The Autobiography of Red (7 page)

That night they went out painting.

 

Geryon did an early red-winged
LOVESLAVE
on the garage of the priest’s house

 

next to the Catholic church.

 

Then passing down Main Street they saw fat white letters (recent) on the side

 

of the post office.
CAPITALISM SUCKS
.

 

Herakles eyed the paint supply dubiously.
Well.
He parked in the alley.

 

After crossing out the white letters

 

neatly with a bar of opaque black he encircled it in an airy red cloud

 

of chancery script.

 

CUT HERE
. He was quiet as they got back into the car.

 

Then down the tunnel

 

to the on-ramp for the freeway. Geryon was bored and said he couldn’t see any

 

good spaces left,

 

got out his camera and went off towards the sound of traffic. Up on the overpass

 

the night was wide open

 

and blowing headlights like a sea. He stood against the wind and let it peel him

 

clean.

 

Back at the tunnel Herakles had finished printing his seven personal precepts

 

in vertical black and red over a fading

 

stenciled
LEAVE THE WALLS ALONE
and was down on one knee scraping

 

the brush on the edge of the can.

 

He did not look up but said,
There’s some paint left—another loveslave?—no

 

let’s do something cheerful.

 

All your designs are about captivity, it depresses me.

 

Geryon watched the top of Herakles’ head

 

and felt his limits returning. Nothing to say. Nothing. He looked at this fact

 

in mild surprise. Once in childhood

 

his ice cream had been eaten by a dog. Just an empty cone

 

in a small dramatic red fist.

 

Herakles stood up.
No? Let’s go then.
On the way home they tried “Joy to the World”

 

but were too tired. It seemed a long drive.

 

Back at the house all was dark except a light from the porch.

 

Herakles went to see. Geryon had a thought to call home and ran upstairs.

 

You can use the phone in my mother’s room

 

top of the stairs turn left,
Herakles called after him. But when he reached the room

 

he stopped in a night gone suddenly solid.

 

Who am I? He had been here before in the dark on the stairs with his hands out

 

groping for a switch—he hit it

 

and the room sprang towards him like an angry surf with its unappeasable debris

 

of woman liquors, he saw a slip

 

a dropped magazine combs baby powder a stack of phone books a bowl of pearls

 

a teacup with water in it himself

 

in the mirror cruel as a slash of lipstick—he banged the light off.

 

He had been here before, dangling

 

inside the word
she
like a trinket at a belt. Spokes of red rang across his eyelids

 

in the blackness.

 

As he made his way downstairs again Geryon could hear the grandmother’s voice.

 

She was sitting in the porch swing

 

with her hands in her lap and her small feet dangling. A rectangle of light

 

fell across the porch from the kitchen door

 

and just touched her hem. Herakles lay flat on his back on top of the picnic table,

 

both arms across his face.

 

The grandmother watched Geryon cross the porch and sit down between them

 

in a deck chair

 

without interrupting her sentence
—this idea that your lungs will explode

 

if you can’t reach the surface
—

 

lungs don’t explode they collapse without oxygen I have it from Virginia Woolf

 

who once spoke to me at a party not of course

 

about drowning of which she had no idea yet—have I told you this story before?

 

I remember the sky behind her was purple she

 

came towards me saying
Why are you alone in this huge blank garden

 

like a piece of electricity?
Electricity?

 

Maybe she said cakes and tea true we were drinking gin it was long past

 

teatime but she was a highly original woman

 

I was praying God let it have been cakes and tea I’ll tell her my anecdote

 

of Buenos Aires those Argentines

 

so crazy for tea every day at five the little cups but she drifted away the little

 

translucent cups like bones you know

 

in Buenos Aires I had a small dog but I see by your face I am wandering.

 

Geryon jumped.
No ma’am,
he yelled

 

as the deck chair gouged him.
Gift from Freud but that is another story.

 

Yes ma’am?

 

He drowned not Freud the dog and Freud made a joke it was not a funny joke

 

having to do with incomplete transference I cannot

 

recall the German wording the German weather however I remember exactly.

 

What was the weather ma’am?

 

Cold and moonlit. You met with Freud at night? Only in summer.

 

The phone rang and Herakles

 

fell off the table then ran to answer it. July moonshadows stood motionless

 

on the grass. Geryon watched

 

a presence soaking out of them.
What was I saying? Oh yes Freud reality

 

is a web Freud used to say
—

 

Ma’am? Yes. Can I ask you something? Certainly. I want to know about Lava Man.

 

Ah.

 

I want to know what he was like. He was badly burned. But he didn’t die?

 

Not in the jail.

