Brass safe-deposit boxes walled him, side by side, bearing buttons and horns. Each one had a different coffee inside. The smell of coffee enflamed him. There were rows of stalls for muffins, each of which reminded him of the pale brown coconuts he had drunk. In his pocket he found a single coin with a hole in it. They gave him a muffin. He became an anthropologist.
Resolute Bay, Cornwallis Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1991)
On the komatik, whose slats had been partly covered by a caribou skin (now frozen into iron wrinkles), he lay comfortably on his side, gripping two slat-ends with his fishy-smelling sealskin mitts which were already getting ice-granules behind the liner (an old bedsheet) because every time he wiped his nose with the skintight capilene gloves the snot was soaked up by the old bedsheet which then began to freeze; and as the komatik rattled along at the end of its leash, making firm tracks in the snow-covered ice, the wind froze the snot around his nose and mouth into white rings, but not immediately because it was not cold enough yet to make breath-frost into instant whiskers; however, it was certainly cold enough to make his cheek ache from contact with the crust of snot-ice on the ski mask; meanwhile the smoothness of the sea began to be interrupted by hard white shards where competing currents had gashed the ice open and then the wound had scarred; sometimes the ice-plates had forced each other's edges into uprising splinters that melded and massed and hardened into strange shapes; the Inuk wended the Ski-Doo between these when he could, going slowly so that the komatik did not lurch too badly; his back was erect, almost stem, the rifle at a ready diagonal, and he steered south toward a thick horizon-band that seemed to be fog or blowing snow; in fact it was the steam of open water. Over this hung the midday sun, reddish-pale, a rotten apple of the old year.
Then the groaning ice fissured into a shape like a girl's mouth, and the komatik broke through. He fell under the ice. The other girl was waiting beneath with her mouth open to drink his blood and he was already freezing and paling, but then the girl breathed upon him lovingly and he was warmed. The first girl, the one who was ice, opened her mouth; the second one lifted him on through to the sky.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1992)
Inside the cheerful egg-yolk yellow of the Muni car, with its two-toned rising and falling whine, the man was eased confident through its narrow grooves, past hanging laundry, swashbuckling in traverse across the street-scored sides of house-choked hills, creeping patiently down the shady lanes designated for the Muni's exclusive use, then bursting back out onto the sunsetty hillside, crooning to a stop in the park where Latino children got off. Suddenly the car reeked of leather jackets like the smell of cunnilingus; fashionable people had boarded. Keeping power wires company beneath the deep blue sky, the Muni bore the man toward the vortex which would determine his next state. He knew this but did not want to bear it. An Asian mother tenderly helped her little child negotiate the aisle, the child grasping her finger in a needing hand, and he wondered whether he had been or would be her. A little black boy in an orange jacket ran down the sidewalk, and then the Muni turned onto Market Street so that the boy was gone forever, and the man felt lost. An Asian girl boarded and stood beside him for a moment, gripping her two quarters fiercely; they did not have holes in them. Did that mean that she had but one life, or that she had already lived? The girl saw a vacant seat and went away. Now the Muni car hummed at the corner by the Chinese restaurant. It drummed secret hooves, twisted along the metalled furrows that it needed, stopped, and buzzed while a pony-tailed man got on. Swooping like nuns to a steeple, the Muni turned the last aboveground corner where so many metal rails from other Muni routes joined this nexus, shining like ice. It rang its bell like a submarine about to dive, entered the long narrow cage, and sank into its cement foundations so that the evening seemed to get later and later, the afternoon shadows on the walls becoming twilight gray, then midnight black as the Muni shot into the tunnel. Believing himself now to be safely southeast of the street of souls, he permitted his anxiety to go just as beer foam slowly narrows, collapsing in the middle as the bottom eats itself away. Then at Civic Center two girls got on with barely healed wounds in their breasts. They approached him in silence, each with her left hand behind her back. They looked into his eyes. He tried to look away. They bent over him and began breathing slowly and calmly into his face. Closing his eyes in despair, he struck out and his fist encountered a girl's fist which stopped him while three other girl-hands prized his fingers open and placed a token with a hole in it onto his palm; instantly a reflex of greed and longing for life overtook him, so he closed his fingers over the token just as the Asian girl had done with her two quarters, and he felt himself becoming something but when he opened his eyes he was still on a subway.
Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)
They had left the extremely wide, yellow and subterranean Aero-puerto terminal where he was born. When he was a youth they reached Oceana in the middle of the street of time, mesh fences on either side, the people elegantly serious, quiet. A vendor came along dumping candied eggs on everyone's lap. Though eating one of these would doubtless have carried him to new possibilities, he was not tempted. He feared to taste blood. The vendor returned and collected the eggs. No one had opened a single one, although two girls read the label. He was still holding his egg as the vendor neared him. Suddenly he felt a bird-heart beating inside its thinness and his fingers began to curl to clench the life out of it, but he bit his lip to save himself and swallowed his own blood, shutting his eyes and waiting until he felt the vendor remove the egg from his palm. Then he allowed himself to gaze upon his life again. The two girls stood, one wearing black shoes, one wearing white, their knees bent, holding the stanchions, swaying, almost dancing, blackhaired (one braided, one waterfalled), looking subtly down at his feet, in an obviously coordinated awareness, and he peered into their lovely broad faces and they smiled and touched him and then got off at Misterios. He was old by then. He swayed and fell down dead.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1992)
Gray-lit struts took his weight as he shot across the bridge; flat gray-green ribs were stripped of their nightflesh by the dingy lights, the lights of Oakland rippling in between like scales, inhuman lights all the way to the gray horizon. What a relief when the world finally ran out of electricity, and we'd have to turn them off! On his left was a city of stacks and towers clustered with lights like sparks that could never be peacefully extinguished, could never cool themselves in the earth. A gush of smoke blew horizontally from the topmost stack. He scuttled up greenish-gray ramps of deadness into the dead night, accompanied by characterless strings of light, dull apartment tower lights, dark bushes; he bulleted down a lane of dirty blackness clouded by trees on either side, remnant trees suffered to live only because they interrupted that ugly terrible light. Then he came into the outer darkness of unhealthy tree-mists where the sky was as empty as his heart. He slid like a shuffleboard counter through the cut between blackish-brownish-gray banks of darkness, the sky greenish-gray above. He crossed the grim vacuous bridge that was the last place before the night country; he pierced the turgid black river (so night-soaked that he could perceive it only at its edges where light coagulated upon black wrinkles) and came into the ruined desert.
The toll bar came down. The attendant was waiting. Cars were beginning to honk behind him as he sat there at the tollbooth of souls, looking through his pockets. Finally he found a single coin with a hole in it. He reached, dropped it into the attendant's palm. The toll bar went up. He became a piece of jute cloth.
