Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (31 page)

One of the policemen lent the professor a bullhorn, and he declared, in booming electronic tones, “This is only a test. It is almost impossible that is should work. I have calculated that out of any given hundred acres, possibly a hundred square feet will be receptive. So you see how great the odds are against us. You must give us room. You must let us move about.”

The students were not only loose and good-natured and full of grass and other congenial substances on that shining April day; they also adored Hepplemeyer as a sort of Bob Dylan of the scientific world. So they cooperated, and finally the professor found a spot that suited him, and the hoop was set up.

Hepplemeyer observed it thoughtfully for a moment and then began going through his pockets for an object. He found a large gray eraser and tossed it into the hoop. It passed through and fell to the ground on the other side.

The student body—as well as the working press—had no idea of what was supposed to happen to the eraser, but the crestfallen expression on Hepplemeyer's face demonstrated that whatever was supposed to happen had not happened. The students broke into sympathetic and supportive applause, and Hepplemeyer, warming to their love, took them into his confidence and said into the bullhorn:

“We try again, no?”

The sixteen stalwart young men lifted hoop and frame and carried their burden to another part of the quadrangle. The crowd followed with the respect and appreciation of a championship golf audience, and the television camera ground away. Once again, the professor repeated his experiment, this time tossing an old pipe through the hoop. As with the eraser, the pipe fell to earth on the other side of the hoop.

“So we try again,” he confided into the bullhorn. “Maybe we never find it. Maybe the whole thing is for nothing. Once science was a nice and predictable mechanical handmaiden. Today two and two add up maybe to infinity. Anyway, it was a comfortable old pipe and I am glad I have it back.”

By now it had become evident to most of the onlookers that whatever was cast into the hoop was not intended to emerge from the other side, and were it anyone but Hepplemeyer doing the casting, the crowd, cameras, newsmen, cops and all would have dispersed in disgust. But it was Hepplemeyer, and instead of dispersing in disgust, their enchantment with the project simply increased.

Another place in the quadrangle was chosen, and the hoop was set up. This time Dr. Hepplemeyer selected from his pocket a fountain pen, given to him by the Academy, and inscribed
“Nil desperandum.”
Perhaps with full consciousness of the inscription, he flung the pen through the hoop, and instead of falling to the ground on the other side of the hoop, it disappeared. Just like that—just so—it disappeared.

A great silence for a long moment or two, and then one of Hepplemeyer's assistants, young Peabody, took the screwdriver, which he had used to help set up the hoop, and flung it through the hoop. It disappeared. Young Brumberg followed suit with his hammer. It disappeared. Wrench. Clamp. Pliers. All disappeared.

The demonstration was sufficient. A great shout of applause and triumph went up from Morningside Heights and echoed and reechoed from Broadway to St. Nicholas Avenue, and then the contagion set in. A coed began it by scaling her copy of the poetry of e.e. cummings through the hoop. It disappeared. Then enough books to stock a small library. They all disappeared. Then shoes—a veritable rain of shoes—then belts, sweaters, shirts, anything and everything that was at hand was flung through the hoop, and anything and everything that was flung through the hoop disappeared.

Vainly did Professor Hepplemeyer attempt to halt the stream of objects through the hoop; even his bullhorn could not be heard above the shouts and laughter of the delighted students, who now had witnessed the collapse of basic reality along with all the other verities and virtues that previous generations had observed. Vainly did Professor Hepplemeyer warn them.

And then, out of the crowd and into history, raced Ernest Silverman, high jumper and honor student and citizen of Philadelphia.

In all the exuberance and thoughtlessness of youth, he flung himself through the hoop—and disappeared. And in a twinkling, the laughter, the shouts, the exuberance turned into a cold, dismal silence. Like the children who followed the pied piper, Ernest Silverman was gone with all the fancies and hopes; the sun clouded over, and a chill wind blew.

