Michael Hoffman

Thirteenth segment

Arnprior, 25 km. Renfrew, 80 km. The names mean nothing to me. What time is it? 7:13. Still as bright as mid-day. Maybe I'll stop for dinner in Arnprior? No. I'm hungry, but distance, distance is what I crave now, more than food. But I'm tired. Why didn't I stay in Ottawa? Get a good night's sleep and leave tomorrow morning – that's what I should have done; it's what I wanted to do, but somehow, though the room offered every comfort, I just couldn't settle down. Every sound, however faint, made me jump; in my imagination it presaged a knock on the door; I'd open it and there would be that fellow on the street who took me for Professor What's-his-name. His own name, I learned from the card he handed me, is James Fukuyama – Japanese ancestry? I saw nothing Oriental in his features – and he works in External Affairs, in what capacity the card does not say. All it says is "James Fukuyama, Ministry of External Affairs." That's surely enough for me; I am not curious to know more; I don't want to know even that much. I wish I could undo our meeting, but of course I can't; we did meet, and if I were writing up my Red Notebook as assiduously as you, my boy, wrote up yours, I'd have to put him in it, wouldn't I? – whether I liked it or not, because, whether I like it or not, he happened. What was that professor's name? Moses somebody. Moses. I bear a striking resemblance to a professor Moses somebody, Moses S, I believe, who teaches comparative literature at Concordia University – my own alma mater, incidentally – specializing, apparently, in Nietzsche and Dostoevsky! I wonder if Mr. Fukuyama will get in touch with the professor: "Were you by any chance in Ottawa on May 31?" The professor will say no, and that will absolve me of any identity with him, will effectively dissolve the link between us – if he calls! But what if, as seems more likely, he doesn't? He will continue to harbor the suspicion, maybe even the certainty, for one can be certain of anything without that thing being true –that the man he met, which is to say me, is in fact the professor, who either disdained to acknowledge his former student, or else is suffering from amnesia and honestly thinks he is... Steven Marcus, retired ladies' wear executive. Well, supposing he does think that. How does that affect me? Not at all. What difference can it possibly make to me if some jerk in Ottawa thinks that I am Professor... Sorenberg, that's it, Sorenberg. What difference does it make? None. And yet, it's a fact! It's a fact that a Mr. James Fukuyama of Ottawa thinks that I, Steven Marcus, am Professor Moses Sorenberg. I, Steven Marcus, am not Professor Moses Sorenberg, and yet somebody thinks I am!

Arnprior. Renfrew, 55 km. Keep going. Or maybe... I slow down as a new idea comes to me. Maybe I should get in touch with Professor Sorenberg myself? If for no other reason, to see for myself just how close our resemblance is. Besides that, there's no telling what I might not learn from him about Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. We might become friends, based on our common interest; develop a relationship that, if it materializes, could only be described as fated, given its origin.

Should I? Not for the first time this trip, I am roused by a blast of a truck's horn; I am going 55 kmh in the fast lane. All right, all right. Sorry. I activate my turn signal and edge right. I've missed the first Arnprior exit, but there's another. But... dammit, I wish someone would tell me what to do! I can't help smiling to myself as I recall myself as a teenager, screaming at my mother, "Stop telling me what to do all the time!" Could I possibly have imagined then my present state of mind? Me at sixty-two, wishing my mother was here to demand of me an obedience I would accord her only to willingly. What should I do, mom? Stop at Arnprior and plan my next move? Go back to Montreal without further ado and look up my professorial alter ego? Or – since this idea, too, has come to me – push on to North Bay and find that marvelous slummy hotel with the delightful broken door handles and the loose bedsprings, there to get reacquainted with you, my son. Hm. How far to North Bay? Did you note down the hotel's name? I pull over onto the shoulder and roll to a stop. The map first. The BMW, of course, has one of those... what are they called? GPS?... one of those devices, but I never use it; I know how to, after a fashion, but... well, let's just say that the computer revolution has passed me by; by no exercise of the imagination or force of will can I convince myself that what appears on a computer screen is real, or has any connection to the world I inhabit. I unfold the map, measure the distance with my thumb and forefinger, whose spread the scale in the bottom left-hand corner shows to be worth roughly... 150 km, give or take a bit. An hour, hour and a half. I'd get there at nine; it'd probably still be light. Now, what has the Red Notebook, on the seat beside me (together with The Mind of Primitive Man) have to tell me? Here it is: "I love these slummy rooms..." Yes, yes, but the name? Why, as a matter of fact, there is a name! The Northland Hotel! Very catchy, very original. You can just see the flashing neon sign, with half the lights burnt out. Would it still exist? All right, let's go find out, shall we? North Bay it is. Easing the BMW back into traffic – of which, incidentally, there is very little – I picture myself lying on the very same bed you lay on – pity you didn't record the room number! – mulling over my options. Back to Montreal and Professor Sorenberg? Forward to San Francisco and Debi Asher? Both? Neither?

What shall I slip into the CD player? For I have a sudden craving for music. Beethoven's Sixth? No – Handel's Messiah! What a strange excitement seizes me! Suddenly, inexplicably, everything seems so... so right somehow! Rolling down the highway on a beautiful summer evening, bound for the delightfully slummy Northland Hotel in North Bay, Ont., 150 km ahead, the cat-like purr of the engine, a sound Handel could never, ever have imagined, harmonizing ever so unobtrusively with his greatest creation! The dead body of Isaiah Gibbs? Forgotten. The theft of the book? Forgotten. James Fukuyama? Forgotten, forgotten. Consciously forgotten – which is to say, recalled on purpose that I might dismiss them from my mind. "I'm learning," I say to myself. "I'm learning what it is to be on the road" – and then, to him: "You can despise me all you like for being in a BMW instead of hitchhiking, but you don't know everything; you don't even know how little you know; for people like you, contempt comes easy. Nietzsche said, 'I teach you contempt,' or some such thing, and you said to yourself, 'I despise the stupid bourgeois with their pot bellies and their sagging flesh and their tasteless jewelry, therefore I am a true disciple of Nietzsche.' Well, good luck to you, but if you expect me to be your disciple..."

I slow down, preparing to ease onto the shoulder once more, this time to put the music on, when suddenly I see him: a hitchhiker. I can't make out his features – or hers, it may be – no, it's a man, and his excitement at having, as he supposes, bagged a ride is only too plain. He snatches his pack and runs towards me. Shit. I haven't stopped yet, I could hit the gas and speed past... why don't I? I don't know. Somehow I don't. The car stops; he tries to open the door, finds it locked, and looks to me with an expression of naked appeal. He is not young – not old, but not young; in his thirties, maybe. Somewhat grudgingly, I lean over and unlock the door for him. He flings it open and fairly throws himself onto the seat – I scarcely have time to get the Red Notebook and The Mind of Primitive Man out of his way. "Hey, thanks, man!" he says. Thanks, man. Well, all right, I've done what I've done, now I'm stuck with him.

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"Oh... anywhere. Far. How far you going?"

Should I say Renfrew, and get rid of him after a few kilometers? Already his presence is making me claustrophobic. Strangely enough, my failure to answer immediately seems to dissolve the question; he does not insist on an answer – perhaps, as far as he's concerned, it's of no importance – allowing me to pretend to be too engrossed in maneuvering the car back onto the highway to have heard.

Now what? Who is to start the conversation? What a stupid predicament! There is a perfect stranger sitting in my car, and, honestly, I'm not altogether sure how he came to be here. He was hitchhiking and I stopped, but I didn't stop for him, wasn't even aware of his existence, and suddenly... With furtive, sidelong glances I try to make him out. There's not much to him. Jeans, t-shirt, windbreaker. Pale blue knapsack resting on his knees. Dark hair, neither long nor short, just as he himself is neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, handsome nor ugly. He's nobody; he's everybody; he could be anybody. Should I ask him where he's from? The knapsack is small, more like a day pack, and from what I can see of it doesn't look terribly full. He's traveling light – which reminds me that I myself have nothing on me, a situation I'd meant to remedy in Ottawa, but somehow I never got around to it. He's clean-shaven – which is more than I can say for myself. What would he be making of me, with my two-day growth of beard? But he doesn't seem interested in me at all; he's staring straight ahead, as if he finds the scenery absorbing. Maybe he sees more in it than I do. Maybe he's on drugs. A sign: Renfrew, 25 km. Pembroke, 60.

