The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
Page 35
Plus rent. Plus utilities … Yes, tonight the stage of a concert hall, a tuxedo. A party, champagne, adulation. But tomorrow it was back to cat fur.
The waiter arrived with a second plate for him, huge and unexpected. A pretty selection of things that seemed to have been cooked in the broth. Mmm. Shapiro leaned into the light of his hanging lamp to poke around at it—carrots, onions, white beans, cabbage, celery, a small … haunch, something that looked … like … a snout …
One of the men at the next table chuckled softly. Shapiro glanced at them involuntarily again, and they stared back, their faces framing the teardrop of light from their hanging lamp. Then one of them, still staring, reached up and unscrewed the bulb.
The enfeebled musicians threw themselves on García-Gutiérrez’s last, idiotic, triumphal chord. What had happened? Shapiro felt as though he’d awakened to find himself squatting naked in a glade, blinking up at a chortling TV crew that had just filmed him gnawing a huge bone. Had he played well or badly? He hardly knew. He’d played in a frenzy—the banal sonorities, the trivial purposes, the trashy approximations of treasures forged in the inferno of other composers’ souls. Lacerating ribbons of notes streamed from his hands as he tried to flog something out of the piece, but it had simply sat there over them all—a great, indestructible, affirming block of suet.
The sparse audience stopped fanning themselves with their programs and made some little applause. Seething with confusion and misery, Shapiro stood to take his bow, and caught a glimpse of a man who could only be García-Gutiérrez, opaque and dignified in the face of tribute. At the sight, Shapiro reexperienced the frictional response of his skin, seventeen years earlier, to the man’s blandishments, like an acquiescence to unwelcome sensual pleasure.
Outside, Penwad resumed his post at Shapiro’s elbow. “We’ll just stick around here for a few minutes,” he said nervously, “then round everyone up and get going to the reception. Oh. I don’t believe you’ve met. Joan.”
“That was lovely,” Joan said. “Just lovely. You know, we looked for you at your hotel today. We felt sure you’d want to see our Institute of Indigenous Textiles.”
“Oh, Lord—” Shapiro floundered. “Yes! No, absolutely. I—”
“We left messages at the desk,” Penwad said.
“Well,” Joan said. “Those people at the desk …”
Night had ennobled the Center. Musicians and members of the audience milled about in the uncertain radiance of stars and klieg lights. A slow, continuous combustion of garbage sent up bulletins of ruin from the hut-blistered gorges, which were quickly snuffed out by the fragrance drifting down from the garlanded slopes of the Gold Zone.
Penwad pointed out various luminaries. There was a Cultural Attaché, a Something Attaché, several Somethings from the Department of Something—it was all a matter for experts.
“And do you see the lady over there?” Joan said, nodding discreetly in the direction of a stunning woman with arched eyebrows and a bloodred mouth. She was bending toward a boy who appeared to be about fifteen. “Our hostess. The reception for you is at her house. And her son. Well, as you see. They’re identical. You’ll enjoy talking to him. Perfect English—he’s going to boarding school up in the States, and he just loves it. He loves to meet our visitors. The father’s cattle, you know. Special, special people. Josefina’s a marvel. You’re not going to believe the house. She’s a real force behind culture here. And, you can imagine, some of these wives …”
“Wonderful people,” Penwad said. “And of course you two know each other from way back.”
García-Gutiérrez had joined them, murmuring thanks to Shapiro. He was as handsome as before, though he’d be over sixty—a great tree of a man, at which age was hacking away fruitlessly.His loaflike body was still powerful; his long arms and legs, the musculature so emphatic one felt aware of its operations beneath the very correct clothing, the straining neck and jaws, the hooded eyes. “I feel that you brought something new to my music tonight,” he was saying. “Something of a darkness, perhaps.” In the man’s lingering examination Shapiro felt the blind focusing, adversarial and comprehending, the arousal of the hunter. “Very interesting …”
Oh, that night seventeen years earlier! When it was reasonable for Shapiro to assume that he himself was going to be one of the favored. That he, too, would be respected, dignified, happy … The audience that night! How gratifying Shapiro had found their ardor then, how loathsome now, in memory. How thrilled they had been, seeing their own bright reflection in all the weightless glitter.
