OIL: Countless times. She kept a bottle of olive oil beside the bed. I always thought flies would come.
SEMEN: F.’s too? I couldn’t bear that. She made me deposit it there myself. She wanted to see me masturbate for the last time. How could I tell her that it was the most intense climax of my life? rice: Raw rice. She kept one grain in there for a week, claiming that she could cook it.
URINE: Don’t be ashamed, she said.
FINGERNAILS: She said that Orthodox Jews buried their fingernail parings. I’m uneasy as I remember this. It’s just the kind of observation that F. would make. Did she get the idea from him?
MAN’S TEARS: A curious incident. We were sunbathing on the beach at Old Orchard, Maine. A complete stranger in a blue bathing suit threw himself on her stomach, weeping. I grabbed his hair to pull him away. She struck my hand sharply. I looked around; nobody had noticed so I felt a little better about it. I timed the man: he cried for five minutes. There were thousands stretched on the beach. Why did he have to pick us? I smiled stupidly at people passing, as if this loony were my bereaved brother-in-law. Nobody seemed to notice. He had on one of those cheap wool bathing suits that do nothing for the balls. He cried quietly, Edith’s right hand on the nape of his neck. This isn’t happening, I tried to think, Edith’s not a sandy whore. Abruptly and clumsily, he rose on one knee, stood up, ran away. Edith looked after him for a while, then turned to comfort me. He was an A——, she whispered. Impossible! I shouted furiously. I’ve documented every living A—— ! You’re lying, Edith! You loved him slobbering on your navel. Admit it! Perhaps you’re right, she said, perhaps he wasn’t an A——. That was a chance I couldn’t take. I spent the rest of the day patroling miles of beach, but he’d gone somewhere with his snotty nose.
SPIT: I don’t know why. In fact, I can’t remember when exactly. Have I imagined this one?
RAIN WATER: She got the idea it was raining at two in the morning. We couldn’t tell because of the window situation. I took a thimble and went upstairs. She appreciated the favor.
There is no doubt that she believed her belly button to be a sensory organ, better than that, a purse which guaranteed possession in her personal voodoo system. Many times she held me hard and soft against her there, telling stories through the night. Why was I never quite comfortable? Why did I listen to the fan and the elevator?
13
Days without work. Why did that list depress me? I should never have made the list. I’ve done something bad to your belly, Edith. I tried to use it. I tried to use your belly against the Plague. I tried to be a man in a padded locker room telling a beautiful smutty story to eternity. I tried to be an emcee in tuxedo arousing a lodge of honeymooners, my bed full of golf widows. I forgot that I was desperate. I forgot that I began this research in desperation. My briefcase fooled me. My tidy notes led me astray. I thought I was doing a job. The old books on Catherine Tekakwitha by P. Cholenec, the manuscripts of M. Remy, Miracles faits en sa paroisse par l’intercession de la B. Cath. Tekakwith, 1696, from the archives of Collège Sainte-Marie – the evidence tricked me into mastery. I started making plans like a graduating class. I forgot who I was. I forgot that I never learned to play the harmonica. I forgot that I gave up the guitar because F chord made my fingers bleed. I forgot about the socks I’ve stiffened with semen. I tried to sail past the Plague in a gondola, young tenor about to be discovered by talent-scout tourist. I forgot about jars Edith handed me that I couldn’t open. I forgot the way Edith died, the way F. died, wiping his ass with a curtain. I forgot that I only have one more chance. I thought Edith would rest in a catalogue. I thought I was a citizen, private, user of public facilities. I forgot about constipation! Constipation didn’t let me forget. Constipation ever since I compiled the list. Five days ruined in their first half-hours. Why me? – the great complaint of the constipated. Why doesn’t the world work for me? The lonely sitting man in the porcelain machine. What did I do wrong yesterday? What unassailable bank in my psyche needs shit? How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me? The hater of history crouched over the immaculate bowl. How can I prove the body is on my side? Is my stomach an enemy? The chronic loser at morning roulette plans his suicide: a leap into the St. Lawrence weighted with a sealed bowel. What good are movies? I am too heavy for music. I am invisible if I leave no daily evidence. Old food is poison, and the sacks leak. Unlock me! Exhausted Houdini! Lost ordinary magic! The squatting man bargains with God, submitting list after list of New Year’s Resolutions. I will eat only lettuce. Give me diarrhea if I’ve got to have something. Let me help the flowers and dung beetles. Let me into the world club. I am not enjoying sunsets, then for whom do they burn? I’ll miss my train. My portion of the world’s work will not be done, I warn you. If sphincter must be coin let it be Chinese coin. Why me? I’ll use science against you. I’ll drop in pills like depth charges. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t make it tighter. Nothing helps, is that what you want me to learn? The straining man perched on a circle prepares to abandon all systems. Take hope, take cathedrals, take the radio, take my research. These are hard to give up, but a load of shit is harder still. Yes, yes, I abandon even the system of renunciation. In the tiled dawn courtroom a folded man tries a thousand oaths. Let me testify! Let me prove Order! Let me cast a shadow! Please make me empty, if I’m empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I’m not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness. I don’t want to be a star, merely dying. Please let me be hungry, then I am not the dead center, then I can single out the trees in their particular lives, then I can be curious about the names of rivers, the altitude of mountains, the different spellings of Tekakwitha, Tegahouita, Tegahkouita, Tehgakwita, Tekakouita, oh, I want to be fascinated by phenomena! I don’t want to live inside! Renew my life. How can I exist as the vessel of yesterday’s slaughter? Is the meat punishing me? Are there wild herds who think poorly of me? Murder in the kitchen! Dachau farmyards! We are grooming beings to eat! Does God love the world? What a monstrous system of nourishment! All of us animal tribes at eternal war! What have we won? Humans, the dietary Nazis! Death at the center of nourishment! Who will apologize to the cows? It’s not our fault, we didn’t think this whole thing up. These kidneys are kidneys. This is not chicken, this is a chicken. Think of the death camps in the basement of a hotel. Blood on the pillows! Matter impaled on toothbrushes! All animals eating, not for pleasure, not for gold, not for power, but merely to be. For whose eternal Pleasure? Tomorrow I begin my fast. I resign. But I can’t resign with a full stomach. And does fasting please or offend Thee? You might construe it as pride or cowardice. I have memorized my bathroom forever. Edith kept it very clean, but I have been less fastidious. Is it fair to ask the intended to scrub the electric chair? I’m using old newspapers, I’ll buy rolls when I deserve them. I’ve promised the toilet much attention if it will be good to me, I’ll unblock it. But why should I humiliate myself now? You don’t polish windows in a car wreck. When my body starts, the old routines will start, I promise. Help! Give me a hint. For five days, except for that first half-hour of failure, I cannot enter the bathroom. My teeth and hair are dirty. I can’t begin to shave, to mock myself with a little deposit of hair. I would stink at an autopsy. Nobody wants to eat me, I’m sure. What’s it like outside? Is there an outside? I am the sealed, dead, impervious museum of my appetite. This is the brutal solitude of constipation, this is the way the world is lost. One is ready to stake everything on a river, a nude bath before Catherine Tekakwitha, and no promises.
14
Into the world of names with us. F. said: Of all the laws which bind us to the past, the names of things are the most severe. If what I sit in is my grandfather’s chair, and what I look out of is my grand -father’s window – then I’m deep in his world. F. said: Names preserve the dignity of Appearance. F. said: Science begins in coarse naming, a willingness to disregard the particular shape and destiny
of each red life, and call them all Rose. To a more brutal, more active eye, all flowers look alike, like Negroes and Chinamen. F. never shut up. His voice has got into my ear like a trapped fly, incessantly buzzing. His style is colonizing me. His will provides me with his room downtown, the factory he bought, his treehouse, his soap collection, his papers. And I don’t like the discharge from my pecker. Too much, F.! I’ve got to hold on to myself. Next thing you know my ears will be transparent. F., why do I suddenly miss you so intensely? There are certain restaurants I can never go to again. But do I have to be your monument? Were we friends, after all? I remember the day you finally bought the factory, eight hundred thousand dollars, and I walked with you on those uneven wood floors, floors which as a boy you had swept so often. I believe you were actually weeping. It was the middle of the night and half the lights were gone. We walked between the rows of sewing machines, cutting tables, defunct steam pressers. There is nothing more quiet than a still factory. Every now and then we kicked a tangle of wire hangers, or brushed a rack where they hung, thick as vines, and a curious tinkling resounded, like a hundred bored men playing in their pockets, a curiously violent sound, as if the men were waiting among the grotesque shadows cast by the abandoned machines, men waiting for salaries, goons for the word to smash F.’s shut-down. I was vaguely frightened. Factories, like parks, are public places, and it was an offense to the democratic mind to see F. so deeply moved by his ownership. F. picked up an old heavy steam iron which was connected to a metal frame above by a thick spring. He swung it away from the table, dropped it, laughed while it bounced up and down like a dangerous yo-yo, shadows striping the dirty walls like a wild chalk eraser on a blackboard. Suddenly F. threw a switch, the lights flickered, and the central power belt which drove the sewing machines began to roll. F. began to orate. He loved to talk against mechanical noise.
