Celebrant

by Cisco, Michael

  Around them both is growing a somatism of ardent love—trees, rolling and fragrant grass, new blossoms, birdsong, are indispensable to love. Possibly twilight; that might belong on the list—that’s the love spell—can they fall in love without it?

  I know I love her (he thinks) if her presence produces a delirium in me of green blossoming dusk, the garden and the memory of the garden at once. The park of death spring reverence and love. Love I let off in blasts of phosphoprophetic.

  She sneezes abruptly and it’s like a flashbulb goes off by her face.

  I have photic sneezing (she says, sniffing raggedly and rubbing her hands with her shoulders)

  Don’t look at me, she had said. But I had already seen, as she slept, that her lips, the skin over her eyes, the flesh around the rims of her ears, the tip of her nose, like the other sensitive parts of her—her most sensitive part in fact—are all partially transparent. Her teeth, and the boney eye sockets, are dimly visible through the tissue she keeps thickly covered with kohl and powder and dye. She’ll learn in time that it doesn’t matter to me (he thinks)

  He glances over to her, where she rests, her eyes barely open. She smiles blackly at him.

  She catches a glimpse of herself and him together in the window as they pass—in it they are smiling, they are happy.

  To hear music and to experience memory, down in the body, and to be confused because this is no fantasy—this memory of love, unaccountable to you, who only daydream about love. To find, persistently, and present of its own accord, a memory, one day old, of love. That’s a shock. Sad to think it is a shock. The hypocrite assumes the eye of the other is censorious and puts himself beyond the reach of love. Don’t let that happen. Make sure you handle that.

  The new rail cars going by on flatbeds, a gliding steel ribbon, toylike from here and indued abstractly with enormous mass. On the train now, with the lights switched off and the sun already down, nothing to see by but the luminous sky. Between one woman sitting on one side, to the other woman sitting on the other side, the nose and lips of the one, on the one side, and the nose and lips of the other, on the other side, there are two entirely distinct universes. In that space a man sits who is nearly formless, and might be retarded. We sit watching tiny planets orbit his head as though it were the sun there between his ears, and solar wind breath. He smokes—it’s a flare. If he goes out in the rain it’s the deluge for those little worlds. Look carefully at one of them, with a jeweler’s loupe in your eye, and see little flashes of motion there on the surface. And, as you loom in with the loupe, the man/defender God of this solar system flicks your hand away with the backs of his fingers saying “you’ll burn them.”

  Phryne and deKlend had sent themselves invitations for different times. They will have to wait to arrive together, and right now they don’t want to be apart. They hold hands. She has a scarf around her head that flattens her wiry braids, and covers her kohl with big tortoise-shell sunglasses. She refreshes herself with sherbets sweetened with lead sugar, while he goes on ahead, not wanting to. Now she’s all dressed up and looking so appetizing he wants only to undress her again. They both sent themselves invitations for different times, and his is the earlier.

  A low chord on a music box and here comes the house sweeping in like jetsam assembling itself a piece at a time in swells of night sky, and there are gobbets of night sky all over the place. They are large, gelatinous, faceted fragments each with one pebbly side where it tore free of the night mass, in which all the sections of the house are lodged. Slip into one of the unused rooms and find night mass crinkling in through the window, sucking vacantly at the outer edges of the room, partially dissolving them, slickening them and rounding their edges, reducing impressive or charming rooms to lozenges for soothing the night’s sore throat. Tiny rivulets of melted night trickle down the walls like glittering hair.

  Is this the Belvedere?

