Invasion

I'm standing on a great plain with no trees or buildings in sight, and I notice a faint hum of engine noise. I look up. Airplanes or airships that must be of enormous size, though they are barely dots because they are so high, are flying in formation across a crystalline, cloudless sky, leaving tiny, precise contrails miles above me. They seem not to have come from any of the cardinal points but simply to have descended from the stratosphere. As I watch I see white parachutes emerging, opening and hanging in the air like dandelion seeds, but the skydivers don't descend; they simply hover in space, dancing and parading together, held aloft no doubt by powerful high-altitude winds.

A crowd has gathered. I hear the cough of a police radio at my back and air-raid sirens somewhere in the distance. Strobe lights flicker. Military vehicles appear, steered by grim-faced men in helmets and dark glasses.

The aircraft are moving over our heads at what must be terrific speed, though from the ground they barely seem to creep. The parachutists, too, are drifting away, still whirling in tight patterns and showing no sign of coming to earth. The crowd thins and the vehicles race off and disappear from sight. The plain darkens as the sun falls behind distant mountains. All is quiet.

Ouch (2)

Jeopardy clue: "Inscribed on Woody Guthrie's guitar: 'This machine kills' these." Contestant's response: "What is 'trees'?"

(Correct question: "What is 'fascists'?" Kudos to Jeopardy for remembering, especially now.)

Ouch

Jeopardy clue: "John & Priscilla Alden lie in the U.S.A.'s oldest maintained cemetery, which like a poem about the couple, is named for this person." Contestants' proposed questions: "Who is Poe?," "Who is Arlington?," and "Who is Mary?"

(The correct question: "Who is Myles Standish?")

Tower

In the office on the 73rd floor, high above the city, the president of the company passes me a handful of letters to mail and a note with the deli order for lunch. "Quickly!," he shouts, and I rush to the elevator, which swiftly descends the great steel and glass tower until its doors open at the ground floor. A rush of wind hits me as I exit through revolving doors, and the letters are blown from my hand and scattered. Pedestrians hurrying in and out of the building trample the letters and leave their footprints on them. I gather them up and enter the deli, but there's a crowd ahead of me struggling to be served and in the confusion I drop the letters again. Now they're torn, soiled with beef blood and grease. I run outside looking for a mailbox, for a place to wash my hands, but all in vain...

The Mark of Ubu

What's-his-name, in the role of the original sociopath. "His poltroonery is only surpassed by his invincible avarice" (Macmillan's Magazine, 1897).

Poster by Iida Lanki, from 2013.

Tourist advisory

This is why you should always keep a decent set of maps in your glove compartment: you're driving along, just hoping to get home by dark, but the road is looking more and more unfamiliar, was that a rice paddy you just passed?, and all of a sudden you're hurtling down the long hallway of an apartment building, there's laundry waving on lines above your head, you hit the brakes too late to stop the car from plummeting into the coal cellar. So you climb out your car door and look up at the woman who's leaning over the railing looking down at you, hands on hips and shouting "hey, here's another one," and soon you're running, running, but it does no good, they'll catch up with you sooner or later, and what's worse, your supper is cold.

Anthropology

My colleagues and I are seated around a picnic table at the edge of a farm field in the countryside. Below us, beneath some trees, is a small stream, and beside its muddy banks the neglected grave site of a German Catholic priest. I listen to the end of the presentation that precedes mine, and am about to preface my remarks with a sarcastic aside to the effect that, in our field, everything we study must be justified retrospectively by the influence it had on Bob Dylan, when two rafts come into view heading downstream. Both are jammed with trussed animals, among which we are astonished to see two live jaguars. Before we have time to react the poisoned darts come flying through the air.

The Palace of the King of Night (Introduction)

In the spring and summer of 2007 I wrote a narrative entitled The Palace of the King of Night, described in its subtitle as "a novella, or folly." Later, when I phased out the website where I had originally posted it, I elected not to transfer it over to my current blog. Not being inclined to revise or or even re-read it at that particular moment, I suspected that the length and likely artistic shortcomings of the piece would render it a distraction from what I was interested in doing at my new address. For whatever it's worth, I have decided to make it available now, in installments, but spun off onto a separate blog [here].

The novella originated, as does much of the (relatively little) fiction that I write, in a dream or half-dream, and the opening scene and perhaps a little more derive directly from that source. Once the story got going, however, I more or less consciously steered it according to a preconceived plan, and it became a kind of ersatz Grail legend, set not in a forest, as is traditional, but in an arid landscape that perhaps was also a kind of underworld or land of the dead. The peculiar artwork of Charles-Frédéric Soehnée (see above) was a partial inspiration, at least for atmosphere, and their were faint traces of what I knew about ancient Egyptian mythology, which was (and remains) very little.

I am far happier composing shorter forms (a few paragraphs) and so the writing of the novella was both exhilarating and grueling. I'm afraid its deficiencies will be all too evident, but perhaps something of what impelled me to keep at it will come across. I dislike reading long texts on a screen, and ideally I would print this up as a chapbook, give the copies away to the twenty or so people who would be polite enough to pretend to read it, and leave it at that. Until I get around to doing so, here it is, warts and all.

Fighting words

The Spectator, 6 November 1852:

Five publishers were yesterday summoned by Mr. Panizzi for the non-delivery of books at the British Museum. They were all convicted and fined. Mr. H. G. Bohn was one of them. He had not sent in a copy of Andrew Fuller's Works. There was a rather warm scene in court between the librarian and the publisher. Mr. Bohn contended, that a courteous intimation that the book had not been sent would have insured its being sent with an apology for the oversight: that was the course followed by Mr. Panizzi's predecessor. Mr. Bohn further said, it was well known that he sent his books to the Museum, yet it constantly happened that his friends could not find them. Mr. Panizzi (very warmly)— "That's untrue, and you know it." Mr. Bohn— "I know that I have applied for one of my books myself, without being able to get it." Mr. Panizzi— "What book? Name any book." Mr. Bohn— "Why, Schiller's Works, for one, I remember." Mr. Panizzi— "It is false. You shall not make such a charge in public."

