“ . . .”
“Well there you have it then, I think that’s everyone. Who do we pick?”
“ . . .”
“Then we’ll do the women.”
“ . . .”
“Bottom line is I’m going to keep talking because if I’m talking then I’m not dying. No dead man has ever talked so cogito ergo someone who is talking, in this case me, cannot die, at least not insofar as they are talking per se ad infinitum. Understand? Anyway I’m ready to vote and I vote for Gilligan Glass, father of Angus Glass and lover of beef. I’m sorry what I said before about the beer. It weren’t true father! He’s a good man, a real man. Not like I was. He woke up every morning and did something he didn’t want to do. Now as my life ebbs away I realize I did something I didn’t want to do about three percent of the time. The other ninety-three percent of the time I watched people do what I wanted them to do. What I accomplished the last couple of days was great, no question about that, and don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me that finally achieving this achievement has led to my imminent death by in effect giving me the green light to expire now that I’ve achieved greatness, but the truth remains that what I’ve done is essentially simulate my own life. And now it’s over. I guess the only consolation is that I will not experience death since death is by definition something that cannot be experienced. It’s coming though . . . I can’t keep talking . . . there’s simply nothing left to say. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
“Although I certainly didn’t think it would end with this kind of feeble whimper that’s for sure,” he sighed and sank lower. “No I always thought it would be like the end of Scarface whereby a veritable army would be required to take me out. I thought I would be raging against death with all my final breath. I certainly didn’t think my final demise would come because Alyona’s uncle read in Landlord Magazine that he could save money by installing electric heat. I didn’t think that . . . father please . . . help me . . . Gilligan Glass . . . that’s who I vote for.”
Angus stopped talking. He was asleep. I knew this because his breathing changed. I was in the chair.
I stayed awake, diving further and further into the chair and always conscious of my eyes being peeled. So I know I was awake when I saw DeLeon come to me, from out of the darkness and into a new slight light, one without independent basis, to show me that his face had been shattered open, its skin barely clinging to the flesh it once covered; the lower cheeks swollen outward in a parody of a smile. I looked away but he wanted me to see. I called to Angus. DeLeon said his face hurt. He said it hurt more with every passing minute. That the hurt didn’t go away, that I should know it continued to exist even after everything else had ceased to. That it was true pain. That I could try to imagine what it was like and still not truly know and that wanting it to go away meant next to nothing because it was a given. He said all that, the bloody remnants of his lips moving up and down exaggeratedly, and I looked away from him and into the black frigidity knowing that Angus was right and I was going to die that night. I pushed DeLeon away and fell forward out of the chair.
When I looked up from the floor I found I could see Everything. I saw the fundaments of the universe; quarks and neutrinos in visible ubiquity, jittering and bouncing, off each other and onto me. I saw Time itself, the fourth dimension, naked and enormous in its full horror, neither flowing nor frozen, and beside it the relativistic Elsewhere, lifeless and defunct. I saw Music, not the notes or the sounds but what it verily was. I saw incomplete but beautiful Math, its integers and the rules they obeyed, and I understood it all.
I saw minds. I saw thoughts, disembodied but clear. I stared at consciousness itself, saw what it looked like, and became frightened. Concepts were visible; I saw Justice and Cowardice, Enmity and Envy. I saw leprous bodies piled high, discarded by what had animated them and seemingly congealing into a single mass of fibrous muscle and cartilage. I saw the unborn and the dead as they clawed at the living. And the living weren’t healthy. They were diseased and deformed, with arms where legs should be and skin peeling to expose ambiguity where distinction was needed. I watched flesh devour flesh and heard bones crack from weight and from that moment on I started hearing everything as well. I heard colors and circles, trees and triangles. I heard Fear lick the face of Hate accompanied by a final whispered scream. Then I heard, felt, and saw the world begin to crack open to admit, little by little, the return of Light. The light dispersed everything else as I watched it grow and fill the room.
I saw Angus on the sofa and watched the breath leave his nose. I stood up. The sun rose and the room shone. Then the artificial light began to return as if responding to its father. One by one its sources came to life casting a plastic brightness on what had hid in the dark. The heat began clicking furiously and I dropped to its level inches away. Television came on and Angus opened his eyes.