  Although he isn’t sure he ought to, deKlend doesn’t wait for the rooms to come to definite coalescence around him, but goes on walking. Now here’s a dark room filled with dancing people. He skirts around the margins, trying to find a vantage point from which to see them, and finds an illuminated niche containing a statue of a fancifully-dressed youth with a crafty expression of intelligence on his vaguely sambo-like face, labelled “the homeless scholar.” deKlend remembers the story, although not from where, because he liked it profoundly the first time he heard it—a student abandons a prestigious school to join a band of wanderers who have no home countries and hence belong nowhere, and later some former classmates meet him again in a little restaurant with red vinyl booths. In response to their easily-imagined questions he tells them, more or less, that he made his choice after an encounter with the wanderers showed him the difference between the study of chicanery masquerading as truth and the study of true chicanery, then went on to read their minds and tell them about it, stood up, walked into the shadows and vanished forever.

  It doesn’t seem to matter, it is and it isn’t. The name of this hotelhouse is “Á Un,” with awkward glottal stop.

  The light from the niche casts a glow over the dancers. Here are twins, middle-aged men with little pot bellies, with round heads and short black hair, who have linked arms and are gaily whirling each other in circles like overgrown kids. deKlend keeps turning his head, thinking he is catching a scrap of music, and he begins to hear that the intermittence of the sound is the rhythm. These are mnemosems dancing to Black Radio. A soft pressure on his elbow, and a figure guides him into a little office or parlour. Watery November daylight comes from the windows, the walls are very high, deKlend is placed in a chair at a desk against the wall, and must push the chair back and twist uncomfortably to speak to the man in his pyjamas who stands in a part of the room like an alcove with a lowered, diagonal ceiling that must be the underside of a staircase. deKlend is speaking disjointedly, numbly gazing at nothing...

  ...providentially cool July day... to think I first began to see things pertaining to this in my dreams

  the past present and future, time and space, the journey I became persuaded I was being expressed to take

  celebrating the rite of a lifetime, the whole of a life? when I’m only already halfway through mine? but the whole of a life can also be the whole of everything me—even a genius doesn’t contain all or most or perhaps any of the things he does or will do, he causes them in a flash, just exactly like a dream

  he finds the time and place for the write, which is possible only because life as a whole is a write, and, in an instant only he can select, only he is selected, and he dreams the whole of life and launches that dream entire, with himself, into whatever surpasses it and breaks it—

  the skull criss-crossed with fractures, so that blinding sunlight pours in and the shivered mind is like three or four voices all speaking at once, each hearing the other without understanding and all seeing what each other sees—the rest of the body light as air floats along moving like a puppet

  the ritual is actually performed by celebrants countless times, and it’s a never-impressive, dreamlike jumble of acts and words, and it’s an everyday task the way taking the trash out is a task—like a shoemaker or an undertaker. The write may be done automatically, without being at all touched by thoughts that remain stubbornly far away, effortlessly fixed on some other preoccupation. It may be done in a spirit of desperate boredom that urges obedience to collapse straight to the floor and lie there for hours, awake, stunned by its own failure, wondering if it will be able to pick up where he left off tomorrow as if nothing had happened today, or if it will never be able to bring itself to performance again—did he even remember how?

  This actually is all part of the write. taken at face value, the rite is fixed and very ancient, but it can only be compared with someone’s recollection of the last time it was done, so the continuity of the rite is not as certain as it might seem even when compared with the writings.

  there are a number of scriptural sources, all of whic
h agree with each other in terms and in particulars, but this is not remarkable, because none of the scriptures provides any really detailed description for or description of the rite. Celebrants are trained, which involves a curriculum, more or less, with some stretching. Many who receive this training never realize it, either at the time, or later. They are immersed in the relevant passages with the idea that this will make it possible for them to improve and improvise the rite correctly in the standard way.

  (The man, who is large and middle-aged, paces back and forth, rubbing his face with both his hands as though he were washing it, and yawning from time to time, with a noise like surf.)

  the journey—to go perform the write in a pilgrimage destination, and he’s one of many. The others will know him and he them, that’s for certain although he can’t bring any particular sign to mind any more than he can clearly recall being set the task in the first place. (There should be a memory)—In part to prove that the world, while it is a globe, is nevertheless infinite, and geographers and map makers have made a mistake. Travelling beyond the horizon, you will never come back again—you will go on and on, the world forever accompanying you—in companyless company. There is a mystery in back of it, having to do with other dimensions, that is not troubled by any of the contradictions in these ideas.

