The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  The last time Tree stumbled onto something really exciting, she and Lillian and I wound up inside a refrigerator carton with a candle, the Kabbalah, and a double-terminated Herkimer quartz crystal. Naked.

  The first page is good, by the way. No, it’s really good. I went over it several times last night, more than a little jealous at how deftly the conclusion is turning in a direction I’d totally failed to anticipate. Odd, though. Truman is talking dip slopes and other obscure geologists’ terms that can’t have very much to do with Southern Noir. I’m more than a little curious about this second page.

  I seize the gin bottle by the neck and suck on it for a little while. My definition of making myself a drink these days. There’s a popping sound as my lips come away. Shuddering, I return to the front room and the American Teacher’s Computer and say hi to Cowboy Shirt Elvis. He doesn’t reply. I decide to make a quick check of my email and there encounter the usual spams, chain forwards, too-little too-late petitions against the Iraqi war—uh, operation—and another all-caps message from Jeremy, which I delete unopened. Sore loser.

  Now my eyes register a name I’ve never before seen in print, let alone in my personal inbox: Ana Manguella. I open the message.

  Dear Julian,

  What a surprise to encounter you at the museum! It was quite a chain of improbable circumstances that put me there that day, and I’ve reflected on what that could mean. Still don’t know! But, recalling our conversation on the train, I thought you might be interested in the link below. Happy reading.

  All the best,

  Ana

  The link takes me to a highly academic site on European mythology that features an article on Heracles. Above the article is an old drawing of our superhero, club in hand and lion skin adorning his head. With the aid of his cousin, Iolaus, Heracles is battling the wicked Hydra. He/they don’t seem to be making much headway.

  Deciding to put off reading the article till I’ve savored Truman’s latest page—and made myself another drink—I thank Ana for the information and ask whether she might be able to free up some time for an afternoon stroll along Kowloon Bay. No woman can resist being walked beside a body of water. It can be a sewage treatment lagoon. Doesn’t matter.

  After mailing and downing drink number two, I break out Page Two. Nothing earth-shattering. More wacky handwriting. More geological peculiarity. Here’s something strange. The first paragraph of the new page ends with the word “blue.” There’s only one other paragraph on the page, and it ends with “green.” Curious, I go back to the first page of Chapter Thirteen, which too is composed of exactly two paragraphs, the first concluding with the word “beware,” the other “sheen.”

  We won’t think about that just now.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “It’s been a very strange year,” I say to Ana Manguella.

  Very close by, a cruise ship glides soundlessly along Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour.

  “Everyone I know says the same thing,” replies Ana, strolling beside me in a long tan raincoat. “Let me guess,” she continues. “You’re experiencing one unexpected turn after another, you’re frustrated and stressed to the limit, yet there are more opportunities than ever. Am I right?”

  “Except for the opportunities part,” I say.

  “Oh, the opportunities are there, I assure you,” says Ana. “It’s the outer planets. Things won’t settle down till after the eclipse in May. Think you can last that long?”

  “That’s the plan,” I tell her.

  “I’m sure you’ll be tucked back into your Memphis well before then, and that nasty break will be fully mended.”

  Ana raps lightly on my cast, now adorned with a complex ball-point doodle by Rui Long.

  “Can it be somebody else’s Memphis?” I inquire. “I keep moving away, but I always wind up back there. It’s probably the food. Hard to beat barbequed pork on white buns with sugared coleslaw and cold beer. My favorite breakfast actually.”

  “Didn’t Memphis recently erect an enormous pyramid?” asks Ana.

  “In the middle of downtown. Fits right in.”

  “Wouldn’t that change things enormously? In the energy sense, I mean?”

  “Hard to say,” I reply, “but the winos are now asking for spare deshrets. What’s that strange smell?”

  “Smell?”

  “I think it’s oxygen. Actually I think spring has come to the mainland. The way you know is, the public restrooms come to you.”

