Who is that knocking on my door? It is someone
come to do me harm.
No. It is the three strange angels. Admit them.
- D. H. Lawrence
Look, he's falling, a young girl yells to no one in particular.
Her hands are full of books and papers. She's on her way to class. A few
of the boys in the courtyard tossing a red Frisbee, run over to her-- they all stop beside the old man lying on the ground. What should we do? Somebody
pulls out a cell phone and dials 911. Does anybody know who he is? I saw him,
he was just walking along, then he stumbled a few times and fell. He must've
tripped or something. Is he drunk? I don't know. He's breathing.
I see three angels huddled on the inside branches of the heavy
oak when I take my morning walk. I'm slow and infirm now, and their easy smiles
of light and revelation fill the rooms of my mind and remind me of the way my
mother used to gaze down at me when I was a boy, sitting at the kitchen table
penciling answers to math questions in my notebook. Even then, I must have intuited
that there would be many more questions than answers in life. And my desire
for knowledge, for answers, became a trait I carried with me for the rest of
my life. Maybe that's why I became a scientist and eventually a Nobel. I mention
this now only so you know perhaps that I'm not a stupid man. Or a gullible one.
I think he's a professor. Naw. Look at him, he's gotta be
ninety years old, at least. What was he doing around here anyway?Yeah, but I've
seen him around. I think he's an architect or a doctor. No, doesn't he have
something to do with the stars? The stars? Maybe we should move him. No, don't
move him. Look, his eye lids are fluttering. Did 911 answer yet? He's still
breathing.
I was masterful in my hurried pace, always taking the same well-worn
path under the overgrown canopy of emerald that led directly to the ivy-walled
university I called home. How many nights did I spend working late in the lab?
Too many. On a quest for what? There were always more problems to be solved.
And never quite enough answers to go around for what the world seemed to need.
As a young scientist treading down my familiar path to work, I'd see only trees,
leaves, nothing more. The closest I came to true spirituality was the infrequent
morning splash of sunlight, a welcome sweetness that played across my face in
early spring-- most days I forgot to even look up at the trees in my distracted
state-- my mind stuffed as it was full of theorems and formulas, facts.
Yet, every so often, I'd get a feeling, almost as if something,
someone? was watching, compelling me to look! there! up at the
sky! and when I'd glance toward the light above, those beams of light soothed
my face like a warm rain cleansing me of my folly and concerns. Momentarily,
I'd feel something. What? I dismissed the warmth of the sun, the blaze
of the sky and that ephemeral watchful something as nothing more than
the dazed confusion of someone too long immersed inside the tissuey pages of
books and numbers. I'd shake my head, shuffle off on my way, and if there was
something, a plan, or even watchfulness, it wasn't mine to know then. I dismissed
any and all thoughts of ...God ...for the sleek-- some would say sterile, but
nevertheless, provable-- path of scientific pursuit.
Look, he's stopped breathing. Somebody, give him CPR. One
of the students, the young girl who first spotted the old man, bends forward
and places her soft lips on his. Another of the boys takes his hands and strokes
his fingers. The boy knows the fingers are too cool for the warmth of this day.
They feel strangely hard. Does anybody know who he is? The crowd around them
grows larger with more and more students coming to see what's going on.
If you would have asked me, I would have told you that these
blue-sky, green leaps of delight that I felt occasionally were nothing more
than the lost appreciation of nature's beauty I'd simply failed to notice before.
I missed this display of nature's loveliness because of my own determined selective
perception. Nothing more. And I certainly wouldn't have noticed angels in the
trees. Mythological creatures.
Maybe it's true age takes you places you would never think of
going on your own. Maybe it's true age brings you closer to the essence of things.
I sense otherness between the spaces of my world now. Maybe, my colleagues would
say, age has made me into a fool. Angels. Peter, I can hear Bernard
say, get a grip. You know better. You can't possibly believe in such nonsense?
Bernie may be correct-- he is after all, one of the foremost
physicists in the world. I do need to make some sense of my situation. Am I
losing my mind? I know that angels don't fit the usual parameters of scientific
reality we've composed. Oh, how I know that.
The girl's breath feels warm inside the man's throat. She
seems to know precisely what to do, the amount of air he seems to need. And
yet. His chest still isn't moving. She can't feel any breath returning to her,
there's only an emptiness that she can't seem to fill, no matter how hard she
tries. Hey, I think he might be somebody important. Isn't he some famous math
guy? I remember seeing him on TV. Come on, no, look at him, he looks poor, doesn't
he? How could he be somebody? Doesn't anybody have a clue who he is? We gotta
notify somebody. Let the police take care of who to notify.
That's why I haven't mentioned the angels to anyone-- except
for you. Because you believe, too, don't you? Or do you have all the answers?
Like I once thought I did.
I suggest you take the time to look up at the sky, let your eyes wander the
branches of the trees for a bit and see what's really there. Perhaps our truest
vocation in life is to simply live, let live and not so much do. I
had forgotten this simplicity in my pursuit of knowledge. Have you?
I do know I became a complicated man somehow, probably because
the world became more complicated. My mother used to say, Peter, your vocation
is a divine calling. Choose carefully what you want to do with your life...
Yes, yes, I want nothing more than to work, to make a difference, to advance
mankind's knowledge. If I could do this....
If. I could do anything back then. Now? Now, I've known the
feeling of what it was like to sit at my desk late at night and have the stunning
realization that I was one of the few people in the world to arrive at an answer
to a mathematical problem while others are still trying to formulate the correct
question. But were you happy then, Peter? Oh, Mom, who's to say what happiness
is? I was, I felt, vindicated.
I miss her simplicity. Her hands. Her face. I miss the sound
of her familiar voice calling me home before dark. Did I also miss the best,
the sweetest part of life merely because I wasn't looking; or maybe I was looking
at the wrong things? It all happened so fast. There wasn't time for all things.
Who has enough time? It didn't seem as if the days were pouring past at the
time, and yet, here I am. Now.
No matter.
Is he gonna be alright? He's not breathing. A whine of sirens
fill the distance. The girl keeps her lips on his, breathing deeper, feeling
more of the emptiness. Does anybody know who he is? Isn't there somebody we
can call? Check his pockets. See who he is. He's somebody. I know it.
The angels in the trees now, their eyes, seem to say that our
endings are only the beginnings of other, finer pursuits. Perhaps our divine
call is yet to be discovered. It doesn't end with a lifetime. And perhaps it's
not the call of a single man or a chosen few, as I was once led to believe,
but a calling for all listening and seeing men and women. The secret
of our lives reveals itself in this final quiet time. There are the deepest
of eyes watching me from under the light of the pale sky-- when I turn away
for just the briefest of moments, there's a rustling sound-- and I see a single
leaf falling.
Arlene Tribbia grew up in Chicago and has
written for The Chicago Tribune for a number of years. Her poetry and
short stories have appeared in literary journals in the United States and Canada.
Two of her stories have been nominated for this year's Pushcart Prize. She's
currently writing a novel, Silent Light.
