HILARITY OF THE WILL

The great towers of Kuala Lumpur astonished him.  Greater than New York’s World Trade Center towers and expressive of a wholly alien power, they humbled him almost daily.  He worked in their shadows for a year.  And he worked under other shadows as well.  That was the time of the drought when the jungle forests burned, and the city was for a time smothered by their smokes, and then the Asian economies crashed, and for a brief while work on his project halted.  Then the political crisis in Indonesia besieged the attention of the whole archipelago.  He felt caught up in a great world drama that made him forget his personal griefs.  But through the turmoils and uncertainties, construction continued, and after a year, when his part of the work was done, he was ready to come home. 

     But once he arrived, it was like he had never been gone.  All that had begun to sit on him when Harry called returned as he stepped back into unfinished work and incompleted tasks.  He still had to buy a car, the spackling and painting he had started in his living room was waiting to be finished, and he had a message on his answering machine.

     Alethea Archer was waiting for him.  Though the thought of resisting had taken hold of him, he called.  She had put on weight and her hair had grown.  She looked like a different person.  When Abel saw her, he didn’t recognize her.  But when she saw him and reached out, saying, “Abel, I’ve missed you,” he knew her.  She was not as beautiful as he remembered, and she looked older than he remembered.  They met in New York, where she was now living.  

     He had spent one day with her a year ago.  But memory of it lingered, coming to him as a mixed and complex thing.  Now, after a year, the joy and the pain of that day had subsided, and he couldn’t say which was the greater.  He still had the need, the long, dark, dreary pull of two deaths that never left him and that infected him with a feeling of purposelessness, the implacable, familiar despair, that gave him (even among the Malaysians) the look of someone who walked under an unlucky cloud (though he often felt lightened of it when immersed in his work) which, on the day he spent with her, had vanished entirely.   

     Now, after a visit to the MOMA and a quiet mid-afternoon snack at a Greek deli that she knew and favored, they walked leisurely up Fifth Avenue, he, talking of the great city of Kuala Lumpur and holding in abeyance the eagerness that pressed on him, and she, setting the pace of their walk, listening, and waiting for what she knew must come—when he would ask why.  But he didn’t ask.  And after they had walked in the park and, having grown tired, sat on the grass and spent long minutes on end in silence together, neither reaching out to touch the other, except for the first shaking of hands, each, throughout the afternoon and, still, sitting in the grass, self-contained and detached, he felt the deadness in him devour the eagerness, and realizing that whatever may have been possible between them a year ago had now passed, he told her he must go.

     “But why must you?  It’s early yet.  Tomorrow is Sunday.  I hoped we might have the whole weekend.”

     “I don’t have a car,” he replied, making an excuse.  “I had to take the train in.  It’s tiring and boring, and if I leave now, even though it’s early, it’ll be late before I get home.”

     She knew why he didn’t have a car, and that knowledge prompted her, “Why go home?”

     He looked at her thoughtfully.  He didn’t come prepared to spend the night, and even though she was offering, he didn’t know what she meant by it.  She was mercurial, mostly uncommunicative during the afternoon, and very much unlike what she was in the yard of the Long Island house and on the beach.  He felt he didn’t know her, which, he realized, he didn’t.  She was not the same person he had met then.

     “I don’t want it to end like this.  Abel, if you go home, we won't see each other again.”

     There was just a hint of desperation in her voice, though he ignored it.  He didn’t look at her.  Instead, he stared down the grassy slope on which they were sitting.  He was unresponsive and contemplative.  She, too, fell into her own thoughts.  They sat together, as they had been, for many minutes in silence. 

     “Come home with me,” he said, finally.

     She looked at him, looked into his face, searchingly, and realized the burden had been placed on her.  He didn’t ask, and she didn’t know what that meant.  He had said it as a directive, as an answer to a problem.  It was the only answer, he was right.  If she didn’t go, then the choice was hers, as it was the first time.  She wished he would ask about then.  He rose from the grass, tall and thin, and held his hand out to her, which she took, and he raised her up.  She didn’t know him, but she felt in him, as she felt in him that first day, a capacity for devotion she had never known and which she sorely needed.  But she saw in him, also, a complexity of character next to which she was, or felt herself to be, simple.

     “I thought you’d never ask,” she said, smiling, and took his arm and leaned into him.

     He smiled back, put his arm around her waist and walked her out of the park back to the Avenue.

     Where the asphalt path rose from the sloped lawn where they had been sitting and met the sidewalk there were trees, and a crowd of people were there in the shade, some sitting quietly on the low stone wall bordering the park, others milling about.  Only a few days before, this place had been the scene during the Puerto Rican Day parade of a mass hysteria over young men groping girls in the park, while the police, paralyzed over complaints about harassment and victimage, stood aside unable to act.  Except for the raging warfare in the press (with every stripe of social activist trying to turn the incident to his or her own advantage), all now was as quiet as though the ruckus had never been.  A bus screeched to the curb, and some of those in the shade of the trees got on.  Abel stopped at the sidewalk, noticing the people who had gathered in the shade.  Three of them were teenagers. 