  Ana pauses to pull a small bud from a tree. With a bow, she delivers it to the palm of my hand. There’s a hint of purple at one end. “The way you know that spring has come to Earth,” says Ana, “is the emergence of flowers.”

  I place the bud in a shirt pocket and we step onto a wooden pier. Before us, the breathtaking blue of the bay reflects the white skyline of Kowloon. Reaching the farthest end of the pier, we lean against a sun-warmed iron railing.

  “So you’re planning to return to Memphis yet again?” asks Ana.

  “If I can just get out of China,” I answer. “But I never stay any one place for very long. This guy I work with, Bobby, asked me how many times I’ve moved in my life. He said he’d moved four times, which for a Chinese is practically nomadic.”

  “And you?” asks Ana.

  “Fifty-four, so far. Living somewhere is intolerable, if you want to know the truth. Have you ever put off going home because you can’t stand the thought of being there? Yet you end up home anyway because every other place you can think of is worse?”

  Ana blinks. “Have you ever been treated for depression, Julian?”

  “Successfully? No.”

  “Go on,” she says.

  “What better way to shake things up than to move? Suddenly you’re in survival mode. You’re living out of unmarked boxes. Even brushing your teeth requires creative thought. You’re eighteen years old again. You’re setting up your first apartment.”

  “I never looked at it quite that way,” says Ana. “To me, moving is simply hell.”

  “Of course it’s hell. It may be six months before you get your life back online. Finally you establish these little rhythms. You’re back. Which is the problem, of course.” I look at her. “You. Or me, as the case may be.”

  “I had no idea,” says Ana, “you were this fucked up.”

  “I’m at least this fucked up,” I tell her.

  “Here you are being so transparent with me,” adds Ana. “Frankly, you were just awful on the train. I’d say China has been good to you, Julian.”

  “Tree says I’m changing.”

  “And what are you changing into?”

  “I think I’m just changing out-of,” I reply.

  Ana gives me a questioning gaze. I watch the breeze toy with her hair. I’m becoming somewhat fond of the fine hairs around her ears.

  Stepping off the pier, she and I pass a sidewalk poet with long chin whiskers and a longer paintbrush. He’s doing calligraphy on the sidewalk using water, onlookers admiring each stroke. Before he reaches the end of the poem, the beginning has evaporated.

  Escaping campus today wasn’t easy. The moment my final class dismissed, I hurried to the English office to drop off the clipboard, which usually entails dodging Marilyn, who has taken to haunting the patio just outside the English office. Oh Ju-wen, it’s you. I did manage to skirt around her, only to discover a familiar hiney in Lil’s desk chair. At least she didn’t have her feet on the desk.

  “I have a question about the homework,” said Rui Long imperiously.

  “I didn’t assign any homework,” I replied.

  “Then I have a question about today’s class.”

  The other English teachers pretended to be very busy at their desks.

  “Could we step outside?” I suggested with an icy smile.

  Beyond the door, I wedged my hands as deeply into my pockets as I could manage, so as to keep them off Rui Long’s little throat. “I thought you were an expert at blending in. What you’re doing right now
is the blending equivalent of a Falun Gong demonstration.”

  “You’re just going to criticize me?” said Rui Long. “Somehow I expected more than that from you.”

  “Oh Ju-wen, it’s you.”

  “Why hello, Marilyn.”

  I managed to get away with the greater part of my skin and very little in the way of dignity. I’m not sure just what’s going on in my personal life right now. It’s the outer planets, no doubt.

  “So,” says Ana, “what do you intend to do?”

  “Do?”

  “About your problem,” she says.

  “I have a problem?”

  “You’re all fucked up.”

  “Oh,” I say, “that’s not a problem.”

  “You might think about moving on to the second Noble Truth,” she suggests. “There’s little fun to be had in the first, you know.”

  I shake my head. “I’m way ahead of you. I’m at Noble Truth Number Four, which is ‘Ignore Truths One through Three.’ Would you like to hear my technique for turning a grade-three depression into a grade-two?”

