Nine
Tuesday
November 25, 1990
“It doesn’t look like a penis,” said Janis. She frowned down at the Ace of Swords.
“It’s phallic, Janis,” Matilda explained patiently. “That doesn’t mean that it has to look exactly like a—”
“But it’s nothing like a penis. I mean, not at all. It doesn’t do anything that a penis does. It isn’t dangly, and it doesn’t get engorged, and it isn’t hollow, and it doesn’t piss, and it doesn’t shoot wet stuff out its—”
“Jesus, Janis,” complained Mark.
“What?”
“Dinner conversation?”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Symbolically,” Matilda tried again. “Symbolically it’s like a…” But Janis was shaking her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just don’t see it.”
“You’re thinking too literally. You have to try to think outside the box, see?”
“What box?”
Mark laughed.
“No, I’m serious. What does that mean? Is that the box as in ‘idiot box?’ You mean the television?”
“Actually,” Mark told her gravely. “That’s exactly what it means.”
•
“I’m still not getting this,” said Janis. She squinted down thoughtfully at the Ace of Cups.
“It’s like negative space, okay? You know, there’s this sticky-out thing, and what fits it, see, is—”
“But it doesn’t,” Janis pointed out. “I mean, unless that’s one really weird-shaped cup, then it doesn’t at all. If it’s shaped the way it looks like it’s shaped in that picture, then what actually fits into it would be something more...oh, I don’t know. Breast-shaped, if anything. Seriously. I mean, just look at it.”
“There are fundamental biological details here,” Mark commented dryly. “That—”
“Oh, shut up, Mark. I know how babies are made. And you don’t make them with a cup.”
“It’s a symbol, Janis.”
“Sorry. I just don’t see it.”
“Okay. You’ve got your male symbol, your masculine symbol, right? The phallus. And then—”
“But the female equivalent of the penis is the clitoris.”
“Okay,” sighed Matilda. “Let’s just drop the gender stuff, all right, because it isn’t working. Let’s try this instead. Try thinking of it as a symbol of love. It’s like love, in that you sort of dissolve in it, right? And then you kind of—”
“You think that love is something that dissolves people?”
Janis stared at her, then slowly shook her head.
“Oh, I can’t see that,” she said. “I can’t see that at all.”
•
Thanksgiving Day
November 27, 1990
Sri filled the glass with cool cool water. He held it out the window for a few moments, letting it get cold, and smiled to see the condensation appear when he pulled it back in. “Ghopal,” he said.
Ghopal was staring down at his hands.
“Come on. It’s time.”
Ghopal did not move.
“Ghopal.”
Ghopal looked up at him. His pupils were dilated, and his skin was ashy.
“Have you ever,” he asked slowly. “Ever looked at your hands? I mean,” he said, and swallowed. “I mean, really looked? At your hands?”
•
And the end of the fifth day Jeff came to her room alone. Brittany remained silent.
He unchained her wrists and said, “Please to follow me.”
And she did.
Or tried to, anyway. She managed three steps before she collapsed. She looked up at him and let out a strangled moaning noise, then continued towards him on her hands and knees.
“Good,” he told her, nodding. “Good.”
He waited until she had made it halfway to him, then stepped forward to help her up. She did not weigh very much at all. Her head lolled backwards as he tried to support her back, then gave up on that idea and merely scooped her up in his arms. He frowned slightly, looking down at her. He felt for her pulse.
•
Ten
He never knew how he had managed to make it all the way back to the farmhouse. He could remember very little of the last mile or so; it was all a great white blur of blustering snow and blinding pain and the pure clean focus of will on the act of moving one foot in front of the other. He collapsed against the front door and pounded against it, over and over again. It seemed a very long time before it opened, and when it did, he pitched forward and sprawled across the lintel.
“Youngjack, what the hell did you do with my goddamned— Christ!”
“Please forgive me, Daniel,” he managed to whisper. “The Malandanti. I—” Gunner spat something and bent down to haul at him, dragging him over the threshold and across the hardwood floor.
“Can’t you move yourself at all, you damned fool?” he snapped. “How'm I supposed to get this door closed?”
