Rich Meyers
Rich Meyers lives in the San Francisco, teaches English as a Second Language at SF City College, and has published two poetry chapbooks. He was active in Berkeley Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the 60's and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in India in 1968.
He has written the novels The Journey that Never was Made, Alms for Oblivion, Under Indian Skies, and A Maze for Infidels
and two books of poetry, The Journey's Loom and Striptease of the Soul.
His work is available from Gandarva Press, 3654 A, 24th Street, SF, CA. 94110.
Richmeyers88@aol.com
NEW by Rich Meyers...
WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING BADGES
VANISHINGS AT THE CAMEL MARKET
WHERE HAVE ALL THE SPIRITS GONE
THE QUANTUM THEORY OF AUNT ROSE
The Man Who Slept Through Heaven
AND SHOULD NOT I PITY NINEVAH?
MEMORY, A DEEP HORIZON
It was
Jonathan’s first time to Southeast Asia
and as he wandered the wooden- carved temples. The destruction
of Buddhist
heritage from Western bombs only decades ago was painfully
evident. His journey
to Laos however did not concern the ravages of history. He had
come to see the
burial place of his old companion Josephine and so the
landscape he searched
belonged to the province of the soul.
The
years since the passing of this woman were spare in detail and
had only added
to her stature in Jonathan’s mind, making her seem almost
vague like the murky
meaning that resonated in the faded images he glimpsed on the
walls at the
temple of Pha That Luang. The two had traveled many countries
of the world
together, socially enmeshed in ex-patriot communities from
Greece to India,
known with some notoriety as the exciting host couple, J and
J, Josephine and
Jonathan. Through the years they had drifted apart, traveling
separately on one
adventure or another. Continuing a correspondence that spawned
the globe, they
had held each other close in their hearts seeing each in the
image of the
other. Between the two would always exist an imperishable
devotion. Nothing
except circumstance had ruffled their sense of harmony. All
barriers had
continued to dissolve even though they had come to live in
different countries,
sometimes on different continents. No longer lovers, their
friendship deepened
further. Each had other relationships but telling about those
seemed unimportant.
The feelings shared with others had in time faded like a
dream, there being no
dream that would not fail, no life that would not end, except
the ethereal one
they shared. When souls merge, a possibility of the immortal
is conceived; a
bond is struck that cannot imagine its end like the deep
calling the deep.
While
Jonathan had worked on European newspapers in South America,
he often thought
he would return to India to see Josephine again. The
uncertainty of the times
fostered procrastination and for well over a year her address
had changed
frequently and he didn’t know where to reach her. Why she
hadn’t written to him
in that period of time had been puzzling. Why he hadn’t just
dropped his
employment and joined her when finally a letter arrived was
far more a
disturbing mystery. His fingers still trembled with tender
remorse whenever he
read that poetic and poignant letter. It read with the warmth
of an invitation
long overdue:
Deep
Horizons Guesthouse and Cottages
15
Thanon Chao Street near the river
Vientiane,
Laos 15-68745-23
Dearest
Jonathan,
I write to you, my estranged companion
of my lost youth, as one who has walked alone seeking through
mazes of sorrow
for that contentment I always felt awaited me somewhere.
Eureka, I have found
it. Remember my dream of owning a traveler’s guesthouse in a
warm friendly
country. Horizons is that place. It has fourteen rooms built
around a city
fountain monument in Vientiane, the most laid back city in all
of Asia. Not
because of abundant opium as much as the Buddhist soft rhythm
of life. Almost
forgot- there are also eight little A-frame bungalows closer
to the Mekong
River that has flowed gracefully through my life now for some
years. Who’s
counting! I found a business partner in Sandra Fullmore, a
capable and
compatible young lady from Vancouver. She saved my life in a
way.
I
returned home over a year ago to be with my mother in her last
days. When she
left this world, it hit me hard. I was devastated, depressed
and completely
alienated back in California. The California coast was all
beauty, but I
couldn’t see it. My Mom’s house, as you remember, was in
Bodega Bay, rugged
coastal loveliness, but all I could see were the dead seagulls
of the wind,
leaves of my spirit falling, an old house of broken memories
like mirrors
reflecting the harsh light of the sea, my father dead years
ago in his
melancholy, my mother dead among her dreams. I went on
medication, anti-
depressants. They made me agitated and restless. I inherited
some money from
the estate and once it was in my hands I immediately left for
Thailand. It
didn’t work out for me there. Most travelers were so
hedonistic and young, and
all around me people were partying. I was miserable until I
came to Laos and
met Sandra who could help me realize my dream. Before I found
and built this
place I felt purposeless, morose and abstract. I felt my
mother’s world calling
me, the dead world, her death, still the only life in me. Do
you understand?
You are probably the only person who possibly could
understand. Everything
seemed ethereal and very distant. The only faces that filled
my mind were the
faces of those already gone, those who had died and their
dreams with them. I
belonged to my own bleak imagination, which was like a hotel
of dead souls. Now
I have brought life into that hotel of illusions. All is
tangible again. So is
the memory of you and all we shared. If time hasn’t taken the
wind out of you,
and you tender the hope of seeing a truly revitalized woman,
come over here and
see me. I’ll send you a ticket if that’s a problem. Love and
glory always.
Yours for
always,
Josephine, a life’s companion.
Another
was sent back three times but finally reached Jonathan in
Buenos Aires. It
echoed her invitation and included a map of the streets of
Vientiane. It was
that same map he held before him now. There really wasn’t any
need for him to
look at it; he had memorized the streets and had gone over in
his mind the
route to the hotel and bungalows a hundred times. Years had
passed since she
had first invited him. Long years had passed, years of
drifting from job to
job, his only purpose being the avoidance of any financial
need to return to
the states. He and his friends abhorred what U.S imperialist
greed had wreaked
on the world. Long years he had breathed in the foul air of
rage those thoughts
of political injustice had formed; he had often retired at
nights in the
world’s cheap hotels, a man with a vindictive and dry heart
and an aching
emptiness. His life abroad had been lonely after his time with
Josephine.
Mostly
he read and wandered through the streets of harbor cities,
those that at night
seemed all like each other. The nearness to the sea, at least,
provided the
beacon for future journeys, always the hope lay in the East.
Jonathan
turned the corner at the Bone Shrines
at Haw Khao Dip road. Small stupa- shaped reliquaries
contained the cremated
remains of temple members. Josephine, he had recalled, always
spoke of
cremation as the preferred way of dealing with her corpse.
What had changed her
mind to burial? One location that he did not know was exactly
where she was
buried. He would find out hopefully at the hotel from the
business partner
named Sandra. What would their meeting be like, his and
Sandra’s? What could
they communicate? Only grief, perhaps. On one hand he would
love to know more
about how she had died, her spiritual state but then again his
memory of
Josephine was so far a shrine untarnished by others’ words.
Her image loomed in
his mind with such absolute light that he would not invite
others to speak of
her. Any description of her other than his own might dim that
light by casting
a degree of relativity that any mention of flaws or shades or
phantoms might
suggest. Details or particular stories had never mattered much
between the two
of them so why should they now that she had disappeared from
his life as a
tangible presence? He began to have for the first time doubts
about his coming
to Laos. However, she had wanted him to come. Requesting his
presence was a
fervent wish that he could, at least, respect. To breathe the
same air that
sustained her in her last happy years was for him a goal
outside of time, a
place more true and absolute than that in which he had been
living.
Jonathan
paused at the gate of the Deep Horizon’s Guesthouse and
Cottages. The noon sun
beat heavily upon the thatched roofs of the bungalows. Two
women servants were
sweeping, and when Jonathan asked to speak with the owner they
replied “ Miss
Sandra, yes” and pointed to the main guesthouse. Across the
riverside promenade
lined with banyan trees were a group of small wooden
structures built around an
old French colonial style fountain. Josephine, he thought, had
created a pleasant
place, the cozy, relaxed environment she had imagined. A dream
realized! A sign
on a screen door indicated the office and behind the desk was
a young Lao girl.
Jonathan asked for the owner and again the name "Sandra" was
spoken.
He waited at the desk. Whisperings were heard from behind a
curtain. Jonathan
turned and looked outside noticing a pomelo tree in the tiny
courtyard and
madhavi creepers by the guesthouse windows. This lady, Sandra,
could be proud
of what she had created in the adversity of the tropics. He
would certainly
complement her. There was, however, a growing tension in
waiting so long to
speak with her. A servant, a young woman in a sarong, busied
about, sweeping
the pathways while another in a light dress walked towards the
bungalows across
the street carrying a bamboo
tray of
food. Another servant woman in the room adjoining the office
was lighting some
incense sticks, then sticking them, like slim pencils, into a
perforated brass
stand. She arranged slices of oranges and mangoes and
cucumbers on three brass
plates and placed them in front of small figures of the gods.
How refreshing,
Jonathan thought, to be back in the world of ritual and
worship! He had been
hungry to return to a reverent atmosphere, leaving the roaring
revolutionary
discontent behind in South America and he envied Josephine her
years of peace
in the deified realms of Asia, a sanctuary for the devotion to
the divine. And
Sandra as well, he would tell her how fortunate she was. Where
was she and how
long must he wait? He summoned one of the servants to fetch
“Madame Sandra” and
tell her he couldn’t wait much longer. A moment later the
young girl returned
saying, “ Miss Sandra no come now. Come later she say.”
Jonathan could not help
but feel avoided and suddenly he was surprised at hearing his
own voice rising
to a shout, "Miss Sandra, please! I’m waiting and waiting.
Sandra
Fullmore, I am Jonathan Bryce, a dear old friend of
Josephine’s come halfway
across the world to be here.” The loudness of his voice shook
the air and a
figure of a short western woman in a sari, short-cropped hair
and a
disapproving face appeared at the desk and said: “ I know who
you are. I’ve
been expecting you now for some time. We don’t shout here, Mr.
Bryce, never.”
“I’m
sorry but I was waiting, over an hour it seems.”
“It
only seems. We live here with a different sense of time.”
“Forgive
me,” Jonathan offered proceeding more gently. “You have a nice
place here, a
really divine sanctuary.”
“Yes,
I know. It’s become a thing of the past. I’m going to sell it
as soon as I find
a buyer,” she said. Her lipstick overlapped her mouth slightly
and the square
handsome face looked incongruous above her thickening body
tucked awkwardly
into a sari.
"I
am sorry to hear that. I know how much this place meant to
Josephine. She spoke
of it in her letters all the time, she did.”
“I
know very well how she loved this place. I guess you’ll want
to
see her grave.
Some local people maintain
it, people devoted to her.”
“How
did you know I was coming?”
“She
talked about you. She spoke well of you and often.”
“Thank
you. I’ll call you Sandra, if I may. You know this guesthouse
was her dream.
“I
understand. I know that was true.”
“I
remember when she first imagined it. We were living in East
Africa and one night
in a shabby cabin we rented at the foot of Mt. Kilamanjaro she
said what a
shame it was that there were not many decent friendly places
for budget
travelers. She said the world needed ‘ real places’ that would
blend into the
feeling of the country. How she hated tourists.”
“Yes,
she really did.”
“She
referred to tourists as those who were homesick the moment
they arrived in a
new place while travelers, authentic travelers, knew that they
might never
return and were searching for a new and true meaning of the
word home.”
“Yes, she
often said that.”
The talk
continued in this way, almost all
Jonathan’s words celebrating Josephine’s spirit. The past came
into it more and
more as he spoke: their first meeting in Morocco, the journey
to India
afterwards, their time in Goa when there were only fifteen
European travelers
on all the beaches. People were spoken of, names not known to
Sandra; periods
of time were spoken of --the year the two had worked in
Australia, the
deportation after their crusading for aborigines and their
rights. Jonathan
went on speaking of their help in building a foreign community
in Bali, how you
wouldn’t recognize the island these days, so fashionable and
touristy it had
become; how later they had lived in Nepal; how Josephine had
felt the draw of
the religious life at that time while he had felt the receding
of it; how they
had parted ways then.
“Yes,
yes,” Sandra repeated, adding. “ Yes, you went through much
together.”
“Wherever
we went,” he continued. “People we knew from the past always
found us. There
was a circle and we were among the original group.”
“Yes,
she told me so many stories,” Sandra said again. “Well we were
survivors. We
always had money. We threw amazing parties.”
“I
know about your parties.”
“All
over Asia, all over the world, in fact.”
“What
time is it getting to be, do you think?" Sandra asked. “People
are
probably still talking about those gatherings. The one
in Kashmir
lasted a week. The best
gatherings, ours. We were ‘ J and J’. That’s what we were
called.”
Suddenly the cup of tea Sandra had in
her hand fell crashing to the floor. Silence intruded. Then
Sandra, her face
tight and shaking and her eyes fluttering and moist with
tears, shouted
angrily, “ Stop it! Stop! Just stop it!” Jonathan pulled back
from the sound of
the shattered cup and cringed in shock at this woman’ s anger.
She couldn’t
contain herself and turning away towards the curtain behind
the desk she
grumbled, “ You are just like her with all that nostalgia. I
can’t believe the
two of you could go on and on like that! I despise those
endless, endless and
endless monologues.” She continued, livid, fuming under her
breath, “
Monologues. Indulgent, that’s what they are. If you need to
see where she’s
buried come here to see me tomorrow at noon. I’m too busy now.
Sorry, I can’t
now.” She quickly disappeared in a flurry of agitation behind
the curtain.
Jonathan
moved away from the office towards the courtyard. He suddenly
felt a sense of
desolation. My God, the woman had silenced him, he thought,
diminished him like
a scolded child. He felt shut out like a helpless child. He
walked hesitantly
through the courtyard and down the riverside promenade.
Sandra’s dismissal left
him overcome with the pain of being excluded. And from
Josephine’s world as well,
he was censored from her life’s circle that had been Laos and
the guesthouse.
In fact the woman had spoken unkindly about the two of them,
Josephine being
only a memory, now somewhat blemished. He disliked her sudden
abruptness. He
disliked intensely her choice of words: “despise” and the way
she mumbled “
indulgent” under her breath. It made him recoil. It was unfair
the way Sandra
had allowed him to talk so long and passionately about
Josephine and then
abruptly turning on him, in a way turning on the two of them,
and reducing all
his heartfelt words to the class disdainfully called a “
monologue”. He was
fretful and beside himself like a child. At the same time he
was a man, strong
and experienced in the world and infuriated with his own
defenselessness. He
felt hateful towards Sandra Fullmore but at the same time he
knew the hatred
was foolish. After all, this woman had been such a friend, a
savior to
Josephine in a desperate time.
He
walked over the broken paved path past several former French
colonial homes
followed by four of Vientiane’s major temples. Imperialism and
Buddhism, he
thought, next to each other. These two contradictory movements
could represent
a choice of how one might react to the insult he was feeling.
It was comforting
to take his pain into the mental sphere. The imperialist in
him was incensed
and wanted to overcome and subdue his adversary while the
Buddhist impulse was
to forgive Sandra. Concepts did not, however, come to his
rescue. It was no use
hoping to think his hurt away; it was in the end a completely
emotional matter.
Thinking might be clearer at a later time. At this moment he
needed to calm his
nerves. A quick drink in a bar had worked in the past to
change his mood. It
was the Western oriented area of town so he should have little
trouble finding
one. There was a French bakery followed by a few travel
agencies and behind
them was the Shangri- La Lounge.
He fumbled in the darkness towards the Lao woman
serving the drinks. She
seated him at a table. Something clinked against something
else; two, three,
possibly more bottles, which he pushed aside awaiting the beer
he had ordered.
A light, dry cough nearby startled him. That sound was
followed by a voice, an
American accent, and another voice, distinctly English,
answering out of the
darkness. How strange and eerie it was to be sitting in the
dark, really close
to men you couldn’t see, whose voices penetrated the dark yet
whose forms were
little more than the outline in the shadows. The dominant
voice belonged to the
American and he spoke in that intoxicated and bemused way so
familiar to
Jonathan, “I felt the same way when I first came out East
thirteen years ago.
What dreams I had then. I wanted to learn the languages and
read the holy books
in the original, probe into the native psyche, you know, to be
a missionary of
humanity. Everyone who comes East dreams the same dream. Then
the malaise sets
in. Imperceptibly your energy is drained in the tropical
hothouse. Fever zaps
you no matter how much quinine you swallow. It gets right into
your bones; you
become slack and drowsy, soft and indifferent.” The English
man had spoken only
a few words and listened in the darkened bar room to the
American. A match
flared up, for a second, light flickered over a limited area.
Jonathan could
see the American’s face as he lit a cigarette. He was an older
man, gaunt and
pale and before any details could be taken in clearly darkness
returned to
swallow up the fleetingly illumined features. After this brief
pause the
American went on again talking. Jonathan found the darkness
and the man’s
incessant talk oppressive. He would have liked to get up and
leave, but knowing
that his presence had been noticed, it would appear too abrupt
and precipitate.
He felt stuck in the situation and he grew increasingly
annoyed with the man.
The word “monologue” floated into his mind and he realized
that it was the same
manner of talking that Sandra had just accused him. She had
gone as far as
judging Josephine of the same. How strange things had become.
Since Josephine’s
disappearance from his life there had been no one to turn to,
no other sentient
being who had actually known Josephine and could share with
him the fabric of
that memory. There was only Sandra.
Instinctively
he could feel the two men staring at him even in the darkness.
He sensed their
curiosity moving in his direction. It wasn’t long before the
American directed
his words at Jonathan and said,
“And you, my
friend, what brought you out
to the East?”
“The
lure of the exotic?” the Englishman asked teasingly. “Or was
it the mysterious
Light of Asia?”
“I don’t
see much light to be found here,”
Jonathan replied.
“Oh,
it’s another blackout,” the American added. "It happens all the time.
I do my best drinking in the
dark. No, really, what brings you to Vientiane. The opium, the
monastery?
What?”
“Neither,”
Jonathan grudgingly answered. “ It is a woman, a
memory really.
She’s dead now. My best
friend.”
“Sorry
to hear that. This country takes its toll,” the American
commiserated. “ You say
she died?”
“Over
a year ago. A sudden aneurysm I was told.”
“Then
who did you come here to see?”
“Her
business partner, owner of the Deep Horizons Guesthouse.”
“Who
does he mean?” inquired the Englishman turning around
in
his chair to face the American. "I thought I knew every bloody
person in this
town. Who’s he mean then?”
“He
means the Fullmore lady over at the Horizon. Sandra.”
“Oh
that one! At the Horizons,” the English man recalled.
“Business partner? Hell,
lovers you mean.”
“Well,
they were partners in the place,” the American added.
“So the other
lady, the pretty one, was
your friend who died.”
“Yes,”
Jonathan answered, startled, his world weakened, shrunk.
“Two
raging dykes, the two of them,” the English man continued.
“A couple of
love birds. It was no secret.
Your friend, her name?”
“Josephine,”
Jonathan replied. He was shocked. He wanted to leave. The
men’s words were so
abrasive that for one moment he felt their harshness as a kind
of epitaph for a
dead friendship and he wondered whether it would ever be the
same again, his
reverent memory of Josephine.
“
That’s right, Josephine,” the English one said. “ She was a
good sort. A decent
soul she was. The two of them, love birds at first. They took
to quarreling and
fought like hags from hell. That Sandra loved her. That’s the
truth.”
“Everyone
loved her,” the American added. “ Especially the
locals. When
she passed Sandra went into a
depression, a near coma and almost died herself. Anyway you
probably know all
that, I imagine. But one thing, my friend, it wasn't a sudden
death at all. It
was typhoid fever. Poor thing suffered. Nasty business, that
typhoid! It's the
most horrible death."
The heavy,
lumpish words “dykes” and
“typhoid” sank slowly down into his mind like a stone through
a quagmire.
Jonathan felt the dreadful images these words suggested sink
inside, feeling
their heaviness depress his heart. A silence crept into the
bar. He could see
only the outlines of the two men’s forms merging darkly into
the blackness and
the red glow of the cigarette in empty space. Nobody spoke and
now it was the
silence and not the words that had become oppressive, heavy
like the tropical
air. At last he could bear it no longer. He stood up in the
darkness and said
nervously but politely, "Good night" as he stumbled into a
table on
his way out of the Shangri-La.
Returning
to his room at the Bhodhi Hotel, Jonathan crawled into bed
under the mosquito
net. The day was overwhelming. It was long and shattered and
he felt its debris
crumbling emptily in his mind. He went to bed early,
desperately hugging his
pillow and knowing that he would wake up during the night,
sleepless and
perplexed by the day’s revelation. Usually when under such
anxiety he would
begin talking to himself, hoping to push through a dilemma by
articulating it,
but now, so overwhelmed, he was lost for words. Jonathan fell
into a torment of
profoundly disturbed sleep, full of muddled images. He saw the
figure of
Josephine floating through space and then falling into a dark
room where the
sighing sounds of carnal love could be heard. The room turned
into a bed on
which Josephine lay locked in a woman’s passionate embrace.
The image appeared
more tangible than any in his waking life. When he awoke he
recalled the dream
and saw its parallel to the myth of Tantalus, his reaching for
the tangible and
it evading him, even horrifying him and finally suspecting
that the tangible
itself were an illusion. Drifting towards sleep again he saw
hovering for a
moment, at the margin of consciousness, a ship in the mist he
felt to be his
soul sailing towards things far distant and not to be
realized. Just near the
meandering ship was a granite road, clear, quite direct but he
was destined to
take the sea road taken by the ships falling beyond a far
horizon.
It
had been a restless night and in the morning he timidly awoke
fearing his visit
to see Sandra. The prospect of being shown Josephine’s grave
overcame him with
an alarming sense of finality and beyond that to be shown that
place by her
lesbian lover, a woman who, it appeared, reviled his very
existence, made the
world look harsh and flat. The meeting must not be avoided
even if that woman
tried again to avoid him. He was no longer just dreaming and
searching; he was
following, now, at last, her advice, for he had come to this
far place. What
was before him, what he had taken this journey to find out, he
thought, must
ultimately be closer to the real and truthful. The morning
dragged on and he
was too fretful to wait any longer. Jonathan walked a street
of temples as he
thought how cut off and alone he felt. Everyone, the men in
the bar and Sandra
had known that which had eluded him, the secret that was no
secret in
Vientiane. Theirs was a better grasp of reality while he
alone, for so many
years, had seen only the fleeting image of his companion, the
fragment beyond
realization. Now it had become indispensable to him to have
Sandra face him; he
would not let the woman who had lived at the center of
Josephine’s life avoid
him again. It wasn’t quite noon but he couldn’t wait any
longer. He wanted to
confront her while his heart still throbbed with pain. The
hurt went deeper
than the staining of his beloved’s memory; it was the kind of
pain that carried
in it the seed of truth that in an obscure way gave his life
vitality. Jonathan
was intent on knowing more. Something in him was changing. No
longer by some
momentary quiver of the dreaming eyelid, would he choose
illusion only to find
reality banished. In a dark bar room two strangers had
bewildered him with the
truth. The actual had swept over him with its surface phantoms
displacing his
mirage and his once untainted memory of Josephine was now only
its ghost
blowing in the wind.
It
seemed an unthinkably long way to Deep Horizons. He was
hurrying because of his
heart’s need for an answer, because of chance words heard in a
bar that
encompassed him in darkness, because of a weariness of
imaginary speakers and
the endless dialogues of self with self. Now as the road
curved closer to the
guesthouse, there appeared temples one after another. The
intricate facades
topped by slanting roofs ended in curled flames. Jonathan knew
that these
symbolized an unfurled lotus bud suggesting the cooling effect
of Buddhism on
human passions. It was ironic, he thought, that he should
experience the summit
of his anger and striving in such a soft and serene country.
There was indeed
so much more to learn. He turned another corner and at last he
was in the
courtyard of the guesthouse.
Approaching
the office this time he did not find the young Lao girl behind
the desk.
Instead she was in the prayer room to the side lighting the
incense and placing
a bowl of fruit in front of the brass icons of deities. He
intended to be
patient, but he had made such a great effort to return after
what he now knew
about the two of them that he couldn’t allow himself to just
quietly wait.
After all it was he who was crossing over the gulf to her,
leaving his past
shriveled and void. He hesitated. He couldn’t bear waiting and
again he was
startled by his own voice, incensed and loud, shouting, “Miss
Fullmore, Sandra,
I am waiting to see you. Please don’t make me wait again. We
have an
appointment.”
There
was silence for a moment, as he stood motionless, waiting. The
Lao girl
frightened came trotting over to him and whispered, “Quiet
please, Madame
Sandra sick, not feel good.”
Jonathan
went behind the desk and pulled back the curtain. Sandra was
there in a small
room lying folded up on the floor. He nervously kneeled to
attend to her. She
was breathing regularly, her eyes wide open and as if
conscious, but there
seemed something missing in her look. Yes, she was confused,
and not all
together aware of her surroundings. He very much wanted not to
disturb her. But
there was another desire in him. And her being seemed to hold
him. His will was
paralyzed and left him standing there slack before her. She
shuddered for a
moment and turned around in her torn sari and looked at him
and not at all
unkindly said, “You are here. Did I have another spell? Was I
talking crazy?
I’m sorry that this has happened.”
He
felt strangely warm inside. “There’s nothing to regret,”
Jonathan said.
“But
I hated your coming here,” she said, trying to raise her head.
“
Please, Sandra stay lying still now.”
“ I
was afraid you would be kind. I didn’t want any kindness from
you. I wanted
to hurt you for bringing her
ghost back into my life. How I prayed you’d never come. And to
come now after
all this time, after the horror has ended. I was so jealous,
for years.”
“ I
know,” he said hoping to ease her. “ I understand.”
“ No,
you don’t. Really you don’t. I was jealous of the memory I
knew you had of
her. That pure and holy
memory. That part belonged to you, only to you. The end was
horrible. The
fevers and the sweating. She shrunk to half her size, a
delirious shrieking
dying thing cradled in my arms. She couldn’t swallow anything
after the first
two weeks. It was too late for help. There had been a typhoid
epidemic after
the monsoons that year. She had refused to take the medicine.
We had fought and
she wanted to spite me by taking only the local herbs. She
always wanted to
prove something. When she was in Africa with you she didn’t
take the quinine
and ‘we survived’ she said. ‘We survived on the faith that it
could never touch
us’ she said. Faith! I hated that idealism of yours, that
blind dreaming faith
in, in whatever it was—in the invisible or the ignorance of
common sense. The
‘intangible’ she called it. Listen to me. A monologue. Now I’m
doing it. I
think I am going crazy again. Do you think I’ll be crazy?”
She sat still, away from him, with her
face drooped aside, not ready to look into his. Her tears fell
very slowly.
There was complete silence. He too sat there on the floor
motionless and
silent. In the curious naked pain that pierced his thoughts he
looked again to
her for some kind of answer. The strange puzzlement of his
pain consumed his
heart as he watched Sandra alone with her muse. How could he,
consumed by a
grief so abstract compared to her concrete anguish, reach out
to her? What was
this weaving of illusion of his really good for? Who or what
did it serve? He
had built a monument of a memory, worshipped another without
ever understanding
his own divided heart. He sat amazed, bewildered and afraid,
but his eyes were
beginning to open into something of a deeper passion, an
ultimate horizon he
was beginning to sense.
A ghastly light
from the courtyard snuck
through the shutters into the room. Outside the sounds of
drums and gongs could
be heard; the afternoon temple ceremonies were in session. He
turned motioning
to get up to close the shutters when Sandra reached out and
grabbing his arm
said, “ No, don’t leave me. Please, God, don’t leave me.”
Jonathan, trembling
with delight at her sudden touch and at the tenderness of her
voice, put his
hands softly on her forehead and scarcely touching it with his
fingers said, “
There’s no fever. That’s good. Just rest, please. Try to relax
and rest.”
“ Rest?
I have what’s left of my life to rest in. The two of us need
to talk. I know
that now."
His
heart flared with warmth at hearing this. Just when he was
hoping for it she
had reached out to him of her own accord. Perhaps her thoughts
were keeping
pace with his. Maybe she had felt the fervent wish that was in
him, and then
the yielding turn of mood had come upon her. He kneeled wiping
the perspiration
from her forehead. Then, stroking her hair with his other
hand, he said softly,
“Sandra, what can I do for you?” She did not answer nor yield
fully to his
words.
“Tell
me what it is. Do you want to say something? Do I know?”
She did not
answer at once. Then she said
in a tearful outburst,
“O,
I am thinking about faith. Do you know what it means to live
here in this
country with faith and its ceremonies all around you everyday
and not to have
any of your own? You become as a shadow. Doubt hides and
separates you. When
she died, my arms ached from holding her suffering body. I was
ashamed to feel
the relief her death brought, and I cried and prayed for her
return. I spent
days in the holiest of temples, hoping that like the Buddha’s
body whose parts
it was believed could be reassembled so I could worship
Josephine’s memory back
into a whole. They call it dhatu, the parts believed to be
buried in these
shrines, a hair, a nail or piece of bone. You’ll think me mad
but I had saved
those parts from her corpse and placed them at the foot of the
altars and
bronze statues. On my hands and knees I held fragments from
her dead body at
the altars and before all the deities prayed that she would be
restored to me.
I didn’t eat or sleep. I waited for something to happen to
transform me, I
suppose. Nothing came and I felt abandoned and excluded from
God’s grace. I
felt shut out from faith. There was no mercy when the spirit I
had begun to
imagine was part of me suddenly disappeared and those parts of
her body along
with it. Imagine my humiliation one morning watching a mangy
dog chewing at her
bone. And you were thousands of miles away! Comfortably
sanctifying her image.
I took her blows, her rage against death. Her poor body near
the end was
doubled back and twisted. What was I to do? She was wild and
ravaged. What was
I to do? I couldn’t watch it any longer. Do not judge, do you
hear me? I was
alone with that agony for weeks. It was an act of kindness.
There was nothing
to relieve it. No morphine. She couldn’t swallow so opium was
useless. It was
my last loving act. O, how I loved her. I put my hands to her
throat. Gently,
just the slightest pressure and she was gone. My sweet lover’s
life ended. And
mine too, I prayed. I felt her dead spirit calling me. I
wanted so to be with
her. I was delirious. I sunk a broken bottle into my arm and
twisted it
desperately, but I was not allowed to leave this world. I woke
up in the
hospital. I lost so much blood but not my life. I was in a
coma. The ceremony
waited for me to recover. How I hated those days of prayer and
the endless
screams of worship and those wretched priests pouring oils and
powders over her
corpse. I’ve been only once to her grave sight, the sacred
place the people
made for her. Only once since her death. The sight only
deepens my emptiness.”
She turned her face towards him, looking
at him strangely. Then suddenly raising herself to her knees
she shook, growing
angry again.
“Don’t look at
me that way. It is not
guilt keeping me from that
grave.
Don’t look at me accusingly.” She was in a rage again
and screamed,
“Where were you?” She lunged
toward him and struck out at him. “She died by my hand, but it
was an act of
mercy.” Tears filled her eyes. She struck out at his face, but
Jonathan caught
her hands. She looked deeper into his eyes and easing her
fury, fell gently and
desperately into Jonathan’s arms. “Help me! For God’s sakes,
help me. Stay with
me if you can. I’m losing my mind. Stay, please, Jonathan.
Stay.” He felt so
warm and helpful holding her tightly in the darkening room. He
recognized as
his own her grief and his heart merged in another’s. He felt a
part of
something vast. In the vision of some omniscient eye he was
essential and needed,
engraved not so much on memory’s spinning disc as alive in the
vital present.
He felt all barriers dissolving, his friendship like the deep
calling the deep.
He felt the tangible joy of his heart as the other heart.
Every soul was the
other soul. Jonathan held her hand and leaning on his elbow,
looked for a few
moments at her distressed face and on her tearful cheek and
her quivering
mouth, listening to the sobbing and her deep-drawn breath.
Then he knew that it
was meant for him to take care of her now and to accompany her
when the time
came back to Canada.
The
morning was the kind often experienced in the East. A dull,
yellow light pleads
to a pitiless sun to delay a short time its usual intensity.
The sky broods
over the village and the river. This day the tantalizing
breath of rain was in
the air. The night fires were still burning their embers in
the murky air, and
along the river the long-tail boats glided ghostlike past the
temple stupas
drooping against the heavy sky. Comforting her through the
jagged edges of the
night, Jonathan felt a sustained wave of tender elation ease
from his heart and
glide in a warm stream through his body. He felt the tender
glow of approval
sparked by the steady fire of service. He longed to quiet the
sorrow in her strange
moods. During the long night he continued pressing cool
compresses to her
sometimes-fevered brow, brewing hot soup or tea, which she
allowed him to feed
her. One moment when her fever was high, he had moistened her
forehead gently
with his lips and at one time their faces so near one another,
he softly
pressed his mouth to hers. She may in her past have recoiled
as she did not
enjoy a man’s intimate touch, but the gesture had no carnal
intention in it. It
was not that kind of kiss.
In
the following months there were many things to be completed. A
Dutchman bought
the guesthouse and bungalows at a decent price. There was one
condition Sandra
insisted upon and that was that her Lao servants remain
employed and at their
same salary. Her possessions were sold cheaply at an auction
attended by
Europeans. The proceeds went to her loyal local people for the
maintenance of
Josephine’s gravesite. Jonathan visited the grave only once
and did not even
mention it to Sandra. His own identity was dissolving into the
landscape, as he
stayed long enough to feel part of the season’s change into
the monsoon. He
became at peace with the lazy and sultry streets and the
brooding muddy river.
Along the banks of the river stood hazily the golden spires
and slanted roofs
of the temples. Jonathan understood the frailty of the wall’s
painted images.
It was in the nature of things for them to fade, peel and
tarnish in the humid
Mekong air.
WE
DON'T NEED NO STINKING BADGES
Once on a Jewish holiday when most kids were in school, my
brother and I were
allowed to go to the movies. We waited for my father to
drive us to the Apollo
Theater where we would present our mother's hand-written
letter to the ticket
booth lady. It read: "Please permit my two sons to today's
matinee
(September 24) as they are excused from school for a
Jewish holiday." She
signed it and put it in an envelope and handed it to
Harold, who was two years
older than I. We were excited as our father's car pulled
up and we beheld the
radiant marquee: Humphrey Bogart double feature "Treasure
of the Sierra
Madre" and "Key Largo." After the second feature we were
to go
immediately to the front of the theater under the marquee,
where father would be
waiting. As our father walked us, holding our hands, to
the ticket booth, we
felt a nervous exhilaration, anticipating entering the
empire of the dark.
Our father said, "Always stand up for what's right. It's
your holiday so
don't let these gentiles
try to get one over on you. You understand?"
Standing outside the ticket booth, Harold handed the lady
mother's letter and
bought two child's tickets for sixty cents each. We looked
towards father's car
and watched Dad light his cigar and drive away.
We entered the slanting sunlight entranceway and walked
past the red velvet rope
on its silver post into the artificial glow of the red
lobby with its thick rug
and glass-covered candy counter. The Apollo's light turned
from a mysterious
dusk of lobby into a sudden decisive darkening where the
blue folds of the
curtain, slowly parting, revealed the swift shining of a
screen. The seats were
mostly empty which made our presence in the dark both
conspicuous and very
exciting. A few adults in the back row turned around in
their seats and looked
quizzically at Harold and me. An old man walked down the
sloping aisle and chose
our row. He slipped past six chair-arms and pulled down a
faded velvet seat,
close to us. I leaned back impatiently, waiting for
simulated nightfall,
whispers of ushers, the beam of flashlight in the darkened
aisle. The old man
made a brief glance in our direction and then returned his
eyes to the screen. A
moment later he turned again and tilting his head towards
Harold, asked,
"Shouldn't you boys be in school now?" The man's voice
startled us and
we hesitated while looking at one another in a puzzled
way, waiting to see who
would answer the question. Harold, older and more
responsible, timidly replied,
"It's a holiday today."
"What holiday is it today?"
"It's a Jewish holiday," Harold cautiously replied,
pressing the back
of his head against the fuzzy velvet seat.
"Are you two boys Jewish then?"
As the question was asked the lights went out totally and
on the luminous screen
the bright letters of Coming Attractions flickered. The
letters flashed over the
black and white images dancing on the screen. The old
man's voice intruded upon
a world bathed in the screen's glow. "What's the name of
this holiday for
the Jews?" I turned towards the man two seats away and saw
his large hard
black shoes caught in the cone of the flashlight beam in
the darkened aisle.
Harold looked at me and turned towards the man and
whispered, "I don't
remember its name. It's a high holiday. I forgot the
name."
"You're Jewish and you forgot the name of your own
holiday?"
"It begins with an R, but I forget."
Even in the dark I could almost see my brother blushing.
We both felt a sense of
awkwardness that was often followed by shame. We longed to
escape this
discomfort by submitting to the alluring powers of the
dark.