Things

Things that fit in the hand.
Things that follow us, but only from a safe distance.
Things that are closer than they appear in the rear-view mirror.
Things that have no reflection when they are held up to a looking-glass.
Things that have not yet been described by science.
Things that are best left unspoken.
Things that have no names.
Things whose names have been forgotten.
Things people call you if they can't remember your name.
Things that are not bilaterally symmetrical.

Things that spin on an axis for a brief moment or two, then topple over and stop moving.
Things of potential utility during rainstorms.
Things that fell into a crack in the floorboards, and when they were at last retrieved, no one knew any longer to whom they belonged.
Things found floating in the water.
Things washed up on the shore.
Things found in the belly of a hippopotamus, in surprisingly good condition.
Things that make people blush, at first, or maybe always.
Things that left-handed people find it particularly difficult to use.
Things that can be shaken to make percussion instruments, at least until they break.
Things in my pockets.

Things that fell through a hole in my pockets, rolled into the street, and disappeared down a storm drain.
Things Mama don't allow.
Things that all came out in the wash.
Things the dog chewed.
Things you originally bought for yourself but decided to give as a present instead.
Things that can be folded repeatedly without tearing.
Things you never learned.
Things whose nature can not yet be publicly revealed, but which probably weren't worth the trouble in the first place.
Things supposedly nicknamed "George" by those who were there at the time.
Things nobody ought to ask you if they don't want to know.

Things that got moldy and had to be thrown out.
Things you shouldn't stick in your ears.
Things that only grow under beech trees, in the deepest part of the woods.
Things marked "unknown artist, c. 1930."
Things that aren't remembered.
Things that can't be placed.
Things that are different.
Things that aren't the same.
Things you don't have to declare when you cross the border.
Things that once released, can never be put back in the bottle.

Things you can't buy on Sundays in parts of Pennsylvania.
Things marked with several small perforations, perhaps from a BB gun.
Things someone stuffed in a brown paper bag and shoved in the back of a desk drawer, and that's the end of it.
Things lemons are good for.
Things that most likely got left behind when the neighbors moved out.
Things nobody knows.
Real things.
Things that never were.
Things that are gone.
Things that remain.

The Asiago Bunny

The following story engages the two central themes of Western Literature, which are, of course, the possibility (or impossibility) of true love and the tragic fate of the pre-industrial artisan in an economy of mass production. Asiago is a kind of cheese.

"The Asiago Bunny: An Edifying Tale for Children"

With apologies all around

Many years ago, in a small village, there lived a cheesemaker named Granola. His was a lonely life; while everyone else in the village was having a good time he spent his days stirring vats of fermenting milk with a garden rake and waiting for the balls of cheese he had hung from the rafters to age, and he longed for a companion with whom to share his misery.

One day he became so completely unhinged that he picked up his penknife and resolved to do himself an injury, until his glance happened to fall on a wedge of asiago that was attracting flies on a shelf. Something about the way the light shimmered on that hunk of lifeless cheese suggested to him the outline of a face, and in an instant the cheesemaker was furiously gouging out pieces of it with his knife, until, in a few moments' time, he had sculpted the perfect likeness of a bunny, complete with soft, stumpy tail and lovable bunny face.

He nestled his creation in his arms and whispered to it as he rocked it back and forth; then he cleared a place for it on his cheesemaking table and set it down softly, reassuring it with a gentle pat on its innocent soft head. Through the rest of that day, as he went about his cheesemaking chores with more than usual esprit, he conversed with the bunny and shared his sorrows and dreams and sang to it his songs of the cheesemaking life.

When the sun went down and his work was through he gathered up the bunny and retired to his dusty garret, making a cradle for it on his tiny table alongside his only other possessions, a single stumpy candle and a half-filled bottle of wine. Before he snuffed the candle out he gazed into the eyes of his companion and sighed and said “Oh, if only you were a real bunny!”

That night, as Granola lay asleep, the Cheese Fairy glided through his window, beheld the sleeping cheesemaker and his inert creation, and with one sweep of her wand changed the carved cheese into a real bunny, with long white teeth and soft fur but with a body that was still only made of cheese. The bunny opened its limpid eyes and looked around, then climbed onto the bed beside the cheesemaker and began to gently nuzzle his ear. The cheesemaker rolled his head about but did not awaken, and the bunny curled up at his side and went to sleep.

After a while, however, it woke up and began to explore the room; it found the bottle of wine and sniffed at it tentatively, then pushed it over and drank the contents. Within a few moments the bunny began to feel unwell and lay down, and soon after it became completely unconscious.

When the cheesemaker awoke the next morning he looked down at the empty bottle and the motionless bunny beside it, and could not remember anything that had happened the day before. He picked up the bunny in his large, calloused hands, sniffed its curious aroma of mingled wine, cheese, and small herbivorous mammal, and shrugged his shoulders. He carried it downstairs, put it in a pot, and cooked it over the fire for a while, then smeared the steaming, savory, melted mass onto the remains of a loaf of bread and ate it for breakfast.

Several readers have objected to the manner in which the bunny drains the wine, pointing out that a bottle resting on its side will retain a substantial quantity of liquid, and that it is unlikely that the bunny would have the strength to raise the bottle over its head in order to invert it and drain the balance. The objection is simply addressed: the bunny lowers himself slowly over the edge of the table, tilting the bottle after him until he finishes the contents, then allows the bottle to rock back into its resting position on the table.

(From 2004 or thereabouts, previously posted on my old site.)

