“What’s this all about?”
“Well, you told me to go out on the street and get a woman, that you didn’t want to have anything else to do with me sexually.”
“So what happens now?”
I shook my head.
I had just gotten a grant from the Organization of American States to study Latin American Studies/Argentinian Literature for a year in Buenos Aires.
“I guess we go to Argentina and—”
“And?”
“Vamos a ver . . .” (We’ll see . . .)
So down to Buenos Aires we went, and Nona stayed behind on Lilac Street.
Maybe it was going to be over, finito, kaput; who could tell? It was horrible, that last night before we left.
“How can you do this to me?”
“I’m not doing anything to you; Fate is doing it to me. I have the grant; I can’t just throw it out the window.”
“So you’re throwing me out the window instead.”
“Once we’re settled down there let’s see . . .”
Summer in East Lansing was winter in Buenos Aires.
Cold. Sometimes on the edge of snow. But I loved it, the streets, the shops, the beef . . .
Registered at the university, started classes . . . we found a nice little apartment on Santa Fe Boulevard, Mimi found a bunch of black suede stuff at rummage sale, got all sexed up, we messed around a little sexually. A new start.
Or so it seemed . . .
Only how was I supposed to just forget The Whore of Babylon, the Queen of the Damned, my Delilah, my Juliet, my soul mate, best pal? Because that’s what we had become, not just suck and fuck but pals, sharing dreams, intermingling pasts, presents and futures. No matter how much I tried I couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t get her out of my mind. We had no phone but there was a public long-distance phone place a few blocks away from us and every night, after everyone got to sleep, out I’d go—a little dangerous, OK, lots of cops and soldiers on the streets, the usual Argentinian political chaos, but no one bothered me walking down the dark streets to the phone-place.
“Hey, Nona, howya doin’?”
“I miss you terribly.”
“Me too. Lucia is playing seductress, but after a couple of acts, it gets pretty lame . . .”
“You want me to come down?”
“OK.”
“My sister Martha said she’s willing to fork up the plane-fare.”
“Great.”
“My parents think I’m nuts. Although my mother the other day did say ‘If you don’t follow your heart, it’ll end up following you, like a lost dog all the rest of your life.’ She’s a real poet . . . too bad you haven’t met her, although you will, eventually you will . . .”
And within a few weeks, down she came, I got her (us) a room about a mile away from the apartment on Santa Fe and the whole thing began again.
I kind of dropped out of the university. Found it unbelievably boring. I was studying Argentinian literature, right? OK . . . why not meet the authors themselves instead of going through everything second hand? I was Mr. Post-Beatnick, Professor Yippie-Wippie Wilddog, letters all the time from New York (Harry Smith), San Francisco (Richard Morris), Boston-Sommerville (Jerry Dombrowski), Duane Locke (Tampa); instead of literature being classroomish and academic, it had become LIFE ITSELF.
Mimi called up the dean of Argentinian letters, Jorge Luis Borges, and told me “He said to come over on Sunday morning . . .”
“OK.”
She didn’t seem to mind Nona being around. Was that the “norm” for her: wife + mistress?
And Nona “allowed” me time for Mimi.
Things were self-adjusting, so to speak.
So Sunday morning there we were over at Borges’ place. I rang the bell, a long pause, and a somewhat disheveled Borges appeared at the door, in his pajamas, short, round-face, looking like some sort of Anglo-Spanish butler.
“Yes?”
English? With an English accent?
“It’s us, the Foxes.”
“Professor Fox,” talking to Mimi, “I told you come any time but Sunday morning.”
“I thought you said come Sunday morning.”
“Anytime but Sunday morning, but OK, come in . . .” And he ushered us into his library-office. “I’ll be back shortly, my mother’s here visiting . . .”
Closed the door behind him.
I found myself totally amazed at the books on the shelves. All the books devoted to arcane, obscure oriental stuff. Chinese, Japanese, Hinduism, Buddhism . . .
