Joyland Trio Deal

by Jim Hanas

  Every morning he came in from Port Perry by GO train. At midday, he went to the Silver Dollar, for its lack of grand disillusionment, and took his lunch — a bottle of 50 and a small trayful of Arrowroot biscuits. At four o’clock he was set free.

  Some nights he might contemplate a night on the town. Perhaps, he considered once or twice, he could take in a fine meal and some Mozart at the Hummingbird Centre, which he’d read about but had yet to see. And yet, what if it were not altogether enjoyable, what then?

  He opened the freezer and withdrew another microwave lasagna.

  He wanted a cigarette. But you couldn’t do that anymore, at least not here. So he fingered the lighter in his pocket and stared the teenage girl in the face as long as he could stand to. Here was his fabled impasse, at the counter of the ice cream boutique just west of Spadina. Clearly the girl was unwilling to inconvenience herself by turning off the hot water tap they’d been running to clean the scoops between uses, and he’d already made such an issue of it that there was nothing left to do but decide between paying for his double scoop of banana chocolate chunk or turning around and exiting without completing the goal of his initial entry.

  This was his crisis of conscience, his moral standoff. And his wife practically pressed her fingers through his biceps when he made principles the victor.

  There was some applause, although no one actually followed him out of the store; it was hot and humid.

  — Are you running for the Green Party? a woman outside asked him, which unfortunately didn’t sound completely ridiculous at that moment, so the next morning he called party headquarters and volunteered.

  He ran on a platform of water conservation — because it had admittedly launched his bid in the first place — and very little else.

  On the subway platform one morning, a mentally challenged man asked him for a hug, and then proceeded to dry hump him in his viselike grip. It was the only time his photo ever made the newspaper.

  She respected her husband in the same way as she respected Canada Post, as something large, secure, and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents, she appreciated his abstract value as a male.

  He wasn’t altogether interesting, more or less an Irish-Canadian stereotype except for the clever spelling alteration he’d made to his Christian name so it appeared more exotic, but he was altogether established, and could at least scrape together enough to house her and her daughters in the same neighborhood of Rosedale as her father’s second cousin, who was casually familiar with two media moguls and one ex-prime minister.

  When she thought of her ex, it was only as the one who had given her the courage to move to the city in the first place. She’d always wanted to be a big fish, to run her own agency or at least have someone under her whose general state of happiness and satisfaction rested in her hands. She had said that trying to be a whale in the ocean seemed too daunting, and that remaining a salmon in a river seemed a much more palatable option.

  He told her that a whale wasn’t actually a fish, and they split.

  Outside where they were holding the other patrons in a line, a dirty man with an inkstain on his tongue was attempting to sell his sketches of UFOs and abstractions for a dollar a sheet. Business was slow and his clientele standoffish. The bouncer made to move him and his lazy eyes rolled out onto his Slovak cheekbones and perched there, considering a jump.

  Hadn’t they all, upon leaving their homes, been happy? Before they were reminded of the city’s downtrodden and destitute? Before their dreams, even those that were inconsequentially small, were ruined by guilt? But what was the solution?

  Another man walked by with what looked like a dead squirrel.

  A woman was handing out heart-shaped stickers to all the attractive people she thought might give her some money, which was everyone.

  She carried a fake baby.

  And in a bar down the street:

  — I shot a woman in the face once.

  — Is this how you often introduce yourself to people?

  — I’m just saying. She was stabbing me at the time. But I still got kicked out of the army.

  He ate another walnut cake.

  — They’re the ones who taught me to use it the first place.

  Whenever he left the city, his lungs cleared almost immediately. He felt younger and more opinionated. He felt less pressure to seem intelligent or better informed. He felt comfortable with both himself and his surroundings.

  Once, on only the second morning after the funeral, he took a wrong turn and ran for an hour and a half before he realized he was lost.

  Of course, as soon as he returned, so did the coughing. For the first week he felt a hard nugget of mucus building near the corner of his right eye, and then he forgot about it simply because he’d grown used to it.

  Gradually he would forget again that this was not normal.

  Only when the snow fell, which seemed to happen less and less frequently, and the smog was momentarily matted to the buckling cement, did he begin to grasp what fortune meant, as he watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight.

  Serwold and the Artist

  There is good reason to suppose that “Serwold and the Artist” (1995) was a major factor in Christopher Eaton’s failure to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is popularly considered that its failure to publish in any literary periodical except [place name here] had very damaging effects, but in truth the story was lacking in certain regards, namely a plot and a suitably developed character. Whereas Eaton probably thought of himself as a harbinger of the forme nouveau, “Serwold . . .” does not hold a candle to some of his earlier works, and the style was quickly abandoned in his later ones.

  What Eaton was thinking when he wrote the story is a mystery. We do know that he never meant the story for publication. It remained locked in his hard drive for months before someone managed to salvage it, tie up the loose ends (not doing a very good job of it, I’m afraid), and submit it for publication under Eaton’s name. Eaton had, by this time, conveniently disappeared.

