Wakefield

by Andrei Codrescu

  “It look to me, Mr. Wakefield, please forgive me for the truth, that you are running from responsible, that you are like child who does not come inside when mother calls.”

  Wakefield laughs. “Apt, no doubt. Will I ever come inside?”

  Aleisha points hopefully to a clump of damp grounds at the intersection of many fine lines. “That is home, maybe you go there in a year, but you wait for something.”

  That’s nothing either Wakefield or the Devil doesn’t know. Neither one has gained an advantage through Mrs. Petrovich’s cup.

  “Many thanks, Mrs. Petrovich. I am waiting for something.”

  Right. The Devil fingers a sixteenth-century Italian musket with gold-inlaid ivory stock he has brought along for the occasion, but changes his mind (yet again) and returns to his Carpathian cave where, on a bed of moss next to a gurgling brook, a sleeping beauty dreams of his long, curly tongue. Wakefield can wait a while longer.

  The front door bangs and Mr. Petrovich treads heavily into the room. He’s holding a bottle of plum brandy; his face is swollen. Aleisha leaves the room and Susan stands up, ready for anything.

  “Been having a good time eating my food, Mr. Wakefield?” Slobodan’s bloodshot eyes roam the kitchen. “Where is she going? My check must be here.”

  Mrs. Petrovich comes back into the kitchen with her hands on her hips. “I pay bills with your check!” she hisses. The adversaries face each other. Susan steps between them.

  “Pop, you should leave now!”

  Mr. Petrovich says something nasty in Serbian and heads for the door.

  “Mr. Wakefield, tell your boss we aren’t afraid of bombs!” Slobodan shouts before he slams it.

  Wakefield makes a mental note. Who is his boss?

  When he and Susan step out on the street, after many hugs and kisses from Mrs. Petrovich, they see Slobodan Petrovich speeding off in his old car, exhaust billowing behind him. Wouldn’t pass inspection, thinks Wakefield. Nor would his native country, billowing its own lethal smoke thousands of miles away.

  Back at the wheel of her little car, Susan is quiet for several blocks.

  “Well, that was a bust,” she finally says, lighting a cigarette. “Sorry. Do you want to get a drink?”

  His talk at the museum is at eight, and it’s already five, but the hell with it, it’s been a long, weird day. He has some notes. “Sure. Let’s go back to the hotel, have a drink at the bar there. That way I can change into my art sweater and get ready for tonight. I have no idea what I’m going to talk about.”

  His black turtleneck sweater is always helpful in art-situations.

  “You could talk about hit men in black turtlenecks,” Susan jokes, throwing the butt out the window. “Just kidding.”

  Well, sure. If there is one thing that Wakefield knows he can count on, it’s serendipity. The left field always provides. He pursues the Teleskou story. There is something very mysterious here, and possibly helpful.

  “Let me see if I understand this,” he tells Susan. “Teleskou was a collector of religious belief, a Homo religiosus, who believed in the myths of races, in spiritual forces that shape nations as well as people. He believed in the afterlife, in ghosts, in place-spirits, in active witchcraft, really. I know he wrote in a dispassionate, scientific way, but those things were real to him. Was everything in Teleskou’s worldview antithetical to your father’s?”

  Susan takes her time. “No, but something was.”

  “What was it?”

  “Me.” Susan lights another cigarette.

  Somehow, that doesn’t surprise him. “You had a romance with the professor?”

  “Not a romance, no. I felt that he was my older soul mate, my guide. But Pop was suspicious. Fairy tales always made him nervous.”

  “No wonder, given Aleisha’s. Surely the politics is something else, though. The police will figure it out one day,” says Wakefield. Truthfully, though, he is not so sure that the police will figure it out. He senses here a mystery that is beyond the Wintry City police, involving as it does myth and the Balklands, ideologies and a beautiful princess. A detective with a Ph.D. in religious studies might, just might make something out of it.

  Wakefield goes to his room, leaving Susan in the bar with a martini. On his way up in the elevator he phones Zamyatin. “I’m in deep shit, man. I landed on your planet and I have no idea how to talk to the natives.” He tells him about the pre- and post-Communist art show, the ethnic tensions, the battling Petroviches, Susan. “What am I going to say tonight?”

  On the other end of the call Zamyatin is at his living room window in the bar, in a philosophical mood. Wakefield can hear the ice cubes clinking as they talk.

  “In the first place, don’t even say ‘ethnic’ this or that, that’s like the newspapers. Where does the word come from? ‘Ethos,’ the beliefs and behaviors of a people. They don’t hire you to talk about their ethos, that’s what they are fighting about. They hire you to tell them about your ethos, something they don’t know, maybe how to make some money, or travel for free. Forget about that ethnic shit. Of course, they might just kill you.”

  Zamyatin laughs his smoky laugh that sounds like marbles in a tin box. Wakefield has reached his room and is rooting around in his bag for his sweater. He wonders how long he can go on pulling his speeches out of thin air, giving himself up to inspiration and chance. What if one day he’s on stage facing the expectations of a hungry mob, and his inspiration snaps? What if the Devil cuts the rope and he falls to the ground with a thump? That would be some warning shot: the total failure of his act!