One, a girl of about fifteen, was wearing wide, floppy pants and a black short sleeve pullover with a collar.  She had a pink infant’s pacifier in her mouth and was sucking it so hard, her cheeks caved in.  Another girl, about the same age, wearing pink shorts and a blue halter top, exposing her mid-torso, where he saw a ring piercing her bellybutton, had a large-billed pink sun visor on her head and large hoops in her ears.  Draping from her neck were several strands of pink and white and blue plastic beads of varying shapes and lengths, and on both wrists were also plastic rings of varying widths. This girl, too, had a pacifier in her mouth and another hanging from a pink cord about her neck.  A young man, in jeans and lemon T-shirt, with short blond hair and rings in his ears, also was sucking on a pacifier.  None of the other people seemed much interested in these three, but Abel was stopped at the entrance to the sidewalk, unable to move.  The girl with the sun visor turned, and Abel saw she had something on her back that looked like little pink wings made from some furry material he had never seen before.  All three of the teens had a look in their faces and eyes Abel couldn’t fathom, but which, seeing, made it impossible for him to step off the path onto the sidewalk.

Alethea, laughing lowly, took his arm again and pulled him on, past the three teens, who seemed unaware of the affect they had on him, and out into the sunshine.  Once underway, they walked quickly, and Alethea kept turning back, looking up the Avenue for a taxi.  She waved several times before one stopped for them.  Abel had remained quiet and contemplative until they reached her apartment.  Once inside, he asked her about the teens.

“They’re ravers,” she said, pulling an overnight bag from the closet.  She went into the bedroom and shouted to Abel that he should fix himself a drink if he liked, he’d find the fixings on the buffet in the living room.  She’d be a few minutes. 

“Do you have beer?” he shouted back.

“In the fridge,” she replied.

When she came into the kitchen, he asked what she meant by “ravers.”  “You mean, like, stark raving?”  He had conjured up an image of some medieval god phenomenon in which whole groups of people went mad together, crossing the countryside from village to village, bearing witness to a new religious frenzy.  Only, he suspected, recalling their faces, there was no religion involved in these kids’ lives.

“It’s just another fad,” she said, amused by his reaction.  “The kids go to parties dressed like that.  They trip on this drug called ecstasy and listen to weird electronic music.” 

“That look on their faces,” he said, “it shocked me.  So it’s a drug stupor I saw?”

“No, probably not,” she said, thinking about it, about his concern.  “They affect that look.  It’s supposed to tell us that the world is boring, that we’re boring, that they’re bored.  That look of emptiness.  They’re very good at it.”

“And sucking on pacifiers?  What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How should I know?  I never asked.”

“It must be a kind of world rejection, you know, climb inside the senses, escape the burden of consciousness.  ‘Just give me my sucker and leave me alone.’”

She laughed, and he was charmed by her.  Her face was fuller now than that day on the beach.  Her mouth more desirable to kiss.  He felt stirring in him once more feelings he had had in her back yard when they looked at the RV. 

“What’s the burden of consciousness?” she said. “They’re bored?  Poor things.  It’s hard to sympathize.  For one who has not only looked into the abyss but has been in it, consciousness is not a burden, it’s the great gift.” 

She said it.  The moment gave her the opportunity and it was out.  She’d wanted him to ask.  But since he didn’t, she let it spill.  She paused and looked at him.  He had fallen silent and was looking at her.  She couldn’t guess what he was feeling.  He had gone through this once already, and it had nearly taken his mind.  She couldn’t imagine that he didn’t suspect, that he had not already come to his conclusions. 

But he hadn’t.  He had evaded this reality.  All that he didn’t understand now made sense to him.  As though a wave had passed through him, over him and into him, altering the structure of past experience, he understood now what he should have grasped immediately on the beach.  The whole pattern of that day changed.  He was too self-involved and couldn’t see what she needed him to see then.  At her unpremeditated prompting, he realized what a fool he had been, how much time he wasted; had he been keener, how different everything would have been, for him and her. 

“I won’t abandon you,” he said, recalling her former husband, “if it gets bad,” trying to stand in her living room like the rock in the stream that divides the waters but feeling the lightness of being which was all he had known during the first year after Veda’s death.

“It won’t.”  She felt the tears whelming and she didn’t want to cry.  Steeling herself from the effects of his declaration, she said, “It’s been more than a year, now.  It was a year in December, just before Christmas; the doctors said I was clear.  I only have to stay clear.  But if it comes back, they say we can fight it again, just like this time.”

He wanted to rant at doctors.  But he forced himself, for her sake, to stay calm.  This is exactly what they told him and Veda.  They filled him, both of them, with hope that they knew was false—and then kept at it all the while Veda was dying.  He hated them and that hatred welled up and grasped his throat.  He was speechless.  She came and took his hand. 

