15

“Invitation?”

I pulled out the squarish envelope that had been slipped under my door. My name had been inscribed in a flowery script suitable for weddings and debutante balls. I handed the gilt-edged vellum across the table.

“Did you RSVP?” the bear demanded.

I shook my head. I could hear music in the forest not too far away. The invitation was to the annual jamboree. It promised “a celebration of winter’s end and a joyous awakening to lusty spring.”

He pawed over the pages of a long list of names.

“Ah, here you are. Okay, go on through and follow the others.”

“What group is sponsoring this event?” I asked.

He furrowed his thick brows.

“Who invited you?” he growled.

I had no idea why I’d received an invitation. In fact, I barely knew what spur-of-the-moment caprice had made me rush to Central Park. It might have been the word “lusty.” I had been going here and there for treatments for my condition, but nothing had helped so far.

“It was under my door … ” I began to explain as the line of waiting bears grew longer behind me.

“All right,” he interrupted with a wave of his paw, “go in.”

The entire park must have been taken over for the jamboree. I passed through the checkpoint and followed the crowd of bears as it flowed beneath the antique street lamps. Even on the wide paths, furry pelts and thick muscles pressed against me in the crush. An excited chatter moved with us as we struck deeper into the park.

Ahead, near the Great Lawn, I could see bears converging from several directions. Far too many to count. On a bandstand raised near the leaping light of a bonfire, a band of a dozen bears played drums, fiddles, and flutes in a jig that reverberated through the park. Around the fire a hundred or more bears danced with legs crossing forward and back and arms outstretched to clasp one anothers’ shoulders. When the music quickened, the bears separated to leap and kick before coming together again. Tables were crowded with serving dishes heaped full of berries, mushrooms, acorns, and grasses. Bears with overflowing plates lined up to fill their cups from spigots in giant kegs.

Not seeing anyone I knew, I followed an impulse and leapt in among the dancers. I squeezed between a couple of bears, tossed my arms over their shoulders, and let the frenzy of the dance move my limbs. The drums seemed to connect me to the depths of the earth while the flutes lifted me to the heavens. The fiddle inspired a wildness and speed that had me jostling in and out among my giant companions. My perspiration flowed like spray from a fountain, and my body loosened with the heated movement until I imagined I had been created only for this, this endless dance that would go on and on. As if in confirmation of that feeling, the band ran one tune into the next so the flow of music never stopped. I had no idea how long the sponsor’s permit allowed this party in the park, but I felt that only the rising sun could silence this music.

“Hey, remember us?”

I looked at the family with momentary incomprehension. The surge of the dancers carried me onward, and I made a full circle around the fire before reaching them again. I stepped away from the dance and tried to place this giant dark-coated bear, his large wife, and their two cubs.

“How have you been?” I asked, certain I had met them but not at all sure when or in what circumstances. We had undoubtedly been introduced, but I hadn’t the faintest recollection of their names, where they lived, their unique concerns, or anything about them.

“We’ve been fine,” said the father in his basso voice. “Frankly, it’s a pleasant surprise to see you here. I wasn’t expecting to.”

“No,” chimed in his wife.

“That’s for sure,” added one of the cubs in a less pleasant tone that made me wonder why they didn’t expect to see me there.

“I didn’t expect you either,” I answered, still panting from the dance and wanting to show pleasure at our reunion.

“Why did you come?” asked the father.

“I got an invitation.”

“Ah.”

“I came home today and found the invitation. It must have taken a long time to be delivered, because the jamboree was, of course, tonight. I’ll be moving soon, so it’s a miracle it reached me at all. Anyway, I rushed out the door and came to the park.”

“And you’ve been having a good time?” he asked dubiously.

“What could be better than dancing?”

He leaned toward his wife and whispered something into one of her upright, furry ears. She nodded in reply.

“Come on, Dad,” complained the cub who had spoken before. “This is boring.”

“Quiet down,” the father said gruffly.

