Molly was in town to do some Saturday shopping and had stopped by to see her father, but had not found him home. Her mother was never home in the middle the day, but it was unusual not to find Daniel there. On her way back to the highway she found herself caught in a minor traffic jam at the high school as drivers slowed to gawk at a baseball game, taking in a couple of plays or studying the scoreboard. Molly glanced at her watch, then at the expanse of green dotted with crouching white figures and up at the grandstand, and there he was. It wasn’t that she actually recognized him, but the bleachers were largely empty with at most a couple hundred spectators clustered behind home plate, but way off in the top corner, hunched over something on his lap, with his back turned away from the game, was a solitary figure. It had to be Daniel. Molly could pick him out of any crowd. He was always the one on the fringe, the non-participating, the outsider.
She parked in the gravel lot behind the field, took the bleachers two at a time, and, puffing for breath, slid in beside him. Oh, hi. Daniel gave her a glance then returned to the book on his lap. What are you reading, Pops? He marked his place with a slip of newspaper, closed the book, and looked passively out over the game. Camus, he said. Any good? Well, it’s interesting. I rather like it. Why you out here? she asked him. Just a walk. Who’s winning? They snorted in unison. Daniel wasn’t much of a sportsman. I stopped by your place, but you weren’t there. Daniel shrugged. Just thought I’d say hi, see how you’re doing. He turned to her and a smile lit his face for an instant. Never better, he said. Molly put her arm around his shoulder and bent her head against his. They sat like that, motionless for several minutes.
Do you remember coming here to watch me cheerlead? You and Mom? Of course. It was nice of you to sit through all those awful football games just to be supportive. It wasn’t so bad sitting out here in the sunshine, and I liked watching the games back then. Did you really? Yeah, sure. Oh, right, that was before you went weird on us.
How’s your French? he asked. Well, I supposedly teach it, she said. Not that they offer anything but Spanish at my school, so I may be a bit rusty. Why do you ask? Maybe you’ll translate a sentence for me. From Camus? Yeah. Well, I’ll give it a try. Daniel re-opened his book and handed it to her, pointing to a sentence that he had marked by pencil in the margin. Molly glanced quickly at the page then turned to her father with a look of amazement. I didn’t know you read French! This whole book is in French! Well, yeah, Camus was French. He wrote in French. But there are translations of this. I read this book in English. He grimaced, pulling the corners of his mouth down and puckering his stubbly chin. I’m not too happy with the standard translation. But, when did you take up French? Oh, in the past year. And you’re already reading Camus? It’s not particularly difficult. But, what prompted this? Were you bored or something? I don’t get bored, he said. Remember, adults don’t get bored. Yeah, sure. Well why then? So I could read this book, that’s all. This particular book? Yes. In fact, this particular sentence. The one I’m waiting for you to translate for me, if you’d be so kind. Molly shook her head and chuckled under her breath as she returned her attention to the page.
Par une belle matinée du mois de mai, une élégante amazone parcourait, sur une superbe jument alezane, les allées fleuries du Bois de Boulogne.
Well, that’s not too tough. It says: “On a beautiful morning in May, an elegant, umm, Amazon was riding a superb chestnut mare along the flowered, or flowery, blossoming, alleys of the woods of Boulogne.”
Why do you translate amazone as Amazon? Well, what else does it mean? Horsewoman, a woman who rides a horse; the French call such a woman une amazone. Okay then: “On a beautiful morning in May, an elegant horsewoman was riding a superb chestnut mare along the blossoming alleys of the woods of Boulogne.”
You choose blossoming over flowered for fleuries? The alleys aren’t blossoming, they are flowered. Molly shrugged. I suppose. Blossoming is somehow prettier, that’s all. Daniel stubbed his index finger into the page. But less accurate. Fine, she said. Flowered it is.
