The Autobiography of Red (11 page)

A paste of blue cloud untangled itself on the red sky over the harbor.

 

Buenos Aires was blurring into dawn. Geryon had been walking for an hour

 

on the sweaty black cobblestones

 

of the city waiting for night’s end. Traffic crashed past him. He covered his mouth

 

and nose with his hand as five old buses

 

came tilting around the corner of the street and halted one behind the other,

 

belching soot. Passengers streamed

 

on board like insects into lighted boxes and the experiment roared off down the street.

 

Pulling his body after him

 

like a soggy mattress Geryon trudged on uphill. Café Mitwelt was crowded.

 

He found a corner table

 

and was writing a postcard to his mother:

 

               
Die Angst offenbart das Nichts

               There are many Germans in

               Buenos Aires they are all

               cigarette girls the weather

               is lov—

when he felt a sharp tap on his boot propped against the chair opposite.

 

Mind if I join you?

 

The yellowbeard had already taken hold of the chair. Geryon moved his boot.

 

Pretty busy in here today,

 

said the yellowbeard turning to signal a waiter—
Por favor hombre!

 

Geryon went back to his postcard.

 

Sending postcards to your girlfriends?
In the midst of his yellow beard

 

was a pink mouth small as a nipple.
No.

 

You sound American am I right? You from the States?

 

No.

 

The waiter arrived with bread and jam to which the yellowbeard bent himself.

 

You here for the conference? No.

 

Big conference this weekend at the university. Philosophy. Skepticism.

 

Ancient or modern?
Geryon

 

could not resist asking.
Well now,
said the yellowbeard looking up,

 

there’s some ancient people here

 

and some modern people here. Flew me in from Irvine. My talk’s at three.

 

What’s your topic?
said Geryon

 

trying not to stare at the nipple.
Emotionlessness.
The nipple puckered.

 

That is to say, what the ancients called

 

ataraxia.
Absence of disturbance,
said Geryon.
Precisely. You know ancient Greek?

 

No but I have read the skeptics. So you

 

teach at Irvine. That’s in California? Yes southern California—actually I’ve got

 

a grant next year to do research at MIT.

 

Geryon watched a small red tongue clean jam off the nipple.
I want to study the erotics

 

of doubt. Why?
Geryon asked.

 

The yellowbeard was pushing back his chair—
As a precondition
—and saluting

 

the waiters across the room—

 

of the proper search for truth. Provided you can renounce
—he stood—
that

 

rather fundamental human trait
—

 

he raised both arms as if to alert a ship at sea—
the desire to know.
He sat.

 

I think I can,
said Geryon.

 

Pardon? Nothing.
A passing waiter slapped the bill down onto a small metal

 

spike on the table.

 

Traffic was crashing past outside. Dawn had faded. The gas-white winter sky

 

came down like a gag on Buenos Aires.

 

Would you care to come and hear my talk? We could share a cab.

 

May I bring my camera?

 

Although a monster Geryon could be charming in company.

 

He made an attempt as they hurtled across Buenos Aires in a small taxi.

 

The two of them

 

were crushed into the back seat with their knees against their chests,

 

Geryon unpleasantly aware

 

of the yellowbeard’s thigh jolting against his own and of breath from the nipple.

 

He stared straight ahead.

 

The driver was out the window aiming a stream of rage at passing pedestrians

 

as the car shot across a red light.

 

He pounded the dashboard in joy and lit another cigarette, wheeling sharp left

 

to cut off a bicyclist

 

(who bounced onto the sidewalk and dove down a side street)

 

then veered diagonally in front

 

of three buses and halted shuddering behind another taxi.
BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK
.

 

Argentine horns sound like cows.

 

More blasphemy out the window. The yellowbeard was chuckling.

 

How’s your Spanish?
he said to Geryon.

 

Not very good what about you?

 

Actually I am fairly fluent. I spent a year in Spain doing research.

 

Emotionlessness?

