by John K. Cox
Oh, Capricorn . . . why didn’t you spare me this?
Why did you help me destroy that monument of gold, flesh, and moonlight?
Oh, Eurydice: the image, the shadow—the whoring viper!
WALPURGIS NIGHT, OR THE
BEGINNING OF FORGETTING
I recall that it was at the outset of the long, painful Walpurgis Night.
“I can hardly wait to get horizontal,” said Dirty Pussy, squeezing my arm.
I said nothing. It was the beginning of Walpurgis Night.
“Do you live far away, Tomcat?”
“Uh-huh,” I said absentmindedly.
“And your folks aren’t at home?”
“No,” I said. “They live several stories above me. Way up on the top floor.”
Then I fell silent. We walked a while, without talking, across the bumpy cobblestone streets of the late-night suburb. Her mouth reeked of kakaform and her hair stank of shedding cat. From time to time, she rammed her tongue in my ear, so that I practically had to run along in front of her.
“Why don’t you want to flip on the light?” she asked, as she entered the attic.
“It’s an idiosyncrasy of mine,” I said.
“Then at least put me in the bed,” she said.
I began to undress her without turning on the light. I only left her her silver-and-black slip, which was the color . . . the color of snakeskin. (I recognized the colors more by their scent than by their feel under my fingers.) She stuck her panties into a red plastic tote bag. I heard the zipper whirring as she opened and closed it. Then I took her in my arms and whirled wildly several times around the room. When I had distracted her in this way, I placed her on the straw that was lying on the floor. She got up in a hurry.
“You tricked me,” she said. “You don’t even have a bed in your room, Mister!”
“I sold it,” I said. “But don’t get formal with me. As you can see, I’m plenty informal with you.”
“I was raised that way,” said Dirty Pussy.
“But still,” I said placatingly. “You shove your tongue in my ear and then you call me ‘Mister.’ That’s not right. One must be completely naked. Without a condom on the tongue.”
“You’re just a run-of-the-mill poet, nothing more,” she said. “And you’ll always remain a poet. And nothing more.”
I recoiled, insulted.
“How do you know that? It wasn’t . . .”
“You’re just blabbering away. That’s how.”
“Aha,” I said, now relieved. “I thought maybe I had called you something like Eurydice . . . or . . .”
“Did you sell your bed on account of her?”
“No,” I answered. “I was kidding. I’m having it chromed. I’ll be ready tomorrow. I think it will be ready . . . tomorrow.”
“Eurydice or the bed?” she asked mockingly.
I clenched my teeth. (Had I dared utter that name in front of her?)
“The bed! . . . And don’t ever say that name again!”
“Eurydice, Eurydice, Eurydice—how’s that? Eurydice!”
“Please, don’t! I implore you!”
“Eurydice!”
At that moment I swung my fist in the direction of her voice. I felt her teeth sink into my hand. Then I covered her mouth tightly with the palm of my hand so that she wouldn’t be able to spit her teeth out. I was afraid that the neighbors, or the cleaning lady, would hear us. It had already been two months since I’d paid any rent. She twisted out of my grasp and scraped me with her grubby fingernails. This riled me up, and I started squeezing her harder and harder. A moment later I felt her arms descend gently around my neck. That was when I removed my hand from her mouth. Then I pressed my lips to hers. Just in case.
“You’re good at that,” she said, spitting out one of her eyeteeth.
“Oh,” I said, feeling flattered. “I’m actually not quite myself tonight.”
“You’re gentle, Mister,” she said. “I don’t like brutes.”
“What did I say about being formal with me?”
“I was brought up to do that,” she said, and I heard her unzip her little tote bag. “Put on my underwear for me,” she said with a whimper. “The straw is poking me.”
Obediently I raised her leg. Corpses are dressed with the same attentiveness after they are washed.
Then I lit a cigarette. I smoked for a while in silence. A clear beam of moonlight glided through the attic. Like the distant tones of an accordion. Then it disappeared, unexpectedly.
