by David Miller
Sitting on the stove Saul was like any big rag doll that a kid has been taking out some incomprehensible rage on. “What happened,” Meatball said. “If you feel like talking, I mean.”
“Of course I feel like talking,” Saul said. “One thing I did, I slugged her.”
“Discipline must be maintained.”
“Ha, ha. I wish you’d been there. Oh Meatball, it was a lovely fight. She ended up throwing a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics at me, only it missed and went through the window, and when the glass broke I reckon something in her broke too. She stormed out of the house crying, out in the rain. No raincoat or anything.”
“She’ll be back.”
“No.”
“Well.” Soon Meatball said: “It was something earth-shattering, no doubt. Like who is better, Sal Mineo or Ricky Nelson.”
“What it was about,” Saul said, “was communication theory. Which of course makes it very hilarious.”
“I don’t know anything about communication theory.”
“Neither does my wife. Come right down to it, who does? That’s the joke.”
When Meatball saw the kind of smile Saul had on his face he said: “Maybe you would like tequila or something.”
“No. I mean, I’m sorry. It’s a field you can go off the deep end in, is all. You get where you’re watching all the time for security cops: behind bushes, around corners. MUFFET is top secret.”
“Wha.”
“Multi-unit factorial field electronic tabulator.”
“You were fighting about that.”
“Miriam has been reading science fiction again. That and Scientific American. It seems she is, as we say, bugged at this idea of computers acting like people. I made the mistake of saying you can just as well turn that around, and talk about human behavior like a program fed into an IBM machine.”
“Why not,” Meatball said.
“Indeed, why not. In fact it is sort of crucial to communication, not to mention information theory. Only when I said that she hit the roof. Up went the balloon. And I can’t figure out why. If anybody should know why, I should. I refuse to believe the government is wasting taxpayers’ money on me, when it has so many bigger and better things to waste it on.”
Meatball made a moue. “Maybe she thought you were acting like a cold, dehumanized amoral scientist type.”
“My god,” Saul flung up an arm. “Dehumanized. How much more human can I get? I worry, Meatball, I do. There are Europeans wandering around North Africa these days with their tongues torn out of their heads because those tongues have spoken the wrong words. Only the Europeans thought they were the right words.”
“Language barrier,” Meatball suggested.
Saul jumped down off the stove. “That,” he said, angry, “is a good candidate for sick joke of the year. No, ace, it is not a barrier. If it is anything it’s a kind of leakage. Tell a girl: ‘I love you.’ No trouble with two-thirds of that, it’s a closed circuit. Just you and she. But that nasty four-letter word in the middle, that’s the one you have to look out for. Ambiguity. Redundance. Irrelevance, even. Leakage. All this is noise. Noise screws up your signal, makes for disorganization in the circuit.”
Meatball shuffled around. “Well, now, Saul,” he muttered, “you’re sort of, I don’t know, expecting a lot from people. I mean, you know. What it is is, most of the things we say, I guess, are mostly noise.”
“Ha! Half of what you just said, for example.”
“Well, you do it too.”
“I know.” Saul smiled grimly. “It’s a bitch, ain’t it.”
“I bet that’s what keeps divorce lawyers in business. Whoops.”
“Oh I’m not sensitive. Besides,” frowning, “you’re right. You find I think that most ‘successful’ marriages – Miriam and me, up to last night – are sort of founded on compromises. You never run at top efficiency, usually all you have is a minimum basis for a workable thing. I believe the phrase is Togetherness.”
“Aarrgghh.”
“Exactly. You find that one a bit noisy, don’t you. But the noise content is different for each of us because you’re a bachelor and I’m not. Or wasn’t. The hell with it.”
“Well sure,” Meatball said, trying to be helpful, “you were using different words. By ‘human being’ you meant something that you can look at like it was a computer. It helps you think better on the job or something. But Miriam meant something entirely –”
“The hell with it.”
Meatball fell silent. “I’ll take that drink,” Saul said after a while.