Battambang City, Province Battambang, Cambodia (1991)
A woman in a mask who had a blue blanket over her head put the soft limp jute of him onto the conveyor belt. Then he got Jmr Swashed and rolled. The rollers gleamed and worked him back and forth, softening him. He could not scream. To her he was not even a shadow. (A poster of the president changed rose-light on its shrine.) What worked the rollers? The factory had its own generator, its own gra
nd shouting alternators, built to last, 237 kilowatts . . . The jute of his soul got matted and soft. He did not see the hammer-and-sickle flag anymore. His soul got squeezed by a rickety rattling. Now he was squished almost as thin as a hair. People dragged him away slowly, pulling long bunches of him with both hands. He was in a vast cement-floored enclosure whose roof was stained brown. They stretched him out. Slowly he went up a long steep conveyor. He emerged in a pale white roll of hope, twirling down, narrowing into a strip. The barefooted workers gathered him into piles on the concrete floor, then stuffed him into barrels, which were then mounted on huge reels. Murderers like him had destroyed this place once already. There had been twelve hundred workers. Now that it had been rebuilt, eight hundred and sixty worked there, eight hours a day, six days a week, not knowing that jute was souls. They cleaned and pressed him into accordioned ribbons of fiber that built up in the turning barrels. A masked girl stood ready to pack him down with her hands and roll a new barrel into place. He recognized her. She pressed him to her unscarred breast. Then someone took the barrels to go into a second pressing machine. A metal arm whipped back and forth, but only for a minute; the barefoot girls had to fiddle with it again. His substance was cleaned and dried. A masked woman lifted up levers, twisted him by hand into the clamps, pulled down levers, and he spilled out again. He recognized her also. She smiled at him. Now everyone could see him being woven into string, dense, rough and thick; this string in turn was woven into sacking. They were going to fill his empty heart with rice. This is not such a bad destiny for anyone, since rice is life. The barefoot girls teased out the rolls of soul-cloth, gathering them from the big roll in different sizes (63 X 29 inches and 20 X 98 inches); boys dragged them across the floor at intervals, stretching, looking around, slowly smoothing them amidst the sounds of the mechanical presses. So they stacked him among the other sacks. Girls sat on sacks on the floor, sewing more sacks; they were fixing the mistakes of the sack-sewing machine. Then they pressed the sacks into bales. But he'd turned out perfectly; he did not need any girls to stitch up holes in his heart. He was ready now in the bale of sacks. If someone guarded him well he might last two years. Then he'd turn to dirt. A man's hands seized his bale and carried him toward the place where he would be used. Then the man's work-shift was over. The man went to serve his hours on the factory militia, readying himself for duty in the room of black guns on jute sacks. The man knew that in the jungle other murderers were still nearby.
I SEE THAT YOU LIKE
ORIENTAL WOMEN
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1994)
* * *
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1994)
I see that you like Oriental women, said the taxi driver.
Greek women are very nice too, I said. (I tried to be polite and I could tell by his accent.)
Let's be honest, the taxi driver said. All women are beautiful. Especially a young virgin from anywhere, full of hormones.
My wife stared out the window, disgusted and offended. But the driver did not see. He saw only me, because I was one of his kind, a man who liked Oriental women.
I was married to a Chinese girl, he said. I met her in Beijing. She was absolutely, uniquely beautiful. One in a million. A dress model. I had to marry her twice, once in Beijing and again the afternoon we arrived in Sydney. Here in Australia they don't recognize those other marriages. If you don't marry them again it's considered sexual slavery.
So what happened?
Oh, it was about children. She wanted them and I didn't. She accepted it initially, but after the sixth or seventh abortion she began to kick. She tried to come back to me six months after the divorce, but I didn't want to be reconciled.
Why's that?
Oh, by then I had a hot young black girl. Every night I stood her on her head and filled her full of my jizz.
We'll get out here, my wife said.
I wondered if he was going to stare, turn to me, and cry: Oh, it talks! — But he only said: Right we are. Enjoy your stay in Sydney, ma'am.
My wife stood waiting on the sidewalk with her arms folded. As I was paying him he whispered with a wink: You've put some miles on her. Better trade her in for a new one soon's you can. You want me to tell you where to go in Sydney?
Looking into his eyes, I saw such raw wet pain in them, throbbing and obscene, that for a moment I could not breathe. In him there was more need and less hope than in any beggar I had ever met. I started to tip him a tenner, but he shook his head and said hoarsely: Listen to me, pal. Please listen. You've got to be more careful. I know things! You'll need it for the alimony payments.
