The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

the sky as white as the cataracts of dreams, decimating the park around him, and he builds rickety ladders as high as siege engines, things of an unknown purpose, absurd, words dedicated to the people around him, the stone they walked upon, even the mundane, hell, even the fucking squirrels that come and peer and jeer and run about in primal mischief, all in an effort to manifest an intentionality which would allow him to transcend himself, become a true artist, an immanent being of perfect empathy, and only as the sun sets and the quiet death of day descends does he come crashing down, human once more, nearly broken, sunburned on his arms and the back of his neck, the pages of his notebook flapping in the wind, crushed cigarettes discarded in a circle around him.

Nothing he wrote that day is very good, he thinks. Soon the day has gone to the dogs, run off with itself, and Kierk is left still and alone at an outdoor cafe, lighting his umpteenth cigarette, exhaling the evening. The haunting of the day by Atif’s ghost has made the world a beautiful sensorium. Brief studies and prolegomena on thanatology are scratched out, rewritten, played with vaguely. He picks at his fries, throws one to a brave albino pigeon. He thinks about Atif’s mother, the coffin, the prodigal son returning to his homeland in pine . . .

Is there anything worse than for a parent to lose a child? And then with a sharp intake of sadness as if cold water had doused his chest—where does she think I am? She must think she has lost me.

At a secluded section of a nearby street he paces up and down before working up enough courage to dial an old number from memory.

“Hello?”

Her voice, the first voice, hits him so hard and so fast he immediately begins to blink away tears, a sudden buildup of glottal pressure in the back of his throat, and in an instant he’s crying, turning away from the street to face the brick of the building.

“Oh, Mom, it’s me, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I should have called six months ago. I shouldn’t have cut you out like that.”

“Where were you? Where were you? Honey, where were you?”

“I . . . I was . . .”

“What happened to you?”

“I got . . . I got lost somehow. I just . . .”

“Oh, honey, you’re okay, you’re okay. You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m in New York . . . and I have a job now.”

“A job? And you’re okay? You had me, I was so, I couldn’t—”

“I should have called you when I came back east. I’m going to come up and see you, okay, I’m going to come up and see you the moment I get a break here, I’ll get like, a week off and I’ll come up. I was just so ashamed about leaving Madison and disappointing you, and the fight we had then, and everything. I was just so ashamed. I’m so sorry. It was all just too much, it was too much. But I’m back, Mom. I’m back.”

“Honey, the things I said, I think about it every day. I didn’t mean them. I love you and your life is your life, and you can come up anytime.” Even over the phone it is clear she is shaking with emotion. He can see her perfectly, sitting in her reading chair and tearing up, probably in her old ratty robe and pajamas, the TV on mute, the small terrier a half-moon of fur poking up from the dog bed.

Even long after the conversation is finished Kierk is still seeing her, imagining her rinsing her cracked feet in the sink before going to bed as she always had, all the protections built up around his heart breaking and washing away.

The sounds of New York City at night boom in ambulance wails that seem purposeful attempts to demonstrate the Doppler effect, which mix with the sounds of conversations outside her window, and Carmen is listening to it all while lying on her bed, a book splayed in front of her, as, unknown to her, the phone in her discarded pair of jeans is buzzing because Kierk is calling her.

She has spent a lot of time contemplating Atif in the background of her day. Reading the email that had come from Atif’s mother had caused her to feel like her chest was collapsing into itself, and she had put a hand over her mouth and sobbed. She had written and deleted and rewritten again and deleted again. Nothing could answer the question.

So instead that morning she had called her parents for a long conversation, mentioning nothing, reveling in the sameness of their complaints and concerns, their well-worn tracks. Then she had taken a walk around her neighborhood in the East Village, where even the trees had seemed mournful, the day overcast. She’d spent the rest of the day holed up in her apartment, filling the hours doing yoga naked on her yoga mat while listening to NPR, making coffee. Everything tasted very good and the yoga made her body feel useful and functional. Now she’s reading one of her favorite books, the correspondence between Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, which ranged in topic from the mind-body problem to fluctuations of their health and fortunes to the punctilious dissection of Descartes’ theories of atomic vortexes. Carmen reads this the way some people Bible dip, finding random things of relevance, adumbrations of their daily lives, poetry. When she shifts her weight on the bed she leaves stamped outlines of her sweat on the sheets. Her fan is on full blast, and she could really use some frozen yogurt, but the thought of putting a bra on seems infinitely difficult so she’s meandering between Descartes’ belletristic linguistic bows and winking compliments and Elisabeth’s occasional playful teasing to thoughts about death and how quickly life can change, how precarious everything