The card game had been abandoned and Sandor’s friends were slowly getting wasted on tequila. On the living room couch, one of the coeds and Krinkles were engaged in amorous conversation. “No,” Krinkles was saying, “no, I can’t put Dave down. In fact I give Dave a lot of credit, man. Especially considering his accident and all.” The girl’s smile faded. “How terrible,” she said. “What accident?” “Hadn’t you heard?” Krinkles said. “When Dave was in the army, just a private E-2, they sent him down to Oak Ridge on special duty. Something to do with the Manhattan Project. He was handling hot stuff one day and got an overdose of radiation. So now he’s got to wear lead gloves all the time.” She shook her head sympathetically. “What an awful break for a piano-player.”
Meatball had abandoned Saul to a bottle of tequila and was about to go to sleep in a closet when the front door flew open and the place was invaded by five enlisted personnel of the U.S. Navy, all in varying stages of abomination. “This is the place,” shouted a fat, pimply seaman apprentice who had lost his white hat. “This here is the hoorhouse that chief was telling us about.” A stringy-looking 3rd class boatswain’s mate pushed him aside and cased the living room. “You’re right, Slab,” he said. “But it don’t look like much, even for Stateside. I seen better tail in Naples, Italy.” “How much, hey,” boomed a large seaman with adenoids, who was holding a Mason jar full of white lightning. “Oh, my god,” said Meatball.
Outside the temperature remained constant at 37 degrees Fahrenheit. In the hothouse Aubade stood absently caressing the branches of a young mimosa, hearing a motif of sap-rising, the rough and unresolved anticipatory theme of those fragile pink blossoms which, it is said, insure fertility. That music rose in a tangled tracery: arabesques of order competing fugally with the improvised discords of the party downstairs, which peaked sometimes in cusps and ogees of noise. That precious signal-to-noise ratio, whose delicate balance required every calorie of her strength, seesawed inside the small tenuous skull as she watched Callisto, sheltering the bird. Callisto was trying to confront any idea of the heat-death now, as he nuzzled the feathery lump in his hands. He sought correspondences. Sade, of course. And Temple Drake, gaunt and hopeless in her little park in Paris, at the end of Sanctuary. Final equilibrium. Nightwood. And the tango. Any tango, but more than any perhaps the sad sick dance in Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. He thought back: what had tango music been for them after the war, what meanings had he missed in all the stately coupled automatons in the cafés-dansants, or in the metronomes which had ticked behind the eyes of his own partners? Not even the clean constant winds of Switzerland could cure the grippe espagnole: Stravinsky had had it, they all had had it. And how many musicians were left after Passchendaele, after the Marne? It came down in this case to seven: violin, double-bass. Clarinet, bassoon. Cornet, trombone. Tympani. Almost as if any tiny troupe of saltimbanques had set about conveying the same information as a full pit-orchestra. There was hardly a full complement left in Europe. Yet with violin and tympani Stravinsky had managed to communicate in that tango the same exhaustion, the same airlessness one saw in the slicked-down youths who were trying to imitate Vernon Castle, and in their mistresses, who simply did not care. Ma maîtresse. Celeste. Returning to Nice after the second war he had found that café replaced by a perfume shop which catered to American tourists. And no secret vestige of her in the cobblestones or in the old pension next door; no perfume to m
atch her breath heavy with the sweet Spanish wine she always drank. And so instead he had purchased a Henry Miller novel and left for Paris, and read the book on the train so that when he arrived he had been given at least a little forewarning. And saw that Celeste and the others and even Temple Drake were not all that had changed. “Aubade,” he said, “my head aches.” The sound of his voice generated in the girl an answering scrap of melody. Her movement toward the kitchen, the towel, the cold water, and his eyes following her formed a weird and intricate canon; as she placed the compress on his forehead his sigh of gratitude seemed to signal a new subject, another series of modulations.
“No,” Meatball was still saying, “no, I’m afraid not. This is not a house of ill repute. I’m sorry, really I am.” Slab was adamant. “But the chief said,” he kept repeating. The seaman offered to swap the moonshine for a good piece. Meatball looked around frantically, as if seeking assistance. In the middle of the room, the Duke di Angelis quartet were engaged in a historic moment. Vincent was seated and the others standing: they were going through the motions of a group having a session, only without instruments. “I say,” Meatball said. Duke moved his head a few times, smiled faintly, lit a cigarette, and eventually caught sight of Meatball. “Quiet, man,” he whispered. Vincent began to fling his arms around, his fists clenched; then, abruptly, was still, then repeated the performance. This went on for a few minutes while Meatball sipped his drink moodily. The navy had withdrawn to the kitchen. Finally at some invisible signal the group stopped tapping their feet and Duke grinned and said, “At least we ended together.”