And what about the verb, parcourait? It doesn’t mean ‘was riding’? Monter is to ride. Well, yes, but she’s on a horse, so she’s riding. Parcourir means to traverse, to travel across. I suppose you could say, “On a beautiful morning in May, an elegant horsewoman was traversing, on a superb chestnut mare, the flowered alleys of the woods of Boulogne.” Maybe in English we’d say: “On a beautiful morning in May, an elegant horsewoman was traveling along the flowered alleys of the woods of Boulogne on a superb chestnut mare.” Or, even better: “On a beautiful May morning an elegant horsewoman on a superb chestnut mare was traveling along the flowered alleys of the woods of Boulogne.”
I’m still not happy with the verb. What tense is parcourait in? That’s the imperfect. It’s like the continuing past. Parcourut would be the simple past, meaning traversed, parcouriat means was traversing. He scratched his head. So how would you express the verb in the subjunctive? That would be parcourirait, she said. Pretty close to parcourait, he mused.
Daniel retrieved his book from Molly’s lap. Thank you, he said as he stood. I think I’ll mosey on homeward. And just leave me wondering what the hell that was all about? There’s no end to wonderment, he said without turning around. Horizon to horizon, just chock full of wonderment. Thanks again. He raised and held a hand above his head in some kind of farewell as he stepped off the bleachers and sedately followed the dirt path along the edge of the playing field, headed for the gate and the street.
Daniel hadn’t always been like this. Until his early fifties he’d led the most ordinary life. He had met and married his wife, Sharon, soon after college and they had settled in his hometown, in the southwest, where they still live. He started an insurance agency, selling all flavors and working as an adjuster. Sharon produced twin girls, Polly and Molly, and this prompted a move to a new house on a beautiful treed acre close to downtown. Sharon stayed at home with the girls while Daniel grew his business and made them all very comfortable. Sharon and Daniel played golf at the country club and vied with their neighbors for the biggest television set and the most digital channels. They held neighborhood barbeques that they called ‘cook-outs’, and hosted the annual company Christmas party in which the girls’ skill with piano duets was always prominently featured. When the girls became teens Sharon began a career selling real estate with Century 21, as she said, more to get out of the house than anything.
Polly and Molly were identical twins, but Polly left her sister in the dust academically. School counselors said it wasn’t brains but attitude. What was wrong with Molly, anyway? All through high school the two of them conspired on how to get away from this Boring family, this Boring house, this Boring Little town. The derided their mother’s high heels and panty hose, their father’s polyester friends, his non-sports car, and his passion for chasing a little white ball into one hole after another. They turned golf around and came up with flog, which is what Daniel spent his weekends doing: flogging the lynx, poor beast! Then, suddenly, at the end of their junior year of high school, Polly had her wish come true. With straight A’s in solid Advanced Placement classes and the highest test scores in the state, she was awarded a full scholarship at an east coast woman’s college, and she was gone. The next fall Molly plugged through her final year ignoring all mention of her sister, wearing Polly’s success like a coat of mail, and finally squeaked into the local college where she enrolled in Education.
The Only interesting thing about Daniel was that he was something of a reader. Not that being a reader is particularly interesting, but what he read seemed out of character and may even have hinted at the follies to come. Early in his marriage in a bargain bin at a secondhand bookstore he had stumbled upon a set of 54 volumes, put out in 1952 by the Encyclopedia Britannica, called Great Books of the Western World which started with Homer and the Greek Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, then proceeded through Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. etc., concluding with Darwin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, William James, and Freud. Approximately thirty-five thousand double columned densely printed pages that the girls calculated contained over thirty-two million words. Before the twins were born Daniel started on Volume I, and every evening after the television was off he would read a few more pages. On weekends he would occasionally spend an hour or two in the hammock under the Chinese Elm tree with a glass of iced tea and the current volume.
The girls had been precocious readers and Polly turned into a voracious one. In her early teens she began demanding her father read something more contemporary. She’d give him the complete published works of J D Salinger, for Christmas, James Joyce’s The Dubliners for his birthday. He would thank her graciously, peruse the jackets and place them with reverence on the shelf to the right of the 54th volume of the Great Books of the Western World, and say that he looked forward to getting to them. Boring! Predictable! Stodgy! When Molly left home at age eighteen Daniel was just finishing Volume 51: Tolstoy’s War and Peace, leaving him just The Brothers Karamazov, The Principles of Psychology, and four works by Freud to complete his task. Polly took pleasure in deriding the collection: If they were only going to choose one Dostoevsky, it should have been Crime and Punishment, everybody knows that! And Tolstoy’s most Boring book is War and Peace, it’s just more famous because it’s so long. And why stop with Freud? What about Jung, or Freud’s contemporary, Nietzsche? Was there not a single writer of merit in the first half of the 20th century? Daniel just smiled at the criticism and was pleased to think that his daughter might have actually read any of the works she was touting.
