Antiphony (21 page)

The darkness feels divine. The backs of his eyelids are a perfect expanse of blankness, a field of nothingness where his mind can empty itself and go still. With his eyes closed and his other senses shutting down, he feels it—something hard in the briefcase his head is lying on. Not his computer, he left that back at the office in his hurry to get away. A book. His eyes open again and he sits up, unzips the front pouch where he sometimes puts a book or two he has been reading. He opens the hardcover book and flips through its pages—
The Mathematical Theory of Cosmic Strings: Series in High Energy Physics, Cosmology, and Gravitation.
He had been reading it on the flight to California, engrossed in its descriptions of infinite straight strings and loops and the associated singularity structures—the zero point and the infinite strings that go with it. Here, on page 337, is an interesting passage, something that had caught his eye:

“The remaining metric function,
ψ
, is fixed by the constraint equation (10.12) and can be expressed as an infinite series of toroidal harmonics. It turns out that
ψ
is well defined if ξ
₀
is smaller than a critical value ξ
_crit
which depends only on the mass per unit length
μ
of the string. One interesting feature of the solutions, alluded to earlier, is that as ξ
_0→
ξ
_crit
the ratio
M/(μL)
of the gravitational mass of the string to its local mass tends to zero. Thus, the effect of the impulsive toroidal wavefront is, in some sense, to mask the far gravitational field of the string.”

This had seemed to him to be an important insight into the basic structure of the universe, hidden here in the back pages of this obscure and mostly unacknowledged book. He had underlined the passage heavily in blue pen, in his typical manner of annotating books he reads, and had drawn a number of blue arrows in the margin pointing to the passage. The insight comes back to him—the image of a vast, infinite set of toruses spiraling out and away from an infinitely long string that spans the breadth of the universe—this could serve as the underpinning of the basic cosmic structure and the key to understanding the far-reaching, yet unexplainable effects of gravity. He turns the page to read more, and then
he sees
. There, buried in the back of the book, stuck between the pages, two folded pieces of notebook paper covered with his scratchings in blue ink—his notes! The notes he searched for everywhere; of course, how could he have not remembered. He had been reading the book on the plane, had gotten excited about this description of the gravitational effects of infinite strings, jotted something down on the notebook paper, folded it up and tucked it away. But his growing sense of panic at the hotel, his vision of doom, had blurred
his thinking—he had searched everywhere in this bag, but didn't remember to look inside the pages of this book.

Here it is—the equation from the book that he jotted down in one of the few remaining spaces on his two pages of notes:

He had intended, on the plane, to refer to this equation and the idea of the toroids spiraling out from the infinite, universe-sized looping string, and the toroids masking the effect of the string's gravity, but he had been so totally flustered that he had forgotten all about it by the time he appeared on stage to give his presentation. And he had forgotten many other things, many other equations, scribbled in a kind of haphazard grid between the lines of the two pages of notebook paper. He looks at them now and remembers all the hours he put in, all the hard-fought victories and insights he had won and weaved into this research. All of it for naught.

Why couldn't he find these notes when he needed them? Why hadn't he sent them to himself in an email? That's the thought that worms its way into his head and will not go away as he lays the pages down beside him. He stares up at the grim gray wedge of sky. If there is a God out there in the heavens above, how could His will be so diametrically opposed to Theodore's own? How could God have wanted him to fail so miserably—in such an embarrassing way—by saying something to all those people about God? A kind and loving God would have wanted him to succeed, to make Himself known in a better way than this. But perhaps God is indeed the kind of vengeful,
wrathful God Victor said he had no need for, when they were talking in his office. Theodore knows now why his colleagues had been so appalled by his evocation of God during his speech: We can only be certain of what we can see and measure and detect with our instruments and our own two eyes. Everything else is subject to guesswork and speculation, and the dangerous attribution of whatever any madman may want to propose as the Will of a Higher Being than us, without proof. In that case, there can be only the testimony of one man against another. When that happens, history has shown that the result must be bloody wars and tyranny and persecution, the very things that rational scientists and all sane men have been trying to rid the world of the past four hundred years.

Theodore closes his eyes and lays his head down again on his bag. Of course, there is no God. How could he have ever entertained such an idea? There is only the spinning, expanding remnants of an accidental explosion, shreds of energy that have slowed down enough after billions of years to congeal into clumps of cooling matter which exhibit a tendency to hang together in particular ways that sometimes allow for structures that show a slightly higher degree of order and self-perpetuation—what is commonly referred to as life. There is only the cruel cold vacuum of blackest space beyond this thin envelope of drifting clouds; there is only death and decay and destruction awaiting him and every other animal that has had the audacity to witness and consider the setting and rising sun, the infernal phases of the moon marching onward in its elusive transit across the sky. Into his head and through even his heart the pain of this knowing has spread, and with his eyes closed
and his head sunken down upon the bag as a cushion against the hardened ground of the pit, he calls upon the mercy of sleep to calm him and send these terrible visions of affliction on their way.

And with eyes closed twelve corpses still across his vision fled, his field of vision still as wide as ever even with eyes closed images keep marching on. With eyes closed from thought his mind can image the stirred up relics of his very own soul, of the souls of every other man to regale with the visions that have contrived to arise and explore, that have stretched across whatever appears to have happened to one man and to all the rest, engendered in the head of one man and living for ever after in the heads of all who succeed. With eyes in rest he sees the cruel wings flapping of the swan, he reaches destinations every other man and woman have reached. With head in quietude his images can fly from one mass of glory to the next and he is free to match them thought for thought, free from shouldering the debt of first accounts and second. Free of civil gardens free from crimson pits and soldiering on for grieving joys of Job. In Gethsemane, all images are pressed out and forged together, from the shuddering loins of the earth, all desires are given their due.

