More insight into Ryn
A - E F - J K - O P - V W - Z Newest Files
“Warning“ - NO graphic sex in this one. Sorry.
If that’s all you want- skip this Part :) But Pen. fans should
understand the principle: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder....”
Part Four: Secrets of the Past
He awoke late, and brilliant sunshine was streaming into the
bedroom. He felt completely refreshed and reinvigorated. She was
gone, but the impression of her hand on his upper arm was still
there. He felt it as a lingering sensation. The cloying scent of
her perfume was on his skin and the pillows. There was a note on
the crystal nightstand. He picked up the lavender sheet and read
her delicate copperplate.
George -
I need to work today but I will be home early- around 7 pm. (That’s
early for me !) There ’s food in the fridge and kitchen cabinets,
and your clothes are all cleaned and pressed. You will find them on
top of the dresser. I have your size and I’m going to bring you
some new clothes tonight.
We need to talk about you. You don’t belong on the streets - no one
does, and I do want to help you. And remember what I showed you
last night. I hope you learned something from that experience.
You can look around all you want- except for one room on the second
floor that I keep locked. Please stay out of there. There are many
televisions, tapes and discs, and my library is on the fourth
floor. You seem to like books and reading and I think you will find
some interesting things up there. I also have a huge classical &
Jazz collection.
You need to be tested - maybe a Weschler- and we should talk more
about your education - where you belong and what you want to do
with yourself.
There is a scene in David Copperfield that you may remember- I’m
sure you’ve read it - when Master Copperfield is taken in by his
Aunt after a terrible journey through London. I have no crazy Uncle
Dick in my attic, and I do not chase carriages away from the front
lawn, but I do care for you, and think that you deserve a better
deal from life than the one you have been given so far.... We’ll
talk about this.
If you need to reach me just press “Hal” on any telephone in the
house, and Hal- he’s my office computer-will let me know you want
to talk to me. I don’t like telephones. The sound of a phone
ringing is hateful to me, don‘t ask me why.
Take care and be good- I will see you tonight.
Bye
Ryn
He read the note over several times, and a feeling that his old
life was passing away, and that he now stood on the threshold of a
completely new experience, seized his thoughts and quickened his
pulse. Entropy governs the universe he had told himself bitterly,
many times over. The principle of entropy explained the inexorable
tendency for all gardens to turn into weeds, for the finest food to
rot, for the best and noblest and kindest of everything to “fail
and fade once shown.” The whole universe was running down like an
old clock.
But entropy did not govern the world unchecked, or so it seemed to
him this morning. Things do not always grow inevitably worse. Here,
at last, there seemed to be light and hope to relieve the gloom of
his days. He smiled for the first time in a long time. It was an
innocent and sweet smile, like spring-time sun emerging from clouds
after a long and stormy winter.
Her kitchen awed him. Every appliance was of professional grade, of
the type used only in the finest hotels. She took cooking very
seriously indeed. He found a ten-pound burlap sack of Jamaica Blue
Mountain coffee beans in the stainless steel refrigerator, but
couldn’t find a bean grinder until he noticed that one was built
into the Krups coffeemaker. The aroma as the coffee brewed was
incredibly rich. She had real cream too- not the diluted crap most
supermarkets sell.
He visited the machine again, and stood before its gleaming metal,
as fascinated as he was the night before. But he spent the morning
in her library and found in it all the riches she had hinted at.
Here was an original Divine Comedy, dating from the 16th century.
He was dimly aware that it was beyond price, and he handled the
cracked vellum pages cautiously. He couldn’t even imagine how she
had acquired the volume. His Italian was meager, but he could pick
his way through the hero’s journey into Hell, and stood with him in
the dreaded Ninth Circle of the Abyss.
Framed portraits lined the walls of the library, and he recognized
a young Einstein, Wagner, Kurt Godel, and Ayn Rand among others. It
was a pantheon dedicated to intellect. The walls were solid walnut
and the deep pile carpeting was an elegant French blue. The entire
ceiling was a skylight, and sun soaked the whole room with its warm
rays. The grounds of a large and well-kept estate surrounded the
mansion.
While browsing her shelves he was surprised to find the novel she
had mentioned to him last night. It was a cheap hardcover with
faded dust jacket, an anomaly for her library of rare and exquisite
volumes. A picture of a girl in an autumn setting adorned the
cover. He flipped through the pages, picking up the thread of the
tale. A letter fell out of the book, and he picked it up from the
floor. It was addressed to Ryn.
