And as Dr. Weizenger stood on the threshold of the house, his house, on the island of Antigua, the sun was shining and his wife, her name: May Weizenger (now it was Weizenger, but before it could have been Smith or Locke, something like that would do), was standing next to him and he wanted to go through the door and so he did, he stepped over the threshold and he remained just as he had been, the same man who had come from Prague and all the things attached to that, his escape from death, his expulsion from his paradise, his journeys to places with those awful names that he had only known on a map, and now to Mr. Potter and the place which had made Mr. Potter what he was and what he would be, and all of it so without importance, Dr. Weizenger had never even seen it on a map, for no mapmaker yet knew of Mr. Potter and where he came from and what had made him. And Mr. Potter went into Dr. Weizenger’s house also and opened all the windows and he showed Dr. Weizenger and his wife May how the windows could be made to do that, open and shut, with their bars turned this way and then that, and Dr. Weizenger was surprised at the very scrupulous simplicity of the working of the windows and immediately dismissed that such beauty, the clean and clear motion of windows opening and then being shut, could have anything to do with Mr. Potter and he wished Mr. Potter would just go away, but Mr. Potter knew very well the person who had made the windows, in some roundabout way they were related; Dr. Weizenger could not have known that and Dr. Weizenger just then did not want to know it, and then again, why should he?
But that opening of all the windows by Mr. Potter, why that? Mr. Potter had entered the house and moved about, entering room by room, and opened all the windows; there were twenty windows all in all but the numbers were not of interest to Mr. Potter and Dr. Weizenger was so suffused with sensation that such a number of windows had no meaning to him then (but only just then, at another time this might not be so, but who knew, another time might come again and then again, perhaps not). And Mr. Potter opened the rooms as if he had authority over not the rooms themselves and not the windows themselves, but as if he had authority over the space outside the rooms, the space beyond the windows. The space beyond the windows was the very air itself, empty of things that were made by human hands, but not empty of things that were the product of the human mind: there were trees, shrubs, herbs, and other annoyances of the vegetable kingdom; there were animals and birds and other annoyances of the animal kingdom; there was emptiness waiting to be filled up with what? with what? and with what again? But Mr. Potter, the entity that made up Mr. Potter, was nothing itself, nothing in the sense of something without worth, nothing in the way of a lighted matchstick when it is not needed, so Dr. Weizenger thought, and so too thought the rest of the world, the rest of the world who could have an idea in regard to anything and then launch that idea into the realm of the everyday.
But that opening of all the windows by Mr. Potter made Mr. Potter look out at all the light outside, how it thrilled him (’E ah make me trimble up inside, ’e ah make me feel funny), for it was the light as he had always known it, so bright that it eventually made everything that came in contact with it transparent and then translucent, the light was spread before Mr. Potter as if it were a sea of water, it covered and yet revealed all that it encompassed; the light was substance itself and the light gave substance to everything else: the trees became the trees but only more so, and the ground in which they anchored themselves remained the ground but only more so, and the sky above revealed more and more of the sky and into the heavens, into eternity, and then returned to the earth; and Mr. Potter thought, for he was lost in the light outside the window (but which window? For it could have been any of the twenty windows), he thought, but his thoughts then are lost now, his mind went blank and he existed not as a man who could cause pain and would cause pain, and not only as a victim of pain and injustice. And he saw the light outside making everything so transparent and then everything becoming translucent and Mr. Potter was happy, he swelled up with it, happiness, and I was not born yet, he had not yet abandoned my mother when I was seven months old in her womb, my mother had not yet taken all his savings, money he kept in the mattress of the bed they shared together, and run away from him; he could not read or write, he could not go to a bank, and my mother had taken all his savings meant for him to one day buy his own motorcar and carry his own passengers, and when she abandoned Mr. Potter and took all his savings, I was then seven months old in her womb. My mother’s name was Annie. And because Mr. Potter could neither read nor write, he could not understand himself, he could not make himself known to others, he did not know himself, not that such things would have brought him any amount of happiness. And because Mr. Potter could neither read nor write, he made someone who could do so, who could even love doing so, reading and writing. And as Mr. Potter stood before the window, seeing the world (for it was the world he was seeing) in that special light, in that special way, he did not think to himself, This is Happiness itself, This is as happy as I will ever be, This is as happy as anyone, any human being, will ever be; he did not think that at all, for he was not at that moment separated from himself, he and that particular sentiment and that particular moment were one: he was happy in that light and all the glory of the world could not exist without him.
