I wash my crotch with his washrag. I bet it’s a woman on the phone, wanting to come over or Peter to come by. So be it if that’s what he wants, but don’t be silly: he can be with me tonight and tomorrow with her. Though I’m still not sure why I’m here. Sex, yes, and the only reason, but by now I don’t even know if I can get into it in any way. Sure I can. Lights out, blinds down and shut to keep out the street light, close my eyes, open my legs, feel around with my hands, and it’ll be easy and easier still if I can work my way to the top. The pressure of my weight usually slowed him down by half and my control up there speeds me up considerably, making us about even. Then sleep, morning, coffee, goodbye. I wash under my arms with the same rag, wash my face, rinse the rag, brush my teeth with his brush, brush my hair, fold up my clothes, run warm water in the sink and one at a time stick my feet under the tap, pushing out any recalcitrant lint between the toes, dry them and put on his bathrobe. Soft and so long on me that I feel like a girl in her father’s coat. I leave the bathroom, set my things on a chair. Forgot to look for the spermicide. I did see a box of condoms. No hiding them under the T-shirts in the dresser for him. Bedroom door’s shut. I knock.
“In a minute.”
I go back to the living room, turn over the record, look at the two walls filled from ceiling to floor with books.
“No, you listen to me once this year,” he yells in the bedroom.
Something new: each bookshelf is labeled. Poetry, Novels A-D, Novels E-J, Short Stories, Antiquities, Literary Criticism, Deutsch und Franzosisch, and half a wall of just art hooks: cocktail-table size, regular size, miniatures, some with spines hundreds of years old. Must be five hundred of them, and half it seems on primitive art. I should ask him why so many Cycladic pieces—my favorite period ever for stone—have women with their arms crossed over their flat stomachs. Good guess would be fertility or breeding, but I want something more than my own spec. I pull out an enormous book called Dubuffet, whom I’ve taken-to lately—what was it he recently said in a newsmagazine comparing art to literature: that art is a hundred years advanced over lit, or was it lit over art? But poetry. Dubuffet goes back. Too bulky a book to put on my lap and turn the pages of so late. But that’s what I’d like right now: a simple pastoral nineteenth-century English poem to go along with my lightmindedness and the guitar and flute. I start on the top poetry shelf, but a book on the short-story shelf above it catches my eye. Krin. Daniel. By. Translated by Daniel Krin. I can’t believe it. I take it out. Modern Japanese Short Stories, translated and with an introduction by Daniel Krin. Reputable small press. Softcover. How’d Peter end up with it? Same Krin? I turn it over. Two-by two-inch photo of him in a crewneck sweater, looking a little balder than he did tonight, hair windblown or just uncut, homecut or messed up, what look like West Side brownstone terraces behind him, so taken from a terrace several stories up, trying to smile but looking as if he’s squirming on the pot. Photo by Rena Moscow. Not one of the well-known literary photogs. Probably a good friend at the time or a cousin or niece. Krin: Moscow. Both could be Russian-Jewish names, Krin for Krinsky I’d think. Nothing much about him under the photo or anything inside. NYC’s public schools and CCNY, but no mention of a postgraduate degree or university teaching, which could mean he has none or never taught or no place he’s especially proud of or this press thought would help sell the book if it listed it, but whom would the NYC public schools appeal to? Among his other works: Songs of Ancient Korea: an anthology of poems in the sijo form, whatever that is, but one of the best university presses published it, and by this same press: Poems and Tales of the Northwest American Indian and Pueblo Ritual Poetry. So he’s an orientalist of sorts, with a side interest, because of the Mongoloid linkage and frozen Bering Strait, in American Indian literature, or maybe the reverse, last one first, and poetry over fiction. How old is he and his book? Copyright page. 1935—Older than I thought by about six years, though the photo makes him look fifty, even if it had to have been snapped more than four years ago when this book was published. Probably has had a book published since and got a teaching job and maybe his doctorate. Dedication page. “To my mother Pauline Saffner Krin, who helped support me through this & other works.” I look through the short-story shelf and the poetry and anthropology shelves, but there’s nothing else by him. I wouldn’t have taken him for a translator or anthologist or even someone much interested in literature. More as what? Because of his wide chest and bull neck and that Diana met him at an artists’ colony: a sculptor; an erector or puttogetherer of monumental steel-crossbeam constructions through the use of pulleys and tackles and an acetylene torch, or perhaps an action painter a little late for that scene. In other words, a moderately intelligent laborer or spontaneous stroker of artworks rather than an artful definer of them. I turn to the introduction. “Modern, in modern Japan, seems to mean—”
Peter comes in. “Good, you’ve kept yourself busy. Sorry about the phone. Find a book you like?”
