The Last of the Wise Lovers (4 page)

   "So?" I said
absent-mindedly.  "They're always sending something."

   "Read it," she insisted,
"it's actually quite interesting."

   I went back to reading.  The
Society offered Mom membership in a group of preferred customers who would
report their opinions about the Society's products to the Marketing Department.
 In order to join the group she'd have to solve a small riddle.  Not
only was whoever solved the riddle correctly "not likely to force reality
to fit her perceptions, and therefore suited for the group" but she was
also likely to win a cruise to the Caribbean.

   The riddle was printed on the bottom.
 It really was interesting, and that's why I copied it onto a scrap of
paper that's been here in my room ever since: "Arrange the following nine
words into three meaningful sentences.  Make sure the sentences are logical,
and do not give in to the temptation to create sentences that will suit your
needs. Here are the words: fruit, is, isn't, sour, food, honey, sweet, is,
lemon."

   "There," Mom said
gleefully.  "I've already solved it."

   On the back of a different envelope
she had written the following sentences: "Honey isn't sour.  Lemon is
food.  Fruit is sweet."

   "That's not right.  It's
not logical," I said.

   "What's not right?"

   "Fruit isn't always sweet."

   "There's sugar in every
fruit."

   "But that doesn't mean it's
sweet.  According to your answer, an olive is sweet."

   "Fruit is sweet," she said
in that same voice of hers that always gets me to give in.

   The only way to show her that she was
wrong was to find another solution.  But I was too uptight, annoyed, and
even a little scared.  How was it, I thought, that everything that was
familiar and clear and obvious a mere 24 hours ago suddenly seemed so
uncertain, shaky?

   I passed the afternoon in thought,
too.  Suddenly I got this idea that maybe everything that had happened was
somehow connected to Dad's work.  Maybe that was why Mom didn't know what
it was about, and maybe that guy who had said what he'd said in the back seat
had just assumed that she knew something that Dad had told her.  I went back
to Mom's room.  She wasn't there.  The light was on and the book she
was reading was resting on its spine.  I went to the dining room. Mom was
sitting at the large dining room table, writing something in a yellow notebook.
 Another part of her life that took place in the hours when I wasn't home?

   "I think we should call
Dad," I said.

   "What about?" she asked in
a tone that made it clear she was willing to hear any reason except
that
reason.

   "Nothing," I gave up and went
back to my room.  The phone rang.  Mom answered.  For a moment I
thought of lifting the receiver and listening in, but then I decided not to.
 I'd had enough of the whole thing.

   Your guys are making noise in the hall.  It's now
7:00 a.m. and both of them are tired after a long night.  I can hear
they've decided to take turns sleeping.  I'm not tired.  My desire to
tell keeps growing.

That same night, I thought for the first time of
the man who was destined to die.

   He came to me in a dream.  He
didn't have a face, and his body was hidden by a kind of long robe.  He
sat down beside me on a wooden bench, and I knew he was blaming me for not
convincing Mom to stop whatever it was she was supposed to stop.  I tried
to get up and walk away.  He grabbed me with a clammy hand and bent down
to whisper something in my ear.  I leaned back as far as I could, but he
was taller or more limber and managed to reach my ear.  Of all the things
he could have possibly whispered to me, he chose to give me the answer to the
riddle.  When I woke up I didn't remember what he'd said, but after five
minutes of concerted effort I arrived at the correct solution: Lemon is fruit.
Honey is food. Sour isn't sweet.  I wrote it all down on a Kleenex box and
ran into the kitchen.  Mom was already awake.  In fact, it looked as
if she hadn't slept at all and had spent the night writing something, which she
covered with her arm when I came in.

"Here," I threw the Kleenex box on the
table, "this has to be the answer."

   She took a piece of chocolate from
the chocolate bar in front of her, put it in her mouth, and looked at me
thoughtfully.  I angled to see what she was hiding.  It was the same
notebook from yesterday, crammed with lines of scrawl.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Recipes," she answered absently.
 "I'm trying to think of something good to make for tomorrow, when
your father comes home."

   That sounded strange, but I was
preoccupied with the solution to the riddle.  I slid the box of Kleenex
across the table, in between her arms.  She read it hastily.

  "That's a possibility," she said
generously, "no less reasonable than mine."

   "Yours isn't right...”

   "It's too late," she broke
in just as the clock struck seven.  "I took a stroll to the mailbox
last night and sent it.  Hurry up now, or you'll have to answer to Mr.
K."

   "Will you give me a lift to the
bus?" I asked, forgetting for a moment that we didn't have a car.

   But she had become absorbed in her
writing again.  I went back to my room and quickly got dressed.  Then
I grabbed something to eat and I skipped down the inside steps to the garage.
 When I'd gotten outside, Mom called to me from the window.  I went
back.  I was hoping she'd finally decided to say something to deliver me
from my confusion and embarrassment, but all she wanted was to give me a kiss
goodbye.  Again I went racing down the steps to the garage.  I could
feel the slide in my pocket with every step.

