Private Novelist

by Nell Zink

  I’m trying to remember what book I’ve read that the present book (Sailing Toward the Sunset) reminds me of, and it’s not Possession or Dictionary of the Khazars. I’m afraid it might be Moby-Dick, because of all the jumping around.

  It is every author’s nightmare to provoke comparison to Moby-Dick, whose shoelaces he is not worthy to untie.

  The poets I knew in my teens called such a feeling the “Anxiety of Influence.” It’s what happens when you read “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and get an overwhelming urge to write about your grandfather and snow globes. The term is also applied to the eternal recurrence of metaphors, similes, and rhymes. Its usual form of expression is “Everything has already been written.”

  Once I participated in a poetry workshop.

  My poem begins:

  Sea lions hunt all the time.

  When they’re not hungry, they hunt mali mali.

  Mali mali are big black fish, round in profile.

  They move glacially through the sunny upper layers of the Pacific.

  The sea lions, after biting off a mali mali’s fins, bat it around like a volleyball for a while before letting it sink to the bottom where, alive and helpless, it awaits their return.

  My poem concludes as the sea lions

  . . . whisper, while deciding at which end to begin, quoting Artaud,

  “In the state of degeneracy, in which we live, it is through the skin

  That metaphysics will be made to reenter our minds.”

  “They’re called mahi mahi, and they’re white,” remarked my uncle Charlie, who had told me about them in the first place. “Otherwise, it’s okay.” Years before, he had described to me his harrowing experience watching a seemingly innocent episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in which the events indicated above transpired, and since then I had retailed “the mali mali story” as frequently as possible, never failing to mention both my uncle and Jacques Cousteau. The story, as I saw it, was so compelling that no artistic failure on my part could lessen its power.

  Also attending the poetry workshop, where most of the Anxiety-laden poets strove to combine the stumbling density of Hopkins with the double entendres of Nabokov, was a woman who said her favorite poet was Ogden Nash. Every week she read us her latest oeuvre, generally in eight lines rhymed ABAB CDCD, on the subject of springtime. I considered her hilariously thick, yet illiterate and stupid. How dismayed I was, years later in Washington, D.C., to meet her again and find that she had become an editor of National Geographic. In the intervening years she had acquired oval wire-rimmed glasses like those worn by Yigal and a collection of drab coatdresses, and the look of intelligence this gave her, combined with her absurdly sporty body, beautiful skin, piercing blue eyes, and long blond hair, had gained her a career for which others (me, for example—I had tried and failed to get a job at National Geographic as a clerk typist) were perhaps better qualified. “If everybody in editorial died tomorrow, we could still put it out for five years,” one of her subordinates told me. He was a homely workaholic who had edited his college paper three years in a row.

  In the Anxiety of Influence process, the great literature of the past, by confronting the author with his own mediocrity, destroys his self-esteem. In reaction, the author does his best to evoke this literature as little as possible, while still feeling he must equal it in quality. At his death, diskettes and notebooks are discovered. Each contains two or three short pieces no one has ever read.

  Luckily, I suffer more often from an opposing feeling—the fear of failure to make clear exactly what my unconscious influences are and why I like them so much. Far from publishing a formal disclaimer to the effect that comparisons to Moby-Dick are unwelcome, I would encourage the reader to discard Sailing Toward the Sunset immediately in favor of Moby-Dick, the wit and profundity of which shame all other novels. I welcome any and all influence of my favorite authors, whom I am willing to meet halfway by confessing that if my work ultimately resembles that of Melville in any way, it is as much an accident as if Melville’s work resembled mine.

  Unlike the Anxious writers, I am free to evoke the great literature of the past as often as possible, and without inviting comparison, in the easiest possible way: I mention it, over and over. I am grateful to my models, Possession and Dictionary of the Khazars, for demonstrating the ease with which this can be accomplished.

  I wish I had a copy of Moby-Dick right now, so that I could borrow a few of Melville’s epigrams on the subject of the whale so nearly resembling the mysterious “Mr. Pickwick,” which now nestled comfortably, as though it planned to stay for a long time, on the Mediterranean seafloor.

