Member

by Michael Cisco

  On another occasion, I smelled what I at first mistook for the smoke of an especially cloggy chimney in one of the nearby houses, until I realized it was coming from the mulch under one of the pieces of hideous playground equipment. There was smouldering underneath. After kicking a little more mulch over the red glow and achieving nothing, I ran, or rather hurried, to the drinking fountain and filled my cheeks with water. Rushing back and forth, refilling my mouth again and again, I spat out the fire in a few minutes. Later, I was sufficiently engrossed in the recollection to wonder why I hadn’t broken open my fly and dispatched matters that way.

  Then there was the time a young man seemed to be taken with me. He came and stood near me, not out of any desire for me—there can never be any question of that anymore—but maybe with an unrealized suspicion of affinity. Sometimes it’s possible to engender a strange enthusiasm for yourself in someone else, who knows why. It’s a virtual certainty he was wrong, whatever he thought about me. After a while, perhaps twenty-five minutes, he left for good.

  Today I feel like an animal in a cage, looking out through the bars in despair. I don’t know why; I don’t know what anything I may feel has to do with the being that’s suffering here, right now, for no reason at all.

  Astonishing to see clouds scud with such speed across the night sky now, the old regatta of those vast aerial movers, gasp with astonishment at the rate of the rotation of the earth: I fix my eyes on a star and move until it is just obscured by the telephone pole there, and wait for the earth’s movement to bring it back into view. There is nothing between me and that scintillating blue star but a little air and millions of empty miles. Countless empty millions. For a moment I feel a presentiment of cosmic, end-of-the-world chaos, and my own smallness.

  I love to see the eh—

  *

  What was that editing?

  If it was possible once, who’s to say it hasn’t already happened many other times, unnoticed by me? My past in its entireity took place unnoticed by me. What is my past? The only reason I don’t say I don’t remember it, is that I don’t believe I’ve forgotten it.

  What matters is the persistent feeling of lightness—not weakness, only lightness... opened onto something else, as if a seal has been punctured. An unsealed feeling; memory and so on is an unmoored boat and I’m on the shore, I can give it a gentle shove with my foot and send it floating away. It seems other people want to replace me in my own memories of events; I look back on the day, trying to see myself doing what I know I’ve done, as if I were watching a film of myself, but when I try to see myself, I see my role acted by other people I know.

  There’s a man standing over me. He’s going to say something to me—he’s standing too close to mean anything else, unless he’s gathering strength or courage, preparatory to launching an assault.

  “Hey buddy. You all right?”

  My shoulder is jostled. I don’t wince; he could have handled me much more roughly.

  I’ve become used to the idea that I hate mankind, but is this really true?

  I don’t hate mankind.

  The word ‘hate’ is entirely too strong.

  And besides that, I don’t know ‘mankind.’ I know this person and that one. They might as well belong to varying species, each distinct.

  If I do keep away from human beings, and fling myself headlong into the bracken to avoid them, it isn’t because I’m harboring any hatred or fear of them, but because I love peace and silence so much.

  And what do I think of that conclusion?

  Not much.

  “Don’t I look all right?” I ask.

  That word ‘love’ is too strong.

  I only love peace and silence when I’ve been driven out of my mind with fuss and trouble. It’s fuss and trouble that I hate, and associate, very logically, with human beings.

  What I love is dreaming with my eyes open.

  And every time I try to let it happen, someone blunders into my field of vision. Ruining the spell.

  The moment someone else puts in an appearance, everything suddenly belongs to them, and I helplessly have nothing. I can’t ignore their constant characterizations.

  He raises himself, having bent toward me to put his hand on my shoulder.

  “You seemed kind of out of it,” he says, smiling warily.

  When I encounter people, I don’t hate them. I don’t hate this man, with his heavy red features, the deep folds around his eyes and mouth.

  He strikes my fancy. I think of him as generous, at least for right now.

  I’m not a misanthrope. At worst, I’m an irritant—a minor irritant.

  The human world I run from into visions, but those visions are human visions and the banality I run from is really nothing at all. My own banality is so much worse.

  “Mind if I sit down? I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  Politeness so uncommon it moves me.

  “Go ahead,” I say. “Have at it.”

  He sits. I was at my post, practicing. Unwittingly full of boredom until I noticed the hungry avidity with which I shifted my attention to the stranger.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I been walkin’ all day, it feels like.”

  In my fantasy, I tramp through the streets of an abandoned, wind-wracked city.

  I live in the ruins, and spend my days exploring and collecting remnants.

  The moment I get a glimpse of a long stretch of empty sidewalk, or any place unmarred by disfiguring humanity, the ruins are conjured before my mind’s eye. Then I catch sight of a man walking his dog and the illusion bursts.

  But the ruins and remains are human in origin. And imagine the fuss and trouble involved in building the city, populating, and running it. Then ruining it. You spend all your time chasing after human leavings.

  “How ’bout you?” the man asks, rubbing his thighs with his palms. He is also surrounded by a field, but he’s not the man who accosted me before.

