“A poet?” Julia asks.
“This surprises you? Hmm, how curious. A writer. Yes, writing is Loche’s other love—journaling, short stories, novellas —perhaps even novels. Something that he discusses within these pages,” Rearden pats the book in his lap. “I had no idea that Loche had such a love for the written word. He speaks of having volumes of writings at his home—and apparently he hasn’t shared his work with anyone. He says that he hasn’t yet fully developed his gift yet. Though I am quite taken with the story, he’s no writer. Not yet anyway. One day perhaps, if he keeps at it. But that aside, he says that there is something to come, something terrifying lurking within him that will one day emerge. Something in his writing, in his craft—” Rearden sighs and scowls. It is obvious to Julia that he is having a difficult time trying to organize his thoughts.
“Julia, have you ever wondered why you exist?”
She flips a look at the old man that says, what in the hell are you talking about?
Undeterred, Marcus carries on, “Have you ever wondered why you can never be satisfied with your life, no matter how terrible or pleasurable it is?” Julia does not respond. “Yes, you know, the coffee table conversations. The deep, late night, nicotine, alcohol, pot-induced interrogation of the universe and all its gods and human beliefs. The self-help message of positive thinking, manifestation and all of that. Yes, your mocking smile seems appropriate—is there a God? Does my life matter? Is there a heaven? A hell? An afterlife? What is eternity? By your bemused grin I can see that you believe that those questions won’t be answered for us. So what is the use of asking them? Right? Right! That is just how I felt, though, being a psychologist, asking such questions is quite useful in treating a client. It opens the shrink and client relationship, if you understand me.
“Well, Loche Newirth believes that those lofty questions have answers. Real answers. He believes that if he can gather those answers around him he can heal and restore his clients. And mankind. He wants to ease the pain in the world. Now, I don’t know the depth at which you’ve considered such concepts. Perhaps you don’t trouble yourself.”
“I don’t trouble myself,” Julia says.
“Ha! That’s it, young lady. That’s the smarter way to go. Either way, mankind, as a collective, has struggled to come to terms with these disconcerting mysteries since the beginning of time, and all we’ve got to show for it is a cream cheese bagel, as one of my clients is fond of saying—that is, by the way, zero, zilch, nada—nothing. Nothing but more questions, more gods, more self-help witchery, more classes studying Plato, Catholicism, eastern philosophy, Oprah and motorcycle repair.
“I believe that all thought has its place. All opinions matter —every man that believes, truly believes what his heart or intuition tells him, matters. Whether or not it matters to anyone else is the bitch.
“I believe in the eternal chess game.” Rearden nods simply. “I’m certain that a delicately carved, decorative set has graced many a coffee table, over which you and your friends and acquaintances have discussed the meaning of life.”
“I don’t play chess,” Julia says.
“Humph,” Rearden snorts. “Either way, a lovely game. It is all about strategy, patience and forethought. What fascinates me about the game is the class of pieces—pawns, knights, bishops, royalty—the whole caste system. Ha! I can think of many times when I was referred to as a pawn. You too?” Julia gives him a sidelong glance. “Yes. There are some among us that we call kings and queens. Some of us are knights. Some of us are as stout and strong as castles. But most of us are pawns. Just pawns. We start the game and seldom survive long enough to become kings. I believe we are the pieces, if you will, to a long, long, long chess game. We are being moved around a cosmic playing board in complex strategies. Every so often, a pawn is presented with a chance at greatness. And when that chance comes, one must take it. For good or ill.”
The doctor cracks his window. “Ah, cold air.” He then looks at his listener. “I apologize for the long speech. I think I like to hear myself talk.” Marcus lifts the book. “Julia, just remember there has to be two players for a good chess game. After all, there’s always two. This book is about all of these things. It’s as much about Loche, as it is about Basil Pirrip Fenn. And in some strange way, it is about you, too.” The mention of Basil does not move Julia to respond as the old doctor had expected. “You knew him.”
