The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  “I don’t have a family,” I tell Marilyn at last. “I have a twin sister and a turnip mother and a father who steals things and gets caught.” I struggle to hold the round face in focus. “You know, Marilyn, you’re not a bald looking woman. Bad, I mean. I mean good.”

  Marilyn glistens for me. Now the beak re-appears. “I think you just go back America, forget about me. I am old-fashioned Chinese woman, need a husband help me. My son need this, too.”

  Unexpectedly Marilyn’s hand crosses the table. I feel two firm pats on my hand. “But I lonely,” she says and the hand remains there. “I think you lonely too, Ju-wen. You feel lonely, you can call me.”

  I gaze at the plump, warm hand. This woman can take me so quickly from attraction to repulsion and back again that I’ve no idea what to think. The hand disappears. “Where that waiter girl?” says Marilyn vexedly. “Supposed to bring Pineapple Fried Rice same time as fish.”

  There’s an old story about a woman in need of a husband. Early one spring, she went to an enchanted well and said into it, “I want a husband. What should I do?” Her reflection replied, “Fill your pockets with gold coins and jasmine flowers.” The woman did as instructed but no husband appeared. She returned to the well and said, “I did what you asked. Where’s the husband?” Her reflection answered, “He is here!” The reflection of her face on the water’s surface changed to that of a handsome young man. Overjoyed, the woman jumped in. The gold coins took her straight to the bottom, of course, and she drowned. To this day, you’ll find coins at the bottom of every well, and early in the spring you can still catch the faint scent of jasmine.

  “Ow!” I say.

  Marilyn looks at me.

  “Glass,” I explain, shifting my weight to the other buttock. “I don’t think they got it all.”

  I reach into my shirt pocket for my pain medication. One tablet every four hours or every four drinks, whichever comes first. My fingers close around something. It turns out to be a withered flower bud. Stricken, I gaze at it. A gift from our lady of tousled tresses. The way you know that spring has come to Earth is the emergence of flowers. The bud is drying. Only the faintest blush of purple remains at the tip.

  “I need to use your phone,” I tell Marilyn decisively. “Can you dial the number for me?”

  Marilyn accepts the note from my wallet. “Hong Kong?” she says. “Is very expensive dial this from—”

  “I’ll pay double,” I say, beginning to slur. “I’ll pay you in jeweler’s gold. I recently came into some.”

  Marilyn is still looking at the note. “This say some woman’s name. You want call some woman Ana Hong Kong?”

  “A man,” I say. “Anabolic Steroid. Old workout partner.”

  Marilyn dials and hands me the phone. I stumble away from the table. After one ring, I hear a familiar hello?

  “You always know it’s springtime on Earth,” I say, “because of all the flii-iiers.”

  “Julian? Are you sloshed?”

  Pushing through the men’s room door, I say, “My little snowflake. It’s just so magical to hear your rather pristine voice in my ear. Especially in the men’s room.”

  “I’m at work,” says Ana. “Are you all right?”

  I gaze at the dying bud in the palm of my hand. “I need to see you immeeedially if not sooner.”

  “Um, do you remember that I said I’d call?”

  “I can be at your rather pristine door,” I say, holding the phone with my shoulder and struggling to open my fly, “in less than an hour.”

  “Julian, I won’t be home in less than an hour.”

  “Then half than less an hour,” I say.

  Ana sighs. “I’ve no idea when I’ll be free. That’s why I said I’ll call you. I have to go now.”

  “Why? Who are you with?”

  “Oh my God, Julian. Do grow up before you call me again.”

  I hear a click.

  “Ana?”

  Damn. I’ve just pissed all over my shoes. Wiping them on my trouser legs, I return to the table. Marilyn is not in her chair. At the center of the table is a pile of bills. Fine. I never did care for women with no sense of humor. Turning, I aim myself at the doorway and very nearly miss. Bursting into the humid night, I make a wide left turn and head toward the dock of Shikou Ferry.

