Where is my body? the woman whispered. Where are my bones?
He could not reply.
Waitresses paced inside the glass house with the waterfall outside, and it was just the same as the birds in the aviary. He was at the nexus, the Husserlian insertion point, the city that was neither outside nor inside; so he thought that he might very easily find the key. Once he did, he could help bring the lost woman entirely into one realm or the other. The waterfall, the skyscrapers, the marble tables of the restaurant, were all so incongruous. On the ledge above the waterfall a statue of a boy stood with his arm upraised, and then the camera finished flashing and the statue moved once more.
In the twilight, the swarms in suits and uniforms hurried along the edges of black buildings whose tiles were as slick and shiny as new cakes of soap, each building with a different brand name glowing from it like a pulsing wound. So many crowds! But it seemed that they were all inside. The city's metonym was this tank of shrimp thrashing white legs at each other, bulging their eyes out and straining to fly in the water like beta-test helicopters. He was the soft red carp breathing with difficulty between two reddish companions, its eye bulging and rotating with almost the same intensity as the white spots on the shrimp's scratching legs. But who were these other fishes like slabs of ring fungus swishing their fins lethargically in the murky water, straining and crowding? So many! He'd never know them . . . Behind the counter of the next window, uniformed men weighed out so many different barks and leaves and colored roots and dried sea creatures on white paper. People sat at stools before them, as if by a soda fountain. He heard the woman take in a long trembling breath. The men weighed out abalone shell for liver-cures and dyes, terrapin shells for lung complaints and renal bleeding, sea-horses for impotence, hawks-bill turtle shells for epilepsy, oyster shells for acid stomach, geckos to quench thirst and increase virility, centipedes to stop hemorrhages, tiger shins for arthritis, stag penises for a cold uterus, fossil bones for insomnia and amnesia, sulphur for virility, cinnamon for diarrhea, eucommia bark for hypertension, castor beans for cutaneous ulcer, red beans for headache. But there did not appear to be anything to remedy traumatic spatiotemporal amputation. The woman was whispering. — A jewelry window said: 61% OFF. He saw gold chains and crosses on squares of white paper. The next window was crammed with twenty-three-carat gold sunglasses round and oval and square, even a pair that folded down the nose, and a pair not much bigger than a fountain pen; it would barely cover one's pupils. He passed another long narrow jewelry shop at whose red-velvet tables the clerks sat punching calculators, drinking Cokes and wearing golden spectacles as fierce as new-cut diamonds. The glow of red characters on yellow awnings bored into his eyes with the same brightness as the golden objects for sale in the windows. A crowd of dark-uniformed policemen stood straight, their black walkie-talkies and holsters and nightsticks hanging correctly down; they walked with their hands behind their backs.
Where is the book you put me in? asked the woman.
This is the atlas, he said. This is the book. — And he bent down and touched the pavement. He knew that everything was set upon a single page.
Open the book, she said weakly.
It's open already.
Where am I, then? Am I inside or outside?
I don't know, he murmured, suddenly resentful. I don't know where I am anymore, either. I lost my freedom because of you.
Eastward, where the streets became grayer and narrower, there was a stand of aquariums in the street, the goldfish and the other deep blue ones he didn't know slowly fanning their tails within glass worlds like the spirits in the bottles in the liquor store whose walls formed part of the thoroughfare, or the banana-clusters which hung over the apples in the fruit stand, beset by swaying red lights. The signs were carved and painted now, not lighted. Sometimes they halfway or entirely spanned the narrow alleyways like stilt roots and flying buttresses. Windows and gratings and balconies clutched each other across spaces of narrow darkness.
He bought a bottle of rice whiskey at the liquor store and poured it out upon the pale sidewalk. — Here is your blood, he said. Now it's in the book.
A girl in pink, with scarlet lips, was leaning against the ice cream freezer in the liquor store talking with her husband, and when her mouth shaped itself into O's the crimson seemed to rise like smoke-rings to join the red signs and suddenly the husband was lighting a cigarette, and the fire at its end seemed to have come from her mouth. She touched the husband's hand. Across the street, a man was searching through a pile of apples, and when he found one that seemed redder than the rest and held it up, the watcher looked at the girl and saw that her mouth had just made an O again. Here was the being who could save the woman he cared for by bringing her entirely in or out of the atlas. Enchanted, he came closer, until he could hear her speak waterfalls that peacock-tailed so brightly down the wall of the Stock Exchange, losing themselves in the hill of potted yellow flowers which bordered the long, long escalator. (Underneath were the hundreds of white gambling booths.) He caught a red O in the air. It was hard like a marble. Throwing it down onto the pavement so that it shattered and disappeared, he muttered: Here are your bones. Now they're in the book. — The girl's ruby syllables rolled him away, so that floundering past a marble lobby (evidently of a seafood restaurant in whose immaculate tanks swam crowds of giant silver carp), he could peer but briefly into a small store to see the round table and the two girls slowly slicing a mound of ginseng. He fell through a red bubble of her delicious spit, tumbled into the market of dried fish whose broad gray mummies lashed together resembled palm fronds, was carried through the restaurant whose two men in black tuxedos were just lighting the final torch around the golden border of a red sign that uttered something incomprehensible to him; and like the men in suits and ties on holiday riding escalators up the hills of Ocean Park he swam volitionlessly past two ladies whose store contained nothing but dried white shark fins, each behind its own pane of glass like some strange sea-trophy; that was when he realized that he was in the sea.
