Graham fell asleep, snoring, a weird musiking. Jess lit a cigarette, keyed up, unable to relax. A headache was beginning at the back of her neck, the love-making had, had again, a weird flavor, a taste of desperation. These rooms were too small, this city, she and Graham saw each other too much, were too much in each other’s pockets. The feeling of panic, of lemmings to the sea. She could feel the marriage, that fragile edifice, buckling, breaking apart under his Sailing hands.
Adjusting the light, she read, savoring the quiet, the absence of reaction and the need to react. A fly circled in the room, Graham grunting beside her in his sleep. Living with a person, cleaning ears, borrowing razors and occasionally sharing a toothbrush, not buying bananas to which he has an allergy. What fine curly hair full of various directions. When, having embarked upon a certain course, do the alternatives cease to present themselves? What was this beside her in the bed?
The war paint designs used by the American Indian (illustrated). Their marriage had been a strange beast, with its own queer shape. She had thought that Europe might heal some of the fissures, but instead.
Jess’s sister Sally, blue-eyed Sally. Three years younger, she had set up some kind of floating residence centering mainly on the East Coast of the States. Her parents still lived in St. Paul, the yellow house, her father teaching history at the night school. The two of them, her parents, stand side by side on some hill in her memory, mother’s arm through father’s, staring ahead and smiling like figures on a wedding cake. Having developed this conceit in talking about them to Graham it was so strong that, seeing them again before leaving for Europe, she found herself looking down at their feet to see whether traces of the icing, like snow, still clung to their shoes. Her mother translated Jess’s and Sally’s affairs, the comings and goings, connections, into the vocabulary of her own time; sweetheart, beau. In this language the dark fumblings and disasters became neat, romantic, very like her own nice world. There were, amongst the people she knew, divorces, car accidents, alcoholics, but these always seemed like aberrations, grave departures from the norm. Here, in these places, with these people, this generation, it was the basic coin, the declared form of things. The personal fallings, the difficult acts, breakings. Her mother, loving them, was now always sad and puzzled that these two daughters, so lovely as little girls, should have become such unhappy homeless creatures. That they were not, in their own terms, so lost she could not believe. She sent them letters and birthday presents, adored Ray, fussed over their health when they visited her home. She hoped, always, for more grandchildren and some magical suburb. They loved her, but could not explain.
The fly buzzed again, in thrall to the light, diving at her head. The Apache, Van Eyck, Manhattan, Vermeer. New Amsterdam. The Beatles. Lapis lazuli. Damn, have to piss again. Curious how the language of excretion varies from family to family, the private code. Piddle, wee, pee. Tinkle, in her childhood. Make water; wash your hands. With Ray they used Graham’s word, piss, less coy than most.
A smell of baking bread from the bakery across the street. Outside the frequency of passing cars began gradually to increase, soon the milk trucks and the first shopkeepers would begin to unlock their various doors and engines, turn switches, push buttons, and like knives to a fallen beast, still warm, to cut away pieces of the failing dark. Jess flexed the muscles of her legs and feet, cramped by curling into Graham’s sleeping form. If she did not get to sleep before the first real light and noise, she would not sleep at all. Pulling her legs cautiously away from him, then swinging them from the warm cave of sheets and blankets out into the chilly dark. Her feet are stiff, groping over the cold floor, in the hallway she punches the light button and then, the flood of brilliance painful after the small yellow illumination of the reading lamp, her pupis spasm, she goes shut-eyed the known way to the toilet, the light showing orange through her lids.
The surfaces are cold, and the rush of water sounds enormous in the quiet house. A sense of violating and anti-social noise, Jess creeps back. What she wants is a glass of water, her mouth already musty and sour with near sleep, but she fears that the noise of the faucets, more groaning of the plumbing, will finally wake Graham and the child sleeping in the next room. Instead she takes a handful of grapes, the spurt of sweet juice shocking her dry tongue, the gritty teeth. Turning out the light, the window’s square of sky turns from black to cobalt.
TRANSLATE
These houses. That story. This garden. Those trees. I have read this book; it is much better than that one. I never smoke those cigars. This house has not been painted. Who is that man? This photograph is good, but those are very bad. These are our children, those people have no children. These books are mine. Do you know these people? Yes, of course, they are my neighbors. Those must be my pens. After that he stood up and went into the room. They looked at this for a long time.
The View of Delft is the purest square of pulsing light and air. Breath and absolute tonality. What is the nature of vision?
Amsterdam, the Venice of the North. They moved through the city. Even she, who had no sense of direction, began to learn her way around the streets. They argued, and Rachel grew fretful. Concentric canals.
A WALK AROUND AMSTERDAN
From the station (1) cross the bridge and go up the main street, Damrak, alongside the little harbor (2). Further on is the Exchange (3) built in 1903 (open 9-5; free admission to galleries). Continue along Damrak to Dam with the Royal Palace (4) originally built as the town hall in 1648 by Jacob van Campen (open summer 9—4, winter 9-3). Next to it stands the Nieuwe Kerk (4) begun in 1490 but frequently altered since.
