by D. M. Fraser
“He has very well-developed pectorals, and all the major credit cards, and …”
Jamie sneezed, wiped his nose on his knuckles, and took a swallow of whisky. “What’s the word from Andromeda? I’ve been gone so long they won’t transmit to me now. Nothing comes through. The receivers won’t receive. People in high places laugh at me, when I complain. The pure of spirit have fled away, and I can’t find them. That’s right: I can’t find the pure of spirit when I need them, in this age of crisis and widespread discontent. Is it you I’m talking to?”
“It isn’t the Singing Nun,” Isobel said. “I called to say I’m leaving you. Everything is flux. I had an old dog, and his name was Flux / Well he never barked, but he gave good fucks. You see what I mean. You’ll have to contend with it. Change and decay, gratuitous incursions of weeping, that sort of thing.” Jamie thought he heard, in the background, the abuse of a medium-range sound system.
Isobel. Everyone … oh hell, it wasn’t worth naming the names. The whisky wasn’t bad, but the water he’d poured on top of it was greasy. The telephone was humming.
“I’m a lost battle, I think you said once. Did you remember to feed the guppies?”
“They all died,” Isobel said. “They just rolled over and died, the poor little things. There’s something weird about the cat, too.”
“I can’t involve myself in domestic disorders, practically speaking.”
He’d loved her. She’d raised her flesh up to him, he’d laid his down on top of it, in the time-honoured custom of men and women. Isobel. They’d been terrorists together, in the old days. “Where did we … go wrong?” Jamie said. His suitcase leaned against the door. “You can answer that another time, I guess. I have to be on my way.”
“There won’t be another time,” Isobel said.
The room clerk grinned as he settled Jamie’s account. “Hurry back soon,” he said. “Practice personal hygiene at every opportunity. You’ll get a better deal when you feel real.”
There were few people in the streets. Umbrellas went past, occasionally, with tourists underneath them: the expectation of rain is very nearly as wet as the rain itself. Bermuda shorts went past, with legs inside them. The activity was sparse. Jamie thought: I can’t stand it any more. It was going to be a long walk to the bus depot. Distances were immeasurably greater than they’d been when he arrived; in the interim, distances had become more … distant. Itinerant musicians played guitars, banjos, spoons, at every corner:
New York Ted
New York Ted
Put a microphone
in his head
You’ll never forget
what his cortex said
New York Ted …
Jamie paused long enough to shiver, long enough to grope for a smoke, light it, compose himself for departure. He’d become attached to Lonesome Town, after all; he could feel it as a weight heavier than his suitcase, as strenuous hands grabbing at his feet. “It’s a two-bit honky-tonk tourist trap,” Isobel had warned him. On billboards and hoardings, painted exhortations seemed to confirm her analysis: ACT NOW! Don’t miss this special offer. Thrill to lifelike displays, realistic duplications, reasonable facsimiles … “Hey you,” someone said, leaning into Jamie’s face, “can you spare some bread to feed our brothers and sisters?”
Our brothering cistern. Would he never be rid of these voices, these strangers who mocked and muddled him? He had to walk faster, had to run, past all the guaranteed attractions and the lines of gaudy, quarrelsome people waiting to view them, past the Tourist Bureau, past the concessions, the souvenir racks, the beads and candles and whoopee cushions strung out for sale, past the hawkers of every sort of redemption … every fraudulent vision. As he loped across an intersection, he thought he saw a small, brown-bearded man watching him wryly, waving him on; it was almost a gesture of encouragement. He thought he heard: “Who am I to deny a man his daily encouragement? I dreamed about a flood, the night I fell down the cliff. Floods are among the proven techniques for population control, and they require very little human assistance to work effectively. Black water was rising beside a highway, spilling over the edges, blurring the distinctions. An exodus of some kind was in progress. The water reflected flaming and falling aircraft; the sky was full of them, dropping like giant mutant butterflies. Refugees lurched along through the floodwaters, dragging charred remnants of baggage, things that must have meant something to them, in some earlier life. In recollection, dreams lose their specificity. I have more to say to you, but it will have to await more … advantageous … circumstances. For now, good luck in your travels.”
