by Tito Perdue
The next place was empty while the one after that had succumbed to an idiotic television show in which Philip could see a pair of gunmen firing shots at female body parts. It did somewhat mollify him, however, to find the tenant, very possibly the last of her kind, working at her ironing board. Except for a loom or knitting, or playing Debussy on a piano, or reading poetry by candlelight, nothing could be better than that.
The following home was full of half a dozen wives and babies and visiting cousins, all of them talking at the same time. They never changed, the normal people of the world. It must have also been like this in the Golden Age of Greece, or even just Florence when its special time had come around. He had put himself in the right place, by God he had, and might actually have a last stab at happiness, assuming he could overcome all those months in the progressive North.
He returned to his shack and after extinguishing all forms of artificial lighting, set up four candles to satisfy the need. The woman was being very quiet, the way he liked her, and moreover had cut a piece of pie and left it on his desk. He had expected to get back into his Suda, but after struggling for a few minutes with the unaccustomed Greek, he took his pie and cigarettes and relocated — it was 9:22, time for good people to be in bed — relocated, as he was saying, to the front porch with its owls and crickets. How strange all things were! Was this not the very same moon that Lilith had looked upon? And yonder owl with the enormous voice, wasn’t he or she the offspring of that same Sumerian bird who just a couple hundred generations before had kept Moron (Moron “of bright eyes”) dreaming all night of times earlier even than his own?
Seventeen
For the following two weeks and three days, he made improvements about the house. The roof, for example, needed to be repaired, as also the stairs and a good portion of the floorboards in the older part of the structure. Further, he had begun to restore his book collection for the purpose of “kick starting,” as his slave-owning great-great-grandfather had said, “kick starting” the next installment of western civilization. And when he wasn’t reading, he loved to come out onto the front porch, shivering with pleasure each time the ever-more-frequent rains seemed to cut him off from the overpopulated world. He wanted his books to stay inside, and the rain out, and the freedom to move back and forth at will from one station to the other.
He spent two hours on the roof — his joy in manual labor had never been so small — before applying to the man in the green cottage to come and finish for him. He was a phlegmatic sort of person, this neighbor, who was forever coughing and spitting and talking to himself. Worse still, he never went about without a radio giving off some of the most debased music ever composed. Meantime Philip sat at his desk, studying a seed catalog as he waited for the repairs to come to an end. It was his intention to plant hyacinth about the house, also love-lies-bleeding and other flowers bearing names that ranked among the most beautiful in the language. Fruit trees, too, provided he could find room for them on his tiny allotment. He definitely wanted plums and roses, figs and a flowering crabapple tree weighted down in natural course of time with endless blossoms. But mostly he insisted upon dogwood, a concession to the mixed-breed animal obtained against his advice by the strange woman who shared his quarters. That was when the carpenter appeared suddenly at his side and asked to be paid. Philip looked at him. In these parts, it was considered unfriendly to keep one’s doors closed and locked.
“Be about 234 dollars,” the man said. (His hands were unclean and yet he hadn’t hesitated to touch Philip’s desk with them.) “Counting labor.”
“Two hundred and thirty-four?”
“Right. A check will be okay. Sara Jean told me about all that money. Where’d you get that stuff, by the way?”
Philip paid. His account was not as large as it might have been, not since the expenses of a house, vehicle, books and dog. And then, too, he had undoubtedly made a mistake by forever wearing his expensive suits, which gave an exaggerated impression of his wealth.
In fact, the suits had become too large for him, as also his shirts and, he fancied, even his ties. (At one time, he had weighed a full 178 pounds.) He could still be proud of his shoes, however, and the good work done by the woman in keeping them shined.
On Thursday, he rose up betimes and strode off with unselfconscious arrogance toward the railway that lay at no great distance from his house.
He was grateful for the sound of the trains that passed in the night, and grateful, too, for the rails that led through the pine forests that characterized this part of Tennessee. He liked to hike for, say, about a half-mile before setting up his easel in a clearing occupied by a ruined home tenanted by lizards and birds. In fact, those tracks led directly back to town, a truth that he had failed to understand until three full months had gone past.
Would his good luck never end? He could walk and paint, and then two hours later could end up in the public library with its six thousand titles, not all of them worthless. Or, he could ask the librarian impossible questions, or light up a cigarette, or go off into a corner of the building where he could read and nap and, occasionally, draft letters to the Martins of New York. Or, he could behave himself, his usual mode of conduct everywhere else.
“You’re that new person,” the librarian informed him.
Philip admitted that he was.
“I have to ask you not to smoke here.”
He made haste, Philip, to suffocate the tip of his cigarette in the soil of the flower pot and then return the butt, which was long enough, to the original package. Never had the librarian seen so thrifty a man as well dressed as Philip was.
“Hm,” the man said. “I rather expected you to have one of those silver cigarette cases.”
“Like those seen in old movies?”
“Exactly like that.”
“I suppose you’ve never seen so well-dressed a man as thrifty as me.”
Both men laughed. And both were literate, too, based upon those qualities that allow such people to recognize each other.
