Mickelsson's Ghosts (71 page)

Mickelsson put down the book and went back downstairs. When he turned on the Christmas tree lights his funereal mood darkened more, but he let them burn on, as he let the big, warlike music of Wagner go on playing. It was an outrage that such a swine should write beautifully—not that Mickelsson claimed
Kunst Wissenschaft.
He'd tried to put out of mind Wagner's crimes against humanity, that year he and Ellen had spent in Heidelberg. The Germans had long since forgiven Wagner, he saw; but then, more than a few of them, it seemed to Mickelsson, had forgiven Hitler. In the laundromat he and Ellen had to use there were large, carefully painted swastikas. “The kids, the kids!” the woman who ran the place had told them in English, indulgently batting the air. In his impeccable German, Mickelsson had said, “The kids paint very professionally.” In Austria, not far from the Eagle's Nest, he'd been invited to the home of a baron who had a painting of the Führer over his fireplace, two lighted candles on the mantel. Not that he hadn't met good people too, people who hated what Germany had done, even one woman who'd converted to Judaism so that when the soldiers came, herding Jews down the street, she would not be free to pretend it was not her business. Nonetheless, he distrusted every shopkeeper and bus-driver, the whole clean, dangerously law-abiding tribe.
“Das ist verboten!”
they would cry out as one man if some poor fool lit a cigarette where he shouldn't. They would rise again, fountain up, shining with terrible brightness, to the first Martin Luther or Wagner or Hitler who cried out to them, a tribe as wickedly high-minded as ever. Bäumler's Nietzsche—Hitler's Nietzsche—was still, to a surprising extent, the Nietzsche Germans knew: the altered, Jew-hating, war-monger Nietzsche whose
Also sprach Zarathustra
Nazi soldiers toted in their backpacks. Even more easily than they'd stolen and perverted Christ (in Nietzsche's view), they'd stolen and perverted the Antichrist. Mickelsson hadn't left a day too soon. His heart, when he came to the messy, disorderly streets of New York, had lifted like a yellow March kite.

In the kitchen he poured milk into a cereal bowl, then carried it into the livingroom to set down near the cat. As always, the cat ignored him, feigning indifference, though in the morning the bowl would be empty. “Hypocrite,” Mickelsson said, but not with malice. It was a common fault. He thought of reaching out with two fingers to pet the cat's head, then thought better of it. For all the evidence of his warrior nature—the nicked ears, deformed belly and shortened tail—the animal seemed comfortable, serene; yet he could spring in a split second, Mickelsson knew—could explode in unholy outrage, hissing and slashing.

He stoked the fire one last time: red flames and embers, whiteness behind them, the air astir with heat waves as if reality were dissolving before his eyes—he thought he saw Donnie Matthews' pouting white face in the flames—and then, as he was uncomfortably turning away, he noticed near the woodstove, on the brick and stone foundation, a pair of fur-lined leather gloves. They were small, a woman's, and looked familiar. When he raised them to his nose and caught the scent, his chest went light and he realized that they belonged to Jessie. Odd that she should have left them and not known it, cold as it had been when she went out to the car last night. Freudian mistake, perhaps. He felt the softness of the fingers, the leather warm in his hands, then smelled them again. Something eased into his mind, something he'd been looking for before, he had a feeling. He had seen, maybe thirty-five years ago, some horror picture about voodoo; a white glove on a table, moving by itself as an old, old man spoke incantations. In the night outside, a woman in a white dress, owner of the glove, came sleepwalking down a long, straight road, under an arch of trees. When the glove reached the edge of the table, the woman was at the door. At the time, Mickelsson—twelve or thirteen—hadn't doubted that such summonings were possible. If the world was all a show, the flesh make-up and rags behind which vast energies played, why not?

He shuddered, then absently, dismissing the memory, folded the gloves and laid them on the flowerstand by the door, where he'd see them and remember to take them along with him to school when the roads were plowed. He switched off the radio without noticing he was doing it; then he wound the clocks, pausing for a long time after the last one, listening to the wind howl—banging on the livingroom door like a dozen angry fists—and looked down at the key in his hand, trying to remember what it opened. It reminded him a little of the key to some old-fashioned wind-up toy, something Leslie or Mark had played with, or something he himself had played with as a child in his grandfather's study. He'd played there for hours, though his grandfather had been cranky as a goat, family stories suggested. “Grampa,” he had asked once—meaning nothing large by it (or so his mother believed), hoping to hear only of some particular event, as when one day he had dusted the furniture in the livingroom without being asked—“why does God love us?” “That,” his grandfather had said, looking furtive, cornered, “is a mystery.”

