There is a black-and-white television sitting on the bar in the Minotaur’s kitchen, its screen no bigger than a child’s lunchbox. It was there when the Minotaur moved in. Only once, maybe twice, surely no more than three times during his residence, has the Minotaur turned the TV on, corrected the vertical roll and actually sat watching. But something about this night draws him to the deep empty screen.
Watching television, and particularly one so small, is physically challenging for the Minotaur. He has to sit close enough to reach the round dial for changing channels and to twist and bend the wire clothes hanger wrapped in foil that is stuck into the broken antenna, then cock his head back and to the side to fix the little glowing rectangle in his sight. The Minotaur’s eyes are tired, and every few minutes he has to turn his head and look through the opposite eye.
He doesn’t understand much of what is broadcast. The sitcoms confuse him, both the reruns from twenty years ago and the newer ones. The televangelists with their weeping and pleading stir in him old and dangerous desires. The Minotaur has seven channels, sometimes fewer. As he clicks through the numbers on the dial, everything he comes to is either a sales pitch or a laugh track. Unsure as to what channels he actually receives the Minotaur turns up into the double digits. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, nothing but hissing static. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, the same. But at channel forty-three something stops him. The picture rolls, fractures; the sound is barely audible. The Minotaur fiddles with the makeshift antenna. When he finally gets a reasonably clear picture the program goes to commercial. The Minotaur sits before the black-and-white television while an assortment of men and women, all with bare midriffs, demonstrate a wicked-looking contraption called The Abdominizer.
“Are you lonely tonight?” a disembodied voice asks. The camera is fixed on a low table and two glasses of sparkling wine. A thickly carpeted floor leads to a fireplace in soft focus in the background, the fire crackling in shades of gray.
“Me, too.” It is a breathy voice accompanied by moody piano music. The camera pans left to the arm and high back of an overstuffed chair facing the fire. All that can be seen of its occupant is one thin leg, clad in a high-heel boot to the knee.
There is something familiar in that voice. The picture goes to static but comes back into view as the Minotaur leans forward to adjust the antenna. When he leans away, there is static again. The Minotaur twists, positioning his body so that the signal stays clear.
“We don’t have to be lonely by ourselves.” A lean white arm reaches out. The arm is atrophied, but the hand that cups and lifts the wineglass is broad, knuckled and masculine, despite its long painted nails. The Minotaur assumes red.
“We can be lonely together.” As the wineglass is lifted to the mouth the camera swings around to the figure in full view: the high black boots, the satiny robe that implies nakedness beneath, the poised hands, the blond hair in ringlets. The face, obscured, refracted in the glass, could be beautiful. When the glass is pulled away the lips are pursed and wet, and the heavy-lidded eyes blink languidly into the camera. The Minotaur lows softly.
“Hi. I’m Hermaphroditus, and I want to be your special friend.”
The tectonic plates of the Minotaur’s heart pitch and heave. Recognition. Hermaphroditus and the Minotaur, by-products of carnality. Whore’s birds. Ancient stepchildren. Siblings of the genus Erroneous. A chasm, unbreachable, opens within the Minotaur, and he falls into an all-consuming sadness.
Hermaphroditus peddles a tired old beauty.
“Hermaphroditus Telephone Escorts. I can be anything you want.”
“Hermaphroditus is waiting for your call.”
“Hermaphroditus Telephone Escorts. Have your credit card ready.”
The Minotaur should turn off the television here and now, but he doesn’t.
CHAPTER 15
The Minotaur dreams himself a zygote—dreams
the weight of the yoke across his back—
the whittled ribs and lungs thick with sawdust
The Minotaur dreams himself a zygote, formed half—
half formed—no—malformed out of aberrant desire
hammered into life by Daedelus—shortsighted bastard
In the dry trough of his birth canal the Minotaur dreams already
of retribution—dreams the sluice gate and the hot wash of shame—
dreams the broadax splinter and pulp
CHAPTER 16
But the Minotaur does not turn the television off. Nor does he move from his hunched and uncomfortable position, necessary for a clear picture. Rather, he sits bent forward on the frayed couch, his heavy head cocked and drooping, the thin muscles of his lower back taut and aching. Two other commercials follow Hermaphroditus, but neither registers in the Minotaur’s mind. When he finally musters the wherewithal to change the channel, once again, hapless fate or poor timing rules the choice.
