My paternal grandmother believed that the earth was hollow. Literally: that the earth was a rocky shell encasing a vast void. I never could decide if she was crazy, but I was certain that she was wrong on that count. The last thing she said to me, months before she died, was, "Have you noticed how people's heads are so square?" I don't think she knew who I was by then, and I laughed and asked her if mine were square. She assured me that it was.
This morning I sat on my deck in the early sun drinking coffee, reading James Joyce's The Dead. I cried twice during that hour, those few pages, and when I put it down and contemplated his snowflakes falling faintly through the universe on the living and the dead, I knew suddenly what my grandmother meant. At least, having not thought of it for years, the image of the coreless earth had suddenly a metaphorical ring of truth to it.
My cat bounded through the long grass in the back yard and ran part way up a birch tree, her claws, spread and extended, gripped into the papery bark. The tree swayed graciously in the light breeze, clinging unconsciously to the earth, in passive disinterest of the cat. The sun warmed me through my sweatshirt and a surge of pleasure buoyed me in the pleasant, contemplative melancholy that Joyce's story had induced. I felt solid and content, my feet firmly grounded, as spring burst around me, totally self-absorbed with green growth and vigor.
With thoughts of spring come those of winter. But it was not wintry thoughts that drew me back through Joyce to my grandmother, for the dead of winter harbors the seeds of spring, and the terror of Michael Furey's fate, as my grandmother's, as mine, is that it bears none. It bears nothing at all. No, it was not the season's cycle, but a finer example of death, that jogged my memory.
*
I have a friend whose name is Jack. I am not sure, but I believe that I am his only friend, and friendship may be an inappropriate word for our relationship, yet acquaintance seems a bit weak. I know Jack because he is my neighbor and he has been since I moved into this house six years ago. It took at least two years of occasional chance encounters over the fence that separates our adjoining back yards before we exchanged names, and another two before he accepted an offer to drink a beer with me on my back deck.
My interest in Jack you might call anthropological, as he is an interesting instance of humanity. I believe he has no interest in me whatsoever. Yet we have conversed.
Jack is the most solitary person I know, the most solitary person I can imagine, so I was very surprised last week when he knocked on my door late in the evening and invited himself in for a drink. It was this action, and what fell out over the subsequent hours, that spurs me to anoint myself his friend.
Jack is middle aged, as am I. In fact, we are within months of the same age, although I had guessed him ten years my senior. He works for a small software firm as a computer programmer, and his office is downtown in the city in which we live, about three miles from our houses. Jack's build is slight, his height average, and his head quite bald. The scant gray-blonde hairs that he has are long and always in disarray about his ears and collar. Gray eyes squint from under ordinary gray eyebrows and radiate gray wrinkles as far as his ears. Yet he is not frail or stooped or sickly, but rather, there is an intentness about him that evinces vigor.
I have seen him many mornings, in fair weather and in foul, striding past my house, and I had always
assumed that he was off to catch the bus to his office, but he told me that night that he walks to work each day, and home again in the evenings. On his route there is a small cafe, that I have often seen but never entered, and on warm mornings years ago it became his habit to stop there on his way to work for a cup of coffee, for the cafe has a small outside terrace in the back with a few tables that catch the morning sun. At first he did not stop every day, but only on fine days, and only on fine days that coincided with a lack of urgency for him to be at work. Jack explained to me why he liked this particular cafe: it was quiet, the coffee was good, and he could always get a table to himself at eight in the morning. Although he had been going there for years, and he had never ordered anything but an espresso, when he stood to order his coffee the coffee maker always waited for the request. Not once had he been given a nod of recognition or a 'The usual, sir?' Jack had never experienced a smile or any indication of familiarity. Always the same coffee maker, always the same request, always the same response: a cup of good coffee. That was why Jack returned: his anonymity, his solitude, was respected. I remarked that he had met a kindred spirit and Jack merely shrugged.
Jack shrugged, but then he looked at me inquisitively, squinting further his squinted eyes. "The point of this story," he told me, "is that I did meet a kindred spirit there, but it was not the coffee maker."
