Pat Cobhan laughs, downstairs, and glances at the clock, behind the bar. He asks for another beer and plays with a silver coin, trying to balance it on the rim of the empty glass.
Want to marry me, Fanny?
Don’t talk nonsense, Pat.
I’m serious.
Stop it.
Do you like me, Fanny?
Yes.
I like you, Fanny.
The coin falls into the glass, Pat Cobhan turns the glass upside down, the coin falls out, on the wood of the bar, what’s left of the beer drips out, liquid and foam. He takes the coin and dries it on his pants. He looks at it. He would like to sniff it. He places it on the edge of the glass. He glances at the clock. He thinks: Young, you bastard, will you finish up? Sweet is the scent of the whore of Closingtown, sweet.
Fanny glides her lips over Young’s sex, and he looks at her: he likes this. He puts one hand in her hair and pulls her to him. She moves the hand away, still kissing him. He looks at her. His hand is in her hair again, she stops, raises her eyes to him and says Be good, Young. Be quiet, he says, and with his hand pushes her head towards his sex. She takes it in her mouth and closes her eyes. She slides faster and faster, back and forth. Like that, whore, he says. Like that. She opens her eyes and sees the skin on Young’s stomach shiny with sweat. She sees the muscles contract, suddenly, as in a kind of agony. Come on, he says. Don’t stop. A kind of agony. He looks at her. He likes her. Looks at her. He places his hands on her shoulders, holds her tight, and then, suddenly, shoves her back and lies on top of her. Slowly, Young, she says. He closes his eyes and moves against her. Slowly, Young. With her hand, she feels for his sex, he moves her away. He pushes hard between her thighs. Shit, he says. Shit. His hair, wet with sweat, is pasted to his forehead. Shit. He slides away again, suddenly. She turns her head to one side, lifts her eyes to heaven for an instant, and sighs. And he sees her. Sees her.
Pat Cobhan lifts his eyes to stare at the clock, behind the bar. Then he looks at the stairs that lead to the second floor. Then he looks at the full glass of beer in front of him.
Hey, Carver.
Pat?
Keep it cold for me.
You going?
I’ll be back.
Everything all right, Pat?
Everything’s OK, yes, it’s OK.
All right.
Keep it cold for me.
He stands up and leans on the bar. He turns and glances at the door of the saloon. He spits on the floor, then crushes the knot of saliva with his boot, and looks at the wet dust, on the floor. He raises his head again.
Make sure no one pees in it, OK? and smiles.
Why don’t you go home, Pat?
Go yourself, Carver.
You ought to go home.
Don’t tell me what to do.
Carver shakes his head. Pat Cobhan snickers. He picks up his glass of beer and takes a swallow. He puts the glass down, turns, looks at the stairs that lead to the second floor, looks at the black hands on the yellowed white dial, You bastard, he says softly.
Young has turned, he has stretched out one hand towards the belt hanging on the chair, he has taken the pistol out of the holster and now he holds it tight in his fist. He slides the barrel over Fanny’s skin. White is the skin of the whore of Closingtown, white. She starts to get up. Stay put, he says. He sticks the barrel of the pistol under her chin, presses it there. Don’t move. Don’t cry out. What on earth are you doing, she says. Quiet. He slides the gun barrel over her skin, lower and lower. He spreads her legs. He rests the pistol on her sex. Please, Young, she says. Slowly he pushes the gun in. He takes it out and slowly sticks it back in. Do you like that? he says. She starts to tremble. Isn’t that what you wanted? he says. He pushes the pistol deep in. She arches her back, puts a hand on Young’s cheek, gently. Please, Young, she says. Please. She looks at him. He stops. Calm down, she says. You’re a good boy, Young, right? You’re a good boy. She’s weeping, the tears falling all over her face. Give me a kiss, I like kissing you, come here, Young, kiss me. She speaks softly, without taking her eyes off him. Stay with me, let’s make love, would you like that? Yes, he says. And he starts moving the gun again, back and forth. Let’s make love, he says. She closes her eyes. A grimace of pain that contorts her face. I beg you, Young. He looks at the gun barrel moving in and out of her flesh. He sees that it’s covered with blood. He cocks the trigger with his thumb. I like to make love, he says.