“That’s what I want to ask you. Just bought it because you were interested?”
“Let me see—That one. Was going with a very wealthy Japanese journalist—I’ll tell you why I mention her wealth—a short time after we broke up, and she gave it to me. Along with a book”—he pulls one off the Gallimaufry shelf—“on how to teach yourself Japanese in three easy weeks, as she wanted to buy us tickets to Japan together soon as I could fit it into my work plans. Didn’t work out.” He hands me the language book. “Got to know one word, but not from that. Soshi. Small. Or toshi. She said she was a little above average height by Japan’s standards, but here was considered tiny, and compared to me, a pygmy, so she gave herself that name for me to use. Not toshi or soshi. Something else, and I think the feminine version of it. I called her it once—was very embarrassed doing it—and though I told her it was thought an insult to be called that here, bright as she was she didn’t mind and she even laughed. Moshi. Skoshi. I think the last one’s it. She also gave me a book of Japanese poems—”
“By the same translator?”
“Who’s that?” Looks. “Never heard of him. The poems were done by the famous one. Been around for years. A very dear old geezer who once did a catalogue intro on Japanese rock gardens for the museum.”
“But it’s so bizarre you have this man’s book. I met him at Diana’s tonight. I thought he was a sculptor or lumberjack.”
“Take it then. I read one story and got bored. I’m not saying it was your friend’s fault. I simply don’t like Japanese fiction, modern or otherwise. Take the language book too.”
“Why would I want it?”
“Did you talk to him much? Is he married? There was no chance of his calling you—nothing like that? It was just routine cocktail party hooey?”
“No, he said he would call, but—”
“Then he will. Why wouldn’t he? So take the language book—take both books and anything else here that’s Japanese. Not the art books and dolls. Then when he calls, say a few words in Japanese to him. Maybe to perplex him or as a joke. Or say hello in Japanese the first time he calls, then switch to English. And why not some Japanese art books? The ones made there, no matter of whose, are as beautiful as anything the Dutch produce, and I can always get replacements at fifty percent off. First that poetry book.” He goes through the shelves. “Right—she borrowed it because it had the en face originals on some poems she was suddenly dying to read, and then we broke up and she never returned it. No great loss. But the art books—”
“This is silly. I don’t want any.”
“But I want you to have them. This is our Japanese night. I’ll even get out sake and warm it. I have the special cups.”
“It’ll make me sick again.”
“Then beer. Japanese is the best for an upset stomach or to keep one away. Very mild, made from rice. I have some in the fridge.”
“Still from those Japanese journalist days?”
“No, though I did learn the upset stomach remedy and preventive from her and I g
ot to like their beer even more than I had before I met her. Japanese and Dutch beer. Never made the connection between beautiful art books and great beer before, but there it is—though I never dated a Dutchwoman for more than a night nor heard of a Dutch wine made from cheese. Have you?”
“I’ll take the Japanese stories but that’s all,” and I put the language book back on the shelf.
“But I insist. And a painting book.” He pulls out a book that must be two feet long and three inches thick. “This is for you. Astonishing color reproductions. Now you can’t refuse a present. Serendipity call it. You meet this Japanese man—”
“He’s not Japanese.”
He takes the anthology from me. “He doesn’t look Japanese to you, and the name?”
“Not at all. And Krin?”
