The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

8

THE AUTHORITIES DID NOT keep Bill Lundborg in jail long. Bishop Archer arranged for his release-based on Bill's history of chronic mental illness-and presently a day came when the boy showed up at their apartment in the Tenderloin, wearing a wool sweater Kirsten had knitted for him, and his baggy pants, his pudgy face bland.

It personally gladdened me to see him. I had thought about him a number of times, wondering how he was doing. Jail did not seem to have done him any harm. Perhaps he did not distinguish it from his periodic confinements in the hospital. For all I knew, not that much difference existed; I had been confined in neither.

"Hi, Angel," he said to me as I entered the apartment; I had been forced to move my new Honda to keep from getting a ticket. "What is that you're driving?"

"A Honda Civic," I said.

"That's a good engine in that," Bill said. "It doesn't over rev like most mills that small. And it's sprung well. Do you have the four-speed or the five?"

"Four." I took off my coat and hung it in the hall closet.

"For that short a wheel-base, it rides really good," Bill said. "But on impact-if an American car hits you-you'd be wiped out. You'd probably roll."

He told me, then, the statistics on fatalities in single-car accidents. It presented a gloomy picture insofar as small foreign cars were concerned. My chances were nothing like, say, with a Mustang. Bill spoke with enthusiasm about the new front-wheel drive Oldsmobile, which he depicted as a major engineering advance in terms of traction and road-handling. It was evident that he believed I should get a larger car; he exhibited concern for my safety. I found this touching, and, moreover, he knew what he was talking about. I had lost two friends to a single-car accident involving a VW Beetle, the rear wheels of which had cambered in, causing the car to roll. Bill explained that that design had been successfully modified, starting in 1965; after that, VW utilized a fixed rather than swing axle. It limited toe-in.

I think I have these terms right. I am dependent on Bill for this kind of information about cars. Kirsten listened with apathy; Bishop Archer revealed at least simulated attention, although I had the impression that this was a pose. It seemed impossible to me that he either cared or understood; for the bishop such matters as toe-in were as metaphysical matters are to the rest of us: mere speculation, and a frivolous one at that.

When Bill disappeared into the kitchen for a can of Coors, Kirsten's lips formed into a word directed at me.

"What?" I said, cupping my ear.

"Obsession." She nodded solemnly and with distaste.

Returning with the beer, Bill said, "Your life depends on the suspension of your car. A transversal torsion-bar suspension provides-"

"If I hear anything more about cars," Kirsten interrupted, "I am going to begin shrieking."

"Sorry," Bill said.

"Bill," Bishop Archer said, "if I were to buy a new car, what car should I get?"

"How much money-"

"I have the money," the bishop said.

"A BMW," Bill said. "Or a Mercedes-Benz. One advantage with a Mercedes-Benz is that nobody can steal it." He explained, then, about the astoundingly sophisticated locks on the Mercedes-Benz. "Even car repossessors have trouble getting into them," he finished. "A thief can rip off six Caddies and three Porsches in the time it takes to get into a Mercedes-Benz. So they tend to leave them alone; that way, you can leave your stereo in the car. Otherwise, with any other car, you have to lug it around with you." He told us, then, that it had been Carl Benz who had engineered and built the first practical automobile propelled by an internal combustion engine. In 1928 Benz had merged his company with Daimler-Motoren- Gesellschaft to form Daimler-Benz from which had come the Mercedes-Benz cars. The name "Mercedes" was that of a little girl whom Carl Benz had known, but Bill could not remember if Mercedes had been Benz's daughter, grandchild or what.

"So 'Mercedes' was not the name of an auto designer or engineer," Tim said, "but, rather, the name of a child. And now that child's name is associated with some of the finest automobiles in the world."

