“Yes, I can see that.”
“But how were we going to do that, Julie? How would you have done it, knowing what our situation was? Alan has gone home, presumably to raise enough money to buy Ishmael outright. Ishmael is suffering from a bad cold, bad enough that I want him hospitalized. When Alan returns on Monday, both Ishmael and the carnival will be gone. But I can leave someone behind with a message for Alan.”
“Okay.”
“What message do I leave behind for him?”
“ ‘Go home and leave us alone.’ ”
Art shook his head. “That’s not going to work, Julie. Alan is rescuing his teacher from the forces of evil. ‘Go home and leave us alone’ just isn’t enough.”
“True.” I shrugged. “I know how I’d do it, but I don’t think Ishmael would approve.”
“Ishmael wanted Alan to give up all hope of ever resuming his career as a pupil. He wanted Alan onc
e and for all to say to himself, ‘I’m on my own—completely and forever. Ishmael is never again going to be there for me to lean on.’ He wanted Alan once and for all to say to himself, ‘Ishmael’s gone, so I have to become Ishmael myself.’ ”
“Then maybe he would approve.”
“So what message would you leave behind for Alan?”
“I would leave this message behind: ‘Ishmael is dead. His condition got worse and worse, and he died of pneumonia.’ ”
“That was the message I left for him, Julie.”
“Jesus.” Though I didn’t say it, I remembered wondering: Will it work?
Five months later I had my answer.
Alan’s Ishmael
In Alan Lomax’s account of his experience with Ishmael,* he admits to protesting that he was “not the kind of writer” who could bring Ishmael’s message to the world. But when faced with Ishmael’s death, he evidently went home and found a way to become that kind of writer. I salute him for this.
I’ve talked to many people who have read Alan’s book, and not a single one has commented on the very odd fact that when it came time for Ishmael to leave the Fairfield Building, he left without saying a word to Alan about it. (Alan doesn’t comment on it either!) Similarly, no one seems to notice that Ishmael is very far from delighted when Alan finally shows up at the Darryl Hicks Carnival. (And while Alan notices it, he shies away from looking at it very closely.)
I’m sure everyone will be relieved to hear that I don’t intend to produce a point-by-point comparison between what Ishmael said to me and what he said to Alan. To my mind, the only real discrepancy occurs on the subject of Ishmael’s other pupils. If Alan is reporting truthfully (and why wouldn’t he be?), Ishmael gave him the impression that he’d had very few pupils in the past—and had failed with all of them. This is very strange, since he gave me the opposite impression—that he’d had many pupils and succeeded with all of them to some extent. This indicates that Ishmael was shading the facts for one of us, though I can’t imagine why.
Is Alan’s Ishmael my Ishmael? I personally don’t think so, but then I’m hardly in a position to be objective about it. Alan’s Ishmael seems to me a bit dour and gloomy, and rather uncomfortable with this particular pupil. But how will my Ishmael seem to people who read this account? I have no idea.
I learned something very important from reading Alan’s book—besides what Ishmael had to teach him. I mean I learned something from Alan himself. It’s not easy to put into words, partly because it means admitting I was wrong. From reading Alan’s book, I learned how easy it is first to leap to a false conclusion about someone and then to view everything he does in light of that conclusion. Once I’d made up my mind that Alan was a jerk, everything he did looked to me like the work of a jerk. Reading his book made me see that this was not only grossly unfair, it was completely untrue. Art Owens was guilty of the same fault to some extent—but not Ishmael. Ishmael consistently defended Alan to me, was clearly irritated by my prejudice against him, and refused to contribute to that prejudice by discussing with me his worries about Alan’s possessiveness. I once saw Sigmund Freud quoted as saying, “To understand is to forgive.” In Alan’s case, after living with his book for four years, I’d revise that maxim to read, “To understand is to understand.”
People also ask me about my reaction to the teachings of the person known as B—Charles Atterley, another pupil of the gorilla.* What I think is this: Ishmael wasn’t training parrots, and B is certainly no parrot. He took what he learned from Ishmael and carried it in the direction of his own passion, and I’m sure this is exactly what Ishmael wants to see happen. Are the teachings of B authentic—meaning, do they derive in any way from the teachings of Ishmael? I would certainly have to say so, based on intimations to be found in Alan’s book. The fact that these same intimations are not to be found in my book means nothing. Ishmael made it very clear that each of his pupils receives “a different telling” of his message.
As I’ve written this book, I’ve known all along that I was eventually going to have to justify my opening line about waking up at age sixteen and knowing I’ve been screwed. I guess now’s the time.
When Alan’s book came out, I told Art I intended to write one of my own. His reply was: “Ishmael would certainly want you to do that—but you’ll have to wait for a while.”
Naturally I asked why.
“You’ll have to trust me about this,” he said.
“I trust you,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask why.”
“In this case it does, Julie. You’re just going to have to take it on faith.”
“Okay. But what am I waiting for?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”