The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  He'd known John for two years. He wrote him notes about the excellent and doubly large sandwiches he made and John put them up on the bulletin board. Then John would get in trouble for making the sandwiches too big, but John didn't care. John had been a student forever, making films. John turned up the radio as he chopped onions, sang I'm glad to be gay along with Dire Straits. He felt that he could count on John, that John understood his neediness. Sometimes when John was off, he went there and got drunk. Although he hardly knew John, he didn't want him to see that.

  There had been an aquarium a few years before John, but the fish died one by one. Now there was a jukebox instead.

  The girl who stood in for John that night was thin and blonde and homely. He was drunk and so he loved her through his heart's arch-windows of phallic narrowness. He knew what love was because he always felt it. It was simple loneliness.

  If he had a gun right now he'd probably go kill himself, but he'd be calm and very very happy.

  He decided that he would drink two more beers and then one beer and then he'd be ready to ask her to go out with him. Having never seen her before, he loved her so much. Love notched his soul like the close-packed circular indentations on the trunk of an imperial philodendron. He loved listening to the jukebox and being drunk all alone with no one to bother him, and her not being bothered yet by knowing that he loved her. He loved the nice quiet careful way that she made sandwiches.

  Seven-o'-clock. He'd been here for four hours.

  The 7-Up machine buzzed fretfully—no, it was singing! It was happy; it too wanted to express itself. . .

  A blonde in an army surplus outfit and a white headband came in and ordered a sandwich with melted cheese. He smiled at her. She smiled back. He was so happy that now he could die and no one would be bothered.

  The thin girl came to take the empty beer bottles away. She smiled at him.

  He loved to see her working so hard, cleaning the meat sheer. A few weeks ago, on a Saturday night, he'd been in here with his best friend, who'd now cut all ties. He'd talked about shooting his ex-wife, then himself, just for fun. He wondered if this waitress had been here then. He remembered a thin one, who'd been so patient behind the counter. He'd given her a ten-dollar tip, just for the hell of it. That had left him pond-bottom broke, but today was another payday.

  The girl's hair seemed to be darkening so far away across the room, behind the counter. She was wrapping something in paper. The blonde with the white headband was still here, one booth away, staring out at cars and darkness. She looked at him; he looked at her, then down.

  The refrigerators were making a steady loud noise. Sausages hung in the air. Finally nothing could be seen outside but the reflections of the cars. The waitress was clicking at something, moving food processor levers. How sweet she was! It would be impossible for any man she'd ever known to emulate his tenderness.

  Do you want me to take this away? she said to him.

  Maybe I'll just keep looking at it awhile, he said.

  It was very black and pretty out the window at eight-o'-clock, just as it had been the previous night when he'd run past his ex-wife's house, running back along the dark street, running back from San Pablo where a man had chased him yelling that he was going to kill him; once he'd crossed Grove Street he slowed down, wondering if he'd see his ex-wife. He didn't want to see her, exactly, but he sort of hoped he would. He never did. If he had, his heart would've curdled so tight as to snap the scar tissues. Standing outside the house, he remembered the day that his best friend had told him that her friend Colleen had just moved in. He had never met Colleen. His best friend said that she was very pretty. He wondered what his ex-wife had told Colleen about him, and whether he could creep into Colleen's room and kiss her, to be unfaithful to his ex-wife . . . But in fact he had slept with no one since his ex-wife.

  Nine-o'-clock.

  You want lots of lettuce? the thin girl was saying to a woman in blue. You got it.

  He got up slowly. — Will you go out with me? he said to her. Please?

  He was already looking at the floor so that he wouldn't have to see the disgusted pity rushing at him from the girl's face.

  No, I don't think I could do that.

  Please? he said, longing to kill himself.

  I'm sorry.

  He went out.

  New York, New York, U.S.A. (1990)

  He always sat in one of those chairs whose cushion was the color kof canned tomato soup, in one of those chairs whose arms curved round to embrace your kidneys, at the table in the corner where the brick partition began. From this location (his loneliness reflected in the spoon) he could see one TV on a sports channel bright and silent, and the two fans spinning circles of shadows across the pennants that hung from the ceiling like sleeping bats. Above the brick partition reigned the paintings: the ocean scene, the phony horse, the discreedy blurred nude, the happy child—and beyond them lay a wall of lace locked in place by brass posts. Through this he could occasionally find flickers of action from the bar, but he preferred to gaze down the length of the brick partition, past cash register and coffee pot, where he could sometimes see the waitress who interested him. He did not love her; he did not know her name. But he was sorry whenever he didn't find her there. He had not yet learned when her shifts were because he did not come every day. Often enough she was there, blonde and Irish, rubbing her nose as she said something on the phone.

  When she got the bone out of her throat and her ear out of her shoe, by then they'd hung up the telephone! a drunk was shouting.

  On the television a man was in the driver's seat, closing the door of his car, and his arm was immense, bigger than his shoulder.

  The door to the kitchen swung and glittered. He thought he saw his waitress's face through the diamond window.

