By Arthur H. Dorland
“Damn odd,” a puzzled reader intoned one morning at breakfast, as he pushed a newspaper item he had just finished over to his wife. “What do you think about it, Margaret? I say: Damn odd.”
Cheerless and solemn, a young lady, distressed, feeling trapped, rested her brow upon folded hands as she sat one evening at her bedroom table. The electric lamp burned low and dim. She was sadly reviewing her day, a day much like most other days. Monotony at her job was killing life.
All the information, name of the medication, dosage, expiration date and so on had been typed on a tiny label and glued onto the plastic vial, ready for the customer. God, this stuff was boring, that young woman thought, and so were the people sitting out there in plastic chairs waiting for their prescriptions. Monica kept looking all afternoon at the clock. Armed with her four-year-old degree in pharmacology, she had been doing this confounded job forever, it seemed.
She came to the counter and called out Mr. Johnson’s name. Mr. Johnson came and went, walking away with his puny troubles and his twelve-dollar chemical compound. There had to be something better, somewhere better than this, someone to carry her away. Monica had been waiting and waiting. And remembering, often, a couple of iambic lines she admired:
till one greater man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat
That is what she had been waiting for, an awful long time, it seemed: one greater man.
Not to say Monica was any kind of religious zealot, much less some inspired English Puritan of olden days, like the famous author of those lines. Monica had no real interest in religion, never went to church, belonged to no church. But she nevertheless had acquired of late a keen interest in literature, so much of it linked in some way with religious belief, and for this reason, among others, she knew a little about various religions and spiritual traditions, stories and myths even, and wanted to know more.
Monica had a suitor—at least she hoped he was—a young man she cared for deeply and who was well versed in topics of this sort, for he had graduated with an advanced liberal arts degree, whereas Monica had gone into the sciences all those years. One has to make a living, after all.
They spent many evenings together, at his home or hers, discussing their relationship and mutual interests, and it made Monica regret that she had not taken more literature courses at college, for his depth in the subject was so much greater than hers. She had pinched her nostrils and swum just below the surface; he descended in a diving bell. It made her sometimes apprehensive that she would lose Jason, that Jason would discover and resent her emptiness, finding her in the end not sufficiently interesting to continue the fragile romance. Monica was frightfully attracted to this man, as to no other she had been involved with, and at the same time afraid of him in a way. There was something unsure and false about their relationship. At least that is how she saw it, and it must be fixed.
The young woman had found herself in two or three hopeful episodes before, and each time the partner had walked away, leaving her devastated, almost suicidal. And in not one of these situations had she immersed herself so entirely as this time with the irreplaceable Jason. All the same, each time it hurt. Monica began to believe she was created to be hurt. She was the injured duckling the flock swam away from.
One winter evening they were sitting together in Jason’s living room listening to recordings. Jason was especially fond of early music, very early French and Italian music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, pieces predominantly vocal in nature, smooth, direct and personal as it were, compared to the swollen instrumental scorings of classical music, and the powerful chamber-shaking vibrato of opera. Monica had come to share his enthusiasm for this tradition. “I took an appreciation course in college,” she told him, “But music like this I have never heard.” The young man beside her on the couch was a cornucopia of experience and information of the most extraordinary kind, and Monica took it all in as the dry earth welcomes rain.
He knew so many things. She admired and appreciated it all, but at the same time it made her feel even more insecure, unsure of herself, diminished in his presence, no matter what assurances he gave. Could a man like that, the man, the greater man she so wanted, possibly come to love a philistine slave of the dull sciences, as surely, he must think her, Monica?
Unquestionably intelligent, as Jason well knew, the young woman was highly skilled and competent at what she did for a living. The shop was not an ordinary corner drug store, simply filling orders from stocks of manufactured medications stored on shelves and purchased from large firms. It had those but was also a compounding pharmacy that put together made-to-order prescriptions out of raw materials, like cake made from scratch. Monica was highly conscientious and efficient.
“The supervising pharmacist allows me to fill orders without his oversight sometimes,” Monica told Jason once. “I take my work seriously however routine and repetitive it may be.”
There was power and a certain kind of hazard in what she did, and sometimes it made her a little nervous. Not only health, but lives were entrusted to her clever hands. A serious inattention could be serious indeed. “I have to be careful and alert. Always. I must never go beyond established procedure; I must never do anything unethical. Never ever.”
Jason reassured her. “I would put my life in your hands gladly,” he said. “I would trust you beyond anyone in the world, Monica.” He reached for her hand and smiled comfortably.
Did he really mean it? Would she ever find out?
till one greater man Restore us and regain the blissful seat
Monica was not looking to the Messiah, as John Milton had. She was not religious. The greater man she wanted was the one who would save not the world, but a single, simple 28-year-old girl. She was that girl, and she knew in her heart Jason was that man—if she could keep him. That was her conflict and her torment. If she could just keep him.
