by Jim Nisbet
Where was I.
The resolution. The finalé. Finalé implies music. The dénouement. Better.
Yes, he said, stroking the heap of papers like it was an old dog, this is the novel that became its own dénouement, while, significantly, ceasing to be a novel. Actually, it never cohered as a novel, but it was interesting to write my way through what I hoped to see repeated as human behavior. As Chuang Tzu queried, “Who is it that has the leisure to devote himself, with such abandoned glee, to making these things happen?” Me, that’s who. Charley!
You hear about people burning plays in the kitchen sink, and I myself once fed an entire draft of this novel into a wood stove, so I’m here to tell you that, one way or another, it doesn’t work. The urge doesn’t go away. Kafka, on his deathbed, asked Max Brod to burn his collected works. Max said sure. Kafka died—and Max didn’t do it. They were best friends! So, do not we know Kafka not only because he failed to make his work go away but also because he was betrayed? Okay, Kafka is an exception. But literature is the story of exceptions. And how does that square with the snuffing of the self? Was it not Philip Whalen, himself a bona fide Zen roshi, who said, “Insist there be a voice, then listen”? Okay, take the next step. Ask yourself: Would you listen to a voice uninformed by suffering?
Burning a useless novel is one thing, but scuttling Vellela Vellela is another cup of rum entirely. And I should scuttle this disgusting little phial along with it. All I know is what snippets Arnauld told me. Snippets? What a chatterbox! Everybody thinks he’s just a boat bum, but I wonder if Red knows how much Arnauld knows. Insofar as I got the drift and filled in some blanks, these people for whom Red undertook to trans-ship this genetic material are a bunch of royalists whose nationalist fervor has led them into thinking they can take over the so-called first world with a combination of business as usual and a more or less permanent figurehead. Nothing new there. Arnaud flat-out thought it was a joke. But they figure a genetic leg up on the situation is kind of like taking steroids before the triathlon. Without a doubt, they like it when the fix is in. That’s how they think. It’s what they believe.
Of course I dove the hull. I dove it the minute I got here. And what did I find? A kilo of blow? Check. The Prez’s DNA? Check—though I wasn’t supposed to know about that part. And then? A fucking transponder, which nobody told me about. So the question immediately became, who’s tracking Vellela Vellela? Red? Arnauld? Some unknown third party? Or—worst thought, best thought—am I the only person in this picture who doesn’t know what’s going on?
I couldn’t just leave the transponder behind. That’d be a dead giveaway. And I presume that as long as it’s transmitting from where it’s supposed to be transmitting from, things will proceed according to schedule, whatever the schedule is. And if the schedule includes my being intercepted? Well, if I leave the DNA behind, they won’t get what they want. Fuck them, and pretty simple. And if they’re after the blow? Even simpler, they can have it. I couldn’t care less about a kilo of blow.
But consider this: what if I make the trip to Key West intact?
The new plan is as follows. Since I’m being followed I touch land one more time, just like I’m supposed to, but not where I’m supposed to. When I get upstream of Boca Chica Key, if nothing untoward happens between now and then, I’m going to set this transponder adrift, take a left into Key West, and let the Gulf Stream carry the transponder northeast, towards Boca Chica. The minute I’m off the boat, I’m going to Xerox the log of this trip and post the copy to you. To most eyeballs it will read like garden-variety woolgathering. To yours, however, it will reveal necessary clues and advice, depending upon what happens between now and the time I send it, and it will contain everything you’ll need, with some cogitation, to find your way to here, here being Long Cay.
Next, I’ll find Cedric Osawa, because if anybody in Key West knows what to do with a kilo of cocaine, it’s Cedric Osawa. Vis-à-vis converting blow into cash, Cedric will know the go-to guy. I’ll deal him in for a taste, and Bob’s your uncle. Then—back to sea, upon which I’ll simply sail into history; or, maybe better, I walk away from Vellela Vellela, leave her right where she’s docked, which should make for a few days of delay at least, while I make like the Tasmanian Tiger and disappear. Why? Because it’s time. British Columbia, the Yukon, Alaska, Thailand, the south of France … As long as I get my ass and a change of scene out of this deal, I don’t care where I go.
