The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “I’ll give you a parka.” Nieman ran for the coat rack and took down a long beige parka Freddy had ordered from L.L. Bean. He held it out to the young man. “I guess I seem nervous. I’m not. It’s just that I’ve wanted to talk to you since I was ten years old.”

  “Yes. You’ve been calling me for some time.”

  “I thought you would be old. Like of the time when you died. Did you die?”

  “I thought so. It was most uncomfortable and Francis wept like a child, which was not altogether unpleasant.” He laughed softly. “It is better to come with my young eyes. In case there is something to see.”

  “Where are you when you aren’t here?”

  “Quite far away.”

  “Will it matter that you came here? I mean in the scheme of things, as it were?”

  “It will matter to me. To read the books and see these instruments you are describing. I have always wished to have my curiosity satisfied. That was always what I most dreamed of doing. Francis never understood that. He could never believe I wouldn’t be satisfied to eat and drink and be lauded and talk with him. It kept me from loving him as he deserved.”

  “I meant, will it change the course of anything?”

  “Not unless you do it.”

  “I wouldn’t do it. Could I do it by accident?”

  “No. I will see to that. Do you want to go out now, in the vehicle in the snow?” There it was again, the smile that soaked up all the light and gave it back.

  “Let’s get dressed for it.” Nieman led his guest upstairs and gave him a warm shirt and socks and shoes and pants and long underwear. While he was changing Nieman banked the fire and put the food away and set the crumbs out for the birds and locked the windows and threw his things into a bag. He forgot to drain the pipes.

  “Well, now,” he said out loud. “I guess I can drive that Jeep in this snow. Let’s assume I can drive. Let’s say it’s possible and I will do it.” He turned on the mobile phone and called the department at Berkeley and left a message saying he was bringing a senator to see the labs. Then he called the president of the university at his home and called in his markers. “Very hush-hush,” he told the president. “This could be very big, Joe. This could be millions for research but you have to trust me. Don’t ask questions. Just tell the grounds people to give me the keys when I come ask for them. I can’t tell you who it is. You have to trust me.”

  “Of course, Nieman,” the president answered. “After everything you and Freddy have done for us. Anything you want.”

  “The keys to everything. The electron microscopes, the physics labs, the works. We could use one of your technical people for a guide but no one else.”

  “There’ll be people working in the labs.”

  “I know that. We won’t bother anyone. I’ll call you Monday and tell you more.”

  “Fine. I’ll look forward to hearing about it.” After he hung up the phone the university president said to his wife, “That was Nieman Gluuk. Did you know he’s quitting writing his column? Took a leave of absence to go back to school.”

  “Well, don’t you go getting any ideas like that,” his good-looking wife giggled. “All he ever wrote about were foreign films. He’d gotten brutal in his reviews. Maybe they let him go. Maybe he just pretended that he quit.”

  There was a layer of ice beneath the snow. Nieman tested it by walking on it, then put Leonardo into the passenger seat and buckled him in and got behind the wheel and started driving. He drove very carefully in the lowest gear across the rock-strewn yard toward the wooden gate that fenced in nothing since the fence had been abandoned as a bad idea. “Thank God it’s downhill,” he said. “It’s downhill most of the way to the main road. So, when was the last time you were here?” He talked without turning his head. The sun was out now. Birds were beginning to circle above the huge fir trees in the distance. “Have you been to the United States? To the West Coast?”

  “Once long ago. I saw the ocean with a man of another race. I walked beside it and felt its power. It is different from the ocean I knew.”

  “We can go there first. It won’t take long once we get to the main road. I’m sorry if I keep asking you questions. I can’t help being curious.”

  “You can ask them if you like. I was visited by Aristotle in my turn. We went to a river and explored its banks. He was very interested in my studies of moving water. He said the flow of water would impede the mixture of liquids and we talked of how liquid forms its boundaries within a flow. He had very beautiful hands. I painted them later from memory several times. Of course everyone thought they were Raphael’s hands. Perhaps I thought so too finally. After he left I had no real memory of it for a while. More like the memory of a dream, bounded, uncertain, without weight. I think it will be like that for you, so ask whatever you wish to ask.”