When Monica was little her parents gave her a lovely rag doll one Christmas. It was the most wonderful gift she had ever received. She loved that doll and carried it with her or dragged it behind everywhere she went until it became irredeemably dirty and threadbare. It disappeared. Monica looked everywhere for it, brokenhearted, inconsolable. She could not be appeased. Then her parents told her they had thrown it away. Every trash day she came out into the yard to watch the men in the big truck with the yawning, insatiable hopper, hoping somehow dolly would reappear, they would give it back. There had been a mistake. The child drew a lesson from this, even at that early age. Life is brief, love doesn’t last.
Jason’s mind was a rich lode of the most precious ore, and now he was sharing this treasure with Monica. So unselfish. How she loved that man. She felt herself becoming something, something she had never been before, and before meeting Jason had never dreamed of. Life had been an empty and arid wasteland, she thought, herself a starveling orphan, a cipher. The dry mathematical formulas of chemistry worked out in a thread of black graphite, the compounded elements of prescriptions put together on plain paper, so pale, so charmless. What was that all about, how had her student days not uncovered this more brilliant and delicious world her lover explored and proclaimed? Jason was a medievalist, and he told her wonderful tales from the old romances, of Lancelot and Guinevere, Abelard and Eloise, that one was true even, so Jason said. She especially loved the story of Tristan and Iseult, Tristan sent by his liege lord King Mark to fetch the king’s bride over the seas home to Cornwall. A magic love potion, a philtre they called it, is aboard the ship, meant for King Mark and his bride, but by mistake is drunk by Iseult and Tristan. Bound in error and into sin by the inescapable and fated liquid in the shipboard cup, they are united at once in a tragic love, infinite and always, even in death.
“Yet for all their love,” Monica inquired, “They were apart in life, but bound together forever in death, immune from all the cares of the world, and inseparable? Is that what it means?”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” Jason answered. “The potion was all. But it’s just a legend.”
Oh, how Monica wished she, with her arcane knowledge and skills, might create such a potion, made up of herbs and simples, as they said in those olden days. What had become of those elements, where did they go? Every working hour she labored in her white smock among the most varied and powerful chemical ingredients, some that could kill if put together wrong, but not a one of them was known to induce everlasting love. Science failed. Her skill had the power to heal or destroy; it could not unite. She thought about that, again and again. The potion—oh, how she wanted to believe—belief could command reality, could manipulate it into conformity with desire. Could it, really?
Monica put her ballpoint pen down one lovely evening and rose from her bedroom table. She left a letter explaining everything; someone would find it.
A few days before, they had been sitting in Jason’s living room listening to medieval music. The polyphonic voices, angelic, ascending from the remote past, strung themselves together, came apart, and joined once more just like the cultivated vines in ancient orchards Jason had told her about. Beautiful, mysterious. He knew something about everything, Monica thought, if it was old and written down in books. He brought before her eyes pictures from pastoral poetry, from Virgil, the Bucolics; it was all so engaging, so wonderful.
Jason himself was even more wonderful, she knew this for sure, but would it last? Thoughtful and accommodating as he was, he nevertheless sometimes changed the subject when Monica brought up a life together. Her thoughts went back to the old rag doll.
They had been talking one day about various fruits in legend and literature: the cherry orchard, and how it represented to Chekhov the passing of an old way of life, never to return. The grape and its fermentation; how that small green or purple globule pushed its way into probably every storytelling history that ever was. The apple, red and savory:
whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe
With loss of Eden;
or the Apple of Discord that carried the ramparts of Troy and destroyed its people. Jason mentioned the pomegranate in passing and relayed to Monica an old legend he had heard that if a man and woman shared between them the pulp and seeds of a pomegranate they would be bound together all through life, even into the long sweep of death. It was forever. Maybe beyond forever. “Be careful,” he advised her ironically and bemusedly, “who you divide a pomegranate with.”
This had Monica’s attention. “Oh, Jason, would you share a pomegranate with me?”
Jason said offhandedly. “Sure, it’s only a silly old legend anyhow. Can’t even remember where I read it. I have never tasted a pomegranate, have you?”
Monica had never tasted a pomegranate.
“You promise to share a pomegranate with me, you absolutely promise?”
Jason was amused. “Bring a pomegranate and two spoons and we shall test the legend. I swear to you upon a stack of holy bibles and all the Sibylline prophesies.” A wry look crept upon his face. “Will that do?”
Monica went to the local market the day after and purchased two pomegranates. They were most unattractive, she thought, hardly the stuff of legend; two irregular brown spheres with nothing to recommend them except weight. In her kitchen she split one open with a knife. A trail of bright red juice, like blood, spattered the knife blade and sullied the sink. Monica swallowed hard; it looked like a dime novel murder scene. Her knees got a little weak, and her stomach unsteady but she regained composure. The seeds were soft and mildly flavorful, the pulp more so. She got Jason on the phone and asked him for lunch day after next. There would be a special treat.