Of course that was him.
No one could ever have accused him of being occidental. He was a chineseified-japaneseified-hinduified obscurantist at his most obscure.
“Pero el me dijo de venir el domingo en la mañana—” (But he told me to come Sunday in the morning—) Mimi started in.
I shhhhhed her.
“No importa.” (It doesn’t matter.)
He came back in a few minutes, hair combed, more awake, alive, presentable.
“Do you know Anglo-Saxon?” he asked me, the single most unexpected question I could have ever expected out of his mouth.
Here I was in Buenos Aires with the greatest of Argentinian writers and I’m asked if I know Anglo-Saxon.
“As of matter of fact, believe it or not, yes. I had a course in Anglo-Saxon at the University of Illinois, Professor Roland Smith.”
“Wunderbar,” he smiled, pulling a book off the shelves and handing it to me.
Beowulf. In Anglo-Saxon no less.
“Sit down, sit down, sit down . . .” and after we’d sat down, he told me “Open the book at random and read the first line that hits your eyes.”
Which I did.
And he started reciting the rest of the line, went on and on for five minutes of recitation, word by word, never missing a beat.
Then stopped.
“Try another page.”
I tried another page, read the beginning of a line and he finished it, kept going on and on again.
Ten tries, ten total successes. Not missing one word! So the sonofabitch knew Beowulf by heart!
“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?”
Time to go, that was his body-language message as he opened the door.
“Your accent, it’s English but northern, I mean—”
“Scotch border accent. You picked it up. I’m impressed. My nursemaid when I was a child was from the Scotch border.”
“Like my German professor, Felix Schwartzenberg, Loyola University, Chicago. Czech. But spoke German full-time. Had had an English governness.”
“So it goes. Kinderheit ist alles.” (Childhood is everything.)
Out we went. No chance to ask him about his work, intentions, changes, future directions, nada, nada, nada, nothing, nothing, nothing . . .
And there we were out on the street again.
“Vamos a tomar un cafe. Tu puta puede esperar un poco.” (Let’s have a coffee. Your whore can wait a little.)
“I don’t like that puta stuff,” I objected.
“What is she, la Virgin Maria?” Laughing. In a good mood. “That Borges is so crazy . . .”
“Mad genius.”
I spotted a coffee place. Buenos Aires was the promised land of coffee places.
Very nice. Any type of coffee you could imagine. Plus Italian goodies. Biscotti, muffins, fruit bars, you name it.
We sat down. Outside. A pleasantly perfect day.
`”So what’s going to happen with your puta?” she asked as soon as we got our espressos and rich chocolate muffins.
“What’s the problem? You told me to go out and get a puta.”
“But the money....I mean I can’t very well teach Spanish here. One grant, two houses . . . ella tiene que trabajar.” (She has to work.)
“OK, I’ll suggest it to her.”
“Suggest, no; tell her. Don’t let the puta run the show.”
“Can’t you just call her Nona?”
“Putas don’t have n
ames! They’re just putas.”
Grrrrrrrr.
The next day I went over to the Centro Argentino-Americano, the Buenos Aires equivalent of the Centro Venezolano-Americano in Caracas where I had taught or two years. And, of course, I got a job. Just a few hours a day. But enough to put some tacos—oops!—steak on the tables.
Nona had a room in a private house.
The woman who owned the house made a big point of keeping her in her area, period. There was even a sign on the door into the house itself: PROHIBIDO ENTRAR/KEEP OUT.
But one afternoon, when the landlady was out, and Nona was soaking in a hot, bubbly bath, I went in anyhow, found a phone and called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Aires, the Camara de Comercio.
“You wouldn’t happen to know about any jobs for Americans here in Buenos Aires. Secretary-receptionist, something like that . . .?”
“As a matter of fact we have a whole list. Just come down and I’ll xerox the list for you. Is it for you?”
