A Spy in the Ruins. Christopher Bernard

lost and dazed toward the burning cities of the future. Their small hard faces were shaped with axes.

      And yet beneath his eyes the glorious words flamed with hope ah such promise his heart blazed with his mind in sudden and binding recognition the towering amazement at being human shouted across the valley toward the uncanny shame. The uncanny shame. Oh the pride and the shame of being human.

      They could not make you not believe. Not after giving you this taste. No matter how hard they tried.

      And yet as he fingered the map of scars that already grew over his heart how could he in the end not not believe. Which was the veil which the veiled. Avail. Not avail.

      When he was very young he ripped out of the book each page as he read it. As though it were the wrapping on a gift.

      Here the livingroom there the wall closets a bank of wooden louvers shifting open to rows of stuffed parkas mittens dangling like amputated hands from the sleeves knit wool caps rows of boots yellow red blue for the girls black for the boys umbrellas and the rest of it while here the fireplace rarely used the rows of books half unread the silent stereo the shutters made of walnut and oblongs of translucent sheets of plastic between which pressed leaves and peacock plumes peered like ghosts the picture window looking onto the brown gravel path the small flourishing dogwood the tiny bluebells shaking in the spring the row of black green bush creating a quiet space just outside the window and beyond the bushes an outstretched plain of grass dotted with yearling trees the flat gaze of the neighbor’s house in the middle distance beyond that forest and valleys and the distant rolling thunder of the hills leading to the horizon where the river defined the border of a neighboring state and the horizon the edge like the lip of a great clam between the land and the sky.

      The axis between home and school was created by the route of a yellow bus.

      Two cocoons. Each one breaking slowly inner outer into the splendor into the misery of the. World for lack of a better name.

      The phrase “giddy disgust” would not come to him for years.

      The books however made him reflect. What is this place? What am I doing here? What are we doing here? What am I supposed to be doing here? What should I do next? Who should I believe? What can I hope for? What do I know? Who am I? Where am I? Is there a God? What is God like? A person? A thing? An equation? What is the world? What is the world exactly? What is this universe above and around me? What is this thing called time that flows through me and around me at every moment whirling a kaleidoscope in a carrousel spiraling around me behind me throwing a long shadow pricked with fading brightness in front of me an even longer shadow of impenetrable darkness? What will happen to me when I am dead? What will heaven be like if there is a heaven and I go there?

      The answer again came back to him heaven is the place of your greatest happiness and what is your greatest happiness. Despite what you know what you do not know. To live my life moment by moment over again. Over again. And over again. Forever.

      Starburst. The teachers came eagerly with the news. They spread their eyes like peacock tails both proud and vaguely fatuous and did their little dance in front of the library. They were all aflutter. Diplomas stuck from their pockets in exaggerated tubes of approval. They had their favorites embalmed and placed on biers of honor in the front hall. It was all rather embarrassing how they strutted during assembly. They fanned themselves with report cards and gossiped in the cigarette-scented lounge. They were unremittingly saccharine but never forgot their sovereign power to mortify. Mrs. Booker the hateful beauty who detested her pupils and taught them the rudiments of the German language once made Bill Peters pee in his pants in class you should have gone during lunch she said clean it up. To say nothing of the constant petty humiliations of the coaches. And the math teachers. And the science teachers. Simpering sadists. They filled the funnels with grade-point averages historical dates rules of grammar diagrammed sentences multiplication tables and the names of dead presidents then jammed them down the production line of little ears. The pupils bleated the teachers smiled. The pupils regurgitated the teachers examined the half-digested residue. Tut-tut this morsel is not correctly gagged. My my this morsel is perfectly untouched ready-made from the mill of my lectures. Unalloyed with thought and expectorated pristine. Here (they passed it around to their colleagues) isn’t this a pretty one. They marked their favorites for a fall and graded the radiant collapse. They slogged determinedly through the herds of little ones their faces in grimace of barely controlled fury and disillusionment hailing each other at hopeless intervals beacons of wrinkled despair towers of blindness foundering in the quicksands of relentless childhood. There was one he liked. There were several he liked. But most of them he detested. Yet he felt despite rather sorry for their plight their valiant stupid battle against the stupidity assailing them from all sides. Their look of shock behind their pretense of control impressed him increasingly as the years wore on. There was so little they could really do between the studied indifference of the parents the raving idiocy of television radio smarm the resentful laziness of their pupils the sanctimonious cretinism of the school board the political pusillanimities of the principal and the vicious laws of the marketplace for which they were preparing their charges like sheep for the slaughter of a corporation’s bottom line. Baying tongues of an insolent darkness. Some of them actually believed in what they were doing they lectured pleaded tried to pass along their learning their belief in knowledge the search for truth and the importance of integrity like guttering torches in a relay across generations though it was more like a match lighting three they believed in the quest for truth and the cherishing of beauty and the absolute value of absolute good like a very dead Greek indeed but they were alive alive and they carried their little faith like a weak lantern in a gale. They were ridiculous and true. And he longed to be faithful.

      For he was curiously even strangely at heart in love with authority. He wanted the people who insisted on being respected to be worthy of it. He wanted his authorities to be authoritative. Indeed he considered rebels ludicrous and pitiful. Authority stood in the shadow of his father whom once in the long ago he had worshipped like an idolater whose every word he engraved in his mind examined in little corners for subtleties nuances profundities missed at first. Even his long silences were studied in detail the timing of a frown the angle of a glance the little signals conveyed by the swiftness of a gait the hieroglyph of a gesture. His teachers were pathetic copies of the great original but nevertheless bore the essential markings even in their drab mediocrity and hopeless aspiring. Dusty plaster busts. Petrified memories of splendor.

      Alone he sometimes aped his father’s voice his opinions his mannerisms he looked in the mirror for hints of his father’s efficient authority the calm intensity of his gaze. In despair. For there was little resemblance he could see till his mother who was not his mother but then who was his mother gone she once pointed out the little fold over the eye she claimed he shared with his father and indeed all the family on his side it comes from the Indian blood that came into the family many generations ago. He became terribly proud of that little fold of his Indianness of his fatherness. It gave his face an exotic cast that almost feminine face with its pudgy cheeks pale eyebrows cropped blond hair. What frightened him was the irritation he would suddenly see in his father’s face when in order to please him he tried a brief imitation. The face froze in what it would take him many years to realize was recognition. Where did he get that phrase that expression on his face that way of turning his back on the room. What does he think he is doing. Throwing my weaknesses in my face as though they were flatteries. The little monkey pantomiming the king. In exasperatingly faithful idolatry. That would one day be so deeply betrayed.

      For the father feared and loved and hated what he saw in the mirror that was his son.

      And his son in baffled longing absorbed his father’s fear and love and hatred and made it into the bone of what he was.

      Neither could turn away from the other. For neither knew more than what he saw. And that was all reflection. Hypnotic in adoration and repulsion.

      Till escape expunged the necessary little war.

      But that was still to come. Now he studied bent over his books. Like his father spent many an evening or weekend afternoon bent over a book his teachers told him to study he pleased the adults by studying. Even his peers grudgingly