Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

The phone rang, startling him. What now? But it was only Jim Elliott, the Chamber of Commerce secretary. He was working at home on the new industrial brochure and needed information on certain zoning ordinances, which of course Ralph had at the office, not here at home. Elliott was a stupid arrogant ass. Himebaugh explained the problem. “But listen, Jim, if you really need the ordinances, I’ll go get them for you.”

“Aw hell, no, Ralph! Not out in that fucking mess. I just thought you might, you know, have them at hand, or something.”

“No, but I really don’t mind. It is a nasty day, but—”

“Don’t think twice about it! Anyhow, there’s a game on TV, and I’m sick of this goddamn brochure anyway. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Well, if you insist. But do come in the first thing tomorrow. You know I wish to help all I can. How’s your family?”

“Oh, everybody’s fine, thanks. Fat and lazy. Sally’s sore at me because I wouldn’t let her go out in the storm to a movie, but I think she’ll get over it.”

Ralph chuckled cordially, chewed irritably on his pencil. Would the fool never shut up? He and the mayor were the two men Ralph hated most in this stupid town. They never wearied of imposing on his good will with their infantile little games and incredibly insignificant problems. And, God, they monologized without cease. Now it was that hateful brochure. And it was useless, utterly useless. They would never recover from the mine disaster, of that Ralph was sure. But what good would it do to tell them? They were all sick.

“See you tomorrow then, Ralph.”

“Yes, I’ll keep the day entirely free for you, Jim. Give my best to your good wife.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that. Hang loose, now!”

Ralph laughed lightly, as he supposed he was expected to do, and cradled the receiver. The idiot! The cats, fed, had composed themselves about the house. One of them scratched in the sand in the pantry. Ralph stood at a window and gazed out on a gradually darkening world, vanishing under the deadweight of snow. The wind had diminished, but the snow still sifted down heavily. There would be accident suits and insurance claims.

He poured himself a snifter of cognac, brushed Omar out of the armchair, and curled up moodily in it, alongside his several scrapbooks and records. He started back about seven years, flipped slowly through, disaster after disaster, pausing meditatively at unusually significant events or peculiarly grotesque ones, letting his mind drift unanchored through the accumulating morass of woe and rot and grief. Slowly the black shape grew. It came to bear, as it had every day for nearly two months, upon the explosion at the Deepwater Number Nine Coalmine, seemed to hover like thick black fumes over that ravaged pit. What did it mean, why was it that single horror so impressed him? He knew full well it was purblind to place exaggerated emphasis on one event merely because of its proximity, yet he could not rid his mind of the possibility that this disaster, this one in particular, provided him, him in particular, some vital urgent message: as though — as though he had been the intended victim and had in some incredible manner escaped, and now he had one more chance, one more chance to find the way out, to discover the system that would allow him to predict and escape the next blow.

The number ninety-seven, the number of the dead, was itself unbelievably relevant. Not only did it take its place almost perfectly in the concatenation of disaster figures he had been recording, but it contained internal mysteries as well: nine, after all, was the number of the mine itself, and seven, pregnant integer out of all divination, was the number of trapped miners. The number between nine and seven, eight, was the date of the explosion, and the day of the rescue was eleven, two one’s, or two, the difference between nine and seven. Nine and seven added to sixteen, whose parts, one and six, again added to … seven! Sixteen was, moreover, in the universe of the line, a fourth-dimensional figure, hardly less important than sixty-four, one more than the product of nine and seven. That product, sixty-three, also added to nine. And yet there was more: Though the acceleration curves for, as an example, energy expenditure and estimated cellular destruction were not the same, yet all of his curves tended to approximate the common parabola produced by the graph of y = x 2 , on which, as the value of x is increased by one in a series of whole numbers, the value of y increases as the square of the numbers in that series, and the value of the difference between the successive lengths of the accelerating y ordinates forms a series of odd numbers increasing at the rate of two units between each whole number in the original x series. When the unit value of x has reached three — the quotient of sixty-three divided by twenty-one, the number of the day within the tenth sign on which rescue took place! — the related value of y becomes nine and the difference between that value and the succeeding one of sixteen is seven! It was through this astounding discovery that Ralph had been able to place himself with certainty upon the present moment of the parabola, lacking only a final calculation of the value or values of the single x unit. When he had that , he knew he would be invulnerable! And it was not beyond his grasp, for he was slowly learning to measure the area under the several parabolas , and the area-function sooner or later would lead him to the ordinate-function, provided only he could finally expurgate these area measurements of all arbitrary components, which he believed his current project of graph overlays would eventually do. His head spun. He uncurled, poured another snifter of brandy, watching Grendel licking her genitals. Suddenly infuriated, he doused her with the cognac; she started, scampered under the couch. Only Nyx could do that and not nauseate him. He poured another snifterful.

And then there was ninety-seven plus one: the infamous product of seven and fourteen. For years he had resented the emphasis placed on the number seven, supposing it to be the consequence of stupid obedience to the religionists’ texts. Only late in life did he discover that these infantile texts were actually corruptions of older and infinitely more precise, infinitely less adulterated writings, now lost, and he now willingly suffered through the garbage in search of the sources, now willingly respected the generative powers of numbers like one and seven and twelve and fourteen. Plus one: Giovanni Bruno. Who was he? Why was it he? John Brown! The very anonymity lent an unreal — or, rather, a superreal —odor to the occasion, a kind of terror, the terror inevitably associated with voids, infinities, absences, facelessness, zero. For seven weeks now, he had been contemplating a private conversation with the man. Ralph paced the living room. Perhaps he should go tonight. Yet, so much was at stake. His entire reputation in West Condon, for one thing. Nevertheless, a night like tonight, who would be out in it? Who would there be to see him coming and going? And, if apprehended, he could always explain himself in terms of some obscure legal matter. Even a will or something; God knows, the man should have a will. But how would he explain himself to Bruno himself? No, it was better to wait, to be certain, to have the questions precisely formulated. He poured more cognac, again stroked Omar out of the armchair, curled into it now with a thin jacketless book. He tried to read it, but could not concentrate. Why was it so famous? It was a pack of emotional ignorant ravings! He threw it down. The destroyer, damn it! The destroyer! They all saw it, but could not face it. Oh, the cowards! Oh, the disgusting yellow pigheads! Oh, the sniveling pissants! He again paced, cursing them, and drank his cognac. Precious ninnies! Asses! Babbling little chickenshits!