A gloating shadow hovers somewhere, hissing softly to itself and watching with possessive satisfaction as the old link dissolves.
He just shakes his head, and that line drops lifelessly off.
Time races by as they sit there like preserved specimens—traffic noises, construction noise—banalities about the weather—a last chance, she mentions a seminar on urban planning she will be attending two days from now, and he goes off on building again as before.
She still loves him but for no reason all she can do is passively watch herself being disappointed. She is not exactly suffering; it’s like numbly sensing pain through an anaesthetic she’s afraid will suddenly stop working.
The lights are coming on outside, although the sky is not yet dark. They are more and more polite with each other, the formality of strangers reasserting itself—going to graduation day I’ll see you there all right?
Now she is closing the door—his head turned away, a strip of black hair in the light outside, turning to go, shrinking in the closing gap until the door is shut—that gloating shadow is still there, and when she turns, she meets its gaze helplessly.
*
SuperAesop here, putting the I back in b-u-l-l-s-h-I-t.
There are some words calling, with a sound like water flowing along a baseboard, looking for a mouth to drain out of. Their silent minion on the other side raises the curtain with his latch of vaginations and the clouds open, the word rain releases its glittering darts. The one the story is about doesn’t want to tell it, but it has to be told because that ghost is looking in on it, and whatever that ghost looks in on has to be related thereunto, so it looks like I’m getting drafted to tell this thing myself.
So, goaded on by a kind of inner jostle, and spurred by my passion for service, I’m searching through offices in a building that’s been closed for the night. I got in, if you’re curious, through the service entrance. A collapsed man in brown coveralls, laden with a collection of collapsed brown cardboard boxes bound together with plastic tape, happened to come crabwalking out the door, and I poured myself in, ran up the stairs behind his back, up and up, found a bathroom and camped out in a stall until all the lights went out. Now I’m searching, and now I find the glass man from the future, Assiyeh’s minion, wearing a suit and tie, asleep at his desk, gurgling quietly to himself.
I pull up a chair and gaze into the glass head, into the glowing, sleeping mercury vortex inside it, until the spiral lets loose its pictures to where I can see them and start to tell the story:
I see a castle at night, Professor Aughbui at a gigantic medieval table with candelabras and skulls and astrolabes and theodolites and heaps of fruit and a dead ferret artistically draped over a pile of grimoires and there’s a dagger there and some pearls rolling around loose. Professor Aughbui is squinting through a jeweler’s loupe at a tiny mechanism. He keeps reaching in and trying to pinch a couple of tiny metal vanes that cross each other through the center.
Enter sneering FLUNKY.
FLUNKY: Hey fuckup, the villain’s about to marry the Princess—any reaction?
PROFESSOR AUGHBUI: (without taking his eyes off what he’s doing) Huh? (Glance up, then back at his device.) Mm, yes, right. Congratulations.
Exit FLUNKY with sneer and shrug.
PROFESSOR AUGHBUI: (to himself) How the deuce does this thing work?!
I leave the scene, my head reeling with untenanted images. Go into a diner for cat food hash and a disgusting glass of hot caff-lent. The waitress, who has up until now done nothing out of the ordinary, stands very close to Professor Aughbui as she clears his dishes; she picks up the fork he’s been using and, looking him directly in the eye, she puts the tines into her mouth and licks them clean.
The melancholy of the piano music they’re piping in here is abstract; it would be laughably grandiose of anyone to apply it to anything they might actually be experiencing. It’s music for contracting.
OK now I’m seeing Professor Aughbui as a youth. Like an owl chick. Lots of fluffy hair around his head. He’s with his old school pal Lewis, who is much more handsome, with a mouth that turns up at the edges, skinny, hair shaped like a saddle. They’re in some kind of alienating, weird school building, all white, with black arches in rounded white walls. It’s a lobby, or open ground floor, tapering up toward a white apex high overhead. The air smells like paper. Maybe it’s a library lobby. Or perhaps I’m reading, in some other part of me. The floor is shiny. Air conditioning. A few potted plants and dark sofas or benches are the only things that aren’t white.
