Flying to America (20 page)
Now, my harpsichord has been out of tune for five years, some of the keys don’t function, and there are drink rings on top of it where people have set their drinks down carelessly, at parties and the like, still it is mine and I didn’t particularly want to give it to his wife, I believe her name is Cynthia, and although I may have drunkenly promised to give it to her in a fit of generosity or inadvertence, or undue respect for the possible pleasures of distant others, still it was and is my harpsichord and what was his wife giving me? I hadn’t in mind sexual favors or anything of that kind, I had in mind real property of equivalent value. So I went into the other room and drank a glass of water, or rather vodka, thinking to stall him with the missing “part” of the trivial anecdote I had been telling him, to keep his mind off what he wanted, the harpsichord, but the problem was, what kind of lie would he like? I could tell him about “the time I went to Hyde Park for a drink with the President,” but he could
look at me and know I was too young to have done that, and then the failed lie would exist between us like a bathtub filled with ruinous impotent nonsense, he would simply seize the harpsichord and make off with it (did I say that he was a sergeant? with three light-blue chevrons sewn to the darker blue of his right and left sleeves?). Who knows the kinds of lies that sergeants like, something that would confirm their already existing life-attitudes, I supposed, and I tried to check back mentally and remember what these last might be, drawing upon my (very slight) knowledge of the sociology of authority, something in the area of child abuse perhaps, if I could fit a child-abuse part to the structure already extant, which I was beginning to forget, something to do with walking at night, if I could spot-weld a child-abuse extension to what was already there, my partial anecdote, that might do the trick.
So I went into the next room and had a glass of something, I think I said, “Excuse me,” but maybe I didn’t, and it had to be fabrication that would grammatically follow the words “and then” without too much of a seam showing, of course I could always, upon reentering the first room, where the sergeant stood, begin the sentence anew, with some horrific instance of child abuse, of which I have several in the old memory bank, and we could agree that it was terrible, terrible, what people did, and he would forget about the harpsichord, and we could part with mutual regard, generated by the fact (indisputable) that neither of us were child abusers, however much we might have liked to be, having children of our own. Or, to get away from the distasteful subject of hurting children, I might tack, to the flawed corpus of the original anecdote, something about walking at night in the city, a declaration of my own lack of leftness — there’s not a radical bone in my body, all I want is ease and bliss, not a thing in this world do I desire other than ease and bliss, I think he might empathize with that (did I mention that he had the flap on his holster unbuttoned and his left hand resting on the butt of his weapon, and the rim of his black shoes touching the rim of my brown boots?). That might ring a bell.
Or I could, as if struck by a sudden thought, ask him if he was a “real” policeman. He would probably answer truthfully. He would
probably say either, “Yes, I am a real policeman,” or, “No, I am not a real policeman.” A third possibility: “What do you mean by ‘real,’ in this instance?” Because even among policemen who are “real,” that is, bona fide, duly appointed officers of the law, there are degrees of realness and vivacity, they say of one another, “Fred’s a
real
policeman,” or announce a finding contrary to this finding, I don’t know this of my own knowledge but am extrapolating from my knowledge (very slight) of the cant of other professions. But if I asked him this question, as a dodge or subterfuge to cover up the fact of the missing “part” of the original, extremely uninteresting, anecdote, there would be an excellent chance that he would take umbrage, and that his colleagues (did I neglect to say that there are two of his colleagues, in uniform, holding on to the handles of their bicycles, standing behind him, stalwartly, in the other room, and that he himself, the sergeant, is holding on to the handle of his bicycle, stalwartly, with the hand that is not resting on the butt of his .38, teak-handled I believe, from the brief glance that I snuck at it, when I was in the other room?) would take umbrage also. Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that — one need merely look out of the window, for example. But what we are trying to do is get away from despair and over to ease and bliss, and that can never be attained with three policemen, with bicycles, standing alertly in your other room. They can, as we know, make our lives miserable than they are already if we arouse their ire, which must be kept slumbering, by telling them stories, for example, such as the story of the four bears, known to us all from childhood (although not everyone knows about the fourth bear) and it is clear that
