SOMETHING SO SIMPLE

SOMETHING SO SIMPLE

He thought he had hit upon a truth—something so simple that others couldn’t see it: people are neither stupid nor blind.  For all that they appear so--and Oh, don’t they ever!--what makes them seem so is that they are obsessed.  Regardless of their station in life, people are obsessed.  Most of the time they are obsessed with one thing.  It is a rare, unusual person who is simultaneously obsessed with two things, and no one is obsessed with more than that at any one time. Think of it!  Caught in the grip of your own obsession, how attuned are you to the obsessions of others?  There it is.  It’s true.  His moment of illumination clarified the great mystery of life—his own and others’.  People are obsessed, and it’s always one thing that they are obsessed with.  For example, tennis.  For another, cars.  For another, sex.  For yet another, religion.  For someone else, political power.  And on and on.  Everyone has the one thing.  Why?  What was he obsessed with?  He thought about it and realized he was obsessed with Nothing.  He had no obsessions.  Should he be worried?  

     He was worried.  He worried all the time.  He tried.  God knows, he tried.  He looked at the world and saw nothing that interested him.  He hated sports.  He didn’t like to drive.  Whenever he went to church he fell asleep.  And women!  How they talked!  Their obsessions drove him crazy.  Some people were obsessed with making money.  He didn’t care about money, either.  He worked.  He liked his job delivering mail because he could be alone all day.  Except for starting and quitting, when he had to go to the post office, he was alone.  There were only the orderly addresses, the mute mailboxes, none of which ever got smart with him or confused him.  They obediently opened their mouths and he placed within them the daily food that kept them satisfied till the next day.  He wasn’t obsessed with this either, not caring one bit whether any particular address received its daily ration.  He had no obsessions!

     He would go in the evenings to a bar, no particular one, and have a couple of beers.  This was the closest he came to having an obsession.  He always went out in the evening for a couple of beers.  He never had more than a couple.  He would sit at the bar, never at a table, and put a five dollar bill down next to an ash tray, light up a cigarette, and sip his beer.  He had two taps, making each one last.  Then, when there was a dollar left, and he sipped the second beer down to the foam in the bottom of the glass, he’d sign to the bartender he was leaving, get up and walk out.

     One night, two young men followed him out and pinned him against the door outside on the sidewalk and shook him down for the fifty dollars he had in his pocket.  He was terrified.  But they let him be when they got his cash.  He went home trembling and never got over it.  That was another obsession.  Shaking people down.  They must have laughed and felt proud of themselves.  They’d do it again and again, till one day they’d kill someone.  Then that obsession would come to an end, because there are people out there obsessed with catching killers.  That’s life, he thought.  Simple.  Uncomplicated.  He understood the formula that made the world intelligible—it, the world, was this vast concatenation of individual obsessions, many of them working in coordination with each other, in spite of people’s blindness, and many of them not.  The only problem is, he didn’t see how he fit in.  He was like no one, nor did he want to be.  Then why was he worried?

     He thought about this anxiety and wondered about it.  He had a permanent job from which he would retire when the time came with a good pension.  He had a nice apartment that he easily afforded.  He was well dressed and well fed.  He had no real cares, being healthy and responsible for no one but himself.  He had no debts.  He had no obligations to anyone, now that his mother had died, keeping his distance from entangling affairs with people.  He was completely and without question free of all inhibiting factors that might compel him to do anything he didn’t want to do.  Then why was he worried?  He didn’t know.

     He stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom and looked at his image.  Then he said to it, Why?  And as he turned his back, he heard it say, “Because you are nothing.”  Astonished, he turned and looked at the image in the glass.  It was himself.  It grimaced as he grimaced, looked left and right when he made those motions.  Nothing about the image in the glass suggested it could or might have spoken.  But he heard it!  It spoke to him.  He pulled the shower curtain back and looked in the tub.  He opened the little closet by the door and peeked in, only to see the four shelves holding their burden of towels and washcloths, toiletries, and paper products.  He looked at his image in the mirror and said again, Why? and a moment later turned his back and walked away.  But he was stopped at the door when he heard a voice say, “Because you are nothing.”  He rushed back to the glass and looked in.  He put his hand to it, and his image hand came to meet it, fingertip to fingertip.  He looked into his eyes carefully.  Was there just a hint of wildness about them?  A certain trembling about the lids?  Were the pupils too constricted?  He looked into his eyes in the mirror and was afraid.  He stood there for a long time, reluctant to walk away.  But hearing nothing more and growing calm again, he turned and walked away.  Just as he was stepping through the doorway, he heard it again, only a little different—“You are nothing.”  Just that.  No inflection, the voice being tonally even, as though it were announcing a flight departure:  “You are nothing.”  He slammed the door of the bathroom and fled into the living room and turned on the television.

