Nine Horses (3 page)

And it was a pleasure to drink

cold wine by a low wood fire

before being directed to a small room in an upper gallery,

a room with a carpet and a narrow bed

where I folded my clothes into a pile

then came back down, naked

except for a gauzy striped cloth tucked around my waist.

It was an odd and eye-opening sensation

to be led by a man with close-cropped hair

and spaces between his teeth

into a steamy marble rotunda

and to lie there alone on the smooth marble

watching the droplets fall through the beams

of natural light in the high dome

and later to hear the song I sang—

“She Thinks I Still Care”—echo up into the ceiling.

I felt like the last of the sultans

when the man returned and began to scrub me—

to lather and douse me, scour and shampoo me,

and splash my drenched body

with fresh warm water scooped from a marble basin.

But it was not until he sudsed me

behind my ears and between my toes

that I felt myself filling with gratitude

the way a cloud fills with rain,

the way a glass pipe slowly fills with smoke.

In silence I thanked the man

who scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.

I thanked the history of the Turkish bath

and the long chain of bathmen standing unshaven,

arms folded, waiting for the next customer

to come through the swinging doors of frosted glass.

I thanked everyone whose job

it ever was to lay hands on the skin of strangers,

and I gave general thanks that I was lying

facedown in a warm puddle of soap

and not a warm puddle of blood

in some corner of this incomprehensible city.

As one bucket after another

of warm water was poured over my lowered head,

I stopped thinking of who and what to thank

and rode out on a boat of joy,

a blue boat of marble and soap,

rode out to the entrance of the harbor

where I raised a finger of good-bye

then felt the boat begin to rise and fall

as it met the roll of the incoming waves,

bearing my body, my clean, blessed body out to sea.

The boy at the far end of the train car

kept looking behind him

as if he were afraid or expecting someone

and then she appeared in the glass door

of the forward car and he rose

and opened the door and let her in

and she entered the car carrying

a large black case

in the unmistakable shape of a cello.

She looked like an angel with a high forehead

and somber eyes and her hair

was tied up behind her neck with a black bow.

And because of all that,

he seemed a little awkward

in his happiness to see her,

whereas she was simply there,

perfectly existing as a creature

with a soft face who played the cello.

And the reason I am writing this

on the back of a manila envelope

now that they have left the train together

is to tell you that when she turned

to lift the large, delicate cello

onto the overhead rack,

I saw him looking up at her

and what she was doing

the way the eyes of saints are painted

when they are looking up at God

when he is doing something remarkable,

something that identifies him as God.

I have come back to the couch—

hands behind my head,

legs crossed at the ankles—

to resume my lifelong study

of the ceiling and its river-like crack,

its memory of a water stain,

the touch of civilization

in the rounded steps of the molding,

and the lick of time in the flaking plaster.

To move would only ruffle

the calm surface of the morning,

and disturb shadows of leaves in the windows.

And to throw open a door

would startle the fish in the pond,

maybe frighten a few birds from a hedge.

Better to stay here,

to occupy the still room of thought,

to listen to the dog breathing on the floor,

better to count my lucky coins,

or redesign my family coat of arms—

remove the plow and hive, shoo away the bee.

These are no pages for the young,

who are better off in one another’s arms,

nor for those who just need to know

about the price of gold,

or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.

But eventually you may join

the crowd who turn here first to see

who has fallen in the night,

who has left a shape of air walking in their place.

Here is where the final cards are shown,

the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds,

and sometimes an odd scrap of news—

that she collected sugar bowls,

that he played solitaire without any clothes.

And all the survivors huddle at the end

under the roof of a paragraph

as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.

What better way to place a thin black frame

around the things of the morning—

the hand-painted cup,

the hemispheres of a cut orange,

the slant of sunlight on the table?

And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,

strange roommates lying there

side by side upon the page—

Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,

Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.

It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,

not the couples of the animal kingdom,

but rather pairs of men and women

ascending the gangplank two by two,

surgeon and model,

balloonist and metalworker,

an archaeologist and an authority on pain.

Arm in arm, they get on board

then join the others leaning on the rails,

all saved at last from the awful flood of life—

so many of them every day

there would have to be many arks,

an armada to ferry the dead

over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,

and many Noahs too,

bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

Even though I managed to swerve around the lump

of groundhog lying on its back on the road,

he traveled with me for miles,

a quiet passenger

who passed the time looking out the window

enjoying this new view of the woods

he once hobbled around in,

sleeping all day and foraging at night,

rising sometimes to consult the wind with his snout.

Last night he must have wandered

onto the road, hoping to slip

behind the curtain of soft ferns on the other side.

I see these forms every day

and always hope the next one up ahead

is a shredded tire, a discarded brown coat,

but there they are, assuming

every imaginable pose for death’s portrait.

This one I speak of, for example,

the one who rode with me for miles,

reminded me of a small Roman citizen,

with his prosperous belly,

his faint smile,

and his one stiff forearm raised

as if he were still alive, still hailing Caesar.

These are the kind you are supposed

to stop to look at, as I do this morning,

but just long enough

so as not to carry my non-stopping

around with me all day,

a big medicine ball of neglect and disregard.

But now I seem to be carrying

my not-stopping-long-enough ball

as I walk around

the circumference of myself

and up and down the angles of the day.

Roadside flowers,

when I get back to my room

I will make it all up to you.

I will lie on my stomach and write

in a notebook how lighthearted you were,

pink and white among the weeds,

wild phlox perhaps,

or at least a cousin of that family,

a pretty one who comes to visit

every summer for two weeks without her parents,

she who unpacks her things upstairs

while I am out on the lawn

throwing the ball as high as I can,

catching it almost

every time in my two outstretched hands.

I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table

to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end

a blue and white marble

becomes the earth

and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,

open a bottle of wine,

then I sit in a ladder-back chair,

a benevolent god presiding

over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing

a homemade canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth too hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees

and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave,

the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again

and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon

circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

It was one thing to notice

that behind the pepper mill on your kitchen counter

there was an identical pepper mill

painted on the white tiles,

and that behind the saltshaker

and the bottles of oil and vinegar

exact images of themselves

had also been applied there to fool the eye.

But it was another thing—

a higher note in the opera of Art and Life—

to see that the bundle of asparagus

you brought home for dinner,

bound with a red rubber band,

upright in a ceramic bowl of water,

stood before its own painted version,

a meticulous, Platonic rendition of itself.

I kept you company in the kitchen,

drank a little wine while you chopped and stirred,

watched you loosen the bundle

then trim and cook the stalks

while the flat, timeless, inedible

likeness of asparagus lingered on the wall.

We had crostini that night,

portobello mushrooms, grilled salmon,

and, of course, buttery asparagus.

And as I ate each spear,

I kept one eye on the portrait of asparagus—

the memory and ghost of the vegetable,

a thing beyond our devouring.

Even after I shut the door to the guest room

and fell into the soft bed,

I thought about the double serving of asparagus

offered up by you,

one for the eye and one for the tongue.

As I lay in the heavy darkness,

I felt like David Hume or William James

contemplating the nature of asparagus,

its troublesome epistemology—

the appearance of its ferns and fibrous stalks,

the reality of its succulent green tips.