At home, sitting at the dinner table, Kate asked a question.
“Do you know anything about fools?”
Lee finished chewing her mouthful of lasagna and swallowed.
“It’s not a clinically recognized category of mental illness, if that’s what you’re asking. Far too widespread.”
“Not this kind of fool. This one thinks of himself as some kind of prophet, spouting the Bible.”
“You mean a Fool?” Lee said in surprise, her emphasis placing a capital letter on it. “As in Holy Fool?”
“As in,” Kate agreed.
“How on earth did you find one of those?”
“He’s connected with that cremation in the park. Seems to be a sort of friend or maybe spiritual leader, if that isn’t too farfetched, to the street people in the area.”
“That would make sense, I suppose.”
“So what do you know about fools?”
Kate watched Lee take another forkful while she thought.
“Not an awful lot, off the top of my head. It’s a Jungian archetype, of course, a way of counteracting the tendency of social and religious groups to become concretized. The Trickster is a combination of subtle wisdom and profound stupidity, a person both divine and animalistic.” She pinched off another square of lasagna with the edge of her fork, ate it. “Many of the most influential reforms, certainly in religious history, have been made by people who fit the description of fools. St. Francis, for example, was a classic fool: He was the son of a wealthy family, who suddenly decided it wasn’t enough, so he gave it all away and went to live on the streets, preaching simplicity. Let’s see. In the Middle Ages, the court fool was the only one who could speak the truth to the king. Clowns are a degenerated form of fool. Charlie Chaplin used traces of Trickster behavior. I don’t know, Kate, I’d have to do some research on it.” She chewed for a while longer, on the food and on the idea. “You know, I vaguely remember this guy at a conference, years and years ago, in the Berkeley days maybe, who presented himself as a fool. A very deliberate and self-conscious evocation of the archetypal figure—it must have been a Jungian conference, come to think of it, one of those weekend things sponsored by UC Extension or the Jung Institute.”
“Do you remember anything about him?”
“Not really. Tall fellow, had a beard, I think. White. Him, I mean, not the beard—he was young, not more than about thirty.”
“You’re sure about the age?”
“Kate, love, this was—what, fifteen years ago? All I remember is that he was taller than I was, hairy but neat, wearing motley and carrying this skinny little cane with an ugly carving on it, and trying hard to project an aura of wisdom and self-confidence, although I think at the time I was not impressed. I picture him as uncomfortable, and I think I wondered if he felt silly. Memory is too unreliable to be sure, but I’m fairly sure if he’d been much older I would have been even more struck by his lack of self-assurance. I take it your fool is too old.”
“He is. I’d say he’s a very healthy seventy, seventy-five.”
“No, I don’t think the man I remember could have been anywhere near fifty. Is there no way of finding out who he is?”
“We’re making inquiries, but so far everything’s negative. Nobody knows where he came from,- he was not carrying any ID. He won’t tell us anything.”
“He doesn’t talk?”
“Oh, he talks. Just doesn’t always make sense. He speaks in phrases taken from someplace—the Bible, Shakespeare, things like that.”
“So far as I can see. I don’t know, of course,- I’m just a Catholic, and everyone knows Catholics don’t read their Bible. But I’ve been told that.” She explained about Dean Philip Gardner and the Graduate Theological Union. “He says they’re quotes, and I’ll take his word for it. They’re definitely not straight speech.”
“How strange.”
“You’d say that isn’t standard behavior for a fool?”
“I don’t know that there is such a thing as standard behavior among fools,” replied Lee, “rules of behavior being almost a contradiction in terms. Still, I wouldn’t have thought that speaking only in quotations was completely consistent with being a fool. In fact, I’d have said fools would be the last people to constrict themselves in that way. Spontaneity would be their hallmark, clever wordplay, and a definite, urn, suppleness in mind and body. Two things that I possess not, at the moment. I’d have to make a deliberate effort and research the topic before I could give you more than a superficial idea, I’m afraid.”
“It’s not superficial, and you’re doing fine. It’s very helpful, especially knowing there was a fool in the woodwork ten or fifteen years ago, even if it’s a different man. Would you like to look into it for me, see if you can find out who he was, or maybe find someone like him?”
“For you, or for the department?”
“I suppose it would be for me. I doubt they’d pay you a consultancy fee, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It isn’t that. I’m just… I don’t know.”
“What is it, sweetheart?” Kate could see that Lee was troubled but couldn’t understand why.
“Oh nothing. No, I guess it is something,” said the therapist. “I just don’t know how I feel about getting involved in another case.”
“Oh God, then don’t, hon.” She took Lee’s hand from the table, kissed it, held it tightly. “I don’t want you to touch any of my cases,-I don’t want them to touch you. The question of who fools are or were is of no earthly importance,- I can’t imagine it has the slightest relevance to the case. This man who calls himself Brother Erasmus, he interests me, that’s all. I don’t know what to make of him and I was curious about what you might know.” She did not add, And I thought it might interest you, give you a project that was challenging but not strenuous. Think again, Kate. The last and only time Lee had been involved with one of her lover’s cases, she’d ended up with a bullet tearing through two of her vertebrae and a multiple murderer dead on her living room floor, ten feet from where they were now sitting. A lack of enthusiasm for future involvement was not only understandable, it was to be encouraged.
“It was a bad idea, hon. Forget it.” She gave Lees hand a squeeze and let it go, but Lee did not immediately resume her meal, and Kate kicked herself for her stupidity.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Lee said slowly. “When I said I don’t know how I feel about it, I meant just that: I don’t know. I think I’m expecting to feel apprehension, but I honestly don’t know if I am. If anything, there’s an absence of emotional overtones, just a vague interest, intellectual almost. Perhaps the apprehension is so strong that I’m blocking it. There’s a degree—What are you laughing at?”
Kate wasn’t laughing, but she was grinning widely. “God, you sound like a therapist, Lee.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I am a therapist.”
“I know,” Kate said, loving her, loving the surge of affection and exasperation and normality that had hit her, and then she really was laughing, and Lee with her. When it had washed on, Lee picked up her fork again and continued where they had left off.
“If it’s just for you, I’d be happy to see what I can do. Jon has the modem up and running, this would be a good exercise in learning how to use it in research.”
“If you want to, if you have the time, I’d appreciate it. But I want it kept on a purely theoretical level. If you find someone, I don’t want you talking to them, even through the computer. I don’t want your identity out there at all. The last thing we want is the press standing in our petunias and looking in our windows, and the case is colorful enough already without you getting involved.”
“Actually, I think Jon dug out the petunias and put in some sweet peas, but I agree. Newspaper reporters know how to use computer nets better than I do. Now, tell me more about this fool of yours.”
Dinner progressed with the story of Erasmus, told as entertainment, with the dark moment of the cremation and the possible confession downplayed and the conversation in the parking lot behind the Hall of Justice omitted altogether.
Jon came into the kitchen just as Kate was putting on the coffee. He raised his eyebrows at the plates in the sink.
