by Keith Korman
The words were hushed, tremulous, so soft they could barely be distinguished from the babble of human noise coming from every corner of the world. His writing mind became a thin thread that never left her hand, and she ran alongside it back to the sunlit room, England. Smoggy, gray London, Steaming taxis, vistas of brick row houses … She found his new home quiet and out of the way.
His study was brighter than the old one, with a bit of well-tended garden beyond the French doors. Outside, the leaves of an almond tree stirred in the wind, their color a tender springtime green. She wanted to ask, What happened? To Vienna? To my clinic? Did anyone tell you? But though she might circle the earth a dozen times, or sink to the depths of the sea where the devilfish lit their way in the dark, she couldn’t pick up a pebble. Make a sound. Or blow a fleck of lint from his sleeve. Yet she could travel in his mind. And know his thoughts. The date on the letter read 1939: six years gone by. A mere six years for all of them in Rostov to be forgotten. Not even a shred of memory fluttering in a passing thought. And as she watched his hand crawl across the pad, she could feel the man was sick. Too sick to care about anything else, Perhaps he had a month to live. Perhaps a week.
They had made yet another appointment for him at the London Clinic. A mere formality. Lün, the chow dog, lay under the desk and breathed sleepily. No formality in that. Looking down, he saw that Lün had cracked open one eye, which glanced upward at him. Then she pushed her soft, furry body past his cold legs. She circled once on the rug and sat heavily on the carpet. Often, he could walk only that far himself. A few weak steps in the garden and then back to his desk.
He had seen a picture of himself in the paper last week. It showed him standing outside his new English home, his face clamped and sour, the corner of his mouth drooping to a mushy line. The doctors had removed a section of his jaw as neatly as you’d bone a chicken. They had shown him the bone afterward: black and soft with cancer. In its place they had put a prosthetic implant that fit closely into the hollow they had carved out. Already the muscles were cleaving to it, so that he could talk, even if he slurred.
He had used those jaws — to talk and howl and laugh, to kiss and eat. How he loved meat. Roasts and steak and flanken. Chew the bones and suck the marrow out. Now the thought of all that gnawing and bone-cracking left him weak and slightly nauseous. He fed himself with a spoon at mealtimes, his old man’s fingers shoving in a puree of infant’s mush.
Lün lifted her head slowly and stared sleepily out into the garden. À thrush had landed on the ground and pecked daintily at the dirt. The thrush looked at the dog and the dog looked at the thrush and they held each other’s gaze for what seemed a long time. Then the bird chirped once as if to say, Bye-bye, Lün! and turned tail, hopping off. It flew up into the lower branch of the almond tree and preened. The dog yawned and laid her big head back down on the carpet.
“You’re a lazy hound,” the old man said. Lün thumped her tail gently on the carpet, agreeing without too much effort.
They had found a new cancer near the prosthetic implant…. He knew he smelled, that his whole mouth smelled rotten with decay. That’s why the dog chose a spot on the carpet far away. Sometimes he fancied that he could still taste those Canary Island cigars he used to buy by the box, He saw it clearly: a snug balsa wood box, holding twenty Triple-A hand-rolled cigars, each wrapped with a green-and-gold band.
Pope Julius II brand, they were called,- the pontiff’s profile and Medici nose were embossed on a miniature tinfoil plaque in the center of the box. His Old Jules, he used to call them, and during the long middle years of his practice each box cost twenty florins. That was the combined revenue from three and a third analytic sessions, each at six florins an hour. If he spent three hours in the morning analyzing three patients, they paid for the box of cigars he bought during lunch. But if the slow holiday season of a Vienna summer left his consultation room hideously empty, while the long afternoons slipped idly into evening, then that slim day’s work barely covered a nasty indulgence. The smoke of those cigars wafted sweetly in his memory, hanging motionless in the air of the old consulting room shifting as the murmurs of his patients floated through their veils. And even now, at the end of his life, the whiff of Old Jules clung to him as cancer in his jaw.
The old room had been a little like a museum filled with collectibles and cherishables — more like a spinster’s curiosity shop than a doctor’s office: inlaid marble boxes from the Orient, a print of the Sphinx in the Gizeh Nile Valley, embroidered pillows with worn tassels and book upon book on shelf after shelf. While nearby a watchful tribe of miniature antiquities silently guarded three sides of his green blotter.
