by Don DeLillo
“Where does that come from? Who asked? You feel things. You feel things when they’re in your interest. You feel things when they further your drive, your will to do something.”
“Ass of the universe.”
“Pure will. Where’s the heart?”
“Where’s the liver?” she said.
“I don’t know why I came here. It was crazy, thinking something might come of it. Did I forget who you are, how you consider the simplest things people say and do an affront to your destiny? You have that, you know. A sense of personal destiny, like some German in the movies.”
“What’s that mean?”
“l don’t know.”
“What movie, ass?”
“Come to my room. Come on, let’s go to the hotel, right now.”
“Whisper,” she said.
“Don’t make me hate myself, Kathryn.”
“You’ll wake him up. Whisper.”
“I’m fucking pissed off. How can I whisper?”
“We’ve had that argument.” Bored.
“You make me hate us both.”
“That’s an old tired argument.” Bored. The worst remarks were bored ones. The best weapons. Bored sarcasm, bored wit, bored tones.
“But what about Frank? We haven’t had that argument in a while, have we? How is it he just happened to drop by? Did he want to talk over old times?”
She was laughing. What was she laughing at?
“What a pair, you two. The ragged self-regarding artist, the secretly well-to-do young woman. How many intimate little lunches did you and Frank have while I was doing my booklets and pamphlets? All those diminutive things I was so good at. That minor status you hated so much and still hate in me. What sexy currents passed in the air? Buddy-buddy. Did he ask you up to one of those dreary flats he was always holed up in? He spent half his life looking for bottle openers in other people’s kitchens. Did that make it sleazier, sexier? Did you talk about your father’s money? No, that would have made him hate you. That would have made him want to fuck you in all the wrong ways, so to speak. And what about Owen, the way you look out for his interests, his curious interests, that half-flirtish thing that comes over you.” I went into my female voice routine, a tactic I hadn’t used since the recitation of the 27 Depravities. “Are you sure, Owen honey, you never wrote a single line of poetry when you were a lonely farmboy under that big prairie sky?”
“Fobuck yobou.”
“That’s right.”
“You stupid.”
“That’s right. Bilingual.”
“You’re just shit.”
“Whisper, whisper.”
She went inside. I decided to follow, feeling my way in the dark. Soft noise, a light around the corner. She was in the bathroom, pants down, seated, when I moved into the doorway. She tried to kick at the door, one arm flailing, but her legs were caught in the jeans and the arm wasn’t long enough. Water music. Too urgent to be contained.
“What were you laughing at before?”
“Out.”
“l want to know.”
“If you don’t get out.”
“Say it in Ob.”
“You bastard.”
“Would you like a magazine?”
“If you don’t go. If you don’t get out.”
The argument worked in such a way that we kept losing the sequence. It moved backwards at times, then advanced abruptly, passing over subjects. There were frequent changes in mood. Moods lasted only seconds. Bored, self-righteous, injured. These injured moments were so sadly gratifying that we tried to prolong them. The argument was full of satisfactions, the major one being that we did not have to examine what we said.
“It lacks intrepidness.”
“Get out.”
“You’ll build a reed boat.”
“James, son of a bitch, I want you out of here.”
“You’ll live in a gas balloon that circles the earth. A seven-story balloon with ferns in the lobby.”
“I’m serious now. If you don’t get out. I really mean this.”
“You’ll take him to the Museum of Holes. So he’ll have a better understanding of your life work. Dirt holes, mud holes, tall holes, short holes.”
“You bastard, I’ll get you for this.”
“Pee pee pee pee pee pee pee.”
“You stupid.”
“Don’t you realize that as long as you have to sit down to pee, you’ll never be a dominant force in the world? You’ll never be a convincing technocrat or middle manager. Because people will know. She’s in there sitting down.”
I stayed on the terrace for a while. Then I climbed the short stairway to the roof. Flashing lights in the harbor. He was awake, I could hear them talking and laughing. What were they laughing at? She came up, tossed me a sweater and sat on the ledge.
