He thought of his own favorite teacher in graduate school, McPherson. He’d been fifty-five or sixty when Mickelsson had first known him; reputed to be homosexual, though one never heard any real evidence. A bachelor, Southern genteel, like Tom Garret, but of an earlier vintage—three-piece suits, Phi Beta Kappa key, both his house and his office crowded with books; one could hardly see the walls. He’d been notoriously stern. If someone dropped a pencil he would stop the class. But also he’d been famous for kindness, like old Lawler. Mickelsson remembered, with a flush of embarrassment, a cocktail party he’d gone to once, in his grad-student days, where he’d set himself down next to McPherson’s chair and had made some rash, casual remark about A. J. Ayer. McPherson had bent toward him—he had a plate on his knees, a glass of whiskey on the floor beside his shoe—and suddenly it had come to Mickelsson that the man was listening, actually interested, as if he thought he might learn something. Panic flared up in him; he’d had nothing much to say about Ayer, really. He’d stammered, had felt almost faint for an instant; and then some kind demon had entered him and he’d found himself saying things he hadn’t been aware that he knew—the slippage in natural law, why it implied not freedom but a bizarre randomness—McPherson nodding, jabbing his fork in the air in front of him—“Exactly!” or “Ah, but that’s a moot point!” or, once, “Poppycock!” Afterward, back at the quonset hut, lying in his bed a little drunk, Mickelsson had realized that McPherson had granted him, as if nothing in the world were more natural and right, the first serious philosophical conversation he’d ever had with a real philosopher. He hadn’t been able to explain to Ellen or anyone else the special, almost miraculous quality of that conversation. “Faggots are like that,” Ellen had said, smiling her big, white smile. “Instant charm.”
Toward the end, McPherson had gone nearly blind. The last time Mickelsson had seen him, his eyes, through the glasses, were like large, blurry eggs, and everywhere he went he had to be guided; but there were plenty to guide him—forty years’ worth of students, all of them eager to exchange a few words with him.
It was a strange thing that, with models like McPherson, Mickelsson should have failed. Rifkin had given him a dozen theories, ways of letting himself off; but they were all, as McPherson would say, poppycock. Whatever might be true for other people, it was always the case with Mickelsson, he was persuaded, that in his darkest moods he saw most clearly. Only then did everything stand still for him, the patterns creep out from behind their obscuring foliage. Rifkin scoffed; but it was a first principle of philosophy that no hypothesis should be rejected if all the available evidence supported it, and search as he might, he could find no evidence that the primary fact of his nature was not selfishness, bestial self-love, blindness to the ordinary needs of those around him. “Come on now,” Rifkin had said once, exasperated into showing his colors, “people are like that.” He pointed with a rigid arm and finger at the waiting room. “You should see what comes through that door!” He spoke as if with scorn (the tone, Mickelsson understood, was accidental) of Dr. Freud’s late theories, the universality of neurosis in human beings, the lifelong struggle of Eros and Thanatos, finally one thing, the incurable disease which began with the theft of the infant’s feces, how every love afterward was an imperfect and therefore doomed sublimation of that first sweet shit-love. Mickelsson knew that Rifkin was wrong; philosophers had understood since Butler that psychological egoism was false. Against all Rifkin’s philosophical backwardness, Mickelsson held up, like a cross against a vampire, the image of McPherson among his student-disciples, and also another, older image: his father standing against the sun, coppery-headed, a heavy black and white calf slung across his shoulders.
Mickelsson rolled over on his back on the couch, as if to turn away from the argument, and covered his tear-filled eyes with his forearm. That was where the image had come from, in paintings and books, of Satan cringing from God’s light: from real human experience like his own, certain knowledge of inherent defect or self-betrayal. From somewhere came the thought of his mother, living with cousins now, for the most part staying in one room—lace curtains on the window, a bright red and yellow quilt on the bed, a highly polished mahogany chair and desk where she sat to write, in her slow, trembling hand, preparing her Sundayschool lessons. He had thought the room, the one time he’d visited her there, a wonderfully bright and pleasant place—but of course it was only because she was that, even now, shrunk to dwarf-size and bent almost double. “Well, of course sometimes I miss the house,” she had said, and had smiled at herself indulgently, as one might at the foolishness of a child. Only now did the full force of what she’d meant come through to him—the big old farmhouse shell, not unlike this one, rotting away on its hill. All those years, more than a century, it had been full of life, but now, because there was no one left to want it—except her, his mother, a being as supererogatory as the house—it must sink back into Nature, as everything sank back, dead children, Michael Nugent, those huge white-elephant hotels in the Adirondacks. …
Abruptly, as if it were the couch that was sending him these painful thoughts, he threw his heavy right leg over the side, then his left, and with difficulty sat up. He rubbed his forehead with both hands, his teeth clenched together, then leaned forward and carefully stood.