  “Serwold and the Artist” follows themes set up in Eaton’s other works. The Canadian landscape figures prominently, populated by various artist figures in search of identity, each a feeble metaphor for the other. But where “Serwold . . .” differs from Eaton’s other stories is that the artist figures in it are strangely silent. There is no clever phrase-turning, no vivid imagery, and almost no action whatsoever. It seems as though Eaton was attempting to create a story in stasis, and the result is like a photograph of a horrible car accident, his paragraphs lying mangled on the page, his sentences like dismembered limbs.

  He should have known better. Experimental fiction has the tendency to alienate its reader. It sets itself up as something which ought to be read because of its literary merit, its voyages past the frontières des mots, but in reality it is nothing more than highbrow intellectual wanking. Sophomoric pataphysics replace genuine sentiment and emotions, and the author delights in nothing more than aggravating his reader instead of telling a decent story.

  I recall meeting Mr. Eaton at a conference once. I questioned his tactics in other stories such as “Chasing Games” and Columba St. (a novel that has been called “a cross between Thomas Hardy and Tristan Tzara’’), to which he replied: “I care nothing for either my readers or my critics. There is a line, sir, which must be crossed if one deserves to be taken seriously.”

  The typical response of an overrated, under-talented writer.

  But perhaps this is one of the keys to understanding “Serwold and the Artist.” The characters, each of them speaking in Eaton’s characteristic stilted manner (hovering somewhere beyond what the ear can normally endure; perpetually about to crash into the ground), display an intense desire to be taken seriously. It is unfortunate that they reside in a story that does not deserve that privilege.

/>   There is one scene in particular which sums up the whole. In it, Serwold, the art critic, is studying the artist (who remains nameless for no apparent reason) for an article he is writing. Serwold decides to lay everything bare in hopes that he will get the scoop he is desperately searching for, and poses for the artist. Naked, he asks the artist how he might describe himself:

  The artist held his thumb between them. To Serwold, it seemed as though everything hinged on that thumb, a universal hinge that might somehow open the door to deeper and darker secrets. He shifted his nuts. He tried to imagine that the tourists were not there. And really, in the moment, they weren’t. Or, rather, they were extensions of himself. They all asked the question of the artist together, and they all held their collective breath in anticipation of an answer. The answer . . .

  “. . . ,” said the artist, working hard against the wind.

  The crowd supplied him with a wind by their collective sigh.

  The artist, as it turns out, is a mime painter, meaning not that he paints mimes, but that he mimes painting. In the rare clever bits, this situation produces both laughter and sympathy as the artist attempts to collect for his work. The patrons — Eaton again gives no names, labeling them Patron One, Patron Two, etc . . . — are unable to see what the artist has done, and refuse to pay him. Patron Three even threatens the artist with bodily harm, which the artist then escapes by trapping himself in a box. He re-emerges from his self-inflicted imaginary prison once Patron Three, frustrated at the art’s utter incomprehensibility, has gone.

  Serwold (the story’s only named character) lacks even the artist’s thin humor. The situation of the mime painter is ripe with the possibility of parody, but the critic, instead of unmasking the delightful ridiculousness of the nonexistent paintings, becomes enraptured with them:

  The artist held [the painting] out to [Serwold] for inspection. He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye, plucked an apple from a tree that was not there, and leaned nonchalantly against an invisible wall as he ate it, waiting for a response. Serwold had nothing to say. Even with all the time they’d spent together, all those questions asked and unanswered, he had been completely unaware that the artist had been working on this piece in secret, and the act of generosity rendered him speechless.

  It was huge, perhaps only one foot by two feet in the artist’s hands, but easily becoming six by nine as he passed it to Serwold. In the top left quadrant of the canvas, the artist’s trademark sun broke from the water of the inlet, splashing the gathered sons and daughters of Oedipus in the lower center with crystals not unlike small safety pins. Their points unrestricted by clasp or cover, the pins pierced all but two eyes, those of the already blinded Oedipus himself. Facing in the wrong direction, he consoled the fruits of his loins . . .

  And Serwold could see them. . . . He could see them!

  Ultimately, the reader cannot help but see Serwold as a reversal of the enfant naif figure from “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Instead of realizing that everyone else has been deluded by this scam, he is the only one who falls for it, seeing something that isn’t there. His triumphant realization that he can “see them,” far from convincing the reader that there is some substance to the artist’s work, only makes the critic out to be a fool.

  One might assume that the mime painter is only a minor character in Eaton’s grand scheme, especially when set beside Serwold. Certainly he appears much less often than the art critic. But Eaton makes claims to the contrary, that the artist is indeed the focus, always was. The critic only seems to overshadow him. In [place name here], Eaton has put his intentions in print:

  In “Serwold and the Artist,” I wanted to create a character that would represent the ultimate artist, creating from nothing. I didn’t want the character to speak for himself too much, to flout his own art. There’s something impure about discussing your own work, and for the artist to speak would hypercaustically imply speaking about art. It is my opinion that the pure artist does nothing but create. He or she does not talk, does not stop to eat lunch, does not think. Just creation. I created Serwold as the critic so that the artist’s work could be depicted objectively. Left to his own devices, my artist would revert to discussing his paintings, his Sunrise and the Eiffel Tower, his Sunrise and Patron Three, his Sunrise and Mary Magdalene. . . . It would all be dreadfully boring.

