American Genius

by Lynne Tillman

  The present into which I’ve landed from my swoon might be a fine one, I feel this maybe illogically, having just returned from the oneiric empire and been released here, so I can listen to other voices, while the fire throws heat on my sensitive skin, it prickles, but I want more, sensation of any kind. I don’t actually mind fainting, except for the feeling of added pressure or weight on my heart, fainting is a habit about which I have no choice, when I lose consciousness, which relieves me in the moment from worse sensations or, in short, consciousness. But the Count takes out his Breguet and announces, “It’s time.” Even where our days and nights are relatively unstructured, it’s always time for something, with too much or too little of it, everyone complains, then asserts, it may be my time, or I had my time, but what would that have been, yet it’s said people live beyond their time, which seems on the face of it a worthless idea, I don’t know what it serves, like a cheap design. A neurotic often realizes it is better to live in time, and some of the residents cajole each other, Be present to your experience, get over it, get past it, or just move on, metaphorical phrases that proselytize a physical approach to static mental conditions, practical if mostly useless. The staff encourages the residents similarly with ambiguous regulations and rules that rest on flexibility, except no one knows when that relaxation will occur: for instance, the inventor was allowed to be with his dog when I couldn’t bring my young wild cat, and they probably know he dropped his jeans and exposed his rosy ass, and nothing happened, but if the demanding man did it, his act might incur a negative reaction from the administration. Certain fellows’ complaints are handled by the staff but others they expect the residents to sort out among themselves, but none of us knows exactly why, since their reasons and rationales are their own, and while we are encouraged also to be ourselves and to be inquisitive, there are some things we must accept, because that is the way things are, it is life. If I could cleanse myself of memory, I would, if I could abandon the sensible or rational world, I would, I’d like to, I think I’d like to. I’d also like to be unafraid and full of faith, like Samantha, who was here two years ago, who followed various teachers to the ends of the earth and never again returned to our ordinary one. Instead she wanders, untethered from any single person or place, in a day-to-day existence of happenstance. If I could, I might be able to pretend that our cat and my dog had found good homes, that beloved dead friends hover like guardian angels or are alive, which happens in dreams, and that I’m not alone and without purpose, subject to forces bigger than myself, about which I have no choice. At my mother’s grand age, with her damaged brain, whose irascibility none can predict, her memory’s extraction occurs daily, but she forgets and remembers the same things, so even loss has a pattern. She never forgets her husband, my father, only that he is dead and not waiting for her in his car, she forgets she killed our cat and my dog, she forgets my brother or remembers him as a child, she remembers her mother, whom she believes was perfect, and when she awakens from a dream, she’s believes she’s in prison, trapped in an apartment that is not hers, and nothing reassures her.

  Longing to be sure but without the cunning for certain kinds of pretending, which allow for ecstatic drifting or dour certainty, I can imagine and fantasize, I can even will myself toward something like hope when I’m doing and undoing things, which is why Contesa appeals to me, also the Count, both of whom dwell in made-up elsewheres, my dinner partners, also, with their resilience, will, or fortitude, like the Magician, who, though a new resident, responded so graciously to a stranger, me. My incapacities and limits must be internal truths, which is why I do what I do and don’t do. I can’t unring the bell, I can remove the clapper, I will take apart a bell tomorrow, I can see it, the clapper lying on its side, useless, but if I set many clappers on their sides, and have many, many bowls on a table or on the floor, the patterns could achieve something. A staggering number strewn on the floor, so many inert, disentangled, disconnected objects might become something, or only things on a floor taking up space, but that is what everything does, take up space, all things need room, so I might try the experiment, since nothing succeeds without failure, failure has many charms, a mistake might bear a thrilling offspring. I want sensation, even though I don’t know what I’m looking for, while scientists, whom I admire, know what they seek, so their experiments are conducted with an aim, an order, a logic, purpose, as they are interested in outcomes and in proofs. I am mostly interested in ways to the end, processes closer to living, whose outcome is always the same, a reliable fact of life, so there’s reason to be curious only about when it comes, and for most there will be no proof of anything, another reason to follow, yet also question, science, with its assurance of repeatable outcomes. History repeats itself, but differently, people repeat themselves, there is a compulsion to repeat, which is not chosen, and few actually appreciate conscious repetition, except psychoanalysts, scientists, salespeople, and shopkeepers, who depend on regular customers, and artists, who might find elegance or beauty in it. Many repetitions are numbing, some might be propitious mistakes, or just useless error, though eating the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner has a certain beauty or intelligence because you could have more time for other thoughts, though they may be plaintive and less sensual than deliberating about food, when, and only if, it is plentiful. The abundance of recipes and menus can be a bounty or a burden, but it can be stupid to hold the same position toward things because you have always held it, or as a principle. I ruefully acknowledge mistakes, as well as episodes of stupidity, as Contesa called them, which aren’t only sexual, but some have been and continue to be, and wrongness lumbers on in a range from pathetic, poorly conceived, or subtly incorrect acts or thoughts, to indifferent, crude, and manipulative ones, sometimes similar to cruelty, whose sting is worse than being struck dumb, or being incapable of knowing what to do or why. The sprites who forgive and forget taunt me, and some obsessive thinking is disheartening, while most is a mistake.