  “… so my favorite song,” Zamyatin goes on about something, “is ‘Paint It Black,’ so we play it over and over until the KGB colonel knocks on the door one night and says, ‘I’m confiscating the music.’ And from then, I hear the Rolling Stones come from the colonel’s apartment every night! You see, that was socialism. Then I signed a manifesto to free political prisoners, and they take me to the nice, quiet hospital.… The colonel himself takes me, then before I go in he gives me a little present. It’s the Rolling Stones, my old tape. I play ‘Paint It Black,’ very appropriate because everything in the hospital is white including the food, then they send me to the Arctic where, you know, everything is more white. You tell me what it means. God, does she have a cute ass!” That’s clearly not in reference to the tape.

  Still listening to Ivan, unable to find his sweater, Wakefield logs on and sees that he has twenty-two e-mails. “Okay, but do you think this ethnic fighting is going stop or is it just getting started?”

  “I know my people: gloomy Slavs, people with souls as dark as Leningrad in December. They gonna suffer forever. They have old, old feelings … like nine hundred years old. What we should do is parachute one hundred thousand psychiatrists in there and put the whole place in therapy, make everybody listen to Rolling Stones. Maybe after thirty, forty years the lamb lies down with the chicken hawk. Listen man, good luck tonight! I gotta go.”

  What’s scary is that Zamyatin is never wrong, not even when he sounds completely insane. Wakefield has an overwhelming desire to hear “Paint It Black,” also one of his favorite songs. The Devil’s, too, no doubt. He reads some of his twenty-two messages. Of course, there’s a new one from his ex-wife. “Are you in town yet, Wakefield? You didn’t call, so I suppose you are. There are things we need to discuss and if you don’t call me I’m going to come to your thing tonight. Peace, M.”

  Peace, huh. That’s serious. Wakefield has an unpleasant vision of Marianna in peasant-roots drag making a scene at the museum. That would be a performance. He could announce from the podium that he has racked his brain for insights into the problems and paradoxes represented by the exhibition and come to the conclusion that a public discussion with his Romanian ex-wife on the subject of their daughter would best serve the purpose.

  He’s found his sweater and is putting it on backward when Susan calls from the bar. “What’s taking you so long? Hurry up, I have a surprise for you.…” />
  Wakefield sees the surprise as soon as he enters the bar. Everybody’s staring at two incredibly beautiful women sitting with Susan, drinking martinis. They look like women on the covers of fashion magazines. They are on the covers of fashion magazines. He squeezes into the booth next to Susan, who’s on her third martini and very happy.

  “This is my surprise,” she bubbles. “My sister, Tiffany, and Milena, her girlfriend.”

  Wakefield, kissing their proffered hands, murmurs, “Enchanté,” in an “I’ve been to Europe” way. He can’t believe his luck. He’s in the garden of the muses.

  Tiffany met Milena, a Czech girl with the same name as Franz Kafka’s girlfriend, in Prague, at the Café Milena, a coincidence that still amuses them as they recall their encounter for Wakefield. Milena Café has a view of Prague’s famous medieval clock that rings in the hour with the figure of Death.

  “So it’s the hour,” says Tiffany, “and I’m standing at the café window looking at Death with all these German tourists, and when I go back to my table, my purse is gone.… I look around and I see this boy, like twelve years old, running toward the door with my purse under his arm, and the next thing I see is this gorgeous long leg come out from under a table, and he trips over it and falls face down. In a flash I’m on top of him, but the chick who tripped him is already on top of him. I fall on top of her and we are both on the floor on top of the little thief, and when we look into each other’s eyes … kaboom!”

  They look into each other’s eyes and laugh. Susan makes a face. She’s heard the story.

  “That’s amazing,” says Wakefield sincerely. It’s nice to see people in love from so close up. “Like magic.”

  “Prague is a magical place,” Milena say’s in her seductive accent. “Alchemists, artists, writers, everybody loves Prague. It’s the most beautiful city in the world.”

  Tiffany says tenderly, “She’s never lived in a city where art isn’t just everywhere. Art is her air. She thinks that it makes everything run, even the buses, not to mention revolutions.”

  “And what is wrong with that?” Milena asks, draping herself around her friend. “Beauty is truth, is it not?”

  Susan turns to Wakefield. “Isn’t true love disgusting? You want to know how I feel about the guy I’ve been dating? If there was a fire and I had to choose between him and my new vibrator, it would be no contest.”

  A young man with a clipboard approaches their table.

  “Hi! I’m from Trend Watch. We’re doing a survey. We’re asking people what they think the next big thing is going to be. Would you mind?”

  “My dinner,” answers Milena, who’s a chef, as well as a model.

  “It’s so nice of you to ask,” says Tiffany, stretching like a lynx inside her angora sweater.

  “In the future, robots will conduct surveys,” says Susan.

  “You know what I think?” Tiffany says sharply, her irritation directed at her sister. “I think the next big thing will be that people will always be very nice to other people because they’ll be wearing electronic bracelets that monitor their aggression levels. Whenever you say mean things, you’ll get zapped.”

