14 Fictional Positions

by Williamson, Eric Miles

  Do you:

  think about the girls at the well in town, their loose garments being blown against their bodies, clinging in the wind?

  tell yourself that the reason the woman you love will not make love to you is because she loves you so much?

  wonder why it is that you do your most philosophical thinking while you are defecating?

  think about opening your own restaurant in America?

  grip tighter?

  quake in laughter?

  confess?

  Of course, you do none of these. For it is not you who are participating in this, nor even imagining this. Do you forget? We traded places long ago, and this imagining is not yours, but mine for you to imagine. Did you believe me? How foolish of you if you did, for as I told you, I, Castelo, can never believe you, and if I cannot, how then can you be so bold as to think that I would return my disbelief with a truth?

  Nevertheless I shall continue with my tale.

  My hands creep along the windowsill, first one way, then the other, brittle chips of paint peeling off and falling to the dust outside. A parade of virgins and married women kick up the dust in the dead field, beads of perspiration like muddy streams on their naked bellies. They laugh at me. I put my hand in my trousers, like you did. I want to love them, and they want to love me. But they will not confess it. I grip tighter. I laugh. I think about the well in town. I think of you. I dream of the prostitute.

  Women are like Americans: they all look the same.

  And I do know of America, for I have read the work of Alexis de Toqueville, the book you so kindly left for me to read during your absence. I have read the book well.

  The well was surrounded by women the morning that you were leaving Juarihantas, the animals sucking at the muddy earth at the base of the well, children chewing their mothers’ teats, the wooden bucket rising, spilling its contents, then plunging again. You had asked me to come with you, to leave this place and seek the mysteries and treasures of the world, all the time knowing that I would not come. I hated you for asking. And the way you would draw maps in the dust, pointing out where the waters were, making mountain ranges out of little pebbles and pieces of clay, and you would look at me and smile, pointing at the stick which was you, moving it across the clay and pebbles and into lands unknown, into the finely strewn hay which you have designated as the great plains of America. Each day as the sun was setting and the mosquitoes were beginning to swirl in clouds, you would add to your relief map of the world, showing me yet another place you would someday go. And then you left.

  Pause for a moment to consider what is left for Castelo.

  Imagine that you once again are Castelo, and you are huddled in the bushes outside the house of the prostitute. Ophiuchus is lined up with the cock which is now spinning in the warm night breeze, the villagers and farm people are home in bed, and she is waiting for you. You loosen your grip and pull your hand out of your trousers. You can imagine what she looks like without even closing your eyes, the mussed dark hair, oily with sweat and dust, the tattered gown she has put on for comfort (her working gown now soaking in the soapy water,) the glass of water in her hand, the fingers loosely wrapped, gently shifting like waves across the glass, the cigarette in her mouth, dangling, ashes falling between her breasts like brittle leaves into a canyon. You close your eyes and she disappears.

  The breeze whistles through the grass, playing a song that Castelo has come to detest.

  While you are trying to imagine her again, the song wisps through the grass, the leaves, the tattered gown, the space between her breasts. You falter during your attempt to stand, to reveal yourself, afraid of what your special time holds for you tonight. You stand with your knees half bent, hunching forward, looking at the window, the weather vane, the mansard roof. You thrust your hand back into your trousers and sit back down. You detest the song that the wind plays through the blades of grass.

  But you, Aveiro Ilhavo, can only imagine her, the musky odor she gives off, her low hoarse voice.

  The house with the mansard is very far from where you are now.

  Do you remember the night that we so desperately wished to see ourselves instead of always each other? It was dark and we had no mirror, no glass, no shiny metal surface to gaze upon. We went down to the well where mud encircles the stone barrier like the corona around the sun, gradually getting drier as the distance decreases between the well and the scattered huts of the important villagers. It was all your idea, Aveiro Ilhavo Figueira de Foz. We neglected the dark clouds which hid the stars and moon that night, and we lay down face first in the mud, our heads touching each ºothers’ and the stone barrier at the same time. It smelled of urine and dung and I lifted my face much sooner than you did. My impression in the mud was not pure, and did not look much like me, the nose and chin much flatter than my own, eyes like wide holes, no lips or mouth, only a flat space between the flat nose and flat chin. You left your face in the mud much longer than I. You lifted yourself up and regarded the perfection of the likeness. You were fortunate enough to behold yourself. Our faces were both muddied, stinking of urine and dung, but to you it was worth the while. What was once only one you of flesh was now two Aveiro Ilhavo’s of mud, one standing, one lying, forming a 90` x-y axis, the feet meeting at zero. But the spectacle was fleeting, as we had forgotten the dark clouds. It began to rain. The edges of the impression eroded first, small clumps of mud and clay and sand falling into the now filling puddles. We saw islands and continents erode into the vastness of ocean. Your face began to run, mud oozing down the crevices beneath your eyes, to the sides of your mouth, and you told me that my face too was running. We stood there watching the impressions, your perfect one and my imperfect one, both become effaced. We were left only with each others’ streaked faces and bodies. Our eyes were blurred and crusted, but neither of us raised a hand to wipe our eyes and improve our vision.