Some of the statuettes were originals, others copies of copies. Some were gifts, some he had bought himself as the state of his practice and the price allowed, Isis the moon goddess was one of the first miniature statues he bought. He had fallen in love with her name, which meant “She-Who-Weeps.” A Roman copy made of soft marble, seven inches high,- her lips full, her belly round and navel deep. Her breasts hung separate and alone, and they stared at him kindly. With such a pleasant, giving body, what did she weep for? For whom … ?
Next came Marduk, a four-inch god of war; his face had smoothed with years, leaving his beard a few mere scratches. In one hand he once held a weapon no bigger than a matchstick, Yet his mouth was cruelly carved — the insatiable lips of Nebuchadnezzar, the bitter breath of battle fume and death. A tiny battle god like an outrider who precedes the main host. A blot on the horizon, yet the herald of doom. Rapine, ruin, and slaughter. He didn’t have to be big, just the right size to swing from your neck as your sword rose and fell and the blood ran down its hilt.
In an alley shop in Siena he had found Astarte. And when he saw her he knew he must possess the little love goddess of fertility. The ancient days had seen so many of them, a score of lusty maids for a score of lovers. So many Astartes had been made from common clay, perhaps in honor of the sacred temple prostitutes of her name. Common clay-feet country girls, serving for a time in the big city, before being sent home pregnant, with a sack of coppers in their belt. This one, so shameless, so blatant — she made him covet her in an instant breath of lust. And yet a figure so old and weathered there was precious little left of her to admire.
But what was left told all. The long-dead maker had concentrated on her woman’s parts. They were raised like a lozenge, as though meant to be adored. Swollen, impossible to overlook. And after millenniums his eyes were still drawn to the space between her thighs. So she was meant to be: a wanton, luscious thing, with taunting voluptuous parts and the heavy splayed feet of a barefoot country girl. So a sculptress made her. For it had to be a sculptress — so much self-love, self-adoration in the thing. The maker had to be a woman, and knowledgeable in the ways of men. Maybe a prostitute who thought herself a goddess. One of dozens who lived in a temple of fertility and love. A sacred precinct run by prostitute priestesses in a town full of soldiers and merchants: where outside the town walls the good wives kept their husbands at home, digging out crumbling furrows under the sun of Assyria.
He would never know….
Chapter 6
The Wise Man Dies in Childhood
The sun had shifted along the carpet, a bar of light warming Lün’s dark-brown nose. And the thrush had returned from the almond tree. The bird stood in the open garden doorstep, a foot or two from the sleeping chow. The old man looked down at the figures surrounding his green blotter. The blotter had been replaced twenty times since he had begun putting statues on his desk. This one was fresh and untouched. It mocked him, for he would never wear it out, never fray it with thoughtless scribbles and a pointed pen. They had put it on his desk to remind him of the old office. To make him more at home. But in trying to make these strange surroundings more familiar, they only made it more obvious that he had lost forever everything that came before. Another kind of death.
His little tribe of gargoyles would pass into the future without him,
as they had done with countless owners since their beginnings. The possessor of life died, and yet the mute stones remained; is that what people meant when they said the gods were immortal?
He had saved them from the sack of Vienna — if a man could save a god. Stowing them about his person, even in his wife’s purse, smuggling them across the frontier like forbidden idols from a hostile land. His favorite, Pan, thumped heavily in his overcoat pocket. Keeping his coat on no matter what, in the June heat, in the sweaty waiting rooms and stuffy railway compartments. Even when he had to urinate in the spotless coach toilet,- it banged against the locked door as the train rocked him unsteadily from side to side. He missed the swaying toilet and wet his shoes. He didn’t care. Pan was with him.
Pan. The bawdy joker, the thief, the horny monster. He drew the statue across the blotter. Five inches of bronze, green with age — cloven hoofed, his limbs taut and supple. The body of a wrestler, who could wriggle out of the tightest grip or throw you on your back, Stubs of antlers grew from his head. His green eyes lit with mischief; his frisky tail ready for the chase. The artist had captured him lifting one knee in the air as if dancing a jig, his hand held up in a mock salute.
