93

Publication of TriQuarterly is made possible in part by the donors of gifts and grants to the magazine. For their recent and

continuing support, we are very pleased to thank the Illinois Arts Council, the Lannan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sara Lee Foundation, the Wendling

Foundation, and individual donors.

TriQuarterly also thanks the following recent donors and life subscribers: Simon J. Blattner, Jr.

Charles T. Martin

Louise Blosten

Florence D. McMillan

Paul Brownfield

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew McNally

Robert Creamer Eleanore Devine

Dorothy J. Mikuska Michal Miller

W. S. Di Piero

William T. Morgan, Jr.

John B. Elliott

Alicia Ostriker

Mr. and Mrs. H. Bernard Firestone

Linda Pastan

Mr. and Mrs. C. Dwight Foster

Fran Podulka

Martha Friedberg

Mark Rudman

Amy Godine Jay Harkey

Gilaine Shindelman

Mr. and Mrs. David C. Hilliard

Gary Soto

Allen R. Smart

Irwin T. Holtzman

Susan A. Stewart

Helen Jacob

Lawrence Stewart

Loy E. Knapp Greg Kuzma Patrick Mangan

Dorothy H. Taylor

NOTE:

Scott Turow

TriQuarterly welcomes financial support in the form of

donations, bequests and planned gifts. Please write to Reginald Gibbons, editor. Please see the last page and the inside back cover for names of individual donors to TriQuarterly.

SUBSCRIBE TO TRIQUARTERLY! (before our rates go up in September 1995) Please sign me up for: o

a two-year

subscription for $36.

o

a one-year

subscription for $20.

o

a life

subscription for $500.

Foreign subscribers please add $5 per year. enclosed.

o $

0 This is a renewal.

Please begin my Name

subscription with

__

Address

issue#

_

_

Or call us toll-free at 800-832-3615 to charge it!

BI93

SUBSCRIBE TO TRIQUARTERLY! (before our rates go up in September 1995) Please sign me up for: o

a

0

a one-year

two-year subscription for $36.

o

a life

subscription for $500.

,

subscription for $20.

Foreign subscribers please add $5 per year. o

Please begin my

$,

enclosed.

0 This is a renewal.

Name

__

subscription with Address issue #

_

_

Or call us toll-free at 800-832-3615 to charge it!

BI93

GIVE TRIQUARTERLY! o $

enclosed.

Buy your first gift for $20 (before our rates increase in

September 1995), and each additional gift costs only $1711

Name

Address

1st gift subscription ($20)

2nd gift subscription ($17)

Name

Name

Address

Address

Gift-card message

Gift-card message

Add $5/ year for foreign subscriptions.

BG93

Tri�MM<e[f�

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 2020 RIDGE AVENUE

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS 60208-4302

Tri�MalIJ'(t<e[f�

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

2020 RIDGE AVENUE EVANSTON, ILLINOIS 60208-4302

Tri�<e� NORTHWESTERN

UNIVERSITY

2020 RIDGE AVENUE EVANSTON, ILLINOIS 60208-4302

�.

••

SPRING 1995 BOOKS AND BACKLIST

THEODORE WEISS Selected Poems This definitive selection of poems by one of America's most distinguished and original poets recovers work that is immensely contemporary and at the same time reaches back to the roots of an accomplished generation of poets that includes Lowell, Jarrell,

Berryman and Bishop. Weiss's distinctive, idiosyncratic poems, noted for their syntactic compression and linking of intimate experience and historical incident, are a major accomplishment.

[Weiss's poetry} is among the most valuable work produced in our time.

-James Merrill 260 pages

$49.95, cloth (0-8101-5037-9)

$15.95, paper (0-8101-5040-9)

CYRUS COLTER A Chocolate Soldier 'I..·�

...

,

..

t

-:

�f;'('

.-;;.oj

,�:()I� ·I·I:I� ....

"

[""

�I

Colter's fourth novel is a cautionary tale of revolutionary dreams, bitter realities, and the persistence of both hope and falsehood. A kind of historical fable about the possibilities and perils of black revolution within and against

twentieth-century white America, this novel is brilliantly structured and voiced. It is Col ter is greatest and crowning work, and no reader will forget the tale it tells.

This powerful writer should win the attention of every serious reader

offiction.

-SATURDAY REVIEW

278 pages

$14.95, paper (0-8101-5038-7)

DIANE GLANCY

Monkey Secret Three short stories and a powerful novella by the award-winning Cherokee-German-English poet and prose writer explore that essential American territory, the border­ between: between past and present, between native and immigrant cultures, between self and society.

Her gift for expressive language and her courage in exploring painful

subjects like abandonment, illiteracy, and abuse make the reader hungry for more.

-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

116 pages

$19.95, cloth (0-8101-5016-6)

ADRIAN C. LOUIS Vortex of Indian Fevers

Wordplay, metaphoric brilliance, technical virtuosity and a scathingly sardonic critique of self and society fill this new collection. Louis celebrates life amid hardship and self-destructiveness, and consecrates a part of the past as a source of ideals for the present. N. Scott Momaday has characterized Louis's work as acceptance and defiance brought into delicate balance." Fueled by both anger and irony, Louis analyzes, excoriates, jests, prays and mourns. The result is psychologically and culturally complex.

II

76 pages

$29.95, cloth (0-8101-5017-4) $11.95, paper (0-8101-5042-5)

WILLIAM GOYEN In a Farther Country Subtitled

1/

A Romance," In a Farther is an intense Country performance,

both lyrical and colloquial, shaped as a series of meditative narratives.

Set in a Spanish arts factory in New York City, the novel grows around the conflict of its main character's mixed ancestry. Marietta McGee­ Chavez and her friends and acquaintances populate a world in

which they experience dreams and

reality, sexual desire and loneliness, triumph and defeat. This is the first paperback edition of Goyen's small neglected masterpiece.

WHlUlm

I�VtH

182 pages

$13.95, paper (0-8101-5039-5)

TRUDY LEWIS Private Correspondences Winner of the 1994 William Goyen Prize for Fiction This moral thunderclap of a novel portrays a teenage girl who, attacked by violent evil, chooses not to flee it but to face it, and then to embrace it.

In prose that swings between lyrical moments of illumination and gritty sexual insight, Lewis explores the dark heart of a misogynist culture.

Lewis's shattering study of sexual violence and individual vulnerability is both timely and universally resonant.

-

PUBUSHERS WEEKLY

196 pages

$19.95, doth (0-8101-5033-6)

CYRUS COLTER The Hippodrome Set in a Chicago seething with

physical and psychological violence, The Hippodrome is an examination of power and exploitation and their entangle­ ment with sexuality.

In the tradition of his fictional

ancestors, Dostoevsky and Faulkner, [Colter] has produced a work which uses the world of everyday reality in a manner beyond the scope of

journalism or sociology -as an entree to the soul.

-James Park Sloan CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

214 pages

$13.95, paper (0-8101-5036-0)

TINO VILLANUEVA Chronicle of My Worst Years / Cronica de mis afios peores TRANSLATED AND WTIH AN AFTERWORD BY JAMES HCX:;CARD

In this bilingual edition, an

established Chicano poet describes with passion and elegance some of the American realities that remain absent from mainstream poetry.

Villanueva voices complex and compelling historical, literary and cultural questions as urgent

personal utterances.

Tmo Villanueva won the 1994 American Book Award for his recent book, Scene from the Movie GIANT.

96 pages $34.95, cloth (0-8101-5009-3)

$12.95, paper (0-8101-5034-4)

MARCJ. STRAUS One Word This first collection of poems by a

physician combines poetic craft, medical expertise and a keen sense of human vulnerability to pain and

suffering in an uncommon portrayal of the complex and often troubled relations between physician and patient. With directness and power, Straus confronts matters rarely encountered in poetry. These poems are a fine addition to the scant body of imaginative work that speaks with authority from within the medical world.

80 pages

$29.95, doth (0-8101-5010-7) $11.95, paper (0-8101-5035-2)

Tino Villanueva

WILLIAM GOYEN Arcadio Completed while he was dying, William Goyen's Arcadio is one of the most affecting and imaginative farewells to life ever written.

Arcadio, whose voice is inimitably Goyenesque, is a creature from beyond the normal walks of life.

Half man, half woman, raised in a whorehouse and for years the

[Arcadio] virtually pulses with life; it is both audacious and wise; a timeless fable that manages to be

boldly contemporary as well.

-Joyce Carol Oates

veteran exhibitionist of an itinerant

circus sideshow, he has escaped

from the show and has been wandering in a quest for his lost family. Speaking intimately and secretly to the reader, he tells the bizarre and fantastic tale of his life.

148 pages

$12.95, paper (0-8101-5006-9)

WILLIAM GOYEN

Half a Look of Cain: A Fantastical Narrative Chris, whose leg is injured, and his lover Stella, with whom he lives in a ruined, abandoned house; Chris's male nurse; Marvello, the circus aerialist; a lighthouse keeper; a

flagpole-sitter in small-town

America-these are the creatures of William Goyen's visionary fable of

love, lust and loneliness. Because of its central focus on the erotic and its unusual novelistic form, Half a Look of Cain was rejected in the 1950s by Goyen's publisher. The first publication of this novel inaugurates

TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press plan to publish and reprint all of Goyen's out-of­ print work. a

Goyen's paramount concern is with the ways in which people connect, commune and create, with the ways they hurt and heal one another and with the capacity of everyone to do good or evil [Half a Look of Cain] is the work of a gifted, intelligent artist. ....

-

NEW YORK TIMFS BOOK REVIEW

220 pages

$22.50, cloth (0-8101-S031-X)

New Writing from Mexico Edited by Reginald Gibbons This large anthology is a carefully chosen and scrupulously translated sampling of the most vigorous and exciting new short fiction, poetry and essays being written in Mexico today.

Gibbons has been guided by a healthy eclecticism and a sense offreshness and authenticity of conception and execution.

-HARVARD REVIEW

...

a

feast of reading enjoyment.

Gibbons's collection gives us people worth caring about and writing not afraid to be at once serious and joyful.

-SMALL PRESS

448 pages

$15, paper (0-916384-13-6)

ANNE CALCAGNO

Pray for Yourself Anne Calcagno vividly captures the

o

textures of women's lives in this

exhilarating collection of short stories.

Her characters grapple with problems ranging from domestic violence to obsessiveness with body weight; the dramatic situations are extreme, edgy and utterly convincing.

Calcagno has the clean voice and sharp unblinking eye of a true storyteller.

-Larry Heinemann Language as maddeningly fascinating as a fifty-car locomotive, perfectly carved, from a single piece of wood.

-Lynda Barry 136 pages

$26.95, cloth (O-8101-5000-X) $12.95, paper (0-8101-5003-4)

� o

CAROL FROST Pure A fierce, passionate series of

meditations on experience and consciousness, morals and customs, and on the natural world that surrounds and shapes human life.

Frost's poems bear the stamp of a thoroughly original artistic vision and style-they are discursive yet filled with concrete images; they inquire into moral issues

(responsibility, pleasure, guilt, jealousy) without moralizing; they catch the echoes of western myths in domestic and quotidian events; they sharply diagnose relations between the sexes.

For all poetry collections.

-LIBRARY JOURNAL

64 pages

$26.95, cloth (0-8101-5029-8) $10.95, paper (0-8101-5004-2)

PETER READING Ukulele Music • Perduta Gente

�""�h,�

_,,,,.,m,,,,,,,,,,,,,,",,,,, �.,"'� �fo."1»IOd

"""''''''''''''''''"''­ ..,.".."...,1mI>-

This double volume of poems is the first U.S. publication of an important English poet. "There is nothing safe about Peter Reading's work," one reviewer has written, and a storm of letters to the London Times and the Times Literary Supplement, attacking and defending Reading's work, has made him the most controversial English poet of the age. Rarely has any poet found a way to address the most appalling and dispiriting aspects of life with such astonishing artistic virtuosity, bitter humor and

disconcerting honesty.

112 pages

$26.95, cloth (0-8101-5030-1) $11.95, paper (0-8101-5005-0)

The Urgency of Identity: Contemporary

English-Language Poetry from Wales EDITED BY DAVID LLOYD

This anthology of poems and interviews presents for the first time in this country the important English-language Welsh poetry of the 1980s and 1990s, illuminating the complexity, constant flux and political implications of the poet's sense of inherited culture. Superb poems have been rigorously selected to showcase the Welsh poets' skill and seriousness, and the sensuous density of their language, which, like that of contemporary Irish poets, offers the reader memorable expressive riches and a striking depiction of landscape and society. Included in the

anthology are John Davies, Gillian Clarke and R S. Thomas, among others.

244 pages

$39.95, cloth (0-8101-5032-8) $14.95, paper (0-8101-5007-7)

ALAN SHAPIRO In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination A collection of passionate, rigorously argued essays on the situation of poetry in American culture today.

These essays speak forcefully to the literary debates concerning the use of

tradition, the openness of American poetry to diverse subjects, and the

teaching of creative writing. This book should be read by any poet who teaches in the United States and by anyone with an interest in contemporary poetry. It will become a benchmark for discussion of contemporary American poetry.

200 pages

$39.95, cloth (0-8101-5025-5) $12.95, paper (O-8101-5028-X)

ANGELA JACKSON Dark Legs and Silk Kisses: The Beatitudes

of the Spinners

Wmner of the Carl Sandburg Award and the 1993 Chicago Sun-Tunes Book of the Year Award in Poeby

Angela Jackson brings remarkable gifts

to the articulation of African-American

experience. Her poetry features an impressive variety of characters exploring social identity, the rituals of race

relations, the female psyche,

creativity and spiritual experience.

Angela Jackson has known, for long, what is right for her attention and scrupulous investigation.

-Gwendolyn Brooks 120 pages

$25, cloth (0-8101-5026-3) $11.95, paper (0-8101-5001-8)

TIMOTHY RUSSELL Adversaria w ..... r.

"'1

TI�.I"Ct

DI'

Of

�.('

l><t .�,J_(

'all

.O(T'�

Wmner of the 1993 Terrence Des Pres Prize for Poetry Adversaria celebrates the rough beauty of ordinary life and laments its inevitable decline. These poems, titled in Latin, combine colloquial style with a late imperial tone to capture the stark contrasts and contradictions of a life lived between a steel mill and the quiet, graceful natural world.

To read Adversaria is to be in the

presence of a lively and supple and various mind, as tough as it is

InOliJYR

American.

II

mil

-Li-Young Lee

104 pages

$25, cloth (0-8101-5027-1) $10.95, paper (0-8101-5002-6)

EVAN ZIMROTH Dead, Dinner, or Naked We hear in these poems a song of tenderness, anger, intelligence and wit. Evan Zimroth's erotic, intense poems are rooted in history, myth and everyday life. Her strong, singular voice makes us look where we might not have looked, see what we might have missed, face what we would avoid.

I love the combination of smartness,

pain, and what one might call conscious postmodern trashiness in this book A profoundly urban book, ofharsh memory and fantasy, set in harsher reality.

-Alicia Ostriker ....

80 pages

$15, cloth (0-916384-10-1) $8.95, paper (0-916384-14-4)

BRUCE WEIGL What Saves Us In these wrenching, elegant poems

Bruce Weigl writes out of

uncompromising memory and vision.

From bars and bedrooms, in Ohio and Nicaragua and Vietnam, his voice rises through the noise of history and habit to reach us with impeccable grace and remarkable invention.

Song of Napalm made almost everything else that has been written about the Vietnam War seem irrelevant.

What Saves Us moves right along from that achievement. Bruce Weigl has become one of the best poets now writing in America. -Denise Levertov 80 pages

$17, cloth (0-916384-08-X) $11.95, paper (0-8101-5013-1) (PAPERBACK REISSUED WITH A NEW ISBN)

MURIEL RUKEYSER Out of Silence: Selected Poems EDITED BY KATE DANIELS

In a recent article, someone defined the

deplorable state of publishing (and the Republic) by a single fact: Muriel Rukeyser's poetry was out of print.

So this is not just another book: it is a restitution.

-Eleanor Wilner

The publication of Out of Silence is worthy of celebration.

Finally one of this century's most distinguished, misunderstood and undervalued poets is back in The time for a just estimate of print Rukeyser's contributions is long overdue.

Out of Silence is a necessary start.

-TIlE WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS an event

...

....

192 pages

$28, cloth (0-916384-11-X) $14.95, paper (0-8101-5015-8) (PAPERBACK REISSUED WITH A NEW ISBN)

LINDA McCARRISTON

Eva-Mary Winner of the Terrence Des Pres Prize for

1991 National Book Award Finalist

Poetry

Eva-Mary

Wmner of the 1991 Terrence Des Pres Prize for Poetry NOW IN A FOURTH PRINTING! An extended poetic meditation on

suffering and change, on cruelty and innocence, on love and endurance.

An immensely moving book, fearless in its passion. Linda McCarriston

accomplishes a near miracle, trans­ forming memories of trauma into poems that are luminous and often sacramental, arriving at a hard-won peace.

Linda McCarriston -.�

"';'"

-Lisel Mueller

80 pages

$10.95, paper (0-8101-5008-5) (REISSUED WITH A NEW ISBN)

Fiction of the Eighties Edited by Reginald Gibbons and Susan Hahn This landmark anthology honoring TriQuarterly's 25th anniversary includes 47 of the best short stories to have appeared in the magazine over the past decade. The stories range widely over the experience of modem life, and share a high level of artistry.

An incomparable primer of the contemporary possibilities of fiction.

For contemporary fiction [Fiction of the

The Eighties] is a standard-bearer and the fictional depth of multiplicity wisdom lives here are astonishing and wildness of writers too numerous ....

...

to thank.

-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

592 pages

$26.95, cloth (0-916384-05-5) $16.95, paper (0-916384-06-3)

Writers from South Africa Based on the proceedings of a literary conference hosted by TriQuarterly magazine and

Northwestern University in the autumn of 1987, this collection of speeches and dialogues by fourteen leading South African writers, poets and intellectuals opens up the world of contemporary South African literary culture to Ll.S. audiences, outlining such concerns

writing and censorship, worker poetry, the place of poetry in society as

and many others.

128 pages

$6.50, paper (0-916384-O3-9)

Writers from South Africa CULTURE, POUTICS AND UTEItARY THEORY AND ACTIVITY IN SOUTH AFRICA TODAY

Stephen Deutch, Photographer: From Paris to Chicago, 1932-1989 A stunning gift book-with

photos of Chicago over decades of change, including Deutch's Pulitzer-nominated photos from the Daily News. This collection and analysis of Deutch's work, with plates both in duotone and in color, is the

first full record of Deutch's

achievement to be published.

144 pages

$23.50, paper (0-929968-06-9)

Send this order form W: !'1Iorth\\t'slt'rn l niwrsil� PrI'SS

Chical!o ()Ist ributlon Center 110:10 South IAlngil'} \\l'nut' Chicago, 11.60628

Name

___

Address

___

State

City Author/Title

Cloth/Paper

o

Check or money order enclosed

CJ

MastercardlVisa number:

Quantity

Zip Unit Price

_

Total

Subtotal

Shipping and handling*

_

TOTAL

Expiration Date

Signature:

*Domestic-$3.50 first book. $.75 each additional book

_

• _

Foreign-$4.50 first book. $1.00 each additional book NW-123

Spring/Summer 1995

Editor

Co-Editor

Reginald Gibbons

Susan Hahn

Managing Editor Kirstie Felland

Assistant Editor Gwenan Wilbur

Executive Editor Bob Perlongo

Special Projects Editor

Design Director

Fred Shafer

Gini Kondziolka T riQuarterly Fellow

Christopher Carr Reader

Editorial Assistants Kemba Johnson, Lorin Cohen, Keith Newton

Deanna Kreisel

Advisory Editors Hugo Achugar, Michael Anania, Stanislaw Baranczak, Cyrus Colter, Rita Dove, Richard Ford, George Garrett, Michael S. Harper, Bill Henderson, Maxine Kumin, Grace Paley, John Peck, Michael Ryan, Alan Shapiro, Ellen Bryant Voigt TRIQUARTERLY IS AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WRITING, ART AND CULTURAL INQUIRY PUBLISHED AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.

Subscription rates (three issues a year) Individuals: one year $20; two years $36; life $500.

Institutions: one year $30; two years $48; life $500. Foreign subscriptions $5 per year addi­ tional. Price of single copies varies. Sample copies $4. Correspondence and subscriptions should be addressed to TriQuarterly, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, 2020 Ridge -

Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208. Phone: (708) 491-7614. The editors invite submissions of fie­ tion, poetry and literary essays, which must be postmarked between October 1 and March

31; manuscripts postmarked between April 1 and September 30 will not be read. No manu­ scripts will be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All manu­ scripts accepted for publication become the property of TriQuarterly, unless otherwise indicated. Copyright © 1995 by TriQuarterly. No part of this volume may be reproduced in any manner without written permission. The views expressed in this magazine are to be attributed to the writers, not the editors or sponsors. Printed in the United States of America

by Thomson-Shore; typeset by TriQuarterly. ISSN: 0041-3097.

National distributors to retail trade: Ingram Periodicals (La Vergne, TN); B. DeBoer (Nutley, NJ) Bookpeople (Berkeley, CAl; Ubiquity (Brooklyn, NY); Armadillo (Los Angeles, CAl; Fine Print

(Austin, TX)

Reprints of issues #1-15 of TriQuarterly are available in full format from Kraus Reprint Company, Route 100, Millwood, NY 10546, and all issues in microfilm from University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. TriQuarterly is indexed in the Humanities Index (H.W.Wilson Co.), the American Humanities Index (Whitson Publishing Co.), EBSCO Publishing (Peabody, MA) and Information Access Co. (Foster City, CAl.

After seven years of administering open competitions for the William

Goyen Prize for Fiction and the Terrence Des Pres Prize for Poetry, TriQuarterly will discontinue the competitions for these prizes. Both administrative limitations and financial constraints in a time of dwin­

dling funding for the literary arts have contributed to this decision. In the future, Des Pres and Goyen Prize winners will be selected from among manuscripts accepted for publication under the TriQuarterly Books imprint of Northwestern University Press. There will be no appli­ cation process. TriQuarterly Books welcomes queries with sample chap, ters

of prose or up to ten pages of poetry, but we cannot consider

unsolicited book manuscripts.

Due to rising paper and postage prices, TriQuarterly must raise subscrip­ tion rates starting with our Fall 1995 issue (TQ #94). The new prices for

individual subscriptions will be $24 for one year and $40 for two years.

Subscribe or renew your subscription before September 15 to take

advantage of our current low rates ($20 for one year; $36 for two years)!

Are you a life subscriber to TriQuarterly? Please make sure we have your current

address so we can continue sending you issues, as well as print,

ing your name on the last page or an inside cover of the magazine.

Two poems from TriQuarterly have been selected for inclusion in the

anthology The Best American Poetry 1995. edited by David Lehman­ "Unearthly Voices" by Edward Hirsch, from TQ #89, and "Manu' facturing" by Alan Shapiro, from TQ #90.

From time to time TriQuarterly makes its subscription list available to

responsible publishers. If you subscribe and would like to restrict the commercial use of your name and address, please let us know.

Contents Editors of this issue: Reginald Gibbons

and Susan Hahn FICTION

Penguins for Lunch Scott Bradfield

........••.•...•.......•••.................••

Almonds

21

45

Richard Stern The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders

..•.•.•......

65

A. Hernon

Baby Girl

77

Fred G. Leebron The Woman from Russia

..............................•....

111

David Plante The Cat and the Clown

134

Maura Stanton Wild Indians & Other Creatures

1 75

Adrian C. Louis Forever

191

Jean Thompson The Clouds in Memphis

206

C. J. Hribal

17

POETRY

Transfer; Keeper; The Resurrection Bush

••••........

91

Ingrid de Kok In Extremis; Hotel Orvieto; The Amazing

Vanishing Grace Myrna Stone

95

The Flat Road Runs Along Beside the Frozen

River; Aesthetics of the Bases-Loaded Walk; "Flowers are a tiresome pastime" Joe Wenderoth

....................•••..

Days; Century Flower; The Black Raincoat; The Nature of the Beast; Ray

•..•....•.•.•••.••••.••••••.

99

103

Brooks Haxton conversation with the stone; long afterwards;

light; to the beloved dead; rather free. after Brecht

119

Yaak Karsunke Translated from the German by Andre Lefevere

and Marc Falkenberg

For Billie; Male Trio

...................•.••••.............•..

124

David Galler Marie at Tea; Brooklyn Twilight

126

Alicia Ostriker The Scar; Transgressor

••••••..•••••••••••.•...•........•••.

130

Sharon Kraus In Touching Distance; The Substance of

Evanescent Things; The Logic of Opposites

Alane Rollings 18

....•..

145

Poems of Horace: 111.26 To Venus; 1.34 Of the God's Power

151

Translated by David Ferry

Breasts; Government Protection; An Officer's Story; Duration; Before; The Herd; The Tooth; Visitor (April 1978); The Bear; Placefulness; Repossession; Scenarios; Grasshopper Sperm; Sorrow Village; Texas Gulliver Malaria; The Grave; Mushroom River; Blood & Sage; Flame; The Steadying

15 3

William Heyen

ESSAY

Yellow Peril

238

Jianying Zha

CONTRIBUTORS

265

Cover painting, Tethered Bird, by Lorna Marsh Cover design by Gini Kondziolka The artwork appearing throughout this issue is from the exhi­

bition Displacements: South African Works on Paper, 1984� 1994, which was recently on view at the Mary and Leigh Block Gallery at Northwestern University. A list of acknowl­ edgments concerning these works can be found on page 268.

19

Every year since 1981, the National Endowment for the Arts has award­ ed TriQuarterly grants in support of the magazine's ongoing mission. For most of these years, we have requested and received grants mostly for support of contributors' honoraria. The U.S. Congress has been debar­ ing, in one way or another, the fate of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum Services, for several years now, and the prospects of these fed­ era 1 agencies, which exist only to contribute to the national culture in a modest way, are troubled. Yet these agencies have done great good in

making all sorts of cultural events and accomplishments possible, sus­ tainable and available to audiences, and there are lots of good reasons why our national government should support them.

We therefore urge you, our readers, to communicate to Congress your support of this good work. Perhaps it is even more important to communicate to local and state governments-and to local corporations and private funders as well-your belief in the value of contemporary literature and your hope that they will support it in every way they can.

Contemporary literature, although representing the most widespread engagement of the American people with any art form, receives an astonishingly small amount of financial support. Every voice raised on behalf of the value of poetry and fiction, as well as every dollar donated to this cause, really does make a difference.

TRIQUARTERL Y

Penguins for Lunch Scott Bradfield

Though dabbling in all three elements, and indeed possessing some rudimentary claims to all, the penguin is at home in none. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the air it flops. As if ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the earth.

-Melville, "The Encantadas"

1. The Ice Floe Bar and Grill "I'm a high-rolling entrepreneur on the free-market of love," Whistling Pete told his closest friend, Buster Davenport, one sunny afternoon at

the Ice Floe Bar and Grill. "You don't blame Mercedes for selling cars, do you? You don't blame McDonald's for frying burgers, or the [aps for

peddling cheap cars. Well, what I've got just happens to be what the lit­ tle girlies want. And when the little girlies want it, well. I don't mean to sound rude, Buster-but I happen to be just the guy that's gonna give it to them."

The Ice Floe Bar and Grill was one of a series of new up-market fran­ chise restaurants that had recently opened all across the tundra. As part of their inaugural promotion campaign, the Ice Floe was offering dollar

Margaritas during Happy Hour, along with all the free mackerel you could lay your flippers on.

Whistling Pete slid a creamy oyster into his throat and sighed. He pat­ ted his firm white belly, as if testing for tone.

21

TRIQUARTERL Y

"This is the life, Buster," he said philosophically, leaning back in his green vinyl lawn chair and folding his sleek muscular flippers behind his

head. He and Buster were sitting on a veranda overlooking the outdoor

pool. "Sunny days, starry nights, envelopes of rich fatty tissue to keep our butts warm, and loving spouses to go home to. What more could we ask? What more, that is, than maybe a hasty little frolic in the frost with one of yonder ice-maidens?"

Nodding towards the various lithe Penguinettes sporting themselves seductively around the pool, Whistling Pete clock-clocked his black tongue. His entire body shivered with a slow delicious enthusiasm for itself.

"Yeah, well, I just hope you know what you're doing," Buster said.

Buster's gaze was roving back and forth across the restaurant and patio.

He kept glancing sheepishly over his shoulders, as if he expected their

indignant wives to appear at any moment brandishing blunt objects.

When the waitress came up behind him and said, "How you boys doing?" Buster nearly jumped out of his socks.

"Whoa, there, Buster-relax, old buddy. It's not the gendarmes, you know." Whistling Pete cautioned his friend with an upraised flipper and presented the waitress his best award-winning smile. "And how are you doing this afternoon, sweetie?"

"If you boys don't need anything," she said, "I'll go check on my other tables."

Buster, slightly out of breath, was still smoothing his ruffled tail feath­ ers. "I guess I'll have another Margarita," he said, looking forlornly at his empty white side dish. "And if Happy Hour's still on, could you maybe find us a little more mackerel?"

Whistling Pete unashamedly examined the waitress's fatty deposits.

"Me," Whistling Pete said, "I'll have what some of what she's having."

He indicated the large commercial advertisement posted behind the bar. The ad featured a lithe, lovely Penguinette scantily clad in a white silk top hat and baggy white fishnet stockings. She was leaning against a sporty red snowmobile and stroking a large icy bottle of Smirnoff's.

The bold black caption exclaimed: IT'S PENGUINIFIC! While Buster resumed his edgy lookout for wives, Whistling Pete appreciatively watched their waitress waddle back to the bar with their order.

"Vah-vah-vah-voorn!" he said, and saluted her departing buttocks with the dissolving ice in his glass. Then he tossed down the slush with the last of his oyster sliders. His toes evinced a self-satisfied little wriggle.

22

TRIQUARTERL Y

"Life's definitely the coolest," Whistling Pete pronounced. "The sun rises, the sun sets. And so do I, Buster, old pal. So do 1."

Whistling Pete slammed his glass down on the table with a familiar emphasis.

"Yeah, well." Buster's eyes flicked from Entrance to Exit, from restroom to

window to door. He picked up the extinguished mackerel

plate and sadly licked it.

"I just hope you know what you're doing," he said.

Whistling Pete arranged for a clandestine rendezvous with one of his ladies nearly every day at noon, just when the twilight sky was begin­ ning to generate something like phosphorescence. They met unashamedly at the Ice Floe for drinks and quick, light lunches while Pete proffered flowers, compliments, stockings and chocolates. Then, as fast as their little legs could carry them, they dashed next door to the Crystal Palace Motel where Whistling Pete kept an open account. They ordered caviar and champagne through room service, sported them­ selves silly across the taut-fitted coverlets, and made the most they could of an hour-sometimes an hour and a half.

"This is the life," Whistling Pete muttered every so often. "This is what the All-Mighty Penguin had in mind when he designed such cute

little Penguinettes."

Infidelity took all the knots out of a morning. The bad breakfast with the screaming baby, the frantic rush of late orders at the warehouse where Pete worked, and the sense of blue dissolute formlessness Pete

experienced whenever he gazed out his office window at the utterly black sky littered with cold white stars.

"It's the worst weather in the entire universe," Pete regularly com­ plained to his early morning mug of Earl Grey. "Icicles, icebergs, ice­ mountains and ice-rocks. I'm not ashamed to say it. Antarctica really sucks, even for penguins."

Then, looking up, he found himself exchanging a quick, illicit glance with Berenice, an Accounts secretary across the hall. A warm amorous

pulse filled Whistling Pete's sinuses and face.

After a moment, Berenice smiled and waved. Then, after another moment, Whistling Pete smiled and waved back.

One of these days, Pete reminded himself, I really must go over there

and chat up our little Berenice.

The Penguinettes he did chat up were invariably young, impression­ able, intelligent and very quick to please. Some of them worked in

23

TRIQUARTERLY

Whistling Pete's office at Consolidated Fish, but mostly he met them during Happy Hour at the Ice Floe, or while swimming in the local ponds. They were office girls in a hurry to be young and didn't bother themselves too much about moral imperatives or social graces.

"I just figure we have nice times together," Whistling Pete's favorite

girlfriend, Melody Long, frequently explained, usually after her second gin-and-tonic and a quick steamy romp in the Motel Sauna. "So maybe you're married and have a baby-that's cool. I'm not a material girl. I don't need, like, to own a boy just because I like him."

Then, with a bubbly flirt and a giggle, she pinched Pete's belly with one hand, and soothed his inflated pride with the other.

"Not that we can call our little whistler a boy exactly," she reminded him, and began nibbling playfully at a stray chest-feather, "Mr. Pete is more what you'd have to call a dirty old man. Isn't that right, cutey?

Isn't that right, you big bad boy, you?"

Lunchtime was what Whistling Pete lived for-brightness, intoxica­

tion, energy and truth. Lunchtime was the passion and the glory.

Lunchtime was life.

By the time Pete returned to his office he was already subsiding into a post-coital melancholy which wasn't altogether unpleasant. He felt his mind descend into the sluggish depths of his own body, drifting through continents of ice, landmass, gravity and weight like a sort of bathy­ sphere. Down here the green, gnarly water was populated by pulsing black shellfish, gigantic cyclopean squid, translucent spiny seaweeds, and dark brooding prehistoric entities squeezed into barnacled caverns and shipwrecked galleons.

"Hey there, bro," Buster said, leaning into the office around four P.M. The day's tentative flare of sunlight was already extinguishing. Weird bright glows and refractions cast themselves across the planes of dazzling white ice like spinning crystal discs. "We hitting Happy Hour today or what?"

Buster was already glancing anxiously over both his shoulders. He was not

the sort of penguin who rushed headlong into life's vast hiss and

adventure. Instead, he anxiously avoided every bit of life that came

rushing after him.

Whistling Pete took his feet off the desk and sat up abruptly in his spring-cocked office chair. He saw the binders and ledgers, the interof­ fice memos and gray, slimy faxes. This desk, this office. These hours measured by dollars, these dimensions demarcated by ice.

24

TRIQUARTERLY

(And somewhere else entirely: Melody, Martha, Trudy, Dallas, Pippa, Dolores and Joyce.)

Or perhaps, Pete realized, Buster simply pretended not to know.

"Buster, old pal," Pete said finally, and clapped his flippers together with brisk authority, "has the sun stopped shining or the earth ceased to spin? Of course we're hitting Happy Hour. And if I recall correctly, I believe it's your tum to pick up the tab."

2. Making Marriage Work "It's just a phase Pete's going through," Estelle said, and succinctly regur­

gitated chunky blue broth into a white ceramic bowl. "Ever since he turned forty, he can't seem to sit still anymore. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror all morning, combing his feathers and picking his teeth. Every day on his way home from work he forgets to pick things up at the store-milk, bread, mineral water, you name it. He's wandering around in a dream world, Sandy, I swear. I know I should probably be hurt or angry, but I can't help feeling sorry for him. I think he's going through some pretty heavy emotional changes right now."

Estelle dabbed her beak with a pastel cloth napkin. Then she passed the bowl of broth to their six-month old fledgling, who was presently conducting a happy inner symphony with an upraised wooden ladle.

"Fish," Junior exclaimed. "Fish-jishy-fish."

Estelle sighed. Then, almost imperceptibly, belched.

"Excuse me," Estelle said.

Buster's wife, Sandy, lit another menthol cigarette and shook out her paper match with bristly impatience.

"For chrissakes, Estelle. Read the writing on the wall, will you? Your

lousy husband's out fertilizing every yolk in town. What are you-blind something?"

Estelle gazed out the sparkling window and sighed, leaning her beak on one cocked flipper. Sometimes she just wanted to sit in her clean kitchen, watch the thin sunlight and feel the deep, immanent warmth of her own body. She was so bulked-up with raw meat after months of gravid-gorging that she could hardly waddle to the sink and back with­ out falling out of breath. And now Sandy, lean and mean, telling her or

what to do with her life, as if she were some sort of expert.

"You don't understand, Sandy," Estelle said. "If you want to make a

marriage work, then some things just aren't that simple."

25

TRIQUARTERLY

"Things are that simple, Estelle, and let me tell you how simple they Pete's screwing every cow on the island. He's dipping his wick in every candle on the beach. You can either tell him to shape up or move are.

out.

Or you can hack him to death with the stainless steel. I'll tell you

thing," Sandy said, punctuating her resolve by flicking a long, intact gray ash onto the checkered tablecloth, "if Buster ever pulled a fast one on me, boy, I'd bite out a long message in his fat butt, that's what I'd one

do."

Estelle wanted to explain, but she couldn't seem to work up any words from the mulchy depths of her overloaded body. It was strange how flesh

could reshape itself around you, as if it possessed mind and intention all its own. Estelle looked at the flaring brightness outside. Then she

looked at her six-month-old fledgling, Pete Junior.

Without a second thought, Estelle thumped the side of Junior's high chair.

"Don't play with your food, Mister," she said.

Caught in mid-gargle with a bolus of macerated mussel, Junior swal­ lowed abruptly. He looked at his Mum with wide eyes and slowly put down his wooden ladle.

"Fish," he said evenly, indicating his chunky broth. "Mum's fish."

Estelle felt the sadness in her body start to rotate.

"Yes, baby," Estelle said. "Mum's fish."

Then, lowering her head to her folded and glistening black flippers, Estelle began to cry. Softly at first, but with a slowly rising intensity, like the sound of distant winter thunderclaps.

Sandy bit off another tiny puff from her menthol cigarette. She looked

Junior and Junior looked at her.

"There there, honey," Sandy said softly. "It'll be all right, honey.

There there, there there."

Then, extinguishing her cigarette in the glass ashtray, Sandy leaned at

over

and took Estelle gently in her arms.

Some days Whistling Pete didn't have any patience for family life.

Grocery bills, diaper services, overpriced podiatrists, peeling linoleum

and faulty pipes. "Domesticity is for the birds," Pete pronounced solidly, walking home with Buster through the starry night. Atmospheric strobes and opacities wheeled across the high black sky like chapters out of Revelation. "I'm talking the feathery, flighty kind of birds, you know?

The ones with their heads in the clouds? Sure, it sounds nice and all­ big tract houses, gas central heating, indoor plumbing and all that.

26

TRIQUARTERLY

Trade, commerce, low, tech industry, certified schools for the kids, com' munity rep, all the bread in one basket, that sort of domesticity, you know. But basically, man, it's an idea cooked up by the little girlies.

Wives, man; females seeking security for their babes. Girlies are home'

builders, but us guys, we're like homebreakers. It's not our fault, Buster, it's just our nature. Girlies like home and hearth, three square meals, new wallpaper for the nursery, church weddings and matching cutlery. Us guys, however, we're hunters and gatherers. We don't want cornflakes for breakfast-we want the hot blood of the kill in our mouths. We want to venture beyond what we already know, and stop remembering the boring old places we've already been. Nature's cruel, Buster, just like us. Nature's

cruel, and so are us guys."

The long white road descended into the village, leading Pete towards the smell of yeasty bread baking. He saw yellow light glowing in the windowpanes of his house, and the idea that he was anticipated made him edgy and ungallant. Two strange minds waiting in a house where he didn't belong. They knew he was coming. They knew he was already

late.

He put his arm around Buster with a comradely squeeze and gestured downhill. "There it is, buddy. Our little village in the snow, the home

forefathers and foremothers planted in the wilderness. Back in the old days our ancestors waddled around on rocks, man. They starved, our

hunted, mated and died without proper funerals or mortgage insurance.

The only education they got came from the School of Hard Knocks.

And who do you think first initiated the idea of houses, man? Why, the ladies, of course. 'Let's stack a few ice blocks over there as a sort of lean, to,' they told their weary, flatulent old husbands. 'How about four walls,

honey? A roof and a floor?' Us guys would have lain out there scratching our lice on that stupid rock forever if we'd had the choice, but the choice wasn't ours, no way."

Buster, well-oiled with budget tequila, was waddling along beside Pete with uncustomary resolution. Instead of glancing over his twitchy shoul­ ders he gazed dreamily into the endlessly illuminated sky. Showers of meteors, swirls of galaxies, planets entrained by moons and whorling dust. Buster loved the night when it got like this: vast, unencompassable and rinsed with sensation. It was a time when everything, even the uni­ verse, seemed at once awesomely complicated and weirdly specific.

"Actually," Buster muttered out loud, "I always kind of dug domestici­ ty. Beds with sheets, down comforters, canned lager and imported salsa.

I like knowing I'll get paid every Friday, week after week, as regular as

27

TRIQUARTERL Y

clockwork. Some days, Sundays especially, I lie in my warm bed and let my mind wander. I don't go anywhere. I just let my imagination loose

and I wander."

Pete whistled softly to himself. He wasn't listening to a word Buster

said, but then he hadn't been listening to anybody for months now. He was thinking: Melody, Marianne, Gwendolyn and Jane. Tomorrow at noon and next Wednesday at twelve forty-five. While Pete's body wad­ dled down the steep slope towards the hard, unendurable village, his

mind journeyed into different realms altogether. Places with thrill and

expectation. Places of slow tongue and undress. Times like this, Pete believed he would never die. Even when the hard village stopped endur­

ing, Whistling Pete wouldn't.

"Men may build the cities," Pete said softly, just before they arrived at his white doorway, his paved driveway, his leaning mailbox, "but. believe you me. It's the little girlies who make us live in them."

Despite his protestations to the contrary, Pete arrived home each night aching with apology and self-reproach.

"I know I should have called," he told her. "I know it's late, and I for­ got to buy milk again. And yes I did drink too much, and spent too much money, and Little Petey's gone to bed again without kissing Daddy good night. I'm sorry, Estelle, I really am. I'm sorry but I can't seem to explain. Some nights I just have to get away with my buddies, have a few drinks and unwind. No, and I can't say it won't happen again. I wish I could, Estelle, but I can't."

Later, in bed, Estelle pretended to sleep. Pete could feel the slow breath of the hard house around them, the ticking radiators and rumi­ nating clocks. Next door in the nursery, Little Petey, true to his geno­ type, faintly whistled while he snored.

"I'll try to be better," Whistling Pete told his wife, pretending he believed her when she pretended not to hear. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to. Maybe I can tell you what you want to hear, Estelle. But that doesn't mean I can be somebody I'm not."

Then, too tired for remorse, he fell asleep with a hypnagogic little kick. And descended into the dreams he pretended not to know.

"Of course I worry about Estelle and Junior," Buster told his wife that night, tossing and turning among the knotted sheets and lumpy pillows.

"But Pete's my friend, Sandy, and I'm not just going to lie here and listen

while you trash him."

28

TRIQUARTERLY

"Trash him?" Sandy said, in a rising crescendo of disbelief. "I'm trash­

ing him?"

Buster turned onto his other side and gazed out the bare, glistening

window. The full moon glared at him like a primitive mandala; Buster

could feel the cold, deep resonance in his bones like a hum.

"What about Estelle, huh?-Who's trashing her, Buster? Who's doing the serious emotional trashing in this morbid little scenario of ours? Me, or your close friend, Whistling Pete?"

Buster submitted with something like relief. Sandy was like a geyser or

earth tremor. He could hear her about to happen all day, charging the dark air with rumor and electricity. an

"So I guess poor little Estelle is supposed to grin and bear it-is that what you mean? Because if she calls her wonderful husband a liar and a cheat then she's trashing him? And if I start calling him a louse-which is exactly what he !S, Buster-then I'm trashing him too? I guess if it's a man

doing the trashing then that makes it O.K., huh? Is that what you're

saying, Buster? If men trash women, then that's the proper order of

things, right?"

Buster took a long deep breath and sighed.

"That's not what I said, Sandy. That's not what I said and you know it."

Every morning after a fight, breakfast became a ceremony of courtesy and toast. While Sandy brought in bottles of frozen milk from the front porch and thawed them on the stove, Buster took up the sports page and read through yesterday's skating and ice-hockey scores, enjoying the cool comfort of abstractions, a sort of rousing statistical hum. Click, clicks-click-click. Clicka-click-click.

"I'm going shopping," Sandy said flatly, peering at him across her

china teacup.

"That's a good idea," Buster said, nervously glancing at the wall clock.

In another few minutes he might be able to leave for work without

appearing too obvious.

"I'm getting a beak trim and a pedicure at Valerie's. Then I'm meeting Estelle for lunch at the Green Kitchen."

Buster felt the weight of depth charges hidden beneath the surface of Sandy's blithe words. He refused to look up from his paper.

"Have a nice time, honey," he said. "I should be home by dinner."

Later, traipsing back up the long winding road to the Factory, Buster rehearsed his concern until it resembled indignation. He gestured

29

TRIQUAR TERL Y

severely with his red metallunchpail.

"Enough's enough, buddy," he said. "And believe me-I'm telling you this for your own good. If you want a little fling now and then, that's cool. But these daily rallies of yours are getting to be too much. Show a little discretion, man. What do you think we are-seals or something?

Happy flappers lying out on the beach all day, mating indiscriminately, barking like morons? No, Pete, we've built something for ourselves out here. Homes and schools and factories and jobs. So if you want to shoot off your mouth about how rotten civilization is and all, well, that's your

prerogative. But if you're going to continue living here, then you've got to start taking responsibility for yourself. I hate to be so hard on you, bro'-believe me, I don't like it anymore than you do. But I'm being hard on you because I care. And if you don't understand that, well, just

forget it. Maybe I've been wasting my time with you all along."

Steaming with resolution, Buster chugged into the Factory just as the second whistle blew. Grizzly fishermen were dragging weirs-full of squirming carp and tuna from the harbor while the Factory gates were rolled open by large, muscly-looking penguins in greasy gray overalls.

By the time Buster reached Pete's office he knew he was finally going to do it. He was going to tell Whistling Pete what he thought about him once

and for all. The hot energized words carried him up the stairs and

down the hall. They carried him through Payroll, Group Insurance and

Personnel, past filing cabinets, bulletin boards and water fountains.

Buster was finally going to speak his mind, come hell or high water. Or perhaps he was just going to let the unrestrainable anger in his mind speak for itself.

Inside Pete's office, Nadine, the Accounts secretary, was stirring a big pot of tea with a wooden spoon.

"Let me speak to Whistling Pete," Buster told her. "And tell him I mean muy

pronto."

Nadine took a moment to understand. She looked at Buster, then at the open door to Pete's office. She was smiling faintly, as if she had been

expecting this pathetic little display all morning.

"Sorry, Buster," Nadine said, "but your buddy's not around." Then she

placed the teapot on a wooden tray alongside four chipped ceramic mugs, one tarnished teaspoon and a bowl of brown, lumpish sugar. "If there's an emergency, though-and it better be one hell of an emer­ gency-you can always leave a message for him at the Crystal Palace Motel."

30

TRIQUARTERLY

3. Mordida Girls

Spring returned and the squat white sun wouldn't leave, skating round the horizon's meniscus of thinning ice and dripping mountains like a sentry. Time grew increasingly diffuse, gray and immeasurable.

Not that time mattered to Whistling Pete anymore-only the quick lapse into timelessness he regained every afternoon in the arms of his adorable Penguinettes. Often he trysted two or three of them on a single afternoon, bang bang bang, beginning each session with a few shots of Jack Daniels and a plate of imported caviar. Often by the third or fourth session he fell rudely asleep and dreamed of white, sandy beaches and tropical heat. Later he awoke in the dim room, saw the windows hung with thick black curtains like a shroud, and heard the hissing radiators.

Sometimes his latest Penguinette was sitting in front of the vanity mir­ ror gazing dreamily into the vertex of her own multiple reflections.

Usually, though, Whistling Pete awoke to an empty room laced with perfume and musk. Hotel personnel knocked summarily at the door.

"Maid service," said a woman with a heavy Dutch accent. "Should we clean up, Mister? Or you want we should come back later?"

By the time Pete waddled into work it was often as late as three or three-thirty, Fellow administrators and their assistants looked up dis­ tantly when Pete skirted through the halls. Back in Accounts his assis­ tant, Nadine, was always in a furious temper.

"Mr. Oswald came by from Marketing, and Joe Wozniak asked again about your expense receipts. I've tried covering for you as far as the sales

conference, but I can't do anything if I don't see some retail brochures pretty damn soon. Oh, and your wife and little boy popped round asking for you-you were supposed to take your son fishing today. I think you blew it, Pete."

"Oh shit," Whistling Pete said, and slumped into his swivel chair. He checked both his vest pockets for stray cigarettes but located only twist­ ed bits of tobacco and a small white business card. The card said: Henrietta Philpott

Public Relations Consultant.

He wondered if he and Henrietta had spent any time together. Or if

maybe they were about to.

"I knew I'd forgotten something," Whistling Pete said.

He knew but he couldn't quite bring himself to care. He had passed 31

TRIQUARTERLY

through a barrier of some sort, and was now journeying fearlessly into primitive wilderness of the mind penguins weren't supposed to know. Cold black spaces where the sun never got to. Huge white polar bears roaming about, cracking shellfish against rocks. Dark hot shapes swooping overhead while strange animals cried in the distance, hungry for fresh meat. When you journeyed this far south, the old rules didn't apply. The only thing you could do was keep moving forward and never some

look back.

Pete continued making excuses, but they felt more like formalities

than contentions.

"But I'm going to take Junior fishing," Pete declared, with a forced sin­

cerity even he didn't recognize. "I want to help teach him to fish. But I got delayed meeting a distributor on the Stroud Islands. What do you want me to

do-neglect my job?"

"I sure wouldn't want that," Estelle said emptily, leaning against the

kitchen table. She held a Mackerel-Cracker in front of her face like a cue

card. "Obviously, neglecting your job's all you're worried about any­

more.

So tell that to your year-old son who adores you."

"I'll make it up to you, sport-I really will." Pete paced back and forth in the living room while Junior lay on the floor perusing his geography

homework (Fishing Routes of Our Polar World, Twelfth Edition). "We'll go camping, that's it. A weekend on the Outer Orkneys. Just you, me and those mackerel. We'll bring along that new sealskin pup tent we've been

meaning to use."

Junior didn't look up. He tapped a pencil against his beak, and turned the page of his textbook. In the last few months since being weaned,

Junior's body had grown angular and weirdly composed. It wasn't a body Pete entirely recognized anymore.

"Like, that's cool, Dad. It's no big deal or anything. We'll go fishing some other time. When you're not so busy, that is."

"I've got the expense receipts," Pete told the Executive Staff in the

Factory Green Room. "Of course I've got the expense receipts." The Executive Directors had called him in during lunch break. They sat around the long black conference table, munching processed-salmon sandwiches and prawn-flavored crisps.

"It's just that, well, Payroll screwed up the Group Finance Report, and by the time Nadine and I got that mess straightened out with the Commissary it was time for the Monthly Service Catalog, and, well, I

32

TRIQUARTERLY

know it sounds like a bunch of half-assed excuses and all

" ...

A bright

cold sweat broke out on Pete's forehead; he tried to shake a little venti­ lation into his facial feathers and felt a faint dizzying rush, as if he were

and of course I'll get the falling through vortices of warm air. ". to and I like to sound like I'm trying to don't reports you by Friday, divert blame or anything, right, 'cause of course Nadine's a great girl and all, but she does have something of a temperament. I'm not trying to cast aspersions or anything but I mean, like, she's always blaming every­ thing on the system, right, and the male-dominated patriarchy and all .

.

that, and, well, it's sort of hard to get Nadine to cooperate as far as her official responsibilities are concerned. I'm not blaming Nadine for all the screwups, understand. I'm just saying there's only so much I can do,

right? I've only got two flippers, you know."

But no matter how hard Whistling Pete expostulated, prevaricated and fibbed, he knew the game was coming to a rapid conclusion. Even though he'd ordered a new company-account checkbook only two weeks ago, he had already used it all up. He'd paid last month's motel, room service, and bar bills, but now this month's bills were beginning to fall due, and Finance wouldn't be forthcoming with another checkbook until May. Pete had purchased a half-dozen pearl necklaces, brooches and earrings, but couldn't even remember which Penguinettes he had distributed them to, or for how much in return. He journeyed through each day in a weird sort of somnambulism, never certain of the time, suffering sinus headaches and blurred vision. He began to avoid his own bloodshot eyes in the bathroom-cabinet mirror.

A line from an old Dylan song kept recurring to him: "To live outside the law you must be honest." What Pete decided was: To live outside

the law you must work really, really hard. He awoke every day at seven, gulped black coffee, and hurried to the Factory where he unsuccessfully tried to catch up with the work he'd been neglecting for weeks. Then he fell asleep at his desk, awoke to Nadine's pottering, and skipped off in a faint anxiety rush to the Crystal Palace Motel, where he encountered the silk-clad bodies of Stella, Ariadne, Velma and Chloe. Then he returned home each evening through a slow dull daze of incertitude, to be greeted by unpaid utility bills, humming kitchen appliances and stiff, intricate silences. Estelle in bed with her book. Junior out

gallivanting

with his friends.

Some nights Pete found the bedroom door bolted shut and he

knocked politely like a timid solicitor.

"Estelle?"

33

TRIQUARTERLY

"What?"

"Are you in there?"

"Of course I'm in here."

"Can I come in?"

"No you can't."

"I'm really bushed, Estelle. I need to lie down and sleep."

"So sleep on the couch."

"I feel very strange, you know, all run down and everything. I've got

stomach pains, my liver's enlarged, there may even be something wrong with my spleen. I've got a rash on my inner thigh that bums like crazy.

I'm really beat, Estelle, and I think, well. Maybe we should talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," Estelle said with calm conviction, as if she were slipping a form letter under the door. "I'm afraid the time for

talking is over."

Her voice was clipped and regular, like the Factory's canning machine.

Whistling Pete leaned against the flimsy plywood door. He could detect her warmth in there, like radium or metal. It felt very far away, divided from him by distances more extensive than space.

