The Fountains of Neptune (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

by Ducornet, Rikki

  The sound of Olivier’s laughter? It is the sound of pearls spilling to the floor, of bells muffled by a heavy fall of snow. . . . Is this what love is? I cannot sleep because he is not with me. Nor can I think of anything but him. The Kingdom has become my world, but only when he is near. Without him it is a mockery, the shambles of a world: paint, dust, and shadow. It is his quickness I admire, his innocence, his grace, his fire. He is so mysterious! He is all I cannot know or name. He is the bone, the marrow of me. When he appears I am fearful, I am joyful. Olivier is that room I dreamed in a tree; he is love’s animated temple and all the animals, new and playful, in God’s garden. He is more than son to me, more than a friend; he is breath.

  I have never asked him anything about himself. His past and origins are of little consequence to me. What do they matter? I think as we sit side by side cutting paper leaves and flowers that the entire kitchen could, by the power of his beauty, ignite. I love him because he has appeared from nowhere like a clean rain.

  We are making trees: mango, coconut, breadfruit, banana, olive, and Cyprus – those eternal trees. Ours is a universe in three storeys. Paradise is in the attic.

  Is this what K means, I wonder. Am I “living creatively”?

  You are living in beauty, she writes, and now that the “rules” have been clearly retraced on the ballroom floor, would you please tell me what they are!

  CHAPTER

  21

  Dearest K,

  One never tires of watching a child at play. I am mesmerized by the nape of Olivier’s neck, the way he holds the scissors, the way, as he inks in the veins on a leaf or paints dolphins on the border of a map, his eyes smoulder.

  “When I was a little boy,” I told him, “my uncle Totor and I built a castle on the beach. As we worked, sand-fleas leapt about us. These fleas are scavengers. They feast upon the corpses of the same fish which, when alive, eat them. ‘The ocean is one vast banquet,’ Totor liked to say, ‘where sooner or later every guest finds his name on the menu.’ ” This conversation put Olivier in the mood to make a thumbnail library for the fleas and to give them a world; Myopia. Sand-fleas are the only creatures in the Kingdom of d’Elir to have developed a tide-pool architecture.

  You have asked me why I have set myself the task of reconstructing the world, or worlds – ideal, real, and imaginary. Just after I awoke I had great difficulty remembering things from one instant to the next. I could recall the past in detail – after all, my “ontological age,” as you say, was nine. But new thoughts, perceptions, and even recognitions, were like gnats dancing in moonbeams only to be snapped up, one by one, by a famished toad. They would appear for an instant, buzzing, bright, and lively, and recede into nothingness at once. My mind was a vaudeville show of vanishing acts!

  Ever since you left I have been going over all this in my head. How you, with your affection and science, enabled me to regain entry into reality. I could have spent my entire life as immobile as a fossil in rock. But if I have been “present,” I have also been passive. As I construct my temples and towers, I am building a bridge between the boy of nine and the man of sixty. I am reclaiming territory. I am making myself a country.

  Nini

  My Nini,

  Your letter gives me such pleasure! I feared leaving you behind yet believed that you were ready, as you insisted, for autonomy.

  There are many who would not approve of my methods and would say that you are still in the neurotic clutches of nostalgia and reverie. But I insist that the self is rooted in nostalgia and reverie, and that they are the fountains of Art. I argue that Art reveals the real. That the existential is always subjective. All that is true is hidden deep in the body of the world and cannot be taken by force. It must be dreamed and attended and received with awe and affection. But be careful. You are walking a tightrope. Madness is often the handmaiden of genius. To survive the world we must all be lucid dreamers!

  Your loving Venus

  Dearest K,

  Olivier and I were sitting in the kitchen braiding crêpe paper into the bark of trees. We were speaking of islands. We both have a special weakness! I described Easter Island as I imagined it when I was a boy – with a Roc’s egg rising in the centre like an astronomical dome. Olivier described an island gutted like a house and haunted by the blackest shadow of a bird; I believe he was describing a volcano.

  “We shall catch crickets,” I told him, “and bring them to the attic. We shall open the windows to let in the sound of frogs, of summer downpours, and thunder. Unattended our Eden will spring to life.”