Was there to be, then, somewhere down the line, the emergence of a pattern, a real live Design? Would it suddenly appear clean and glossy before him, like an aerial photograph hung on the great opaque wall of the world? Jamie suspected it would not. “You poor fool,” his mind said to him. “You poor, dismal fool.” He told his mind what it could do with itself. He said to his mind, in passing: “Are these illusions? Do I presume too much when I ask of faith such prodigies in a century still corrupted by skepticism, among men who are the slaves of self, who love little and quickly forget, who are troubled in soul, and heed only the calculations of egotism, and the sensations of the hour?” No, his mind replied, you don’t presume too much. Nor do I.
Good luck. In Lonesome Town, the streets seemed full of water (they weren’t, of course; how could they be on this rainless day?), the black water of a dreamed flood. Passage was difficult. Passage was becoming more difficult all the time. Isobel, I knew from the beginning what you were trying to tell me, I swear I did. It was a knowledge I was too proud, too crazed, to use … Oh shit. The bus depot was just ahead. Jamie slowed his pace. There might still be a chance, if he wanted it fiercely enough, to take another direction; negotiation wasn’t utterly out of the question. Hadn’t he been wished “good” luck? Couldn’t that be construed as a portent, a promise? Words floated past his ears, as he hesitated: “The survivors had sallow, ivory faces, the burnt-out eyes of children in a dimestore painting. The backdrop would have been black velvet, if life were art. Forgive me, the survivors said as they went past, forgive me. The water was phosphorescent around them. Aircraft shrieked and carolled in the sky, flames shot out of them, down they went kathwhoomp, into the water. Kathwhoomp. I didn’t know what was expected of me, what action was required by the situation …”
DON’T MISS THIS UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY! ACT NOW!
The bus is waiting, revving up, as buses will. The driver is wearing a brass helmet, goggles, an aviator jacket (brown leather, with insignia in an unheard-of language), a knowing grin. Advertisements pasted to the side of the bus recommend special offers. Steady, steady. Jamie will pass up the unique opportunity, the special offers, the promises of futurity sold in handy wallet-sized packs, in Lonesome Town … Can’t go on with this, can’t find a way out of it, you’ve heard the story before. When, where, did the world … just … go … away?
The bus is waiting. The driver is wearing a clean blue uniform. A calm voice, professionally sexless, is reading messages over a loudspeaker: “May I have your attention, please,” the voice says, without inflection. “Thank you. Will Mrs J. Gaspard kindly report to Travellers’ Aid. Lost children have been sighted in several areas. We regret any inconvenience to our customers and friends. For the benefit of those who missed the previous announcement …”
Elsewhere, where Jamie is going, the usual protocols will still apply. Good friends will shake his hand, lend him money, tease him gently for his pretensions, his continuing and mostly unwelcome love. He will tell stories about Lonesome Town, trade anecdotes, compare notes, exaggerate everything. Days will pass in this fashion, and nights, and seasons. Overhead, aircraft will go to and fro, without falling. The government will survive, narrowly, a crisis of confidence. “Jamie,” Isobel will say when they meet for coffee, for old times’ sake, in an Austrian pastry shop, “our lives have signally failed to achieve the impact we wanted them to have. Trut
h is, our lives have achieved no impact at all. We could stand in the middle of the street, and the traffic would pass through us without slowing down.” Jamie, beleaguered, will probably agree. At most, he’ll put up only a token resistance.
Another day, he’ll feel an urge (which he may or may not suppress) to say to her: “Listen. I was tired often enough, but it wasn’t always feasible to lie down. I couldn’t just flop on the sidewalk, after all. A man has his dignity, his self-esteem. What if the inhalator came and took me off to the hospital, and my underwear was dirty? Personal stains. What then, eh? What then? It’s a matter of … well, call it integrity. One has to preserve one’s integrity.”
“It’s a little after the fact for that, isn’t it?” Isobel will say. “But I still love you, anyway.”
