Fountainhead

I had seen him at the café maybe six or seven times. He always sat at a booth in the far corner, toward the back window, divorced from the din, as though he was intentionally segregating himself from the rest of us. I’d never seen him without a book in his hands, and as far as I know, he never ordered any food. He just drank black coffee in his booth and read by himself.

I think the others were put off by his shabby appearance. I don’t mean to imply that he was unclean, just a bit disheveled, like he wasn’t friends with his iron or his razor or even on speaking terms with his comb. He dressed like a man who cared enough only to keep from walking the streets naked, but no more than that. His eyes, which may have betrayed more vulnerability than he was comfortable with, were shielded behind black sunglasses. He never took them off, not even while reading. And perhaps the most curious aspect of his person was the scar that ran from his left temple down and across his face, cutting right through the lips, and ending beneath a wild but light mane of blonde growth on his lower right cheek.

I can’t tell you his name, because I don’t know it. I only talked to him the one time, though it was a conversation I’ll never forget. But I never thought to ask his name, and he never offered it. I’ve since taken to calling him Fountainhead, for reasons the reader will no doubt understand later.

Our strange dialogue began one day right before Christmas when I was cleaning the booth next to his. I confess, this booth wasn’t really in need of my attention, but I wanted to get near Fountainhead and study him, for he evoked some deep and piercing curiosity in me. As I drew my towel across the table, wiping up crumbs that weren’t there, he noticed me watching him. I couldn’t see his eyes, remember. But a curt tilt of his elderly head told me he was looking my way.

“Is there something you want to say?” he asked, his gravelly voice lower than I expected.

“That book you’re reading,” I replied. “Do you like it?”

“Why? Have you read it?”

“I have.”

“All the way to the end?”

“Uh huh.”

He seemed annoyed. “Then surely you must know that I like it. As you no doubt know, no one could make it through this book who didn’t like it.”

I threw my damp towel over my shoulder. “Fair enough. I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand.”

He turned back to his book, as though my company was equal to a pesky mosquito. “That’s wonderful,” he said with disinterest.

And that, it seemed, was the end of the conversation. He clearly wanted me to go away. Or did he? I honestly cannot tell the reader why, but somehow I suspected he didn’t want me to go away. In fact, I suspected he was acting that way to see if I could discern this. Testing my theory, I sat down in his booth, opposite him.

He looked up from his book again, scowling. “What, are you on a break?” he barked.

“Not really. My shift just started.”

“Then what, may I ask, are you doing? Any moron could see that I’m trying to read. More than that, half a moron could see that I’d like nothing better than to be left alone.”

I smiled. “I don’t believe you,” I replied.

“Is it your habit to sit down uninvited?”

“That’s funny,” I countered. “I could’ve sworn you did invite me.”

To my astonishment, he smiled. Well, sort of. It was half a smile, anyway. But it was enough. I wanted to ask him about his scar, but I didn’t.

He finally set his book down. “How old are you, son?”

“Twenty.”

“Jesus. You’re just a kid.”

“How many kids do you know who have read Ayn Rand?”

“Assigned in school, no doubt.”

“Come on, pops,” I said. “You know as well as I do that no school would endorse the works of a Russian author. Not around here, anyway.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “This is the 1960s. I forgot.”

This was quite a strange remark. The year was obviously 1968. It was as if he had genuinely forgotten that. But how could that be? Who would forget what decade it was? This was the only time during our brief discussion when I got the peculiar impression that Fountainhead didn’t belong here. Though where he did belong, I couldn’t say.

There was a brief lull in the conversation at this point. The juke box started playing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Connie Francis was singing about a partridge in a pear tree. Sandy, one of the waitresses, sidled up to the booth and poured fresh coffee in Fountainhead’s mug. Then she looked at me. “What are you doing, Donnie?” she inquired a tad unkindly. “Is Herb paying you to sit around?”

That’s just how Sandy was. Saying nothing, I waved her away. She left.

Fountainhead cleared his throat and said, “Donnie, is it? Well Donnie, since you won’t let me read, tell me something.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“Whatever. Just speak. Open your mouth and make words. Anything will do.”

I thought for a moment. Then, possessed of a bizarre impulse, I asked a question I didn’t know I’d been contemplating until that moment: “Do you think ignorance is bliss?”

He nodded. “It most certainly is.”

I nodded too. “Yeah,” I said. “But… that’s sort of the bitch of it all.”

He grinned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s your basic Isaac Newton, right? For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”

Fountainhead sipped his coffee and growled, “Go on.”

“Well, I mean… if ignorance is bliss, then the inversion must also be true.”