They’re here to meet these two girls they like to have lunch with. There they are, sitting on a bench against a white wall. Cathleen and I swear to God Brigrun is the other one’s name. Cathleen is getting up to throw some balled up something in a trash can like a big enamel smokestack. She’s tall and thin, with light brown hair trimmed short, bony, pale, good legs with oddly heavy thighs, ballet flats on. Brigrun is compact, with chaotic black hair and heart-shaped face hosting an expression of eerie cunning. The two of them notice Lewis and Aughbui, look each other in the face, share a giggle, look back.
That silly giggle of theirs won’t quit dripping. As the boys approach diffidently, Cathleen swings around and plants herself back down next to Brigrun as tight as Inca masonry, and they begin a regular alternation between watching the swervy approach pattern of the boys and eagerly consulting each other’s faces. I get the idea this is Professor Aughbui’s “that day.”
They walk out together, the girls still joined at the hip and giggling, darting looks over their shoulders at the boys, who follow gingerly along behind them, the various parts of their bodies all moving a different velocities. They pass a cemetery that rises above the level of the street, and the view opens out to a lake with thickly forested sides, viscous-looking water with big lozenge-shaped mirror daubs squirming on it, small islands covered in trees that look too tall for it, and here at the shore there’s an anarchic tangle of rope and boards and posts, some boats moored there, a few people around. Old fishing man with a red shirt and a floppy hat, carrying a bucket of aquaslime or crawslush or whatever, and here, this guy is a slim older man, erect, in white yachto pants and a short sleeve pastel vacation shirt, calling them. The girls wave and make sounds, go over to him still giggling, the boys plod plod plod up. The man’s face is close-shaved and puffy, with delicate wrinkles around his large, mobile eyes and mouth. His hairline has receded up his scalp to expose a shiny egg forehead, and the short hair that’s left, neither sandy nor grey, stands straight up. He greets the girls familiarly and they each dart in like fish to give him a peck on the cheek. The boys get a handshake each as the girls introduce them; his hand is large, firm, soft, warm. Gold watch. Big ring. Aftershave.
“This is Mr. Slutarp.”
He nods and smiles at them. It seems like he should say, “call me Denny,” something less formal, to break the ice, to induce social relaxations and lubrications, but he doesn’t. They know his name anyway. They were expecting this, to go boating with this family friend of one or other of the girls, or maybe he’s friends with both their families, and his name is Mr. Slutarp.
“Come on aboard,” he says, in a slightly throaty, TV voice.
With nameless misgivings they follow him along a gangplank and board his boat. It’s got a motor, no sail, and seems kind of large, kind of ostentatious, for this small lake. He will stand in the rear and pilot it, and there’s a wide canopied area in the middle where they can sit and watch the black water glide, the plumage of black pines on the shores changing angles, the dwindling shore. The girls stand next to Mr. Slutarp, giggling, speaking in little spasms. He says something modulated and droll to them, and they laugh. Then they come forward and sit right in the front, glued together. The boys have been going from one side of the boat to another, taking in the sights with listless enjoyment. When the girls reappear, they keep looking at them, expecting some cue.
Now the boat skirts one of the islands. The trees come
right up to the rocks at the edge. The boat comes around a little point of land and turns into a notch in the island, where there’s a dock.
“Well, here we are. Welcome to Elu Island,” Mr. Slutarp says, proprietarily.
They get off the boat and walk up onto the island, a heap of dark dirt tightly clutched in tree roots, risen from the depths of the lake like the roots reached down and pulled the dirt up under them from the lake bottom. It’s hard to think that those watery depths aren’t directly beneath their feet, and that the island isn’t just a large, organic raft.
Young Aughbui notices a cemetery climbing one side of the island, the graves among the trees, cordoned off by an iron railing. He figures it’s an extension of the cemetery on the mainland. It’s all one cemetery, he imagines, with most of the graves under the lake. There are probably more on its opposite shore. With all these old trees and now this graveyard, the singing makes it almost impossible to think. He’s a little out of sorts, a little dizzy, the light of the day and the weird luster of the lake seems to flicker behind the trees. The motion of the water makes it seem as if the island were adrift, the shore floating past over there.
