We have not come together to settle an absurd problem. We are here, comrades, because outside this room, in the world, as they call it, there is no place in which to mention the Holy Name. We are the chosen ones, and we are united ecumenically. Does God wish to see children suffer? Such a question may be asked here. Is evil necessary? That too may be asked. It may also be asked whether we have the right to expect a Paradise here and now, or whether eternality is preferable to immortality. We may even debate whether Our Lord Jesus Christ is of one divine nature only or of two consubstantially harmonious natures, human and divine. We have all suffered more than is usual for mortal beings to endure. We have all achieved an appreciable degree of emancipation. Some of you have revealed the depths of the human soul in a manner and to a degree never before heard of. We are all living outside our time, the forerunners of a new era, of a new order of mankind. We know that nothing is to be hoped for on the present world level.
The end of historical man is upon us. The future will be in terms of eternity, and of freedom, and of love. The resurrection of man will be ushered in with our aid; the dead will rise from their graves clothed in radiant flesh and sinew, and we shall have communion, real everlasting communion, with all who once were: with those who made history and with those who had no history. Instead of myth and fable we shall have everlasting reality. All that now passes for science will fall away; there will be no need to search for the clue to reality because all will be real and durable, naked to the eye of the soul, transparent as the waters of Shiloh. Eat, I beg you, and drink to your heart’s content. Taboos are not of God’s making. Nor murder and lust. Nor jealousy and envy. Though we are assembled here as men, we are bound through the divine spirit. When we take leave of one another we shall return to the world of chaos, to the realm of space which no amount of activity can exhaust. We are not of this world, nor are we yet of the world to come, except in thought and spirit. Our place is on the threshold of eternity; our function is that of prime movers. It is our privilege to be crucified in the name of freedom. We shall water our graves with our own blood. No task can be too great for us to assume. We are the true revolutionaries since we do not baptize with the blood of others but with our own blood, freely shed. We shall create no new covenants, impose no new laws, establish no new government. We shall permit the dead to bury the dead. The quick and the dead will soon be separated. Life eternal is rushing back to fill the empty cup of sorrow. Man will rise from his bed of ignorance and suffering with a song on his lips. He will stand forth in all the radiance of his godhood. Murder in every form will disappear forever. For the time being…
The moment this inscrutable phrase rose to my lips the inner music, the concordance, ceased. I was back in double rhythm again, aware of what I was doing, analyzing my thoughts, my motives, my deeds. I could hear Dostoievsky speaking, but I was no longer there with him, I was getting only the overtones. What’s more, I could shut him off whenever I pleased. I was no longer running in that parallel timeless time. Now the world was indeed empty? drab, woebegone. Chaos and cruelty ran hand in hand. I was as grotesque and ridiculous now as those two lost sisters who were presumably running through the Village with puppets in their arms.
By the time night falls, and I start to trek it back, an overpowering loneliness has gripped me. It does not surprise me in the least to find, on returning to the room, a telephone message from Mona saying that her dear friend is ill and that she must stay with her the night. Tomorrow it will be another story, and the day after another.
Everything is happening to ‘Stasia at once. One day she is ordered to move because she talks too loudly in her sleep; another day, in another room, she is visited by a ghost and forced to flee in the night. On another occasion a drunkard attempts to rape her. Or else she is grilled by a plain clothes man at three in the morning. It is inevitable that she should think of herself as a marked woman. She takes to sleeping in the daytime and roaming the streets by night; she passes long hours at the cafeteria which never closes, writing her poems on the marble-topped table, a sandwich in her hand and a plate of untouched food beside her. Some days she is the Slav, speaking with a genuine Slavic accent: other days she is the boy-girl from Montana’s snowy peaks, the nymph who must straddle a horse, even if only in Central Park. Her talk becomes more and more incoherent, and she knows it, but in Russian, as she always says it, nothing matters. At times she refuses to use the toilet—insists on doing her little jobs in the chamber pot, which of course she forgets to empty. As for the portrait of Mona which she had. begun, it now resembles the work of a maniac. (It is Mona herself who confesses this.) She is almost beside herself, Mona. Her friend is deteriorating under her own eyes. But it will pass. All will be well again, provided she stands by her faithfully, nurses her, soothes her tortured spirit, wipes her ass, if need be. But she must never allow her to feel that she is deserted. What matter, she asks, if she has to remain three or four nights a week with her friend? Is not Anastasia the all in all?
You trust me, don’t you, Val?
I nod a silent assent. (It’s not an ecumenical question.)
When the tune switches, when I learn from her own lips that it was not Anastasia she spent the night with but her own mother—mothers too get ill—I know what any idiot would have known long before, viz., that there’s something rotten in Denmark.
What harm, I ask myself, would there be in talking to her mother—over the telephone? None whatever. The truth is always enlightening.
So, impersonating the lumber king, I pick up the receiver and, amazed that it is a mother speaking to me, I inquire in the most casual tone of voice if Mona is there, if so, I would like to talk to her.
She is not there. Very definitely not.
Have you seen her lately? (Still the noncommittal gentleman inquiring after the lady fair.)
Not a sign of her in months. The poor woman sounds distressed. She forgets herself to the extent of asking me, a perfect stranger, if her daughter could possibly be dead. She virtually implores me to inform her should I by chance get wind of her daughter’s whereabouts.
But why don’t you write to her husband?
Her husband?
There follows a prolonged silence in which nothing registers except the ocean’s deep hum. Then, in a weak, toneless voice, as if addressing blank space, comes this: So she really did get married?
Why certainly she’s married. I know her husband well…
Excuse me, comes the far off voice, followed by the click of the receiver being hung up.
I allow several nights to pass before broaching the subject to the guilty one. I wait until we are in bed, the lights out. Then I nudge her gently.
What is it? What are you poking me for?
I was talking to your mother yesterday.
No answer.
Yes, and we had quite a long conversation…
Still no answer.
The funny thing is, she says she hasn’t seen you for ages. She thinks maybe you’re dead.
How much longer can she hold out? I wonder. Just as I am about to let out another mouthful I feel her spring to a sitting position. Then comes one of those drawn-out, uncontrollable fits of laughter, the sort that makes me shudder inwardly. Between spasms she blurts out: My mother! Ho ho! You were talking to my mother! Hah, hah, hah! It’s too good, just too good for words. Hee, hee, hee! Val, you poor sap, my mother is dead. I have no mother. Ho ho ho!
Calm yourself! I beg her.
But she can’t stop laughing. It’s the funniest, the craziest thing she’s ever heard.
Listen, didn’t you tell me you stayed with her the other night, that she was very ill? Was it your mother or wasn’t it?
Peals of laughter.
Maybe it was your step-mother then?
You mean my aunt.
Your aunt then, if that’s who your mother is.
More laughter.
It couldn’t have been my aunt because she knows I’m married to you. It was probably a neighbor. Or my sister maybe. It would be like her to talk that way.
But why would they want to deceive me?
Because you were a stranger. If you had said you were my husband, instead of impersonating someone else, they might have told you the truth.
It didn’t sound to me as if your aunt—or your sister, as you say—were putting it on. It sounded thoroughly genuine.
You don’t know them.
Damn it all, then maybe it’s time I got acquainted with them.
Suddenly she looked serious,
