Involuntary Bliss Read online

  On the one hand, his excommunication had been involuntary, he said, having been handed down to him from the mid-level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. On the other hand, his excommunication had been entirely voluntary because he knew full well the consequences of not wearing polyester pants. By refusing to wear them, he had willed his excommunication into being. For these reasons, it was not entirely the case that he’d quit, and not entirely the case that he’d been let go.

  In the wake of his excommunication, he said, two questions immediately arose. The first was how long it would take before the hotel’s management saw fit to reverse its decision. Now that he’d been excommunicated, the hotel’s standard of furniture arrangement was bound to deteriorate, the management bound to recognize its error. How many complaints from irate guests at awkwardly positioned tables with inadequate numbers of chairs would they be able to stand, he wondered, before his excommunication was reversed? Not many, he said, answering his own question. The second question was whether he would wish to return to the employ of the Auberge St. Eglise once his excommunication had been reversed, an affirmative answer being entirely unthinkable without consideration of the terms of his return. He’d want a raise. He’d want no more early morning shifts. Finally, he’d insist on wearing denim trousers on the job. If those terms were met, would he then agree to the reversal of his excommunication? He would agree to no such thing, he said, for he had no desire to return to the hotel’s employ as a furniture arranger even under the most favourable circumstances, having considered the terms of his return only to make a point. His employment was no longer tenable because it interfered with his writing of poetry—a pursuit to which, in the wake of Warren’s death, he’d committed himself entirely.

  He’d had a great deal of time to consider his dropping out after Warren’s fatal accident, he said, and at least in part the missionaries were to blame. This saga began in November, the night before our paper on the Peruvian novella had been due and several weeks before Warren died. On that night in November, said James, he’d been studiously seated at his desk, about to formulate his thesis, when the doorbell rang. He’d been determined to ignore this intrusion, his resolve enduring until the third ringing of the bell, at which point he was finally compelled to rise from his desk with every intention of telling his unwanted visitor to go away. When he peered through the cracks of the venetian blinds, he was surprised to find an unfamiliar young woman standing there, pale and not-unattractive, with fair shoulder-length hair, dressed in a long wool coat and modest skirt as if she had just attended church and had come calling afterwards, or else was bound for church and had stopped to collect him on the way, James discovering, upon opening the door, that the latter assumption was the closer to the truth, the young woman forgoing introductions in favour of inquiring if he was able to find peace in a world filled increasingly with turmoil, a world in which, it seemed, things were not as they should be. Before James could reply, she began quoting a passage prophesying a future moment in which , and though she looked upon her open Bible as she spoke, it was apparent that she was reciting rather than reading, the young woman having committed the verse to memory just as James would later do, so that he in turn might recite it each time he spoke of how he’d invited the young missionary inside, against his better judgment, finding her earnestness enticing, intrigued as he was by the certitude of the conviction that had led her to knock upon his door—a woman by all appearances inclined to timidity yet nevertheless compelled to ring the doors of strangers by an incontrovertible directive to proselytize, to spread the word, to seek out those whose salvation had not yet been secured and lead them to the flock, her innocence in stark and utter contrast to the perversity of the Peruvian novella with its confounding notion of involuntary bliss, her presence providing him a temporary reprieve from its darkness.