"That's true," Bill said. He told us another story about automobiles that few people knew. Dr. Porsche, who had designed both the VW and, of course, the Porsche, had not invented the rear-engine, air-cooled design; he had encountered it in Czechoslovakia in an auto firm there when the Germans took over that country in 1938. Bill could not remember the name of the Czech car, but it had been eight-cylinder, not four, a high-powered, very fast car that rolled so readily that German officers were finally forbidden to drive them. Dr. Porsche had modified the eight-cylinder high-performance design at Hitler's personal order. "Hitler wanted an air- cooled engine utilized," Bill said, "because he expected to use the VWs on autobahns in the Soviet Union after Germany took it over, and because of the, weather, because of the cold-"

"I think you should get a Jaguar," Kirsten interrupted, speaking to Tim.

"Oh, no," Bill said. "The Jaguar is one of the most unstable, trouble-prone cars in the world; it's far too complex and requires you to have it in the shop all the time. However, their terrific double-overhead cam engine is maybe the finest high-performance mill ever built, excepting the sixteen-cylinder touring cars of the Thirties."

"Sixteen cylinders?" I said, amazed.

"They were very smooth," Bill said. "There was a huge gap between the flivvers of the Thirties and the expensive touring cars; we don't have that gap now ... there is a complete spread from, say, your Honda Civic-which is basic transportation-up to the Rolls. Price and quality go in small increments, now, which is a good thing. It's a measure of the change in society between then and now." He started to tell us about steam cars and why that design had failed; Kirsten, however, rose to her feet and glared at him severely.

"I think I'll go to bed," Kirsten said.

Tim said to her, "What time am I speaking at the Lions' Club tomorrow?"

"Oh God, I don't have that speech finished," Kirsten said.

"I can improvise," Tim said.

"It's on the tape. All I have to do is transcribe it."

"You can do that in the morning."

She stared at him.

"As I say," Tim said, "I can improvise."

To Bill and me, Kirsten said, "'He can improvise.'" She continued to stare at the bishop, who shifted about uncomfortably. "Christ," she said.

"What's wrong?" Tim said.

"Nothing." She walked toward the bedroom. "I'll finish transcribing it. It wouldn't be a good idea if you-I don't know why we have to keep going into this. Promise me you won't launch into one of your tirades about the Zoroastrians."

Faintly but firmly, Tim said, "If I'm to trace the origins of Patristic thought-"

"I don't think the Lions want to hear about the desert fathers and the monastic life in the second century."

"Then that is exactly what I should talk about," Tim said. To Bill and me he said, "A monk was dispatched to a city carrying with him medicine for an ailing saint ... the names are not necessary. What must be understood is that the ailing saint was a very great saint, one of the most beloved and revered in the north of Africa. When the monk reached the city, after a long journey across the desert, he-"

"Good night," Kirsten said, and disappeared into the bedroom.

"Good night," we all said.

After a pause, Tim continued, speaking in a low voice to Bill and me. "When he entered the city, the monk did not know where to go. Stumbling about in the darkness-it was night-he came across a beggar lying in the gutter, quite ill. The monk, after pondering the spiritual aspects of the issue, ministered to the beggar, applying the medication to him, with the result that the beggar soon showed signs of mending. However, now the monk had nothing to take to the great ailing saint. He therefore returned to the monastery from which he had come, dreadfully afraid of what his abbot would say. When he had told the abbot what he had done, the abbot said, 'You did the right thing."' Tim fell silent, then. The three of us sat, none of us speaking.

"Is that it?" Bill said,

Tim said, "In Christianity no distinction is made between the humble and the great, the poor and the not-so-poor. The monk, by giving the medication to the first sick man he saw, instead of saving it for the great and famous saint, had seen into the heart of his Savior. There was a term of contempt used in Jesus' time for the ordinary people ... they were dismissed as the Am ha-aretz, a Hebrew term meaning, simply, 'the people of the land,' meaning that they had no importance. It was to these people, the Am ha-aretz, that Jesus spoke, and with whom he mingled, ate and slept, that is, slept in their houses-although he did sleep occasionally in the houses of the rich, for even the rich are not excluded." Tim seemed somewhat downcast, I noticed.

" 'The bish,' " Bill said, smiling. "That's what Kirsten calls you behind your back."

Tim said nothing to that. We could hear Kirsten moving about in the other room; something fell and she cursed.

"What makes you think there's a God?" Bill said to Tim.

For a time Tim said nothing. He seemed quite tired, and yet I sensed him trying to summon a response. Wearily, he rubbed his eyes. "There is the ontological proof ..." he murmured. "St. Anselm's ontological argument, that if a Being can be imagined-" He broke off, lifted his head, blinked.

"I can type up your speech," I said to him. "That was my job at the law office; I'm good at that." I rose. "I'll go tell Kirsten."

"There is no problem," Tim said.

"Wouldn't it be better if you were speaking from a written transcript?" I said.

Tim said, "I want to tell them about the-" He ceased speaking. "You know, Angel," he said to me, "I really love her. She has done so much for me. And if she hadn't been with me after Jeff's death ... I don't know what I would have done; I'm sure you understand." To Bill, he said, "I am terribly fond of your mother. She is the person closest to me in all the world."

"Is there any proof of God's existence?" Bill said.

After a pause, Tim said, "A number of arguments are given. Perhaps the best is the argument from biology, advanced for instance by Teilhard de Chardin. Evolution-the existence of evolution-seems to point to a designer. Also there is Morrison's argument that our planet shows a remarkable hospitality toward complex forms of life. The chance of this happening on a random basis is very small. I'm sorry." He shook his head. "I'm not feeling well. We'll discuss it some other time. I would say, however, in brief, that the teleological argument, the argument from design in nature, from purpose in nature, is the strongest argument."

"Bill," I said, "the bishop is tired."

Opening the bedroom door, Kirsten, who now had on her robe and slippers, said, "The bishop is tired. The bishop is always tired. The bishop is too tired to answer the question, 'Is there any proof of the existence of God?' No; there is no proof. Where is the Alka-Seltzer?"

"I took the last packet," Tim said, remotely. "I have some in my purse," I said. Kirsten closed the bedroom door. Loudly. "There are proofs," Tim said.

"But God doesn't talk to anybody," Bill said.

"No," Tim said. He rallied, then; I saw him draw himself up. "However, the Old Testament gives us many instances of Yahweh addressing his people through the prophets. This fountain of revelation dried up, finally. God no longer speaks to man. It is called 'the long silence.' It has lasted two thousand years."

"I realize God talked to people in the Bible," Bill said, "in the olden days, but why doesn't he talk to them now? Why did he stop?"

"I don't know," Tim said. He said no more; there he ceased. I thought: You should not stop there. That is not the place to come to the end.

"Please go on," I said.

"What time is it?" Tim said; he looked around the living room. "I don't have my watch."

Bill said, "What's this nonsense about Jeff coming back from the next world?"

Oh God, I said to myself; I shut my eyes.

"I really wish you would explain it to me," Bill said to Tim. "Because it's impossible. It's not just unlikely; it's impossible." He waited. "Kirsten has been telling me about it," he said. "It's the stupidest thing I ever heard of."

"Jeff has communicated with the two of us," Tim said. "Through intermediary phenomena. Many times, in many ways." All at once, he reddened; he drew himself up and the authority that lay deep in him rose to the surface: he changed as he sat there from a tired, middle-aged man with personal problems into force itself, the force of conviction contrived into, formed into, words. "It is God Himself working on us and through us to bring forth a brighter day. My son is with us now; he is with us in this room. He never left us. What died was a material body. Every material thing perishes. Whole planets perish. The physical universe itself will perish. Are you going to argue, then, that nothing exists? Because that is where your logic will carry you. It isn't possible right now to prove that external reality exists. Descartes discovered that; it's the basis of modern philosophy. All you can know for sure is that your own mind, your own consciousness, exists. You can say, 'I am' and that's all. And that is what Yahweh tells Moses to say when the people ask who he has talked to. 'I am,' Yahweh says. Ehyeh, in Hebrew. You also can say that and that is all you can say; that exhausts it. What you see is not world but a representation formed in and by your own mind. Everything that you experience you know by faith. Also, you may be dreaming. Had you thought of that? Plato relates that a wise old man, probably an Orphic, said to him, 'Now we are dead and in a kind of prison.' Plato did not consider that an absurd statement; he tells us that it is weighty and something to think about. 'Now we are dead.' We may have no world at all. I have enough evidence-your mother and I-for Jeff returning to us as I have that the world itself exists. We do not suppose he has come back; we experience him as coming back. We have lived and are living through it. So it is not our opinion. It is real."

"Real for you," Bill said.

"What more can reality give?"

"Well, I mean," Bill said, "I don't believe it."

"The problem does not lie with our experience in this matter," Tim said. "It lies with your belief-system. Within the confines of your belief-system, such a thing is impossible. Who can say, truly say, what is possible? We have no knowledge of what is and isn't possible; we do not set the limits-God sets the limits." Tim pointed at Bill; his finger was steady. "What one believes and what one knows depend, in the final analysis, on God: you can't will your own consent or refusal to consent; it is a gift from God, an instance of our dependence. God grants us a world and compels our assent to that world; he makes it real for us: this is one of his powers. Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God, was God Himself? You don't believe that, either. So how can I prove to you that Jeff returned to us from the other world? I can't even demonstrate that the Son of Man walked this Earth two thousand years ago for us and lived for us and died for us, for our sins, and rose in glory on the third day. Am I not right about that? Do you not deny that also? What do you believe, then? In objects you get into and drive around the block. There may be no objects and no block; someone pointed out to Descartes that a malicious demon may cause our assent to a world that is not there, may impress a forgery onto us as an ostensible representation of the world. If that happened, we would not know. We must trust; we must trust God. I trust in God that he would not deceive me; I deem the Lord faithful and true and incapable of deceit. For you that question does not even exist, for you will not grant that He exists in the first place. You ask for proof. If I told you this minute that I have heard God's voice speaking to me-would you believe that? Of course not. We call people who speak to God pious and we call people to whom God speaks lunatics. This is an age where there is little faith, It is not God who is dead; it is our faith that has died."

"But-" Bill gestured. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would he come back?"

"Tell me why Jeff lived in the first place," Tim said. "Then perhaps I can tell you why he came back. Why do you live? For what purpose were you created? You do not know who created you-assuming anyone did-and you do not know why, assuming there is a why. Perhaps no one created you and perhaps there is no purpose to your life. No world, no purpose, no Creator, and Jeff has not come back to us. Is that your logic? Is that how you live out your life? Is that what Being, in Heidegger's sense, is to you? That is an impoverished kind of inauthentic Being. It strikes me as weak and barren and, in the end, futile. There must be something you can believe, Bill. Do you believe in yourself? Will you grant that you, Bill Lundborg, exist? You will grant that; fine. Good enough. We have a start. Examine your body. Do you have sense organs? Eyes, ears, taste, touch and smell? Then, probably, this percept-system was designed to receive information. If that is so, it is reasonable to assume that information exists. If information exists, it probably pertains to something. Probably, there is a world-not certainly but probably, and you are linked to that world through your sense organs. Do you create your own food? Do you out of yourself, out of your own body, generate the food that you need in order to live? You do not. Therefore it is logical to assume that you are dependent on this outer world, of whose existence you possess only probable knowledge, not necessary knowledge; world is for us only a contingent truth, not an ineluctable one. What does this world consist of? What is out there? Do your senses lie? If they lie, why were they caused to come into being? Did you create your own sense organs? No, you did not, Someone or something else did. Who is that someone who is not you? Apparently you are not alone, the sole existent reality; apparently there are others, and one of them or several of them designed and built you and your body the way Carl Benz designed and built the first motorcar. How do I know there was a Carl Benz? Because you told me? I told you about my son Jeff returning-"

"Kirsten told me," Bill corrected him.

"Does Kirsten normally lie to you?" Tim said.

"No," Bill said.

"What do she and I gain by saying that Jeff has returned to us from the other world? Many people will not believe us. You yourself do not believe us. We say it because we believe it is true. And we have reasons to believe it is true. We have both seen things, witnessed things. I don't see Carl Benz in this room but I believe he once existed. I believe that the Mercedes- Benz is named after a little girl and a man. I am a lawyer; I am a person familiar with the criteria by which data is scrutinized. We-Kirsten and I-have the evidence of Jeff, the phenomena."

