Gilda Trillim

by Steven L. Peck

It’s every kitty cat’s dream to be in a room of delicious delectable rats, but does she fricassee their moist and tender bodies? Does she dress them in mint sauce and roast them until slick with paw-licking grease? Oh no, dear reader she does what? She teaches them to sing. So she says. I was there as she talked to the little gang of true believers that gathered to hear the tale (or the tail in a rat’s case). No, she does not gobble them up, she gives them the von Trapp family rodent treatment and lays down the do re mi.

  Right then and there our own little tyrant Monty Smithy declares that we will recreate the Hanoi Hilton A Cappella Rat Ensemble, “There will be nothing like it!” He’s got that right, and we can only hope it stays so. The first problem rises sea serpent-like because at what range do our furry friends warble? Eight octaves above middle C! Whoo, I haven’t heard that high a caterwauling since little Missy Whitepads was doing the humph, humph dance with that bobcat sized orange tomcat that stalks down by the docks!

  So his highness calls upon his minion musicians to find the appropriate instruments and zip zap they try and try and worry their little heads, but only instruments high enough to reach rat-squeak assai altissimo also lack the je ne sais quoi so lovely in the rat-screech timbre Gilda longs for. Whaah, Whaah, says poor Smithy. But at last a devoted fan (and sometimes lovey dovie, lead singer of a certain local band I will not mention except it starts with ‘Enemy’ and ends with ‘People’ and has a very small word that starts with ‘o’ and another that starts with ‘t’ in the middle). She shows up with birdcalls, wood twisted on wood things that squeak like a rat, or so says our dear one-armed music bandit. Monty the wonder horse runs out to the birdcall/ratcall emporium and buys up more than 200 which give a couple of notes up and down from that high, high, high, high C. He added a few Vietnamese song loans for good measure (they were trying to imitate Vietnamese rats don’t you know?).

  To make it authentic (and who would even want to participate in an inauthentic rat choir?), the rat goddess arranges ladders and trundle beds hoisted up the wall with clever little pulleys, so that we can crawl up the walls and sit in the corners like well-positioned rat artistes. “Detail. Detail. Detail people. Let’s make this real!” Monty would call with all the seriousness of the damned and deranged. It was here, dear reader, that your intrepid reporter almost pulled the plug and fled this downer scene. But no, no, no! How could I live with myself if I did not put my readers front and center and do the hard work of exposing the inanity of art gone mad? So in a fit of determination unbecoming of the Madam, I pulled myself up by my tail and faced the music or rather the cruel blasphemous din.

  So on the day of the ‘concert’ we took our positions. Me sitting as pretty as a tortoiseshell Manx, up on one of the trundle beds. There were six ladders and four beds hauled up to just the right heights to satisfy the most discriminating rat music aficionado. Monty took a position on a ladder all his own, one with a little cushy seat that kept his tush well tended for the duration of our enduring polyphony.

  Then with great portent and seriousness her rattiness Queen Gilda handed out the score. Oh my, oh my, my little kittens, such pretentiousness has the Madame not seen since the reign of Queen Lady Ragnar the Gold at the Wagn’ Drag-on where said lady sang lustily the body eclectic.

  The ‘work’ was composed by Miss One-arm, but scored by his Holiness himself and brace yourself for the title, as lovely as the music it represents, Rat Vomit Symphony No. 1 in B8 minor, for Fifty-six Bird Calls and Five Song Loans. I thought nothing could ever, ever be as awful as that title until I heard the music. The atrocious title my dear ones does not capture the vileness of the music. Rat vomit indeed!

  Gilda came forward with … with … I cannot say it without a chuckle tremoring my feline frame, a baton medical-taped to her stumpity stump! Oh, yes there she stood wearing a pair of pink overalls and a ghastly teal T-shirt, her hair was cut Twiggy style, except badly, and on her shoes? Birkenstocks! Of course! The abomination was complete.

