14 Fictional Positions

by Williamson, Eric Miles

  My employer and her daughter, Agnes, live down the street from the apartment complex in which Duke and I lease one-room flats. The women live in the house Duke built.

  When we look out the window of Duke’s flat, we see the house he built. Magnolias spread over the lawn. The branches of live oaks arc over the cobbled street of our Texas town.

  “I planted the live oaks when Agnes was born,” Duke says. “The magnolias when my spouse severed our relations.”

  When the wind blows, Duke and I watch loose shingles on the roof flutter like a stadium of applauding hands.

  Envy

  From the window of Duke’s flat we see the women attempt to leave for shopping. We see them try to start the car and find the battery dead, their looks of frustration, their trek back inside the house, where they use the telephone to call Duke and me.

  Duke and I do not answer our telephones.

  Because we do not answer our telephones, the women sneak up on our apartment complex, in hopes of catching us boozing.

  The women are dismayed when Duke and I booze, either independently, or, as is our custom, in manly tandem. They are dismayed when we go to the shooting range together. They are dismayed by the relative proximity of our flats.

  They suspect us of covering for each other when we do things we should not be doing.

  “‘When armies are mobilized and issues joined,’” Duke says, “‘the man who is sorry over the fact will win.’ Lao-Tzu.”

  “Life is a hair shirt,” I concur.

  Lust

  We live in a difficult situation, Duke and I. His spouse will not divorce him, and yet she will not grant him admission to enjoy the luxuries of her bedroom.

  Agnes, Duke’s daughter and the daughter of my employer, refuses, like her mother to Duke, to grant me the use of her feminine upholstery. Although we terminated our courtship four years ago, she continues as if we had not.

  With great tact I have suggested that our acquaintance has outlived its pleasantness, though I have not told her, “In ferrum pro libertate ruebant.”

  I have not told her, “My digestion gives me great concern, these days.”

  I fully intend to tell Agnes these things, eventually, and with effusion.

  Agnes’s mother, however, is my employer.

  Wrath

  No quantity of flowers can temper the wrath of Agnes.

  The wrath of Agnes can be overt at times, subtle at others. One time, during the second year of our acquaintance, Agnes put Bessie Mae Smith on the record player.

  I knew what that meant.

  “I know what this means,” I said.

  Agnes pretended she did not understand.

  When I informed Duke of the incident, he poured gin, our beverage of choice.

  He played his Furtwängler Rheingold, and he closed his eyes, not unemotionally.

  Duke handed me the gin tumbler and shook his head.

  “You have my complete sympathy,” Duke said. “In this matter.”

  Sloth

  Agnes liked me when we first met. I boozed with great zeal, at that time. Then she stopped liking me.

  She asked me to stop boozing.

  “I will like you more,” she asserted, “when you stop boozing.”

  I stopped boozing, mostly. Still Agnes did not like me.

  I booze with Duke. Agnes suspects this, but can prove nothing.

  Although she will not admit me to the diamond-tucks of her custom upholstery, she forbids me the company of other women. Nights, she walks outside my window, spying on me.

  When she believes she sees me doing something I should not be doing, she drops by unannounced, if uninvited. She searches my apartment for women and booze, and when she finds my booze, hidden beneath my mattress, she pours it down the sink with great ceremony.

  I am a tidy person.

  I am not one to keep my women hidden beneath a mattress—

  Justice

  —though I do my utmost to hide them other places.

  Early in the third year of my acquaintance with Agnes, I brought a woman to my flat. To show her my platyhelminth collection, and other wares equally of note.

  A knocking on my door interrupted a considerable examination of gephyreoids both rare and of common variety.

  “We should remain quiet,” I told the woman. “Quiet is best, at such times.”

  I took her in my arms, with expression.

  The knocking continued, and was soon enharmonied by a voice both shrill and familiar.

  “He’s showing you his prize nemathelminthes, no doubt,” Agnes screamed.

  The woman recoiled, and I was obliged to release her from my expressive embrace.

  After the woman made her exit, Agnes made her entrance.

  Agnes discovered my distilled spirits, beneath my mattress. She stood over my sink, pouring.

  “You have flubbed an opportunity,” Agnes said. “I was contraceptually prepared.”

  I rearranged my platyhelminth collection.

  Dread rose in delicate tendrils from the sump-tank of my soul.

  Prudence

  I keep my booze at Duke’s now, as his wife, my employer, has not been inside his flat these past fifteen years, since the day she found it for him. At Duke’s, my booze rests undetected.

  When I am sure Agnes is asleep, I go to Duke’s. We drink until the morning train rattles down the tracks behind our flats. Then we go to work. By the time we get home from work, we are both sober enough to face the women, if we are beckoned to do so.

  “Why do we live like this?”

  “The examined life,” Duke says, “is not worth living.”

  Gluttony

  Agnes stops by my flat, unannounced and uninvited. She is wearing makeup, and her clothing is uncharacteristically fashionable.

  “I bought new lingerie,” she says. “May I come in?”

