Animal Money

by Michael Cisco

  There was a third stall. Three stalls, like three porcelain funnels of a buried ship. The middle stall was the one that was ajar, and inside it was some liquid as well, slopped around the toilet, and none in the bowl itself. This didn’t look like blood; it was thick, gelatinous, and it smelled like roses.

  It didn’t smell like roses, it had a floral scent, perhaps an artificial floral scent, but I was sure it was organic, not a detergent. The siren was getting closer. The trash bin must have been emptied recently; there was nothing in it. I felt around inside the toilet, in case the foetus had fallen into the bowl. A wad of melted tissue paper was all I found. I washed my arm in the sink. There was no foetus in that bathroom. Not anywhere I looked, but where else could it have been? Out the window? In the ceiling somehow? I don’t remember what the ceiling was like. Down a drain in the floor or something? It seemed to me very unlikely that the woman had accidentally flushed her foetus down the toilet—would she then have thrown in the tissue paper after she’d flushed?

  The cloying of the floral smell and the smell of blood and animal together nauseated me as I went out the door. As I went out the door I waterbrashed and hurried to the men’s room to vomit. It seemed like such a waste, having only just eaten, to cast it all up again like that. Auguringly I peered at the pink residue lining the sparkling bowl, then—, and so on.

  When I came back to the square, the woman was being loaded into the back of the ambulance, sobbing and then wailing, as if a nightmarish thought kept pouncing on her and pouncing on her. The tree was an olive, not an oak tree. One of the attendants was coming over toward the bathroom, pulling on a glove. There was a moment of possible misunderstanding, but I let him know I was the one who called the ambulance, and that I’d been looking to see if the foetus was there in the women’s bathroom, since she seemed to have lost it, and that there wasn’t any. He looked at me as if I were extremely weird and told me to stay where I was, thrusting his now white rubber palm toward me as if he didn’t think I could really understand Spanish, and went into the women’s bathroom. If the other economists want to know why I missed the General Assembly they can just read this part.

  *

  Thank you, second Professor Long.

  That night, the night after the General Assembly, I dreamt of the used book store with the CEMETERY section. In that dream, I was trying to find a lost book, but I was also made aware, all throughout the dream, that I was being talked to somehow. This language consisted of a hundred different kinds of sniff, a hundred different coughs, rustlings, shufflings of feet, knuckle cracks, chair squeaks, floorboard creaks, stomach gurgles, crumplings, yawnings, the cicada noise of a pencil eraser and the quick dry sweep sweep of fingers brushing eraser shavings to the floor, protesting zippers, the murmurs that follow suppressed sneezes, the hollow crunch of hands rummaging in bags, even the muted rushes of air conditioning systems and other sounds not directly produced by anything. Was I being talked to or talked about? It was the voice that spoke through the second Professor Long; I knew that, although I dreaded to find any confirmation of that. I was not able to understand the meaning, only that something involving money was meant.

  The papers all carry the story of the woman the second Professor Long saw. She had been nearly four months pregnant. The foetus had vanished without a trace. The authorities assume it went down the toilet. The woman said a gigantic snake attacked her when she sat down. Dr. Ventaltia appeared on the TV screen above the hotel bar; I recognized her from where I stood, in the lobby, the television is so enormous. Perhaps they were interviewing her about snakes.

  We are all still pretty tired from raising the Voor dome at the General Assembly yesterday, and we install ourselves once again in the lounge. With mock ceremony Professor Budshah absolves the second Professor Long for his absence, and we resume our conversation.

  We study types of magical accounts, like the emotive ancient $100,000; and creating the money is an outgrowth of magic-believing put to specific use, since the sacred A is scientifically determined or detected somewhere and so makes magicians exist. We talk about the “Since,” the causal element, between commodity purpose, power, and age.

