He carved holes the size of dessert plates in the walls, holes big enough for an adult’s head, let alone a child’s, to fit through; every wall had a hole at eye level. Wooden window frames, David’s pride and joy, were defaced with deep grooves, as if Nielsen had suddenly sprouted a polydactyl paw with bone claws and a desperate need to scratch against something. Upon finding a screen door, Nielsen apparently enjoyed shredding that, too, until it dangled like a ripped spiderweb. Perhaps he slept in it, or maybe hung in it upside down.
He liked to chip away at the bathtub with a hammer and chisel, but only in the near left corner. The bathtub was cast iron, and he must have been trying to get to the metal through the enamel. Apparently he didn’t find the other corners palatable.
The basement had housed some air ducts below the ceiling; they carried warm air to heat the house. Now the basement no longer housed them: Nielsen had cut them out. He ripped out sections, three yards in all, according to a plan he alone understood, a plan that no human brain could comprehend. Thinking that my eyes deceived me, I dragged a certified American contractor in to inspect the damage: What is this? Can you, please, explain?
“Holy shit,” whispered the certified American contractor, backing away in fear. In American B movies, that’s the facial expression that earthlings have as they stand there looking and not knowing what to do next when suddenly—thump!—something covered in spiderwebs and goo jumps into the frame and carries off in its jaws a young actress of average looks, the one that you always knew was going to get quartered and eaten after getting entangled in something sticky.
Sure, the house was also dirty, but what difference did that make? It was finally clear why he required sterility specifically, and not mere cleanliness: if you’re a messenger from hell and you’re building a pentacle, you need to purify the space of all specters, of all the lares and penates, both the household and the basement variety. That’s when you need demons-for-hire to arrive with their fumigators—Kock and Chik, transvestites joined in matrimony, if not in surname; I should have figured this out earlier, when I saw Kock arranging glassware contrary to all human convention.
Bushes were pulled out by the roots in the garden, roses were cut down to resemble ski poles, and at the border with my neighbors there were signs in the soil of indiscriminate digging. The mailbox contained two letters. One a month old, in which Nielsen gives notice that he has vacated the premises and demands the return of his security deposit of fifteen hundred dollars. And the other letter, informing me that, because of my failure to return his security deposit, he is suing me. He is suing me.
* * *
§
So there you have it, girlie, that’s the finale: you find yourself alone in the middle of the great American continent, not a penny in your pocket, and a crazed arthropod bent on suing you. Have you ever tried to wrap your mind around the behavior of, say, cephalopods? Consider, for example: “The fourth left arm in the males is distinctive in its formation and is used for fertilization purposes.” Clearer now? The above is a scientific fact, by the way.
I found the address of a Princeton law firm in the Yellow Pages. Drove to their office. I picked the lawyer whose last name to me hinted at a knack for cunning pettifoggery. Described my situation.
“And why didn’t you keep the monies in an escrow account, as the law prescribes?” inquired the lawyer.
“I just borrowed it, no big whoop.”
“I see. Well, now he has the right to demand from you not just the security deposit, but also a penalty—I would guess around three thousand dollars. My fee, by the way, is two hundred dollars per hour.”
“Shit. Um. Okay. So what’s the plan?”
“I would be delighted to handle this case.” The shyster’s eyes lit up. “I think we can expect a very interesting fight in court.”
American courts are not as they appear on TV—things proceed a little differently. In my nonprofessional opinion, everything could have been handled in just an hour. But at two hundred dollars for my lawyer and probably the same for Nielsen’s, it would hardly be worth showing up for. So both shysters delight in playing for time. After a few hours, it’s our turn to question Nielsen. Here is my lawyer, leisurely getting up from his seat, strolling ever so casually, as if contemplating something, then sloooowly spinning on his heel, slooowly asking:
“Your full name?”
There followed ten minutes of irrelevant questioning, then Nielsen’s lawyer doing the same—and how polite, how respectful toward each other these shysters are. You don’t need to be a detective to know that they take turns driving their bimmers to each other’s house’s to sip whiskey on the rocks after work. Weekends are for barbecuing by the pool.
