Knots
Page 9
* * *
Her starting point was Nick Cave’s song “(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For,” where he sings, among other things: “I knew you’d find me, ’cause I longed you here.” So, if one was to believe Cave, it was possible to long someone to you. One could imagine that Vitalie’s longing lay like a well-hidden egg in her chest and purred unseen with glorious, secret dreams. And inside the egg lay her longing, which was not going to transform into a bird. No, it was shiny and thin, like a fishing line. The line lay coiled in Vitalie’s chest and grew and grew like a baby bird until one day, one day she was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and listening to her father tramping around in the next room—she was so fed up with that tramping! She couldn’t bear that tramping anymore!—it started to tap on the shell that was inside her chest. The line tapped and tapped until it managed to break a hole in the shell, and then it wound out and through her chest, found its way through her ribs and out through her skin, and then it started to move about the room, in slow, undulating movements. Then it found a window, bored its way through the window frame and glass out into the air. Then it carried on down the road in the same slow, swinging movements. And anyone with extremely good hearing might have heard it buzzing, or humming, through the air. The line swung and looped around the town until it found an officer that took it by surprise. Something felt right about this officer. This officer was the one it had to be! The line pierced through his uniform, through his skin, found its way in through his ribs and wrapped itself around his heart. The officer felt an inexplicable pull. He was pulled through the town, his legs just walked and walked, until he finally found himself standing outside a window. There was an alluring light in the window, it was a dark winter’s night outside, and there was a warm light in the window. He made a snowball, threw it at the window. Who was in there? A young woman. She stood there with her arms hanging by her side, and then she opened the window. She was very beautiful! Nothing prim about her, no scraped-back hair. Her hair was loose and her cheeks were flushed.
* * *
Anna didn’t know if they had windows that could be opened in 1852; in fact, she wasn’t sure if they had windows at all. She thought they had windows. She got up from the sofa and looked out at the vast fields around her. They were yellow, covered in a sharp layer of frost. Farther down, the fjord came into the bay, lay in it, held it tight. Later in the evening, she would stand here and watch the trailers creeping up the mountainside like moving constellations. Anna went over to another window, looked up toward the road, the streetlights were just coming on, emitting a pale halo. The forest was black. She went into the kitchen and looked out the window. The fjord, the forest. She let down her hair. She took a knife and carved her name into the kitchen table, and the year: “Anna Bae, 2004.” Now she was ready. She ran her finger over the letters on the table, and just knew it. Everything was buzzing. She was warm and happy.
* * *
Then she heard a low sound, a kind of humming, in the air. She looked out and to her great surprise saw a UFO landing on the field over there. It was shaped like two soup dishes glued together with a row of flashing lights around the middle. Anna stood there staring and waiting to see if a door would open, if a ladder would drop down. But nothing happened. It was as though it was waiting. Who are they waiting for? Anna thought as she pulled on her boots and jacket. Is it me? she wondered as she walked over the frozen grass that crunched under her boots. It wasn’t a big UFO, she could see that, smaller than she had imagined UFOs to be. And it wasn’t silver, as she thought they were, but dark. Dark. And—she refused to believe it. She walked right up to it and put her hand on the UFO wall. It was covered in a green fabric, just like the one on her sofa. Exactly the same. The UFO was covered in green velvet in a complicated pattern of flowers and leaves. Some of the flowers and leaves were in raised, shiny velvet, and it was uneven and it felt good to stroke your hand over it. It was the strangest thing Anna Bae had ever experienced. To stand there and stroke and pat a UFO.
The Object Assumes an Exalted Place in the Discourse
Here is the object: it’s shaped like a polygonal prism and is luminous green. Can everyone picture it? Okay. This object comes sailing into the discourse, which we can think of as darkness. As if the object came sailing in through space. Slowly. The music we hear in the background is the music from Blade Runner, and the sound of the small flying cars that Harrison Ford uses. The object now sails slowly ahead, before starting to climb up and up, until it docks some way up in the discourse. And it sits there glowing. Yes, in an elevated position, just as Roland Barthes describes it in Writing Degree Zero. We let the magnifying glass glide over Barthes’s text, and see the word “discontinuous.” We carefully study a sentence we love: “The interrupted flow of the new poetic language initiates a discontinuous nature, which is only revealed piecemeal. At the very moment when the withdrawal of functions obscures the relations existing in the world, the object in discourse assumes an exalted place.” It is absolutely no surprise that at this point we have the picture of a luminous green prism sailing in through the dark and taking an exalted place on our retina, a bit like when you’ve been staring too hard at a lamp on the ceiling and then close your eyes! How strange, we think, that a sentence that was written to explain an aspect of modern poetry can have roughly the same effect on our imagination as science fiction. In particular, the phrase A DISCONTINUOUS NATURE, WHICH IS ONLY REVEALED PIECEMEAL makes us imagine a vast darkness and then rectangular blocks of bright green sections of nature, and they are not lined up as such, but appear in flashes. The blocks of bright green and sudden nature appear in flashes. And when the light disappears, they vanish into the dark like spooky, withdrawing creatures. And the phrase AT THE VERY MOMENT WHEN THE WITHDRAWAL OF FUNCTIONS OBSCURES THE RELATIONS EXISTING IN THE WORLD makes us picture “functions” as the switches in a spaceship that has lost contact with the Earth, which has been visible down there as a bluish-white marble until now, but now it’s gone, all is dark, and THE OBJECT IN DISCOURSE ASSUMES AN EXALTED PLACE. A bit like a ballet, where the plot involves nothing more than a ballet dancer suddenly entering the stage, then standing there completely still. Or a small plot in a short text that can be summarized in as many words as the text itself: “The object assumes an exalted place in the discourse.”
