The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (25 page)

"That was to get me to come with you."

"I want you along. So you can drive me. Otherwise—I'm afraid I won't find what I'm looking for." He smiled.

"Shit," I said. "I believed you."

"I have had dreams," Tim said. "Disturbing dreams. But no pins under my fingernails. No singed hair. No stopped clocks."

I said, falteringly, "You wanted me to come with you that badly." For a moment I felt a surge in me, a need to go. "You think it would be good for me, too," I said, then.

"Yes. But you won't come. That's clear. Well—" He smiled his old familiar, wise smile. "I tried."

"Am I in a rut, then? Living in Berkeley?"

"Professional student," Tim said.

"I run a record store."

"Your customers are students and faculty. You're still tied to the university. You haven't broken the cord. Until you do, you will not fully be an adult."

"I was born the night I drank bourbon and read the
Commedia.
When I had that abscessed tooth."

"You
began
to be born. You knew about birth. But until you come to Israel—that is where you will be born, there in the Dead Sea Desert. That is where the spiritual life of man began, at Mt. Sinai, with Moses.
Ehyeh
speaking ... the theophany. The greatest moment in the history of man."

"I would almost go," I said.

"Go, then." He reached out his hand.

I said, simply, "I'm afraid."

"That's the problem," Tim said. "That's the heritage of the past: Jeff's death and Kirsten's death. That's what it's done to you, done permanently. Left you afraid to live."

"'Better a live dog—'"

"But," Tim said, "you are not genuinely alive. You are still unborn. This is what Jesus meant by the Second Birth, the Birth in or from the Spirit; the Birth from Above. This is what lies in the desert. This is what I will find."

"Find it," I said, "but find it without me."

"'He who loses his life—'"

"Don't quote the Bible to me," I said. "I've heard enough quotations, my own and others'. Okay?"

Tim reached out and we solemnly, without speaking, shook hands. He smiled a little, then; after a bit he let my hand go and then examined his gold pocket-watch. "I'm going to have to get you home. I've still got one appointment left this evening. You understand; you know me."

"Yes," I said. "It's okay. Tim," I said, "you are a master strategist. I watched you when you met Kirsten. You brought it all to bear on me, here, tonight." And you almost persuaded me, I said to myself. In a few more minutes—I would have given in. If you had kept up just a little longer.

"I am in the business of saving souls," Tim said enigmatically. I could not tell if he spoke in irony or if he meant it; I simply could not tell. "Your soul is worth saving," he said, then, as he rose to his feet. "I'm sorry to rush you, but we do have to go."

You always were in a hurry, I said to myself as I also got up. "It was a wonderful dinner," I said.

"Was it? I didn't notice; I'm preoccupied, apparently. I have so many things to finish before I fly to Israel. Now that I don't have Kirsten to arrange everything for me ... she did such a good job."

"You'll find someone," I said.

Tim said, "I thought I found you. The fisherman, tonight; I fished for you and didn't get you."

"Some other time, maybe."

"No," Tim said. "There will be no other time." He did not amplify. He did not have to; I knew that it was so, for one reason or another: I sensed it. Tim was right.

When Timothy Archer flew to Israel, the NBC network news mentioned it briefly, as they would mention a flight of birds, a migration too regular to be important and yet something the viewers should be told about, by way (it would seem) of a reminder that Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer still existed and was still busy and active in the affairs of the world. And then we, the American public, heard nothing for a week or so.

I got a card from him, but the card arrived after the big news coverage, the late-breaking sensational story of Bishop Archer's abandoned Datsun found, its rear end up off the little rutted winding road, up on a jutting rock, the gas station map still on the right-hand front seat where he had left it.

The government of Israel did everything possible and did it swiftly; they had troops and—shit. They employed everything they had, but the news people knew that Tim Archer had died in the Dead Sea Desert because you cannot live out there, crawling up cliffs and down into ravines; you cannot survive, and they did eventually find his body and it looked as if, one of the reporters on the scene said, as if he knelt praying. But, in fact, Tim had fallen, a long way, down a cliff-side. And I drove, as usual, to the record store and opened it up for business and put money in the register and this time I did not cry.