"I'm going as far as Pembroke," I say. I'm not sure myself what I have in mind. Why say Pembroke and not Renfrew? Why say anything at all?

"That's cool, man. Thanks."

Does he even know where Pembroke is? Has he seen the sign? My hands tighten on the steering wheel. This is crazy: I am nervous in my own car. I feel as if I'm imposing on him, rather than the other way around. I had been about to put on Handel's Messiah, but this alien presence somehow makes that, if not impossible, at least undesirable. I don't want to listen to it with him, I want to listen to it alone. That's why I stopped - not for him, but to put the music on. "I stopped for the Messiah but got him instead." The thought pops into my mind, and makes me smile, but it's a nervous smile, and I constrain it lest he ask me, or at least wonder silently, what I'm grinning at.

The silence has gone on too long to be lightly broken. If I'd asked him immediately where he's from, it might have sounded like genuine and natural interest; now, it would only ring hollow. And where could it possibly lead? He'd name a city or town, which in all probability would mean nothing to me, and then what? Or supposing he names a place I've been to. I imagine myself exclaiming, with exaggerated excitement, "Oh, I've been there!" and racking my brains for the name of the main street, or the hotel I stayed at, or the park I took a stroll in – the desperate search for common ground.

Here's Renfrew. I could have shed him here, and recovered possession of my car, my space, my thoughts, my music... As it is I must endure him for another 35 km. What possessed me to say Pembroke? I could of course say I've changed my mind, I just remembered a call I have to make in Renfrew, my ex-wife or something... Thirty-five kilometers. At 110 kmh I can be there in fifteen minutes. At 120, maybe in ten. I seem to be accelerating; now I'm doing 130.

"I saw you at Rigaud."

"What?"

He has spoken. I'm afraid I fairly gasped with surprise.

"I saw you at Rigaud," he says again. "Your car, anyway. I was hitching there. I remember you license plate number. You slowed down. I thought you were going to stop for me, but then you sped up again. Maybe you didn't like the look of me."

Was that said accusingly? "You're mistaken," I say. There's a faint quiver in my voice. Does he hear it? "I left this morning from Hawkesbury."

"It was last night. Very late. I'm not mistaken. I have this thing about license plates. I notice them, though God knows they're not worth noticing. You might even say I'm obsessed with them. When I was a kid I used to be fascinated by license plates from faraway places. Strange, eh?"

"Mine's not from a faraway place."
"I know. Quebec, AFX 355."

"Do you memorize the number of every car that passes?"

"No. But I remember yours, because you seemed about to stop for me."

"I don't remember anything of the kind," I say, not hoping that my words, or my way of uttering them, would carry much conviction.

He is silent; so am I. 140, I see I'm doing. Pembroke, 10 km. "I'm stopping at Pembroke," I say, just in case he's forgotten.

He hasn't. "I know," he says.

I venture a question: "Will you stop here too, or do you plan to go on?"

"It's still light. I'll go on."

"Are people likely to stop at night?"

"Long-distance truckers do. If you're lucky."

"Well... shall I let you off here, then?"

"Here will be fine."

I slow down, ease onto the shoulder, stop. He opens the door. "Thanks, man." He accords me a little wave, which I return as, with an almost indescribable relief, I set the car in motion. Here's the exit for Pembroke. He's no longer in sight, but I take it anyway – an indication of how spooked I feel.

So here I am somewhere in the outskirts of Pembroke. It wasn't even the main exit. Houses, row on row of houses. They could be houses anywhere, in the suburb I left behind, for instance, and yet, for all their perfect, almost offensive commonplaceness, they house perfect strangers; people in no way different from the people I know, and yet... strangers. Here's a man walking a dog. Don't ask me what kind of dog; I know nothing about dogs except that I hate them; don't ask me why – maybe some forgotten incident in childhood. This man, this dog... I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, exactly. Supposing, through some supernatural agency, they were suddenly whisked through the time-space continuum, or whatever it's called, into my own neighborhood. It would occur to nobody there to find their presence strange; they would blend in with the scenery there just as they do here; they could continue their walk without anyone dreaming of disturbing them, or feeling they don't belong. And yet, if I were to roll down my window and say hello to him, he would be very much put out, would think me mistaken at best, crazy at worst. What is wrong with me? Do I have a fever? Instinctively I raise a hand to my forehead. It is cool. To school, mom would say. So it's not fever that makes this perfectly obvious, perfectly insignificant thought of mine seem striking and meaningful. Here are some children gathered on a driveway in front of one of the perfectly ordinary houses that could be anywhere but are here. They look about eight, nine. Five, six of them. Boys and girls. What are they playing? Hopscotch! Yes, there's a boy getting ready to toss a pebble onto one of the squares chalked on the asphalt. Just like we used to do when I was a kid! Without specifically intending to I stop the car. The scene holds me rapt. The pebble lands on its intended square, and now the boy begins his hop; balancing on one foot, he stoops to pick up the pebble; he's going to make it "home"... But the children have noticed me, I have distracted them. Another sort of man might smile, wave, call out a greeting, say, "I used to play that when I was your age!"; maybe he'd even get out of the car and ask the kids to let him have a turn; if he did it in the right spirit they'd be delighted, but it has to be done right, and not with a calculated rightness but an instinctive rightness – kids can sense calculation, and they despise it more than anything; more, even, than evil... I set the car in motion, absurdly pretending not to have noticed the children at all, to be searching for a certain house.

Where is the highway? What time is it? 8:26. Soon the children's mothers will call them inside: "Bedtime, children! School tomorrow!" That's what my mother used to say. Is there school tomorrow? Of course. Summer holidays begin June 23, or thereabouts, and today is... May 31? June1? Bedtime. Oh, for a bed! I had planned to go on to North Bay, but weariness, fatigue... Maybe I'll check into a hotel here. Would that hitchhiker still be there, I wonder? Or would he have been picked up? Maybe he's on his way to North Bay!

I pull into a little shopping mall, park, turn off the engine, close my eyes and just sit there. What now? If I had an idea, would I have the strength to carry it out? Do I lack strength because I have no idea? Or is it vice versa? If I'm going to make North Bay tonight I'd better get started. Yes, but what if that fellow, my erstwhile passenger, is hitchhiking, and sees me pull onto the highway? Well, what if he does? He'll think it strange, of course. He'll see me and know it's me, I'll see him and know it's him, we'll make eye contact, he'll see me pretending not to know him... and then in a flash I'll vanish out of his life forever, leaving him with a weird, incomprehensible impression of a man who, in "real life," is anything but weird and incomprehensible, who in fact is ordinariness personified... Crazy, insane. I am perfectly sane, and yet I am acting insanely. What's that? I jerk awake – not that I have been sleeping, only daydreaming, but anyway, who is this woman who is trying to get into my car? What's going on? Fortunately the door is locked. "Oh, sorry!" she exclaims on the other side of the closed window. Fearing I may not have heard her, she says it again, more loudly, with exaggerated movements of the mouth: "I'm sorry! Wrong car!" She's young, pretty. With a sheepish smile and a wave she is gone. Who did she take me for? Her father? Is there another silver-gray BMW in the lot somewhere? Never mind. Out of here. Out. The engine purrs into gentle but powerful life. What time is it? 9:03. Still not dark. Disorienting, these long June days. Never mind. I'm awake now. North Bay, North Bay. Where's the highway?

There's no sign of the hitchhiker as I ease my way into the westbound traffic. So he's been picked up – good for him. May he be taken far. A fresh wave of relief surges through me at my recovered solitude. Handel's Messiah – that's what I had stopped to put into the CD player when he suddenly materialized. Shall I put it on now? Not if it means stopping. The light is fading quite rapidly now. I switch on the headlights, and savor the orange fireplace glow of the instrument panel. How I love this car!

