– What do you intend to do, F.?
– There is a statue of Queen Victoria on the north side of Sherbrooke Street. We have passed it many times on our way to the darkness of the System Theatre. It is a pleasant statue of Queen Victoria in early womanhood before pain and loss had made her fat. It is cast in copper which is now green with age. Tomorrow night I will place a charge of dynamite on her metal lap. It is only the copper effigy of a dead Queen (who knew, incidentally, the meaning of love), it is only a symbol, but the State deals in symbols. Tomorrow night I will blow that symbol to smithereens – and myself with it.
– Don’t do it, F. Please.
– Why not?
I know nothing about love, but something like love tore the following words from my throat with a thousand fishhooks:
– BECAUSE I NEED YOU, F.
A sad smile spread on my friend’s face. He extracted his left hand from my warm pocket, and extending his arms as if in a benediction he crushed me to his Egyptian shirt in a warm bear hug.
– Thank you. Now I know that I have taught you enough.
– BECAUSE I NEED YOU, F.
– Stop whimpering.
– BECAUSE I NEED YOU, F.
– Hush.
– BECAUSE I NEED THEE, F.
– Goodbye.
I felt lonely and cold as he walked away, the brown books along the steel shelves rustling like windy heaps of fallen leaves, each with the same message of exhaustion and death. As I set this down I have a clear impression of F.’s pain. His pain! Oh yes, as I peel off this old scab of history, gleaming like one pure triumphant drop of red blood – his pain.
– Goodbye, he called to me over his muscular shoulder. Listen for the explosion tomorrow night. Keep your ear next to the ventilation shaft.
Like the frozen moonlight through the windows of this shack, his pain floods my recognition, altering the edge, color, and weight of each possession in my heart.
51
Kateri Tekakwitha
calling you, calling you, calling you, testing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 my poor unelectric head calling you loud and torn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lost in needles of pine, tenant of meat freezer, fallen on squeezed knees searching hair for antennae, rubbing blue Aladdin prick, calling you, testing sky cables, poking blood buttons, finger fucks in star porridge, dentist drill in forehead bone, broken like convict stone, calling you calling you, frightened of stew, signals filthy laundry of this mind rubber girls aside, wafer banana skins of vaudeville, black air filled with pies of humiliation, no AC outlet beneath scalped hair, testing, testing the last dance, rubber scorpion on pillow of tit, handfuls of milk flung at doctors, calling you to call me, calling you to pull me if only once, fake proof accepted, plastic birchbark accepted, calling, artificial limb accepted, Hong Kong sex auxiliaries accepted, money confessions accepted, wigs of celanese acetate accepted, come pills, postcards of old-fashioned uncle sucking accepted even as ideal brown Plato, movie seat rubbing accepted, fat stage tease accepted and lap hats hiding hairy windows of underwear accepted, gratefully accepted, astrology boredom accepted, wife limit accepted, cop-gun deaths, urban voodoo accepted, false harem smells accepted, dimes accepted, seance feels up lonely old lady thighs, criminal bridge sales accepted, Zabbatai vote buttons worn in stigmata places, market Moses horns, square earth theories accepted, microscope girdles for Tom that failed, cunt dictionaries illustrated deceptively in vellum fuzz, calling you now, all reasons accepted, rope buttock creases, luminous highway Mary houses, pharmacy visions un-revoked, Zen Ph.D. tolerated, unpolished enemas, no references required, academic fashion ecstasy believed, dirty cars, all my baffled unbelief calling you with bowed physical brain terror, testing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, unelectric head calling.
52
Phrase-book on my knees, I beseech the Virgin everywhere.
KATERI TEKAKWITHA AT THE WASH HOUSE
(hers the lovely italics)
I bring you linens for washing
I need them until to-morrow
what do you think? Can you get them ready until tomorrow?
they are absolutely necessary to me
especially my shirts
as for the others, I must have them the most late until the day after tomorrow
I want them entirely new and clear
a shirt is missing for me, a handkerchief and a pair of stockings, too
I want this back
I want this costume to be cleared
when can I get it?
