Onion Songs (21 page)

Malcolm could not escape the perception of
mytaphore
, metaphor, in the history of this road and his theory regarding developments in the human personality. Isolated, diverted, and segmented all came to mind when he contemplated the nature of the human spirit.

The door to No. 56
Rue D’âmes Vidées
, if that sunken slab of wood could be called such, was dragged open with surprising ease by a handsome man in a fine robe. Malcolm felt immediate intimidation—there was a piercing, electric quality to the man’s eyes as they gazed, unblinking.

“
Excusez-moi, Monsieur
. I was told, I believe, there is a,
arrachage?”
He knew he must sound like a fool, but how do you ask about such things?

The man on the other side of the door said nothing, those eyes examining Malcolm up and down with unsettling calm.
He made a little wrinkle with his mouth and stepped out of the way.

They moved through the darkness before settling into a sour-smelling room
, lit only by a blazing fire. Even though Malcolm was accustomed to working in the hottest of Parisian kitchens, he found the heat in this room almost too much to bear but his host appeared unperturbed, his high forehead dry, unwrinkled. But not undamaged. Closer up, the man’s face appeared scraped, flaking, as if there might be layers of skin missing. “Tell me your story, if you would,” he said.

“
Do you mean my theories? Or would you like some sort of introduction?”

The man said nothing for a time, then replied,
“Tell me what you would tell me.”

Malcolm worried over this, then asked,
“How shall I address you?”

“
You may call me
Professeur
. I think I would like that. At least that will suffice for now.”

Given the
professeur
’s lack of precise direction, Malcolm had no idea how to begin. Seeking to avoid an extended and laborious back-and-forth, he started with his somewhat disorganized and impulsive decision to move to Paris, his struggles in the city to feed and shelter himself, his relationship with Degaré, finally culminating with the reason he had knocked on the man’s door: his bed-facilitated speculations regarding the problem of the human personality and its inherent conflicts.

Along the way Malcolm became progressively more aware of the increase of light in the room.
He supposed it his eyes’ natural ability to acclimate to the ambient gloom, but the fire did appear brighter, fuller, more intense. With the heightened illumination came an abundance of raw detail: the shelves collapsing under the weight of oversized jars and mysterious machinery, the frightening cracks in the ancient beams high overhead, the litter of decaying documents and scrolls in the corners, the small piles of half-eaten food, the constant fall of cinnamony dust, the scattering of indecipherable taxidermy, the stain mark that ran along the walls at an identical height, a sign of some past flood survived. And with that increase in visual detail came a corresponding heightening of olfactory sensation, a blend of acrid and acidic aromas that tickled the nose, then burned. The state of the room seemed dramatically at odds with the elegance of the man who lived here, even if it was for only some short stay. Was this perhaps some Germanic trial of the spirit? Malcolm’s eyes began to weep involuntarily, and soon the entirety of him appeared to be leaking.

Perhaps these various elements led to a distortion in his senses, because Malcolm became convinced the
professeur
had been amused by his narration, the man’s finely sculpted features gradually warping under the pressure of an ill-fitting grin. However it was not an impression he felt comfortable commenting upon.
Ne réflexion
.

Finally the
professeur
spoke, an unmistakable smile dancing across his lips. “We will require several vessels for your various aspects, suitable bodies to contain the release of spiritual energy. Not too many as it is possible to spread the
sauce
too thin, as it were.”

“
Vessels?”

“
They need not be informed volunteers. Tell them I will feed them, pay them, whatever. I will recruit a few, but if one might acquire at least one, as
assurance?”

“
I do not wish to hurt anyone.”

“
How might you hurt them? Paris is full of aimless foreigners now. Czechs, Poles, Asians, uncountable young Brits such as yourself. You yourself say that one meaning is as good as any other. We live in a time in which the world is full of wandering spirits. How do you know you will not be providing them with a better meaning? You might do them a favor! Bring whoever you may find here tomorrow. A similar time.”