  “I don’t think I want to ask anything now. I think we should go to the ocean first since we are so near. I forget about water. I forget to look at it with clear eyes, and yet I was watching the snow when I fell asleep. Also, I was crying. Why are you smiling?”

  “Go on.”

  “I was thinking that when I was small I knew how to appreciate the ocean. Later, I forgot. When I was small I would stand in one place for a very long time watching the waves lap. Every day I came back to the same spot. I made footprints for the waves to wash away. I made castles farther and farther up the beach to see how far the tide could reach. I dug into the sand, as deep as it would allow me to dig. I was an infatuate of ocean, wave, beach. Are you warm enough? Is that coat comfortable?”

  “I am warm. Tell me about this vehicle. What do you call it?”

  “Automobile. Like auto and mobile. It’s a Jeep, a four-wheel drive. We call it our car. Everyone has one. We work for them. We fight wars over the fuel to power them. We spend a lot of time in them. They have radios. We listen to broadcasts from around the world while we drive. Or we listen to taped books. I have a book of the Italian language we could listen to. You might want to see how it’s evolved. It might be the same. It might be quite similar to what you spoke. Would you like to hear it?” Nieman shifted into a higher gear. The road was still steep but lay in the lee of the mountain and was not iced beneath the snow. “We’ll be on the main road, soon,” he added. “We’re in luck it seems. I wouldn’t have driven this alone. One more question. How do you read the books so fast?”

  “I’m not sure.” Leonardo laughed. “It’s been going on since I quit the other life. It’s getting better. At first it was not this fast. I’m very fond of being able to do it. It’s the nicest thing of all.”

  “Where do you stay? When you aren’t visiting? I mean, going someplace like this.”

  “With other minds.”

  “Disembodied?”

  “If we want to be. Is that the main road?” It was before them, the road to Willits. Plows had pushed the snow in dirty piles on either side of the road. In the center two vehicles were moving in one lane down the mountain. A blue sedan and a white minivan were bouncing down the road in the ripening sunlight.

  “I believe this,” Nieman said. “I’m in my red Jeep driving Leonardo da Vinci down from the house to see the ocean. My name is Nieman Gluuk and I have striven all my life to be a good man and use my talents and conquer resentment and be glad for whatever fate dumped me in Northern California the only child of a bitter woman and a father I almost never saw, and I never went into a movie theater expecting to hate the movie and was saddened when I did. Maybe this is payback and maybe this is chance and maybe I deserve this and the only thing I wish is that my friend, Freddy, could be here so it won’t destroy our friendship when I am driven to tell him about it.”

  “You won’t remember it.” Leonardo reached over and touched his sleeve. He smiled the dazzling smile again and Nieman took it in without driving off the road and took the last curve down onto the highway. “You will have it,” Leonardo added. “It is yours, but you won’t have the burden of remembering it.”

&nb
sp; “I want the burden.” Nieman laughed. “Burden me. Try me. I can take it. I’ll write a movie script and publicize intelligence. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte. That’s the beginning of The Divine Comedy. That’s what I went back to Berkeley to take. Instead, I’m in this forest of biochemistry. I’m dreaming the things I’m reading. They put literature into a new light. The artist intuits what the mind knows and the mind knows everything, doesn’t it? Past, present, and forevermore.”

  “Some wake to it gradually. Some never know.”

  “I’ve worked for it,” Nieman said. “I have worked all my life to understand, to see myself as the product of five hundred million years of evolution. You seem to have known it always.”

  “I was taken from my mother’s house when I was four years old. On the walk to my father’s house, the fields and the wonder of the earth came to console me. But I worked also. I always worked.” He laid his hand on Nieman’s arm. Nieman steered the Jeep across a pile of snow and turned onto the road leading down to Willits. Around them the snow-covered hills with their massive fir trees were paintings of unspeakable complexity. Neither of them spoke for many miles.