Youngjack pulled himself painfully by one elbow out of the way. Gunner was leaning his entire weight against the door, fighting the wind. There was already nearly an inch of snow piled up across the threshold.
“This is no normal storm,” Gunner bawled over the howling of the wind. “This is one of your people’s work, isn’t it?”
“My people?” Youngjack repeated numbly.
“You were out in this? God damn.” He slammed the door, then bolted it shut. “What did you just say about the—”
“The Malandanti. They stole your truck, Daniel. I really am most terribly sorry. I don’t know how I could have allowed such a thing to happen.”
“The Malandanti,” Gunner repeated carefully. “Stole my truck.”
“Please, Daniel. Do you think that I might possibly prevail upon you for...for a glass of water?”
Gunner regarded him for a long moment. “Hell,” he muttered, bending down to heave him to his feet. “You oughta be unconscious. Or forget unconscious.” He wrestled him into the living room, grabbed a chair and levered it beneath him. “You should be dead.”
“No one should be dead,” whispered Youngjack. “No one. I’m...I’m stronger than I look, Daniel. You know that.”
“Uh-huh. So tell me again about the truck.”
“They took it. I don’t know what they plan on doing with it. It’s possible they’ll just get bored and leave it somewhere. They don’t know that it’s yours. They think it’s mine. And they...they really aren’t very mature. Really. So I just don’t know. I didn’t give it to them,” he added, after a long silence. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Gunner shook his head.
“They hurt you, Thomas?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” said Youngjack. “They hurt me. And...” He took a deep breath. “And I need to tell you,” he said, “that I’m under contract. Again. If that means that you have to throw me right back out that door, I’ll understand.”
“You gotta be kidding me. Again? What the hell did you promise him this time around? The moon on a string? The Holy goddamned Grail?”
“Oh, don’t!” Youngjack buried his head in his arms. “Daniel, don’t. You don’t know. You just don’t know. Please don’t.”
“I don’t know why the hell I’m letting you stay here.” Gunner stomped off. Youngjack could hear him banging and crashing about in the kitchen. He returned some time later, with a glass of water and a bottle of Percodan.
“Take ‘em all, if you need ‘em,” he said. “I can get more.”
Youngjack tossed the plastic bag he had carried with him all the way from Herschberg down onto the table, cracked the bottle open with his teeth, and dumped out its contents. He picked up the glass of water and began grimly swallowing pills. Gunner poked at the parcel suspiciously.
“What’s this?”
“Repayment, Daniel. For your truck. For your hospitality. For your kindness. My people always pay their debts. Always. It’s a law.” He shuddered and downed another two pills. “The Law of Fair Payment. Open it.”
Gunner squinted at him thoughtfully, then picked it up. He peeled off the plastic bag, unfolded the dirty towels. His hands slowed, then stopped. He stared at the gleam of metal.
“This...this isn’t what I...” He unwrapped the rest of the towels.
“Do you like it? I thought of you the instant I—”
“Goddammit, Manitou. Is this your idea of a joke?”
“No, Daniel. I could just imagine how very badly you must always have wanted one, that’s all.”
“This is some goddamned Manitou joke, isn’t it.”
“No, Daniel. It’s not.”
Gunner picked up the blade and turned it, carefully, in his hands.
“This can kill you,” he said, with something like awe in his voice.
“Just about anything can kill me these days. A stray bullet can kill me. A fall can kill me. A..." He swallowed. "An injection," he said. "An injection can kill me.”
“You know what I mean, damn it. Your people. Manitou. This can kill the Manitou. Why—” he began, then exploded: “Why in hell would you give this to me? Why? Of all the people in the world you could have handed this to...”
“Because, Daniel. Because. Because. Because you are the only person in this entire town, the only person. Whom I trust.”
“You trust?” Gunner catapulted himself across the table. “I have a mission from God, Manitou. Don’t you understand that?”
“I—” Youngjack froze. He looked down at the point of the dagger pressed against his throat. “I, I understand that,” he said.