   I had almost an hour to think on the
bus.  I had an overwhelming urge to look at the slide, but I was afraid to
take it out of my pocket.  I tried to concentrate and to remember why the
word `agitator' looked so familiar.  Then I went back over Mom's solution
to the riddle: Honey isn't sour. Lemon is food. Fruit is sweet.  Maybe
fruit was always sweet, as she claimed?  But then her solution itself
would be intrinsically illogical: lemon is fruit - and of course everyone knows
that lemon is sour - so fruit is not always sweet!

   I remember wondering: if the riddle
really is meant to test how well a person can cope with reality without
stubbornly trying to make it fit his needs, and if Mom's answer is incorrect,
am I supposed to understand that Mom isn't a realistic person?  And if she
isn't realistic, maybe she is ignoring some important message that the guy in
the Lincoln Tunnel passed on to her through me, by mistake?  And if she is
ignoring the message, does this mean that an "unpleasant" fate awaits
her, like the guy promised, and that someone she's involved with really is
going to die on the 7th of September?

   The bus climbed the cement ramp to
Port Authority.  I could envision the guy breaking the window of Mom's car
in order to get into the back seat.  I tried not to think about everything
that had happened since then, tried to just erase it all, but the knowledge
that one word from me could warn someone - maybe even just the suggestion that
he should disappear, take off to another city or even to another street around
the 7th of September - was stronger than any other thought or sentence or tune
that I tried to pound into my brain instead.

   I got up and stood by the door.
 When we got to the platform I was the first one off.  I looked back
as I walked down the long, narrow passageway to the main hall of the terminal.
 The escalator was packed with people.  Which of them was plotting
something?  Which of them would be the unwitting victim of some plot?
 I wasn't sure of anything anymore, and I kept looking behind me as I
walked down 42nd Street. The usual bums were splayed out in front of the
library and the coffee shop was still closed.  A workman was perched atop
scaffolding, spraying water at the lintel that bore the inscription
"MUNICIPAL LIBRARY".  Since when had that scaffolding been erected?
 I must have looked pretty lost and confused, because some smiley-faced
guy with a pin on his lapel that said "The City of New York - Department
of Tourism" came up to me right away and asked, "Can I help
you?" Without answering, I ran under the scaffolding and went inside.

   Did I ever tell you what morning at
the library is like?  Well, there were still three more minutes 'till we
were officially open, but the woman in charge, Ms. Yardley (and heaven help
anyone who called her `Miss', even by accident) was already standing at the
ready behind her counter, watching over the three regular employees who were
wiping away at their counters with chamois cloths.  My counter was also
covered with a fine layer of dust.  I wiped it off with my sleeve (my
anti-static chamois was stolen from me the day I got it) and the shellac on the
wood made a pleasant crackling sound.  Next I opened the drawer under the
counter and took out the ledgers, stamps, and forms. Finally I took the slide
wrapped in paper out of my pocket and wedged it in the crack between the
counter and the sign that said "Requests for Books and Periodicals; Course
Registration".  Again I thought: where, for heaven's sake, have I
seen that word ‘agitator’?

   The big hand jumped.  9:00. Ms.
Yardley straightened.  A uniformed guard opened the door that led to the
Reading Room and sat down in the bag-checker's booth.  Another guard
opened the door that led to the corridor just as Mr. K. came running in and
crossed the room, absent-minded as ever.

 "Good morning, Mr. K.," Ms.
Yardley said emphatically.

 "Good morning," Mr. K. dismissed,
hurrying past.

   From that moment on, nothing
happened.  Simply no new clients come to the library at 9:00 in the
morning, especially in the summer when there's no need to get warm.  The
regulars already know how to use the computer to find the titles they're
looking for; they fill out the proper forms themselves and continue on to the
Reading Room to get their books.  Not a single one of them needed help,
and none of them came to register for any of the courses or to reserve a
periodical.

   At 9:30 Ms. Yardley let up a bit and
permitted herself to lean ever-so-slightly on the counter.  The other
three employees were also leaning on their counters and one of them, Mrs. Kahn,
slipped one shoe off and massaged the ankle of her other, still-shod foot with
fat, naked toes.  At 10:00, Ms. Yardley sat down.  Two people asked
to register for the course on science fiction, and she sent them to Mrs. Kahn
to fill out the forms.  I took the slide out of the crack where I'd stuck
it and nodded my head at Ms. Yardley.  She nodded back a nod that meant -
in this place - something like `five minutes'.

   I imagine she thought I wanted to go
to the bathroom, but I went to the Reading Room.  `Agitator' didn't exist
in either the Encyclopedia Americana or in the Britannica.  Webster's
Dictionary defined it as a political subversive.  The scientific
dictionary completely ignored it. I tried to think where else I might find
something about `agitators', and again I asked myself what there was about this
word that was so familiar yet so different from the other words on the slide,
like "pneumatic valve" or "exhaust valve".