  It was past noon when they drove through the small town of Willits and turned onto Highway 20 leading to the Pacific Ocean. “I’m going to stop for gasoline for the automobile,” Nieman said. “We collect it in foreign countries. The countries of the Turks and Muslims, although some of it is under the ground of this country. We store it underneath these filling stations in large steel tanks. Steel is an alloy made of iron and carbon. It’s very strong. Then we drive up to the pumping stations and pump the fuel into our tanks. Even young children do this, Leonardo. I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know, but I feel I should explain some things.”

  “I like to hear you speak of these phenomena. Continue. I will listen and watch.”

  Nieman spotted a Conoco station and stopped the Jeep and got out. He took down one of the gasoline hoses and inserted it in the fuel tank of the Jeep. Leonardo stood beside the tank watching and not speaking. “Don’t smile that smile at anyone else,” Nieman said. “We’ll be arrested for doing hallucinogens.”

  “They never explode?” Leonardo moved in for a closer look, took a sniff of the fumes, then put both hands in the pockets of the jacket. There was a package of Kleenex in one pocket. He brought it out and examined it.

  “It’s called Kleenex. We blow our noses on it,” Nieman explained. “It’s a disposable handkerchief.”

  “Could one draw on it?” Leonardo held a sheet up to the light. “It’s fragile and thin.”

  “Wait a minute.” Nieman pulled a notepad and a black felt-tip pen out of the glove compartment and handed them to Leonardo. Leonardo examined the pen, took the top from it, and began to draw, leaning the pad against the top of the Jeep. Nieman put the hose back on the pump, then went inside and paid for the gasoline. When he returned, Leonardo had covered a page with the smallest, most precise lines Nieman had ever seen. Leonardo handed the drawing to him. It was of the mountains and the trees. In the foreground Nieman was standing beside the Jeep with the gasoline hose in his hand.

  Nieman took the drawing and held it. “You are a microscope,” he said. “Perhaps you will not be impressed with the ones we’ve made.”

  “Shall we continue on our way?” Leonardo asked. “Now that your tank is full of gasoline.”

  They drove in silence for a while. The sun was out in full violence now, melting the snow and warming the air. “The air is an ocean of currents,” Nieman said at last. “I suppose you know about that.”

  “Always good to be reminded of anything we know.”

  “You want to hear the Italian tape? I’d like to hear what you think of it.”

  “That would be fine.”

  Nieman reached into a pack of tapes and extracted the Beginning Italian tape and stuck it into the tape player. “This Jeep doesn’t have very good speakers,” he said. “We have systems that are much better than this one.” The Italian teacher began to teach Italian phrases. Leonardo began to laugh. Quietly at first, then louder and louder until he was shaking with laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Nieman asked. He was laughing too. “What do you think is funny? Why am I laughing too?”

  “Such good jokes,” Leonardo answered, continuing to laugh. “What questions. What news. What jokes.”

  It was thirty-six miles from Willits to the Pacific Ocean. The road led down between mountains and virgin forests. They drove along at fifty miles an hour, listening to the Italian tape and then to Kiri Te Kanawa singing arias from Italian opera. Nieman was lecturing Leonardo on the history of opera and its great modern stars. Long afterward, when he had forgotten everything about the day that could be proven, Nieman remembered the drive from Willits to the ocean and someone beside him laughing. “Are you sure you weren’t with me?” he asked Freddy a hundred times later in their lives. “Maybe we were stoned. But Kiri Te Kanawa didn’t start recording until after we had straightened up so we couldn’t have been stoned. I think you were with me. You just don’t remember it.”

  “I never drove in a Jeep with you from Willits to the ocean while listening to Italian tapes. I would remember that, Nieman. Why do you always ask me that? It’s a loose wire in your head, a precursor of dreaded things to come.” Then Freddy would smile and shake his head and later talk about it to his psychiatrist or Nora Jane. “Nieman’s fixated on thinking I drove with him in a Jeep listening to an Italian tape,” he would say. “About once a year he starts on that. It’s like the budding of the trees. Once a year, in winter, he decides the two of us took that trip and nothing will convince him otherwise. He gets mad at me because I can’t remember it. Can you believe it?”