  She passed the small white table with two settings: two forks on the left, and a knife and spoon on the right, then salt, pepper and flowers, always wilting flowers. He had never sat there. It would have been too sad to sit alone.

  Someday he would take this waitress out to dinner and they would eat at that table. She would get up and serve them both, or else no one would serve them and the food would come by itself, sliding like the black plastic tray on which she brought his change, Lincoln's wry face uppermost, his edges curling upward toward the distant fans.

  Berlin, Germany (1992)

  So. You want to come with me? the blonde from Mannheim said in that calm slow voice.

  Well, I don't know. Maybe. Can I kiss you?

  She flinched. — Depends on where.

  How long will I have with you?

  Well, you know, we won't have all night, but I won't hurry you.

  How much?

  One hundred fifty deutsche marks.*

  I don't have that much.

  No? No credit card?

  No. I'm sorry; I wish I could. I didn't know it was that much. I talked with a girl last night who told me a hundred . . .

  Nothing?

  No.

  It includes the price of the room.

  I can't.

  She stepped back.

  I wish I could, he said again.

  You know, the blonde from Mannheim explained, the more you pay the more you get.

  I'm not surprised.

  You want to try?

  OK.

  Ja?

  Sure, I'll try it.

  The blonde from Mannheim unlocked the door, and they went up wide stairs. Just past the landing, where it could no longer be seen from the street, a red carpet began. These last stairs pulsated like blood vessels. Inside the salon where the loitering crowds of ladies in lingerie were pinkened by crimson lights, the red carpet thickened into something resembling endometrial lining, and he felt as if the blonde from Mannheim had led him into the womb of a ruby grapefruit. It was very dim and spacious and he walked beside her into this soundlessly cinematic dream of a brothel, a dream he'd had many times before.

  She took him into the first
room on the right. It had a red carpet, and the double bed had a red bedspread. The casement was open. She closed it and began to undress, which didn't take long. He laid the money down on the table.

  I must go pay the rent, she said. Please undress.

  He took his clothes off and lay down on the bedspread, which was warm, damp and smelly. After awhile he lifted it up and got beneath it. There was nothing there but a bare mattress covered with crumbs of something like old scabs.

  The blonde from Mannheim returned and said: For what you gave me I can do nothing except with my hand.

  Can I kiss you?

  Never.

  He looked at her. Then he got dressed.

  The money is gone, you know, said the blonde. You can't get it back.

  Why isn't that news? he said, tying his shoes.

  You're not angry?

  No, never mind, he said.

  She followed him to the top of the stairs.

  Well, then, goodnight, she said.

  Goodnight, he said emptily.

  He came back down onto Kürfurstendammstrasse where it was a late September night and a double-decker bus passed among street-lamped trees like a ghost. Greasy squares of sidewalk throbbed with the U-bahn's moling. Two men played a duet on electronic keyboard and xylophone. A crewcut boy in a denim vest sat with a knifeblade between his teeth. A clean straighthaired woman stood inspecting haloes in a jewelry shop; the haloes were watches. A little past eleven, a guard came and drew shutters over that window. Now the haloes were transubstantiated into denizens of the kingdom of squares.

  For the purposes of free enterprise there were illuminated glass cubes displaying towels or else white lingerie on black dummies with roses. A blonde leaned against the nearest one, chewing gum alertly.

  — You want to go back up with me? she said. I can make you very happy.

  Can I kiss you?

  No.

  Some whores stood intense and still. Others in big boots waved to him with cheery wolf-whistles. He went to three of them and said: I'm sorry I don't have any money left but can I just kiss one of you?

  OK, darling, laughed a redhead. I'll kiss you. — She sucked at her gum for awhile, strode up to him, pulled his head toward her and spat in his face.

  * In 1992, 150 DM was about U.S. $94.

  Antananarivo, Madagascar (1992)

  I speakee you good! I speakee you no problem! I sleep under you hotel? But afterward she drew her hand across her forehead, wiping the sweat of amazed disgust.

  Once she had put her clothes on, she raised again her lovingness, like a man lifting an immense load of green bananas onto his head, and whispered: No problem. I likee you! No problem! I likee you! I speakee Mama come back here six-o'-clock morning.

  She got dressed in the dark, whispering again and again to him in pidgin her lies of reassurance. Then she asked for money for the taxi. He gave her thirty thousand,* which was the rate for a full night of that work, and she kissed him on the lips and went out. He had already forgotten her face, but there stayed with him the delicious feel of her hair, which she had braided with fibers from some plant so that it felt like hempen rope intermixed with velvet, and he remembered the sugary taste of her nipple and the salty taste of her vulva, the energy of her blood when she first approached him; in an instant she'd been writhing and begging on his lap in the disco while she pierced his mouth with her long wet tongue, and he remembered how as soon as he'd entered her all that had paled to patience, but most of all he remembered the rich smell of her, a smell of roast coffee, chocolate, shit, soap and fresh sweat, a smell which had repulsed him slighdy at first but which he grew to love faithfully in the course of that hour because of its strength: he trusted her fleshly richness.

