The Great Lover (18 page)

...Hulferde walking away; he never answered.

*

In bludgeoned sleep, the Prosthetic Libido began to claw at the door with fingertips as hard and durable as diamond drills. Over what he didn’t know was several days’ time he managed to detach and peel back the steel armor at the lower corner of the door, exposing the wood. In time his panic returned, and he again attacked the door screaming and battering blindly at it. This went on for unmeasured time, the anguish growing more and more overbearing until suddenly it snapped and drained away. The Prosthetic Libido slumped to the floor, dazedly began clawing again, picking out tufts of fibrous wood from the door in a spot adjacent to the lowest of the three external hinges. When something gave under his fingers he was startled, and, becoming more alert, he pulled the now exposed hinge from the jam as easily as one might pull a shoelace from a shoe. He looked a long time at the hinge in his hand, and only slowly turned his attention to the steel armor adjacent to the middle hinge.

Hulferde was there, as he always had been there whenever the door opened, but he was not seething at the threshold; he was farther away, lying on the floor, at the foot of the basement steps, with flies on his face. The Prosthetic Libido approached him timidly, and knelt by his side.

He laid his hand on the damp chest, and felt there the bizarre sensation of decomposition. He took Hulferde’s wrist, and raised the nerveless arm that had beaten him. He looked at it for a few seconds, and then lowered it again. With his finger, the Prosthetic Libido cleared flies from Hulferde’s mouth, that had vomited curses on him in torrents. The lips made a licking sound on the teeth. When he took away his finger, the lips retained its dimple. The Prosthetic Libido lightly pulled the collar back from the throat, and touched Hulferde’s voice box. His own head drooped, and he slipped back onto his haunches, looking at the body. It had been a man, now it was just a smeared lump of refuse.

The Prosthetic Libido stood up and looked at the other objects that were there. His eyes returned many times to the stairs, until, staring at them, he all at once fitted them with the regular thumping that had invariably preceded Hulferde’s visits, and found in his mind that decaying impressions were suddenly organizing themselves around what he saw. Hulferde came from the top of the stairs, and a vaster resounding openness was up there.

He dashed up the stairs and began exploring the house, beside himself with excitement. On first catching sight of himself in a full length mirror, propped against the wall in a disused bedroom, he froze, stared at himself awestruck, then dropped to the floor in orgasm where he lay until hours past daybreak. Sexual release, in his case, was invariably followed by a brief period of dissociation, a perfect suspense of the association of one thought with another.

When he finally emerged from that room, the next object to present itself to his attention was the sun, blazing in through an open window. Its warm light on his body and face made him more lucid, and his thoughts resumed their orderly array. With this new acuity came the acknowledgement that Hulferde
was dead
. He tried to think past that thought, but some other thing was also wrong and this thing, which he didn’t understand, interfered with his thinking.

>>> surrounded by delicate hazelnut trees, then into dazzling sunlight, puddles on the pavement as far as I can see, and warm green afternoon mist, so that crying out, and the street blazing, became like a kind of sleep >>> when I awoke, cries that had been in my neck would spin and form into language >>> hair drunk from these yellow gourds, as dusk gathered semen with flies on his face >>> by telepathy I received a luxuriating idea of water from forests at night, and left Hulferde in the elasticity and strength of godly wind >>> catching sight of my self dawn stirs, revelling in the mere music, do I wake or sleep under the green oak
’
s jewels? >>> they can also be gold, and then you unearth blue-white waves of force: fake skies yearning in me to be touched <<<

The feeling that he is not alone seeps into him, and with alarm he lunges toward the window and the open air. Although he has no need to breathe, he experiences suffocation — but the sight of people in the streets stirs him. He is suffused with choking desire, and with the desire come memories of torture. His thoughts and feelings strain in all directions and then come apart with a click. He falteringly thinks to return to the room in the basement and pull the door to, believing this will restore Hulferde to life and order to his thoughts.

The Prosthetic Libido does none of these things, but stands by the window and turns his gaze with effort back to the sun. The serene and even light and warmth that he experiences gradually steadies him, and his mind is strengthened. Boil in the sun-dazzled corners of the dingy room, speaking to him from the little heaps of clotted dust, he sees someone else, that soiled other face that he knows, a clean coil of breath like a little kind snake in his mouth. He is wandering out the back door of the house and the sunlight chalks him in its warm urine.

Sparse ivy covers the back fence — little girl in the alley on the other side says

“
Mother that man has no clothes.”

A frightened older face transfixes him with a wild look, hastily gathers the child and is gone. The Prosthetic Libido stands where he is; the sun is now too strong and it’s squashing his mind. With relief he dips down into the shade of the house.

Clouds gradually assemble in the sky. Rain descends with the sun and in confusion the Prosthetic Libido picks through Hulferde’s clothes. The slicker and hat he finds first; everything else he tries is almost immediately ruined by the oil on his skin. Trying on pants is an especially distasteful experience. Wrapping himself in the slicker and hat, he darts outside without a second thought and finds himself splashing down the narrow sidewalk in bare feet — no one else goes in bare feet, you know, and the water is disagreeably cold. The slippers he finds serendipitously in an ash can by the corner, sitting on top of the refuse.

The rain helps to shield him from view; everyone walks with downcast faces and under umbrellas. Pursuing dim lines of association he walks uncertainly through the streets, arms held out at his sides, the wandering, irregular gait of a small child. He is exposed, and must remind himself not to cringe when someone appears suddenly out of a doorway, when someone emerges from an alley.

