American Purgatorio

by John Haskell

  “How many barns do you have?” I ask him.

  “Just the one,” the man says.

  It’s filled with bales of sweet-smelling hay, and as we walk around the inside perimeter of this barn the man occasionally holds out his hand, and to steady him, I take it. He sometimes rests his hand, or the fingers of his hand, on my shoulder, and although it’s just a normal meaningless gesture, I feel it has a kind of meaning, a kind of generosity, and because I am thinking about generosity and looking at the piece of gauze bandage stuck to his face, I’m not sure if I’m hearing what the man is saying.

  “War?” I say.

  “There’s always a war,” the man says. “Or if there’s not, then it’s coming. Not out there”—and he points to his chest. “Here.”

  I’m going to ask him to elaborate but the man moves on. In his mind he’s constantly moving on, not stopping for understanding or for the acknowledgment of understanding. He’s moving, and I follow him.

  The wooden planks are unevenly worn around the swirls of knots in the wood. I ask the man, “Do you still have bats?”

  “I thought you were the expert on bats,” he says, and he smiles.

  And for some reason I smile back. “I thought you were.”

  “Well, there you go,” he says, and laughs out loud, in a way that I find infectious. Not the laugh itself but the situation. I don’t really know what, but something is amusing. And although I started out being jealous of his relationship with Linda, it’s hard to be jealous of someone so genial. Although my usual modus would be to envy the man’s seeming happiness, instead I can feel that seeming happiness making me seem to be happy.

  I follow him through a narrow door into a structure with another door and we walk through that door and the old man starts climbing up the hay bales stacked in the corner. The barn is in disrepair. “Come on,” he says. And because I don’t feel at the moment like climbing up a stairway of old straw, I ask him, “What’s up there?”

  “The view,” he says.

  “Of what?”

  “It won’t hurt you,” he says, “I promise,” and he holds out his hand.

  I would rather not have to depend on a withered old hand but I don’t see a lot of options, so I reach out and the old man indeed pulls me up, into a small attic-like room. He closes the trapdoor and we find ourselves crouching in darkness.

  As I wait for my eyes to adjust, I notice that my hands are raised, as if to defend myself. That’s weird, I think, because there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve been in pitch-black rooms before, but still, fear is not a logical thing. And it isn’t until my eyes adjust and I can see the source of light that I know where I am and let my hands drop.

  A camera obscura is a dark chamber with a hole on one side and that’s what we’re in. Projected against the opposite wall of the room is an image—mainly sky, a few trees—and something about the color of the sky and the depth of the sky, despite the inverted view, makes it seem completely real. The image isn’t large but it’s large enough to hold, in its indistinct frame, the whole world. I’m looking at the image, watching the world it portrays—removed from it and watching it—like watching something die. It seems at that moment like a world of possibility.

  “I don’t get up here much anymore,” the man says, and then he opens the hatch, and when we crawl out into the normal light, the possibility doesn’t vanish.

  We climb back down the hay and I don’t mind the straw in my socks. I like it. I like everything. I feel energized, buoyed, and the feeling has something to do with the man, or the presence of the man, who is smiling, narrow-shouldered but erect, looking at me as if I am a source of pride. The watery whites of his eyes are cloudy, but the dark center, from behind which he seems to be looking, is bright.

  When the man speaks, the words coming out of his mouth are reassuring, or have the intention of reassuring. For instance, “On the road.” He says these words out loud, infusing them with nobility, declaring them as a state of being. “On the road.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “You were on the road,” he says, and he says it with a seriousness that stills me. He is looking at me.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I can see,” he says. And it seems as if suddenly he’s lucid. “Do you know what’s happened to you?”

  “You mean about my wife?” I say. And the man doesn’t answer.

  I think what he sees is some truth about me, not a secret inside of me, but what I am. And he can see that I don’t know myself what that is, and so all he can do is stand there, with a bandage on his cheek, looking at me with his watery, compassionate eyes.

  Once we’re outside, I try to slide the barn door shut by myself, but it’s stuck. I am trying to do a good deed by closing the door but I can’t get it rolling on its rollers. Even with both hands, even leaning into it with all my weight, the gate doesn’t move. At which point the old man holds the side of it, pulling it onto its tracks. He tells me to try again, and this time, on its rollers, the thing easily slides shut.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You’d do the same,” he says.

  And then he starts walking, looking down at the path of his feet. When he gets to the house he turns around, having already forgotten who I am; but trusting whatever I am, he smiles and walks inside. I would like to follow. I like his house and I like him, and although I want to stay with him, I can’t.

  6.

  As human beings we have an idea of who or what we are, and we like to keep that idea intact. And although this desire for a sense of self isn’t a sin, like a sin we can get excessive about it. Two hundred years ago Keats spoke about the ability to live without definite answers and borders, and because I’m a man who makes adjustments, at the moment I’m willing to do that. At the moment I’m with Linda, following her directions, driving with her, and I’m willing to know nothing but what’s in front of me, or in this case next to me, in the car. And not only am I willing to simply see her, I’m also willing to send her something, something reassuring. I’m trying, in some quasi-physical way, to send her something good.