  I lean slightly forward, my head just outside the window frame, my hands clutching the windowsill for balance. The wind is blowing harder now, the grass bent, dust obscuring the distant spires of the village, the great mountains, the eucalyptus trees by the river, the cold iron pole which proudly displays our flag, the symbol of our revolution. My eyes water. I clench them shut, then strain to open them again. The ground rumbles as if a foreign army is marching toward my hut. Squinting, I look down at the earth map. I see that the straw which was the great plains of America has blown across the rocks and pebbles and come to rest on the other side of the range of mountains. I think to replant it and restore it to its proper position, but I do not. I merely reverse my conception of that region and displace you.

  (Runs hands along windowsill. Wind blows dust into the room. Voices whisper nearly inaudibly, windlike. Light dims. Voices become increasingly louder, the sound of the wind fades.)

  The earth map.

  Blurred vision.

  The waves of grass.

  The parade of virgins and married women.

  Detested songs.

  The prostitute.

  Eroding faces.

  You.

  The cock on the weathervane.

  Ophiuchus.

  Me.

  The windowsill.

  Dust.

  III

  renegade in america—Aveiro Ilhavo the unclean

  I sincerely hope that you will understand the things that I am to tell you. So many wonderful things I have seen since I left Juarihuantas. I do hope that I can explain this in terms which you can understand, in terms so explicit that all the spaces in your imagination will be filled. You may not believe me, but what I say is the truth. I know. It happened to me. This you can believe, Castelo Sabugal.

  The cities are large. Juarihuantas houses fewer people than one building does here. The women are harlots. There are no virgins. There are no married women. Rats follow the harlo
ts down the garbage strewn streets and into their numbered sewers. White faces. Like cocaine. Their faces have many welts and sores. I, Aveiro Ilhavo Figueira de Foz, live on the street of harlots.

  I stand here in this doorway day and night. I need not move. These people bring me all I need. They lay it before me: food, drink, women women women—more than I could ever satisfy. It is a vantage point beyond compare. It is here that I see the marvelous things I tell you about. The air is warm. Hot and steaming. Even at night, when fog coats the city like a cloud of dust and insects, the heat does not wane. And if I ever become bored, I surely will think of you, Castelo. There is much, however, to consider here. There is little time.

  You must come someday.

  I gaze at the billboard across the street from my doorway. On it is a beautiful woman, blond, skin as dark as my own. She beckons to me with her index finger. She is not ashamed to show an abundance of cleavage. I know that I could easily love her, as she so obviously loves me. I also know that I am as close to knowing her as I am to being with you. You are not with me. You would not come. I do not know you any longer. The blond woman’s index finger, though suspended for eternity in its thrusting position, is more real to me than you are.

  A group of school children once gathered beneath the shelter of my doorway, uncaring of my need for an unobstructed view of the billboard woman and her beckoning finger, her wanting eyes. They started to play a game, the likes of which I had never seen in Juarihuantas. They formed a circle on the ground. The leader produced a stick of chalk. He closed his eyes and bowed his head as if in prayer (placing his four fingers on his forehead, thumb on his chin). When he came out of his meditation, he scribed seven dashes on the ground, like this:

  He then drew this:

  The subordinates began calling out sounds, fragments of their language, after each of which the leader would look to the sky, his index finger to his temple. Then he would shake his head and etch a body part on the sidewalk with his stick of chalk: head, body, legs, arms, fingers, toes.

  The subordinates grew unruly. No matter how hard they tried, they could fill none of the spaces with their sounds. They threatened the leader, and demanded the truth, the secret of the blank spaces. But he would not succumb. He pocketed his chalk and fled.

  He left the blank spaces and the drawing for me to study.

  Have you been adding to our model? Have you been true to me, or have you altered it and made the model what you wish it to be? Here are my latest instructions:

  —south of the pebbles place a snail shell (this is my home)

  —burn the straw (the grain has been harvested)

  —urinate daily on the snail shell (a river flows beneath all great cities)

  —gather more twigs and lay them side by side, as closely as you can

  —lay one dead fish in the middle of the twigs.

  I can not hear footsteps over the rumble of the streets; it is too dark to see shadows, the buildings looming high above, obscuring the sun. The city reeks of dead fish and mantling ponds of water. All I can perceive is that which enters the rectangle of space which I perceive through my doorway. It is certainly enough.