TOO MANY GODS
Goa, Goa, India (1990)
* * *
Goa, Goa, India (1990)
They gave him parrotfish in brown rivers and he gave them white lotus flowers, purple lotus flowers; he transmuted fish into flowers. Girls and old ladies stood at the side of the road, holding out garlands for sale. They sold his flowers to him in the temples; he paid in good luck and deeds. Then he planted the flowers in the slit windows behind funnels in the stone. They grew into white towers with arches and statues. He planted the money plant in its pedestal in the courtyard. They gave him flowers, garlands and coconuts for offerings. But they were his flowers anyway. On the hillside his worshippers raised a stone phallus to him. He penetrated the faithful who lived slowly moving across their glistening fields, walking barefoot behind their water buffalo. Then the fields were fertile. At a distance suited to humility, rows of pickers and transplanters bent as if in prayer, but they were only taking from him again. Still he gave them cashew apples: red, yellow, green; gave them palm tree suns with green rays, gave them tiny black birds skittering over the swamp, houses tucked under palm trees. The hills of Goa were wrought with trees—mango, cashew, jackfruit, pineapple, and mango. Cashew liquor goes very good with Limca, they said, pleased. But they complained a little, because every year they had to change the roofs of their palm-leaf houses. — They wanted eternal leaves. If he'd given them those, then they would have wanted to be eternal, too. They wanted everything he had. They gnawed at his knowledge, paving nothing. But he couldn't help feeling pity for them. That was why he'd taught them how to fix things. To repair a bridge, they heated metal on wood fires which they'd started with dry coconut fronds. It was easy; he made it easy. His heart was bright green like a rice field.
Mango and bamboo went brown. Across the brown square fields, a woman came striding slowly in a red sari. She said to him that everyone was going to raise blue concrete crosses in front of their houses, because a porous arch had been exhaling the steam of Saint Francis Xavier's breath. Saint Francis Xavier was dead now, so he could not be contradicted. Everyone had decided to paint Jesus on the spare-tire covers of motorcycles.
He said no word. He stared at the woman in the red sari until she felt as tiny as a cashew fruit. She fled among the silvergreen palm-tree mango-tree hills.
He entered the town, and saw the Portuguese governors, plump, sweaty, with long black sickle moustaches, sitting wearily in their black and gold armor, which made their hips as big as women's. He shrank them down, but they were so far lost they didn't even notice it.
Saint Francis Xavier, dead under a roof of palm thatch; opened his eyes and saw him. There was already a halo around his head. Dappled, holding crucifix and rosary, Saint Francis Xavier said to him: They'll expose my body four times a year, on a bier of teak, resting on an angel's head!
He replied to Saint Francis Xavier: I'll be there. And I'll cover you back again, as a clean cat covers its shit.
He stared at Saint Francis Xavier, but Saint Francis didn't shrink. He was dead.
He went back to the black waterbuffalo wallowing in swamps. He saw his white churches, green trees. His arch still crowned a palm mountain.
His remaining worshippers gnawed him, like a cow nuzzling the side of a thatch house.
Houses went up, too, in the new town, roofed with red rusted tin. Churches went up. S
aint Francis's church they built of porous lat-erite, its black brick arch rough like lava. Tall narrow windows capped old arches of the old black stone. Its roof-long timbers were parallel like those of a ship, then gold. The sun of Jesuit initials, I.H.S., un-derlooked two cherubs above; then beneath the sun, standing on a big gold pyramid (the child Jesus between his legs), stood Saint Ignatius with his hand raised, a silver crown upon his head, his belly plate widening like that of a beetle. He was bearded, radiant, distant.
And Saint Catherine's church, that was a white church, with a white dog, a big white arch, plaster behind hot cruciform. Inside, it was cool, white and gold. It was floored with gravestones. There were white summery muscles and tendons and arches on the ceiling. There were shell strips on her windows. She was shuttered with translucent shells.
He said: There are too many gods here now.
They gave him parrotfish in brown rivers and he gave them nothing. Girls and old ladies stood at the side of the road. They tried to sell his flowers to him in the temples, but he wouldn't buy them. They were his flowers anyway. On the hillside the angry worshippers knocked down the stone phallus. So he denied them cashew apples, palm tree suns, tiny black birds skittering over the swamp, houses tucked under palm trees. They stopped giving him anything. They stopped asking him for anything.
The Atlas Page 40