Mickelsson glanced at the Christmas tree. The cat, when Mickelsson looked over toward the stove, was gone.

“You all right?” someone asked.

“You know I'm not,” another voice answered acidly, as if with familiar anger.

“Needn't snap,” the first voice said, the old man's. He did not sound apprised of how deeply that feminine anger burned, how long its festering poison had been coaxed and tended.

When Mickelsson turned, slowly, as if to stir no breeze, they were standing there, perfectly still, the old woman's face bloodless gray, her eyes full of lightning. She wore a flowerprint housedress with a faded pink robe over it, her dark, graying hair brushed straight down, to the backs of her knees. Mickelsson reached out toward the wall to steady himself—exactly as Mabel Garret had reached out, he remembered. The old woman's carefully sealed-in fury was infecting him, it seemed. His stomach knotted tight, and a strangling feeling came into his throat and chest. The old man was in stockingfeet and workworn trousers, only a washed-out gray undershirt above, white bristly hair poking out like a hundred tentacles around the neck. Mickelsson knew him, then recognized him. It was the man in brown, from the hospital, but much older. His hair was parted in the middle and lifted at the sides, as if brushed. His beard was uneven. In his left hand he held a large silver pocket watch, which he'd apparently just wound and was now trying to read through his low-on-the-nose, thick-lensed glasses. His mouth was as lipless as an old razor cut. You could make out the white of his chin, like bread-dough, through the hair. At last he gave up on the watch and looked at Mickelsson. He seemed only a little surprised that he was there. For a moment it seemed that he would speak, but then the ghost worked his wrinkled, nearly toothless mouth—four or five long teeth in front, then nothing—as if trying to rid the inside of some taste. He turned his head, fumbled the watch into his pocket without looking at it, and moved toward the stairs. The old woman followed, clenching and unclenching her right fist, which had something in it, her eyes bright glints in the cavernous sockets, tiny glittering specks like wild-animal eyes lit up in the darkness of their lair. Mickelsson stood still as they moved past him, the two never glancing in his direction, watching the floor. In her spotted, trembling left hand the old woman clutched a fistful of the robe. With her right hand she dabbed at her mouth with what he saw now was a wadded-up hankie. When they were gone (he could hear them going slowly up the stairs) he remembered the clock-key in his hand, opened the glass door of the clock, and dropped the key inside.

“Well?” he imagined Dr. Rifkin saying.

“I don't know,” Mickelsson said. “I'm not the only one, you know.”

“Come on now,” Rifkin said, and made a face as if he'd bitten into a lemon.

Mickelsson hovered, consciously refusing to come down firmly on either side. He thought of calling Jessie, then groaned, thinking of the face he'd seen in the flames. He must get money for Donnie. Had his mind's chaos progressed to such a point that he'd be willing to take a loan from Jessie? Acid and darkness rose in him and he thought nothing, slowly chewing a Di-Gel, then another.

Half an hour later, as he was drifting toward sleep, he heard the snowplow roar by. Along with the engine noise there was a soft swishing sound, almost the sound of a heavy old boat cutting water. It faded away down the road toward silence.

“Got to think,” he whispered, knowing he intended to do nothing of the kind.

He had seen the ghosts. Was he afraid? He wasn't sure.

The sudden stillness of the house startled him, in fact for an instant terrified him, until he made out that it was only that the wind had fallen off, and the waterfall in the glen below was frozen.

That night he dreamed that he saw the old man up on the roof of the house, fixing the chimney. Something was wrong. The old woman came out onto the lawn below, walking stiffly, something behind her back. He woke up sweating.

As he was feeding the cat, two mornings later, the phone rang.

“Pete? Finney here. Thought I'd just touch base, see if you-me, still blood-brothers.”

“Hello, Finney.”

