Dancing Over the Rays of Light

Dancing Over the Rays of Light

a novel

Paul Enns Wiebe

Copyright © 2018 Paul Enns Wiebe

All rights reserved.

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The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write:

a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

—Samuel Johnson

Contents

Dramatis Personae

I. A Great Awakening

II. Narrator Discovers Vocation

III. Sallying Forth

IV. Back to School

V. On Writing a Novel of Superior Quality

VI. A Surprise Visitor

VII. An Important Discovery

VIII. A Practical Skill

IX. Beyond the Penitentiary Gates

X. A Second Great Awakening

XI. Another File Discovered

XII. The Question of Guilt Revisited

XIII. Looking for Slack

XIV. Chapter the First

XV. Funeral the Third

XVI. Narrator Discovers …

Dramatis Personae

[Narrator limps down aisle with aid of a shillelagh; climbs on stage, cheeks aflame; receives trophy; exchanges innocuous cheek kisses, etc., with both formally-suited male and sheer-gowned female luminaries; accepts applause from rising, broad-smiling audience, then directs decrescendo from fortissimo to pianissimo by gesture that recalls ancient rite of laying on of hands. Reaches up toward microphone; male luminary comes forward and adjusts it for him or her; Narrator speaks, with face set toward ceiling.]

I’d like to thank the Higher Power, or Powers—you know who you are—for sprinkling a wealth of clues in my modest corner of the earth. They greatly aided me in my quest to discover both my identity and my place in the vast arrangement of things. Without their help, I would not be standing before you today as the one who finally solved the enigma of our species’ place in the universe. Let’s give them a big hand. [Applause.]

[Casting a horizontal gaze] I’d also like to thank the little people in my life. First, Erma Cannon. If you’d please stand up, Erma … Rusty, could you tell Erma to stand up? … There. Let’s have a big hand for Ms. Cannon. [Applause.]

And for Rusty Chuck Stubbs, who helped Erma stand up. [Mix of laughter and applause.]

Reginald and Regina? The Wrights? Yes. Good. And a hand for them. [Applause.] Reginald is the gentleman, Regina is the lady. That’s how I learned to tell them apart. [Laughter.]

You may sit down, Erma … (Rusty, could you please help Erma sit down?) [Laughter; smattering of applause.]

Fine. Now, Marta Smith. Where’s Marta? Oh, there she is—she’s the one riding on a cloud, floating from table to table, collecting autographs. I hope you don’t mind. She has a colossal collection and takes every opportunity to augment it. A hand for her single-minded search for celebrity signatures. [Applause.] Wave to everybody, Marta. Isn’t she something? [Continued applause.]

Now, Professor Calloway. Is Professor Calloway here? Professor Chlöe Calloway? Rusty, have you seen Professor Calloway? No? She’s probably at home, rearranging the jots and tittles of her dissertation. [Smattering of laughter.] Don’t laugh. She inspired the title of my novel. Doesn’t that deserve a hand, in absentia? [Applause.]

And where’s Maria? Maria Flo? [Suddenly struck.] Oh, I forgot. This was the day for her screen test. [Knowledgeable laughter.] But mark my words. One of these days she’ll be standing up here, giving her own acceptance speech. [Standing ovation.] No no. [Staying expression of audience enthusiasm with charismatic yet graceful gesture of the hand.]

Hold your applause. Save it for later. [Suddenly overcome with emotion.] What can I say?

[Preparing to leave stage.] Thank you. [Touching fingers to lips; blowing kisses to the assembled masses.] Thank you. [Raising trophy in triumphant yet unpretentious fashion.] Thank you very much. [Bowing in acknowledgement of applause, now at fff level; bowing again; repeating, in random order, many of the above-cited tokens of reply to the general zeal; finally descending from stage, making way through a thicket of hands greedy for a mere touch o’ the garment, moving slowly but inexorably to table occupied by the little people in his life.]

I

A Great Awakening

1

One morning not long ago, I awoke with a start from the dead of a dreamless sleep to find that I had no memory. I did not know where I was, or who, or what place I held in the commodious order of things. Nor did I know the answer to the prime questions: How did I come to be here? and Why? I was even innocent of the order of being to which I belonged.