Fuck, says Pat Cobhan. He moves away from the bar. I’ll be back, he says. He passes the Castorp brothers’ table, he greets them, touching two fingers to the brim of his hat. Black.
Top of the world, Pat?
Yes, sir.
Bitch of a wind today.
Yes, sir.
It’ll never stop.
My father says it will get tired.
Your father.
He says no horse can gallop forever.
The wind isn’t a horse.
My father says it is.
Does, does he?
Yes, sir.
Tell him to come see me, every so often.
Yes, sir.
Tell him.
Yes, sir.
Bravo.
Pat Cobhan waves and heads for the stairs. He looks up and sees nothing. He climbs a few steps. He thinks he’d like to have a gun. His father doesn’t want him to have one. That way, you don’t get in trouble. No one shoots at an unarmed kid. He stops. He glances at the clock, down behind the bar. He can’t remember exactly how much time has passed. He tries to remember, but he can’t. He looks down into the saloon and thinks he’s like a bird perched on a branch. It would be nice to open your wings and fly, grazing their heads and landing on the hat of the blind musician. I would have shiny black feathers, he thinks, while his right hand feels in his pants pocket for the hard outline of his knife. It’s a small knife, the blade folded into the wooden handle. He looks farther up the stairs and sees nothing. A closed door, no sounds, nothing. I’m just being stupid, he thinks. He stands there, lowers his gaze, sees his boot on the step. Dust thick on the worn leather. Taps twice, with his heel, on the wood. Then he leans over and with a finger polishes the tip. Just at that moment he hears from above the dry sound of a shot and a brief cry. And he realizes it’s all over. Then he hears a second shot, and, one after the other, the third and the fourth and the fifth. He is frozen. He waits. He has a strange buzzing in his head and everything seems far away. He feels someone shove him, and people are running up the stairs, shouting. In his eyes is the shiny tip of his boot. He waits. But he hears nothing. Then he gets up, and goes slowly down the stairs. He crosses the saloon, goes out the door, gets on his horse. He rides all night and at dawn he reaches Abilene. The next day he heads north, passing through Bartleboro and Connox, following the river as far as Contertown, and then for days he rides towards the mountains. Berbery, Tucson City, Pollak, to Full Creek, where the railroad goes. He follows the tracks for miles and miles. Quartzite, Coltown, Oldbridge, and then Rider, Rio Solo, Sullivan and Preston. After twenty-two days he comes to a place called Stonewall. He looks at the tops of the trees and the way the birds fly. He gets off his horse, picks up a handful of dust, and lets it slide slowly between his fingers. There’s no wind here, he thinks. He sells the horse, buys a gun belt, holster and gun. That night he goes to the saloon. He doesn’t talk to anyone, he sits there, drinking and watching. He studies them all, one by one. Then he chooses a man who is playing cards, who has white uncallused hands, gleaming spurs. A narrow beard, cut with care and deliberation.
That man’s cheating, he says.
Something wrong, kid?
I don’t like bastards, that’s all.
Get your shit tongue outside, and fast.
I don’t like cowards, that’s all.
Kid.
I’ve never liked them.
Let’s do one thing.
Let’s have it.
I didn’t hear a word, you get up, you disappear, and for the rest o
f your days thank heaven it ended like this.
Let’s do something else. You put down the cards, get up, and go cheat somewhere else.
The man pushes back his chair, slowly gets up, stands there, his arms by his sides and his hands on his guns. He looks at the boy.
Pat Cobhan spits. He looks at the tips of his boots, as if he were searching for something. Then he raises his eyes towards the man.
You fool, the man says.
Pat Cobhan suddenly grabs his gun. But he doesn’t draw. He feels the sixth shot, now. Then nothing else, forever.
Silence.
What a silence.
Shatzy had a poem by Robert Curts stuck on the door of the fridge. She had copied it because she liked it. Not all of it, but she liked the bit near the end where it said: Lovers die in the same breath. It also had a nice closing, but the best part was that line. Lovers die in the same breath.
