Madame Betz was more proficient, there was no doubt about it. She used a crystal, but her weakness was conjuring, and as soon as Ella had stepped in the trailer, Madame Betz began the conjuration of Thursday. It went on and on: Cados, Cados, Cados, Eschereie, Eschereie, Eschereie, Hatim, Ya—name after name—Cantine, Jaym, Janic, Auie, Calbot, Sabbad, Berisay, Alnaym—until angels, stars, and planets had been invoked and Adonay Himself was called upon—Na Nim Nim Na—to bring Schiel, a great angel who was the chief ruler of Thursday, bound in a coil of greenish smoke, forcefully into her globe. The spell proved to be powerful, but Ella didn’t think she could remember it all, and when she told Madame Betz that what she really wanted was to be rid of her gifts, Madame Betz was frightened and sent her away. Ella persisted, nevertheless. She came back again and again. Isn’t there someone you could find who would like them—someone I could give them to, Ella begged. A Clara? My neighbor’s name. No, no—no one—of course not, Madame Betz had said, your gifts aren’t organs you can get dead and donate. I give them to no one—go away fast as blink.
Often Madame Betz would try to hide. Why do that, Ella told her, I always know where you are, and besides it’s undignified. Then Ella suggested a charm against clairvoyancy, some spell that might work at least for a while, and be renewed when it weakened, like a treatment for cancer, but Madame Betz refused this kind of help entirely. Ninny, she said, there’s no outside cure for what’s inside. And this was the last wisdom which Ella could extract from her, for as Ella grew worse it became apparent, since she was so much Madame Betz’s superior in every psychic thing, that if Ella were unable to assist herself, certainly poor Madame Betz, with her short refracted sight and scratched bowl and smallish magics, could do nothing for her. So she was paying Madame Betz a polite last friendly visit when Ella’s husband caught up with them. He was shouting, naturally, as he always did, and there isn’t much room in a trailer. Ella then slipped through the crystal. Madame Betz screamed. And Edgar began breaking her furniture.
The dark steam was beautiful, the silver spoon too, and the warm palm of the porcelain. Why don’t you just pour your coffee in the sugar bowl, her husband used to ask her. Oh, a drink that sweet, she’d say, will relieve me of my teeth. Watching her dissolve still more sugar in her cup, he would groan and hide his distraught hands before his face. Madame Betz loved sweetening too. We’ve got to have something, haven’t we lovey, she would say, stirring her cocoa pensively.
Home soon. To Ella Bend. Bend is end with a blossom on it. She slid the cards from beneath the cushion. A sip or two. After they were married and driving away, her husband said: Now you’re Ella Hess, nee Bend—roaring with pleasure and rubbing the curb. You pronounce nee nay, she should have said, and she was still sorry. A sip or two. Do I carry the cup to the table or not? Not. It’s to be broken another time. In their hotel room he’d slapped her bottom—nee Bend, he said. Nay, which means no, she should have said. She was still sorry. A vulgar whistling went through, and she thought: I’ve simply got to persuade him to move. Move? She shuffled expertly. I should shoo back Mrs. Maggies, she’s got no business here—not yet—and with evening coming in, the damp, the chill, the wind. He’s being held up by lights and traffic. A fine mood he’ll be in—accelerator angry. Ella stuffed a hankie in her sleeve and sat down to the kitchen table, flicking the cards. There was no point in laying them out, of course; she knew what they’d say. At the seventh card, if she played slowly, he’d barge in. There was the king of money to start with—a very fair or very gray-haired man—yes—a protector, but easily vexed. Sorry old soul. Someday there’d be an end and he’d be dead and she’d be dead and past this kind of feeling. Perhaps they could be friends then. And the queen of swords—a very dark woman—oh that fits nicely—a false and intriguing woman—well let it be, let be—or the queen might mean a widow. What is sword but word with s on its head. The next should be the three of money—there it is, as advertised—and that’s domestic trouble, quarrels, litigation. The table was glaring. Ella blinked. The cards clicked. Again a sword, the five, for bad temper. The cards are garrulous; that didn’t need saying. Then still another sword—so many—worrisome, such a concentration—the three—I hadn’t remembered—it’s for a journey—a journey?—or for tears. It is that September fuss-up, I’m just certain. I don’t weep in that one anywhere, though I get a beating. Curious. It’s true my eyes are welling, things are bleary. Not a bit like me. There’s no time left for this. Ella blotted with her hankie. Not now. Not now. Edgar’s in the drive and I’ve another card to turn.
