The Secret of Life Page 5

  “Do you ever get hot, Taffy, bouncing on that horse?” “Oh, Conrad.”

  There was a weird preacher outside the movie theater. A pale, wild-eyed Negro with big freckles splotched on his papery skin. He had some red-and-yellow signboards about the end of the world, and he was passing out gospel tracts. Conrad stood in front of him for a minute, soaking it up, and thinking,I can fly . “Yoube lookin’ for meaning and the words fall away! TheSon don’t come in time till time runout . These are the last times, my friend.”

  Conrad took a tract and let Taffy drag him into the theater. He’d brought along his unopened half-pint of Gordon’s. Once he’d gotten popcorn and settled down with Taffy, he excused himself to go to the bathroom.I can fly. He sat down in a stall and sucked down a third of the bottle. Just like at the Bo Diddley concert. The buzzing started. He drew the wild man’s tract out of his pocket and studied it. It was dull bullshit—a straight pitch for getting saved by Jesus—with none of the weird resonances that the actual preacher had.

  Conrad took another slug and squinted to see who’d printed the pamphlet. “Gospel Tract Society, Shoals, Indiana.” No good. After the movie, Conrad stopped to talk to the preacher. “What do you mean, ‘the words fall away’? How do you make it happen?”

  “You hide it to find it,” said the man, smiling. He was glad to answer questions. That’s what he was here for. “Conrad, comeon ,” urged Taffy. This evening wasn’t working out properly.

  “How can you hand out crap lies like this?” demanded Conrad, gesturing at the tracts. “Who pays you?”

  “I tell you,” said the preacher, putting his hand on Conrad’s shoulder and drawing him close. “The world take care of the world. Andyou a fallen angel.” All at once, Conrad felt dizzy from the red-and-yellow Gordon’s and the preacher’s red-and-yellow signs. His head was roaring and it was as if everything were bathed in flames. Flame-people. Flying wing.

  In the car, Taffy was really angry. “Just take me home, Conrad. I don’t want to go to our make-out spot tonight. You can kiss me in the driveway.”

  “Thank you, Taffy. I’m sorry I’m acting crazy. I love you. I can fly.”

  “You can what?”

  “Fly. On the way to pick you up, I flew out over the Ohio River. I think maybe I’m not human.”

  “My father’s right, Conrad. You really are crazy.” Her voice was cold as ice.

  On the drive back to his house from Taffy’s, Conrad opened all the windows, hoping the air would wash the gin fumes away. The bottle was on the seat next to him, not quite empty. He felt really strange.

  Just then a car full of hoods pulled around him as if to pass. Little greasers, all worked up. Instead of passing, they locked speed and began yelling curses and giving him the finger. Two cars speeding along side by side, the kids on the left yelling at Conrad.

  Conrad zipped up the Bungers’ long dark driveway, loaded the little derringer, and went partway back up the driveway on foot. The other kids had stopped at the end, scared of an ambush. They were yelling things. It was too dark to see. Conrad leveled the pistol at the sound and paused.

  He was just drunk enough to consider shooting.That would show them. And if the cops came—well, he could just fly away and ...

  As Conrad deliberated, the whole dark world began to flame and shudder. A voice was running in his head, a memory tape.If you misuse your powers, you will discorporate, said the voice.Remember why you are here!

  Slowly he lowered the gun to his side. The car full of hoods was driving off.

  “Why I’m here,” murmured Conrad. “To find the secret of life.”

  He unloaded the gun and went to bed. It was time to go to college.

  Part II

  That’s living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it’s a change no one notices: The proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense.

  —Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea

  Chapter 8:

  Tuesday, October 1, 1963 “For one thing,” said the political science teacher, “I’m sure that all of us here agree on the basics.

  We’re all liberal Democrats. Is there anyone here who isn’t?”

  Conrad and the only other Southern boy raised their hands. The other boy had red hair and came from Mississippi. The teacher called on him first.

  “Liberalism has just about ruined America,” the red-haired boy drawled. “The conservative philosophy is not only for fools and bigots. It represents the only truly progressive response to the realities of the late twentieth century.”

