Jazz comes and inspects the stick Benchere has picked up from the pile. He bites at the end, pulls against the grip. Benchere looks again toward his sculpture and then at Deyna watching him. Her features are classic, the angles and expressions found in paintings by Morisot or the sculptures of Leo Mol. He pictures Mol’s Anne, the bronze casting of a woman seated naked, inscrutable in her posture, meditative, her thoughts distant, her strength and intelligence clear. Her wave of thick hair is moved back as a singular action, revealing only what she wishes to show of her face.
In contrast, Benchere thinks of Marti, sees Aphrodite by Saint Clair Cemin. The goddess sculpted in copper, honed in primitive form, the maternal figure, indomitable, hieratical, with rounded hips balanced and affectively forged. Beautiful, both ancient and immediate, Benchere can hear her calling, Here I am. Before and after me there is no more.
One by one the lanterns around camp flicker off. Mund’s patrol passes twice. The breeze through the menagerie of tents moves the fabrics ever so slightly, and yet by the sheer number in camp the sound is like that of a collective thrashing. Deyna wipes sand from her jeans, starts over, her voice like Marti’s, full of chafe and amusement. “You’re not fooling me,” she says. “If you have sympathy for the demonstrators, why should it matter how they use you?”
“Back to that again.”
“That, yes. It’s really something what’s happened.”
“It’s a freak occurrence is all.” Benchere reaches for the whiskey bottle, heavy with the sand. He shifts about, looks for a way to make things clearer. “Whether I feel for the folks in Mutare or not is irrelevant,” he answers. “My personal politics are just that. My beliefs are mine and my art is something different.” He leans forward as if to stand, is used to asserting his height as leverage. No sooner does he do so, however, than he sits back down again, does not wish to tower over Deyna, prefers to look directly at her. “What I’m trying to tell you,” he says, “is that art is not some thump drum billy club stick. When I make a sculpture, I’m not trying to tell anyone what they should see. That decision is up to them. Even if I feel for them, and I do,” Benchere continues, sincerely so and for the first time here with a hint of the conflict in his judgment. “It’s not ok for any group to force feed their interpretation of my sculpture onto the masses and then use my name and my art to support their agenda. This is bullshit,” he gives animation, bobs his head and stomps the sand. “What if Mugabe did this?” he argues. “What if Mugabe used my name and my sculpture’s image to support his politics? Would you say he had a right, too?”
“That’s different,” Deyna replies.
“How so?”
“Because you don’t support Mugabe.” She says again, “You support the demonstrators.”
“That herring’s red,” Benchere pours the sand from the whiskey bottle, lets it gather between his boots. “This isn’t about me. It’s about art,” he jabs the air with both index fingers extended.
Deyna tries again, says of Benchere’s main complaint, “It’s all well and fine to describe art as belonging independently to each individual, but when you have exactly that,” she says of Mutare, “when hundreds of individuals have the same view and come together to reinforce their interpretation of your sculpture, how is that a problem?”
“It’s a problem because that’s not what happened. Individuals did not come freely to their opinion of my sculpture. The demonstrators created a convenient perception of what they wanted my sculpture to mean and demanded everyone else think the same.” Benchere reaches for another stick and pokes it in the fire, goes on again about the progressive modernists, Jean-Paul Laurens, Edouard Manet and others producing social billboards, how once a painting or a sculpture is used as an instrument to further a specific cause it’s no longer art.
He shows the stick now burning, chants the rally cry of Theophile Gautier, “L’art pour l’art!” then tosses the stick onto the fire, quotes James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who wrote: “Art should be independent of all claptrap, should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of the eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it.” In his own words Benchere says, “Art is no backyard totem. You don’t use art to sell laundry soap and you damn well don’t use it as a pistol prop in some African rebellion.”
The light of the fire is bright enough still to create shadows. Deyna follows across Benchere’s face, from the half-lit to the half-shaded. Rather than argue further the surface points of his contention, the academic observations and distinctions made, she looks for the root and asks him then, “If art is meant to move each individual separately without ever dictating what they see, and groups and gatherings are not supposed to impose their interpretation either, the implication is still that art is there to move people toward something.”
