Authors: Ellen Gilchrist
“We have telescopes and microscopes with lenses ground a million times to such fineness and keenness, with light harnessed
from electrons. They can magnify a million times. A thousand million. I don’t know the numbers. I can take you to where they
are. I can take you to see them if you want to go.”
“Of course. Yes, you will take me there. But it must be soon. There is a limited amount of time I will be with you.”
“How much time?”
“It will suffice. Will your vehicle travel in this snow?”
“Yes. Perhaps you would like to borrow some modern clothes. Not that there’s anything wrong with your clothes. They are very
nice. I was especially admiring the cape. The weave is lovely. They’re always worrying about security. I want to take you
to the laboratories at Berkeley. I can call the head of the department. He will let us in.”
“You may have the cloak since you admire it. It can remain here.” He removed the long brown garment and handed it to Nieman.
“I’ll give you a parka.” Nieman ran for the coatrack and took down a long beige parka Freddy had ordered from L.L. Bean. He
held it out to the young man. “I guess I seem nervous. I’m not. It’s just that I’ve wanted to talk to you since I was ten
years old.”
“Yes. You’ve been calling me for some time.”
“I thought you would be old. Like of the time when you died. Did you die?”
“I thought so. It was most uncomfortable and Francis wept like a child, which was not altogether unpleasant.” He laughed softly.
“It is better to come with my young eyes. In case there is something to see.”
“Where are you when you aren’t here?”
“Quite far away”
“Will it matter that you came here? I mean in the scheme of things, as it were?”
“It will matter to me. To read the books and see these instruments you are describing. I have always wished to have my curiosity
satisfied. That was always what I most dreamed of doing. Francis never understood that. He could never believe I wouldn’t
be satisfied to eat and drink and be lauded and talk with him. It kept me from loving him as he deserved.”
“I meant, will it change the course of anything?”
“Not unless you do it.”
“I wouldn’t do it. Could I do it by accident?”
“No. I will see to that. Do you want to go out now, in the vehicle in the snow?” There it was again, the smile that soaked
up all the light and gave it back.
“Let’s get dressed for it.” Nieman led his guest upstairs and gave him a warm shirt and socks and shoes and pants and long
underwear. While he was changing Nieman banked the fire and put the food away and set the crumbs out for the birds and locked
the windows and threw his things into a bag. He forgot to drain the pipes.
“Well, now,” he said out loud. “I guess I can drive that Jeep in this snow. Let’s assume I can drive. Let’s say it’s possible
and I will do it.” He turned on the mobile phone and called the department at Berkeley and left a message saying he was bringing
a senator to see the labs. Then he called the president of the university at his home and called in his markers. “Very hush-hush,”
he told the president. “This could be very big, Joe. This could be millions for research but you have to trust me. Don’t ask
questions. Just tell the grounds people to give me the keys when I come ask for them. I can’t tell you who it is. You have
to trust me.”
“Of course, Nieman,” the president answered. “After everything you and Freddy have done for us. Anything you want.”
“The keys to everything. The electron microscopes, the physics labs, the works. We could use one of your technical people
for a guide but no one else.”
“There’ll be people working in the labs.”
“I know that. We won’t bother anyone. I’ll call you Monday and tell you more.”
“Fine. I’ll look forward to hearing about it.” After he hung up the phone the university president said to his wife, “That
was Nieman Gluuk. Did you know he’s quitting writing his column? Took a leave of absence to go back to school.”
“Well, don’t you go getting any ideas like that,” his good-looking wife giggled. ’All he ever wrote about were foreign films.
He’d gotten brutal in his reviews. Maybe they let him go. Maybe he just pretended that he quit.”
There was a layer of ice beneath the snow. Nieman tested it by walking on it, then put Leonardo into the passenger seat and
buckled him in and got behind the wheel and started driving. He drove very carefully in the lowest gear across the rock-strewn
yard toward the wooden gate that fenced in nothing since the fence had been abandoned as a bad idea. “Thank God it’s downhill,”
he said. “It’s downhill most of the way to the main road. So, when was the last time you were here?” He talked without turning
his head. The sun was out now Birds were beginning to circle above the huge fir trees in the distance. “Have you been to the
United States? To the West Coast?”