“You say that you aren’t here to corrupt me? And then you bring me this, this—”
“Gunner.” Youngjack closed his eyes. “It's sharp, Daniel,” he said. “It is very sharp. And it very much wants me, my blood. It wants that. All you need do is break the skin. Your…your hands are shaking. Please. I...if you are going to do this thing, then please. If you do it, please mean it.” He let out his breath as he felt the point withdraw slightly.
“All I need to do is break the skin?” Gunner repeated numbly. “And you die?”
“Eventually. It binds us in form. Permanently. Irrevocably. Entirely. After that, anything can kill us. Anything that can kill you, can kill us.”
“So it just makes you human, is that all?” Gunner grunted. “Is that really such a terrible thing to be, Thomas?”
“We weren’t made for mortality, Daniel,” Youngjack told him quietly. “We were made to live forever.”
“If I cut you with this, there wouldn’t be any point in you serving that thing you serve anymore. Would there?”
“No, Daniel.”
“Would you consider it, then? If that were the case? Coming to the Light, I mean.”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“I see what you mean. About it wanting you, your blood. I can feel that.”
“Yes,” said Youngjack.
“You do know what I have to do here, Thomas. Don’t you?”
“What would you like me to tell you, Daniel? ‘Do what you must?’” Youngjack shook his head. “Don’t do what you must, Daniel. Never do what you 'must.' Do what you choose. Ask yourself: what is my motivation? And then do as you choose.”
He waited, eyes closed, feeling the point hover at his throat, feeling its cold will to do him harm.
“Though he slay me,” he said then. “Though he slay me, yet I shall trust in him.”
He did not open his eyes again, not even after he felt the blade leave his throat, not even after he heard Gunner’s feet walking up the stairs. He kept them closed for a long, long time.
And then he drank a long cool glass of water.
•
There was a mirror above the sink in the bathroom. They always did that. They always put their mirrors over their sinks. He stood before the basin and took a long look in the mirror.
“Selkie,” Youngjack said, “I am the seventh son of a seventh son, and I was born with the Sight. I have dreamed of your coming. I dreamed it the night before last, and also the night before that. When I dreamed it again last night, I knew that it was a true sending and no deception. I knew that it would be tonight. I know what you have come to do. I...”
His voice faltered, and he swallowed. His hands, those graceful hands, were clenched tightly together in his lap.
It tilted its head to one side, watching him with some interest. It always found it curious, the way they so often did this. As if they were not made to be mortal. As if death were not inevitable. As if it made the slightest bit of difference, in the end, how well they managed it.
“I,” he said faintly. “I would not suffer, Selkie.”
“You will not,” it told him carelessly. No reason, really. Except that it found the man attractive—it liked the look of his hands—and it had been relieved to find him so, feeling that this would make the distasteful job that it had been sent here to do somehow more palatable; and because it had no desire to see what had once been attractive become ugly through suffering.
“You will not,” it told him carelessly. “Make whatever preparations you require.”
The man nodded slowly, eyes large in his bloodless face. He looked about the room, as if hoping to see there something that might remind him of what preparations were appropriate, or expected of him.
“You have questions,” it told him then. “I will answer three of them, Thomas. If you do not take too long in the asking.”
He blinked, confused, then blurted: “Why?”
“Because,” it said, and smiled faintly. “It is traditional. Ask your second question.”
“I...” He was shivering, although it was not at all cold in the room. “You have come,” he said carefully, “to get my wife with child. That, too, I dreamed. I also know that you will not hurt her. I...I thank you for that. But I...my next question. My next question, Selkie, is: why? Why me, and why mine? That is my second question.”
“That is two questions, Thomas. But I will answer. You have certain talents, as does your wife. As, for that matter, do I. By assuming your form, I absorb your strengths while still retaining my own. And may pass them on. The child will be yours, as well as mine. Take comfort in that, if you wish. My time grows short. Ask your final question.”
“But is...is it really necessary...” He swallowed hard. “I am not... obstructing you. I am not standing in your way. So do you really have to... is it really necessary? For me to die?”
“Necessary?” It shrugged. “It is foretold, Thomas. It is commanded. It is the will of heaven.”
