The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  The Fortune Bridgo parlor is coming up on the left, and Welles gestures toward its boarded-up windows. You picked a good spot to run your game, he says. An historic spot, even. That was Bill Harrah’s old place. At one time—this would have been the 1930s—Bridgo was a big draw around here. Bridgo, Budgo, Tango. All those bingo games. Are you familiar with bingo?

  Not really. I heard of it. I never played.

  I thought not. You don’t seem the type, frankly. It’s an odd game. Unusually authoritarian, as games of chance go. You pay your money, you take your cards, you sit and listen and await revelation. You accept what is given to you. Since the game’s origins are intertwined so closely with those of the Italian state, I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising. In any event, despite this strict assertion of authority—or maybe because of it, who can say?—the municipal apparatus here in Los Angeles has been rather hostile to it, which is why Bill Harrah eventually moved his operation to Nevada, where he met with quite a lot of success. This is a pattern that recurs. Tony Cornero, the mobster who operated gambling boats just off the coast here, also in the 1930s, went on to found one of the largest casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Have you ever visited Nevada, Stanley?

  I’m not sure. I maybe passed through it.

  I used to go there quite often. On business, after the war. Its present territory used to be covered by great lakes. Did you know that? Inland seas, really. This would have been during the Pleistocene Epoch, which is fairly recent in geological terms. Nevada is quite dry now. A desert, in fact. Where did those lakes go? Might they return one day? Let’s turn left here.

  They cut through the portico of the St. Mark’s Hotel and head inland, passing department stores, the Forty-Niner restaurant, a hotdog vendor, a Tee Pop stand. Everything is closed down, dark, and has been so for several hours. The illuminated clock on the hardware shop gives the time as nearly one a.m. Down the block, in the shadows cast by the JESUS SAVES sign, a figure is moving: a very large dog, or a person crawling on all fours. Before Stanley can decide which, it’s gone.

  So, Welles is saying, what brought you to Los Angeles?

  Stanley guesses it would be unwise to tell the truth, at least until he’s figured out how to ask Welles what he wants to ask. Just drifting, he says. Seeing the country. I happened to be in L.A., so I figured I oughta track you down.

  Well, I’m very flattered that you did. Where did you come across my book?

  I picked it up from a guy I knew on the Lower East Side.

  Manhattan? Welles says. That’s remarkable. We only printed three hundred copies, you know. A hundred of those are still sitting in my attic. How on earth did it find its way to New York, I wonder?

  I got it from a pile of books that belonged to a fellow who’d just started a hitch at Rikers Island. There was a bunch of poetry books in the batch. But this fellow was getting sent up for trafficking stolen goods, so it’s hard to say where he might’ve got it.

  Perhaps the title appealed to him.

  Maybe so.

  A halfdozen Harleys are doing laps around the traffic circle, and Stanley and Welles fall silent in the thunder of their engines. Welles follows the curb clockwise to the circle’s opposite side. The dog stretches the leash to its full length, straining away from the street, lowering its head and cocking back its ears against the roar.

  When the bikers are two blocks behind them, Welles speaks again. It’s a bit silly of me to ask, he says, but I’m curious. You said that there were several collections of poetry in the group of books that your friend had. Did you take any of the others?

  No sir. Just yours.

  I’m wondering why that is. Why you took mine. Not the others.

  Stanley takes a few paces before he responds. I wonder about that myself, he says. I remember I liked the way it looked, for one thing. The rest all looked sort of cheap. Either that, or like you were supposed to be in awe of how great they were. But something about ’em was fake. Your book looked like somebody made it. I liked that.

  My publisher would be gratified to hear it, Welles says. Were he not in Mexico avoiding his creditors I would certainly pass your comment along. Let’s cross here.

  When they reach the other sidewalk, Stanley speaks again. Something else, he says. When I opened up your book, I couldn’t follow hardly any of it. I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be, even. I could tell somebody worked on it really hard, and spent a lot of time on it. And that really got on my nerves. Because, okay—here’s this complicated thing that somebody made. And I come across it just by accident, in a pile of crap on some hoodlum’s floor. And I can’t understand any of it! It made me mad, to tell you the truth. I’m not saying I rescued it or anything. It didn’t seem like it gave a damn what happened to it, whether anybody read it or not. But every time I open it up, it makes me think of all the crazy stuff in this world that I don’t know nothing about. That I never even heard of. And I guess that’s a feeling that bothers me, Mister Welles.

