The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(116)

Sheddan would come to see him one last time and then no more. They sat in an empty theatre. Is that you, John? he said.

The long one was slouched in an upper seat. He didnt answer for a while. Then he said: It is, Squire. In a manner of speaking.

The breath of but one in the silence. He listened. What to say? It’s good to see you, John.

Thank you, Squire. It’s good to be seen.

I’ve missed our little chats.

And I. How did you wind up here?

In a theatre.

Yes.

Not sure. Maybe something to do with the fact that a theatre can never be dark. Something few people know.

A theatre can never be dark?

No. See the light behind you?

Yes?

It is always on. No matter what. Do you know what it’s called?

No.

It’s called a ghost light.

And what. There’s one in every theatre?

Yes. One in every theatre.

And it’s always on. Night or day?

Night or day. Yes. One takes no chances.

No.

Years of wandering all caught in the recollection of a moment. An empty theatre you may have also noticed is empty of everything. It is a metaphor for the vacated world of the past. At any rate it seems an unlikely place to come to for news. Are you well?

I think so.

Why are you here?

I’m not sure.

Nothing has changed.

No.

You wont be offended if I tell you that I find that heartening? You of the iron sphincter. The noble resolve.

No.

I suppose in the end what we have to offer is only what we’ve lost. It’s not that I love paradoxes. It’s just that they’ve increasingly come to seem the last factual reality. I suppose that’s hardly a novel observation.

No.

But let me continue.

Of course.

You called me a visionary of universal ruin. But there was no vision to it. It was at best a hope. You were the visionary. You had the tools for it. I’d no grief in my heart, Squire. That was what was missing. I was always envious of you. For that among other reasons. God it’s cold in here. I’m never warm anymore. You called me Beelzebubba.

I called you what?

Beelzebubba. You dont remember.

I remember. You were not amused.

No. A fake God and you shrug your shoulders. But a fake Satan can only be laughable. And then there’s the implied bumpkinhood.

I’m sorry.

Consider it forgotten.

Thank you. What else?

Ah.

You should say.

I should have said. I was lost in thought, apt metaphor. I’ve little to lay at your door, Squire, but I wasnt treated well. All in all. A bit late for complaints I suppose. To some extent you wrote me off as a parlor intellectual. And it’s true that I never got far from my raising. As I’m sure I’ve said before. I could always appreciate a cold glass of buttermilk. But that’s not a bad thing.

No.

I’d like to have been in better graces with you. I dont think I was ungenerous. Even if it was with other people’s money.

No. You were not.

I always thought you would drown yourself. You didnt.

No.

I had this recurring dream of you. One of two. Alone on the ocean floor in your indiarubber unionsuit. Fleeing some yawning subduction. You struggled in those hadal deeps like a man wading through mucilage while the pugs of your leaden shoes closed slowly in the loam behind you. The plates creaking. The clouds of silt rolling slowly up to engulf you. Your lamp had eked out and you were left to make your way in the eerie light of the ancient fumaroles smoking in the distance like standing candles. There was something more than poetic in your flight before those hellish sealamps out of whose sulphurous womb it well may be that life itself was brokered in the long ago.

You told me.

Did I? I forget. In their recollections dream and life acquire an oddly merging egality. And I’ve come to suspect that the ground we walk is less of our choosing than we imagine. And all the while a past we hardly even knew is rolled over into our lives like a dubious investment. The history of these times will be long in the sorting, Squire. But if there is a common keel to our understanding it is that we are flawed. At our core that is what we know.

You think that we loathe ourselves.

I do. Insufficient to our deserts, of course. But yes.

So how bad is the world?

How bad. The world’s truth constitutes a vision so terrifying as to beggar the prophecies of the bleakest seer who ever walked it. Once you accept that then the idea that all of this will one day be ground to powder and blown into the void becomes not a prophecy but a promise. So allow me in turn to ask you this question: When we and all our works are gone together with every memory of them and every machine in which such memory could be encoded and stored and the earth is not even a cinder, for whom then will this be a tragedy? Where would such a being be found? And by whom?

I dont know, John.

The bore of one’s life closes down like a collet. A final pin of light and then nothing. We should have talked more.

We talked a lot.

We might have come to synchronize our dreams. Like the periods of sorority sisters. In spite of the occasional causticities I’m compelled to say that I’ve always grudgingly admired the way in which you carried bereavement to such high station. The elevation of grief to a status transcending that which it sorrows. No, Squire. Hear me out. It’s the idea of loss. It subsumes the class of all possible lost things. It’s our primal fear, and you get to assign to it what you will. It doesnt invade your life. It was always there. Awaiting your indulgence. Awaiting your concession. And still I feel I sold you short. How to sort your tale from out the commons. It must surely be true that there is no such collective domain of joy as there is of sorrow. You cant be sure that another man’s happiness resembles your own. But where the collective of pain is concerned there can be little doubt at all. If we are not after the essence, Squire, then what are we after? And I’ll defer to your view that we cannot uncover such a thing without putting our stamp upon it. And I’ll even grant you that you may have drawn the darker cards. But listen to me, Squire. Where the substance of a thing is an uncertain business the form can hardly command more ground. All reality is loss and all loss is eternal. There is no other kind. And that reality into which we inquire must first contain ourselves. And what are we? Ten percent biology and ninety percent nightrumor.