“Once long ago. I saw the ocean with a man of another race. I walked beside it and felt its power. It is different from the
ocean I knew”
“We can go there first. It won’t take long once we get to the main road. I’m sorry if I keep asking you questions. I can’t
help being curious.”
“You can ask them if you like. I was visited by Aristotle in my turn. We went to a river and explored its banks. He was very
interested in my studies of moving water. He said the flow of water would impede the mixture of liquids and we talked of how
liquid forms its boundaries within a flow. He had very beautiful hands. I painted them later from memory several times. Of
course everyone thought they were Raphael’s hands. Perhaps I thought so too finally. After he left I had no real memory of
it for a while. More like the memory of a dream, bounded, uncertain, without weight. I think it will be like that for you,
so ask whatever you wish to ask.”
“I don’t think I want to ask anything now. I think we should go to the ocean first since we are so near. I forget about water.
I forget to look at it with clear eyes, and yet I was watching the snow when I fell asleep. Also, I was crying. Why are you
smiling?”
“Go on.”
“I was thinking that when I was small I knew how to appreciate the ocean. Later, I forgot. When I was small I would stand
in one place for a very long time watching the waves lap. Every day I came back to the same spot. I made footprints for the
waves to wash away. I made castles farther and farther up the beach to see how far the tide could reach. I dug into the sand,
as deep as it would allow me to dig. I was an infatuate of ocean, wave, beach. Are you warm enough? Is that coat comfortable?”
“I am warm. Tell me about this vehicle. What do you call it?”
“Automobile. Like auto and mobile. It’s a Jeep, a four-wheel drive. We call it our car. Everyone has one. We work for them.
We fight wars over the fuel to power them. We spend a lot of time in them. They have radios. We listen to broadcasts from
around the world while we drive. Or we listen to taped books. I have a book of the Italian language we could listen to. You
might want to see how it’s evolved. It might be the same. It might be quite similar to what you spoke. Would you like to hear
it?” Nieman shifted into a higher gear. The road was still steep but lay in the lee of the mountain and was not iced beneath
the snow. “We’ll be on the main road, soon,” he added. “We’re in luck it seems. I wouldn’t have driven this alone. One more
question. How do you read the books so fast?”
“I’m not sure.” Leonardo laughed. “It’s been going on since I quit the other life. It’s getting better. At first it was not
this fast. I’m very fond of being able to do it. It’s the nicest thing of all.”
“Where do you stay? When you aren’t visiting? I mean, going someplace like this.”
“With other minds.”
“Disembodied?”
“If we want to be. Is that the main road?” It was before them, the road to Willits. Plows had pushed the snow in dirty piles
on either side of the road. In the center two vehicles were moving in one lane down the mountain. A blue sedan and a white
minivan were bouncing down the road in the ripening sunlight.
“I believe this,” Nieman said. “I’m in my red Jeep driving Leonardo da Vinci down from the house to see the ocean. My name
is Nieman Gluuk and I have striven all my life to be a good man and use my talents and conquer resentment and be glad for
whatever fate dumped me in Northern California the only child of a bitter woman and a father I almost never saw, and I never
went into a movie theater expecting to hate the movie and was saddened when I did. Maybe this is payback and maybe this is
chance and maybe I deserve this and the only thing I wish is that my friend, Freddy, could be here so it won’t destroy our
friendship when I am driven to tell him about it.”
“You won’t remember it.” Leonardo reached over and touched his sleeve. He smiled the dazzling smile again and Nieman took
it in without driving off the road and took the last curve down onto the highway. “You will have it,” Leonardo added. “It
is yours, but you won’t have the burden of remembering it.”
“I want the burden.” Nieman laughed. “Burden me. Try me. I can take it. I’ll write a movie script and publicize intelligence.
Net mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, the la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual
era e cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte.
That’s the beginning of
The Divine Comedy.
That’s what I went back to Berkeley to take. Instead, I’m in this forest of biochemistry. I’m dreaming the things I’m reading.
They put literature into a new light. The artist intuits what the mind knows and the mind knows everything, doesn’t it? Past,
present, and forevermore.”
