Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (11 page)

He helped
a certain party
build a radio receiver the size of a horse. In Shanghai in the 1930’s,
a certain party
had shipped home two of the finest European receivers available there at the time. Now he installed in front of his mechanical barber’s chair a broad, rectangular platform which had been used originally in the breeding of silkworms and still reeked of their body fluid, and on top of this he took apart the two sets and reassembled them as one receiver. When he was finished, he attached headphones to his large head and sat listening to the radio all day. The construction of the receiver took three months to complete. Once it had been assembled
a certain party
scarcely ever removed his underwater goggles for observing solar eclipses and the headphones which made his large head bulk even larger. Trapped in the paranoid certainty that to someone peeking into the storehouse
a certain party
would look like a spy transmitting secret messages, he walked careful rounds around the building with the bayonet at his side.

[[So you couldn’t hear the radio yourself? the “acting executor of the will” inquires after waiting in silence for a considerable interval while his shoulders heave and “he” labors to regain the energy which even this short fragment of narration has cost him. I had no desire to listen to the radio, my main tasks during those
Happy Days,
as
a certain party
sat there listening to the radio and pondering, were to gaze at the back of his giant head and to guard him from the volunteer informers in the valley who would have loved to discover a spy or two for the glory it would bring them. Besides, I wasn’t really interested in radio equipment. Then how can you have been any help assembling the receiver? All I did was pick up screws that had rolled off the work table onto the floor so
a certain
party
didn’t have to keep getting up from his mechanical barber’s chair. Not that it was easy finding little screws in the dimness of that storehouse, it wasn’t a job a dog could do, “he” says.]]

To provide food for
a certain party
and his mother, and for himself, he struggled. Standing on the left side of the large number 8 bike whose pedals he couldn’t quite reach even when the seat was lowered all the way, he would step with his right leg beneath the bar that supported the seat until his right foot rested on the right pedal, then push off, tilting the bike sharply away from himself to compensate for his weight, and “side-pedal” long, perilous hours until he reached the neighboring town down river, where he would buy in bulk, at the only butcher shop in the vicinity, according to
a certain party’s
instructions, the oxtails and pigs’ feet which no one in his region would eat except the Koreans who worked in the forest felling trees. Oxtails sold out at once and were often impossible to get; the pigs’ feet, unshaven, made a bristling, bulky package which he tied to the back of the bicycle and transported home. This shopping for meat was actually the first task
a certain party
had assigned him. For days after he had prepared his bed on the earth floor of the storehouse he had been ignored. Then one morning he awoke with a faint sensation of anxiety to find
a certain party
towering over him on the raised wooden floor in front of his mechanical barber’s chair, gazing down into the face. Only partially awake, he gazed back and smiled, and was immediately dismayed at his own forwardness and, because the smile had been ignored, ashamed. As he lay there in what was now indignant silence,
a certain party
addressed him for the first time.
Can you ride a bicycle?

Down a midsummer road white as snow beneath the
powder of crushed rock, the same long road he had dreamed of reapeatedly before and after, he “side-pedaled” to the butcher shop in the neighboring town and that wasn’t all: stopping on the way home at the shack of the forest workers who had been brought forcibly from Korea and were kept in isolation, barred from living in any other community no matter how wretched, he had to receive from the Koreans a few strands of garlic. Because he had the feeling both the oxtails and the pigs’ feet would have been food for the Koreans if
a certain party
had not managed to cut in ahead of them, he was afraid they might notice the packages loaded on his bicycle right in front of their shack, and when he finally managed to cross the bridge back into the valley, he was careful the strands of white garlic tied with a cord to his bare stomach beneath his shirt were not discovered by the other children. When the word spread among these valley brats that the compost pool at the Manor house had a queer smell and they came reconnoitering, he took his position in front of the drain cover of the outhouse attached to the storehouse for
a certain party’s
exclusive use, and brandishing his Russo-Japanese bayonet as if it were a carving knife, he kept the persistent enemy away and finally sent them running altogether out of the territory the people of the valley referred to as Manor-house-rise.