– Larry! he cried, moving down the empty benches. Larry! Ben! Dave! I know you can hear me! Ben! I haven’t forgotten your hunched back! Sol! I’ve done what I promised! Little Margerie! You can eat your tattered slippers now! Jews, Jews, Jews! Thanks!
– F., this is disgusting.
– Every generation must thank its Jews, F. said, leaping away from me. And its Indians. The Indians must be thanked for building our bridges and skyscrapers. The world is made of races, you better learn that, my friend. People are different! Roses are different from each other! Larry! It’s me, F., boy goy, whose blond hair you ofttimes ruffled. I’ve done what I promised you in the dark stock room so many afternoons ago. It’s mine! It’s ours! I’m dancing on the scraps! I’ve turned it into a playground! I’m here with a friend!
When he had calmed down F. took my hand and led me to the stock room. Great empty spools and cardboard cylinders threw their precise shadows in the half light, temple columns. The respectable animal smell of wool still clung to the air. I sensed a layer of oil forming on my nose. Back on the factory floor the power belt still turned and a few spikeless machines pumped. F. and I stood very close.
– So you think I am disgusting, F. said.
– I would never believe you capable of such cheap sentimentality. Talking to little Jewish ghosts!
– I was playing as once I promised I would.
– You were slobbering.
– Isn’t this a beautiful place? Isn’t it peaceful? We’re standing in the future. Soon rich men will build places like this on their estates and visit them by moonlight. History has shown us how men love to muse and loaf and make love in places formerly the scene of much violent activity.
– What are you going to do with it?
– Come in, now and then. Sweep a little. Screw on the shiny tables. Play with the machines.
– You could have been a millionaire. The financial page talked about the brilliance of your manipulations. I must confess that this coup of yours lends a lot of weight to all the shit you’ve been spouting over the years.
– Vanity! cried F. I had to see if I could pull it off. I had to see if there was any comfort in it. In spite of what I knew! Larry didn’t expect it of me, it wasn’t binding. My boyhood promise was an alibi! Please don’t let this evening influence anything I’ve said to you.
– Don’t cry, F.
– Forgive me. I wanted to taste revenge. I wanted to be an American. I wanted to tie my life up with a visit. That isn’t what Larry meant.
My arm struck a rack of hangers as I seized F.’s shoulders. The jangling of coins was not so loud, what with the smaller room and the noise of the machinery beyond, and the thugs retreated as we stood in a forlorn embrace.
15
Catherine Tekakwitha in the shadows of the long house. Edith crouching in the stuffy room, covered with grease. F. pushing a broom through his new factory. Catherine Tekakwitha can’t go outside at noon. When she did get out she was swaddled in a blanket, a hobbling mummy. So she passed her girlhood, far from the sun and the noise of hunting, a constant witness to the tired Indians eating and fucking one another, and a picture of pure Mistress Mary rattling in her head louder than all the dancer’s instruments, shy as the deer she had heard about. What voices did she hear, louder than groans, sweeter than snoring? How well she must have learned the ground rules. She did not know how the hunter rode down his prey but she knew how he sprawled with a full belly, burping later at love. She saw all the preparations and all the conclusions, without the perspective set against a mountain. She saw the coupling but she didn’t hear the songs hummed in the forest and the little gifts made of grass. Confronted with this assault of human machinery, she must have developed elaborate and bright notions of heaven – and a hatred for finite shit. Still, it is a mystery how one loses the world. Dumque crescebat aetate, crescebat et prudentia, says P. Cholenec in 1715. Is it pain? Why didn’t her vision turn Rabelaisian? Tekakwitha was the name she was given, but the exact meaning of the word is not known. She who puts things in order, is the interpretation of l’abbé Marcoux, the old missionary at Caughnawaga. L’abbé Cuoq, the Sulpician Indianologist: Celle qui s’avance, qui meut quelquechose devant elle. Like someone who proceeds in shadows, her arms held before her, is the elaboration of P. Lecompte. Let us say that her name was some combination of these two notions: She who, advancing, arranges the shadows neatly. Perhaps, Catherine Tekakwitha, I come to you in the same fashion. A kind uncle took the orphan in. After the plague the whole village moved a mile up the Mohawk River, close to where it is joined by the Auries River. It was called Gandaouagué, another name which we know in many forms, Gandawagué, a Huron word used by missionaries to designate falls or rapids, Gahnawagué in the Mohawk dialect, Kaknawaké which developed into the current Caughnawaga. I’m paying my dues. Here she lived with her uncle, his wife, his sisters, in the long house which he established, one of the principal structures of the village. Iroquois women worked hard. A hunter never lugged his kill. He made an incision in the animal’s stomach, grabbed a handful of entrails, and, as he danced home, sprinkled the guts here