[Ken McGoogan is the author of the novel Calypso Warrior and the award-winning non-fiction book Canada’s Undeclared War. Visions of San Francisco is the first chapter of his latest novel, Chasing Safiya (Bayeux Arts, 1999). He is currently working on another non-fiction book for Harper-Collins Canada about a 19th-century Arctic explorer named John Rae. Born and raised in Quebec, Ken lives with his family in Calgary, Alberta, where with journalistic colleagues and others he has been on strike for more than six months against Conrad Black's Calgary Herald. -ed]
On the eve of any new millennium, a famous writer once told me, people confront elemental forces. Ancient rituals, hidden powers and forgotten prophecies erupt into our workaday lives, turning them tumultuous. Was he onto something? I don’t know. I do know that until last year, unless we count a recurring nightmare, dreams and visions played no role in my life. True, my late mother had claimed psychic abilities and dabbled in the occult. She’d devoted weekends and holidays to séances and ceremonial magic and the arcane rituals of witches’ covens. But that was during my boyhood.
She was a Quebecoise in exile, and my Irish-American father said that explained everything about her: her theatricality, her flamboyance, her joie de vivre -- everything he most loved True, too, I married a woman who, just before she died, began single-mindedly to explore her own unusual religious and cultural heritage.
But how could I have anticipated that? Faithful to my father’s memory and, I suppose, some image of myself, I resisted other-worldly blandishments and plunged into journalism: nothing but the facts, ma’am. I celebrated myself as a throwback to the days when “tough-minded newspapermen” paid no attention to organized religion and still less to New Age mumbo-jumbo. Probably my skepticism was why, as a journalist, I managed to carve out a niche. A year ago, when my cosmic shock treatment began, I was writing a city column for The San Francisco Statesman. I’d been working at the paper since the mid-eighties when, fresh out of J-School, I landed a summer job and made it stick. Over the years, I’d covered education, courts, city hall, cops, even did a stint in business. Lately, under the rubric “Lanigan’s Corner,” I’d been churning out copy on everything from high-school reunions to a day in the life of a bus driver. Infotainment.
It was just bad luck, then, or so I believed, that the Managing Editor should assign me to chase down the “Vanishing Arsonist” who’d begun torching buildings in the Bay Area. A petite redhead with a stylish wardrobe, a big voice and a bad temper, she stormed across the newsroom late one afternoon brandishing a notebook: “Lanigan? Drop what you’re doing.” Not twenty minutes before, she’d publicly dressed down three hulking police reporters for having turned up zero on the Arsonist. Now a copy runner had taken a call from a man with a thick accent who identified himself as “Chinvat or something.” He said the Vanishing Arsonist was going to firebomb a bookstore in Corte Madera, just north of the city in Marin County. While various colleagues pounded away at their keyboards, heads down, terribly busy -- this didn’t look promising -- the M.E. handed me a scrap of paper with a name scrawled on it: Polarities. She couldn’t have known it, but this was the bookstore Behroze and I had visited the night she died. And which I hadn’t entered since.
“Show them how it’s done, Bernie.”
Apparently the M.E. remembered that, several years before, while working the police beat, I’d won a couple of awards. No sense arguing: she was famous for “drive-by assignings.” I’d been polishing a column about a straight alderman wrongly “outed” by his constituents, but I stored it, grabbed my jacket and made for the cafeteria.
There, at a quiet table in the corner, reading volume two of
Lord of the Rings, I found my darling daughter, Colette -- the light of my life.
Once a week, after school, her best friend’s mother would drop her off
at the newspaper and I’d take her to piano lessons. I’d wait upstairs
in an anteroom, perusing dated Peoples and Newsweeks, and afterwards we’d
visit a spaghetti house. I’m not much of a cook and this was one of three
weekly sorties. Friday nights we’d visit a fish-and-chips place, and Sundays
we’d brunch at The Cheesecake Cafe, where I’d confine myself to
spicy omelets and she’d pig out on waffles and ice cream. Sure, I indulged
her: why not? This afternoon, as we plunged into the streets of San Francisco,
Colette protested:
“Dad, I can’t miss piano. I’ve got a recital next week.”
“Colette, we’ve no choice.”
“Can’t you drop me off and come back?”
In fact, I could have done just that. But I’d decided that, from the bookstore in Corte Madera, I’d head straight home and then file by remote. I didn’t want to drive all the way back into town. So I said, “No, we haven’t time.”
“And I can either like it or lump it, right?”
This had become a favorite rejoinder and I ignored it.