He searched the room for some help or distraction, but there was nothing. It came to him that the whole room was subtly composed of threes—three pictures on the walls, three chairs, three cushions on the couch, three plants. …
He thought of going up to the bedroom and lifting weights for a while and started indecisively in that direction. Just ahead of him, in the kitchen, the phone rang. He decided to ignore it, but at once found himself moving—rather quickly, considering the shakiness of his legs—to answer it. It would be Jessie; he knew it as surely as if he’d already heard her voice. Guilt washed over him.
“Hello, Pete?” she asked.
“Hi.”
“Are you all right? Your voice sounds strange.”
“I’m fine, Jessie,” he said. “Little in the doldrums, maybe.”
“Are you drunk?”
Her bluntness made him smile in spite of himself. “I haven’t been drinking, but it’s a good idea.”
“It’s just that your voice sounds funny,” she said, still suspicious.
“I know. You mentioned that.” He wedged the receiver between his cheek and shoulder and sorted absently through the papers on the counter, mostly unopened mail.
“Poor Peter,” Jessie said, suddenly all affection and concern, her voice as comforting as her touch would be if she were here. “It must be an awful time for you too. All those Santa Clauses with their laps full of kids … the Christmas music …”
“It will pass,” he said. “Have you heard from the Garrets, Jess? Did Mabel get out of the hospital?”
“They brought her home day before yesterday. She’s fine. Lots of tests. Nothing.”
Belatedly he registered the phrase “an awful time for you too.” He could summon up no image of Jessie and her dead husband celebrating Christmas, or the two dead children. He tried to think of something to say. Nothing came.
“You know Mabel,” Jessie was saying lightly. “She’s not a talker. I told her about the ghost you saw. She just looked at me. You know that way she has, like any minute all your flesh may disappear and she’ll be staring at a skeleton. She hates it when people talk about her gift … or whatever. I guess she thinks we think she’s crazy. Maybe she thinks so herself. Now that I’ve told her about your ghost, she’ll think you’re crazy too.”
He thought a moment about whether or not to tell her, then said, “I saw him again—or rather them. Plain as day, this time.”
“What?” she said. “You’re kidding!”
“I don’t think so.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked sharply. “What happened?”
He told her about the old man and the angry old woman, the wadded-up hankie, how they?
??d walked through the room he’d stood in, as solid as himself.
“Mickelsson, you’re moving out of that house,” she said.
He smiled, his gaze focused on nothing. “Like hell I am!”
“Why not?” He imagined her blazing eyes. “Listen, I’m coming out there!”
“Fine,” he said, “terrific. But don’t think I’m moving. I worked hard on this place.” He smiled more fiercely, domineering, as if thinking she could see him. “When shall I expect you?”
The line was silent for two or three seconds.
“Jesus,” she said at last. Her way of giving in.
The wave of pity came an instant before his understanding of it: Jessie, the grinning, overconfident warrior, suddenly overwhelmed by her department’s Commies. Bitter pill that he too should be defeating her—and so easily, at that. He thought of Donnie Matthews, sex kitten par excellence, now suddenly, to her astonishment and indignation, caught in Nature’s snare.
The silence lengthened. His guilt mounded higher and darkened, like an approaching thunderhead. He must think of something to say to her. Really, of course, he must do something. Move against her enemies.
Donnie Matthews’ angry face, at the periphery of his vision, distracted him.
Jessie asked abruptly—he imagined her jerking her chin up, sweeping her hair back with one hand—”Have you talked with your kids?”