The telegraphist (conclusion)

All was quiet the next morning. There were a few heavy clouds along the horizon that he thought might portend a storm, but the next time he looked in that direction, a few moments later, they had vanished without a trace and the air around him was as searing as ever. He didn't even bother to look in on the mule, of whose existence he had by now in any case forgotten. He had lost track of time and only occasionally remembered how he had come to be stranded in such an isolated, godforsaken place. The thought occurred to him that he might in fact be dead, but after trying to get his head around that notion for some time he decided that he couldn't form a conclusion one way or another and so put the matter out of his mind. He opened a fresh can of beans -- there weren't many left but he wasn't eating very much anymore -- mouthed a few spoonfuls, and set it aside. The telegraph bell rang now and then, but he paid no attention to it.

He passed two or three days in a state of intermittent delirium, shaking with fever and too weak to get up, until in a brief lucid moment he realized that he must soon drink something or die. Filling a bucket from the wooden barrel, he drank steadily for several minutes until he felt himself about to retch. He returned to his cot and almost immediately fell asleep.

When he awoke -- it could have been the next morning, or the day after, he wouldn't have been able to say -- he felt much better and his appetite had revived. He grabbed the same can of beans, brushing away the flies that had congregated around it, and sat up at his desk. As he was pushing the first spoonful through his cracked and blistering lips he heard the alarm ring. Seconds later the message came down:

Nesabap alaba barababaranap mana ba STOP Palaba banabarep arefep ber erabet geret nasefaterabat gret bara basarep

He carefully wrote the words down, then examined them at length. Their significance was as inscrutable as ever, and yet the longer he looked the more there seemed to be something in them -- some delicate gesture, some faint hint of tenderness -- that desperately longed to be conveyed. He read them backwards and forwards and out of order, anagrammatized them and spent at least an hour simply staring at the forms of the letters as if the shapes alone bore some critical message that had nothing to do with any language known to man, a message that arose from some other realm where nothing was arbitrary symbol, where every communication was a direct encounter with some truth so profound and absolute that it couldn't be expressed in anything as insignificant and arbitrary as language but only as itself. Before he even knew he was doing it, he began to tap out a response:

Qa balaqa STOP Barabasabaraq qaraq ablababap STOP Balap rabelaba perap salap balarepareb na nabap

The reply was almost instantaneous:

Gasap beragera aramerabap STOP Beragabaragap blagap gasa berarqaraba basaraba berap asanta nabep rebasapar raba berabasep

He sat back, contemplating the words. At that moment they seemed to him as soothing as the freshest spring rain, as deep as a desert well, as tender as a mother's love for the infant at her breast. Weeping with gratitude at their beauty, he stood up and spoke the message aloud, chanting it over and over as he circled the room, kissing the paper on which he had written it out. Trembling with joy, he leaned over the key and tapped out a response that he knew, with complete certainty, would be received and understood as his irreversible declaration of utter and undivided submission:

Garaqasap abamaba maserab berasseraber STOP Asarabageram merasapa aba basapa mergaraga berasaperaba STOP Meragerabarap birab qaru nagraba barasabar

With one motion he swept everything off the desk -- his books, his water jug, and his lamp, which shattered onto the floor -- and awaited the answer that he knew would soon be forthcoming.

*****

When the relief party arrived at the oasis they found the mule still barely clinging to life in its stall. Out of mercy they shot it. The body of the telegraph operator was slumped over his desk, surrounded by page after page of incomprehensible scribbling. At the orders of the officer in command of the party they buried him just beyond the edge of town; then they gathered all of his papers in a pile and set them ablaze. After that they cut the telegraph wires and stripped them off the poles; the copper, at least, could be used again. When they were done, right before they left, they dynamited the command post, just to be sure.

The telegraphist (II)

At the beginning of the seventh week all communication with Z---- was broken off again, this time for three days. It resumed promptly and without explanation on the fourth morning at 0600 hours, but two days later it ceased and did not resume. A slave to protocol, he submitted no daily reports, since none had been requested. To break the monotony he began to make his morning rounds in a counter-clockwise direction. He was struck by how different an aspect the oasis revealed when examined in this fashion, but after a few days the novelty wore off. He began to alternate, walking clockwise one day and counter-clockwise the next, and this seemed to be the most tolerable arrangement.

After the second full week of silence he caught himself softening his steps, listening for the engines of the relief party that by now was overdue. He heard none, nor were there any unexpected visitors, suspicious or otherwise. The worst of the heat of the dry season, suffocating and blinding, lay upon the desert, and he spent as much time as he could asleep with wet rags over his eyes. Scarcely animate, the lethargic mule stared at him from its stall with unblinking and (he half suspected) unseeing eyes, and barely summoned the energy to eat.

He was writhing on his cot in a semi-delirious state, somewhere between night and morning and between sleep and waking, when the alarm rang. He leapt up and rushed to the telegraph. It wasn't the operator at Z---- but the outward post, and the message, as ever, was incomprehensible:

Ba bara sabara rebapara azera ba STOP Sarabara berisa seribisarabisa serata bezera razara ra STOP Berisol sorisoriso bazara sarisarasarisab STOP

He transcribed this seeming gibberish into his logbook, returned an acknowledgement, then relayed the message to the operator at Z----. There was no response.

The following day, at around the same hazy hour of dawn, another message came down:

Saraba barisaserisab azarasaraza bazirazep STOP Azirasora sarizap borisoq qrabba oraseraborisep prebanamarasarasap STOP Azapep STOP

Again he acknowledged, transcribed and forwarded the message, and received no response from Z----. To his surprise, however, an hour later an identical message arrived. Perplexed, he carefully compared it with the previous one and acknowledged it, but almost immediately a third came, and then a fourth. He duly forwarded each transmission, but when the fifth and sixth arrived he held back. Clearly the operator in the hinterlands was not receiving his acknowledgments and was repeating himself in the mistaken belief that his messages were not getting through. There was no point in annoying the authorities at Z----, if they were indeed listening, with obvious repetitions. For several hours the wires carried message after identical message, dozens, scores, eventually hundreds. He transcribed each one, for a while, then simply gave up, walking away and returning every hour or so to see if the incoming transmission was the same as the others. It always was.