  But how do you do that? How do you wish another person well? It’s probably not so difficult, but with her I’m having a little trouble. And the trouble is Anne. I need to believe that Anne will remain in my life, but at the moment Anne’s not here.

  Linda and I are driving deeper into the woods, into steeper, more rugged country, and at a particular turnoff she tells me to pull over, and I pull off the main road onto a rutted dirt road and we drive up that road until we come to the end. We get out of the car, walk up through a trail in the grass, and arrive at a clearing at the top of a hill. There’s a metal structure, with a platform at the top, a lookout above the trees, open to the elements.

  “There’s the view,” she says. “Up there.”

  And then she walks down a slight incline to another part of the clearing. There’s a pool, a reflecting pool made of stone, abandoned now, covered with lichen and moss, built by human hands a long time ago. There’s a shallow layer of water in the pool and she doesn’t walk in the water at first. Instead she walks along the stones describing the pool’s perimeter. The sun is shining enough so that she feels like taking off her shoes, which she does. She’s dancing from stone to stone, and she knows I’m watching, and although she doesn’t know who I am, it doesn’t seem to matter.

  And I’m thinking along the same lines. That who she is is partly transparent, or rather the outside of who she is is transparent. I see through the layer of linen pants and skin to something else, to a person. It’s an image of her and it’s my image of her, and as I watch the image of her I’m thinking about Anne.

  When we were first getting to know each other, before we’d even had sex, Anne and I took a trip to the beach. It was summer and she was wading into the tidepools with her pants rolled up and a light shirt on and the waves on the rocks and I always suspected she got wet so that I would see her and want her, and if that was her plan it
worked.

  And you might think that I would be thinking of that time with joy and happiness, but I’m not. Those times, I’m beginning to think, are gone. With my feet in the present and my mind in the past, my emotional attachment to that memory is beginning to fade. And I would be willing to let it fade, except even if it’s part of a past chapter in my life with Anne, there are other chapters coming, chapters filled with love and intimacy. I’m thinking that what existed in my past was love and that you can’t manufacture love or manufacture passion, and a person has to believe that those things—love and passion and life itself—will exist again, in the future.

  I say I’m thinking, but it’s not so much thinking as telling myself. I’m trying to influence my thoughts. And also my feelings, the thoughts of my body. Somewhere in my body I’m enjoying what’s happening now. I’m enjoying the splashing of, and proximity to, this other person, and although I’m not trying to cancel the past or filter it out, I’m afraid that what is happening now will cause Anne to disappear.

  To the extent that we make our own future, I want to make one I can hold on to. I need Anne, sure, but what exists right now is real. I am real and Linda is real, and real things have a certain attraction, and so I turn to Linda, and when she looks back at me I don’t do anything. I don’t try to change or correct or filter anything out. I let Linda be Linda. It just happens. And the fact of its happening is frightening because I’m not used to Linda. But I tell myself—looking at her—that what is happening is reality. Whether I’m making it or not, the sun is shining. Part of the rectangular pool is cast in light and part in shade and she has pulled up her pants and she’s splashing in the water, laughing occasionally in the sunlight.

  I’m perched on the rock ledge, sitting in the sun, and when she splashes me I enjoy it. She’s holding her shoes in her fingers, her socks tucked inside, and you’d have to call it dancing what she does. The sun drops down farther into the trees and the sunlight disappears and by the time she steps out of the water of the pool she’s, not wet, but damp, and she’s shivering. I loan her my jacket and without guilt or memory or sadness getting in the way, we sit. I hold her in my arms, feeling the coldness of her skin and the warmth beneath that skin.

  When Anne lived above the flower store on Sixth Avenue it happened like this many times. I came in the door and there she was, demure and polite but obviously excited, her etiquette not intending to mask her excitement. And without much talk we removed our clothes and then she jumped onto me. Her legs spread around my hips and I was lifting her and holding her so that her chest was level with my nose and mouth, and then lowering her down, and without any help from any hands we came together like that, sometimes her arms getting tired from holding on and sometimes my legs getting tired supporting her, and when this preliminary congress was over, I carried her to the bed and we fell finally, relaxed, into each other’s arms. And then showering, and in the shower if the mood was right, we would repeat ourselves.

  And whatever love existed then, that was one thing, and each moment a new love takes its place. And I can see this person next to me, and I can see the possibility of love, and the only reason not to love is Anne, because I still love her. I can feel the regret and loss, and sitting next to me is something else, something that isn’t regret or loss. But there’s nothing I can do because in my heart, love and loss and regret are all combined, and I have my need, and my need is to find the thing that’s lost.

  That’s when Linda stands up. She stands up, out of my arms, and starts tiptoeing away through the water. It seems to me she wants to be on her own, so I stand up. I walk to the tower at the top of the hill. I look up the rungs of the metal ladder and then begin climbing it, rung by rung, straight up, concentrating on the individual rungs as I come to them. And when I get to the top, to the perforated metal platform, I look down and she’s still there, walking through the pool. I look out and can see over the rolling hills, and although the sky is filled with clouds I can see the horizon in 360 degrees. The expression “takes your breath away” would be appropriate here because my heart or lungs seem to fill with so much air that it’s difficult to breathe. I’m looking off in all the various directions, and although I’m looking at the view, I’m thinking about Anne.