From the girls’ perspective, their parents’ lives didn’t change much with their departures. Sharon was doing well selling houses and started investing her earnings in fixer-uppers around town. And Daniel was still just boring old Daniel, doing whatever it was he did in his office, mowing his big lawn, playing thirty-six holes of golf every week, gaining an inch around his waist with every passing year, and scratching his head over William James. With the girls gone, they started taking expensive holidays over Christmas, one in Fiji and another in Italy. Sharon came back with enthusiastic reports that Daniel glumly confirmed.
Late one summer evening Daniel, snuggly ensconced in his Lazy-Boy recliner, read the final paragraph of Volume 54. Freud said:
Ladies and Gentlemen – Let me in conclusion sum up what I had to say about the relation of psychoanalysis to the question of a Weltanschauung*. Psychoanalysis is not, in my opinion, in a position to create a Weltanschauung of its own. It has no need to do so, for it is a branch of science and can subscribe to the scientific Weltanschauung. The latter, however, hardly merits such a high-sounding name, for it does not take everything into its scope, it is incomplete, and it makes no claim to being comprehensive or to constituting a system. Scientific thought is still in its infancy; there are very many of the great problems with which it has as yet been unable to cope. A Weltanschauung based upon science has, apart from the emphasis it lays upon the real world, essentially negative characteristics, such as that it limits itself to truth and rejects illusions. Those of our fellow men who are dissatisfied with this state of things and who desire something more for their momentary peace of mind may look for it where they can find it. We shall not blame them for doing so; but we cannot help them and cannot change our own way of thinking on their account.
*Weltanschauung: A comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world, especially from a specific standpoint.
He reread the paragraph then quietly closed the book and rose to slip it into its place on the bookshelf. It was almost midnight, Sharon long asleep. Daniel put on his shoes and a light jacket and walked out into the balmy darkness. A half moon was just rising through the piñons on the near horizon and the stars seemed hungry, suspended in the black palm of the infinite. He didn’t like Freud. As a person, he didn’t like him. He had spent half a year reading those four pompous diatribes. The man was a genius, no doubt, but arrogant. A true genius would show some humility. Even in that last paragraph the man stated that science (meaning, in part, himself) had only a partial grasp on his subject, (and what grasp he thought he had, had become, over the succeeding century, more and more questioned) nevertheless he was arrogant. A real genius would be humbled by the vastness of his ignorance, for who sees that better than a genius, and would not be puffed up by his certainties and the adulation of his disciples. Daniel crossed a field, ducked under a rusty wire fence and entered the state park that occupied the ridges above the town. Freud lived well into the twentieth century and Homer predated him by about twenty-seven hundred years, but which had a better grasp of the human condition? It had been twenty-five years since Daniel had read Homer’s two great poems, but he still remembered the stories, the characters, the conflicts and resolutions well enough. He had read The Odyssey twice, in fact, wanting to savor it, and being disinclined to rush on into what he feared, incorrectly as it turned out, would be heavy slogging in the Greek tragedies. Did Freud understand Achilles and Odysseus better than Homer did? Not a million hours of couch time would have given him the insight of that blind old scribbler of Asia Minor. Daniel gained the ridge and sat with relief on an outcropping of rock, feeling the moon’s presence over his shoulder as it lit his return route. And what about Shakespeare? King Lear and Othello he had reread as well. Talk about understanding the human condition! Daniel resolved to read those plays again as a means of cleansing himself of Freud. Even William James! What did he know? Something. Something, no doubt. But it didn’t stick with you.
