Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

  A blush of light comes over her cheeks, making her tears gleam. Clear as starlight, yet a light not from the heavens. It is the room that is aglow.

  I turn out the ceiling lamp, and only then do I see the source of the glow. It is the skulls. An ancient fire that has lain dormant in them is now awakening. The phosphorescence yields pure to the eye; it soothes with memories that warm and fill my heart. I can feel my vision healing. Nothing can harm these eyes anymore.

  It is a wondrous sight. Quietude itself. Countless flecks of light fill the space. I pick up a skull and run my fingers over its surface. Here, I sense a glimmer, a remembrance of mind, an indication of her mind. Tiny sparks drift up into my fingertips, touching me, each particle bearing the faintest light, the merest warmth.

  “There is your mind,” I say.

  She stares at me, eyes tearful.

  “Your mind has not been lost nor scattered to the winds. It’s here, and no one can take it away. To read it out, I must bring all these together.”

  I kiss her again on the eyelids.

  “I want you to leave me by myself,” I say. “It will take me until morning to read it all out. I cannot rest until then.”

  She surveys the rows of softly glowing skulls before exiting the stacks. The door closes behind her. The flecks of light dance upon the skulls. Some are old dreams that are hers, some are old dreams of my own.

  My search has been a long one. It has taken me to every corner of this walled Town, but at last I have found the mind we have lost.

  37

  Lights, Introspection, Cleanliness

  HOW long I slept, I don’t know. Someone was rocking my shoulders. I smelled the sofa. I didn’t want to be awakened. Sleep was too lovely.

  Nonetheless, at the same time, something in me demanded to be roused, insisted that this was no time to sleep. A hard metal object was tapping.

  “Wake up! Wake up!”

  I sat up.

  I was wearing an orange bathrobe. She was leaning over me in a white men’s T-shirt and tiny white panties, shaking me by the shoulder. Her slender body seemed fragile, insecure, childlike, with no sign of last night’s Italian excesses. Outside was not yet dawn.

  “The table! Look at the table!” she exclaimed.

  A small Christmas tree-like object sat on the table. But it was not a Christmas tree: it was too small and this was the beginning of October. I strained my eyes toward this object. It was the skull, exactly where I’d placed it, or she’d placed it. In either case, the glowing object was my unicorn skull.

  Lights were playing over the skull. Perishing points of microscopic brilliance. Like a glimmering sky, soft and white. Hazy, as if each glowing dot were layered in a fluid electric film, which made the lights seem to hover above the surface. We sat and watched the minuscule constellations drift and whirl. She held on to my arm as I gripped my bathrobe collar. The night was deep and still.

  “Is this your idea of a joke?” she said.

  I shook my head. I’d never seen the skull glow before. This was no phosphorescent lichen, no human doing. No man-made energy source could produce such soft, tranquil light.

  I gently disengaged her from my arm, reached out for the skull, and brought it over to my lap.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” she now asked under her breath.

  “No.” For some reason, I wasn’t.

  Holding my hands over the skull, I sensed the slightest ember of heat, as my fingers were enveloped in that pale membrane of light. I closed my eyes, letting the warmth penetrate my fingers, and images drifted into view like clouds on a distant horizon.

  “This can’t be a replica,” she said. “It has to be the real thing.”

  The object was emitting light into my hands. It seemed somehow purposeful, to bear meaning. An attempt to convey a signal, to offer a touchstone between the world I would enter and the world I was leaving.

  Opening my eyes, I looked at the twinkling nebula at my fingers. The glow was without menace or ill will. It sufficed that I take the skull up in my hands and trace the subtle veins of light with my fingertips. There was nothing to fear.

  I returned the skull to the table and brought my fingers to her cheek.

  “Your hands are warm,” she said.

  “The light is warm.”

  I guided her hands over the skull. She shut her eyes. A field of white light gently enveloped her fingers as well.