"Oh Estelle," Pete sighed, feeling his entire body slump into itself like an

expiring party balloon. "Maybe you're right, honey. Maybe you're

right."

"If you don't mind my saying so, Pete-you're starting to look pretty thin and unraveled lately."

Melody was sitting on the edge of the mattress and pulling on her baggy white fishnet stockings.

"I'll do what I can," Whistling Pete said dreamily. He imagined him­ self floating downriver on a wide jagged platform of ice. He was gazing up at the white sky, the thin white sun and moon.

Melody gazed distantly at her herself in the shimmering vanity mirror.

"You're starting to lose a little of your, oh, what do you call it? Your get­

up-and-go. I don't mean to sound impolite or anything, baby, because we've had some great times together. But I just don't look forward to seeing you anymore. I mean, when I know we've got a date coming up­ oh, how do I say this? Knowing I've got to see you is getting to be a big bummer."

Melody anchored the tops of her stockings to a matching pair of elas­ ticized red-velvet garters. Her body gave off thin, languorous heat and a sense

of benign inattention.

"Even General Motors suffers an occasional financial slump,"

34

TRIQUARTERLY

Whistling Pete said, smiling fondly at the clock on the wall. "Even the Japanese experience an occasional recession."

Melody pulled on her short black cocktail skirt with a wriggle. She scowled faintly at herself in the mirror as if she remembered something anterior to her own reflection. Some memory which did not belong to this face, these eyes, this body, this occupied and lonely room.

"I worry about you, Pete. I really do. You used to be fun. You used to be a lot of laughs. What happened to the old Whistling Pete I used to know?"

Drifting in the direction towards which all currents yearned, Pete saw empty planes of ice, tall white mountains, gaping crevasses, rust-red lichen the size of dinner plates. We've lived for thousands and thou­ sands of years, the lichen collectively muttered. And want to know what's happened out here in all that time?

Nothing, man. Nothing nothing nothing nothing.

"I'll be fine," Pete said. He reached for his glass of Smirnoff's. "A bit of the bug, probably. I've been working too hard. I need to relax."

"Yeah, well." Melody got up and brushed herself off. She was wearing a lot of crushed black velvet and pink powdery body-blush. "You take care of I because yourself, Petey, worry about you, I really do. But until act I think you get your together, maybe we shouldn't see each other for a

while."

4. The Crystal Palace Motel Buster sat at the lee Floe sipping a strawberry margarita while Al the

portly bartender swabbed everything down with a damp dishcloth.

"He's been over there every night," Al said. He shifted a toothpick from one side of his beak to the other, and nodded in the general direc­ tion of the Crystal Palace Motel. "Every day and night, actually. And when he comes in here-usually for another bottle of Smirnoff's-he doesn't say hi or anything. He just takes what he needs and leaves."

"No skin off my butt," Buster said, and lit another menthol cigarette.

Buster had recently taken up smoking, just to give his hands something to do. "He doesn't need my help with anything. He's got his little girlies to keep him company."

"Little girlies," Al said, and poured himself a soda water from the hand-dispenser, "Little girlies and God knows what else."

Buster sat at the bar and watched Al gaze abstractedly across the

35

TRIQUARTERLY

empty restaurant. It was three P.M. and Buster had just finished a late

lunch of oysters in clam sauce.

"And God knows what else," Al said again. He refused to look at

Buster, and there was something in this refusal that Buster took as a

reproach.

After lunch and a second margarita Buster tried calling Pete's room at the Crystal Palace Motel but there wasn't any answer. When he stopped

by the lobby on his way back to work he found the day clerk playing a new hand-held electronic ice-hockey game. The day clerk swung the back and forth, as if he were steering a particular­ beeping computer toy slalom down the rocky hillsides of his imagination. ly nasty "Is Whistling Pete still in Room 408?" Buster asked. Buster lit a fresh cigarette off the old one and crushed the old one out in a hip-high, sand-filled aluminum ashtray.

"Ah shit," the day clerk said.

The computer beeped its tiny contempt and the day clerk looked up.

"Whistling Pete, huh?" He gave Buster the once-over. "He's not the sort

of guy who has many friends. So you must be another customer,

right?"

Before he knew what he was doing, Buster was lifting the stroppy,

bell-hatted little penguin up over the counter top and slamming him

rudely against the clattery ashtray.

"What's that supposed to mean, Numb-nuts?"

"Hey, I was just kidding, is all."

Buster heard a tone in his own voice he didn't recognize.

"I'll ask you one more time," he said simply, "and don't give me any more

blather. Just tell me where can I find my friend, Whistling Pete?"

By the time Buster found him he wished he hadn't. The day clerk had clean, and as a result left Buster feeling irredeemably dirty.

"You know what I'm talking about, Mister-don't play Baby Innocence with me," the day clerk had replied, hitching up his uniform blue-serge slacks with a pompous little swagger. "I'm talking seals, man.

Otters. Big slimy lady walruses with fat blundery arses. It's like the Tart's come

Grand National around here-them strutting their stuff up and down those stairs day after day. And your pal, Mr. Pete, he doesn't even leave the room at all anymore. You can't imagine the sort of disgusting activi­ ties that're going on in there. It's sick, that's what it is. There should be a

police ordinance or something. Not to mention his hotel tab, which

36

TRIQUARTERLY

has gotten completely out of hand. In another couple days, your old

buddy's going to find himself tossed out on the tundra with the wolves and the polar bears."

Pete's room had recently been relocated to the second-floor servants' quarters. Buster took the service elevator and arrived at a long angular hallway dingy with infrequent lighting, where the linty velour carpets

emitted a greasy, unsavory sheen. The entire area smelled of cigarettes

and spoiled vegetables.

When Buster knocked at Room 7, he heard a slow slumberous rouse from deep inside.

Buster coughed awkwardly. Then he knocked again.

"Yeah, well, it's not paradise," Pete conceded. "But then, who's look­ ing for paradise, right?" He was sitting on the edge of his frayed, sunken mattress, scratching his genitals through tatty checkered boxer shorts.

The room was littered with bottles, newspapers, and fast-food wrappers.

"Why don't you take a shower, Pete. Put on some clean underwear, for godsake. Then I'll take you home to your wife and kid." .

"My wife and kid are history, Buster. Estelle took Junior to her sister's

on the Fimbullce Shelf."

Buster refused to be deterred. If Pete was ever again to have faith in

himself, Buster would have to be the one to teach him how.

"First we'll get you squared away," Buster said. "Then we'll go bring her back. She still loves you, Pete. I know she does."

"Bring her back to what?" Pete asked. His voice and eyes were

phlegmy and aimless. He picked a white sticky substance from his ear and wiped it on the mottled sheets. "What's left of me ain't exactly a work of art, you know. And you must have heard about the expense money I embezzled. Nadine getting fired for my incompetence and graft.

The fact that I've lost what little reputation and self-respect I had left­

and the funny thing is, I don't give a goddamn. I don't miss any of it.

Especially not the self-respect."

Buster, embarrassed by the false assurances he was tempted to offer, looked away. He saw the messy bathroom, the broken dripping toilet, towels on the floor.

"We'll find you a new job," Buster said. The lie echoed hollowly in the filthy room. "With Estelle and Junior's help we'll get you back on your feet again. Hell, buddy-I can loan you a few bob till you get your­

self straightened out. What are friends for, huh?"

"Oh Buster," Pete sighed. "Wake up and smell the coffee, will

you?"

37

TRIQUARTERLY

Pete indicated his entire body with a small ironic flourish. The high strain of ribs,

the frazzled patchy feathers, the haunted and thinning

gleam in his eyes. "All my nice sleek body fat has melted away. No job,

family, no savings to speak of. It's quite ironic, really. Because civi­ lization has given me the luxury of thinking, I've had time to disrespect all the civilized comforts that allow me to think."

no

"Don't," Buster said. He knew he was in trouble if Pete started talking.

"Stop it, Pete. Stop winding yourself up."

Pete was on his feet again, waddling back and forth in front of the bed. "But that's the point, isn't it? What do you build when you build

yourself a civilization? Nice warm houses, nice warm restaurants, nice warm places to go to the bathroom. What does civilization give us, Buster? Temperature. Heat. Oxygen. Light. And what do we do with all this, this energy, this year-round fat and reserve? We burn it, pal. We use it to stoke the fire of our bodies all day and all night. Heat and oxygen fuels the brain to think, the loins to procreate, the body to consume.

We are burners of hard fuel, Buster, and thinkers of hard thoughts, and we can't ever rest until we die. Civilization doesn't solve problems, Buster. It reminds us of all the problems we haven't yet solved. What we don't have. Who we haven't been. How much we haven't spent. How many little girlies we haven't plugged. It doesn't end, Buster. I keep

thinking it will end, but it doesn't end, not really."

"Don't do this to yourself, buddy," Buster said desperately. "Turn it off, man. Give yourself a good swift kick in the backside and shut your damn brain off."

Pete came to a sudden halt and he turned. His face was sunken, his eyes lit with a fire that burned itself as much as the things it saw.

"But Buster," he said, "the only way to turn it off is to stop living. The

only way to forget what you know is to pretend not to be."

At which point, Whistling Pete fell to the floor with a terrible crash.

With friends from the Ice Floe Buster managed to transport Pete back to his

home, where the atmosphere had grown stale, sluggish and unreal,

almost as bleak as Pete's room at the Crystal Palace. The walls, beds and furniture were icy with neglect and disuse. The pilot light had extin­

guished in the furnace, and a shutter in the bedroom had ruptured under the impact of a recent storm, permitting an avalanche of rocky ice and sludge to build up around the dressing table. The only whiff of life remaining in the entire house was exuded by the bowels of the refrigera­ tor, where shriveled vegetables and garlic bulbs blossomed. When they

38

TRIQUARTERLY

laid Pete out on the cold bed, he tossed and turned in his sleep, mutter­ ing against the tide of visions only he could save himself from. Buster wasn't able to reactivate the pilot light in the furnace, but he did man­ age to get a good blaze started in the fireplace.

"More," Whistling Pete murmured, drifting in the depths of oceans much deeper than sleep. "More yesterdays. More todays. More tomor­ rows."

"Sleep tight, old buddy," Buster said, posting himself in a cracked wooden chair beside the bed. He had just started a pot of canned soup simmering over the fireplace. "And if you need anything, you know where to find me."

Sandy didn't understand, but Buster never thought she had to.

"Who's your real wife, anyway?" she asked him. "Me or Whistling Pete? And since when did you take up cooking and housecleaning? I never even seen you open a can

of beans before."

Buster was wearing one of Estelle's frayed white aprons and scrubbing rusty pans in the sink.

"It's just something I've got to do," Buster said. He felt strangely

peaceful and solid. "If you love me, you'll try to understand."

"Try to understand," Sandy said. Suddenly, like a wind snuffing out a candle, all the fight went out of her. "Try to understand."

Buster took his overdue vacation time from the factory and repaired Whistling Pete's window and furnace. Every afternoon, after preparing a lunch of chicken broth and fresh fruit salad, he helped Pete out of bed, walked him around the room a few times, and changed the linen.

Whistling Pete's body was all slump and desuetude, his complexion jaundiced and scabby. He was losing feathers all around his skull and under his armpits.

"We'll get you a nice wool cap," Buster promised one day during their exercise session. "The body loses ninety percent of its heat through the

old skull, you know. In order to keep the body warm, you gotta keep your lid on-get me?"

"That's why we've got gas fires," Pete said. "That's why we've got cen­ tral heating."

"Go back to sleep now," Buster said, laying him back in the cool fresh linen. "You don't have anything to worry about for a long, long time."

Usually Whistling Pete drifted off again, but some afternoons, as if driven by the momentum of his own feverish imaginings, he started talking out loud in his sleep.

39

TRIQUARTERLY

"I dreamed all night of the white ice," Whistling Pete said. "I was

walking south, into a region of thin air and dazzling aurorae. I knew I was heading into the big nothing, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. I knew I had to keep going, not because I wanted to get anywhere specif­ ic, but because I couldn't bear to remain anywhere I already was."

The dreams seemed to increase in force and volume, and Buster could never

decide whether this was a good omen or a bad one. Sitting beside

Pete's bed with his newspaper, Buster watched his friend toss and turn

with slow, gathering intensity, like a kettle heating on a stove.

Sometimes he cried out or started upright and Buster soothed him with a

steaming wet towel.

"Human beings are the next step," Whistling Pete cried out from time time. "They'll be here any day now. And if human beings don't get

to

here pretty soon, then I'm afraid us penguins won't have a choice. We'll start

turning into human beings. You, me, Estelle, Junior, Melody, the

girls, the beautiful girls. Big fat hairy human beings with guns, oil and machinery. We'll start erecting supermarkets and shopping malls. We'll drive like maniacs across the ice on motorbikes and mopeds. We'll start shooting each other in the head, and chewing tobacco, and pissing on our own

front stoops. I have seen the future, Buster. I have seen the

future and it is us. Animals who can't stop themselves anymore.

Animals who always want more than they've already got."

"It's O.K., Pete," Buster said. He shook and repositioned the foam pil­

lows, helping Pete subside back into them. "Stop worrying. Stop think­ ing and just relax. It'll be O.K.-I promise. I'll stick by you. All you've got to do is get better, Pete. I'll take care of everything."

They buried Whistling Pete beside the pond where he first went fish­ ing with his father. A lid was cut in the ice and Pete's naked body inserted into the frothy, secret currents beneath. The various attending penguins seemed too stunned, disoriented or angry to look at one anoth­ er.

On the fringes of the small crowd a few lonely, heavily veiled

Penguinettes sobbed quietly into black satin handkerchiefs.

When the lid of ice was refitted into place a few words were said by each of Pete's surviving friends and relatives. Usually they offered slow, awkward condolences like, "He will be missed," or, "He was always a hard worker and good provider," with a dull casual flourish, as if they signing a form letter. The last person to take the mound was Pete's father, who had swum in that morning from his retirement village on Carney Island. (Pete's mother had died two years previously in a freak were

40

TRIQUARTERLY

skiing accident.)

"Whistling Pete was a good boy," his father said in a cracked, halting voice, trying to read from a sheet of foolscap in his trembling hands. He wore a faded gray flannel shirt, a black wool stocking cap and wire-rim bifocals. "He was always polite to his parents. He always did well in school and helped his mother with the housework. Now maybe he exag­ gerated the truth every once in a while, but that's just the way he was, 1 guess. He found the truth a little too boring, so he tried to embellish it a little, it was kind of like generosity. Pete always thought big. He was ambitious and talented. Ever since he learned to swim, he dreamed of going to faraway places and accomplishing great deeds. 1 remember when he was little, he was such an enthusiastic fisherman. He kept bringing home sacks and sacks of them, more fish than we could possi­ bly eat in one modest household. So then he started giving away all the extra fish he

caught to the poor homes and convalescent hospitals. He

always gave that little bit extra to everything he did. Maybe some peo­ ple considered it selfish. But 1 always thought he gave life everything he had because he loved it so much."

Mr. Pete paused to wipe a frozen teardrop from one eye and continued in a wet, quavering voice. "Maybe he made some mistakes when he grew up. He never visited his mother and me after we retired, but by then he

had a family of his own, so 1 guess he just got too busy. But he was always "

good to me and his mother when he was little, and that's, that's Abruptly, Mr. Pete began to sob. A hush fell over the mourners. Even some of the succinctly sobbing black-clad Penguinettes fell respectfully ...

silent.

Buster stepped up and whispered something in Mr. Pete's ear.

"No, no, I'm O.K.," Mr. Pete declared irritably, and shook his sheet of

foolscap at Buster as if he were shooing flies. Then he wiped his glasses with the end of his stocking cap, folded the foolscap in half and slipped it into his vest pocket.

"I just wanted to say that Whistling Pete was always polite to his mother and father when he was little, and that's how I'll always remernber him."

5. The Land of the Midnight Sun Estelle and Junior moved back into the house and Whistling Pete's father returned to his retirement village by the sea. With much stem

41

'

TRIQUARTERL Y

and obvious ceremony, Buster and Sandy began making what they referred to as "a fresh start" together. They exchanged small occasional

gifts on personal anniversaries and public holidays, and in the renewed silence of their co-op duplex apartment they cautiously maintained a tender, almost obstinate parity.

"No, sweetheart," Buster would demur, leaning to grant her a kiss behind each ear. "This is my night to do the dishes again. You washed up two nights in a row last week."

They sat in the living room every evening after dinner sipping Darjeeling, nibbling oven-hot gingerbread and listening to the BBC World Service. Old empires disintegrating in the Baltic, Adriatic, Sahara, South Africa, Taiwan. Currencies crashing and stock markets rocketing. The pose and strut of presidents, businessmen, pretenders and kings. "Before civilization," Whistling Pete used to say, "we never had time to realize what we didn't have. Now we've got all the time in the

world to worry about what we'll never keep." Sitting with Sandy in the

recently redecorated living room, Buster often felt Pete's voice sneak up behind him like a physical presence. It was a summons to attend con, versations never conducted, a simple memory of resonance.

In the mornings before work Buster took long aimless walks into the

wilderness, wrapped tight in his sealskin parkas and scratchy woolen underdrawers. He knew this was the dream Pete had died trying to real, ize, and that if he tried to realize it himself then he would have to die, too. Not a dream of comfort or plenitude, but a sort of homeless insuffi­

ciency, a careless surfeit of the blood's pulse and circuit. Buster ascended mountains and forded rivers. He skated across plains of ice and refrac­

tion, hopping from one jaggedy landmass to another. Some mornings he got lost and arrived late for work. He received three warnings and one official reprimand. One more tardy report or no-show, they told him, and he would be fired, no explanations asked.

That night at home, Sandy tried to understand.

"Do you know what you're doing?" she asked. Sandy had lit soft can' dles and prepared a cheese souffle. She wore a string of pearls, rubber

pedal pushers and a Dacron shower cap-a combination she knew looked really good on her.

"Not really," Buster said. He sat beside the fireplace and waited. He didn't know what he was waiting for anymore, he only knew it would be here soon. "I try not to worry too much, though. If it happens, it hap' pens. I'll get another job. I'll do the best I can."

42

TRIQUARTERLY

"I'll do the shopping again tomorrow if you like. Is there anything spe­

cial you need!"

Buster thought about this for a moment as if it were an especially

tricky parable.

"Not really," he said. "These days it's hard for me to think too much about tomorrow."

David Koloane, Untitled I (1993, graphite on paper)

43

Paul Emslev, Untitled (1994, chalk on Fabriano paper)

TRIQUARTERLY

Almonds Richard Stern

everything was implicit, as the nut in its husk, the future and the present, and the harbour­ -Calvino

1 I hadn't been avoiding Frankfurt. Far from it. I've wanted to come back, and, a couple of times, came close. A few years ago, I drove by it on the

autobahn, nearly crashing with astonishment at the skyline which hadn't existed when I'd lived there with Jean and Billy in 1951-52. This time, though, I had a reason to come, at least bits of different reasons.

My life isn't orderly. Half of the year, I'm away from New York. A free­ lancer makes his lance, then finds things to stick it in. I never had trou­ ble finding them, which led me to discipline myself by accepting almost everything offered. How else become other than what you were?

The life was hard on Jean and on her successor, Rowena. Sarah, to whom I've been married since 1980, is in tune with it. Before her own work-ceramics-made her well-known, she used to take off with me at the drop of a hat. As for Jean, after our two German years, she spent a lot of time alone with Billy and discovered that I was superfluous.

Rowena? She enjoyed being in different places but couldn't travel to

them: airsickness. We lasted ten months.

45

TRIQUARTERL Y

2

O.K., Frankfurt.

I was in L.A. doing a piece on movie interest in the artistic and intel­

lectual figures of the century. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso and Gertrude Stein were as familiar as the Eiffel Tower, but after Beatty made Reds, the Hollywood net dragged up odder fish. Lancaster wanted to make a film about old Pound; Streisand optioned a book about

Jackson Pollock. Eliot's widow had closed him off, but Lawrence, Joyce, Rilke, Valery and God knows who else were floating properties.

At the Beverly Wilshire, I had a call from Lyon Benjamin, assistant to Floyd Harmel.

I do lots of work by phone and deduce more than I probably should from voices. Benjamin's is a staccato tenor. Phrases sounded as if they were painfully selected and more painfully joined to their predecessors and successors. The voice itself wasn't reedy or breathy, just exception­ ally tense. "I'm interested," it said. "In a man-who may be a cousin of mine. Dead in 1940-sixteen years before I-came

on

the scene.

Suicide-French-Spanish border-trying to escape-the Vichy miliciens.

Heart trouble-carried a manuscript-over the Pyrenees. Wouldn't give it up-more precious than his person. Had an American visa-but-"

The pause here was theatrical, not vocal. I've received assignments from types who use so few words you're suspended in their silence, and from

others who need ten calls to let you know what they're after. Usually they don't know themselves till they pick up your response to their fum­

bling. Lyon Benjamin knew. "That day-the Spanish required a French-exit visa. Benjamin-my probable cousin-didn't have one.

That night, he returned to a French harbor village-Port Bou-injected himself with morphine and died."

"That it?"

"The man was-Walter Benjamin."

"Yes?" "The great literary critic."

"I don't work much in that area."

I heard the intake and expulsion of breath; the living Benjamin was disappointed, or pretended to be. I don't embarrass, I don't get humiliat­

ed, I don't mind being seen as a naif Benjamin sensed the score. (He did a lot of telephonic work himself.) He started, as if from scratch, even

spoke with ease, legato. "I think there's a film in his life. 'The last intel­ lectual.' Hyperbole. Still, the man was at the center of European

46

TRIQUARTERLY

thought. Lived by it, died for it. And no anchorite. Lots of women.

Movies haven't touched types like this."

"Zola."

"Different. That was the Dreyfus Case. Before my time. The film."

"Even before mine. The Case."

"You've done good film work. Not much, but good."

In my four-decade writing life, I've done three scenarios and six or seven treatments which got nowhere. Not my line. Which may be why I

find it easy work. I tend to see lives at their crests, in crisis. The small knack is seeing the gestures, hearing the words that define them. The two

films which got made made no waves. I appreciated Benjamin

appreciating them.

None of my work gets much appreciation. I publish articles, not

books. Now and then, one causes a stir. There is next-to-no fan or hate mail. I don't hear about my skill except from editors, and little from them. New assignments are my reviews. I like it this way. Skill hides

itself, and the "skillet," Invisibility makes my work easier. The better­ known the writer, the more he becomes the story. Throwing your mug around is a career in itself, a nerve-wrackingly contingent one. The

spend on the career, the shorter it is.

"The End of His Rope's a class film. And a fair money-rnaker."

more time you

"I didn't have a piece of it."

"You'd have a piece-of this."

"This' being a film about your cousin."

"Exactly. Mr. Harmel has-a certain amount-of seed money. We cast it out-selectively-very-if you can cast selectively. One seed in

fifty-takes. When it does-you have a-Harmel film. An event. A cultural event. A popular event."

I'm not a film fan. Films run through me. I might be able to name ten staying films, not more. The Godfather. Citizen Kane. Ambersons. City Lights. La Strada. My Darling Clementine. A Bergman or two. Do even these stack up with the top two hundred literary works of the world? I don't think so. They're too diverting, tantalizing, erectile. Bodies, islands, Astaire, Ginger. One temptation after another, till you're daz­ zled. Still, in this world of illusory charm, Floyd Harmel charms deeply.

He makes pictures you remember a week after you saw them.

I had two assignments after the Hollywood piece. After that, I read at, in and around Walter Benjamin. His writing was full of the highfalutin

distinctions and tortuous formulations which, decades ago, turned me off academic life, but it was also perspicuous, sensuous, pleasantly per-

47

TRIQUARTERLY

and surprising; he was a writer. More, he'd lived more or less as I have, on his wits (at least after his father stopped supporting him, his wife and son).

Other coincidences. There were basically three women in his life, though he'd only married one of them. Like me also, he'd had only one child, a son, whom he saw as seldom as I see Billy. We even look alike, burly, heavy in the belly, thin-nosed, brown-eyed, black-haired. His hair verse

was

thicker than mine and rode more fiercely from the scalp. He also

had a thick black mustache and thick eyeglasses. Unlike Lyon

Benjamin, who turned out to be an inturned wisp of a man, pigeon­ toed, knock-kneed, cross-eyed, baldly young, we could have passed for cousins.

I decided the film would center about Benjamin's love affair with a

remarkable, beautiful, promiscuous--does this word still make sense?­ young woman, Asja Lacis, whom he met on Capri in 1924. Asja, a Latvian Bolshevik, was an actress, director and pioneer in children's theater. I wrote Cousin Lyon an outline, then a treatment, got my twelve thousand dollars and a go-ahead to do a scenario.

3 In March '94, I had an assignment for a piece on the Italian elections. I

Rome, then spent a day looking over Capri. To Rome, I flew Lufthansa so that I could stop over in Frankfurt. Benjamin's post-doctor­

went to

al dissertation-Habilitationsschrift-had been rejected in 1924 by the Goethe University there, and it was in Frankfurt that he'd decided-as,

twenty-eight years later, I would-to live as a literary free-lancer. He for the Frankfurter Zeitung and other newspapers, for magazines, for the radio; he even did graphological analyses. In any case, under a Benjamin tax-cover, I stopped in Frankfurt.

I had other Frankfurters on my plate, a couple I'd met at a European political conference in Bellagio. There was a tennis court there set in a grove of aspen and cypress; [ochen, a law professor, and I played tennis every day for the five days of the conference. His companion, Cristina­ wrote

for whom he'd left his American wife-twice fished my copy out of the-to me-alien WordPerfect waters.

En route to Rome, in the two-hour Frankfurt stopover, I left a message their answering machine saying I'd be coming back in a week, would they please get me a hotel room, close to their place if possible. on

48

TRIQUARTERLY

Two small airport incidents. I inserted a Visa card in the wrong money machine. It flashed "Invalid." I thought it was its fault not mine, and tried again. Behind me, a briskly unpleasant baritone said, "You will lose your card." Wrong. It came back.

Minutes later, by a row of telephones, I asked another German busi­ ness type

if he'd be so kind to exchange enough pfennigs for a dollar so I

could make a local call. Courteously, he waved off my dollar and slipped his phone card into my phone slot. I left Jochen and Cristina the mes­ sage.

4 From September 1950 to March of '51, I worked in Heidelberg. My main job was teaching two courses in American literature at the univer­

sity, but, as an assistant, I received only auditor's fees (Ohrgeld), which amounted to less than three hundred marks a semester. Nights I worked GS�3 in the Staff Message Control of the u.S. Army. This paid enough to support Jean and me in a room overlooking the Neckar River.

When Billy was born, we needed more space and money. I got a job in Frankfurt as a GS� 7 teaching illiterate American soldiers (those who hadn't reached sixth grade and had thus been illicitly recruited). In as a

March, I took the train up to find an apartment there.

Stepping out of the beautiful iron-and-glass station, I saw a fifteen­ foot cardboard cut-out of Charlie Chaplin, mustache, derby, battered shoes, cane, an advertisement for City Lights, a film I'd been trying to see for years. After I did my business at army offices-getting the apart­ ment, picking up and depositing dish-and-houseware and interviewing a

maid-a GS� 7 lived well in Occupied Germany-I went to the film.

I remember feeling set apart from the audience. We'd lived a year in

Heidelberg, but we weren't used to being part of a German audience; we saw films at an American army theater. Local opera audiences were dif­ ferent: there wasn't the same passive gawking in the dark.

Near the end of City Lights, the tramp gets out of jail. Back walking

city streets, he's mocked by a couple of urchins. He takes off after them, missing a kick or two. The audience-including this member of it­

laughed. Through the window of a flower shop, the tramp sees the for­ blind girl for whose successful eye operation he'd gotten the money which sent him to jail. He stares at her lovingly. Noticing the odd little tramp, she comes out and gives him a flower. He keeps looking at her. mer

49

TRIQUARTERLY

As she touches his hand, she realizes that her savior was not the prince­

ly millionaire she'd imagined, but this tramp. Her shock and recognition are beautiful, and Charlie's answering expression, a fusion of love, pride and comprehension, is the close-up to end all close-ups, the expression on which I'd like to close my eyes in this world and to see as-if-they open in another.

When the lights went up in the theater, I stayed in my seat, overcome.

The German audience, in overcoats, hats and scarves, rushed up the

aisles, faces frozen, even angry. Something had happened to them in the film's final sequence. Till then, they'd laughed as I had. Why weren't

they moved by the beautiful conclusion? Was it uri-Germanic? Frankfurt still squatting in wartime rubble. Around the half-skeletal Cathedral (the Dom) were ex-blocks of stony nothing. Were the feelings of its citi­

was

zens

also in the rubble? Had they been decimated by bombs and a dozen

years of manhandling by another little mustached man?

5

Nostalgia makes everyone a poet. I was in Frankfurt for poetry. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Perhaps fewer than two thousand of my daily seconds have been turned into assigned words, though in most of natural

my conscious seconds, there is a pressure in me, so familiar it's as as the circulation of my blood. Interrupted, it bleeds. Yes, I wanted to

where I'd been, wanted to feel what I believed I'd feel, but part of this want was the awareness of literary gold in the feeling.

In 1952, I wasn't a writer. I was vaguely preparing to be a professor.

The teaching job I had was tedious, seven hours a day teaching soldiers see

read, add and subtract, but the money-$2,800 a year, free rent and maid, plus 300 percent profit on four weekly cartons of American ciga­ rettes (which the German mailman picked up and paid for once a week}-was princely. In two years, I saved $3,000 dollars, enough to to

support Jean and Billy if I went on for a doctorate.

If the job was tedious, life wasn't. I came home to wife and baby in an apartment heavy with mahogany tables and sideboards and

to

Frau

Gortat, who cooked and served our sauerbraten and chops. At twenty­ three, I felt like a manly provider. I also read enormously and with tremendous joy. Once a week, I traded Italian for English lessons with a Neapolitan barber from the Frankfurt Military Post, and twice a month I

studied the Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses with a graduate student

50

TRIQUARTERLY

from the university. Somewhere in there, I wrote my first article, a sur, New vey of German cultural and political affairs, modeled on Genet's

Yorker pieces on France. The New Yorker refused my piece, but on one of the great days of my life, the Partisan Review wrote that they'd accepted it. I was going to be in a magazine that published Sartre, Eliot, Orwell,

Silone, Camus, Auden. The company was intoxicating, though I stayed sober enough to know I didn't belong in it. I thought I might be a little closer to Genet. If I had a gift, it was for a kind of verbal photography. I could report what was going on. I wasn't much of an interpreter or theo­

interpretations in my Partisan article were quoted from sages

rist. The

cited in the Frankfurter Zeitung.

Still, I'd felt a door open. I was a journalist, a commentator. Even before the article was accepted, I sensed it was the way for me to go. I did not want to stand in front of students, dropping stale bits of informa­ tion into their mouths or wiping up the misinformation they spat back.

Back then, our German friends worked for the u.S. Army and HICOG (the High Commissioner of Germany) in the I. G. Farben

Building. They'd been schooled, and a few had killed, as Nazis, but, as far as Jean and I could tell, they thought and felt as we did. They were

starting over; we were starting out, and were in spiritual step.

Now and then, we brought them cigarettes from the PX or American gasoline coupons for trips up the Rhine and to the Taunus Hills. This was not

the source of their affection for us. If it had been, even such

naive enthusiasts as we would have spotted curds in it. We trusted our antenna.

After all, we were Jews; we should be able to sense racial

antagonism.

Our parents, back in America, were less trusting. Jean's father went on

about the fights he'd fought with "krauts and micks who called me

'sheeny.'" He wrote us, Anti-semitism is the dandelion in the German lawn. Pluck it out, wake up

the next morning, it's there again. Hating Jews is their avocation.

They take it up when there's nothing else to do. Keep your eyes open.

"He's from another time," said Jean. "He doesn't understand what's

going on." The most we conceded was that for our German friends our

Jewishness was a sort of charm they could touch to cure their old racial scrofula. "Take Gotz," said Jean. "Who could be more decent, tolerant and gentle?"

Gotz had been an aide to Admiral Raeder. He'd spent six months in

51

TRIQUARTERLY

English prison camp where, he told us, he'd read Holderlin and "was turned inside out." He had one of these top-heavy philosopher heads an

you sometimes see in German university towns, forehead for much of

the face, with a strip of hair like an afterthought. His eyes, very light

blue, sat deep in sockets. He went over a Holderlin poem with me line by line. "Written," he said, "in 1804, as madness was sinking in him."

Why did you spread night over my eyes so

that I couldn't see the earth?

Thinking of Gotz and Germany rather than Holderlin, I was moved.

(Though my insides stayed where they were.)

One winter evening, walking home to NeuhauBtrasse from the Farben building, I realized that I felt at home in Frankfurt. My feelings had leapt over the rubble of hatred to the days when my German great­ grandparents lived here. They had passed down a Germanic credo to my parents: cleanliness, neatness, punctuality, obedience, hard work, doing your duty. My parents had nagged me with these virtues, and I'd mocked them, but they were in me, they governed my habits, my values, the way I dressed, the way I lived. I thought they might be the reason I'd discov­ ered my vocation in Germany.

6

[ochen and Cristina gave me a map and pointed out the route between their apartment and the Farben Building. I went up Bockenheimer Landstrasse to Opera Platz. The morning was cold, sunny, full of crystal flash off the stone, steel, glass and concrete. Frankfurt was a hard, proud city. It had elected the Holy Roman emperors; it had been, until after the Franco-Prussian War, a free city. Now it dominated with money. The new towers were banks. Yet the city was gemutlich as well as proud, a cozi­

ly horizontal city whose skyscrapers looked embarrassed, out-of-place.

The low, solid, gray-and-chocolate stone snubbed the gauche metal

gleam of the presumptuous banks. This was Goethe's city, poetic in its burgher heart. And it was my city. Wasn't my assignment here to under­ stand that? The feeling I had for it was a form of love, one I wanted and was pushing myself to get. You were supposed to feel this way. Nostalgia was an emotional pension earned by living long enough to return.

I crossed Eschersheimer Landstrasse, and there was NeuhauBtrasse.

Fantastic joy filled me. I floated down its hundred yards of umber six-

52

TRIQUARTERLY

flats with tiny lawns. Here and there were basements newly white­

washed, roofs and chimneys newly tuck-pointed, but otherwise it was

unchanged. Number 7. Our house. I could see the back garden where Frau Gortat had married Herr Willy. (Jean and I were their witnesses.)

Here was the bay window by whose light I'd read Clarissa and Ovid, Les Liaisons dangereuses and Heine. Here my parents had come to visit us. I saw them, at least saw the photograph we'd taken of them in the garden holding Billy. Mother was a dozen years younger than I was now; her curls were brown, her smile lovely.

Forty-three years ago. They'd been dead twenty, and Billy was an angry forty-year-old who hardly spoke to me, and, when he did, told me how wrong I was about everything I wrote, said, was. "I love you," went his last postcard, "but I can't have anything to do with you. You're out of touch."

I walked back to Eschersheimer Landstrasse. The English bookstore

where I bought Everyman and Penguin novels was gone-a pang-but much else wasn't. The medieval watchtower, fat and confident as a sausage, had been repainted and stood where it had stood for five hun­

dred years. The Hauptwache, which Goethe thought Frankfurt's most beautiful house, was as it had been. One day, forty-three years ago, class­ the army school were suspended so that Americans could redeem their old scrip for new. Germans stuck with old scrip were out of luck.

es at

American soldiers came down to the Hauptwache to trade scrip for German marks at a terrific rate. One of my first-grade students, Private

Hoover, an enormous black man with a mouth full of gold teeth and a constitutional resistance to the printed word, was dealing marks and scrip with a banker's aplomb. The week before I'd said to him, "Private Hoover, I'm afraid you're not going to make it to second grade." The teeth gleamed. "Thass all right, Mister Goldman, don't you worry none bout't. Sno blame on you." After Money Change Day, they gleamed again. "Made me four hunnert thirty-one dollar, Mister Goldman."

I walked through a crescent of beautiful half-timbered houses to the

Dom. In 1952, the houses were sheared in half, the rooms agape like screaming mouths. Porcelain toilet bowls shone in the rubble. One­ legged and one-armed men were everywhere, as were midgets and hunchbacks. By the station was a poster for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Schneewitschen und die Siebener Zwerge. Jean and I decided to see it, but instead, spent the evening with our landlord-I don't remember how we found the room-Graf Posadowski, a soft-voiced, soft-faced aristocrat who took in our thirty marks and what we were and offered us

53

TRIQUARTERL Y

schnapps in his book, lined study. He sat in the dark in an embroidered armchair. His English was oddly elegant, the phrases treasured and sur' rendered with regal grace. "I am required to fill out a questionnaire, a Fragebogen. Since I am, unfortunately, of noble birth, I am required to put down the names of all the people I know who are equally unfortu­ nate. I have been writing names of dead people for four days." He told us of one such noble cousin. "His plan was to assassinate Hitler. He made an

appointment to demonstrate a new piece of equipment for him. He

strapped an explosive device under his tunic. He planned to embrace the Fuhrer, pull a cord and explode. Hitler broke the appointment. Axel made another. That too was broken. Then Axel was sent to the Russian Front." The count walked over and poured schnapps into our glasses.

"May I request a favor?"

"Of course," said Jean.

"Our German cigarettes are frightfully expensive and the tobacco is suspect. Could you Chesterfields ?"

buy for me from your PX a few boxes of

Said Jean, "Of course, your Excellency. We'll find a soldier and give him some dollars."

"No 'Excellency,' please," said the count gently. "Only the cigarettes."

7 I crossed the Main on an iron bridge and walked up Museum Row to the German Film Museum. For Benjamin, film was the exemplary art of the age of mechanical

reproduction. A collaboration of humans and

machines, its making differed from that of the older, religion-based art.

The film artist performed for no audience but the camera, so there was no

"aura," no felt look exchanged-yes, exchanged-between painter

and viewer, painting and viewer. Yes, the painting looked too, as in that Rilke poem about the headless marble torso, when the viewer realizes, "There is no place that doesn't see you. You've got to change your life."

That was going a bit far for me, but I was looking for a Frankfurt aura.

Oddly enough, four days earlier, in Rome, I'd had an aura, like experi­ ence

with a work of art. I'd taxied over to the Vatican Museum at 8:15

A.M.

and was first in line to see the Sistine Chapel. When the guard

raised the bar, I'd hoofed it like a maniac up and down stairways,

through the marmoreal labyrinth, finally into the chapel itself. Except for three guards gabbing in front of the white curtain behind which

54

TRIQUARTERLY

worked on The Last Judgment, I had the place to myself. I walked from one side to the other, then up and down, taking in the ceil, ing frescos, the creation of Adam, of Eve, their expulsion, the flood, then the surrounding prophets and sibyls reading-it seemed to me­ restorers

the stories depicted above their heads. I felt insights pouring into my head, felt Michelangelo's intellect touching mine. I knew the ceiling was about making something out of nothing, about illusion, volume, space, story, destiny, about the human imitation and betrayal of creation.

When the tour crowds came in, I took off. I bought a couple of books

Michelangelo, walked past the crowds swelling each other, then along the high brick wall to the Bernini Colonnade, down Conciliation Walk, around Castel Sant'Angelo and across the Tiber. When I got to the Campo dei Fiori, I drank a cappuccino in front of the hooded bronze head of Giordano Bruno and read the books. They didn't put words to what I'd seen and thought, but they knew when Michelangelo had painted what, when he'd fired an assistant, how he lived-miserably­ what he wrote to his spoiled brothers and father back in Florence. One book included a sonnet he'd written about painting the chapel. With my pocket dictionary, I worked out a version of it. It went something like I've grown a goiter in this den which drives my belly to my chin, my beard to heaven, my nape upon my spine My breast bone's a harp, the brush,drops dripping on my face tum it into pavement. My loins are in my I'm strained like a Syrian bow. paunch, my ass (cul') its counterweight are a twisted My perceptions crazy, false: gun can't fire straight. [He calls to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia.] Johnny, stick up for my dead pictures and on

...

....

....

my honor because I'm in a bad way. And I'm no painter.

I worked up a lot of fellow feeling for the amazing fellow. Young, early

thirties, he thought himself old, ruined, dying. Full of common and busi­ ness sense as well as genius, full of feeling for which he never found any' one worthy, except late in his life (the young marchese Vittoria Colonna), he poured it into marble. Considerate, tender-erotically, fraternally and filially passionate-it was only the precious marble from Cararra which responded to him. The aura.

The encounter with Michelangelo was why I went not to the art but the Film Museum. After caviar, I wasn't up-or down-to hot dogs.

(The museum was crammed with apparatus and diagrams about human attempts to preserve what it saw.)

55

TRIQUARTERL Y

8 At one, I sat with [ochen in the Cafe of the Literatur Haus on

Bockenheimer Landstrasse, waiting for Cornelia Snapper, a friend of his who was writing her Habilitationsschrift on Walter Benjamin, and who worked mornings as an archivist for the Deutsche Bank.

The Cafe consists of a few black tables casually served by two waiters.

I was the oldest person there, though there were a couple of gray or

graying beards and heads, one of which was [ochen's. (He's twenty years my junior.) Since he had only come to introduce me to Cornelia,

we

ordered.

(Beer and goulash.) We were also expecting her companion, Eberhard Kurst.

Jochen seemed edgy. "What's up, Jochen? Something wrong?"

"My wife." She'd called him that morning about their twelve-year-old daughter. "She says Peggy's made a date, she doesn't know what to do. If she lets Peggy watch Beverly Hills 90210, naturally things like this will happen."

"Is a date so serious?"

"Yes. She should have space for herself now. Some pubescent drooler

could ruin her for years."

"Nothing will ruin a daughter of yours. She has you as a model."

"Her mother doesn't think that's ideal."

"I think I was a devoted, loving father. My son is a bitter middle-aged

bachelor who regards me as a fraud and disaster."

"A son is different. He's competitive with you. You've had three

wives, he'll have none. He'll show you. And he'll be all right."

"When I'm dead," I said. "Which he's more or less said."

Jochen's fine, bearded face contracted. "I love this little girl. I can't bear what I may have done to her. But I can't exist without Cristina."

"There are millions in this boat. We postwar plutocrats use up one life after another. No wonder our kids resent us. When are they going to live?"

carrying a book bag, headed our way.

Extremely pretty, she had short straight blond hair, blue eyes and A girl in a denim jacket,

seemed to be smiling from every pore. I got up, "Cornelia?"

"How did you know?"

"[ochen said you worked for the Deutsche Bank. I was looking for someone

who looked like a banker."

She kissed [ochen on the cheek, came around and shook hands with me.

"So I look like a banker?"

"Exactly."

56

TRIQUARTERLY

"Good. I like to look important."

There is, I think, a sort of Boyle's Law of Emotional Diffusion. In time, people feel more or less the same about one another. If one cools, the other cools. Cornelia Snapper didn't immediately feel charmed by me, as I was by her, but she felt that I was charmed, and this pleased her.

We joked, and this pleased both of us. We liked each other.

I am poorly constructed inside; my emotional mortar has never set

properly. Sometimes I think that Sarah is its fixative, but then I pass someone

in the street, even see someone in a film, and I feel the mold

crumbling.

Not that I often fall. (An antique word that rings true to my antique

psyche.) Even when a brief connection is made there is seldom any con­ sequence, letters, phone calls, even memory. My nature is narrow, exclu­ sive, dominated by work. I've married the emotional Sistine Chapels in my life.

Eberhard, a sturdy, bespectacled, pleasant man in his mid-thirties, showed up, and [ochen left. The three of us talked CDU, FOP, the

breakup of dominant parties in Mexico, Japan, Italy and Germany, nationalism, fundamentalism, the political manipulation of skin hue, ethnicity, chauvinism and ideology in Serbia, India, Sri Lanka, East Africa, and-Eberhard's phrase-"the Soviet Dis-union." Within it all was their persistent self-indictment of Germans as "humorless," "myopic," "grandiose" and "fascists-in-the-egg."

"I must know the wrong ones."

"You're passing through," said Eberhard. "We put on Sunday clothes for you." He touched Cornelia's shoulder, shook my hand. "I'm off to train more of us. Cornelia will take care of you. Till tonight." We were

all going to see In the Name of the Father.

"What can I show you?" asked Cornelia. "Museums? The Goethehaus?

Or would you rather be on your own?"

"Definitely not. And I've seen all the museums I want to."

"Come to my apartment. I'll give you tea and a wonderful view of the

city from the roof."

Bless the conspiracy of beauty and niceness. I had to fight off the dazzlement. "Whither thou, thither I." "What?"

"To your place. Is it far?"

"Ten minutes. Up Reuterweg."

"It wasn't Reuterweg in '52." It was against the erotic tide that I men­

tioned those years before her birth. "He was mayor of West Berlin. Every

57

TRIQUARTERLY

letter had to have a two-pfennig Berlin-rebuilding stamp attached. We called it the Reuter-Tax," "You must give me German-history lessons."

"Just my life, not history."

She walked her bicycle, I behind, gauging hers in the loose blue jeans.

Her walk was flat-footed, toes pointing out, a confident walk.

The house too looked confident, a five-story limestone on a street of its cousins. Cornelia lived on the top floor. No elevator and no conces­ sion from her to any difficulty in the ascent. Subtle flattery. The door

opened into a small kitchen with a table, oven, fridge and chair.

Versailles it wasn't. The other room featured an unmade bed, a quilt thrown back like an invitation. "Sorry about the bed," she said. "Tea first, or view?"

I sat at the kitchen table, facing the open quilt, repressing post-stair­ case

huffing and newer excitement. "Perhaps tea."

She filled the kettle. "[ochen said you were writing a movie about

Benjamin."

"His affair with Asja Lacis."

She filled mugs and sat within two feet of me, tea steam touching her face whose every pore glistened with receptivity, amusabiliry: the friend­ liest beauty. "I don't think of him as a person, only an idea-machine.

Germanic. That's maybe why it takes me so long to write."

"I'm the opposite. Ideas fly right past me. I don't know what

Benjamin's talking about, or what others mean when they analyze him.

Adorno says he was 'in flight from the trance-like captivity of bourgeois immanence.' What can that mean?"

"Very German. Anything to do with innerness, makes us think we're getting the truth of things. If it's innig, it can't be bad."

"For us, 'inner' means someone's putting something over on someone.

Inner circle. Or it's dangerous. Inner city."

The pores and blue eyes lit up. "Bei uns, 'inner city' means historic, old, the Altstadt, the true center. Want to see?"

We went up to the roof. It was windy, cold, dazzling. Cornelia brushed hair from her eyes as she pointed to the Dom, the bridges, the towers, the Farben building spread below us like a huge orange gun turret. "The city's fighting itself," I said. "The present and past don't fit."

"This is all I've known. I don't see what you see. Though maybe I do.

Want to see where I get my name? Look, there, beyond that small domed church, to the right of the Dom." She hoisted my arm and point­ ed it; delicious support. "A little more to the right. Goethe's house."

58

TRIQUARTERLY

"On Cornelia Street?"

"Nein, Hirschgraben. Not even my parents would name me

Hirschgraben Snapper. Cornelia was his sister." She dropped our arms, brushed hair from her face. Where do the mistresses of beauty learn their enchanting gestures? "It's so windy. I show you her picture down­ stairs."

There she handed me a postcard of a long-faced, long-nosed woman, hair pulled back over a powerful forehead, eyes closed, the slightest smile on her full lips. "Seems awfully melancholy."

"Postpartum depression. She died at twenty-seven. Two years younger than I." "And your parents named you after this poor sad person?"

"The great genius's sister; his only real companion."

"The secret sister."

"Yes. The new archetype, the abandoned sister."

Tea and sympathy, as the famous play of the fifties had it. It was about

age-and-youth, a headmaster's wife, a lonely student. I can't remember if she loved him. I too was on a double track, ageless inside except for the knowledge that I wasn't. Bolder seniors than I would have led Cornelia to the open quilt, but fixed in my burly self, I stayed where I was. No risk, no gain, yes, but no loss either. And I had something to lose, the amiable feeling this kind beauty had for me. Who knows, if I held up, there'd be something more another time. Though other times were get­ ting rarer, harder. Still, to be pushed off, even as gently as Cornelia would have done it, would be unbearable. Need I could bear.

I told her my life, my wives, my interviews, travels, famous and odd friends. A Desdemonish glint lit her face, but I was no Othello. I inter­ viewed Othellos. Still the hour was passing strange.

9

Capri, Summer, 1924.

A small grocery store, wooden bins of fruit and vegetables, shelves of old�fash�

ioned cartons, cans and jars. Male storekeeper in apron, mustache. Making

purchases is WALTER BENJAMIN, short, solid, thick black hair, eyeglasses catching and throwing off sunlight from the windows, narrow nose, dressed in suit, necktie.

BENJAMIN [pointing at tomatoes and holding up three fingers]: Tre pomodori, signore. [Enter Asja Lads in white dress, carrying packages. She

59

TRIQUARTERL Y is

Benjamin's height, dark�gray eyes, dimpled chin, pretty; her Italian is

almost nonexistent.]

ASJA: Buon giomo. 10-1 wish-je voudrais-ich mochte gem.

[Shrugs, dropping two packages which Benjamin picks up. To Benjamin:] Sank you, sank you. Merci. [To storekeeper, as she looks around for what she wants:] Mandeln. [Storekeeper shrugs. Mindahl. Almonds. Amandes.

[Waving hands, shaking head, dropping packages.]

BENJAMIN [smiling, picking them up. To her]: Entschuldigen sie. [To storekeeper:] La signora desidera delle mandorle. [Storekeeper fetches a bag of almonds, scoops out a long spoonful, looks questioningly at Lads. She nods happily. He pours them into a smaller bag and wraps them up.]

ASJA: Grazie, signore. [To Benjamin:] Vielen dank', Mein Herr. [Close­ up on Benjamin's serious but delighted face. Cut to sunlit street. Benjamin is carrying all the packages but the sack of nuts. Now and then he drops one, they both stop to pick it up, faces close to each other, smiling. Cut to Asja's apartment. You can see her twelve�year�old daughter, Daga, reading on a small balcony which overlooks the Bay of Naples. Benjamin is seated at a small table set for three with glasses of red wine, silverware. Asja brings a plate of spaghetti to the table and, while they talk, serves it. They drink, eat, talk.]

BENJAMIN: I've seen you and your daughter for days now, maybe weeks. You seem to float in your white dresses. Lovely sight. She has such long legs.

ASJA: She's almost thirteen. She's acted with me twice, once in Brecht.

He said she was very good. We go to Moscow in a few weeks to work with Piscator. There are exciting things happening in the theater there.

In everything. Why don't you come? Palestine is the past, Moscow the future.

BENJAMIN [close-up, smiling.]: I do see some future there.

ASJA [close-up, smiling, touching his cheek, then calling]: Daga! There's

spaghetti and wine for you.

DAGA [looking up, craning her head to see them at the table, going back to her book]: Save some. I'll eat later.

10

Waiting for Jochen and Cristina, I read the Literature section of the Eff Ah Zed (the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung). A momentary shock: there, in an aquarium, nose to nose with a moronic looking dogfish, was a pho-

60

TRIQUARTERLY

tograph of Billy.

Not Billy, of course, but, said the article, "the bard of the Fallen-Wall epoch of German literature," one Ours Grunbein of East Berlin. Not really, when I got down to it, a Billy-clone, but with a similar bell of brown hair and huge-eyed innocence.

My recognition system had been shunted onto the strange double track of these Frankfurt hours. So I saw the younger, softer Billy, the one who was still, somehow, mine.

Reading German, my spirit eases when I see the indented, italicized lines of poetry set in the solid blocks of prose. Even the clearest German prose worries me, if only because I know that waiting somewhere on the next page

is a construction which will ambush me. I'll have to look up

five words I don't know, and by the fifth, the argument will have been

derailed. Line by line, poetry may be harder, but there's less of it, and that less-like a photograph-goes a long way, and you feel you've pen­ etrated essential German-ness. I like reading about German poets. Here

only the bard of the Fallen- Wall but "his ancestors, Brecht, Celan, Rilke and Trakl," good German company, the suppliers of neatly packaged profundity. And once you opened the packages, there was often something special just for you, a sort of high-grade astrology. It was better reading about the poet, for you didn't have to bother with the whole poem, only the lines the critic selected and interpreted. This crit­ ic offered a neat line of Brecht, "Mit kalten Spruchen innen tapeziert" ("Tapestried inside with chilly maxims"-appropriate enough) and three lines of Celan so clear I thought I was missing something. was not

und zuweilen, wenn nur

das Nichts zwischen uns stand, fanden

wir ganz zueinander.

I didn't have to look up a word and came out with: and sometimes, when

only Nothing stood between us, we found ourselves completely beside each other.

Completely beside each other. Billy and I. Cornelia and I. Billy was hung up on the old "1," an "I" I did not want to revisit. That "I"'s history was streaked with feelings another poet had called "savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust." With his therapist's "help," Billy remembered the noise of paternal tumbles with visiting ladies while Mom was off at

61

TRIQUARTERLY

Grandma's and a backyard where he played with a terrifying bulldog

while Daddy diddled its mistress within. Grunbein's Wall had fallen in 1989. Only my death would crumble Billy's.

11 In the Name of the Father turned out to be less a story of brutal injustice in Belfast than the transformed relationship of a father and son impris­ oned in the same cell. Most unsettling to this father sitting in the dark

beside Cornelia into whose ear I whispered clear English versions of the actors' rapid Irish, English.

Afterwards, we went across the street to a cafe, loud with the pound, ing music I cannot discriminate or bear. The four of us-Cristina had gone home to write a paper--drank beer and managed a few sentences

of post-film critique in the musical intermissions. Time for goodbyes.

In the street, I realized I'd forgotten my cap and went back to the cafe.

