Illusions (7 page)
Authors: Richard Bach
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Modern fiction, #General & Literary Fiction
"Right," I said. "So all there is left in the world is boredom . . . there are no adventures when you know that you can't be troubled by any thing on this earth. Your only problem is that you don't have any problems!"
That, I thought, was a terrific piece of talking.
"You missed, there," he said. "Tell me why I quit my job... do you know why I quit the Messiah job.?"
"Crowds, you said. Everybody wanting you to do their miracles for them."
"Yeah. Not the first, the second. Crowdophobia is your cross, not mine. It's not crowds that wear me, its the kind of crowd that doesn't care at all about what I came to say. You can walk from
London
on the ocean, you can pull gold coins out of forever and still not make them care, you know?"
When he said that, he looked lonelier than I had ever seen a man still alive. He didn't need food or shelter or money or fame. He was dying of his need to say what he knew, and nobody cared enough to listen.
I frowned at him, so as not to cry. "Well you asked for it," I said. "If your happiness depends on what somebody else, I guess you do have a problem."
He jerked his head up and his eyes blazed as though I had hit him with the wrench. I thought all at once that I would not be wise to get this guy mad at me. A man fries quick, struck by lightning.
Then he smiled that half-second smile. "You know what, Richard ?" he said slowly. "You . . . are . . . right!"
He was quiet again, tranced, almost, by what I had said. Not noticing, I went on talking to him for hours about how we had met and what there was to learn, all these ideas firing through my head like morning comets and daylight meteors. He lay very still in the grass, not moving, not saying a word. By
I finished my version of the universe and all things that dwelled therein.
". . . and I feel I've barely begun, Don, there's so much to say. How do I know all this - How come is that?"
He didn't answer.
"If you expect me to answer my own question, I confess that I do not know. Why can I say all these things now, when I've never even tried, before? What has happened to me ?"
No answer.
"Don ? It's OK for you to talk now, please."
He didn't say a word. I had explained the panorama of life to him, and my messiah, as though he had heard all he needed in that one chance word about his happiness, had fallen fast asleep.
7
Wednesday morning, it's
, I'm not awake and WHOOM!! there's this enormous noise sudden and violent as some high explosive symphony; instant thousand voice choirs, words in Latin, violins and typani and trumpets to shatter glass. The ground shuddered, the Fleet rocked on her wheels and I came out from under the wing like a 400-volt cat, fur straight-out exclamation points.
The sky was cold-fire sunrise, the clouds alive in wild paint, but all of it blurred in the dynamite crescendo.
"STOP IT! STOP IT! OFF THE MUSIC, OFF IT!!"
Shimoda yelled so loud and so furious I could hear him over the din, and the sound stopped at once, echoes rolling off and away and away and away. Then it was a gentle holy song, quiet as the breeze, Beethoven in a dream.
He was unimpressed. "LOOK, I SAID OFF IT!!"
The music stopped.
"Whuf!" he said.
I just looked at him.
"There is a time and a place for everything, right ?" he said.
"Well, time and place, well . . ."
"A little celestial music is fine, in the privacy of your own mind, and maybe on special occasions, but the first thing in the morning, and turned up that loud ? What are you doing?"
"What am I doing ? Don, I was sound asleep . . . what do you mean, what am I doing?"
He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders helplessly, snorted and went back to his sleeping bag under the wing.
The handbook was upside down in the grass where it had fallen. I turned it over carefully, and read.
Argue
for your limitations,
and sure enough,
they're
yours.
There was a lot I didn't about Messiahs.
8
We Finished the day in
Hammond
,
"Don I will grant you that this life can be interesting or dull or whatever we choose to make it. But even in my brilliant times I have never been able to figure out why we're here in the first
place. Tell me something about that.
We passed the hardware store (closed) and the movie theater (open: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and in stead of answering he stopped turned back on the sidewalk.
"You have money, don't you?"
"Lots. What's the matter?"
"Let's see the show," he said. "You buy ?"
"I don't know, Don. You go ahead. I'll get back to the airplanes. Don't like to leave 'em alone too long." What was suddenly so important about a motion picture?
"The planes are OK. Let's go to the show."
"It's already started."
"So we come in late."
He was already buying his ticket. I followed him into the dark and we sat down near the back of the theater. There might have been fifty people around us in the gloom.
I forgot why we came, after a while, and got caught up in the story, which I've always thought is a classic movie, anyway; this would be my third time seeing Sundance. The time in the theater spiraled and stretched the way it does in a good film, and I watched awhile for technical reasons. . . how each scene was designed and fit to the next, why this scene now and not later on. I tried to look at it that way but got spun up in the story and forgot.
About the part where Butch and Sundance are surrounded by the entire Bolivian army, almost at the end, Shimoda touched my shoulder. I leaned toward him, watching the movie, wishing he could have kept whatever he was going to say till after it was over.
"Richard ?"
"Yeah."
"Why are you here?"
"It's a good movie, Don. Sh" Butch and Sundance, blood all over them, were talking about why they ought to go
Australia
. Why is it good?" he said.
"Why is it good?" he said.
"It's fun. Sh. I'll tell you later."
"Snap out of it. Wake up. It's all illusions"
I was irked. "Donald, there's just a few minutes more and then we can talk all you want. But let he watch the movie, OK?"
He whispered intensely, dramatically. "Richard why are you here?"
"Look, I'm here because you asked me to come in here!" I turned back and tried to watch the end.
"You didn't have to come, you could have said no thank you."
"I LIKE THE MOVIE . . ." A man in front turned to look at me for a second. "I like the movie, Don; is there anything wrong with that?"
"Nothing at all," he said, and he didn't say another word till it was over and we were walking again past the used-tractor lot and out into the dark toward the field and the airplanes. It would be raining, before long.
I thought about his odd behavior in the theater. "You do everything for a reason, Don?"
"Sometimes."
"Why the movie? Why did you all of a sudden want to see Sundance ?"
"You asked a question. "
"Yes. Do you have an answer?"
"That is my answer. We went to the movie because you asked a question. The movie was the answer to your question."
He was laughing at me, I knew it.
"What was my question ?"
There was a long pained silence. "Your question, Richard, was that even in your brilliant times you have never been able to figure out why we are here."
I remembered. "And the movie was my answer. "
"Yes "
"Oh "
"You don't understand," he said.
"No "
"That was a good movie," he said, "but the world's best movie is still an illusion, is it not? The picture' aren't even moving; they only appear to move. Changing light that seems to move across a flat screen set up in the dark?"
"Well, yes." I was beginning to understand.
"The other people, any people anywhere who go to any movie show, why are they there, when it is only illusions?"
"Well, it's entertainment," I said.
"Fun. That's right. One."
"Could be educational."
"Good. It is always that. Learning Two."
"Fantasy, escape."
"That's fun, too. One. "
"Technical reasons. To see how a film is made."
"Learning. Two. "
"Escape from boredom . . ."