I was thinking of Eurydice.
Around four in the morning we set out from the attic. A cold, raw wind was blowing, showering us with needle-like snowflakes. I wrote down her address and accompanied her to the first streetcar of the day.
When I returned, I still had the taste of her skin in my mouth. The taste of rancid meat and goat’s blood.
The next day I sold my lute at the flea market. After that I went to the post office and wired half the money to Dirty Pussy’s address (77 Walpurgis Vista Road). With the rest of the money I bought a large bouquet of white carnations and took them to her in person. I wanted to apologize to her for being vulgar and inconsiderate.
She met me in a colorful nightgown made of Chinese silk. She had done up her hair like a geisha. And on her feet I noticed pearl-studded Arabian slippers.
“Well, what do you know!” she said when she caught sight of the flowers. “Didn’t I say that you were some kind of poet? Flowers and women . . .” And with that she took the bouquet out of my hands. Then she chucked it into the garbage can standing by the door. Before the carnations landed, I saw maxi-pads blooming luxuriously amid the trash. Fortunately the flowers then blocked the sight of them.
“Don’t you like them?”
“They’re beautiful,” she said. “But my doctor prohibits me from having them. I’m allergic to flowers. I always break out in a rash . . .”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. If I had . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s okay,” she said.
“How are your teeth?” I asked, in order to break the silence.
“Fine,” she said. “I put in my spare dentures. The other ones were worn out anyway.”
As soon as I had paid that visit, I felt terribly hungry, but I couldn’t eat. My hands disgusted me, as did my mouth. That’s why I went and bought a small bottle of alcohol and a bar of pink soap. I bathed and scrubbed myself with a sponge all morning long, until they threw me out of the bathhouse.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked the woman at the counter, when I handed her the money for my visit to the hammam.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just a little scorched.”
My hands and face, and indeed my whole body, were one giant scald and blister, in which the lymph wobbled at my every motion. The strong alcohol solution I had rinsed with chewed up my mouth.
For several days I was unable to eat anything. As soon as my temperature had fallen a bit and I could move again, I popped into Pygmalion’s and ordered myself a bottle of gin.
“Shall I wrap that up?” the waiter inquired.
“No,” I replied. “Just bring me a big glass.”
Then I drained the whole glass at one gulp. Afterward, dear Igor, I vomited, vomited so beautifully, so passionately.
Igor, my brother—my eyes were clear, my hands were innocent like those of a maiden. My hands, comrade Igor—
“See to it that you get them dirty,” came Igor’s response.
“What?” I said. “How’s that?”
“Well, you know,” he said. “How long do we intend to remain sleepwalkers?”
“I don’t know, Igor. I regret what happened to my hands.”
“Cleanliness has infected you the way syphilis does,” he said. “It’s messed up your head. I still maintain that the only medicine is prostitution and lust. Physical therapy.”
“I know, Igor, I know. But I’d prefer to kick the bucket this way. And, by the way, I’ve already t
ried it all.”
“You have not,” he said.
“You have not.”
“For instance?”
“Yellow Fever!”
“Give it to me immediately!” I said. “Infect me!”
Igor called the waiter over and ordered two pomegranate juices, two cognacs, two maraschinos, two glasses of palm wine, two gins, two shots of whiskey, and some other drink the name of which I forget. Then he shook it all up and stirred it with the little silver spoon he always carried with him. Next he put in a little mint, rhubarb, vanilla, and clove, and then squeezed in several drops of essence of violet.
“Down the hatch!” said Igor.
“Down the hatch!” I whimpered. “To the spirit of Eurydice!”
The taste of vanilla reminded me of her mouth.
“It’s already been a light year since you sang anything,” Igor remarked. The fever had dulled his eyes.
“Not since I sold the lute.”
“So start up again,” said Igor. “Say: ‘I don’t give a shit about the lute.’ Say it.”
“I don’t give a shit about the lute.”