Ahead and above on the ash pathway, Mr. Slutarp’s white butt floats and his hands swing loosely as he takes each step. The girls are walking separated, holding out their arms for balance. Brigrun stops to fix her shoe. As Young Aughbui comes up, she takes his arm to stabilize herself, and keeps hold of it as they walk on. The instant her hands touch his arm, a nervous electrification shoots through him, rattling his not unpleasant disorientation. She is walking close by his side, he can smell her brand of face soap. The path bends, and Mr. Slutarp disappears, then Cathleen and Lewis. For a moment, no one can see the two of them, and Brigrun stops and looks at him, eyes mysterious, lips parted. Excitement, so abrupt and violent, cracks through his chest and tries to climb out his throat, a kind of gravity pulls her into his arms and they kiss. Her mouth tastes like metal and her lips are cool. Then she’s looking at him, then she’s lowered her gaze and doesn’t want to look at him. She has him by the hand and they hurry along up the path toward the house, which seems to spread itself out as they first catch sight of it, like a rehearsed gesture of welcome. Set right in among the trees, the house is stucco and red tiles pulled out at the corners like curling toes, and all overgrown with creepers that combine with the gloom of the trees to dim the whitewash and make it look blue. There are no lights on; the windows are like charcoal smudges.
As they draw nearer, the house straightens up out of its slouch. It looms taller than it looked at first. They don’t go up onto the veranda that faces them, but around to the other side of the house, passing under narrow slitlike windows. There’s a soil bed with some severely pruned roses between the lumpily-paved path and the house.
Around the front, there’s a vibrant lawn of long green grass, truncated by an abrupt drop above the water and they can see across the lake to the far shore, and to the witch-hat mountains already fading in the blue beyond the tops of the trees.
“Hello there!”
A woman in a pastel mu-mu that flies all around her like a sail is coming down the crumbling front steps of the house. She comes up and takes Mr. Slutarp’s hand and they stand there meeting each other. She’s young, a suntanned blonde in her twenties, dressed like an older woman on vacation, in flip flops, white sunglasses with thick round frames baretting back her hair, which is cut in a sort of Louise Brooks kind of way, emphasizing her round head and her long neck. She wears heavy bangles on her wrists and huge dangling earrings. Gigantic baubles and beads are draped around her neck and press down between her breasts. Her body wiggles and jiggles inside the mu-mu.
She and Mr. Slutarp stand together, both of them squinting although it isn’t that bright, and receiving introductions.
“I’m Diane,” she tells them.
Then, after getting the basics down, she turns to Mr. Slutarp.
“I’ll go get things ready,” she says.
Then she turns and wiggles back into the house.
“Well,” Mr. Slutarp says, waving at the mountain view. “Satisfactory?”
“It’s wonderful,” Brigrun says.
The conversation is desultory and awkward, the boys just want to venture off alone into the privacy of the woods with a girl and see what happens.
“This house has been here since the war,” Mr. Slutarp says, looking up at it with his hands on his hips. “The Duke of Blaccio was going to live in it, but he died. Never even came to the lake.”
Finally Diane reappears high above on the terrace and waves them up to a table set outside. They sit down and she circles the table, doling out preloaded plates. As she puts his plate down in front of him, one of her breasts brushes his shoulder. It clearly wasn’t done intentionally, but then again she made no effort to prevent it from happening, either. When she serves Lewis his plate, the same thing happens.
They eat their sandwiches, except for Diane, who eats a salad, planting each forkfull on her outstretched tongue. Mr. Slutarp asks the boys masculine questions about their studies. When Lewis says he’s interested in medicine, Mr. Slutarp seems to take an interest for the first time.
“Really? Do you plan on becoming a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“A surgeon?”
“Well, yes, right!”
Mr. Slutarp claps his hands once.
“Now that’s exciting! Not ...”—and here he turns to uh young Aughbui with a quick gesture—“... to say anything about economics, but surgical medicine has always fascinated me.”
