by Tito Perdue
I never learned where he passed the nights or took his meals, if any, or the books he read during that period.
Forty-six
He came back home with enough money to make a down payment on his loan. Stunned to have the money returned to him, the old man began to work more diligently, more persistently, and the rest. Together they had set up a gazebo out back, this time planting parsnips on the roof, a winter food that ought be useful to them in the weeks to come. Even so, it was not a good time for the boy. His sweetheart was on tour with the quartet, and then on Monday his parents came looking for him.
“And so this is where you live, then,” his father noted, his eye roving back and forth across the rooftop development. “We assumed you were in college, your mother and myself. Just an assumption. We haven’t been provided with your address, actually.”
“This is it,” the boy said, pointing to the address etched on the mailbox, a crude affair devised out of a lard can.
“Dean Jonson is of the opinion that you’re not going to school anymore.”
“Oh, honey,” his mother said. “You could have told us.”
“No, no; it’s alright. He already knows everything, anyway. Knows a lot more than his professors. He’s always been real lucky that way.”
“Oh, honey.”
They were invited into the home itself and allowed to choose the sitting places they preferred. The woman’s eyes were for the curtains, the man’s for the music recordings arranged fastidiously in the floor-to-ceiling book cabinet that lay over against the sink and toilet. That was when the boy’s helper entered, trailed by his mastiff dog, a one hundred eighty-pound manifestation with a bleary expression. No one spoke, not till the animal mounted the sofa with great effort and posited himself next to the boy’s mother. Even then no one spoke, not till the laborer took out a plug of tobacco and inserted it longitudinally into a mouth formed to receive it. His teeth had dropped out long ago, leaving him to masticate with what was left.
“Oh!” the woman said.
They dined slowly, the five entities, then gathered on the front porch to listen to the crickets. Two doors down, a married couple was having a spat, while nearer at hand someone was singing in a parked truck.
“Oh son, how do you stand it?” the woman asked. “That’s what your father and I would like to know.”
“And is he going to introduce us to that girl—that’s primarily what I want to know. Otherwise, what are his plans for the future?”
“We’re planting roses next spring,” the autodidact replied.
They left next morning, only to be replaced an hour later by the rich bohemian woman and her gardener. She was still wearing the same Hindu medallion, but this time had dispensed with any and all brassieres. In the event, her breasts were small but heavy, the sort that he admired least in the whole wide world. Her nipples were large as cigarette filters, endangering the integrity of her sweater.
“See what he’s done?” said she to the individual waiting next to her. “He doesn’t mind breaking rules!” “I’d like to do something like that with our guesthouse. Not exactly like that, of course.”
“Well, ask him to do it,” the gardener said. “Then I won’t have to.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have time.”
“Ask him. He’s standing right there in front of you, for Christ’s sakes.”
He hadn’t time to answer, the boy hadn’t, when yet another visitor stepped forward to submit a complaint.
“Look, I like music as much as anybody, but . . .”
“Too loud?”
“It just goes on and on and on. What is that stuff?”
“Mussorgsky.” And then, turning to the woman’s gardener: “My friend could do your roof.”
“Friend? That ole boy over there? He can’t even stand up straight!”
“Oh, never mind. We aren’t really sure we want to do it, anyway.”
“You used to be sure.”
“Oh, shut up, Herb.”
“Walking around the way she does. You wouldn’t know she’s fifty-two years old.”
“I would.”
And so on.
Came night, he turned the music down. It was thundering, and there was lightning and rain outside, producing an enjoyable noise for people of his particular bent. More than that, it shielded him from the neighborhood noises. He now changed over to a more commensurate sort of music, a Wagner composition also full of stormy noises.
Forty-seven
It continued to thunder the entire night, yea, even unto morning and beyond. Remaining all day inside his cozy cabin, he smoked and read and then, toward noon, put on some of his and the world’s best music. It was pleasant here on this hillside, whence he could keep watch on the water-logged clouds and jagged lightning sticks targeting the city down below. Going to the window, he observed a wet dog running for cover where no such cover existed. As to the people themselves, he saw just one, a medieval sort of individual drawing behind him a two-wheel cart containing material that shouldn’t be touched by rain.
He napped and then, much refreshed, took out the four several photographs he had inveigled from the girl. The first and earliest of these showed her at about the age of three, whereon, as the poet had written, his heart was “driven wild.” Shy in those days, she had never wished to be photographed in the first place. Even then her dress was blue, and her adorable little five-pronged feet had both been fitted with blunt little shoes in which she was expected to meet the world. He could see her walking across the field, her cerulean pinafore exposing two soil-stained knees moving in and out of view whilst chasing bumblebees. He was going insane. Not even oxygen was good enough to touch her skin or abide atop her golden head. He broke out crying.
“I know you,” a friend had said to him. (He had no friends.) “You’ve hoarded up the love that belongs to life in general, and given all of it to just one person only!”
“Correct,” he said. “And as for you, you can rot for what I care.”
