Collected Fictions (51 page)

But, by thunder, in a world of dango-dangos, by Jove, how can there be any going any too far in anything in a world where confections came at you anointed with a moniker like that? For pity's sake, dango-dango, a dango-dango—did you ever in all your days? Who who who ever did?

Oh, love, love!—the man loved it, anointed with a moniker. Words, words—anointed, moniker, ahh.

A thing you got in a bakery anointed with—or anointed by?—well, a moniker—going by a moniker—keep it plain, keep it simple, and watch it with the little words, oh the pesky these pesky these tiny little pesteriferous little words everywhere. But, anyway, no really, anyway, this too, this too, everything—it all, it all—it all of it so very fittingly fit the scheme of the narrative the man was assembling for when it all—better told than this, you may be certain—could be told.

Oh, he saw it, he saw it—the foil being collected into itself, the massive woman collecting the foil into itself for her to make a very correct bolus of the thing before discarding it—no, not discarding—say instead letting gracefully ever so gracefully go of it—so that the thing seemed to the man to drift luminously down into the dark hollow beneath the sink. Was there a receptacle under there? Oh, there had to be a receptacle down under there. Didn't there have to be a receptacle down under in there? But what man could be convinced of much in this crepuscular light? Yet the man could be certain of the teeth of the girl in love, for example—ah, her teeth, such teeth. The girl in love was smiling into the amazing space. Her ring, one of her rings, this one ring among her many many rings, she turned it, kept turning and twisting it, kept sighing and smiling, the large head leaning, leant up against the even larger head of the woman—oh no, of the girl, of course of the girl, the even larger head of the even larger girl who sat on the bench beside her—no, to the other side—who sat to the far side of the girl in love.

The man marveled—the man was marveling over all of it, everything—or marveling at it. At how the bustling about was like a languor—or was it that the languorousness of the biggest of the girls was somehow like a slumbrous bustling about everywhere actually—very managerial, magisterial, big-bodied, indolent—yet quick and exacting—or fastidious, this was the word, fastidious—massively fastidious even, really pretty massively.

Oh, everything was opposites!

Everything here was in such a state of being opposites here. Yes, wasn't this the only way to say it, that all here was so marvelously, well, just a jumble of opposites here?

Jostling opposites.

All these opposites jostling one another.

Or is it oppositions, oppositions?—and is it not each other, not one another but each other?

Well, everything was a jumble, wasn't it?—a murmuring madness—amazed and amazing—the large handsome little-toothed young woman—a girl, a mere girl—so wondrously in love with, of all things, the man, this man.

With such speed.

With such ease.

Or ease first and next, then next, speed.

Well, so much for travel.

It was wonderful to travel.

It was marvelous to travel.

The man had traveled, was traveling—had come to this land to get a bit of a travel in him taken care of. Wasn't travel experience?

Experience.

An experience.

And this was what it was to really have it, wasn't it?

The girl?

A girl in love insisting that she is what the story says she is—a girl in love—and in love—crazily, crazily—with this wonderful wonderful marvelous marvelous, can you believe it, American!

The girl in love sighed.

Her little teeth showed in her big sighing face.

There was something on the stove, heating. There was a pot of something heating gently gently heating on the stove. He would have some, wouldn't he? Your lover, your fiancé, your American from the United States, he would have some of this, wouldn't he? And the wine? Aren't we ready for the wine? Who is ready for the wine? But first—the dango-dango!

The man caught sight of the shimmering glimmering foil—the amazing paper. Someone was collecting it into a ball of some kind—a bolus, a bolus—and was now laying it—this was the biggest girl, the really biggest one, right?—was just now laying it ever so gracefully down into the dark well beneath the humble sink.

Oh my God, the sink.

The stone sink.

A sink made out of stone.

Humble, wasn't it?

And how had they got to this place? Wasn't it up, had the girl not led them up a long dark twisting turning oh so, well, so humble hill?

"My friends!" she had said. "My very best in all the world so lovely lovely friends!" the girl had said.