  There was a time when I wanted people to like me, but now I want to like people, once I believed them capable of what they espoused, I suppose I wanted to believe them, now I like them if I do, despite what they espouse, and, as I look around me, I marvel at the characters here, yet still long to be in my room, lying on my bed, drawing a chair, reading or musing, listening to the radio, or taking apart a tape recorder, scattering its tiny innards in the air and seeing where they fall, as if they might be an omen, but it’s probably good to be with people, not to avoid them, which I mostly want to do, because I’m not sure what they hold in store, yet when the Count recounts how, in the 4th century AD, it was Clement, Ignatius, and Tertullian who determined the twelve books of the New Testament, after years of dispute, or Spike expands on her riotous, ingénue’s repertoire, or the Turkish poet sighs about sex and life’s recondite treacheries, I am also at home. I can believe that I am supposed to be here, a curious feeling, one that has been growing in me, maybe since I’ve been here, that it’s right that I’m here, or I’m right to be here, that I shouldn’t be anywhere else, a sense I don’t often have, though I am usually aware of being in or being a body, because I’m encased in dry, sensitive skin, and during the winter, especially, it cracks and bleeds, but anytime a detergent touches my hands, my skin will immediately react to its poisons and for many days afterward the affected fingers, usually the middle and index fingers and thumb, will be inflamed, the skin flaky and tough, tearing and bleeding, and very painful until it heals in the requisite four days. The disconsolate woman with psoriasis opines that her problem is solely environmental, a word I abjure, though my dermatologist told me that most doctors think psoriasis and many other skin diseases have a genetic and psychic origin, because their outbreaks can be triggered by trauma, for instance, shingles, or the chicken pox virus, or herpes complex might live but lie dormant in the spine for many years and break out when a person is under extreme duress. The disconsolate woman has her ups and downs, mood swings, which are marked by patches and fla
res of red and lakes of pus on her arms and hands, and the world is increasingly poisonous, or toxic, as she’d say, but psoriasis has been around longer than laundry detergents and emissions that have destroyed the ozone layer, though its cause is still unknown. Hippocrates described the disease in the 4th century BC, but it wasn’t named until much later. Heredity appears to be significant, and it appears equally in both sexes, but it’s uncommon in black people, and I’ve read that the American Indian and native Fijians don’t have psoriasis, and, I guess, must, with assimilation, change, unless they have resistant genes, and then they should be studied. I know my body is in a place, either when it hurts or has pleasure, otherwise I may forget it. The other disconsolate woman, who has asthma, hates her body or hates bodies, a common phenomenon here and in the place I call home. The word for body in Zulu is um-zimba, and if some Zulus hate their bodies, their reasons may be different from those of us in America, where women were historically free to choose their husbands and damned for it, and for whom men, whatever a woman’s sexual desire, are an important subject.