I Wish You Wouldn’t
Mr. Hess said, his hat turning slowly between his knees. His wife lay sick in a chair, quite silent. Mr. Hess was leaning forward, his weight on his forearms, hat hanging from the pads of his fingers, carpet across his eyes. Um, he thought. Aah. His wife tipped back in the lounger, rigid as always, her risen feet in a V. Mr. Hess, however, sagged in contrast, his whole weight pressing against his thighs above his knees, brown hat dangling between his trousers. His missus stretched out staring at the ceiling in order not to see, and he couldn’t endure that either. The canary, or whatever the hell it was, rattled its beak and then shrieked … shrieked and rattled its beak. Hess moved his shoes to stand inside the florals. The venetian blinds were scratched, though you couldn’t see the scratches in the shade they threw. Their shadows simply said how crookedly the slats hung. What to do? although the question required no answer, hurrying after itself with furthermore of itself like a second hand. He had sucked the center from that old cliché: and time lay heavy on his hands. Dusk sank through the light to snow his shoes—the air so thick, the fall so fast—while whatever it was—canary bird, cuckoo—rapped its beak along the bars till Hess remembered boyhood pleasures too … with a pang like the smart of a stick. What? what? what to do? Thin tan lines flew parallels inside his suit no matter how he moved, but his wife could barely stretch herself about her bones. Mr. Hess was afraid she had cancer—something, at any rate, lingering and serious. Her skin was a poor color and she was wasted as an ad for famines. Maybe her mind had been affected by the illness, too; that would explain the peculiarities of her behavior. Change of life, he’d heard, often did them funny. He felt that he should get her to a doctor. A doctor—he pendulumed his hat—a doctor, yes, that was his duty. The doctor would report upon her. Smiling gently, rimless-eyed, he’d write her up as dying. Then he’d instruct Mr. Hess in the society of symptoms which his wife’s disease had founded. They always turn queer in a case like this, the doctor would say; oh they go strange, sometimes very early. We suspect, the doctor would say—my science does, you understand—that there’s a kind of signal to the future in it. Poor things, he’d say, they’re done for from the first: an abnormal placenta, don’t you see, pressure from a pelvis that’s too small, or some slight chemical disturbance, sudden stress, internal turbulence or organ tumble, a quiet slow infection, and it’s all over: sizz-z-z-z until the air’s out; so don’t heavy your head any further with it, Mr. Hess, don’t dent your hair, not even by a hat’s weight, none of it’s your doing, she was born at half eleven in her life … chew this bit of candy here to sweeten up your teeth, possess yourself in patience … death should follow shortly now, though her soul can only seep away, not fly, it has so little stamina. You’ve no young children, I suppose, Hess, have you? and I trust you’re well insured. Ha ha, Mr. Hess thought. Ha ha. And he solemnly prayed for his wife’s demise. Too weary for hate or even malice, he certainly didn’t feel ashamed; foreign, rather, to remorse or any sorrow. She was sick enough to be lots better dead. That was a fact, god’s truth. Hess wished her speedy passage o’er the great divide as he wished, weekends, for green golfing weather. It was reflexive, a wish as mild and futile as it was heartfelt and desperate, because he’d given up golf, as he’d given up bowling. Having gotten her laid to rest, he’d want the shoveling ceremony, please, run through just once again. The disappearance of her bier beneath the earth was a constant longing like the t
hirsty for another dram. His hat dropped softly to the carpet, quashing an edge. He slid his right arm forward to recover it. Only a doctor, only a definite “soon she must die,” could give him hope, for his own heaviness was overcoming him. Every day he hung a little lower on himself. It grew more difficult to rise in the morning, lift himself from chairs or slide from the seats of cars, even stir at all, accomplish stairs or carry any trifling action to completion, and the blood which fell out of his heart was siphoned back painfully. But she would never submit herself to any sort of physical examination. It was inconceivable. She knew she had a body of extraordinary kind, and that strange gray oblong organs would be discovered swimming like sea animals in the plate of the X ray. No … he had to be satisfied, since it was always possible that the doctor might frighten her off from the brink of her death with a knife or a needle, whereas her present ill health, so hopefully plain, though he only conjectured it, advanced with a steadiness no one as deeply concerned as he could fail to appreciate. He would accept the uncertainty. Mr. Hess knew no more of the spirit than his hat did—that is, not directly; and if his flesh seemed to be sliding slowly from him like thick batter or heavy syrup, it did not make his bones more saintly. Nevertheless it was that realm, mysterious in its work as magnets, and moving always out of sight and underground like rivers of electricity, which was the source of his dismay and the cause of his anguish. He did feel that with ingenious instruments it probably could be seen, in some way metered or its passage mapped, for this invisible world in which his wife lived made her weary; the stream she swam in was perhaps impalpable, but it left her damp; indeed, there were times when Mr. Hess sensed, somehow, the current flowing, and knew that sallow as her skin looked, lifeless as she seemed flung down on a couch or discarded in a chair like emptied clothing, she was lit up inside and burning brightly like a lamp. Even so, the only lamp he knew which fit his image of her was the sort which smoked above a poker table; surely she had no sky inside herself to fall from, no ceiling fixture, ceiling chain, or