“The will of heaven,” he repeated. He hugged himself, shivering, then slowly sank to his knees.
“Thy will be done,” he whispered and bowed his head, eyes squeezed tightly shut, wincing. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
It had broken his neck in a single blow. He had not suffered. Much. Not much. Not much at all.
It had not understood suffering very well back then. It could just as easily have made him suffer. It had entertained itself that way on many other occasions.
He stared into the eyes of the man in the mirror, who had wanted to live and who had been made dead, who had never had the chance to grow old.
I’m glad, he thought. I’m glad that I didn’t make you suffer. Much. Not much. Not much at all.
I don’t know if this matters at all to you, he told him then. But I wish now that I hadn’t. Will of heaven or not. It wasn’t necessary. I don’t believe that it was necessary. There is nothing, there is absolutely nothing that is necessary. But I didn’t understand that back then.
Can you understand that? he asked the man on the other side of the mirror.
But of course the man on the other side of the mirror could say nothing. Not unless he were willing to say it himself.
•
Eleven
So they had just reached the dessert stage, and he had said something about pumpkin pie, and she had met his eyes over the table and said “Fuck the pumpkin pie,” and so naturally, that was when the phone had started ringing.
“Leave it,” he’d said, but she had shaken her head.
“Can’t. I’m the Sheriff.”
She had come back in a few minutes, scowling furiously, and thrust the receiver at his torso hard enough to knock him backwards gasping.
“It’s Hoover,” she’d snarled.
You will not address the patient. You will not look the patient in the eyes. You will not...
A very special patient, Hoover had told him. They had met at his house, of course. There had been many cars in his driveway, and a number of them lining the street as well, and as Terry had stumbled up the snow-covered steps, he had been able to hear the sounds of Hoover’s Thanksgiving gathering from the other side of the door. He wondered who had been invited—and why the hell he had not been. Hoover hadn’t even invited him into the house. Instead, they had spoken out in the garage.
A very special patient, he'd been told, and so naturally he had then asked:
“Who? Who is it?”
“Jane Caulfield.” Hoover evaluated his response, then added, “I should warn you that you may find her appearance a bit…shocking. She has been in the care of the Order of Haurvatat and Malach-Ra.”
“They exist?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But I’m a doctor,” Terry objected, and then realized what an utterly absurd thing this had been to say. After all, why else had he been called out here?
“Oh God,” he said then, suddenly struck by a thought. “This isn’t because I made that phone call, is it? On Saturday? When I saw her projecting? Is that why they got called in? To make her…safe?”
“No, Terry,” Hoover told him gently.
He hadn’t believed him.
He had been given instructions, written instructions, on how he ought behave, what he should say, what he should not say. So as not to interfere with their work. Do not address the patient. Do not look the patient in the eye. Do not refer to the patient by name. Do not make any reference to the patient’s previous life or experiences...
“This is,” Hoover had told him as he had stared down, stunned, at the instructions he clutched in one frozen hand, along with the address he had been given. “This is, you understand, a matter of the utmost secrecy.”
He had never thought that he would hear himself use such a cold tone with Hoover.
But he had.
“And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession in my intercourse with men,” he had said, “if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.”
Hoover had just stared blankly at him. He had sighed, then, and given in, and recited the formula that he knew the man was waiting to hear.
“I shall place a stone upon my tongue.”
The directions took him to a warehouse just on the border of town; it had, he thought, perhaps once been a factory. There were a number of cars parked nearby with men inside them, men whose eyes watched him carefully as he approached the door and knocked in the manner in which he had been instructed. He could feel the power of the wards brush over him as he crossed the threshold.
The man who admitted him was not what he had expected: a plump short Indian fellow who looked absolutely exhausted.
“I am Sri,” he explained, in a softly accented voice. “My colleague is indisposed. You will please to come this way?”
The stench was nearly enough to make him faint as he entered the factory: the smell of human waste, and illness, and despair. The pizza that he and Jennifer had ordered because neither of them could cook worth a damn rose back up in his throat, and he swallowed hard.