The Minotaur clicks the dial once, twice. On the third click a blurred image emerges from the static. It is important to note that the bull is a color-blind animal. The Minotaur, however, is blessed with color. Only when tired or weary are his coal-black ocular disks unable to perceive at least the primary colors. But the bull, strictly defined, lives in a monochromatic world, seeing only degrees of gray. When the image of the matador appears on the tiny black-and-white television screen the Minotaur knows that the cape sweeping through the air and over the arena’s dirt floor in graceful arcs is red. He knows, too, because he has a man’s heart, that the red of the cape has much more to do with the psychology of the audience than with anything inherent in the bull—the bull jet-black but for one ragged patch of white like a cluster of grapes on its haunch, the bull enraged and pawing at the arena floor.
At each pass of the bull the audience roars in approval. “Olé! Olé! Olé!” drowns out the Mexican announcer and the brass horns and the drum. “Olé! Olé! Olé!” drowns out the huffing, wheezing and snorting bull, which cannot possibly understand that the picadors, high on their padded horses, drive the barbed lances again and again into the thick muscle between its shoulder blades to weaken its neck so it cannot raise its head without excruciating pain. The bull was bred for this: kill or be killed. With each pass of the sweeping cape the bull’s dark head brushes the brave unmoving matador, its horns seeking despite the pain, eager for any soft target. “Olé! Olé! Olé!” Each pass, each turn and each move are named. Even in the confines of the small television screen, even rendered colorless, the matador’s suit of lights—the beaded bolero, the skin-tight pants that define the contours of his muscled thighs and buttocks, that unabashedly pronounce everything male about him—is captivating, seductive. Even in the confines of the small television screen, even rendered colorless, the blood streaming from the pulpy wound on the bull’s back glistens horribly.
The matador prances. He stamps his feet and shouts to provoke the bull, which stands laboring for breath before him. Up on his toes, the thin-soled zapatillas digging into the dirt, sighting down the long metal blade, the matador steels his heart and profiles for the kill. Because it knows no other option the bull charges. The proud matador stands motionless until the last possible second, solid and fearless as granite, then simultaneously leaps aside and plunges the narrow sword into the wounded flesh between the bull’s shoulders. The tip of the blade is curved slightly, hooking downward to ease the passage among the ligaments, cartilage and bone, to find and sever the thick aorta deep in the bull’s chest.
When the sword penetrates, the Minotaur’s lungs seize. A searing pain climbs his spine. The matador is careless in his arrogance. The sword misses its mark. Rather than sink to the hilt with ease through the animal’s viscera the sword stops short. Protruding from the bull’s back eight, maybe ten inches, the blade sways wildly back and forth. The bull flings its head from side to side, looping strands of blood-tinged saliva flying from its mouth. The Minotaur feels sick to his stomach.
Outside, on the road, in the dark, the driver of a
passing car taps twice on the horn. Inside, in the pale light of the television, the Minotaur watches the matador dance around the bull and pull the sword from the wound. The spectators roar from the wooden stands and stamp their feet, a deafening sound even through the small speaker. Nearing death the animal—stupid and proud—is undaunted. It again accepts the challenge of the matador. The matador—stupid, proud, vastly human—meets its charge and drives the sword home.
To come upon the scene—the matador facing the bull with his arms outstretched and palms turned up—it’s possible to think he is attempting to embrace the animal, that he is seeking or offering forgiveness for what has just transpired. But the Minotaur knows differently. When the matador lifts and lowers his hands slowly, the movement mirrored by the bull’s head as it follows up and down, the Minotaur knows that it is an action with a purpose. Each time the bull raises its head the blade embedded deep inside its chest cuts and damages more.