And Pan had an erection. Curving upward like a horn, the monstrous thing reached nearly to his navel. So that’s what his naughty smile was about, teasing, “Eh, missy! Is this what you want?”
How easy to imagine the rogue sitting under the shadow of a fig tree, the shadow obscuring his shaggy haunches. Passing for a weary field hand, resting at noon with the glaring sun beating down all around him. His tail leisurely flicking the flies from his legs, And then he saw her — a small black speck across the land.
She was slowly lugging water in a heavy jug to the hands who toiled in the dirt. When they threw back their heads to drink, the water splashed on their faces and on the ground. When the jug ran empty, she trudged back for more. All day … up and back, the heavy jug pressing deeper and deeper into her shoulder. And finally, when she’d watered a dozen men’s dusty faces and most of the ground at their feet, she set the heavy thing down gratefully. Across the long strip of earth she spied one last man loafing in the shade of a fig tree. Oh, God …
With a sigh, she hoisted the jug upon her shoulder once more, pushed one sluggish foot in front of the other. The bottom of the jug dug a red crease in her flesh, aching with every step. She had long since given up switching shoulders, and she tried to put the pain out of her mind by staring at her dusty feet. They were the same color as the earth, toenails cracked, pads of callus harder than the ground. The sun beat down and her eyes began to swim. What a low cur. What a lout. Not even getting up to meet her!
Sweat ran down her sides in long rivulets. It was probably Picus, the headman’s son. Lazy Picus. Loudmouthed, good-for-nothing Picus. Never doing a lick of work but always on hand when the wine was being mixed, then coming after his father’s women. The headman’s older wives were more than idle … so he might have some welcome there. But Picus only chased the young pretty ones: and he was a gap-toothed clown, stupid looking when he smiled. Who would want to kiss a face like that? But there he sat, like the headman already, making her come to him. Black despair wrapped her in a cloth,- the lone fig tree shimmered in the distance, never seeming to come any closer. The bastard! She would see him dead one day.
Then at last the shade yawned before her like a puddle at her feet. She let the heavy jug down, water sloshing over the rim. Less for him, then.
“Well, if you want some water come and get it, Picus.”
“No, you come, Come into the cool and rest yourself.”
Rest herself! She should go. Leave him sitting there without the water. To spite him, she hefted the jug and drank. Rivulets ran out the corners of her mouth and down her front. It felt delicious and cool, and her rags hung wetly. She knew he was staring. Let him stare. Setting the jug down, she bent farther than she ought, showing herself off. For a slow moment a crawling silence gathered in the shade of the fig tree. He broke it with a low chuckle.
“You drink well, but I’m not very thirsty….”
Damn him, then!
She turned away proudly, showing off her hips. Showing him something he’d never have. And then he laughed. Her wet rags went cold. Picus never laughed like that. She tried to imagine his gap-toothed grin, but now she could not recall his face. Her eyes roved across the fields, but the fields lay empty. Where were the others? The hairs rose on her calves., She took a step back from the jug, shading her eyes against the glare to peer into the gloom under the tree. The figure stirred, Slowly it stood, shaggy haunches unfolding from the long grass at the trunk, hooves crumbling clods of dirt. His tail swished back and forth. He had his man-thing out —coming, coming for her.
She ran, her shout swallowed up in a deaf sky. She noticed a little cloud, all alone in the blue: a tender silky nimbus racing with her…. And then another cloud descended down upon it. The dark cloud spread out its gray cloak, gathering in the silky one. Why see this now? Her shoulders no longer ached, her wet front warm as summer rain. And she suddenly felt hungry for a piece of roast meat between her teeth, the juice running over her chin.
She stole a glance over her shoulder. He fell over himself as he came on. Above her, the two clouds were tangled. She stumbled, her body hot and sweaty in the soft dirt. She wasn’t fleeing from him anymore…. His breath blew against her ear and smelled of mown grass. She squirmed, struggling in the dirt to make the taking sweeter. To make him want it more. Her rags ripped and shredded; the sun shone on the backs of her thighs. She raised her bottom for him, and he hugged her to the ground. Beside the fig tree her jug had fallen over, and the water from the water jug gurgled into the soft earth. She howled, glad no one could hear her cry. She was open and ready…. Beg me for it, Picus. I’ll laugh in your face tonight!
