Jair sticks his head in from behind the muslin cloth that divides the showroom from the back office and announces that Mussifiki has arrived. We exit the haima to meet him. A man of about fifty is leaning on the counter. He has blue-black skin, almond-shaped green eyes, and fleshy, purple lips. He must be used to getting stared at, because he tells me out of nowhere: My mother is Chinese, from Macao, and my father is Zulu. He shakes my hand and, without any further ado, goes to a stack of carpets and deftly pulls out one from nearly the very bottom. I don’t get anything from these deals, he says, holding up a corner of the carpet while the rest of it cascades onto the floor. I do it because it gives me pleasure to know that an acquaintance of mine is going to make something as special as this a part of their household. In a way, it’s as if the new owner is sharing the spirit of the carpet with me. He gives it a close look, satisfied. Stunning, no? We all agree that it is. I’m going to tell you about its history, he says, taking a deep breath. Louise interrupts him: Mussifiki, save it for tomorrow, when we bring it to Sylvie. A great choice, Jair says, as he rolls up the rug. There’s a hint of sadness in his voice, as if he were reproaching himself for not having detected just how interested his clients were in this piece of merchandise. The price had already been settled the day Mwanassali discovered the rug, and it’s too late now to raise it. You’re lucky no one else took a liking to it, he says, resigned. I’m going to take it home to touch it up, Mussifiki says, picking up the package. What time are we meeting at the Chelsea, Louise?
Wednesday. I’ve passed by the Chelsea Hotel so many times, but this is the first time I’ve ever been inside. Suite 1006 is on the top floor. When you leave the elevator you turn left, then go past a pair of swinging doors and walk almost to the end of a long dark hallway. To reach the top suites you have to go up a creaking wooden stairwell. Sylvie’s apartment is almost devoid of furniture. On the far wall, next to a large window, there’s a flight of stairs that lead to the rooftop. Take a look, you’re going to love it, Louise suggests. I climb up to find myself lost in a maze of dormer windows, glass cabinets, twisted chimneys, gardens, and soil beds in which all kinds of plants, bushes, and even fruit trees grow. You have to come see the terrace at night, Sylvie says when I go back down. I love this woman. She’s petite, fragile, very pretty, with blonde hair and large blue eyes, and a very feminine air that perfectly complements Louise’s masculine look. She doesn’t look you in the eye when she speaks to you. I also like Robert Moreau, Louise’s poet friend. He looks like Picasso, but is tired of people telling him that. He has a unique sense of humor that he uses as a shield to protect himself from other people’s curiosity. He is in town for Louise’s opening at Westway. There’s an essay by him in the catalog. Mwanassali pulls the same stunt as the day before at Izmir Bazaar. Just a few minutes away from when everyone was told to arrive, he calls to say he’s going to be a bit late. Exactly half an hour later, he bursts into the suite without knocking. Louise makes some quick introductions because Mwanassali is eager to show everyone the rug, which he carries tucked under one arm, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a fine string. He deftly undoes the bundle, spreading the rug open on the wooden floor. He kneels and smiles with satisfaction before he speaks:
The rug is originally from the Gaziantep region in southwest Turkey, on the Syrian border, and, near as I can estimate, it must be around a century old, perhaps a little less. The colors, design, and weaving technique point to a type of carpet common among nomadic tribes. He turns it around. This symmetrical weaving pattern is known as Turkish knot. There are between sixty to seventy knots per square inch. His long, black-blue fingers gently caress the lower fringe of the rug. Mwanassali points at the pattern in the center. That’s the mihrab, which means niche, he explains. It’s the equivalent of the niches in the walls of mosques at the points nearest to Mecca. Mwanassali caresses the rug as if it were a living thing. Why does it look new, despite its age? Because it has been used exclusively for praying—the rest of the time it was carefully stored. This type of rug is relatively rare because they aren’t meant to be sold. Mwanassali stands up. He seems saddened by the necessity of separating himself from the Kurdish rug. All of us admire its beauty in silence. In the days when this rug was first woven, the contemplation of its complexities would be enough to send the mind into an altered state. As though the mihrab were a door that at any moment could open into another dimension. Madame Sylvie, this is a very beautiful gift that will keep you company for the rest of your life. Who knows how many places this rug has been before winding up at the Brooklyn bazaar where I found it, how many owners it must have had, what kind of lives were being lived by those who stepped or kneeled upon it? One thing is certain, the craftsmen who wove it are dead, as are its first owners, and most likely the owners after that. Mwanassali looks around, smiling. When all of us in this room have passed away, its beauty will only have deepened, and who knows where it will be then, and what kind of new owner it will have.
