Fifty Contemporary Writers

by Bradford Morrow

  How could I drop down? I thought back on this over and over, and I was still at a loss. At the time, it seemed I had come to the end of the tunnel, for I saw a vast expanse of white outside the tunnel. I couldn’t grasp whether I had emerged from the ground or whether I was still underground. Even less could I figure out where up and down were ahead of me. By then, even the earthworm had vanished without a trace. Turning back had become even more impossible. I’ve already said that this tunnel was so narrow that it was really lucky it could accommodate my body, so there was no way I could turn around at the cave entrance. This was really dangerous, almost the same as finding a pretext to “drop down.” Of course, after a long trip, I reached my goal. Was this place really my goal? Where was the lion? Now, even the Hon didn’t appear on the ocean. It had become a dead sea.

  Time kept passing, and I was still in the same place. But how could I stay in the same place forever? I couldn’t eat the earth here for it had a very strong limestone odor. I had never fasted for such a long time. Now, utterly weakened, I was about to faint. Maybe it was in that moment that I made up my mind that I was in for a penny, in for a pound, and I might as well drop down. Just as I was falling, the Hon appeared. So large, and yet so agile, he filled my entire field of vision. His mane—ah, his mane … Whatever happened afterward, I don’t remember. I seemed to be in a murky rocky hole. Something was swaying in the air—sometimes a foot, sometimes a skull. That was my last memory. Maybe I just couldn’t bear to look back at what was happening, and so I forgot it. Sometimes I think that maybe what happened was truly death? Could that rocky hole have been Grandfather’s tomb? What could be so unbearable to remember?

  Anyhow, when I woke up, I was in my own field. There were earthworms above me and earthworms below me, earthworms to my left and earthworms to my right. They weren’t tilling the land; they were quietly waiting for me to wake up. When I woke up and let out a sound, they slowly began their activity. I heard their excitement: their supple bodies were knocking the earth, making a “tili, tili, tili” sound, just like the falling rain. In that instant, I was intoxicated with the sound of rain purifying the soul. I really wanted to break through the layer of earth that separated us and embrace these viscous companions. I wouldn’t care if their viscous fluid flowed all over my body. But I didn’t, because I knew that neither they nor I was accustomed to expressing ourselves this way. We were introverted creatures, used to communicating our enthusiasm in solitude. How softly and comfortably the earth was clinging to my body! I roused myself to till more than ten meters away from here. My companions were following me. It was as if we were swimming freely in the ocean (naturally, I have to admit that I’ve never been to the ocean)! Ah, let me till deeper down; I wanted to double the size of my field! I tilled vertically again, and my companions kept following me. Some also tilled in front of me. Just as we were tilling enthusiastically, we heard the lion’s roar. My companions and I all stopped. It seemed that the sound was coming from a grotto. It shook the soil until it wobbled a little. Had the lion gone underground? I recalled all the scenery I had glimpsed in the moment that I fell down from the entrance of the tunnel. Could it be that the lion had been underground then, and that the lion atop the wasteland had been merely a shadow—one of his many shadows? In the midst of the roaring, we were all hushed. We wanted to understand what the roar meant. But after roaring several times, he stopped: we hadn’t had time to figure it out. We could only try our best to recall it. As we tried, our brains went blank. This kind of reasoning led to no outcome at all. Then, as if we had made an agreement, we began tilling the land together again. We were dead tired from our work. As I tilled the land, I dreamed about the lion in the grotto. Always, it was that incomparably large head, the silvery mane giving off light like the sun—so dazzling that I couldn’t open my eyes. Someone whimpered in my ear: “I can’t move.” Who? Could it be the lion? Why couldn’t the lion move? It was only my grandfather who couldn’t move! Then was the lion my grandfather? Ah, my thinking was all mixed up. I couldn’t go on thinking, but I still had my feelings, and I sensed that he was there, underground, holding his breath, about to explode. I dreamed for a really long time. In my dream, I ate a lot of earth. The “tili, tili, tili” sound enveloped me again. They were knocking again, and I was so moved that I thought I would cry.