  She raised her arms and everyone brought a birdcall to their chest, one hand on the handle and the other holding the little wooden bowl mounted like a wheel and axle designed to squeak when twisted back and forth. And so we began. We had practiced a bit so had the basics down, but it took a few minutes to get going and the maestro made us stop and begin again ten or twenty or thirty times. But at last we were on the move. Because rats have no way to hold their notes we did some tricky things to overlap one another’s squeaks. “Find the structure in the music, people,” Monty pleaded, “it’s in the structure you’ll find the depth of eternity!” But at last we were rolling. And by rolling I mean we were rolling on a rusty wheel squeaking abominably but with vim and verve and a determination to see the monstrosity through to the end.

  To listen to five minutes of this would have been misery. Ten minutes would have been inhumane (I myself would have not even done it to a rat). Thirty minutes? What would you, dear reader, think if it went that long? Surely you would call Geneva and tell them that their lovely conventions were being turned on their head. But, no, even thirty minutes would not have come close to describing the length of that duration. We went, and I kid you not, hand on a stack of catnip, three hours, seventeen minutes, and many seconds each of which we were embedded in the full horror of the sound of wood on wood screeching.

  All the while, stumpy Trillim had such an effect of pathos on her face that if you saw her, your heart would break at the power of her thrice-bemoaned countenance. What acting! What fawning. I kept waiting for her to place the back of her one good hand against her forehead and swoon away in a melodramatic syncope. Her look was serious. Oh so serious with an intensity that would have intimidated even the most hardened Soviet politbureaucrat’s eyebrows and all. Comical almost beyond my ability to keep from giggling, but I am the master of composure. I am a cat after all.

  Magister composer was no better, save his reaction rather than affective pain was pure ecstasy. Like Bernini’s St. Teresa he looked orgastic, his eyes rolled back into his head and a look of divine bliss blistering his countenance as he twisted the bird call with purpose. Oh when I looked at his face I swear the divine nature rested on it. If by divine nature you mean flatulent silliness.

  I must admit dear reader to one moment at about five minutes into the second hour. For just a second. I was caught up in the moment. The spirit of the rats entered into me and I saw a beatific ratty vision of the all. But then at seven minutes into the second hour it was gone and I was back in the world of squeaking inanities. Sadly a good number of the players took on this Trillim inspired method-acting demeanor, a mien that spread throughout our merry band until I was almost ready to deliver fresh wet hairballs to one and all.

  At last, at last, when it was over, there was silence. The quiet of the damned when the flames die for a moment and the sulfurous burning pauses. The Queen Mother fell to the floor—overcome with her own vastness. The High King slumped over exhausted. The queen of the rats was weeping. The king sobbing baby-like burbling and whimpering unabashed. She finally staggered to her bebirkenstocked feet and they shook and sobbed in each other’s arms. There was not a dry eye in the room—one cannot keep the tears of mirth at bay for that long. Even a cat has its limits. Finally the potentate spoke:

  “Never before in the history of the world has the voice of the rats been spoken more powerfully. There will be none here that will easily forget this day! This music is sublime. Not for mundane ears. This we will put away …” And here his face took a mystical air as he shook the score at us and his eyes wandered to the heavens, “… for it is too sacred for this earth. Too holy to be mocked.” (And you can be sure kittens that it would be. Oh how it would be.) “So it will be sealed to come forth when the great god comes to reclaim his kingdom when this song will be sung again by all the rats of the earth with one voice.”

  So let it be written so let it be done.

  Then on cue, the one-armed rat woman fell on the floor weeping and screaming Loudun nun-hysteric
al. Like an alley cat hopped up on catnip and with its tail on fire and being chased by a pack of greyhounds. She started running around the room looking for things, screaming for Fatty. Then she bolted. Out into the street. We ran after her but lost her. No one has seen her since.

  So dear readers shed a tear. Gilda Trillim has left the stage. Will she return? We hope not. We certainly hope not.

  Vignette 16: Interview with Reporter Dob Klingford, Published in The Paris Review. July 3, 1981

  I’ve been a fan of Gilda Trillim for years. Her minimalist book A Coven of Pines is in my top ten list of favorite books ever. As an ex-war correspondent, I think her status as a POW in Southeast Asia first endeared her to me, but then her book’s strange beauty soon compelled me to love her writing for its own sake.