I have, too, a dress, a coat, trousers, a tressed waistcoat, a blouse, underclothes, stockings, so forth.
I shall come back again after three days to get them
please, iron them for me
yes, sir. Come to get them
what do you think about the trousers?
I like it. That’s what I want
when will my suit be ready?
after a week
it takes a lot of work
I shall make you a wonderful suit
I shall come to take it myself
no, don’t come!
we shall send it ourselves to your house, sir
good. Then I shall be waiting for it on next Saturday
the suit is dear
the suit is cheap
you are a good tailor
thank you
goodbye.
later I shall get another one
as you like, sir
we shall satisfy you very much
KATERI TEKAKWITHA AT THE TOBACCONISTS
(hers the lovely italics)
Can you, please, tell me where is a tovacconist-shop?
at the corner of the road on the right, sir
in front of you, sir
give me, please, a box of cigarettes
what kind of cigarettes have you?
We have excellent cigarettes
I want some tobacco for pipe
I want heavy cigarettes
I want light cigarettes
Give me a box of matches, too
I want a cigarette-case, a good lighter, cigarettes
how much do all these cost?
twenty shillings, sir
thank-you. Goot-bye
KATERI TEKAKWITHA AT THE BARBER’S SHOP
(hers the lovely italics)
the hair-dresser
the hair
the beard
the moustache
the soap
the cold water
the comb
the brush
I want to shave myself
please, sit down!
please, come in!
please, shave me!
please, cut my hair very short behind
not very short
wash my hair!
please, brush me
I shall come back
I’m pleased
until when is the barber’s shop open?
until 8 o’clock in the evening
I shall come to shave myself regularly
thank-you, goodbye
we will treat you as well as we can, because you are our client
KATERI TEKAKWITHA AT THE POST-OFFICE
(hers the lovely italics)
where is the Post-Office, sir?
I’m a foreign here, excuse me
ask that sir
he knows French, German
he will help you
please, show me the Post-Office
it’s there on the opposite side
I want to send a letter
give me some postage-stamps
I want to send something
I want to send a telegram
I want to send a package
I want to send an urgent letter
have you your passport?
have you your identity?
yes, sir
I want to send a check
give me a post card
how much will I pay for sending a package?
15 shillings, sir
&n
bsp; thank-you goodbye
KATERI TEKAKWITHA AT THE TELEGRAPHIC-OFFICE
(hers the lovely italics)
what do you want, sir?
I want to send a telegram
with a paid answer?
how much does the word cost?
fifty pence a word
a telegram for
it’s dear, but never mind
will the telegram be late to go?
how long does it take to go?
two days, sir
It isn’t a long time
I shall send a telegram to my parents to
I hope that they will take it tomorrow
there is a long time and I didn’t get any news from them
I think they will answer to me telegraphically
take, please, the money for the telegram
goodbye. Thanks.
KATERI TEKAKWITHA AT THE BOOKSELLER’S
(hers the lovely italics)
goodmornig, sir
may I choose any books?
with pleasure. What do you want? Choose!
I want to buy a journey book
I want to know England and Ireland
Do you want anything else?
I want a lot of books, but, as I see, they are dear
we shall do a little decline of prices for you if you get many books
we have books of every kind. Cheap and dear
do you want them bound or not bound?
I want bound books
those they aren’t destroyed
here they are
How much does it cost?
four dollars
have you any dictionary?
I have
please, envelop them
I shall take them with me
thank you very much goodbye!
O God, O God, I have asked for too much, I have asked for every thing! I hear myself asking for everything in every sound I make. I did not know, in my coldest terror, I did not know how much I needed. O God, I grow silent as I hear myself begin to pray:
My Dear Friend,
Five years with the length of five years. I do not know exactly where this letter finds you. I suppose you have thought often of me. You were always my favorite male orphan. Oh, much more than that, much more, but I do not choose, for this last written communication, to expend myself in easy affection.
If my lawyers have performed according to my instructions, you are now in possession of my worldly estate, my soap collection, my factory, my Masonic aprons, my treehouse. I imagine you have already appropriated my style. I wonder where my style has led you. As I stand on this last springy diving board I wonder where my style has led me.