Our dad should have made us remember the name of the
holiday was the first
thought that came to me. Our parents did not know much
about the religion itself
and never went to synagogue, but we were handed down a set
of rules on how to
stand up and be proud for being "what we were." Dad had
modeled that
message on a few occasions. Once we had been dropped off
at the St. Anthony
Public Swimming Pool. We undressed in the locker room and
rushed to the chlorine
depths of the outdoor pool. Maybe some of our clothes and
things never made it
into our metal cubicles that had no locks. When my brother
Harold and I went to
the front of the building upon leaving, we saw Dad
frowning at his watch. His
look of stern authority turned to anger when he realized
we had left something
important behind. It appeared we had lost the silver
necklaces that Jewish
parents bought for their kids. They were called mezuzahs
and were embroidered
with the Star of David. They had been stolen our father
concluded and he would
confront the gentile management of the pool to "get to the
bottom of
this." Dad raised his voice to the janitor, demanding to
see the manager.
"Those are sacred things and expensive," he shouted, "this
is a
public pool. Don't think we Jews are fools. We want that
jewelry given
back." He ranted and raved while Harold and I stood
embarrassed against the
corridor wall. Our father's face was flush with defiant
anger. His rage
continued even after the janitor came out of the office
with our mezuzahs and
explained that we had left them sitting out on the locker
room bench. The
necklaces had been sitting safely in the lost and found
box in the office. Our
Dad grabbed our hands and walked out briskly, slamming the
front door. His face
remained red on the drive home and when he told Mom the
story he shouted wild
recriminations at St. Anthony's. "See how they try to
insult us."
Later he claimed: "I had to force the truth out of them."
I had fallen into a stupor, for a shuffling sound startled
me. The old man
stepped out of his seat and on to the upward sloping
aisle. I felt relieved by
the leaving of the man and slipped back into the
comforting darkness, filled
with the smell of the tattered red seat cushions, popcorn
and soda-stained
floor. The curtain fluttered and closed momentarily and
then reopened, signaling
the end of the previews and the beginning of the main
feature. Humphrey Bogart
was walking down a street in Mexico after the titles were
shown. I leaned back
contentedly and slouched down resting my head against the
seat. Harold turned to
me and said, "I'm glad he's gone. Hey, don't put your head
on the seat. You
know what Dad said. It's a good way to get an infection,
ringworm or
something."
"Shh, Harold. Watch the movie." I felt the urge to look
behind me to
see where the old man had gone. I was nervous and
restrained turning around as
if feeling I had been guilty of something. The theatre was
empty in the rows
ahead of us. The nearly deserted rows of seats deepened a
growing sense of a
forbidden experience that enveloped us. The feeling of
being absorbed in a dark
movie house while the majority, the gentiles, were in
school, disclosed a slight
danger in this clandestine violation of the usual. It was
far too early to think
about my father waiting for us outside the theatre yet I
pictured him pacing
back and forth, smoking his cigar and looking at his
watch.
Down the sloping aisle came the tread of feet and I could
see the stiff shoes
approaching,
lit up by the single bulb at the end of our aisle. In that
uncanny light I could
see the outline of a suited man developing. The figure
stopped at our aisle and
leaned over the first seats and looked into our faces. A
deep voice emerged
which at first was difficult to hear separate from the
voices on the screen. The
man walked close to our chairs and his face was encircled
by the aura of the
throbbing glow of screen light as he bent over near us.
"I'm the manager.
Do you boys want to come with me?" I nervously looked at
Harold whose face
was invisible in the obscuring light from the dim image of
Bogart and Tim Holt
in the night gloom of a grungy flophouse. "Come on boys to
my office,"
the voice continued. "We need to talk." I knew some
reproach was about
to happen, but I met it with an outward calm. Harold rose
from his seat
stealthily and budged me to follow. Seats brushed against
my knees, a coin
clinked but I didn't bother to pick it up. My foot kicked
a popcorn box and a
seat shot up with a thump. The aisle sloped down more
sharply than I had
remembered. I followed behind Harold and the tall man
whose shoes shimmered in
the light bulb blush of each row of seats. As I passed the
arms of seats I felt
a pulling at my calves, as if I were being pushed forward
against my will.
Wouldn't we be allowed to finish watching the movie?
Looking ahead and up at
Harold following behind the elevated head of the manager,
a heaviness came over
me. I could scarcely drag my feet. Outside after a while,
my father would be
waiting under the marquis with his arms folded, the stump
of his cigar clutched
in thick fingers. The screen was fading behind us and the
music grew dim. Worry
overshadowed the desire to watch the movie that I had
waited years to see. I
felt that something was slipping away, but my thoughts
were murky and flickered
out of reach.
At the top of the aisle I paused, cringing with
disappointment toward the glint
of sun peering through the front entrance door. The
manager led us past the red
velvet rope on its silver post. Suddenly we were back in
the well-lit lobby with
its red rug and glittering candy counter. The manager who
we now saw was a
gray-haired man in a suit, motioned for us to sit down in
the armchairs just
outside the door with the sign reading OFFICE. "Are you
boys playing
hooky?" the man asked leaning over our chairs. "What's
this about some
Jewish holiday? What school do you go to? Let's see the
note you showed at the
ticket booth." The manager glanced quizzically at the note
that Harold took
out of the envelope. The man shook his head skeptically
and focusing on Harold
said, "And you don't even know the name of the holiday?
We'll have to look
into this. Just sit here for awhile as I straighten this
out."
"Can I go over and get a drink of water?" I asked. I went
over to the
water fountain and took a long swallow. At the darkening
end of the corridor I
saw a sign that said REST ROOMS, with a blue arrow
pointing down. I was walking
in that direction when I heard someone shouting at me. It
was the manager of the
theater. He walked towards me now accompanied by an usher.
"Where are you
going? To the rest room? The usher here will go with you.
Come back soon and sit
over there by the other one, your brother. He said your
father's coming for you.
We're calling your school and then we'll wait for your
father to come and get
you."
In the men's room the usher, an older teenager in uniform,
stood, shuffling his
flashlight from hand to hand as I slipped into the stall
and listened to the
usher's black shoes pacing the floor. I opened the door of
the stall and walked
up the stairs while the usher followed close behind. At
the top of the stairs
was the corridor, now empty except for Harold sitting in
the armchair outside
the office. I tiptoed towards my brother whose face had a
discomfited expression
in the dim light cast from the candy counter lit by a
single bulb. The theater
appeared to be still, almost deserted. I sat in the chair
next to Harold and
heard the manager fingering papers in the office. Ahead of
me I could see the
row of closed doors leading to the entranceway. Under the
doors I could see an
unsettling line of sunlight. I was anxious and composed,
worried and calm.
After nodding off for some time, I suddenly saw our father
coming through the
entrance door, bursting through the glare of sunlight and
striding swiftly up
the carpeted slope. As he approached nearer I could see
the stub of cigar poking
through his fingers. His gruff and decisive
gait was briefly interrupted by the teenage usher who said
something to father
while pointing to a "No Smoking" sign. Father reached over
the red
velvet rope and pressed his cigar into one of those tall
ashtrays with white
sand. Father's face was angry as he shouted at Harold and
me. "Why didn't
you kids wait for me outside like I told you? When I tell
you something I mean
it. What am I talking to, the wall?" The manager, hearing
the loud voice,
came out of his office and began speaking to my father. I
was so nervous that I
couldn't hear a word spoken. I only saw my father's hands
moving and the manager
pacing in his large black shoes on the carpet. Then Dad
came closer to us to
deliver his admonishment. "Didn't you tell him that it was
Rosh Hashanah
today? It's New Year. You had a note. No school. Didn't
you tell him? Look at
you. They've got you looking like prisoners here. What is
this, Auschwitz?"
Father continued his rage, raising his voice and flapping
his arms. After
speaking a few muffled words, the manager went back into
his office. Father
grabbed our hands and pulled us roughly towards the exit.
The young usher
followed us furtively past the candy counter and along the
red velvet ropes.
Nearing the entranceway, he turned abruptly around and
turned sternly, facing
the cautious usher and shouted, "Where are their scarves.
These boys came
in here with scarves, expensive ones. Where are they? Go
look. Don't you people
have a damn lost and found. Go look!" The pale usher was
stunned and winced
as he turned sheepishly around and walked up the incline
and into the manager's
office.
Harold and I looked at each other in astonishment. What
was father thinking? A
flush of blood snuck up and reddened my face. Harold
looked puzzled and
uncomfortable. We could hear the voices of the manager and
the usher
grumbling in the office. I didn't know what to do. I did
not move and remained
silent. Something should be said but I felt my will
slipping away. The manager
emerged from the office followed guiltily by the young
usher. The two walked
past the red velvet rope on the silver post and the
manager lifted up the flap
that led to the rear of the candy counter. The manager
shuffled around searching
behind the popcorn machine
while the usher pointed the flashlight on the floor and
shone it upon the glossy
candy wrappers and stains of sticky butter. The two of
them could barely squeeze
in the space behind the high popcorn machine where the
candy lady was seated.
The manager clumsily shook the yellow glass that turned
the popcorn
butter-yellow. He turned to the usher and raised his voice
grumbling some
irritable words. The blood again surged to my head,
trickling down to a thumping
in my face. I reached for my father's jacket sleeve and
gave it a tug.
"Dad," I said.
Father whispered, "Shhh", and gripped my hand and gave it
a sharp
squeeze.
Some complaining words flared up between the manager and
the candy lady. He then
ordered the women to stand outside the counter. The
manager and usher continued
their search, tossing around boxes and sweeping out debris
from under the
counter. A strange feeling crept over me. Something
pleasant, a secretive
enjoyment at watching their fumbling search, slipped into
my awareness. Harold
reached behind father's back and nudged me. I didn't
respond and stood still and
silent. Again I was prodded. I didn't move. "Dad," Harold
blurted out.
"There are no scarves, dad. We didn't bring our scarves."
I could feel
Father's body tighten up and he looked down at Harold and
in a voice, surprising
in its calm and warmth, quietly said, "That's for us to
know. Not them. You
understand?" Again father squeezed my hand, affectionately
this time, and
smiled. The manager staggered out from behind the candy
counter and uttered some
cantankerous sounds to the usher before disappearing into
the office.
That subtle sensation of pleasure returned for a moment.
The teenage usher
awkwardly shuffled down the sloping carpet towards us. His
words were low and
muffled: "The manager says that if we find the scarves we
will let you
know. We have your telephone number."
"And who gave you that?" Father asked angrily.
"They gave it to Mr. Williams, the manager, I guess," said
the usher
cautiously. He looked not at my father, but away with
embarrassment. "We'll
call you he said and you can come pick them up."
"Pick them up?" father barked. "I'm a hard working man,
not like
him. Do you people think I have time to leave my job to
come down here?"
The usher glanced away and nervously replied, "Then write
down your address
and we'll mail them to you."
"Address," father yelled. "We don't need to give you no
damn
address. No lousy address. Tell your Mr. Williams that you
can't play us for
fools. Come on, kids, let's go. Let's get out of here.
Mom's waiting. We don't
need the aggravation."
Grabbing our hands and pulling us along, father marched us
to the crimson glow
of the exit sign. In the car Father paused to light up a
cigar.
"When we get home, tell Mom how I told off those goyim. I
grew up with that
kind in a tough neighborhood. My father wouldn't let me
hide from them in the
house. I had to go out and fight
or I wouldn't be allowed home, not even for dinner. I have
half a mind to go
back there and get my money back."
"Don't Dad," Harold pleaded. "We saw the movies! We got
our
money's worth." I looked at my brother in amazement.
Harold cast a harsh
glance at me and shook his head, urging that I cooperate
in silence.
"We'll as long as you stood up for yourselves," father
conceded.
"We did. They couldn't kick us out on a holiday," I
answered quivering
with honor.
"Good then. That's a good movie, that Bogart one about
gold. What is it
that bandit says, the Mexican guy with gold teeth? Funny!
What the hell is it he
says? What was it, Harold?"
"I went to the bathroom in the middle of it."
"What was it?" father asked me.
"He doesn't remember," Harold hastily answered. "He
doesn't
remember names or anything."
The car sped home past Jefferson Street and up the hill to
Rosewood, the Jewish
neighborhood.
THE
SHOES OF SAINT GREGORY
We admired the saints, snuck into the church schoolyard
and hid while our
friends went into the confession boxes, and we led them
later to the woods of
Fairmount Park that were considered forbidden territory by
the nuns.
Anna-Marie Kelly let me carve her initials into a tree.
She wouldn't allow the
heart and arrow to be drawn. My younger brother wanted to
wrestle with Loretta
Hines who was a tomboy and stood a foot taller than him.
He was only eleven and
crazy about girls. I was two years older than Robbie, and
I was wild with desire
for Anna-Marie. We followed the girls to church often and
usually waited for
them at Snyder's Drug and Soda Fountain on their way back.
We never dared enter
the church itself although we had more than once snuck a
peek inside. We were
the Jewish kids in a neighborhood of Catholics.
Anna-Marie made it very clear that she would not "go all
the way" with
a boy. Robbie and I didn't really know what that meant.
The gentile boys said
they knew, but we didn't believe them. I was crazy that
summer to find out.
Davey Ryan had a crush on Karen Farmer, but she was a
reverent Catholic girl and
nobody could get to first base with her. Karen was serious
about her upcoming
confirmation, and she was anxious about choosing the name
of a patron saint.
Butchy Mueller elected Anna-Marie his "patron saint of
pussy." We
hated that word and Robbie told Butchie never to talk that
way around the girls.
Robbie secretly told me later that he had offered
Anna-Marie his entire
collection of Phillies cards and ten spider man comic
books for a peek at Anna
Marie's breasts. She refused. Anna Marie without a doubt
had the biggest tits in
all of West Philadelphia. It was in the same conversation
that Robbie told me
how much he wanted to convert to being a Catholic. Being
Jewish, he said, was
boring. He loved the look of churches "with the altars and
statues and all
those stained-glass windows." The gentile guys get all the
"nookie",
he insisted. I tried to explain that conversion wasn't
that easy. Although I
didn't really know much about it, I told my younger
brother that Judaism was a
good religion and much older than Christianity. "They're
different from us,
Robbie. They don't like us. The nuns tell them that we
killed Christ. They don't
really want us. Someday maybe you'll find out."
Butchy Mueller's mom thought it would be all right for
Robbie to go with the
other kids to the St. Gregory Church Shoe Sale. Robbie
followed the others down
the dark carpeted aisle past the stained glass windows
portraying the Stations
of the Cross and through the corridor of statues. It led
to the stone staircase
that spiraled up to the social hall where the donated
shoes were on sale to the
public for less than half price. In the entrance to the
hall stood a statue of
the Virgin Mary. One of the Patton kids said, "She's the
reason you can't
get into Karen's pants. She's in love with the virgin."
Mike Casey laughed,
saying. "Two years now that I'm no virgin. What about you
guys?" No
one answered.
Butchy Mueller bowed slightly and said good evening to
Sister Margaret. Robbie
knew that name. The girls often talked about the nuns.
Sister Margaret was the
strict one who used the stick as punishment. He knew about
Sister Alice who
stuttered and Sister Elizabeth who gave hours of Latin for
homework. He
recognized Father Anthony. He was a stern priest but he
had a sense of humor,
Johnnie Grady said. Johnnie had been an altar boy studying
with Fathers Anthony
and O'Rourke. Robbie saw the priests talking to Sister
Margaret. Among the shoes
Robbie found the perfect ones, a pair of seven and a half
Buster Brown's. When
he took the pair over to the cashier, Sister Cecelia, she
told Robbie to wait a
minute. When Robbie told me what happened he said it was
Sister Margaret who
took the shoes away from him. He said it was Father
Anthony who came over to him
from across the hall and told him that the shoes were not
for sale. When Robbie
questioned the priest, it was the other one, the tall
priest, Father O'Rourke,
who answered, "This sale is for St. Gregory's
parishioners, not for Jews.
We're sorry, son, but who told you that you could come
here?" Robbie cried
when he told me, and in time he became interested in girls
from another
neighborhood, girls "more his kind." It was the summer
that Robbie
learned the difference. It was the summer he found out.
DISAPPEARANCE
Lately, I can't seem to complete my feelings. When I
experience intense emotions
I begin to tremble and soon after I disappear. I thought
it might have something
to do with aging, but when I look around at my friends who
are also climbing up
in their thirties, I don't see this strange thing
happening to them. I wonder if
others would understand if I told them that strong
passions like desire and
anger and shame utterly transform my body. My hands, legs,
every part of me
fades; my entire being dissolves and I enter invisibility.
It's difficult to
know exactly when this occurrence first began, because I
have always felt a
penchant for invisible states. For example, I am talking
to someone and what I
say is ignored, or my words are used as an
initiation to another's
monologue. As a child I was usually passed over when
choosing sides in
games, waiting to be served in a store and always the last
raised hand in the
class to be called upon. For all of my life, all that I
can remember, there's
been this feeling of being unnoticed, but now that
tendency is turning into
fact. I now completely fade away in front of people.
Just last week I'm shopping at Walgreen's when I say to
myself, "Oh my God,
it's her." I'm looking at Rebecca, an old girlfriend I
haven't seen in ten
years.
"Adam," she says, "how are you? I can't believe it's you!"
I'm very nervous as she walks towards me. I'm amazed how
good she looks. That
beautiful black hair, just a little gray, and those arched
eyebrows. How
gracefully she's aged! I don't know what to say to her
after all the years. As
usual, I want to hide. I don't remember her arms being so
thin as they stretch
to fold around me in an embrace. Her body is half the
width of mine. I am struck
by her slender elegance. We begin to reminisce, talking of
younger days and
friends now gone from our lives. There still exists that
old candor, a warm
openness between us. I begin to feel that old attraction
for her now returning.
She smiles and laughs and then whispers, "Did you ever
resolve that problem
you were having?" I am bewildered. My mind is blank. She
cups her hand
around my ear and again whispers, "You know, that problem.
Your impotence.
See , you've forgotten. I knew it was just temporary, just
a phase you were
going through. I told you not to worry, you silly." I
begin to blush with
embarrassment. Soon I can't speak and a sense of nervous
shyness grows fully
into shame. "Men become so worried, preoccupied," she
continues, but
her words are faint and distant. It's beginning to happen.
Again I see my hands
fading before me. I can feel my legs going numb,
dissolving in air. Still she
speaks, her voice dwindling. She continues,
"I don't have that problem with men. I'm into women now."
Then something happens that I don't know if I can explain.
I'll try, but I
confess that it's so damn mysterious. Whatever is
happening at the time of
disappearing is gone, and whomever I'm talking to vanishes
also. I remember the
whole painful incident, but I don't know if I am
remembered. You see, my
witnesses-they're gone as well. A dizziness overtakes me,
and I float away into
a moment of peace. It's sublime, this brief interval. In
the next moment I am
entirely somewhere else, in a new situation, another
involvement. And this other
place holds me in a drama, even more painfully emotional
than the last. It's as
though I am punished for disappearing from a present
moment by being hurled into
the next. What I couldn't endure in the present becomes a
memory of the past I
am forced to relive in all its agony.
These strange episodes of disappearing and reappearing
force themselves upon me.
Always and quite suddenly I am jolted back into what
normal people call the
present. There the facts of a current life come back to me
and I am surprised,
dumbfounded at the shock of who I am supposed to be-I mean
whom others believe
me to be. This same day I met Rebecca at the drugstore, a
woman behind the
counter
called me "Mr. Majors" Wrapping up some skin oil and
talcum
powder which I don't remember buying, she asked, "Today
could be the day,
right?" It's always easiest to just say yes in those
situations. Can you
imagine my embarrassment when the clerk at the checkout
counter smiled and asked
me, "How's the wife." I said "fine" but it took me the
better part of a minute to recall that I had one. Yes, I
had married Janet
Belasco five years ago and we lived uptown somewhere in
the nineties. The
address was on my drivers license which I never made use
of for obvious reasons.
The cashier
looked at me baffled when I didn't fully respond to her
question and simply
said, "That will be eight dollars and sixty-five cents." I
searched my
pockets and pulled out some bills and change and counted
them on the glass case
near the register. I must have counted very slowly because
the cashier looked at
me quizzically and said, "Mr. Majors, you're giving me too
much. You're
just nervous today. It's understandable.
Just a little absent-minded. You know, 'the absent-minded
professor'"
Professor? She was right. My God, I was a teacher of
English to foreign students
and I had intended to go to the office on Madison Avenue
to pick up my paycheck.
Money was something I had wanted to ignore my entire life.
Money surrounds
you in this life as the earth does in death. It makes the
world go around but in
the wrong direction. Its very consideration is a burden.
Who is free? No one is
free. Everyone is under pressure. It's the weight we
carry. This thought
reminded me of a reprimand that came over the telephone.
It must have been a
recent complaint. Otherwise, I don't think I would have
remembered it. A
supervisor called saying that there were reports of my
blanking out while
teaching class. So it now happened in class. The episodes
were spreading now
into all corners and aspects of my existence. More
pressure would surround me if
I lost my job. At the end of the conversation Mr Brooks
said something
empathetic, in fact, strangely forgiving. "I understand
the pressure you're
under at this time," he said. "Must be hard keeping your
mind on your
work. It's normal. Everything will come out all right. It
always does."
Again, I had to surrender to the vagueness of what was
being told me. The idea
of being recognized as a "space case" was, in its
clearness, a relief.
Instead of saddening me, it had the opposite effect. It
put me in a pleasant
mood. The notion that the pressure and affliction that all
of us were under was
noticed made me feel lighter and clear-sighted. It was
extraordinary how relaxed
I became. My eyes were all at once open to what was around
me. I saw with
enjoyment how the druggist and the woman who wrapped my
purchases and the
cashier were smiling and flirting, how their faces
suddenly glowed.
And on the streets in the snowy afternoon, also, it was
curious how much I
acknowledged and what joy it gave me simply to be there.
This feeling
accompanied me even down into the dark chasm of the
subway. My destination
wasn't clear to me at first but the hazy hint of an
appointment near the Fulton
Street exit slipped into my awareness and I trusted my
long term memory to
sharpen the closer I traveled towards the realm of short
term memory where
details might find a focus.
Thoughts very often grew rich and prolific in the subway,
because of the motion
and rhythm of wheels against tracks, my anonymity among
strangers, sharing
possibly the same subtleties of the riders' states as they
clatter and rattle
under streets and rivers, under the foundations of
massive, towering buildings,
and my mind had already been excited. Grabbing the bag
from the drug store
thoughts arose of powder and cleanliness and freshness,
the feeling of near
rebirth after a bath or shower. I followed a train of
reflections, first about
new cycles and renewal, the flush in the sense of
beginnings and starting over,
the joy of living outside one's cage of worry and
preoccupations. I recalled two
dreams of the night before. In one, a fish had dropped
into my arms and its
scales were radiant in color and as I stroked it the skin
peeled off into a
seamless tapestry of unicorns, all in an ordered splendor.
In the other, I was
stuck in the catacombs of Rome and was crawling painfully
through narrow canals.
It was a sad dream, that one.
Meanwhile, I continued my examination of the subway
passengers. I studied the
variety of faces and found them flawed and even contorted.
Some of the riders
stared back at me. This was troubling and I began to feel
the wheels and spokes
of the trance beginning that would, I feared, soon be
followed by fragmentation
and then disappearance. Now I fought off the intrusive
wave and resolved to root
myself in the present. Short-term memory kicked in and I
remembered a recent
conversation with my wife Janet in which she said, "Don't
wait too long.
You'd better pick up a few things on the way." She had
told me what she
needed and I carried her request in the bag of drugstore
items. So I was moving
carefully and with responsibility; I was on track.
I looked around at the passengers jostled in their seats.
Again I felt forlorn,
glimpsing the dejected expression that enclosed them. I
had seen these faces
throughout my thirty-four years and I had sat and walked
among them. Now in this
hurtling train I felt disjointed in my bleak perceptions
of these fellow
creatures, unconscious participants in a sort of carnival
of transit ignominy.
All of them, however, had, like myself, carried forward
what parents had given
them. Was it as simple as heredity or had I been cursed
with a dominant gene of
judgment? How I longed to wipe away the stain of this
jaded and cynical
inclination. I longed for a new creation of myself. In the
end, all others,
blessed or cursed, are bound to me through existence. What
were thirty-four
years reckoned against eternity? Thirty-four years were
gone, and I wanted to
find a rekindling of something brighter in my spirit. Now
the pity of it all
staggered me and I could feel my arms numbing, my sense of
my body contours
dissolving. I felt my being withering away. I was
struggling against vanishing.
A voice stirred me and arrested the progression of the
process.
"Adam," a squat, animated woman said. "I thought that was
you.
You must be on your way there. Of course, you're not
teaching today."
I stumbled in my mind for perspective and managed a few
words. "Yes, my
stop is Fulton."
"That's next. My best, Adam."
"Yes, thanks."
The doors of the subway train opened. I waived to the
women whose name escaped
me for the moment. I walked through the dark corridors
with tiled walls stained
with grafitti. There were layers of profane words sprayed
everywhere. I no
longer read the
anguished and defiant inscribed mutterings. There was much
to be angry about.
The country was in deep turmoil, corruption and
insincerity abounded. I walked
up the steps to the Fulton Street exit. The futility of
the times almost made me
burst into tears. The harsh and frightful deeds of the
masters of policy had
brought a desire for anarchy about. Could my own spark for
loving again glow in
all this apparent darkness? I remembered a time of
creative imagination. I was
once the instrument of that energy. Let it come again, I
mused, and guide me
toward ends I thought were my own. The sidewalks on Fulton
Street were shrouded
with debris. I had spent so much will ignoring the obvious
squalor of the city
that I measured out my spare moments of happiness in the
solitude of our
apartment with its volumes of books and music. It was
Janet's sanctuary as well.
How rarely I thought about her happiness. I had sometime
back begun to live
privately while once I had wanted to share and live inside
her, with her hopes
and desires. What happened? It all seemed so unjust. I
searched my wallet for
the address of the appointment. I was close. I knew that
much.
I walked to the steps of the building. As I ascended the
long staircase, my
thoughts boarded that world-weary train of reflection. To
suffer, to labor, to
push your hopes through the barbs of survival, to crawl
through its narrowest
canals, to push out from under the weight of expectation,
to earn money only to
look in the mirror and see myself as a third-rate wanderer
in this weary march
against flat, decadent and self-satisfied, ordinary masses
towards the place
where more tender and luminous feelings may have their
beginnings. The vision
for something higher, more noble and decent
must survive. Would personalities be colder as the world
aged and could kinder
and more peaceful aspirations of a new generation
transcend the inhumanity of
the present time?
"Can I help you, sir," a woman from behind a desk asked.
"Yes, my wife, Janet Majors?"
"Let's see. Follow her. She'll take you."
I felt somehow taken, perhaps guided towards something
more powerful than
myself.
Whatever it might be eluded me. How could I forget what
could be at the end of a
progress in the mystery of fulfillment. The force of some
promise, perhaps
buried or not fully formed, beckoned me down the corridor.
I paused at a door
where the woman had led me. Some power pushed me in. The
room was suffused in
glaring light. Beams flashed brilliance everywhere. There
were figures in white
hovering over a central focus. Waves of shimmering light
drew me closer. The
intensity of light guided me forward into a place that was
familiar. For a
moment I thought I was entering the trance threshold to an
imminent
disappearance. What was this blaze I was walking into?
Drawing closer, the room
was radiant, encompassing.
"Come closer," a voice whispered. "It's about to happen."
"Come on. Any moment now!"
A sense of mystery and wondrous anticipation overwhelmed
me. The room was a
sanctuary of incandescent splendor. Am I going to
disappear, I wondered, as a
force surrounded me, gathering and not fragmenting the
layers and parts of my
being? Something new was pushing into me and I was
squeezing my way towards it.
Instead of dissolving, I seemed to be growing new limbs. A
sense of stirring
into a re-integration seized me and the images that now
floated into my
receptive mind were beaming bright. I felt so completely
delivered into this
blissful immensity that the white shapes in the room I
imagined to be angels.
The white wings upon closer look were garments and out of
them came human hands
spreading over and tenderly attending to a human form.
"Adam, Thank God you've come. Come nearer." The voice came
from a bed
and it was my wife's voice. Janet was sweating and
struggling to speak. A person
behind me prodded me closer and draped me in a white
garment. "Come here.
That's it, right here. It's coming. Push, yes, push dear.
Here, it's just
there." Someone guided my gloved hands towards my wife.
"Just a little
more," another person urged. Into my hands it fell. That
moment contained
all the white and wet glistening wonder of the way heaven
must feel. The child
stirred, cradled in my hands and I cried with joy.
"Congratulations," a voice announced. "It's a girl."
A
SWEETENED MEMORY
Many shopkeepers in Burra Bazaar wanted to avoid her. If
the spice merchant
spotted the woman in the distance he would lower the
corrugated metal gate that
closed the shop and would hide inside the stall until
Jenny Balasanta, the
loquacious Anglo-Indian woman had clearly passed. My God,
they were difficult,
those loud cheeky, half-breeds always yammering away,
putting on airs. "My
father was No.1 railroad engineer at Bangalore
Cantonment," she'd always
boast. My Uncle this __ my cousin that __ and my
cousin's brother
commissioner Inspector on the Express Line between Bombay
and Trivandrum. These
Anglo bastards, they were all the same, a deceiving lot of
outcasts, leftovers
from their whore mother's one night with some English
lackey. That's what the
spice merchant, Mr. Mukerjee, thought of Anglo-Indians.
Their kind generally had
such a poor portion of self-respect that he feared it
would diminish his own
respectability just to be seen with her. This Jenny
creature would come to beg
strange things from him. She'd come to his stall in her
faded flower print dress
and her oversized heeled shoes at the end of pale bony
legs, her face powdered
to appear whiter.
"Mr. Mukerjee, I saw your mother at Juhu Beach. She was
looking grand. Such
a sari, gold trimmed. It's a fine thing to have such
money. My grandfather,
bless his soul, started your mother in this business. This
spice business was
built on money Bunsi Balasanta gave her, did you know
that? Oh poor me, yes not
a loan, he gave her the money. Yes he did. Uncle Baba was
that way, always with
the handouts. Didn't you know? My father was at your
wedding. A feast he said.
He put a thousand rupee note in your pocket, wishing you a
good life. Oh Papa,
what a special prince of a man. Resting in peace now. And
how many came to his
funeral? Thousands! Mararajahs and movie stars, the best
people, first class. He
begged me to go into the movies but I had so many other
things to do. So much to
take care of."
"Miss Balasanta, please, I am a busy man. What can I do
for you?"
"The same. I want your old spices. Old cloves, cardamom,
whatever your
sweet hands want to throw away, not chili or cayenne, but
sweet kind, darling,
tamarind, coriander, a little cumin, turmeric, old so the
hotness is gone."
"I do not get my spices free, Miss Balasanta."
"Just old throw-away spices. My cousin 's brother spent
too much rupees
here in your store. A fortune he spent with you."
"Miss Balasanta, what do you do with these old spices?
They're not good for
cooking."
"No, for smelling, darling man. For the sweetness."
"Why not fresh spice like a regular person buys. Why
always old spice? It's
the money isn't it? You want to save money."
"On a beautiful day like this you want to insult me? My
sweet Papa left me
an inheritance. What his great father left him. We people
have money. Never find
a beggar named Balasanta. Never find my family begging!"
"Aacha. I will find you old spice __ free spice, as you
wish, but this is
the last time, I am telling you. Please, don't ask again."
"Mr. Mukerjee, don't disgrace my family's name like that,
please. Someone
has to care for their honor, yes for the family's sweet
honor. Someone must take
care. I look after my family's honor. Generations of our
people built your
railroads, operating the rails for India. Who remembers
them? Someone has to. We
have English blood in our veins. Isn't that a thing to be
honored? We are not
trash. Respect must be paid."
The
spice merchant was stunned and annoyed. He did not like to
have one of her
kind talking to him that way. Her incessant talk made him
nervous. Her
insecurity, covered by a feeble haughtiness and
exaggerations made him very
nervous. He didn't want to talk to her any more. He
reluctantly reached behind
his shelf of spice jars, gathering the old spices into a
banana leaf which he
then wrapped up in rice paper and attached a rubber band.
Mr. Mukerjee was
anxious to be done with her.
To his surprise she offered him money, a few rupees that
she pulled out of a
tiny purse. She fumbled clumsily for the money. Mr.
Mukerjee shook his head
gesturing for her to just hold on to her
money.
"
No charge. Not important. Please, take it and go."
"
Well, I thank you kindly. Bless you; my dear dead family
thanks
you.
We won't forget your service. Someone must take care of
them.
Father
always said you were such a decent
man."
The spice merchant turned away focusing his attention on a
paying customer,
hoping that might help him get a hold of his nerves. Miss
Balasanta took her
package and ambled out from her monologue and into the
streets outside the
market where she continued yapping away to herself. She
carried the spices as if
they were as precious as sacred offerings.
She walked the curving street passing the dome and minaret
of the inner city
mosque. She mumbled to herself, "These people, these
Muslims are a
minority, yet they have grave-yards for their departed."
She grew tired at
one point on her long walk and had to stop and rest just
beside the Hanuman
Temple. Mumbling on to herself, she said, "They let
monkeys into this
temple but not me. The way the Brahmin priests look at me.
I have my family I
belong to. I don't need their idolatry. My family had
Jesus. And Hindus, what
about their deceased? They are burned expensively,
cremation ceremony and all.
Not the Christian way, father always said."
At the north end of
the city was the Railway Cantonment. A lane of small
bungalows beyond the
station stretched toward the modest lane of small houses
that were provided for
the families of the railway officials, many of whom were
Anglo-Indians,
respected and remembered only by their children and
relatives, their own kind.
She had a set of keys she was proud to own and she fumbled
with them coming up
with the silver one that opened the front door. She turned
the key after
knocking and opened the door. Inside was her aunt busying
about with a broom and
a little spade. The floor that spread from two charpoys to
the rear of the small
cottage was not cement, not stone at all. The house she
had entered had a floor
of dirt. Jenny Balasanta took off her shoes and walked
over to the area of earth
mounds where her aunt was digging a hole with a spade.
There were crosses on the
four mounds. They had pictures at the front of them. Old
photographs of her
deceased father was attached to a cross. Rosary beads were
coiled around the
pictures. Next to that mound dedicated to her father was
another bearing her
mother's photo. The two other graves contained the bodies
of her uncles, her
mother and father's brothers.
"Auntie, what have you been doing? Are the holes dug? I
have the
spices."
The aunt hurried about on bent gnarled legs finishing the
holes with her spade.
Jenny, bent over the graves. She poured the old spices
into a tall cup and
poured the contents into the holes.
"Someone," Jenny said, " has to take care to sweeten the
memory.
It's only right and respectful, you know. Someone must
attend to their
honor."
YOU
LOOK
LIKE GOLD TO ME
At the north end of Ackland Street in Melbourne looms a
huge figure of a clown
whose wide-open mouth is the entrance to the all but
abandoned Luna Park, a
tawdry amusement park, and a popular haunt for family
outings sometime ago.
Children had been amused or frightened of the giant
clown. My Australian
host's boys called it the "boogie swagman" or more
amicably,
"look at me mates, no worries." Lying on the grass
under the old
wooden roller coaster, a voice reached towards me, "My
God, you're here
too." It was Sweet William who like me had journeyed to
Australia from
America for the grand family reunion. All of us
would gather in a few days
on French Island, south of the city, an ecology farm
reserved for the week's
occasion. William had come from Austin, Texas;
others had come from
Rochester, New York, and Hawaii and England and France.
Most of us were Northern
Californians. Hosted in our spiritual families'
Melbourne houses, we
awaited the long anticipated train and ferry journey to
the island. "You
made it," William said. "It's magic, this family of
ours. I
saved, I prayed and imagined this, Australia, 2003. It's a
party." He
looked around him and gazing up at the Ferris wheel and
palm trees, added,
"It's a circus, an international circus."
For my birthday and as a gift to my spirit, I took this
journey down under. On
my way in Thailand I bought a T-shirt with a colorful
image of Ganesh who I
adored in the aspect of the destroyer of obstacles.
The elephant god said
to me, "No worries, mate." Here every Aussie said
it, on the
street, on the trams, after every thank you, at every
encounter. Australia
was a gift, the way travel often is, and once I accepted
its expense and
occasional ordeal , the world took me in. I glimpsed
the details of this
anomalous continent. It had a subdued inclusion,
never an assimilation of
ethnic variety; I glimpsed its Victorian yet rugged
amalgam of suppression and
vigor, its brusque casualness as well as its terrain of
novel, unadulterated
mystery. The incongruous and ordinary were swallowed
together. My friends, all
part of a divine movement, a family, inspired by our
Bengali teacher, had all
been born here and adapted with that uniquely terse
and sardonic humor to
the character of this young continent. Their lives grew up
in this unusual
environment and absorbed into it as though swallowed up by
that snickering and
gaping mouth of the clown at Luna Park.