wire burning like a worm. She had her distances, all right, but within was their one direction, and Mr. Hess could not help but wonder once again exactly why he was sitting where he was; how it had happened to him, so bodily a being, even if he were a bit baggy and had all those habits she disapproved of in her subtle aerial way, never saying a word, just exuding an odor like ripe cheese when he appeared, causing the temperature and light to alter, holding up time so that it seemed he’d been picking his nose forever, or simply sending a sigh through the house like a breeze; how had it happened he should be so fastened to this—this twig, he sometimes thought in those moments when the past seemed as though it had held a promise and he’d once been a blossom, then a fruit, full of juice and flavor; how had it happened to him? prisoners must say that, over and over, he thought, handcuffed, chained; shit, Christ even thought it, as he was hanging there, nailed; but Mr. Hess had no head for searches, he could scarcely find his slippers, answers were out of the question, as his wife said sometimes, no, only these same wonderments circled through him, wooden in their wheeling as a roundabout. I’ve got to slow down, Mr. Hess thought. He ran along paths in the carpet, in the tan, around the turns of leaves and flowers. She hasn’t enough blood in the narrow channels of her flesh to pink a tear, while mine is like sand in a sand clock, almost wholly in my head—thick, moist, flushed, hot—or in my feet—heavy, old, cold, quiet—awaiting the tipsy-turvy to trickle out, thus I alternate a lot, don’t I? she’s not the only one whose spirit’s like electric current, but alas I’ve none of the instant capacity of wires. Hang in there somehow, Hess. Hang in. But she was having her weirds now, the stiffish kind, and he wished she wouldn’t. He could hit her again, of course. He could always do that. Instead he groaned and tried to spin his hat upon his finger. She was ill. She was dying. So he hoped. But she didn’t have to tell fortunes. She didn’t have to sit in the kitchen with the cards spread out, absorbed by the tale they were telling, bad news for Edgar when he came home. She didn’t have to leave the house to squat on the front step, in the drive, where he would find her making noises like a key-wound engine. Nor did she have to disgrace his needs, throwing up her skirt quite suddenly to leave him thunderstruck. I’ll be needing lawyers if I’m not careful. Not so heavy with the fall of the fists, Hess, hey? he cautioned himself. Not so quick with the kick. When the jury learns what you’ve been through, Mr. Hess, don’t worry, they will give you sympathy; they’ll put her beaten body behind bars; they’ll hiss when she is carried through the court. You’ve heard of the victimless crime, Hess, haven’t you? Well, there are crimeless victims, too. You’re one of them—one of those. What’s a paltry kick compared to the piteous smiles she’s inflicted on you, the looks thrown heavenward with such aboriginal skill, and cunning with curves, they stone down later in your living room the whole naked length of a sofa-soft Sunday afternoon, passing through the shield of the Sunday paper, bruising your eyes; or the little whimpering moues which cower in the corner of her mouth, how about those? the glances which scuttle away like bugs to the baseboard to wait the night, all the tiny gnawing things she keeps about her: frightened knees and elbows, two flabs of breast with timorous nips, disjointed nose, latched eyes? There are laws against that, Mr. Hess, unwritten laws, the laws of common decency, laws of the spirit and the soul, what she knew best, Hess, didn’t she? sure, her silences, for instance, are against the law, silence is against the law, silences are blows, and you can plead self-defense, you can plead extenuation, you can argue quite agreeably that you were driven to extremes, out of reason as out of town, by all those occasions when she struck you with inwardness—oh—withholding is wicked, refusing to respond, that’s malice, Hess, you have every excuse, don’t worry your warts, and when the jury hears how you have borne yourself these long weary dreadful, ladensomely heavy years, they’ll set you free to cheers and to the sound of bells, though it’ll help your case if you don’t have young children, Mr. Hess, you haven’t have you? that’s best. Ha ha, Mr. Hess thought. Ha ha. Please to observe, Mr. Hess, now, that she isn’t dead. She’s having one of her little nervous spells, a little dab of the dizzies, so she’s resting, that’s all, she’s merely unmoving, stiff and staring, eyes wide as a picture window, watching god knows what going on on the screen of the ceiling, some soap opera of the soul, a few new developments in the Grand Design, I shouldn’t wonder—ha, Mr. Hess, hey? ha—no, it’s just another quietly ordinary sagamuffin Sunday in the Hess household, and you’re no stranger to it, sweat it out the same as always, lean on your knees till your thighs dent, you know how it goes, you know the routine—oh my goodness, what’s to be done, Hess, what’s to be done? His urine fell out of him as out of a nozzleless hose, while she was forever listening … listening … in constantly alert and continuously expectant receivership, so to speak, like a line of ears for early warning. Pamphila. Faugh. What’s done is done; then done, it’s done, and then it’s done. So why wait any longer? when every act is over and we’re filing out. Anyway … my wife, to picture paths and patterns in resting rocks, deep tides of feeling, vast programs of action … well, she became positively seismographic, and registered dirt in huge mud-bound hunks roundly wibble-slob-wobbling like a dancer’s tum. Wait? Thin ass on a fat chance. Run? She said she heard his grass and claimed it was up to no good and had ungracious plans. What could he do but close his hands? She’d pick up stray transmissions even in the splash of his pee, the hum of motors, the surreptitious click of switches. Everything which entered the house, whether from above or below ground, entered her … entered without knocking: the wind, of course, and the rustle of leaves, sunfall as noisy as Niagara, day-mist and light spatter, they were welcome as holy water because she sensed the presence of the Sacred Word in bird whistle, rain plop—noises natural and noises not—squirrel chatter, pipe rattle, buzz, bloom, shadow; she parsed them all as easily as he read Dick and Jane—St. Francis couldn’t hold a sparrow to her—and she had for each of this world’s blurts a warm greeting, n
