A City Made of Words

by Paul Park

  She took her time. She imagined leaving this place, shutting the door, walking down the hill again to find her car parked on Main Street in front of the bank. She had to work in the morning at the maternity store in Somerville. That wasn’t the worst thing, was it, under the circumstances? She examined her feelings, while at the same time she took little steps that brought her closer to the table under the blocked-up window, where among the tarnished candelabra she could see the desiccated figure of a man, curled up on himself and the narrow surface, chained down, she saw, with iron cuffs—that was the sound she’d heard.

  His head was hairless, an animated skull. She leaned down to hear him speak, the soft words unintelligible, because her German never had been good. But he must have smelled her; now he opened his eyes, and now the words came clear, his accent thick at first, then dwindling. “She’s starving me. I was the one who hired her, over some objections I may say. The decision was not unanimous. And now what has she done? Please,” he whispered, and she could see his delicate nostrils flare. “I am so hungry. So … thirsty.”

  Yvette brought up the stiletto and laid it across his bare esophagus, just has Karen had shown her. But then she hesitated. And perhaps he could sense the hesitation: “You,” he said. “Please, please. I have under my control a two-year postdoc, what do you say? Or if your dissertation is not finished, perhaps we could arrange something … under my supervision. The stipend is … quite generous …”

  “What’s the teaching load?” she whispered, her breath as soft as his.

  “Teaching …” he said, almost too weak to continue, until she brought her wrist up to his lips, and allowed his little, childlike mouth to fasten onto it. After a moment she could feel his rough, probing tongue.

  A Homily for Good Friday

  Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example of have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is their destruction, their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.

  —St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, 3:17

  WE CAN READ THIS excerpt from the letter to the Philippians as part of a fight over the future of the early church. On one side, St. Paul’s mission to the gentiles. On the other, James and Peter and their followers, who don’t think it necessary to give up their Jewish traditions in order to embrace Jesus. These are the people Paul calls enemies of the cross of Christ. As he says, “Their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame.” That is, they follow the dietary laws of Moses and the custom of circumcision. For Paul, this means they are obsessed with earthly things and with their own attempts to purify themselves, instead of trusting the redemption Jesus offers them.

  For Paul, Christianity is a simple thing, easily summarized. “All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and to share his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” We too, primed by anti-Semitism, can easily find ways to congratulate ourselves, that we have not let ourselves be distracted by the letter of the law to the detriment of faith, which should be the law’s foundation. We, like Paul, indeed like Jesus, can sneer at those ancient Pharisees. But I ask you to imagine ways that we’re the same as they are. Since theology abhors a vacuum, a great deal has grown up inside the church in the past two millennia to replace what Paul tried so majestically to clear away. Whenever I stand to recite the Nicene Creed, for example, I think to myself, this is our proliferated law, not of ritual purity, but of belief.

  In a way it’s natural to confuse belief with faith. Faith cannot be discussed, cannot be described. But we’ve got to discuss something with all the time we have to kill, so we fall back on belief. We believe this. We believe that. If you don’t believe this, you’re not one of us. But belief is faith’s opposite, if you can imagine calling one twin the opposite of the other. The similarities make the differences more crucial.

  Belief comes from our heads, faith from our hearts. Belief is of this earth, faith is not. I imagine Paul to have been a world-champion doubter, and I think he would have been astonished to hear about the things Christians have been asked to believe in the centuries after his death. Things that never would have occurred to him. But the proliferation of belief is a natural process, sort of like raising the bar during an athletic competition. “You think that’s hard—try this. Not only was she a virgin, but she rose up to heaven in her own body.”

  Finally, of course, the bar is so high that we all fail in our heart of hearts. And this makes me think that the church fathers who guided this process, as well as those old Pharisees, might have been on to something. As St. Paul puts it, “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal.” He doesn’t need to be reminded that the race cannot be won even by saints.

  I’m in danger of mixing athletic metaphors here, but perhaps it’s just as well for us not to think we’re in the same competition as St. Paul. For the rest of us, it’s good to place that bar firmly out of reach, so that we knock it down each time. Each time we pray, each time we say the Creed. In the same way, I imagine, those who follow the Jewish dietary laws and yet are mercilessly honest with themselves, must think with every bite that they are committing some impurity. Their bar is also too high.

  We need to be reminded every day, but especially on Good Friday, of the spiritual importance of failure. On Easter we have a different celebration, but today is our day of failure. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s Christ’s day of failure too. It’s the day when it became clear to him that no one, not Peter, not John, not Mary his mother or Mary Magdalene, and certainly not any of us, were able to believe what he was telling them, even after years of trying. In a way, he was the most incompetent messiah in the history of the world. As we have seen so painfully in these past years, over and over, the most unlikely prophets can find people who follow them to death. It was no different then. Josephus describes several messianic movements from the generation after Christ, all of which resulted in massacres. Christ’s movement is unique in that no one believed in it at all, at least not enough to die with him. And maybe that’s a feature of the truth, that it cannot be believed with any certainty. If something inspires certainty, then it has to be a lie.

