Savage Love (12 page)

In 1998, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of California (Berkeley) for his contributions in the fields of anthropology, translation, archaeology, cancer and
AIDS
research, sexual dysfunction, poetry, and the War on Drugs. It is believed that at this time he had a brief if unpublicized affair with the famous Hollywood starlet C
D
(her name cannot be revealed, not because the world will end, but because of the threat of lawsuits; see C
D
v.
Vogue Magazine
, currently in the Second Appellate Court, State of California, docket #7384-2903). This claim is surprising given that by his own count Trqba was 125 years old. It must also be observed that he was never what one would describe as an attractive man. When he died, he was no more than five feet tall, with three remaining teeth and skin the colour and texture of a walnut. All his life he affected a pencil-line moustache like some early twentieth-century cinema Lothario. He was an incessant smoker — American Spirit cigarettes when he could get them. He wore baggy trousers to accommodate his priapism, a mismatched suit jacket, and a straw fedora stained with ancient sweat. Yet he was a proud man who carried himself like a young cockerel or a king till
his last illness, despite the incontinence, the paralysis in his lower limbs, the constant moist, hacking cough, and the glass eye which he often turned inward so that he could, as he said, see himself better.

Let it also be noted that Trqba never spoke Spanish with the facility one would expect from a lifelong practitioner. He spoke English with a New Jersey accent, but he did not speak it well either, not as a native. He often remarked to researchers that Ng was the only language in which he felt at home, that every other language seemed prosaic, inept, incomplete, and foreign, that in Ng the world was a beautiful and dramatic arena for the practice of love and war. Nor could he ever convey in English or Spanish or any other contemporary language the true complexity of Ng thought, which required the full thirteen distinct genders, twenty-five tenses, and the dozen moods (including the hopeful-but-not-optimistic mood) of High Ngian. The Ng had 433 words for the English word “thought,” which can only be translated in clumsy, agglutinated phrases, e.g.
, the thought that goes in and out of my head like a fly in a jar, the thought that comes when my lover undresses in the moonlight by a still lake, sad thoughts as I watch my enemy die upon the field of battle while I hold his hand to comfort him. Common conversation was highly abstract and philosophical; Ng children were taught the arts of war, mathematics, poetry, and love from an early age. According to Trqba, it would be impossible to translate the English sentence “I need to take the car to the garage for an oil change and pick up the dry cleaning” into Ngian, even the demotic vernacular. (See Hilo Revlog,
The Incommensurability of Universes: Ng Syntax and the Weltanschauung
, Universidad de la Rioja, 1998.)

To be sure, many scholars dispute Trqba's claims and the body of research that has grown up around them (for a survey of the current literature, see Magot, Vetch, Weeder, and Wurmes,
The Ng, an Anthropological Fantasy, a Counter-Proposal
, University of Nijmegen, 2010). His account of killing five men in spectral duels on glacier-covered Yucatán mountaintops with the Vulture Eye of Ng must be disregarded, just as his “lifetime” tally of 5,363 lovers only weakens his credibility as a scientific observer. It is undoubtedly difficult to overlook Trqba'
s unmistakable air of charlatanism and shoddiness. He was raffish, lewd, intellectually inconsistent, and maddeningly mysterious (all, it might be added, traditional characteristics of the shaman; see V. Shklovsky, “The Disreputable Intermediary: Signs of the Mystic Other in Daily Life,”
Readers' Digest
online, 2009, a revision of his earlier blog post “Our Saviour was a Hippie Magician
,” posted on the now-defunct
Delta Alert for Alien Invasion
, 2008).

In March 2010, as he lapsed into a mysterious lethargy symptomatic of his final decline, Trqba dramatically recanted all his previous Ng testimony. In an e-mail to his friend and noted paleolinguist Boris Napkin at the Stalinski Philological Institute in Belarus, Trqba disowned a lifetime of teaching and the immense corpus of research and translation he had generated, saying that Ng wisdom could only be transmitted in the ancient oral mode from priest or “grandfather” to acolyte, in the language of High Ngian in the midst of outrageous feats of ritual asceticism and endurance in the lonely wastes of the Yucatán desert. Written down (or, as the ancient Ng would say,
“made to lie still in the snow like corpses”), Ngian words lost their capacity to generate Being and became nothing but utilitarian devices of crude communication. He said to Napkin: “How can I teach you what I dare not speak?” (As per his usual practice, this e-mail was sent by Trqba's beloved Naomi, companion and soulmate; their incestuous relationship has long been a subject of fierce underground debate in the otherwise tepid purlieus of Ngian Studies.)