She knew by looking at him, at his sudden paleness, that he was still frail emotionally, in spite of all the time that had passed, and that he knew it.  This was something they would have to work through.  It was good she was going with him to Long Island.  It was best, she felt, that neither of them be alone just now.  She felt her own burden had just doubled, however; but she welcomed the added weight.  As he sat, she looked at him.  His face was thin and his blond hair was going gray.  His deep blue eyes were not cold, but stared back with concern.  It was a face upon which the habit of thought and much experience had left their traces.  And everything seemed worthwhile to her now, purposeful, as though someone—God?—had arranged it thus. 

When she was ready to leave, she asked him if they should stop to have something to eat, and he said that his house was not a place right now where they would want to cook.  It would take at least two hours to get back to his place, and they would have to wait for the six o’clock train.  So they decided to find a meal in town.  He told her what he had been doing before he went to Malaysia and the condition of the house.  No, she didn’t still have the RV.  She was working in Manhattan where she had moved after selling the house on Long Island to be near the Sloan Kettering Hospital where she had gotten her treatment.  He, too, was working again.  They sat in silence, then, contemplating these new barriers to their togetherness, the rhythm of the train seeping into their thoughts.

Spring became summer, and summer was passing.  It had been hot and unbearably humid, but the weather had turned and the days were now fresh and cool and the sky had become profoundly blue.  Able was standing in the yard behind his house looking over the garden to MacKinnon creek and Sutter’s Pond.  The woods were full and dark, and he knew there would be only a trickle of water in the creek.  There was laundry on a line behind the house next door, and it was flapping and occasionally whipping in the breezes that came off the shore.  The husband of the family that moved into the house was, apparently, a truck driver who owned his own rig, for Abel seldom saw the man during the summer, but when he did, he had parked his rig in the cul de sac, where it stood like some Jurassic creature emerging from the trees.

It was a Saturday morning, and Alethea was still sleeping.  Sometimes he spent the weekend in New York, and sometimes she came to him.  It was a long-distance affair, and neither of them was content.  She was an urban creature through and through and couldn’t live on the Island, and he was always short tempered with the social complexities of the city and the pretensions of New Yorkers, especially those people she knew from her former life as an opera singer.  She had returned to training her voice, meeting twice a week with a group of people who studied together with the same voice coach.  Abel attended a session once, and told Alethea she would have to pursue this side of her life without him.  Not because he didn't appreciate the music, he did; but because he couldn’t stand being among the people. 

They argued about it, but when he reminded her of those teens they had seen coming out of the park and told her that her friends merely affected a different attitude, she desisted, leaving him to his own predilections. 

“But there are attitudes and attitudes,” she said, once, trying to enlighten him.  “Some are the right kind and some are the wrong kind, some are healthy and some are not.  Everyone has an attitude,” she threw at him, convinced this was her trump, “even you!”

“No,” he said unsmiling.  “I live my life and give myself to it.  People with attitudes are always trying to live, and, in my opinion, not succeeding.”

She had no comeback to this reasoning.  All she could do was shrug.  She half believed him and laughed and joked about it but stopped short of applying his judgment to herself.  Abel was a fundamentalist, she thought, though he didn’t even know what it was to be one and would have rejected the notion if she had mentioned it.  But she loved him, depended on him. 

She loved him and depended on him precisely because he was so uncalculating in what he thought and did and was so honest she could trust implicitly even the most trivial flicker of feeling that crossed his face.  People who came to know him either loved him because of this quality of character or they ridiculed him.  Sometimes, among her own friends, the fierce social laughter he provoked embarrassed her.  Her friends saw him as an earnest rube, and he, aware of their perceptions, had no use for them.  Alethea herself, however, was clear enough to see that though Abel understood what her friends thought about him, they were always too dense to see themselves through his eyes.  She saw Abel, more and more, as she lived with him, as the very ground of her own being.

This morning Abel’s knee didn’t hurt.  Standing in the morning sun made him feel alive and fresh and happy.  He looked at the garden and felt good.  Over the summer, he had trimmed the bushes, cleaned out the weeds, planted alyssum along the border, and watered regularly, all of which made the garden more attractive than it had ever been.  It was a small garden.  Next to the landscaping in his brother’s yard, it was rather pathetic.  But it was all that he wanted.  It came to represent for him something of the state of his own life. 

As did the house.  He had finished the repair work, painted all the rooms, refurnished them with Alethea making most of the decisions, especially as to drapes, and now had what he felt was a new home.  But that was the whole point, it wasn’t new: it was a remaking of, or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, a return to the very essence of the old.  With Alethea now he felt planted, solidly rooted in life.  The only imperfection, the only blemish in this new existence was the long-distance relationship which, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get accustomed to.  He wanted Alethea to come live here permanently and knew that wasn’t going to happen. 

She saw him through the window in the kitchen standing with his hands on his hips in front of the garden, gazing into the woods.  She looked over to the little house next door, and seeing no signs of life there, stepped herself into the yard.  She was still wearing her nightgown, a light, see-through, lacy thing.  When he heard her coming, he turned and chuckled, opening his arms.  When she stepped into him, he hugged her and faced her in the direction he had been gazing.