At the garage we hopped into my 1968 Mustang convertible, which I’d recently
finished restoring to pristine condition. As we roared off I rolled down the
top and, as a mutually agreeable peace offering, inserted one of her favorite
tapes -- Paul Simon’s Graceland. The driving rhythms made us both feel
better. Traffic was light and we zoomed west, nodding and tapping along to the
music. I told Colette about the Vanishing Arsonist, and that he’d threatened
to blow up a bookstore -- though I didn’t say which. She said, “Will
we see it explode?”
“You won’t see it at all,” I said. “You’ll wait in a coffee shop.”
“Dad, no way. You’re making me miss piano. You’ve got to let me share the fun.”
“Colette, please.” As I swung north onto the Golden Gate Bridge, the tape cut out. I glanced down to see what had happened to Paul Simon and KABOOM! drove straight into the back of a fire truck that sat stalled on the ramp to the bridge. It happened that fast. No warning, nothing. Just KABOOM! And so the shock treatment began. I found myself floating high above the scene of the accident. Looking down, I saw my body draped over the bridge railing like a rag doll. Colette lay beside me on the sidewalk, unconscious, but even that sight didn’t scare me -- not yet. Detached, emotionless, I heard a muffled roar and watched my vintage Mustang explode in slow motion.
Then whoosh! and away I went.
Maybe you’ve read about Near Death Experiences. This “NDE” of mine began conventionally. I plunged head-first, just whoosh! into a pitch-dark tunnel that ran on and on and just when I thought it would never end, the walls fell away, that sense of constriction, and I found myself tumbling, tumbling slower and slower through what had become a gray void, cavernous, empty. Drifting now, feather light, I communicated with spirit guides who resembled my parents -- chatted, almost, though now I remember not a word of what we discussed. I found myself floating towards a dazzling white light . . . and that’s when my NDE twisted oddly.
As I drifted towards the light, wanting only to draw nearer, the world around me shifted as if in a kaleidoscope. Suddenly, I stood on a tropical beach with the sun beating down white and nothing to see but white sand and palm trees beneath a cloudless blue sky, with turquoise ocean, yes turquoise, rolling away to the horizon. Down the beach, a slim woman emerged from a stand of palm trees. She wore white slacks and a sleeveless white sweater. As she approached I recognized Behroze, looking exactly as she did at twenty-seven, when she died. Oddly enough, I wasn’t surprised to see her. Behroze took my elbow and spoke gently: “Mazda says, ‘Walk with me.’” This was a variation on my recurring nightmare. But to make that clear, I’d better explain about my dead wife’s heritage. Born and raised in Colorado Springs, Behroze was American to her fingertips: she played baseball and loved hot-fudge sundaes and wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the novels of Willa Cather. However, she also had this unusual heritage: Behroze had been raised a Parsee.
The Parsees, all two hundred thousand of them, descended from the Zoroastrians who, more than one thousand years ago, fled religious persecution in Persia and settled in India. Over the centuries, they’d fanned out all over the globe, and a few had found their way to America -- Behroze’s parents among them.
Parsees worship a benevolent god called Ahura Mazda, who wages a cosmic war against the evil Ahriman. So far, so dualistically typical. But Parsees reject Western notions of original sin and salvation, and likewise Eastern ideas of nirvana, karma and reincarnation. They insist that believers or “ashavans” accept personal responsibility and take an active role in shaping and justifying their own lives.
Back in the days when I was courting Behroze, a two-fisted journalist bent on becoming a soul-of-the-city columnist, I regarded all this as harmless nonsense. Besotted, I even entertained the notion of converting to Zoroastrianism -- though Behroze soon discovered that for two centuries, a theological controversy had been raging over the wisdom of accepting new believers. We drove to Sante Fe and married before a justice of the peace.
It wasn’t until a couple of years later, after giving
birth to Colette, that Behroze expressed any serious interest in her unusual
heritage, and then she described it as purely academic. I’d smile tolerantly
when she waxed enthusiastic, but basically paid no attention. Behroze had been
studying her roots for a year when she arrived home from grocery shopping one
Saturday afternoon and suggested that we go hear some “author-prophet”
speak that evening at a bookstore in Corte Madera, just a few miles from where
we lived.
“He’s a Parsee?” By now I’d grown wary.
“He was raised a Parsee but left that behind. They call him ‘The Prophet of the Golden Flame’ and say he’s a John-the-Baptist for the new millennium. Apparently, he’s created a new synthesis. He draws on Zoroastrianism, but also on Existentialism and Carl Jung.”
“What about Colette?”
“Bernie, she’s four years old. We’ll get
a baby sitter. It’ll be fun.”