“That’s not so easy to do,” he said, then wished he could call back the words. Now he had to tell her about Mark. He hadn’t mentioned to her his son’s disappearance. She couldn’t be expected to understand, close as they were, why he’d kept it to himself. Useless to tell her (only half true anyway) that his silence had nothing to do with her, had to do with a wordless superstition on his part. Now that he’d talked to Mark on the phone, knew that his son was alive and claiming to be well, it was possible—or easier—to speak of it. He told her about the phonecall. Jessie made appropriate exclamations that, in his present heavy mood, he couldn’t help finding suspect. “Peter, that’s terrible!” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” And: “Poor Mark! He’s a brave kid, isn’t he. Jesus. Have you contacted Missing Persons? What do the police say?” He soothed her mechanically, answering questions, making promises—he would hire a private detective, yes (she’d apparently forgotten the condition of his purse). All the time he talked, he found himself lingering over the memory of stroking her as she slept, murmuring to her, “Jessie, Jessie,” like a father lulling a child past nightmare with its name. If she were here he would close his arms around her, make himself clear. They would comfort one another, lean on one another like strolling lovers in a painting. But behind some tree Donnie Matthews waited; behind another, sooner or later, the hard-ball players, as Finney liked to say, of the I.R.S. He felt increasingly burdened, put upon, and the next instant realized why. She’d called because she was staggering under the attack on her, no doubt baffled and hurt by it, though she’d clearly foreseen it, and had been feeling in need of Mickelsson’s comfort, though partly unsure of him, maybe injured—he should have called her—and lo, having risked the call to him, she’d found herself constrained, as usual, to give comfort to him instead. His annoyance grew more intense, as if someone else had pointed out to him his failure. For all her talk, for all her evidently earnest wish to avoid imposing on him, there it was: obligation.
As soon as he was able to get off the subject of his missing son, he asked, “How’s that business between you and the Marx brothers, Jessie?”
“Bad,” she said. “I managed to tell off old Shel today.”
“Shel?”
“Blickstein. Probably one of the few friends I’ve got.”
Mickelsson smiled, imagining Blickstein’s embarrassment, his awkward attempts to calm her down, get her out of his office. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “He’ll forgive it. He knows you’re upset. Believe me, he’s on your side. And if he’s not, your yelling at him won’t make him either better or worse.”
“You don’t know,” she said. “You’re not Jewish.”
There it was again. He shook his head. “He’s rabbinical,” Mickelsson said. “He’ll be just.”
“He hates Jewish women.”
Mickelsson laughed. “Shall I shoot him for you? Shall I shoot them all?”
“That’s not funny, Mickelsson. You don’t know how great the odds are that I’d say yes.”
Again he shook his head, touched by the way she instinctively blocked pity. The pity that makes us melancholy and ill. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Help me. Threaten people! Write to your Congressman!”
“They’re making you cynical, Jessie,” he said.
“If you want to do something, do something,” she said. “I leave the details to you.”
“I will. Whatever I can,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“Whatever,” she said. Then, after a moment: “Anyway, none of that’s what I called you about. What are you doing for Christmas?”
“I don’t know.” His voice, he was sure, betrayed his alarm at the question. “I thought I’d try to miss the whole thing. Get roaring drunk, maybe.”
“Aren’t you just a little tired of that solution?”
He sighed, staring blindly at the mail he’d been mindlessly sorting. “What’s the expression, ‘Don’t shake my china cabinet’?”
“Something like that. Listen, you want to spend Christmas with me?”
He frowned, trying to think.
“Hello?” she coaxed.
“No,” he said at last. “I don’t think I could handle that, Jessie.”
“OK,” she said. “Just a passing thought.”
“Thanks, though. I really appreciate—”
“Skip it.” The voice was unusually sharp, as if she thought he were trying to start a fight. “Well, that’s all I had to say, I guess.” Then as usual she relented. “Listen, Pete, if anything happens—those ghosts, I mean … or anything …”
“I’ll phone you right away.”
“I mean it,” she said. Then apparently a new thought occurred to her, or she remembered something in his voice earlier that had left her unsatisfied. “You’re sure you told me everything that happened—when you saw them, I mean? They didn’t try to do anything—hurt you, I mean, or talk to you?”
“They didn’t,” he said, then instantly could have kicked himself.
As though he were staring right at her he saw her lunge forward, her face suddenly tense. “Pete! What are you saying? Somebody else tried to hurt you?”