 

Fourteenth segment

It's 10:05 as I roll onto the exit ramp for North Bay, and still not what you'd call pitch dark. How far north would we be, I wonder? What latitude? If I inquire at the desk of the Northland Hotel, will they know? Better think first of finding the Northland Hotel. It'll be right downtown, no doubt, near the train station, or the bus station. That's where the cheap bars and the cheap hotels are. Strangely enough, all my earlier weariness has left me; the indefatigable BMW has given me a kind of energy transfusion; I could drive all night. Should I? Maybe I will – but let me at least see the delightful slum that meant so much to you. I'll decide then whether to check in or not, but I do at least want to see it. The most obvious place to ask is at a gas station, and though I'm in no urgent need of a fill-up, I pull into the first one I see. "Northland? Hotel?" The spring in the step of the young fellow who's about to attack my windshield with his squeegee loses a bit of its élan; something almost resentful flashes into his expression at my depriving him of it; he's not from here, he explains – "Linda!" Linda? "Hang on just a moment, sir, Linda's local, she'll know." We're joined presently by a young woman dressed identically to the young man – red jacket, red pants, red cap. A grease-stain mars her lovely left cheek, or – who knows? – perhaps makes it lovelier. "Do you know the Northland Hotel?" She does indeed – is it my imagination that detects a certain triumph in her manner as she relegates the non-local young man into the background and takes over? "Wait a sec, I'll draw you a map." From the breast pocket of her jacket she withdraws a pad and pen. "It's just a little bit complicated, you see, because Slater Street is closed for roadwork." She shows me how to get around Slater Street. "And here it is, on your right," she announces, adorning a little rectangle marked "N" with two bold arrows. She rips the sheet from the pad and presents it to me. "Think you can follow that?" She smiles and winks. Is she flirting with me?

"Your name's Linda," I murmur, feeling my face redden. "I know a girl named Linda..."

"As for girls named Linda," she snaps, tartly but good-naturedly, "there's no shortage of 'em! Hope you find what you're looking for."

She's gone. Did I say something wrong? Did I offend her? Meanwhile, the young man has finished cleaning my windshield and now offers to empty my ashtray. "No, that's okay, I don't smoke..." What business is it of his whether I smoke or not? I'm done at last; the BMW is gorged with gas, my credit card is safely back in my wallet, and Linda's little drawing is on my lap. I turn left, as instructed. Lights are everywhere – headlights, tail lights, neon lights, traffic lights, street lights... Was North Bay this bright in your day? It's puzzling; I'd been picturing a nothing little town in the middle of nowhere... Here's the curve she mentioned; I'm to bear right. Done. Now... left at third traffic light. Okay. Supposing someone stopped me in downtown Montreal and asked me for directions to... well, Place Ville Marie, or the Chateau Champlain, or wherever. I can just imagine the stammering confusion I'd be reduced to. But she, Linda, without the faintest hesitation, as if she'd been expecting the question and had prepared for it, not only had an answer ready but was able to produce this map which, I now find, corresponds with perfect exactitude to the actual city. On my right, she said – and here it is: Northland Hotel. But... what the hell? This is where you stayed? This is your slum, "with the door handles broken off and the door hinges creaking eerily"? A horn beeps – I shouldn't stop here. Where can I stop? Damn, the traffic is... what the hell is going on? Is this North Bay? Have I come to Toronto or somewhere by mistake? I crawl forward, stop at a red light, turn left, scanning the area for some sort of parking place, but there's nothing; nothing is parked, all is in motion. I advance one block, two... Ah. Here's a parking lot. I stop abruptly. Another horn sounds. I'm in the way, holding up traffic; I could get rear-ended, driving like this. Should I go into the lot? Is it open all night? If not, and I check into the hotel... But why check in? That Northland is surely not your Northland! The horn again, more insistently this time. All right, all right. I flash my turn signal and go into the lot. An old man – well, oldish... my age, perhaps – emerges from the little yellow shed and jogs over to me. "Hi," he says, like we're old friends who last saw each other yesterday.

"Listen," I say, "do you know the Northland Hotel?"

"The Northland? Sure. It's just around the corner."

"How long's it been there?"

"How long?" He shrugs. "Long as I can remember."

"You from around here?"

"Well, from Sturgeon Falls originally."

Wherever that is. "Is there another Northland Hotel in town?"

"Another Northland Hotel? How could there possibly be?" The expression on his face says, "Are you mad?"

"Hm. Are you open all night?"

"Twenty-four seven."

"I see." What do I see? He's waiting for me to get out and turn the car over to him. I guess I will – what else is there for me to do? "Take good care of her," I say, trying to sound casual.

"You bet," he grins. I see empty space where a tooth should be. "Treat her like my own baby. You staying overnight?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Well, either way."

We part on that ambiguous note.

***

The lobby of the Northland Hotel is so intimidatingly opulent that, having entered, I hesitate to step forward. This is beyond luxury; this is... no, I'm exaggerating. It's the contrast with the slum I'd been expecting that has my senses reeling. My hand strays to my unshaven cheek. What will they make of me at the reception desk, assuming I can muster the courage to approach it? It seems very far away; I can barely make it out across the vast distance of carpeted floor and through the milling throng of men and women... What is going on? A wedding? An official visit by a royal family? A weird thought strikes me – that this is your slum after all, only in my disorientated state I am seeing it all wrong, or... hm! But if that's true, wouldn't the mere thought burst the illusion, or at least cause it to lose some of its solidity? Nothing of the sort happens. On the contrary, the scene before my eyes grows sharper, more nuanced, almost unbearably so. That woman, for instance, in the long green dress, standing alone by the potted plant as though waiting for someone... She seems to have noticed me. She smiles, makes a move in my direction. The jeweled necklace at her throat glitters in the light of a chandelier. She stops in mid-stride; the smile leaves her face; realizing her mistake, she returns to the potted plant and resumes her attitude of waiting, having dismissed me from her thoughts as completely as though I had never existed. I hear the hum of conversation, the clink of ice in a glass, a thin wreath of music. "A thin wreath of music" – that's from a poem, isn't it? Isn't it, my boy? No, it's from the Red Notebook – you high on something or other and waxing poetic.

The Red Notebook. Here it is in my hand. Four red notebooks and The Mind of Primitive Man; all I possess in the world apart from my BMW and my all-enabling credit card. There was a TV commercial once – a seedy-looking guy enters a luxury hotel, throwing the entire establishment into a panic; unfazed, he slaps his credit card on the counter; the credit card speaks for itself and procures him the service to which a holder of that particular card is entitled. Emboldened, borrowing his stride, so to speak, I make my way to the front desk. "Yes, sir? Room, sir?" No shock, no panic; times have changed. "Listen," I say. "Forty-odd years ago when I was hitchhiking across Canada, I put up one night at a slummy little dive in North Bay called the Northland. It is recorded here, with all the romantic embellishment of youth, in my journal." I allow him a glimpse of the Red Notebook. "It's that place I came looking for. I find instead..." No need to elaborate; he knows perfectly well what I find instead. "Can you say something to maybe lighten my confusion?"

"A slummy little dive called the Northland?" His spectacles flash. He is a very handsome man, his jet-black hair not so much cut or coiffed as sculpted, his dark suit suggesting he is no mere desk clerk but someone wielding a behind-the-scenes authority that he need not raise his voice to exercise. "I'm sure I wouldn't know, sir." His very deference is dismissive. "This Northland has been in North Bay since 1975" – and this Northland, he implies, his meaning clearer than words could possibly make them, is the only one that counts.

"Hm." What to do? There is clearly not the faintest reason for me to be here – or to be anywhere else, for that matter. "What time is it?"

The man casts a glance behind him. The same thing happened in Ottawa. I asked the time, failing to notice the wall clock right in front of me, and was answered without a hint of perceptible irony, as I am here: "Five minutes past eleven."

"Five minutes past eleven... All right, yes," I say, suddenly making my mind up – not because the time settles anything, but simply because a decision has to be made, whether there is a basis for making one or not, and "yes" is easier to say than "no." "Yes, I'll stay tonight."

"Very well, sir."

I scrawl my name and address on the form he lays before me, and he presents me with a key to room 1789. 1789 – a date known to every schoolchild as marking the beginning of the French Revolution. Could anyone, receiving this key, fail to be struck by that? "I wonder," I say, "if room 1972 is available."

"1972? Yes, but 1972 is a double room."

"That's all right. Let me have 1972 please."

"Very well, sir." He obviously likes the phrase. "The elevator is just there on your left. Have you any luggage?"

"Yes. This." I show him my four red notebooks and The Mind of Primitive Man. "Thank you."