Why hadn't he taken a professional driver? the news people asked. Why had he ventured out on the desert alone with a gas station map and two bottles of soda pop—I knew the answer. Because he was in a hurry. Undoubtedly getting hold of a professional driver took, in his view, too much time. He could not wait around. As with me in the Chinese restaurant that night, Tim had to get moving; he could not stay in one place; he was a busy man, and he rushed on, he rushed out into the desert in that little four-cylinder car that isn't even safe on California freeways, as Bill Lundborg had pointed out; those subcompact cars are dangerous.

I loved him the most of all of them. I knew it when I heard the news, knew it in a different way than I had known it before; before it had been a feeling, an emotion. But when I realized he was dead, that knowledge made me into a sick person that limped and cringed, but drove to work and filled the register and answered the phone and asked customers if I could help them; I wasn't sick as a human is sick or an animal is sick; I became ill like a machine. I still moved but my soul died, my soul that, Tim had said, had never been fully born; that soul, not yet born, but born a little and wishing to be born more, born fully, that soul died and my body mechanically continued on.

The soul I lost during that week did not ever return; I am a machine now, years later; a machine heard the news of John Lennon's death and a machine grieved and pondered and drove to Sausalito to sit in on Edgar Barefoot's seminar, because that is what a machine does: that is a machine's way of greeting the horrible. A machine doesn't know any better; it simply grinds along, and maybe whirrs. That is all it can do. You cannot expect more than that from a machine. That is all it has to offer. That is why we speak of it as a machine; it understands, intellectually, but there is no understanding in its heart because its heart is a mechanical one, designed to act as a pump.

And so it pumps, and so the machine limps and coasts on, and knows but does not know. And keeps up its routine. It lives out what it supposes to be life: it maintains its schedule and obeys the laws. It does not drive its car over the speed limit on the Richardson Bridge and it says to itself: I never liked the Beatles: I found them insipid. Jeff brought home
Rubber Soul
and if I hear ... it repeats to itself what it has thought and heard, the simulation of life. Life it once possessed and now has lost; a life now gone. It knows it knows not what, as the philosophy books say about a confused philosopher; I forget which one. Locke, maybe. "And Locke believes he knows not what." That impressed me, that turn of phrase. I look for that; I am attracted to clever phrases, which are to be regarded as good English prose style.

I am a professional student and will remain one; I will not change. My opportunity to change was offered to me and I turned it down; I am stuck, now, and, as I say, know but know not what.

F
ACING US, SMILING
a moon-wide smile, Edgar Barefoot said, "What if a symphony orchestra was intent only on reaching the final coda? What would become of the music? One great crash of sound, over as soon as possible. The music is in the process, the unfolding; if you hasten it, you destroy it. Then the music is over. I want you to think about that."

Okay, I said to myself. I'll think about it. There is nothing on this particular day I'd prefer to think about. Something has happened, something important, but I do not wish to remember it. No one does. I can see it around me, this same reaction. My reaction in the others, here on this cushy houseboat at Gate Five. Where you pay a hundred dollars, the same sum, I believe, that Tim and Kirsten paid that crank, that quack psychic and medium, down in Santa Barbara, who wrecked us all.

One hundred dollars appears to be the magic sum; it opens the door to enlightenment. Which is why I am here. My life is devoted to seeking enlightenment, as are the other lives around me. This is the noise of the Bay Area, the racket and din of meaning; this is what we exist for: to learn.

Teach us, Barefoot, I said to myself. Tell me something I don't know. I, being deficient of comprehension, yearn to know. You can begin with me; I am the most attentive of your pupils. I trust everything you utter. I am the perfect fool, come here to take. Give. Keep on with the sounds; it lulls me and I forget.

"Young lady," Barefoot said.

With a start, I realized he was speaking to me.

"Yes," I said, rousing myself.

"What's your name?" Barefoot asked.

"Angel Archer," I said.

"Why are you here?"

"To get away," I said.

"From what?"

"Everything," I said.

"Why?"

"It hurts," I said.

"John Lennon, you mean?"

"Yes," I said. "And more. Other things."