(No. He’s dreaming now. That is not in the least what Isobel will say, and he knows it. Isobel is in fact married, competently, to a rising television producer, an erstwhile wunderkind; they have a moderately precocious daughter whose first complete articulate utterance, pronounced last night in the presence of Darryl, the babysitter, was: “Paws off, you creep.” They have invested in a modest bungalow and a somewhat less modest condominium at a popular ski resort. Isobel is working, part-time, in a recreation centre for the incorrigibly sociopathic. For a hobby, she raises tropical fish and writes romantic short stories, under a pseudonym, for the major women’s magazines. She also writes articles; the latest is called “Why I Renounced Communism and Went Bourgeois.” Jamie is blamed, indirectly. For his part, he is in love, in love, in love, with a walking wonder named Big Deb, who is eminently worthy of his affections, and who dances like a demon. Or is this another dream? Most likely …)
It goes on and on. The bus driver leans possessively on the steering wheel. And one day no longer goes on … Jamie puts his suitcase in the appropriate receptacle, lights a cigarette, flips the match away in the manner of rugged men. In his pocket—under the lump of hoarded pennies, under the pitiful balls of wadded Kleenex that mysteriously accumulate, the ordinary pocket-fluff, the admission stubs from movies he doesn’t remember having seen—down there, if he hasn’t lost it, is his ticket. He finds it, of course.
Say farewell to the high-steppin’ ladies
Say goodbye to the high-livin’ men
No more time for the good-lookin’ ladies
No more time for the hard-workin’ men …
Easy now: there’s still a moment, a warp he can huddle in for a quick smoke, an abbreviated thought. It’s important, however, that the thought be complete, that it be self-sufficient, so that he can leave it on its own, to fend for itself, in Lonesome Town. If you wanted to tell everybody everything, what would you say? His audience is gathering; he hadn’t realized they’d all been invited. They stand in a deepening semi-circle around him: old women in splendid hats, men in military greatcoats, children in the prim uniforms of respected schools. Beautiful girls. Convicted dope dealers. Used-car salesmen. The publisher of small, exquisitely crafted volumes of erotic verse. The mayor and aldermen of Lonesome Town. Old friends, new friends, people not necessarily on speaking terms with one another. It seems presumptuous to address them. But it seems to be, right now, what he has to do.
“I was advised to expect some reward,” he says, “a leavening of the spirit, or at least a purging of it, here. That was promised. It was, of course, a false promise. I understood soon enough that there was to be no leavening, no effective purge. That was one of many deceptions, and perhaps not the most remarkable. But I came down, anyway, to Lonesome Town, as people will. I did some of the things that visitors in Lonesome Town are encouraged to do, and neglected to do others. I did not, for example, cry my troubles away: that seemed rather excessive, for a man of my character. I sent off a great number of postcards, depicting the orthodox scenes, expressing the orthodox sentiments. I walked around in the streets, tracing routes—many of them circular—that seemed more familiar than they ought to have been to a stranger like me. Others, also strangers, were wandering up and down, clutching small radios, looking distraught, as if lost, as they may well have been. Many of us have been lost on one occasion or another. I thought steadily, and as charitably as possible, about my life, that odd parenthesis. I concluded that it made sense. I thought of everyone I had left, the brave and merry friends, the patient lovers, the ones who now never will be lovers. They appeared to parade around me, garbed in the gaily patterned costumes of emerging nations. They smiled and beckoned, but it quickly became evident that these gestures, so stylized and pure, were merely a charade. But how dearly I loved them! On a hoarding I passed, someone had written: End the War. And in another handwriting I saw, below it, The Hour is Nigh. In a public square a band was playing, voices were singing. I couldn’t make out the words, but something invaded me and I began to snivel. My troubles didn’t go away. How courageous, I thought, how sad, these efforts to wake and warn us. And how little we heed them! If you must know why I came here, why I came down to Lonesome Town, it was only to study futility.”