Die. The Minotaur wants the bull to die. But the bull is adamant at life. Somewhere inside the massive chest blood gushes. The heavy body begins to sway, but the bull refuses to topple. It tries to make a step toward the open-armed matador; its front legs give way, and the bull pitches forward. Still it will not fall. The matador taunts the dying bull, standing arrogantly mere inches from the once-threatening horns. The cumbersome head is now unable to do more than bob softly as the animal struggles to stay alive. In one final heroic burst of bovine valor the bull staggers to its feet and bellows, the cry choked and muffled by the blood gushing from its mouth and nostrils. The Minotaur feels faint.
He has no idea of the origin of this broadcast—another country, another time. He has no idea of the miles and the minutes, or hours, or maybe years, that separate him from the death of this bull. But when this matador, broken down into minute particles, then shot through time and space to be reconstituted in black-and-white and four inches tall in the Minotaur’s trailer, when he steps before the standing bull and hammers his fist down once on the wide bony plate between the animal’s eyes, the blow strikes deep in the Minotaur’s own heart. The bull goes rigid instantly. Its eyes bulge and roll up, the thin milk-white rims glaring from black pits. Then comes the fall, stiff legged and impossibly slow. The big dead bull leans and leans and leans, a mockery of gravity, held aloft by the raucous fervor of the audience.
“Bravo! Olé! Bravo!”
It falls, though the sound of its body coming to the ground is lost. When the puntillero comes with the short dagger with the three-sided blade, when he stabs it at the base of the bull’s skull, severing the spinal cord, the animal’s body goes into spasms, legs pedaling the air. And the Minotaur falls to his knees. To be a man means to be capable of this. To be a bull.
CHAPTER 17
The Minotaur doesn’t use his telephone, never has. As a matter of fact, in the hundred-plus years of the telephone’s existence, the Minotaur can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he has made or received a call. Though Sweeny has provided an old rotary telephone in the cramped boat-shaped trailer, the likelihood of its ringing for the Minotaur is small. And no matter how distraught, the Minotaur is less likely still to pick up the receiver and fit his thick-nailed fingertips into the dial the seven or eleven times necessary to call anyone. Something about the unnatural manipulation of time and space. Something about the disembodied nature of the voices. Something about the fat sluggish tongue.
Standing in the gravel drive of Lucky-U Mobile Estates in the tattered blanket of light from the street lamp, images of both Hermaphroditus and the dying bull reeling in his head—pictures so graphic and tangible as to stink of sweat and blood, images that boil up deep within the brain, storm the synapses and slam again and again at the back of his eyeballs, pictures so incessant that the distinction between them blurs and it becomes the pale naked body of Hermaphroditus on all fours in the center of the dusty arena that takes the sword, Hermaphroditus who bellows open-mouthed and retches blood, the sagging breasts, the withered penis and testicles bobbing and swaying, and it is the black bull that becomes the tawdry whore of late-night television, satin robe splitting at the seams, wineglass wedged in its cloven hoof, breathy solicitations whispered from its rubbery black lips—standing in the driveway the Minotaur suffers blurred vision, his heart thumps furiously and he yearns. He yearns for yesterday. He yearns for two days ago, before Hernando’s wound, before Buddy’s death, before Grub’s new plan. And he yearns for even more. The events of the evening and the past few days have put him in a rare state; the Minotaur longs to be in the company of another person.
