The Fatigue Artist

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  “Couldn’t you make a scene?”

  “Who would believe me? He’d say I was a hysterical woman. Anyway, it’s hard to make a scene when you’re flabbergasted. Before I could even grasp it, it was over. A guy in his sixties, married. Grandchildren, I bet.”

  “Did he have his mouth open or closed?”

  “I don’t remember. Partly open, I guess.”

  “Did he press his body against you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. What is this anyway, Laura? The Spanish Inquisition?”

  “Sorry. It’s too bad about your idea.”

  “I’ll have another idea. There’s no shortage of ideas. More important at the moment is my teeth.”

  “Why don’t you make some kind of complaint? Tell the insurance company. Or the dentists’ association.”

  “Are you kidding? They’d laugh. No, no complaints whatsoever. It’s not like I’m scarred for life or anything. And you know how those bureaucracies work—I’d be embroiled forever. I should have told him, Doc, I’m a dyke. That might have scared him off. Or I wonder if I could have used Tai Chi. What do you think the teacher would say? Yield and be soft? Imagine where that would get me!”

  “I somehow don’t think that’s the sort of situation the old masters had in mind.”

  “No,” says Grace. “He says they were fearless in the face of ferocity. But the dentist wasn’t what I’d call ferocious.”

  “No. Oh, that reminds me. I went to the Fauves show at the Met the other day and thought of you. What you said about museums not being the right place to show art. I thought I’d wandered into a suburban shopping mall.” I tell her about the woman in search of a maid who could serve as well as cook.

  “Well, those women have a right to look at paintings, too. That would be okay, to hang work in shopping malls. The paintings could be part of daily life, next to the Taco Bell place or the merry-go-round. Or between the ATM machine and the ice-cream bar. In the Middle Ages the art was in the cathedrals, which were gathering places, and you’d see it whenever you passed through. Of course that was a holy atmosphere, but nowadays shopping malls are holy, so it comes to the same thing. Or else hang them in the subway. That would be ideal. Other countries have art in the subways.”

  “It would certainly look better than ads for acne, warts, and anal fissures.” We’ve reached the park now and can see the others standing around in clusters, waiting.

  Grace shakes her head sadly. “They should think of those ads as our public art, then see if the Moral Majority would make a stink. Or if the NEA would fund them, not that those guys need funding. Listen, twenty-odd years ago there were these hordes of hippie couples coming to the museums in their tie-dyed uniforms with babies on their backs and toddlers trailing with sticky lollipops. They’d put the kid in front of a Picasso and say, So, Jason, what do you think of that? And the father would whip out a notebook to preserve Jason’s opinion for posterity. Meanwhile people are standing there trying to get a peek at the painting. So, is that any different from busloads of suburbanites getting culture?”

  “Maybe not. I was in school back then. That all seemed very exotic and free.”

  “Yeah, well, I dropped out,” says Grace. “I happened to be one of those counterculture types with the sticky kid holding my hand. But even then I knew that parading through those huge overheated rooms with one great picture after another lined up on the white walls was not the way. People get the idea that art has to do with self-improvement, you know, take your regular doses, like vitamins. And now, between the cards on the wall and the tapes you plug in your ears that tell you what to think, how can you see or feel anything? Those tapes should be bombed out of existence.”

  I’ve never heard Grace so irritable. “How many kids do you have?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Where is he? Or she?”

  “He. Don’t ask. He’s a schoolteacher in Memphis. He married a born-again Christian and he became one, too. It’s his personal backlash, my punishment for giving him a disorderly childhood. What did I know? I thought he’d be a free spirit. He thinks I’m a disgrace, my work, the fact that I live with a woman, everything about me. You know, I think he’d prefer it if I were really militant, heavily into gay rights and stuff. Then I’d have a kind of religion. He could relate to that. This way, he thinks I’m just perverse. I’ve told him it’s not that I didn’t like men per se. I had my share. Only after a while I just couldn’t take all the shit that goes along with it.”

