"You can go to jail for that," Bill told him. "Listening to the enemy."
"Bull," Harvey said.
"I wonder what Tim and Kirsten would say," I said to Bill, "if they could see us now."
"I can tell you what Tim is saying," Bill said.
"What does he say?" I said, relaxed by the marijuana.
Bill said, "He says that-he's thinking that-it is peaceful here and he has finally found peace."
"Good," I said. "I could never get him to smoke grass."
"They smoked it," Bill said. "Him and Kirsten, when we weren't around. He didn't like it. But he likes it now."
"This is very good grass," I said. "They probably had local stuff. They wouldn't know the difference.", I pondered over what Bill had said. "Did they really turn on? Is that true?"
"Yes," Bill said. "He's thinking about that now; he's remembering."
I regarded him. "In a way, you're lucky," I said. "To find your solution. I wouldn't mind having him in me. In my brain, I mean." I giggled; it was that kind of grass. "Then I wouldn't be so lonely." And then I said, "Why didn't he come back to me? Why to you? I knew him better."
After a moment of reflection, Bill said, "Because it would have wrecked you. See, I'm used to voices in my head and thoughts that aren't my own; I can accept it."
"It's Tim that's the bodhisattva, not you," I said. "It was Tim who came back, out of compassion." And then I thought with a start: My God; do I believe it, now? When you're high on good grass, you can believe anything, which is why it sells for as much as it does, now.
"That's right," Bill said. "I can feel his compassion. He sought wisdom, the Holy Wisdom of God, what Tim calls Hagia Sophia; he equates it with anokhi, God's pure consciousness. And then, when he got there and the Presence entered him, he realized that it was not wisdom that he wanted but compassion ... he already had wisdom but it hadn't done him or anyone else any good."
"Yes," I said, "he mentioned Hagia Sophia to me."
"That's some of the Latin he thinks in."
"Greek."
"Whatever. Tim thought that with Christ's absolute wisdom he could read the Book of the Spinners and untangle the future for Tim, so Tim could figure out a way to evade his fate; that's why he went to Israel."
"I know," I said.
"Christ can read the Book of the Spinners," Bill said. "The
fate of every human is inscribed in it. No human being has ever read it."
"Where is this book?"
"All around us," Bill said, "I think, anyhow. Wait a sec;
Tim is thinking something. Very clearly." He remained silent and withdrawn for a time. "Tim is thinking, 'The last canto. Canto Thirty-three of Paradiso.' He's thinking, ' "God is the book of the universe" ' and you read that; you read it the night you had the abscessed tooth. Is that right?" Bill asked me.
"That's right," I said. "It made a great impression on me, that whole last part of the Commedia. "
"Edgar says that the Divine Comedy is based on Sufi sources," Bill said.
"Maybe so," I said, wondering about what Bill had said, the statements about Dante's Commedia. "Strange," I said. "The things you remember and why you remember them. Because I had an abscessed tooth-"
"Tim says that Christ arranged that pain," Bill said, "so the final part of the Divine Comedy would impress itself on you in a way that would never wear off. 'One simple flame.' Oh, shit; he's thinking in a foreign language again."
"Say it out loud," I said, "as he thinks it."
Bill haltingly said:
'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.' "
I smiled. "That's how the Commedia begins."
"There's more," Bill said.
" ' ... Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate!' "
"'Abandon all hope, you who enter here,"' I said.
"He wants me to tell you one thing more," Bill said. "But I'm having trouble catching it. Oh; now I have it-he thought it again very clearly for me:
" 'La sua voluntate e nostra pace. ..' "
"I don't recognize that," I said.
"Tim says it's the basic message of the Divine Comedy. It means, 'His will is our peace.' Meaning God, I guess."
"I guess so," I said.
"He must have learned that in the next world," Bill said.
"He certainly didn't learn it here."
Approaching us, Harvey said, "I'm tired of the Queen tapes. What else did we bring?"
"Did you manage to pick up Radio Moscow?" I asked. "Yeah, but the Voice jammed it. The Russians switched to another frequency-probably, the thirty-meter band-but I got tired of looking for it. The Voice always jams it."
"We'll be going home soon," I said, and passed the remains of the joint to Bill.
16
IT BECAME NECESSARY to rehospitalize Bill sooner than I had expected. He entered voluntarily, accepting this as a fact of life-a perpetual fact of his life, anyhow.
After they had signed Bill in, I met with his psychiatrist, a heavyset middle-aged man with a mustache and rimless glasses, a sort of portly but good-natured authority-figure who at once read me my mistakes, in order of descending importance.
"You shouldn't be encouraging him to use drugs," Dr. Greeby said, the file on Bill open before him across the surface of his desk.
"You call grass 'drugs'?" I said.
"For someone with Bill's precarious mental balance, any intoxicant is dangerous, however mild. He goes into the trip but he never really comes out. We have him on Haldol now; he seems able to tolerate the side effects."
"Had I known the harm I was doing," I said, "I would have done otherwise."
He glanced at me.
"We learn by erring," I said.
"Miss Archer-"
"Mrs. Archer," I said.
"The prognosis on Bill is not good, Mrs. Archer. I think you should be aware of that, since you seem to be the one closest to him." Dr. Greeby frowned. "'Archer.' Are you related to the late Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer?"
"My father-in-law," I said.
"That's who Bill thinks he is."
"Sufferin' succotash," I said.
"Bill has the delusion that he has become your late father-in-law due to a mystical experience. He does not merely see and hear Bishop Archer; he is Bishop Archer. Then Bill actually knew Bishop Archer, I take it."
"They rotated tires together," I said.
"You are a very smart-assed woman," Dr. Greeby said.
I said nothing to that.
"You have helped put Bill back in the hospital," the doctor said.
I said, "And we had a couple of good times together. We also had some very unhappy times together, having to do with the death of friends. I think those deaths contributed more to Bill's decline than did the smoking of grass in Tilden Park."
"Please don't see him any more," Dr. Greeby said.
"What?" I said, startled and dismayed; a rush of fear overcame me and I felt myself flush in pain. "Wait a minute," I said. "He's my friend."
"You have a generally supercilious attitude toward me and ,toward the world in all aspects. You obviously are a highly educated person, a product of the state university system; I'd guess that you graduated from U.C. Berkeley, probably in the English Department; you feel you know everything; you're doing great harm to Bill, who is not a worldly-wise, sophisticated person. You're also doing great harm to yourself, but that is not my concern. You are a brittle, harsh person, who-"