by John K. Cox
And in conclusion, Capricorn, haven’t I told you a hundred times that I am writing in order to emancipate myself from my egoism?
RETURN
In late autumn I returned to the attic. I climbed the stairs excitedly, lugging my heavy backpack loaded with shells and the seeds of exotic plants. I had brought a gift for everyone: for Eurydice a necklace of dolphin teeth and a conch named Mandragora, for Igor a shrunken head from Equatorial Africa, and for the old cleaning lady a seven-colored reed mat.
“This is for you, Madame Witch,” I said. “It can be used as a doormat.”
“Where did you swipe this from?” she asked darkly.
She looked closely at the iridescent rainbow in the folds of the mat.
“I got it from an aborigine. His name was Tam-Tam. In return, I had sex with his wife.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said.
“Alas,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
“But where is the Billy Goat?” I asked. “Surely he hasn’t yet learned to walk quietly in the corridor and wipe his feet at the door?”
“I’m sorry, who?” she asked, blinking.
“Igor,” I said. “From the attic. Billy Wiseass.”
“Oh, him. You know, he moved down to the second floor. He’s working now. He says he’s writing a novel. ‘So why are all these women coming to see you?’ I ask him. ‘Those are my models,’ he says.”
“Well, how do you like that!” I said. “I’m going to have him thrown out.”
“Watch your step or I’ll have you thrown out, dearie!” the cleaning lady snapped.
“I just meant,” I said in appeasement, “that I would have to ban him from my place up there. What the hell am I supposed to do with that confabulator?”
“Don’t call him that! He has talent.”
“How do you know?” I said.
The blush of a teenage girl spread across her pockmarked face.
“Well, you know, I’m also, um, like . . . a model,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“A model?!”
“Yes,” she said. “In that thing that Mr. Igor is writing, I will be a—a cleaning lady.”
“But you are one already!”
“Yes, but Mr. Igor says that in his novel I will be the prototype of all cleaning ladies. Me as myself, plus all the rest.”
“And how does Mr. Igor plan on accomplishing that?” I asked, out of both curiosity and envy. “How does he intend to make a ‘prototype’ out of you, when you’re already what you are? Surely you’re not going to pose nude for him?”
She thought about this for a while, then she just shrugged her shoulders:
“I trust Mr. Igor,” she said. “He’s so sweet and so talented.”
The first thing that took me by surprise when I opened the door to my good old attic was the odor of dankness and urine. Igor’s black trousers swayed on their hook, and I flinched. It’s not easy to see one’s good friend hanging. Even if it is only symbolic.
Otherwise—at first glance—nothing had changed.
Yet the cranes had flown from the walls. And there wasn’t a trace at all of the wild doves; the mastodons and reptiles lorded over the place by themselves. Their teeth had grown alarmingly long.
“Well, now!” Igor said unexpectedly behind my back. “As you can see, old boy, nothing has changed.”
We embraced.
“Where is that stench coming from?” I inquired.
“From the rat poison,” he said. “Vermin and rats are rotting in the cracks.”
“How clever!” I said. “The things you keep coming up with!”
“There’s that derision again,” he said.
“I brought you something,” I said, to avoid a fight. “Hang on just a second.”
I proceeded to dump the shells into the middle of the room, and moonlight spilled out of them like crystals.
“What the hell is that supposed to be?”
“What the hell is what the hell supposed to mean?”
“But those are just ordinary shells!”
Then I picked up the loveliest conch, the one with the richest sound, which was about the size of a chamberpot, and tilted it up against his ear. “Listen,” I said. “Do you hear anything?”
Gradually his eyes filled with tears and shame. And possibly with remorse, too.
You birdbrain, I would’ve killed you if you’d remained consistent. But now what can I do? It’s utterly inconsistent of me, but I’ll tolerate your affable presence and your help.
I prized the shell away from his ear. “Here’s a handkerchief,” I said. “Wipe your snot. This is hypocrisy and Europeanness. You’ve grown a touch sentimental.”