  “I don’t suppose he appreciated that.”

  “No.”

  “But I know what you mean. I’ve thought the same thing. Believe me, I’ve often considered...”

  “It’s not something you consider, Laura. You just find yourself doing it.”

  “I guess I never met anyone who’s my type.”

  “Why, what’s your type? Oh, don’t get alarmed, I’m happy with Irene. I’m just curious.”

  “My type? Big shoulders, hairy chest, scratchy cheeks . . .”

  “Uh-huh.” She nods as we take our places in the assembling group. “I can see your problem. But I’ll keep my eyes open. You never know.”

  “Good morning,” the teacher says. “Continue.”

  “He could change,” I whisper halfheartedly.

  “He’d have to,” Grace whispers back, “because I can’t.”

  Then it’s business as usual. Relax, sink, keep the breath thin, long, quiet and slow. Spine straight—it’s the Pillar of Heaven. Joints loose. Feel the weight of the air, feel the arms encircling the ball of energy. Like Mount Lu and the River Che, nothing much.

  “In the olden days,” he says, as he has said often before, “the masters used to teach at the shore of a lake. The students would raise their arms and with the invisible strings at their fingertips pull up the energy of the water. When the water level began rising, ha ha, they knew they were doing Tai Chi. Here we have the river. See what you can do.” He glances in my direction and the interpreter’s gaze follows along. “A parable, Laura.”

  “Ha ha,” I reply. Could the interpreter do all this by himself, maybe? Surely he knows the images and parables after so much translation. Unless the teacher’s presence and voice are needed for the efficacy of the words. Is there an original that the teacher translates from?

  We do the arm-raising movement five, ten, fifteen times—why keep track? We’ve done it many times before. We know the repetitions are a test of endurance, and by now we’ve mastered the unspoken secret of endurance, which is not to long for the test to be over. The teacher himself has no sense of time, or I should say feels no pressure about time, though the lessons begin unfailingly at the appointed moment and end exactly an hour later. How he manages this is unclear. Perhaps he goes by the progress of the sun, scaling the sky from the east or heading down to rest overnight in the river.

  “All right, enough. Now we’ll do a little exercise. Rooting the feet.”

  We’ve done this little exercise before. We stand with one foot forward and the other slightly behind and pointed outward, like fourth position in ballet. We place all our weight on the front leg for two or three minutes, then switch to the back leg. Very simple, back and forth for an eternity. The faint of heart, or of leg (in Chinese medicine their strength is interdependent, linked by the circulation), drop out quickly. I endure out of pride and habit, though this may well cost today’s quota of energy.

  “If you do this for a few minutes each day, growing your root deep into the earth, nothing will throw you off balance.”

  He calls me over to do push hands with Marvin, who seems preoccupied. Maybe video rentals are in a slump. He teeters off balance again and again. The teacher lectures him about adhering. To me he says, “I see you’re listening to him.”

  “I don’t know why it’s happening. I’m not even trying.”

  “Not trying is good. But something is different,” he insists. “You’ve started to listen. To listen.” He says those last two words in English
and ears perk up all around: What’s going on here—the teacher spoke in English!

  He fixes me with a penetrating look. Of course. “You’re right, actually. I have been listening.”

  He’s satisfied. I’ve given the correct answer.

  Afterward, the students sit or lie on the grass, limp, the two stockbrokers resting their heads on their attaché cases. The teacher comes over to ask, through the interpreter, how I enjoyed my vacation. I’m glad to see that at least he acknowledges my words directly, without having them translated.

  “Have you seen the woman I suggested? Carol?”

  I always forget she’s only human and has an ordinary name.

  “Oh, yes, thanks again. You did get my note? That was very kind of you.”

  “Is she helping?”

  “I think so. At least I feel better for a couple of days after I see her. She’s a bit of a witch, isn’t she?” Carol the Witch.

  “A wise woman.”

  “That’s what I meant. A good witch. Can she make the waters rise?”

  “Yes, I think she can. It’s nice to have you back, Laura.”

