Celestial Inventories (29 page)

“Take me along,” he whispered.

And he felt his head beginning to fall, as if from a great height. Pulling him somewhere.

His name was Walt, but he much preferred Dad, also Daddy, when there was way too much fun to be had. Had with his two little boys, James and Terry, age six and seven, more or less. Every afternoon he was their giant, also mountain, also dragon, also cloud of delicious tickle.

“I . . . can’t . . . stop . . . tickling!” he cried, and his sons died in laughter.

He came from a long line of giants, his father, his grandfather, big men who filled a room, big men in control of things, although they didn’t necessarily want to be. Big men who remembered they had once been little boys, but were not too sure of all the details. Little boys who had swollen with time and ripened into giants, and who no longer knew how to fit the tiny spaces they’d been crammed into.

There was a great deal of responsibility in being a giant. Little people were everywhere, crawling over your shoes, getting into spaces you hadn’t even noticed were there, chattering away in their secret languages, singing of their tiny joys. A distracted little person might easily be crushed because of your one misstep.

The giant Walt loved the little people in his house. In fact he had no words gigantic enough to express the size of his adoration. He was prouder of their small accomplishments than of the largest things he had ever done. At the same time they made him feel lonely in his isolated mental room high in the clouds. They had magically given uncertainty a physical form. They held it mysteriously in their fragile little bodies and in the regular but unpredictable pace of their hearts. He hated that they were so delicate, so ephemeral. Like fairies. Like dreams. Their impermanence horrified.

Now and then during the long afternoons of play he became almost convinced they were imaginary creatures, the results of some enchantment, some befuddlement of the senses. If he could only turn around quickly enough he might witness their transparency, their wings, their horns. But a giant’s body is a slow, deliberate thing, hobbled by syrupy circulation and glacial reaction. So sometimes he was too rough with them, hoping to shake them free of spell and charm. He always felt terrible afterwards, and they always giggled.

When they climbed across his gigantic shoulders or balanced on his enormous knees, he had to restrain his movements in case one might fall. Some days his fears for their safety kept him locked behind the great door to his room, silent and frozen even as they wailed and beat dramatically on the other side.

“Come out and play with us!” they cried. “We’re so bored!” they insisted. He’d rather lose an eye than wound their feelings, but all he could manage in response was some helpless growl.

But these minions, these Lilliputians, were not to be dissuaded. These little people were insane—he supposed it was their smallness that made them so. They maintained that chatter and dance until bed and after. Their lives were so much bigger than they could contain, and they did not know what to do with themselves.

Unable to tolerate their high pitched whining, he would periodically leave his bed and settle on the rug in the great hall, holding himself still as they climbed and hung from his neck and arms. They screamed gleefully as they beat on his massive chest and head. Sometimes he snarled, but only because they wanted him to. Most of the time he simply sat there, measuring out his patience.

Then in a moment of possibly feigned mania he threw off his children, laid them side by side on the battered floor and hovering over them shouted “I’m going to eat you! I’m going to eat you!” over and over again, putting his lips to their necks, their arms, their bellies, pausing to breathe in their dusty little-boy smells, then considered, considered, before opening his mouth and carefully pretending to bite.

They screamed, horrified, and laughed until they made themselves dizzy.

They were clever, these boys, and always got him back: a box of trash tipped from the top of a door, a rug full of marbles, jacks, and tiny, slippery cars. He fell more than once, he fell more than twice, and yet all he could think was how reassuring it was, because this is the way you survive in a world full of giants.

Today he’s a mountain they can climb. He crouches to make it easier. The first one to the top plants a flag in his eye. He knows he is every impossible job they will ever have, every unreasonable boss. He is the hole that opens in the road, the dark cavern that has no ending, the terrible disappointment at the end of the day.

He knows that sometimes it is the giant in him that makes them feel so out of control. If they go too far he grabs and bear hugs the madness out of them. His enormous sad eyes see everything. He glares down at their pale, translucent faces from his so-different weather.