The grass whispered under my body. The afternoon wind had
brought those
tenacious flies to my mouth and ears. The constant need to
wave away those
menacing, buzzing insects was a common gesture known
locally as the Australian
salute. The world slipped amusingly over the glassy rounds
of my
eyeballs with images sparked in crystal spheres. Flowers
were suns in fiery
spots of sky strewn over the beach and park in St. Kilda.
Birds, magpies and
parrots, flickered like skipped stones across the vast
inverted lake of heaven.
An early moon hung low in the sky. Its shadows seemed on
the wrong side, its
shape, veiled in its waning, appeared reversed. Yet that
seemed appropriate, I
thought. At night I beheld entirely new galaxies. Orion's
belt tumbled beneath
the falling warrior as his head tipped down towards the
bridge that spanned the
harbor where ferries glided off in the night towards
Tasmania. It made a kind of
sense. After all I was at the very bottom of the planet,
down under
I sat on a bench feeding some doves the remains of my
curried steak-and-kidney
pie when I caught sight of three dark and wild haired men.
It was a shock
suddenly seeing these swaggering and heavy-limbed men.
They laughed while
passing to one another bottles of hard liquor. The men
walked past me. Not far
behind them, walking in a stupor, weaving back and forth,
were their women,
squat, round, black limbs in shabby pants. One of them
extended a plump and
tattooed arm to me and said, "I am Pixie. This Doria
Woolangu and sister
Nori. We are aborigine. You don't see our kind here in
Victoria, do you?"
"I am American," I said defensively.
"Ah, he is Yank, " Doria said to the others.
"Yank?" Pixie replied playfully, slapping Doria's wrist.
"Well, I
tell you, he looks like gold to me. Yes he does, like
gold. We are meeting our
family here from the bus from north. We are going back
home. Westland
Yakadangang.
You want some drink. Join us! Yank man?"
"No Thank you," I replied nervously. "I have an
appointment. I
must go meet some people."
"Family?" the one called Nori asked.
"Hesitating for a moment, I replied, "Yes, family."
"Family best. Always best!" Pixie asserted. Her eyebrows
were arches
of penciled black under a mane of dusty and tangled hair.
Doria was thin with a
mouthful of crooked teeth protruding from wide gums of
smeared lipstick. Nori's
face was cavernous and scarred. The three of them had huge
bony heads, which
made them appear misshapen, somewhat lion-like. I felt
uneasy and timid in their
presence and wanted to pull away. I saw the men, loud and
drunk, stumbling back
in our direction. They joined their women and staggering
together spoke wildly
in their language. Theirs were deep and untamed voices and
I was uncertain
whether it was quarreling I was observing in their excited
and frenzied pitch.
Pixie pulled on one's sleeve while the sisters rifled
through the bundles the
men had carried over their shoulders. Pixie turned to me
and said, "Watch,
Yank. We can show you something!"
I replied fretfully," I have no money. Honest. Really I
don't"
"Nobody talking money. Come, drink with us. We can show
you the dance, our
family dance," The bundles they had carried were spread
upon the grass and
much wild talking back and forth went on. Pixie turned to
me and said,
"Don't you worry, mate, you watch this." The men talked
among
themselves with voices rising and falling, searching their
bundles and pulling
out things. Pixie and the sisters smiled at me while the
men continued fumbling
through their things. I was on edge with their every
movement. I watched one of
them pouring water from a bottle into several coconut
shells which contained
what looked like mud of different colors. The men smeared
each other's faces
with the ointment and the women rubbed it over their
limbs. It all happened
quickly. The shouting was muffled and slurred by the
whiskey drinking that
accompanied the swaying of bodies in the dance they
performed. The dance was
clumsy and brief. It was the oddest thing. The women
clapped as the men swirled
and circled before me on the grass. Above their arms
tossing and their heads
gyrating, I saw again in the now darkening sky that
lopsided moon. The sight
helped me avert my eyes from the dancing and the garrulous
women. I was
embarrassed and had no idea of what was possibly expected
of me. Almost as soon
as it began the dance ended and I paused and then looked
with bewilderment at
Pixie.
"Thank you but I must go. I'm late. Sorry, people are
waiting. I must
go."
"These people?" she asked. "Who these people?"
The words quickly came to me. "My family," I answered.
I ran off along Fitzroy Street in the lights of the cafes
and past the tables of
the outdoor restaurants. Smoke and lights slanted out of
bars and voices
crackled amid the sound of clinking glasses. My heart was
pounding but I was
hopeful of the relief that my escape from the aborigines
would bring. I rushed
away under the buildings of Victorian facades and wrought
iron latticed
balconies. Waiting for the light to change at the
crosswalk at Grey Street, I
looked behind me. In the distance. I could see them,
crossing Ackland Street
walking away from the clown at Luna Park. There was no
doubt that they were
following me. I cursed them. Worried and frustrated, I
wandered what they wanted
of me. I couldn't imagine. Did they think I owed them
something? I hurried
further towards the Espy Hotel and Pub. The traffic noise
blared. It was just
another street and I would arrive at my destination, the
birthday party for
Kalki. The entire Melbourne family would be there. Some
were coming down from
the country north of the city. Others were driving up from
the southern coast.
Much of the Australian family would be there.
Ahead of me I could see glimmering in the twilight the
marquis of the The Espy,
announcing music events for the night. "Kalki's 32nd
Birthday" was
happening on in a nightclub called The Fish Bowl. At
the columns of the
hotel, I looked back again and could see them still
advancing, the men and their
women. I thought I saw Pixie leading the group and waving
her arms, perhaps
shouting at me. I mounted the stairs and at the entrance
of The Fish Bowl sat
two young women at a table collecting an entrance fee.
Next to the entrance was
a long window that looked into the bar and dance floor.
"Five dollars, please," one said. I paid. "Do you want
your hand
stamped?'
"What did you say?" I asked. "Your hand. Do you want it
stamped?
You know, so you can leave and come back. Not be charged
again."
"Yes," I said distracted. I considered warning the women
that I was
being followed. By a pack of aborigines I would say. It
all seemed too absurd to
even mouth the words. I didn't hear their footfalls. I
walked rapidly to merge
in the anonymity of the crowd. There were two crowds, the
drinkers at the
bustling bar and the dancers swirling to pounding disco
rhythm on the dance
floor under the balloons and flashing lights. I saw but
could not hear the
voices of my friends. I was hugged and then abandoned in
the roar of clamoring
music. I ordered a brandy and drank it quickly. Behind me
stretching the length
of the dance floor was the window that from outside The
Fish Bowl the activity
inside could be viewed. There was no sign of Pixie and her
group. I swallowed a
second brandy
and turned my eyes to the dance floor. Some family dancers
beckoned me forward
to join them. The disco throbbing sound waned as the
lights went on. There was a
pause from the loudness. The streamers and balloons glided
along the ceiling.
There was the stir of anticipation. Then came the
announcement. It was time for
Kalki's performance.
As Kalki walked into the spotlight wearing her glittering
costume, there came a
prolonged roar and applause and laughter pierced
occasionally by a scream. Kalki
began her dance. Encircling her feet were nine hoops. As
the music built, she
maneuvered her ankles and calves to start the hoops
twirling about her.
Amazingly, the hoops spun wildly up her body, a few at
waist level, others
around her neck and several about her arms. The music
increased its tempo and
the performer gyrated wildly, adding the remaining hoops.
Hands were clapping;
arms were hugging me as the loving crowd cheered on the
birthday girl. A kiss
was planted on my cheek and when I turned to see who it
was, I saw gazing from
behind the window the faces of the aborigines. Through the
murky light of the
smoke-filled nightclub their faces looked diffident,
almost furtive at first
with their broad heads pressed against the glass. I was
shocked at their sudden
presence. The music grew louder, the applause increased. I
could see a change
come over their faces that now reflected the enjoyment of
the celebration.
Pixie's wide eyes and expansive nose pressed against the
glass; her mouth was
all teeth and smiling. I don't know if she saw me, but a
few people caught
glimpse of her and the others. Pointing at the window
where the group was
peering in was Pixie, raising her arm above her head
showing the V-shaped peace
sign. The others followed imitating her gesture. I felt
awkward and bemused. A
shiver of delight crept over me. Goosebumps and shivers of
delight encircled me
like Kalki's hoops, overcoming my reticence. Kalki was
dissolving, it seemed, my
entire unease and apprehension as she twirled and spun,
ravishing the crowd in a
momentum of rapture. Casting my eyes again at the pleased,
even ecstatic faces
of the strangers at the window, I saw a violet shift of
light moving across the
nightclub, across the ceiling of balloons and streamers
and the shadowy dance
floor. It was an arc of light that reached into the beam
of my imagination where
I saw the rose-colored premiere of a new picture. In it
were ships landing with
white men upon a new continent and embracing its
indigenous people. The vision
of harmony rushed past any images of dominance and land
grabbing or rabbit-proof
fences or genocide. It was a brief glimpse into a
promising world of miracles
and with eyes closed I languished in its spell. My eyes
opened again to the last
movements of Kalki's wondrous hoop dance. The colored
rings began to unfurl from
their dizzying circles around her body, from legs to hips
to arms. The music
stopped; the lights went on. Kalki bowed as the crowd
roared with applause.
I walked through the swarm to the exit where the two women
still sat at the
table. Pixie and her group had already started down the
stairs. They apparently
had watched the dance from the window; they never entered.
Pixie turned around
and looked at me at the top of the stairs. "Yank," she
yelled,
mounting the stairs like a round, lumbering animal. I felt
like a child in her
robust presence, both amused and a little scared as though
she was the giant
clown at Luna Park. She smiled and reached for my hand; it
disappeared in her
dark fleshy paw. "You watch our family dance," she said
contentedly,
"Now we see yours. Family, best. Number one. We go home
tonight. Peace to
you, Yank. Family is peace. Yes." The men and the two
sisters were
descending the staircase staggering in a laughing swell of
drunken revelry.
Pixie continued to hold my hand. She looked at my hand and
said, shaking her
gourd-like head, "I want something from you. Then we go
west. I want to
have the tattoo on the hand like you." Pixie walked over
to the table at
the entrance to the crowded nightclub and held out her
hand. The young women
looked in confusion at one another. Hesitantly, the one
with the stamp pressed
the black ink symbol to Pixie's hand. "Good," Pixie
shouted,
descending the stairs and waving her stamped hand for her
family below to see.
"We go home now, Yank. Good! Peace to you, mate. No
worries."
VANISHINGS
AT THE CAMEL MARKET
Early morning hours. A knock upon the door....I don't want
to be a bother, but I
really must talk to somebody. Were you still sleeping? I
can bring up some mint
tea if you and your friend would like....
.....Oh I see. Would a beer suit you guys better? I've
gotten accustomed to mint
tea, but I know we Americans prefer a beer now and then.
If you change your
minds I'd be happy to get some. I know a place in the
Medina where they'll sell
me some Spanish beer, Tecate and El Oso Negro. This
merchant wraps them up in my
djelaba I bring to him for that purpose. Just let me know
when you want me to
get some.....
.....No don't worry about the cost. I'm grateful to be
able to talk to someone.
It's been so difficult to sleep ever since this thing
happened. I know I babbled
on last night. I don't know if it made any sense. Thanks
for bearing with me. I
need someone to listen to my story. I don't know what to
do, really I don't.
When I saw that woman in the market wearing Angela's
bracelets I freaked out.
You can imagine.
....Yes I've spoken to the police. A number of times.
First I filled out a form,
missing person's report, gave full description of my two
friends. But of course
they were useless, the police. Two women missing? They
were suspicious, looked
me up and down. What was my relationship to them? That's
all they were
interested in. What was I doing traveling so far south
with two women? Was it
sex, was I having sex with them both? It came around to
that, again and again.
They didn't even take time to write down a description of
the men involved. I
must have told them ten times that the men were Moghrebi,
not Berbers. "So
you know the name of the Sahara people?" They said that
over and over but
didn't write down a damn thing, not a word of my
description. I don't know whom
to turn to, really I don't.
.....O.K. yes, thank you. I will calm down. I'll try. My
nerves are in a knot. I
can't help talking about it. Nothing but talking about it
helps. It's the only
way to keep my sanity. Believe me, I'm not on drugs or
anything. Just fear. I
used to do speed some months ago when I was here alone in
Tangiers, but I
wouldn't touch that shit again. After a while you talk
yourself into a corner. I
know people in the hotels who were so wired they stopped
talking to one another
and began writing notes back and forth to communicate. I
never got to that
point. Actually kief is what I prefer. It's for mental
relaxation, more
meditative. But I don't even do kief anymore. Not since
all of this happened.
See there I go again. I can't seem to stay focused.
....Yes I'll tell you how this started. Just interrupt me
if I go too fast or
stop making sense. I met Angela and Francine here in the
Zoco Chico some time
back. They were two schoolteachers from Boston. Angela and
I kind of flashed on
each other, but Francine tried in her way to keep us
apart. Francine was tall.
She liked me but knew how to keep everything at a
distance. She thought I was
crazy, imaginative. She called me "Nameless." We smoked
kief together,
went to Marrakech where I lived in a room next to theirs
in a cheap hotel. We
talked on through the nights. We learned to make majeung,
hashish candy, from
dates and ground nuts and pressed kief powder from the
Riff Valley. We three
were high much of the time, stoned every day. But not the
day Francine came up
with the idea to go south to the camel market at
Goulamine. She had heard about
the weekend just after Ramadan when the camels were sold
or traded. It was
supposed to be a spectacle when the buyers from the
caravans came from all over
Morocco to select, trade and barter for camels. The
traders came from everywhere
south beyond the Atlas Mountains, even from as far as the
Sahara. We'd make the
journey together. It was best, they thought, to have a man
along. They were
bored and I was lonely. We were companions.
....Dangerous? No, not that we knew of. We had no idea
about the remote regions.
We never looked at the tourist books. We knew how harsh
and rude the Berbers
could be,but we had heard about gentle people in the
south, the blue people they
were commonly called. And there were at least two villages
that were entirely
Jewish, yes Jewish Moroccans. We had heard nothing of the
plundering Reguibat
tribes and that there had been the war of the Sarrho, but
I don't know what that
was about. No, we had no thought of danger. In fact,
Angela who was quite the
businesswoman packed jewelry and some leather bags from
Fez that she thought she
could sell among the merchants at Goulamine. Angela was
the fearless one and
Francine, always detached, a real snob, went along for the
adventure. It was
Angela that turned me on to the lost travelers' check
scam. She knew all kinds
of things,; she knew the angles.
....Oh you haven't. You haven't heard about the travelers'
checks. Well, I'll
tell you about it in a moment, there's some risk, not
much. Angela loved risks.
My God, in Taroudant she talked us all into leaving a
restaurant without paying.
She was crazy that way. She had it figured out that when
the bus beeped for the
passengers, she'd wait until everyone had boarded and then
we'd make a run for
it. She walked into a circle of men playing music at a bus
stop...what was the
name....anyway she walked into this tent near where the
bus rested and picked up
a drum and, joining the group, all men, began drumming.
Francine was always
warning her, "This is Morocco. Don't get us in trouble
here." I'd tell
her, "If we got in trouble it would be my throat that got
cut. I'm the man.
Remember that. I'd pay for your mistakes."
...What's that? What mistakes did she make? Well not
mistakes exactly. She
pushed things to their limit. It was her nerve, she had
incredible nerve, and it
was her nature. Not really mistakes. She dominated
circumstances, always. From
the moment we arrived for the camel market in Goulamine,
Angela took over. I had
no power, and that made me fearful from the start. It was
nighttime when we got
there; the stars were all around, some shooting stars
every few minutes, it
seemed. A large tent was set up for the foreign visitors,
but there were
surprisingly few. A few French guys and the two German men
who came on some kind
of hunting trip with rifles in their jeep. But Francine
and Angela were the only
white women, you know what I mean, the only European
females among all these
Moroccans. We were charged ten durham to stay under the
big tent including
couscous and vegetables. All night you could hear the
snorting and grumbling of
the camels and in the morning we were surrounded at every
turn by swarms of
camels pacing in circles, turning about, craning their
necks, lifting their
rubbery lips over brown and yellow teeth. It didn't take
Angela long to befriend
some merchants. Francine followed.
These men, it was later revealed to me, were from the
Moungari tribes that had
come north from the Mali border, hundreds of miles along a
caravan trail that
began in Timbuktu. I felt instantly cut off from their
conversation with my
women and it wasn't long before I felt totally isolated.
The second day I didn't
lay eyes on either Angela or Francine and when nightfall
came they did not
return to join me in the foreigners' tent. In the early
part of that night there
was a kind of entertainment, an assembly of men in robes
and jelabas playing
music and telling stories. There was an Oud player,
several other string
instruments I didn't recognize and drums and tambourines.
The stories were told
in Berber, but a French Moroccan from Fez translated the
stories first in French
then English. I found all of the stories although magical
and spellbinding
somewhat spooky, even horrifying. A dark tribesmen,
dressed in a blue robe and
scarf, sang a song about the unholy winds of the Sahara
that created quicksand
in which nomads were known to slip down into. And falling
into what became a
well of time they would surface somewhere else completely.
Some victims became
invisible and others were transformed into animals or
caught and trapped in the
realm of the dying, a dark world said to be located near
every oasis. The
stories went on, each one more bizarre than the last.
Truth is I couldn't pay
much attention, as I was too concerned about the girls.
What was keeping them, I
wondered? What the hell were they up to?
When the Oud player began playing to introduce the next
story, I slipped out of
the foreigners' guest tent and walked out in the direction
of the Moungari area
in the Goulamine square, the place where I had last seen
the girls talking to
the men, camel traders or merchants, whatever they were. I
didn't know exactly
where to find them so I listened, eavesdropping on the
talk from within the
tents, hoping I might hear English and the voices of
Angela and Francine. A good
while after wandering around from tent to tent, I heard
some faint sounds of
English. It surprised me. I stopped after moving closer
and listened. The voices
were too hushed to be identified, but something told me I
had found the right
tent. I continued around the side of the tent to an
opening of a seam for a
better view. The voices seemed to stop, leaving silence. I
saw a black cape I
thought to be Angela's. Her back was to me and she was
facing two men, perhaps
the same two Moungari men. I eased around the legs of a
few camels that had huge
packs loaded onto them. I needed a better view. The beasts
snarled and spit and
tossed their heads, irritated. A voice in the tent reacted
nervously to the
camels' sounds. Clearly, I was certain it was the shrill
voice of Francine.
Afraid to be seen, I hid in the shadows of the camels that
stretched out along
the side of the tent. The voices resumed.
....Well I'll tell you what I heard. It shocked the hell
out of me. What? No, it
was the men's words I heard first. I grabbed a word here
and there, thick
accents, garbled words. Hard to take it all in but the
word "diamonds"
I heard clearly and "ten thousand American dollars", that
too I heard
distinctly. "Not dangerous" the deeper voice repeated. And
again there
was silence until I heard Francine again, although her
voice was also muffled,
and she seemed very agitated.
I listened intently and for a long time until I could not
make out anything at
all. Francine was upset, at last I heard Angela
responding. Her voice was really
faint. It sounded like they were arguing and the two men,
the merchants or
traders or whatever were interrupting the two girls,
trying to calm them down,
it seemed. It was Francine's voice I tuned into. She said
clearly and nervously,
"We can't take that kind of risk" and later on, more
shrill and
angrily, "We are not smugglers!" and later she called out
Angela's
name and said that they had better leave. Arguing
continued. The men said
something about passports and "arrangements" and continued
to reassure
the girls to carry out some plan. One man raised his voice
in irritation. The
other was trying to calm him. "Ten thousand dollars" I
heard again.
"Very simple". Suddenly a sharp pain lodged in my back. A
camel had
kicked me, struck a hoof into my back, just hard enough to
take the wind out of
me. I never felt anything quite like that before, I tell
you.
....No, it didn't trample me or bite me. I felt no blood,
just my back ribs
caved in. No I couldn't! Thank God I couldn't cry out to
give myself away. I
stumbled off away from the tent trying to get my breath
back. I couldn't talk at
all. For a moment I walked in circles in a daze. Then
quickly I leapt down and
remained crouching among some rocks, reaching to touch the
spot where I had been
kicked. Before I could rise, a man was upon me, reaching
out his hand to help me
to my feet. He wore a dark burnoose and I understood his
words to be Berber.
.....How did I know? I lived in Marrakech for months. I
knew the sound of the
language of those people. Well I stared up at him. He
smiled and lifted me to my
feet and mumbled "kief?" and then "hashish?" and then
"come". I followed. I didn't want any dope. I just wanted
to go
somewhere safer, away from the camels and the hard earth
and that damn
conversation. The Berber smiled, showing his yellow teeth.
He put his hand on my
mouth and shook his head "No parlez-vous?" I shook my head
responding
in gesture that I couldn't speak at all. My voice suddenly
disappeared. People
came up from behind me; it seemed they were running about.
It sounded that way
and within a few moments a group led me into a clearing
away from the tents and
the camels. There was a lot of commotion in this place,
people meandering or
scurrying around. Berbers and some of those blue people
and various other
tribesmen. Now there were two men assisting me, an arm
held by each. We
approached a crowd that had gathered around several men,
lying among a herd of
sheep and goats. What was I doing here, I wondered? What
would happen to the
girls? Anyway before my eyes, these men, unrobed and half
naked, were rolling in
the dirt among the animals, shouting as they kicked up
clouds of dust. What the
hell was this? The men at my sides were laughing and
shouting into the center
where the men continued twirling and rocking back and
forth under the hooves of
the nervous sheep and bleating goats. Several men turned
to me, smiling and
laughing. One pushed me forward to enter the circle. I was
really confused and
scared. Another man pulled me back. Someone spoke English,
"Watch!"
There in front of me, a man who had been lying down among
the animals stood up
and before my eyes began making animal sounds, bleating
like a goat. It was more
than just imitating. I swear to you that man for a moment
took on the visible
form of a goat. The animal sounds came deep from within
him while at the same
time something, some force pushed its way into my chest,
filled my lungs and my
voice. I swear to God, I let out a goat's cry.
Unmistakably, I was
breathing a sound that grew into my chest, rising into my
throat. Fucking
unbelievable! I had gotten my voice back. Deep and loud,
my voice returned to me
saying: "Oh my God".
.....Honest. Well, I'm sorry if you don't believe me, but
it's true. You stay in
this country long enough and you'll see the magic that can
happen here. O.K.
yes, I'm getting back to the girls. I pulled away from
this crowd after awhile.
The men were laughing, some embracing me, very friendly.
All of them seemed to
know what had happened miraculously to me. They seemed to
know about this trick
or magic. These men were not shocked at all. It appeared
that they were familiar
with the technique by which these men who groveled among
the animals gave me my
goat voice and then my own voice returned. It was like a
joke, an intricate
strange joke was being played on or though me. I don't
know which.
......O.K. I'm getting back to that story. I can see how
skeptical you two are.
Have a little understanding, compassion __ something,
because I was really
freaked out, at this point. Hey, I'm sorry. You're kind
enough to listen to my
crazy story. What the hell's the matter with me coming
down on you at all. Man,
I really appreciate this. You must be starving. Do you
want to go into the
Medina to eat, I'll pay. Money's not my problem. You sure.
Really you want to
hear the rest.... now. O.K.
So I go to seek out the foreigners in the tent. One of the
German hunters is
there, so I told him about the girls and what I had
overheard. Well I might as
well have been talking to the moon. He stared right
through me, muttering,
"None of my business." He spoke German to his friend who
shook his
head insisting that he had never seen my female friends.
In fact that could be
true, but it was their coldness and unconcern that amazed
me. The Frenchman I
later saw was more compassionate when I told him what I
had experienced.
However, he questioned how accurate my hearing had
actually been. Because, he
said, if I had heard exactly what I said, that it was
still fragmentary and had
to be put into some context. I understood his skepticism,
but when I pushed
further asking him to interpret the best he could what I
had overheard, he
surprisingly put it very simply. "It sounds like these men
were trying to
convince these women to smuggle diamonds." I was shocked
to hear such
definite words.
"Smuggle diamonds? Where to?" I asked.
"Anywhere," he said, "Central Africa, along some route to
maybe
Sudan or Egypt. There's a lot of that going on. Diamonds,
money, drugs, of
course. Women are considered less suspicious, less likely
to be searched."
He explained to me that he had come to North Africa many
times. There have been
scams and secrets and 'arrangements', as they were called,
going on in this part
of the world for centuries. What was I to do, I pleaded
"I'll tell you what to do, my friend, and I mean this
sincerely. Do not
interfere. Do not! Tres dangerous. Your friends got
themselves into this; it's
their fault, their involvement. So if they don't want any
part of this
'arrangement', then they can get out of it. Wait for them
to return after they
realize the risk."
Then I explained how one of them enjoyed risks and that
the other just went
along with her, although reluctantly. "Then I can only
wish you luck,"
he said. "It's their fate. Westerners do not understand
this part of the
world, especially the Sahara. There's every kind of
mischief here.... You can't
imagine. Half these tribesmen were once bandits,
thieves.... some still are. You
wouldn't believe what happens here. Wander far enough into
the Sahara and the
law ends. There are caravans that attack others, warfare.
This camel market here
in Goulamine is the frontier; beyond here it's tres
dangerous, 'no man's land'.
Believe me beyond this place, south of here, anything can
happen and does....
even white slave trade. Honest my friend it's true."
His knowledge, its danger and intimacy, scared the hell
out of me. My sense of
helplessness was the worst of it. What was I to do? Beside
myself with worry, I
ran after the Frenchman hoping he might suggest some
action, but at the same
time expecting that his words would increase my fear and
deepen the darkness.
"Please, monsieur," I pleaded. "What is there that I can
do? What
did you mean what you said about white slave trade. Did
you mean white
women?"
"I meant white European women sold among the tribes. I
meant becoming part
of the caravans. I meant sold as entertainment as sex
slaves. There's no proof
exactly, but this is not a country of facts or proof. I
mean my friend, in all
sincerity, that women, Western women, have just
disappeared into the Sahara and
into void of the tribal world."
I questioned him, tried arguing. It wasn't a rational and
modern world we're
talking about, he said. Women could easily make wrong
choices; forget themselves
and their roles. If they showed a weakness and lost the
sense of who they were.
Well they could disappear. He had known it to happen to a
few women, one English
girl who was foolish enough to be begging on the streets
of Fez. Just
disappeared. The Frenchman walked hurriedly ahead. I
followed him. I had to know
more about these things. When I reached out and touched
him on his shoulder, he
turned around and angrily shouted, "Stop your following
me. Stop it at
once, do you hear me!" And I insisted that he tell me
more. At this point
he raised his voice violently. "You have heard enough. Go
away from here.
Stop your sneaking, prying and following. Don't you have
your own path,
monsieur? Don't you know how to keep inside yourself?
Follow your own path. I
know your kind __ you depend on others' stories, their
lives. Find your own! You
are one of those Europeans. E'tanger passion. And you are
'quelle que chose de
preoccupation' I tell you, young man, in all sincerity,
find your own story,
follow yourself."
...What did he mean? Well I'm not sure. It puzzled me then
and it baffles me
now. The French words? Oh something like that I am a
stranger of passion or what
it means is a passionate stranger. The other word.
Something like a creature of
preoccupation. Anyway it was like a curse, his words and
his impatience. I felt
identified and scrutinized without the benefit of knowing
what he actually meant
by it. I was struck motionless. Literally, I swear. I
couldn't seem to move at
all, and my leg, the one the camel had kicked, felt like
it was sinking heavily
into the sand. It was like I was succumbing to quicksand.
My leg was getting
shorter as it was swallowed up in a whirlpool of sand. The
Frenchman was now
some distance ahead of me. I continued to sink down
helplessly. At last I cried
out to him again and again. He turned around and saw my
predicament and came
running towards me and grabbing me tightly under my arms,
pulled me up and away
from the hole that was swallowing me. "This is serious" I
remember he
said that because it seemed funny at the time to be saying
that. Of course it
was serious, whatever it was that was happening. "Come
with me, you foolish
man. Come, you must be taken care of. You are a danger to
yourself and possibly
to others. Forget your lady friends for now. Come, we must
go to see someone who
can help you."
I just decided to shut up and follow this man and we
walked past a camel herd
and their auctioneers and past several tents and circles
of musicians. We came
to a little hovel covered by a corrugated roof. A tall
Negro, a man with ebony
skin, entwined in a robe and a blue mountain of a turban,
met us at the thick
wooden door. The Frenchman spoke a few words to him in an
unfamiliar language
and we were led inside to a room where an old man sat on a
thick woven carpet.
Around him on the walls draped with animal skins were a
collection of baskets
and gourds and several glistening swords and shields. I
turned to the Frenchman
to explain what was going on and he said that this man he
had brought me to was
Abban don Halal. He was known as faqih, a sage, a kind of
wise man who could
counsel people who had fallen under certain spells, people
like myself who were
in trouble. I was in trouble and that he would explain my
problem to him. The
Frenchman spoke the man's dialect, a Southern Atlas
language, and he would
translate to me the best he could what the fqih said. So
that's what went on.
The two of them talked back and forth. The fqih got up
paced around on the
carpet, listening to the Frenchman tell the story. The
fqih folded his arms,
released them, and threw them up in the air,
gesticulating. I waited and waited,
having no idea what was going to be told me. I was
anxious, felt feverish. After
some time the Frenchman pulled me towards him and sat me
down on the carpet and
I sat at the feet of the old seer and listened to the
Frenchman translate the
words.
The old man wanted me to describe to him the two ladies,
their physical features
and then to pronounce each name, Angela and Francine,
first softly and then
loudly, almost shouting their names.
...Well, it sounded silly to me as well, but I was in no
position to argue. What
then? Well the Frenchman translated some very weird ideas
that came from the old
man. How could I ever know if there was truth in them? But
I was convinced that
I was headed for great danger so I listened carefully.
What the Frenchman told
me was very much like the story the dark tribesman had
told under the tent my
first night in Goulamine. As in that story I had been
caught up in an unholy
Sahara wind that had tried to pull me into one of those
gaping holes or fissures
in time. I was still in danger, the old man told the
Frenchman, and that at any
moment I could still be swallowed up. I was at risk of
falling into an
earthquake, a fault in the sands of time. It was my
"obsession", he
said, that was to blame. At any instant my own mind and
its driving fury to
rescue the women could pull me hopelessly down into a
whirlpool of dessert sand
and I might just disappear. The Frenchman added
vehemently. Oh he was angry.
"Stop worrying about them disappearing when it is you who
may disappear. Do
you understand? Love your own life, leave this place, and
go back to Marrakech.
You have fallen way out of time with your self and you
must escape the trap you
have created."
...What? What did I say? I'll tell you what I said. I told
the old man that
those Moungari men were the dangerous ones and I described
them again and again
but I was told that they were not important. The Frenchman
translated my words
to the fqih and the old man laughed but the Frenchman had
no patience and
screamed at me. He said, what was it, what were his words,
something like me
being a victim of, let's see, a victim of my own
preoccupation. And I got
impatient myself and argued back at him, saying that it
was he who warned me of
European women falling into trouble and finally
disappearing into tribal
caravans. "Don't you remember?" I shouted at him. "The
English
girl you told me about disappearing. Don't you remember?"
I further argued
that he had told me of a white slave market and women sold
as concubines.
"Do you think I want that to happen to my girls!" I
shouted.
"They are helpless alone out here in this savage world of
madmen."
The Frenchman raised his hands to quiet me down and
turning to the sage said
something. Again, the old man laughed and smiling at me
said something over and
over again. What did he say, I insisted. The Frenchman,
calming down, turned to
me with a kind of benign disinterest and said, "The fqih
says that you are
a child in this world, one who creates any and every
excuse not to live his own
life. You are the kind of being at the mercy of every wind
that will take you
down every hole in the desert."
The Frenchman looked at me, directly into my eyes and,
then turning to the old
man, took out some durham from his own pocket and gave it
to the fqih. Then he
turned towards me and taking my hand led me to the door
and said, " Young
man, foolish man, I say to you 'bon chance'. Live a good
life, your own life. I
say this with all sincerity." And that as they say was
that. He walked off
across the sand and disappeared.
… Yes, that was all he said. Except something else but
it's not important.
Well it was just a thing the old man had told him. How
could the old man surmise
that just from my description of the girls and by speaking
out their names? I
said "Angela" softly and then I shouted it. Then he had me
say
"Francine" in the same way. Right? Well, after meditating
on my
description and the pronouncing of their names, he
concluded that the two had
already departed Goulimine. He said they were gone, but
how could he know that?
Further his vision revealed that they were frightened and
fled north and had
actually left Morocco entirely. It's a trick; he was a
fake just like his title,
just trying to divert me from my search.
… No, I don't. I don't think it's possible. Leaving
Morocco and not telling
me? Not my girls! I mean as close as we had become? No
way! I didn't think you
guys would fall for that. Just abandon me? How could you
believe that shit?
They're here I tell you and they're in great danger. I saw
that bracelet the
Bedouin woman was wearing. It was Angela's. I saw the
native woman wearing it in
the marketplace. What? Really. That's absurd! You're
sitting there telling me
that Angela could have sold the bracelet to the native
woman. Well, yes I did
say Angela had brought jewelry to sell at the camel
market. So what? That
doesn't explain anything. Christ, whose side are you on
anyway? I can't believe
it! I'm all alone in this. Everyone wants to turn their
backs on the truth. Even
you! I thought I could trust you to listen and believe me.
God damn it, I
thought you understood. The Frenchman was right, I am a
fool. I honestly, yes,
genuinely thought you wanted to understand. You're no
better than that faker,
worse than the police! Damn it. Hey, wait a minute. Where
are you going? You're
leaving? Hold on; wait a goddamn minute, would you? I
haven't even told you
about the travelers' check scam yet. There's a lot you
haven't heard. I'm not
asking you to help me search for them. Just stay and
listen to my side of the
story. Can't you be kind enough to do that? Wait now, wait
one fucking minute!
Don't abandon me. Not now. I'm all-alone in this weird and
horrible country!
Wait! Hold on. I'm all-alone. Wait.
SO
PROUDLY
WE HAIL
He looks in the mirror at himself in uniform while
imagining someplace in the
nebulous future. A place in the mountains-he closes his
eyes firmly to see the
lake and feel the splendor of dawn- contains a cottage,
calm and serene. He is a
father of grown children. For a moment, his actual life
dissolves, the one in
which the world expects him to return to combat in Iraq,
and he feels this
preferred life slip over him like a soft robe. He sits at
a long table near a
roaring fire surrounded by friends and children,maybe
they're his. He can't
quite make out the man sitting across from him, but he
thinks if he can hear his
father's voice in his imaginings then it will become his
father. "So glad
to have you home with us, son," the voice says. "Mom and I
were so
worried about you getting killed over there. And for what,
godammnit, for
what!" He tries to wander back toward reality just close
enough to discern
the sound of his own voice but instead hears his brother's
and feels Damon's
hand in his. "You don't have to go back, Davey. This war
is a lie, a
fiction. There's always Canada." He hears the radio
blaring, T.V. vibrating
the news, the front door cracking open. He wants to stay
seated at the table at
the mountain cottage, but feels himself slipping back into
the weight of his
life. He hears his mother worrying about him, "The
casualties, they say,
are increasing. Everyone's proud of you, Davey. We've got
to keep those
terrorists from attacking us over here. Maybe it'll be
over soon or maybe you'll
be rotated back home soon," and he remembers the
bloodstained, mangled
bodies of Gary and Eddie after a mine exploded their jeep.
With his eyes peering at the uniform in the mirror, he
turns to the clock and
remembers that he has only two days left before reporting
to the military
airbase for the flight back to Baghdad. He sees a younger
boy staring back at
him from the mirror. The boy is a boy scout and he's
waving an American flag and
reciting from a patriotic credo. "Bless the republic, it's
freedom and
mercy, the generous hearts of the brave, its prayers for
the foreign souls it
must save from oppression…" He stands uncertain and faint
before his
reflection. He suffers the image of the innocent boy and
he wants to kneel down
and pray and he is ashamed that he never prayed before,
never before he gazed at
death in Iraq.
He began praying for the first time when he saw the
streets of dead bodies,
mostly women and children, civilian casualties after the
bombings. He began to
see praying without restraint as a testimony to the horror
because what he saw
needed witnessing. He began to view Jesus as his personal
ally whose eyes saw
and heart felt as his did the brutal killing of innocents.
