In his memory that pink dress resembled a shady place not yet overrun by solar heat; still the night fragrance could hide here for another quarter-hour, defying the encircling day. But in full light, with the chance to make something of himself now once more safely past, the green reeds were going a lovely silver, their tips whitewashed so newly, the birds now awake (by now the cemetery grass would be a dreary orange-brown); and still he thought to improve his day just as morning gilds grassheads and wet grass. Morning presented him with the colors of berries and the songs of meadowlarks, the dark water beneath bright reeds, algae’d water like jellied jade, two rabbits chasing each other in a circle—and now in the widening of the morning, the smell of reeds and water began to be superseded by the delicious odors of trees.
36
The whipping of the trees made him queasy. It was the trees, nothing else. If only they would stop! Closing his eyes did not help, because he knew that the trees were still writhing. Making another effort, he stared them down. They swayed until he could no longer remember every place that they had been, which was when he vomited. So he got into his car and drove home. Needless to say, no time of day is as profitless to ghost-lovers as high noon, particularly in summer. Life sweats away our thanatotic idealizations, and then where are we? Toying with two of Victoria’s unremembered letters, he smiled, but decided to treasure them as they were for a while longer. It was not right to decant her sayings when he felt less than his best.
It was a very hot day. He lay in misery, waiting for his prescription narcotics to rescue him. He would not reenter the hospital; those people would weigh down his misery with powerlessness, and he would still die. Cheered by his determination to be free (and forgetting that he had already made it), he opened a letter and read:
Dear Vickie:
You’re tipsy. No, I’m sober. Then why are you writing this? Because I don’t want to go too long without having him receive a letter even if it’s not what he wants. Give him what he wants, Vickie. No, Victoria, I don’t know what he wants from me. You do, mostly. What do you expect, a list of rules? Do this, don’t do that? Pour your heart out to me, screw around all you want but leave me your soul. Write me intense romantic letters every Sunday over tea and biscuits. Scent your letters. Discuss your erotica. I’m tired. Who isn’t?
In twenty years I bet I’ll have breast cancer. I wonder what it feels like to lose a breast. If I’m going to be unhealthy I’m not going to live. Yes, you’ll show them, won’t you? Lung and breast cancer, kidney disease and maybe a goiter, and you’ll just go and die. You’re unstable, aren’t you, Vickie? I admit it. Not everyone does. After I’m done with prettiness, I know what I am—silly as it is. Vickie, no one thinks I’m a rock of security, but do they know you’re compulsive, self-destructive, paranoid? Probably.
Will this amuse him?
Are you amused?
I’ll tell you, Vickie, when he answers.
Will he answer?
Sure, he’s probably cross at me but he’ll answer me.
Love,
Toria.
P.S. My mother has a tumor in her breast. I hope it isn’t malignant. Selfishly, I’m worried not only for her but for me and the children I’ll have.
P.P.S. I’m still getting the great American suntan in my wholesome sexy swimsuit and Riviera sunglasses. You in your hijacker sunglasses and me in mine, what a pair! I’m reading The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, The Hite Report, and The Total Woman. I’ve decided to become a man—grow hair on my chest and cultivate a tight ass.
P.P.P.S. Purge the earth. Kill every third person. No, every fourth. No, just all those that protest.
37
Luke’s friend Raymond had sometimes spoken quite calmly and freely of his first wife, the one who had left him and whom he still loved the most. And Luke used to take pleasure in speaking of Eve, whom, as he freely confessed, he loved because he never knew her; some years it had seemed as if he loved her more than Stephanie, out of self-spite or something more glorious. By the time he had thinned out, staggering dizzily and clutching at his greying head, he rarely mentioned Eve. As for Victoria, hopefully her husband had both known her and prized her over other women; whereas this formerly seventeen-year-old lover of hers was only now getting acquainted with her. What he had begun to learn from rereading her old letters shamed him: even then she had offered him this knowledge of her, openly and honestly—perhaps because she did not love him, for if she did, would she have been so brave? Or did this conclusion simply indicate how debased his idea of love must be? But then who could be as cruel as Victoria, who when she went away to college liked to calmly, brightly write him about all the boys to whom she opened her legs? As to whether these revelations had hurt him at the time, he had no recollection. After her he had had, among others, a number of prostitute girlfriends, and even when his middleclass sweethearts cheated on him and lied about it, he never felt especially jealous—oh, a little, perhaps. Had Victoria broken him of that habit? He longed to rush off to the cemetery right then; he had many things to ask her. But some of love’s most delicious business takes place behind the beloved’s back—for instance, remembering her. There were times that long ago summer when he got to see Victoria for an hour—and then, while he was with her, he loved her so much that he wished they were already apart, so he could begin to remember her sayings and smiles; if he stayed with her too long, he might forget one or two of them. (Which ones hadn’t he forgotten by now?) Smelling the insides of the envelopes, and sometimes peering inside them just in case there might be something still undiscovered which his dead girl had sent him, he chewed pain pills. He would have liked to ask Luke’s advice: Next time he went to the cemetery, should he, so to speak, go deeper? At seventeen he had a male friend to whom he related everything, while Victoria must have had some other seventeen-year-old girl, or perhaps her younger sister, to whom she confided this or that about him—or had she truly been so strong, or isolated, that she kept him to herself? He wished to describe to Luke what it was like to see Victoria welling up out of her grave like a swarm of fireflies; sometimes her skull grinned at him like a stone lantern before the flesh seethed mistily and milkily over it. Knowing that the dead could come back was one of the great experiences of his life; he yearned to tell Luke all about it. But presumably Luke, being dead, already knew. Anyhow, shouldn’t he have used the green potion to bring Luke back, instead of putting Victoria first? No; Luke would not have wanted to return; that would have been unkind. Then why wasn’t it unkind to resurrect Victoria? Well, she was confined to her grave; it wasn’t as if he had kidnapped her out of oblivion and imprisoned her like a pretty goldfish! Then where was Luke? What if he too were trapped? At least his ashes were scattered in the mountains. And Luke had assured him, he had insisted and promised (although how could he know?) that there was no postmortem consciousness; did that mean that Luke was safe from being one with the old man whose marble head gazed sternly out of the niche in his family skeletons’ landmark?