they can’t lay their bicycles down
and sit, which would be the normal thing, no, they must stand there at more-or-less parade rest, some department ruling that I don’t know about, but of course it irritates them, it even irritates me, and I am not standing there holding up a bicycle, I am in the other room having a glass of beef broth with a twist of lemon, perhaps you don’t believe me about the policemen but there they are, pictures lie but words don’t, unless one is lying on purpose, with an end in view, such as to get three policemen with bicycles out of your other room
while retaining your harpsichord (probably the departmental regulations state that the bicycles must never be laid down in a civilian space, such as my other room, probably the sergeant brought his colleagues to help him haul away the harpsichord, which has three legs, and although the sight of three policemen on bicycles, each holding aloft one leg of a harpsichord, rolling smoothly through the garment district, might seem ludicrous to you, who knows how it seems to them? entirely right and proper, no doubt) which he, the sergeant, considers I promised to his wife as a wedding present, and it is true that I was at the wedding, but only to raise my voice and object when the minister came to that part of the ceremony where he routinely asks for objections,
“Yes!”
I shouted,
“she’s my mother! And although she is a widow, and legally free, she belongs to me in dreams!”
but I was quickly hushed up by a quartet of plainclothesmen, and the ceremony proceeded. But what is the good of a mother if she is another man’s wife, as they mostly are, and not around in the morning to fix your buckwheat cakes or Rice Krispies, as the case may be, and in the evening to argue with you about your vegetables, and in the middle of the day to iron your shirts and clean up your rooms, and at all times to provide intimations of ease and bliss (however misleading and ill-founded), but instead insists on hauling your harpsichord away (did I note that Mother, too, is in the other room, with the three policemen, she is standing with the top half of her bent over the instrument, her arms around it, at its widest point — the keyboard end)? So, standing with the glass in my hand, the glass of herb tea with sour cream in it, I wondered what kind of useful prosthesis I could attach to the original anecdote I was telling all these people in my other room — those who seem so satisfied with their tableau, the three peelers posing with their bicycles, my mother hugging the harpsichord with a mother’s strangle — what kind of “and then” I could contrive which might satisfy all the particulars of the case, which might redeliver to me my mother, retain to me my harpsichord, and rid me of these others, in their uniforms.
I could tell them the story of the (indeterminate number of) bears, twisting it a bit to fit my deeper designs, so that the fourth
bear enters (from left) and says, “I don’t care who’s been sleeping in my bed just so long as it is not a sergeant of police,” and the fifth bear comes in (from right) and says, “Harpsichords wither and warp when their soundboards are exposed to the stress of bicycle transport,” and the sixth bear strides right down to the footlights, center stage (from a hole in the back of the theater, or a hole in the back of the anecdote), and says, “Dearly beloved upholders, enforcers, rush, rush away and enter six-year bicycle race that is even now awaiting the starter’s gun at the corner of Elsewhere and Not-Here,” and the seventh bear descends from the flies on a nylon rope and cries,
“Mother! Come home!”
and the eighth bear —
But bears are not the answer. Bears are for children. Why am I thinking about bears when I should be thinking about some horribly beautiful “way out” of this tense scene, which has reduced me to a rag, just contemplating it here in the other room with this glass of chicken livers
flambé
in my hand —
Wait.
I will reenter the first room, cheerfully, confidently, even gaily, and throw chicken livers
flambé
all over the predicament, the flaming chicken livers clinging like incindergel to Mother, policemen, bicycles, harpsichord, and my file of the
National Review
from its founding to the present time. That will “open up” the situation successfully. I will resolve these contradictions with flaming chicken parts and then sing the song of how I contrived the ruin of my anaconda.
