Mickelsson's Ghosts (63 page)

He couldn't get the horror out of his bloodstream. A queer thought took possession of him: the unpleasant idea that once, before he'd stood religion on its head, that gross, foul-mouthed swine had from time to time heard confession—young girls who'd had venial thoughts, middle-aged lechers whose escapades had surely made young Martin lick his lips. There was a good deal to be said—as no doubt no one knew better than Luther—for his having gotten rid of that ugly institution; but then a queerer thought came: how comforting it would be, for a man in Mickelsson's position, to be able to pour out his soul to a red-faced lout of a priest whose lips were sealed!

He was building, today, the door- and window-frames for the new diningroom, beautiful cherry boards he'd gotten for a song from a farmer on the lower road, who had a home sawmill. As he worked, measuring, sawing, fitting—handling the tools with a skill and confidence he'd never known he possessed—he played with the idea of confession. “I'm in love with a beautiful Jewess,” he whispered, rolling his eyes upward toward the confessional curtain.
Jewess
was to make Luther's lips curl and his genitals quiver. “Every day she seems more beautiful and more wrong for me—and I for her—just as the other woman I see, Donnie Matthews, seems more repellent.”

Heavy breathing behind the curtain. “Who is Donnie Matthews?”

“A young whore, Father.” He put woe in his voice.

“Ah!”

“Alas, I am not, in Kierkegaard's sense, ‘pure in heart,' able to will one thing.”

“Kierkegaard?”

“A somewhat older whore.” (“Not funny,” Jessie would say, and would shake her head.)

“I see. Continue.”

The greater his desire for Jessie, he would explain, a desire heightened now by remembered images—the fullness of her breasts as she arched her back above him or swung from side to side, drawing him in deeper and deeper—the greater his sense of his worthlessness, her moral and spiritual superiority to him, even, alas, intellectual superiority. (“I've had carnal relations with them both, Father,” he would say. And Luther: “Ah, ah!”) He could not imagine making love with Jessie in the way he did, almost without shame or remorse, with Donnie. He could not say for certain that his sordid bestiality would be shocking to Jessie—it seemed unlikely, in fact—but he knew that he himself, at least, would be sickened by it, as sickened as he'd be by the most abhorrent acts of blasphemy. (Why he should hate blasphemy—copulation on church altars, or filthy jokes about Jesus—he wasn't sure. Not because he was in his heart still a theist, he thought. It had more to do with his childhood; the insult to his small-boy innocence and faith in goodness, insult to the ardent love all human beings feel, if only now and then, for righteousness.) In his mind Jessie had become for him (though part of him knew that it had nothing much to do with reality) a sort of Platonic beacon of immaculacy, secular equivalent to Luther's “Lord's Supper,” the point at which the finite and infinite touch. And Donnie, poor kid, had become for him the soul and vital symbol of all things lubricious and lewd, meretricious, debauched, profligate and goatish—the dark side of Luther's symbolism of the privy in the monastery tower. The more he brooded, self-flagellating, turning his bullish will against itself—striking out in his mind first at Jessie, then at Donnie—the more angry, confused, and anxious he became.

He'd dropped his little confession game, it came to him; turning his poisons inward, as usual. No matter. A stupid game anyway. He finished tacking in the headstop and stepped back to admire the finished door. Even unstained, it was a handsome piece of work. He dropped his hammer in the makeshift toolbox and picked up the measuring tape.

Thoughts of his worthlessness in comparison to the image of himself Jessie stirred in him—or recalled to him—made clearer old Luther's doctrine, and Mickelsson's grandfather's, of all flesh as filth. “The world not only is the devil's, it
is
the devil.” And he understood more clearly now than ever before, it came to him—understood in his bowels—Luther's observation that never is God's wrath more terrible than in His silence. Nietzsche's starting point. That once mankind discovers that it has lost God, the only possible result is universal madness. If God is dead, Nietzsche had claimed, human dignity is gone, all values are gone. Cold and darkness begin to close in. If it were true that mankind is filth, and impotent, then indeed God, if He did not exist, would have to be invented. But for that, alas, it was now much too late. The knowledge that God is dead, and Heaven a fairytale, had settled and cooled like lava, becoming the ground. No alternative now but the old, mad Luther's imperious longing for death, the sad old fiend limping on gouty legs from room to room, shaking his fists, demanding release from this wicked virgin-shit world, and the sooner the better. (And might his death be painless.) It was too late now even to cry out, fervently indignant, for death. Peter Mickelsson was living in the cynical, long-suffering age Nietzsche had foretold. Rhetoric was exposed; and suicide—all human feeling, in fact—was rhetoric.