***

Room 1972 of the Northland Hotel in North Bay, Ontario is, like whatever the room number was at the Holiday Inn in Ottawa, fit for a royal occupant – Marie Antoinette perhaps, since the French Revolution has come up. Come to think of it: what would Marie Antoinette, or someone like her, feel upon entering a first-class 21^st-century hotel room like this? Would she be awed, contemptuous, indifferent? I know so little of history. How was royalty housed in her day? How did they wash? Bathe? Void their bladders and bowels? Not in comfort, is my guess, although, not having 21^st-century comfort as a standard, they probably didn't miss whatever accoutrements we today wouldn't dream of living without. I switch on the overhead light and close the door behind me. This is astonishing, truly astonishing. It is not a room I find myself in, but a world, a universe. Not a sound to be heard, not a ray of light that doesn't come from within. Thick chocolate-brown drapery covers an entire wall; behind it, presumably, is a window, but I feel no inclination to investigate. The carpet beneath my feet is as soft as a cloud; one doesn't walk on it, one floats. The bed is in the center of the room. It's a double room, therefore, I suppose, a double bed, but it's easily big enough for three, perhaps even four. The desk and the night table which the room also contains are positively dwarfed by it. To all intents and purposes, this room is one vast bed. And I have it all to myself! I have lived alone all my adult life, and yet never, never have I ever had such a sense of solitude – solitude complete, solitude inviolable – as I have now. The joy that wells up in me is such as I imagine a young lover feels as he meets his beloved. Am I high on something? I'm not, of course, but I feel high, higher than I ever felt on the drugs to which Isaiah Gibson represented my initiation. What is this? What's happening to me? Isaiah Gibson – is he really dead? I remember, I left the youth hostel in Hawkesbury convinced that he was – but couldn't I have been mistaken? Of course I could. I'm no doctor. I didn't even think to take his pulse; not that I would have known how. His motionless surprised me, and I panicked and pronounced him dead. I daresay many a sleeper looks dead. He's probably up and about at this very moment, taking the air on his front porch and, for all I know, wondering whatever became of me. Should I call? Is there a phone? Stupid question – of course there's a phone. There it is, on the desk. What's the name of the place? That waitress in... where was it? Alfred? She mentioned it: the Rhyme and Reason. I'll call directory assistance...

Instead I lie down on my bed, as pleased with myself as though I had called directory assistance, and spoken to Isaiah, and heard from his own lips that he had never thought of dying and was surprised to wake up and find me gone. Oh, Lord, how good I feel, how good! Like an insomniac who has finally been granted a night's sleep, and now is privileged to see life as it really is. Dostoevsky, I remember, spoke of an "aura" that precedes an epileptic fit – it lasts mere seconds, but the joy it affords, the world harmony it reveals behind the outward shell of chaos, is worth, he said, the whole of a person's life lived on the conventional, "healthy" plane. Can mere seconds, however joyous, really be worth decades of life, however blind? Does one have to be an epileptic to know what Dostoevsky knew, to see what he saw? No, no. Have I myself not just now had a vision of eternal life? Dostoevsky sent his young monk Alyosha Karamazov a vision of the radiant wedding feast at Cana in Galilee; my vision was of Isaiah Gibson... I am talking nonsense, I know, but... a curious kind of excitement has taken hold of me, like nothing I have ever experienced before... There must be a Bible in the drawer of that desk, there must be, there always is... Cana of Galilee, the first miracle, where Jesus turned water into wine. I seem to feel someone taking me by the hand, pulling me off the bed. Is the feeling an illusion? That depends on how narrow our definition of reality is, doesn't it? Yes, here's the Bible. Where was that story? I am not familiar with the Bible, which shows no doubt how sadly and stupidly I have wasted the time I have been accorded here on Earth. "Never mind the Bible," says a voice, a somewhat impatient voice, which does not, however, startle me. "The phone, the phone." I pick up the phone and, while I'm puzzling over what to do with it, a voice comes through the receiver – and this voice does startle me. "Room service." Room service! How did that happen? Well, happen it did. "Scotch," I hear myself say. Then, as though the sound of that unexpected word has given me an idea, I proceed: "Bring me a scotch on the rocks. Make it a double." "Certainly, sir." "How long will you be?" "Ten minutes." But surely ten minutes have not elapsed before there is a gentle tap at the door. "I'm coming, I'm coming," I mumble, as though drunk already. "I have drunk deep of joy" – who said that? Shakespeare? "I have drunk deep of joy/ And I will taste no other wine tonight." What treasures, what treasures we throw away in our youth, not recognizing their value; if we're lucky we live long enough to recover them. "I have drunk deep – " The tap is repeated, less gentle this time, and reinforced by an announcement: "Room service!" The door opens – I must have opened it – to reveal not a waiter but a fairy tale prince, a radiant young man in a splendid uniform, balancing in one hand a tray, on which rests a glass. "Double scotch on rocks?" I confirm. "Shall I put it on your credit card?" "Yes, please." Then it occurs to me that I must give him something, I must tip him – how much? But he is gone; my fairy tale prince is gone! And the scotch? There, on the desk, by the phone. Did he disdain my hesitation? Or does the likes of him disdain tips? Or does that too go on the credit card?

 

Fifteenth segment

The phone looks like it is about to ring. I am sitting at the desk, sipping my scotch which, like the wine at the feast in Cana, continually renews itself; I sip and sip but the glass remains, as it was to begin with, half full; nor does the ice melt. This miracle does not surprise me – why should it? Isn't the natural order of things itself astonishing? The mere fact that I am alive, that I know myself to be alive, that I am I – what can be more astonishing, more miraculous, than that? I am a miracle – so why should I be surprised if a miracle happens to me?

Only one faint anxiety disturbs my contentment. The phone. No, I am not drunk. I know that nobody in the world, nobody in the universe, knows I am here; nobody could contact me even if they wanted to – and who would want to? – and yet, as I say, it looks somehow as if it is about to ring. That too is absurd, you will say – rightly; I know as well as you do that a telephone about to ring, or ringing, for that matter, looks no different than a telephone not about to ring. Nevertheless... is there some way to disconnect it? A jack I can unplug? It would be somewhere behind the desk. I lower myself down from the chair to look for it – here it is; but no, it's fixed in place, you can't remove it. Wait, I have an idea. I pick up the phone again. After a pause the familiar voice sounds: "Room service." "I want the front desk," I say. "Dial zero," says the voice. Fine. I dial zero. "Front desk." "Hello, this is room..." What was the room number? A momentary panic – instantly soothed! He knows my room number: "1972." "Yes," I say. "1972. Please hold all calls." "Hold all calls. Very well, sir." "Very well sir" – it must be the man with the sculpted hair and the flashing spectacles. What will he be thinking? How will I face him in the morning, when he informs me, with mockingly irreproachable deference, that there were no calls to hold?

But no sooner have I cut myself off from the outside world than a kind of restlessness comes over me; the calm, scotch-flavored contemplation I'd looked forward to has been denied me. Like Moses, I have been permitted to glimpse the Promised Land but not to cross over into it. Like Moses! I, Steven Marcus, like Moses! There's a joke for you. No one will call me, that's settled, but is there anyone I, Steven Marcus, can call? I rack my brain for names. They do not come. I am not rich in acquaintances. "Moses, Moses," echoes in my brain, but like gibberish, devoid of meaning: "Moses, Moses." Then: "Moses Sorenberg." Moses Sorenberg? Who's he? My head is beginning to ache. "I have an idea," I hear myself say aloud – hear myself as though through a thin wall; my voice is that of the company president I once was, rallying his subordinates: "Gentlemen, I have an idea. I will take a hot shower, and go to bed." An Aspirin would be nice... Never mind.

Suddenly I sit up bolt upright in my chair. Have I been dreaming? Impossible. If that was a dream... impossible! It was the clearest, most coherent, most vivid thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I was... my God! I was in the middle of a crowd, a vast throng, I see nothing but faces, bodies, eyes, mouths, beards... No street, no houses, no walls or furnishings – where am I? There is no way to know, nothing that so much as suggests a setting. And everyone, everyone, is shouting at me, shouting – not in anger but so I'll understand; it is absolutely necessary that I understand – only I understand nothing, because I don't know their language; not a single word is intelligible to me...

