The Sky Below (36 page)

I am happy. I am going a bit gray. Janos is even grayer. Sarah and I stay in touch. The tortoiseshell cat spends her days sleeping in the window, dreaming of the birds she can sometimes still catch in the garden. My lazy lion hasn't padded away, and from time to time he wakes up and claws me, perhaps to remind me that he's untamed. Like the tortoiseshell cat, the lion likes to prove that he is still in full possession of his prowess. Indeed, we respect it. We can smell the lion, and the lion can smell us, whether we're just waking up, or walking on the Promenade, or eating in a restaurant. You might see two men, nicely dressed, one slightly grayer than the other, one heading toward round, both ordering well. We see the lion, for the moment sleeping at our feet under the table, his mighty head on his paws. My ears don't ring anymore; instead, I constantly hear, though faintly, as if from far away, a tympanic, windy sound.

On that same train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and on others as well, I often look up to see Miranda, Leah, Natasha,
and Anna smiling down at the passengers from their cardboard stars, still aloft, still victorious, fresh from their latest lingerie-tearing ordeal. Sometimes I idly do the math in my head as the train moves under the river, and I know that it's barely possible that Fleur is still alive, even less possible that she's writing the books. And yet there she is, reigning over every train in the city, the constellation of her muses fixed between ads for podiatrists and fragments of great poetry. If those muses were to look back at me, they would see the ordinary, interesting face of a man on the train, not quite old and not quite young, almost handsome, gray at his temples, opening his briefcase to look over the list of names of the dead. We wouldn't recognize one another, though we were all so close once.

If it's a nice day, at lunch I walk over to Grand Central to buy a fancy sandwich from one of the fancy stalls that line the upper concourse, and as I head back across the central hall to Vanderbilt Avenue with my white plastic bag, I look up. High above my head, shining in the deep blue, is the map of the heavens that ornaments the lofty aqua arch of the ceiling, each constellation in its place. And above them somewhere, watching the sky below, are the gods, who had their way with me, and sent me back.

And, as you may know, when the hero comes back from the underworld, he has to bring something with him. Tortoiseshell cats don't count. So I bring you my story. I tell you all my secrets. I show you all my gods and goddesses, shining like paste jewelry in shoeboxes. My City. A house on Pineapple Street with windows like sails, a little girl with brownish-blackish hair standing at one of those windows like a grave captain at the prow of a ship. The silver flowers and rhinestone stars on the street. You've seen me around, maybe on the train, or walking along by the river, or maybe we'll meet when I carefully set you in your place in my city made of light. Or maybe we won't meet at all. Or maybe we're about to brush past each other in
Grand Central, under Orion or Cassiopeia, maybe our sleeves will touch and you'll catch a glimpse of my profile, my ordinary face, the dark shape of the bird in flight on my hand, as I disappear into the crowd. Maybe, for a long or a short time after, you'll remember me.

 

Christiania

 

There is a man fixing a bicycle, or attempting to fix a bicycle, in the lane. I am sitting by the bluish window of a borrowed apartment in Christiania reading a paperback mystery badly translated from Italian. I bought it in the Copenhagen airport. It has something to do with boats—someone was murdered on a boat, salty types haunt the harbor—but I don't care about boats.

I do find that I care about Christiania, which, though I've never been here before, feels familiar to me, as if I've dreamed of it many times. A good-sized island in the center of Copenhagen, surrounded by a river, it was taken over by hippies in 1971 and declared a “free state,” with communal property, no cars, and drugs openly for sale on the main drag, helpfully named Pusher Street. It has been a free state ever since. Now it is a leafy, semi-occluded place, with dirt roads, peculiar hand-built houses—some look like shacks, some look like spaceships—a few streets of stores selling crafts, and a climate all its own: it is warmer and damper here than in Copenhagen proper, as if one has stepped into a vast terrarium. Christiania, shaggy and rural and utopic, is a collective wish, under constant threat of being torn down by the government or turned into condos. There was a riot last week, apparently; a building was set on fire, it isn't clear by whom, the anarchists or the cops. Christiania's signature, its export to the unfree world, is innovative, handmade bicycles. Some of them look like the bicycles people, or aliens, might ride on Jupiter. Some of them look as if they were made by Dalí. Some appear to be anticipating a time when people will be much taller.