“You know, the old pond is icy cold and it’s loaded with fish.  Years ago, I used to go there on a morning like this and take a dip—my own private pool.  It was invigorating.  In those days there was no house over there, and I used to walk to the pond in my pajamas.  Sometimes I’d take my tackle box and rod, and after the dip I’d catch breakfast.”

“Well, I’m not going in my pajamas.  There is a house there now, and I’m not that type, anyway.  If you brought a fish in, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t eat it.”

She said those things on purpose, though what she said wasn’t true.  Whenever she found him in one of these moods, when he became nostalgic, she felt a somberness creep over him, and she usually brought him out of it by forcing him to pay attention to the differences between now and then, her and Veda.  Usually, it worked.  He was aware of this tendency and willed himself, for her sake, to get by it.  She was often surprised by how successfully he could surpress his feelings.  When she mentioned it, he said it had taken him a long time to master that skill.

But he wasn’t feeling somber this morning.  He was feeling happy, cheerful, and very, very energetic.  He wanted to do something, to leap into the woods, into the pond, to shout and splash, and Alethea, seeing something very strange coming over him, decided she had better get back inside.  But she never made it.

He grabbed her and lifted her up and carried her across the field into the woods and to the pond.  He walked heavily, stumbling across the dry creekbed, clumsily holding her up, while she laughingly protested and kicked her legs and shouted and beat on his chest.  When he got her through the trees, it was as though they had stepped out of the familiar world into an enchanted place.  She became limp and quiet. 

Although she had been here before, she had never been at this morning hour, when the pond glowed with such a strange light and the very atmosphere seemed green.  The beds of iris on the other side of the pond, surrounded by waterlily pads, had no flowers, but their densely packed blades looked like an alien forest-within-the-forest.  Nearby, jacks-in-the-pulpit threw their glossy leaves into the open spaces between the trees, where spotted wintergreen, twinflower, and pyrola bloomed, and the purple raspberry and fireweed hung duskily with fruit.  It was so quiet she could hear Abel’s heart beat.   

He set her down and took off his clothes first and then took off her nightgown.  Then, holding her hand, he encouraged her to step with him into the water.  There was no gradation like at the beach.  When she stepped off the bank, she plunged.  But her feet hit the sandy bottom and she stood waste deep.  It was so icy she gasped in air and went numb.  Urban creature that she was, her body got no sunshine at all.  She was pasty white, and when her skin pimpled up with goose bumps, she looked sickly.  He dragged her down to wet her upper body, forcing her to sit.  Then, blustering and shivering, he lifted her up and set her on the bank and crawled out himself.  She was unable to speak from the trembling, and Abel put his own shirt over her, then led her out into the sunshine. 

“I’ll never forgive you for that,” she said, plaintively.  “Never, never.”

“You’ll forgive me as soon as you get dressed.  We’ll do it again sometime.”

And she did forgive him.  She felt invigorated by the icy dip, so much so that when she stepped into the shower to rinse herself off, she used only cold water.  It was not as cold as the pond, but she still shivered.  When she came into the kitchen, Abel had scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee waiting.  Their plan for that day was to go in to Astoria to visit her parents, and after that, go to her place in Manhattan.  Then late Sunday afternoon he would return to Long Island.  That was the hard part, because he wouldn’t see her again for four days, which meant five nights alone, unless he went in on Wednesday evening, which he was sometimes able to do, depending on what he was doing at the shop. 

In Astoria her parents lived in an old row house just a block from St. Basil’s, with the train station a block further.  The house was old but large, being three stories above the basement.  The foyer at the entrance was larger than Abel’s country kitchen, with a closet door on the right as one entered, upon which was hung a full length mirror; beyond it, the staircase to the upper floors rose, its handsome banister making a spiral turn to the extra wide base step; to its left and quite a ways back, since the staircase itself had a long, gentle rise, was the entrance to the wide hall that led to the kitchen; and, on the left of the main entrance, a double door opened onto the living room. 

     Alethea’s parents were in their seventies.  Her mother, Anna, was short, round, and white haired and was pleasant and easy to know and talk to.  Her father, also gone completely white, was tall, spare, and well built still for his age.  One could see he was once a powerful man, and his demeanor compelled respect, for he held himself with military bearing and spoke in an even tone with careful enunciation—which is where Alethea derived the trait that Abel was so struck by when he first met her.  He was less easy to know and talk to, but Abel liked him and felt at ease with him.  

     Wladyslaw Radom was only fifteen when the Germans invaded Poland, and in the early days of the war he fought with the partisans there.  Then later, along with other fighting Poles who survived the Nazi onslaught, he joined the loosely organized forces under Tito in the Balkans.  It was among them he met the young woman who would later become his wife.  They had faced dark times together.  Now, the old man and his wife looked out at a world seemingly at war with itself, and neither was complacent about Alethea’s future.

     “Why make things so hard on yourselves?” Anna queried, hunching her shoulders up.  “I don’t understand.  Life passes too fast.  You both know that, you’re not young anymore.  I don’t understand.”

