The Little Book (52 page)

“What good will that do?” Dilly had asked in that last day, when he heard of the invitation.

“I honestly don’t know,” Wheeler said. “But maybe if we can get him to sense the deprivation the child is being raised in. Maybe that will change things, just slightly.”

“Better than strangling the little fellow?” Dilly had said, rolling his eyes. Wheeler had offered the trip in a very precise and narrow time frame. He had no idea of Freud’s response. “He must have started believing your reality. If he shows up that’s quite a statement: it’ll show that he finally understands.”

“I don’t think he will,” Wheeler said. “But at least I offered.”

Now alone, Wheeler looked around the room, and his mind wandered as it had so many times back over the events and their causes. Dilly’s death had come peacefully, as if he had quite literally run out of fuel. Wheeler had to keep reminding himself that this was the second time Dilly had died, and not only was it infinitely more peaceful and comfortable than the first, it also had followed a time in which they both had been granted a very special wish. It was indeed a second chance.

But still it was death. Wheeler sat with the body for a long time and wept, making his peace with the father he had never known. His mind kept drifting to his mother, Flora, and to how much both he and Dilly had wished that she could have been with them in Vienna. And why not? If he and Dilly had traveled, why not she? And what a time they would have had! It also occurred to Wheeler then that had Flora been with them, Dilly probably would have stayed. Instead, his body now lay cold and wax-like on the bed of his small dark rented room, while his spirit ranged out over time looking for his great lost love.

Wheeler had left Dilly’s room, dropping an unsigned note in the mailbox of the proprietor of the building, reporting that the man in the second-floor room had died, and leaving it up to the public officials of the city to establish the identity of the deceased. Dilly Burden’s expired body was of no use to anyone. “Maybe they will bury me in the unmarked grave beside Mozart,” Dilly had said in one of his last bursts of optimism.

With nearly unbearable heaviness of heart Wheeler collected his things to do what he knew he must: leave Vienna without a trace, to leave Weezie, once and for all. She had a new start on life now, and she was resilient and mature. The future had her marrying Frank Burden soon after their return to Boston, and there was nothing stopping that, nothing irrevocable or permanently damaging that had happened; in fact, there was no evidence that said everything was not according to the reality of history.

Except Weezie’s having read the journal; that was a problem. Her reaction had of course been almost unbearable to take in. She looked numb and confused, crushed by the weight of what she had read.

“You allowed me to call you by that other name.” She looked more sunken than angry. “Even in those moments of the greatest intimacy for a woman.”

“I had to.”

“Well,” she said, considering all the options. “Well, I guess it doesn’t change those moments.”

“I hope not.”

“You know,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, with a powerful resolve. “I am known to be very good in times of crisis,” she had told him. And all Wheeler could hope was that this would be for her one of those times.

He would never forget the image of her sitting by the studio window with the journal in her lap, her own mind racing with the extraordinary new information that now confronted her. How completely enervated she looked in the face of the awful knowledge. “I don’t care about this,” she said after a time, after she had collected herself. “I made my commitment to you when I came back to Vienna. We can get any money we need from my family, and we can go anywhere we need to go.” Her eyes shone with a bright confidence.

Wheeler did not know how even to begin. “You weren’t to have seen that,” he said dumbly. “I wrote it for my own sanity. It was incredibly careless of me to leave it where you could find it.”

“No,” she said, nodding with conviction. “I have become part of this story. It is important that I know the truth.”

“What do you make of it?”

“There are only two ways to make sense of it,” she said, struggling for self-control. “Other than the fact that it is a remarkably thorough and well-documented record, very hard to disregard. Either it
is
true, in which case its author is some sort of visitor from another time, or it is not true, in which case its author is certifiably mad.”

“Which do you think?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said softly, “but considering the alternative, I prefer to think it true.” As she spoke, incredibly brave and positive, seated erect in the light from the window, Wheeler was overcome by how courageous she was and how much he loved her. It was not for the flow of history that he now feared, but for the emotional well-being of this woman he loved.

“I think you should give me the journal,” he said.

“That is possible.” She lifted it from her lap, closed it, and handed it to him.

“We should not see each other again,” he said, taking the journal and feeling its weight.

She let out a tiny gasp. “That is not possible.”

“It is necessary, though.”

“I think I would die if you left me now,” she said, her eyes now filling with tears. There was more concern than desperation in her voice. It was as if she was stating a fact about the weather or remarking on the color of the wallpaper.

Recognizing at once the truth behind what she said, Wheeler walked over to her and touched her hair. She looked up at him with a new depth in her blue eyes. He pulled her face to his chest and then bent down and kissed her. “What are we going to do?” he said from the bottom of his soul.

“Take me to bed.”

They lay in each other’s arms without speaking for what seemed like an eternity, with no need to part, with nothing of the outside world calling them away from each other.

“Your friend Dilly—” She paused and pulled herself up bravely. “The one you say is my son. He is dying, isn’t he?” she said.

“I am afraid he is.” Finally, he was able to tell her the truth.

She winced. “Is there nothing to be done?”

“It appears not.”

“And when you die,” she said, her face buried in the nape of his neck, “is that how it will be for you?”

“Who’s to say?”

“I will be with you when it happens,” she said with a kind of conviction that resonated with the farthest stars.

“When the end comes and it comes suddenly, there is something you absolutely must know,” Wheeler said. She moved against him, her bare breasts against his chest, their legs intertwined, waiting for him to continue. “I have waited all my life to find love like this. Will you know that, confidently and completely?”

“I shall,” she whispered.

“Promise.”

“I absolutely promise,” she said, pulling herself even closer.

And it was in that moment that Wheeler knew that he would have to leave her and leave Vienna forever, regardless of the consequences.