  Standing shivering on Ana’s windblown street in Sheung Wan, I find three things unmistakable. First, I might have given more consideration to passing out on the floor of that men’s room, as it turns out to be fully cold in Hong Kong and Ana Manguella’s apartment is as dark as a Memphis pawnbroker’s heart. Second, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt quite this alone, as I have not in quite some time detected my sister snooping at the edges of my awareness, and Tree has departed for her pilgrimage to Taishan Mountain, no doubt in the company of a one-legged man in a cheap watch. Rui Long meanwhile awaits deportation proceedings handcuffed to a snoring great auntie, while Marilyn sits sans cell phone boo-hooing her way across town on a Route 101 bus in a nice red blouse, and Ana Manguella is out on the Pearl of the Orient with God only knows who or what. And here I shiver devastatingly alone on a damp and windy street with my sad stories and my disheveled bandages and my oh so reckless heart.

  Was that three things?

  Anyway, it’s certainly true love this time. One knows by the scale of the suffering, or so I was once told in a Beijing lunch-buffet place. I have, at least, stationed myself quite strategically beneath a balcony that offers a bit of protection from the fine mist now issuing from all directions at once. Good thing I thought to wear a jacket tonight, though a watch cap and peacoat might have better served. I’ve also wedged myself between two large shrubs that cut the wind a bit while making me invisible to whatever pierced and ear-notched hoodlums possess these streets between dusk and dawn. As I am situated directly across the street from Ana’s door, I feel reasonably assured of seeing anyone who approaches well before he/she, say nothing of he and she, catch sight of me.

  I hear the strains of “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain” for more or less the nineteenth time. Extracting Marilyn’s phone from my jacket, I announce, “Marilyn can’t talk right now. I tossed her headless and unclothed body into Kowloon Bay. You’re next.”

  I click off the phone and return it to my pocket.

  Two men showed up at the American Teacher’s Apartment today. I thought you’d want to know. They didn’t have brown mustaches or shiny gold badges. They’d come to replace the bathroom door. I covered the ‘shroomery with Lil’s largest bath towel and busied myself at the computer during the installation process. The new door is fashioned from steel. Good thinking there. There’s no removing the blood stains from my sister’s bathrobe nor from the kitchen woodwork. But who wants to pass through this world without leaving some kind of mark?

  “Julian. What has happened to you?”

  I turn to discover Ana Manguella in her tan raincoat. Somehow she has appeared between me and one of my shrubs of concealment.

  “Did you think you could get rid of me so easily?” I reply.

  “Julian, my God.”

  “Ana, my goddess. Would you consider making me a small pot of tea?”

  “No, I would not,” she says. “I’ve just put in a long day, and I’m going straight to bed.”

  “Half a pot, then?”

  “Julian, I said I’d call you.”

  “That was five days ago. Exactly what is going on with you?”

  She sighs. “I can’t go into it right now. There are problems at work and—”

  “You’re having problems at work,” I interject. “Why don’t we go inside and compare problems at work.”

  “Dammit, Julian. I should never have gotten involved with you in the first place. I knew you were hopelessly immature. Now I find that you’re unstable, to boot.”

  “But I kiss well,” I say.

  “Actually you use too much tongue. Good night.” She turns away.

  I lurch forward to follow the tan raincoat ac
ross the street. “No. Don’t say good night.”

  “Goodbye then,” says Ana. “My life is far too complicated for this.”

  “Goodbye?” I say, grabbing her by the shoulder. “Did you just tell me—”

  All at once I am face-down on the wet cobblestones, my gauze muzzle soaking up a puddle, my cast twisted awkwardly beneath me. Ana’s foot is on my shoulder and both her hands are forcing my only functional wrist in the worst possible direction. I’d scream in agony if I could draw the requisite breath. “Don’t you dare,” says she, her voice throaty and dangerous.

  After a moment, Ana releases her hold and I hear the tinkling of keys then the sound of a door opening and closing. The rain starts down a little heavier. On cue, Marilyn’s phone tinkles its lone forlorn melody then goes silent. I think I’m weeping. Maybe it’s only whimpering. Above my head is the sound of an upper-story window opening. Now splashing into a puddle near my face is a moldavite pendant. The window closes again.

