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By Root 396 0

the past few weeks, surrounded by the glass windows of his living room and the views of the city, he had been tempted to think that he could spend his final decades there alone, or at most in the company of a sad succession of cats, sifting through his memories in the continuing attempt to ascertain exactly who he was. But out here on the bay, listening to Maria and with Leo at his side, he knew it was an untenable proposition. It was just as Leo had said: there was only so much you could uncover on your own. If Beatrice had taught him anything, it was the need to reach outside, to search patiently for what he was looking for, whether it was love or faith or anything else that might give his life meaning. He had done this with her, and while it may have been a tentative and crippled form of love, it was for him pure and forgiving, and he had cried the tears to prove it.

He was still only forty-one years old, and the city, splayed out in front of him, beckoned with possibility. He remembered his high school longings for a girlfriend, and how he had always been drawn to the idea of someone molding the spinning mass inside him into something artistic and refined and—most of all—human. What he realized now was that he had presented not just a mound of clay but a wildly off-kilter wheel, so that, no matter how gifted anyone might have been, there was no way to center him. Now, perhaps, the wheel was at least level and spinning in the right direction, and he could almost feel his hands pulling himself up into something to behold.

AT LUNCH BEFORE the service, Martin had described to Leo some of what had happened since 9/11 to him and to the city itself. If not quite sanguine, Leo had been philosophical about the terrorist attacks; as he pointed out, many if not most cities throughout history had suffered far worse mutilations—he specifically mentioned the 1871 Commune, where thousands of Parisians had been killed by their own countrymen in the course of a day or two—and while some of these cities had died and were buried, many had recovered, and still more had been born. They talked about Anna Prus, whom Leo had seen at the height of her career, when—as he assured Martin—she had been most impressive. Martin in turn had described her death, and Leo seemed genuinely astonished, or at least very much intrigued, to learn about the Tristan manuscript. Martin offered to show it to him, but Leo demurred, saying that he wanted to wait for Maria; the three of them had already arranged to meet after the service.

Martin returned his attention to Maria’s song and soon found himself thinking of Anna. At first the accident had been terrifying to consider, not only because of what it conjured up in terms of Hank and Jane but also because of the thought of an old woman—alone and lonely—getting killed like this, another life ending in a most undignified way, her remains swept up like a pile of garbage. As he reconsidered it now, in the fragmented and dreamlike sunlight reflecting off the water, he felt certain that Anna had not been afraid, that she had possessed an unlikely tranquillity as she flew past, almost as though—he realized with a start—she had arrived at the same conclusions about life and death as he had while awaiting the inevitable, i.e., death in the form of a speeding taxi, but unlike him had made the choice to succumb. Although he continued to resist the idea that she had been looking at him—as opposed to anyone else who happened to be in the vicinity—he did not find it difficult to entertain the notion that she had at least considered him, in the way two people passing each other in a narrow hallway might, with a nod of recognition and understanding that each was now headed in the direction from which the other had just arrived.

45

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

NEW YORK CITY, 2002. Leo Metropolis ushered Martin and Maria into a small cabin on the upper deck and invited them to sit. They began by talking about the weather, about Bayreuth, about Martin’s “retirement” and Maria’s facetious desire for the same.