by Bruce Bauman
“You look healthy. Not so fragile.”
“Doing some yoga. I’m lousy at it, but overall, doing okay. Blood tests have been good.”
“Excellent … Any chance I’m going to be an uncle?”
Moses looked up and stared at the seaside painting on the wall. He was sorry he even hinted at the possibility during their talks while he was in the hospital.
“Sorry, Mose, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“We reconsidered it but …” He didn’t finish his sentence. If he had, it would’ve gone like this: I’m still afraid I’m going to die soon and I don’t want my kid to be fatherless at three years old and I don’t think Jay wants that responsibility and we’re cold-shoulder arguing over nothing, which is not a good atmosphere and I’m going to be fifty and she forty … Instead, Moses changed the subject. “What is so urgent about meeting up?”
“We’re embarking on a world tour to promote Noncommittal. I’m leaving in October and I’ll be gone off and on for about two years. It’s the Around the World in 800 Days tour.”
For the past two years, Alchemy and the band, with Absurda’s replacement Silky Trespass, former guitarist of the Come Queens, had been touring the States. Moses and Jay did not mention seeing them when they played L.A.
“Have you discussed seeing your father with Ben?”
Moses didn’t understand what seeing his father had to do with the Insatiables going on tour. “Yes, and according to Sidonna Cherry, this guy Lively said he is still willing to allow an audience,” Moses said sarcastically.
“Laban Lively?”
“You know Lively?” Neither of them had mentioned Lively to the other before.
“Yessiree. We first met when I was a kid and I bit his ankle just before Salome stabbed him with box cutters.”
Moses had read about this incident, but it had omitted Lively’s name and Alchemy’s biting Lively. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “And you wonder why I’m afraid to see her.”
“Oh, no, I don’t wonder at all.” Alchemy scrunched his eyebrows and shook his head. “She also managed to slice her hands before Lively slapped her unconscious and they took her away to Collier Layne.”
“You saw all this?”
“Most vivid memory of my childhood. When they took her away was the last time I cried, until Absurda died.”
“Alchemy, I’m so sorry.”
“So it goes.”
Moses rolled his lips together, pressed them against his teeth, and lowered his eyes. Each time he peered into the carnage of Salome’s madness and the burdens her affliction cast upon Alchemy, he felt more deeply bonded to his brother than he could have ever imagined.
“So Lively is friends with your father?”
“Seems so. Lively insinuated that he was WWII military intelligence and they met during the war and continued a business affiliation ever since.”
“Salome says Lively is CIA. What? Mose, you look distressed.”
“I’ve been more obsessed about my father than anything else in my life. And now when all I must do is act and ask … I can’t …” Moses halted, his words stuck in this throat. “Every time I seriously consider making plans to meet either one of them … I think about my mom, Hannah, I really miss her … and I become almost cataleptic.”
“Shit, Mose. What I’m going to say might help you. Might make it worse.”
“Wh-at?” A tremor crept into Moses’s voice.
Alchemy gulped down his beer. “Mose, this is tough. Salome is going to have a major exhibition at the Hammer Museum. Some new work. Some old. Not happening for maybe two, three years. She’ll be visiting often. I wanted to give you enough time to absorb it. Mull it over. Or get out of town.”
Moses cupped both of his hands around his glass of lemonade. “Thanks. I think. Jay would’ve probably found out. I wonder if she’s already heard rumors.”
“It’s bound to get around the art world.”
“I’ve searched Salome on the Net and cross-examined Jay about her art. I wish Salome’s parents were alive. Maybe I could have asked them about my ‘death.’ ”
“Me, too. For lots of reasons.”
“I’m still terrified of confronting her.”
“Wish I could say your fear is unwarranted.” Alchemy stood up. “I gotta use the facilities and get another beer and taco. You want something?”
Moses shook his head, overcome by a daymare:
Slipping and sliding along a jagged cliff, I walk into the sky, but instead of falling, I float-crash along. Suddenly, I begin to plunge through the atmosphere. I’m screaming but no words come out. I smash into the ground and my body, like a rocket, burrows deeper until I crash in a dark mine. Everything in my life is being sucked into the mine on top of me—Jay, our house, cars, clothes, books, and CDs. Someone is sealing the mine and burying me alive. From aboveground I hear the laughter of the dybbuk Shalom,—Don’t miss your last chance.