The old man came back to his study,- he touched Pans smooth bronze skin. How much he wished he had that huge manness now, possessing the great swollen heat of it. He remembered it as a separate part of him, an animal, distinctly not human, with its own needs and wants. Then came a stab of burning envy. That horny goat with the smooth green skin had owned his manhood for three thousand years and would own it for another three. But not himself. Not Herr Professor of Maresfield Gardens, not Herr Doktor of 19 Berggasse, not the lover of Martha, the father of his children. Not his mortal, human self who possessed the man-thing for a brief score of years, a poor little tail, withered and flaccid in the end.
How irrelevant an old man’s penis was — compared to what it had always been. An old man’s stick, no good for women and hardly even good to pee with. Then, last of all, becoming a leaky faucet, a constant drip you couldn’t ignore.
Now he bore his wife’s kind smiles when she came to him in bed; the last time he had gone to her was almost a year ago. At eighty-two! How cocky he felt that day. A swift year later he had waned for good. While in the darkness of each night he felt her push her warm bottom up against his cold flanks. What did she think of then? His younger days? Then the kindness of her smiles killed him. Much too late now to tell the world that the envy of an old man for his younger self was the last bitter breath of life. That — and your wife drifting off to sleep with an old woman’s sigh …
In a flicker of torment, he saw her bottom as it looked in her youth, round and firm like a pear that he could split open with his fingers whenever he wanted and devour it. A lump rose in his throat, and he feared he might cry. Cry right there in his sunny morning office, in front of Lün. Dogs understood about crying, whining mournfully or coming over to snuffle your leg. And Lün sensed his mood, nosing it out of the air like a smell. Even his own Lün … She shifted her furry head off the carpet and stared at him with great brown watchful eyes. The dull pain in his jaw returned to trouble him. Somehow he had let the statue of Pan fall on its face. He managed a dry chuckle, then stood the god upright and drew Astarte alongside. Pan with his great erection and, beside him, Astarte — showing the world her vo
luptuous vagina. He turned the figures face-to-face. “You know,” he slurred, ‘you two should think about getting married.”
The London Clinic was one of those horribly efficient places only British medicine could run and maintain. As the old man walked unsteadily down the corridor, he spotted a nearly unforgivable over sight. Some nurse or orderly had failed to collect a bedpan, leaving it out in the open on a gurney in the hall. The stainless-steel receptacle contained someone’s sickly green feces, the smooth consistency of toothpaste squeezed fresh from the tube. A singularly repulsive sight, with the aura of incontinence and disease and slow wasting. Yet the pan surrounding the excrement was clean and spotless, as if the patient’s elimination had been put there by hand and the metal rim polished like a fancy dish served in a smart restaurant. Was this some kind of joke?
“Oh my heavens,” came a squeak in the hall, A reedy nurse with blond hair tucked into a starched cap had discovered the offending artifact. She hastily made to carry it off in disgrace. Her body was young and compact, strapped neatly into the white hospital uniform. The old man stopped his shuffling to watch her,- she held the scandalous thing with a considerable amount of poise. Yes, a dying man’s joke. Here’s my sick shit, Nurse,- be good enough to take it away.
The reedy nurse cast an accusatory glance at the old man as she marched past, as though silently charging him with complicity in the matter.
“Rest assured,” he muttered as she went by, “it was not mine, my dear.”
She came to a halt.
“May I help you, sir?”
He noticed she had a bitten face, too tight for her own good. He had read somewhere that these efficient English nurses were so capable they could sweep the curtains around a bed in one of the crowded wards, wrap a dead body, and spirit away the patient’s corpse while the rest of the ward took their tea. Faced with this compact creature at ten paces, he was completely prepared to believe it, He didn’t want to go like that, not with a frigid young woman’s hands the first things to touch him after he was gone, the blood still warm in his veins.... No! Not like an eyesore, like a nuisance, like a misplaced stool in a bedpan, requiring nothing but swift removal — all because he had the thoughtlessness to die.