“ ‘Collective unconscious’? Isn’t that Jung?”
Jet frowned. “Jung. Yes. And Jung, too. They knew to respect dreams.”
“Well, I question that respect. I’m skeptical. From a scientific perspective, no one can prove that there is any ‘manifest’ or ‘latent’ material in any dream. A dream is a mental state, a stream of impressions caused by the discharge of neurons in the brain. Why claim that it ‘means’ anything at all?”
“Joshua, I can’t believe you’re so—willfully—ignorant.”
“Jet, I can’t believe you’re so superstitious.”
Seigl’s heart was beating absurdly. He knew better!
Jet turned back to their chess game. She fumbled with a chess piece, overturned several and righted them again. Seigl wondered if she was actually trying to recall her dream game. At last, half-shutting her eyes, she pushed a knight forward impulsively.
Seigl took the knight. And another of Jet’s pawns. The game was narrowing. Jet’s pieces were sadly depleted, while his army was mostly untouched.
Again it was Jet’s move. While she fumed, murmured to herself, smoked and scattered ash on the chessboard, sipped wine, and chewed at a strand of her hair, Seigl mentally scrolled through the lines of Virgil he’d translated that day. What solace, in the dignity and sonorousness of Virgil’s poetry.
Jet said, with maddening persistence, “Why do dreams threaten you, Joshua? Ask yourself.”
Seigl said lightly, “ ‘Why do dreams threaten you, Joshua?’ ”
“Very funny. You’ve been hiding behind sarcasm and intellectual bullshit since childhood. The world rewards you for it. Sure.”
Again Jet spoke with surprising bitterness, vehemence.
This woman hates me, Seigl thought.
“Jet, why don’t we finish this game tomorrow? You’re tired, you’ve flown up from Florida—”
Jet cried, “Noooo! You want to break the spell. Because I remember this game, and if I can remember the ending . . .” Jet hesitated, not wanting to claim I can win. For the possibility of Jet winning the game was obviously remote. Instead she reverted to her obsessive subject, dreams, saying that she’d had recurring dreams of Seigl for weeks, and of their parents, and that these dreams must mean something, for she had no reason otherwise to dream of them, she was certain.
Seigl said, “But family memories are literally encoded in your brain cells. Going back to infancy. It’s natural to dream of them.”
“But why these? And why now? And when I arrived here today, you revealed to me that, yes you are endangered. You appear to have a—” Jet hesitated. What was she about to say? A nerve disease, an autoimmune disease, a fatal disease? “—something wrong with you, and you don’t know what. But I knew. I mean, I had a premonition. It’s as if our brain cells are linked. Our souls are linked. Don’t laugh at me, damn you: how did I know to call you? to come here? There must be millions of memories encoded in my brain cells, but I’ve dreamt of these. Why?”
Seigl stared at Jet. How like a harpy-Cassandra his sister was!
He was beginning to be frightened by her.
“Jet, I don’t know. Truly.”
“Yes. Because you don’t want to know.”
“Move, Jet. Let’s wrap the game up.”
“See, Josh, I know. I know what I feel.”
I know what I feel. The boast of ignorance through the centuries.
After much deliberation, Jet finally moved her queen. As soon as she lifted her fingers from the piece she saw: Seigl would checkmate her king in the next move. She uttered a baffled, hurt cry, like a wounded bird, and before Seigl could prevent her she swept the pieces from the board into Seigl’s lap and onto the floor, and in the process spilled what remained of her wine onto the carpet.
“You cheated! Damn you, Joshua! Distract me and confuse me and fucking cheat me! Just as you did when we were children.”
Hardly children but teenagers. For Jet had behaved in this childish way well into adolescence. As she’d done then, she ran from the room incensed as if she’d been insulted, leaving her brother behind to crawl about on his hands and knees awkwardly gathering the scattered ivory chess pieces. And dabbing at the spilled wine with a wetted paper towel, without much success.
Seigl’s joints ached. His temples ached. His eyes smarted from Jet’s cigarette smoldering in an ashtray. Still the fact remained: “I won.”
THE FEEBLEST OF BOASTS, as it would turn out.