In one section of the city prostitutes walked along the streets or sat looking out of large glass windows, tempting pedestrians with what seemed to be the same psychology of plenty as that which filled the bakery and fruit shop displays with pyramids of shining goods in juicy, lavish abundance. Butter, chocolate, crystallised fruits, and these women. A big woman smiled at them as they passed by her window, a pile of golden hair and skin as sweet and fat as cream. Their open, vital presence in the city filled the nostrils, gave to the whole place a smell of sex, a nervous excitation, a flush of general body heat.
They ate herring from the stands in the street. They went every day that week to the Rijksmuseum. What, she said, is the nature of vision? Trying not to fight, to break the new bitter habit, they made resolutions, broke them made more. Perversely enough, like separate animals, their bodies were still mated, still sought each other out.
The surfaces of the paintings absorbed her, she returned to them again and again, they were her richest food. At night he explored her body hoping to receive some of that nourishment at one remove. Her fingers smelled of herring; later, her tongue, teeth, the soft cushions and hard furniture of her mouth, of herring, raw fish, the pickled smell mixed with the other smells.
Getting up to piss and rinse his mouth, to take the child to the toilet, the strangeness of the plumbing fixtures, the odd, very shallow Dutch toilet bowl, surprised him each morning. It was as though, during every night, he forgot that he was not at home, in New York, and had to relearn that fact at the beginning of each day. He would return to bed to find Jess flung back into sleep again, deep under the blankets, growling at intrusion. He would begin to rub her back, her sides, reach beneath her to touch her round, soft belly and her breasts, loose in his hands, sweet-tipped. A journey through her hair, the absolute abundance of the flowing waves outspringing from the brow, spreading over skin and sheets. The fine hairs pencilled along her arms, rough, half shaved on the legs and arm-pits, the warm, musty mount. The small arm hairs, forming his horizon against the light, his chin resting on her belly, flamed and moved like the leapings of light from an eclipsed sun. The very particular shapes of flesh and textures of her skin, the odors rising from her, from him, seemed to him at those times the constituents of the whole physical world. The periodic table of desire and repletion.
The light in that city, that room, at that part of the m
orning, was particularly clear, not yellow but white and silver, filling the space with a lucid intensity. No shadows and massing, just the clarity of surface and color, and the quiet occupation of space by forms. In the movements, pressing, tonguings, vials of scent opened into the air.
They would fall away from each other, grateful, tired, arid sometimes sleep again.
DROWNING
Drowning is caused by complete immersion of the nose and mouth in water for a length of time which varies with the individual circumstances.
please—alstublieft
many thanks—dank U wel
good morning—goedemorgen
good night—goedenacht
Holland is one of the smallest countries in Europe, with its area of 13,514 square miles. Its greatest width is about 125 miles. 32% of the country is under plough, 36% pasturage, 7% forest, 9% heath and sand-dunes, 3% gardens and market gardens, and finally 13% built-up area.
Dear Mother, Jessica, Rachel and I are enjoying Amsterdam very much. We’ve had some rain, but it is pleasant even then. We visit the museums, of course, and I have been working on a photographic project on Water, water in all shapes and places. Mother, this may seem an odd request, but I should like you, when you write again, to answer several questions for me. (1) What was the name of the spaniel we had when I was about ten? (2) What was the name of that family that lived next door, the ones with red-headed children, when we lived on Dundee Road? (3) Did the large closet in Grandma’s big upstairs bedroom really have a secret passage? I can remember, with awful clarity, a passage opening at the back of the closet, with stairs extending down the length of the house, but I cannot remember whether it was a dream. It may have been a dream, but the details are so fine. Please write and tell me the answers to these things as soon as you can—I’m just trying to get some things straight. Let me know how you are. Give my love to Linda and the others.
LAND UNDER WATER
The story of the Netherlands is one of the most remarkable chapters in all of mankind’s history, involving a fierce struggle against nature which is still going on today, and is fascinating to witness.
Centuries ago, most of the Netherlands was either permanently inundated, or periodically swept, by the sea. Yet men determined to live there nevertheless. How? By reclaiming land from the sea itself.
Pre-historic men built huge mounds of earth in the sea, and then placed their homes and farms atop the mounds. Later they learned to wall off the sea by building dykes—first out of earth, centuries later out of stone, and today out of concrete and steel. The areas that were walled off were then drained of their water (originally, by windmill-driven pumps) to create reclaimed land—or polders as the Dutch call these once-below-the-sea areas. And the polders were then farmed and cultivated to create some of the most incredibly fertile and breath-taking scenery in the world today.
By building such polders, the Dutch reclaimed nearly half the land that today comprises the nation. “God created the earth,” goes a famous epigram, “but the Dutch built the Netherlands.”