The world saw nothing
of the devastation, knew nothing of the suffering. He came
to believe in Jesus
in the way he believed in a secret. Together they saw the
murders, the bodies
torn apart and scorched. Now he is entangled in the
shameful secret. He turns to
his brother Damon and tells him that he saw a bombed
marketplace full of
blood and severed limbs. "Damon, that was no accident. Our
forces knew. It
was covered up. Lies. I am part of it. Tell Mom and Dad
someday that I hate
myself."
Davey prays while his brother listens, "We must forgive
them in their
ignorance, Lord Jesus, for they have not your holy eyes to
see the truth,"
and he whispers wiping a tear away. Damon isn't really
paying attention. He's
busy at the family liquor cabinet, preparing the drinks
for the toast to the
departing soldier. He is tearful just thinking about it.
Damon calls the parents
down from upstairs for the farewell drink. Father comes
down and smiles and
says, "We're sad, my boy, but we're so proud of you."
Mother has tears
as well and says, "I packed at least twenty pairs of
socks. It seems that
not even the 101st infantry can keep its socks matched."
Davey takes his
vodka and tonic in hand and excuses himself to go briefly
to the bathroom. When
he emerges the glasses are raised as it's time for the
toast. Davey volunteers
and toasts in the form of a prayer. All eyes are on him as
he prays, "And
be kind to us in our darkness and show us the way to love
our neighbors as
ourselves and remember that what we do to the least of
yours we do to you. In
your blessed name we pray." The family says amen and
watches Davey as he
lowers his head in solemn prayer. He staggers. Damon
reaches out to his
brother's shaking hand. He sees Davey let go of his glass,
hears his mother
gasp. When Davey collapses against the wall, Damon rushes
forward to catch the
falling body. Damon looks afraid. His brother's eyes are
closing now and his
hand is gripping something. Father shouts, asking what has
happened. Davey
slides slowly down the wall to the floor. His hand opens.
"Sleeping pills!
A whole bottle of them. My God, help us," Damon cries. As
Davey fades away
to another world, he comes upon a vision as if it were a
landscape, the whole
world sinking into a lake, the vast realm contained in the
image of the cottage
he is moving towards. "Are the others coming too? Gary and
Eddie and the
others?" he asks Damon who is bent over the fallen body,
holding Davey's
hand. He wants to tell Davey again that he doesn't have to
go but realizes the
folly of that statement. He holds Davey against his heart
as if they were in
eternal embrace. He wants to tell Davey that he is
forgiven and that the war is
a mistake that too will be forgiven. He rises up from the
floor and looks at his
parents in bewilderment and wants to follow his brother
far away to the sunlight
and peace of the mountain cottage.
THE
LIGHT
FANDANGO
For the fifth anniversary of their meeting Leo gave
Melanie a photo album with a
velvet cover, soft as feathers. She was sitting beside
him, smoothing her
fingers over the cover, when the doorbell rang and Leo's
ex-girlfriend, Destiny
walked in. They were drinking tequila and the
ex-girlfriend pulled up a pillow
on the floor and all three began looking through the
pictures.
"It's all about you," Melanie said. "All the pictures are
from
your traveling days. I can't find more than a couple
photos of us." Leo
turned the pages excitedly and paused at one page, totally
engaged.
"Oh, here it comes," Destiny said. "The burial scene. I've
seen
it a hundred times. Get used to it, Mel, you're just one
in a series of ghosts.
This is the hippie burial. Amy, his road sweetheart. She
died in Delhi."
"It was Katmandu," Leo asserted. "It was the worst case of
hepatitis."
"I didn't mean disrespect, Leo," Destiny offered. "It's
time to
get over it. You dwelled on that grief for the years we
were together. You might
spare Mel some of that."
"It doesn't bother me, really," Melanie said. "I just wish
there
were more pictures of us now."
Leo didn't turn the page and just rearranged the photo
under the cellophane.
"There's just a few details here I never saw before. It's
Marcel raking the
logs. I always thought he had carried Amy's corpse to the
pyre."
"Does it matter?" Destiny asked. "Details? You went over
them
again and again. Mel, when I met Leo in London he was just
back from India. He
couldn't tie his shoes, Mel. Totally freaked out and then
we came into some dope
and we made a living. Those were wonderful days. London
was exciting then."
"Leo must have had it together then," Melany said.
"He did," The ex-girlfriend added. "I pulled his life
together.
He was so sweet and lost. We did well until we were
busted, twice, and then
deported."
"Sure, we were happy," Leo claimed. "We had so many
friends,
didn't we?"
"Too many!' Destiny replied. "We were never alone. That
was the
problem. We were hidden from each other among the crowd
and parties."
Leo glanced fixedly at the photo. He wanted to turn the
page, for the others'
sake, but he just couldn't. "Look, Destiny, come look.
That's Daniel there.
You remember Daniel in London. He's the one who talked me
into the public
cremation. I didn't want it that way. The embassy didn't
want the expense of
shipping her back home. Some of us decided to take care of
it ourselves. I was
against it."
Leo felt the compulsion of his mind to wander and
experience again the time of
Amy's cremation. Once the body was committed to flames, it
didn't take long.
After the mourning friends left, Leo stayed on watching
Amy's bones crackle and
bend in the warping heat. Realizing his preoccupation with
that sordid memory,
he thought of his tendency in life to rake over the burnt
embers of the past. It
was kind of the metaphor for his life.
"Leo, did you ever tell Melanie about East Africa? We were
living at a
campsite outside Nairobi. There was absolutely nothing to
do but fuck all day.
Excuse my French. The bad news was that the place was full
of missionary campers
and the children of these Christian fanatics would be sent
over to our tent to
preach the Gospel. We were big sinners and Leo with his
'unshorn' face and me,
his 'concubine' -we were headed straight for hell. I got
pregnant on that boat
to Bombay. I did the whole rerun of India with Leo. I lost
the child in my third
month when we were in Rajasthan. There are some pictures
of us in India
together."
Melanie poured another glass of tequila and offered to do
the same for the
others. Leo felt a self-centeredness in his leafing
through the photo album and
pulled away from the pages of his obsession. He inhaled
the smoke of the two
women's cigarettes and sang along with Procul Harem on the
tape deck. "We
tripped a light fandango and did cartwheels 'cross the
floor"
"Do you think anyone knows what 'the light fandango'
means?" Leo
asked. "It's a mystery."
"I always thought I did," Melanie answered.
"What is it then?" Leo repeated.
Well, it's like the dance of life, don't you think. It's
the feeling of time
dancing away with one's life. It's a feeling," Melanie
said.
"It's not my feeling," Leo countered. "No, it's a mystery.
The
whole song's a mystery."
"That's the way you like it, Leo." Destiny said. "You're
always
comfortable being lost in a mystery. Anyway the music is
stolen from classical
Italian baroque. Albinoni or someone."
"Stolen?" Leo said. "That's a strong word. Borrowed is
more like
it. Stolen?"
"Yes, damn it, Leo," Destiny insisted.
"My, my, why so angry?" Leo asked. "Too much tequila! You
never
were a good drinker."
"Stolen, Leo," Destiny angrily repeated. "Stolen, just
like
Billy. Your own son was stolen from you."
"Come on!" Leo said. "He went to London with his Mom. He
went to
school there for a while."
"What are you talking about, Destiny," Melanie pleaded.
"You know what happened. She stole him."
"I don't see it that way," Melanie said. "Myra was a tough
cookie, taking custody of Billy. She was possessive and
all."
"She took him off to Europe," Destiny said. "Leo didn't
see him
for almost two years. You shouldn't have let that happen.
Leo was fucked up over
that. You don't know. I was with him. He brooded and was
depressed. We went to
India to get it behind us. His wife, that bitch Myra,
ruined it for us. Leo, you
didn't want the child I lost. You were too busy grieving
your loss of
Billy."
"Hey, Destiny. You're going too far with this," said Leo.
"You're
exaggerating. You don't know what I was feeling. Not
really."
"Yes, I do. I know exactly what you were feeling. I read
it. I read it in
your diary. If you want to know anything about your
boyfriend, Melanie, just
read his diary."
The painful moment of his son Billy's departure for Europe
came suddenly
flooding his memory. The car pulled up to Leo's house in
the drizzling rain.
Inside was Myra's boyfriend who had been sent to fetch the
eight-year old Billy.
Leo gripped the boy's hand tightly in his own and tried to
restrain his tears
and conceal his devastation. Billy was nervous and
confused and wanted the
moment to end. The window of the car slid open and the
boyfriend's voice said,
"Come on, Billy. Mommy's waiting. You're going
to see London and Paris. Say goodbye to your sweet Dad
now." The boy began
to cry as he hugged his father. Slowly the fragile little
hand slipped away from
Leo's grip and the rain thickened. The car sped away and
Leo watched
the rear lights fading out of sight. Turning towards his
apartment on the third
floor of the building, he slowly mounted the seventy-six
stairs and opened the
door where Destiny was waiting. She embraced him for what
seemed an interminable
time and he then broke away and went to the bedroom. He
locked the door and
walked over to his chest of drawers. Opening the top
drawer, he found what he
was looking for. Unraveling the white bindle, he emptied
the white powder on a
mirror, took a straw to his nose and snorted a huge line
of cocaine.
"Leo, you're drifting," Destiny said. "Well, it doesn't
matter.
It's time for me to go home anyway. God, I got drunk.
Didn't I? I hope I didn't
get too offensive. I know how irritated I can get."
"No," Melanie answered. "We're all friends here. It's just
life,
you know, "the light fandango."
Destiny gathered herself up from the pillow on the floor
and walked to the door
and, smiling, left.
"Wow, that was intense." Melanie said. Leo
walked over to
his girlfriend and embraced her.
"What will you be writing about this day, Leo?"
Leo knelt down and picked up the photo album from the
floor and craned around to
look at his bookshelf. Outside the window it was drizzling
in twilight. The
lights of the city were blurring in the distance. Leo
could smell the rain
rising from the darkening streets.
"Tonight, you'll probably write that we've been together
for five years,
but 'my years with Destiny are the ones that I remember.'
You may even write how
wonderful I am."
"Melanie, that's not true. I'm not thinking about it."
"In a year you'll write, 'What was it I saw in Melanie? I
wonder why she
was so soft and accommodating. It's true she never
quarreled and lacked a
certain intensity'"
"Stop it. I won't write anything like that."
"Maybe, you will. In a few years you'll write, 'No wonder
I have so few
photos of her. She never does anything memorable. I can't
imagine Melanie ever
creating any drama in her life.'"
"No you can't," he said. "You can't imagine me writing
that,
nothing like that."
"Someday soon you'll write, 'She'll be coming home soon.
Whatever will we
talk about?'"
"Stop it," Leo said. "You see how intense you can become?
Surprise! But it's no fun."
"Perhaps I'll start my own diary."
"Don't bother!'
"It may say," she said. " 'I think he likes me ageing and
the
white streak of hair.' In four years I'll write 'I'll
bring Billy here to live
with us fulltime. In the winter all three of us will go to
India together."
"It doesn't matter," he said.
"Which place do you want to go first. Nepal or India?"
"It's not necessary. It's too late."
"Which place first, Leo? Katmandu or Benares. You don't
believe I'll
go."
"I do," he said. "It doesn't matter."
"Leo, damn it. I want to go."
"Not in your heart of hearts, you don't"
"You're wrong. It's not too late. We can go."
"Please, Melanie, just be happy in the present moment.
Please."
"I'm not afraid to go, Leo."
"Your breath smells like the flowers of India. Do you know
that?" he
said.
"Is that in your diary?"
"And your hair has a jasmine smell. It reminds me of
Kashmir, if you want
to know the truth."
THREE
WRITES
OF PASSAGE
PASSAGE
When my son comes upon me glancing at the picture of the
two of us, tears
trickling from my eyes down over the circles into my
graying beard, he'll think
twice about leaving home. In the last few years, he's made
two journeys that I
called "impulsive and vague" and I tried to stop him.
Sometimes simply
words- we never have enough time with each other and your
childhood was taken
from me ---my arms flailing from my sagging body. Once in
Thailand
he wanted to travel off on his own, I held onto the money
and told him it was
too dangerous. He raged---you only love wanting to love
me. Not me, not for
myself. He flings his drunk and anguished body on the
concrete hotel floor. Now
he wants to get away to see a friend in the South. He'll
get a job there. He's
had years to find work here instead of depending on his
mother. His face reddens
and his voice rages against me-For once, dad, I want your
blessing. I can't bear
his condemnation and I walk away. My father walked away
often and slammed a door
behind him. You're lucky you don't get my strap-ending all
argument.
My heart beating wildly I stop at a sidewalk bench after
chasing my angry son
through the dark Oakland streets. My legs feel numb and
feet are swollen in
pain, as though they belong to someone else. He disappears
under a freeway
underpass. I worry-It's too dangerous. What will his
mother say when I arrive
without him. So many summers I hitchhiked back home from
California to see my
parents in Philadelphia. My father was unrelenting in his
disapproval-You can
live here like other kids. We have schools and jobs here.
You go wandering the
country like some goddamn gypsy and you won't get another
penny out of me. You
hear me? At his mother's house I wait for the sound of my
son opening the front
door. I grow nervous. It is the same as my mother's kind
of worry.
He'll open the door and run to embrace me. I'll hear his
footsteps, the
reassuring turning of the door latch.
He'll touch and comfort me the way Mom did when I was sick
in bed running a
fever. But it is a tenant in his mother's house that opens
the door. Only my
panic comes closer. A strident voice shouts out and echoes
through the cavernous
hallway. Where's our son? You're his father. How can you
come back without him?
SAME OLD THING, DIFFERENT NOW
Your arms reach up and slip off your shirt, although they
have never quite moved
like this before. Always you know what places you want to
reach for and grab,
but you have watched your child slip down wet thighs and
suck on breasts like
these and your hands
held the newborn, and it surprises you to find your hands
again in this
position, you who like to hold offerings over the
altar, but your hands
take deeper hold as the earth of many years holds you
firmer, driving earlier
doubts out of your head except oddly your own mother
saying "be kind to
everybody" when you were twelve and had a fight with a boy
in the
neighborhood and also the sound, so riveting as the bone
in your hand hitting
bone and even more oddly the sound of the doctor slapping
your baby into
breathing---all this slapping, bone and flesh, even the
love you feel for all
contact running through you so quickly you understand now
as your hand reaches
down her thigh and the same old sensation stirring,
slightly domesticated now,
although you don't take the blue pills like others your
age, and the thigh you
kissed just moments ago was once in a diaper someone
changed and before the
woman beneath you gurgles and moans with pleasure, the
image of your child looks
at you first in bewilderment and then in embracing
comprehension and the only
thing between your hand and the child's face is your mind
restless for some
image, not clearly shaped, not yet born, the thing you
call fulfillment.
FAMILIAR EVERYWHERE
He read longingly the letters from home. They took almost
two weeks to arrive in
the remote village in South India. The images ushered in a
variety of feelings.
The ones that were repetitive like his parent's letters
were comforting in their
familiar concerns, but the ones from a girlfriend and
brothers, speaking of
changes he was too far away to witness, took troublesome
turns in his restless
imagination, some fears and murkiness went directly into
his dreams. The cook,
Swami, hired for his Peace Corps
Group, interrupted these dreams when he awakened him out
from his morning
slumber under thick mosquito nets for breakfast. After the
vegetables and
chapattis, he would often talk to Swami in the mud hut
kitchen. The content was
vague and irrelevant, but that didn't matter. It took him
into the realm of
being cared for, a kind of mumbling and droning spell that
his grandmother cast
him in when he was very young. Sometimes Swami would work
himself up into a
devout lament followed by bursts of tears. That too was
familiar. His
grandmother would often grieve for family and friends dead
or dying in "the
old country." The sultry days surrendered to insect-loud
nights as it does
in tropical jungle and he had the strange thought that he
had never been born.
The thought appeared kindly and wrapped him in perhaps his
earliest memory. He
remembered summer nights in Philadelphia coming through
the screen door of his
house after the neighborhood games and sitting down to
supper at the table, a
fresh hot supper prepared by his mother's caring hands and
grandma in the
background whining like Swami. It was a perfect memory and
it often floated into
his mind when Swami cooked for him.
But after some time the perfection of the image faded and
he began to understand
with some anxiety what his girlfriend had written, filled
with doubt, saying,
"It's been a long time, too long. I'm beginning to forget
what things
together with you felt like." In the morning he sat down
with Swami at
breakfast and grumbled, "How did that lizard get in here?
Chase it
out!"
A
WORLD MORE DANGEROUS
Every Thursday night in the basement of the synagogue was
his mother's Hadassah
meeting.
The ladies from Sammy's neighborhood would meet for
discussion, bingo and tea
and honey cake. The money went for the buying of trees in
Israel. Sammy waited
until nine o'clock to walk a few city blocks to meet his
mother at the front
door of the synagogue.
"Did you win at bingo tonight, Mom?"
"I sure did, Sammy. Look, another figurine."
She held it up for her son to see. It was a small
porcelain mantelpiece
nick-knack. "This one's the fiddler. Pretty soon I'll have
the whole set.
It's the gypsy dancers."
"I got something too. The rabbi gave me a certificate.
It's for my
contribution he said."
"For planting a tree. That's wonderful, Sammy. For our new
state,"
mother said.
"For Palestine, Mom."
"No, not for Palestine. That's the other side.
The trees are not for those people. It's Israel, the
Jewish state."
His mother played bingo for the prizes and there was only
one thing she wanted-a
complete set of the figures that would sit upon the living
room mantel. For some
time now she had been a winner. The ushers stood on chairs
by the doors and
reached into tall wooden crates. All over the floor were
straw and pieces of
newspaper, mostly from the Hebrew press called the
Forward. Whatever his mother
was awarded she would trade in for a figurine at the end
of the meeting.
Contented with her prize, she was glowing as Sammy walked
her home. She stared
at the little fiddler as they passed under the street
lamps. There was often a
moon behind the trees. She'd talk about collecting all the
pieces of the set.
"I'm very lucky these days," she'd say, holding it at
arm's length.
"These pieces are precious and, like the trees we're
planting in Israel,
they will last us a long time, long after all these
politics."
Time passed and his parents worried about the Korean War.
Things were not
clearly going so well in Israel either. Sammy and his
mother watched the
newsreels at the movies. There were prizes to win at the
movies as well. On
Saturday matinee there were the Our Gang Races, the
comical antics of bicycle or
roller skate races. After finishing, the theater awarded
those in the audience
bearing the ticket number
that matched the winner of the movie race. Sammy never
missed a Saturday and won
often,
but once and only once was the prize one of Mom's
figurines. Meanwhile, the
synagogue staff had a falling out with the manufacturers
of that line of
porcelain. His mom was a few pieces shy of the full set.
Sammy's relatives, uncles and aunts from the New York side
of the family, were
fervent and stern in their vision of cultivating and
transforming the deserts of
the emerging Jewish state. Uncle Dan and Ruben and Cousin
Joe and wives and
family all emigrated and worked on kibbutz's. Some years
later Sammy went over
in answer to numerous requests. "Come have a look for
yourself,
Sammy," a letter from Cousin Joe said. "Come see what
we're doing
here. It's a miracle. Come assess the situation."
Everywhere in Israel Sammy saw fences and barbed wire
separating out the
Palestinians. In the towns, the cities the buildup of the
Israeli army was
overwhelming. Constant raids and incessant searches of the
native peoples' homes
were what Sammy saw everyday. Counter attacks were waged
with stones against
Israeli tanks and artillery. "Do you see what we're up
against,
Sammy?" Uncle Dan grumbled. Everywhere Sammy saw broken
pieces of crockery.
Something compelled him to look among the debris of
smashed porcelain and china.
There was nothing rational in his search for figurines
along the roads of
shattered pieces.
Along a beach he found a figure vaguely reminiscent of
what his mother had
collected.
The sea had washed over the tiny broken limbs and he soon
realized that the red
shade of the object was formed from hardened blood.
Sammy came home for a visit and on Thursday night his
mother asked him to walk
her to the synagogue for her Hadassah meeting.
"What' s happened?' Sammy asked. "You always walked by
yourself and
I'd meet you afterwards."
"Well, things change," his mother replied. "The
neighborhood's
dangerous now. Your father usually walks me but now you're
here."
The two walked under a clouded moon and they paused at
Jefferson Street, a block
from temple.
"Sammy, we're not going to temple. I don't go to Hadassah
anymore."
"Not even for bingo?"
"That's been over a long time ago. Now, it's an investment
meeting.
Corporate stocks in Israeli companies. Sammy, don't tell
Dad. He doesn't know
I've quit. He drops me off here every Thursday and when he
turns the corner I go
to the movies. I'm ashamed of what we're doing to the
Palestinians. Ashamed! I
don't want to talk to Dad or anyone else. We're doing the
same things the
Germans did to us."
"And those nick knacks you collected?" Sammy asked." I
didn't see
them on the mantel."
"I gave them away to Mrs. Narafhat."
"The neighbor from Palestine?"
"Her son was killed in an army raid. It's a disgrace,
Sammy. Don't tell
anyone about this."
After the movie the green lights flooded the velvet
curtain. It was warm inside,
but outside it
was dark and cold. Walking home, somber and distressed
after seeing "All
Quiet on the Western Front", his mother put her arm around
Sammy and said,
"I guess this world's always been a dangerous place.
Sometimes we're given
a momentary glimmer of hope."
"So that was Lew Ayers playing the German soldier," Sammy
acknowledged. "The First World War, right? Our side shot
him dead as he was
reaching out for the butterfly in the grass."
"He was just reaching out for that butterfly," Mother
said.
"That's all he wanted to do."
THROUGH THE CRACKS
When Lonnie, the Gower's boy, came home from Iraq, he
hugged his parents, put on
jeans and Vegas T-shirt, found his old drinking mug and
went down to Haley's,
the neighborhood bar. No one was there. He asked Joe Haley
about the old gang.
Larry and Ray were finishing law school upstate and the
Gearson brothers had
moved with their corporations overseas to manage foreign
labor. "I think it
was Taiwan or the Philippines," Joe said. "What you going
to do,
Lonnie? You must have saved some money from the service."
Lonnie had a few
beers and turned in his mug to the bartender. He went to
the New Day Used Car
dealer and bought an old Ford.
In the following two weeks he drove around town and hung
out with his younger
brother after school at Barton High. He wore his uniform
for the girls but soon
decided that they were all too young for him. Along with
his brother he did some
drugs in the bathroom at the Horizon's Disco, but the
pills and weed gave him a
terrible headache. On the last weekend of the month his
car blew a gasket and a
tire went flat. He gave the car to his brother and caught
a bus to Nashville.
The next day at the Grand Ole Opera, he bought a couple
dozen pictures of his
favorite blues and country western singers. B.B. King was
too sick to appear
that night but he waited around until Saturday for Johnny
Cash. He took in a
stand-up comic who told some jokes about the unfound
weapons of mass destruction
and did a whole routine on the senior Bush and Barbara and
their village idiot
son. He applauded afterwards but left the club feeling
embarrassed. Sensibly, he
had left his uniform back at his house in Ohio. He rented
videos of some of the
movies he had missed that year and lied in a hotel bed
smoking and watching
movies and occasionally looking at the job listings in the
local newspaper. One
of the comedies he enjoyed but the porno bored him. "Black
Hawk Down"
he found disappointing. He had a difficult time following
the plot. Lonnie took
a Greyhound to New York. The ride was long and slow and
for maybe two hundred
miles a black man next to him talked on endlessly about
unemployment and his
battle with diabetes. In the city Lonnie found a cheap
hotel room a few blocks
from Ground Zero of the devastated Twin Towers. He sent a
postcard to his
parents of B.B.King on which he scribbled "To Lonnie
Gower, Love B.B.King."
Then he sat with a deck of cards and stared out the
window. He took out his
wallet and looked at his appointment card with the
prosthetics doctor next month
at the V.A. Hospital in Dayton. Out the window the wind
was stirring and
somebody's hat was blowing away down the street. The hat
disappeared behind a
billboard. The one beer he drank made him sleepy. He
removed his clothes,
climbed into bed and began to massage the two toes that
remained on his left
foot.
THE
ISLAND
OF DOPAMINE
My father was a devoted, resolute, conscientious man. And
according to friends
and associates, he had those character traits since
adolescence, even earlier in
childhood. In my own recollection he was like other men
except for one
distinction. He was the most celebrated and controversial
writer of his
generation. My mother and I followed him in his career on
reading tours that
stretched across the eastern states. It was my mother not
my father, however
that ruled the house, whether in the kitchens of hotels or
managing the details
of his book signings and other public events. The summer
that we were
vacationing in the Bahamas something unusual happened. He
began building a small
boat.
He was serious about it. In time he became obsessed with
the project, fitting
and balancing the craft, its soft wood and angled frame.
It was to be sturdy and
durable enough to last several decades and only large
enough for one person. My
mother was perplexed by this intense distraction. Instead
of returning to New
York to fulfill his lectureship at Columbia University he
insisted on staying on
in the islands. He neglected to show up for literary
engagements, one after
another. My mother was plenty mad and carried on
constantly, arguing and
screaming. Was her husband becoming an eccentric recluse?
My father ignored her.
He didn't answer agents' letters and refused to respond to
appear for his
acceptance of the Pulitzer Prize in Boston. Our house in
the Caribbean was only
a half-mile from the dock where boats moored at the
threshold of the intricate
island archipelago.
I can never forget the day my father drove his boat down
to the pier. In my
dreams he cried saying farewell to me, but actually he
showed no pleasure or
other emotion. He threw a little clothing in a bag and
gathered together a few
notebooks, leaving behind his manuscript of his most
recent and almost completed
novel, and said good-bye to us. He took no provisions with
him. It didn't matter
that mother ranted and raved. She stood pale and tearful
at the door and managed
to wrench a few words out of the paralysis of her grief:
"What will I tell
everyone? How can I explain that you are just abandoning
your family, your
career, everything to float off to God knows where."
My father did not answer her. He looked mildly at me and
gestured for me to
follow him. I was afraid of my mother's disapproval, yet I
was eager to obey. We
drove together to the dock where he unloaded the boat and
lowered it on the
slide that placed it on the water. I was excited and
emboldened enough to ask:
"Father can I come with you in your boat?"
He just looked at me curiously and smiled and by a
gesture, told me to go back.
He began walking away and then paused for a moment and
said: "Son, I don't
expect you to understand what I am about to tell you. But
if you listen and
remember any part of it you might pass these words onto
your mother. I no longer
want to write, I live and die with my characters, but for
myself I have no
story. I only fulfill others' expectations. My life no
longer has a plot. It's
all become habit. My readers are simply addicted to my
habits. I have nothing
that drives me, no addictions of my own. If you can
remember any of this, tell
your mother that I must seek out solitude. I have studied
these islands all
around here and I know how to survive floating in my boat,
island to island.
What I can't explain, no one needs to know. Where I must
go you cannot follow.
I'll be gone some time, maybe a long time. Go back. Have
somebody take the car
back. My blessings, boy. And don't let anyone tell you how
to live your
life." I watched father get into the boat that cast a long
shadow as he
rowed away.
Father did not come back. There were occasional reports
over the years of seamen
who had seen him rowing and floating through the network
of islands that
eventually spread into the Caribbean. Travelers through
the islands and natives
living in the area told of a hermit that lived on a small
island who came into
their marketplace at the town port of Amalie to purchase
goods every few months.
Everyone was shocked. What happened to the country's
leading novelist and where
did he disappear? Time and Newsweek magazine ran articles
speculating upon the
mystery and comparing his vanishing to the case of
B.Traven, a novelist of a few
decades earlier who had disappeared, it was believed, into
the remote hideaway
of Mexico where he may have assumed a new identity.
Whatever happened, he was
never seen again. As the years passed and neighbors and
friends and the entire
literary community discussed the phenomenon, the feeling
that he would never
return became confirmed.
My mother was ashamed. She tried to conduct herself but
whenever she was asked
about any news of her husband, she lost her composure and
her face fell into the
look of tearful humiliation. The natural conclusion was
that father had gone
insane. Certain people imagined that he had succumbed to a
religious vision and
searched the islands on a quest for God or to become some
kind of ascetic saint,
or that he had contracted some incurable disease, maybe
Alzheimers, and that he
couldn't remember his way back home. I knew better,
clearly remembering his last
words to me. Those words remained my secret. I always
imagined him maneuvering
his boat through the islands, which he knew like the palm
of his hand, maybe
hiding in the twist and turns of the course in which other
people got lost,
There in his private labyrinth, which extended probably
for hundreds of miles,
with thick island jungles on all sides, he felt free and
safe.
When mother and I moved back to our home in the
Adirondacks of New York State,
it wasn't long before bills and taxes came due. Mother had
to sell the home.
After paying the enormous mortgage owed and paying back
the publisher's advances
and the costs of breach of contracts, we were left with
barely enough to move
into a minimal apartment in the depressed neighborhood in
East Orange, New
Jersey. We even sold our furniture and a private collector
bought some short
stories, hand written, mother had found in father's old
oak writing desk.
Father's desk was the only piece of furniture; the only
relic of the past, that
mother did not sell. Mother remembered that father had
kept a diary locked in
the bottom right drawer of the oak writing desk. Maybe
that was why mother held
on to the desk.
Though his wife had never felt the slightest curiosity to
read his diary, she
knew that her husband had always hidden the key nearby.
Moving the papers on the
desk in order to dust it, she was suddenly seized with a
temptation to open the
drawer and see what it was that he didn't want her to
know. When I came home
from school mother asked me if father had ever mentioned
anything about his
diary. Of course, he hadn't. In fact I was sixteen before
I ever read any of his
novels. Finally as I read one after another I became
engrossed in the characters
and their conflicts, but I could never imagine my father
as the their author.
"I think I left some papers in the bottom drawer of this
desk," mother
said. "Do you have any idea where the key might be."
"How could I, mother," I replied. "We've moved out of our
mountain home over a year ago. How could we find a key
now?"
"Well, the papers, his royalty agreements must still be in
there and I'd
like to take a look at them sometime." she said. "As for
his diary I
don't know exactly what to do with it."
"It's private and he didn't mean anyone to read it." I
said.
"Did he say so?" mother asked.
"No"
"Then how do you know he didn't want anyone to read it?"
"I just know, that's all."
"Just asking," mother continued. "I was married to your
father
for forty three years and we had no secrets."
Which I took to mean that mother was very curious to know
their contents. A few
days later I noticed a slab of wood that had been torn
loose from the drawer and
a chisel and small hammer lay near it on the floor. Some
time later I came home
to find that mother whose eyes were red from tears had
taken an axe and split
open the drawer of father's desk that contained the diary.
After mother calmed
down, she began to tell me about the shock of reading the
diary.
"Your Dad has broken my heart. He wasn't the person I
thought he was. He
lied, he kept secrets from me. He had desires, filthy
secret desires. You should
never hold him in respect, ever again. What he says in
that horrible book is
more hurtful than I would have believed possible. All
those years together! How
can I ever trust anyone again?"
"Not even me?" I said confused
"No, not you. He confided in you. You must have known
this. No, least of
all you."
We sat in silence for a while. And then she said, "I
thought all those
years he loved me."
"Of course he loved you. He often told you. I remember."
"What else do you remember that you are not telling me?"
"Nothing." I said. "Nothing that he didn't say to you."
"Then why did he say this?" She read from his diary which
she clutched
desperately in her hands. "From my life's warehouse I can
only find one
thing of value, my son's softness, his pilgrim soul. I
weary of my wife's anger
and her abandonment of faith."
"Mother, don't read any more. It's private."
"You know something I don't know," she shouted. "Listen to
this,
written not long before he left me, I mean, us 'it seems
often all the world is
habit. I am adrift on a boat with a cargo of compulsions.
I cradle my desires
for the warm rush, the lips of dark red orchid.' You see
there was another
woman. He goes on. 'Angelweb of nerves. His heart's grasp
I mistook for
revelation.' Maybe not a woman, maybe it was a man.
"Seaswoon, gold gone
dull, illusions only. Always wanting so much. Always
hungry, not enough. The
final storm of boredom's gates. Always wife, family
return. Not even death can
break the habit of life.' See how bored he was with us?"
"Mother, I don't see how you can say that. These words are
not for you. We
shouldn't read any of this. He probably wanted his diary
to be disposed of
unread."
"That's right, son. We could burn it. All its pages."
"No don't," I said. "Put it back. Maybe it will prove
valuable in
time."
"Valuable?" mother said. "Listen to this. This is
September 12
just as we arrived on the Bahamas. "Most people have never
heard of willing
slaves. There's one that waits and lives inside of each of
us, a spellbound
martyr who enjoys the whips of Egypt and historically
harsh kings.' Oh my God, I
think he was, what do you call it, a sadist or a
masochist."
"Stop it Mom. Please! We don't know what he meant."
"Be quiet and just listen. 'We bear and suffer, awaiting
that tingling
surge, relief. Our addiction that art in heaven, dopamine
be thy name.' Do you
see? He was insane as many people said. Listen 'I will
build my boat and escape
this ritualized terror of routine and these dark
messengers of ambivalent moods.
I will float to the island, reborn without shame. Dopamine
is its name."
"Mother, put it back in the drawer. Leave it there
forever."
"No," she argued. "It must be destroyed. Dopamine! All
those
years he was hiding his secrets from us. Now this filth
must be hidden from the
world. Just think if you someday have a child, the last
thing in the world you'd
want would be for that child to read this horrible stuff!"
"I'd tell him he could," I said.
"Could what?" she asked.
"Read them if he wanted to. I'd let him decide just as I
think the world
should decide what to do with this diary. It might be
important in days to come
that there was a world famous writer who wasn't altogether
what he seemed to
be"
"Who was in fact," mother said, pausing. "Who was, as the
truth
be known- Anyway your son would be born
never knowing your
father, so he would never be shocked and ashamed. I'm
going to burn this awful
thing. You stay where you are. I'll be back in a moment
with matches and
gasoline."
My mother, however, did not come rushing back. Years later
publishers and
literary critics came in possession of the diary. The
pages were scrutinized and
their interpretation shed a radically new light on the
meaning and intentions
contained in all my father's novels and stories. When my
mother one day finally
revealed to me why she hadn't returned that time to burn
father's diary, she
said: "I was afraid. I didn't want to be away from you for
even the short
time it would take me to go upstairs to get the matches. I
stood at the top of
the stairs just looking down at you. I was afraid. I was
afraid that if I took
my eyes off you, even for a second, that you would turn
into something that you
did not seem to be. You might have turned into a total
stranger."
WHERE
HAVE ALL THE SPIRITS GONE
We bring our spirits with us, ghost-breath shapes, lurking
guides; we have come
to watch the meteor showers, the hovering star dome with
streaks of luminous
arrows. They wait outside the planetarium, avoiding voices
of rationality
inside. See Orion riding the Lion! See Calliope burning
her crown! Spirits make
up their own stories. The Pied Piper rides into Avalon on
a rat, wildly and
fast, faster, rushing to invisibility. He will hide from
all eyes as he grows
up, like our own spirits who in the galaxy of time will
appear infrequently,
randomly, disguised as accidental and impending. They
hide, especially
in public at parades or political rallies. They lose us,
collaborating with our
growing uncertainties and our craving to forget them.
Where are our spirits, our
old allies? Why do they drift, no maps, logic, perhaps
growing taller. That's
it. No wonder we can't find them. They have grown up,
several feet higher,
sprouting beards and breasts, trading the intimacy shared
with children for the
faithless webs organized by adults. We may make
appointments and flirt with
them, but we are secretly intimidated by their unexpected
size. They tell us not
to bother, aware as they are of our declining attention
span. They will be there
when we need them.
And occasionally they drive home with us on lonely
highways or visit after a
loved one's death. Sometimes they peek in through our eyes
when we are searching
our face in the mirror. They massage our shoulders and
calm us when listening to
Bach or tribal drums. They are embarrassed when we invite
them along for sermons
and sacred ceremonies, feeling something like a third
wheel, but they give in,
not wanting to loose all contact. We are known to call
upon them when
desperately helpless and lost in calamity, but then it's
rarely directly. When
we do, it's more like the frantic search for a mislaid
object.
An old friend of mine who is very comfortable and
conversant with his spirit
guides told me that they tend to see us as distant and
often wearing armor
that's often far too big for our bodies, shrunken with
age. In fact, so rigid
and fabricated do we appear that the spirits see us as
museum waxed figures or
stuffed animals in a diorama. We are restless wanderers in
a dark museum, the
same curious halls we laughed in as children. Now, our
spirits fade with boredom
in those halls of information. When the guards begin to
dim the lights and
prepare to lock the doors, our spirits are the first to
leave.