A shiver ran down his spine and Daniel rose to shake it off. He didn’t feel like going to bed, so he stumbled along the ridge heading up towards the summit. Achilles was such a sulky bugger that Daniel had become impatient with him, and hadn’t really enjoyed The Illiad, with all its blood and gore and endless battle. But The Odyssey: what a trip! In Odysseus Homer had created a true hero. Very clever, a trickster he had called him, and daring as well as lucky, but with his share of faults. Of course he had a goddess to get him out of his jams. But he took the bull by the horns and did what he wanted to do. You’d never find him sulking in his tent! He was level headed and thought things through, planning what he could to ensure his success. He ignored advice, both good and bad, and struck out on his own. Every man was Odysseus if he just had the balls for it.
When Daniel got home he picked up the volume of Homer and crawled into Polly’s long-abandoned bed, and read:
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
When he awoke it was already mid-morning, Sharon was long at work and the coffee on the stove was cold. Daniel had never been late for work in his life, but he was late today. He telephoned his secretary and said he wouldn’t be in at all. He brewed fresh coffee and took it into the back yard. Across the decrepit fence that separated their properties, Daniel watched his neighbor, Red, shamble out of his dilapidated trailer with his own cup steaming, and slump into a plastic lawn chair under a wonderful canopy of cottonwood and elm. Daniel saluted him by raising his cup and Red responded in kind. Hey Red, got a minute? Red got grumbling to his feet. His whole yard was essentially a garbage dump, the eyesore of the community, littered primarily with the remains of automobiles and rusted out household appliances. Red was visibly steeling himself for another lecture. Wanna sell me your place? Daniel asked him. Red stopped in mid-shuffle and took a sip from his cup. Everything’s for sale, man. For the right price. So, how much you want for it? Red scratched his gray stubble. Twenty-five percent over appraisal. Daniel chuckled. How ‘bout appraisal, and you keep your house there, and whatever you want of all this other stuff. Ten percent over appraisal and I’ll keep the trailer, and you deal with the rest. Daniel leaned over the fence and stretched out his hand. Deal, he said.
A month later over a steak dinner and a decent Merlot Daniel told Sharon about the arrangement. What! That junkyard! Her eyes narrowed. How much? He told her. What! You fool! That’s twice what it’s worth! There are nice one-acre lots out by the club going for that price! How could you buy real estate without talking to me? What d’you want if for, anyway? I’ve always wanted it, you know that. Just to clean it up. Jesus H Christ! Don’t you know that the town has ordered him to clean it up? They’re going to expropriate it if he doesn’t! Well, that’s all fixed now, because I’ve hired Phil the Fin to haul it all to the dump. Be clean as a whistle by next week. Then what are you going to do with it? Just leave it there? No, I think I’m going to build a little house on it. So, you’re a real estate developer now? No, no, nothing like that. Just put a little four hundred square foot cabin on it, a kind of getaway. A getaway from what? for whom? We don’t need a getaway? Right next door? Well, it’s for me, actually. Just a place for me to go and sit and read. You know… No, I don’t have any friggin’ idea. What’s should I know? Are you leaving me? Is that what you’re trying to say? Sharon! Come on! I’m not leaving you. I wouldn’t leave you! What for? I’m just building myself a little getaway next door so I won’t be under-foot. Since when have you been under-foot? We barely even see each other. Well, that’s the other thing… What??? Well, I think I’m going to retire. Retire? You’re only fifty-two, -three… fifty-three. We can’t afford for you to retire. What about your business? What will you do with that? What do you mean you’re thinking of retiring? When? Well, actually, I am retired. I sold the business last week. What??? Jesus H. Christ! Without even talking to me about it! You sold our bread and butter! Jesus Mother of Christ. You mean Mary. What??? Mary. Who’s Mary? Mary is the mother of Christ. You said Jesus Mother of Christ. Doesn’t make sense. DANIEL!!! Sorry. You want some more wine? What you get for it? The business? Daniel told her. God in Heaven, you’re a moron. Why is that all you got? It’s worth two, three times that much, at least. Well, I didn’t want to dicker, you know. Tom made the offer, I countered, he said he was firm, so I shook on it. Tom! Tom McWhat’s-his-name? That shyster! Jesus, Daniel. Is it closed already? Yeah, like I said, last