THE PERISCOPE
[Undated fragment. Probable
date of writing: April 1969]
The war cry of the Order of the Knights Incoherent was ¡Viva Don Quijote! (the same password used by Hughes, Anzaldúa, and Moreau at the meetings of the Paris chapter, of which I will speak below). They held their sessions at the Periscope, a bar on the Lower East Side. The members of the New York chapter were David Ackerman (my grandfather), Felipe Alfau, Jesús Colón, Aquilino Guerra (alias One-Eye), and Henry Martínez, aka Lord Gin. Although some sessions were for members only, the Knights Incoherent usually brought one or more guests to the meetings. Sometimes they would invite lecturers, or give talks themselves. The Order also offered small seminars on a bafflingly wide range of topics. One way or another, the Knights Incoherent were all literary types. Although he made a living working as a translator for a bank, Alfau was a poet, novelist, and short story writer. A journalist of remarkable talent, Colón nonetheless had no choice but to take on a wide variety of jobs to make ends meet. As for my grandfather, he was the head typesetter for the Brooklyn Eagle. The literary ambitions of Aquilino Guerra and Henry Martínez were much more modest. Guerra was the owner of a grocery store on 14th Street in which he sold Spanish delicacies. He bragged that his imported items were highly appreciated by the locals. He had to ship orders of his signature spicy chorizo all over the States. Lord Gin, an inventor (he had obtained various patents for a bunch of rather absurd contraptions), he wrote plays in verse. He taught history at a community college in Long Island. One of his inventions was a literary genre he called “vicarious travel literature.” He recast and revised travel articles and books, substituting himself and his friends for the protagonists of the originals. He had made up a list of forty to fifty potential readers—made up of friends and acquaintances—to whom he would send his vicarious travelogues unsolicited. No one took offense, although few of the recipients bothered to read his ridiculous tales to the end. According to the Annals of the Order, on one of the occasions Martínez handed a piece of writing to a fellow member, the annoyed recipient blurted out: We can’t read as fast as you write! Martínez took it well, though. Anyway: As stated earlier, there was a chapter of the Order based in Paris. It had only four members: Alston Hughes, Robert Moreau, Jesús (Chus) Anzaldúa, and an honorary member, one “Gilgamesh,” of whom I have learned very little, save that he was a compulsory plagiarist. Hughes and Moreau were poets, the former from Panama, the latter French. They were both translators, as was Jesús, who was a native of Navarre and now living in Barcelona, though he traveled often to Paris. Anzaldúa was the opposite of Martínez; he had traveled widely, but never wrote. He said that he lived in a state of poetic vigilance, waiting for the Muse to call upon him. It’s up to her, he would respond when asked if he was going to write something for a forthcoming meeting. If she’s not interested, I’m not either—I have enough going on already. As for the Knights Incoherent of New York, three of the five founding members were Americaniards (Alfau, Guerra, and Mart
ínez). Alfau had come to Manhattan on an ocean liner with his family when he was fourteen years old. He was a Catalan from Barcelona, but considered himself Basque. Colón arrived in this country on a merchant ship as a stowaway; he was Puerto Rican. Guerra was born in a small town near Murcia, and Martínez came from the village of Dos Hermanas, Seville. The only native-born American was my grandfather, who was a third-generation Brooklynite. By then, David was already writing his column for the Brooklyn Eagle. The members of the group covered the political spectrum from one extreme to the other. The Puerto Rican was a card-carrying communist; my grandfather belonged to an anarchist labor union; Martínez and Guerra were left wing, although they didn’t know quite how to classify themselves. When Alfau pushed him during one of their meetings, Martínez declared himself a utopian socialist; Guerra wasn’t sure what that meant, so for the time being he said nothing, but when the meeting was over he asked Colón what Henry had meant. When he came to understand the concept, he decided to declare himself a scientific socialist, to mark out his territory more than anything, although he had to wait for the next gathering to inform Alfau. Alfau himself was right wing, which made his relationship with the rest of the Knights Incoherent rather difficult at times, although generally Jesús Colón was able to put out any fires when things got ugly. I’ve come to know about