He wasn’t embarrassed by his approach; on the contrary, he was proud. His habit, he told me, was envisioning the two of them huddled in a blanket at the back of a cave. Cold weather in those days, but they were able to wait it out in each others’ arms till April and May and the warmer days to come. Or, he conceived them walking across a long and level field detailed with yellow flowers, her excelsior face on fire from starlight.
He couldn’t endure it. He moved to prepare a cup of coffee, but turned and came back before he got that far. For some people it is possible to yearn so deeply for something that time becomes an ordeal, an agony in the brain, a snake in the soul, heart’s blood white as paper. That’s essentially what we’re dealing with here.
Came night again, the second time in a row. Despite his mental condition, he did sleep for about an hour and fifty minutes before coming awake and striding back and forth among the rooms. He visited the kitchen, poured himself a drink, and then went outside to piss. Having finished with that, he continued to stand in place, exposed to the cool night air. That it was growing cooler in Tennessee he could no longer doubt. He had formed so many plans and projects for the summer that now was ending, not to mention the books and flowers and girl leaving footprints in his brain.
His car was fueled and pointing in the right direction; he did not, however, climb inside it, not immediately anyway. It was his long-standing wish that she might come to him, arriving like the Sun, heralded by corybantic stars. His mind then reverted to that wee blue vein that sometimes was visible a couple of millimeters beneath the cream-colored skin behind her knee. No one could possibly be as ethereally beautiful as he imagined her to be. And yet . . .
Departing at just past two in the morning, he drove the necessary miles at high speed, smoking six several cigarettes betimes. Almost nothing was to be seen in his rear-view mirror, a blessing that indulged his hope that the world was inhabited solely by the girl and himself, perhaps a smattering of iridescent birds and not much else. How coul
d the world be so unlike what he wanted, especially in view of how much he wanted it? It was his chief complaint.
He parked as close as possible to the girl’s bedroom window, and after changing the music over to her favorite piece, turned the volume up. Either it would summon her to him, or sweeten her dreams at least. A light went on in one of the upper apartments. He let another few moments go by, then left the car and came to her window. He almost thought that he could see her lying face-up in bed. Or thought rather that he could almost see her like that. Daring not to wake her, he loitered there for about two hours till the Sun at last began its all-time routine. God loves people who love like that.
Forty-eight
Sweet dreams indeed, she had passed the night in a fever of womanly desire, even at one point actually putting herself astride her pillow and allowing herself to imagine things. She had been a virgin all her life and was growing thoroughly sick of it, too. Mentally, she was somewhat unwell, and at times imagined she could hear herself producing music from far away.
As noted earlier, her urges were somewhat larger than they should have been, the result of living in a land where summer heat was as persistent as it was. A serene sort of person, lofty and sad, a first-class mind with musical talent . . . No one knew what really went on in that head.
In mid-September she was made to go on tour with her quartet, coming back nine days later with an award and two marriage proposals, one of them a plausible offer on behalf of a forty-year-old divorced man who attended all three of the concerts that took place in Micala.
“He was nice,” she told the boy. “A gentleman. Tall and brawny, and likes music, too.”
“Damn you.”
“How does that make you feel?” (She came nearer, her eyes full of filth.)
“I can see what you’re going through. Me with someone else. I can see it in your face.”
“Trying to drive me insane?”
“Just up to the edge.”
“I suppose you think you’re safe as long as we’re in a crowd?”
“Well, I sure wouldn’t talk this way if we were alone. Just think what you might do!”
“I do think about it. All the time.”
“Good.”
This, I suppose, was the sort of language that brought the boy to visit me at my lake home the first week of everyone’s favorite month, October to be more precise. No one adores that season more than those who have only a limited number of them in store. Dogs were calling, the perch were feeding, and the wind was full of uncollected apples decaying on the stem. As to the actual leaves, they were transitioning from gold to lacework, revealing their veins by hundreds of millions. This was the time my special student came riding up in his worthless car. I hadn’t seen him in months, the exact same period during which he appeared to have grown a little bit older. His car was older, too. We nodded each to each and then adjourned quickly to the den in order to speak.
“I think he exaggerates,” the boy revealed. “Spengler. But he’s right about a whole host of things.”
“Oh? Which are those?”
He preferred to change the subject.
“We’re also getting along a lot better now. That girl I told you about.”
“Relieved to hear it.”
“Driving me out of my mind! But she doesn’t mean it.”
“It’s a problem. Boys and girls.”
“Can’t sleep.”
“I see. Have you lain with her yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I will, I will. But that’s not the problem. She’ll still be . . .”
“Yes?”
“She has her own way of looking at things.”
“And you don’t know what those ways are.”
“Right. What is she thinking when she’s playing on that harp? She won’t tell me.
“She can’t tell you, for God’s sakes! I don’t even know what you’re thinking, and we’re both men! Or I am, anyway. What, you expect to break through the girl/boy barrier? You can just forget about that.”
“Not fair.”
