new little red notebook, made in China—still with him here, its pages foxed with London rain and Roman wine—and an umbrella for the endless drizzle, one of a series of umbrellas that he bought and lost as he went, one at almost every pensione, on every train.
Boney Rasmussen was already dead when Pierce set out that winter to find the Elixir to make him better. So there was no one on whose behalf he could have sought it but his own. In fact, as he knew very well even then, there is no other living person for whom it can be sought: though it can only be found, if it's found, for everyone.
What he hadn't known, and would never learn later, was that by then the thing lost had already been found. It had been found by him and others, and redeemed from the place where it was hidden and at threat, and restored to the place it should possess; and this event had stopped the decline of the whole world toward dissolution, toward frozen inanition and repetition such as Pierce had experienced in the cold halls and hot rooms of Rose. The world—"the world,” all this, day and night, self and others, things and other things, inside and out—had been coasting to a stop, and just in time had been put back in a forward gear again. And then it could continue, and would, until all traces of that moment of redemption were erased from all hearts and memories (But you remember it, don't you? Night, and the woods, and the lights put out, and one light restored?). New-wakened Adam would then open his eyes again, the beautiful circle would close, and roll on forever into the future and the past at once.
5
So:
The snow had continued to fall, and grown steadily fiercer, till the airport, great-winged white bird, was wrapped in it. Outside the wide windows, airplanes were ghostly, moving to their assigned runways with lights burning. Then not moving. Pierce, ticket in hand, heard that his flight was to be delayed. Then further delayed. Then canceled. New arrangements to make for the night flight, if there was to be one.
At evening, Pierce and his fellows arrayed themselves on hard benches designed only for a brief alighting in passage, not for the comfort of the benighted and delayed; there was no way Pierce could twist his big frame into more than a moment's repose. He gazed in envy at men and women and children who had tucked up nearby with their coats up to their chins or their heads under their wings, breathing softly as though enchanted. The short day turned toward darkness.
Maybe he wouldn't go, after all. He thought this, and grew still. Maybe he'd sit here as the snow flew and covered the world, sit for days, for months; he'd sleep and dream, fill his new red journal with what he might have done but finally did not do, and go farther inward than he would ever dare to go outward.
And just then in the limbo-like procession of snowbound souls through the great space, a figure attracted his attention, and at the same moment the figure seemed to notice him: a man not large but somehow big around, in a jaunty feathered fedora and a fur-collared coat, a leather document case tucked under his arm and a small suitcase on a little trundle he pulled along.
It was Frank Walker Barr, once Pierce's professor and advisor at Noate University. His eyebrows rose, and he stepped or rolled toward Pierce with an air that seemed to suggest he was conscious of illustrating the ancient wisdom about coincidences—that if you run into someone you haven't seen in years, it's certain you will very soon run into him again, and then a third charmed time. For Pierce had, not two months before, walked and talked with Barr in an obscure resort in Florida, and been told truths, and tried to listen. This after he had not seen his old mentor for a decade.
"Hello again,” Frank Walker Barr said to him. The plump coat over his tweeds made him a Humpty Dumpty, the same chummy, threatening smile cleaving his great face almost in two, hand held out to shake.
Boney Rasmussen was already dead when Pierce set out that winter to find the Elixir to make him better. So there was no one on whose behalf he could have sought it but his own. In fact, as he knew very well even then, there is no other living person for whom it can be sought: though it can only be found, if it's found, for everyone.
What he hadn't known, and would never learn later, was that by then the thing lost had already been found. It had been found by him and others, and redeemed from the place where it was hidden and at threat, and restored to the place it should possess; and this event had stopped the decline of the whole world toward dissolution, toward frozen inanition and repetition such as Pierce had experienced in the cold halls and hot rooms of Rose. The world—"the world,” all this, day and night, self and others, things and other things, inside and out—had been coasting to a stop, and just in time had been put back in a forward gear again. And then it could continue, and would, until all traces of that moment of redemption were erased from all hearts and memories (But you remember it, don't you? Night, and the woods, and the lights put out, and one light restored?). New-wakened Adam would then open his eyes again, the beautiful circle would close, and roll on forever into the future and the past at once.
5
So:
The snow had continued to fall, and grown steadily fiercer, till the airport, great-winged white bird, was wrapped in it. Outside the wide windows, airplanes were ghostly, moving to their assigned runways with lights burning. Then not moving. Pierce, ticket in hand, heard that his flight was to be delayed. Then further delayed. Then canceled. New arrangements to make for the night flight, if there was to be one.
At evening, Pierce and his fellows arrayed themselves on hard benches designed only for a brief alighting in passage, not for the comfort of the benighted and delayed; there was no way Pierce could twist his big frame into more than a moment's repose. He gazed in envy at men and women and children who had tucked up nearby with their coats up to their chins or their heads under their wings, breathing softly as though enchanted. The short day turned toward darkness.
Maybe he wouldn't go, after all. He thought this, and grew still. Maybe he'd sit here as the snow flew and covered the world, sit for days, for months; he'd sleep and dream, fill his new red journal with what he might have done but finally did not do, and go farther inward than he would ever dare to go outward.
And just then in the limbo-like procession of snowbound souls through the great space, a figure attracted his attention, and at the same moment the figure seemed to notice him: a man not large but somehow big around, in a jaunty feathered fedora and a fur-collared coat, a leather document case tucked under his arm and a small suitcase on a little trundle he pulled along.
It was Frank Walker Barr, once Pierce's professor and advisor at Noate University. His eyebrows rose, and he stepped or rolled toward Pierce with an air that seemed to suggest he was conscious of illustrating the ancient wisdom about coincidences—that if you run into someone you haven't seen in years, it's certain you will very soon run into him again, and then a third charmed time. For Pierce had, not two months before, walked and talked with Barr in an obscure resort in Florida, and been told truths, and tried to listen. This after he had not seen his old mentor for a decade.
"Hello again,” Frank Walker Barr said to him. The plump coat over his tweeds made him a Humpty Dumpty, the same chummy, threatening smile cleaving his great face almost in two, hand held out to shake.
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