The director shook my hand politely. He offered me a loaf of bread to take with me. As I went back into the chilly rainy afternoon and passed the line, which had now grown to fifty people, the tears burst out of my eyes.
CLOSING THE BOOK
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
* * *
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
He had left her burning in her tears at the Greyhound station, I land now he was about to take the city bus home. It was twi-w light. Knowing that she was standing in line at this moment, facing him, yearning for him, made him weary and afraid. A black cawing creature crooked itself through the slatey air between palms. A bus came, well lit inside. People dreamed or stared as it rolled them away. Perhaps she was boarding her bus now, passing through the long smelly darkness of the loading garage. The blue-uniformed baggage man would be kicking the last suitcase deeper into the sidecave; then he'd slam down the cover. Could she hear that, sitting inside? She'd be looking out her window at the numbered metal doors. The driver would close and lock the one she had just come through, so that she couldn't see the Coke machine anymore, but through the window she'd still be able to find legs opening and closing with comic earnestness, reflecting themselves on the bile-green floor. Now she'd be staring at the streaks of brown grease above those metal doors. He could feel her thinking of him. He'd never get away from her. She thought of him until the driver came in and started the engine. The driver took his coat off, slammed the door, slid glasses over his nose, honked, and began to pull out into the street. A man in a baseball cap was whistling and pacing, a garbage bag over his shoulder. Cold shadows and tired lights began to encase the buildings in their night incarnation. Another bus went by, almost empty, a rolling box of lateness. She would be on the freeway now because the traffic was light. It was too late for her to be accompanied by the noises of little boys in baseball caps eating chips. The other heads growing from the seats like halitosis melons would be weary heads, not even mumbling as she passed the Hofbrau and the Hotel Marshall on that bus which sometimes smelled of leather, sometimes of tunafish, always of that disinfectant whose nauseating fumes always commanded him to consider the toilets of mental wards. He could see himself sitting behind her, glimpsing the top of her head over the seat, her shoulder between the seats; maybe she'd reach for the reading light and he'd see her arm bloom sweetly up. He allowed himself to remember kissing her. Remembering was just the same as reading the commentary on a favorite poem, not to learn any secret, but only because he'd read the poem to satiation without yet exhausting his love, and scanning the commentary was a way to kiss the poem again without reading it. Nobody was in sight. Blank or vicious little headlights scuttered around the bases of the chilly skyscrapers. It got darker. The trees were now almost the color of the sky. Cool darkness pressed on his head. On a squat skyscraper, a glowing red bead tipped a horn of darkness.
You want some love? a whore said.
Too much love is my problem, he said.
All right, honey. Well, we don't have to call it love.
He looked up at her and she was not very pretty but she was very determined and he remembered how one Japanese term for a courtesan meant ruining a castle.
I don't know who she is, but if you want I'll be her, the whore said. Just tell me how to be her and I'll be her for you. I need my fix real bad.
Can you be a train? he said. I left her on the Greyhound but if you were a train you could carry me home to her.
The whore got down on her hands and knees on the sidewalk and whistled like a train. She began to crawl toward him. He stood up, and the sound of his heels upon the hard night sidewalk echoed like light. Laughing, she snatched at his ankles. Gently he took her hands away and sat down on her back. — All aboard! she cried. Her eyes became headlights. The train thudded very slowly between the gravel shoulders and fences and across the trestle bridge to morning, only slightly rusty, that put the brown river behind.
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
Soon now he'd knock at the door of the cool house where she'd be waiting to leap into his arms. He sat on one of the long wooden benches, which was warm and moist with so many people's sweat, and listened to the echoes that clashed beneath the high vaulted ceiling like belltower vultures, harsh and flat and desperate in the heat. Soon he'd be drinking her spit. Soon he'd be holding her in his arms listening to the moon. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead. It was breathlessly hot. Little girls in matching dark plaid dresses whose squares were as wide and solid as flagstones—evidently some school uniform—wandered, eating onion chips and drinking sodas. A slender-legged Japanese girl with a severe black braid knelt on the marble, watching black boys play cards on the next bench. The boys had their uniform, too—white shirts and bluejeans. They were eating ice cream cones. — Cheat! one shouted. — No I didn't, wept the Japanese girl. You play!