A few bold kids wanted to follow, but Hepplemeyer barred their way and warned them back, pleading through the bullhorn for them to realize the danger involved. As for Silverman, Hepplemeyer could only repeat what he told the police, after the hoop had been roped off, placed under a twenty-four-hour guard, and forbidden to everyone.

“But where is he?” summed up the questions.

“I don't know,” summed up the answer.

The questions and answers were the same at Centre Street as at the local precinct, but such was the position of Hepplemeyer that the Commissioner himself took him into his private office—it was midnight by then—and asked him gently, pleadingly:

“What is on the other side of that hoop, Professor?”

“I don't know.”

“So you say—so you have said. You made the hoop.”

“We build dynamos. Do we know how they work? We make electricity. Do we know what it is?”

“Do we?”

“No, we do not.”

“Which is all well and good. Silverman's parents are here from Philadelphia, and they've brought a Philadelphia lawyer with them and maybe sixteen Philadelphia reporters, and they all want to know where the kid is to the tune of God knows how many lawsuits and injunctions.”

Hepplemeyer sighed. “I also want to know where he is.”

“What do we do?” the Commissioner begged him.

“I don't know. Do you think you ought to arrest me?”

“I would need a charge. Negligence, manslaughter, kidnapping—none of them appear to fit the situation exactly, do they?”

“I am not a policeman,” Hepplemeyer said. “In any case, it would interfere with my work.”

“Is the boy alive?”

“I don't know.”

“Can you answer one question?” the Commissioner asked with some exasperation. “What is on the other side of the hoop?”

“In a manner of speaking, the campus. In another manner of speaking, something else.”

“What?”

“Another part of space. A different time sequence. Eternity. Even Brooklyn. I just don't know.”

“Not Brooklyn. Not even Staten Island. The kid would have turned up by now. It's damn peculiar that you put the thing together and now you can't tell me what it's supposed to do.”

“I know what it's supposed to do,” Hepplemeyer said apologetically. “It's supposed to bend space.”

“Does it?”

“Probably.”

“I have four policemen who are willing to go through the hoop—volunteers. Would you agree?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Space is a peculiar thing, or perhaps not a thing at all,” the professor replied, with the difficulty a scientist always has when he attempts to verbalize to the satisfaction of a layman. “Space is not something we understand.”

“We've been to the moon.”

“Exactly. It's an uncomfortable place. Suppose the boy is on the moon.”

“Is he?”

“I don't know. He could be on Mars. Or he could be a million miles short of Mars. I would not want to subject four policemen to that.”

So with the simple ingeniousness or ingenuousness of a people who love animals, they put a dog through the loop. It disappeared.

For the next few weeks, a police guard was placed around the hoop day and night, while the professor spent most of his days in court and most of his evenings with his lawyers. He found time, however, to meet with the mayor three times.

New York City was blessed with a mayor whose problems were almost matched by his personality, his wit, and imagination. If Professor Hepplemeyer dreamed of space and infinity, the Mayor dreamed as consistently of ecology, garbage, and finances. Thus it is not to be wondered at that the Mayor came up with a notion that promised to change history.

“We try it with a single garbage truck,” the Mayor begged Hepplemeyer. “If it works, it might mean a third Nobel Prize.”

“I don't want another Nobel Prize. I didn't deserve the first two. My guilts are sufficient.”

“I can persuade the Board of Estimate to pay the damages on the Silverman case.” “Poor boy—will the Board of Estimate take care of my guilt?”

“It will make you a millionaire.”

“The last thing I want to be.”

“It's your obligation to mankind,” the Mayor insisted.

“The college will never permit it.”

“I can fix it with Columbia,” the Mayor said.

“It's obscene,” Hepplemeyer said desperately. And then he surrendered, and the following day a loaded garbage truck backed up across the campus to the hoop.

It does not take much to make a happening in Fun City, and since it is also asserted that there is nothing so potent as an idea whose time has come, the Mayor's brilliant notion spread through the city like wildfire. Not only were the network cameras there, not only the local national press, not only ten or twelve thousand students and other curious city folk, but also the kind of international press that usually turns out only for major international events. Which this was, for certainly the talent for producing garbage was generic to mankind, as G.B.S. had once indelicately remarked; and certainly the disposal of the said garbage was a problem all mankind shared.