  “Thank you.” I look the interpreter squarely in the eye. “Nice to see you again, too.” An experiment.

  He nods blandly as they turn to leave. Has he nothing to say for himself?

  15

  “Laura? You’ll never guess what happened with my notebook. Just listen to this. I took your advice and called the MTA but no luck, and then one day—”

  “Joyce, could you hang on just a minute? I want to turn on the light and find a cigarette.”

  “Oh, God. Smoking. With the way you feel...” The liquid voice on the phone congealed in disapproval. “I only smoke one cigarette a day. There’s no reason you can’t do the same.”

  “You’re right, I’ll do that. Wait just a second. Okay.”

  “I’m sorry if I woke you. It’s only nine-thirty. You usually stay up late.”

  “It’s fine. I was up.” Lying in bed with the moon out my window, I was off on a trail of speculation in the thicket between waking and sleep. What would it feel like to live this way forever? Never to walk fast again, never again to run for a bus or spring out of a chair or dance (raucously with Q. or sedately with anyone else)? Never to glide easily through space, always to be swimming in air. Always to calculate, then assemble the energy needed. If there were reincarnation, I’d do best returning as a tree. I could stay rooted in place century after century, bare or lush as the climate dictated, learning the tides of the upper air, willingly enduring sun, wind, rain, so long as I needn’t budge.

  “So what were you doing, sitting in the dark?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “What about?” Joyce through and through. Gathering data from her informants.

  “About smoking, Joyce. About how nice it was when we could smoke with impunity. So what happened?”

  “I couldn’t get resigned to losing it, not only because of the notes but because Lizzie gave me that book for my birthday last year. She got it when she was in Siena—they make beautiful paper in Italy, beautiful designs and textures. Anyway, I called the lost-and-found and got this charming man on the other end. We had such a nice talk. It turned out his son-in-law is an anthropologist, too, and is in West Africa for two years, so he understood, I mean the MTA man did, how important the notebook was. He told me how he missed his daughter and grandson and kept bemoaning the way young people travel constantly nowadays. He longed for the old days when families stayed close to home. I could’ve told him there were really never such days, there’ve always been migrations though not always by the same groups, but I left him with his illusions. Well, with all that talk, he still didn’t have the notebook, so I was very disappointed, as you can imagine. But then the other day I happened to get on the Broadway bus around the time we did on that fateful day, noon, and guess what? The driver was the same one as when I lost the book.”

  “Really? I didn’t even notice what he looked like.”

  “She, not he. That’s why I noticed. A small dark woman, about in her mid-thirties, with her hair in a braid.”

  “It’s amazing you remembered.”

  “I got on the bus before you, so I had a chance to look around. But I do tend to remember people. It’s a habit, from being in the field. So I asked her about it. You’ll never believe this, Laura, but the woman had my notebook. She found it at the end of her shift and left it in her locker down at MTA headquarters. She said to call her there at six and describe it to her. Well, I ask you, how many people would be carrying around a notebook exactly like that one, with the Italian floral pattern. But I suppose they have their procedures. . . . Anyhow, I said not a word, I didn’t want to push my luck. I told her I remembered her because you don’t see that many women driving buses. She said it wasn’t easy to get the job. They make you go through so much training—I must say you wouldn’t think it from the way most of them drive. She’s Mexican, and before this she worked on a farm in California, driving a tractor, she told me, so she’s used to handling heavy vehicles—”

  That was the last I heard. I was listening, I was even visualizing as Joyce spoke. Too well. In my visions the small dark Mexican woman climbed down from the bus driver’s seat to clear a path in the underbrush of memory. I traipsed off behind her, and when I reached the end of the path I dug a hole and sank in.

  The trail she led me through began in Penn Station, four years ago. I was meeting Q. He was perpetually in transit, always disembarking. The Metroliner, that day, after settling his father in a Washington hospital.

  Why don’t we have lunch right around here? I suggested. I know a place.