Two by Two
At ten minutes to one, one night in November, Edel loses it. She has been standing by the window with her arms crossed since ten past twelve, alternately looking down the drive and then at the watch on her wrist. Sometime before this, she lay on the bed clutching a book to her chest with her eyes shut tight and felt good, strong, and completely open. Then she got up to clear the snow, so that Alvin could drive straight into the garage without having to stop and clear the snow himself first. She wanted to reach out to him—that was the expression she used when she thought about what it was she wanted to do; it was a cliché, but that was okay, it was what she wanted. She imagined her own small hand reaching out and being taken by Alvin’s hand, Alvin’s big, strong hand. Her eyes filled with tears when she thought of their two joined hands and everything they symbolized. And clearing the snow—it dawned on her that clearing the snow symbolized that she was making room for him again. She was making room for him again after he had asked for forgiveness and said that from now on, she was the only one, there would be no others; she had let him stay in her life as Thomas’s father, as someone she shared her home with, someone she refused to look in the eye at the breakfast table and whose shoes she occasionally kicked as she passed them in the hallway. She shoveled and cleared the snow and as she shoveled, she looked up at the double garage and thought that it symbolized her goal, she was clearing the way for him—she was the garage that he could come home to. Her small car was already parked on one side of the garage and when his car was on the other side, things would be as they should be. Her small car parked alongside his big car. She ran up to the garage through the uncleared snow and tu
rned on the light and looked at her little car that was standing there all alone, waiting, and she cried as she cleared the rest of the driveway to the garage.
* * *
That was forty minutes ago. And it’s snowing hard again now, snowing so much that it looks like the snowflakes are falling together, two by two, three by three, four by four, falling through the air until they land suddenly and mutely in the snow. In only forty minutes, the driveway has been covered again. And the man she cleared the way and made room for is not here and the fact that things are not as they should be screams out at Edel. He should have been here forty minutes ago. The last ferry docked at twenty past eleven and it takes three quarters of an hour to drive here from the ferry—and that’s being generous. In other words, he should have been here at ten past twelve, when she finished clearing the snow and stood waiting, red-cheeked, by the window with a magnanimous, nearly loved-up look on her face. Every minute that passed after ten past twelve pulled this look of love from her, like a net being dragged from the water, and by the thirtieth minute past twelve, when she called his mobile and heard it ringing in the breadbox in the kitchen, her face was no longer remotely magnanimous. She screamed with rage, she, who had felt no rage one hour earlier as she lay on the bed feeling good, strong, and open and then decided to get up so she could clear the snow. At that point, in the thirtieth minute past twelve, there was nothing left in the body with the crossed arms that was in any way still touched by the good, light magnanimity she had felt blossom in her heart just over an hour ago, as she lay on the bed and read Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. The English poet Ted Hughes wrote the book for his deceased wife, Sylvia Plath (also a poet). In the book he expresses his love for Sylvia, who took her own life largely because she felt that this love was lacking—she believed that he did not love her, that he was unfaithful, which he was, and on February 11, 1963, she put her head in a gas oven and took her own life. And in the years that have followed, the English press and many others have held Ted Hughes responsible and criticized him for not talking about it, for not expressing any regret, or even asking for forgiveness, nothing. He has received prizes for his poetry, but people look at him with eyes that no doubt clearly express what they really think of his behavior. Edel is one of those who have held it against him. She loved Sylvia Plath and she has borne a grudge against Ted Hughes. Though she has found some solace in the fact that even among famous poets there are those who share her experience. She, as a small bookseller in a rural community, can recognize herself in a famous poet, Plath—there are bonds between people, she thought; even successful poets in big cities wander around in their own homes in desperation, even they rage and throw things against the wall. The fact that they cried and felt small, small and betrayed, that they wanted to be stones that would sink to the bottom and stay there, was a huge relief to her. It was awful that Sylvia had suspected Ted and was right. Because that meant it was possible: to suspect and to be right.