Be gentle, for their souls are at work. Be kind, for creation is their power now and ever after.

In the belly of the beast, the mind has fountains of its own to deliver, has chasm spaces full of plots of gold; in the beast's blue belly, blue and dark and slippery and cold, the mind and soul conspire to generate their own Jonas delays, their own fine wet fountain spray of life ever-lasting. In the darkness still the
brightness of the light inside can shine, the light which shined on shores of Genessaret, shines and grows. For kings are sometimes dwellers of the space within, and duchess loves cannot anchor down to sleep without a lack of light.

To have a dream, the prince must fall asleep and forget—forget that the dream is one with the dreamer.

Once forgotten, he can go inside the skull, he can dwell inside the nooks and crannies of the worn-down world in which he lives. The crown of skull can forge a proscenium arch, the sockets of the eyes are pot lights shining on a cast and plot he must undertake and bring to pass within. The cranium is as vast as any district, state, or nation, vast as treaties may declare, as any planet star or sun, and within it by agreement will be overflowing with the fullness of imagination, images that are nothing but his own whether they are against his heart and eyes or whether they are for them.

Song, song, song; no God was seen nor heard, no staring equanimity with eyes that rot like fruit left out too long on a grocer's shelf, ears of no congratulation, never thrown a solitary sound. No God was seen nor heard. Only the objects of the worn-down world, the collected experience of two million years of mankind thrown open to roil and boil like a pot full of wretched refuse, all pressed down and shaken together. Waves of crying bright self-aroused and broken enemies, a furnace of heat and falling planet toil, to hear them talk, to arrive with sailors setting forth from shores to a destiny unknown and unforeseen, two extraordinary jointed travelers, Jason setting forth with his hands tied against his night of woe, encumbered in the belly of the ancient wooden ship, dominion over the waves of
leaping tall and weeping in the eager moonlight swell, the wetting world of water all around, slapping against the belly of the ancient ship. Out-setting against all sanity and odds led forth by the promise of only hauling a golden catch, every night he sets forth over rain-sodden waves, on against the immense expanse of watery every where the depths of its ocean-tide more frightful than the width extending to forever. What lies ahead can surely be no more filled with dread than what lies beneath—what pushes up against the shifting creaking dry rot hull beneath his feet: the sum of all the million years of human kind all pressed down and stirred together:

Snakes cut down from their fetters, released from their trees, the annual sum, the tortured tonic mysteries, mothers and fathers torn from their children, children torn from their silver victories, river banks and dunghills, shades against a midnight glare, accountants, defendants, attendants, repressible whores and slayers of infidels, founders of empires long since turned to dust. Here they all are, distilled into a paste of dreamy longing:

Fall roses, clinging to one final dying breath of muffled doom, a squire traveling, with a troupe of his own companions, an artful parade of children's toys lined up and waiting to be jested, shoes and boots and other rags of clothing, discarded and disused, cracked ceramic plates and crockery, the translucent wings of bees. City streets and vistas over avenues in towns that no longer exist, houses shuttered and houses gleaming new on the first day someone entered and called them home. Old discarded tools and archaic ways of speaking, words in languages that no one ever speaks, methods of writing with chisels and feathers and parchments, alphabets that no one can decipher,
symbols that mean nothing to anyone any more. Here they all are:

The eyes of a woman who was someone's mother, someone's wife, the lips of a child who spoke her name, both of them dead and gone. Species of leaving creatures too numerous to count, who swam and ran and flew across the waters and the plains. A tourniquet, a guillotine, a gas mask and a neoprene defender and invader. Shell casings and powder horns, arrow tips and battering rams, hot oil poured on the heads of some-one's children, five pounds of lead blown through the chest of someone's father. Organ pipes and catgut strings, rough-hewn canvas and paints made out of oil. Loose-bound leather books that hang together sewn by hand.

Sparrows and harrow rows for turning up the soil, lions and plumb lines for plotting out the beam, here in Golgotha's cranium cave they are stirred and boiled together.

And across the still hoar frost of the night that bears its weight upon the pit in which he lays, above the garden's sleeping shadows deep, his soul traverses and surveys, consummates the journey every soul must make across the giant chasm void each night, concentrates the faint impressions of the day into a seascape vast and ever rearranging. The waxing yellow disk of the moon shudders and peeks above a bank of cloud, tall and shifting through the freckled burning early morning stillness and cold; the wind raises up from the shores of the lake, propelled by the gradient of warmer air above the liquid mass and sucked around the darkened storefronts and apartment blocks, behind the towers of the campus quad and slinking through Persephone's shadow, her arms out stretched, palms down, her
blessing granted to the earth her winter home, the wind creeps down the stairs into the pit where his ancient dreaming head lays sleeping, streaming its cold wet breath into his ear.

So therefore, the dreams go numb, the giant ship pauses atop the crest of a wave, settles its weight there and its admiral surveys the vista vast and deep. Tied to the mast, bound and gagged against the call, the dove's tail slithers through the clashing rocks, the potion casts its spell. The golden object of desire slips away, its fine and wispy wool unravels and disavails. Having met with no disaster other than his own creation, his head is free to bolster yet another day. Jesus never knew what hit him in the end. They dragged him off the cross and tossed him in the tomb. But when he woke again to find that one life ends and so soon after another one begins, he announced himself as if nothing happened, nothing but the coming of another day.