Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [91]
“Daymare,” he managed, squinting in the noon light. His pulse was quickened by these shifts of consciousness, and a kind of drear disgust hovered over him like a surreal smog. As one who felt he’d achieved what Oppenheimer once termed “profound serenity through discipline”—the discipline of renunciation, no hatreds, no ambitions for self, no desires other than to vanish into the ether—he was astonished by his dream. The world was drawing him back into its current, and his expressive unconscious exhibited good evidence as to why it had become preferable for him to be out of rather than in the flow.
“What made you so afraid?”
Kip lay back on his pillow soaked with sweat.
“I don’t know,” he lied.
“Marcos told me you were in the ring this morning. I didn’t know you could ride.”
The image of a dignified woman atop a funeral pyre was as if seared onto the back of his lids. Her eyes were wide open, and she looked knowingly at him. He must have been floating above her as the smoke drifted upward, just like it did during second passes in Laos, flying low over fast terrain to lay down white phosphorus in places where the living would soon be dead.
“I can almost do anything, Mary. Emphasis on almost.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Call you by your right name, you mean?”
Franny stood up. She was wearing a loose white dress that in this limewashed, sundrenched chamber gave her the appearance of a statue draped in finely hewn, supple marble. “I’m just trying to be nice, Kip. You’ve already made your opinion known about what I’m doing. Besides, you promised.”
“I remember my dream now.”
The statue remained standing, unmoving, listening to Kip as he concocted a dream in which three people—Franny, Marcos, and Mary—who had all been good friends were told by the doctor they couldn’t see one another anymore because each had a disease that, though not threatening to his or her own health, would be fatal to the other two.
“That’s no nightmare. You’re making it up.” Franny had never been cross with Kip before, but his fake, even preachy dream distressed her. She’d built him up in her mind as a kind of guru, with earned convictions and a light, disinterested touch. Why was he pressing her? Of course, the problem he raised was as real as the dream he used to pose it was sham. “I’ll leave you to your fictions,” was about as disparaging a remark as she could manage.
“Thanks for troubling yourself, really. I’m fine now.”
She turned to go, to flee this reminder—the last Kip would ever furnish on the subject—but couldn’t escape his final observation. “I had a friend back in Laos, very religious person, for a killer. He slaughtered the enemy without fussing, was a deadeye with any weapon you put in his hands. Still, this guy never met a spiritual creed he didn’t like. Philosopher. He had a saying I was thinking about earlier this morning. The only way to know somebody is from the inside out, not the other way around.”
“You can’t be a murderer and a religious man at the same time.”
“Most murderers think they’re God. And God has blood on his hands, too, don’t forget.”
“Well, none of this has anything to do with me.”
“You’re right. I apologize.”
“What you mean is, Marcos doesn’t know me.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Franny’s white dress swung luminous in the doorway, and once she had gone, Kip listened to the birds chattering and scolding one another in the high branches.
What right do I have? he thought. What right in the world.
Her left side was partially paralyzed, though her fingers moved at the doctor’s command and her thin wrist rose with difficulty but nonetheless rose. She could feel the hands that held her own, and pleased everyone with her ready half smiles. The stroke had mildly slurred her speech—she didn’t feel much like speaking those first days, anyway—but her physician believed she had every chance of regaining full articulation. She fought sadness and fear as best she could. She prayed, though her prayers, begun with energy and commitment, would trail away before she got to a proper Amen.