So-and-so and so-and-so.

Their names were so-and-so and so-and-so.

Well, it was hard for the man to hear.

He could hear voices, hear the voices of men—of the worshipful, the man imagined—chanting, or groaning, in a neighboring room.

He said, "Are there people here? It sounds like zealots or something."

Everything was so—well, glittery.

The light was downright crepuscular in here.

"The heavy Turkish cups—Morrocan—sacred, I think they were. Probably semi-sacred, don't you think? Mugs, ceremonial mugs, perhaps they were."

That's it!—it was tea, wasn't it?

A kind of tea was brewing, wasn't it?

Look at her, troubling herself to separate out the glossy tape the bakery had used to bind the glorious foil. The man saw somebody save the tape, wind it into a tight spool, then set the result to the side of something—of the humble sink, that humble cavity—so shallow, so very shallow, it seemed to the man from where he sat—a scooped-out effect in a stone that must have been cut from the very oldest of old stones. Wait a minute—didn't the spool just sort of loosen itself when the girl let go of it? Then what was the point of that, what was the point of it?—of tightening the tape like that into such a precise spool of it like that if it was only to lose its form, the tension spilling out of it—spooling out of it in an instant—when the thing had been set to the side of what was it?

Yes, the sink made out of stone—yes, to the side of the humble sink created from a humble stone.

Humble, everything so humble.

Well, the light in this place, whatever it was, it was so very crepuscular—by jiminy, this light in this place, isn't it altogether too terrifically crepuscular?

Her dress, one of them, the dress of one of them—its loose sleeves seemed to the man cuffed or turned up in some interesting way, or twisted oddly, oddly twisted—that was it, twisted—so that the immense girl's immense arms appeared to the man to be too visible, to be sort of angrily visible, great bulky things, great swollen things, angrily jostling the amazed air. But thank goodness the man could see that the dress she wore—who was this, which one of them was this, was it the one in love?—that it was a sort of cream-colored affair, wasn't it, the color of this dress.

The color of cream?

It seemed to the man that there was somebody whose dress was colored a sort of creamy color—that there was a dotted effect scattered all about—some sort of dotted device—or not dot, not dot, but pinwheels perhaps, perhaps pinwheels. Yes, there seemed to the man to be a sort of dotted pinwheely effect, brought forth into the light by a range of strengths—in maroon, in the color maroon. Well, mightn't washings, mightn't long sad riverbank washings account for the variation from here to there in the vividness, or lack of it, the lack of it, mightn't it be the variability in this, in long sad desert-bound washings—they beat cloth, didn't they?—whipping at it with long thin sticks—with reeds probably, probably with reeds—mightn't it be the hard washings—actually whippings—the cloth had undergone to get it clean that accounted for the weak effect of one pinwheel and then of another pinwheel and then of yet a further even weaker pinwheel—maroon, hardly even still maroon, so beaten into proud cleanliness this least of all the pinwheels was?

I mean, it wasn't a design, was it?

Some intentionality in it of some sort?

By design?

And where was the knife point?

The dango-dango, had they cut into it yet?

The man rather liked the notion of this rough homespun subjected to a furor of care unique to this large mysterious person, common to these large mysterious persons. The word chestnut occurred to the man. The word maroon. Weak maroon, a weakened maroon, whipped to only barely scarcely even hints of a maroon—just barely visible tiny tiny—well, pinwheels of a kind of tiny-hearted maroon.

Whatever pinwheels were.

And maroon.

How-hearted maroon, what-hearted?

It was cold in here, or cool, wasn't it?

"Oh, how lovely all this is—how lovely," the man murmured into the madly amazed space.

Hadn't he meant to say chilly?

Well, the man was certain someone was waiting for him to speak. So the man spoke. He said, "It's so terribly lovely in here." He said, "I am the happiest man there is in here."

Ah, perfect.

Splendid.

