M Train

  —

  I hadn’t factored in all the snow. It reflected the chalk sky already infused with murky smears. It would prove difficult for my simple camera, too much, then too little, available light. After half an hour my fingers were getting frostbitten and the wind was coming up, yet I stubbornly kept taking pictures. I hoped the sun would return and I irrationally shot, using all of my film. None of the pictures were good. I was numb with cold but couldn’t bear to leave. It was such a desolate place in winter, so lonely. Why had her husband buried her here? I wondered. Why not New England by the sea, where she was born, where salt winds could spiral over the name PLATH etched in her native stone? I had an uncontrollable urge to urinate and imagined spilling a small stream, some part of me wanting her to feel that proximate human warmth.

  Life, Sylvia. Life.

  The bucket of pens was gone, perhaps retired for winter. I went through my pockets, extracting a small spiral notebook, a purple ribbon, and a cotton lisle sock with a bee embroidered near the top. I tied the ribbon around them and tucked them by her headstone. The last of the light faded as I trudged back to the heavy gate. It was only as I approached the car that the sun appeared and now with a vengeance. I turned just as a voice whispered:

  —Don’t look back, don’t look back.

  It was as if Lot’s wife, a pillar of salt, had toppled on the snow-covered ground and spread a lengthening heat melting all in its path. The warmth drew life, drawing out tufts of green and a slow procession of souls. Sylvia, in a cream-colored sweater and straight skirt, shading her eyes from the mischievous sun, walking on into the great return.

  In early spring I visited Sylvia Plath’s grave for a third time, with my sister Linda. She longed to journey through Brontë country and so we did together. We traced the steps of the Brontë sisters and then traveled up the hill to trace mine. Linda delighted in the overgrown fields, the wildflowers, and the Gothic ruins. I sat quietly by the grave, conscious of a rare, suspended peace.

  Spanish pilgrims travel on Camino de Santiago from monastery to monastery, collecting small medals to attach to their rosary as proof of their steps. I have stacks of Polaroids, each marking my own, that I sometimes spread out like tarots or baseball cards of an imagined celestial team. There is now one of Sylvia in spring. It is very nice, but lacking the shimmering quality of the lost ones. Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line.

  Credit 13.3

  Grave of Sylvia Plath, winter

  I awoke to the sound of church bells ringing from the tower of Our Lady of Pompeii. It was 8 a.m. At last some semblances of synchronicity. I was weary of having my morning coffee at night. Coming home through Los Angeles had twisted some inner mechanism, and like an errant cuckoo clock I was operating on time interrupted by itself. My reentry had spun out strangely. Victim of my own comedy of errors, my suitcase and computer stranded in Venice Beach, and then despite the fact I had only a black cotton sack to be mindful of, I left my notebook on the plane. Once home, in disbelief I dumped the meager contents of my sack onto my bed, examining them over and over as if the notebook would appear in the negative recesses between the other items. Cairo sat on the empty sack. I looked helplessly around my room. I have enough stuff, I told myself.

  Days later an unmarked brown envelope appeared at my mail drop; I could see the outline of the black Moleskine. Grateful but perplexed I finally opened it. There was no note, no one to thank but the demon air. I extracted the photograph of Sylvia in the snow and examined it carefully. My penance for barely being present in the world, not the world between the pages of books, or the layered atmosphere of my own mind, but the world that is real to others. I then slipped it between the pages of Ariel. I sat reading the title poem, pausing at the lines And I / Am the arrow, a mantra that once emboldened a rather awkward but determined young girl. I had almost forgotten. Robert Lowell tells us in the introduction that Ariel does not refer to the chameleonlike sprite in Shakespeare’s Tempest, but to her favorite horse. But perhaps the horse was named after the Tempest spirit. Ariel angel alters lion of God. All are good, but it is the horse that flies over the finish line with Sylvia’s arms wrapped around his neck.