Our waiter, seeing me, twirled it on his forefinger, an expression on his

amused young face which I read as mockery. Was it my age which amused him? (What was an old codger doing in such a place, forgetting his hat and who he was?) Or was it another dandelion in the German lawn?

Another uneasy undercurrent in this Frankfurt day. On the dark street, I shook hands with Eberhard and then, when Cornelia leaned

toward me, I kissed her mouth.

A last Frankfurt vignette. Two blocks from our U-Bahn exit, a dark,

skinned, uncomely woman, Latin or Indian, approached [ochen and me speaking a language we didn't follow. Finally, we made out the word ayuda. She pointed to a door. It seems she couldn't get in with the key she held out to Jochen. It took me seconds longer than it took [ochen to realize that the help she wanted was not about getting into the apart, ment. "Sorry," said [ochen. "Tenemos prisa."

12 Moscow, December, 1926.

SCENE 31: Asja and Benjamin are in her small apartment.

Outside,

glimpses of the Kremlin. They've been arguing.

ASJA: If he weren't as stupid as the general, he'd have thrown you into

62

TRIQUARTERL Y

the street. I wouldn't care. I thought you were trying to squeeze the bourgeois out of your veins. We're not each other's property.

BENJAMIN: You get pleasure from such morons.

ASJA: Pleasure's pleasure. It doesn't destroy the pleasure I have with you. Pleasure's not something you deposit in the bank, draw interest on.

BENJAMIN [shakes his head, goes to the window, stares]: I used to think snow so

beautiful. I must have had a warmer coat.

SCENE 35: We follow Benjamin to a baker's. Medium shot through glass

window as he buys cake and carries it out. We follow him through the snowy streets, back to his small hotel. In the lobby, to his amazement, sits Asja.

BENJAMIN: Why didn't you go to my room? The key is there.

ASJA [looks at him with uneasy affection]: No. BENJAMIN [opens the box with the cake and shows it to her]: For you.

[Asja touches his arm, shakes her head. They look at each other puzzled.]

SCENE 39: We follow Benjamin out of the lobby of the hotel in his overcoat

and fedora. He's carrying a large suitcase. Asja is waiting in the street. An old taxi pulls up in front.

ASJA: Perhaps I'll corne to Berlin in the spring.

BENJAMIN: Let me know. [They look at each other. She kisses him on both cheeks. He gets in the taxi. As it takes off he looks around and sees her staring at the taxi. It's dusk, the suitcase is on his knees. He puts his head down on it and sobs.]

13 From: Lyon D. Benjamin To: Edwin Goldman Date: April 30, 1994 In re.: Scenario: Almonds. Fulfillment of Section IIl.b.

Agreement entered into February 9, 1994. 678,A,985,439 Benjamin fever cooled around here. Apparently need higher gradient fuel for the Nineties. Another decade perhaps. Regrets.

63

TRIQUARTERLY

14 Frankfurt/Main, May 12,1994.

Dear Edwin, Thank you for sending this fascinating script.

Will it have a performance in Frankfurt? If you invite me, I will buy a new

dress.

I wish my work went so well. Perhaps, like Benjamin and you, I was not created to be a

professor. I follow him into the labyrinth and cannot

find the way out.

Eberhard suggests we go to Capri in June. Maybe I find the way out in the Blue Grotto. It would be much fun to run into you there.

Cornelia

15 "Dear Cornelia. Capri! Isle of goats. This one-this old one-can't see himself gliding through blue grottos munching almonds and apples in your boat," I didn't write.

"Something odd. Three months back from Frankfurt, I can't remem­ ber your face. I confuse it with the melancholy one of Goethe's sister.

Your body, though-which I never saw-breasts, bottom, groin, is some­

thing else. Now and then I lay it over my legal-and loved--demesne.

"Frankfurt poetry. The capitalism of memory: what I deposited in 1952, I cashed in 1994. It had accumulated the interest of forty-two years.

"Poetry? A twisted gun can't fire straight.

"On Father's Day, out of his incalculable blue, Billy phoned. I told him about seeing the house in which he'd spent his first two years. His response: 'I hate the past.' Why did he call?

"I wish you better luck with your Benjamin than I had with mine. For

that matter, better luck with your Germany than he had with his.

"One golden Cornelia redeems a lot of dandelions."

But why can't I remember your face?

64

TRIQUARTERLY

The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders A. Hernon Translated from the Serbo-Crocnen by the author; the end notes were written in English

Alphonse Kauders is the creator of The Bibliography of Forestry, 1900� 1948, which was published by the Society of Engineers and Technicians, in Zagreb, in 1949. This is a special bibliography related to forestry. The material is classified into seventy-three groups and encom­ passes 8,800 articles and discussions. Bibliographical units are not num­ bered. The creator of The Bibliography of Forestry was the first to try to catalog the entire forest matter in a single piece of work. The work has been qualified as influential.

Alphonse Kauders had had a dog by the name of Rex, whose whelp, in the course of time, he gave to Josip B. Tito.

Alphonse Kauders had had a mysterious prostate illness and, in the course

of time, he said:

"Strange are the ways of urine."

Alphonse Kauders said to Rosa Luxembourg: "Let me put it in a little bit, just a bit, I'll be careful."

Alphonse Kauders said: "And what if I'm still here?"

Alphonse Kauders was the only son of his father, a teacher. He had been locked up in a lunatic asylum, having attempted to rape seven seven-year-old girls at once. The father, a teacher.

65

TRIQUARTERLY

Alphonse Kauders said to Dr. Joseph Goebbels: "Writing is a useless task. It is as though we sign every molecule of a gas, say, of air, which, as we know, cannot be seen. Yet, signed gas/air is easier to inhale."

Doctor Joseph Goebbels said:

"Well, listen, that differs from a gas to a gas."

Alphonse Kauders was the owner of the revolver with which King Alexander was assassinated.

One of Alphonse Kauders's seven wives had had a tumor as big as a

healthy three-year-old child.

Alphonse Kauders said: "People are so ugly that they should be freed from the obligation to have photos in their identity cards. Or, at least, in their Party cards."

Alphonse Kauders desired, with all his heart, to create a bibliography of pornographic literature. In his head he had held 3,700 titles of porno­

graphic books. Plus magazines.

Richard Sorge, talking about the winds of Alphonse Kauders, said:

"They sounded like sobs, sheer sorrow, which, resembling waves, emerged from the depths of one's soul, and, then, were breaking down someplace high, high up."

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, had to crawl on all fours for seven days, for his penis had been stung by seventy-seven bees.

Alphonse Kauders had owned lists of all the nymphomaniacs in Moscow, Berlin, Marseilles, Belgrade and Munich.

Alphonse Kauders had been The Virgin in his horoscope. And in his horoscope exclusively.

Alphonse Kauders had never, never worn or carried a watch.

Records were held that the five-year-old Alphonse Kauders had amazed his mother by making "systematical order" of the house pantry.

66

TRIQUARTERLY

Alphonse Kauders said to Adolf Hitler, in Munich, as they were drinking their seventh mug of beer: "God, mine's always hard when necessary. And it's always necessary."

Alphonse Kauders: a) had hated forests b) had loved to watch fires.

These inclinations were happily united in his legendary obsession with forest fires, which he would have watched, with great pleasure, whenev­ er a

chance occurred.

[osip B. Tito, talking about the winds of Alphonse Kauders, said: "They sounded like all the sirens of Moscow on the International Labor Day."

Alphonse Kauders had fertilized Eva Braun and she, in the course of time, had delivered a child to the world. But, after Adolf Hitler had started establishing new order and discipline and seducing Eva Braun, she, intoxicated by the Fuhrer's virility, sent the child to a concentra­ tion camp.

Alphonse Kauders had hated horses. Oh, how Alphonse Kauders had hated horses.

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, believed that men had creat­ ed themselves within the process of history.

Alphonse Kauders stood behind Gavrilo Princip, whispering, as urine running down Gavrilo's thigh, as Gavrilo's sweating hand, holding a revolver, trembled in his pocket, Alphonse Kauders whispered: was

"Shoot, man, what kind of a Serb are you?"

Alphonse Kauders described his relationship with Rex: "We, living in fear, hate each other."

Records exist that Alphonse Kauders had spent some years in a home for juvenile delinquents, having set seven forest fires in one week.

Alphonse Kauders said: "I hate people, almost as much as horses, because there are

always too

67

TRIQUARTERLY many people around and because

they kill bees and because they fart and stink and because they always come up with something, and it's the worst when

they come up with irksome revolutions."

Alphonse Kauders wrote to Richard Sorge: "I cannot speak. Things around me do not speak. Still, dead, like rocks in the stream, they do not move, they have no meaning, they are

just present, barely. I stare at them, I beg them to tell me something,

anything, to make me name them, I beg them to exist; they only buzz in the dark, like a radio without a program, like a deserted city, they want to say nothing. Nothing. I cannot stand the pressure of silence, even sounds are motionless. I cannot speak, words mean nothing to me. At times my Rex knows more than I do. Much more.

Praising God, he is

silent."

Alphonse Kauders had known by heart the first fifty pages of the Berlin phone book.

Alphonse Kauders was the first to tell Joseph v. Stalin: "No!"

Stalin asked him: "Do you have a watch, Comrade Kauders?" and Alphonse Kauders

said: "No!"

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, narrated: "In our Party, there are two factions: the Maniacs and the Killers. The Maniacs are going mad, the Killers are killing. Of course, in neither of these two factions are there any women. Women are gathered in the faction called the Women. Mainly, they serve as the instigators of bloody fights between the Maniacs and the Killers. The Maniacs are better soccer players, but the Killers can do miracles with knives, like nobody else in this modem world."

Alphonse Kauders had had gonorrhea seven times and syphilis only once.

Alphonse Kauders does not exist in the Encyclopedia of the U.S.S.R. Then again, he does not exist in the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia.

68

TRIQUARTERL Y

Alphonse Kauders said: "I am myself, everything else is stories."

Dr. Joseph Goebbels, talking about the winds of Alphonse Kauders,

said:

"They resembled the wail of an everlastingly solitary siren, the sor­ row

in the purest of forms."

One of the seven wives of Alphonse Kauders had had a short leg.

Then again, the other one had been long. The arms had been, more or less, of the same size.

In the Archives of the U.S.S.R. there is a manuscript which is believed to have originated from Alphonse Kauders:

"1) shoot under the tongue (?); 2) symbolism (?) death on the ground (?) in the forest (??) beside an anthill (?) beside a beehive; 3) take only one bullet; 4) the sentence: I shall be reborn if this bullet fails, I hope it won't; 5) lie down, so blood flows into the head; 6) burn all manuscripts => possibility of somebody's idea they were worth something;

7) invent some love (?); 8) the sentence: I blame nobody, especially not Her (?); 9) tidy up the room; 10) write to Stalin: Koba, why did you need my death?

11) take a bottle of water; 12) evade talk and conversation until the certain date;" One of Alphonse Kauders's seven best men had been Richard Sorge.

Alphonse Kauders had most regularly subscribed to all the porno­ graphic magazines of Europe.

Alphonse Kauders had taken out his own appendix in Siberia, and he probably would have died, had he not been transferred to the camp hos­ pital at the very last moment. And that was only due to the fact that he had informed on a bandit for secretly saying his prayers to God at night.

Alphonse Kauders said to Eva Braun:

69

TRIQUARTERL Y

"Money isn't everything. There is some gold too."

Alphonse Kauders had been a fanatic beekeeper; throughout his whole life he had led fierce battles against parasitic lice which ruthlessly exploited bees, and were known under the name "varoa."

Alphonse Kauders said: "The most beautiful fire {not being a forest one} I have ever seen, was when the Reichstag was in flames."

The very idea of creating Alphonse Kauders for the first time had occurred to his {future} mother. She said to the {future} father of

Alphonse Kauders: "Let's make love and create Alphonse Kauders."

The father said: "O.K. But let's watch some, you know, pictures."

Alphonse Kauders had been a member of seven libraries, of seven api­ cultural societies, of seven communist parties and of one national­ socialist.

Alphonse Kauders narrated: "In elementary school I attracted attention by being able to stuff my fist into my mouth. Girls from other classes would rush in crowds to see me stuff my fist into my mouth. My father, a teacher, glowed with a bliss

girls around me. Once, a girl that I wished to make love to approached me. And I, having been excited, tried to shove both of

to see all those

my fists into my mouth. I broke two front teeth. Ever since I was

noticed

for my insanity. This event probably determined the course of my life.

Ever since I do not talk."

On one copy of the Bibliography of Forestry, 1900� 1948, stored in Zagreb, there is the following handwritten comment: "Since the day I was born I have been waiting for the Judgment Day. And the Judgment Day is never coming. And, as I live, it's all too clear.

The Judgment Day had come before I was alive."

Alphonse Kauders narrated: "When Rex and I would be having a conflict, and that was happening almost every day, he would stray and would be gone for days. And he would tell me nothing. Except once. He said: 'The stray dogs' shelter is full of spies.'"

70

TRIQUARTERL Y

On the eve of the Second World War, Alphonse Kauders, in Berlin,

said to I vo Andrich: "A firm system still exists only in the minds of madmen. In the minds

of others there is chaos, as it is around them. Perhaps art is one of the last lines of defense against chaos. And then again, perhaps it is not.

Who the hell cares?"

On the eve of the First World War, Alphonse Kauders said to Franz

Ferdinand's pregnant wife: "Let me put it in a little bit, just a bit, I'll be careful."

On one of the Alphonse Kauders's seven tombs it is written: "I have vanished and I have appeared. Now, I'm here. I shall disappear

and I shall come back. And then, again, I shall be here. Everything is so

simple. All one needs is the courage."

Alphonse Kauders wrote to one of his seven wives letters "full of filthy details and sick pornographic fantasies." Stalin forbade such letters to be

by Soviet mail because "among those who open letters there are many tame, timid family people," so then Alphonse Kauders sent his letters through couriers. sent

Alphonse Kauders said: "I, I am not a human being. I, I am Alphonse Kauders."

Alphonse Kauders said to Richard Sorge: "I doubt there exists an emptiness greater than that of empty streets.

Therefore, it is better to have some tanks on the street, if nothing else is possible. Because Anything is better than Nothing."

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, had put a revolver on Gavrilo Princip's temple, for he had burned a bee with a cigarette.

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, said to Stalin: "Koba, if you shoot Bukharin ever again, we shall have an argument."

And Bukharin was shot only once.

Alphonse Kauders said to Eva Braun, in bed, after seven mutual, con­ annals, Alphonse

secutive orgasms, four of which had gotten into

71

TRIQUARTERL Y

Kauders said to Eva Braun: "A way should be found of forbidding people to talk, especially to talk each other. People should be forbidden to wear watches. Anything

to

should be done with people."

It has been supposed that the barely known pornographic work "Seven Sweet Little Girls," signed by a pseudonym, had been written by

Alphonse Kauders.

Alphonse Kauders narrated, in the course of time, the first days of the Revolution: "We killed all mad horses. We set quiet houses on fire. We saw sol­

diers weeping. Crowds gushed out of prisons. Everybody was afraid. And we

had nothing but the bad feeling."

Albeit Alphonse Kauders hated people from the depths of his soul, almost as much as he hated horses (Good Lord, how Alphonse Kauders hated horses), he was the creator of a folk proverb: "Never a bee from a mare."

Joseph v. Stalin, talking about the winds of Alphonse Kauders, said: "Many a time, during our Central Committee sessions, comrade Kauders would, well, cut a wind, and a few moments later, all comrades would be helplessly crying. Including myself, as well."

Alphonse Kauders was the owner of the revolver with which Lola, a twelve-year-old Marseilles prostitute, was shot.

Ivo Andrich, talking about Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time,

said: "His insides had been removed by a secret operation. All that remained was a sheath of skin within which he safely dreamt of a bibli­

ography of pornographic literature."

Alphonse Kauders spent the night between April 5th and April 6th, 1941, on the top of Avala, waiting to see Belgrade burning.

Alphonse Kauders killed his dog Rex with gas after Rex had tried to slaughter him while sleeping because Alphonse Kauders had set mouse on traps all over the place to revenge himself on Rex for having pissed his uniform.

72

TRIQUARTERLY

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, had been engaged in paint­ ing. The only painting that has been preserved, oil on canvas, is called The Class Roots of Tattooing and is kept in the National Museum in Helsinki.

Alphonse Kauders, in the course of time, said to [osip B. Tito: "A few days, or years, hell, ago I noticed that a tree under the window of one of my seven rooms had grown some ten goddamn meters. There aren't many people who notice that trees grow at all. Those who do are most often lumberjacks."

Gavrilo Princip, talking about the winds of Alphonse Kauders, had said:

"They sounded like this: Pffffffuuummmiiuujmmsghhhss."

Alphonse Kauders had had two legal sons and two legal daughters.

The rest were illegal. One son had been shot as a war criminal in Kaunas, Lithuania; the other had been a distinguished member of the Australian national croquet team. One daughter had been an inter­ preter at the Yalta conference; the other had discovered, in the Amazon rain forests, a then unknown species of an insect resembling the bee,

named Virgo Kauders.

Alphonse Kauders had said: "Literature has nothing human in itself. Nor in myself."

Alphonse Kauders had never finished work on the bibliography of pornographic literature.

Notes on Kauders J. B. Tito was the Yugoslav communist dictator for thirty-five years.

My childhood was saturated with histories of his just enterprises. My favorite one has always been the one in which he, at the age of twelve, found a whole, cooked pig's head in the house pantry, hoarded for Christmas, and, without telling his brothers and sisters, gorged with it all by himself-an ominous act for a future communist head of a state.

Afterwards, he was sick for days (the fat overdose) and was additionally

punished by being banned from the Christmas dinner. Later on he

73

TRIQUARTERLY

became an atheist and never lost the passion for pigs and heads.

Rosa Luxembourg was a German communist who attempted, with Karl Liebknecht, a socialist revolution in Germany after the end of

World War I, and then withered with it. Rosa Luxembourg was a terri,

bly nice name for a revolutionary.

King Alexander was a Yugoslav king and was assassinated in Marseilles, in 1934, by a Macedonian nationalist, with the generous help of Croatian fascists. Rickety propaganda machinery of the first Yugoslavia sermoned that his last words were: "Take care of my Yugoslavia." The likely truth was that he gobbled and bolted his own blood, while a sweaty French secret policeman was protecting, with his own body, Alexander's ex-body, corpse-to-be. I always thought that the fact that an Alexander was assassinated by a Macedonian was as close as you can get to a nice touch in a farce.

Richard Sorge was the Soviet spy close to the German diplomatic cir­ cles in Tokyo before and at the beginning of World War II. He had informed Stalin that Hitler was going to attack the Motherland, but Stalin trusted Hitler and disregarded the information. The first time I read about Sorge I was twelve and, not even having reached the end of the book, decided to become a spy. At the age of eighteen. I wrote a poem about Sorge which was titled The Loneliest Man in the World. The

first verse: "Tokyo is breathing and I am not."

Gavrilo Princip was the young Serb who assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand Habsburg and Sofia, his pregnant wife, thus

effectively starting World War 1. He was eighteen at the time and had the first scrub over his thin lip and dark ripples around his eyes. He was incarcerated for life, which lasted only a few more years, and died of tuberculosis, blessed by repeated beatings, in an obscure Austrian prison.

In Sarajevo, by the bridge that used to be called Latin, at the comer from which he sent those historical bullets into the fetus's brain, his

footprints were immortalized in concrete (left foot W,E, right foot SE, NW). When I was a little boy I imagined him waiting for the Archduke's carriage, waiting to change the course of history, stuck up to his ankles in wet concrete. When I was sixteen my feet fit perfectly into his feet's tombs.

The Encyclopedia of U.S.S.R. is a book whose different editions are innumerable and often obscure. Historical characters (like Stalin's numerous

Secret Police chiefs) would be praised in one edition and

then would be vanished in the other. There are countries whose pre' cious minerals (with annual production in parentheses) would be

74

TRIQUARTERLY

minutely listed by the encyclopedia's sanguine map in one edition, and in another they would be swallowed by an ocean, much like Atlantis, without the bubble, burps ever reaching the surface of the map-world.

This great book teaches us how the verisimilitude of fiction could be

achieved by the exactness.

The Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia, on the other hand, was never even

close to being entirely published, so there really isn't any encyclopedic Yugoslavia, which, by a brute tum of history, couldn't matter less, since there's hardly any Yugoslavia.

Bukharin was a high Party official and probably the main Soviet ide, ologist (save great Stalin) in the thirties, for which he was awarded with an

accusation of spying, simultaneously, for the United States, Great

Britain, France and Germany. No one was surprised but every one was terrified when he was sentenced to death, for that was the beginning of one

of Stalin's greatest purges. From his death cell he sent a letter to

Stalin, beginning with words: "Koba, why did you need my death?" He voluntarily cooperated with his inquisitors and refused to be used as the martyr of Stalin's tyranny. If he is in a Dantesque inferno, he'll eternally bang his porcine head against the walls of hell's pantry.

Ivo Andrich was the only Yugoslav author that has ever been award,

ed the Nobel Prize. In 1941, he worked in the Yugoslav embassy in

Berlin, and helped organize trysts of cringing Yugoslav politicians with Hitler. He was a gentleman and wrote novels about the ways people are

entangled with history. At the acceptance ceremony he talked about the importance of bridges. In his youth, he was involved in organizing the Archduke's assassination.

On April 6th, 1941, at dawn, Belgrade was relentlessly bombed by the Luftwaffe. That was the beginning of the German attack on the

Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which lasted for eleven more days.

Avala is a breastlike mountain by Belgrade, with the tomb, tumor for the Unknown Soldier, built after World War I. The Yalta Conference brought together Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. The end of the war was near and they were victors ("I'd like some Germany"). When I was thirteen I saw a photo of those three great men in Yalta, sitting in three wicker chairs, against the back, ground of standing people whose names were as insignificant as their deeds. The three heads of the world had something like a dim grin on their rotund faces, as though they had done a good, hard job ("Have some Germany"). When I was thirteen, I thought that the picture was taken right after their lunch, because, as my father claimed, right after

75

TRIQUARTERLY

lunch is the best time, for people are "full and happy." I thought that behind their dim grins they were trying to get out last trifles of food

from between their teeth. They gaze at me, full of borscht, Crimean wine and plans for the world. Within a few moments Churchill will be

asleep, and I'll be old, lacking significance, but not memories.

Now read the story again.

Randolph Hartzenberg, Traces: Above and Below (1991, monotype oil on paper) 76

TRIQUARTERLY

Baby Girl Fred G. Leebron

The baby was born on a Tuesday night at the end of July, its mouth rimmed with a tarry green-black crust that had a sweet, pungent odor.

"Now what do I do?" said the obstetrician.

"Bring her on up to Mom." The nurse stretched out her arms to receive the baby. "Cute little fella," she said. She laid the baby on the

mother's chest.

Are you a boy or a girl, the mother wondered. "Hello," she said.

The baby's chest rose and fell in a rattle of inhalations. Its back left a soft green crud on the mother's breast. The nurse reached across and

tapped the baby.

"Come on, baby," she said. "Breathe for your mother."

"Hi, honey," the father said. An hour before he'd taken a long look as the baby's head had begun to crown, and he'd seen the too-rich tangle of dark hair and announced she was a girl. He confirmed this as the nurse tapped the baby's chest again. He could not help but feel a little disappointed. He had wanted to name the baby after his father's father, because he did not respect his father and his father knew this, and he wanted to show his father that he loved him. He had imagined his father's teary voice on the other end of the line after he said, "It's a boy.

We're naming him Jacob."

"We're going to have to take the baby," the nurse said. She pulled the

baby back to her.

The father looked at the mother to see what he should do.

"Go with her," the mother said.

"I'll be right back," the father said.

"She's a little dusky," the nurse said.

77

TRIQUARTERLY

He followed the nurse from the delivery room, the baby breathing a

gravelly pant. They crossed an open area, to his left a bank of monitors suspended from the ceiling, men and women in scrubs standing under it, like passengers checking flight departure times.

"I could use a little help here," the nurse called.

She carried the baby into a dark room, the father close behind her.

"Could you get the light switch," she said.

In the dark the glass walls were opaque and tubes hung out of machin­ ery. He felt frantically for a switch. When he flicked it on she lay the baby on a cold metal table. The baby rasped and wriggled. "Come on, baby," the nurse said. She tapped the baby's chest. The baby choked and coughed. She had narrow little legs and a proud yellow chest. Her face appeared blue. "Come on, baby," the nurse coaxed, reaching to her right for a forked tube, which she bit at and stuck one end of in the baby's mouth. Out a third end was a clear plastic bag. The nurse sucked, and greenish black matter began to fill the bag.

"Meconium," someone said.

A few people in scrubs had wandered in. The father knew what meco­ nium was-in the opening of his life that was the onset of parenthood

he'd heard any number of birth stories from new parents-Caesarean,

forceps-meconium wasn't a problem. During a trauma in labor, a moment he thought he could now clearly pinpoint, the baby

vacuum,

had inhaled part of her first bowel movement. He drifted back as the

medical people filled in the remaining space between him and the baby.

The clear bag bloated with the meconium.

"You go on back to your wife," a man with a beard said. "We'll bring her to you."

A balloon, shaped bag hovered over the baby's mouth and the nurse

drew the tube out as someone with a braceleted wrist handpumped air into the baby. Her chest rose and fell.

"You go on," the bearded medical person said to the father. "She'll be fine."

"He can come back in a few minutes to cut the cord," the nurse work, ing on the baby said over her shoulder. The father looked at her. "If you want."

"Sure," he said.

She turned back to reinsert the tube into the baby's mouth.

In the cramped delivery room his wife was examining her placenta, while the obstetrician, with the assistance of another woman, stitched the episiotomy. The placenta sat in a beige plastic tub on a metal cart.

78

TRIQUARTERLY

Through its red bulb he could see pockets of the green-black tar.

"How is he?" the mother said.

"She's a girl," the father said.

"A girl?" the mother said. "I thought someone called her fella."

"They're working on her," he said. "She aspirated meconium." He gave an involuntary smile at the plucking of the words.

"That's what Ann and Jon's baby had," the mother said. "It took ten minutes."

"They said they'd bring her back," the father said.

"That hurts," the mother told the two women stitching her.

"Really?" the newly arrived woman said.

"Yes," the mother said.

"Where I was last," the obstetrician said, pointing at the mother's vagina, "we used to do a loop there."

The bearded man in scrubs came in and looked at the two obstetri­ cians working, then at the wife, then at the husband.

"Your baby," he said. "They'll bring her back to you on her way to intensive care." He started to leave. "You still want to cut the cord?"

"Intensive care?" the mother said.

"Just for a little while. A couple hours, maybe a day. She should be fine."

The father squeezed the mother's hand and accompanied the man with the beard back to the glass room. The little girl lay on a white bath blanket with a tube running out her mouth, her round face yellow and her eyes open but inert. The father was given a pair of scissors and he cut the cord. The baby was screaming but she didn't seem to have any voice. He reached through the people in scrubs and touched her chest.

The nurse smiled back to him. "We'll bring her in to Mom in a second."

In the delivery room his wife lay dazed and unattended on stained

sheets, the placenta in its tub on the floor.

"They're bringing her back," the father said.

"I'm hungry," the mother said, her left hand still hooked to an IV. She studied the IV and he bent to look at the placenta. "You want to make the phone calls."

He shrugged. It seemed a little soon, but he knew it would please her.

"What should I say?" he said. She told him. "I'll be right back," he said.

He hurried out to the waiting area. In the new wing, uninhabited for

another month, a pay phone had been planted into a wall of unpainted sheetrock. As agreed, he called her mother first, then her father, then his parents. He heard his voice say that the doctors said everything

79

TRIQUARTERLY

would be fine, that the baby was having difficulty breathing, that it was

just meconium. The grandparents expressed elation. Plane tickets were already being bought. He saw fragments of his face in the mirrored metal of the wall unit. He nodded at himself as he listened to the sugary voices. An inexplicable hatred for all the grandparents came to him and settled in him. "Way to go, tiger," his father said.

Twenty minutes had passed. His wife still lay in bed. "Did they bring her by?" he asked.

"Not yet. Were the phone calls all right?"

"I'll go check on the baby," he said.

Out the other door, through the way station filled with medical staff halfheartedly eyeing the monitors, he found the glassed-in triage room empty. He turned to interrupt one of the staff. She looked at him indif­

ferently.

"The baby who was in there." He pointed at the lit windows.

She shrugged. "There's a clerk out by the waiting area who can help "

you.

He exited yet another door and followed a bright hallway to where he

recalled the intensive care nursery being, from the expectant parents' tour the month before. He stood in a narrow antechamber as a new group of medical personnel maneuvered around a warming

bed that he

surmised held his child. A woman saw him and touched the crossed heavy arms of a large man with a silver beard and a yellow gauze gown.

"The father's here," she said, loud enough for the father to hear.

The man looked up and smiled at the father. "Come on in," he said.

"Put on a gown."

The father pulled a disposable yellow gown from a wall dispenser and thrust it on. A sign said to wash his hands for one whole minute, and he made himself do this as well. He stepped into the nursery and stood by the doctor in the matching gown.

"You have a very sick baby," the doctor said.

The father nodded. Through the tangle of tubes and arms he caught of her. Machinery gonged and beeped above her, and her mouth

sight sides was pried open by a blue respirator tube. Her arms lay loose at her and her eyes were glazed under heavy lids. A white tube sprang from her umbilicus. She had IV's attached to a hand and a foot. From her fore­ head a toy-sized syringe projected. A diaper lay open under her bottom,

making way for a catheter that fed a tiny plastic bag.

"At this point, we're just trying to stabilize her," the doctor said.

"Why don't you come back in an hour or so with your wife. I'm sure

she'd like to see the baby."

80

TRIQUARTERLY

"What happened?" the father said.

The doctor recrossed his arms and leaned against a sink. "She inhaled too much meconium and it's settled so deeply in her lungs she can't process oxygen and we can't suction it out. It's a situation that will have to resolve itself."

"What are you saying?" the father said.

The doctor sighed and scowled and smiled. "We'll have to wait and see," he said. "Like I said, you have a very sick baby."

The father looked past the medical people at his little girl. He was reluctant to leave her to them, but he had to tell his wife. What would he tell her? He glanced sideways at the doctor in his yellow gown, the thick arms folded on the shelf of his belly. A woman in blue demanded, "What's her pH?" and glared at a guy in green scrubs while he fumbled for an answer. The baby quivered under a bright yellow light aimed at her belly. The father wished he could close the diaper for her. He count­ ed five people around the baby, plus the doctor. He wondered if the baby was warm enough. Labor had lasted nineteen hours and he was cold and knew he should be hungry, but he had no appetite. He followed the hall­ way back toward his wife's room, half expecting to find her gone.

She sat in bed, eating meat loaf from a styrofoam plate. She looked up at

him; she was making herself eat. The sheet under her was a dark cir­

cle of blood.

"She's in the leN," he tried to say evenly. "The doctor said we have a very sick baby."

She put her hand to her mouth and made herself swallow the food in it. She shut her eyes, nodded, and opened them. She pointed to a red carton of juice on her tray.

"I saved this for you," she said. "Is she going to die?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Did you ask?"

"He said we have a very sick baby." He took up the carton and forced it open, took a sip of the juice.

"I need to pee," she said.

He came around the other side of the bed, to where the IV hung from a

metal pole. She held on to him and he pulled the pole along on its

wheeled stand as they made the difficult walk across the room to the bathroom. She sat gingerly on the seat and looked up at him. Small blood vessels had popped under her eyes from the pressure of pushing the baby out.

"I can't," she said.

81

TRIQUARTERLY

"Try," he said.

She remained on the toilet.

"Should I close the door?" he said. She shook her head. The faintest line of water sounded from the bowl beneath her. Her face flushed. He touched her hand, careful not to disturb the IV. After the sound ceased she wiped herself and he helped her from the seat. There was blood in

the bowl and blood 011 the back of her gown and blood dripped in drops onto the bathroom floor.

"I'd like to put on some underwear," she said.

He nodded and went to the packed bag with the teddy bear and the new

nightgown that opened down the front so that she could breastfeed,

and he found a pair of fresh underwear while she leaned against the .

bathroom doorframe.

She looked at the small, white underwear. "I guess not," she said.

He helped her back to the bed and she leaned carefully against it and eased herself onto the dark stain of blood that marked where she

should sit.

"Could you get me a cup of ice?"

He'd been getting cups of ice all day. In the waiting area, a pregnant woman sat on a wooden chair waiting to be admitted. She clutched a

string of beads-a rosary, he guessed-and muttered words, her eyes shut.

The ice machine was clogged with ice that had partially melted and then refrozen, and he took a metal fork and poked at its mouth and gouged and slashed until the ice fell free. He held a cup to it, pressed the button,

and ice overflowed onto the floor. The hallway was empty. He took the full cup and stepped over the tricky cubes of ice back down the hall.

She was not in the delivery room. A wheelchair which had sat wait­ in a comer was gone. He hurried out the corridor to the ICN. As he

ing

approached he could see the back of her in the chair wheeled up close to the warming bed. Her cotton gown fell slightly open at the back, her pale skin cold in the bright light of the nursery. The yellow gauze of the required gown was looped around her neck. The nurse who'd brought her down stood waiting to take her back. He came right up beside his wife, not bothering with the gown or a hand wash, and the nurse retreated. His wife moved her left hand, the one with the IV still in it, and across her chest until it rested on his hand as it curled around up

the top of the wheelchair. The baby lay just out of reach on the warm­ her face ing bed with her diaper thrown open, her eyes nearly shut, and swollen, and stale pinpricks of blood flecked on her skin

puffed

where the tubes and lines had been inserted. Someone from X-ray was

82

TRIQUARTERLY

due to take a picture of her lungs and the second blood gases were

expected in ten minutes.

"You should get some rest," the doctor said to the mother.

"Yes," the mother said. She bent her head and looked at her lap, at the crusty nearly transparent hospital gown under the sterilized gauze of the ICN gown, then looked up at the baby again. White adhesive strips were taped tightly around her mouth to keep the respirator tube in

place. "Could she die?" the mother said.

"What?" the doctor said. The father thought he could sense the vari­ ous men

and women around the bed pause in their ministrations, listen­

ing with a defensive professional instinct.

"I said, 'Could she die?'" the mother said.

The doctor readjusted himself against the sink, his folded arms resting in a fresh position on his belly. "Yes," he said.

They made the phone call to her mother at one-thirty her time. The husband made it because the wife was afraid she wouldn't be able to say what needed to be said. She was now free of her IV and she sat in the wheelchair by him in the starkly lit unpainted new wing while he

punched in all the numbers and the phone rang twice and then the tired voice came on the line. He carefully explained to her mother all that he knew and when the mother interrupted to ask if the baby could die, he gave the same simple one-word answer the doctor had given and her mother let out a sharp intake of breath as if she'd been struck and her voice for the next few seconds was only a whimper. He waited a moment and then told her why they needed her help and what perhaps she could do for them and through the phone line he could feel her nodding yes, yes. She would make phone calls to her colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry, wake people, to find out possible prognoses and treatments. She referred to the baby as "Our baby" and he was ner­ vous. She took notes, posed pointed questions, and hung up without remembering to ask to speak to her daughter.

"She'll call around," he said to his wife.

They took the elevator to the fifth floor, where from their Lamaze classes they knew was an alcove of vending machines situated outside a short cafeteria. A janitor stood at the other end, working a mop and bucket, carefully ignoring them. They bought shrinkwrapped food-a burrito for him that he had to microwave, a ham and cheese sandwich for her-and took it to a large empty waiting room that serviced the

geriatrics unit. They sat side by side against a long wall and ate. There

83

TRIQUARTERLY

was a

television which the husband wanted to turn on to get some noise

in the room. There were a pile of magazines and an

empty flower pot.

"We should get back," she said. She stood up and threw away the

remainder of her sandwich. He helped her from the room, holding her elbow gently. The elevator was waiting for them.

Outside the ICN they washed and gowned themselves, only to be told by a nurse that it was change of shift and they'd have to come back after midnight. They could barely see the baby on her warming bed, her head resting to one side, the wide white adhesive tape obscuring most of her

face.

His wife now had a bed on the maternity ward, across the hall from

labor and delivery. It was a three-bed room, the beds planted at crazy

angles to one another to accommodate the dividing curtains. He set up his wife with a sitz bath in the narrow bathroom. Through the curtains he could hear a nurse scolding one of the new mothers. "You have to change him," she said. "It's your responsibility." The walls of the bath­ room were green and when the door opened and his wife came out from her sitz bath and maneuvered herself into bed, her section of the room was washed with a greenish light. He tucked her in and asked if she wanted her teddy bear. She shook her head no.

He was not allowed to stay in any of the parents' rooms because they had all been previously booked, and he was not allowed to stay in his wife's room. He found a small waiting room across from the nurses' sta­ tion and covered himself with a lap blanket from his wife's bag. The room was

airless and dark and cold, and he did not think he could sleep.

He woke to the feeling of someone recovering him with the blanket.

"Is that you?" he said. "What time is it?"

"A quarter to four."

He made himself get up into the cold room. He walked out into the

hallway with her. There were still skins of little puddles where he'd dropped the ice. As they hurried along the corridor to the ICN he asked her if she'd heard anything. "Nothing," she said.

Their baby's side of the nursery was well-lit. In an enclosed room off to the right a woman in blue scrubs bent over a spiral notebook with a four-color pen. She looked up, nodded at the parents, and scrawled on a ruled line. They washed their hands for one minute and pulled on the sterile yellow gowns. He put his arm around her shoulder and they walked out to the baby. They stood by the side of the bed. Her belly was

puffed up and her chest fluttered in regular wingbeats as the respirator fed her air. A dark ring of crusted blood had formed around the white

84

TRIQUARTERLY

tube at her umbilicus. Her cheeks pursed against the white adhesive fore­ tape and dried perspiration left a film around her eyes and on her head. At two of the IV insertions, one at the foot and one on the hand, little bulbs of orange light had been attached in an almost ornamental fashion.

"You can touch her," someone said behind them. "And talk to her, too. She'll

recognize your voices."

It was the doctor, leaning against his sink.

The mother reached out and stroked an unmarred length of the baby's When she was finished, the father felt along the soft skin, patches

arm.

flaking with a layer of birth fluid.

"You're the only ones who touch her who won't hurt her," the doctor said. "Whenever one of us touches her," he smiled apologetically, "it's to start an IV or suction the breathing tube."

The mother bent down to the baby. "Hi, sweetie," she said.

"How is she doing?" the father said.

"The pictures were not good." The doctor looked at both of them as the mother turned from the baby. "But she's shown great resiliency. Her heart is normal. She's urinating, which means her kidneys are in order."

He pointed at the respirator settings. "You can see for yourself she needs a hundred percent oxygen, eighty breaths a minute. She's not processing it that well. We'll have to wait and see."

"She's not stable?" the mother said.

"She's critical," the doctor said.

"How many cases of this do you see a year?" the father said.

The doctor shrugged. "Three. Maybe four."

"What happens next?" the mother said.

"We'll have to see."

The father touched his daughter's arm, gently scraped away some of the flaking. An alarm gonged. The father was horrified. The woman in blue scrubs came out from her office and shut the sound off, looked around at the father and the mother and the doctor. "I don't think you

should touch the baby," she said.

"They can touch the baby," the doctor said.

She pulled up a high cushioned chair on wheels and sat next to the bed with her notebook.

"Where were we?" the doctor said.

The father was torn between wanting to be with the baby as closely as he could, to let her know he was there, and wanting to listen to the doc­ tor. The mother lay a pinky in the baby's hand and the baby squeezed it,

85

TRIQUARTERLY

her face grimacing around the white tape. Another alarm beeped. The woman rose from her chair, sighed, and clicked it off.

"Do you have any family here?" the doctor said to the parents.

"No," the mother said. "They're all on the East Coast."

"They'll be coming out," the father added quickly.

"Good," the doctor said. He started to leave, then tapped the white index card on the side of the warming bed that said BABY GIRL KEENAN. "Let us know when you name her," he said.

When he was gone the woman in scrubs looked up from her book. "I didn't mean to be rude," she said. "It's just better for the baby if she rests

quietly as possible." She got up and retreated to the little office behind the glass windows.

They stood by the baby. In the mother's bag in her room was a list of a half-dozen boys' and girls' names, but they had virtually agreed on which two it would be-Jacob, for the boy, Emery for the girl, after the mother's grandfather. The girl lay there in sleep with her knees at a slightly jaunty angle, as if perhaps she could push herself up and run off. as

The father didn't want to name her just yet. To name her would be to somehow condemn her. He felt superstitious, just as he'd been about

calling the grandparents. He felt it was better to wait until everything was in the state it ought to be. He could feel the pressure of his wife beside him, wanting to name her, wanting to welcome her into the world, wanting to say you are one of us and you have a name. He didn't want a particular name attached to this moment in her life, fixing her in it. He wanted to wait. He needed to wait. Didn't he have any faith in

her? He touched her wrist. "We name you Emery Keenan Brooks," he

said.

In the late morning they had a long meeting with a second doctor assigned to the ICN. He was younger than the first, in his late thirties or forties, with thin black hair and hornrimmed glasses, and he

early

assured the mother and the father that the situation was not so bleak.

"She's not on Pavulon, for one thing," he pointed out. "And we haven't

had to hook her up to dopamine yet. Beyond that, there's always the lung bypass machine. Am I going too fast?"

The father and mother shook their heads. The doctor had already sketched a diagram showing how the lungs refused to process oxygen and how the baby had reverted to a type of breathing that she'd been the doing in the womb-persistent fetal circulation. Very rare, and in had father the And said. doctor the of life, "very difficult," first four

days

86

TRIQUARTERLY

spent a half hour on the phone with a doctor at his mother-in-law's pharmaceutical firm, a man who had been woken up at two in the

morning and sounded as if he lived for that kind of phone call and had spent the next nine hours reading up on the baby's illness and consult­ ing colleagues in and out of the firm. "The doctor on your case," the

pharmaceutical doctor had said, "is a top guy." Now the father would have to ask about this new doctor.

A woman popped her head into the doorway. "When you're done with these two," she said with a Caribbean accent, pointing at the mother and father, "I need to talk to them. I'll be in my office. See you guys soon."

"The social worker," the doctor explained. He continued with a dis­ cussion of the lung bypass machine, that this particular hospital didn't

have one and the baby would have to be transported across town to the

university hospital. "ECMO," the doctor called it. "It's like a spaceship.

It's the latest thing." He waved his hand. "Anyway, it has its risks. We

don't need to talk about it quite yet."

The father rose from his chair. He liked being in the room listening to the doctor, listening to all the possibilities that existed, how possible

they all seemed. He liked the closed, sealed feeling of the office with its certificates and family pictures. He liked the doctor. The mother got up, still moving with fatigue and pain. They thanked the doctor and crossed the hall to the social worker's office. It was smaller and no framed diplo­ mas hung on the wall.

"How you guys doing?" the social worker said. She gestured them into hard plastic chairs.

"Fine," the mother said.

"I have a few things I want to go over with you." She reached across

the desk and handed both the parents her business card. She told them about pumping breast milk and bringing it into the ICN to store for when the baby was ready to eat. She told them about the rules for book­ ing the parents' rooms, how they were only for parents of babies awaiting

discharge, so they could become accustomed to nighttime changing and feeding. It was best to sleep at home until that time, the social worker said. "Although you're welcome at any time to visit her," she said. "She's a cute baby." She fetched them sealed bottles of sterile water to empty and store the breast milk in, and she called and reserved an electric breast pump for them and double checked to make sure their insurance covered the cost. "Is there anything else I can do for you?" she said.

"I don't think so," the father said.

87

TRIQUARTERLY

"I'm here Monday through Friday, eight-rhirtv to five." She stood up and shook both their hands. "You just come in if you want to talk." She

pointed at her card that the father held in his palm. "I have voice mail, too."

"Great," the mother said.

On the wall outside the social worker's office was a large corkboard filled with pictures of ICN parents departing with their babies, with

birth dates and birth weights and discharge dates written in ink below each photo. The parents paused to study it, looking for a baby like their

baby, but all of the babies had been preemies.

Back on the maternity ward the mother climbed tiredly into her bed,

her face pale. It was almost noon. Curtains around the beds were all

drawn, and they could hear the cooing and gurgling sounds of mothers with their babies.

"Hey there!" a man's voice announced. "Can I come in?"

"What is it?" the father said.

A white-haired man in a red volunteer's blazer parted the curtain.

"I'm here to help you fill out the necessaries on your child's birth certifi­ cate."

The father's stomach cinched.

"What is it?" the mother said.

"Nothing," he said.

"What's the child's name?" the volunteer said, his pen poised over a

clipboard.

The mother looked at the father and when it was clear to her that he didn't want to say it, she asked, "Do we have to do this now?"

"I only come around once a day," the volunteer said.

"Emery Keenan Brooks," the father said.

"Could you spell it?" the volunteer said.

The father spelled it.

"That's it." The volunteer looked at his clipboard. "I have everything else. The certificate will be available for you to pick up at the records office downtown in three weeks. But you have to pick it up. It won't come to you.

And it costs ten bucks."

"Right," the father said.

The volunteer headed on to the next mother.

"You ought to get some sleep," the father said.

The mother lay against the hospital mattress, its slightly scooped

angle.

"I'm checking out today," she said. "They wanted to keep me another

88

TRIQUARTERLY

day but I told them no."

"Good," the father said.

Tears ran from the comers of her eyes down the sides of her face. She

shut her eyes and her face trembled.

"I guess I'm really tired," she said.

He climbed in beside her. Her back was to him and he reached around

and held her and she shook. She was very quiet. He could feel the cur, tains of their third of the room close around them. He wanted to whis­ per that it was going to be all right. He said, "We're going to be all right." His wife continued crying in that silent way. Every few moments

he'd pull himself up and see the tears streaming down the exposed side of her face. They'd known each other seven years, they'd been married three years. His father had almost died, had lain in a strange hospital in a

strange city for three months after a complicated open heart surgery.

The baby herself had had trouble very early, in the fourth or fifth week of pregnancy, and a doctor had announced that they were going to lose

her then. There'd been pre' term labor in early June that confined the wife to bedrest for a month. Past the middle of her labor, late yesterday

afternoon, the mother had requested something for pain and the anes­ thesiologist had injected so much epidural anesthesia into her spine that she was numb from the neck down and her blood pressure had dropped seventy-two over forty and the baby's heartbeat had decelerated so precipitously it appeared almost to have stopped. Doctors and nurses to

had burst into the delivery room, a rush and swirl of activity that the husband had been both sucked into and pushed out from, as he felt his wife's life and the baby's life and even his own life pulled from him, and

they'd injected the wife with Adrenalin, and attached a fetal heart mon­ itor to the baby's scalp. Five minutes later they declared that everything was fine, and that she could proceed with a vaginal delivery. And now here they were. Soon the wife would finish crying and the husband would rise from the bed and hug her and go out the door and down the corridor to the elevator, which he'd take to the lobby, where outside he'd catch a taxi almost precisely twenty-four hours from when the taxi had dropped them off at the hospital. At home he would arrange for a rental car; perhaps a phone call or two would trap him; though he would try not to answer but, of course, he would have to answer. He'd pick up the rental car downtown, pick up the electric breast pump, and return to the hospital for his wife. They'd spend that night at home, and every night at home, curled up in bed by the telephone, spent from the days of back-and-forthing to the hospital and pumping milk and sterilizing

89

TRIQUARTERLY

equipment every three hours and waking in the middle of the night to pump some more and sterilize and call the hospital, until one night the

phone would ring, or perhaps they'd even be there at the hospital, and an ultimate shift would occur that would change their lives forever. One their would breathe air day baby again. Though lying in bed with his wife now, waiting for this sequence to unravel, he knew they were He held wife his as she cried herself already changed. tightly, out, and he was astonished at how much they could hold between them, and how hard it could be to name.

Zan Louw, Kenani on the Beach-Malawi (1988,

linocut on paper)

90

TRIQUARTERLY

Three Poems Ingrid de Kok

Transfer

All the family dogs are dead.

A borrowed one, its displaced hip at an

angle to its purebred head,

bays at a siren's emergency climb whining from the motorway.

Seven strangers now have keys to the padlock on the gate, where, instead of lights, a mimosa bums its golden blurred bee-fur to lead you to the door.

"So many leaves, too many trees" says the gardener who weekly salvages an ordered edge; raking round the rusted rotary hoe left standing where my uncle last cranked it hard to clear a space between the trees, peach orchard, nectarine and plum, to prove that he at least could move the future's rankness to another place.

Forty years ago the house was built to hold private unhappiness intact, safe against mobile molecular growths

91

TRIQUARTERL Y

of city, developers and blacks.

N ow rhubarb spurs grow wild and sour, the mulberries, the ducks and bantams gone.

In the fishpond's sage, green soup its fraying goldfish decompose the sun,

wax-white lilies float upon the rot.

And leaves in random piles are burning.

Townhouses circle the inheritance.

The fire station and franchised inn keep neighborhood watch over its fate.

The municipality leers over the gate,

complains of dispossession and neglect, dark tenants and the broken fence.

But all the highveld birds are here, weighing their metronomic blossoms upon the branches in the winter air.

And the exiles are returning.

David Koloane, Untitled II (1993, graphite on paper)

92

TRIQUARTERLY

Keeper The riverine forest once stored its light beneath damp canopies of trees, where vines knotted bright berries and flycatchers hawked in the heat's filigree.

Now above the banks

of the dried Luvuvhu River, carcases bleach black, fevered baboons quiver, and the keeper of Pafuri,

drought's carapace, asks us for razorblades, sugar, lard, toothpaste,

stamps and news of camp as

he tends the picnic place.

In rigid sunlight he sweeps the sand repolishes the tap riddles the ashes and recount: "The rain has gone.

The river has gone.

God has gone.

The lions keep me awake at night."

Then he shuffles past our car to his bamboo shack and remembered birdsong, summer storms, fresh animal tracks.

93

TRIQUARTERLY

The Resurrection Bush The desiccated soil only raises

archaeological relics, gray shale, stunted bush

and this dead clump of sticks noticed between the rocks till the ranger broke a stalk as if to chew or crumble it while we climbed and talked.

no one

Purgatorial bouquet, dry brush of drier summer, then placed in water overnight drifts in a porous coma.

Just as Egyptian sheaves, delivered from their vacuum tomb as dormant seed, air

inspired to corn again, so

in one day stick turns to stalk,

in three, gold nodules nudge and stir,

then tinder flares into tendril fire: a

xerophilious shooting star.

Scorched bushveld stoic,

shriveled, sown in stone, its sap revived, sprouts green again in one chance cup of rain.

94

TRIQUARTERLY

Three Poems Myrna Stone

In Extremis

In this Time photo exclusive the subjects, avian

and Sudanese, are displayed in candid compositional balance: straddling sand and scrub grass

the lammergeier assumes a watchful visage, his finely modeled head dwarfed by massive shoulders, his gaze clearly, intently directed

the scant foot of savannah to the child who, in having failed to reach the feeding station, its ministry of tents and trucks, its rescuing across

grain,

occupies the foreground in a crouched position, knees braced beneath a swollen belly, toes tunneled into the dirt, her oversized head now

resting on her arms as if she is unaware or

careless of the presence of both vulture and camera.

In the background only the dun humps of termite

mounds,

95

TRIQUARTERLY

the mottled screen of acacia leaf and spindle, a glimpse of sky, distract briefly from this central image and its opposing need that finds us wanting to imagine any resolution but the axiomatic and prosaic one: that this child, saved or not, dying or dead, is

carrion,

by the action of the camera diminished yet again-that the vulture, in his passive vigil, is no monster, but merely one more mouth unfed.

Vuminkosi Zulu, Train Accident (1985, linocut on paper)

96

TRIQUARTERLY

Hotel Orvieto Beyond our window, close enough to touch, the angels of Santa Maria Maggiore arrange themselves in strict linear conceit, buttress against the night's inevitable flux.

Beneath our balcony the narrow Roman street quiets in an hours- long trance, the walls of this room, this bed, now gilded, now shadow in a violent candling of light before dusk.

History tells us the stonecutter's sons pose in these angular torsos, in the fixed tum of wrists and necks, in these elevated

faces, no more compelling, now in this light, than your own in rapt motion above mine.

What power we have we give away, a laying on of hands, the spirit tractable, translatable, the language of angels in their endless ascension

passing now between us, now out of us the way the stonecutter's sons-in holy guise, in their father's sacred service-passed wordlessly out of their bodies into memory.

97

TRIQUARTERLY

The Amazing Vanishing Grace Ten years, and still THE WORLD'S SMALLEST WOMAN minds

the occupational odors: raw flesh stacked and searing on the trailers' griddles, the pall of palm-oil smoke from Haskell's frying vats, sweat, dung, the dense stench of animals caged or staked inside the barn's metal walls, her customers' endlessly cloying parade past her midway platformand now, daily grown more objectionable, more noxious, her own lurid effluence, what Haskell punningly calls evidence of her fall from grace, dis-ease she tries but fails to scrub from her clothes or hose from her tent, though not even this precursor prepares her for the scale's

pronouncing balance, the clear decline marks but cannot she stop Darke, Montgomery, Champaign, Ohio's county fairs repetitive, one so like another she is lost for days at a time, time re-composing itself into reductive numbers: her diminishing weight, her customers' half-averted faces, the trial of Haskell's bed, which she slips from ...

nightly, never the old palatal pleasuresthe elephant ears and vinegar-laced fries-drawing her through Concessionary Row, but the paddock's grassy air instead, the omissive eye of the moon under which, blessedly, finally, she is unobserved

and unremarked, as all things are.

98

TRIQUARTERLY

Three Poems Joe Wenderoth

The Flat Road Runs Along Beside the Frozen River The man dying in the bed thinks of riding a bicycle,

slow, standing up.

