You acknowledge that yes, you’d heard that there were bomb threats made against the restaurant, some time ago. The proprietor, Nadia, the cheerful zaftig woman with the untidy horse’s mane trailing down her back, who’d just shown X to the table, has been an activist in liberal causes for years—protesting, picketing, marching. Gay/lesbian rights, immigration rights, No Nukes, Clean Water. Possibly there’d been an attempted bombing at the Purple Onion, but—so far as you know, no actual bomb was detonated . . .
“Hmm! Are you sure? Because I—”
Tersely, calmly you say with a clenched set of jaws: “I live here, and I would know.”
“Ah! I see. Of course.”
X, who has traveled thousands of miles to interview you, does not wish to antagonize you. (At least until the interview is over.) Very easily X could consult his iPhone to determine who is correct, you or he, but he says only, in a conciliatory voice, that he’d heard “something vague” about a high school dropout in this part of California, near San Francisco, who’d assembled a bomb following directions he’d gotten on the Internet from an ISIS site . . . But whether it was actually detonated, X doesn’t know.
“This sort of ‘terrorist’ news is usually exaggerated”—you laugh softly, a sort of hissing-laugh, the laughter of contempt and indifference, finality.
At the time of the (alleged) bombing you’d been in residence at the American Academy in Rome. Or maybe it was the American Academy in Berlin. Focused on your work, no time for news of bombings, school shootings, mass murders in the United States, that seemed to be a near-daily basis.
Overhead, a high droning sound like a dentist’s drill but you refrain from glancing skyward.
At last, a waitress approaches your table, takes your orders gravely, departs. X pushes the iPhone gently toward you. Bares his big teeth in a smile that appears lewd but might be only conspiratorial and says, with a wink: “Cut to the jugular, friend. Tell me what you’ve never told any other interviewer.”
3.
Precisely 12:19 P.M. when you arrive at the Purple Onion Café for your interview with X which is scheduled to begin at 12:30 P.M.
For it is your way to arrive early for appointments. Particularly those appointments you dread.
X, the internationally renowned interviewer, is known to be a disagreeable person. X will flatter you in conversation, then eviscerate you in prose. You know, though you must pretend otherwise.
X has a name but you decline to supply the name. In fact, you will never address X by his name.
You were away in Europe when the Purple Onion was closed for repairs for nine months. Just recently reopened, much fanfare in local media. You see that the exterior of the restaurant has been repainted—the shingled roof looks new—a new flagstone terrace, new tables and chairs. A low evergreen hedge, some of it partially damaged, running the length of the terrace. You have no interest in going inside the restaurant, you suffer from a mild claustrophobia and recall that the interior of the Purple Onion is crowded with tables, and loud. The voices and laughter of your species do not suffuse your heart with joy. And close quarters, in the company of X, would be particularly disagreeable.
Hello, sir!
You try not to cringe as you are greeted, a little too exuberantly, by the proprietor/owner of the Purple Onion, Nadia with her brave smile, ankle-length peasant skirt, knitted vest, and Navajo jewelry. Nadia is a stout, hearty, big-boned girl of fifty with graying hair falling loose over her shoulders and skin that glows with incandescent light except for the net of fine white scars across her forehead. One of those well-intentioned but exasperating locals who murmurs slyly in your ear—Mr. ___, I have read all your books!
Also—It’s an honor, sir. Thank you, sir. Air of excited girlish embarrassment that makes you wince.
Nadia seats you at the table you’ve requested which is your usual at the Purple Onion—farthest corner on the terrace, beside a wall of wisteria just beginning to bloom. You will take some small solace from the fragrance of the wisteria. Often in this (late) phase of your life your eyes glance skyward, astonished at the heartbreaking beauty of clouds that look sculpted in white marble, sometimes a faint daytime moon, blue sky beyond like washed glass. That beauty that is (literally) out of your reach.
You are not a person who is comfortable being seen; it has always been your strategy to be the individual who sees. Not to be the center of attention is, to you, the goal of your relationships with others for you are not unlike a thief, a thief who steals whenever he can, and from whom he can, often randomly, with no plan, as a matter of survival.