Christiania's melancholic hope loops around my heart. It is the ruins of the future. As soon as we got here, the very first stop on the tour, my comeback tour—coming back from what to what, anyone might well ask—I wanted to stay. But we're all leaving in the morning. We're taking the train to Göteborg, whatever that is. In the living room of this borrowed apartment, five enormous windows made out of salvaged glass look onto the dirt road below. The light blue of the glass makes me wonder if it was salvaged from a church. Otherwise, the room is all bookshelves, a long curve of modernist red sofa, and two enormous, identical sleeping hounds with coarse gray fur. The old man with pink gauges in his earlobes who let me in told me not to worry about them, which I don't, but I wish they would wake up. Instead, they lie on a chartreuse blanket on the floor, paws twitching in twin dreams. It's cold in here. I would like to wrap a sleeping dog around me for warmth, but settle for a pair of fingerless knit gloves that I find on one of the bookshelves.

The bicycle wrench goes
cling clang
. . .
clingcling clang .
A loud screech, a ping. The man swears. I don't speak Danish, but by the propulsive sound of the word he makes I know he's swearing. I look out the window. Short, choppy yellow hair; tools and a sweater on the ground; a bicycle turned upside down, gears to the sky; his round face; a bit of a gut on him, though he's young. Young
ish.
He drinks from a dark brown beer bottle, a slender wrench dangling from his other hand. He has stripped down to a T-shirt in his exertions; the indigo-blue edge of a tattoo is visible on one upper arm. He is handsome—almost too handsome.

My new young manager, Boone, looking, as usual, like he died two days ago, clatters up the wooden stairs and into the room carrying a small velvet bag. “Are you ready, Anna?” he says. “Sound check in an hour. Why did you turn off your phone? You should see where the rest of us are staying—this is
nice.
” Boone has a face like a chipped white plate. Small, round, questioning dark eyes. An ambivalent beard. A concave chest. He can't settle, doesn't sit down, hovering a few feet away. I would like to put him in my pocket and feed him crumbs.

“It's cold,” I say.

“Not really,” he ventures. Boone is still trying to find his way around me. “Take a look at this.” He opens the velvet bag, unwraps tissue paper from a porcelain figurine—a vaguely Turkish-looking man who appears to be singing, smiling face uplifted, and playing a tiny porcelain guitar—which he sets on the coffee table. “Only a hundred fifty euros.” He rocks on his heels.

“Huh,” I say in what I hope is a neutral tone. Something about the figurine makes me uneasy—its uncanniness, its exorbitant price, its sentimentality. What is actually going on in the world if this kitschy thing is valuable?

“There was another one there, a Schiffener, but it wasn't nearly as good. Why did you turn off your phone?”

“I don't know,” I say, because I don't. The jet lag makes me feel a beat or two behind myself. I pretend to go back to reading my book. Sardines, a bloody handkerchief. The pensive, hard-drinking, salty-tongued detective. It smells like licorice in this room; where did I leave it? I'd like some licorice.

“Anna,” says Boone. “I've been trying to call for an hour. What are you
doing?
Whose dogs are those? They look like van Stavasts—do you think they could be? It's a really rare breed.”

“I don't know.” I turn a page. I hate Boone, I think. “It's too cold in here.”

Boone sighs. “Anna. Are you freaking out?”

