“Maybe so,” she laughed. “That orange shirt suits you.”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I went home during lunch and changed. I don’t live far from work so it was very convenient.”
Several of the appetizers arrived, and for the next few minutes we ate in silence. The flavors were light, delicate, subtle. The shrimp were consummately fresh, the oysters kissed by the sea.
“So did you finish with the unicorn business?” she asked, as she let an oyster roll into her mouth.
“More or less,” I said, wiping squid ink from my lips.
“And where were these unicorns?”
“In here,” I said, tapping my temple. “The unicorns were all in my head.”
“Symbolically speaking, you mean?”
“No, not at all. Do I seem like the symbolic type? They really were living in my consciousness. Someone found them out for me.”
“Well, I’m glad they were found. Sounds very interesting. Tell me more.”
“It’s not so very interesting,” I said, passing her the eggplant. She, in return, passed me the smelt.
“Still, I’d like to know more. Really I would.”
“Well, it’s like this. Deep in your consciousness there’s this core that is imperceptible to yourself. In my case, the core is a town. A town with a river flowing through it and a high brick wall surrounding it. None of the people in the town can leave. Only unicorns can go in and out. The unicorns absorb the egos of the townpeople like blotter paper and carry them outside the wall. So the people in the town have no ego, no self. I live in the town—or so the story goes. I don’t know any more than that, since I haven’t actually seen any of this with my own eyes.”
“Well, it’s certainly original, I’ll say that.”
River? The old man hadn’t said anything about a river.
“But it’s none of my creation, at least not that I’m aware of,” I said.
“It’s still yours, isn’t it? Nobody else made it.”
“Well, I guess.”
“The smelt’s not bad, eh?”
“Not bad.”
“All this does resemble a little that Russian unicorn story I read you, don’t you think?” she said, slicing through the eggplant. “The Ukranian unicorns were supposed to have lived in a completely isolated community.”
“It’s similar in that way, yes.”
“Maybe there’s some link …”
“Just a second,” I interrupted and reached into my blazer pocket. “I have a present for you.”
I handed her the small black leather case.
“What is it?” she asked, turning over the curious metal object she removed from the case.
“I’ll show you. Watch carefully.”
She watched.
“Nail clippers?”
“Right! Folds back in reverse order. Like this.”
“Very interesting,” she said. “Tell me, though, do you often give nail clippers to women?”
“No, you’re the first. Just now while I was waiting, I went into a hardware store and felt like buying something. The woodcarving sets were too big.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep them in my bag and think of you every time I use them.”
The appetizers were cleared away and presently the entrees were served. My hunger had hardly subsided. Six plates of appetizers hadn’t even put a dent in it. I shovelled a considerable volume of tagliatelle into my mouth in a relatively short period of time, then devoured half the macaroni. Having put that much under my belt, I could swear I saw faint lights looming up through darkness.
After the pasta, we sipped wine until the bass came.
“By the way,” she said, “about your apartment, was the destruction done by some special machine? Or was it a demolition team?”
“Maybe you could call him a machine, but it was the work of one person,” I said.
“Must have had a lot of determination.”
“You wouldn’t believe.”
“A friend of yours?”
“A total stranger.”
“It wouldn’t have had anything to do with that unicorn business?” she asked.
“It did. But nobody’d bothered to ask me what I thought from the very beginning.”
“And does that have something to do with your going away tomorrow?”
“Mm … yeah.”
“You must have gotten yourself caught in a terrible mess.”
“It’s so complicated, I myself don’t know what’s what. Well, in my case, the simplest explanation is that I’m up to here in information warfare.”
The waiter appeared suddenly with our fish and rice.
“I can’t follow all this,” she said, flaking her suzuki with the edge of her fork. “Our library is full of books and everyone just comes to read. Information is free to everyone and nobody fights over it.”
“I wish I’d worked in a library myself,” I said.
“The fish was exquisite,” she purred, after we’d finished off our entrees. “Especially the sauce.”
“Good butter sauce is an art,” I said. “It takes time. You stir finely minced shallots into melted butter, then heat it over a very low flame. No shortcuts.”
“Ah yes, you like to cook, don’t you?”
“Well, I used to. You need real dedication. Fresh ingredients, a discerning palate, an eye for presentation. It’s not a modern art. Good cooking has hardly evolved since the nineteenth century.”
“The lemon soufflé here is wonderful,” she said, as the desserts arrived. “You still have room?”
The grape ice was light, the soufflé tart, the expresso rich and heady. Once we’d finished, the chef came out to greet us.
“Magnificent meal,” we told him.
“It is a joy to cook for guests who love to eat,” said the chef. “Even in Italia, my family does not eat this much.”
“Why, thank you.” We took it as a compliment.
The chef returned to the kitchen and we ordered another espresso each.
