Geryon photographed the yellowbeard beneath one that read
NIGHT ES SELBST ES
TALLER AUTOGESTIVO
JUEVES 18–21 HS
Then they made their way to a bare loft
called Faculty Lounge. No chairs. A long piece of brown paper nailed to the wall
had a list of names in pencil and pen.
Help Us Keep Track of Professors Detained or Disappeared, read the yellowbeard.
Muy impressivo, he said to a young man
standing nearby who merely looked at him. Geryon was trying to keep his eye
from resting on any one name.
Suppose it was the name of someone alive. In a room or in pain or waiting to die.
Once Geryon had gone
with his fourth-grade class to view a pair of beluga whales newly captured
from the upper rapids of the Churchill River.
Afterwards at night he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of
the whales afloat
in the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall—as alive as he was
on their side
of the terrible slopes of time. What is time made of? Geryon said suddenly
turning to the yellowbeard who
looked at him surprised. Time isn’t made of anything. It is an abstraction.
Just a meaning that we
impose upon motion. But I see—he looked down at his watch—what you mean.
Wouldn’t want to be late
for my own lecture would I? Let’s go.
Sunset begins early in winter, a bluntness at the edge of the light. Geryon
hurried after the yellowbeard
through dimming corridors, past students huddled in conversation who stubbed
their cigarettes underfoot
and did not look at him, to a bare brick-walled classroom with a muddle of small desks.
Empty one at the back.
It was a tight fit in his big overcoat. He couldn’t cross his knees. Presences hunched
darkly in the other desks.
Clouds of cigarette smoke moved above them, butts lay thick on the concrete floor.
Geryon disliked a room without rows.
His brain went running back and forth over the disorder of desks trying to see
straight lines. Each time finding
an odd number it jammed then restarted. Geryon tried to pay attention.
Un poco misterioso, the yellowbeard
was saying. From the ceiling glared seventeen neon tubes. I see the terrifying
spaces of the universe hemming me in.…
the yellowbeard quoted Pascal and then began to pile words up all around the terror
of Pascal until it could scarcely be seen—
Geryon paused in his listening and saw the slopes of time spin backwards and stop.
He was standing beside his mother
at the window on a late winter afternoon. It was the hour when snow goes blue
and streetlights come on and a hare may
pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book. In this hour he and his mother
accompanied each other. They did not
turn on the light but stood quiet and watched the night come washing up
towards them. Saw
it arrive, touch, move past them and it was gone. Her ash glowed in the dark.
By now the yellowbeard had moved
from Pascal to Leibniz and was chalking a formula on the blackboard:
[NEC] = A}B
which he articulated using the sentence “If Fabian is white Tomás is just as white.”
Why Leibniz should be concerned
with the relative pallor of Fabian and Tomás did not come clear to Geryon
although he willed himself
to attend to the flat voice. He noted the word necesariamente recurring four times
then five times then the examples
turned inside out and now Fabian and Tomás were challenging each other’s negritude.
If Fabian is black Tomás is just as black.
So this is skepticism, thought Geryon. White is black. Black is white. Perhaps soon
I will get some new information about red.
But the examples dried away into la consecuencia which got louder and louder as
the yellowbeard strode up and down
his kingdom of seriousness bordered by strong words, maintaining belief
in man’s original greatness—
or was he denying it? Geryon may have missed a negative adverb—and ended
with Aristotle who had
compared skeptic philosophers to vegetables and to monsters. So blank and
so bizarre would be
the human life that tried to live outside belief in belief. Thus Aristotle.
The lecture ended
to a murmur of Muchas gracias from the audience. Then someone asked a question
and the yellowbeard
began talking again. Everybody lit another cigarette and clenched down in the desks.
Geryon watched smoke swirl.
Outside the sun had set. The little barred window was black. Geryon sat wrapped
in himself. Would this day never end?
His eye traveled to the clock at the front of the room and he fell into the pool
of his favorite question.
XXX. DISTANCES
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“What is time made of?” is a question that had long exercised Geryon.
————
Everywhere he went he asked people. Yesterday for example at the university.
Time is an abstraction—just a meaning
that we impose upon motion. Geryon is thinking this answer over as he kneels
beside the bathtub in his hotel room
stirring photographs back and forth in the developing solution. He picks out
one of the prints and pins it
to a clothesline strung between the television and the door. It is a photograph
of some people sitting at desks
in a classroom. The desks look too small for them—but Geryon is not interested
in human comfort. Much truer
is the time that strays into photographs and stops. High on the wall hangs a white
electric clock. It says five minutes to six.
At five minutes after six that evening the philosophers had adjourned the classroom
and made their way to a bar
down the street called Guerra Civil. The yellowbeard rode proudly at the front
like a gaucho leading his infernal band
over the pampas. The gaucho is master of his environment, thought Geryon
clutching his camera and keeping to the rear.
Bar Guerra Civil was a white stucco room with a monk’s table down the middle.
When Geryon arrived the others were
already deep in talk. He slid into a chair across from a man
in round spectacles.
What will you have Lazer? said someone on the man’s left.
Oh let’s see the cappuccino is good here
I’ll have a cappuccino please lots of cinnamon and—he pushed up his spectacles—
a plate of olives.
He glanced across the table. Your name is Lazarus? said Geryon.
No my name is Lazer. As in laser beam—but
do you wish to order something? Geryon glanced at the waiter. Coffee please.