  When I emerged from the ground again, all the fireflies were dead, moonlight was spread across Mother Earth, and there was a strong funereal odor. I climbed to a limb of the old poplar tree and looked over at the plains. The whole area was deserted, except for the shadow of an occasional bird skimming past. Had the realm of lions lost its master? No. He was still present. It looked as if he were fused with the rock: he was absolutely still. His mane no longer shone; his entire body was tarnished. Had he died? The sound of thunder was gradually rolling closer, and the moon was hidden behind dark clouds. The lion’s image was a little blurred. Suddenly, he melted into a bolt of lightning and shot out from behind the rock, breaking through the blackened night air. He illuminated heaven and earth, but he lost his own form. This made me doubt whether his body had ever been real. After the explosive thunder ended, there was another bolt of lightning … and another! Both shot out from the rock. Now there wasn’t even the sound of thunder. These bolts of lightning turned the sky snow bright; the moon that now and then showed its face had lost its rays of light and was about to turn almost completely dark. How presumptuous this was. I couldn’t bear to go on watching. I went under the ground. The snow-bright lightning jolted the earth. Really. It was willfully tossing the rocks on the earth, as well as the trees and hills, back and forth. I didn’t dare look at it, for if I looked again, I would faint. I closed my eyes and felt my way home. Even though I was underground, I still faintly heard the turmoil on the ground.

  I was so weary that I quickly went to sleep. In my sleep, I was plowing the familiar rich, black soil. The earthworms rapped politely toward me to transmit a message: Grandfather was alive again. Deep underground, he had regained life and was growing. In my dream, I was feverish all over. I couldn’t hear Grandfather growing, but all of the earthworms did. They told me. This was the first time in my life that I felt profoundly that I—and also my companions—had become one with the grandfather at the earth’s core. Was this because of the lion? I tried my best to imagine, but—no matter what—I couldn’t call to mind the lion’s face.

  The Photographer Upstairs

  Christopher Sorrentino

  WE HAD IN THE PHOTOGRAPHER upstairs and his girlfriend for dinner last night. He is a recent émigré, having moved to the US from Australia, where he lived in Melbourne. His arrival in this country was coincident with his having moved in upstairs, though previously he had traveled extensively throughout the continental states (and Hawaii), visiting most of our major cities on commercial and journalistic assignment. He and his girlfriend had grown tired of the long-distance aspect of their relationship and, pursuant to a very amusingly recounted bet, which he lost, he’d agreed to move here. We shop carefully for the photographer upstairs and his girlfriend because they are vegetarians. No, it’s dairy that they can’t or won’t eat. Carefully nevertheless.

  I think, reflexively, of major cities as being those that are home to major league baseball franchises. It is as valid a way as any of ordering things. Though surely Portland, Oregon, would disagree. Surely Nashville, Tennessee, would disagree. Surely Salt Lake City, Utah, would disagree. For years now I have heard that these are cities enjoying more significance, more majority, than (say) Cincinnati, Ohio, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I will have to ask the photographer upstairs whether he has been to either and, if so, what his opinion is on the matter. It may be a photographic opinion. It’s entirely possible that Pittsburgh is the more photogenic city, with its smoky foundries and ironwork silhouette. Names of cities flood my brain: Memphis, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Santa Fe. Cheyenne, Omaha, Council Bluffs. Big skies and sulfurous clouds, prairie grasses and mounds of native dead. The swee
t song of America. I can imagine myself in a jeep or a sporty coupe, wearing pants with extra pockets stitched onto the thighs, lifting a heavy camera to my face to capture an Elks Club sign or the neon of an old theater marquee. Waitresses carrying steak and eggs, all my worldly possessions in a cordura bag on the empty seat beside me.

