Charles Bobuck lay in a hospital bed. The room was empty. Peter, still shaking, had stepped out to call Roman. Charles was filled with a calm and natural contentment, such as one feels when coming home after a long journey. He understood he had had a seizure. He had a terrible headache and wondered if perhaps he had had a stroke or something similar that had torn up his brain.
He was feeling tired and closed his eyes.
The curtain was pulled back and a doctor strolled in staring at a pad.
“How we feeling Mr. Bobuck,” he said as Charles looked up to focus on his face.
I was not in the least surprised to see Dr. Hill. He asked what I remembered. I said that Peter and I were in the church looking for a man who disappeared. I didn’t want to say we were looking for a ghost.
Dr. Hill got a very serious look on his face and placed his hand over my eyes. Then he said, “ Zac and Joshua told me you were at the i-Bar and you had been drinking quite a lot. You really have to watch your drinking Charles.”
I suddenly saw Zac and Joshua’s faces in my mind. I said, ”Yes, I remember now, we were eating soup.”
As Dr. Hill went about the room, adjusting a few objects here and there, I noticed something about him which I had not registered before, in spite of the fact that we would meet on the stairs two or three times a week: even though he seemed very old, he could not be any older than mid fifties.
He came up to where I lay. He spoke quietly, so it seemed, to someone who was kneeling by my head though no one else was in the room. The invisible fingers let my brain go and the headache subsided. I sat up.
Dr. Hill gave me a friendly smile and helped me move to a chair and said, “There is nothing mysterious. You were not having a seizure. It’s time we talked.”
“Charles,” he sighed, “you must realize that everything in the universe, absolutely everything, is made of star matter, Baryonic matter. It is just the way it is. What animates this universal dust into physical objects has never been understood by humans, but I accept that knowing an answer is not necessary. Introducing magic or gods into explanations works against any understanding. Humans are limited in what they can understand. The possibilities of the universe are beyond human comprehension.
Here is what I think is happening to you. I believe that you have a very odd gene in your genetic strand. It isn’t a totally unique gene, but it is extremely rare. AGCT is usually all we get in a DNA strand, but you seem to have a rather big surprise that shouldn’t be there. I suspect it in only two other cases. Both of those are in India. I’m not necessarily saying this is a good thing, Charles. For all I know you could explode at any minute.
Though at the moment, it seems to mean you can solidify ideas, create matter from thought. Just as Zac can take a piece of wood and an idea to turn into a puppet, or Joshua seems to produce music out of his imagination, I believe that you, in some mental states, are able to manipulate star matter into physical objects, including living objects. Obviously this freaks you out when it happens, it would anyone. In more ancient cultures you would quality as a god, a creator.
Each thing in the universe is only a symbol made of dust. Do not be afraid of this. Let knowledge come gradually. Knowledge and memory are the same thing.
As frightening as this must be for you, if you tell people about the things you see, the things you know, they will say you are sick and have you hospitalized. For that reason it is hazardous to bring it up, difficult as it may be. For now this should only be between us.”
The friendly, almost kindly tone in which Dr. Hill concluded this speech restored my calm, and I felt safe, like a sick child that knows its father is close by.
Then he walked me to the stairs that led to my apartment. Before wishing me good night, he handed me an object. A Rubik’s Cube. He said, “When you feel distress, look at this cube and remember that as complicated and random as it seems, there is a pathway to order.”
I went to bed and tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Never before in my life had I been capable of such sharp and precise thought as now. The rhythm of health flowed through my every nerve, arranging my thoughts in orderly rows, like an army awaiting my command.
Formerly I had been the slave of fantastic impressions and visions, now I suddenly felt I was the master of my visions.
Possibilities, which normally I allowed to slip past my notice, were now clear, soaked with significance. This music group I sometimes remember being a part of. I had built that entity of star matter but it crumbled when I no longer focused to give it existence.
The book of Ibbur appeared before me with letters engraved in flame upon it: one representing the brazen woman was throbbing, powerful as an earthquake, another was infinitely rich: the hermaphrodite on the mother-of-pearl throne with the crown of red wood on its head. Next to them was the old man with his clown face and finally the soldier brandishing his shield and spear, smiling with his green eyes.
If Dr. Hill was correct... I might even be creating him, but I didn’t think I was.
The Rubik’s Cube sat on the table.
A hand laid over my eyes and I fell asleep.
—-
My phone pinged. I had received a text from a phone number I did not recognize.
It read:
I recently popped into your room unannounced. Sorry, but I need your help. Will you meet me at the Cathedral at 5 today?
Angelina
I replied that I would.
A new mystery. A human soul had turned to me for help. To me! Now there was something to give meaning to my day, something rich and radiant. “Angelina!”
