The Lava in My Bones (24 page)

German has three genders of noun; English has none. German has eight standard plural forms; English only the insipid “s.” Do you love my new complexity, Sam, you hot little horndog?

I decided to take a psychological risk and create a painting. Betsy would scold me if I broke a fingernail or got paint on
my dress, so I'd protect my nails with oven mitts and cover my clothes with an apron. With Veronika at the helm, my art metamorphosed. Glowing, yellow squares expanded to obliterate the trees. Returning from the art shop one night, I took a detour to see the Canadian flag at International Park snapping rhythmically in the north wind. Feeling elated and delighted by my courage (Franz had been afraid to go to dark places at night), I turned homeward. Little did I know I was about to have a life-altering experience.

I was sashaying down a deserted street, carrying my can of paint and a bag of breakfast groceries (eggs, bacon, and quark). I heard footsteps behind me, an insidious
scuffle-scuffle
punctuated by the
clang
-kick of a trash can. The shuffling sounds blurred, overlapped. There was not one pair of feet but two. Then stifled laughter, muttering, snorts. I walked faster. I passed an
Apotheke
with an iron grid pulled down over its window.

From behind, a raspy male voice. “Hey, foxy lady.”

I should've kept walking. I should've kicked off my heels and run screaming up the hill. But I sensed an altercation was inevitable. If I didn't confront these assholes now, I'd have to tomorrow or the day after. They'd keep following until I turned to face them. Also, I thought the man's “foxy” comment referred to the stole I was wearing.

I spun round on my heels and said, “I am not wearing fox! This is mink!” The two men were younger than expected, teenagers with puffy cheeks splattered with pink acne. Both wore ripped blue jeans and running shoes. One guy was cute as hell. He had a square, flat-top haircut, the kind I wished I could grow.
The other had a moustache like a dirt smudge under his nose.

“Whatever it is,” said the hot guy, “you look pretty nice.”

I tried not to feel flattered. “I don't care what you think. I want you both to leave me alone or I'll call your parents right this minute.” I was so nervous that my high-pitched falsetto was starting to break.

“What you got under that coat?” said the cute one. He stepped forward. He lifted one hand and began stroking the fur on my chest. “It's nice and soft. Is it as furry as your pussy?”

I was breathing heavily. Should I say something? Should I shriek? The boy's face was right before mine. His hot breath on my cheeks smelled of beer and onions.

Suddenly the dirt-lipped boy grabbed my forearms and, in one quick movement, yanked my arms behind my back. Cutie grabbed my shoulder and together they dragged me screaming into an alleyway. I was surprised at their strength and my weakness. Since becoming Veronika, I'd stopped going to the gym and my Herculean muscles were becoming pudding-sacs on a stick-body.

In the urine-reeking alley, dirt-lip held my arms behind my back while the other boy tore down the front of my dress.

“Help!” I cried. “Help! Police! Rape!
Rape!
”

He threw my tattered dress to the ground, ripped down my nylons, and with two able hands, slid his fingers under my waistband and yanked my panties to my knees.

All at once, my penis, crouching in its den, came hurtling forward like a massive javelin. The cute boy gasped and jumped back, as my erect penis pointed at him like an accusatory finger.
The other guy released me and leapt to one side. Both boys stared, stunned.

“Stand back!” I said in my man's voice. “Or I'll shoot!”

The head of my penis gleamed in the moonlight. Its arrowhead tip looked sharp as a machete.

The flat-haired boy said,
“Scheiss!
It's a fucking queer!”

He lunged forward and punched me in the stomach. The cruel gleam in his eye—instantly I remembered when I'd dumped ice cream in your hair. These boys and I, were we equally aggressive? What were they afraid of? What was I afraid of?

Dirt-lip tried to hoof me in the balls, but I grabbed his foot in mid-air, lifted it to my mouth, and drove my teeth into his calf. He screeched, fell to the ground, and I spit out his blood. The other boy struck me on the head with my paint can. My vision blurred. I felt dizzy. Nauseous, I collapsed on the ground and gazed into the sea of cobblestones. The boys unscrewed the can lid and poured the whole blue mess over me. Then they opened my grocery bag and broke the eggs, one by one, on my forehead, and shoved a slab of bacon into my mouth before running off.

My breathing slowly returned to normal and the top of my head stopped throbbing. I spit out the bacon and beheld, up in the sky, your two eyes glowing brighter than any stars. In that brightness was not judgement or censure, but acceptance and love.

Egg yolk slid from my forehead and splattered in my lap, and I understood that, totally humiliated here, I was more like you than ever before. Why had I refused to empathize with you?

Du bist ein sympathischer Mann.

I began to shiver uncontrollably. I imagined the worst that could have just happened, and it was more horrible than what I'd feared from you. The terrors I'd clung to had given me nothing, and in reality, I was like these boys. Fear took up so much space, there was room for nothing else.

As I wiped soggy bacon and blue paint off my thighs, I wondered: would losing the accoutrements of my ultra-civilized life be so bad, if you were watching? Your eyes were as miraculous as snowstorms in August. You'd awoken a generosity in me I'd never felt and these boys would never feel. Your staring eyes had turned me toward Veronika, who I now saw was the steadiest part of me. You showed courage by meeting my hostility with affection. With Veronika at my side, could I be courageous?

Sam, it was impossible to escape you—and why would I want to? From now on I'd step boldly before the firing squad of your gaze and get closer to your country. Forests surrounded my city. Trees blanketed your massive home. I'd let nature consume me at last. That was the final step. But I had to give you something back for your gift. What could I offer?