* * *
But then she read Birthday Letters. With great resentment, she picked the book with the red poppies on the cover from the cardboard box of books that she had ordered and with great reluctance she opened the book and read the first poem. She didn’t know how it happened, but as she read the book, it struck her: even though he betrayed her, he must have loved her, he saw her, saw all the big and small things that she went around doing and feeling—and if only she had known that, Sylvia, as she went around doing all those things that she did not think were noticed! When she got to the last poem, she discovered that the red poppies on the cover referred to this poem about the red poppies that Sylvia had loved and seen as a symbol of life; and this evening, as she, Edel, lay on the bed reading this last poem, she felt she was the one who saw all this for her, in a stream of warmth and the dark timbre of the voice that saw and said, that twisted and twisted down and down until finally she could barely breathe, suffocated by a pressing joy, or sadness: This Is Life, You Are Loved and You Are Betrayed in That, That Is Life, I Must Accept It, I Accept It: Life Is Good, Painful, and Awful! She thought to herself: This is Acceptance! The notion of “acceptance” radiated inside her like the sun suddenly staring through the clouds, forcing them open and covering the fjord like an iridescent bridal veil. This is God, thought Edel, and she felt like she was about to explode; she clutched the book to her breast and closed her eyes and felt completely open. She also felt overwhelmed by something else and had to scribble down some words on a piece of paper: “the power of literature.”
* * *
The reason that Edel let go of this good, magnanimous feeling, of the notion of “acceptance,” and has now lost the plot instead, is that she cannot see, but suspects, the scene that was unfolding in a house by the ferry around the same time that she was clearing the snow from the driveway, a forty-five-minute drive from the double garage at the end of the driveway. The scene that Edel suspected when she lost it, but could not see, looked like this: Her husband, Alvin, was standing behind Susanne, who lives in the house that stands alone by the ferry, a forty-five-minute drive from the double garage. They were both naked, Susanne was bending forward and holding on to a window ledge. Alvin was standing behind her and holding her hips. Alvin thought to himself that this was not what was supposed to happen, this was not what he had intended, he should have driven straight home, he should never have called in on Susanne, just to say hello, to find out if she was very sad because he had stopped coming, if she had been all right in the last six months, and to say that it was difficult, nearly impossible, just to drive by her house when he finished work, to say that he stood up on the bridge of the ferry and tried to see her inside every evening when she had the lights on and it was dark all around, and her house twinkled at him like a small star in the night sky, but that it couldn’t carry on, he had a family to consider, Edel had threatened to leave him and take Thomas with her and he couldn’t bear that, he had to sacrifice their love for Thomas, that was the way it was, that was what he wanted to say, he wanted to take responsibility for his family, that was what he had chosen, having spent a long and painful period thinking and doubting, he couldn’t come in and stand here like he was now, holding her by the hips and pressing his cock between her legs.
* * *
Thomas—for whom Alvin was going to sacrifice his love and not stand as he is standing now, for his sake—is asleep. He has been out all afternoon selling raffle tickets in the snow and spent the whole time thinking about Noah’s ark, which he learned about at school. He thought about giraffes and leopards. He thought about rhinoceroses and dreamed of stroking them and sitting on their backs, touching their horns. He thought about how enormous the boat must have been, as the teacher said yes when he asked if it was bigger than the hotel. He wondered whether there were also two ants on board. And two lice! And now he was lying curled up like a small fetus, dreaming about crocodiles. Because there were crocodiles on board, he had asked about that. He is dreaming about a big crocodile that has laid a crocodile egg in a nest, while Edel storms through the sitting room and pounds up the stairs to the bedroom. She throws on a pair of pants and a sweater, puts on a pair of shoes, and hurls Birthday Letters at the wall as hard as she can. Alvin comes all over Susanne’s buttocks. In the crocodile nest, the first baby crocodile breaks through the hard shell of the egg. A rhinoceros stands for a long time looking at another rhinoceros, then suddenly walks away, out of the ark’s big front door, and the rhinoceros that is left behind doesn’t know why. Thomas shouts to Noah: Wait! Wait for the other rhinoceros! He tugs at Noah’s tunic. Then he runs toward the door to bring back the rhino that has walked away. The one that was left behind falls to the ground with a great thud.
* * *
Thomas stands in the doorway with tousled hair. “Something went bump, Mommy,” he says. “It was a book I threw against the wall,” replies Edel. “Why did you throw it against the wall?” asks Thomas. “I was angry,” says Edel. “It was a bad book. A terrible, terrible book. Put your clothes
on, Thomas, we have to go and get Daddy.” “Why?” asks Thomas. “His car has broken down and he can’t get home. Hurry up,” she says, and Thomas says that he doesn’t want to, he has to sleep! If he doesn’t go to sleep now, the rhinoceros might leave forever! “You can dream in the car,” Edel says. “But I might not dream the same thing!” says Thomas. “Of course you will. Come on, I’ll help you get dressed,” she says and takes him firmly by the arm, her whole body shaking. “I want to dream the same thing!” Thomas whines.