“Your son’s afraid you might frobeeze.”
“What?”
“Frobeeze tobo dobeobath.” Amused.
“I wish you’d stop doing that. Both of you.”
“Issue a formal order.”
“Why did you come up here?”
Amused. “He sent me.”
“I want to see him. Wherever you two end up. You’ll send him.”
“Issue a command. We’ll route it through the system.”
“Bitch. You knew.”
“How do you think I feel? I wanted to come back here.”
“To dig.”
“You make me insane sometimes.”
“Good.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“You’re afraid of your own son. It disturbs you, that there’ll always be a connection.”
“What connection?”
“We find things. We learn.”
“What do you learn?”
“I never minded what you did. I know you’ve always arranged your life around things you couldn’t possibly fear losing. The snag in this plan is your family. What do you do about us? But I never minded what you wrote. It’s your present occupation I despise. I would hate your life. l would hate doing what you do. That awful man.”
A high-pitched voice. “That awful man.”
“The travel alone would drive me crazy. l don’t know how you stand it. And the job.”
“We’ve heard all this.” Bored.
“What am I, who am I, what do l want, who do l love. A Harlequin romance.”
“Make sense.”
“Make sense. If only you knew. But you’re so small and whining.”
“I’m the ass of the universe. That implies a certain scope, a dimension.”
“You’ll be an alcoholic. That’s what you’ll be. I give you a year. Especially if you don’t go back to North America. You’ll drift into it here. You’ll find yourself packing a flask to take to Saudi Arabia. If you’re better off without it, you’re an alcoholic. Remember that.”
“That’s your father’s line.”
“That’s right. But he wasn’t better off without it. He was a dead soul either way. You’re different.”
“I like what I’m doing. Why can’t I make you understand that? You don’t listen. Your view is the only view. If you don’t like something, how could anyone like it? If you’re better off without it, he’d say, pouring another bourbon. And I like his writing. I I think it’s fantastic. I’ve told him that. I’ve encouraged him. You’re not the only one who encourages him. You’re not the sole support. And I’ll tell you how you think. I’ll tell you exactly. You need things to be committed to. You need belief. Tap is the world you’ve created and you can believe in that. It’s yours, no one can take it from you. Your archaeology is yours. You’re a wonderful amateur. I mean it, the best. You make the professionals seem like so many half-ass triflers. They just dabble, they putter. It’s your world now. Pure, fine, radiant. He’d pour another bourbon. If you’re better off without it. He liked his bourbon all right. What was the name of that boat, where we talked? The fisherman pounding the octopus. Boats are eith
er saints or women, except when they’re places.”
I put the sweater on.
“You know how it is with Canadians,” she said. “We love to be disappointed. Everything we do ends up disappointingly. We know this, we expect this, so we’ve made disappointment part of the inner requirement of our lives. Disappointment is our native emotion. It’s our guiding spirit. We arrange things to make disappointment inevitable. This is how we feed ourselves in winter.”
She seemed to be accusing me of something.
The terrace was L-shaped. From the longer of the segments, the east, where I sat doing a pronoun exercise in my book on modern Greek, I saw a familiar figure in red shorts and t-shirt go running across the street and along the restaurant wall, where he passed quickly from sight, the first of two familiar figures I would see that day.
It was David Keller, toning up. I put down the book, delighted to have an excuse to do so. Then I went outside and headed up through a small dusty park toward the pine woods that form a band around Lycabettus Hill. As I walked through the opening in the fence I heard my name called. Lindsay was behind me, also tracking the runner.
We walked into the woods and found a path that looked as though it might suit someone running, being set at less of a lateral slant than the others. The pine floor was dry and pale. There were no shrubs or bushes and it was possible to see a fair distance up into the woods.
“Why does he come all the way up here to run?”