  There was also a fair copy of a poem called “New Foal” that I placed in the book some time ago. It describes the birth and arrival of a foal, reminiscent of Superman as a babe, encrusted in a dark pod and hurled into space toward Earth. The foal lands, teeters, is smoothed by God and man to become horse. The poet who wrote it is one with the dust, but the new foal he created is lively, continually born and reborn.

  I was glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed, with my little television and all my books. I had only been gone a few weeks but it somehow felt stretched into months. It was about time I salvaged a bit of my routine. It was too early to go to ’Ino, so I read. Rather, I looked at the pictures in Nabokov’s Butterflies and read all the captions. Then I washed, put on clean versions of what I was already wearing, grabbed my notebook, and hurried downstairs, the cats trailing after me, finally recognizing my habits as their own.

  March winds, both feet on the ground. The spell of jet lag broken, I was looking forward to sitting at my corner table and receiving my black coffee, brown toast, and olive oil without asking for it. There were twice as many pigeons than usual on Bedford Street, and a few daffodils had come up early. It didn’t register at first, but then I realized that the blood-orange awning with ’Ino across it was missing. The door was locked, but I saw Jason inside and I tapped on the window.

  —I’m glad you came by. Let me make you one last coffee.

  I was too stunned to speak. He was closing up shop and that was it. I looked at my corner. I saw myself sitting there on countless mornings through countless years.

  —Can I sit down? I asked.

  —Sure, go ahead.

  I sat there all morning. A young girl who frequented the café was going by carrying a Polaroid camera identical to my own. I waved and went out to greet her.

  —Hello, Claire, do you have a moment?

  — Of course, she said.

  I asked her to take my picture. The first and last picture at my corner table in ’Ino. She was sad for me, having seen me through the window many times in passing. She took a few shots and laid one on the table—the picture of woebegone. I thanked her as she left. I sat there for a long time thinking of nothing, and then picked up my white pen. I wrote of the well and the face of Jean Reno. I wrote of the cowpoke and the crooked smile of my husband. I wrote of the bats of Austin, Texas, and the silver chairs in the interrogation room in Criminal Intent. I wrote till I was spent, the last words written in Café ’Ino.

  Credit 13.4

  Before we parted, Jason and I stood and looked around the small café together. I didn’t ask him why he was closing. I figured he had his reasons, and the answer wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

  I said good-bye to my corner.

  —What will happen to the tables and chairs? I asked.

  —You mean your table and chair?

  —Yeah, mostly.

  —They’re yours, he said. I’ll bring them over later.

  That evening Jason carried them from Bedford Street across Sixth Avenue, the same route I had taken for over a decade. My table and chair from the Café ’Ino. My portal to where.

  Credit 13.5

  —

  I climbed the fourteen steps to my bedroom, turned off the light, and lay there awake. I was thinking about how New York City at night is like a stage set. I was thinking of how on a plane home from London I watched a pilot for a TV show I’d never heard of called Person of Interest and how two nights later there was a film crew on my street and they asked me to not pass while they were shooting and I spotted the main guy in Person of Interest being shot for a scene beneath the scaffolding about fifteen feet from the right of my door. I was thinking about how much I love this city.

  I found the channel changer and watched the end of an episode of Doct
or Who. The David Tennant configuration, the only Doctor Who for me.

  —One may tolerate the demons for the sake of an angel, Madame Pompadour tells him before he transports into another dimension. I was thinking what a beautiful match they would have made. I was thinking of French time-traveling children with Scottish accents breaking the hearts of the future. Simultaneously, a blood-orange awning turned in my mind like a small twister. I wondered if it was possible to devise a new kind of thinking.

  It was nearly dawn before I sank into sleep. I had another dream about the café in the desert. This time the cowpoke was standing at the door, gazing at the open plain. He reached over and lightly gripped my arm. I noticed that there was a crescent moon tattooed in the space between his thumb and forefinger. A writer’s hand.

  —How is it that we stray away from one another, then always come back?

  —Do we really come back to one another, I answered, or just come here and lazily collide?

  He didn’t answer.

  —There’s nothing lonelier than the land, he said.

  —Why lonely?

  —Because it’s so damn free.