  “I’ve been here all day,” I say.

  He nods, and looks around.

  “Nice spot,” he says. “It’s nice to be in a place where you can see trees and, you know. I miss that.”

  I nod my head knowingly and hum.

  The man exhales, blowing out his cheeks a little. Noticing the drinking fountain nearby, he gets back up again.

  “I’ll just get a little water,” he says.

  Just a little.

  Is it impossible to say, “I’ll just get a whole lot of water?”

  It wouldn’t go well with the brevity suggested by saying ‘just.’ Is this meant to show me that he assumes his absence at the fountain will make me impatient?

  Fluting his mouth, the man drinks, straightens, wipes his lips with his sleeve, and sits beside me again.

  “That hit the spot. You should have some. It’s ice cold.”

  “I had some earlier,” I say. “Ice cold.”

  Now what.

  “It’s funny. I keep seeing snow.”

  I look at him, and he returns my look. He has a surprised expression.

  “You see any snow? Like falling?”

  He wriggles his fingers, lifting his hand.

  I shake my head.

  “It’s like the guy who’s talking me into existence is looking at snow right now. Although I’m like a version of someone else really. I mean, I’m not much of a character.”

  “Well don’t look at me, man, I’m not seeing any snow.”

  Is this true? Don’t things look a little snowy? Like an unusually strong metaphor that presents itself on its own recognizance?

  You might say the sunlight snows down all around us.

  That there is a particulate trembling or streaming in things as I gaze steadily at them.

  “No?” He shakes his head. “Weird. It’s like I keep thinking I see snow. But—it’s not me seeing it.”

  The man’s eye keeps trying to catch my own, to see if I understand.

  “It doesn’t seem that odd to me,” I say finally, to get him to ease
off. “The light today is a little on the pale side.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s true,” he says, although the day is brilliant, not pale. “Hey, do you know this neighborhood?”

  “Not very well,” I say.

  He looks down at his hands, which he rubs again on his thighs, and exhales through his nose. Then he reaches into the front pocket of his sweatshirt and pulls out a battered letter. Holding it in one hand, he gets to his feet and steps out in front of me, looking around, then back down at the letter.

  “I got this letter to deliver,” he says. He looks at me, then down at the letter, batting it lightly with the backs of the fingers of his free hand. Then he shrugs, spreading his hands and grinning at me. One of his teeth is missing.

  “But I don’t read!” he says.

  The smile that goes with this confession is designed to shelter him a little from shame. A shame I certainly don’t produce myself.

  Bringing his hands together, holding the envelope between his thumbs and index fingers, he asks me if I know where to find the address. When I lift my hand, he offers the envelope to me. As it happens, I know where that address is, and I give him detailed directions. The man listens to me carefully, nodding every now and then, and occasionally repeating and rephrasing what I’d just said, usually with an important mistake, so that my will to go on diminishes as I reach the end of my directions.

  “So,” he says finally, “I go to Agua Seca, then turn right...”

  “Why don’t I deliver it?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t answer, and I begin to fear I’ve hurt his feelings, suggesting that he isn’t capable of finding his way. His eyes are fixed on the letter, as if he were waiting for it to tell him what to do.

  “Would you really do it?” he asks.

  Now it seems I was wrong. His uncertainty involved me.

  Admittedly, delivering this letter will require me to leave my post. That would go a long way toward alleviating my boredom, but it would also mean that the static charge I’d built up by waiting so long, doing nothing, would be thrown away. Well, let it, what was I going to do with it, after all? I never believed in this post; I’d assigned it to myself by the habit of always having some sort of duty to perform.

  Delivering this letter would be a real, if probably very minor, service to this man, and perhaps to the recipient as well.

  “I’ll do it,” I say, rising to my feet. “I’m off.”

  I’m a courier again, I think to myself, the old excitement coming back. Without another glance at the man, despite the sudden brotherly love I feel for the poor thing, I head off in a direction I don’t question. But I can hear him hurrying along behind me, his feet whisking in the grass.

  “The Empress says it has to get there today,” he’s explaining. “She would have sent it yesterday, but there was a problem and she couldn’t do it till today. So, it’s got to get there before seven o’clock.”

  It isn’t even late afternoon yet. All the children are still in school. The address is only a few blocks away. His insistence is beginning to annoy me.

  “The Empress says...”

  “I know, I know,” I say airily, waving the envelope in the air and talking without turning around. “I know all about the Empress, don’t worry, don’t worry.”

  My air of nonchalance seems to give him confidence.

  “Oh OK,” he says. “Just so long as you know. OK. Hey, thanks a lot! I really appreciate it!”

  “No problem,” I say. “See you later.”

