by SK Dyment
With a slight moan of metal on hinge, Mimi’s consciousness leaves the cell, and the door snaps locked behind him.
9.
THE TWO WOMEN are going to meet a man who now has no nipples. He is lucky to be alive. His nipples are at an undetermined spot; a healthy mind would not even dwell on the ultimate resting place of his nipples. Perhaps they are in the stomach of a bird. Indisputably, they are not on his body; there is nothing there now but the form of an abrasion scar, leaving behind the appearance of a manikin who has been dropped into life from a mould. In fact, he has almost dropped out of life on many occasions. His nipples were torn away and stolen from him in a moment of spite by a pissed-off guardian angel responsible for dispensing justice during Ben’s various brushes with mortality. They were removed as a reminder to Ben, and as a handy-dandy keepsake to his angels, for keeping keys or for marking pages in his book of life, separated from his body at the place where he once nearly lost everything he had. Many people have had a close swipe with death, but only a few leave a body part at the scene.
Ben has a long history of musk-filled evenings of romance initiated in every case by Wanda, Jackie’s one-handed friend, who wears an attractive smell of honeysuckle and Harley-Davidsons, and possesses a power over full-grown men she has neither abused or acknowledged. Jackie, who first met Wanda after her friend was busted for swinging her stiletto from her toe for a Vancouver escort company she believed was leading her into an acting career, knows all about Wanda’s feeling for Ben.
“Has he stirred at all?” Jackie asks, staring out at the blur of ditch and weeds.
At the beginning of their romance, Wanda tells her, Ben had a wholesome boyhood fantasy of making love to Wanda before an audience of birds and hooved animals while she was tied to the altar of a famous European cathedral. The way he said it had made her laugh and love. After he confessed this to her, his glasses slipping low on his sweaty nose, he fell asleep, dreaming of nothing but flying through air. Now, his nipples, like two scraps of leather, lie next to a fading single rubber tire burn on the highway. The rubber burn traces a slight register of panic followed by an over-compensated wild angle left towards the dive into certain death below. Wanda’s lover had flown with eyes the size of plates through darkness, coloured lights, and the contortions of his rain-slicked motorcycle yet somehow survived.
Wanda tells Jackie that most people about to die in such a way are accompanied by the magic hieroglyphics and dancing rock art of the ancients, ushering anyone on psychedelics into the next world. Jackie responds that actually the way in which he was about to die was the no-frills way that all individuals, having become too fascinated with a prism of rain striking a windshield through a double-hit of acid at a speed of eighty-five miles an hour, can and should expect they will die. They are kissing their rear ends goodbye. Ben had stared headlong into what was certain to be a messy and imminent death.
After skidding along on the shoulder, the inertia of his lovingly rebuilt Czechoslovakian motorcycle had evidently booted his backside bombastically aloft. Not unlike a trick with wires and pulleys in a Shakespearean play, Wanda replies, the man and the machine flew, together, into the air. According to the police who first arrived on the scene, they bounced, much like a rubber ball would bounce, and in a single rebound, were floating off the side of a cliff. Wanda spreads out her arms in the Civic and tells Jackie that she believes that his motorcycle jacket opened out like wings, creating flight. This is where Wanda thinks Ben has gone to in his coma. The flying fantasy must surely be resting in a satisfying and unforgettable way in the back of his mind as now he is waking up again and beginning to lift a spoon. Ben was able to fly through the air with his leather jacket flapping around him like wings, and even though he had just lost his nipples he was oblivious to his misplaced body parts, and so high that the sensation was undoubtedly wonderful. To Wanda, this explained the smile that remains there, fierce, toothy, all-knowing, and so trusting in a higher power that even ordinary people can see a violet aura washing around Ben. He smiles back at them, and the sight of it both attracts and repels.
10.