So the cameras whirred, and fifty million eyes were glued to television screens as the big Sanitation truck backed into position. As a historical note, we remember that Ralph Vecchio was the driver and Tony Andamano his assistant. Andamano stood in the iris of history, so to speak, directing Vecchio calmly and efficiently:

“Come back, Ralphy—a little more—just cut it a little. Nice and easy. Come back. Come back. You got- another twelve, fourteen inches. Slow—great. Hold it there. All right.”

Professor Hepplemeyer stood by the Mayor, muttering under his breath as the dumping mechanism reared the great body back on its haunches—and then the garbage began to pour through the hoop. Not a sound was heard from the crowd as the first flood of garbage poured through the hoop; but then, when the garbage disappeared into infinity or Mars or space or another galaxy, such a shout of triumph went up as was eminently proper to the salvation of the human race.

Heroes were made that day. The Mayor was a hero. Tony. Andamano was a hero. Ralph Vecchio was a hero. But above all, Professor Hepplemeyer, whose fame was matched only by his gloom, was a hero. How to list his honors? By a special act of Congress, the Congressional Medal of Ecology was created; Hepplemeyer got it. He was made a Kentucky Colonel and an honorary citizen of Japan and Great Britain. Japan immediately offered him ten million dollars for a single hoop, an overall contract of a billion dollars for one hundred hoops. Honorary degrees came from sixteen universities, and the city of Chicago upped Japan's offer to twelve million dollars for a single hoop. With this, the bidding between and among the cities of the United States became frantic, with Detroit topping the list with an offer of one hundred million dollars for the first—or second, to put it properly—hoop constructed by Hepplemeyer. Germany asked for the principle, not the hoop, only the principle behind it, and for this they were ready to pay half a billion marks, gently reminding the professor that the mark was generally preferred to the dollar.

At breakfast, Hepplemeyer's wife reminded him that the dentist's bill was due, twelve hundred dollars for his new bridge.

“We only have seven hundred and twenty-two dollars in the bank.” The professor sighed. “Perhaps we should take a loan.”

“No, no. No indeed. You are putting me on,” his wife said.

The professor, a quarter of a century behind in his slang, observed her with some bewilderment.

“The German offer,” she said. “You don't even have to build the wretched thing. All they want is the principle.”

“I have often wondered whether it is not ignorance after all but rather devotion to the principle of duality that is responsible for mankind's aggravation.”

“What?”

“Duality.”

“Do you like the eggs? I got them at the Pioneer supermarket. They're seven cents cheaper, grade A.”

“Very good,” the professor said.

“What on earth is duality?”

“Everything—the way we think. Good and bad. Right and wrong. Black and white. My. shirt, your shirt. My country, your country. It's the way we think. We never think of one, of a whole, of a unit. The universe is outside of us. It never occurs to us that we are it.”

“I don't truly follow you,” his wife replied patiently, “but does that mean you're not going to build any more hoops?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Which means you are sure.”

“No, it only means that I am not sure. I have to think about it.”

His wife rose from the table, and the professor asked her where she was going.

“I'm not sure. I'm either going to have a migraine headache or jump out of the window. I have to think about it too.”

The only one who was absolutely and unswervingly sure of himself was the Mayor of New York City. For eight years he had been dealing with unsolvable problems, and there was no group in the city, whether a trade union, neighborhood organization, consumers' group, or Boy Scout troop which had not selected him as the whipping boy. At long last his seared back showed some signs of healing, and his dedication to the hoop was such that he would have armed his citizenry and thrown up barricades if anyone attempted to touch it or interfere with it. Police stood shoulder to shoulder around it, and morning, evening, noon, and night an endless procession of garbage trucks backed across the Columbia College quadrangle to the hoop, emptying garbage.