“Are you all right?” the mother asked me in a kindly tone. She put her paw on my waist to steady me.

My head had begun to feel light and my body rubbery, as if my knees might give way.

“I don’t feel very well,” I admitted. I looked down at my arms, surprised to find them white, furless, and spindly. Had I been sick? Why didn’t I look like the throng of strong bears I could see in every direction?

“Some food might help.” The father came to my other side, and the two of them walked me toward the tables.

I can’t explain why I found the food unappetizing. The grass looked dry, the mushrooms uncooked and perhaps poisonous, and my teeth wouldn’t be able to crack the hard shells of the acorns. Why couldn’t I eat with the same gusto as everyone else? At last I put a few dark berries on my plate.

“Is that all?” asked the father with disapproval.

“He’s not feeling well,” said the mother. “Let’s sit down and let him rest.”

We settled at one of the picnic tables. What had happened to my fur? Where had my thick muscles vanished to? Why didn’t I have claws? As I fed myself the berries, one at a time, I realized that I lacked the handsome snouts of my companions. Despite my horror and disgust at seeing myself in this new way, I gradually began to feel more in control of my body. Had I never looked in a mirror? How could I not know that I looked so bizarre and otherworldly?

The family ate without any concern for my appearance. They chatted amiably about the enormous turnout, good friends they hoped to run into, the beauty of the spring night, and how life is given a pleasurable intensity by contrasts. This exuberant party made him think, the father explained, of the hibernation from which he had recently awakened.

“How peaceful the long night of winter can be,” he said. “In the darkness, with our daily concerns forgotten and our bodies sufficient unto themselves, the mind lets go and travels. Is it that way for you?”

I nodded to conceal my confusion. I had no recollection of hibernating. As far as I could recall, I had spent the last winter in my apartment with the rising steam banging in the radiators.

“You should take better care of yourself.” He adopted a gentler tone, perhaps moved by imagining my long sleep to have been like his.

“I’m hoping to get better,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” asked his wife.

I couldn’t bring myself to reply.

“Stop that, you two!” She spoke sharply to the cubs, who had been licking their white plates with their long tongues. “You have better manners than that.”

“From what?” asked the father.

I shrugged. My embarrassment must have been evident, because he rose and gestured for me to come with him.

“Mind your mother,” he ordered the cubs.

We wove our way through the throng and into the forest. I followed him on a small, twisting path until the ever-renewing music and the ceaseless roar of chatter seemed distant. He gestured for me to sit. I looked around and, seeing only tree trunks, settled on the ground, with my back supported by rough bark. He sat with his legs crossed, his head and shoulders still towering above me.

“What’s troubling you?”

I hung my head. I would never admit to him or anyone that for the first time I had seen myself as strange, freakish, an eternal outsider worthy only to be despised or pitied. I didn’t understand how he could accept me with such grace.

“You can tell me,” he spoke gently. “You’ll feel better if you get it out.”

“I’m not what I used to be,” I said vaguely.

“Yes?”

“I used to be better.” Here I waved in the direction of my genitals.

“You’re having some difficulties … ”

“I can’t get an erection.” I let myself speak boldly but sensed other, more elusive losses connected to this one.

“Not even by yourself?”

“Not by myself, not with anyone. There’s no point in my trying.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that why you’re here tonight?”

I nodded my head miserably. “Not the only reason, but certainly a reason. The celebration of spring, the new awakening. I hoped … ”

“What?”

“There might be an elixir.”

“Elixir?” He raised his thick brows and peered at me as if I had just come into focus.

“Yes.”

“Like a magic pill?”

“Exactly. That’s what I want.”

“There are commercial products, of course … ”

“I’ve tried them. They don’t do a thing.”

He put a paw to his chin. Tilting his head, he looked at me contemplatively.

“You’re sure it’s what you want?” he asked at last.

“Wouldn’t anyone want it?”

“Probably,” he agreed, “except for someone who didn’t think of it as a problem.”

“But it is a problem.”

“What’s sex anyway?” he asked.

There must have been a good retort, but I couldn’t think of it.

“Energy,” he answered when I failed to. “But energy can take many forms. Perhaps you need your energy for something other than sex.”

“But … ”

“Just consider it.”

I did a quick mental survey of my daily activities, wondering which could be claiming the energy that had once found expression in sex. But this survey felt like the kind of questionnaire no one bothers to fill in. By and large, I didn’t remember what I did during the day, or night for that matter. I remembered the envelope slipping under my door. I remembered rushing out to the jamboree. I certainly remembered that I couldn’t have erections.

“I have a question,” I said.

He raised his brows to show interest.

“Where do all these bears live? I’ve never seen one bear in Central Park, much less thousands.”

“In the caves,” he answered, nodding his head.

“What caves?”

“The park is full of caves.”

“There would have to be thousands of caves,” I protested.

“Yes, thousands, hidden from sight.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s a secret project.”

“Whose project?”

“When the mayor was elected to his first term, he promised to end the housing shortage. He made a firm commitment to affordable housing. One of the easiest steps for him to take was to build these caves.”

“You’re kidding me. I would have read about it in the newspapers.”

“I said it was secret.”

“But … ”

“Think about it. How many homeless bears will the public tolerate? That’s one reason the mayor took it on first, before subsidized housing for the poor and the disadvantaged middle class. And there are certain practical advantages—”

“Such as?” I broke in.

“A cave is basically just the absence of something. All that’s required is a large hole. You don’t have to lay a foundation, put in pilings, find materials and workers to build up story after story. It’s incredibly cheap. No additional services are needed—heat, gas, and electricity are irrelevant. Historic districts and the beauty of the city skyline are left undisturbed. And Central Park could easily host tens of thousands of caves.”

“But are the bears happy in caves?”

“Where else would you want to be in the winter?” he asked. After waiting a moment, he went on, “Of course, there are different kinds of caves. Some are shallow, hardly more than an opening in a cleft of rock. Others penetrate a long distance but are straight and flat. Some go down almost vertically. And then there are the chambers that you come on unexpectedly, small nooks that can be perfect for curling up and large caverns with stalactites and stalagmites. Have you noticed how the shape of the cave affects your dreams?”

“No, I really haven’t,” I replied.

“Yes, that would be my only criticism of the mayor’s building program. I find my dreams aren’t as interesting now. The caves feel as if they came off an assembly line. Perfectly rounded, all about the same length, all flat or declining very gradually.”

He piled absurdity on absurdity.

“I find it hard to accept,” I said deliberately, “that the mayor would build caves before apartment buildings.”

“You’re still stuck on that?”

I didn’t answer. We sat there, each lost in his own thoughts. The music and the buzz of the revelers still came through the forest. My companion had lowered his head, closed his eyes, and might well have fallen asleep. I could feel the hard bark pressing into my back. I shifted one way, then another. Suddenly he leapt to his feet.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“I want to show you something.”

He moved deeper into the forest. I followed, not complaining about his speed, the branches whipping at me in his wake, or the darkness. We must have walked for ten minutes before the rise of a rocky cliff blocked us.

“This way.”

I followed and found myself in a tunnel. I call it a tunnel, not a cave, because obviously it had been built by machines. A gradual slope led downward. On the ceiling a translucent wire strip gave off a faint glow. After a few minutes, we reached a cave. The lighting ceased with the end of the tunnel, but I could make out the irregular contours where the cave began. He squatted and pointed back the way we had come.

“Now do you believe me?”

I couldn’t imagine a better explanation for this tunnel to nowhere. I had to nod my head in agreement.

“I spent last winter here.”

Realizing this was his home, I wondered at its emptiness.

“Will you come back?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“At first I slept near the entrance, but I didn’t enjoy my dreams. So I kept waking and moving deeper. I ended up in the real cave, the part that had always been there. Come, I’ll show you.”