But as I will recount, I have been able to decipher these enigmas and come to complete and total self-understanding, relying entirely on my powers of observation, reasoning, and more than a little reflection.

2

How can I describe my experience upon waking?

I cannot compare it to being born. For how could it be possible for one to recall those moments in which one enters the world, trailing clouds of glory and being trailed by a long, bloody cord?

I cannot compare it to waking from a dream, for though I have since that day had an ample share of slumbering reveries, I can detect no likeness between those awakenings and that experience.

No. I conclude that there is nothing like waking for what appears to be the first time.

Rather than striving to describe my uncanny experience, I will simply report that upon stirring, my attention turned inward, to the ruminative region of my mind.

After some time, the words of the French philosopher René Descartes rose to my attention: Cogito, ergo sum, which I translated as I think; therefore, I am.

Satisfied that I existed and was not merely an illusion, I moved on to the next logical question. I am … what? Animal? Vegetable? Mineral?

In giving this question sustained thought, I concluded that I was not an animal, for I suspected that animals lack the capacity for reflection. Nor could I classify myself as a mineral, and for much the same reason.

Therefore, I concluded, I was a vegetable.

But this conclusion only led to a further question: What species of vegetable am I?

I turned this query over in my mind for a good half an hour. Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, the aphorism penned by the writer Blaise Pascal arose in my mind: "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed."

Author’s note to reader:

You’re right. There does seem to be an inconsistency here. How could our Narrator quote a brace of French philosophers if, as he, she, or it earlier stated, I awoke with a start from the dead of a dreamless sleep to find that I had no memory?

But read on. You’ll find that this and other inconsistencies are only apparent.

Pascal’s thought was consistent with my initial discovery, that Cogito, ergo sum. At this point I congratulated myself, for I had arrived at the conclusion for which I had grasped long and hard: I was a human being, though of what age, gender, or erotic predilection I had yet to determine.

Pleased with this discovery, I continued to think, reflecting on my chain of reasoning, checking for any logical errors I might have committed. And while I was in this cogitative state, my mind wandered to and fro until it came upon the line authored by that greatest of metaphysical poets, John Donne, No man is an island, by which he meant, I came to realize, that a human being exists in a world of other humans as well as of other objects.

At this point, I withdrew my attention from the ruminative sector of my mind and directed it to my surroundings.

Description of surroundings:

Above me, there was a ceiling plastered with thousands of pieces of faux popcorn. Surrounding me were four beige walls. On one of these walls hung a portrait of Jesus with shoulder-length hair, a well-trimmed beard, an earnest gaze, a long, handsome, shining face, and a head surrounded by a nimbus. A window looked out upon an outside world decorated with trees. In the distance, I saw a parking lot. Below me, a faux gold carpet appeared to have been carved out by some mediocre sculptor. A bedside clock of inferior quality appeared to be abuzz with the reminder that it was past six o’clock and time to rise.

For a long time I gazed at this world of objects. Then I was struck with an astounding thought: there was exactly enough space for each object! The clock, for example, occupied precisely its share of available space—its share, and no more. What a marvelous set of surroundings!

At this point I thought to ask myself: What is the cause of this marvelous world? After pondering long and hard, I concluded that there could be one, and only one, reason for this world: a Higher Power.

But here I caught myself. There must be at least one cause, etc., at least one Higher Power. Speaking logically, there might be more than one Higher Power. And if there were more than one, this would require a coordination of the many Higher Powers, for without planning, they would run the risk that every object would occupy either more or less than its allotted space. In brief, the world as I was beginning to know it might have been concocted by a committee.

The bedside clock continued to ring.

Recognizing the source of this buzzing, I reached over to that sound and shut it off. From this act I was able to deduce that I had fingers, which implied at least one hand and one arm—in this case, I instantly realized, the ones on the left.

Using this information, I ran my left palm over the surface of the bed. I found it to be draped with a tawdry, lumpy bedspread, which shrouded both me and a damp mattress, which I judged to be of inferior quality. I could easily imagine that it had once supported either a pet or an untrained child, or, perhaps, an incontinent senior citizen.

I stopped to ponder these possibilities. Was I, or had I ever been, that pet? That child? That senior citizen?

I quickly discounted the conjecture that I was now a pet. For a pet is an animal, and I had already satisfied myself that I was no such thing. Besides, except for notoriously unreliable fables, I had never heard of an animal that could translate French.