“Yes,” she replies painfully. Loche’s description of Basil with a gun below his chin flashes before her eyes. She scowls, shakes it off and grips the steering wheel. “Yes.”
He opens the cover to the journal and sighs. “I’ll read to you while you drive.”
“Don’t leave anything out,” Julia says.
“I wouldn’t think of it. Where did you leave off?”
“Just after Loche and Basil had met.”
“Very good. Now you understand that he is writing of one single second, right?
“What?”
“You see, after Basil’s death, Loche saw upon that final canvas his short history with Basil, as crazy as that might sound —he lived it all over again—in the flash of an instant, as he says. So really, he’s writing about what happened at the Uffizi. He then returned to the States and went to his cabin to write it all down. Get it?”
“Just read,” Julia says.
“You do understand, don’t you?” Rearden asks.
“Just read.”
Marcus clears his throat and begins.
Upon Basil’s last canvas there appeared the door to my office—it was the following morning.
“Dr. Newirth, William Greenhame is in your office, and he is quite out of sorts.”
“Yes, I know. He called me at five thirty this morning.” I said as I handed Carol my coat.
“He was outside the doors when I arrived, pacing and talking to himself.” Carol lifted a clipboard and a file folder from her desk. “I let him in and he went straight to your office. I told him to wait in the lobby, but he insisted—”
“It’s okay, Carol. He’s probably reading by now.”
“I don’t think he likes me very much,” she said carefully. She turned her back and hung up my coat. “How was the lake visit?”
“Very fine,” I answered.
There was a crash, the crackle of broken glass, then a voice echoed down the hall. “Heu, heu, heu! mihi misero! Vitae meae finem disidero!” Carol shook her head.
“Latin today?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee.
“Is that what that is? I can never understand that man, Doctor. What was he speaking last week?”
“Middle English, he told me, and some bursts of French, then he ended the session with word scrambles.”
“Does he always speak in different languages?”
“No, only when he’s having an episode. When he’s calmed down a bit he speaks words I can understand, though, I use the word understand loosely.” I smiled at Carol as I turned the corner and walked the ten paces down the hall to my office.
The door was ajar. I pushed it open. William Greenhame stood on my desk posed like a ballet dancer frozen in time. His long arms were raised above his head, twisted into a spiral. One foot kept his balance while the other hung in the air, stretched straight out at forty-five degrees. I marveled at his ability to hold such a difficult pose. His treelike limbs and slender frame remained effortlessly still as his gaze, earnest and yearning, peered out to some distant place beyond my office ceiling.
Trembling, I studied the room, with my fists clenched at my side.
He wore a tailored English tweed jacket of deep olive green with thin sienna stripes that crossed in a wide graph pattern. Underneath was a muted yellow-gold waistcoat with carved wooden buttons, and a comfortably tied clay-red cravat that covered an ivory collared shirt. His pants were earthen-toned, and well-worn leather boots finished off the ensemble. A finely crafted umbrella with a curved ebony handle dangled down from his right wrist. Antique shopper was the first thing t
hat came to my mind upon our first meeting, and every meeting since, for this was his consistent manner of dress.
Several of the items from my desk were strewn about the floor. The framed picture of my wife and Edwin lay broken in a pile of paperwork. I stepped carefully into the room and took a moment to assess the damage. I steadied myself with a deep breath. I then looked up at the man.
I finally addressed him. “William,” I said calmly, “nice pose.” Greenhame didn’t respond, but kept his eyes strained into that distant place where all sculptures seem to gaze. I continued, “I especially like the coiled arms. Very graceful.” I sipped, walked around my desk and put my briefcase down. I felt the irrepressible desire to tidy up, but I attempted to appear unaffected, for his sake. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Yes, with cream and sugar.”
“Carol,” I said into the intercom, “please bring William some coffee.”
“With cream and sugar,” Greenhame reiterated.