CZECH LITERATURE is more formal, Wanda tells Jackie, and Slovak literature is more romantic. It is one of the many things the couple argued at length before the crash. As far as Jackie can surmise, her friend is intending to teach her the difference between Slovak and Czech literary styles to her while feeding yogurt to Ben with a spoon. Jackie, invited to look at a partly rebuilt Triumph Trident in Ben’s garage, is now trapped in the uncomfortable position of having to socialize with complicated people, in the deconstructed presence of a revered machine. Vespa is coming to visit them, something that has Jackie stoked. Ben sits in a silent posture, not yet his usual self.
Wanda swirls the yogurt. “At the beginning of the Second World War, vast pieces of Northern Czechoslovakia were given away to Germany. Negotiations were conducted in Munich with negotiators from London, Paris, Rome. Now they have fashion shows together. It was piracy! They actually thought that by breaking a small country into a jigsaw puzzle they would save other nations from war … London, Paris, Rome…. Even today, we are still at the mercy of their ridiculous specifications in clothes.”
Jackie takes a long, cold stare at the cradle frame with two pipes running under the engine, the fantastical exhaust system, the mufflers curving out at the back wheel. “I think there should be no borders, no giving away people’s land.”
“Europe was mutilated,” Wanda responds.
Jackie reaches to adjust the spoke tension on the old Triumph even though it has a flat. It is an excellent replacement for the CZ. Even in its condition, it has a spectacular design. She finds that the spokes have been adjusted already, as if someone who had been working on it had then rashly given it away. Undaunted, she begins removing the battery.
“Agh-ah oogah!” says Ben.
Wanda jumps up and strokes him on the head.
“Ben just said that the Nazi party also gave Hungary a large portion of Southern Slovakia.”
“That may be true, but he didn’t say that!”
“He did say that. I’m his woman, I think I know what he says!”
Jackie sighs. “How can you say he said that when all that he said was that one four-syllable word, not even one word or one sound?”
“In theatre, there is a whole school of expression where words become elemental sounds.”
She moderates her voice. “Well, maybe he once said all those other things, but just now all he said was…”
“Arooo ooogah! Zmlknout!”
Wanda cocks her head, listening to Ben. She breaks into a smile. “True, Ben, true. Interesting point.”
With a clatter, Jackie sets down an adjustable wrench. “Classic transference, Wanda. You’re projecting onto him things that he can’t say. You are unable to accept the rate of his recovery. You are not his translator, let go of your control.”
“Wrong. Look at Grotowski and the Polish Laboratory Theatre when Poland was Soviet-controlled. Text prolonged as wails; they toured his plays and made a big hit in free America.”
“The idea isn’t new,” says Jackie.
“Blahopřání!” squeals Ben.
“That was ‘congratulations,’ in Czech.”
“Bullshit! You should be in therapy, both of you.”
“Wanna bet?” says Wanda.
“Mír!” shouts Ben.
Jackie sighs. She remembers the woman in the holding cell, hot young Wanda with the kohl-lined eyes. Love more, thinks Jackie, love your friends. She changes her voice to a more sotto tone. “Wanda, there is no way, considering the accident he’s just survived, that Ben could ever be thinking or saying very much more right now….”
“Jerzy Kosiński. A classic casualty of Soviet occupation. State-approved, pornographic slush,” says Ben.
The two women stare at him for a second.
“It’s
true. He always thinks Kosiński is an example of an arrogant writer taking advantage of a gulf in popular culture….” Wanda tells her.
She shovels a spoonful of banana yogurt into Ben’s gaping mouth, and then walks over so that she is standing in Jackie’s light.“Of course, in Soviet-controlled regimes, a writer was often treated like a criminal. I don’t mean a criminal who is not to be trusted, but a criminal against the State. Not that you are not to be trusted because you are not now a criminal. Or not anymore. In all your time in jail, have you ever read…?”
“No,” she tells her.