  CHAPTER 8

  BEFORE DESCRIBING THE ENIGMATIC submarine, I should remind the reader that my aim in Sailing Toward the Sunset is not to create irresistible literary characters, but in deference to my models, Possession and Dictionary of the Khazars, to dispense with such fripperies in pursuit of a higher goal: the suggestion, through breathless innuendo, of an exotic and unverifiable past.

  I turn to Shats’ eighth chapter. It begins on page 213. The novel ends on page 234. This chapter is surely an especially dense one, whose every word carries an ambivalent and multilayered significance, as these twenty-two pages must ultimately carry three-quarters of the hermeneutic weight of the entire book. It begins:

  The angels [could be “queens”] of complaint came to Jamaica in the eighteenth century, and told the committee of virgins: the [?], symbol of reality and [?] of the bitterness of the power structure . . . the two deaths separated by eighty years. . . .

  Hebrew words notoriously have multiple meanings, since each Hebrew word is based on a three-consonant root, and the twenty-three consonants (I don’t think that’s right, but it’s something like twenty-three) yield only 12,167 possible combinations. As I recall, English has at least three times that many words, indicating that each Hebrew word must carry, at the absolute minimum, three English meanings. I.e., the sentence can also be translated:

  Deeply eroded ravines [could be “gutters”] of resignation came to Sicily in despite of the 144 elisions, and told the objectors: the [?], essence of truth and [?] the bad flavor of the fruiting tops . . . the five circles split into eighty fragments. . . .

  Or:

  Cain entreated God for permission to lay down his weapon: but God said, one [?] has brought me here, I cannot be turned back . . . the wind [piped?] in Cain’s ears, loess filled his lungs, he walked in the dust behind Abel, carrying a bag of newly grafted mango seedlings. . . .

  The multivalence of the Hebrew vocabulary, I am told, makes it uniquely suited for poetry. (I have this on the authority of Amir Or, editor of Helicon.) Personal experience, on the other hand, gives me the sad impression that the Hebrew language is narrowly pedantic and precise. The title of Zohar’s book, for example, Shu Hai Practices Throwing the Spear—“It’s not a spear,” Zohar said to me with an air of frustration. “‘Throwing the spear’ is what we call that Olympic field event, the javelin. It’s ‘Shu Hai Practices the Javelin.’”

  Okay, I thought, whatever. Guess that’s bound to happen if spears fall out of daily use.

  Mary and I went down to the old port to look at Mr. Pickwick.

  The old port of Tel Aviv, with its dusty cats, scabby dogs, flaking concrete, deep and opaque berths for ghost ships, etc., is surely worthy of treatment in prose-poetry, that bastard child of television. The style of montage, of snapshots succeeding each other, is similar to the way an inexpensive documentary, where the tripod is carried from place to place while the camera is turned off, might be perceived by someone who is not really paying attention. Certain parties I have attended present themselves to my memory with the benefit of similar editing techniques—I know I was there for ten hours, but all I remember is:

  A small fire of twigs. Why were we building fires? Standing on the dock, I look back at the house and sway. Matthew on an attic cot, shivering and moaning. He does not look up. The hippie-earth-babe chick he’
s seeing—damn her. Splashing of the oars as I am helped into the boat. Two fingers of peppermint schnapps, he is not expecting this, neither am I, on Doug McLeod’s head. Can’t he see I’m already drunk enough?

  Mr. Pickwick–related activity radiated from a yeshiva occupying one of the largest buildings in the port, next to the river. Dozens of buses were parked on the uneven gravel, and a crowd of men in black suits was milling around and sitting on beat-up garden chairs in the shade of the walls. We pressed through to the front, by the sea. “You can’t see anything from here,” Mary said, kicking off her shoes and beginning to unbutton her blouse.

  I stopped her. No one should swim anywhere near the mouth of the Yarqon. We returned through the crowd to a sort of reception desk, where a few pictures of our King and Messiah were hanging decorated with Sukkoth streamers and tinsel. “You must be here for the disco,” the staffer said sympathetically. He pointed us one building over.