It is winter and the flat road

along beside the frozen river.

Always something has happened before his riding away. runs

He can't say what, then or ever.

There is a woman by the side of the bed.

She is the one he is riding away from in his thought.

He is riding toward where he is.

The woman places an empty bowl on his chest and looks at him.

He closes his eyes, but still, he knows she's there.

The bowl is full of blood, and his heart cannot lift it, even once.

He is standing up on the bicycle.

"The bowl couldn't be full of blood," he says, looking down the bright flat road, and the dying must start all over again.

99

TRIQUARTERLY

Aesthetics of the Bases-Loaded Walk Four times the pitch is outside the strike zone.

High, low, outside, low-four balls.

The man must be given a base, a base on balls.

But there is no base to be given, no base unoccupied, the bases are full.

Some cannot understand this.

They believe it must be a shameful thing,

lowly forfeit, the humiliation of man, made rules and chalk boundaries.

They imagine confrontation itself has failed.

Some, even most, don't understand the bases, loaded walk, and they proceed to hiss, or to mock their earlier earnest applause.

But I love it.

They've got no room to put him on.

They put him on.

They put him on, and here comes the lowly run home. Certain, uncontested, and incomparably calm.

A home run would have been unbelievable­ the grand slam, loveliest of moments to

glimpse-

but it leads quickly, inevitably, away from us.

Bases empty.

Rally as good as over.

But a walk! a walk! Bases still loaded!

Rally never at a more crucial or capable point!

This is the beauty of it.

The maintenance of a simple danger by way of a good eye.

The inning, the game itself, hangs in the indelicate balance of this most subtle method for staying alive, in the casual implication of unending loss, in the terrible patience of an anonymous victory.

100

TRIQUARTERLY

"Flowers are a tiresome pastime" -w. C. Williams

with Williams it's always this certain flower in a certain light at a certain time of year on a particular piece of furniture, always the certainty is different than it ever was before, told by a color, keeping us all where we are-though I have had no way to know where this is, exactly, not living myself in the midst of flowers, flowers' names, I have understood the one worsening season of color

only vaguely, moving quickly on to the introduction of the unspeaking hero, the degree of day, the non-flower objects, broken of course and appearing where they will, where I do get his drift, mine but today I found myself understanding Williams's flowers, none of them in front of me, none in names, I was riding the subway over to Astor Place to get my hair cut for cheap, and I began to see in my car the beautiful faces of the ugly, rising and staying, blooming a moment somewhere beneath my voice, then leaving, not,

obviously, in petals, but going completely dark, feeding the necessary never, returning, given to the bottom of the light for scattering, and these are his damned flowers, and for once I wasn't allowed to tum toward the necessary never and to hear it speak, hear it pronounce the dark world's further dim my own,

101

TRIQUARTERLY

but took instead the mute bloom of faces up like breath, like a breath was what was mine, I took to saying while it held itself that it held itself, as I have been held, every minute of my life, by no one I know.

Jeremy Wafer, Untitled I, from the triptych Power Station (1987, hand, made paper) 102

TRIQUARTERL Y

Five Poems Brooks Haxton

Days

The days of rain collapsing into the dusk went day by day by day, and night was day.

Past midnight, sleet dinged into the sleeve of a window unit-ding!-and Mom was awake.

Big pellets clocked into the headboard wall, ticking the windowpanes. Time, sprung loose from the blinking digitals, whirled everywhere.

The cracked,off limbs lay flailing in the street.

Wind swung from a traffic light.

And Mom left Dad face down, children, breathing, in their sleep, while something soft as a thrush at a windowpane kept flinging itself into the side of the house. to check the

103

TRIQUARTERLY

Century Flower Hayden, your Collected Shorter Poems reminded me just now of a century flower on a Leeward coral ridge.

Along the path under the woody branching-over cactus limbs and thomtrees hermit crabs in their unwieldy shells, their bodies grown lopsided to fit the sleeve, trundled over the chalkdust, looking the way I feel in this whorled English I picked up somewhere, with sphery eyes chitin stalks, ridiculous sea creatures on the mountainside among the cactuses. on

Isaac, who was six then, liked their vigilance. When they detected us, shapes swimming in the light, vibrations in the path, however they could tell the predators had come, they snapped back into their conches in a blink.

By now we were sweating under a midday sun and straining up the mountainside, with Francie little in the knees and feet, and me all scratched up from the bright idea I had to see how things might look away from the path. sore a

Here on the steep grade, when the crabs

snapped back into their shells, without their legs to brace them, they would teeter, and the ones that tipped went barreling downhill past us into the rocks and underbrush, two, sometimes three or more at once.

Isaac laughed at them.

He looked me in the eye, and laughed.

104

TRIQUARTERLY

Hayden, next to yours, my melancholy almost a balm. How this may be for Isaac I don't know. But here was a question in his look, tender, unexpectedly, and sharp, deliberate as the laugh was effortless which made me laugh, and started Francie laughing at the both of us, all three a long time laughing at the laughter more than anything, with sweat-stung eyes, looking from face to face, while those poor idiotic goddamn crabs slammed headlong into the reef.

seems

After a while we came out of the cactuses and thorn trees to a clearing where the greenest hummingbird imaginable zipped along the now near-level path, bobbed into the subequatorial blue sky, and dropped beyond the ridge.

Following, we found the century flower: lemon yellow panicles in tiers high on a single candelabra stalk.

The surge of sap thrust up six varas (it was a thing that wanted estimation in no less than varas, or in English, wands).

The sap surged out of the dying fountain, shape of fleshy broad spiked blades below into the waxen oily yellow blooms, hundreds of florets suffused with pulque, pure mescal distilling into the blue.

The hummingbird drank there, the flying insects, and the columning red ants.

It was not metaphorical.

The century flower stood on the promontory. You reminded me of it, Hayden, in your book, the flower poems, the passion for your local woods and farms, and everywhere,

105

TRIQUARTERLY

between the dead lake and the Kmart, sad though they may be, festivities for the human flower too. even

Lyn Smuts, The Concealed Dance Floor at Prince Albert (1990, etching on paper)

106

TRIQUARTERLY

The Black Raincoat I don't know: I wanted to bring the raincoat maybe

for the weather, if it changed. You got me. It was odd­ the way I laid it out and smoothed and buttoned it.

I folded the arms down, forward, in a V. This was my wife's coat, O.K.?

One of those black shiny plastic jobs.

I stepped back from the bed and stared at it.

I mean, I didn't really think I'd wear it if it rained.

It's like I said. I don't know what I thought.

I rolled it up tight like a sleeping bag and kept it on the seat beside me in the car.

Here we go. I drive straight there, over the Spuyten Duyvel to the Cloisters parking lot.

I walk right up to the ledge.

I've got the raincoat in both hands.

So there I am. I'm standing there.

I'm worried what comes next.

This was my first time, O.K.? I felt sick.

My hands were sweating, trembling, I felt dizzy in my stomach­ it was like-you're in an elevator and the cable snaps, and there I am pretending to admire the view.

I know. It's in the guidebooks. It's a four-star view.

This must be the first weekend in May, when you can still make out the bridge from up there, through the leaves. You see yachts on the river.

You can see the Palisades. Maybe that's your kind of thing, a view. Me, it made me feel like I would disappear. O.K.: I have to let myself unroll the raincoat on the top of this low wall.

I pick up one arm by the cuff and let it dangle off the far edge-forty feet straight down.

I take my handkerchief, I stuff it in her breast, you know, the pocket, neat, like, with three corners out.

Which clicked, and now I could undo the buttons. So: so far so good. I know there must be people watching me.

107

TRIQUARTERL Y

I don't need to look around. I know.

There're always people in that park. Young couples. All the time.

I'm thinking how I'll get my wife some red shoes with stiletto heels, and she can wear this coat, and them, and nothing else, or maybe one of those black panty girdles with the lace, the kind that's open in the crotch.

I'm thinking we can turn the lights on bright tonight­ I'll change the bulbsand she can stand there, backed up to the window, with the curtains wide, and I'll be sitting on the couch, where she can talk to me, and open up the coat, and tell me things.

I'll ask her I can ask her anything. I could too. Hell, I did.

We did all that. It was amazing. Really. She was great.

She thought I might be joking that first night.

It was a joking kind of thing. But right away she got the feel for it. And I was proud of her, you know, back then. It's funny, though: that afternoon, already, I could tell: it was the coat. It wasn't her.

I mean, I wasn't using it to make things good with her.

And I'm not saying I used her to make things good with it.

I couldn't let myself do that. But that first time, while I was getting those first thoughts, about how we could do it later, after I got home, I knew the part at home wasn't the part I needed.

I was leaning way out over the wall, holding the coat up by the shoulders. And I didn't feel sick now.

I was about to let it go. ...

...

108

TRIQUARTERLY

The Nature of the Beast Blunt skull of a jaguar, eye

reptilian, pupil tiny, radiating gold spikes hatched with blue and flecked with pigeon blood, scales iridescent, clouded with dried salt, between scales tufts of hair-maybe the larva crept into the rotten eaves, into the attic where it lived on mice which we had thought were eaten by the cat that ran away, only she did not run away.

And now the creature wallowed in our bed.

It breathed a tinge of milk and blood, while we stood at the doorway looking in.

The lips curved in a smile, thin, wine red, leathery, and thoughtful in a way sublime though not remotely human. Black wings buckled with vermilion flexed and stretched out over the scaly back. Afraid to run, we looked hard into the creature's eyes, its eyes, not each other's.

109

TRIQUARTERL Y

Ray I failed, and after I had failed I saw my failure failed to make what we call sense.

My person, meanwhile, claimed upkeep, and care, a room, food, drink, a tad of the ancient virtue (manhood, that would be, in Latin). I needed mana (in Maori, soul), and manito (in Ojibwa, god), but manhood (Sanskrit, manu) indicated a person, preferably male.

Nouns are a covert form of the question behind all questions, namely, Hunh? I'd say, the manatee could be my manitou, the manta ray, the leopard eagle ray, all radiant beings in the sea, in air, and earthbound, and in airless space dead bits of the exploded mash from inside stars.

Who am I whom I could be here to fail?

Michael Hallier, The Road to Double Drift (1988, pastel on paper)

110

TRIQUARTERLY

The Woman from Russia David Plante

Yvon Dubois had been in New York for just a year. He lived in Hell's Kitchen, which he called Clinton, maybe thinking that a different name

would make the place different. The view from his living room was of the street and a brick apartment building, all of the windows boarded up with plywood except one, open with dirty curtains hanging out. A row of garbage cans was lined up by the iron fence, their covers chained to the railings.

Sunday afternoon, two men and a woman were sitting on the stoop to the entrance of the apartment building. The woman's face was covered with sores. The men sat on either side of her, and none of them spoke, but looked out on the sunlit street, as Yvon, on the third floor, looked down on it through his dirty window. Stuck at the corners of the win­ dow were little squares of silver foil, like mounts holding a large picture in place, invisible except for dust and the faint, silvery outline made by the thin alarm wires that ran from corner to corner.

Yvon saw a girl come along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, her shadow preceding her. She stopped, raised her arms over her head, and, her legs folding beneath her, she fell into her shadow. For a moment, Yvon thought that he was in fact seeing a faded, grainy picture

that was mounted on the glass. The two men and the woman on the stoop stood; the woman emitted a cry, and the two men grabbed her arms

and pulled her into the building.

His scalp tightening, all the skin of his body tightening, Yvon ran to the door to his apartment and left it open as he rushed down the stairs to the street

door, and he left this open, the burglar-alarm system beep-

111

TRIQUARTERLY

ing, to run across the street to the girl. She was lying face down, her

long hair thrown forward over her head.

His impulse to raise her in his arms was stronger than what he should or should not do, and he kneeled by her and lifted her by her shoulders.

Her head hung, and her hair dragged against the cement as he lifted her and turned her over. Her tongue stuck out through her shattered jaw and teeth. Her eyes were open. The alarm went off in the building where Yvon lived.

When the police arrived, the woman in the building with plywood windows came out and yelled, "Police," but she stayed at a distance, watching, as two officers approached Yvon holding the girl.

As the ambulance drove off, one of the officers said the shooting was

of those crazy New York things, and the other told Yvon to go home and change his Tshirt, which had a circle of blood on it. The darkening

one

afternoon was hot, but Yvon was shivering.

Walking from his bedroom to the living room and back, again and again, he shivered, sometimes shuddered. When he looked down at the blood on his 'I-shirt, he had the momentary sense of having forgotten how the stain got there. He pulled the shirt off, and, not knowing what to do with it, he rolled it into a tight bundle and wedged it behind a cardboard carton at the back of the closet in his bedroom. Then he undressed and showered.

He was twenty-six, with the smooth, clear face of a boy who didn't yet shave.

Wet from his shower, he got into bed, and there he shivered, then

yawned, then shivered again, and again yawned. Though he had a date to meet a friend in a bar, he stayed in bed. The room went dark. Before dawn, he got up and went into the alcove kitchen to make coffee. His attention kept shifting to details he had never noticed before, such as the scroll design on the handle of a spoon.

Not he, but someone acting separately from him whose motions Yvon

followed, prepared to go to the college on Long Island where he taught French, and Yvon went with him. The streetlights were still lit in the reddish, hot dawn. On Fiftieth Street, not far from where the girl had been killed, a black man in an overcoat was throwing down pieces of bread to pigeons with one hand and holding a net ready with the other, and Yvon saw him swing the net down and trap one of the flapping pigeons. Just as the man was stuffing the pigeon under his overcoat, he

spotted Yvon, and he turned away. Yvon walked down Ninth Avenue to Penn Station.

112

TRIQUARTERLY

Below ground, big fans moved the hot air about a group of people he stood among, waiting for the platform number of his train to appear on the board. He was sweating in the heat. Everyone was sweating. A black woman walked among them, holding up in one hand a piece of card, board on which was written, in big capital letters, that she was deaf, and in the other hand a paper cup with change in it. Yvon stepped back

from her when she approached him and he lowered his head. Nearby, lying on the floor and wrapped in a quilt, was a white man with a red

beard. A stream of pee flowed out from beneath the quilt.

As he was early at the college, he found the door to the secretaries' office of the Modem Language Department shut. In his office, he sat on a

wooden swivel chair at his old-fashioned brown wooden desk. The

bookshelves were wooden, and the floor was bare wood planks. He sat still in the quiet. He thought of being in the town of Biddeford, in

Maine, a graduate student at the college there.

Back in his apartment, he found messages on his answering machine-one from the friend he had had a bar date with, and another from a couple, Bill and Simona Perril, to remind him that they expected him for dinner. He telephoned his friend, if he could call him a friend, to say that he had had a lot of work to

do, and he still did, and he told

himself that he wouldn't go to the Perrils. To talk about what had hap'

pened would make him feel sick.

His concentration was focused on a hair in the bottom of the tub, a smear on

the mirror, a dry bean on the counter in the kitchen alcove.

Showered and changed, whether or not he wanted to, he followed the person who now went ahead of him everywhere onto a crosstown bus to

the East Side. Through the high, wide window of the bus, Yvon saw, in the nighttime lights, a man lying face down on the sidewalk, one arm extended as if reaching.

In the outside heat, he carried his jacket and walked slowly so he wouldn't sweat. In the air-conditioned lobby of the apartment building, Yvon put on his jacket.

A young man wearing a starched white cotton jacket and a black bow tie circulated in the air-conditioned room with a silver tray of drinks.

With a gesture of his free hand held palm upward, he indicated the drink that had been asked for, and his face shone. The Perrils were art

collectors of nineteenth-century academic art, and their collection hung in gilded frames on the white walls.

Simona Perril looked over Yvon's shoulder and said to him, "Come with me, I'll introduce you to someone you'll like." She introduced him

113

TRIQUARTERLY to Nadia Turmanova.

Just approaching middle age, her square face, with blue was soft about the edges of her jaw and cheeks, but com­ pale eyes,

pletely clear. Her blond hair was short, almost as short as Yvon's, and, like Yvon's, hung in points over her ears. Her smile was slow but lasting.

She was Russian.

He asked, "You're really from Russia?"

"That surprises you?" She spoke English so well, it was as if, not she, but he had an accent.

"I never met a Russian before," he said.

"Do you think we're so different?"

"I do, yes."

"In what way?"

Yvon said, "I've always had such an idea of Russia."

But Nadia looked away from him when, in a hallway through a double

doorway at the end of the living room, a door opened and out ran a boy in pajamas, laughing. An Oriental girl, calling him and also laughing, ran after him, caugh: him, and brought him back into his room and shut the door.

Simona Perri I said, "He wants to ruin the party."

"Oh," Nadia said, "he can't want that."

Bill Perril said, "He doesn't have a choice."

Before Nadia could look back at Yvon, Simona said the guests should come with her to the dinner table, which was visible, at the far end of the hallway, set with candles in silver holders. Yvon was placed at a cor­

of the table, with Simona at the top and Nadia next to him.

When Simona and Bill and the six guests were seated, the boy, fol­

ner

lowed by his Oriental au pair, came running into the room, this time crying. He ran the length of the table, and, his arms out, he wobbled.

His mouth was open so his bottom teeth, his lower gums and his tongue

showed, and saliva dripped down his chin. Pushing her chair away from the table, Simona reached out for him and took him into her arms as he fell towards her. The au pair stood to the side. The boy howled in his mother's arms, howled so his chest heaved. His mother held him close

and, biting her lower lip, looked down the table at his father, who

pressed his lips together so they vanished.

Nadia, leaning a little past Yvon, said to Simona, "But of course he's upset, kept away from the party, kept away from his mother. Wouldn't anyone be upset and come crying?"

The boy passed the back of his hand from one cheek to the other under his nose and looked at Nadia. She reached her arms past Yvon

114

TRIQUARTERLY

and said, "Won't you come and sit on my lap!" The boy studied her, then, his lower lip out, nodded he would. Quickly, Yvon stood and lifted him from his mother's lap, his little body elongated, and placed him in the lap of Nadia. Then Yvon shoved his chair out from the table and

turned to the boy in Nadia's lap, and when Yvon put his hand on the boy's head to smooth his hair, he was shocked by an uncontrollable sob, and, withdrawing his hand, he tried to pretend he had coughed. Nadia held the boy more closely to herself and whispered, "You mustn't be sad-" The young man in the starched white jacket who had served the drinks was coming towards the table with a platter and Simona told the au pair to take the boy back to his room.

After dinner in the living room, Yvon, though he knew he should

speak with others, sat on the sofa with Nadia when she smiled at him and placed her hand on the cushion next to her.

She said, "You were going to tell me your idea of Russia."

"I was," he said, but he rested his head on the sofa back and said noth­

ing.

"You've forgotten?"

"No." Sitting next to her in the deep sofa, he felt not only that he was tired, but that he could fall asleep and she would let him. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he saw she was still smiling. He said, in a low, dry voice, "To me, Russia is a country that Russians feel so much for, if Russia is suffering, all Russians, even those who have food and warm apartments,

suffer with Russia."

"That is your idea of my country?"

Yvon rolled his head against the back of the sofa. "It is," he said.

Nadia touched his arm.

A man came to her and spoke to her in Russian, and Nadia spoke to

him in Russian. She said to Yvon, "I must go," and she left with the man.

Yvon also left.

In the humid heat outside, he took off his jacket. On Fifth Avenue,

the lights of cars, shining as if with the hard points of hurtling stars, fell, all at different speeds, down a wide sky track, on either side of which was a

diffused, pinkish glow. The headlights bounced up and down and

sometimes swerved from side to side.

The cracked, bulletproof shield between the passengers and the driver was

half open, and the driver's creased black neck was wet with sweat.

He drove through Central Park and down the West Side. At a red light,

Yvon saw, out on the sidewalk, sitting, knees up, against the wall of a

brick building, a man with long lank hair wearing a leather vest and no

115

TRIQUARTERLY

shirt. His toothless mouth was caved in. He was barefoot, and between his feet was a bottle in a brown paper bag. The brick wall behind him

sprayed with aerosol graffiti, and above him the illuminated dirty windows of the building were shut but for one, from which tom curtains

was

hung out.

In his bedroom, he undressed and lay on his bed, unmade. He turned

his stomach, his head twisted to the side, and closed his eyes. of New York came to him, images of a discarded shopping cart, a Images

over onto

burnt-out rubbish bin, a wrecked umbrella in a gutter, a battered mail­

box, a large cube of dirty ice melting on a sidewalk, an armchair burning in an alley, a doorway filled in with cemented cinder blocks.

Turning onto his back again, he placed his hands on his chest.

In his office at the college, he heard, through the wall, a woman pro­ fessor talking with a foreign student, who was having trouble getting on at the college. The professor asked, "What do you feel?"

Yvon heard the student say, quietly, "I am feeling despair."

The professor laughed. She said, "No, not despair. You see, you don't say, in English, 'I feel despair' for what you must feel. That's too strong." .

"What do I feel?"

"Perhaps what you feel is stress," the professor said.

"Stress ?"

"Perhaps you would say you are stressed about not doing very well here, stressed about the possibility of failing."

"But I would not say 'I am feeling despair'?"

"No."

The autumn remained hot, then, in one day, turned into cold winter, with a heavy dark sky that lasted weeks. One Saturday, pulling out the cardboard box from the closet in his bedroom to open it, Yvon saw, behind it, the rolled up 'Tshirt. He felt he was withdrawing from touch­

ing it at the same time he picked it up. It unrolled in his hands. The cir­ cle of blood was brown. He couldn't throw it away, and he also couldn't wash it. He folded it and put it in the bottom Saturday afternoon, he was supposed to go to a bar to meet a few

friends, but instead he went, as he liked going, to the minor art galleries on the Upper East Side to look at paintings, little landscapes and interi­ ors and still-Iifes of books and stamped envelopes and brass candlesticks.

To get into a gallery he had to ring a bell, and an attendant came and first looked at him through the glass before opening. Inside, the carpets were dove-gray, the paintings, in molded, gilt frames, tilted on pale

116

TRIQUARTERLY

walls, and there were a couple of delicate, white-and-gold chairs. At the back of the gallery Yvon found Nadia Turmanova studying a painting.

Seeing him, her blond, open face opened even more and brightened with pleasure, and she almost reached out to kiss his cheek, but then she

caught herself back.

She said, "I heard there was a picture here by Isaac Levitan, and I have a look at it before I go back to Russia tomorrow."

came to

"Tomorrow?" he asked.

They both studied a narrow landscape under snow, with a sunset behind birch trees.

When Yvon turned to Nadia, she said to him, smiling, "I'm glad to see you again."

In a hotel restaurant on Fifth Avenue, they had coffee by a window

through which they could see the last leaves of the trees in Central Park fall. Snow would surely fall from the heavy, dark sky.

"I remember your idea of Russia," Nadia said.

"My idea?"

"You don't remember telling me?"

Yvon laughed, a small, embarrassed laugh. "I remember," he said.

Leaning forward, Nadia reached across the round table and put her

hand on Yvon's hand resting beside his coffee cup.

Her hand closed about his, and he turned his over so their palms were pressing together. A moment later, he opened his fingers and withdrew his hand from hers, and she didn't move her open hand.

He called for the bill and sat back and didn't speak. But, leaving the hotel with her, he asked her if she had time for a walk in the park. She

appeared to be surprised, and, smiling, said yes, she did. As they walked along the paths, under the trees with bare black branches and one or two leaves, she picked up a leaf and held it out for him to see, dun-yel­ low.

On a bench along the path were three people, a woman with a man

either side of her, wrapped in clear plastic sheets through which their dirty clothes were visible. The woman, bareheaded, had long stringy on

hair and a bloody mouth and nose. The woman looked at Yvon and Nadia as if from a great distance, and then she closed her eyes and, let­

ting herself fall sideways, lay her head on the plastic covered lap of one of the men.

Snow began to fall. "Russia is descending on us," Nadia said.

They walked to the other side of the park and down Ninth Avenue.

On a comer of Fiftieth Street, where Yvon stopped, men were unloading

117

TRIQUARTERLY

sacks of potatoes onto the sidewalk.

Nadia said, "I must go. I am leaving very early tomorrow morning."

She smiled her slow, lasting smile.

Yvon hailed a taxi for her. The taxi swerved a little in the snow when it braked beside them. Yvon opened the door. The taxi, swerving, sped

off, and Yvon concentrated on the red rear lights and the illuminated license plate.

In his apartment, he stood at a window and watched the snow fall. It strange for an American, brought up so much in the awareness of Russia, to think of Russia as the other country. Even when he was a was not

boy in Maine, walking home after school across a snow-covered field, a birch woods beyond, and beyond the thin trees the purple-pink arctic sun

setting, he would think: This must be like Russia.

johan Louw, Untitled (1993, charcoal on paper)

118

TRIQUARTERLY

Five Poems Yaak Karsunke Translated from the German by Andre Lefevre and Marc Falkenberg

conversation with the stone

remember (he said when he met me) you are mortal you will become sand

(i replied) in which the wind

(was his answer) will obliterate your traces

Translated by Marc Falkenberg

119

TRIQUARTERLY

long afterwards something is better than nothing or too worse

little than nothing at all

good days we all could see farther than we could walk-

-on

the roadsigns point over there but won't budge from here

Translated by Andre Lefevere

-

}ohan Louw, Untitled (1993, acrylic on paper)

120

..

TRIQUARTERLY

light someone

gives him a light he sucks

the smoke deep into his lungs blows it out through his nose breathes between puffs how many he wonders should he count them his aunt (when he was little) used to hold the smoke in her mouth let it flow out again & suck it back in through her nose -he never learned how later he throws the butt away grinds it out on the ground thoughtful then they take him to the courtyard tie his hands behind the stake before the wall and the blindfold carefully across his eyes seven minutes

Translated by Andre Lefevere

121

TRIQUARTERLY

to the beloved dead

you were the land we always thought was it a utopic image of the times to be

although there was never enough time to visit you were by far the better Germany with great envy we praised every achievement of workers & farmers in their German state how should we come to terms with this bereavement did the proletariat deserve this fate?

from afar we really loved your beauty sparse & bittersweet somehow you made us whole now orphaned all walking behind your hearse what you died of we do not want to know the red carnation defiant in our buttonhole tells the world how sad we are to see you go

Translated by Andre Lefevere

122

TRIQUARTERLY

rather free. after Brecht when the house fell down

-they had been warned it was decaying long ago & many times & always in vaina

few of them still clung

to the odd beam even as

they fell

& praised the plans of the architects

they also praised the foundations before into their quickly spreading cracks they vanished in the end & from the depths still they were praising the roof built to protect them the collapse of which finally killed them

Translated by Andre Lefevere

David Koloane, Untitled III (1993, graphite on paper)

123

TRIQUARTERLY

Two Poems David Galler

For Billie

Somewhere near the end of her life, when certain Cognoscenti, who'd nothing better to do Than write how Joe Guy had mistreated her, which was their way Of saying she was through, Or how she slept with her boxer Mister, which Meant, I imagine, she wouldn't make a comeback, I sat down next to her on the one stool free at the White Rose,

Perhaps because, in my lack, I had some visionary intuition That some day Sperry Rand'd stand there, but Meanwhile, well, I could just laze like Lester Young behind her, The porkpie hat, eyes shut, Ecstatic tossed-off obbligato with horn

Held out high to the side the way he did.

I don't know what I thought. I do know, looking up from the tiles, I kept my feelings hid,

Watching her take me in through the smoke Of her cigarette, as though I weren't there Or were as much an accompanist as any, tossing her gin back, The gardenia in her hair.

124

TRIQUARTERLY

Male Trio For some months after her miscarriage, the one She said I caused, I'd leave her there in bed,

Sleeping, I guess, at about 1 A.M.; slip on my jeans, Light up, and quietly head One flight up to the roof. Under the stars

And hardly stirring breeze, I'd walk to the edge, Say Hi to the old man, who leaned with his binoculars Each night and didn't budge Until the light snapped on across the street, And the beautiful young woman quickly undressed, Lay on her back in bed, reading her book, knees up, thighs spread, While her young man pressed His face between them, till she lowered the book To watch him jerk off at the foot of their bed; Opened her arms to him, and snapped the light. Sometimes I held

The glasses up to his head, At his request, during this little scene,

With one hand (in the other, a cigarette), While he tried to relieve himself, muttering, Look at the poor bastard Dig for clams! I'd let

Myself wonder, not too hard, who got Him more excited, her or him, then say

Goodnight, head on back down, and quietly go in. Sometimes, Watching her as she lay

Flung on her belly in moonlight, legs somewhat Apart, motionless, wordless, I'd worm inside.

Then light up, sit by our window, smoke for an hour, and blink at the dark Pane on the other side.

125

TRIQUARTERLY

Two Poems Alicia Ostriker

Marie at Tea

You remember the extremes

Wittgenstein says There is no such thing as ordinary

Experience My heart aches, literally, and a drowsy So I wonder if I will die soon Sometimes I am so tired I want to You remember the extremes

I remember when his father died We took the train into London

Sat in his childhood And boyhood living room Listened to a Joan Baez record That we always listened to And when she began singing "The Great Silkie," a tragic Scottish folk song about fathers And sons, he threw His head in my lap and sobbed, I Never saw him weep again although I have sobbed and yowled countless times On his chest his lap his shoulder

126

TRIQUARTERLY

I remember when I gave birth The first time, thirty-six hours labor While he was sitting in the labor room Trying to help me breathe

Through my contractions Then in a comer reading an Obstetrics textbook where Normal childbirth occupied Fifty pages and possible complications Five hundred pages It frightened him so terribly he wanted To tell the obstetrician if he had a choice To let the baby go and save his wife I have always felt This to be touching I remember the lunch in the Red Lion When in tears I begged him To stop fooling around with the au pair girl And to my astonishment He refused. You remember The extreme things Not the normal Uneventful moments Years decades Screams laughter Food sex Betrayal conciliation A day at the races A night at the opera

Everything Then afterward you say: We're married this long Because we are both too stubborn To admit we made a mistake, Which is a good line And a workable disguise The truth is that you do not know the truth

127

TRIQUARTERLY

The kernel of death

Life wraps itself around Like chamois cloth Around a diamond Ice Cold at the center Precious no doubt because

Inhumanly old, that Is my idea of Love, of marriage, the Extreme

Randolph Hartzenberg, Artaudust (1991, mono­ type on paper)

128

TRIQUARTERLY

Brooklyn Twilight The dissident and his son Walk out into their first American snow Bundled up and holding hands On the comer in front of the bakery The man tries to pull His son around, playfully, but

The boy squeals breathlessly In a Russian accent, Papa, You're making me fallAnd softly, softly, the neon storefronts Come on, like a memory Of prison friendship Like a word of betrayal or rescue­ The length of Pitkin Avenue.

129

TRIQUARTERLY

Two Poems Sharon Kraus

The Scar

Afterwards, I looked out from inside my body, I saw the outline of it the shape of my life, too, my form puckering at the nipples, where I want to give forth, and joined into the bright humming comer where I most crave to be reachedof course that place wears its hood, I could see how I want things and pretend not to. He was lying heavily on me, resting that dense torso on mine, the wayan island leans into a hidden tectonic plate-clearly I am a piece of planet, damp and furrowed-and between me and him a portion of that primeval ooze substance which still remembers the taste of lightning crept, as a river trickles far from its delta. And then I felt my many-parted hair dividing, I felt my ribs open like a hand-it wasn't that I was crying, it was a huge rending of my structure: I want to be inside him. I almost hate that his body seals itself against me. And unseals me, was

130

TRIQUARTERLY

and blessedly fills me, as a plant is filled with its milky quick.

And then draws from me that core; then that slaying emptiness

again. But, later, this body of his will shred will molder; my own strong arms will crumple and dissolve.

So maybe what matters is that red crescent mark I left on his clavicle, by holding on too hard or trying to not cry out. I know it will fade, but also it won't fade, he'll live out his life with my sign deeply embedded in him, one of the many arcs that make up the body: the shape of lifting bounded at the beginningand the end-points. Maybe this is the true shape of the human life. And all the time he was saying, I've got you, I've got you, and I was wishing that were so.

Vuyile c. Voyiya, When Shadows Cough the Heart lumps III (1994, linocut on paper)

131

TRIQUARTERLY

Transgressor As though it were happening again, the new cat

plunges her fang into the succulent meat of my hand, she has to she has to she cannot get her tooth out of my palm, I think she must like it­ no, she accedes to the will of the species.

As though it might help her, to puncture the live, ly sinews of my hand. And yet, she flinches.

She thinks she will be hit. And this is when I see in the furred body the foot which is the tooth in my side, the leather, shod thorn that bites me in my midsection, bi­ sects me into body and body, soul gone out, side as the child goes forth from the two parents to live among others of the tribe, and where the soul was is a blank cleft, a furrow that joins two ribs where the foot in its tanned hide buries itself, but not buries, plants itself, because the foot is of the man who forgets, who kicks to lift the flesh up from its hiding place, his daughter has said no, she had not made the bed, and who is she to say no, is he not the father, what is he, what is he, he kicks to dis, cover what he is, his foot a solid thing, his leg a material force, the man who fears his daughter will erase him with her no, her will somehow what the boy he was wept under under the belt that tore the air with its grinning buckle

132

TRIQUARTERLY

and then its biting prong that ate the fabric of his body. Until he is rent cloth, and seed, and he wants to be re­ made, whole and so terrible the father's hand will drop the belt and tremble.

The foot that planted itself in me to find him took root in my rib cage, fallow soil of my gone soul dense with the haired stalks of my father's terror. I almost I almost I almost love what my father did to me, the minor beatings, the way the pains from the foot radiated through my bloodstream, and that the tooth of the pain, the branched plant of pain, takes its place in my body, which is the garden of unnamed things. Finds some relief there.

Jean Brundrit, Self-Portrait with Judy (1991, gelatin silverprint on fiber­ based paper)

133

TRIQUARTERLY

The Cat and the Clown Maura Stanton

-I lived the life of a cat until I was nineteen, Vicki said.

We were all sitting in a booth at the Dream Cafe telling stories about our

first lovers. She'd just been listening up until now, and it was her

tum.

We knew she had lots to tell. She had long, straight chestnut hair

and strong bones. Men turned their heads to look at her.

-Are you changing the subject? Laurie asked.

Vicki shook her head. I was just trying to remember what it was like before sex, she said. It was like being a cat.

-A spayed cat, somebody laughed.

-Yes, a house cat, Vicki said. Curled up most of the time. Stretching.

Looking out windows. Eating muffins.

-Muffins!

-Why not muffins? Olivia said. My cat used to love powdered-sugar doughnuts.

Martha wiped the foam of beer off her upper lip.

-My mother's cat-his name was Dirt-Boy-s-loved to lick the olives in martinis. He'd sit there waiting until she was done with her drink. He .

liked pretzels, too.

-Dirt,Boy? That was the name of your mother's cat? Vicki asked.

-Yeah, his nickname. He liked to roll in the dirt.

-My mother's cat was called Gingemut, Vicki said.

-We're getting way, way off the subject. Laurie looked at Vicki. Go on.

-Well, 1 was a cat and then 1 wasn't. I remember looking in the bath, room mirror. I'd turned into a big, tall girl with breasts, and hips, and a

134

TRIQUARTERLY scary mouth that wanted to be kissed all the time.

A fork clattered to the floor at another booth, and we all turned to watch a guy with grizzled hair reach down to pick it up. We'd seen him

around before, but didn't know his name.

The Dream Cafe was divided into three sections. Sometimes we sat up front in the family part, where minors were allowed. If we sat there, we drank cappuccino. Tonight we were in. the smoky bar section, and we were all drinking drafts. At night they showed foreign movies in the back room, and if we didn't feel like talking much we'd gather back there, where you could sip something strong if you liked, or not even

drink at all.

-How did it happen? Laurie leaned forward. She had short dark hair and rimless glasses. She was a law student, and felt an obligation to keep

things focused.

Vicki stretched back in her chair, half-closing her eyes.

-I think I could have gone on forever without an interior life if I

hadn't fallen in love with a clown. She laughed a little ruefully, and took a sip of her beer. You know, I wish I were still a cat.

-But you're not, Laurie said. Go on. And do you mean a real clown, or is

that just an adjective?

-Sort of both, Vicki said.

She squeezed her eyes together tightly, then opened them wide. Now

they seemed glazed and far away, as if they were no longer reflecting the four of us sitting around her. We had vanished.

She began.

-I've always hated clowns. I can't explain why. My older brother,

Johnny, hated them too, and he was always teasing me. We had this lit­ tle game that got more and more out of hand over the years. One Christmas when I was twelve and he was seventeen, I opened a package from him and there was this clown doll with orange hair. A few days

later, I snuck the clown doll into his bed, so he'd find it when he turned back the covers. Not long afterwards the clown doll showed up again in my bed with a love sonnet Scotch-taped to its tummy. Then I sent Johnny a clown birthday card; about a month later I found a clown col­ oring book in my book bag when I got to school.

-This sort of thing went on for years, even after he'd moved out to his own apartment. It's amazing how many clown products there are.

Johnny and I found them all, and gave them to each other on every pos­ sible occasion. Clown bubble bath, clown bubble gum, clown coffee mugs, wind-up clowns, clown barrettes, books about clowns, inflatable

135

TRIQUARTERLY

clowns-you name it. And then the other half of the game was to hide the horrible clown thing in the other's place, which was easier for Johnny, because I still lived at home and he could stop by when I wasn't there. It was a lot harder for me to find excuses to go over to his apart­ ment.

Once I managed to get the inflatable clown into the driver's seat

of his car when he was warming it up outside on a cold night. That was one

of my biggest triumphs.

-After I graduated from high school, I started going downtown to

the university. One of my friends threw a nineteenth birthday party for

She invited a bunch of our old friends who were back home for Christmas break. She also invited Johnny, because she had a crush on me.

him, but he refused when he heard it was going to be all girls.

-Of course I knew I was going to get a clown gift from Johnny. It was just a matter of what, and when. But I thought I was pretty safe at the party. All the presents seemed to be from my friends, though of course Johnny might have talked one of them into wrapping something up for him as a joke. But at least the cake was covered with blue and pink roses.

One year I'd had to cut slices out of a frosted clown face.

-Around nine o'clock, just as I was opening the last present, a big oversized T-shirt with a cat on the front-everyone knew I was crazy about cats-the doorbell rang.

-Some of the girls went to the door. The rest of us heard a squeal,

than peals of laughter.

-A huge, live clown walked into the room.

Vicki paused. The waitress was hovering over us. She was new at the Dream Cafe, and Vicki cleared her throat self-consciously.

-Anything else here? the waitress asked. She had a soft, educated voice. A long braid of dark hair fell down her back. She wore a lot of mascara and her lips were brightly painted. Her name tag said "Chloe."

-Another draft, Martha said.

-Make that two, Olivia added. Can you bring us some chips and cheese dip, too, please?

The new waitress moved off. Olivia was looking at her critically.

-Did you see those suede heels? She's not going to last long waitress­

ing in those.

-She looks sad, Martha said. Don't you think so?

-Just tired, Olivia said. I used to work here, you know. After a while, you get so tired you can't feel your body anymore.

Laurie made a brushing gesture in the air, as if to wipe away all our

remarks.

136

TRIQUARTERLY

-O.K., Vicki, you were talking about the clown at the door. What kind of clown? The hobo type like Emmett Kelly?

-No, no, the other kind. Vicki looked fierce. He had orange hair, a

sad white face with big red lips, a huge nose, a baggy polka-dot costume and oversized feet. He carried one of those squeeze horns, too, and a big handful of balloons.

-Ugh, said Martha. I don't like clowns either.

-So, anyway, he comes into the living room followed by my girlfriends, and they're just rolling with laughter. Of course they all know about Johnny and me. Then he pulls a child's slate out of one of his

pockets, and writes in chalk: Where's the birthday girl?

-Everyone laughed and pointed at me. I laughed too, but 1 was angry, and I could feel myself flushing. Johnny had really gone too far this time.

-The clown handed me the bouquet of balloons, then started playing "Happy Birthday" on a harmonica. My girlfriends started singing along.

Afterwards, everyone applauded. Then, before I realized what was hap­ pening, the clown leaned down-he was really tall-and gave me a kiss with those big red lips.

Martha made a face -On your cheek?

-On my lips, Vicki said. And do you know what I did?

She paused. The waitress had just returned with our beers and the bas­ ket of chips. We waited until she had set them in front of Martha and Olivia, and made a notation on the green bill underneath the napkin holder.

-What did you do? Olivia asked in a low voice as the waitress left.

-I cried. 1 broke down and cried.

-Jesus, Laurie said. And what about the poor clown?

-The clown just stepped back like he'd been slapped. Then he started apologizing in a normal man's voice. He'd been hired by my brother.

He was a semi-professional clown, and he was hired to play "Happy

Birthday" he said, give me a birthday kiss, and then entertain us all for hour with his clown act. Now he felt terrible.

-My girlfriends all took his side at once, and told me to lighten up.

So 1 did. I swallowed the lump in my throat, winked back my tears, and an

tried to act normal and cheerful. The clown did his clown act-he squeezed his horn, squirted water out of his buttonhole flower-all the stuff they do, and I sat there with the others, pretending I thought it was

137

TRIQUARTERLY

funny, and applauding when it was over. But I hated it. And when the clown left, he came over and took my hand in his big white glove. He pantomimed that he was sorry about the kiss. Then he squeezed my hand. He pulled out his slate again and wrote: I'll call you soon.

-And did he? Olivia held a chip in the air.

-Of course he did, Laurie laughed. That's the whole point of the story. Go on, Vicki.

-He called me for a date the next day. I said no. I was sure Johnny

had put him up to it anyway. Then one afternoon in January, when I got

home from class, there he was in the house having coffee with my moth­ er

and Johnny.

-In his clown costume? Olivia asked.

Vicki shook her head.

-He was wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn't even know who

he was at first. I just saw this hunk sitting on the couch across from my mother.

-So he was good-looking? Laurie nodded.

-Not just good-looking, Vicki said emphatically. He was gorgeous. A

dream guy-tall, wavy black hair, big shoulders. But he was awfully shy, and every time I looked at him he flushed to the eyeballs. It turned out that was why he'd gone to clown school.

-You mean you can go to clown school? Jesus, Martha said with a

shudder.

-Apparently a lot of people want to be clowns, Vicki said. And you learn how to be one. They teach you how to put on makeup, create your own character, and do clown-type things like ride tricycles and per­ form mime. Chris-that was his name-always wanted to be a clown. can

When he was a clown, he lost his inhibitions, he said. It was a kind of

therapy. Besides, he loved it.

-So you liked him, Laurie said.

Vicki nodded. My mother fixed me a cup of coffee, Johnny left, and I there talking with Chris. I loved the way he couldn't quite look at

sat

me, but when he did, his eyes were all came

shiny. Once Gingernut, our cat,

into the room and started to walk over the back of the couch, and

I saw Chris stiffen up. Cats made him anxious, he said, but when I told

him I loved cats, he started petting Gingernut, and after that, whenever he was over and the cat came into the room, he made a point of stroking her and calling her "pretty kitty" even though you could tell he didn't really like touching her.

138

TRIQUARTERLY

Vicki finished her beer, but kept staring down into her glass.

-I know I've made it all sound really funny so far, she said, but Chris

and I started going out, and it wasn't long before we were both in love.

He was a sweet guy, really shy and kind and nervous around people. But he was so handsome that other girls would practically tum around on the street to look at him. I have to admit I really liked that. I was nine' teen and I hadn't had many

boyfriends-and none I really felt anything

like love for. Chris was the first.

-What did he do when he wasn't a clown? Olivia asked.

-Oh, he was Johnny's age. He'd already finished college and worked

analyst. He made good money, and had a nice apartment. I used to tell my parents that I was staying over at Johnny's, but I'd really spend the night with Chris. I started taking the pill, and we made love.

At first I was uptight, but after a while I relaxed and it was wonderful.

Chris knew exactly where to touch me. Afterwards, I loved to curl up next to him and put my head on his chest and fall asleep while he was reading and gently stroking me. I felt so warm and safe. I started imagin­ ing what it would be like to live together, to get married. I began to lose as a systems

interest in school. It was hard to concentrate.

-But what about the clown business? Laurie asked.

-That was the thing, Vicki said. I just couldn't bear the fact that he was a

clown, and I refused to ever see him in his costume or go to any of

his clown things or even talk about it. Once I'd seen his polka-dot cos' tume

hanging in his closet with his suits, so I always made sure the clos­ I was hoping of course that he'd give it up,

et door was shut after that.

but he said it was important to him, it was his way of expressing him, self-it was like his art, he said. So on certain nights or especially

Saturday afternoons, I knew he was off being a clown, and I tried not to think about it.

-Did your brother keep teasing you? Martha asked.

-No, he really liked Chris-they'd met through some mutual friends, it turns out-and he either sensed how serious things were between

Chris and me or else Chris spoke to him about it and asked him to lay off. Anyway, the clown jokes stopped completely. It was just this hidden

thing Chris and I never talked about.

-Once, I remember, it was the summer after we'd met, we went to the amusement park together and were having a great time. We were both soaked from the flume ride. Chris had won a blue teddy bear on the ring' toss, and I was holding a big pink cloud of cotton candy in one hand, and Chris's hand in the other, when suddenly this clown in a

139

TRIQUARTERLY

patchwork costume, who was selling balloons, carne out of the crowd and started waving at us. Johnny waved back.

-It's Flim�Flam, he said. We met in clown school. She's a really good clown.

-He started pulling me over to meet her, but I broke away and ran over to the Ferris wheel. The line was short and I got on right away.

When I looked down from my car at the top, I saw Chris with the blue

bear under his arm talking to the clown.

-Don't you think you were going a little too far with the clown­ avoidance thing? Laurie asked, frowning.

-I know I was acting a little crazy, Vicki said, looking around for the waitress. I need another beer.

-There she is, Olivia said. She's talking to our man.

Olivia meant the man with the grizzled hair. He was about forty with

interesting planes to his face. We liked to speculate about him.

-You could have talked to his friend, Laurie insisted. Even if she was a

clown.

-Hey, I'm telling a story. Do I need to defend my actions, too? It's way in the past.

-I'm just trying to understand, Laurie said.

-Well, your reaction, Vicki sighed, was exactly Chris's reaction.

Olivia waved her hand over our heads.

-She's corning. Do you guys want another one, too?

-Sure, we all said.

-Five drafts, Olivia said. And another basket of chips.

The waitress smiled, and made a notation. She looked at Vicki. You know that guy over there, she said, he thinks he knows you from some­ where. He wanted to know if I knew you.

Vicki turned her head slightly to look. I've never seen him before, she said. She looked pleased.

-So Chris got mad at you, Laurie said as soon as the waitress left.

-He was upset, Vicki said. He didn't say much but he seemed moody the way horne. And when he got back to his place he confronted me.

He told me that he loved me, but being a clown was part of his life, and I had to accept it. Just as he'd accepted the fact that I liked cats, and he

on

didn't care for them much. And I had to admit it was true. He'd even

given me a pair of cat earrings.

-We worked out a compromise. He was free to talk about being a clown, to tell me about his experiences, but I didn't have to ever go

140

TRIQUARTERLY

with him or see him as a clown. And for a while that seemed to work.

But it was summer, and he had more and more chances to be a clown­

there were a lot of children's birthday parties in backyards, and he start­ ed getting invitations from church groups and hospitals. He was

apparently one of the best clowns in the city. Something about Chris's clown character appealed to everyone.

-Everyone who liked clowns to start with, Martha said.

-Right, Vicki agreed.

-Did he have a special clown name? Laurie asked.

-Joujou, Vicki said. That's French baby talk for toy.

-Joujou the clown. Martha made a face.

-1 had a summer job at a travel agency downtown, Vicki said, and one Saturday evening I was hanging around waiting for Chris. I knew he had to go to some clown thing that night, but he'd said he would pick me up at six and drop me at home so we could have a little time togeth­ er.

-The car pulled up and I ran out to get inside. But there was a clown at

the wheel. Chris was in his costume. No, I shouted. I slammed the

door shut, and ran down to the bus stop. Chris was following me in the but the bus got there first and 1 jumped on. 1 was panting and almost crying.

car,

-We were both angry at each other for about a week. 1 felt betrayed and he felt I was acting stupid-he even got Johnny to try to talk to me

about it, because he thought the game Johnny and 1 had been playing

for years had contributed to my hysteria about clowns. That's what he called it-hysteria.

-An ugly word. Martha nodded.

-He was so handsome, Vicki said. I loved playing softball with him in the park, or going bike riding, or out for pizza. Other girls always turned around to look at us, and 1 knew they were green with envy. But

the idea of going around in public with a clown, people turning their heads to look at us, laughing not just at him, but at me, too-it made me

cringe with shame.

-It sounds to me as if the problem was more with you than with him, Laurie said. Poor guy.

-Clowns are id figures, Martha said. I think they're creepy, too.

-Oh, for heavens sake, Olivia laughed. Don't take sides. Let her finish.

-Do you want to hear this or not? Vicki was looking directly at

Laurie.

141

TRIQUARTERLY

Laurie looked away. I'm listening.

-It was a bad week for me. I really loved Chris, and I missed him ter­

ribly. And it was clear that everyone else was on his side-my parents, Johnny, even my girlfriends when I told them about it. Finally we made up. Chris said he loved me, too, and was almost ready to give up being a clown. But he just couldn't, he said. If he killed [oujou, it would be like killing himself. We went for a long walk around the lake, and we agreed that gradually-that was the word, gradually-steps had to be taken to get me over my phobia.

-Phobia! Martha shook her head.

Vicki took a long sip of her beer, then leaned forward determinedly.

-The idea was that I had to get used to Chris in the clown costume, she said. He thought it would be best if the occasion were a natural one for costumes. So we hit on Halloween. Some friends of his always had a party on Halloween. He would go as [oujou, and I would wear a cos­

Everything would be natural and easy. The whole world would be in costume that night. tume,

too.

-I had a cat costume that I'd worn a few times before. It was pretty

simple-black leotards, a sweatshirt hood with ears sewn onto it, a swishy cape and a black mask, long whiskers that I taped to my upper lip, and a yam tail. I wore my tall black boots, too.

-All day I was nervous and dry-mouthed. Around six I got into my costume, and started pacing up and down the living room. My mother kept trying to calm me down, but she was sort of laughing at me, too.

Underneath, she thought I was being silly. Then Chris knocked on the door--or rather, [oujou.

-He came into the living room, and my mother, who had never seen him as a clown before, admired him profusely. He honked his hom and did a few clown tricks for her, while I just stood there holding my cape together with one hand.

-C'mon Vicki, he said, reaching out for my hand with his white glove. It's time to go. His natural voice seemed strange coming out of the clown face, and for the first time I really looked at [oujou. He had a white face with red tears painted under eyes that gave the illusion of being stitched with thread. His red clown lips were painted in a wide circle around his real lips, and his putty nose was huge and misshapen.

-I followed him out to the car without a word. He took his white

gloves off to drive, and the whole way over to the party I kept my eyes on

his human hands gripping the wheel. I wouldn't look at his face, but

I made a real effort to talk to him in a normal voice.

142

TRIQUARTERLY

-Everyone was in costume at the party. There were gypsies and mummies and rock stars and witches and the usual assortment of Disney

characters and spacemen, all dancing and drinking and talking together.

But everyone looked like they were in costume, that they were just

dressed up and pretending to be someone else, and it wasn't long before the monsters had taken off their hot rubber masks, and the gypsies had lifted their half-masks, and rolled them back across the tops of their heads. But [oujou didn't seem to be in costume. He seemed real, and every time we danced to a slow song I felt sweaty and cold when he held

against him.

-Once, when I went to the bathroom, I saw that my cat whiskers were missing. I didn't want to lose them, because they'd been pretty dif­ ficult to make, so I looked around for Chris. He was in the kitchen. me

-Chris, I said, was I wearing my whiskers when we danced the last time?

-Instead of answering, he began to squeeze his hom and gesture, and I realized that he hadn't said a word all night. He was [oujou. He was only speaking in mime, or writing on his slate. Everyone in the kitchen was laughing. He pretended to stroke me as if I were a real cat. Then he made comic snipping motions with his bulky white fingers. He pulled my whiskers out of one of his voluminous pockets, and handed them to me

with a flourish.

-I took the whiskers and turned to go. Suddenly I felt a tug. [oujou

had me by the tail. Everyone was laughing hysterically. He pulled me back into the kitchen by my tail, and then my tail came off in his hand.

-I let him have the tail. I'd been drinking wine, but now I went over

the table where the drinks were set out and fixed myself a gin and tonic, heavy on the gin. I got drunker than I've ever been in my life. to

-When the party ended, we went back to Chris's place. I was so drunk I was numb all over. I remember that he undressed me and started kissing me, but I was only semi, conscious more like a rag doll than a ,

person. Once I opened my eyes and was aware of this scary white face

with orange hair looming over me. [oujou was making love to me, not Chris. But I was too drunk to move or protest, and to escape I just closed my eyes.

-Thirst woke me up. It must have been near dawn, for the room was

bathed in pale light, and I could see Chris's naked body beside me. I half rose, still dizzy, with a splitting pain behind my eyes. I reached out to touch Chris's thigh, then my eye traveled up to the head buried in the pillow, and I saw the white cheek and the comer of the red lip. He was still wearing his face makeup, and I was suddenly filled with great ten,

143

TRIQUARTERLY

demess for him. I had what you might call a moment of insight. Joujou really was Chris. [oujou came from his interior life, and if I loved Chris, then of course I loved [oujou, too.

-Good for you, Laurie said. That's exactly right.

Vicki's hair had fallen partly across her eyes, shielding their expres­ sion.

-But my head felt funny, she said, and it wasn't just because of my hangover. I reached up and touched something strange, like a cap over forehead. My skin felt caked and stiff. own hair, then brushed my

my

-I got quickly out of bed. I almost stumbled on my cat costume, which was crumpled on the floor, but I grabbed the edge of the dresser in time. The bathroom tile felt like ice under my bare feet. 1 groped

around for the light switch.

