Philip Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

"Which can't be known, Kant said," I said.

"Which normally can't be known," Barefoot said. "But I had somehow perceived it, like a great, reticulated, arborizing structure of interrelationships, everything organized according to meaning, with all new events entering as accretions; I had never before grasped the absolute nature of reality this way." He paused a moment.

"You got home and wrote it down," I said.

"No," Barefoot said. "I never wrote it down. As I hurried along, I saw two tiny children, one of them holding a baby-bottle. They were running back and forth across a street. A lot of cars came along very fast. I watched for a moment and then I went over to them. I saw no adult. I asked them to take me to their mother. They didn't speak English; it was a Spanish neighborhood, very poor ... I didn't have any money in those days. I found their mother. She said, 'I don't speak English' and closed the door in my face. She was smiling. I remember that. Smiling at me beatifically. She thought I was a salesman. I wanted to tell her that her children would very soon be killed and she shut the door in my face, smiling angelically at me.

"So what did you do?" Bill said.

Barefoot said, "I sat down on the curb and watched the two children. For the rest of the afternoon. Until their father came home. He spoke a little English. I was able to get him to understand. He thanked me."

"You did the right thing," I said.

"So I never got my model of the universe down on paper," Barefoot said. "I just have a dim memory of it. Something like that fades. It was a once-in-a-lifetime satori. Moksa, it is called in India; a sudden flash of absolute comprehension, out of nowhere. What James Joyce means by 'epiphanies,' arising from the trivial or without cause at all, simply happening. Total insight into world." He was silent, then.

I said, "What I hear you saying is that the life of a Mexican child is-"

"Which way would you have taken?" Barefoot said to me. "Would you have gone home and written down your philosophical idea, your moksa? Or would you have stayed with the children?"

"I would have called the police," I said.

"To have done that," Barefoot said, "would have required you to go to a phone. To do that you would have had to leave the children."

"It's a nice story," I said. "But I knew someone else who told nice stories. He's dead."

"Maybe," Barefoot said, "he found what he went to Israel to find. Found it before he died."

"I very much doubt that," I said.

"I doubt it, too," Barefoot said. "On the other hand, maybe he found something better. Something he should have been looking for but wasn't. What I am trying to tell you is that all of us are unknowing bodhisattvas, unwilling, even; unintentional. It is something forced on us by chance circumstance. All I wanted to do that day was rush home and get my great insight down on paper before I forgot it. It really was a great insight; I have no doubt of that. I did not want to be a bodhisattva. I did not ask to be. I did not expect to be. In those days, I hadn't even heard the term. Anyone would have done what I did."

"Not anyone," I said. "Most people would have, I guess."

"What would you have done?" Barefoot said. "Given that choice."

I said, "I guess I would have done what you did and hoped I'd remember the insight.

"But I did not remember it," he said. "And that is the point."

Bill said to me, then, "Can I hitch a ride with you back to the East Bay? My car got towed off. It threw a rod and I-"

'Sure," I said; I stood up, stiffly; my bones ached. "Mr. Barefoot, I've listened to you on KPFA many times. At first, I thought you were stuffy but now I'm not so sure."

"Before you go," Barefoot said, "I want you to tell me how you betrayed your friends."

"She didn't," Bill said. "It's all in her mind."

Barefoot leaned toward me; he put his arm around me and drew me back to my chair, reseating me.

"Well," I said, "I let them die. Especially Tim."

"Tim could not have avoided death," Barefoot said. "He went to Israel in order to die. That's what he wanted. Death was what he was looking for. That's why I say, Maybe he found what he was looking for or even something better."

Shocked, I said, "Tim wasn't looking for death. Tim put up the bravest fight against fate I ever saw anybody put up."

"Death and fate are not the same," Barefoot said. "He died to avoid fate, because the fate he saw coming for him was worse than dying there on the Dead Sea Desert. That's why he sought it and that's what he found; but I think he found something better." To Bill he said, "What do you think, Bill?"

"I'd rather not say," Bill said.

"But you know," Barefoot said to him.

"What was the fate you're talking about?" I asked Barefoot.

Barefoot said, "The same as yours. The fate that has overtaken you. And that you're aware of."

"What is that?" I said.

"Lost in meaningless words," Barefoot said. "A merchant of words. With no contact to life. Tim had advanced far into that. I read Here, Tyrant Death several times. It said nothing, nothing at all. Just words. Flatus vocis, an empty noise."

After a moment I said, "You're right. I read it, too." How true it was, how terribly, sadly true.

"And Tim realized it," Barefoot said. "He told me. He came to me a few months before his trip to Israel and told me. He wanted me to teach him about the Sufis. He wanted to exchange meaning-all the meaning he'd piled up in his lifetime-for something else. For beauty. He told me about an album of records that you sold him that he never got a chance to play. Beethoven's Fidelio. He was always too busy."

"Then you knew who I was already," I said. "Before I told you."

"That's why I asked you to come up front with me," Barefoot said. "I recognized you. Tim had shown me a picture of you and Jeff. At first, I wasn't sure. You're a lot thinner now."

"Well, I have a demanding job," I said.

Together, Bill Lundborg and I drove back across the Richardson Bridge to the East Bay. We listened to the radio, to the endless procession of Beatles songs.

"I knew you were trying to find me," Bill said, "but my life wasn't going too well. I've finally been diagnosed as what they call 'hebephrenic."'

To change the subject I said, "I hope the music isn't depressing you, I can turn it off."

"I like the Beatles," Bill said.

"Are you aware of John Lennon's death?"

"Sure," Bill said. "Everybody is. So you manage the Musik Shop now."

"Yes, indeed," I said. "I have five clerks working under me and unlimited buying power. I've got an offer from Capitol Records to go down to the L.A. area, to Burbank, I guess, and go to work for them. I've reached the top in terms of the retail record business; managing a store is as far as you can go. Except for owning the store. And I don't have the money."

"Do you know what 'hebephrenic' means?"

"Yes," I said. I thought, I even know the origin of the word. "Hebe was the Greek goddess of youth," I said.

"I never grew up," Bill said. "Hebephrenia is characterized by silliness."

"Guess so," I said.

"When you're hebephrenic," Bill said, "things strike you as funny. Kirsten's death struck me as funny."

Then you are indeed hebephrenic, I said to myself as I drove. Because there was nothing funny about it. I said, "What about Tim's death?"

"Well, parts of it were funny. That little boxy car, that Datsun. And those two bottles of Coke. Tim probably had shoes on like I have on now." He lifted his foot to show me his Hush Puppies.

"At least," I said.

"But by and large," Bill said, "it was not funny. What Tim was looking for wasn't funny. Barefoot is wrong about what Tim was looking for; he wasn't looking for death."

"Not consciously," I said, "but maybe unconsciously he was."