I broke out laughing. Couldn’t help it. “So you want to unite with her, is that what it is? Like two amoebas coming together to form one business? Forget it. The albumin and yoke of one egg, as Plato said?”
“But . . .”
“Yes, yes, I’ve seen her.”
“And so I’m supposed to go through my whole life . . .”
“Yep, that’s right, the whole thing, and without ever being one hundred percent completely happy. That’s how things tend to be.”
“But . . .”
“Yes, I know. But people don’t get what they deserve, especially not when they deserve a lot.”
“Yeah, but she deserves it even more than me!”
“Very sad. Sad things have a way of being everything. Marry her, nail her three times daily”—and here I sought to tell him about his first attempt at love-making1—“and then get you back to what you were doing. Metaphysics, is it now? Or die. You can always do that.”
We drank, red wine for the most part. It needed another half-hour before the varlet had calmed enough to proceed to my three-wall bookcase and chase down the five volumes I’d recently added to my slowly cumulating set of Rosenthal’s translation of Tabari. Intellect alone (mixed with intransigence) could have saved this child’s soul, though I was sure it wouldn’t.
“Naw, I don’t guess I’m ready to die yet,” he said after a time. “I still think I have possibilities.”
“Possibilities are without number. It’s probabilities that tend to be thin. Remember, it’s always just the present time that’s awful; the rest is fine.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Women are only women, after all. Correlative allotropes we call them, those of us. Individuals of the same nature, but with unlike forms. What, you think a woman’s appearance is a fair representation of her character?”
“No! Of course not. It’s just a reflection of my character, I suppose. Meantime I think I’m going insane.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Nothing wrong with going insane?”
“Nothing wrong with suspecting it.”
Forty-nine
He went back to what he was doing. He will have garnered a lot of attention by now for his peculiar home, enough for his method to have been copied in at least two other places, one on this side of town and one the other.
“You should have applied for a patent!” someone suggested.
Weeds were a problem. German, too, with its endless prefixes running back and forth. He could not fathom the mindset of these people. Busy was he, too, with the girl, who possessed him like a fist tightening around his brain. He cried frequently. He went outside at night and walked about. He had constantly to put on fresh sheets, and to keep himself respectable he had begun using a professional barber. His money running low, he actually bought a real suit, a dark blue affair in compliance with current fashions.
He had a good experience that afternoon while driving about the city. A home had been put up for sale, its contents brought out and made available to bargain-hunters. He went at once for the books, of course, but finding nothing worthy of himself, he gravitated to a good selection of household tools spread out on a table. His eyes hit upon a wrench, a heavy-duty artifact that should have cost more than that. Exalted by this find, he chose a jar of plumbing washers, an eighteen-inch screwdriver, five drill bits (one of them exceedingly tiny), and a dozen sparkplugs in perfect condition. Moving among the wares, he began to hum a segment from Debussy, carrying it off in his incompetent way. No one loved music more than he, and no one had less ability in that special skill. He saw then an outboard motor for sale, an antique Evinrude in salvageable condition. Three horsepower indeed, the thing couldn’t have propelled even the smallest skiff beyond five knots an hour.
“I’d like to purchase this outboard motor,” he had said.
“I don’t know why. Not an
y good. Never was any good.”
“Maybe I can fix it up.”
“Don’t know why. Hadn’t got but three horsepower in it. Probably down to about one horsepower now.”
“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t underestimate a horse.”
They looked at each other. The fellow was large enough that the boy chose not to underestimate him, either.
“Give you a dollar for it. One horse, one dollar.”
“Five dollars.”
“What did you say? Nobody’s going to pay that!”
“I’d rather throw it away.”
“Okay, just tell me where, okay?”
“I’ll throw it where you can’t find it! I will.”
“Here, let me dispose of it for you.”
“You come around, saying things about my books. Most of the people around here are real nice people.”
“I used to be nice.”
“What happened?”
“Prices. Everybody wants too much money for their stuff. Now you take this motor . . .”
“Good God A’mighty. Alright, I tell you what, just take it. Take it right now! I don’t want to see it anymore. Don’t want to see you, either.”
“Fair enough. Help me carry it to the car, okay?”
In the end, he paid two dollars and managed easily enough under his own power to transport it to the car. A million years of evolution and industrial progress had been needed to build this machine, and yet he’d been able to possess himself of it in under three minutes and for what even by his standards was a pittance. He had further pittances in his wallet at that moment wherefore he decided to resume his tour of the town. The afternoon was bright, and October was in season.
He expected to see girls in their autumn dresses; instead, falling under the excellent music that perpetually filled his car, it began to seem to him that the town was empty, no people anywhere. How odd all things were! Perhaps nothing existed. Or perhaps he was alone, and all things else, buildings and people and the rest, were but exudations of his own unhealthy mind. He had always suspected some such thing.
He parked, left the car, and tried to enter an office building that ran up into the sky for a great distance. He was sick, had a headache, and was close to vomiting. Happily, his car was approximately where he had left it, and he was able to pick his way home at half speed. His bed, too, was where it should be, thank goodness.