THE
MUSEUM OF FOOLS
For a period of some weeks at night I would close my eyes
and watch my own
private parade of players marching through the gates of my
memory. Processions
of celebration came into view one after another. I watched
the pageants, as they
seemed to pass before the window of my life. Each night
the curtain of my
imagination opened to a variety of festivals. The images
were familiar yet
enhanced by the ability to experience them again,
sometimes simultaneously. At
one moment I would be dodging firecrackers in a Dewali
revelry in Old Delhi or
splashing water and being doused by Thai children for
Sangram New Year in Chiang
Mai. Time shifted all around for in the next moment I was
in the Mummers Parade
of my childhood strutting down Market Street in
Philadelphia to the strings of
"Oh, Them Golden Slippers." Festive flecks of light and
exaggerated
gestures and movements often floated in slow motion upon
the stage of
half-sleep. Colors and dancing shapes accompanied me up
those ecstatic steps
that led to my temple of dreams.
The dreams themselves were not always so simple or
celebratory. In a certain
recurrent dream I would find myself taking confused steps
through the rooms of
strange museums. At first I would walk into hallways of
stuffed animals and
replicas of battle scenes of some historical relevance. I
felt that I was
viewing mislaid moments of my predatory past re-enacted.
In one version of this
dream a sleuth was brought in from London's Baker Street
Agency to unravel clues
and in another researchers and curators of what I believed
to be the Victoria
and Albert Museum were busy arranging objects and
collected pieces to be placed
in their appropriate rooms. In the west wing were a series
of rooms that
contained an exhibition entitled "The Eastern Journey of
Fools."
What this exhibit contained was not typical archeological
findings or ancient
relics. Placed here in the west wing was something quite
different. The rooms
contained what were called the archives of trances and
diverse and sundry things
that were labeled to be evidence of visions and
psychoactive states. In a glass
case were the sandals washed ashore after a Brazilian
named Coffee Beans walked
out into the Arabian Sea to drown. In a corridor was a
long case displaying the
smoking apparatus and famous syringes of early foreigner
junkies living in Goa.
Also under glass was the shaved-off hair of reveling
seekers that had been
collected and codified by the Society of Premature Bliss
and Seizures.
Visitors to the museum walked the halls gazing at
everything, yawning while
reading the footnotes to the rare objects. Here hung a
gold-framed portrait of
Queen Mary, not of Scots but rather of hippie fame, whose
mercy and money
rescued hundreds of travelers from homelessness. Next
stood two ornately dressed
figures of Desiree, "The Dutch Bride of Wonder" and her
Canadian beau,
"The Bridegroom of New Frontiers." In another room, huge
with
chandeliers were portraits of travelers to India. A velvet
cloth hung from the
ceiling stating the collective title of the paintings,
"The Legendary
Adventurers from the Western Lands of Failed Identities."
The corridors began to empty; the museum was about to
close. The viewers quickly
took their last look at the sculptures of the avatars of
the road: A bronze of
French Bruno bellowing mantras from the bottom of the well
and Eight-Finger
Eddie, his mudras in marble, the pied piper guru preaching
the freedom that was
India. "Was it in the sixties?" the viewers pondered. "No,
it was
the early seventies," another visitor argued. The west
wing of the Museum
of Fools was closing. The exits were black with amnesia's
beaded curtains.
"I'm sure it was the sixties," someone said. Everyone
forgot what was
remembered yesterday. "Let's ask the curator," another
voice said.
Suddenly I was in the dream because all the eyes turned to
me. "Are you the
overseer, the archivist here?" I don't know but I must
answer I tell myself
upon awakening.
JACK'S
BEADS
Jack was an innocent, and a good friend, but he was lost
in India without a job.
When the time of service ended in the Peace Corps, the
three of us went to New
Delhi to await our future. Russell and I saw the irony of
our situation,
Americans working for peace being sent home for probable
conscription for the
war in Vietnam. The humor went beyond Jack.
He lived in an inattentive state like a clumsy daydream,
contented in
distraction. No one laughed at him; he was full of good
intentions, lumbering,
not grown into his massive body, always caring, devoted to
simplicity, ingenuous
and trusting. Like his pure reveries, he had a flair for
the maudlin.
Every moment in Delhi Jack fumbled with his beads. A
beggar in Benares had given
them to him after Jack had lavished rupees, many every
day, on the cripple. The
story he was told was that the artifact belonged to
Krishna devotees. Jack
quizzed everyone outside temples, even mosques, if they
knew to whom the beads
belonged. He cherished his beads as a protective object as
he had once regarded
a rabbit's foot. He polished them frequently with
sandalwood paste as he said a
prayer he had learned in his high school fraternity. He
loved sleeping with his
beads the way a baby sleeps with a security blanket. Most
of all, they served as
a talisman that he believed would keep him safe. They
offered admission to a
sacred place in his imagination, where all thoughts felt
comforting and
friendly.
Like many foreigners in India, we felt drawn to the
possibility of magic, and
Jack believed resolutely that the bead's power would carry
us past all
obstacles. He was convinced that they had saved his life
when he had suffered
with dengue fever in Madras. When the monsoon storms had
almost washed our
bungalow off a hill in the Nilgiris, Jack made a ritual
out of moving the
necklace of beads around the bungalow, draping them over
each of our beds, tying
a knot with coconut hair and palm leaves and touching the
necklace to various
areas of the threadbare shelter. He insisted that they had
kept a cobra at bay
he had encountered in the rice field he helped plant for a
neighbor.
At the Parliament Building we were hoping against all
probability to be given a
visa renewal from the Deputy Chief secretary. We wanted
fervently to remain in
India as long as we could.
Facing the grave uncertainties that awaited us in America,
we preferred to take
our chances surviving in the subcontinent tropics of
anonymity. We paced the
bureaucratic floor with great anxiety. The man who could
decide our fate with a
rubber stamp didn't arrive in his office until almost
closing time. The turbaned
Sikh, Mr. Sanjay Singh, looked hurriedly at our passports
and finally said, shaking his head disapprovingly, "No
chance, my good
friends. Impossible! You have been too long in our
country. Actually speaking,
you could be deported. But I can do one thing. Come
tomorrow and I'll arrange
for a two week transit visa that will give you time to go
overland to the
Pakistan border."
Russell and I paced under our hotel fan, agitated and
despondent. Jack was more
peaceful. "The trouble may be that I haven't polished
these beads in weeks.
They'll be shining when we go in tomorrow. No worry,
believe me."
Jack wanted to turn the two of us into believers. However,
that day we were not
in the mood. After buying the sandalwood paste from the
man under the banyan
tree, Jack went to pick up his mail at the Poste Restante
at the American
Express Office in Connaught Circle. There was just enough
time before our
appointment with Sanjay Singh. I'll never forget the
strange look on Jack's face
as he approached us with the letter in his hand. He was
frantically fingering
his beads. His draft board in San Diego was sending him to
report for duty at a
training base in Germany prior to going to Vietnam. Jack
was younger than us and
his number had come up. It was a tough break. Jack turned
quiet for just a few
moments, staring down at his letter, then after a time he
smiled and comforted
himself with his beads. "No problem," he said. "I'm still
a lucky
guy. The magic just doesn't disappear. Let's go see Mr.
Singh."
Again the bureaucrat was late. After a servant had served
us tea and cokes
several times, Mr. Singh arrived. He seemed disconcerted
and he was sweating. He
yelled at the servant in Hindi and fumbled through a stack
of papers on his
desk. We studied nervously his every gesture, but Jack
stared directly into his
eyes while twirling the beads rapidly. Mr. Singh checked
our passports
impatiently. He was restless and cast his eyes repeatedly
at Jack. And then
abruptly, somewhat irritably, asked Jack, "What are you
doing?"
"My beads," Jack answered. "Hindu beads.
From your Krishna."
Mr. Singh. flipped through the passport pages
distractedly. Again he stared at
Jack and again yelled at the servant. "It's late. It's
closing time,"
he said. He reached for his rubber stamp and in one
hurried motion he stamped
all three.
We were outside the building, leaning against the columns
of Parliament, before
we conjured
up the courage to look at the decision. On the last page
of our passports under
the national icon in blue, our visas read: Good for one
year.
MARIACHI
Luis Romero, a mariachi for hire, had an air of old
elegance. He sat with his
guitar in the Plaza Garibaldi under a rain-soaked awning,
drinking tequila,
waiting for customers or passersby to pay to hear his
music.
The square, renowned for its musicians, was all but
deserted. The new music with
its electric bands and discos had swallowed up the desire
for his kind of
traditional music. Across the table sat an ageing trumpet
player wrapped in a
bright bolero studded with silver buttons, his snug, weary
face clownish, framed
by a silk scarf and maroon sombrero. His eyes were
desperately hopeful,
glistening like fool's gold anxious for the money he once
made in this Plaza of
Mexico City.
Luis, eyebrows knitted, peered into the near distance. It
was the exact pose as
in an old painted photograph: El Mariachi as he was called
was sitting in an
outdoor café in Guadalajara with Julia and their child,
Elena, in his arms. The
child wore a wide brimmed hat, its curling ribbons
floating on a cascade
of black hair. Clearly happy with Elena, guitar on his
lap, he was searching
across Tlaquepaque Plaza for something- for the glimpse of
that moment to be
held forever?
Luis was from the mountains of Michoacan. He had grown
flowers and made a living
selling them in the marketplace. Julia crafted the baskets
that contained them.
The baskets were made from dried grass and seeds and nuts
from the forest near
their cottage at the edge of Lake Patzcuaro. Out of the
window Elena watched her
father gather the flowers- vibrant roses, marigolds,
daffodils and even orchids.
Her mother sat inside in a slant of sunlight, weaving the
dried fragments into
baskets. As a young girl, Elena enjoyed searching for wild
flowers. Mother had
warned her about the packs of wild dogs that inhabited the
woods, beasts that
were vicious from their mistreatment by the townspeople.
They will snarl and
leap upon you and sink their teeth into your skin. But it
was another kind of
beast, a human one, who abducted Elena and sold her to the
whorehouses of a
northern border town. A boy herding goats and his
grandfather reported to the
police that they had heard a young girl's screams but by
the time they reached
the forest they saw a cloud of dust and a shiny black car.
The retreating car
opened up with automatics as it sped north on the grimy
road. The police wanted
a bribe before pursuing the case.
Luis pursued the search on his own. He traveled north and
went town-by-town
questioning and probing for his fourteen-year-old
daughter. His wife had to go
to the city to seek work. Luis wrote her letters, less
frequent and optimistic
as time stretched on. From the desert villages to the
coastal towns he inquired
about her. He had no reward to offer.
Luis survived by playing guitar and singing, sometimes in
the bars of the plazas
and sometimes in the markets. The older people enjoyed his
music but usually his
mariachi sound was drowned out by modern radio music and
TV soap operas. The
fervor for the old music was ebbing while the shouts from
rural rodeos and
saloon drunkenness increased, assaulting his ears. His
search began to loose its
hope to the taste of sour beer and smell of thick,
dizzying smoke. It was the
modern music that filled the nights of searching the
brothels. He had always
hated the thought of the border towns as it was suspected
that his father was
killed in Nogales before he could escape across the border
to search for
employment in the U.S.
Luis had learned to play and sing from his father, an old
mariachi who was
somewhat legendary for his improvised rhythms of the
Michoacan style. The songs
of his father had deeply inspired Luis and he believed
fervently in their drama
and meaning. Without their songs, men like his father,
would have become deeps
of silence among the ruins. The high-reaching notes and
swirling, rapturous
chords were achieved through generations of learning and
passed down into
families whose memory was the only record, a living
archive. Like he imagined
his father's last days, Luis had begun to feel abandoned
and obsolete. Still his
father's songs guided and then followed him in his search
for Elena and it was
in the outskirts of La Paz that a fisherman stopped him to
say that he
recognized the song. He had heard it from a musician who
appeared in the plaza
years ago. It was the song he loved and had often
requested the mariachi sing
and play. Luis explained his plight to the fisherman. The
man knew certain
people who knew the whereabouts of "stolen girls". A
seaman who was
friendly with the local police advised Luis to go to a
neighborhood of Tijuana
and show a picture around for merchants and bartenders to
see. Offer some money.
Mention the Mariscos Company and the name, Claudio
Navarre. "Navarre is a
name everyone fears."
It wasn't those names or the money, which led to finding
Elena. It was his
father's song that Luis sang and his daughter heard in the
alleyways of the San
Felippe district of Tijuana. With the help of the police
Luis rescued his
daughter from a brothel. It was on Easter Sunday.
Each year on Easter Sunday Elena was absorbed by the
memory of her abduction and
the experience of her year of horror in Tijuana. When she
met with her on this
day each year she would not permit any talk that might
dredge up the details of
that time she was lost to the world. Sudden flashes of
captivity in Tijuana
would cause tears to abruptly rush to her eyes. But then,
she would come back to
the present and her father and mother would rejoice in the
spirit of
resurrection as if life could begin again, healed and
whole.
So the old trumpet player, buttoned up in his bolero and
snug under the
sombrero, looking out dismally into Plaza Garibaldi said
to Luis, "The
world has left the Mariachi jobless." And Luis paused for
a moment before
answering and then said with a slight smile, "It's an old
story, my friend.
Time wears out its plumes. But I lost a daughter once and
now she is back once
again and we'll be together someday."
"Where is this daughter?" the man with the clownish face
asked.
"North, safe across the border," Luis placidly answered,
as he looked
out at the plaza awash in the January rain. "She has
escaped and my songs
with her.
SHADOWS
AND
APPOINTMENTS
There are all around me scalding glances and whispers of
missed opportunities.
Do you know what I mean? Here is this woman who I am asked
to follow down a
carpeted aisle. She's working at the funeral home. She
asks me if I'm family and
when I answer yes, she takes my arm and escorts me towards
the coffin. I look
over at her breasts filling out her blouse and I could see
through it if I
wanted to. I let go of her hand as we approach the few
steps leading to the
casket shrouded with flowers. The chapel is full of
shoulders and heads of
people I know. My aunt's face is like a clay sculpture
lying on soft blue
pillows with powder caked into the ravines of her
wrinkles. She wouldn't mind
the dark refuge of the grave. She had wanted to die and
now she was keeping that
appointment.
The shuffling of shoes behind me; a whisper slowly
advances and the woman in the
thin blouse touches my shoulder. Do I want a moment alone
with my aunt? I do. I
want a few minutes alone with my curiosity. No witnesses.
I shudder at the
somber stillness. I won't leave the world this way. Those
who know me always say
that I'll be late for my own funeral. That premonition
seems so punctual at this
moment.
Only one thing gets my attention. I focus on my aunt's
ring, her wedding ring.
She intends to wear it to her grave. It encircles her
finger and I imagined the
moment my uncle gave it to her. But there is another
moment that clearly reached
into my memory. It was a troublesome recollection. It was
that time in Guatemala
when some energy pried me from my hotel moments before the
earthquake. That
force that rescued me felt like a kind of thief in the
darkness peering into my
soul with a warning. I rushed, stumbling through streets
of crumbled rocks.
Under the debris of a mound of fallen matter was a
half-buried body. What caught
my eye was a pale hand protruding from the pile. On a
finger of the hand was a
ring, brass with a blue gem. I was frightened and wanted
to run towards a bus.
Something made me pause long enough to reach out and pull
that ring off the
extended hand. I shuddered at the thought of what I had
just done. Why had I
taken it, I wondered, while fleeing towards the town's
center? I felt the thread
of fate's thin body following me out of town.
I imagined scalding glances and the whispering of
accusations behind me He stole
his aunt's ring during the viewing. Uncle George said,
"Off a dead woman?
What the hell do you think your doing?"
"No. The ring was offered me," I said. "I didn't keep it.
I hid
it behind the hotel column in Guatemala City.
It wasn't my doing. It was reaching toward me." I turned
around to face my
accuser but there was no one there. Behind me were blank
and motionless bodies
among the pews.
My father had once told me about Aunt Dorothy's ring.
Uncle Dan gave it to her
when he returned home from Korea. He gave it to her as she
was leaving on the
train to spend the summer in the Midwest. He was afraid
that she might meet
another man far away from him and he seized the moment to
propose marriage to
her. He had survived the war, survived tuberculosis, and
he married my aunt.
People may say that I intended to steal the ring off the
hand in Guatemala. Some
may even accuse me of contemplating stealing from my dead
aunt. The truth lay
buried in the shadows of my thoughts, the rubble of the
past. When I now embrace
these memories I see no determination on my part or any
perceptible act of will.
There is nothing traceable. The quake happened shortly
after the young traveler,
the Englishwoman had closed her door on me. I confess that
I came on to her
heavily. She refused. I slept. One moment I was in that
dreary hotel and
something woke me out of a slumber that floated like
moonlight over plaza and
the cathedral and the market. In the next moment there
came a rumbling, a
tremulous quake and a torrent of human cries. I ran
through the streets in
panic. I didn't take a moment to check on the woman. After
all, she had refused
my intentions. I ran into the streets and stopped running,
only for a moment, to
take that ring, to take something from the jaws of death.
A shadow I imagined to
be fate followed me out of town. From the bus I watched
buildings below collapse
in a thunderous faint. Mountains shuddered; the ancient
earth buckled.
To be honest, I was never meant to be in Guatemala at all.
It was only to give
my wife a break from me. I left her in Mexico City. She
wanted to be free of me
to party with friends. On the winding road through Chiapas
the bus skidded and
almost plunged off a mountain. What good does it do to
look for signs? I don't
know what to make of all this. I have come to learn to
live with what is not
intended as a kind of contraband time that smuggles in its
own events.
Who really knows about shadows and appointments in the
dark city? Looking at my
aunt, stiff and powdered, lying in her casket of blue
pillows, I felt pulled to
move closer towards her face. Her lips, would they part
and words come forward?
What would she say? This is death. Here's my ring. I
shuddered at what I saw as
pale and perishable in her corpse, the habit of mortality.
I lingered with
another aspect, part vision. The ring on her hand
glistened and, like chance, it
beckoned me. My mind combed the mystery into strands,
mortality and imagination,
braided for meaning. In the end only whispered
possibility.
THE
QUANTUM THEORY OF AUNT ROSE
It was in the salty air of Atlantic City, I watched my
Aunt Rose spin away out
of her seat on the Ferris wheel, revolve and fly off on an
arc wave into
oblivion. Momentum of sudden descent pressed her ample
limbs against me, tossing
me firmly to the side of our car. She screamed wildly as
the earth dropped away
and her gartered thighs flew over my head. It was
embarrassing when the
conductor of The Thunderbolt asked me what happened to the
woman who had boarded
the ride with me. I had no explanation. Centrifugal force
was the only thing I
could say. No one had seen her actual flight. Her laughter
had been heard; her
screaming as well, but she had become a blur, dotted dress
and leather shoes and
pink purse, gone. I remember her haze of a mouth
muttering, "Oye, oye! God,
what are you doing to me?" Her confused face flickered and
multiplied and
then flew away. Her lipstick lips were fluttering until
dissolving before my
eyes.
I pondered my aunt's disappearance as I walked along the
boardwalk. She had
vanished, perhaps into the sea like tide abducting with
sand, waves washing away
the last of her image. "Where's your aunt?" her husband,
Uncle Ruby
asked. "Gone!" I said. "Don't worry about it," my uncle
said. "You're too young to worry. Anyway, it's none of
your business."
When I pressed on with my bafflement, Uncle Ruby told me
to ask his brother
Uncle Dan. "That man thinks he knows everything. Ask that
know-it-all.
He'll have an answer even if he doesn't know." Any moment
I expected my
aunt to reappear: behind the painted clown arch of the
seashell ticket booth of
Million Dollar Pier or riding upon the seahorse or mermaid
figure on the
whirling carousel or in the distorting mirrors of the Fun
House. She never
appeared.
"It's not centrifugal force," Uncle Dan argued.
It's beyond gravity. My theory goes even beyond
electro-magnetic field. Your
Aunt Rose is quantum.
Yep, quantum physics."
"Meaning what?" I asked.
"Exactly," Uncle Dan said. "What does Aunt Rose mean?
She's gone.
The concept of your aunt is vanishing from the receptors
of your brain. Old
generation. No use. Mentally, she is obsolete. The thought
form that has been
Aunt Rose has reached a speed that exceeds the ability of
your eyes to apprehend
and believe. Momentum. Inertia. Gravity.
Black holes. Quarks. It's very apparent that people
disappear, and thoughts, and
things. Beliefs and fictions and whole galaxies. So why
not Aunt Rose?
Ideas and numbers and theories spin out beyond our reach.
Pictures of
constellations in what we think of as a fixed universe
blur and become as faded
as Rose's dyed hair. Thoughts are conceived with the
desire to keep them
unchanging. But they travel toward us at the speed of
light. Everyone wants
complacency, static laws when really everything is
constantly at the point of
vanishing."
Opening the door of my parents' condominium, I hoped that
Aunt Rose would leap
out and cry, "April fools" but it was late July and my
aunt always
slept through summer afternoons. My mother sat in her
bathrobe and hairnet
eating last years' matzoh and father wore pajamas.
Imprinted on the back were
the words: "Pool Champion of Lakewood, 1952." It was now
1997. Both
parents were watching a quiz show on television. Maybe it
was the TV's loudness
or the fact that they never looked in my direction that
led to the impression
that they didn't see me. I didn't exist in their world.
"Mom, dad, did you hear me?" I said loudly. "Aunt Rose
disappeared this morning. On the Ferris wheel. She flew
off into space. Listen,
I'm trying to tell you that Aunt Rose is gone. She just
evaporated."
I watched my parents fussing about, complaining,
quarreling, and breaking one
another like the brittle matzoh in their shaking hands.
"What are you
talking?" Dad said. "Rose gone? Don't be crazy. She's
making strudel
for the holidays. How can she be gone? Look here,
meschuggena son," Dad
said, taking down a family photo album from the shelf and
turning the pages and
pointing. "You see? There's Aunt Rose. Satisfied? There
she is at your Bar
Mitzvah and here at Cousin Izzy's wedding in the
Catskills."
"Dad, it's not about photos," I said. "This is a puzzle, a
matter
of quantum physics."
Mother rose from the sofa, straightened its plastic cover,
and walked towards
me, pointing her finger petulantly. "Puzzles? Hey,
Mr.Smarty, you got
answers? Go on T.V. Go on 'Jeopardy'. If you're an expert
on the subject of my
sister Rose then go on T.V. with your answers. Make us
proud of you for a
change. Puzzles!"
Dear Aunt Rose, I pondered, how lucky she is to have left
this world, this dull
sty of indiscriminate dust! My father and mother could
never understand the
dynamic event that was her disappearance. She had
dissolved and probably her
energy was already being rearranged. I walked away from my
parents and their
plastic covered sofa and throbbing T.V. and began walking
the eight-mile
boardwalk. The salt-sea air sizzled against the sun-dried
wooden boards. The
energy interacted and was absorbed. Was my Aunt Rose also
an interaction now, a
kind of transforming process? Perhaps she was still
vaulting through space and
hadn't gained enough velocity to fly beyond Steel Pier and
the diving horses.
Will she stupidly and simply collide with a plunging
horse? That would be a
nasty joke and God, who she invoked when she flew out of
the Ferris wheel, had a
better sense of humor than that. No, it was like Uncle Dan
suggested. Aunt Rose
was to become absorbed by the receptors of thought in an
entirely new dimension.
The details of her disappearance would never be known. She
was neither matter
nor consciousness, Uncle Dan later tried to explain, but
mutually enfolding
projections of a higher reality. She might never make
strudel again or walk the
boardwalk in Atlantic City. Like myself she was a phantom
in a world that no
longer could interact with her. A river could stop its
flow if only a stream
were there to receive it. Maybe my aunt had become that
river. An ocean would
never flow and laugh if clouds weren't there to kiss its
tears. Maybe I have
become that ocean. I'll ask my Uncle Dan.
THIS
COULD
BE THE BIG ONE
You notice first a difference in your animal's behavior.
The dog is walking
nervously in circles and the cats are scratching the walls
and hiding under the
bed. The sunlight looks slightly stained but still golden
through the dust
hanging in the driveway, where the man who handed you the
eviction notice has
just pulled out a few moments ago. The sun is turning
rusty along its rim
spreading beneath tiers of sky until it begins to fade
into the tree line. It is
growing bleak now as if the sun was slipping off the edge
of the world.
You turn off the garden hoses, wondering if the plants
find you too concerned,
perhaps indulgent. Then you are aware that the dog is
whining while taking
shelter beneath the porch. On the other hand the birds are
gone, the blue jays
and the robins; you don't hear a single bird song. You
watch the telephone wires
along the lane vibrating in the windless twilight. A few
inches above one
horizon a flock of Canadian geese are drawing a thin
fluttering line across the
sky. You are about to rake away some leaves when you have
an ominous but
palpable sense that the earth under your feet is taking on
an electrical charge.
It is not quite a steady trembling, but something like a
deep throb of energy, a
dynamo in the distance. You see a kind of fluctuation of
light approaching from
behind the hills. A pulsation is seizing you and then in a
moment another and
another. Again and more intensely you have the uncanny
sense that everything
inflates for a moment, and then shrinks. You mount the
porch and open the screen
door to the house, not hastening but not moving leisurely
either. You reach for
the telephone and punch in the number of your brother who
lives in the town on
the other side of the hills.
"Hello, Walter. It's Martin."
"I guessed that," Walter answers. "What's up?"
"I'm not sure. Something's about to happen," I tell my
brother.
"Something? What do you mean?"
"Well, my animals are acting funny."
"What can I tell you? You have weird animals."
"Then there's an electrical charge."
"From the T.V. no doubt. I'm telling you that you watch
too much of that
crap. All it does is make you apprehensive. You're always
anticipating
disasters. War, political scandals, stock market, floods,
famines fires."
"Walter, you forgot one thing"
"What?"
"Earthquakes. There's one coming as we speak."
"Oh, Come on, Marty!"
"Well, Walter, we're due for one. It's time. Every ten or
fifteen years we
get a big one."
"Where did you here that?"
"I'm not saying it's the big one, Walter, but the wires
are vibrating and
the sky is trembling and the animals are hiding. Those are
signs."
"No, Marty, you're just tripping. It's not a quake."
"Then what is it?"
"Anything! It's your fear or maybe your writer's block.
You want change,
that's all."
"Writer's block? Please, Walter don't mess with me. This
is a strong
premonition."
"Just fear, Marty. That's all."
"Of what?"
"Of mortality. It's probably a premonition of failure."
"God, Walter, you really know how to hurt a guy."
"Hey, now it's nothing personal. We're writers, aren't we.
I'm just going
deep here, looking at the causes within. Writers are
always glimpsing into the
abyss, always expecting failure. Look at Faulkner! Do you
know that he
considered himself a failed poet? And Henry James wanted
to be a playwright.
Universities turn out bunches of critics who see
themselves as failed
writers."
"I never heard this stuff before, Walter.
But you're not listening to me. How are your cats acting?"
"Marty, the only quake is in your confidence. Failure is
not such a bad
thing. It's a kind of negotiable fact while success is a
temporary illusion. But
cheer up, you're never alone in failure."
"Well, there's a consolation," I answer impatiently. "I'm
telling
you something's up. My roof is shaking."
"Get it fixed. Pay your goddamn rent. Have you paid it
yet?"
"Walter, its not about rent or failure."
"You know what T.S. Eliot said when it was observed to him
that most
critics were merely failed writers?"
"Listen, Walter, this isn't the time to tell literary
anecdotes."
"He said, Marty boy, "But so are most writers'. And when
you tell me
that this isn't the appropriate time, do you know what I
reply."
"Walt, the windows are shaking."
"I'll tell you what I reply 'You live in your time, I'll
live in mine'. Get
over it, brother, it's nothing more than television fever
or writers
block."
"Speak a little louder. You're fading," I say. "Don't you
hear
our connection failing?"
"Failure, that's right. It's only natural. It's the soul's
cautious way of
resisting.
"Resisting what, Walter. Speak louder."
"Resisting against hubris, bro. Failure balances
overweening pride,
arrogance, haughtiness. That's more my problem than yours.
Your problem is fear
and rent. Have you paid your rent?"
Rapidly, the tone of the phone is flickering and fading.
"Walt, Walter, are
you there? After the tone fading, the long pause, then a
busy signal. You feel
shut off, quite completely alone. Your heart begins to
quiver in your chest. A
noise outside. The dog begins howling. The neighbor's
spaniel is yammering also
and down my country lane, a symphony of howling dogs.
Twenty yards away is the
nearest neighbor, but you do not dare to risk the walk to
their house. You try
calling the Philips. No answer. There is aq busy signal.
Pacing the carpet, you take the phone over to the window.
You peer out to the
swaying trees. The sky is trembling in the west and along
with it a beam in the
house is creaking. You look at your phone list on the
wall. First you call 911.
Busy. Next, the Highway Patrol. Busy. The Fire Chief.
Busy. You even try the
mayor you just met Saturday at the town meeting. No sound
at all. Then comes a
recorded message, blunt and shaky with static, advising
you that all the
circuits are busy.
At the bottom of the phone list are the long distance
numbers. Your son's number
in Minnesota is in front of you, but you don't want to
alarm him. The two of you
were together in your city apartment for the San Francisco
earthquake in the
late 80's. Now that you are living north in Sonoma County,
everyone thinks you
are safer. After your son Billy's number comes his
mother's in Indiana.
Ex-wives, I think, never listen. Why would she now? I
won't get through anyhow,
so what the hell. I dial, nervously rehearsing what to say
on the chance she
answers. The tone of the phone sounds different and after
a pause, a voice comes
on.
"Hello," the voice begins. "Who is this?"
"It's Martin, Marty here."
"My god, it's been some time."
"Marsha, it's kind of urgent. I'm expecting an earthquake
out here any
moment."
"Is that a big deal? They happen all the time out there,
don't they?"
"Not like this, Marsha. This could be the big one. It was
bound to happen
sometime."
"That's what they always say. Marty calm down! Have you
been smoking weed
or something? I know it's practically legal out there
these days. I read about
it. Shops where you buy it. For medicinal purposes, right?
Medicinal, my ass.
Hippies growing that crap and fake doctors writing
prescriptions! Earthquake?
Maybe that's not a bad idea. I'm sure glad I got Billy out
of there. All of you
are addicted out there, am I right? So you got a woman? No
point in asking if
you got a job. O.K., Marty, what's really going on with
you?"
"Listen Marsha, do you remember
that life insurance policy I turned over to you some years
back?"
"Turned over? Don't you think I was entitled to it? Who do
you think
supported your son all those years? Teeth fixed and his
school loan I paid off.
That money didn't just fall out of the sky you know."
"Wait a minute, Marsha. I helped out. I always did the
best I could. But
that's neither here or there. That life insurance, Marsha,
had a clause in it.
Remember? It was called an act of God clause, meaning that
if I died by an
accident of nature, fire or flood, or an earthquake, the
money could go to my
offspring. Billy then could get the money. Understand? Get
your lawyer to look
into that because I think the big one's about to happen.
Maybe tonight. Maybe
tomorrow."
"Marty, as usual you want me to do all the work. Why don't
you talk to your
older brother, the big shot lawyer in New York?"
"Who Herman? He's totally out of the picture. Walter and I
never hear from
him. It's been years now. I don't even have his phone
number. It's a miracle I
got through to you. All the local lines are down. I'm
telling you, Marsha, this
is the real thing."
"Martin Hammond, you know what I think? I think you're
tripping. Drunk or
stoned, you're just tripping."
"Hey, the sky may be falling but my name is not Chicken
Little. The big
one's coming. I feel it in my bones."
"Well, that's what you get for living in California. So
now you want my
sympathy. What's that I hear. Are you sure you don't have
a woman there?Never
mind. Marty, it's too late for my pity. There's too much
dust between us. An act
of God? You always thought everything you did was some act
of God. Why don't you
go talk to your guru?"
"Stop it, Marsha. You know he died long ago."
"And your high and mighty parents?"
"They're gone too. You know that.
Just please look into Billy getting the money in case I
get swallowed up or a
tree falls on me. Why are you so bitter?"
"Well, Martin, I may be bitter but it's not me who the sky
is falling on.
Talk to your brother Herman in New York. Call me when it's
time for you to
apologize to me. Then we can talk."
You wait listening to the buzzing after Marsha hangs up.
You look out the window
again and now there is a faint flickering in the air. On
the windowsill outside
a few branches are beating against the glass. There is
still electricity running
to your T.V. You flip your remote to all the stations, the
national news, the
local news, and the weather channels. There's no mention
of tremors and no
reporting of an imminent earthquake. I feel the world
shutting in around me. No
help or voices to console me. Even T.V. broadcasting is
abandoning me; no
communication is left to corroborate my premonition. The
dog and cats are
clamoring at the door. I let them in. They are my only
comfort. These breathing
animal bodies come in to my lonely sanctuary to await some
ultimate event with
its final atmosphere.
You pet your animals and feed them.
Slowly surrendered and resolute in your isolation, you sit
in the long velvet
armchair, hoping to rest, to sleep just for awhile. The
cats' fur is standing on
end and they are unusually restless. My dog is more
relaxed or maybe just
resigned to inevitability. He sighs and licks my hand. I
fall slowly into a
brief sleep. It is interrupted by a short pulsing sound
coming from my answering
machine. This time the recording tells you that all
operators are busy and that
the first available party will answer your call. The
service is going haywire, I
conclude, The voice track ends and a swell of music
begins. It is a grand
orchestra, violins and pianos, playing a rendition of "The
Party's
Over." The music is trembling, scratching, wobbling, and
vibrating as if in
empathy with a world topsy-turvy, on the brink of
upheaval. I am reconciled now
with indifference after my weary voice surrenders any
further will to have the
universe listen. But still my heart is thumping. What is
the tone, the message
of this beating? Anger, it is my resentment I hear beating
in my chest,
shuttering against a deaf humanity. I am fatigued and
overwhelmed and fall again
into a sleep.
Again a sound erupts. It is my phone. This time it is
ringing for me to answer.
It rings once, twice, three times. I answer. The ringing
startles the animals. I
reach out and grab the receiver off its cradle. An
indistinct voice
begins talking. It is an excited voice, rushed and urgent.
"Hello, is this Martin Hammond? This is your brother
Herman in New
York."
"Are the phones working again? They were useless all day
yesterday."
"Can you hear me? It's a nightmare here. I had to talk to
somebody.
Martin."
"Yes, what time is it?" I ask dazed and sleepy.
"Never mind the time. The city is in flames. People are
jumping out of
buildings."
"What time is it?"
"It's eight A.M."
"New York time?"
"Of course, what's wrong with you?"
"What day is it?"
"The eleventh. September eleventh. God damn it. Listen.
Haven't you seen
T.V.? We've been bombed. America has been bombed. The
World Trade Center. Gone.
Devastated. We all could be killed out here.
It's like Pearl Harbor. Worse! Some fucking airplanes have
crashed into the Twin
Towers. Martin? They say it's the Arabs. They're going to
kill us. All of us.
Marty, this is Herman, your brother. Can't you hear me?"
"Is this really Herman? What do you want me to do?"
Again you have the absurd sense that everything, including
this voice inflates
and then shrinks. The voice continues screeching and
whining.
"Marty, listen to me. We're dying here. Thousands and
thousands."
The voice is like a recording. It erupts but I can't
listen. On the other end,
the urgent voice is shrill and piercing and edged with
static.
"Marty. For Christ's sake. Turn on your T.V. I need to
talk. I'm
terrified."
The sound of the voice skips and shakes. It is like a
needle on an old
phonograph bumped from its record groove.
"Talk to me, Marty. Don't you care?"
You look out the window again. It is morning and the house
is no longer
shuddering. Daylight is growing brighter.
"Marty! Please. I tried Walter. No answer. Talk to me. I'm
scared."
The voice skips again. I can't listen. I can't respond. It
is a recorded voice,
not a real voice, I hear. It tells me that I have lost
connection and that all
circuits are busy.
I'm having a difficult day. I can't seem to find my balance; I'm losing perspective. This is because I allowed the sentimentality of a movie to get to me. It was a Stanley Kubrick film, the scene where Barry Lyndon, an admirably ruthless and unfeeling scoundrel, is suddenly sobbing at his little son's deathbed. I was unguarded, taken by surprise. His films are famous for their coldness, sustaining such a dispassionate angle of vision. This scene is maudlin; the protagonist is defenseless against his worship of this boy. A grown man weeping his heart away. I turned the sappy movie off the T.V. Then I summoned up some cognitive denials. I had to purge my fear of fragility and weakness. The first step was to trash the foundation, so I told myself that I had seen this drivel before. Bonnie Blue Butler in "Gone with the Wind" falls from her pony and soon after dies, and Rhett and Scarlett weep their hearts away. It's plagiarism, stolen from Thackeray. Nothing worth saddening oneself over! You see, that's how I manage to protect against emotions. I mentally minimize the feeling, nullify it and soon I am restored to a sane and familiar level of numbness.