  “I do feel something,” she said. “I don’t know what, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I can’t explain either,” I said.

  I stooped to pick up my watch from the floor. Four-six-teen. Another hour until dawn.

  I went to the telephone and dialed my own number. It’d been a long time since I’d called home, so I had to struggle to remember the number. I let it ring fifteen times; no answer. I hung up, dialed again, and let it ring another fifteen times. Nobody.

  Had the chubby girl gone back underground to get her grandfather? Or had the Semiotecs or the boys from the System paid her a courtesy call? I wasn’t worried. I was sure she’d come through fine. The girl was amazing. She was half my age, and she could handle things ten times better than me. I set down the receiver with a tinge of sadness, knowing I’d never see her again. I was watching the chandeliers get carried out of a once-grand hotel, now bankrupt. One by one the windows are sealed, the curtains taken down.

  I returned to where she sat on the sofa.

  “Is the skull glowing in response to you?” she asked.

  “It does seem so, doesn’t it.”

  The unwaking world was as hushed as a deep forest. I looked down and lost myself in my shirt and pants and tie, which lay scattered on the carpet among her dress and slip and stockings. They were the shed skin of a life of thirty-five years, its culmination.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “These clothes. Up until a little while ago, they were a part of me. But no longer. They’re different clothes belonging to a different person. I don’t recognize them as my own.”

  “It’s sex that does it,” she smiled. “After sex, you get introspective.”

  “No, that’s not it,” I said, picking up my empty glass. “I’m not withdrawing into self-reflection. I feel as if I’m tuning in on details, on the minute particulars of the world. Snails and the sound of the rain and hardware store displays, things like that.”

  “Should I straighten up?”

  “No, leave the clothes as they are. They seem quite natural.”

  I reached for my pack of cigarettes and lit up with matches from the beer hall. Then I looked at our clothes again. Shirt sleeves stretched across stockings, velvet dress folded over at the waist, sweet nothing of a slip dropped like a limp flag. Necklace and watch tossed up on the couch, black shoulder bag on its side on a corner table. Even cast aside, clothes know a permanence that eludes their wearers.

  “How’d you decide to become a librarian?” I asked.

  “I’ve always liked libraries,” she said. “They’re quiet and full of books and full of knowledge. I knew I didn’t want to work in a bank or a trading company, and I would have hated being a teacher. So the library it was.”

  I blew cigarette smoke up at the ceiling and watched it drift away.

  “You want to know about me?” she asked. “Where I was born, what I was like as a girl, where I went to school, when I lost my virginity, what’s my favorite color—all that?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re fine as you are. I’ll learn more as it comes.”

  “I’d like to get to know more about you though, little by little.”

  “I was born by the sea,” I said. “I’d go to the beach the morning after a typhoon and find all sorts of things that the waves had tossed up. There’d be bottles and wooden geta and hats and cases for glasses, tables and chairs, things from nowhere near the water. I liked combing through the stuff, so I was always waiting for the next typhoon.”

  I put out my cigarette.

  “The stran
ge thing is, everything washed up from the sea was purified. Useless junk, but absolutely clean. There wasn’t a dirty thing. The sea is special in that way. When I look back over my life so far, I see all that junk on the beach. It’s how my life has always been. Gathering up the junk, sorting through it, and then casting it off somewhere else. All for no purpose, leaving it to wash away again.”

  “This was in your home town?”

  “This is all my life. I merely go from one beach to another. Sure I remember the things that happen in between, but that’s all. I never tie them together. They’re so many things, clean but useless.”

  She touched my shoulder, then went to the kitchen. She returned with wine for her and a beer for me.

  “I like the moments of darkness before dawn,” she said. “Probably because it’s a clean slate. Clean and unused.”

  She snuggled up close next to me on the sofa, pulling the blanket up to her breasts, then took a sip of wine. I poured myself some beer and looked, glass in hand, at the skull on the table, its pale fires reflecting in the bottle. She rested her head on my shoulder.