 

And then what? And then he joined with Barnum you know the Barnum Circus

 

he toured United States made a lot

 

of money I saw the show in Mexico City when I was twelve. Was it a good show?

 

Pretty good Freud would have called it

 

unconscious metaphysics but at twelve I was not cynical I had a good time.

 

So what did he do? He gave out

 

souvenir pumice and showed where the incandescence had brushed him

 

I am a drop of gold he would say

 

I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things
—

 

Look! he would prick his thumb

 

and press out ocher-colored drops that sizzled when they hit the plate
—

 

Volcano blood! Claimed

 

the temperature of his body was a continuous 130 degrees and let people

 

touch his skin for 75 cents

 

at the back of the tent. So you touched him?
She paused.
Let’s say
—

 

Herakles bounded in.

 

It’s your mom. She’s finished yelling at me now she wants to talk to you.

 

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

 

He woke fast from a loud wild dream that vanished at once and lay listening

 

to the splendid subtle ravines of Hades

 

where hardworking dawn monkeys were wheedling and baiting one another

 

up and down the mahogany trees.

 

The cries took little nicks out of him. This was when Geryon liked to plan

 

his autobiography, in that blurred state

 

between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul.

 

Like the terrestrial crust of the earth

 

which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul

 

is a miracle of mutual pressures.

 

Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet

 

the cold air of the world and stop,

 

as we do, just in time. The autobiography,

 

which Geryon worked on from the age of five to the age of forty-four,

 

had recently taken the form

 

of a photographic essay. Now that I am a man in transition, thought Geryon

 

using a phrase he’d learned from—

 

door hit the wall as Herakles kicked it open and entered carrying a tray

 

with two cups and three bananas.

 

Room service,
said Herakles looking around for a place to set the tray down.

 

Geryon had moved all the furniture

 

up against the walls of the room.
Oh good,
said Geryon.
Coffee.

 

No it’s tea,
said Herakles.

 

My grandmother is in Argentina again today.
He handed Geryon a banana.

 

She was just telling me about the electricians.

 

You know you have to pass an examination to get into the electricians’ union

 

in Buenos Aires but all the exam questions

 

are about the constitution. What do you mean the human constitution?

 

No the constitution of Argentina

 

except the last one. The last constitution? No the last question on the exam
—

 

guess what it is you’ll never guess. Guess.

 

No.

 

Come on. No I hate guessing. Just one guess come on Geryon just one.

 

What time of day did Krakatoa erupt?

 

Great question but no.
He paused.
Give up?
Geryon looked at him.

 

What is the Holy Ghost?

 

That’s it? That’s it. What is the Holy Ghost—a truly electrical question!

 

as my grandmother put it.

 

Herakles was sitting on the floor beside the bed. He drained his teacup

 

and regarded Geryon.

 

So what time of day did Krakatoa erupt? Four
a.m
.,
Geryon said pulling the quilt

 

high up under his chin.

 

The noise awakened sleepers in Australia three thousand kilometers away.

 

No kidding how do you know that?

 

Geryon had found the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1911 edition) in the basement

 

and read the Volcano article.

 

Should he admit this? Yes.
Encyclopedia.
Herakles peeled a banana.

 

He seemed to be thinking.

 

So your mom was pretty angry last night.
Geryon said
Yes.
Herakles ate

 

half his banana. He ate the other half.

 

So what do you think? What do you mean what do I think?
Herakles placed

 

his banana peel on the tray

 

and straightened the parts of it carefully.
Think you should be getting back?

 

Geryon was chewing

 

a mouthful of banana and didn’t quite hear. This sentence is important for you,

 

said a little lulled voice inside.

 

What? I said there’s a bus every morning at nine or so.
Geryon was trying

 

to breathe but a red wall

 

had sliced the air in half.
And what about you? Oh I’ll be staying around here

 

I guess my grandmother wants

 

the house painted said she’d pay me I can probably get a couple guys

 

from town to help.

 

Geryon was thinking hard. Flames licked along the floorboards inside him.

 

I am quite a good painter myself,
he said.

 

But the word
good
cracked in half. Herakles watched him.
Geryon you know

 

we’ll always be friends.

 

Geryon’s heart and lungs were a black crust. He had a sudden strong desire

 

to go to sleep. Herakles slid to his feet

 

smooth as a monkey.
Hurry up and get dressed Geryon we’re going to show you

 

a volcano today I’ll be

 

on the porch my grandmother wants to come too.

 

In Geryon’s autobiography

 

this page has a photograph of some red rabbit giggle tied with a white ribbon.

 

He has titled it “Jealous of My Little Sensations.”