October Light (7 page)

The officer glanced at him.

Dr. Alkahest smiled, breathed deep. “It submits to all gods.”

The officer glanced down, this time pursing his lips so hard it made his nose move.

But Dr. Alkahest smiled on, frail, fragile fingertips tapping the silver opera glasses that rested on the purple lap rug. He moved his head forward and down slowly, pursuing anfractuous questions of philosophy. He resisted with all his might the temptation to hum a little ditty, though it boomed in his head:
Have some Madeira, my dear! It's really much nicer than beer!
“I've often reflected,” he said gently, thoughtfully, “that we should all of us try to be more tolerant. Close our noisy mouths and accept divergent lifestyles. After all, that's America! Truth has many faces, even changes her mind. We organize, you know, we establish splendid laws, but—” He paused, breathed more deeply, nostrils trembling. “New men will come, and not improbably with new ideas; at this very instant the causes productive of such change are strongly at work.”

The officer mulled it over a moment, peering into the fog. At last he said …

More pages were missing. Sally Abbott looked up, listening, eyes narrowed, then sighed irritably and looked back at the book. “We're our own worst enemies,” Horace had often said. (Now what on earth had brought
that
to mind?) She discovered that a line from the book was idly repeating itself in her head.
Close our noisy mouths and accept divergent lifestyles.
Horace would no doubt have agreed with that, though for reasons not quite pure. (She was no child; she could accept impurity of motivation. All of us hold back. We all “hedge our bets,” as her friend Estelle's husband Ferris used to say.) As he grew into middle age—though he'd once been a talkative man—Horace had fallen more and more into the habit of silence, especially with her. When he came home from the office he'd do nothing but listen to his music and read, though perhaps inside his mind he talked endlessly to himself. Not that he'd been sullen! She'd never known a more contented man. He was quiet, merely. Men frequently grew more quiet and withdrawn as they got older. It had been the opposite with her. She'd started out a quiet one, but now in her old age she liked nothing better than a little conversation when the mailman came, or the insurance man, or when she met old friends at Powers' Market.

She could remember well how hurt she'd been at first by Horace's unwillingness to talk. She'd been jealous, in a way, and hadn't been altogether wrong to be. It had come to a head as they were speaking one night—or rather
she
was speaking—about her sister-in-law, about Ariah's cooking, actually, and about cooking in general, though what was in the back of her mind was an image of Horace wiping dishes, up at her brother's house, some weeks before, joking with Ariah and little Richard. Horace was at work tonight on his map of next year's flower garden; Sally, here in their own kitchen, did the dishes alone. Horace seemed to listen to her talk of Ariah without interest, speaking not a word. “My,” she'd finally said,
“you're
certainly the quiet one tonight!” She'd put her fists on her hips, smiling hard, giving him no choice but to say something.

He went right on working with his map and colored pencils, and after a minute he said, “Are you aware that we have on this planet, or used to have, something like ten thousand languages—maybe more?”

“That's a great many,” she'd said, studying him, putting up her guard.

He nodded. “Yes sir, it's the last frontier.” He eyed his map, for a moment holding it away from him. “You'd think we'd all get together and try to speak one language, wouldn't you? It would improve understanding, advance the cause of peace.” He glanced at her and grinned, pleased with himself, secretly remote.

She'd said nothing, still studying him, smelling a trap.

“Well, we never will,” he'd said, shaking his head, still grinning that private, insufferable grin that wasn't meant to be understood—putting down the yellow pencil, picking up a blue one. “Children will continue to say ‘I and him,' scold them all you like, and your brother will continue to say ‘Here I be.' Peace and understanding—” He looked over her head, thoughtful. “That's the dilemma of democracy.”

She hadn't been fooled by his fancy talk, and in a sudden flash of hurt feelings and indignation she'd lashed out, still smiling: “Why don't you just run
away
with her?”

He hadn't pretended not to know who she meant. “I never said that's what I want, Moogle.” (It was one of the pet names they'd called each other.)

“Everything she makes tastes of onions,” she said.

