578
PARTISAN REVIEW
weak simply to crawl, Michael twists and slithers to the door. He reaches up
to touch the lock, and the door springs free. They have deliberately left it
open. He moves to the entrance of the house, slithering to the front door.
It,
too, is unlocked. A neighbor spies him as he twists outside, slithering like a
commando moving beneath barbed wire. The neighbor hesitantly ap–
proaches. Michael is covered with dirt. There is blood on his forehead, where
he scraped it against the door jamb. He smells of feces and dried urine and
sweat. The neighbor reaches down, touches him, furtively, as if Michael
were some jelly-like blob. Michael smiles. The neighbor will telephone the
police. No, Michael insists, better
if
he simply helped him get into the car.
He slithers to the car. With the neighbor cradling him, he gets inside.
As
he suspected, the door of the car has been left open. The keys wait in the
ignition. Michael feels light-headed - from hunger, from his own smell, from
the unexpected gift of freedom, from the outrage and distaste so visible on
his neighbor's face. Michael turns the key, touches the specially constructed
hand controls, smiles his gratitude at the neighbor, who angrily slams the car
door shut. Michael drives off, no longer a captive.
He has been sentenced to helplessness. But he remains a believer.
"People like us," I remember his saying as he told me of his decision to enter
the ministry, "have been chosen to suffer for the rest of mankind. With our
lives, God demonstrates his love for the world." I remember how I resisted
the temptation to make some caustic comment about God's love. Instead, I
told him that I believed men chose their fates by what was available to them
at the time of their choosing. Michael was adamant. God, he insisted, had
chosen him. And whether I knew it or not, he had chosen me, too. If so, I
remember thinking at the time, his God was capricious enough to serve as
ringmaster for this century's circus. But I didn't say anything. Michael was
determined to survive. His faith was the price he paid for that survival.
Michael drove to the house of a parishioner, a woman his wife insisted
he was sleeping with. He saw her only for work related to church projects.
Better, I thought, as I listened to the story, if they had been sleeping to–
gether.
The woman bathes him, washing away the smell of captivity. She sets
the table, listens to Michael say grace. Like the neighbor, she wants to call
the police. Michael refuses. She must understand. He is a minister. He is a
cripple. He is a burden. Without knowing it, he has read Kafka up close.
Thinking about that story makes me want to howl like a wounded ani–
mal, to stick my hand through glass. Thinking about that story makes me
believe that only in the breaking does life make sense. I am fifty-five years
old. I have created a life, built it piece by piece. And I can be thrust aside,
locked away, made susceptible to the same terror as Michael was. I shiver
as I envision myself in Michael's place. Reeking of humiliation, imprisoned by
those one loves, tested by a calculating malevolence.