“We’re going to be all right,” he said.
“No,” I said. “But we’re going to live.”
Angus stood and walked to a basket. He took out a control of the remote variety and began to reprogram his HDVDCR. I couldn’t move yet.
“I had a dream,” he said. The heat began to fill the room. “Our thoughts during dreams are often more lucid, I feel good.” For the first time in over a day I took off my jacket. Angus saw this and took his off. “And I don’t give a cow’s dick what Hume said, science rules! Smell that heat? That’s what science smells like, that’s science baby.”
“Cows don’t have dicks.”
“What?”
“Bull.”
“Exactly, that’s bull!”
“No, bulls have dicks.”
“Fine, have it your way; but I still don’t give a bull’s vulva about Hume.”
My car wouldn’t start. Everyone was everywhere. I took the A to Times Square. Toad’s response to the blackout had been to decree that every light in the square had to be placed on TITS (or the non-acronymic Temporarily Illuminatorily Trebled Status) even during daylight and it was hard to make out people or structures in that brightness. Giant digital soda cans poured their would-be liquids near skeletal human underwear holders and a morning news program aired on the giant screen turning the area into the world’s largest living room and us into passive viewers. Arrows illuminated in succession toward neon women and Disney characters handed out free previews to their parents’ movies. I looked around confused. I needed a bus. I was desperate and lost. A guy in a van said he went where I needed to go provided I had the two dollars he needed. Everyone in the van talked about the blackout except me. The van dropped me off two blocks from my mother. I walked and found that the unmitigated cold of the last two days had made me more susceptible to losing my warmth so that by the time I got to the house I was shaking again.
There were no cars in the driveway and I feared I would be alone. The door was locked but I thought I heard voices inside. I climbed in through the window. I walked into the living room. My mother was there with others. Alana was there, Timmy and Mary. Flames cracked in the fireplace. They said Marcela was still in the hospital but doing well along with the baby and both would be coming home any minute. I walked to the fire as my face stung from the new heat. No one talked about the blackout and Mary filled the room with words.
chapter 25
Will you read this to me? Please?
—Mary
THE STORY
Garrapata Nahyuv-McDunnit
A New Translation by Nestor del Tobón
The agèd Queen two princes begat; her newer half-young
As Elder was old. Until, as mothers wont do,
She urged the younger where travel and likewise what bring.
Thusly did it come to pass that this younger of two
Did alight onto our world from the openest sky
Feebly armed and with only sense slight of where he’d go,
What he would do once there and why.
The sky he quit was soft and warm
Yet the low lan
d he saw draw nigh,
Growing steadily in his eyes, seemed frigid and hard,
With poorer air than the home he’d departed and less
Room where he might hope to safely ensconce his heart.
For where he then landed was densely forest
Where aught the tallest trees were small
And truly the roundest circles seemed square.
Of this forest he deemed study all.
Looking first up before down
Then side to side with scant awe.
But not without adding to his face a mounting fearful frown
For well he understood he was not rightly of that place
And also did he perceive an encroaching darkness then.
One that would blind him to leafy trees,
The slight creatures extant and home,
And the very ground that supported his
Weight and pushed up against his own
Feet ensuring he could not take flight
To ascend from that darkening globe
And return whence he left.
Thus did his princely mind
Resolve that ere Day went
He would endeavor, through sight,
To find his way out of that
Tangled brush and unchecked grime
Which had entwined his heart,
Rooted him to heavy Earth,
And obscured his purpose from the start.
To begin, the resolute prince first
Traveled eastward where he found
The forestry slighter yet thicker,
The pull greater from the ground,
And a harshly disfigured beast,
Enormous in both sight and sound,
Blocking any passage he might attempt
While addressing him thusly:
“Only one who is truly lost,”
Spake the beast, “would dare appear before me
In such a manner wholly unarmed
So that thy certain and grievous defeat
Would occur in and of slightest momentum
And in every possible event
With greatest attendant harm.”
Only when the young man spoke naught
Did the creature hastily quod,
“Or is yet my speech intemperate?
For could not the sight of thou naked
Yet calm portend the terrible truth
Of a strength and power greater for being well-hid?”
Nor to this either did speaketh
The young prince, well aware
He of his dearth of strength
Both hidden or evidently clear.