  Suddenly I was visited by a stunning recollection of my mother: She was bathing in a metal tub and I was standing between her knees, supported by her hands. Her black hair tumbled about her shoulders like a knotted rope. Her nipples were erect and spurting milk. I seized a breast and raised it to my lips. With my other hand I toyed with her hair.

  Recalling these instants my heart was suffused with warmth and I knew this was not a fantasy but a memory, and that Odille, as you have said, was not purposely evil.

  Nini

  Fröschlein,

  I am so pleased you have had this loving, nurturing (and playful!) memory of Odille. More are sure to follow. After all, up until her death, you had spent twenty-seven months at her breast.

  I think beauty is power. I think of the power and beauty of Odille. Had she been more loving than lusting, had she, simply, been plain, perhaps you might have lived your life like any other man. But no, it is not her beauty to be blamed, but her blindness. Self-centredness had blinded her. And famishment.

  At a recent lecture of mine a student stood up to tell me that the gas chambers had never existed. His theory is that the Jews invented everything! (Ah! The torturous paths of paranoia!) I warned him that to ignore history is to sleep with a venomous serpent in the room. Those who think evil is but a lesser good take heed; it is above all a mutilation of the self, a plucking out of the eyes.

  America is, as you know, at war. This war is televised and the abject horror of those images is creating a palpable malaise – that and the countless young men returning without limbs. There is a new student here, a black amputee. When we met I thought of the Marquis; I imagined him thus: a mime without a leg. The boy introduced himself and I burst into tears. He said: “It’s O.K., my mind is O.K. I’m grateful to be alive.” He said: “All my friends are dead. I want to talk to you. I want to know. . . . I want to know why the human race continues to castrate its children.”

  Your affectionate Venus

  P.S. I’ve been thinking about Toujours-Là. It is evident he had a keen distrust of women. When I think back on everything you’ve told me, all his stories were about ogresses but one – the one about Bottlenose. As if that phallic-faced explorer (who even as an infant tempted nuns) was the only hero who could fearlessly penetrate the female (this is how I read the jungle). But wait! How does that story end? Bottlenose succumbs to fever beside the photographer’s (!) skeleton. So you see, in the end all men (according to Toujours-Là) fall into the Abyss! I cannot help but wonder: What was his own story? Back to Odille. Had she been “virtuous” Toujours-Là would not have loved her. He feared and loved and hated her, just as he feared and loved and hated the sea. Yet had Odille been virtuous, he would have surely damned her for a prig!

  Your own Venus

  Dearest K,

  I am devouring your library. I have read that according to Ezekiel there were no trees in Eden but precious stones instead; others say those burning stones were stars and that Eden was never on Earth but in Heaven. I imagine an Eden of trees constellated with precious stones.

  Enoch says Eden is an arid place dwarfed by mountains and animated by columns of fire so high they obliterate the sky. A desert, mountains, a pit of fire, and God’s own hideous alabaster throne.

  The second time Enoch visits Eden he finds aromatic trees. The perfume of one of these is so wonderful it causes his heart to beat faster. Its fruit grows in full, tight clusters. Today
I wanted to make such a tree but I had no glue. Paste is something I’ve learned to make, not glue. The bazar has it. I always take the largest size. It is white, suitable for wood, paper, and plastic. It is very adhesive and transparent when dry. It takes paint and withstands varnish. Why do I go on and on about glue? Because it holds my little universe together.

  I waited for evening. I rarely see anyone then. As expected, the bazar was open and to my delight, boxes of toy hand grenades made of pressed cardboard and suitable (with minor alterations) for the fruits of Paradise lay stacked beside the door.

  I haunted the counters eager to indulge myself in some cans of metallic paint. I carried these and the grenades to the proprietress. She took up my purchases one by one and squinting, deciphered their prices. She had done something odd to her hair. It looked scrambled and fried. As she taped my boxes together I contemplated the top of her head. Then she handed me my parcels, but before I could look away, she had taken her dress up by the hem and lifted it to her chin. I saw that the creature was entirely naked and, crushing my purchases to my heart, I fled, howling. When I leapt across the threshold I stumbled and fell. My boxes collapsed beneath me with a dismal crunching sound. To make matters worse, I fear the ancient hairlip was sobbing.