He bought a shark fin for one Hong Kong dollar. Then he took it around the corner where the two ladies would not see and be hurt. He slapped it gently down onto the hard epidermis of the street and whispered: Here is your flesh. Now it's in the book.
He thought he heard her moan.
A man unhooked a bundle of dried fish from the awning pole of his shining store, covered the boxes of nuts with burlap, returned to unhook the bale of dried eels, then the hanging light bulb, then stepped outside and pulled down a rusty wall of darkness over everything.
Next door a stern man was still sitting behind his desk, emperor of rolls and scrolls of marbled cloth, and he stared out the window. He gaped his gristly jaws and gulped, which proved him to be a fish.
Entering that shop, the watcher bought a length of midnight-black cloth and unravelled some threads from it. — Here is your hair, he said, letting go the strands. Now it's in the book.
The people whose ahs and ows twisted in the guts of the night now drowned the scarlet-lipped girl's speech entirely; so in hopes of finding other luminescence he ascended a steep hill of meat and lighted produce stands whose pears and potatoes shone like lanterns (their bok choy greener than darkness, their cats mewing like tweaked piano wire). Strings of lights transected the heavens to encourage the ones struggling up that coagulation of night, carrying those purchased brilliancies away darkened in plastic bags.
The Sinew Co. was being closed, but inside the shopping malls, people were still peering and pointing, the women especially wistfully touching the glass of Rainbow Leatherware Co. and Rolie Collection. A restaurant was serving tea. He bought a cup of it and cupped his hands over the steam. Then he brought his cupped hands down to the floor and said: Here is your breath. Now it's in the book. Now you're complete in my book at last.
The whole city sighed, or perhaps the sigh came from somewhere deeper than that. Then the voice said: Thank you. I love you.
The
ferry buildings were like space stations, with their lights and roundness and dockings; but they did not whirl, only rose and fell, and a reflection of the sea rose and fell in their television-like windows. Beyond the Star terminal rose a golden bowtie of neon, tall and absurd, crowned by a white trapezoid and a blue spire. Forgetting the scarlet-lipped girl and the woman whom he'd saved, he let himself be caught by the blue neon-light on black water.
Goodbye, a woman's voice said from under the water.
The thin old man with the white star on his chest stood holding the gangplank railing in a gloved hand, watching something too proud for others: the blackhaired girls with arms folded over their breasts, the skinny boys jutting out their chins, the ladies in glasses happy not to have missed the ferry, the married couples (wives on their husbands' arms). Then the whistle blew, the ferryman braced his foot against the bulkhead and strained at the rope, winching the gangplank up against the door. He stood watching Kowloon come closer (another ferry passing the black water, a vast illuminated casket). He remembered the Japanese restaurant where the indigo-pigtailed waitresses stood in corners with their hands behind their backs, white bows tied behind their short black skirts; and they wished him happy New Year and grew into the New Year like those tropical trees tas-seled as if by strings of lime-colored beads. But he himself was coming outside his life again as steadily as the Kowloon ferry bearing through the cold and fishy night. — The ferryman stood still, squinting at a newspaper, his pinkish-orange face worn down almost to a skull by rain and fog and wind. He stood without support, swaying easily with the lurching deck. The horn sounded three times; the water began to burn evilly with the red and blue neon reflections of Tsim Sha Tsui, and he locked his newspaper away to again pull on his plastic gloves. He stood by the gangplank, patiently watching the greenish-gray window-lights and orange-gray wall-lights come closer. Then he gripped the rope, unhooked the chain, and let the pulley go. The crowd went out calmly, lighted faces going steadily into darkness.
Mexicali, Estado de Baja California, Mexico (1992)
So after that they let him outside. He was back inside his mind, they said. His behavior was normal. Just as in the ancient Egyptian cartouches south of Aswan each world is pale blue inside, yellow all around, so within himself he kept his secret color now. He'd closed the book and shelved it. Henceforth he'd return silence to all pleas.
He wanted to buy a ticket to take him farther outside. The sun formed white triangles and trapezoids on the floor of the railroad station whose early morning air was hot and stale, and people sat around picking their eyebrows because none of the ticket windows had opened yet. Two officials went into the MODULA DE ASIGNACIONES and he felt hopeful until they came back out and locked the door.
He waited all day and half the night. Finally, at the stroke of midnight, the window flew soundlessly open, and the woman stood behind it, smiling. Without speaking, she gave him a ticket of glowing gold.
