There was something else in that museum that got to us. It was the marble centerpiece of an ancient fountain. It consisted of a man’s face, eyes wide open, mouth stretched in the largest, most desperate scream ever. Looking at it, one could almost hear the scream. It was not a pleasant object, and though we could not resist its pull, we turned away as quickly as possible. So gratuitous, we thought to ourselves, wishing to return to the courtyard within the courtyard.
But when the soldiers invade the museum, the expression on the fountain’s face ceases to be gratuitous. The fountain screams as the fresco comes crashing down, as the soldiers make off with brilliant red fragments. Across the city, trapped in dim, stifling rooms, we suddenly become capable of evil.
regime #4
During a terrible war, a woman sits alone in an auditorium. On the stage are two men. Both men look exactly like her husband. One is her husband. The other is an imposter, a talented actor whose skills have been co-opted by the regime for this very game. She must identify one of them as her husband. If she picks correctly, her husband will hop off the stage, will stroll with her to their apartment, will eat the illegal pear she’s been saving for the occasion. Their home will smell richly of black-market coffee; they’ll sit on the sun-stained couch while the sun sinks. If she picks incorrectly, her husband will be shot in the plaza.
The men wear identical black sweaters, jeans, sneakers. Both are six days’ unshaven. Both are equally tall. Both have dark hair, brown eyes. Both have a wrinkle running vertical between their eyebrows. Both have clammy skin under the stage lights. At first they stand before her with bowed heads, as though each expects her to recognize him immediately. There’s no hint coming from one that does not also come from the other. The slight sloping of the shoulders, the slight curve in the spine: these markers that lie in the skeleton itself do not help her, for one of these men has studied the other and understands everything about his body. They may say only one word. It must be the same word, agreed upon beforehand, spoken simultaneously. They say it, and she stiffens; she has not been called this in a while. But it doesn’t serve as a clue. They both look at her with imploring, tender eyes. Shouldn’t she be able to see on his face, like a filmstrip playing across it, the memories to which only he and she are privy?
She is given one minute in which to make her decision. The loudspeakers inform her that fifteen seconds remain. Both men gaze at her with familiar, infinite, identical love. Slowly, terribly, she raises her arm, unfurls her finger, and points.
regime #5
Please be warned that an essential piece of information will be withheld from you until the very last instant. In the meantime, your heart will beat too quickly. You’ll wake parched and unsure.
In order to distract yourself from this circumstance, we strongly recommend that you pile everything you own in the living room. When your spouse reacts with dismay, pretend you’re not daunted by what you’ve done. Maintain a cheerful, flippant exterior. Adhere to the following guidelines: Get rid of an object if it’s been over a year since you used it, if it has holes, if it’s a meaningless wedding gift, a knickknack, a birthday card, a magazine, a CD, a book . . . Don’t you feel better already? Now’s the time to disregard your spouse’s scared, compassionate eyes, to playfully salute your spouse, shouting “Hiya there, sport, howdya like the mighty wind of change blowin’ through our digs?” Continue to work even as your spouse stares at you. Don’t be surprised if your spouse goes to the kitchen, maybe even to the liquor cabinet, and doesn’t return for a long time, if ever. You’ll come upon things that initially strike you as magical (Christmas lights encased in scallop shells, red bracelets from faraway continents, a plastic eggplant), but don’t be seduced by such ephemera. Gather these “precious” objects and take them to the street. Let the vultures descend in the form of your neighbors. When everything’s gone except a few old shirts, don’t let those shirts—slumping over the sides of the cardboard boxes, their arms splayed in gestures of supplication—pull on your heartstrings. Somebody will claim them soon; no guarantees about who it will be, nor how that person will treat them, but this is precisely what we are trying to teach: Avoid sentimentality. Don’t get bogged down in your emotions; remember, they’re just chemicals and synapses.