“Did you study medicine?” Lewis carefully asks.
Mr. Slutarp’s face creases in a melancholy smile and he shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “When I was your age, I had to work, and I was changing places all the time. By the time I had a stable enough life for studies ...”
He tosses one hand in the air, as if to say, “poof.”
“... I’m too old for them. But, you know, Diane here is a nurse.”
“Was a nurse,” she says.
“The hospital was closed.”
“They closed a hospital?”
“It was a mental hospital,” she says. “Now they just give the patients drugs, and don’t admit them. So, when the last one died, we weren’t needed any more.”
“She never did get a chance to assist a surgeon,” he says, not looking at her. “Only the sort of first aid they do when a patient hurts himself, slices his wrists open, you know. And they used to induce insulin shock, as a form of treatment. You need nurses for that. Someone with medical know-how, to manage the seizure.”
Brigrun is sitting next to young Aughbui, and, as his hand has happened to stray onto his leg, he feels her hand, very warm, alight on top of his, and squeeze it discreetly. He is very careful to give no sign of surprise. He’s wondering if there’s anything else going on under the table.
As the meal ends, it’s getting dark, and Mr. Slutarp waves them all inside. He is talking to Lewis about surgery, and Cathleen is doggedly sitting it out with him. Brigrun has gone to the bathroom, Diane is moving to and fro tidying things and lighting candles. He is sitting on a sofa, doing nothing, topped up to the brim with novelty. When are they going back? The darkness keeps getting deeper. They aren’t going to stay there, are they?
“We don’t have power in all the rooms yet,” Diane says, lighting candles on the mantelpiece. “But I think this is cozier, don’t you?”
The room is a white cube with a malachite fireplace, a sofa, an iron coffee table on a small, dark Persian rug, arched and open doorways in two walls, deep blue windows, striped with black tree trunks. Diane wafts by leaving a wake of perfume as she goes through one of the archways. He suspects she is naked under that mu-mu. The house is dim, filled with yellow light. He sits there alone for a long time. Then he gets up and starts looking around. Though he sees no one, he can hear murmuring voices, the giggling of the girls, and he gets the impression there are more peopl
e in the house than just the four of them. Glancing down a hallway, he sees a door partially open, and a shadow inside, a figure raising its arms maybe, like someone putting on or removing some article of clothing over the head.
He wanders outside and takes the path back down the way they came, down to the cemetery, and stands there, his hands on the fence, listening in silence to the trees and graves singing. Their singing drew him back down here. He knows he should be back up at the house, that whatever strange things were happening up there were the sort of strange things he came here to find, and that, if they notice he is missing, if they find him here, they will think he is crazy. They’ll gloss it over, but not by being discreet, not as joke, but with doubts and even aversion. Because they can’t hear the singing of trees and graves, the ghostly comings and goings in and out of the graves, the trees, and his skull, growing more and more intense without becoming even the littlest bit louder, more and more intense, and when they find him he’s doubled up on the ground crying and hugging himself, and they can’t uncurl him or get him to explain.
*
What more is this?
A canopied patio at the school. She sits opposite you.
“Do you know Alec?”
“I don’t think so. He’s observed my economics class, but we’ve never spoken socially.”
“He and his friends are having a cooking party in their, you know,” she waves her hand. “Their housing. They fire up all the ovens in all the apartments and make a feast.”
“What’s the occasion?”
She shrugs.
“I’ll ask Alec when I see him next week. In the department.”
“Aren’t you going?”
“Nobody’s asked me,” she says, looks at me and shrugs. “I don’t like to go alone.”
“Ah,” you nod.
Me? Who’s me? Aughbui? No. This isn’t him. Another one.
Then you say, “Please excuse me.”
A wry smile, twisting painfully. You get up and head to the bathroom. You don’t have any physical urge to go, but you need her to see you heading in that direction. Go in, just in case. Wash your hands. Look at your face in the mirror. Ronald Crest. Ugly. Defeated. Aging. Young, but somehow aging, like a time lapse. The lips twisted in a smiling grimace.
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