Dan

by Joanna Ruocco

  “Dinner is a surprise,” said the man, holding out his wooden spoon to prevent their approach.

  Don Pond nodded his small head vigorously.

  “We’re passing through, Helmut,” he said. “We absolutely will not peer.” To Melba he said in a loud whisper: “It’s always entertaining to pass by a European. They take offense at the least thing and want to duel you with swords or pistols or else they burst into storming sobs or give you ominous counsel and if they’re feeling expansive they present you with oddments from a storied cigar box of oddments which they claim to have taken with them on many journeys by boat.”

  “What kind of oddments?” whispered Melba dutifully.

  “Sheep vertebra, digestive biscuits, potsherds, triangular coins,” said Don Pond, waving his hand vaguely to indicate “and so on” or “things of that nature.”

  “Ah,” said Melba. The man had returned his attention to the pot on the stove.

  “He’s really from another country?” asked Melba.

  “That’s what we assume,” said Don Pond. “Dan has its homegrown Europeans to be sure, but Helmut Pirm doesn’t mix with them. He says they speak gibberish and if you allow them to take your coat they fill the pockets with mothballs.”

  “I’ve seen his mansard,” said Melba. “Does he make good dinners?”

  “He makes surprising dinners,” said Don Pond. “Watch me sidle to that door then do the same.” Don Pond sidled to the door. Helmut Pirm stirred his pot. Melba tried not to investigate Helmut Pirm or his vicinity as she sidled after Don Pond but she noticed that he had lined up a row of spices and a bird on the counter.

  She stopped behind Don Pond who had stopped before the door. The door opened inward and Don Pond stepped back and sideways, as though he too were a door, a door that opened outward. He gestured Melba through the door and she went through it, feeling uncomfortably aware that she had passed through the Don Pond door to reach the kitchen door—the second door, Melba said to herself.

  The room she had entered was narrow, no windows, walls of recessed shelves bearing boxes, bottles, sacks, and jars of foodstuffs rising to the low ceiling. Across from the door, at the other end of the room, there was a wooden ladder. Don Pond was crowding her forward so that he could shut the kitchen door, the second door, behind them. The room was so small that Melba was soon pressed against the ladder. She put her foot on the first rung. From the second rung, she could press up on the hatch in the ceiling. She pressed up and began to climb through the hatch. Her head and shoulders emerged into the amber air of the upper story, and she saw the pant legs of many men. Tilting her head, she saw entire men, ranged all about.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. A few of the men glanced over but most took no notice. A fair number of them were grouped together with their backs to the hatch, studying a wall. Melba squinted. There was an image on the wall, dots and lines either drawn across its dull surface or drawn upon a large sheet of wheat-pasted paper, but as Melba peered, ascending a rung on the ladder and craning her neck to get a better vantage from her position, halfway out of the hatch, she realized the dots and lines were not drawn at all. They were dimensional. She saw that there were pins in the wall, dozens of pins, some long, protruding far from the wall’s surface, shanks stacked with beads, others short, more like tacks, their wider, flattened tops covered in plaid cloth. Colored strings stretched from pin to pin, although some of the strings might well have been wire, Melba thought, heated piano wire, or perhaps fishing line, so often purposed for other things, Zeno Zuzzo had once explained, coiling the line from wrist to wrist, such as the looping of a garrote, and the pins and strings created a vast web, with, it seemed, infinite hubs, radii, spirals, and frames, and Melba fixed her gaze, straining to look through the wall, wondering if a picture might resolve in the foreground, rising out of the hopelessly irregular design. Her eyes watered and she blinked. Her eyes felt spent, limp, and the water continued to drip from the incontinent ducts.

  Suddenly, a man broke from the group. He stepped closer to the wall, pressed the point of a black pin against it, and sank the shank deeply with three practiced blows of a lozenge-shaped eraser. He stepped back and another man sprang to take his place, wrapping the end of the pin again and again with gold embroidery floss. Melba watched, curious as to what the man would do with the other end of the floss: attach it to another pin presumably, but which?

