He dropped all his books as Hans wrestled him to the ground. It wasn’t much of a match; Don was a skinny kid, and he was more worried about keeping his glasses from slipping off than in putting up a fight. He was soon on his back with Hans on top. Hans swiftly pulled off his glasses and slapped him twice, hard. He lay still, his face stinging and wet, as Hans got up.
“I had to do that, Donnie, because of the rotten thing you did to Jonathan. You understand that, don’t you? I mean, we don’t have to talk about it anymore. That was all I wanted to say.” He held up the palm of his right hand. “You okay now?”
Don nodded. His face was hot with fear, his eyes turned upward, away from Hans.
“See you tonight for a beer?”
Don nodded. He closed his eyes and dug the fingers of one hand into the cool soil. But Hans still waited, out of his field of vision, tired and afraid; unsure, Hans waited for an answer.
“Kaefig, you’re crazy!” he whispered.
He lay there, not moving, long after Hans had gone. The tree above was blurred, but he could trace the pattern of its larger branches, and the smaller ones seemed to wink in and out of existence. If he concentrated and squinted, he could follow even those, tracing the patterns over and over with his eyes and his mind. He often looked at trees, never tired of looking at trees, sliding along the limbs with his eyes, absorbing the whole of the latticework.
Every year there were new branches on the tree outside his window. Even this year, strange as it might seem, new green branches on the tree outside the window of the elephants’ graveyard. To lose himself on these branches. To reach up and out with his mind. To lie prone on earth and cease to ponder on himself, the while he stared at nothing, drawn nowhere. His breath came with more difficulty these days, his hands would not close with ease and pained him when they did. Walking was an effort and all chairs too hard and wrongly proportioned. He longed to—what was the verse?—to
seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
But he was no hero. What lay on his desk was merely dry and inevitable. The morning’s mail, a cup of coffee, the laughing icosahedron. He had thumbed through the journals marked for his attention by Bibliography late in the morning. And there it was, in a Polish journal of logic, to be sure. In German, yes, but there could be no mistake: “Die Widerspruchlichkeit der Logikgrundsatze als Folge eines geometrischen Beweises, “ by Kalman Kodaly of the University of Budapest.
Of course, it had to happen; anyone should have known. He placed one hand on the icosahedron, no longer needing to look at it, and raised himself to his feet. He walked slowly to the window, knowing he would find something there, the vision of order and neutrality, of “light anatomized.” It was waiting for him, soft and green and easy on his eyes. And for long minutes that morning, Donald Lucus stood at his window, tracing the lines, the beautiful lines of the tree, and wept for the death of his dear friend Hans.
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Orbit 16 - [Anthology] Page 29
