by Patti Smith
The overhead fan was covered in dust. I watched it turn, or rather the motion of its turning. I must have momentarily nodded, catching the wisp of the end of another passing song. New York, I love you, but you’re bringing me down. Pine-covered hills, morning eggs in a basket.
—Another drink?
—I’m not much of a drinker, I was saying. Just some black coffee.
—Do you want milk?
The waitress was pretty but had a piece of skin hanging from her lip. I couldn’t stop staring at it. In my mind, it got bigger and heavier, then detached and plopped into an imagined bowl of steaming broth that widened, forming a bubbling pool, where an imitation of life emerged. I shook my head. The things that transport us can be so random. It was definitely time to get moving, but an hour later I was still there. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty but I thought that maybe I should order something to justify sitting at the same spot for over an hour, but no one seemed to care, perhaps the same postelection paralysis claiming us all.
The days passed, and what was done could not be undone. Thanksgiving gone and Christmas Eve looming, I meandered through the shopping streets to the beat of an internal whisper: Don’t get me anything. Don’t get me anything. Guilt wetted the dried particles of defeat; how did it come to such a bad end? Another case of imbalanced social outcry. Silent, silent night. Assault rifles wrapped in foil stacked beneath artificial trees decorated with tiny golden calves, targets set up in the backs of snow-covered yards.
Dead of winter yet there seemed to be no temperature at all. Crossing Houston Street, I noticed that the infant Jesus was absent from the Nativity scene in front of St. Anthony’s. There were no birds perched on the shoulders of St. Francis. Plaster maidens with white headdresses were preparing an empty feast. I was never so hungry, never so old. I plodded up the stairs to my room reciting to myself, Once I was seven, soon I will be seventy. I was truly tired. Once I was seven, I repeated, sitting on the edge of the bed, still in my coat.
Our quiet rage gives us wings, the possibility to negotiate the gears winding backwards, uniting all time. We repair a watch, optimizing an innate ability to reverse, say, all the way back to the fourteenth century, marked by the appearance of Giotto’s sheep. Renaissance bells ring out, as a procession of mourners follow the casket containing the body of Raphael, then sound again as the last tap of a chisel reveals the milky body of Christ.
All go where they go, just as I went where I went, finding myself in a shadowed corner reeking of whole egg and linseed oil in the workshop of the brothers van Eyck. There I saw a ripple of water executed in such an exacting fashion as to induce thirst. I witnessed the precision of the younger as he touched the sable ends of his brush to the wet wound of the Mystic Lamb. I hurried away lest we collide and continued on rapidly toward the unfolding twentieth century, soaring past the green fields of rural prosperity dotted with crosses commemorating the slaughtered sons of the Great War. These were not ungraspable dreams but a frenzy of living hours. And in these fluid hours I witnessed wondrous things until, tiring, I circled above a small street lined with old brick houses, choosing the roof of the one with a dusty skylight. The hatch was unlocked. I removed my cap, shaking out some marble dust. I’m sorry, I said, looking up at a handful of stars, time is running and not a single rabbit can keep up with it. I’m sorry, I repeated, descending the ladder, conscious of where I had been.
December 30th. I sailed past my seventieth birthday into the year ending, ankle deep in confetti. I whispered Happy New Year to my well-traveled boots, just as I had done exactly one year ago. One year to the day having pulled into the Dream Motel, where certain things were rendered uncertain and a sign predicted I’d be going to Uluru. One year to the day when Sandy Pearlman was still alive. One year to the day when Sam was still able to make a cup of coffee, and write with his own hand.
THE MYSTIC LAMB
Without a trace of hyperbole
Traveling with an almost religious simplicity to a place I had never heard of, a town near Santa Ana, back west, where Sam was staying for the winter. A town, he said, where it would not stop raining. Come, he commanded softly, and just like that I packed a rain jacket, flannel shirt, some socks and a small but profusely illustrated book on the Ghent Altarpiece. On the plane, I tried not to think about the state of things, of anything unpleasant. There was a bit of turbulence, which was all right with me, just disruptive weather patterns harboring no personal intentions. I opened the small book and concentrated on the great altarpiece, a long-favored preoccupation.
The magnificent polyptych was painted on oak in the fifteenth century by the Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. The whole of the altarpiece was committed with such supple eloquence that it was venerated by all who beheld it and believed by many to be a conduit to the Holy Spirit. Just as the archangels had been divine instruments, a physical embodiment of a phone call from God. The Virgin Mary received such a call, depicted on the exterior panel of the Annunciation, the announcement of the Incarnation by the angel Gabriel; one could only imagine the burning network of fear and exaltation that emanated from this single transmission. The Virgin kneels within a kaleidoscopic void ornamented with her words inverted in burnished gold. Not a garish leaf but a Flemish leaf, applied by incomparable Flemish hands. Once I touched the surface of the exterior panel and was filled with awe, not in the religious sense, but for the artists who realized it, sensing their turbulent spirits and their majestic concentrative calm.