  Or maybe it’s just that doubt comes from doubt and certainty from certainty, and only false prophets are sure. The words from the cross show a range of feeling, from certainty to despair. A range of concerns, some earthly, some sublime. If we are, in Paul’s phrase, “to share Christ’s suffering by being like him in his death,” then maybe we should share his doubts as well. Maybe that’s the worst of what he suffered.

  Or there is a third possibility. Why would Jesus have wanted Peter to accept him, if it meant he might be tortured and killed? Surely that would also be a sign of a false prophet. Maybe when Jesus says to Peter, “You will deny me,” he should take it not as a prophecy, but as a command. Maybe he was saying even then, that it is through failure of belief that we find faith.

  Creative Nonfiction

  HE NEVER WOULD HAVE guessed she was the type to play these games. One of his prompts was always to make him smile, maybe from some piece of misdirection or irony, and in that patch of sky she did not shine. Occasionally he’d seen her laughing with her friends or teammates outside the library. Once after dark he’d caught her as he passed through the quadrangle. She stood by herself under the chandelier in one of the side rooms of Burrell Hall. He watched her through the lighted window and she was open toward him under glass. He knew she couldn’t see him because of how windows work. He stepped back out of the rhombus of light. Her blond hair, pulled back so sharply from her forehead that you could see the strain, was in a ponytail. Under the hard light her face looked pink and scrubbed. She was wearing a fleece pullover and black running tights. She turned and put her hands on her hips. Her name was Taylor McLeef
, which made her sound like someone in a story. She was eighteen years old. It was a damp September evening and he was walking to his car.

  Where she excelled was straight-up earnestness. Her father had died when she was young. Her mother was a lawyer. She played on the field hockey team. He knew these and many other details of her life because of the nature of the class she took on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Creative Nonfiction.

  She had not yet figured out the “creative” part, and she was not alone. He’d seen hundreds like her, students who succeeded by following directions, a forced march that started in elementary school. There was something inhuman about them, or transhuman at least, a master race of female student athletes, filing past him like robots into the future. Taylor’s work was single-minded, uninflected, autobiographical. Here is an example:

  I came out the restroom hating myself all over, the taste of barf and acid in my throat, and found a room where I could be alone. Because of the light from the fixture, I could see my reflection thrown back, my mouth open because of the pain in my throat. I hated what I looked like. But then I could see (and it didn’t make me feel better!) Mr. Santelli peering in at me from the walkway in the quad. What a little creep! I turned to show him my fat ass, and when I turned back he was gone. I hate him and I hate his stupid class. He’s way big on telling the truth, way big on self-exposure. Now I can see why!

  As a distancing mechanism, he had suggested writing about herself from a different point of view, or else in the third person. Then she could describe things she hadn’t actually seen or heard. “It’s not meant to be a record of what really happened,” he’d told her more than once.

  A man of medium height, popular with students and faculty, Mike had been working at the school for six years since his divorce. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the town, five miles or so from campus. It was there at the kitchen table that he corrected student papers over a bottle of merlot. Was this a step forward or a step backward? Could it be called “creative” to misinterpret everything, or call yourself fat when you were thin, popular when you were not?

  But Jesus, what was this?

  I know how to get back at him. I have a mandatory conference next week in his office. He’s been giving me crappy grades and I’ve put Mom on the case. But I can do more. If he wants to look, let him look. He likes my black leggings, I’ll wear my black leggings. And maybe something sexy on the top.

  It was true. He did have a meeting with Taylor the next Monday morning in his office above the library. And on Friday he had gotten an email from his department chair, telling him that Winifred McLeef, who was an alumna of the school and a former trustee, had some concerns about her daughter. Could he provide some clarification on her progress in his class?

  He sat up late on Sunday night. The next morning, when Taylor came in at ten o’clock, he scarcely looked at her. Yes, he verified what she was wearing. She sat down in the chair next to his desk and he went over his comments: “These seem like random events, random thoughts and feelings. It’s not a travelogue, this happened and then this happened and then that happened. You need a plot. That’s the difference between stories and real life.”

  He risked a glimpse at her face. She looked like a caricature of puzzlement, furrowed brow, pursed lips. To all appearances she was a serious girl, serious about her future, or at least her GPA. “It’s not finished,” she said. “She hasn’t even decided what to do.”

  “To punish him, you mean.”

  “Yes. I mean she’s teasing him a little bit.”

  “I don’t like that part,” he said. “Which means I don’t believe it. It’s not in character.”

  He kept his eyes on her paper, the marked-up pages spread out on the desk. “It’s not like she’s some kind of teenaged seductress. You haven’t built that into her. She’s too insecure.”

  “I didn’t mean …” She paused and then she stopped.

  “Then what about this?” he asked, indicating the phrase “maybe something sexy” with his red pencil. “Every detail is important. I don’t even know why she’s got it in for this poor guy. What’s his name? Santelli?”

  “He spied on her. He gave her a bad grade.”

