Erotic Lives of the Superheroes
Page 48
He imagined the old hero with his trembling arms and his radiant gaze, resting in his wicker chair, covered by the blanket that someone had spread over his knees. What was the legendary Superman dreaming about? An unlikely resurrection of the era of the great heroes? Or was he dreaming of going radically past that point, and throwing open the gates of a brand new age?
He could feel himself sliding down in the seat. By now, he supposed he was officially asleep. His thoughts were no longer thoughts but choreographic sparks in his consciousness.
So Superman wanted to leave his moral legacy to someone. Superman wanted to find a new Superman? Could there be a new Superman? If so, was he already enrolled in the Park Slope school? Was the new Superman around, somewhere else in the city or on the planet? Was he riding in the same subway carriage as Bruce? Was he a man or was she a woman, white or black, a mystic or an atheist? Did she dye her hair, did he have his teeth whitened by laser? Did he eat hamburgers, have political convictions, was he sterile or was he endowed with vigorous, feverish reproductive cells?
He heard the passengers get on and off the carriage. He smelt the aroma of cinnamon chewing gum and that reminded him of something… He wanted the train to go on rocking him. His mind had slipped into an indistinct territory, filled with joy and sparkling shadows. Next to him, some guys were discussing the latest news, something about a space probe about to return to earth from an important space exploration mission. He was happy to note that his brother had been shoved aside as the most talked-about story of the day. That is, provided he’d actually heard those guys talking and hadn’t just dreamed them.
Oh, there was one thing he guessed he hadn’t dreamed. The promise he had made to the old hero. He’d promised he’d consider his offer. The train continued on its way, pushing a whirlwind of hot air ahead of it, making the tracks screech like the strings of a viola, sending vibrations deep towards the gurgling heart of the earth and, at the same time, up towards the surface, through layers of rock and dirt, up to the sensitive stalks of the city’s skyscrapers.
Tens of yards above the subway tunnel, in a tastefully furnished apartment, Alyson Rhodes put down the book she was reading and noticed that a vague tremor had just shaken the building. She decided that it was a subway train going by. The vibration was not always perceptible. On the occasions when she did notice it, she would shut her eyes and make a wish, the way you would when you see a falling star. Sometimes the wish was expressed by the depths of her inner being, other times by more surface layers. The last time, if she remembered rightly, she’d wished she could find a certain handbag on sale, and that wish had come triumphantly true.
The cat resting on a chair not far away had raised its head too, and was looking at Alyson and purring lightly. She stood up and stroked its head. For some reason she thought of Bruce. She hadn’t seen him in weeks. She’d kept her distance lest he assume that she, like every other reporter in town, was fishing for news about his brother.
She went on stroking the cat and decided to go ahead and make the wish. She thought of Bruce and wished for him to have a good life. She wished that he might have the miraculous lucidity needed to avoid losing his way, and to follow his trajectory, whatever that might be, in the skies of existence.
*
It was just a few more hours until the re-entry into the atmosphere. The crew checked the instrument panel yet again while the radio transmitted the words, excited and crackling, of the technicians on the ground. The commander of the space probe joked with the technicians about the banquet he wanted waiting for him upon landing. “Guys, what do you say you set up for us… What do you say about a roast chicken fresh from the oven? After more than two months floating around in outer space, NASA rations have sort of lost their appetising appeal.”
“For me,” another crew member broke in, “you can prepare a piping hot apple pie!” The request was expressed with such fervour that it prompted a general burst of hilarity. Everyone laughed. The astronauts’ voices seemed to break away from their bodies and hover in mid-air in the spaceship, light and echoing, as if searching for a crack through which to escape and diffuse freely into the boundless emptiness of space.
“Elaine, what do you want most?” asked the commander, addressing the one female crew member.
Elaine Ryan stopped looking at the data she’d been checking on a screen. The young astronaut seemed to focus: “For me… For me…” She shook her head and smiled. She had to admit that she had no idea, and was finding it hard to try to think once again, after living for weeks in the electrifying vacuum of space, about the variety of foods and pleasures back on earth.
Recognising Elaine’s feelings, her crewmates moved towards her. They surrounded her, floating in the absence of gravity, moving as in a gentle dance, laughing, as emotional as she was. They were going home. They were returning to the embrace of their planet’s atmosphere after weeks on a space mission, and this triggered in them a mixture of euphoria and subtle, heart-rending regret. They were leaving the luminous womb of space. They were leaving the realm of satellites in equilibrium, worlds suspended from other worlds, orbits intertwining with other orbits. Their voyage was over. They went on spinning in the centre of the cabin, three men and a woman with reddish hair, their limbs virtually weightless.
In the background, the beeping monitors of the electronic instrument panel were emitting an accelerating series of alerts. The earth’s atmosphere really wasn’t far away.
Elaine Ryan reached one of the portholes. The vehicle seemed to be accelerating, now, hurtling towards the planet as though driven by an impatient, irresistible impulse of love.
She imagined that down there the television broadcasts had already begun from the landing zone, a stretch of sea where the probe was scheduled to glide down in the early hours, and where it would be picked up straight afterwards by naval craft. She imagined that the television cameras had already focused on the sector of the sky from which the probe was expected to emerge, and that in the meantime the commentators were reporting the heartwarming detail: the crew had expressed their longing for a real earth meal. Roast chicken and apple pie.
She looked down at the globe of blue and white and emerald light. It was likely that her family was waiting up. It was likely that at the space centre in New Jersey they were following the news of the landing.
She lost herself in the illusion of the planet’s perfect immobility. Waiting for her down there would be a new phase of her life. Down there she would regain the sensual weight of her own body, the arcane cycle of light and shadow. She felt changed. The space probe had taken her far away, out into a frightening and magnificent void, where solitude flipped over into a sort of unfamiliar peace, and where her body seemed to have captured a considerable quantity of wonderful, disconcerting self-awareness.
The earth shone beneath her eyes. White masses streaked the atmosphere. The colours of the surface became more and more vivid, so bright that they made the surface look as if on the verge of bursting open and giving birth, who could say, to a new and never-before-seen colour. Elaine gave a moan. The world was ever closer, with its intense shades, a giant bubble of air and matter and heat. The world was waiting for her. The world was poised, hanging beneath her eyes. The spaceship started to vibrate again, and for an instant she had the impression that it was the earth that had wobbled, almost on the point of falling, just like a ripe, wasted fruit. Elaine reached out towards the porthole. “Don’t fall,” she whispered, in the tone of a prayer. “Don’t fall.”
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