“You’re the first person I’ve met who could match my appetite,” she said.
“I can still eat,” I said.
“I have some frozen pizza at home, and a bottle of Chivas.”
“Let’s do it.”
Her place was indeed near the library. A small prefab affair, but it had a real entryway and a yard, if only big enough for one person to lie down. Doubtless it got no sun, but there was an azalea bush over to one corner. There was even a second story.
“It’s really too much room for one person,” she explained. “We bought the house because my husband and I were planning to have kids. I paid back the loan with his life insurance.”
She took the pizza out of the freezer and popped it in the oven, then brought the Chivas Regal out to the living room table. While she opened a bottle of wine for herself, I selected a few tapes—Jackie McLean and Miles Davis and Wynton Kelly—and pushed the PLAY button on the cassette deck. We settled back to Bags’ Groove, followed by Surrey with a Fringe on Top, and drinks until the pizza was done.
“You like old jazz?” she asked.
“When I was in high school, I listened to jazz all the time in coffee shops.”
“And nowadays?”
“A bit of everything. I hear what people play me.”
“But you don’t listen of your own choosing?”
“Don’t need to.”
“My husband was something of a jazz buff. You probably had similar tastes. He was beaten to death in a bus, with an iron vase.”
“He what?”
“Some punk was using hair spray in a bus, and when my husband asked him to quit, the guy brained him with an iron vase.”
I didn’t know what to say. “What was the kid doing carrying an iron vase?”
“Who knows?” she answered. “It was a pitiful way to die.”
The oven timer rang: the pizza was done. Si
tting side by side on the sofa, we each ate half.
“Want to see a unicorn skull?” I asked.
“A real one?” she said. “You honestly have one?”
“A replica. Not the real thing.”
I went out to the car. It was a tranquil early October night. Here and there a patch of sky cut through the cloud cover to reveal a near-full moon. Fair weather tomorrow.
I returned with the Nike sports bag and produced the towel-wrapped skull. She set down her wine glass and examined the skull up close.
“Extremely well made, I’ll say that much.”
“It was made by a skull specialist,” I explained, taking a sip of whiskey.
“It’s as good as real.”
I stopped the cassette deck, took the fire tongs out of the bag, and tapped the skull. The skull gave off the same parched mo-oan.
“What’s that?”
“Each skull has a unique resonance. And a skull expert can read all sorts of things from these sounds.”
“Incredible!” she exclaimed. She then tried striking the skull with the tongs herself. “I can’t believe this is a replica.”
She set the skull on the table and reclaimed her wine glass. We scooted together, raised our glasses, and gazed at the skull.
“Put on more music,” she smiled suggestively.
I chose another couple of cassettes and returned to the sofa.
“Is here okay? Or shall we go upstairs?”
“Here’s perfect,” I said.
Pat Boone sang softly, I’ll Be Home. Time seemed to flow in the wrong direction, which was fine by me. Time could go whichever way it pleased.
She drew the lace curtain on the window to the yard and turned out the lights. We stripped by moonlight. She removed her necklace, removed her bracelet-watch, took off her velvet dress. I undid my watch and threw it over the back of the sofa. Then I doffed my blazer, loosened my necktie, and bottomed-up the last of my whiskey.
She rolled down her panty hose as a bluesy Ray Charles came on with Georgia on My Mind. I closed my eyes, put both feet up on the table and swizzled the minutes around in my head like the ice in a drink. Everything, everything, seemed once-upon-a-time. The clothes on the floor, the music, the conversation. Round and round it goes, and where it stops everyone knows. Like a dead heat on the merry-go-round. No one pulls ahead, no one gets left behind. You always get to the same spot.
“It seems so long ago,” I said, my eyes still shut.
“Of course, silly,” she said mysteriously, taking the glass from my hand and undoing the buttons of my shirt. Slowly, deliberately, as if stringing green beans.
“How’d you know?”
“I just know,” she said. She put her lips to my bare chest. Her long hair swept over my stomach.
Eyes closed, I gave my body over to sensation. I thought about the suzuki, I thought about the nail clippers, I thought about the snail on the cleaners’ front stoop. I opened my eyes and drew her to me, reaching around behind to undo the hook of her brassiere. There was no hook.
“Up front,” she prompted.
Things do evolve after all.
We made love three times. We took a shower, then snuggled together on the sofa under a blanket while Bing Crosby crooned away. Euphoria. My erections had been perfect as the pyramids at Giza. Her hair smelled fresh and wonderful. The sofa cushions were nice and firm. Not bad, from back in the days when sofas were sofas.
I sang along with Bing:
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling—
It’s you, it’s you must go, and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
And when the alley’s hushed and white with snow.
It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny Boy, I’ll miss you so!
“A favorite of yours?” she asked.
“Yeah, I like it well enough,” I said. “I won a dozen pencils in a school harmonica contest playing this tune.”