  Magic is influencing deposits by incomprehensible emotions; by human forms offered accounts to become human. Who offers those accounts? A Language offered A; A are magical tender; monetarily similar in being more sacred, fiat adding the primary use-specific modes, which can be any operation, even chants, establishing debts, ways which language spoken by money types words and emotions; the savings purchasing purpose are checking the sacred with other factors successively.

  This is what those voices, the voices of zippers and coughing, were telling me last night, or whenever it was that I dreamt them.

  Professor Budshah fumbles out his phone. Another newspaper interview, he says through wired jaws, this time it is La Lucha. They will be right over.

  Twenty minutes later they arrive, a spindly, hatched-faced, long-haired reporter in skin-tight jeans, and a beefy, bubbly, giggling photographer, with a salt and pepper moustache and mop of curls. The photographer starts taking pictures right away, using an actual film camera, clicking and snickering at us, taking photo after photo and telling us to smile each time the shutter is about to snap.

  “I feel like I’m turning into Smilebot,” the second Professor Long says.

  Finally the photographer throws up one hand and declares he is finished, then goes, pawing a cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket, to sit down by the endtable. I realize now why I have not been able to stop staring at him; he closely resembles Mateo Morguo.

  The reporter, meanwhile, has set up a recorder with a small microphone on a little table prop, a video recorder, and a light with a withering glare. He sits next to the light, which he has clamped to a regular lampstand, pipe cleaner legs crossed, smoking a bidi. His eyes glitter through the smoke. They both of them sparkle with dewdrops of sweat.

  He asks us to introduce ourselves, interrupting and telling us to speak more slowly and distinctly. He stops Professor Budshah three times.

  “My jaw is wired,” he says in irritation. “What do you want?”

  The questions all seem to arrive at once, dropping down on us in a solid wedge of ice: Where do we come from? Are you Canadian (I teach in Canada) are you Canadian (I’m Californian) are you Chinese are you Indian (I am from Kashmir) are you Indian (I am from Kashmir) are you Pakistani (I am from Kashmir) are you American are you American are you American? What are our credentials? What are we doing in San Toribio? What is the nature of the conference? How did we all happen to be injured? What is the purpose of our animal money theory? Do we have any ties to foreign governments? (Define “foreign”.) NGO’s? (Define the International Economics Institute.) Are we homosexual? Are we witches? Are we drug users?

  Are we neo-Benthamites?

  “Neo-Demi-Fourierist,” I say.

  Are we neo-neoclassicists?

  “Neo-paleo-futurist,” Professor Budshah says.

  Do we intend to rehabilitate the discredited Benthamite idea of subjective value?

  “Proceeds are mythical when small at the back end,” the second Professor Long says.

  On what hard empirical data do we base our theory of animal money?

  “Initial research is anecdotal. Current assessments are symptomatic. The data is still in formation,” Professor Aughbui says.

  How disruptive do we think our theories will be on the development of the Latino?

  “Hairy mergers in America protect Southern interests,” I say.

  How irresponsible do we think it is to bring up disruptive monetary theories given the general public debt crisis?

  “How irresponsible do you think it is to ignore monetary policy in light of the general private debt crisis?” Professor Budshah asks.

  We’ll ask the questions.

  “Who is ‘we?’” he asks.

  Are we Marxists?

  Are we Socialists?

  Are we Neoliberals?


  Are we Communists?

  Are we Syndicalists?

  Are we witches?

  Are we Anarchists?

  Are we American agents?

  “Anti-sado-austerity,” Professor Aughbui says.

  “Anti-masocho-money,” the second Professor Long says.

  “Ask Carolina Duende,” Professor Budshah says.

  “Ask Baruch Plano,” the first Professor Long says.

  There are no such people.

  Pull out that newspaper.

  Open to page four.

  The photo shows the five of us only.

  No Carolina Duende, no Baruch Plano.

  No naked figures.

  Public nudity is not tolerated in San Toribio.

  The byline reads “Mario Gonzalez.”

  The photographer giggles and smoke splats out his nose. He breaks into full-throated laughter when we insist we were interviewed by Carolina Duende and Baruch Plano, again when we suggest they consult with La Censura about their mistake.