  The survey guy is fixated on Tiffany’s angora-framed cleavage; the tip of his tongue is actually hanging out of his mouth.

  “I think a well-placed ‘fuck you’ would be worth getting zapped for,” Susan counters.

  Milena ignores them and earnestly tells the surveyor, “Wearable technology, if you really want to know, is the next big thing. And fingerprint ATMs.”

  While Milena enlightens the surveyor, Susan tells her sister about the situation at home. “Pop’s gone nuts. We’ve really got to do something, Mommy’s crying all the time.”

  “You know how she feels about me and Milena. I don’t know what I can do.”

  “We’ve got to get her away from Pop. I’m afraid he’ll hurt her. Or get hurt himself. I told you Mommy bought a gun.”

  Milena and the clipboard guy have somehow gone on to the subject of post-Communist legs.

  “It’s a new, EU kind of thing. After communism, girls’ legs grew longer, everyone got taller. And the shorter the skirts, the longer the legs, you know.”

  He doesn’t, but laughs anyway. He doesn’t care what she says as long as he can keep looking at her. Tiffany turns away from her sister and jumps into Milena’s conversation.

  “Milena just loves surveys. In her country no one ever asked her opinion about anything. She was eleven during the Velvet revolution, Havel and all that. She’s a velveteen”

  Apparently Susan is used to this kind of family-issues avoidance by Tiffany. Milena continues to elaborate her theory of post-Communist beauty.

  “The founding myth of Bohemia is very interesting. The tribal ruler was a woman, the Princess Libuse, and she was forced by the nobles to take a husband, which caused all the women to revolt. They call it the War of the Maidens, and it lasted for many years, but unfortunately the men prevailed and established a dynasty that ruled for six hundred years. Because of the importance of women in Czech history, beautiful stone women decorate almost all the buildings in Prague. That’s why we invented Art Nouveau,” she smirks, elbowing Tiffany. “When I was a little girl I loved these stone ladies, and I wanted to look just like them when I grew up.”

  Susan looks disgusted by her chickenshit sister and Art Nouveau. “Are you saying that Czech chicks grow up beautiful in order to compete with a bunch of buildings?”

  “What’s wrong with that? Stone women can be naked year round because they’re not bothered by cold and snow. In the Czech Republic we have only one or two months of summer to enjoy being naked.”

  “Milena loves to be naked,” confirms Tiffany.

  The guy with the clipboard holds it against his chest, as if holding in his about-to-explode heart. He’s hypnotized.

  “Shoo,” Susan tells him. “Go away now.”

  He doesn’t know what to do.

  “That’s all,” says Tiffany. “That’s all we have to say.”

  Milena winks at him. Reluctantly, he drags himself away backward, like a supplicant. The next big thing. Wow.

  “You chased away my admirer!” Milena pouts.

  “There are always more where he came from.” Tiffany bumps her shoulder. The two of them are like a couple of young thoroughbreds.

  Wakefield doesn’t want them to gallop away, but he really does need an hour alone to prepare for his talk. It’s getting late.

  He excuses himself from the booth, but Susan won’t budge.

  “I’ll just stay here and drink until you come back. Don’t worry, I’m an excellent drunk driver.”

  “I’m not so sure,” her sister warns. “I can drive all of you. Milena’s getting pretty shit-faced and I just love it when she’s like that. She’ll do anything.”

  Milena pulls up her skirt under the table. “I’m not wearing any panties!” she announces cheerfully.

  Twinge of desire. No, he really must go upstairs for a while. Alone. He does like his wide range of choices, options, and possibilities, though. It’s as if in giving him a deadline for starting the race for his “real” life, the Devil gave him a prelife of delights, like the best parts of all kinds of great movies. Just as quickly as he rejoices, he sees the downside. If all the great alternatives occur in the prelife, what happens after the starter shot? Will the range perversely narrow, leaving him not with the likes of Maggie or Susan, but choices between, let’s say, working forever in a slaughterhouse or serving breakfasts in an insane asylum. No women, no great restaurants, no glittery cities, no beautiful cornfields … just his back on an eternal treadmill. The Devil’s sense of humor is not like ours. We laugh about anything, including ourselves, but the Devil has a cruel surrealist streak.

  Because of the controversial nature of the exhibition, the museum has hired private security guards to augment city police for the opening. When Wakefield and his tipsy sirens arrive, there is a cordon of uniformed police and beefy guys with walkie
-talkies and bulges under their jackets in front of the building. Wakefield goes through a metal detector and receives his Speaker badge. Doris is there on the other side of the checkpoint, and she takes him to the green room backstage. They are accompanied by two muscular guys in suits who scan the empty hall before unlocking the door to the green room. Doris sighs. “Private security. We had to. Regular museum security people don’t even have guns. I hope it doesn’t bother you.”

  Wakefield drinks a soda, then goes out to peek at the crowd from behind the curtain. One bodyguard walks in front of him, the other behind. Wakefield takes a look; the auditorium is full, at least fifteen hundred people. He sees his friends in the front row. Milena has stuck her long legs out in front of her. The short skirt and what he knows isn’t under it give him a momentary thrill, but it’s followed by a stronger feeling of fear.