the Order of the Knights Incoherent through Ben and David, though somewhat less through my grandfather (he wasn’t wont to talk about the brotherhood). In the Archive is a photograph of the eight members of the Society (as they sometimes referred to themselves), the five from Manhattan and the three from Paris (the elusive Gilgamesh is missing). Alfau is white, tall, skinny, gangly, with a thin mustache that makes him look like a Mexican movie star. Colón is black and completely bald, with intelligent eyes and a sincere smile. Henry Martínez has a thick head of silver hair combed back. He has small, porcine eyes and a sharp nose, and is wearing a black cape and a white scarf. Guerra is short, chubby, balding; in the picture he’s wearing overalls of some sort. Hughes is a mulatto, tiny, and is giving the camera an arrogant stare. For some reason that Ben couldn’t explain, Hughes is dressed as an Arawak, but a woman, not a man, with braids and a skirt. Anzaldúa is tall, self-assured, with a Basque sort of face. Moreau has Caucasian features, an aristocratic bearing, and a shiny bald dome. In the picture, he’s wearing a gray suit with black pinstripes and has his thumbs stuck in the pockets of his vest. The idea to name the group the Knights Incoherent seems to have been Alfau’s, although there were always lively arguments about who had first come up with it.
In the Archive are numerous texts by the Knights Incoherent, as well as various documents chronicling the activities of the Order. Most literary works are by Felipe Alfau and Jesús Colón. The documents by my grandfather David are kept apart, in a file that includes his journalistic pieces. Colón was a writer of infinite grace. His articles were published in local newspapers, forgotten today, a shame no one has bothered to collect them in a book, because they’re masterly. Alfau’s manuscripts include carbon copies of the two novels he published in life, and a handwritten letter from Mary McCarthy. Ben told me that one day he turned up at the Periscope and showed the letter to the members of the Order. In it, Mary McCarthy goes overboard praising the manuscript Alfau had sent her. It was titled Locos and published in June 1936, three weeks before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Alfau spoke flawless, somewhat archaic Spanish, but he wrote in English and cultivated an avant-garde sort of aesthetic. His only subject matter was Spain. The Knights Incoherent very much liked his first novel (if that’s what it was—it’s not clear if you can call it that). They would sit in a circle at the Periscope, taking turns reading it aloud. It’s set in the Café de los Locos, an imaginary venue in Toledo. Colón was a very different but no less talented writer. He was a kind of Caribbean Figaro—the penname of the great Larra, one of Spain’s most incisive literary journalists ever, and a great writer too. Colón was critical, intelligent, funloving, and as opposed to his Spanish model, his work always contained a note of optimism. I’ve taken the time to confirm the things that Ben told me about Jesús Colón’s work, and everything is as Ben said, with frightening precision, even the pseudonyms and the dates on which the articles were published. Ben went to a few of the Order’s gatherings and he had total recall of the first time that his father took him to the Periscope. In fact, after David’s death, he inherited my grandfather’s membership card.
The anecdote I’m about to set down here takes place in the middle of winter. At that time, Moreau and Hugues had shown up at the Periscope with some young women, French artists, one of whom was no other than Louise Lamarque. Frequently, the Order presented avant-garde spectacles at the Periscope, and that afternoon they had put together a performance whose purpose was to poke fun at Vicente Blasco Ibánez. The Valencian novelist was doing very well in Hollywood, but in the opinion of the Knights Incoherent, he had sold out—for them, having a book made into a commercial film was a mortal sin. On the wall, in the back of the room, they hung a caricature of the novelist. Above it, they had written in large letters “BLASCO’S–EYE.” The French artists had painted a target in the colors of the Republican flag right on his nose.
The Civil War changed everything. Alfau stopped coming by, and it would be many years before he returned. The news from Spain was unsettling. The Republicans were beginning to lose. Ben went to a public lecture given by Ralph Bates at a hotel in Manhattan. After hearing the Englishman speak, he felt even more strongly about his already firm decision to enlist with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
MR. TUTTLE, ALIAS THE SHADOW
[Exact date of composition unknown.