  It seems the photographer upstairs works at a model fabrication shop. I offer him a glass of red wine, selected especially to go with the grilled portobello mushrooms, and sit opposite him in the uncomfortable chair while listening to him describe his job, the dust, his wearing of a respirator. It seems that he works in an airlessly oppressive environment, some kind of sweatshop; that rather than traveling free throughout hill and range he fights to breathe amid deafening noise and fearsome equipment that might maim and disfigure him. Plus I have a slight problem with his accent. I think to myself, But how unfortunate that he can’t find work in his field, especially since he’s so accomplished. It may have something to do with immigration. I think. I begin to ask him is it true that if an American, a citizen, is capable, for example, of taking the photographs required for a given project, then that job necessarily must by law go to the American? He holds the red wineglass by the stem. No, I’ve served it to him in a fluted tumbler, as I’ve seen done in certain storefront bistros. Which would be the greater affectation? It—his lost stint at the dusty shop—seems inherently unfair, fails to take into account his unique ability and vision; I plan to ask him whether he feels at a disadvantage—being an Australian, that is, and a native speaker of English as well: does he sometimes feel he would be better off if, say, he were from Mexico and could make a case that his photographs of the children of the East Los Angeles barrio could not have been obtained without his ability to converse with the kids in their native tongue? But before I can ask the photographer upstairs about this thing, or these things, I am interrupted by my own lady friend as she brings in an attractive tray of kosher vegetarian hors d’oeuvres. I turn to his girlfriend: and how long has she been living here? From her slight accent I imagine that she is from Germany, or perhaps Austria or Switzerland. She responds that she has been living in the neighborhood for twelve years, which is not what I, the answer I was seeking, at all, but then, before I have a chance to request clarification, to clarify my question, she responds animatedly to a passing remark I make about a minor neighborhood celebrity, exclaiming that she had attended high school with her, had been in the class two years behind her. The person in question is an American, definitely. An American or a Canadian. This fact, or probability, confuses me, but by now both the photographer upstairs and my lady friend are asking her, and me, who we’re talking about and we both turn to face them and comically interrupt one another. For an instant it is a moment in a comedy of manners, a comedy involving mistaken or switched identities—as if the girlfriend and I are linked more closely than my lady friend is with me and the photographer upstairs is with his girlfriend. In any case neither of them knows who the neighborhood celebrity, this actress in independent films or this performer of alternative music, this noteworthy person, neither of them knows the identity of this minor icon, what I mean is like neither of them knows who we’re talking about. Beloved of BOMB magazine and sometimes even The New York Times. Or is she just a minor neighborhood celebrity in the sense that one might intend when referring to the man always to be found sitting in a folding chair outside the bodega? The friendly one, with the red-rimmed eyes, whose life is a complete mystery? That may be what I meant when I first made, wrote that reference, more than seven months ago.

  But I knew exactly who I meant then, and for my purposes I know it here, so I can go on: for a moment I feel how lonely it is for them, my lady friend and the photographer upstairs, skewered shrimp dangling from their limp fingers; their confusion has not given rise to the sort of fumbling fellowship that the photographer’s girlfriend and I find in our small plot of common knowledge. They are simply united in their confusion, which has never really united anyone, as history has shown again and again.

  There’s a moment when the photographer upstairs places his wineglass on the coffee table. I can see the dirt embedded deeply, inaccessibly, under his fingernails, the dirt he carries with him from the model fabrication shop. The base of his glass simply breaks when it comes into contact with the table, and the wine spills. An inexpensive glass. Red wine on a white carpet: it’s good luck, I say.

  No, stepping in dog shit is good luck, says the photographer’s girlfriend.

  No, being shit on by a bird is good luck, says my lady friend.

  What’s good luck down under? I ask.

  Coming up here, he says, and he actually looks relieved to be here.

  When you’re taking pictures, I ask—having thought of times when I was in a public place with a camera, usually in a strange city, and was seized with self-consciousness about raising the instrument to my face and snapping a photo—are you ever self-conscious? Or is that just something you lose? I’m pantomiming the act of taking a picture, burlesquing a kind of awkwardness. This is an entirely different flight of the imagination than the one having to do with rural waitresses, jeeps, restless creativity. This is pleated, relaxed-fit shorts, and a wheeled suitcase parked at the foot of a bed in some midrange hotel. Much closer to my actual experience. I mean there’s an authoritativeness to the awkwardness I pantomime with my imaginary camera. It’s that of a middle-class man more concerned about whether he will drop the camera or have it ripped from his hands by a street thief than about getting an excellent photo. I’m saying, what I’m saying is when I’m talking to a professional I always try to find some kind of common ground, thing. I might say some thing about teeth to a dentist. Say. I always try to find I don’t often stray outside my field. The other arts are a mystery to me. I finally drop my hands to my lap where they become hands, empty hands, again. Are you? He gazes at me blankly for a moment, his fork halfway to his mouth. I suppose I am, he replies. I’ve never thought about it. I can barely take a picture without putting my thumb before the lens, he says.