Jason said yes, thinking of other treats she had invited him to, not at lunchtime.
Monica took the second pomegranate with her to work next day. The supervisor was away much of the afternoon. At slow intervals during these hours when customers were few she had time to examine the pomegranate, consider its characteristics, and even work with it a bit, bringing science to bear. Altering, or augmenting the fruit’s qualities, as it were, and according to her own requirements and expectations. Unexpectedly, her hands were a bit less steady than heretofore. Come home, she covered the two halves she had cut with a thick layer of granulated sugar, for there was now a subtle, very faint bitterness in the taste. Monica placed them in a plastic baggie to preserve freshness in the refrigerator till lunch hour tomorrow.
Jason was a man of his word, and as he had promised, came to the door next day at the prescribed hour. He thought his girlfriend exaggeratedly grateful, and a bit animated, nervous even. She sat him down at the kitchen table.
They had a glass of wine and a small sandwich. Monica then brought out the special dish, served on two plates, a silver spoon stabbed into each half.
“Well,” said Jason, “the famous pomegranate.”
“Yes,” she answered, “The famous legendary pomegranate. I sampled one yesterday. They are very tart, but you will like it all the same. I certainly did.” Her voice was a bit unsteady. Jason didn’t notice.
“So that must be why you have covered the thing in this layer of sugar? You think of everything, Monica. But I have to say, you are always afraid of the tart things in life. Isn’t it so? Admit it.”
Monica pulled up a chair and sat beside him. She placed a half sphere of pomegranate, bleeding like a stuck pig as it warmed, before each of them. Her knees were a little unsteady. “Well, here goes,” she said, “I know you will like it; it is ancient, and it is legendary.”
Both seemed to enjoy the fruit, plunging their spoons into the pulp, chewing the seeds, scraping right down to the husk. Monica arranged this process with precision, taking an answering spoonful each time and only after Jason had consumed one of his own. She was a follower, she thought, not a leader.
The antique legend now rested in the dark of their stomachs. Monica believed she had finally found the greater man she had always sought, and she would never have to search again. Not ever. Her hand fumbled for his hand beside her and held it tightly, scarcely willing to let go. She let her head and a billow of fine brunette hair come to rest upon his shoulder, like a warm, comforting shadow. An odd, but agreeable feeling came across the young man; he had never inspired anything like this in any girl before, and he was almost proud of himself. And grateful.
“Too bad we didn’t do this at my house,” Jason said after they had relaxed a while. “I could have played some beautiful sacred motet for you to accompany our adventure.” He wanted to get up and stretch a bit as he normally did after a meal, but his legs seemed a little heavy. “Jesus,” he thought, “I must be getting old. Can’t handle a glass of wine at noontime.” Monica watched this closely and noticed a similar effect on her own part.
They began to talk about a few things, but the conversation trailed off, and at last, was not replaced. Jason’s breathing had softened and slowed charmingly, just one more exquisite perfection in this irreproachable man.
Monica looked at her greater man, perhaps for the last time. His beautiful chin rested upon his breast by now, and the vast river of sleep upon which he drifted, carrying him slowly away, began to lap at her feet also. She had no regrets. The two of them will be in Paradise soon, Paradise never to be lost, and they will be together, even in death. She did this for both of them.
Monica was fading, but she still commanded the strength to raise a smile to her lover. No telling what this new abode will be like, but however it is, it shall be forever, and for them alone. The beautiful legend, surely, could not tell a lie.
Monica’s thoughts began to disassemble and stagger in the pathway. But one remained with her, even as she struggled to keep her eyes fixed on the young man, and her own head began to droop. “You promised, Jason,” she said to herself and to him, quietly smiling. “You promised.”
The journey was nearly over, and, in the last glimmer of a young girl’s consciousness, just beginning. Monica folded her arms as best she could about Jason, exhaling a new life into her irreplaceable guest who was not entirely enclosed in that embrace, quite yet. A bright red, fruity spirit, she imagined, was filling his sail and hers, impelling them like drifting clouds from this imperfect and unreliable world, the world she was ever so willing to leave behind, into what is to be hereafter, into what is to become, what is to fulfill, what is to gently round off unfinished edges.
Into forever.
Arthur H Dorland is 82 years old with a bachelor’s degree in English and Classical Languages granted by a liberal arts college back about the time the last mastodon was falling to a hunter’s spear. He is relatively guiltless of academic creds but has used up many a light bulb reading and absorbing American and European literature. The ancient legend the story is built around is real, though he can’t remember its exact provenance.