     They were sitting in the living room, Alethea and her mother on one of the small sofas, Abel on a chair by the window overlooking the sidewalk, and the old man by himself on the other small sofa facing his wife and daughter.  Neither Alethea nor Abel responded.  They had already unsuccessfully tried to explain their circumstances to her mother, who wanted them to marry, and, expecting to hear this complaint, took it with good humor.  But the old man was not content with their silence.

     “I don’t wish to intrude upon your privacy,” he said with his formal enunciation of each word, sitting erect, “but I know enough of these arrangements among men and woman to caution you.  Unless one of you makes a commitment to the other,” he said to his daughter, meaning her, of course, “your ways will part.  As surely as fall follows summer.”  As he said this last, he gestured to the window, where Abel was sitting, but meant the turning of the summer now to cooler and more comfortable days.

     It was uncharacteristic of him to take up his wife’s complaint, for he stayed out of his daughter’s affairs and never probed into Abel’s life.  He was reticent and private by nature, both of which traits were consistent with his old world, almost aristocratic demeanor, and his now taking a position on his daughter’s relationship with Abel made Abel feel he had to speak.

     “Surely you know, Mr. Radom,” Abel said respectfully, keeping to the formal tone in which the old man spoke, “men and women live different lives today than they did when you and Mrs. Radom were our age.  Our commitments take different forms.  I can no more compel Alethea to live with me than she can me to live with her.  This is a fact of life with which we are content.  Our commitment to each other though is as real as yours and Mrs. Radom’s.”

     “But, surely,” the old man said, now facing Abel, “you can’t prefer to live on the Island while she’s in Manhattan?  Forgive me for prying, but aren’t you both being stubborn, or do you like being alone?  I won’t accept the comparison you made.  We have nothing in common,” he said, gesturing at the four of them.

     “Oh, papa, I’m not alone,” Alethea said, ignoring his gesture and the implied criticism, “I have a lot of friends.  There’s always somebody.”

     “Yes,” he replied, disapprovingly, “and do you sleep with them?”

     Alethea dropped her mouth open, so unlike her father was that remark.  Abel didn’t know what to say; his face reddened and he avoided the old man’s eyes when he turned to him.

     “You leave here this afternoon not with your mother’s and my blessing.  You leave here with our regrets.  That’s the way it is.”

     And that’s the way it was.  No more was said.  Poor Anna was mortified by her husband’s condemnation of her daughter and of Abel.  She resolved to say no more.  And as for Wladyslaw Radom, the time had come to say what he thought.  That was his way. 

     When they left, the old man shook Abel’s hand gravely.  The look of disapproval he gave his daughter, however, cast them both into a blue mood as they walked up the block and turned toward St. Basil’s, where Alethea used to attend services when she still lived with her parents.  When they reached the El, they plodded up the steps to the platform and stood in front of the settees, waiting for the train.  A warm breeze stirred their hair as they stood silently beside each other. 

     Alethea was clearly upset at her father.  She turned to Abel and looking into his face apologized for the old man. 

     Abel was lost in his own thoughts.  He agreed with her father but could find no way to say so without offending her.  “Maybe we should think about what he had to say,” he said, wanting to defend him.

     “It’s me,” she said, “His ire was directed at me.  Not you.  Me!”

     She was feeling betrayed.  After her brush with the abyss, she couldn’t believe her father would take that tone with her and condemn her.

     “You know,” Abel said, choosing his words carefully so as not to add to the burden she was already carrying, “every day we spend apart is a day lost to us.”  He paused to let her think about it, hoping that by putting it that way she might come to see how their common interests twined.  “Think about what your father said, in those terms.”

     “I can’t live on the Island,” she said, irritated, ignoring his observation or, at least, the point of it.  And again, defensively,  “I’d go nuts.”

Abel didn’t respond.  He wanted to say that there were a million people there and that only her refusal to see that limited her.  But he didn’t say it.  She was agitated and becoming provoked.  He had not seen her in this mood before.

“There’s nothing for me there,” she threw at him.    “I’d shrivel up.”  Then she said sarcastically, “There’s no question about you coming to me, is there?”

     Abel wanted to say, “There’d be me on the Island!” but held his breath instead.  Again, knowing the potential for grief in what he wanted to say, he chose his words carefully, gently.

     “If performing again were a real possibility, it’d be different.  But will you ever. . . ?”  He stopped short of saying it, but her eyes went wide as she picked up his meaning.

     “So, it’s all an illusion.  Right!  I’m sacrificing a wholesome, fulfilling life with you for a dream!  Fine.  Never mind my job and the life I have, never mind my friends!  That’s what you think.  Damn you, Abel,” she said, her voice shaking, “Damn you!”

