Sure you’re not provoking them? she’d asked.
They say carrot tops belong with carrot tops.
And what do you say to that?
Mom!
Alright! Alright!
So it was that Felix had more screen time than was good for a revolutionary boy and could ask questions of the Brazen Head. He especially liked giving the Head fantastic instructions: Use mutant robot zombies to collect the infofiles! Use color-coded carrier pigeons! Bake the answers in a jujuberry pie! The Brazen Head would signal his disdain for such fancy by sitting on the color-coded pigeons until answers oozed from under his buttocks and trickled down the legs of his gilded throne.
Because neither uncle nor nephew could read Hebrew, or Aramaic, they usually told each other stories about what Grandfather’s book probably said. Usually this meant stories about a beautiful princess named Celeste.
Except on this day. On this day, Felix chose a book not much bigger than his hand, with silver cornerpieces and a complex pattern stamped on its leather binding. Instead of starting a story, Felix stared at the yellow pages, which seemed impossibly thin, and said, I think I need glasses. Can you see? Leonard, can you see? The letters are dancing.
He’s better than us
Felix insisted he could “read” the dancing letters. Gate of Reincarnations, he said. What’s that?
Where could Felix have gotten that word? Leonard doubted very much that it was part of Felix’s Integrative Optimal-Learning Curriculum.
Well, Leonard said, Pythagoras believed that after we die, our souls are reborn in new bodies. He called it metempsychosis or transmigration; that’s basically the same as reincarnation.
Why is the soul reborn? Felix asked. I thought it went to heaven, where it was eaten by worms and happily tilled by peasant women and men.
Different people think different things, I guess. Pythagoras believed that we reincarnate so we can perfect our souls.
Like … like Grandfather might be reborn? As a cat, you mean? Felix asked.
Medusa meowed; Leonard hadn’t realized she was in the room, but there she was, a coil of shiny fur by their feet.
I guess, Leonard said. So what does the story say? And he listened as Felix “read” about a guy named Chaim, who had apparently given a lot of thought to reincarnation. Leonard found Felix’s performance charming, if somewhat disturbing.
Is Celeste in this story? Leonard asked.
No, Felix said. But listen, and he explained how there are gilguls (I’m sorry, he said, I can’t come up with a better word for it) who enter a body at birth and stay with that body its whole lifetime.
What about the municipal compost heap? Leonard asked. Is that in the story? Or beasties?
No, Felix said. Listen, and he explained how there are two types of ibbur, which are reincarnations on purpose: when a righteous soul enters a grown body either to perfect itself or to help the soul of that body become more righteous.
That’s good to know, Leonard said, and said no more as Felix traced the many incarnations of Mr. Chaim, whose name, Felix explained, means life.
When Carol returned, Leonard didn’t worry her about soiled toreador pants or Felix’s hallucinations or perplexing tales; he noted only that the boy might be weary. A nap, he suggested, or time off from school?
Felix has to go to school, Carol said, pulling cold bannocks and Scotch pies from a secret compartment in her silver travel vest. He has to understand the enemy if he’s to lead the revolution.
Like many mothers, Carol had big plans for her son.
If the police come to the door, pretend you’re sleeping, she said, finding an air-resistant container for the bannocks and pies.
Why would the police come to the door?
They wouldn’t. Just as a general rule, a precept to live by.
Oh, Leonard said. Have you seen this new Chipmunk Patrol?
If they stop you with Felix, pretend you don’t know me.
Are you in trouble? Leonard asked.
Why would I be in trouble? All I do is sling bannocks, take care of you guys, and spend time with my book club.
I have to go to work, Leonard said.
I can see that, she said, looking pointedly at his all-white vestments. He’d taken special care with them that evening, perfuming his caftan and pressing his trousers into seven sharp pleats.
You need to be careful with Felix, Carol said. He’s better than us, you know.
I know, Leonard said.
Messer Marco
Leonard approached his White Room with special reverence. He could not imagine working for any other chain. NP was committed to supporting its Listeners in every possible way — through innovative aptitude testing, exhaustive training, thoughtful supply of easy-to-use Pythagorean materials, provision of periodic “refresher” updates. The sole support Carol got from Jack-o-Bites was laundry service for her tartan steep pants. He’d heard from screen-yakking Listeners that all the Heraclitan flamethrowers got was a can of Flame-Off, should they set fire to their limbs.
Leonard repaid NP’s faith by working hard. He memorized conversion scripts for all known and anticipated Scenarios: wrong numbers, solicitations, pollsters, obscene callers, lonely widowers, cranks asking for itsy-bitsy Neetsa Pizzas, smart-alecks wanting to know how a company that preached transmigration could sell robin’s egg pizza, and so on. Eighty-six percent of Leonard’s complaint calls and seventeen percent of his “off” calls converted — which is to say, the caller accepted and redeemed a Neetsa Pizza coupon — by far a company record, but low, considering Leonard’s Special Gift.
Fulfillment of Leonard’s Special Gift was limited by two factors. First, an almost antisocial unwillingness to obey all rules exactly to the letter (hence the true-ray blocker on the roof); second, a tendency to display less than Total Compassion when mocked. When a crank called, Leonard would make one, possibly two scripted conversion attempts, but if the crank persisted, he would, very much against Neetsa Pizza policy, terminate the session.
This would change! Given another chance, Leonard would show optimal compassion in every possible Scenario!
Before even opening the door to his White Room, he engaged in a five-minute Pythagorean meditation, ignoring Medusa, who twirled about his legs. He then swept the inside clean again, lest the Room’s purity be compromised by even one speck of dust. Then he retrieved his Pythagoras Papers from their specially molded slot by the screen.
He hadn’t read his Papers since Basic Training, though his NP vow obligated him to do so every day. He sat on his swirly chair within reach of the phone and pondered cartoons illustrating those concepts he’d found most interesting in boot camp — eternal recurrence, for example, which holds that everything that happens now has happened before — which Leonard found rather disturbing. Did it mean that someone like him had already sat in a White Room fretting about missing complaints? What did that Leonard do about it? Weren’t White Rooms a new phenomenon, one of six Neetsa Pizza innovations for the new millennium (six being Pythagoras’s first perfect number, the sum of its aliquot parts: 1+2+3)? Did it mean merely that someone like (or unlike) Leonard had waited somewhere for something that was missing and important? If that were the case, the concept didn’t mean much, did it?
When he added metempsychosis, or reincarnation, to the mix, his head began to hurt. Is it the same reincarnated soul who sits in the White Room over and over again waiting for complaints, and isn’t that rather like hell, to experience the same life over and over again? What was the point? Does the reincarnated soul remember its past? If so, maybe that soul learned what to do about the missing whatevers — but then he wouldn’t experience those same things over and over again, would he? Or did the same incidents rotate to different souls so that everyone got to experience everything at one time or another, in which case that might be interesting. But what if the soul reincarnated as a grasshopper? Did grasshoppers experience the grasshopper equivalent of waiting for missing calls in a White Room?