  Inside, Agnes walks my flat as if a model on a runway. Agnes takes off her skirt and unbuttons her sheer blouse.

  “So,” Agnes says. “What do you think?”

  I approach alluringly, seductively, some would say expertly. My Florsheims are polished like onyx, and their squeaks are not inaudible.

  Agnes buttons her blouse and pulls up her skirt. She zips with great ceremony.

  “All you want me for is sex,” Agnes says.

  Agnes looks at herself in the mirror.

  “I understand,” Agnes says, “though I do not approve.”

  I believe I should say something.

  I consider my options and the possibilities of interpretation thereof.

  I say nothing.

  Temperance

  Duke is a maker of bullets and a reloader of shotgun shells. Every day when Duke goes to the range to test out a new bullet or a new powder, he saves his brass and his shells and brings them home for reloading.

  Duke is concerned with environmental waste.

  Sometimes Duke takes me to the range. He brings his pistols and rifles and shotguns and we shoot at targets or clay pigeons. Duke can hit the clay pigeons with his pistols.

  Duke is a very good shot.

  “From a hundred yards,” Duke says, looking at the house he built, “I could hit a diamond in a goat’s ass.”

  Pride

  “Why your acute interest in ammunition?” I ask.

  “I am in search of the perfect bullet,” Duke responds.

  Faith

  Not long ago, Duke’s spouse, my employer, and her daughter, Agnes, spend the evening at St. Anthony’s, the local branch of the Catholic church, where they drink wine.

  “Wine is alcohol,” I note. “Do you not find your stance concerning my occasional alcoholic beverage in conflict with an activity
of which you are soon to partake?”

  Agnes touches the cue-lever of her phonograph, on which Bessie Mae Smith already rests spinning on the platter.

  My aversion to the singer grows like a well-fertilized wart on the nose of my indignity.

  At the bar, Duke and I use cash. Credit card bills have been used as evidence of moral turpitude, though they prove nothing conclusively.

  We do not speak of the women.

  Instead, Duke breaks three snifters over the brows of impolite patrons, as a favor to the effeminate mustached barkeep.

  The barkeep, without expressing gratitude, requests we quit the premises. As we begin our departure, Duke notes a cardboard placard of the entertainer Elvira, dressed in tight black satin, propped abundantly by the door.

  In Duke’s flat the telephone rings without let and we sit in clandestine darkness, Duke and the cardboard Elvira at his ammunition table, myself in a strategically placed folding chair by the window, looking down the street at Duke’s house.

  Duke duct-tapes an Astra .44 snubnose revolver to Elvira’s shapely cardboard hand.

  On his knees, Duke begs for assistance. Elvira does not comply, and Duke pours a gin and turns out the light.

  “‘If your position is formless,’” Duke says, “‘the most carefully concealed spies will not be able to get a look at it, and the wisest counselors will not be able to lay plans against it.’ Sun-Tzu.”

  “There are oil slicks in the harbor,” I agree, “but that is preferable to periscopes.”

  Avarice

  “I want a bevy of zoot-suited handmaidens to jitterbug around my flat while I play Charlie Parker tunes on a throat-warbler and drink fruity rum-based cocktails.”

  Fortitude

  Accompanied by my employer, Agnes has decided upon a China pattern. A tastefully spare floral design, I have been informed.

  I do not question their taste, in these matters.

  “‘There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success,’” Duke says. “Churchill.”

  “It’s better to be shot by the wrong gun,” I reply, “than not to be shot at all.”

  Hope

  At times, when we booze, we hope the situation will change, Duke and I.

  The Professor Asks His Students If They Agree With The Conclusion: The Table Is An Imitation And Therefore Not Real

  Now that you have heard the argument, do you agree with the conclusion, asks the professor.

  I agree.

  Yes; I should imagine so.

  There is harmony in that, no one can deny it.

  That is very true.

  That is well and truly said, Socrates.

  Certainly.

  Yes, beyond a doubt.

  Phaedo lays his head on the table, goes to sleep.

  There can be no other alternative, Socrates.

  Yes, Socrates; that will clearly be the answer.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  Yes; that is what the authorities say.

  What a singular dream, Socrates.

  I think that you are right, Socrates; how then shall we proceed?

  Crito reaches across the table, scrapes his hand, and now he has a sliver beneath his flesh.

  Nothing can be clearer, Socrates.

  Doubtless.

  Indeed it is so.

  Without further debate I can see it is so.

  Granted; it is so.

  Even the gods on Olympus must see it is so.

  Even in Sparta they will agree it is so.

  Meletus picks his nose. He rolls a substantial booger between his index finger and thumb, applies it to the underside of the table.

  Not only in Sparta will they agree, Socrates, but all over lands yet unexplored they will know the verity of your conclusion.

  Even those wading in the waters of Lethe will come to agree with you, Socrates.

  A tanned boy, no name, enters the room. Socrates and his students all fall silent. They turn and look. The boy climbs atop the table and gets down on all fours. The professor goes first.

  Well done Socrates.

  We can be but imitations of this ethereal ideal.

