When Laura still did not answer, but only shone dimly in the arched corridors of his mind, like a dagger at the bottom of a well, he became angry, feeling that his honesty had been rejected. Then he thought of Michael's suicide and Laura's unsureness of the reasons for her own death, and, because he thought he was put-upon and knew he was suffering, he said a cruel thing.
"It isn't as if I were the only one who did not fit into the world. Think of yourselves before you send me on my errand of mercy. Of the three of us, who hid in the earth like frightened foxes, and who lived? You may have looked more at ease in the world than I, and been more able to keep up the pretense of living with your neighbors, but who lived, who lived?"
Even as he was saying the words he hated and disowned them, but he said it all, straight through until he was sure he was finished, and then he shivered and felt wretched. There was a thin, liquid bitterness in the back of his throat.
"All right, I'm sorry," he said to Laura. She stood so quietly in his mind. "You know I'm sorry. Either forgive me and be at least a little tolerant, or else hate me and leave me alone. Right now, I don't much care which."
For a while he thought that Laura had left him, for he could find no trace of her inside his head. He sighed, telling himself that the inevitable is a great blessing to a man weary of making choices. In time he would undoubtedly forgive himself, absorbing his loss the way a fish's wounded mouth gradually absorbs a broke[broken?] fishhook. Given a little time, he would not only forget Laura, he would come to believe that she had never been real, that he himself had made her up out of a head full of unicorns and sad virgins. And perhaps he had.
It might be, he thought, that Michael and Laura and every other ghost with whom he had talked and passed time had never existed except as he was lonesome and wanted company. Perhaps the dead were dead and there were no ghosts except his own memories of lost chances, friends never spoken to, letters never written, never answered, women never accosted on the street or smiled at in subways. Or perhaps, to be blunt about it, he might well be a good deal madder than he thought. He had always considered himself a little mad.
But they had needed him a little, he thought, and perhaps that meant that they were real. Dreams never needed you to remind them that they existed—it was always the other way around. Perhaps they were real after all, Michael and Laura and all the others; for they had come to him, calling him by his name, asking him for the small kindnesses he had never been able to give away before. And he had given them all away, eagerly, almost frantically, and now there were none left. He could feel the difference in himself, as though he were beginning to cave in. There had never been very much to give, really, and now there was nothing, nothing except the little that he had always planned to save for himself so that he might be warm when he was old.
"I will not do it," he said, knowing that Laura was listening, even though he could not see her. "Not even for you. I will not help you because it is too much effort for too little return. I do not love you"—this to Michael as well, and whoever else might be listening to him—"and I am sorry if I led you to believe that I loved you. The fault was mine. I only love myself, and that affair is dying of time and knowledge, as all love dies. Soon it will be over, and I shall have some sort of peace, with nobody asking me to do things for them."
He thought of Mrs. Klapper and wondered if she would come today. If she did, he would tell her the same thing and get it over with. He should never have accepted anything from her—concern, companionship, or the story about Linda. If she came, he would give her back the raincoat and tell her to stop bothering him. He hoped she would listen.
Stopping to get his bearings, he discovered that he was approaching the Wilder mausoleum, but from a different direction from his usual one. The road was beginning to rise before it sloped down into the shallow valley in which his mausoleum was located. At the top of the hill, scrolled and white, white as soap, there stood up the castle whose foundation was the chest and belly of Morris Klapper.
The building seemed bigger every time Mr. Rebeck saw it. It was the only thing he had ever seen that did.
I will sit on the steps for a while, he decided, because I am tired. I will open my shirt and roll up my sleeves and get some sun. When the sun goes down I will go down the hill to my own place and wait until the raven comes to find me.
When he reached the steps of the Klapper mausoleum he stood still, looking up at the white roof. He had read or heard somewhere that the earliest gravestones were just that—stones piled thickly on top of a hasty grave to keep the wolves from digging up the body. If that were the case, he thought, then Morris Klapper was quite safe. The animals inside—whatever Laura meant by that—could not touch him. God himself would break a few fingernails getting at Morris Klapper.
He sat down on the steps, which were not nearly so comfortable as the ones he was used to, and raised his face to the sun. With his eyes closed, he felt the warmth soaking into his skin. He liked sitting in the sun. It made him feel like a father, lying on a park bench with a newspaper over his belly, almost asleep, watching his son play in the dirt. But the daydream seemed a little ragged around the edges today. He could not feel at ease on the wooden bench, no matter how often he shifted his position, and the boy vanished whenever he took his eyes off him.
"Very well," he said aloud. "I have a bit of a guilty conscience. This is perfectly natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. It will pass. This too shall pass away and become a nought."
Behind him a voice said, "I wish I'd said that."
Mr. Rebeck turned quickly and saw nothing. There was nothing at all between him and the door of the mausoleum.
"Hello," he said nervously. "Is somebody there?"
"What?" said the voice.
"Is anyone there?" Mr. Rebeck asked again, feeling a little silly about it now.
"Oh," said the voice. "I'm here. For quite awhile."
The voice was faint, but clear and very dry. It made Mr. Rebeck think of thin shoes walking in sand.
"Are you Morris Klapper?" he asked.
"I don't know," the voice answered slowly. "I hadn't thought—" Then, with sureness, "Yes. Yes, I must be. I am Morris Klapper."
"My name is Jonathan Rebeck." He wished that he could see Morris Klapper, to find out if he really did look like him.
"What are you doing here? I don't know you, do I?"
"No," Mr. Rebeck said. "I live here."
"Here? In the cemetery?"
Mr. Rebeck nodded. The voice said nothing, but he was sure that he sensed disapproval.
"You have a beautiful house," he said, unconsciously adopting Mrs. Klapper's term. "I was just admiring it."
"What, this place?" He thought he heard a dusty sigh. "You don't know. All I wanted was a nice small stone, with my name on it and perhaps a few words of recommendation. Look what I got. A synagogue. A courthouse."
"Well, your wife wanted you to have an expensive tomb," Mr. Rebeck said.
"Oh yes," Morris Klapper said. "The place has 'Gertrude Klapper' scrawled all over it. It's a monument to her, not me."
"She didn't mean it that way," Mr. Rebeck said angrily. "You're a fool if you think that. She loves you."
"Love is not an excuse for bad taste."
Mr. Rebeck felt that he was being peered at closely, and it made him tense. He had never felt ill at ease with the dead until now, when he spoke with Morris Klapper and could not see him.