A breath of cool breeze enters the swamp-hot garage as the door opens, letting in bright white sunlight that illuminates the group. Outside, overgrown bushes turned into trees can be seen waving softly in the wind. Ben’s sister, dressed in leather boots, comfortable jeans, and a jacket for highway riding, steps lightly into the centre of the room. Jackie notices that she smells of fragrantly crushed flowers, sweat, perhaps motor oil, and spices from places Jackie has never seen. Nodding to them, she crosses the garage. A cry of joy bursts from her throat as she showers her brother with kisses. The yogurty spoon Ben has snatched from Wanda becomes ensnared in her hair.
Ben’s sister extends her hand to Jackie as she withdraws the spoon. She gives Jackie a hearty, lactose-lubricated handshake. “Vespa,” she tells her. “Good to meet you. Jackie, right?”
Exchanging names, they both wipe their right hands on the thigh of their jeans.
Jackie is staring. And not at Ben. “Vespa! A brilliant machine!” Jackie remarks.
“No!” says Wanda. “That’s what her mother called her; it’s her real name.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Ben bursts into laughter, spraying the group with saliva and mirth.
“‘If the union of a soul to a machine is impossible, let someone prove it to me,’” says Jackie.
“‘If it is possible, let someone tell me what would be the effects of this union,’ Diderot, 1774,” Ben’s sister answers on cue. The two women smile at each other with more meaning.
“Vespa, it appears that Ben is talking.”
“Talking so soon? That’s impossible.”
Ben gurgles and Vespa messes his hair, kissing him on the forehead.
“So your mother rode a scooter, and she named you…?” Jackie asks.
Vespa laughs. “No, she rode a Condor. That was the smallest bike she ever had. Swiss Police Bike, 580cc side valve flat-twin Condor. Not too different in many ways from the structure of this Triumph. I told my brother while he was in his coma that if he stabilized I would give him this machine. It’s nothing like the thing he trashed, but we’ll fix it up all right. Yes, that Condor was the sweetest. The police took it away from her, of course. In Switzerland. They chased her because the Condor was stolen. From them, in fact. They chased her, and they took it away. Long story, long chase, long telling.”
Vespa brings down a box of tools from the wall of shelves at the side of the garage and kneels next to the bike. “This Triumph here is just something I picked up. If he can ride it, he can have it, after all he’s been through….”
Vespa runs her hands through her own hair a few times, blending the yogurt into her curls. Jackie remains transfixed. Vespa traces her fingers along the length of the large, early model fuel tank and licks her lips. The little hairs on Jackie’s arms stand up. Wanda rolls her eyes at them and then gets to her feet.
“We were just discussing the early war period of Czech breakup and describing the post-war annexation,” Wanda tells her.
“I know what you’re up to,” says Vespa. “My brother isn’t stable enough to listen to you two arguing about underground art movements. You’re only taxing his brain….” Vespa leaves the bike and falls to one knee by her brother. She strokes his hair.
Jackie coughs and looks at Ben’s sister. “It wasn’t actually me discussing any of these things,” says Jackie. “So I wasn’t taxing his brain.”
“Let him defend himself then. He spoke to me just a minute ago,” Wanda snaps.
“He did,” says Jackie.
Vespa jerks her head. “He spoke?”
“Slug!” roars Ben. An agitated arc of spittle flies from his mouth.
“Wow!” says Vespa, “He can talk. And I was afraid he would have lost his bad temper….”
“He’s back,” says Wanda, “and he glows with love.”
“Lose it!” Ben shrieks. “It’s not a blessing to have a near-death experience. It’s not a gift to touch the hand of God, fight for your life, and then surface from a coma to realize you are surrounded by airheads.”
They stand staring. Wanda clasps and unclasps her hands.
“Aroo-aoongah. And stop staring,” says Ben.
Vespa reaches out to stroke his arm. “Wanda’s right. You do have a sort of love glow … and you never had a love glow on you before, Ben.”
Jackie watches Vespa, seeing her lips part and pucker and then close reflectively as she stands looking at her brother. She smiles as Vespa’s breasts sigh with happiness.
Wanda returns to her seat next to the yogurt. She wrestles the spoon from his hand.