Moreover, icing on the Cake of Gone Charley, I’m going to swallow the anchor, which is sailor talk for giving up the sea. You heard me. Melville did it. Conrad, too. Why not Charley?
Except, unlike them, I plan to give up on writing, not start. No more dope smuggling either, and perhaps that goes without saying. I’ll never be found. Why? Because I won’t be me!
I never took proper care of my sister, Red rode my ass to a life of leisure, now he’s fucked me on this deal, and so—this phial is my legacy to the two of you.
No kidding, I’m nervous enough to puke.
And get this: your disposition of it is our legacy to the world. Listen to me. Today, I’m doing a favor for everybody except Red Means and whoever hired him. Altruism is my keel cylinder. Whether or not I went down with my ship no one will ever know. And, excepting the revenge factor, my fate will be irrelevant. If you decide to make your fortune in the meantime, the rest of the world might well get the government it deserves. By the rest of the world, I mean humanity. After that, who knows? Will Nature bat last? Think of us, you and me, as shaving the odds.
Even as I write this, a light bulb ensnarled by monofilament and eel grass is drifting past the starboard side. I used to take that stuff aboard and dispose of it properly. But, long since, there’s too much of it to deal with. If you want a portent of the endgame, take a look at pp. 208-213 of Archipelago, by Susan Middleton and David Littschwagger.
Man is also Nature, of course, and vice versa, alas. What a mass of contradictions, as Aesop noticed, is the creature we call man, able to blow hot and cold with the same breath. But mostly, his breath stinks.
Fire at sea is a scary thing, but I’ve considered setting the manuscript alight in a dinghy and casting it off at dawn. What a hell of a way to pass the day, watching the horizon for the smudge pot designed to extinguish the fruit flies of the mind. …
You see why I will never get anything published except for my epic Similes and Metaphors To Wince By. Kind of like Nixon for Lovers.
That dinghy scenario. Oh, the dreary psychology of it all. Whatever else it may be, however, psychology is not THE TRUE.
Why do I keep indenting?
In the end, apraxia will set in. Or I’ll be ground up in the torture chambers of ideology. Writing in lemon juice would be too much. Hysterical, even. But it would smell good. I could use a quill from a seagull. Invisible screed which you warm with an illuminated bulb in order to read. Until which point there will be no more reflecting upon that which one has written. Those journalists who write a story then wrap it by going back to the beginning, as if their lead were a hook they thought up from the git-go, and wrap it up into a neat little package? Not that I disparage the effort, or begrudge the trade its tricks. The history of art is a story of exceptions. Will Windward Passage be an exception? Am I never to know the ending? It’s hard to believe I’ll be able to resist watching from afar, but some mysteries are best left unscrutinized. Perhaps Windward Passage is one of them.
And finally to business.
You found this duct-taped into a biscuit tin buried three feet deep at a remote location. Upon a quantity of pages torn from a log book, you have discovered this letter, the final chapter of a late, unlamented novel. I’m more or less relying on the likelihood that, if you, my sister, don’t find it, then nobody will, and therefore this letter will never be required to change the world. Or to start a new one. Or to repeat the same old horseshit. Maybe that latter statement is all too obvious.
Whose DNA is this? Arnaud, that fount of info, couldn’t t
ell me. Which probably means that Red doesn’t know either. But this tuft may well contain the self-portrait of the future Dauphin/Dauphinette of your basic New World Order. I suppose they can predetermine the sex, too?
Preposterous as it may seem, there are people who are prepared to kill in order to possess this little vial. And they’re not all venal—per se, anyway. Some of them actually believe in what they’re doing. So the phial is not quite priceless. In any case they have brought to bear considerable resources. Leaving it here and walking away isn’t going to work. Take care.