He shook his head, smiling, saying something in French. He knew she knew no French. After that he would say nothing, and gradually it came to her—it made her scalp prickle—what it was he'd meant: people had all those languages in order
not
to be understood. They were castle walls. She had cried that night, understanding that there were things about her that he did not want to know, and parts of himself he would hide from her, wall off, even if he spoke of them. She'd learned to accept it, though it was natural to be watchful and suspicious. It was at about that time that he'd begun to read aloud to her. What she thought of it she wasn't quite sure, though she'd quickly grown used to it.

She pursed her lips, eyes narrowed again, then abruptly looked down at her book. After the gap of missing pages, it continued:

… him that he slid down awkwardly in his chair and couldn't pull himself up.

“Doctor,” the officer said.

But he waved him away, gasping with laughter, and leaned forward to say more. He had a sense that he was speaking very rapidly, though as a matter of fact an omniscient observer could have told him he was not. “I survive, of course. My cleaning woman makes little remarks—I embarrass her, no doubt. Working for a lunatic crippled pervert soils her reputation. But I survive. I can't help myself, you know. I tease people in uniforms the way monkeys climb trees, or chickens lay pigs.” (There was something wrong with that, he felt at once; but the more he thought about it the better he liked it.) He'd slid practically out of his chair by now, and realizing this, he felt sudden panic. The pot smell strengthened. Then the lights all went off.

He woke up in a white, white room. A man in a white coat looked over at him and nodded to show that all was white. The officer stood leaning on the studded white doorway, his face fixed in a wince.

“This happened to you before?” the man in white said.

Dr. Alkahest stretched his eyes open wider. Hours might have passed. Days.

“You seem to have fainted,” the man in white said.

“Ah,” he said, growing clearer. He tried to sit up, felt faint—sickish woozy—and lay back again. He seemed to be floating above the table. The officer came over from the door, and Dr. Alkahest suddenly remembered. He asked urgently, craftily, lifting his head, “Why do you suppose those people had their lights off?”

The officer glanced at the man in white, the ship's doctor.

“The fishingboat,” Dr. Alkahest explained, irritated, his old heart racing, and at last the half-wit officer understood. He sucked in his breath, puffed his cheeks out, patted his belly. “Good question,” he said. He lowered his head, squinting. “I'll tell you my theory,” he said. “My theory is they must've heard him go in.
Splat!
They shined their lights around, but the fog reflected it, you know, and they saw that the lights was more harm than good, so they switched 'em off. But no luck. Gone.”

“Ah,” Dr. Alkahest said, and closed his eyes. But he was still unsure how much they knew. “Why do you suppose they left so suddenly—while you were still talking to them on that—” he struggled for the word, but it refused to come. He waved his hand. “That horn.”

“You don't know fishermen,” the officer said. He rolled his eyes heavenward and grinned.

Dr. Alkahest said nothing.

“Well,” the ship's doctor said, “you get some sleep, that's my advice, and when you wake up you'll be as good as new.”

“Yes, good,” Dr. Alkahest said; but he looked up at the officer again. “What are the chances of that fellow's surviving that drop?”

“The suicide? Zero!” He waved the idea away; his hand was like a soft brick. “Practically zero. The water's like concrete when you hit it from that far up. And then there's the current.” He laughed, only partly rueful. “Also, the fall takes the air out of you. You drown just like that.” He snapped his fingers. He sounded quite pleased. “A lot of them die of a heart attack before they even hit.”

Dr. Alkahest moved his head in a subtle nod, then closed his eyes. “What fishingboat
was
that, by the way?”

“I don't know,” the officer said. “Just some boat, I guess.”

“You don't know?” This time he did sit up. The room yawed and swung. Both the officer and the ship's doctor looked at him as if he'd gone crazy and reached out to catch him.

The ship's doctor put his arm around his shoulders. “Take it easy, there!”

“You didn't ask?” Dr. Alkahest said.

