A Wild Sheep Chase

  I laughed. This time the laugh came off. “You start talking like that and there’s not a human alive who isn’t weak.”

  “Enough generalities. Like I said before. Of course, it goes without saying that everybody has his weaknesses. But real weakness is as rare as real strength. You don’t know the weakness that is ceaselessly dragging you under into darkness. You don’t know that such a thing actually exists in the world. Your generalities don’t cover everything, you know.”

  I could say nothing.

  “That’s why I left town. I didn’t want others to see me sinking any lower. Traveling around alone in unknown territory, at least I wouldn’t cause problems for anyone. And ultimately …,” the Rat trailed off for a bit.

  “Ultimately, because of this weakness, I couldn’t escape the specter of the sheep. There was nothing I myself could do about it. Probably even if you had shown up at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Even if I’d made up my mind to go down from the mountain, it would have been the same. I probably still would have come back up in the end. That’s what weakness is.”

  “What did the sheep want of you?”

  “Everything. The whole lock, stock, and barrel. My body, my memory, my weakness, my contradictions … That’s the sort of stuff the sheep really goes for. The bastard’s got all sorts of feelers. It sticks them down your ears and nose like straws and sucks you dry. Gives me the creeps even now.”

  “And for what in return?”

  “Things far too good for the likes of me. Not that the sheep got around to showing me anything in real form. All I ever saw was one tiny slice of the pie. And …”

  The Rat trailed off again.

  “And it was enough to draw me in. More than I’d care to confess. It’s not something I can explain in words. It’s like, well, like a blast furnace that smelts down everything it touches. A thing of such beauty, it drives you out of your mind. But it’s hair-raising evil. Give your body over to it and everything goes. Consciousness, values, emotions, pain, everything. Gone. What it comes closest to is a dynamo manifesting the vital force at the root of all life in one solitary point of the universe.”

  “Yet you were able to reject it.”

  “Yes. Everything was buried along with my body. There remains only one last thing to do in order to see it buried forever.”

  “One last thing?”

  “One last thing. And that I have to ask you to do. But let’s not talk about it now.”

  We both took sips of beer. I was warming up.

  “The blood cyst works kind of like a whip, doesn’t it?” I asked. “For the sheep to manipulate the host.”

  “Exactly. Once that forms, there’s no escaping the sheep.”

  “So what on earth was the Boss after, doing what he was doing?”

  “He went mad. He probably couldn’t take the heat of that blast furnace. The sheep used him to build up a supreme power base. That’s why the sheep entered him. He was, in a word, disposable. The man was zero as a thinker, after all.”

  “So when the Boss died, you were earmarked to take over that power base.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And what lay ahead after that?”

  “A realm of total conceptual anarchy. A scheme in which all opposites would be resolved into unity. With me and the sheep at the center.”

  “So why did you reject it?”

  Time trailed off into death. And over this dead time, a silent snow was falling.

  “I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas—if I like these things, why should I apologize. The same with having a beer with you …” The Rat swallowed his words. “I don’t know why.”

  What could I say.

  “Somehow or other, we have created two completely different entities out of the same ingredients,” said the Rat. “Do you believe the world is getting better?”

  “Better or worse, who can tell?”

  The Rat laughed. “I swear, in the kingdom of generalities, you could be imperius rex.”

  “Sheeplessly.”

  “You bet, sheeplessly.” The Rat threw back his third beer in one chug, then clunked the empty can down on the floor.

  “You’d better be heading down the mountain as soon as you can. Before you get snowed in. You don’t want to spend the whole winter here. Another four, maybe five days, the snow’ll start to collect, and listen, it’s a real trick traveling down frozen mountain roads.”

  “And what will you do from now on?”

  The Rat let go a good, jolly laugh from off in the dark. “For me there is no ‘from now on.’ I just fade away over the winter. How long it takes depends on how long this one winter is. I don’t know. But one winter is one winter. I’m glad I got to see you. A brighter, warmer place would have been nicer, of course.”

  “J sends his regards.”

  “Give him my regards, too, would you?”

  “I also saw her.”

  “How was she?”

  “All right. Still working for the same firm.”

  “Then she’s not married?”

  “No. She wanted to hear directly from you whether it was over or not.”

  “It’s over,” said the Rat, “as you know. Even if I was unable to end it on my own, the fact is it’s over. My life had no meaning. Of course, to borrow upon your venerable generalities, this is to say that everyone’s life has no meaning. Am I right?”

  “So be it,” I said. “Just two last questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “First, about our Sheep Man.”

  “The Sheep Man’s a good guy.”

  “But the Sheep Man, the one who came visiting here, was you, right?”

  The Rat rolled his neck around to crack it a couple of times. “Right. I took his form. So you could tell, could you?”

  “Midway on,” I said. “Up until then, though, I had no idea.”

  “To be absolutely honest, you surprised me, breaking the guitar. It was the first time I’d seen you so angry, and what’s more, that was the first guitar I ever bought. A cheapie, but still …”

  “Sorry about that. I was only trying to shake you up enough to show yourself.”