The week before he died, despite the grievous nature of the impending surgical intervention, Trqba was excited about the trip to Los Angeles. He wanted to see the “famous footprints” in
the Hollywood sidewalk and shop on Rodeo Drive for “cowboys” boots. But he seemed very tired just at the end, a little wistful. Before he lapsed into a coma, Trqba became delirious and seemed, yes, to speak in tongues, even to prophesy in the magisterial tones of ancient royalty. The sounds he made were meaningless to observers, but one, at least, switched on his pocket digital recorder on the assumption that Trqba was speaking in true Ng. Alas, the device malfunctioned. (The resulting forty-nine minutes of digitized static are available on
YouTube.com
, erroneously tagged “signals from Cephhebox.”)

A Paranormal Romance

Everything Starts at a Bookstore

I was supposed to meet Zoe for dinner at a chic Parisian restaurant she had discovered on the Internet, a crucial rendezvous during which I intended to propose marriage. But I was running late. A fierce, cold rain lashed down as I bounded up the
metro steps, rain as I had never experienced before. It drove me back into the underground, where dozens of African Parisians discussed the weather in languages other than French. I glanced at my watch and leaped up the stairs again, blinded by the torrents of rain.

Wind whipped the leafless plane trees along the avenue. I spotted a flower shop and ducked in, thinking to buy a bouquet for my love. But I must have slipped through the wrong door, for I found myself in a neat, closet-like second-hand bookstore with dark oak shelves marching back toward an ancient desk fortified with parapets of leather-bound tomes. I hovered, dripping, in the doorway, loath to enter and perhaps spatter valuable books with water but also reluctant to dive back into the deluge. I wiped rainwater off my watch face, frantic with vexation and indecision. I naturally blamed all my troubles on the Parisians, their precious City of Light, and Zoe's love of travel, which I did not share.

At length, an elderly gnome, about three feet high, with white braids wrapped like wheels at the sides of her head, shuffled from behind the desk in what looked like wooden clogs. Everything smelled of dust, mildew, and creosote. Her skin was the colour of ash. The high ceiling seemed wreathed in smoke. She dragged anciently toward me, taking hours it seemed, with a small book clutched in two veined and corded hands the colour of mahogany. She extended her arms, offering the book to me, almost toppling over as she held it out, her blue lips working wordlessly, foam at the corners of her mouth. But her watery blue eyes darted intelligently, anxious and beneficent.

A folded slip of paper fell from the book as I reached for it. Then I had to grasp the old crone by the shoulders to prevent her from falling as she vainly tried to catch the escaped sheet before it landed on the damp floor. I could already see the blue cursive letters soaking through the yellowing page. I snatched it up by a corner and flung it open, hoping to preserve the message, but the letters were beginning to run. The penmanship was bold, what used to be called copperplate; the words were, surprisingly, in English. They disappeared as I read them. “I adore you. I belong to you for eternity. It doesn't matter what you have done. I take your sins for my own. I will suffer the punishment and happily wait for you in the Afterlife. But, my heart, if I could just see you once more before I go, it would be so much easier to bear. At the Gare at seven under the clock.”

There was a wormhole through the paper. The ink was pale with age. The book was Lautréamont's
Chants de Maldoror
, an early edition, in French, of course. I had never read it. The aged dwarf was on her way back to her desk. It would take her a week. The rain had stopped, replaced with the sepia twilight of Paris in late autumn. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to seven, just moments before I was to meet Zoe, my future wife (and dental hygienist). A strange feeling descended on me, the feeling of being directed by an unseen hand.

At the Gare

It occurred to me that Zoe was always late, that I would be cooling my heels, eating bread at the table alone while the waiters crossed their arms and whispered about me behind my back. The Gare du Nord was not far. The craziness of the impulse lent it an air of spontaneity and romance. The note was a hundred years old, if not more. What Gare did the writer intend? What city? Still, I was the reader of the message and it wouldn't hurt me to fulfill the ancient invitation. I knew that in some obscure way I would think better of myself for having done so.

I dove down the metro steps, interrogated the route map on the wall, and raced to the platform, catching the train as the doors swept shut. The trip seemed interminable. I wondered about the handwriting, the person who wrote the note, for whom it had been intended, what crime he had committed, what terrible fate awaited her. Already I was haunted by the thought of the lovers who never met, their not-meeting whispering down the decades till the moment when the leaf of paper fluttered from the gnome's hand. At that moment, I realized I still clutched the book. I had not paid for it.

