and prints that, in truth, belonged to him.
What bothered me about my getting involved with Bill lay in my sense of the ferocity of madness. It can consume its owner, leave him, look around for more. If I was a rickety machine, I stood in danger of that madness, for I was not all that psychologically intact. Enough people had gone mad and died already; why add myself to the list?
And, perhaps worst of all, I discerned the kind of future that awaited Bill. He had no future. Someone with hebephrenia has dealt himself out of the game of process, growth and time; he simply recycles his own nutty thoughts forever, enjoying them even though, like transmitted information, they degenerate. They become, finally, noise. And the signal that is intellect fades out. Bill would know this, having planned at one time to become a computer programmer; he would be familiar with Shannon's information theories. This is not the sort of thing you want to tie into.
Bringing my little brother Harvey along, I picked up Bill on my day off and drove up into Tilden Park, by Lake Anza and the clubhouse and barbecue stoves; there the three of us broiled hamburgers, and we tossed a Frisbie around and had a hell of a time. We had brought a Ghetto-blaster with us—one of those super sophisticated two-channel two-speaker combination radio and tape deck masterpieces that Japan turns out—and we listened to the rock group Queen and we drank beer, except for Harvey, and ran around and then, when it didn't seem anyone was watching or cared, Bill and I shared a joint. Harvey, while we did that, tried out all the heat-sensor controls of the Ghetto-blaster and then concentrated on picking up Radio Moscow on its shortwave.
"You can go to jail for that," Bill told him. "Listening to the enemy."
"Bull," Harvey said.
"I wonder what Tim and Kirsten would say," I said to Bill, "if they could see us now."
"I can tell you what Tim is saying," Bill said.
"What does he say?" I said, relaxed by the marijuana.
Bill said, "He says that—he's thinking that—it is peaceful here and he has finally found peace."
"Good," I said. "I could never get him to smoke grass."
"They smoked it," Bill said. "Him and Kirsten, when we weren't around. He didn't like it. But he likes it now."
"This is very good grass," I said. "They probably had local stuff. They wouldn't know the difference." I pondered over what Bill had said. "Did they really turn on? Is that true?"
"Yes," Bill said. "He's thinking about that now; he's remembering."
I regarded him. "In a way, you're lucky," I said. "To find your solution. I wouldn't mind having him in me. In my brain, I mean." I giggled; it was that kind of grass. "Then I wouldn't be so lonely." And then I said, "Why didn't he come back to me? Why to you? I knew him better."
After a moment of reflection, Bill said, "Because it would have wrecked you. See, I'm used to voices in my head and thoughts that aren't my own; I can accept it."
"It's Tim that's the bodhisattva, not you," I said. "It was Tim who came back, out of compassion." And then I thought with a start: My God; do I believe it, now? When you're high on good grass, you can believe anything, which is why it sells for as much as it does, now.
"That's right," Bill said. "I can feel his compassion. He sought wisdom, the Holy Wisdom of God, what Tim calls Hagia Sophia; he equates it with anokhi, God's pure consciousness. And then, when he got there and the Presence entered him, he realized that it was not wisdom that he wanted but compassion ... he already had wisdom but it hadn't done him or anyone else any good."
"Yes," I said, "he mentioned Hagia Sophia to me."
"That's some of the Latin he thinks in."
"Greek."
"Whatever. Tim thought that with Christ's absolute wisdom he could read the Book of the Spinners and untangle the future for Tim, so Tim could figure out a way to evade his fate; that's why he went to Israel."
"I know," I said.
"Christ can read the Book of the Spinners," Bill said. "The fate of every human is inscribed in it. No human being has ever read it."
"Where is this book?"
"All around us," Bill said, "I think, anyhow. Wait a sec; Tim is thinking something. Very clearly." He remained silent and withdrawn for a time. "Tim is thinking, 'The last canto. Canto Thirty-three of Paradiso.' He's thinking, '"God is the book of the universe"' and you read that; you read it the night you had the abscessed tooth. Is that right?" Bill asked me.
"That's right," I said. "It made a great impression on me, that whole last part of the Commedia."
"Edgar says that the Divine Comedy is based on Sufi sources," Bill said.
"Maybe so," I said, wondering about what Bill had said, the statements about Dante's Commedia. "Strange," I said. "The things you remember and why you remember them. Because I had an abscessed tooth—"
"Tim says that Christ arranged that pain," Bill said, "so the final part of the Divine Comedy would impress itself on you in a way that would never wear off. 'One simple flame.' Oh, shit; he's thinking in a foreign language again."
"Say it out loud," I said, "as he thinks it."
Bill haltingly said:
"'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.'"
I smiled. "That's how the Commedia begins."
