The Oblivion Arms - Part Two
Iliac Academy, nestled in the willfully feudal hamlet of Fistula-on-Ane, had heard about Khâder Adipose, certainly, star of "Burton!" and "Melancholy Baby," and had indeed mailed him application materials, care of Murray and Phoebe, at their request; he had been accepted instantly, and his arrival was greeted, literally, with applause and klaxons. He was the kind of student who added luster to Iliac. This woman, a kindly sort, remembered a mildly obese boy with a deep voice and a determined expression. But nobody knew where he was.
"He's just gone?" said Phoebe.
"Let her finish," suggested Murray.
"I'm finished," said the woman. "That's all I know."
"Ah," said Murray.
The phone rang. She answered it. She hung up. Her mouth became a strict gray worm. "Actually, maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Because I don't remember an Indian lad."
"He was light-skinned," said Murray.
"Is," corrected Phoebe.
The secretary shook her head. "No, I think I'm thinking of someone else."
The parents insisted they had neither requested said material nor seen any of it, that the first they knew of Iliac with regard to their son was when said child mailed them a postcard, which they at that point produced. On the face was a bland aquarelle rendering of the Menander Building, which housed most of the classrooms and studios, and the Raunst & Tickle Auditorium, recently erected. Phoebe was quietly, strenuously delighted. Murray, for his part, tried to think if old Armando Adiposa had anything to do with the campus's design. It was a beautiful place, so probably not.
The message on the reverse, in Khâder's impeccable hand, briefly explained the conditions of his scholarship, and expressed his desire that they not try to contact him for the duration of his high school education.
"Harsh," said Murray. He had already resigned himself to the fact that Phoebe was probably not going to quote him in any scenes she might write today.
The secretary ushered the Adiposes into the principal's office, an agreeably dark room that seemed carved out of a mammoth block of cherrywood. The principal, Ricer Carr, wore a loose suit, his shirt the color of sherry, his tie the color of slate. Looking at him, Murray felt pleasantly drowsy.
"Mr. Adipose," he said, "and Ms. Tickle Adipose -- delighted! Welcome back to the land of the Tickles, as they say!"
"Ah," said Phoebe -- delighted, too, against her will.
"I'm afraid there's not much to be said. Your son has been MIA these past however many months. He exists on no record we have."
"Could we see his--" began Murray or Phoebe.
"File? There is no file to open. We can't say what's up with that and the only consolation or piece of information I can give you, take it or leave it, is that one of our most esteemed teachers, one of our groundbreaking instructors, this being his last year, is going ahead with his immersion technique, which is when the student is plunged fully -- 'immersed,' if you will -- in the milieu that the character in question supposedly inhabits. It's not method acting, it's different, let's make sure we understand that! In Khâder's case, he's taken the role of the youngest Punjabi POW ever to survive the Vietcong. It's based on a true story, I think. If not, it should be!"
Ricer Carr laughed. Murray couldn't help but chuckle. Phoebe shot him a glance.
"It's called T"he Youngest Ever." In keeping with the techniques offered by this veteran groundbreaker's guidelines I can offer no reassurances, really. The interior world of the actor has become externalized somewhat, do you see what I mean, and his isolation must remain uncompromised."
"Tell us where he is."
"My other option is to be unfriendly, look you in the eye, and say, Khâder Adipose? Who the aitch, who the eff, is Khâder Adipose? Never heard of the guy in my life. Let's have some coffee."
"No coffee," said Murray. "Our son, who we believe to be on the Iliac campus, was led off the true path thanks to his parents' consumption of certain items."
"I'll have some coffee, thanks," said Phoebe. Murray's jaw dropped in shock.
"Anything in it?" said Ricer Carr.
"I like it the way I like my men: black."
Murray's jaw dropped even lower. Then he realized it was a line plucked from "The Half-Life of Patience," her first produced play -- a one-act from before they met. It had run for a weekend in New Haven. Patience was a black maid who suffers from a Tourette's-like disease, linked to plutonium poisoning, that at least in theory makes her jokes funnier. Except it turns out to be a terminal illness.
Ricer Carr, who was black, had somehow missed "The Half-Life of Patience." He raised an eyebrow.
"That's a play she wrote," explained Murray.
"We'll sue," said Phoebe, back on the offensive. "We will close you down, brother."
"I second that emotion," said Murray.
"Sue?" said Ricer Carr. "'Sioux' is an Indian tribe."
"I'm warning you."
"Don't be silly."
"You're the one being silly," Phoebe said. "Now where is our son? Before we call the police."
"'Police' don't! And I'll have you know I'm perfectly within my rights to act the way I'm acting," said Carr. He spun a fountain pen on the glossy desktop. "Your son has either been slated to play this youngest POW character for a major, major motion picture entitled "The Youngest Ever," about the youngest Punjabi POW in 'Nam. Or else he's doing something even more secret. Or he never came here, he's dead, you're both insane and you forged that postcard. Either you will be extraordinarily proud, prouder than you already doubtless are, or else you will hang your head in sorrow and shame. These are the facts, madame."
Murray wanted to stand up, pound the desk of Ricer Carr, and spit out passionately, "Sir! I demand satisfaction!" the way Gluteus Maximus does to Seneca in one of "Burton!'s" many historical sequences. But something about Ricer Carr -- his bizarre jokiness, his wardrobe -- took the fight out of Murray. He sighed. "Maybe it's for the best."