I raced up the steps at the Gare du Nord and burst onto the concourse. It was, yes, just seven. Now I would be well and truly late meeting Zoe. She would arrive unsupported, puzzled at not finding me at the table, embarrassed to sit by herself. I had imagined I'd find some nineteenth-century pedestal clock with Roman numerals for numbers and thick arms black with coal soot. But there was only the huge digital sign,
DÉPART DEPARTURE ABFARHT
, blinking destinations in waves like wind blowing across fields of wheat. Everything smelled of marble and ozone. Fresh rain fell in waves on the glass roof as if we were under the ocean. Trains gleamed impatiently between pedestrian
quais
where the globe lights walked into the distant dark. There were the usual chic-looking French people hurrying along with their black-rimmed glasses and baguettes like loaded rifles, also students with haversacks and Muslim women in head
scarves. I waited under the digital sign, looking at my watch, feeling a little foolish. Except for me, everyone was in transit, passing through, with a definite destination in mind. An African sweeper with a barrow came by, emptying the trash. Except for the public address system blaring incomprehensible messages at me in French, I was engulfed in silence.

I opened the book and read the words “
Plût au ciel que le lecteur, enhardi et devenu momentanément féroce comme ce qu'il lit, trouve, sans se désorienter, son chemin abrupt et sauvage
. .
. ,” which were incomprehensible to me yet somehow seemed to find an echo in the passionate intonations of the public address announcer. I noticed a slender, melancholy figure emerging from the shadows at the rue de Dunkerque entrance, cloche hat, black lipstick, dark wool coat down to her calves. I noticed her because her eyes were fixed on me, and I could feel them. She was unique, it seemed, in a train station packed with what you would expect, and I had no doubt that it was she who had left the note for me in the book of poems (printed in an unreadable language). But as soon as I thought this thought, I realized how ridiculous it was. I remembered Zoe and the lateness of the hour and heard the clisp, clisp of the commuters' footfalls like dead leaves falling all around me.

The woman seemed dangerous, tragic, sad, and fascinating. I was having the adventure of my life just watching her stride across the concourse. She came toward me like Fate, ferocious and wild. I felt in my jacket pocket for the little velvet box that contained the engagement ring. Zoe would be in a panic. I was the anchor of her little world. I felt a twinge of contempt for that little world. I had answered the invitation, the lover
's call. The woman was wearing strange wooden shoes,
sabots
, I think they are called. I wondered how I knew that. Her eyes were blue, fierce with certainty and renunciation, also relief, the deepest happiness. I looked for the exit. I knew I could escape. But what was there to escape to? She broke into a rueful smile. I could smell book dust, mildew, and creosote. Under her cap her black hair was braided in tight wheels against her temples. Her skin was white as paper. I held out my arms for her. Up close her hair smelled like snow, like winter.

“You came,” she whispered, clutching my hand. “It's enough. Now I can endure everything.”

“I don't know what you
're talking about,” I said.

“Je t'adore,”
she said. “It's all I need.”

“
Je t'adore,”
I whispered. (It did not escape me that all at once I could speak three words of fluent French.)

I knew she wasn't real, but I suddenly realized what it meant to say my heart ached, to know what I wanted and could not have. My entire life seemed diminished, something I watched on a
TV
screen, scripted, flickering, but nothing I was participating in. The revelation made me sick. A strange malady. I had the feeling that henceforth the years would be haunted with the realization that nothing could measure up to this moment and this woman for whom there would never be a substitute.

At the Café

It took me ages to find my way to the restaurant what with the metro suffering one of its frequent shutdowns (due to electrical shortages, or maintenance problems, or terrorist threats) and the snow falling, snarling the traffic. Yes, snow was falling. Suddenly it was winter. The streets were like strips of parchment. The gas lamps hissed as I walked beneath them. Horses dragging the street trams clattered on the pavement, striking sparks with their iron shoes. Nothing, of course, surprised me. I felt a certain posthumous quality in everything I did. I didn't recognize my clothes.

The caf
é was boisterous, overheated, and brilliantly lit with gaslights and candles. Waiters in aprons, oiled hair, and black moustaches swayed amongst the tables. Women in little bonnets perched upon their upswept hair laughed coquettishly. I spotted Zoe almost at once. She was sitting with an earnest young man dressed in a modish grey suit, his hair already receding slightly, giving him an air of premature wisdom and solidity. Her cheeks were warm, her eyes vivacious. She wore a ring on her finger. They were drinking champagne out of fluted glasses, and their waiter was making a fuss, fluttering excitably around them — an intimate, everyday tableau.
Bonne chance,
I thought, trying out more of my new-found French, feeling a certain Continental contempt for the naive and conventional tourists.

I sat by myself where I could watch them. I ordered Pernod and a hot grog and asked for some paper to write on. I could smell winter through the window glass, astringent, bracing, and real.