“Thaaaaat’s it . . . And now sing something,” he said, twirling the little silver spoon inside the empty glass.
I launched into a song, bellowing:
A rose petal will be your pillow,
and tulips will mourn your footsteps . . .
“Lute-meister, Lute-meister!” exclaimed Igor. “The same old song again.”
“Sorry, Billy. Forgive me.”
Then Billy Wiseass chimed in with his silvery voice:
Your pillow will be a petal that rests on thorns,
And Lute-meister will forever grieve over you . . .
Then I intoned:
Tulips will blossom in your footprints,
And you will fall into the arms of a blockhead!
“Bravo! Bravo, Lute-meister,” Billy screeched, clapping his hands hysterically. “Now that’s what they call ‘therapy.’ Long live yellow fever! Long live the blockheads! Down with sleepwalkers!”
At dawn we regained consciousness under a table, in a condition beyond excruciating. Between the two of us some naked, grungy body was sleeping the innocent sleep of a child, hands stretched out above her head. Her eyes were half open, dark violet. Her breasts sagged down onto the filthy, spit-covered floor, their tips poking into the dust. Slowly it all dawned on me. I remembered that Igor and I had wrenched her away from some sailor types in a quayside bar. The ache on the top of my head and Igor’s black eye reminded me of that much. At first it was a fistfight, until a red-headed sailor raked a beer bottle across my head. But Igor and I managed to reach the bar. At first she was rooting for the sailors, but when we got hold of the bottles and started toppling the drunken seamen, she began laughing so hard she bent double and started cheering for us. In the end she gave the victors a big wet kiss on the mouth and ordered herself a Yellow Fever. On our tab.
“To the conquerors!” she said and raised her glass.
“Whore!” snarled Igor, fingering his eye.
Then I broke in: “The only medicine is prostitution and . . .”
“Whore!” Billy repeated. He hurled his glass to the ground.
She was bent double with laughter.
“She’s a bitch,” said an offended Igor. “At the beginning she was rooting for the sailors . . .”
“But later she was for us,” I said. “Right?”
“She’s a sneaky bitch,” Igor repeated as he started crying. “They’re all alike. Even whores are dishonest. Even whores!”
“You haven’t tried everything yet, comrade Igor,” I said, moved by the emotion of it all.
“Everything. I’ve tried it all,” he said. “Whores were my last hope.”
“You haven’t tried Red Fever yet,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”
Igor regained his composure. “Do you know the recipe? For real?”
“Waiter, waiter!” I panted.
“What can I do for you?” said a new character as he executed a bow.
“Mix us a cocktail with everything imaginable . . . And put a dash of vanilla in it. And some window-box sage . . . And don’t forget the shot of primrose bitters either, and, to top it off, a spot of delirium from poppies and henbane.”
“And three glasses,” interjected Igor.
He held up three fingers in front of his eyes, as if in amazement. Then he repeated: “Three.”
In those days I was hideously bored in the attic. Maybe I missed my lute. That silly, idealistic clamshell. To pass the time, I started prac- ticing jujitsu. Then I acquired boxing gloves and a punching bag.
“You’ve gone crazy,” said Igor.
“I’m amusing myself,” I replied.
“Why don’t you read something?” he suggested.
“Nonsense,” I said. “You should’ve just read those sailors some poetry that night at Pygmalion’s to try to get that Mary Magdalene away from them.”
“Don’t tell me you mean to imply that I didn’t kick enough ass that night?”
“No, you fool. That’s exactly the point. You kicked ass all right and . . . you earned Mary Magdalene.”
“So that’s why you’re practicing your boxing? To win Eurydice?”
“She does not exist,” I said, irritated, and launched a series of punches at the bag.
“Who are you hitting?” Bill Goat asked maliciously.
“I’m beating the Lute-meister on the head. I’m knocking some sense into him,” I said, gasping and pounding myself in the mug till the blood flowed.