And another thing. Shatzy was always humming a rather stupid song, which she had learned as a child. It had a lot of stanzas. The refrain began like this: Red are the fields of our paradise, red. It wasn’t much, as a song. And it was so long that you might be dead before you’d sung the whole thing. Truly.
Young died in his cell, the day before the trial. His father went to see him, and shot him in the face, point-blank.
13
Gould had twenty-seven professors. The one he liked best, however, was Mondrian Kilroy. He was a man of about fifty, with an oddly Irish face (he wasn’t Irish). On his feet he always wore gray cloth slippers, so they all thought that he lived at the university, and some that he had been born there. He taught statistics.
Once Gould had gone into Classroom 6 and had seen, sitting at one of the desks there, Prof. Mondrian Kilroy. The curious thing was that he was crying. Gould sat down a few desks away, and opened his books. He liked to study in empty classrooms. One didn’t usually find professors crying there. Mondrian Kilroy said something, very softly, and Gould was quiet for a bit, then said he hadn’t heard him. Mondrian Kilroy, turning towards him, said that he was crying. Gould saw that he didn’t have a handkerchief, or anything, and that the back of his hand was wet, and the tears were dripping down inside the collar of a blue shirt. Do you want a tissue? he asked. No, thank you. Would you like me to bring you something to drink? No, thank you. He was still crying, there was no doubt about it.
Although peculiar, it couldn’t be considered completely illogical, given the direction that for some years the studies of Prof. Mondrian Kilroy had been taking, that is to say given the nature of his research, which, for some years, had centered on a rather singular subject, that is to say: he studied curved objects. You have no idea how many curved objects exist; only Mondrian Kilroy, and even in his case it was only by approximation, was able to appreciate the impact on man’s perceptual network and, therefore, on his ethical-sentimental disposition. In general he found it difficult to recapitulate the argument in front of his colleagues, who were often inclined to consider his research “excessively lateral” (whatever such an expression might mean). But it was his conviction that the presence of curved surfaces in the index of existence was anything but accidental, and in fact represented in some sense the flight path by means of which the real escaped the rigid framework of its destiny, that fatally blocked orthogonal structure. It was what, in general, “set the world in motion again,” to use the exact words of Prof. Mondrian Kilroy.
The sense of all of that emerged clearly—and yet in an undoubtedly bizarre form—in his lectures, and in some in particular, and with unusual brilliance in one, the one known as Lecture No. 11, which was devoted to Claude Monet’s Waterlilies. As you all know, Waterlilies is not properly a painting but, rather, a group of eight great wall panels that, if set next to each other, would give the impressive final result of a composition three hundred feet long and six feet high. Monet worked on the paintings for an unspecified number of years, and decided, in 1918, to give them to his country, France, in homage to its victory in the First World War. He continued to work on them to the end of his life, and he died, on December 5, 1926, before being able to see them exhibited to the public. A curious tour de force, they received contradictory critical judgments, being at times described as prophetic masterpieces and at times as, at best, decorations for dressing up the walls of a brasserie. The public, however, continues even today to regard them with unconditional and rapt admiration.
As Prof. Mondrian Kilroy himself was fond of pointing out, the Waterlilies presents an obviously paradoxical feature—disconcerting, he was fond of saying—and that is the despicable choice of subject: for three hundred feet of length and six of height, they immortalize solely a pond of waterlilies. Some trees, fleetingly, a bit of sky, perhaps, but essentially: water and waterlilies. It would be difficult to find a subject more insignificant, in effect kitsch, nor is it easy to grasp how a genius could have conceived of devoting years of work and hundreds of square feet of color to such nonsense. A single afternoon and the outside of a teapot would have been more than sufficient. And yet it is precisely in this absurdity that the genius of the Waterlilies begins. It is so evident—Prof. Mondrian Kilroy would say—what Monet intended to do. He intended to paint nothingness.