“Some wake to it gradually. Some never know.”
“I’ve worked for it,” Nieman said. “I have worked all my life to understand, to see myself as the product of five hundred
million years of evolution. You seem to have known it always.”
“I was taken from my mother’s house when I was four years old. On the walk to my father’s house, the fields and the wonder
of the earth came to console me. But I worked also. I always worked.” He laid his hand on Nieman’s arm. Nieman steered the
Jeep across a pile of snow and turned onto the road leading down to Willits. Around them the snow-covered hills with their
massive fir trees were paintings of unspeakable complexity. Neither of them spoke for many miles.
It was past noon when they drove through the small town of Willits and turned onto Highway 20 leading to the Pacific Ocean.
“I’m going to stop for gasoline for the automobile,” Nieman said. “We collect it in foreign countries. The countries of the
Turks and Muslims, although some of it is under the ground of this country. We store it underneath these filling stations
in large steel tanks. Steel is an alloy made of iron and carbon. It’s very strong. Then we drive up to the pumping stations
and pump the fuel into our tanks. Even young children do this, Leonardo. I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know,
but I feel I should explain some things.”
“I like to hear you speak of these phenomena. Continue. I will listen and watch.”
Nieman spotted a Conoco station and stopped the Jeep and got out. He took down one of the gasoline hoses and inserted it in
the fuel tank of the Jeep. Leonardo stood beside the tank watching and not speaking. “Don’t smile that smile at anyone else,”
Nieman said. “We’ll be arrested for doing hallucinogens.”
“They never explode?” Leonardo moved in for a closer look, took a sniff of the fumes, then put both hands in the pockets of
the jacket. There was a package of Kleenex in one pocket. He brought it out and examined it.
“It’s called Kleenex. We blow our noses on it,” Nieman explained. “It’s a disposable handkerchief.”
“Could one draw on it?” Leonardo held a sheet up to the light. “It’s fragile and thin.”
“Wait a minute.” Nieman pulled a notepad and a black felt-tip pen out of the glove compartment and handed them to Leonardo.
Leonardo examined the pen, took the top from it, and began to draw, leaning the pad against the top of the Jeep. Nieman put
the hose back on the pump, then went inside and paid for the gasoline. When he returned, Leonardo had covered a page with
the smallest, most precise lines Nieman had ever seen. Leonardo handed the drawing to him. It was of the mountains and the
trees. In the foreground Nieman was standing beside the Jeep with the gasoline hose in his hand.
Nieman took the drawing and held it. “You are a microscope,” he said. “Perhaps you will not be impressed with the ones we’ve
made.”
“Shall we continue on our way?” Leonardo asked. “Now that your tank is full of gasoline.”
They drove in silence for a while. The sun was out in full violence now, melting the snow and warming the air. “The air is
an ocean of currents,” Nieman said at last. “I suppose you know about that.”
“Always good to be reminded of anything we know.”
“You want to hear the Italian tape? I’d like to hear what you think of it.”
“That would be fine.”
Nieman reached into a pack of tapes and extracted the Beginning Italian tape and stuck it into the tape player. “This Jeep
doesn’t have very good speakers,” he said. “We have systems that are much better than this one.” The Italian teacher began
to teach Italian phrases. Leonardo began to laugh. Quietly at first, then louder and louder until he was shaking with laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Nieman asked. He was laughing too. “What do you think is funny? Why am I laughing too?”
“Such good jokes,” Leonardo answered, continuing to laugh. “What questions. What news. What jokes.”
It was thirty-six miles from Willits to the Pacific Ocean. The road led down between mountains and virgin forests. They drove
along at fifty miles an hour, listening to the Italian tape and then to Kin Te Kanawa singing arias from Italian opera. Nieman
was lecturing Leonardo on the history of opera and its great modern stars. Long afterward, when he had forgotten everything
about the day that could be proven, Nieman remembered the drive from Willits to the ocean and someone beside him laughing.
“Are you sure you weren’t with me?” he asked Freddy a hundred times later in their lives. “Maybe we were stoned. But Kin Te
Kanawa didn’t start recording until after we had straightened up so we couldn’t have been stoned. I think you were with me.
You just don’t remember it.”