Meatball glared at him. “I say,” he said. “I have this new conception, man,” Duke said. “You remember your namesake. You remember Gerry.”
“No,” said Meatball. “I’ll remember April, if that’s any help.”
“As a matter of fact,” Duke said, “it was Love for Sale. Which shows how much you know. The point is, it was Mulligan, Chet Baker and that crew, way back then, out yonder. You dig?”
“Baritone sax,” Meatball said. “Something about a baritone sax.”
“But no piano, man. No guitar. Or accordion. You know what that means.”
“Not exactly,” Meatball said.
“Well first let me just say, that I am no Mingus, no John Lewis. Theory was never my strong point. I mean things like reading were always difficult for me and all –”
“I know,” Meatball said drily. “You got your card taken away because you changed key on Happy Birthday at a Kiwanis Club picnic.”
“Rotarian. But it occurred to me, in one of these flashes of insight, that if that first quartet of Mulligan’s had no piano, it could only mean one thing.”
“No chords,” said Paco, the baby-faced bass.
“What he is trying to say,” Duke said, “is no root chords. Nothing to listen to while you blow a horizontal line. What one does in such a case is, one thinks the roots.”
A horrified awareness was dawning on Meatball. “And the next logical extension,” he said.
“Is to think everything,” Duke announced with simple dignity. “Roots, line, everything.”
Meatball looked at Duke, awed. “But,” he said.
“Well,” Duke said modestly, “there are a few bugs to work out.”
“But,” Meatball said.
“Just listen,” Duke said. “You’ll catch on.” And off they went again into orbit, presumably somewhere around the asteroid belt. After a while Krinkles made an embouchure and started moving his fingers and Duke clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oaf!” he roared. “The new head we’re using, you remember, I wrote last night?” “Sure,” Krinkles said, “the new head. I come in on the bridge. All your heads I come in then.” “Right,” Duke said. “So why –” “Wha,” said Krinkles, “16 bars, I wait, I come in –” “16?” Duke said. “No. No, Krinkles. Eight you waited. You want me to sing it? A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces, an airline ticket to romantic places.” Krinkles scratched his head. “These Foolish Things, you mean.” “Yes,” Duke said, “yes, Krinkles. Bravo.” “Not I’ll Remember April,” Krinkles said. “Minghe morte,” said Duke. “I figured we were playing it a little slow,” Krinkles said. Meatball chuckled. “Back to the old drawing board,” he said. “No, man,” Duke said, “back to the airless void.” And they took off again, only it seemed Paco was playing in G sharp while the rest were in E flat, so they had to start all over.
In the kitchen two of the girls from George Washington and the sailors were singing Let’s All Go Down and Piss on the Forrestal. There was a two-handed, bilingual morra game on over by the icebox. Saul had filled several paper bags with water and was sitting on the fire escape, dropping them on passersby in the street. A fat government girl in a Bennington sweatshirt, recently engaged to an ensign attached to the Forrestal, came charging into the kitchen, head lowered, and butted Slab in the stomach. Figuring this was as good an excuse for a fight as any, Slab’s buddies piled in. The morra players were nose-to-nose, screaming trois, sette at the tops of their lungs. From the shower the girl Meatball had taken out of the sink announced that she was drowning. She had apparently sat on the drain and the water was now up to her neck. The noise in Meatball’s apartment had reached a sustained, ungodly crescendo.
Meatball stood and watched, scratching his stomach lazily. The way he figured, there were only about two ways he could cope: (a) lock himself in the closet and maybe eventually they would all go away, or (b) try to calm everybody down, one by one. (a) was certainly the more attractive alternative. But then he started thinking about that closet. It was dark and stuffy and he would be alone. He did not feature being alone. And then this crew off the good ship Lollipop or whatever it was might take it upon themselves to kick down the closet door, for a lark. And if that happened he would be, at the very least, embarrassed. The other way was more a pain in the neck, but probably better in the long run.