     She went to sit down, and when Abel sat beside her, she got up again.  He stayed sitting.  She turned her back to him and stood facing the tracks.  The train came in then, raising an even warmer breeze that whipped across the platform, and squeaked and rumbled to a stop, the doors of one of the cars opening in front of her.  She stepped in, keeping her back to Abel and the platform and hanging on to the upright bar just to the side of the door.  She stood for several minutes like that, expecting Abel to step in in front of her, but when he didn’t, she turned.  Unluckily, at that moment the doors closed, and through their windows she saw Abel still sitting on the settee.  Her eyes went wide again, but this time in fright.  He wasn’t even looking at her. 

As the train started to pull out of the station, he did turn to her, and for a brief moment they caught each other’s eyes. In that moment she saw—nothing!  An absence of the Abel she knew, a blank, blue vacancy that chilled her.  She saw him rise then and walk to the steps, his head hanging and shaking from side to side.  “He’s going back to the car at my parents’ house,” she thought.  She wondered if he would speak to them.  She wondered also about those eyes and what they meant.  As the train picked up speed, she felt it was carrying her away from him—further away than the miles that separated his place from hers—carrying her away, permanently.

There was a moment when Abel understood many things that had been mysterious to him.  Such moments do not come in peacefulness, they bring with them when they come great perturbation.  This moment came when he was looking at Alethea’s back on the train platform.  It was a good thing he was sitting when it came, or it would have knocked him down.  What opened the door to the revelations was her sudden leaping to the conclusion that he implied she was living in an illusion.  He had not meant to imply that.  But the illusions that moved him, the illusions whose natures he had not questioned, the illusions that held him in their grips—these he suddenly saw and, seeing, dissipated, as the sun does mist on an autumn morning, leaving him in the presence of recognitions he couldn’t have imagined coming to him. 

     He recalled the two moments, separated by a half hour, when he passed the leaping marlin on the lawn of one of those houses in the neighborhood where Alethea was living when he first met her.  He recalled staring over the ocean and seeing that ship so far out on the horizon.  And that night at Alicia’s bedside in the hospital.  And Veda’s last moments.  Those moments defined for him—all these recognitions occurring in a matter of microseconds as he stared at Alethea’s back—the power of illusion to grip and hold our minds.  He knew, too, in that moment, that Alicia had no illusions, poor girl, none but the one—the one that killed her.

     It would not be accurate to say that the joys he had known with Alethea were now no longer possible to him.  He would still love her.  He would still feel that elation and sense of well being when she came to him.  It’s just that, now, he saw her realistically as a truly diminished being, as for what she was.  And what was that?  Abel knew it was only the human frailties we are all afflicted by that he suddenly perceived in her.  Again, in a matter of time that could only be measured in microseconds, he saw, by comparison, the same frailties in Veda, in Lila, in Harry, in himself, in his brother Vaughn.  But Alethea, in particular, now seemed shrunken—selfish rather than self-centered, twisted rather than self-motivated, ungrateful rather than heedless.  The affect of these perceptions was to render him emotionless, to hollow his mind as though he were a vessel now emptied. 

     The fault was his own, not hers.  She didn’t change, he did.  He rose from the settee—after catching a glimpse of surprise in her eyes—and left the platform.  He felt that old familiar sinking in his stomach and fought it as he went down the stairs.  He made his way back to her parents’ house.

     When he rang the bell, Anna came.  She opened the door and, not expecting him till tomorrow evening, was immediately solicitous of his condition.  She asked if he and Alethea had argued and if he was OK.  He stood in the foyer, uncommunicative, looking distracted.  Anna called her husband and the old man invited Abel to sit in the living room.  She, however, recognizing that something was the matter with Abel, felt that her husband ought to be left alone with him, and so she retired to the back of the house with the excuse that she would fix them drinks.

     “Well,” the old man said, assuming Abel and his daughter had had some kind of falling out, “I suppose I’m at fault.  I put too much pressure on you.”

     “Fault?” Abel said.  “No, no, you misunderstand.  We didn’t argue.”

     “You look rather like you need a drink, Abel.  I assumed. . . .”

     “No, nothing of the sort.  I’d like a drink, though.”

     And so the old man sat back and fell silent, waiting for Abel to explain his presence if he wished.  Usually, Abel left his car at the house in Astoria when he went into Manhattan with Alethea, coming back for it late in the evenings.  It was just easier to take the train in and walk or take a taxi from the station to her flat.  But he had been gone only a short while. 

     Abel felt his problems were trivial and beneath the consideration of this complex old man who had seen so much and done so much in his life and was reluctant to talk.  It was the old man who broached things.

     “I take it Alethea has no intention of leaving Manhattan.  It’s too bad.  I’m sorry for you.  It’s no life seeing each other only on weekends and on the odd day here and there.  Alethea was always willful.  But then,” he laughed a little, “why shouldn’t she be?  She was an only child and late, and we doted on her.”

     “I understand,” Abel said.  “We do make the best of it, though.”

     Wladyslaw Radom was puzzled.  He didn’t want to be blunt and so he held his peace, calling to Anna to hurry with the drinks.  She came in with a tray on which were two tumblers filled with ice and a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic water and a plate of lime wedges.  She placed the tray on the coffee table between her husband and Abel and returned to the kitchen. 