-A clown face stared back at me from the big mirror over the double

sinks. It was a big, hideous white face with a huge grinning red mouth tears. A bright pink and eyes that were dripping painted

blue-ringed

curly up spot glowed on each cheek. My long had Chris there on the bed, applied orange wig. While 1 was passed out into a clown. turned me and to face, hair was tucked

make-up

into a

my

-I looked at the rest of my naked body, perfectly human and attrac­ made a tive. I might have screamed if my mouth hadn't been so dry. 1

croaking noise in my throat.

-My God, Laurie said.

and -I just stared at the clown. 1 thought 1 must be dreaming pinched myself. But I wasn't.

-What did you do? Martha whispered.

-I picked up Chris's can of shaving lotion and I sprayed it all over the mirror until I couldn't see the clown anymore. Then 1 flung the wig off and in the garbage and got in the shower. 1 scrubbed all the makeup for my bedroom washed it down the drain. Then 1 went back into the minus the tail and whiskers. Chris was still it and I

on, put and later in the day I called him and told him the left I house, sleeping.

I never wanted to see him again.

-Didn't you let him explain why he did it? Laurie asked.

I've Vicki smiled. Nope, she said. And that's the end of my story. Now cat costume,

really got to take a piss.

She yawned and stretched her arms above her head. Then she got up where the and on her way to the ladies' can she passed close to the table looked at each other and man with the grizzled hair was sitting. They smiled. We knew that soon she'd be telling us all about him.

144

TRIQUARTERLY

Three Poems Alane Rollings

In Touching Distance

How much another person means to me doesn't come in a comfortable quantity.

To have been in touching distance can create so acute a joy it makes all the senses oversensitive.

I'll shudder at strong colors, taste the acid in an apricot, then suddenly I swear I'm tasting everything in the refrigerator.

The nerves in my heels and toes start dancing; I think my feet will shake loose from my ankles; I understand the intimacy of happiness and pain.

A little torture can be pleasant.

Once, some boy poured a bucketful of sand on my head, and my ears and eyebrows hurt for his hairgrease, his knobby elbows, all of him.

I thought then I'd always want to be someone

dancing, laughing, clasping,

who tells her bones and muscles to go ahead and ache, who savors every swallow of blue sky as it slides down her throat and sends every form of love an open invitation to her flesh.

But temperaments are shaped by distress as well as pleasure.

And anyone who's overextended, who relies upon a billion unreliable nerve endings

145

TRIQUARTERL Y

develop strange conditions where sensations contradict.

Anyone who's suffered from extremity overload, mango poisoning, sunflower fever, or who's merely had too much sweetness sucked from her lips,

can

who's wept the water out of her and believed the grass has wept when she's walked on it, knows that when these torments stop, it's a form of bliss.

I've praised myself for all that I've avoided­ who are brusque with waiters, women who don't appreciate interior design, kids, pets, cocktail parties, public gatherings.

Then one night I gave a lift to someone standing at a 4,way stop sign in a sudden shower.

When I stopped again to drop him off, I saw his face, his blue-green jacket with the blue-green faded out, and said I'd take him someplace else, anyplace he wanted.

I knew I was in for it. men

This time, before it worked its way deeper, through the ribs, I felt love in my hands.

In the car's little atmosphere, molecules of uncondensed rain began to sting my palms, my wrists, the skin that webs my fingers.

I'd reached into a honeycomb, and the bees had come.

146

TRIQUARTERLY

The Substance of Evanescent Things Being a romantic is my calling: I ache for victories over time and space.

He said, "Come close. You'll soon be warm."

We kissed; I ran to the window panting;

he ran after me; my blood sang.

I became cooperative, ready to climb onto him and be transported.

He said, "Stand there. I want to stare at you."

He asked for everything, offering nothing but the fever patches on his cheeks, his chest with "Dominance" inscribed upon it.

I wanted something, too: to enfold him in that room where we never watched our language.

He confided in me with his arms and legs; I pressed my mouth against his neck, filled my head with his essence, watched the room go out of focus, let myself be lifted to a sweetness with a self-erasing quality that asked to be repeated. Was it a rush, a splurge, a charge? It left no evidence.

There were some facts: he had skin that blushed, a

touching hardness to his bones, a pink appendix scar,

attachment to his limbs, and a face which he'd written half his story.

There are facts formed by sensations: time is told by physical changes; happiness is made of pleasures as short-lived as happiness.

He was taking something from my breast, leaving nothing but impressions of his hands. But his hands had much to do with my formation. I began committing him to memory, preparing for a future when I'd sit and make him non-mysterious.

Time was up. an

on

147

TR1QUARTERLY

Sometimes I imagine him as he exists without me: he stands with an odd forward slant, as if the floor were sloping away.

I want him only with my eyes.

My hands, mouth, labyrinth aren't involved at all.

He may be halfway to Antigua living under an alias in a distant city.

Our romance is more mine than his, though it's from him I learned the weight of memory, time, sensation.

I'm through with fantasy.

The space he takes up in me is one fact no one can say I dreamed. or

\�!�

··T'

•

r:.;

",,-

'/ "

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile (1994, charcoal and pastel on paper)

148

TRIQUARTERLY

The Logic of Opposites The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning, "No."

-Rilke, "Autumn" Serbia is on my back and Jonestown was my failure.

And Birmingham, Hiroshima, Belfast: I'm implicated in the world's disgraces. Every mood is in me, every feeling.

Chain reactions blow up laboratories, cities.

When they take place in my head, they tip my balance.

Like someone plunging from a height, I fill with terror, with "What did I do wrong?" with "Make this not be happening," with "Let me out of life's vicious double-crossing trick."

I fall. I beg my bones, "Get ready not to break!"

I want to play touch football in your yard again.

Let's see what links events and moods and why I'm always drawn into catastrophe scenarios.

I miss happiness.

I want this graveyard spiral over with, the future rolling, clothes flying off again, no images of leg-bits and exposed bones. our

You don't think up and down have much in common.

You tell me one can only fall so far, can ascend to any height.

You send fragile capsules full of delicate machinery into space, sure you'll catch them later.

I'm thinking black holes, poisoned oceans, fallout from precision

bombs.

I want your labcoat, your van, your house, your crabapples, your Hefty bag of dead grass, dandelions, dog droppings.

Most of all I want to give you one more piece of my mind:

To meet your eyes is a suicidal leap.

Your ideas confuse me, mix and don't mix with my own.

I can't love, can't not love you, can't not blame, can't blame you, can't stand not to understand.

149

TRIQUARTERLY

There has to be another mood.

If I'm tough on life, it's just that I'm attached to it.

I never asked for the heights of happiness, but I'll pray for a miraculous recovery.

Maybe I can breathe differently, raise my head.

If my eyes weren't ashamed of the light falling into them, I could go running with your dogs again.

The sun has reached its nadir.

Now the days will gain upon the nights: it's the logic of things in opposition.

I want to fall in love with you again, lie down upon whatever has accumulated in soft heaps beneath us: goosedown, fallen leaves, failures, errors, and illusions.

Here are my hands, unsure of their chances, extended to you.

At times, things settle into place.

I reached for the sun at noon; a tenth of a watt lit gracefully upon my fingertip.

Let's study frailty: in our wine; girls who slip from ramps at beauty pageants; flies tiny intellectuals forced out of Shanghai's windows; Lebanon; South Africa; Sudan.

Computers gently parachute to Venus. I'm on my feet, noticing the shaft of light that's holding up the room.

150

TRIQUARTERLY

Poems of Horace Translated by David Ferry

111.26

To Venus Not long ago I was A not inglorious soldier

Experienced in the wars, But now upon this wall, Beside the effigy of Venus, goddess of love, Born from the glittering sea, I place these weapons and

This lyre no longer fit For use in the wars of love.

Here I offer the torch, The crowbar and the bow, Siege weapons used Against those closed-up doors. o goddess, queen of Cyprus Queen of sunny Memphis Far from the snows of Thrace, All I ask of you Is one punishing flick Of your uplifted lash To sting arrogant Chloe.

151 •

TRIQUARTERLY

1.34 Of the God's Power Sparing and but perfunctory in my devotions, Going my own way, wandering in my learned Well�considered folly, now I must turn about, And change my course, and sail for home and safety.

For Jupiter, whose thunder and whose

lightning Require the clouds, just now, this minute, drove

His thundering chariot and his thundering horses

Right straight across a perfectly cloudless sky, Unsettling streams and shaking the heavy ground All the way down to the River Styx, and out To the end of the earth, beyond Taenarus's seat Where Atlas upon his shoulders holds up the sky.

Oh yes, the god has power. Oh yes, he can Raise up the low and bring the high things down.

Fortune's wings flutter as the choice is made.

Gail Catlin, A Rainy Day at the Farm (1989, pencil and charcoal on paper)

152

TRIQUARTERLY

Twenty Poems William Heyen

Breasts

A dozen Indian women appeared to Custer in a dream in his tent he's cross' legged in buckskin it's winter the women had snow on their backs & hair each

laid a cradleboard baby on his lap his lap filled with children the children seemed made of beadwork & horn the children were silent the children were vortices of cold along his thighs belly chest & the women were touching him with warming fingers & saying was

breasts our breasts our breasts our breasts contain milk we cannot feed our children there are no berries the people are starving there is no meat the people are crowding the scaffolds there is

our no

wood the living are cold he stood up with so much to do in his tent an antelope a skunk to stuff & specimens to pack for the eastern zoos the women could fit in the next wagon of wooden boxes the children no

...

153

TRIQUARTERL Y

Government Protection After the promised protection at Fort Robinson, Doctor McGillycuddy, friendly spirit, said, "I wedged my way in between the guards and found Crazy Horse on his back,

grinding his teeth and frothing at the mouth, blood trickling from a bayonet wound above the hip, and the pulse weak and missing beats, and I saw that he was done for."

...

At five o'clock that afternoon, the doctor administered a shot of morphine.

A kerosene lamp smoked beside them ....

When the first dose of morphine wore down, the Indian received another, & now the buffalo wash themselves in moaning wallows on the plains, & all the women he has known fly above him in their blankets, holding

suckling children, & air is arrow, arrow everywhere, the moon dimming & bursting, & thwack, the flag, unlike an eagle's wing above the fort, thwacks in wind, each time like an enlightenment.

154

TRIQUARTERLY

An Officer's Story Custer cut a cutting from a dead Indian & grafted it onto himself. "Look," he said, standing there with his arms wide as though that extra slip of carrion attached to his chest were an orchard.

But the graft did take. We could see it swell, day by day during the campaign until he had to keep his shirt unbuttoned.

The tree, or whatever it was, branched out up under his chin, & he was proud of every bud

but wondered aloud how long this could continue. Then, one morning, he woke with shadows in those limbs, hundreds of cocoons, so went to work with shears, reverting to his old self again.

155

TRIQUARTERLY

Duration Sources believe that Crazy Horse was stabbed twice

by a scared private whose first name was William, but in any case,

stabbed twice. The killer thrust his bayonet into the captive's side, with, drew it, took aim & plunged it into

Crazy Horse again, this time deep into his kidneys

....

In the space between the two strikes the victim tried to twist loose from constraining arms but couldn't but

he'd by then with, drawn except from pain except from regret but who could have known the motion would slow

156

TRIQUARTERLY to this slow?-

the thrust, then duration during which he realized again the actions of his life when he threw a berry at Black

Buffalo Woman when they were children when he killed his first enemy the Omaha woman

whose bloodthick hair & scalp sickened him when his people elected him the holy shirt when it was taken back when the herds beat in his chest during the night's hunt, & more, & countless more, then the second piercing of the government blade, then

the long slow undesired

agonistic falling into legend.

157

TRIQUARTERLY

Before The snow has melted. Under a warm spring sun, the buffalo crop grass without looking up, their small eyes half,hidden in hair.

Prairie is again remembering flowers.

Bees in the flowers. Colors in flowers.

The herd eats its way slowly across prairie,

here to see them. This is before, this is before the human hunters, tens of thousands of years before, when,

no one

directly overhead, clouds gather, & rains come, again, to prairie, as they had the day before, & will the next, sun now

buffalo graze in rain, tasting the wet grass, rain running from their fur in rivulets as they crop the new grass, as

flowers bead with rain & bees bumble among petals that tremble in prairie shower. No one as

will see them here for tens of thousands of years, or flowers budding & blooming in rain as

prairie continues its reawakening.

158

TRIQUARTERLY

The Herd Once in the later years when buffalo were few, in the years when Crazy Horse often

rode out across the land alone, Oglala scouts found a small herd, & there,

downwind on a knoll near the grazing animals, saw their Strange One resting, gun across his knees.

For a long time, they watched him, believing he'd dreamt the herd into being.

159

TR1QUARTERL Y

The Tooth After the beheading, they found the one gold tooth in Custer's mouth.

They propped open his jaws, cut away the upper

lip,

& looked into the tooth in firelight.

It was like a small television

tuned to the news, & a white man in a white suit was already stepping down onto the moon.

160

TRIQUARTERLY

Visitor (April 1978) In the Plains Indian Museum in Wyoming, I stared into the eyes of a stuffed buffalo, first one & then the other. I did not see in one Custer firing an Indian village; I did not see in the other Tasunke Witko, dismounted, firing into the forehead of a soldier. In each brown & black glass eye, I saw myself & exhibits around me, weapons & costumes in cases in plains sunlight flooding in from a skylight. The beast, massive on its pedestal, did not countenance history or sentiment but with man-made eyes reflected me back past exhibits to exit.

161

TR1QUARTERLY

The Bear After midnight after emptying the bearskull & stuffing it with dry grass to dry it out, Custer slept for his usual four hours.

This happened only once, but happened: in dream time, below the moon, he padded in the body of the bear, ravenous, confused, carrying his own thoughts, in English, with him; nevertheless, willow tangle & water shimmered, he heard night sounds of the winged ones, he moved through fern & canebreak that could as well, he said to himself, have been Virginia wilderness as here, where he was, if he was here, on plains where the Sioux slept with himself, the bear, in their vision. He had to escape or outrun their dreaming him, he knew, or he'd never waken.

He shook himself dark with green odors, his claws clawed his face, he was crazed here, & then, at last, he left the woods & found the two rails gleaming across the land to the Indian village where he would surely find, & kill, the dreamers.

162

TRIQUARTERLY

Placefulness Discipline in his camp, quiet, & sleep, but far past midnight Custer woke to singing.

It was Little Robe, sitting against a tree, oblivious to others, chanting an Indian melody

....

Later, pressed to explain, he said he'd been apart from his lodge for too long, & the thought of soon returning home had filled his heart with gladness that could only be expressed in song.

163

TRIQUARTERLY

Repossession Crazy Horse spotted Custer carrying two sacks of stars over his back. Some were sticking through canvas & bursting with keen sacral light. Bluecoat was bent over with so much weight.

"Yo, dude, wassup?" Crazy Horse asked in his own lingo, pulling an arrow from his quiver.

"I claim these for my children, and theirs," said Custer.

The arrow of Crazy Horse's thought, & the arrow from his quiver-

each was faster than the other. Despite summer, Crazy Horse stood over Custer like a hailstorm.

He would have liked to melt & explain, but his own daughter was dead, & he was out of time.

164

TRIQUARTERLY

Scenarios Custer sought out Crazy Horse.

The two sat under a willow near the river, facing one another. I wanted to tell you, said Custer, that my employer is downsizing, like all the rest. They've offered me a buy-out, and I've agreed to take it. This is the right time, Libbie and I will settle in the Capital.

There's a chance 1 could become the Great Father, the President, and if I do, I'll send for you ....

The tree lost its leaves twice, thrice.

Crazy Horse didn't want to ask, & didn't.

If Long Hair said anything more, the Indian didn't hear but stared into the white man's forehead until, in the brainfolds, he saw cobblestones & people, whole cities of stone buildings, & people.

One white lifted his tall black hat.

An eagle flew out & hovered. In one of its eyes, the herds receded, one calf bawling at the rear.

165

TRIQUARTERLY

Grasshopper Sperm Custer saw the whole bottom of a stream covered with grasshoppers for miles.

He took off his boots & waded in, just to walk on the wingless myriad, to feel them between his toes.

A pod of whales would find their surfeit here, he wondered, but then, at the instant of ejaculation, became afraid of the power of nature.

166

TRIQUARTERL Y

Sorrow Village Custer salvaged a medicine bundle from a burning village.

In time, he & Libbie, in the firelight of his study, unwrapped this artifact & found, among claws & feathers & bits of bone & beads & herbs & strips of fragrant leather,

red stone pipe, a running buffalo carved into its bowl but as they held the pipe, its buffalo stopped, looked back at them, dropped its head, then dropped to its knees & disappeared, disappeared completely.

a

...

167

TRIQUARTERLY

Texas Gulliver Malaria The General digs into an ant-mound, anxious to learn its mechanism.

Mazes of tunnels & chambers, patches of fibrous white & yellow mold-he can not make sense of it, & can not find the queen, if there is one, not even

among

thousands of eggs, some of which, translucent specks, are being hauled over his boots.

The mound level, Custer continues digging, to no avail. You get down into something, & nothing's there, he thinks, & thinks the tribe of pismires awesome as they rearrange their ranks.

A few weeks before, a column had ransacked a linen twist of quinine. Now, again, he dizzies as they seethe around him.

168

TR1QUARTERL Y

The Grave Crazy Horse dreamed himself into the Black Hills to dig for turnips, he thought, but out from mud emerged Long Hair, & sat there spitting gold,

cleared. p-tooey, until his throat & mouth continued but no Horse digging. mind, paid Crazy beetles with The other's face filled winged who formed a mouth to say, "Dig it deep enough for both of us." All turnips were gold, & inedible.

Then there was only himself, on a faraway scaffold.

169

TRIQUARTERL Y

Mushroom River Crazy Horse picked one the size of his fist.

Underneath, gills, as in the heads of fish.

He knew it could hear him. He said, I am going to eat you, & did, & later, as he slept, he saw himself walking where friends he had not seen since childhood welcomed him. To be heard, they did not need to open their mouths. Their campfire

flowing round on itself, filled with huge silver buffalo with red eyes. There was nothing to do here but stare into the current, & forget, & remember. was a river

170

TRIQUARTERLY

Blood & Sage For days, the smell of rotting blood mixes slightly with sage & wafts over the landscape.

The mice smell it, & the coyotes, & the snakes with their tongues, & even, in their own ways, the grasses, & even, in their own ways, the rocks,

& even, in their own ways, the dead.

Some of the living smell it while awake,

while sleeping. The dead smell it day & night, & are restless, Custer among them. Crazy Horse smells it some

while he hunts during a dream: the buffalo smell it, & retreat in front of him, sickened: he abandons the hunt, but a hot wind blows the blood & the sage into his village until his people understand, & move on.

171

TRIQUARTERLY

Flame Custer saw a maybe willow

spangled in yellow as though on fire.

As he rode closer, it kept wavering in flames.

Closer, & bits of flame detached & reattached, whole branches of flame.

Close enough, & the tree seethed with butterflies, aswarm, like bees, in the stirrings of first spring.

He reached his upturned palm into them, gently,

& they soon covered his arm, & would have taken him, completely, but he brushed them back, laughing. This was not

filled with butterflies, butterflies in a tree, but

a tree or

butterfly, butterfly tree, one creature,

a tree a

he realized, for just an instaht of flame, as you do, as I do, but not with the constancy that could, possibly, still save the world.

172

TRIQUARTERLY

The Steadying Where we are, & at what speed: I know we're spinning 14 miles a minute around the axis of the earth; 1080 miles a minute in orbit around our sun; 700 miles a second straight out toward the constellation Virgo; & now Custer is charging maybe a half, mile a minute into an Indian village; but from many eyewitnesses we know Crazy Horse dismounted to fire his gun.

He steadied himself, & did not waste ammo.

Where we are, & at what speed: I saw on display at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., the black boots & top hat Lincoln wore that night; at Auschwitz, a pile of thousands of eyeglasses also behind glass to slow their disintegration; in a Toronto museum, ancient mummies, ditto; in Waikiki, some glittering duds once worn by Elvis; but from many eyewitnesses we know Crazy Horse dismounted to fire his gun.

He steadied himself, & did not waste ammo.

Where we are, & at what speed: I remember, in Montana, a tumbleweed striking the back of my knees; when I was a boy, a flock of blackbirds & starlings beating past Nesconset for the whole morning; at Westminster Abbey, in the stone comer, a poet's rose for just a second drinking a streak of snow; cattlecars of redwoods vowelling to Gotham in my dream; but from many eyewitnesses we know Crazy Horse dismounted to fire his gun.

He steadied himself, & did not waste ammo.

173

Deborah Bell, AU Flesh Is Grass (1991, lithograph on paper)

TRIQUARTERLY

Wild Indians & Other Creatures Adrian C. Louis

How Coyote Got Killed and Resurrected by His Groin High plains. The last Sunday of March. Brilliant sunshine at eight in the morning. The unseasonable fifty-five-degree temperature made Coyote feel slightly sexual. And he had woken up with the remnants of a

dream in which he was in bed with a strange woman. The warmth of

the dream lingered with him, probably because his wife had been gone all month visiting relatives in California.

He raised his lean frame onto his hind legs, put on a windbreaker, and went out to

rake the yard where snowdrifts had melted. After a half

hour, he had a huge collection of dead leaves, cigarette butts, dog poop, and bleached-out beef bones. Beads of sweat popped off his snout.

Clean, nonalcoholic sweat.

For four years running, there had been no beer cans or wine bottles in his yard. Four years since the day he quit the sauce, the day he began to

daylight at the end of the slimy tunnel that had been his life. It had been almost two years since he and his mate Wanda left the reservation see

and moved twelve miles south across the state line to Heinzville,

Nebraska.

This cowturd town of twelve hundred souls was roughly one-third Indian and two-thirds white. Of those white two-thirds, one third had an

Indian in-law somewhere and the remaining third were just corpu­

lent, cow-copulating rednecks.

Bending down to scoop the pile into a square-point shovel, Coyote saw the town dogcatchers setting a wire trap across the street in a corner of the elementary school playground. The two cowboy-clad women were redneck-decked from Stetsons to dung-heeled Tony Lamas.

Young, tall, lean, and sinewy, they sneered at Coyote as he continued 175

TRIQUARTERLY scrape up the dog poop. His first thought was what it would take to make them tumble to the dust in a fight. He strategized. Maybe bite one to

on

the butt and grab her partner's ear and rip it off. Then go to work on

them with his claws while they're howling. Coyote began to drool at the

thought of wrestling the two female dogcatchers.

They were laughing to each other when Coyote saw one take a small bottle of liquid and dab a few drops inside the cage. Coyote pondered.

Maybe it was some sex scent that made free-roaming dogs want to enter the cage. Maybe it was imitation sirloin perfume. More likely, it was the distilled souls of the dogcatchers themselves, he decided.

Here they were on land stolen from the Indians and yet these humans continued to torment Indians and dogs. The only dogs in the dog pound were wild Indian dogs. But these two city employees were fine-looking white women and no doubt, many Indian dogs drooled about the prospect of being caught by these dogcatchers.

When the dogcatchers caught the stray dog of a white citizen, they called the citizen up and asked him to please come get his dog. With Indian dogs, it was a twenty-five-dollar fine and the fine increased with any backtalk or show of hostility by either the dog or its master.

The sheriff's department had a similar policy with humans. In the park last year, the nephew of the district judge clubbed some Indian winos in the head and rolled them. He got away with it. In Borden, another cow turd town eleven miles east, a cop shot an Indian in the

back the year before and got away with it. And cattle ranchers were always shooting innocent coyotes that had meandered out past the city limits. Of course, it went without saying that they too got away with it.

That's just how things were. That's why Coyote looked at the dog­

catchers as opponents in a cosmic struggle of good versus evil, or maybe madness versus sanity. Last year they captured Gizzard, his Pekinese attack dog, for no reason. Because of such lunacy, Coyote thought the whole white world was deranged. And wherever he went, he always had their faint odor of insanity clinging to his hide. That was because when­ Coyote encountered lunacy, he wrestled it to the ground. Bits of

ever

craziness clung to him like cowpies hugging the sneakers of jogging hay­

seeds. That's just how things were.

Coyote had gone down to the sheriff's office and demanded release of Gizzard hours after they took him. The dogcatchers weren't under their

command, the sheriff's deputies smugly told him.

"Well, then who?" Coyote asked, feigning anger. He could not control his desire for the dogcatchers.

176

TRIQUARTERLY

"The mayor," they said. "And besides," they added, "them girls was

only following orders for Christ's sake."

Stunned by their arrogant stupidity, Coyote could only think of the ongoing massacre of his own fine-furred race. And dogs, well, dogs were his first cousins. Eventually, though, he had gotten his Pekinese freed.

And as one of the dogcatchers handed his dog back, she had made a point of staring point-blank at Coyote's groin.

Now they were messing with him again. And he was excited again.

When the dogcatchers were done setting their trap, they cruised off in a battered GMC pickup with a faded city decal. Three times in the next ten minutes, they circled his block. On their third pass, Coyote hopped his white picket fence and got out to stop their truck.

Every night his old lady Wanda jogged past where they'd put that trap, he told them. They remained impassive.

"My old lady gets caught in there, I'm gonna come looking for you, both of you illiterate yahoos. I know where you babes live," he said.

"Well, by all means, please do come on by," one said.

"Parlez�vous menage a trois?" said the other.

They glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, smiled, and then drove off, peeling rubber. Five minutes later, two sheriff's squad cars screeched to a stop in front of his yard. Four cops grabbed Coyote and threw him to the ground.

His face was pressed against the pile of dog poop and bones. He didn't move,

thinking of Rodney King and knowing firsthand what a police

baton felt like when it kissed the fur. They cuffed him and dragged him

squad car. They hauled him to the county jail and charged him with threatening two peace officers. The dogcatchers had caught an angry Coyote this time.

Coyote was placed in a small cell at the end of a short hallway. The female jailer could monitor him in a round mirror suspended outside his cell. The jailer was hefty, flarne-haired, and she had big milk-cow eyes that fluttered behind some archaic, black-framed glasses. She had Coyote locked in a stare-down.

Coyote flopped on the metal cot, spat at the wall, and gently caressed his private parts, wondering if she might get off watching him do that.

He thought of the two dogcatchers and his groin began to grow. In an instant, his shiny red tallywhacker was out and he was ready to squirt.

He spasmed, saw stars, and howled at the top of his lungs: to a

"Amroooooo!" His action was done more out of contempt than sexuali­ ty. He was disgusted with the entire system.

177

TRIQUARTERLY

"Now, let's have a cigarette, liebchen," he said as he zipped up his pants and stared straight into her eyes.

The bulky Teutonic jailer walked up to his cell and smiled. She blew him a kiss and then shot him squarely in the heart with a .357 magnum.

Coyote ricocheted off the walls and then crumpled into bloody stillness.

He was dead, stiff as a board when hours later a city janitor tossed him in the back of the pickup and drove him to the boondocks where he quite unceremoniously dumped Coyote's carcass.

Three days later on Easter Sunday, Old Bear went looking for a ciga­ rette to

borrow and stumbled upon a pile of fur and bones stinking up

the high-plains sand. He looked closely and saw it was his old friend

Coyote.

"Yo, Cootie Coyote, dude, are you dead or just trying to fake me out?"

Old Bear asked.

"For sure I'm dead, ayyy," Coyote said in a barely audible whisper.

"Whaddya think. I'm down here doing aerobics or maybe debating Nietzsche with the grains of sand?"

"Got a cigarette I can borrow?" Old Bear asked as he took off his seed cap and wiped the sweat from the inside band.

"That nasty crud is what killed me. That and a bullet from a federale's

.357 magnum," Coyote said and then laughed and pointed his finger at his friend. "If you don't quit smoking, Bear, then you'll be a dead bag of bones too."

"Awww," Old Bear said and scooped up what was left of Coyote in his arms

and carried him back to his cave. He sat Coyote down in an easy

chair and asked him if he wanted some leftover watermelon soup.

"Watermelon soup? Yuck and yuckity," said Coyote.

"Well, howzabout some hot macaroni casserole? I'll make it the way Unci taught me. First you boil the macaroni, then put it in a casserole

dish and add a can of tomatoes, chopped-up onion, and some shredded commodity cheese. Then you cover it with bread crumbs and bake it good. We gotta put some meat on your bones. Make you able to get a

moon-howling boner again."

"What for?" Coyote asked. "I'm dead. Deader than a doornail. Deader than a dinosaur fossil. Deader than a Mother Superior's cobwebbed bloomers. I'm old and dead and, what's worse, I got some bad news for you, my friend."

"So lay it on me," Old Bear said and went about making his casserole

anyway.

178

TRIQUARTERLY

"You're dead too, you simple bugmuggerl" "

"Ayyyyyy. Always the trickster "Look in the mirror, Bear," Coyote laughed. "Look into your eyes.

You'll see you're no longer there. Go ahead. Go look. I ain't bullshel­ lacking you. I mean look at what's going on. We'd have to be in some ...

nether world for us to even communicate."

"You're so full of crap," Old Bear said. "We've been friends for years.

And you've been a bullshitter as long as I can remember."

Nevertheless, Old Bear walked to the bathroom and stared at his eyes in the mirror. He winked and blinked and stared again. Sure enough.

Coyote was right. He was not inside his eyes. He splashed some cold water on his face and looked again. He was not inside his eyes. Maybe he was as dead as Coyote. He walked back to the kitchen where Coyote was up and messing with the casserole, pouring Tabasco sauce all over it.

Coyote winked.

"You always did have a thing for Mexican food," Old Bear said and put the casserole back in the oven.

"Well?" Coyote said.

"Well, what?"

"Tell me whatcha seen," Coyote laughed. "It ain't the end of the world. Being dead ain't that bad, my man. Ninety percent of these humans walking around are dead and don't know it. For reals!"

"No more bedroom Olympics, no more hide the salami," said Old Bear and then sat down on his haunches and began to bawl.

"Yo, Bear. You ain't had none in more than ten years anyways. So what are you crying about?"

"At least I could fantasize and pound my pudendum," said Old Bear as

he reached for a Kleenex.

"Don't do no good to fantasize," said Coyote. "It was my lust for them

dogcatchers that got me into trouble in the first place. But, if it'll make you feel better, we can add a can of tuna fish to the casserole."

"Ennut!" said Old Bear. "Now you're talking. Here, give me your hide and I'll get you straightened out."

Coyote handed him his hide and Old Bear put it in his washer, then his dryer, and finally he ironed the old fur.

"Try this on for size," he told his old friend. Coyote put his hide on and didn't look half bad, almost spiffy. Bear brushed his own hair and splashed some Aqua Velva on his hairy face. He handed the bottle of aftershave to his buddy. Coyote gargled with it and then swallowed the turquoise liquid.

179

TRIQUARTERLY

"We're going to tell each other that we are alive and, if we say so, we must

be. To prove it, we're going out," Old Bear said and winked slyly.

"Yessiree, we're outta here."

"Out where?" Coyote asked.

"I know a couple old blond English teachers who work over at the

Indian school. They always looked dead to me and besides, it's a holiday.

They ain't working. We're gonna go see if they can still huff and puff and kiss fur good."

"I sure hope you got some conundrums," Coyote said.

"Always," said Old Bear. "That's all I'd need now is to catch me some of that human-plague virus. End up wired to tubes and machines, bab­

bling death songs and looking like a skeleton."

"No shit, Sherlock, I'm with you on that, even if we are possibly dead

anyways," Coyote said as he and his friend diddlybopped out of the cave and across the chilled sands towards the Indian school.

"Human nookv ain't half bad in a pinch," Old Bear said.

"It's O.K., I guess, but it's nothing compared to a badger or a skunk.

And ooo-la-la, man, them funky skunks can get you going," Coyote said and made a gesture pinching his nose. Coyote never mentioned sex with female coyotes in front of Old Bear, and Old Bear never discussed sex

with female bears in front of Coyote.

"I sure could use a cigarette," Old Bear said.

"Me too, brother," Coyote answered. They were walking in a sweet,

blue haze. The early spring sun was limp and refused to evaporate the Aqua Velva that they'd splashed on themselves.

"My casserole!" Old Bear screamed all of a sudden. "I left the damn It'll burn down my cave."

"Geez-Louise, are you getting Alzheimer's or what?" Coyote asked.

oven on.

"I really gotta go back," Old Bear said and turned.

"Sheeeeez," Coyote said and fell to the sand, a heap of fur and stinking bones.

"Sorry," Old Bear said. "Rest your bones just a while."

"Just let me be dead in peace," Coyote whined.

"Don't be so dramatic, just give me twenty minutes," Old Bear laughed. "Then I'll be back soon and we'll both get us a piece."

Old Bear got back to his cave and the air was thick with the delicious smell of casserole. He couldn't resist it. He ate the whole thing and then fell asleep. He dreamed a dream so wondrous, so fantastic and beautiful that it does not bear repeating because no humans except a few old-time Indians would ever understand it. It was a dream of green beauty and

180

TRIQUARTERLY

flowers when humans and animals were the best of friends.

Then he awoke and went to help his dead friend Coyote get laid. And they did. And it was O.K. Not great, just O.K. Coyote went home and finished the yard-raking he had started two weeks earlier. The very same dogcatchers were cruising their city truck around his block. Coyote went inside and closed the

blinds on all his windows. He peeked out at

them and when he was sure they were gone, he went back outside and

continued raking. Those white girls sure were pretty. Pretty and pretty damn dangerous.

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile (1994, charcoal and pastel on paper)

181

TRIQUARTERLY

Why Coyote Knotted His Whanger Five months later, towards the end of summer, Coyote heard a noise and

peered up over the sagebrush where he had been snoozing in the wilting heat ever since Wanda kicked him out of the house for flirting with the dogcatchers. He saw the last cowboy and the last cowboy was not on television or on the silver screen.

The last cowboy looked like he could have been a clone of Ross Perot, but he had a red neck and was clearly a dried, out drunk. He was stand,

ing on a deserted highway winding wearily through the Nebraska sand, hills. The oven of late summer was cooking the last cowboy's stringy flesh. His car had broken down and he had no cash to fix it. He was

broke, too broke to even pay attention.

The last cowboy looked around and swore up a storm. No houses, tele­ phones, or televisions were in sight. Coyote could almost hear the cow'

boy doing an assessment of his sad life. He was middle-aged, broke and jobless, with two heart attacks and one gall bladder job in the body bank and his wife was unabashedly boinking a younger man.

Coyote suspected that invisible electric vultures were circling the old shitkicker's brain, waiting for the last gasp of common sense, for the last tango of his tough, white meat.

"Howdy there Mr. Hopalong," Coyote yelled at the human and he rose to

his hind legs and waved.

"Hummmmppphhh," the last cowboy answered.

Coyote reached into his cooler, grabbed an icy bottle of Budweiser and walked upright towards the old cowboy.

"Thirsty?" Coyote asked.

"Faaaaact. That's a fact. Thirsty and angry," the old man said and reached for the beer.

"Well, you're thirsty and angry. I'm sad and horny as hell and living in the bushes to boot," Coyote said and winked.

"Christ, I hope you ain't one of them perverts," the man said.

"No, I'm hetero," Coyote said and flexed his bicep.

"Hetero? What's that?"

"I'm a straight arrow. I ain't no pervert. So what's the matter with your

ride? Out of gas or what?"

"Broke down. Life shouldn't be this hard for a white man who's been to war but never to

182

jail."

TRIQUARTERLY

"I was just released from the can five months ago," Coyote told him.

"Was charged with assaulting some dogcatchers verbally, but then the

jailer killed me."

"Never heard such crapola," the old cowboy said. "But you never can tell these days. The whole country's going to hell in a handbasket.

When they took God out of the classroom, they took God out of

America."

"Hmmm," Coyote murmured and scratched at some fleas dancing around his groin. "And which God might that be?"

"The only one, God damnit," said the cowboy as he squinted suspi­

ciously at Coyote. "The Lord God of the Bible. Yahweh."

"My way, Yahweh, whatever," said Coyote as heard something and perked his ears up. He turned his head quickly and saw a spiraling dust cloud in the distance. When it approached, he was able to see it was nothing but a brown UPS truck speeding across the land.

"And the Darkness is creeping from south to north. Here, even here in the Heartland the Darkness is corrupting, threatening and changing,

scaring and scarring," the old man said and took a long drink.

"Hmmm," Coyote said. "Darkness, huh?"

"My own teenaged kids done quit school and now dress like those dirtbag gangster rappers on MTV," the cowboy said. "But legislation demands my tolerance. It's against the law to openly oppose the Darkness. I feel so helpless. What the holy hell happened to my coun­

try?"

Coyote spit and shrugged.

The old cowboy restarted his flapping jaws. "It wasn't so bad when it

only them Indians we had to put up with. It wasn't so bad when it was only them lazy good-for-nothing Prairie Niggers."

In the distant sky Coyote saw an eagle soaring.

"Look," he told the last cowboy. "An eagle. A good omen."

The old cowboy craned his neck skyward. Coyote let out a deep sigh and then another. He regretted that his civic sense had led to this.

Coyote snatched back his bottle of beer and ran off into the shimmering heat. Coyote had once been married to an Indian girL And he didn't like people badmouthing his ex-in- laws.

"Up yours, you racist," Coyote yelled when he thought he was out of hearing range of the old man.

"Yeah, you'd like to, wouldn't you, you damned hairy pervert," the last cowboy gasped and flipped his middle finger into the air.

"Maybe. Bend over and we'll both find out," Coyote hooted, not was

183

TRIQUARTERLY

wanting the old white man to have the last word.

Two days later, Coyote was back in the slammer. Smoking a cigarette, march­ on his back on his cot, Coyote had weird visions of his dogs

jail

been in cold storage a ing outside the county jail carrying signs. He'd week this time. He'd been charged with stealing beer from the old white

cowboy. The old man had gone down to the sheriff's department and filed charges against him. Unreal! So much for good deeds.

The day after he was arrested, the federales offered to let him go with a sheriff to go simple $25 fine for disturbing the peace, but he told the hell with doublejointed upon himself. The sheriff turned red, said the so bars cell the Coyote hocked a you and tried to grab Coyote through

big green loogie on him.

"You want to die again, just keep that up," the Sheriff said.

"I'm a political prisoner," Coyote said lamely, not that he had

that

much fear of death anymore. him The next day they hauled Coyote before the magistrate and gave the with business The original seven days in jail, minus time served. local the want didn't was discussed. He told the judge he

dogcatchers cousins. Leave gendarmes to mess with any dogs because all dogs were his bench again. them alone, he said, or he'd be before his "Who's John Darms?" the judge asked and gave him a stern yet quizzi­ education and cal look. The judge had the dangerous combination of no man with a white-haired no sense of humor. He was a forty-five-year-old life

wheat.

growing lifelong case of severe acne. He'd spent most of his alone." left want "I said. my dogs just "Never mind," Coyote said.

"I make the rules around here," the judge did "Rules rule," Coyote said and winked. The truth was that Coyote alone. He wanted them to mess want the dogcatchers to leave his dogs firm. with him. They were so pretty. And his shiny redness was getting cousins the dogs. He wasn't Coyote wasn't always so protective of his he loved for that mat­ always so protective of himself either, or anyone lived in the ethereal dusk of the bot­ ter. For nearly twenty years he had anesthetized daily, and tle. His soul, his fears, his hopes and dreams were addicted to alco­ became of course, that's why people and animals too

had started to hol. At least that's what it said in the A.A. booklet he carry with him these days.

That much was obvi­ Coyote knew that the sauce obliterated reality. cosmic secret that firewater soothed fears. When ous. It was also no

big

184

TRIQUARTERL Y

he sobered up four years ago, Coyote came to know the beauty of dogs as he had during his childhood. He began to communicate with them and they became partners in his new, sober world. They became his main

companions, much to the chagrin of his old lady Wanda. Wanda had never really liked dogs much after one slipped her his bone when she was in

her teens. It had been a Great Dane.

"I don't see why you like them or even why they like you still," Wanda

said one day. "You used to bite them and really treat them nasty when you were still drinking. Make them go without food for days."

True. Yes, he did. But these dogs he had now were never abused by him. He got them after he sobered up. What she meant was that he had abused his other dogs, Pee Bear and Puppy Luppy. Worse, he was responsible for their deaths. That had happened five years ago, on the final year of his seemingly eternal binge. Pee Bear was an English retriever. He showed up in Coyote's yard as a puppy, a brown, round ball of love who resembled a teddy bear. But he was untrainable inside and peed constantly on the rugs, so Coyote named him Pee Bear.

Puppy Luppy was a black Lab he found under the stairs of the tribal­ college center in Manderson. He, too, was a young puppy when Coyote brought him home. He named him Puppy Luppy and then shortened that to Lupper. They were tough-guy dogs when they matured two years later. They kept winos and thieves away from his house and kicked tail on any stray dogs who came down his street.

The two dogs had a wild-ass streak and chased cattle and once killed a young heifer which Coyote then loaded up in the back of his small sta­ tion wagon and took home and butchered. They feasted for a week on steaks, ribs and succulent roasts.

Remembering the fine, tender, grease-dripping meat made Coyote drowsy. He fell back to sleep and dreamed of the pan-fried liver and onions he would ask his wife to cook for him once he got out of the

slammer. Sweet onions, batter-dipped, golden liver, and freedom. He slept and salivated and woke up hungry and remembered that his wife Wanda had indeed kicked him out of the house.

For a moment he was unsure whether he was still dreaming or not.

The fire-haired jailer was standing outside his cell. Her chunky flesh was Vibrating, and Coyote could smell her excited sex, but he forced himself to ignore her. He'd read the recent papers about that woman in

Virginia

who'd chopped her husband. Besides, he'd learned his lesson. He'd learned his lesson. His whanger wasn't going to get him into trouble again. He reached down underneath the thick jailhouse blanket that

185

TRIQUARTERLY

covering him and tied it into a knot. He didn't know whether it felt good or bad, but he knew it felt safe.

He smiled, closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until the mean, fire­ haired woman walked away. He didn't want to be killed twice in the was

same lifetime

by the same woman. Such a thing was possible.

Jeremy Wafer, Untitled Ill, from the triptych Power Station (1987, hand­ made paper)

186

TRIQUARTERLY

Coyote in the City of Angels It was a skanky summer day in Los Angeles. The sun beat down upon

the garbage dumpsters and gave the unmoving air a bad case of rotten breath. The sidewalks baked, drawing moisture out of the mouths of every living thing. Up in Hollywood, the dealmakers were looking for a

live brain to suck ideas out of. Down in South Central and over in East

L.A., the residents were going about their daily business of murdering each other.

On the downtown side of Pico-Union, Coyote had spent the entire

morning searching for a lifesaving, cool drink of firewater. It had been over

six months since he'd left the Great Plains and nearly a year since

his wife had gotten bitten by a squirrel with rabies and died. Even

though he wasn't living with her at the time, her death propelled him towards seeking his own. He'd put his dogs in the care of Old Bear and hit the road, then the skids, and had rejoined the shadow soldiers in Grand Army of Booze.

Coyote was a sorry sight to see. He'd developed a severe case of mange and not only had frequent shaking spells, but he smelled bad. He stunk of disease and impending death. Day after day, he'd dragged his swollen paws over the scorched pavement, his tail dangling between his legs.

Now staggering to a shabbier street, he saw a small blue building with winking neon signs that beckoned him. The bar was named "The Shanty" and was frequented by citified Indians and other denizens of the once-natural world.

Coyote's only thought was of cold liquid trickling down his parched throat and then up to pacify his fiery brain. Shaking, drawing up all his

strength, he assumed as straight a posture as possible, put his right foot forward and entered the blue building. Stumbling in the darkness, he stubbed his toe on a chair. It hurt like hell and he did a strange dance until the pain subsided. He felt like a fool until he found a stool and sat

down, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

"Whatcha want, Cuz?" asked a burly, dark, skinned human with a shaved head.

Coyote stared at the man. "Don't I know you?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"I'm from South Dakota," Coyote said.

"No kiddin', what rez? I'm from Rapid City, originally from Pine

187

TRIQUARTERL Y

Ridge," the man said. "My name is Verdell Ten Bears. Got in a little trouble back home and headed out."

"Never heard of you," Coyote said with an apologetic shrug of his

bony shoulders. "Sorry, I thought you looked familiar."

"All us savages look the same. Take my word on it. You don't know me

from Shinola. I don't know that many coyotes anyways. The only

coyotes I ever saw were those that got nailed by speeding UPS trucks or

those in hunters' traps."

"Very funny," Coyote said and coughed to hide his disgust. He knew for a fact that when Indians disappeared into the steel-and-concrete canyons of cities they changed. They became hopeless, lost, or just like

the white men. To him, urban Indians were the most pitiful of God's creatures, even more pitiful than the white man.

"So what is it? What can I do you for?" Ten Bears asked.

"A cool, cool drink," Coyote answered.

"A drink of what-?"

"Gin-and-tonic's O.K.," Coyote said as he handed the man a handful of change that he had panhandled earlier. The shaved head brought him a large glass of cold, clear liquid with a slice of unhealthy lime floating atop it. Coyote lifted the glass to his lips and then screamed. There was a monster in the glass! He poured out the contents onto the floor and

asked the man for another.

"It's your money, dude," the man said and brought Coyote another

large tumbler of the liquid.

Again, Coyote raised the glass to his lips, but again he saw the mon­ ster on the surface of the clear liquid.

"Arrrggghhh-aroooo," Coyote screamed. "What is this funky creature in my drink? What the hell is going on here? What the hell is this?

Psychedelic gin?"

The large, scary-looking bartender ignored him. The human named Ten Bears acted like this was an everyday occurrence. Coyote decided to take action. He bared his teeth and raised the glass to his lips. He would show the monster how ferocious he was and it would run. It didn't

though. Coyote looked into the glass and cringed. Inside, on the surface of the liquid, a dark, hairy, repulsive monster stared back with bared teeth. Coyote drew back in terror. Coyote slapped his face to try to

regain a grasp around reality's neck. He hoped this monster in his drink wasn't a prelude to the shimmering d.t.'s.

He sat on his haunches and took a deep breath. Maybe the monster

would leave of its own accord. It certainly was one of the ugliest beasts

188

TRIQUARTERLY

he'd ever seen in his life. After a few minutes, Coyote leaned forward and looked into the glass. The monster was still there. Coyote panicked and ran out of the blue building, forgetting his deep thirst. But, after a few desperately alcoholic minutes in the heat, he recalled that there was yet another blue building on the same block.

Although he was tired, dirty, and half-cooked from the heat, Coyote

walked in the direction of the second blue building. He would find a cool drink there and his thirst was what propelled each step. All during the journey down the never-ending block, the face of the monster from the other building danced in his mind.

"That was one skankv-lookin' bugmugger," Coyote whispered to no one

in particular. "One ugly hunk of head cheese."

The sun was beginning to set and still there was no relief from the heat. Coyote could walk no farther and fell asleep in a cool alleyway behind a large green dumpster. He was so exhausted he slept through the whole night and awoke the next morning when the sun was high in the sky.

Tired and disoriented but more thirsty than he had ever been in his life, he decided to go back to the first blue building. His thirst was now greater than his fear of the monster in the glass. His throat was on fire as he entered the building. He would kill anything that stood between him

and the life-blood of liquor.

"Oh, you again," said the dark, muscular man with no head hair as he wiped down the cigarette-scarred bar. Coyote nodded and ordered a

large drink.

"Same as before?" Ten Bears asked.

"Same and hurry," Coyote rasped.

"Here you go," the bartender said as he handed Coyote the gin-and­

looking into the glass, Coyote handed it to another human, grizzled old Mexican sitting at the bar. This Mexican, a former assistant organizer in the United Farm Workers, took the glass and half drained it. He burped and thanked Coyote, but Coyote grabbed the glass back and prepared to drink the remaining half. tonic. Before a

"Gracias," the old man muttered.

"If this old Pancho Villa can drink it safely, then the monster must have gone," Coyote mumbled lowly and raised the glass to his lips. He

closed his eyes and took a deep, refreshing gulp. The liquid was pure heaven and his aching bones and flaming soul felt instantly relieved. He poured the remaining liquid down his dry, sandy gullet.

"Salvation," he shouted at the Indian named Ten Bears.

189

TRIQUARTERLY

"That mean you want another?"

"Yes, damn right, get me another," he yelled at the bartender. When the fresh drink arrived, he noticed to his great dismay that the monster had reappeared. He slammed the glass down in fear and disgust. The vibrating glass caused ripples on the surface of the gin and the monster

disappeared. Coyote thought this strange and stared until the liquid was calm again. And when the booze had stopped vibrating, the hideous creature was back on the surface

again.

Coyote took his paw, placed a claw into the liquid and stirred the liq­ uid. Again, the monster vanished. Coyote then realized that the ghastly creature was his own reflection.

"For crying out loud," he roared. "Hah-hah-hooooo." He laughed so

loud that everyone in the bar stared at him. Coyote giggled and ordered another drink. He had a pocket full of change from panhandling and

nothing now stood between him and blissful intoxication.

"For a while there, I thought I might be seeing snakes crawl up the walls. For one brief second, I actually contemplated joining up with those A.A. whiny asses," he told the bartender.

"A.A. sucks a big one," Ten Bears shouted.

"Yo, screw A.A. and the horse it rode in on," Coyote repeated.

"You got that," Verdell Ten Bears said and shrugged, then glared and walked away. He was a practicing drunk and had been for years. Even the thought of going to A.A. made him want to kick ass on somebody, anybody. For a brief moment, Coyote considered slamming him in the back of the head with his glass. The monster was now inside him and he felt the power of a god. He was sick of mankind.

"The hell with this city," he said to no one in particular. But outside, thousands of blacks and Chicanos had somehow heard him. They nod­ ded in assent at the new voice of God, and began to burn down the

"City of Angels."

190

TRIQUARTERLY

Forever Jean Thompson

"You know how long it took me to use a knife again?" The mother held up her empty hand, as if it could testify on its own. "I couldn't slice a tomato, carve meat, anything. I'd shove it away from me."

The reporter's hand held a pen. He had a notebook as well as a cas­

recorder, and every so often he wrote something down. "What are you writing?" the mother asked. "What did I say?" The reporter showed sette

her. He'd written the word "knife." That was all. It was a note to him­

self, he explained.

"It's always in the back of your mind," said the mother. "It comes out in ways you don't expect. Like if I see a TV commercial with a little girl in it, it don't even have to look like her. It still sets me off. Is this the kind of thing you want, Mr. Hughes?"

Hughes said yes, this was fine. He said she should talk about anything she felt like.

The mother said, "I am only doing this because it might help jog

somebody's memory. Or whoever's out there, it might make them come forward."

The mother sat on the living-room couch, which was covered with a tasseled bedspread. The mother's name was Bonita Poole. Hughes knew from his notebook that she was forty-four years old, divorced, and worked in a factory which made packaging materials. Next to the moth­ er on the couch sat her oldest daughter, Joy. On top of the television set was a picture of the had died, and an arrangement of dried who daughter roses. The roses came from the funeral, the mother said. They were pink roses, faded to the color of old paper except at their tips, shedding petals when nobody was looking.

191

TRIQUARTERLY

In the photograph the daughter had a waterfall of poufy hair arranged

shoulder, and a smile that pulled up one comer of her mouth.

A wise, guy smirk, as if she'd mugged and giggled and stared the camera over one

down, not really wanting to have her picture taken. Her name was Kelly Poole and she was eighteen when she died, one year ago minus ten days.

The mother saw Hughes looking at the picture. "Pretty, ain't she.

Those big brown eyes. She favored her Dad that way."

Mrs. Poole and Joy were stamped out of a different mold, fair, with sketched, in eyebrows, and faces as broad and plain as pie tins. Joy was twenty, seven. She looked like she'd stopped being young some time back, almost with relief. Young had probably never suited her. She was

hard around the mouth and soft everywhere else. Flesh mounded up under her 'Tshirt and stretch pants. Just by sitting, she projected griev­ ance,

the unfairness of being large and unpretty and having a sister

who'd been raped and murdered and pushed into a ditch off a county road. Joy reached up and adjusted the plastic clip in her mother's hair,

absently, as if it were her own head.

Hughes thought, as he often did in the homes of the poor, of expen­ sive magazines, department stores, and banks, everything that implied this room did not exist. But here it was in all its gaping ugliness, turning the lie around; it was as if nothing else was real except for it. The living' room walls were painted a deep flat unconvincing blue. Water stains dripped down from the comers. Plastic curtains hung at the cloudy win' dows. The kitchen was at the other end of the main room. Boxes of cereal and crackers were lined up on the counter, along with scouring

powder and a jar of iced-tea mix. The refrigerator muttered, laboring.

Two ceramic plaques in the shape of preening roosters hung over the

kitchen table. The smell in the house was of something burnt, with an

overlay of cheese.

"Tell him about the phone calls," Joy said. It was the first time she had spoken. Hughes waited, but the mother shook her head.

"That stuff don't have nothing to do with Kelly. It's just ugly."

"People are sick," said Joy. "We got calls right after the funeraL People

hanging up on you. Or saying things."

"That's enough," said the mother. "Like I said." Joy sat back on the couch, her mouth closing down over another grievance.

"Tell me about the psychic," suggested Hughes. The psychic had told the police where to find the body. The psychic was one of the things that made the case newsworthy.

"Oh, him. We kind of gave up on him."

192

TRIQUARTERLY

"He moved to Cincinnati," said Joy. "He was regular, looking. He could of been somebody's grandfather." Her tone implied that this was one of his failings.

"They give him a sweater of hers. Like a bloodhound. He knew to find her near water, the borrow pit." The mother closed her eyes. Hughes had seen the police pictures of the body. He hoped the mother had not.