He got on the train, and it took him into a tunnel that coiled round and round underneath the earth. And he came to the core, which was a giant geode glittering with crystals underfoot and overhead. And in the very center of the world was an atlas on a chain. He opened it, and the woman's bones fell out (they were very skinny and fragile, like fishbones), followed by her hair and gobbets of greasy flesh and flakes of her blood and all the other things which he had given her. The man broke off a crystal from the ceiling and buried it in her remains like a seed. Soon there grew a brilliant flower that filled the entire hollow heart of the world. Just before it enveloped the space which he had occupied, it invited him in . . .
THE STREET OF STARES
Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales, Austraila (1994)
Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales, Austraila (1994)
Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales, Austraila (1994)
Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales, Austraila (1994)
* * *
Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales,
Austraila (1994)
No, no, I did not go all the way to Blacktown (and in Launces-ton a disgusted cab driver said: Have you heard the latest? In your country the schoolchildren have to sing Baa, baa, green sheep in order to avoid offending the niggers. Next thing you know some do-gooder will say the name "Blacktown's" not good enough for them!); I did not go all the way to Blacktown, because Redfern was closer, and because a waiter had proudly related: I took a girl to Redfern and she went white as a sheet! She didn't know we had neighborhoods like that in Australia. — Being already as white as a sheet myself, in part due to birth, in part to illness, I figured that no red fern or black town or green sheep could make me seem any whiter. The NEXT TRAIN sign said BLACKTOWN but I did not go there; I rode between the grim-grimed pillars and arches with steel on top, was carried out past bulldozers gnawing gravel and then in again. NO THOROUGHFARE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. That was what you saw if you tried to exit the wrong way at Redfern Station. The wide-gravelled channels of railway beds beset me with brick walls. The train went on to Black-town, and a man with a pole came and slammed Blacktown away to bring up another destination.
Under the sign, another man stood drinking V.B. He held the can very tightly in his hand. He did not quite reek as some drunks do but he was beery enough. He looked into my face. They called him black and that was what he sometimes called himself, but actually his skin was more reddish, almost Venetian red like that of the brown-haired aboriginal girl on the train who'd looked at me with such big searching brown eyes, working her plump, kissable lips as if to say something that she'd never said; this man opened his mouth and said: Buy me another, mate? How 'bout it? — Then he fell down. That was Redfern Station.
Outside there was a street, and across the street was a wall with a giant snake painted on it in aboriginal style, with the words 40,000 YEARS IS A LONG TIME . . . 40,000 YEARS STILL ON MY MIND. Turning the corner of this street, at the Redfern Aboriginal Cooperative, I found myself looking down a narrow street where right away a fat woman with a beer in her hand said: Excuse me. Could you spare a smoke? and the wall went on down that street, muraled with silhouettes who had white-dotted skeletons; and I saw grimy rainbows and dot-painted flowers and then the street narrowed further, sloping down into shady house-walls where people sat on their porches listening to radios, drinking, smoking and staring out. This was the Street of Stares. I had the feeling of coming into a place where I did not belong. White shoes and socks glowed on dark and shaded bodies, all lining the way and watching me. Second storeys gaped doorlessly like the bomb-burned flats I'd seen in Sarajevo; sky shone through one such hole; the others were dank and dirty and grafhti'd, coolly unfriendly like the eyes of the watchers, or so it seemed to me as I went on, remembering times when I'd come into certain black neighborhoods in my own country and found myself immediately hated, but then a man nodded back at me and said: G'day, mate! and I was comfortable again, which might have been stupid, because Snake, who that day became my wise uncle, told me: I'm not allowed to go out at night. My woman don't let me. Lotsa fights. I tell you now, don't walk around here. — That was Snake, and his woman was Sadie, and then there were Ruthie and Rob, all of whom lived together farther down that narrow street which smelled in places like airplane glue, not as far as the very end where thick gratings and brick mirrors greeted the next highway, across which lay the stinking pub where I bought the case of Victoria Bitters so that Rob would like me and take me in to Ruthie, Sadie and Snake behind that wall built less of grimy brick than of stares.
Originally we was from up the bush, Snake said, opening the first V.B. North coast. We came just visiting here. Then we stayed.
Tell you something about Redfern, the younger man cut in. They got a different attitude here. A bad attitude.
So why did you come visiting then? I asked.
Well, really there wasn't nothing up there, said Snake. Not enough to do. More opportunity in the city than in the country. That's why we're here.
Yeah, look at him talk, laug
hed Rob as he took out a beer. What kinda opportunity have you found, Snake? What kinda opportunity's anybody got in this town?
A lot of people playin' the numbers just to pass the time, Snake admitted. Really can't go anywhere. I'm only just visitin'. Wanna go back, huntin' and fishin'. And my woman, she's from the snow country, the table lands.
I miss the trees, the mountains, the grass, agreed Sadie wearily, sipping at her V.B.
All we needed up there was a tent, said Snake. Like, you could go to the river and get everything. I can kill anything with a stone that big. I could take two men out. I done it before.
The Atlas Page 43