“I know of several Daniels who are Japanese. The Hawaiian senator for one. Anyway, you meet him and it leads to your owning a hundred-dollar book, and after December 31st, a hundred twenty-five. And the language book.” He gets that book out. “I want you to be a hundred percent Japanese tonight. Language, painting, literature, drinks. I even have a Japanese pleasure book, hand-illustrated about seven hundred years ago. I should keep it under dehumidified glass. I’m getting a beer, you get the pleasure book. Oversize shelf, green binding, so thick, looks old. I also have Japanese champagne.”
“I’ll share your beer.”
“No you won’t. I want my own.” He goes into the kitchen. I follow him. “You’re supposed to be looking for that book. It has a few practicable things in it we can try, for most are for a couple supple as pizza dough and the man hung like a horse.”
“For now, let’s stay occidental and modern, except for the beer. If I can ask, who phoned? Family or more personal?”
“Someone I don’t see anymore, but hear her?—oh boy. Right after the one after the journalist. Too crazy and young. She once wanted to come over when I had someone here, and when I said ‘Not possible, I’m very tired—’” He opens two bottles of Japanese beer. “Pilsner or regular glass?”
“Bottle will do.”
“Bad for your tummy. Something about all that air through the neck.” He gives me a glass, pours, clicks glasses and says “To the land of Japan which has given us many Daniels, one or two indirectly, and you, circuitously, a beautiful book,” and drinks. “I have to get out of this toasting rut. I can’t lift a glass of milk—”
“So the woman?”
“They let her in downstairs, since they knew her from before, and then she knocked and knocked on my door after she rang it to death. I finally said ‘Go home!’ and she sat on the doormat and started crying. A neighbor phoned me. I let her in, but hid the other woman in the kitchen. I thought I could get rid of her in a few minutes: take her downstairs, put her in a cab, after promising to see her for lunch the next day. But she wanted to stay over. Finally I said I’ll have to get the cops to drag her out or do it myself, and I actually grabbed her arm and dragged her along the floor to the door. The other woman—I’d met her that night—came out and said ‘Here I am, peekaboo, that what you wanted to see, Doreen, or maybe you’re still here because you’re hot to make it a threesome? Well get lost, you screwed-up bitch,’ and Doreen fled the apartment. I should have been more honest with her at once, introduced her to the other woman, which was this woman’s advice, but I thought she’d get hysterical. I even thought she might have a gun. She once ran over an old boyfriend but the jury decided it was a legitimate gripe. I’m through with messy relationships. The woman who chased her out turned out to be almost as bad. Manic dieter. Doesn’t work, affairs with unstable women. Just levelheaded from now on—scholars, professional women, and minimum age of twenty-five. I know I was occasionally drawn to the unpredictable erratic type because there was no chance of anything stable and sane developing with them. But you didn’t come here for a barrage of self-analysis from me. Though you’re the kind I need: peaceful, sensible, doesn’t willfully throw up good food. To you I can also say I shouldn’t be a satyr too. I can say it without your thinking I’m too egotistical, which I know I am. Unstable too, but I’m improving in both categories. I’m in analysis these days, but you probably know that.”
“You, the original anti-analysis man?”
“Dot didn’t tell you? Strange. And she says, my analyst, to be as open as I can when I can and the situation legitimizes it, not when it’s pure self-obsessive talk. So I’m going to tell you something which I hope won’t kill it for us tonight. Drink up.”
I sip.
“More, more—take a big gulp. And probably we should sit on the couch for this one—not the bed yet.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t say it. You might be ready but I might not be to hear it.”
“It’s important you do. I might let this go with someone else—a pickup, if there’s ever another one—or maybe I wouldn’t. I might be less egotistical and unstable than I was—my analyst thinks so—but I don’t know if I’m any more self-sacrificing and well-intentioned, except to someone I respect as much as you.”
“You have crabs.”
“Herpes. Good guess. It’s dormant now, but let’s not chance it flaring up overnight. If we use a condom it’s impossible for you to get it. And before, you said—”
“Hold it, hold it, hold it.”
“You don’t like them, or didn’t used to, and how could you?—but unlike some women, you don’t refuse to make love if I put one on.”