week the papers went through. Shit shit shit! How could you do this to me? You’ve lost your marbles. Lost your friggin’ marbles. I thought you were the Rock of friggin’ Gibraltar… Why don’t you just say fuck if that’s what you mean? Lost my fuckin’ marbles. And now you’re using that word! How can you talk to me like this? That word has never, ever been heard in this house until this moment. Twenty-seven years we’ve been married and I’ve never heard you use that word. What’s happened to you Daniel? What’s going on? I just decided to retire, that’s all. Had enough of working every day. It’s no big deal. Happens to everybody. Not at fifty-two it doesn’t! I’m fifty-three. Fifty-three, and lucky to be able to retire while I still have some life in me. Why didn’t you talk to me about it? Huh? Your wife, you know, your partner in this life… Shouldn’t I be a part of this decision? Well, yeah, but, you know, you’d have argued against it and I’d probably have backed down. You know how we are, you and me… Jesus, Daniel, that’s NOT true. What a thing to say! You think I’m a bully? You’re a hen-pecked little son-of-a-bitch? How are we going to pay the mortgage? What mortgage? We’ll just pay the damned thing off. That’s nothing! I can pay off the mortgage, build my little shack across the fence, and live happily on what’s left over for the rest of my life! Money’s not a problem! What about me, Daniel??? I’ve gotta eat! Sharon, get real! You have enough income to feed yourself, me, and all of our neighbors! Daniel, that’s just a hobby. It’s pin money. It’s not a real job, like yours… Like yours used to be. Sharon, if we’re careful, we have enough to live on for the rest of our lives. Sell your rentals if you need more money. You like selling real estate, you’re good at it. Keep doing it! Everything will be fine. I don’t want to be careful, damn you! That’s not how we live! What about our trip to Antarctica next Christmas? I don’t want to go to Antarctica. But we agreed to go! I put down ten percent! Well, get it back. What do you mean, get it back? You know it’s non-refundable. I wanted that trip! Well, if you can afford it, then you can go, but count me out. I can’t afford it and I don’t want to go anyway. What about the club? Are you going to quit that too? I am, actually. When it comes up for renewal, you can renew on your own. But you LOVE golf, Daniel! Well, it’s true, I do like it out there, but there are other things in life. Like what? Sharon, think about it. There are a LOT of things in life besides golf! And it’s expensive, and time-consuming… Daniel, you can’t quit golf! What will you do every day? Give me a break, Sharon! I can live without goddamned golf! And happily.
A couple of months later Molly was home from college and making another attempt to bridge the gap between her estranged parents. She found Daniel across the fence squatting beside a pile of adobe bricks and a wheelbarrow, trowel in hand. A square concrete stem-wall had been set in the ground and at two of the corners her father had stacked pyramids of bricks. How come you do it like that? He glanced up at her then explained that the building was stronger if one constructed the corners first rather than just laying the bricks one round at a time. How do you know that? I got a book. How come you’re doing this? It’s just how it’s done, is all. I mean, to Mom. How come you’re doing this to Mom? He stood and washed his hands in a bucket. Molly, if you’re going to continue to come and visit me, and I’d like you to, believe me, I want to make some ground rules. Like what you will and won’t talk about? That’s right. I don’t want to talk about me, or you, or your sister, or your mother. I don’t want to talk about our relationships, our health, our appetites, our history, our future. OK? I also don’t want to talk about politics, our wretched government, the dismal state of the environment, the education system, endangered species, foreign affairs, the problems in the Middle East, the weather, global warming, child pornography, et cetera, et cetera. Molly just stared at him. So, what’s left? What DO you want to talk about? If we can’t talk about anything that matters, that is? Ideas, Molly. Let’s have real conversations about ideas, the marvelous creations of the great minds of the human race. Jesus, Daniel, I want to rescue you, to save your marriage, to make my mother happy again, to get you to a doctor, if that’s what’s required, not discuss relativity and the existence or non-existence of God! I don’t need rescuing, Molly. My marriage will evolve as it was always going to evolve, your mother will be as happy as she wants to be independent of you or me or anybody else. If you’re going to leave her, why don’t you just leave her, for Christ sake? Why are you moving next