The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  Sometimes Blue was on the ropes. I didn't want to see much more. The trainer lifted Blue's slender legs above his head. He'd bowed to the garland at the beginning of each round, but that hadn't saved him from a knee to the balls four times. The man's face scarcely seemed to change, but he burst into sweat and swayed back almost proudly. At the end of the round his trainer looked in his pants, rubbed him down, slapping his hand to make him listen; his head flopped toward the trainer and he nodded. When they raised his legs above his head, he grimaced with pain.

  They fell together; the crowd went ooooh! open-mouthed. They flailed at one another with spread fingers and the crowd cheered uh-oh! uh-oh! The fighters' wrists were above their heads as if they desperately strove to be birds.

  From behind the middle zone's fence a man yelled advice, trying to teach Blue, his hero, how to punch. But Red threw Blue back down again and kneed him in the groin.

  With each incarnation the air was hotter with crowd-sweat, more eye-watering with cigarette smoke. People were betting, fingers raised; people were crying out with deep ritualized shouts. Red won, then Blue, kicking Red in the pit of the stomach although Red kept swinging; Red won, and I sat illuminated by their flashes of pain, shock, rage and triumph—and, so often, just the dull gaze of endurance. They sometimes prayed while waiting for the verdict. Sometimes they ducked back from a blow. So often I saw the sudden mask of disappointment that falls across the loser's face (the winner raises a fist, bows); this mask was stroboscopic,* flashing each twist in this chain of violent beauty, the puncher's face merely determined, the victim's bobbing under his punches; each seemed about to cry but that was only the effect of grimacing; anyhow these faces were but workings in the molten flesh that worked itself like clay, each skull an anvil for the fisthammer or heelhammer to forge into that ultimate mask of loss as the crowd cried: Yao! Yao! Eeeeh! — Sometimes Red and Blue were a pair whom no one cared about or betted on; then the crowds leaned against the fences and grinned at one another, or watched expressionlessly, only chanting and chattering a little when a flurry of punches landed. Then a new Red and Blue would offer themselves. Now the shouts swarmed and rang like a flock of angels, celestial and horrible; but I could see no difference; it was still Red and Blue. Before they began I saw one contender talking with his trainer, the other stretching, balancing on one leg, lifting and flexing the other with all his toes apart, as if in illustration of the futility of stratagems; after him would come the next Red or Blue, nothing ever to be decided. What did Napoleon accomplish, or Genghis Khan? True, the world would be different without them, but the fortunes of the prizes for which they fought continue their shift and ebb.

  A judge passed a slip to the referee. Red had won. Then it was time for time for a new head to be bouncing back against the ropes. They hadn't even gotten to the champion fight yet, but I'd seen enough.

  When I came outside it was night and I saw a canal full of rising gray water caked with raindrops. I saw girls in yellow uniforms scurrying to work in massage parlors, and a drenched old man between stopped cars (eight abreast in the rain, and motorcycles darting in between) stood selling newspapers in plastic bags. And I thought: no matter who you are or what you do, life is war.

  * In 1993 this was about U.S. $24.

  * Or perhaps it was just the strobelike effect of the fans cutting across the light-tubes in the smoky humidity.

  THE BEST WAY

  TO SHOOT H

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  * * *

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  On a hot and sinister night when the whores on Mission Street were yelling: What are you parking next to me for? I'm gonna smash your head in, motherfucker! and their pimps only said: You want any shiva? You want any doses?—on that night he turned down Seventeenth and it was dark and empty. Someone whistled urgently behind him in a two-toned signal. Whores and pimps called each other that way when something was up; maybe other characters did, too. It made him nervous. When he got to Capp Street there was only one whore, a demented pimpled mumbler far away down at Sixteenth, and the dark vacuum between thickened with smoky rainy zeroes and enigmas as his anxiety contemplated it. Another whistle. He began to walk toward the demented whore. At once he heard a louder whistle; and looking up he saw a man leaning out a window, regarding him, and the man put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Instantly another whistle replied from behind him, much closer than before. He looked over his shoulder but could see nothing. A half-suppressed cough came only a few steps behind. He walked quickly to Sixteenth where it was light, and the demented whore pulled up her skirt to let him enumerate the stale jellies of her flesh, but then he heard the whistle again from the darkness of a doorway just behind him; and he was getting angry now, so he strode boldly to the doorway (standing some distance away to delay and hopefully prevent the launching of any blade into his stomach) and he said: Were you calling me?

