This was either rubbish or it was brilliant, and I couldn’t decide which. I stood up from the table, intending to have a break, but I found myself standing hunched over Harry’s notes reading through them feverishly. Something about this insanity got under my skin. There seemed to be a pattern forming: my father built a prison; Terry became a criminal influenced by a prisoner he met in the prison my father built. And me? Maybe this was my role. Maybe this book was finally something I could stake my life on, something to take with me into the cold, abandoned furnace of death. I couldn’t drag myself away. The pages were beckoning me like the glint of light from a coin at the bottom of a swimming pool. I knew I had to dive in to see if the coin was valuable or if it was just some aluminum foil blown in by the wind.
I lit a cigarette and stood at the door of the shed and looked up at the sky. It was a dark night with only three stars visible, and not the famous ones. I put a hand in my pocket and felt the scrunched-up wads of cash. After all the lectures I’d given Terry about crime, how could I do this? Wouldn’t that make me a hypocrite? And so what if it did? Is being a hypocrite such a terrible thing? Doesn’t hypocrisy actually demonstrate flexibility in a person? If you stand by your principles, doesn’t that mean you’re rigid and close-minded? Yes, I have principles, but so what? Does that mean I have to live my life unbendingly by them? I chose the principles unconsciously to guide my behavior, but can’t a person assert his conscious mind to override the unconscious? Who’s the boss here, anyway? And am I to trust my young self to dictate the standards of my behavior throughout my whole life? And might I not be wrong about everything? Why should I bind myself to the musings of my own brain? Am I not now, at this moment, rationalizing because I want the money? And why shouldn’t I rationalize? Isn’t the benefit of evolution that we possess a rational mind? Wouldn’t the chicken be happier if he had one too? Then he could say to mankind, “Would you please stop chopping off my head to see if I will run around without it? How long is that going to amuse you?”
I rubbed my head. I felt an existential migraine coming on, a real blinder.
I went out and walked along the dark road into the town. With his newfound celebrity, Terry had given the criminal world a face. With this book, Harry and I would be giving it a brain. It felt good to be a part of something bigger than myself. The lights from the town were flicking off, one by one. I could see the silhouette of the prison on the hill. It loomed large and grotesque, like an enormous stone head of some long-dead god eroding on a cliff. I spoke out loud: “Why shouldn’t I do what I want? What’s stopping me?”
I felt a lump in my throat the size of a fist. It was the first time I’d ever questioned myself so rigorously, and it seemed as if the questions were being articulated by someone older than myself.
I continued to speak out loud: “People trust too much in themselves. What they take for truth, they let rule their lives, and if I set out to find a way to live so I will be in control of my life, then I actually lose control, because the thing I have decided on, my truth, becomes the ruler and I become its servant. And how can I be free to evolve if I’m submitting myself to a ruler, any ruler, even if that ruler is me?”
I was scared by my own words, because their implications were beginning to sink in. “Lawlessness, aimlessness, chaos, confusion, contusion,” I said to no one, to the night. I was talking myself in circles. My head throbbed. I was thinking the kind of thoughts that caused throbbing.
All of a sudden, with blinding clarity, I knew that Harry was a genius. A prophet, maybe even a martyr- that would be decided later, depending on the nature of his death. He was innovating. That’s why Harry chose me to bring his asinine tablets down from the mountain. He was showing me the way. By example, he was showing me that it doesn’t take a god to innovate, create, invert, destroy, crush, and inspire; a man can do the job just as well, and in his own good time. Not in six days, like You-Know-Who. It needn’t be a rush job. And even if, at the end of my toils, I wound up inspiring only hatred or indifference, I knew then and there it was my duty to try, because this was my awakening, and that’s what an awakening is all about: getting up. There’s no use having an awakening and then hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep.
These were big thoughts, really obese. I found a half-smoked cigarette on the ground. I picked it up. It felt strong in my hand, like an Olympic torch. I lit it and walked around town. It was cold. I stamped my feet and held my hands under my armpits to keep warm. This book of Harry’s was the first small step in a nameless revolution that was taking place, and I had been chosen because of the excellence of my mind. I wanted to praise myself without guilt. I wanted to kiss my own brain. I felt thousands of years old. I felt older than soil. I was overcome with the strength and power of words and ideas. I thought about my first father, father number one, back in Poland, and I thought about his insanity: dying for a god. What a stupid reason to die: for a god, a lousy god! I shouted loudly to a tree, “I want to die because I am a creature with a sell-by date! I want to die because I am a man and that’s what men do; they crumble, decay, disappear!” I walked on, cursing my father’s blind stupidity. I screamed, “To die for an idea! To take a bullet for a deity! What an idiot!”
Our town had streetlamps only on the main street- the roads leading into and out of it were left to the mercy of the moon and the stars, and when there were neither it was black through and through. The trees rattled in the wind that blew from the west. I walked to a house and sat on the veranda and waited. For what? Not what: who. I was at Caroline’s house. I realized suddenly that romantics are dickheads. There’s nothing wonderful or interesting about unrequited love. I think it’s shitty, just plain shitty. To love someone who doesn’t return your affections might be exciting in books, but in life it’s unbearably boring. I’ll tell you what’s exciting: sweaty, passionate nights. But sitting on the veranda outside the home of a sleeping woman who isn’t dreaming about you is slow moving and just plain sad.
I waited for Caroline to awaken and come out onto the veranda and wrap her arms around me. I thought the power of my mind was so strong I could will her from her slumber and draw her to the window. I would tell her my ideas and she would finally know who I was. I thought I was as good as my mind and she would be bowled over by both; I forgot entirely about my body and my face, which were not so hot. I stepped up to the front window and saw my reflection and changed my mind. I stepped away and walked back home. This was my awakening, Jasper! Harry, poor Harry, he was enormously important for me: an unfettered mind. Up until I met him, all the minds I knew were fettered, shockingly fettered. The freedom of Harry’s mind was exhilarating. It was a mind absolutely true to itself, that ran on its own steam. I’d never before encountered a timeless mind, impervious to the influence of its surroundings.
I went home and sifted through Harry’s notes some more. They were impossibly silly! This book, his handbook for criminals, it was an aberration. It shouldn’t exist. It couldn’t exist. That’s why I had to help him bring it to life. I had to! I divided the book into two major sections: Crime and Punishment. Then within these sections I made chapters, an index, and added footnotes, just like in a real textbook. I was completely faithful to Harry’s notes. Every now and then as I typed I’d come across a passage and I’d laugh out loud, a huge belly laugh. It was wonderful! His words were stupendous! They bored right into my brain.