I don't respond. I'm not exactly trying to torment him. It's just that, for one thing, I'm cold. I hate being cold. For another, I resent the implication, which underlies every exchange we have, that I should be grateful that he agreed to take me on. He's said I must know how major I am, but we both know I went to him. All of Boone's other acts are much younger, their beardless pallors glow, they have some sort of Icelandic/Berliner/post-polar-ice-cap handcrafted glamour, they wear peculiar Amish-like outerwear and badly fitting pants, only maybe two of them are junkies. They are all, of course, very serious. Brilliant, even. Their music is the music of the new world, coming over the waves, half translated. If you told me that they cobbled their own shoes out of scrap leather made from the tanned hides of cows they had butchered themselves with knives made in their own smithies, I would believe you. Many of them claim to be my lifelong fans, too, to have the lyrics from
Whale
engraved on their hearts, to be unreasonably devoted to my very shadow, but I can't help feeling that if I were taxidermied and tied to the front of their tour buses, I'd be equally as lovable to them.

In my darker moments I feel like the Queen of England, bound and gagged by reverence. Tin-crowned and irrelevant. Perhaps I should stay here in Christiania, take up my other life, pass through the hemp-scented membrane of this place and become another Anna Brundage, maybe a better one. An Anna on a distended, futuristic bicycle. Also, for yet another thing, this entire idea was along the lines of a disaster. Music is quicksilver, gossamer; careers are measured in butterfly lifetimes. My butterfly life ended seven years ago in Rome. No one gives a shit about what I do anymore. I'm on a tiny label, albeit a tiny one with some cachet, but I paid for
Wonderland
myself. I begin to feel queasy. What have I started? I eye the sentimental porcelain figurine, singing so witlessly. Why did Boone agree to take me on? Am I a novelty act?

“I'm just cold. It's too cold in here,” I say. “How's the house?”

He scratches at his chin, grimacing. “Online sales are all right so far. It was a holiday yesterday, everybody was out drinking, we're expecting more at the door. I mean, given who you are it's going to be great, but it is the first one, and there's a big World Cup match on TV tonight, you can't—”

“Isn't there any way to turn the heat up?”

Boone zips his sweater up to the neck in the way of a man who would like to strangle someone and is strangling himself instead. He puts the terrifying figurine back in its wrapping, its little velvet bag. “I have no idea. It isn't my house.” He's so aggravated that he's barely speaking above a whisper. “I don't even understand where we are. Is this island some kind of commune deal?”

“But I can't sing if I'm too cold. You know that.”

“Anna. Darling. Put on a sweater. There will be heat in the theater. This place—it's dirt roads, did you see that? It's not so surprising that the heat doesn't work that well.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “But everyone is playing the Bee Palace right now. Right?” He regards me. “This is good.” How young he is. His beard barely on his face, he might scratch it right off one day. But he does work hard, he does.

“Christiania is a free state,” I offer as an olive branch of information. “The last one in the world, I think. We're in the ruins of the future. Can you check on the heat at the theater?”

“Yes,” says Boone. “If you turn your phone on. Anna, it's
nice
in here. You have the best one.” He gives me a significant, managerial look and clatters out. Also proving my point about the gratitude thing.

Beyond the salvaged blue window, the man is squatting next to the broken bike, smoking a cigarette and drawing lazily in the dirt with a stick. He is definitely almost too handsome. Daring myself to open the window, I open the window. I whistle. He lifts his face. “Hey. Want to come up for a beer?”

Apparently he speaks English, and he's thirsty.

He does have a gut, it turns out, but in a while I discover that over his belly button, unafraid and rather large, are the letters
AMOR.
“Who was this for?” I say, tracing them with my forefinger, still in the cut-off gloves, my hand just beneath the hem of his rucked-up T-shirt. I am nervous, not nervous, nervous, making my way down the steep slope into the first valley of the
M.
This is where the tour properly begins, right here, where the point of the
M
is lost in a fold of this stranger's skin. This is the way in. I like the way he smells. My pulse quickens. I used to do this; it was part of it, part of the mystery of it. Not a dare, not a conquest, more like heading down an unnamed street.