  Sunday morning I awoke to find someone standing over my bed. When I opened my eyes I looked up into a pair of nostrils. The strangers scratched his nose and without saying a word shuffled off. I dressed and ran downstairs eager to obtain an explanation. A throng of people were milling about the front hall. I retreated to the third storey and found an entire family picnicking on the freshly varnished ocean. Boys had discovered the bathtub dahabiahs and sunk them all. Gum was stuck to the sides of the imperial stables and the blue-tiled balconies of d’Elir, its forums and circuses had been used for ashtrays. All the catwalks of Corpus Christi are crushed. There were people everywhere and I had trouble getting rid of them. When the housekeeper appeared at noon, she put the blame on the proprietress of the bazar who, she says, has been “spreading stories.” I can’t describe the havoc.

  Certain illuminated decks of cards are missing, and all the dice; above all the precious world-state constitution, nearly completed, is gone. I’ve locked the Grand Hotel, but this evening the gardens were pullulating with strangers smoking cigars and riding bicycles.

  On Tuesday a journalist managed to get in by lowering himself down a chimney. He called the Kingdom a “heteropia,” the objectivization of the symbolic theatre of the mind. “Those little Chinese temples are awfully cute,” he said. “I want you to meet Yves Prouteau. He’s the curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Nantes.” I screeched: “I HATE MUSEUMS!”

  “Yes! Yes! I knew you’d feel that way!” He squeezed my shoulders with affection. And, ignoring my protests, walked up and down my sacred and symbolic avenues exclaiming: “You’re mad! Que c’est génial!” totally oblivious to the ceremonial significance of the paths he was obliterating with his sneakers. He prodded Easter Island so violently with his foot that it became unglued. Then he got down on his hands and knees for a closer look at the cosmological references painted on the palace ceilings of Shhbzpur, the powdered faces of the whore-priestesses of Hooghly.

  “May I keep one as a souvenir?” he asked, holding up an oval sarcophagus containing the embalmed body of the Princess Polyandrous and waving it in the air. He began to take pictures.

  “I can’t believe my eyes – why it’s an anamorphose!” (Catching sight of shrubbery and lakes.) We had a fight over the camera, which ended when I was able to grab it away from him and hurl it downstairs. As he left he cried:

  “You’re a genius! Don’t worry – I’ll be back! You should charge admission!” (People were standing in line at the door.) “Like Le Facteur Cheval! Le Curé de Rotteboeuf! Pic Assiette!” What sort of people are these? I cannot imagine anyone honest charging admission to their dreams.

  As soon as he was gone I set to work attempting to repair the damage. I sealed off the chimneys with chicken-wire. Things were quiet all evening, but the next day at noon the housekeeper introduced that dreadful Figuebique. Elephant parts littered the kitchen table and a heap of papier mâché coconuts were drying in the oven. Figuebique confronted me with numerous and extravagant rumours. She claimed that I am “the evil architect of places of worship small enough for demons and constructed of church publications with the holy words of the blessed Pope commingled with the heathenish vociferations of psychoanalytical journals, the daily rag, and other refuse!” (My exact recipe! Add glue, water, and stir!) That it is known I entertain children in ways scabrous and unclean (this rhetoric is hers); that I am not only a dangerous heretic, a lunatic imposing hurtful notoriety on the town, but, furthermore, a pederast!

  “A pederast!” she badgered me, jabbing at my diaphragm with one extended finger. “A Paphian demonologist who has turned the spa into a heathen temple!”

  “Yes! And I am Charles the Second, too!” I roared. “Grandson of Charles Daedalus the First and son of Thingummy Ma’Hoot!” To prove it I leapt about the room, drumming all the while upon my chest. Figuebique grabbed her purse and ran.

  Now I am abandoned by the housekeeper. It is fortunate that we had put in a fresh supply of cans. I don’t dare show myself in the village. But it really doesn’t matter. I’ve more than enough to keep me busy: stacks of newsprint, glue, and paint; cardboard, sawdust, sand. I’ve the library and I’ve Olivier. As we sit together in the kitchen painting fig leaves on plastic babies and giving them wings (these are the inhabitants of Myopia); we invent new games.

  “You shall play at being me when I was a little boy,” I told Olivier this evening, “and I, I shall be Aristide Marquis.” I proceeded to tell him the story about the archipelago of Waq al Waq where a large tree grows whose fruit resembles the heads of human beings. Each dawn when the heads awaken they open their eyes and mouths very wide and they cry: Waq! Waq! Subhan al-Khalaq! Praise be to the Creator!