  Look at the front page.

  It is La Lucha.

  There is no such newspaper as La Censura.

  Look online.

  Look in the phone book.

  Call the press agency.

  There are no such people as Carolina Duende or Baruch Plano.

  “We didn’t speak to any Gonzalez,” Professor Budshah points out.

  The photographer giggles and the hatchet-faced reporter jets nostril smoke into the glare of his clip-on lamp.

  Are we sure? San Toribio is full of Gonzalez’s.

  “He works at your paper,” I say. “You ask him.”

  Instantly, the two men are silent.

  “He’s dead,” the reporter says. “A car hit him.”

  Are you imperialists?

  “Well, listen ....”

  Are you feminists?

  “Well, listen ....”

  Are you terrorists?

  “Well, listen ....”

  Are you monetarists?

  “Well, listen ....”

  Are you Zionists?

  “Well, listen ....”

  Listen—China is buying up the US stock market. Margaret Thatcher said she wanted to change people’s souls, and society should not exist.

  “So you are Sinophobic anti-Thatcherite ...”

  No no no no no

  no

  no

  no

  no

  no

  Listen ... in our work, we are exploring the nature of money. In particular, we are moving away from the usual idea of money ... a purely quantitative idea. It’s not a question of nicer money. We want facts. We have been reaching out to other disciplines to inform our theory, for example, zoology. At present time, we are working with physicists, Assiyeh Nemekeseyah. You have never heard of her? Really? She’s ... a very interesting person. I don’t think she teaches ... not very theoretical, more experimental. Central Asian woman.

  Very straight, thin, not too tall, black hair to the shoulder, dark skin ... She had a harelip. You have to look close, but you can see where it was. Whoever fixed it did a very good job—excellent.

  (Vincent Long here: I’d like to add that her shoulders stand out from her spine like spars from a mast, making them seem broader than they are, and that she has a kind of authority way of carrying herself, and also something witty about her, mocking. She’ll play tricks on you. It isn’t authority, it’s the look you see on a child’s face when she is in an unfamiliar situation and fiercely understanding everything she sees. It’s what patronizing adults call the exaggerated seriousness of the child. They say that because adult seriousness is not serious but just a hollow meringue of affect. That hard, hard understanding look is the real seriousness.

  Assiyeh is notorious, both for the daring irregularity and scale of her experiments, their exhilarating indifference to commercial or military applications, and for her ruthlessness in procuring funding. She is the terror of grant granters and fund funders all over the world; she doesn’t contact them, she descends on them, like a horde of Scythian maniacs with the locusts hot behind them. When she encounters resistance, she storms the offices or ambushes a director or administrator, preferably in public, dressing him or her down, eyes flashing, finger waving, her mouth a machine gun of crisp allegations, transformed altogether into an invincible amalgam of Hispanic, Mediterranean, and Islamic womanly indignation. The other restaurant patrons retract social feelers from the vicinity of the target and the target senses their retreat, the threat to delicate social webbing. She gets her check on the spot and storms out, leaving the victim steaming. Assiyeh throws herself into the back seat of a cab and only then, as she melts into the anonymous stream of city traffic, does she break out in a grin and directs the driver to head for the nearest bank with a gloating chuckle.

  (I cede my remaining minutes to the first Professor Long.)

  Thank you.

  The night ... you know ... a few nights ago it was very dark. No moon or stars, the sky just black.

  I had been feeling better lately, and so I went for an after-dinner stroll along the path that runs past the hotel, on the other side of Contrereralas. You know the spot, doubtless.

  I came to a place where a number of unpaved roads cross, and the landscape rolls upwards, dotted with houses and thick brakes between the trees. I thought the night was very still ... very quiet—too quiet.

  Then I noticed Assiyeh Nemekeseyah up in a tree. I asked her what she was doing there. She didn’t answer me right away, but just kept peering into the dark with the fiercest concentration.