door??? It’s absurd! And, why aren’t you sleeping with her anymore? She told you that? Of course. She tells me everything. What else would she do? Well, I suggest that you mind your own business. Who I sleep with or don’t sleep with is my own business and always has been. If your mother cries on your shoulder you should keep it to yourself. And, for what it’s worth, it is she who turned me out of her bed, not the other way around. Daniel arched his back, cracking it loudly, then resumed his squat beside the bricks. With the trowel he slapped a thin layer of mud from the wheelbarrow onto a brick in the wall, then, grunting, picked a fresh brick off the pile beside him and set it firmly in place. The bricks were four inches thick, twelve inches long, and eight inches wide. How’s your back holding up, Molly asked? It’s doing fine. What do they weigh, the bricks? I don’t know, fifteen, twenty pounds. How many you need? Couple thousand, it’s a small house. How long’s it going to take you? I don’t know, a month or two maybe. Just for the walls? That’s right. Then you have the roof, the floors, the windows and doors, all the plastering and finishing. You going to do it all yourself? As much as I can, I will. It’s nuts, Daniel. Why don’t you just hire somebody? A crew of guys would have it done in no time. I want to do it, that’s all. It’s just something I want to do. But this is your life, Daniel! Think of all the time you’re wasting just stacking bricks. Daniel looked at her and shrugged. What’s time to a pig? Huh? Who said you’re a pig? I didn’t say you were a pig. Why do you call yourself a pig? I didn’t. Yes you did. You said: What’s time to a pig? That’s right. That’s what I said. Now, why don’t you go away and think about it.
A couple of years later Molly got her Teacher’s Certificate and landed a job as a substitute teacher in a village about an hour’s drive from her parents. They seemed to be getting on. They hadn’t divorced, although Daniel spent most of his days and nights in his little adobe shack next door. It had turned out okay, amateurish, but livable with a tin roof and blue trim. It was just one room with a bed in one corner, a kitchen in another other. The tiny Mexican-style bathroom was adequately tiled and had some charm. There were only two windows, and under one of them was a large square table that was littered with books and stacks of papers. Daniel didn’t seem to need a telephone, television, radio, or computer. He did have a small ghetto blaster and a short stack of CDs. When Molly had made a move to look at the CDs, Daniel put them into a drawer.
What do you eat when you’re here on your own? I eat okay. Oatmeal, salads, stir-fries, eggs. Mom says you’re a vegetarian. Is that true? Yeah, pretty much. What do you mean, pretty much? Do you eat meat or don’t you? I don’t eat meat or fish, but the definition of a vegetarian seems kinda hazy to me. I eat eggs and milk and cheese. So, you’re a vegetarian, but not a vegan. Oh, is that it? How come you don’t like meat anymore? Who said I didn’t like meat? Well, if you like it, why don’t you eat it? I don’t want to support the cattle industry, chicken farms, you know. What’s wrong with supporting fishermen? They kill fish. Fish are the birds of the sea. I think we should leave them alone. So, it’s the killing you’re opposed to, not the hormones and antibiotics, the genetic engineering, all that stuff. Obviously it’s all that stuff. So, if you killed a deer with your own gun, would you eat it? I wouldn’t kill the deer. It’s quite simple, I think we should leave the animals alone. The cows would all die if we left them alone. And they’re not going to die if we slaughter them? Gimme a break. They’re an artificial creation anyway, those herds of beef cows. But it’s okay to keep dairy cows cooped up in milking sheds. Molly, this is a stupid conversation and I don’t want to engage in it. I don’t eat meat anymore, that’s it, subject closed.
Did you know Mom has a boyfriend? Daniel had added a porch to the front of his house and was on a stepladder painting the trim. Aren’t you going to answer me? No, he said. Well, she does. Doesn’t it bother you that your wife is sleeping with another man? Daniel descended the ladder, banged the lid on the paint can and began to clean his brush. Go home, Molly. You’re being a pain in the ass. His name is Jeff. Did you know that? Mom says you don’t know him, that she just met him last year. Go home Molly. Daniel took a few threatening steps towards her. Well, you can hardly blame her, can you? Molly said it over her shoulder as she skittered quickly towards the gate that now joined the two properties. And they’re going to Cancun for a month this winter! Her father had never struck her, but she wasn’t at all sure he was still averse to it.
