CHAPTER 3: STARGAZING AFTER SUPPER

In my tenth mid-year, I was taken on vacation to visit a couple of kids who I detested at a cluster of cabins along a lake in the Northern Uplands. They were the children of my father’s friends; it was a couple too many degrees of separation for me. Why people who lived on a lake in Southeastern Doria would spend nine hours going all the way to a lake in Northern Doria was beyond me. Especially to see two mean and babyish boys. Only seven and eight. Real jerks. How could my father, so sensitive to me in other respects, want me to play day in and day out with twerps? Well it wasn’t all bad, they had a sister, around my age, who was…nice. I spent the mid-year avoiding the two brats.

        One sultry moonless night after dinner, Lise and I walked down together to the wooden pier. A motorboat had just gone by, and Uncle Ernie’s rowboat tethered to the dock was softly bobbing in the starlit water. Apart from distant cicadas and an almost subliminal shout echoing across the lake, it was perfectly still. I looked up at the brilliant spangled sky and found my heart racing.

        Without looking down, with only her outstretched hand to guide me, we found a soft patch of grass and laid ourselves down. The sky was blazing with stars. There were thousands of them, mostly twinkling, a few bright and steady. 

        Lise: If you look carefully, you can see faint differences in color.

        Enriko: Really?

        Lise: Yeah, see that bright one right there?

        Enriko: Uh huh, it’s bluish.

        I felt again for the ground beneath me; it was solid, steady…reassuring. Cautiously she sat up and looked left and right, up and down the long reach of the lakefront. She saw both sides of the water.

        Lise: The world only looks flat, you know.

        Enriko: Huh, what are you talking about?

        Lise: Really it’s round. This is all a big ball…turning in the middle of the sky…once a day.

        I tried to imagine it spinning with millions of people glued to it, talking different languages, wearing funny clothes, all stuck to the same ball. It seemed ridiculous.

        Enriko: There’s no way.

        Lise: Here, stretch your arms out.

        Enriko: Why?

        Lise: Just do it.

        I stretched my arms out and tried to sense for a spin.

        Lise: Can you feel it?

        Enirko: Maybe, just a little.

        Lise: Look, across the lake, there’s a bright star twinkling between the topmost branches. If you squint your eyes you can make rays of light dance from it. Squint a little more, and the rays will obediently change their length and shape.

        Enriko: I can’t tell. Am I just imagining it, or…woah.

        The star was now definitely above the trees. Just a few minutes ago it had been poking in and out of the branches. Now it was higher, no doubt about it.

        Enriko: So that’s what they mean when they say a star is rising.

        Lise: The planet is turning in the other direction. At one end of the sky the stars are rising. That way is called East. At the other end of the sky, behind us, beyond the cabins, the stars are setting. That way is called West. Once every day the planet will spin completely around, and the same stars will rise again in the same place.

        Enriko: But if something as big as the planet turned once a day, it had to be moving ridiculously fast. Everyone we know must be whirling at an unbelievable speed.

        Lise: Doesn’t that sound like fun?

        Now, I could actually feel the planet turn—not just imagine it in my head, but really feel it in the pit of my stomach. It was like descending in a fast elevator. I craned my neck back further, so my field of view was uncontaminated by anything on planet, until I could see nothing but black sky and bright stars. Gratifyingly, I was overtaken by the giddy sense that I had better clutch the clumps of grass on either side of me and hold on for dear life, or else fall up into the sky, my tiny tumbling body dwarfed by the huge darkened sphere below.

        I actually cried out before she managed to stifle the scream with her wrist. 

        Lise: Fun, huh?

        That was how her brothers were able to find us. Scrambling down the slope, they discovered on our face an uncommon mix of embarrassment and surprise, which they readily assimilated, eager to find some small indiscretion to carry back and offer to my parents.

        In one night, I had learned much more than in all my years of schooling. I had wondered to myself, if the planet was really spinning, who was doing the spinning? What in the world made it turn? Maybe it didn’t and Lise just made it feel that way. When we returned, Mother seemed to tremble in panic.