ot for him, though, just for the holing of moles and earth-eating worms, just for the paths, traps, and caches of beetles and spiders, for ants, wasps, cicadas—veterans as jovial in their cozy halls of relaxation as members of the American Legion. She’d have an immediate sympathy for the growth of roots, too, Hess was prepared to bet, their efforts, the energy, life’s task, how it was … like fingers struggling into gloves. Like the robin, she could hear the grub grub and the earthworm worm. It was a contradiction he couldn’t countenance or fathom, because for all her foreknowledge, he still had to yoo-hoo when he came round a corner, and without that cheerful next-door warning, or the boop-boop-boop of a rubber horn he’d filched from the handlebars of a neighbor tike’s bike—ha, oh lord, ha ha, ha ha—she’d startle like a sparkler, burn with indignation briefly, and darken on the wire. Otherwise she was stoical. She was patient. Rapt, she waited for erosion, rust, chip, flake, craze, settle, since slowness didn’t faze her, accumulations of the gradual, the thick that gets there bit by bit the way fog sags in a hollow, little reiterations, all the overtold anecdotes of the actual, same upon same, she said, were satisfying, though her face did not betray her pleasure, if, in fact, she felt some, giving away only what a dial would, so he sometimes knew where his wife was tuned without any sense of the source or substance of the signal, and because she was a stranger to class and its consequent snobbery, she listened equally to gravel scatter or the incontinent wetting of basement walls. The further within she went, the more numerous the noises, an orchestra hot for its A couldn’t compete for cacophony, and they delivered her news as diverse as the dailies. To tap drip, naturally, she bowed like a rod; to knuckle pop and cloth scrape, she was a wand … how do you stand it, Hess often said, with so much going on, if it’s as you say, and there are vibrations in ethers as yet unimagined, sounds exceeding sound even in the customary shoe squeak and silk slither, or from drapes, morose and heavy, hanging in a skin of dust, there comes the prolonged metal shudder of a gong? Of course, it’s only me who has the wonder, and who am I?—so dull, so down; but I think it’s remarkable that you should be responsive to the low moan of cushions; if you ask me, it’s even suspicious how warmly you are washed by every slow hydraulic sigh released by grease racks, barber chairs, and doorstops; strange that you are passionately moved—imagine—by the yearn of warping boards, the tireless cries of wood rot, thin as thread and exquisitely tangled, but perhaps it’s that sadistic element in you which appreciates broken slats and tacks like teeth, screws, nails, staples with their twin penetration like the drilled wounds of eyes, the elongating pains of picture wire, the screams of burning bulbs, and although in your overburdened state it may be kind of you to regret the steady dampening of salt on humid days, still, one need not be a queen and have a palace to enjoy the sweet granular silence of sugar in its crock. Voices: they were everywhere around her like gnats. In snowfall, frost. He had his hat. To rise? to doff one final time? good day, Madame—goodby—surprise— … to leave? He could do that. Run under it out of the rain. How many of his dreams had flight and freedom in them? Ham and eggs. Pie and cheese. Muff and sniff. She’d hear the Southern slurs of melting custard and be … entranced. He had his hat. He could do that. But noises he made deliberately to set her off, stomps around the room or weights he placed on the floor to make it groan, soda he shook and swallowed, screws he gave an extra turn to, fists he left printed in the air, the pounding he gave the coverlet, or conversely the squeaks he silenced with sewing machine oil, the har har hars he swaddled in socks, the lids he glued or the many things he simply removed in the trunk of their car to cast on the dump or drop in a lake or bury: none of these acts move her because, she said, under torture matter could be made to say anything. Mud, mold, matter—what one called it didn’t count—but it had neither courage, nor loyalty, nor conscience. In her husband’s police state matter would moisten its tongue for its own ass, and she didn’t believe that was right, she refused absolutely to consider it, matter alone meant nothing, a calf of slime, she said, not an object of experience, of piety or speech; it was a convenient carrier at best, a carton for cats, and so she thought of it the way typhoid must have thought of Mary, no more, not even as a necessary ambience or elevation or so much as a stand for music, pediment for a statue or tower with an aerial, though that was closer, and what was he, then, in his dense maleness, a series of surfaces like a stack of plates, what was he with his bowling and his beer and his business—charging the living for their life and paying off only when death was a winner—what was he with his busy pencil and greedy teeth, in the flesh of his flesh, but the purest muck, individuation driven to the point of indifference, asafetida not energy, sheer dumb disagreeable stuff, unworked, unrealized, raw, foolish in its lean and teeter, its oils, wows, and ouches, as an Evereadied dolly, yet with a prick which led him on his little trot through life like a leash held at the loop end in the Pope’s fist? Butterflies leave laces in the air like a courtier’s cuffs, she said. Faugh. Easy to say such, harder to prove so. Still, in order not to shit, she would refuse to eat—intolerable the sounds of devoured food: unfeathered, fried, carved, bitten, chewed—therefore why was his pissing so productive? How about a belch, he’d ask her, much message in that? How about a fart? What can you read in a sneeze or the ooze of sweat, that color of water on the toilet pipe—ha—what do you say?