And Mr. Potter stood before the window (it could have been any of the windows) and just for a moment he paused, and in that moment all of the world was revealed to him and he could see it clearly, the world, that is, the world and all that was in it and all that would be in it, but words just then failed him, for he could not read and he could not write and then he turned around to see Dr. Weizenger and his wife and made a gesture, he flung his arms out and away from his body, he flung his arms open wide and without hurry, as if to say, Here! All this in front of me is mine and I want to share it with you, let us live in it together, but Mr. Potter could not read and Mr. Potter could not write and in any case Dr. Weizenger did not want to share anything with him; Dr. Weizenger, so recently placed on the very edge of extinction, did not want to share anything with Mr. Potter, a man so long alive in a cauldron of terror. “What is your name?” asked Dr. Weizenger, “What do they call you?” asked Dr. Weizenger, and just at that moment Mrs. Weizenger, Dr. Weizenger’s wife and also his nurse, said “Zoltan,” she was calling out her own husband’s name, “Zoltan,” she said, and Dr. Weizenger turned away from Mr. Potter and looked toward his wife and Mr. Potter supposed that he saw her, he was looking at her, he was looking in that direction over there where she stood, and what was her name, thought Mr. Potter suddenly, as if it would matter, as if knowing her name, the one that was not Mrs. Weizenger, would ever matter to him. And when Dr. Weizenger looked at his wife (her name was May, that was the name Mr. Potter wondered about), something passed between them, words perhaps, a meaningful silence perhaps; it was words but they spoke in a language that Mr. Potter did not understand, it was English but Mr. Potter did not understand it, and that exchange between Dr. Weizenger and his wife ended and he, Dr. Weizenger, now turned again to Mr. Potter, resuming his interrogation, but silently now, he picked up where he had left off, as if nothing had come between them, not silence, not its opposite, and Mr. Potter said, “Me name Potter, Potter me name,” and the sound of Mr. Potter’s voice, so full of all that had gone wrong in the world for almost five hundred years that it could break the heart of an ordinary stone, meant not a thing to Dr. Weizenger, for he had been only recently inhabiting the world as if it were composed only of extinction, as if it were devoted to his very own extinction. And Dr. Weizenger was of the mammal species, not reptile or amphibian or insect or bird, but of the mammals, and so used to observing, not being observed, and so used to acting, not being acted upon. And his own extinction had almost succeeded and how surprised he was by this, and how surprised he would remain for the rest of his life, as if such a thing had never happened before, as if groups of people, one day intact and building civilization and dominating heaven and earth, had not the next found themselves erased and not even been remembere
d in a prayer or in a joke by the rest of humanity; as if groups of people had not been erased from the beginning of life and human memory. And the sound of Mr. Potter’s voice as he spoke his own name, giving his own name the character of a caress (or so Dr. Weizenger thought), made Dr. Weizenger furious, angry, and how he hated Mr. Potter then, Mr. Potter whom history had made into nothing, a thing of no spiritual value, nothing had the luxury of self-love, and Dr. Weizenger could hear it in his voice, “Me name Potter, Potter me name.” Those were the words that were spoken, but the sound of Mr. Potter’s voice, so full of love for himself, so full of certainty that his name and he were one, made Dr. Weizenger just then want to shut off Mr. Potter’s ability to take in oxygen, he wanted to silence Mr. Potter forever, or certainly just now, but all of this murderous rage was distilled into commands: where to place the suitcases, when to come again and carry them for a ride to some destination or other in Mr. Shoul’s car. And Mr. Potter and Dr. Weizenger were standing face-to-face and Dr. Weizenger and Mr. Potter were standing opposite each other, and memory, which is to say, history, that frail recollection, that unreliable gathering of all that has happened, did not abandon them: Mr. Potter took off his hat (it was a cap worn by children, schoolboys, in England) and held it in his hand with his head bowed low, his head had come to a rest on his chest, and he looked at the ground in front of him as it lay at his feet, the floor it was and it was made of pitch pine and he did not wonder who made pitch pine and Mr. Potter did not wonder who had made such an idea as pitch pine possible and then turned it into floors and then tables and chairs, and who made anything valuable. Mr. Potter did not think of any of that, his eyes were cast down on the floor (made of pitch pine) and the floor became a relief, for the floor was nothing, just itself, a floor, a man-made barrier against the shifting disorder of the earth; how Mr. Potter