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InterText Vol. 8, No. 3 / May-June 1998
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Contents
Bite Me, Deadly................................Stan Houston
Widow.......................................Armand Gloriosa
A Stray Dog in Spain.........................Peter Meyerson
The Central Mechanism.............................Jim Cowan
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Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@intertext.com geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
Submissions Panelists:
Bob Bush, Joe Dudley, Peter Jones, Morten Lauritsen, Rachel
Mathis, Jason Snell
....................................................................
Send correspondence to editors@intertext.com or
intertext@intertext.com
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InterText Vol. 8, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically every two months. Reproduction of this magazine
is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold (either by
itself or as part of a collection) and the entire text of the
issue remains unchanged. Copyright 1998 Jason Snell. All stories
Copyright 1998 by their respective authors. For more information
about InterText, send a message to info@intertext.com. For
submission guidelines, send a message to guidelines@intertext.com.
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Bite Me, Deadly by Stan Houston
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It takes a special kind of man to be a Private Dick. Smart.
Tough. An eye for broads. And a complete set of nonstick
cookware.
....................................................................
It all started on a typical day in Houston. Morning fog,
noontime tornado, afternoon hurricane. Forecast: partly cloudy
sunset. Relative humidity: a hundred and fifty percent.
Predicted overnight low: 25 degrees.
Two o'clock. I was camped out in my office watching the
neighborhood fly by the window when I heard her ooze through the
door. Hey, I'm a private eye. I'm trained to recognize sounds
like that.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything important." She sounded
like a standing invitation to break every Commandment. And obey
the Golden Rule. Her breathy voice reminded me of Marilyn Monroe
the night she orgasmed the birthday song to John Kennedy. I
always got sweaty thinking about it.
"No, no. Not at all." I swiveled my chair so I could see what
was attached to the voice. She had a body built for the fast
lane, and I wanted to drive her. In all five gears. Plus Park. I
guessed five-foot six with thirty-six C-cup by twenty-four-inch
waist by thirty-six-inch seat cushion. But who was keeping
score?
I pulled a handkerchief from my Levi's and mopped my face. "Have
a seat. Miss?"
"Mrs." She sat. "Mrs. Lola Raymond."
"Mark Mallet. Private eye."
"Yes, I know. I saw it on the door."
I saw right away she was no typical dumb redhead. I also noticed
she collected jewelry. Especially the kind with large diamonds.
Lola tilted her head to the right about ten degrees. Maybe
twelve. Geometry was one of my worst subjects.
She smiled. "Do you always dress so informally?"
I shrugged. "I was in a quirky mood this morning. Decided to
wear my dark blue Levi's to set off this pale pink dress shirt,
then accent it with a pink-and-blue-striped tie. Notice the
matching socks." I swung my right foot onto the desk.
"Very nice." She punctuated her smile with a graceful nod. "I
admire a man with taste who's not afraid to show it. Did someone
recommend you wear the Reeboks with that ensemble?"
"No." I jerked my foot down, reminded myself to pay more
attention when I dressed.
Time for a different approach. I offered her a cigarette. In
Houston, it's against the law to smoke. Except in my office.
"No, thanks." She shook her head. Her long, blazing-sunset red
hair went along for the ride. "I quit."
"Smart," I said. "How long?"
She pursed blood-red lips, stared with emerald eyes. "Who knows?
Time is a spatial concept governed by the assumption reality
exists and the universe evolves in an orderly manner."
I took that to mean she'd forgotten. "Coffee?"
Her red mane swayed again. "No. I quit."
I decided not to ask how long ago. "What brings you here?"
"My husband."
I straightened my tie. "What about your husband?"
"He's dead."
I flipped on my shocked-but-sympathetic face. "I'm terribly
sorry. It must have been quite a blow for you."
"Yes. But not as much as it was for him."
I cleared my throat. "What happened?"
"He was murdered."
"How did he die?"
"A gunshot."
"Where?"
"In our bedroom."
"No. What part of the body?"
"His head."
"I don't mean to seem insensitive, Mrs. Raymond, but the head is
a primary target for many suicide seekers."
She slid a mauve handkerchief from her purse, dabbed her eyes.
"I know. But do they tie themselves to the bed?"
"Your husband was tied down?"
She nodded.
"Who found him?"
"I did. He had gone upstairs to prepare for bed. I stayed
downstairs."
"What made you go up?"
"A gunshot. I ran to the bedroom. But it was too late."
"How did you find him?"
"I opened the door and there he was."
"No. I meant, where did you find the body?"
"On the bed. His hands were tied to the posts."
"And the gun?"
She shook her head. "No. It wasn't tied down. It was just laying
on the bed."
"Did you call police?"
She nodded. "They believe I killed him."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "His money, I suppose."
"Your husband was rich?"
A fingertip caressed the edge of my desk. "Filthy."
"What business was he in?"
"Condoms."
"Condoms?"
She crossed her legs, one silk-covered thigh sliding over the
other. It looked like fun. I wanted to help. "Yes. The AIDS
epidemic gave his company the thrust it needed. He made
millions. Maybe billions. I'm not quite sure."
"Have you seen a lawyer?"
"I'm sure I have. It's so hard to tell sometimes. They look like
everyone else."
"No, I meant, have you hired a lawyer?"
She cocked her head. "Why should I? I didn't do anything."
"When did all this happen?"
"Two nights ago. On Wednesday."
"Mrs. Raymond, did you see anything unusual in the bedroom that
night, other than your husband's body?"
"An item from Randolph's collection was missing."
"Collection?"
She nodded. "Randolph kept it in our room. After me, it was his
second love. He was the world's foremost authority on rare bird
figurines. His collection included every rare bird known to
man."
"And you say one was missing?"
"Yes. A figurine. Not a man."
"Which one?"
She paused, as only a beautiful, mysterious woman who's about to
deliver an important message to a private eye can.
"The Peruvian Parrot," she said.
After Lola Raymond left, I decided to call it a day. It was
Friday, so that's what I called it.
I locked the office, walked to my Mustang convertible, and
headed home. I drove east on Westheimer, the only Houston street
that runs in a straight line for more than a mile. While the
afternoon gale winds blasted my wavy blond hair, I played back
my favorite part of the meeting with Lola. She paid my fee up
front. Opened her large sand-colored tote bag and dumped out my
retainer. Fifty C-notes. My job? Track down her husband's killer
and find the missing bird.
Fifteen minutes later, I hit my driveway in the Montrose,
Houston's largest gay neighborhood.
I owned a beach house set twelve feet above ground on stilts.
I'd had a lifelong phobia about floods. This really pissed off
my neighbors, since the nearest water was sixty miles south in
Galveston. They slapped me with a deed-restriction lawsuit about
once a month.
I glanced at my imitation Swatch watch. Damn. Almost dinner
time.
I hurried to the kitchen. Grabbing a large skillet from the
cabinet, I poured in an ounce of cooking oil and set the burner
at medium low.
While the oil heated, I tossed in salt, pepper, onions, garlic,
paprika, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Then I raided the
refrigerator and the pantry. In a large bowl, I mixed cream
cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, liver pate, diced tomato, six eggs,
a pound of chopped sirloin and two ground-up dog biscuits. The
whole mess went into the skillet to simmer for ten minutes.
The phone rang.
"Mallet here."
"You won't be for long if you don't solve the Raymond case." It
was a man. His voice sounded like it had kissed too many Jack
Daniels bottles and sucked too many unfiltered cigarettes. Or
maybe he just had a cold. I couldn't tell.
"Who is this?"
"You don't want to know. Just remember one thing, Mallet."
"What's that?"
"Louie the Limp."
The line went dead.
I checked the skillet. Still simmering.
A nicotine urge hit. I didn't allow smoking in my house, so I
stepped out onto the deck for a cigarette. What the hell, one
more wasn't going make any difference in this burg.
From my deck, I had a view of Houston's skyline. I stood there,
twelve feet off the ground, sucking on my cigarette,
contemplating the steel and glass corporate towers that shot up
into the sky like giant phalluses.
Damn. How about that. Scored a double. Metaphor and simile. And
I managed to work in sex. I was on a roll.
The phone rang again. I dashed through the door and grabbed the
receiver.
Same voice. "Mallet. I forgot something."
Just what I needed. A crank caller with a short-term memory
problem.
"What?"
"Diamonds."
He hung up.
I was staring at the phone wondering about the connection
between diamonds, Louie the Limp and a Peruvian parrot when the
oven timer chimed. I retreated into the kitchen, grabbed the
skillet containing my gourmet concoction and headed out the back
door. At the bottom of the stairs, I located my St. Bernard,
Marlowe. He sat by his food dish, nose in the air.
"Sorry I'm late."
I dumped his hot dinner into the dish, then dashed back up to
the kitchen, whipped together a peanut butter and banana
sandwich for myself, and washed it down with an ice-cold Pepsi.
So sue me, Spenser.
"Mallet here." I aimed one eye at the bedside clock. Glowing
numbers flashed 5:15 a.m.
"Mallet! What the hell are you doing sticking your honky nose
into the Raymond case?" It was Detective Sergeant Milford
Ulysses Washington. One of Houston's finest; I saved his life
years ago during a bank robbery.
I sat up, tried to shake numbness from my head. Milford calling
this early meant he was upset.
"I gotta eat. Raymond's widow threw a lot of cash at me to find
her husband's killer."
"Stay away from the Randolph case, Mallet," he growled. "I don't
want you screwing this one up."
He hung up.
Just what I needed. An angry cop who didn't want me to eat.
Saturday morning. Hurricane Billy Bob was rampaging across the
Gulf of Mexico toward Houston. But I had a case to solve. A
little rain never hurt anybody.
I picked out a pale-blue dress shirt, matching blue-and-red wool
tie, gray-blue wool slacks, and a navy blazer. As a final touch,
I stepped into brown Hush Puppies.
I drove to the Galleria mall on Houston's west side. Fancy
stores sold expensive merchandise there. Somebody might know
about rare bird figurines.
Two hours later, I stood near the lower-level ice rink, more
depressed than Ross Perot reading his IQ test results. My idea
about the mall had bombed.
I watched the skaters, hoping one of the more well-developed
ones would fall on her ass and cause that cute little skirt they
all wear to flip up. No one fell, so I left. As I drifted toward
the parking garage, my eyes zoomed in on a window sign I'd
missed:
Horowitz Collectibles
ON SALE TODAY!
Peruvian Parrot Figurines
Maybe I could learn something after all.
I entered. A gray-haired old man with a humpback guarded the
cash register. He looked like a small camel.
I jerked out my ID. "Mallet. P.I. I need to talk to you."
He squinted through wire-framed glasses. "What unusual
initials." He had wrinkled skin and smelled like a dead fish.
"What?"
"Your initials are P.I.?"
"No. That's what I do."
"Oh." His brow furrowed. "What's P.I.? I mean, what do you do?
I sighed. "I'm a Private Investigator."
His beady black eyes widened. "You mean like on TV?"
"Right. I used to wear a button that said `As seen on TV!'
People kept asking me if I sold Thighmasters. So I stopped
wearing it."
The old man pulled a rag from beneath the counter and started
cleaning. "This is an honor. I've never had a private eye in my
shop. Let me clean this. You don't want to get your sleeves
dirty when you smash my face down on it."
"What?"
He stopped wiping. "That's what you guys do, isn't it? Someone
refuses to help, so you grind their face into something hard so
they'll talk."
I closed my eyes. Counted to ten. "No," I said. "I don't do
that."
The old fart actually looked disappointed. I swear on a stack of
Raymond Chandler novels.
"That sign." I pointed toward the window. "It says you have
Peruvian parrot figurines. Right?"
His little head bobbed.
"How much?"
His eyes lit up. He wrote a price on a note pad, held it up so I
could see.
"Is that all?"
"I'm afraid so." His voice quivered. "There's not much demand
for them."
"Has anybody bought one recently?"
He nodded. "A fat man, very short. He coughed all the time. Came
in last week. Looked at the birds, then bought two."
The description fit Louie the Limp, probably Houston's most
incompetent criminal. Maybe my anonymous caller really knew
something. It would be a first. I usually got the heavy
breathers.
"Did he say why he wanted two?" I asked.
"No. He gave me a delivery address and left."
"You delivered them?"
The old man nodded. "He told me he didn't want to carry them
around all day because they might get damaged."
"Still have the address?"
He reached under the counter and brought out a battered shoebox.
"Certainly. Right here." He handed me a piece of paper. It
listed a River Oaks address. I recognized it as the Randolphs'.
Now my brain cells really started clicking. Or maybe it was the
grandfather clock in the corner. I couldn't tell. But I knew I
had stumbled onto something big.
"When were the birds delivered?" I asked.
"Two days ago. On Wednesday."
How convenient. The day Lola's husband bit the big bird.
"Your birds?" I asked. "Where are they?"
He pointed to the opposite side of the store.
"Show me."
The old man shuffled toward the display. He never made it.
Gunshots ripped my eardrums. Glass exploded, rained down on us.
The old guy clutched his chest, slumped to the floor.
I drew my snub-nosed thirty-eight and knelt, ready to fire out
into the mall and kill or maim thirty innocent people in order
to hit the assassin. I looked down. Blood gushed from a wound
near the old man's heart.
Damn. This Peruvian Parrot business was dangerous.
The cops entertained me all night. We had a ball. Finally, at
seven a.m., they decided I hadn't zapped old Horowitz.
I stepped out of police headquarters just as Hurricane Billy Bob
tore through the south side. As I set out to find my car, a
long, silver Cadillac drove up. A tinted rear window slid open.
From the Caddy's bowels, a voice boomed. "Get in, Mallet. I want
to talk."
I climbed in. "Big Daddy," I said. "I thought you never came
within two miles of this place unless you had your shyster on a
leash."
"Cut the crap," he snarled. "We got business." He jerked a bony
hand up and rapped the plexiglass separating us from the driver.
The Caddy leaped forward.
