I had wanted to be the reservoir where engines and people drank, blood sperm music pouring out and getting hooked in someone’s ear. The way flowers were still and fed bees. And we took from the others too this way, music that was nothing till Mumford and Lewis and Johnson and I joined Cornish and made him furious because we wouldn’t let him even finish the song once before we changed it to our blood. Cornish who played the same note the same way every time who was our frame our diving board that we leapt off, the one we sacrificed so he could remain the overlooked metronome.
So because Willy was the first I saw when I got back I pretended to look through his eyes, the eyes Nora wanted me to have. So everyone said I’d changed. Floating in the ether. They want nothing to have changed. Unaware of the hook floating around. A couple of years ago I would have sat down and thought out precisely why it was Cornish who moved in with her why it was Cornish she accepted would have thought it out as I set the very type it was translated into. The Cricket. But I shat those theories out completely.
There had been such sense in it. This afternoon I spend going over four months’ worth of The Cricket. Nora had every issue in the bedroom cupboard and while she was out and the kids stayed around embarrassed to come too close and disturb me (probably Nora’s advice—why doesn’t she still hate me? Why do people forget hate so easily?) I read through four months’ worth of them from 1902. September October November December. Nothing about the change of weather anywhere but there were the details of the children and the ladies changing hands like coins or a cigarette travelling at mouth level around the room. All those contests for bodies with children in the background like furniture.
I read through it all. Into the past. Every intricacy I had laboured over. How much sex, how much money, how much pain, how much sweat, how much happiness. Stories of riverboat sex when whites pitched whores overboard to swim back to shore carrying their loads of sperm, dog love, meeting Nora, marriage, the competition to surprise each other with lovers. Cricket was my diary too, and everybody else’s. Players picking up women after playing society groups, the easy power of the straight quadrilles. All those names during the four months moving now like waves through a window. So I suppose that was the crazyness I left. Cricket noises and Cricket music for that is what we are when watched by people bigger than us.
Then later Webb came and pulled me out of the other depth and there was nothing on me. I was glinting and sharp and cold from the lack of light. I had turned into metal at my mouth.
Second Day
By breakfast the next day Cornish still hadn’t returned so Buddy walked the kids to school, he was quiet but got them talking. Soon however numerous friends of his kids joined them on the walk. They were the ones who began conversations now and though the dialogue took him in there were codes and levels he was not allowed to be a part of as the group bounced loud and laughing towards the embankment. Hands in his pockets he strolled alongside them, his two kids dutifully sticking with him.
Hey Jace—this is my dad.
Oh yeah? Hi.
As they hit the embankment he impressed all by answering three complex dirty jokes in a row. Riddles he had heard years ago. Dug into his mind for further jokes he knew would be appreciated and which spread like rabies the minute they got into school.
Stanley, what’s that note you’re passing—bring it here.
It’s a question Miss.
Bring it here.
Handed to her silently, creeping back to his desk.
What’s this … What’s the diffrence, difference is spelled wrong Stanley, what’s the difference between a nun praying and a young girl taking a bath? … Well Stanley, stand up, what’s the difference?
Rather not say Miss.
Come on come on, you know I like riddles.
You sure Miss.
Of course. As long as it’s clever.
Oh it’s clever Miss, Charles’ dad told it.
Go on then.
Well. One has hope in her soul and one has soap in her —
STANNNNNLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!
By the time they reached the school Bolden was a hero. He raked his memory for every pun and story. Finding out who the teachers were he revived old rumours about them. He suggested various tricks to drive a teacher out of the room, various ways to get a high temperature and avoid classes. As they approached the school the kids began to run from him fast into the yard to be the first there with the hoard of new jokes. He combed his fingers through his son’s hair, kissed his daughter, and walked back. He avoided the areas he knew along Canal. Eventually he cut into Chinatown and asked about Pickett. No one knew of him, no one.
A guy with scars on his cheek, right cheek.
He was directed to the Fly King.
He was home then four days before the street parade. The first evening with Nora and Willy Cornish. The first night with Nora. The second morning with the children, late morning (perhaps) with Pickett. Pickett should not have been that difficult to find. He had at one time been a power. His room was on Wilson. Chinatown however was a terrible maze.
But Bellocq had been there photographing the opium dens, each scene packed with bunks that had been removed from sleeping compartments of abandoned trains, his pictures full of grey light which must have been the yellow shining off the lacquered woodwork. Cocoons of yellow silence and outside the streets which were intricate and convoluted as veins in a hand. Two squares between Basin and Rampart and between Tulane and Canal through which Bellocq had moved, never lost, and taken his photographs.
So Bolden had probably been there before, with him.
Second Evening
Parading around alone. I walk to Gravier north past Chinatown and then cut back to Canal, near Claiborne. Along the water. The mist has flopped over onto the embankment like a sailing ship. Others walking disappear into the white and the mattress whores have moved off their usual perch to avoid being hidden by the mist. They walk up and down, keep moving like sentries to show they haven’t got broken ankles. The ones that have stand still and try to hide it. A quarter a fuck. The mist has helped them tonight. Normally now the pimps are out hunting the mattress whores with sticks. When they catch them they break their ankles. Women riddled with the pox, remnants of the good life good time ever loving Storyville who, when they are finished there, steal their mattress and with a sling hang it on their backs and learn to run fast when they see paraders with a stick. Otherwise they drop the mattress down and take men right there on the dark pavements, the fat, poor, the sadists who use them to piss in as often as not because the disease they carry has punched their cunts inside out, taking anything so long as the quarter is in their hands.