  Then, “Be silent,” she says, without even glancing at me.

  I try to see what she is looking at. There’s a white, two-story house down there, shaped like a barn. It is surrounded by blue black clumps of brush, a real barn, a parked tractor.

  “Tell me if you see anything move,” she says to me, very faintly in the dark.

  I strain my eyes. Nothing.

  “What am I looking for?” I ask.

  “Something flying around the house.”

  Nothing.

  Assiyeh’s gaze is ... like a whirlpool boring steadily into the night, giving its shape to space and vision.

  After a few minutes, she walks past me, toward the house. I didn’t hear her climb down. She stops to look again, setting out a long canvas bag with straps, puts hands on hips. Then she picks up the bag, opens it, and takes out a rifle.

  “What are you doing with that?” I ask her, finally, after getting over my surprise. She, meanwhile, is loading the rifle with something that looks like a stainless steel pen. A tranquilizer dart.

  “Where did you get that?” I ask.

  “At the zoo,” she says. “The lion’s cage.”

  “The lion’s cage?” I ask incredulously.

  “I purchased it from the lion,” she says coolly. “Using lion money. You know all about that, don’t you? Aren’t you one of the ‘animal money five?’”

  “But the lion must have stolen it from one of its keepers,” I say.

  “Well, I bought it,” she says.

  “That’s receiving stolen property though!”

  Rifle at the ready, Assiyeh approaches the house quietly.

  “How did you get lion money?” I ask.

  “Sh!” she says.

  Assiyeh peers intently through the blackness.

  She moves surefootedly in the dark, whereas I do not, so I fall behind. When I catch up to her, she is surveying the house from behind a colossal banyan tree. Not a light to be seen anywhere. The whole night is a frenzy of seeing, seeing.

  Suddenly, we hear a faint, muffled cry—a sound of terror!

  Assiyeh dashes to the front door, throws it open, and rushes in. I follow her, and she is already hurrying back downstairs with her arm around a woman covered in a blanket, huddled over.

  “Take her!” Assiyeh commands sharply. “Find an interior room, no windows!”

  Then she rushes back upstairs again.

/>   The woman is whimpering and sobbing, incomprehensible. I notice she’s at least eight months pregnant. She goes directly to a closet under the staircase and shuts herself in it.

  A commotion overhead. Now Assiyeh is beside me.

  “It got away,” she says. “Where did you put her?”

  I point to the closet. Assiyeh opens the door a crack and looks in, telling the woman to stay there until she returns or dawn comes, whichever happens first.

  “Now it will try to get away,” she says. “Come with me.”

  Out the front door. Assiyeh looks around, then picks up a pole from a heap of lumber by the steps and hands it to me.

  “If it comes out, swat it.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” she says, heading around the corner. “I’ll watch the rear.”

  There is a blundering noise on the top floor.

  Something pale and wet tumbles upwards into space from an upstairs window. By chance I am there below it, swing the pole and clout it before I know what I’m doing. The thing veers back in through the window with a cry.

  I can hear it breathing in there. The breath calms after a second or two. It sounds like human breathing, a breathing woman.

  A whirring sound then, I think I’d heard it before, I think it is the sound of the thing flying, and I get the pole ready, but the sound fades. It’s going to try a different window now.

  I notice a gas can over by the tractor, so I pour some gas on the pole and light it.

  By the light I see it’s a woman’s head flying in the air with the guts hanging down from the stump of its neck and a snarling white face and swirling blonde hair. I jab the fire into her face. The eyes open wide, the mouth makes a black O, and the head darts back into the house, exactly as if a woman had been leaning out the window and jerked back.

  I lower my torch, and just at that instant the head shoots out of the window toward the trees. Assiyeh comes around the near corner of the house just then, plants her feet, lifts the rifle, smoothly tracks, aims, fires. The gun snaps. The head jerks. It doesn’t fall, but continues its clumsy flight, the dart sticking straight out the side of the head like a silver antenna.