—what about the petulant whine and then the frightened whinny of laboring machines? leap of light from a mirror? unkinking cock? but she would smile her sad peacemaker’s smile at his coarseness, face him with a calm forbearing palm, explain that only the plainest idea could be contained in such a short intemperate sound as a sneeze, bereft of feeling and every fineness, say how often there’d be but blunt sense in the sharpest signal, because you never can tell about such things, Edgar, you must know that by now, surely you do, you do, surely, and though paint slides from a brush sometimes in a way that’s purely meditative, never mind, I have heard hush! in the batter of hammers, the clatter of cans, and please in the rasp of a file. I know every letter of the law, Hess said: L … A … —and I know of the awe in it, was her reply. It helped her to hit her, Hess knew that. Surely he knew that. Who had his hat? She hadn’t his hat. He had his hat. She wanted hitting in the worst way, although her surrender to his will was like another conquest of China. Still, what did it matter whether she was out from a blow or lost in her dizzy mind’s movies, since she could easily have dreams during dinner, trances during a doze? There was no place or moment she was willing to occupy the way Hess took over his air and hours—fully, heavily, persistently—so he was unable to feel there were any outlines to her—no weights, no volumes, no shifts—she was never anywhere. His wife might undergo visions while steaming a crease in his office trousers, plume out a chimney and disappear, receive visitations washing dishes, her thin hands gloved in suds as delicate as underclothes, or entertain omens and other astral submissions as though they were coffees set out in kitchens, as though one’s daughter or less likely one’s son had come home from a party and wanted to talk and you had perhaps pie and a bit of cheese to go along with the midnight signs and ciphers, the symbols and the codes, while you listened numbly dumbly to the life you’d passed by years ago like some display in a window turntabled once again—turntabled—ha—ha ha—and your daughter or less likely your son awkwardly dancing to it as if it were a new tune and not a revival routinely fiddled by Old Bones and his Big Band. Ha, Mr. Hess thought. Ha ha. Articles in attics: so much for her visions. Voices spoke to him too, spoke to Hess, nicknouned the Hessian by his mates—ha—ha ha—they spoke to him from out of the past as hers did out of walls, because—it was true—what has gone before goes before like a hound, peeing a path, and damn if the old days didn’t dump on her, she was no different for all her fancies, because Hess knew from his own bitter history, hers too, that when today caught up with yesterday they would call it tomorrow. Visions, she said. Voices. Faugh. He had cause: cause like cotton is the cause of wounds. Blah. He knew. He had grounds. But
his eyes did not step from the carpet where they were confined by stems and leaves to little curlicues. There was no need to look. Even if the room changed around him, it would be the same to his shoulders. I have cause, good cause, for what I do. My god, I’ve grounds, grounds like this floor here, concrete covered with fur, and beneath that earth forever and the few pipes we shit through. Listen, Father, I have cause. I do what I have to, always with cause, good cause, and only when I have to, only with cause. I’ve grounds. That’s why I wait/wait till I have to/to do what I have to … do. I wait while the years pile up and cause after cause comes like snow in a storm, so that now I may have too many, grounds too great like a park around a puddle, because they get suspicious if you have too many, they suspect that if you have too many, you haven’t any, and oh god, Father, I have many—many, many—still …. not too many, just enough, although they may ask what are these causes which never effect? what is this mass which never moves? but I have many—many, many, many—and who can blame me if I run past complaint now as if it were a STOP I hadn’t seen? Visions. Indeed. Faugh. Blah. Visions of what, though? Never of gods and goddesses, never any angels, scarcely a cupid, beauty bare, the naked truth, not a single streak of light like the sperm of a star to pierce some window to where she was sitting, not Fate or a Fury or a vampirish mouse with a flat furry face like Bela Lugosi … nobodies, every one, not a name among them—Tyrone Power—not an old demon even, out of work or with an odd hour off and able to visit. No. Faugh. Don’t bet the farm on Mahatma Gandhi. Nooooh-bodies, boy. NOOooo. The walls stood up around him, tan as a turkey, and the ceiling smirched along overhead as though in a day it might rain. It must be tiring to stay that stiff, he thought, for she wasn’t dead, that would be restful, the stiffness, the silence, of death. This was tense, this was a bellow, a huge howl which steadily grew and now contained the room which contained them. Father, she’s all right. I mean, she’s sick, and her soul is like a Cape Cod shingle, but she’s all right. Never could detect a pulse. Chest as still as a stove top. Fire’s out. Sick, then. Normal. She’s all right. Voices, she said. Messages. All right, messages: blah, where were they? what did they come to? sniffles and yipes from Little Orphan Annie, whining about lost dogs, weeping because there were boys away in the war, anxieties about men: boorish insensitive husbands like himself, brutal brothers, inconstant