“You have read the instructions we have prepared?” Sri asked civilly, and—and actually? He was just about what Terry had expected. Or at least, what he ought to have been expecting. The question was not really a question at all. He nodded.
“I have read and understood,” he said, mouth dry.
He was led to a small office at the back of the factory. It was warmer here, which made the smell far worse. Another man, presumably Sri’s colleague, lay on his back on a small cot, staring at the ceiling and giggling to himself. He looked not only ‘indisposed,’ Terry thought, but really quite ill. His complexion was ashen, and he was shaking with what looked to be some sort of tremor.
Terry glanced nervously at him, and then at the chair where Caulfield had been propped. From the look of things, they had been trying to get her cleaned up when he had arrived. A bucket of water was sitting at her feet, a cloth floating in the dirty soap scum on its surface.
Oh Lord, he thought. They have no hot water.
He bent over to look at the woman in the chair, and then simply stared.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh, my...what have you done? This isn’t, isn’t...”
He stopped. His brow furrowed. He blinked, twice.
“I am begging your pardon?” Sri asked him.
Terry's face slowly relaxed. “What?” he asked vaguely, and then shook his head and tried to attend to his patient.
Caulfield had the worst case of edema he had ever seen. Her fingers were the width of mature carrots, and around her nails the skin had simply burst open like ripe fruit. It looked as if she might be wearing rings—Terry could make out their location by the dimples they left in her swollen fingers—but they themselves were invisible, sunk deep into her flesh. She had the sunken eyes and poor skin torgor of severe dehydration, and she stank of feces and infection. She had been beaten black. Her eyes stared blank and dead past him to the far wall, where there hung a poster of the Hindu god Ganesh.
I can’t do this, he thought.
I can do this, he told himself. I am a doctor.
He had assumed that she was completely oblivious to his presence, but when he pulled out the blood pressure cuff she slowly raised one arm to the appropriate position. He flinched as he tightened the cuff around her swollen arm, but she did not; she didn’t even blink. He took the reading and then simply stared.
“Um,” he said.
He took a second reading, then shook his head. She really shouldn’t be alive at all. When he removed the cuff, she kept her arm up in the air. He frowned and tapped it gently. She put it slowly back down.
“She has had some water,” Sri told him. “She was able to swallow. With help.”
“She needs more,” he said shortly.
“Elephant,” croaked Caulfield.
They both looked at her.
“Elephant,” she said again. “Thing.”
Sri followed her gaze to the poster on the wall.
“That is Lord Ganesa,” he told her pleasantly.
Terry conducted the rest of the examination in silence. Sri seemed to anticipate what he needed her to do; he instructed her himself. There was no need for him to address the patient. The girl followed simple commands, and she stayed where she was put. When he had finished, he looked up to see Sri watching him, waiting expectantly. He had absolutely no idea what to say.
“This young woman needs hospital care,” he said finally. “With blood pressure like this, she should be dead. I have no idea why she is not.”
And that was when the man who had been lying on the cot suddenly leapt to his feet, staring.
“Elephant-thing!” he screamed in English, then burst into a babble of some language Terry did not understand. Sri responded calmly, in that same language, but the other man seemed only to become more agitated.
“What’s...” Terry took a deep breath. “Uh, excuse me,” he said, “But...I mean, look. Is there anything that I can maybe do for your—” but the fellow was working himself up into what appeared to be a state of hysteria. He backed slowly away from them, his voice rising steadily, then turned and ran out of the office. Sri stared after him for five full seconds, then turned to Terry and smiled perfunctorily.
“You will please to excuse us,” he said, and followed his colleague out the door.
He stood alone in the tiny room with the not-dead girl. He did not look her in the eyes. He had been instructed not to. He had been instructed not to address her at all. So instead he filled the sink with water from one of the giant jugs and began to wash his hands.
He stood before the basin, waving his hands through the cool, cool water. He did not look up. There was a mirror there, and he was not yet ready to look into it. Was not yet ready, somehow, to meet its eyes.
Her voice, when it came, took him by surprise. It was as flat and as expressionless as a bullet shot.
“Doctor.”
He bent over the basin, looking at his hands.