“Would you really even think twice about not telling a pickup you have herpes?”
“Yes. No. Wait, let me get your syntax straight. Would I really not? Would I really think twice? Be aboveboard, Peter. Since analysis—it’s actually been since analysis that I got herpes, but not from my analyst. Maybe from Yatsuko.
She swears she doesn’t have it and there’s nothing I can do but believe her, since she’s back in Japan. Doreen perhaps, but I’d never approach her about it because of what it could start. She’d claim she got it from me, if she doesn’t already know she has it. Or even if she doesn’t have it she’d then think she did and say I gave it to her to cripple her. Wasn’t the pickup because she made me wear a condom that night and the few times after. She was afraid that every man she knew, except for her regular boyfriend, had herpes. As for some others—it’s difficult to pinpoint whom and sometimes to locate them again, and what will I gain by it? A lesson’s been learned from my screwing around. And it would be sheer magnanimity on my part to help the woman know she has it, something I don’t feel inclined to being to the person who gave it to me. But if we use a condom—”
“Still too risky. There’s this cesarean business if you get pregnant no matter how many years after—”
“I know about that. I can’t get rid of it. I’ll have to hang around for the rest of my life with it unless some genius comes up with a cure. It’s a pain in the ass.”
“So, since we’re not going to sleep together—”
“We could still fool around. You don’t get herpes through the hand, though I wouldn’t want you to do it with your mouth unless you—”
“I’ll talk to my gynecologist to see what I can do in the future with a carrier. Now I better go,” and I start for the living room.
“Then just sleep over. I’m telling you, you can’t get it unless I stick my dick in you. I’ll wear pajamas. I’ll wear my bathrobe in bed and keep my underpants on or change into a fresh pair.”
“I’m going home. All I’m asking from you now is to help me get a cab.”
“Damn. Fuck it! Piss! Oh hell, I’ll drive you home.”
“You have a good parking spot. Is it good for tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t lose it. Just put me in a cab.”
“And if I hadn’t told you I had herpes?”
“And if you hadn’t?”
“I would have felt lousy. Worse. Suicidal to the point of kicking myself. Okay, get dressed. But take all the books I gave you. My one condition, or no cab.”<
br />
I change in the bathroom. He has his coat on when I come out and is holding my coat and bag and a shopping bag with the books in it.
“My umbrella!” I say. “I left it at the reception.”
“Want to phone them from here?”
“No, and I’m sure I’ll never get it back.” I look inside the shopping bag. “Looks like more books than before.”
“It was supposed to be a surprise when you got home. I found some other Japanese books—beauties, one only on cats in Japanese art. Nobody loves cats more than you and maybe no people but the Chinese painted them better than the Japanese. You even have two Siamese. Sammy and Sue. How are they? I miss them. Getting off your couch with my pants plastered with their hair. Fish. I remember those long white sausages of slightly digested fish I’d step in early in the morning on my way to your john. And your temperament is practically Japanese. Soft—I’m talking about stereotypically Japanese—and your voice mostly softspoken and your attitude so polite and deferential in company, so it’s perfect these gifts.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying about me, but you win.”
I have my coat on and he hands me the two bags. “My apologies, Helene. It’s been a bad night for us and my library but not Japan. You might even think of changing fields after several close thumb-throughs of these books, so maybe also a bad night for American literature but Japan’s gain.”
“You never know. But there are plenty of things Japanese I’ve always liked. Music, food—movies, other than for the ones where dogs walk around with human hands in their mouths.”
“With Yatsuko—talking about food—I never walked out of those restaurants the way most people say they have—hungry. She ate sparingly. I used to have my plateful and then half of hers. But one last time.” Before I can stop him he has his arms around me and is kissing my neck, working his way up diagonally to the jaw. I try to squirm free, bag of books drops to the floor. “What are you doing? You can’t get herpes from kissing or hugging either, unless I’ve sores on my lips or open wounds on my fingertips which I’ve kissed with my herpes-infested lips. But I don’t. Just on my dick.”
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