  Part Three: The Year of the Hydra

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Just how long has it been since you ate something?”

  The sight of Shatrina Carter standing perspiring in this funky ruined-ass apartment strikes me as so novel that I can’t help but stare. Actually I think she was here last week. Or maybe it was last month. That would depend a little on what month this is.

  “Did you even hear me?” asks Tree. “I just spoke to you.”

  Tree just spoke to me, but “Suzanne” has started up again and I want to listen to the words. The American Teacher’s Computer, I’ve recently learned, will repeat a single song more or less forever if you ask it to. Now each time that nasal whiskey-edged tenor returns to this stark reptilian space, to my horseless and monthless latitudes, I am pinioned once more against an iridescent landscape of sea-foam and seraphim bones. At last I’ve heard these verses for the first time. And the first time. And the first time.

  Dr. Carter has bored of our conversation. She now harrumphs in the kitchen, which I admit needs a little work. My left hand reaches for a nearby pair of khakis to cover the charred hole in the American Teacher’s Mattress. Now the hand returns to its customary office of cradling the right wrist, which feels appallingly naked without its customary plaster cast. They wouldn’t let me keep it a day longer. Now my eyes re-visit the honey jar on the settee table. Something is unfinished.

  “Lord have mercy,” says Tree from the kitchen.

  I hear sirens. Beneath the high arcs of their wails, Leonard Whisper Boy creeps in once more, minor-ing the key and dropping the register to just above the glazed ceramic tiles where the heavy gases accrue, there to rot the grout and distort space/time, syncline and anticline beginning somewhere near the dresser and heading irrevocably this way. I’ve no idea what will happen when that vector achieves the spot whereon I lie each hour of day and most moments of night, awaiting the singularity that dots the eye of the tigress.

  It stalks me, that singularity. But by painfully slow degrees.

  Tree returns to the front room where the kiddie art is half-fallen from the walls and I am fully fallen from grace, it would seem.

  Gravelly laughter. She tosses her long hair behind her shoulders. Do you want to know what’s really true?

  As I watch, Tree clears off a settee chair and kicks aside the clutter until she can place the chair opposite my spot on the mattress. Now she tries to wedge herself into the chair, turning a little sideways. This doesn’t seem to please her very much. But I don’t think much of anything here does. At least the burnt plastic smell is gone. I returned from Studebaker Supermarket to find the apartment filled with acrid black smoke. I threw open the windows and poured a pan of water onto the corner of the smoldering mattress, a place where nothing at all had been, as far as I could recall. Still, a charred hole penetrated Lillian’s fitted sheet and mattress cover and continued all the way through the foam mattress. Whatever had melted down hadn’t stopped before charring the floor tiles, leaving a permanent stain. The tarry deposit provided no clue as to what had generated such heat, but some days later one item did turn up missing. The moment that something came to mind, I knew exactly where I’d last seen it. That very spot at the corner of the mattress. The Barbie deck.

  Ken’s mad.

  “Lillian tells me that you aren’t taking your medication,” announces Tree. “Are you, or are you not?”

  I gaze at her.

  “Why are you not?” says Tree. “It came in the mail. What happened to it?”

  I try to answer but my voice isn’t quite working. I clear my throat. I clear it again, more forcefully. Finally I croak, “How’s Lil?”

  “Worried sick. The school called her and said you aren’t coming to class anymore or even leaving the apartment. They said you aren’t eating. I came here to cook something and give you your medication. Where is it?”

  I pretend to be considering a reply. In a moment perhaps I’ll know what this woman is talking about. The part about not going to class is definitely untrue. I go at least once a week. Anyway, it averages once a week.

  “I didn’t climb those stairs to talk sweet with you,” growls Tree. “Where is your medication?”

  “Verse three,” I whisper hoarsely.

  It’s all in verse three.