Author’s note to the reader, with a suggestion:

You ask, What about parrots?

I presume that a parrot can be taught to speak French, just as it can be taught to speak English. It is even conceivable that a parrot might be taught both languages. But it would be ridiculous to say that a parrot can translate, either from French to English or vice versa.

The suggestion. You might consider thinking carefully about your questions before asking them. Inserting a superfluous question breaks up the flow of the narrative.

As for the possibility that I had once been a pet, I dismissed it on the grounds that it would require the workings of either reincarnation or metamorphosis, neither of which I believed in, being, as I supposed after having looked long and steadily at the portrait of Jesus, a Christian. But as I further supposed from the fact that I had already entertained the possibility of a committee of Higher Beings, I was doubtless a Christian of the backslidden variety.

Next I turned my attention to the second conjecture, that I was now, or had once been, a child. The first possibility, that I was now a child, was easy to dispose of. My reasoning was that though it is possible for a precocious child to translate French into eloquent English, I had to admit that I was not a member of that class. Well above average, certainly, but not a child prodigy. The latter possibility, that I had once been a child, could not be dismissed so readily: I might be an amnesiac. After some meditation on this possibility, I set the issue in a far corner of my mind, where it might later serve as a working hypothesis.

This left me with the third conjecture, that I was, or had once been, a senior citizen.

If I had once been a senior citizen, I reasoned, then something must have happened to me in the intervening period. That something must have involved a change. And that change was either (1) a transmigration, (2) a metamorphosis, or (3) a death.

As for the first two possibilities, I had already concluded that they did not apply, at least in my case; because being a Christian, though admittedly of the backslidden variety, I believed in neither transmigration nor metamorphosis.

As for the possibility that the change had been death, I discarded it on the grounds that I was still alive, evidenced by the fact that I had recently reached over and shut off my alarm device. What is more, in the Christian view of things, I must thus be in either (a) heaven or (b) hell or, in the Catholic repertoire of endings, (c) purgatory.

Considering the fact that my surroundings were generally of an inferior quality, I concluded that I was not in heaven. Considering the fact that my feet were presumably cold, I was not in hell. And considering the fact that my walls were not adorned with an icon of the Virgin Mother, I was not in purgatory.

Having refuted the supposition that I had once been a senior citizen, I turned my attention to the remaining possibility, namely, that I was now a senior citizen.

I ran my fingers over my face and discovered wrinkles. Exploring further, I found those wrinkles to be deep. Aha, I informed myself, I’m old! I ran my fingers over other parts of my body and found that I had no breasts. A hypothesis formed in my mind. My fingers kept exploring. Soon my hypothesis was confirmed: I was a man. I conflated my two discoveries and concluded that I was an old man. Then, after a long interval of exploration, I found that, though I was an old man, my male parts were in satisfactory if not superior working order.

This latter discovery gave me the courage to sit up and place my legs over the edge of the bed. I noted a cane leaning against the near wall and took this as a sign that my powers of locomotion were on the wane. I speculated that this was a result of an old football injury. I reached out, grasped the cane, inspected it, and found it to be polished and sturdy. It was also of a high quality, as evidenced by its gilt handle, which resembled the head of a duck.

I eased myself off the bed and slowly stood up to determine which of my limbs required this aid. Strangely, I felt no pain. In fact, a quick examination showed that my powers of mobility were approximately adequate. Why, then, the cane?

After giving this matter additional thought, I came to recall the Aristotelian principle that there is a reason for everything. Therefore, there was a reason for the cane. A cane, I continued, is designed to aid a person in the act of walking. This aid is required if and only if there is an impediment. That impediment must be a bad hip. Old football injuries that affect one’s powers of locomotion commonly involve a hip. Therefore, I concluded, the purpose of my cane was to aid me in moving about despite my ailing hip.

As for the question of which hip it was that was ailing, I decided, perhaps arbitrarily, that it was the left one.

Having made this discovery, I climbed back on the bed, curious to know whether any medical procedures had been taken to palliate my condition.

At this point I found that I was wearing no bedclothes.

From this fact I was able to deduce that I was naked.