companions, faithless friends, lying lovers—bitching, bemoaning—nothing about the sweet thunder of the pins or the excitement of a homer, the comforting closure of a jaw in a bun, not a leaf from the tree of knowledge, not even so much as a mutter from the moral law, not even a helpful household hint—so—so much for the spiritual telegraph, for ESP, because only diseases sent messages of any length and complexity—moment-by-moment readings, hourly bulletins, daily summaries, weekly releases—every sickness seemed to be somehow a triumph of the spirit, especially stopped-up sinuses, and migraines, like static on the radio, headaches so electric they haloed your hair, and it completely flummoxed Mr. Hess, who held his own head and groaned, even whimpered, while his missus felt giddy, had a spell of dizziness, or fell softly to the floor in a faint the way clothes slide sometimes from a hanger. Then there were discharges, menstrual moans, and the whites like a fog of sound. Mr. Hess hated to think about the others and couldn’t—didn’t dare—ask; nevertheless, what he gathered was that the ethereal world his wife loved was nothing but the loathsomely oozy body done into jiggles and jogs like the huff and puff of someone running. The books he consulted agreed in substance, though seldom in detail: it was a school of the dance, vibrations in vapors or ripples around rocks; it was streaks in cloth, they said; it was speeding clocks; it was clouds in chambers, ozone after lightning; it was wow, ow, ouch; it was apples on vacation from their cores. And the things in nature which proved most mute were therefore most sound, were in equipoise and balance like the billiard before its score, so equal and so uniform it was impossible to guess where a lean might come from or what tilt it might topple toward. Scrape, scratch, rasp: it was this inefficiency, this illness, this grumble in the works, which caused the uproar—indigestion, for instance, arthritis, epilepsy, ulcer—so that Hess felt sometimes that if the world would fall silent, she would be silenced. The hope led him to let his watch stop, although she said it kept on keeping time, and this was yet another reason why he double-washered taps, overoiled hinges, smothered the sharpener, and carried things out of the house tightly wrapped. He had long since ceased to smoke because Ella complained of the foggy swowl in every draw, the ploan like a stormhorn in every puff. Now he went to the garage to grind his teeth. If you’re all so big about the spirit, Ella, he said, why are you all so physical, hey? why so gut and head sick, so eager to hear the earth? and why are you each so ugly: you’re either flat-faced or fat, thin-haired or moppy, lime-lipped, gun-gray—the lot of you—with teeth likely to be spilled in one of your mouths like a damp pan of beans; you guys ain’t elegant, you’re not opulent, not delicate, not shy, no ma’am, rather wart-, wen-, and liver-spotted, vein-roped, yeah, albino-eyed you bet, allergic, snivel-nerved and pukey, with tits loose and shriveled as emptied balloons, man-oh-man, or melted and sloping, uddery, why? drunk on disapproval, are you? and is every pain a blessing like a Boy Scout’s badge for merit? proud—I guess so—vain as if you were a Beauty, spoiled in the same way as a Jewish Princess, still I wonder how you came to be so fuckless if so female, hey? so juiceless, dry as oatmeal overboiled, oh even your stout ones like Madame Betz have dust bowls standing in their bellies, even in July when every skin is slithery with sweat because underneath the sweat the skin is dry, cunts closed and lying buried in their also sweaty secret hair like clams in silt, hey? and you have the gall to despise me for guzzling beer at the ballpark and playing with my toes. It was the only time Ella had ever raised her fist against him, and hadn’t he fetched her a good one, but there’s really no use talking to her, Father, to hammer some sense, because she won’t listen to me. She hears muscles jumping in my jaw; she will hear a hair gray, milli-inch by milli-inch; she covers her ears when the belly rumbles; she listens to my face flush and moistens her brow with a cloth; frequently she sings along: she hears all this, each secret part and public parcel, but she won’t pay mind to me or to any official broadcast. Father, Mr. Hess said seriously, I have cause to believe she’s committed adultery with a drainpipe. Well she raised her fist that solitary time and said something overgrand and stucco like a thirties theater. It was really rather remarkable, come to consider it, how she seemed to gather the pieces together, various panels of her clothing, a collar, a pocket, a sleeve, each moving as separately as ants yet together like clasp and tie, too, all soft and hardbody at the same time, the way a scarecrow would grow if it grew, and her mouth opening, wider than when a muffin entered or a triangle of toast, and the muscles tensing along the length of her neck, the veins enlarged, quite blue, and the cry coming slowly out atop her tongue, in scraps, in flecks, the way she’d risen from the floor—AYEEEE—“shall” the only word which seemed to have a stop to it, curling up at the end like a pair of skies—beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—monsters in the movies wailed like that at the threat and showing of the Cross—freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—ha—ha ha—I shall be free. Not of me, he’d answer, automatically; not of mee, he’d said, with a depth of seriousness no dipstick was notched sufficiently to measure; not of meee, he’d said, shouting, and he fetched her a second and a better one. What are you at cards for, if you can hear so much? horoscoping, number-nosing, syllable counting, peering the leaves, or skittering out to consult that bubble-reading Madame Betz, all gyp, by god, no gypsy, just to show off to the competition what a better witch you are? and didn’t she call you a copy-cunt right in the pleasure of my hearing? and then didn’t I have to rough her up? how well you get along, you mystical ladies, pretending to concerns so delicate they can’t be seen but only seen through, like a pair of seductive panties. Well, none of that’s real, you hear me? I’ll tell you what’s real. I am. I AM REAL. And she had smiled a