As he looked around the station, he saw more and more of these children who wore the mark of the beast. Plaid dresses and white shirts multiplied like bacteria beneath the lens of his recognizance. The old ladies who leaned on their luggage carts, gossipping, shaking their heads so that their steering-wheel-sized earrings shook; these souls too seemed to be a part of the school, because he saw them wearily enumerating children with their forefingers. "A man in a pork-pie hat whom he'd been sure had nothing to do with it suddenly smiled in a sinister way; a boy in a white shirt had run up between the man's knees. The man turned away. Could he himself be the only one who did not belong? A white girl and a Latina girl sat on the floor, kicking like horses, playing finger games among their plaids. Suddenly they stared at him over their shoulders. They began to whisper. A black boy in a white shirt ran to them, darted his head anxiously, then tore away in brand-new sneakers to a sweating lady who sat dragging a handkerchief across her broad brown cheeks. The lady frowned. She cupped her hand, waiting for him to expectorate his tidings like chewing gum. He muttered into her palm. The lady gazed sharply at the girls. Then she blew on a whistle. At once, everyone in the waiting room got up and streamed through the exit without looking back.
He sat alone.
A blonde girl in a black plaid dress came out of the ladies' room. — You're not with them, Mister? she said.
No.
Really?
How could I be? Am I wearing a white shirt?
Who do you belong to?
Nobody. How about you?
Nobody.
Mister, you wanna be with me? 'Cause I'm not with anybody.
He thought of the woman who was waiting for him. She wanted to have his baby but was unable to get pregnant. Maybe she'd want to have this girl.
He looked into her face. — Do you want to be my child or to have my child?
I don't care, the girl whined. I just gotta be with somebody.
Then you have to take off your uniform. Otherwise how can I trust you?
You wanna be with me or don't you? You don't want to be with me.
Wailing, the little blonde girl dug her fingers into her eyes. Then she ran to the farthest corner of the waiting room and pressed her face against the wall.
They called his train. He got up and left her there. When he passed down into the cool tunnel that led to the train tracks, there was no one. The ceiling vibrated from the buses and trains overhead. He walked on, passing ramps which terminated in triangles of scorching sunlight.
He got on the train and it was full. He walked backward through car after car, past the dining car where they were serving the last shot of gin they had, and finally reached a car of middle-aged people who somehow looked alike. One seat was empty, but when he asked if he could take it the sighing lady said: That's for our darling. Have you seen her?
No.
She's a little blonde girl in a black plaid dress. I don't know what's happened
to her. We can't think without her. We can't laugh without her. Look at us! Every hour without her makes us a year older. I can't compose myself, young man. You see, she was at the center of things.
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
The leering twitching grayhaired mumbler ahead of him kept seizing his sleeve and whispering: Is this the good bus? Yes, he said finally. It's the good bus because I'm going to ride it to the woman I love.
But is it the good bus? fretted the man. I mean the bus to Nome, Alaska. Now Anchorage is a slow town at night. That's why I'm going on the good bus to Nome, Alaska. Is this the good bus?
I'm going to the South Pole, he replied. It won't be easy to get there on a bus; you have to drive onto a big iceberg.
Then I'll save up all the ice in my cocktails! the old man cried with a wink . . .
Inside the dark and waiting Greyhound it was cold and stank of disinfectant. He looked down on the lunch hour world, experiencing the sense of progress that one gets when watching car after car roll down a one-way street. The driver came on, closed the door, locked his seatbelt, worked the wide wheel with one hairy arm, stopped at the red light, sucking his cheeks, then went forward. Office workers impelled themselves blindly into the mall.
The old mumbler, who sat behind him, craned and said: Is this the good bus?
If she takes me in her arms it'll be the good bus, he replied.
The bridge ahead with its tower above the row of roofless arches invited him across the graygreen river. A flock of birds flung themselves somewhere meaningless like a handful of wood chips.
We're in Alaska now, said the old man.
How do you know?
Because I smell her perfume.
She doesn't wear perfume.
That doesn't matter. You only love her. That's what they say. But I belong to her forever. And I'm telling you this: As soon as she takes you in her arms we'll be in Nome, Alaska. They told me that, too. Now I know this is the good bus. I'm going to sit here now and be quiet and hope and wait and pray until I see her running to meet you and kissing your mouth into Nome, Alaska.
Sacramento, California, U.S.A. (1992)
The morning was overcast and cool like her touch as he passed the shop-windows that were just now sleepily raising their eyelids. He felt very rested, but also very hungry. The long brown scaled ribs of the first bench soared against his back. Behind him, other benches squatted in a queue. No one was in the waiting room but he. The fountain had been turned off. The ticket window was down. On its eight faces, which had been textured to resemble the sockets inhabited by pomegranate seeds, two luminescences like oval headlamps moved as his gaze moved. Perhaps they were the headlights of his high and silver train. He got up and went outside the station, watching the empty track. Suddenly the taste of her saliva came into his mouth.