"There's more," Bill said.
"'... Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate!'"
"'Abandon all hope, you who enter here,'" I said.
"He wants me to tell you one thing more," Bill said. "But I'm having trouble catching it. Oh; now I have it—he thought it again very clearly for me:
"'La sua volúntate e nostra pace ...'"
"I don't recognize that," I said.
"Tim says it's the basic message of the Divine Comedy. It means, 'His will is our peace,' Meaning God, I guess."
"I guess so," I said.
"He must have learned that in the next world," Bill said. "He certainly didn't learn it here."
Approaching us, Harvey said, "I'm tired of the Queen tapes. What
else did we bring?"
"Did you manage to pick up Radio Moscow?" I asked.
"Yeah, but the Voice jammed it. The Russians switched to another frequency—probably, the thirty-meter band—but I got tired of looking for it. The Voice always jams it."
"We'll be going home soon," I said, and passed the remains of the joint to Bill.
16
IT BECAME NECESSARY to rehospitalize Bill sooner than I had expected. He entered voluntarily, accepting this as a fact of life—a perpetual fact of his life, anyhow.
After they had signed Bill in, I met with his psychiatrist, a heavyset middle-aged man with a mustache and rimless glasses, a sort of portly but good-natured authority-figure who at once read me my mistakes, in order of descending importance.
"You shouldn't be encouraging him to use drugs," Dr. Greeby said, the file on Bill open before him across the surface of his desk.
"You call grass 'drugs'?" I said.
"For someone with Bill's precarious mental balance, any intoxicant is dangerous, however mild. He goes into the trip but he never really comes out. We have him on Haldol now; he seems able to tolerate the side effects."
"Had I known the harm I was doing," I said, "I would have done otherwise."
He glanced at me.
"We learn by erring," I said.
"Miss Archer—"
"Mrs. Archer," I said.
"The prognosis on Bill is not good, Mrs. Archer. I think you should be aware of that, since you seem to be the one closest to him." Dr. Greeby frowned. "'Archer.' Are you related to the late Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer?"
"My father-in-law," I said.
"That's who Bill thinks he is."
"Sufferin' succotash," I said.
"Bill has the delusion that he has become your late father-in-law due to a mystical experience. He does not merely see and hear Bishop Archer; he is Bishop Archer. Then Bill actually knew Bishop Archer, I take it."
"They rotated tires together," I said.
"You are a very smart-assed woman," Dr. Greeby said.
I said nothing to that.
"You have helped put Bill back in the hospital," the doctor said.
I said, "And we had a couple of good times together. We also had some very unhappy times together, having to do with the death of friends. I think those deaths contributed more to Bill's decline than did the smoking of grass in Tilden Park."
"Please don't see him any more," Dr. Greeby said.
"What?" I said, startled and dismayed; a rush of fear overcame me and I felt myself flush in pain. "Wait a minute," I said. "He's my friend."
"You have a generally supercilious attitude toward me and toward the world in all aspects. You obviously are a highly educated person, a product of the state university system; I'd guess that you graduated from U.C. Berkeley, probably in the English Department; you feel you know everything; you're doing great harm to Bill, who is not a worldly-wise, sophisticated person. You're also doing great harm to yourself, but that is not my concern. You are a brittle, harsh person, who—"
"But they were my friends," I said.
"Find somebody in the Berkeley community," the doctor said. "And stay away from Bill. As Bishop Archer's daughter-in-law, you reinforce his delusion; in fact, his delusion is probably an introjection of you, a displaced sexual attachment acting outside his conscious control."
I said, "And you are full of recondite bullshit."
"I've seen dozens like you in my professional career," Dr. Greeby said. "You don't faze me and you don't interest me. Berkeley is full of women like you."
"I will change," I said, my heart full of panic.
"That I doubt," the doctor said, and closed up Bill's file.
After I left his office—ejected, virtually—I roamed about the hospital, at a loss, stunned and afraid and also angry—angry mostly at myself for lipping off. I had lipped off because I was nervous, but the harm was done. Shit, I said to myself. Now I've lost the last of them.
I go back now to the record store, I said to myself, and check the back orders to see what did and didn't arrive. There will be a dozen customers lined up at the register and the phones will be ringing. Fleetwood Mac albums will be selling; Helen Reddy albums will not be. Nothing will have changed.
I can change, I said to myself. Lard-butt is wrong; it isn't too late.
Tim, I thought; why didn't I go to Israel with you?
As I left the hospital building and walked toward the parking lot—I could see my little red Honda Civic from afar—I spotted a group of patients trailing along behind a psych tech; they had gotten off a yellow bus and were now returning to the hospital. Hands in the pockets of my coat, I walked toward them, wondering if Bill was among them.