He thought, suddenly scowling to himself, of Jessie's distrust of poetry. He got a brief, silly image of Dante's Beatrice, sixteen years old, dressed for the 1980s, saying, eyes fakely widening, “Gee! Really?” No one anymore, not even a cheerleader, could be trusted to be a fool.

He lined up the sill horn and dado and tapped the sill into place.

“To tell the truth, Father,” he said past the nails in his mouth, removing one, slanting it into the sill, then striking three times with the hammer, “there are times when it seems to me that if I ever do quit evading life—as eventually I must, since dying of woe is no longer a live option—if I ever do set my fat head firmly toward whatever future may be out there—I could hardly survive if my Jewess were not a part of that future. The thought brings me no peace, of course, only greater disquietude, almost—to be truthful—a feeling of existential horror.” He took the saw from the box.

He thought of Luther's strange devotion to his ex-nun wife, “lord Kate,” as he'd called her—with all the usual Lutheran complexity: the sarcasm of a man who knows himself pussy-whipped, but also the worship of courtly-love-in-marriage: “I would not swap my Kate for France with Venice thrown in.” In the monastery (child of the Middle Ages and Renaissance) Luther had written lutesongs to God. Now he wrote them to both God and Kate. The most careful analysis, authorities said, could not figure out which was which. No man, Luther said, could be a true theologian who had not awakened with pigtails on his pillow. Well, Mickelsson had never aspired to theology. Or if he had, striving upward from marriage, he had stupendously failed at it.

“I have moments of respite, of course.” He chuckled falsely, gesturing with his left hand as he finished a cut. “I find myself glancing into mirrors or store windows, sizing myself up, experiencing a brief little flare-up of self-satisfaction. At times, often after a conversation with Jessie at the university cafeteria or in the hallway that runs past both our offices, I am inclined to think myself a handsome devil, no more gone to pot than other men my age, my red hair still quite striking, in point of fact, though admittedly rather odd, yellowing out and unkempt, the freckles on my fat nose and this heavy, flattened forehead sort of merrily boyish.” He tapped his forehead dramatically, then returned his hand to the frame-piece he was cutting. “In a shirt or sportcoat I still look passably athletic, it seems to me: broad shoulders, big chest—so long as I hold my stomach in. It's only in a trenchcoat or overcoat that I look definitely boxy, not to say rotund.”

The curtain moved, Luther peeking out. Mickelsson struck a pose, then went back to his sawing.

“We're neither of us spring chickens, Father—Jessie and myself—though it's true that she's beautiful, perhaps right now at the peak of her beauty, and she'll no doubt look younger and healthier than I all her life.” He frowned, losing his place, saving himself in the nick of time from sawing along the wrong pencil line. “All the same, I think I could fairly be called, given my height, broad shoulders, et cetera, an imposing sort of man.” As the end-piece fell to the floor he tapped his chest with his left hand. “No woman need be ashamed to be seen with me.” He sighed, studied the next cut, and began sawing. “Such is my extraordinary self-confidence, at times.” He cleared his throat and continued, “Alas, more often, gazing at this same form, what I see is a blotched, shaggy monster, red of face, as if I were always angry, or a drunkard. I'm a rather heavy drinker. Did I mention that?” He rolled his eyes up toward the confessional. “And I've come to be increasingly aware of another disagreeable feature: my back has become rounded. Father. It's somewhat gone to fat. My eyes are what a former student of mine, a macrobiotic, called ‘sanpaku,' white showing under the irises, you know, which gives me a kind of septic, jaded look. When this mood is on me, needless to say, it seems to me impossible that any woman, even Donnie Matthews, could conceivably be fond of me. And indeed she is not fond of me, of course.” He waved the hand that held the saw, dismissing hope. “One more of her Fellini freaks.”

“This is a very long confession, my son!”

“I know. I hope you've had supper.”

A weary sigh, then a belch.