  The other students tittered, and the teacher smiled. He was extremely tall and skinny. He wore a tweed jacket and a hand-tied bow tie. “Very well, Pound. And what about you, Bunger?”

  This was the first time that Conrad had spoken up in any of his college classes. His heart was beating so hard he could hardly speak. He wanted the teacher to like him.

  Conrad and then raised his hand.

  “Yes, Pennington?”

  “Anarchy is theabsence of a political system, sir. There’s no point in discussing it here.”

  “Very good.”

  Conrad’s face burned. After class a very short, dark-skinned boy came over and spoke to him.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Louisville.”

  “In Kentucky?” The boy blinked and adjusted his glasses. “I’m from Long Island. Chuckie Golem. You going to have lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  Over lunch, Golem told Conrad about his roommate, a wild character called Izzy Tuskman. The boys discussed the few girls whose names they knew. It turned out that Chuckie lived in the same dorm as Conrad.

  “You want to play some Frisbee?” Chuckie asked as they ambled back from lunch. He seemed so kind and gentle. “What’s Frisbee?”

  “It’s a plastic flying saucer. You throw it back and forth.”

  “OK. Though I do have a lot of homework ...”

  “Just a half hour, it’ll do us good.”

  It was a brilliant October day, hot as summer. Chuckie patiently demonstrated the Frisbee until Conrad was able to throw it a little.

  “The Frisbee looks neat when it hovers against the sky,” observed Conrad presently. “It’d be perfect for a UFO movie. Did you seeEarth versus the Flying Saucers ? It came out in 1957, the same year as Sputnik.”

  “I didn’t go to those movies,” said Chuckie. “I listened to folk-music instead. I guess they have a lot of UFO sightings in Kentucky?” The precise, hesitant way he said, “Kentucky,” made it sound wild and unpredictable ... if not actually crude and benighted.

  “Waal, shore,” said Conrad, putting on a hick accent. “There’s a gentleman down the road from where we lived—old Cornelius Skelton—he always tells as how one night he seed a flying saucer make off with one of his hawgs. He fired on it, but twarnt no use. Only good come out of it was next day Cornelius found him a big mineral crystal spang where the space vehicle had landed! Still hot, it was. Mr. Skelton keeps that crystal on his mantel, for to show folks. I’ve seed and touched it myself, I have.” The story was more-or-less true, but Chuckie didn’t seem to understand that it was supposed to be funny as well.

  If anything, he looked a little sorry for Conrad. Conrad wished he hadn’t told the story. The fact of the matter was that, for whatever reason, he thought of Mr. Skelton’s crystal quite often.

  “It’s amezuzah .” Chuckie laughed happily at Conrad’s confusion. “A religious thing, against the Angel of Death. I’m Jewish.”

  “Oh, are you?” In his embarrassment, Conrad dropped the Frisbee. He’d never met any Jews before, though he’d heard his brother Caldwell talk about the oneshe’d met at college. Caldwell said Jews were untrustworthy.

  “You don’tlook Jewish,” Conrad said politely.

  “Are you kidding?” Chuckie gave his dry, humming laugh. “That reminds me of a joke. There’s a guy on the train, right, and thi
s old Jewish woman keeps coming up to him and asking, ‘Are you Jewish?’ ‘I’m not Jewish,’ the guy says, ‘so leave me alone.’ ‘Are you sure?’ says the woman. ‘Are you sure you’re not Jewish?’ She keeps doing this for about an hour, right, so finally he gives up and says, ‘All right, lady, I admit it, I’m Jewish!’ Big pause, and then she says, ‘Funny ... you don’t look Jewish.’ ”

  “That’s good,” laughed Conrad. This sure was different from Louisville.

  “There’s a lot of Jewish jokes. Jewish humor. Have you readStern ? By Bruce Jay Friedman?”

  No.

  “I’ll lend it to you. It’s a panic.”

  Over the next week, Conrad came to realize that most of his new Swarthmore friends were Jewish. His roommate Ron Platek, and Cal Preminger across the hall, and most Jewish of all, Chuckie and his roommate Izzy Tuskman.

