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

resemble a field of ruins of the most precious sculptural designs, where everything shouts at us: ‘Come, help, perfect! … We yearn immeasurably to become whole!’ ”); Nietzsche the Lutheran minister’s son, hounded even on the highest mountains, where he regularly fled, by the ghost of the Reich-loving, good-German father of Protestantism, master musician and monstrous hate-monger (who had written: “What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? … I will give you my faithful advice. First that one should set fire to their synagogues. … Then that one should also break down and destroy their houses. … That one should drive them out of the countryside!”)—Luther whose Christ had in the end turned Nietzsche into a self-styled Antichrist, though he was nothing of the kind: God’s dog, or at worst, a classically defective Christian, guilty of Pride, as Luther was tormented by Pride and more, finally even Sloth, rolling over for order, hierarchy, harmony, good German monk that, in the end, he was (but Nietzsche had, in his final great madness, debased himself, throwing himself down, to no avail, before Cosima Wagner, admitting at last, symbolically, however futilely, the necessity of what he’d dismissed from his system, amazing grace; whereas Luther remained to the end self-righteous and stiff-necked, for all his rhetorical self-abasement—remained, in Mickelsson’s grandfather’s phrase, a sinner besmutted beyond all washing but the Lord’s) … not that Mickelsson was blind to his own sins, mainly Wrath and Despair. … “What choice have I,” Mickelsson asked, “but the wisdom of the Orient: self-abnegation?” He said, leaning closer, “I will become one more piece of the world! No more ego! I’ll make furniture—good, solid, comfortable pieces. No more thought!” The nose of the man with whom he spoke began to move. It was not a nose, he noticed now, but a bird. When it began to beat its wings, he jerked awake.

Mid-day. He stared at the guest-bedroom ceiling, lying on his left side, remembering everything, then looked over at the door he would in a few more minutes go through, beginning his new, more narrowly circumscribed life. He listened for sounds downstairs. Nothing. He noticed that, new as it was, the paint on the guest-bedroom door was cracking, and he felt a twinge of irritation. That was the kind of thing he must learn to put up with.

Yet he felt a strange uneasiness creeping up on him, as if there were something important he was supposed to do and had not done. Suddenly it came to him that the feeling was not free-floating guilt but fear, increasing by leaps and bounds. He held his breath and confirmed what a part of him had known for minutes now: he was not the only one breathing in the room. He rolled slowly away from the door onto his back, groping across the bed with his right hand until he came to ice-cold fingers—a hand that seized his tightly and hung on.

The next thing he knew he was standing in the hallway, clutching his head in his two hands, bent over from the pain of his heart’s pounding, whispering to himself, and the guest bedroom, behind him, was empty. Perhaps the old woman had simply vanished; perhaps she’d gotten up, a little after him, and had moved away out of his line of vision. He straightened up, breathing deeply, and at last, unable to think what else to do, he went back into the bedroom, looking around carefully, seized his clothes from the chair and his shoes from beside the bed and carried them downstairs to the kitchen, where he dressed.

He raised his face toward the kitchen ceiling, listening, once more holding his breath. Not a sound. For a long moment he stood scratching his head with both hands, trying to think; then abruptly he lowered his hands: there was nothing to think about. The old woman had finally noticed him; had turned her rage from the foolish old man to one more deserving of her stronger-than-the-grave indignation.

No danger, he thought. No ghost in the world has the power to move a wing of the most delicate moth off course.

Once again the clankings and groaning engine sounds penetrated to his consciousness. He looked out the kitchen door. Halfway up the mountain behind his house, just below the woods, two bulldozers were tearing a huge brown gouge across his field. Below the gouge, trucks and cars were parked. Fifteen or twenty men and women in dark, drab clothing stood watching the tractors or working with picks and shovels. When he opened the door and stepped out to see what the devil was going on, the whole thing vanished, the engine sounds abruptly breaking off. A small, dark bird sang on the ice-crusted telephone wire.

In the doorway between the kitchen and livingroom he stopped, staring in astonishment. His son had arrived. He lay asleep in his rumpled clothes on the couch in the destroyed, now cleaned-up livingroom. Carefully Mickelsson approached and touched him, to see if he was real, then sniffed his hair, as if the sense of smell might be more worthy of trust than touch. The boy was dressed in black, his face to the back cushions of the couch. He half awakened now and turned his head, opening his eyes. “Hi, Dad.” He smiled. Mickelsson burst into tears. “You’re home,” he said. “Are you all right?” For some reason, something in the boy’s expression, he pressed his ear to Mark’s chest. If the heart was beating, he couldn’t hear it. When Mickelsson raised his head to look at Mark’s face, the boy smiled and let his hand fall onto Mickelsson’s—the hand was warm—then closed his eyes and, perhaps without meaning to, drifted back into sleep. With his free hand Mickelsson patted Mark’s shoulder, or perhaps the cushion, or some pile of old clothes, maybe nothing at all.

Mark was still asleep at five o’clock that afternoon. Mickelsson moved restlessly, hardly making a sound except for