It wasn’t as if he had feet anymore. He became aware that everything around him had not been made by human hands. Where he stood was a plateau, high up in a mountain range. The color gray was like a rocky ground, the bits of white like scattered snow. He had never climbed a mountain, but it seemed to him he must have done so many times. It was all extraordinarily vivid, right down to small details. He felt he had arrived at the roof of the world.
“I was standing on the roof of the world, Reverend. That’s what I call it. But I knew it was not of this world.”
Meanwhile, as he approached the cloud, he heard harsh, insistent, frantic voices. They were somewhere behind him, out of sight. Come back! Don’t you dare get away from us! Get this guy back!
Very crude obscenities were also uttered, which the lawyer chose to leave out. But they made no difference. He ignored the voices. He only wanted to go forward. He wanted to enter the cloud. He now knew that the trauma of working his way through the maze was necessary. The roof of the world, of course, would not be easy to reach.
There came to him an excitement, a rush of desire, a whole new level of exultation. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew that the cloud was a passage into infinity. What he might see when he entered it, what he might find out, he didn’t consider. He was still too earthbound, but he knew it was going to be far beyond anything imaginable.
It amazed him now that when his heart stopped, his whole life wasn’t flashing by him. He had never actually thought about it, but it had seemed to him something that would go on automatically, just because people tend to say so.
He had only one memory during his experience. He saw a glimpse of himself as a boy in a classroom, looking at a blackboard where the teacher chalked the symbol for pi. He was being told that the number for pi contains decimal places no one could count, because pi is a number that never, under any circumstances, comes to a stop.
When he was very young, he had hoped to become a mathematician. He was good at arithmetic. He liked the clarity and the evidence of numbers. But the idea of a number with the ability to last forever was too much for him to handle. He simply could not believe it.
Facing the cloud, so close to him, so close, he understood that he was finally going to know what pi means. He was going to become a pi.
And all along, the voices at his back grew louder, more insistent. He could not pretend that those voices were not a threat to him, and when he felt human hands grabbing hold of him, he was mystified and furious. He couldn’t understand how anyone could seize an invisible man, and he resisted with all his might. He felt he was being cuffed and shackled for a crime he did not commit.
That was where the lawyer ended his story.
For the first time he looked at me directly. I wondered if he felt he had made some sort of confession. A look of relief was in his eyes, and though he kept himself carefully guarded, I saw what seemed a new lightness in him, as if he’d put down a burden and lay there with leftover traces of feeling his body had no weight.
We smiled at each other in the hush. He didn’t ask me if I believed him. He didn’t tell me he felt he was changed inside himself, as a butterfly can never again be a caterpillar.
He shook his head no when I suggested he might want to read testimonies of other such events and find out about research on the subject. His expression was inscrutable except for the softness of the smile.
Then he said, “I had thought, when I sent for you, I’d need help.”
There was a pause. He seemed to think I knew what he meant. Did he want me to pray with him? Speak with him about a heaven that doesn’t have to be called heaven? Speak to him about his soul? Or how he’d go back into his life a changed man, from his meeting with his beautiful cloud?
“I wrestled with myself about forgiveness,” he said. “I was afraid I could never forgive my surgical team for bringing me back. But I have done so. I see that as a spiritual matter, and I assure you, I’m glad to be alive. It crossed my mind that the next time I’m in church, I should sit up and pay attention whenever they’re talking about Lazarus.”
“Because, from now on, that will have meaning for you?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m grateful you took the time to hear me out. I’m sure you appreciate knowing about my experience, exactly as it happened.”
“I do, thank you.”
“Please don’t suppose I expect you to keep confidential what I told you. I only ask to have my name kept out, should you wish to ever share it.”
We exchanged another smile, and bade each other good-night.
I felt that I’d listened to his story as the telling of a dream. I have heard many, many dreams. It’s common for someone in a bed to talk to a chaplain as one would to talk to a therapist.
The lawyer was not being monitored. His room was as empty of medical equipment as a hotel room; he was counting down the hours to his release. Obviously no one was worried about after-effcts of a very recent experience that involved near death.
I spoke again with the nurse of the auto shop, this time about his condition. What he had was more of a procedure than a surgery, she told me. But if anything was bothering me after talking to him, I should see the attending.
I tracked down the resident assigned to him, a woman I’d run into before on days. She was only here filling in for a night shifter. She was frazzled and tired and her mood was not a good one.
“Oh, him,” she said when I mentioned the lawyer.
She was hurrying to a room, but I learned that while he was under whatever anesthesia he was given, he had partly awakened. Back under he went, followed by a little scare, a glitch in the proceedings, during which his heart rate was somewhat compromised. It was all just a moment: a slight irregularity, an adjustment. Just one small moment. The lawyer spent a few hours afterward in intensive care, so as not to take any chances. He was as strong as a healthy, middle-aged horse.
I didn’t feel I was wasting time asking questions. I had Plummy in my thoughts. What to say to him?
I always knew what time it was where he was: Germany. The new baby PhD had been offered a position in a research institute he hardly dared hope to be recruited for. In grad school he had slacked off for a while—he fell in love with someone who then met someone else.
We didn’t give each other those sorts of details. What he called slacking off, and what most people mean when they say it, are not the same things. When he said, “I am shattered,” because of that girlfriend, I knew he meant it literally, as many people do not. All the same, his grad school experience worked out for him; he had rocketed through his degree.
When he phoned me with the Germany news, I pointed out that he didn’t know the language.
“It’s on my laptop for the plane ride,” he said.
Sometimes, now, the six years since we were together seemed a long time ago, so that Plummy was part of the everything of my life in a past that was closed, and done with.
Sometimes it seemed only yesterday I was nudging him out of my apartment so he wouldn’t miss his plane into his future.
The last time we texted, about a week before this night, he reminded me how much I’d admire the great hospitals of Germany, which he was in and out of due to the neurologists he was collaborating with.
As usual I reminded him of how I viewed him and me.
“Let me tell you again how much I look forward to being the minister at your wedding with a bride your own age,” I had typed.