  You want any doses, man? said the darkness shyly. I got me some mighty fine powder . . .

  He replied: Now I see. I thought it was you, but it's nobody. Isn't it amazing, to realize that? There's nobody!

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  In those nights he was living on Mission Street because so many people swarmed there that he could hope someone might actually smash through his soul-eye's smooth flat window to kill him or make him free, but instead the people just flowed down his pane like gray rain. That afternoon there'd been a carnival with fat ladies moving their bottoms in the streets, black-eyed Asian schoolgirls cooling their teeth in the hissing streams of each other's breath, brown girls in black and silver skirts working their lips into kisses; and he'd never forget that coffeeskinned girl on the parade float, swinging her gold-spangled crotch in sharp bursting arcs; now that that was ended and the police had stacked the barricades back into rented vans there remained only the same threateners and bottle-smashers, and above them the same smell of doughnuts in the hallways because the hotel was right over a bakery—preferable to the adjoining hotel, which had married a Chinese fish market for so many do-us-parts that the slime of rotting seafood had leached its way through the wall and summoned the same slow fat evil flies that Lucifer kept under his tongue; no, give me doughnuts, please. Well, he had his doughnuts—the sweet soggy smell of them, anyway, a smell as weary as being alone at ten-o'-clock on a rainy Sunday night in a sleazy hotel.

  A voice was saying: He said he was gonna gimme twenty bucks but I need thirty.

  He unlocked the door. The old lady was kneeling on the floor, looking up at him in terror while her very dark blood crept slowly down her arm, the hypodermic needle which was stuck in it wine-colored with blood. Her grayish-blonde hair was drawn back tight against her head to make her younger. Her arm had doubled up as if to thrust the elbow forward in defense of her life. She held a bloody paper towel in her hand.

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  She wasn't such an old lady, actually. She was just a whore who only got her periods when she went to jail, because she couldn't shoot her speedballs in there. She disliked getting periods, but what she positively hated was being forced to sleep at night. (Everyone knows that whores are nocturnal while Johns and prison guards [with some exceptions] are diurnal, which proves at least one difference between the species.) And because he lived with her, because he tried to sleep at night, he dreaded the night, dreaded the smell of old cigarettes and old age, the sound of moaning and coughing in the bed beside him.

  He sat down on the bed, and she came and sat next to him. She turned up her half-dead lips to be kissed. — Oh, that feels wonderful, she said.

  There was a knock.

  Who is it? she cried ferociously.

  It's me, said a sad shy voice. />
  Grunting, the old lady popped her hernia back in and opened the door. It was the whore who'd been raped with a vacuum cleaner. (Two days afterward, her stomach had suddenly swelled up, and she fainted from the pain.)

  You get it? said the old lady.

  Got it right here, the girl whispered.

  They heated the bottlecap with the old lady's lighter, untwisted the paper, added water from the brandy bottle (the white stuff in the cap was already fizzing), stirred it lovingly with the needle end.

  Just draw it up, the old lady snarled.

  I'm tryin' to.

  The girl peered down at the mosquito-striped needle. — I left seventy-five, she said. Twenty-five for me, fifty for you.

  Let's make it eighty.

  OK, said the girl guiltily.

  They were almost ready now to bare their arms to the needle, like children who didn't have a ticket to a carnival, stretching their hands out from so far behind the fence.

  Well, that came out right, said the old lady with satisfaction.

  I'll come back. Where's the restroom? I gotta stick myself in a personal place.

  The old lady shot her a glare. — You'd better come back, or I'll hunt you down and kill you.

  The girl cringed in terror. — I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she said almost inaudibly. I'll do it here.

  Go to the restroom if you want. You heard what I said.

  I'll do it here.

  Well, stop whining and do it here, then. You need me to hit you? Which personal place is it today?