With his rough pads and claws, he grasped my hand and led me away from the light until I could see nothing. Unlike the gradual descent of the tunnel, the gradient in the cave was steep, and I kept slipping and banging my feet against ledges and loose rocks.

“Watch your head,” he warned.

I bent and groped with my free arm.

At last he guided me to a ledge of smooth stone where I could sit. I smelled a strong odor, like bales of hay but more pungent. Since I couldn’t see anything, the source of the scent remained a mystery. Cool air flowed upward over my bare arms and face.

“Was this better?” I asked.

“In a way. There’s a small niche right here, where I curled up to sleep. You don’t hear a sound.”

It was true. I couldn’t hear the music anymore.

“Sometimes,” he added, “I would quiet my breathing so I couldn’t hear myself.”

“But what about your dreams? I thought you said you enjoyed the long sleep, the chance to let your thoughts wander.”

“You know what the hunger madness is like before we hibernate. At first I kept dreaming about foraging, but I couldn’t find what I wanted. I didn’t like those dreams, but when I moved deeper I started dreaming of strange creatures I had never seen in the forest. After a while I became troubled.”

“Why?”

“I hesitate to say.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said, thinking that might be his concern.

“Do you feel anything about the darkness?”

I had never experienced such absolute blackness, but I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“What about it?”

“How many of us are here?” he asked.

A shiver shot up my spine. I had no idea.

“Just you and me,” I answered, hoping he would agree.

“In a way, that’s true.”

“Why in a way? It either is or isn’t true.”

“It’s true when I’m awake, but when I’m sleeping, I’m not sure if it’s true.”

“You’re talking about your dreams.” I wanted to clarify that in reality only he and I were present.

“Do you feel the air rising up?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“A few feet in front of you is a deep shaft. It goes straight down. I have no idea how far, but the air rising from it suggests it connects to other caves.”

Immediately I felt afraid—think how easily I could have fallen into an unseen shaft.

“When I moved this far into the cave, I began to have a series of dreams. One night I found myself climbing down the shaft … ”

“In your dream?”

“Yes. A glow lit it inside and stone steps had been chiseled in a spiral that I thought would go on forever.”

“Did you get to the bottom?”

“Not in that dream, no. But in dream after dream I returned to the shaft and climbed farther down. Finally, after I don’t know how many dreams, I reached the bottom. I saw a deep stream flowing swiftly through boulders. All around was a forest that, as far as I could tell, had never been touched by an ax or a backhoe. This virgin world attracted me, except for one thing.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing lived there.”

“Then you were safe. Nothing threatened you.”

“But I came into that world like a germ, an infection. Not just my beating heart and the pump of my blood, but my thoughts—especially my thoughts. They radiated from me. I couldn’t stop thinking. I couldn’t hold my thoughts back. They entered there like a vibration that would go on and on. They are vibrating there still, growing fainter and fainter but never vanishing.”

“It was a dream,” I protested.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“If we had a flashlight, we could look down the shaft and see that there are no steps.”

“And another thing,” he said in the darkness, “I felt that these dreams came from the shaft. They rose like the air from that other world.”

“But that makes no sense. If no one lives in that other world, how could anyone be dreaming?”

“Anyway, after that idea occurred to me, when I looked in the stream I saw I was wrong. There was life there. Enormous white fish were swimming at the bottom. They had large round mouths for sucking nutrients from the debris on the streambed. I could see down through the water thirty or forty feet. In fact, I walked on the water above them. The fish had to be as long as I am tall. Slowly they began to rise toward me. This frightened me, and when one of them came close enough, I gave it a hard kick to make it keep away.”

“Did it bite you?”

“I’m not sure these fish had teeth. No, it didn’t, but it began to change shape. It grew two legs and two arms. So did the other fish. I don’t know what to call them, because soon they stood upright. They had heads but no faces—just white, unshapen skin.”