So he decided to try and keep his lease-breaking party from deteriorating into total chaos: he gave wine to the sailors and separated the morra players; he introduced the fat government girl to Sandor Rojas, who would keep her out of trouble; he helped the girl in the shower to dry off and get into bed; he had another talk with Saul; he called a repairman for the refrigerator, which someone had discovered was on the blink. This is what he did until nightfall, when most of the revellers had passed out and the party trembled on the threshold of its third day.
Upstairs Callisto, helpless in the past, did not feel the faint rhythm inside the bird begin to slacken and fail. Aubade was by the window, wandering the ashes of her own lovely world; the temperature held steady, the sky had become a uniform darkening gray. Then something from downstairs – a girl’s scream, an overturned chair, a glass dropped on the floor, he would never know what exactly – pierced that private time-warp and he became aware of the faltering, the constriction of muscles, the tiny tossings of the bird’s head; and his own pulse began to pound more fiercely, as if trying to compensate. “Aubade,” he called weakly, “he’s dying.” The girl, flowing and rapt, crossed the hothouse to gaze down at Callisto’s hands. The two remained like that, poised, for one minute, and two, while the heartbeat ticked a graceful diminuendo down at last into stillness. Callisto raised his head slowly. “I held him,” he protested, impotent with the wonder of it, “to give him the warmth of my body. Almost as if I were communicating life to him, or a sense of life. What has happened? Has the transfer of heat ceased to work? Is there no more …” He did not finish.
“I was just at the window,” she said. He sank back, terrified. She stood a moment more, irresolute; she had sensed his obsession long ago, realized somehow that that constant 37 was now decisive. Suddenly then, as if seeing the single and unavoidable conclusion to all this she moved swiftly to the window before Callisto could speak; tore away the drapes and smashed out the glass with two exquisite hands which came away bleeding and glistening with splinters; and turned to face the man on the bed and wait with him until
the moment of equilibrium was reached, when 37 degrees Fahrenheit should prevail both outside and inside, and forever, and the hovering, curious dominant of their separate lives should resolve into a tonic of darkness and the final absence of all motion.
ERRAND
Raymond Carver
The life of Raymond Carver (1938–1988) was cut short by lung cancer, rather than booze. Whilst his life may have been short, his legacy is large – together with Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff he came to incarnate the soul of North American writing in the 1970s and 1980s, what Bill Buford once termed “dirty realism”. Carver’s collections include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant.
Chekhov. On the evening of 22 March 1897, he went to dinner in Moscow with his friend and confidant Alexei Suvorin. This Suvorin was a very rich newspaper and book publisher, a reactionary, a self-made man whose father was a private at the battle of Borodino. Like Chekhov, he was the grandson of a serf. They had that in common: each had peasant’s blood in his veins. Otherwise, politically and temperamentally, they were miles apart. Nevertheless, Suvorin was one of Chekhov’s few intimates, and Chekhov enjoyed his company.
Naturally, they went to the best restaurant in the city, a former town house called the Hermitage – a place where it could take hours, half the night even, to get through a ten-course meal that would, of course, include several wines, liqueurs, and coffee. Chekhov was impeccably dressed, as always – a dark suit and waistcoat, his usual pince-nez. He looked that night very much as he looks in the photographs taken of him during this period. He was relaxed, jovial. He shook hands with the maître d’, and with a glance took in the large dining room. It was brilliantly illuminated by ornate chandeliers, the tables occupied by elegantly dressed men and women. Waiters came and went ceaselessly. He had just been seated across the table from Suvorin when suddenly, without warning, blood began gushing from his mouth. Suvorin and two waiters helped him to the gentlemen’s room and tried to stanch the flow of blood with ice packs. Suvorin saw him back to his own hotel and had a bed prepared for Chekhov in one of the rooms of the suite. Later, after another hemorrhage, Chekhov allowed himself to be moved to a clinic that specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and related respiratory infections. When Suvorin visited him there, Chekhov apologized for the “scandal” at the restaurant three nights earlier but continued to insist there was nothing seriously wrong. “He laughed and jested as usual,” Suvorin noted in his diary, “while spitting blood into a large vessel.”