“We’ll talk more, you and I, at the reception,” García-Gutiérrez whispered, and glided off with Penwad and Joan to a huddle of musicians, who watched their approach with alarm.
Shapiro’s heart jumped and blazed. People were beginning to float toward the parking lot. He played better now than he had then, but it made no difference—no difference at all. And those nights at the stage door; the faces, golden in the light, diamond earrings winking in the gold light … All the beautiful women. Gone now. No matter. What was it they’d adored? Those ardent glances, warm in the glow of his fame, the first shock, at the stage door, of Caroline’s great, light eyes. Affirming, affirming—oh, what was he to do? They couldn’t even put him in the decent hotel! Caroline was walking down the street. She wore a dainty little dress. The sun was on her hair, but black shadows swung overhead, and battling armies clanged behind her in the dust. Men and women lay on the sidewalk, their torn clothing exposing sticky lesions. One of them shifted painfully and held out a disintegrating paper cup. Caroline paused, opened her purse, and took out a quarter.
“Are you all right?” someone asked. Shapiro blinked, and saw the boy, the son of the woman who was having the reception. “You must be famished.” He regarded Shapiro with the merry, complicitous look of a young person who anticipates approval. “What a workout for you, I think, that piece of G.-G.’s. But we’ll have plenty of food back at home—the cooks have been racing around all day. Oh! Well, look at this. He’s smart. He brought his own.” The boy directed an amused glance toward Beale, who was ambling toward them, disemboweling an orange.
“Hello,” Shapiro said. The boy’s tone—despicable. He hoped Beale hadn’t caught it.
“Would you care for any?” Beale said. “I’m afraid it’s somewhat …” He nodded to the boy, who nodded distantly back. “You know,” he said to Shapiro, “I’m sorry if I lost my bottle a bit last night. I tend to go on, from time to time, about one thing and another. Hope I said nothing to offend.”
“Not at all,” Shapiro said. It made no difference at all.
“Good good.” A pink and rumpled smile wandered across Beale’s face. “Goody goody.”
Beale was making a complete mess of his orange. A small piece of peel had lodged in his webby tie. The boy was looking at it. “Oh,” Beale said, glancing up. “Sorry. Difficult to handle. You know, it’s strange about oranges, isn’t it? They’re so alluring. Irresistible, really. I mean, that color, for example—orange. And the glossiness. And that delicious smell they have. But it’s all very strange. I mean, what good does it do them? They can’t enjoy it. At least, so one supposes. All their deliciousness, do they get any fun out of it? No. It only gets them eaten. Isn’t that strange? I mean, what is it for, from their point of view? I suppose you might ask the same of a flower. Flowers have sort of got it all, don’t they. Looks, scent … But they have absolutely no way to appreciate that!” He giggled. “For all we know, they think of themselves as grotesque.”
The boy was considering Beale with a dreamy, meditative look. His stare idled among the stains on Beale’s suit. “Excuse me,” he said. He smiled briefly at Shapiro. “I should go find some of our”—he glanced at Beale—“guests.”
Beale gasped. “Did you hear that?” he said. “Little swine. Vicious little prick. As if I were going to crash the party! As if anyone could crash their fucking miserable party—they’ll have half the fucking army at the gate.”
“It’s Joan,” Shapiro said, hesitating. He heard his name again. “Just a moment!” he called out. “Just a moment,” he said to Beale. “I’ve got to—”
“Little putrid viper,” Beale was saying, as Shapiro hurried off.
“We’re ready to leave now,” Joan said cheerily as Shapiro approached. “Everyone’s gone down to the parking lot.”