t him from the floor, smiled a smile which spread like syrup, so full of slow sweet pity for him he could have killed her—well—and he did give her a stern toe on account of it and his foot felt as if it were entering a basket of laundry. The idea that his missus had been chaffing for something like the same thing that he, Hess—knick-nacked the Penholder by his playmates—had, was … infuriating, it was … humiliating, it was … intolerable. Well, no, Father, truth to tell, it’s hardly been a successful union, a kind of side-by-side life, you might say, as close and on our own, each one of us, as two plants in the same row, stealing substance from one another, water and air and all the rest, what’s near, what’s by, that’s all, yet meeting, I suppose, once in a while, like leaves meet in a pile, for breakfast or in bed—ha—ha ha—never touching except, like I’ve said, when I reach out and whack her, and not even then, she sees to that, I think she knows days in advance—yes siree, no mistake—why, sometimes the bruise will be there, yellow and green like a young banana, before the day before the blow. The rug rolled. Goal or threat. Perhaps a promise. Designs slid out of the rim of his eye. Something to aim at: a telepathic bull’s-eye. I don’t ……. know. The shriek of the bird left silence foaming behind it like a boat’s wake and Mr. Hess thought of the boats he had seen in the showroom, turning slowly around and gleaming on their cradles like the girls he had ogled on the stage, paint too perfect for a world of logs and oil, and promising more escape than a plane. So. Well. Who had his hat? Mr. Hess thought he would apologize first for being so faithless—no—he wouldn’t put it like that—for being so irregular in attendance, whatever it was, but it didn’t matter because he hadn’t come about himself, he’d say, but about his wife, Ella, who was in dreadful danger, he felt, he’d say, danger of conspiring, was it? with the Devil. She was a goddamned witch, that’s what she was … a witch. She said sometimes her real name was Pamphila, Father, and I looked it up at the library, with a little help in the library, and it’s the name of a witch—who would believe—? She said it with a small smile—true—a small smile, but in the bathroom one day he’d overheard her singing in her thin thin seldom songful singing voice: I Conjure and Confirm upon you, something like ye holy Angels, though she never encountered any, what pretensions, what a liar, and by the name Cados, Cados, Cados, he remembered, it was like “cadence, cadence, cadence,” a birdcall, Eschereie, Eschereie, Hatim, Ya, strong founder of the worlds, in that direction, it filled his feet with immobility just to hear her, Cantine, Jaym, Janic, Auie, Calbot, Sabbad, Berisay, Alnaym, noises she accompanied by clapping, and by the name Adonay, who created Fishes, and creeping things in the waters, and Birds upon the face of the earth, and by the names of the angels serving in the sixth host, better she’d been masturbating, Father, when I barged in, before Pastor, she sang, as if undisturbed, a holy Angel, and a great Prince, and she said she was only trying out a conjuration of Thursday that she’d got from Madame Betz, and which amused her … amused her! by all the names aforesaid, I conjure thee, Sachiel, a great Angel, who are the chief ruler of Thursday, that for me thou labor, Father listen to that—my god! Thursday—and he’d lowered his fist like a flag at taps. A witch. A ghoul. Ha, never put a broomstick between those thighs, though, no sir, no siree, she’d ride nothing so phallic as that; she traveled in her mind, rode another wind; and he’d tell the Father how it was, and that although she was spiritual to the point of lily-wilting, she wasn’t spiritual in the churchly chichi sort of way; on the contrary, she was the only cunt he ever knew to wear galoshes, the kind that buckle, that swallow your shoe, and he, Hess, who sold insurance and knew about investments in a modest, even humble fashion—money, Father, is my métier—knew she put great stock in all those lives she planned to lead beyond the grave, took great store from them, took … tock … Who had his hat? He had his hat. The feather and the felt. Then ran for fun—he could do that. Who would be missed, the missus or himself? The label and the lining: silk. There was a sign above the hooks which always warned him to watch his coat, and Hess would watch so wrathfully, on celebration Sundays, sometimes, when they went out, he could have swallowed worms and felt well fed, been none the wiser for a wedge of mud. No, no, he’d have proud pie and royal cheese. And take a poster boat to distant cities, see famous landmarks done in strident inks, shape a shy smile of gratitude for the frank solicitations of dark and unintelligible tongues. Then outdoors, what? leafy trees, new green, a breeze. Play catch as catch can there. Watch. She might have been the hook itself he’d hung his hat from, her nose in the band above the brim. Outdoors, what? not the rush and the roar of a wind but the light lift, the almost imperceptible touch, of elevating air. For if Ella looks before, I after, if I left who would replace me? the present has already gone, though in a way it lay around his wrist still, keeping tabs, perhaps more perfectly now it had no need to tick continually and mill its hands or waste its face by glowing in the darkness. Go. Though catch would come after. Either. It’s just that, well, he, Hess, her husband, was worried about her chances since she lately seemed so sick and was this minute stiffer than most corpses, open and empty-eyed, and he had noticed recently (that is, in the few moments previous to his present