Mary is pictured again in a more serene manner above the central panel of the interior, where she takes her place on the left of God the Son. Words span the double halo curving about her slightly bowed head, declaring her the unblemished mirror of Divine Majesty. Despite all accolades she exhibits a wholesome simplicity, the sweetened nature worthy of the Queen of Sorrows.
Beneath is the crux of the altarpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, said in its time to have induced swooning. A sacred mystery made visible through a work of art. The triumphant yet stoic lamb, accepting all earthly suffering, stands upon the altar as blood from his side pours into the Grail, in accordance with prophecy. Thirst will cease to be thirst and wounds will cease to be wounds, though not in the way that’s expected.
What will happen to us, I wondered, closing the book. Us being America, us being humanity in general. The look in that lamb’s eyes seemed unremitting, but is it possible that the blood of benevolence may not be infinite and will one day cease to flow? I imagined the withering spring, the drying of the Samaritan well, a disturbing convergence of stars.
I felt a dull throbbing in my temple. I noted my sleeve was stained from grazing the palette of the painter whose brush stroked the dark wound of the lamb. Had that really happened? I couldn’t recall a face, but I know I had wept, though without the salt of tears. I remember standing there only a handful of days ago, dumbfounded until cruelly spun from the time of The Adoration into the realm of the now. The stain, I reckoned, looking out at the western sky, was at least as real as memory.
—What is real anyway? Sam had asked not long ago. Is time real? Are these dead hands more real than the hands in dreams that can cast a line or turn a steering wheel? Who knows what is real, who knows?
In San Francisco I boarded a shuttle to Santa Ana. Sam’s sister Roxanne picked me up at the airport. Her sunny disposition was a welcome respite, for the sky was nothing but gray and it was raining, just like Sam said. We pulled up in front of a white clapboard house. I walked up the steps and saw Sam through the screened door before he saw me. He looked more like Samuel Beckett than ever, and I still harbored the hope that I would not be destined to grow old without him.
We worked in the small kitchen. I slept on the couch. I could hear the incessant rain beating against the awning protecting the porch. We were a world away from Kentucky, Sam’s land and horses. Away from everything his. Our days centered on his manuscript, destined to be
his last, an unsentimental love letter to life. Every once in a while, our eyes would meet. No masks, no distances, only the present, the work being the principal thing and we its servant. In the evenings, it was tabled and all cheerfully submitted to the ritual of hoisting down the wheelchair, negotiating porch steps and taking a walk into town to the café that served Mexican hot chocolate. I walked slightly behind in the mild drizzle, experiencing a dizzying sense of bygone days hanging on to Sam’s arm as we tripped down Greenwich Village streets.
The silence surrounding the little house was unnerving. There was nobody around when we took our nocturnal walks. I hated myself for feeling restless. Sam felt it too but understood; he was born restless. When I had to leave California, it was still raining. I got in the car with Roxanne. We pulled away from the white clapboard house, the ivy-covered trellis and the oversized watering can. I promised her I’d keep in touch. Thirst will cease to be thirst and wounds will cease to be wounds. As we approached the Santa Ana airport, I glanced at my phone. There was no message from the angels, not a call, not a single ring.
THE GOLDEN COCKEREL
We are the living thorns
The night before the Inauguration there was a waning crescent. I tried to ignore the tightness in my throat, a mounting sense of dread. I wished I could sleep until it was over, a Rip Van Winkle kind of sleep. In the morning, I went to the Korean spa on Thirty-Second Street and sat in their infrared sauna for nearly an hour. I sat there coughing with a small mound of sticky tissues and thought of Hermann Broch mapping out The Death of Virgil in his head while confined in prison. I thought of Virgil’s tomb in Naples and how he wasn’t actually there because his ashes were lost in mysterious circumstances in the Middle Ages. I thought of Thomas Paine’s words: These are the times that try men’s souls. Outside, the rain ceased but high winds remained. And what was truth remained the truth. It was the last day of the Year of the Monkey and the golden cockerel was crowing, for the insufferable yellow-haired confidence man had been sworn in, with a Bible no less, and Moses and Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed seemed somewhere else entirely.
The following night gongs sounded and dragons spewing paper flames rolled down the streets of Chinatown like enormous pull toys. It was the 28th of January. The cock of the new year had arrived, a hideous thing with puffed chest and feathers the color of the sun. Too late too late too late, he crowed. The Year of the Monkey was over, and the fire rooster, waiting in the wings, made a grandiose entrance. I skipped the lunar year parade though I watched the fireworks from my stoop. It occurred to me that I had grazed the sidelines of both the East and West Coast celebrations, the alpha and omega of the Year of the Monkey, yet had not participated in either. Perhaps not so surprising, other than proximity, for even as a child I found it difficult to surrender wholeheartedly to such festivities, actually dreading the drone of the annual Thanksgiving parade with its floats and marching bands or the manic excitement of the Mummers parade. Inwardly I always felt completely lost in swirls of revelers, like Baptiste unwillingly swept into the throes of the manic carnival at the end of Children of Paradise.
