A visitor
River’s a good choice
I was lying awake trying to decide what to do next given my failure, when a doorway drew itself on the wall — there’s no other way to describe it. It opened out to a terrace, a lawn and hedges behind it.
A rustling sound grew louder as an angel drifted down, alighting on the terrace. He pulled in his wings and came through the doorway. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. His spoke very clearly. He sounded like one of my father’s friends. “Forgive me, but when you plunged into the river, they sent me. It’s not necessarily sinful. It depends.” He looked around the room. “You may as well know that the Axis will be defeated. Your empire won’t long survive the war, though, and the repercussions of that will play out here for a long time. Your husband will recover and live on.”
He hovered above the floor in the manner of an Italian painting. “Others leave marks on the floor,” he explained. He paused, then spoke again. “Your reputation is secure.” Another pause. “It may seem incongruous that I’m not trying to talk you out of it, but it’s not like that. People do what they do. Most of it is pointless, but there are exceptions. When they hear of one, I pay a visit — provide a bit of reassurance, knowing how things will go, and some practical advice, if I may. The river’s a good choice, but put some stones in your pockets.”
The suitcase
Turned away, a document demanded that I lack, I’m back in this small room. I should be out asking who to bribe or locating a guide, but do I have the funds? More to the point, would I survive the journey? I will nap and then decide. Ah, but I must be dreaming, because there’s an angel standing here! Am I dead? No, he assures me that I’m not. He’s speaking French, a voice like the baker back in Paris, but softer.
He tells me that if I go tomorrow, they will let me through and I will end up in New York. If I don’t go tomorrow, my suitcase will be in good hands. And almost everything else will be safe. Some lives are odd, he says, apparently star-crossed and thwarted as you live through them, but in retrospect they make sense.
Now and then, he says, he encounters someone like me, laden down with hastily written notes that just are the fragments of something bigger even than a metropolis and just as discursive. A suitcase weighs not much, but the work itself presses down like so many gold ingots, immensely valuable but no longer supportable.
He pauses, then speaks again, but this time in German, a voice like the porter in a good Berlin hotel. Not every ending is an ending in truth, he says. This is an example: you could press on, suitcase in hand, but everything that matters is behind you. You will have to set it aside for five years, try to make your way in a new language. A project like this not easily set aside, but you’ve given it a separate existence. Give your friends your suitcase. It’s superfluous, but its aura will linger, part of your reception.
The kitchen
Barely light. I hoped the children wouldn’t awaken. The scene was set, the manuscript on the table. The second page listed the order of what followed, to forestall any tampering. “Here we are again,” he said. I remembered how he spoke the last time, that mid-Atlantic radio voice. He sat in a spare chair in the corner of the kitchen. What was it doing there?
“You again!” He nodded. “Each time, more of a mess for others to clean up, and this won’t be an exception. I don’t know why I bothered to come, but your name came up and it’s not my role to argue. As you correctly saw, you’ve written a masterpiece, breathtaking, some of it. I’ve read so many manuscripts that fail to measure up to their occasion, but yours is remarkable. And you lived on to write it, as of course you would continue to do, being so good at it. They will wonder later what they missed, should you carry out your morning’s plan. The pain of it will spread far beyond its intended recipient. Greek tragedies will be cited, and if this were a different age, you might take your children with you like Medea, but your humanity rules out such things. Not that it spares them, in the end. Collateral damage, they’ll call it later.”
He shifted his robe. “Sorry to drone on. I knew beforehand it was useless, but your question: roll up a dish towel or two and stuff them under the door. Summon help by telephone. The phrase, ‘I need you to come immediately’ should do it, as this person is just far enough away. The front door is unlocked. I checked it. Purgatory, I suspect, but that’s not my department.”
The window
Few things are as bleak as January in New York City. And what have I to show for my efforts? “This is the wrong question,” I’m told again and again. “Nothing is final. Everything takes time.” I recognize myself in the pointed-out tendency to bet my life on some momentary outcome. Yes, I’m forced to admit, it’s a bad habit for an artist. I should be emulating my elders, the survivors amid so many others, but I conclude regularly that I won’t live long enough or that my talent won’t burn bright enough, some version of these depressive stories I tell myself when I’m not elated.
Oh, but I’m not alone! “Is it you?” I ask, and he nods politely. He walks up to the table where I’ve got some work laid out. It’s been there for ages, a taunt to my ambitions. “They will wonder later how you possibly didn’t know,” he finally says. His voice is like a teacher from grade school, the one who seemed to see me as I was. He moves one of the prints to look at another. “Two years in ordinary time since we last spoke. No convincing you,” he adds. “Some will say a talent squandered, but of course it’s hard to know. I can only speak to your reception, a buzzing sort of thing not very distinct even to me, but there it is, audible. If you lean out the window, you can hear it, and if you fall, it will get louder.” Only buzzing? “No, voices asking why.”