It is at this time that the crucial piece of information will no longer be withheld. Now we’ll reveal to you the exact instant at which you shall ___.
regime #6
Because our government is concerned about the low number of infants being produced by our population on an annual basis, a National Reproduction Day is declared, and the lights in the subways are turned to their lowest, rosiest setting. Slender white candles are given out free of charge. All married citizens of childbearing age are ordered to stay home. It is mandated that liquor stores remain open until midnight the evening before. Chocolate and strawberries are sold half price. The streets are strewn with rose petals. The aged and unmarried members of the Symphony play Tchaikovsky’s most extravagant melodies in the square. Young wives are informed that the Prime Minister wishes them to wear their most provocative garments to the breakfast table. Young husbands are reminded that women are most sensitive at the nape of the neck. Banners containing romantic slogans are hung across the highways.
But I don’t wear anything provocative to the breakfast table. Instead, in honor of National Reproduction Day, we sit naked on our sun-bleached couch. Your penis is limp and my breasts sag, as though we are already old. We hear strains of Tchaikovsky stretching down the alleyways; we notice the sadness beneath the lushness. The sun casts pale, unvigorous light across the wooden floor. We conclude, somewhat smugly, that we are different from everyone else. We do not wish to drink champagne at this hour. We are not particularly grateful to have a day blocked off for this purpose. It happens to us bizarrely, while washing the dishes or upon waking from nightmares. Honestly, we’d rather do laundry today. But if we were to be seen outside—a young, healthy, fertile couple—surely we would be apprehended and sent back to our bedroom. Even so! We gather our laundry; heavily laden, rebellious, nervous, snapping at each other and then apologizing, we make our way through the empty, moaning city until we find an open laundromat. It is packed with many young, healthy, fertile couples, heavily laden, rebellious, nervous, snapping at each other and then apologizing.
regime #7
They order us to grow raspberries on our windowsills. We don’t know what motivates this law. We do know it’s been a long time since supermarkets carried raspberries; our children wouldn’t recognize them. Our memories flit around something: a hill somewhere, raspberry brambles over fragrant dirt, a thrilled, frightened person, the unfamiliar sensation of abundance, a stomachache, a good night’s sleep. This is the extent of our knowledge about raspberries—so how can we be expected to grow them ourselves? We lose sleep over this, as over everything. Restless and sad, we search the cupboards of cramped kitchens where no moonlight reaches.
Raspberry seeds arrive in government envelopes. We’re embarrassed by our overwhelming feeling of gratitude. We praise the regime for being so organized. Another blessing: the seeds come with instructions. We obey. We buy pots and dirt, sweating in long supermarket lines. If the stakes were lower, we’d let our children plant the seeds but, under the circumstances, we do it with our own trembling fingers.
There’s a certain pleasure in watering the dirt while our children look on with thrilled, frightened eyes. Yet as the weeks pass, we curse the weak sunlight, so unlike the thick sunbeams of our childhood. Alone, at night, we pray they put families in one prison cell. And then: most joyous day. A green shoot. The following months are the best in recent memory. Things grow and unfurl. Our children clap and hoot. We try to enjoy their happiness without reflecting on the fact that they’re too easily impressed. Suddenly, miraculously: three tiny hard green raspberries. Breathless, we watch the slow blush spread. Soon men with guns will appear, asking for raspberries, and we—we shall deliver! We teach our children to do so
mersaults across the bed. The raspberries become large and bright, sagging on green stems, desirable.
So when the knock comes at our door, when we rush to fetch our three raspberries, it’s hard to know who to blame, who to hate, since we’ve all considered eating them at one time or another.
regime #8
When the man in the navy blue suit returned to the town, this is what he found: a tangle of dead rosebushes, blossoms shriveled like the ears of old women, a metallic sound as hot wind moved among the thorns. He stood there in fury. His briefcase slipped from his perspiring fingers. He fell asleep and dreamed of an air-conditioner. A white hotel room. A place where a plan was hatched to save a nation. After a few seconds, he awoke and collected himself. He picked up his briefcase. He knocked on every door. No one answered. Curtains flickered in upstairs rooms. This town—it was a coy woman vanishing into a dying rose bramble.