The day he delivered his first oxtail on bicycle number 8
a certain party
made one of his rare appearances outside the storehouse, to do the cooking himself. The cooking shed stood alongside an uncovered well with the giant black pine behind it, between the storehouse and the main house, which was a good thing both for his mother, who had no desire to behold anything so ominously exposed as an oxtail, and for
a certain party
himself who, in
becoming a temporary cook, could not help losing a measure of his dignity. His face stubbly with beard, wearing an African explorer’s helmet and a khaki “citizen’s jacket” buttoned up to the collar, his underwater goggles on, useful as protection against the midday summer sun and the spattering from the giant heated pan of the crude lard his mother made,
a certain party
emerged from the storehouse with a step reminiscent of the wooden soldier dolls, popular in those days, that tottered forward in a kind of simulated walk when you placed them on an incline. Slowly he approached the cooking shed; dangling from his right fist, in which he clutched it by the butchered end, bright red meat and yellow fat and white bone showing, was an entire oxtail with black hide still matted with blood and filth; in his left hand he gripped a short sword in a scabbard of white wood. The boy, whose headlong journey clinging to a bicycle had drenched his shirt and short pants and model helmet in sweat and who had washed them in the river and stuffed them into a red-willow stump to dry, was waiting in the garden in just the outfit valley children always wore when they swam in the river, a cotton loincloth and nothing more, his bayonet in hand. As
a certain party
passed, his large moon face looking pale and puffy in the sunlight, he spoke an order in a soft, hoarse voice,

____
Pick me some smelly wild grass, pick all that grass you won’t even feed the goats because you say the smell is too strong.

Naked as he was, he bounded off at once like an animal on the run. But when he stepped into the thicket of hot, damp underbrush at the edge of the forest and began actually picking “smelly grass,” he was stricken by the sudden feeling that this was an unlawful act no respectable person in the valley had ever committed before, maybe
even an open betrayal, a desecration of all the plant life thriving in the forest. Then his exultant pride at having managed to obtain the oxtail meat
a certain party
required seemed to spoil, to deteriorate in the direction of a very nearly indelible shame. Nonetheless, though he had never so much as touched wild scented grasses, he managed to gather, guided by the instincts of “one who eats,” a
bouquet garni
as opulent and fragrant as any to be had in the valley, including even withered tomato plants covered with yellow fruit the size of ping-pong balls which he pulled up roots and all, and ran back to
a certain party.

[[Before long I became experienced at making oxtail stew myself, and do you know when I think back to the “smelly grasses” I gathered that day I get the feeling my
bouquet garni
included everything indispensable to oxtail stew but impossible to obtain in that valley, not only celery and parsley but even dried laurel. I even get the feeling
a certain party
must have had a bottle of wine hidden away, to use in stewing the oxtail he’d sauteed in lard, or that he’d prepared soup stock in advance and could actually move effortlessly to stage two of the preparation, cooking the whole stew. I realize I’d be inviting my mother’s ridicule if I left things in writing so obviously counter to the truth, so I won’t include it in my account but it does feel real to me, “he” says.]]

What appeared to him in his memory, as if in an overexposed photograph, was a huge frying pan in heavy shadow on top of a stove that glowed ruby red in the fading light, and the face, also in deep shadow, and shiny white helmet of
a certain party,
his large head lowered mournfully as he peered down into the frying pan through his underwater goggles, which must have been fogged by the rising steam. Several steps behind
a certain party,
his
head and body bared to the sun, he listened to the meaty, sizzling joints of oxtail jump and bump in the pan, and smelled, with revulsion, the indescribably cruel, animal odor of the meat. Sweat rolled continuously down his back and felt as if the pointed ridges on a dinosaur’s back were being chiseled into his own. For a long time he stood this way, stock still beneath the summer sun, and presently, as always happened in the valley, the sun’s position passed a certain point above the forest, dusk came and was gone in a flash and heavy darkness abruptly fell, the fire in the cooking stove glowed even redder, and the scrawny dogs that had gone wild and lived in a pack at the edge of the forest began to howl.

Finally
a certain party
turned around to him, his shadowed face pitch-black except where the rims of his underwater goggles bluntly gleamed, and asked in a perfectly sober voice, as if his raptness over the cooking stove had been the work of some entrancing demon that now had dropped away,
Can you support my weight?
Shivering in the chill wind from the valley below he stepped forward tensely, still aware in his nakedness, though his sweat had dried long ago, of what felt like the scars of those ridges on the dinosaur’s back.
A certain party
placed his hand on the top of his head as though he were grasping the end of a pole, and began walking, step by step, toward the entrance to the storehouse. Even now he could recall, with extreme vividness and reality, thinking his neck must break beneath the weight if he continued walking this way, and, ridiculous as it was, wanting to shout Long live the emperor! so that
a certain party
would acknowledge that it was his young son who was the true heir to his blood.