"Yeah, but that phenomena you have, all of them-they don't prove anything. You're just assuming Jeff caused it, caused those things. You don't know."

Tim said, "Let me give you an example. You look under your parked car and you find a pool of water. Now, you don't know that-the water-came from your motor; that is something you have to assume. You have evidence. As an attorney, I understand what constitutes evidence. You as an automechanic-"

"Is the car parked in your own parking slot?" Bill said. "Or is it in a public parking lot, like at the supermarket."

Slightly taken aback, Tim paused. "I don't follow you."

"If it's your own garage or parking slot," Bill said, "where only you park, then it's probably from your car. Anyhow, it wouldn't be from the motor; it'd be from the radiator or the water pump or one of the hoses."

"But this is something you assume," Tim said. "Based on the evidence."

"It could be power-steering fluid. That looks a lot like water. It's sort of pinkish. Also, your transmission, if you have an auto-matic transmission, uses the same kind of fluid. Do you have power steering?"

"On what?" Tim said.

"On your car."

"I don't know. I'm speaking about a hypothetical car."

"Or it could be engine oil," Bill said, "in which case, it wouldn't be pink. You have to distinguish whether it's water or whether it's oil, if it's from the power-steering or the transmission; it could be several things. If you're in a public place and you see a puddle under your car, it probably doesn't mean anything because a lot of people park where you're parked; it could have come from the car parked there before you. The best thing to do is-"

"But you're only able to make an assumption," Tim said. "You can't know it came from your car."

"You can't know right away, but you can find out. Okay; let's say it's your own garage and no one else parks there. The first thing to figure out is what kind of fluid it is. So you reach under the car-you may have to back it out first-and dip your finger in the fluid. Now, is it pink? Or brown? Is it oil? Is it water? Let's say it's water. Well, it could be normal; it could be overflow from the relief system of your radiator; after you turn off an engine, the water gets hotter sometimes and blows out through the relief pipe."

"Even if you can determine that it is water," Tim said, doggedly, "you can't be sure it came from your car."

"Where else would it come from?"

"That's an unknown factor. You're acting on indirect evidence; you didn't see the water come from your car."

"Okay-turn the engine on, let it run, and watch. See if it drips."

"Wouldn't that take a long time?" Tim said.

"Well, you have to know. You should check the level in the power-steering system; you should check your transmission level, your radiator, your motor oil; you should routinely check all those things. While you're standing there, you can check them. Some of them, like the level of fluid in the transmission, have to be checked while the motor's running. Meanwhile, you can also check your tire pressure. What pressure do you carry?"

"In what?" Tim said.

"Your tires." Bill smiled. "There're five of them. One in your trunk; your spare. You probably forget to check that when you check the others. You won't find out you've got no air in your spare until you get a blowout someday and then you'll find out if you have air in your spare. Do you have a bumper jack or an axle jack? What kind of car are you driving?"

"I think it's a Buick," Tim said.

"It's a Chrysler," I said quietly.

"Oh," Tim said.

After Bill departed for his trip back to the East Bay, Tim and I sat together in the living room of the Tenderloin apartment, and Tim talked openly and candidly to me. "Kirsten and I," he said, "have been having a few difficulties." He sat beside me on the couch, speaking in a low voice so that Kirsten, in the bedroom, would not hear.

"How many downers is she taking?" I said.

"You mean barbiturates?"

"Yes, I mean barbiturates," I said.

"I really don't know. She has a doctor who gives her all she wants ... she gets a hundred at one time. Seconal. And also she has Amytal. I think the Amytal is from a different doctor."

"You better find out how many she's taking."

Tim said, "Why would Bill resist the realization that Jeff has come back to us?"

"Lord only knows," I said.