  But she never came back.

  He'd known that she wouldn't, but waited just the same, unable to sleep in the sweltering room of rainforest planks whose knotholes let the mosquitoes in, and outside he heard music and dancing and laughing because it was New Year's Eve, so he could not sleep, and finally he went out to see if he could join them but they'd gone into closed houses; and as he stood taking this in, a chalky dog loomed out of the dirt's darkness and he went back upstairs to his room where he sat smelling the stink of his sweat and waiting for the night to be eaten like so many others and listening to the mosquitoes around his head.

  Her smell stayed on him—at first a mere pale greenish stalk, but then when for loneliness he pressed his face in the pillow where her head had lain it expanded like a mango tree's cracked and crumbled bark; it became an orchard of palms whose trunks were thickly sprouting everywhere with ferns.

  Weeks later he spied her by daylight, a barefoot woman striding rapidly down the road with an immense basket on her head, her arms easy at her sides. He watched, and she didn't see him. And he said to himself: Her cunt is one of those roadside huts in which any can take shade—any of these muddy barefoot men in patched pants! So why won't she shade me? Why won't she shade me?

  Then it was night in another town. Night it was, while the two women he'd rented sat over their coffee, and he over fresh white lychee-fruit juice, and his women were swishing flies off their brown arms and laughing, tranquilly scratching insect bites, while motorcycles and pousse-pousses went by and the one who'd made him so lonely went into market across the street, the market which offered pineapples and melons. He could not get away from her, it seemed. He wanted only her. His women chatted. Charlotte sans culottes was always grinning, laughing hoarsely at him and the other woman, slapping her thighs. She'd be a good loser. Tonight, although he'd paid her off, she'd attached herself to him and the other woman like a leech, coming all the way to the Bras d'Or to get him to buy her coffee, but so lazy she wouldn't walk like they did; she had to pay the pousse-pousse both ways. It had been an expensive coffee for her.

  He said to Charlotte: Are you lonely?

  She laughed until she cried. Then she said: Always.

  She laughed again quickly, so that he wouldn't believe her. Then he knew that she was telling the truth.

  And you? he said to the other one.

  Not with you, my love. — She for her part tried so hard to be sincere that he knew she must be lying.

  So they were both lonely! Imagine that—and him, too! All lost and falling!

  The whore who'd left him came out of the melon store, licking fruit pulp from around her lips. He stood and blocked her way.

  For a long time she didn't recognize him. Then she said: OK no problem! I sleep under you one more time, you me two ladies? OK I speakee you good! I likee you very good . . .

  He said: Why didn't you come back?

  She gazed at him without answering. Then suddenly she'd wriggled past him, was running down the street so that the other two whores gaped; almost gone in the darkness, she screeched over her shoulder: I no likee you! I no likee you!

  * In 1992, 30,000 Malagasy francs was about U.S. $16.

  Nairobi, Kenya (1993)

  Every evening was a parade of crowd sounds, honking horns, calls, chantings and whistlings, and yet he never saw any parade. Maybe he needed to look again, persevering like the toilets in Nairobi, which often work best on the second flush; or maybe he was the parade, and everybody else a spectator: the whores on posts with their feet stretched out before them (big smiling whores in blue-jeans and sandals, smiling because they had all the time in the world), the men sitting on switchboxes, the birds rushing like the crowded buses, like the cigarette smoke whirling up from beneath men's top-hats and baseball caps. He obtruded himself upon the Kenyans' attention in just the same way that the diesel-smoke crept along the pavement in swirling melting ridges like blowing snow, flickering across people's shoes and steel shutters and gratings and across the uniformed guards outside the shops. He paraded on. Taxi drivers grinned wide and white, elbows out the window. He went past the yellow honeycomb of Nyakio House whose windows were melted in, and he came to the striped posts around the perimeter of the concrete island by Moonlit Limited
where the whores always began to sit in the late afternoon. There was a dark girl at a post, chewing gum, her cheeks bulging out and shining white in the streetlights. He hurried past her and saw another one in a doorway and her eyes made his eyes explode into flames. He went on. The twilight smelled like cigarettes, curry and armpits. Through that continuous grimy roar men rode in open vans, packed like soldiers. Dark men in pale suits and hats sat on a low wall that curled around a dirt parking lot for taxis. — My friend, can you give something to eat? Something small? — They were unlike the beggars in Madagascar, who upon receiving money immediately asked for more. The children, however, were the same—sly, insistent and treacherous. When a grimy waif—boy or girl?—pushed up against him like a calf as he walked, grabbling in his pockets, he felt helpless. — No, he said. — The child snuffled. It worked its snotty fingers deep into his pockets, digging and scratching while it clung, its head against his crotch; he wearily said no and no. Everyone was watching him. They pointed at him in the way that people point in Nairobi, reaching up at the sky. He did not want to hurt the child, and he did not want to be hurt for hurting the child, and he did not want the child to take his money. Finally a man shouted and pushed the creature away.