I am writing this last letter in the Occupational Therapy Room. I have let women lead me anywhere, and I am not sorry. Convents, kitchens, perfumed telephone booths, poetry courses – I followed women anywhere. I followed women into Parliament because I know how they love power. I followed women into the beds of men so that I could learn what they found there. The air is streaked with the smoke of their perfume. The world is clawed with their amorous laughter. I followed women into the world, because I loved the world. Breasts, buttocks, everywhere I followed the soft balloons. When women hissed at me from brothel windows, when they softly hissed at me over the shoulders of their dancing husbands, I followed them and I sank down with them, and sometimes when I listened to their hissing I knew it was nothing but the sound of the withering and collapse of their soft balloons.
This is the sound, this hissing, which hovers over every woman. There is one exception. I knew one woman who surrounded herself with a very different noise, maybe it was music, maybe it was silence. I am speaking, of course, about our Edith. It is five years now that I have been buried. Surely you know by now that Edith could not belong to you alone.
I followed the young nurses to Occupational Therapy. They have covered the soft balloons with starched linen, a pleasant tantalizing cover which my old lust breaks as easily as an eggshell. I have followed their dusty white legs.
Men also give off a sound. Do you know what our sound is, dear frayed friend? It is the sound you hear in male sea shells. Guess what it is. I will give you three guesses. You must fill in the lines. The nurses like to see me use my ruler.
The nurses like to lean over my shoulder and watch me use my red plastic ruler. They hiss through my hair and their hisses have the aroma of alcohol and sandalwood, and their starched clothes crackle like the white tissue paper and artificial straw which creamy chocolate Easter eggs come in.
Oh, I am happy today. I know that these pages will be filled with happiness. Surely you did not think that I would leave you with a melancholy gift.
Well, what are your answers? Isn’t it remarkable that I have extended your training over this wide gulf?
It is the very opposite of a hiss, the sound men make. It is Shhh, the sound made around the index finger raised to the lips. Shhh, and the roofs are raised against the storm. Shhh, the forests are cleared so the wind will not rattle the trees. Shhh, the hydrogen rockets go off to silence dissent and variety. It is not an unpleasant noise. It is indeed a perky tune, like the bubbles above a clam. Shhh, will everybody listen, please. Will the animals stop howling, please. Will the belly stop rumbling, please. Will Time call off its ultrasonic dogs, please.
It is the sound my ball pen makes on the hospital paper as I run it down the edge of the red ruler. Shhh, it says to the billion unlines of whiteness. Shhh, it whispers to the white chaos, lie down in dormitory rows. Shhh, it implores the dancing molecules, I love dances but I do not love foreign dances, I love dances that have rules, my rules.
Did you fill in the lines, old friend? Are you sitting in a restaurant or a monastery as I lie underground? Did you fill in the lines? You didn’t have to, you know. Did I trick you again?
Now what about this silence we are so desperate to clear in the wilderness? Have we labored, plowed, muzzled, fenced so that we might hear a Voice? Fat chance. The Voice comes out of the whirlwind, and long ago we hushed the whirlwind. I wish that you would remember that the Voice comes out of the whirlwind. Some men, some of the time, have remembered. Was I one?
I will tell you why we nailed up the cork. I am a born teacher and it is not my nature to keep things to myself. Surely five years have tortured and tickled you into that understanding. I always intended to tell you everything, the complete gift. How is your constipation, darling?
I imagine they are about twenty-four years old, these soft balloons that are floating beside me this very second, these Easter candies swaddled in official laundry. Twenty-four years of journey, almost a quarter of a century, but still youth for breasts. They have come a long way to graze shyly at my shoulder as I gaily wield my ruler to serve someone’s definition of sanity. They are still young, they are barely young, but they hiss fiercely, and they dispense a heady perfume of alcohol and sandalwood. Her face gives nothing away, it is a scrubbed nurse’s face, family lines mercifully washed away, a face prepared to be a screen for our blue home movies as we sink in disease. A compassionate sphinx’s face to drip our riddles on, and, like paws buried in the sand, her round breasts claw and scratch against the uniform. Familiar? Yes, it is a face such as Edith often wore, our perfect nurse.