The people you need to deal with—for you have no choice: you must deal with them—aren’t asking any questions. Not of you, anyway. They are very powerful. Even if you’ve gotten this far, perhaps especially if you’ve gotten this far, you will not long be able to avoid dealing with them. They’re probably just around the next corner, waiting for you to lead them to it.
The upside is, with this little vial, you’re holding the cards. Winner! Ding ding, ding ding ding. Try to avoid the Pow!
There are bidders all over the place. Citizens of former Iron Curtain countries, for example, of no particular ideology, who are merely looking to get in the middle. Members of certain families, for additional examples, who, reverential or not, recognize this vial’s intrinsic potential. I prefer the word phial. It sounds eldritch. Or Jacobian. Of course I’m rambling. I’m pissed off and scared. Focus, Charley, focus.
Then there are the members of the various political parties who would like to substitute the genetic material of a being they feel more … not more worthy but … more suitable, that’s it, more suitable to disinherit the earth. It is The True. Many of these players are not in funds sufficient to bid in this game, of course. Certain among them, not known for their lack of chutzpah, think it should go to them what has the bigger agenda. If you have a big agenda, you take. Why pay money? In the pinch, their philosophy of enterprise and unchecked markets always deserts them.
And then there are the Crazies.
Beware the Crazies, Sis. While they represent your best market opportunity, they will kill you if they don’t like the way you’re exercising it.
The Crazies go beyond reverence for this project. They fetishize it, they are prepared to establish it as a religious relic. They have already set about laying the foundation for a cult to be centered around a carefully groomed personality. Its destiny is predetermined. Think about it. And don’t be making your protestations to me. I didn’t set the wheels in motion. I’m just the sociopath who got hold of one of the levers.
I forgot about the Provenance. Not to worry. A little birdie told me that if you have a look at that big Kissinger hagiography (definition: the biography of a saint), published not so long ago, I don’t know the title, Man of Vision, something like that, but the genome sequence is every third pair of letters starting from the last page of text, not including endnotes and index, and running back to front through the entire book, not including the prefatory material. Which nevertheless probably makes but a limited contribution to why it reads so badly.
Not to worry, the problem is not whether or not this thing is genuine. The problem is to survive its having come into your possession.
You will find that I’ve bequeathed you a kind of monkey’s paw. You remember that story?
Goddammit. I’m trying to strike the Sunset Tone and having a hard time. After all is said and done, this ain’t it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve embarked on this letter. Two, at least. I only left Rum Cay two days ago, and I only realized I had an extra problem to solve yesterday morning, after I dove the hull. Can you imagine Arnauld sounding me on whether I could loan him a T-handled T-2 Torx wrench? What, the conch thinks I was born yesterday? The minute he asked me, I knew something was up. Mon, mon, I lied, I only noticed that the yard used Torx screws when I called in at St. John’s. Been meaning to replace them with Phillips heads but there’s been no need. Plus, hell, I can’t replace them until I get a Torx driver or bit, but if it’s a bit I gotta get an impact wrench, and if it’s an impact wrench I gotta get a compressor, a hose, a drop cord, and pretty soon I’d be well and truly lost in the Möbius clusterfuck known as Break Out Another Thousand—you hear what I’m saying?
Arnauld just laughed. Smile, mon, he tells me. I whup sompin’ up. Vernacular, they say, should be used only if you are running behind in the polls. If you find this, I’m beyond caring—right? And if you don’t find it? Well, I’m preaching to the dark side of the lid of a biscuit tin.
Maybe compulsive revision isn’t such a good thing after all. It’s held me back all my life. I used to know a piano player. Talented guy, but he could never make it all the way through a tune without stopping, and he’d stop with a curse. He’d play the spoilt passage over and over again. When he’d perfected the recitation to his satisfaction he’d start from the beginning and find some other passage to be dissatisfied about. He’d never get to the end of a tune. Somebody would remind him that Thelonious Monk declared that there’s no such thing as a wrong note. Fuck him, my friend would say, Monk was a genius, I’m just a piano player.
You see? Unlike the people who want to get their hands on the contents of this phial, I’m not obsessed with my legacy.