  “I watched you coming back from the kitchen just now,” I said.

  “Did I pass?”

  “You’ve got great legs.”

  “You like them?”

  “A whole lot.”

  She put her glass down on the table and kissed me below the ear.

  “Did I ever tell you?” she said. “I love compliments.”

  As dawn drew near, sunlight gradually diminished the cranial foxfires, returning the skull to its original, undistinguished bone-matter state. We made love on the sofa again, her warm breath moist on my shoulder, her breasts small and soft. Then, when it was over, she folded her body into mine and went to sleep.

  The sun shone brightly on the roofs of the neighboring houses, birds came and went. I could hear the sounds of TV News, hear someone starting a car. How many hours had I slept? I eased her head off my shoulder and went to the kitchen. I shut the door and turned the radio on low. An FM station on low, Roger Williams playing Autumn Leaves, that time of year.

  Her kitchen resembled mine. The appliances, the layout, the utensils, the wear, everything was normal. There were knives for various purposes, but their sharpening left something to be desired. Very few women can sharpen knives properly.

  I don’t know why I was poking about in another person’s kitchen. I didn’t mean to be nosy, but everything seemed meaningful. Autumn in New York, by the Frank Chacksfield Orchestra, was next on the FM. I moved on to the shelves of pots and pans and spice bottles. The kitchen was a world unto itself.

  Orchestral stylings over, the FM hostess floated her silken voice over the airwaves: “Yes, it’s time to get out the sweaters.” I could almost smell them. Images out of an Updike novel. Woody Herman swinging into Early Autumn. Seven-twenty-five by the clock-timer.

  Twenty-five minutes after seven A.M., Monday, the third of October.

  The sky had broken, clear and deep, carved out with a sharp knife. Not a bad day for taking leave of this life.

  I put some water on to boil, took tomatoes from the refrigerator and blanched them to remove the skin. I chopped up a few vegetables and garlic, added the tomatoes, then stirred in some sausage to simmer. While that cooked down, I slivered some cabbage and peppers for a salad, dripped coffee. I sprinkled water onto a length of French bread, wrapped it in foil, and slid it into the toaster-oven. Once the meal was ready, I cleared away the empty bottles and glasses from the living room and woke her up.

  “Mmm. Something smells good,” she said.

  “Can I get dressed now?” I asked. I have this thing about not getting dressed before the woman does. It jinxes everything if I do. Maybe it’s just a civil gesture.

  “How polite of you!” she said, stripping off her T-shirt. The new morning light breathed across her breasts and stomach, highlighting the fine hairs on her skin. She paused to look herself over.

  “Not bad.” Her humble evaluation.

  “Not bad at all,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

  She pulled on a yellow sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table and started our breakfast.

  “Compliments to the chef,” she said. “It’s delish,” she said. “How can you cook this well if you live alone? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “No, not really. I had five years of marriage, but now I can hardly remember what it was like. It seems as if I’d always lived alone.”

  “You never thought of remarrying?”

  “Would it make any difference?”

  She laughed. I looked at the clock. Half past eight.

  “What are your plans for the day?” she asked.

  “Let’s leave here at nine,” I said, “and go to a park. I want to sit in the sun. Maybe have a couple of beers. Then around ten-thirty, I’m thinking of going for a drive. I’ll take off after that. What about you?”

  “I’ll come home, do the laundry, clean the house, lie around thinking about sex. That sound okay?”

  “I envy you.”

  While I washed the dishes, she sang in the shower. The dishwashing liquid was one of those ecological vegetable-based soaps that hardly sudsed at all. I wiped off the dishes and set them on the table. Then I borrowed a toothbrush. Did she have anything to shave with?

  “In the upper right-hand corner of the cabinet,” she said. “His things should still be there.”

  I located a Schick razor and a can of Gillette Lemon-Lime Foamy with a dry sputter of white around the nozzle. Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.