  She felt a knocking on her calves. Don Pond wanted to ascend the ladder and Melba remained half in and half out, stalled between rooms. She tried to whisper down the hatch, “I believe it’s some kind of club, Don. A private men’s club. I’m not a member. I don’t think I should …” but the knocking on her calves sped up and began to sting, even through her skirts. Sighing, Melba struggled through the hatch, bracing herself with her arms then dragging up her knees.

  A moment later Don Pond shot up through the hatch. Melba hung back as Don Pond circulated. She stood, fidgeting, a few paces from the open hatch and its lid, a hinged square of raw wood. She stepped forward once to toe the lid over, intending to close the hatch and reseal the space, feeling guiltily as though, by leaving the hatch open, she was allowing a kind of leak to persist, a leak which might eventually deflate the private men’s club altogether, so that the room and everything in it shriveled. She lifted the lid an inch with her toe then reconsidered. Was it better not to meddle? She stepped back, trying to detect in the room and in the men any sign that in fact the club was leaking, looking about for increasing flaccidity, listening for a high whine.

  The hatch had not opened into the middle of the room. It had opened into the middle of the bottom right square of the room, if the room could be thought of as a four-square court, with the men studying the wall occupying the top left square. Melba suspected that the kitchen was beneath the bottom left square of the room. She sniffed and smelled no vinegar. The air was dry and tangy. Everywhere she looked there were men: men pacing, men standing, men sitting, men crouching, men lying on their backs, men lying on their stomachs, men lying on their sides. Melba swallowed, hesitant to seem as though she studied these men. She cast about for objects upon which to drop her gaze. Everyone knew that men in private men’s clubs preferred to protect their identities.

  And here was Melba Zuzzo, thought Melba Zuzzo, self-accusation and self-pity warring within her, here she was, standing uninvited in the middle of one quarter of a private men’s club, identifying men left and right! She tried to blot out the names before they registered in her mind, but she realized she was moving her lips, shaping the names with her mouth. Bert Bus. Hal Drake. Grady Help. Seton Holmes. She clapped a hand over her mouth. She would never have put herself in this position intentionally.

  Damn Don Pond, she thought.

  “This must be a faux-pas!” she burst out. “And it’s your fault Don Pond!”

  The men nearest by, those standing in a line that described the top of Melba’s square, brushing the shoulders of each other’s sports jackets with tiny brushes, all turned their heads to look in her direction. Don Pond, charging over from the top right square, pushed through the line of men and marched right up to Melba, who sagged at his approach.

  “Oh, now I’ve done it,” she said miserably. “I’ve identified you. I shouted ‘Don Pond!’ for all to hear, and you probably use a different name in this context, like Shorty or Fats Fish. I’m no good up here. I’ll wreck everything. I don’t know why you brought me.”

  Melba’s nose burned and she dug her nails into her palms. She realized that, in her sagging, she had allowed her neck to wilt and her head hung lower than she’d thought possible. It hung heavily and her neck offered no resistance. Her head swung slightly as it sank and sank. The carpet filled her field of vision. It was a dull carpet, institutional beige, designed for moderate to heavy traffic, new or recently cleaned, nylon, no off-gas, utterly inert. Melba felt as though she were executing the slowest swan dive in the world. She was diving into the carpet. She had penetrated deep inside
the carpet. The fibers twisted around her this way and that. She had come too close; she could no longer see the pattern of the weave. Its curves formed the dimensional space in which she bobbed, weightless.

  Matter has but one pattern, thought Melba, rotating, seeing the fibers branch and branch again, those branches branching off, the shapes they composed creating a whole that was the same shape as every part.

  The subdivisions are infinite, thought Melba. Infinite and identical. The distributions of fibers in the carpet, of cells in her body, of bodies in the room, of rooms in the house, and of houses in Dan—they were indistinguishable, each from the others. At a certain range, Dan wasn’t any different from the mountains that surrounded it or from the craters on the moon. Maybe, without difference to separate one thing from the other, distances vanished. She could be anywhere, with anyone. She could walk around inside herself and there would be sacks of dark apples, culverts, sudden rises and muddy declivities, swamps and meres and woods and rotted leaves to nestle into, mosses that would sing her to sleep. She could continue sinking, headfirst, diving slowly down onto the carpet. She could roll onto her back on the carpet. She could lie quietly.