When she looked up again she said, "He can't help us with who did it.

It's like the trail's gone cold. Like he can't find her spirit. Do you think

people get more dead as time goes on?"

Hughes said he didn't know. He was unsure of what the mother want' ed him to say, and unsure of the whole notion. Yes, he might have said, if he'd thought about it. The dead become more dead. They recede from us little by little, down a long corridor. They forget their names before we

do.

But the mother didn't want an answer. She said, "He give me all these numbers that were supposed to be license plates of cars. For a while that's all I did, was drive around looking for those numbers. I had all

these little scraps of paper everywhere in the house. One day I looked at them and said, What is this? It was getting out of hand. Sometimes I sit and try and make my mind clear, to see if something comes to me. You'd think if anybody would feel something, it'd be me."

In his notebook, Hughes saw he had written the word "psychic," fol­

lowed by a question mark.

"Her father lives in Florida. I had the police call him. We haven't seen

him since nineteen seven nine. He didn't come to the funeral. He never

kept up with her or his other, that's Pete. It's like he never had a daugh­ ter.It's like a car he sold a long time ago, then somebody else wrecked it."

Photographs of the mother's six surviving children stair' stepped their way across the living, room wall. Some were towheaded and jowly, like Joy, others darker, more angular. Distinctive features-a receding chin, freckles-emerged, then extinguished themselves, a schematic represen­ tat ion of the marriages, three of them. Someone else might have asked, reasonably, why Mrs. Poole kept on marrying, kept having children, but Hughes thought it was because Mrs. Poole took life seriously. Hughes liked Mrs. Poole, which was different than feeling sorry for her.

"Do you want an orange soda?" she asked. "I run on so much, I didn't

think to offer anything."

Hughes said thank you, but not to bother. He closed his notebook.

His hand rested on the cassette recorder, waiting and delicate.

"I almost forgot you had that going," said the mother. "Did you get

193

TRIQUARTERLY

enough for your story? There's a lot more about Kelly, but I don't know if it would be good in a story. She liked baking cakes, fancy ones, with the decorations. She loved kids, she was great with them. Oh I don't

know. What else can I say except she was my daughter. That night she had on a new red jacket they never found. That and her keys. It's anoth­

thing I look for now. Somebody wearing that jacket. I know that don't make sense. It's the exact same jacket you can get at the mall." er

Hughes made his thank-yous. He eased out the front door and stood looking at the square of lawn, the clumped brown grass that had already stopped growing. It was the end of September, a bright dry season, when everything in the landscape bleached out. The sun had a squint to it, flattening the shadows. White weeds lined the ditches. Leaves faded and curled under. A dry wind made these leaves click together, and spun the petals of a plastic sunflower stuck at the edge of the lot. A clothesline hung along one side of the porch, freighted with white cotton socks, striped bath towels, T,shirts, stretched-out underpants. The cloth made stiff ridges around the clothespins, as if everything had been hanging there a long time.

The grass reminded him of something. He decided it was the petrified flowers inside. On the street the car he'd come in was parked, a heavy, shining car that made the small frame houses look stoop' shouldered, flimsy and wrong. He could see the photographer sitting behind the steering wheel, his head back, dozing.

The front door opened again and Joy came out. Hughes couldn't tell if she'd wanted to find him, or if it was an accident, his standing there a minute too long. She didn't seem startled at encountering him. She said, "So what are you going to say about us?"

"It depends on how much space the editor gives me." This was true,

although it didn't answer her question.

"Uh huh," said Joy. She folded her arms over her chest. The cool wind roughened her skin, bringing up pebbly goose bumps. "She was my half, sister," she said. "Kelly was. My dad was named Jim Harney." Everything she said managed to convey deep suspicion, belligerent disbelief.

"You mentioned phone calls."

"I wasn't always the one to answer. The times I answered it was some And guy. He'd say, 'Hey, I did her too, and she was good.' Talk like that. a

lot worse. That's what my mother had to listen to."

"I'm sorry," said Hughes. There was a place in his mind where he

sealed away the knowledge of such things.

Joy kept talking. It was as if only certain words fit the shape of her

194

TRIQUARTERLY

mouth, words she had not been allowed to say inside. "She grew up flighty because she was spoiled. She had to have everything: clothes, a car. She got in trouble once, she was going to have a baby. Mom had to pay for that too. She used to walk around the house without her clothes on, just to show off.

You could see her ending up like she did. I don't

how that sounds. She knew too many boys and they were all sup­ posed to pay attention to her. But she was my own family. I knew her all

care

her life, beginning to end."

"I'm sorry," Hughes said again. He wanted to leave now, to get away from this world of women and their dense, intricate griefs. He looked out past the crimped grass and the gleaming ovals of light reflected in the surface of his car, to the end of the block where the road broadened out into Main Street.

"If they found out who did it, I would do anything. I would cut off parts of him."

Hughes didn't respond. Joy said, "You live in Chicago, don't you?"

"The suburbs," amended Hughes, then wondered what possible differ­ ence

it would make to her.

"You wouldn't come to a place like this in a million years except for

Kelly. She was always fussing in the mirror. Like she had to be so pretty.

Well, she's dead now because she was pretty and somebody wanted to get her. And you're only interested in her because she's dead."

Hughes had never wanted to kill anyone. He considered himself defi­ dent in hatred, or perhaps murder came from something different, something cooler to the touch. He had not wished to kill, even in his imagination, his ex-wife in the last ruinous weeks of their marriage, nor drunks who had stood toe to toe with him in parking lots, nor any of his

professional enemies, men who had lied or undercut him. No treacher­ ous friend, no figures of fairy-tale malice from his childhood. (Hughes had grown up in a place called Licking, Missouri, and he wouldn't have gone back there in a million years.) He was as incapable of the thought of murder as of the deed. He recorded the words of those who were

capable of both like a sighted man running his hands over Braille.

Superior, Indiana, was another small town burdened with a whimsical name.

On its Main Street, two closed-down gas stations faced each

other from opposite corners. At one the corroded pumps still stood,

nearly paintless, sinking into cracked cement. At the other they'd dug out the fuel tanks and covered the lot with gravel. (The new gas station, a self-service franchise that sold packaged sandwiches, milk, and dough-

195

TRIQUARTERLY nuts, was two miles away on the highway.) It was a town losing ground

by both inches and leaps.

There was a Red Star Market, an auto-body shop, and two churches built of the same liver, colored brick, one for the Methodists, one a United Church of Christ. A row of false-front buildings, empty except for the Honeybee Bakery. A gift shop that accommodated a post office.

A new flat' roofed mini-mall housing an insurance agency and a laun­ dromat. There was a pizza restaurant, a feed store, a tavern that sold

hunting licenses, and a white frame cottage tricked out for antiques.

"Small, town values," the photographer intoned, as he steered the big car through the quiet streets. "Deep roots. America's rural heritage."

The photographer's name was Jencks, and his ambition was to take celebrity portraits. He was a young man, about the age of Mrs. Poole's daughter Joy, Hughes figured. He wore clothes that Hughes, who was closer to Mrs. Poole's age, found affected: everything baggy and drab, expensive garments meant to look like they came from thrift shops. His hair was combed back with some product that kept it looking wet.

Jencks said, "They'll never use a tombstone shot. Too kitschy."

"Your talents are wasted on us," agreed Hughes. He had stopped pay' ing attention to Jencks some time during the 160,mile drive from Chicago. "Turn here."

"It is kind of pretty," offered Jencks. "It could be on a calendar for an insurance agency."

The shade trees showed spots of pale yellow, pale orange, and copper.

Some yards had shining green or blue reflector balls set on pedestals, objects Hughes had not seen since his childhood. Tomato plants and cucumber vines hung on in the gardens. There was a dusty bloom laid over everything, the kindly aspect of decay.

"Tell me again," said Jencks. "Why are we here? I mean, what's the big draw?"

"Mrs. Poole wrote the paper a letter."

"The paper with a heart," said Jencks. His face went slack, as if he had surprised himself and said what he meant.

A young man sat on the front steps of a house on the corner. In spite of the cool weather he was shirtless, his lean, elongated chest looking nearly anatomical, a working model of ribs and muscles. He wore blue

broom jeans and scuffed black boots. His hair was shaggy, the color of and straw, and in his shadowed face his eyes were unexpectedly light for a piercing, like a malamute's. He and the reporter traded stares someone besides If was borne Jencks had moment before Hughes away.

196

TRIQUARTERLY

been in the car, Hughes would have said what he felt, that Kelly Poole had been killed by a boy exactly like that, or maybe that same boy: young, bored, fitfully employed, knowing nothing of himself or anyone

else, and with a talent for meanness.

The cemetery was a long mile outside of Superior, beyond the remains of a lumberyard. It occupied the grounds of a disused church, the ances­ tor of one of the new brick constructions

in town. The old church was

white painted board, outfitted with a steeple, and coming unknit at all its angles. The graves were laid out in rows, like corn. The oldest stones went back to

the end of the last century and were smooth, nearly fea­

tureless, the dead who had become entirely dead. Some of the plots were ornamented with bits of ribbon, chrysanthemums in coffee cans, or arti­ ficial geraniums. "This is so sad," said Jencks, indicating the foil­ wrapped flowerpots, the crosses made of wire-and-tissue rosettes, the thick grimed plastic petals. By that Hughes thought he meant it was in bad taste.

"Where is it you'd like to be buried?" asked Hughes, wanting Jencks to shut up. He'd found Kelly Poole's gravestone. It was pink granite with two interlocked hearts, and "FOREVER" chiseled above the name and dates. There was a grain or sheen in the stone, something that sparkled.

"Hearts," said Jencks, meaning it ironically.

"She was stabbed in the heart," said Hughes.

Jencks went back to the car for his cameras and worked in silence, kneeling, focusing, squeezing off shots. The cemetery was on a rise, and Hughes looked around him in all directions, back east towards town, north to the railroad tracks and the tree line beyond, south across a chewed-looking hayfield, then west, where the small white sun was low­ ering itself behind a knobby hill.

"Finito," said Jencks, packing his equipment into its stiff leather cases.

He already had pictures of Mrs. Poole and her house, a copy of Kelly Poole's portrait, and other, possibly useful shots of Superior and envi­ rons. "We gone."

"Take me over to Anderson," said Hughes. Anderson was twenty miles away, the nearest metropolis, where people went when they need­ ed a doctor or a bank, shoes, refrigerators, jobs. "I want to get a rental car."

Jencks said, "I feel obliged to point out that you already have a rental car."

"You're going back. I'm staying overnight. I want another crack at the boyfriend." Hughes was pleased to think that he'd just had his last con-

197

TRIQUARTERLY versation with Jencks, although Jencks said a few more things. "Mmn,"

said Hughes. "Mmnhm." At the rental, car office he fished his things out

of the trunk and gave Jencks his sunniest smile and wave.

Hughes equipped himself with a motel room and a fried chicken din, He called in for his messages. He tried to reach Kelly Poole's boyfriend at the number Mrs. Poole had given him, but got no answer.

He set up his laptop computer and reviewed his files. More and more, he liked working outside of the office. He preferred these assignments to transcribing the accusations of one politician against another, or reading the entrails of press releases. He liked being alone in utilitarian rooms and eating out of paper bags. He searched out opportunities for solitude. nero

He had been a reporter for most of his life, and sometimes he seemed to himself like a stirred cup, or a gong beating in a metal chamber, too full of noise and push and other people's stories: grand, indifferent, tragic, or

vapid. Every chord in him had been struck over and over, until the strings were loosened. There was nothing that could not be hyped up, sentimentalized, made obvious and meaningless.

But he liked Mrs. Poole. If he had been a different kind of man, he

would have said "God bless you," or something like that, on his way out the door.

Kelly Poole's boyfriend's name was Dean Kinshaw, and he ran a car wash and detail shop in Anderson. Hughes was there early, before it opened. It had rained just before dawn. Puddles reflected the moving sky, which was the color of cement and bruise. Cold fogs rose up. The car wash was built of white cinder block and occupied a triangle of space on a commercial artery. Traffic rolled and braked. Hughes sat in the front seat of his rental car, curling his fingers around a coffee cup, breathing in steam and exhaust.

There was a billboard overhead, one he'd seen a number of times since yesterday, an advertisement for a counseling center. "Life Is Hard," it stated flatly, next to a starkly lit picture of a spectacled man gazing at some

unseen

inward blankness. The line of his mouth was thin and

sealed. Only now did Hughes recognize it as his own face, enough like him to be a photograph. Or rather, it was his face as it might appear if no one

else was watching it.

A maroon panel van pulled into the driveway, all its doors seeming to open at once. A small man and smaller woman emerged, followed by

three children who seemed to be nearly the same age and size, like a nest of mice. The children carried expedition gear: a portable television, a

cooler, paper sacks, gym bags.

198

TRIQUARTERLY

Hughes stood in the office door until someone, the woman, noticed him. The children were already strewing their goods around the shop, unhooking the vacuum-cleaner hoses to use in tug-of-war, feeding quar­ ters into the pop

machine, preparing for their day just as seriously as the

adults. When the woman nudged him the man stubbed the end of his cigarette into the concrete and crossed the room. "Help you?"

Hughes introduced himself and gave the name of his newspaper. It was a

weighty name, one that most people were unused to encountering

in the flesh. It intimidated them, or got them defensive and riled up.

Dean Kinshaw reached for the cigarette he'd been smoking and found it

missing. He was older than Hughes had expected, in his late twenties, undersized, hollow-chested, black-haired and pale, with a slight, angu­ lar, handsome face. The stray seed of some lost black Irishman, grown up among weeds.

"I know why you're here," Kinshaw said. "Bonita called me. She's all

excited. I don't see what she expects to come of it. Talk. There's things you shouldn't have to keep saying."

Hughes suggested getting a cup of coffee. Kinshaw shook his head.

"Let's make this one quick."

"Would later today be any better for you?"

"Never would be better for me," said Kinshaw. He fished in his breast

pocket for a new cigarette, setting off a rattle of cellophane. "I smoke too much," he offered. "Regular chimney."

"Everything's bad for you," agreed Hughes.

"I worked nights then. That night. You know that already, I bet. I was over at the foundry. I quit because my nerves went out. I still can't do a lot of things. Like drive. You know what I mean? They put you back together with pills, and the pills make you sweat and pee funny and bite your tongue until it bleeds. Just so you know where I'm coming from. I don't see what good a newspaper is here. No newspaper ever raised the dead, last I heard."

Hughes thought of the stream of letters the paper got, the lost and los­ ing causes, petitions for redress of grievances, prayers, confessions, accu­ sations, cranks, victims, unsung heroes wanting to be sung, miracle seekers all.

"Do you believe in God, Mr. Hughes?"

Hughes glanced at him, but there was nothing belligerent in Kinshaw's face. He was only serious and remote, gazing out the open door.

"No," said Hughes. "Not lately, I don't."

199

TRIQUARTERLY

"Well I do. I have to. Because God's the only one who can really kick "

ass.

Kinshaw leaned in over his lighter. The small flame hollowed out his narrow, handsome face. Hughes felt sorry for Kinshaw, which was differ­ ent

than liking him. Weakness always made him sorry. He thought of

Kelly Poole watching Kinshaw just like this, bent over his cupped hands. Hughes tried to make himself quiet inside. He wanted his mind to be as a tree branch is to a bird, he wanted to coax the vision closer, see what she'd seen in all the faces she'd known. Kinshaw straightened, "Sharon." calling, The woman detached herself from the telephone and came to stand beside Kinshaw, She had short brown hair and a round shy face. "This is Sharon. We're together now. She knows everything about me."

Sharon's children had the television hooked up and were piled in front of it watching a show, ignoring the adults. Kinshaw said, "Life goes on. Maybe that sounds cold. I can't tell you what you come to hear. I can't keep dwelling on it. It could have been anybody did it. That's how I look at people now. Like they could be the one. Everybody. Kelly was tough. She fought him hard. Her shoulder was dislocated. I've already gone and said too much."

"Life is hard," said Hughes, to no one. He was back in his car, driving the two-lane highway from Anderson to Superior. "Life is hard, and then it goes on." For some, he added silently. The weather had shifted

overnight from dry to damp, the first step down the long slope that led to winter. A shrill unfriendly wind scoured the com stubble and shred­ ded the leaves.

Kelly Poole hadn't liked her boyfriend working late shifts. She'd com­ plained about it to her girlfriends. The last night of her life she'd left her mother's house at ten o'clock. She was bored and fretful, and sometimes kids she knew hung out at the Denny's seven miles away. It was a school

night, but she and her friends weren't very serious about school. They were seniors, and were not expected to take it seriously.

At Denny's she sat in a booth with two other girls, ordering Diet Cokes and french fries. There was never anything to do nights, they agreed. This place, they said, rolling their eyes. If they lived anywhere else in the world, there would be something to do. Kelly said she was thinking of skipping school the next day. She borrowed three dollars for gas to get home. She yawned and contemplated the tabletop universe of crumpled straw wrappers, circles of damp, the smudged creamer, the era-

200

TRIQUARTERL Y

dle of pink saccharine packets, everything familiar and unremarkable, begging to be noticed for the last time.

They left Denny's at eleven, thirty, trotting across the parking lot with their hands in their pockets, shivering. Kelly hopped on one foot, look, ing for her keys. Her friends waited in their car, the engine running, while she went through a pantomime of exasperation: Do you believe this, how dumb, I mean, really dumb. Then she dredged the keys out and held them up in triumph.

Hughes stopped his car in front of the Red Star Market, with its ban,

advertising pork and beans, heads of cauliflower, dish soap. Two pickups were parked by the feed store, and an old woman with a head scarf like a bandage was entering the laundromat. Wood smoke rose from a chimney down the street. The life of the town had retreated indoors, like a green plant set in a silent room.

When he stepped into the wind he tasted stinging grit. He pushed open the door of the Honeybee Bakery, with its smell of sugar and radia­ tor heat. He took a seat at the counter, nodding at a table of men in windbreakers and caps. He blew on his coffee, waiting. These days he waited out stories, where in years before he might have pursued them, ners

forced them, asked too many questions. Now he had more patience. He was a tree

branch, and the story was his bird.

In the mirrored panel behind the counter he saw, as he'd known

would happen, one of the men at the table get up and approach. He

knew how small towns worked. The man leaned his backside comfort,

ably against the counter. "You're from the newspaper."

Hughes introduced himself and shook hands. "Bob Larrabee," the man said. "Care to join us?" Hughes piloted his coffee cup to their table.

There were five of them, substantial men with solid handshakes and meaty, weatherbeaten faces. Hughes edged into a seat and they shifted

heavily to accommodate him. "Plenty of room," one of them said.

"Don't let Art here crowd you."

Everybody laughed. Art was the only one of them you might have called thin. There was a silence. They seemed embarrassed. "Terrible business," said one.

"It was my field they found her in. I got to say, I wish she'd ended up anywhere else. Gives you the cold chills."

Another silence. Another man said, "All this time, and it's still going on.

Still in your face."

"No good ever come of that family."

"Bonita's all right. It's those kids. That girl and the two after her."

201

TRIQUARTERLY

"Kids run wild these days."

"You got to feel for Bonita. She was on her own."

"You see," said Larrabee, "this isn't the city. People don't do each

other like that. We never had the newspaper here before."

"It's always been a good place to live. Still is."

They were waiting for him to second this. "It's good to get out of the city," he offered. "See some open space." He felt them considering him.

"I grew up on a farm. Used to show polled Herefords." This was an exag­ geration, but one he thought he could handle.

He let the information settle. "What do you think happened to her?"

"She got into somebody's car. Or was made to get in."

"She stopped at Supergas. The boy there saw her. So it wasn't her car quit on her."

This time the silence was expectant. None of them looked at Hughes, but he felt them encouraging him, wanting him to say things for them.

"You think she went out looking for trouble?"

"Maybe she was somewhere she shouldn't of been."

"Bad luck or bad habits."

The waitress, a lean woman in slacks and a sweatshirt, approached with the coffeepot. "I think none of you has an ounce of charity in you," she said. "I'm ashamed to know you."

"Now Hildy."

"It might have been your own daughter. Or it might have been your son

did it. You don't know anything."

"I am buying this gentleman his coffee," said Bob Larrabee. "I don't want him to think we are

"Buy

a

always this ugly to people."

steak dinner if it makes you feel better," said Hildy. "Maybe

this used to be a nice place. It's not now."

Hughes took a last look at Superior. "Four-H Welcomes You." "Join us for worship." "Home of the Chargers." "Your State Farm Agent." It was after four o'clock and the sunless sky was descending like the lid of a box. He was anxious to be back in his own world, where he was unre­ markable and anonymous. Where evil was as diffused and impersonal as the soot drifting down from a smokestack. He touched the paper cone on the seat beside him. It made a bright, crackling sound.

He took the tum to the cemetery, glancing up at the narrow house on the comer. It was a beat-down yellow, the color of a yellow dog. The porch was a broken lump of cement, set at a little distance from the front door. At that moment the light-eyed boy came around the comer

202

TRIQUARTERLY

of the garage. He was wearing a denim jacket unbuttoned over a T-shirt.

As before, he stared at the car, a long, wolfish, disinterestedly rude stare.

In his hands were a loop of frayed electrical cord and an open pocket

knife.

Hughes kept driving, his hands steady on the wheel, but he felt as if an alarm were ringing within him, as if the skin had been ripped from the ordinary surface of the world. If there had been anyone in the car, even Jencks, he would have said he was afraid he was losing his mind.

He wanted to be the telephone voice whispering in Joy's ear: him, that one. But there was nothing he could ever say to anyone, and no one to say it to.

He reached the old churchyard and pulled in, listening to the small

ticking of the cooling car. He considered the possibility that he had spooked himself. Nerves, just like Kinshaw, poor sorry bastard. He con­ sidered the possibility that he'd had a vision. That this was what a vision was, something neither verifiablv true or false. A fine veil of misty rain blew against the windshield.

He picked up the paper cone, got out of the car and walked behind

the church to survey the graveyard. A dark-haired girl in a red jacket stood at Kelly Poole's headstone. It took him a long suspended heartbeat to recognize her as

Sharon, Kinshaw's girlfriend.

As he approached she turned her head and smiled at him over her

shoulder, a small, welcoming smile. She was wearing an elderly oversized high-school jacket with cracked leather bands at the shoulder. The maroon

panel van was parked behind her on a dirt track.

"Hi," she said. "Didn't expect to see you again."

"I'm just now on my way out of town."

She pointed. "What have you got?"

He held the paper out to her, a little embarrassed. "Well look at this," said Sharon. The roses were cream-colored with an edging of yellow,

heavy-headed, densely textured. "These are beautiful."

"I forgot a vase," he said, apologizing. He had not wanted to explain himself.

"It's no matter. Just lay them right there. That's fine. It's real sweet of you. Dean likes for her to have flowers."

"She deserved better than what she got," said Hughes. "Anyone would."

"That's exactly right," said Sharon.

They stood for a moment looking at the roses, and the sharp-cut pink with its skirt of clipped sod. "So what brings you here?" Hughes

stone

203

TRIQUARTERL Y

asked, just as if he himself had a reason.

"Oh, Dean can't come out here. So I do. For him, sort of. It's not a jealous thing with me. It's real peaceful here, don't you think? Some

people it scares them. Not me."

"It is peaceful," he agreed. He felt himself calming. He wanted Sharon to keep talking. He thought this was what Kinshaw valued in her, calm­ ness.

"Dean paid for the stone," said Sharon. "Did you know that? But he's never once seen

it. He was in the hospital for the funeral. I think one

he took up with me and the kids is there's so many of us. No mat­ ter what happened, there would still be someone left for him."

reason

The fine misty rain blurred Hughes's glasses and beaded ori the creamy skin of the roses. "Did you know her?"

Sharon shook her head. "She was so pretty. I've seen all her pictures.

And full of spirit, like a little wild horse. He tells me all about her. She wasn't a bad girl, no matter what people say. She was just young. She

perfect the way she was. Put that part in the paper."

Hughes shook his head. "Ah, Sharon."

was

"Sure you can."

"Neither of us knew her," he said, not wanting to explain the stric­ tures and requirements of

journalism.

"There's different ways of knowing," said Sharon. She curled her fin­ gers up into the oversized sleeves of the jacket. Her hair was darkening,

clinging to her broad forehead. "It wasn't fair. She was just young."

Hughes felt sleepy. He felt as if he had been dreaming someone else's dream. The rain was softening the edges of things, turning the horizon into gray gauze, the fields into squares of light. The roses dripped with light. The boundaries of the world were indistinct. The dead were slip­ ping through the tree line, through the soft fences of memory. His own death approached him, neither very far away nor entirely near. He rec­ ognized it with a certain relief, as he might recall the name of an acquaintance who had been smiling at him from a crowd all along. He was only one of the dead who were not yet dead.

"I should get on home," said Sharon. "He frets if I'm not back by dark.

Drive careful. You'll have some real rain up north. If there's room in your story, put that he will love her forever."

204

Pippa Skotnes, For Ruyter (1993, color etching on paper)

TRIQUARTERLY

The Clouds in Memphis C. J. Hribal

1 The military payloads always come through at night.

Janie walks towards the hollow clanking with her arms crossed and the wind whipping her hair wavy and seaweedlike over her face and shoulders. It's cold for October, maybe only the high forties, and the wind on her cheeks makes the world go blurry. Birds, hundreds of them,

fly straight up out of the oaks and magnolias, then get beaten back or sideways. It's as though they're launched, then tail away, lacking the power, the velocity to get anywhere near where they want to be. They should just stay in the trees, but then it's her startling them that makes them burst from the trees with that sonorous beating of wings.

At first, watching their strange flights, their sudden cutaways and swoops, Janie thought they were bats. Do bats congregate in Memphis?

Later she finds out they're a kind of thrasher or catbird. Or grosbeak.

Whatever somebody tells her she forgets. She's like that. They're beauti� Jul, she thinks, but just as quickly They're only birds. And under the magnolias and fir trees they make such a terrible mess. See? The wrought-iron fences are chipping, and the sidewalks are gouached white and black and purple.

Still, at least they weren't bats.

Janie hugs herself as she nears the railroad tracks. You can't go very far in anyone direction in Memphis and not run into them. They're every­ where. The yards seem to expand in girth every time you turn your head. All that growth, like rings on a fat man's stomach. Somebody tells her no, nobody's added lines in years and years, but she simply won't believe them.

206

TRIQUARTERLY

The backs of her hands feel good underneath her armpits. She's

pleased at the way her workouts make her feel less rubbery. Janie is a rangy woman. Some might call her petite but she gave up that way of thinking years ago.

She takes a deep breath. The roaring of wind and the rustling of leaves is tremendous. It is the kind of wind that whips birds out of trees and the moisture from your eyes. Her feet on the cement sidewalk don't

sound like her feet. They sound like they're coming to her from distance away; they are somebody else's feet and they're coming up behind her, or obliquely from across the street. She turns quickly, even

some

expecting to see someone or something approaching, but there's just the scattering of yellow gingko leaves that have already fallen and the tum­ ble of dirt and grit they always get mixed up with.

Rufus is snapping at a whorl of leaves and grit. He barks twice at the foot-high dust devil, then yips as it blows right past him. Rufus is the reason she can walk at night. He's a black collie mix, five years old, the result of one of Stephen's prized bitches getting out at night with the neighbor's black Lab. Stephen was going to throw the whole lot into the river. His standard practice with accidents: take the entire litter of yelp­ ing pups, cinch them inside a burlap sack, and heave the whole thing into the Mississippi. "What you can't help you correct with dispatch," he says. Janie hugs herself tighter and hardens herself again and again

against him. What does he say about Stevie then, or Peter? Dispatch.

She bets it's something they say with pride down at the office.

2

Stephen comes every day for the trial, but leaves early. They neither speak nor sit together. Stephen is not a man who likes inaction, and sit­ ting with his hands folded in his lap or his head inclined in his upright palm, his feet jiggling, he is the picture of something wild and untamed forcibly restrained, his obedience temporary, reluctant. Janie can't help sneaking sidelong glances at the woman next to him, a blond in a blood-red suit whose gold-and-diamond brooch is nesting where the

lapels on her jacket cross. Her skirt and jacket match her lipstick and her hair is done up in that poofy-curly style favored by homecoming queens and cheerleaders. She is the type of woman for whom sitting

Stephen is a kind of apotheosis, something she has trained and studied and denied and maneuvered herself for, and Stephen is the next to

207

TRIQUARTERLY

result of that denial, the indulgence she gets in exchange for her self­ mortification.

Which makes what Janie has done a kind of apostasy.

As often as not Stephen leaves at the first lull. He gets up, the blond gets up, and then Stephen crosses the aisle and presses his card into Janie's hand. "Call me if something develops," he says. He's given her

the card twice now. The blond, who's very tall, waits with her overcoat

draped over her forearms. Janie wonders if this woman thinks she's stu­ pid or a basket case or just forlornly unlucky or what. It bothers her that she even wonders what this woman thinks. She-the blond-is proba­ bly a woman to whom Stephen gave his business card only once, and even that was superfluous. The card, or his number if he wrote it on a napkin or envelope, went immediately into the Rolodex by her phone.

Janie, however, who married him, is given his number weekly. This is Stephen's way of saying he remembers the startling rapidity with which pieces of paper get buried under or fly out of Janie's life. No doubt the tall, lemon-haired woman has been told this. No doubt Janie must appear to her to be

a

very dreary woman. It's evident in the way she

stands, one wool-and-silk-sheathed thigh canted slightly in front of the other. "Oh, yes, the wife." She's behind Stephen; her unspoken "Oh, do let's get on with this, Stevie" is communicated by her posture.

Only a tall drink of water-Stephen has always referred to his women as comestibles-in a blood-red suit could get away with calling Stephen "Stevie." It's probably a liberty with which she experiments.

"Call me if something develops," Stephen repeats. His blunt-edged fingers drill his card into her palm. He's making sure she acknowledges he's leaving. She knows Stephen. He has no interest in process. Results, verdicts, decisions-now there's something to concern yourself with. He wants to

make sure he's there when the decision is reached. Since he

make the decision himself, he at least wants to be there when they reach it. The difference between reach and make is the difference between approximation and creation. All a jury can hope to achieve is cannot

approximation, a confirmation of what he's already decided. And his appearance, his being there (he believed this about their marriage, too), will be the cause, the instrument by which judgment is reached and jus­ tice rendered. Reasonable doubt and due process are obfuscating intrigues. If he knew this judge he'd have called him already.

Pity there has to be a jury.

This is one time Janie agrees with him. She would like to skip com­ pletely this business with juries and advocates for the defense and plain-

208

TRIQUARTERLY

tiff, this whole courtroom business where the simplest facts get worried into meaninglessness or badgered into nonexistence, where every possi­ ble permutation the sequence of events could take is given weight and credence, where the trivial "might could"s concerning her son's death are

examined discussed analyzed re-analyzed and cross-indexed for refer­

And yet the facts of this case are simple: a drunken boy in a Plymouth convertible struck her son and killed him. What else is there to know? She wants to stand up and scream at the jury, That boy killed

ence.

my son! What else is there to know?

The card from her husband is made of one of those new materials they use

in papermaking now. It's translucent as rice paper and feels flimsy

enough you might poke your finger through it. Or it might dissolve in water. But you can't rip it, tear it, or make it go ragged in any way. It is indestructible.

She leaves it on the bench when they break for lunch, folded like a white crow.

3 You cannot get Nightline in Memphis. Instead you get reruns of Perry Mason. Until recently Janie always pitied Della Street. Admired her, too, for her beauty and perseverance until one day she simply shouted at

the screen, Wake up, would you! He's not ever going to love you. He's just your boss! and she realized with shame that she had been pulling for the

impossible, for something the writers hadn't even conceived of, so intent were they on making sure Perry had no life outside his cases.

Della Street is an employee, and Perry's relationship with her is totally, inexhaustibly professional.

Isn't that a laugh?

4 It's usually after Perry Mason that Janie takes her walks. With Rufus

nosing the bushes she's given up being scared of what most women at

night are scared of. She even walks on bad streets-anything south of Central is questionable-and delights in the tiny thrill that no one else she knows would be doing this in daylight, much less at night. But it's at night when the most trains come through. The military payloads are the

209

TRIQUARTERLY

richest. Camouflaged jeeps, half-tracks, tanks, personnel carriers, whole boxcars in dull green with black stenciling: TOP SECRET and PROP­ ERTY: U.S. GOVERNMENT. They are long, lumbering affairs, these

trains; the wheels click and clack with a sleep like rhythm that's broken only occasionally by the shriek of a crossing whistle. Two short toots, then a long, deep hooooonnng! Then a final, brief toot. As a teenager, Janie had been a ham-radio operator. The very idea of speaking to some­ one

in Peekskill, New York, or Kingston, Ontario, or even

someplace in

South America excited her. Each time she got her chance at the key she was giddy, though her brother Spencer usually hogged it. From eight to thirteen she studied Morse code religiously. By age eighteen she had abandoned it completely. A whole piece of her life simply gone. It was the same way with her belief in God. Walking towards the hooooonnng! she wonders why trains sing out at crossings with the International Morse Code for "Q." It's as though the train itself were a

question.

At the corner of Melrose and Central she pauses. The lawn at St. Paul's Episcopal Church is uncut and littered with leaves and dancing

candy wrappers. The stop signs shi ver, and the amber and cherry stop­ lights flashing over the intersection are uncertain discs swaying in the wind. They don't look capable of slowing down or stopping anybody.

And then the train goes past and its irregularly regular clacking sounds like drunkards in tap shoes struggling to form a kick line.

Janie is filled with a sadness she cannot fathom.

5 Thirteen months ago she was just another divorced mother of three.

She was having trouble with the rent and the school payments (St. Catherine's for Nikki, Memphis University School for Peter, special ed for Stevie); utility bills, bank statements and magazine subscription

notices-Interview, Newsweek, Southern Living, Architectural Home Digest-all tended to go in a pile by the door. She kept a pigeon-hole writing desk there, a big one with a high back, and at one time she took great delight in keeping everything separate and prepaid. She filled the empty holes with shells from trips to Biloxi and Miami Beach and the

Gulf coast of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. That was back when she was married and even after, before Stephen realized, or decided, that he could wrench control of her life from her simply by delaying or skip-

210

TRIQUARTERLY

ping or scrimping on the child-support payments. Stevie's medical bills

questioned constantly. He can't breathe! Janie shouted at Stephen once when he asked about the latest round of tests. They say he's got weak lungs and the air is too moist for him. Don't you remember when he was a baby? He can't breathe! He's never been able to breathe!

I remember, Stephen said. I'll have a check for you next week, Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. Some things need to clear this week yet. Stephen was a contractor. He'd inherited his hardware store from his father and then gone into real-estate development. He made his money building in Whitehaven and Collierville and Germantown­ places where people paid good money to stay away from Memphis prop­ er (though that had failed in Whitehaven; it was mostly black there now and the name seemed a cruel joke). At any given time Stephen had six or eight projects all going on at once and all of them, he claimed, required his capital.

I need it now, Stephen. The children can'tCan wait. People are used to waiting. Or at least they should be.

Patience, after all, is a virtue, and whatever happens quickly- Stephen went off on one of his important-sounding drones. Janie tuned him out. were

This was the man who spent ten thousand dollars getting hair to grow on

his head, then complained he didn't have any money to send Nikki

good college preparatory school in New England.

She couldn't believe she had married him, but things were different then. She had been on a spring-break trip with two other women, and

to a

two men from a

fraternity who had traveled down with them. She was

rather taken with George but she ended up marrying Stephen. Stephen,

unlike George, was serious. He was tall and thin and wore his hair short about the ears and neck, but long on top and slicked tight to his skull.

On the beach, though, his carefully plastered hair whipped about his face and long strands of paleness littered his shoulders as they broke off, bits of scalp still attached to the root ends. He was going to bald early and it touched her seeing it fall off like that. She believed she could fall in love with him in time, especially since he set himself up as Janie's protector, warding off bullies and generally acting chivalrous.

When he first kissed her and she had to pry open his anus like pucker with the slippery worm of her tongue, she knew she would have to show him everything. But then he wiped his clamlike lips and was on her, her silence a kind of permission. He blundered into her with eagerness and love and came out again with grateful torpor. Eight months later they were

married. The delay, Janie was sure, was caused by his mother's

211

TRIQUARTERLY

hounding him to drop her. But despite the quiet, diffident manner he assumed when in his mother's presence, Stephen stuck by her. I love her, Mama, he told her one night after dinner while they sipped tea on the porch swing. I love her and I will always cherish her.

Sex, Janie gleefully decided at the time, is stronger than blood.

A lot of things Janie used to believe have proved erroneous, but that is one idea she has not had to amend. So many things she treasured have been undermined, but that casual, defiant assertion made when she wasn't quite twenty still nags her. It's like with mosquitoes. You slap them and slap them and yet they're still buzzing, peppering you with

bites that swell the longer you scratch them.

Sex is stronger than blood. Janie knows that, the secretary knows that, every trophy who ends up a wife worried about the next trophy knows that. Even Stephen's mother, who was cordially distant to her from the as tell Janie very first, knew it. She would never do anything so impolite what an awful thing Janie had done, but it was clear that the horrible thing was not something for which she would ever be forgiven. On the morning of the wedding, though, Stephen's mother took her aside and

issued what Janie at the time took to be a warning, but years later decid­ ed was a brief upwelling of compassion.

"Remember, dear," Stephen's mother had said, "the diamond is never

big enough."

6 Stevie was a blue baby. He kept passing out as an infant and had to be revived with respirators two or three times a day. Stevie would cease

breathing and his color would change the way figures in cartoons get hot or angry: the rapid progression through the hues of red to umber, to purply brown, to a midnight blue that looked like it came from a foun­ She went with even less sleep than she had anticipated; she tain pen.

endlessly checking on him, putting her hand on his back to feel the under his nos­ tiny bones rise and fall, or failing that, shoving a compact trils. Once she brought iced tea out to the yardman and passed the time with him a little, talking of nothing in particular, when she was sudden­ ly seized with dread. Back in the nursery Stevie was a blue ball, curled tight as a shrimp.

There might be some damage, the emergency-room doctor said. Janie looked at him blankly. The brain. When he passes out like that he's not

was

212

TRIQUARTERLY

getting enough oxygen to his brain. We'll have to wait and see.

Oh, Janie said, and found herself biting her lips until they were lumpy and sore and her mouth was filled with blood.

When she found out later Janie wondered which was worse-that her lack of watchfulness when Stevie was a baby meant he'd always be slow, or that Stephen used Stevie's slowness as a reason to sleep with his sec­ retary? She didn't find out until the twins were three. She'd had inklings of it early in the pregnancy, but had said nothing. She was afraid to believe it was true. When she finally confronted him about it he said, Yes. And Janie in a blind rage told him to move out. To which he said, Thank you. For years, he said, he'd been piling guilt upon guilt until he was freighted with a moral heaviness so great that he was grateful Janie had given him the green light to shed it. Now, he said, he could live with himself. He could live with his secretary.

And Janie was left biting her lips again, wondering how he'd managed it, a getaway as clean as God's.

7 The switching yards are so close to Central Gardens that some mornings when Janie's working she can hear the click of wheels and the boom and

bang of metal coupling with metal. It's as though the trains are lovers slapping each other, provoking desires where none exist.

Janie thinks things like this while she's doing these people's houses.

She has overheard enough arguments to know that more slapping goes on in the world than you'd think possible. Knows, too, that every bit of violence that ends in lovemaking is a kind of rape the wives won't admit but acquiesce to. Sometimes there's a crack, a sharp little cry, and then the warm noises of two bodies struggling to overcome their own separateness. The warm humming noises of people desiring to meld flesh with flesh into a single flesh. As though such a thing were possible. As though their shouts and cries and exasperated gasps Janie hears from testimony to the fact that this cannot be so. look out the windows and see clouds above them, Janie, listening the treetops, gray cottony clouds stretched until they're shredded. On other mornings she sees high cirrus clouds that look like the pale skele­ tal bones of long, broad fish. It's on mornings like this that she keeps the windows open and listens to the trains coupling. They make a more dis­ tinct noise than people. But to get the windows open she has to argue. two floors away don't give to

can

213

TRIQUARTERLY

Most people for whom she works like to keep them closed.

They have high ceilings.

The noise of their house's machinery will drown out, they believe, the noise of their lovemaking. And besides, why let the outside air in any­ radiator heat and central air and big square rooms with

way? For ventilation, Janie will say. I need to breathe. And sometimes

they relent.

Actually, there is precious little lovemaking in Central Gardens.

Mostly she hears it in the newer suburbs where the nouveau riche believe they're being racy. In Central Gardens she's only heard it twice, and both times it was after she started the air compressor, then shut it off to bleed the hoses.

Central Gardens is an old neighborhood, and except for the modem conveniences they keep to the old way of doing things. The houses are

brick or pink granite or white stucco. Built at the tum of the century,

they are now occupied by the descendants of the families who built them. There are a few Philadelphia attorneys and chiropractors sprin­ kled about, but most of the new money lives out east, in Germantown

Collierville. Janie used to live in Bartlett, and worked for those peo­ ple, but she wanted to be closer to the river, closer to downtown, in a neighborhood where there were sidewalks and where people walked, at least occasionally, for groceries. She also wanted to get away from a neightborhood that was constantly reminding her of the accident.

That's what she calls it, though it hardly seems accidental when you drink on purpose, as that boy had. But "accident" is as good a word as any for encapsulating grief, for letting her speak of what happened with­ or

out

feeling what is raging inside her.

Even if it doesn't work.

Some mornings at six A.M. it's only Janie and the live-in maids. The

day maids are dropped off at six-thirty or seven by men in boatlike Chryslers and Cadillacs seven years out of fashion. The cars sputter away from the curb spitting oil like an outboard, and with their ruined shocks and the suspension's swing and sway they really do look like

boats riding low in the water. They remind her of her friend Clarice's car.

She's not seen Clarice in years; Clarice moved to Savannah and is a

morning-news anchor there. It seems odd now to Janie to be at work at six, probably about the same time as Clarice, only Clarice is on TV and Janie's arriving at a house with live-in maids. They'll have a biscuit and coffee waiting for Janie, then retrieve the morning paper while Janie

unloads her eight-year-old Datsun crammed with ladders, paint cans, shellacs, glues and varnishes. She has wood crates filled with brushes

214

TRIQUARTERLY

and sponges, drop and oil and tack cloths, varnish removers and paint thinners, scrapers and steel wool and plastic sheeting and rags. Also a box or two of medical examining gloves. Often the owners want the

woodwork redone to go with their newly textured walls. They decide this once Janie's already painting. Then they say they'd like everything finished by Friday, Saturday the latest. They're having a dinner party that evening and need the day to air everything out. Could you come in early? they'd like to know. We'd be ever so grateful.

Janie, letting her voice go good-old-girlish, says she might could, then quotes a figure that would put a strain on most people's gratefulness if she weren't so sure they'd smile knowingly to themselves if she asked for less.

Janie used to worry whether she was charging the right amount, too high or too low, and then found out that she was charging what a black painting crew grateful to get the work would charge. She discovered that she could get more work, or the right kind of it, if she was priced nearer to exclusivity. There was a certain pride for her clients in agree­ ing to swallow too high a fee. But it took her years to figure this out.

She comes home most evenings eager only for a light beer and some­

thing nonthreatening on TV. For Janie, comfort is a major issue. It dis­ appeared completely when Stephen left and she has been years scraping herself and her family back into the middle class. At one point, right after Peter, she thought God was punishing her for trying to be comfort­ able. For merely wanting it. But then she thought, given what her clients make, her prices are fair and life isn't. So they're not connected.

Bad things just seem to happen to her. It's a little the way she is-e-scat­ terbrained-and a little the way the world is. She locks herself out of her apartment, out of her car, leaves her car's lights on till the battery's

dead, leaves money at the automatic-teller machine. The machine she uses is called "Anytime Annie," and sometimes this so infuriates her that as she's walking away she leaves her keys, her money, right on the tiny aluminum shelf they provide for just such stupidities. Later she'll find her keys are being held by a security guard inside the bank, but her withdrawal has vanished.

Some people are just singled out, it seems. Major griefs and minor inconveniences: it's only by size that you can distinguish them. In the year after Peter was killed Stevie had his truck wrecked by a couple of

drunk teenagers in a car that turned out to be stolen, Nikki had her car stereo stolen, and Janie herself had backed into a light pole and side­ swiped a neighbor's car while parallel parking. There'd also been a

215

TRIQUARTERL Y

break-in at her studio and her cat had been run over right in front of the house. Renting in a block where everyone else owns she already feels

singled out. Now she's becoming known as "the catastrophe lady." The people in the apartment upstairs, a history professor and his wife, talk about her. She was backing her car out of the curved driveway-she had snapped the mudflap off previously, and was now smashing in the wheel­ well-when a deadfall from the pin oak in the front yard landed smack on the hood of her car. The professor's words to his wife and guests (they were having drinks on the front porch before the Memphis State-Ole Miss game) floated out to her. "Some people," the professor said, "just aren't born to luck."

8 It was while she was still married to Stephen that she got interested in

painting. Stephen thought this was something wives went through, a

phase coincidental with pregnancy and childbirth and post-partum depression (he'd been reading up on this), so he made the arrangements for a nanny, and three mornings a week Janie drove the Volvo to Memphis and took classes at Memphis State. But Janie got good at it­ watercolors especially; they were nontoxic, and with kids that mat­ tered-and once Stephen moved in with his secretary Janie moved to Memphis and finished her degrees. In graduate school she was drawn to oil and clay. That something could be tactile, thick under her fingers; that she could touch the painting after it was dry and feel the bright dark whorls of color: that was something. A small gallery in Miami took one of her pieces ("Evening, Lake McKellar") for an exhibit of Art by Southern Women: Reforging the Chains, and a Chattanooga collector bought one of hers entitled "Lost at Sea." This pleased her but she was still dependent on Stephen's irregular alimony and child-support checks, which were likely to arrive five, eight, fifteen days late, if at all. Stephen would make a big show out of making it up to her-buying her dinner in East Memphis, springing Mall of Memphis shopping sprees on the kids-but the ripples from this largesse were also meant to sustain them long after the wake of his passing had died against some far distant and unseen bank. His attentions were lavish but infrequent; the local Toyota dealer did better by him than they did.

She and Peter and Nikki and Stevie were living in Bartlett then. One of Stephen's townhouses. The children were in a Catholic elementary

216

TRIQUARTERLY

school. Even Stevie. This was a sign of her rebellion against Stephen, who once commented that a Catholic woman had worked as a recep­ tionist in his office for a time, and she seemed very nice. The lay teacher who had Stevie in her class, however, said Stevie might be best served by placing him in a special class. He's slow, the teacher explained, he needs special attention and care that in a class of forty-five I can't give him. Janie called Stephen.

Stephen, she said, biting her lips, Stephen, we need more money for Stevie. He's been tested, Stephen. He needs special schooling.

Special, huh? His tone was more impatient than malicious. He believed discipline and hard work could make even the slow adequate.

Stephen, please. His teacher, the nuns-they all say he needs special attention.

Hand-holding, Stephen said. Then, more softly, What's this special attention going to run me?

She quoted a figure that he would not have blinked at if she were

redoing his living room. A great silence and then a resigned, All right, I'll look into it.

So Stevie went to live with his father and his father's new girlfriend,

and Janie, in the worst way, was happy. She couldn't admit this even to herself without acknowledging that a terrible fault resided inside her.

Stevie was now enrolled in a school for the retarded outside Oxford.

And Janie felt terrible because her life was made easier, because the very first emotion that washed through her was relief. It was not a feeling she trusted. Relief was a spitefully mixed blessing. Those nights she couldn't sleep she went down the hall to Nikki's room. Nikki smelled of just­ washed hair. Janie resisted the temptation to slide in beside her daugh­ ter. It was enough to sniff the child-skin about her neck, to sniff the wet strands of hair still scented with shampoo. It was enough to remind her that her daughter was still there, still alive, still whole.

9 Sometimes the clouds look like they're big gray swatches of fabric that have been sliced with a pinking sheers. Other times like they've been ripped right across a straight edge. A tall slate mass of clouds edged per­ fectly, blue sky trailing. Or that high pale blue with the perfect wall cloud behind. Bad storms-sheet lightning, torrential downpours, torna­

does, landfall hurricanes-always, always, always with the wall trailing.

217

TRIQUARTERLY

The professor from the apartment above says it's because they live at the end of a trough where cold fronts from the north meet the leading edge of stationary fronts that bubble over the Gulf. The systems meet smack

the Mississippi. Hence the dramatic, changeable weather.

He repeats the usual joke: "If you don't like the weather in Memphis,

over

wait fifteen minutes. It'll change." He's new in Memphis, he has to

know the reason for everything.

10 The last week of the trial there are no clouds. High ceilings, unlimited

visibility day after day. Not even humidity. The weatherman is glowing.

It's February and it isn't raining and the daytime highs are nearing sev­ enty. To unwind each day everyone goes back to the house. It's a big brick house on Russelford and janie keeps painting supplies-a ladder, dropcloths, wood crates filled with stains and turpentine and paint brushes soaking inside coffee cans-behind the porch's long brick wall.

She hasn't touched this particular cache in months and spiders have spun webs over everything. Her mother takes a broom to clean places for people to sit. janie, really-her mother says, then stops. Nikki and her boyfriend Louis sit on the porch smoking cigarettes, janie and her mother on white-cushioned wire-backs. Louis has the soft handsome features of the genetically wealthy-soft sculptured cheeks, very dark

eyebrows, long sandy hair he keeps in a ponytail. He's wearing cuffed chinos and no socks, boat moccasins taped with silver duct tape, and a loose-fitting tweed coat over an equally loose-fitting turtleneck. Nikki met Louis at Rolling Meadows, the Episcopal boarding school for the recalcitrant but recovering well-to-do Stephen had picked out for her.

Stephen has come to the house. It's the start of the last week and he feels obligated to be there. First days and last days-there's a gravity to these occasions that needs upholding and he is there to uphold it.

Solidarity, he says, making it sound like he's sympathetic with Poland.

He's the same way about everything. When the children started school he'd insist on driving them there on day one, and on the last day he'd collect them as well. He liked graduations, too. First days and last days rolled into one. Gravity. In art he always wanted the first or last in a series of prints or etchings. Anything in-between, no thank you. The other numbers in the series exist only to establish distance between the items of real worth.

218

TRIQUARTERLY

He stays in his car now. The secretary girlfriend (the first secretary is

three? five? girlfriends ago by now) pouts in the front seat. She has lips specially made for pouting. They form a bright red cherry when she

sucks in her cheeks. The car is a white Caddy with Mississippi plates.

He has a Sunbird registered in Arkansas and a 4 x 4 registered in Tennessee. Janie has no idea what his Alabama car is, and for all she

knows he might have a western Kentucky car, too. He likes to keep cars in each state he does business. None is over two years old. After Peter, she told Stephen she didn't want him buying cars for the children, but he bought Stevie a maroon-and-blue pickup, which Stevie promptly

totaled, and a Nissan 300 ZX for Nikki, on the grounds she'd repeat her senior year at Rolling Meadows, thereby qualifying her for Vandy, or at least Alabama or Ole Miss. He doesn't want her going to Memphis State or the community college, like her mother. All they know how to do there, he says, is play basketball.

Stephen's window vanishes into the doorframe. From where they sit the porch they can hear the cool exhaust of the air conditioner.

"Janie," he calls, perfunctorily waving, "we'll see you tomorrow."

Nobody says anything. Nikki blows at a fly that's inspecting her on

knuckle.

11

Janie is thirty-eight but she used to be forty-one. She started subtracting three months ago, one month equaling one year. Now she's holding. She goes every evening at five, thirty to an aerobics class, and her body is hard and lean. Sometimes Nikki joins her. Nikki is a little soft, the way teenagers get when they drink beer and diet soda and don't exercise, but

Janie has biceps that jump when she paints. Her forearms look like knotted rope, and the slight bulge of muscle on her upper arms shapes her back like a wedge. Her waist is small, and she has the hard thighs and tapered legs of a swimmer. If her mornings were freer she'd take up cycling; stationary bikes lack vista. Small women usually go soft, their behinds widening like plush pillows. Janie is taut as a bowstring.

It's her skin that worries her. She made a point after leaving Stephen

of acquiring, and keeping always, a deep mahogany tan-he hated

that-and the effects are showing up now. Fine, tightly woven wrinkles pucker her arms and legs and face. She looks wiry but unstrung, a little haphazard. Her origins betray her. Working,class. The ladies of the

219

TRIQUARTERLY

homes she works on say that to themselves, to each other. "Pretty once but working-class. You see how that turns out? They don't last. ...

They're like those pretty Negro girls. Or Indians."

These women are friendly to her. They are pleased they have some, body handy with whom they compare favorably. And since she charges a hard wage but still less than an interior designer would, they speak to her with a candor they usually reserve for their hairdressers. Rolling salmon, colored paint onto somebody's living-room walls, or marbling those walls pink or rose or white or magenta, or sponging trompe l'oeil with a wrin­ kled Baggie, she hears about divorces, infidelities, addictions and neurot­ ic obsessions. They make it sound like staying is obviously preferable to leaving, but they sound so sad in relating this that Janie wonders. All that forced brightness, all that levity. It's obviously a great strain for them. They have voices that go higher up the register with each fabrica­ tion, they crane their necks forward with the earnestness of those who want you to believe, until Janie has to shut her eyes to drive out the pic, ture of these shrill, contorted ladies protesting their happiness.

You don't know, Janie wants to say, having never left. And yet they want Janie, the one who has, to comfort them about staying. They have vested interests, they explain, they can't leave. Can't Janie see? And doesn't she feel awful about leaving? They are wearing navy wool dresses with pearls. Diamonds as big as pearls adorn their fingers. Clusters of pearls are set about their ears. Janie wears no rings; she takes off her turquoise when she's painting, and her brown fingers are stained and dried and stink of paint thinner and Elmer's Glue-All, A trade secret:

Elmer's, when painted, makes new woodwork look antique.

