Little Doors (21 page)

“Think all you like. But in the meantime, tell me how to reach Gala.”

“Oh, very well. Simply follow the elephants.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all. Now, begone!”

Dali cannot resist asking one more boon. “Oh, great Jesus, I do not wish to meet Gala so disfigured. Can you not heal me?”

“It is done,” says Christ.

Dali looks. His leg is indeed restored.

However, a new weight drags down his body. He peers over his shoulder.

His buttocks are exaggerated sacs of flesh, yards long.

“These monstrously long buttocks must have a deep significance, I admit, but it escapes me just now!”

Restored sunlight falls over Dali. Christ and his antimatter entourage have vanished from the sky.

Dali realises he is now standing on the black and white pavement, his flabby fundament dragging on the cold tiles. The car and the ant have been subsumed back into the texture of this universe, and Dali is alone. Bereft of a guide for the first time since his arrival, hindered by his new deformity, he reasserts his devotion.

“I make the most abysmal subconscious avowal that I shall forge onward to a final accommodation of my desires, symbolised by a stone almond: the illumined pleasure of clasping Gala to my bosom!”

Feeling somewhat better after this assertion, Dali begins to walk on, encumbered by his flabby ass.

At the end of the tiles, the granulated desert floor reappears.

Dali’s buttocks leave a trail like that of a sledge.

In the middle of nowhere, Dali comes upon a living green eidolon with wild hair, standing on a pedestal. The figure’s eyes and mouth have been overgrown by the substance of its body. A locust crouches on the membrane where the mouth should be.

“Have you seen any elephants lately?” asks Dali.

Wordlessly, both the eidolon and the locust point in the same direction.

Dali obediently directs his gaze thither.

A herd of elephants dominates the near distance. Their huge bodies are elevated half a mile above the earth on spindly stork legs which are jointed uncountable times. They carry palanquins occupied by obscure forms. The troop is rapidly approaching.

“Thank you,” says Dali. “By the way, would you have the time?”

The mute produces a soft watch rimmed in gold with a blue face, and displays it for Dali.

“Metabiotically speaking, a soft watch represents DNA, the cell’s memory. I take this as a good omen that Gala, my soul’s DNA, will soon be mine.”

Dali advances to meet the elephants.

Soon the first ones are atop Dali, their splay feet, attached to ridiculously thin shanks, sending up dust from the plain. Each stride of theirs covers half a kilometer. Dali realizes that they will soon outpace him. How is he to follow? He begins to trot desperately, dragging his posterior painfully.

“Stop, stop, you must lead me to Gala!”

It is no use. The elephants continue on their way, heedless.

Just as Dali is about to give up, he feels a trunk encircle his waist.

Up, up, up, seemingly miles high he is lifted, until he is placed inside a palanquin.

The canopied bower is filled with madmen, their clothing besmeared with excrement, their faces bloody with self-inflicted wounds. They hoot and holler at Dali.

“Fishermen of Port Lligat! How wonderful to meet here again! Let me shake all your hands— “

Dali and his old friends spend the time talking gleeful nonsense, while the elephants stride spaciously on.

After an unknown time, Dali finds himself submerged in clouds. It becomes hard to tell whether or not he is still moving. Finally, Dali decides that he is indeed stopped. He steps from the palanquin onto a cloud.

It upholds him.

Again Dali is alone.

He moves through the clouds until he emerges into an immense luminous cloud cavern. High up near the roof is a fragmentary arch of classic design. Occupying the arch is a naked male figure whose face and genitals are swathed in mist.

The man thrusts a hand out, as if to ward off something evil. The flock of antimatter angels that attended the Christ reappear.

In their midst, riding a swan, is Gala, clothed in a white robe that falls charmingly from her beautiful shoulders.

“Leda Atomica!” shouts Dali ecstatically. “Gala, my own! Fly down to your Castor, Pollux! Let us engender progeny worthy of our loins!”

Gala smiles, and begins the descent on her feathery steed.

The empyreal notes of an average fine and invisible harp fill the air.

As soon as the pi-mesons from Gala’s smile strike him, Dali feels his most recent deformity vanish. He is made whole for the arrival of his celestial bride.

The swan alights. Gala steps off. Dali rushes into her embrace. Instant ecstasy overwhelms him. He feels their flesh fuse in a metabiotic mesomorphic alchemical union. One androgynous soul is born from the crucible of their love. Gali/Dala is home at last.

* * *

The officious Pharmacist of Ampurdan stands up in the bedroom in the castle at Pubol and moves to close the lids of Dali’s dead eyes.

But before he can lay a finger on the chilling flesh, the body is transformed into a carpet of roses which distill the odours of a woman’s sex.

Antonio Pitxot, Catalan, smiles knowingly.

OUR HOUSE

The three of us—I, my wife, and the realtor—stood on the sidewalk, amid broken glass and candy wrappers, crumpled cigarette packages and bottle caps, looking up at our house.

Even though my wife and I had never been inside, you see, I already had the habit of referring to the place as “our house.”

From the moment I had first seen it, driving past one evening on a new route home from the office, I knew we would one day own it. Its strange proportions and unique charms attracted me as no other structure ever had. It seemed to promise a certain domestic serenity to anyone lucky enough to live in it, a kind of natural ease, as if it could mold itself to its inhabitants, becoming an extension of their bodies, rather than a stiff shell or clumsy carapace, like most houses. Perhaps this was entirely fancy on my part. All I really knew was that the house attracted me.

Our house was situated in a rough section of town that was now undergoing the early stages of gentrification. At one time this neighborhood had been several square blocks of Victorian and Edwardian respectability and pomp. (How they had loved their cluttered neatness, their elaborate classifications, the people of that age!)

