“I remember very well. I went horseback riding with my brother Bill. Why do you ask?”
Smiling, I tried to think of something logical to explain the question but couldn’t think of anything. Luckily she made a little face of dismissal and sipped her tea. “Not that it’s been much better here. I just don’t have any urge to go back to America. Does that make me an expatriate? I need to be something these days.”
“What have you been doing since you got over here?”
“I take a job when I have to. Nothing spectacular. You glide over the days and from city to city and nothing much happens, but you’re basically all right. You live in this strange state of okay most of the time. You get by. There aren’t a lot of highs or lows. Nothing really memorable or perfect ever happens, but nothing bad either. Livable. Halfway between blah and hooray.”
“Are you with anyone?”
“No, not for a long time. That’s what I mean—I’m not closed off to men, but I haven’t met one I want to be with. It’s all right, though; I’m content being alone.”
“And you live in Vienna? What do you do here?”
For an instant, half a second, it was plain she didn’t know. Her face went blank. She didn’t know because there was nothing but memories and vague shadows left.
“Um, I’ve been working as a secretary at the American embassy. It pays the bills.”
I have never read Dante’s Inferno but vividly remember looking through an illustrated copy and seeing a picture of two people floating in the air, reaching out desperately to touch each other. As I remember, their sin had been that they were illicit lovers in life and were now condemned to this situation in Hell—close enough to see, smell, hear the other, but never for eternity allowed to join again.
Emmy Marhoun was in exactly the same place. For whatever reasons, in death she was damned to existing so close to life that she thought she still was alive. Never again allowed to touch the fullness and pulse, the body of real life, she nevertheless recognized and remembered it completely. Hell for her was walking around in life almost alive but not knowing the difference anymore.
Is that what Death would be, not knowing? Strayhorn had said nothing about that, but Jesse insisted Death wasn’t to be trusted. My mind was exhausted, overflowing. I could no longer sort or decipher, and it wasn’t even noon yet. I had raised the dead and met the dead and had hundreds of new questions, but now I had no more energy and felt close to collapse.
As calmly as I could, I told Emmy I had to go. I asked her to call me at the hotel so that we could meet again while I was in town. She said I looked washed-out and should take it easy. I paid the bill and we left together. On the sidewalk we kissed, and her cheek on that summer day was neither warm nor cold.
Luckily there was a taxi stand nearby and I was home in a few minutes. When I asked for the key to my room, the concierge handed me several messages, which I ignored. It was time to rest, and if that meant seeing Philip Strayhorn again, fine. But at the moment sleep was more important than answered questions.
I am running across a bridge. I know this bridge but cannot remember why. It’s very long—goes straight into the horizon. I know I’ll never be safe unless I get to the other side. But the wolf is very fast and is catching up. This wolf which comes after me so many nights. It does not have eyes but, rather, two large X’s where eyes should be, like the ones you make in a tic-tac-toe game. It’s mouth is gigantic, full of white pointy teeth, a rubbery red tongue that goes up and down and around its lips in circles. When not drooling, the wolf grunts and growls or laughs like a hyena, because it’s getting closer and closer. When it catches me it’ll kill and eat me. It’s wearing orange overalls that are buttoned across one furry shoulder; the other flap is broken and jumps wildly as the wolf comes full killer-speed at me. He also wears a black stovepipe hat that slides back and forth across his head as he runs. Behind me are big brown puffs of dirt to show how fast I’m going. Both of us make the sounds in a cartoon—screeching, bells clanging, brakes screaming—but none of this is cartoon for me. It’s real and terrifying, my world when I was seven years old, scared awake night after night by the same dream: the wolf chasing me across the endless bridge, me always knowing I’d be caught. The moment that happened, he would whip out a cannibal’s pot and logs from some deep pocket, start up a snarling fire, and throw me into the pot, now magically filled with water. I usually awoke, petrified, just as the final water started to burn me. I can’t begin to express how frightening it was even though I knew the dream by heart, having had it over and over again.
I awoke this time too, engulfed again by the identical terror in head and heart I’d known as a boy. The churning gut, my fingers clawing, my tongue too enormous in my mouth. Exactly the same. A middle-aged man knowing seven again as it truly was.
“It’s not the way you remembered, is it?”
I turned my head and saw Philip Strayhorn sitting on the corner of the bed. It took time to regain my senses, but he seemed content to sit and wait. I looked blankly around the room and finally realized where I was—the hotel room in Vienna.
“It was so clear! I remember the dream. I’ve always remembered it, but never this vividly. It’s frightening!”
“No one remembers what childhood was really like. They only think they do.”
“Phil, what are you doing?” I sat up, leaning back on my elbows. “Is it allowed? Can you be here like this?”
“Don’t worry, this is still part of your dream. But, yes, I can go over to the real world if I like. It’s no big deal. No one sees me there but the dead, and you.”
I fell back onto the bed. “I can’t get over that dream. How incredibly strong! I don’t remember its being anything like that. Not that intense. Were things really so frightening when we were kids? How did I survive night after night?”
“You didn’t—the kid died and became an adult. Life isn’t learning; it’s forgetting. That dream’s just a small example. You needed to know that.”
“Speaking of forgetting, will you tell me about Emmy Marhoun?”
He wrapped his hands around a knee and cleared his throat. “Is that a formal question, Wyatt? You know the rules.”
“Yes.”
I went everywhere and saw astounding things, always accompanied by Strayhorn. He was my guide and instructor. I thought I understood his answers. He always appeared pleased with me and, as reward for my understanding, gave me more and more insight, perception, powers. He called them “gifts.” For a while I felt like a prodigy and was supremely hopeful. Why did other people have such a hard time understanding Death’s answers? To me they seemed logical and down to earth. I could not talk to Jesse Chapman or Ian McGann about what I was learning, but I secretly began to feel that perhaps they were both dense.
My health stabilized, and so did theirs. With Strayhorn I visited wars and weddings; I walked through people’s minds as it they were museums. I walked through my own, alternately aghast and delighted. Did I live here? Is this how it really was?
Besides being shown sides of life I knew few had ever seen or experienced, I was given more and more information as well as answers to my questions. I understood and ingested as much as I could, but taking it all in was impossible. There was too damned much.
Outwardly, I made it look to Sophie and Caitlin Chapman as if I’d grown keen on Europe and, because I was feeling so much better, wanted to stay a while before returning to America. Jesse was reassured to hear I’d be around and found me a good, reasonably priced pension. He was also heartened to hear that Strayhorn said it would be all right for him to return to his job.
One night Sophie and I went out to dinner alone. Afterward we walked to the Volksgarten and sat in the warm dark. We talked a long time. She asked me to fill her in on what had really been going on since we’d arrived. I said as much as I could, but after a while she knew I was holding important things back. Her silences became longer and longer. “Sophie, don’t be mad at me. You’ve got to understand—this stuff is so far beyond me and I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing or taking one wrong step. You know me; I’d tell you everything if I could, but I can’t.”