  Welles laughs softly: a smug, paternal chuckle that Stanley doesn’t like. You mind telling me what’s funny? Stanley says.

  Welles shakes his head. Let’s bear to the right here, he says.

  The sidewalk carries them off Windward onto Altair Place. Streetlamps are fewer, occluded by palmtrees and eucalypts. The shadows make Welles’s face harder to read. I’m not laughing at you, he says. I was surprised by your description of my book, that’s all. The reason you cite for your choosing to read it was very similar to my reason for wanting to write it in the first place. A fascination with what is unknown. More specifically with what is invisible. It took me several years and quite a number of drafts to recognize that impulse. Now it’s pleasing to hear you say it. Let me ask you another silly question. Do you like my book, Stanley?

  Stanley can’t figure out why Welles would ask this. Then he can’t figure out how to answer. He’s aware of the silence measured by their footfalls, the grunts of the little dog. To tell you the truth, he says, I never thought of it that way. I don’t know what to say to that. I read it all the way through probably two hundred times. I think I could say the whole thing out loud to you right now, from memory. But do I like it?

  They’ve come to a spot where the streetlamps’ glow falls unimpeded between trees. Stanley takes a moment to scan the weedy yards of the nearby cottages. They’re near the neighborhood where he and Claudio hid from the Dogs: it feels familiar.

  I like it sometimes, Stanley says. I hate it sometimes. I don’t ever get bored with it. I guess I should probably tell you that I came all the way out here to see you, Mister Welles. I told you a minute ago I was just drifting, but that ain’t the truth. About the last thing I was doing was drifting. I had to leave New York City, for some reasons that I’m not gonna get into right now, and I decided right then to track you down. It took me a lot longer than I figured. I hope it don’t upset you that I’m telling you this, or make you want to stop talking to me.

  Of course not, of course not, Welles says, but Stanley can feel discomfort radiate from him in the dark. He wonders whether he’s made a mistake by not playing it cool. Then he thinks: fuck it. His leg hurts. He’s tired of pussyfooting with this guy.

  Welles is quiet for a while. His pipe has gone out. Altair Place merges into Cabrillo. About half the streetlamps on the blocks ahead are burnt-out or broken. At the edge of the dim circle cast by one of the survivors two large rats are fighting; the dog tenses and raises its ears at their inaudible shrieks and squeals.

  I’m glad you came to see me, Welles says. I am worried that I’m going to disappoint you. It is difficult, but probably necessary, to remember that books always know more than their authors do. They are always wiser. This is strange to say, but it’s true. Once they are in the world, they develop their own peculiar ideas. To be quite honest, I haven’t revisited the poems in The Mirror Thief in more than a year. The last time I did, I couldn’t remember quite what I’d meant by much of it. A few lines have been mysterious to me since
I wrote them. Let’s turn right on Navarre.

  The sidewalks are badly cracked, reduced in spots to rubble, overgrown with grasses and creeping plants. On the left, the lots slope away from the narrow street; one house has a pond in the middle of its swampy lawn, overgrown by bulrushes. As Stanley’s eyes adjust to the dimmer light he spots a gap where the plants have been flattened, and a pair of human legs protruding from the gap. The legs are motionless, clad in black boots and mud-spattered bluejeans. Down the block, a motorcycle is parked. No lights are on in the house. Stanley can smell sweet flowers somewhere nearby, but can’t see them.

  I understand how you feel, Welles is saying. And why you came here. At least I think I do. I did something similar myself once, if you can believe it. Are you familiar with the work of Ezra Pound?

  No sir.

  You’ve never read Pound at all?

  Does he write poems?

  Yes he does.

  I never read any poems, except for the ones in your book.

  Really? Welles says. My goodness. Well. It’s as good a place to begin as any, I suppose. But you should probably borrow a few items from my library.

  A few houses away a party is winding down: Stanley can hear a tangle of raucous voices through the hedge, and a hi-fi playing a bop quartet version of “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” At the next intersection, the streetsign bears a name—RIALTO—that Stanley knows from Welles’s book, and the sight of it raises hairs on his neck.