You will not address the patient. You will not look the patient in the eyes. You will not...
“Yes?” he said.
“Doctor,” she asked him then, still in that same dead voice. “What’s my motivation?”
Serve the Light, the voice that he had always been told was the voice of God instructed him to answer her. Trust in God. Do what you must. Obey the will of heaven.
“I don’t know that, Jane,” he said. He turned from the mirror and looked her straight in the eyes. “Nobody can tell you that,” he said. “Everyone has to figure that one out for themselves. Just—”
DO WHAT YOU MUST, the voice commanded him to tell her. DO WHAT YOU MUST DO WHAT YOU MUST DO WHAT YOU—
“—do what you can,” he told her. “And hope for the best. And—”
—AND WALK WITH GOD AND WALK WITH GOD AND WALK WITH GOD AND WALK WITH—
“—and try, you know,” he said. “Try not to do any harm.”
•
Twelve
Sunday
November 23, 1990
"What the hell?”
“Good morning, Daniel. I trust you slept well. I hope you like eggs.”
“You shouldn’t be cooking. You’re a mess. Go and sit the hell down.”
Youngjack thought about this for a moment, then nodded. He picked up his bag of ice and carried it with him to one of the chrome and leather sling-back chairs where he seated himself and then leaned way back, placing the icebag carefully over his bruised and swollen eye.
“You were up very late, Daniel,” he said.
Gunner grunted. “Had some calls to make.” He bent over the already warmed pan and began cooking the omelettes. Youngjack smothered a smile.
“Don’t know if it was bothering you, by the way,” Gunner told him, after some time had passed. “But you don’t have to worry about that Blade anymore.”
“No?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone?” Youngjack raised an eyebrow, then winced.
“Gone. Out of the country. Gone. I talked to some people last night. Some of our people. It’s gone to where it can do some good.”
“Oh? And where might that be?”
“Never you mind. It’s gone to where it’s supposed to be, and that’s all you need to know about it.”
“I knew you’d do the right thing with it, Daniel,” said Youngjack, in all sincerity.
“We’ll make a follower of the Light out of you yet, Thomas. Startled me, you did. Last night. Placing your trust in God like that.”
“God?” Youngjack smiled. “Oh, Daniel. It wasn’t God I was referring to.”
“Don’t tell me that.” Gunner slammed an omelette and a glass of orange juice down on the table next to him. “If that’s so, then I don’t want to hear about it.”
Youngjack sat up and lifted the glass. “A toast, Daniel,” he suggested. “To trust. And..."
"And?"
And to tactics, thought Youngjack.
Fabian tactics.
•
The fragment of broken mirror was sharp. He picked it up gingerly, taking care not to cut himself on its edges.
He tilted it from side to side in the light from the window that looked out in the direction of the Herschberg University campus. It caught the watery winter sunlight and reflected it, sent it bouncing along the ceiling and the walls of Gunner's small spare bedroom.
Where the fragment had sheared away from the rest of the mirror, it had left a jagged, angled edge. The light fractured there and schismed, sent prisms dancing on the room’s white walls, gleamed rainbow rainbow rainbow deep within the glass.
He tilted it carefully, sending the tiny flecks of light into the deeply shadowed corners of the room, watching the prisms dance on the walls, looking at the colors caught within the glass.
He tilted the broken mirror carefully, observing all of the things that it was capable of doing.
Reflecting.
Illuminating the Darkness.
Breaking the Light.
Thomas Youngjack looked down at the piece of broken mirror, and then out the window, in the direction of the Herschberg University campus. He narrowed his eyes.
“Not on my campus,” he said.
•
Thirteen
“Dave,” said Cecil, looking up from the massive bible on his lap in some confusion. “This book has been rebound.”
•
At the very end of his life, University founder Harry Herschberg summoned his son Moshe to the side of the bed where he lay dying. With shaking hands, he handed him a large flat wooden box.
“Open it,” he said.
Moshe looked questioningly at his father, and then slowly opened the box. Inside was the casing of a Bible—not ornate, not ornate at all, but simple and plain and well-tooled—front board and back board and hand-sewn cloth.