Had I had a little advance warning I could have done this on oilskin or something, some patient medium, for who can say how long this letter is going to stay buried? It reminds me of the time we buried that Pueblo Indian wallet dad brought back from New Mexico. We stuffed it with play money and wrapped it in tinfoil and buried it in the back yard—remember? We used a compass and ma’s sewing tape to measure from the hole to a fencepost in one direction and to the apple tree in another direction. My first cocked hat! That backyard is probably a mall by now. A temperance center. A gun shop. I always wondered if somebody dug that wallet up. Maybe a backhoe found it? What would it have been like? Rotted all to hell? Could they tell what it was? Were they surprised or shocked or scared? Did they simply recognize it for a prank by two little kids? Or did the backhoe lift it out of the ground and deposit it into the back of a dump truck, thence and to the landfill, never to be noticed by anybody? That’s more like it. Way more like it.
Just like Windward Passage.
Rotted in place. Rotted in peace. Rotted unknown.
And now I see we’re nearly to the end of page 295. What a story. I’m looking forward to a fabulous last sail, followed by a serious change of mental and physical scenery. It is The True.
All my love,
Charley
P.S. When they find you—and they will find you—just sell it to them and get out. Take whatever they offer, and go.
P.P.S. If this works, buy yourself a lot of books and a nice boat.
After all, see where books and boats got me?
FORTY-THREE
WHEN TIPSY RETURNED TO SAN FRANCISCO, SHE FOUND A MODIFIED WORLD.
It started with a cursory glance at a Chronicle in the cab on the way in from the airport.
Whooooeee, she thought on her second jump from page one, all fucked up and nobody left to sell it to. Except foreign policy based on xenophobia, of course; that hadn’t changed.
It continued with a calling card tucked between the edge of her front door and the weather stripping, right beside the doorknob, where a body couldn’t miss it.
Vassily Novgorodovich
PetroPozhirat, LLC;
Moscow, London, Havana
Beverly Hills, Guandong, Caracas
33-01-46-09-88-88
This must be the guy, she thought.
The first notice atop the pile of mail announced the severance of her phone service due to nonpayment. It would cost her so much to square the account, so much to reinstate it, including a one-year deposit against this not happening again, and the provider would hold her phone’s number for thirty days from the above date, some forty-seven days ago. Not incidentally, she’d have to buy herself a new phone, too.
Next she found a postcard from her landlady.
<
br /> How about two month’s back rent, goddammit?
Among similar notices from PG&E and the water department she discovered, hey, her newly restored driver’s license, an astronomical bill from the mandated high-risk automobile insurance pool, and two identical letters from the same law firm, dated a month apart.
Chester, Plowright & Samuels
721 Montgomery St., Suite 903
San Francisco, CA. 94111
415-546-3231
Ms. Teresa Powell
321-A Quintara St.
San Francisco, CA
94116
Dear Ms. Powell:
In regard to the estate of Mr. Quentin Asche, please contact this office at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Hanford Reach, Esq.
She caught herself reflexively reaching for the phone to call Quentin and ask him if it were true that he had died.
“That’s not going to work for a couple of reasons,” she said to the empty room.
His death wasn’t unexpected. Quentin had been ill for a long time. Still, she’d never allowed herself to imagine life without him.
She turned her back on the rest of the mail and went outside. The nasturtiums appeared to be riotously happy, and a mocking bird perched on the very top of the fig tree was making all kinds of music. The cushion on the seat of the Adirondack chair was covered in leaves and dust and city grime. She turned it over and sat down. Then she cried for a while.
Later she walked an armful of correspondence six blocks to a laundromat and used its change machine and pay phone to call the phone company, PG&E, the insurance company, and her landlady. The woman who answered the phone at the law firm put Tipsy on hold but came right back with an appointment in two days’ time at ten-thirty in the morning. After some not-so-cute guy with a wrecker got the Beamer started and put air in its tires, she drove to her bank on Irving and deposited enough cash to cover the payables.