Back in the apartment I searched for Dad’s more recent notebooks. I needed an idea, and no textbook could better aid me than one he wrote himself. But I couldn’t find them. They weren’t in his wardrobe, or under his bed, or wrapped in plastic bags and hidden in the top of the toilet- none of his usual hiding places. After an hour of general ransacking, I had to admit they weren’t in the apartment at all. What had he done with them? I turned the bedroom upside-down again, which only transformed it from one state of chaos to another. Exhausted, I lay on his bed. The atmosphere reeked of Dad’s collapse, and I did my best to avoid the sticky notion that this was not the beginning of the end but the actual definitive conclusive end, the end of the end.

On Dad’s bedside table was a postcard from Anouk. It had “ Bali ” printed in bold red letters over a picture of rice workers in a field. On the other side she had written “You guys need a holiday,” and that was all. We sure did.

I rolled over. Something in his pillowcase dug into my skull. I shook the pillow- out fell a black notebook! There were 140 pages, all numbered. Okay, I was the only one who could free Dad, and this book was going to tell me how. The problem was, entering my father’s mental state implied a certain danger, because his was the kind of thinking that closed around you, not slowly or surreptitiously but quick like the snap of a rusty bear trap. My defense, then, was to read ironically, and with this in mind, I braced myself and began.

Not surprisingly, it was a profoundly uncomfortable experience, as all journeys into dissolution and madness must be. I read it through twice. There were general frustrations, as on page 88:

I have too much free time. Free time makes people think; thinking makes people morbidly self-absorbed; and unless you are watertight and flawless, excessive self-absorption leads to depression. That’s why depression is the number-two disease in the world, behind Internet porn eyestrain.

and disturbing observations pertaining to me, as on page 21:

Poor Jasper. Watching him sleep while I’m pretending to read, I don’t think he realizes yet that every day his pile of minutes lightens. Maybe he should die when I die?

and observations about himself:

My problem is I can’t sum myself up in one sentence. All I know is who I’m not. And I’ve noticed there is a tacit agreement among most people that they’ll at least try to adjust to their environment. I’ve always felt the urge to rebel against it. That’s why when I’m in the movies and the screen goes dark I get an irresistible impulse to read a book. Luckily, I carry a pocket torch.

The most recurrent thoughts were Dad’s desire to hide, to be alone, to be isolated, not to be bothered by noise and people. The usual Dad rant. But surprisingly, there were also hints at a megalomania I hadn’t heard him articulate before, passages in his notebook that alluded to a longing to dominate and change the world- this appeared to be an evolution of his obsessive thoughts- which shed new light on his usual longing to be alone. I understood it now as a desire to have an isolated headquarters where he could plan his attack. There was, for instance, this:

No symbolic journey can take place in an apartment. There’s nothing metaphorical about a trip to the kitchen. There’s nothing to ascend! Nothing to descend! No space! No verticality! No cosmicity! We need a roomy, airy house. We need nooks and crannies and corners and hollows and garrets and staircases and cellars and attics. We need a second toilet. The essential important idea that will shift me from Thinking Man to Doing Man is impossible to apply here. The walls are too close to my head, and the distractions too many- the noise of the street, the doorbell, the telephone. Jasper and I need to move to the bush so I can lay the plans for my major task which I have lying in egg form. I am also lying in egg form. I am a halfway man, and I need a place of intense concentration if I am to whisper into a golden ear and change the face of this country.

and this:

Emerson understood! “The moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction,” he said. That’s my problem. I’m ¼ of who I should be! Maybe even ¹/8th. Then he said, “The voices which we hear in solitude grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.” This is my problem exactly: I can’t hear myself! He also said, “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” I can’t do this!

And then, on my second reading, I found a quote that was so frighteningly to the point, I actually shouted “Ah-ha!” which is something I’d never said before and have never said since. It was this, on page 101:

Pascal notes that during the French Revolution, all the nuthouses were emptied. The inmates suddenly had meaning in their lives.

I closed the notebook and walked to the window and looked down at the twisted roofs and roads and the city skyline, then moved my eyes to the sky, to the clouds dancing on it. I felt as though I had drawn a new and fresh source of strength into my body. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what I had to do.

I caught the bus to Eddie’s and trod a narrow path winding between expensive jungles of fern to the front of his sandstone house. I rang the bell. You couldn’t hear its call from the outside. Eddie must have made a lot of money himself from strip clubs- only rich people can afford to mute like that; the silence is due to the thickness of the door, and the more money you have, the chunkier your door is. It’s the way of the world. The poor get thinner and the rich get chunkier.

Eddie opened the door, combing his thin hair. Gel dripped off the comb in large dollops I could smell. I cut straight to the point.

“Why are you always so good to my father?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always offering money and help and kindness. Why? Dad says it started the day you met him in Paris.”

“He said that?”

“Yes.”

“So I don’t understand- what is it you want to know?”

“This generosity of yours. What’s behind it?”

Eddie’s face was strained. He finished combing his hair while searching for the right words to answer me.

“And while you’re answering that one, answer this: why are you always taking photographs of us? What do you want with us?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“So it’s just plain friendship.”

“Of course!”

“Then you might be able to give us a million dollars.”

“That’s too much.”

“Well, how much can you get?”

“Maybe, I don’t know, a sixth of that.”

“How much is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, Dad’s been saving, and I don’t know how much he’s got, but it won’t be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To help him.”

“Jasper, you have my word. Whatever I can do, or give you.”

“So you’ll give us a sixth of a million dollars?”

“If it would help you and your father.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m not the one in hospital, Jasper.”

I suddenly felt bad about harassing Eddie. He really was a rare person, and clearly their friendship meant a lot to him. I even got the impression he thought it contained a deep spiritual quality that was in no way lessened by the fact that Dad occasionally hated his guts.

When I went back to the hospital, Dad was strapped to a bed in the same olive-green room. I peered over him. His eyes rolled around in his head like marbles tossed into a teacup. I bent over and whispered in his ear. I wasn’t certain he was listening, but I whispered myself hoarse. Afterward, I pulled the chair up next to him and put my head on his rising and falling stomach and fell asleep. When I woke, I realized that someone had put a blanket over me and a croaky voice was talking. I don’t know when Dad had started his monologue, but he was already in the middle of a sentence.