“I see you,” he said. For a moment he had, behind him in the mirror.
The television poured forth atrocities. Or were they realities? “Up next,” promised the newswoman, with a visage of wood, “Texas State Supreme Court grants local journalists the right to televise executions.” Outside the courthouse, a crowd in floodlit darkness cheered. Then, a commercial, a slim brunette in a white swimsuit: “If you’re counting calories, here’s something you should know…” Smith changed the channel. “…where officials estimate that one thousand children are starving to death daily, while government troops remain free to confiscate relief rations from the United Red Cross, selling to the black market what they don’t eat themselves.”
And next: “—confessed today that he knowingly tainted the entire hospital’s transfusion supply with AIDS infected bl—”
“—amid allegations of abducting over one hundred children for what FBI officials have called ‘the underground snuff-film circuit—’”
“—strangled slowly with a lampcord while her common-law husband and his friends took turns—”
Smith turned off the set, feeling as confused as he felt disgusted. The newspaper offered more of the same. CRACK MOM TURNS KIDS TO PROSTITUTES read one local headline. The
Smith’s contemplations wavered. What could be more real than all of this?
The sun felt like a blade against his face as his guest dragged him back out onto the street. He was shriveling. It occurred to him, as he ascended the stone steps, that this was the first time he’d entered a church since he’d become a writer.
An old priest limped across the chancel, his bald head like a shiny ball of dough. He began to change the frontals on the altar.
“Excuse me, sir…er, Father,” Smith interrupted.
“Yes?”
“What is real?”
The priest straightened, a frocked silhouette before stained glass. He did not question, or even pause upon, the obscurity of Smith’s query. He answered at once: “God, Christ, the kingdom of Heaven.”
“But how do you know?”
The priest’s bland face smiled. He held up his Bible.
Smith thanked him and walked out. He felt abandoned, not as much by God as by himself. Conviction wasn’t proof. Belief didn’t validate a
Smith considered how he must look — a haggard, emaciated vagabond. “Forgive my appearance…
The professor lit a pipe with a face engraved in relief on the bowl. His eyes looked tiny below the great, bushy gray brows. “That’s quite a universal question, wouldn’t you say? You want
In the window, the campus stood empty in sunlight. “Yes,” Smith said after a pause. That’s when he noticed the ghost. It was standing just outside, looking at him, an ethereal chaperon. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I’d appreciate your opinion very much.”
“Ah, what is real?” Pipe smoke smeared the professor’s aged face. “Consider, first, the initial tenets of conclusionary nihilism. Truth is reality, and there is no objective basis for truth. Take mathematics for example, which exists only because space and time are forms of intuition; all material qualities are only the
Smith resisted rolling his eyes. He thanked the professor for his time, and left, thinking,
So it wasn’t truth, and it wasn’t spirit. Smith lit a cigarette, pondering the smoke.
These were simply subjectivities trying to be concrete, which was impossible.
Wasn’t beauty what all writers were supposed to pursue?
He heard a sigh, or no — a hiss. Did it denote relief, or disappointment? “It’s beauty, isn’t it?” Smith asked aloud to the shadow which now lingered at the closet. Was it inspecting his clothes? The shape sharpened as dusk bled into the room, creeping. What had it said, just days ago, on the street?
He opened the Yellow Pages, to the E’s. ESCORTS UNLIMITED, BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, CONFIDENTIAL, 24 HOURS, VISA, MASTERCARD.
The sigh replayed in his head, and the wondrous scent rose as Smith reached for the phone, to call beauty.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
The girl’s smile twitched. “Uh, well…”
“Never mind,” Smith said. “I was allegorizing, I suppose. I used to be a novelist.” He sat behind his desk, behind his typewriter, which was turned off. He would never turn it on again, and this left him dryly depressed. He had nothing to write. But it seemed a suitable place from which to observe: the lap of his insufficiency.
“What, uh, what would you like me to do?” the girl inquired.