She laughed. “Life’s funny like that.”
“A laugh a minute.”
She put on Danny Boy so I could sing it again.
But if you fall as all the flowers’re dying,
And you are dead, as dead you well may be,
I’ll come and find the place where you are lying,
And kneel and say an ave there for thee.
But come ye back when summer’s in—
The second time through made me terribly sad.
“Send me letters from wherever it is you’re going,” she said, touching me.
“I will,” I promised. “If it’s the sort of place I can mail letters from.”
She poured wine into both our glasses.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Nighttime,” she answered.
36
Accordion
DO you truly feel you can read out my mind?” she asks.
“Yes. Your mind has been here all along, but I have not known where to seek it. And yet the way must have already been shown to me.”
We sit on the floor of the stacks, backs against the wall, and look up at the rows of skulls that tell us nothing.
“Perhaps if you tried to think back. One thing at a time,” she suggests.
The floor is cold. I close my eyes, and my ears resound with the silence of the skulls.
“This morning, the old men were digging a hole outside the house. A very big hole. The sound of their shovels woke me. It was as if they were digging in my head. Then the snow came and filled it.”
“And before that?”
“You and I went to the Woods, to the Power Station. We met the Caretaker. He showed me the works. The wind made an amazing noise.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Then I received an accordion from him. A small folding accordion, old, but still usable.”
She sits, thinking and rethinking. The temperature in the room is falling, minute by minute.
“Do you have your accordion?” she asks.
“The accordion?” I question.
“Yes, it may be the key. The accordion is connected to song, song is connected to my mother, my mother is connected to my mind. Could that be right?”
“It does follow,” I say, “though one important link is missing from the chain. I cannot recall a single song.”
“It need not be a song.”
I retrieve the accordion from the pocket of my coat and sit beside her again, instrument in hand. I slip my hands into the straps on either end of the bellows and press out several chords.
“Beautiful!” she exclaims. “Are the sounds like wind?”
“They are wind,” I say. “I create wind that makes sounds, then put them together.”
She closes her eyes and opens her ears to the harmonies.
I produce all the chords I have practiced. I move the fingers of my right hand along the buttons in order, making single notes. No melody comes, but it is enough to bring the wind in the sounds to her. I have only to give myself to the wind as the birds do.
No, I cannot relinquish my mind.
At times my mind grows heavy and dark; at other times it soars high and sees forever. By the sound of this tiny accordion, my mind is transported great distances.
I call up different images of the Town behind closed eyes. Here are the willows on the sandbar, the Watchtower by the Wall in the west, the small tilled plot behind the Power Station. The old men sitting in the patch of sun in front of my quarters, the beasts crouching in the pooled waters of the River, summer grasses bowing in the breeze on the stone steps of the canal. I remember visiting the Pool in the south with the Librarian. I view the Abandoned Barracks near the north Wall, the ruins of the house and well near the Wall in the Woods.
I think of all the people I have met here. The Colonel next door, the old men of the Officia
l Residences, the Caretaker of the Power Station, the Gatekeeper—each now in his own room, no doubt, listening to the blizzard outside.
Each place and person I shall lose forever; each face and feature I shall remember the rest of my life. If this world is wrong, if its inhabitants have no mind, whose fault is that? I feel almost a … love … toward the Town. I cannot stay in this place, yet I do not want to lose it.
Presently, I sense within me the slightest touch. The harmony of one chord lingers in my mind. It fuses, divides, searches—but for what? I open my eyes, position the fingers of my right hand on the buttons, and play out a series of permutations.
After a time, I am able, as if by will, to locate the first four notes. They drift down from inward skies, softly, as early morning sunlight. They find me; these are the notes I have been seeking.
I hold down the chord key and press the individual notes over and over again. The four notes seem to desire further notes, another chord. I strain to hear the chord that follows. The first four notes lead me to the next five, then to another chord and three more notes.
It is a melody. Not a complete song, but the first phrase of one. I play the three chords and twelve notes, also, over and over again. It is a song, I realize, that I know.
Danny Boy.
The title brings back the song: chords, notes, harmonies now flow naturally from my fingertips. I play the melody again.
When have I last heard a song? My body has craved music. I have been so long without music, I have not even known my own hunger. The resonance permeates; the strain eases within me. Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
The whole Town lives and breathes in the music I play. The streets shift their weight with my every move. The Wall stretches and flexes as if my own flesh and skin. I repeat the song several times, then set the accordion down on the floor, lean back, and close my eyes. Everything here is a part of me—the Wall and Gate and Woods and River and Pool. It is all my self.
Long after I set down the instrument, she clings to me with both hands, eyes closed. Tears run down her cheeks. I put my arm around her shoulder and touch my lips to her eyelids. The tears give her a moist, gentle heat.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Page 34