I glanced across the seat. Big Daddy hadn't changed much since
I'd last seen him. Tall, with a hawk-like face and a body as
thin as an eighty-year-old's tits. He looked like he always did
-- a crime kingpin. His diamond earrings, nose rings, finger
rings, tie pins and solid gold watch accented with diamonds made
me sick. Sick that I couldn't afford them. Everyone called him
Big Daddy because he had fathered at least twenty illegitimate
kids. In his spare time, he controlled Houston's entire vice
business. He also was inclined to blow your brains out if you
ever mentioned his real name. I guessed I'd be touchy if someone
called me Theodore.
I popped open the mini-fridge. "What? No Diet Pepsi? Did you
miss a night at etiquette class?"
A scrawny hand shot across the seat and wrapped itself around my
throat. Tight. Very tight. "You want to live, Mallet?" He pushed
up, lifting me off the seat. Funny, I would've never guessed
such a skinny guy could have so much arm strength. Then again, I
believed Oliver North and Bill Clinton.
"Right." I hit a note most sopranos would die for.
"Then can it."
"Right." Damn. Two high ones in a row.
Big Daddy's eyelids formed tiny peepholes. "I hear you're
looking for a bird."
"Right." I squawked. What the hell. Might as well go for a
record.
"I want it." With his free hand, he stuffed a wad of bills into
my coat pocket. "Here's five grand. You work for me now."
"I already have a client." Pavarotti would have been proud of
me. An entire sentence only dogs could hear.
"That Raymond dame. Forget her. I'll deal with her later. Find
that Peruvian Parrot. Bring it to me. Do it or I'll find a live
bird and stuff you up its ass."
I couldn't imagine how I'd fit inside a bird's ass, but I
figured Big Daddy knew a way.
"Right," I squeaked.
"And stay away from Louie the Limp." Suddenly, Louie was the
most talked about guy in town. I had a hunch he was up to his
fat little bumbling elbows in this case.
Big Daddy released my hostage throat and hit the Plexiglass
again. The car stopped on a dime and left twenty cents change. I
pitched forward onto the floor.
"Get up," Big Daddy demanded. "You'll ruin the carpet." The door
opened. As I tried to right myself, Big Daddy delivered a field
goal kick to my ass, sending me tumbling onto the street in the
middle of a hurricane.
"I'll give you a week, Mallet. Bring me that bird or you'll
never see a sunset again." His Caddy roared away.
I stood alone in the rain, watching my all-wool sports coat and
slacks shrink before my eyes.
Jerk. What kind of threat was that?
You'll never see a sunset again.
Didn't he realize I lived in Houston?
Driving home, I punched in Lola's number on my car phone.
"Mr. Mallet. What a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect you'd
come through. So soon."
I ignored her choice of phrasing. "I think I know who killed
your husband. But I don't have the bird yet."
Silence. "Find it," she said, then hung up.
When I arrived home, I felt like I had been the only condom at a
porno movie wrap party. I strolled into my bedroom, hit the
light switch and froze. Lola Raymond lay stretched across my
bed. Naked.
"From the moment I saw you," she said, "I knew I had to have
you."
Damn. Who was I to argue with logic like that?
I ripped off my clothes and executed a swan dive onto the bed.
For two hours, we devoured each other -- grabbing, rolling,
pounding, slapping, sucking and moving in ways I never knew.
Then we had sex.
Later, I lay on my back, spent, my eyes closed. My clock had
been cleaned, but I didn't know what time it was.
I observed the rules of etiquette. "Did you come?"
Silence.
I opened my eyes. Lola stood over me, still naked. Except now
she held a large knife high over her head.
I rolled to my left as he blade whizzed passed my shoulder and
ripped into the mattress. I executed an expert martial arts kick
to Lola's seductive hipbone, throwing her off balance. Leaping
off the bed, I locked her smooth, creamy arms against her
incredibly firm body, expertly arranging my hands on her
breasts. We tumbled to the floor. She hurled curses. I threw
them back. I fought to knock the knife from her hand. Somehow, I
was able to sneak in several gropes of her well-rounded ass.
Lola's hand groped between us. She grabbed and yanked.
I screamed. Enough was enough. I slammed a fist into her jaw.
She collapsed.
I struggled to my feet, gasping as I flopped onto the bed.
During the fight, Lola's tote bag had fallen to the floor. It
lay on its side, open, contents scattered. There, half exposed,
poking its head out, was a figurine.
It looked like a bird.
Hurricane Jimmy Jack was snorting its way through the Gulf of
Mexico toward Houston. But I had a job to do. A little high wind
never hurt anyone.
I left Lola at the beach house, naked, standing in the bathtub,
hands tied to the shower nozzle. I thought I knew why Lola had
the bird. It made sense now. But I needed one more answer before
I tossed this case to the cops.
A few minutes later, I entered River Oaks, Houston's answer to
Beverly Hills. Except no one had ever bought a map to the
mayor's house. No one cared.
I found the address listed on Lola's drivers' license. Same
address the old guy at the Galleria had given me. That meant two
figurines purchased by Louie the Limp had been delivered here.
On the day Randolph Raymond was killed.
The house was a modest mansion, maybe twenty or thirty rooms,
with a four-car garage. But who's counting?
I parked the car and walked to the back yard. No wonder this guy
got whacked so easily. No security that I could see. Any psycho
could wander in.
"Hold it, Mallet."
I was right. A wacko had wandered in. I recognized the wheezy
voice. "Louie the Limp. What brings you to the classy side of
town?"
Cold steel jabbed my kidney. Actually, I couldn't tell it was
cold. I was wearing my sports jacket. But in private eye novels,
the bad guys' guns were always cold steel.
"Insults will get you nowhere. You've got something I want.
Where is it?"
" `It?' What have I got that you want, Louie? Charm? Women? Good
looks? A cheap office? A foot-long love machine?"
He rammed the gun harder. "Shut up, wise ass. Take me to the
Raymond dame or your kidney's gonna eat hot lead. I want to talk
to her."
I sized up my problem. Did this overstuffed whale really think
he could ace me, Mark Mallet? Hell, no. I'd pulled myself out of
more tight places than Warren Beatty. Besides, my kidney wasn't
hungry.
"Only if you give me your gun," I said.
"What? You really think I'm that stupid?"
"Yes."
"Oh, okay," he said as he handed me the pistol.
Like I said, he was Houston's most incompetent criminal.
"Luuucy, I'm home." I shoved Louie through the door of my beach
house.
"Get me outta here!" Lola's scream made Louie flinch.
"Is that her?" he asked.
"Right, Louie. The woman of your dreams." I pushed him toward a
chair. "Sit. Make yourself comfortable. I'll bring her out."
I hurried to the bathroom.
Lola greeted me with dagger-filled eyes. "You bastard. I'll have
you arrested for this."
I slapped her ass. Hard. "Listen, sister. I brought back an old
friend of yours who wants to see you about a bird. Cooperate or
I'll leave you like this and send him in."
She considered my proposal. "All right. Untie me."
I loosened the rope. "I love it when you talk dirty."
Lola rubbed her wrists, then walked to the bedroom and slipped
into her clothes.
As we entered the living room, the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," I announced. "Probably the Publisher's Clearing
House Prize Patrol." When I opened the door, Detective Milford
Ulysses Washington and Big Daddy stood on my deck. "Well, talk
about the odd couple. Come in, gentlemen. Glad you could join
us."
Both scowled as they trudged in.
I moved to the center of the room. "I invited everyone here so
we can clear up this mess. What say we proceed?"
"Proceed with what?" Big Daddy growled. He and Milford parked
their butts on my worn green and yellow sofa. Milford wore the
same brown suit I'd seen him wear for five years. Big Daddy
still looked like a walking jewelry store.
Time for my song and dance. "Everyone seems to have the hots for
a bird figurine. At first, I couldn't figure out why. Then I
remembered Lola telling me about her husband's business.
Randolph Raymond -- condom king of Texas. But that was a front.
His real business involved jewels. Stolen diamonds. He used
condom shipping orders to sneak them into the country."
"That's absurd." Lola sneered at me from the sofa. "Randolph
would never do anything illegal."
"Don't be so sure." I forged ahead. "He found an easier way to
transport his goodies. Figurines. They held more diamonds."
Milford piped in. "Where did you get this crap, Mallet?"
I stuck out a hand. "Hold on. Give me a minute." I whirled
toward Lola. "You discovered Randolph's plans. But you wanted
the jewels for yourself. So you hired Louie to knock off hubby.
Louie probably stabbed him, then blew off half his head to hide
the wound."
Lola's eyes breathed fire. "You bastard. You don't know what
you're talking about."
"I don't? Why'd you hire me and then try to carve out my
organs?"
She made a face. It looked like she had just sucked on a lemon.
Or a spoiled prune. I couldn't tell.
"You wanted to throw the cops off the trail. But when I got too
close, you decided I would look better in a coffin."
Lola turned away and pouted. I strolled toward Louie. "Fat Boy
here owed Big Daddy a favor. So Louie clued him in on Randolph's
diamond scheme. Big Daddy came down with a case of greed. He
loves diamonds. Big Daddy hired Louie to snuff Randolph. Louie
had it made. Two fees for one hit."
"You're crazy, Mallet," Louie grumbled from the corner. "I've
never seen this dame before."
"Is that right? Then why did you have two figurines delivered to
her house the day Randolph was murdered? My hunch is you both
wanted to make a switch. But Lola double-crossed you, didn't
she?"
Big Daddy waved a pale, bony hand. "Mallet, you've gone too far
this time. Do you have evidence?"
"You just said the magic word." I strutted over to the liquor
cabinet, reached around, and brought out the Peruvian Parrot.
Lola jumped to her feet. "Where did you get that? she screamed.
"It's mine!"
"Be careful with that, Mallet!" Milford yelled.
I held the bird out like a battle trophy. "Randolph used this
bird to test his smuggling operation. When Lola found out, she
lifted it from the murder scene." I threw Lola a smug look. "But
Louie thought you had cut someone else in on the deal. The old
man from the Galleria. He had connections to sell the diamonds.
Louie wanted everything for himself, so he shot Horowitz."
Milford stood, shaking. "Mallet, shut up and give me that."
"Not until I prove I'm right." I hoisted the bird high above my
head then smashed it against the coffee table.
"No!" All four screamed. In unison. Almost in harmony.
The bird shattered. Glass flew everywhere.
It was empty.
"What the hell?" I stared down at the jagged base I held.
Milford grabbed my arm. "Mallet, you moron. You just destroyed
the murder weapon."
"What?"
Milford's forehead was a mass of sweat drops. "Mrs. Raymond
bashed in her husband's head with that. Then she used his gun to
try and make it look like suicide."
My insides turned to water. "How do you know that?"
His lips twitched. "Ever heard of pathology, bird brain?"
"But what about the diamonds?" I pleaded.
"There were no diamonds, you idiot." Big Daddy looked as if he
wanted to feed me to his pet wolf, Peter. "That figurine had a
flaw," he said. "A factory mistake. It was worth a fortune.
Since I'm also a collector, Mr. Raymond was prepared to sell it
to me."
"Oh." I retreated a couple of paces. Glass crunched under my
shoes. "I guess that settles that. Glad you folks could drop by.
We'll have to do this again sometime. Real soon."
Milford wrapped a beefy hand around Lola's arm. "Come on. You're
under arrest for murder." As he handcuffed her, he grunted at
me. "By the way, jerk-off, Horowitz wasn't killed for the bird.
Some kid wanted to marry his daughter. The old man objected."
I stood alone in the middle of my living room, fragments of a
priceless Peruvian bird scattered around me. Maybe my career,
too. I felt lower than snail shit. I needed company.
I dashed for the back door. Outside, I rushed down the stairs
searching for my Saint Bernard, Marlowe. I found him, under the
house, humping the next door neighbor's collie.
Just what I needed. A closing metaphor.
Stan Houston (srhouston@aol.com)
----------------------------------
Stan Houston is a 55-year-old retired advertising/financial
writer who has produced four satirical novels and numerous short
stories during the past five years. One of his stories won first
place at the 1997 Houston Writers Conference. His unpublished
satirical mystery A Murder Made in Heaven is a finalist in the
Authorlink 1998 International New Author Awards Competition.
Widow by Armand Gloriosa
=============================
....................................................................
Love manifests in many forms.
Even ones that hurt.
....................................................................
1.
----
He was waiting for her in the bustle of the Mactan Airport's
domestic terminal, trying to keep his dignity as he mopped up
the sweat from his forehead and neck with a designer
handkerchief while his big, heavy Rolex wiggled loosely on his
wrist. The sticky air swirled with the fumes of taxis and vans
and the odor of uniformed porters. He was about fifty years old,
with a high forehead and thinning, gray hair, wearing rimless
glasses with thick lenses. He was dressed in a blue safari
jacket and slacks, an outfit that brought Arthur C. Clarke in
steaming Sri Lanka to mind.
The girl he had apparently been waiting for arrived. She was
tall, wearing a thin dress that showed off her legs. Though her
clothes were clean, they were obviously old; the dress was short
only because it was too small for her. Her black leather shoes
were too heavy-looking and save for the revealing dress, she
looked like a poor country girl in her Sunday best. Still, she
had a freshness to her that turned heads. Since she had just
gotten off the plane, her make-up had not yet begun to streak in
the heat. Her already-pretty face lit up some more when she saw
the Engineer, who smiled back uncertainly.
People looked on at the scene of the meeting, trying to figure
them out. Men and women idly watched them with strangely mixed
feelings.
Despite the evidence before their eyes, the men knew instantly
that the poorly-dressed girl was the old man's mistress. She had
clearly been bought by his money. It was a classic story that
everyone should know, but the actors never learned its lessons.
The men all imagined themselves as the leading man in the story,
learning the lesson ever so slowly as the rest of the world
watched on with pretended superiority.
The women responded to the young woman's attractiveness,
recalling the days when they had almost as much to trade on, and
they cocked their heads and looked down their noses at the girl
for trading on it. The young hussy, traveling on an airplane
looking like an _Ermita habitue!_ But her sugar daddy -- isn't
that Engineer Whatshisname? For shame!