“Just a moment,” he said. “I’ll be right—”
“Don’t be long,” she sang with warning gaiety, and tweaked the lapel of his tuxedo.
“I’ll be right—” he said. A tuxedo! He might just as well be wearing grease-stained overalls with his name embroidered on the pocket. “One more minute.” He hurried back to find Beale, but Beale had disappeared.
“Hello?” Shapiro said. “Hello? I just wanted to—” But where could Beale have gone to? How arrogant that young boy was! How—Well, and the fact was, Shapiro thought, a man in livery could hardly afford to turn up his nose at a sloppy suit. “Hello?” he said again.
For a moment there was just a gentle surf of night noises, but then Shapiro made out Beale’s voice, faint, very faint. Following the sound, he saw Beale, a dark shape, crouched in the corner of a concrete trough that must have been intended as some sort of reflecting pool.
Beale was speaking into his tape recorder. His voice had a stealthy, incantatory tone. “And now …” But the little noises of the night were washing away his words. “… take you to the party I promised you. It’s … prominent family here.”
There was an oily stain, or fissure, Shapiro saw, at the bottom of the trough. “And any important artist from … And what a beautiful … high, white … and tasteful objets d’art. But tonight … to take you out into the …”
Shapiro stood as still as he could and strained to hear.
“How lovely it …” Beale crooned into the machine. “Fountains, flowers … And … of chirpings! Croakings! Can you hear, my darling?”
Beale held the tape recorder up in the lifeless trough. Shapiro shuddered—a slight chill was coming down from the mountains.
“And those other sounds—do you hear?” Beale said. His voice was growing louder or Shapiro’s ears were adjusting, seeking out the words. “The little plashings?” Beale said. “The fountain, yes, but what else? Not Spanish. But a language, yes! Just so. A language that’s much, much older.
“Yes, because we’re right across from the servants’ quarters. And right there, on the servants’ portico, the children are playing. The Indian children. Their mothers are all inside, serving little goodies to the guests. Can you hear the chatter behind us, of the guests?” Shapiro closed his eyes. Yes, he could hear it, the chatter, the pointless chatter. And smell the orange-scented garden. Yes—and he could see the children, just beyond the fountain, with their black, black hair, and shrewd, ravishing little faces.
“Good,” Beale said. “Yes. And one of the children has a piece of stone or crockery. The others whisper together. They’re joining hands—they seem to be inventing a game, don’t they? Or reinventing. Some sort of game. Maybe they remember …”
Shapiro’s name floated up from the parking lot. They were beginning to shout for him. Yes, yes, he thought fiercely, and held up a hand as though both to forestall and to shush them. In a moment … He sat down, as quietly as he could manage, on the cool concrete. Another moment and he’d go.
“When I first came to this country,” Beale was telling the tape recorder, “the sky was a blue dome over the highlands. People had more food then, and weren’t so afraid. When you went hiking through the villages, suddenly there would be a waterfall, and fifty, a hundred, two hundred women, swaying along the mountain, coming to do their washing.”