Now, however, the area enjoyed a status barely above that of a ghetto. There were many empty, fire-blackened lots. The houses that had survived were mostly shabby. Youths with bad intentions congregated on corners. Liquor stores did a thriving business. Still, here and there a building stood out, either having been maintained throughout the years of general neglect, or now being renovated.

Our house was one such.

Despite being surrounded by a weed-filled yard, it was in decent shape. I could see that its slate roof was intact. Its clapboards were sound, if in need of paint. Its foundation appeared firm. I have already alluded to the uniqueness of its overall appearance. Three stories tall, our house was a whimsical structure—what I believe is called a “carpenter’s gothic”—reflecting the unknown intentions of its long-dead architect. (In a way, its lines, from certain perspectives, seemed almost arbitrary, as if the edifice had grown willy-nilly, an organic thing, rather than having been planned and constructed deliberately. An evolutionary sport, perhaps.)

Our house sported gables and towers, gingerbread and scrollwork, stained glass and leering wooden gargoyle bas-reliefs. At moments, it seemed almost like three separate houses jammed together. At others, its disparate elements were miraculously fused into a whole that, as I have said, struck one—struck me at least—as very appealing. I hoped, of course, that my wife, seeing our house for the first time, would feel the same way.

Turning to her now, I tried to gauge her reaction to our house.

Her brow was wrinkled, her lips composed in a straight line, her gaze a bit remote. Not a face of disapproval, I thought, but merely her familiar abstracted look of weighing and evaluating, which often settled on her appealing features when she was working on a case at home, prior to writing a brief. Her judgment was still in suspension, and I could only hope it would eventually be made in favor of our house. Wishing to sway her, I turned to the real estate man, the third member of our party.

“What’s the asking price?” I inquired.

He named a ridiculously low figure, and I nodded sagely.

“It’s the neighborhood, of course,” he continued. “Puts quite a few people off. But I can see that you two wouldn’t be bothered by that. You look like folks who enjoy being on the cutting edge of things. That’s just the situation we have here. This whole district is turning around. The smart people are buying into it now. Pretty soon you won’t be able to touch a house like this for even twice the price. And believe me, this would be a lot of house at even twice what they’re asking.”

I caught my wife’s eyes, now focused again. She nodded slightly to me, and I knew that the outside of our house, at least, had not put her off. I wasn’t sure if her feelings were as intense as mine, but at least she didn’t dislike it. In time, I was sure, her enthusiasm would grow to match mine.

“Well,” I said, “we won’t learn any more standing out here. Shall we go in?”

At this point, the real estate man grew nervous. He absentmindedly ground a bottlecap into the concrete with the tip of his shoe, as if trying to expunge something distasteful.

“There’s a slight problem,” he said. “We won’t be able to see the whole interior. Oh, the bulk of the house is perfectly accessible. Very nicely remodeled too, all the modern conveniences … It’s just the third floor and the basement that we can’t inspect.”

“And why is that?” I asked.

The agent ground the cap down more forcefully. “It’s the tenants.”

“Tenants!” interrupted my wife. “The reason we’re buying a house is to escape tenants. We’re tired of renting, we need more room, a house of our own. We plan to have a child in two and a half years, and we were going to devote the third floor to it. Part of the second floor has to be my home office “

“They’re very good tenants,” the agent temporized. “Always pay their rent promptly, never make any noise. Why, their rents will almost completely cover your mortgage payments …”

Before my wife and the agent could further antagonize each other, I interceded.

“Do they have leases?”

“No, I don’t believe so. Nothing actually signed, anyway. But they’re tenants of long-standing. From what I’ve heard, they’ve always lived here, even before the current owners.”

“Still, without leases, they’re in something of a precarious position, wouldn’t you say? Times are changing, and if we should see fit to raise the rents above what they could afford, I can’t imagine what alternative they would have, except to move.”

My wife smiled. The agent just shook his head. He seemed unusually tenderhearted for someone in his profession.

“This is really nothing for you to worry about,” I offered. “Why not just show us the portion of our house that’s open, and let us make a decision based on that?”

The agent acquiesced. We began to move up the front walk, crushing the weeds that grew up between the flagstones.

“I won’t have people living in our cellar and in our attic,” said my wife forcefully, as if demanding the death penalty in a murder case.

“Don’t worry, dear,” I said, not really bothered by the prospect of evicting the unseen tenants. For she had said the words that let me know she was as much in love with the place as I.

“Our cellar. Our attic.”

* * *

It was a weekday evening. We were idling in the cozy parlor on the first floor of our house. We had been living in our house for three weeks. Already, as I had anticipated, it felt as if we had always lived there. Our house seemed a natural layer on our existing personalities, a kind of second skin, comfortable as a wrinkled pair of favorite jeans. With our house as a refuge to retreat to, away from the pressures of the daily world, both my wife and I were functioning more efficiently at work. We really couldn’t have been happier.

Except, of course, for the matter of the tenants.

I had discovered, by making careful inquiries among the neighbors and at City Hall, the names of our unwanted lodgers.

Huddling cravenly in the basement, a Mr and Mrs Ab.

Perched insouciantly on the third floor, a Mr and Mrs Meta.

Illegal immigrants both, I was certain, with names like that. It was an angle I was willing to exploit, if necessary. No pressure seemed too unethical to apply, if it would force them to leave. Why, they probably didn’t even belong in this country, much less in our house. Every time I thought of them, practically trespassing on our property, I became as angry as I ever did. I knew my wife felt the same way. Tonight, I had resolved, was to be the occasion of my speaking sternly to at least one set of these disreputable squatters. And I had decided, rather arbitrarily, to buttonhole the Abs first.