This discovery led me to a brief meditation on the question of a sleeping partner. I wondered: Was I married? The question quickly led to another: Was I heterosexual, or was I homosexual? (This question was asked in an impartial and scientific way, for though I am an old man, I found that I did not have the moralistic or religious preconceptions that are commonly said to tinge the attitudes of my generation.)

As I lowered myself a second time from my bed and moved about the bedroom with the aid of my duck-headed cane, I could find no evidence of a sleeping partner. The chest of drawers, which had escaped my initial visual inspection, revealed no clues. The top drawer of this small, crude piece of furniture contained a week’s supply of underwear, socks, pajamas, and a pair of old ticket stubs to a showing of perhaps Woody Allen’s finest film, The Purple Rose of Cairo.

It also contained what appeared to be a man’s wedding band. A quick glance convinced me, however, that it was not my size, a supposition that led me to conclude that it had been placed in the drawer by mistake.

Having come up empty, so to speak, I placed the questions concerning a sleeping partner in a retrievable corner of my mind. Then I sat back down on the bed and returned my attention to the question concerning the state of my left hip. I was chagrined to find that there was no scar, old or new. I took this fact as an indication that future surgery was a distinct possibility, assuming that I would want to return to the active life that I supposed, perhaps too quickly, I had once enjoyed. But at that point in my reflections, I turned my attention to a more pressing matter.

I was still naked.

If I wished to sally forth into the world beyond this bedroom, I told myself, I should get dressed.

And so I arose with the aid of my cane and, resting a goodly portion of my weight on the duck’s head, limped—there is no other word for it—back to the chest of drawers. Opening it, I withdrew a change of underwear (a ribbed top, a pair of boxer shorts) and a set of athletic socks adorned by the Nike swish, and laid them neatly upon the bed.

Author’s note to the reader:

I sense your impatience. I can only assure you that all these descriptions are necessary to the story. This book is a mystery. (There will be a body. Maybe as many as three or four! But there won’t be a massacre.) There are clues scattered throughout these pages. See if you can spot them.

Next I gazed out the window and observed that it was snowing, a fact from which I was able to infer that it was winter.

Author’s note to the reader, beginning with a brief catechism and ending with a warning:

Q. In the finer class of literature, winter is often taken to be a symbol of what?

A. Death.

See how easy it is when you pay attention?

Warning: Don’t overdo it. The boxer shorts, for example. They don’t mean a thing. The athletic socks? They may or may not be significant. (If you believe they are, the Nike swish could be a splendid subject for a discussion in a graduate school seminar on the dependence of the contemporary novel on Greek mythology.)

But on with the old man’s story.

II

Narrator Discovers Vocation

Suspecting that my spartan bedroom would yield no more clues to my identity, I cast my eyes about for a point of egress and detected a closed door about four feet beyond the foot of my bed. I moved toward it with the aid of my cane and, when I finally achieved it, found it to be unlocked.

As I emerged from the bedroom, I found myself in a small hall. Immediately in front of me was a passage through which I could see what appeared to be a standard refrigerator, which appeared to be humming, a valuable indication that it was apparently in good working order. Glancing to my left, the hall appeared to open out into what appeared to be a room somewhat larger than my bedroom. This room contained what appeared to be a stuffed chair, several pairs of stuffed bookshelves, and a computer station, complete with a computer and books of instruction on its intended use.

I stored all these conjectures in an accessible mind-file. Then, glancing immediately to my right, I noted what I surmised to be a door to a bathroom.

I turned the knob, pushed the door open with my cane, and entered the room. My surmise proved correct. I was in a bathroom, which, though it appeared to be fully stocked and clean, I judged to be of inferior quality, being decorated in much the same tasteless fashion as the bedroom from which I had only minutes before emerged.

Continuing my inspection, I noted that the room contained a bathtub; a washbasin above which one could discern a mirror, hidden behind which I guessed was a medicine chest; and an elevated commode of the sort one would expect to grace the bathrooms of the frail elderly.

I sniffed about my person to determine if I should either bathe or shower. I was pleased to find no unpleasant odor, or at least none that could not be remedied by a swipe or two of what I expected to be a stick of Old Spice deodorant.