“With cream and sugar,” I echoed.
I walked around to the front of my desk and began to pick up my things. Greenhame spoke again, “Anxiatus est in me spiritus. Cur moratur meus interitus?”
“What was that?” I asked, “my Latin is a bit rusty.”
“Luctus, dolor et desperatio.”
Carol arrived at the door. Seeing the mess, her eyes moved up Greenhame’s posed frame. “H-here’s your c-coffee, Mr. Greenhame.”
“Oh, thank you, dear Carol,” he said, leaping down to the floor and taking the cup from her. He took a sip. “Perfect. Perfect.” He smacked his lips and added, “That is, if you didn’t poison it.”
Carol looked at me and raised her eyebrows, “Can I bring you anything else, Doctor?”
“Not now, Carol. Thanks for bringing the right medicine.”
“I do what I can,” she said eyeing William cautiously as she walked out.
“Now Greenhame, I’ve heard those Latin words before. Let me see if I can get this right, you are filled with sorrow, grief and despair—and you are miserable.” He nodded and sat down, holding his coffee cup as if it were a rock climber’s last hand hold. “That’s all I could gather. Was there more?”
“Ithic veli agtig?” he whispered.
I shook my head.
“Ithic veli agtig?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.” Nor did I know the language. I’d not heard anything like it before. Yet strangely, the sound of the words seemed to form a sentiment in my mind, and a simple question. I somehow knew what he was about to translate for me. But perhaps that was due to the many times he’d said the same thing in English.
“Why does my death delay?” he translated gravely.
I looked at him a moment and processed the question. William Greenhame was forty-four-years-old. He looked thirty. The expression he wore most often was contemplative, but on the verge of some joke that was just about to be pitched. Below his right eye and tracing across his cheek was a thin scar—a horseback riding accident from childhood, he told me. There was a light and strength in his face, and it was good-natured, especially when he smiled. Long, dark hair draped over his shoulders, and his bright hazel eyes looked to me for answers. We had been acquainted for some time. After our first three sessions I had diagnosed him with Schizotypal Personality Disorder along with obvious Narcissistic Defenses. His panic, manic and bipolar episodes were difficult to track.
However, his odd beliefs and his unusual perceptual experiences were quite interesting to observe. Having lived some years in England myself, his English accent made me comfortable. It reminded me of my youth. William was not born in England, nor had he ever visited.
There was also something familiar about his eyes. I supposed that the familiarity was due to our shared search for peace of mind. William’s education was worn outwardly, and his firm conviction to his beliefs was captivating. He claimed to hold degrees in both history and literature. But the most interesting thing about his condition was his imagined state. William had taken a theme—a fantasy—and had weaved it into his thought process, much like a method actor or a historical reenactor. Greenhame believed that he was born in 1375, outside of London. He believed that he was immortal.
“So,” I asked, “what happened this morning? Your scheduled appointment wasn’t until eleven-thirty.”
“Living the life, living the dream,” he said, “and that is extremely overwhelming, you see—for when you’ve been alive as long as I have you tend to think of too many things all at once.”
“I can imagine,” I said as comfortingly as I could, “there must be a lot of memories to sift through.”
“No,” he fixed me with a quick, stabbing glare, “you can’t imagine—and yes indeed! Memories, memories, memories!” he exclaimed. “So many memories.”
“Did something happen that lead to your call this morning?”
“Have you ever really looked at a statue?”
“What statue?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter what statue, my lad. Just a statue?”
“Well, yes,” I replied, “I’ve seen many statues.”
“I saw a statue in my dreams last night. Then I became the statue.” He slowly shook his head and closed his eyes. “I couldn’t move. I felt frozen and all I could see was what was directly in front of me.”
“What did you see?”