  Your own Nini

  CHAPTER

  22

  In a recent letter K proposes a theory of d’Elir: she writes that its historic and geographic fragmentation implies a refusal of place. She suggests the Kingdom is a denial of homeland, the denial of home. And the denial of Time – that absolute fatality. But I wrote back to explain that d’Elir is the attempt to embrace the entire world. To be at home everywhere at once. Which is why its Amazon embraces the Sahara, its Nile empties into the Mississippi; its Catskills sleep at the foot of the Andes. If only I could find a way to make it rain without damaging the parquet.

  It is, after all, only an accident that I was born where I was and when. And if, as Toujours-Là believed, mindlessness rules the world, at least my own small corner is actively conceived. I say this with humility; simply, I am content to putter and paste, wanting nothing more than to occupy time and place in my fashion.

  This week and alone I created the bar in Thule Toujours-Là once described; its beams and rafters made of the ribs of whales. He said the stars were uncommonly bright and the constellations strange so I strung Christmas lights, white and blue, across the ceiling. I call this place the “Snark” (another favourite theme of K’s), and I have painted this above the door, the S like a bristling sea serpent – red, spitting a violet smoke.

  This room was once a pantry, cool and dim, its windows so pummelled by rain and dirt as to be opaque, silver in the sun. I’ve painted a mural – a stark, polar landscape animated by the snarkish silhouettes of polar bears. There are gulls wheeling in the sky and standing in the broken, black sea on a hunk of ice, a lone explorer contemplating the beauty of the world although he and the world are doomed.

  I have set an oil lamp on a little table of worn wood and brought in two evil-looking stools. I have filled a whisky bottle with tea for myself and for Olivier I’ve made a pitcher of lemonade.

  Outside it is spring, full and deep; the enclosing hedges have turned a deep emerald green. But waiting for Olivier in obscurity I feel it could be winter.
Here the world is cubby-holed and squat, the gravity of history contracted and compressed.

  Olivier surges in breathless and smelling of flowers. Faerie in the guise of a child inspirits the room.

  “Tell me a story,” he cries as he slides onto the little stool I’ve set out for him. I pour him a glass of lemonade; he downs it thirstily. “Tell me a strange story, but true!”

  “I’ll tell you about Odysseus and the Sirens,” I begin, “or Sindbad and the Well of Corpses.”

  “No!” Olivier shakes his head vigorously. “True! True!” he sings. “And strange!” He worries the words like candy with his teeth and tongue. “Tell me” – he kicks his feet excitedly – “tell me a story about Toujours-Là!”

  “I’ll tell you Toujours-Là’s story,” I say, “just as he told it to me, myself.”

  “That’s good!” says Olivier. “That’s the story I want to hear.” He bends towards me expectantly.

  “Today I am Toujours-Là,” I tell him, “and you, you are me”

  “I’m Nini!” Olivier agrees. I take an authentic-looking swig from my bottle.

  “This, son, is wh-whisky. D’you know why men drink whisky?”

  “No, Toujours-Là. Why?”

  “To forget. To forget the piece of bone they lost long ago in Eden – along with their peace of mind.”

  “That’s good!” Olivier approves. “You sound just like him!”

  “You bet I do, little bugger, but dammit – I forgot that I smoke a pipe.” The problem has me stumped but only for an instant; Olivier’s bubble pipe is handy in his pocket. “Phah! Tastes like soap! You want to poison me, son?”

  I begin:

  “I was conceived of a dark impulse, yes! Of two lumbering beasts. I grew up in squalor well inland – O far, far from the sea! In a hovel rotten with saltpetre. Even the stone floors was crusted with salt. I was the smallest of four an’ two babies had died. My mother brooded an’ raised rabbits; she fed them with the weeds she pulled from the roadside. We wore rags and rabbit skins she sewed into little vests; we smelled of dirt and badly tanned leather and mostly we ate beans. But once my father stole a lamb and slaughtered it. My mother roasted it before the fire; we kids burned our fingers on the skin an’ got to taste it ’fore these men came after my papa with pitchforks and a gun. I never saw him again for three years.