Leonard was at a loss. He didn’t know any stories! He couldn’t share Grandfather’s books — they were shut tight behind sixty-day sealant. Felix sighed, deeply. So Leonard taught him the clapping song, complete with the dance that went with it. He probably shouldn’t have. He was breaking the promise he’d made to his grandfather — sort of — and the one he hadn’t quite made to his sister.
Felix seemed to enjoy it: pink returned to his cheeks, rather as if he’d engaged in five minutes of awesome karate kicks. After they’d sung and danced the clapping song, Leonard told Felix the story that went with it. At times he could remember only the line he was speaking at that moment, but as soon as he spoke it, another came to take its place. This wasn’t surprising: every day for ten years he’d sat with his grandfather while Carol worked. When he got home from school, he helped his grandfather to the toilet, then brought him a snack — usually canned peaches, sometimes herring with sour cream. Then he did his homework on the old man’s settee, and when he’d finished, his grandfather would say, Listen, boychik, I need you to listen good, and he would pick one of his stories (he only had a few) and he would tell it, and after he told it he would say, You’re a good egg, boychik, you tell no one about this except your grandson.
He always told his stories the very same way, using the exact same words each time. Leonard couldn’t help but memorize them, though this didn’t diminish the pleasure they gave him.
At first. By the time he was fifteen, Leonard had little use for his grandfather’s stories, little use for his grandfather; he was bothered by the old man’s smell, he didn’t like answering questions about school, questions that were increasingly confused, the answers to which (no he hadn’t learned anything, no he had no friends) he found embarrassing. He definitely didn’t like taking his grandfather to the toilet. So that when, on his fifteenth birthday, his grandfather asked him again if he could read the scrawls on his wall, Leonard, feeling bad for not being able to read them, for always being unable to read them, said bad things, unkind things. And then, two days later, his grandfather died.
Leonard felt then as if he’d been dropped from the earth. Milione spoke of a desert. Leonard could well imagine this — shaded by nothing, light always shining in your eyes, an accusatory light reminding you that you’d acted badly, your grandfather had died because of you, and now you’re alone, you’ll always be alone. Fifteen-year-old Leonard stopped speaking, he spent long hours on his grandfather’s settee staring at the wall, trying without success to understand the script his grandfather had scrawled there.
I could have asked him what it meant, he told himself, as Medusa, a kitten then, purred on his lap. I could have asked him and I didn’t; now I’ll never know. I could have laughed at his jokes about herring — would it have killed me to laugh at his jokes?
Carol seemed to understand. She stopped making him do things he didn’t want to do, like go to school, like go anywhere, really.
For five years, Leonard did little or nothing but follow the doings of Sue & Susheela, let Medusa in and out of the garage apartment, and care for Felix. Till Carol told him he had to get a job.
Like all of his grandfather’s stories, the one that went with the clapping song didn’t make much sense — his grandfather had learned it from his grandfather, who’d learned it from his grandfather (and so on), so maybe that was to be expected. But it was about demons (who cause havoc only on Mondays), so Felix pronounced it truly grand. His favorite was Kafkaphony, the demon with two wives: with one wife, he had leper babies; with the other, two-headed babies who fought each other and had open sores on their faces. He also liked Kafsephony, whose babies leapt from one end of the ether to the other, sometimes appearing as men and telling the future. Also, he liked the fact that dogs were formed in the ether out of bad deeds; they barked and howled, and bit people; they could find no cure for their condition till they died and were reborn as something else. He couldn’t wait to draw the goats who look like people. And so on.
Can I really not tell Mom? Felix asked. His cheeks were still pink from the exertion of hopping skipping jumping west south north east around the invisible circle.
Grandpa made me promise, Leonard said. No one can know, just you and me.
Felix considered this a moment, twirling a lock of his red afro.
What if I add the demons to my opus?
They have to stay between us. You can show your grandson. He’s the only person who can see it.
Will I have a grandson? he asked.
Of course, Leonard said.
You don’t, Felix said.
You’re better than I am.
I am?
Of course you are! Look at you! Leonard said. You’re strong! You do awesome karate kicks. You have an opus!
I do, don’t I?
And you’ve got red hair, Leonard said. Girls love red hair.
They don’t seem to, Felix said. He was thinking of Celeste, whose idea it had been most recently to dump him on the municipal compost heap.
Trust me, Leonard said, and Felix did.
A pleasing style
Good news! Milione said one night, his voice again bright. A gentleman has arrived who wishes to transcribe my adventures. He remembers me from Acre, he has a pleasing style. A certain Rustichello of Pisa — perhaps he lives near you?
I don’t think so, Leonard said.
Have you encountered his romances?
Not my cuppa tea.
He writes in French, Mill said. I gather this is the language for romance.
I wouldn’t know, Leonard said.
I neither, Mill said. But he proposes to make me famous beyond the walls of this shit-piss town. They will have to release me then, don’t you think? Really, I believe I shall go mad here.
Leonard couldn’t argue with that. But he didn’t think Mill’s “memoirs” would help him out of his loony bin; they might occupy him, however, and stave off what seemed a deepening depression.
What will you write about? Leonard asked. I’d say no to the dates and silks, yes to the starving caliph and marauding khan.
I shall talk of the Tibetans! Mill said triumphantly, and the line, predictably, went dead.
The Desert of Lop
Do you ever feel you are the only person in the universe? Mill asked the next night. When the moon disappears, and the sky is black and the sea is still and there is nothing around you but the void, then, dear Leonard, do you sometimes feel alone?
I guess I felt like that when my grandfather died. Carol was glad. She was tired of taking care of him. I was fifteen. I felt alone then.
An orphan is always alone. I was an orphan for fifteen years.
So you said, Leonard said, thinking, You were never an orphan, you know nothing about being an orphan.
There is a desert of which I have oft tried to speak, Mill said.
The Desert of Lop, Leonard said, surprised that their connection wasn’t severed.
Yes, that place. I was lost there, did I tell you?
No.
That is because I have told no one. No one knows of this. I became separated from my fellows there. The desert was full of apparitions, sounds that beckon — one hears voices there, the sounds of waterfalls, of livestock and bandits. You follow those sounds, or you run from them, it does not matter, you only ever find yourself alone. Within hours your brain empties, the inside of your head feels hot, as if filled with desert sand, your eyes become parched, your throat closes, you feel certain you will never speak again, and how could you, for you have lost all words. And there is no one there with whom to speak, nor will there ever be. Everywhere is light, but this light, it illuminates nothing! You are your inside, your outside is in, and you are as empty as can be. You are sere. Do you know whereof I speak, dear Leonard?