I worried that these regressional tangents, both physical and mental, had wasted precious time. I wondered if the Secretary was disappointed in me, and if I had failed in the preparations for my mission and thus the hopes for the salvation of the young scientist. I sat on the floor and wearily extracted everything from my bag of tricks. All seemed useless, yet as treasured as the miniature vase so adored by Akutagawa.
I’m sorry, I said, aloud, lining up a small army of tin soldiers. I’m sorry, lining up a handful of marbles and old tickets to the cinema, little red tickets torn, but not in half. I’m sorry, I said again in my head, and at once heard her tinkling laughter, like the Good Witch of the North. Her Billie Burke laugh.
-Do not despair, everything you’ve experienced has happened in a blink of an eye, there are still moments to spare before you are truly ready.
-What shall I do? I asked somewhat desperately. I was tired, tired of my own imagination, hungry for a new direction.
-Count to ten, go backwards, and then forwards. Trace your step- you were coming down the stairs…
-Yes. There was a quarantine and then a lockdown. The pandemic raged on and on it seemed forever and I paced my room like a starved coyote and one day just went out on the street with my camera and encountered from a dense fog that seemed to drop like a fishing net brimming over with cloud a dog with prismatic eyes and instantaneously a stream of love encircled my sockets and bled into my heart.
The voice of the Secretary dissolved, as mist upon a lake burned by sun. And the same impossible mist burst into the palette of William Blake.
Something to believe in. Something to believe in.
A chorus of angels, fallen from grace, with all too human shoulders, just nubs of scar tissue where once were wings. Gossamer nets cling to their faces, all identically beautiful. Something to believe in, they sing. The birch and the foxes know their song; a woebegone chorus breaking the hearts of life around them.
Something to believe in. Something to believe in.
-Believe in this, cries a young girl with a wide honest face. It’s Friday. She should be in school, but stands steadfast before a world turning its neck the other way.
-Believe in this! The forest you are pacing will soon be burning, the clear pool will dry and sympathetic foxes will starve. Believe in this, drop your nets and follow me.
The angels rushed toward her dimensional dwelling. Suddenly I saw everything. Shackleton’s Endurance at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. I saw Peter Kropotkin remove his scarf, in wet and frozen air, then stricken with pneumonia. I saw the young Alice Ball extracting the fats of the chaulmoogra tree in search of a treatment for leprosy. I saw the greenish glow surrounding the wild hair of Marie Curie. I saw Kurt Cobain rocking himself in the corner of some remote cabin, laughing and crying, as if an old man, affected by everything joyous and sad.
I saw and saw and saw. I saw everything like an exploding collage of Goddard. And Goddard himself piecing together the puzzled world. I felt excited and frightened. It’s coming, I know it, the end of things, at least as I have known them. Again, I heard her voice. Don’t look back. I saw Lot and his wife. I saw Orpheus and Eurydice. I heard the voice of the troubadour: You have everything you need. My rucksack was in a corner. Inventory: whistle, wool cap, face mask, protective goggles, meteor fragments, but something was missing.
I felt the heart of the Secretary racing.
Love. But I had that as well. Love for the Emperor. For though I can’t say why, I do love him. I let myself be enveloped by love, and focused on the Queen Anne’s lace that covered the fields of a small island off the coast of Georgia, as it pixilated, vanished, and returned as snow.
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