Next day, Jet didn’t appear downstairs through much of the morning. From time to time Seigl, working on his Virgil translation at the dining room table, could hear her on the telephone: she was contacting old friends in the area, making plans to meet them. (Former lovers included?) Her telephone voice was bright, vivacious. From a short distance it sounded like a parrot’s cries. Each time Jet hung up the phone there was an abrupt, ominous silence overhead. Seigl thought uneasily, she will come for me now.
Seigl knew not to expect his sister to apologize for her rude behavior of the previous evening, nor to betray any sign of embarrassment or remorse. For Jet was one who, after she’d behaved badly, blamed the person to whom she’d behaved badly for causing such uncharacteristic behavior in her.
Unassailable logic! Seigl smiled.
He resolved to say nothing about the overturned chessboard, the spilled wine. He’d dragged a chair over the stain in the carpet and hoped that Alma wouldn’t notice it next time she cleaned the living room.
And he hoped the house didn’t stink this morning of Jet’s damned cigarette smoke. He’d opened windows to freshen the air. But judging from a flicker of expression on his assistant’s impassive face, when he let her into the foyer that morning, he guessed that Alma detected it.
He set Alma to work in his study. The massive task of sorting, stacking, disposing of and filing Seigl’s correspondence was nearly completed; by next week, Seigl would be confronting the great challenge of his numerous manuscript drafts. Laboring over a few lines of Virgil—
On the farther shore
The great trunk headless lies unnamed
On the distant shore
The great/vast trunk lies headless and unnamed
—Seigl tried to banish personal anxieties from his mind.
“Joshua! Why is that cleaning woman working with your papers?”
Seigl looked up guiltily. There stood his astonished sister trembling before him, breathing in quick pants like a wounded creature. Presumably she’d gone into his study to discover Alma there. Seigl knew he should have prepared her, but he had not. Now he saw that Jet was terribly upset. This was not pretense or playacting but the real thing: hurt, incredulity. Like a betrayed woman she stared at her brother with damp blinking eyes.
In the light of late morning Jet’s face looked hastily made up, her eyelids puffy and her hair far less buoyant than it had been the previous day. Still a striking woman but definitely middle-aged, and baffled.
Seigl heard himself try to explain that Alma Busch was not his cleaning woman primarily, but his assistant.
“Your assistant? Her?”
“Jet, not so loud.”
Jet protested, “But—I’m your assistant, Joshua. I’ve always been your assistant.”
“Jet, no. You’ve misunderstood.”
“How have I ‘misunderstood’? This is why I’ve come to Carmel Heights: to assist you.”
This was exactly what Seigl had dreaded. Now that it was happening, he felt as helpless as he’d been in Mount Carmel Cemetery, his legs struck out beneath him. He said, “I never asked you to come and assist me, Jet. In fact, when we spoke on the phone I made it clear that—”
“You lied to me! You misled me!”
“Jet, how did I mislead you? I told you frankly—more than once—that I didn’t need or want your help.”
“But I’ve helped you in the past. I helped you with your play, remember? You always said you were grateful.”
Eight years before, Seigl had accepted a commis
sion from the prestigious Public Theater in Manhattan to write an original play derived from The Shadows. As it evolved over a period of arduous months, the play turned out to be very different from the novel; there were only two characters, both male, both Jews, one an agnostic and the other a rabid anti-Semite. Counter/Mime had received respectful if puzzled reviews from critics but Seigl withdrew it from further productions with the excuse that he wanted to revise it. Sitting through performances had been agony for him, the play had seemed so static, obscure. Jet’s initial role had been to type Seigl’s constant revisions of the script into a word processor during the pre-production period and, during rehearsals, to involve herself in the actual production. Seigl recalled the experience as one might recall a bout of malaria. Somehow, he’d gotten through it. But it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat.
Jet said, incensed, “And you misled me about that—creature! How can a cleaning woman be Joshua Seigl’s assistant! You’ve done this deliberately to sabotage our heritage—and to spite me—haven’t you?”
“Jet, don’t be ridiculous. And don’t speak so loudly, I don’t want Alma to overhear.”
The sound of Alma’s name was a goad like a hot poker to Jet. Seigl realized his error as soon as he uttered it, provoking Jet to cry, “ ‘Alma’! What is this ‘Alma’ to you?”