Gasping for air, I yell,—To do what?
“Yo, Mose. Mose?”
Moses looked at Alchemy vacantly.
—I warned you …
“Whew. I’m surmising you’ve inherited the Savant dream-state gene.”
“Suppose so.”
Alchemy didn’t inquire further, and Moses didn’t want to hear any more about his inheritance. “Bro, brought you a beer. Sorry if I upset the balance.”
“No worries. I appreciate the heads-up. So, can I ask a question about your father?
“Shoot.”
“You think I should see her and Teumer, but you never want to see Phillip Bent again?”
Alchemy scarfed down another taco. “It’s not the same. Salome is your mother. It might be good for her, since no one seems to know what really went down. She wanted you. And your other mom is gone. With Teumer, shit, I get that. It’s hard for me to admit, but yeah, I wanted to meet my father. When I did, like I told you, he was a prick who has never changed. Fuck it, Mose, no one understands your hesitation more than I do. I know what it’s like to be unwanted. I also understand that what I’m going to say is no fun to hear.” Alchemy took his time and took two more gulps of his beer. “Salome never got over your death.”
“I guessed that, only I’m trapped between guilt, curiosity, and fear of a rejection that will crush me. Let me cogitate.”
“Sure.” Alchemy lifted his beer bottle. Moses lifted his. Alchemy began, “To …” His eyes shifted toward the book still on the table. In a brotherly epiphany, they simultaneously said, “… the disinherited.”
34
THE LAMENTATIONS OF MALCOLM TEUMER, I (2006)
Pleased to Meet You
Malcolm Teumer took pride in his ability to outwit and outlive the tormentors who had desired his death for nearly sixty years. If he were to die now, approaching his eighty-fourth birthday, his final word would be: victory. Still, he had been agitated when Laban announced that the second son of Salome Savant sought an audience. Better him than Moses, he thought.
The night before, he had watched the Insatiables’ live Globo TV concert broadcast with three of his thirteen grandchildren. Such noise. Not music. He left them for another room, where he muted the sound on the TV. He examined this Alchemy who roused and exploited the primitive needs of the masses with an admirable élan. Now Malcolm looked forward to their encounter.
He relaxed in the courtyard on his white cushioned chair centered amid the landscaped greenery. To his left, a fountain with seven naiads spraying blue water surrounded a statue of the spear-carrying Ares.
A guard notified Malcolm as Alchemy’s limo passed through gate and made its way to his driveway. A servant escorted Alchemy to the courtyard. This vaunted buck with his pococurante gait, prominent chin, and frosty blue eyes was imbued with a magisterial assurance reminiscent of his mother. His muscular arms and taut upper body were highlighted by a tightly fitting soccer jersey given to him during the televised concert by Ronaldo, the Brazilian football star.
Malcolm stood up and the tw
o men shook hands, taking each other’s measure. Malcolm crossed his sturdy forearms across the chest of his short-sleeved, button-down green shirt. His frame was more roundish than trim, his white hair closely cut around the sides and back of his bald, freckled crown.
“Sit, please.”
Malcolm offered him a cognac. Alchemy assented. They did not toast.
Malcolm asked, “What do you hope to achieve with this meeting?” His accent lilted lightly Germanic, and his words resounded with the bellicose syncopation of a chopping knife against a wooden cutting board.
Alchemy replied, “To see if there is any benefit in Mose meeting you.”
“Acting as his savior was insufficient? Now you have anointed yourself the family unifier.” Malcolm dismissed any pretense of politesse.
Alchemy’s expression turned to one of slight amusement.
“You’re implying what? That I’m upset because you screwed my mom? You grossly overestimate your importance in her life. You’re just another slug in a very long line of unmemorable slugs she fucked and discarded.” Alchemy paused, barely repressing a rueful smile. “I imagine a man of your instincts would be curious to hear how she remembers you.”