*

It would be no exaggeration to say Malcolm felt qualms, although they were not of the moral kind, since he did not believe in that sort of thing. He did believe, however, in survival of the fittest, and the imperative of doing what was required by the environment you were in, which all seemed to add up to a rough sort of justice, and this particular activity, this collecting of vessels, seemed somehow less than just. Of course he did not relate all of this to Degaré, but Degaré
was
, indeed, his confessor, and so he did manage to cover the bare outlines of the problem.

“
Merde
.” Degaré spat into the restaurant’s dishwater. “I would give you myself if I could, for the price we discussed, but
pardonnez moi
, I find I am not yet prepared for such a major life change.” He thought for a moment, rubbing soapsuds through his greasy locks. “Have you thought of Zajic?”

“
The kitchen slops man? The Czech?”

“
The very one. He broke up with another girlfriend. He mopes all day, he cries. Get him out of here, I say, before I kill him.”

Malcolm found Zajic sitting out in the alley behind the kitchen, weeping.
He crouched beside him and commiserated. It was not an entirely false commiseration—he had a few memories of his own, but he had lost his belief in romance long before he had lost his belief in religion. Neither was of any practical use to him.

He offered Zajic some food.
The Czech smiled, his hard, slabbed, clay-like face splitting in unused directions. Malcolm offered him a job, and was suddenly swallowed by the slop man’s unwelcome embrace.

In the same gloomy chamber Malcolm lay on a low bed made up of straw and planks and the thinnest of blankets.
Zajic lay on a similar arrangement beside him, nearly unconscious from heavy drink. Malcolm had drunk a small amount of wine but wanted to be relatively clear-headed for this procedure, this extraction.

But he was being constantly distracted by a commotion behind the door in a generally left direction, behind his line of sight.
He hadn’t noticed a door there before, but he could hear it creaking, opening now and then, shutting with a soft bang, and the people behind it, murmuring drunkenly, possibly weeping.

“
Pay no attention to them.” Meyer, the
professeur
, was suddenly above him, and unless Malcolm misapprehended, gazing down at them as if they were babies in their cribs. “They will come in later during the process. We start with one, we expand to two, as many vessels as are needed. The mathematics are inexact—I will know only after we have begun.”

“
But they seem distressed.”

“
Distressed? Oh,
non
, I assure you. They are simply
anxious
to be a part of this great
expérimentent
. We are surrounded by a surfeit of life force—surely you can feel it? Yours, our volunteers’, the spirits of all the soldiers who died in the war? So much to channel, to redirect, to sort! I must ask you to simply relax. I have something more for you to drink. It will go well with your wine.”

The taste was strong and bitter, but the bitterness went away immediately, replaced by an overpowering sweetness.
The professor smiled broadly and danced around the room, his arms above his head, loose and waving, rubbery. But then he was back close again, a moldering book in his hands, whispering, but Malcolm could not hear him. The anxious people behind the door were too loud.

The professor caressed Malcolm
’s side, and his fingertip came away bloody, and there was a knife in his hand, dripping. Malcolm watched as the professor used the knife to carve shreds out of the book, then stuffed those shreds into the wound in Zajic’s side. He had a moment’s anticipation of a different, simpler life to come, fewer complications and conflicts, an avoidance of misunderstandings. And then the professor strolled over to him, grinning widely, his hands full of those shreds, those fragments of ancient narratives, and then the professor’s hands went inside Malcolm, where they stayed, and became busy as insects.

*

He had been in Paris for decades, it seemed. He could not recall the year he had arrived from Prague, or the look of Prague in even the most general of detail. He could not recall why he had ever left, but he was sure it could not be desperation. It could not be desperation.

There would be no point.
Worlds were coming to an end and there was no point. The cities were all failing at the same time. Had no one else noticed this? Could he be the only one?

Some days he would wander the lanes, searching the short streets, the forgotten streets, for nothing.
The
Rue Abattue D’enfant
, the
Rue des Veuves Aveugles
, the
Rue D’âmes Vidées
. Some days he would walk to the river, and watch there. He could not remember the river’s name, but thought it might be the Seine, the Thames, the Vltava.

Some nights he climbed the shaking steps to his attic room.
But Degaré now lived there. He said he had always lived there. “
Monstre!”
the burly Frenchmen shouted. “
Meurtrier!
Can you not leave me alone? You do not live here!”