Seigl pushed himself to his feet. He was trying to keep his voice lowered. “There’s no need for you to be abusive, Jet. Alma is my assistant, I’ve hired her to help me with various projects. Not just my writing. She’s very—”
“ ‘Capable’! I bet. She hardly appears to be literate, let alone literary. Just now I tried to engage her in conversation, I was scrupulously polite to her, and she blushed and gaped at me like an idiot. You’re trusting your papers and manuscripts to an idiot. She speaks some sort of sub-English. She mumbles and wipes her nose on her hand. That tattoo on her face is grotesque. I wouldn’t doubt she is a Ukrainian peasant, or she’s been airlifted from Bosnia, Albania. I hope to God you’re not having her answer your phone, Joshua. Everyone must be laughing at you.”
“Jet, that’s enough. You’re becoming hysterical.”
“I’m hysterical? What about you? Denial is a form of hysteria, like catatonia. You’re deeply into denial, Joshua. Your career is in tatters and you don’t seem to care. This ‘autoimmune’ condition: it’s your own self turning against you. But in destroying yourself you’re destroying others, too. The memory of our family. Our heritage.”
Seigl couldn’t believe what he’d heard: his sister was blaming him for his illness? Your own self turning against you?
Jet said, “I’ve been in denial, too. For much of my life. But I’ve never been so self-destructive as you, Joshua. Because I haven’t your genius, for one thing. Why, this creature ‘Alma’ will be losing your manuscripts, if not stealing them. Can she get her hands on your checkbook? Your credit cards? And you, hiding in here, translating Virgil.”
Virgil was pronounced like Alma, with infinite scorn.
Seigl said, incensed, “Jet, that’s enough. You’re a guest in my house, not a resident. You have no right to abuse my assistant, or me.”
A new, lewd light came into Jet’s eyes.
“That cow is your live-in whore, isn’t she? That’s it.”
Jet was leaning onto the dining room table with both hands balled into fists, as if about to leap at him. Her bloodshot eyes glared, there was a glisten of madness in her face.
One of the Dirae his sister was. Head entwined with coils of snakes and wings to race the wind.
“Jet, come on.”
“What explanation is there for this, otherwise? What would our parents say? An illiterate peasant, Joshua Seigl’s assistant? About as blond-shiksa as you can get? What a joke.”
Seigl knew better than to get into an escalating exchange with his sister who thrilled to such scenes and who navigated arguments like a bat flying and darting by radar. Yet he couldn’t stop himself. He said, infuriated, “You’re being ridiculous and vulgar. I’m not in the habit of bringing women into my house and paying them for sex.”
“How would I know, Joshua? I don’t know my brother any longer. I don’t know your sick, sad heart.”
Jet must have seen something in Seigl’s face to deflect the course of her outrage. Abruptly she ceased her verbal attack, and backed off. She lifted her hands as if to shield her face.
Seigl said, disgusted, “Enough.”
Jet fled upstairs. Seigl heard sobbing. Was it genuine, or simply part of the scene, he had no idea.
Guiltily he went to seek out Alma in his study. His heart was pounding dangerously fast, as it pounded at the onset of one of his attacks. But he couldn’t succumb now. Even before the onset of his symptoms Seigl couldn’t have borne so intense and so demeaning a scene with Jet, or with anyone, without a visceral reaction. He hated raw emotion, melodrama. He hated the willful sabotage of reason, the triumph of the blood.
The door to his study was partway closed but not shut. Had Alma heard? It didn’t seem so. The young woman appeared to be oblivious of Seigl in the doorway, though he was breathing heavily. He was greatly relieved. He saw with what frowning earnestness Alma was inserting manila folders into the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, awkwardly squatting on her haunches. In profile her face was childlike, rapt in concentration; the ugly birthmark, or tattoo as Jet insisted it must be, wasn’t visible.
Seigl thought, She hasn’t heard. She has been spared.
SEIGL WENT UPSTAIRS, and rapped on Jet’s door. When she opened it he was surprised at how much calmer she appeared. She’d rinsed her face, she’d reapplied makeup and was dressing to go out. Seigl said, “Please promise me, Jet, you won’t approach my assistant again? You won’t speak with her?” and Jet said, annoyed, “Of course, Joshua. I promise. You’ve made a decision I can’t understand, but I can respect it. Obviously, I shouldn’t have come here.”
