The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [114]
Moody and forlorn with middle age, baffled by the enigmatic Christian knight of faith, Kierkegaard, who nevertheless came to grips with spiritual psychologies as few thinkers ever have, battered with visual memories of Aaron, I would walk back to the bed, comically abandoned by sleep. It occurred to me that my lifelong tramps through the landscapes of philosophy had set Aaron off in the direction of counterphilosophy, of Scientology and Theosophy and Anthroposophy and the other occult sciences he favored. Who knows, who knew, what set him off? Perhaps he loved men and not women. But who would care one way or another about such a choice, in this era, except the unenlightened? We would have accepted him gladly, accepted his homosexuality, if that’s what it was. We would have welcomed him back to the house. He knew that. He could have come back, our own beloved prodigal, bedecked with strange clothes and jewels, dressed like a gypsy, and we would have swung wide the door and hugged him and kissed him. But no, he preferred to hate and to be hated.
This is the only cure for insomnia I know. Lying on my back, I would imagine myself in a cosmopolitan but still rather lethargic city, a city that had long ago given up worldly ambition, a city in genteel decline, Lisbon, for example (which I have never visited), where I am sitting at an outdoor café during a mild summer afternoon, drinking bitter coffee and reading the paper in Portuguese. Esther sits there with me, commenting on the architecture of the square — shabby Baroque — and on the passersby. Some are solitary. Others, the lovers, walk arm in arm. They all have an inaptitude for work. The women wear bright scarves tangled around their necks, the young men wear peacock-colored shirts. Occasionally we witness a group of three or four, laughing quietly as they pass in front of us. Then I revise the city so that the square faces the estuary. Boats sail in and out past the anchorage, near a breakwater at whose end is a harbor light. I am also on some of these boats (I am subdivided), and I wave to myself affably. No one has to go anywhere, no one has to accomplish anything. One has, it seems, an entire lifetime to sort through the major questions and to develop a coherent set of opinions and judgments on these matters. The meaning of everything will arrive in due course.
Gulls land and then take flight from the quay at Alcântara. The waiter brings another cup of coffee, a boat toots in the distance over the lapping waves, there is a hint of rain beyond the wharf, a bank of clouds developing over the horizon suggests but does not threaten the relief of a storm. At the next table over a man feeds olives to a gray pet parrot perched on his finger. Esther murmurs something to me, a consoling phrase, I don’t quite attend to it, though I may register the words later. I look around again at the harbor and now at the buildings behind me. Nearby, children are playing hopscotch. Two scholars of the Talmud stroll by, arguing in Portuguese flavored with Yiddish. A small band of musicians is tuning up, a trio of vagabond string players enjoying the outdoors, intending to perform Rossini. I am not particularly hungry, but when the solicitous waiter comes by I order a plate of the local delicacy, a rolled pastry with honey tucked inside.
I take another sip of coffee.
Usually this little nighttime fantasy