The Correspondence Artist (24 page)

Nelson Algren similarly careened between self-effacement and self-aggrandizement. Sometimes it's hard to say whether it's one thing he's doing or the other. You could argue that he was the one who brought on his own obscurity at the end of his life. He certainly predicted it. They misspelled his name on his tombstone. But a few years before, he'd written that it didn't really matter having your name attached to anything, as long as it was inscribed “on some cornerstone of a human heart.” He said, “On the heart it don't matter how you spell it.”

 

 

The picture of my heart on a plate may have been misleading, but it doesn't really correspond to the photo with the con artist. The con artist doesn't correspond to me, or Binh, and in many ways Binh doesn't correspond to the paramour. Neither does Tzipi, or Santutxo, or Djeli. Simone de Beauvoir doesn't correspond to my lover, and I don't correspond to Simone, or Nelson Algren, or “the ugly woman.” The paramour doesn't correspond to Zeppo Marx in
Monkey Business
, and I don't correspond to Tony Curtis as the “body slave.” In fact, I don't really correspond to this narrative voice. Or I do, but I don't. There were many of us, or maybe we were just two. We were hardly elite Chinese intellectuals, or French ones – we just wanted to feel like we were for a little while, and it was romantic and it was sexy and I know I'm going to miss it. I mean I'll miss the fiction, I'll miss Tzipi and her cruelty and her hair, I'll miss Binh's strange images and his beautiful cock, and Djeli's angelic voice, and Santutxo's hypochondria. I'll miss waking up every morning and running to the computer so I could be with them again. And I cried a little, again, writing the end.

But your friends can always see this fiction for what it is from the outside, and they know that you could be happy again if you wanted to. This is almost exactly the way
The Mandarins
ends, but a little more “American” and less existentialist.

Thanks to: S. Calle (inspiration), H. Mathews and M. Chaix (glass of wine and a Cuban); D. Levine (title); J. Taylor (notes); E. Obenauf and E. Obenauf (even more notes); A. Pellegrini, C. Smith, C. Swartz, A. Schnore, J. Lewis, J. Vaccaro, R. Enriquez, and V. DeConcini (encouragement); L. Oliveira (misgivings); E. Cowhig (maternal grace). Tzipi, sorry.

Copyright © 2011 by Barbara Browning

All rights reserved.

eISBN : 978-0-983-24712-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010943433

Typeset in Garamond, the best font ever, and Calibri.

 

All images used with permission.