“Your imagination reflects your ego’s need, not mine.”
Undeterred, Alchemy continued, “After I met Mose, I asked her about your relationship. She’d never mentioned you.” Alchemy chose his words with precision. “She said she wished you were her best friend Kyle when you fucked. She called you a ‘fiendish little man with the soulsmell of sour pickle juice.’ ”
Malcolm laughed jovially, as if he’d been complimented. “You should have been my son. You are hard. But he, he behaves like a weakling.”
“Mose is not weak.”
“If he were not so cowardly, he would be here instead of you.”
“That is where you are wrong. It takes great fortitude to accept your emotional deficiencies rather than pander for love and recognition.”
“Are you sure you are not speaking of your own situation?”
“Perhaps.” Alchemy conceded the point and shook his head solemnly. He relaxed his elbows on the chair’s armrests and clasped his fingers together in front of his chest. “Perhaps your ego is still smarting over the way Salome tossed you out because you loved her?”
“That assumes you believe I am capable of love.”
“I’ve made only one assumption about you.” Alchemy leaned forward, picked up his drink, swished it around his mouth, and then, like a Clint Eastwood avenging hero, spit it on the grass a foot to the right of Teumer’s chair. “Nothing you’ve said so far leads me to believe you have any remorse for how you treated Mose or Hannah.”
Malcolm stood up and grinned eerily. “Follow me.” This insolent child needed a lesson in humility. They entered the house and walked into a room dominated by one of the untorn canvases from Salome’s Flowers, Feminism, Fornication exhibit. “Wait here.” He turned and left the room.
Malcolm returned in less than two minutes. He handed Alchemy a medal—a silver iron cross with a red, silver, and black ribbon. “For you.”
“Why? Why do you have this? I don’t want this.”
“Give it to him, if you prefer. And these.” He placed a slim sheaf of stapled and typewritten pages on the table. “Take them. Show them to your half brother. Or destroy them. The choice is yours. It seems you are now his keeper. It has been my pleasure to entertain you.”
35
THE SONGS OF SALOME
No Exit Interview
The day Nathaniel departed, I took refuge in Orient. I didn’t want to beg him to stay. Still, I wrote him often, and although I missed him, through autumn I contentedly flaneured about.
At Alchemy’s Christmas break we flew to Paris and stayed at Nathaniel’s flat on Rue du Cherche-Midi. The three of us would lah-di-dah to the Luxembourg Gardens, where we read Alchemy the French canon of subversive lit.
Nathaniel often convened with the Babacools, a group of aging or neo-hippies, at the Rond Point café for a nightcap or three. In another noncoincidence, one night Marlene Passant, the Nouvelle Obs arts writer, rumbled into the café flanked by two aspiring artists. She shed them and sat beside me. After ten nonstop minutes condemning America, praising me, and a candid admission, “I, too, have been incarcerated for unbecoming societal behavior,” she fluffed her henna-colored hair and grinned like a feral cat. “I both detest and comprehend French sneakiness so I am sneakiest of all. You could use a viper like me on your side. Gibbon is selling the works you release to him too cheaply. You don’t have an exclusive with him, do you?” I shook my head. Marlene was a surefire homicider with a soulsmell mix of shag carpet soiled with dried semen and freshly minted French francs.
She called the next day. “I secured a commission from a collector for forty thousand dollars. Do whatever you want. I have access to a studio on Rue de la Roquette that you may use.” With a rush of adrenaline, I finished a Scourge painting: Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People with the face of Arletty (a famous pre-WWII French actress who became infamous because of an affair with a Nazi officer) as Liberty leading faceless Holocaust victims to the camps. On the painting I scrawled my version of the French motto: “Liberté, Egalité, Mendacité.” Marlene and the collector were more than pleased. She paid me sixty percent rather than the usual fifty.
