Barefoot said, "The same as yours. The fate that has overtaken you. And that you're aware of."
"What is that?" I said.
"Lost in meaningless words," Barefoot said. "A merchant of words. With no contact to life. Tim had advanced far into that. I read Here, Tyrant Death several times. It said nothing, nothing at all. Just words. Flatus vocis, an empty noise."
After a moment I said, "You're right. I read it, too." How true it was, how terribly, sadly true.
"And Tim realized it," Barefoot said. "He told me. He came to me a few months before his trip to Israel and told me. He wanted me to teach him about the Sufis. He wanted to exchange meaning-all the meaning he'd piled up in his lifetime-for something else. For beauty. He told me about an album of records that you sold him that he never got a chance to play. Beethoven's Fidelio. He was always too busy."
"Then you knew who I was already," I said. "Before I told you."
"That's why I asked you to come up front with me," Barefoot said. "I recognized you. Tim had shown me a picture of you and Jeff. At first, I wasn't sure. You're a lot thinner now."
"Well, I have a demanding job," I said.
Together, Bill Lundborg and I drove back across the Richardson Bridge to the East Bay. We listened to the radio, to the endless procession of Beatles songs.
"I knew you were trying to find me," Bill said, "but my life wasn't going too well. I've finally been diagnosed as what they call 'hebephrenic."'
To change the subject I said, "I hope the music isn't depressing you, I can turn it off."
"I like the Beatles," Bill said.
"Are you aware of John Lennon's death?"
"Sure," Bill said. "Everybody is. So you manage the Musik Shop now."
"Yes, indeed," I said. "I have five clerks working under me and unlimited buying power. I've got an offer from Capitol Records to go down to the L.A. area, to Burbank, I guess, and go to work for them. I've reached the top in terms of the retail record business; managing a store is as far as you can go. Except for owning the store. And I don't have the money."
"Do you know what 'hebephrenic' means?"
"Yes," I said. I thought, I even know the origin of the word. "Hebe was the Greek goddess of youth," I said.
"I never grew up," Bill said. "Hebephrenia is characterized by silliness."
"Guess so," I said.
"When you're hebephrenic," Bill said, "things strike you as funny. Kirsten's death struck me as funny."
Then you are indeed hebephrenic, I said to myself as I drove. Because there was nothing funny about it. I said, "What about Tim's death?"
"Well, parts of it were funny. That little boxy car, that Datsun. And those two bottles of Coke. Tim probably had shoes on like I have on now." He lifted his foot to show me his Hush Puppies.
"At least," I said.
"But by and large," Bill said, "it was not funny. What Tim was looking for wasn't funny. Barefoot is wrong about what Tim was looking for; he wasn't looking for death."
"Not consciously," I said, "but maybe unconsciously he was."
"That's nonsense," Bill said. "All that about unconscious motivation. You can posit anything by reasoning that way. You can attribute any motivation you want, since there's no way it can be tested. Tim was looking for that mushroom. He sure picked a funny place to look for a mushroom: a desert. Mushrooms grow where it's moist and cool and shaded."
"In caves," I said. "There are caves there."
"Yes, well," Bill said, "it wasn't actually a mushroom anyhow. That, too, is a supposition. A gratuitous assumption. Tim stole that idea from a scholar named John Allegro. Tim's problem was that he didn't really think for himself; he picked up other people's ideas and believed they had come out of his own mind, whereas, in fact, he stole them."
"But the ideas had value," I said, "and Tim synthesized them. Tim brought various ideas together."
"But not very good ones."
Glancing at Bill, I said, "Who are you to judge?"
"I know you loved him," Bill said. "You don't have to defend him all the time. I'm not attacking him."
"It sure sounds like it."
"I loved him, too. A lot of people loved Bishop Archer. He was a great man, the greatest we'll ever know. But he was a foolish man and you know that."
I said nothing; I drove and I half-listened to the radio. They were now playing "Yesterday."
"Edgar was right about you, however," Bill said. "You should have dropped out of the university and not finished. You learned too much."
With bitterness I said, "'Learned too much.' Christ. The vox populi. Distrust of education. I get sick and tired of hearing that shit; I am glad of what I know."
"It's wrecked you," Bill said.
"You can just go take a flying fling," I said.
Bill said calmly, "You are very bitter and very unhappy. You are a good person who loved Kirsten and Tim and Jeff and you haven't gotten over what happened to them. And your education has not helped you cope with this."
"There is no coping with this!" I said, with fury. "They all were good people and they are all dead!"
"'Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are all dead.' "What's that?"
"Jesus says that. I think it's said during Mass. I attended Mass a few times with Kirsten, at Grace Cathedral. One time, when Tim was passing the chalice around-Kirsten was kneeling at the rail-he secretly slipped a ring around her finger. No one saw but she told me. It was a symbolic wedding ring. Tim had on all his robes, then."
"Tell me about it," I said, bitterly.
"I am telling you about it. Did you know-"
"I knew about the ring," I said. "She told me. She showed it to me."
"They considered themselves spiritually married. Before and in the eyes of God. Although not according to civil law. 'Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are all dead.' That refers to the Old Testament. Jesus brings-"
"Oh, my good God," I said, "I thought I'd heard the last of all this stuff. I don't want ever to hear any more. It didn't do any good then and it won't ever do any good. Barefoot talks about useless words-those are useless words. Why would Barefoot call you a bodhisattva? What is all this compassion and wisdom you have? You attained Nirvana and came back to help others, is that it?"
"I could have attained Nirvana," Bill said. "But I turned it down. To return."
"Forgive me," I said, with weariness. "I don't understand what you're talking about. Okay?"
Bill said, "I came back to this world. From the next world. Out of compassion. That is what I learned out there in the desert, the Dead Sea Desert." His voice was calm; his face showed a deep calm. "That is what I found."
I stared at him.
"I am Tim Archer," Bill said. "I have come back from the other side. To those I love." He smiled a vast and secret smile.
15
AFTER A MOMENT of silence, I said, "Did you tell Edgar Barefoot?"
"Yes," Bill said.
"Who else?"
"Almost no one else."
I said, "When did this happen?" And then I said, "You fucking lunatic. It will never end; it goes on and it goes on. One by one, they go mad and die. All I want to do is Tun my record store and turn on and get laid now and then and read a few books. I never asked for this." My car's tires squealed as I swerved to pass a slow-moving vehicle. We had almost reached the Richmond end of the Richardson Bridge.
"Angel," Bill said. He put his hand on my shoulder, tenderly.
"Get your goddamn hand off of me," I said.
He withdrew his hand. "I have come back," he said.
"You have gone crazy again and belong back in the hospital, you hebephrenic nut. Can't you see what this is doing to me, to have to listen to more of this? You know what I thought about you? I thought: There, in a certain real sense, is the only sane one among us; he is labeled as a nut but he is sane. We are labeled as sane and we are nuts. And now you. You are the last one I would have expected this from, but I guess-" I broke off. "Shit," I said. "It's out of control, this madness process. I always said to myself: Bill Lundborg is in touch with the real; he thinks about cars. You could have explained to Tim why one does not drive out on the Dead Sea Desert in a Datsun with two bottles of Coke and a gas station map. And now you are as crazy as they were. More crazy." Reaching, I turned up the radio; the sound of the Beatles filled the car-Bill at once shut the radio off, entirely off.