   The answer might even be inside the
computer, programmed to locate books by subject, which sat in the Catalog Room
next to my counter.  But Ms. Yardley would never in a million years let me
use it when I was supposed to be helping the public.  There was another
terminal, in Section A of the stacks, which the librarians used to locate lost
books and books that had been returned without call letters.  I went
around the copy machine and opened a door that led to a long, dim corridor.
"Stacks Section A", blared a red sign, "Authorized Personnel
Only".  The farther I went, the mustier the air got with the heavy
odors of dank paper, glue, and mold.  There were books everywhere - on
carts, in boxes, in mailbags.  A telephone was ringing its head off on a
low table next to a terminal whose screen winked green letters.

   I typed in my request:
"AGITATOR?"

  The screen shot back: "ENTER
SUB-CATEGORIES”.

  "NONE," I typed.

  It quickly fired in response,
"AGITATOR: NO SUCH ENTRY”.

   Again I felt defeated.  But this
time I was attuned to every tiny movement - including the sound of soles on
cement.

 "Who's there?" I asked.  Of
course, no one answered.

   I peeked between the stacks of books.
 Two or three of the aisles were lighted; the rest were dark.

  "WAITING" the computer winked,
but I couldn't go on.  Now I thought I could hear something else, a kind
of slow, steady, measured breathing, as if someone was watching me.  This
is probably what a blind man feels, I thought as I called out,
"Hello?"  Somewhere an air conditioner kicked in.  I went
back to the computer.  "AGA...” I typed again, but I made one mistake
and then another until I realized that I was too busy looking into the screen
to see the reflection of anyone who might be coming up behind me.  I typed
"CANCEL", took the slide, and turned back down the corridor.

   By then I was positive I had heard
footsteps.  They could have been the echo of my own steps, but they
could've been someone else's, too.  I didn't stick around to find out.
 I know that fear is not one of those things the world expects from a guy
of more than seventeen and a half, but, after all these years, I don't mind
telling you.  Besides, I'm sure you'll agree that my fear was justified.
 After all, what would keep someone who was going to commit murder on the
7th of September from killing me just because I had heard something I wasn't
supposed to hear?

   After turning twice I came to a
slightly less dark part of the corridor, and for a minute I almost relaxed -
except that just then someone grabbed my arm.

 "Aha!" Ms. Yardley cried, dragging
me like a prisoner through the door that led to the Reading Room. Her grasp
wasn't all that strong, but I was so startled and so busy just trying to
remember to breathe that it didn't even dawn on me to resist.

 "From the very beginning I could tell
there was something dishonest about you," she prattled, "... and this
morning, when you showed up without a wound or a bruise after reporting a `car
accident', I knew I'd have to keep an eye on you and see precisely what you
were up to."  She grabbed the slide from my hand.  "And
from which book have you torn this?"

 The insult brought me back to my senses.

 "That's mine!"  I tried to
grab it back.  "Let go!"

 She let go of me, but not of the slide.

 "Yours?" she peered at it in front
of the light.  "I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you'd torn a
nude from one of the art catalogs.  Perhaps you can enlighten me as to
what this is a diagram of?"

   "I don't owe you any
explanations."

   "No, perhaps you don't owe me
any," she said, the glint of victory in her eye, "but you'll owe Mr.
K. some and how." She strode ahead without even checking to make sure I
was behind her.  At that moment I had no intention of escaping - quite the
contrary.  I went with her, all the time trying to imagine the sound her
orthopedic shoes would make on the cement corridor in the stacks.

   We passed behind the librarians'
counter - even senior employees were forbidden to do that without a reason -
Ms. Yardley going full steam ahead, staring straight at everyone we met and
announcing, "I'm taking this young man to Mr. K."  

At the entrance to Mr. K.'s office I said to her,
"If all this to-do is to throw me out, then there's no reason for me to go
in there, I'll just take my things and go."

 But she was too smart for me. "If
that's the case, then you admit your guilt.  Good.  But now even if I
wanted to, I couldn't let you go. The theft of a slide from the library is a
matter for one of the directors."

   "Are you sure he's one of the
directors?" I asked skeptically, looking at the plywood walls that made a
corner of the corridor into a tiny cubicle.

   "He most certainly is a
director," she whistled importantly. "And he knows me, and knows that
when I'm right, I'm right."

   She knocked on the door once, and
then again, but there was no response.  She twisted the handle decisively
and went in.  Mr. K. sat absorbed in two books that were open in front of
him among a bunch of other junk that crowded his desk.  There was an old
lamp in the shape of a globe whose bulb had burnt an orange stain in the Pacific
Ocean, a few books piled in two low stacks, magazines, opened letters,
envelopes, post cards, and notes.

   "Yes," said Mr. K., taking
a bite out of an apple.