“It’s true.”
“And what is that thing?”
“This,” Benchere says and slaps his chest then throws out his arms with such force as to surprise himself. He gives Deyna a look, different from before. I know, I know, he almost says. If setting up in the desert and refusing to invest in anything other than mounting steel upon steel three hundred feet high appears as a fully effected form of escape, if his ambition seems an effort to create further distance, as he denies any connection between himself and the demonstrators in Mutare, between himself and the people who have come to the Kalahari because of him, between himself and anyone with him now, there is nonetheless the sincerity of his outburst, the way he howled This! and exposed absolutely the clarity of his purpose and appreciation for life.
Deyna stares back at Benchere. There is something perfect in his response. This! The thumping of his chest makes her happy, makes her think despite all of Benchere’s other declarations that he is still determined and fighting through. This is what she wants for him, more than the connection his BAA students see for his sculpture, more than the link between the world and his art. And still, she knows, there are other nights when Benchere is moored differently, and weighted with the past, is able to speak of nothing but Marti.
Here is another truth: What was, is. It’s foolish of her to push at ghosts. She has an advanced degree in the study of things dead and gone and what consequence the past has on the present. To deny is a mistake, and yet it was Benchere who howled, Benchere who slapped his chest and told her, and what is she to do now? Her training as a scientist makes it her job to resolve what initially appears lost; the chase of things buried deeply. It’s her belief that where she digs something will be found. That she can never be completely sure what that something will be lends mystery to her application and forces her to rely more than she otherwise would on the unempirical state of faith.
A twig cracks in the fire. Deyna watches the sparks rise then settle. She places her feet back on the crate. The sounds out in the desert include the occasional animal roar, which causes Jazz to lift his head. Deyna’s hair has been cut in response to the heat. A convenience, and still it flatters her, complements her eyes and cheeks. Benchere notices, though has yet to comment, his restraint strictly imposed; even if he wanted he has no idea what to tell her.
The sculpture stands outsized, creates shapes upon shapes in the dark. The sky is a vast charcoal pane dotted by starlight. Benchere looks up, spots Leo Major flipped over and lying on its back. Jazz has settled again to the left of Benchere’s chair. The cries in the distance grow louder. Benchere dismisses the jackals, says, “It’s nothing.” He tries to downplay his earlier chest thump, sends his hand out sweeping once more, takes in the expanse and says, “What I meant by this is everything. I mean, what is now is this. Here. When I finish here it will be something different.” The claim is confessional, exposes more than intended. He tries again, a clumsy Benchere, he hasn’t performed this poorly in a long time. He starts over, stutters and stumbles and struggles again.
Deyna finds a sweetness in Benchere’s frustration. He begins anew, falters then and stops himself once more, points this time, d
oes not even realize he’s about to do so until he asks, “Did you cut your hair?”
A scarabaeidae beetle, grey against the sands, digs upwards, draws Jazz’s attention. Deyna turns back to the fire, feels the heat like a blush against Benchere’s question.
Benchere moves his hat forward then lifts his head again, finds Ophiuchus there besides the Milky Way. He tries not to think, focuses instead on the sky and the array of stars containing their own eager majesty. He pictures Avenue de Clichy in the Evening by Anquetin and van Gogh’s Starry Night trilogy, imagines the forming of the constellations, the chaos before and after the first universal explosion.
“There’s a quote from Goya,” he tells Deyna. “Marti liked him. We have a Goya painting. A print. I have it now.” He pauses for a second then recites the quote: “Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and origin of marvels.”
“I like that,” Deyna says.
“The stars are a fantasy,” Benchere tells her. “But there’s a reason they’re here.”
Deyna smiles. The beetle Jazz has been hunting burrows beneath her chair as she weighs her reply, hesitates then goes ahead and says, “I think Goya’s right. At some point you have to make sense of your fantasies, but I think the opposite is also true. Reason without fantasy is like art without imagination. It’s a sterile fish.”