"The purpose of my book is to provide comfort to heartbroken people who have lost loved ones. What could be more reassuring than the knowledge that there is a life beyond the trauma of death, just as there is life beyond the trauma of birth? We are assured by Jesus that an afterlife awaits us; on this the whole promise of salvation depends. 'I am the Resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.' And then Jesus says to Martha, 'Do you believe in this?' to which Martha responds, 'Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.' Later, Jesus says, 'For what I have spoken does not come from myself; no, what I was to say, what I had to speak, was commanded by the Father who sent me, and I know that his commands mean eternal life.' Let me get my Bible." Tim reached for a copy of the Bible which lay on the end table. "First Corinthians, fifteen, twelve. 'Now if Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached, how can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless; indeed, we are shown up as witnesses who have committed perjury before God, because we swore in evidence before God that he had raised Christ to life. For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people. But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep.' " Tim closed his Bible. "That says it clearly and plainly. There can be no doubt whatsoever."

"Guess so," I said.

"So much evidence turned up at the Zadokite Wadi. So much that sheds light on the whole kerygma of early Christianity. We know so much, now. In no way was Paul speaking metaphorically; man literally rises from the dead. They had the techniques. It was a science. We would call it medicine today. They had the anokhi, there at the wadi. "

"The mushroom," I said.

He eyed me. "Yes, the anokhi mushroom."

"Bread and broth," I said.

"Yes."

"But we don't have it now."

"We have the Eucharist."

I said, "But you know and I know that the substance is not there, in the Eucharist. It's like the cargo cults where the natives build fake airplanes."

"Not at all."

"How is it different?"

"The Holy Spirit-" He broke off.

"That's what I mean," I said.

Tim said, "I feel that the Holy Spirit is responsible for Jeff coming back."

"So then you reason that the Holy Spirit does still exist and always existed and is God, one of the forms of God."

"I do now," Tim said. "Now that I've seen evidence. I did not believe it until I saw the evidence, the clocks set at the time of Jeff's death, Kirsten's burned hair, the broken mirrors, the pins stuck under her fingernails. You saw her clothes all disarranged that time; we had you come in and see for yourself. We didn't do that. No living person did that; we wouldn't manufacture evidence. Do you believe we would do that, contrive a fraud?"

"No," I said.

"And the day that those books leaped out of the bookshelf and fell to the floor-no one was there. You saw that with your own eyes."

"Do you think the anokhi mushroom still exists?" I asked.

"I don't know. There is a vita verna mushroom mentioned it in Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis, Book Eight. He lived in the first century ... it would be about the right time. And this citation was not something he derived from Theophrastus; this was a mushroom he saw himself, from his direct knowledge of Roman gardens. It may be the anokhi. But that's only a guess. I wish we could be sure." He changed the subject, then, as was his custom; Tim Archer's mind never stayed on one topic for long. "It's schizophrenia that Bill has, isn't it?"

"Yep," I said.

"But he can earn a living."

"When he's not in the hospital," I said. "Or spiraling into himself and on the way to the hospital."

"He seems to be doing fine right now. But I note-an inability to theorize."

"He has trouble abstracting," I said.

"I wonder where and how he'll wind up," Tim said. "The prognosis ... it's not good, Kirsten says."

"It's zero. For recovery. Zilch. Zip. But he's smart enough to stay off drugs."

"He does not have the advantage of an education."

"I'm not sure an education is an advantage. All I do is work in a record store. And I wasn't hired for that because of anything I learned in the English Department at Cal."

"I've been meaning to ask you which recording of Beethoven's Fidelio we should buy," Tim said.

"The Klemperer," I said. "On Angel. With Christa Ludwig as Leonora."

"I am very fond of her aria," Tim said.

"'Abscheulicher! Wo Eilst Due Hin?' She does it very well. But no one can match Frieda Leider's recording years ago. It's a collectors' item ... it may have been dubbed onto an LP; if so, I've never seen it. I heard it once over KPFA, years ago. I never forgot it."

Tim said, "Beethoven was the greatest genius, the greatest creative artist the world has ever seen. He transformed man's conception of himself."

"Yes," I said. "The prisoners in Fidelio when they're let out into the light ... it is one of the most beautiful passages in all music."