But who? Where to go? Calling anyone is out of the question. His needs are simple; he wants nothing more than to share space, to breathe common air with another living being. But there is no one in his immediate world. He can’t knock on Sweeny’s door, not tonight, anyway. The Crewses probably wouldn’t wake up. Josie and Hank are out of the question. The Minotaur gets into his car and rolls the windows down. As he reaches for the hand brake his thumb rakes the fore edge of the book he has all but forgotten and catches on a folded piece of paper. He breathes heavily as he unfolds the tax form to read Kelly’s address in the weak yellow light that falls from the dome in the Vega’s roof. He almost laughs aloud at the absurdity of the act. The Minotaur almost laughs because he knows, even as he pulls on to the road and pushes the gas pedal to the floor, the valves slapping and knocking against the rockers as the tired four-cylinder engine struggles to gain speed, he knows that he cannot stop at Kelly’s house.
He knows it the first time he drives by. He knows it the second, the third and the fourth. But not until driving past Kelly’s darkened house a fifth time does the Minotaur believe it enough to keep driving. With no second destination in mind the Minotaur drives in the hope that the hot night air washing over him will clear his head. He crumples his stolen secret and tosses it out the window on a littered stretch of highway, where it will surely get lost amid all the other trash. When the Minotaur pulls to a stop in front of David’s apartment he is no less muddleheaded, and even as he walks to the door he’s not sure why he’s there. A sign in Sister Obediah’s window blinks CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED, but he sees thin blades of light between the partially open Venetian blinds.
Standing at the window, reading the menu of Obediah’s services, the Minotaur wishes he could believe in what she has to offer: a promise woven into the deep lines of his palm, some turn of fate told by a card. But faith is a nebulous thing and charlatans a dime a dozen; it’s always been that way. The Minotaur both envies and pities the devout.
The Minotaur hears voices from inside Sister Obediah’s. He cocks his head to hear better. A man’s voice totally devoid of emotion says something in English, then repeats phrases in another language—a familiar language, old and heavy with diphthongs.
“Taedium vitae.”
“Taedium vitae.”
“Taedium vitae.”
And then Obediah’s voice tentatively mimics each phrase after it is spoken, her version a little quieter and less precise, as if she is attaching shadows to the words.
“Sudum est hodie.”
The weather is nice today.
“Quid admisi sceleris?”
What have I done wrong?
“Cubitum eamus.”
Let’s go to bed.
Sister Obediah is teaching herself Latin. The Minotaur recognizes the language.
“Capillus satis compositus est commode?”
The Minotaur searches his memory for definition.
“Res male inclinant.”
He turns his bullish head to press an ear to the glass, forgetting for an instant the cumbersome horns; it is a frequent and disturbing oversight. Almost immediately after the bony protuberance raps against the windowpane, the lights extinguish. All is quiet inside Sister Obediah’s. Afraid of being caught looking in her window the Minotaur steps quickly into the stairwell of the apartments overhead. Moths orbit a naked bulb in the ceiling high above; the sounds of
their wing beats and of their bodies striking the Sheetrock ricochets in the windowless enclosure.
The Minotaur is halfway up the stairs before he remembers something he has to do. As quietly as possible he slips back out to the Vega and climbs over the front seat so he won’t have to open the squeaky rear hatch. From the bottom of his toolbox he pulls a small handmade sanding block, which he puts into his pants pocket. Back in the stairwell the Minotaur smooths the hardened Spakle paste from where he repaired the wall. Then he sits for a while on the steps trying to decide what to say if David answers the door.
He does.
“M?” David asks from the cracked door. As if it could be anyone else standing there with the head of a bull.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur answers. As if there were another, a truer answer.
David steps back to let the Minotaur inside.
“Wake you?” the Minotaur asks.
“No,” David says. “I was up.”
Lights are on in the back of the apartment; the smell of gun oil is palpable. They stand in awkward silence in the doorway of the apartment, and it takes the Minotaur a few minutes to realize that David is not wearing odd pajamas, as he’d first thought. Rather, he is garbed in the Civil War uniform the Minotaur saw in the box the day he helped David move. David is embarrassed. The Minotaur is embarrassed.
The Minotaur: Takes a Cigarette Break Page 14