  As we approached we could hear the fast, monotonous, irritating high drone of techno music over the idling of the buses. A pimply, hollow-chested young man stopped us at the door. “Do you have tickets?”

  “We’re looking for information about Mr. Pickwick. Have you seen anything?”

  “We’re waiting here for Mr. Pickwick,” he said, gesturing toward the interior. The pitch and volume rose in a whooping, tense curve, and I could hear yelling from the dance floor. “We think Mr. Pickwick will come soon. The tickets are seventy shekels, you can get them at the white shipping container on the other side.”

  “Thanks,” we said, sidling away.

  “I want to see Mr. Pickwick,” Mary said, leaning on the seawall. “Can you watch my stuff?” She climbed over, gave me her clothes, and dove out past the rocks into the surf, suddenly looking very tiny and white in her black silk underwear. She didn’t come back up. I waited two hours, then wandered home, feeling sort of stupid for waiting. I put her clothes in a paper bag with her other possessions (another set of clothes, a toothbrush of Yigal’s) and set them by the door. I mean, I dug around for a while, but that’s all I could find. I thought, This can’t be all she has, there must be more. I cried a few tears, thinking of the lonely and vulnerable seal-girl adrift in a hot, dry world, then let her in the door around seven P.M. She was glowing with the exercise, fanning herself with a newspaper.

  “I am so glad to see you!” I cried, hugging her closely, her damp bra leaving two spots on my shirt. “What was it like?”

  “Well, it’s true what they say, it’s huge. It’s completely black, metal. I went all around it, every side and the bottom, and there’s not a mark on it, except, well, except something I’m not sure I should say—you know how dolphins are supposed to be really smart?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, they aren’t so smart—I mean, they have a language and everything, they read and write, but that isn’t what makes a person smart. I know you’re a Dolphin Star priestess and everything, so I feel really bad about telling you this . . .”

  “What? Wouldn’t you rather I know the truth?”

  “Well, you know the way the whole human race thinks dolphins are totally wise and, like, cosmic? And the seals sort of like it that way, it keeps you guys off our backs. So I’m not sure—do you promise not to tell?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “I hate dolphins.” She sighed. “It was covered with personal ads. Really gross, explicit ones, the kind where they get really specific about who’s going to put what where and how many—”

  “Gross,” I said. “You mean they were printed ads, or just written on there, or what?”

  “Graffiti,” she said. “Mostly. It’s a new medium—ships with that antibiotic paint haven’t been around that long. It’s bringing the oceans closer together I guess, and everybody says it’s a good thing, but nobody knows where it’s going to lead. If this is any evidence—ick. It’s so typical of those stupid dolphins to spoil everything. I need coffee.” She started for the kitchen.

  “Mary,” I said. “So if dolphins are so bad, then what’s really the wisest animal in the sea? Is it seals?”

  “Starfish,” she said without hesitation.

  “Seals eat starfish,” I objected.

  “We do not! We venerate starfish!” She shook her head so that her wet hair slapped against the wall. “Starfish are wise. Starfish are gentle. We only eat fish and birds, though I personally never eat birds. No seal would ever, ever, ever eat a starfish.” She emphasized each of the last few words by stomping her foot.

  “I guess I was thinking of sea otters.”

  “Nobody eats starfish.”

  “But, Mary, it’s true. Now I remember, the sea otters fold them up so all the sticky suckers are on the inside, and then they eat it like a Popsicle.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “You are not a nice person.” She glanced into the bag with her clothes, grabbed it, and left. A minute later I heard the door of Yigal’s apartment slam, and that’s the last I saw of Mary until four days later.