  “That’s all right. Come tomorrow, everything’ll be gone anyway,” said the Rat dryly. “So now your other question is about your girlfriend, right?”

  “Right.”

  The Rat said nothing for a long while. I could hear him rub his palms together and sigh. “I didn’t want to deal with her. She was an extra factor I hadn’t counted on.”

  “An extra factor?”

  “Uh-huh. I meant this to be an in-group party. But she stumbled into the middle of it. We should never have allowed her to get mixed up in this. As you know very well, the girl’s got amazing powers. Still, she wasn’t meant to come here. The place is far beyond even her powers.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She’s okay. Perfectly well,” said the Rat. “Only there’s nothing that you’d find attractive in her anymore. Sad, but that’s how it is.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s gone. Evaporated. Whatever it was she had, it’s not there anymore.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

  “I know how you must feel,” continued the Rat. “But sooner or later, it was bound to disappear. Me and you, these girls with their certain somethings, we’ve all got to go sometime.”

  I thought about his words.

  “I better be going,” said the Rat. “It’s getting on time. But we’ll meet again, I just know it.”

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “Preferably somewhere brighter, maybe in summer,” said the Rat. “But for now, one last request. Tomorrow morning at nine, I want you to set the grandfather clock, then connect the cords behind the clock. Connect the green cord to the green cord and the red cord to the red cord. Then at nine-thirty I want you to get the hell out of her
e and go down the mountain. I’ve got a rendezvous with a fellow at twelve o’clock sharp. Got it?”

  “Good as done.”

  “Glad I got to see you.”

  A moment’s pause came between us.

  “Goodbye,” said the Rat.

  “See you,” said I.

  Still snug in the blanket, I closed my eyes and listened. The Rat’s shoes scuffed across the floor, the door opened. Freezing cold air entered the room. Not a breeze, but a slow-spreading, sinking chill.

  The Rat stood in the open doorway for a moment. He seemed to be staring at something, not the scenery outside, not the room interior, not me, some completely other thing. The doorknob or the tip of his shoe, something. Then, as if closing the door of time, the door swung shut with a click.

  Afterward all was silent. There was nothing else left but silence.

  Green Cords and Red Cords;

  Frozen Seagulls

  After the Rat disappeared, an unbearable cold spread throughout the house. I tried to throw up, but nothing would come, only gasps of stale breath.

  I went upstairs, took off my sweater, and burrowed under the covers. I was swept by alternating waves of chills and fever. With each wave the room would swell and contract. My blanket and underwear were soaked in sweat, which congealed into a cold, constricting skin.

  “Wind the clock at nine,” someone whispers in my ear. “Green cord to green cord … red cord to red cord … get the hell out by nine-thirty.”

  “Don’tworry,” says the Sheep Man. “It’llgofine.”

  “The cells replace themselves,” says my ex-wife. She is holding a white lace slip in her right hand.

  My head rocks.

  Red cord to red cord … green cord to green cord …

  “You don’t understand a thing, do you?” accuses my girlfriend.

  No, I don’t understand a thing.

  There comes the sound of waves. Heavy winter waves. A lead-gray sea specked with whitecaps. Frozen seagulls.

  I am in the airtight exhibition room of the aquarium. Row upon row of whales’ penises on display. It’s hot and stuffy. Someone better open a window.

  Someone opens a window. Shivering cold. Seagull cries, sharp piercing voices ripping at my flesh.

  “Remember the name of your cat?”

  “Kipper,” I reply.

  “No, it’s not Kipper,” the chauffeur says. “The name’s already changed. Names change all the time. I bet you can’t even remember your own name.”

  Shivering cold. And seagulls, far too many seagulls.

  “Mediocrity walks a long, hard path,” says the man in the black suit. “Green cord via red cord, red cord via green cord.”

  “Heardanythingaboutthewar?” asks the Sheep Man.

  The Benny Goodman Orchestra strikes up “Air Mail Special.” Charlie Christian takes a long solo. He is wearing a soft cream-colored hat.

  Return Visit to the Unlucky Bend

  Birds were singing.

  Sunlight spilled in stripes across the bed from between the shutter slats. My watch lying on the floor read 7:35. My blanket and shirt were as wet as if they’d been soaked in a bucket of water.

  My head was still fuzzy, but the fever had gone. Outside, the world was a snowswept landscape. The pasture gleamed positively silver in the new morning light. I went downstairs and took a hot shower. My face was pale, my cheeks stripped of their flesh overnight. I coated my entire face with three times the necessary amount of shaving cream, and I proceeded to shave methodically. Then I went and pissed so much I could hardly believe it myself.

  I was so exhausted from the piss that I collapsed on the chaise longue for fifteen minutes. The birds kept on singing. The snow had begun to melt and drip from the eaves. Occasionally in the background there’d be a sharp creaking.

  It was almost on eight-thirty by the time I got up. I drank two glasses of grape juice, ate a whole apple. Then I picked out a bottle of wine, a large Hershey bar, and two more apples from the cellar.

  I packed my things. The room took on a forlorn air. Everything was coming to an end.