This morning he is their origin and their desire. This afternoon he is the seemingly unyielding shape of their destiny. At evening he is their demise.

Out of his body came everything they are, and yet to kill him would make them successful beyond their wildest dreams. Of course they should outlast him—giants are too big for their own good. In the final analysis, he is a dysfunction of disproportion.

When sleep finally comes the giant-killers dream of the giant who lives in these mountains. They can see his legs and arms sprawled into ridges, his enormous head in that peculiar stand of trees. In his sleep and theirs they are safe to live another night inside him. But they all know that other day will come. They pack their bags with crackers and Kool-Aid for the journey. He washes himself until every thread of dead skin has vanished into the drain. They gather their bats and rackets, sharpen the tiny nails at the ends of their skinny fingers. He sits quietly on his great landscape of rug, patiently awaiting the arrival of his beautiful sons.

Richard lived alone in an apartment above a decrepit carriage house off an alley in the oldest part of the city. He believed that once upon a time rich people had occupied the neighbourhood—that’s why there were so many large houses (now divided and re-divided) and oversize utility buildings, like his carriage house. These had been people whose faces and reputations were known, even written about. People who might sneak out in disguise from time to time for a brief vacation in anonymity, that place where he—and most people he knew—lived all their lives.

Of course, the rich all picked up and drifted away at the first smell of shabbiness, not even waiting until that shabbiness made its actual appearance. Now he survived as best he could, the end recipient of a progression of hand-me-downs.

He’d been in the carriage house at least twenty years. When he attempted to recollect his move-in day more precisely, he became irretrievably lost in the lies and self deceptions of memory. Surely, it couldn’t have been that long ago. Surely, it had. Surrounded as it was by taller buildings with thicker walls, and a shadowing backdrop of huge trees preserved through some rich woman’s personal campaign, it was quieter here than a room so close to the heart of the city’s commerce had any right to be.

“People will judge you by your companions,” Richard’s father once said, responding to one of the countless confessions Richard had made concerning some trouble he and various friends had gotten themselves into. “You become known by the company
you keep.”

Good advice, he thought now. Very perceptive. But unbeknown to his father, somewhat off the point, as all of Richard’s confessions had been lies. There had been no trouble. No legal entanglements due to bad influences, no youthful misadventures with peers less conscientious than he, despite dozens of such tales told and retold.

Richard would much rather have his father think he chose his companions poorly than know that Richard had no companions
at all.

Not that he lied out of shame. He simply didn’t want to have to explain himself to his father. Although he’d always desired friends, he wasn’t sure what friendship might mean for him. He’d imagined the state of friendship as one in which your friend understood you, supporting your dreams, empathizing with your failures and imperfections. Someone always on your side. But he’d seldom seen such friendship in the relationships of others. And over the years his idea of a friend seemed increasingly improbable, a creature more at home among unicorns and banshees. Loneliness, on the other hand, was something he could always bank on, a predictable destination at the end of every workday when solitude became total, but more than that, an attitude he might carry with him into the office, out to restaurants, even into one of the increasingly rare social gatherings he might feel duty-bound to attend. He had come to carry that loneliness around with him much the way a monk carried bliss.

It would be difficult to say precisely when he discovered that his particular brand of solitude might not be as simple as all that. But certainly it solidified the day he met the pale man on the corner by the library.

Richard had been returning some long-overdue travel guides. He’d been in a hurry—he didn’t like to linger in or near the library. Something about the enforced quiet, and all that wealth of information at your disposal if you knew the right questions to ask. But of course Richard never knew the right questions to ask.

Although there’d been no particular reason to isolate this one man among the many who gathered there that day, there had been something about the posture—something vaguely anticipatory about the man’s stance—that filled Richard with a sudden, peculiarly overwhelming, and inexplicable empathy for this lone figure awash in the torrents of flesh, bone, leather, and cloth that flooded the sidewalks of this inhospitable concrete sprawl.