  When I dream of Castelo Sabugal and of my faraway home in Juarihuantas, I do not wish to be distracted by the sights before me; and, as you know, I do not like to fantasize with my eyes closed. I hang a soiled towel over my face and gaze through a sea of white and black and brown, changing my focus and imagining the stains to be that which I am dreaming of: the morning fog loafing amongst the fields; the scaffold in the center of the village across from the well; hot afternoon dust sheeting over the huts in waves; wedding dresses; light brown breasts; reptiles sunning their scales on rocks; the sharp instruments of the village physician; you.

  I was interrupted from a dream once, and I could not stop shaking, for the dream was of a great intensity. I do not remember the particulars, as they became instantly obscured when I snapped unwillingly into consciousness. My towel was lifted from my face, and a black man stood before me, his arm stretched across my vision, the towel in his large hand. “What ‘choo be doin’, man? You be missin’ the show!” he said. “I beg your pardon, senhor?” I inquired. Then he pointed out the great bridge in the distance which spanned the river, explaining the virtues of its girders of steel and pillars of the strongest stone. He told me he was a stock broker, and that for a small sum I could be a shareowner of the monstrous bridge. I looked him sternly in his blood rimmed brown eyes and said no thank you, sir. I pulled the towel back over my eyes and tried to remember my fantasies, or to start a new one.

  I was not born yesterday afternoon.

  Have you ever seen a black man? Their eyes float in pools of blood like bloated yellow corpses. Their tongues seem pinker than ours. Their hands are softer to the touch. Many wear a peculiar costume, consisting of a blue tailed coat, yellow waist-coat, and trousers with high black boots. There are many of them here, in front of my doorway, passing by again and again. The youths of the race are plagued by an odd form of epilepsy, and it is not uncommon to see a crowd gather around a stricken child who is shuddering and having spasms as if possessed by evil demons, or the ague. And the crowd smiles and seemingly takes the fit for a festive occasion.

  What if the Catholics are right about everything, I mean everything? If all that the very reverend Father Sorrel says is absolutely true? It would be a certainty that you and I would suffer for what we have done. Should we not then partake of the joys which are offered us to their fullest? Is there any reason that we are suffering this pitiful separation?

  Join me.

  The final leg of my journey here was in an automobile with a host of young Americans. They called the car a Hudson and said that they had found “IT” at a whorehouse, and to them this was very amusing. Has the prostitute let you lay your flesh upon hers, or are you still devising your plan? Do you crouch nightly behind the bushes in wait? Castelo, my lover, the stars are different and fewer here. Ophiuchus is not in the skies. If you were to wait here for your special time, it would either never come or it would be constantly upon you. You would then be forced to act. Would you? I do not believe that you would. I believe that you are trying to fail.

  You are always asking me to imagine that I am you, and you know that I cannot, for I am not you and will never be. I do not want to be you. I do not want to fail. For once, imagine that you are Aviero Ilhavo, and you have left your windowsill, the waves of grass, the house with the mansard. You have faced many perils, the crazy Americans in the Hudson, the Border Patrol, the bad water of Mexico, the tall Americans with cowboy hats and pointed boots. You are walking through the streets of a large city, pigeons gabbling along beside you, too fat to fly, lecherous women leering with lonely wanton lamentations. You are in search of a place to rest, to sit or stand without being told, “Move along spic, ain’t ya got anything better to do than stand?” And of course, whenever they ask, you do not have anything better to do than stand, so you must move along. The motion to you means nothing. You read the signs as you walk, though you do not understand all of the words:

  Help Wanted

  Army Navy Air Force Marines

  No Shoes No Shirt No Service

  God Saves

  Men At Work

  Animal Shelter

  No Loitering

  You stop a woman and ask her to help you read the signs. “Can you help me read the signs?” you ask. “It depends on which ones,” she says and continues walking down the street. She has many welts and sores on her face, and her voice is offensive, sour like grapefruit just picked, and she emits an odor which can only be the combined fume of all of the men in her life, lingering long after she has moved deftly on. She does, however, have large breasts which do not sag much.

  At times I feel like a man lying on my back in the dark.

  She reminds you of when
you were a child. Your babysitter too had large breasts. She showed them to you once. You did not want to see them. She tied you up like a sow with rope, and you did not close your eyes, though you think you wanted to. Your feet and hands were tingling and numb, a result of the tightness of the rope which bound together your wrists and ankles. Do you like to look at these? she asked. Do you do you do you? You did not answer, but you did look at them, the way they bobbed up and down in her cupped hands, the way the skin bulged out between her widespread fingers, the three long black hairs on the left nipple waving like tiny flagellites in the opposite motion of the alternately bobbing dugs.