        Marie: I’ve looked for you everywhere. Why aren’t you where I can find you? Oh, Enriko, something awful’s happened.

Sometimes I would get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and find my father there in his pajama bottoms, his neck craned up, a kind of patrician disdain accompanying the shaving cream on his upper lip. “Hi, Champ,” he would say. It was short for “champion,” and it was a delightful nickname. Why was he shaving at night, when no one would know if he had a beard? “Because” –he smiled– “your mother will know.” Years later, I discovered that I had understood this cheerful remark only incompletely. My parents had been in love.

My first experience with death was with one of our serfs, Old Zeldovich. Old Zeldovich was on the roof, putting up a lightning rod, when a storm broke out. After he failed to show up for dinner, Mother went to look for him. 

        Marie: What is it, Old Zeldovich? You're not looking well. Are you Okay? You feel all right?

        On a cloudy day, we laid Old Zeldovich to rest; it was a brief but touching funeral.

        I have wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others. Zeldovich’s death cut the ground from under Father’s feet and opened his defended keep and let in old age. On the other hand Mother, who surely loved her family as deeply as did her husband, was not destroyed or warped. Her life continued evenly. She felt sorrow but she survived it. 

        I think perhaps Mother accepted the world as she accepted the Holy Scrolls, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her. 

Father may have thought and played and philosophized about death, but he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick. 

        To Mother it was simply death—the thing promised and expected. She could go on and in her sorrow put a pot of beans in the oven, bake six pies, and plan to exactness how much food would be necessary properly to feed the funeral guests. And she could in her sorrow see that Father had a clean white shirt and that his black broadcloth was brushed and free of spots and his shoes blacked. Perhaps it takes these two kinds to make a good marriage, riveted with several kinds of strengths. 

        Once Father accepted, he could probably go farther than Mother, but the process of accepting tore him to pieces. After that, Father was never the same. He kept the same good-looks but he could only pretend, when he put his mind to it, that he cared about you. He was a martinet. He had some people come over weekends to weed and garden at the house and then made fun of them after they left. He became puffed up with imaginary self-importance. He was not a gentle man anymore and he had no idea what a sense of humor was. No one was to call me “Champ” anymore.

That night I had a strange and vivid dream. It began in an open meadow, enwreathed by forest trees. The field contained several upright coffins, perfectly still. Then all at once, the lids flew open and out of each emerged a single waiter, dressed in black and carrying assorted food atop their trays. They all wandered about aimlessly like lobotomized turkeys. Eventually, they all converged in the middle of the meadow and clashed into one another, causing them and their dishware to tumble to the ground.

        I knew that after that dream I would not grow up to be an ordinary man. 

I spoke often with Father Lawrence, who was always dressed in black with a black beard. For years, I thought he was some sort of widow. 

        Father Lawrence: Every action has a cause. The universe exists, therefore it has a cause. It follows Almighty created the universe, therefore He exists. 

        Enriko: And yet Poincaré didn't believe in the Sacred Triumvirate.  

        Father Lawrence: Poincaré was an Alum. 

        Enriko: What's an Alum?

        Father Lawrence: You never saw a Alum? Here. I have some sketches. There are Alums.

        Enriko: No kidding. They all have these horns?

        Father Lawrence: No, this is the Dorian Alum. The Phrygian Alum has these stripes.

I recall my first mystical vision. I was in the woods, heading toward my special place where I do…stuff. That day, I was thinking about The Anointed. If He was a carpenter, I wondered what He'd charge for bookshelves.

        Suddenly, I saw a strange cloaked figure standing in front of me. 

        Enriko: Who are you?

        Cloaked Figure: Death.

        Enriko: What happens after we die?  

        Death: …

        Enriko: Is there a hell? 

        Death: …

        Enriko: ls there an Almighty? 

        Death: …

        Enriko: Do we live again?

        Death: …

        Enriko: Alright. Let me ask one key question: Are there girls?

        Death: You're an interesting young man. We'll meet again.

        Enriko: Don't bother.

        Death: It's no bother.