  When allegations surfaced that she had betrayed her fellow captives by playing the whore to our then enemies, and rumors floated that she was a Russian spy and that she was an ‘enemy of the people’ as it were, I was stunned. Truth in war, they say is the first casualty, and the same is true when the vivid signs of wear in a public figure’s reputation start to show, so I decided to investigate the matter myself.

  Tracking down Trillim’s whereabouts was no easy romp in the park. She was known to be in southeastern Utah. I had little to go on. I knew that after her father’s death, Trillim’s mother, Maggie Trillim sold their farm and bought property somewhere in that region of the West. Sleuthing out where required visiting the county tax records in nearly every city of that arid region (and is a tale, which surely will win me a Pulitzer Prize for heroics should I ever write it up). The property turned out to be in the La Sal Mountains, east of Moab on the Utah side of the Buckeye Reservoir area, adjacent to the western border of Colorado.

  I decided to backpack there, thinking (not incorrectly) that if I came bounding up there in a truck, I would frighten her off. Something about the immediacy of the lone walker I thought would grant me a moment of her time that would be denied someone who could just hop back in the truck and drive away.

  The hike was magnificent. I thought should I fail in obtaining the interview, the trek alone was worth the effort. Under a late summer sky, I walked up from a little dying mining settlement called La Sal, a lonely outpost, less a town than a collection of trailers with a post office and a small store. The journey began in the low sagebrush hills foregrounding the magnificent La Sal Mountains, a chain of snowcapped laccoliths that erupt from the canyon lands like the Moai of Easter Island—seemingly placed there to inspire awe by ancient Gods.

  It was warmer than I like, but not awful. I followed a gravel road for many miles. My frame pack swayed to a rhythm that I’ve come to associate with many pleasant memories. The sage turned to scattered Gambel Oak and the land seemed inhabited only by jackrabbits and large drooling cows which would stand and stare stupidly until, after realizing I was not giving up in my resolve to continue down the road, they would bolt in a noisy burst of lumbering motion.

  As the road switched from gravel to a two-track dirt track, the scrub oak turned into gorgeous, shady, aspen stands mixed with scattered patches of fragrant Ponderosa pines. Among these I spent a night under stars with the Milky Way burning across the sky like a pale fire. The magnificence of those heavens defies description.

  In the morning after an agreeable breakfast of instant coffee and ash biscuits I continued up the road now twisting beneath a dark canopy. I did not hurry—I was within five miles or so, and I didn’t want to arrive too early. The presence of the cows never abated and provided an audience that watched me pass with a lazy, hollow gaze.

  At last after wandering through a sere meadow of grass harboring large old and stately tan colored pines, I descended a hill beside a small creek that laughingly led me into a narrow valley. Just before the road crossed into Colorado (marked by a barbed wire fence and cattle guard) I came to a small homey cabin sitting serenely under the protection of mature Ponderosa pines. It was rung on all sides by a full porch. The home (for such is a better description than cabin) was walled with tight raw timber boles.

  Three women were sitting on the porch rocking contentedly in the morning air all dressed in jeans and T-shirts. All three were easy to identify. Gilda Trillim: dark, unruly, ruddy hair, pretty, stark face, missing hand. Her mother Maggie: much the same in aspect, but heavier, white-haired, strong and fierce—knitting. Babs Lake: athletic, dark hair and complexion, taller than the other two, an SLR camera sitting open on her lap and film being loaded onto the spool—radiating a calm protective air. An ancient white-muzzled black lab was lying under the door mantle.

  I waved at them from the road, then strolled the seventy-five yards or so over toward them. As I approached, the old dog raised his head for a second then laid it back down keeping a single eye trained on me. They were calm and unafraid. I was glad I had not come in a truck; they seemed unperturbed by my presence. We chatted a while about the area, about the animals I had seen. I complained about the cows and their effect on the ecosystem, praised the cabin, and complemented their cozy space.

