If All Else Fails (14 page)

"I've got it for
sure, this time," said Peter Renoir.

Semina rolled her
eyes. "Ill see it first before I believe it. What do we do?"

"Well, we drop all
our clothes on the floor and then we get under the sheets of the bed and we talk. Then I get up
and go for a drive in my sports car. Later you will cry."

"Is that
it?"

"There's more,"
said Peter Renoir.

"Such
as?"

"Well," said Peter
Renoir with a smile. "Then the Army comes in and rapes the hell out of both of us."

"It's just like a
movie," said Semina and she was deeply moved by it. It almost made her want to cry but she held
it in. She wasn't scheduled to cry until the next scene.

Now, class, why is
this story worth studying?

Because it is
metaphor as metamorphosis. It has become a story cut off from its name, habits, associations.
Detached, it sees everything and nothing. It sees all things, swirling independently and then
becoming gradually connected. The change of detachment. I am talking to you personally, be­cause
detached I become only a thing, an exercise, a crea­tion, an amusement. I become the thing, in
and of itself. It is disintegration into pure existence, and at that point, I the thing, I the
writer, I the reason for this story, I all of these things, am free to become endlessly
anything.

A literary critic
peeping through the keyhole said, "The storm over style and content will rage
forever."

Peter Renoir and
Semina are trapped in an outhouse by two Dominican friars and several very irate forest rangers.
Violence seems imminent. The priests are chanting, "We are only interested in the
superficial."

The forest rangers
break down the door. The rangers make off with Semina, the priests disappear into the
night
with Peter Renoir. Semina reveals
her pregnancy by word association and the rangers take her deep into the woods. They rape her and
we are left with a sense of guilt. Peter Renoir is castrated in a frustrated rape attempt. We are
left with a sense of accomplishment.

I don't see what
you see. I see what I see. You see the city and your lips put that name to it It is a CITY. I see
a severed insect mound.

Your green earth is
my ocean. My eyes are my body. The ability to see is a viral infection. Do you have the
cure?

The CITY is an
architectural ring of disease with sex at its center. The CITY. The genitals of the angry CITY
have been sedated with suburbs. But let us suppose a journey, let us bring forth one of the
diseased creatures from a dollar hotel. Let us bring him forth and send him to the edge of the
city where he shall discover muddied dreams and zones of sophisticated boredom. We will point the
eyes of the city through his eyes and we shall hear the city speaking. It will say, "Look where
we worship. Look where we worship."

I am the diseased
creature from a dollar hotel. I have fulfilled the premises inherent in life. I have predicted
the future. Cancel my subscription to the RESURRECTION. I have predicted the future.

Suppose I saw a
foot cut off from its body. Suppose I saw it. If I looked downward, immediately realizing that it
was not my foot, if I looked downward and discovered the foot belonged to someone else, would I
not be curious?

Curiosity is the
greatest single impregnator of mothers in the universe. Even a person of my ability is not immune
to it. I would tap the foot lightly. It would seem inanimate. It

would seem
reluctant to strike up a conversation. It would be dead.

Perhaps it will be
severed from a visually unpleasing pulp which lies beneath the bed of an overturned truck.
Perhaps.

By itself, the foot
will have a curiously appealing quality to it. It will give off an aura of continental largesse
that will please me greatly. I will immediately desire its ac­quaintance.

That is my
prediction of the future. It came true. I did see just such a foot. I think I saw it on
Tuesday.

Using one of my
less desirable skills, I animated the foot and gave it the power of speech. The foot took it
quite well. It wiggled its toes experimentally, opened its arches and cleared its metatarsals,
preparatory to speaking. Outwardly, it seemed quite pleased with my ministrations.

"Shall we walk and
talk?" I began.

"Let's," said the
foot. "But keep in mind that neither of us should smile or light up a cigarette."

"I accept your
limitations," I said and I began walking briskly down the long hot highway. The foot fell into
step with me and we continued along in thoughtful silence.

"I suppose you've
walked this way before?" I finally asked.

"Yes and no," said
the foot, somewhat cryptically.

"I am a former sky
swallower," I said, by way of intro­duction.

"And I am a foot,"
said the foot, arching its toes in a little bow, bending stiffly at the joints. "I am still
employed as such, although bereft of my employer. It seems, thanks to you, I am yet a foot but am
now, thankfully, self-employed."

"It was my
pleasure," I replied. "It seemed the least I could do."

Without warning,
the foot suddenly rammed into an ob­ject, stubbing all of its toes. It cried out in pain and
hopped up and down.

"Perhaps I should
have given you eyes too," I observed. "This could have been avoided."

"What the hell did
I trip over?"

I bent over, as
moved by curiosity as the foot seemed to be, and immediately noted that it seemed to be a string
made out of rock. It was either that or a rock made out of string.

"It seems to be a
string."

"And to what is it
attached?" inquired the foot. "To what does it lead?"

"To those
questions, I am afraid I draw a blank. It seems to be of indeterminate length, stretching off as
far as the eye can see."

"Perhaps we should
follow it," suggested the foot.

The suggestion was
agreeable to me and we set out to fol­low the string. Let us suppose a journey.

We journeyed many
days and nights. It seemed to stretch out undiminished before us like a fat man climbing a
light-year. The string stretched ahead of us, turning, twisting like a nightmare, and we followed
patiently.

In Germany, it led
through a large oven, as big as a house, that reeked faintly of gas. The string was coiled around
a factory that made walls in Berlin. In France, the string covered the ground in cobwebs beneath
guillotines.