  As I make my way there, I receive permission to take advantage of this opportunity to reflect on the Empress. Recently, I’d noticed her eyes in a store window as I hurried past on my way to the park. The wind had been bitingly cold, and I was, then as now, scarcely any more presentable than my friend with the letter. The wind cut through my clothes at me; if I was going to suffer like this, I might as well, I thought, do it at my post and accrue merit thereby. I glanced up then, and caught sight of her eyes; they were Asian eyes, which was unexpected, but the things themselves aren’t what matter, it’s the gaze that comes through them. I could tell it was the gaze of the Empress, or its exact counterpart, by the vivid contrast between the darks of irises and the whites, the feminine outline they belonged to and which I couldn’t quite see, because I was hurrying, and because of reflections in the glass, and because she was also moving, pulling on a backpack I think.

  It was the contrast and distinctness and the eternalness, that made me think of the imperious gaze of Egyptians on walls.

  The envelope is already buried deep in my pockets, so that I have to rummage with my arm in well past the wrist to extract it again. This is the right way. I must have glimpsed the address as I thoughtlessly stuffed the letter out of sight. Trudging along in the gutter, since there are no sidewalks here in the suburban streets, I read the address carefully. I never knew her name, but I know I am reading it now. So that’s it. I read the entire name all at once, without scanning it, and it bores into my mind, but I don’t say it, either aloud or silently to myself. It has less sound even than the silent pronounciation of a new name in the mind. It would appear that the Empress is sending herself letters. There’s nothing stopping her from doing as she pleases I suppose, but isn’t this a wasted effort? So perhaps one part of her writes to another; she might be so great that it would be necessary for her to communicate among herself this way, or, which is the same thing, I think, she might be sending something to a self she has but does not know is herself, or vice versa. Vice versa would be a self she knows but doesn’t have, which makes no sense, so, assuming I wasn’t just staking the supplementary phrase onto the sentence inattentively or to round it out, but with some idea dimly in mind, what was the idea? It was that she might be sending a communique to a self that did not know it was hers.

  Hardly seems worth it. No wonder it seemed dim. I should have left it dim.

  My thoughts don’t sound like me today.

  This is pretty different from zooming along with the bag in my hand. The houses crawl by, the same street before me every time I happen to pay attention again to what I’m seeing. As I walk, my thumb is stroking the flap of the envelope, over by the edge. This side was imperfectly glued down, leaving this one inch or so free, and adventure has already bent up and frayed it here, so it feels more like fabric than paper. Rip it open and find out what’s inside? Perhaps it’s expected.

  I’m fulfilling a function right now, and that’s more important to me than collecting scraps of miscellaneous information I’m not qualified to understand.

  Turning down a sloping street, I nearly lose my footing as the ground beneath me abruptly changes from asphalt to slippery cobblestones. This lane here is like a cleft between two huge cemented promontories that support the suburb, and it debouches on the flat bottom of a valley. Across from me, about a half mile or so away, are enormous brick warehouses, each the size of a city block and over a hundred feet high. A thousand, maybe. Or that’s too much. I can’t visualize it.

  In the intervening space there is something like a thick rectangular pad of blackened cork, criss-crossed with deep fissures: sooty bungalows. Making my way down to their level, I find a wide, blonde dirt road running along one side of the bungalow rectangle. An old red brick wall runs the length of the road on my left, and old trees droop gnarled limbs over it. The bungalows are small, crowded closely together, empty, long deserted, and falling to pieces. All the same, I can hear children playing, and from time to time I catch a glimpse of a moppet in there somewhere, always among the bungalows and never inside them.

  The warehouses look abandoned, too. Their black doors are welded with age to the runners. An unpaved avenue runs between the bungalows and the warehouses.

  This part of town is hilly, so that you look from one house to the next across a gulf, and there’s also a house down in each gulf. Bells are ringing dully in my memory again, and when I see my destination, according to the street names and numbers, I know I’ve been beneath that hi
gh window before.

  From just about this spot, if memory serves, I spied on her, sporting up there with somebody. The two of them tossed up and down in the air like salad leaves.

  The house has a main body, a cube, with an attached wall of the same smooth white material, which elbows out from the main body to enclose a yard. Herbs poke up above the level of the wall. There is a tower, about three stories high, attached to the main body, and, since the day is getting dark, there are lights on.

  At my approach there is movement at the tower window, in the middle. It’s her. She’s caught sight of me already, spreads her hands urgently at me.

  “You want me to stay here?” I shout.

  She looks alarmed and presses her palms repeatedly at me, then makes a shushing gesture.

  “What?” I shout, as loudly as possible.

  She winces, and begins making gestures toward the wall, where there’s the rough wooden gate. She points to herself and then at the door, repeating the shushing gesture.

  “You want me to meet with you secretly?!” I scream.

  Quickly she yanks the drapes shut between us. Her face had been, just in that moment, marred by an expression of disgust. I, not knowing what to do, do nothing.

  I continue to debate to myself what I should do—wait for something to happen, or take the initiative, drop the letter, still clamped in my fingers, into the mail box, and scram?

  I’m not eager to go back to nugatory. This is the only thing I’ve actually done in weeks, and it seems probable that dropping the letter in the box would mean the end of my spell of work. Is there a chance that, if I wait until I can get an interview with the lady, she might have some other stupid task for me to do?