I remained unconvinced. Lately I’d begun covering city hall and, during
the past week, I’d endured one too many council meetings. This morning,
after taking Colette swimming, I’d rented a video: Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom. Now I proposed that we stay home and watch it, maybe order in
a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and double anchovies: “Anyway, you’ll
never find a babysitter, not at this hour.”
“Want to bet?”
Behroze extracted a promise: if she did find a sitter, I’d go with her to hear this Prophet of the Golden Flame. Then she started working the phone.
On the fourth or fifth try -- my wife was nothing if not persistent -- she located an ex-student who owed her a favor. This young woman turned up promptly at seven. Behroze gave instructions and, ten minutes later, we left Indiana Jones at a crossroads, piled into our battered Dodge Colt and headed for Corte Madera. Polarities bookstore specializes in wisdom literature, as well as literary, psychoanalytical and New-Age titles, and the male owner, one half of a gay couple, greeted Behroze like a long-lost friend. He showed us upstairs, where forty or fifty people sat in metal folding chairs. A couple of thirty-fivish men bustled around, shuffling chairs and testing the sound system. An older man, bald-headed, be-robed and beatific-looking, stood behind a podium shuffling notes -- the Prophet of the Golden Flame. I disliked him on sight.
This feeling intensified when the man began speaking. He flaunted his deep, theatrical voice and mellifluous delivery, but what irritated me most was the arrant nonsense he spewed -- and the way it went over with the crowd. I won’t pretend to quote him verbatim. To tell the truth, I didn’t listen closely. But I do remember whispering to Behroze that it sounded to me like a New-Age variation on the Parsee mumbo-jumbo I’d long since dismissed as irrelevant, anachronistic. For sure, I’d reverted to type.
The Prophet held forth for an hour while the audience listened, rapt. I couldn’t understand it. Behroze had earned three university degrees to my one. How could she sit listening to bafflegab about psychic inter-connectedness and the way Taoism relates to the teachings of Zarathustra? Finally, when I was about to explode with frustration, the Prophet announced an intermission. I asked Behroze whether she’d heard enough and she raised her eyebrows ominously. I said fine. I’d wait in the bar across the street:
“When you’ve heard enough, come and get me.”
Instead of getting angry, Behroze shook her head sadly: “Sometimes, Bernie, I feel sorry for you.”
The bar was dark, dingy and dead, just a half dozen regulars. Tell the truth, in those days I drank hardly at all -- but that night, nursing an inexplicable and wholly unjustifiable sense of grievance, I started knocking back beer. What did those mindless New-Agers know? I should have stayed home with Colette and Indiana Jones. Finally, as I was draining my third beer and contemplating a fourth, Behroze turned up. I suggested one for the road but she gave me such a look that I grabbed my jacket and cleared my tab. Behroze didn’t become silently furious until, approaching the car, I stumbled and almost fell. Then, tight-lipped, she said, “Give me the keys.”
Behroze suffered from poor night-vision, so after dark I did the driving: “Behroze, I’m fine.”
“No, Bernie, you’re pathetic. And far too drunk to drive.”
Probably, she was right -- though often I’ve wondered. Shamefaced, I handed over the car keys. Behroze took the wheel. We pulled away from the curb and . . . and that’s the last thing I remember.
Witnesses say Behroze ran a red light. Not two blocks from the bookstore.
And wham! a fire truck slammed into our subcompact. Must have been doing sixty. Three weeks later, I woke up in hospital. Found myself alone. The car had been smashed like a tin can. Nobody could understand how I’d survived.
Nor could anybody explain why Behroze hadn’t. For the longest time, I couldn’t believe it: Behroze ran a red light? My Behroze? With a fire truck barreling down on us? I couldn’t believe it. No, no, a thousand times no. No, no, no, no never. Yet half a dozen witnesses said that’s what happened. And I knew Behroze didn’t see well in darkness. In the end, it didn’t matter whether she’d deliberately run the red light or simply hadn’t seen it. Behroze had left the building. And nothing I could say or do would bring her back.
I beat up on myself endlessly, of course. If only I’d remained at the bookstore, if only I’d tolerated the Prophet of the Golden Flame, if only I’d confined myself to two beers . . . if only, if only, if only. Nobody could dispute any of this, though several people tried. And eventually, I recovered -- physically. Over the years, for the sake of Colette, I willed myself back into a semblance of wholeness.
As I did so, a recurring nightmare entered my life -- a nightmare comprising two vivid scenes. The first takes place in a courtroom, where I stand accused before a judge. He recapitulates the story I’ve just outlined, highlighting my refusal to remain at the bookstore, then peers at me over his glasses: “Anything to say for yourself?”
THE END