At first I just nodded politely and said “Mmm”, and “Very true”, and similar things that people say when they don’t know what to say, but when he said “Love is the only rational act”, I just couldn’t bear it any more.
“Bill,” I said, “didn’t Morrie say all of that?”
So Bill decided to pass on some wisdom of his own. Most of what he had to offer I had heard before, mainly from my own father. My father was a font of good advice. “Never mix your drinks,” my dad used to say, “when you can get the barman to mix them for you.” Plus: “Do not wear white socks in public, unless you are a tennis player or a newborn babe.” And also: “Never trust a short man.”
Soon Bill was running short on wisdom, and I was running low on bourbon. I started making motions to leave. “You know,” said Bill with a hint of desperation in his voice, “sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways.” I pondered that. It is true, in some respects. I still don’t know how light can manage to be both particle and wave at the same time, and I have never managed to find out what direction water goes down a plughole if the plughole is directly on the equator. Perhaps Bill would be of some value after all.
“Go on,” I said, taking out a pen and pretending to take notes. That stumped him again. The universe does work in mysterious ways, but it is generally easier to say so than to give concrete examples.
“How come your phone can go all day without ringing,” he said, “then the moment you make a call, you get two incoming calls at the same time?”
“Hm,” I said.
“Uh, and, uh, have you ever wondered what the water level of the ocean would be if sponges didn’t grow in it?”
I suddenly took pity on the poor old guy. I rose from my seat and placed my hand on his shoulder, but neither of us liked that, so I took my hand off his shoulder again and sat down hurriedly.
“Bill,” I said kindly, “there is no law that says being old means you have to be wise. Wisdom is for people trying to sell books.”
He looked at me with mute and grateful eyes. We sat there a while, looking at each other. “The Massagetae, Bill, were a tribe of the Scythian people who occupied the land to the east of the Caspian Sea around 600 BC,” I told him. “They venerated old people, Bill. They looked after them, and doffed their caps to them, and they never demanded that the old people contribute anything by way of wise insights or clever maxims. They accepted that old people had done enough just by getting old. Oldness is enough of a good example.”
“The Massagetae, eh?” said Bill, nodding thoughtfully. “Maybe I should have been a Massagetae.”
“Well, not necessarily, Bill,” I had to confess. “They venerated their oldies until a certain point, then they would throw a big birthday feast for the ancient fellow, swing by his house and at a certain stage of the evening – I would imagine sometime after the speeches, and after the first round of drinks – they would kill the birthday boy, boil his flesh and add it to the stew.”
“Oh,” said Bill.
“Yes,” I said, “it wasn’t all fun and games and tribal wisdom, living in ancient times.”
“Savages,” said Bill gloomily.
“You should see the Mayans,” I said. And then I said: “Life is simple, Bill. It is enough that you are alive, and you seem more or less continent, and you can watch television whenever you want, and you are not actively participating in the commercial hunting of minke whales. Plus you have your geese, Bill. Don’t forget your geese.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“Don’t put so much pressure on yourself,” I said. “Leave wisdom for the people who feel their lives are empty without it. They are sad people, Bill. They are desperate people. You and me, we can get along just fine without it.” But then I remembered that these days people only really listen to aphorisms, so I said: “You know, Bill, when you think about it, wisdom is just another word for living well.”
I don’t really know what that means, but it seemed to make him happier. We got along just fine after that, and when the bourbon was finished and I weaved my way to the door, it was just like we were old acquaintances. As he waved me goodbye, I turned and looked him in the eye and said: “I’m okay, Bill, and you … you live next door.”
It was one of those moments that you never forget, no matter how you try.
But perhaps Bill was sent to help me write this final chapter. (If so, it is a very depressing thought. Imagine living an entire life, complete with its full allotment of heartache, trauma and bad haircuts, simply so that some mouthy fellow next door can finish his book in time to make the Christmas sales list.) After I arrived home, once I had buried my keys under a loose tile in the kitchen, I fell to musing. You and I have come a long way together – well, longish – and I am afraid I may have been doing us a disservice. I know I have been referring to us as “lazy” all through this book, but maybe “lazy” isn’t the right word. We may not want to go to unnecessary exertion, but the important word there is “unnecessary”, not “exertion”.
