Bridge of Sighs

cops finally came over and lifted him off Jerzy’s chest and said, “That’s enough now. What’re you trying to do, kill him?”
    Apparently, Bobby’d had just enough strength left to answer that yes he was.
             
     
    O DD, HOW OUR VIEW of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred doors, choose to enter one, where we’re faced with a hundred more and then choose again. We choose not just what we’ll do, but who we’ll be. Perhaps the sound of all those doors swinging shut behind us each time we select this one or that one should trouble us, but it doesn’t. Nor does the fact that the doors often are identical and even lead in some cases to the exact same place. Occasionally a door is locked, but no matter, since so many others remain available. The distinct possibility that choice itself may be an illusion is something we disregard, because we’re curious to know what’s behind that next door, the one we hope will lead us to the very heart of the mystery. Even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary we remain confident that when we emerge, with all our choosing done, we’ll have found not just our true destination but also its meaning. The young see life this way, front to back, their eyes to the telescope that anxiously scans the infinite sky and its myriad possibilities. Religion, seducing us with free will while warning us of our responsibility, reinforces youth’s need to see itself at the dramatic center, saying yes to this and no to that, against the backdrop of a great moral reckoning.
    But at some point all of that changes. Doubt, born of disappointment and repetition, replaces curiosity. In our weariness we begin to sense the truth, that more doors have closed behind than remain ahead, and for the first time we’re tempted to swing the telescope around and peer at the world through the wrong end—though who can say it’s wrong? How different things look then! Larger patterns emerge, individual decisions receding into insignificance. To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy. Or so it sometimes seems to me, Louis Charles Lynch. The man I’ve become, the life I’ve lived, what are these but dominoes that fall not as I would have them but simply as they must?
    And yet not all mystery is lost, nor all meaning. Regardless of our vantage point, some events manage to retain their drama and significance. Bobby Marconi’s epic battle with Jerzy Quinn seems to me just such an event. Picturing Bobby atop his adversary, punching him with every ounce of his remaining strength, yes, trying to kill the other boy, I’m filled with wonder. Who could have guessed that one day this same boy would become the most famous man to hail from Thomaston, New York, even more so than Sir Thomas Whitcombe himself? I can’t help thinking that somehow Bobby actually managed to do what we all imagine we might back when we’re young, before time and repetition erode and render mundane the mystery of existence. Bobby alone, it seems to me, invented both a life and a self to live it.

OBITUARY
     
    I T’S NOT a great couch,” Noonan conceded when they arrived on the third floor of his place on the Giudecca. Lichtner was staring at the sofa gloomily as if he’d independently arrived at the same conclusion. “I’ll get you a pillow and blanket.”
    When he returned, Lichtner was standing in his socks in front of the easel. Yet again the cloth had been thrown back. “It looks just like you,” he offered.
    “Thanks,” Noonan said. “I think so, too.”
    Lichtner flopped onto the sofa, clearly disappointed that his insult, after landing flush, hadn’t any discernible effect.
    “I should warn you. I sometimes have night terrors.”
    Lichtner blanched. “You what?”
    “That’s how Evangeline got the black eye. Trying to get me to calm down. Which doesn’t work.”
    Lichtner looked genuinely terrified. “What should I do?”
    “Run like hell.”
    “Tell me something,” he said when Noonan reached the stair. “Do you love her?”
    “No,” Noonan answered far too quickly, but the question had surprised him. “Do you?” When Lichtner just stared at him, he said, “You don’t have to answer tonight. Sleep on it and tell me in the morning.”
    “I don’t ever have to tell