Michael smiled faintly. "You know more about death than I do."
"I've lived here a long time," Mr. Rebeck said. "Death is something that has to be learned. Just like life, only you don't have to learn so fast because you've got more time."
"Will it be like this—forever? I mean, so far it's just like being alive, only less rushed."
Mr. Rebeck didn't laugh. "It's different," he said, "but I can't really tell you how. I could if I were dead, I think—only then I wouldn't want to." He saw Michael blink puzzledly and went on. "This much I can tell you: you forget things. A week from now you'll have forgotten a few things—what music you liked, what games you used to play, little things. In two weeks a few bigger things may go—where you worked, where you studied—in three weeks you won't remember that you ever loved or hated anybody. In four weeks—I can't exactly put it into words. You just forget things."
"I forget everything?" Mr. Rebeck could barely hear Michael's voice. He nodded.
"Everything? Talking—thinking?"
"They become unnecessary," Mr. Rebeck said, "like breathing. You don't really forget them, you just don't have any use for them or any need. They atrophy, like the appendix. You aren't really talking right now. How can you? You haven't got a larynx, you haven't got vocal chords, you haven't got a diaphragm. But you're so used to talking and you want to talk so badly that I hear you as clearly as if you could make sounds. Nothing's going to stop you from talking as long as you want to. You just won't want to after a while."
"It is Hell, then," Michael said slowly. "It really is Hell."
"Funny you should say that," Mr. Rebeck said. "I always thought of it as a little like being an angel. You can't be touched any more, or jarred, or hurt. All the little hypocrisies that hold life together drop away from you. You become a sort of closed circle with no end and no beginning. I think it's the purest state of existence."
"Like an amoeba," Michael said. "They don't get traumas either."
"Not like an amoeba. I'll show you. Look up, Michael. Look at the sun."
Michael raised his eyes and saw the sun. It was red and swollen in the late afternoon, and its heat had become vengeful and vindictive. Mr. Rebeck blinked rapidly as he looked at it and turned his head quickly away. But Michael stared hard at it and saw only a shriveled orange hanging in a crumpled tree. He felt a great pity in him, and a corner-of-the-mouth scorn.
"You see?" Mr. Rebeck asked when Michael finally turned undazzled eyes on him.
"God," said Michael.
"That may be," said Mr. Rebeck. "If I had looked at the sun that long I'd be blind now. You can look at it all day. You can watch it move, if you care to. Nobody can blind you now, Michael. You will see more clearly than you ever saw in life. Nobody can lie to you now, because three-fourths of a lie is wanting to believe it, and believing makes no difference to you any more. I envy you a great deal, Michael."
He sighed and juggled two small pebbles in the palm of his hand. "Whenever I get to thinking I'm dead too," he said softly, "I look at the sun."
Michael wanted to look at the sun again, but he looked at Mr. Rebeck instead and said, "Who are you?"
"I live here," Mr. Rebeck said.
"Why? What do you do?" A thought— "Are you the caretaker?"
"In a way." Mr. Rebeck got up and went inside the mausoleum. He came out a moment later, holding half a baloney and a small container of milk. "Supper," he explained, "or a very late lunch. An old friend of mine brought it." He leaned against a cracked pillar and smiled at Michael, who had not moved.
"Death is like life in a lot of ways," he said thoughtfully. "The power to see clearly doesn't always change people. The wise in life sometimes become wiser in death. The petty in life remain petty. The dead change their addresses, you see, not their souls.
"I've always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues—you've seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces. They give visitors cards at the entrance, you know, with their relatives' streets and house numbers. It's the only way they can find them. That's like a city, too.
"A dark city, Michael, and a crowded one. And it has most of the qualities of the other cities: companionship, coldness, argument. There is no love, of course, no love at all, but there isn't so much of that floating around outside either.
"There is loneliness, though. The dead are very lonely for a while, very bewildered, very frightened. The gap that separates them from the living is as wide as the gap that separates the living from each other; wider, I think. They wander as helplessly through the dark city as they did through the cities of stone, and finally they find a quiet bed and try to sleep.
"I like to help them. I like to be here when they come, to calm them and ease their spirits. Someone to talk to, you might say. People have gone mad looking for someone to talk to. We talk, or we sit and play chess—I hope you play—or I read to them. Very little things, Michael, and only for a little while. Soon they drift away, and where they go I cannot follow. They don't need me then; they don't need anyone, and this pleases me because most of them spent their lives trying not to need.
"So I keep them company for a while, these friends of mine. I sometimes tell them that I am the mayor of the dark city, because the word at least is familiar to them, but I think of it more in the nature of being a night light, a lantern down a dark street."
"Charon," Michael said. "Charon and coins on the tongues of the dead."
Mr. Rebeck smiled. "I used to think so," he said. "But Charon was a god, or a demi-god. I'm a man." He chuckled softly. "I used to be a druggist."
"I was a teacher," Michael said. "A history teacher. I liked it very much." He thought of something and asked, a little awkwardly, "Can you see me? I mean, am I visible?"
"I see you," Mr. Rebeck said. "You look like a man, but you cast no shadow and I can see the sun behind you."
"A kind of tracing of a man," Michael said bitterly.
"It doesn't matter," Mr. Rebeck said. "In three weeks or a month you won't even need to take the human form any more."
"I won't remember it, you mean."
"You won't want to remember it."
"I will!" Michael cried out fiercely.
Mr. Rebeck spoke slowly. "I make you the same promise I make everyone, Michael. As long as you cling to being alive, as long as you care to be a man, I'll be here. We'll be two men together in this place. I'll like it, because I get lonesome here and I like company; and you'll like it too, until it becomes a game, a pointless ritual. Then you'll leave."
"I'll stay," Michael said quietly. "I may not be a man, but I'll look as much like one as possible."
Mr. Rebeck spread his hand and shrugged slightly. "I said it wasn't so different from life." He hesitated and then asked, "Tell me, Michael, how did you die?"
The question startled Michael. "I beg your pardon?"
"You look very young," Mr. Rebeck said. "I was wondering."
Michael grinned widely at him. "How about premature old age?"
Mr. Rebeck said nothing.
"I have a wife," Michael said. "I mean, I had a wife."
"I saw her," Mr. Rebeck said. "A beautiful woman."
"Lovely," said Michael. He was silent.
"Well?"
"Well what? My lovely wife killed me. Poisoned me, like salting the soup."
He saw the shock on Mr. Rebeck's face and enjoyed it. He felt very human. He smiled at Mr. Rebeck again.
"I would like to play chess," he said, "before sundown."