Sometimes, in my solitude, a temptation to socialize creeps in. It just happens. Some kind of herd or tribal instinct invades. It's not an emotional thing, thank God, so it's easy to manage. When I feel myself drawn down into an impulse to communicate, I begin to recite my affirmations, the ones that evoke resentments. I pray for the help needed to vent my anger. The homeless, ragged and pathetic, provide great opportunity. I grumble nasty retorts to myself like, "Spare change"? How about a kick in the ass or a spare herring slapped In your face?" You see I do have a sense of humor. It is a great resource, a power, in a sense, greater than myself. The other day I'm in a book store looking at Rimbaud's "A Season In Hell", when a woman comes up to me and says, "You like Rimbaud? Me too! Do you know where I might find that line of his, 'Only I have the key to the savage sideshow' ?" I browse her face, blue eyes and full lips. I recognize my lust, even before I open my mouth. I practice my denials, by thinking: "She's just playing me on. She sees that I'm too old for her." Then I vent internally: "Deceitful bitch, just like all the others." If necessary I'll rage: "I'll show you my key and when I'm done with you, even a sideshow wouldn't take pity on you. But I never speak these thoughts. Why should I reveal the precious secret of my wrath? No, rather I look inside myself and take a fearless moral inventory. I remind myself of the basic truths of my condition. I tell myself that I am alone in an empty universe, that I allow no human feelings to enter my sphere. Any reaching out to another will only recoil and hurt me in the end. Any compassion will come back to haunt me.
There was a woman in my life. Very devoted to me. She did everything for me. She found a flat for us on the south side. She supported me on the salary from her office job. She cooked and cleaned and kept the house orderly. She was pliant to my hard edges, and she was sensitive to my silence. At night she was open to my passion, learned to accommodate my fierce fantasies. She knew just how to mold to my cruel intimacies. She knew how to be quiet. Together we grew into an unspoken complacency. Like in our favorite Pink Floyd song from "The Wall", we had become "comfortably numb". I could do anything to her. Tie her up, let her loose into my nightmares. I taught her how to remove the blood from the veins of her feelings. She learned how to meditate on the stars to make them dim and darken. I became dependant upon her, but she wanted to look too deeply into my eyes. She wanted to become pregnant. That's when I knew we were finished. In those nine months, all I can remember is that her stomach was in the way when I climbed on top of her. Anyway, the child was born David Grunch.
I struggled to free myself of the situation. When the kid was about six months old, he got a bad case of Whooping Cough. I was kept awake all night, listening to that wheezing and rattling cough. I prayed for indifference and for the peacefulness of not caring. Instead the sound of steam pumping from the humidifier near his bed filled my ears. I was distracted beyond all discipline. I needed help. That’s when I began going to the meetings, turning my will over to the consciousness-raising and step-by-step program offered by the House of the Numb.
At first I felt discouraged and thought I couldn't go through with it. The discipline was so difficult. The meetings took place in comfortably dark, abandoned warehouses around the city. The members were incommunicative and anonymous, all addicts of various emotional attachments. They supported my silence, encouraging my anger to evolve into a desired sustained submissiveness to apathy. It was clear that my woman and that nuisance of a boy of mine were my burden and distraction. I had to get rid of them. The group was patient with me. I wanted my adherence to the principles to be absolute and perfect. I came to realize my defect; I was no saint. I made a list of the people who had harmed me and accepted my hatred towards them, always nurturing the hope that my venom would be transformed into the blessings of numbness.
I never revealed my name, Daryl Grunch. We would all introduce ourselves with "virtue" names. Mine was Rage. So at the opening of a meeting I would say, "My name is Rage and I'm an emotional being." Returning home from the meetings I was brimming with resolve until I saw the needy face of my woman and heard the irritating coughs of my boy Davie. I tried to withdraw, hold back, shut down but it was becoming impossible.
One morning it occurred to me what I had to do. The illumination came when I was reciting to myself the group's proverb, a cogent adage that has served me well.
"Grant me the power to despise the feelings I must change and to change the feelings I must hate and the wisdom to ignore the difference." I meditated on all this profundity, and it gave me the will to act. I unraveled from my inertia, told the wife a new day was born. I picked up little Davie out from his steamed-up bassinette and carried him eagerly in my arms straight to the doctor's office.
In the waiting room I filled out the registration: name, address, and health history. Davie Grunch, 6403 Apathe Ave., Wilmington, Delaware. I pulled down Davie's blankets, smiled at him while showing him pictures in the magazine until the nurse called us in. I handed Davie over to the nurse with the registration papers. She took him in to see Dr. Gandol. I smiled at Davie, and then the nurse. I buttoned my jacket, put on my ear muffs and walked out the front door and down the marble steps out on to Fordham Street. I ran for miles. That was the last I saw of the woman I had lived with for many years.
I left Wilmington and went out west. That was nineteen years ago this November, and I forgave myself immediately. One has to, really, if you're going to live a decently detached life
Davie is a different story. The image of him comes to haunt me from time to time. A somberness would come over me occasionally whenever I slipped from my careful disinterest and thought about him. Through the years I've managed to maintain my attitude of numbness to the world. I was faithful to the principles of the program of the House of the Numb. I avoided conversation, always rebuking those who tried to solicit sympathy or compassion. I've continued my practices and affirmations. I've been on the path. But only about Davie have I felt remiss. Those insidious moments of remorse would creep in when I thought of my abandoning him. Only those feelings for Davie, so inconvenient and humiliating, have caused me any problem. He was my flaw, my shame and, in these last few years, my nemesis and crucible of doubt.
About a year ago I awoke with tears in my eyes. I had been dreaming about Davie. I'll admit it. I wouldn't admit it to him. In the dream little Davie was coughing, somewhere in a deep forest. I wandered through the mists of wooded paths searching for him. I was lost in the dream. I tried to suppress the dream, but it continued rising in my troubled thoughts. I became lost in my life. I began attending meetings again. I needed the support of the groups that congregated at the House of the Numb. Except for the fact that I was much older than the others, everything about the program remained the same. The meditations on apathy were the same, and the affirmations and moral inventories contained language almost identical to that used so many years ago. The confessionals hadn't really changed either. Always they began with the customary introductions: "Hello, my name is so-and-so, and I am an emotional being." The group responded with, "Hi, so-and-so." After that the speaker would offer his or her testimonial describing the details, the sufferings after falling from the grace of disengagement and from the loss of the serenity of the insensible life. Over a period of time I gained recognition as an authority in the groups. It wasn't long before I became a sponsor, effective in teaching my own innovative method of cognitive denials. Those I was able to guide along the path benefited from my three basic steps. Helping them in their struggles to overcome an emotional entanglement, I would have them take the battle to the cerebral arena, where they learned to fight like gladiators with their analytical and rational weapons to defeat all vulnerability. "Minimize, nullify, and restore one's numbness." The three basic steps I had used throughout my disconnected life. For example, about my woman I'd say, "She was a fragile and susceptible loser. One, minimize. "She was all wrong, thinking we belonged together, destined for each other to stay together. See, she's gone forever. She was wrong." Step number two, nullify. "Always be invalidating!" Strive, I'd tell them, to reach that clean and cold, well-lighted place of numbness. Step three and goal, restored.
But then something strange happened. I had left all those feelings for the woman and the child behind me. Honest I did. I am a truthful man, for all my cleverness. Too truthful, maybe. I am ready to tell you, I wasn't prepared, and maybe that was the problem. For one drizzly night in Denver I was standing at the rear of a meeting, listening to confessionals when I heard a coughing sound. It came from a young man at the front of the hall. I could see him moving his mouth, his throat throbbing, though at first I couldn't hear what he was saying. I only heard the cough. I was feeling very odd. An impulse to turn away seized me, and, despite all the signals and warnings coming at me from the higher powers, I listened more intently. The young man who was rather pale and thin spoke, although his voice rattled and wheezed. Interrupted by the hoarse gratings of a cough, he said, "My name is David Grunch, and I am an emotional being. I have no virtue name."
For a moment I trembled. Blood rushed to my head. I felt dizzy. I thought I would faint. I stumbled against the seats in front of me. Someone turned around irritated and told me to be quiet. My giddy mind fumbled around for affirmations. There weren't any. I reached out to be rescued. I feebly whispered an attempt at a cognitive denial. I stammered on the first step, saying, "It's just a coincidence, an unholy mistake. It doesn't mean anything." At that point an older man turned around, shaking his head while chiding me, " Hey, be quiet! Let the kid reveal. You'll get your turn." My heart was beating fast. I felt undone. I responded to the man, whispering, too loudly, I suppose, "But that's my son. That's him up there!" Another person in the row of seats before me said, "So what! Shut your mouth, You know the rules."
I look around the hall. The members are listening attentively to my son's confessional. I can't seem to hear a word he's saying. I feel suddenly like an intruder, completely out of place. I bend forward to tune my ears to his voice. All I can hear is his coughing. "Davie," I say under my breath, beginning to hear myself as I really sound to the world. I stand on my toes for a better glimpse. Davie is leaving the front of the hall and walking down the aisle. My voice gets stuck, reaching out. The chords in my neck tighten, and then loosen up as a sound echoes through the hall. "Davie, wait, Davie, it's your father."
The young man, my boy, rushes down the aisle and out onto Dole Street. I walk after him hastily, forgetting myself, my equanimity, control, and all the silence and harmony a life of numbness has given me. Davie looks back momentarily and then, looking at me in a desperate and frantic way, turns running down an alley. I follow shouting, "Davie, it's your dad. Didn't she tell you? I abandoned you. Your cough. That's my fault." I can't run any longer. I am older and have to slow down. I see that he too is slowing and stops near a row of tents. I watch carefully, hoping he will now talk to me. He ducks his head down and disappears into one of the tents that line the wall of the alley. I furtively approach the ragged tent and whisper, "Davie?
Davie Grunch." There's no answer. Behind me a raspy voice asks, "Spare change, a quarter, mister?" I stand outside the tent, an improvised shelter for the homeless. Inside I hear muffled voices, coughing and groans, and I smell the rank mixture of alcohol and tobacco. The homeless, I think to myself, and my Davie is among them.
I cry out to the young man whose shadow I see tilted behind the torn fabric of the tent, "Davie, don't you have anything to say to me, your dad? Tell me something. Tell me you suffered and because of me. Don't you hate me, revile me? At least that. Don't you even care?" There is no answer. I stand there pleading in my solitude to an empty universe. My anger grows and I shout uncontrollably, "Davie, don't you care at all?" Not hearing a single word, I try to rise out of my desperate and confused feelings. I say to myself. He's just a homeless, wretched kid. Minimize. He's meaningless. He doesn't care for me and I don't care about him. Nullify. And as the harsh wind dries the moisture in my eyes, I begin to feel numb, so comfortably numb.
BY RICHARD MEYERS
Early one April morning, a year after his arrival in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India, James Hollands woke from a long, deep sleep with a fire in his heart for a village woman. As he descended the winding path dressed like the locals in a lunghi cloth and long white shirt, he knew that she would be among the crowd of passengers, arriving at the Coonoor bus station. If it was a quiet day for beggars, he might get a better glimpse of the woman's complete body. Sometimes she turned her face towards the dense green hills, divulging a lovely swirl of long black hair. On crowded days she struggled with her bundle and food wrapped in banana leaves to squeeze her way off of the packed bus. She always talked to the villagers in an animated way while walking in the muddy street, and nothing in her behavior ever suggested that she had the slightest hint of being watched.
Her skin was a smooth brown and the curves of her body slithered
under her bright sari with a rural kind of desirability. Not long ago Hollands had frequently glimpsed her eyes, almond-shaped and a liquid-black, when he would carefully watch her attending the garden at Sim's Park. The garden was an imitation English, an attraction of the hill station of Coonoor and a short walk from his bungalow where he stayed while working for an American construction project in collaboration with the Indian government. Holland's interest in the woman had to be a secret kept from his employers, the native villagers and the few English residents who had remained living guarded and sedentary lives in Coonoor long after the colonial departure. Only his work partner, Dennis Boyd, knew of James's sensual fascination for the woman and repeatedly warned James against any indiscretion. He had often expressed derision towards his friend's "futile obsession." He would say something like, "What could you be thinking, Jimmy? What could possibly come of this?" or, "She's a common native, poor, doesn't speak the language. Don't even know if she's married. Come on, wake up and get real."
Hollands was aware of the woman's distinct limp. He noticed the affliction when she would walk about the botanical garden at the park, planting and digging in the flower beds. Once she looked up towards him sitting on the hill, but he was never certain if she had caught his improper stare. It was rude of him, he was certain of that, and he averted his eyes. What compelled him to gaze at her for those moments that she walked lamely from the rose bed to the spot under the banyan tree where she gathered with other women workers to talk? He never actually stood close enough to glimpse the details of her appearance, but what general aspect of her form he beheld absolutely enthralled him. Her morning arrivals on the bus gave a more distant and crowded view. Never near enough to hear her speak, he could only see her mouth moving unclearly and he often wondered whether, like other poor, rural women he had seen, she was chewing beetle nut. In fact he knew utterly nothing about the woman. He only knew that the habit of studying her at a distance had become a kind of ceremony that nurtured his hours in a world that had grown more and more foreign and incoherent. Watching her, first at work in Sim's Park and now arriving in the mornings on the town center bus, was a secret practice that absorbed his entire being.
What did he expect to find in this woman? A certain gentle servility of temperament was a desirable quality he believed characteristic of Indian women, especially those of the poorer classes. Perhaps he might stay on in India, marry even, and own a house like the Tudor cottage up on Tiger Hill or build a bungalow above the tea plantation near Lamb's Rock. He wouldn't be the first Westerner to do it, to settle into an ex-patriot existence in a remote region of the subcontinent. Really, there wasn't much in his life calling him back to the States, not for a thirty-six year old man who had been away a number of years and had fallen out of step with the momentum of the western world. In fact, in Madras he had looked into the matter of what was involved, papers and procedures and legalities, regarding the possibility of marrying what was referred to as "a host country national." It wasn't really a complicated thing, not nearly as difficult as would be the courtship and social mechanics of crossing the dubious boundaries into this deprived woman's life. No doubt Boyd was right in calling the consideration absurd and reckless. But the rational wasn't a factor in his fantasies and the more impractical it all appeared, the more he was enticed by the idea. Once confiding in Boyd after a few drinks on the verandah, Hollands had said, "Here we are living at the rim of this country, just barely peeking in. Why not, if one finds an opening, go on, even if blindly, and just plunge in? Even if the water turns into quicksand." Although Hollands liked the sound of his own brash spontaneity, untypical of his reticent nature, he faltered at his own phrase, "if one finds an opening." Just how was that done, he wondered. There was no way that he saw of entering her existence, no way of approaching the woman as an equal, speaking Tamil or doing the things that her kind did. At this point, he was only dreaming from a distance; he watched her from the outside as merely a witness to the surface of things, an ineffective spy in the obscure mesh that was India.
Since the time, some five weeks ago, when he first noticed the woman arriving from Mettapalayam and the hot plains, James Hollands had observed her from the balcony at the Vishnu Hotel and Restaurant. Here he sat drinking a cup of chai listening to the radio playing Karnatak South Indian music while deep, disembodied voices called out, "Chai garam, garam chai." He preferred the Vishnu to the Sangam across the way with its loud, blaring Hindi movie music. Also, the waiter at the Vishnu was friendly, in fact, familiar enough to have whispered to James, "no husband," after some time of noticing the foreigner's attention towards her. The man's name was Ram, and he was the only local in Coonoor, as far as he knew, who had an intimation of his fixation with her. That he believed her to be unmarried was the only information Ram could offer the American.
After the bus arrived from the plains, he would remain seated on a wooden bench under the shade of a thatched awning, drinking his tea from a red clay cup, brimming with steaming liquid. It was a strange relief he felt, seeing the woman disappear from his sight as she walked up the hillside path towards her work at Sim's Park. The trance induced by watching her so intently was lifted, at least until the next morning when he would return again. The bus returning to the villages of the plains arrived at the same place in the early evening, but he had decided never to be there so as not to invite any notice of a conspicuous pattern. Once the woman was gone from his view, Ram might sit down with him and teach him how to put some Tamil words together into a sentence. Relaxing, he would inhale the soothing smoke of a beedie, sip, smoke, and stroll about town, observing the huddled pageantry of markets in their morning bustle.
Sounds and colors spilled out with prodigality, tipping into the benign confusion of the variety of the bazaars. Laid out on banana leaves and bamboo mats were the strange merchandise of the medicine man: snakebite cures, scorpion poison remedies, lizard oil and mongoose extract balms, dried frog legs and bird's feet. Next to the medicines came the bright-colored anatomy charts displaying symptoms and cures for cartoon-like figures in turbans and loincloths, garishly painted. For a moment Hollands's mind drifted to the sudden thought of a cure for the woman's crippled leg. Could this world of strange conceptions of the body ever allow her to submit to surgery and Western methods? Yes, Boyd warned him that Hollands and the woman lived in different worlds. That fact became more obvious with every strange occurrence he saw. A blind beggar, strumming a one string instrument, stretched out his hand. Hollands handed him a rupee. More beggars approached him, children in rags, an old woman shaking with palsy, a shrunken old man with a face like molten wax extended his wilted arm, no fingers on his stump of hand. Leprosy, his mind quivered. Swells of goats and pigs, bristle-back and snorting, rummaged for food along sewers and canals of Coonoor streets. What squalor, he thought, and how he would love to rescue this woman from the filth and hopelessness of an impoverished life. His eyes now turned to what had become a familiar sight. A group of mourners passed before his eyes. The hurrying procession, accompanied by the sounds of drums and cymbals and ragaswaram horn, was bearing a garlanded palanquin of a mummy-cloth corpse high in the air, joyously singing prayers and chants for the dead. Ecstatically, they jostled down the streets towards the pyre of flames prepared behind the temple.
Hollands wandered the town and later worked a few hours on the new hospital construction. After work he went back to his bungalow, and before falling asleep, he drifted off into fantasy. He imagined the woman as his wife preparing a meal for guests in their cottage on Tiger Hill. He pictured her as the decorous hostess to his admiring friends. After the guests were gone, he saw her on their bed with her long black hair languishing on the pillow and her ample breasts peeking above the sheet.
The day's memory of the mourners summoned an image of her death. These same friends comforted him with their condolences, whispering words of praise for his devotion to her. Someone said to another, "He was so kind and good to her. He saved her, gave her a life of grace and comfort." Another replied, "Yes, rescued the poor women from poverty." Restful and contented with these images, he fell asleep.
When the woman did not appear on the bus the following day,
Hollands didn't worry about it. He knew so little about her life that it seemed imprudent to try to reason out just why she was absent from the usual place. It occurred to him that morning that she had just needed one day's rest in Mettapalayam, but when he didn't see her anywhere in Coonoor in the two following days, he concluded that she had stayed on down in the plains. What would she be doing at this moment, he wondered, what would she do there? Then it came to him: perhaps she had not appeared because she had noticed him watching her. He was enamored with the thought that she was aware of his infatuation and was perhaps too shy to present herself. He was shy himself, but it was now clear to him that it was time to make contact with her. In Calcutta only months ago, he had resisted proposals of marriage to Bengali women, suggested by the women's male relatives, somebody's cousin's brother or other. These offers were easily dismissed in that these thinly-veiled grasping plots to gain American citizenship were embarrassingly obvious. But this woman was not like the forward and avaricious kind from the city. She was a guileless simple rural woman.
When a week passed not seeing her, he grew anxious and decided it was time to make inquiries. He would go and ask Ram at the Vishnu. When Hollands, with rupees in hand, looked up from the table to ask Ram about the missing woman, he was upset to see another waiter. "Chai, chai, garam chai?" the man asked. Ram never asked so aggressively. He was always polite.
"Where's Ram," Hollands asked as he peered over the tables, "in the kitchen?"
The young man shook his head in confusion. Hollands wanted to ask the question in Tamil, but he feared his pronunciation would be too imprecise. He tried anyway.
"Ramku yenna achi?"
The waiter did not react. Ordering a tea, he wondered whether Ram had been replaced. When the new waiter returned, Hollands was disappointed. The man poured the tea, not in the way Ram did by cooling the hot liquid by pouring it rapidly from one glass to another.
Hollands left the Vishnu and walked around the central town area plotting what he might ask anyone. "Pardon me," he might begin, "do you possibly know anything about the woman who… " He couldn't consider mentioning the limp. "…. the woman who each day takes the bus to Mettapalayam?" No, these questions were vague and absurd. A sense of folly was folding in upon him, when suddenly he felt a tap upon his back. He turned around, and there was Ram.
"Sir, you are looking for me? Today not working. I know what you want. Where is the lady? Yes? Someone is telling me she stays in Mettapalayam with her daughter."
"Daughter?" Hollands replied. "You didn't say anything about a daughter."
"That is correct. I only talked about a husband. I said she doesn't have. A daughter she has staying Mettapalayam. That is what I know. She is working sometime here in Coonoor and living and working sometime Mettapalayam."
Hollands had a difficult time explaining to Dennis Boyd his need to go to Mettapalayam. "Jimmy, I'm telling you, if you continue chasing after her and losing time on the job, the company will fire you. How long will you be gone ?"
"A couple of days," Hollands answered. "Maybe a week."
"A week?" Boyd repeated in amazement. "Don't push this thing with that woman."
"Losing the job would not be the end of the world," Hollands said. " With the money I've saved I could live in this country for a long time. She has a daughter, you know. The woman needs help."
"Word gets out to the wrong people," Boyd warned him. "and you might lose your visa."
It was with some anxiety on the following day that James Hollands boarded the crowded morning bus for Mettapalayam. The stifling heat filled the airless bus as it descended into the arid plains. The bus stop was in front of the small marketplace which contained a row of palm-thatched food stalls and the post office. Across the mud baked street from the market was the Ganesh Lodge and Restaurant. The passengers got off here and walked the rest of their way home. This was the downtown where the paved road ended; so also ended the outside world with which the town was connected to the Nilgiris by this back-and-forth rickety bus run by the Guratgi Hill Station Bus Company. On market days the shops and stalls were filled by tribal villagers out to buy and sell. It was among this crowd, passing through the few streets that formed the downtown that Hollands hoped, at some time, to be able to see the woman. It was destined to happen, he thought. The town was quite small. What he would do when he finally saw her was an uncertainty that confounded him as he sat down for chai at the Ganesh.
"Chai, chai, garam chai," a voice behind him shouted. For a moment he hoped it could be Ram. The waiter surprisingly spoke English and poured the tea into a porcelain cup placed on a saucer. "You are coming from Coonoor?" the middle-aged man said in a refined voice.
"Yes," Hollands answered. "It was a long and hot ride. I'm not used to the plains."
"Yes, this town is not cozy like the hill station towns, Ooty or Coonoor," the man commented. "But this is the real India. Not the story book one of cool and lovely landscapes. This is more real. Down here you can find what you are looking for."
It was a curious way the waiter had of speaking, and Hollands felt encouraged in the relative safety of this remote town to press on and inquire about the woman and her daughter. "You speak English well.To tell you the truth I am looking for something. No, really I'm looking for someone. I'm working at building that new hospital in Coonoor, and there's a woman here. She has a limp, you know, a bad leg. There's a chance the new surgery unit could operate to fix it for her. The doctors want to encourage people to be helped by Western type medicine. You understand? She's not real young, and she walks around with a bad leg."
"Does she have a little daughter" the waiter asked. "about ten years old?"
"Yes. Do you know her?"
"The girl comes in here everyday," the waiter said. "after school to buy sweets. She speaks the very best English. Just like me. The mother is very lovely looking, but she does not speak, maybe a word or two. She speaks Tamil only. The girl, Rumitra, she will come soon. She goes to English school, but it costs money. They are too poor. The little one tells me that she may have to quit this school and begin working in factory."
"But she's too young to work," Hollands objected. "Far too young!"
"Not in this country," the waiter said. "In Madras state most children begin working when they are only seven years old. I read this. Just wait. You can talk with her. Soon she's coming."
It was late afternoon as Hollands sat at the Ganesh hotel waiting to meet the woman's daughter. The trees in the town center grew darker as the earth lurched away from the scorching sun. Birds began clamoring as the high branches fluttered from their weight. The racket continued, intensifying every minute as the sky turned into a deep orange sunset. Under the lights and awnings, women in bright saris, their hair braided and scented, walked charmingly into the market and the shops. A group of school girls came strolling past the Ganesh, and, just as the waiter had predicted, a young little girl in blue and white school uniform entered the restaurant and searched dreamily at the shelves of sweets behind the desk.. Hollands nervously watched the young girl as the waiter walked over to her and whispered while pointing towards Hollands. The little one the waiter had called Rumitra walked in slow cautious steps toward Hollands' table.
"Hello," said Rumitra. "Mr. Subramanium said you wanted to talk."
"Is that his name?" Hollands asked.
"Yes. But he likes me to call him Mohan. That's his first name. What is yours, sir? My name is Rumitra." She was thin and fragilely built. He hoped it wasn't malnutrition. There was a simple particular elegance in the way she stood with her arms against her prim and dark blue school dress. A chain crucifix dangled about her neck, and her fingers, slight and copper color, toyed with it.
"My name is James," he said in a voice one uses for children.
"I met you before, sir. You're a friend of my mother's."
"No, that's impossible, never before this moment," Hollands said. "I see your cross. Are you Catholic?"
"Catholic, you mean like Christian. Oh no, sir. I am like Mama. We go to temple. I go to Christian school and they like me to wear this. Are you, how do you say, Catholic?"
"I was once," he said and found a wave of emotion stirring in him.
"Once?" she said puzzled. "No, you're tricking me. You can not be something 'once' and not be the same thing now."
"Why not?" he inquired with great curiosity.
"Because!"
"Because why?" he asked.
"Because God."
"I don't understand. Tell me, Rumitra."
"Because God makes you and loves you the same, for always. You can not change the love of God. You know! You're tricking."
"I'm sure God loves you.. Your mother knows where you are? I mean she does, doesn't she?"
"Mama is working?"
"What does Mama do?"
" I don't know. A service, I think. Giving things."
"Rumitra, I want very much to meet your mother."
"She is working now. She needs to work for long time. If she becomes rich then I can stay in school. She loves me and doesn't want me to work. I love school. I am the best in English. Teacher says."
"And your Daddy," he asked. "Papa. Where is he?"
"I don't know him, but I know he wants me to go to school."
Looking at her more attentively, he decided the truly engaging feature was not her full little mouth, but her eyes; they were coal black, piercing, older and enthralling and, because of their size, seemed to overwhelm her whole face.
"You are a very nice… a very special girl," he said in a fervent and tearful voice. "I want to meet your mother. I want to tell her what a wonderful and special daughter she has."
"Thank you, sir. I know where to find her. You wait here. I know you will be good to her. I will bring her here. I will tell her that you are such a kind man."
As though moving in a dream, he watched the little girl walk out of the Ganesh Lodge and Restaurant into the noise and twilight of the streets. The air had a fresh tangible quality to it. He took a deep breath and finished his tea. The tables in the Ganesh were empty; he was alone in the large room which was losing its shape in the growing darkness. Closing his eyes he felt an upward surge; soft images of contentment rose before his mind. he saw the delightful little girl holding his hand and leading him through the cedar groves along Tiger Hill towards the cottage where her mother stood on the high verandah beckoning them home for dinner. In another imagined scene woke Rumitra and him from their reveries of English books to come outside to watch a flight of wild monkeys, racing through the vine-hung trees above their cottage. Drifting off in contentment, he reached into his vest pocket and fumbled with his wallet full of rupee notes. Satisfied, he became aware of the ceiling fan, swirling and churning. The sound seemed to continue long into his musings, the sound of the whirling blades of a fan overhead. Then gradually the haziness of it blended into the clear murmur of a silk sari and this, delicately evident, was moving nearer, growing acutely until the room seemed to yield to a wave of whispers. Hollands shook and opened his eyes to a sharp, direct stare.
"Hello," said the woman. The figure of the woman loomed before him with an odd sense of unreality. He gazed fixed at the space where, a moment ago, the daughter had sat. Now the woman appeared with her falling black hair, bordering a powdered and brightly painted face. Again he heard, "Hello." The room was real. The fan was whirling above. The woman was vividly there, but it was not faithfully the woman he imagined. A small voice spoke, crossing over the threshold of his awareness. It was the little girl Rumitra's voice.
"That is one word she knows, 'hello'," the daughter whispered. "Sir, this is my mother." The woman smiled, not demurely as he imagined, but boldly. Surprised by the lack of shyness in her face, he looked closer, expecting to notice her teeth stained with beetle nut. Rumitra took Hollands' hand and placed it in her mother's hand. The woman gripped it firmly. "I will translate for the both of you," the little girl offered. "I do it all the time in my class." Holland's nervously mumbled that he was glad to finally meet the woman. Rumitra translated these words into Tamil for her mother. The woman again smiled at him, continuing her clasp of his hand. A silence fell momentarily over the three of them. The mother's strange smile annoyed him; it was disingenuous. The woman bent over and whispered in her daughters ear, Rumitra looked at Hollands with a genuine smile and translated, " my mother wants to know how much you want to pay for her service." Hollands was startled, and before he fully grasped the meaning of the question, the mother again whispered and the daughter altered the last words, "My mother means how much for what she has, you know, handicrafts. How much do you want to pay her?" The woman leaned forward, gazing intrepidly into Hollands' eyes, her head nodding assertively while her finger rushed in a tickling way the palm of his hand.
Shocked, he recoiled hastily and, rising abruptly from the table, noisily over- turned the stool and shouted, "Services? Handicrafts, you call it? In front of your precious little girl. My God, what kind of woman are you!" Scornfully and desperate for admonishing words, he yelled out, "You could cost me my job, you know!"
Stuttering on, he added, "And…I could…loose…my visa." The woman turned away, frightened. The little girl was shaking; tears poured down her cheeks. He stared stricken and confused at the mother and child.
Staggering out of Ganesh's and on to the crowded street, Hollands walked furiously towards the bus stop, hoping to catch the 7:30 back to Coonoor. His feet moved numbly as if they carried him grudgingly. He paused in the crowded street.
All intention to escape left him. A tide of darkness seemed to be sweeping the last moment and it's passion away from him. He did not want to watch it disappear.
His buttoned vest had come undone. He dropped his wallet in the dust. He stooped to pick it up and saw the thick swell of rupee notes inside. His body stopped walking and stiffened as the image of the daughter's face, worried and blameless, floated before him with tears spilling from her soft engaging eyes. He turned around and began walking back towards the Ganesh. The tide of darkness seemed to draw him back towards the place where, for a fervent and poignant moment, he felt deeply implicated in a family's misfortune. He turned away from an urge to grieve the loss of his own fantasy. Suddenly he longed to enter again and participate in their life. It was so much larger than his own. "Help, help!" he whispered to himself, but his voice was slight, barely a strand of sound..
The lights were dim in the Ganesh as he walked meekly to the mother and child, being comforted now by the waiter the girl had called Mohan. Hollands approached them reticently and reached for his wallet and laid the pile of rupees on the table. "For Ramitra's schooling," Hollands said, feeling a warm wave of kind completion rising in his blood. "For your precious daughter." Turning from the table he could hear the little girl translating for her mother into Tamil what had just occurred.
The Man Who Slept Through Heaven
The Man Who Slept Through Heaven
by Rich Meyers
“You have a complaint? You wanted to see me. Yes I own this hotel and restaurant. I speak English. You say this is not the food you ordered. You asked for the Ethiopian bread? Yes I know the spongy bread like the pancake. This is not a place for Ethiopian food. You are in Harar now. We are not Ethiopians or Eritrean. You will not understand the difference. It is more than language or food. We who live here understand. But you are European, am I right? This is not a bad town, not many foreigners come here. The hot winds do not blow in the afternoon. We have terrible winds so when they do cease blowing in the afternoon, we call that time the “Semayat”, ‘heaven’ in your language. “
The young Dutchman, Gerard, explained that he had been misinformed and so took the wrong bus from Addis Ababa for the Afhat Seman to see the Coptic Church mosaics. The only way now was to take a morning bus at the north end of town for Begemdir and Semun.
“So you were told in Addis Ababa about a morning bus. That is typical of those people __ to tell you only part. What they did not tell you is about the Nefas, the winds that bring on the fevers. They blow through this town in the mornings sometimes. This summer is their season. The bus does not come at all if there is a warning of the winds. Nobody can know until shortly after sunrise. At about 6 AM if horizon is without the blue clouds and if the flies have not come then probably it will be a safe and windless day. Then word will spread that the buses can come here to Harar. Yes I do. I do speak good English. I learned in London. Four years at a school in London. So in the summer here, the mornings are uncertain. The evenings, I mean, the late evenings the mosquitoes come up from the marshes at Dal Es Khardosi and it is impossible to be outside. They are everywhere and their bites go on itching for days. So the truth is that the only good time of day is the afternoon. The air is still and clear. No flies or mosquitoes. It’s the only peaceful time and so we call it the time of peace, a time for enjoying or for meditation, whatever you like. Semayat, the time of heaven. Yes, of course, I have a room for you. There is a fan. Turn it off if the winds come and close the shutters. Take the room for one night and we can see in the morning the chances of the Fenas. You are fortunate to have arrived so early in the morning. The rooms fill up by noon when people want to be settled before they go out for the Semayat to walk the streets and enjoy the calm. Here it is, the key, room one hundred and eight. We can talk money in the morning. Go rest, there are some hours before the Semayat. “
The Dutchman put his one bag in the room and walked out to the public square. The streets were empty and only a few people were shopping in the market. The men were tall and thin and wore their robes and the women were in white garments covered with blankets. It was surprising just how few people were generally visible on the streets in the town. Even the capitol Addis Ababa was it seemed a place without vitality, desolate, bereft of the business he had experienced in most other countries he had traveled. Gerard had been offered a cheap ticket in Cairo to fly to Ethiopia and he decided to visit some ruins and other sites he had read about. He wasn’t prepared for such poverty and barrenness.
After he had eaten in the market sitting by the edge of the town’s only fountain, he felt very sleepy. There was no sound but the olive trees rubbing together and the splashing of water into the fountain at the center of the market. It seemed like a town of stillness; just waiting. The heat and the bus ride had tired him out. He turned out of the market to the long empty street lined with one- story buildings of mud with corrugated tin roofs. The meal he had eaten lay heavily in his stomach, but he dared not complain about the food again. The town was not very friendly. It was just a stopover place on the way to see some archaeological ruins, particularly the mosaics, which at this sleepy point in the morning no longer had much importance to him. The town was not mentioned in the tour book and he made up his mind to accept the fact that he had lost a day of travel. Idleness, he was not a stranger to it. He had to wait out his time in a town in which there was nothing to see or do, no surprises at all. At the end of the street, probably the main street, he came to a marsh. He heard sounds that after awhile he identified as the voices of thousands of frogs. Perhaps, he thought, the frogs would eat the mosquitoes. The light now that he could see it upon the flat landscape, moved in a strange way; slightly up towards the clouds and down towards the horizon, and sideways as well, but never appearing to change its position. Did this peculiarity forecast the coming of the winds? No, the hotel owner he remembered had said that they would not come today.
In the next moment he turned onto another street on his way back to the hotel. In front of every building there were horrible foul heaps of garbage, festering piles of rancid matter, debris mixed with scraps of food. The air was heavy with the smells of rotten fruit and olive oil and sun-baked excrement. Gerard covered his face until the stench was left behind. He rounded the edge of town along a crumbling wall, and through a large rift in the wall he saw the blank endlessness of flatlands broken at certain spots by the warping of heat waves. Not losing recall of the location of the hotel, he explored another street that had a few palms and more heaps of garbage lying by the sides of houses. This street also had very little movement. An occasional robed man passed and mumbled a brief greeting. Nearby a man emerged from his mud house and shouted out something to Gerard. The man whose entire body was covered with blankets called him over to talk.
“I said Dasudayet but you would not understand. It is a dialect of Amharic. At a distance I thought you were Ethiopian. I’m sorry. I do not myself speak Amharic although I am able to. I am from up north and I speak a kind of Tigrinya. I called out to you hoping that you could do something for me. I could tell that you were not from here and probably you were a Christian and you would not be offended to be asked this favor. Please carry these containers of waste over to that pile across the street. Do you see it? Ah yes. You see I am a Moslem and cannot touch unclean things so close to prayer, the time of worship at the mosque. You understand, please. We are mostly all Moslems in this town but I lived among Christians years ago in Asman. Please, only a minute, please. The Dutchman bent down and picked up two buckets of garbage, not very heavy but putrid, and carried them across the street and deposited them into a larger mound of waste and returned to the man whose face peeked out smiling from under his garments and wrappings.
“You are very kind. What are you doing in this town so remote. Oh I see. So you are going to see the Coptic mosaics. Very interesting! You should also see the famous obelisk near Axum, which was the ancient capital. Then you catch the bus for Labbela tomorrow.