  Welles is lengthening his stride, picking up the pace. When I was in Italy after the war, he says, I went to see Ezra Pound at the Disciplinary Training Center outside Pisa. He was imprisoned there, awaiting return to the United States to stand trial for treason. At the time there was every expectation he would be executed. Pound’s work was important to me at a critical time in my life. But I found his conduct during the war to be questionable. And I suppose I went to Pisa looking for some kind of explanation. Make a right turn here.

  They turn onto Grand Boulevard. The street broadens, and the sky, heavy with fog, pushes between the palmtrees.

  I was never able to speak with him, Welles says. No one was allowed to do that, not even the MPs. I was only able to see him very briefly. He was kept in a cell, eight feet by six, with a wooden frame and a tarpaper roof. He wore Army fatigues. He had neither belt nor shoelaces. There were more than three thousand other men in this facility, most of them hardened criminals—thieves, murderers, rapists—and almost all of them lived in the open, in tents. There were only ten cells like Pound’s. His, uniquely, was reinforced with galvanized mesh and airstrip steel. Because of the mesh walls, he was always exposed. To the sun, to the weather, to the eyes of the curious. It was always possible to see him. But no one could speak to him. In the Army’s formulation, you see, language was the weapon he had used to commit his crimes. Therefore the only language permitted him in his confinement came from his own mind, from his memory. I knew when I saw him that he had been utterly vanquished. I left Pisa very disappointed and dissatisfied. But some years later—after he had been declared insane and transferred to St. Elizabeth’s—I realized that that had been the ultimate acknowledgment of his power. For the Army to do that to him. I suppose in a sense I was fortunate to have been thwarted in speaking with him. More fortunate than you, I fear. We’ll make a left here on Riviera.

  They’re nearing the oilfield now. Stanley can hear the sighs and hisses of machinery, and his sinuses churn with petroleum odors: sweet butane, bitter asphalt, fecal sulfur. In the median of a boulevard, a horsehead pump nods, throwing weird shadows under the derricks. The lights behind it wink as it rises and falls.

  I was about to say, Welles says, that Pound’s silence was more powerful than any words could have been. But that is not correct. His silence was worthless. Powerless. As silence always is. Rather, it was the image of his silence. The sight of him in that cage. That has stayed with me. Reshaped, no doubt, according to the dictates of my personal mythology. Because that’s the trick, isn’t it? Our memories of language are generally stable. But how often do we remember words? It’s more often images that we recall. And images are slippery, which is why so many technologies have emerged throughout history to fix them. It’s also why successful despots tend to banish poets, or to imprison them—even poets like Pound, who are great admirers of despots—and why they tend to recruit and employ painters, sculptors, filmmakers, architects. Stop for a moment, Stanley. Let’s look at the moon.

  They’re standing on the median a few yards east of the fenced-in pumpjack. Stanley can hear the soft whir of its electric motor, the whine and howl of the working beam. A few automobiles are still on the road, mostly cop cruisers; their headlights stretch shadows from the patchy grass as they veer off and onto the boulevard. The little dog roots around with its blunt nose, turning up stripped bolts and bits of glass, but Welles is quiet, staring at the pale circle in the western sky. It dilates as it sinks toward the horizon, its perfect circle sharp-edged, even in the fog.

  It’s in your book a lot, Stanley says.

  I’m sorry?

  The moon. It’s in your book a lot.

  Yes, Welles says. Yes, I suppose it is.

  Like that part when Crivano’s on the boat. When he’s escaping. He has that whole conversation with the moon.

  That’s right. He does.

  My light conceals nothing, Stanley recites. You are my rescue, my restoration. I seek you in constant carnival, masked Crivano, along the waterline.

  You have a good memory.

  Or when he has his dream. I labor with the blind surveyors of night, Selene, and with bricks hewn from sleep I raise your city.

  Welles shifts the leash from hand to hand. That’s another one, he says. You are quite right.

