The Impossibly

by Laird Hunt

  And now, suddenly, as I stood holding the crushed blue bottlecap—I had not keeled over in this case either—I realized what I had seen. The man in the photograph, or someone dressed like a man in a long dark trench coat and shiny leather or mock leather shoes, whose face, if face you could call it, was a pale blur, was the one I was looking for, the one I had to find. I went home and made a phone call. To them, I mean. It has started, I said. Are you asking or telling? Both. So do you need an answer? Yes. Then, yes. Is the guy in the photo the one I’m looking for? What photo? The photo I found in the hall. I was put on hold. I do not like being put on hold. After what seemed like a long time and was, I had timed it, the voice was back. Yes, it said. Good, I want a gun, I said. What kind? Large. I’ll see what I can do. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. It was the young woman from the first day. You have a lovely figure, young woman, please sit down, I said. She said, what the fuck did you just say? I apologized. She told me to apologize again. I did. She sat down. She then took a small gray box out of her bag and set it on the table in front of me. What’s this? I asked for a gun, I said. Maybe it is a gun. It is not a gun. Today, I’m just the messenger. And other days? She smiled. I opened the box. In it I found an almost impossibly tiny dagger made out of a single piece of silver with the image of a lion carved into the part of it, about two inches long, that was meant to represent a handle. What is this? I said. It looks like a bladed instrument that would probably fit nicely in someone’s kidney or throat, she said, taking it from me. Or maybe into someone’s eye. Or nostril. She grinned and jabbed the knife around. Interesting, I said. I kind of gave her a looking over. She winked and tossed the knife onto the table in front of me. Then asked if I had anything to eat. Aren’t you the one who fills my refrigerator? I said. She didn’t answer so I told her to help herself. While she was gone I looked at the knife. It really was very small. After a few minutes, she came back with a cold cut rolled tightly around a piece of cheese. Is there anything else I can do for you? she said. You can get me a gun. Or a flamethrower. Or at least a bigger knife. She swallowed then put the rest of the meat and cheese into her mouth. She left. I shut my eyes and tested the small blade against my palm, finding it worked admirably.

  The next morning over a breakfast of meat (not the cold cuts—something substantial, with a little bone and fat in it) and warm bread I tried to think, now that things had started, about how best to proceed. I had slept tolerably well and the dream I could remember, if not exactly pleasant, couldn’t quite be called unpleasant. In it, I had stood on the side of a rocky slope and watched as heavy dust rumbled down through a wooden sluice that seemed to have no beginning and no end, or at any rate it seemed that the beginning and end existed outside of the dream. Which did not seem, something told me, like such a bad place for them to be. I once recorded a fair amount of drivel about beginnings, pretending as I did so that I was transmitting remarks made to me by a friend. That particular friend would never, I am fairly sure, have made any comments about beginnings. He could conceivably have spoken about endings, as they were his business, and as I sat there thinking about it, about my dream and my investigation and the possibility of his having spoken about endings, the following anecdote / observation came into my head. In book III of a certain important individual’s meditations, one can find the following proposition: It is one of the noblest functions of reason to know whether or not it is time to walk out of this world. A second individual, in a tract entitled, intriguingly, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (a title and precept that my former friend would have greatly admired), invites us to interpret with him that the first individual, who if I can remember correctly was an emperor, was referring to a knowledge of whether or not it was time for others to walk out of the world. He then goes on to suggest, and the reasoning seems persuasive, that murder committed in such a context is a form of philanthropy, i.e., amen, or something to that effect. Which would certainly apply in my own case. My own imminent ending. A little amen dosed with a little good riddance is what this anecdote / observation led me to think. But at any rate the dust. Pouring through the sluice in my dream. And my breakfast. And the small dagger. And the photograph. The background (a path, blurred foliage, a gleaming car bumper) looked familiar, or at least I had the feeling it did. Personally, I have never committed an act of philanthropy. That’s not true. Even that isn’t true. One had one’s day. One’s accomplishments. I looked at the knife. Amen. One might still have one or two accomplishments ahead of one. Along with one’s instances of absurdity. So you can see I was thinking about it. And in this roundabout way was beginning to get somewhere. Even if only gropingly. Just like an old man, one who probably craps his pants occasionally, a typical one. Actually I don’t know any old men who crap their pants, and I’ve certainly never done so. I’m a very neat old man. I have a full head of hair and over half of my original teeth. I always wear pressed pants and appropriate colors, don’t talk too much, and can, when asked, sing at dinner parties. I have even been called presentable. Although not when they pulled me out of the well. A less-convincing form of philanthropy. Mine or theirs? The old woman—here it was—why had she blindfolded me?