  Then Babs asked, “So what brings you this part of the world?”

  This was the moment. Now or never.

  “I’m looking for Gilda Trillim.”

  The group froze. Babs reached down and grabbed a .22 rifle that had been laying there unnoticed and laid it across her lap in a calm confident manner. No one said a word, so I continued in a mad-dash-get-it-all-out-there verbal blitz that was at the same time overly formal while simultaneously said in almost a single breath.

  “I’m a fan, a big one, and I’ve read almost everything you’ve written, and I’m now a freelance reporter and did a lot of work in Nam and more recently covering the literary scene and looking behind the scenes at writers and poets and their lives because I myself love the written word and anyway with all the idiots out there saying bad things about Gilda … er … Miss Trillim, I wanted to set the record straight and tell her side of the story, so I backpacked all the way out from La Sal hoping to do an interview and clean this mess up that I don’t believe anyway, the mess that is, but people do, and well I just want to know ‘cause I, having been in Nam and all, know things aren’t as they seem and you, well, haven’t said much about what happened over there, and well, there are crazy stories.”

  Babs looked at Gilda, who gave her a slight nod that I don’t think I was supposed to notice. She went into the cabin and I was afraid she might be going after ammo. But she came back out with a kitchen chair and sat it down and signaled with her eyes that I should take it. I did. A little breathless. I almost tipped it over in my anxiousness.

  We talked all the rest of the afternoon. All three women were engaging and lively conversationalists. Topics ranged from the life of the frisky squirrels found abundantly in the trees, to the writings of Hildegard von Bingen. For dinner Maggie cooked up a pile of Swedish pancakes, served with fresh butter, homemade blackberry jam, and tall glasses of milk. We had gotten lost in conversation since I arrived and other than some peanuts we had eaten nothing so the meal was rare ambrosia. I fear I embarrassed myself by the sheer quantity that found its way past my lips. They invited me to pitch my tent or sleep under the stars outside their cabin and after another long conversation we retired. But not before Gilda agreed to an interview.

  “I cannot promise to tell you anything,” she said, “but if I like the question I’ll answer it.” It was more than I had dared hope.

  The following is a cleaned up version of three days of conversation. I agreed to allow Gilda to edit this final version for content and so it is published with her approval. She could be both frustratingly elusive and intensely profound. And sometimes banal to the point I could not keep my eyes open. Still it left me with the feeling that there is much we will never know about this author. However, she is neither the monster claimed by some, nor the fool championed by others—yet there is something otherworldly about her that draws me to believing she sees things others do not.

  I r
ecorded the conversations on my cassette tape recorder and they were transcribed by my assistant Mary Dent.

  DK: Tell me about your life here. How did you come to settle in these mountains? What is your day-to-day life like?

  GT: After Vietnam I drifted quite a bit preferring to be alone. I found the cheerfulness of others unbearable and I wanted to sort things out.

  DK: Excuse me, sort what things out?

  GT: The nature of things. What are we? Why are we here and how did we come to be. The usual questions. What are these relationships that all things share—living and non-living?

  DK: OK.

  GT: I went through a bad spell after a trip to visit an old friend in New York. My friend Babs came to my rescue. … Let me back up. My father had died a few years ago and she and my mother had conceived this plan to buy some property near Atlantic City, Wyoming and move in with me there, but they had trouble finding a place isolated enough, but then found this lovely spot here where we had vacationed a few times when I was young. So about three years ago my mother sold our farm and bought eighty acres up here and a place down in Moab for the winters.

  DK: And this is where you write? What is your typical day like?

  GT: Right before dawn we arise. Babs and I go for a walk around the lake …

  DK: How far?

  GT: About four miles, give or take. There is a path around the lake that winds its way around the marsh that gathers around the southern shore. There is an owl’s nest near the eastern side of the lake and we often stop and converse with the owl—inquiring about her hunt. About once a week we stop to gather owl pellets, if any are to be had, and dissect them and write down in a logbook what she has been eating.

  When we return mother usually has made a light breakfast often of either mush with raisins or biscuits. Then I sit at this table and write.