Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

Sitting in this fashion Mr. Schmitz towers over his friend, despite being several inches shorter in height. Perhaps it is because of the disjunction of sight lines that Mr. Schmitz does not notice his friend's scrutiny. Rutherford has the attitude of a man who stares hard at his own reflection in a sparkling lake in order to make out what lurks in the water beneath. Mr. Schmitz sits oblivious and still, except for his wayward tuft of hair, which jogs in the steady uptown breeze.

"I once kept a diary," says Rutherford. "But I never read it over. I didn't want to remind myself of all those days when nothing happened — the long passages of time between memorable events. Days like that make up most of our lives. We miss those days only if we keep track of them."

"I think I know exactly what you mean," says Mr. Schmitz. He lets his smoldering butt fall gently to the ground. After coughing several times into his armpit, he spits out a hunk of matter that resembles loose egg whites.

"Recently I've been having this dream, every night," continues Mr. Schmitz. "Though I forget it as soon as I wake. I haven't remembered a dream for over three months. I'm certain that I'm dreaming — I always was an active dreamer. But now, whatever dream I'm having, it vanishes the very second the sports radio comes on. That's at five-fifteen a.m."

"I sometimes have that dream," says Rutherford. He is transfixed by the loose egg white matter and does not quite follow his friend's words.

"I wake up to nothing — no memories of dreams. It's like I stopped existing for the night," says Mr. Schmitz. "I'm calm at first, but seconds later, I start to panic. I pull on my hair sometimes and once in a while" — he leans over to Rutherford, whispering hoarsely—"I turn the radio up so loud that my ears start vibrating. This usually wakes up Agnes, even when her hearing aids aren't in. And when she wakes up, she starts screaming."

"Mrs. Schmitz can, at times, be easily disturbed," says Rutherford, frowning again, and straightening his cuffs. He wears cufflinks, even on a Saturday morning like this one, at the beginning of spring.

"I have a theory about what happens in these lost dreams," says Mr. Schmitz. "I think they take place in a foreign land. A land that appears different to everyone who visits it."

"I think I know this place," says Rutherford, suddenly alert. His arm flies up; his forefinger jabs at a gray cloud above. "The strangest things happen there." Rutherford removes his hat, a black bowler, for a moment, before resting it back down on his matted hair.

Mr. Schmitz watches him closely, his eyes asquint. He speaks in a whisper: "You know what land I'm thinking of, then?"

"Of course I do," replies Rutherford, his voice lilting like a musical saw. "We spent the best days of our lives there, oh, fifty years ago."

"Yes. Tell me about it. Maybe it will help me remember my dreams."

The two men pause for a moment, taking in a deep, cold breath of air. They light new cigarettes, adjust various articles of clothing (a dirty collared shirt; a black bowler), and make brief surveys of the park in front of them. Finally, after exhaling the first mouthfuls of smoke over their outside shoulders, the two old friends turn again to face each other.

One morning in May, nearly a year after Eugene had begun working at Aaronsen and Son, he was assigned, with Alvaro, a job on a shady block between Park and Madison on the Upper East Side. Their moving van rumbled to a stop in front of a three-story redbrick Georgian townhouse. Alvaro, who seemed never to have ventured south of Harlem, removed a crumpled red polo shirt from the floor under his seat, and stretched it over his wifebeater. Eugene was wearing a heavy winter hat, his company's sports jacket, and Alvaro's gold-rimmed aviator glasses.

He realized it was irrational, but Eugene hadn't been this close to his childhood apartment all year and he was terrified of running into his father. He had no idea what he would say to him— that he was back from Florida on vacation?

Alvaro seemed to sense his anxiety. He stared at Eugene for a moment and then broke into a wide grin, his dimples popping craters in his cheeks. He wrapped his arm around Eugene's shoulder and led him to the house. The front door stood ajar, so they peeked inside and announced themselves.

"Hello?" boomed a man's voice. "HELLO? God damn it, who's down there?"

Alvaro and Eugene raced up the stairs and into a hall decorated with large oil canvases of British hunting scenes that depicted eager spaniels prancing gamely around fallen elk and wild boars. The old man was in a room at the end of the hall, dark except for a single lightbulb that hung on a wire from the ceiling; it had all the charm of an interrogation chamber. Several moments passed before Eugene's eyes could make anything out in the dim light. Crowded blackwood bookshelves began to take shape before him. They lined every wall of the room from floor to ceiling, and the rows of books were interrupted here and there by gold-framed photographs. An elderly man with a large head and wide, sunken shoulders sat upright in the middle of the room on a stool. His arms lay dead across his knees so he looked like a man waiting for a dog to return with his throwing stick. He wore a crisp, finely tailored suit and had chalky white hair that gleamed under the hanging lightbulb, which swung back and forth ever so slightly in the room's stuffy air.

The man appeared not to have heard Eugene and Alvaro's footsteps, for instead of acknowledging their presence he made an unpleasant retching sound, hung his head back, and opened his mouth, yawning like a lion. Two rows of bright white teeth sprang up to his lips, with such force that it looked as if they would leap out of his mouth altogether. The man convulsed, and the teeth popped back into his jaw. With a deep sense of relief, Eugene realized they were dentures.

"Hello, sir," he said, stepping forward.

"Yes? Ah, there you are," said the man, suddenly amiable, though on another face, his smile would have seemed a grimace. "Excuse the light. You see, we have this curious situation with our BOOKS." He hit his palms against his knees whenever he stressed a word. "They simply cannot abide the light. And so we're stuck here," he said, beginning to chuckle softly to himself, "in the DARK!"

"Are you Mr. Chisholm?" said Eugene. Alvaro appeared distracted, and was drifting off to one side.

"What's that? Oh yes. I'm Chisholm. ABRAHAM Chisholm," he said, slapping his knee. "Well what brings you here today? How can I HELP you?"

"We're from Aaronsen and Son — we had an order to move some furniture from this house to an office uptown?"

"What is it? I can't see so well. What are you looking at? Ah. Yes, there's Connie." Chisholm had followed Alvaro's gaze to a bronze bust that stood on a pedestal in front of one of the bookshelves. "Good old Connie."

Eugene walked over to the bust. It had been modeled after a young man, robustly proportioned; his caved eyes and pear-shaped cheeks gave him the rugged look of a prizefighter.

"Why don't you take a look around," said Chisholm. He raised his palm high above his knee, ominously, in preparation for an extra large smack. "I don't mind. AT ALL!"

Eugene nodded and, with a glance to Alvaro, he began to survey the thousands of books that had been packed into the cramped space. The first title that he was able to make out was a familiar one: Eakins's The Darkness and the Devil. As he went to take it down he noticed that it was one of over a dozen copies of that novel on the same shelf. Each of them was laminated and marked by a sticker on which was printed the edition's publishing company, printing, and date.

"The Darkness!" shouted Chisholm from his chair, his voice filled with delight. "What wisdom, what daring! What ecstatic madness."