Gerard interjected that he would catch the morning bus if the Nefas didn’t blow through town tomorrow. He added, somewhat confused, that he had understood that the bus to take was the one that went to Gonder.
“And who was it that gave you this information? Ah yes, the hotel owner. I know him. He neglected to tell you that going a few miles further to Labbela would save you a few hours of walking. And the heat at the time you arrive will be terrible. ‘Nefas’, who taught you this word? Oh this same man. I am surprised that he being Eritrean used this word.
The Dutchman said that he understood the hotel owner to say that he was not Eritrean. The hotelkeeper, he said, had taught him another word and that was “ semayat”, in English meant heaven.
“Again he told you only half the truth. The full term for this time of peacefulness is Mengiste Semayat, meaning the government of the heavens. That is, how do you say, yes, literally what it means. These people are always omitting something, a word or a fact. Once I spoke to him on the subject of the Holy Koran and do you know that he omitted five prayers from his Ramadan services? And the rules of purity, he only acknowledges ten. You can’t talk to these people. Really you can’t. But I am keeping you. I thank you kindly for your service. You should go and rest before the Mengiste Semayat __ don’t forget the Megiste part. That is the principal that governs the degree of peacefulness. It is so much to explain and for you to understand. So my friend, ‘Enshala’ and know that I thank you and Allah thanks you and the scavengers thank you.
He waited for the man to stop speaking just as he had done with the hotel owner. It seemed pointless to do anything but just listen to these men. The man bowed and said “Salaam Allecum”. His words had ended. The sun began to be very hot. He covered his head with a scarf he had learned to carry in Africa against the late morning sun. Walking briskly towards his hotel he thought that heaven should be a cooler place and wondered what could possibly change the blazing sun into coolness and how would these putrid odors of garbage heaps be eliminated and perhaps transformed into what he imagined heaven would allow __ jasmine or lilac or roses? It would take a radical change, perhaps a miracle, to create such a contrast that could be thought of in such lofty and ethereal terms. Heaven, he thought, might be for him at this point a soft bed under the coolness of a ceiling fan in his hotel room. In this advancing heat he nearly dozed while walking the streets. He closed his eyes against the mounds of refuse outside the market gates, the heap of bones and inner organs that rotted in front of the butcher’s stall, the sun-baked rinds and blemished peels from tossed out fruit that were piled up against the market gate. In place of these foul sights his mind played over a landscape made of silken garments that veiled soft thighs and round breasts rising like sand dunes transcending the dreariness of the flatlands.
At the hotel Gerard got his key from the floor sweeper. The hotel owner was not in sight. He climbed the stairs drowsily. The sweeper called out to him in one of the Ethiopian languages: “Ibakih, sir” He smiled and pointing to the old clock above the hotel desk he said: “Fellagalio, hulet.” He raised two fingers in the air and again pointing to the clock drew a circle in the air twice. Then he said “Semayat.” Gerard understood him; it meant that in two hours it would be Semayat the time of day the inhabitants of Harar called Heaven. In his room the bed was not soft but it was, however, a bed and for an instant Gerard’s imagination succumbed to a half-defined feeling that he could sleep forever, or at least until the end of Ramadan next month. So when he awoke many hours later, stupefied as if lingering behind a curtain of wonder, which was precisely what he thought had happened. For an instant he imagined his sleep had covered a lifetime.
In the next instant he arose, his head clearer, now free of abstractions, to gaze directly at the fact of the sky. It was reddening into the glow of twilight. He had slept through heaven. Astonished, Gerard looked at the vanishing sun. A vague feeling of disappointment came over him, a sudden sadness as if he felt himself deprived of a phenomena, a prized and collective experience, shared by the townspeople that, now having missed, made him separate. The realization gave him an abrupt and frightened a sense of hurry. He rushed out of his room and down the hotel steps. He wanted to be outside under the sky to catch any last glimmer of that revered time of day about which there had been so much talk. The floor sweeper saw him rushing towards the door and shouted out in alarm a kind of warning, “No, No Sir.” And a woman who he had seen in the kitchen also warned him waving her arms saying: “No, don’t leave, not time to go.”
Gerard bolted through the front door and went out into the fading light and empty streets. He began retracing the route through town he had taken earlier in the day. He passed under several arches, turning onto a dirt street, and turning again he could see the gates of the market, and the foulness of air pierced his nostrils. A strange sound, high pitched, a kind of whimpering sound could be heard coming from the direction of the market. He continued walking. Again the sound, this time a rattle or was it a groan or grumbling? And now the noise came from the opposite direction down another street. The rancid odors increased, so he knew he was near the garbage heaps. The noise subsided and he resumed walking, amazed at the complete emptiness of the streets. Nobody stirred at all, doors of houses appeared to be bolted, shutters latched. The streets were completely silent until again he heard a strange sound. He could not recognize it at all. It certainly wasn’t the chorus of frogs he had heard earlier. It was much louder than the drone of insects. There was a pause and then as if the town had waited for him to get settled into walking slightly more comfortably, the winds returned with a succession of loud and shrill sounds, rhythmic, fluttering like laughter. Walking nervously onward he was able to make out at the very edge of the market’s darkness a shape, a hunch-backed hideous shape of a hyena. Its eyes glittered feverishly. Its enormous jaws were grinding into a heap of garbage, ravenous teeth and tongue, dripping saliva. Seeing Gerard, its ears went back; it whirled around to get a closer look. Gerard froze in panic at the sight and very slowly began walking backwards. Behind him came that high scream. Gerard lurched back, turned around and staggered at the sight of another hyena devouring refuse only some feet away from him. Its stiff erect nostrils were red with blood and its black heaving hide shone in the last glimmers of sun. Gerard eased away and then stood still, trembling violently. He kept his eyes on both hideous beasts that were so absorbed in eating that he could slip away down a side street. The wind had picked up in the half-dark, and ahead he could barely make out a distant movement. A cloud of mosquitoes, he thought, but at his feet hyena tracks were plain enough, dragging through the dusty and dirt clods of a narrow street. Just about to break into a run to the hotel, a shadow cut across in front of him. The movement he had seen was the dark hides of two more hyenas approaching towards him. Too frightened to move, he paused, puffing noisily, the blood pounding in his ears. Then he saw what was occurring. In every direction, on every street, bent over and growling, around the various garbage heaps were hyenas feeding themselves, grotesque packs of devouring hyenas. The red eyes of one of them looked into Gerard’s face; the creature’s eyes were calm and fearless and fierce. Gerard turned from side to side but could not decide how to escape the ugly animals. The dark hideous brotherhood hissed and growled among one another and seemed unconcerned with Gerard’s presence. His eyes were riveted in shock, as he watched the feasting mouths tear viciously at the garbage. The mouth of one opened and vomited a stream of putrefied meat and fluid. The red fearless eyes of another hyena still looked at him, unafraid, remote and detached. Then he heard their distant laughter and saw black blood spurting from the twisted iron-jawed mouth corners. Gerard felt a dizzying rise of blood. At any moment he might faint. Suddenly something struck him from behind and darkness covered him, and he struggled under what felt like layers, one after another, of cloth covering. Shaking, he felt his body rising off the ground. Under the swarm of covering he could feel sharp pressure __ somehow he was being carried, bouncing and twisting in confusion. Quite suddenly again it all changed and he was lying on something soft, and he saw that the unwinding cloth that had enveloped his body was blankets. His eyes opened more fully so that he saw two men standing above him over the bed he had been tossed upon. He recognized one of the two men. The man who had carried him away from the hyenas, carried him to safety was the man whose garbage he had carried.
“You remember me, “the familiar one said. “We met, you carried my garbage out earlier, same garbage those beasts are eating now. Don’t you remember what I said?”
Gerard, still shaking, his shock easing off, slowly stammered. “What? You never told me!”
He was quickly interrupted by the thickly built and forcefully spoken man, “I said that I thanked you and that Allah definitely thanked you.” Gerard’s nervousness turned to outrage and he furiously screamed, “No one told me about the hyenas. Nobody told me that the damn streets filled up with them.”
Again, the man interrupted, “And I said, remember, that the scavengers thank you. Harar is famous for our hyenas. The beasts are our garbage disposal. This is the only place in the entire world where this happens.”
“Hyenas.” Gerard shouted. “Those are deadly beasts. I could myself been eaten alive!”
“But you see you weren’t, we rescued you. Nobody goes in the streets when it becomes dark. Night is the time for the hyenas. Not for you my friend. Thank Allah the angels are among us to set things right.
Gerard’s anger grew apace with his bewilderment. He shouted: “You said nothing of hyenas. No warnings. You said the hotel owner omitted things, told only part. Look at you, what you omitted.”
“My friend. I have long heard words that come not from the heart, words written in desire to change destiny. These words are sermons. Fate cannot be avoided. The hyenas were your fate my friend. You slept all through Semayat. Right? That is what I am told. So you see your destiny, what a good story it is that is being told through you. Don’t you see? It is the story of the man who slept through heaven and woke up in time to get a glimpse of hell.”
AND SHOULD NOT I PITY NINEVAH?
by Rich Meyers
Mikel lay on the Persian carpet at his Uncle Aker’s house in Baltimore. He was wondering when his father would arrive from their home in Fresno, California when his Aunt Debraik came from the kitchen carrying a plate of steaming hot pastries.
“ Mikel, you are the youngest,” she said bending over the carpet to offer her nephew the first of the batch. “ So you begin the eating.”
“ Thank you, Auntie. When is Papa coming?”
“ Supposed he here now.” Aunt Debraik said with her thick accent. “Papa late. Ask Mama when. Eat the pastries.”
“ Deba, Deba,” Uncle Aker said reproachfully. “ Don’t call them ‘pastries’. This is our own Assyrian cooking. Not European. Don’t confuse the boy. Always explain the culture, Deba. And for Mikel’s Papa, tell him the truth. Daiyud is always late. I should know. I’m the brother.”
“ That isn’t so,” said Markla defending her husband. “My Daiyud is on time for things. I think maybe he catch another flight. Not today’s flight. I told him he should come on the plane with us. Daniel told him like a good son, ‘Papa, don’t worry for the pruning of the fruit. The men can finish.’ But, no my husband he wants to see everything is done right. That’s his way. You can not change the man’s nature. Just I say, let the man call. A telephone is not such a big thing to pick up. But Aker promise me, please. No fighting. Don’t upset Daiyud. He doesn’t like quarreling. Promise. Remember his heart condition. Please, Aker
Mikel’s father had promised him a trip to the park and museums and Mikel impatiently longed for the adventure. It was towards the end of March and the streets of Baltimore were steeped in snow. Mikel had never been to the East Coast before and he was amazed at the firm embrace of cold weather as he studied the novelty of snow. He saw the heaps of it shoveled along porch steps and the melting slush filling the gutters and women with their heads wrapped with scarves and their feet encased in fur-lined boots pick their way carefully over patches of melting ice. Mikel wondered if his father had brought boots and gloves along for the Baltimore winter.
“ A man should travel with his family,” Uncle Aker stated. “That’s all I’m saying. Especially these days. With this war and terrorist business going on, it’s better to travel together. We must be very careful. We don’t have blond hair and blue eyes, do we? And our last names are not Smith or Jones. No, not at all. I am Aker Hariri. You Markla and your husband and Daniel
and Mikel are Hariri. And you Debraik . Hariri is not a safe name these days. No, really, think about it. Didn’t you tell me, Markla, that your Daniel was harassed. They chased him, wanted to kill him. See, California’s
no paradise. I told your son to shave that beard. You don’t need to wear a turban or speak Arabic to be hated .People who look like us are suspect. They confuse us with the others. Americans never liked us anyway.”
“ Don’t talk like that, Aker,” Markla Hariri interrupted. “Not with the boy listening.”
“ Now you see, Markla, that is wrong,” Uncle Aker said. “Mikel should know the kind of world he’s living in. And where he’s from. His blood is Assyrian. We are ancient people. We built Babylon. Don’t think your people are from Iraq, Mikel. We belonged to that land long before Baghdad existed. Our capitol was Nineveh. Study your Bible, Mikel. Remember always, we are Christian. We don’t bow down to anyone but Jesus, Mikel. We don’t hijack planes and crash them into buildings and we don’t poison the mail.”
“ Aker, that’s enough,” Aunt Debraik said. “Not here gathering with the family.. We have to listen everyday the radio and T.V. the bad news. Not here. Your brother and Markla are in from California for the holiday. Let’s have peace.”
“ What am I, a war monger?” Uncle Aker asked rhetorically. “ Facts are facts. Where’s Daniel? With him I can converse. Not with silly women.”
“ Listen who he calls silly,” Markla said offended. “ No respect. No wonder he never married. Who would have him?”
“ Talk to me, Markla. I’m right here,” Uncle Aker replied. “I didn’t want a wife. What good is a wife when the world is ending. It’s the end. Read Revelations! The signs are here. Sunday is Easter and I don’t think Daiyud will arrive, even by Sunday. Doesn’t matter. There’ll be no resurrection. It’s two days he’s late, this brother of mine. Where’s Daniel?”
Aunt Debraik took Mikel by the hand across the carpet to the book shelf where she took down some of the family photo albums. Mikel stared at her bushy dark eye brows and trace of a mustache. She wanted the distraction from her brother-in-law’s talking and hoped that Mikel could get involved with perusing the pages of the family history in photos. She was familiar with Aker’s albums and there was a section she always avoided. The pages that featured Debraik with Leonard, her husband who had divorced her some years ago, brought back to her painful memories. Particularly painful was thinking about it at Easter time when the trouble between them had first begun. At an Easter gathering some years ago, Lenny had announced after an impassioned argument with Aker that he was leaving the Chaldean Catholic Church. The decision struck a blow to the family. Daiyud as usual was understanding but the third Hariri brother Sheved, a volatile orthodox Christian threatened to never again speak to the family members if they allowed Lenny ‘to disgrace their name’. He kept his word and no one except the younger brother Daiyud, exceptionally compassionate and caring, ever again spoke to him.
“ Mikel, look here,” Aunt Debraik said, pointing to various photographs. “This is a picture of your Papa and your Mama at their wedding. Papa wears a tuxedo and your mother is wearing a traditional dress. It is Jeseva’s house. That’s your grandfather, your Papa’s father. He died when you were just born. He never left the old country. Eleven children he had. But only six grew up. The others died. Typhoid and cholera. Your parents went back there to the old village to marry. Respect for Grandpa. I remember the old house. I was born there. Your Papa and me we come to America when I am twenty, Papa is eighteen. I remember Daddy pushing me on the swing under the fig tree . There is your Grandma. She was a big lady. There she is planting flowers. Beautiful garden we had. And there she is holding your baby Uncle Rephaim. He was born with only two fingers on one hand. I thought that he would find the missing ones when he came to heaven. He died like Grandma in the old country. We called our place Arbil in the Mosul province of northern Iraq.
Aunt Debraik’s head suddenly turned in the direction of the kitchen where Mikel’s older brother Daniel had just entered the house. Conversation stirred; the house seemed abruptly awakened to sudden news.
“It must be a mistake,” Markla said in a confused tone.
“Of course it’s a mistake,” Aker answered. “It’s a shameful mistake. After all, we are Americans. They can’t just lock a man up because his name’s suspicious. What else did he say, Daniel?”
Daniel, a tall and thin boy of sixteen, looked timidly at his excitable Uncle Acker. Daniel’s hair was streaked with snow and his gloves and boots were dripping puddles on the floor.
“ My God, Daniel, what happened?” Aunt Debraik asked.
“ Daiyud’s been arrested,” Aker said. “That’s what happened. My own brother they are thinking is a spy or something. A terrorist! In jail. Arrested at the airport. Two days ago. ‘Detained’ And only now they tell us.”
“ S-h-h-h,” Debraik whispered, “Keep your voice down. Don’t want the boy to hear.”
“ Oh my God, my dear Daiyud in jail,” Markla said, shuddering with tears dripping down her frightened face. “ We are good citizens. Why this?”
“ Uncle Sheved said this lawyer telephoned him because of the same last name. This lawyer he says they’re holding Papa on suspicion of a link to
the September 11 terrorist attacks. It’s called prevention of terror acts. Uncle says they can keep Papa in custody to see if he has ‘association’ with known Iraqi terrorists. Nothing we can do but wait. Uncle is coming over here to see us.”
“ Not in this house. Won’t set foot in this house,” Uncle Akers said.
“ This is not the time for a grudge,” Markla replied. “My Daiyud is captured in a jail. Because he is a man with such a good heart they want to pick on him. They don’t like his name. It’s an Assyrian name, an old respectable name. We are not Iraqi. We are Christians.”
“ The lawyer said there’s an Iraqi leader,” Daniel added. “ who has our last name. This man is part of a terrorist group. They think Papa is connected. Uncle says when they find out that he’s innocent, they will let him go.”
“Innocent?,” Markla said. “ That husband of mine is innocent just like a saint. Daiyud is a prince of a man and everyone knows it.”
“ Now look who’s talking loud,” Uncle Aker said. “ Mikel may be listening.”
“ Please, Deba,” Mama requested. “Take care of him. He doesn’t know about these things. Nobody should have to know what’s happening to this country. Bombings and war and poisoned letters and jail for just looking like those kind of people. Take him away, take Mikel, please. I have too much to think about. Uncle Sheved’s coming suddenly and Papa arrested. Oh, my God Daiyud doesn’t even have his pills, his heart medicine. I must go see him.”
Aunt Debraik returned to the living room where Mikel lay on the carpet looking at the photo albums. His little fingers turned the pages; he was so absorbed that it didn’t appear that he had heard a word of the adult talk. He pointed to a picture of a squat little man with a long twirled mustach
and asked his Aunt if that was him and when she asked who he had meant, the little one said, ‘Him, my uncle, you know Uncle Sheved’.
“ Yes, that’s him,” she said. “You’ve never saw him. You have his eyes. He is the darkest skin in the family. They say he got his temper from your Grandpa. When he got angry! I’ve heard stories. Here’s a picture of him riding a donkey, there in the old country. He loved that mule. Once he getting so angry and said the family had less sense then that mule. To make his point he brought that mule into the house to live. They should listen to the beast and learn something from another ass. Your Uncle Sheved! This is a cousin. She died from laughter they said. She was very sick and one night at the old house Grandma made a fish soup and it made everyone belch and belch more. This cousin couldn’t stop laughing until she fell off the chair and just stopped breathing. Her sister Esrima was a beauty. She washed her face with goat’s milk mixed with olive oil. She had nice skin. Two men almost killed themselves fighting over her. In the end she married a Kurd from the south so we could never speak to her again.”
The talk in the kitchen grew louder and more intense. The bell rang and Uncle Sheved entered the house for the first time in twenty years. Mikel remained unconcerned, glued to the photos. Aunt Debraik was nervous and found retreat in attending to Mikel. Words from the kitchen spun through the loom of old family interweave, strands of quarrel and conciliation wove their familiar measure in the enmeshed emotions. Mikel’s mother was crying while Uncle Aker shouted at Uncle Sheved and Daniel tried to comfort his mother through the harshness of it all. Suddenly all were quiet when Uncle Sheved raised his voice outshouting the others.
“ I am not here to argue,” he said. “We are in a crisis, aren’t we? A family crisis, a national crisis, the whole world is a crisis. Daiyud will be O.K. soon. It will take time to clear this up. I will go to the jail first thing tomorrow. The lawyer says only one family member is aloud. I am speaking about his case to this lawyer, so I must be the one to go. Anyway I am the oldest brother. Don’t worry, Markla, he will be fine. I’ll bring the medicine. We are a strong people, don’t forget. A proud and ancient race. We have been victims of more genocides than all the Jews and Armenians and everyone put together. More martyrs than all the Muslim tribes. We survive. America needs us. Why would they want to hurt our little Daiyud.”
“ You are still the bigshot, Sheved,” Uncle Aker said. “Always the one in charge.”
“ Uncle,” Daniel pleaded. “Tell the police that Papa is a loyal American. Not a communist. Not a terrorist. Tell them, Uncle. Papa volunteered to fight the Nazis, but his bad heart. They didn’t take him.”
“ That’s enough, Daniel,” his mother said. “ This is business for the adults. If you want be useful then take your little brother outside. He doesn’t have to hear this. Take him out to play. Go now, please.”
On their walk outside Mikel and his older brother were bundled up with fur-lined jackets and boots, gloves and scarves. Snow was everywhere. Daniel found it difficult to think of playing at such a critical time. The problems the world was steeped in now could not be ignored. Any game with Mikel would seem a careless distraction. No, his heart was too heavy and his mind too preoccupied for that innocence. His little brother grabbed Daniel’s hand and playfully pulled him into the park across from their uncle’s house. Daniel followed in gloom into the snow-laden sunlight.
“ Come on, Danny,” Mikel said. “ Let’s play. Don’t you love this snow. Why doesn’t California have any? Please, let’s play in the snow, please.”.
“ O.K., but I’m not in a playful mood. It’s not a good time for games.”
“ Yes, it is. It’s a very good time to play. We can play ‘the sky is falling’. Look up into the sky, Danny. Way up, Danny. See.”
“ What, Mikel. It’s not funny. It’s true that the sky is falling. Everything is falling apart.”
“ That’s just the earth that you’re talking about, Danny. The sky is bigger, much more. See the snow falling. That’s the sky and that’s where we come from. Papa and Mama and you and me. Look way up.”
Daniel turned his head upwards and gazed at the mist of snow. Flakes were falling in the bright sunlight, softly and steadily floating and turning and pausing. Mikel stretched his arms towards the vast whiteness above, his hands soundlessly meeting the snow that covered everything around him. The little child began laughing joyously. He couldn’t stop laughing.
“ Mikel, you’re too young to understand. Mama’s right. You’re a child. Do you know about Papa? Do you know that there’s a war going on?
Never mind. Don’t give up your childhood. Hold on to your imagination. God only knows mine is gone. I have no childhood. It’s gone forever. It crashed and exploded on September 11. Do you even know what I’m talking about, Mikel. Nothing will ever be the same for me again. I may have to go over there to fight and die in Afghanistan. What happened to my childhood?”
“ Don’t be silly. Americans don’t die in battle. America saves the world and it doesn’t hurt people like Papa. It’s all a mistake, Danny. We’re the strongest and kindest and the best country there ever was. Don’t you know? Mama and Uncle Aker are scared because they remember bad things from the old country. They weren’t free there. Here, everyone is free and equal. If you die for the U.S., you die for freedom. Isn’t that true Danny? Papa will go free tomorrow just like that man said.”
“ That man, Mikel, is your uncle. Uncle Sheved. He’s Papa’s older brother and Uncle Aker and Aunt Debraik are younger. He’s the oldest.”
“ I don’t remember him,” Mikel added.
“ That’s because you never saw him before. I met him for the first time on this trip. Papa talked about him. He wanted him to visit us in California but there had been fighting in the family. Uncle Sheved promised to never see a Hariri again. Mama whispered his address to me and said that I could go find him. She was worried about Papa and said the family should be together at this time, now that we were all gathered in Baltimore. I was nervous but I’m sure glad I went to him. That’s where the phone call came about Papa.”
“ Families fight just like countries,” Mikel said quizzically. “Isn’t that strange? Look Danny, the snow has stopped. I want more. I love the snow falling. Let’s build a snow man so we can later knock it down. We can destroy it like it was the enemy, Ossama bin Ladin .”
“ No, it’s time to go inside. It’s time to be with the family. Come on, Mikel. Mama’s making a big dinner. Maybe Uncle has spoken to Papa.”
Just inside the house was a room that was called the vestibule where gloves, snow boots, jackets and scarves were removed and allowed to dry. Voices filled the living room; the rumble of T.V. news bombings exploded in the distance. Uncle Sheved was pacing the carpeted floor and talking.
“ They say they don’t know where he is. The lawyer says that he’s been moved to another facility. So now I called the F.B.I. office and they say Daiyud is at immigration.”
“ For God’s sake, he’s not an immigrant,” Uncle Aker yelled. “He’s been a citizen for forty years.”
“Don’t you think I know that,” Sheved screamed back at his brother. “I went the same day before the same judge. Swearing with the Bible in my hand and the flag in my eyes. I was so proud. And Daiyud too. A citizen of this ‘great land’. The two of us crying away with such love and gratitude.”
“The point is he’s not there,” Markla said nervously trying to hold back her tears. “He’s not at the downtown jail. Lord Jesus, my husband is locked up and we don’t even know where to look to find him.”
“ And F.B.I. say he’s gone from there,” Debraik puzzled. “And immigration. What do they say?”
“Nothing!,” Sheved shouted irritably. “the immigration office is closed after five.”
“ Tomorrow is Saturday,” Markla said shuttering. “ You mean he will be locked up for the weekend. We can’t see him. The poor thing all alone. Nobody to see him!”
“ See him?,” Uncle Aker raised his voice. “They move him around like a prisoner or a slave or I don’t know what. See him? We don’t even know where he is being kept. What crime do they accuse him? No. Do they bring charges? No. Suspect. Only suspect. Is that democracy?”
“Democracy?” Sheved thundered. “it is a time of crisis. National crisis. Detainment on suspicion. No due process. No rights. Emergency rules. Did our people have rights when they sacked our houses, burned our churches? At a time like this there’s no desire for justice. Remember what the Turks did to us. The Persians and others.”
“Sheved,” Aker said sardonically. “So now you’re talking not only as a lawyer but as a historian too. Always teaching, always knowing everything. Just like always. Listen to him. After twenty years we don’t see him and he’s still the authority on everything. Look ladies, Sheved’s home!”
“That was the old country,” Debaik said. “This is Baltimore, America. Year 2001. You can’t arrest and torture a man for having an Iraqi sounding name. He’s a good Christian, a community leader.”
“ Deba, Deba,” Acker said. “Who said anything about torture?”
It snowed lightly through the weekend. Cars and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the action of living went on secretly behind a pale curtain of uncertainty. In the falling quiet there seemed no sky or earth, only a screen of snow lifting into the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms of Uncle Aker’s house, deadening the outside world of the hushed city. At all hours it was necessary to keep the heaters on. Fear and expectant attention hovered around the telephone. Mikel lost track of the days: Friday was no different from Saturday and on Easter Sunday after dinner when Daniel was to take Mikel to the movies, an important phone call came from the lawyer. Uncle Sheved took the call.
“Uncle,” Daniel cried out. “How’s Papa? Was that the lawyer?”
“ Daniel,” his mother hushed him. “Don’t mix in with the adults. Let us hear what Papa’s lawyer said.”
“ It’s not good news, Markla,” Sheved prepared her. “The lawyer can no longer work on the case. The interrogation, that’s what they call it, is being ‘transferred’ to another ‘division’.”
“ For God’s sake, speak English,” Akers insisted.
“It’s their language. Not mine. Now they suspect Daiyud of some kind of financing of terrorism. ‘Money laundering’. So he again has been moved somewhere else. I must go in tomorrow to meet with a Mr. Dernewitz.”
“ Ah, a Jew,” Aker blurted out. “ So. So. So what now?
“ What now? I don’t know. He says that there is a second man they brought in to custody’ This could be the one they’re looking for. I hope, I pray because if this other one, this Muslim man, that’s good that he’s Muslim, is the one they suspect more than Daiyud then our brother will be a free man. This is hopeful.”
“Oh Sheved.” Markla said breathlessly. “Can I go with you to see him, I mean Daiyud tomorrow?”
“ No, Markla,” Sheved said with his usual authority. “That’s impossible.”
“And why is that? Can you say who can go and who cannot?,” Aker hollered. “Are you the High Priest of the law. Do you have your personal Code of Hammurabi?”
“ Because they can’t find him. They’ve lost his file. They moved him from here to there and now they don’t know where the poor man was sent. Which detention center? They can’t identify him is what this Jew lawyer said. It is like they’re saying they cannot find the man unless he converts to their image of a terrorist. You understand? In the old, old days when we were dominated by Muslims, way back to Timurlane long ago, they said that if we did not convert we were to wear crosses weighing over five pounds around our necks to show that we were with Christ and that we were the resisters.”
“ This is no time for a history lesson, Sheved,” Aker remarked.
“ Stop fighting,” Markla shouted, her eyes aflame. “ This is a time to be together as a family. A time to pray for my husband. Be kind to each other. That’s what he would want from you. Kindness, prayers. Aker, this crisis has brought our Sheved back among us. Please, no more insults. Both of you.”
“ Let’s pray,” Aker said. “Let’s pray my brother comes back in one piece. The law is changed. They can stop our liberties. My brother has no rights.”
“ Our brother. Say ‘our brother’. You are correct. The U.S. of yesterday does not exist,” Sheved began explaining. “They vote, you know the Senate voted and passed an antiterrorism bill. You know that? 98 to one. Like in the Civil War and No.2 War. I read all the time about these things. They call it ‘expansion’. They call it ‘expansion of surveillance’. Soon they will vote the right to torture. I’m telling you torture will have court approval any day now.”
“For once I agree with my educated brother,” Aker said. “Nothing to stop them from using threats and pressure and maybe some truth serum. A ‘detainee’ that’s what he is. In the hands of interrogators. The law will choose to look the other way. Israel has been doing it for years. Just threaten to turn a suspect over to Israel and that person will talk very fast , you bet.”
“ Please, stop talking this way,” Daniel cried out. “I’m getting scared. They couldn’t hurt Papa. There’s such a thing as human rights abuse groups.
Anyway Papa’s innocent. They couldn’t force anything from a man like Papa. He is innocent.”
“ Now you have the boy scared,” Markla complained. “I hope the little one doesn’t hear these things. Look at him with those family albums.
God bless him. Let him grow up safe without shame or fear.”
“Tomorrow,” Sheved advised the others. “when the Jew lawyer calls, let me answer. I will do the talking. They could be recording what is said. Wire tapping and all this business. We must be very careful these days. Very!”
Continuing the prayers for the youngest of the generation, Aunt Debraik added: “May he not have to hide from who he is, this sweet one with his father’s sweetness in his blood. Never should he bow his head or hide from his roots in this America. Not like we the elders always apologizing to strangers for our foreign ways. And ridiculed.”
“ And why? Why do we apologise?,” Akers offered. “To fit into somebody’s lie. Why should our Mikel suffer like us. He doesn’t speak funny with the accent. He is almost white like the others born here. He won’t be harassed and ridiculed. He doesn’t have the map of Iraq all over his face.”
“Soon they will bomb Iraq too,” Sheved stated. “We can never see our homeland again. Remember only I talk on the phone.”
“ Never say ‘never’,” Markla reproved. “ Daniel and Mikel will see the beauty of where we came from. Now, please, let us take our prayers to bed. And leave this lamp on for Daiyud. Maybe he comes back in the night a free man. Daniel, Mikel, come on. It’s time to go to bed.”
Mikel rose up from the Persian carpet and followed his mother and Aunt Debraik and his two uncles as they mounted the staircase to the guestroom where they arranged blankets and pillows as they prepared for sleep. Uncle Sheved grumbled as Aker brought in a mattress from the closet for his reluctant brother. It was like in the old country, Markla Hariri commented with a warm note of sentimentality. Debraik added that it was like the old days when they slept, all of them, in that little room in Mama and Papa’s house. Laughingly Aker observed that there was something missing and that was Sheved’s beloved mule. The family, all of them , laughed together.
Awaking Monday morning Mikel felt a sudden upward surge in the mood in the house. After days of fear and distress the family’s emotions appeared to be resting or waiting. A curtain of calm was momentarily woven over all thought. It was in a trancelike state that Uncle Sheved answered the phone call from the new lawyer with the news that Daiyud was being ‘processed’ for release and that a family representative should meet with him to fill out the necessary papers.
“ So that’s it?,” Uncle Aker said. “He’s free. A man spends over a week in jail with who knows what kind of criminals, moved from one interrogation to another and no one can see him and suddenly he’s free to go. No explaining and no apology. Nothing. A man of good respect kept from his family. A man without his medicine or the company of family and children. No apology.”
“Be quiet, Aker. Doesn’t matter,” Markla said with tears of joy. “Nothing matters now that my Daiyud is coming back to us. Thank God!
Papa’s a free man, children. Boys, I want you should go to that bakery Uncle Aker showed you and buy a dozen of those pastries with prunes and a dozen of the cherry ones. Get dressed. Here’s money. Buy a dozen of anything looks good for Papa’s homecoming. We didn’t have a real Easter yesterday so we will celebrate today. Hurry, Sheved, hurry. Daiyud is waiting. Hurry! Sign the papers, whatever. Go get him out. Bring him here. Thank God.”
When Mikel and his brother opened the front door they fully expected to behold the imagined miracle of snowfall to reflect the great event of their father’s release. What they saw instead was pale sunlight on the roofs and dirt-tainted snow piled up at the edge of the sidewalk. Much of the snowmelt was now ice and slush. Small streams trickled into the furrows along the curbs and down into the drains at the street crossings. On their way to the bakery Mikel asked his brother if there would be pictures taken of Papa’s homecoming. Mikel was very excited. He expressed to Daniel his desire to begin his own family photo album. Would he be able to receive photos by mail in California taken by the Baltimore family? Daniel explained that there were problems with the mail these days. Poison had been turning up in letters and the country was on alert. He didn’t use the term ‘biochemical’. He didn’t want to trouble his little brother’s mind with terms like ‘weapons of mass destruction’ or ‘germ warfare’ that had filled him with apprehension. At last he would be able do discuss with father the things that he feared and all that was on his mind.
It was brighter in the house when the boys returned with the pastries. They left their snow clothing to drip in the vestibule and entered the living room where all awaited the return of Uncle Sheved with their freed father. Mama had just emerged from her bath wrapped in a dressing gown. She pulled out a stool from under the kitchen table and sat down in front of the hallway mirror and with a plastic brush began combing out her hair in long sweeping strokes. Mikel knew she was making herself pretty for Papa.
Uncle Aker was pacing back and forth on the kitchen linoleum. Under the lamp light that had been left on for Papa were the glossy pages of the photo album. The album was open to a halftone picture of a disaster scene, the San Francisco earthquake of ‘87’taken by Papa. Another of Papa standing on the far side of some rubble with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. When Mikel asked Daniel who had taken the picture, his brother answered that it must have been a stranger. Mikel grabbed the photo album and called out for Aunt Debraik who came from the kitchen and taking Mikel’s hand sat him down on the carpet to look through the album.
It wasn’t until some time after Uncle Sheved’s return that his aunt who was so engaged in identifying the faces in the album began to realize that something was wrong. Sheved had come back alone. The adult voices grew louder and then shrill. Disturbing sounds were coming out of the kitchen. The words coming from his uncles were muffled and when Mama began screaming almost nothing spoken could clearly be understood.
“ Sheved ,” she screamed in a sound that was strange beyond the sound of a human voice.” No! No!” Then Uncle Aker hollered and cursed and Mama fell on the floor and more noise and shouting continued.
“It was his heart,” Uncle Sheved said shaking and stuttering. “The poor man’s heart gave out.”
Aunt Debraik rose up from the carpet and ran to the kitchen shrieking ‘Daiyud’ and ‘what happened?’. Daniel came staggering towards his little brother and folding his arms around Mikel, pulled him into the back room away from the kitchen.
In the kitchen stood Sheved, pale and weighed down, holding in his hand a shriveled document.
“It’s the release form for the body.” Sheved said, shaking with tears. “We must sign before he can be buried. A new ‘Detainee act’ releasing them of any responsibility. God, pity us. From cell to cell they moved him. In the dark. And then the interrogations. The pressure. The poor man’s heart could not take it.”
Aunt Debraik gasping to catch her breath reached out to Markla who was down on the kitchen floor pounding her fists against the cracking linoleum. “Daiyud, Papa, my baby,” she cried out into the vastness of the silent house. Uncle Aker bent down to help her to her feet. “Murderers, murderers,” he screamed again and again. “America, murderers, they always hated us.” Aker’s knees buckled and he fell hopelessly against the wall. He couldn’t believe the drops pouring out of his eyes. He hadn’t cried since a time in childhood in the old country. His older brother reached his arms towards him. Sheved was still shaking in the frenzy of disbelief.
“ Daniel, come!,” Uncle Sheved shouted hysterically. “Daniel, help us, help! Your father, poor Papa.”
A momentary lull came over the wailing in the kitchen. It was the kind of moment when the mind waits, as though for a revelation. Out from that brief force of calm and waiting came the voice of Mikel whose little heart was beating away against the impact of the horror and grief he could not yet absorb. He explained to his brother the history in the photos, struggling to keep the tears from falling.