     He sat in his recliner chair, pushed back the seat a little, and clicked to Headline News.  In five minutes he was, as usual, sound asleep.  When he woke, the news was telling about the stock market.  “Another obsession,” he said.  He clicked off the television and leaned back.  He thought about the voice in the mirror and laughed. He must have dreamed it.  “I am definitely something,” he said, laughing, pinching his arm.  “What nonsense.”  But he thought about it, nevertheless.  Nothing.  Being nothing.  Maybe it was a good thing to be nothing.  Why was he afraid?  He was himself.  That was not nothing.  When he was dead, he would be nothing.  Then and only then.  That was everyone’s fate.  He was no different from anyone else in that regard.

     Besides, he thought, he was not nothing for another reason.  He was the chemical and atomic stuff he was made of.  That stuff was immortal.  He didn’t understand these things beyond knowing that scientists knew what the material stuff of the universe was made of.  He knew enough about it to know that the elements of matter were formed and reformed by physical processes into an endless chain of phenomena and he was, in a literal sense, one moment in this chain.  How could he be nothing?  It wasn’t true.  He was something and there existed some sense in which what he was was immortal.  He relaxed with these thoughts, happy to have refuted the anxious accusation of his dream.  But as he reclined in the chair, it came to him with absolute certainty that he didn’t dream the voice in the mirror.  He had heard it.  What did it mean?  Was he losing his mind?

     He was afraid to go back to the bathroom.  But he had been out already this evening and had had his two beers, and he had to go!  He decided he would not look at the mirror when he went in.  In fact, he wouldn’t even turn on the light.  He stood over the toilet, relieving himself, with the door partly open, admitting light from the hall.  He hummed a tune to fill his mind with some diversion.  But he heard the voice anyway.  “You are deluded, because you are nothing.”  His stomach fell.  “Who said that!” he shouted, zipping up and running into the hall.  He stood in front of the bathroom door, looking into the dark room, and shouted into it, “You don’t scare me.  Whoever you are, you’re a liar!  Ha! Ha! Ha!  You’re a liar and you don’t

scare me!”

     But he was scared.  He went into his bedroom and got a blanket from his closet and went back to the bathroom and covered the mirror with it.  “There,” he said, “see how you like that!”  The mirror didn’t respond.  He felt at ease now, and decided to go to bed.  It was getting near ten o’clock, which was the time he usually turned in.  Normally, he’d have a light snack about now—a piece of cheese and an apple or a glass of milk and some cookies.  But he wasn’t hungry.  He undressed and climbed into bed.

     Immediately, a dark swath of emptiness rushed over him, and he had the sensation of weightlessness.  He gasped and leaped out of bed and dressed again.  “What am I going to do?” he said to himself.  He was frightened.  He decided to go out again, maybe go back to the bar he had been to earlier and have another beer.  He picked up his car keys and left the apartment.

     He had had too many beers and was beginning to reel.  He drove home slowly and carefully and made it without incident.  He reeled as he walked into his apartment, and he fell asleep in his clothes on top of the covers.  When he woke in the morning, he felt hungover.  He had completely forgotten about last night and the voice in the bathroom.  When he went in, he wondered why the mirror was covered with the blanket.  He took it down, tossed it on the bed, showered and shaved, dressed in his uniform, and left for work, unable to eat anything for breakfast.  He fell into his usual rhythm on the route and got through the day feeling better and better, until, by quitting time, he felt quite normal.  It wasn’t until then that he remembered the evening before.  He stood beside his car, filled with wonder.  He hadn’t remembered a thing until just a little while ago.  All day, he had completely forgotten about it!  How odd! 

But now, remembering, he had that sinking feeling in his stomach.  He decided not to go home.  Instead, he went out to eat.  But after supper, he realized he would have to change clothes if he wanted to stay out for the evening.  So, reluctantly, he went home.  He stayed away from the bathroom.  He changed, went into the kitchen and made coffee and sat down and had a cup, reading the newspaper he had taken in with him, having forgotten all about it in the morning and glad to see it still in his box in the entryway.  He was overwhelmed with a feeling of normalcy.  Encouraged, he went into the bathroom, flicked on the light, and washed his hands and face, looking at himself in the mirror.  Nothing unusual had happened.  He took out his razor and shaving cream and shaved again, something he never did in the evening.  When he was done, he patted some lotion on his cheeks, took a last look, and flicked off the light as he stepped out.  He paused in the hall in front of the door, waiting to hear the infernal voice.  But nothing came.  Everything was back to normal.  He was buoyant.  He sauntered up the hall to the kitchen, picked up his car keys, and went out for a few beers. 

