lester was forty-three and cohabitated with his mother in a second-floor rental within a tiny brownstone, that lingered past repair on a dozy city street. there had been no tenants on the first floor in quite some time, so the apartment was quiet and forgotten, and the silences within its rooms pulsed with the moon. lester took care of his mother who had been ill for many years. she fell on a trip to rome when young and tripped and dashed her head against each of its spanish steps. lester was a baby at the time. he never knew the woman who played in the fountains of the piazza di spagna, a cut-short starlet of the new cinema. he knew only the woman who wet herself three times a week, who could not chew solid foods or bath herself.

in his youth, lester had been a student at the nearby university where he’d studied the influence of ptolemy’s almagest on arabic astronomy, especially al-kharaqī’s refutation ‘the ultimate grasp of the divisions of spheres,’ in which he postulated that the planets revolved inside tubes, like the tiny silver spheres inside some great, cosmological pinball machine. but his mother’s prolonged convalescence, in time, wore down on lester’s scholarly obsessions and whittled them away, first into diverse passions, then the detritus of interest, and finally the wee nubs of a hobby. the earmarked books with cracked spines that lined his bedroom stood as silent sentinels, future bricks of the tomb that would one day enclose him. by the time he was forty-three, he had slowed himself into a slump, and the slump gave birth to a tumor which ate away at his colon and his stomach. soon it was said that lester would die before his mother, and the two were laid side-by-side. the old woman cried to see her son laid out like this and begged his forgiveness. none of us may move destiny’s mountain, he said, my fate is my own.

but late that night, after all had left them there to die, a ring came at the door. with no one else awake, lester pulled himself up from his bed to answer it. within the open frame was his old faculty adviser, professor cerulo, her hair short at the shoulder, eyes climbing excitedly over her glasses. she rushed in behind the sound of chimes, and the room bloomed into an arcadian garden. roses from the sinks. bushes from the refrigerator. maple trees from the trash. and they sat at the kitchen table in eden and laughed at the rabbits that bobbed back and forth: you really must come back, she said. the whole al-kharaqī thing was so prescient, so ahead of it’s time. not just the content, but your methodological rigor, just stunning. i can promise you a full fellowship if you’d be willing to return and sit for your oral examinations. and you must come now! lester peaked in at his mother sleeping. surely he would be back before she woke. he would just take a quick jaunt to the old campus, walk in its old familiar halls, sit at his old desk. he would return before the sun rose.

already feeling much better, buoyed by an energy he’d not felt in years, lester threw on his coat and followed cerulo out the door into the cold, bitter november night. the walk was long and a snow storm swept them back every step of the way. at times lester did not believe they would make it, but at long last, they arrived at douglas hall and went inside which was not like he remembered, but now not unlike a wooden cabin, a shack outside of which the wind still roared. sitting in this dark shack, lit by candles tucked away in corners, at a table of thick wood, was wen chang, the chinese god of culture and literature, and his attendant, kui xing. 

a huddled face not unfamiliar to him, thought lester did not notice when first he entered, sat penitent at the door. my god, his head spun: it’s mac. still 25 and handsome, his notebook out, pencil already in hand. mac had been a year ahead. they bonded at a passion pit concert their first summer in the city and spent the night in a corn field, eyes skyward, making plans to hike the appalachian trail together and read hughes and dylan to one another along the way. but you never went and time scattered, the way it does, and good friends lost touch. lester was happy to see mac, here and now, of all times and places.

then, from behind the candle flames, kui xing motioned for lester to take a seat. the exam must begin, he grunted. 

oh, but there must be same mistake. lester’s hands interfidgeted. i’ve not prepared. there are booklists and bibliographies, old notebooks to consult. my god, i left them all at my mother’s, we shall have to go get them. you see, they contain every-

a shadowed fist hammered the table. wen chang, a god of few words, pointed a finger to his own temple. a nearby tea pot began to whistle, and cerulo told lester to grab a cup. do you prefer black tea or green?

and yet when lester sat down to his cup of green tea, it was as if a key was turned and a great chest opened. a hidden wealth locked away inside him, in a room at the top of a staircase, in a tower on the abandoned part of his inner estate. he gave a dissertation in the moment on the greek distinction between fate and fortune. to fate was awarded the active chi, the force of process and transformation. to fortune, the spoils of environmental conditioning, of structural identity. the greeks held these ideas at once, the world we make becoming the environment which makes us in turn, over and over, in what the buddhists called the wheel.