The process is still going on. In the early 1930s the Dutch completed their famous nineteen-mile-long “Enclosure Dyke” (Afsluitdijk) which sealed off the stormy North Sea from the former Zuider Sea into a peaceful inland lake. Elsewhere, in the Western section of the country, the Dutch are presently building their gigantic “Delta Works”—a series of five new dykes that will seal off further large estuaries of the North Sea. And remember, too, that even after land in Holland is reclaimed, it must constantly be drained by canals and pumps—or else the water will rise again:
two twee
three drie
four vier
five vijf
six zes
seven zeven
eight acht
nine negen
ten tien
Graham worked on a series of photographs of water, water in the Netherlands. The sea, the canals, the rivers, the whole country was knit by the presence of water, actual water, and the water which was no longer there but always threatened. The silver, shining, reflective surface. What, he took a picture of Rachel standing in a fountain ecstatic in a great fount of spray, is the nature of vision? Photographing Jess the light caught and recorded a magnificent aureole. Then sunlight on your hair! an extraordinary and beautiful luminescence. The phrase became a joke and a password.
TRANSLATE
The house was built a year ago. We were seen by his brother. The new ship has been sold. When will the letter be written? The boy was bitten by a dog. His name is Richard but he is called Dick. Have the horses and cows been rescued? I love you. The ship is not expected today. The raven was flattered by the fox. The books must be sent to my house. The country has always been governed well by its statesmen. He was trusted by his friends. The wheat has not been mown. I love you. The children were sent home. Were these vases sold? These glasses have not been washed. The bird was caught by a small boy. The girl was called by her father. The church had been built in the middle of the village. The roof of the house is on fire. I love you.
Saskia! No justice and early death. Such a beautiful Flora, the flowers in your hair, the oval face, slightly fat, the fine, bumpy nose and most stunning, endearing, dimple-forming, slight, up-curving smile.
The broad-brimmed hat of the Dresden portrait casts a shadow over Saskia’s smiling face, so that her golden complexion, her strawberry-red lips and rosy cheeks lie partly in brightest light, partly in shadow dappled with surface reflections. Borne on a ray of light, this graceful image of a happy wife rises out of a fiery darkness.
As Rembrandt wrestled with the mighty task of the Night Watch, Saskia wrestled with death; on June 14, 1642, she died, aged barely thirty.
This must have come as a terrible shock to Rembrandt, for in the light of his art we can guess what Saskia meant to him, kindling and inspiring his imagination in all his work. Then, abruptly, after the abounding joy, the radiant delights of his life with Saskia, came darkness. While she lay dying, her features haunted his fervid imagination and pursued him into the thick of the soldiery peopling the Night Watch, conjuring up a world of strange imaginings in which we see her in the guise of a child, in a realm of fantasy where time has ceased to be.
The Night Watch and the dead Saskia. The life of Rembrandt. Bad news, bad news. All over Asia and Africa men are doing violence to each other, the Chinese are reported to be carrying out a genocide of the Tibetans, and in the West the grip on order is also precarious.
A letter at American Express. Aunt Kate is dead of cancer.
As though the devolution had its own momentum, they became more and more unhappy. With all the shaking glass, the sound of beams breaking loose, Graham became enormously hungry, a frantic hunger. He would eat huge meals, potatoes, bread, sausage, and then would rise, leave the restaurant, and peer into the window of the first food store they came to. The windows of candy stores and bakeries were stuffed full and bright as Christmas. Biscuits, cakes, cookies, glazed fruits, creams, huge crusty pies. The most splendid pastel candies, fudges, truffles.
Truffles were one of his favorites, the flakey powdered chocolate coat, the lump, and, breaking the faint tension of the surface, the cream which was itself a marvel of transience. It did not rest on the tongue but melted immediately into pure sweetness dripping down the throat.
Bitter Ballen
meat balls with mustard
Blinde Vinken
stuffed veal or beef rissoles
with bread, milk, salt, nut-
meg, egg, bacon, bread-
crumbs, butter, margarine
Boerenkool met Worst
Smoked sausage and cab-
bage
Ertwensoep
Thick pea soup with
smoked sausage, cubes of
pork, pigs’ feet, leek,
celery
Hangop
A kind of gruel with milk
Paling
Smoked eel on toast
Rolpens m
et Rodekool
Minced beef and tripe
topped with apple slices,
served with red cabbage
Uitsmijter
Bread with a slice of cold
meat topped with fried
eggs.
This is a popular “quick
lunch”
Rachel became obsessed with mirrors; she would stand on a chair in front of the oval glass in their hotel room and stare at herself for long periods. Sometimes she would make faces, talk, but most often she would just sit and look.
With all the food Graham began, for the first time in his life, to grow fat. Layers of new flesh folded themselves around his bones; he slept for hours each day.
ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION
Artificial respiration is used to make a person whose natural breathing has stopped start breathing again. It must be done deliberately and regularly for at least an hour, if the patient does not recover before then. Resuscitation as a result of artificial respiration may occur many hours after apparent death.
While artificial respiration is being applied, an assistant should loosen clothing at neck and waist of the patient, make sure that there is nothing in the mouth blocking the airway, get clothing or rugs to keep the patient warm, and massage the limbs from below upwards. This assistance must not interfere with the application of artificial respiration which is all-important.
One night, slightly drunk on beer, making love. She perceives her body, defined by its contact with his, as construct, architecture and earth. The old truisms sharpen their teeth. Body like a building, like a mountain, huge.
Strangeness Page 34