loved the floor just then, just at that moment when he was standing in front of Dr. Weizenger and the views and the light just outside the window (or the windows, as it may be) were now behind him. And when Mr. Potter said to Dr. Weizenger his name, he did not long to know of all the Potters that he came from and how it came to be so that he came from them, he did not seek to interrogate the past to give meaning to the present and the future, he only said his name as if he had been asked to state the shape of the earth or the color of the sky, he said his name with the certainty natural to all true things. And as Mr. Potter stood face-to-face with Dr. Weizenger and as Mr. Potter stood before Dr. Weizenger and heard all Dr. Weizenger’s commands in regard to the this (the suitcases) and the that (taking Dr. and Mrs. Weizenger here and there), his mind, his conscious thinking, roused itself from the satisfaction of hearing the music of his own voice saying his own name, and now he suddenly disliked the way Dr. Weizenger spoke English, for the English language did not skip off Dr. Weizenger’s tongue as if glad to do so, it did not dance out of his mouth calmly, so sure of itself; Dr. Weizenger did not speak the English language as if he, Dr. Weizenger, and the English language were one seamless, inviolable whole: ‘E make pappy show o’ ’eself, is what Mr. Potter thought when he heard Dr. Weizenger talk then, that time when Dr. Weizenger had just arrived, so new to the new place that was very old to Mr. Potter, so new to the place that Mr. Potter knew very well, inside out or almost so, inside out.
And Mr. Potter left the Weizengers, that is, Dr. Weizenger and his wife May (for that was her name, May); he left their presence, he left their house and walked out to the car, Mr. Shoul’s car, for Mr. Potter was not yet driving his own car, and he opened the door and he sat in the driver’s seat and he turned the car’s key so that the engine would start the car, making it ready for driving, and then he looked over his shoulder, but only figuratively, for he did not really wish to look backward, and to himself he wondered about the people he had just left behind, Dr. Weizenger and his wife who was also his nurse, her name was May, and when wondering about them then, or at any time, the words to come out of his mouth were, “Eh, eh!” and then, “Eh, eh!” a continuing series of those words, those sounds, “Eh, eh!” “Eh, eh!” And when he got into the car, he placed his right foot on that thing called the accelerator (the car he was driving was made in the United States of America) and he went forward out into the small part of the world that was Antigua, and he drove past the cemetery and he drove past many churches through which all the dead passed on their way to the cemetery, and as he drove he could see the great sea of the Caribbean on one side of the road and the great ocean that was the Atlantic on the other and events great or small did not enter his mind, nothing entered his mind, his mind was already filled up with Mr. Potter.
And Mr. Potter turned his back and walked out of the room in which he had been standing with Dr. Weizenger, Zoltan was his name and his wife was named May, and Zoltan and May, that is, Dr. Weizenger and his nurse, were now all alone, and when they were alone they were Zoltan and May and only when they were not alone were they Dr. Weizenger and his nurse Mrs. Weizenger. And May smiled, not to anyone, not to herself, she only smiled, and this was from a habit developed as a child, for when she had been a child her world was grim, she said her parents had been killed sometimes, had abandoned her sometimes, one way or the other she had no parents, and she only felt the loss of the arm posts of such a thing, called a mother and a father, in the first moments of being alone in a new situation, and her husband being with her at that moment, just after Mr. Potter had walked out of the room, did not make enough of a difference: Nurse May, Mrs. Weizenger, was alone. And she said, “Zoltan?” and Dr. Weizenger did not answer and she did not want him to do so. And May looked down at her feet, she wore shoes that were made of a very good leather from the skin of a cow who had been born and raised and then killed with care in the English countryside and how nice the cow’s skin now looked after it had been made into something pleasing (a pair of shoes), and into something that offered protection (a pair of shoes), and into something to cause envy (a pair of shoes); a pair of shoes did not come easily to Mr. Potter. And looking down at her feet, her eyes went across the floor and up the thin wall and the wall stopped some distance from the ceiling and May wondered what was the point of that, but it had a good reason, everything in the world had a good reason to back it up, and the room might have swirled and its entire contents spun around, caught up in the violence of a sudden turn in the world’s events, and inside that would be May and all her life right up to the moment she met Zoltan, and her life even after she became Mrs. Weizenger.