“My ‘girlfriend,’” I answered, almost said “novia.”
“OK, just ask for Jane.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
After Nona had gotten out of the bathtub and poured herself into something very tight and very black, put on some heels like she’d never worn back in the states, and we’d gone out and found a coffee place, were drinking espresso and eating chocolates, I put it to her.
“Listen, Nonny, when you were in the tub soaking, I called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and they said they had a whole list of secretary jobs here in Buenos Aires. You know, we’re very short financially, two places, six mouths to feed, I thought you might get a part-time job as a secretary.”
“I’m not going to get any job to feed your brats!” she said, all pissed off.
I don’t know what happened to me, but it was like my hand suddenly had a will of its own and I reached across the table and slapped her in the face, and predictably she was off and running down the street with me (predictably) running after her, screaming “I’m sorry, it was an automatic reaction, I’m sorry, I don’t know how it happened! I’m sorry . . . sorry . . .”
Getting back to her room—a beautiful job of running in high heels—up the stairs to her door, then turning.
“Don’t come near me or I’ll start screaming. I wouldn’t think Argentinian jails would be too pleasant. I’m getting the fuck out of here. Tonight. Tomorrow. Back to the U.S. I didn’t come down here to get beat up by you!”
Key in the door, inside, door locked.
I tried knocking.
“LEAVE ME ALONG, ASSHOLE! THIS IS IT! IT! IT! IT! GET IT?”
So I left her alone and the next day she left, went back to Kansas.
Only instead of that being the end-end, it was just another beginning-beginning. I started calling her every night again, long walks on the darkest streets down to the phone place.
“I can’t be sorrier. I don’t know what came over me. I guess it was calling my kids brats. They’re just innocents. Innocent victims of all this. And I thought you might enjoy working in some office down here. My intentions were good, believe me . . . I feel terrible. I never hit a woman before . . .”
“You sound repentant enough.”
“I can’t live without you. I need you.”
One week of this. A second week. And the third week her sister, Martha, the librarian at Rockhurst, came up with some more money and she was back down in Buenos Aires.
“No puedo creer que ella ha regresado. Es una puta bien especial,” Lucia laughed when I left to pick her up at the airport, “I can’t believe that she’s come back. She’s a very special whore.”
She was a very special whore.
Got her old room back. Had to pay some unpaid rent. A little help from her microbiologist mother this time.
And the tone had completely changed too. The puta was straining to become Wife Number Two.
All she talked about now was my leaving Mimi, period, coming back to the U.S. with her, no more three-way games.
Sex full-time. She literally was engulfing me, giving me everything I’d always wanted and what Lucia had never give me: unconditional love, constant sex, affection, a sense of spiritual as well as physical oneness, romance . . .
She wrote to Herb Bergman, one of the professors in the Department of American Thought and Language back in East Lansing. He was doing a series of volumes of Whitman’s unsigned editorials and always needed help.
He wrote back.
Dear Nona:
Of course I can find a place for you here. I always need someone exactly like you: bright but at the same time super-careful and scrupulous. You want a job, you’ve got a job. When can you start?
Best,
Herb Bergman Ph.D.
She showed me the letter with her face glowing. For her this was a big hit. Like burying the last survivor of the other mob in town.
“So what do you think? I can go up and get the job, get settled, and then you can follow me.”
“Well, with the three kids and all . . .”
“They’ll be back.”
“What if Mimi decides to take them to Peru, move back there?”
“She won’t. She’s got a great job at Michigan State. She won’t ever go back to Peru. Ever.”
“Well . . .”
Up in the air. Way, way up in the air.
She grabbed me and pulled me down on her bed and started massaging me down there where it counted, massage, massage, massage. She could drag it out for hours, do it once, twice, thrice—that’s the most I had ever managed to do it during one session—although it looked like she could have gone on all night.