About a year before our conversation Jack had been sipping his morning coffee at the cafe when he noticed a young woman at another of the few tables on the terrace. She was perhaps eighteen or twenty. He noticed her and thought how familiar she looked, then he realized, with a shock, that he, in his disinterested way, had seen her there at that same table, many times before. She was immersed in a small book, which she held flat on the table with one hand while the other alternated between conveying her coffee and her cigarette to her lips. She had such a familiar air about her that Jack realized, with some unease, that he must have been watching her, unaware of himself, for months.
Her hair, straight and somewhat blonde, hung down over her shoulders, and her eyes, set wide apart above a long sharp nose, were gray-blue. He found himself watching her as she read with amazing speed, flipping one page after another and never looking up.
*
Jack told me that he had lived in the house next to mine almost all of his adult life, but that he had not always lived there alone. He had purchased the house and moved into it with his wife shortly after they were married, when they were both still in college. As far as he knew, he and his wife had been quite happy there for years. They had one child, a daughter they called Julie.
Then one day they had had a tremendous row and his wife and Julie had left him. Jack was accused by his wife, and subsequently by the sheriff, of sexually molesting their daughter, a charge he assured me, and I firmly believe, was totally false. The courts, however, granted his wife a divorce and custody of Julie, and specified that Jack never be in the company of his daughter again. It was from that moment that Jack became a solitary man. He shunned those who did not shun him, and he had not had a friend nor a friendly conversation since.
Amazingly, he did not seem particularly bitter towards his wife. He reasoned that she had done what was correct given what she believed. How she could have believed it was perhaps another matter. Julie was presumably to blame for fabricating the story, but she was only ten and was probably reacting to some heinous crime that he didn't wish to dwell on. So Jack's reaction, he told me, was to consider himself lucky and to withdraw. Who needed it, he said, sordid human interaction?
*
Jack became obsessed with order and with the mechanics of living. He came clean, he told me. Introspection and order, he said, although I suspect that order was already his bent, considering his profession. With time on his hands and being in possession of the requisite equipment, he began to read and to think, and by the time I got to know him he seemed to have read and digested everything of importance. It turned out, however, to my surprise and chagrin, that he had read no fiction since Thomas Mann. "Fiction, as a creative process," he told me, "is dead. It reached its pinnacle in Joyce and its death in Mann." When he said this he was well aware that I am a writer. He shook his head at my objection. "What new can you write?" he asked. "It has all been said." I replied lamely, "But who reads Joyce or Mann today?" To which he said with a finality that closed the matter, "It's there, nevertheless. All that's left for you is to restate or to break wind."
After Jack first noticed the young woman in the cafe he began to stop for coffee more frequently. She was usually there. Even when the weather was bad he would sometimes stop in, and since the terrace would be closed he would sit inside near the glass door that, in good weather, opened onto it. The door was always left ajar, even in the most inclement weather, for ventilation, so his inside table retained something of the atmosphere he had grown accustomed to. On such days she often did not come, but when she did she would also sit near the open door, moving automatically, without even looking around, to an empty table.
Something about her attracted him and he knew almost immediately what it was. It was not sexual, although he acknowledged there might be something latent there. No, in fact, he knew that it was definitely not sexual, and he was painfully aware that any approach, should he make one, and which he had no intention of doing, could only be construed that way. No, it was not that.
He began arriving before she did to confirm his certainty. He watched other patrons, some still drowsy due to the early hour, and others already reading the morning papers or joking with companions. He watched the coffee maker exchange gossip with them and call them by name. He came to recognize the regulars and some went so far as to give him a nod of recognition as their eyes met his. When the young woman came in and ordered, however, the coffee maker looked right through her and he never spoke. He took her order, took her money, and handed her her coffee, a double espresso. Yes, Jack had been right, she was another contented solitary, a lone wolf.
Months passed and many cups of coffee were consumed, but never a word passed between them, never a glance. Jack guessed that she did not even know of his existence, just as he had been unaware of hers for so long.