“That’s because of the novel,” he said with a sniffle.
“What kind of novel?” I asked, feigning astonishment. “You don’t mean you’ve given up astronomy?”
He started stroking the conch shell disconcertedly.
“No,” he said. “You know, old man, it’s like this . . . I’ve fallen in love.”
“Bravo,” I said. “That’s a good thing. It’s no reason to cry.”
“Her voice is like the moonlight from the Bay of the Dolphins.”
I winced. How did he know anything about my orgies in the Bay of the Dolphins? Then I saw the luggage tag from Tam-Tam’s native land on my backpack.
I let out a laugh.
“That’s the last thing I need,” I said. “For you to fall in love too. Then who will stay sober and track the phases of the moon, and the constellations? It’ll be pure hell.”
I was too tired and agitated to go out searching for Eurydice that same evening. By the way, our European custom of only receiving visitors until 8:00 p.m. is most irksome. It doesn’t even take into account whether the moon is full or in its last quarter.
I hung up my trousers on the peg next to Igor’s and dutifully brushed the sand out of my tattered tropical coat; then I shook out the stardust. Afterward I washed my feet and lay down to dream. I was fed up with prose.
“Knight errant!” she said.
“Eurydice! Eurydice!”
The rains of autumn started up again.
I carried her in my arms across dark streets. I held her high above the muck.
“You are still the same, sweetheart,” she said.
We were approaching the railroad embankment, toward which something was always drawing us. Memories. And piles of faded leaves in the ditch.
I placed her on a bed of foliage and began to recall her embraces. Her eyes. Her scents.
“Your hands have grown harder, sweetheart.”
“From the oars,” I said. “From the winds.”
No, I didn’t say anything. I inhaled her breasts, went blind.
The next day I cleaned up the attic a bit and reached once more for my lute. I spent the entire morning tuning its strings. It had fallen ill during my absence, grown deaf. It must have perceived my fingers on its slender neck as caresses.
Otherwise, why would it have lamented?
It took several hours of great patience for me to find its former resonance and tone. All at once—that is, completely by itself—it remembered its voice; from out of its dark insides poured a flood of pearls, as if from a colossal shell.
Then it seemed to me that someone was knocking, and I stopped playing for a moment.
“Would you knock it off already?” said the cleaning lady, rapping on the plywood door with her key.
“I’m done,” I said. “Excuse me.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can strum on that thing as much as you like. But the tenants are complaining that they can’t enjoy their siestas after lunch because of your flute.”
“It’s a lute,” I said.
“Well, fine,” she said to appease me. “A flute.”
I drank bitter woodland tea and ate half a pack of zwieback with butter. Then I stretched out in the rocking chair to rest, since I couldn’t play. There I sat, with my eyes closed, for about h
alf an hour, and then I stared at Venus’s thighs on the ceiling. Above one stately knee the dampness had drawn a dark blot that resembled a large wart. I shifted to my side and lit a cigarette.
That’s when Igor arrived.
“Sorry to wake you,” he said.
“Have a seat,” I said. “I was just napping a bit.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “I need to ask something of you.”
“Say . . . You haven’t gotten into a jam with her, have you?”
“How did you know? Did the cleaning lady tell you?”
I burst out laughing.
“I just had this presentiment,” I said. “You fell out of the stars and right onto her!”
“You’re in a joking mood,” Igor responded. “But this is a very pressing matter.”
“How many months along is she?” I asked.
“Two.”
“What do you intend to do now, Billy?”
He shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes upward. That was how God looked when he surveyed the world on that seventh and final day of Creation.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I came to you.”
“Write a novel,” I said.
“Can I have a cigarette?” he said. “I’m nervous.”
“But of course.”
“I have to confess something to you,” he said, after we had lit up. “Only, please don’t misunderstand me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I started it,” he said. “The novel.”
“Well? Go on.”
“That’s not the issue,” he said. “The problem is that I don’t know how it is going to end. I don’t know how all these things are going to unfold . . . And I’ve got no money for the abortion.”