the feeling it summoned in its listeners was rapturous, spell-binding, enchanting, words rang like bells. they fell like stars. they skirted the otherwise still waters and refracted the moon. when lester was through, all sat back in wonder. mac came up from behind to congratulate his friend, take his shoulders in his hand, feel the loosening tensions in his neck. all agreed. passed with highest honors. but that was not enough, no, a talent such as this could not be wasted. a tenure-track position, said wen chang, has opened up in the city university’s classics department. he is being appointed right away, to begin immediately.

but, lester said, standing, feeling slightly taller than before, my mother. she is ill, and that was the whole reason...i can’t expect you to understand, and i am grateful for the chance to come here today and speak with you, but i cannot accept so long as my mother is alive.

a silence bubbled between them, popped only when kui xing stood to fetch the book. cracking its mighty red spine, he read from the book of life: joyce carol. born 1963. nine years remaining. he clapped the book shut and walked straight up into lester’s face, his glowing yellow eyes burning like enlamed matches behind the irises. a sabbatical shall be granted, he said. mac shall be awared the post for the period of your sabbatical, while you tend to your aging mother. at which point, you will report to the city university, and assume your position.

and with that, the gods ordered lester and mac to return to their villages. the storm had abated, and the sun had risen, tucked away behind the clouds, like rolling fields of stone. for the first time they saw the immense field of long grass, and beyond it, the mountain pass, through which both men would pass on their way to their respective villages. entering the pass, and coming to the point where they must once again leave, they turned to one another to make their goodbyes. in that moment, time itself stretched itself across their faces like thin layers of gossamer which wiped away the years, the struggles, the disappointments. they were brought to some uncanny intersection of past, present and future, where potential lay manifest and they wore their dreams close to them, like second skins. lester found mac’s face as he’d left it. everything that had been possible in his eyes was there again, already darting westward to his village, from which he would take leave to assume his new position. the hush of departure fell on them. will you be able to find your way back? lester asked. mac smiled. it’s always spring where the sun falls, and i’ve no need of lamp or candle, for the night is always bright. and with that he turned and walked headlong into the treeline, never turning, not once, pulled into the thicket.

lester woke suddenly as if from a dream. there was a scream, then a rustling of the furniture, a scuffling of chairs agains the hardwood floors. the room spun for but a moment, and then the scene came into sight. beside him in bed was his mother, who put her hand up to his cheek. the faces of their friends and neighbors stretched in horror which melted into joy. without a word, they all burst into tears and stood about the room, frozen as statues. he had been dead for three days, they assured him. his coffin had already been fitted and lay empty in the next room. we shouldn’t let it go to waste, he said. he requested pen and paper and wrote down an address. ship it express to this address. they are in need of it. tell them it is a gift, from one of mac’s oldest friends. no one understood how it was he knew that the old man had died just that morning. they fell to their knees and prayed, but lester stood straight away to fetch his mother a cup of tea.

nine years later his mother passed away, peacefully in her sleep. lester called their neighbors, telling them to come and tend to the body. the arrangements had all been made, but he could not stay. mrs brown from two units over ran quickly to their front door. lester already stood in the doorway, a stack of books  tucked beneath his arm, a briefcase in his hand, a smart looking hat atop his head. he moved as if in slow motion, every gesture and smile stretched itself into time. he said nothing to mrs brown who did not think to inquire where he was off to on a day such as this. lester only tipped his hat to her, and walked off down the street. and yet when she walked up the front staircase, into his mother’s bedroom on the righthand side, there she found them both, lying peacefully, her hand pulled tightly across his chest, dead and silent.

mrs brown filed a police report, but after a few days, revised her earlier statement. surely, she said, she had been mistaken in what she’d seen there on the front steps. however, a copy of her original statement had been passed on to her brother-in-law who was a state detective. it lingered in a box of old papers until he too passed away. his daughter, a close friend of mine, recounted its discovery to me one day over lunch at harold’s, though when i asked to see it, she claimed it could not be found. who’s to say the events it recounted actually happened. i cannot vouch for the truth of the matter.