The man let himself settle back into the one good chair. He listened to the heating of whatever it was—tea—yes, it was tea—that was heating on the stove. The adorations of the adoring, their obeisances, superb, superb. Had the man ever heard anything more superb? Belief was a wonderful thing—marvelous, really—faith. Was there a sanctuary nearby? Was such a sanctuary actually here within? Were they in it? Is this what this was?—no kitchen, after all—not a scullery but a site where life leant over to huddle into itself in great grand occurrences of prayer?

"Perfect—perfectly perfect," the man murmured as he settled back into the vast depths—the vastation, isn't it permissible to say vastation?—of this very decent—an important piece actually—of this very good, though humble, probably emphatically sturdy humble chair.

The young ladies seemed to be looking at the man in very deep approval of this.

Or at—at this.

"Perfect," the man said, a little madly, he now thought. "Oh, this is perfect," the man said.

Yes, yes, a toast, somebody called—time for a toast! Mustn't something be said in testimony of this great happiness? But how conduct a toast when the cork had yet to be taken from the bottle? No wine had been poured yet, had it? Oh, these people, these perfect people, water tumblers in lieu of wineglasses and a wine that was devised as sacred and health-giving, even sacerdotal.

Or holy and so on.

As in consecrated and so on.

In lieu of, the man loved that, in lieu of. Oh such innocents, these big-bodied hill-dwelling people, such perfect—the lot of them—such perfect naifs—water tumblers in lieu of, of all the things in the world.

Instead of?

In place of?

No, in lieu of, in lieu of!

Sacrality, now there was a word!

Ah, well, what else did the man love?—apart, of course, from his loving in lieu of and loving how the girl was still keeping her head leant against the head of the girl sitting next to her, now the both of them sighing now, now the both of them sighing now into the burning phosphor now, and smiling with little dots of little teeth. Let me see, then, let me see—what else did the man love, you ask me, what else?—well, you shall have your answer, shan't you!—for this man loved, had loved, would always love the tapping of his mother's fingernails tapping on the backs of playing cards. That, that, and the way the woman had of shooting a look heavenward in hopeless appeal and of rolling her eyes at him, one of the wives the man had had, or was it really indeed the man's mother who had done this?

Oh, that's a good one—those hads—a mad murmuring distribution of hads we of us who are still striving to keep paying attention just had. Ah, but what a confusion of things this is getting to be—the man standing amid such a confusion of things—or sitting amid it, settling deeply into the humble chair, the young ladies, no more now than mere biggish impressions of amazingly biggish things, forever seeming to him to be directing at him looks of deeply satisfied approval.

Well, the wife was dead and the mother was dead and people were only their repertoire of gestures anyway and here was the man traveling as travelers will travel and here all of a sudden was suddenly this mere biggish impression of a biggish girl now somehow traveling with the man—and now look, will you please just look, all these festive others now settling with the man into the glimmering deep light of the crepuscular—as if the world had been lifted off its course and laid down into, laid ever so gracefully down into—no, let go of gently gently falling falling—into a very, well, harem—say harem, then.

Or that other word.

Seraglio.

Say seraglio.

Ah, that was the one, that was the very one—at least as words go, it was—into a very, say, seraglio.

What a word, what a word!

At least as words go, what a winner.

"A toast!" the man bleated.

Gad, but who says the man bleated?

Well, the man would not tell of this, of bleating. There would be no telling of this bleating, by gum. Had the man bleated? Had he, well, burped, belched, eructated? What on earth had the man done if not offered a toast? For the man had the sense—or, rather to say, impression, wasn't this the word, had an impression?—for there was this impression forming around him somewhere elsewhere, wasn't there?—perhaps in the man, perhaps somewhere to either side of the man, or all around the man—it was the impression of a kind of bleating or something eructating from somewhere elsewhere. Well, the man could have burped, could he not have? Or belched—or, you know, or eructated? The man could have eructated in a—of course, of course—eructated in a ructation, couldn't he have? Well, the wine—after all, the wine. And the man had done a fine job of it, hadn't he?—of getting the cork from the wine.