[[The “acting executor of the will” begins to fidget
and “he” asks reproachfully, Do you think I’m making this up? I’m a man dying of liver cancer, why should I have to tell made-up stories? Furthermore, I’m coming to the part about how the valley doctor discovered that
a certain party
had bladder cancer. When I’m getting ready to talk about cancer it seems to me you could show a little respect, not to me but to my cancer!]]

Slowly they advanced toward the entrance to the storehouse, but
a certain party’s
feet, ponderously lifting and lowering like the leg of a circus elephant stepping up onto a barrel, simply could not step across the broad, high threshold of the many-layered fire door. And when the boy dropped to his knees on the ground that retained the midday warmth and threw his arms around the calf of the thick pole of a leg
a certain party
was still laboring patiently to lift and tried to lend him strength,
a certain party
fell over on his back as unceremoniously as an infant but with a thud that shook the ground. Then his large, pitch-black penis sprang from the long-since buttonless fly of his “people’s” overalls, and he energetically urinated. The boy remained on his knees, chilled with a sense of failure, and the smelly urine wet his naked side and right buttock. Hesitantly he had wiped his fingers, and then, because they were sticky, had rubbed them on his chest and was just perceiving uneasily that something thicker and more mucous than urine remained, when
a certain party,
lying on his back on the ground and attempting with one hand somehow to put away his penis shrunken now after urinating and hard to distinguish on top of his wet trousers, spoke an order in a voice more than ever sober and composed:
Fetch that quack doctor and tell him my bladder is bad.
Jumping to his feet he raced down the stone path just as he was, not stopping to rest until he
reached the doctor’s house, and when he saw in the light that spilled through the glass door from inside that his naked body was drenched in blood he burst into tears.

[[And from that summer in 1944 until that special day the following summer when the soldiers who had left their barracks came for him,
a certain party
didn’t venture a single step out of the storehouse. That night, when the old doctor from the valley who had been examining his bladder since before the war arrived at the storehouse, he informed
a certain party
immediately, with a mournful helplessness in his voice, Squire, you’ve finally gone and fetched yourself bladder cancer, yessir! “he” says. When the blood in
a certain party’s
urine got all over my hand, which was when the commotion that went on most of that night began, I had a premonition that it must be some kind of important omen, and then twenty-five years later when I found out cancer had caught me, too, I took a careful look at my hands, which had turned bright red, and I understood the significance of that omen in blood. My life has a splendid continuity, don’t you agree, especially in the details? What happened to the food? The food? The question catches him by surprise and flusters him. To cover his embarrassment, and because “he” is still unsettled, his head a blank, unable to form words clearly, “he” begins to laugh. Ha! Ha! Ha! Your job requires that a person be realistic above all, I realize. Still, if you’re not aware of any difference in importance between bladder cancer and stew because you think everything I tell you is made up and take it all relatively, no matter how bloody, that’s a bit of a problem! But you know I love oxtail stew, I’ve helped you fix it many times. And as long as that saucepan full of oxtail is still on the fire, it’s on my mind. Ha! Ha! Ha! People who still have a long life ahead of
them are so cheerful and easygoing, their feet are so firmly on the ground! “he” says. My mother was that way too, that night, someone with a long life ahead of her, who didn’t come to the storehouse to visit the invalid even though the doctor had announced that he had bladder cancer, but was thoughtful enough to see to the oxtail stewing in the cooking shed. Even though she had no desire to see anything as horrifying as oxtail, she was probably moved by the respect paid to food in general in those days. The next morning, when I went out at
a certain party’s
bidding to look in the cooking shed, the stew was ready. Since I had no idea how to serve it out of the smaller pot my mother had put it in, I carried it pot and all to
a certain party
where he lay in the storehouse in the room with the wooden floor. Then I wanted to take care of my own stomach and had no choice but going to the kitchen in the main house. Since my mother had continued to prepare noon and evening meals for the recluses in the storehouse, my share of the previous night’s meal, of which I had eaten nothing, should have been waiting for me that morning. I went in through the kitchen and found my mother in the adjoining room, repairing and polishing the ornaments to be used in the autumn festival at the monkey shrine. Ever since my brother’s ashes had come home, my mother had cast a cold eye on the valley and everything in it, even the scenery, she scarcely even lifted her eyes to see where she was going, but she had begun to look after the monkey shrine with real devotion, and to this day she still does! When I asked for my breakfast, my mother answered me stiffly, as if she’d rehearsed the lines, lifting her eyes only to dart glances at me as she spoke,