“Meaning that too much knowledge is misery?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what you really think, Donnie?”

“I think it’s what you think, too.”

Fountainhead regarded me for a moment, perhaps trying to gauge me. “You’re a smart kid,” he pronounced at length. “Why are you working here?”

“Oh, it’s just a paycheck,” I said. “I’m saving up for college.”

“To do what?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Something. Anything.”

“I see,” he observed. “Well, to address your question, yes, if ignorance is bliss, then knowledge is misery. That’s the double-edged sword of reason.”

“Double-edged sword?”

“The ability to reason is the highest mark of human capability, Donnie. It is an amazing thing, reason. However, we must remember that having the ability to know things includes the possibility of knowing too much.”

I felt like this was the heart of the matter. “Knowing too much,” I repeated. “Is that even possible?”

He shrugged. “You seem to think it is.”

I thought about this. It did seem to me that perhaps humanity could get its hands on knowledge it shouldn’t have. The ability to split the atom, for instance, and harness the ensuing power into a bomb. Or coming to understand certain diseases so well that they can be weaponized. I was reminded of Prometheus giving fire to the Greeks, thereby angering the gods.

I then considered these opposing facts: the same knife that can be used to kill can be used to heal. The same gun that ends one life can save another, depending on who is shot and why. The same vehicle that transports us through the many events of our lives might also spell our doom if the conditions of the road are ripe for it. The food we eat to live, from which we derive the energy to be, can turn against us and stop our hearts. Religion, from which some derive a blessing, can and often does incite hatred for everyone else. The planet on which we live provides everything we need to survive, and yet one night spent in that same planet’s severe elements could kill us. Our bodies are made mostly of water, yet to be too long submerged in water means we drown. The air we breathe can sustain our lungs and poison them at the same time. The sun we depend on for our very lives will blind and burn our eyes out if we look at it. Gravity, which keeps us tethered safely to our planet and prevents us from being flung out into space, will shatter every bone in our bodies if we fall from a far enough height. And life, which is the most beautiful, wondrous thing in all the Cosmos, is, for the most part, one long exercise in agony and disaster.

Yes, all the best things in existence are a double-edged sword. Reason is no different.

“You’re right,” I said after more reflection. “Yet I cannot escape that my destiny appears to be the pursuit of knowledge. Does this mean I’m doomed to be miserable?”

Fountainhead chuckled. “You’re probably going to be miserable anyway. Most of us are.” I didn’t necessarily think that was true, but I didn’t say so. The old man missed nothing. “You’re too young to know that,” he added. “You’ll find out one day. Happiness is elusive. It’s not unobtainable. But my God, it’s elusive.” I guess my face must have appeared crestfallen, for then he waved a dismissive hand and said, “You never know. Maybe I’m just a jaded old man who spouts hot gas. Don’t listen to me, kid. Maybe you can be as happy as you choose to be. And even if you’re not, go ahead and pursue knowledge anyway. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather know and be sad than be ignorant with bliss. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my book.”

That’s how the discussion ended. I went back into the kitchen to do my job and he buried his nose in Ayn Rand. To my knowledge, he never came into our café again.

That incident took place fifty-two years ago. It’s now the year 2020. I’ll be seventy-three in four days. My wife of fifty years passed away several months ago of a disease called COVID, a disease that was as far from my mind in 1968 as the Moon is from Earth. All our kids are grown and off living their lives. And I’m alone.

Well, not really alone. I have my friends for company. Newton and Nietzsche, Einstein and Spinoza, Camus and Sartre, Lucretius and Aurelius, Seneca and Schopenhauer, Heidegger and Kant, and all the rest. I’ve spent my life pursuing greater knowledge, just as I told Fountainhead I would. And here, not necessarily at the end, since I’m still reasonably healthy, but definitely well ensconced within the third and final act, I can speak to some of those things Fountainhead said to me that day in the café.

First of all, he was absolutely right about one thing. Happiness is elusive. I’ve tasted it. Now and then. It’s hard to hold in your hand, because it slips away like a wave on the sand. But if you train yourself to, you can walk in the surf of that wave from time to time. You can even lie down in it.

Secondly, reason is most definitely a double-edged sword. He was right about that, too. It is certainly possible to know too much. I could say more about that but, alas, I don’t really want to.

And finally, I wouldn’t say that knowledge is misery. Not quite. It may be that knowledge is like the fountainhead of some great river. The water is pure at the source. You can drink it. It’s fresh. But the longer it flows, the heavier it gets, and you can drown in it. In this way, knowledge begets neither happiness nor sadness. It can save your life or it can end it. It really just depends on where you swim, and how.