  Outside the small town of Novo, Nieman found a trail he had used before. It led to a beach the townspeople used during good weather. He parked the Jeep in a gravel clearing and they got out and climbed down a path to the water. The ocean was very dramatic, with huge boulders jutting into the entrance of a small harbor. The snow was melting on the path. Even now, in the heart of winter, moss was forming on the rocks. “‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,’” Nieman said.

  “Dylan is happy now,” Leonardo answered. “A charming man. I go to him quite often and he recites poetry. It makes the poetry he wrote when he was here seem primitive. I should not tell you that, of course. We try never to say such things.”

  “Look at the ocean,” Nieman answered. “What mystery could be greater. Shouldn’t this be enough for any man to attempt to understand? This force, this power, this place where land and air meet the sea? ‘. . . this goodly frame, tire earth . . . this most excellent canopy, the air . . . this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire . . .’”

  “Will loved the sea and wrote of it but had little time for it. Plato was the same. He talked and wrote of it but didn’t take the time to ponder it as we are doing. Of course, in other ages time seemed more valuable. Life was short and seemed more fleeting.”

  They were walking along a strip of sand only ten to twenty feet wide. It was low tide. Later in the day it would have been impossible to walk here and they would have had to use the higher path.

  “We could just stay here,” Nieman said. “We don’t have to go to the labs. I just thought you might want to see the microscopes.”

  “We have all day.”

  “They’re leaving the labs open in the biochemistry building. We can go to Berkeley or we can stay here. I saw you looking at the atlas. Did you memorize it? I mean, is that how you do it?”

  “I remember it. It is very fine how they have mapped the floor of the oceans. Is it exact, do you think?”

  “Pretty much so at the time of mapping. The sand shifts, everything shifts and changes. They map the floor with soundings, with radar. When you le
ave here, where do you have to be? Is there some gathering place? Do you just walk off? Where do you go?”

  “I just won’t be here.”

  “Will the clothes be here? I only wondered. That’s Freddy’s coat. I could get him another one but he’s pretty fond of that one. He took it to Tibet.”

  Nieman moved nearer to Leonardo, his eyes shifting wildly. The day had a sort of rhythm. Sometimes it was just beating along. Then suddenly he imagined it whole and that made his heart beat frantically. “I don’t care, of course. You can take it if you need to. You can have anything I have.”

  “I will leave the clothes. It would be a waste to take them.”

  “When will you go? How long will it be? You have to understand. I never had a father. No man ever stayed long enough. I was always getting left on my own. It’s been a problem for me all my life.”

  Leonardo turned to face him. “This is not a father who leaves, Nieman. This is the realm of knowledge, which you always longed for and long for now. It is always available, it never goes away, it cannot desert you, it cannot fail you. It is yours. It belongs to whoever longs for it. If you desert it, it is always waiting, like those waves. It comes back and back like the sea. I am only a moment of what is available to you. When I am gone the clothes will be here and you can wear them when you are reading things that are difficult to understand. You will read everything now. You will learn many languages. You will know much more than you know now. Tell me about the microscopes.”

  “I haven’t used one yet. But I can tell you how it works. It concentrates a beam of electrons in a tube to scan or penetrate the thing you want magnified. It makes a photograph using light and dark and shadow. The photograph is very accurate and magnified a million times. Then a portion of that photograph can be magnified several million more times. It’s so easy for me to believe the photographs so I think it must be something I know. My friend, Freddy, thinks we know everything back to the first cell, that all discovery is simply plugging into memory banks. Memory at the level of biochemistry. Which is why I can’t believe it took me so long to begin to study this. I had to start in the arts. My mother is a frustrated actress. I’ve been working her program for forty-four years. Now it’s my turn. But this is plain to you. You’re the one who saw the relationship between art and science. It never occurred to you not to do both.”