He sat as usual, alone at the bar.  This place was new to him.  It was one of several establishments attached to each other with a little parking lot in front.  The other shops were a pizza parlor, still open, a stationary that was closed, and a dry cleaner, also closed.  As he drove by, he saw the little tavern and it looked inviting, so he pulled over and parked in the little lot right in front of it.  There were neon Miller and Budweiser signs in the window, a potted plant, and a large photograph of a covered wagon, the place’s name being the Prairie Schooner.  He laughed as he walked in, because the idea of those old covered wagons as schooners tickled him.  “Another obsession,” he said to himself.  “Whoever said we have to be rational about them?”  He put his five down on the bar and asked for whatever they had on tap—he was never particular about the beer he drank, so long as it was cold.  The bartender gave him a long, concentrated look when he put the beer down on the bar in front of him.  Still looking, the bartender picked up the five.  Then he turned to the register, took three singles out of the drawer and put them on the bar, taking another long, hard look.

“What’s that all about?” he thought, feeling a sinking in his gut.  He sipped his beer, settling comfortably into his solitude, when he noticed the bartender at the other end of the bar holding a hand to one eye and looking around the room, then holding the other hand to the other eye and doing the same.  “Why’s he doing that?” he said to himself.  Then the bartender, a tall thin middle-aged man, stared down the bar at him, looking unnerved.  “What the hell?” he thought, feeling the sinking even worse.  Then he saw it himself.  He glanced at himself in the mirror behind the bar, casually, not giving any thought to his own image, until he noticed it—he had only half a face!  The image in the mirror had only one side of a face, the other side, from the nose to the ear, was gone! 

In a thrill of fear, he touched the missing side, and it was there—so his fingers said.  But in the glass it was gone.  And that’s what the bartender saw—A MAN WITH HALF A FACE!  Nearly fainting from the pounding of his heart, he wanted to scream.  He struggled to get a grip on himself. Then, looking in the mirror, he lifted the glass and sipped some beer.  In the mirror, half a mouth touched the glass, but it felt like his whole mouth took in the beer.  His heart was pounding and his hair was all prickled on his head.

Just then another person came in.  The bartender looked terribly relieved, and the guy, an older man with short gray hair, sat at the other end of the bar by the bartender.  They apparently knew each other, for they used each other’s name in greeting.  Then the bartender motioned with his head down the bar and leaned over and whispered something to the other guy, whereupon they both turned toward him and stared.  He turned toward them.  He wanted to tell them that it was an illusion, that they should feel his face, it was really there, but the two men, astonished and alarmed, put their hands to their eyes.

Gripped by terror, he ran.  He jumped into his car and sped home, saying over and over again, “What the hell! What the hell! What the hell! . . .”  When he got home, he ran into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.  Terrified at what he expected to see, he stood there staring at his whole face, not realizing it was all there and normal.  After a few minutes he calmed down enough to see, and he said, “Thank God! Thank God! Thank God!”  Still shaking with fear, and still feeling the thrill that shot through him in the bar, he walked unsteadily to the living room and sat in the recliner.  He leaned back, trying to calm himself, and trying to think—“What? What? Why? What?”—not very successfully.

When he woke in the morning, he had that strange bodily sensation we have when we have had a nightmare but cannot remember it when we wake.  An eeriness pervaded him, making even the morning light seem peculiar.  He was afraid to get out of bed, afraid to keep his eyes open, and afraid to keep them closed.  He lay there a long time trying to rid himself of these feelings.  Then he got up.  He turned his thoughts to his mail route.  He had a job, and an obligation to perform it, and so he nerved himself to go into the bathroom.  He opened the medicine cabinet and took out the toothpaste and closed the door.  As he brushed his teeth, he realized there was no image of himself in the mirror.  His mouth full of foam, he screamed, mechanically and blankly.  It was a foamy, idiot scream, long and drawn out and hoarse, crescendoing and diminishing into a moan.  As he stood there staring into the empty mirror, it seemed to him as though the scream came from another body.  Then he passed out. 

He woke sprawled on the tiles, a bump on his head throbbing.  He pulled himself up over the sink, expecting to see himself in the mirror, as always since this terror began, leaving him suspended between reality and hallucination.  When he rose up to the mirror, however, there was no image.  He stood staring dumbly into it, expecting it to appear—as though it were tardy.  But it didn’t come.

Finally, he went back to bed.  In a little while, the Post Office would call.  He would answer the phone and tell them he was sick.  The next day, they would call again.  Again, he would say he was sick.  This would go on, because he had given in to the Nothing.  A colorless, silent emptiness settled over him, and he felt like he was floating, a not unpleasant feeling.  Someone, he knew, would eventually get his route, and the calls would stop.  After that, no one would call.  Not a soul.