Say farewell, all you dreamers and darers
Say goodbye, say a mantra for me
If you live you can be my pallbearers
If you die you’ll be buried at sea …
There’s a rattle of applause, a swift return to mubble. Jamie needs a megaphone, a commanding personality, a podium. He needs a rest. In the Kingdom of Perfect Love, in Lonesome Town, speech is an extravagance. All this foolishness is, as you surely know, only a way to stave off what must come. This foolishness has no choice but to persist, while it can, against the hard metallic logic of the world. A frail battlement, gaily painted with pagan symbols, with rash slogans, improbable incitements, the calligraphy of Gratified Desire. It caves in slowly, without a sound, in soft focus. The heart must break. The story must end somewhere. The struggle must begin somewhere. Here?
Jamie, spendthrift, will compose himself for another effort. Small aircraft pass overhead; one of them may, for the hell of it, fall into the sea. If it were to happen, that could easily be the end of the story: a moan of engines, a silence, a displacement of water somewhere off the coast. Meanwhile, with a fine sense of the opportunity, someone in the audience is playing a harmonica; the song is “Lucky Old Sun,” it’s “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” it’s—what else?—“Lonesome Town.” There’s a clown in every crowd. In Jamie’s (uninvited) opinion, this guy is overdoing it. Next there’ll be a mandolin, a fiddle … it’s not fair.
Say farewell to the luminous ladies
Give godspeed to the …
Not fair, indeed. “I can’t stand it any more,” Jamie said “The story isn’t finished; it’s just that I’m losing my way in it, can’t carry on with it for a while. At some point the heart must break. There never was a language to tell you. I couldn’t simply hold you, in mind or arms, when there was nothing else I wanted more to do. In extreme love, in rage and foolishness, only the music was ever loud enough to sustain us, the music lifted us and took us as though on a stretcher, away …”
(… to an island, it may have been: a rocky wooded place, away from all the metallic world. I wanted to stay forever. I could have loved you perfectly there, forever. All through one night I watched the fire we’d built from driftwood and paper plates; you fell asleep; it would have been allowable, if I’d had the words, to say everything then. I didn’t have the words. The occasion floated away, out to sea. I woke in a rubble of bottles, butts, food scraps, glossy magazines, sighing ash, under trees I no longer recognized …).
In extreme love. There are worse things than to take a holiday, once in a lifetime. “It will go on and on, until finally one of us notices—until I notice—that it’s no longer going on. That it’s … over.” Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now preparing to depart from Lonesome Town. We hope you have enjoyed …
It comes down to something as simple as this. The story may not be finished, but it’s painless enough just to stumble aboard the bus, find a seat, lean back, light a smoke in defiance
of regulations … The bus is crowded; bodies collide in the aisles, strain together on the narrow seats; the air is rich with the smells of old plastic, diesel fumes, disinfectant. The man next to Jamie has soaked himself with manly deodorant, to no effect. He says now, tentatively, “Goin’ home?” Later, after dark, his hand will fall (not quite accidentally) to Jamie’s thigh, and it will stay there, taking no further liberty, for the rest of the journey. “Yup, goin’ home.” Then an afterthought: “In a manner of speaking.” The man nods, understanding afterthoughts. “Name’s Harvey, call me Harve, I’m in textiles. The old man’s gig, y’know?” The bus engine rumbles, groans, turning over without alacrity. Jamie closes his eyes.
Say goodbye …
Oh, forget it. Harve, I want you to listen carefully to this, with your cat’s smile and nicely trimmed whiskers, I want you to remember my words when you get back to the world, back there with your textiles and your grooming aids, your Mercedes-Benz, the black lace panties you wear on weekends. I want you to engrave on the interstices of your mind everything I’m going to tell you from now on: the sound advice, the reasoned dialectic, the poems I’ll recite for you, the songs, the final peroration. Everything …
Now the last houses, the last murky streets of Lonesome Town, go by at a pace that’s too much, almost, for the eye to comprehend. The stuccoed suburbs are a blur, a shadow on the window.
Harve? What I want you to do, right now, is tear your eyes from that sceniscopic window and look at me, and open your ears, because you’ll never hear the likes of this again, and you’ll never hear it precisely this way, ever again. Pay attention, now …
XIV. The End of the Story