  “Come in, Lydia,” said James, having deduced the young woman’s name from the tag affixed to her chest. She complied, smiling shyly in an unsuccessful effort to conceal her trepidation as she stepped into James’s living room and stood waiting for her host to move to one side of his chesterfield a stack of books, a water bong, a dirty plate, before he invited her to sit. He offered to take her coat, but she declined. He seated himself cross-legged on the floor before her, looking up, as if he were the attendee of a nursery school at storytime, and though Lydia appeared surprised by the position he assumed, she refrained from comment, seemingly intent upon not passing judgment, instead posing the question she’d already asked and this time allowing his reply, James responding in the affirmative, the world in his view burgeoning with turmoil, a time of momentous upheaval heralded by the appearance of four horsemen on the horizon—the first being the flourishing of philistinism combined with the incompetence of the vast majority of those who were not philistines; the second being the destruction of the natural world in conjunction with what James referred to as the catastrophic impoverishment of the unnatural world; the third being the denigration of the Cyclopean in favour of a bleary-eyed and depthless bi-opticism; the fourth being the hegemony of arborescent thinking and the subsequent perversion of rhizomatic cartography—accompanied by a burgeoning herd of pack mules whose backs were bowed with the burdensome loads of the diminishing sanctity of mystery and the increasing currency of the triumphal homicide detective, the flourishing of prurience combined with adolescent hypersexuality, the waxing of the military industrial simplex, the collapse of community and the preponderance of the perplexed individual, the proliferation of electrified instrumentation and the subsequent marginalization of the acoustic mandola, the metastasizing of organs within the global body, the benignity of agnosticism and the banality of fundamentalism, the unspeakable ugliness of the English language and the utter incomprehensibility of the vast majority of other languages, the airiness of the uninhibited and the earthiness of the ethereal, the vigour of the effete and the frangibility of the robust, the indulgence of the ascetic and the austerity of the hedonist, the manufacture of dissent, the sagacity of the absurd and the inanity of the sensible, the vapidity of the astute and the profundity of the conventional, the piety of the unorthodox and the agnosticism of the devout, the advent of talkies and the subsequent demise of silent cinema, the completeness of the inchoate and the immaturity of the fully formed, the prolixity of the concise and the succinctness of the pleonastic, the fact that Lydia’s attention wandered partway through his litany not escaping James, who observed his visitor as she surveyed the room and its contents, her right hand absently straying toward the fine silver chain around her neck, its pendant tucked discreetly beneath the collar of her dress.

  When he’d finished and she quietly announced that it was time for her to leave, he attributed her reluctance to stay to her inability to confront the woeful state of the waning world as it had just been described. She proved indifferent to his protestations that their conversation had only just begun, that his salvation had not yet been secured, her skirt swaying with the haste of her departure as she left him alone once more, unable to reclaim his focus in order to complete his paper on the Peruvian novella and its confounding notion of involuntary bliss, the thesis of which, he was convinced, had been at the forefront of his mind at the precise moment the doorbell rang, a thesis of the finest sort, at once the inevitable outcome of all that it preceded but also entirely unexpected, confounding and unsettling, a thesis that would denude the limitations of the reader’s understanding, shake the reader’s preconceptions to their core, a thesis that had, he was convinced, upon the third and final ringing of the bell, been forever lost in the foreboding wilderness of his mind, the words he’d put to paper crumbs that had been devoured by mercilessly foraging woodland birds, by four-footed scavengers of myriad description, who, in the unshrinking shadow of winter (which, James was always quick to mention, is never more than three seasons away) were ever-intent on ingesting every morsel of sustenance to which their beaks or noses might lead them, no matter how minute, no matter what the conseq
uences for James’s already impoverished GPA.

  In the wake of Lydia’s intrusion, he’d been compelled to meet with the professor of our Cyclopean Studies seminar in her office, and had found himself dismayed at his failure to look her in the eye. When he’d finished speaking, she let silence hang in the air between them, as if it might elicit some truth that had eluded James in his account. She then said the Peruvian novella was indeed a challenge to comprehend, it being one of the most sordid and difficult texts in the entire Cyclopean canon, assuring James that he was not the first to be both moved and confounded in equal measure by the seeming senselessness of the Peruvian novella’s notion of involuntary bliss. She’d graciously granted him another week to produce his paper, encouraging him to take a few days to clear his head, impressing on him the importance of perseverance, of seeing his thesis through to its conclusion, assuring him that the rewards yielded by a hard-earned understanding of the Peruvian novella and its confounding notion of involuntary bliss were unequalled in the field of Cyclopean Studies. James spent the following week in more or less the fashion our professor had suggested it be spent, returning to his desk several days before his new deadline, where he’d been studiously seated, intent on completing his essay when the doorbell rang again. It had occurred to James that it might be Lydia having returned to renew her efforts at securing his salvation, but when he approached the door and peered through its window, it was not Lydia he saw. He didn’t recognize the man, who was short and slight, clean-shaven and impeccably groomed, dressed in an open overcoat and a dark green, three-piece pinstripe suit of a cut that had not been fashionable for years. In his right hand he held a fedora, while tucked beneath his left arm was a leather attaché case, battered with use, strangely incongruous with the man’s otherwise immaculate presentation.