  This next scene actually took place in Yigal’s bed, but I am informed by Shats that the vast majority of scenes in Israeli fiction take place in cemeteries, so we’ll say instead that Yigal and Mary were holding hands as they walked on noisy gravel past the blazing white stones and skinny cypresses of the old cemetery on the south side of Tel Aviv. They rested for a moment in the shade under an aluminum canopy, and he fetched her a cup of water. Several aisles away a funeral was going on. The naked body of a middle-aged woman, wrapped in a sheet, was slowly vanishing under half a ton of sand. Yigal lay on his back, watching a reflection on the ceiling. Mary drank with her head on a pillow, dribbling water down her chin. He turned toward her and asked, “How did you get here, anyway? Swim?”

  “No, I flew. On an airplane.”

  “What sort of passport?”

  “Canadian.”

  “How’d you get that?”

  “I bought it.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So where do you get all this money?”

  “You promise you won’t tell? Don’t be mad.”

  He kissed her fingertips and so on as though he had no intention of telling or being mad, but actually he was thinking about whores, gambling, and cocaine, and hoping her career involved gambling. Credit-card fraud was another acceptable alternative; arms dealing was something he was used to, spying a possibility, though he didn’t think she was a spy any more than she was a silkie from the Shetland Islands . . .

  “Well, it’s like this, you know how silkies are sort of magical, and when you’re sort of magical, there are things you can do?”

  “Cut to the chase.”

  “Well, if I think really hard about money, I find it in my pocket. Most silkies just live off guys, but I don’t think that’s fair. To the guys, I mean, but also I think it’s degrading to be always asking guys for money.”

  “So you find it in your pocket. Which pocket?”

  “Usually my pants. The back pocket, here.” She patted her butt.

  “I understand.” Yigal nodded. “I get money by mailing it to myself.”

  “Cool!” She seemed impressed.

  “No, seriously, you think about it and it’s there?”

  “Sure. Like, right now, I am thinking about a hundred shekels for groceries.”

  “Why don’t you think about fifty thousand shekels and buy a car?”

  “Can you drive?”

  “Sure.”

  She got up and went over to her pants. “Here. Wait, I don’t think this is fifty thousand. Maybe fifty thousand won’t fit in my pocket.”

  “You’re right,” Yigal said, counting the money. “This is only ninety-four hundred.” He threw it to the floor and took her in his arms. “Skip the pants. Go for a million shekels in the laundry hamper.”

  Yigal was not a freier, so that after he lost hope of getting a straight answer out of this mysterious woman whom he liked so very much regardless, he j
ust changed the subject, and not being a freier, he didn’t immediately go and look in the laundry hamper either. He waited until the next time she was in the bathroom. He stuffed it back in without counting it.

  After a decent interval (I think it took him two days), Yigal said: “Please marry me. I really hate my job.” They had gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to Café Tolaat Sfarim.

  “Of course,” Mary replied. “If I didn’t want to marry you, I never would have told you about any of it. I know you really love me. Otherwise you would just ask me for like a billion dollars and hit the road.”

  When I told Zohar about it, he said, “Tell that girl I need forty thousand dollars to buy a big white Lincoln Town Car.” His voice was thick and slurred. “I’m cold. Where did you say those camel people are?” He was still seventy miles shy of the Nepalese border. “You tell that girl, tell that girl I need forty thousand dollars, buy me a Hummer. Baby, do you have a sweater I can borrow?”

  “Hold on, Zohar,” I said. “I’m coming to save you.”

  “Don’t do that. It’s only seventy more miles. Get there by tomorrow. Wish me luck, baby, I’m gonna need it. Got a glacier in the way. Ouch.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Hangnail . . .”

  I waited a minute and finally said, “Don’t keep me on the line while you play with it. Satellite phone time is expensive.” We exchanged vows of love and hung up, but I was starting to worry. It occurred to me that getting Zohar home from Bhutan in time to teach the fall semester might be more complicated than anyone had thought.

  CHAPTER 9

  I WAS SLOW IN FALLING ASLEEP LAST night and awoke at six, unable to shake the uneasy feeling that I had somehow involved myself in something unutterably sordid, and that I was surrounded by death. I’m pretty sure this happened because Zohar rented Taxi Driver. The same thing happened a month ago when I saw a VH1 documentary about Studio 54.