What time is it? Where is the light switch? Good God, I hear those voices still! I get to my feet, and stagger about looking for the switch. The pain in my head now is beyond a simple headache, it's... I don't know, it's a pain I've never felt before. Not unbearable, just... unusual, different. A brain tumor, maybe? And dizzy – the floor is reeling, like ocean waves – "Look, mom! I'm walking on water!" My mother, I have neglected to mention, is Christian; not church-going Christian, but Christian, and with, for all her intelligence, an odd superstitious streak where divine matters are concerned; this drunken, mocking sally of mine would have made her gasp. Drunken – am I drunk? How much did I drink? Here's the light switch. The room goes dark. Pitch dark. That means it's still night – unless those chocolate-brown curtains are proof against daylight, which may well be the case. A wave more powerful than the others upends me, and when I recover consciousness I am lying face down on the massive bed, quite content to remain there. The voices are silent – only the faces remain, all gazing at me, some with horror, some with pity. Then they too fade. The thought occurs that I should undress and get under the covers, make myself comfortable, but my brain fails to send the requisite orders to my limbs, and I make no move to do so.

***

I awake from a dream of Linda – the Linda of the stationery store. She is naked and so am I, we are in bed together – whose bed I don't know; not mine – and though she does her best to arouse me, it is no use. I apologize; she assures me there is nothing to apologize for. She will not stop trying, will not give it up as hopeless. "Linda," I say, "I am impotent, have always been, that's why I never married." She merely smiles, as if to say, "I've heard that line before," and proceeds with her stroking, caressing, licking, sucking. "Linda, please," I say, "stop, or it will get to the point I will be unable to control my revulsion, because what to other men is the height of pleasure is to me..." "Revulsion?" "Yes." Why doesn't she stop? Does she not understand me? Have I failed to make myself clear? "Linda, can't you see that you are turning my love for you into hate? Don't do it, I beg you, because... because my love for you is all I have..." What a stupid dream. How long was I asleep? The room is dark, but not quite as dark as before. It might be morning. The pain in my head is still there – a little worse, I fancy. What's that sound? Rain? Could it be raining? It could be, of course – why not? How did I get under the covers? Am I undressed? Yes, I am. Strange. Did someone put me to bed? Certainly I have no memory of putting myself to bed. So someone was ministering to me while I was unconscious. Pain shoots through my head at the slightest movement. I am dying, I think to myself with perfect calm. I am dying. I close my eyes, as if to signal to death that I will put up no resistance. I drift off, and Isaiah Gibson says, "Welcome." I drift past him. There is a knock on the door. I open my eyes. "Come in," I murmur. I brace myself for the entrance of a stranger, but no one enters; the sound of the rain is steadier now, and the pain in my head is gone.

What to do? Call room service and order breakfast? Not a bad idea. I suddenly realize I'm hungry. Was it my hunger that suggested the idea, or the idea that suggested my hunger? When's the last time I ate? Alfred, I think. Bacon and eggs at Alfred – how long ago was that? Hm. What shall I order? Not bacon and eggs... "Caesar salad" pops into my mind. Caesar salad. To be perfectly honest, I'm not altogether sure what a Caesar salad is. Well, all I have to do is pick up the phone and command one to be brought me, and within minutes I shall know. Let me wash and dress first; I'll think it over carefully while I'm in the shower. How strangely, ridiculously good I feel. All trace of my hangover, or brain tumor, or whatever it was, is gone. I feel ten years younger, if not twenty. I feel immortal – yes, that's the word; it's as if, during the night, I fought a battle to the death with death – and won! Well, well! Good God – is that my face I see in the bathroom mirror? The stubble is almost a beard now – already? It promises to be white and very distinguished. Perhaps I'll let it grow. I've never had a beard. There was that abortive attempt to grow one back in the days of the Red Notebook... Ah, that shower feels good! I close my eyes and just stand there. I remember as a child I would stand in the shower pretending I was Superman and the hot water was kryptonite, the one material in the universe to which the invulnerable man was vulnerable; my knees would buckle and I would actually sink to the floor in simulated agony! And in my agony I would hear my mother's voice: "Steven! Do you know the price of hot water?"

What is that – the telephone? Is the telephone ringing? What telephone? Where? My mother, calling to remind me of the price of hot water? What idiotic thoughts come into your head when you're flustered! Ignore it, ignore it – but even as I'm saying that to myself I'm shutting off the water in guilty confusion. Snatching a towel but too flurried to wrap it around myself, I dash to the desk, to the phone – who, who can it possibly be? Moses Sorenberg? "Hello?" A voice addresses me – calmly, clearly, perfectly comprehensibly, and yet it takes a minute for the message to sink in: it is checkout time and I must be on my way or be charged for another night. "What time is it?" I demand.

"Eleven forty-five."

"I'm staying tonight," I hear myself say.

"Very well, sir."

What? Him again? Is he still on duty? I hang up, go back to the bathroom, and set about drying myself. What a stupid thing I've just done. Why stay tonight? What for? To hell with breakfast, damn Caesar and his salad – I long to be off. Off where? Off somewhere. Off. Here's what I'd do if I could: I would get on a highway not knowing where it led. I'd drive and drive. With Handel's Messiah and Beethoven's Sixth for company. With the rain pattering against the roof and the windshield, and the roadside trees enfolded in mist. Is that possible? No. Road signs are everywhere. Sudbury, x km; Ottawa, y km. You can't set out from North Bay without making a decision: towards Sudbury, or towards Ottawa? Well, still, that's no reason to stay in North Bay. I pick up the phone; I'll tell Mr. Very Well Sir that I've changed my mind, I'm checking out immediately, thank you for the service, you've been very kind, if ever again I have business in North Bay – "Room service." Room service! I hang up. It's not room service I want, it's the front desk. Of course – to reach the front desk you must dial one. I pick up the receiver again and dial one. But instead of the front desk I get a dial tone. What the - ? Ah. My mistake. Front desk is zero. Wait... what's the number of directory assistance? 104, if memory serves. 104. "Directory assistance." I'm right! In my excitement I almost forget whom to ask for – almost, but not quite. "Montreal, Concordia University, department of philosophy." She says something I don't catch; there is a pause, and then... dammit, a pencil! I have nothing to write with. "The number is 5-1-4-8-7-1-4-3-1-2. That's 5-1-4..." 871-4312, 871-4312. Got it thank you. I dial quickly, so as not to forget, but in my haste I forget to dial one for the outside line. "Room service." Damn room service! I try again. It rings, rings again... "Concordia University, philosophy department." "Hello!" My feelings, I am aware, are altogether disproportionate to the occasion, more appropriate to a stranded man sighting a helicopter and foreseeing rescue. Never mind. Never mind! "Professor Sorenson... is Professor Sorenson there?" "Sorenson? There is no professor here by that name..." The helicopter vanishes; my heart sinks – but it suddenly reappears! "Sorry, my mistake – Sorenberg. Sorenberg" "I'm sorry, Professor Sorenberg – oh! Wait, he just walked in. I wasn't expecting him. Whom shall I say is calling?"

"Whom shall – " What can I say? Steven Marcus of P. Marcus and Son, Ladies Wear? "Tell him... er... a student... a former student... Fukuyama."

Stupid, stupid! I haven't even said hello to the man, and already I've lost control of the situation!

For a man who "just walked in" and should therefore be immediately available, he is certainly taking his time coming to the phone. What does that suggest? That he is less than eager to talk to Mr. Fukuyama? That he must refresh himself with a page of philosophy first? Perhaps he doesn't remember Fukuyama, and is puzzling with the secretary over who on earth Fukuyama might be. And who, since we're on the subject, might Professor Sorenberg be? "He just walked in" – who just walked in? What sort of man? Elderly or young, fat or thin, bearded or clean-shaven, gruff or cordial? Instantly recognizable to the secretary, he is to me a total mystery. Even my desiring to speak to him is a mystery. What do I desire to speak to him about? He'll come to the phone, and what will I say? Meanwhile, he does not come to the phone. I can hang up, and it will be as if I never made the call – at least from my point of view. Who knows, though, what chain of events I might, totally unbeknownst to me, have set in motion. The professor will wonder why Fukuyama called him. Maybe he'll contact Fukuyama – if he remembers him, that is – and Fukuyama will deny having called but will remember the encounter in Ottawa with a man he'd taken for the professor... Ah, that's right, I'd forgotten: Professor Sorenberg looks like me. Neither fat nor thin, then; neither young nor conspicuously old. But where is he? What's going on back there in the office of the Department of Philosophy at Concordia University – which, if I'm not mistaken, is on the fifth floor of the Hall Building? I took a philosophy course in my first or second year – what was it on, now? Introduction to Philosophy – something like that. One of those introductory survey courses, from Plato to Wittgenstein; the professor was a young woman with silky jet black hair streaming halfway down her back; all the guys –

"Sorenberg."