  “You have grades?”

  “It helps to objectify. I assign three grades. There’s a grade four, as well, but I stay away from it. If there’s a grade five, I think one simply loses consciousness. Do you know what syzygy means?”

  “Sy- what?”

  “Never mind. Most people only know about grade-one depression. That’s the blahs. You’re not in the mood for anything. For me, that would be a pretty good day.”

  Ana bursts into laughter before catching herself. “I’m sorry.”

  “Grade two,” I continue, “is actual suffering. You’re burning calories. You’re practically aerobic. When you hit grade two, you’re reaching for the coping mechanisms. You’re sitting in the bath eating from the one-gallon tub of Rocky Road with a spoon. You’re doing everything you can think of. Still, grade two is common enough.” I turn to her. “What’s broadly misunderstood is grade three. You’re suffering about suffering. You’re suffering about suffering about suffering. It’s a pain feedback loop so intense that it leads to thoughts of death. Not that death is an actual remedy. All depressed people believe in an afterlife because it’s the most depressing thing imaginable.”

  Ana studies the paving stones before us. “And your technique?”

  “Technique?”

  “For turning a grade three into a—?”

  “Oh. Very simple, really. You stop wanting to feel better.”

  “That’s it?” she says.

  “You think that’s easy?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You’re surrendering your last vestige of hope,” I say grandly, throwing my hands. “You’re giving up the only thing that could possibly matter to you, which is finding a way out of the pain. There’s nothing harder.”

  We walk in silence for a moment, and with a start I cognize what I’ve just said to this alabaster woman. I suppose it’s a little late to take it all back.

  “I suppose I’ve never thought about it,” says Ana. “I’m a very work-oriented person—not career-oriented, mind you. But extremely focused on what I do. I suppose I never take the time to think about being happy.”

  “Have you heard the story of the horse that forgot how to walk?” I reply. “Someone asked him which leg moved first, and which second, and so on. Once the horse thought about it, he couldn’t move at all.” I look at her. “Don’t think about being happy.”

  Ana places her right hand in mine. It’s lighter than expected. Slightly cool to the touch.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before,” I admit.

  “About the horse?” she asks.

  “The other part.”

  “Not even your sister?”

  “My sister and I don’t really talk,” I say. “She self-discloses. I smart off.”

  Actually, we don’t even do that anymore. I suppose I should call her.

  Ana says, “Actually your method isn’t exactly Buddhist. Very few people realize that Buddhism is, in fact, a psychological system—just as Celtic spirituality is, once you unpack it. But all the wisdom traditions converge at a certain point, don’t you think?”

  I nod. “You give up the struggle, then you realize that it was the struggle that was driving you crazy. In Buddhism, when you finally get that, you’re enlightened. In Taoism, you just get an erection.”

  Ana laughs before catching herself. “And in Christianity?”

  “In Christianity, you get a little wafer. Listen, I don’t have this hand-holding thing down exactly. When are we supposed to let go? And am I supposed to be making little squeezes or something?”

  “You’ve never held a woman’s hand before?”

  “Only long enough to get the handcuffs on her.”

  “You can let go anytime you’d like.”

  “But how do you know it’s time? And since you initiated it, if I let go first, wouldn’t that constitute some kind of message? But I can’t hold on forever, both of us perspiring heavily—why are you laughing? This is serious stuff.”

  “Julian, you just need to relax a little.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “Let’s try an experiment,” says Ana. “Instead of thinking of my response, just make yourself completely comfortable with my hand. You can pretend I’m sleeping, or in some other way completely insensate. Do you see?”

  I consider this dangerous proposal for a moment. “What I’m hearing is, I’m supposed to be totally myself with your snowy right hand?”

  “Exactly.”