"Murray, I swear to God," said Phoebe. She tapped the desk of Ricer Carr with a surprisingly thin forefinger and, wittingly or not, echoed a line from her monologue "Swing Batter Batter Swing." "You have not heard the last of me."
The secretary brought in coffee but the self-plagiarizers were already out the door.
On the way back from Iliac, Murray drove and Phoebe developed the crossword. The first name of Murray's grandfather, ARMANDO, appeared vertically. A little chill ran through her with the writing of each letter, as though she was witness to a ghostly manifestation. The answer began one horizontal (ARID) and terminated another (BOLERO), and was impaled at the center by a distorted maxim she wasn't sure was right. Every so often Murray would spot something out the window and gaze.
"Cows," said Murray. "Thirteen, make that fourteen cows."
"You're going to get us killed," said Phoebe, printing TICKLISH in a tentative hand.
"Cows are sacred in India," said Murray. Vermont could still surprise him with its unrelenting green. It made him sort of nauseous.
Back in the Arms, Phoebe fixed herself a sandwich. Murray deftly switched on and muted the TV. On The Hamburger Channel they were showing several ways of storing ground beef. He had forgotten about seeing Khâder on the tube last night -- it seemed like a dream -- and didn't know how to explain it to Phoebe. They recommended a number of different bags and a handheld device that sucked out all the air. It looked like a stapler.
The next day brought a series of telegrams from Khâder. Their son had discovered, to his eternal mortification, that they had visited. He was quite cross--hadn't he insisted that they not meddle? DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU STOP. It was clear that they didn't take him seriously; one more act of aggression and he would sue them, for career sabotage -- he had friends who'd done so, successfully, versus their forebears, natural or adoptive, divorced or together. He was sending this missive through a third office, all the way in Indiana, which would strip every trace of his location.
"So he could be anywhere," said Phoebe. "He could be in Vietnam, or -- Canada."
"He could be in Penumbra," said Murray, looking at the ceiling. "He could be in the Oblivion Arms."
"This is voodoo working," said Phoebe, her fingertips gray from the telegram carbon, her chin - -the second one, alas--beginning to quiver. "Career sabotage'? He wouldn't have a career without us."
"He wouldn't be here without us," elaborated Murray. Phoebe cast around for pen and paper. "He'd be in India, in an orphanage, eating garbage and bathing in public."
"I am writing to that demented Ricer Carr," she said. "Anything you want to say?"
Murray shook his head.
Time passed. A false bird uttered the hour, two trochees, and retreated. Phoebe had yet to write anything and Murray was itching to visit the TV room. It was five to two, and there was a special on bricklaying that had sounded sort of good.
"I was thinking," said Murray. "Maybe Khâder would have been an actor anyway, back in India. In a traveling troupe. They would ramble along on elephant-back and perform in town squares and if they were good they would get food and lodging."
Phoebe made preliminary scratches with the pen, which was near dry. "What about the elephants?" she said.
"They just stay outside."
She threw away the pen, destroyed the paper. Murray fished things out of the refrigerator. They ate in silence. Afterward, Phoebe stepped out -- for some fresh air, she said, in a tone that did not exactly encourage Murray to join her. She made it as far as the lobby, where her eye caught a dim corridor with a stately door at the end. She went to investigate.
Meanwhile, Murray sat what his younger, more raucous self -- the Murray who shook up a moribund opera scene with his scandalous, three-and-a-half-hour "tone poem," "Dementia Americana" -- would have called his skinny white ass in front of the television, bringing with him the day's mail. His fingers worked the letter-opener as the set quivered to brilliant life. The mail bore the usual renditions of his name. Mr. and Mrs. Animus. Dear Mr. Autobus, Imagine that you had a machine that could fold all your letters for you -- freeing up your hours for the things you want to do. Mr. Murray Oedipus. Nothing worth mentioning, save a letter from a monk over at Lopsa Logosh Monastery in New Anhedonia. This monk, Ananda Nada, was of the mind that Murray and Phoebe's son was more likely than not the seventeenth reincarnation of the great blind lama, Karada Naga. He was not a betting monk but if he were he would place it all on Khâder Adipose.
You see, the Iliac Academy chaplain, a friend of Ananda's, had told him of an extraordinary student, Khâder, who had "the Knack" -- some ineffable soul-quality, some perpetual state of complete performance that went beyond mere acting, that transcended the definition of talent and was something else: being, quite possibly. Ananda rarely left the monastery, but would be in Penumbra for a conference, and wondered if it might be possible to pay a visit to the parents of this rare and beneficent creature.
"And the Buddha said, 'How shall I litigate versus the parental units?'" intoned Murray. "And, not discerning an answer, he betook himself into the woods beyond the mountain and played a Punjabi POW for a straight-to-cable movie while agents renegotiated his contract."
"Co-Ed Bodyshaping" was on. He found it had a soothing effect, making him less startled than he might otherwise have been by Andanda's letter. He put it aside, on the coffee table. When he went to fetch some snacks, his knee swiped the letter, causing it to be added to the pile of junk mail, magazines, staff paper, napkins, and other scraps that were already massing on the floor, soon to rise and form a blanket about him.