Veronika's hat lay smashed. I felt sorrowful because it had actually been a nice hat with a stuffed bird on top. (Is that ridiculous? Please laugh now, Sam. Just a titter?) On the way home, I ducked into a café washroom to clean up. Then I sat at a curbside table nursing a cappuccino. This was, I decided, my last night as Veronika. I was sad to see her go. I'd stumbled upon her by accident, thinking she was a hiding place when she was, in fact, a transition. You brought out the Veronika in me, Sam. Veronika was self-reliant and independent; she listened and watched.
She'd never be cruel to anyone. In many ways, she contained the best of me.

But she'd taught me all she could and I would now return to being a man because, as a man, Sam, you saw me most clearly. Thinking over the past few months, Veronika began to laugh. (Veronika has a great sense of humour, Sam.) She laughed loudly, her sing-song giggles echoing about the street. Everyone in the café turned to look. Was the woman mad? Had she gone out of her head? Veronika has the most beautiful laugh in the world, Sam, and I hope someday you'll be able to hear it.

The next day I awoke shaking. Hyperventilating, I put on a ripped plaid shirt, dirty jeans, and work boots. I boarded a bus and, still trembling, travelled 180 kilometres south of Zurich to the wildest part of my country—the most like your own.

I stood alone on the shoulder of the road, dust filling my eyes as the bus roared away, and stared up at the Matterhorn, Switzerland's highest peak. I paced there for a full half-hour before daring to step onto the forest trail. Finally, as my boots stamped on the dirt path covered with rocks and bulging roots, I breathed in the pine-scented air. I had become a man again and enjoyed the acrid scent of my sweat and the feel of my cock smacking against the insides of my legs. Your eyes hung in the sky between Mount Alphubel and the Rimpfischhorn.

I approached a wide stream and stopped, suddenly frightened. Veronika came to my rescue and exclaimed, “Oh, goodness.” Her
hands flitted in the air like birds searching for a resting place as she carried me across the stream. Then she disappeared inside me. I remembered life before Veronika, cocktail parties with Gucci queens on the roof of the Hilton or grope-fests with strangers in bars that smelled like vomit, my endless visits to Excelsior's until I'd arrive home with two-dozen shopping bags, fling open the wardrobe door, and cry, “But what
can
I throw out?” My civilized self would soon be shattered, but what would take its place?

In my pack I carried granola bars, a canister of water, rope, a flashlight, and a hunting knife I'd hurriedly picked up in the toy store next to the bus station; it was plastic but looked authentic. (Sam, you're starting to chuckle! Good!) I spent the morning wandering forest trails, getting nearer the base of the Matterhorn. But my breathing was constricted, my shoulders locked, my hands fists.

I finally came to the edge of a highway along which cars shot fast as bullets. I looked down and saw a brown toad squatting on the shoulder of the road. He was covered with copper-covered warts. I immediately identified with him because when I was seven years old, I had a wart on my knee. I hadn't wanted the wart removed and had begged the doctor not to do so; when he lifted his scissors and snipped off the wart, I felt a second head had been removed. I'd held the decapitated wart between my fingers and looked into its face, certain there were eyes, nose, and a mouth there that would speak if given the chance. The toad leapt once, twice. He wanted to cross the road but could easily get hit by a car. I said to him, “Don't worry,
Freundkein.
I'll help you.”

I knelt and scooped him into my hands. He leapt against my
upper palm; the rough, spongy top of his head against my skin felt like hardened oatmeal. His tiny feet and round belly were sticky as glue on my lower palm. He was no heavier than a prune. “All right, hold your breath, dear friend.”

I ran into the traffic. Horns blared. I dodged flying cars; halfway across I crouched on a white line while a northbound, eight-wheel tractor-trailer hurtled past in a whirlwind of dust and stones.

Safely on the other side, I deposited the toad on the gravel bed. Immediately he jumped back onto the road, a BMW heading straight toward him. I leapt forward and grabbed the toad in one hand. A horn blasted, brakes shrieked, and the car veered. A man yelled,
“Arschloch!
”

Back on the shoulder I held the toad in front of my face and scolded him. “Idiot! You just came from across the road and now you want to go back? You make no fucking sense! Look before you leap or you'll end up a blood-and-bone pancake.” His black eyes peered unblinking like two ball bearings. I put him down and again he leapt onto the road.

“Jesus Christus.”
I jumped out, snatched him up, and again ran to the opposite side of the highway. “You don't know your ass from a hole in the ground, you know that?”

I put him down on the spot where I'd first met him. Again he jumped onto the road. Swearing uncontrollably, I snatched him up—“Don't you understand a
verdammt
thing?”—and carried him across. However, this time I continued straight into the woods. I walked twenty minutes and at last lowered the toad onto a rock in a stream. Just before leaping from my hand, he
left a toad turd in my palm. It was a symbol for something, but I didn't know what.

I returned to the highway and spent the morning helping other animals cross the road. A coffee-coloured June bug was ambling clumsily through the crabgrass on the roadside. I cupped her in my hands, ran across, and placed her on the lawn. I scooped a dozen crawling ants into my hand and later helped a fidgety grasshopper. Each time I placed the animals into the opposite ditch, I exclaimed, “Animals, be free!” Unlike the toad, none of these tried to jump back onto the road. “Animals, you are blessed,” I cried.

By noon I was famished. I ate my granola bars, but that wasn't enough. I started walking along the side of the highway. Soon, Sam, I came upon something from your country. I stood speechless, my mouth gaping. Before me stood a white building with ceiling-high rectangular windows. On the top of a post was a sign shaped like a horizontal teardrop coloured white and red: “Dairy Queen.” I'd once thought it was an American franchise, but they put it in a forest so that meant it came from your country. Plus, the sign was white and red, like your flag. This place was authentically you, Sam. I had never been inside a Dairy Queen. They were new in Switzerland, but surely they were everywhere in your country. A map of Canada would probably show one in every town.