After Christmas I flew off alone to London, ostensibly to see an exhibition of work by the conjurer William Blake. My true motive was to infiltrate the spirit of Phil Bent, Alchemy’s genetic dispenser. I located him through an executive at EMI, Bent’s former record company, who arranged the meeting but warned me to expect “a rather decrepit and pitiful sod.” I checked into the Hotel Russell Square, and the next morning I took the Underground to Earls Court. A gray and matted-haired Macbeth-like witch, with a golden front tooth, answered the door of the ground-floor hovel. If it weren’t for his scraggly three-day beard, I might’ve thought it was his mother. He reeked of old sweat, hard snot, vomit, beer, cigarettes, and greasy wrappings of fish and chips. “Who de, heh, fu—Salome? Wha?” Next to him, Keith Richards would’ve sounded like Churchill. I didn’t know if he’d forgotten our appointment or he was pretending. I blurted out, “You stink. Why don’t you take a bath?”
He regained a speck of lucidity. “It’s cold in ’ere and ain’t got rot to ’eat up the water.” The tub’s heater only worked when you deposited some coins. “Maybe you could gimme a nice body wash. You always did get ’ot in a loo.” He lamely reached to grab my right tit. I slapped his hand.
“The kid with yer?”
“Do you want to see him?”
“What the bloody fuck for?”
“Good goddamned question.”
“That why you ’ere? ’Ow much is it worth to yah?”
He was collecting royalties, though perhaps not much, from the Baddists’ records. “Fast Enough” remained a staple of oldies rock radio stations. Any money I gave him would go for heroin, pills, and alcohol. I muttered, “Nothing.”
I cursed myself all the way back to the hotel. I wished he were dead. Terrified of the frailties he, and yes, I, too, had given to my son. I called the apartment. No one answered. I checked out of the hotel and left London a day early without going to see the exhibition.
I got back to the Paris around 8 P.M. Ana, the wife of the Portuguese concierge, was babysitting Alchemy. I found him in Nathaniel’s office, which we’d temporarily converted into a bedroom, lying flat on the top of Nathaniel’s desk listening to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, which along with Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America Nathaniel had bought him for Christmas. I stood silently in the doorway until he sat up. My almost-thirteen-year-old-going-on-forty son turned his head and winked at me. I winked back. “Do you like it?”
“It sure is different. Nathaniel told me I had to listen a few times before it made sense. I’ve listened to side one four times.”
“And?”
“I’d like to meet the Captai
n and ask who he listens to.”
“Maybe Nathaniel can answer that for you.” I cozied up on the desk beside him. I hugged him, trying to exorcise the demon seed residue from Phil Bent that flourished in him no matter how much I wanted to deny it.
Nathaniel hadn’t told Ana or Alchemy where he was going, only that he’d be home around midnight. I traipsed over to the Rond Point. From the window I spied Marcel, the reformed mobster maître d’, pouring a drink into a glass for Nathaniel. Across from him fawned a luscious-looking girl. Jealous and thrilled, my instincts were to swoop in, pluck her from him, and devour her myself. I went back to the flat.
Nathaniel sauntered in close to 1 A.M. He told me he’d gone to see Duck Soup at the Pagoda cinema with some colleagues and then got a few drinks at the Rond Point. I didn’t ask who the colleagues were. I didn’t want to hear his wiggly words as lies or truth.
Nathaniel focused instead on my anguish and listened patiently as I told him about my disastrous trip to London. I realized how fortunate I was to have him instead of the Bents, Horrwiches, or even the Holencrafts of the world. Then we fucked.
Overnight, my excitement at seeing Nathaniel flirting with a young hottie turned my spirits Savant Blue. I felt the pull of the dark matter. To Nathaniel, I pretended meeting Bent was the only cause. I had to confront him. Two nights before Alchemy and I were to leave Paris, Nathaniel and I went for dinner at the La Moule en Folie.
“Nathaniel,” I began. His eyelids twitched. “The night I came back from London I saw you with a woman in the Rond Point. I don’t care or want to know if you are screwing her.”
He began tugging at his glasses. I clasped his wrists inside my hands. He tried to speak. “I, no—”
“Stop.”
“But—”
“No! I’ve forfeited the right to know. No matter what you do, I will always be faithful to you in my fashion. I told you to go have affairs. But Nathaniel, first you came here without me and now there is someone else.”
“Salome, there’s no one else. A group of us went to the movies. We went for a drink after and then the others left.”