  Tuskman and Golem had been wrestling stars at different Long Island high schools. This was one sport that Swarthmore competed seriously in, so the two had been recruited and billeted together in a one-person room. To make space for their desks, the college had installed bunk beds. Often, after supper, Conrad and Preminger would squeeze into Tuskman and Golem’s room to trade jokes and insults. They all liked to tease Conrad for not being Jewish.

  “Hey, Conrad, you know whatschmuck is?” This from Tuskman, a five-foot two-inch, thick-lipped elf who looked and talked like Chico Marx.

  “Well, in German it means ‘ornament.’ ”

  “He evenspeaks Kraut,” marveled Golem.

  Conrad knew some German from listening to his mother’s relatives. “Ornament,” he repeated. “Like jewelry, you know?”

  “Dat’s poifect,” exclaimed Tuskman.“Ohnament.” He doubled over in glee. His whole face squeezed into lumpy wrinkles. “Ohnament,” he gasped. “Tell him, Chuckie.” Chuckie had a more scholarly demeanor than his roomie. “Schmuckin Yiddish means ‘penis,’ ” he explained, adjusting his glasses for emphasis. “If you call a person aschmuck , it means you think he’s a jerk.”

  “Come on, Conrad,” said Izzy, still giggling on the floor. “Don’t be anohnament .”

  It was fun having strange new friends, but it was just as much fun to go off and be alone whenever you liked. Conrad felt like he was really getting to know himself. He liked to walk down into the Crum woods, or sit with his books on some isolated corner of the great front-campus lawn. When his parents had brought him to Swarthmore on a tour-of-the-colleges last year, Conrad had been impressed at the sight of blue-jeaned students sitting on the lawn with books. And now that was him.

  He didn’t study too much out there; mostly he just looked at the clouds and trees, the birds and the squirrels. One day a squirrel got mad at him—he was leaning against its tree, and perhaps it wanted to come down—the squirrel got mad and began making noises at Conrad. Odd, chirr-chucking noises; it was a noise he’d heard in trees before, but he’d never realized that it was squirrels doing it. He threw sticks at the squirrel to keep its scolding going. The noise sounded almost like speech, and faint memories of some higher-energy language flitted across Conrad’s mind.

  Often, thinking or studying, he had the feeling of being close to some great realization. He’d forgotten something, something big, but always it escaped him. He felt closest to the big answer when, staring up at clouds, he forgot himself entirely. It was so sweet to be a creature living here on Earth.

  Conrad didn’t pay much attention to his roommate, Ron Platek, for the first few weeks. The guy was clearly a schmuck. Tall, uncoordinated, thick-lipped, hook-nosed, he wore heavy black glasses with Coke-bottle lenses. He looked and acted like an old man. He came from Brooklyn. Seeing Ronald William Platek’s address on the list of roommates, Conrad had expected him to be a Negro. Platek, for his part, had expected Conrad von Riemann Bunger to be a Nazi. They finally got to be friends when they rearranged the room’s furniture.

  “Push that desk over there, Conrad. I’m sorry I can’t help you, I’ve got a bad back.”

  “OK, Ron. That looks good, doesn’t it? How about putting the bookcases together like this?”

  “Beautiful. Would you help me nail up my bulletin board?”

  “Sure. Do you think we could get some travel posters?” Caldwell had had travel posters in his college room.

  “Please, no travel posters. This isn’t the University of Kentucky, Conrad. How about some art reproductions from the bookstore?”

  “Yeah.”

  They got in the habit of having long talks in the dark, after going to bed. They were both such provincials—each in his own way—that each found the other’s strange accent endlessly fascinating. Ron had an insatiable appetite for facts about the Southern high-school scene, and Conrad did his best to make it sound interesting. In return, Ron told about his gritty life in Brooklyn.

  Ron’s parents were poor immigrants who’d fled Poland to escape Hitler. The neighborhood they’d settled in was half-black and very tough. Ron had been robbed at knifepoint several times. One of his friends had an older brother who’d paid a woman to shit on his chest. The parks were full of junkies, and the sidewalks were littered with used rubbers. “Some of these guys haveno mind , Conrad. With the mouth you got, you wouldn’t last two days.”