  But of course having thought things through I had to wait until dark before I could do anything. I passed the time sitting next to the radio. Also, I paced for a while. The apartment is not exactly what you would call spacious, but there is adequate room to make a large enough triangle or even diamond if one is given, as I have long been, to geometric pacing. When I had had enough of the radio and walking out approximations of complex shapes on the floor, and you might be surprised by how long I am able to engage in such activities, I lay down on my bed and dozed and thought some more, or, rather, engaged in repetitive thinking. I thought, over and over, and with several accompanying composite images, one of which involved small blue crabs piled in a bucket, then said crabs blackened and piled on a large plate: I should have asked for something else; I should have asked for nothing; or not nothing, but not quite something either. Frankly (and I thought this even as I attempted to gather myself), I had begun to suspect that it might not happen—that they would skip the whole thing as too expensive, too tiresome, too much. But not as too complicated—complicated they didn’t mind, they had proved this time and again. And anyway it wasn’t. In fact, in the end, as far as their part was concerned, it was quite simple. It is quite simple. Really. Or will be.

  The old woman wasn’t home. I had pocketed the dagger (imagining, as I did so, the reaction I would get if I presented it at a tricky moment—smiles, a punch in the mouth, no more teeth) and the photograph and set off through the dark streets. Without the old woman to guide me, it hadn’t been easy finding the little house. It sat at the end of several tricky turns, and I think I spent the better part of an hour negotiating them. Darkness, of course, complicates any route, even the simplest one—say from bed to bathroom; actually that’s a poor example; interiors are often more complex than exteriors; even the most intimate ones; I had an apartment once that seemed always to be shifting around me; or at any rate I kept banging into walls and furniture; usually with my shoulder; I’m not sure what is at the heart of this phenomenon; possibly the darkness; certainly not the walls and furniture; likely myself; but also the darkness; the darkness has some role; fucking darkness; even if I also love it, etc. At the end I did find it, as I’ve already made clear. I tried the door, found it open, and went in. Little had changed. A packet of crackers, which I ate, had appeared on the kitchen counter, and there was a similar assortment of fruit on the table. The bedroom, which with the exception of the toilet, was the only other room in the house, seemed much neater than it had when I had lain there in the dark, but that was really just speculation. I wanted, insofar as it was possible, to avoid speculation. The business at hand, my last assignment as it were, seemed to merit more. I would, I said aloud to myself rather pompously, restrict myself to the evidence in making my final determination. Or course, leads were diff
erent. The pursuit of leads seemed to admit some degree of speculation. And what beyond speculation could have brought me back to the house of this old woman? I was momentarily at a loss. Fortunately, at that very moment, as I stood with my hand in a drawer full of undergarments, a voice, hers, said, don’t turn around. Hi, I’m sorry about this, I said. It’s just I’m making an investigation and wanted to ask you some questions. I’m hungry, she said. You can ask me your questions over dinner. This seemed reasonable, even civilized. I took my hand out of the drawer and started to turn around. Don’t turn around, she said, and put your hand back in the drawer. I followed both her instructions. She gave me the name of a restaurant, told me to wait five minutes before following her, then left.

  Her house was much easier to leave than to get to, and I soon found myself negotiating small streets, where wisteria spilled over balconies and hyacinth and jacaranda were in bloom. During the day, these streets were likely bustling, but at night there were only a few unsavory shadows and the occasional cat, and despite the flowers and stars overhead, I was not unhappy to leave them and, after following a long row of pine trees and climbing a steep flight of steps, to arrive at the restaurant. Actually, I am omitting the part where I had to stop and ask directions. The young man I interpolated was exceedingly polite and even called me sir, which was not at all unwelcome. It is only in recent years, and even now infrequently, that anyone troubles him / herself to call me sir. I have wondered if this has anything to do with the fact that for so long I was so heavy, and now I am so gaunt. I look like one of those ancient employees you come across in medium-size family-run operations—the one who, a little wobbly on his / her pins, receives the item the other more limber family members have pulled down. The comparison is faulty only inasmuch as I am, despite the above-mentioned tendency to keel over, somewhat more agile than such individuals. I’m not, in fact, quite that far along, I’m not really far along at all, only to look at.