  “Honestly, I don’t think that’s enough motivation. He could have just been walking to his car. He could have glanced in through the window, not even seen her. Sometimes when you’re inside a room at dusk, say, you think people can see you when they can’t. You don’t know how the light affects the glass.”

  “He gave her a B.”

  “But she deserved it! She knows that! The way you’ve written her, she’s young, but she’s not unfair. She’s not about to ruin someone’s life just because she doesn’t like him.”

  People had tried to ruin his life before, his ex-wife in particular. He felt Taylor’s gaze on the side of his face. She was only a few feet away; the office was tiny, a square of white cinderblock. Just to cross his legs was a potential harassment suit. “It all starts with character,” he said. “Motivation. What does she want? Why does she want it? What happens if she doesn’t get it? What happens when she does?”

  This was a prepackaged spiel. “That’s why I’m giving you a B on this,” he said. “It’s just not credible so far. High-achieving mother. A lot of pressure. Absent father. Fine. But this part, this totally mistaken body image. It doesn’t add up. How does that work with the whole exhibitionism thing?”

  “I don’t think that’s contradictory.”

  He risked a longer glance at her. She hadn’t changed her hair at all. She still had that peeled look, her tight ponytail. Her top had a lace neck, and he could see the dark straps of her bra. But she hadn’t gone for naked shoulders or even naked arms. The whole ensemble was more cautious, maybe, than she knew.

  Cruelly, he pressed on. “This suggestion of bulimia. It’s a cliché. I guess I don’t believe that either. Not how it’s written, at least.”

  She pressed her lips together, hollowed her cheeks. And you had to give her credit. She did seem to be thinking this through. “Yes, okay. What about this for a plot? I could make her ruthless. You know, really do it. Accuse him of all kinds of things. Lean on her mother to get him fired just for the fun of it. It’s not like he has tenure.”

  “I guess it depends on the effect you want,” he said after an extended pause. “But wouldn’t we have to think she was a jerk? I don’t know if the piece works if all our sympathy is with him. You know, as a whole.

  “I mean,” he said, “we don’t want to think she’s spoiled and entitled and self-absorbed, and has it in for this guy for no reason. There are worse things in the world than bad grades. I guess he could give her a D. That might help. Do you want to try that?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  And then in a moment, mimicking him, “It’s not credible. She’s applying to colleges.”

  The top she wore was gray with a flowered motif. She touched her fingers to her cheek. “She seems spoiled to you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just saying we can’t hate her. And you’re starting at a disadvantage. Most readers have a bias against these girls at expensive private schools. To be frank, it’s hard to care about their problems. This part where she hates the place so much she wants to blow it up. That seems really extreme.”

  Mixtures of emotion passed over her face, even though it didn’t move. He said, “What you have to remember about writing, it’s not about self-expression, not really. That’s why Santelli’s wrong. It’s not about exposure. It’s not about the truth. Nobody really cares what you think or feel.”

  She closed her mouth. He listened to the air whistle through her nose. She was puzzling it out. You had to give her credit. “Okay, so that plot won’t work,” she said. “It’s true, I want people to like her. But what about if he’s the jerk? You know, a bad man. The antagonist. Then he’d deserve whatever happened!”

  He considered this. “Then he’d deserve to, say, get fired?”

  “If he was bad enoug
h. Or even worse! End up in jail. I agree with you about the harassment stuff. He’s just a little creep. This isn’t what this is about.”

  Panic moved through him. But he couldn’t exactly disagree. She was right, and he couldn’t pretend she wasn’t. “I certainly think it’s a good idea if you undercut him in some way. That way our sympathy is not about her vulnerabilities. It’s about her strength.”

  She pulled at the flimsy fabric around her collarbone and then got up from her chair. “He could be involved in something shady. Or some kind of trauma that makes him act irrationally. A violent past. Thanks, Mr. Pombo! You’ve given me a lot to think about. This isn’t finished, of course. I’ll have a rewrite by Thursday.”

  Even on Wednesday, though, she seemed different to him as he saw her around school. Maybe she had gained a little weight, was that possible? At an exposition of extracurriculars outside the cafeteria (where he saw her answering questions under a banner that read Transhumanity: The Next Evolutionary Step?) he learned she was a Big Sister to a couple of disabled kids, and on Tuesday evenings she read local newspapers to the blind. On Wednesday morning she was with some of her teammates outside the library, protesting the new regulations on African refugees and the president’s new task force on deportations, authorization for which was winding through the House of Representatives.

  But that day he wasn’t paying her as much attention, which was just as well. He had his own problems. Because of the conditions of his divorce he was not able to see his children, Sadiya and Mike Jr., except under supervision. But at the same time his monthly child support necessitated making more money. So he had taken on some independent tutoring and even some government work at the internment facility farther out on Long Island. He had met his wife in Cameroon and now, because of his military and state department background, he had gotten hired as an independent contractor to help process refugees, which was discouraging but necessary. The United States could not continue to be the dumping ground for half the world because of drought in the Sahel.