I went into my bedroom for my coat and set off down the stairs. Usually these passages and alcoves are filled with a fine, poisonous dust that grabs me by the throat and chokes me, but today it retreated before the vital energy streaming from my being. I paused for a moment outside Dr.Hill’s door then continued down the steps.
Already night was creeping along the rows of houses as I stepped out into the empty square the Cathedral commanded. From the ancient structure, the soft chords of an organ crept out into the stillness of the evening. They were like oddly dissonant melancholy tears trickling down into the deserted square.
I entered the Cathedral and paused in the darkness of the side aisle. The nave was filled with the faint green and blue shimmer of the dying light slanting down through the stained-glass windows onto the pews. At the far end, the altar gleamed at me in a frozen cascade of gold. A priest stood in front of the alter and he seemed to be reaching for me, yelling though no sound could be heard from his mouth. The air was musty with the smell of wax and incense.
I leaned back in one of the pews. My heart grew strangely calm in this realm where everything stood still. The whole expanse of the Cathedral was filled with a presence that had no heartbeat, with a secret, patient expectation.
The Virgin Mary looked down at me. I was wide-awake and excited.
Someone touched my arm. “Can we go to that pillar over there. This feels too open.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bobuck, for agreeing to meet me”
“Charles,” I said, then I stammered a few banal phrases.
I recognized her as the terrified woman who had sought refuge from Wasser in my room.
“I don’t know how you feel about a person like me, that I am in love, as you must assume, with a man who is not my husband.”
I told her that I was not one to judge people, but even as I said it, I wondered if that was the truth or just the proper response.
Her face relaxed a bit.
Angelina’s Story
“That night, in the apartment next door to you, I was alone waiting for Anton, Dr. Savioli. There was a soft knock and expecting it to be Anton, I opened the door. But it was not, it was that Wasser. He has been spying on me, following me for months. I burst past him and into the first door I saw, yours. I have no idea what his intentions are, but I have to accept that he is a threat.
At first Anton tried to reassure me. At worst he thought it would be some petty blackmail. But I felt he was afraid every time the name of Wasser was mentioned, and I began to suspect that he was concealing something from me.
Now Anton has gotten sick. He doesn’t answer email or texts. I cannot visit him without our affair being discovered. He is delirious, and in his fever he imagines he is being chased by Frankie Wasser.
Anton is not easily intimidated, so you can imagine how much it worries me to know that he is paralyzed by this fear.
I would leave my husband but I have a beautiful little girl. My husband is jealous and controlling. He would take her from me.
Here, Mr. Bobuck, take these,” she tore open a bag that was stuffed with expensive looking jewelry.
“Give these to Wasser. Ask him to leave us alone.”
I said whatever came into my head, a tangle of phrases, word balloons that burst so quickly that I hardly knew myself what my lips were saying.
Unconsciously, I was transfixed by the painted statue of a monk standing in a niche in the wall. As I talked, the statue gradually transformed. The monk’s face became youthful and handsome, dark hair draped over his right eye.
Slowly she seemed to compose herself again.
After a long silence she started to whisper, “The reason I have turned to you, Mr. Bobuck, when I burst into your room, I immediately recognized you from a long time ago.”
My blood froze.
“You were saying goodbye to me, I can’t remember why, we were in your dressing room. What I wanted to do was to give you the heart of red coral that I wore on a silk ribbon round my neck, but I was too embarrassed and sad.”
The invisible, choking fingers were feeling their way towards my tongue again. Without warning an image appeared. A young woman in a white dress, and we stood in the wings of an ornate theater. The red coral locket. I remembered the red coral locket.
I clenched my teeth and called up all my strength to control an approaching seizure.
A hospital alarm went off. Charlie opened his eyes wide, Charlie was scared. He hadn’t expected to be scared. Roman and Peter each held one of his hands. Each had a look of shock on their faces and Charlie wondered if they were looking down on a dying man. Then his body shook with a brief spasm and he passed out.
I don't know what happened. I had lost time again. I passed a market, and right in the middle of it, covered with red canvas, was the open stage of a puppet theater, Zac’s Punchinello. A string with a skull dangling from it clattered across the miniature stage. Children laughed. They were staring, open-mouthed and listening spellbound to the verses of the poet, Oskar Wiener, that my friend Zac was declaiming from inside the booth:
“What have we here? A jumping jack! As skinny as a rhyming hack; All dressed in rags of red and blue—Watch the tricks that he can do.”
Lacking interest in the puppetry, I stepped into the street, into the darkness between the rows of unlit houses. A handful of tiny stars glittered in the narrow strip of sky above the gables.
Then, from the square I again heard the voice of Zac, the puppeteer, clear on the wintry air:
“Where is the heart of coral red? It hung upon a silken thread, Gleaming in the blood-red dawn.”