All at once I grasped the seriousness of the situation.
The girl can die, I thought. Or she can give birth to a baby girl. Or she has the option of aborting.
My God—so many possibilities!
But she definitely has to have the abortion.
This is as urgent as it gets. Otherwise—voilà, a new character!
I am very much afraid, Billy, you dimwit, know-it-all, sonofabitch, Igor, devil—I am very much afraid that you might become a hero.
What will become of you if you don’t scrape together the money? You’ll get all kinds of notions that you are a hero, a martyr, a Don Juan, a man of sorrows, cavalier, victim of your passions, he-man, sensualist, seducer, daredevil, father, husband, citizen, debtor, spouse; you will become socially aggrieved, politically reactionary, sectarian, conspiratorial, humiliated and marginalized, insurgent, ostracized, oppressed; you will be a good-for-nothing, a gelding, an accursed poet, a defender of the poor and needy, patron, man of compassion—to sum it up in a single word, you will be something like a character in a novel, a hero, or even—a category.
Believe me, I would never utter your name again.
Alas! If only I could contribute something toward this abortion of yours with my old lute!
But for that kind of money you couldn’t even get the lowliest midwife from the other side of the tracks to soil her hands.
It rains so often here that the moonlight is splashing.
Eurydice, put your arms around me!
You aren’t always the same, either, you who appear in the likeness of Eurydice, from out of the words, shadow, and veil. On the outskirts of the city your voice spreads luxuriantly, peacefully across the windows, like dusk, blue. In the moonlight it starts to resonate—like a harp, like . . .
But in the attic, toward evening, when your breasts are bare, your voice becomes a caress, a miracle, a violet blossom.
“My beloved, you’re kind of quiet today,” she said. “How can you be sad when I love you?”
We were standing under the bridge, watching as the cloudy green water whirled off into the twilight.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why do people always flip off the lights when the caresses begin? There’s only the occasional flicker of a candle or glimmer of twilight.”
“Oh,” she agreed. “You’re right. Tenderness is . . .”
“Why did you stop? Say it: tenderness is . . . ?”
“I don’t know, it’s . . .”
“This dreary rain is to blame for everything,” I said. “And this gloomy water. Let’s get away from here. To the movies. Or to a café.”
“It’s late,” she said. “I’m also feeling a bit melancholy. I can’t put my finger on it . . .”
“It isn’t late. I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to the attic. Why didn’t we think of this before?”
And there we were, climbing up the slick steps, holding hands as lovers have done since time out of mind. Upstairs the glow from the streetlights overcame the gloom. The rain fluttered like a swarm of tiny insects around the chandelier. Our pale shadows quivered in the puddles on the shimmering asphalt.
“You’re wearing a new dress,” I said, as an excuse for gazing at her. And then I heard her answer.
“New? You are conversant with my wardobe?”
“I am right, am I not?”
“Yes. I recently had it made here. Do you like it?”
“Very much,” I said, letting my gaze pass over her again before casting my eyes down. “Do you want to dance?” I added.
“Would you like to?” she asked, her brows raised in surprise, but still with a smile.
“I’d do it, if that’s what you want.”
“You’re not quite as well-mannered as I thought you were,” she said. When I dismissed this with a laugh, she added: “Your cousin has already gone.”
“Yes, he is my cousin,” I confirmed quite unnecessarily. “I also noticed a while ago that he had left. I’m sure he’s taking his rest cure.”
“Nous causons de votre cousin. Mais c’est vrai, you are all a little bourgeois. Vous aimez l’ordre mieux que la liberté, toute l’Europe le sait.”
“Aimer . . . Aimer . . . Qu’est-ce que c’est! Ça manque de définition, ce mot-là. What one man has, the other loves, comme nous disons proverbialement,” I contended. “I have been giving freedom some thought of late,” I continued. “That is, I heard the word mentioned so often, that I started thinking about it. Je te le dirai en français what I’ve been thinking. Ce que toute l’Europe nomme la liberté est peut-être une chose assez pédante et assez bourgeoise en comparaison de notre besoin d’ordre—c’est ça!”