Some nights he slept where he could.
Some nights he wandered without sleeping.

Was he starving?
Did it matter?

Everywhere he went people stared.
They did not stare just at him—they stared at everything.

He himself stared, he was always staring.
He did not want to miss any vanishing detail. In this at least they were brothers and sisters.

There was much he had forgotten, and yet there was much he still knew.
Every idea in him had its own voice, every stray thought its own head. In him there were multitudes. He thought perhaps that particular idea might be from the Bible, but he did not know for sure.

He might be sad, he thought.
He very well might be. But he could not be sure. He waited for all these other voices to tell him.

FISH

He calls himself Fish because he swims at the bottom of the pond.
Most everybody he knows glides so easy above, like life wasn’t even a second thought, even the ones who live hard, who fill their insides with sewage, they’re still high in the sky as far as Fish is concerned.

He don
’t mind. Sometimes it’s safer swimming at the bottom. He can look up at their faces and see they’re looking at each other, hating on each other, but not seeing him at all.

“
Get outta there, Fish!” That’s his brother Paul. But Fish just found somebody’s ring in the Trench, and he has hopes for more. Paul keeps his distance from the Trench, he has no belly for it, the Trench where they dump the bodies before they burn them. Bodies lay there two, three days so they smell like nothing ever smelled before, mommies and daddies and kiddies waiting to be burned by the burning crews, always short-handed, it being such a foul job. Fish has seen the burning, and he thinks it’s pretty, the way the flames go blue in places, like they caught a soul—souls burn blue. Houses of people, blocks of people, cities of people are dying every day—pretty soon, Fish thinks, the whole world will burn blue.

But Fish finally gives it up, crawls out and rolls around in the dirt to get the stink off, then crabs after Paul, low to the ground where Fish feels safe, the ring hid in his pants pocket.
Paul says it’s time to eat, and Fish was born hungry.

Along the way they stay out of trouble even though trouble passes the time.
Trouble always means you eat late.

Some slime-head has his tongue down the mouth of a little girl, but they pass him by like he was scenery, even though it makes Fish
’s teeth ache.

Some bald woman sits in water and screams, pinching skin until she
’s black-spotted, scratching herself until the skin runs.

A clean-up crew chatters about nothing while they beat an old man with electric fans and toasters, slinging any machine with a cord into the wrinkled face, snapping ribs, pounding dead arms and legs.
Paul pushes Fish’s head away so he don’t see.

A so pretty lady lies on a sofa in the middle of the street.
She’s been harvested, her parts replaced with rotten potatoes and corn. Fish gets away from Paul and swims right up to her. He don’t get upset—he just looks a long while trying to figure out what he sees.

Most of the houses are burning, those dead families a cloud of smell that creeps across the sky.
But the sunset is still something beautiful, like Paul says it’s been since the beginning of time.

When they get home Mama has the food hot and waiting.
But Fish swims in slow, careful of a kick and a stomp, a belt across the ear.

“
Paul, get your brother up off the floor,” Mama says, and it’s like the daylight finally come, and Fish sees himself in the bright new kitchen, and there’s a great green tree out the window, and the voices of little kids playing outside.

“
He was talking crazy again, Ma,” Paul sings like a crow, “and jumping out of his wheelchair, rolling around on the ground. It was embarrassing! I wish you’d let me tie him in if I have to take him out!”

“
We’re not tying your brother to a chair like he was some kind of animal! Not like they do in those places. We’re his
family
, and it’s an
honor
for you to mind him. Some day you’ll understand that, I pray when it’s not too late.”

Mama cries as she and Paul help Fish back up into his chair, and Paul says he
’s sorry, and everybody’s sad. Except for Fish, and Mama’s new boyfriend, standing in the door.

Fish jerks his head around, and remembers, laughing loud because they live in such a nice place, with sunshine and linoleum and good smells and no Trench outside waiting for them to make a mistake.

And then Fish looks at Mama
’s new boyfriend again: the smoke in his face, the blue fire in his eyes, and remembers, and remembers there are things in the pond that swim even lower than Fish.