For a brief moment the man had turned to face him, and Richard had been struck immediately by the paleness of the face; then a look as of recognition vaguely distorted the sheet-white features, and the man turned away with a kind of desperate speed, stumbled, and almost fell.

Richard might have forgotten all about the incident, despite the strong impression of the man’s seemingly bloodless complexion, when several other people in that vicinity made the same stumbling move.

Nothing remarkable or similar about these individuals in any way, both men and women, a variety of races, dress, and facial types—and yet for some reason they had stumbled almost identically.

But stranger still had been Richard’s reaction. He felt as if he knew them, although surely he’d never seen them before. They were like him. They were meant for greater things they did not understand. They possessed capacities unrecognized, even to themselves. They had lived their lives as solitary warriors, and now at last their army had begun to form.

He had no idea why he should think such things. His life had not altered appreciably in years. He had seen no signs of change, had heard no call. No one approached him in the street, and at work he was still known by his last name and the relative coordinates of his cubicle walls.

When he was a boy he’d imagined himself imbued with superpowers. The drawback had always been that he didn’t know what those powers might entail. But he had faith that they would reveal themselves at the appropriate time: A child would fall from a window and he would suddenly find himself flying up to catch her. Some disaster would occur—a factory explosion, a collapsed parking garage, a hospital on fire—requiring his unusual strength and courage. Everyone would be surprised by his transformation, but no one more so than he.

Richard was due for a two o’clock appointment up on the sixth floor. He found himself at the elevator in the lobby at a quarter till. He’d developed this habit of referring to himself in the third person. Found himself was a deliberate choice of words—often lately he would catch himself that way, find himself in some location or situation with no clear memory of what came immediately before.

It was a small group gathered before the elevator, staring at the downward progress of numbers over the doors as if in suspense over the outcome. Normally he would fix his own eyes on that fascinating numeric display, but in recent weeks his habit had become to examine the members of any group he might find himself in, looking for some vague confirmation of questions he had no language for, seeking some signal or sign, some indication that he had at last landed in the right place and time.

There was nothing remarkable about any of these people: four men and three women dressed in grey, black, and brown business attire. The one Hispanic woman who’d attempted to add colour with an orange scarf looked uncomfortable in it, as if the attempt might strangle her. One of the men was taller than the others by a few inches. He appeared to stoop further the longer they waited, as if attempting to reduce himself before anyone noticed.

They barely left room for the exiting passengers as they rushed into the opening doors, but those they jostled betrayed no discomfort at this, nor did Richard’s group appear aware that they might have created some discomfort.

Once inside, they fit closely together. The elevator seemed to ascend slowly, as if hauling weight well beyond its posted limits. Richard watched as the man in front of him placed a hand on his right hip, sending a narrow elbow against the Hispanic woman, who in return leaned away and placed her own right hand on her own right hip.

The man beside her did the same. And the man beside him, all around to Richard, who, so embarrassed he found it difficult to breathe, did the same.

The man ahead of him put one foot forward and the others, including Richard, did the same.

A very slight shuffle to the right and a step back. Richard struggled to maintain his composure, did the step just the same, feeling as if he’d been kidnapped. By the time they reached the sixth floor, he felt barely capable of exiting. He turned quickly to see what might be in their faces, but they’d fallen back into their still, stuffed positions. He entered the offices of the insurance company sweaty and disheveled. And sorry to have left the elevator behind.

He was told he was ten minutes late and would have to wait an hour for the next appointment. The clock above the receptionist’s desk pointed to two o’clock exactly, but he did not object. The reception area was full. He found a solitary chair against the wall, mostly hidden by a large potted plant. He had to remove a large pile of magazines from the seat in order to sit down. Not seeing any place to put these, he pulled them into his lap, hugging them and hunching over to keep them from falling.

A few feet away a fat man raised his right hand slowly and placed it on the front part of his head, immediately above the hairline, pressing down with obvious strain, as if trying to keep one particular train of thought from jumping track.

On the other side of the reception area, almost behind the desk, Richard saw another man—well-groomed, hair slicked back—do the same.