  And then he was gone. I walked over and stood where he had been standing and felt the warmth of his presence. The wind was picking up and unidentifiable bits of debris were circling in the air. Something was coming, I could feel it.

  I stumbled out of bed, fully clothed. I was still thinking. Half asleep I slipped on my boots and dragged a carved Spanish chest from the back of the closet. It had the patina of a worn saddle, with a number of drawers filled with objects, some sacred and some whose origins were entirely forgotten. I found what I was looking for—a snapshot of an English greyhound with Specter, 1971 written on the back. It was between the pages of a worn copy of Hawk Moon by Sam Shepard with his inscription, If you’ve forgotten hunger your crazy. I went to the bathroom to wash. A slightly waterlogged copy of No Longer Human was on the floor beneath the sink. I rinsed off my face, grabbed my notebook, and headed for Café ’Ino. Halfway across Sixth Avenue, I remembered.

  —

  I began to spend more time at the Dante but at irregular hours. In the mornings I just got deli coffee and sat on my stoop. I reflected on how my mornings at Café ’Ino had not only prolonged but also afforded my malaise with a small amount of grandeur. Thank you, I said. I have lived in my own book. One I never planned to write, recording time backwards and forwards. I have watched the snow fall onto the sea and traced the steps of a traveler long gone. I have relived moments that were perfect in their certainty. Fred buttoning the khaki shirt he wore for his flying lessons. Doves returning to nest on our balcony. Our daughter, Jesse, standing before me stretching out her arms.

  —Oh, Mama, sometimes I feel like a new tree.

  We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother’s voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don’t go. Don’t grow.

  A Dream of Alfred Wegener

  ANOTHER RESTLESS NIGHT. I got up at dawn and worked, my eyes burned from deciphering scribbled envelopes, endpapers, and stained napkins, then transcribing the text to the computer with everything out of order, then trying to make sense of a subjective narrative with an asymmetrical timeline. I left the lot of it on my bed and went to Caffè Dante. I let my coffee run cold and thought about detectives. Partners depend on one another’s eyes. The one says, tell me what you see. His partner must speak assuredly, not leaving anything out. But a writer has no partner. He has to step back and ask himself—tell me what you see. But since he is telling himself he doesn’t have to be perfectly clear, because something inside holds any given missing part—the unclear or partially articulated. I wondered if I would have been a good detective. It kills me to say it, but I don’t think so. I’m not the observant type. My eyes seem to roll within. I paid the check, marveling that the same murals of Dante and Beatrice have papered the café walls since at least my first visit in 1963. Then I left and went shopping. I bought a copy of a new translation of The Divine Comedy and laces for my boots. I noticed I felt optimistic.

  I went to my mail drop and picked up the mail. A first edition of Anna Kavan’s A Scarcity of Love, two royalty checks, a massive catalogue from Restoration Hardware, and an urgent missive from our CDC secretary. It was absent the customary seal, so I opened it quickly, with some trepidation. It contained a single watermarked sheet advising all members that the Continental Drift Club was formally disbanding. She suggested that we shred any official correspondence with the CDC letterhead or seal and wished us all good health and contentedness. At the bottom she had written hope to meet again in pencil. I immediately wrote her a brief note promising I would do as she asked, adding some verses I had written for the CDC theme song. As I addressed the envelope I could hear the plaintive sound of Number Seven’s accordion.

  Saints day in the snow, where did Wegener go

  Only Rasmus knows, and he is in God’s hands

  Raise an iron cross, he’s no longer lost

  Found within are notes, and they are in God’s hands

  I removed a gray archival box from the top shelf of my closet and spread the contents on the bed—a dossier containing our objectives, printed reading lists, my official confirmation, and red card—Number Twenty-three. There was also a stack of notated napkins, a Polaroid of the chess table used by Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, and my sketch of Fritz Loewe for the 2010 newsletter. I did not open the packet of official letters tied with blue string but instead built a small fire and watched them burn. I sighed and crumpled the paper napkins containing the notes for my somewhat ill-fated talk. My intention had been to channel the last moments in the life of Alfred Wegener, drawing from the members’ unified mind, prodded by the query: what did he see? But the light chaos I had inadvertently ignited obstructed any possibility of realizing a vision akin to poetry.