On the train, a child was crying with dull hopelessness. He sat down in a seat still warm from a vanished body. The train began to move almost immediately. Wet gray streets, wet white-gray sky, wet green-gray trees, mudfields and green fields unraveled, the train clicking like a monstrous loom. There was nowhere to go except home, and home was nowhere anymore. He was starving. To the even jack-hammering of the rails he sat remembering the dinner she'd made him last night: lamb chops and home fries and buttered beans.
The train slowed, as if to enjoy the shade of the overpass, then rolled between a trestle's interminable X's as it crossed the greenish-brown river.
He disembarked with the others and went into the first coffee shop he could find.
Both waitresses limped. One was a fat lady whose gray hair was cropped so severely that she might have been a recent electroshock patient. The other was an old Chinese who shouted almost consonantlessly.
The Chinese lady brought him a menu.
Pork chops and eggs, please, he said.
Why you wan' po'k cho' OK! screeched the waitress.
The walls glistened yellow-green with grease.
A giraffe-necked man in the next booth kept biting his ladyfriend's ear with a silly laugh. An old man lurched in, clutching the rails of his walker. In came a woman, limping.
The clockface was so gilded with decades of grease that it might have been deep sea brass.
A whore and a pimp were sitting side by side at the counter. The pimp said: They stole something else from me. I threw away all my underwear that didn't have holes in it so they'd leave me alone, but they stole the raggedy ones just the same.
The whore yawned and drank her coffee.
What'll you have? said the fat waitress.
Number three, said the pimp.
I dunno what the number three is, said the fat waitress. You order what it is, not what number it is. I don't care how many girls you got working for you.
Gimme some soup then, said the pimp meekly.
A man in a booth smoked, sucking his elliptical face into a round tobacco moon while his glasses gleamed greedily.
The fat waitress hobbled bowlegged, leaning on each booth as she went, struggling with a scalding platter of meat that was too heavy for her.
He remembered the taste of her armpits and the pulsing of the veins in her fingers when he kissed her hands. He thought of the train going farther and farther from her.
The Chinese waitress brought his pork chops and eggs.
Thank you, he said.
She stared at him in surprise.
What do you have coming, hon? the fat waitress was saying to the whore. I didn't hear you.
Two over easy, the whore said bitterly.
He was never going to see her again.
You whaiee po'k cho' ho' sausssssss? shrieked the old Chinese lady.
Hot sauce? OK.
Thank you, he said when she brought it, and she smiled a timid old smile. That was when he began to love her.
Where's my soup? said the pimp.
Just a minute more, said the fat waitress.
I don't have time for you, bitch, the pimp said. — He got up and walked out. The whore looked down at the counter and ground out her cigarette against the saucer.
Your friend's no good, said the fat waitress in outrage. I told him the soup would be ready in a minute and he called me a bitch. The hell with him.
The whore said nothing.
You whaiee whea' toasss please? shrieked the waitress.
Sure, I'll take some wheat toast. Thank you.
This time her smile was full and open.
As he ate he looked around him at the horrible place. The man who had been smoking moved in the next booth, which the giraffe-necked man had left. His face was flushed red. He stuck his cigarette into the nosepiece of his glasses and glared dreamily. — Thank you, he said sarcastically. I oughta run you through, you asshole. Talking to that Chink like that. Thank you, he says.
The bill came to $4.60. He was going to leave six, which would keep a dollar in his pocket after the bus. When the old lady came, she said: Whaieee now e'thing OK?
Nodding silently, he took out seven dollars.
Too much! she shrieked.
Wearily he pushed it into her hand.
T'ank you, t'ank you!
Thank you, he said. As he got up, he watched her fingers tighten ecstatically around the money.
SOURCES
and a note
p. xi
Compiler's Note: James Branch Cabell quotation — Let Me Lie, Being in the Main an Ethnological Account of the Remarkable Commonwealth of Virginia and the Making of Its History (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947), p. 17.
91
"Houses," Roberts Camp section — C. H. Hinton, M.A., The Fifth Dimension (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1906), p. 38.
145
"Spare Parts," first Somalia section, "The principal meteorological factors" — W. Thompson, The Climate of Africa (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 3.
214
"The Atlas," Bible excerpt — New Oxford version, Proverbs 7:25-29.
214
"The A
tlas," Qur'-An excerpt — A.J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Collier Books, 1955), XXVII:41-47.
222
The Atlas Page 48