“‘The body is an automaton,’” Jackie announces, “‘but the mind has free will and therefore lies outside the realm of scientific explanation.’”
“Which is the only explanation as to why he’s coming around.”
“Descartes,” says Jackie, drawing the attention back to herself.
“Cogito, ergo sum,” says Vespa.
“Where were you educated?” Jackie asks.
“I am,” says Vespa, “self-educated. And an artist and a sculptor, and a chipper of granite and marble and onyx and soapstone, a caster of plaster and silver and bronze, and a collector of Band-Aids and blood.”
“Do you write any of your ideas down?”
“I wanted to. To be a real hellraiser of poetry, to write a poem every day. Ben always said poetry was the bastard of painting,” she smiles at the Triumph. “It looks like someone’s been doing diagnostics…. To tell you the truth, Jackie, it looks as if this whole handlebar assembly….” Vespa looks up, her eyes brightening with surprise. “You did it!”
As if it is a contract for a nuptial agreement, Jackie hands Vespa a copy of the wiring diagram she had earlier placed under the seat.
Vespa looks at her more closely, and her lips part in a silent kiss. “That little continuity check saved me from dismantling the whole brake-light mechanism! There was nothing wrong with it! Now all I have to do is change this bulb.”
The two of them lean close and begin plans for an overhaul of the vintage gear works, when Ben roars unexpectedly and attempts to ride up from his chair. “Scarred, defaced, impending separatism, of course it’s a metaphor for our relationship. Please, I love you, Wanda….”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Vespa drops a wrench. “Marry him or something. He’s speaking and he loves you!”
“Samostatnost!” cries Ben. “No one is feeding me with a spoon.”
Vespa is finished. The muscles in her neck stand out and her face seems flushed. Jackie is attracted to the mechanism of Vespa. The two women take apart pieces from the turn-signal assembly and set them on an open bandana, their shoulders continually brushing.
There is a long silence while Wanda is cradled by Ben. The garage resounds with hiccups and squawks. A nose blows. Ben makes another difficult attempt to interpret sound.
“He said, ‘Vespa likes that demon female,’ quote unquote,” Wanda tells them.
“He said that?”
She giggles and buries her face in Ben’s summer-hot pits, yogurt splattering on the crotch of her dress. She stays there awhile, and Ben turns to them and speaks hypnotically with Wanda cradling in his lap.
“It is my wish to notify you of an incident involving the metabolic transfer of seven women e
scaping imprisonment by harmonizing with the sound, Ohm. Employing the same frequency and bandwidth as steel and cement, but with a unified voice of resistance—Ohm being the measurement of the resistance of a current of electricity in response to a measure of power—they have transcended their oppression. Utilizing a female in a brown chamois sweater as means of a conductor, the group has successfully exited in a chorus of seven complete harmonies through the walls of their cell, landing on their cans next to a hot-dog vendor across the street. This is the first case of this sort that I, Ben, am aware of, or have been able to understand since my dendrites went swizzle-side up in a flight through the sound barrier that gave me both the supersonic ability of bats and the occasional ability to read announcements of the psychic variety. This particular news bulletin was posted by the before-mentioned female in chamois. Stay in tune for more astral updates, slumbering hard to bring you the news.”
Ben smiles, his eyelids lowered.
“Did she have a tattoo on her hand that was a flying squirrel? Oh, never mind. I think I know what’s going on. C’mon, Scooter,” says Jackie, “let’s go for a walk.”
11.
VESPA, REALIZING JACKIE needs to understand her, brushes her soft body against her and kisses her softly on her fragrant neck. “I’ve been on my own for a long time,” says Vespa.
“How long?”
“Since I was a child.”
Jackie runs her fingers, the muscular hands her lovers beg for, slowly along Vespa’s torso. “A child?”
“My mother smashed her Husqvarna racer on a lonely frozen river in Sweden,” Vespa tells her.
“She was a racer?”
“Mother topped all previous speed records as well as all previous blood-alcohol findings in a single moment of glory.”