Next I maneuvered myself into a position to open the medicine chest and get at the Old Spice. The achievement of this goal required the performance of a series of discrete actions: locating a stool; moving the stool, with the end of my cane, from its position adjacent to an empty wastebasket to a position immediately in front of the medicine chest but away from the wash basin; and climbing onto that stool, again with the aid of the cane I had come to regard as indispensable for any locomotion, toward a place that had piqued my cavernous curiosity.

Significance of the stool:

Establishes the fact that the Narrator is short.

Significance of the Old Spice:

Reinforces the suspicion that the self-described old man hasn’t lost his vigor.

Reason for referring to the Narrator as The Narrator:

He does not know his name.

Reader’s Question:

Will he find out?

Author’s Answer:

Keep reading.

Q. Is it Aaron?

A. No.

Q. Adam?

A. No.

Q. Does it begin with an A?

A. No. And that’s all I’m going to say.

These acts accomplished, I was ready for an assault on the Old Spice. But as I was reaching for the medicine chest, I caught a view of myself in the mirror. I could not help but note that I appeared to be of Caucasian ancestry.

This fact neither pleased nor displeased me, for I believe I can say, with dispassionate objectivity, that had I found myself to be otherwise—African, Hispanic, East Asian, Hindu, Arabic, Indian, Amerind, Eskimo, or even some mix of these venerable races—I would have cared not a whit. The important thing was that I was a member of the aptly-named species, Homo sapiens.

The question of my pigmentation having been answered, my attention next turned to another of my visible features. I had no teeth. Upon closer observation, in fact, I detected a shocking resemblance between my own visage and the horrible face depicted in Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893).

Author’s note to the reader, with a suggestion:

This painting is reproduced in H. W. Janson’s History of Art (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. and Harry N. Abrams, New York, rev. ed., 1969), p. 511. According to the redoubtable Janson, Munch’s painting shows the influence of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin.

The suggestion. You might choose to go to the National Museum in Oslo to view the picture in person. (For maximum effect, The Scream is best viewed in winter.)

If I wish to make myself presentable, I told myself, I must (1) find some false teeth and (2) insert them into my face. And even as I used the word presentable, I became aware that I was postulating the existence of another world outside what I assumed, perhaps too hastily, was my apartment; not to mention that I was assuming the existence of other human beings. I was also aware that these postulates were a mix of expectation and hope—expectation based, I surmised, on past experience; hope grounded in a firm conviction of the existence of one (or more) Higher Power or Powers.

My eyes darted about, searching for a pair of false teeth.

Imagine my delight when I suddenly discovered, on a glass shelf directly below the medicine chest, a water-filled cup containing the object of my quest.

At this I recalled my desire to make myself presentable. Thus I took the teeth and placed them into the lower part of my face. Then, looking a second time into the mirror, I smiled.

I was pleased to note that the resemblance I had earlier detected, between my face and the subject of Munch’s painting, was gone. At this I broke into song, only to discover that I could not carry a tune.

Identity of song:

Lyrics: Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow. Melody: The Old 100th.

Next I grasped the head of my duck-headed cane, with the aid of which I turned myself completely around. With my back to the mirror, I shuffled approximately two feet to my left, backed up, and, raising myself with great exertion, seated myself on the commode.

These efforts, however, proved fruitless. For to my surprise and dismay, I realized that I had neglected to observe whether the lid of that commode was up! Chuckling softly at my error, and at the spectacle I must have presented to an imagined witness, I regained with some effort my standing position, turned around in such a way as not to aggravate the pain I had reason to believe was in my left hip, leaned down, and, in brief, lifted that lid.

Soon afterwards—I will spare my reader the details—I found myself seated on what I later came to regard as my throne. My joy at this achievement was short-lived, however, for after a protracted and agonizing period of time, I came to realize that the goal of my efforts could not be attained. Further reflection led me to the conclusion that the cause of this surprising failure was that I had recently ingested neither food nor drink. In fact, it was at this point that I began to entertain the radical hypothesis that I may have never ingested anything, that I was, so to speak, a virgin to these and other basic delights that mark us as the highest of God’s creatures (angels excepted). Or, to put the matter plaintively, this was the point at which I began to wonder if the cause of my lack of memory was that I literally had no past!

But I soon quit this line of thought, for I recognized that, to paraphrase Karl Marx, the philosophers have only contemplated the world; the point, however, is to live in it, an adage