Victoria, or at least her circumstances, might have intrigued Luke. If nothing else, Luke would have listened to him kindly and patiently. His grief for Luke was as deep as a bullfrog’s voice in a sweltering swamp whose summer evening smell of sunburned live oaks now begins to ooze away at the edges, for fingers of coolness are oozing out of the muck; now the light softens from gold to white, and dusk dances on the triggerhairs of grasses.
(I try to keep my life at arm’s length and just look at it, Luke once said. I haven’t done a lot of things I wanted to do or should have done, but I don’t pretend I have.)
Remembering when he and Luke were young and went hiking in the mountains together, he lay down, chewing more pain pills; the bottle was nearly empty. After that he might have been dreaming. Opening the middle drawer of his father’s desk, he saw the dead moon in the black sky. He loved the sight. How often, if ever, did Luna duplicate herself? Wearily he crept to the window and fou
nd another moon there. Then he was sick to his stomach. Once that ended, he lay down on top of his unmade bed and closed his eyes. He saw the moon again. This time it appeared to be falling up toward the blue earth.
38
When he met Mr. Murmuracki again, he realized that he had lately been perceiving everyone else as if through glass, distant and muted. Only this old man did he see true.
He knew enough not to inquire about moonflowers. He said: I’d like to go to the moon.
Well, said Mr. Murmuracki, for that you don’t need me. You need—
Excuse me, but I can’t seem to find anyone else.
Ah. How much time did you say you had left?
I’d guess three months. But how can I know? My stomach hurts—
And why is it exactly that you thought I might be able to help you?
I bought my moonflowers from you.
Yes, I remember, but how does that signify?
I’d like to go to the moon because—
Yes. Why exactly would you wish to travel to the moon, especially in your condition?
If I could just see what’s going on up there right now—
That’s different. We do have a channel, to communicate with our suppliers. You’d be satisfied to observe it from the viewing room?
Have you been to the moon?
Oh, I’ve never missed a day of work. I’m much like your late father in that respect . . .
You knew him?
A fine man. One of the best.
Could I see him?
He’s gone.
Where did he go?
Where you’re going.
Will I see him then?
He’s considerably farther away than the moon.
Oh.
Now, as I mentioned, we do have a viewing room. Whom would you like to see?
Victoria.
Of course. A pretty name, isn’t it?
Yes—
You have very good taste, if I may say so, to feel as you do toward that lovely young woman. In her life she was, how shall I say, unappreciated—
But she—
Yes, yes, that’s right. This way. Now, when you open the door, it will seem quite dark. Close the door behind you and wait for your eyes to adjust. Remember also that from here to the moon is a good light-second or two, as we both know from our college days. Just take your time. I’ll be in my office up front.
Thank you, Mr. Murmuracki.
Within seconds he had become one of the elect who comprehend that the moonglare is caused by a certain pearlescent cloud-lid pressed tight over the Mountains of the Moon, whose fragile purple teeth and angles become black by contrast with this painful cloud and with the steep white bow of snow beneath; something about these entities makes for an awful and dangerous dazzlement.
Isaac was sitting alone and moody by the shore of a high cold lunar lake whose surface happened to be, in horrible contrast to Isaac himself, alive with earth-tides; he was picking moonflowers and dissecting them into nothing, ignoring Victoria, who hovered seductively at his shoulder, festively clad in her flesh; the breeze kept whipping her long blonde hair in Isaac’s face; sometimes a strand of it flicked into his eyesocket, and then without looking up he brushed it away with his wristbone, meanwhile ruining more and more moonflowers, whose petals flew up like fireflies toward the lunar mountains. The roar of the lake-waves against the dun and cinder-dark moon rocks was so loud that whatever those two might have been saying to each other, if anything, could not be overheard; but presently Victoria began to ascend away, and as she cast one look over her shoulder, my neighbor who watched discovered her face sparkling with tears. Isaac never looked up. Pitying her, this sad watcher, whom both of them had rejected, leaped up to call to her; he thought merely to console her; he wasn’t selfishly desirous! At this, Isaac gangled himself upright, a tall skeleton no longer in possession of all his metacarpii (no doubt he rambled hard here on the moon), turned round, waved and grinned at his former friend, who waved back neutrally, neither disliking nor blaming him but disinclined to be won over and re-abandoned (when he was young, he, like Isaac, had tried his best to make everyone love him, until failures taught him how to strengthen himself with the magic spell called no); whereas Victoria, flitting and hesitating, finally alit upon the water, at arm’s length from the shore, wiped her eyes upon her fairskinned arm, and said: Hi.