     “Help yourself, Abel,” the old man said.

     They both fixed drinks, Abel taking a little less gin than the old man.  When he sat back, Abel took a deep sip and enjoyed the cool flavor of the lime and tonic.

     “Do you ever feel, sometimes,” Abel said, pausing to think how to say what he meant, “that nothing we think we know is really true, that nothing really matters—things are what they are and will be what they will be in spite of us and we never really know anything, though we delude ourselves believing the opposite?”

     “Is my daughter giving you a hard time?” the old man said.  He didn’t understand Abel’s question—though he was concerned with the younger man’s tone of discomfort.  Something had happened between him and Alethea, he was sure, but Abel was not willing to put the matter plainly.

     “It’s not her,” Abel replied.  “It’s something that came to me in response to what you said before.”

     The old man sat quietly, sipping his drink.

     Abel took another deep sip of his own, then said, “I have to be going.  I came for the car and thought I’d say goodbye before heading home.”

     He started to rise, but the old man stood up quickly and pushed Abel back into the sofa.

     “No, you don’t, now.  Finish your drink and relax a bit.  There’s no hurry, you’re early getting home.  There’s something you want to say, and I’d like to hear it.  If you could see yourself, why, you’d be as concerned as I am about you.”

     Abel sat back and smiled.  He liked the old man.  He had not yet had so intimate a conversation with him and the formal old gentleman was showing a side of himself Abel had not seen before.  He decided to take his advice. 

     “What’s troubling you?  I know it has to do with Alethea.  Why not be frank about it?  I haven’t lost all influence with her, you know.  Maybe I can help.  Me or Anna.  Tell me.”

     “It’s not her, really,” Abel said.  “Oh, at least, not anything she said or did.  It’s me, you know.  I have a tendency to expect too much and when I’m disappointed, well, I get disappointed, what else is there to say?”

     “I’m sorry to hear that.”

     “Sorry about what?” Abel asked, afraid the old man was getting the wrong idea.

     “That my daughter has disappointed you.”

     The old man’s white hair had fallen over his forehead, and he pushed it back, sitting erect in the soft cushions, a feat Abel didn’t think he could accomplish himself.

     “It’s not her,” Abel said, for the third time, suspecting the old man again wouldn’t believe him.  “Look,” he decided to take another tack, “I’ve had a couple of body blows in the past five years, people close to me dying.  I’ve been in worse shape.  Alethea knows all about it.  She’s had her own problems, as you know.  There’s nothing between her and me you need to be concerned about.  We get along and care for each other.  Sometimes I’m just grabbed by a feeling of futility, like I said before, as though nothing really matters.  It’s a mood and it passes.  I’ll be fine.”

     “Let me tell you a story before you go,” the old man said, divining more in Abel’s words than Abel meant to say.  “It’s one I’ve told to Alethea, and reminded her of only a week ago.” 

     He gazed at Abel with a drawn look of seriousness in his face.  Again pushing hair off his brow, he began:

     “In the year 1940, when I was sixteen years old and the Nazis had been in Poland for a year already, I was wounded in a firefight.  I had taken a German bullet in my thigh,” he pointed to a spot between his legs, just below his crotch, “and I couldn’t run.  My companions fled and left me.  They had no choice, of course.  They couldn’t carry me in those wooded hills and the Germans were coming off the road with much more firepower than we could defend against.  I’d have done the same if it had happened to one of them.  The point is, I was alone and there were many German soldiers about, and I was helpless.  ‘Nothing matters,’ you say, ‘things are what they are, in spite of us.’  I was bleeding badly and hurting more and was prepared to die.  I had pulled myself against a tree, pushing a dirty handkerchief into the hole in my thigh, which didn’t help, because the bullet passed through and I was bleeding on both sides.

     “I heard Germans coming.  They were not being careful about their positions, because they were kicking up noise and calling out to each other.  I had a rifle, but it was lying on the ground too far away to reach, and I hurt too much to move.  Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.  My heart jumped.  It was a young man I had only recently come to know.  He and several others had joined our group of fighters only some weeks before.  He was maybe fourteen at the time.  He pulled me under some heavy brush about fifteen meters away and helped me to lay down on my stomach, then he retrieved my rifle and climbed under with me. 

“We lay there, now, waiting for the Germans.  They came.  There were many of them, and they found the place by the tree where I had been sitting.  There was quite a bit of blood there, and the Germans were talking about it, taking, apparently, considerable satisfaction in the discovery.  We were not far away and could see and hear them perfectly clearly.  One of them must have been Catholic, for he crossed himself looking down at the blood.  Then they went on.  They never saw us, and when they retraced their way to the road, they passed us by quite a distance.  We stayed where we were for a long while, sleeping several hours at least.  We bandaged my wound with a piece of my shirt.  Later, we made our way back to our companions. 