“Not bad, Pete. Nothin to complain about, anyway nothin terminal, except that it's God damn Monday. Listen, two items. First is, it looks like the squeeze play's working. She's makin the right noises, any day now she'll be singin like a camel. Keep the pressure on, OK? No talkee, no cashee!”

“Actually—” Mickelsson began. He felt a queasiness in his stomach and knew Finney had swung around in his chair.

“Her lawyers have agreed to a meeting in court,” Finney said, and grimly laughed. “They don't like it, natch, but thanks to a little pressure from the court itself, which is thanks in turn to a little clever manipulation by yours truly (no applause, please! Thank you!)—I'll spare you the details (thanks, Shirley; Jesus; all right, tell the fucker I'll get back to him right away). … Let me tell you, Pete, the whole God damn world's comin apart at the seams, you aware of that? Begin's gone crazy and Sadat's still tryin to learn to imitate his fart; piss-ant politicians out there shaking the ash can—‘You don't go long with me I'll blow up the world.' Not that I care. Be glad it's not
me
up there. I'd put my fingers in my ears and push the button with my cock. Actually,
don't
be glad it's not me. I been thinking of running for office, maybe. State legislature. No crap! Man needs to broaden his avenues of income, get more screws on more people, these troubled times. All that filthy corruption, it makes me sick that I'm not in on it. But OK, OK, we're still down here in the pigshit dealing with the piss quotient, right? You there, Pete?”

“I'm here.”

“I was afraid you'd gone to sleep. Listen, try to groan a little when I talk to you, OK?” Finney laughed. “I keep getting the feeling there's nobody out there, I mean nobody in the whole fucking city of Providence, whole universe even. Isn't that weird? Finney at his lawyerdesk oinkin away, putting his feet up, puttin 'em down again, looking at the ‘out' box, looking at the ‘in' box, sweating and scheming, squinting his little eyes, and nobody out there—I mean nobody, nowhere,
nothin.
Little stirrings of dust.”

“Finney, you should see my psychiatrist, Rifkin. He lives right near you. He's a good man.”

“You tellin
me
I should see a psychiatrist! Believe me, no room in the schedule, I gotta keep runnin, cover my ass. OK. Thanks, Shirley. OK, where was I? Oh. Got it. OK, so all we're waiting for now is a court date, which is up to the court, you know; nothing I can do about it. So stay loose and stay in touch. That all clear, Pete?”

“How much warning—if we get this court date—”

“Couple days, maybe. Never mind, kid, we're getting down to payshit.”

Mickelsson said, “How does Ellen seem?”

“She's alive. What can I tell you? Or if she'd dead she's still walkin. People will do that, you know. Walk around dead. Fucks up the census count. Listen, second item: I got a call from a sap named diSapio. Name ring your bell?”

“I know who he is,” Mickelsson said, reserved.

“He's got a lien on everything you eat or evacuate—I guess you know that. I'm tryin to work something out with him, but it's likely he'll garnishee your salary any day now. He could keep you eating sawdust for years, if we're not careful. He's pretty crazy, from what I gather. One false move and suddenly you'll be a whole lot easier to find, if you take my meaning. Get yourself a lawyer in P-A, OK? And don't put it off, you got that? You want me to find you one, sing out.”

“I'll manage it. Anything else?”

“That's it from this end.”

“OK, I'll be in touch.”

“So long, pal.”

“So long.”

“Man, you said it!” Finney laughed.

The other phonecall he received that morning he would discover to be important only later, though it fit well enough with the way his world was going; it was suitably depressing. It began oddly. Intending to telephone the Susquehanna Home Center to order hardwood, any odds and ends they might have, small stuff—he was not quite sure yet what he meant to make with it, chests, trinket boxes, plant-tables, maybe; something to make the house look less barren—he'd just picked up the receiver, the phone had not rung, when a voice said, “Professor Mickelsson?”

“Hello?” Mickelsson said.

“Professor, this is Michael Nugent.”

“Oh, hello,” Mickelsson said. He recognized the voice now, and felt a twinge of simultaneous guilt and annoyance. He imagined Nugent's coldly staring, rapidly blinking eyes.

“I guess you didn't look at the note on your door. I asked you for an appointment.”