  The restaurant was extraordinarily crowded. The walls were covered in photographs, of various citizens and sections of the city, as well as with rather hideous caricatures, possibly of the owner or some other somewhat distinguished gentleman. Waiters came and went around extraordinarily encumbered tables. An individual was playing an accordion. Another was playing a guitar. I looked for the approximation I knew to be my party, but saw no one who fell within the parameters. Clearly, however, if I took a table, she would find me. I was beginning to do so when a man called to me from across the restaurant. Actually, I’m with someone, I said. She won’t be coming, come over here and sit down, he said. The man, although he had nice eyes, was quite a fucking sight. It looked like he’d had an extra chin sewn onto the side of his face and also, in the throat area, a little like he’d swallowed a couple of tennis balls. It’s not communicable, he said. At least not highly, otherwise they wouldn’t let me in here. It’s just I’m a little busy, I said. With your investigation? You know about my investigation? He smiled. I sat down. What will you eat? I’ve already eaten. We both know that’s not true. Then I would like some boiled meat. He called a waiter over. The waiter went away. Are you …? No questions please, he said. We sat there. I listened to the accordion and the guitar. I don’t know what he did. The food arrived. I asked him if he would like some. He declined. He leaned forward and I could see his shoulder holster. I wondered if this was him. I’m not him, if that’s what you are wondering, he said. I was. Well, I’m not. The gun has nothing to do with this or with you. Well, that’s good, I suppose. Eat, now, he said. I did. The boiled meat was excellent. He poured me a glass of wine, which I quickly polished off. More? he asked. Yes, please, I said, registering that I was beginning, slightly, to enjoy myself. I was a little disappointed or disgruntled or put off or taken aback, but I’m doing much better now, I said. Good, he said. What’s wrong with your face, anyway? It’s a condition. I’ve had those. Not this one you haven’t. He had very pretty green eyes and delicate eyebrows. I was about to remark that his face must at one point have been quite sympathetic, perhaps even handsome, I had even settled on a way to say this very politely, had planned to make an allusion to a book I had once heard summarized, involving a tortoise someone had covered in gold, although actually the tortoise had ended by dying badly, from the gold, ah well, I would have omitted that part, when he leaned forward and asked me if I recognized him. No, I said. I was terribly handsome before all this. I can believe it. But you don’t recognize me? No. Well then let’s leave it. We did, but it troubled me a little afterward. I have been told many times that the old forget, that this is part of their reward for having lasted so long, but when it happens, or when I am aware that it is happening, I derive little satisfaction from it. Usually what I forget are key words and phrases, so that I look even more foolish than usual in clever company. The unpleasant episodes, which have been legion, I remember. The pleasant episodes, such as that visit to that earlier city on the coast, I also remember, but such memories pain me. The memory of her hands and of her back and of her lovely, careful movement pains me. Just as the memory of the way I think it may have ended makes me sick. You haven’t changed, he said. Someone told me recently that I looked much better than I used to. I don’t agree. I thought you said we were going to leave it. We are. Good. Go over and tip the accordion player. What? Put a tip in his basket and compliment the young guitar player, he’s really coming along. I stood. I had the idea that I would just walk right out of the restaurant, go home, drink a beverage, put a pillow over my head, and wait for whoever was coming for me, but when I reached the accordion player he jazzed up his tune and looked at me expectantly, and the guitar player, who really wasn’t that bad, did the same. So I reached into my pocket, pulled out some bills, and made to place them in the little basket that sat between them on the table. Only I saw that there was an envelope there. Should I take this? I asked the accordion player. Tip me and compliment him, and you can take anything you like. All right, I said. I dropped the bills into the basket and paid the young man an exaggerated compliment. The two beamed at me and I beamed back then picked up the envelope, turned, and discovered that my interlocutor was gone. When I reached the table, I saw that he had left enough money to cover my meal and also that he had left me a note wrapped around another note. The first note read, put this note in the envelope. I opened the envelope. It was empty. I thought for a moment, then decided that by “this” he was referring to the second piece of folded paper. I put it in the envelope, which I then licked and sealed. Then I sat down, had a sip of wine, thought a little about my interlocutor’s chin (and here is when I settled on the image of the swallowed tennis balls), decided it wasn’t so bad, his chin, wondered if I had known him, decided I had, thought about the investigation, smiled at the musicians, then took out the tiny dagger, cut open the envelope, unfolded the piece of paper it contained, and read the following:

  Go home now. Digest. The boiled meat may cause problems, I am suspicious of it. I will have a strong antacid put in the medicine cabinet. Three weeks from tonight at 11 P.M. go to the southwest entrance to the public gardens. Wait.

  Three weeks from that night, I went there and waited. Afterward, after I had stood waiting all night, I realized it was possible I’d been given a significant clue, one that might hold the answer or something like an answer, but at the time, having waited three weeks for that moment, and then being involved in that moment, to use the word “moment” in its more expansive sense, I was mostly just pissed off.