“The horizon. It would fade into view. Light came from behind. Then I could see the sun drop down and set on the Earth, fall in, and dim. Then black for awhile. Over and over, the same thing. I saw the sky change colors, days into nights and back again. Sometimes there were grey skies, sometimes blue, sometimes snow.” He stood suddenly, raised his arms and his right foot into the air, and took the exact shape I had discovered him in when I entered. His eyes gazed into the distance. “A host of pigeons, perched on my nose, on my finger tips, on my leg. Shitting all over me,” he said. He remained still for nearly a minute then sat down. “If you were over six hundred years old and felt like a statue and watched each day pass without moving and you’ve got centuries of pigeon shit all over you, how would you feel?”
I thought for a moment. How would I feel? “If I were that old, William, I think I would have figured out how to cope with a host of issues. I think I would be a very patient and ordered individual. After all, there would be plenty of time to come to terms with the many frustrations of living.”
He smiled. “That’s very good, but you do not understand,” he said with gravity, “you cannot yet understand.”
I leaned forward. “William,” I said, “you were born in 1971, in Athol, Idaho. Your parents own a cattle ranch, and you are the night watchman at the Coeur d’Alene Resort. Let’s not forget these things.” I spoke gently as he bowed his head. “Sometimes dreams seem real. But they are only shadows of our cognitive beliefs. What you believe isn’t always real.”
He looked up at me. “What is real, you wouldn’t believe.”
I sighed. “William, the statue dream didn’t lead to your episode did it? Was there some other event that took place that you haven’t told me about?”
“I haven’t even begun. I am a moving, living, breathing statue. I cannot die. All I can do is wait for the next event. There must be an end to all of this.”
I was perplexed. He was certain that he had lived for centuries. No matter how many times I showed him his records to remind him of his true age, it made no difference. He would glance at the facts and brush them aside as if they were absurdities that he had created to disguise his real identity. It seemed that the only way to get to the bottom of his illness was to humor his delusion—or more accurately, I would use what’s called the mirroring of interpretation of narcissistic vulnerability, which simply means, empathize and listen. He seemed to speak freely if he thought I believed his stories. And I listened and tried to pinpoint areas that mirrored his reality. From there, I would try to coax him to health by providing anchors for defense and resistance. But ultimately, it was about iden
tifying his pain and finding a way in which he could organize it.
“Well,” I said, looking at my watch, “It’s almost eight o’clock and I have a session at eight thirty. You can begin now and we can finish up at your eleven thirty appointment.”
“When I called this morning, the world was too much with me. I had given my heart up to be sacrificed by a past I cannot change, a present I cannot hold and a future that promises nothing but the same emptiness that I’ve known since my coming of age. Childhood was my only heaven, for it was then I knew naught of this bane of ever-last.” William then said in friendly tones, “Talking with you has restored my discipline. You have a way of doing that for me, even for one so young.” I started to respond but he stopped me, “I know, I know, you didn’t say much. You don’t have to. That is why I come to see you each week.
“And you are like a statue, too, Dr. Newirth. But you have a strength that you haven’t yet realized. Believe me when I tell you that. I’ve met a great many characters in my long, long lifetime. You will weather the storms that shall come, and you’ll stand steadfast and confident like a Roman sculpture, even after Rome falls. But when it falls, you will come to life. And if I am not mistaken, the fall will come soon.”
“Sooner than last week’s prediction?” I asked with a grin.
“Don’t mistake me,” William said, “an unexpected turn has set events in motion.”
“Mysterious.” I stood. “And I am sure there is so much more to learn.”
He smiled, “Ah yes, there is indeed.”
I opened the door. “Will I see you at eleven-thirty?”
“No. I feel better.”
“Now William, try to keep your focus on your job, your family and friends, but most of all—yourself. You are the key to getting well.”
“I’m not sick, Doctor, I just need a disciplined, normal man to talk to,” said William.
“Yes, I know. Just focus on what’s tangible, solid and real. We’ll discuss the big deep heavy next week.”
The Invasion of Heaven, Part One of the Newirth Mythology Page 5