  The write is an indispensible operation of opening and connecting—it was an admission of something, like opening a window to let in the wind—

  deKlend makes an abrupt, violent effort to grasp it firmly and is stricken by an overpowering need to sleep. His head sinks... drops onto his neck and his mind melts in black fog and a snatch of music keeps playing in his memory—suddenly he seizes hold of a thought and wakes up, as if he’d just stolen something from a jealous guardian he’d caught napping, and he must to escape at once with his prize—

  The write has something to do with other dimensions... the world goes... um...—on... in them, so that it is infinite even though it has particular boundaries, just like a human life can be, and the world, and the... world is... is also repeated in them with variations, like a theme—

  When deKlend next looks up, the man has gotten dressed, with a maroon bow tie around his neck and a double-breasted blazer made of pink vinyl. His hair is neatly brushed. He crosses the room from the alcove, going around the far end of the intervening sofa and decisively up to the desk right next to deKlend, letting his hand drop onto the telephone. deKlend feels so fatigued that he can’t raise his hand to stop him, and suddenly indifference and neutralizing resignation wash him down. The man lifts the receiver and dials a number. But he is not calling for help, or sending a warning. He is saying “He’s one of us.” For the first time, deKlend notices a man he now remembers had been introduced to him on the silent dance floor as Dr. C_____, who was sitting on the sofa, with one leg over the other, taking notes on money. deKlend remembers a woman leaning over to tell him Dr. C_____ took all his notes on money, as though this were the height of refinement. The woman, who wears a red dress, is also present, crossing the room she says something to the effect that she dislikes speaking Swedish because “Swedish is so tentative.”

  deKlend gets up and goes to the window. Somehow he knows that this carious light is just a thin, sheer breath of the unbroken night outside, and wonders if it isn’t bad for him. He moves to another window and sees darkness outside with a feeling of delicious relief and invigoration.

  There are dozens of garbage cans in the alley. Pigeon girls begin going through them systematically, quietly removing and replacing lids, expertly and rapidly sifting the contents of each can, setting aside anything edible to them. A shadow breaks the windowlight and the girls freeze. When Burn looks up, she glimpses a man in the window looking out not at them but at the night. He’s a striking man, with large dark eyes and a black moustache, and his bearing, the blanket he has regally cast about his shoulders, the large and gentle hand he is using as a broach, all impress her. She thinks she would like to hear him speak, to be smiled at indulgently by him, to be able to ask him for explanations, to be instructed by him in his pastimes, to see what sort of possessions he has. He turns, still obviously lost in thought, and leaves the window. Burn resumes her foraging, wondering how she could position herself to catch another view of him.

  I must find Votu (he is thinking) What is the next step?

  The next room is roughly circular, with little round sections radiating from it like petals. A rich carpet on the floor, littered with bottles, a man’s watch with a chain, an exploded newspaper. Divans and ashtrays and cushions are everywhere. A man dressed as a maitre d’ rests on the floor looking at a cardboard box filled with pocket-junk wearily. deKlend intuits at once that this man is burdened with the impossible task of restoring each of these castaways to their proper owners. All around him, the house resounds with laughter, cries, hoots, shouts, incessant chanting. The paintings hung over the busy black and gold wallpaper are all of robins, except this black and white photograph, carefully framed, of a clock made of black gum. Turning from the photo, deKlend sees a flash of movement by the floor, and finds the mouse is already an egg, which becomes a cup as he walks over to it—or rather, it’s that antique bowl I’ve been looking for. Is Phryne here yet?