"It goes beyond beauty," Tim said. "It involves an apprehension of the nature of freedom itself. How can it be that purely abstract music, such as his late quartets, can without words change human beings in terms of their own awareness of themselves, in terms of their ontological nature? Schopenhauer believed that art, in particular music, had-has-the power to cause the will, the irrational, striving will, to somehow turn back onto and into itself and cease to strive. He considered this a religious experience, although temporary. Somehow art, somehow music especially, has the power to transform man from an irrational thing into some rational entity that is not driven by biological impulses, impulses that cannot by definition ever be satisfied. I remember when I first heard the final movement of the Beethoven Thirteenth Quartet-not the 'Grosse Fuge' but the allegro that he added later in place of the 'Grosse Fuge.' It's such an odd little bit, that allegro ... so brisk and light, so sunny."

I said, "I've read that it was the last thing he wrote. That little allegro would have been the first work of Beethoven's fourth period, had he lived. It's not really a third-period piece."

"Where did Beethoven derive the concept, the entirely new and original concept of human freedom that his music expresses?" Tim asked. "Was he well-read?"

"He belonged to the period of Goethe and Schiller. The Aufklarung, the German Enlightenment."

"Always Schiller. It always comes back to that. And from Schiller to the rebellion of the Dutch against the Spanish, the War of the Lowlands. Which shows up in Goethe's Faust, Part Two, where Faust finally finds something that will satisfy him, and he bids the moment stay. Seeing the Dutch reclaiming land from the North Sea. I translated that passage, once, myself; I wasn't satisfied with any of the English translations available. I don't know what I did with it ... that was years ago. Do you know the Bayard Taylor translation?" He rose, approached a row of books, found the volume, brought it back, opening it as he walked.

"'Below the hills, a marshy plain infects what I so long have been retrieving: that stagnant pool likewise to drain were now my latest and my best achieving. To many millions let me furnish-soil, though not secure, let free for active toil: green, fertile fields, where men and herds go forth at once, with comfort, on the newest earth, all swiftly settled on the hill's firm base, raised by a bold, hard-working populace.

In here, a land like Paradise about:

up to the brink the tide may roar without,

yet though it gnaw, to burst with force the limit,

by common impulse all men seek to hem it.

Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence,

this wisdom's ultimate and true:

he only earns his freedom and existence-' "

I said, "'Who daily conquers them anew."'

"Yes," Tim said; he closed the copy of Faust, Part Two. "I wish I hadn't lost the translation I made." He then opened the book again. "Do you mind if I read the rest?"

"Please do," I said.

"'Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away of childhood, manhood, age, and vigorous day. And such a throng I fain would see, stand on free soil among a people free!

Then dared I hail the Moment fleeting,

"Ah, finger still-thou art so fair!" '"

"At that point God has won the bet in heaven," I said.

"Yes," Tim said, nodding.

" 'The traces cannot, of mine earthly being, in aeons perish: they are there!

Anticipating here such lofty bliss,

I now enjoy the highest Moment,-this.' "

"That's a very beautiful and clear translation," I said.

Tim said, "Goethe wrote Part Two just a year before his death. I remember only one German word from that passage: verdienen. Earns. 'Earns his freedom.' I suppose that would be Freiheit, freedom. Perhaps it went, 'Verdient seine Freiheit-' " He broke off. "That's the best I can do. 'Earns his freedom who daily conquers it-them, freedom and existence-anew.' The highest point in German Enlightenment. From which they so tragically fell. From Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven to the Third Reich and Hitler. It seems impossible."

"And yet it had been prefigured in Wallenstein," I said.

"Who picked his generals by means of astrological prognostications. How could an intelligent, educated man, a great man, really, one of the most powerful men of his times-how could he begin to believe in that?" Bishop Archer said. "It is a mystery to me. It is an enigma that perhaps will never be solved."

I saw how tired he was, so I got my coat and purse, said good night, and departed.

My car had been ticketed. Shit, I said to myself as I pulled the ticket from the wiper-blade and stuck it into my pocket. While we're reading Goethe, Lovely Rita Meter-Maid is ticketing my car. What a strange world, I thought; or, rather, strange worlds-plural. They do not come together.