“He likes the woods. Someone told him it’s better to run on rough terrain.”
“A milder heart attack.”
“He was serious about sports. He needs to hear himself breathe, he says. He was football, basketball crazy.”
“The dogs will get him in here.”
“Dogs like him,” she said.
She walked lazily, swaying, hands clasped behind her. From an opening in the trees we saw part of the sprawl toward Hymettus, white buildings, a white city in this September sun. She seemed often to be thinking some amusing thought, perhaps something so nearly inseparable from a private perception she could not share it easily. She was shy with people but eager to receive, never wary or distrustful. Her eyes were full of humor, fond remembering. Her favorite stories concerned men making fools of themselves heroically.
“I like it here. It’s so still.”
“He has a kind of shagginess. As far as dogs.”
“They really do. They follow him.”
We saw him coming back this way, pounding crookedly on the narrow path, dancing over tree roots and stones. We stepped out of the way. He went past grunting, breath blasting, his face twisted and stretched, looking unfinished. We found a crude bench in the sun.
“How long will you stay?” she said.
“Awhile. Until I begin to feel I know it here. Until I begin to feel responsible. New places are a kind of artificial life.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean. But I think that’s a Charles Maitland type remark. A little weary. I also think people save up remarks like that, waiting for me to come into range.”
“It’s your own doing.”
“Sure. I’m so innocent.”
“How are your storefront English lessons going?”
“It’s not exactly a storefront and I think I’m learning more Greek than they’re learning English but aside from that it’s going well.”
“It’s not that we think we see innocence. We see generosity and calm. Someone who’ll sympathize with us over our mistakes and bad luck. That’s where all these observations come from. Mistakes in life. We try to make pointed remarks out of the messes we’ve created. A second chance. A well-turned life after all.”
Below us two dobermans ranged along a draw. The woods were marked with shallow draws and deeper man—made channels to carry off winter rains. We heard David approach again. The dogs went taut, looking up this way. He passed just above us, blowing, and Lindsay turned to flip a pebble at him. A girl in a school smock said something to the dogs.
“When will we get to meet Tap?”
“They’re still on the island. They’re laying plans.”
“You make it sound sinister.”
“They’re sitting in the sunlit kitchen, avoiding mention of my name.”
“We haven’t had dinner in a while,” she said.
“Let’s have dinner.”
“I’ll call the Bordens.”
“I’ll call the Maitlands.”
“Who else is in town?”
“Walk around the Hilton pool,” I told her.
The three of us went slowly down toward the street. David talked in short bursts.
“Happen to have a canteen? What kind of friend?”
“What are you in training for?”
“Night drop into Iran. The bank’s determined to be the first ones back in. I’ll be leading a small elite group. Credit officers with blackened faces.”
“I’m glad we’re here instead of there,” Lindsay said. “I don’t think I’d want to be there even after the trouble ends.”
“It ain’t ending real soon. That’s why I’m doing this commando stuff.”
An old man with a setter walked along an intersecting path. Lindsay stooped over the dog, murmuring to it, a little English, a little Greek. David and I kept walking, turning into a path that ran parallel to the street, twenty feet above it. A woman walked below us, headed in the opposite direction, carrying pastry in a white box. David’s breathing leveled off.
“Dresses with thin shoulder straps,” he said. “A puckered bodice, you know. The kind of dress where the strap keeps slipping off and she doesn’t notice for two or three strides and then she puts it back up there casually like brushing a curl off her forehead. That’s all. The strap slips off. She keeps walking. We have a momentary naked shoulder.”
“A puckered bodice.”
“I want you to get to know Lindsay. She’s terrific.”
“I see that.”
“But you don’t know her. She likes you, Jim.”
“I like her.”
“But you don’t know her.”
“We talk now and then.”
“Listen, you have to come with us to the islands.”
“Great.”
“We want to do the islands. I want you to get to know her.”
“David, I know her.”
“You don’t know her.”