What Janie wants to say to these ladies is, The diamond's never big

enough.

But they've already decided it is.

What they want, it seems to Janie, are the spiritual benefits of leav­ ing-freedom, release, privacy, space-with all the material comforts of staying. She understands completely their desires. She'd like for them to be true, too. But she wants to shout at each and every one of them, It can't be done! Do you hear me? It can't be done! THE DIAMOND IS NEVER BIG ENOUGH! It's their neurotic obsessions, though, from which she derives her busi­

These women can't leave well enough alone. The furniture's all in place, the paintings, the candlesticks from the aunts in Carolina, the ness.

antique picture frames, the Oriental carpeting, it's all in place, but rose, salmon, is the color sweeping through the formal dining rooms and

not

220

TRIQUARTERLY

living rooms of Germantown and Central Gardens and Collierville this spring. No, wait. It's teal. Teal for the dining room, rose for the parlor.

They are conservatives of radical conformity. Which is fine with Janie, since during the slow months her business is mostly furniture work: faux antiquing, marbling, coordinating window treatments with caned radia­ tor covers. Labor intensive and low margin. She'd rather be doing walls, big spaces she can feel her muscles stretching to accommodate.

Territory, walls she can gallop across. Antiquing or marbling a mirror frame is like doing miniatures. Her business really depends on people changing wholesale. New homes, new walls, new looks. "We want to give the place a face lift," her clients tell her, believing that a certain attention to cosmetics can make everything new, everything better, everything wonderfully, inexplicably alive.

It can't, she wants to tell them. Look at me. Her face is a web of fine

brown wrinkles, her arms shriveling berries. And Peter! Peter looked so

preposterously perfect in his makeup. You could really believe he'd only fallen asleep in this oddly formal, static pose. A child mumming death.

And everyone with the veils and black capes and condolences because this was a mummer's ball, a celebration people took too seriously. They had assumed too completely their roles. Really, it was starting to get on her nerves; it was really in very bad taste to continue dissembling like this.

At the private showing she lost it. Something gave way completely

and she lost it. Nikki keeps telling her this later, getting her to drink water and

holding tissues to her face. You lost it, Mama. You really lost it. Janie had shaken Peter, slapped his face, tried pulling him free of the coffin by his lapels. All the while screaming, Peter, wake up! Wake up, Peter! Wake up! You'll be late for school! Pe-ter! Pe-ter! And then she

collapsed, sobbing Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby! until they pulled her away from him.

She spent three days driving nails into a piece of clay. She made mis­ shapen hands with stubby arms and drove nails into the palmy lumps.

She fashioned a head, a torso. Nails went into the skull, the cheeks, into

the chest, the back of the neck where the spine rose hump like into the shoulders. She took bits of plaster of Paris and jammed them into the eye sockets, and wounded the clay further with twigs and bits of stick, with gravel, with green glass. When she was finished it looked like

something from a fifteenth-century Polish church. Medieval, full of nudity and power. She worshipped it. Then she painted wildly in oil for three weeks, drunk on bourbon, Coke, wine, codeine, coffee, iced tea

221

TRIQUARTERLY

and tranquilizers. She painted almost exclusively in dark yellow, forest green, blood red and black. Each square canvas featured a line of rectan­

gular boxlike bodies with wide shoulders and sticklike limbs. Small rec­ tangles for the heads. The teeth a row of tiny yellow boxes.

Recovering now, she wonders how many of these women lose it every day and never tell a soul, never say a word to anyone. Or if they do, make it seem all right even as they relate it to their friends over coffee in the sunroom: Oh, I had myself a good cry yesterday, you know. And the other women nod, and that's all that's said about it. A good cry, it's over now,

it's just sometimes it gets to be too much, you know?

If a housewife screams in a suburb and there's no one there to hear her

fall-?

12 Nikki has been kicked out of some of the finest Catholic and Episcopal

boarding schools in the South. St. Catherine's, St. Lucia's, Pennywhistle, Argus, and now Rolling Meadows. Stephen should never have given her that car. There she is, tooling about the Mississippi Delta with a carload of kids doing whippets. That's what nailed them at the check-in gate. The clink of metal from spent whippets. Nikki claims she wasn't doing any. She was only driving home people who'd partied too much. What am I supposed to do, Mama? Let them kill themselves?

That always gets to Janie. That plea. She believes everything Nikki tells her. She has to. Nikki is the last real child.

The last time this happened, the previous spring, Janie told Nikki, "I just don't know what to do with you. Why are you doing this? You're a fine student when you apply yourself. Why are you pulling these stunts?"

"I don't know, Mama."

"Well, find out, dammit. The trouble with you, young lady, is you lis­ ten to every fool

who comes along with an idea that might be fun but

isn't."

That was what Janie had decided about Nikki originally. When her grades plummeted and she started getting in trouble and St. Kate's asked her to leave and later St. Lucia's: it wasn't that she wasn't smart or wasn't good, it was just she listened to the wrong people. She allowed herself to be persuaded into doing foolish things by bad people, and all the time she thought she was doing them some good. Saving them in a for way she couldn't save Peter. That drinking episode at St. Kate's,

222

TRIQUARTERLY

example. Nikki knew that boy was going to get his liquor one way or another, and he'd most likely drive himself home later and kill himself.

So she bought the liquor for him-she looked older, it was only when she opened her mouth that she sounded seventeen-and took the wheel, and she was the one arrested at St. Kate's gate for being underage in a car with open liquor. Nikki swore she hadn't been drinking herself.

And only one boy, the boy Nikki was trying to protect, had tested intoxicated. The other two boys and the girl Nikki was with had tested only "impaired."

It was so silly it was stupid. The girl just didn't think.

Stephen blamed the Catholics. "It's the school itself. It's lax. I don't care what they say about discipline. The fact is Catholics are soft. That's why there're so many of them. Lord knows, I've had two Catholic women in the office, and they seem very nice and all, but-" "But what, Stephen?" They had been through all this before. Janie had been a Catholic before she married Stephen. She converted before the engagement. They never breathed a word to Stephen's mother, for whom the word "former" or "lapsed" just meant you were biding your time. And given what transpired, perhaps it did.

"Let me handle this, Janie. Some things simply need to be taken care of." Stephen called his friend Hollister, whose own daughter went to Rolling Meadows, and the arrangements were made. Nikki would start .

late the spring semester, take summer term, stay the next fall and spring, and the following fall be at Vanderbilt or Ole Miss, her grades finally

high enough to justify placing her there. The extra year of school wouldn't hurt and being a nineteen-year-old freshman might even give her a leg up on things.

"Stephen, let's just get her through the first spring, all right?"

Janie wished she could send Nikki further away to school-something in Connecticut or New Hampshire or Vermont, where Janie had gone several times on vacation. But Stephen bought a hair transplant and started poor-mouthing himself. Besides, he wanted to know, what was so terrible about a Mississippi prep school? Nothing, Janie said, only Nikki might do better someplace else.

She's going to do fine, Stephen said.

In celebration of her anticipated graduation the following spring Stephen sprang for the ZX. It was fire-engine red with a red leather inte­ rior and a CD player with Bose speakers. Stephen was very proud of the speakers.

"Stephen, how could you? A car?! She hasn't even graduated yet!"

She will, Stephen said. You know she will. She just has to be among 223

TRIQUARTERL Y

the right sort of people.

In July Janie went to collect her. The car was being impounded. Janie would have to collect that later. Janie's only satisfaction in the whole

business was that this time it happened at Stephen's school. With Catholics it's drink, Janie told Stephen over the phone. With Protestants it's whippets. I'm not sure I see the difference.

Now Nikki runs around town with her girlfriends and whatever boys are

in that pack. Janie can't keep track of them all. There's Stacy and

Jules and Amanda and Tricia and Beth and Winnie and Joleen and Dierdre and Dixie and Sue Ann and God knows who else. Janie can't remember ever having that many female friends. Nikki buys beer for those younger and gets beer bought her by those older. Her face has set­ tled into that Oh, yeah? sullenness common among teenagers but never present before in Nikki. They hang out at the Antenna Club and the doughnut shop across the street they call Heavy Metal Doughnuts. The Antenna patrons head over there after closing for a sugar fix. Janie her­ self prefers Huey's. The burgers are held together with cocktail tooth­ picks and the acoustical tile ceiling is studded with red and green cellophane-tailed toothpicks driven ceilingward through drinking straws. It's sort of a tradition, she explains to Nikki, though she's been here before with Nikki and didn't feel the need to explain anything. At the home of the best burger in Memphis, Janie says, feeling like a TV commercial, you shoot your toothpick at the ceiling to see if you can get it to stick. Mo-ther! Nikki says, rolling her eyes. You're ruining my life.

Huey's used to be cute, but it's bourgeois now, bogus. Don't you see? It's filled with old people.

Janie wonders when exactly she became old people.

Louis, although he seems like a nice young man, is evidently at least partly responsible for Nikki's new attitudes. Louis has come to dinner with Nikki, and it's obviously from Louis that Nikki learned her eye­ rolling. He also says Bogus! quite often while studying his fingernails.

Janie has an image of Louis in ten years saying Objection! with the same studied perfection.

But that doesn't matter right now. What matters is that Nikki is sleep­ ing at various friends' apartments, Dierdre's and Julie's especially, but maybe also at Louis's and she's just eighteen. And Janie can't say any­ thing against her, can't raise her hand though she's raised her voice plenty. But Nikki knows it's meaningless, knows that whatever Janie says now she'll relent on later.

Don't you come back in my house if you do this! Don't you dare set

224

TRIQUARTERLY

foot in my house! And a week later Nikki's back, raiding the refrigerator with her friends, taking Janie's books and cassettes, even Janie's

Janie's missing two silver picture frames and thinks maybe one of Nikki's friends stole them. That's it! Janie screams. Never again do

sweaters.

your friends set foot in my house! But her alarm system is broken and

though she threatens to change the locks she doesn't.

If Nikki were really to stay away Janie wouldn't be able to bear it.

Over Christmas Nikki goes to Biloxi with Jules and Dierdre, and comes back talking about Eddie. Eddie's serious, Mom, Nikki says. He wants to call me Nicole.

Eddie is a lifeguard. Nikki met him on the beach (Where else? Janie would like to ask, but she bites her lip), and he's real dreamy. Dreamy, she says, like it's 1963. Isn't dreamy bogus? Janie wants to ask, but she doesn't say that, either. And she can't simply say, That's nice, because "that's nice" doesn't cover any territory at all. Neither does, What about Louis? All she'd get in reply to that is Aw, mom! as though the question were

beyond belief. So instead Janie risks the one question that matters.

Are you using anything? she whispers, as conspiratorially as Jules or

Dierdre might ask her, only without the giggles, and all she gets for her trouble is Oh, mother! as though she's asked her daughter to wear a

chilly morning when it might be nice later.

Janie's working on a house at Carr and Willett now, a big brick four­ square with a two-story clapboard addition in back. They call the addi­ tion a hang-on, after the way these homes were built-four huge rooms to a floor, no attic to speak of, and forty years later came the addition once eight gigantic rooms simply weren't enough for the way these fami­ lies lived. Some people have even blown the roof off the attic, built in dormers, and use the extra space for the maids or as a family entertain­ ment center. Before air conditioning, attics were of no use except as a place where the heat could escape to, and even now some people leave their attic windows open so the heat doesn't pent itself into an explo­ sion. In other attics, though, window air-conditioning units have blos­ sweater on a

somed like mushrooms. Janie's seen some of these attics because she's been asked to decorate them. Often they're a room for the eldest son, off to or just back from college. To paint these walls, Janie pries off the thumbtacked posters of models in thong bikinis and crotch-hugging

soon

jean shorts and thinks, My daughter's sleeping with a lifeguard in Biloxi, Mississippi, brought up on posters like these. She wishes she could tell Nikki she understands, because she does, really, but Nikki is not going to want to hear it.

Oh, mother-! Janie can already hear that, can hear

225

TRIQUARTERLY

Peter's never-voiced Aw, mom!

as

she orders him to take down the

thong ladies, posters he never put up, would never put up, and she with a start when she realizes that the wall she's speckling has nearly dried. The tacky tsch-tsch-tsch of her baggie on the paint finally wakes her.

So how does she wake up Nikki? She can barely wake herself. For comes to

years now she has gone off with men she didn't trust. With Kenneth to

the Outer Banks, and to Cape Cod with Stan. She went a couple of times with Stan to Wellfleet and

Provincetown, and once even to Martha's Vineyard. They rented bikes and went looking for Kennedys.

Stan was a tall man, thin and athletic. The word ropy comes to mind

recalling him, and the hair on his head-black, oddly kinked curls going gray-was vaguely pubic. She liked to rub his bald spot, a point on his crown where baby-fine hair grew like lawn seedlings doomed to frost.

She met him on vacation. It isn't hard meeting men on the beach. You

simply lie there and wait for them to talk to you. And they always, always would. Stan was a photographer. He wanted her to relocate, talked of marriage, said he could get her started in her own gallery, or if she wanted to keep doing walls she could do that, too. He knew a lot of people, artists and craftspeople all up and down the coast. He assured her she wouldn't be hurting for work.

His friends couldn't hold their liquor. Janie suspected they waited till they got drunk to say the things they wanted to. Or at least things they oughtn't. Janie couldn't tell if it was maliciousness or just bad manners.

Every time she opened her mouth to speak-she usually waited until the evening was well along before she said anything-they stared at her as though she were from Mars. Ah do declahre, one of them said with great quilty breathing, a reg-u-lahr Southern Belle!

That's a phone company, Janie said, but she was already outside the circle. The moment she opened her mouth, she had become Stanley's Memphis belle. Stanley protested but Janie knew it was the same as if he were seeing a colored woman or a Jew. They were the open-minded sort who closed ranks on anyone not from the tribe. You could be different, but only in a limited way. Say as a liberal Republican. One had to stay with one's own sort, after all, at least in marriage. Until then it didn't matter who you

slept with.

Janie found this out after she said she'd stay with Stanley another three weeks in August. She had misgivings but pooh-poohed them. She could postpone her jobs in Memphis, and the two of them would go to Wellfleet, where Stanley knew some gallery people he'd like her to

226

TRIQUARTERLY meet.

Ditto people in Boston. She really shouldn't pass up this kind of

opportunity. Cleaning the Boston apartment one day she came upon a cache of ladies' underwear behind the bureau and hotel receipts mixed in with his correspondence for days she was in Wellfleet and he'd gone back to Boston on business. "But I was captivated by you," Stanley said.

"It's your own fault, really. You shouldn't look if you don't want to find."

So she was merely an oddity, a Memphis belle he could make promises to

and cheat on. Among themselves they would put it cutely: So

Stanley's been fucking the maid again. How perfectly (choose one) awful/charming.

So how can Janie blame her daughter for a fault they share? She wants to call Nikki and tell her, Don't trust anyone possessing both a smile and a penis, but instead she calls Nikki and reminds her that succumb­

ing is not hope, that submission is not salvation, and that it's not easy, but you can maintain distance and skepticism even in the most raptur­ of positions.

Mother, Nikki says, what in tarnation are you talking about?

ous

13 The boy who killed Peter was a quarterback for Presbyterian Country

Day. That's how she thinks of the blond boy in the blue suit and the blue-and-maroon foulard. When they pulled him from the car he had

long strings of blond hair hanging in his eyes and a chin beard of black and blond and rust-colored wires. He reeked of alcohol. She knows this because Peter was struck by a car going sixty-three in a thirty-five zone.

And he was not alone. William, a friend, was with Peter when it hap­

pened. They were trying to cross Poplar Pike. They were on the curb chatting and there seemed to be a gap in traffic and Peter stepped off the curb. William started, then stopped, then made a grab for Peter's shoulder. The car-a '59 candy-apple-red Plymouth convertible, boat­ sized, with a white interior and fins-spun Peter over the front grillwork and up the windshield and spat him off to one side the way you might send a penny spinning off a table. Only this penny-these were the words her attorney used in court-only this penny ended up dead.

William said he couldn't remember anything. Pieces only. He remem­ bered the car, its looming grillwork, its shriek of brakes, the thud, like the sound of cars colliding, you know? Only it wasn't cars colliding. It was

Peter. Peter and the boat. Peter with his cheek bruised and

227

TRIQUARTERLY

scratched, his legs bent up under him in a way that didn't seem natural unless you were a little kid playing Army and pretending you were dead.

Kids die in poses like that. When Janie paints in her sunroom she sees across

the street the children with their sticks and toy guns. The elabo­

rateness of their death throes is

appalling. They clutch their chests, stag,

ger, throw wrist to forehead as though in a faint, then collapse to the

ground, knees first, then shoulders, then their bellies slump, they twitch once, twice, an arm gets thrown out, they lie still, they jerk, they roll over, they fake electric shock, they throw out the other arm, and then finally, finally they lie still, crucified on their parents' front lawn, their heads tipped to one side.

Peter just had a little dirt on him. His Tshirt and pants were stained and smudged, his cheek was scraped and there was some grit in his hair.

He'd sometimes come in looking worse after working on the car.

SurelyJanie doesn't want to talk about it but she can't not. Every day she goes to the trial and watches a parade of human beings she doesn't know

only vaguely recognizes all claiming to know her son or the boy who killed him. There are photographs, diagrams, calculations that remind her of high-school trigonometry problems. If Fig. A is traveling from East Memphis at fifty-nine miles per hour, and Fig. B is a stationary object on a curb near Sound Warehouse, what will the velocity of impact be at 3:38 P.M., Central Standard Time, given dry road condi­ tions, a clear day, and six empties clinking about the floorboards behind or

the front seat?

Each day she goes home with her mother and Nikki and sometimes Louis and they sit on the porch swing or the metal deck chairs in the

mild February air and talk about bulbs maybe breaking free of the

ground soon and the first flair of forsythia-how soon? how soon?­ until she can't take it anymore and runs inside crying.

Some nights on her walks with Rufus she rolls in the oak leaves and shows up later at Huey's or the P&H Cafe with bits of oak leaf and other detritus in her hair. She has three or four or five Lite beers, then goes home and showers obsessively.

Her attorney tries explaining due process to her. He is a serious young man

with tortoise-shell granny glasses and a neatly trimmed mustache

and only the hint of second chin forming underneath an otherwise handsome face. He is married with two children and lives in her neigh, borhood. She sees him sometimes tossing an orange Nerf ball at his three, year' old son, who tries batting it with a monstrously huge banana,

228

TRIQUARTERLY

yellow Nerf bat with an outsized blue handle. The swings are clumsy, the father relentlessly encouraging. The ball travels maybe three feet. In his offices he tries explaining reasonable doubt and jury of your peers and she's screaming, Jury of your peers? Jury of your peers? How about Peter's peers? How about a jury of people hit by automobiles? How about a row of bloody corpses, huh? Huh? Huh? And her attorney, the mild young man with the round face and the tortoise-shell spectacles calmly

lets his blue-suited chest and shoulders absorb her beating.

14 There is a problem with the boy who struck and killed her son. (She can't think of him any other way.) He's the son of an appellate-court

judge and is a star quarterback. The policeman at the scene recognized this. Eight hours elapsed before they gave him a Breathalyzer test. There seems to be an unspoken agreement among all present-judge, jury, spectators, courtroom personnel-that this was a terrible accident but not, repeat not, a criminal offense. The defense attorney, a florid man

with iron-gray wavy hair and a propensity for double-breasted suits, fos­ ters

this view, repeating over and over that the freshly barbered boy in

front of them should not pay a lifetime's worth of guilt and sorrow-he is already sorry-and certainly should not be criminally liable for a sin­

gle moment's lapse of concentration, especially since that stretch of Poplar Pike-a commercial street of strip malls and dry cleaners and florists and restaurants with funny names like the Halfway House and Ben's Lobster Supreme and the Normal Barbecue-has neither a consis­ tent sidewalk nor a crosswalk.

It could, the defense attorney concludes, have happened to anybody.

Janie cannot believe what she's hearing. Why hasn't her attorney leapt to his feet? Why isn't he riddling that flimsy argument full of the holes it's so easy to poke? Why does he seem: to be cooperating, even acquiescing in this clean, clinical discussion of what this one boy has so

carelessly, remorselessly done to her son? And to talk of that barbered boy's suffering! Twisted, grievous mess-that's what her attorney said in his opening arguments, and after that Janie could barely bear listening, but she did, she did, and now it's come down to this calm reasoning, this weighing and sorting of testimonials and pitches for leniency. It could not have happened to anybody. Even the way he says the word is a lie.

He says anybody, not anybody. Body body body body! Don't they see?

229

TRIQUARTERL Y

Don't they feel it? The cold rush of metal into one's abdomen, the whoof! of air dispersing, disappearing? The internal blossoming of organs loosed in blood?

It's a conspiracy of concern for the living body over the lifeless one.

The boy in question is a prettified drunken quarterback who had the

good fortune of being born into an appellate-court judge's household.

What matters most, it seems, is how to dispose of the evidence and not muck up the future for the guilty when what's done is done for the inno­ cent.

That night Janie feels something biting her under the covers. Her

legs, her feet, her thighs, it's even chewing into her pubes. Something is biting her legs or crawling on them while she sleeps. She gets a flash­ light and shines it down the length of her torso-nothing. Examines every inch of the bed covers-still nothing.

And yet that morning she has a rash. Red pustules as though an army of something were eating her alive while she slept. Ointment, a hot shower, more ointments help. She still has the rash but it feels less like fire.

She makes a notation on the phone pad, "Call dermatologist. Call

exterminating company," then rushes off to court, tearing another mud

flap free of her car as she backs down the driveway. There's a clunk and a scrape and after she pulls forward and backs out again she can see the mud flap in the driveway. It looks like a roofing shingle. She tosses it into the back seat on top of some magazines and McDonald's wrappers.

The car is filled with the fumes of thinners and paint.

Something is going to happen to me, she says once she's moving. The window is down and the sun is streaming across her face and the yellow dust motes flutter like leaves. There is a tickling inside her stomach and about her waist. The car smells now of warm dash and upholstery, and the air of wet mold.

Something is going to happen to me. She can feel it in the way her knuckles curl over the steering wheel.

The rash is spreading.

15 After the trial is like the first day of the trial. Her husband Stephen is there, but he stays out on the street in his white coupe with his black toupee and his red-wool-and-silk miniskirted girlfriend. All he can say

230

TRIQUARTERLY

when Janie comes up to say good-bye is, If he'd have stayed with me­ And then he drives off, the engines roaring.

Janie's eyes sting and she thinks it might be from the way the dying sunlight lands on her hands, her cheeks, her eyelids. She looks up through the bare trees and there are high cirrus clouds, brightly white against the palest blue imaginable. They are as thin as fish vertebrae. Is this the something? she asks herself. Is this the something?

16 In the morning she stands in her nightgown in front of her dry sink.

The dry sink has been in her family for ages. It is high-backed and mir­

rored. She keeps a speckled enamel bowl and a pitcher on the table, but she showers like anyone else. The bowl is for letters, the pitcher con­ tains dried flowers. She wonders when it was that her arms started

to

wrinkle, and has her face always seemed this weblike? Her hair is the color and texture of spun cocoa.

Every night for the next week she is visited by the vermin. The der­ matologist can't help her; neither can the exterminator. He checked the mattress, box spring, mattress pad, bolsters, bed frame, sheets, blankets, pillowcases, wardrobe, everything. She has to leave the house for an entire morning while he sprays and pokes at holes. When he's done he says she can't go back in the house for another couple of hours, then she should air the house thoroughly. And what was it? she asks. The exter­ minator man shakes his head. Negative, ma'am. It all came up negative.

Dr. Polanchard tells her the same thing. Whom should she believe, these experts or her own skin?

She tells the history professor upstairs about it. The poured cement and brick porch is the only covered place outside and they have an arrange­ ment that

allows them both to use it. Janie is out there now refinishing

somebody's furniture-a bedroom set for a five-year-old with a painted border of leaves and fairies on the bureau's sides and headboard. Or

maybe they wanted bunnies and mushrooms. It's hard to remember. Blue and white, pink and green. It's so pastel Janie can't stand it. But she's try­ ing to get herself back into some kind of normalcy. Dr. Polanchard says her painting will help. He says throwing herself into her work will help.

But that's a guy thing. She's too distracted to concentrate.

She's drawing the stencils while waiting for the apartment to air. The

history professor listens sympathetically when she tells him about these

231

TRIQUARTERLY

things that keep biting her but nobody can find anything. She gets going and going about it until she's telling him that it's spread to her buttocks and the small of her back. At aerobics the raised hives show

through her tights; her legs have the look and feel of a pebbled basket­ ball. Even the undersides of her breasts are affected. I thought it was prickly heat but it's not, she says, and lifts up her arm. She's wearing a tank top, and the hives run like an army of marching ants into her armpit. The history professor says maybe it's stress. He's preparing a paper on the divorce rates of Nebraskan homesteaders in the 1840s and

1880s. Women were more likely to bring these suits than men were, and

that establishes his assertion that emancipation on the Plains began a lot sooner than anybody seems to give it credit. It coincides, he says,

with the rise of mental hospitals for the female insane. Surely, he says, this is not without significance. Janie wipes her hands with a rag and nods. She knows he's in the middle of an affair with one of his soon-to­

be-divorced graduate students. It's just like a man, she thinks, to be writ­

ing lectures, papers, even whole books about the emancipation of women

while doing that. Dead women, she thinks. Safely emancipated.

Dead, free. She throws the rag down, suddenly enraged. Then she dis­ cards the notion of telling his wife as soon as it occurs to her. What

business is it of hers? She has problems aplenty without alienating the

neighbors.

Can I make you some tea? the history professor asks. He's going inside

and he'd be happy to bring her a glass. Janie says thank you and then feels his eyes lingering on the sway of her breasts and the jump of her

biceps as she rubs stencils onto the bureau top. She allows herself a brief crinkling of smile. After his graduate assistant, she's next. It will be a silly business, her telling him she's not even remotely interested while he's saving face by saying he thought it was her idea, something she wanted. After all, she lifted up her arm to show him her hives.

And something is still eating at her. In the mirror she sees bite marks.

It's not just scratching; there are pinpoints of blood from the teeth.

She wonders, Is this the something that's going to happen to me? Is this the

something?

She paints walls now with a special fury. The marbleized cornices and trompe l'oeil buffets have an unfinished, angry look to them. The cus­ tomers never notice, except for one woman who asks if maybe she isn't

working too hard?

Janie promises she'll slow down. This is not a business where you can afford word of mouth containing qualifying "buts-". So she practices at

232

TRIQUARTERLY

being calm, wiping her fingers as though she might be dusting, moving her crates of material about with an intensity of professional purpose.

Her own work takes on the frenzy instead. A surviving victim of Francis Bacon meets feminization. That's what she wants to title her latest. An

inverted V of boxlike figures with stick hands and red, bloblike heads flank the familiar prolate hexagon, the painting's monolithic center.

The brushwork is frenzied, the figures hideous, as though, like the clay figure in the living room, they were made of cardboard, plaster, pieces of earth, and branches. Everything beckons to her, the turkeylike flesh and the sticklike arms, the blood-black-and-red bodies, the sickly green eyes.

They are androids from hell, and her nipples are itching. Her flecking breasts are on fire, and she wants to feed them, she wants to feed them.

She throws down her brushes and screams.

17 Months pass. Janie still goes every night to see the military payloads rat' tle through the switching yard, listing like somnolent bulls. Half-tracks and troop carriers and tanks and jeeps on flatbeds, each machine in

camouflage colors or Army green with the white bars and stars and let' tering. And the chemical tanks and boxcars, each stenciled DANGER RADIOACTIVE.

She just folds her arms across her chest and watches them clank and rattle through. Her attorney says if not the criminal case, then the civil.

They can at least get something. Janie pinches her muscular biceps with her thumb and four fingers and watches the veins jump in her forearms.

Corded mahogany. There's a wrinkled sadness to every bit of flesh she touches these days. It's even true of her new boyfriend, with whom she already knows she won't stay long. It's as though every bit of moisture has been wicked clean away from her life, leaving her nothing but wrin­ kled sacking.

Four jets from the Naval Air Station at Millington make matching razor slices across the sky that unfurl themselves into bleached asparagus tips.

Janie? her attorney asks.

Janie comes to with a start. I don't think so, she says. Then, more definitively, No, absolutely not.

But we can win this one, he says. We have a real chance.

No, Janie repeats. Absolutely not. Please, don't ask me again.

233

TRIQUARTERLY

Nikki has moved in with Louis, though she still writes Eddie. Maybe she'll marry them both. Or neither. The world is so full of possibilities,

and who's to say polygamy might not come back into fashion?

Janie's beginning to believe that what she's received from life are only

of its possibilities.

Nikki's friend Julie has become Janie's confidante. It is from Jules, not Nikki, that Janie hears Nikki's quit Louis and gone to see Eddie, who lives in Nashville, and it's Jules who tells Janie that Nikki's moved in

some

with her. Janie sees that as a good sign.

Nikki is worse off in some ways than Janie. Janie at least knows some­ thing's happening. Nikki hasn't a clue. She's spent the last year being

social, or whatever it is they say now when they mean a girl is sleeping around to keep from being alone with herself.

By October Nikki's moved at least partway back home, leaving off books and laundry, though officially she's still staying with Julie. She won't, when she and Julie come back from their dates or wherever they've been, go inside the house. She and Jules sit on the poured cement railing instead, their backs against two square brick columns, and toss cigarette butts and Lifesaver wrappers and Diet Coke cans and Corona bottles over the railing and into the box hedging. A little trash

heap gathers beneath the porch. Outside where she parks her car, too.

She just drops her wrappers out the window. God or the city sweeping crew will eventually whisk everything clean away.

Some nights Janie finds Julie and Nikki there after she's back from a walk and Janie thinks of joining them, of saying, Make room, y'all, but she doesn't for the same reason she didn't climb into bed with Nikki intrusion enough, though Nikki years ago. Rufus nosing their hands is and wag his tail happily. lick it leaves her hand where Rufus can When they want her, they'll ask her.

18

Nearly eight months after the trial and Janie is wondering

if she should

mark the second anniversary of Peter's death. Not if, rather, but how. celebrate an event like that? A party? Call up Peter's How do you

friends-Julie would know, she used to date Peter once upon a

time­

and invite them for a cookout? Ask everyone to come in dark suits, black velveteen dresses, and dance to Halloween organ music? Give

people those purple funeral flags with the white cross and

234

the magnetic

TRIQUARTERLY

bases and drive Central Gardens into a panic? (The dead of Central

Gardens are discreetly buried elsewhere.) Janie doesn't know where to begin. She's driving past the Maryland Arms on Mansfield and Central,

however, when it hits her. The Maryland Arms is an exclusive condo, minium. It's red brick with green, and pumpkin-colored awnings. Each unit has its own brick, and, stone balcony and underground parking.

There's a wrought, iron fence out front with brick pilasters and a circular drive. Out on the lawn they've having a party. They're still setting

things out. There's a large yellow-and-white-striped tent. Yellow nap' kins, tridents of candles, white lawn chairs and tables. Wine goblets, water glasses, silver place settings, aluminum canisters of soda and great troughs of ice. What Janie can do is get everyone to come over just after this party has broken up. They'll sit among the rumpled napkins, spilled

wine, half-filled water glasses, discarded finger sandwiches, melting sher­ bet, drying fruit slices, and crumbs. The breeze will ruffle their hair and they will all think of long ago, when Peter was alive and the bright vel­ low leaves of the gingko trees did not seem to mock them.

Janie feels the nape of her neck then signals for a right turn into the drive. A curious thing has happened: since late summer the rash has subsided. It is only a rash now, and is centered just beneath her neck, an

inverted triangle of raised dots that spreads across her thorax and fun, nels like water between her breasts. Sometimes she feels it beneath the bra she wears while working out, but that's just sweat.

Janie does a slow turn around the drive. Her car labors in third gear, bucks even, but she's watching the white-jacketed waiters too closely to pay attention to her driving. Even her rash gets brief attention; she

scratches absently, downshifts absently. The waiters set out butter dishes and mint trays and linen, wrapped bread baskets and bowls of grapes. Tiki torches are being set, bug coils lit. They are below the gnat line. Even in October no-see-urns and mosquitoes can pepper your limbs with bites.

Bites. Janie is scratching her neck harder as she completes her circuit.

She's still looking over her shoulder as she pulls from the drive into traf­ fico Three black men are pushing a bright black 300 ZX into the drive from behind the building. It's wrapped like a Christmas present. Foot, wide red ribbons run the entire length and width of the car. On the Z's hood sits a huge red bow. She's watching this vehicle creep up in her rear and sideview mirrors-objects are closer than they appear-and so doesn't see the larger vehicle from her left that she's idling into as she rolls out the drive. She doesn't even see it's a truck until it's two, thirds of the way past her. There's the single eeeeeehhhh! of the horn and

235

TRIQUARTERLY

then her car's shuddering several feet to the right. Her bumper flies off beneath the truck and a headlight skitters and slides and jumps like a

dropped head of cabbage.

It's a dry-ice truck. Janie sits with her hands at ten and two o'clock, the crushed front of her car pointing at Archer Hall across the street. A Victorian stone mansion with crenelated towers and high arched gables

and coppery green gutters and flashings, Archer Hall has been empty since the last owners tried and failed at making it into a restaurant. The

Rotary Club has its House of Horrors there each Halloween. Janie is sure the Archers, when they built this monstrosity, never intended for their front lawn to be an asphalt parking lot with fading yellow parking lines, the lot roped off by a cankered chain looped like cartoon ocean waves between short yellow fence posts. Nor did they intend for their house itself to be a joke ghost house, a fund-raising gimmick for a men's drinking club. But it has, and suddenly for Janie everything is very clear.

She sees things in a way she doesn't believe she ever has before. In a way she didn't think before was even possible. She starts to laugh and cry all at the same time, the tears running down her cheeks and drop­ ping like snowflakes into her mouth and onto her chin and fingers.

Are you O.K., lady? the driver's asking. He's not from around here, his voice is too nasal. Janie keeps staring straight ahead, her hands at two and ten o'clock. The driver is offering her his license. She should reply, do the same. But she simply cannot take her hands off the wheel. She holds on tight; it feels like Play- Doh when you can't squeeze it any tighter and it's a cool snake inside your fingers. Janie can't feel anything but that cool inanimate snaking just beneath and outside her grasp.

Amazing, simply amazing. She leans her head forward until her fore­ head touches the top of the steering wheel.

Lady, are you all right? Lady? LADY?!

She lifts her head, smiles weakly, then bites the steering wheel, gets it like a dog might a favorite stick between her teeth. She tongues the warm

plastic and she is amazed at its rigidity and texture inside her mouth.

LADY? Lady?!

She lets the steering wheel go. It's all right, she says. I'm fine. I'm going to be fine, really.

Jesus, lady, you gave me a fright. He starts going on about her going into the street like that, just rolling like a trike as he was lumbering towards the interstate. Janie again shakes her head and smiles weakly.

Yes, she says. I guess I gave us all a fright.

236

Paul Emsley, Untitled (1994, chalk on Fabriano paper)

TRIQUARTERLY

Yellow Peril Jianying Zha

The best-selling author in China after the great Chairman Mao may be a slight, little man named J ia Pingwa. Instead of the Little Red Book, J ia has written a big yellow book-yellow being the color that signifies sex and pornography in China. In The Abandoned Capital (Feidu), [ia's

thick, juicy new novel about contemporary life in an old Chinese city, the red fire of revolution has long faded. What burns in the hearts and minds of today's Chinese men and women is a flame much more ancient and enduring: sex. And what does life mean besides a good fuck? Well, for the citizens of the abandoned capital, it means eating, bribing, scheming, and generally gypping each other.

This novel has taken China by storm. Described by journalists as "the that has caused a great literary and publishing earthquake in 1993," The Abandoned Capital sold a half-million copies within the first

event

few months of its publication and, with more than ten pirated versions

available, countless more later on.

Wild accolades from both critical and popular sources have showered on it. The novel has been hailed, for instance, as "an epic work of the Chinese intellectual soul" and "an extraordinary monument of contem­ have porary Chinese literature." Meanwhile, the novel and its author taken as much beating as touting. A lot of intellectuals and literary Chinese men and women have condemned the novel, outraged by its

"unbearably vulgar sex scenes" and "despicable male sexual psychology."

If J ia must write nakedly about sex, they demanded, why couldn't he at least write about it with some beauty and depth, as D. H. Lawrence had done? All decent, educated Chinese readers admired Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had only been released in China a few years earlier. Why 238

TRIQUARTERLY

couldn't our novelist elevate sexuality to render it some spiritual mean­ ing? Instead of creating a world of emotion and romance, J ia had us toss and tumble in an arena of flesh! A Beijing graduate student drew the distinction between Lawrence and J ia this way: while reading both of them may cause a young man to masturbate, with Lawrence he may feel a bit ashamed of himself afterward, but never with J ia!

Government officials at "the antipornography office" weren't happy about the situation, either. For years now they have been fighting China's swelling "yellow trade," which has been enjoying a boom in the new climate of economic openness and prosperity. The common variety of yellow trade involves porno video tapes made in southeast Asia and Europe, which get smuggled in across the southern borders and then reproduced and sold all over China; porno literature on private book­ stalls across the country; and all manner of undercover sex services, which are usually disguised as massage parlors, karaoke bars, or beauty stylists. The antipornography officials have been waging battle by arrests, bans, confiscation, even an occasional execution. But this time they were caught in a strange bind: The Abandoned Capital is penned by a famous, serious novelist who has not only a stainless political and moral record, but also a reputation for having produced in the past only "pure literature." Is it possible for someone like that to have written a "yellow book," or "a filthy novel showing moral turpitude," as some peo­ ple have claimed it to be?

Meanwhile, a lot of elite critics openly or privately deplored yet anoth­ er case

of a gifted, serious writer "selling out" under commercial pressures

and "degenerating" into the low ranks of pornography and ditan wenxue,

"literature for the sidewalk stalls." The Chinese writers' imagination is

withering rapidly, they lamented, and now they must resort to catering to the sex-hungry soul of the average Chinese in order to gain fame and profit. What a sad example of the vulgarization of literature!

All the same, the novel kept on selling, and people kept on talking about it. For every verdict of condemnation, there would be a matching comment

of admiration and encouragement. As a matter of fact, it's

been so long since a work of fiction stirred such passionate debate that

people began to wonder if this wasn't a sign of the public's renewed interest in literature. Some even hoped that the success of this one novel would help raise the market value of literature in general and enable it to "walk out from the bottom of the valley." Maybe television some

soaps and pop singers and karaoke bars are not going to dominate all.

Maybe the demand for good writing is still there.

239

TRIQUARTERLY

Zhang Yiwu, a young Beijing critic noted for his essays on postmod­ ernism, is not given to such wistful thinking. He says that The Abandoned Capital is a watershed event only in the sense that, for the first time, China has a commercially hyped-up major best-seller written

by a serious novelist as a serious artistic work: from now on, he says, "the division between the high and the low in Chinese literature has van­ ished." [ia's novel, Zhang further points out, suggests that the trend of "quality writing for leisurely reading" is making a comeback. The trend had had a lively play in the Chinese literary scene back in the twenties and thirties, but later got overridden by the political ideology that ush­ ered in the literature for the proletariat.

In any event, by the end of 1993, withstanding {and thriving under} all the skepticism, sometimes mudslinging, from the cultural elite, The Abandoned Capital has become a household name in China.

J ia Pingwa is a forty-one-year-old novelist living in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province in northeastern China. Xian is an ancient city known for its rich historical sights and, more recently, for having pro­ duced Zhang Yimou, the celebrated film director. But J ia is not riding on anyone's coattails. A literary prodigy with a smooth-sailing career, [ia is natural writer blessed by early critical plaudits and continuous prolifi­ cacy. He is also one of those serious literary postulants who has enjoyed a

something of a popular following. He writes both fiction and sanwen, a popular Chinese genre best described as a form of meditative prose essay with literary overtones, and his works have been published everywhere in China, some of them in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He is admired as a "beautiful stylist," and his fluid, beguilingly simple prose seems to charm readers across varied classes and regions. In the Xian literary scene, he has been, of course, larger than life.

Still, nobody expected The Abandoned Capital. Widely taken to be more or less autobiographical, it surprised many of J ia's fans like a sud­ den, bizarre revelation by a familiar author. Set in the ancient capital city of Xijing {which is easily recognizable as Xian), the novel centers around the story of Zhuang Zhidie, a middle-aged, frustrated writer whose enormous literary fame helps to pave way for both his sexual adventures and his eventual destruction. The main plot line can be summed up simply. A small-town hustling writer, Zhou Min, comes to Xijing, and tries to make a name by publishing a gossipy profile of the famous Zhuang. In it, he freely exaggerates Zhuang's past romantic liai­ son with a now-powerful woman colleague. The woman files a libel suit that ends up involving everyone in the city's literary circles. Meanwhile,

240

TRIQUARTERLY

Zhuang embarks on an affair with Zhou's sexy mistress, and later begins affairs with various other women. Zhuang's wife and friends try to use all their connections and influences to settle the libel suit, to no avail. In the end, misfortune falls on most of the main characters. Zhuang loses

everything-the suit, his wife, his mistresses. He gives up writing and flees the city.

This summary, though, hardly conveys the sense of this dark, dank novel that literally oozes slimy, sinister scenes and characters. Dwelling on

the details of everyday events in a meticulously realist fashion, the

novel unfolds gradually, almost blithely, a picture of life in an old capital city that is rotten and perverse in every way: its pervasive greed, corrup­ tion and hypocrisy, its superstitious beliefs, its prurient repressiveness, and its stagnant powers. The author gives no specific time reference, but the story's contemporaneity is beyond question. For one thing, popular ditties about 1980s corruption and the new social hierarchy are fre­

quently cited in the novel by a prophetic old man-a sort of town freak who collects and sells garbage; any Chinese reader will instantly recog­ nize these satirical rhymes. With its large cast of characters, the novel seems to

have rounded up the usual suspects who have been running

rampant and looming large under the dark post-Mao Chinese sky: a phony, corrupt mayor and his sycophantic underlings, small-time hus­

tlers, hooligans and creeps, shameless mandarins, sham artists, entrepre­ neurs

who make fake products, scheming family servants, a manipulative

and wanton nun, a street hooker spreading VD, even an opium addict.

Nobody in sight is innocent or very likable, not even the hero. With all his existential suffering and self-pitying whining about his own weak­ ness, when the moment comes, Zhuang is quite capable of licking the asses of powerful officials, or marrying off, for his own interest, one of his mistresses to the mayor's crippled son. Through treacherous sleight of hand, he helps to kill one of his best friends in order to take hold of the man's collection of rare art. The way every character in the book cheats

and grabs in his or her own self-interest displays a brand of ancient cyni­ cism that, revived, is pervading Chinese society in recent years.

Central to this fin-de-steele scenery are Zhuang Zhidie's sexual

exploits. The traditional bugaboos of a well-established, forty-something male are all there to prepare us for his wild tripping-out: Zhuang is emo­ tionally inhibited, growing skeptical about his celebrity status, fearful that his creative juices have dried up, and ashamed of the impotence he

experiences with his good-hearted, thick-headed wife, who is a cold fish in bed. So when Zhou's mistress, a coquettish small-town beauty named

241

TRIQUARTERL Y

Tang Waner, appears on the scene, this timid, repressed man of slight physique and homely looks turns into a Chinese Don Juan. And he cer­ tainly finds his match in Tang. Having liberated herself from a boorish husband by eloping with Zhou to Xijing, Tang is already getting bored and restless with her new life. The moment she and Zhuang set eyes on each other at a dinner party, Tang turns hot-cheeked and Zhuang has to hurry to the rest room to relieve his erection.

The two soon take to secret rendezvous and lustful fornication, which opens the floodgates for sex with a vengeance. Between frequent sexual feats with Tang, Zhuang quickly adds his pretty housemaid and a work­ er's good-looking wife to his list of conquests. He never really needs to seduce these beautiful women, though: they more or less drop to their knees, craving or begging for his sexual favor as soon as they learn who he is-the famous literary celebrity whom the entire city worships. His appeal is such that even a whore offers him free sex after exchanging but a few words with him. The only woman Zhuang does try to seduce is the demure wife of one of his best friends, but he fails in this: being a prud­ ish sort, she pushes him out of her bed even as she tearfully confesses her eternal love for him. The only woman in the novel who has an edu­ cation, a career, and a somewhat urban character is the well-connected colleague who files the libel suit against him. In the old days, when

Zhuang was still a young man fresh from the countryside, struggling to make a name for himself in the city, he had held her in awe and had merely dared to romanticize her in his head. But during their long, bitter

lawsuit, he keeps wondering if she is sour about him because he didn't fuck her back then. After losing the case, he plunges into a drunken

fantasy of marrying and then humiliating her: He has their wedding announcement printed in all newspapers, and has

the ceremony take place in a luxurious hotel. After an evening of noisy celebration, he asks the guests not to leave. First he shuts the bedroom door. Then, imitating the ancient Chinese as well as the modern Westerners, he invites her to bed, reads parts of The Golden Lotus to her, and plays Western porno videos for her. He arouses her desire,

strips her, caresses her with his hands, with some feathers, with his mouth and tongue. She gets excited, out of control, but he still rubs her, overwhelms her senses, laughingly presses against that most sensitive spot. Finally, amid her hot breathing and trembling words, he sees a stream

of frothy juice welling up from the cluster of her brilliant hair.

So he rubs clean his finger on her belly, picks up a piece of broken tile which he had earlier placed underneath the bed and covers her with it.

242

TRIQUARTERLY

Then he puts on his clothes and walks out. Solemnly he announces to the guests still gathered in the living room: from this moment on, I my marriage with Jing Xueyin! Right away the news gets tele­ vised. The guests stand in astonishment, as though asking: Didn't you

renounce

just marry her? Why divorce her now? He bursts out laughing: I have now

finished my job!

This is by no means the most lascivious passage in the book. Filled with vengeful hatred, this is probably the tamest of all the book's sex scenes, which total over sixty by one reviewer's count. Despite a certain archaic quality in his prose style, the author usually depicts sex graphi­ cally and in minute detail, in the fashion of hard-core porno-erotic nov,

heat, too, and provides a good variety: masturbation, wet dreams aplenty, voyeurism and menages-a-trois. But here comes a peculiar twist: [ia always omits the last juicy details of sex, ual intercourse, marking them with six conspicuous blank blocks, fol­ lowed by a note in parenthesis: "{here the author deleted xxx words}." els. He

turns

up the

This self-censorship has become notorious since the novel's publica, tion, viewed by many critics as a coy trick, a deliberate way to highlight the sex scenes and play hide-and-seek with the readers' sexual imagina­ tion. As for the scenes that do get fully written out, the author some' times reveals a kinky taste that can easily shock a prudish reader, such as

Zhuang fondly licking Tang's scabs, or Tang pasting her pubic hairs onto a love letter and having it sent to Zhuang by a pigeon. In a sort of Fatal Attraction deja vu in reverse, the pigeon eventually ends up in a steam pot: after Zhuang's wife finds out about the affair, she boils the bird into a

soup and forces it down the two adulterers' throats. One may also

imagine the genteel reader's reaction to another unconventional scene: Zhuang and Tang make love soon after her abortion, leaving a big splotch of blood on the pillow; afterwards, Tang embroiders it into a

"maple leaf' design, and then displays the pillow as an artwork in a gallery show.

This is a radical departure from the past for a novelist who has been famous for his peasant roots, pure spirits, and warm, colorful portraits of Chinese rural life. In fact, The Abandoned Capital is J ia's first novel about "the city"-some say it's his first mature novel or "middle-age" novel.

Clearly, the image of Chinese urbanity in his eyes is far from pleasing. If anything, the city seems to be the gathering place for all manner of human venality, a place where things can only go from bad to worse.

The city runs in a vicious cycle: its social and political system appears to be hopelessly rotten yet self-sustaining and enduring, and its citizens 243

TRIQUARTERL Y

hopelessly cynical and cowardly yet complacent in their own petty games and vanity. In explaining the title of his novel, J ia sounded a metaphysical note. The city of Xian, he said, has been the capital of twelve dynasties in Chinese history. Although it has long declined and has by now become a backward place, pride and smugness about the past have not faded in people's minds: the result is a kind of inferior-superior mind set, a cynical wisdom arising from helplessness, an anguish from embarrassment. This cultural mind-set of the Xian people is extremely typical. In a sense, Xian is the abandoned capital of China, China the abandoned capital of the world, and our earth the abandoned capital of the universe. Writing about the Xian mentality is writing about the Chinese mentality in general.

This could be deadly. Such a fatalistic, apocalyptic vision of China as an abandoned, spiritless and decadent civilization, going nowhere at the end of the century, could be the sort of political dynamite that, before anything else, blows up the novel itself. Certainly it clashes with China's prevalent mood of prosperity and optimism, which the government pro­ motes and a good portion of the population gladly indulges in. In keeping with its newly gained commercial instinct, the media hype surrounding the novel has predictably chosen to focus on issues of money and sex. So, fortunately--or perhaps unfortunately-another clamor has drowned out J ia's dark, pessimistic voice, for the time being at least.

Interestingly, however, the first buzz about the novel grew from an outrageous claim to high literature. "The Abandoned Capital is the Dream

of the Red Chamber of our time," a newspaper article quoted someone who had read the manuscript as saying-invoking an eighteenth-centu­ ry Qing dynasty masterpiece by Cao Xueqin about the fortunes and tragedies of four decadent high families, which for the Chinese is the greatest fiction classic, like Tales of Genji for the Japanese, or perhaps Shakespeare for the English. Evidence of The Abandoned Capital's super­ ficial resemblances is easy to find. Like Dream of the Red Chamber, [ia's novel also opens with a long narrative introduction about four deca­ dent, prominent men, though he eventually fleshes out only one man and his family while the other three remain sketchy. Like Cao, [ia chronicles domestic life in a prominent house-meals, banquets, family finance, parental and marital relations, outings and parties-with almost no mention of any great historical events at the time. And like Cao's famous hero, who has become a literary archetype of qingzhong, a born lover, J ia also portrays his modem-day hero this way, and uses his involvement with many women as a central plot line. Finally, all ends

244

TRIQUARTERLY

tragically just it does as in Cao's great novel: the big families collapse, the women either die or fall into disgrace, and the disillusioned hero flees the scene.

Word of The Abandoned Capital spread fast among publishers, precipi­ tating a frantic bidding war for J ia's manuscript: telegrams, phone calls,

letters, editors and publishers themselves, all descended on [ia for his predetermined masterpiece. He was mobbed in his hotel room when he came to Beijing in March to attend a meeting of the Political Council

Congress. According to the reporters who seemed to be on the scene to cover every step of the bidding transaction, the right to publish J ia's novel even attracted bids from three nonpublishing corporations and two bookstores. Eventually, [ia decided to give the rights to Beijing Press, a major state-owned publishing house which would not only bring out the novel in book form but would devote an entire issue of its own

literary magazine, October, to printing the novel. According to some reports, J ia made the decision out of sentimental reasons, for the October editor, a fiftyish woman originally from J ia's own province, had read the

manuscript nine times in a row and showed a deep understanding of it.

J ia was moved.

Meanwhile, a local paper reported in the spring that [ia had received payment of a million yuan, and a dozen other papers instantly picked the story up. Suddenly, the entire Chinese literary community had something to sleep on. One million for a novel not yet in print? The going rate these days is but a few thousand. And one should thank one's lucky stars for getting printed at all, for the joke of the day is that there are more people writing novels than reading novels. The new image of a Chinese man of letters is someone with thick spectacles on a big head, thin legs over old shoes-quite a pathetic creature. But now a million, aire novelist! How thrilling! Even though the one-million-yuan pay, ment turned out to be misinformation from an overly excited reporter (she misread 150 yuan per 1,000 words as a 1,000,150 total), its sensa, tional effect lingered on. The press speculated endlessly about the exact sum J ia received from his editors; it has never been publicly confirmed, and the press likes to keep it that way.

While still at the printers, the novel received yet another crowning from unspecified publicity sources. This time it was something that made all the book dealers, salesmen and future readers perk their ears: "The Abandoned Capital is the Golden Lotus of Our Time!" The Golden Lotus {}in Ping Mei}, the novel with which [ia's hero arouses his female colleague in his wedding fantasy, is the all-time Chinese classic of sexual

245

TRIQUARTERLY

debauchery. This notoriously earthy late Ming dynasty novel describes the life of a wealthy, dandyish merchant Ximen Qing, in particular his tireless, randy sexual relations with his concubines, housemaids and boys. The novel is highly valued for its literary merits as well, and it greatly influenced the author of The Dream of the Red Chamber, though scholars usually praise the later work for its more romantic, spiritual tone, its aristocratic refinements and perfect literary delivery. The Golden Lotus, on the other hand, has never been able to shake off its

image because of its excessive delight in the flesh and its lack of spiritual transcendence. To this day in China, it is nearly impossible to coarser

get an unabridged copy. The government allowed an "internal circula­ tion" of it in the 1950s; ironically, only ministers and heads of provinces

qualified for copies. In the early 1980s, the Qilu Press of Shandong province obtained permission to reprint a small quantity for literary his­ torians, but it is still inaccessible to a lot of scholars. Taking advantage of the ban, some private book vendors have surreptitiously peddled pirate copies of the complete version; worse yet, some have simply packed all the censored bits and pieces into a special juicy text, and sold it for a very high price. All this has further contributed to the myth of were

The Golden Lotus as the ultimate sex bomb in print. And now, here comes The Abandoned Capital, the Golden Lotus of our time! How can you beat a sales pitch like that!