Then one warm summer morning she wasn't there and she didn't come and he was surprised, and he felt a pang, which surprised him even more. The terrace tables had filled and it was becoming noisy. He had never lingered so long. Then, just as he rose to leave he saw her enter the cafe. Flustered, he regained his seat and he watched her as she moved along the counter, awaiting her turn, her back to him, cascades of hair to her waist. He observed her closely as she ordered, received her coffee, then turned and walked through the glass doors, tall, her full skirt clinging to her knees. She stopped abruptly and surveyed the tables. They were all full except for his, at which there was an empty chair. "May I?" she said to him matter-of-factly, her voice low and icy. She nodded towards the chair. "Of course," he replied. He tried to smile but she wasn't looking at him. She placed her coffee on the table and sat, not with her knees under the table, but turned at ninety degrees. He watched her in profile as she lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply then opened her book on her lap and began to read. He sat for several minutes in silence before he rose and went to work. Jack told me that he suddenly wondered, for the first time in twenty years, if he was in love.
A few weeks later, after many mornings passed as they always had, she at her table in one corner of the terrace, he at his in another corner, he was staring at her when she glanced up at him and caught him. Quickly he averted his eyes. But when he looked back at her she was still looking at him. When he returned her stare, his mind racing, wondering what to do, she calmly returned to her book. He saw no invitation in those gray-blue eyes, there was no encouragement; there was only an acknowledgement: one lone wolf to another.
More days and weeks passed, always the same, then abruptly she no longer came. For weeks he waited for her, wondering when and if she would return, wondering why she had broken such a long-standing habit. Finally he came to a decision: when he saw her again he would introduce himself, suggest that she join him at his table. He knew she came to this cafe because she could enjoy her solitude and he knew his action might destroy that for her, but he decided to do it anyway. If she declined, he would find another cafe and leave her alone. Or was it already too late? Had their exchanged stare those weeks before implied to her a nascent intimacy that his continued presence had threatened to foster, and so she had been driven away? He couldn't decide. He wondered if he should search her out in other cafes. But no, if she'd left for that reason, then he already had his answer.
A month passed and gradually Jack returned, almost with gratitude, to his former routine. He no longer looked for her or waited lest she be late. He no longer lingered over the cold dregs of his espresso and stared vacantly at her empty table. Then, one morning, he was drinking his coffee on the terrace when he heard her laugh. He almost leapt out of his skin, for he knew it was her laugh, he recognized it even though he had never heard it, or even heard her speak, but for those two low icy words. He jerked to his feet, but then immediately restrained himself. He sat and turned to look into the cafe towards the counter. "So this is your haunt," he heard her say, her voice louder than he would have expected. And there she was, he could see her from the back, ordering her coffee. But she was not alone. There was another woman with her, older, with shorter hair. Both of them were tall, though the older was slimmer than the younger, and the older woman was paying for the coffees. Then Jack realized that it was she, the older woman, who was talking; it was she who had been laughing. He could see her there speaking. The voice he recognized was coming out of the wrong mouth. He stood suddenly and spilled his coffee. His neck went rigid and he whirled away as they turned towards him. He trembled as he felt them come through the glass doors onto the terrace. They were speaking but he didn't hear what they were saying, for there was a very loud buzzing in his ears. When he knew from the direction of their voices that they were away from the door he bolted. He did not look back.
That was the night that Jack surprised me by coming to my door and inviting himself in for a drink. He'd already had a few, I could tell, yet he was in a state of great agitation. As he sat on the edge of my couch in the darkness and talked, he alternated between holding the glass of whiskey and his balding head between his hands, his hands that were still shaking from his near encounter with life.
"What a mistake!" he said, then we sat in silence for a long while before he spoke again. "Do you think it's hereditary?" I looked at him. "Reclusiveness?" he said. I shook my head. "And what if I had introduced myself? Can you imagine?" I had been imagining, but again I shook my head. Then he said with a great outflowing of relief, "What an amazing fluke that her mother was there!" and I shuddered. I shuddered, for I felt an icy chill descend upon the room. I told him that he was a painful case.
*
Which brings me back to Joyce and my grandmother's hollow world. I live upon this green, vibrant scrim that, through the sheer energy of life, keeps itself, in ignorance, afloat above a great concave abyss of despair and loneliness and death. Spring follows winter, but nothing returns from that abyss. I live with the illusion of the scrim and poke furtively at it, wanting, but not wanting, to know.
Jack lives somewhere else, knowing, but not wanting to.
Brock Taylor Bellingham May, 1991