  My pussy.

  That's where the happy veins are, the old lady laughed, the needle already in her wrist, the smelly pantyhose knotted around her upper arm . . .

  At midnight, after the girl had gone out to make more money (her pussy was already abscessed, but one time when he was with her she'd spread herself with pride and told him: You can always tell if a woman's got a disease by smelling her vagina. If it's not healthy she's got a bad odor. See, I don't smell, do I?), he killed the light. He awoke an hour later to see the old lady kneeling on the carpet, trying to stick herself, walking on her knees to the sink so that she wouldn't wake him when she washed the blood from arm and sleeve.

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  There was a black woman sitting naked on his bed, with the old lady wearing nothing but underpants beside her. He knew the black woman well. She was the whore who put makeup on her needle tracks (which she called fleabites). She was the whore who always made the John pay first and then said: OK, baby, you just lemme go out and get my medicine and then I'll be more relaxed. — Whenever she could get away with it, she didn't come back. — The old lady was hitting her with the needle and the black woman's face was turned away and the old lady slyly knuckled her vulva but the black woman said: I been in the pen but I ain't never been no lesbian. I don't have no use for girls, 'cause they don't have three legs! Course, I don't need boys, either, when I got dope. (I dunno about that vein there, baby. Maybe you can't stick that vein.) Dope's my sex. Dope comes first, food comes second, and boys come last. Sorry, honey, but your finger just ain't on my list. An' them boys, they should be thankful they're on the list at all. 'Cause if they don't like it I can just go to the store and buy me a rubber husband. Plug it in and turn it on an' I don't need any other kind.

  The old lady wasn't listening. She slid her middle finger deep inside the black woman's vagina. Then she eased the plunger down, and the black woman's eyeballs rolled up in gladness.

  Sitting on the bed, he glanced at the old lady's sorry arms. He remembered the dark shoeshine place on Sixteenth with the airplane glue smell where he'd come with a broken watch because the proprietor had a round gentle face and his spectacles were alive and his fingers were repairman's fingers, downgrowing piney tendrils studded with sensitivity, so he gave his watch to the proprietor, who took it into another world where a bird flapped on television, purifying all the spools and bins of shoes and boots and purses and jackets, and the proprietor said something to himself in Chinese and took the watch to a pincer-machine, a clamp-machine and then a sewing machine; and smiling quite happily, the proprietor returned from behind the partition on which rubber soles and crescents of a mysterious silver metal waited to come alive, and the proprietor set the watch down on the counter, on which a piece of paper was laid, and the paper said: The Blood of Jesus covers all of my sin.

  Sixty-thirty, the proprietor explained. Any time is sixty-thirty. Trusty me.

  How much do I owe you?

  Three dollar OK?

  Sure.

  The watch was fixed, and he was happy. Then the proprieter showed his own watch, whose plastic strap he couldn't fix.

  The old lady's arm and soul were both like that. She fixed others, for a fee, but how could she repair herself?

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  Well, sorry I was gone for so long, whispered the whore who'd been raped with a vacuum cleaner. I got another date, and I just couldn't let that twenty dollars pass. I don't give a shit about that, the old lady said. Do you have it or not is all I give a shit about.

  I'm sorry, the girl said quickly, pulling out the bag of powder.

  It only took the old lady only a quarter of an hour to find a vein. The girl watched big-eyed, licking her lips. Afterward the old lady started happily complaining about the black woman, mainly because she wasn't there. — That raunchy stuff is what bugs me, she said. She wean a skirt that barely covers the crack of her ass, no underpants, and she opens up her legs when the cars go by. I went by in a car with one of my regulars and she started flappin' her titties. It was so disrespectful!

  I dunno, the girl said, embarrassed because she was not listening. I gotta go stick myself in a personal place.

  But the old lady would not let her go. She made her listen to the story about the last time she'd gone to jail, when she lost her thirty-dollar coat. When you go into jail and anyone in your hotel sees you get picked up, your belongings are gone on the first night. The black woman said: I don't know what happened to your coat. — But when the old lady got out, the black woman was wearing it when she went down the street. The old lady said: Isn't that my coat? The black woman said: Uh-uh. Anyhow, it's too tight for you. It looks better on me. — In the end the old lady had to trade her for it.