  Certainly it is so.

  It cannot be refuted.

  Now that you have asserted your authority over the argument, Socrates, even Xanthippe will see it is surely the best.

  By far the best.

  Yes; by far the best.

  There can be nothing better.

  In the superlative, Socrates.

  I think that a good many doubts are no longer apparent, Socrates.

  Yes, that was a mighty wave which you have escaped.

  The students now take their turns. When they are through, the boy drops his tunic back down and leaves.

  So then, you have indicated beyond a doubt that you agree that I have proved my argument, that it is the best, asks the professor.

  Yes.

  Yes yes.

  Yes yes yes.

  Yes, that must be so if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure.

  Plato has used his notes to wipe up the table. He has no more parchment on which to write, and instead carves his notes into the tabletop, to be transcribed at a later date.

  H A N G M A N

  I

  the day of the execution

  The rope is snug about your perspiring neck, Aveiro Ilhavo Figueira de Foz, and we only await the final nod from the constable. I, Castelo, watch the newly laundered black sack puffing in and out like a miniature bellows as you breathe. You ask me to cut you some slack, as you prefer a quick easy snap over a lingering asphyxiation. I do not reply. Surely you must have known it would come to this if you were ever to return. But you evidently preferred to live in your world of fiction, of fantasy, of illusion. This is the price, my lover, that you must pay. Your mother and father may have told you this when punishing you as a child, but it seems especially fitting at this point in time, so I will say it, though it may seem cliché: this pains me as much as it pains you.

  Together we brought this on. And when you returned, you claimed to know nothing! They asked me if I remembered the details, if I could fill in the blank spaces. I, Castelo, said I did not and could not. I tried not to disclose that which only you and I had knowledge of: our affair, your plans, your dreams. But I was weak, and I betrayed you. The spaces have been filled, the scaffold will not go unused. I know that you may never forgive me. I will, if the constable looks away, cut you some slack.

  II

  a time before the execution—Castelo’s lament

  You are asking me in this communication if I, Castelo Sabugal Guarda, believe you; and of course you know that my answer is no I do not. For how could I? It is not my duty to believe you, but rather yours to believe me.

  I rest my hands on the crude windowsill and look out at the tips of celery and waves of grass, and I know that someday, like you, I too will leave this farm. You say you have seen so many wonderful things. I do want to believe you.

  Yesterday afternoon was like a rebirth for me. In the neighboring village of Juarihuantas, a man stopped me. He was chewing on coca leaves and wearing an expensive sombrero. He asked if I knew a man named Carlos. And of course I thought of you, Aveiro Ilhavo, off on your journey, of your parting words as you left me. You turned to me by the well in the village, the large hat you so carefully wove using straw from the farm covering your dark eyes, and whispered so that the children and women would not hear, “Do not ever confess what we have done, for it would surely spell disaster. Will you not come with me over the mountains and into the world?” As if I had any choice? What did you think that I would do? You should be happy with me, though, for as I have imagi
ned the wonderful places you have been since you left, the sandy beaches, the green hills, the trees as wide as huts, the snow covered mountains, I have added to the model of the world which you started building outside our hut, just below the windowsill where I can always gaze at it. I have not been to town since you left, and surely it is believed by many that I have died, or that I have gone in search of you.

  Let us switch positions for the time being, so that you may feel the full import of my leaf-fringed legend.

  Imagine that you, Aveiro Ilhavo, are in love with the prostitute. And she, in turn, is in love with you. Each night you stand outside her home by the river, just outside of the village, waiting for Ophiuchus to rise in the summer skies and line up parallel with the cock on the weather vane. Then it is time for you. You have already been waiting for many hours, since dusk perhaps, and you have seen many people whom you know from the farms and the village entering and later coming out. But you are not dismayed. Your special time is soon to arrive. And you know what will happen, for you have done this before. You will see the light brighten in the windows, and you will see her silhouette passing back and forth like a pacing spectre. Your heart will race, and you will be both afraid and happy at the same time. You will glance up at Ophiuchus and see that the time has come, and you will be reminded of the joke you so often tell when you are in your shanty alone. And of course, you laugh. It is the joke of a rich Brazilian who is walking on the sandy beaches of Sasso Fetore. He comes upon a pauper dressed in rags, sand clinging to his once wet clothes and skin. Look at you, just lying there, he says. I was once like you, but I made something of myself. I went to America with nothing and built myself a pushcart out of which I sold lunchfoods. After many years, I was the owner of the largest food chain in the province, Senhor Silva’s. And now, I travel the world, dine in the finest restaurants, have my pick of the beautiful women, smoke the finest tobaccos. Now I can lie on this white sandy beach and relax, no cares, no problems, anytime I wish. When the rich Brazilian finishes the story of his successes, the pauper turns to him and says, “But senhor, I can already lie on this white sandy beach, and I have had to do nothing!” It is your favorite joke, and just thinking about it makes you quake in laughter. And you slip your hand into your trousers and look back at the window, then at the weathervane. It is your special time. What then do you do?