The messages trailed off in late evening, then sputtered to a halt. He was awakened once during the night, then again around 0500, and after that the pace began to pick up again until the incoming transmissions had become a virtually continuous stream of characters. He walked away from his desk and went outside. The wind had gathered and a sandstorm was obscuring the horizon, but the heat was as relentless as ever. The mule stood motionless and he wondered whether it had died standing up during the night and had simply neglected to fall. He threw it some hay regardless.

When he went back inside the telegraph was still chattering. He recorded a few lines, then threw his chair back in a huff and started to walk away, rage rising within him. On the verge of losing control completely, he was about to smash the instrument and put an end to his torment once and for all when he caught himself, finding that a greater fury was welling up inside him, and coldly and meticulously typed out a message to the operator on the other end:

Raberaparabep barabap parabarabagarap garap baregatarat top barop roparaoparop bererep qrabab STOP Garep arepabap gop STOP

These syllables, though they meant nothing to him, he transmitted without a single pause. To his surprise, the machine did not pick up where it had left off. Instead there was silence for a few moments, then a brief acknowledgment, and then it lay still.

No further transmissions arrived until late that evening. He was dozing in the cot, his spoon rattling in the empty can of beans beside him with every labored breath, when the alarm woke him and a message trickled out:

Garabarep farabara barana marabap amar raba raba barabaramop STOP Garabananana badarap badar badar badarap bada STOP

He wrote out the message, then tore it roughly out of the logbook and paced the room, reading it over and over. He had been instructed in the making and cracking of basic ciphers during his initial training, but this fit the pattern of nothing he had ever seen. He leafed through his logbook, carefully examining old entries. There seemed to be too few unique letters, too much obvious repeated filler, for the messages to contain any but the most rudimentary communication. No doubt there was a key, known to the operator on the other end and also at Z----, or maybe not even there, maybe the transcriptions were referred to another operator at some distant headquarters, perhaps even all the way to the home country, to some intelligence officer in the national palace, who perhaps decoded them for the eyes of M. le Président himself. One way or another it was clearly beyond his ken.

While he was considering this the alarm sounded again, and another string came through, this one identical to the last:

Garabarep farabara barana marabap amar raba raba barabaramop STOP Garabananana badarap badar badar badarap bada STOP

And then it seemed to wait, patiently, expecting an answer. He put his hand on the key and tapped, hesitantly at first, then fluently:

Morarerabap aramara marabeparepamar berererapap STOP Beraqraba garab megaraba babap babap babap ma garabarap STOP Serabep arbaraba barapep a pep perapebabep merera baramabap STOP

A brief acknowledgment followed, and then nothing for the rest of the night.

(To be continued.)

The telegraphist (I)

He was the last one left. Just before decamping the legionnaires loaded up the barrels of gunpowder that remained onto carts, piled on all the old carbines and anything else that was portable, and blew it all up at the edge of the desert. The shock wave whipped the overhead wires that hung slack between the weatherbeaten poles and blew out two windows of the command post, but the adobe walls held firm. The little generator in the next room, after skipping a single beat at the initial concussion, resumed its steady chugging, brushing off the aftershocks that echoed, ever more faintly, for the better part of an hour.

They left him a mule and some fodder, a rifle and cartridges, and enough fuel and food and water for two months, three if he was careful with it, and not very much rum at all. By the time his provisions ran out, if he was lucky, he would be relieved; in the meantime his presence would be essential to communication along the line, sporadic though it might be. In the absence of the lieutenant, who had never returned from a reconnoitering expedition the year before and was assumed to be among the casualties of war, the sergeant formally transferred his authority in a brief ceremony several times interrupted by boisterous outbursts on the part of his subordinates, all of whom were in varying states of drunkenness and immune to the sergeant's halfhearted rebukes. They wished him good luck, embraced him one by one in turn, and clambered into the back of the hulking, wheezing truck just as the driver, who perched alongside the sergeant was by no means the soberest of the lot, ground on the gears until he managed to cajole the reluctant vehicle into lurching forward, blowing up clouds of dust and sand as it lumbered haltingly to the edge of the oasis. He watched them drive off for a moment, waved his cap three times over his head, and returned to his desk.

During the first few weeks his duties kept to their normal routines. He slept in a cot in the office within earshot of the alarm. Each morning, at precisely 0600 hours, the office at Z---- would transmit an identical message inquiring for his report. He would respond that all was well and await instructions. A few moments later the machine would jigger into life again, with a one-line order to expect a further communication at 1800 hours. After breakfast and coffee he would make a brief circuit of the immediate environs of the command post in order to stretch the kinks out of his legs, he would feed and water the mule, and then go back to sleep until evening, when there would be a similarly terse exchange with the operator on the other end. He would warm up a few more spoonfuls of canned rice and beans, knock back a single precisely measured shot of spirits, and call it a night. On rare occasions and at unpredictable hours a brief message came down from further up the line, transmitted by an operator in some even more isolated and woebegone outpost. When that happened he tapped out an acknowledgment and promptly relayed the information; as these messages were usually encrypted and he had not been entrusted with the key this entailed the careful replication of a string of apparently meaningless syllables, a task for which, he decided, he was particularly suited.

Only twice did he see any sign of life other than the vacant and imperturbable mule. One morning, during his constitutional, he discovered the faint traces of hoof prints across his path. That the marks were visible at all, considering the incessant drifting of sand over every square inch of the oasis, proved that they had been made the previous night, perhaps just before dawn. He traced their origin back as far as the last palms, but no further, then reversed course and followed them to the point at which they trailed off into the desert. He determined that there had been three camels, that their riders had never dismounted, and that they had found nothing of interest to detain them or even to cause them to veer from their course. A week later, by chance, on one of the few relatively windless days, he spied a small caravan -- twenty riders or so, from the look of it -- very far off, but it never approached and he lost sight of it, even with his binoculars, after an hour. His report of each incident was duly noted and acknowledged, but nothing more was said of either one.