Hello, he said. I was just—
I don’t want to talk about it.
All right, he replied, mildly sorry that he could not help her. A moon-bird with a pearlescent beak rushed silently between them. He turned away as she began to strip, and Isaac swung the telescopic barrels of his eyesockets toward her. He left them then, approving of them both, wondering whether Victoria would succeed, in which case Isaac would certainly break her much-broken heart: all in a day’s work.
Far away across the milky moon-lake, which widened and narrowed like a woman’s body, there was a rolling rise of moon-alders and laval outcroppings, and beyond this grew many blackish-purple mountains of fantastic height, sharpness and fragility, like broken glass upended on narrow points, flaring out into double-bladed wings, and then terminating (where the clouds revealed it) in needles; and because he was on the moon, and therefore already partially of this place, he found himself able to speed as rapidly as a water-bird, if not as gracefully as his Victoria, over the waves and then up that lava-pored tree-swale and up a very steep yet rounded canyon to a glacier amphitheater amidst the highest peaks; and there, as he had suspected and hoped, walked Luke, quite steadily and still undecomposed; while at his shoulder now flew that naughty, never satisfied Victoria, so good at making herself and others unhappy, whispering, giggling, touching herself; just then she was a skeleton and did not seem to know it—or perhaps she had tried everything else and hoped to tempt Luke through this more advanced state of undress. Luke trudged on. Why didn’t he fly like her? Well, he hated to cut corners. When she swirled down before him, seeking to clasp him in her bony arms, he pushed her away. She fell to the ground, perhaps on purpose, then leaped into the sky and streaked upward, leaving behind her a glowing trail of anger which condensed and fell to the snow as reddish-brown crystals which in turn sublimed into nothing.
Giving Luke awhile to recover from the irritation which Victoria must have caused, he presently overtook him, and called out. Luke uttered his name with cheerful surprise, and so he flew down to visit his friend.
How are you getting on?
Oh, not bad, said Luke. There’s a million-year hike I plan to take, if I last that long, which I probably won’t. What’s going on?
Happily and excitedly he began to tell Luke all about himself. So often in their lives he had talked and talked, and Luke had patiently listened. At intervals Luke had called upon him in distress; but mostly it had gone the other way, and it was still like that. He requested advice, and Luke said: Well. I can tell you what I’d try not to do, not that I’m very good at doing what I’m supposed to. You’ve collected a lot of stuff in your life. Why not get rid of it?
I’m trying to phase it out in stages, he replied.
I’d say that’s very sane.
How are you feeling? he asked again.
I have good days and bad days. Being dead isn’t all that great, but it’s not terrible. I try to appreciate what I can, like the earthlight on the snow over there. Where I’m heading there should be much more snow.
Then the wind began to hiss, whistle and shriek. Luke lowered his head, walking steadily into it.
The watcher hovered behind, as he had in life, perceiving now how steep and shadowed was that place between the rock-teeth. Here was he and there was Luke, with death snow-shadowed between them. There was Luke, going up into the blue sky of space. When the dying man departed the viewing room, he felt slightly ashamed that on his face Mr. Murmuracki could probably discern t
hat loneliness, as if he had sat too long by the shore of that writhing lunar lake, while everyone else went about the business of living or being dead; he thought: Oh, no, to be lonely forever! and a high cold wind rushed down from the Mountains of the Moon.
39
When he found the little red book in which he had written his morbid poems, he felt revulsion and resistance. It was this object which caused Victoria to leave him. His final lover’s letter to her was enclosed, carefully and viciously marked up by her. Setting it aside, he took the red book back into his hand. Pulling open the cover with his thumb was more unpleasant than it would have been to lever the slab off Victoria’s grave. But he did it. The poems, of course, were very badly written, in an unhappy seventeen-year-old’s unaware imitation of the Decadent manner. But it was worse than that—what had he been thinking? They described someone who looked like her, yet was dead and rotten. It was bad enough that he had written them; but why had he sent them to her? What had he supposed would happen? Now for a moment he excavated the grave of that pallid, skinny seventeen-year-old boy who had understood neither Victoria nor himself. The boy stared up at him. A beetle crawled across his spectacles. His desire to ask the boy anything fell away, for the boy knew nothing. He replaced the slab. Asking himself how he would feel if some woman wrote him poems like these, he answered: I would think her very sick. I would fear she meant me harm. I would get away from her—far away, forever.
Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) Page 70