  She would like this bowl (he thinks)

  A boy in a field smiling, then zoom past him and loop around a cloud—see the film projected on the floor, with tiny airplanes like ants circling it down here? How simple stories are, finally—a dark stone stairway... leave the rest... Here are the adults, with all their sexual and aggressive powers, social powers, drugs powers. The seediness of adults.

  Is Phryne here yet?

  The twins sit side by side on a divan, smiling and lunging forward again and again to scoop up their highball glasses and toss a bit more of the contents into their mouths, before setting them down again. They drop the glasses like children releasing pebbles into a pond and it’s obvious the drink is only a seasoning to the primary pleasure they take in these motions. In between drinks they chat with each other, constantly stroking and rubbing their own hands. One keeps scraping his open hand down his face. The other folds his hand back with his other hand and repeatedly knocks the back of his wrist against the side of his head.

  People line up to ask questions with expressions on their faces that are slightly unpleasant, as if there were a spirit of mockery or cruelty in them.

  “And what do you think I should do?” a young woman asks.

  The face-rubber, smiling beneficently, says—By all means you ought not to retire.

  Don’t retire! (the head-knocker adds a little more quietly, smiling and nodding to himself)

  “No?” she asks, nearly spluttering her laugh in their faces.

  By no means (face rub holds up his face rubbing finger and nods once emphatically)

  No means at all! (head-knock says)

  deKlend edges in.

  And me? (he asks, uncertain he’s been heard)

  You? (face-rub says, in surprise)

  You? (head knock says, as if he had momentarily forgotten the meaning of the word)

  Love your lover! (face-rub rumbles, just having finished rubbing his face) Love your lover!

  Your lover! (head-knock says brassily, beginning to laugh)

  The two of them lean in, huddling their heads together, and titter.

  deKlend looks from one to the other foolishly. By standing there, it may be that he thinks he can cause something better to come along.

  Face-rub turns his body more toward head-knock. They are swaddled in blankets from the waist down, although these are twisted all around their pants. Head-knock heaves himself to and fro, apparently trying to get the outer pocket of his jacket, which he is wearing, out from under his bottom, without using his hands. He causes it to flip out onto his thigh, and then withdraws from it a thick bundle of paper, folded together. Face-rub takes the other end of this rectangular sheaf, which is white, with a faint, very pleasing suggestion of blue. With much twinkli
ng and nodding they murmur to each other and face-rub, without pausing, tugs the sheaf from the hand of his twin and holds it, a little drooping, out to deKlend. The two men are completely engrossed in each other, but face-rub’s outstretched hand opens to release the bundle just as deKlend’s fingers are beginning to press it.

  Take this you might need it! (face-rub says, without looking at him)

  You might... (head-knock says, glancing at him and smiling with glee)

  It’s a map! (face-rub says, without looking at him)

  A map! (head-knock chortles, turning to his twin)

  A woman with assertive cologne shoulders by him and commandeers the attention of the twins. deKlend abstractedly strolls into the corner, opening the paper, which proves to be the copious template of a map. The paper has a nice heft to it, and is appealingly smooth and broken-in. It’s the kind of paper that’s dense enough to fray at the edges with wear.

  The twins are tittering with each other.

  I don’t think he liked our joke! (one says)

  Not our joke! (the other says)

  One side is blank except for a box with a few blank lines inside it, labelled MAP OF, with a thermometer scale. On the other side there is a grid with numbers and letters and a field all dappled with pastel blues, tawnies, greens, and russets. The map is so large that deKlend can’t get a look at all of it at once, and he keeps thinking he sees writing, big black dots or stars, in among the folds as he pages through the map. Perhaps these marks can be seen only given this angle or that fold. Anyway, the parts he is able to examine, in the dim, red light in that room, are blank except for the grid lines and the shapeless zones of color.

  A number of officials are all conversing informally. One of them says, “Well look here Yolk Eye, here’s your assistant.”

  The man addressed as Yolk Eye turns his head slightly toward the man indicated and nods almost imperceptibly, his eyes flicking here and there, without actually ever reaching around to see him.