"Engineer Lamberto?" the girl said, her eyes twinkling.
"Mrs. -- ah, Lamberto?"
"Please sir, you can call me Becky. Glad to meet you, sir," she
said, and impishly stuck out a delicate hand. Her accent was
thick, her speech innocent of the irritating up-and-down of
_colegiala_ singsong, so that if he hadn't known better, he
would have doubted his ears as to whether she had said "Vicky"
or "Becky." He shook her hand gingerly, aware that everybody was
watching them.
"I knew it was you, sir," she said. "Paul look just like you."
"Let me take your bag for you. Aren't you going to get your
luggage, as well?"
"I brought only my bag."
They left the terminal in a white, chauffer-driven 1970s S-Class
Mercedes with bright, untinted windows that put everyone and
everything inside the car on display, like an aquarium.
They didn't speak until they were crossing Mactan Bridge on the
way to Cebu.
"I never travel in an airplane before," she said.
"But you've been to other provinces before," he said.
"I come from Quezon Province. I didn't grow up in Manila. Paul,
he tell me so much about Cebu, although he say he didn't want to
live here anymore." She realized she had said something
inappropriate, and fell quiet. She looked out the window past
the railings of the bridge at the sea below.
Engineer Lamberto's house was of 1920s vintage, with a big lawn
and a white fountain in front. The house itself was a big
wood-and-stone affair with high ceilings. A long flight of steps
led up from the driveway into the second-story living room,
while ground floor level itself was meant only for the garage
and servants' quarters. Since it was so old, it was not located
in one of the plush Cebu subdivisions that Becky had heard so
much about. In fact, it was located on a street that had become
busier and busier in modern times, but with the front lawn so
big and the house so far back away from the traffic and its dust
and noise, it was still a nice house. The house reminded her of
Casa Manila; Paul had taken her there once, on a tour of
Manila's museums.
After she had been shown to her room and had freshened up, Becky
and the Engineer had coffee in the living room. The German-made
grandfather clock said ten past three. She expected the
floorboards to creak as the maid came and went with their coffee
and Danish butter cookies, but they didn't.
"I'm sorry my Tagalog is bad," the Engineer was saying.
"That's all right; you don't have to be sorry. I'm already used
to talk English with Paul."
She had brought her little red handbag with her to the dining
table. From it she pulled out a pack of Philip Morrises. She
didn't ask for permission to smoke. She offered him a stick,
which he graciously declined. She lit her cigarette from a box
of matches she had. She seemed ill at ease, and only
half-finished her cigarette.
The sight of her bright red lipstick on the no-longer
pristine-white filter of the cigarette made the Engineer's
stomach queasy. She stubbed the cigarette out on an ashtray of
Austrian crystal which only guests ever used. The Engineer
remembered some tobacco-related prejudices that he had been told
about some years before. In Cebu, he was told, Philip Morris
Menthols had a reputation for being "_pang_-hostess"; while Hope
Menthols were "_pang-banyo._" He knew that Philip Morris
suffered no such stigma in Manila. He kept this piece of
frivolity to himself.
"So how did you meet, Becky?" he said, in a tone that he hoped
was gentle but casual.
"In a bar."
The Engineer fell quiet. He looked at the discarded cigarette in
the ashtray, and watched stinking fumes rise from a surviving
glow in the tobacco.
"Was it a church wedding or a civil wedding?" he finally managed
to ask.
"Church," she said. "Paul insisted. Actually it was a chapel.
Paul didn't like to marry before a judge. He said he like to do
right by me, and marry me in a church."
This last she said quietly, as if she didn't want the
volunteered part of her answer to be heard. Since they had met
for the first time a few hours before they had exchanged a
little more than a dozen sentences between them. They had gotten
down to the basics rather too quickly.
"So you stopped, ah, working, after the wedding?"
"Yes. He also insisted on that. Heaven knows how we get by, but
we get by."
She couldn't bear the turn the conversation had taken. She got
up and wandered in the direction of the shelves. He tried not to
watch her swaying backside.
"Oh," she said. "You have so many records."
"Those aren't records," he said, breathing in with some relief.
"My records have all been boxed up and shut away. I've gotten
used to CDs by now. But those are laserdiscs."
She pulled one out from the shelf, puzzled. "This is a movie?"
"Movies, yes." He got up and joined her at the shelf. "What kind
of movies do you like? I suppose you go for the Sylvester
Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger type of movie," he said in an
attempt at light conversation.
She didn't answer. She was engrossed in looking over the movie
titles.
The Engineer realized something strange: she recognized the
movie titles not by their stars, but by their directors -- Hanif
Kureishi, Stephen Frears, David Lean, Richard Attenborough, and
so on. The other directors rang no bells -- Kurosawa, Truffaut,
Fellini. Only Spielberg and George Lucas she recognized from the
non-British directors.
I'm surprised you like British film, the Engineer was about to
say. And then he closed his mouth as he realized that it wasn't
such a big puzzle after all. It's Paul's influence, he realized.
But why the narrow range?
For a moment he saw a wistful look pass over her features,
beautiful despite the garish make-up. It was a strange look to
see on the face of someone so young. And then it was gone. She
laughed as if in recollection of fond memory.
"Paul and me, we go to the Wednesday British Cinema at the CCP
religiously. It was not far from the school where he was
teaching."
The Engineer was on playback again.
"But you're so good with math. You've always topped your math
classes. Why waste your natural talent?" the Engineer asked his
son. "Look, son, give this a chance. You're still young. There's
time for you to get a degree and take over the office."
"Pa, I've spent four years earning my AB in Philosophy. I
haven't changed my mind in all this time. I like Philosophy. I
love Philosophy. There's nothing wrong with Philosophy. If you
knew half of what you were talking about, you'd know that there
is no philosophy without mathematics. Besides, I'd also like to
spread my wings a bit, get into the arts. As a matter of fact,
I'm talking to people about publishing my novel, and I've even
been very active in the theater -- "
"The arts!" the Engineer exclaimed in disgust. "Architecture.
Architecture, then. You'd be both engineer and artist. Why not
combine the two?"
"Listen to yourself, Pa. When you say `the arts' you sneer. For
all your talk about admiring Kafka and Van Gogh and Schubert you
probably wouldn't give them the time of day if you bumped into
them in the street."
"How dare you talk to me that way."
The son was silent, ashamed, but he still held fast to his
convictions.
"Don't expect me to subsidize your Bohemian lifestyle," the
Engineer said, "because I'm not going to stand for it. The
moment you come to your senses about your vocation, I'll promise
you my whole practice, the sun, the moon and the stars, the
shirt off my back. Until then, you're on your own."
The son said nothing. "And how are you going to support, that,
that, your girlfriend?"
"She has a name, Pa. Her name is Stephanie. We can both work,"
he said uncertainly.
"You can both work," the Engineer echoed mockingly. "You give
your philosophy lectures in your two-bit downtown university,
while that woman dances in the bars?"
"Stephanie's not a dancer, she's a waitress, Pa."
"There's a difference?" the Engineer said, but the fiery flash
in his son's eyes made him regret it immediately. "And if she
gets pregnant?"
"We'll manage. I have so much to teach Stephanie, Pa. She's
willing to learn everything I have to teach her."
Again the Engineer forgot his counsel of prudence to himself.
"Oh, so she's your very own Galatea, to mold and to do with as
you please, heh? This is going too far!"
"Pa, this conversation isn't getting anywhere. I'll come back to
talk to you when you're feeling reasonable. Goodbye, Pa."
They didn't get that other chance to talk about it. The next
time Paul came home, he brought Stephanie with him. And that was
the beginning of the end.
The girl told the Engineer that they never had any money, but
made it a point to go to the CCP for the free film showings of
the Wednesday British Cinema. Once in a while they could go see
a play or a piano recital with complimentary tickets cadged from
his acquaintances in the theater. Once, she said, they had even
seen an opera for free. All she could remember about it was that
it had a hunchback in it, it was very long, and that throughout
she was feeling very sleepy, like much of the audience, until
that familiar tune came out, the one that people sing with the
words "Hopiang di mabili." Anyway, after the Wednesday movie
showings that they'd go downstairs to the CCP canteen for some
Coke and the sometimes stale empanada, and then sit on the
seawall and talk about what they'd just seen.
The girl smiled fondly, and the Engineer saw a bit of what his
son saw in her. "How he could talk and talk," she said in her
fractured English. "He know so many things about movies, and
many other things also! I think, is he like that also in his
class?"
"Tell me, Becky," he said.
"Sir," the girl said. He didn't correct her. He felt that it
gave them a bit of distance between them, and he felt more
comfortable about it.
"Did you ever get to meet a girl named Stephanie?"
"Oh," she said. "Stephanie is before me. But Paul, he didn't
like talking about her. She was, he called, a `non-topic.'"
"Oh," it was the Engineer's turn to say. Of course it would be a
"non-topic." "So you and Paul have been together for -- ?"
"One year and one half. But then we get married, so we are
married for one year. I tell him, I know you don't like me to be
a hostess still, but we need to have the money. And Paul, he is
so hard-headed, he always said no. So we are always hungry. But
we are also happy. I did not become pregnant, so maybe that is
for the good thing." She seemed embarrassed for a moment, and
then recovered herself.
"How old are you, Becky?"
"Nineteen."
After a pause, she said, "You have so many books on the shelf.
Have you read all of them?"
They were still standing in front of the shelves. The Engineer
scanned them. "Yes, I have. Over the years. All of them."
Becky was impressed. "It is no wonder your eyeglasses are very
thick."
"I'd be wearing eyeglasses anyway. Years ago, when I was still
in high school, my optometrist -- my eye doctor -- told me that
my eyesight would have deteriorated in any event, and it'd stop
when it reached a certain point."
"Do you really remember everything you have already read?"
"For the most part. Actually, all I've been doing for the past
two years is re-reading my library. And reviewing my movie and
record collection. I've turned in on myself. I'm turning into an
old fart." He smiled at her.
Becky didn't understand the word, so he straightened up the
expression on his face.
"Why do you go back to read again your old books when you have
read them already and you remember them? It is boring to read
something you already know, no?"
The Engineer smiled. This was not a person who would be
interested in shades of meaning, evolution of outlook and of
attitudes, and maturity over the years. So he only said, without
condescension, "No, not at all. Not at all."
2.
----
Over the next few days, the Engineer stopped by the office less
than he used to. Sometimes he would stay for a few hours before
or after business lunches; on some days he dropped by for only
fifteen minutes. Most of his spare time he was accompanying
Becky on her shopping. Encouraging her to shop was something
that he felt driven to do, because Becky was obviously being
crushed by boredom in the house.
At the start, the girl bought little trinkets like costume
jewelry, but improved her mind by paying close attention to
fashion magazines, the type with heavy, glossy paper. She was a
fast learner, though, and pretty soon it showed in her shopping
patterns.
In the matter of sunglasses -- "shades" -- she shunned Versace,
dismissing the designs with a laugh as "matronic." Her skin
received the loving attention of concoctions whose brands she
mispronounced horribly: Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, Almay. In the
space of three weeks she promoted herself from Johnson's Baby
Shampoo through Ivory Shampoo up to Clairol Herbal Essences. And
soap-wise, eventually only Neutrogena was good enough for her.
Becky grew in confidence, and stopped asking the Engineer for
permission for each and every purchase. The salesladies gave
knowing funny-looks at the Engineer -- again, it was that
mixture of contempt and pity.
He endured it all. He felt that his conscience was clear on this
point, and that the girl, although undeniably attractive, was
not an object of his desire -- he had bedded several women of at
least equal beauty, but of impeccable family, breeding and
education. Two of them had been other men's wives; one of them
had even been happily married.
No, his guilt lay elsewhere entirely. But it still had to do,
indirectly, with the girl.
One night, as he passed her door on the way back from the
kitchen to get a glass of water, he noticed her door partly
open.
He was touched. It was an old-fashioned way for a guest to
behave -- not closing the door on one's host before one is
actually about to sleep.
She was applying astringent to remove her make-up. For a
suspended moment, he did not breathe, and he saw how different
she looked. She was very beautiful. He almost didn't recognize
her.
She saw him looking through the door. She stopped swabbing the
cotton on her face, and nodded politely. He wished her a good
night. He heard the door closed and locked as he walked into his
own room.
Then, that dream again, for the nth time. The Engineer was in
playback again, but with less control than when awake.
His son and Stephanie insisted on spending the night together in
the house. They picked a bad time to arrive -- he was
entertaining important guests.
The Mayor was in attendance; there was a sprinkling of Cebu's
"beautiful people," and of executives from Europe and the Middle
East.
The Engineer had wanted a string quartet playing on the lawn,
but he hadn't been able to make the arrangements in time. So he
had to make do with his dual mono tube amps playing canned
Horowitz and Ashkenazy.
Fortunately, the absence of live chamber music aside, everything
else was just as he wanted it. The caterer was given
instructions that the party was open bar; the guests were
sophisticated enough be trusted with the Moet et Chandon.
Indeed, so sophisticated were they that even the Arabs
graciously partook of the champagne, while no eyebrows were
raised at this breach of the strictures of the Qur'an.
From the lawn the Engineer saw Paul and Stephanie arrive in a
clunker of a taxi, tugging at their luggage up the front stairs
before the maids, horrified, hurriedly bustled them and their
battered baggage up the stairs, out of sight into Paul's old
room.
The Engineer forebore, for the moment.
But later in the evening, Stephanie came down to the kitchen
dressed in slippers, sando and the briefest of shorts to get a
glass of water. The Arab guests practically licked their lips at
the sight.
In his dream, the Engineer left his guests for the moment, and
marched up to the room where his son and his girlfriend were
spending the night. Even before he was a teenager Paul had
always been partial to making bold statements and drastic
gestures, and finally this drop had overflowed the bucket. The
Engineer's tolerance caved in.
He knocked, and the door was opened. Icily, he told them that
they were to leave immediately.
They did so, packing their clothes back into their single
suitcase. As the Engineer led his guests out onto the lawn, with
the fountain all lit up, his son and his son's girlfriend were
ushered out through the back door by the maids and the driver.
The driver took the couple away in the Toyota Crown, and the
guests barely noticed the car drive away.
In his dream, the Engineer watched this. There was a sense of
relief, that he had done the right thing. Thank God, he thought,
I kept my temper. Thank God I didn't humiliate him in front of
the guests. But I had to show him that I was angry, that I would
not suffer his insulting behavior. But at the back of his mind,
the relief was hollow, for some reason. He could not put his
finger on it. Then he woke up, the dream began to fade from his
befogged brain, and with it, the sense of relief.
It didn't happen that way. He wished it had. Because it would
still be possible to have a reconciliation; it was even entirely
possible that the son would have come back to him, of his own
accord, to ask for forgiveness. For forgiveness! It could have
been that way. Or, the Engineer would have eventually swallowed
his pride and come to his son, asking him to come home. It would
have taken a little longer, but he would have done it. No matter
how grave the insult, a father has no business standing on his
pride if his own son needs him -- even if the son doesn't
realize it.
But no, what had happened was that he had lost his temper, and
after being sassed by his son's girlfriend after he had
reprimanded her for coming down so unsuitably dressed -- or
undressed -- he lost his temper, and went up to the room after
the girl. Before she could close the door behind her, he had
held the door open and with gritted teeth, told them to get the
hell out, now. Although he hadn't exactly yelled, he hadn't
exactly whispered, either. The guests who were in the house
became very quiet downstairs. And when he personally heaved
their still-unpacked luggage out of the window onto the
manicured lawn, even then he knew he had more than paid back the
insult in the same coin.
The maids picked up the luggage from the grass, and the driver
drove them out of the house in the ghostly-quiet Toyota Crown.
The guests were gracious about their host's profound
embarrassment, but the party broke up within twenty minutes.
When the driver got back, the Engineer was too proud to ask him
where they had gone.
It took a long while for the Engineer to build up his courage to
ask Becky the things that he had really wanted to know.
When, a year after the Stephanie incident, he inquired by letter
after Paul at his University, he was referred to Paul's address
in downtown Manila. Becky ended up answering the last of the
Engineer's persistent, inquiring missives, in a letter of her
own written in barely decipherable hen scratches. Her name was
Becky, she explained, she was Paul's wife, and she was writing
to him, Engineer Lamberto, without having opened the letters he
had written addressed to Paul. Paul was gone, she wrote. Beyond
that she would say little else. Or rather, if she had written
anything of significance beyond that, the Engineer didn't
understand it.
Several more letters from the Engineer, this time addressed to
"Mrs. Rebecca Lamberto" herself, eventually persuaded Becky to
quit her job and come to Cebu, to stay with the Engineer
indefinitely.
One evening, after dinner at a fancy restaurant at the Cebu
Plaza, they sat in the living room drinking coffee. The traffic
noise in the distance had died away to inaudibility, and the
faint sound of crickets and cicadas in full riot elsewhere in
the distance filled the silences between their words. The
Engineer could sense that the girl was vulnerable tonight; his
experience with women had taught him that much. He decided to
press his advantage. So, after aimless small talk involving
their common hostility against grade school teachers, the
Engineer steered the topic to Paul.
"When Paul told me wanted to teach, I was dead set against it.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so harsh on him, if it was what
would have made him happy. Even you, he considered you his
student. I know he was happy teaching you the things that he
knew."
"Yes," said Becky. "Maybe though I am not a very good student.
Because he leave me, he have a new student maybe brighter than
me." The Engineer let her go on without interrupting her. "One
of his students, she was even ugly, with pimples and a crooked
teeth, one day he started talking about her about how
intelligent she is. Since I already see the girl I did not
worry. She have literary interests, Paul said. He called her a
blue socks -- a blue -- "
"A blue stocking. Yes."
"He said, `She understands my poetry.' Of course, Mr. Lamberto,
Paul always recited his poetry to me, sitting on the seawall
after the Wednesday movies especially, but I did not understand
it. I tell him I like his voice reciting his poetry. He told me,
`Never mind what the words means, just feel them.' "
The Engineer looked at Becky, in her fashionably cut dress, her
long black-stockinged legs stretched out and crossed at the
ankles, with her expensively done hair. With a haughty demeanor,
chin in the air, she would have been perfect for a fashion
shoot; instead, she was leaning back in her couch across from
the Engineer's chair, a hand under her nose to hide the fact
that she was biting back her tears. Her blinking gave her away.
This girl is little more than a child, the Engineer realized not
for the first time, but he had to be merciless.
"Where did they go?" he asked finally, when the words would not
come to her and the tears rolled freely. "Where did they go?"
"Davao," she said. "I think the girl flunk many of her other
subjects. `Not good at math, not good at math,' Paul said. I
remember. Later, Paul was always angry at me for anything that I
did. I did not understand him. One day he left our apartment, he
left me a letter saying that his student was going back to Davao
to continue her college there, and that he was going with her.
He call me a slut because I always want to go back to work at
the bar. Mr. Lamberto," she said, facing him full now, "I miss
him so much."
She was crying now, and the Engineer was afraid the househelp
would hear. They had seen much in their day, with the comings
and goings of the various women in his life over the years, but
they didn't have to see and hear everything if he could help it.
He moved towards her and knelt at her feet. She moved her face
closer to him, tears streaking her make-up, her face in great
pain. She was shaking with silent sobs. "Mr. Lamberto, please, I
miss him."
Gently he shushed her, and brushed back her hair from her eyes.
"Did he leave an address?" He repeated the question even as he
wiped her tears. "Do you remember his student's name?"
She tried to kiss him, smearing the lenses of his glasses.
"Becky," he said quietly, "do you remember the student's name?"
"No!" she said loudly through her crying. "I burn his stupid
letter. His stupid goddamn letter. I don't remember her name. I
go back to my old job because I have to. I am not like what he
says." She raised a hand to his face. "Mr. Lamberto," she said,
and tried to kiss him again.
He slowly pulled his face away from her. He held her face in his
hands, looking steadily into her eyes as she made a long, uneven
moaning sound that was lower than her speaking voice. He shushed
her again, patiently, and when the low of pain had subsided, he
gathered her up in his arms and carried her to her room.
Though she was thin, she was tall, and he was not prepared for
her heft. It had been a long time since he had carried a woman
in his arms; the unbidden memories gave him no pleasure. He was
aware that a pair of eyes -- it was one the maids, certainly --
was watching them from the little glass window of the swinging
kitchen door.
In her room he did not turn on the light, and navigated by the
yellow light from the hallway which flooded in through the open
door. He laid her down on the bed, and with tender hands
stripped her down to her underwear, while she did not resist.
Then he pulled a thin blanket over her, turned on the electric
fan, and left, closing the door gently behind him.
In his own room, fully clothed, with his shoes still on, he lay
down on the counterpane of the bed. All he took off were his
glasses and his watch. He knew he was not going to get any sleep
tonight. He waited, eyes wide open and staring at the high
ceiling, for the sun to rise.
It was a summer afternoon when Becky left the house. On that day
the weather was of the type that always occurs during power
blackouts: the air was hot, sticky and windless. But the lights
didn't go out that afternoon, the Engineer remembered. The
decorative, wooden ceiling fans only swirled the humid air
around. The exotic, powerful vacuum-tube sound system that took
pride of place in the living room was silent; the Engineer never
played music while reading.
He sat in his favorite leather chair, a genuine La-Z-Boy he had
had shipped in from the States after attending a convention.
Where his body touched the chair it was damp, even through the
clothes. On his lap lay, open face down, his favorite paperback
of English Romantic Poetry, cracked along its spine from age and
use.
They were sitting together stewing in the living room, with the
folding doors the length of one entire wall open to the garden,
because the only room with a working air conditioner was the
Engineer's. To invite her into the bedroom, which was big enough
and had enough furnishings to have been an apartment in itself,
would have been inappropriate; and he felt that to stay inside
by himself enjoying the chill would have been rude to his guest.
His old fashioned sense of gallantry was coming to the fore,
although it was mixed with confusion about what would be the
right thing to do.
The girl sat on the sofa opposite him, fashion and interior
design magazines scattered all around her. She kept sighing, but
the Engineer didn't notice. His mind was a haze, and thoughts
had difficulty forming. He was trying to prolong this state, to
control it so that he could stretch it out. He was trying to
prevent thought from taking form, and with it, memories and
guilt. He didn't move. It was a state of mind precious for its
illusory peace; it didn't happen too often.
Boorishly she broke into his tenuous peace. It was like a
boulder being dropped into a still pond. "I can't stay here
anymore."
He started, not immediately understanding the words she was
saying. He echoed them mechanically. "You can't stay here
anymore?" he said, not grasping what he himself was asking.
"I'm sorry, Engineer Lamberto, you are very generous to me since
before. But I think it is like we are waiting both of us for
your son to come home. Sir, he's gone. He will not come back to
you or to me."
The Engineer didn't reply right away. "You are still his wife,
and I am still his father."
"It doesn't mean anything," she said. "He is not here anymore."
She didn't go on and say, 'It's like he is already dead, and
there is nothing that binds us anymore.' The Engineer felt that
that was what she wanted to say, but she kept herself back. He
was grateful for such mercies.
"So where do you want to go?"
She looked at him, biting her lip, eyes unsuccessfully trying to
hide guilt. For the briefest moment, the Engineer saw again how
his son had seen Becky. Right now she was a bit like a
beautiful, naughty favorite child trying to fool a parent.
"Somewhere."
"Home?"
"Somewhere."
The Engineer's heart sank. It wasn't the thought that she was
leaving. It was the thought that he had failed to reach out to
his son, to make up for things, no matter how indirectly.
Whenever he began talking to Becky freely and honestly about his
feelings about what had happened between him and Paul, she would
tune out. Perhaps it was because she had had enough pain of her
own. Or maybe it was because she thought that he should be a man
about the whole thing, and bear it in silence and with dignity.
Or, the Engineer thought uncharitably, this girl is exactly what
she appears to be: uncouth and callous, badly educated, a vain
and silly creature whose only saving grace, aside from her youth
and her salacious beauty, was that she had fallen in love with
Paul; that she could at least begin to appreciate him for what
he was, and more difficult, for what he tried to be. It took a
lot to love Paul, he knew. Anybody who loved Paul, in all his
obstinate, impractical and heedless romanticism could not
honestly be accused of being shallow in feeling. And he felt
ashamed of his contempt for the girl.
3.
----
A week after she had left, the Engineer was practically useless
around the office. Everybody in the office knew that his
mistress had left him, and there were giggles that a man of his
age could still be driven to distraction by the baser part of
his manhood. At one point the Engineer thought he heard as he
left the room one of his engineers murmur, "Thinking with his
nuts."
Another week passed, then another. Finally he had no choice. He
could not keep his mind on anything, not his work at the office,
not his movie collection, not the cable TV, not his music
collection. He had to do something, anything. It didn't
necessarily have to make sense what he was going to do -- as
long as he did something.
He flew to Manila, and rented a tired early-model Sentra from
there. He bought a road map from a National Bookstore branch in
Makati, and after studying it, gave up trying to fold it back
the way it was when it was new. The huge map stayed partly open
on the passenger's seat beside him, and at 6:30 in the morning,
so as not to be caught in the humongous Manila traffic, he set
off for Quezon Province.
Quezon was a drive three and a half hours south. He took the
rented car through the tollway and beyond, down narrower
provincial roads. In addition to being in bad shape, with a very
heavy clutch and a tendency to lurch even at cruising speeds,
the car was badly designed, with impossibly heavy steering for
such a small car.
But the drive itself kept the Engineer wide awake. It had been a
long time since he had been on such a long drive.
He persuaded the car to follow along a winding road that looked
down precipitously from the hill through which it wound -- the
road was nicknamed _bitukang manok_ because its wild twists
reminded motorists of a gutted chicken's intestines. When at
last he got back to level ground at the end of the road, he saw
a garishly painted statue of a mermaid in the water some yards
from the shoreline. He knew he had arrived in Becky's town.
Eventually the countryside scenery gave way to a busy town full
of one-way streets. He asked for directions, naming the local
elementary school and the courts as the landmarks, and
eventually found himself pointing the car up a steep hill with a
dirt track. He eased the car upward, and went past a public
school where children were arriving in droves, dressed in their
uniforms of printed white T-shirts with dark blue skirts or
shorts. The children made way for the car, but the dirt track
was so narrow, and his traction so unsure, that the Engineer
prayed he would not accidentally hit any of them. Nightmare
visions of the car slipping on a backward tack crushing a
bag-toting child chilled his fingers.
Further up on the opposite side of the road was the courthouse,
beside which a big, yellow grader was parked. The workmen who
were working on paving the dirt road came up to help. Their
gentle manner as they worked to get the Engineer's car out of
the rut struck the Engineer pleasantly; he reminded himself that
he was in the provinces again. Gratefully he pressed some money
on the men, which they took, shyly and reluctantly.
At the top of the hill, he stopped. He didn't know where to go.
There was nowhere to park the car, because on either side of the
dirt track the terrain rose up like a grassy, muddy embankment.
The Engineer left the car where it was and slogged to the
nearest house to ask again for directions.
The house was an amalgam of old and new. The older part was made
of now-dark unpainted wood, and had windows of seashells ground
to translucent thinness with thin curtains hanging limply in the
windless, overcast mid-afternoon. Clumsily grafted on to the
older part was an extension made of concrete, with a roof of
corrugated iron and windows with jalousies of frosted glass.
There was movement from within. Voices issued in agitation.
Becky stepped out of the house. She wasn't surprised to see him.
She had seen him coming, with the noise that his car was making.
"Mr. Lamberto," she said, with what seemed to be displeasure on
her face.
The Engineer stopped. Now he was here. He realized he hadn't
thought of why he had come. "Hello Becky," he said, looking up
at her. He had to make his voice carry between the twenty feet
of distance between them. After a while he said, "I came to
visit you." Better than "May I come in," thought the Engineer.
It sounded less suppliant.
"Come inside," she said, making room for him in the doorway even
as he trudged up the hill, unsure of his footing. Perhaps he had
been imagining her coldness.
He had barely sat down on the wooden bench in the living room
when he stood up again, to greet Becky's mother. The Engineer
was introduced to her as "Paul's father." Becky's mother then
bustled about in the newer part of the house, in what was
evidently the kitchen, complete with sky-blue tiles and a new
Korean-brand refrigerator. She emerged with glasses of weak iced
tea.
"I'm surprised you are able to find my house," she said with a
smile. He had been imagining things.
The Engineer's mind worked double time, thinking of the right
thing to say. "It's a small town" was all wrong. And to tell her
"I remember you talking about your house near the court and the
public school" seemed to be an admission that he had been paying
attention to their small talk, unconsciously filing away for
future reference little nuggets of information she had given
him. "I asked around," he said.
Voices came from the kitchen. First there was Becky's mother,
slowly talking in single-word sentences. "Visitor," she was
saying. "Becky. Visitor." Then a man's voice wordlessly
vocalized sounds signifying comprehension.
Becky fidgeted. A tall man wearing a T-shirt, shorts and
slippers ducked under the low doorway and entered the living
room. The Engineer looked at him. A foreigner, light-skinned,
slit-eyed, probably in his late thirties. Judging from the style
of the glasses the man was wearing, the Engineer guessed he was
Japanese. He was not handsome, but his smile seemed to point to
a mild nature.
"Mr. Lamberto, this is Kazue."
They shook hands and sat down.
"I just came to pay a small visit to my daughter-in-law," he
said uncertainly to Kazue. Kazue looked at him attentively. The
Engineer wasn't sure he had understood. "I'm sorry, do you -- ?"
Becky hesitated, then started speaking in Japanese to Kazue.
Kazue listened and nodded, smiling. The Engineer listened in
surprise, and wondered just what she had told him; a diplomatic
lie, perhaps. Her Japanese sounded smooth, but then the Engineer
would have been the last person to judge fluency in foreign
languages.
For the next few minutes there was an attempt at conversation
among the three of them, during which Becky tried to keep the
flow of meaningful information to a minimum. Kazue was an
ordinary _sarariman_. Becky had learned her Japanese from a
Japanese-language school on Avenida. Kazue had been in the
Philippines twice before on business, but now he was in the
country for only two weeks, on vacation leave. There was not
much else besides that. The Engineer felt more and more
uncomfortable. The feeling grew in him that whatever it was that
he had come to do, it wasn't going to happen. Finally, he got
up, making sure that Kazue understood he was going to leave.
"Well, Becky, Kazue, it's been nice chatting with you," smiling
a smile he did not feel. He shook hands with the Japanese.
As he was stepping through the doorway to get back to his car,
Becky spoke suddenly, in a low voice that didn't seem to be
meant to be heard. "I'm going with him."
The Engineer stopped. He didn't seem surprised. "To Japan?"
"Yes."
"Are you getting married?"
Becky looked at Kazue. "If he wants."
The Engineer felt a chilly sadness descend on his shoulders.
Gently he kissed a surprised Becky on the cheek. "Goodbye,
then," he said. He took leave of Becky's mother, who saw him off
with customary effusiveness. To the Japanese he nodded politely,
receiving in return a slight bow. He found himself hoping that,
even if just this once, people appeared to be what they were,
and that a kindly face meant a kindly soul.
There was nowhere to turn the car around. The Engineer had no
choice but to go down the road backwards, past the court, past
the grader, past the public school, all the way to the main
road, the transmission whirring with a hydraulic sound that one
hears only in reverse gear. He got to the bottom safely.
He realized he hadn't even looked back at the house as he was
backing up. He couldn't see it anymore from the bottom of the
hill.
The Engineer pointed the car north.
Armand Gloriosa (dogberry1@yahoo.com)
---------------------------------------
Armand Gloriosa was born in 1968 in Cebu, Philippines. He worked
hard for years to become a lawyer, and when he did become one,
regretted it. He married his first girlfriend, didn't regret it,
and now has two children to show for it.
A Stray Dog in Spain by Peter Meyerson
==========================================
....................................................................
History happens to other people. Memories happen to us. The
difference can drive us mad.
....................................................................
1.
----
I can't really say that what follows has haunted me all these
years. I wish I could; it would be more dramatic.
But the truth is that every so often, when I recall what
happened, I remember the experience without any feeling one way
or the other. It may be that because I was young and determined
to live the good life, I couldn't -- and perhaps still can't --
deal with the odd and ultimately sorrowful event that climaxed
our stay in Spain.
We arrived in Le Havre on the old, supremely elegant Ile de
France in early September, the most jubilant couple in the
history of marriage. By design, we had no particular itinerary,
although an older Spanish couple we knew from our summers on
Fire Island -- a painter and his pediatrician wife -- gave us
several letters of introduction to friends of theirs in Europe:
Robert Graves on Majorca (The White Goddess had been my
bible in college); Pablo Casals, who had a house in the
Pyrenees; and an exiled Spanish painter, Juan Peinado, who lived
with his family in Paris.
As it turned out, the Peinados, their children, and
grandchildren became our surrogate family during our months in
Paris, and I still on occasion think of that dear, impoverished,
generous family with a wistfulness that borders on longing. I
have kept and treasure a photograph of the Peinados'
twelve-year-old granddaughter, Jeanne Marie. I shot it in the
garden behind the artist's modest suburban studio. (The old man
used to bicycle the six miles to and from their apartment on the
Left Bank to the atelier every day.) The picture is a close-up,
snapped on the morning after we had taken Jeanne Marie to see
her first ballet. She is staring straight into the camera,
sedate, innocently ravishing, framed by a halo of flowering
vines and, to my eyes, dancing wildly in her mind.
Peinado was in his mid-seventies, a kindly, consistently
affectionate family man, but extremely difficult, to say the
least, when it came to the business of art. Like several other
painters I've known, he was vehemently distrustful of gallery
owners. I'm not qualified to judge his talent as an artist, but
when it comes to sabotaging his own interests, he was a raving
genius.
We left Paris in early December and headed south, hoping at some
point during the year to connect with Casals and/or Robert
Graves. But we didn't get to meet either of them -- Graves
because we never got to Majorca and Casals because our entire
stay in Europe, where we went, how long we stayed and when we
left, was to a large extent determined by a clinically insane MG
Magnette acquired in Paris for fourteen hundred dollars from an
old high school buddy. The car threw its first serious fit in
Avignon, and we had no choice but to spend a month exploring the
Midi and the Basse Alps (hardly a tragedy) in a rented car while
waiting for a new set of cylinders to arrive from Paris.
Like I said, while we didn't have any particular timetable or
destination, we were determined to find a warm place to spend
the winter. Reaching Nimes, we flipped a coin: heads, we'd turn
left and go to Sicily, tails, we'd turn right and drive down to
the Costa del Sol, a very different place in those days. It was
tails.
Now understand: I am not, nor have I ever been, the
hey-man-it's-cosmic type. Admittedly, in the late sixties and
seventies did my share of psychedelics (along with every other
drug known to man). I waved hello to walls that waved back,
watched my friends transform into angels and devils, and had
chats with God that seemed important but probably weren't since
I've never heard from Him again -- not yet, anyway. Once, with a
cooperative Penthouse model and my all-time favorite, MDA, the
so-called "love drug," I had an orgasm that lasted two months.
Still, I was never suckered into buying all the woo woo bullshit
of the period -- astral projection, astrology, communal living,
talking to vegetables to improve their health, Eastern
religions, guru glorification, arcane massages, beatific grins,
and all the rest of it. I began and ended the epoch as a
pathetically rational human being.
Thus, I was thoroughly unprepared for what happened when Anita
and I crossed the border into Spain at Port Bou, almost a decade
before I'd even heard of acid: I knew -- knew -- that I'd lived
there in another life! Everything -- the landscape, the smells,
people's faces, even a mangy cat I saw hanging around a gas
station -- was intimately familiar to me. This was my country; I
was home. And it really shook me up. I was having an experience
I didn't believe in!
Anita was thrilled, which sort of disappointed me. I wanted her
to worry about me, to be concerned for my mind. But Anita had
always been more open to this sort of thing, even before it
became fashionable. In fact, later on she went all the way with
it and spent her fortieth birthday in Nepal searching for
something which, she wrote back, "most people aren't remotely
interested in." The "most people," of course, included me, by
then her ex-husband and the father of her two children who were
living with me full-time while their mother was out looking for
herself in the Himalayas. For years I'd been telling Anita that
she'd have better luck finding herself on a psychoanalyst's
couch, advice which, as you can imagine, made a solid
contribution to our eventual breakup.
Although the revelation that Spain was my former homeland stayed
with me throughout our stay there, the initial awe and euphoria
I felt was replaced by rage just North of Valencia. Despite its
rebuilt engine, the goddamn MG began cleverly mimicking the
symptoms of a catatonic stupor, forcing us to put up at a
government parador after a brace of incompetent mechanics poked
around a post-war engine they'd never even seen before,
pronounced its condition muy serimente, and probably replaced a
few spark plugs while pretending to make repairs for the next
several weeks. Save for another young American couple with the
revolting habit of treating their mutt as though it was an
adorable only child, the hotel was empty. Anita realized that my
usually sunny disposition had abandoned me when, at our first
dinner with these people, I asked them whether it was difficult
finding the right size diaper for a daschund in a destitute,
outcast country.
To her credit, Anita immediately went to work on me and, as she
had from the day I met her, returned me to my rightful
character. She pointed out that we were in a warm place in a
cold month and not hurting for money, that we had a large,
bright room and a tiled terrace overlooking the Mediterranean,
that we ate our breakfast in the sun and strolled down to the
tiny harbor to watch the small fishing boats return in late
afternoon and hawk their catch right there on the stone wharf.
She reminded me that each morning we swam in ancient Roman pools
just down the beach, pools carved out of the rocks two thousand
years ago, neatly squared and refreshed with every incoming
tide, and that I'd discovered many new things, like sargo, a
delicious local fish that often became trapped in these shallow
pools and were caught by the hotel staff using long,
jerry-rigged bamboo poles at the end of which were a few feet of
line, a hook and a bit of octopus -- which I'd also never eaten
before, but now loved even more than sargo.
"And what about finding your cosmic homeland the day before
yesterday?" she added. (For the record, I never said it was my
"cosmic" anything.) "You could have sold shmatas to the Romans
who built these pools." (She was right about that, though. Once
a Jew, always a Jew, no matter what your incarnation.) "Given
all of this," Anita concluded. "I don't see how you can be in
such a shitty mood just because our car broke down again."
But by then I no longer was, and you can see why I loved Anita
so much. It always surprises me when I think how, some years
down the line, we almost came to hate each other, got divorced,
and didn't become friends again -- well, distant friends -- for
many years.
There's an event that occurred during our stay at the parador
which I feel obliged to mention because of the significance it
took on later: I didn't catch a fish. Not one. And I tried
almost every single day. My compulsive dedication was a joke
among the hotel staff, albeit a discrete and respectful joke
since this was a fascist country and Franco was looking over
everybody's shoulder. I suppose they also felt sorry for me
because they offered lots of encouragement and all manner of
tips for nailing this wily prey. (Okay. The truth is there's
nothing wily about sargo. They'll devour any tidbit you dangle
in front of them.)
The whole mortifying business started after I'd watched the
hotel guys fishing both the Roman pools and from the rocky
breakwaters that enclosed the tiny harbor. (One guy actually
grabbed a fish out of the pool with his bare hands.) Now I
considered myself a pretty fair fisherman from my summers on
Fire Island. I used to surf cast for Atlantic blues in season
and the occasional bottom fish that always hung around a sunken
wreck a hundred yards off shore. Obviously, I didn't bring my
rig to Europe, so I was forced to suck up to the dog people --
good sports, really -- and wrangle a lift to Valencia. There I
got all duded out with the best fishing gear a sporting goods
store had in stock, returned to the parador, and, as you can
see, made a complete schmuck out of myself for the next two
weeks.
2.
----
Carvajal wasn't on the map. Barely a village, it was a cluster
of white-washed hovels on the beach between Torremolinas, the
major haven for tourists with an artsy attitude (they called
themselves "exiles") and Gibraltar, a place we came to know well
thanks to the loathsome, Stephen King-esque MG. The car
apparently found Carvajal to its liking and went into another of
its fraudulent, money-eating death throes as we were passing
through on our way to Marbella. Fortunately, there were half a
dozen rental cottages adjacent to the village, and for
seventy-five bucks a month (housekeeper/cook included) we
settled into the only vacancy still available for the winter.
I'm reluctant to concede that reverberations from some past life
had anything to do with the speed with which I picked up the
local dialect -- or at least a workable version of it. But I did
feel instantly at ease with our Andalusian neighbors and we got
on enormously well. If it's because, as Anita suggested, I may
have sold shmatas to their ancestors too, so be it. There was
certainly patience and good intentions on both sides and that
always helps.
A housekeeper, Maria, came with the place. She was twelve years
old and one of the countless offspring of Tomaso, a fisherman
who became my friend -- except during those times when he beat
his wife and/or children. Their deplorable wailing and pleas for
mercy were too much for me and I always kept my distance for a
few days after these incidents, causing Tomaso considerable
consternation and confusion. Nevertheless, I chose not to
discuss these outbursts with him. There's no point telling a
Spanish peasant it's tacky to bounce your family off the walls
when whacking the shit out of relatives has been a revered
tradition since the Vandals began raiding Roman towns along the
Iberian coast in the fifth century.
Our other neighbors -- mostly English vacationers -- disliked us
from the moment they learned we were paying our wretchedly
undernourished housekeeper four dollars a week. They seemed to
think that we, like all "rich Americans," were "spoiling the
natives rotten," creating expectations which would cost them,
the true tourists, dearly. Tough shit! We're talking about
victims of a repressive regime, pauperized peasants with little
more than a roof over their heads and the shredded rags on their
backs. So desperate were these people that, to avoid the
dreaded, rapacious, omnipresent Guardia Civil, they would row
out to sea in the middle of the night, risking prison to salvage
some water-logged tree trunk out of which they fashioned planks
to repair their boats and make oars and furniture and statues of
the Madonna and God knows what else. Fuck those English
tourists!
Anyway, I was still sargo-possessed; it had gotten to be a
me-or-them sort of thing, and, even before unpacking, I grabbed
my gear and made a dash for the sea. Little kids, both foreign
and domestic, began to gather on the beach -- no doubt impressed
by my fancy rig. As I stood waist-deep in the water getting
ready to cast for the fat, elusive (for me at least) silvery
fish, I jokingly asked a six-year old English kid watching from
shore, "Can you count to ten?"
"Of course I can," he replied, insulted.
"Good. You count to ten and I'll pull in the biggest fish you
ever saw."
"Will you really?" he asked, eyes widening, jaw dropping, a
pearly stream of spittle beginning to meander down his chin. In
those days, little children, even bright, English public school
kids, still believed that certain adults were blessed with
magic.
Well, I had magic that day.
While a good-sized sargo averages a mere six or seven pounds, I,
on my very first cast, landed a twenty-five pound behemoth,
probably the biggest sargo in the entire Mediterranean! I have
no doubt that had I waited another day, it would have washed up
on shore dead of old age. I became an instant hero, not only to
the kids, but to the fishermen as well, many of whom came
running over to see this amazing catch and the amazing man who
caught it. They themselves tossed drop nets over the sides of
small rowboats and, in theory, had a better chance to trap a
fish this size. Apparently, they never did. To pull one out of
the sea with a cheesy lure on the very first cast was quite a
feat.
I must say adulation beats disgrace any day of the week, but
redeeming myself from the humiliations suffered at the parador
meant more to me. For one euphoric moment, I considered sending
a snapshot of me and Gigantor to the waiters up the coast, but
that would have been a bit too gauche.
After a while, I noticed a man taking in the scene from the
periphery of the small crowd. I guessed he was in his late
thirties, tall, blue-eyed, greying at the temples and
extraordinarily handsome. His face seemed to have been molded in
white clay and left unbaked -- powerful, angular, yet muted,
almost soft. What really made me take notice was the perplexing
contradiction of his bearing: He stood absolutely erect, yet the
longer I looked at him the more I saw (imagined?) him crouching,
maybe even cowering, within himself. It was very strange the way
pride and sorrow somehow came together in the man's demeanor. I
was hooked. I had to find out who this guy was.
It wasn't easy. For three weeks, we didn't exchange a word. We
simply nodded to each other as he passed by on his twice-daily,
unhurried walks along the beach. I found myself too shy to
initiate a conversation, which wasn't like me at all. I was
usually surrounded by an audience of impatient kids hungry to
witness my next triumph over nature. But my magic never did
return, and with every puny flounder I dragged from the sandy
bottom, I'd lose a few more disciples. Eventually, all my
admirers lost interest or, more accurately, faith, in my powers,
and abandoned me to my vigils. I wasn't their very own magician,
after all; I was just another ordinary human, kind of like their
fathers. I was sorry to disappoint them.
I soon learned that his name was Gerd and that he and his wife,
Helga, lived in a cottage at the other end of the tourist
enclave some fifty yards up the beach. She occasionally went
with him on his daily promenades which always took place at
exactly eight a.m. and four p.m. You could set your watch by his
strolls. He walked as he stood, upright and downcast, the most
august and angst-ridden man I'd even seen. Helga, a skittish,
chatty, blond woman whom I judged to be in her early thirties,
flapped around him like a raven harassing an eagle. Gerd never
engaged her directly on these walks; he looked passed her or
through her when she happened to flit in front of him, always
gazing straight ahead, his eyes on the fisherman who, at these
times of day, were hauling in their nets or sorting their
pitiful catch on the sand. The couple kept to themselves and I
never saw them speak to their neighbors. I wasn't sure they even
knew English until I met them and discovered they spoke the
language flawlessly, with only a shade of an accent.
Because animals must live in non-Catholic countries to possess
souls and feel pain, those unfortunate enough to inhabit Latin
countries lead lives of unrelenting misery. Useful beasts, like
donkeys or cows, are only a little better off than pets, so if
you wake up tomorrow and discover that you're a stray dog in
Spain, head for the nearest border or swim out to sea and drown.
In 1959, though, you'd have found a haven in Gerd's cottage.
That's how I finally met him, on the morning a bunch of local
kids were hurling stones at a trembling mongrel and harassing it
with sticks. Gerd must have heard the ruckus too (it woke me
up), because he came running down the beach shouting (in
Spanish) and chased the kids away from the near-dead dog. I
watched from my terrace as he cradled the poor creature in his
arms and took it back to his cottage, murmuring soothing words
in German.
I had to meet this guy.
Later, when I knew he'd be taking his afternoon walk, I
intercepted him.
"Good morning," I said.
"Good morning," he replied, neither pleasantly nor unpleasantly.
"Ah. You speak English," I said, grinning inanely. He didn't
reply, so I continued. "That was a nice thing you did this
morning, saving that dog."
He shrugged. His shrugs were difficult, slow to start and
lengthy, as though there was a hundred pound weight on his
shoulders. A long silence followed, so long I began thinking,
well, that's it for today, when he said:
"That was quite a fish you caught the day you arrived."
"Just luck," I said, with what I imagined to be disarming
modesty. Then, strangely, I felt compelled to diminish my own
stature with a confession. "You know, I fished for two straight
weeks near Valencia and didn't catch -- " I was about to say
"shit," but thought better of it. " -- a single fish." Something
about the guy demanded a measure of formality. Or maybe I was
self-conscious, knowing how Europeans hated the way Americans
presumed a jolly friendship from the first hello.
"Good luck counts," he said. Huh? Wow, was that ever elusive!
Counts for what? In what context? Fishing? Life? Everything? So
far the guy's said a dozen words (including "good morning") and
already I'm mulling over what he means. (Although, there was a
voice inside saying, hey, you want a mystery, you'll find a
mystery.)
Well, I had plenty of time to gnaw on this bone because Gerd
nodded without smiling and resumed his walk. Watching him vanish
down the beach, I began wondering about what he did during the
war. True, he had the air of a soldier, an officer, but I
couldn't imagine him fighting for the Nazis. I trusted my
feelings about him and, his aloofness notwithstanding, Gerd had
heart; there was no way he could have been on the wrong side.
Working with the underground was more like it -- dangerous,
secret meetings in Berlin safehouses, sending morse code
messages to London, blowing up bridges across the Rhine, night
attacks on barracks in the Black Forest -- all the stuff I'd
seen in movies.
Or maybe I'd known him in one of my previous lives. Yeah: I'm a
wandering gem merchant pursuing my trade in one of the old Roman
coastal towns, Saguntum or Tarraco. Gerd's a Carthaginian Vandal
from North Africa. (Come to think of it, in this scenario, he
could very well be one of Tomaso's ancestors.) On one of their
raids, I'm taken prisoner. I'm about to be executed when Gerd
intervenes: "Let this one be!" he thunders to his men -- don't
ask me why. I thank him in a language he doesn't understand and
go on my way. A few months later, one of Justinian's armies
arrives to sweep these dreaded barbarians out of Africa and put
an end to their brutal forays along the Spanish coast. Now Gerd
is captured. He's about to be executed. I recognize him at once
among the thousands waiting to be nailed to the cross. I check
my gem bag and approach a centurion. The guy's got a hammer in
his hand and sneers ominously through a mouthful of nails. The
bastard can't wait to start hammering. "Excuse me," I say. "That
man over there, the one who's straight and bent at the same
time....I'd like to buy his freedom." I bribe the boob with two
opals and an emerald -- second-rate stones actually, but what
does he know? Gerd jumps down off the cross. He thanks me in a
language I don't understand and goes on his way.
Sounds about right to me.
"What do you think of the kraut?" I asked Anita when I returned
to the cottage.
"Which one's the kraut?" she replied, which tells you where her
focus was. Anita had started knitting a muffler in Avignon that
was now seven feet long.
"You expecting Siamese twins?"
"Up your ass," she replied matter-of-factly.
I guess being together twenty-four hours a day for five months
was beginning to take a toll on our marriage. It wasn't serious
(yet), but it wasn't fun anymore either. We didn't fight; we
were just there, keeping more and more to ourselves, leading
separate lives in the same space. As the winter went on, we
became increasingly listless, kind of numbed out, at least with
each other. Sex, on those rare occasions when we had it, was
still pretty good -- for me. But I'm a skilled pervert who can
(or could in those days) get off behind anything. Assent,
resistance, indifference, even a woman's passion -- all were
aphrodisiacs to me.
We couldn't see it then, but this was more than a bump in the
road on the way to a happier marriage. Our alienation was
growing at about the same rate as Anita's muffler. No surprise
that it took a while to notice the most important sign of all,
the one that reads: "Couples Who Stop Discussing A Future
Together Don't Have One."
3.
----
Now here's a shocker: That same night, Gerd, with Helga in tow,
showed up at the cottage with a chess set under his arm, just as
though we'd made plans for the evening! We were digesting yet
another feast of boiled leather (squid), half-baked potatoes and
raw carrots -- What do you want? The kid was twelve years old!
-- when I noticed the two of them standing on the flagstone
terrace: Gerd, as always, outwardly erect and inwardly stooped,
Helga, doing her overwrought raven routine, dipping and weaving
and hopping around her stationary husband as though waiting to
pounce on his discarded tidbits.
"May we come in?" she asked, smiling politely.
"Hey, our door's always open," said Mr. Cheery, prompting a
God-you-can-be-putzy-sometimes sigh from Anita. "Come, in, come
in," I continued, ignoring the put-down. I'd done it! Casals is
in the Caribbean, we may never meet Robert Graves or Picasso.
But who cares? I've landed another giant sargo!
"I thought you might like a game of chess," Gerd said.
Jesus! How does he know I love chess?
"Well, sure! You guys want a drink, coffee or something?"
"Guys?" asked Helga, rattled by the colloquialism.
"Oh, sorry. It's....you know, a way to say....it just means the
two of you."
"Ah, I see." But I could tell she didn't see anything. I suppose
she thought I was calling her a dyke.
I noticed that Gerd, who didn't pay any more attention to his
wife indoors than he did outdoors, was scrutinizing the room.
(What was he looking for? The tourist bungalows are all
identically furnished.) What I was totally oblivious to, until
later when she busted me for it, was that I was ignoring Anita!
For the next two hours, it's like she wasn't there. Weird. I was
imitating this guy!
Loving a game doesn't guarantee that you'll be any good at it,
and I'll never be more than an average player. However, my ego
isn't invested in chess and I didn't mind losing three games in
quick succession. Truthfully, I would have lost even if I hadn't
been distracted by an avalanche of thoughts regarding my
enigmatic opponent. (Why had he suddenly appeared at the
cottage? What did he want? Who was he? Why did I care who he
was?) What did bother me was that he hardly said a word that
night. He came to play chess and that's what we did. Helga, to
Anita's dismay, took up the chit-chat slack, giving new meaning
to the phrase witless prattle. (Examples: Spain is a lovely
country. The sea is beautiful. I wish the beach weren't so
rocky. The sand is grainy. It hurts to walk barefoot. How nice
to be warm in winter. Have you been to the bullfights in Malaga?
Et cetera.)
Anita, kind, generous, big-hearted Anita, was wilting under the
barrage. My wife, an M.A. in Comparative Lit. who read four
books a week -- despite her knitting obsession -- had no flair
whatsoever for small talk. Nonetheless, there were a few nuggets
of substance in Helga's painfully mindless soliloquy. The
Rautenbergs, I learned, weren't merely tourists. They had taken
a long lease on their bungalow years ago when they came to live
in Spain permanently. Helga worshipped her husband and told us
that Gerd was a commercial artist who made a living painting
"the most exquisite labels" for Rhine wine bottles for a company
in West Germany which kept him supplied with materials. I
noticed Gerd winced slightly every time his wife touched on
anything relating to their personal lives.
The Rautenbergs left as suddenly they had come. Cutting his wife
off in mid-rant, Gerd swept the chess pieces off the coffee
table into their sweet-smelling cedar box, snapped the board
shut, rose to his feet and said, affably but unsmiling,
"Goodnight." I thought the guy was pissed by my shabby
performance. Later I came to understand that sudden appearances
and abrupt departures were his style.
He disappeared through the open, glass-panelled door with poor
Helga fluttering in his wake firing salvo after salvo of
exaggerated tics over her shoulder. Before I realized that these
twitches were intended to be apologies for her husband's
unceremonious exit, I suspected she might be a loon who'd been
downing anti-psychotic medication for too long.
But that was it. No "Thanks for the coffee," no "What a pleasant
evening," not even some 1959 equivalent to "Your chess sucks,
I'm outta here." Just a curt goodnight, and he was gone.
"So...?" I said to Anita. I really wanted her angle on the guy.
"What do you mean?"
"Ah, c'mon, Anita," I whined. "What do you think about Gerd?"
"I like him," she said.
"All right. I can buy that. So do I. But, seeing as he didn't
open his mouth, what do you like about him?"
"Must I have a reason?" she asked.
"Hey, this isn't a grilling. I'm only asking for your opinion."
"Why're you so interested in him?" she said, unspooling the
half-mile-long muffler.
"Must I have a reason?" I shot back, mimicking her tone exactly.
Okay, it was a snide, self-defeating remark and I knew it would
curb any further discussion. I wasn't surprised that Anita got
up without a word and went into the bedroom, but, what the fuck,
I was angry, justifiably angry, at her airy intransigence. I was
also frustrated. Anita had a unique fix on people; I valued her
observations and I had a genuine yearning to discuss the evening
with her; I didn't want to keep this guy to myself. I'd hoped he
was a mystery we could unravel together.
Alone on the terrace, staring into a black, starless sky,
listening to the crashing waves of an exceptionally high tide, I
started thinking that maybe we'd turned some corner and were in
the early stages of a doomed marriage. Not having experienced it
before, I had no idea how a downhill slide started. But, geez,
we'd been together for less than four years, only two of them as
man and wife! The notion was too outrageous, too painful to hold
onto. Exhausted, I wrapped the thought in a sigh and let it go,
trusting it would float out into the darkness and sink to the
bottom of the sea. Then I went into the house, opened Claudius
the God and instantly fell asleep on the sofa, quite unaware
that this was the very first time Anita and I wouldn't be
spending the night in the same bed.
All in all, January wasn't a good month; February was worse.
I'd given up surf casting and started going out to sea with
Tomaso, helping him gather his nets and fishing from his boat. I
was hoping I'd have better luck in deeper water. I didn't. Late
one morning I returned from one of these expeditions and found a
letter from Olga, Peindado's wife. She said that Peinado had
died suddenly in his sleep. (I've always wondered what that's
like, to die in your sleep. Are you dreaming you're dying and
then -- I don't know -- stop? Or do you just keep on dreaming
forever? Or are you trapped in a nightmare and reach that
terrifying moment where, ordinarily, you wake up in a sweat,
panting, relieved that it was just a dream, only this time you
don't wake up and the nightmare goes on through all eternity? Or
do you never really die in your sleep? Is the proverbial
obituary entry, "died in his sleep," a euphemism for waking up
and dropping dead? Which would mean Peinado was present for his
own death. And what about Olga? She had to be there next to him,
because you don't make it through forty years of marriage
sleeping on the sofa in the living room. However it happened, it
was probably fast, and I consoled myself by thinking there's
this to be said for death: it puts the fear of dying behind
you.)
Although we'd only known Peinado a short time, I felt like I'd
lost my grandfather all over again -- the one on my mother's
side for whom I had a special love all through my childhood.
I'm certain Anita was just as upset by the news as I was, but by
then we'd reached a point in our relationship where we couldn't
even share our grief.
It was after Peinado's death that I began, unconsciously, to
assume Gerd's carriage: head up, heart down. He must have
detected the change in me because he soon became friendly in a
more conventional way. He'd show up at the cottage to play chess
two, sometimes three nights a week -- often without Helga, which
probably added six months onto our marriage. Frequently, we took
long walks along the beach to Fuengirola, a more prosperous
village where fisherman plied the waters in spacious,
broad-beamed boats, some equipped with single masts and huge,
billowing sails, others powered by motors. From these vessels,
tipped with majestic, ornately carved mastheads, they swept the
sea clean of larger fish for miles around, leaving Tomaso and
our other Carvajal friends -- in their ancient, rotting dinghies
-- little more than minnow-sized scraps.
And Gerd began talking more. Nothing intimate, nothing about his
past, just the kind of stuff you'd expect from him -- how he
hated the way the Spanish treated animals, and he thought the
English were snobby, but their kids were charming. It wasn't
much, but it was a step in the right direction.
Then, suddenly, surprisingly, I learned everything I wanted to
know about Gerd all at once. It happened on one of our chess
nights, which always took place at our cottage since they never
invited us to theirs. Helga was with him. Gerd and I had settled
down to play. (I'd begun to give him some competition, losing a
mere three out of four games.) As usual, Helga was spouting and
Anita was fuming when, an hour into the evening, I asked a
question about Thomas Mann, a question that can only be
characterized as bland, inconsequential. Gerd's response to it
led to -- what? -- a dramatic explosion? a shocking confession?
a major breakthrough? Well, yes and no. The content of what he
said was certainly dramatic, and it was a major breakthrough
given my ardent interest in him. Yet, it all came out so
offhandedly, it couldn't in any way be considered either
shocking or confessional. For a moment, I was convinced that the
only reason Gerd hadn't said anything about himself until that
night was because we hadn't asked!
"When I was seventeen," I said, "and a freshman in college, I
was a Thomas Mann nut." Followed by: "It must be great to read
him in German, huh, Gerd?" Gerd snorted and for the first time
in my presence spat out a smile, a piercingly cynical smile, and
grunted: "Thomas Mann? When I was seventeen I wasn't reading
Thomas Mann."
"Oh? How's that?" Don't ask me why, but I'd assumed Gerd was
well-educated, a guy who loved books.
"Because members of the Hitler Youth weren't encouraged to read
the books they burned," he said with that long, weary shrug of
his.
Shock? Stunned silence? A deafening lull in the conversation?
Take your pick. They all describe our response to this blunt,
prosaic, utterly stunning revelation -- and that includes Helga.
I glanced over at her. She looked as though she'd just been told
she was going to have open heart surgery without an anesthetic.
"Ah... interesting," I said after what seemed like ten minutes.
"So you were in the Hitler Youth." Like, no big deal; Germany
had the Hitler Youth, America has the Boy Scouts. Anita didn't
even bother reacting to this prize absurdity.
"He had no choice," Helga said. For a second, she was no longer
a raucous, chatty raven; she became a hawk spreading it wings
protectively over her newborn chick. Gerd glared at her. The
message was: I didn't ask you to defend me, so stop it. Helga
obligingly returned to her babbling mode -- though it was a
pretty heavy babble this time.
"It was terrible for us... the firebombings... in Hamburg....
They say it was worse than the atomic bombs in Japan. We lost
everything... everyone.... We had to live in the streets. We had
no food. We... we ate rats! Everybody was sick, and the dying...
the bodies on the street.... Mein Gott, mein Gott, I can't tell
you how horrible it was." She covered her face with her hands
and began rocking back and forth in her chair.
"Oh. So you guys knew each other during the war." I said. It was
the most idiotic, irrelevant, inappropriate statement I'd ever
made, but I was desperate to lighten things up. Ridiculous. I'd
spent two months looking for a cat to let out of the bag and now
that it had appeared, I had this urgent need to shove it back
in. There was good, old fashioned Jewish guilt at work here, as
in: How dare you invite these lovely Nazis into your home and
allow them to feel uncomfortable.
"No, no," Helga went on. "We met after the war, at a camp."
"I thought `camp' was reserved for Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals
and other undesirables," Anita said. I cringed. Anita was born a
High Episcopalian related to such heavyweights as Benjamin
Franklin and Alexander Hamilton on her father's side and the
pre-colonial divine, Jonathan Edwards, on her mother's side.
With bloodlines like hers, you don't worry much whether your
Nazi friends are ill-at-ease under your roof. Besides, Anita had
tolerated Helga's monologues long enough; she wasn't about to
defuse the situation now that she had something to dig her teeth
into.
"A refugee camp," Helga replied, staring at her shoes. "We were
displaced persons when the war ended, so that's where they put
us. We tried to emigrate to America, but -- " She stopped.
I was thinking, why not? We took in lots of Nazis after the war.
Too bad Gerd wasn't a rocket scientist, he'd have gotten in for
sure.
"--But I had tuberculosis," Gerd said. "And that disqualified
us."
"Being a Nazi wasn't enough?" Anita asked. The woman wouldn't
let up and now I started shooting her dirty looks. I mean,
c'mon, let me handle this; I'm the Jew in the crowd.
"Apparently that didn't matter...." Gerd said. There was nothing
apologetic in his voice, just profound sadness -- but, if not
for having been a Nazi, for what then?
I decided, fuck it, I'll take the direct route. Sure I like the
guy, he moves me, but pretty soon we'd be leaving Spain and I'll
probably never see him again. I had nothing to lose. And, of
course, my greedy curiosity had only been partially satisfied.
"Gerd, tell us what happened," I said, softly, sincerely. He
studied me for a long moment, then told us the following:
"I was born in the Sudetenland, an area given to Czechoslovakia
after World War I. We Sudeten Germans were a hated minority and
the Czechs treated us...well...like what you would expect. When
Hitler annexed the region, we all greeted him as a great
liberator. Of course, I joined the Hitler Youth. I was a
patriot. By the time the war started, I was a lieutenant in the
Wermacht. For anyone who cares to make the distinction, we were
the elite fighting arm of the German Army; we were soldiers, not
those hideous thugs. I fought the whole war on the Russian
front. A Panzer unit. Twice I was among a half dozen men to come
back from an engagement. At Stalingrad, the beginning of the end
for us, I was the only survivor in my section. Even our general
had been killed. Later, like so many soldiers, when we saw that
we were finished, we raced to the West. None of us wanted be
captured by the Russians. When I learned about what we had done,
I cursed God that I hadn't been killed in battle. In 1949, Helga
and I left Germany for good."
Then he got up and left.
I'm sure Helga knew about the atrocities, but was saved by her
talent for rationalizing the ugly parts of life. Gerd really
didn't know what happened, but assumed responsibility
nonetheless and paid the price: He was broken, irreversibly and
everlastingly, a man who would never mend. And I will always
believe that other than Helga and some U.S. Army interrogators,
he had never told anyone the story he told us that night in
Carvajal.
Two days later, Anita and I were startled out of our sleep (she
in the bedroom, I on the sofa) by a harrowing scream. Along with
our neighbors, we rushed to its source, Gerd and Helga's
cottage. Helga had staggered onto the beach, howling, arms
outstretched, spinning in ever-tightening circles until she
collapsed to the sand sobbing. We found Gerd in the cottage, a
rope around his neck, dangling from a beam. We cut him down and
laid him out on the floor. For the first time, Gerd was neither
stooped, hunched nor hiding within himself. In fact, he seemed
quite peaceful.
Peter Meyerson (peteram@ix.netcom.com)
----------------------------------------
Peter Meyerson spent a decade or so in magazine and book
publishing in New York, putting in four years as a writer and
editor at Time-Life Books. After freelancing in Europe for a
couple of years, he moved to Los Angeles and worked in
television and films, developing and producing Welcome Back
Kotter. He is currently working on a novel.InterText stories
written by Peter Meyerson: "Small Miracles are Better Than None"
(v7n2), "Closed Circuit" (v7n4), "A Stray Dog in Spain" (v8n3).
The Central Mechanism by Jim Cowan
======================================
....................................................................
Who's to say that if a challenging truth were revealed to us,
we'd deal with it any better than those who came before?
....................................................................
1.
----
This is not a science fiction story.
It's not any kind of story. It's a proof, and when you get to
the end you'll see what I mean.
But let's get started. I'm simply going to write down some
things that really happened to me. What's more, I'll tell you
what I found on a hard drive at the computer recycling center,
some science that makes the Copernican revolution look like a
PTA meeting. There's love, hate and death in all this too. When
I've finished, you'll see there's no other way for me to get
these ideas into your head except to pass the whole thing off as
a story. But it's not.
Anyway, here goes.
Last Sunday morning I'd slept late after a heavy Saturday night
at Trino's. Someone I'd really respected had died last week,
pointlessly; I was angry at everything, and I'd drunk even more
than usual. Around noon on Sunday I was on my way to the
computer recycling center, driving on the four-lane, farting
from last night's beer all the way up the hill to where there's
the big church at the top, First Church of Something, with one
of those signs where the pastor changes the message every week.
So I'm coming up to the top of the hill and there in the middle
of the road is this old geezer -- thin, frail, bent over with
his back to me -- placing traffic cones to close off one lane so
all the fundamentalists can get out of the church parking lot
and home to their Sunday lunch without having to wait for us
atheists to pass by.
I shift down a gear and gun the engine, because these cones make
me think about the separation of church and state. The road is
state property, right? And I'm a veteran, a guy who was willing
to put his life on the line to defend the Constitution, right?
4500 rpm.
Now you've gotta understand that a CJ-5 like mine's a real Jeep,
not one of these Wranglers that Chrysler passes off as Jeeps
today. The old CJ-5's are heavier, more powerful, and mine's got
a bikini top to keep the sun off my head because there's nothing
worse than a bad sunburn on a bald head. The top's all I need
because it's warm year-round down here and you really don't need
doors or anything, especially when you're driving an '82 like
mine with its torn seats and more mud than carpet on the floor
and only a bunch of wires where the radio used to be. The radio
got stolen when I was in Atlanta once. There's not much crime
around here, unless you count the fight that broke out when a
handful of gays and lesbians tried to march in the July 4th
parade after the Gulf War and the local patriots in the crowd
waded in, threw some punches and stole their flag.
Anyway, as I get closer to the church and the old geezer I see
that this week the church sign says: "Read the Bible: Prevent
Truth Decay," and that made me even madder because revelation's
not the way to truth and no one had said that better than the
man who'd just died.
I guess I should make things clear right now. I don't like the
fundamentalists. The fundamentalist crap that passes for
Christianity round here -- faith's the only way to get to
heaven, that sort of thing -- is what I don't like. Good works
don't count in the Bible Belt. Only faith matters, and I don't
like that because faith's the enemy of reason.
I shifted down another gear. The needle on the tach jerked up
toward the red line.
5500 rpm.
Faith means you have to believe stuff no normal person would
ever believe. Believing two and two make four isn't faith
because two and two do make four. Faith's believing two and two
make five, which is impossible to believe unless you put your
brain in a vat of liquid nitrogen and leave it at the
U-Store-U-Lock-U-Keep-the-Key out by the Interstate. Of course,
that's why faith's such a big thing. If religious stuff was
based on reason there'd be no room for faith, and a lot of
people would have to get real jobs.
The old geezer puts down the last cone and straightens up. I hit
the gas.
6200 rpm.
The reason I don't like the fundamentalists is that when I was a
kid and Mom and me had nothing to eat in the house, all the
faith in all the churches in town wasn't much use to us, but a
little charity, say a few good works in the shape of some canned
goods, sure would have been nice. That's what I mean about faith
and good works, and I learned that from my mom when she stood
looking at our empty pantry. That was before she got her
bookkeeping job at the Chevy dealership. She's been there more
than twenty years -- now ain't that something?