The twitching that is Benchere’s finger dance stops. Did you just say …? He brings his head forward, lowers his arms for balance and grabs the bottom of his chair. “A sterile fish is it?” He starts to laugh but the sound he makes comes out more as a struck calf’s moo. He releases his grip and rubs hard at his chin. Ophiuchus shines. The height of Benchere’s sculpture casts the moon heads into the stars. The armatures crooked and the thick trunked beams below give the piece human form, appears as Phaethon on the verge of bursting skyward in an effort to gather up what is there.
Across the way, the glow from the Africana’s fire burns orange. Coals made from charring down acacia wood are set inside a shallow pit. Zooie sleeps with Daimon, Julie now with Naveed. Linda sits and talks with Harper, has struck up a friendship, while the BAA students have adopted the Iowa three. The rows of tents stretch past where Benchere can see in the dark. The Munds have moved just east of their original spot, inviting all of their followers to join them. Benchere looks off again, then back at Deyna. He recalls the first afternoon they met, how he asked her with some confusion, Who are you? Confused again, he pushes away from his chair and stands.
Jazz runs once around the fire and stops. Whereas in Tiverton he would race through the house each night in search of Marti, in the Kalahari, with no point of reference, he has abandoned this. It’s understandable, Benchere thinks. Everything in the desert is different. He brushes his hands across the front of his jeans, gives another long look at his sculpture out beneath the stars, then turns to Deyna and says goodnight.
LINDA SITS ON Harper’s cot, the mosquito netting rolled behind her, a Lucky Strike in her left hand. Harper has brought the cigarettes from Pomfret, smuggled through without their tariff stamps. Linda has gone with him twice, likes to fly in the Maule, jokes about gaining a new appreciation for the cockpit. Theirs is a harmless banter, what passes as physical between them is mostly sport. Harper cracks, “Come on, I’m old enough to be your brother.”
Benchere comes into the tent and sits on a spare wooden crate. Linda launches smoke rings off her tongue. The circles dissolve slowly, like miniature clouds. Earlier, Harper had worked on one of the generators, cleaning out the base skid, the reduction gear and air inlet, replacing the oil cooler with the spare he was wise enough to bring along. The motor charged gives a general hum to the air. Linda hands Benchere water, says, “What’s the worry there, captain?”
“Nothing. I’m good.”
“You look a little flustered.”
“It’s nothing,” Benchere says again.
“Nightcap?” Harper offers. Benchere considers then says no.
Linda mentions the news from Mutare. “Some day, huh?”
“Someday, Darling,” Harper winks and Linda scolds. “You keep that wish, sailor.”
Benchere rubs the back of his neck. Whatever impulse had him coming to talk, he changes his mind now. Linda leans over and drops her cigarette into the tin can. Harper keeps an eye on Benchere. He reaches into the can and fishes around for the butt, straightens what smolders and puffs it back to life. Untying his boots, he removes the left one first, pulls down his sock and shows his pterodactyl toes. His nails have yellowed and his heel is calloused. “So,” he, too, senses in Benchere’s mood an agitation. “What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up,” Benchere wishes he hadn’t come.
Harper puffs twice more, drops the butt back into the can. “Where’s Deyna?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Why should I know?”
“Weren’t you hanging out by the fire?”
“It’s late. I left.”
“I see,” Harper looks now at Linda who takes the cue and says, “I like her.”
“Who?”
“Deyna.”
Harper undoes his second boot. Benchere on the crate forms a Buddha shape. His face is clenched, defensive. Harper drops his boot, stretches his legs out from the chair, sets his heels atop the tarp. “I like her, too,” he says.
Benchere rises, his body stiff and not as easy to unfold as it once was. “I’m going to go,” he says.
“What?” Linda calls. “But you just got here.”
“I’m tired,” Benchere stands hunched inside the tent. “I just came to say goodnight.”
Harper shakes his head, has seen enough in the last few weeks to know, is more than guessing as he says, “Listen, you’re human.”
“Am I now? Thanks for that.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
“Do I?”