Turned back to Lazer. Unusual name.
Not really. I am named for my grandfather. Eleazar is a fairly common Jewish
name. But my parents
were atheists so—he spread his hands—a slight accommodation. He smiled.
And you are an atheist too? said Geryon.
I am a skeptic. You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God
with the good sense to doubt me.
What is mortality after all but divine doubt f
lashing over us? For an instant God
suspends assent and poof! we disappear.
It happens to me frequently. You disappear? Yes and then come back.
Moments of death I call them. Have an olive,
he added as the waiter’s arm flashed between them with a plate.
Thank you, said Geryon
and bit into an olive. The pimiento stung his mouth alive like sudden sunset.
He was very hungry and ate seven more,
fast. Smiling a bit Lazer watched him. You eat like my daughter. With a certain
shall I say lucidity.
How old is your daughter? asked Geryon. Four—not quite human. Or perhaps
a little beyond human. It is
because of her I began to notice moments of death. Children make you see distances.
What do you mean “distances”?
Lazer paused and picked an olive from the plate. He spun it slowly on the toothpick.
Well for example this morning
I was sitting at my desk at home looking out on the acacia trees that grow beside
the balcony beautiful trees very tall
and my daughter was there she likes to stand beside me and draw pictures while
I write in my journal. It
was very bright this morning unexpectedly clear like a summer day and I looked up
and saw a shadow of a bird go flashing
across the leaves of the acacia as if on a screen projected and it seemed to me that I
was standing on a hill. I have labored up
to the top of this hill, here I am it has taken about half my life to get here and on
the other side the hill slopes down.
Behind me somewhere if I turned around I could see my daughter beginning to climb
hand over hand like a little gold
animal in the morning sun. That is who we are. Creatures moving on a hill.
At different distances, said Geryon.
At distances always changing. We cannot help one another or even cry out—
what would I say to her,
“Don’t climb so fast”? The waiter passed behind Lazer. He was moving at a tilt.
Black outside air tossed itself
hard against the windows. Lazer looked down at his watch. I must go, he said
and he was winding his yellow scarf
about his neck as he rose. Oh don’t go, thought Geryon who felt himself starting
to slide off the surface of the room
like an olive off a plate. When the plate attained an angle of thirty degrees
he would vanish into his own blankness.
But then his glance caught Lazer’s. I have enjoyed our conversation, said Lazer.
Yes, said Geryon. Thank you.
They touched hands. Lazer bowed slightly and turned and went out. A gust of night
pushed its way in the door
and everyone inside wavered once like stalks in a field then resumed their talk.
Geryon subsided into his overcoat
letting the talk flow over him warm as a bath. He felt for the moment concrete
and indivisible. The philosophers
were joking about cigarettes and Spanish banks and Leibniz, then politics.
One man recounted how
the governor of Puerto Rico had recently proclaimed it an injustice to exclude
citizens from the democratic process
merely because they were insane. Apparatus for voting was transported
to the state asylum. Indeed
the insane proved to be serious and creative voters. Many improved the ballot
by writing in candidates
they trusted would help the country. Eisenhower, Mozart, and St. John of the Cross
were popular suggestions. Now
the yellowbeard spoke up with a story from Spain. Franco too had understood
the uses of madness.
He was in the habit of busing large groups of supporters to his rallies.
On one occasion the local madhouses
were emptied for this purpose. Next day the newspapers reported cheerfully:
SUBNORMALS BEHIND YOU ALL THE WAY FRANCO!
Geryon’s cheekbones hurt from smiling. He drained his water glass and chewed
the bits of ice then reached
across for Lazer’s glass. He was ravenous. Try not to think about food. No hope
of dinner till probably ten p.m.
Willed his attention back to the conversation which had wandered to tails.
It is not widely known,
the yellowbeard was saying, that twelve percent of babies in the world are born
with tails. Doctors suppress this news.
They cut off the tail so it won’t scare the parents. I wonder what percentage
are born with wings, said Geryon
into the collar of his overcoat. They went on to discuss the nature of boredom
ending with a long joke about monks
and soup that Geryon could not follow although it was explained to him twice.
The punch line contained
a Spanish phrase meaning bad milk which caused the philosophers to lean
their heads on the table in helpless joy.
Jokes make them happy, thought Geryon watching. Then a miracle occurred
in the form of a plate of sandwiches.
Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread
filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.
He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how
slipperiness can be of different kinds.
I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.
He would like to discuss this with someone.
And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.
When he got back to the hotel room
he set up the camera on the windowsill and activated the timer, then positioned
himself on the bed.
It is a black-and-white photograph showing a naked young man in fetal position.
He has entitled it “No Tail!”
The fantastic fingerwork of his wings is outspread on the bed like a black lace
map of South America.
XXXI. TANGO
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Under the seams runs the pain.
————
Panic jumped down on Geryon at three a.m. He stood at the window of his hotel room.
Empty street below gave back nothing of itself.
Cars nested along the curb on their shadows. Buildings leaned back out of the street.
Little rackety wind went by.
Moon gone. Sky shut. Night had delved deep. Somewhere (he thought) beneath
this strip of sleeping pavement
the enormous solid globe is spinning on its way—pistons thumping, lava pouring
from shelf to shelf,
evidence and time lignifying into their traces. At what point does one say of a man
that he has become unreal?
He hugged his overcoat closer and tried to assemble in his mind Heidegger’s