“I’m afraid not too well. I’ve run out of food and I’m lost and just about ready to go back and call it quits.”
“NO!” Misty shouted with surprising force. “You aren’t allowed to do that! Guys — the Pen Man can’t quit!”
To his credit, Cody appeared to give the matter some thought. He inserted his hands into the side pockets of his overalls and removed them several times, as if they might come out differently than they went in. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and hair stuck out of his armpits in two, surprisingly delicate light-brown fluffy patches. He looked fragile, all in all. “No, Pen Man,” he said. “Misty’s right. You can’t do that.”
Meanwhile, Black Dog was busy putting the stone into his mouth, sucking on it, and then removing it. After a while he would put it back into his mouth, and repeat the process. Parsifal wondered if the stone’s taste reminded him of anything, but couldn’t imagine what it might be, besides a stone. Black Dog said nothing, but nodded at him several times in a serious manner, to indicate that he was in complete agreement with Cody and Misty.
“Wait,” Misty said. “I have an idea. We all have extra energy bars I made myself for our trip to the forest. Guys, if we could each take two of the kind we like the least and give them to Pen Man here, then he’d have”—she paused for a moment—“a total of six energy bars that he could use to help him while he looks for his cup.” Misty turned to Parsifal. “Then, when you find your cup, you can fix my pen that you’ve already been holding for a long time. Here. I’ll start with a chocolate-cherry and a granola-cocoa. Cody?”
Cody fished around in his pockets to find a banana-apple and a prune-sesame bar. Black Dog tossed in two peanut-fig clusters.
“Thanks,” Parsifal said. “Actually, your pen’s been ready for a while. I think you’ll be pleased with the result.”
“That’s great — really good news. Then that’s that,” Misty said. “You’ll go on, you’ll find your cup, and when you come back, then you can show it to me, and I’ll finally get my pen back.” She brushed her hair away from her face. Her hair seemed to have found some extra golden highlights since he had last seen her.
“I have a good feeling about this, Pen Man.” She dug into her waist pouch and handed him a stick of gum. “You may as well take this, too.”
“It’s Parsifal,” Parsifal said.
“What?”
“Parsifal is my name.”
“Well, okay, whatever. And now we have a few things to do yet before we go back, so Cody and Black Dog and I have to be moving on, if you don’t mind.” She paused. “Listen,” she said, “it was amazing meeting you out here like this — almost like it was meant to be. I think this could be really important for you, Pen Man. And not just for you, but maybe for a lot of other people, too. Do you ever have the feeling the things you do mean something? I mean in addition to the things you think they mean?”
“Sometimes,” Parsifal said.
“Me too. So you be careful, like I said. I’ll see you when all this is over. Don’t blow it, Pen Man — Parsifal. Okay?”
Then Misty stretched out her arms as if she were flying and ran on ahead, with Black Dog and Cody following.
Parsifal looked down. At his feet was the round stone that Black Dog had been sucking on, lying wet and shiny on the ground. For no good reason whatsoever Parsifal bent down, picked it up, wiped it off, and stuck it in his pocket.
“Sand,” he had answered Joe.
You might think that a person as sensitive to the scrutiny of others as Parsifal would be happy to be surrounded by blind individuals, but this was not the case. In a certain way, whatever gasps his external appearance may have provoked among many sighted individuals (with the notable exception of librarians), he was still left with the comfort that the person who had made such a quick and superficial judgment of him was unable to see beneath his skin to his real, more complex, and creative self.
Conversely, Parsifal’s difficulty with the blind was that he was unable to blame their judgments on any misperception. They, by virtue of not having to depend on externals, were able to plunge straight into a person’s soul, and, like long-deceased Aztec priests, seize the living hearts of their victims (in this case, him) and rip them out. In other words, Parsifal thought, How would you like it if your place of residence was encircled day and night with a ring of dead and judgmental Aztecs?
It was after high school that Parsifal — having run out of such benefits as his social worker had gotten for him, and run out of Mrs. Knightly, too (she got married) — alone and, like so many other high school graduates, without a skill or means of supporting himself (he hadn’t yet discovered fountain pens), chose the crawl space of the Happy Bunny Preschool to make himself a little temporary shelter. It had been a damp day and cold as, curled in the cramped crawl space beneath the schoolroom, surrounded by spiders, rodent droppings, and years of toddler trash, Parsifal suddenly remembered his life back in the forest and the comfort that even a small fire could bring. And so he heaped atop abase of Popsicle sticks a pile of discarded chocolate milk cartons, plus a few pages torn from old coloring books, and struck a match. The cartons, coated as they were with wax, flamed up with a surprising intensity.
The bird circled above, and he was almost positive it was the same one he had seen a couple of days ago, though it was hard to know with birds, considering that they pretty much look alike. Ditto a drone painted to look like a bird.
The librarians in the county jail, he quickly learned, were not to be trusted.
Actually, when Parsifal stopped to think about it, he didn’t even know why that cup was so important, although Misty seemed to agree. Still, what was broken can never be fixed completely — he had learned that from fountain pens. What was broken can be replaced, true — but fixed, no. Or it can be repaired; that is to say, the damage can be halted at a certain point, but once it has already happened, nothing can be reversed. Nothing can be made as good as new. Although a nib can be replaced with a new one, there’s always something slightly different — sometimes better, sometimes worse — but not the same. Never the same.
He just has to get that cup.
One of the first things he noticed when he arrived in the city was that dogs, especially seeing-eye dogs, barked at him far more than at other people. Trained to be calm under all conditions, these helpers of mankind would nonetheless tug at their harnesses as if to pull their masters from harm’s way as he passed, although Parsifal meant no harm. It wasn’t his scent, because after he had washed several times they continued to do it. His best guess was it was something else.
Fenjewla.
If a person will only think about it, the first fountain pen was undoubtedly the human body itself, with its seemingly endless (till death do us part) supply of ink. So it’s not at all hard to imagine some cave person sitting around after a hunt and noticing that he had pricked his finger on a thorn, or maybe even had the tip of his finger bitten off by a wild animal, then discovering he could use it to draw pictures.
Parsifal believes no instrument is more expressive of our bodies and ourselves than a fountain pen in proper working condition. Not the messy brush of painters; not the smudgy smears of charcoal or pencil; not the childish crayon; not the soulless ballpoint so favored by Conrad; not the greasy roller ball; not the unpleasant, percussive smack of typewriters (now mercifully almost extinct); certainly not the silent, eyeball-straining pixels of the computer screen.