speaking) several brief breaks in her oh-so-shallow breathing, ominous interruptions of the ceiling readings, and little lapses in reception which caused her silence to fall short of itself, toward another silence, like a broken arc, and now her pauses had a puff and stutter to them like that bird of hers when it was angry, and he thought she might be about to Kick the Habit and Cross Over, or whatever one did. Li ……. ve. Die. He couldn’t settle his heart about it, couldn’t get his guts to decide. The Universal Insurance Company of North America presents to Mr. Edgar Hess this Electronically Prepared Personal Proposal of … The blue folder contained no certificate, no diploma, no golden seal, no ribbon like a panting tongue, but a promise of protection: the Estate Builder, Econo-matic Life. Reality broke in like a burglar and stole his dreams before he could etch his name. He would raise the hue and cry. He would never be out of work. His desk was littered with electronically prepared proposals. His appointment book was black. His tie was parched, his coat was dry. Hey there, stop—stop wife, stop life. Ha ha. Hess wondered just who had his hat. The rug rose, wetting his knees. Perhaps you might sprinkle her with something, Father, water and oil, stuff like that, to snuff her evil emanations out and sail her off to heaven in a paper plane. Fold her. They were blue, with a red stripe, in soft tabbed paper, privacy assured. The last business was his business, UNICONA’s deep concern, he always said, and his clients would nod submission, extend their hands, shake like canisters of ice. Now this moment she might … she might go Hence, cut from his face like a whisker, and Hess wondered whether it might have been otherwise, whether their life together had been so totally enformulated that they couldn’t help rubbing wrongly together and consequently being in a constant state of mutual exasperation like the sawing legs and so the laughing screams of the cicada—an ill mix from the first, bad match, poor pair, punk job, odd lot, and so forth, a complete and perfect botch; but if she were oil, then he was water, and if she lay quietly in a skirt of colorful iridescence, he fell slowly into darkness and into the depths of himself, beyond all light, beyond the last fish, stonily to stony bottom, or perhaps beyond that, bottomlessly un ……. der … no, he didn’t th ……. ink so; he thought rather that they might have made it with a little counseling—right—maybe that’s all it would have taken—sure—just some authority figure to tell her to V her legs and buck a bit, chuck his balls under her chin, to come down out of the cumulus and clown around a little, a lot of ladies like to go to the games, scream for the team, lap up a beer, some bowl, and—my gosh—many will respond to a nibble or a twiddle even, consequently square up, Missus Hess, therefore straighten around, don’t endeavor to be exceptional, to see camels in clouds or become what we call cipher silly, what do you say? that’s zero, the cipher, zerrr-oh, the cold, the o in obliteration. I’ve known several like you in my time and practice who
sought clues to the future in the daily crossword, games of that kind—the x in eccentric is a cancellation, remember—how did they fare? well, they went up, then down, across, or desperately took diagonals like last-minute shoppers at Lazarus’, in the Christmas rush at Macy’s or Marshall Field’s, but black blocks cut them off eventually, hemmed them in on every hand like smudges on a diner’s napkin—Ella, Ella—backed into byways, uneasy always, and there to remain as cats are caught at the hairs’ ends of alleys, illumined by doglight—Ella, Ella, Missus, Madame—or compelled to live on a letter like k—what a coffin—so placidate yourself, ma’am, run for calm like a carrot, resign, accept—we know you want to know only because you’re curious, but tomorrow will be along never fear … and Hess felt he could have been content, the conviction had grown on him—indeed was a callus—he could have been content, his length in his Barcalounger, mag open in his lap, listening for the fry of dinner, the pitpat of the cat; for what had he asked for? honey in the comb? had it been much? … so much? perhaps if he gave her a book of some kind, one which explained marriage and contained diagrams and pictures, anatomy and arrows, though she never had much interest in words laid to rest like that: in so many glassy-eyed rows like results of a gunning. What he wanted was calm, calm was quiet, the stillness of a world which spoke about as often as an onion. Chewing on a hard roll, for instance, the sweet work of the teeth, he thought, sufficiently contained itself. It didn’t need to broadcast the news of the world, or—well—as Ella said, be a checklist of his day-dreamy desires. Yes. He felt he could have been content. Ella, however … She never joked, never saw the funny side of life; when was the last time they’d had a good ho ho together? no, she was always, what? grim? serious at any rate, intense, anxious, fearful, pitched past every la ti do they’d so far found a line for, prim. Pris ……. sy. Cold. Patronizing. She gave him the length of her nose, not a hair—not a fart—from her quim. Ha. Ha ha. Flighty. Notional. Picky. Poky too. Thin. A shoe stirred ever so slightly beneath the level of the rug. Was it his? hat? Step on a slat, make your mother fat. Five, six, pull your pricks. Why did he remember that? His memory was mostly reluctance. And then she was also so sickly. Sickness in a skinny woman is particularly … Splaugh. What would happen? malnutrition? cancer? kidney failure, then? Cold. Consider it: ummmmmm. What could he do? Die. Live. I just don’t know. Headstrong but bowelweak. Ran in the family. Distant. Cold. Hearthard but tummytender. Normal, then. Cold. While I only wanted … What was it I once wanted? honey in the comb? Still, I wish, Mr. Hess said … Anyhow, Ella, really, I wish you wou …
Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas Page 5