"I was noticing you," Barefoot said, "because you were asleep. You may not have realized it. Did you realize it?"

"I realized it," I said.

"Is that how you want me to perceive you? As asleep?"

"Let me alone," I said.

"Let you sleep, then."

"Yes," I said.

"'The sound of one hand clapping,'" Barefoot quoted.

I said nothing.

"Do you want me to hit you? Cuff you? To wake you up?"

"I don't care," I said. "It doesn't matter to me."

"What would it take to awaken you?" Barefoot said.

I did not answer.

"My job is to wake people."

"You are another fisherman."

"Yes; I fish for fish. Not for souls. I do not know of 'soul'; I only know of fish. A fisherman fishes for fish; if he thinks he fishes for anything else, he is a fool; he deludes himself and those he fishes for."

"Fish for me, then," I said.

"What do you want?"

"Not ever to wake up."

"Then come up here," Barefoot said. "Come up and stand beside me. I will teach you how to sleep. It is as hard to sleep as it is to wake up. You sleep poorly, without skill. I can teach you that as easily as I can teach you to wake up. Whatever you want you can have. Are you sure you know what you want? Maybe you secretly want to wake up. You may be wrong about yourself. Come on up here." He reached out his hand.

"Don't touch me," I said as I walked toward him. "I don't want to be touched."

"So you know that."

"I am sure of that," I said.

"Maybe what is wrong with you is that no one has ever touched you," Barefoot said.

"You tell me," I said. "I have nothing to say. Whatever I had to say—"

"You have never said anything," Barefoot said. "You have been silent all your life. Only your mouth has talked."

"If you say so."

"Tell me your name again."

"Angel Archer."

"Do you have a secret name? That no one knows?"

"I have no secret name," I said. And then I said, "I am traitor."

"Who did you betray?"

"Friends," I said.

"Well, Traitor," Barefoot said, "talk to me about your bringing your friends to ruin. How did you do it?"

"With words," I said. "Like now."

"You are good with words."

"Very good," I said. "I am a sickness, a word-sickness. I was taught it by professionals."

"I have no words," Barefoot said.

"Okay," I said. "Then I will listen."

"Now you begin to know."

I nodded.

"Do you have any pets at home?" Barefoot said. "Any dogs or cats? An animal?"

"Two cats," I said.

"Do you groom them and feed them and care for them? Are you responsible for them? Do you take them to the vet when they're ill?"

"Sure," I said.

"Who does all that for you?"

"For me?" I said. "No one."

"Can you do it for yourself?"

"Yes, I can," I said.

"Then, Angel Archer, you are alive."

"Not intentionally," I said.

"But you are. You don't think so but you are. Under the words, the disease of words, you are alive. I am trying to tell you this without using words but it is impossible. All we have is words. Sit down again and listen. Everything 1 say from now on, today, is directed at you; I am speaking to you but not with words. Does that make any sense to you?"

"No," I said.

"Then just sit down," Barefoot said.

I reseated myself.

"Angel Archer," Barefoot said, "You are wrong about yourself. You are not sick;
you are starved.
What is killing you is hunger. Words have nothing to do with it. You have been starved all your life. Spiritual things will not help. You don't need them. There are too many spiritual things in the world, far too many. You are a fool, Angel Archer, but not a good kind of fool."

I said nothing.

"You need real meat," Barefoot said, "and real drink, not spiritual meat and drink. I offer you real food, for your body, so it will grow. You are a starving person who has come here to be fed, but without knowing it. You have no idea why you came here today. It is my job to tell you. When people come here to listen to me speak, I offer them a sandwich. The foolish ones listen to my words; the wise ones eat the sandwich. This is not an absurdity that I tell you; it is the truth. This is something none of you has imagined, but I give you real food and that food is a sandwich; the words, the talking, is only wind—is nothing. I charge you one hundred dollars but you learn something priceless. When your dog or cat is hungry, do you talk to him? No; you give him food, I give you food, but you do not know it. You have everything backward because the university has taught you that; it has taught you wrong. It has lied to you. And now you tell yourselves lies; you have learned how to do it and you do it very well. Take the sandwich and eat; forget about the words. The only purpose in the words was to lure you here."