“And I like her. Honest.”
“She likes you.”
“We all like each other.”
“Bastard. I want us to do the islands.”
“Summer’s ending.”
“There’s winter,” he said.
His probing looks disarmed me. It was a practice of his to search people’s faces, determined to find a response to his vehement feelings. Then he’d show his big tired western smile, his character actor’s smile. It was interesting, the esteem in which he held Lindsay, the half reverence. He wanted everyone to know her. It would help us understand how she’d changed his life. She caught up to us now.
“Everyone’s so nice,” she said. “If you speak a few words of the language, they want to take you home to dinner. That’s one of the things about living abroad. It takes a while to find out who the madmen are.”
Near the spear leaves of a blue-green agave she turned to speak to David, her left ear translucent in the sun.
Later that afternoon, near a kiosk where I often bought the newspaper, I saw Andreas Eliades in a car with another man and a woman. The car had stopped for a light and I’d glanced that way. He was alone in the rear seat. It was one of those low-skirted broad-visored Citroëns, medieval, with slash headlights and heavy trim, a battering contraption for sieges. Above the full black beard his dark eyes were set on me. We nodded to each other, smiled politely. The car moved off.
Sherding. Crouched in the pungent earth, soft forms all about her, pink-ridged, curled, writhing, here in B zone, below the black decay. She is scraping down the square. Right-angled corners, straight
sides. Her sweat is a rank reminder, the only one, that she exists, that she is separate from the things that surround her. Troweling around a stone. She remembers someone telling her that stones gradually sink through humus and loam. Clip the roots, leave the stones in place. Part of a hearth, perhaps, or wall. An incised design. A glimpse of political life. Rodents, earth worms turn the soil. She senses the completeness of the trench. It is her size, it fits. She rarely looks over the rim. The trench is enough. A five-foot block of time abstracted from the system. Sequence, order, information. All she needs of herself. Nothing more, nothing less. In its limits the trench enables her to see what’s really there. It’s a test device for the senses. New sight, new touch. She loves the feel of workable earth, the musky raw aroma. The trench is her medium by now. It is more than the island as the island is more than the world.
I was helpless, overwhelmed. The bare fact of it disheartened me. I couldn’t see what the work signified or represented to her. Was it the struggle that counted, a sense of test or mission? What was the metaphor, exactly?
I was compelled in the end to take her literally. She was digging to find things, to learn. Objects themselves. Tools, weapons, coins. Maybe objects are consoling. Old ones in particular, earth textured, made by other-minded men. Objects are what we aren’t, what we can’t extend ourselves to be. Do people make things to define the boundaries of the self? Objects are the limits we desperately need. They show us where we end. They dispel our sadness, temporarily.
She called that night to say she’d taken a job with the British Columbia Provincial Museum. She spoke haltingly, her voice full of concern. I could almost believe someone close to me had died. The British Columbia Provincial Museum. I told her that was fine, fine. I said it sounded like a wonderful museum. We were polite, accommodating. We spoke softly, moved to a gentleness we clearly felt we owed each other. Owen had helped arrange the job, through contacts. The museum was in Victoria and specialized in the culture of the Northwest Coast Indians. The museum sponsored occasional field schools. Fine, fine. We were warm to each other, considerate. I wanted her to be certain the job was good enough, what she wanted, although she wasn’t sure at this point exactly what she’d be doing. She apologized for having to take Tap so far away and promised we would work out visits despite the distance. Work out meetings, trips together, long talks, father and son. Her voice was dense, chambered, the telephone a sign and instrument of familiar distance, this condition of being apart. All the tender feelings passed between us that I’d sought in recent months to revive by some jumbled luck of character, will and indirection, carried now in the static of our voices, undersea. There were many silences. We said goodnight, dark, sorry, making plans to meet in Piraeus for the trip to the airport. After that we would talk again, talk often, keep each other in formed, stay in the closest possible touch.