“Do you recognize the damage, as shown on these photographs, as the damage you caused to the walls?” slooowly asks my guy.
Nielsen is silent.
“Were you the one who damaged these walls?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you cut an opening in this wall?”
“I did.”
“And did you cut an opening in this wall as well?”
“Yes.”
“For what purpose did you cut these openings, as shown in exhibit A and exhibit B?”
Nielsen is quiet, as the meters continue running. We are playing double or nothing: If I win, Nielsen will have to cover all my fees, including those for my attorney, in addition to the repairs. If he wins, I’ll have to return his security deposit, pay a penalty, and cover his attorney’s fees, and my house, desecrated by this beast for his séances of evolutionary regression, will hang around my neck like a millstone. What to do?
They stall and stall and then break for lunch. Another hour, another two hundred dollars. After lunch I ask my guy: So? How is it looking? He goes to confer with Nielsen’s shyster. Through closed doors I can hear them laughing, obviously discussing other things and not just my case. This is how it’s looking: Nielsen was unable to answer any of the questions clearly—his lawyer is furious. Furious! It’s a special kind of lawyerly fury, because it doesn’t cost him anything. But this doesn’t mean that I am sure to win this case! It remains a fact that in failing to deposit his check into an escrow account I did violate state law. My chances are fifty-fifty. But we can end all this right here.
“He is willing to withdraw his claim,” says my guy. “In exchange, he wants you to withdraw yours. That’s the cautious way out. But I would be delighted to fight this!”
Of course you would! But I can’t risk it. To hell with him. Let’s end it right here. To leave and to not look back. After all—“forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
“What a shame, what a shame!” calls my guy after me. “It was just getting interesting. I was looking forward to a good fight!”
* * *
§
After somehow repairing and cleaning up the house, I was able to sell it to a Latino couple. They weren’t particularly friendly, never smiled, not even out of politeness. So I didn’t tell them about the leaks in the basement. They never asked and I never said, just as my realtor had taught me. “I don’t want to know! I don’t want to know!” he’d exclaim, putting up his hands.
I sold all my belongings at a yard sale. Dragged some tables outside, set out my forks and corks, curtains and schmertains and other crap—just like the stuff they sell in the subways in Moscow. I put my furniture up for sale, too: a sizable crowd came to check it out; hard to keep an eye on everyone, so many things were stolen, including the draftsman’s kit, but it wasn’t mine anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Americans also pinch stuff, not just us Russians. The patio had lost some of its color over the years, the wood turning silvery, and it was almost time, according to the licensed carpenter’s schedule, to treat and stain it. Won’t be me—I’ll leave it to the buyers! Their kids, by the way, had enormous heads.
; I sold my car to a neighbor down the street—he had a grimy little shop in his backyard: taking apart junk for spare parts, tuning up engines, and selling it all to auto supply shops. I asked for five hundred dollars but he turned me down. In the end he paid me one buck, and this was fair: the bottom had rusted out so much that, between the pedals, you could sometimes spot the remnants of skunks who hadn’t quite made it. He actually did me a favor: you can’t simply abandon an old car here—they’ll fine you. Unless maybe if you take it deep into the woods, to a forgotten plot of land, to a shack called “the End of All Paths,” and leave it there until the cows come home, until the fat lady sings, until Columbus’s second coming, until the day when they come for us all.
Thou comest naked into this world, and naked thou shalt leave.
I stood at the fork in the road, looking.
Yanked out the needle from my heart and walked away.
Doors and Demons
Throughout my life, Paris has been marked on my road map in a distinctive red color: maybe it’s karma, or misaligned feng shui, maybe the Catholics jinxed me or someone shot me the evil eye or put a spell on me, but in Paris specifically, unseen dark forces lunge viciously at me, wreaking havoc in an unusual, sophisticated manner.