This world is awash with guff, with humbug and bushwah and just plain dumbness, and it is a full-time job to wade through it all without becoming so tired that you just lie down and let it roll over you and become one with the dumbness. Stupidity clothes itself in many outfits – the postal services, Spice Girls pursuing solo careers, that little bastard Jamie Oliver – and one of its current looks for this and the next few seasons is to dress up like wisdom.
Our job – yours and mine – is to shrug off the stupidity, to push it behind us, and above all to enrich ourselves while we’re about it. I’ve held up my end of the bargain by writing this book, and hopefully by selling it too. How you do your job is up to you. I have no ideas off the top of my head, but do let me know if there is anything of a practical nature I can do to help.
I was going to wrap up with an explanation of the title, but I don’t think I’ll bother now. There was never really any cheese, was there? And even if there had been, I would probably have eaten it, rather than moved it around. The cheese was just a cunning device to get you to read to the end. And here you are, so I suppose it must have worked.
EPILOGUE
Bill and I are good neighbours now. There is warmth in our good-morning nods. But of course, old habits die hard. When I work too late I still get the urge to shinny over the wall and tiptoe across his lawn and rearrange his plaster aviary. Just this morning I woke to the sound of Bill shouting and cursing and rooting around in the shrubbery for one of his birds.
I opened the bedroom window and I leant outside. I yelled across the wall. “Relax, Bill!” I yelled. “Relax!”
Bill looked across to me, and our eyes met once more. “Don’t worry, Bill,” I said. “It was me, Bill. I moved your geese.”
You will notice that the final pages of this book are blank. There is no writing on them. They are – unless the staff members at your local bookstore have been playing silly buggers with their felttipped pens – entirely free of doodles, graffiti, bar-graphs, shopping lists and marginalia. Do not consider yourself cheated. Think of these pages not as a disappointment but as an opportunity.
Blank pages in a book are the literary equivalent of unscheduled free minutes in your day. It is obviously my duty to suggest you put these pages to some improving end – jotting down preliminary thoughts for your impending assault on Fermat’s last theorem, for instance, or making notes for the planned epic sonnet cycle that will revolutionise the way we read poetry for evermore – but in truth there are altogether simpler and more rewarding uses to which these pages may be put. For instance:
• You may be reading this book in warm weather, perhaps wearing woollen garments you donned this morning in the mistaken belief that the afternoon would turn chilly. If so, these pages are eminently suitable for blotting perspiration from your upper lip. Do not hesitate to do this: a moist upper lip causes you to resemble Richard Nixon. It is unattractive. You are unlikely to get lucky with a moist upper lip. Plus, I wouldn’t want a
ny passers-by to think that this is the sort of book read by people with moist upper lips.
• Detached from the binding, these pages would be suitable for use in origami, as coasters for your bourbon, or as a do-ityourself confetti kit.
• You may want to use these pages to make yourself a checklist of everything you have learnt in the preceding pages. Each morning you can rise and greet the world and run through the valuable tips you have gleaned. I shan’t dictate what valuable tips you should have gleaned, but if I might make a few suggestions:
When life gives you a mango, use it to make sangria.
Stupid is as stupid does, so stop doing stupid things.
Life is like a box of chocolates – it is overpriced, will make you sick if you have it too quickly, and if other people see you with it, they will try to take bits of it away from you.
Think before you speak. Read before you think. Wash your hands before you read.
A stitch in time saves seven-and-a-half, eight tops.
I’m okay.
Do not waste time wondering if the glass is half-empty or half-full. If the glass looks half-anything, it is time to order another round.
In life, as in dinner-table conversation, only a cad says everything he means, and only a bore means everything he says.
Do not just say no. Do not just do it. These things require circumspection. Just say: “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Just say: “Maybe, maybe not.” Just say nothing at all.
Always leave the party five minutes before you have run out of things to say.
I wish you well, my friends. If you feel your strength failing, flip through this book and soon you will be reminded: “Anything can be faked.”
I Moved Your Cheese Page 7