“No,” he said quickly, raising his hand palm out to calm her, as if she too could see across miles and through walls. “But somebody talked to me.”
Even more reluctantly than he’d told her about the old people, he told her about his phone conversation with Michael Nugent.
After he finished she was silent for a long time. “You’re not making this up?”
“Do I sound like it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Something else,” he said abruptly, “a cat’s moved in with me. Big gray and white one, big as a house.”
She was silent again, then said, “I know about the cat. I saw him when you were at the hospital with the Garrets.” Again her tone was faintly accusing, as if his mentioning the cat seemed to her frigid. She was right. “That’s awful about your student,” she said. “Peter, are you positive you didn’t dream all this?”
“Not positive, but I don’t think so. It’s a terrible thought, isn’t it? Ghosts worrying, wandering around in the dark, crying—”
“It sounds like a nightmare. It can’t be like that. You know those books about people who died and were brought back to life—Dr. Ross, is that it?”
“You’re an optimist, Jessie.”
“Do you honestly believe …” she began, then let it trail off. “Well,” she said, and after a few seconds, with a laugh, “Thanks for cheering me up.”
It
was evident that his gloom had infected her, his spirit reaching out, as Nugent’s had done, filling her house with shadows.
“Well, I better let you go, kiddo,” she said.
“OK. It was good to talk to you, Jessie. Sorry I haven’t been more fun. If there’s anything at all I can do for you—”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Bye, Pete.”
“Good-bye, Jess. Keep the ole chin up!”
The dialtone came.
His gloom hung on for hours, like the cabbage smell in the hallway outside Donnie’s apartment. Not even weight-lifting could free him of it. If he were Nietzsche, he thought, he would write some malicious, sarcastic tract—against “Faith” in Martin Luther, for instance: an incapacity for Christian works—a personal fact shrouded by an extreme mistrust whether every kind of action is not altogether sin and from the Devil. That was Mickelsson’s situation, of course—not to mention Nietzsche’s, though Nietzsche had shrouded it in clowning and rant. It was the situation of the modern world, announced by Nietzsche’s hammer resounding on the door of the emptied church. Bullshit rhetoric. Good-bye! Keep the ole chin up! No doubt Dr. Martinus had secretly suspected it, that not only his enemies’ opinions were “donkey fart,” but his own ravings about the world as shit were of the world. Had begun to suspect the truth within fifteen seconds of the famous lightning bolt that nearly burned his cock off (so he’d joked) and startled from his lips the vow that if God would spare him he’d sign up as a monk. Certainly must have suspected it later, gouty, with coarse features—“trying to lend them a suffering and tender expression,” a not too friendly visitor wrote—or in his own words “gross, fat, gray, green, overworked, overloaded, overwhelmed. …” With good-peasant honesty had paid for the secret fear that all he maintained might be bullshit by ladling scatology into everything he said, more foul than the devils who threw their bedpans at the doctor, as he threw his at them, or so he claimed; more foul-mouthed than mad, tortured Jonathan Swift—and foul-mouthed even before he’d been struck by kidney disease, when he was driven insane by (as was fitting) his own piss. A man of profound depressions, and for reason enough: Machiavellian, steeped in all seven deadly sins, even a rather peculiar twist of lechery, arranging with his friend that they screw their wives at the same time and think of one another; even in the noblest causes a liar and, like Nietzsche, buffoon: “Not only children, but also great lords, are best beguiled into truth, in their own best interest, by conveying it to them through foolishness. Fools are tolerated and listened to by those who cannot suffer the truth from a wise man.” Always in action, a veritable dynamite keg of will—he’d scribbled and scribbled, volume after volume—though unable to justify works of any kind. … Lover and lute-player, small flashing eyes, thick crooked lips, Renaissance roué composing tunes for his heavenly sweetheart—and battling with Kate about a husband’s right to take mistresses. The filthiest, basest of swine, in short, whatever his genius—as Mickelsson’s grandfather would admit, wincing. Much to the old man’s credit. He was the only practicing Lutheran Mickelsson had ever met who would admit the truth about the founder. The old man had said (it was a family legend: the only near-joke he’d ever been heard to utter), “Think what he’d have been if he hadn’t been kept busy with all those books!”