It was somewhere near the end of the fourth week, or perhaps the beginning of the fifth -- he had become increasingly indifferent to the calendar -- that his orders failed to arrive on schedule for the first time. He wasn't alarmed by this. Interruptions along the line, due to downed poles or balky generators, weren't particularly unusual or unexpected. The lack of communication posed no imminent danger, as the front lines -- to the extent that those could be defined in a guerrilla conflict in inhospitable and poorly charted terrain -- lay hundreds of miles off, and even the odd raiding party, should it by chance happen to break through, would have no reason to venture into a region that offered little in the way of opportunities for pillage. The telegraph remained dormant through the evening, but when at 0600 the next morning the alarm sounded and the operator at Z----, making no reference to his silence of the previous day, inquired for an update on local conditions, the telegraphist neither sought an explanation nor gave it a second thought.

Semi-automatic

A man stands alone on a street corner — but to say he's alone isn't true, in fact he's surrounded by a swirl of pedestrians and onlookers, some of whom are also standing motionless at the moment, it's just that he happens to be on the corner for reasons of his own, which he shares with nobody else in the crowd, reasons which we, the witnesses of the scene in which he is the principal and in fact sole protagonist, are also not privy to — and it's not quite true to say that he stands either, he's actually half-standing, half-leaning, supporting himself against an ornate cast-iron lamppost that rises from the sidewalk, ascends over the man's head, and then curves down gracefully to grasp in one solitary iron-vegetable claw an opaque white globe, which is not illuminated at the moment because it is afternoon, and in fact the sun is steadily burning through the stagnant haze of dust and exhaust fumes that hangs over the city, and the office workers on their lunch hours have loosened their ties and opened their shirt collars to give them some small respite from the stifling heat — but the man isn't wearing a tie at all, just a beige short-sleeved cotton shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, with a single breast pocket which, however, is empty — and on the streetcar that is rattling past, tethered to overhead wires, the passengers are leaning out of the windows and exits trying to get a little air, fanning themselves with newspapers, and the men have removed their jackets and you can see that their shirts are soaked with sweat, but the man on the corner shows no sign of discomfort, in fact he's so at peace that he may have closed his eyes behind his dark glasses, not that he's sleeping mind you let alone passed out drunk, but clearly he hasn't been exerting himself or been shut up all day in some airless bureau where the spinning metal fans that are whirring on every desk, creating a drone like a hive of bees, do little to relieve the suffocating atmosphere, more likely he's been sitting by himself at a table in the corner of some dark air-conditioned bar a few blocks away, and the taste of the cool, sweet concoction he had been drinking — possibly having more than one — is still lingering deliciously on his palate along with the traces of cigarette smoke from the interior of the bar, though he, himself, doesn't smoke, and it may well be that he has closed his eyes the better to picture in his mind the woman he had been dancing with the night before, a woman of his acquaintance and possibly his lover but certainly not his wife because he isn't married, it's quite certain, he has the look of someone who isn't married, who will never be married, who perhaps one day when he is old and ill and childless will feel a brief pang of regret at his state but who will shake it off, because when all is said and done the memory of the taste of rum in your mouth on a hot afternoon leaves precious little room for regrets.

An anecdote

à Amittai Aviram

As an autumn afternoon advanced, Arthur Asbury, an accomplished Assyriologist, ambled along an avenue, arriving at an Asturian auberge. After an appetizer (artichokes and anchovies, attractively arrayed) and an appropriate apéritif, Asbury approached an antiquary's. Admiring an authentic Athenian astrolabe, Arthur acquired an Abish, an Auster, and an anonymous antiphonary, and asked (as an aside) after an Argentinian acquaintance, Arabella Aragón. Ages ago, Arabella assassinated an aging archbishop -- as an anarchist, Arabella abominated Anglicans -- arcing an adeptly aimed arrow at an atherosclerotic aorta. As an Austrian ambulance absorbed an Alpine avalanche, Arabella absconded, avoiding arrest. After apprehension, adjudication, and an appeal, an attorney achieved an acquittal. An absolute antinomian, Arabella abjured absolution.

Assuming an aristocratic accent and adopting an Armenian alias, Arabella apprenticed as an archaeologist's assistant. Ambitious and amoral, Arabella ascended academically and acquired avid acolytes and admirers. At an anthropological association affair, awaiting an antipasto, an awestruck Arthur Asbury attempted an awkward advance, anticipating an amour. Astonished at Arabella's ambivalent answer, Arthur affected affliction and advanced again; after an acrimonious argument Arabella accepted an absinthe and an afterhours assignation. Arriving as arranged, alcohol-addled, Arthur assaulted Arabella amateurishly. Alert and athletic, Arabella artfully applied an ashtray as an anesthetic.

Asbury awoke, alone, aching, and abashed, an aubergine abscess appearing above an ankle. Ashen and aggrieved at Arabella's absence, Asbury ate at an automat and addressed an abject apology. Arabella's apparently affectionate acceptance allowed an ambiguous amity, and -- after an anxious April -- an ardent affair. As autumn arrived, Asbury's aspirations approached apogee.

The Tenant (conclusion)

[Back to Part I]

11. I had begun cobbling together a story from raw materials that originally had nothing to do with each other. On the one hand were impressions of Borges and his circle derived from a slender memoir by Alberto Manguel; on the other was the vaguely remembered dream from which I had awakened the morning after reading the memoir.

12. After writing a few pages I found myself quickly losing interest, in part because I myself didn't find the story believable. After all, I knew little about the setting and not much more about the characters of my little conte à clef, except for some bits about Borges I had gleaned from reading Emir Rodríguez Monegal's biography years before. I wasn't going to go to the trouble of researching the background, for one thing because ultimately I knew it would all be fakery; I've never been to Argentina and anything I would learn from my researches would be superficial and unreliable. Plus the story had turned into a kind of drawing-room literary satire that requires an alertness to social nuances which I do not in fact possess.