“Tiens! C’est amusant. C’est ton cousin à qui tu penses en disant des choses étranges comme ça?”
“No, c’est vraiment une bonne âme, his is a simple temperament, not prone to dangers, tu sais. Mais il n’est pas bourgeois, il est militaire.”
“Not prone to dangers?” she repeated with great effort . . . “Tu veux dire: une nature tout à fait fermée, sûre d’elle-meme? Mait il est sérieusement malade, ton pauvre cousin.”
“Who told you that?”
“We all know about one another here.”
“Did Director Behrens tell you that?”
“Peut-être en me faisant voir ses tableaux.”
“C’est-à-dire: en faisant ton portrait?”
“Pourquoi pas. Tu l’as trouvé réussi, mon portrait?”
“Mais oui, extrêmement. Behrens a très exactement rendu ta peau, oh vraiment fidèlement. J’aimerais beaucoup être portraitiste, moi aussi, pour avoir l’occasion d’étudier ta peau comme lui.”
Then I gazed mutely a while longer at the ceiling, at Venus’s thighs. How selfishly had I grown accustomed to this new role! My God! What an amorphous stain these thighs of Venus were in comparison to this skin!
“Let’s do that,” I said mechanically again. And so we went on speaking softly, our conversation covered by the piano. “Let’s sit here and watch, as if in a dream. It is like a dream for me, you know, for me to be sitting here like this—comme un rêve singulièrement profond, car il faut dormir très profondément pour rêver comme cela . . . Je veux dire: C’est un rêve bien connu, rê
ve de tout temps, long, éternel, oui, être assis près de toi comme à présent, voila l’éternité.”
“Poète!” she said. “Bourgeois, humaniste et poète . . .”
“Je crains que nous ne soyons pas du tout et nullement comme il faut!” I responded. “Sans aucun égard. Nous sommes peut-etre life’s orphans, tout simplement.”
“Joli mot. Dis-moi donc . . . Il n’aurait pas été fort difficile de rêver ce rêve-là plus tôt. C’est un peu tard que monsieur se résout à addresser la parole à son humble servante.”
“Comment? C’était une phrase tout à fait indifférente, ce que j’ai dit là. Moi, tu le remarques bien, je ne parle guère le français. Pourtant, avec toi je préfère cette langue á la mienne, car pour moi, parler français, c’est parler sans parler, en quelque manière—sans responsabilité, ou comme nous parlons en rêve. Tu comprends?”
“A peu près.”
“Ça suffit . . . Parler,” I continued, “pauvre affaire! Dans l’éternité, tu sais, on fait comme en dessinant un petit cochon: on penche la tête en arrière et on ferme les yeux.”
“Pas mal, ça! Tu es chez toi dans l’eternité, sans aucun doute, tu la connais à fond. Il faut avouer que tu es un petit rêveur assez curieux.”
“Et puis,” I said, “si je t’avais parlé plut tôt, il m’aurait fallu te dire vous!”
“Eh bien, est-ce que tu as l’intention de me tutoyer pour toujours?”
“Mais oui. Je t’ai tutoyé de tout temps et je te tutoyerai éternellement.”
“C’est un peu fort, par example. En tout cas tu n’auras pas trop longtemps l’occasion de me dire tu. Je vais partir.”
It took a while before what she had said penetrated my conciousness. But then I started up, looking about in befuddlement, like someone rudely awakened from sleep. Our conversation had proceeded rather slowly, because my French was clumsy and I spoke haltingly as I tried to express myself. The piano, which had been briefly silent, struck up again . . .
“What are you going to do?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“I am leaving,” she repeated, smiling in apparent amazement at the frozen look on my face.
“It’s not possible,” I said. “You’re joking.”
“Most certainly not. I am perfectly serious. I am leaving.”