  “Hello,” said the man, “are you going to open the door?” and James was reminded that the man could see him through the crack in the blinds and was studying him just as James was studying the man, the man maintaining his patience though James had kept him waiting for some time. The man had good news, James thought as he opened the door, that much was clear from the geniality of his expression, from the mixture of expectancy and patience with which he stood waiting on the step.

  “You must be James,” said the man, and before James could confirm the man’s presumption, the man had introduced himself as a distinguished church Elder visiting from New York on special church business. He explained how he’d learned of a young missionary’s encounter with a student at the local university, a young man who’d expressed concerns she was not able to address, concerns that had given her much cause for prayer, causing her to doubt the divine truth of her convictions, the young missionary urging the Elder to call upon the young man before he returned to New York.

  “I’m not James,” James had said, claiming further not to know anyone by that name. The Elder’s expression had registered his disappointment as he apologized for the misunderstanding, proposing that the two of them nevertheless spend some time discussing their respective thoughts on matters of faith. When James declined the offer, the Elder did not press the matter further but placed his fedora back upon his head, opened his attaché case and handed James a pamphlet he suggested James peruse at his leisure. As James bid the Elder good day, shut the door and returned to his desk, he regretted having ended their conversation before it had begun, for once no longer in the Elder’s presence, he felt drawn to those qualities that had only moments before made him feel so ill-at-ease—the man’s sincerity, his aura of benevolence—qualities that Lydia had also possessed, and he felt seized by a peculiar desire to open the door, run down the street and ask the man to come inside so that he might speak to him about the difficulties of finishing his essay on the Peruvian novella and its confounding notion of involuntary bliss, of how he’d endeavoured to see it through, James deciding in the Elder’s absence that there was much they might have said to one another had he given the man a chance. He also took pleasure in the knowledge that his conversation with Lydia had unsettled her to such a degree, James himself having experienced considerable doubts and misgivings of his own about any number of convictions that he’d once steadfastly held.

  He then looked at the pamphlet in his hand, its heading commanding him to , its cover featuring an illustration of a mountain and a valley, a young man dressed in denim coveralls standing in an orchard at the valley’s edge, the orchard’s trees burdened with blossoms as well as ripened fruit. The young man stood on a ladder while smiling broadly, radiant with well-being, reaching upward, while a basket overflowing with apples (or else unusually large cherries), rested at the ladder’s base. Not far from him, a young woman pushed an elderly woman in a wheelchair, both women wearing the same ecstatic expression as the fruit picker. James wondered whether the young man and the young woman might be lovers, as it occurred to him that if he were to shave off his beard and cut his hair, he might look somewhat like the fruit picker, although the wheelchair pusher, who was brown-skinned and dark-haired, did not resemble Lydia. In the middle of the valley stood an older man in a straw hat, sowing seed in a field of green. At the edge of the field was another young woman, seated, reading a book, and two barefoot young boys were not far from her, dressed in denim short pants and kicking a ball between them. The farmer did not seem to begrudge them their leisure, nor did he seem confounded by the prospect of sowing seed in a field already overgrown, for he too was smiling. The valley was at once blooming and verdant and autumnal, and the peak of the mountain was capped with snow, so that it seemed all seasons occurred in simultaneity, as if time had been suspended, or else as if time did not exist, the woman in the wheelchair having been always old and frail, the children always children, the fruit picker and farmer tireless in the bliss of their labours, their diligence inspiring James to return to his desk and make every effort to forget the peculiar exchange that had just occurred, attempting once more to conceive of a worthy thesis and finding himself increasingly convinced that he now understood the Peruvian novella far less than he had before, eventually abandoning for a final time all hope of completing the paper and surrendering to a fitful sleep in which he had two dreams—each distinct from the other but connected nevertheless—that left him with a feeling of incompletion, as if they were the first two instalments in a trilogy of dreams from which he’d wakened before he could dream the third.