  He departed from Eismitte on All Saints’ Day, seeking provisions for his friends waiting anxiously for his return. It was his fiftieth birthday. The white horizon beckoned. He detected an arc of color staining the snow. One soul breaking apart from another. He called out to his love, a drifting continent away. Dropping to his knees, he could see his guide, several yards before him, raising his arms.

  —

  I tossed the crumpled napkins into the flame, and each closed like a fist, slowly reopening like petals of small cabbage roses. Fascinated, I watched as they fused and formed one enormous rose. It ascended and hovered above the tent of the sleeping scientist. Its great thorns pierced the canvas, and its heavy fragrance rushed within, enveloping his sleep, becoming one with his breath, and penetrated the chambers of his exploding heart. I was blessed with a vision of his last moments, rising from the smoke of cherished mementos of the Continental Drift Club. An enthusiasm pulsed through me whose language I knew well. These are modern times, I told myself. But we are not trapped in them. We can go where we like, communing with angels, to reprise a time in human history more science fiction than the future.

  Credit 14.1

  Parsifal’s robe, Neuhardenberg

  I have smoothed the hem of the robe of Parsifal.

  Watched Giotto’s sheep wander from a fresco.

  Prayed before holy icons unveiled, surviving time.

  Held shavings swept from the hut of Geppetto.

  Unzipped a body bag and beheld the face of my brother.

  Witnessed the acolyte scatter petals over a dying poet.

  I saw the smoke of incense form the shape of my days.

  I saw my love return to God.

  I saw things as they are.

  Shard by shard we are released from the tyranny of so-called time. A curtain of purple wisteria partially conceals the entrance to a familiar garden. I take my seat at an oval table, Schiller’s portal, and reach across to caress the
wrist of the sad-eyed mathematician. The separating chasm closes. In a wink, a lifetime, we pass through the infinite movements of a silent overture. A lighthearted procession moves through the halls of an illustrious institution: Joseph Knecht, Évariste Galois, members of the Vienna Circle. I watch him as he rises, following at their heels, whistling softly.

  The long vines sway ever so slightly. I picture Alfred Wegener and his wife, Else, having tea in a drawing room flooded with light. And then I begin to write. Not of science but of the human heart. I write fervently, as a student at her desk, bowed over her composition book, composing not as she is bid but as she desires.

  Credit 15.1

  Statue detail, St. Marien and St. Nikolai Church

  Road to Larache

  ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY, I reluctantly prepared for yet another journey. I was invited to participate in a conference of poets and musicians in Tangier to honor the Beat writers who had once made it their port of call. I much preferred to be in Rockaway Beach, drinking coffee with the workers and watching the slow but meaningful process of the salvation of my little house. On the other hand I would be joining good friends, and April 15 marked the passing day of Jean Genet. It seemed to be the right moment to deliver the stones from Saint-Laurent Prison to his grave in Larache, only sixty miles from the conference.

  Paul Bowles once said that Tangier is a place where the past and present exist simultaneously in proportionate degree. There is something hidden in the fabric of this city, a weave that produces a sense of welcoming coupled with mistrust. I saw a bit of Tangier myself first through his work, then through his eyes.

  I was first introduced to Bowles in a serendipitous way. In the summer of 1967, shortly after I left home and went to New York City, I passed a large box of overturned books spilling out into the street. Several were scattered across the sidewalk, and a dated copy of Who’s Who in America lay open before my feet. I bent down to look, as a photograph caught my eye above an entry for Paul Frederic Bowles. I had never heard of him but I noticed we shared the same birthday, the thirtieth of December. Believing it to be a sign, I tore out the page and later searched out his books, the first being The Sheltering Sky. I read everything he wrote as well as his translations, introducing me to the work of Mohammed Mrabet and Isabelle Eberhardt.