To wit: I arrive. It’s April. I’m on my way to buy some fancy tea for which I acquired a taste after giving up cigarettes. As Polina Suslova—Dostoyevsky’s muse—said, “Tea is my everything—my lover, my friend, my raison d’être.” There is something to that.
Being a Taurus—as everyone knows, Tauruses like buying in bulk—I purchase enough tea to last me several years: four kilos, to be exact. To drink myself, to give away, to have some nicely wrapped New Year’s gifts handy. So I’m ready to head back, dragging my bale of dried Camellia sinensis leaves, when by the tea shop I spot a nice little boutique amiably located next door. Everything there is silk, just my size, and on sale. And if things are affordably priced, well of course you end up buying a ton: mountains of necessary things and oceans of unnecessary ones, for, as everyone also knows, sale prices intensify greed.
So here I am, buying a blouse the color of the Virgin Mary’s mantle. And a mint one, even though I already have a dress that same exact color—but how can one resist the color mint? And a third blouse that reminds me of eggplant at night. I’m also purchasing a thoroughly unnecessary jacket simply because it’s not just any shade of white, but…how should I describe it? It’s as if someone had eaten a boatload of steamed salmon and then gingerly breathed on the crème fraîche. That color.
I don’t have enough cash on me, it’s back at the hotel. All I had planned on buying was tea.
The boutique proprietor is very stylish and handsome; he is around eighty but still sprightly, silver haired, with a scarf around his neck. If there is a wind, or when autumn comes, the Frenchman is never at a loss, the Frenchman has a scarf. Things, of course, get a bit more complicated in winter—he has to raise his collar.
I say to the owner: Wait for me, I’ll go get cash. He’s all: Pas de problème, d’accord. I go with my eyes: I’ll be back, trust. He goes with his eyebrows: But of course.
I walk out with my head turned back 180 degrees: oh, the heaps of beautiful things that I’m leaving behind, unpurchased. That splatter-of-white-on-black dress, for instance.
I come back to the hotel, unload the tea, and go back out with a fist full of cash and a head full of dreams. I’m walking, dancing along the way, feeling all the feels: Paris! Paris! Boulevard Saint-Germain! The sun is shining wonderfully, as it often does in April. Look! There is a monsieur standing in the middle of the street, having a conversation with some other gentlemen. He’s holding a lovely long stick, which he keeps swinging around: waving it, drawing it up like a fishing pole, slashing left and right….How strange, I say to myself, as I pass a few feet away from him, giving him a sunny April-in-Paris smile. How str—but I do not have a chance to finish my thought: with a swing of his stick, the monsieur knocks me down, and I fall slam-bang on the pavement of Boulevard Saint-Germain. My favorite street in Paris, by the way. But perhaps that’s irrelevant.
First I fall to my knees, skinning them against the pavement, and then I sprawl out, purse to the side, euros fanned out, iPad sliding out of my bag like a bar of chocolate. Parisians do not react.
In the early-morning fog,
Fuckers whack me with a log;
As I slump and curse my luck
No one seems to give a fuck.
At this point, of course, I start laughing hysterically: I’m spread-eagled, dying of laughter, when it finally dawns on me: the monsieur’s stick is white—he’s blind and so are his companions; they, too, I realize, are holding long white sticks in their hands. And through my laughter I can make out their conversation: “I think I knocked someone down,” the monsieur says, sounding pleased. And his friends, likewise tickled: “Oh!” As if to say, “Oh great, the morning is off to a good start. Perhaps the rest of the day will be good, too.”
I reassemble myself, dusting off and inspecting the damage, and limp to the nearest pharmacy, where they clean my wounds and stanch the blood. I look myself over in the mirror: my tattered tights are a good match with my dirty coat and its half-torn sleeve. The boutique proprietor does his best to suppress bewilderment when, with my blackened, bloodied hands, I hand over a pile of stained euros: She strolled out a lady and crawled back a tramp….Well, times are tough.