Sorenberg. To my mortification, I am stammering uncontrollably. That sometimes happens to me; when I am nervous or at a loss for words, as I most certainly am now, I stammer. But the professor comes to my aid.

"Jim? Is that you?" His tone is genial and warm – he is pleased to hear from Jim. ""How are you? It's been ages."

"Fine, fine." If it's been ages, Jim didn't call, and, piling absurdity upon absurdity, I hear myself say, "Listen, professor, you weren't by any chance in Ottawa the other day, were you?"

"Me? In Ottawa? No..."

"Funny. I met a guy – I could've sworn he was you! I go up to him: 'Professor! Good to see you!' Meanwhile he's lookin' at me like I'm from Mars or something – but the resemblance! I actually found it easier to believe it was you snubbing me than – "

"Snubbing you! Why would I snub you?"

"No reason I can think of, but... well, put it down to my insecurity, ha ha!" I should have been an actor – I'm doing this well! Warming to my role, I go on: "I'll be in Montreal tomorrow. Are you free for lunch?"

"For lunch tomorrow? Sure!"

"Say, one o'clock?"

"Fine!"

"Where?"

"Oh... I don't know. Come on up to the office, we'll make our arrangements there."

"Professor, it's a date."

"Great to hear from you, Jim."

"See you tomorrow, then."

"One o'clock."

The first coherent thought that occurs to me as I replace the receiver is, "Did that really happen?" I close my eyes, and when for no good reason my hand strays to my forehead, I find it is beaded with sweat. My eyes open, and I see I am naked. This is incredible! If someone could see me now – if you could see me now; eh, my boy? You would have me committed, I dare say. You'd deposit me in the Helen Keller home; my mother and I could share a room. I hear laughter, and realize it must be mine – gay, boyish laughter. Yes, I am in the best of spirits. "I think I'll take a shower." I pick up my towel from the floor where it has fallen, and head for the bathroom.

 

Sixteenth segmentWell, I think to myself, once more under the hot water, I have a whole day ahead of me – what shall I do with it? I am in a place called North Bay, Ontario, which suggests so little to me that I can honestly say that, to all intents and purposes, I don't know where I am; in a hotel called the Northland, which I had taken for a slum but turns out to be.... well, you know what it turns out to be. What time of day is it? Noon or thereabouts, and yet I have yet to see daylight. What's the weather like outside? I heard rain before, or thought I did. And tomorrow I am to meet Moses Sorenberg, professor of philosophy, for lunch. Philosopher though he is, he is quite secure in the totally false impression that he has a luncheon appointment with Jim Fukuyama. If he happens to mention it to someone, and that person chances to say, "Are you sure?", the professor will reply, without a moment's hesitation, "Yes, quite sure." Hm. What an interesting chain of thought. I should have been a philosopher myself. What is that branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of knowledge? Ontology...? Epistemology. That's it. Epistemology. Haven't I just proved that there is no such thing as knowledge? There is the feeling of knowledge; we're all familiar with it; but everything we think we know, everything, is as easily undermined, if we only "knew" one thing more, as the philosopher Moses Sorenberg's knowledge that he is going to meet Jim Fukuyama for lunch tomorrow. I laugh out loud. This is marvelous. Perhaps I'll spend the entire day standing in the shower, philosophizing. But suddenly I am aware that I am not at peace. Something is troubling me – not acutely, in fact so vaguely that I was not even aware of it until now... The BMW. That's it. Where is it? In a parking lot around the corner, I recall, and the momentary wave of panic recedes somewhat – still, shouldn't I check up on it? You can't just leave a car in a parking lot indefinitely; at the very least they'll be wondering where I am, how long I'll be... "All right, all right!" I mutter aloud, as though in response, once more, to my mother's remonstrances about the price of hot water. I turn the water off, towel myself dry – it's a good, thick, almost luxuriant towel; you'd expect no less from the Northland Hotel – and what kind of towel did you dry yourself with at the Northland, eh? I don't believe you mention it in the Red Notebook.

Drawing back the thick chocolate-brown drapery hiding the window, I am startled to find the June sun shining brightly in a cloudless indigo sky. How odd. Does that mean it wasn't raining after all? And yet... Well, and yet nothing. It couldn't have cleared up this completely that quickly – ergo, it wasn't raining. I won't have to buy an umbrella after all. No, but I will have to buy some other things – clothes, for instance; the pants and shirt I am wearing are starting to feel pretty grubby, to say nothing of underwear. I'll attend to that today. Also, an electric shaver. But if I'm going to grow my distinguished white beard I don't need a shaver. And if I'm going back to Montreal tomorrow, I don't really need clothes either. Am I going back to Montreal tomorrow? Am I going to grow my beard?

I must... pin myself down a little, make some decisions. Why did I leave home in the first place? There must have been a clear reason, to cause me to take such a drastic step, one so at variance with my settled habits, and yet, though I remember this and that – that strange noise, for instance; some incident or other involving Helen Dahl; another incident involving a Mrs. Pearlman, whose son committed suicide or something... and of course Debi Asher. I say "of course Debi Asher," but the truth is that until this moment I had forgotten her entirely. Yes, Debi Asher, to whom, at nineteen, I could perhaps have lost my virginity, if circumstances had not been against us, or if I'd been a little more venturesome, and with whom some sort of reunion project has taken shape – in San Francisco, if I'm not mistaken. Strange – there's the sound of rain again. Some noise somewhere in the plumbing, no doubt.

Breakfast. I must see about breakfast. I've eaten hardly anything. I'm not hungry. Why not? What time is it? Where is my watch? I don't seem to have it with me. There's a digital clock by the bed – what! 1:13! AM or PM? PM, PM. If I'm going to meet Professor Sorenberg tomorrow at one, shouldn't I get started? How far is it from North Bay to Montreal? I'm not sure, but... hm... quite a distance, anyway. But I've said I'm staying the night. That's insane. If I stay the night there's no way I'll be able to keep the appointment. Well, if I don't keep it, I don't keep it – let him come looking for me! Yes, but in that case, why did I set up the appointment in the first place? Good God, don't let me... don't... help me resist this confusion! Give me a foothold; or, failing that, a handhold, for I feel as if I'm sliding down a sheer precipice into the sea far, far below! Send me, O Lord... send me... Is there a prayer somewhere in the Scriptures for a man who fears he is losing his mind? Nonsense, nonsense! What is this about losing my mind? Nothing of the sort. Firmness, determination – that's all I'm losing! The universe is not orderly, that's a myth, there is no order in the universe, it's man who imposes order on the universe! That's what I'll tell Professor Moses Sorenberg tomorrow; let him try to refute it. And the man who fails to impose order on the universe is insane, or senile – but I am neither; I'm tired, that's all, a little disoriented, from travel, maybe from hunger too, though I don't feel hungry. Can one be hungry without feeling it? Of course one can. Of course. I'll go down to the coffee shop, have some coffee and a bite to eat, and I'll be fine! Beyond the shadow of a doubt, by the time I've finished my second cup of coffee I'll know what to do, my course will be as clear as the course of the earth round the sun, or the sun round... whatever it revolves around.

An elevator stands empty, its doors open, waiting to receive me. Without a single stop it delivers me to the ground floor. "Good afternoon, sir," says Mr. Very Well Sir – I think it's him, anyway – "did you have a good rest?"

"Yes, thank you. Listen. About staying tonight. Is it too late to cancel that, and check out now?"

"I'm afraid it is, sir."

"I see. Well... where's the coffee shop?"

"Just up that flight of stairs." A slight movement of his well-coiffed head indicates the direction.

"Thank you. But first... I'll be right back."

"Very well, sir."

