The Face of Days
“I take it you don’t extend your disbelief to all deities,” I said.
“I’m selective,” he said, smiling. “I find it easier believing in the principle of the feminine. It has true existence for me.”
I remembered seeing young devotees at his reading earlier in the evening. They would have followed us to the bar had Madd not dissuaded them. As it was a few had followed anyway and made a show of getting soused at another table with friends they had drummed up out of the shadows. The girls showed in their faces that they certainly found affect in Madd. Since all youths belonged to one lost generation or other, I supposed Madd had to serve as legitimate prophet, speaking as he did of all the things mysterious in this world.
“In fact, I think it was the feminine that swallowed Beni. I’m not certain, but I believe it to be so.”
“But you said it was the wall.”
“I didn’t see the wall. He said he did, and that he was going to walk into it. He announced to me that the wall was ahead of us, and that he was determined this night to go through it. He’d wanted to for a long time. A lot of people are like that, I suppose. When they have a strange thing presented to them that doesn’t make sense, they embrace it immediately as if it were some kind of divine sign. That was Beni. He was drunk. Since I didn’t see the wall, I didn’t see how it could do any harm that he walk in a particular direction along the beach.”
“What did you see?” said Jacqueline. I looked at her, to see if she revealed any feelings. Her face showed little. Her eyebrows sat lower over her eyes, and her expression might have been darker than at other times; but nothing in her expression told of deep sadness or regret about the situation. Maybe Madd was right about the wall, in a way. Maybe no one believed in the wall. Maybe Jacqueline could acknowledge that Beni disappeared within the wall without seeing the event in fatal terms. She would see no reason to grieve.
“I saw him walk down the beach and disappear, and that’s all,” said Madd. “I walked immediately after him, curious where he’d gone to, but I didn’t see any sign of him. To the best of my knowledge I followed exactly in his footsteps. No, I shouldn’t say I saw nothing. Maybe I did, because I dreamed almost in a nightmare of what I did see. It was a crone, a figure of extreme age, standing on the beach. In my dream I saw Beni walk toward her and as he closed distance with her, her jaw dropped. It kept dropping lower and lower as he came nearer her, until her mouth had grown so large that he simply stepped into her mouth. She shut her mouth, which instantly returned to normal size. Then she turned and walked into the waves. But that was a dream, later.”
“Your goddess,” said Edwin.
“I’d never exactly pictured her that way,” Madd said. “I suppose it’s no different. I saw a crone. Beni saw a wall. I just find it interesting that Beni was living in consensus reality, because he was seeing what everyone else was seeing, and he had the power to disappear into something that everyone but me could see. Even in my presence he could do it.”
“Whereas to us it’s amazing that you didn’t disappear as well.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I did. Maybe I disappeared into this world, and you are the people on the other side of the wall.”
“You never cease to amuse, Madd,” Edwin said.
“We’re ready for a new bottle already,” Madd said, holding the bottle with a look of surprise.
“I think I need to go to bed,” Jacqueline said. “I have to work early.”
“Let me walk you back,” I said.
“No, no, you stay. You don’t have to work tomorrow morning, do you?”
I saw the change that had come over her face, and saw I would be unwelcome to any familiarities tonight beyond a parting kiss, which I accepted with good grace. She was feeling the loss.
“This is comfort, too,” Madd said, holding up the third bottle when it arrived.
I offered my glass in mute agreement.
“I propose an outing,” said Edwin. “To the beach.”
Madd said nothing as he paced back and forth, his feet kicking occasionally at larger cobble to send it skittering among smaller rocks. Edwin and I sat on one of the wave-polished logs pushed up almost against the wall that protects the sidewalk and street from any unusually high water. We had done justice so far to half the third bottle. At our feet in the sand sat a fourth, bought before leaving Henri’s as insurance against the length of the night.
“Listen to this,” I said. “I’m beginning to see something. It’s maybe what you’ve been talking about.”
“Hell, Jenson, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“You do, in your crazy way, Madd. Listen to this. The secret of the universe. Not really. But it’s pretty good. Just think of us, humanity, becoming such a huge thing upon the globe, such an encompassing thing, such a fertile, ever-burgeoning thing, and we’ve remade everything we can. We’ve remade the world in a billion ways, we’ve changed the shape of the land and the content of what it holds and the taste and flavor of its air and waters. So what I’m saying is this lousy, stupid thing.”