  After a while, the only thing Conrad didn’t like about Ron was his first name. Finally, one night, an appropriate nickname hit him. Ron was tossing in his bed, worrying about a big astronomy test, and suddenly Conrad had the image of Ron as a great dingyplatter with food sliding back and forth. “Hey, Platter ,” he giggled. “What toothsome victuals do you bear?”

  “What are you talking about, Bunger?”

  “That’s your name. That’s what I’m going to call you.Platter. ”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You can callme Platter, too. We’ll be like the Jackson twins.” Conrad was referring to a newspaper comic strip about twin teenage girls.

  “Oh, my God, the Jackson twins. With the little brother ...Termite ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Christ, what I’d give to fuck the Jackson twins. Even just one of them. I’d give my left dick.”

  “I remember I actually jacked off on aRex Morgan comic strip once. There was this real hot woman waiting for Rex in a motel room. You could see her thighs.”

  “Jesus. Soft, creamy thighs quivering with uncontrollable lust.”

  Another night, they got onto the differences between the Jewish and Christian religions.

  “Is it true that you all are still waiting for a Messiah?” asked Conrad. “I read somewhere ... I think it was inUlysses ... that every time a Jewish man has a son he’s all excited thinking it might be the Redeemer.”

  “Ah, that’s bullshit.” “Didyou know that Christ was really a Jew, Platter?”

  “Of course! What do you think the Last Supper was?Pesach! The feast of Passover. My family does it every year. Real good food, Platter, you ought to try it.” Platter paused in fond recollection, then went on. “Sure, Christ was a Jew. A nice guy like me!My father’s a carpenter, you know, he lays parquet floors.” “What if you were the Messiah, and you didn’t even know it? What if you thought you were a regular person, but you were really something else?”

  “Guys like you and me don’t have to worry about that, Conrad. Nobody thinks we’re regular persons anyway.”

  Chapter 9:

  Friday, April 10, 1964 Conrad took all the LifeSavers out of the package and shuffled them around on the desk. He closed his eyes, picked one, and tried to guess what color it was. Couldn’t tell. Took it out and looked at it: green.

  For a second he couldn’t remember whatgreen was supposed to taste like.

  His attention wandered back to the paper in his typewriter. Page nine. The fine arts teacher had insisted that all papers be ten to fifteen pages in length. Conrad had been up all night trying to satisfy him. It was

  7:15 and the papers were due in class at 8:00. Everyone was supposed to write about the new science library.

&nb
sp; “All in all,”Conrad typed desperately,“the new science library is a real plus for the Swarthmore College campus. As one cute freshman coed was heard to say, ‘Wow! This building really turns me on!’ ”

  Still just nine pages. Struck by sudden inspiration, Conrad rubbed the page numbers off the Corrasable Bond page-corners and then retyped them, skipping the number4 . That brought him up to ten pages. He went by the fine arts class, laid his paper on the teacher’s desk, and headed back to his dorm. He didn’t want to think anymore. He wanted to sleep.

  When Conrad woke, it was late afternoon. He’d been dreaming about flying. For the thousandth time he thought back to the time he’d flown out over the Ohio River. That had really happened, hadn’t it? But now, here at Swarthmore, he never felt any of the old power. He was just an awkward Kentucky boy with not too much to say for himself. He winced, recalling the wretched climax of his art paper. Another C for sure.

  At least it was Friday. And tomorrow was spring vacation. Conrad was planning to get drunk tonight.

  There was going to be a bonfire party down in the Crum woods, and he’d arranged for an older student to get bottles for him and Platter. The pickup was supposed to be at five.

  Looking to kill a half hour, Conrad wandered out of the dorm and into the quad. There, sitting on some stone steps, was Izzy Tuskman. He was drawing a detailed sketch of a still-leafless Japanese shrub. The rendition was excellent. Tuskman seemed to twinkle with energy as he looked—reallylooked —at the strangely twisting branches.

  “That’s a good drawing, Izzy.”

  Long silence. Tuskman was not averse to milking a moment for all it was worth. “Sure,” he said finally, looking over with a shrug and a quick smile. “I’m an ahtist. Did you finish your paper?”

  “Yeah, it’s terrible. It took me all night. I’m going to get drunk.”

  “Wit what?”