Ah! Along the mountain, coming closer. Their faces were in shadow still, and indistinct. But any minute, any minute now …
“I wanted to speak to them,” Beale said. “But how could I? I was only an apparition! But—are you listening, my darling? I know they’re still there—they’ll always be there, beyond the curtain of blood.” Beale stretched himself out in the trough, tucking the tape recorder under his head like a pillow, and a delicious sensation of rest poured into Shapiro’s body. “I’m tired now.” Beale patted the tape recorder. “I think I’ll sleep. But it’s going to be all right. Because the first thing. In the morning. When the sun is up again and shining? I’ll start back off to them. And finally we’ll speak. Please be there with me. They’ll be so happy. I know they will. Because everyone has something, some little thing, my darling, they’ve been waiting so long to tell you …”
BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
B.I. #59 04-98
Harold R. and Phyllis N. Engman Institute
for Continuing Care
Eastchester NY
‘As a child, I watched a great deal of American television. No matter of where my father was being posted, it seemed always that American television was available, with its glorious and powerful women performers. Perhaps this was one more advantage of the importance of my father’s work to the defenses of the state, for we had privileges and lived comfortably. The television program I most preferred then was to watch Bewitched, featuring the American performer Elizabeth Montgomery. It was as a child, while watching this television program, that I experienced my first erotic sensations. It was not for several years, until late in my adolescence, that I was able, however, to trace my sensations and fantasies backward to these episodes of Bewitched and my experiences as the viewer when the protagonist, Elizabeth Montgomery, would perform a circular motion with her hand, accompanied by the sound of a zither or harp, and produce a supernatural effect in which all motion ceased and all the television program’s other characters suddenly were frozen in mid-gesture and were oblivious and rigid, lacking all animation. In these instances time itself appeared to cease, leaving Elizabeth Montgomery free alone to maneuver at her will. Elizabeth Montgomery employed this circular gesture within the program only as a desperate resort to help save her industrialist husband, Darion, from the political disasters which would come if she were exposed as a sorcerer, a frequent threat in the episodes. The program of Bewitched was poorly dubbed, and many details of the narratives I, at my age, did not understand. Yet my fascinations were attached to this great power to freeze the time of the program in its tracks, and to render all the other witnesses frozen and oblivious while she went about her rescue tactics among living statues whom she could again reanimate with the circular gesture when the circumstances called for this. Years later, I began, like many adolescent boys, to masturbate, creating erotic fantasies of my own construction in my imagination as I did so. I was a weak, unathletic, and somewhat sickly adolescent, a scholarly and dreamy youth more like my father, of nervous constitution and little confidence or social outgoingness in those years. It is little wonder that I sought compensation for these weaknesses in erotic fantasies in which I possessed supernatural powers over the women of my choosing in these fantasies. Linked heavily to this childhood program of Bewitched, these masturbation fantasies’ connection to this television program were unknown to me. I had forgotten this. Yet, I learned too well the insupportable responsibilities which come along with power, responsibilities whose awesomeness I have since learned to decline in my adult life since arriving here, which is a story for another time. These masturbation fantasies took their setting from the settings of our actual existences during these times, which were located at the many different military posts to which my father, a great mathematician,brought us, his family, along. My brother and I, separated in age by less than one year, were nevertheless dissimilar in most things. Often, my masturbation fantasies took their settings from the State Exercise Facilities which my mother, a former competitive athlete in youth, religiously attended, exercising enthusiastically each afternoon no matter of where my father’s duties brought us to live for that time. Willingly accompanying
her to these facilities on most afternoons of our lives was my brother, an athletic and vigorous person, and often myself as well, at first with reluctance and direct force, and then, as my erotic reveries set there evolved and became more complex and powerful, with a willingness born of reasons of my own. By custom, I was permitted to bring my science books, and sat reading quietly upon a padded bench in a corner of the State Exercise Facility while my brother and mother performed their exercises. For purposes of envisioning, you may imagine these State Exercise Facilities as your nation’s health spa of today, although the equipment used there was less varied and maintained, and an air of heightened security and seriousness was due to the military posts to which the facilities were attached for the uses of personnel. And the athletic clothing of women at the State Exercise Facilities was very different from today, constituting full suits of canvas with belts and straps of leather not unlike this, which was far less revealing than today’s exercise clothing and leaving more to the mind’s eye. Now I will describe the fantasy which evolved at these facilities as a youth and became my masturbation fantasy of those years. You are not offended by this word, masturbate?’
Q.
‘And this is an adequate pronunciation of it?’
Q.