Dr. Nyr
Thank you very much for your letter and your interest in my novel.
You know, I really intended it to be a play, but it came out as a
novel instead.
No, I am not planning a sequel. My tale of your namesake is done.
Imagination is like a window into another world, and those windows
open for a while, and then they close, never to be opened again.
Life is like that too. We meet people and we say goodbye, never to
meet again. Each person is a world. I suspect, as others have said,
that many so-called imaginary worlds are really discovered rather
than invented.
The question you pose in your letter is therefore difficult for me
to answer. I have written no sequel and have not even thought of
one. The story ends with Mario in the hospital, and your namesake
unable to continue alone. I will tell you that my best intuition is
that she does survive and go on, whether with Mario or not I can
not say. But I strongly believe that she survives- it is her
deepest nature. Whether she ever finds love or happiness I can not
see. The window is closed now and I can no longer peer into her
world.
You may wish to contact Jodie- she played the character very well,
and if she still remembers the movie she may offer you insights
that I no longer have.
I am sending you an autographed copy. Thank you again for your
kind interest and good luck to you.
Laird Koenig
In his hard bitter life on the streets books had been his only joy,
libraries had been his only refuge, his own mind had been his only
friend. He understood this infatuation with an idea, this love for
an imaginary character, this desperation to peer into another world
in order to better see our own.
Undelivered Mail
At mid-afternoon he went downstairs and busied himself with making
a sandwich. A knife holder was at the back of the pink granite
countertop, near the fridge. He reached for it and noticed a letter
holder against the wall. Bills and correspondence were in the front
of the letter holder, but a small, yellowed envelope was all the
way at the back. It caught his sharp eyes because the envelope was
worn and well creased. The paper appeared aged. Here was something
important he said to himself as he reached for it.
Ryn wouldn't mind he thought. She had only forbidden one room of
her house to him, and had invited him to “look around.”
The envelope wasn’t sealed. It appeared that it had never been
sealed; though it was otherwise ready to be mailed. He removed the
stiff cream-colored parchment and unfolded it. A dry, sweet
fragrance rose from the paper, and it took him a moment to
recognize the faded lilac perfume. It was a typed letter of some
kind, but bore no name on it, merely a title. He began reading.
Leaving
You loved this world, and you hated it. It is filled with beauty,
and darkness, and your mood flickered in a beat with the daily
rhythm of sun and darkness as you hoped for lasting light, a
violent and mute rhapsody of light and dark, hope and fear. You
wanted more but accepted the things that life gave you. You asked
but were not answered. You sought with such intensity that you
cried inside at the emptiness of the nonreply. You needed God, but
found science, and were unappeased.
The World - a vast, deep place where the great Manichean struggle
continues, without and within. The sun would rise and a darkness
would rise in you at the beginning of each day. Your hopes were
great hopes and involved all mankind, yet you never hoped for
yourself, and you never gave me a chance to hope for you.
Love. How you sought for it and compromised with it, begging,
pleading for it to come and stay. It spurned you, but you honored
in your heart a memory. We are each a candle in the wind Pasternak
said, so precious, so fleeting, but you carried your own candle
into the long night and who now can see it?
Meaning must be created by the mind or the body will falter. Life
is given by the body but not meaning. To be alone is the hardest
thing and the most necessary thing. Through the prism of solitude
all the spectacles of the world are focused into a coherent image,
an ordered spectrum of light and shadow.
We see the truth within ourselves. Not with our tongues but in our
thoughts, not with our ears but in our minds do we know of truth.
The rainbow is the truth of light, its elements revealed, and it
commands the sky alone with a unique integrity, but itself casts no
shadow, being made of light. Remember the footprints in the snow
you followed that bleak winter morning, squinting as you did while
clinging to a tightrope of fear? With half-closed eyes you saw the
rainbow reflected within your tears. You saw the cruelty, the
violence, the beauty, the meaning of the world.