In America, the
string was used to tie the knots that held the doors of slaughterhouses closed against the
public. In America, the string tied itself into colored worlds that said, "You can't eat here.
You can't sleep here. You can't marry my sister."

We diligently
followed the string. In Georgia, the string was a tightrope that political candidates swallowed
and un-swallowed with arthritic grace.

In Canada, the
string was woven up in tuberculous-infected blankets that the Hudson Bay Company passed out to
Indians.

In South Dakota,
the string was a lynch rope that kept the mice from seeing the cat.

In South America,
the string became a highway that mowed down the grass that hid tiny statues made out of wind and
night. In South America, the string was a ribbon that rich people cut that let the first car
drive across the bro­ken bodies of dying animals, dying dreams.

Patiently, we
followed the string.

In Spain, the
string was a cure for venereal disease the natives called the INQUISITION. Everyone the string
touched was ultimately cured when the grass grew back over their bodies.

In Florida, the
string was a roll of tickets to the alligator farm where the last of the Seminoles lived off tips
tourists gave him when he put his head inside of an alligator's jaws. He put his head inside and
prayed the alligator would swallow.

In Nebraska, the
string was a rosary that a Catholic priest tied to a dead Indian baby. In Nebraska, the string
was a ro­sary that built two churches for every child, with the finan­cial support of a God who
ultimately said, "I can't see your face in my mind."

We followed the
string, ceaselessly. It weaved its way through the bloodstreams of men and women, carelessly
draped around their loins in curling spirals of mistrust and doubt. We followed the string. In
some men, it entered their eyes and filled the empty sockets with frayed rope. In some women, it
entered their bellies as umbilical cords that fed them, that took nourishment from the blood of
the children.

As we traveled, we
felt less inclined toward conversation, for stretched before us were the visual puppets of the
world that danced on string.

It was endlessly
fascinating, and we were speechless be­fore the vast panorama of the never-ending string. How it
curled like a twisted whore, screaming and thrashing like a
child—a small child in nightmare alley! And the string touched all things
and beauty and death and hate and love were all knots on the endless surface of the string, all
there from the cruelty of children to the kindness of men who killed cattle with hammers in
slaughterhouses.

We grew weary. We
had seen too much and, perhaps, felt too little.

"I grow weary," I
said and I looked with longing once more at the sky and dreamed of the days when I once held it
like candy in my mouth.

"I too am weary,"
said the foot. "I have walked too far and feel that I have blisters that make my mortality
signifi­cant and valuable."

"Blisters in
themselves are no sign of accomplishment," I admonished the foot. "There has yet to be a world
that did not have a string attached. There has yet to be a world, but one can hope for it. Until
then, we must pay attention that we see more clearly the string so that we may someday touch
people without tying them to us like beaded souve­nirs on a necklace."

The foot thought
this over carefully for a little while, as I once more aimed myself like an arrow of longing at
the sky. All my thoughts had turned to the change of seasons, to the harmony of the sky and the
four winds of the creation.

"What do you think
of Western Civilization?" asked the foot.

I pulled the edge
of a cloud out of my mouth long enough to shout back down at him, "I think it would be a very
good idea!"

If you want to get
to heaven, you got to raise a little hell. If you want to know how the future is, the old ones
know it is wrapped within the skins of the beginning. It is there or there is no future. I have
been writing that everywhere. On trees, flywings, and people rising to the objection. On your
enemies you shall write your name. That is how it is written. I am a proud woman. I am a warrior
and a chief and I walk everywhere. As a woman, I have lately found the sun very hot on my head
and it has made me feel that I was in the fire. These are not the old times. These are the times
of the fire.

And so it is I come
into this place, poised like a great question of beginnings on the edge of the future. And so it
is I have come into this valley and drunk of these waters, these waters in the metal bowls of
buildings with colored win­dows. I think they call this kind of building a church. They call this
water "holy water," but if the truth be known, it doesn't taste very good. I suspect someone has
washed his head in it.

I have traveled
through time with the memory of better times and better feelings. I have only quite recently been
saved. I can't remember what I have been saved from, but
the missionary tells me I have been saved. Actually, I was only thirsty for
water. If the white people have crucified Jesus Christ, let them punish themselves. Our men and
women had nothing to do with it. If he had come among us, we would have treated him
better.

I have come to this
place from a great height to find the religiously secure. I've heard they have them here and I
thought I would come here and see one. A man without doubt is no man at all and so I have come a
great distance to see one. I have lived a long time and my mind has been filled with a fear and a
dread. They say God has a beard. I have heard much talk of this and I am filled with fear and
dread. I have heard much talk of this in my lodge, far from the pinball machines of the whites,
about the Immaculate Conception. It must have been quite an event, to judge by the
fuss.

Personally, I do
not see what all the shooting and shout­ing is about. After two thousand years, I think it no
longer important how clean someone was when they did it. If the child was born on a clean sheet,
it is nothing to shout about. I myself was born on a new buffalo robe and you do not find me
yelling about it.

Why I am speaking
today on this matter is that I think I have been fooled. Fooled and shamed by treachery. I think
the white people have fooled me into thinking that they came from this world. I think they have
shamed me into thinking I am less than what I am. I think the white people fell out of some giant
animal's udder. I think they crawled out of a crack in a lizard's skin. The reason I think I have
been fooled I shall relate to you in the story of Standing Bear who, against my advice, went to
the beginning of the world. It is this place from which all people came into this world. It is
this place from which we draw all our wisdom. It was I who gave advice to Standing Bear. I said,
"Don't go where it whoops." It is wrong to go there alone.