The sunshine, just as in Ottawa, is so dazzlingly bright I can hardly bear it. Since when have my eyes been so sensitive? Sunglasses – I'll get myself a pair of sunglasses. But first things first. Where was that parking lot? To the left, or to the right? Right, I'm almost sure – in which case, my sense of direction being as faulty as it is, I should probably go left. But no, right; that billboard advertising Budweiser beer – I remember passing it. And left at this corner – here it is! I was right! Disorientation be damned! I stride boldly into the lot. The shed is occupied now by a young girl – well, a young woman – instead of the fellow from... where was it?... the fellow last night. She accords me a bright smile of welcome. What would she be thinking, right this instant? What thoughts would be on her mind? How does she see the world? If I could see myself through her eyes, what would I see? Would I recognize myself? Enough of this. If I'm going to let myself be overwhelmed by thoughts like these every time some casual stranger flits across my path... "That's my car over there," I say, catching sight of the BMW nestled safely in a back row. What a relief! It is the intensity of my relief that makes me aware of how worried I was. What was there to worry about? Nothing, nothing. I know. Let it pass. "I don't need her now," I say breezily; "just passing by, thought I'd say hello." A poor enough joke, but she laughs loudly, showing big teeth. "No problem," she says, "stay away as long as you like, we'll take good care of her."

"It's a load off my mind to hear you say so. I may be back for her in an hour or so; if I'm not, it'll probably mean my business will keep me in town till tomorrow. Is there any problem about leaving her overnight again?"

"No, no problem at all."

"You're open twenty-four hours?"

"That we are."

"So if I were to come at, say, five in the morning..."

"We'll be ready for you."

"Excellent. Splendid. May I ask... are you from around here?"

"Yes, I was born here."

"Hm. I... well, thank you, thank you very much." Why did I ask her that? What is this idiot chattiness that gets hold of me sometimes?

"I'm a student at the U of T," she says, evidently not at all resenting my intrusiveness. "Home for the summer."

"I see. And what are you studying?"

"Biochemistry."

"Biochemistry!" My exclamation is stupid; everything I say in her presence seems stupid. A profession of ignorance seems called for. "My God, I hardly know what biochemistry is."

"Well, the simplest and most comprehensible explanation is that it's the chemistry of life."

"I suspect the 'comprehensibility' of that statement is more apparent than real."

"You're right, of course. Excuse me for just a moment."

Another car has pulled in, and she trots off to attend to it. "Excuse me for just a moment," she said – "for just a moment;" was that an invitation to stay and continue the conversation? She would have nothing to do between cars; my ignorant and interested presence would help her pass the time; she could initiate me into the mysteries of the chemistry of life, and I would leave North Bay richer in knowledge than I entered it. But she returns to find me gone, and as I picture the scene while sipping my first cup of coffee at the Northland coffee shop I find myself wondering if she is relieved, or mildly disappointed. Biochemistry! Yes, there are all kinds of ways of looking at the world... How would my predicament look, I wonder, from a biochemical point of view? My luncheon engagement tomorrow, I mean, with the unknown Professor Moses Sorenberg, who will be expecting his former student, Jim Fukuyama, who now works in some capacity or other at the Ministry of External Affairs? What will his first words to me be? "You're not Fukuyama!" And where will we go from there?

"So then, sir, what will you be having?"

What is that lilt in her voice – Irish? She, too, is a pretty young woman. Are all women young and pretty these days? Certainly every one who has attended to me over the past few days has been. "Are you Irish, by any chance?"

She flushes slightly, then smiles away her embarrassment. "Yes, as it happens. How sharp of you to notice."

Is that sarcasm? "I'm Irish on my father's side," I say – mendaciously, but what does it matter? With a total stranger, someone you've never seen before and never will see again, isn't it stupid, isn't it madness, to confine yourself to the truth?

"Oh! What part?"

"County Cork" – which name I've heard somewhere, though I couldn't locate it on a map.

"I'm from Dublin. I moved here when I was five, but I don't seem to have lost the accent."

"Marked for life!" I say with mock drama, and burst out laughing. "Do you have Caesar salad?"

"Yes we do."

"Good. Bring me a Caesar salad, please, and some more coffee."

 

Seventeenth segment

I open the door to find the bed already made, the room restored to its original pristine condition. I promised myself that my second cup of coffee would show me the way; having finished it, my course would be clear; but it is not. My predicament is this: a decision must be made, but there are no grounds for making it. It seems, in its own small way, a philosophical predicament – therefore, since the opportunity has presented itself, perhaps I should consult a philosopher. I feel a smile coming to my lips. If I want to be convinced, that is a by no means unconvincing argument! No question about it – something about this North Bay air seems to have sharpened my rational faculty. I am pleased to see that happening; my new powers, if that's what they are, are a delight; I look forward to applying them to all sorts of problems – but all this notwithstanding, something is missing: energy. Somehow the argument, ingenious though it undoubtedly is, fails to generate motion. If I'm leaving I have to gather my things, pay my bill, claim my car, be on my way – but instead I am drawing the chocolate-brown curtains shut and, in the near total darkness, sinking down on the bed. How firm the mattress is! How vast its expanse! I can stretch out my limbs in all directions, with plenty of space to spare. I am Robinson Crusoe, alone on a desert island – I even seem to hear the faint murmur of the sea not far off, reminding me how cut off I am from the world of men. This is good, this is wonderful. If only I could stay like this! But of course I can't. Or perhaps... why not? Not in this hotel, but I could buy a house, or rent an apartment, here in North Bay; nobody would know where I am; if by any chance anyone did think to wonder what became of me, they'd have no chance of locating me; I'd be as lost to the world as though I really were on a desert island, or in a monastery... Hm.

As a child, I remember, the question of time used to puzzle me. If I am absolutely motionless in a totally dark room, with no light visible and no sound audible, with nothing happening and nothing changing – would time pass? It wouldn't, of course it wouldn't. How old would I have been? Nine? Ten? I was convinced I could stop time – if I could only be quiet enough, find a place dark enough. My bed at night was the obvious place to experiment. Unfortunately, I always fell asleep. I would wake up chagrined to find it morning. One day, I told myself, I would defeat morning, but first I had to conquer sleep. I never did, at least not during the few days that this problem exercised my imagination. Then I guess I forgot about it, and time sailed on unopposed; the world changed, I grew old. Seriously – what am I going to do? An idea of sorts comes to me: I'll call Debi Asher in San Francisco and tell her something's come up, I can't make it after all. If she seems genuinely regretful, I'll say never mind, it's nothing so urgent after all, speaking to you now has made me realize how eager I am to see you, etc. etc. If she seems indifferent – well, that'll be that!

Yes, it's a good idea, but it has the same weakness as my other idea, the idea of consulting a philosopher – it imparts no energy, no motive force; it doesn't get me off the bed and to work. Is there an idea compelling enough to get me off this bed? Honestly, I don't think there is. Behind my closed eyes I imagine a fire alarm going off. There are shouts, screams, footfalls; the very building shakes as, on every floor – how many floors are there? – men, women, children – if there are any children; come to think of it, I haven't seen any – flee to safety; not even that, I fancy, would rouse me; and yet it is not a question of torpor, for never, as I said before, has my mind been clearer. How clear? Clear enough to accept death by fire.

What stirs me at last is not an idea but a purely physical necessity: that of moving my bowels. Well, I am up. Shall I call Debi? What's her phone number? It's written down in one of the new red notebooks – and where are the red notebooks? Invisible in the gloom. I draw the curtains and the room floods with June light – in which, oddly enough, the notebooks are no less invisible. I search here and search there. Strange. Could I have left them in the car? No – I distinctly remember showing them to Mr. Very Well Sir when he asked about my luggage. The notebooks and The Mind of Primitive Man. Here is The Mind of Primitive Man, on the desk beside the TV set. My God, don't tell me I've lost the Red Notebook! Debi's phone number I could sacrifice, if need be, without a qualm, but the Red Notebook! That's irreplaceable. If that's lost... if that's lost...

The maid must have taken it. I know, I know – what would she want with it? But you suggest a likelier possibility. She's the only one who's been in the room. She may not have stolen it, only misplaced it. Misplaced it? And the three others too? That would take some doing! Stolen, then. What for? On a whim – the way I, who'd never stolen anything in my life, stole The Mind of Primitive Man, a book in which I have no more interest than... than a hotel chambermaid could possibly have in my Red Notebook! My God!