– Those are very nice lines you’ve drawn.
– I’m quite fond of them.
Hiss, hiss, run for your lives, the bombs are dying.
– Would you like some colored pencils?
– As long as they don’t marry our erasers.
Wit, invention, shhh, shhh, now do you see why we’ve soundproofed the forest, carved benches round the wild arena? To hear the hissing, to hear wrinkles squeezing out the bounce, to attend the death of our worlds. Memorize this and forget it. It deserves a circuit, but a very tiny circuit, in the brain. I might as well tell you that I exempt myself, as of now, from all these categories.
Play with me, old friend.
Take my spirit hand. You have been dip
ped in the air of our planet, you have been baptized with fire, shit, history, love, and loss. Memorize this. It explains the Golden Rule.
See me at this moment of my curious little history, nurse leaning over my work, my prick rotten and black, you saw my worldly prick decayed, but now see my visionary prick, cover your head and see my visionary prick which I do not own and never owned, which owned me, which was me, which bore me as a broom bears a witch, bore me from world to world, from sky to sky. Forget this.
Like many teachers, a lot of the stuff I gave away was simply a burden I couldn’t carry any longer. I feel my store of garbage giving out. Soon I’ll have nothing left to leave around but stories. Maybe I’ll attain the plane of spreading gossip, and thus finish my prayers to the world.
Edith was a promoter of sex orgies and a purveyor of narcotics. Once she had lice. Twice she had crabs. I’ve written crabs very small because there is a time and a place for everything, and a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity. I appear to be engrossed in my therapeutic exercises, she in the duties of supervision, but shhh, hiss, the noise of steam spreads through O.T., it mixes with the sunlight, it bestows a rainbow halo on each bowed head of sufferer, doctor, nurse, volunteer. You ought to look up this nurse sometime. She will be twenty-nine when my lawyers locate you and complete my material bequest.
Down some green corridor, in a large closet among pails, squeegees, antiseptic mops, Mary Voolnd from Nova Scotia will peel down her dusty white stockings and present an old man with the freedom of her knees, and we will leave nothing behind us but our false ears with which to pick up the steps of the approaching orderly.
Steam coming off the planet, clouds of fleecy steam as boy and girl populations clash in religious riots, hot and whistling like a graveyard sodomist our little planet embraces its fragile yo-yo destiny, tuned in the secular mind like a dying engine. But some do not hear it this way, some flying successful moon-shot eyes do not see it this way. They do not hear the individual noises shhh, hiss, they hear the sound of the sounds together, they behold the interstices flashing up and down the cone of the flowering whirlwind.
Do I listen to the Rolling Stones? Ceaselessly.
Am I hurt enough?
The old hat evades me. I don’t know if I can wait. The river that I’ll walk beside – I seem to miss it by a coin toss every year. Did I have to buy that factory? Was I obliged to run for Parliament? Was Edith such a good lay? My café table, my small room, my drugged true friends from whom I don’t expect too much – I seem to abandon them almost by mistake, for promises, phone calls casually made. The old hat, the rosy ugly old face that won’t waste time in mirrors, the uncombed face that will laugh amazed at the manifold traffic. Where is my old hat? I tell myself I can wait. I argue that my path was correct. Is it only the argument that is incorrect? Is it Pride that tempts me with intimations of a new style? Is it Cowardice that keeps me from an old ordeal? I tell myself: wait. I listen to the rain, to the scientific noises of the hospital. I get happy because of many small things. I go to sleep with the earplug of the transistor stuck in. Even my Parliamentary disgrace begins to evade me. My name appears more and more frequently among the nationalist heroes. Even my hospitalization has been described as an English trick to muzzle me. I fear I will lead a government yet, rotten prick and all. I lead men too easily: my fatal facility.
The Favourite Game & Beautiful Losers Page 33