‘In the fantasy which I am describing, I would envision myself on such an afternoon at the State Exercise Facilities, and, as I masturbated, I envision myself gazing out across the floor of vigorous exercises to let my gaze fall upon an attractive, sensual, but vigorous and athletic and so highly concentrated on her exercises as to appear unfriendly woman, often resembling many of the attractive, vigorous, humorless young women of the military or civilian atomic engineering services who possessed access to these facilities and exercised with the same forbidding seriousness and intensity as my mother and my brother, who spent long periods of their time often hurling a heavy leather medicine ball between them with extreme force. But in my masturbation fantasy, the supernatural power of my gaze would rattle the chosen woman’s attention, and she would look up from her piece of exercise equipment, gazing around the facility for the source of the irresistible erotic power which had penetrated her consciousness, finally her gaze locating me in my corner across the activity-filled room, such that the object of my gaze and I locked both eyes in a gaze of strong erotic attraction to which the remainder of the vigorously exercising personnel in the room were oblivious. For you see, in the masturbation fantasy I possess a supernatural power, a power of the mind, of which the origin and mechanics are never elaborated, remaining mysterious even to I who possess this secret power and can employ it at my will, a power through which a certain expressive, highly concentrated gaze on my part, directed at the woman who was the object of it, renders her irresistibly attracted toward me. The sexual component of the fantasy, as I masturbate, proceeds to depict this chosen woman and myself copulating in variations of sexual frenzy upon an exercise mat in the room’s center. There is little more to these components of this fantasy, which are sexual and adolescent and, in retrospect, somewhat average, I now realize. I have not yet explained the origins of the American program of Bewitched of my early youth for these fantasies of seduction. Nor of the great secondary power which I also possess in the masturbation fantasy, the supernatural power to halt time and magically to freeze all other of the room’s exercisers in their tracks with a covert circular motion of my hand, to cause all motion and activity in the State Exercise Facility to cease. You must envision these: heavily muscled missile officers held motionless beneath the barbell of a lift, wrestling navigators frozen complexly together, computer technicians’ whirling jump ropes frozen into parabolas of all angle, and the medicine ball hanging frozen between the outstretched arms of my brother and my mother. They and all other witnesses in the exercise room are rendered with but one gesture of my will petrified and insensate, such that the attractive, bewitched, overpowered woman of my choice and myself only remain animated and aware in this dim wooden room with its odors of liniment and unwashed sweating in which now all time has ceased—the seduction occurs outside of the time and movement of the most very basic physics—and as I beckon her to me with a powerful gaze and perhaps as well a slight circular motion of just one finger, and she, overpowered with erotic attraction, comes toward me, I also in turn arise from my bench in the corner and come also toward her as well, until, as in a formal minuet, the woman of the fantasy and I both meet together upon the exercise mat at the room’s exact center, she removing the straps of her heavy clothing with a frenzy of sexual mania while my schoolboy’s uniform is removed with a more controlled and amused deliberation, forcing her to wait in an agony of erotic need. To compress the matters, then there is copulation in varied indistinct positions and ways among the many other petrified, unseeing figures for whom I have stopped time with my hand’s great power. Of course, it is here you may observe this linkage with the program of Bewitched of my childhood sensations. For this additional power, within the fantasy, to freeze living bodies and halt time in the State Exercise Facility, which began merely as a logistical contrivance, became swiftly I think the primary fuel source of the entire masturbation fantasy, a masturbation fantasy which was, as any onlooker can easily be able to tell, a fantasy much more of power than merely of copulation. By this I am saying that envisioning my own great powers—over citizens’ wills and motion, over the flowing of time, the frozen obliviousness of witnesses, over whether my brother and my mother even may move the robust bodies of which they were so justly proud and vain—soon these formed the true nucleus of the fantasy’s power, and it was, unknown to me, to fantasies of this power that I was more truly masturbating. I understand this now. In my youth I did not. I knew, as an adolescent, only that the sustaining of this fantasy of overpowering seduction and copulation required some strict logical plausibility. I am saying in order to masturbate successfully, the scene required a rational logic by which copulation with this exercising woman is plausible in the public of the State Exercise Facility. I was responsible to this logic.’