13. Still, I had four characters (five, if you count the young woman observed entering the building across the street) whom I had left hanging, their teacups poised in mid-air. So, not to draw things out further, here is how the story would have gone had it been my story to write, or had I been the writer to tell it:

14. Once the possibility has been raised that the young woman they have been observing might be in league with a vampire, one of the characters must suggest that they break into the apartment and have a look around. Perhaps it's one of those things that gets started as a joke and develops its own unstoppable momentum, each of the four raising the stakes a bit until they have committed themselves beyond recall. Borges, of course, being blind and elderly, must naturally be depicted as being at least as game as any of the others; Manguel, as the youngest, would largely defer to the rest. So it is Ocampo and Bioy Casares who do most of the egging on.

15. The next problem was how to get them into the building opposite, once the young woman has left for the day. My first thought would be that the lock would be picked, but who would do it? Who would be revealed as the secret possessor of the skills of a break-in artist? Bioy, the slightly disreputable man-about-town (as I depicted him), with a soupçon of James Bond in his makeup? Manguel, who, newly sobered up, reveals himself as a handy and resourceful character suitable to a Hardy Boys novel? Borges? Or, after they had failed miserably to gain access, would Ocampo show them all up with a hatpin? In the end I settled on an alternate contrivance: Ocampo would have noticed that the young woman always slipped the key into a windowbox upon leaving, and they would simply dig it out from among the petunias and open the door.

16. Once inside they would find the building deserted, dark, and barely furnished, the few pieces covered with dropcloths and shoved to the side. They would climb first one flight of stairs, then another, and as they reach the third floor (but in Argentina, of course, it would be only the second piso) they would be struck by a sudden and unexpected illumination. As they step forward into a large central room they would see that the roof above was made of glass, and as they enter this brightly lit solarium they would approach a couch, its back turned to them, and reclining on the couch, its head projecting over the top, they discover a skeleton …

17. At this point the young woman unexpectedly comes up behind them. “How dare you,” she says, or something along those lines; “What is the meaning of this?” There will be a moment of embarrassed silence until at last Borges steps forward. “My dear,” he says meekly but with impeccable dignity, “I must apologize for our intrusion. I'm afraid we have let our imaginations get the better of our judgment.” Then, while his companions stand abashed, he tells her the whole story.

18. The young woman appears to be, to some extent, mollified by this. (And besides, she has recognized the old man, as any resident of Buenos Aires would.) She briefly explains that she is an artist, the skeleton her model, and she pulls aside some coverings and shows them easels on which are displayed some of the accomplished, intricate anatomical drawings with which she has been occupying her afternoons.

19. But she does not quite accept the old man's abject expressions of regret. “An apology is not sufficient,” she declares sternly; “I demand compensation.” There is another awkward silence as the intruders anxiously ponder what kind of retribution the young woman may require. Speaking directly to Borges she says, “You must return later in the week, after my day's work is done, and be my guest for tea.” And then, as an afterthought, she adds, “you may bring your friends, if you like.” Borges nods, gravely, and of course he accepts her terms. With a great sense of relief the four leave the building, escorted by the young woman.

20. On the appointed day, Borges and the others appear at the front door, dressed elegantly and bearing flowers and a small cake. They ring the bell but there is no answer. Reluctant to barge in a second time, they wait outside, then ring the bell again. When no one appears one of them tries the door handle and they see that it is unlocked. They step inside and and call up the stairs, but there is no answer. They climb up through the building until once again they come into the solarium. There is no sign of the young woman, nor of the skeleton. The easels are gone and every other trace of the tenant has been cleared out. There is no note. The four writers stand together in the late afternoon sunlight, lost in thought.

The Tenant: untelling a story (I)

1. A few nights ago I began reading a slender volume by Alberto Manguel entitled With Borges. In it, Manguel relates how, as a teenager working in a bookstore in Buenos Aires in the 1960s, he became one of the many people who at one time or another were recruited to read to Jorge Luis Borges, who was by then almost entirely blind. From that starting point he sketches, in a mere seventy-odd pages, a genial portrait of Borges and his circle, touching on the great man's friendships, his character, his political opinions, and his reading habits, the latter being, to Borges, most important of all, much more so even than his own writing.

2. Before I woke up the following morning I experienced a sort of gothic dream, the details of which I have largely forgotten. The dream had nothing at all to do with Borges or with Argentina, but as I woke up, with Manguel's memoir on the bedside table and still fresh in my mind, the dream and the recollected traces of the previous night's reading began to converge, and by the time I was fully awake I had imagined the outlines of a short story in which Borges, his friend and collaborator Adolfo Bioy Casares, Bioy's wife Silvina Ocampo (herself a noted writer), and Alberto Manguel would be the participants in the events that had taken place in the dream. The story was to begin in the apartment long inhabited by Bioy and Ocampo, where Borges was a frequent visitor.

3. As soon as I could I began writing the story. But almost immediately the first of several obstacles arose. I have never been to Buenos Aires, and know next to nothing of its geography and neighborhoods. Borges, I knew, lived, when Manguel first met him, on the Calle Maipú. Was this within walking distance of the Calle Posadas, in the upscale Recoleta district, where his hosts lived? A bit of cursory research suggested it was not, but I wasn't sure. Would Borges have come on foot? I didn't know.

4. I began my story with the old man's arrival, the young Manguel at his side. Here was another problem. I referred to the character as “the old man,” and not by name, because I was in fact inventing the details of his appearance and bearing out of whole cloth. It was meant to be evident that the man was Borges, but any attempt to pass off my description of him as an accurate likeness would never pass scrutiny by anyone who knew better. And so I began:

The old man arrived, as was his custom, around nine, dressed in a faded grey suit and yellow necktie, a neatly folded handkerchief (surreptitiously spritzed with cologne by his maid) poking out of his suit pocket. He was accompanied by a young man they didn't know, no more than sixteen, with a wisp of beard and incipient mustache, who hung back slightly but didn't seem overawed to be in the company he was in.