The following year Molly got a full-time job at the high school she’d been subbing in, with her own homeroom and she began teaching Spanish and Geography. She was dating the PE teacher and in the spring they announced their engagement. Daniel didn’t seem too impressed. You’re not living together, I trust. No, Daniel, we are not living together, but that doesn’t mean we’re not having sex at every possible opportunity. Oh Jesus, spare me the particulars. Molly threw herself into a fold-up fabric chair on his deck. What are you reading these days, Daniel? Kazantzakis. Boy, that’s a switch! You think so? It’s not really. He wrote a sequel to The Odyssey, did you know that? Thirty-thousand lines of verse following Odysseus’ life until his death. Molly shook her head. He did Zorba and The Last Temptation of Christ, right? They were pretty big ten, twenty years ago. I didn’t know about this Odyssey thing. So he just picks up where Homer left off? Exactly. It starts with Odysseus taking a bath to wash off the blood and guts of Penelope’s suitors, whom he has just slaughtered. So what does he do the rest of his life? What do you think? Heads back to sea. Sails south around Africa, has lots of adventures and ends up paddling a kayak solo right down to Antarctica. How many times have you read Homer now, four or five? Something like that. So, what’s with you and Odysseus? You like that he-man stuff? You some kind of armchair warrior? Daniel snorted. Are you completely without heroes, Molly? No, I have heroes. Like who? Like Gandhi and Mother Teresa, maybe Judy Chicago. Who the hell is Judy Chicago? A feminist artist, big in the seventies. Never heard of her. Of course not. That was your Shakespeare phase. Shakespeare and golf, what a combo! Well, Ghandi’s a good hero, I guess. And Mother Teresa. But what a gulf between them and Odysseus! Yeah, he was a selfish, arrogant bastard, and they were saints. But he was human. Are you saying Gandhi wasn’t human? Mother Teresa wasn’t human? They were humans! It’s Odysseus that never existed. He’s fictional. Yeah, I guess, but realer than anybody I’ve ever known or heard of. Daniel was sitting at a small table on the deck overlooking his tidy vegetable and flower garden. He removed his glasses and polished them with a tissue from his shirt pocket, all the while looking at the gathering dusk through the branches of the giant cottonwoods. Odysseus is every one of us, Mol. Most of us don’t have it in us to be saints, but, don’t you see? we are all Odysseus, at our best. He folded his glasses and slipped them into their case, rose and with his back to his daughter, croaked, Odysseus is my heart.
Daniel expressed relief when Molly’s PE teacher broke off their engagement. You’re not a jock, Molly. Funny, that’s what he said, even though I tried. Called me a couch potato. I was reading Salmon Rushdie. Say, do you know what a sanyasi is? Yeah, some kind of Hindu hermit or beggar. Well, kind of, but it’s much more specific than that. So, tell me, what’s a sanyasi according to Salmon Rushdie? You are a sanyasi, Daniel. Oh, good. That’s reassuring. Please explain. A sanyasi is an older man who has had his career, raised his family, fulfilled his social and familial responsibilities, then leaves it all behind, walks out of his house one day wearing only a loin cloth and devotes the rest of his life to his spiritual development. I didn’t walk out on my family. Well, you’re a modern-day sanyasi. You quit your job, built yourself this ever-so humble abode, and have detached yourself from everything, just spend your life reading. And I work in my garden. Yes, you have a nice garden. And walk up in the hills. You are losing weight, aren’t you? Still, you’re a sanyasi. If you say so. I rather like it. She smiled. What do you like best about it? I like getting up in the morning and walking around under the trees. And do you know the most amazing thing I’ve just realized? I can go any which way I please! Couldn’t you do that before? I’m not sure. Maybe, but the thing is, I never did.