To paint nothingness must have been such an obsession for him that the last thirty years of his life seem, in hindsight, to have been possessed—utterly consumed—by it. And from the exact day when, in November of 1893, he bought an extensive piece of land adjacent to his property at Giverny, and conceived the idea of constructing a large pool for aquatic flowers—in other words, a pond filled with waterlilies. A project that could, reductively, be interpreted as an old man’s taking up of an aesthetic hobby, and which, on the other hand, Prof. Mondrian Kilroy did not hesitate to define as the conscious, strategic first move of a man who knew perfectly well where he was going. In order to paint nothingness, he first had to find it. Monet did something more: he produced it. He surely understood that the solution to the problem was not to obtain nothingness by leaving out the real (ordinary abstract painting can do something like that) but, rather, to obtain nothingness by a process of progressive breakdown and dispersal of the real. He understood that the nothingness he was looking for was the whole, caught in an instant of momentaneous absence. He imagined it as a free zone between what existed and what no longer existed. He was not unaware that this would be a rather lengthy undertaking.
“Excuse me, my prostate is calling”—Prof. Mondrian Kilroy customarily said when he reached this point in Lecture No. 11. He would go to the bathroom and return a few minutes later, visibly relieved.
The record tells us that in those thirty years Monet spent much more time working in his garden than he did painting: ingenuously, the record splits in two an action that in fact was one, and that Monet performed with obsessive determination every moment of his last thirty years: creating the Waterlilies. Cultivating them and painting them were simply different names for the same adventure. We can imagine that what he had in mind was: waiting. He had had the wit to choose, as a starting point, a corner of the world in which reality was characterized by a high degree of evanescence and monotony, a muteness nearly without meaning. A pond of waterlilies. The problem then was to induce that portion of the world to unload any residual dross of meaning—to bleed it, empty it, dissipate it to the point of near-total disappearance. Its lamentable existence would then become little more than the simultaneous presence of various vanished absences. To achieve that ambitious result, Monet relied on a rather banal but well-tested stratagem—a stratagem whose devastating efficacy is attested to by married life. Nothing can become so meaningless as whatever you wake up beside every morning of your life. What Monet did was to bring into his house the portion of the world that he intended to reduce to nothing. He created a lily pond in the very place where it would be impossible for him to avoid seeing it. Only an ass—argued Prof. Mondrian Kilroy in his Lecture No. 11—could believe that to impose on oneself daily intimacy with that pond
was a way of knowing it and understanding it and stealing its secret. It was a way of demolishing it. One can say that every time Monet’s gaze rested on that pond he came a step closer to absolute indifference, burning up residues of amazement and remnants of wonder. One can even hypothesize that that ceaseless work on the garden—attested to by the record—touching up here and there, planting flowers and pulling them up, laying out and relaying out borders and paths, was nothing other than a painstaking surgical operation on everything that refused to be worn down by habit, that persisted in rippling the surface of attention, disrupting the picture of absolute meaninglessness that was taking shape in the painter’s eye. Monet was looking for the rotundity of nothingness, and where habit showed itself to be impotent he didn’t hesitate to intervene with the scalpel.
Vran, Prof. Mondrian Kilroy noted, with onomatopoetic effect, accompanying the expression with an unmistakable gesture.
Vran.
One day he woke up, got out of bed, and went into the garden; he reached the edge of the pond, and what he saw was: nothing. Another man would have been content. But one of the components of genius is a boundless obstinacy which causes it to pursue its goals with an overdeveloped anxiety for perfection. Monet began to paint: but shut up in his studio. Not for a moment did he think of setting up his easel at the edge of the pond, facing the waterlilies. It was immediately clear to him that, having labored for years to create those waterlilies, he had to remain shut up in his studio to paint them, that is, confined in a place where, in order to stick to the facts, he was unable to see the waterlilies. Sticking to the facts: there, in his studio, he could remember them. And this choice of memory—rather than the direct approach of sight—was an extreme, brilliant modification of nothingness, since memory—as opposed to sight—assured an infinitesimal perceptual counter-movement that kept the waterlilies a step away from being too meaningless, warming them with a glimmer of recollection, just enough to stop them an instant before the abyss of non-existence. They were nothing, but they were.
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