  We tried to tame the madwoman, you and I, and thought we had, only to find that beneath the cover of night she’d molted, spawned, come swarming back with tendrils aswirl to swallow civilizations like the jungles of Yucatan at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour just before we’d succeeded in laminating facsimiles of ourselves to the living room furniture and mailing our fingers to the Bureau of Records.

  I think we fear only two things, you and I. Being dead and being alive. The closer we get to either, the more attractive the other starts to seem. In truth, we don’t like either one very much. You and I.

  We left no forwarding address when we disappeared into the night with these terrible dreamers, wrapped in our cloaks of regret and secret oaths to forest nymphs. Whispered and re-whispered in leaf beds of humid and perilous screwing beneath the watching sky. We thought we would arrive somewhere and mythologize our journey, rear strong-boned children who’d help in the fields and become complacent with fire. But something had already shifted beneath our feet, the deer trails become rabbit trails then ant trails. And then the ants were following us, hoping we knew where the grasshopper lay dying and which curled leaf held morning’s final teardrop. And following behind the ants were the rabbit and the deer.

  We disappear again into that forest each time we sleep, hurl ourselves once more into that darkness that promised so much, there to dream all of this into possibility that we may again awake as something recognizable, utter words that others may distinguish, eat for breakfast what we couldn’t finish at dinner, and scheme to forget what we have suffered so hard to learn.

  I don’t know how long I can stand to look at these things.

  I am hearing sirens, the melancholy two-tone kind from old European films. There seem to be three of them, one a bit flat, almost major-seventh-ing the others. They issue from different directions, their vectors seeming to cross very near this very mattress.

  “What are you growing in here?” asks Tree’s voice. Someone’s in the kitchen with the ‘shroom farm. Someone’s in the kitchen I know.

  “My lorr-rrd?” sings Tree.

  Could be it’s time for the other sandal to fall. To finally bring the other side of the equation, the part that doesn’t add up but does multiply. That lives somehow despite every death sentence and failed appeal, that even now delivers fresh messages from the fallow field from which blow the seeds of all possibility and the dreaded spores of gnosis. Which is why Leonard Whisper Boy reaps so grimly, his little worm-words eating into both sides of the brain, serving up the horrific alongside the celestial and saying all of this is what you are.

  All of this is what we are.

  Tree returns to stand before me, her hands filled with spent
packages of ma huang gathered from the floor. Her eyes hold accusation.

  “This is your new health-food diet? Mushrooms and ma huang?”

  “Very low in fat,” I croak.

  It’s a good thing I just carried out the gin bottles.

  Tree opens her hands. The plastic wrappers fall to the floor. She stares at me for another moment before placing most of herself in the settee chair. As she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, a crease appears at the center of her forehead.

  I think I slept for an hour or so around dawn, awakening with what seemed perfect continuity of thought, though recalling the thoughts themselves proved problematic. The mushroom tends to come in waves. I never know when another swell may appear to suck me down and drag me along the gritty sand at the ocean bottom. My eyes return to the honey jar, nearly empty. Something is unfinished.

  Tree begins another deep breath, and I watch her body swell. The crease in her forehead begins to fade, and I wonder whether the sabbatical to the mountain worked for her.

  I deleted the novel last night. And told Ahmed Massoud Monzur to burn his copy.

  Tree draws another deep breath, and I wait. The suspense is difficult to bear. Soon her eyes will roll open and precisely chosen words will nail these wrists and feet to a mattress in dire need of sweeping, its charred hole beneath a dirty pair of pants. But what day is without its dilemma, what dilemma without its day?

  Tree’s eyes open. Her voice is calm. “Julian. Your mother has been in a coma for three months. Your sister is fighting a court battle over the living will. She was just arrested at a peace demonstration, and it was… messy. There’s talk of having her disbarred. This SARS thing is totally out of control—they’re quarantining whole airline flights—and now Lillian gets a phone call from Shenzhen saying her brother has flipped out. I told her I’d come and check on the situation. So I come here. And this is what I find.”