Bark and howl of trains, the raucous calls and explosive laughter of a group of young men on the empty platform; they pile onto the train and speed away. The Prosthetic Libido emerges from his hiding place behind the tiled stair and perches on the edge of a bench, his presence there play a motet for a single voice and let its peal swell and ebb in the air. Squeal of the train: having assured himself it is empty he boards the last car and huddles in the corner seat at the very rear, head resting on the window and gazing out as stations come and go. He will remain here until:

...I am rigid, sitting by the glass. Human energy is turning my head, like a confusion of smells — Now,
there he is!
The sewerman lumbering out of the tunnel mouth...

*

The map had a dream, entitled:

“
Prosthetic Night”

The Prosthetic Libido breathed in chords, his body softly palpitating in the shadow on the floor. He raised his hand and it emitted jagged, transparent light; he’s fascinated by the light — clear flame in a fan of spearheads from his fingers. The sensation of his touch is truly indescribable: he touches me, and I see corposants rising in the air of this tiny, stripped room, there’s a green one, the pale color of spring leaves. There goes a gold one, I guess they can also be gold. Crashing, blue-white waves of force roll down as he looks up at me with expectation in his face... he is trilling. The light flickers violently, and the effect on me of those trembling glints darting over his face, with the unceasing, only partially coordinated movements of his features — the contained flight of his face was a series of foggy pictographs. Now, although the rest of its body is rigid, the head is lolling drunkenly — the waist swivels and bends, giving off a strong smell like roasting electrical insulation inside an old console radio, and boiling oil. Grease condenses and runs in droplets down the walls, now they’re slick with oil: the ceiling gone I seemed to see a shining ziggurat. The ceiling is a black pane of space. His manner, a mixture of yearning and exasperated tiredness, like an invalid velleity that has barely the strength to say “I want... I want...”

*

“
I want to go home with you,” the Prosthetic Libido folds lightly against me.

“
I have no home. I live in the sewers.”

“
Couldn’t we hide there?”

“
I have no need to hide myself,” he looks at the Prosthetic Libido sharply. “But you, that might be a good idea.”

“
Then take me down there.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to get you dirty.” Putting my hands on my knees and standing up, I say, “Come with me — we maybe could use the weather station.”

The Prosthetic Libido wants to link arms with me, I can tell, but I choose to give him no indication that this would be permitted.

Empty green slope deep trembling green in rain light, framed with soft trees.

“
Look at all the
space
,” the Prosthetic Libido cries. “May I run?”

“
Sure.”

The Prosthetic Libido goes bounding away down the slope brandishing his limbs in transports of joy, his voice ringing out like a glass harmonica. He gambols like a toddler in an adult’s body, his rain hat flipping from his sculpted locks, his eyes greedily sucking in everything. He sees the great profusion of life the birds the squirrels the trees the plants —

“
Oh how
awful
that I can never be a part of it!”

He crams his fists in his mouth and stops still. He drops into a crouch and his head rolls forward until his chin touches his chest.

With a sigh, I lumber over to him.

After a few minutes, he says, “I shouldn’t exist.”

“
Well, neither should I,” I feel the grin coming out from the inside. “We’re here aren’t we though?”

A few minutes more, and I start getting impatient. I grab him under his arms and straighten him, then pick his hat up and hand it back to him looking him straight in the eye. He looks back confused, a cloud of resignation is beginning to shade his eye.

“
All right forget it.”

Soon enough I hear rustling behind me.

Under the boughs in the thicket of green to the edge of the meadow there is a broad black stream spattered with floating leaves; here it is crossed by the thick span of a stone bridge, small but massively built. I point to the black, motionless water.

“
I don’t want to go under the water,” he says.

“
It won’t damage you.”

“
I know. I just don’t want to.”

He looks at me with painful attention, glorious eyes under misshapen rain hat.

“
You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

“
Yeeees... OK,” and I wave him after me. Night is only very gradually falling, grey of the sky is darkening to lead grey lined with blue. We ascend a dark hill. The Prosthetic Libido is still a bit clumsy, and is having trouble navigating the many obstacles off of the path. Neither one of us is what you would call graceful. I turn to look at him as he pauses before a heap of brambles, entirely uncertain as to how to proceed.

“
Here, I’ll carry you.”

“
I’m very heavy.”

“
Don’t worry. I’m immensely strong.”

The Prosthetic Libido’s arms twined around my neck, I hold him with one arm down straight against his spine and hand under the bottom like a chair on a ski lift and climb. He catches a glimpse of a high gabled house at the top.

“
It looks menacing,” he says.

“
Yes, but its menace will be at your disposal.”

This is the former weather station I’ve used before. It is a sort of a fantasy of Viking churches, the front of the house presents so many lofty triangles that it looks like a clipper ship in full sail. It looms up above us now dark against eerie, vibrating blue sky, like a witch’s head. The Prosthetic Libido stands, his hat rolls down his back to the ground and suddenly he grabs me by the front of my coat, mouth open. I meet his gaze with my eyes at half mast my face absolutely blank. The Prosthetic Libido, frustrated, shakes his head and then rolls his brow on my chest.

I push him away, gently. “You’ll dirty your head doing that.”

The Prosthetic Libido puts his hand to his brow.

Rags of bygone weather haunt this place, and now, despite the gathering gloom outside, a phantom sun imbues the interior of the house with a honeyed, somber amniotic haze. The house seems to shiver with an inaudible swelling tone like the solemn basso profundo of an organ as we cross the threshold. The room to the left of the door is empty with leaves scattered on the floor, a drawn circle and stains. Up to the third floor, I lead him to a spacious and bright apartment just under the rafters, the ceiling slopes dramatically. The Prosthetic Libido is looking out the enormous window, a foggy silhouette against a square cloud of pale light.

“
The view is beautiful.”

“
What will you need?”

The Prosthetic Libido looks at me, features washed out by the light. “Maybe... a bed?”