  There at the beginning, even. In the malediction. The treasure he bears in his butterfly sack is none other than—

  The foremost reflector itself. Of course. The book is, after all, called The Mirror Thief. The mirror is not meant to be understood literally. Not exclusively so, at any rate. Crivano is an alchemist. His mode of thought is Neoplatonic, derived from the sacred texts attributed to your patron deity, the Thrice-Great Hermes. To Crivano, the world is itself a reflection, the material emanation of an idea in the mind of God. We cannot know the mind of God any more than we can look directly upon the sun. We look at the moon instead, made visible to us by the sunlight that it reflects. The moon represents the Opus Magnum, the alchemist’s indirect means of discovering God’s thoughts in order to become like God. All mirrors contain something of this lunar essence.

  Yeah, Stanley says. I got all that. It’s in your book. I read it.

  I—I don’t think I stated it quite so explicitly in the book.

  It’s clear enough. You can put it all together. This equals this equals that. I’m ignorant, all right, Mister Welles. But I ain’t dumb.

  Welles opens his mouth, closes it, and sighs in exasperation. My apologies, he says. It is difficult to speak of these things without seeming pedantic or obscure. Especially since I’ve no way of knowing what you know.

  Stanley shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. The fabric pulls tight across his back, pressing the blackjack against his skin. Yeah, Stanley says. Sorry. I guess the thing is, I ain’t never been too good at asking questions. Thanks for being patient.

  Spooked by something, a pair of gulls takes off from the crown of a derrick a block south, yelping and beating their wings, and Stanley and Welles both jump. The dog freezes, raises its head. We should move on, Welles says. The place I want to show you isn’t much farther.

  They cross the boulevard’s eastbound lanes and pass once more into a street of battered bungalows. Derricks rise from empty lots, sometimes from lawns. The houses are dark, tumbledown, with broken windows. An abandoned Kaiser-Frazer sits on the left side of the street, perched haphazardly across the curb; it’s ringed by shards of glass and crushed cigarette butts, and three of its tires are slashed. Stanley’s shoreline rivals have
left their marks here, painting crude snarling canines on the car’s doors and hood. Dashed-off letters twist in the spaces between, advertising the illiteracy of their authors: D O G E S. Stanley smirks to himself.

  We spoke earlier of wars, Welles says, and of great battlefields. I believe that battles can take a number of forms. One could even say that we are walking through a battlefield right now. Often it has occurred to me that what is being fought over in these conflicts—be they great or subtle—is the right to memory. And not only the right to remember, but the right to forget. To selectively forget.

  They’ve come to a steep bridge over a canal. Looking down, Stanley sees the reflection of the fog-shrouded moon in the stagnant water, filtered through an iridescent glaze of oil. About fifty yards to the right, this canal joins a wider waterway that parallels the street they walk on. A block ahead is a second bridge, then a third beyond that one, and Stanley becomes aware of a network of brackish canals that runs throughout the neighborhood, scum-filmed and overgrown, a liquid shadow cast by the grid of streets. Welles and the dog walk alongside the bridge railing; Stanley follows them. As their footsteps echo below he hears the scurry of rodents, the percolating cluck of mallards roused from sleep.

  The name of this place, Welles says, is not an affectation. Or not an unearned affectation, at any rate. Nearly every street that you and I walked upon this evening, and more besides, were at one time canals. The roundabout on Windward was once a lagoon. Rialto Street, Grand Boulevard, the St. Mark’s Hotel: these names were originally descriptive, not merely allusive. But the city of Los Angeles filled in most of the canals in 1929—to make the area more easily accessible by automobile, I believe—and the original character of the place has been all but lost since that time. I was quite conscious of that history while I was writing my book.

  Welles takes the pipe from his teeth and thumps it against his palm, emptying the ash into the canal. His tobacco tin reappears. The intellectual tradition in which Crivano participated, he says, was syncretic, millenarian, utopian. Like all utopian traditions—think here of Plato, Augustine, More, Campanella—its metaphors are inevitably urban. We find this throughout the Hermetic literature. In the Asclepius, for instance, we see prophesized a city founded toward the setting sun into which it is said the whole race of mortal men shall hasten by land and sea when the gods of Egypt return. In the Picatrix, we read of Hermes Trismegistus’s city of Adocentyn, wherein the display of magical images—images, mind you!—assures the virtue and the prosperity of every inhabitant. The architecture of the city’s structures reflects the architecture of the heavens. Think of the implications of this. In the perfect city, we become our perfect selves. It is literally heaven on earth.