“Townspeople!” he shouted. “Dear townspeople!” He fell asleep and dreamed of someone slipping off the back of a stampeding giraffe. A funny, horrible dream. He awoke. “I would have changed your lives!” he cried out.
He still had his charts and his graphs, and was tempted to pull them out again. He’d shown them here months ago, right in this very place, to a crowd of skinny, nervously laughing townspeople. He’d spoken of the benefits of perfume versus opium; he’d evoked for them regal women ravenous for expensive rosebased fragrances with which to cover their animal odors. Sweating, he’d brought forth infant rosebushes from the van in which he’d journeyed hundreds of miles over sandy roads. But his beautiful charts and graphs—they’d already been used here—they were no longer potent—now they were merely paper and colored ink—humbly explaining and expounding upon the best idea anyone had ever had.
Yet look at this. These roses. Crippled, curled like fetuses.
The man in the navy blue suit dropped his briefcase. He fell asleep and dreamed of a field of such red poppies. They were enormous, exploding. They had no fragrance, yet the color itself resembled a smell. It was tempting, then irresistible, to step forth. He awoke. There was a field of red poppies. Among them stood one skinny townsperson, staring at him with angry, puzzling eyes.
regime #9
Rumors fly. “The average citizen, during sleep, eats eight spiders over the course of a lifetime” . . . “eats ten spiders each month” . . . “eats twenty-five spiders each night.” We’re uncomfortable, afraid; we wonder what these spiders want with us. Desiring truth and order, an anonymous benefactor hires a fleet of detectives. These detectives can pick any lock. They wear black garments that make them invisible after dark. They are respectful and professional. Respectfully, they break into homes across the nation; make their way down hallways; enter bedrooms. Sometimes they take the liberty of gently pulling on the chin of a closed mouth, opening it to the ideal position. After pushing away stuffed animals and strewn clothing, they crouch beside beds. They watch. They wait. They gather statistics. Before leaving, they return our objects to the original messy position. The detectives sigh at the chaos of our bedrooms; it’s not pleasant for them to see how we live, for they are meticulous men, tidy, precise, as evidenced by the dense numbers on their graph paper.
Sometimes, though, there’s a detective who, unbeknownst to himself, has two minutes’ worth of dreaminess in him. A random bedroom, a random citizen, mouth flung open, moonlight glowing on teeth. Shimmering with saliva, a pathway into the velvet darkness of the interior. The tongue as welcome mat. One senses the interior calling to oneself. One imagines oneself traveling up the neck, around the chin, over the lip. In short, one begins to think like a spider. Horrified, the detective rises from his crouch, knocking over a lamp. Ought he add another mark to the graph paper, or ought he not? Did a spider enter this mouth, or did it not? He doesn’t know! He has never not known! In the morning, someone is bemused to find the lamp fallen, the bathrobe folded, a sheet of graph paper covered in meaningless markings.
The results of this study are never made public. They are inconclusive, revealing nothing, and many good men were ruined in the process.
regime #10
In our country, where many things have been decreed, it has now also been decreed that laundry may not be hung outside to dry. No straight answer will be given us as to why, but surely it has something to do with eyesores and property values, dryer manufacturers and electricity corporations. Meanwhile, our clotheslines sway longingly in the breeze, gleam mournfully in the sunlight. We crave the stiffness of clothing dried outside. We’ve always believed there’s nothing quite as wistful as a clothesline hung with the garments of an entire family—bright colors and dull, striped, checkered, paisley, polka-dotted, flapping over the backyards, telling stories through large bras and small pajamas and holey undershirts. Not to mention clothespins! They look so archaic, and serve their purpose so single-mindedly. They remind us of long, weird insects, or of can-can girls with more leg than torso. At the laundromat, we sigh as we drop coins in the dryer. Those damn dryers! They devour quarter after quarter and then our laundry emerges fuzzy and shrunken.