Originally written in the mid-seventies,
revised in January 1992.]
Felipe Alfau met Mr. Tuttle by chance. He was seated by the window of a coffee shop at the corner of Chrystie and Hester, about to take the first sip from his mint tea, when he noticed an iron door on the sidewalk rising slowly. With his cup halfway to his lips, Alfau saw emerge from the bowels of the earth a black midget woman wearing rubber boots and a yellow patent leather raincoat. She took a precautionary look around, leaned back into the hole, and signaled to someone who was still underground to come out. A few seconds later, an individual dressed in a frock coat and top hat stood on the sidewalk. The woman went back into the netherworld, and the trap door closed as slowly as it had opened. The newcomer smoothed his coat, adjusted his hat, checked the time on his pocket watch, and walked off merrily. Alfau had heard tell that this was one of the entrances to an underground city in which thousands of people led a perfectly civilized life. But confirming what had never seemed anything more than a legend made a profound impression on him. Leaving his mint tea untouched, he left the coffee shop determined to follow this apparition who seemed more a character from one of his stories than flesh and bone.
Before long, the man in the frock coat figured out he was being followed and began looking back. When he got to Houston Street, he finally stopped to confront Alfau, and asked him if he didn’t have anything better to do than stalk him. The Americaniard, who all that time had been looking for an excuse to start a conversation, blurted out: How about a coffee? My treat—you’re not going to get a better offer than that today, are you? The man took off his hat, scratched his head—his hair curly and frizzy—and accepted the invitation on the condition that they walk eleven blocks up to Veniero’s, because he loved the cannoli there and it was his birthday. Happy birthday! exclaimed Alfau, shaking the man’s hand effusively. Better than cannoli, why not a cake and candles and everything? A birthday setup. The stranger seemed to like the idea, and they walked off talking about God knows what. Once they arrived, Mr. Tuttle called a waitress over and ordered a fruit tart, asking her to put three candles on it. Alfau made some calculations and thought that perhaps each candle represented twelve or thirteen years, maybe fifteen, and when the tart arrived he asked the guest of honor why specifically that number of candles. It’s becaus
e, the honoree explained, I am in the habit of celebrating my birthdays backward. Alfau gave him a puzzled look, and the man felt compelled to explain:
We’re all aware of the inevitability of death, but no one really knows—barring some notable exceptions—when exactly it will strike. I am, he announced, one of those exceptions. I know for a fact that I will die the day I turn fifty. Mr. Tuttle looked at Alfau expectantly, in case he wanted to object, but Alfau was hanging on his every word, so the peculiar man resumed his speech. For this reason, he said, after I turned thirty-five, I began to mark my birthdays backward. Ever since, instead of celebrating the years I’ve lived, I celebrate the years I have left. Consequently, instead of adding candles to the top of the cake, I subtract them. When I turned thirty-six, I blew out fourteen candles, the following year thirteen, then twelve, and so on till today. Mr. Tuttle clarified that on that day, March 16, 1964, he turned forty-seven, so he had to blow out three candles. As a matter of fact, he had already ordered a cake for that afternoon, he added, although two are certainly better than one—yes, sir.
Alfau nodded and asked him if the tart was okay. Very good, thank you very much, Mr. Tuttle replied. You’re welcome, said Alfau, and cleared his throat before he pointed out that they hadn’t properly introduced themselves. That’s easily remedied, Mr. Tuttle said. What’s your name? Felipe Alfau, Felipe Alfau said, and you? Mr. Tuttle responded that in the underground city he was known as Mr. Tuttle, but the few acquaintances he had made in the superficial world above tended to refer to him as the Shadow, which was all right by him. You may call me either. My pleasure, Mr. Tuttle, Alfau said. The pleasure is mine, Mr. Alfau, the Shadow replied. Do you live in the tunnels of the Lower East Side on a permanent basis? Alfau asked. Mr. Tuttle responded that he did, but that on the night of his birthday he always booked a room at the Chelsea Hotel. One night a year, that’s all? Alfau asked, thinking perhaps he’d misheard. Yes, that’s all, the Shadow confirmed.
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