“This is a picture of Mama and Papa at their wedding in the old country. And this man is Grandfather, Danny. He died when I was just born. There he is pushing Aunt Debraik on a swing under the fig tree. Are yoy listening, Danny? Papa’s parents had eleven children. Only six grew up. All of them wanted to come to America. Aunt Debraik was twenty when she came and Papa was eighteen…..”
by Richard Meyers
The village women were no longer free to loiter and bathe at the well. What had once been a social event, the gathering of unveiled women to chatter and sing and laugh while fetching water in the convivial privacy of an antique custom, was now outlawed by the new regime with its severe restrictions on old freedoms. For so many years the women would linger half the morning, standing in groups to gossip, washing themselves, scrubbing their pots, kneeling to slap bright colors of cloth on slabs of stone. Here their naked bodies were opened to the warm directness of the sun. Some bathed each other, singing as they lathered and poured cool well-water over soft brown shoulders and thighs. Others folded draperies and slipped their limbs into new brightly patterned garments. Some even permitted themselves the vanity of self decoration, applying makeup and eye shadow, languishing in attitudes of self-pleasing indolence.
The well had been the village women’s sanctuary. And while they were free to gather there in light-hearted abandon, it seemed as if the distant whine of gunfire, drone of aircraft, and all the noises of internal warfare leading up to the seizure of Kabul by an extremist militia, were simply sounds of persistent unrest forming a remote background for a social ritual that no one expected would ever be forbidden. Without the women’s laughter and play at the well, the spirit of the village would turn trifling and paltry. The muddy earth unspotted with the skins from fruits and the rocky path to their homes bare of flowers, the landscape would fall under a long, severe shadow. Notices began appearing suddenly in the villages, warnings that a new rule that would strip women of their visibility, voice and mobility must strictly be obeyed. The changes were cruel and unbearably abrupt. A deadline was set, only two weeks after Ramadan, that the policy would go into effect. After that time gatherings of women anywhere, most certainly at the well, would be subject to harsh and perhaps public punishment.
They were beautiful women who suddenly began to feel uncertain about themselves and so slowly practiced contracting that expansiveness of spirit. In fact, the meetings at the well grew tense, and the women began to quarrel. The confusion over what had caused the changes instantly divided the women along ethnic lines of loyalty. The Pashtuns blamed the Tajiks, each group accusing the other for the brutal gender restrictions that day by day seemed to be stripping women and girls of their basic human rights.
There was one among them one who had always been derided, scoffed for her awkwardness and mocked for her homeliness. She often lagged behind the others on the path. The scars on her face left from small pox offended the sight. She was Meera, scorned by those who called her “the ugly one” and when she pulled down to her waist the traditional long garment, her breasts were loose, flat, wrinkled flesh. Not only did she suffer the derision of the women, but she maintained a self-effacing, almost comic view of herself. She was a solitary person at the well and a figure of fun. She was proud, however, of one thing, her ability to read. So when she was asked to read aloud the recent imposed edicts from the new command, her voice became confident. She was aware but not really offended that she was being played with, when after each strict edict read, the women followed the decree with unanimously shouting in Farsi, “your fault, how cruel!” The game of the sardonic blaming of Meera for these dictates was not fully understood by her. However, she didn’t care so much; the attention paid her was so desired that it eclipsed the sting of what was now familiar disdain. So when she read that women were now banished from the work force, the women’s shouting appeared in her willful self-delusion as a shower of approbation. The pronouncements were adverse and incredible. The new regime was determined to thrust women of Afghanistan into a state of virtual house arrest. As Meera read further of the punishments that had already occurred for disobedience, the crowd of women hushed their shouting and the mood turned to one of fear and disbelief. A woman who had defied orders by running a home school for girls was killed in front of her family. Another woman was stoned to death for suspected adultery, and several accused of prostitution were publicly hung. The small crowd at the well was horrified at the stories. Two elderly women were brutally beaten at a nearby marketplace outside Kabul, one for wearing sandals that made a squeaking sound and the other because her ankle was showing from underneath her burqa.
A dark solemnity fell over the women. They were frightened and took refuge in one another. After all they were all Muslim women and part of a sisterhood. Being mere women, they couldn’t turn to any authority to help or protect them, no religious leader or mullah, no real courts of law, no primary role or equality in anything. They had only each other and in that defensive bonding, Meera was included. In their area under the rule of the Bhuleybhan, a fundamentalist Muslim group, they would all be victimized, following a strict code of behavior. All of them including foolish Meera would begin to close themselves in their homes of sun dried mud bricks with the windows painted black and tents made of goat hair. At all times they would be forced to wear the burqa completely shrouding the body, leaving only a small mesh-covered opening through which to see. None could leave their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative. For Meera this meant her husband.
She was the childless wife of Haimadi, a clumsy hulk of a man. He was not tall but wide. Set a-top that broad, muscular frame was a round bearded head, with drooping ears, which gave him an appearance of a lumbering bear. The expression of the face was always snarling, not so much a violent look as one of disgruntled tension and displeasure. He was often shaking with the intensity of those driven by inner agitation. His powerful mass could have intimidated others had he not been slow-witted and awkward. People sometimes said, “ He might be a man to fear whenever he finds the brain lost somewhere in that big body.”
His marriage to Meera, like everything else about him, was a clumsy business. He had been tricked into believing that this unfortunate looking woman from the South was the daughter of a wealthy opium grower. After the ceremony it was revealed that it had all been set up to deceive him into marrying an ugly and unwanted daughter. Her father was a ruthless man, an officer in the mujahideen who fled to Pakistan after the Soviet’s withdrawal. Haimadi blamed it on Meera whose defense was that she had been forbidden ever to speak out about it. If it had been punishment she feared, her husband did not spare her. He used his whip on her, grunting savagely as the lash cut deep into her flesh, his tongue thrust out between his teeth measuring the weight of the fierce blow.
Haimadi was an absolute master with the whip. Before the Russian invasion and the civil war later, he had been a tamer of horses used in the northern plains game called buzkashi. He handled horses with an agility that was both enthralling and terrifying. He handled wild horses that had been captured on the plains and turned over to him while still screaming and bucking, due to take their first taste of harness, and he would struggle for hours under an unrelenting sun with the sweat running off him, his eyes red with a depraved and solemn pleasure. Give him a bunch of stubborn and untamed horses and he would deftly wield his ten-foot lash circling in whirling patterns over their flanks; he loved feeding his pride on his skill like an inspired task master whose whip could whine and crackle and be heard across the long valley, all day and into the moonlit night, never allowing the sharp metal tipped lash to touch so much as a hair of their hides. These beasts which succumbed to his mastery were his beauties, the chastened select that were to run in the royal games in which dozens of horsemen try to grab a headless calf and carry it across a goal. Participants in the game came from all parts of the country, and many sought out Haimadi whose reputation for the best horses, well-tamed and unharmed by whiplash, had spread throughout the valleys and mountain regions. Rumors had traveled from Kandahar up to Mazar-e-Sharif that the horse tamer’s unique skill was inherited by Mongol ancestors dating perhaps as far back as Marco Polo. When examined, Haimadi’s horses might have appeared weary, driven to staggering point, but there was never a mark on them.
“That big tamer is far better with his horses than he is with people.”
This phrase summarized the attitude those who knew him had about him. His awkwardness with people was renowned in his village outside Kabul. In particular was well-known his mistreatment of his wife based on his embarrassment over her hideousness. No others but the women at the well had ever seen Meera unveiled, but word had gotten out that she was a repulsive sight. It was concluded that this must be the reason for his cruelty towards her. Stories were told of how he was childless because he could never bear being close enough to her for breeding. Once at a drunken gathering he was teased by an offer of considerable money if he would unveil to the male guests his wife so all could finally see what all the talk had been about. He refused and turned into a raging madman tearing his own house apart and landing some guests in the hospital with bruised bones and ribs.
The situation grew worse in the time after the Soviets retreat when rival factions fought and Haimadi lost his position as horse tamer. The country was so unstable that the interim governments outlawed all gatherings for entertainment including the ancient game of buzkashi. The clumsy man who could neither read nor write fell on hard times. He was too lumbering for manual work, too unsubtle to be any good at hunting. All he had known were horses and the whip. Unskilled and jobless, he had to rely on Meera for money. She taught the children in her village to read, charging their parents a meager sum. She went house to house to gather laundry to be done at the well. Her husband hated being dependent on his unattractive wife and suspected that he was the brunt of gossip and jokes from the women. He knew only too well how Meera had been the object of their ridicule. Once the baker’s wife was cajoled into presenting Meera with some “cherry cakes for the husband” tied up in a scarf. When she opened the gift in front of her husband, the scarf contained a bunch of goat turds. Once the pranksters knew she was easy to fool, the women all tried their trickery on her. More and more the man and wife became the focus of derision.
For Haimadi things were unbearable, and he went to seek the advice of a mullah. The advice given him was: “Take out your whip! Walk the streets of Kabul, show your skill in public until either the government or the muhajideen rebels buy your service.” And that’s what he did until one day he was brought before a Council of Ministers of the Bhuleyban, the conservative Islamic group that now had taken control of most of the country. So it was for this Bhuleyban that Hamaidi begged to work and swore devotion and loyalty. “We will use your whip in public to demand obedience. You will brandish it for Allah’s sake against the resistance of the infidels.” This was the faction turned rulers that the women now feared. It was the Bhuleyban that in less than a week would begin enforcing their harsh will on the women. And it was Meera’s husband, the foolish brute Haimadi who would come as their messenger to the well to ensure the execution of the new rules.
The day the military man named Nasar din Lahl appeared at the well with his servant Hamaidi the women were relaxing after carrying to their homes cisterns of water balanced on head-rings woven of grass and mud. Aware of the brevity of time until the deadline, they abandoned their worry for perhaps their last immersion in frolic and had run about splashing one another wildly. Their laughter halted at the sight of the two men, and recognizing Meerea’s husband, several women could not desist from snickering. Nasar din Lahl, hearing their impudent sounds, warned the women of the harshness to come and that wet clothing exposing the shape of the body beneath would not be tolerated.
Reporting to the Bhuleyban headquarters what had taken place at the well, Minister Iqbal insisted that Nasar be stricter with “these insolent women.” Let them taste the sting of the lash, Iqbal ordered, telling Haimadi not to spare them pain, not at all. The minister was fond of proverbs and so said to the two men: “ Where there is discipline you’ll find social order. A pet lamb makes a cross ram, you know.” When Nasar explained that in one week women would be free only to learn the lesson of obedience, Iqbal agreed saying, “ Blessing in action. Women are made from God’s inferior cloth. As you know, poor iron won’t make a sharp sword.” The minister turned to Haimadi and in a mocking tone of rebuke said, “I have heard whisperings about you. My soldiers laugh at you, calling you a fool. Yet I have chosen you to serve and should you fail, you will spend the long days of your life as a fool. Not a single mosque will have you. But serve me well and I will reward you. That whip of yours today will become a gun tomorrow. And the others will cease to mock and instead will fear you, and your hand of obedience will become a martyr’s hand that picks the ripe grapes of paradise. You are not a fool and those who shame you because of the stories of your unsightly wife--yes, I have heard them speak of her--will be punished with envy when you come to lie in the Garden hereafter with the comely virgins and endless nymphs. Serve me well and you will marry again, this time to a beauty in Paradise.”
It was a gray morning at the well and the air was like smoke. The women came on the day before Ramadan, the last day permitted for women to gather and be seen unaccompanied. A long way off Meera saw the figure with a red turban coming near and she said quietly to herself, “It’s him. It is Haimadi.” And a slow surge of color burned up over her face; all at once she felt fierce and shameful embarrassment for the meanness, the grousing , ungainly nature of her husband. It seemed cruelly ironic now that she had become accepted by the women to have to be associated in their minds with this ogre. She knew nothing of their husbands, but they laughed at hers. And now that he had been so proudly appointed as monitor to police them, they despised him. There was a curious sense of accountability in her; what was it? An apprehension, of a need to apologize and to caution them. She alerted them of his nearness. The women scattered into the bushes to put on their burqas.
When the husband arrived, Nasar was with him. Haimadi strutted around, leaning authoritatively into the waiting crowd with an unsure gesture of the hand that held the whip. A thrust of his arm sent a sharp snap of the long, thin wooden whip sizzling into the air. Brazenly he struck a pose, holding the position he had proudly disciplined himself into at the Bhuleyban Headquarters, head hunched a bit, hands restless and curled for action. But now he stood uncertain, pinned by the blur of faces looking out at him from behind meshed coverings. His red turban appeared lopsided and his pajamas ballooned out sloppily in the wind. When Nasar spoke to him, he responded with a stuttering, “Yes-s-s, sir. Azz you wish.” At this awkwardness one woman snickered. A chord of hysteria was struck and they began to laugh. Meera joined them cackling.
“ But what have I said? Why are you laughing at me? Why ?”
Meera felt suddenly high spirited, lifted with a pleasant sense of diversion at the unexpected twist in the women’s reaction. For a brief moment a memory of frivolity stirred among the tense, uncertain crowd. Nasar ordered them to be quiet. A silence spread among the women, alert. A woman the others knew for her boldness, cautiously spoke, “Tomorrow is Ramadan, and we are given until the day after to gather here. Let us enjoy our last moments here peacefully, please.” The brave woman was level with the two men, passing them, walking on beyond them. Meera saw her husband’s red eyes and sensed imminent danger. She had seen often his knotted nerves uncoil in violence. She could smell the strong odor of old sweat burning at his nostrils. Haimadi stammered with anger at this woman’s effrontery, and yelling, he walked after her and raised his ten-foot lash circling above her back. Meera felt a wave of terror sweep over her. This poor woman, one of her sisters, was about to taste her husband’s cruelty. She felt guilty and was quick to act, running and wedging herself between the two. She tried to scream and the horror of dreams came true and nothing could come out. In a foolish fury she reached crazily for his whip. The other women ran off. Meera could hear him draw a deep, hoarse breath and he grabbed out at her. Now she fought with him and she trembled with strength as they struggled. The smell of him choked her. Her teeth chattered and sweat poured from her face under the heat of her covering. Wildly she battered him with her head, broke away, but he snatched at the flowing edge of her burqa and jerked her back. Her face swung up and she saw the waves of a gray sky and firmly in his grip, her eyes leveled and she saw the shapes of the women scattering away towards the village. Then Haimadi used his rope to tie her up. She felt the sharp tightening of the rope around her shoulders as he secured the knots in the expert way he had applied to his wild horses once they were ready for harness. He stood dead still in front of her and she stood dead still. Meera was so plunged into grave humiliation that all desire to speak or think went out of her as a room sinks into darkness after the failure of power, and she found herself whimpering like an animal or an idiot. Submission had her by the arms, the waist, the throat; it wasn’t the fear of her husband but the fear that accompanies severe shame.
It was absolute shame that covered her as she was hauled through the streets to the Headquarters. It was disgrace she felt when she was turned over to the soldiers who marched her in front of the eyes of the public at the football stadium. The massive arena had a small number of spectators as it was no longer a place for games but had come to be used by the new regime for military exercise and the occasional demonstration of punishment. Meera was taken off to the side where she was tied to a post near the tables set up for various officials. Her heart thumped loudly and stiffly. If the earth had opened up in fire at her feet, if the wild beast in stories of hell had opened its terrible mouth to receive her, she could not have been reduced to less than she was now.
They were different feelings, however almost as bewildering, that Hamaidi experienced when he arrived at the headquarters now set up inside the walls of the stadium. When he entered the makeshift room, Nasar was telling the Magistrate of the encounter at the well. The magistrate looked up smiling at Hamaidi and said, “You are wise to have listened to my advice. I instruct, you listen! Very good, my man of the whip. You look confused. That will change. When man is perplexed, God is beneficent. But you are not a thinker. You will soon have a gun and the Archangel Gabriel will talk to you through your weapon. There is no need for your thinking. Obedience, that is the only valuable thought. Be merciful only to the obedient!” The Minister of the Council was entertained by Haimadi’s presence, and he laughed and twirled his long beard and then yawned saying amusedly, “ Is that wife of yours proud of you now? No matter, heaven is full of divorce courts. Nasar, take this man and his whip into the arena. Let this falcon feel his feathers.”
Haimadi was proud as he walked along with Nasar down the hall. Some soldiers stood around, some who were in the habit of mocking Haimadi, and made random and acerbic remarks in loud taunting voices. One who had known him when he was a horse tamer poked him as he passed by and said, “A donkey from Afghazi says he wants to fuck your wife.” And another snickered, adding, “ But only if you agree to raise the child as your beloved half-ass.” Haimadi walked on, straining to contain his anger. He gripped his whip so firmly that his hand grew numb. Nasar advised self control and cautioned him. Haimadi, confused and goaded, asked, “Why is it me they insult? What did I say, what did I do? This disrespect and all the laughter, is it Allah’s will?”
“ Ignore them, my friend. They are the fools, not you. Something more important has come to my attention. Some of the women from the well came to Headquarters claiming and swearing that the woman you captured, well, they say it’s your wife. You have brought your own wife to this field of punishment. You must tell the Minister before the worst thing happens.”
“What? Do you think I’m a fool not to know my own wife?” Haimadi raised his voice protesting. “Are you like the others who are always trying to trick me?”
“Don’t be snappy with me! I’m your officer. I am just telling you what these women are saying. If you want to do something to help her, then that is what you and only you can do. I’ve told no one else.”
The two men emerged into the stadium that was cast over by dark ominous clouds. Rain was expected so that if there were to be any public punishments that day, they would have to be enacted soon before any possible downpour. Nasar explained that Haimadi should just watch and not participate unless it was suggested by an officer. The men walked to the table set up as the department for Registry and Complaint. The men at the table were old and bearded and busy discussing certain points laid out in the Koran. Behind them stood young boys with machine guns in their hands. The dust was swirling in the arena, circling wildly, especially when the trucks rolled past carrying exuberant men shooting their rifles in the air. The atmosphere combined the tenseness of officialdom with the aggressive revelry of arrogant and feeble victory. The officer fumbled through his papers when Nasar inquired about the list of the day’s executions. They were basically disinterested but said that the punishments would increase after Ramadan. Today’s demonstrations would have to be rushed before the rains came. And about this woman Nasar asked about, she wasn’t condemned yet, but the fact that she had been tied to the arena pole means it must be a very serious crime. “Out here in the arena, anyone is free to do what they want with this woman.” A man behind the table added speaking to Haimadi , “You have the whip. Time to test it on this infidel flesh. Soon you will anyway, why not today?”
Haimadi, still burning from the insults, turned towards the woman tied to the post. Nasar tried to restrain him shouting, “For God’s sake, don’t. Be merciful, that woman is your wife. Let her be.”
After Nasar had shouted his plea, a flurry of attention stirred among those who had heard. Haimadi slowly approached the captive woman, paced back and forth in front of her, bent close sniffing near the net of her burqa. Protest and despair tingled through Meera’s veins as though she had swallowed a fiery drink. She threshed about within herself for an escape, but there was no way out of this prison walled by her veiling garments and guarded by the tyranny of the times. He raised his whip and thrashed her violently. A crowd had gathered behind him and the banter began, those familiar voices of derision: “ Unveil this woman and show us your famous hag.” Haimadi could not bear the ridicule and answered with the fury of more fierce blows.
“You cannot trick me,” Haimadi shouted. “ I am not your fool. The Minister knows who I am.”
A voice from the crowd shouted back, “ Take off her burqa. Save her, show us the ugly one, show us your shame.” Haimadi had no control left and turned his violence towards the crowd. Nasar moved hesitantly towards him, fearing the foolish man’s rage might turn on him. Nasar sunk to his knees prostrate before the lumbering madman begging him to unveil her to see the truth. Nasar had bent down in a position that allowed Haimadi to reach out and grab the pistol out of its holster. He dropped his whip and brandished the gun in his hand. He waved it haughtily before the crowd. Fevered with this sudden authority that the gun gave him, he turned the weapon against the woman’s head. His face was next to hers; they were never closer. Even from under the covering, her eyes pierced his with anguish, and she summoned her frail voice to beg him, “It’s me, Meera. It’s me. For Allah’s sake, I’m your wife.” Haimadi saw in his ravaged mind a caravan of images that carried before him the weight of a lifetime of shame and disappointment. He looked up to the pitiless sky and unflinchingly pulled the trigger putting a bullet through his wife’s head.
By RICHARD MEYERS
Even through the murky haze along the Chao Prayer River the gold spires of the Buddhist temples glistened in the distance. The air was heavy, but towards evening the January breeze blew a coolness like a benediction through the chedis of Wat Pho Temple and into the congested streets of Bangkok. Roland Mathews carried in his shoulder-bag the new photos, the ones of Burma and Malaysia, as he leapt from the ferry onto the pier at the Belanphu landing. He was excited, anticipating the admiration the other travelers might express at seeing these latest additions to his photograph collection. Precious cargo! It would be satisfying to place them in a new album. So when he arrived at his little cupboard of a room at the Sawadhee Hotel, he would take them out and place them in sequence of the time they were taken, matching them to their proper locations. Mandalay and then Rangoon and then back to Kuala Lumpur. He loved placing them on the sticky white pages, then folding the thin crinkling cellophane carefully over them. "Oh, what beauties these are," he said after locking the door and sitting on the bed half the size of the room to enjoy the memory the photos represented. But this one, he thought, belongs with the Padang temples, and you go over here, and you are too blurred to be included. And you, rascal, are either from the Irawaddy Wildlife Sanctuary in Burma or the one in Southern Malaysia. Little brat! This rogue photo. He really did feel this way about them. They were his companions, and like children sometimes they misbehaved and did not know their place. This one could use some kind of tape, he thought. Perhaps someone down the hall in one of these rooms would have some. When he opened the door, he heard the wild voices of foreigners, young Europeans, busy at partying. The sound of blaring music throbbing with that incessant rap beat echoed through the halls. Never mind, he’d think about that later. He shut the door and re-entered the tiny room. He turned off his ceiling fan. The sounds from the other rooms grew louder. Somewhere he could hear the muffled moans--no, not moans, really--but sighs and panting of a couple breathing hard, building passion, making love. He turned the fan back on again. Roland Matthews, a seasoned traveler, was no longer a young man.
The shops, restaurants, travel agencies were crowded as usual along Khao San Road, a long street of continual throbbing business, the backpackers’ mecca of hotels and shops and discos. The drinking and partying never seemed to pause on this garrulous and wild street. The boisterous and frenzied atmosphere really had no season; the stream of tourists and budget travelers thronged the streets all year, and every nationality came to mingle, drink, dance and carry on before the next leg of their travel. The area also served as the center for cheap travel agents competing for the cheapest land and air tickets, their prices displayed on boards with photos of destinations and affordable lodgings.
It was at Charlie’s Charters and Cheap Excursions that Roland overheard the young girl inquiring about bus travel to Cambodia and Vietnam. Roland prided himself on having all the best and current information. He listened as the young dark-eyed and curly-haired woman whose passport read Israeli was being offered outdated and inadequate specifics by the agent. Roland decided to intervene and came to the young woman's rescue. "Listen, you can get a visa at Sien Riep airport upon arrival. Not necessary in advance, but Viet Nam's another story. It's ninety dollars, U.S. dollars, for one month. Seventy from the Embassy here in Bangkok and another ten if you want these agents to rush it through. Two photos are required. But I should warn you that it's Tet New Years in Viet Nam, and the hotels are packed and the rails impossible. In fact, you can't sleep on the trains out of Ho Chi Minh City, and you can't count on reservations. The best thing to do..."
The dark young woman interrupted and responded saying, "Could we get a juice or something so I could talk with you more quietly? I want to talk with you.”
The two of them left Charlie's and walked across the teeming street to Kumar's Tandoori Restaurant. Roland asked her if she would like to order Indian food and that he could recommend several items from the menu. She declined saying that she was very thirsty. Roland suggested a cool mango lassi, and when it arrived, she sipped slowly. He felt confident offering travel suggestions, calling upon his considerable knowledge of detailed information. "My God," she said, impressed, "they don't even tell you about these choices in the Lonely Planet Guidebook."
"Everyone trusts the Lonely Planet as if it were the Bible, but you know....what is your name, Devorah? a beautiful name. The Lonely Planet gets its commission from hotels and restaurants. It's all, you know, worked out...you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." Roland pointed to his maps, flapping his arms, gesticulating with excitement as Devorah patiently listened, drinking in his words with their wealth of suggestions. And it wasn't long before she began pouring over his photo albums he had brought along on his walk down Khao San Road. Now he showed her his special photos from Cambodia, where she intended to travel. One page after another contained carefully positioned and curiously angled shots of Angkor Watt temples. She saw impressive towers and Hindu sculptures and embroidered walls and the columns of Phra Nan that seemed to be swallowed up by the coiling arms of banyan trees and jungles. “Very few people have seen these photos,” he confided in her.
"You've been everywhere," she remarked with admiration.
He replied imperiously, "Just about...you see this one... wait a minute, it's in this one,...that's me with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.”
"And what about this one?" she inquired.
"Oh that's my baby, that's a beauty... that's the princess of Sikhim. She's now dead. An American like me. She lived as the monarch's wife, helped him rule over the mountain kingdom. Her name was Hope."
The two of them sat together engaged in ardent and steady conversation until sunset when the birds descended on the awnings and tin roofs that fragilely sheltered the merchant stalls and endless shops. Many didn't close until very late, at which time the food vendors came out with their charcoaled meats, juices, pancakes, curries and assorted fruits. "Have you seen the roasted insects?" he asked her, certain that she'd be shocked and curious. "Insects,” he repeated, "it's true, really. Some Thais eat beetles, larvae, winged creatures, even cockroaches, some of them with their tiny legs tied up in thread as though they were a delicacy. There's sometimes a wagon stall of them at the end of this road."
Roland would happily show them to her tomorrow evening. Devorah had an appointment now but promised to rejoin him the next evening at this time and at the same place. "It's been incredible talking to you," she said demurely. As she turned her imposing face, high cheek-bones and alive skin, he noticed for the first time her pleasant gold nose-stud. Her ears had an arch of sparkling studs and one arm was colorfully tattooed above the elbow.
As they parted, Roland pointed to the shopkeepers rolling up their awnings and attendants sweeping off the sidewalks. He hesitated saying it but at last couldn't resist, "Just like in Dylan's song," he blurted out. She stood mute. "You know, ‘Desolation Row,’" he said. She didn't comprehend. The two shook hands. “Until tomorrow.”
Roland remained seated at the restaurant. He enjoyed watching people. Over the years he had become quite skilled, an expert one might say, he thought, at tuning into people's conversation. There was an acquired way of listening as though one didn't listen, at sitting among other people's words and entering their lives while they never suspected that anyone at such a distance could eavesdrop.
That's what he was doing as he glanced sideways at the older German couple. They were typically complaining about the food. And the woman went on all the time about how she ought to take the stomach medicine; she knew that she shouldn't have listened to him and stopped the anti-bacterial pills; she knew she needed them, but he had insisted upon building a natural immunity, taking yogurt only when necessary. And he'd been so patient, he said, with her complaining. And for her fear of sunstroke he had suggested everything, even broad brimmed hats that covered the head completely. No, those kind of hats would never do. “They'll make me look so stupid!” Roland wished they had spoken German so he needn't listen. Unlike his new young friend Devorah, this woman was boring and had nothing of value to say.
Roland decided it was too early to return to the solitude of his room. He got up, paid the bill, and began walking into the stream of travelers; there was a constant turnover, all engaged in the frenzy of the brief ghostly passing show of Khao San Road. Two young girls in spare dress passed by, and he turned to glance as two men, beers in their hands, met them, and they laughed and paired and went off together arm-in-arm. The tables outside the most popular restaurants were straddled by loud groups, Europeans and Middle Easterners and Australians. Two Africans wearing their ancestral clothes sat alone, talking, staring out into the throng of passing bodies. On the opposite side of the street at the busy bars, video movies were projected on large screens around the clock. The constant beat of loud speakers pulsed out music that overwhelmed the movie sound. The most compelling action was simply the movement on the street, the kinetic diversity of travelers that stirred the watchers to gaze at each other from the tables on one side of the road towards people seated at the bars and restaurants on the opposite side of the road.
Oh, how fascinated the travelers were! How mesmerized they appeared, watching it all. It was like an endless play or masquerade, a raucous and feverish play that really had no plot. It was all just partying and watching others party. It wasn't difficult to imagine the movement on the road as so many actors in a debauched play with the sky behind painted as a prop of fabricated scenery. Some of the scenes he observed irritated him. After so many years inundated by hedonistic backpackers, the travel scene had become a stage and the waves of varied scene seekers were merely actors caught in some illusory performance. My God, he had been to Goa, India, as a kind of pioneer when only eighteen. Westerners had staked out their lives on virgin beaches in the then undiscovered scene. Roland thought he would tell Devora that fact tomorrow. “Most of us originals were not seeking escape and vain pleasure,” he said to himself. The quality of purposeful living at that time, he felt, was captured in his photos, especially the early ones of India and Nepal before the invasion of the aimless masses.
Roland rehearsed in his mind how he might guide Devorah away from the superficial, away from the platitudes of Thailand, the Land of Smiles. He would point her north. Perhaps the two might travel together. They'd go to Chiang Mai with its secret markets and life he knew so well. She probably wasn't interested in the Andaman Islands near those golden sands of Phuket, nor would she be trapped in those magical charms of the hill tribes of the North. Devorah could transcend, he thought, the rapturous cant and all of that fairy-tale kingdom hype.
The way back to his hotel curved through narrow streets of honking taxis and tuk-tuks. Mopeds raced brazenly in all directions. Two years ago it was possible to take the quiet route that led through the Buddhist compound, cutting out the loud traffic noise, leaving only the sounds of prayers and chanting from the temple halls, the echo of deep resonant sounds laced with the vibrating shimmer of bells and gongs. That route, however, was forbidden now due to the intrusion of increasing numbers of travelers. The nearer he approached the hotel, the more clearly unequal Roland felt to the sight of his airless, ugly sleeping chamber, the thin torn hallway of stained walls and the old tattered bathrooms. He wearied of the constant bustle of the young Thai girls managing the hotel, taking in the money and handing out the door keys and the lodgers who rented day after day. They were a myriad mixture of internationals engaged in the unrelenting clamor of idle talking. Yes, they appeared lively, engaged, he thought, although what they were engaged about he didn't know.
Ascending the stairs, he paused at the first landing to look down on the lobby of travelers, scampering from the bar to lounge chairs, drinking and playing. Sometimes a phrase went threading through Roland's mind; now it was the "the mackerel-crowded sea." And a moment later approaching the door to his room and hearing again the lascivious sounds of mounting passions somewhere down the hall, another phrase from Yeats surfaced from some subconscious lair, "That is no country for old men." Funny how that would happen! Sudden words were like bursts from his photo album images, leaping up before his mind's eye.
Inside his room, he flipped through a few albums, pondering which ones he would show Devorah the next day. Maybe it should be the series of photos of North Africa and the Bedouin tribes, or would the wildlife of Madagascar be better? One page of an album had torn cellophane and several loose photos. On closer look, the pictures, misplaced, were of his family vacationing in Mexico. Now how did they get in here, he wondered, looking at his ex-wife in a beach chair and his son, just two years old then, wearing a little red sombrero.
Well, he thought, he had done well by them. She had the house now and they managed to stay friends through the years. His son wrote to him a couple of times a year and seemed to enjoy married life and a decent paying job in North Carolina. No matter! Never mind! He had chosen his way of life abroad, and he made it clear that if they ever really wanted to, they could meet up somewhere. Funny, he repeated to himself, how did those photos get there? It was as though his photos had an elusive will, a mysterious life of their own.
The next morning he woke up feeling excited. From the balcony at the rear of the hotel, bright slats of sunlight slanting through fan-leaves of palms shed a fanciful light on his day's hopes. The morning air was not heavy but rather mild, promising a clear and cooler winter day; a sweep of soft clouds crumbled against an unusually blue sky, and across rooftops he could see the river and smoke swirling from tugboats’ stacks and the small waves the rudders of the long-tail boats made in the warm wind. Wise, he thought, very wise of her to come to Thailand in the cool winter months.
After writing an entry in his journal, Roland went to the nearest market, searching under the awning spread alley for his favorite fruits: Rambutan and leechie and starfruit. There were hours dangling before him that needed to be filled before meeting Devorah at the Indian restaurant. Running into the frenetic fanfare of Khao San Road, Roland felt impulsive. He decided to buy a shirt, an embroidered Nepali style silk garment he had been admiring. Impressed with his own decisiveness and the dignified look the new shirt gave him, he felt frivolous enough to indulge himself in receiving a full hour massage. The rich suffusion of a relaxation that the massage offered was the gift he gave himself on this day of gentle anticipation. There was plenty of time left, and when the hour came to an abrupt end, the smiling Thai girl asked him if he would like more time. She smiled persuasively. He said yes and another young Thai girl began working on his feet while the first continued rubbing his chest with oil and kneading his arms and neck in broad and languid strokes. Roland looked into the eyes of the young Thai girl hovering above him. She smiled. He could hear her breathing. The sound twirled up into the leisurely whirling cooling fans calmly; the massage parlor itself seemed to be resting. The younger girls working on his feet, rubbing and softly combing out tension, also smiled at him. He was saturated with repose. The afternoon breeze was like a faint breath, a soft shadowy moth of a sound; he dozed gently off in this silent world.
Roland awoke for a moment. A blur of afternoon light seared his eyeballs when he tried to unseal his lids. Outside the open-air parlor the many forms on Khao San Road continued passing by. A red scarf, like the one he thought Devorah had been wearing, caught his eye, and in the long sharpened streak of light that teased his eyelids open momentarily he saw the figure of a young woman briskly walking past. She seemed in a hurry, slightly agitated. No, that wasn't her, that wasn't his Devorah. His eyes closed again, and although he tugged at the leash of his stupor, sleep softly overcame him.
He awakened slowly, yawning and grumbling, alternated with brief relapses into sleep mixed with visions and clamor. His half-awake eyes swam around the room. The massage girls had left him for another client. Then he came awake with a sudden jolt, sitting up and staring at his watch. My God, it was late. The sun had sunk and leveled off. Roland's exaltation had also burned off. It was late and there wasn't enough time for him to return to his hotel to pick up any photo albums. "What happened?" he asked grumbling.
"Sleeping, sir,” the Thai women answered laughingly. “You snore loud...very loud.” Agitated, Roland stood up, put on his sandals, paid the older woman at the front desk, and set out walking on the Road. His heart began beating. He walked hurriedly through the crowds, craving only to sleep. No photos. He was so drowsy he could hardly guide his feet. His plan was upset. There was barely an ember of excitement left in him. He was tired as he walked on, getting near the restaurant, their place of rendezvous. His breathing was distressed. He gazed towards the area ahead where he expected to see her. Somewhat short of that distance he did actually spot a red scarf. He squinted his eyes, staring carefully. Yes, it was she, it was Devorah. She did have a red scarf after all. She was standing in the road near a food wagon. Devorah was not alone; there was a young man with her, tall with long blond hair. Roland approached stealthily the general area where the two of them, an agitated couple, were quarreling. Hiding from their view posed no problem on a street as crowded as Khao San Road. Roland positioned himself about twenty feet away, under an awning of a clothing shop. The two were angry. He prepared to listen.
"No, you won't," said the young woman, "not until you pay me back."
"You can wait, bitch," the young brazen man said, "you can wait, just like I waited for you half the day yesterday."
"You're angry at that? Why? Because I was talking to that harmless old man over there yesterday?" asked Devorah. "He was just trying to help me with information. For our trip to Cambodia."
"Help you?" the young man shouted. "Do you need that kind of help? I watched you. He was old enough to be your father. What the hell did he want from you?"
"Nothing." she replied.
"Well, you must have been with him for hours.”
"You didn't tell me you were going to wait for me," she defended herself.
"Piss off!" he said. He sounded English or Australian.
"Come on," she said, "get over it, let's go back to the hotel."
"I don't get it." he replied. "What could be so engaging, talking till dark with an old fellow like that..."
On his way back to the Sawadhee Hotel, Roland usually got a slice of pineapple from the fruit vendor. The bright colored fruit, pineapple, papaya and mango sat upon a mound of ice in the glass-encased wagon. He had bought from this particular vendor almost every day and around about this time. That's why Roland became so annoyed that the frail sleepy man had chosen, for some reason, obliviously of course, to sprinkle the pineapple with cayenne. It made a difference. In fact, it ruined it. Never mind! He let it pass and went quickly on, giving the pineapple slice to a beggar passing by.
Roland waited, it seemed for a long time, for his key from the busy young Thai girl attendant. He climbed the stairs, went into his dark stuffy room and sat down on the creaky bed. He sat there just staring at the wall. The photo album he had intended to show that day was on the bed. He opened the album cover impatiently, looked with restlessness at the pages. Before him were his photos, familiar scenes and faces and when he got stuck just staring blankly into the album, he thought for just a moment he heard something whispering, "Never mind. Move on. Turn the page.”