So their lives have become simplified by seeing all the rich and healthy as dangerous, and they automatically run when they see them. The ones who can run. The others drop their mattress and lie down and flick their skirts up, spread their legs with socks on, these ones who don’t care who it is that’s coming. If it’s a pimp he’s gonna check her for a swollen foot so she can’t slip back to Storyville. These broken women so ruined they use the cock in them as a scratcher. The women who are called gypsy feet. And the ones not caught yet carrying their disease like coy girls into and among the rocks and the shallows of the river where the pimps in good shoes won’t follow. But those who are lame thrusting their fat foot at you, immune from the swinging stick that has already got them swelled and fixed in a deformed walk, gypsy foot gypsy foot.
For them it is a good night. Standing like grey angels on the edge of the mist, stepping backward and invisible when they hear a fast rich walk. Like mine. God even mine, me with a brain no better than their sad bodies, so sad they cannot afford to feel sorrow towards themselves, only fear. And my brain atrophied and soaked in the music I avoid, like milk travelling over the border into cheese. All that masturbation of practice each morning and refusing to play and these gypsy feet wanting to play you but drummed back onto the edge of the water by your rich sticks and you
r rich laws. Bellocq showed me pictures he took of them long ago, he was crying, he burned the results. Thighs swollen and hair fallen out and eyelids stiff and dead and those who had clawed through to the bones on their hips. Rales. Dear small dead Bellocq. My brain tonight has a mattress strapped to its back.
Even with me they step into the white. They step away from me and watch me pass, hands in my coat pockets from the cold. Their bodies murdered and my brain suicided. Dormant brain bulb gone crazy. The fetus we have avoided in us, that career, flushed out like a coffin into the toilets and into the harbour. The sum of the city. To eventually crash into the boats going out to sea. Walk over the driblets of manure of the gypsy foot whores, they don’t eat much, what they can beg or take from the half-formed weeds along the embankment. Salt in their pockets for energy. There is no horror in the way they run their lives.
Third Day & Third Evening
Game home with just his face laughing at the jokes. Refused to enlarge stories as he used to. They noticed that, those who had known him before.
There were younger ones around now who had heard of him who wished to revive him but he easily turned conversations back onto them and their lives. Perhaps they were the eventual catalysts. Maybe. As it was they gradually heard of him being back and brought bottles of Raleigh Rye to leave on the doorstep, and Bolden just smiling and bringing the bottles in to Nora in the kitchen but not touching the cap, not drinking, not wishing to, now. Just talked gently and slowly with Nora, watching Nora get meals as he sat in the kitchen as if she was a sister he had never met since they were kids. And sleeping a lot.
On the third day old friends came in, shy, then too loud as they entertained him with the sort of stories he loved to hear, stories he could predict now. He sat back with just his face laughing at the jokes. It was like walking out of a desert into a park of schoolchildren. No one mentioned Pickett until he did and then there was silence and Bolden laughing out loud for the first time. And everyone in the room watching Buddy, waiting for any expression to move across his face, even a nerve.
No those visitors hadn’t bothered him much. He liked to think of Pickett running down the road holding his scars like a dying dog. He still remembered the metal of the strop touch the mirror and both of them watching it fall, like a chopped sheet into the basin. No it was to Nora that the pain came, the people in the house watching him. Buddy’s mind slipped through them. She saw him there and saw he wasn’t even in the room, the only real muscle was his wink at her as some story was ending and she could see him getting his fucking grin ready. She wanted to collect everybody and kick them out of the room. Screw his serenity. Buddy knowing what he owed her and hadn’t given her.
That night Willy Cornish went out again. Buddy was walking and came in at ten. It was after midnight when he wanted to go to sleep. One of the kids cried and without thinking he went into their room and lay on the edge of the bed his arm around the child. Act from the past. Charles jnr probably too old to want this. The cry was part of his sleep and he wasn’t awake, just nuzzled into his father’s body. Did Cornish do this?
He fell asleep, his fingers against his son’s spine under the shirt. About an hour later he woke up and realised where he was. Took his jacket off and lay back in the old flannel shirt Nora had found for him to wear.
Then heard Nora’s ‘Buddy’ close to him and saw her sitting on Bernadine’s bed, leaning forward. He got up and moved towards her.
You ok?
She shook her head slowly.
Is Willy out there?
No. He won’t come back tonight Buddy.
Must be late.
1.30. I don’t know.
He put his hand to the side of her face against her ear.
Please talk, Buddy.
He helps her off the bed and walks with her into the living room, his red arm loose over her shoulder.
She is on the sofa, he is in the chair. She lifts her knees up so her chin is resting on them. She is gazing at the floor between them.