  “Maybe I’m over-tired,” she murmured, stiffening her neck, striving to right herself. Turgor pressure? Was that what she needed?

  “I wonder if all these men drink tea or if there’s coffee …”

  “Coffee’s in the kitchen, Melba,” said Don Pond. He had reached her side. No longer charging, he no longer seemed bullish. He didn’t look in the least likely to stamp and snort and toss her broken body high in the air. He displayed the chumminess of a man enjoying himself in the midst of men and seemed untroubled by Melba’s rash, nominating shout. His chumminess only deepened as he addressed her. “Poor Melba! You missed your chance. Europeans make small coffee so I’m not surprised you didn’t see it!” He laughed. “The coffee was right there. You walked right past it.”

  Melba tried to smile.

  “I know I was accusing just now,” she said. “I felt gawky and out of place, but not anymore. This is a wonderful club, Don.”

  “Wonderful? I don’t know about that,” said Don Pond. “But men have to congregate somewhere. We wouldn’t be men if we were dispersed, if we were each of us all by himself. Do you recognize those potted plants? Or those magazines?”

  “It’s been a long time,” said Melba. “But the whole place, the men, plants, magazines, chairs, carpet, overhead lights, it does seem familiar. It reminds me of Dr. Buck’s waiting room.”

  “A long time you say? Doesn’t it always feel like a long time in waiting rooms!” Don Pond’s enjoyment was only increasing. He rubbed his pale hands together and they squeaked.

  “Is Randal Hans here?” Melba allowed herself to scan the men in the bottom left square of the room, the men who sat in broad low chairs, leafing through magazines, or using shoe horns to remove their boots, settling in to wait with stocking feet. She doubted Randal Hans would be among the more vigorous men, the men clustered at the wall with their pins and spools and packets, using tiny rulers to measure angles, consulting pocket notebooks then pointing at some pin from which several dozen strings radiated, crying out in protest, but neither did she see him among the men seated in chairs. She looked over the heads of these seated men, looked intently at those men sticking and wrapping and crying out at the wall. Suddenly Ned Hat spun away from the wall and glared at her, his mouth bristling with pins.

  “A bald cap,” supplied Don Pond, guessing the source of Melba’s confusion. “This morning. He was wearing a rubber bald cap.”

  Melba nodded. Ned Hat’s hair did not brush his shoulders, but it curved away from his scalp in a globe the bottom curves of which turned inward to brush, on either side, against his jaw. She would have been hard-pressed to believe he could have managed to grow such hair since she’d seen him last, although it seemed ages since she’d stared up at the bald, frothing man in the window.

  Of course, time moves differently when considered from the point of view of hair. Time is slower for hair and yields to a progress narrative—the hair extruding in lengthening shafts—until each hair reaches its maximum length and progress stops. But what about curly hair? Hair that coils around and around? Melba strained, thinking. If she could consider time from the perspective of her hair, which was dead, a waste material, but which would continue to lengthen after she herself was dead …

  Think, she whispered, think, think.

  “He’s wearing a rubber mask too,” said Don Pond. Melba let her fingers drop from her temples where she had pressed them, turning them rapidly back and forth, like drill bits skipping in stripped screws.

  No good, the thinking. She observed Ned Hat.

  “A rubber mask? I wouldn’t have been able to tell,” she said.

  “No?” said Don Pond. “It’s a rubber mask of Ned Hat’s face. Can’t you tell that’s Ned Hat?”

  Melba paused. Ned Hat spat the pins in her direction. His tongue emerged to prod his lips then retracted. He whipped a pocket notebook from inside his sports coat and spun back to face the wall, pointing, crying out in protest.

  “Yes?” said Melba. “But what about Randal Hans?”

  “Randal Hans,” Don Pond thought for moment. “The notary public? Chin dimple, left shoulder higher than the right? The one running for mayor? Randal Hans! His platform is based on selling Dan for fill, which isn’t anything on which to base a platform!”

