[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Faintly, just faintly, came the strains of the Archangel s theme. The Archangel theme! It was fading in and
out and cut through with whistling and lightning bursts, but there it was. Kal reached for the compensator
and balanced the battery voltage, and the signal cleared. There was the Archangel singing over the end of
the verse:
We meet in an alley
Cause we can t meet at home
Stealing moments
We can t call our own
There in the darkness
I hold you tight
Minute by minute
We use up the night
And I d stop time, if I had the
power &
Love by the hour
Love by the hour
This is the Archangel calling. This is the Archangel calling. Can you hear me? You don t know
how much Archangel wishes, sometimes, that you could talk right back to her. Sometimes I talk
and talk and I have to remind myself that I am not really in an empty room, at the top of an empty
building, in the middle of an empty city at all. No, Archangel, I tell myself, you look into the
darkness and you ll see them, huddled round their radios, listening to you. The boys in the
treehouses with their crystal receivers, and the family men who wait for the children to be put to
bed before lighting their pipes and pretending to read the newspaper, while all along it s me in the
headsets. You husbands do use the headsets, don t you? Meanwhile Mother s rocking under the
lamp, doing the darning or the knitting. Or maybe there s just a chair where Mother used to be.
I wrote a poem like that and sent it in to the Post not long ago. I haven t seen an issue of the
Post in almost a year, of course, but I hear it s still coming out, that the problem is only a
distribution problem, and we all know we have so many of those. So I finished the poem and sent
it in. It went:
There s a chair where my Mother used to be,
There s a chair where my Mother sang to me.
Oh, she s gone up above,
That dear mother I loved,
Leaving nought where her well I can t say it used
to be.
I wonder. Do you think the Post would publish such a poem? Leaving nought where her nought
used to be?
This is the Archangel calling, where my Mother used to be.
Do you know, I am considered a morbid person by at least one of my listeners. I know this
because just this morning I was having my breakfast at a diner that I frequent because it is the
only place left open. There are nine of us left and we all eat breakfast at this particular diner, run
by a colored gentleman from Kentucky, fit as a horse, a wonderful cook, too. He says he can
make chicken taste like anything, including chicken, and he does. But I was sitting at the counter
drinking my coffee, and the two gentlemen to my right were discussing the fact that I had read an
account the other evening of what had happened on a farm outside Jamestown.
I m not going to repeat all of the details, but it was a sensational story of an honest-to-God case
of spontaneous combustion. Now, I did not witness this conflagration, nor did I write the
description, nor did I even comment on either the possible veracity of the tale or the style and skill
it was written with. I just repeated the story right out of the paper, and this man strongly objected
to my doing so.
She ought to realize that she is spreading panic and defeat, the man told his friend somewhat
pompously, as though he was some kind of alienist specializing in the public morale. You might
imagine, my ears certainly pricked up to hear someone speaking of me! And of course, it is so
delicious to sit in on conversation having to do with one, while the people conducting it have no
idea of the depth of one s interest! It was as if I were invisible. It was as if I were, well, an angel!
At any rate, this man claimed that I had read the account of spontaneous combustion with a
certain amount of irony. He was especially critical of one sentence in particular, the one having to
do with the head and hair of the unfortunate victim of this supernatural occurrence. He said that I
had laughed at the notion of one s hair standing on end, trembling like cornstalks before a storm,
and then erupting into a pillar of flame! Laughed!
Well, you can imagine that I examined my conscience to see whether I had indeed laughed, and I
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]