I started massaging her in return. She had this special weird interest in the membrane between her anus and vagina. That was the real center of erotic bliss for her. So that’s where I always went, carefully, delicately, as she began to ooh and aah, not as wildly as she would have liked to because of the landlady complaining one time, “Ustedes son demasiado—mucho ruido—demasiado. “You two are too much—lots of noise—too much.)
So she toned it down, at least noise-wise, but thrashed around like crazy, somehow managed to get her mouth down on me, another one of her favorite things to do, “Sucking on the Tree of Life,” as she put it.
All of it blackmail, but not really; not the way she enjoyed it.
It was difficult for me to just leave, leave, leave, little Marcella, my blue-eyed blondie baby who just was all Daddy and good times, not a mean bone in her body; tall, curly-haired Ceci and her long, spindly legs, very dependent on me, a little too much, but sweet as pecan pie; and little Hughie, Mr. Tough-Nuts, Mr. Independent, the one who always gave me the most trouble, always wanted it his way or not way at all.
My three babies.
You just don’t get up and vanish for crissake . . . or do you?
Even Mimi. For whatever was wrong with our marriage, its sexlessness, her total self-involvement, career-involvement, involvement with her progress as a writer, I’d gotten so much from her, so much archaeology, the ancient languages of the Andes, our year in Mexico, two years in Caracas, contemporary and ancient Latin America poured over me in all its richness so I wasn’t the old Chicago guy any more, but internationalized, three-dimentionalized . . .
But Nona won, I decided to leave, period. The big break.
“You can just pick up my checks every month from the Organization of American States office,” I told Lucia, “I’ll arrange it for you, no problem . . .”
“Well, this is so crazy . . . you and your puta.”
“It’s getting old, this puta stuff. You want to be my puta and I won’t leave. What do you say?”
“There’s the door.”
Took each of the kids out separately for dinner before I left.
Hughie first. Tough little monkey.
Went out for barbecue and one of the barbecued items confused him.
“What’s this?”
Round, spongy. I
gave it my medical school flunk-out’s scrutiny.
“It’s a ball, testicle . . .”
Weird.
“I’m not gonna eat bull balls, man . . .”
“Me either. There are limits.”
But the rest of the barbecue was great. Hard to leave a country where all the beef was range-fed, grass-fed, no corn and crap but wild, living on the pampas until they got it in the gut.
“I’m sorry I have to leave you, but we’ll be back together again soon enough when you come back to East Lansing . . . you remember Nona, right? Well, I’m going to marry her, I guess, get divorced from Mimi, start all over again. It just isn’t working out between me and Mimi. As you know. As you know . . .”
“I guess it hasn’t been working out for a long, long time.”
“That’s right, pal, so I’m going to try to start all over again.”
“Well, I’ll miss you, but I wish you luck.”
The next day took out Cecilia. Same story. But she started to cry.
“But I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. Nothing to do with you, it’s just that Mimi and I don’t get along, never really have . . .”
“Can’t I come with you?”
“Not really. Eventually maybe you can live with me and Nona, but there’s a lot of ugliness to be gotten through first.”
“Ugliness?”
“The divorce . . . all the legal stuff.”
“Does it have to be ugly?”
“Not really, but it usually is.”
The next day Marcella.
“Come on, pal, we’re going out to dinner.”
“Mom told me not to go with you; I’ve got my karate lesson to go to anyhow. So screw off!”
“Screw off? Here, let me give you a little karate lesson . . .”
And I took my belt off and wrapped it around her neck, lightly tightened it, she coughed a light little cough and I loosened the belt, she was free again, got up and ran screaming into her mother’s bedroom, screaming and crying.
It would be twenty years before she’d really forgive me for my little game, which, I admit, was wrong to play, but I was a little crazy, wasn’t I? Part of me wanting to stay with Mimi, period, no matter what, even if I had to live a life of celibacy, and then the beast in me clawing and roaring full-time, “I want out, I want out, I want my life, too.”
Who, Me? Page 18