 

No, law codes. I was looking at the sociology of ancient law codes.

 

You are interested in justice?

 

I’m interested in how people decide what sounds like a law.

 

So what’s your favorite law code?

 

Hammurabi. Why? Neatness. For example? For example:

 

“The man who is caught

 

stealing during a fire shall be thrown into the fire.” Isn’t that good?—if

 

there were such a thing

 

as justice that’s what it ought to sound like—short. Clean. Rhythmical.

 

Like a houseboy.

 

Pardon? Nothing.
They had arrived at the University of Buenos Aires.

 

The yellowbeard and the taxi driver

 

denounced one another for a few moments, then a pittance was paid over

 

and the taxi rattled off.

 

What is this place?
said Geryon as they mounted the steps of a white concrete

 

warehouse covered with graffiti on the outside.

 

Inside it was colder than the winter air of the street. You could see your breath.

 

An abandoned cigarette factory,
said the yellowbeard.

 

Why is it so cold?

 

They can’t afford to heat it. The university’s broke.
The cavernous interior

 

was hung with banners.

 

Geryon photographed the yellowbeard beneath one that read

 

               
NIGHT ES SELBST ES

               
TALLER AUTOGESTIVO

               
JUEVES 18–21 HS

Then they made their way to a bare loft

 

called Faculty Lounge. No chairs. A long piece of brown paper nailed to the wall

 

had a list of names in pencil and pen.

 

Help Us Keep Track of Professors Detained or Disappeared,
read the yellowbeard.

 

Muy impressivo,
he said to a young man

 

standing nearby who merely looked at him. Geryon was trying to keep his eye

 

from resting on any one name.

 

Suppose it was the name of someone alive. In a room or in pain or waiting to die.

 

Once Geryon had gone

 

with his fourth-grade class to view a pair of beluga whales newly captured

 

from the upper rapids of the Churchill River.

 

Afterwards at night he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of

 

the whales afloat

 

in the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall—as alive as he was

 

on their side

 

of the terrible slopes of time.
What is time made of?
Geryon said suddenly

 

turning to the yellowbeard who

 

looked at him surprised.
Time isn’t made of anything. It is an abstraction.

 

Just a meaning that we

 

impose upon motion. But I see
—he looked down at his watch—
what you mean.

 

Wouldn’t want to be late

 

for my own lecture would I? Let’s go.

 

Sunset begins early in winter, a bluntness at the edge of the light. Geryon

 

hurried after the yellowbeard

 

through dimming corridors, past students huddled in conversation who stubbed

 

their cigarettes underfoot

 

and did not look at him, to a bare brick-walled classroom with a muddle of small desks.

 

Empty one at the back.

 

It was a tight fit in his big overcoat. He couldn’t cross his knees. Presences hunched

 

darkly in the other desks.

 

Clouds of cigarette smoke moved above them, butts lay thick on the concrete floor.

 

Geryon disliked a room without rows.

 

His brain went running back and forth over the disorder of desks trying to see

 

straight lines. Each time finding

 

an odd number it jammed then restarted. Geryon tried to pay attention.

 

Un poco misterioso,
the yellowbeard

 

was saying. From the ceiling glared seventeen neon tubes.
I see the terrifying

 

spaces of the universe hemming me in.…

 

the yellowbeard quoted Pascal and then began to pile words up all around the terror

 

of Pascal until it could scarcely be seen—

 

Geryon paused in his listening and saw the slopes of time spin backwards and stop.

 

He was standing beside his mother

 

at the window on a late winter afternoon. It was the hour when snow goes blue

 

and streetlights come on and a hare may

 

pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book. In this hour he and his mother

 

accompanied each other. They did not

 

turn on the light but stood quiet and watched the night come washing up

 

towards them. Saw

 

it arrive, touch, move past them and it was gone. Her ash glowed in the dark.

 

By now the yellowbeard had moved

 

from Pascal to Leibniz and was chalking a formula on the blackboard: