The Impossibly (6 page)

what?
She smiled then went over and sat down on the bed. I held my hand up to the light. It’s not nothing is what you’re saying? I said holding my hand out just so, and moving it back and forth under the light. That’s right, she said. And I’m holding it? You are. Well, how about that. It’s beautiful, said John, later, when I showed it to him. It’s exquisite, agreed Deau. Can I put it in my pocket? I asked her, earlier again. She nodded. I put it in my pocket and said, look, I have to apologize—I just called your friend Deau a big fat bitch. I then went out and told John that I had called Deau a big fat bitch. Oh well, he said. I really should have told him about what I had done in the small city on the coast. That would have helped—John was always good at helping. But we were in the country and it was fairly pleasant, and there was still a chance for it to be extremely pleasant, I thought. So I didn’t. Dumb. And then the next day we left. Back to the city. At breakfast the next morning, she told us she was ready to leave. So we left. But other things happened before that. One of those things was that I apologized to Deau. No problem, she said. I’ve just been a little nervous, I said. In general, as a matter of fact, I find you, and especially in your current transitive / intransitive state, to be very pleasant. Hearing this pleased her, I told myself. Look at what she gave me, I said. It’s exquisite, said Deau. It is, isn’t it? I said. At any rate, she went away smiling. So that was patched up. Then I went and found John who told me to go away because he was busy thinking pleasant thoughts. Instead of going away, however, I asked him if he could quote something, something in the style of what he had quoted that time in the restaurant, or that time at the event. Go away, he said. I went away. But then, he called me back. How about this, he said, I just thought of this—nothing that hurts shall come with a new face. Good one, I said. Yeah, it’s pretty good, isn’t it? he said. It was, and in fact I was saying it to myself a few minutes later, when she came across the room toward me. Hi, I said. Hi, she said back. That afternoon we spent out in some nearby fields acquiring things. I did not know the words for any of these things, but that no longer mattered, I now think. Or perhaps it did matter, but it was no longer essential, and anyway, thinking about it now, I remember that in the cases where I did not know the words for things, way before we went out in the afternoon in the field, before even the event and the decision to take the trip, before all that and we were sitting in the park and it was warm and she professed interest in acquiring, for example, a quartz crystal, and I said I knew neither the word for quartz nor for crystal, that did not stop her from managing to get one, and without finding out the word from anyone else. We collected a whole new shelf full of dead insects and dead insect parts especially wings, and who could, as one or both of us articulated, know all those words anyway? She tried to explain to me where she would put this new shelf, “this shelf of insects, etc.,” she called it, but I could not quite picture it. My memory of her apartment was a little confused, and to tell you the truth, even then, it was not a pleasant confusion. But perhaps I am misremembering and am subconsciously overlaying what it is I remember now onto what it was I remembered then. In fact, when I was still in the process, some years ago, of actively learning, or of actively acquiring knowledge, I once read that this overlaying process was not possible, I do not say difficult, I say
not possible
to avoid. We then set about collecting a shelf’s worth of vegetable matter, then one of moss and soil. Did you really plan on shooting that guy? I asked, scooping a handful of organic detritus into a small plastic bag. I did shoot that guy, she said, he just didn’t die. We had brought along a blanket, and even though it was a little cool and the ground bumpy, we, getting cozy, etc. Later, we lay on our backs looking up at the blue sky. I’m sorry I called Deau a big fat bitch, I said. Deau
is
a big fat bitch, she said, and incidentally, they’re fake. What are? And recent. How long have you known her? A couple of weeks. We lay there. Birds and clouds and insects went by. I think I’m in some trouble, I said. How so? she said. It would be interesting to know how she would have responded had I told her. I suddenly realize I have forgotten to relate something about the event. Something connected to earlier and / or later portions of this narrative. It involves a magician and a magician’s assistant John found in one of the apartments down the hall. He had knocked on the door to ask if he could borrow a can opener, and a woman in a green sequin-covered leotard with a tail of peacock feathers and bits of blue glitter around her eyes answered. Behind her, sitting on the edge of a couch in front of a coffee table was a not-too-handsome, very-earnest-appearing individual in an undershirt. The magician. To get the can opener John had to go through a trick. It was pretty good. The magician swished his hands around a few times, and the can opener appeared. The magician then asked John if he needed to borrow anything else. John told the magician that as a matter of fact he was short a hard-boiled egg. The magician turned around for a second, then turned back and pulled one out of his mouth. I mean out of his own mouth, not John’s. His assistant was definitely very exotic, even if she just sort of sat around on a chair. Obviously, they were invited to the event. They came late, from a job, and in full costume, which meant a black tuxedo and a mask for the magician and exactly the same outfit as before plus a mask for his assistant. Neither one of them, John later told me, said a word. They just kind of strolled around investigating the drinks table and having drinks. At some point, I don’t remember when exactly, John came over to where I was sitting in the corner with my eyes closed and whispered, the magician would like to do a trick. Sometimes, when I am very drunk, my eyes and my head do this funny thing—they don’t move. They were doing that funny thing when John came over and whispered, the magician would like to do a trick. The magician came over. Here, said John pointing at me, is the man of the event. The magician crouched down in front of me. He was holding a dove. He then, having made a show of putting the dove away, produced a hat and swished his hands around the way John, in his earlier description, had said he had and would if he came, and then—I saw this because of the funny thing my eyes were doing—he took the dove out of his coat, placed the hat over it, and then swished his hands some more, and then asked me to lift the hat. After a minute, as I hadn’t moved, he asked somebody else. The hat came up, the dove flew out, everybody clapped, and the assistant’s hand snapped out and ripped the dove out of the air. The two of them then went back to their strolling around and a few more drinks. Why did everybody clap? I asked John the next day. Because it was a trick. He made the bird appear. His hat was empty and then a bird flew out of it. That’s what’s called a trick. But all he did was take the dove out of his jacket pocket and put his hat over it. Well if he did, no one besides you saw him do it, so it’s still a trick. It was true that there had been a lot of hand swishing. And I did remember that at one point the swishing hand had flown up in the direction of the magician’s head. I suspected, and I was to give this further thought later, that the ascension of his hand coincided with his cleverly placing the dove on the floor and the hat over the dove. It’s a shame you missed that trick, I said to her as we lay there in the field. The trick with the dove? Deau told me about it the next day. Yes, it’s a shame, I said, as we lay there in the field, in the country, looking up at the sky and the occasional bird, with the wind off in the distance, way off in the distance moving the olive trees.

The End

But all of a sudden John and Deau were there. Look, it’s all over, I said. What is, Sport? they said. They had someone with them. This guy is a beekeeper, John said. My bees make good honey, the beekeeper said. He had quite a nose. It looked like it was about ready to fall off. The two of us sat up and moved over, and John and Deau sat down beside us on the blanket, and the beekeeper, standing off at a slight remove, settled right into talking. He was quite a beekeeper. He seemed to favor words of more than two syllables, and gave quite a speech on a number of interconnected subjects, despite the nose, which really did look, the whole time he was holding forth, as if it was about to tumble off his face onto the grass and maybe even bounce very lightly once or twice when it did. That evening after dinner, having thought carefully about what the beekeeper had said, or having attempted to, I told John that nature was not in the least bit fascinating and that there was nothing natural about it and that honey baskets and pollen hunts were creepy, as were, if you thought about it, velocity and preponderance, not to mention minute digestive tracts, and that nature didn’t have any fucking plan, and the elements, all ninety-fucking-two of them, in fact the entire fucking periodic table of elements and all the other charts the old beekeeper had mentioned, could go fuck themselves, and that whatever I had said about it in the past was untrue, and that, furthermore, he, John, had been absolutely fucking right that time to go berserk and beat the shit out of me. Shut up, said John. Correctly. Then we went back to the city.

IN THE CITY, THEN, IT WAS ALL WORSE AND ALL OVER AND ALL everything, but we were not quite there yet. We were not quite there when we began being there by dropping them off at her apartment, the car quiet for a moment as we all said good-bye. Then, still not quite arrived, John and I returned the car to the rental agency and walked back over the river to my apartment. It was much colder in the city, even if we were not quite there yet, than it had been in the country. It was cold and a wind was blowing, a real wind, and we had bags to carry and were underdressed. The river, even with all its real and reflected bridges receding off into the distance, looked unforgiving and slightly angry. If it is possible for a river to look angry. I think it is.

Then we had arrived.

As a boy, I lived for a time in a room that looked out across a small empty lot onto a high white wall somewhere in a very small town, somewhere. The wall was as wide as it was high and, itself windowless, filled my window entirely. It was to this large white wall that I woke each morning, and it was at this large white wall, dimly illuminated by service lights, that I looked each night. Sometimes, during the day, birds flew along the wall. Or threw their shadows onto it. But that was all. For years. In its near impeccable blankness, is what I would like to say, it produces a memory, this wall, that, upon conclusion of the incidents I would now like to relate, I found, and in fact continue to find, soothing.

Then, I repeat, we had arrived.

Both in the city and at my apartment, which had been taken to pieces.

John looked at me, then at the remnants of the apartment, then went berserk.

Fuck, I said, for my part. Several times.

When he was calmer, which was some minutes later, he asked for an explanation.

What he said was, yours or theirs?

Mine.

Yours?

Yes.

What the fuck?

I know.

You don’t know anything.

True.

You don’t know shit.

Yes.

He picked something up off the floor and said, I bought this nifty keepsake in a little market on the side of a mountain in the middle of a rainstorm.

He held up a piece of it.

He held up a piece of something else.

I said something.

He said, fuck you, then we kind of wrestled around a little until he was on top of me.

Uncle? he said.

Yeah, uncle, I said.

Say Uncle John.

I said it.

He got off.

He walked around a little.

Then he sat down.

Okay, he said. Okay, fine. All right.

I nodded.

He looked at me.

We sat there.

All right, so why did they do this?

I shrugged.

He grabbed the back of my neck, pulled me forward a little, and punched me.

So I told him. Everything.

He agreed with me, 100-fucking-percent as he put it, that my actions or nonactions or whatever the hell I wanted to call them had been stupid.

Nice work, Mr. Jackass, is exactly what he said.

I asked him if I could get him anything. Maybe a snack or something.

He said, yeah.

I said, what?

He said, shut up for fuck’s sake, stupid, what did you do with it?

I told him.

He looked at me.

So why haven’t they gotten it yet?

Because I think I may have put the wrong address on it.

Jesus, he said.

Speaking of stupid, or of stupidly, I am put in mind of the following anecdote once told to me, or actually twice. A former colleague was set the task, well within her expertise, of executing the following procedure: (1) removing someone’s kidney; (2) laying said someone on his / her back in a bathtub full of ice cubes; (3) placing a note on his / her chest, which would read along the lines of, if you would like to live please dial Emergency. Part 1 was approached carefully. Part 2 was accomplished neatly. Part 3 was unfortunately, however, forgotten, too bad, effectively botching the exercise, which had been meant only to serve as a warning. Later I tried recounting the anecdote, but could not remember which part of the procedure the former colleague had left out, and so subsequently solicited and received a retelling of the anecdote by a colleague who was neither the one who figured as the hero of the anecdote, nor the one who had first told it to me, but rather was a third colleague, who for practical reasons was also intimately acquainted with the details of the affair.