Why? You said it all began with a failed abortion, a careless
moment of unexpunged passion later regretted by a nominal mother
and father, who in obeisance to convention married, fought,
suffered and divorced. But the child also fought and suffered and
never knew why. You didn't know what to do, you didn‘t believe you
belonged in this world, you thought your very existence a casual
accident, an oversight. You, so maladroit in this demanding world,
you who reveled in ballet and failed its demand of grace. Why were
you the silent one, filled with such depth and gravity of thought
and feeling inside - unshared, unspoken, left to concentrate in the
darkness within? A black diamond glittering invisibly.
You couldn't find a great meaning in this world so you left it
behind. As the years passed you left it further behind you -
dwelling as you did in that secret place within, a citadel of
memory and thought. An internal Perdition, where your shame and
regret commingled with fantasy and hope. But hope failed you, and
you believed that you had failed Hope. You saw yourself but a
failure. Someone who could never succeed here in this hard place.
You were too sensitive to the barbarities of life, felt accused by
an errant eyebrow, indicted by a frown. A stranger in the light,
most confronted with your aloneness when in the midst of a crowd.
Not knowing what to do, why you were there, why you were.
You hoped and cried and couldn’t smile any more. You struggled in
anger and fear, but Fear ruled you and governed your very thoughts,
though your words cursed the darkness while yet pronouncing it upon
yourself. And in a garden in Barrington, by the tree and not far
from the school, you buried a dream in a little wooden box, but no
seedling took root. Who has counted all the stars, who has measured
every rainbow, who knows of every atom and the stirring of the
wings of every butterfly? Not all the wisdom of Solomon saved him
from infinity, and the song of Ecclesiastes is the truth of the
world.
So strange and different you were. Always a quiet angularity that
made you visible in a crowd - a sad face, deep brown eyes, Uncle
Phil used to call you “Smiley.” Different. You, who thought
kindness the highest virtue, patience the best skill, and love the
keenest insight. You with your shibboleths of secret truth, you who
knew too well and too deeply that a four dimensional object casts a
three dimensional shadow. Truth alone is not meaning; beauty alone
is not love; goodness, alone, is not life. There must be more....
But you would dissent. Self-effacing to a fault, you who turned
away when the cashier shortchanged you. You saw her supervisor
standing there and you were afraid for her, afraid that any sign
from you would threaten her. Fragile. So fragile. You, who took
burdens upon yourself, first in blame, last in praise. Harshest of
critics upon yourself, more stern and sober than any judge in
reckoning your perceived faults and failings, solemn as death. The
stern stone and steel of the harshest prison was nothing to the
prison you made for yourself from guilt and fear, and longing.
Dissent then, for I will say these things for you now.
Your love of ideas and beauty, and the lost chances of history, you
who traveled so far with Proust and Tolkien, Foote and Livy. You,
who found exaltation with Glenn Gould; you, who found sensuality in
words while suffering celibacy in your flesh. Going for long walks
in the sunset, along the ocean, chanting verses of quoted beauty to
yourself while hoping that he would hear you and smile. How you
sought for Him- a being of pure love and understanding, he who
would have accepted you and rescued you from yourself. One touch,
one hug would have saved you. But down the dark path of your fate
you never found him. Love eluded you and your traps and hopes. The
stones and stars alone heard your misspent voice, and your great
beauty was wasted upon a midnight moon.
In the end the thunder of the sea drew you, commanded you. And
hours were lost upon the waves as you peered into the depths of the
abyss. You saw yourself in it. You saw. For the waves spoke to you
didn‘t they? You heard their music, a great music: the crashing of
waves on the rocky coast of Maine. No wind was too cold, no tumult
of sea too great, no darkness too deep for your patient attendance
upon the waves. The sea comforted you and in it you found the
waters of Lethe.
I hope your final hour was one of peace. I hope the sublime visited
you. I hope you rose as you fell. I hope the stars in the firmament
above were the last living sight in your eyes, as you joined with
infinity at last, as light entered into you and remade you, and
healed your wounds, and made you whole.
He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. An old 22
cent stamp was at the right corner. But no amount of postage would
deliver this letter now. No post office on earth had power or skill
to send it to its addressee. The post office did not recognize the
country of the addressee, and sent no mail there, and received none
in return. But the gates of that land loom before all, and all
march upon its first steps, though they know it not.
A quiet thought passed in his mind as he thought of what the letter
meant, almost a plea it seemed, and he read the name again, and
pronounced it softly, “Nyna Nyr.”
[For Paula 7/31/63 - 12/29/87 ]