  “I don’t understand,” blinked Melba.

  “Backhoes, Melba. Dumptrucks. Dig into Dan as far we can go and ship out the soil. People pay top dollar for dirt.”

  “What people?” asked Melba.

  “Coastal people,” said Don Pond. “People afraid of the surging seas. Valley people. People tired of the imperious gazes of hilltop neighbors. Desert people. People who want to plant hyacinths. People! I don’t know which people in particular. A good number of sextons, I imagine. Their bread-and-butter depends on burial plots keeping pace with the booming population. But no one will vote for Randal Hans if he’s propounding such an idea! Not because there isn’t a demand for dirt. There is! Because what is Dan without the dirt it is built on?”

  “A void, I suppose?” said Melba. Don Pond was leaning closer, his face approaching Melba’s. His moist eyes gleamed from deep within thick folds, black eyebrows suspended over them.

  “The abyss,” he said hoarsely. “Everything we do, frantic activities, assignations of meaning to random gestures and grunts, succorings of our organisms and the organisms of those to whom we’ve developed attachments—it’s all designed to distract us from the very abyss in which we formed, the formlessness that fills us. Melba, the infinite emptying of everything … this is the only process! It doesn’t matter if it’s reversed. It is changeless! Do you see why Randal Hans can’t win? He comes too close to the horror. He scrapes against it with his plan, scooping Dan away by the shovelful. He’s a figure of horror as well, the jutting chin, nearly cloven, the twisted shoulders, the shrunken legs. He only comes up to my waist. His legs are so weak they often collapse, folding beneath him at grotesque angles, and he pulls himself through Dan with his arms, creeping through the gutters, singing a little song, a haunting little song. You’ve heard it. It comes from those gutters and from beneath the bed. It comes from within the twisted channels of our ears. It’s so soft. It’s so high and thin. It never stops. I hear it even now …” Don Pond drew a breath as though preparing to sing, or scream.

  “Stop!” cried Melba. “Stop, stop! I don’t think we’re talking about the same Randal Hans at all.”

  Don Pond’s smile returned. “Of course we are. It’s all the same Randal Hans. Let me show you something.” He reached out to grasp her hand. Melba rapidly clasped her hands behind her back.

  “This is the classical way to walk,” she said. “The Attic manner. We’re in an attic, aren’t we?” She tittered nervously. “I do believe in the civic benefits of a classical education, I’m not abashed to admit
it anymore. Don’t you? Principal Benjamin used to have us all recite the Hippocratic Oath at morning assembly.”

  “He did, did he? Principal Benjamin?” Don Pond’s inscrutability impressed her. It was perfect. Perfect inscrutability. Melba remembered that some things are always useless to scrutinize, maybe most things, maybe everything. Behind her back she wrung her clasped hands.

  “Follow me,” said Don Pond. He walked past Melba toward the corner of the room, the bottom right corner in Melba’s square of the room. Melba turned. Don Pond was waiting for her in front of a door. The door had a dark stain and a small brass plate with faint engraving.

  “Hurry,” he said. “Don’t let the men see.” He turned the knob and the door swung inward. Don Pond swung away from the door, toward Melba who stood poised on her toes, undecided and perturbed. She didn’t want to follow Don Pond, but she didn’t want him to disappear through a door, either, leaving her with the men.

  “Go on,” he urged, and Melba walked up to him, almost shuffling, dragging her feet. Her stout, supportive shoes seemed heavier than usual. She opened her mouth.

  “Go on!” Don Pond pivoted and suddenly he was behind her, herding her forward. Melba drew in her breath. She lurched across the threshold. The door clicked as Don Pond pulled it shut. Don Pond and Melba Zuzzo stood side by side on fresh green linoleum.

  “I thought for sure there’d be someone in here!” said Melba, relieved.

  “You’re relieved,” observed Don Pond.

  “I’ve been in offices before,” said Melba, stung by the note of reproach. “More offices than you might think. I wouldn’t mind encountering a person in his office. I know the protocols!” She glanced at Don Pond who was watching her closely. She looked away.