Madame!the Frenchman shouted from somewhere.
I looked up.
Here he came, falling fast.
What are you doing? he said. What in the world have you—
He hit the lawn, dropped through, seconds later bobbed back up and was standing next to me, smelling fresh (lilac scent, beeswax pomade, touch of lye soap).
Now what? he said angrily. What is your plan,madame? For this fellow you have so recklessly freed? Did he not rightly belong with those two beasts? It is terrible, what you have done.C’est une erreur tragique.You and your terrible, facile ideas! According to which, anyone may do anything. Anything at all. All is instantly forgiven, no matter what. Tell me, do you believe it? Really believe it? Bad and good are the same? Damage does no harm? The guilty are innocent, the sinner and the saint shall both sit at the right hand of the Father, enjoying equal portions?
You don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.
The Frenchman looked at me as if I were a stranger, wholly unknowable to him.
You have freed a monster, he said.
—
My charge stumbled over, still incapable of speech, and knelt at the Frenchman’s feet.
To understand his intentions, I knelt down too, side-scooched in. The Frenchman, for the same purpose, bent at the waist, thrust his head into the headspace of my charge.
Let me go with you (was the gist of my charge’s plea). To visit those others like us. Who have sinned against the earth and find themselves at the point of death. And, with you, urge them to repent. As you, honorably, urged me to do.
All of us (charge, Frenchman, Jill, non-Jill) were there messily within one another, our minds abuzz with one another’s thoughts.
A change was coming over the Frenchman. He had despised my charge, been frustrated by him, had at times wished him harm, did, indeed, consider him monstrous. But the transformation my charge was undergoing was reminding the Frenchman of the transformation he himself had undergone all those years ago, at his end, or, more precisely, just after it, while lying in his coffin in a stifling Parisian parlor, surrounded by his wife, children, and scientific colleagues, all of whom had loved him dearly and were still trying to grasp that this great man, who, through his genius, had altered the world, removing the necessity for so much dehumanizing toil, was now leaving them forever.
In that moment, amid sounds of praise and weeping, time had stopped and he had been flung forward by some irresistible force through the decades and shown the potential comprehensive effect of that which he had invented.
With that, his peace had ended and his all-consuming quest had begun.
You are wrong to be so hard on yourself, I said. You were, after all,inevitable.Aninevitable occurrence.Who else could you have been but who you—
No, the Frenchman said crisply. No, no, no. That rubbish is not for me.
And turned his attention to my charge.
Do you have any idea of where we might profitably go first? he said, still bent at the waist, head still within the head of my charge. To whom?
My charge cocked his head, as if surveying the entire world. Nodded.
The Frenchman and I instantly knew who he had in mind: a former competitor of his in Santa Barbara, with less than a day to live and many things for which to atone.
So, we go, the Frenchman said.Allons-y.
My charge rose from his knees and, dressed as he’d so often dressed for work (black suit, white shirt, green tie), began patting his pockets frantically, as if searching for his wallet. He tightened the knot of his tie, checked the time (but was wearing no watch), all of this communicating an urgent desire to be about his business, then looked down in consternation at his feet (which were bare).
Now, as if trying to divest himself of all memories of this time and place that might inhibit him in the next phase of his activities, he gave his head a brisk shake, as a horse will do, and started off at a fast clip (the way he used to when leaving his office, so as not to be detained or interfered with by mere underlings) along the road before his house, and then began to walkfaster, then jog, and by the time he reached the margin of the forest bordering the neighborhood and swerved off into it, he was running at a full sprint, faster, by far, than he had ever run in life, even when young, strong, and at his best, wincing at the pain this extraordinary pace was causing his bare feet (and would continue to cause them into a vast, interminable future, hundreds of years long at least, likely longer, possibly forever).
While the Frenchman flew supportively along above.
Then they were gone.
No matter how many of the dying these two might convert, the effect on the world would be, I knew, negligible, since the dying wereover,their potential fordoinganything at all essentially nil.
And yet, what else was there for them to do, but whatever they felt they still might?