A month after Molly had sat with her father at the baseball game she found him asleep in a hammock that he’d stretched between two of his cottonwoods. He was snoring lightly, glasses askew on his face. Half a dozen books littered the ground beside him within reach. A few sheets of paper had apparently escaped from under his hand where he’d pinned them to his belly, and she retrieved them from where the breeze held them on the fence. Quietly she sat in the white plastic chair beside him and examined the books. Three different editions of The Plague by Camus, the French, which she’d already seen, and two English translations, plus a French-English dictionary, La Petite Larouse, which is a regular French dictionary, and a couple of French grammar books. The sheets of paper she got off the fence were covered in Daniel’s careful handwriting. One had two sets of four sentences:
Par une belle matinée du mois de mai, une élégante amazone parcourait, sur une superbe jument alezane, les allées fleuries du Bois de Boulogne.
Par une belle matinée de mai, une svelte amazone, montée sur une superbe jument alezane, parcourait les allées fleuries du Bois de Boulogne.
Par une belle matinée de mai, une svelte amazone montée sur une somptueuse jument alezane parcourait les allées pleines de fleures du Bois de Boulogne.
Par une belle matinée de mai, une svelte amazone, montée sur une somptueuse jument alezane, parcourait, au milieu des fleures, les allées du Bois de Boulogne.
One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman was riding a handsome chestnut mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.
One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman was riding a handsome chestnut mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.
One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman was riding a magnificent chestnut mare along the flower-strewn avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.
One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman was riding a magnificent chestnut mare along the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne among the flowers.
Molly looked up to find Daniel scrutinizing her. Well, what do you think? What is this, four versions of the same sentence? I thought you told me you read this book. You said you read it in an English translation. Sure, years ago. Well, don’t you remember M. Grand? Apparently not. He’s an older fellow who helps the doctors with paperwork during the plague. Yeah, so? Well, it turns out that he’s writing a novel, and this is the first sentence. He works and works on the first sentence, never getting past it, just trying to get it perfect. Oh, I vaguely remember. Doesn’t he die from the plague at the end? No, it’s kind of a miracle, but he recovers. I think he’s actually the real hero of the novel. Molly held up the paper, and these are four versions of his first sentence? That’s right. So, why are you so curious about them? Well, Camus has M. Grand worrying over this sentence, day and night he’s refining it, trying to get it just right. I’m trying to decide if, and how, they improve at all. At first I thought I’d enjoy seeing the subtle improvement he was making on it, get some insight into how Camus thought, but now I’m not sure there is anything there. Go ahead, read them carefully, in order. Molly read them aloud, first in French then in English, fully enunciating each word, concentrating on the flow, and capturing the lilting cadence of each rendition. When she finished Daniel urged her to read them again. Well, they certainly change, she said. He drops elegante in favor of svelte. ‘…a morning in May’ instead of ‘…a morning in the month of May,’ ‘magnificent’ replaces ‘handsome’. ‘Flowery’ becomes ‘flower-strewn.’ Then the last sentence, it’s almost as if he’s given up. Exactly! I think the sentences get worse, not better. The last one is downright clumsy. Of course, at that point the man is on his deathbed, not expecting to live out the night. Molly scratched her head. So what’s the point? I don’t know, said Daniel. Camus creates this wonderful character, a saint, really, then gives him this almost ridiculous obsession. Kinda like Sisyphus, Molly said. In a way, I guess. Did you know Camus wrote an essay about Sisyphus? Yeah, but I haven’t read it. I think I did in school, or was supposed to. I skipped lots of that kind of stuff back then. But, getting back to this, you have to admit it’s a pretty innocuous sentence for Camus to spend so much time over. Yeah, and maybe that’s the whole point. That, and the fact that it just doesn’t get any better. Are you so sure that Camus is saying something profound? Couldn’t this whole thing just be a little joke on the reader? Well, I suppose, said Daniel, to the extent that everything is basically an existentialist joke. But, you’ve spent months on this Daniel. You spent a whole year just learning French! Daniel grunted, so you think that was a waste of time? Oh, no. I’m not going there again. I know what you’ll say: What’s time to a pig?
That wasn’t what Daniel had been thinking at all, but it seemed as good a response as any.
Taos, August 2002