“Some more wine?” Feingold asked. “What do you think of this Israeli stuff, anyway?”
“It goes well with the fish.” Breckenridge reached for Feingold’s copy of the agreement. “Here, let me initial all that.”
“Don’t you want to check it over first?”
“Not necessary. I have faith in you, Sid.”
“Well, I wouldn’t cheat you, that’s true. But I could have made a mistake. I’m capable of making mistakes.”
“I don’t think so,” Breckenridge said. He grinned. Feingold grinned. Behind the grin there was something chilly. Breckenridge looked away. You think I’m bending over backward to treat you like a gentleman, he thought, because you know what people like me are really supposed to think about Jews, and I know you know, and you know I know you know, and—and—well, screw it, Sid. Do I trust you? Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. But the basic fact is I just don’t care. Stack the deck any way you like, Feingold. I just don’t care. I wish I was on Mars. Or Pluto. Or the year Two Billion. Zap! Right across the whole continuum! Noel Breckenridge, freaking out! He heard himself say, “Do you want to know my secret fantasy, Sid? I dream of waking up Jewish one day. It’s so damned boring being a gentile, do you know that? I feel so bland, so straight, so sunny. I envy you all that feverish kinky complexity of soul. All that history. Ghettos, persecutions, escapes, schemes for survival and revenge, a sense of tribal unity born out of shared pain. It’s so hard for a goy to develop some honest paranoia, you know? Let alone a little schiziness.” Feingold was still grinning. He filled Breckenridge’s wineglass again. He showed no sign of having heard anything that might offend him. Maybe I didn’t say anything, Breckenridge thought.
Feingold said, “When you get back to New York, Noel, I’d like you out to our place for dinner. You and your wife. A weekend, maybe. Logs on the fire, thick steaks, plenty of good wine. You’ll love our place.” Three Israeli jets roared low over Tiberias and vanished in the direction of Lebanon. “Will you come? Can you fit it into your schedule?”
Some possible structural hypotheses:
LIFE AS A MEANINGLESS CONDITION
Breckenridge on Wall Street.
The four seekers moving randomly.
The dead city.
LIFE RENDERED MEANINGFUL THROUGH ART
Breckenridge recollects ancient myths.
The four seekers elicit his presence and request the myths.
The dead city inhabited after all. The inhabitants listen to Breckenridge.
THE IMPACT OF ENTROPY
His tales are garbled dreams.
The seekers quarrel over theory.
The city dwellers speak an unknown language.
ASPECTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
He is a double self.
The four seekers are unsure of the historical background.
Most of the city dwellers are asleep.
His audience was getting larger every night. They came from all parts of the city, silently arriving, drawn at sundown to the place where the visitors camped. Hundreds, now, squatting beyond the glow of he campfire. They listened intently, nodded, seemed to comprehend, murmured occasional comments to one another. How strange: they seemed to comprehend.
“The story of Samson and Odysseus,” Breckenridge announced.
“Samson is blind but mighty. His woman is known as Delilah. To them comes the wily chieftain Odysseus, making his way homeward from the land of Ithaca. He penetrates the maze in which Samson and Delilah live and hires himself to them as bondservant, giving his name as No Man. Delilah entices him to carry her off, and he abducts her. Samson is aware of the abduction but is unable to find them in the maze; he cries out in pain and rage, ‘No Man steals my wife! No Man steals my wife!’ His servants are baffled by this and take no action. In fury Samson brings the maze crashing down on himself and dies, while Odysseus carries Delilah off to Sparta, where she is seduced by Paris, Prince of Troy. Odysseus thus loses her and by way of gaining revenge he seduces Helen, the Queen of Troy, and the Trojan War begins.”
And then he told the story of how mankind was created:
“In the beginning there was only a field of white sand. Lightning struck it, and where the lightning hit the sand it coagulated into a vessel of glass, and rainwater ran into the vessel and brought it to life, and from the vessel a she-wolf was born. Thunder entered her womb and fertilized her and she gave birth to twins, and they were not wolves but a human boy and a human girl. The wolf suckled the twins until they reached adulthood. Then they copulated and engendered children of their own. Because they were ashamed of their nakedness they killed the old wolf and made garments from her hide.”
And then he told them the myth of the Wandering Jew, who scoffed at God and was condemned to drift through time until he himself was able to become God.
And he told them of the Golden Age and the Iron Age and the Age of Uranium.
And he told them how the waters and winds came into being, and the seasons, the months, day and night.
And he told them how art was born:
“Out of a hole in space pours a stream of life force. Many men and women attempted to seize the flow, but they were burned to ashes by its intensity. At last, however, a man devised a way. He hollowed himself out until there was nothing at all inside his body, and had himself dragged by a faithful dog to the place where the stream of energy descended from the heavens. Then the life force entered him and filled him, and instead of destroying him it took possession of him and restored him to life. But the force overflowed within him, brimming over, and the only way he could deal with that was to fashion stories and sculptures and songs, for otherwise the force would engulf him and drown him. His name was Gilgamesh and he was the first of the artists of mankind.”
The city dwellers came by the thousands now. They listened and wept at Breckenridge’s words.
Hypothesis of structural resolution:
He finds creative fulfilment.
The four seekers have bridged space and time to bring life out of death.
The sleeping city dwellers will be awakened.
Gradually the outlines of a master myth took place: the creation, the creation of man, the origin of private property, the origin of death, the loss of faith, the end of the world, the coming of a redeemer to start the cycle anew. Soon the structure would be complete. When it was, Breckenridge thought, perhaps rains would fall on the desert, perhaps the world would be reborn.
Breckenridge slept. Sleeping, he experienced an inward glow of golden light. The girl he had encountered before came to him and took his hand and led him through the city. They walked for hours, it seemed, until they came to a well different from all the others, rectangular rather than circular and surrounded at street level by a low railing of bright metal mesh. “Go down into this one,” she told him. “When you reach the bottom, keep walking until you reach the room where the mechanisms of awakening are located.” He looked at her in amazement, realizing that her words had been comprehensible. “Are you speaking my language,” he asked, “or am I speaking yours?” She answered by smiling and pointing toward the well.