  I stop Ana Manguella in a patch of shadow. Slowly I lift her right hand with both of mine and marvel at the delicate white fingers. Ana’s nails are short and tidy, almost boyish. Before I realize it, I have kissed each nail in turn. Now we’re walking again, quite slowly now.

  “How would you rate your mood just now?” asks Ana, smiling.

  “Point eight and dropping.”

  “Dropping? Is that good or bad?”

  “There’s no good or bad,” I tell her. “As soon as you establish a preference, you’ve lost the round. Actually point eight is quite low, considering the time of day. After lunch, I’m usually well into the twos.”

  Ana looks puzzled. “Is that what it’s like inside a man’s head? Are there just little numbers stacked in there? I don’t think it would occur to a woman to assign a number to a feeling.”

  I glance at her face. “You know what’s funny?”

  “What?” says Ana.

  “I just realized that my arm is wrapped around yours.”

  “It’s nice, don’t you think?” asks Ana, studying my face. “Are you Jewish? You are, aren’t you?”

  “Being fucked up doesn’t make you Jewish.”

  “I have a Jewish grandmother,” says Ana. “I’m one-fourth Goodblat.”

  “Would that be the fourth I’m holding?” I ask. “Feels Goodblatian. The Chinese think I’m British, you know.”

  “Do they?”

  “I suppose I’m a little reserved. Do you think?”

  Ana seems to let her mind drift for a moment. “I think that thinking’s over-rated,” she says at last.

  We walk in silence, and I steal a long glance at the woman in the open tan raincoat. I’m genuinely curious. How exactly does this human draw me in so utterly? She’s easy enough to look at, obviously, in her fair brunette kind of way. But there’s something else. Something neither blue, nor green, nor…

  The two new pages from Tree come to mind. However much I’d rather not think about it, Truman seems to have been warning me away from this particular woman’s sheen since before I was last sodomized in jail. Or was it the time before? Either way, I see no reason to worry, as Truman’s taste in women would have to be the equivalent of no taste at all. Anyway I’m not sure whether I can ever fully trust a disincarnate Pulitzer laureate who begins a chapter with instructions on how to prevaricate syncline and anticline of concurrent tectonic vectors by means of reverse analysis, past-life r
egression, and used rubber bands.

  Ana and I come to a stop at the entrance of a subway station, where we turn to look at one another. She seems as unsure as I how we have arrived here. Kowloon Bay is presently nowhere in sight.

  “We’re at the train,” I tell her.

  Again the warm wind plays with the fine hairs at Ana Manguella’s ears. “Yes, we are.”

  “Might we be moving to Crime Scene B?”

  The blue and the green seem to confer. “Does seem. But I really must ask a question.”

  I wait in suspended animation.

  “On the train you said something about being a narrator.”

  “The narrator,” I correct her. “And?”

  “Does that mean you’re narrating this? This moment, I mean? I do prefer to keep a low profile.”

  With a smile I say, “My lips are sealed.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ana’s vast unscreened windows are open to the night, admitting the low murmur of traffic sounds from the street below. Like most of Hong Kong, Sheung Wan is a cramped, vertical neighborhood with colorful signage draped across the narrow streets. Walk-up apartments are catacombed atop storefronts, delis, and restaurants nearly impossible to enter without turning sideways. I’m not sure how we negotiated the three or four blocks from Ana’s favorite Italian mini-restaurant to this second-floor flat. Something to do with ethanol receptors in the lower rear region of the brain.

  “I can’t believe I’m pouring us another drink,” says Ana, kicking off her sandals and handing me a brandy. “What kind of music would you like?”

  “I don’t do recorded music,” I reply.

  She blinks. “I, um, don’t think I have any unrecorded music.”

  “Then you don’t have any music,” I say. “I’ll make an exception if you’ll agree to dance with me.”

  Ana blinks again.

  “Was that an apprehensive blink?” I ask.

  “I’m a bit challenged that way,” says Ana. “I am British.”

  I step a little closer. “I don’t mean that kind of dancing.”