As I fling myself out of the room the thought occurs that it's lucky the corridor is empty; what would anyone seeing me think! The elevator waits as before – it might as well be my private conveyance. It whisks me to the ground floor, and I emerge into a lobby feverish with unexpected activity. What sort of activity? I do not know. I cannot begin to conceive. Some sort of convention, maybe – not of business people, by the looks of it, but... what? Freemasons? Oddfellows? They certainly are odd, with pointed paper caps on their heads... To hell with them! Where's Mr. Very Well Sir? I strain to catch a glimpse of him through the laughing, milling throng, but he is nowhere in sight. He's fled with my Red Notebook! An insane thought, I know, but it visits me notwithstanding my sanity, and propels me forward through the crowd with an urgency that, fortunately, is blind to the resentment it must inevitably occasion. At the desk a clerk – but again, as with Mr. Very Well Sir, the word "clerk" scarcely seems to suit so distinguished-looking and so well-dressed a man – is engaged in conversation with an absurd pointy-hatted character; they are laughing about something, and I hear the exclamation, "Two hundred and fifty years!" "Excuse me," I say – "excuse me." I will not be balked; they can talk about their two hundred and fifty years – two hundred and fifty years of what? – later. The clerk, silver-haired and really of a most impressive appearance – even more so than Mr. Very Well Sir; he is the kind of man Mr. Very Well Sir will grow into, eventually, if circumstances favor him – turns to me; my fleeting impression is he is angry at the interruption, but the pointy-hatted fellow obligingly withdraws, and the clerk, or whatever he is, with a strained smile accords me his attention. My throat bone dry, scarcely able to pronounce the words of my own language, I stammer out my story as best I can, giving him to understand at last that something has been stolen from my room and I want the chambermaid summoned immediately. Possibly I am speaking louder than I realize; to the clerk's perceptible agitation, heads are turning in our direction. "Step this way, sir," he says at last, and someone, I am not sure who or where he came from, takes me by the arm and leads me behind the counter through a door I have to stoop to pass through, it is so low. I find myself in a little room, not an office exactly – the closest comparison that occurs to me is to a police interrogation room I saw in a movie some time ago, when I used to go to movies. "Sit down, please," says the clerk, and we seat ourselves on wooden chairs on opposite sides of a small wooden desk. We are alone in the room. The desk is bare, there is absolutely nothing on it, so that a small stain directly in front of me, looking as if it came from a coffee cup many years ago, is more conspicuous than it deserves to be or normally would be. The clerk gives me no time to collect my thoughts. "Stolen, you say."

"Missing, perhaps I should have said."

"I should think you should have said that, yes, instead of blurting out in front of a whole lobby full of guests... Do you have any idea the damage something like that can do us? Of course if one of our employees actually did steal something from you it would be a different matter, but this is not some low-life dive, I'll have you know; this is the Northland Hotel, whose name speaks for itself, and in the forty-one years we have been in business in this city not the faintest breath of scandal has touched us. Not the faintest. So you will pardon us if we seem a little jealous of our reputation. Now then – just what is it you say is missing? A notebook, if I understood you correctly?"

"You understood me correctly. Four notebooks. Red, pocket-sized notebooks."

"But why would anyone want to steal such things? Do they contain, perhaps, information that a foreign government would be willing to pay for?"

His eyes, gray, focused, slightly narrowed, bore into mine, but I meet his gaze calmly, unflinchingly. I have quite mastered my agitation. My stammer is gone, as is the trembling in my fingers. He is a businessman; so am I. "No," I say simply, pretending not to notice his irony. "They contain nothing of value to anyone except me."

"And nothing else is missing from your room? Cash? Valuables?"

"Nothing."

"What's your room number?"

"1972."

"Excuse me for just a moment." I start slightly – those were the very words used by the girl – the woman – at the parking lot, the biochemist. That's perfectly immaterial, of course; it's a phrase anyone might use. The clerk draws a cell phone from his vest pocket. "Who would have cleaned room 1972?... Have her come in here, please." He snaps the cell phone shut and replaces it in his pocket. "She'll be here in a moment," he says, and then says nothing further. His eyes fixed firmly on my face, his own face quite expressionless, he lets the silence lengthen. "In a moment," he said, but it is a long moment. Are they doing this on purpose to unsettle me? We'll see who unsettles whom. There are no windows in the room, and nothing on the white walls except, to my left, a little pattern of cracks, or maybe dirt, which vaguely resembles a spider's web. "What is this room usually used for?" I say at last. "It has a vaguely... you'll excuse me for putting it this way... a vaguely sinister quality."

"Sinister?" He does not smile, and the thought occurs that he has trained his face not to smile, lest it impair his dignity, but a kind of twinkle in his gray eyes shows he is amused. "Sinister? Not at all. It's a kind of retreat, you see. Being at the constant beck and call of customers has pressures that one who is not in the service industry cannot be expected to understand. Having a room like this to duck into in a moment of stress gives one a chance to take a deep breath, compose oneself..."

He is interrupted by a quiet knock on the door. "Come in," he says. The door opens, and in stoops a woman of whom my first impression is that this is like no chambermaid I've ever seen or could ever have imagined; possibly I am exaggerating this in my own mind, but there is something almost stately about her, though at the same time deferential. She looks, I would say, about fifty, and, without there being anything youthful about her, is beautiful. Yes, beautiful. How many women have I known, or seen, to whom I would apply that word? Hardly any, perhaps none – I include women I've seen in movies – and it is not clear even to me what quality this one possesses that places her, so to speak, in a class by herself. She is not looking at me and may not even be aware that I am staring at her. Her attention is wholly focused on the clerk (or whatever he is), and, her manner respectful but independent, says, "You sent for me, Mr. Desjardins?" It is a musical voice, a singer's voice; that's evident even in those first few softly spoken, almost expressionless words of hers.

"This gentleman here" – Mr. Desjardins indicates me with the faintest movement of his elegant head – "claims something is missing from his room. I will leave it to him to explain."

The maid now turns to me. Does she know she is being accused of theft? If so, it seems to weigh on her little. She regards me without arrogance, but also without fear. Her attitude is of someone secure in her innocence, confident her innocence will speak for itself. If anyone is fearful, it is me. Not fearful, exactly, just... If I could do it without making an utter fool of myself, I would withdraw my accusation on the spot. More than anything else, I would like to simply walk out of the room without a word and go back to my own room, where, I am suddenly sure, the Red Notebook and its three satellites will turn up; I should have searched more thoroughly before I came charging downstairs to accuse someone of stealing something that, after all, who on earth would want?

The maid is waiting. Mr. Desjardins (so that is his name!) is also waiting. Not with visible impatience, but still, waiting, and I must speak. As usual in tense situations, I tell myself I am addressing a business meeting. It is a setting that agrees with me, and one – probably the only one – I learned over the years to master.

"It's four red pocket notebooks," I say, quietly, firmly and distinctly, addressing the maid. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but they are very important to me, and I merely wanted to ask you if you might have noticed them when you were cleaning the room."

"Four red pocket notebooks? No, I don't believe I did. Your room is...?"

"1972."

"Four red notebooks. I'm sorry, no. They may have been there, but – "

"You're right, of course," I say. "Why would you notice them? You clean hundreds of rooms every day, maybe thousands... if you noticed every little item in every room... you would go mad, I daresay. I'm sorry, really sorry, to have troubled you – and you," I say, addressing Mr. Desjardins as I get to my feet. "I haven't been quite well lately. Where is the door?" Mr. Desjardins too rises, and opens the door. "Watch your head," he says.

I am in the lobby, I know, but it hardly seems the same place. The Elks, or Oddfellows, or whatever they were, are gone. "Where is the elevator?"

"Just there." Mr. Desjardins shows me. "Are you all right? You look pale..."

"Yes, I'm fine, I'll just go upstairs and lie down for a bit, and then, really, I must be on my way, I - "

"Shall I go up with you?" It is the chambermaid. Where has she materialized from? She too seems concerned, as though doubting I can make it to my room on my own.

"Thank you, no, really, I'm fine." I break free of them at last. They mean well but they are oppressive, oppressive. The maid's beauty is oppressive. How did Dostoevsky put it? "Beauty is a terrible force" – something like that. I don't remember exactly. It has been years since I read Dostoevsky, years; I must reread him; it is strange, how my youthful, budding imagination seized on him... "Beauty is a terrible force" – was the maid really beautiful? Is it possible? At her age a woman can be of a dignified appearance, she can be pleasant-looking, she can be appealing in any number of ways – but beautiful? What made me see beauty in her? Strange, strange. I close my eyes, trying to visualize her face, and cannot. As the doors close and the elevator begins its ascent, I think to myself, "Be careful, Steven Marcus, be careful; this is uncharted territory you're heading into..."