ONEWe lived on Victor Hugo Street in a rambling, dilapidated house that was the familys last remaining asset. For years the Old Man had strung a living together in pale bits and pieces, like popcorn on a string, freelance editing, book reviews, a little fact-checking here and there, the table droppings of the literary profession. Sometimes, when his ever-fluctuating mood allowed it, hed even worked as a substitute teacher at the local high school. He called this educational day labor, and despised it. His students were beneath him, as were the lowly, salaried teachers who, he said, pursued their modest pensions like scraps of holy writ. His contempt was bottomless, and it erupted in fits of spiraling rage.In the midst of such seizures, he used the telephone like a whip. In the room where I was made to study, a tiny thing beneath its towering bookshelves, I could hear him leafing through the ever-expanding pages of the enemies list he kept in plain view on his desk, each entry made up of the enemy name and occupation, along with the Old Mans one-word judgment: James Elton, professor, lackey; Carolyn Bender, editor, coward; Stephen Horowitz, headmaster, charlatan; and the like. At some point he would inevitably select certain names from this roll of the damned. Then the calls would begin.I remembered a particular afternoon when Id suddenly paused outside the door of his study, then glanced through its slightly open door. He was sitting behind his desk, screaming into the phone: You are a fake, you hear me! You are a plagiarist! I listened as he steamed on, citing the crimes and misdemeanors of whomever hed called. Hed gone on and on, then abruptly stopped, so that Id heard the voice at the other end, metallic and inexpressive, The time allotted for this message has expired. Please call again to continue.It was pathetic, I thought at the time, all that mighty rage futilely expended into the insensate ear of an answering machine. King Lear had thundered against our earthly plight. In comparison, the Old Mans fury seemed little more than sour grapes monstrously inflated. When he died, I felt that a dark, devouring force had been stilled at last. I wore his death like wings.At the gravesite, I told my sister exactly that, then added, You can go on with your life, Diana. You dont have to take care of him anymore.She nodded silently, then tossed a single rose into his grave.And I thought, At last shes free of him. At last she can be happy.But then came Death, as the Old Man might have put it in his stilted and archaic dictum, an untimely death that came like that fabled highwayman whose poetic exploits Diana had so often recited for his pleasure, Riding, riding, riding, as I can hear her even now, up to the old inn door.It was a Friday afternoon when the court pronounced its judgment that no one was to blame for Jasons death and that no one would be held accountable for it. Since Diana had already separated from her husband, Mark, by th Excerpted from The Cloud of Unknowing by Thomas H. Cook All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