“Did they walk on the water too?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I think they did. I moved away, but one of them gestured as if to speak. But it had no mouth. I wanted to get away. I must have run.”

“Did they follow you?”

“Not in the dream, because I woke up. But I think they did follow me, because I keep thinking about them. How could a fish change shape like that? Why would it want to? What would it have said to me? I regret now that I didn’t overcome my fear and listen.”

“What could they have told you?” I asked.

“You have no idea?”

“No, how could I?”

“That these are not my dreams,” he said.

“But you dreamed them.”

“Nonetheless, that’s what I believe they would have said. I’ve thought about it quite a bit. And if they weren’t my dreams, whose dreams were they?”

I had no answer.

“Perhaps the dreams were theirs,” he finally went on. “I considered that. Now, this is all just a lot of flimsy intuition and conjecture—I could certainly be wrong—but I don’t think they were the dreamers. I think they wanted something else.”

“To inhabit the world you discovered?”

“They’ll do that, of course, but I felt they wanted to find the spiral steps leading upward. That they wanted to climb up and enter our world. They’re still evolving. Who knows what they will look like when that’s finished? They may already be here.”

I didn’t like this idea at all. It brought to mind the world I knew—the skyscrapers rising from streets thronged with people. You could tell just by looking that they had come from around the globe, spoke a babel of languages, and prayed to innumerable gods, but not one of them, to my knowledge, had risen from a dream world.

“If they are,” I said, “nothing has changed.”

“Nothing that we’re aware of yet,” he answered.

The cave had grown colder. Or at least it felt colder to me.

“I’d like to go back,” I said, half expecting him to refuse to take me. I heard the scrape of his claws on the stone; then his paw touched me in the dark. Again he took my hand. I welcomed this contact and overcame my fear of falling into a shaft. Protecting my face with my free arm, I made the slow journey toward the surface. What a relief to see the faint light in the tunnel!

At last we stood outside his den. The full moon had been rising when we entered, but now it had flown to the far rim of the sky. The stars gleamed like points waiting to be connected on a blueprint for some unimaginable invention. We walked without speaking.

“I don’t hear the music,” I said at last.

He stopped by the low wall of a large fountain, its winged statue silhouetted in the moonlight.

“I thought about who the dreams must belong to,” he said, continuing our conversation from the cave.

“It doesn’t really matter,” I replied. “Shouldn’t you find your wife and children?”

“No, they don’t need me.”

This surprised me and I responded sympathetically. “That’s too bad.”

He laughed, a growling catching of breath in that large throat.

“It isn’t too bad. I spend my time alone because I want to. It’s my nature. Anyway, I spent a lot of time imagining who the dreams might belong to. Finally, I thought of you.”

“Me?” Nothing could be more alien to me than those dreams with their weird, changeable creatures. “No, that’s ridiculous.”

He shrugged, a great hulk of darkness.

“In any case,” he said, “that’s why I put the invitation under your door.”

“You did that?”

He nodded.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I decided to be gracious.

“Thanks. It was good to see you again.”

“About the dreams,” he said, “let me know if anything occurs to you.”

“Sure, I will.”

He raised a paw in a gesture of farewell. For a moment, as large as he was, he looked indecisive, hesitant. He started walking away, then turned with an afterthought.

“Good luck.”

I raised my hand and called back to him.

“You too.”

Ignoring the long flights of steps, he slipped over a metal fence and fell to all fours as he climbed a steep embankment. I could barely see his shape as he vanished among the tree trunks.

I sat on the low wall and watched the growing light bathe the angel who had alighted atop the fountain. One of her arms carried a cornucopia or a bouquet, I couldn’t quite make out which, and the other pointed ahead of her as if to mark a direction. I knew I should go home, shower, and ready myself for the day. But as I started to leave, an impulse seized me. I reached in my pocket and brought out a handful of change. With an underhand toss, I seeded the shallow waters with my coins. Then I watched, waiting for what might rise to the surface.