  Checking with my watch, at nine o’clock I wound up the three weights of the grandfather clock. Then I slid the heavy timepiece around and connected the four cords behind. Green cord to green cord, red cord to red cord.

  The cords came out of four holes drilled in the back. One pair above, one pair below. The cords were secured with twists of the same wire I’d seen in the jeep. I pushed the grandfather clock back in place, then went to the mirror and bid farewell to myself.

  “Hope all goes well,” I said.

  “Hope all goes well,” the other I said.

  I crossed the middle of the pasture the same way as I had come. The snow crunched beneath my feet. The pasture looked like a silver volcanic lake. Not a footprint anywhere. Only mine which, when I turned around, led back in a trail to the house. My tracks meandered all over the place. It’s not easy to walk in a straight line.

  From this far off, the house looked almost like a living thing. Cramped and hunched over, it twisted to shake the snow down from its gabled roof. A block of snow slid off the roof and dashed to the ground with a thud.

  I kept walking across the pasture. On through the endless birch woods, across the bridge, around the base of the conical peak, onto the unlucky bend in the road.

  Miraculously, the snow on the curve had not frozen to the road. No matter, I was sure that as carefully as I stepped, I would get dragged to the bottom of that sheer drop. It was an effort just to keep walking until I cleared that curved ledge clinging to the crumbling cliff face. My armpits were soaked with sweat. A regular childhood nightmare.

  Off to the right were the flatlands. They too were covered in snow, the Junitaki River glistening right down the middle. I thought I could hear a steam whistle in the distance. It was marvelous, actually.

  I took a breath and hitched up my backpack, then set off down the gentle slope. At the next bend was a brand-new jeep. In front of the jeep, the Boss’s black-suited secretary.

  The Twelve-O’clock Rendezvous

  “I have been waiting for you,” said the man in the black suit. “Albeit only for twenty minutes.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “The place? Or the time?”

  “The time,” I said, setting down my backpack.

  “How do you think I got to be the Boss’s secretary? Diligence? IQ? Tact? No. I am the Boss’s secretary because of my special capacities. Sixth sense. I believe that’s what you would call it.”

  He was wearing a beige down jacket over ski pants and green Ray-Ban glasses.

  “We used to have many things in common, the Boss and I. Things that reached beyond rationality and logic and morality.”

  “Used to?”

  “The Boss died a week ago. We had a beautiful funeral. All Tokyo is turned upside down now, trying to decide a successor. The whole mediocre lot of them running around like fools.”

  I sighed. The man took a silver cigarette case out of his jacket pocket, removed a plain-cut cigarette, and lit up.

  “Smoke?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “But I must say you did your stuff. Much more than I expected. Honestly, you surprised me. At first, I thought I might have to help you along and give you hints when you got stuck. Which makes your coming across the Sheep Professor an even greater stroke of genius. I almost wish you would consider working for me.”

  “So I take it you knew about this place here from the very beginning?”

  “Naturally. Come now, who do you think I am?”

  “May I ask you something, then?”

  “Certainly,” said the man, in top spirits. “But keep it short.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me right from the start?”

  “I wanted you to come all this way spontaneously of your own free will. And I wanted you to lure him out of his lair.”

  “Lair?”

  “His mental lair. When a person becomes shee
ped, he is temporarily dazed out of his mind and goes into retreat. As with, say, shell shock. It was your role to coax him out of that state. Yet in order for him to trust you, you had to be a blank slate, as it were. Simple enough, is it not?”

  “Quite.”

  “Lay out the seeds and everything is simple. Constructing the program was the hard part. Computers can’t account for human error, after all. So much for handiwork. Ah, but it is a pleasure second to none, seeing one’s painstakingly constructed program move along exactly according to plan.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well then,” the man continued, “our wild sheep chase is drawing to a close. Thanks to my calculations and your innocence. I’ve got him right where I want him. True?”

  “So it would seem,” I said. “He’s waiting for you up there. Says you’ve got a rendezvous at twelve o’clock sharp.”

  The man and I glanced at our watches simultaneously. Ten-forty.

  “I had better be going,” the man said. “Must not keep him waiting. You may ride down in the jeep, if you wish. Oh yes, here is your recompense.”

  The man reached into his pocket and handed me a check. I pocketed it without looking at it.

  “Should you not examine it?”

  “I don’t believe there’s any need.”

  The man laughed, visibly amused. “It has been a pleasure to do business with you. And by the way, your partner closed down your company. Regrettable. It had such promise too. There is a bright future for the advertising industry. You should go into it on your own.”

  “You must be crazy,” I said.

  “We shall meet again, I expect,” said the man. And he set off on foot around the curve toward the highlands.

  “Kipper’s doing fine,” said the chauffeur, as he drove the jeep down. “Gotten nice and fat.”

  I took the seat next to the chauffeur. He was a different person than the man who drove that monster of a limo. He told me in considerable detail about the Boss’s funeral and about his Kipper-sitting, but I hardly heard a word.

  It was eleven-thirty when the jeep pulled up in front of the station. The town was dead still. Except for an old man shoveling away the snow from the rotary and a gangly dog sitting nearby wagging its tail.