Yet, you are acclaimed as a “master” of some sort: the criminal hiding in plain sight.
From your strategic table you can peruse the terrace as it fills up with a chattering lunchtime crowd of mostly women. (Some of these women you know socially, but would be pressed to say their names; if they glance in your direction smilingly, you quickly look away.) From this vantage point you take pleasure in observing, through charmingly gnarled wisteria vines, figures approaching the café entrance on the walkway; if you lean forward you can see a corner of the parking lot, and observe them even earlier.
Is there something unreal about the scene? You feel uneasy, unsettled.
A prematurely warm April day. But—which year?
As in dreams we often have no idea how old we are, and what exactly we look like, so you are thinking that this place has become strange to you, though in all (evident) respects it is (dully) familiar to you.
The sky has become overcast, the hue of watery skim milk. Weather at this time of year can be mercurial in northern California near the coast. Sudden wind from the Pacific Ocean twenty miles to the west, darkening sky, within minutes a violent thunderstorm. Or, wind from the east, dry-desert wind, the sky bursts into pieces of sunshine like shards of broken glass raining down onto your head.
Laughter at nearby tables. Evidence suggests that humankind seems to have decided it is wiser to laugh than to cry.
4.
Waiting for X to appear. Reluctant to admit, you are fearful of X. Fearful that X can peer into your very soul as it has been (ludicrously) claimed of X by previous interview subjects whom you respect—Rushdie, McEwan, Oz, Ondaatje.
Glancing nervously at your watch. Already—12:26 P.M. You feel a pang of loss as the minutes pass.
Almost, you can hear time ticking.
The (notorious) interviewer, based in Berlin, was scheduled to fly to San Francisco via Chicago; from San Francisco, to be driven by hired car to Santa Luce, twenty miles to the east and south, where you have lived an (inexplicable) suburban existence for more than three decades.
X will surely comment upon that fact. Withdrawn, reclusive, near-anonymous, innocuous. A bourgeois existence—shameful?
In bed this morning you felt oppressed as by a heavy object, a body, lying upon you—hot-skinned demonic face pressed against yours. Bulging eyes pressed against yours.
An effort to open your eyes, force yourself out of bed.
Wanting badly that X disappear. Midair?
You have acquired a reputation for being cantankerous, unpredictable. Though to anyone who knows you well you are totally predictable.
“Just one hour with Der Spiegel. Is that too much to ask? What can go wrong?”—your editor in New York City pleaded.
Your publisher is eager for the interview to take place. Publicity for your books, which enjoy a degree of critical acclaim but which have never been commercial. The interview will appear in Der Spiegel on the occasion of your receiving a distinguished international literary prize, to be presented in Berlin later in the year but until that time, confidential.
This new award is a source of pride to you, and unease. Lifetime achievement. Will you then become posthumous?
Idly you think, the interview will be published as an obituary.
Unless X doesn’t appear? Then, all remains unaltered.
Often in recent years, most markedly this past year, you find
yourself hoping that whoever you are waiting for will fail to appear. Even appointments which are crucial to your well-being, like medical appointments—secretly you hope they will be canceled.
Waking early this morning, hours ago, with a jolt. Unwilling to open your eyes—God, let today be canceled.
But now your eyes lift, startled: you are in a bustling public place and a tall lanky man looms above you. Tight-fitting suede jacket, black T-shirt, jeans. Big-buckled leather belt. Ridiculous!—X, a citizen of Berlin, has costumed himself for the American West like a character in a film by Werner Herzog.
Somehow, this person managed to slip past your scrutiny on the walkway. Identified himself to the zaftig proprietor of the Purple Onion who led him at once, proud as the prow of a Viking ship, to your table. Bursting your precious solitude as a balloon might be burst between big-knuckled hairy-backed hands.
“Hel-lo! Sorry I’m late, man.”
5.
Alone and breathless on the outdoor terrace at the Purple Onion Café. Never came to such a place before by yourself. Everyone here is an adult—old.
