Jim Krusoe - Parsifal

Sand.

Once inside, he ate the leftover sandwiches and fell asleep.

Parsifal woke to a radio bulletin that an entire town north of where he lived had been destroyed by a bombardment of two-wheeled vehicles: motorcycles, mopeds, and bicycles. True, it was not a large town, but this was the first time he knew of that such a large-scale sky-related, concentrated disaster had occurred. Over one hundred people had been killed, the media excitedly reported, forgetting to mention the usual famines, earthquakes, and floods killing thousands.

Never had the sky felt more dangerous to him.

The next day brought a report of a large brushfire in the middle of the state, one that filled the sky with soot for nearly one hundred square miles. The fire had been started by a group of hikers who were burned to death.

His infinite wisdom .

if the source of one’s pain comes from an ill-considered action, does that make the pain any less? If a person hurts his ankle, say, by seeing how many times he can hop on one foot in his kitchen, and then maybe lets his attention wander for a minute to a line of blind men outside his window, so he winds up taking a bad hop and hits his head on the corner of a cabinet, is the pain any less? Parsifal wonders about this.

Or does it hurt more?

According to the map Parsifal picked up the following day at a map store, the forest he wanted to visit was actually not very near his home at all, but about a hundred miles north and to the east of the city. The fact that he had forgotten how far away it was he can only attribute to the clouded state of mind he must have possessed when he first left the forest, a state of mind that compressed the memory of several days of travel, limping and hungry, into only a few hours.

Could he be wrong about other details of his past as well?

Parsifal thought the woman who sold him the map at the store was similar to the woman at the florist shop, the one who patted his hand as she handed him the tulips he had bought. However, while the woman at the florist shop was dressed in a light blue smock and a flowered blouse, the woman at the map store was dressed in a plain brown suit that had epaulettes on the shoulders and many pockets, as if she were preparing to leave at any minute on a journey, making ready to fill each of those pockets with maps. Both women wore glasses.

A collapsible hiking pole leaned against the store’s front counter. The woman’s hair was in a bun. Her muscles were firm and her skin was tan. She was not the sort of person whose face might be chosen for a box of cake mix, but possibly for a granola blend with oatmeal, almonds, and cranberries.

“That’s right,” she told Parsifal when he’d asked if she had ever been there. “It’s not a short walk to the forest from here, but I think you’ll like it.”

He told her that he had lived there for a while.

“Well then,” she replied, “I’ll bet that you have a whole lot of fond memories.”

Somewhere there must be a word, some technical term, for a combination of anticipation, nostalgia, and dread.

When he thinks about fountain pens, Parsifal often thinks about ink windows — those clear sections of the body of a pen that enable a user to see how much ink remains. Not all pens have them — most do not — but of those that do, there are basically three types (other than those “demonstrator” pens, which are clear plastic in order to demonstrate the pen’s working mechanism). The first kind of window is a thin, transparent ring about an inch away from the base of the nib. It’s efficient and easy to use. The second is a transparent stripe, or several stripes, running along the barrel of the pen that alternates clear with colored strips. The third has transparent spots scattered about the length of the pen. With all three, a person can hold the pen up to a light and instantly tell how much ink remains. The disadvantage of an ink window is that it interrupts the design, most noticeably with the ring-type window, unless, of course, you consider the ring a part of the pattern. The advantage of ink windows is that a person knows when he is going to run out of ink, so before embarking on any extended sequence of thoughts he does not wish to have interrupted by jumping up and taking a trip to “Mister Bottle,” he can fill his pen before he starts. Knowing when the ink will run out seems a little like knowing the date of your death. Some people want that information. Others, like Parsifal, would prefer to be surprised.

Homecoming .

In the forest, Parsifal and Pearl played a kind of game. His mother would send him out of their little house, ordering him to leave a trail of pebbles or small, hard pieces of bread — whichever Pearl happened to have handy — so that he might find his way back. “Walk somewhere for several hours,” she would tell him, “but don’t forget to leave behind some markers so you can find your way home again.”

When at last Parsifal would return (although sometimes it would take a day or two) she would hug him and laugh. “ Mein kleiner Hansel ,” she would say, rubbing her fingers through his hair.

Hansel?

The loneliness of being alone.

And did Pearl ever learn that Parsifal sometimes tricked her? That instead of making a trail, he had only walked to the nearest hollow tree, a few yards away, and then curled up and slept inside of it for six or seven hours?

Now it’s too late to ask.

If pressed on the subject of the cup, Parsifal will admit that he could have taken Fenjewla with him, but — he never fails to add — because he was in the midst of a crisis situation, he considers having left the cup behind forgivable.

“It happened like this,” Parsifal explained during one of his therapy sessions with Joe. “I had gone out one afternoon in search of food, because my father, Conrad, was delayed from arriving with supplies. This was not uncommon, nor was it unusual that I found myself too far away to walk back home again by nightfall. It was always dangerous to walk in the forest at night, so I built a small campfire, and then, in the morning, left it safely confined within its ring of stones to burn out by itself, because — and here is the single place where I differ with the book on woodcraft my father left with me — if you are properly trained in woodcraft and are certain the fire is unable to spread, there is absolutely no danger in leaving it that way. Also, if a person needs to return quickly to his campsite, he can find it fast by following the wisp of smoke.”

“Then,” Parsifal continued, “I hurried home, and it was a good thing I did, because by the time I arrived my mother was waiting.

“‘You know,’ Pearl said, ‘with my heightened sense of smell, I believe I can smell a fire. It’s far away right now, but I think it’s coming closer, and a person can’t be too careful firewise. Maybe this is exactly the right time for you to take a trip to the city and see if you can track down your father. I’ll stay here and take care of things. Don’t worry about me. You go. I’ll be all right.’”

A condition of Parsifal’s release from jail by the court was that he make regular visits to Joe.

What is the sound of sadness creeping into his heart?

And Pearl was right: the fire, from wherever it began, had moved quickly. Within half an hour it was nearly at their house. “There was only time enough to throw a few items into a burlap sack,” Parsifal said to Joe, “and not time enough to look around for every little thing I might want to take, such as my foolish metal cup named Fenjewla.”

“My mother,” he added, “was wearing her ordinary outfit: a leather apron attached at her sides by strings of animal sinew. Around her shoulders was a stole made out of a couple of fox skins she had sewn together, and beneath that, a fancy black lace bra that Conrad had brought her from the city. As usual,” he said, “my mother wore no shoes or socks. (The soles of her feet were incredibly tough, and she would frequently challenge me to try to pierce them with a sharp stick, but I never succeeded.) On her head was the kind of hat she liked to wear, fashioned out of an abandoned bird’s nest—‘Just for fun,’ she used to say.”