The officer grinned
(Stupid pig! Moron!)
and said, “Too much going on, Doctor. They called us to come look for a body, you know. When you're looking for a body, in weather like this …”

“You ought to have noticed,” Dr. Alkahest said. By pure chance, by the wildest of accidents, he had made the most important discovery of his life, and their squeezed-shut, piggish little brains had blooched it. He clenched his fist, understanding with a terrible shock how utterly alone he was: who among his medical friends could get him marijuana—not a piddling joint, a paltry pipeload, but a mountain of it, a load like the load they had in that boat, that could bring him back
WHAMMO
his youth? Some people might in their frosty superiority—spouting Boethius or Augustine or Carlyle—make light of his anguish. Some people might shrug off his insight as senility. But a man lives only once! He comes wriggling, howling with pain and terror into the chilly, indifferent world, and all too soon he goes trembling-like-a-leaf and howling, bawling, out. No trace of him remains, and no heaven snatches (let us face these things) the failing electrical impulses of his brain. Scoff ye who will! Dr. Alkahest thought,
I'm a pitiful, miserable crippled old man without a friend in the world except my cleaning woman—who, God knows, hates my ass. Who scorns me and worse. Who ignores me! Now happiness is planted
—
behold!—within my reach! and, the very same instant, it's kicked out of sight like a football! Laugh! Laugh on, ye stony distancers! Someday you too will be ridiculous and full of woe! Half my certain inalienable rights were shot away when I was nine years old. No wonder if I cling with all my might to what little remains!

“You could at least have noticed what fishingboat it was,” he whimpered.

“Maybe somebody else did,” the officer said. “I'll ask around.”

But nobody had.

Dr. Alkahest closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and made a vow. Life was precious, never to be repeated, despite all the wide-eyed memories of the transmigrationists. He would do what he must; it was decided. The man unwilling to fight for what he wanted did not deserve what he wanted. He smiled, eyes still closed. His jaw was firm now; a change had come over him. He could not but lament the impending calamities; nonetheless, his sleep was sound.

Meanwhile, at its pier in San Francisco, a vague shape in the tea-brown fog, the
Indomitable
sits waiting, moving a little like something alive, with the gentle lappings of the water supporting its bulk. Old Captain Fist appears on deck, holding his overcoated belly with one hand, leaning with the other on his cane. He is still very sick and walks with the greatest care, as a kindness to his stomach. After a moment the girl, Jane, appears beside him, wearing jeans, a man's workshirt, and an oil-grimed baseball cap, red, white, and blue. She stands balanced and wary as a cat. “All clear?” she asks softly.

From the dock above, Mr. Goodman answers, “All clear.”

Captain Fist makes his way carefully, carefully to the side and stretches up a trembling hand. Mr. Goodman reaches down, takes the Captain's hand and gently pulls, almost lifts, him to the dock. Jane climbs after him lightly.

“Wait here,” Captain Fist says, without troubling to glance at Mr. Goodman. His old eyes stare like two bullet holes into the city.

Mr. Goodman waits. The Captain and the handsome young woman in the patriotic cap move away toward the lights.

“The cause of Liberty is a cause of too much dignity, to be sullied by turbulence and tumult.”
John Dickinson, “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” 1768

2

The Old Woman Finds Trash to Her Liking; and a Chamberpot Sets Off a War

It was a little past midnight when the old woman was roused from her reading by the squawk of a chicken and the thunderous rumble of her niece's car pulling up into the driveway. She couldn't believe so much time had passed, or that the novel, mere froth that it was, had so held her attention. She was always fast asleep by eleven at the latest, except, on occasion, when friends came to visit and Estelle played piano or Ruth recited poems; and even allowing for the way he'd upset her and, come to that, nearly killed her, that brother of hers—he was insane, that's all; always had been—even allowing for the way he'd gotten her all riled up, treating her like an animal, depriving her of her most ordinary human rights till she was trembling and shaking and so weak at the knees she'd been afraid, coming up the stairs backwards, protecting her face with her hands, that she'd collapse and fall on him, and serve him right (she was shaking again now, remembering)—even allowing for all that, it was hard to believe it was fifteen minutes past midnight!