and there, this dangled from a branch, that spiked on a bush. I’ve killed, he announced to his wife. She followed his slimy traces into the forest, and her prize for finding the slain beast was to get it back to her husband, who was sleeping beside the fire, his stomach rumbling. Women did most of the disagreeable things. War, hunting, and fishing were the only occupations a man’s dignity allowed. The rest of the time he smoked, gossiped, played games, ate, and slept. Catherine Tekakwitha liked work. All the other girls rushed through it so they could get out there and dance, flirt, comb their hair, paint their faces, put on their earrings, and ornament themselves with colored porcelain. They wore rich pelts, embroidered leggings worked with beads and porcupine quills. Beautiful! Couldn’t I love one of these? Can Catherine hear them dance? Oh, I’d like one of the dancers. I don’t want to disturb Catherine, working in the long house, the muffled thud of leaping feet tracing perfect burning circles in her heart. The girls aren’t spending too much time on tomorrow, but Catherine is gathering her days into a chain, linki
ng the shadows. Her aunts insist. Here’s a necklace, put it on dear, and why don’t you paint your lousy complexion? She was very young, she allowed herself to be adorned, and never forgave herself. Twenty years later she wept over what she considered one of her gravest sins. What am I getting into? Is this my kind of woman? After a while her aunts took the pressure off and she got back to total work, grinding, hauling water, gathering firewood, preparing the pelts for trade – all done in a remarkable spirit of willingness. “Douce, patiente, chaste, et innocente,” says P. Chauchetière. “Sage comme une fille française bien élevée,” he continues. Like a well-raised French girl! O Sinister Church! F., is this what you want from me? Is this my punishment for not sliding with Edith? She was waiting for me all covered in red grease and I was thinking of my white shirt. I have since applied the tube to myself, out of curiosity, a single gleaming column, useless to me as F.’s akropolis that morning. Now I read that Catherine Tekakwitha had a great gift for embroidery and handicraft, and that she made beautiful embroidered leggings, tobacco pouches, moccasins, and wampums. Hour after hour she worked on these, roots and eelskins, shells, porcelain, quills. To be worn by anyone but her! Whom was her mind adorning? Her wampums were especially cherished. Was this the way she mocked money? Perhaps her contempt freed her to invent elaborate designs and color arrangements just as F.’s contempt for commerce enabled him to buy a factory. Or do I misread them both? I’m tired of facts, I’m tired of speculations, I want to be consumed by unreason. I want to be swept along. Right now I don’t care what goes on under her blanket. I want to be covered with unspecific kisses. I want my pamphlets praised. Why is my work so lonely? It is past midnight, the elevator is at rest. The linoleum is new, the faucets tight, thanks to F.’s bequest. I want all the comes I did not demand. I want a new career. What have I done to Edith, that I can’t even get her ghost to stiffen me? I hate this apartment. Why did I have it redecorated? I thought the table would look nice yellow. O God, please terrify me. The two who loved me, why are they so powerless tonight? The belly button useless. Even F.’s final horror meaningless. I wonder if it’s raining. I want F.’s experiences, his emotional extravagance. I can’t think of a single thing F. said. I can only remember the way he used his handkerchief, the meticulous folding to keep his nose away from snot, his high-pitched sneezes and the pleasure they gave him. High-pitched and metallic, positively instrumental, a sideways snap of the bony head, then the look of surprise, as if he’d just received an unexpected gift, and the raised eyebrows which said, Fancy that. People sneeze, F., that’s all, don’t make such a damn miracle out of it, it only depresses me, it’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too. I hate to think of the things you told Edith, probably sounding as if hers were the first body you ever touched. Was she delighted? Her new nipples. You’re both dead. Never stare too long at an empty glass of milk. I don’t like what’s happening to Montréal architecture. What happened to the tents? I would like to accuse the Church. I accuse the Roman Catholic Church of Québec of ruining my sex life and of shoving my member up a relic box meant for a finger, I accuse the R.C.C. of Q. of making me commit queer horrible acts with F., another victim of the system, I accuse the Church of killing Indians, I accuse the Church of refusing to let Edith go down on me properly, I accuse the Church of covering Edith with red grease and of depriving Catherine Tekakwitha of red grease, I accuse the Church of haunting automobiles and of causing pimples, I accuse the Church of building green masturbation toilets, I accuse the Church of squashing Mohawk dances and of not collecting folk songs, I accuse the Church of stealing my sun tan and of promoting dandruff, I accuse the Church of sending people with dirty toenails into streetcars where they work against Science, I accuse the Church of female circumcision in French Canada.