Seigl let these words hover in the air for a beat or two before protesting politely, “Don’t be absurd, Jet. Of course I want you here. It’s just—I’d rather not quarrel.”
Jet laughed lightly. “I’d rather not quarrel.”
Shortly afterward, Jet left the house. She’d called for a taxi and was going to meet a friend in the city and she asked Seigl not to wait dinner for her, or wait up for her. “I have no idea when I’ll be back.” Seigl returned to his translating but was too restless to work. He, too, left the house on a pretext of needing to make purchases in the village. He stayed away for hours. When he returned it was late afternoon, well past dusk. Most of the first floor of his house was darkened, and all that he could see of the second floor. But someone, very likely Alma, had switched on the outside light for him.
Ascending the nineteen stone steps slowly, gripping the wrought iron railing as he climbed, Seigl allowed himself to think that perhaps his sister had departed the house. She might be staying with her mysterious friend. He would feel relief, though also guilt. And some regret.
Your sick, sad heart.
A curious remark for Jet to have made, after having boasted how well she knew him.
As soon as Seigl entered the house he heard voices. A single raised voice.
He listened in horror. He would afterward think of Nietzsche’s aphorism Around the hero, all things turn into tragedy; around the demigod, into a satyr-play. Adding Around Seigl, into farce.
It was Jet, returned to the house, and to a confrontation with Alma. Exactly what she’d promised she would not do. God damn: Seigl was furious. He wanted to strangle the woman.
Seigl hurried to his study at the rear of the house. He heard Jet’s peevish voice, “I’m not going to steal anything, for Christ’s sake. I just want to look through these manuscripts. I have a right.” There came Alma’s faint protest, and Jet interrupted: “Get out of my way. You idiot.” Seigl arrived just in time to see the women struggling. This was ridiculous! Appalled, he saw his sister slap Alma’s face, he saw Alma crouch whimpering, pressing
both hands over her nose; blood trickled through her fingers. Seigl would recall afterward how strangely passive Alma was: she hadn’t shoved Jet away, hadn’t done much more than try to protect herself against Jet’s wild flailing blows. Yet Alma was clearly strong, and might have overpowered Jet if she’d tried.
When she saw Seigl rushing at her, Jet whirled upon him and began slapping. The color was up in her face, obviously she’d been drinking. “You! You’re the cause of this! Traitor! I hate you, Joshua. I’m glad you’re sick—I’ll never forgive you.”
Jet pushed past Seigl and out of the room. You could hear her on the stairs, heavy-footed as an enraged horse.
WITHIN AN HOUR Jet was gone from the house, with her suitcases. Wherever she went that night, to stay with her mysterious friend, or in a hotel, or to fly back to Florida, Seigl neither knew nor cared.
“Enough. No more.”
6
WHERE WHITE SMOKE like steam rises through cracks in the earth.
Where the mines sunk deep inside the earth are burning.
Wind Ridge, Bobtown, McCracken, Cheet were the names of the mines when they had names. When the mines were still being worked, before the fires.
Where do you live, I live in Hell. I am a child of Hell. I am an American and a child of Hell. Ask me if I am happy, I am.
Mostly everybody has moved away. Grass grows wild where the pavement has cracked. Where people have abandoned their houses. The old grammer school. The asphalt playground. Berlin Street, Coalmont. Scottdale, Mount Union, Tire Hill. Where the smoldering is hottest, snow melts as soon as it touches the ground.
Lift up your eyes unto the hills where the vapor rises. Where help comes from the sky. Tall grasses, saplings. The jungle is returning. It’s a gift for those who have refused to leave the Akron Valley, this peace. Old people mostly. Lead me to the still waters, restore my soul. The Anti-Christ is imminent. If the sky darkens, if there is thunder out of silence. A soul is like white smoke rising seeking the Lord. Out of the highway cracked everywhere like ice the smoke is rising like steam. Something breathing. They say that the fires in the mines could have been put out years ago but Akron County failed to act. The State of Pennsylvania failed to act. Why?
The Tattooed Girl Page 13