“At times, concerning Jessie,” he said sadly, “my thoughts turn rather dark. It's clear, I think, that both of us are playing a morbid psychological game, consciously or unconsciously toying with one another—to put it in its best light, offering brief comfort—because neither of us is entirely prepared to meet the future. She loved, with whatever reservations, her dead husband; I, insofar as I love anyone, love my dear, lost wife. Down in the underground gloom where the light of the brain dims out, we both, I suspect, know that each is, to the other, safe. Not that that can be entirely true: if it were, I would have no problem, now, would I? Clearly my heart, whatever the state of hers, is to a baffling degree divided.” He held up the frame to the opening. Not perfect, but planing would redeem it. He said, “In my worst moods, it's this that I hold against Jessica: I do not want her to pretend to love me if she doesn't, in fact, because only if I know she truly loves me will I be able to confront the possibility that I truly love her.”

“There can be no doubt of it, my son. You are bedevilled.”

“God knows! I'll tell you my worst fear. I wonder if, if I were to propose to her, she'd draw back in revulsion, revealing that all she has said and done has been just play or, worse, charity.”

“Only Christ has charity, my son.”

“Maybe. In any case, if she
has
been acting out of charity, I couldn't blame her. Her marrying me would be imbecile from every point of view. She's well-off. I, on the other hand, even if it were not for the alimony I've already offered my ex-wife, and even if I manage to straighten out my past, even if I should be able to rid myself of Donnie Matthews, as I hope and pray I'll do—not that it won't cost me plenty, in the short run—I, as I was saying, am a miserable pauper. Jessie is fancy, very refined—even counting her odd distaste for poetry. I, on the other hand, am a slightly cleaned-up country oaf. I have to wince, thinking of that concert we went to—I haven't told you about that, I think, but never mind. I made a fool of myself, muttering, destroying my neighbors' enjoyment. Even those mutterings that fortunately remained inside my head make me wince when I remember them—big redneck farmboy sitting there soberly reasoning with himself, the meaning of music is so-and-so, such-and-such—as if music, in any admissible sense, had meaning—while all those easily sophisticated people, even the kids, like my student Alan Blassenheim, less than half my age but trained in good Long Island schools, or maybe private schools, I wouldn't know … at any rate exposed to music of the classier sort … all those people sat back and simply heard what was there and knew as if by nature when to laugh or cry. Sometimes, after an experience like that, it occurs to me to wonder if it might be simply that I'm stupid.”

“All of us are stupid. No help for it. Worthless, steamy filth—”

“I know, I know. In any event, it seems highly unlikely that Jessie would say yes to me, if I were to propose. I've seen how I frighten her at times. And even if Jessie's distrust of me should pass …”

Now he had the second frame tapped in. He sat down on the sawhorse, admiring his work, another part of his mind rambling on.

“It's part of my fanatic idealism that I wouldn't be satisfied, hearing her say yes, unless her answer were rational in the fullest sense, that is, fully informed. I can hardly imagine myself telling her about Donnie. Even if I did, and even if she were, grudgingly, to accept it, it would poison the ideal she too has a right to insist on. And as if that weren't enough, consider this: I don't want her to say yes unless she does in fact love me, heart and soul; and of course not even Jessie, clever as she is, can know whether or not she loves me as my fanatical heart demands until she knows my heart. You follow? Protestations of love are always about seventy per cent wild hope.” He waved at the wall dramatically, showing his scorn of merely hopeful protestations. “Like a caster of spells, one proclaims as actuality what one wishes and, on the basis of present evidence, believes might eventually become actuality. I, however—unreasonably, querulously, foolish Platonist to the depth—I insist on a perfect exchange of love that cannot be until it is. I understand the trap; all the same, I'm trapped, like Epimenides the Cretan in his famous saying ‘All Cretans are liars,' or like the madman who refuses to come down off his pillar until someone can offer him ‘good reason.' Sometimes as I talk with her—once, especially, when we were standing in the parking lot, she holding my hand, her white scarf blowing in the wintry wind like the scarf of a kamikaze pilot”—with his right hand he showed the room how Jessie's scarf had floated—“I felt a sudden wave of irrational irritation come over me: actually it was resentment of the human condition, but at that instant my anger zeroed in on Jessie's inability to love me perfectly, without pity or reservation. My own capacity is of course no greater; but that thought was not in my head at the time. For no earthly reason, I have begun to suspect her of seeing other men. I laugh at myself; but once the suspicion has crept in, it has a way of lodging itself firmly, unevictable. Everything seems to confirm the suspicion. Sometimes when I phone her, even late at night, there's no answer.”