One could say that this entire incident was pure chance. I, however, am inclined to see signs and symbols everywhere. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell me: “Watch where you’re going” or “You’ve fallen victim to blind passion.” Or something simpler: “Why on earth do you need all those blouses, especially when the blue one doesn’t even fit?” But nothing remotely similar ever happens to me in other cities, does it? This is Paris, a particular kind of place.
And then again, just a few days ago, I stopped over in Paris on my way elsewhere. Only a few hours: an overnight layover and then back on the road. Time was tight, so the demons swarmed around me without delay. I arrived late at night. Gracefully flitted into the Métro with my twenty-kilo suitcase. (Go ahead and ask me why I need so much stuff to visit a quiet resort!) Flitted in, I say, exhaled, and all seemed well. Riding along. The train well lit, lots of people around me.
Then suddenly I get a text message: “Boris, door is locked, bell isn’t working, call my cell. Asya.”
I don’t have friends named Boris, and Asyas have thus far stayed out of my life. Who are these people? Or maybe they’re not people? Perhaps the demons are communicating? Sending each other coded messages? Door, you say. Something wrong with the doors. I cheerfully text back: “Asya, you have the wrong number!” but no one responds. The demons are silent. When your demon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.
My train was to arrive exactly by my hotel, with no transfers. I planned it that way to avoid any late-night vicissitudes.
So I’m sitting on the train, when suddenly, behind my back, from the space between the train cars, I hear a series of thunderclaps. They sound like small explosions. The train comes to a halt. Starts and stops. Slowly begins to move again. Then stops in a tunnel. Then moves again. The claps become louder and more frequent. People crouch and look at the dark windows with apprehension. On the panel over my head, emergency lights are illuminated. The conductor grumbles something indistinct over the PA system; the tourists start to get nervous: “What did he say?” “What did he say?” Then, finally, a horrendously loud rumble, the lights go out, the train slowly crawls to some platform, and the gentlepeople hastily exit. I run out with my twenty kilos. Where are we? I ask. I hear back from the platform: “Gare du Nord.”
Okay, Gare du Nord, no big deal—I can get a cab. I follow the arrows toward the exit. The crowds have mysteriously dissipated; I am alone in the half-dark train station.
There are levels and escalators and more levels and more escalators and the signage is worse than what we have in Moscow, I shit you not. Arrows leading to dead ends, into blank walls, toward stairs without escalators. Finally I make my way to the top level: the arrows have lured me with promises of Parisian lights, of cozy taxis and friendly people.
Now, to exit the Métro, you need to use your ticket again, just as when you entered—you insert it into the gate for the doors to open to let you out. Tall plastic transparent doors. So I insert my ticket and I’m exiting with my suitcase dragging behind me when suddenly the doors slam shut. The photo sensor counted my suitcase as a second, unticketed passenger. The doors didn’t sever my arms—we live in humane times, after all, not everyone gets the guillotine. I’m holding on to my suitcase through the slit between the doors, and I can see it, but my access to it has been lost.
And there, behind the doors, in my suitcase are my laptop, my iPad, my passport, all my cash and my credit cards, my phone, and basically everything I have of value. I had put it all in there back at Charles de Gaulle, you know, out of fear of those famous Parisian pickpockets.
So here I am, alone at night, in some deserted and dimly lit back corner of the Métro, separated from my belongings by an impenetrable, albeit transparent, wall. I’d suspect that similar emotions are felt by very wealthy people right after their death: just moments earlier you had everything and then—bang!—here you are, dead as a doornail, all incorporeal with rays shooting through you, and your bank accounts and real estate now belong to someone else, bwah-ha-ha.
Must be what Boris and Asya were quietly discussing.
Then a large man descends from the semidarkness. He grabs my suitcase, lifts it up with one hand high over the doors, and lowers it down beside me. I, of course, am very thankful—grand merci, merci beaucoup—but the man follows the suitcase over the doors; I don’t even understand how he manages it, and I don’t like that one bit.
Aetherial Worlds Page 15