  On each chair in the Rotunda Room, Contesa has provided a typescript of her one-acter or spectacle, I have it in my hands when she announces that the performance will soon start, explains that she has never done this, that her way is not necessarily ours, though she hopes it will entertain and enlighten us, and she rebukes only herself for what disagrees with us. “You may not like my cuisine,” she says pointedly. The head cook may be here, and I watch Contesa’s mouth, it sets decisively. The Rotunda Room, which dates from 1838, is painted rustic gold, or sienna, features a high-domed ceiling, and oval windows that are inset around its perimeter, there’s some echo in the wood-and-plaster room, but its black wooden chairs have sensibly curved backs, so that, like a chair by the Eameses, they respond to the lower back, providing lumbar support. Their flat, svelte cushions are covered in thick, tufted dark green velvet, a gift, no doubt, of the Green Lady, who is known to appreciate theater. The seats are comfortable. During the late 1860s, after the Civil War, a local history book records, séances and sessions of spirit photography occurred in this room, and back then William Lloyd Garrison and Horace Greeley, both abolitionists, attended séances, as did William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper, and some might have been in the Rotunda Room. Spirit photography’s early practitioners were often women, who were usually mediums and who manufactured miracles in which dead people shimmered as palimpsests pressed onto glossy surfaces, chemical ghosts invaded the present, all of which people want, against reason, and probably Contesa elected this space for its redolent, spirit-laden past with which she may feel connected or in which she feels she can better contact the numinous world.

  The room is full, its thirty chairs with our bodies on them absorb oxygen and noise, and also we make sounds, I hear inharmonious wheezing, coughing, and some shortness of breath. Contesa leaves the podium, the lights dim, and, to my shock, from the wings, the odd inquisitive woman wanders onstage, looking about in all directions as if lost, replacing Contesa behind the podium. The odd inquisitive woman holds herself erect in her tatty skirt, a black pullover sweater, while her unruly hair is tucked under a brown suede beret. She would see me soon enough, she said to me in town, I remember that now. She stares at the audience and projects a strength and purpose that is impressive; there is something almost magnificent about her bearing. I cast my eyes quickly over the cover sheet of the typescript: Four Players—The Narrator, Franz Kafka, Felice Bauer, Max Brod—written by Violet.

  The Narrator:

  This is a work in collaboration with the letters of Franz Kafka and the spirit of Felice Bauer. Her letters are lost. So I will take liberties. The Saints preserve pariahs like me. Please touch the hand of the persons beside you, please touch their hands.

  The Count and Spike are beside me, and there is an awkward touch from the Count, who once embraced me, but nothing more, and I hold his hand for a second, and from Spike a rhythmic pat or two, she is usually affectionate, and behind me I sniff the sodden odor of the demanding man, but can’t know if he’s touching anyone or being touched.

  The Narrator:

  Kafka wrote to Felice, “He who belongs to you keeps wandering about in the distance.” In the present, Kafka’s and Felice’s souls, they will mingle. Here comes Kafka.

  The inquisitive woman, the narrator, points stage right, and, augmenting my surprise, the tall balding man walks on, his shoulders a pair of parentheses around his body, which is stiff as an exclamation mark, and I wonder what J and JJ will think of his truculent carriage. He’s wearing a black suit and black derby, like an undertaker. He removes the hat and takes a chair, he is himself and not himself, and I recall that he played Kafka in my dream some time ago, and now his secret lover, the disconsolate woman, enters, stage left, and I feel my stomach contract, while the demanding man groans, Spike chortles with muted pleasure, and the Count sinks into his chair. The tall balding man, or Kafka, waves to her, his Felice, feebly. She nods, and the disconsolate woman, or Felice, faces the audience. She’s staring above our heads, toward the rear of the Rotunda Room.

  Kafka:

  “There are times when impossibility swamps possibility like a wave.”

  Felice:

  He whips himself for us.

  Kafka:

  Never. I’m no Christ, but I am a Jew.