  “Find it?” she called out.

  “Yep,” I said, returning to the kitchen with her husband’s effects and a towel. I heated some water and shaved. Afterwards I rinsed the razor, and some of the dead man’s stubble washed away with mine.

  She was still getting dressed, so I read the morning paper in the living room. There was nothing that would interest me in my last few hours.

  She emerged in beige slacks and a brown checked blouse, brushing her hair. I knotted my tie and slipped on my blazer.

  “What do you want to do with the unicorn skull?” she asked.

  “It’s a present for you,” I said. “Put it out somewhere, as a conversation piece.”

  “Think it’ll glow again?”

  “I’m sure it will,” I said. Then I hugged her one more time, to etch her warmth indelibly into my brain.

  38

  Escape

  THE glowing of the skulls grows faint with the light of dawn. Hazy gray, it washes down, as one by one the sparks die away.

  Until the very last ember fades, my fingers must race over the skulls, drawing in their glow. How much of the total light will I manage to read this single night? The skulls are many, my time short. I pay no heed to the hour as I ply my attentive touch to skull after skull. Her mind is at my fingertips, moment by moment, in distinct increments of heat. It is not a question of quantity. Not number nor volume nor ratio. There is no reading everything of a mind.

  The last skull returned to the shelves, I collapse. I can tell nothing of the weather outside. A subtle gloom drifts noiselessly through the stacks, lulling the skulls into their deep slumber once more. I yet feel a glimmering of their warmth when I put my fingers to my cheeks.

  I sit until the calm and cool has quieted my thoughts. Time is advancing with fitful irregularity, yet it is a constant morning that filters in, the shadows unmoving. Fleeting fragments of her mind circulate through my mind, mingling with all that is me, finding their way into my being. How long will it take to render these into coherent form? And then, how long to transmit that to her, to let it take root? I know I must see her mind returned to her.

  I leave the stacks to find her sitting alone in the reading room. In the half-light, her silhouette seems somehow faint. It has been a long night for her, too. Without a word, she rises to her feet and sets the coffeepot on the stove. I go to warm myself.

  “You a
re tired,” she says.

  My body is an inert lump; I can scarcely raise a hand. I have been dreamreading an entire night, and the fatigue now sets in. It is as she told me the first day: no matter how tired the body gets, one must never let the exhaustion enter one’s thoughts.

  “You should have gone home to rest,” I tell her. “You needn’t have stayed.”

  She pours a cup of coffee and brings it to me.

  “It was my mind you were reading. How could I leave?”

  I nod, grateful, and take a sip of coffee. The old wall clock reads eight-fifteen.

  “Shall I prepare breakfast?”

  “No thank you,” I say.

  “You have not eaten since yesterday.”

  “I feel no hunger. I need sleep. Could you wake me at two-thirty? Until then, would you sit here, please, and keep watch over me? Can I ask you to do that?”

  She brings out two blankets and tucks them in around me. As in the past—when was it?—her hair brushes my cheek. I close my eyes and listen to the coals crackling in the stove.

  “How long will winter last?” I ask her.

  “I do not know,” she answers. “No one can say. I feel, perhaps, it will not last much longer.”

  I reach out to touch her cheek. She shuts her eyes, she savors the touch.

  “Is this warmth from my mind?”

  “What do you feel in it?”

  “It is like spring,” she says.

  “It is your spring, you must believe. Your mind will be yours again.”

  “Yes,” she says, placing her hand over my eyes. “Please sleep now.”

  She wakes me at exactly half past two. I don my coat, scarf, gloves, and hat.

  “Guard the accordion,” I tell her.

  She takes up the accordion from the table as if to weigh it in her hands, then sets it back down.

  “It is safe with me,” she says.

  Outside, the wind is slackening, the snow diminished to small flurries. The blizzard of the previous night has blown over, though the oppressive gray skies hang low still. This is but a temporary lull.