Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

were thousands of them, millions—timidly smiling beasts, imaginationless, good-hearted, truly what they claimed to be, the saints of the world’s latter days. In the dream or vision, whatever it was, they moved in perfect silence, like mile after mile of obedient Russian peasants, drab-coated, dim of eye, pitifully eager to be of use. The sky at the horizon, at the rim of the vast, moving horde, was gray-white, smouldering, the color of dawn in old, fading films. “Here now,” one might say to one’s students, “is the real. Who could dream, having seen this grisly vision, of any possible ideal?” And the colorless accepters of what their betters decreed—Mickelsson’s Mormons—were the least of it. To the east (he would have written) I saw an eager-hearted army as vast as the first, moving swiftly in a direction that would intersect the first where the smoke billowed thickest, but the men of this army wore loud-checked suits, all comically similar, and on their bright, fat faces little moustaches, and they carried attaché cases, lawbooks, and rolled-up sheafs of plans. Some walked on two feet, apparently for their health’s sake; some came in Cadillacs, Chevies, and Toyotas. A thousand thousand came hurrying with their bald, smiling heads uplifted, as if seeing in the clouds above them some great light; as many more came bent double, like scurrying ants, all urgently reading what appeared to be ticker-tapes, press releases, leatherbound stock reports—elegant, thick volumes with pages as thin and as closely covered with small, smudged print as fine old Bibles. And behold, from the north, blowing trumpets and beating drums, loud and dazzling as the whole history of Bayreuth, came an army of Congressmen and Public Ministers, Sheiks and Emperors, ragged-bearded Terrorists, and a miles-wide contingent of Women with their breasts bared, triumphantly throwing gold coins in the air, and beside them another great contingent of Children shouting curious slogans—smiling like children in soap commercials and waving blood-red banners saying WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN or marked with the letters KKK or with fine, dark swastikas. And behold, I saw an old crooked man at my left who was picking up cigarette butts and candywrapper papers with a pointed stick, putting them in a brown plastic garbage bag, and I said, knowing this man would by profession be familiar with such things, “Old man, tell me, who are these?” And he said, “My son, those are the People Who Believe.” And he smiled, showing square yellow teeth.

“Here,” one might say to one’s students, “is the world as it is.”

He turned off the useless typewriter and stood up. It was not the case, of course, that Michael Nugent had killed himself because he’d read too much philosophy, or too little. It was true that Martin Luther and Jake Finney were correct: the world was shit.

He walked, as if aimlessly, back to the livingroom and stood with his hands on his hips, looking at the gun. Those who commit suicide, he had read, condemn their children to suicide. Very well; he had no intention of doing it. But now he felt as well as knew the wisdom of the age-old question: Why not?

The livingroom was warm now—at least the chill was off. The rest of the house was still freezing. He picked up the shotgun, for no real reason, simply for the comforting heft of it, and noticed again with a start how much his hand was like his father’s. All at once—it must have been the memory of his father’s hand that triggered it—a great swoosh of revulsion rose up in him, a taste of bile, and he put the gun down. He was sick to death of unhappiness, ugliness, imprisonment. What was the question he must rephrase—buried metaphor he must penetrate—life-problem he must heal? Why was it that he was one moment almost serene in his despair, as he’d been when on the phone with Jessie, and the next moment drowning in guilt and dread?

If the wall were physical he would slam through it, crash through it in the Jeep. But it was not; more insubstantial even than the scattering of atoms that he would carry to the grave with him—though he lived to be a hundred—the image of Jessie and Tillson on the couch. Because even before that there had been no hope. “The Fall!” Mickelsson’s grandfather would cry, shaking his finger but looking as if he knew no cure for it, for all his fine theories, all his talk about redemption. Sunlight filled the old man’s wild, white hair as if all the energy of his life were flying out.

“Infantile,” Rifkin had said. “The cry of the child who remembers his omnipotence in the womb.”

“Why,” Mickelsson had asked, holding both hands out, sublimely reasonable, “why should people settle for anything less than the absolute happiness of the womb?”

“No reason, if you can get it,” Rifkin had said, and laughed.

It was clearer now than ever that no one could get it, it was not to be had, the problem of life would not “vanish.” He was defeated, wasted, miserably unworthy (according to some standard); and on the other hand nothing available on earth had even a faint, tarnished glint of the perfection he demanded, golden ear for his lutany. The idea that he ought to be reasonable, wake up, made his cheeks redden and his scalp prickle. Sublimieren.

He turned, a moment before the phone rang, to start toward the phone.

“Hello?” he said.

Though it was feathery soft, he recognized Donnie Matthews’ voice instantly. “Hi, Pete. It’s me.”

“Donnie,” he exclaimed, hunching his shoulders in, clenching the receiver in both hands. “When did you get back?”

“I’m naht hahrdly back.” Her laugh was as carefree as a ten-year-old’s. “I’m in Califorrnia!”

“You’re kidding! What time is it there? Are you all right?”

“Naht so fast,” she said, and laughed. “I’m fine.”

“Listen,” he said. “Jesus, I’m glad you called, Donnie. I was worried about you, and—” He bit his lower lip, then rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers,