Her laughter was very gentle, laughter to pillow the head. "What shall I sing you? A riddle song? A lullaby? A song for lovers? A song about an early dawn and the sun rising. What will you have me sing?"
Mr. Rebeck began to tell her about the kind of song he wanted, but he fell asleep and so he never saw that particular dawn. There were others, and beautiful they were, with songs to go with them, but in later years he was always sorry for having missed that one dawn. It was the rum, he used to tell himself. You shouldn't have drunk so much. It made you sleepy. Campos took him home.
Chapter 10
"Don't let it bother you," Michael said. "If she doesn't come today, she'll come tomorrow."
"No she won't," Mr. Rebeck answered. They were sitting on the steps of the mausoleum, looking down the short path that led to Central Avenue. "Tomorrow is Sunday. She never comes on a Sunday. I don't know why, but she never does."
Michael slanted a sly glance at him. "At least you know what day it is. I used to see you looking at my grave to remember the year."
Mr. Rebeck scratched aimlessly on the step below him with a pebble. "I don't always remember what day it is. When I do, it's because a day on which Mrs. Klapper comes to visit is very different from a day on which Mrs. Klapper doesn't come. I have two kinds of days now. I only used to have one."
"I only have one," Michael said. "One long one, with subdivision. Don't worry," he added when Mr. Rebeck said nothing. "She'll come today."
"I'm not worrying. She'll come when she feels like it. What time is it?"
Michael laughed. "Damned if I know. Time and Morgan have nothing in common these days."
"One of us ought to know what time it is."
"Well, it's not going to be me," Michael answered. The flatness of Mr. Rebeck's tone had disconcerted him somewhat. "Why do you care? What difference does it make?"
Mr. Rebeck snapped the pebble away from him. "The gates are locked at five. If she comes late she won't be able to stay very long. I hate it when she just comes, says hello, and goes."
"She doesn't have to go right away," Michael said. "Walters usually makes the rounds a couple of times an hour to see if anybody's locked in. She can stay later than five."
"I've asked her. She always has to go home and start dinner." Mr. Rebeck scowled at the hot, shiny sky. "Or she has to babysit for somebody. She loves that. The parents go to the movies, and she sits in the living room and listens to the radio. The next day she spends hours telling me how she put the child to bed and what she did when it woke up in the night and wanted its mother."
"Hasn't she any children of her own?"
"No," Mr. Rebeck said. "A lot of nephews and nieces, though. She comes from a big family." He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned back on the steps. "She's not going to come today. It's too late."
"Don't panic," Michael said. "She's got time yet." He stood up and took a few steps on the grass. "I think I'll look around for Laura. Maybe we'll come back here later on and tell you a bedtime story."
Mr. Rebeck smiled, stretching his legs in the afternoon sun. "All right. That would be fine." The bedtime story had been a standing joke between them since the morning more than a week ago when Campos, singing and staggering, guided patiently by Michael and Laura and obscenely by the raven, had carried him home, wrapped him in his blankets, and fallen asleep himself on the steps of the mausoleum. Mr. Rebeck had found him there when he woke in the early afternoon, and they had shared breakfast. He had not seen Campos since.
"That was a good night," he said. He liked to think about it. "We ought to spend more nights like that."
"Stick around," Michael said grimly. "We will." He came back to Mr. Rebeck and sat down two steps below him. "I've begun to develop a piddling but useful conception of eternity lately. Listen to me think."
Mr. Rebeck waited, thinking, Of course I'll listen to your thoughts. That's what I do. That's what I am, really, your thoughts and the thoughts of others. He nodded to show Michael that he was listening.
"I had a good time that night, too," Michael said, "but I kept thinking, This is forever. This is forever. You will have this good time again and again, a million times over, until it will be like a play in which you and Laura and a few fugitive lives sit around an imaginary fire and talk and sing songs and love each other and sometimes throw imaginary brands at the eyes blinking beyond the circle of imaginary firelight. And then I thought—and this is where I sounded just like a real philosopher— And even when you admit that you know every line in the play and every song that will be sung, even when you know that this evening spent with friends is pleasant and joyful because you remember it as pleasant and joyful and wouldn't change it for the world, even when you know that anything you feel for these good friends has no more reality than a dream faithfully remembered every night for a thousand years—even then it goes on. Even then it has just begun."
The air was motionless, carved, a block of warm copper fitting neatly around the earth, molded while soft to fit every house and every human being on the earth, and now hardened forever so that no man could move and no air ever came through. The earth rumbled down its alley like a golden bowling ball, shining.
Michael went on. "People used to imagine hell as a place where evil is done and being in hell as having evil things done to you eternally, praise God and don't push; there's plenty of room in the balcony for all the blessed souls. Well, Morgan amplifies this. Hell is forever. Hell is having anything done to you constantly, good or evil. There isn't any good or evil after a few billion millenniums. There's just something happening that has happened before. Think of it—forever. For ever. We don't know what the word means, and we die ignorant and unarmed. Don't ask me to come to any more jolly sessions around the campfire, old friend. I'll come, of course. Wouldn't miss it. Just don't ask me."
He stood up again, moving down the steps and across the grass with the loose, bucking motion of a captive balloon; a manshaped reminiscence, a figment of his own imagination.
"I can't help you," Mr. Rebeck said. He spoke very quietly, but Michael heard him and turned.
"Why, I wasn't asking you to. I wasn't asking for help. I'm very fond of you, but I'd never ask you to help me. I'll never ask anyone to help me again. Say hello to Mrs. Klapper for me."
He walked away and the sun devoured him quickly. Mr. Rebeck sat on the steps of the mausoleum, grateful for the shade the building offered. A cooling breeze sprang up suddenly, making itself audible by shaking the grass and hissing richly in the trees, but it did not reach Mr. Rebeck at all. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his pants, but the breeze was gone and the trees stopped moving. His skin remained oiled with sweat and he could smell the familiar sourness of his own body. Later, when it was dark, he would go down to the lavatory and wash himself. He did not like the liquid soap that you squirted out of a glass jar, but it would have to do.
I am tired, he thought. Maybe the heat is doing it, but I have sat through a good many summers here and never felt like this. I am tired of being helpful. I am tired of being comfortable. Why this should be I do not know, but my image of myself as an understanding old man, floating in kindness like a cherry in a sugared liqueur, is beginning to curl at the corners. I wish something would happen to me, something that would show me exactly how cruel and jealous and vengeful I can be. Then I could go back to gentleness because I chose it over brutality for its own sake, not because I didn't have the courage to be cruel. I might even like cruelty. I doubt very much that I would, but I ought to find out.