20 by John Edgar Wideman Page B

his hand, heard again the palm-stifled sounds of her crying. And he was reminded of the endless and multiform suffering of all the men and women in his life, pain's many faces: his daughter sobbing in a hospital waiting room, Sadie's searching eyes, the Chief's perplexed exhaustion. Even Dexter's rigid mask couldn't hide from him now the shared anxiety in them all, the quiet, constant fear best expressed by Sally's need to intervene, her lack of faith: life dies when you close your eyes—better not blink! He would have reduced them all if he could have, compressed them into the quaking form of Mrs. Klein; and there he would have reached out and touched them, a benediction for the tired and frightened; there he would have told them, all the suffering survivors: “It's all right.”
    But could he say that to himself? Where was the source of peace in the world for an old man past his time? Could one offer comfort, forgiveness to oneself? There were moments when he had sensed a peace in Mrs. Klein, moments when he had believed she was tapping its secret source, moments when, as she had probed him, he had felt her to be his teacher and guide, possessor of a strange wisdom he had only begun to understand. She seemedthen to beckon to him, to bring him closer. But in the end, she had only been human; in the end she had cried like everyone else, lonely like everyone else, just another of pain's many faces, although her suffering and isolation had seemed more perfectly complete, more fully understood—but was that because they were self-induced? I'll tell you, she had promised him at the day's end, two survivors grieving in the dark. Come back and I'll let you know. Would she, though?
    The Detective felt buoyant, expanding suddenly with that old sensation of dispossession, of time suspension, that instinctual belief preceding the infallible solution—his gift returning. But now, for the first time in his life, the gift frightened him; seemed now to have been infected by his philosophizing, by the uncertainty of those strange thoughts which had afflicted the last years of his life, bringing him not an answer unquestionable, not a solution, but another question in itself. And that question wasn't, would she tell him, but rather, could she? Did even Mrs. Klein know for sure? Would her answer, if she provided one, be anything more than a pro forma gesture to satisfy the law? Would it be anything more than an act of friendship, a reciprocal kindness to the Detective, giving him only what he wanted, what he felt he had to know, rather than the truth? And could he now, after his day alone with her, after those moments at the promontory point, could he himself accept any of the definite answers? Was there ever, the Detective suddenly thought, terrified by the thought, was there ever a solution? Not to satisfy the law, but for him, for her, for any man or woman? Was there ever an etiology, a chain of facts to be relied upon? Could one ever close one's eyes while at the brink, on the edge, and still be sure? I'll tell you, she had said. If you must know, if you must…
    The Detective rose, felt himself rise, above his chair, above his pain and exhaustion, the accrued erosion of a hard day, a hard life; and carried by his concentration, only the case to be solved on his mind, he walked past the fire to the desk beside him. Bending, one hand propped against the writing top for balance, he opened a drawer and removed a pack of letters, raising them then before his eyes.
    A pause then, a lingering sensation—tantalizing, frightening—of proximity in time and space to a conclusion, a crisis. Now unavoidably fate's accomplice, he feared his freedom, the weight of the impending decision,forced complicity in life—he alone to decide. The Detective's mind reeled for a moment, spinning memories of Sadie, a multitude of images from the days of their lives, all the framed scenes, the stored immortalities, the secured niches