  Kafka looks aghast, then sad, then he breaks up at his own preposterousness, and I contain my laughter, but some suffocated or constricted noises come out. The tall balding man is so expressive onstage, he exaggeratedly throws back his arms, demonstrative in a way he never is, so watching him act, I’m nervous. His flesh confronts me, he even appears to have an aura or charisma, and, spotlighted, he becomes an object whose every deficiency is on exhibit, people exhibiting themselves can produce some embarrassment. I anticipate that, even shame, but not guilt, thankfully. The other bodies around me stretch their legs, their asses shift on the tufted dark green velvet cushions, their mouths smack and noses snort, a being-human chorus.

  Kafka:

  “But how could my writing to you, however firm my hand, achieve everything I want to achieve: To convince you that my two requests are equally serious: ‘Go on loving me’ and ‘Hate me!’”

  Felice:

  My heart, I have no answer.

  Felice seems to speak from her heart, since she has no technique for walking, standing, or acting, and whatever merit there is in her acting comes from her inability to conceal herself, so she is herself, or an exaggeration of herself, and I’m following, with distractions, people I’ve had breakfast, dinner, and drinks with, if they are allowed to drink, as they transform into characters like or unlike themselves. I can spy unguardedly. The disconsolate woman, Felice, sits down and pretends to write, but then she looks again at the audience, now directing herself to the Count, I think, it’s hard to say, it could be to the demanding man, whose odor penetrates. The inquisitive woman shuffles to the lectern, once again as if she’s lost, it’s deliberate then, and she’s wearing purple lipstick, I’d missed that before.

  The Narrator:

  Kafka wrote that in 1913. He started it all, Franz began writing Felice in 1912. They were engaged twice and Kafka broke it off permanently in 1917. By then Kafka coughed blood. But from the beginning, he created her. Kafka enchanted her, and she was his enchantment.

  Kafka strides to the side of the stage and looks longingly at Felice.

  Kafka:

  “I’m afraid that soon I shall no longer be able to write you, for to be able to write to someone (I must give you all sorts of names, so for once you must be called ‘someone’) one has to have an idea of the face one is addressing . . .”

  Felice plucks a hand mirror from behind or under her chair and looks at herself, the disconsolate woman’s psoriasis has flared, reddened slightly, she’s not my image of Felice, though it’s sly of Contesa to have cast her, but she must have wanted the role. I appreciate Contesa’s discretion, how she kept this a sec
ret, I appreciate this and also some forms of deviousness, but the disclosure of secrets can alarm and be destructive, especially if they expose a long-kept masquerade with intricate roots, whose undoing rips foundations, because change has unknowable effects. I know several people whose fathers had second families they kept hidden, who performed as double husbands and fathers, in elaborate hoaxes, for years and years, making the task seem easier to perform than it is, or it is people’s necessary gullibility, their desire not to see what might hurt them, that permits such inestimable deception. I have a friend a part of whose life may be secret, but by now I don’t want him to reveal it, because there are things I don’t want to know and whose exposure might destroy our relationship. He may or may not have a married lover whose husband is ill, I’ve often considered he does, and that when he departs on a journey, for he often travels, he’s not going anywhere but to his furtive mistress, and for some reason he wants even his closest friends to think he has, as he says, no one to love, and this possibility fascinates me, so I’d be disappointed if it weren’t the case, but also I don’t want to know absolutely it is, because then it would change our relationship.

  The Narrator:

  Max Brod, Kafka’s best friend, interpreted Kafka for Felice. First Felice wrote to him. Brod wrote back to her. Later, he disobeyed Kafka’s will. He didn’t destroy Kafka’s unpublished work, his letters or diaries. Kafka trusted Brod, but he also had invoked chance. Or, did he know what Brod would do?

  Arthur saunters onstage, the fourth player, he is Max Brod, a jaunty figure, and his partner, Henry, sits in the first row beaming, looking around, human beings want approval, even their approval approved. Arthur’s thick, long hair is tied in a chunky ponytail, and he too is in a black suit, but no hat, and sports a cravat and monocle, and, because of the style, I sense another time, as style marks periods, even years, with its date stamp, or maybe it’s because I know too little yet about Arthur, since he communicates mostly to his partner, and this allows me to enter the period better, though Max Brod was Jewish, like Kafka, and Caucasian, but there are also black or African Jews.