A younger man with his face buried in a financial magazine raised his hand slowly, palm up and wavering like a snake’s head, then brought it over in a stretch-like motion, finally settling it somewhat surreptitiously onto the same region of his head.

Richard’s vision filled with the nervous flapping of shadows like dozens of birds exhausted from their long journey. He closed his eyes, looking for his place of quiet solitude, and, unable to find it, opened them again. The men still held their heads in the same way, as if waiting.

Richard searched a last time for a place to put down the magazines, and, failing that, raised his hand high and slapped it over the same region of his head. The magazines crashed to the floor and spread in a wave over the shoes of the people sitting nearest him. Everyone in the room glanced his way except for the three men with hands on their heads, who now lowered their hands without a glance in his direction. He felt his face burning, got up, and left the office.

Out on the sidewalk and everyone appeared to be walking his way. As he pushed through them they raised arms and elbows, overlapping one against the other as if to prevent his flight. On the next street corner a small group stood off to themselves, wrists raised at exactly the same angle as they stared at watches that were missing, pale bands of skin left as evidence.

He felt only a whisper of guilt about stealing a car. Richard manoeuvred the stolen car through streets full of chatting, focused people, people with important appointments to go to, places to see, definite things to do, conversations to have, parties to attend, shadows to scatter, loneliness to bury in a cascade of forced laughter. He at last felt the growing anxiety of someone with a destination. And he would not permit a crowd of other people, those people, the people whose full lives had always put the lie to the so-called life he had cobbled together on his own, to delay him in any way, make him late for the meeting he had waited for all his life.

It saddened him that the truth of it had never been clear to him before, that people like him, people who had endured a solitary desperation all their lives, required no words for their secret communications, that their private handshakes demanded no actual exchange of touch, that their meeting places were spontaneous and secret even unto themselves, that, like the early Christian churches in a world of persecution, they met wherever and whenever more than one of them came together in one place.

Richard looked out the driver’s-side window into another car that had pulled alongside. He wagged his head to the left, veered the stolen car to the left, and that other driver did the same. And another car beside that one, as a result driving up onto the sidewalk, ploughing over the crowds there, striking the front wall of a department store, exploding into flame.

Richard grimly focused again on the road to his destination, hoping that none of the people he had recently recognized were out on the sidewalk just then, and sparing a good thought for the brave and devoted driver who had no doubt lost his life in service to the cause.

But of course we are legion, he thought. When one of us dies there is always another to take his or her place. We always thought we were alone, and our gratitude at discovering our belonging knows no bounds.

The building ahead of him looked little different from the rest, which was appropriate. No crowds pushed inside as if this were some concert hall or sporting event;, and that, too, was appropriate. Because no matter how many of them there might be they would never be a crowd, not in the way these successful and fulfilled unenlightened ones made a crowd.

Richard was pleased to see that no one lingered around the entrance to the building. No one paid it any particular attention, and that was as expected, and wonderfully, joyfully, appropriate.

He stopped the car a few feet from the entrance and abandoned it there. Going in he glanced at the sky, the way the roofline pierced it so nicely, demanding respect.

A few gathered before the elevators, joining him as he made his way through the doors, repeating his gesture of rubbing at his left eye (let it not offend), scratching at his neckline (let it bare itself before thee), pulling at his trousers (my legs belong to you).

They were on the rooftop, waiting, although they did not appear to be waiting. They did not appear even to be aware that others were up on this rooftop with them. They stared at the sky. They stared at the streets below and at the horizon of stone and steel containers stretching in all directions. His company. His associates. They did not look at each other.

But they were here together. Richard understood that the way of silence, the way of solitude, was their way. There was no plan or determination. None was needed.

Well after it began, Richard realized there were fewer of them. Then fewer still. Then he saw a few slip over the edges, like birds sucked one by one into a rising tide of wind.

He was proud that when his own urge arrived he did not hesitate, but floated across the border between gravity and release without a second thought.