Except for the fact that Borges habitually wore a suit only one detail of this was reliable, and it was lifted straight from Manguel: Borges's maid did sprinkle his handkerchiefs with eau de cologne, though apparently not on the sly.

5. Next I introduced the character who was meant to be Silvina Ocampo but at the same time also Victoria Ocampo, her sister and perhaps an even more important literary figure, at least in her role as publisher of the influential journal Sur. I knew very little about either sister, so I simply made it up:

The woman, in her sixties, tall, slender, and sporting a floral print dress and pearls, ushered them in and bestowed a quick, affectionate quick on the old man's cheek before returning, but only momentarily, to the kitchen, her shoe heels rapping loudly on the wood floors where there were no rugs.

As for Bioy Casares, he barely received a description at all:

Her husband, who was reclining in a worn upholstered armchair reading the evening paper, saluted the visitors warmly but did not get up.

6. It quickly became clear that it was going to be very tiresome not to be able to refer to any of my characters by name. There were only so many times I could refer to “the old man,” “the woman,” and “the husband” without it becoming monotonous. Manguel's character, at least, I could refer to, alternatingly and inconsistently, as “the boy” or “the young man.”

7. In my description of the scene in the apartment, I soon began drifting away from the sophisticated literary circles of cosmopolitan Buenos Aires into the world of Jiggs and Maggie. My Ocampo bustles from room to room while heating up a soup left by her maid, who has been given the night off. Bioy Casares, whom I depicted, without evidence, as an avuncular semi-alcoholic, pretends to grumble when his wife asked him to fix drinks for their guest, then plies the teenage Manguel with nearly undiluted scotch, which quickly takes its toll.

By the time the woman announced dinner the boy was quietly reeling but, he thought, managing not to show it. Fortunately the host stepped up to escort the old man, sparing the boy the embarrassment of leaning on his ostensible charge for stability. The woman had set out a garish china tureen and was ladling out a thin, dark liquid that was giving off whiffs of an unpromising aroma. There was a basket of thin bread, which went untouched. The boy saw the old man raise one spoonful, and then a second, to his lips, before carefully setting the implement down and dabbing delicately at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

My only defense for anything in the above paragraph is Manguel's remark that meals at the Bioy-Ocampo household were uninspiring, consisting for the most part of “boiled vegetables.” Guests went there for scintillating conversation, not for the food.

8. As for conversation, I took a stab at it, with “the old man” breaking the dinnertime silence:

“This young man has been reading me Chesterton.”

The boy, hearing himself referred to, looked up with a start, and instantly broke out in a sweat. He had himself by now consumed several spoonfuls of the broth, and was not sure if it was the scotch or the food that was making him feel unwell.

“Father Brown or theology?” his host inquired.

“Father Brown,” came the answer. “Though to me they are equally mysterious.”

The others pondered this mot in silence for a moment, until the host turned to the boy.

“You speak English, I take it?”

“Yes,” he said, in his befuddlement trying to remember whether he actually did, or what the question meant, and whether he would as a consequence of his answer be asked to sing a few bars of Gilbert and Sullivan to prove it.

“He reads English passably well, and French too, in the manner in which they are taught by our schoolmasters,” the old man declared. The boy debated whether or not this was meant as a compliment, and decided that it would have to do.

“He sells me Penguins at Frau Lebach's,” the old man added, finally. For a moment the boy considered this statement, which was after all absolutely true, as well as the utter insouciance with which it was received by his hosts, then barely suppressed an attack of giggling before lowering his head and spoon solemnly in a feigned resumption of battle with the soup.

“I see,” said the woman, in something of the same tone, or so the boy imagined, in which she might have responded to a report of a sheep with two heads or a man who had lived for seven years inside a giant wheel of Stilton. Or perhaps not, for when he looked up she seemed to be regarding him kindly and he felt a pang of regret that he was almost certainly about to pass out into his soup bowl. At the last minute he was saved; the woman stood up abruptly, whisked away the plates, and strode with them out of the room and into the kitchen, where she deposited them into the sink without troubling to rinse them off. She was back in what seemed like a few seconds but was probably ten minutes, bearing cups of rich, strong tea.

"Frau Lebach's" was Pygmalion, the “Anglo-German” bookstore owned by Lili Lebach, where Manguel was employed and where Borges was a customer. Whether Manguel spoke English or French or German at the time (Borges knew them all) I had no idea; I simply assumed that since he was working in a foreign-language bookstore he must have some facility with languages. “Insouciance” was ridiculous; it wasn't the right word but I couldn't think of another.

9. It's common knowledge that Borges read Chesterton's Father Brown stories, and Manguel relates that in spite of his own lack of religious belief he was fascinated by and enjoyed reading theology. But the real point of all this badinage and low comedy is to advance the plot, by means of a shameless segue. (Having finally grown tired of being unable to call my characters by name, I settled on the half-measure of “Sylvie” for Silvina Ocampo.)

“Perhaps Sylvie could make employment of your Father Brown,” her husband said. “She is convinced that there is a mystery afoot in the neighborhood.”

“Ah, is that so?” said the old man, perking up slightly.

“He's making fun of me again,” said the woman. “He never believes anything I tell him.”

“That's not true, my dear. I'm just suggesting that perhaps the good Father, were he here, would be able to clarify the mystery, that's all.”

“What is the nature of the mystery, may I ask?” inquired the old man.

The couple hesitated. “You tell them,” said the woman.

“No, my dear, it's your mystery. By all means you must tell it.”

“Very well, but you must refrain from mocking me while I do so.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“That would be a miracle. It's like this. There's a three-storey house across the street, on the corner, that has been vacant for some time. Three weeks ago, while I was writing by the window in my study, a moving van pulled up outside the building. Two men got out and stood by the truck for about an hour, until a woman in her late twenties or early thirties arrived by cab. She unlocked the front door, and the two men carried a long wooden crate — about six feet long or a little more — into the building. A few minutes later they returned, took a few smaller crates out of the van, brought them inside, and drove away. The woman remained inside the building for about an hour, then left. The following day she arrived at around ten in the morning, carrying a large valise. She stayed until four in the afternoon, then left for the day, valise in hand. Since then she has returned, almost every day, at the same time, and always leaves by nightfall. No one else has entered the building.”

