Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

who were taking the leap of faith that heavy metal machines could sail through air. Our own faith had been diminished by having had pilots and mechanics as patients. Often they were alcoholics or addicts or so depressed that they wanted to kill themselves and couldn't care less if they took whole planeloads down with them. I'd seen one pilot in the West with the fixed delusion that metal of course cannot sail through air and that in fact God picked up each plane on takeoff and set each down gently on landing, and that given the sins of the world, God was fed up and about to stop doing it and there would be a rash of crashes. When his insurance ran out he was turfed out on six drugs, and last I heard he was back flying.

Of all the airports I'd seen in my trip around the world, Boston's Logan was the worst. The night before, there had been a screwup. Flights all day had been canceled or delayed. By the time we got there, the place had the feel of a Third World outpost. People were camped out, little families of refugees huddled over candy bars and soft drinks, staring blankly through the foul canned air at nothing, having long ago run out of things to say to each other. Children shrieked and cried.

We waited anxiously for Malik. To our surprise we were joined by Zoe and Thorny. Zoe was beaming. She, and then Lily, had been interviewed by the Globe.

"The reporter was great," Zoe said. "She'll protect our identities. And after what A.K. did in public, she's just got to come forward. Yesterday another Schlomo victim called TALL! Listen!" She spoke with clarity, and power. The transformation was striking, given where she'd been a year ago, when she came into Misery-a frightened college girl who'd sought power only through men. "So we've got an even better case now. Right, Gilda?"

"Better than better, sweetheart. You may even have a chance. Yeah, if it does go to trial, I reckon you got a chance to nail that predator, for good." "And what about you, Thorny-babe?" Solini asked. Before he could answer, Malik appeared. He was dressed in a khaki safari suit and new black Nikes. He too was carrying his black medical bag. Bronia was carrying two of those black mesh knapsack/suitcases made of everything-proof material, a spin-off from the outer space program. Thinking intergalactic,

I flashed on Jill. Jill in the jungle now, Jill naked but for a purple velvet choker, Jill gone. Sad.

Malik seemed healthier, not coughing. His eyes behind those tinty lenses were intense and curious, as when I'd first met him. Greetings all around. Zoe took out a camera and asked a woman to take a group photo. At her urging, we smiled. Flash. Done. I realized that Thorny had gotten cut off, and asked, "What about you, Thorny?"

"The South Pacific!" he cried. "An atoll! Thorny and the Rainbow Warrior against the dickhead French!"

"Greenpeace?" I asked.

"Thorny!"

"Thorny?'

"Greenpeace! I leave next week!"

"Good for you!" I cried.

"Good for us all! No more 'Family Tree' bullshit-'Tree Family!' " He smiled, all adazzle. "Dickheads Go Green!" We laughed. But then Thorny seemed to crumple a little.

"What's wrong?" MaUk asked.

"Lotta shit comin' down, Doc. The last few months, out there on my own sellin' software, well, I got into a relationship with a lady, and, well, it was like puttin' Miracle-Gro on my character defects. Even the South Pacific may not be far away enough!"

Malik took him and Zoe aside. Zoe shook Malik's hand good-bye. Thorny gave him a big hug, shouting out, "Remember, Malik. Before you met me, you was drinkin' Aqua Velva. And no matter where you are, Lenny, I'll be on you in spirit, like white on rice!"

Zoe and Thorny walked away. I felt worried for them, seeing them, still, as too opened up for the world. Yet I also felt envious, seeing them both as having, over the year, found such clear purpose in their lives, while any purpose I'd entered with had, over the year, been lost. I had no idea what I'd be doing, even tomorrow.

"What did you say to them?" I asked Malik.

"I told 'em how, after I got sober, early in my recovery when I was going through hell, I kept saying to my sponsor, George: 'I'm going insane, George! I'm going insane^ and he said back to me, 'No, no, Malik, you got it wrong. You're goin' sane. You're goin' sane.' "

"Nu, I'll check us in," said Bronia, her sabra body armor seeming, suddenly, to be falling like wet clothes to the floor, leaving merely a woman in love with a dying man. She marched off into the wilderness of Departures. "So where are you going, Malik?" Hannah asked. "Dalhousie, in the Himalayas. There's an orphanage there, run by a woman I studied with, a spiritual teacher. Two hundred children, three attendants, no doctors-until the day after tomor-" A fit of coughing. We waited.

In the wake of this paroxysm it hit home-this was it, the last time we'd all be together. We began to really talk, that rare, intense, back-and-forth you have late at night, say in college, and in love. Malik said how grateful he was to us, for being with him through the year, for hearing the alarm, for waking up. We talked about our love for him, but soon we were talking about our doubt about what we had done all year long-"a year," von Nott had written in a memo recently, "rather typical for Mount Misery"-and doubt about what we could do now.

"And that's it!" Malik said. "That's their power, to get us to doubt. But don't confuse self-doubt with radical questioning. We've each had a hit of vitality this year-each of us-and no institution can stand too much vitality. Not medicine, business, government, not religion, education-none of 'em! And the amazing thing is, is that our doubt is our faith, okay?"

He looked to us, each to each, eye-to-eye, asking, his gaze once again sharp yet kind, the false line between conscious and unconscious revealed and gone, jolting me out of the ordinary, like that feel of grit, that morning, on my cheek. My heart beat harder, my head cleared, my vision sharpened, I was eye-to-eye with him, volt-to-volt. Anything was possible right then.

"And faith itself, in this day and age, is a revolutionary act." He looked from face to face in our little circle. Then he smiled. "Like sports."

"Last call for USAir flight 1492 to Miami, Boarding Gate Thirty-one."

"Shit," Solini cried. "U.S. Scare and I didn't even hear it." The little guy's good-byes were rushed. "So, man," Henry said, embracing Malik last of all, gulping back sobs, "like what's the last question?"

"Isn't that it?" Malik asked.

"No, no, I mean for real. Gimme one anyway."

"Okay, hotshot, here you go: 'What's yoursT "

"Good question," Solini said. He stopped rolling and was still. He knitted up his brow and, starting to roll once again to his internal beat, said, "Mine is this: there's a lot of life out there, man, but you gotta open your eyes to see it? And hey-I got one for you, Malik?"

"I'm all ears."

"Meditate all you want, babe, but tie up your camel?"

"Cool," Malik said.

"So," Solini said, biting his lower Up to keep control, feet and knees 'and legs and arms starting to rock and roll. "So, Malik, babe. You cool on all a this?"

"I'm cool. You?"

"There it is." The little guy blew his nose in his flowery shirt and hurried off.-As he got smaller and smaller he became his shirt and rainbow Rasta cap, and then his shirt and cap became only pops of color, and finally an afterimage of green and yellow and scarlet, like an island on a map of an equatorial sea.

"United proudly announces the departure of flight 699 to Denver."

Gilda and Hannah took their leave, sadly, with fading embraces and promises to keep in touch. We watched them, as burdened as pack mules, disappear down the arroyo of Departure toward their flight to Wyoming.

Bronia was still standing in the crowd at Air India. She didn't seem to have moved. As we watched, a large Indian family draped in silk shoved her aside.