  But in the meantime, there were those three weeks, and it occurs to me that it might be useful to give some account of them. After all, it was during this period that I learned the identity of the old woman and heard what she had to say about a key event in my life, although this isn’t to say that I believed her. Her account of that event was by no means the first I had heard, and, if you have followed any of what I have set out previously, you will no doubt have some sympathy for my attitude toward her revelations. If, in fact, you could call them that. I think it wou
ld be more accurate to call them opinions and interpretations, maybe even slander. After all, by her own account, she wasn’t in the room when it happened, when I received the punitive portion of my first disaffirmation. Which, incidentally, was nothing compared to the second in terms of sheer excruciation. They did several things to me before they threw me down the well, and, as one of them remarked after they sent the so-called spelunkers down to retrieve me, it was curious that I had not bled to death. So you can see why, among other reasons, certain of them might have felt obliged to treat the requests I made at my exit interview with extra attention, or at least why they pretended to have done so. I think she was definitely hands-on involved, the old woman I had known briefly as a young woman told me. And do you think she was the person I encountered some time later? Do you? she asked. I’m not sure. But you said you spent a fair amount of time with her. Most of it was in the dark, and before the lights came back on, the body, if it was hers, was wrapped in tape. Couldn’t you have exhumed the body? I had just buried it. So—you could have gone back later. I don’t want to talk about it. Fine, what do you want to talk about? I thought for a minute. Are you a prostitute—is that what you’re doing with your retirement? That’s what you want to talk about? Yes. Who says I’m retired? Well, I thought you must be. Just exactly how old do you think I am? I didn’t answer, as I wasn’t sure, not at all. So right now, talking to me, you’re on the job? I said. Is the blindfold too tight? she said. No, it’s fine, but why do we need the blindfold now—I know who you are. Have you gotten a good look at me? No. That’s why we need it. I don’t understand. And so on. I mean my interaction with her, once the cards, so to speak, were on the table. If there was a table, if there were any cards.

  Also during those three weeks I had my body manipulated. I have taken, in recent years, to having this done occasionally. I found it helped greatly, following my fall down the well, to undergo the realignment process the procedure entails, and also to lie on the comfortable matting or padded table that is provided. I am not against the use of oils or scented candles either, although in general I prefer the sort of manipulation that occurs when my skin remains relatively unsmeared and my clothes stay on. Imagine me, a dilapidated older individual, glistening with oil, lying in my poorly filled briefs beneath a towel. Perhaps when I was younger and something of a fatty this image would have possessed some charm. I was not, in those days, against applying the occasional cream to my pleasantly taut (and so deliciously abundant) outer tegument and to ingesting any number of beneficial liquids and solids. My world was not, during that epoch, without several individuals who found corporeal configurations such as mine appealing. And it was really very lovely to present to them an exterior that was as well-maintained as it was abundant. But clearly I have, without particularly meaning to, left the subject far behind. I meant only to convey some sense of a particular manipulation, one that was conducted while I lay on a comfortable mat on the floor, fully clothed. One of the old men from the benches in the gardens had given me the manipulator’s name, describing her, as he did so, as highly capable. Extra to my desire to get some needed realignment, I have always, since my early days, been fascinated by individuals who are described by others as highly capable, which is exactly, one of my early keepers once told me as we were sitting in front of the television, what you are not. I did not disagree and in fact, quite interested, asked this particular individual to elaborate, which he / she did when a commercial came on. A highly capable person is one who is able to do whatever he / she wants to or is asked to or is required to by others. Which you, you fat little bastard, are not. And as I say, far from disagreeing with this assessment, I found it remarkably apt, and found the evocation of these mysterious, highly capable individuals extremely stimulating, and I have made it a point to avail myself of their company, in as much as they will have me, whenever they have been reliably identified. I don’t mean to say that I found the old man’s assessment entirely credible. I didn’t know him that well, and he had some rather suspect, or at least overwrought, ideas on, for example (I had brought up the subject), asbestos removal. There was a curious mechanism once, he had said, built in the shape of a great bull and made entirely out of burnished bronze and silver into which up to three individuals of normal size could be placed. A fire was then lit under the belly of the bull and the individuals were cooked. The interesting aspect of the mechanism was that an elaborate system of pipes channeled the screams of the individuals and converted them into a music that, while not exactly beautiful, was beautifully strange. I don’t think that ever existed, I said. It did, but, alas, I’m not sure where it would be possible to procure one, he said. Where did you hear about it? In a book I’ve just been reading about an unpleasant house. It was during our subsequent discussion of this unpleasant house, which apparently devoured the psyches of its inhabitants as it constantly realigned itself, that we came to the topic of manipulation and how I came to visit the individual he recommended, who indeed proved highly capable and left me utterly satisfied.