“That young man and I had become fast friends.  We often helped each other.  We both survived, in the end, though neither of us would have without the other.  ‘Nothing matters?’  ‘Things are what they are, in spite of us?’  Well, Abel, he mattered, that boy.  His commitment to me and mine to him is what kept us both alive.  That’s what matters, and you and Alethea should be able to see it.  It’s commitment, that and that alone.  That’s what makes the difference.  And commitment can’t be one way, only you to her.  Yes, I know my daughter, you see.  It only works if both are committed and are committed all the time.” 

The old man had finished and was satisfied with his lesson.  Able was touched by his sympathy and understanding.  This man he hardly knew had learned through experience the truth of a simple fact of life and wanted, perhaps needed, to pass on the wisdom, and Abel was all emotional over the generosity of it.

“I would appreciate it,” Abel asked of the old man, “if you didn’t mention this conversation to Alethea.”

But the old man only laughed and dismissed the worry.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, “I’m not going to lay into her.  Alethea has always had a strong will, and her mother and I know how to be subtle with her.  Her brush, you know, with the cancer has made her a little demented.  I sometimes wonder about it.  I wish, though,” he smiled, changing the subject, “you would stay for dinner.  Anna should be near done with it by now.  What do you say?”

Abel could never resist such an appeal, it just wasn’t in him.  So he stayed.

He was not surprised when he woke to the smell of coffee and the sounds downstairs of someone cooking in the kitchen.  He looked at the clock and it was only seven.  He wondered how she got from the train station so early until he remembered there was no train on Sunday morning.  “Mnnn,” he yawned, stretching his arms, thinking she must have gone back to her parents’ house last night and taken her father’s car out this morning.  He smiled.  It was exactly the gesture he would have wanted her to make given the way they parted yesterday.  He wondered if he should wait for her to call him or surprise her in the kitchen.  It really wasn’t a choice.  He got up and went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. 

     “Breakfast is not ready,” she said as he came into the kitchen.  She had heard him in the bathroom upstairs.  “Go take a dip in your icy pond, and it’ll be on the table when you get back.”

     “Why not come with me?” he said.

     “Because I don’t want to catch pneumonia.  Go or sit.”

     He had no intentions of going to the pond, of acting as if this were a typical Sunday morning.  He sat, instead,  where he always did, in the chair by the window, where he could look out at the house next door and at the garden behind his own.  She poured him some coffee.  She had two frying pans on the stove, one with hash browns and the other with sausages.  At the counter beside the stove she was making toast and whipping eggs in a bowl.  She kept her back to him and also kept her silence.  He watched her work, sipping the coffee, waiting till she opened the subject he knew they both needed to talk about.  But since she didn’t, he decided he must.

     “I’m glad you came,” he said, finally.

     “I know,” she said, still not turning.

     He was glad she said that, it had all the feel of familiarity and intimacy he had come to trust, but he wasn’t quite sure it wasn’t sarcastic.

     “I was going to drive in this morning, but I’m glad you’re here.”  He was going to, he realized, even though he hadn’t known it until he said it.  She still didn’t turn.

     “What happened yesterday afternoon?” he asked, hoping that would prompt her but wondering how he would answer if she had asked it of him.

     She stopped beating the eggs and dropped the fork in the bowl.  Putting both hands on the counter, she held herself upright and seemed to stare at the ceiling.  But she still didn’t talk or turn.

     “I think what happened,” he said to her back, feeling like he had to absolve her of whatever guilt she might have been feeling, and to absolve himself as well, for he was feeling guilty, too—maybe more deservedly than she—“I think what happened,” he said again, “was undone by your coming this morning.  Just as it would have been had I gone to Manhattan.”

     “You’re not being honest,” she said, keeping her back to him.

     Then she whipped around to face him.  Her face was pale and her eyes were red, and Abel felt awful and guilty for making her suffer.  Then she did the craziest thing.  She started to sing.  She sang that most liltingly beautiful aria from Madame Butterfly, “Un bel di, vedremo,” and she sang with such passion, in spite of the toast popping up, and so ardently that Abel was transfixed.  It is one of the most beautiful love songs in all opera, and he wondered as she sang if she was telling him how much she loved him or if she was demonstrating that she could still perform. 

He was flattered by her passion but dismayed by her craziness.  He sat with his jaw dropped as her singing rushed over him, amazed at how loud her voice was, unable to take his eyes from her, watching her chest make quick expansions as she breathed.  The fragrance of toast, however, was becoming overpowered by a deeper smell.  Both frying pans began to smoke.  As the potatoes and sausages burned, she continued to sing, and still he sat transfixed. 

When the kitchen filled so badly with smoke that she could no longer breathe, she ran for the door.  Abel reached for the pans and burned his hands when he grabbed their handles.  He howled and turned off the burners and, gasping in the smoke-thick atmosphere, stuck his hands under cold running water.    

     He could hear her outside, but he wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying.  He wanted to laugh himself, but his hands hurt too much.  As he listened, however, he was sure she was laughing out there. 

     “What were you trying to do?” he shouted through the smokey door, feigning anger, “burn the place down?”  She was laughing!  He came out, still in his pajamas.  She was lying in the grass, all wet with dew, laughing!