I did not see Bill in the group, and I continued on, past some benches, past a fountain. A grove of cedar trees grew on the far side of the hospital, and several people sat here and there on the grass, undoubtedly patients, those with passes; those well enough to exist for a time outside of stern control.
Among them Bill Lundborg, wearing his usual ill-fitting pants and shirt, sat at the base of a tree, intent on something he held.
I approached him, slowly and quietly. He did not look up until I had almost reached him; suddenly, aware of me now, he raised his head.
"Hi, Bill," I said.
"Angel," Bill said, "look what I found."
I knelt down to see. He had found a stand of mushrooms growing at the base of the tree: white mushrooms with—I discovered when I broke one off—pink gills. Harmless; the pink gilled and brown-gilled mushrooms are, by and large, not toxic. It is the white-gilled mushrooms that you must avoid, for often they are the amanitas, such as the Destroying Angel.
"What have you got?" I said.
"It is growing here," Bill said, in wonder. "What I searched for in Israel. What I went so far to find. This is the vita verna mushroom that Pliny the Elder mentions in his Historia Naturalis. I forget which book." He chuckled in that familiar good-humored way that I knew so well. "Probably Book Eight. This exactly fits his description."
"To me," I said, "it looks like an ordinary edible mushroom that you see growing this time of year everywhere."
"This is the anokhi," Bill said.
"Bill—" I began.
"Tim," he said, reflexively.
"Bill, I'm taking off. Dr. Greeby says I wrecked your mind. I'm sorry." I stood up.
"You never did that," Bill said. "But I wish you had come to Israel with me. You made a major mistake, Angel, and I did tell you that night at the Chinese restaurant. Now you're locked into your customary mind-set forever."
"And there's no way I can change?" I said.
Smiling up at me in his guileless way, Bill said, "I don't care. I have what I want; I have this." He carefully handed me the mushroom that he had picked, the ordinary harmless mushroom. "This is my body," he said, "and this is my blood. Eat, drink, and you will have eternal life."
I bent down and said, speaking with my lips close to his ear so that only he could hear me, "I am going to fight to make you okay again, Bill Lundborg. Repairing automobile bodies and spray-painting and other real things; I will see you as you were; I will not give up. You will remember the ground again. You hear me? You understand?"
Bill, not looking at me, murmured, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every—"
"No," I said, "you're a man who spray-paints automobiles and fixes transmissions and I will cause you to remember. A time will come when you leave this hospital; I will wait for you, Bill Lundborg." I kissed him, then, on the temple; he reached to wipe it away, as a child wipes a kiss away, absently, without intent or comprehension.
"I am the Resurrection and the life," Bill said.
"I will see you again, Bill," I said, and walked away.
The next time I attended Edgar Barefoot's seminar, Barefoot noted Bill's absence and, after he had finished talking, he asked me about Bill.
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"Back inside looking out," I said.
"Come with me." Barefoot led me from the lecture room to his living room; I had never seen it before and discovered with surprise that his tastes ran to distressed oak rather than to the Oriental. He put on a koto record which I recognized—that is my job—as a rare Kimio Eto pressing on World-Pacific. The record, made in the late Fifties, is worth something to collectors. Barefoot played "Midori No Asa," which Eto wrote himself. It is quite beautiful but sounds not at all Japanese.
"I'll give you fifteen bucks for that record," I said.
Barefoot said, "I'll tape it for you."
"I want the record," I said. "The record itself. I get requests for it every now and then." I thought to myself: And don't tell me the beauty is in the music. The value to collectors lies in the record itself; this is not a matter that need be opened to debate. I know records: it is my business.
"Coffee?" Barefoot said.
I accepted a cup of coffee and together Barefoot and I listened to the greatest living koto player twang away.
"He's always going to be in and out of the hospital, you realize," I said, when Barefoot turned the record over.
"Is this something else you feel responsible for?"
"I've been told that I am," I said. "But I'm not."
"It's good that you realize that."
I said, "If somebody thinks Tim Archer came back to him, that somebody goes into the hospital."
"And gets Thorazine," Barefoot said.
"It's Haldol now," I said. "A refinement. The new anti-psychotic drugs are more precise."
Barefoot said, "One of the early church fathers believed in the Resurrection 'because it was impossible.' Not 'despite the fact that it was impossible' but 'because it was impossible.' Tertullian, I think it was. Tim talked to me about it one time."
"But how smart is that?" I said.
"Not very smart. I don't think Tertullian meant it to be."
"I can't see anybody going through life that way," I said. "To me that epitomizes this whole stupid business: believing something because it's impossible. What I see is people becoming mad and then dying; first the madness, then the death."