I
went to the bank to get my money for the day. And they had painted it yellow. Under cover of night, I shrewdly supposed. With white plaster letters saying
CREDIT DEPARTMENT.
And a row of new vice-presidents. But I have resources of my own, I said. Sulphur deposits in Texas and a great humming factory off the coast of Kansas. Where we make little things.
Thinking what about artichokes for lunch? Pleased to be in this yellow bank at 11:30 in the morning. A black man cashing his check in a Vassar College sweatshirt. A blue policeman with a St. Christopher pinned to his gunbelt. Thinking I need a little leaf to rest my artichokes upon. The lady stretching my money to make sure none of hers stuck to it.
Fourteenth Street gay with Judy Bond Dresses Are On Strike. When I leaned out of your high window in my shorts, did you really think I had hurting to destruction in mind? I was imagining a loudspeaker-and-leaflet unit that would give me your undivided attention.
When I leaned out of your high window in my shorts, did you think
why me?
Into his bank I thought I saw my friend Kenneth go. To get his money for the day. Loitering outside in my painted shoes. Considering my prospects. A question of buying new underwear or going
to the laundromat. And when I put a nickel in the soap machine it barks.
When I leaned out of your high window in my shorts, were you nervous because you had just me? I said: Your eyes have not been surpassed.
The artichokes in their glass jar from the artichoke heart of the world, Castroville, Calif. I asked the man for a leaf. Just one, I said. We don’t sell them in ones, he said. Can we negotiate, I asked. Breathing his disgust he tucked a green leaf into my yellow vest with his brown hands.
When I asked why you didn’t marry Harry you said it was because he didn’t like you. Then I told you how I cheated the Thai lieutenant who was my best friend then.
Posing with my leaf against a plastic paper plate. Hoping cordially that my friend Victor’s making money in his building. Then the artichokes one by one. Yes, you said, this is the part they call Turtle Bay.
Coffee wondering what my end would be. Thinking of my friend Roger killed in the crash of a Link Trainer at Randolph Field in ’43. Or was it breakbone fever at Walter Reed.
Then out into the street again and uptown for my fencing lesson. Stopping on the way to give the underwear man a ten. Because he looked about to bark.
When I reached to touch your breast you said you had a cold. I believed you. I made more popcorn.
Thinking of my friend Max who looks like white bread. A brisk bout with my head in a wire cage. The Slash Waltz from “The Mark of Zorro.” And in the shower a ten for Max, because his were the best two out of three. He put it in his lacy shoe. With his watch and his application to the Colorado School of Mines.
In the shower I refrained from speaking of you to anyone.
The store where I buy news buttoned up tight. Because the owners are in the mountains. Where I would surely be had I not decided to make us miserable.
I said: I seem to have lost all my manuscripts, in which my theory is proved not once but again and again and again, and now when
people who don’t believe a vertical monorail to Venus is possible shout at me, I have nothing to say. You peered into my gloom.
My friend Herman’s house. Where I tickle the bell. It is me. Invited to put a vacuum cleaner together. The parts on the floor in alphabetical order. Herman away, making money. I hug his wife Agnes. A beautiful girl. And when no one hugs her tightly, her eyes fill.
When I asked you if you had a private income, you said something intelligent but I forget what. The skin scaling off my back from the week at the beach. Where I lay without knowing you.
Discussing the real estate game, Agnes and I. Into this game I may someday go, I said. Building cheap and renting dear. With a doorman to front for me. Tons of money in it, I said.
When my falling event was postponed, were you disappointed? Did you experience a disillusionment-event?
Hunted for a
Post.
To lean upon in the black hours ahead. And composed a brochure to lure folk into my new building. Titled “The Human Heart In Conflict With Itself.” Promising 24-hour incineration. And other features.
Dancing on my parquet floor in my parquet shorts. To Mahler.
After you sent me home you came down in your elevator to be kissed. You knew I would be sitting on the steps.
