And yet, of course, therein lies the downfall of the pen, for what are the letters formed by a fountain pen, whether exact and inerasable or smeared by some careless thumb, but two-dimensional replicas of our three-dimensional selves, our weaknesses to be exposed to the world by the most amateur grapho-analyst, our spellings and misspellings (Conrad!) mirroring the shallowness of our thoughts, the carelessness of our actions, the foolishness of our hopes, leaving behind a record of us for all to see, for all to judge and to find lacking, unlike the bland and infinitely correctable historical record of the computer-generated page.
Yes, better to write nothing at all, Parsifal sometimes tells himself, to vanish without a trace rather than to produce such an Everest of incrimination, such an effluvium of ridiculousness. Yet what else, after all, is there, either exposed for all to see or hidden?
So, is it any wonder that fountain pens, those faithful transcribers of our frailty, are rapidly losing favor to the monstrous aphasia of this world in general?
There’s no need to answer that, he thinks.
Effluvium?
It occurs to Parsifal that if he can find one single tree from his childhood — its bark, its leaves, its height, its width, the way its branches fork out from the trunk, the way its roots reach into the ground, its age, its health, the colors of the bark, the colors of the leaves, the tops and bottoms of the leaves with the veins that feed them, their textures, the texture of the bark, the smell of the wood, the sound of the air moving through the branches and the leaves, the creaking of the branches in the wind, the shadow the tree throws upon the ground, the sorts of animals that are a part of the tree, from the bark beetles to the cicadas to all those other insects, some of which might be suspended from its branches in cocoons or have laid their eggs directly on the branches themselves; if he can describe the size and shape of the eggs, the birds too, and mammals if there are any, and what their houses look like, their nests, their dens in its roots — and notice here he’s not even talking about those branches that have been broken and how they might heal, or which are beginning to sprout, or which have holes drilled into them by birds and if there are any spiderwebs or tents left by bag worms or other moths, and if there are any vines, and how thick the tree’s leaves are, or how far its branches extend from the trunk and whether they are narrower or wider at the top than at the bottom, and (he almost forgot one of the most important things of all) whether it has nuts, or fruit, or flowers — if he can just find that, then he could turn right around and not have to find a cup at all.
Is wanting to possess anything at all that lasts — compared to the greater truth of change embodied in trees and animals — just vanity?
“All is change,” Joe would say.
Then again, he thinks, so what?
It was after the whole Happy Bunny experience, when Walter’s defense — improbable as it seemed — had worked and Parsifal was at his first court-mandated visit, that Joe told Parsifal he didn’t like to judge people.
“I suppose that’s why I became a therapist, Parsifal,” Joe said, “because for me, no matter how much blood you may or may not have on your hands, you’re just another struggling human being. Believe me, I’ve worked with plenty of criminals, and by now nothing would surprise me.”
Not surprisingly, therefore, judgment-wise, Joe’s own appearance ranged from neglected to downright shabby. He favored Hawaiian shirts, half tucked in and half out, and mostly went around unshaved. He was also completely bald, giving him the look of a giant woodchuck. And yet, Parsifal had to admit that Joe tried to be helpful.
“You don’t have to be so hard on yourself, Parsifal,” Joe said during one of Parsifal’s early visits. “Anyone can see that there’s a straight line from your mother perishing in that raging forest fire to you burning down the Happy Bunny by ‘accident.’ Fire — get it? Now think of your own life as a sentence being written by someone not unlike yourself. What you’ve already written: everything from the past — say, from your mom and the forest fire, until this moment — has filled up many pages. And trust me, those blank pages ahead are your future. Remember that they are the ones you have to fill out — and no skipping because of drugs or inattention.”
Parsifal thought about it and frankly was unable to see Joe’s point, though he didn’t want to disappoint the man by saying so. He had never taken drugs, even once. Joe scratched the side of his face near his mouth, where a spot of egg from his breakfast had stuck.
“Say,” Joe added, “I just thought of this now, but you don’t suppose your mom set the fire on purpose, in order to cover up her murder of your dad for his infidelities during his life in the city, do you?”
Parsifal considered. It was possible, of course, but he couldn’t see how Pearl would have gotten by without those sacks of beans and rice Conrad used to carry into the forest for the two of them. He said, “I doubt it.”
“Well, it was just an idea,” Joe said. One of his better qualities as a therapist was that he never seemed overly attached to his theories. “But say,” Joe continued, “here’s another one: Have you ever thought of going into the fountain pen repair business? It won’t make you rich, but it’s a steady income, plus you could work at home.”
Parsifal noticed that the fingers of Joe’s right hand were stained with dark blue ink, the result, he now knew, of an ill-fitting feed. Joe crossed his legs. He appeared to have walked through something unpleasant on his way to the office, and some of whatever it was had stuck to the soles of his huaraches.
“That’s an interesting idea,” Parsifal had told him. “As a matter of fact, I’ve already started.”
Parsifal ate the prune-sesame bar, which was not nearly as bad as it sounded, and it filled him with a surprising amount of energy. He did not know what Misty and her friends had put into those bars, but this one was dynamite. He walked and walked. He searched the ground for any signs of home (a flattened door, a heavy iron skillet). He looked above his head (for maybe a familiar low branch he used to loll on, now raised up by time), but saw nothing he recognized. Was something burning? Had Misty and her friends made a small campfire to toast drugs, or was this smell part of a larger conflagration, possibly hundreds of miles away? He could not tell, except that his nostrils tingled in a way that made him nervous.
Joe had been right; Parsifal did not have a good history with fire.
So his first thought was to flee, until he remembered the advice of the Old Trapper: if a person is uncertain of the source of a fire, the worst thing to do is run, because the person might race straight toward it and by the time the person realized this, he or she (!) would be too tired to outrun it. Observe the birds, the Old Trapper wrote, because the birds are the ones who have the best overall view. See from what direction the birds are flying; watch where they are headed.
Great advice, except for the fact that all the birds had disappeared completely, including the one that had been circling or spiraling overhead, it seemed, forever.
Pearl.
IX
parsifal must have been nine or ten years old when Conrad took him aside one afternoon to explain the intricacies of double-entry accounting. They sat together on an old log, his father in his dark, pin-striped city suit with a tea towel covering the log so he wouldn’t get his pants dirty, and Parsifal in his usual knockabout outfit of shorts, a tee shirt, and, sensing a cold front was on its way, an animal pelt or two that Pearl had stitched together in her spare time.