“How can you be sure that no one has entered the building when you weren't looking?” the young man interjected.

There was an uncomfortable silence. The husband finally broke it:

“Sylvie has been watching out the window, almost all day and all night, for more than two weeks. She has hardly slept”

“I am positive no one else has entered the building. And the woman is never there at night.”

“Perhaps it is Bram Stoker that you need, and not Chesterton,” the old man drily observed.

10. And there, perhaps a third of the way through the story, having descended into banalities unworthy of an Agatha Christie novel, I threw in the towel. But there was more of the story still to be told.

(To be continued)

Rats

Whatever things this notebook may be, at various times, and despite the title, it certainly is not a dream journal, an undertaking that would be of little interest to me and almost certainly of even less interest to anyone else. But from time to time material from dreams — much transformed — does find its way into these pages. It receives no special privileges, it has to wait its turn like everyone else, but I don't refuse it entry if it has something to offer. (Mostly, it doesn't.) My rat dream had no special merit other than being bloody and vivid, but bloody and vivid ought to count for a little, at least, especially at the end of a night of insomnia due to coffee consumed too late in the afternoon, so here goes:

We were in a house and the rats were trying to join us, which was not particularly acceptable as far as we were concerned. There were a great number of them, and they were making their way in by wriggling in through open windows and under doors. A good many had already gotten into the house and were scrambling around and engaging in the usual rat pastimes, mostly unpleasant ones like looking for infants to eat (we didn't have any) and spreading epidemic disease. We were beating them back with brooms and shovels, all the while trying to close up the gaps that were allowing them entry, and they were just as energetically fighting back, biting and scrambling and leaping onto our shoulders. The battle seemed to be going our way, at least in the room we were in. There was a good deal of rat blood spraying the windows and upholstery and our clothes (I did warn you it was bloody) and there were crushed rats falling out the windows and scattered underfoot on the carpet around us. We hadn't suffered any significant casualties, so the dream ended on an upbeat note.

I actually have nothing whatsoever against rats, as long as they stay out of the house.

Bob Dylan's Dream

How many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
That we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

In May 1962 Columbia Record releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the second LP by a folksinger in his early twenties, and the first to be made up largely of his own compositions. Despite high expectations for the record — Columbia executive John Hammond is said to be convinced that Dylan could be the “next big thing” in the pop music business — the album's sales are initially modest, then quickly plummet. There are one or two polite but puzzled reviews in folk magazines (“original folk songs?”), but most listeners fail to connect with the record and dismiss it as, at best, a mere curiosity. The trade press take it as evidence that the “folk revival” has peaked and will not be a significant factor in the the record business in the coming years.

A few months later a single by an obscure Norwegian polka combo becomes a fluke hit, igniting a decade-long infatuation with the genre. Kids put down guitars and strap on accordions; rival gangs in poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Newark form polka bands, competing with each other to see who can play the fastest and dress the flashiest. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan never earns back its advance, and Columbia scraps plans for a follow-up. The folksinger still plays coffee houses for a while, but to smaller and smaller audiences; people are moving on, and he begins to see the writing on the wall. He waits tables, sometimes in the same clubs he used to play, and does some office work as a temp.

Around the time of JFK's second inaugural he moves up to the Catskills, where he becomes part owner, and later sole owner, of a bicycle shop. His records are out of print, though for a few music collectors and eccentrics they eventually achieve a kind of cult status. Now and then somebody tracks him down at the bike shop, where he acknowledges his identity, autographs an album cover or two, and cheerfully gives directions to a nearby trailhead. He keeps a guitar in the back room and will bring it out if requested, but nobody in town seems to have heard of him — he's just Bob from “Bob's Bikes” — or to care that he once cut a couple of records. Once in a while he heads down to the city and joins one old friend or another on a club stage again, just for a couple of songs. He divorces once, marries again, has a couple of daughters. Sometimes he sits on the front steps of his house playing and singing for the kids in the neighborhood.

In 1978 the owner of a small specialty label calls him up to talk about re-releasing his old records, if the label will sell the rights. Dylan agrees to write a paragraph or two to add to the liner notes. Asked if he has any new material he hesitates a bit and then says yes, he's got a few songs, not too many. He goes into a studio — just a little place in somebody's basement — and makes another record. It doesn't sell many copies, but the owner of the label is satisfied, the New York Times gives it a nice capsule review a few months after release, and an old friend who owns a part interest in a club persuades him to do a couple of shows.

He gets a little paunchy and his hair thins out. For his fiftieth birthday a bunch of friends and neighbors throw him a birthday party in the backyard of his home. He's a grandfather now; he takes out the guitar and sings a song he's just written about his new granddaughter, and his neighbors are surprised to hear how well he plays the instrument. He tells a few stories about the old days in the Village, about what it was like to make a record in a big studio in New York.

He sells the bike shop to a younger employee and becomes the arts reporter for a local weekly. As his sixtieth birthday approaches a couple of his songs are picked up and covered by some young kids in Oregon who are making their first record. The record does well and the royalty check is a nice surprise. After a writer for Rolling Stone does a profile of him one of his old records is re-released again and gets a little airplay on some college stations. There's talk of making a new one, if he can find the time and if he can get the new songs into shape.

He likes to sit on the porch in the evenings, while his wife is cleaning up after dinner, and stare off through the pines at the lake in the distance. Every now and then a black bear ambles into the back yard, just at twilight, sniffing around for garbage. Some nights he takes the guitar out and plays just for the bear.

Postscript: Some time after writing the above, I found this passage in Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One: “I don't know what everybody was fantasizing about but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard. That would have been nice. That was my deepest dream.”