Just the place your mom might be. Drinking wine with her women friends. Last person she’d expect to see here—How-ie? What on earth?
That look in the woman’s eyes. Sick, sinking. For though she couldn’t possibly know, she would know.
The pupils of her eyes would shrink to pinpricks and her mouth contort to a perfect O of a scream.
But no, you don’t see your mom. Anyway not yet. Blindly making your way onto the terrace without waiting for the hostess to seat you because (let’s face it) you don’t know any better, or have forgotten that’s how it is done in restaurants like the Purple Onion where the clientele is adult and has money.
Stumbling to an empty table in the farther corner. Weeks, months of fantasizing the scene yet somehow you’d failed to factor in the presence of other people. The possibility there would be no empty tables and you’d be turned away, ticking tote bag and all.
Panting, sweating. Though also shivering inside the hoodie. Christ!—just to get here, twenty-minute walk from your home on Cargot Street, has been exhausting like climbing a rocky landscape uphill.
The hostess is a broad-hipped woman your mom’s age with straggly hippie-hair, jangling Navajo jewelry, frowning mouth. This female isn’t happy with a pimply kid like you in a khaki hoodie, baseball cap, mud-crusted hiking boots daring to take a seat (by himself, no adult) on the terrace café at this busy time.
Still, she signals it’s O.K., she will send a waitress over.
Because they’re basically pushovers, females like this. Droopy Mom-breasts, bovine faces. This one doesn’t recognize you as your mother’s son, it seems.
Relief!
1:11 P.M. when a cheerful waitress approaches your table with a menu.
You calculate: Should you order something to eat, or will that be a waste of money? There isn’t much time. The detonation is set for 1:30 P.M. Still, you have not eaten since the previous night. You’d meant to eat this morning but were distracted. And even the night before, you’d choked and gagged on whatever it was your mom had prepared, well-meaning mom, always well-meaning. You, puking into the toilet locked upstairs in the bathroom.
The waitress is a girl with long silky blond hair, your age. You are panicked to think that maybe, just maybe, you’d been in high school together—but no, she doesn’t seem to recognize you.
Loser. Nobody.
Hot bitch the guys would call this one. Not your friends, you don’t have friends, but hot bitch is what they’d call her, your guy-friends. If you had them.
In high school, you had a friend. At least one friend. For a while.
Fag. Fags not wanted.
Fuck fags.
Inside your caved-in chest there’s something beating and fluttering like a bat. You’d read online, lots of bats are rabid right now in the dusty foothills of California.
Or, bats are dying from a weird kind of lice. Fungus?
How nature fucks itself up. Almost, you’d think it was on purpose.
Warm day but you’re wearing your khaki hoodie. Boyz in the hood. Good to hide your bumpy shaved head that looks like shit, grimy Giants cap pulled down tight over your forehead pinching your ears flat.
Hiking boots laced tight: paramilitary. Thick soles, rubber treads. Proper hiking socks, wool. (Stiff with dirt. Old dirt. Bunched up at the back of the sock drawer.) In another lifetime you’d have been a hiker, mountain climber. Rock-face climber. That mountain in Yosemite—El Capitan. Breaking the world record. If your dad hadn’t left your mom and you. If your dad had taught you to climb. But then, your dad wouldn’t have been your fucking dad if he had.
Too big, too heavy for the backpack. In your mom’s Whole Foods tote bag you set beneath the table at your feet. What’s inside is damn heavy, dense.
Sweat like cold oil oozes from your face drawn tight as a plaster of Paris mask. Brush away those tiny insects—gnats—you can’t see but hear.
Ticking.
6.
You tell Nadia that the “new” Purple Onion is looking very good.
The exterior has been renovated, repainted—old weatherworn blue replaced by pale cream, covered in purple vines and tendrils in a hippie-LSD feverish pattern that undulates up onto the roof.
Wisteria just beginning to bloom, red geraniums in clay pots, petunias in hanging baskets—glass-topped tables, woven-hemp chairs on a flagstone terrace that looks impressively smooth.