Choosing instead sudden flight
So eager he to abscond from there.
And with expanding black night
Cloaking the fearsome still beast
Did the young prince then decide
To travel farthermost west
In ardent search of method
For retrieving what he’d lost.
So he traveled toward the sinking sun
The horrors of the eastern creature
No dimmer by virtue of being done,
The approaching horizon as if afire
But aglow with the promise
That the answer somehow lay near,
Visible to all, yet in expectant wait only for his
Discovery. Thereat went the young man
Hopeful that second would be last of his voyages.
But his hope did dim much when
Arriving at length at the New
He found a chasm, widened without end
By long sad years, into which the sun now
Disappeared entire taking what meager light
And warmth the new world had theretofore known.
Descending into that hole complete
He found others in appearance as him
Tearing at each other in scattered effort
To raise themselves and sowise climb
(Supported by the massive weight
Of others) but undone by a fall each time.
And the heaven-descended prince eyed the replacement
Moon seeing what he thought the lovely face
Of his mother and entreating it to reveal his fate.
But while the moon’s light did soothe his eyes
Not far had th’orb truly bade
To answer his doubtful sighs.
And presently from the moon’s appearance did fade
The reassuring visage of his mother
So that the young prince was in solitude forced
To seek his means of homeward return,
Out of that world of empty dread
And once again to that of his noble mother,
Through the use of Thought, for surely it had
Been the greatest of the intentionally few
Gifts with which he had obediently traveled.
So quickly did he move away
From that yawning earth
To let his troubled mind weigh
Thoughts of how he might at last depart
That ruinous place. Upon themselves
Those learned thoughts did build, the true
Of them supporting novel ones
And emerging from those
The strongest for corners.
Building through such means
A ladder, ethereal but true,
And able to support his corpse
Thought he. Yet learning instead too
That as he would attempt to elevate
The insubstance of the ladder would
Rebel against his body’s weight,
Keeping him lower than he wished
With dreams of Mother still frustrate.
And though the ladder grew its best
With success eventual
Still imbued with promise,
The young prince grew so impatient with it all,
The progress so deliberately slow,
So often seeing the moon rise then fall,
That he soon sought a newly improved route,
One that would re-wed him to the heavens
With rungs that ought repel his feet until home.
Accordingly did he construct magic vines
Which vines he tied to each step
Of the ladder as up he would steadily rise.
And not until he felt a slight drop
In his climb did he look below
To see the wroth eastern beast rising up
In pursuit, alternating each ascending paw,
Baring its many demonic teeth,
Intent fully on reaching its prey.
The young prince did then raise his speed
Only, in his hurried frantic haste,
To see distance shrink twixt him and beast.
Until, from mere distance at last,
He saw in approach the cloud
That segued to the world of his past.
And in a final leap conducted in the highest above
Did the young prince presently and safely land
Beyond the portal cloud past which the beast dared not run.
Content instead on the ladder to stand
And wait, in vain if need be,
For the return of the princely man.
Who now searched in that safety
For the mother he did not see
Unaware that her end had been deadly,
Just the shortest of measured time since,
At the sullied hands of a brother jealous
That the younger’s journey did not include he.
And now did that elder brother seize in his hands
The limp body of their heavenly mother
To pull on her head by the lifeless hairs
Until only the severed head of her
Remained in his bloodied grasp,
The better with which to deceive his brother.
For into that head he reached to scoop
What in life her skull had cradled,
Cr
eating thusly of the skull a masking top
That forcibly he placed over his head
To in such manner then falsely greet
His brother in guise of the recent dead.
“O my journey ’twas long and full of fright,”
The now becalmed prince spoke,
“Yet the fragrant peace I have only hither felt
Makes my adventures seem far less dark.”
Then adding, hearing no response,
“Your son, the other, does he not hark
To my just now resurrected presence?”
To which came the misprize reply:
“Gone not long from this celestial place
At my request and in search of thee.
Whom I now in turn urge
To return and search well for he.”
A great shiver the young man felt at those words,
His mind’s sight of the beast still unextinguished
Despite his recent and most beneficent turn.
Until the dead woman’s grief and shame
Did bubble over from a rapid swell
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 67
