ne evening, sitting around the dining room table, Miriam Rowe set her fork down and patted her mouth with her napkin.
She said: “I have put up with this silence from you, Charles, for too long. I know that you do not want it spoken of, otherwise you would have spoken of it. But for all of our sakes, for Charlotte’s education, for the continuation of your work, I beg you to tell us what happened and where did you go?”
Charles Rowe also put down his fork. He lay his hands, palms down, flat on the table. He closed his eyes.
“Miriam,” he began. “Miriam, I cannot tell you.”
“Why?”
“I am not sure that I know where I was, how I came there, and how I came back.”
“You are not sure?”
“How can I be sure? My brain is merely a human mind! It interprets and generates. It believes that it sees, but it is so easily tricked!”
“Tell us, then, what your brain records for you.”
Professor Rowe paused. It was a long and pregnant pause.
Charlotte continued gobbling her food. Her eyes, though, were riveted on her father.
Montague chose this moment to let out a plaintive howl, and the three people looked sharply at the cat. Professor and Miriam Rowe transferred their gazes, questioningly, to Charlotte.
Charlotte shrugged.
Professor Rowe wiped his mouth on his napkin and cleared his throat.
“It is awkward,” he said. “It is awkward.”
He paused again.
Then he spoke: “I remember very little of what happened, at first. I recall a feeling of vague uneasiness coursing through my body. My mind—my constant companion—was silent. I have no recollection of anything around me or outside of me or near me. There was a great feeling of nervousness, a well of vibration in my body, but no body, no mind, no reason. I became aware of a deep connect with my ancestors—with my father, and his father. I say ‘I,’ but there was no conception of a self. This feeling seemed to last interminably. I was not aware of its beginning, and I was not aware of its ending. When I think of it, it seems to be still happening. It seems to be a lifetime, coexisting with this fragile existence.” He paused, and sat motionless for a full minute before gathering himself together.
“I awoke here,” he said, looking around the room. “In the bell tower. This place was empty, as it was when we first came here, but all of the structures were standing and new. I do not expect that this was real, you understand.” He gazed seriously into his wife’s eyes. “I expect that this was a vision. The mind travels in an astral plane, but the body does not. I cannot understand what my body was or where it was. I seemed to be here, in this place, when it was new.”
Miriam was nodding with rapt seriousness.
“There was a man on the ground, planting seeds in the ground. He looked up into the bell tower, seeming to sense me.
“ ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘I was wondering what was keeping you.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I am here.’
“ ‘Let’s get you down from the tower,’ he said. He brought a tall ladder and leaned it against the wall. ‘I built this ladder for this,’ he said.
“The man brought me inside, and introduced me to a younger man. ‘This is my son,’ he said. ‘My son is eternally a child.’
“I greeted the young man, and found that his mentality was not developed. He spoke and walked awkwardly, and his smile seemed sly and unnatural.
“ ‘My son,’ said the man, ‘is not dangerous, but he is wrongly accused. Here is what happened. I had left the boy in the care of a man and a woman. This man was a man of your profession and had promised to cure my boy of his affliction, his mental weakness. He worked with children, along with this woman, his wife. They had a home where children stayed, and they were attempting to cure these children. Naturally, they had toys of all kinds, which the children would play with. These people had become reclusive, and they never left their institution. They spent every day among these children who were not normal, who had different types of mental disturbances, and instead of curing the children, this man and woman slowly began to be mentally disturbed themselves. They began to think of themselves as children and act as children. One day, the man was mad at his wife for playing with some dolls. In a fit of anger, he took the dolls from his wife. He lit them on fire and threw them into the children’s rooms. The place was soon full of flames, and all of the children died, but my son. This man put the unburned dolls in my son’s room and accused my son of starting the fire. No one believed my son, but I know that this story is true. We are hidden here in the desert, so that my son can be free. Meanwhile, I carry on work that would interest you.’
“ ‘Why am I here?’ I asked.
“ ‘You are here because I brought you here. Your work is good, you’re on the right path, but it is flawed. Come, let me show you what I have done.’
“He brought me outside and led me through the empty landscape. These orange groves were not here then. He brought me to a small shack that had a cellar door in the floor. He opened the door, and we descended into a tunnel. The tunnel was long and wound through the ground. It was dank and moist, almost living, underneath the ground. We walked for an eternity, until we reached a red door. It was freshly painted with bright red paint. We walked through the door, and it opened into a room that was entirely filled with lights. They seemed disembodied, not electrical, not gas-lit. They inhabited the walls and air.
“ ‘What is this place?’ I asked.
“ ‘This is the brain,’ he said.
“After this, my memories become hazy and disconnected. I remember the color blue, and the words: ‘blue is the ink of the soul.’ I remember that there was a storm that came out of nowhere, and there was a flash of lightning that hit an old oak tree, setting it on fire. It burned all night, sending up inky clouds of smoke. Then there are phrases that I remember: ‘a spatial isolation, an orbit through the soil,’ and ‘a thousand rules of shape and form and time.’ And the face of the mentally afflicted boy, looking at me. Then I was in the tower room, Charlotte’s room, looking at myself in the mirror.”
Professor Rowe’s narration came to a halt.
“And then what happened?” asked Miriam. “How did you get back? How did you get home?”
“I don’t know,” said the Professor. He looked at Montague. “I woke up one morning in a street in New York.” Montague blinked his eyes in a cat-smile. “You see, don’t you,” said Professor Rowe, “that my experiments were entirely worthless. I was pulled away by some other power, that much is clear. I brought back no cognitively knowable truths. I am here even poorer in knowledge than before.” He looked down at the table. “Excuse me,” he said, and rose from the dinner table.
“Hmm,” said Charlotte, and took another bread roll from the table. “What are we having for dessert?”
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