Nonetheless I found myself in Chinatown a few days later, in a trusted pharmacy, consulting an old Chinese herbalist who had made me healing teas in the past. The body is a reactive center, he told me, reflecting on my symptoms and general malaise. All these afflictions are reactions to outer stimuli, chemicals, the weather, food intake. It’s all a question of balance, the system is just recalibrating. Eventually all will disappear, whether a rash or a cough. One must remain serene, and not indulge these reactions with too much energy. He gave me three packets of tea. One was golden, one was red and another the color of sage. Pocketing them, I reentered the cold, noticing the signs of celebration mostly gone, some remnants of paper lanterns, bits of confetti, a discarded plastic monkey on a broken stick.
I walked to the end of Mott Street and descended the stairs of Wo Hop to meet Lenny for congee. In the seventies, a bowl of duck congee cost ninety cents. Wo Hop has always been open, boisterous, serving congee until 4 a.m. All of us ate there back then, often in the early hours after the new year, many of us broke, many who are dead. Lenny and I ate our congee and drank oolong tea in silent gratitude, still alive; born three days apart, seventy and silver haired, bowing to fate. We didn’t talk about the Inauguration, but it hung heavy in the atmosphere, as anxious hearts merged with anxious hearts.
That night I drank the golden tea and did not cough in my sleep. I dreamed of a long train of migrants walking from one end of the earth to another, far beyond the ruins of what had once been home. They walked through deserts and barren plains and strangling wetlands where wide ribbons of inedible algae, brighter than the Persian sky, wrapped around their ankles. They walked dragging their banners behind, clothed in the fabric of lamentations, seeking the extended hand of humankind, shelter where none was offered. They walked where wealth was shuttered within works of architectural mastery, immense boulders encasing modern huts ingeniously obscured by dense indigenous vegetation. The air within was dry, yet all doors, windows and wells were hermetically sealed as if in anticipation of their coming. And I dreamed that all their hardships were viewed on global screens, personal tablets and two-way wristwatches, becoming a popular form of reality-based entertainment. All watched dispassionately as they tread unforgiving ground, hope bleeding into hopelessness. Yet all sighed with emotion as art flourished. Musicians rose from their torpor composing mesmerizing works of symphonic suffering. Sculpture sprang as if from the covered ground. Muscular dancers depicted the torments of the exiled, rushing the length of great stages as if overcome by nomadic futility. All watched, riveted, even as the world in its dependable folly kept spinning. And I dreamed the monkey leapt upon it, this mirrorball of confusion, and broke into dancing. And in my dream it was pouring, as if with a heartbroken vengeance, yet unconscious of the weather I went out without a raincoat, walking all the way to Times Square. People were gathering before a mammoth screen watching the Inauguration and a young lad, the very same who had alerted the populace that the emperor had no clothes, cried: Look! He’s back again, you let him out of the bag! The festivities were followed by a new installment of a reenactment of the trials of the migrants. Wooden boats streaked in gold lay abandoned in the shallow waters. A gilded mascot descended, screeching and flapping its monstrous wings. Dancers writhed in agony as barbs of compassion pricked their feet. The onlookers wrung their hands in sympathetic fury, yet this was nothing to those walking the earth, the circumference killers, tracing words in the windswept sand. Portray us if you must, but we are the living thorns, the pierced and the piercing. And I awoke and what was done was done. The human chain was in motion and their voices played in the air like a cloud of ravaging insects. One cannot approximate truth, add nor take away, for there is no one on earth like the true shepherd and there is nothing in heaven like the suffering of real life.
A NIGHT ON THE MOON
I tried to call you, he said
It was a third-rate café bar. That is to say it had a degree of anonymity that concurrently camouflaged and exposed any questionable goings-on. No place to hide within its colorless walls, but on the other hand, few would come across it, an anonymous-looking joint on a side street just off the boards. Hard-luck joes, bookies and stoolies, the last vestiges of an era only a dirty cop might recognize.
I scanned the layout as I entered. Same scattered tables, yellow-flecked linoleum floor, a few booths. I had been here before, some two decades ago, back when they served the best ham and eggs with real Virginia ham. The pool table was gone but otherwise the same somber deal, absent of décor, unless you wanted to count the mountain-scenes calendar. A place where minding your own business was a minor religion.
The fellow closest to the door was hunched over, staring into his cup as if deciphering a dark prophecy emanating from its grains. Next to him an ashtray full of stubs, the perfect still life. Two guys
in the back were talking low and so close their heads touched across the table.
I stood by the bar, waiting to be served. There was a faded photograph of Manolete the bullfighter in a gilded wooden frame with silk rosebuds glued to the corners. I wanted coffee but was compelled to order a drink. I downed a shot of vodka, wondering how I fit in with this woebegone bunch. Maybe like a drifter, not well-heeled but not down, either, maybe somebody who missed the boat or at least some shining opportunity.
—What kind of vodka is this?
—Who wants to know?
—Well, it’s watered down, but it’s damn good vodka.
The bartender feigned being hurt.
—Kauffman’s. It’s Russian stuff.
—Kauffman’s, I repeated, then wrote it down on a small flip-top notebook I had in my back pocket.
—Yeah, but you can’t get it here.
—But it’s here, I said.
—Yeah, but you can’t get it here.