Still love you Buddy … I’m sorry. Not like it was before because I don’t know you anymore but I care about you, love you as if you weren’t my husband. I’m just sorry about this … I feel sorrier for William. Jesus that red shirt on you, you look fabulous, you look really well aint that crazy that’s all I can think of … you look like a favourite shirt I lost.
They start giggling and soon are laughing across at each other.
Stop it Bolden, snorting back her laugh, we should be having a serious conversation.
His mouth on his wife’s left ear. Feeling his wife’s hands between their bodies unbuttoning the front of her dress. His own hands waiting and then into the cave of his wife’s open dress, round to touch her back and sliding back to cover the breasts of his wife. His fingers recognizing the nipples, the appendix scar. He lies back with his head in her lap. Looking up at her. The home of his wife’s mouth coming down on him.
With Bellocq on the street.
Walking with him to introduce him to whores. But I don’t want you there when I do it. Ok Ok. Cos otherwise let’s just go home. He was scared of Bolden’s presence for the first time. He staggered at Buddy’s side with the camera. You’re sure? I just don’t want you hanging round, just introduce me and say what I want. I know Bellocq I know. Yeah. Well you know what I mean.
He pulled Bellocq up the steps, the camera strapped across his back like a bow. He had seen it so often on his friend that whenever he thought of him his body took on an outline which included the camera and the tripod. It was part of his bone structure. A metal animal grown into his back. He pulled him up the steps, through the doors. You’ve got to get up these stairs man. Bellocq already exhausted began to climb them with Bolden. Man what a wallpaper, giggling as he climbed along the carpet runners that would take him to the paradise of bodies. He brushed his free hand against the blue embossed wallpaper. He saw a photograph of a girl sitting against it, alone on the stairs, no one around. Maybe a plate of food. The wallpaper would come out light grey. Up one flight, then another, his legs starting to ache. This ain’t no joke is it man? No. One more and we’re there.
Let me go in and talk to her first. Her? I thought I was going to meet them all. Yeah yeah but I just want to talk to Nora first ok.
He left Bellocq outside resting on the top steps carefully removing the camera off its sling. Listen I’ve got this friend who wants photographs of the girls. Same price as a fuck you know that Buddy. Ok, but I want to tell you about him first. Willya call the others in I don’t want to say this more than once. He wasn’t sure how to explain it. He wasn’t even sure himself what Bellocq wanted to do. Listen this guy’s a ship photographer—a burst of laughter—and just for himself, nothing commercial, he wants to get pictures of the girls. I don’t know how he wants you to be for the picture, he just wants them. Nothing commercial ok. He’s not weird or anything is he? No, he’s a little bent in the body, something wrong with his legs. No one wanted to. Please, look I promised him, listen I even said no price this time, it’s a favour, see he did a few things for me. You gonna be around Charlie? No I can’t he doesn’t want me to. Two of them left the room saying they were going back to sleep. Listen he’s got a good job, he really does photograph ships and things, stuff for brochures. He’s very good, he’s not a cop, the idea coming into his mind that second as a possible fear of theirs. He’s a kind man. Nobody wanted Bellocq and more went away. I’ll give you a free knock anytime Charlie but not this. They went then and Nora shrugged sorry across the room. It’s morning Charlie, they were all up late last night at Anderson’s. All I could do was get them here. And they were watching the two of you arrive. He looked like something squashed or run over by a horse from up here.
Listen Nora you have to do this for me. Let him take some pictures of you. Just this once to show the others it’s ok, I promise you it’ll be ok. She had moved into the kitchenette and was looking for a match to light the gas. He came over, dug one out of his pocket and lit the row
of hissing till they popped up blue, something invisible finding a form. He let her fill the kettle and put it on. Then he put himself against her back and leaned his face into her shoulder. His nose against the shoulder strap of her dress. Come out with me into the hall and meet him. Give him some of this tea. He’s a harmless man. He put his head up a bit and watched the blue flame gripping the kettle. He was exhausted. He couldn’t hustle for others, he didn’t know the needs of others. He was fond of them and wanted them happy and was willing to make them happy and was willing to hear their problems but no more. He didn’t know how people like Bellocq thought. He didn’t know how to put the pieces of him together. He was too shy to ask Bellocq why he wanted these pictures or what kind they would be. Three floors up on North Basin Street he was nuzzling this lady. That’s all he knew. His mind went blank against the flesh next to him.
What’s he got on you? Nothing. He separated himself from her, picked up a knife and trapped against the small window of the kitchen, looking out. It was cold out, there was steam over the river. He had tried to get Bellocq to wear a coat when he had picked him up, but they had gone on, Bellocq cold and so trying to walk fast. He placed his palm against the glass and left the surface of his nerve pattern there. Rubbed it out. Turning he walked past her quickly through the door into the hall. As he was opening the door she said OK very fast. He turned and saw her leaning in the kitchen doorway with a cup in her hand. Then he opened the door to the stairs.
And then running down the stairs fast, almost crying, down two flights before he saw the figure in the main hall standing against the wallpaper looking up at him—the face pale and embarrassed. He must have heard them laughing in there, must have sat there for ten minutes and taken more than five minutes to walk down.