  * * *

  Remember the bathtub? That claw-foot bathtub? That was probably your favorite place to be. I remember when we were first going out, still getting to know each other. I was in bed, not sleeping, just lazing around, and you got up. I felt you get up, crawl over me, and I remember the water running and you were gone. And you stayed gone. And I began to wonder what happened to you. And when you continued to stay gone I got up and followed the silence, because by then the water had stopped flowing and it was absolutely quiet. And I didn’t knock, I just very slowly opened the door to the bathroom. A candle was burning on a little white table you had—this was your apartment on Ninth Street—and the candle was the only light. You were in the tub, naked of course, and what I remember was your beauty. We’d made love before so I’d seen you naked but this was a different kind of nakedness. You saw me, you looked at me, but nothing changed because of me. You were there, in the tub, and you let me look at you, just as you were letting the sink and the toilet and the candle look at you. You were existing, without façade or artifice. Just being. And I stood there for some time, a long time, seeing your body in the tub, with the water of the tub still and smooth, your face damp, your eyes open, desireless, and you were looking at me. It was the most relaxed you’d ever been with me, the most available you’d ever been. That was the moment you let the world—and I was part of that world—see you. And it could have been my moment too, but it wasn’t. Even though you were sharing it with me, and were willing to share it with me, I didn’t feel it was mine. It was something I seemed incapable of understanding, or deserving, and because it was your moment, I envied you for having it. Later, I washed your back and then other parts of your body and we talked and laughed and I got wet and days went by but that moment, that long moment when you lay stretched out under the clear water, because of that one time seeing you, pure and effortless and still, I never saw you again in quite the same way. I never saw you again as beautiful because I never wanted you to be as beautiful as in that moment. In my mind I was always comparing myself with who you were when you were perfect. You know what they say. “Things happen,” and “Life goes on,” and now I’m here, standing under the sky, thinking of you—somewhere—under the same sky, and when I imagine you, the person I see is the person you were, the person submerged in the water, looking back at me, your eyes filled with what I wanted. But at the time I didn’t realize how much I wanted it.

  7.

  Linda and I drive back to the motel. As we stand at the back stairway, as she’s about to say goodbye and head up the stairs that lead to the second floor, that’s when her friends come out. I meet the other girl and the guy. They’ve been worried, but now they’re smiling and friendly, glad to meet this new fellow, named Jack, who she introduces.

  They all seem nice enough but I’m not saying hello. And the reason I’m not is that I’m wondering who they really are and what they know about Anne. I’m not saying, “Nice to meet you,” because I’m asking them questions. I’ve looked at the car, with its California license plate, but I still haven’t convinced myself it isn’t my car.

  I ask them about the gas station in New Jersey. They tell me they’ve never been there. I ask them why they’re driving separate cars, and the man—the other woman is quiet—tells me, in a British accent, that they’re taking a car to his mother, that it’s his mother’s car and they’re driving it for her.

  Standing there in the middle of the stairway, I’m vaguely aware that I’m speaking too loudly, with too much excitement, but I can’t help it. I’m seeing them across some kind of gap, and because it’s my gap, they don’t quite understand. They seem to be honest, friendly, good-looking people telling me about their trip, and the more they talk, the more I realize
they’re actually telling me the truth.

  And thank god for envy, because without it I could easily let their honesty open my eyes. I could very easily believe that the car is not my car, and convince myself of that. It’s amazing how little attention I’d actually given my car when it was mine. It was just a car. Nothing I took the time to notice really, so that now, faced with my lack of awareness, I’m wishing I’d lived a little differently. If I had I might know. And because I don’t know, I feel lost. I have no idea what I’m doing, only that I have to keep doing it. I started with a belief that used to be mine, and now that belief is a habit so I keep it alive.

  In my, not heart or mind, but in my sadness and my desperation, and my desire to keep my life intact, I can’t believe them. And at the same time I can’t not believe them. I’m caught in the gap of envy, between what I want to be happening and what actually is. And what I want is surety. No negative capability for me. I want what they have. I envy them their ability to move forward with ease and confidence. Although they’re not all Americans, they have the confidence and complacence of Americans, the attitude of ownership that makes them seem American. And since I’m also American, I want the same set of sureties. Although I despise the attitude, I want the kind of confidence which might protect me from the desire for things to be different. And I don’t feel I have it.

  They’re talking to me and saying things to me and I’m making appropriate responses. There’s still the gap between where I am (with the well-intentioned people) and where I want to be (with my belief that they’re the cause of my pain), but after a while, maintaining that gap is just too difficult. Without knowing it and without intending it, I step out of the limbo of that gap, break through the membrane between what I want to believe and what is there. These people are there and I see what they are, and however briefly, I see that they’re not the lovers of Anne or the abductors of Anne. I see, through my own needs and desires, to them.