“Tell me, is our little collection adequate for a scholar like you?” (He was a liverish person with spots on his hands. Philip made no mention of it, however.)
“Hardly. No, I would say four-fifths of the material in this room is perfect garbage.”
The librarian drew back two steps, and then came forward again.
“I see. And I suppose you consider our patrons to be four-fifths garbage, too?”
Philip didn’t immediately reply. Nor later on, either.
“We do what we can with the budget we’ve got.”
“Yes. You can subscribe to only just so many movie magazines.”
“Oh, boy. We had another fellow here a while ago. Reminds me of you. He said he was going back to Alabama, for Christ’s sakes!”
Philip had no wish to involve himself in a dispute with this person who, by his own admission, was doing only as well as he could. But then, by some strange behavioral discontinuity, he involved himself anyway.
“It’s a great mistake,” he said, “to compare me with others. It’s humiliating for people.”
“You’re not really from Tennessee, are you? I didn’t think so.”
“No. But I have to pay the same exact local sales taxes as you, by Jove.”
“We’re making too much noise.”
Philip rose and followed the man to the door. He was significantly larger than the linguist, and his arms, judging from his wrists alone, appeared far more hefty than anything Philip could claim. And yet his head had that odd shape peculiar to a certain demographic with craniums of that kind. Looking into the future, Philip envisioned for him a ten-thousand-year sentence of standing up to his waist in liquefied waste.
“Chilly, isn’t it?”
“Want to go back inside? I knew you would.”
“No, no, not at all. Certainly not. Anyway, I don’t wish to get into a brawl out here with someone of your type. Or anyone’s type, to be absolutely frank about it.”
“Can’t blame you for that. Anyhow, you don’t look too terribly healthy in the first place.”
“No. But the second place is pretty good.”
Both men laughed. Philip was disliking him more and more. They had strolled down almost to the railway tracks, a poetical sort of place with full-grown willows all about. Philip put about thirty feet between the two of them before rounding on the fellow.
“Your wife is from Peru, I believe you said?”
“Yes, and I don’t want to hear anything about that.”
“Actually, I’m very optimistic about that part of the world. Once they’ve unloaded their pimps and murderers on us, their pedophiles and human smugglers, heck, that might turn out be the best place on earth!” (He was wearing his clear, very thin glasses that amplified the lethality of his ice-blue eyes.)
“Oh, good Lord. And this was such a nice little town, actually. Before you come along.”
“‘Came along’ would be the right expression.” But in truth, Philip felt much the same as related to the town, the library, the railway tracks, his office, his maid, and all.
He rested well that night and then shaved, smoked, micturated, and got out of bed. By 5:48, he was at the window waiting for dawn to come up in the Morgenland, one of the very most beautiful of German nouns. Occupied by jackdaws and crows, the yard was frosted with dew, forcing each several blade of grass to reach for its own meed of light. Not that he precisely knew what a jackdaw actually was. Further, he could see hobos hiking southward at twenty-yard intervals down along the railroad tracks. Came then to him from afar the tantalizing smell of coffee and bacon, forcing him to go and wake the woman. Better still was the sight of one of the neighboring men hurrying off to work where he was bound to remain for the day, leaving Philip alone. This person carried a lunchbox made of tin, inside it a sandwich or two assembled by an adoring wife.
He had come to the right place. The sun also rises, just as it had been rising ever since all the world’s quarks had coalesced into this selfsame Tennessee. Amused by the thought, he went out onto the front porch and focused upon the location where the sun ought first to reveal itself, a narrow gulch between the hills where gamboling giraffes were wont to gather. Not that he wanted the townspeople to know about the nonsense that went on in his brain! His face was calm and remained that way even as the sun’s first ray broke free of the horizon and smote the next-door woman on her forehead.
He spent the next hour and forty-five minutes doing nothing whatsoever. Even the scenery was at the mercy of the wind. That sky and those far-away trees, it was obvious to him that they had simply been appliquéd on canvas walls for the purpose of misleading people. Your true scenery, he said, was far more lovely than that, but could only be revealed to one linguist at a time. Suddenly he reached out with his left finger and touched the rough grain of the supposed canvas billowing against his face. Was he finally going completely insane?
Yes, he believed that he was. Or else he had happened upon one of those metaphysical truths too horrible for ordinary people even to think about. He remained calm, however. Someone had to do it, and so let it be the world’s most estranged human being.
He lit a cigarette and allowed the dog to sniff at it. Down along the railway tracks he observed a boy and girl walking hand in hand, he in his straw hat and she in her patterned dress. Gloom came down over the linguist. Grant him just five minutes of that boy’s ignorance and he’d gladly leave his books and cash behind. Or better still, give Philip just two minutes of love in the traditional sense and he’d greet his impending fate with an in situ smile on his face. Really, could anything be more awful than this, to know a great deal and say very little and, as it were, to take onto one’s own shoulders the perceptions that had frightened everyone else away?