(Possibly, this flagstone is synthetic—not “stone” at all. The old flagstone was discolored, cracked.)
Many customers. Midday din! Nearly every terrace table filled. Clever idea to meet an interviewer here, he’ll have to work for his interview.
Definitely, you’d wanted to sit outdoors. You’d wanted a place with no liquor license. You’d wanted a place not far from your residence on Cargot Street, no driving required.
True, you have become (increasingly) eccentric in late middle age. And now, you are beyond late middle age. An individual of certain fixed habits, routines. At first you’d experimented with making demands of others, then you saw how they capitulated to the demands, how easily it was accomplished. Your shyer self was abashed, that a bully could elbow him aside so readily; that a bully could be mistaken for you.
Especially, women will allow this. How far a bully can push a woman, so long as he oscillates with a “reasonable” man, before she breaks, flees.
And now, you are boxed in by your habits. Can’t remember your life before your habits. Can’t remember you.
It is 12:32 P.M. A minute before, 12:31 P.M.
A minute later, 12:32 P.M.
(Has no one realized this, before you? Your eyes stare glazed, hypnotized.)
You are reasoning that, if X has been eager to interview you for months he should have made it a point to arrive earlier than you did, out of politeness.
Accident, plane crash . . . Never arrived at the airport.
Blasted out of the sky, all passengers and crew perished.
Midair, thirty thousand feet, utterly—vanished . . .
You smile. You shudder. It can happen that quickly, you suppose—annihilation.
Tick tick ticking. Blood-pulse in your inner ear.
7.
Cut to the jugular, friend. Tell me what you’ve never told any other interviewer.
Indeed, this is a challenge. Your mind has gone blank like power-washed pavement.
Seeing that he has surprised you X continues, almost self-effacingly, a young pedant advancing a theory: “My definition of a serious artist is a ‘buoyant imagination’ attached to an individual, as a balloon might be attached to an individual, floating above him, string tied around a finger. Yes?”
Vaguely you indicate yes. But your manner is noncommittal.
“In the true artist the imagination is always stronger than the individual. That’s to say, the individual’s personal life. The imagination is, in a sense, impersonal. It is t
ranscendent, it is all-consuming. If in a duel with the personal life, the imagination wins.”
You suppose this is so. It is—almost—too accurate for your comfort. But you don’t give the interviewer the satisfaction of agreeing. Instead you merely smile in that (maddening) way observers have described as inscrutable, enigmatic.
“So, the challenge for the interviewer is to penetrate the ‘personal self’—the persona—in order to speak with the artist’s deepest and truest self which has nothing to do, as we know, with the outer being.”
Outer being. You are thinking, what a curious phrase.
Outer being. You feel the impulse to scratch at your arms, the backs of your hands—to see if you can bleed.
Fortunately an attractive young waitress with long silky blond hair and a fetus-blank face comes to your table to take your orders. X fumbles to pause the iPhone, cursing under his breath.
Self-consciously and gravely, like a schoolgirl reciting poetry she doesn’t understand, the waitress recites the specials of the day: kale / almond soup, kale / cranberry salad, kale / radicchio smoothie, “Green Rush . . .” X is visibly amused by the solemnity, cocking his head in a pretense of attention; when the waitress has finished the litany, X asks her please to repeat.
This makes you furious. Exasperated. Grinding your back teeth.
Nor do you like the way X engages the waitress in supercilious banter while undressing her with his eyes, glancing at you sidelong, inviting complicity.
Ignore X, of course. You have hardly looked at X fully since he’d arrived.
Sharing a meal with an interviewer is like sharing a meal with your executioner. An awkward ritual.
Briefly you examine the Purple Onion menu, oversized, pretentious, sheets of parchment paper stapled to a purple hemp board, fodder for the malicious journalist to note in his snarky prose—vegetarian, vegan, organic, locally grown, dairy-free, gluten-free. X will mock you, by mocking the menu, unavoidably; yet you tell the waitress with a beaming smile that you will have the soup du jour. And with a wink X says—Eh bien, moi aussi!
The (Other) You Page 21