Then I began learning Sanskrit and Polynesian dialects, but I soon realized that there was no point to this, so I switched to English. Soon I was giving private lessons to the sluts of the port. Never before had I had pupils who were more diligent and compliant. And they paid me regularly. In kind, to be sure. How else? Then I stopped giving lessons to those girls who lived by the Bridge of Sighs, as we referred to them. Every day their madam had brought me coffee with a great deal of sugar and milk, just because once I’d said that I liked it. She was convinced that I was a good boy, even a good pedagogue; she did say, though, that I should smoke less and not study so much. She especially recommended that I not smoke before breakfast, on an empty stomach.
“That is the only thing in the world, ma’am, that’s worthwhile,” I said. “Smoking.”
“There’s some great disappointment in your past . . .”
“No, no,” I said. “But I prefer a bitter cigarette to sweet coffee with sugar. It’s simply . . .”
Then she said suddenly: “Listen, it’s not nice of you to make your café latte sound even sweeter than it is, just so I’d end up coming across as all the more insipid. You reporters are all the same. It goes without saying that I’m mentioning this in your interest. And in the interest of my girls. It could have unpleasant consequences for them . . .”
“Don’t worry about anything, ma’am,” I said in comforting tones. “There are people who really like a lot of sugar in their coffee.”
“Nonetheless,” she remarked, “don’t mention my girls’ names in that thing you’re knocking together. And move the plot over to another part of the city. Say, for instance, ‘by the Bridge.’”
“But why, when you don’t live by the bridge but rather by—”
“But I implore you—”
“Oh, forgive me,” I said. “Next time I’ll be more considerate.”
CHEZ TWO DESPERADOS
Igor suggested these names: “Salvation Harbor,” “Last Chance,” “Dos Desperados,” “Chez Orphée,” “The Broken Lute,” “The Two Pistols,” and a few others that we rejected out of hand as too banal: “The Shore,” “At the Sign of the Three Palms,” “A Summer Night’s Dream,” “The Bay of the Dolphins.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “for not contributing anything to all of that. Nonetheless, Igor, you will admit that I myself could have thought it all up as easily as you. You just happened to be the first to
start listing them. Just say so: that’s the way it is.”
“You’re welcome to consider yourself the first one to say them,” Igor countered. “By the way . . .”
“I know. You want to say that I’m making all this up anyway. But, you see, I won’t admit that to you. Well, maybe just the pistols. They were my idea. But one could just as easily assert that you anticipated them yourself.”
This conversation took place at the end of summer, on the coast, as the sun was going down. We watched as the waves pitched the sodden seaweed onto the beach, giving the smooth-faced quartz a red beard. We were seated in front of a small taverna on which we had just put down a deposit. We were supposed to start renovating at the end of autumn, as soon as the previous owner had moved out. He was an old man who was hard of hearing and sold only beer and absinthe, and nobody frequented the place except for longshoremen, worn-out, pockmarked sailors, and various old salts. The old guy griped to us that he’d had to fire a sixteen-year-old girl he’d hired because the sailors had slapped their hands against her rear end so much that her buttocks were soon bruised the color of a sailor’s undershirt.
“Would you agree to stay on as maître d’hôtel?” I asked the old man. “You’d earn more than in the past. And, who knows, maybe later on . . .”
“Nope, nope,” the old man said with a sardonic smile. He had watery, suppurating eyes and he sprayed saliva as he spoke.
I wiped my face with a handkerchief and asked him once more if he would stay with us as a waiter, or headwaiter, if that suited him better. In view of the fact that he spoke Italian and various dialects, he could act as our interpreter.
“No,” he said sadly. “Everybody patted and groped her, everybody except for me. And some of them were even older than I. That’s why I fired her. I couldn’t stand to watch the way they all fondled her.”
At that point, Billy got right in his face: “Will you stay with us? Stay here! With us!”
“Nobody prevented me. But I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t do it,” the old guy said. “And they were all slapping her. ‘Leontina, a spritzer!’ and then a deafening smack on her buttocks.”