  In the first of these dreams, he and Lydia were lovers. Their coupling was adventurous and all-consuming, and in the throes of their passion, Lydia became distanced from her faith just as he unwittingly took that faith upon himself, so that Lydia was cast adrift while James became implicated in a system of beliefs he had hitherto shunned. In the second of these dreams, Lydia and the Elder were man and wife, and James was their perpetual infant son, living an existence without pains or conflicts that could not be assuaged by the caresses of devout parents who selflessly provided for his every infantile need, this dream comprising a delirious image of himself in a washbasin upon a table in a kitchen he had never known, the Elder in suspenders and rolled-up sleeves, holding James’s infant head just barely above the surface, Lydia performing the ablutions, wiping him gently with a washcloth while the balls of James’s tiny fists splashed ineffectually at the tepid water, James awaking the next morning to find himself more fatigued than he’d been when he’d retired. Each night he went to bed with the hope that he might dream the third and final dream, and though the first two recurred with disconcerting regularity, the third dream eluded him indefinitely, leaving the series utterly elliptical in its incompletion.

  A week went by and he found himself unable to reclaim his focus, his failure to complete his paper on the Peruvian novella and its confounding notion of involuntary bliss weighing heavily upon him. Though he was not immune to procrastination, he’d always completed the work that was expected of him, sooner or later, often impressing his professors with the originality of his insight in spite of his consist
ent disregard for academic regulation and decorum. His inability, in this instance, to formulate an interpretation, even a substandard one, proved to be a decisive defeat. Though he continued to answer to the name of James, he was James without content—devoid of purpose, meaning or direction, his thoughts returning again and again to the utopian illustration upon the missionary’s tract, a perpetual reminder of the abyss into which he’d stumbled, he said, as we sat with our backs still pressed against the trunks of our respective oaks on the side of the mountain.

  And then Warren died in the accident, said James, which was the point of no return. He could not compose an academic paper in the wake of such calamity, he said. Instead he’d written a eulogy. He’d not been asked to write one, but had written one nevertheless. It was a shame I hadn’t been at the funeral, which had been only for his family and closest friends. Thankfully, said James, he’d committed it to memory so that he could recite it for me now. Imagine that Warren’s casket lies before us, and his loved ones have assembled dressed in black. In eulogies, said James, raising his voice as if addressing a crowd, it is customary to idealize the departed. It is easy to do so once they are gone, when they are no longer standing over our shoulder. But then, there are also times when the dead actually possess ideal qualities, or at least did so when alive. Rest assured that he was not speaking out of a sense of obligation, or out of his well-known penchant for hyperbole, when he said that Warren had possessed ideal qualities; he was merely speaking the truth. One was better off for having been in Warren’s presence, for Warren’s way of being in the world was far removed from that of the common man. Just as one tires of other people, just as one has them figured out, one meets someone like Warren, and one befriends him. When we first meet those who will go on to become our closest friends, there is inevitably something already familiar about them. We think to ourselves, this person is like X. X—whom we have come to know and understand, about whom we have formed certain opinions, whose behavior we can predict with some degree of accuracy—is our model for understanding this new person whom we have just met, who already seems familiar to us. This familiarity serves a useful purpose, in initially helping us feel comfortable with this person who will eventually become our closest friend. But it is in fact illusory, this semblance of familiarity, for in the ways that matter most, this new person, who goes on to become a valued member of our inner sanctum, does not resemble X at all. Eventually one comes to know this new person intimately, this valued friend, in ways that make his initial resemblance to X seem entirely superficial.