“Quit being so hard on yourself.”
“I’m not hard.”
“Oh, brother,” Linda laughs.
“Give yourself a break,” Harper goes for broke, becomes serious and says, “This is where you are now.”
“Goddamn it, Harper,” Benchere grabs at one of Harper’s loose boots and throws it at him. “Don’t start.”
“If you like this woman.”
“Fuck.”
“Well, I would not have put it so crudely, but yes.”
BACK IN HIS tent, Benchere drops into his chair. He finds his lantern and turns it to low. The air inside is a mix of kerosene, fresh biltong and old socks. A photograph of Marti, unframed, is taped to the far side flap. A pair of blue cargo shorts, a grey backpack, brown BU sweatshirt, three books and several tshirts lay scattered about. Benchere unties his boots and kicks them into a corner. The lantern draws his shadow across the floor. The mosquito netting around the cot has changed color from a once fresh white to a more jaundiced shade of near yellow. Benchere listens to the wind at play, pictures Deyna by the fire still and groans, “Aaargh.”
“What’s that?” Stern can almost hear through the headphones Rose is holding.
Rose adjusts the volume on the Electromax mic.
Jazz settles on the tarp near the cot. Benchere pulls off his sweater, lifts his t-shirt and wipes his face. He thinks of what Harper said and curses. Whatever feelings he’s having for Deyna, he swears they are sentimental at best. Circumstantial nonsense he calls them, not real affection, the attraction impersonal and reflexive. A spasm. Like staring at a bolt of lightning, the flash draws the eye but doesn’t last.
He folds his hands and swears again, “Fuck.”
“What?” says Stern.
“Bah,” Benchere drags his bare feet over the tarp. I will not think, he tells himself, tries to read but can’t. He lies down, gets up, calculates the time and considers skyping with Kyle. He recalls the story Deyna told last night, what she said after Harper and he presented their tales, how she called them inveterate do-gooders and how funny this was really. Sure,
maybe, in those three instances when everything was clear they had made the right choice and reacted in a way that was good, but those sorts of decisions, Benchere thinks now, are easy. Saving sick children and the homeless and helpless and what is that? What’s hard, Benchere knew, is doing right in the day-to-day, in knowing what to do and how to get on. Here is where he tended to fail, was gruff and loud and impatient. Terse with his students and tough on the fools he refused to suffer even when he understood a little kindness would have been better. He trusts his instincts only with his art, and with his love for Marti and his children, for Harper and Jazz in a different way and what else? What else now? Therein lies the question.
He remembers what he said to Deyna about influence, considers the irony, how influence is always the first sign, a symptom as it were, and where it all starts. In Deyna, there seems a sense of this now, the influence she has even against his resistance. He remembers with Marti, a related story, back before Zooie was born, a year or so after Kyle, he and Marti went to Cancun. On their second day they hired a sitter for Kyle and took a snorkeling trip. The brochure at the hotel sold them on warm clear waters in the Gulf and a five-star ship to charter them out. Professional divers were to watch over them, but when they got to the boat they found it was nothing more than an ancient Wreck Valley fishing tub operated by an old man and his daughter.
The day was overcast and the waters pitchy. Neither the old man nor the girl spoke much English and Benchere’s Spanish was rusty. There were seven other people on board, all tourists eager for adventure. The further they went out the rougher the waters became. The shore disappeared and the horizon ran flat against the sky. When the boat finally stopped and anchored, everyone was handed flippers, masks and a snorkel. The waves by then were large enough to rock the boat several feet high. What instructions they were given involved little more than a pantomime of how to fall backwards over the side.
Marti was the first in the water. Benchere soon followed. The power of the waves tossed them about, made snorkeling impossible as no sooner did they put their faces down than a wave would come and fill their air tubes. The water itself was green, much too thick to see through. They were given pellets to feed the fish but the schools came darting from out of the murk, all but invisible, frightening as they nipped and actually bit at Benchere’s fingers and Marti’s legs until all the food was dropped.
Benchere in Wonderland Page 14
