Mortonson’s answer to the question of life

Mortonson’s answer to the question of life begins as an apparent summons to spiritual revelation and ends as a request for crossword help. The encounter briefly makes him feel that his response could determine his spiritual fate; its anticlimax comes when the immense voice treats the answer not as a final truth but as a useful phrase it had been trying to find. The exchange leaves Mortonson with a memorable formulation, but not with the enlightenment he had imagined.

The Question and Its Stakes

While strolling in the foothills of the Himalayas, Mortonson hears a tremendous voice that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere address him. It asks whether he can say what life is. The question arrests him: he stands frozen midstride, perspiring, and recognizes the experience as genuinely mystical. In that instant, he believes a great deal will depend on his answer.

The scale of the question sets a high expectation for the scene. Mortonson does not treat it as casual conversation; he asks for a moment to consider it. He also sees the encounter as a rare chance for spiritual advancement, perhaps even a shortcut toward Enlightenment, Moksha, or Satori. The possibility tempts him with more than insight: he imagines turning the answer into guruhood, perhaps even Buddhadom. His search for a definition is therefore also a search for the right response to a moment that seems capable of elevating him.

Mortonson Searches for an Answer

The delay brings no sudden revelation. Mortonson considers a string of possible descriptions—hesitation, desire, longing, sorrow, preparation, fruition, coming together, and moving apart—without settling on any of them. The list ranges across states and processes rather than offering one stable definition. His difficulty is sharpened by a small, concrete frustration: he grinds out his cigarette and discovers it was his last, with no more available until he returns to his pension. The cosmic question presses on him while this ordinary inconvenience makes him impatient to finish.

At last, rubbing his forehead, he answers loudly but shakily: “Life is conflagration!” The forceful word sounds like a decisive pronouncement, but the scene does not immediately confirm that it is right. An uncanny silence follows. After waiting what he considers an appropriate interval, Mortonson asks whether his answer was correct. His uncertainty survives the declaration: having produced a grand phrase, he still needs the voice to tell him what it means.

The Voice Revises the Revelation

The voice says it is trying the answer out. “Conflagration” is too long, it decides; “Blaze?” gives way to “Fire!” and then to its conclusion: “Life is fire! That fits!” The exchange shifts the apparent source of authority. Mortonson had understood himself to be answering a profound spiritual question, but the voice evaluates his formulation in part for its length and fit. He agrees that fire was what he meant.

The reversal becomes explicit when the voice thanks him for helping and asks for the middle name of the inventor of the frictionless star drive, a crossword answer whose third letter is D. The same voice that had posed “The Question” is stuck on a puzzle clue. Its request collapses the distance between cosmic inquiry and a pastime: the question about life has not led to a revelation above ordinary concerns, but has become one item in a crossword-solving exchange. The scene does not explain whether the voice’s mystical appearance was genuine, comic, or both; instead, its abrupt change of subject unsettles the spiritual grandeur Mortonson had assigned to the encounter.

The Return to Ordinary Life

Mortonson had prepared himself for strange revelations, but not for playing Cosmic Crosswords. Although he recognizes the incident as an Extraordinary Experience, he cannot relate to the voice’s request in spiritual terms. He turns away from the voice and its higher mysteries and returns to his pension in Katmandu.

The account closes not with an awakened teacher or a new spiritual vocation, but with a return to familiar work and leisure. Mortonson is back at his job as expediter in his father’s gristle-processing plant in Skowhegan, and he takes his vacations in Majorca. The contrast gives his answer its final comic shape: for one brief encounter, the definition of life seemed to promise extraordinary advancement, yet the teller’s life resumes its practical routines. “Life is fire!” remains the answer the voice accepted, while Mortonson’s departure leaves the encounter’s larger promise unresolved.