No, nothing (could be more awful than that). That was the moment some unspeakable music came on in the next-door residence, followed soon after by a television, or possibly a radio show with people yelling at each other in high-pitch voices. He had his preference, the country would be under totalitarian control with a 24-hour curfew every day and night. What did they want really, his fellow citizens, and what on earth was the object of so much activity? And wouldn’t it be easier (and more seemly) to take up a position in a rocking chair and go running and tripping at high speed through entrancing ideas?
But not even Philip could entertain ideas for more than a specific amount of time. Accordingly, he left the porch and managed to return to his study without waking the dog. His library, much more developed than of just two months ago, was consuming his savings at an unsustainable rate. (He had never learned to restrain himself in this connection.) Getting on tiptoes, he took down his favorite novelist, a dead man who, he too, had never bothered much with plots. The book held cigarette ashes between every few pages, showing just how far the previous reader had progressed. Positioning himself in the light, Philip read further, reveling in the syntax and adjectives and the occasional engravings wrought by an artist with an unwholesome mind. He knew, of course, that he was almost asleep, the fault of the soporific sun. And saw then that it was snowing. He watched two deer distributing footprints among the shacks. He loved to see smoke lifting from the chimneys, the widespread silence. Of course, he had rather be in paradise but was ready to accept what was offered, for instance the muffins in the oven, a mournful crow standing up to its ankles in snow, a passing train offering snapshots of stately people moving up and down the aisles. Further, he could hear an airplane throbbing above the clouds, and could imagine (but not actually see) giant ships being nudged forward by kindly whales against the perturbations of the sea.
He might be sleeping, a possibility that found confirmation when he awoke to discover his book lying face down on the desk with a platter of hot muffins and blueberry jelly at the side. This was the time to try his radio and give heed to faraway voices coming to his attention as speedily as thought itself. He preferred old weather reports to new, yes, and old music, too, which was not even to mention the international news delivered more urgently every day about troubles east and west. The nations were squabbling again, again fighting for authority over… what? Human beings? He laughed gaily and loud.
Aware of his deteriorating condition, Philip returned to his study, took down his fourth-favorite author, and carried the book to bed. But instead of reading, he began to study the overhead ceiling, a palimpsest, as it were, where the history of the building was summarized in stains and defunct wasp’s nests, and in one place that had been damaged by fire. Outside, the wind was blowing, presenting danger to the “stilts,” he called them, that supported the back of the house and prevented it from tumbling down the mountainside. He made note of the problem, namely that time was passing and his beautiful face was becoming less startling by the day.
Night came, confirming his prophecy of the same. The snow, it is true, had petered down to nothing more than a few random flakes here and there, scarce as butterflies in weather like this. Perhaps he was dead already. But he still liked to see lanterns coming on in the houses, and the shadows of human persons cutting into view. What exactly might they be doing in their barely-adequate habitations with flowered wallpaper? He was glad, of course, that the electricity was down, a major contribution to the aesthetics of the scene. Except for the low-hanging clouds, he might have seen the stars and other things, dirigibles perhaps, and the very moon itself.
He slept again, this time for several hours, and then went and checked himself in the mirror. And the woman? Her sleep was carried out mostly in silence and in truth he had found little to complain about in her overall behavior. She could not know, of course, that he had bequeathed the place back to her so that in the fullness of time she could go back to being as sloppy as when he had first come onto the scene. It was 5:51 in the morning.
He had intended to hike all the way the town, but then had turned and come back after a short time. He was tired and needed to rest; moreover, a few residual snowflakes were
constantly running beneath his collar and bothering him. If he wanted to trek to town and visit his lawyer, or irritate the librarian, or renew his prescriptions, why must he walk the distance instead of simply flying to those locations on wings of thought? Why must he brush his teeth on a regular schedule, or wear shoes, or, for that matter, why should he have been decanted into such an inefficient body in the first place? He despised his daily life and yet, strangely, loved it in retrospect. And in short, nothing chagrined him more than that he was just a human man.
Eighteen
He must have been thirty-three years old when he next walked to town. The past week had been a good one by his standards, the result of a favor from his pharmacist. Rising late and going to bed before nine, he had been able to make good deposits into his “sleep account.” He was still good-looking, too, and never mind that his wardrobe appeared to have been intended for a larger man.
Thursdays were always the best part of the week. Rising even later than usual, he called for his coffee, peeped into his Suda, and then, for the first time in two decades, elected to go without shaving. With
the cold weather coming to an end, he ventured out onto the front porch at 9:22 and spent a minute trying uselessly to reconstruct last night’s very bad dream. But was distracted by a bright red bird that had settled on the clothesline. Oftentimes strange thoughts came into his head, some of them inspired by Giordano Bruno, and at other times by Guénon and his school. And what was all this confusion about Time, and whether it had existed always? And what was the look of things before space had been invented? Heavy questions these, and he would have loved to be around when some day they might be debated in this his new home town.
Thursdays, he liked to wear a dark blue suit — all his suits were blue save one — a dark blue suit with a crimson tie. But hesitated to put it on until after he had consumed a cup of sweetened coffee and a blueberry muffin or two.