  In Eaton’s opinion, it would seem that a fair description of the artist would also be boring. Much of his art is described in detail, but his physical features, his clothing, his peculiar facial contortions . . . none of these are clear. Instead of a genuine person, he could be anyone. Hardly main character material.

  The painter’s death is, likewise, poorly handled. Presented with the opportunity to hit the reader with some true drama (if, that is, the reader has bothered to labor through this quagmire called a story), Eaton elects instead to give Serwold another useless monologue. With the artist dying right in front of him, Serwold forms a tenuous link between mediums:

  One way of seeing it, of course, was to observe the artist’s manipulation of space. Writers worked with words; sculptors worked with wood, stone, polyethylene bags. Each was endeavoring to create out of a mixture of material and the immaterial, the space around words, the silence between notes, or the air around the edge of a sculpture. The artist, however, was working with space — with nothingness — as both his material and his immaterial: space and space. As the exploration of silence is the exploration of language, the exploration of space is the exploration of space is the exploration of . . .

  A sound. A voice. A request for help. Serwold, stunned, intellectual, highbrow, and silent, looked down at the artist.

  What I would deem a pivotal event in “Serwold . . .” is passed over in two words: “He dies.”

  Does Eaton expect his readers to sympathize with his “main” character in any way? Are we supposed to shed a tear over the death of a man we hardly know, especially when the author himself can’t take the time to give us some dying words or thoughts, something to give the death meaning? Eaton’s painter never comes alive, never dances across the author’s own canvas, never gives a small make-believe flower to a blind orphan girl. But the artist is a good spokesperson for the story because of his mime status. He has absolutely nothing to say. Neither, it would seem, does Eaton.

  I could go on and on, citing example after putrid example, but the gist of the matter is this: Christopher Eaton, in writing “Serwold and the Artist,” penned one of the most uninteresting stories of this century. It is a wonder that it was ever published, and presumably it continues to haunt him, wherever he may be. According to the editor of [place name here], [editor’s name], “Serwold . . .” was brought to [his/her] attention by a long process through which the story passed from mutual friend to mutual friend. When it finally reached [her/him], it was unclear whether the story was represented in its entirety, or whether some or most of it had been lost in its hand to hand voyage — legend has it that the text had circled the globe twice by that time — but [he/she] felt some obligation to Eaton’s fans to publish it. [Editor’s name] refused to comment further, claiming no knowledge of Eaton’s whereabouts. “Chris has always been the type to disappear for long periods of time,” was all [she/he] would say. “It’s not like him to stay silent for long though. You can be sure he’s got his hand in somewhere.” [Editor’s name]’s remarks explain the abruptly truncated conclusion to the story, but even that excuse can not save “Serwold . . .”

  I’ll finish with the words of Serwold himself, spoken by the critic in his eulogy to the artist: “He had nothing to say, so he didn’t. I have nothing to say, so I talk about him.” This, I suppose, is the best line in the story, and only then because it is the last one.

  Monster

  (A Play in Five Acts)

  I.

  I see the monster. She rolls; she gnashes; she does other monster things. She millicks, which, as she explains, m
eans “dividing into a thousand, each fragment copying the original.”

  I protest. I stomp. Other angry things. I attempt to chase the monster away, she millicks again, and I am overcome with frustration.

  II.

  The monster neglects to clean the bathroom. We have discussed this any number of times, and her primary responses are catalogued:

  a) Get rid of that cat, and maybe I’ll clean the bathroom!

  b) I have other monster things to do.

  c) Clean your own goddamn bathroom. I don’t even use it. I shit in your bed.

  With monsters, everything is as it is, and everything happens as the monster happens.

  III.

  The monster is sorry for hurting my feelings. No doubt succumbing to the guilt of not placing my desires first and foremost. She calls me at work, ostensibly to apologize, but the temptation to say nothing is tragic and undeniable. I peek over the borders of my cubicle, then slide under my desk, cupping the phone’s mouthpiece to make sure no words escape. I focus my speech to insure aural retention: “I’ve got call display, you little fucker! You won’t be so quiet after I call your mother and she whoops your backside!”

  Not that I don’t know it’s really her, but I like to keep her guessing. I have the advantage of imagination. Confusion is my only weapon.

  Then she is sorry. (I can tell by the silence.) Wrath is a great impetus for regret.

  Regret is the impetus for inspiration, for more wrath.

  IV.

  Common monster questions:

  a) Are you completely fucked?

  b) What was all that crap you left on my voice mail today?