  He peered in and said, Laura, my love, this is one of those yuppie places I cannot abide. Do you mind if we go elsewhere?

  No, wherever you like. But your suitcase?

  I can manage. It’s light. You’re looking splendid.

  And you too, I said.

  That was unusual. Lately he’d been looking haggard. When he wasn’t sleeping enough or eating right, when he was working too hard or ravaged by love, his shoulders drooped and the hollows in his cheeks grew shadowy, until he resembled a medieval saint carved in stone. Today he stood up straight and his hair was becalmed, almost long enough to gather into a little ponytail like Jilly’s motorcycle boyfriend, Jeff. The mustache, yes, I think so. He was grayer, but thank goodness would never look distinguished. No, rather the aging outlaw who’d seen plenty of hand-to-hand combat—nerves of steel, heart of gold. Not a mean bone in his body. Sure. Could he help it if the effects were virulent?

  We walked more than half a mile before finding a place that suited him, but I didn’t mind. We had a history of indulgence. Hadn’t he spent many an afternoon, long ago, listening to me hopelessly recite lines, then wandering up and down Eighth Street for shopping therapy? He finally fixed on a cheap Mexican restaurant on a shabby side street. Two small rooms, both empty. We sat in the inner room, away from the door. Checkered tablecloths, dinky metal chairs, green leather banquettes. Posters of slinky matadors waving red cloths at bulls, of sultry señoritas in ruffled V-necked gowns. Linoleum tiles on the floor and red café curtains hanging from tarnished brass rings. Q. was in an exuberant mood, casting his spell. Beaming on everything, especially on me.

  And because of his visible beam and mine in response, the waitress or proprietor—hostess, really, for she welcomed us as graciously as if it were her home—assumed we were lovers, which at that juncture we technically were not, or lovers only in spirit. I read somewhere that experienced waitresses can always tell the nature of their customers’ relations. She was a short, sturdy, honey-skinned Mexican woman neither young nor old, wearing a plain black dress and white apron, not beautiful but emitting a benign glow, an allusion to the idea of beauty. Her presence was evocative, like those ancient statues of goddesses recently rediscovered and prized: squat women with inscrutable but comforting faces and abundant breasts and hips, who seem to have grown from the earth l
ike palpitating, fruit-bearing plants. She called us Señor and Señora and smiled down at us knowingly, with the wry amusement bestowed on couples who are blatantly, comically in love, enjoying a rendezvous. Did we truly look that way? It was an easy pose for us to fall into; once it had been reflexive.

  She cooked everything herself, she said, recommending what was best. Q. engaged her in detailed discussion of the menu, and in her resonant voice, the names of the common dishes became archetypal, Platonic ideals of Mexican foods. I was intending to eat very little, keeping my participation minimal and my stance remote, for safety’s sake. But Q. urged me to eat and I succumbed. The food arrived, steaming and aromatic. We bit into it. Home-cooked and succulent as our hostess had promised.

  Now isn’t this nice? said Q. Isn’t this better than one of those awful yuppie places?

  I had to agree.

  We talked, bringing each other up to date. There was a lot to say, for it had been a while since the, last time, perhaps there’d even been a quarrel, I can’t remember. But we carefully skirted the subjects of my husband and of Q.’s romances.

  Suddenly Q. put down his glass and said, I have sometimes thought that our relationship is like one of those old Hasidic tales, where I go looking and looking all over the world for something that’s right there before my eyes.

  I’ve often told you that in one way or another. You don’t need to go to a Hasidic tale. Oh, what a fool you are.

  Yes, perhaps you’re right.

  One of Q.’s virtues is that he absorbs such insults without anger or defensiveness, as if they’re simple observations about the weather. The underside of this virtue is a certain patronizing: he knows words are my only tools, so he won’t protest my using them.

  Perhaps you’re right, he said. But as I’ve said before, I can’t help what I do.

  Of course people can help what they do, I replied evenly. That’s what civilization is all about.

  He tilted his head and frowned as if to say, So much for civilization.