Today, an old woman in our neighborhood hung her laundry out to dry. Her huge wonderful underwear looks like the handkerchiefs of gods, up there against the blue sky. We see her lavender sheets, her black dresses, her unrecognizable undergarments from another century (the word ‘bustier’ comes to mind, and ‘girdle,’ though we’re unclear on all of it). We stand in our backyards, staring. How satisfying to see, after this awful hiatus, a clothesline in use. We watch her clothing dry like those folks who watched paint dry. The wind tugs on her odd undergarments. Her lavender sheets swell like the bellies of pregnant women. Her black dresses roast and steam in the sun. We use her clothing for clues: it proves that she has lost her husband, that she is very lonely, that she is indestructible. By the time her laundry is nearly dry, she is dear to us, but already the furious sirens are howling several blocks away, and soon she will no longer be among us.
regime #11
Tourists from our country are astonished to discover that here, in your country, light does not have density. Our grandparents spoke longingly of a time when the light in our country did not weigh down on everyone. This is why we go to your greatest bridge. We walk to the middle, where those stone archways reach upward. We put down our snakeskin suitcases, still papered with stamps from customs. We take off our brown felt hats and finger the rims. We observe the way the sun strikes the cables of the bridge. These cables seem far too delicate, gleaming in sunbeams, to do what they’re doing. We look at the water, where the light becomes playful, glinting in and among tiny waves. For us, it is all so difficult to believe. A wind swells up and blows litter in our direction: a discarded ice-cream sandwich wrapper, a yellow plastic bag, a fistful of lettuce covered in mustard. These objects glisten in the light, and we are delighted. “Icey creamy sandiewichie,” we say in our embarrassing accents.
Then we turn our attention to the people of your country. We notice that the beautiful young boys and beautiful young girls wear large sunglasses to hide their eyes from the beautiful light. Imagine that! These girls and boys walk in slow motion, letting the wind do what it wishes with their skirts and t-shirts. We do not understand why your young people are not smiling. And we get worried when we see the young boys pressing the young girls against the glowing cables of the bridge. We picture the worst: lean beautiful bodies shooting toward the water, illuminated for a few seconds by the incredible sun. We have the urge to chide the boys: “Boy be you careful Girl!”
But then we remember that we are in a country where such things do not happen, where light is not heavy, where sun and wind and water and cables interact without agony, where the young cannot simply fall off great bridges into bright water.
the punishments
punishment #1
In the subway, you’re somewhere on the spectrum from fat to skinny, old to young, ugly to beautiful. Like thousands of others, you have dark hair, decent posture, a zit, a cold, a chip
on your shoulder. Like thousands of others, you have light hair, bad posture, bloodshot eyes, a hangover, a pleasant disposition, a fetus growing inside you. Like thousands of others, you’re stuffed, you’re hungry, you’ve hurt someone terribly, someone has hurt you terribly. You and a hundred men are trying to read the newspaper. You and a hundred women are trying to decipher the graffiti. It is peaceful. You are not the radiant resplendent unique individual they lied about when you were in preschool. Children shriek with delight or rage as they swing around the poles in the subway car, and it’s obvious that all children are the same child. You lean back in the plastic seat. Tired, like everyone.
Then he boards the train. He wears purple sweatpants, beat-up sneakers, a tuxedo jacket, a bowtie. His face is two-weeks unshaven. His haircut is elegant. There’s something evil in his face; you’re grateful for the anonymity of the subway. He’s the kind of man who carries the invisible knives of a criminal, or the invisible badge of a government spy. If he’s not dangerous in one way, he’s dangerous in the other. You sit in your seat like any person sitting in a seat.
But. He comes toward you. The other passengers shrink away, letting your uniqueness shine. He smells like a gorilla wearing cologne. It is you, exactly you, that he’s here for. His teeth are yellowed just for you, to that same sunny color as the walls of your childhood kitchen. He has long eyelashes and long nosehairs. He stands above you. Your heart is a fawn, tripping over the underbrush as it tries to escape. It stumbles, falls. You have been found. Your heart beats in your brain like a hand pounding hard on a door in the middle of the night.
And Yet They Were Happy Page 11