55

A Classic Admiration

The decision to leave Vienna had settled on Wheeler with the heaviness of a death, yet he knew that leaving Weezie, allowing her to return to Boston, was the only plausible course now. He walked along the Ringstrasse with a sinking of heart like none he had ever felt before. He headed toward the Café Central for a good-bye visit, one last romantic gesture.

To understand what happened next you need to know one last detail of Wheeler Burden’s life. When his band Shadow Self parted company forever, it was not just the abandonment of performance music that called Wheeler. He began a project he had been putting off for a long time: the editing of the Haze’s “Random Notes.”

The project took him a full ten years, researching details, reading other accounts, interviewing St. Greg’s alums, immersing himself completely in the life that his old mentor had lived as a young man. Curiously, the only thing he did not do was travel to Vienna. “I don’t want to ruin it,” he said.

When Wheeler walked off the stage that last time in front of forty thousand at the football stadium in Berkeley, quite a mystique built up around him, and the world wanted to know what he was up to. “You are more famous for doing nothing,” a friend told him, “than most famous people are for doing something.” He was working on a secret project,
Rolling Stone
reported; “probably a rock opera,” one of his former band members said. “Wheeler always liked that weird music.”

Finally, after ten years, he announced that he was finished and bound the manuscript up and sent it to Athenaeum Press in Boston, where the editors had nearly given up hope. Six months later
Fin de
Siècle
by Arnauld Esterhazy was published, and much to everyone’s surprise it became a best seller in Boston and the rage of bookstores and coffeehouses around the country. Wheeler began receiving a wave of invitations to speak, and “for the Haze,” he said, he began once again appearing in public. These public appearances fueled the sale of the book, which led to more invitations. It was this new notoriety and celebrity that brought about his end. But more on that later; for the time being just know this.

As he walked into the Café Central for the last time, he could see none of the
Jung Wien
sitting at their usual table or anywhere in the café. He had already committed himself to a path toward the table when he realized the solitary occupant was the one person he had tried assiduously to avoid, Arnauld Esterhazy. The young man was sitting alone at a table, reading the
Neue Freie Presse
. He looked up slowly and fixed his eyes on Wheeler in a way that made it impossible for him to retreat. “Herr Truman, ” he said loudly, “I am reading my friend Wickstein’s
feuilleton
in today’s paper. It is his second.”

“That is good,” Wheeler said noncommittally.

“It is very good,” Arnauld said. “Although this one is not as good as his first. That first one was a masterpiece. It really got people’s attention. I am very proud of my friend.”

“Where is everyone else this morning?” Wheeler said, looking around.

“You are the only one showing up this morning, Herr Truman. There has been an eruption in the group. I doubt if we will ever be the same again.”

“What is it?” Wheeler said without thinking, and suddenly he and Arnauld were in conversation.

“A cataclysm. It’s all about politics. We should avoid politics and religion. They always seem to cause schisms.”

“And which was it this time?”

“The mayor. I don’t know that we can survive this hideous dissension.” Arnauld launched into a description of the heated discussion of Jews and the parts played by the various members. “I don’t understand it,” he said earnestly, “but anti-Semitism seems to be the driving force of a whole cultural movement. Where does it come from?”

The conversation seemed to do nothing for Arnauld’s disposition. If anything, he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into gloom. “And there is more, Mr. Truman.”

“What is it?” Wheeler said openly, the previous conversation giving him a false sense of security.

“I am in love with someone who does not love me.”

“That can be very painful. I know.”

“I am overcome by hopelessness. There seems to be no point . . .” His voice tapered off.

“Often it is not as bad as it seems.”

“I feel like ending it all,” he said with the kind of artistic fatalism that meant business, and Wheeler’s mind raced suddenly to a note he had found among the Haze’s papers dealing with that dark self-destructive mood that seemed to lead so many Viennese artists to suicide. He admitted that as a young man he had fallen into such a mood with such dark thoughts, but he had been pulled out of it by the chance encounter with a wise older man who used to frequent the Café Central.

Oh, come on,
Wheeler almost said, but caught himself. “What is causing this?” he did say.

“It is the American,” Arnauld said with a sigh. “It is Fraulein Putnam. ”

Wheeler had been dancing around conversation with young Arnauld, leaning away from him as much as he could, but suddenly, taking stock of the situation, he could see a deep fatalism and depression in the young man’s eyes, a look that filled him with apprehension. “You are really serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Very serious,” Arnauld said. “I wonder if it is worth it to go on.”

“I would be patient, Arnauld,” Wheeler said, and he could see that the young man was now hanging on his every word, leaning on him for an avuncular wisdom that might set the course for the next decade of his life.

“You don’t think it hopeless then?”

“Oh my, no,” Wheeler said now with conviction, “Fraulein Putnam is very fond of you.” He paused, struggling to find the right approach. “You must think of Abelard and his Eloise, Pygmalion and his Galatea, Gatsby and his Daisy.”

Arnauld looked puzzled. “Gatsby?”

“Sorry. It is a local California reference,” Wheeler said, realizing his anachronism and backpedaling. “A Gold Rush love story.” He paused, then recouped quickly. “Think of Dante and his Beatrice.”

A spark of hopefulness came into his eyes. “Dante and Beatrice, I like that,” he said. “That is very comforting.”

“It should be. Yours is a classic admiration. The kind that fuels great art.” Wheeler looked at him empathetically. “I see you finishing your graduate studies and becoming a great teacher of young minds. I see you being very successful and winning the heart of a beautiful woman, an American, the love of your life, fathering a magnificent son. I see your writing published to great acclaim. You need to be patient and it will work out better than you can now hope. It will just take time.”

“You sound very reassuring.” The very impressionable young man was mesmerized by Wheeler’s words. He looked immeasurably better.