Book dealers everywhere scrambled for orders. "I just leafed through some pages," one private distributor told a reporter. "Right away, I knew it would sell." According to one report, the demand for the novel at

regional book-ordering conferences climbed to hundreds of thou­ sands. To prevent pirate printing, Beijing Press even paid a hundred some

thousand yuan to have a protective seal put around copies of the novel.

This, of course, soon proved to be useless.

Finally, in late July, the novel arrived in the bookstores. Over a thou­ sand copies were sold on the first day at a downtown Beijing bookstore, and J ia, who was there signing books, had to be carried off by the police from the crowd of fans. By September, the entire first print run of

480,000 copies was sold out. The summer issue of October that carried the novel sold out, too. Hong Kong publishers began bringing out their elegant printing of the novel. By the time Beijing Press rushed out a sec­ ond printing of about 170,000 copies, the inevitable pirated versions had already appeared on bookstalls across the nation. Given the chaotic situation of the current Chinese book market, accurate figures of total sales are impossible to compute. But it does not seem out of line to esti-

246

TRIQUARTERLY

mate that

by the end of 1993, The Abandoned Capital had sold well over

million copies. Some said that several million had been sold.

All through the summer and fall of 1993, rumors of an impending ban or of official orders to criticize The Abandoned Capital were circulating.

a

Browsing at a bookstall on a busy Beijing street in November, I was urged by a brisk book vendor to buy the novel "before it's banned." "It's the hottest book this year," he informed me, just in case I hadn't heard.

"I still sell dozens of it every day." At the new [intailu book market on the east side of Beijing, a salesman worked on me with another line: "They say it's going to be officially criticized!" This made me smile, because right there at the marketplace, several bookstores had hung posters on their doors attacking the novel. "Learn the truth about the despicable novel," one poster railed, "and tear away the mask of a

shameless writer!" The poster was there to entice customers to buy sev­ eral hastily rushed-out books of criticisms on the novel. Skimming through a couple of them, I wondered if any official attack could be

devastating than the words of these unofficial critics. And surely, whoever designed these sales posters would not lose a shouting match with a propaganda officer.

After so many backfires, the government may have finally caught on:

more

it's growing more wary of announcing a ban. Now it's the commercial sector that knows how to

exploit the party tradition-a trend that the

party probably didn't foresee when it first commercialized Chinese pub­ lishing years ago. Chinese entrepreneurs promptly took the ball and ran with it. Using the more flexible guidelines as well as loopholes and weaknesses in the old system, they've laid out a tremendous new net­

work of private and semi-private book distribution channels, linking both state and private publishers with book vendors across the country.

Today, this "second channel," as it is commonly known in the publish­

ing trade, exists like a parallel structure alongside the old state-run dis­ tribution system.

Unlike its outmoded, inefficient official sibling, however, it operates

primarily by profit motive and market laws. Given the transitional, poorly-regulated nature of the Chinese publishing market, the second­ channel entrepreneurs have a collective reputation for running their businesses in a crass, wild-West style. Many stories circulate in the state­ publishing circles about how untrustworthy the second channel is, how as often as not a private distributor will take your books and disappear without paying a cent in return. Although I've heard many Chinese edi­ tors describing the second channel as a semi-underground mafia domi-

247

TRIQUARTERLY

nated by a bunch of immoral, cash-hungry swindlers, it is also often credited with bringing into Chinese publishing a degree of professional savvy and business acuity. Forced to compete with or to use the second

channel, the state-run publishing houses have learned not only to keep close tabs on the Party's and the elite's preferences but also on those of the average reader. And they don't always converge: when the Party wants people to stay away from a certain book, or when the elite snubs it, that just might be the sort of book that average folks would love to read. It took no time at all for most people in publishing, especially for book vendors on the street, to realize that a potential ban is always good for the sales, since a "forbidden fruit" is almost always more enticing.

What's more, because the government has never been able to contain

pirated copies and illicit sales-both being hallmarks of the second channel-even after a ban is officially announced, it has become virtu­ ally impossible to effectively enforce it. With so many private bookstalls everywhere, there is no way to keep a good check on all of them.

"The government is much wiser these days," the head of a Beijing publishing house told me. "It has learned that the best way to deal with the intellectuals is not to deal with them at all, and the best way to cool a controversy

is to put it on the back burner."

Still, tensions were acute in the gray buildings that house the Beijing Press. Tian Zhenying, the editor of The Abandoned Capital, told me that

she and her colleagues at the press have been feeling a lot of pressure "from the top" since the book's publication. No official decision had been conveyed to them, but rumors had been running amok. As a rule, if a book is branded "reactionary" and banned, somebody at the publish, ing house must be held responsible and punished accordingly. The rumors were

already taking a commercial toll: to play it safe, the house

has decided to hold back the release of their second printing of the novel until they receive clear signals from their superiors. So far, the

only clear thing is that the house is watching on the sidelines with their overstock of originals, while private distributors are making loads of profit from the pirated copies.

Asked what the main reason behind the novel's commercial success is, nearly everyone-editors, critics, writers and common readers-has the same

reply: sex, of course it is sex. According to several surveys, some

readers felt somewhat "cheated" after buying the novel, complaining that "it doesn't go all the way" on sex. But they bought it and read it­ or

portions of it anyway. Some critics noted sarcastically that [ia might

have intended to write a modem, day Dream of the Red Chamber, but he

248

TRIQUARTERLY

ended up producing a work closer to The Golden Lotus. These critics bought it and read every word of it-by their own confession, often more than once. A prominent filmmaker told me after reading the novel: "It doesn't have a high literary value, but J ia's a honest man-he wrote exactly the way he fucked." Somebody even made up a line paro­ dying a famous rhyme from Dream of the Red Chamber: "[ia is not a fake: culture is his name, sex his horse."

In Chinese, [ia is a synonym of "fake." It also happens to be the sur­ name

of the hero in Dream of the Red Chamber.

At a dinner in Beijing, I asked a well-known, arrogant novelist friend

of mine for his opinion. He patted my shoulder: "I hope you won't go around fooling your American friends about this trash. Put it this way: if one

day I decide to throw my face away for money, you'd get another

hot and bothered best-seller. Anybody knows how to take his pants off if he wants to."

Later, a newspaper cartoonist added his professional spin to this. "You see, it's a face-and-ass issue," he explained, showing me his spoof sketch­ of a bare-bottomed novelist. "[ia took off his pants and showed a not­ so-pretty ass. Those critics can't bear the sight; it reminds them of their

es

own

ugly asses. So they cover their faces and yell: 'Shameless, cover

your ass!'"

Tian Zhenying, [ia's editor at the Beijing Press, helped arrange my trip to Xian.

It was no mean task to find the best-selling novelist, for he has

habit of periodically going into hiding, either to write or to avoid the media. He wrote The Abandoned Capital in a friend's cottage in some a

backwater village. Soon after its publication, he again disappeared.

Some said he was hiding in the countryside, others said he had checked into a hospital. But Tian had been in touch with him. "He is in a hospi­

tal, very sick," she confirmed solemnly. "Normally he would not see any­

body. He said if it was someone wanting to pick a fight with him about the novel, he would not be in the condition to do it." I had to assure Tian of my neutrality as a researcher before she told me that J ia had

agreed to my visit.

A light snow was falling on the day I arrived in Xian. The drive from the airport to the city was nearly two hours, crossing a slow, brown river and a vast, desolate plain at the end of which the city loomed like a tired old animal wizened by the lonely landscape. Rows of graceless, slapdash new shops and restaurants crowded the main avenues towards the ancient drum tower, the center of Xian. Even in fresh snow, the

249

TRIQUARTERLY

looked listless and dirty, the styles of the houses utterly unin­ The spired. only magnificent sight around was the old city walls. Draped streets

in snow and kept in perfect shape, the walls spread majestically, circling

and towering over the city like a gray aura. Right underneath the walls was

the famous Xian junk market: a long row of decrepit shops stuffed

with piles of secondhand ware, everything from used cotton quilts and rusty hand tools to bits of rugs and wires. Most of the goods are stolen.

One of Xian's nicknames is zeicheng, "The Thief City." On a sunny day,

with goldfish, birds and flowers on sale, the scene might have looked more

cheerful; but on that gloomy, cold day, I saw mostly idle shop own,

huddling behind their junk piles, slurping huge bowls of hot noodle soup or staring out blankly, looking like bored thieves themselves.

Mr. Song, the executive editor of a X ian literary magazine where J ia is ers

the nominal chief editor, showed up in my hotel room on time. As

planned, he was to take me to the hospital to see jia. Song isa native of Xian, a tall man with a tired, weather, beaten face, who could be any' where between forty and fifty-five. He has the solicitous, watchful man' and the competence of a person accustomed to being second in command. We stopped by his home on the way because he wanted to pick up his camera. It was one of those standard urban dwellings in all ners

Chinese cities: a walled, in, rundown compound with rows of identical concrete buildings, the type Americans are likely to associate with pub,

lie-welfare housing. Not a single soul was hanging around. While wait, ing in the taxicab, I asked the driver what kind of neighborhood this was. In a thick Xian accent, the driver informed me that this was a pret­ ty nice residential area when it was first built in the 1970s. "Now it's become one of those dope places," he added casually. I asked him what sort of

dope is going around these days. "Dayan, you know, big smoke,

opium. Comes in ashes, rolls. You can sniff, smoke or swallow." He made a

circling gesture with his hand. "A lot of people in those buildings are

addicted."

Before I could inquire further, Song returned. For the rest of the drive, he gave me a tourist-guide chat about Xian. Basically, it's a sad situation: the economy has not picked up; the central government has not offered like those any particularly favorable policies, nor special tax breaks

given to the southern cities; the local mentality is conservative and obstinate; people talk about changes but nobody makes a move; the best and the brightest-Xian has a lot of well, trained scientists-try to leave for the south.

What about tourism? I asked.

"That's been a major source of revenue, of course; we've got all these 250

TRIQUARTERLY

great imperial tombs around here." Song nodded with visible pride.

"Still, proper infrastructure around them has not been developed. That

needs funding too. You'll see what I mean after nightfall. Aside from the historical sights, we have no entertainment in the city. No nightlife except for some outdoor food stands and a few karaoke bars."

I didn't know what to say. But Song did not seem to be in a particular­

ly sullen mood. A twinkle crossed his eyes as he offered me this bit of local folklore: "You know what the tourists say about coming to Xian?

'You look at tombs during the day, and sleep in a tomb at night.' And what does a hotel clerk say to a guest complaining about the flies in his room? 'But sir,' the clerk says, 'they're flies from the Tang dynasty!'" We

both shook our heads and laughed.

The cab pulled into a side street, and Song told me the hospital was right ahead. I looked outside to what appeared to be a farmer's market.

Herds of people drifted about with sacks and bags in their hands. Horses,

mules, and people pulling carts were among the traffic. A funeral home jumped into view with its sign: "Coffins, mourning outfits, flowers."

Then a few steps down, another boarded-up shop sign, brushed in drip­ ping black ink: "Heart Ache Remedies." Suddenly, the street looked so dire, so ominous in the dull wintry afternoon glow, it made my skin crawl. Tombs. Were we talking about tombs? What kind of spirits, I wondered, would hover around here after nightfall?

My head was still swooning a bit as I followed Song into the hospital.

To get to [ia's ward, we had to pass a decaying courtyard covered with rotten leaves, take a creaky elevator, then follow a long, dark hallway that reeked of medicine and stale flesh. Song let me know that this was a

prestigious hospital for people with status.

J ia Pingwa looked as homely in person as in his pictures, which I had seen everywhere in Beijing. He is a short, slight man with soft, oily black hair, a big head, pallid skin, and nervous brown eyes. His sickly complexion and slow, listless movements made him seem much older than a man in his prime. In his unfashionable, unmatched clothes, speaking his thick country accent-so thick Song had to translate for me on several occasions-he could easily be taken for somebody's peas­ ant cousin visiting the county seat for the first time. When talking to me, he often lowered his eyes or looked at Song; yet underneath this meek veneer and lackluster appearance, I could soon sense an obser­ vant, quick-witted man who knew exactly what ground he stood on. It vice versa; in any case, he may be shyness well served by smartness, or

could certainly hold his own without showing it.

251

TRIQUARTERLY

[ia had his private room, which is not easily available in Chinese hos­ pitals; he had been staying here for the past few weeks on account of a mysterious pain he suffered in the stomach. The room was Spartan and cheerless, save for large bundles of ripe bananas and tangerines strewn on the cold concrete floor. J ia offered me these bright fruits, adding: "They are qigong tangerines, good for your body." The tangerines did look very soft and fluffy, but I preferred the bananas, smiling at J ia's half­ occult, half-bantering sensibility. Everything about him had a touch of in the secrecy. He was registered under a pseudonym so other patients hospital wouldn't know that the famous author of The Abandoned Capital was here, getting shots and pills every day until his face was all swollen.

Nobody could reach him directly by phone, but there was a speaker wired on the wall to pass every message addressed to patient XX-the fake name jia had taken. Yet all these precautions did not seem to result in much privacy for him. In the four hours of conversation we had in his

ward, visitors kept dropping in to see him. At one point, there were half a dozen workers from the Xian Butterfly Watch Factory, who seemed to have come all the way just to offer their greetings to the famous writer.

To describe the scene more accurately, the factory delegates simply into the ward, gawked at J ia, while their chief, a man with a glossy

edged

black-leather briefcase and jovial laughter, said a few pleasantries and to treat J ia to a banquet as soon as his stomach would permit.

promised Behaving like an honored hostage, J ia showed them that he was still chat­ wearing an earlier gift from them-a butterfly watch-and politely the think of to episode as ted until the group left. Just when I began to [ia some innocent local-celebrity worship, I heard Song whispering watch the and their deal between factory: about a magazine something the magazine needed money, the factory needed publicity literature. "It's very, very difficult nowadays to keep a literary magazine running," Song had told me earlier on. And I know it's very, very common these days for writers to write well-paid publicity profiles for rich businessmen or big order to supple­ companies, and for literary magazines to publish them in ment their meager government subsidy.

Our conversation dwelt largely on The Abandoned Capital. [ia patient­ ly went over the circumstances under which he had written the novel,

how he came up with the structure, the theme, the central characters.

I'm sure he had done this a hundred times by now, but he was careful,

anxious, to reemphasize certain key factors where his image per­ haps faced the most controversy. He had not, not consciously at least, media pulled any commercial tricks to promote the book, he said; the even

252

TRIQUARTERLY

did all the hyping on its own. He did think that sex would help keep the readers interested in finishing a thick novel, but that was drawn from common

experience, and it was the only "commercial thought" that had

crossed his mind. The self-censoring blanks on sex scenes weren't pre­ sent in the first draft, rather, for fear that the book might not get print­

ed, he made some cuts and the editor made some more, and then he put in the blanks to mark the cuts. And he did not, of course, have those

affairs like the hero in the novel did-it's fiction, not autobiography If not based on personal experiences, I asked, rather bluntly, what ....

then had been his sources and inspiration for the sex scenes? To my sur­

prise, [ia answered without hesitation: "Maopian, chiefly." The porn videos? Not the erotic classics like The Golden Lotus, or perhaps The Carnal Prayer Mat? Biting voraciously into a banana, [ia said: "I've read those too, sure. In terms of language, yes, the classics had an influence on me. But I got a feeling for the sex scenes mainly by watching a bunch of videos. One time I borrowed a whole stack: Thai, Hong Kong,

Taiwanese-they aren't as good as the ones from Europe. The other source

is some stories friends told. Of course, as an adult man, I've got

my own experiences to blend in." [ia's marriage of thirteen years broke

down during the writing of The Abandoned Capital-his wife wanted a divorce after reading the unfinished manuscript. But that is not a sub­

ject J ia wanted to get into.

Obviously impressed by J ia's candid admission, Song cut in, his face a bit flushed: "I wasn't aware of this situation; so many maopian are going around, eh?" Wolfing down another banana, [ia said: "Lots. And they saved a lot of families. An eye-opener. You know how little people know about sex? In my native town, if a husband asked his wife to change a position, she'd think he'd gone mad."

J ia said Chinese readers are accustomed to the kind of fiction in which intellectuals are decent, sex is avoided, and things generally work out in the end. His novel broke all three rules. He gave the readers a bad literatus for a hero, wrote explicitly about sex, and offered no happy ending, not a ray of hope throughout. "Three reading obstacles! But

that's what I wanted. When Yearnings first put a bad intellectual charac­ ter on television, the average audience loved it, the intellectuals hated it. I picked the literati as my main characters because I know them the best. They are a tragic class of people on the road to extinction. The

thing is: if the elite of our country have degenerated this much, you can imagine the rest."

J ia insisted that he portrayed his hero as a sexual pervert. "With no power, no money, no influence, sex is the only thing he can escape into 253

TRIQUARTERL Y

from this hollow life. So he sinks into it, can't pull himself out. He

destroys others as well as himself. It's sick. Maybe I should have handled it differently, making it more of a normal case," [ia ruminated. "That way I might have written better on sexuality."

Then suddenly, all his worries seemed to disappear and a devilish expression escaped him. "Well, I didn't offer truth, kindness, and beauty.

People were expecting a lovely baby, but the baby came out with all the piss and shit. That's what some critics said about me. That's also reality."

Song told me that a lot of old Party cadres in Xian have called The Abandoned Capital "the death toll to our Party, our nation, and an immoral work that stirs up base passions."

[ia cut in: "But every old cadre in this hospital has a copy by his bed."

We all chuckled. He said: "The older Chinese have no way of getting out of our past, our

history. Even my generation, people over forty-we

can't get out. That's what I feel sad about. Not about myself, but about

nation, our race." He lifted his eyes and looked me in the face: "You know what I did when a young Xian guy came up to me and asked me to sign his copy of The Abandoned Capital? Well, he told me he got the visa our

Japan to study. So I wrote on his copy: 'Well, you're getting out of the abandoned capital!

By the time we got out of the hospital, it was dark. Although the tern­ perature must have dropped by ten degrees, the snow had turned into slush and sunk the street into a hopeless, muddy mess. Rotten vegetable stems, animal excrement, and who knew what else had all frozen solid in the ruts left by grinding traffic. Garbage whipped by in the wind, as trembling, shadowy, thickly bundled figures scuttled by. The farmer's market, along with the funeral home and the heart-ache clinic, had all shut down. Standing in an icy wind on the dimly lit, deserted streets, I was seized for a moment by the spell of the city's past: it was frozen into some prehistoric era, a primitive, claustrophobic town cursed with an odor of death and plague, forgotten by civilization. It was the world [ia to go to

'"

had tried to capture in his novel.

M. X. U, a young medical researcher from Beijing now living in New

York, didn't find [ia's hero a sexual pervert. She found him-and by extension his literary creator-an old-fashioned male chauvinist. She

believes that jia writes honestly. "But that's why I'm so stunned by his sexist attitude towards women. It's obvious that, in his eyes, women are

coy playthings, having no business in life except being

the object of

male appreciation and pleasure. They cling to men, and men enjoy

254

TRIQUARTERLY

them the way they enjoy some beloved trinkets: a piece of delicate jade, all the old Chinese say, or a snuff box. This is exactly like the attitude of mandarin gentlemen of the last two thousand years. It's as if Jia has never

stepped into the twentieth century."

Her remarks bring to my mind what a Chinese woman singer once said to me: "You know what Chinese men's biggest hang-up is?

Sexuality. They never come of age sexually-not in a modem sense. So they either remain infantile all their lives, or they behave like dirty old men even when they are young. Sometimes both." I think of another rather popular novel by another famous male Chinese writer, Feng J icai, with the revealing title The Three�Inch Golden Lotus-the trite tradi­ tiona I expression for bound feet. The novel came out several years ago,

the height of China's "culture craze," and Feng's intention was to expose the backwardness of feudal Chinese tradition. As the novel paraded through extravagant scenes of "bound-feet beauty contests," however, it became obvious that our good author lost himself in the

at

erotic beauty of it all. Controversial even back then, a fancier reprint of

this novel has recently come out, complete with the author's own detailed illustrations of a variety of sophisticated shoe styles for bound feet. "A wondrous book!" hailed the publishers and booksellers alike. It is much the same praise The Abandoned Capital has received.

"It's a naked male fantasy through and through," said Dai J inhua, smiling as she stubbed out another cigarette butt in the ashtray. "The

craving for, and fear of, women have always been there in J ia Pingwa's novels, but he was more evasive in the past." We were talking in my mother's living room, which by now was shrouded in smoke. [inhua and I were classmates in the early 1980s at Beijing University, where she now teaches comparative literature. By appearance, J inhua strikes one more as a rock star than a professor. Her fashion statement usually consists of faded jeans or big, billowy skirts, matched with a lean, body-hugging sports jacket or an oversized turtleneck pullover. The accessories, too, must make her quite a sight behind the lecture podium: large digital watch with a wide black band studded with sterling beads, long dangling earrings, the Marlboros she puffs away on one after anoth­

a

and, finally, a pair of black�rimmed, defiantly severe glasses. Some might say that she looks exactly the image of her chosen identity: a radi­ cal, overtly feminist cultural critic. Tall, handsome, and in her early thirties, she has established herself as a top scholar in her field with two books, one on cinema, the other on Chinese women novelists. er,

255

TRIQUARTERLY

Men grudgingly respect her, though sometimes with thinly veiled con­

descension. A young male literary critic, who claims to be her friend, once commented to me: "She has a brain that cuts to the point of an argument like a knife. I've never seen that in any other woman. But she doesn't socialize much-guess it's out of a lack of self-confidence as a

woman."

J inhua is well aware of her odd-ball situation. "You know what it openly declare yourself a feminist in China?" she once asked me when we were drinking together in a conference hotel in Hong Kong. "It means you get a double treatment from men. Men in the northern half of China, being macho in a more uptight way, treat you as this godawful, untouchable thing, as if you are no longer female. Men in the south, being more loose and practical-minded, instantly think that they can take advantage of you because you are this liberated woman, so anything goes. So, outcast in the north, goods for all in the south. You wonder why all the Chinese women writers firmly deny that they are means to

feminists ?"

Giving in to pressure is not J inhua's style, though. And, characteristi­ cally, she does not mince words about The Abandoned Capital. "It's a day­ dream, the psychological compensation of a man who is repressed both socially and sexually. In the past, [ia tried to sanctify his male characters by uglifying the seductive female. This time he confronts his ambiva­ lence, but in an even more timid and weak way. It's a double fantasy: the hero first attracts the women with his status of a 'cultural star,' then them with his sheer male potency. Through this imaginary conquers

success, he attempts to shore up his self-confidence as a

man

of culture,

which has already begun to totter in reality. But it's a double-edged lie, deceiving others as well as himself. This demonstrates not only [ia

Pingwa's own anxiety but also a widespread mental crisis among con­ temporary Chinese intellectuals and modem men."

A lot of university students, especially women, share [inhua's opinion.

In interviews, some of them used strong words to express their anger at

the way women are debased in J ia's novel; others even spoke of it as a of the trend in the 1990s to return to exploiting women in China's part

commercial climate. With the expanding industry of porn literature and they worry that women are once again being turned new

prostitution,

into cheap sexual commodities.

Dai Qing, a prominent Beijing journalist and political activist, is a friend of J ia Pingwa. She was so upset by what she described as "the male sexual psychology" evident in The Abandoned Capital that she

256

TRIQUARTERLY

could not bear to finish reading it. "I'm really disappointed by Pingwa.

All the female characters in this novel are conniving little creatures whose only ambition in life is to please men. It makes you sick after a while." Later, she said to me: "Come to think of it, maybe it's the circle he moves in. Maybe he only knows those little women in small counties and towns."

"Little woman" is certainly not the phrase to describe Dai Qing. Like Dai J inhua, she too has been something of a thorn in the flesh to a lot of men.

Articulate, fiercely competitive and brimming with indefatigable

energy, Dai Qing has not only written numerous taboo-breaking political

investigative reports, but also organized quite a few nearly all-male dissi­ dent activities and groups. Collaborating with another woman writer, she wrote a series of reports about "sexually liberated Chinese women."

When the bold portraits of these bold women appeared in various maga­ zines around 1986, she once again made a lot of hearts jump and a lot of Chinese men frown. For her, it was simply breaking another taboo.

Dai Qing told me she was having second thoughts about being called a

feminist. "I always rejected the label in the past. Now I take a more

careful measure of myself, and I realize in some essential ways I am a feminist. The communist experience for Chinese women gave us some­ thing unique. It empowered us with a sense of equality with men, but then we found out that it was a fake equality-stiff, not humane, and the real discrimination had never stopped. We now want to re-empha­ size the feminine part of us. But having once been empowered, we can never go

back to the old, docile role traditional Chinese society allocat­

ed to women. We want a full, multifaceted, humane female experience.

Of course, it's going to take a long time to reach this goal."

At present, some Western feminist books have been translated into

Chinese, some theories introduced, and a few academic forums take place now and then, but feminism as an organized political and social movement has not yet hit China. Even in intellectual circles, there is little active discussion or even consciousness of feminism. More often than not, cases of sexual abuse and discrimination against women come out incidentally in the popular press, with sex and violence treated sim­ ply as one of the many 1990s sensationalist media topics, alongside money, commerce, and extravagant lifestyles.

The reporters themselves often reveal a sexist or insensitive attitude towards women, which is not uncommon among Chinese men, regard­

less of education or background. According to a brief, inconspicuous report in a recent issue of Tianjin Daily, the suicide rate among Chinese

257

TRIQUARTERLY

has jumped to the highest in the world, and its main cause has been failed relationships with men. But as the number of suicides go up women

year by year, women's issues have stayed largely on the margins of public attention. Seventy-some years after the culturally enlightening May Fourth Movement first brought the image of modem woman and issues

of gender equality to China, and forty-some years after Mao's efforts at

creating the "socialist new man," fresh evidence shows that a lot of Chinese men have lapsed into their traditional attitude towards the other half in the country. Old prejudices have returned, but this time

they are riding on the tide of commercial capitalism.

Up until now, Chinese women themselves have not been able to orga­ nize well to advance their own rights and interests. Most are still either ignorant of or defensive about feminism. Not long ago I heard about a "single women's club" in Beijing organized by the Women's Federation, but before I went to find out myself, J inhua warned me about such group activities. "It's not what you think," she said in her usual acerbic tongue.

"I went to one of their gatherings, thinking it was some kind of feminist

sisterhood stuff. But there I sat, among a roomful of divorced women and spinsters; you'd think the bonding topic would be how great and

liberating it is to be single, but no, they all broke down in tears when somebody started whining about her rotten former husband! They were just socializing and venting grievances in their transitional phases until a good husband comes along." I have nothing against a group like that, but [inhua's description did dampen my interest. After all, the Women's Federation has long been a bizarre subordinate part of the official Party machine; one can hardly imagine the Federation launching a real women's movement.

Nowadays, with public interest so focused on the economy, there are officials in southern Chinese cities who talk about prostitu­ tion from an economic point of view: a red-light district is always good for the local economy, they say, because "it provides a soft environment which attracts investment." Central government spokesmen have duti­ even some

fully castigated such "mistaken views." But everyone knows that, realis­ tically, the sex trade is just too profitable, too well organized, and too widespread to be stopped.

And after all those decades of being "buttoned up to the neckline," can you really blame the incredible Chinese thirst for the body and flesh? It is evident not only in illicit, secretive indulgences, but also in a public voyeurism running wild. As early as 1989, what the Chinese press calls the "great nudity craze" manifested itself in the huge box-office

258

TRIQUARTERLY

success

of a special exhibit at Beijing's National Museum of Fine Art.

The exhibit consisted of nothing but life-sized, realistic nude portraits.

Since then, every printing shop in China seems to have churned out its own

batch of nude and half-nude beauty calendars. Wherever you go,

these calendars hanging at bookstalls on the streets, and next to them you see the weekend tabloid papers flaunting photographs of titil­

you see

lating, lightly clad pop stars, as well as magazines chock-full of stories about prostitutes, massage girls, karaoke girls, drinking, dancing, swim­ ming companions for hire. You read about "Big Cash" with his "Little Honey" {new slang words for the male nouveaux riches and their young mistresses}. You buy a popular set of guidebooks on how to succeed in business, and it turns out the secret lies all in your groin. "For the arena of commerce has a striking resemblance to the arena of Eros," the world­

ly author informs you, "and those who succeed in chasing women will also succeed in making money." In Canton, during the performance of "The Lovers," a Shanghai play, rowdy audiences threw fruit peels at the stage and demanded refunds because the expected bed scene failed to materialize.

"Our countrymen must be going crazy," someone active in media cir­

cles commented to me. "Nothing sells unless you give them some pretty women and sex. I think J ia Pingwa is the smartest writer around. He knows exactly what to tap into. Too bad we don't have a good copyright law or a good distribution system yet; he would have made more than a million bucks." In the next breath, this same man, married and in his mid-forties, assured me that those sexy karaoke girls could really give a guy some good service. Grinning broadly, he confessed that he had been

treated to such expensive great fun by his "Big Cash" friends. Then, encouraged perhaps by my amused teasing, he told me that once during work trip in a lonely southern province, he had even enjoyed such an evening while being escorted by the local cops. "A very sleazy place," he a

said. "Every booth had a long curtain. You could just draw the curtain and do anything you wanted inside with the girl." Of course, they didn't

have to pay.

"Look, it's a novel, not a political treatise," says a European sinologist friend of mine who has been living in Beijing for the past five years.

"The feminists put their finger on the sex and gender issues; their points are well taken. But the sex scenes are the least interesting part of the novel-J ia knows nothing about sexuality, except from old Chinese novels. What's fascinating and brilliant about the novel is that it

259

TRIQUARTERLY

describes so clearly and relentlessly how the Chinese social system works from inside out-the daily transactions of power, how people manipu­

late at all levels while carrying on with their little mundane chores of life. The bribing, the networking, giving and receiving favors-all that

bustling mishmashing in a muddy nest."

"All that dirt," I say. He laughs, wagging a finger at me: "Uh-oh, now you sound like a romantic. The romantics can deal with the sort of dirt

that is in some ways valiant and heroic, like gangsters or bandits.

Shining dirt, you know, the stuff big Hollywood movies are made of. [ia disappoints you. He doesn't grant you any elevation. He gives you a wimp and a cheat for a hero. Nobody puts on a decent fight for any' thing. That's right: it's dirty and not even hard dirt, it's all soft, slimy, slippery, nothing really admirable. But it's got a pretty cozy feeling to it, too. It's a familiar lifestyle where people know all the invisible rules, the social codes. They know they can't beat the system, they also know they can play along with this old game. That's China! Now, no other con' temporary Chinese novel has painted that picture so well as J ia."

Over lunch, a Chinese business, lawyer friend agrees: "That's the way I feel about the novel, too." By his own admission, my friend is an avid consumer

of various types of pornography (movies, videos, books), espe­

cially since he moved to the United States a few years ago. jia has writ, ten nothing new about sex, he concludes, and is far less daring than The Golden Lotus. "But he's got Chinese society down in a nutshell." He tells me about his own encounters during his recent business trips to China­ the twelve-course banquets billed on public money, the tips, the favors,

all sorts of tricks to take advantage of the system. "Everyone does it, exactly like in The Abandoned Capital! It's as though the revolution never

happened and the Chinese have lapsed right back to their old ways.

Everything is rotten to the core, but the machine somehow putters along, and you never know what might become of it tomorrow. At the moment, it's a boom atmosphere. So all anyone thinks about is how to stuff his own pocket as fast as possible, before some awful disaster strikes."

As for J ia's pessimism, my lawyer friend puts it this way: "It's a thing these cultural types in the cities feel. The poor and sour literati, as the say' ing goes. Things are not going too well for them, you know, especially in a place like Xian. Why, the southern cities are quite different from the

northern ones these days. You go to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, every' one is gung-ho about the future. They think Europe had the nineteenth century, America had the twentieth century, and the twenty-first centu­ ry belongs to the Asia Pacific rim, with China sitting at the top."

260

TRIQUARTERLY

The changing economic disparities in recent years have indeed dis­

turbed the traditional rank orders among Chinese cities. Subtly or hotly, regional sentiments get drawn into the controversy over The Abandoned Capital, particularly among the elite. For the most part, the Beijing elite panned the novel; the reviews from Shanghai and Nanjing sounded sar­ castic, if not scathing. Further south, the coastal cities didn't seem to care much one way or another, the rights and wrongs of a novel not being an urgent issue on the regional mental landscape. But in Xian, the entire literary camp closed ranks around J ia, raving about and defending

The Abandoned Capital as if it were a matter of truth and honor.

"The Shanghai critics are always putting down writers from else­ where," a Xian critic pointed out to me, knowing that I am a native of

Beijing. "They yelled and cursed at Wang Shuo two years ago because he was so popular and so Beijing. Now they're cursing at [ia Pingwa because he's written a great novel and it's based on Xian! They like to attack whoever is successful." He presented to me his own book of criti­ cism: The Enigma of Jia Pingwa. I joked about J ia being treated like a national treasure here in Xian. He blushed slightly, then shrugged: "Well, he is the best Xian can offer. But, to tell you the truth, I don't think our great old northern cities have much hope. Not Xian, not Beijing. Actually, Shanghai might produce something new only because of its colonial background before the revolution. It was open to fresh air from outside. We have the roots, the tradition; you need that for great literature. You need to get out of it too. You need a mix to stand above it, not get lost in it. I think Hong Kong has more hope."

I smiled: "Certainly, but they need to come north and seek roots first,

right?"

He laughed, running his fingers through his hair. J ia had made his name first in the "seeking-roots literature" movement in the mid-1980s, writing about the Shaanxi peasants' life in the depth of the mountains.

To a mainlander, roots meant old, rural, weighty matters, something deeply entangled in the Chinese unconscious, something the bubbling Cantonese are not supposed to have or care much about.

Back in Beijing, at a crowded dinner table, a critic leaned forward with a knowing expression. "They say J ia's written a' city novel. What sort of city is Xian? A county seat, really." A novelist known for his "fic­ tion of Beijing flavors" ruled simply: "It's urbanity, seen through the eyes of a peasant."

"Well, it is curious that The Abandoned Capital should be considered a novel about the Chinese city," my sinologist friend in Beijing mused as we

261

TRIQUARTERLY

discussed it. "It really portrays a very provincial way of life. But look, China is provincial--even if the elite in Beijing don't want to face up to it."

J ia Pingwa himself has described to me the culture shock he suffered when he visited the United States in 1991. Usually a reclusive man, jia dislikes traveling outside his home province and feels dislocated even when he visits Beijing. When he finally accepted an invitation and went on a one-month tour

planet.

in the States, it was like landing on another

He visited many places-the East Coast cities, the rural

Midwest, California.

"The biggest problem was I was constantly starved. I couldn't eat the food: the dairy products turned my stomach." [ia made a wry face as he recounted this. "By the end of it, I smelled cream everywhere I went and couldn't wait to get to the next Chinese house to have some noodle soup. But I saw things. I realized that the countrysides in China and the U.S. are so different, there is no way we can communicate to each other

through our literatures about rural lives. I realized Xian is a village by world standards; even Beijing is rustic. And frankly, even though I can't stand their food, I feel Americans are a large people, more big-hearted than us. Ever since then, I've been thinking to myself: we can't just stick to our old modes of writing, we must try to reach out further."

J ia's favorite reading had always been classical Chinese fiction: the Tang stories, the great Ming and Qing novels. Dream of the Red Chamber and The Golden Lotus, he notes, are both about urban life, set in Ming and Qing cities respectively. He wondered why contemporary Chinese fiction about the city always seems false and shallow, and he decided that there is something wrong with the language it uses. "I've always thought that our ancestors had a purer style, unlike our modem writers who have been too much under the sway of European languages since the 1920s. It's a language that cannot touch felt experiences."

Furthermore, J ia noticed that there have been novels about cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, but nobody had written about Xian.

Yet, with its peculiar mixture of the urban and the rural, the old and the new, isn't Xian a uniquely Chinese place? It dawned on him that, after living in Xian for twenty-one years, he himself has not produced a single story about the city, all the while dwelling on the Shaanxi peas­ ant life he

left behind at age twenty! Now, he decided, was the time to

come to terms with his Xian

experiences.

What he tried to achieve in The Abandoned Capital, he explained, was a combination of Western philosophical sensibilities ("because they rep­ resent the most advanced stage of human thought, and they are con­ cerned with the eternal anxieties of human existence, not with partisan

262

TRIQUARTERLY

politics") and a restoration of traditional Chinese literary styles, in terms of language and narrative techniques. "I wrote about how Chinese' people eat, drink, shit, piss and sleep-common things, plain language, realist techniques. But there is a metaphysical level. 1 painted a China both real and symbolic, in a specific historical moment. This is some­ thing I've thought about doing for many years. 1 wanted to find a way to convey in depth how the Chinese existence feels."

Has he succeeded or failed? Or perhaps both? Has he mostly conveyed the tortured ethos of a peasant son who is forever alienated in the city

and nostalgic about the simpler pastoral life? Or has he created a corn­ plex, uniquely Chinese cityscape like none other? Has he revealed him­ self as a sexist and sexually repressed man painting a reactionary,

demeaning picture of women and sexuality, or has he made a break­ through on the subject? These questions still torment J ia Pingwa as he lies in his hospital bed, haunted by the critics' praise and disdain. He has some plans to write a sequel to The Abandoned Capital. But for the time being, he feels too sick and tired to write anything. He is divorced, living alone. His father died. His mother fell seriously ill. His bad liver got worse. "This novel has brought me too much misfortune."

Before leaving Xian, 1 asked the cabdriver to pass by the area where [ia used to live. The residents had all moved away, and the buildings were mowed down; nothing was left on the site but broken bricks and concrete junk. Here and there, weeds popped out from the cracks and snow. 1 jumped out to snap a picture of the ruins. But just as 1 clicked the shutter, I realized the place wasn't totally deserted. A middle-aged man in a faded thick blue coat was peeing by a remnant of a wall. As he relieved himself slowly, he rested his head against the wall, as if lost in some idle thoughts; the man's whole posture suggested exhaustion.

Another memento of Xian was a cassette tape J ia gave me, of a group of Xian musicians playing what they called "ghost songs": melancholy, ancient mourning melodies played on ancient Chinese instruments. J ia himself sang a couple of songs in the tape. "When the musicians played these ghost tunes on top of the city walls at night," he told me, "you felt the chill in your bones. Folks took their kids home and shut the doors."

I brought the tape back to America, and in my room by Lake Michigan in Chicago, I let loose the specter of Xian. Here, mountains

and oceans away, it doesn't sound so creepy, merely sad and alien.

Perhaps the ghosts are a bit lost. They probably never expected to get out of the abandoned

capital.

January 1994

263

TRIQUARTERLY

Postscript In late January 1994, as both the sales of and the controversy over The

Abandoned Capital began to cool, Chinese authorities finally announced an official ban on the novel. The stated grounds were strictly it was found to contain antipornography: filthy, pornographic content in low, vulgar taste, which was harmful to the physical and mental health of the adolescents. The author's insertion of blank blocks accom­ panied by annotation was found to have played, in reality, a role of stim­ ulation, and to have a very bad influence on society. Beijing News and Publishing Bureau ruled that the unsold copies be confiscated, and that an amount three times the profits made from the novel be paid by the Beijing Press. The house was also to submit a written "self-criticism."

The ban has not led to any political persecution of the author, nor to a new wave of publicity for the novel.

Lungile Phambo, From Dawn to Dusk (1986, graphite on paper)

264

TRIQUARTERLY

Contributors

Scott Bradfield's stories have appeared in Ambit, Omni, Conjunctions,

The Pushcart Prize XVIII and The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Stories. He has also been a regular reviewer-correspondent for the

Saturday Independent in London. His novels include The History of Luminous Motion (Knopf, 1989) and What's Wrong with America (St. Martin's, 1994). His new novel, Animal Planet, will be published this year

by Picador in the United Kingdom. His collected stories, Greetings from Earth, will be published by Picador in 1996. * * * Richard Stem's most recent books are A Sistermony (Donald I. Fine, 1995), One Person and Another (Baskerville, 1993), Shares and Other Fictions (Delphinium, 1992) and Noble Rot: Stories 1949-1988 (Grove Press, 1989; Another Chicago Press, 1992). * * * A. Hernon was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia­ Herzegovina. He has lived in Chicago since 1992. This is his first pub­ lished story. * * * Fred G. Leebron's stories have appeared in Grand Street, North American Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review and other periodicals. He is the director of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Ingrid de Kok lives in Capetown, South Africa, where she is em­ ployed by the Department of Adult Education at the University of Cape Town. She has published a volume of poems, Familiar Ground (Ravan Press, 1987), and is preparing a new book, provisionally entitled Transfer.

Her poems have appeared in several periodicals throughout the world, including TQ #69, From South Africa (reprinted in book form by the University of Chicago Press, 1988). * * * Myrna Stone's poems have appeared in Poetry, the Boston Review, Event and other journals. * * * The poems by Joe Wenderoth are from his first book of poems, Disfortune, 265

TRIQUARTERLY

which will published by Wesleyan University Press in fall 1995. He lives in Baltimore,

Maryland. * * * Brooks Haxton's new collection of poems, The Sun at Night, is being published by Knopf in spring 1995. His long poem, Dead Reckoning, was released by Story Line Press in 1989.

He teaches in the graduate creative-writing programs of Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College. Poems of his appeared in TQ #80 and 88. * * * David Plante's most recent novel, Annunciation, was

published by Ticknor & Fields in 1994. He is completing a new

novel, What Makes It Strange, and he frequently contributes fiction and nonfiction to the New Yorker. His stories have appeared in TQ #55 and #66 and in Fiction of the Eighties (originally TQ #78; TriQuarterly Books, 1990).

Yaak Karsunke, who lives and works in Berlin, has published five vol­ urnes of poems, a ballet libretto, film scripts, radio plays, plays for the theater, and a mystery novel, Dead Man Floating, which received the German Thriller Prize in 1990. * * * Andre Lefevere is a professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He has trans­ lated widely from German and Dutch into English and is the author of many books and articles on translation. * * * Marc Falkenberg is a

Ph.D. student in comparative literature at the University of Chicago. * * * David Galler's Collected Poems (1953�1995) will be published by

Crane & Hopper late in 1995. He also co-edited Robert Stock's Selected Poems (1947�1980), which was published by Crane & Hopper in 1994.

Poems of his have appeared in several issues of TQ, including most

recently #86. * * * Alicia Ostriker is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Green Age (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). Her latest book is a rereading and rewriting of the Bible from a Jewish woman's perspective, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (Rutgers University Press, 1994). A former recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America, she has published poems recently in the Paris Review, Antaeus, New England Review, Ontario Review and in TQ #89.

Sharon Kraus's poems have appeared in Agni, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, MississiPPi Review and other journals. * * * Maura Stanton's latest collection of poems is Life Among the Trolls (David R. Godine, 1994). She has also published a book of stories, The Country I Come From (Milkweed Editions, 1988). She teaches at Indiana University. * * * Alane Rollings's most recent book of poems is The Struggle to Adore (The Story Line Press, 1994). * * * David

266

TRIQUARTERLY

Ferry's latest books are Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1992) and Dwelling Places: Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press, 1993). He is working on a new

book of poems and a book of translations of the odes of Horace. A

selection from his translation of Gilgamesh appeared in TQ #83. * * *

William Heyen is the poet-in-residence at SUNY Brockport. His most recent books are Pterodactyl Rose (1991), Ribbons: The Gulf War (1991) and The Host: Selected Poems 1965� 1990, all published by Time Being Books. The poems in this issue are part of a new collection, to be pub­ lished by BOA Editions in 1996. His "Open Letter to [joyce Carol] Oates" appeared in TQ #73. * * * Adrian C. Louis teaches at Oglala

Lakota College, in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. His latest books are a col­ lection of poems, Vortex of Indian Fevers (TriQuarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press, 1995) and a novel, Skins (Crown, 1995). The stories in this issue are taken from his unpublished manu­

script, Wild Indians & Other Creatures. Three of his poems appeared

TQ #90. * * * Jean Thompson's stories have appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, American Short Fiction, the New in

Yorker and other magazines.

C. J. Hribal is the author of a collection of stories, Matty's Heart

(New Rivers Press, 1984), and a novel, American Beauty (Simon & Schuster, 1987). He also edited The Boundaries of Twilight: Czecho�Slovak Writing from the New World (New Rivers Press, 1991). He is writing a new novel, entitled Matty's Wedding. He teaches creative writing and English at Marquette University. * * * Jianying Zha is a native of Beijing, China, who presently lives in Chicago. Her book of novellas and short stories, written in Chinese, was published by The Writer's Press, Beijing, in 1991. She writes a monthly column of cultural corn­ mentary, in Chinese, for the Nineties, a journal published in Hong Kong.

She has published essays and reviews, in English, in the Nation, Transition, the Village Voice, VLS, Antioch Review and Sight and Sound.

"Yellow Peril" is a shortened version of a chapter from her book on con­ temporary Chinese culture and politics, Chinese Pop, which has just been published by the New Press.

267

TRIQUARTERLY

Acknowledgments-Displacements: South African Works on

Paper, 1984-1994

TriQuarterly would like to thank the following individuals and institu­ tions for permission to use the artworks indicated: Untitled I, II and III, David Koloane, Goodman Gallery, Sandton, South Africa: Untitled (two works), Paul Emslev: Traces: Above and Below and Artaudust, Randolph Hartzenberg: Kenani on the Beach-Malawi, Zan Louw, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, South Africa, Train Accident, Vuminkosi Zulu, Tatham Art Gallery, Pieterrnaritzburg, South Africa: Untitled I and III, from the triptych Power Station, Jeremy Wafer, and The Concealed Dance Floor at Prince Albert, Lyn Smuts, South African National Gallery, Cape Town: The Road to Double Drift, Michael Hallier, Tatham Art Gallery, Pieterrnaritzburg: Untitled (two works), johan Louw; When Shadows Cough the Heart Jumps III, Vuyile C. Voyiya, and Self-Portrait with Judy, Jean Brundrit, South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Felix in Exile (two works), William Kentridge; A Rainy Day at the Farm, Gail Catlin: All Flesh Is Grass, Deborah Bell, and For Ruyter, Pippa Skotnes, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town: From Dawn to Dusk, Lungile Phambo, Tatham Art

Gallery, Pietermaritzburg.

Texas Review Press announces A special issue on William Goyen in spring of 1995:

Edited by Paul Ruffin, Irving Malin, and Brooke Horvath. Essays by Fred Chappell, Kelly Cherry, David Cowart, Joseph Dewey, Brooke Horvath, Steven Kellman, John Kuehl, Robert Phillips, Sanford Pinsker, Patrice Repusseau, Victor Stranberg and others. Memoirs and recollections by James Merrill, Joyce Carol Oates, Ned Rorem, W. D. Snodgrass, Arthur Penn, Sam Vaughn. With an introduction

by George Garrett.

To order a copy, send $10 to Texas Review Press

English Department Sam Houston State University Huntsville,TX 77341-2146 or

268

call 409-294-1403

Texas Tech University Press is pleased to announce the publication of .

The

Tongues of Men

�and of A.ngelsby A new book of poetry

Robert A. Fink t

'-

Selected for the Invited Poetry Series

by Walter McDonald Wisdom and candor inform the work of

Robert A. Fink.

With rare skill, he draws vivid and

touching scenes that stick fast to the

i

From

memory.

Vietnam to North

I

Hollywood, from

I

Abilene to Damascus, these poems lay permanent claim to a wide territory. x. j. Kennedy

t f

What is

THE

THREEPENNY REVIEW? � ITS WRITERS:

John Berger, Paul Bowles, Lars Eighner, Louise Gluck, Nadine Gordimer, Thorn Gunn, Elizabeth Hardwick, Diane Johnson, Tony Kushner,

Leonard Michaels, Czeslaw

Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Luc Sante, Vikram Seth, Susan Sontag, Amy Tan, Gore VidaL. �

ITS READERS:

"The Threepenny Review continues to be one of the brightest, liveliest, most intelligent and culturally alert journals in the country.

It's one of the very few magazines that give one the feeling that there really is a conversation going on in this country about the arts and about ideas. I always read it with pleasure."

-Robert Hass �

ITS VALUE:

At $16.00 for one year's subscription

To start your

subscription right away, call 1-800-4-LITMAG

and $28.00 for two, The Threepenny Review is one of the last affordable luxuries. But don't take our word for it.

Subscribe now, and decide for yourself.

(Send checks to The Threepenny Review, P.O. Box 9131, Berkeley, CA

94709)

Set against the stark but seductive landscape of the Southwest. these eight stories explore the inner landscape of mind and heart. where charting the simplest course is subject to a complex constellation of relationships.

$19.95 cloth

•

All My Relations is on astonishing debut, and establishes Mcilroy os one of the best writers of short fiction in Ameri<a. "-Robert Boswell

The Bourbaki Gambit A

NOVEL BY CARL

O.JERASSI

This insider's novel oflife among the scientific elite was written

by the biochemist who won the

National Medal of Science for the synthesis of the first oral steroid contraceptive, $19.9S cloth

Fire and Power The American Space Program as Postmodern Narraffve WILLIAM

o. ATWILL

TriQuarterly thanks the following past donors and life subscribers: Mr. and Mrs. H. Bernard Firestone Melvin P. Firestone, M.D. Mr. and Mrs. Solway Firestone Paul Fjelstad Torrence Fossland Mr. and Mrs. C. Dwight Foster

David C. Abercrombie Mr. and Mrs. Walter L. Adams Amin Alimard Lois Ames Richard H. Anderson Roger K. Anderson Sandy Anderson I. N. C. Aniebo

Jeffrey Franklin Martha Friedberg

Anonymous University of Arizona Poetry Center Gayle Arnzen

Peter S. Fritz Mrs. Angela M. Gannon Kathy M. Garness

Michael Attas Asa Baber Hadassah Baskin Tom G. Bell Sandra Berris Simon J. Blattner, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Andrew K. Block Louise Blosten Carol Bly Susan DeWitt Bodemer

Robert Gislason

Kay Bonetti Robert Boruch Mr. and Mrs. Richard S. Brennan Van K. Brock Gwendolyn Brooks

Timothy Browne Paul Bundy Eric O. Cahn David Cassak

Stephen Chapman Anthony Chase Michael Chwe Willard Cook Mr. and Mrs. William Cottle Robert A. Creamer Andrew Cvr Doreen Davie Kenneth Day Mark W. DeBree Elizabeth Des Pres Anstiss Drake J. A. Dufresne Mr. and Mrs. Donald Egan John B. Elliott

Mr. and Mrs. Stanford J. Goldblatt Lawrence J. Gorman Maxine Groffsky

Jack Hagstrom Mrs. Donald Haider Mrs. Heidi Hall-Jones Mrs. James E. Hayes Joanna Hearne Ross B. Heath Charles Hedde Gene Helton Donald Hey Donald A. Hillel Mr. and Mrs. David C. Hilliard Mr. and Mrs. Thomas D. Hodgkins Craig V. Hodson Irwin L. Hoffman Irwin T. Holtzman P. Hosier

Mary Gray Hughes Charles Huss Curtis Imrie Helen Jacob Del I van Janik Fran Katz Gary Michael Katz Dr. Alfred D. Klinger

Loy E. Knapp

Christopher English

Sydney Knowlton Mr. and Mrs. Martin Koldyke Mr. and Mrs. Carl A. Kroch Greg Kunz Judy Kunz Conrad A. Langenberg

Carol Erickson Steven Finch David R. Fine

Dorothy Latiak

John Larroquette Isaac Lassiter

Elizabeth Leibik Patrick A. Lezark Patricia W. Linton

Philip Lister Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Lorentz de Haas Kubet Luchterhand Ellen L. Marks Richard Marmulstein

James Marquardt Charles T. Martin, Jr. Ms. Jane Mayer Kevin McCanna Robert D. McChesney Charles Gene McDaniel Martin H. McGrath Robert McMillan Mr. and Mrs. Andrew McNally Michael Meaney George Meredith Lois Adele Meyer Cliff Michel Gallery University of Michigan Hopwood Room Michal Miller Ralph Miller Kenneth Monroe William T. Morgan James E. Morrison IV Max Nathan Dean Neprud Fred S. Novy Catherine Ohs Lenrie Peters Paul Peters and Rosemarie Kozdron Scott Peters Jane Petro Lee Phillip Mrs. Marlene Welsh Phillips Evelyn Pine Doyle Pitman Fran Podulka Geraldine R. Pratt Alex T. Primm Richard Prinz, M.D. Honora Rankine-Galloway Anne Katheryn Ream J. M. Reese Peter Reich Susan Reiners Don Reynolds Mary Ellen Reynolds

Christopher Richter Diane Rider Mrs. Richard Rinella Jennie Ritchie Rivier College Deborah Rosen Sam Rosenthal Jim Rowe Roberta Rubin Patricia Ruby

Joan Rybka Joel Schilling, D.D.S. Paul and June Schlueter, Pb.D,s Mrs. H. C. Schmidt Robert I. Schneideman Hart Frank Schulz

Koji Seki David A. Selby Gilaine Shindelman Herbert Shore John Silbersack Martin Silverman Allen R. Smart Gregory F. Smolarek Dr. Wanda Sorgente Laurel Speer Jane M. Starkey Michael O. Stearns Ken Stevens Lawrence D. Stewart Mrs. Robert Stuart Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Suekoff Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Sullivan Geraldine Szymanski

Judith Thornburg Miriam Treger-Honig Geoffrey Ward Turner Scott Turow T utt Library, Colorado College University Club of San Francisco

University Liggett School Carol Upham Thomas H. Vogler William E. Waechter Daniel Wegner Anne R. Whipple Scott R. White Eleanor Wilner Eric Wilson Anthony S. Zummer

Life subscriptions are available at the rate of $500 from

TriQuarterly, 2020 Ridge Ave., Evanston, IL 60208.