And Dr. Weizenger heard his name “Zoltan” as his wife now called it out, only he thought she said “Samuel,” the name he had been called when he was a boy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and he remembered the peace of being himself, the peace of being an ordinary human being, in a position to grant the right to exist or the right to make disappear (this would be an insect, children are always allowed to have power over such things), in a position to judge beauty or its opposite (this would be the color of the noonday sky, children everywhere are allowed to have the power to judge such things); and when he had been a boy in a city in that prosperous place called Europe (and Mr. Potter knew the planet Mars as well as he knew the place called Europe), there were streets and in the streets were little houses placed tightly together, intimately, so intimately that this intimacy produced its opposite, and Dr. Weizenger did not know the names of the people who lived next to him. Dr. Weizenger went to a school, and he had a friend, he had many friends but now he could not remember their names, only the shape of their noses and the shape of their mouths and the color of their eyes and those things: the shape of their noses, the shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes was all that was left; everything else receded as if he was on a train (he had been on many trains, leaving to return, leaving, never to return) and it was pulling away from the platform of the train station, pulling away from a place that had been a destination and now was a place of departure. But this place now with Mr. Potter was a stationary place, Mr. Potter and all he came from had made it so, they had be
en there for centuries, Mr. Potter and all he came from would not go away; the shape of their noses, the shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes would not go away. And Potter, thought Dr. Weizenger, the name of the man who had just driven them to their new destination, was a name so low, named after the service he offered, a potter, a man named after the sweat of his brow, so thought Dr. Weizenger; but “Zoltan,” came May’s voice, the voice of his nurse, the word that was his name, said by his wife.
And Dr. Weizenger heard his wife’s voice and said to himself, Let a minute pass before I make a response to that, and then he said to himself, Let a second pass before I make a response to that. He told himself, silently, that he would allow a pause before he would make a response to this voice coming from this person who was in the same room with him: his entire world as it had been constituted in the past, the past before he came to Antigua, the past that took place before the hurried exit from one place to the next, their names prominent on atlases made after the sixteenth century: Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Shanghai; and houses and streets and rivers and quays and boats and embarkments and arrivals and endless days of rain and never-ending days of sunshine, and milk teeming with cream and then none of that, and conversations about the possibility of the end of the world and then days of the world ending again and again, and within the very days themselves were ends, as if the day did not constitute and define a limitation. And his wife said his name again, “Zoltan,” she said, but he heard her say “Samuel” and before him he saw the miracle that he had been, Samuel, a boy whose hair was a pleasing color (it was black), a boy whose eyes had been a pleasing color (they were black), a boy whose presence had made his mother and father happy, but just now he could not remember their faces, the faces of his mother and father, he could only remember their presence, he had had them, that thing, a mother and a father, only now they were lost, like a turn in the road (only the road was his own life), or like a horizon (only the horizon was his own life), they had just vanished, as if they had never been there at all, as if they had not given him that name, Samuel, as if he had not been their only child, they had just vanished into darkness, yes darkness! a vast darkness had descended over many things he had known, not a darkness like the night, and not a darkness that was the opposite of the light in which he was now standing, not a darkness that was the opposite of the light into which Mr. Potter had temporarily disappeared, more like the darkness from which Mr. Potter and all he came from had originated.
Mr. Potter Page 2