  We serve the grilled portobellos with wild rice, cannellini in tomato sauce, and more of the red wine. It’s a simple meal. That’s how it’s been described for several days running. “A simple meal.” My lady friend and I sat down to discuss the preparations for this informal but anticipated dinner and agreed that we should serve an elegant yet simple meal. When the photographer’s girlfriend had called to ask if she could bring anything she was met with the verbal shrug of being informed that it was a simple meal; as if she could bring either wine, dessert, or a handful of sod. Just bring yourselves, are the words I believe my lady friend used in response. And so they did; they arrived, empty-handed and coatless, from the apartment above. When the photographer upstairs had, finally, come downstairs, did he necessarily become simply “the photographer” upon entering our apartment? I’d shaken his hand and told him we had a simple meal planned. Then I immediately offered him smoked nuts, cheeses and crackers, cornichons; as if apologizing with this extravagance for the inadequacy of the simple meal. At the table I ask the photographer upstairs how it was having been a vegetarian in Australia, given that nation’s renown for raising lamb. He tells me that in fact he is not a vegetarian, but quite a carnivore. He says these words, “quite a carnivore.” His girlfriend places her hand gently on his and remarks that the two of them will eat anything except entrails. And snails, the photographer upstairs adds quickly. Don’t worry, I say, We’re not having snails. And he actually looks relieved. He is visibly relieved, as the newspapers say. I pour more wine. It is a fine dry white, perfect, really, for the veal. Furthermore, he says, it was New Zealand where he lived. I am embarrassed; I hadn’t realized that Melbourne was in New Zealand. It seems increasingly silly and quixotic to dream of asking him questions about the American cities he’s experienced. Clearly I’ll exhaust him with my ignorance right from the start.

  Melbourne, it seems, is in Australia.

  Not only that, but he did not
live in the city. He lived in the countryside. Where, coincidentally enough, he and his wife lived on what he describes as a hobby farm, raising about one hundred sheep.

  “So you’ll have no objection to eating veal then, I gather?”

  There is silence.

  There is the matter of this wife. It settles amid us, the matter, like the phantom woman herself. My lady friend and I look at one another, each daring the other to bring it up. I have a wife, I say. We didn’t own a farm, though. Oh, says the photographer upstairs. Where is she then? I gesture to the northeast with my chin. She could be living behind the bookcase. She could be living in Greenland. About seven blocks from here, I say. Where’s yours? He chews his food, nodding steadily, then swallows. In New Zealand. On the farm. We’re divorced. Oh, I respond. I’m not. We’re not. Actually, neither of us are. I gesture at my lady friend. We’re both married to other people! I giggle. That sounds complicated, says the photographer upstairs.

  I look at the photographer upstairs for a moment. He chews the simple meal smugly. I wonder about his simple divorce. How did they divide the sheep? I say, Did you have an even number of sheep? He looks startled. About a hundred, he says. So you divided them, fifty apiece? No, he laughs. She received the farm in the settlement. I got the apartment in Christchurch.

  And this was before or after the bet?

  Bet? What bet?

  Hesitantly, uncertainly, I recount the bet as it was related to us, the amusing anecdote of the bet, as if I am trying to recall a difficult mathematical formula, pausing to look into his eyes for confirmation of the accuracy of individual details. I manage this theatrical business in a way that suggests my own inattention, not the obvious inability of the photographer upstairs to get the facts of his life straight, although my lady friend briefly rests her palm on her forehead and then leans over to the photographer’s girlfriend to grip her wrist and whisper something. That wasn’t a bet, says the photographer upstairs. It was an agreement. We agreed that whichever of us found a place to live in their home country—he pronounces this ham cantray—the other would move there.