  Please, I gotta go, the girl said in agony. I'll come right back. I done my duty.

  She ran to the sink, bent her head down, and retched.

  I'm sorry, honey, said the old lady. I didn't know you needed to fix so bad.

  It's okay, the girl said, smiling nervously in case someone might strike her.

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  He heard somebody moan when he began to turn the key in the lock. When he opened the door, the old lady was there, wearily w searching for a vein.

  He went to sleep and was awakened by a sick smoky smell. She was burning a piece of Brillo pad until the flame stopped being green, because that was the way to remove the plastic coating, which would hurt you if you inhaled its fumes, and when the Brillo was ready she packed it into the segment of car antenna she'd found on the sidewalk and snapped off a piece of and shoved paper towels through with the spoke of an old umbrella to get rid of the lube until it was a good crack pipe, long and skinny and elegant. She didn't care about smoking crack one way or the other. But so many Johns did nowadays that she had to be ready. The last time, she'd used a drapery hook to pry loose the glass tube in the bottom of a Finlandia vodka bottle. But she'd gone to jail after that, and since then she hadn't seen any Finlandia bottles in the trash can.

  He went to sleep again and began to dream of something whose shape he could not yet see, but from the other world came what the old lady called magic rocks, which were the ceramic bases to spark plugs; one of these could smash plexiglas if you needed to break into a car window, and one of these now shattered the glass of his dream; it was her coughing. She was kneeling in the darkness that smelled like stale doughnuts a
nd rotten fish, holding the needle in her teeth, cutting the plastic baggie of powder, pouring the powder into the bottle cap to sizzle. He heard her whisper to herself: Pay a dollar seventy-seven for a little styrofoain chest and seventy-seven cents for a little ice . . . — Then she twisted the elastic ligature around her upper arm until it sank in and the flesh wrinkled around it. She rolled the bulging vein between her fingers and twirled the needle in, her eyes wide and dark. When she pulled the syringe out it was bloody. Cocking her arm, she slid the red wet point back into herself. She was mumbling faster now. He heard her say: If you get a room on the ground floor, people come through the windows to rip you off. — A minute later she clenched her bloodstained blushing fingers and whispered: Ow, I missed the vein. When I miss, it burns like acid. — It took him a long time to get to sleep this time. Every now and then he'd open his eyes and see her rubbing some new place with alcohol before she quested with her needletip. Finally she found a good vein just above the knee. — I got lucky this time, she crooned to herself. Now I'm through for the night. I had a hell of a time getting it in. Daddy, didn't you hear me whistle? — He opened his eyes again. — You calling me Daddy? he said in amazement. She leaped in guilty startlement; she'd forgotten he was there. To make amends, she came right up to him, naked, abscessed and bleeding, and kissed his cheek. He knew that she wanted to be with him. He was helping her and so she wanted to give him the one thing she had to give. Sometimes she touched him as he slept. At last he began to doze once more and came into the dark room he'd seen years ago in Pompeii with the fresco of the man lying naked on his back touching the naked woman's breast as she squatted on him, stroking his hair, and he half awoke, wondering if the old lady might be touching him, but she was hunched over the sink, washing off her blood; the magic rocks cracked but did not quite smash his dream like the other fresco too leprous with age to make out anymore, just a man and a woman embracing. There'd been a statue of Priapus rising. Perhaps the old lady had just struck a match, because he was out of the dark room now, back in the shining busyness of last week's carnival. Just as a spectator walking along the margin of a parade rediscovers the bright plumes and butterflies which had passed him when he was still, the silver see-through wings of almost-naked empresses, the same musicians on truck beds playing the songs which it now seems will never end, so he followed something sensual and lovely which was probably the same thing that the old lady followed when she broke through her flesh with the needletip, but he never found it because something was pursuing him; it was the sounds that the old lady made, rocking and moaning all night, trying to find a vein. Longing for the courage or heartlessness to put her out, he went to sleep again and then it was early morning and the doorknob was turning to wake him wearily one more time and she came in.