“Turn it over,” said Harry. “You must look.”
“I—”
“You must look.”
Slowly, Moshe turned the front board over, flipped it around to see the other side.
There, in a spiky hand that he knew all too well, was written the Herschberg family tree. Gyorg pere, yes, and his two sons: Gyorg fils, who had died tragically young, and his brother Peytr, whose wife Annalise nee Schuyler had borne him only one son before—
One son?
Peytr?
Moshe drew in a sharp breath.
“What trick is this?” he demanded.
“Don’t you see? Oh, don’t you see?” Harry leaned back into his pillow, the tears running down his face. “Don’t you see? There is hope. There is hope for us all.”
Moshe drew in another breath, then rose convulsively to his feet.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” he hissed.
“My son—”
“No. No.” He bent to the fireplace and let the casing fall, watched as it was slowly consumed by the flames. “I place my faith,” he said. “I place my faith in the Lord.”
Moshe never spoke of it again, and shortly thereafter he moved to California. He alone might have understood why it was that his father Harry, who had invited Gwendolyn Whitman to serve as his first Dean, should also have fought to prevail in his wish that the University he founded bear as its motto, written in the vulgate so that everyone might read and understand:
"NOTHING IS NECESSARY"
•
Wednesday
November 26, 1990
Oh. Now this is just weird, Mark thought.
He stood before the mirror above the sink in the men’s room of the Student Union, staring at the thirty-one year old who gazed steadily back into his eyes. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and no one was going anywhere; the town was cut off from the outside world, and the students were celebrating. From where he stood, Mark could hear strains of the Velvet Underground song that the Third Floor Band was covering upstairs in the ballroom.
I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know
Mark shivered.
“Leave me be,” he hissed. “Why can’t you just leave me be already?”
The thing in the mirror did not like him very much. Mark’s lips drew back in something between a sneer and a snarl—and the lips of his reflection did precisely the same thing.
I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty you are
Mark blinked. As did the thing in the mirror.
But if you don't, let me be your eyes,
A hand in your darkness, so you won't be afraid
He slowly raised his hand to the hand of the thing in the mirror. When they met, the glass felt almost warm to the touch.
When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you're twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands
Slowly, he lowered his hand. As did the other him.
'Cause I see you.
Am I okay in there? Mark asked it then. In the far-off year 2000? Have I come through all right? Have I, have I—
I'll be your mirror
Have I done more good than I have harm?
And his reflection asked him precisely the same thing.
Reflect what you are
I’m trying, they told each other. I’m trying. I’m doing what I can.
He smiled tentatively at the person in the mirror, and the person in the mirror smiled tentatively right back at him.
“Reflect what you are,” he sang along with the Third Floor Band as he dried his hands. “Reflect what you are.”
He left to rejoin the assembled student body, talking, arguing, dancing, singing. Every organization on campus, it seemed, had set up a table somewhere in the Student Union this week. By far the largest was that of the Herschberg Rainbow Coalition, which had flown a giant banner all the way across the top of the stairs.
CELEBRATE DIVERSITY
was what it said.
•
It was warm and bright in the Herschberg campus center on the night before Thanksgiving, while outside the snow kept falling down. It was falling on every part of town, on the trailer park and the art museum, the police station and the Arboretum, on the dormitories and the hill behind the old Herschberg homestead. It fell and it kept on falling, on the stone which marked the place where Gyorg fils lay, the stone inscribed with the epitaph THE VOICE IS THE VOICE OF JACOB BUT THE HANDS ARE ESAU'S HANDS, and also on Harry’s own, which bore the legend upon which he had insisted (“and it must be inscribed precisely as written,” his last instructions had read):
DOTH GOD FEAR JOB FOR NOUGHT?
The snow fell and it kept on falling, on dogs and wolves and horses and mules, on seals and shrews, on sheep and goats, on elephants and elephant-things and things which were nothing at all like elephants. It fell on vampire and on Manitou, on lamb and on lion, on mice and on men, on all of the animals and their keepers—and all of the brothers and theirs.
It fell on all of the students of the humanities.
•
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