But back to Sunday morning. You've got the picture? The old
geezer's closed off one lane with his traffic cones. I'm doing
thirty-five, forty, and the tach's red-lined for sure. Then I
hit the horn, swerve a little, and take out all the cones,
ker-chunk, thwack, ker-chunk, thwack, every last one of 'em, and
I almost take out the old geezer too. I hear his yell above the
roar of the motor. Nice Doppler shift as I pass real close to
him. Very satisfying.
And when I looked back in the rearview mirror he'd made it to
the sidewalk and was standing there clutching at his chest with
one hand and shaking his fist at me. I knew he couldn't get my
tag number because I do a little off-road driving in the
mountains and the mud, and I never, ever, wash the Jeep.
A white-haired guy ran out of the church parking lot to help
him. I only caught a glimpse but right away I recognized Mr.
White Hair because I'd taken a seminar from him -- Humanities
for Scientists -- compulsory for all us nerds. Mr. White-Hair
was Professor William Allan, Dean of Arts and Science at South
Tennessee State which is where I go to school.
I wasn't surprised to see him. Allan's a deacon or something at
that church.
At school he's a rigid tyrant, humiliating students and so on.
He's so mean that someone started a malicious rumor that he's
gay. That was probably a student he'd flunked, but it could've
been someone on the faculty because Allan's made enemies there
too, not least because he's chair of the school's Publications
Committee. Or maybe it was just some guy he'd slept with.
(Snicker.)
Sorry about the "snicker." I usually write e-mail, not
literature. Which reminds me that before we get started with the
real stuff I should tell you a little about me, in case you get
the idea that I'm some kind of a nut. My name is Carl Edwards
and I'm twenty-five years old, a graduate of our own Davy
Crockett High School and the U.S. Army. Don't ask about the Army
-- that was only so I'd have the money to go to school, which I
got, and now I'm a computer science major right here at STSU.
Let me tell you a little more about my good side, so you
understand I'm not just a guy whose idea of a good time is to
flatten traffic cones on a Sunday morning. You know about SETI?
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence? Radio telescopes
scanning the sky, looking for signals from alien civilizations?
Frank Drake started it years ago, using the big radio telescope
at Green Bank, West Virginia, and now lots of people have tried.
No one's found a signal yet -- nothing but noise from the sky.
One problem is there's a lot of sky. Another is no one knows
what frequency aliens might choose to transmit to us. So there's
a lot of sky and a lot of bandwidth to cover, but the biggest
problem is that there's no funding.
SETI's expensive. A state-of-the-art search would cost about as
much as, say, one attack helicopter. In other words, it's not
_that_ expensive. The problem's that most people, especially
people in control, don't want to hear about nonhuman
intelligence. It might be more intelligent than them and that's
threatening, and then there's quite a few fundamentalists in
Congress who say there's no point in looking because the Bible
doesn't mention life anywhere else except on Earth and the Bible
can't be wrong. At least that's what Dean Professor William
Allan told us in his seminar right after the big debate last
year on creation science and evolution.
Anyway, the point is there's a lot of data to analyze, billions
and billions, so to speak, (except Carl Sagan never said that
until after Saturday Night Live made fun of him for saying it)
and there's no money to do the job.
This is where I fit in. I'm part of this project on the Internet
where you download free software that runs on your PC as a
screen saver and analyzes SETI data while your computer's doing
nothing else. When you've finished your chunk of data you upload
your results and download another few megabytes of signals from
the skies and off you go again for a week or two. With thousands
of people doing this all over the planet, you get the processing
power of a supercomputer for free. Clever, huh? Anyway, I'm
running this software, and I'm telling you this so you can see
that I'm not some kind of a nerd. I'm a truly social being,
doing my bit for the community just like everyone else.
Sure, maybe I won't be the one to find the first signal buried
in the hiss of the galactic background noise. But I know, I
absolutely know for sure, that sooner or later someone will.
How do I know? Well, not because little gray men landed their
flying saucer outside my mom's house and came into my bedroom
and performed sexual experiments on me while I was asleep. It's
what I found on the hard drive. What was on that drive changes
absolutely everything.
For example, it settles the church and state thing once and for
all, but not in the way you'd think. I know, I absolutely know
for sure that there's no separation between church and state.
If any fundamentalists have read this far, which I doubt: Don't
you get all worked up and say, "I told you so!" I've got to warn
you, you're not going to like what I'm going to tell you one
tiny bit. Not only does my stuff remove you wackos from the
center of the universe once and for all, it's so much more
elegant, more beautiful, more complete, that there's no
absolutely no doubt at all that I'm right.
Here's another fact about me, sort of a personal note so you'll
see I'm a real person. I like to roll up a paper towel or some
other scratchy tissue at one corner, making something like a
very thin cone, and stick it in my ear to clean out the wax. I
love the way the tissue scrapes against the hairs inside my ear
canal. You should try it; it feels real good so long as you
don't jam the paper in too far and hit your eardrum.
So now you know everything about me and you can tell this is not
a story made up by some writer, because no writer would ever
think of mentioning earwax in a story about physics.
Bet you thought you'd caught me there, but that last line was
just a trick. Like I said, this is not a story. But it _is_
about physics. So let's get on back to Sunday.
The computer recycling center's in our dying downtown, between a
pawn shop and the water-heater factory. Across the street
there's a topless bar, but I don't like that sort of thing. The
building's an old machine shop, a high ceiling, and ten thousand
square feet of space with windows all down one side that look
out over the parking lot where the men who make the water
heaters park their pickup trucks.
It's a charity founded by Rose, the wife of the
local-area-network supervisor at STSU. She's short, with mousy
hair and a bad perm, and lips that remind me of a chimp -- not
that I'd tell her that to her face. She and her husband Thaddeus
are members of the ACLU, Amnesty International, the Sierra Club
and so on, not that they make a big thing of it. I met Thad at
school and he introduced me to Rose. Like Thad, Rose's an
atheist and so for Rose good works are everything. Thad's a
mountain man, respectful and sharp, with a big beard, and the
ability to tell truth from fiction that comes from spending a
childhood in the high hills, away from civilization, and always
knowing that, if civilization doesn't suit him, he can go right
back to his little farm in the mountains any time he likes.
I go to the center one or two evenings a week and late on Sunday
mornings. People bring in their old computers and we give them a
receipt so they can take a tax deduction for a thousand dollars,
which no one in their right mind would ever really pay them for
their junk. We test each component -- motherboard, memory chips,
video card, drive controller and drives, sound card if there is
one, keyboard and monitor if the machine came in with them. We
strip out whatever's broken, cannibalize other machines and
stick in what we need to assemble a working computer. I learned
how to do all this in the Army.
OK, so you've only got a 486-33 with 8 MB of RAM, and not a
Pentium 200 with 128 MB, but to some kid who lives in the
hollers out past County Line Road, or down by the brick works, a
486-33 looks pretty good when the alternative is nothing. We
give a few away to organizations too, not-for-profits. All they
do is word-processing and maybe run Quicken, and what we've got
is fine for that and you can't beat the price.
I gave the animal shelter a real nice old laser printer last
week. People don't spay and neuter here in the sticks; they
think it's cruel, or against God's will or something, so the
shelter puts down eight thousand strays a year by injecting the
blue death into their veins. The shelter's out on Reservoir
Road, on the way to the dump, and they need all the help they
can get. My mom volunteers at the shelter, that's how I know
this stuff. Sometimes I help her and take the dogs for a walk.
They love it. They're such social animals.
Now that I think about it, so am I. What with SETI and computer
recycling and scooping poop at the animal shelter, I do a lot
for our society.
Anyway, that Sunday morning, feeling a little better after
trashing the cones, I arrive at the center and Rose says to me,
"Hi Carl. STSU sent us a machine at the end of the week. Check
it out. They said it's a Pentium."
As I mentioned, we got old machines, even 286s.
"Why'd anyone give us a Pentium?" I said. "Particularly the
state." We almost never get anything from the state. They have
strict rules about getting rid of unwanted state property.
"I dunno, honey," Rose said. "But I'd really appreciate you just
checking it out for me."
I started right away because I had my own reasons for wanting to
examine this surprising Pentium very, very, carefully. There
wasn't any monitor or keyboard, just this case that didn't have
a scratch on it. I took off the cover and yes, there was a
Pentium processor on the motherboard. After plugging in a power
cable, spare keyboard and the best monitor we had in the center
at the time, I switched on the machine.
Turning on the computer told me that the power supply, video
card, motherboard and memory were all intact. Then the machine
sat there, doing nothing -- I didn't even get a C:> prompt.
Someone had deleted everything on the hard drive. Not that
that's unusual on the machines we get. In fact, that's what you
should do, and more, otherwise you might as well leave your
filing cabinet in the street for anyone to poke around in.
That's because computers only delete a drive's File Allocation
Table, or FAT, so that they can't find any deleted files -- but
all those files are still on the disk until you write something
else on top of them. It's like ripping the table of contents
from a book and thinking you've destroyed the whole book. Lots
of utilities will recreate the FAT for you, (actually there's a
second copy of the FAT, so usually it's real easy) and then you
can recover them all.
I booted DOS from a floppy and inspected the hard drive to see
what was on it. Nothing. Then I stuck in another disk and ran an
Undelete utility. Sure enough, there were thousands of deleted
files on the hard drive, waiting to be undeleted.
"Everything OK?" Rose asked.
"I'm not sure about the hard drive," I said, stalling. "Give me
a few more minutes." She had to go out to Radio Shack to get
some connectors or something, and while she was out I ripped out
the hard drive and stuck it in the Jeep. I installed the biggest
drive I could find from our stock of drives we'd taken from
otherwise useless machines, installed Windows 95 and finished
the rest of the tests. The machine was in perfect condition,
ready to be shipped out to some lucky person. I left a note for
Rose that said the machine was OK now, that I was taking the
drive home to run some more tests on it, and went home. I needed
more time, and some privacy, for what I had in mind.
My room at home's real neat, just like in the army. There's a
single bed and a big desk with my computer, a really fast
Pentium with a huge hard drive and lots of memory. I keep
everything else either in the desk drawers, or my filing
cabinet, or the shelves. My clothes are in the closet at the end
of the hall, next to Mom's room.
You can tell a real geek right away because the case is always
off his computer. Too many screws to fiddle with when you know
you'll be opening the thing up again in an hour or two to tweak
something else. In five minutes I had the new drive hooked up.
Then I copied the contents of the STSU drive to my own giant
hard drive. Inside my computer was the soul, or at least the
mind, of the other computer.
I reformatted the STSU drive to _really_ destroy everything on
it, and dropped it off at the center the next day and told Rose
it was working fine.
Did I steal anything? If so, what? You worry about that if you
want to, but while you're worrying I'm going to fill you in on a
few things that happened a year ago.
Last fall the Philosophy Department sponsored a big public
debate on Evolution. One of the young faculty wanted to chew up
and spit out a creation scientist. Over a thousand people
showed. A stage was set up at one end of the gym. There were
tables and water pitchers for the speakers, that sort of thing.
The rest of the gym floor was covered with chairs and there were
microphones in the two aisles for the audience.
I got a seat on an aisle, close to one of the mikes. The crowd
filled the bleachers too, and everything was very bright under
the arc lights they use for basketball games. Actually, the
whole thing was a lot like a basketball game because the
audience came strictly to root for one side or the other. I
doubt all the arguing changed anyone's opinion, but that's how
people are. The debate was the usual stuff. The creationist's
main argument, coupled with some bad science, was that
evolution's not proven, it's only a theory. The philosopher
moved slowly and methodically, destroying the creationist's
arguments, but the whole thing was a little tedious.
There's more people from up north moving into this city, what
with the high-tech corridor out by the airport and the big malls
that've killed the downtown, so the crowd was pretty evenly
split. We heard all about radiocarbon dating, the fossil record,
and the inerrancy of the Bible, but it wasn't really a debate,
just two people talking different languages: reason and faith.
Toward the end of the evening a man came up to one of the public
mikes. He was in his early thirties, blond and with a very neat
mustache. He had the slightly exaggerated features of a movie
star, but everything was just a little crooked, so while he was
no use to Hollywood, he did have a peculiar charm that was good
enough for the real world.
"I'm a scientist," the man said. "In science, all knowledge is
tentative. Everything is a theory until a better idea comes
along. Then we use the better idea. So by definition we're
skeptics and we agree with the creationists when they say the
theory of evolution will be history when someone comes up with
something better. But I have a question for those who believe in
creation. If something better came along, would you agree that
creationism is wrong? In other words, are you willing, at least
in theory, to change your beliefs?"
Of course, that was the end of their masquerade as scientists.
He had them, and the audience knew it. The fundamentalists were
real quiet while the rest of us laughed and then cheered. Some
other people from the audience had to have their say on one side
or the other, but really the evening was over after this man
asked his rhetorical question. I asked the coed sitting next to
me who he was. "Tom Thomas, from the Department of Physics.
Isn't he cute?" He was, and I decided on the spot to sign up for
one of his classes after Christmas.
On the way out I passed Dean Allan talking to the comptroller,
Stott, a thin man, a fundamentalist, who did a lot of Allan's
dirty work for him around the campus. That's how Allan exercised
a lot of his power, through the budget process. Allan was
saying, "Before I believe in evolution, Our Lord Jesus Christ
will have to come down from Heaven Himself and tell me the Bible
is wrong."
Stott nodded sympathetically. Allan knew a lot of the state
Regents who make all the senior administrative appointments in
the state schools and Stott knew that Allan knew the Regents and
that's why Stott... well, you and I know that's how things work.
As for Jesus telling Allan the Bible was wrong, well, it could
happen, I thought to myself, and hoped I would be there to see
Allan's face when it did. I said nothing of course, just smirked
in the darkness on my way to the Jeep. If I was testifying in
court and you asked me to describe Allan's mood that night, I
would say he was very, very angry. Why? Because the night's rout
of the creationists had been allowed to happen on his turf.
But then, he was an angry man. Anyone who's the deacon of a
church that sponsors a hell-house on Halloween and shows kids a
coffin with a body inside it that's supposed to be a gay man who
died of AIDS ain't filled with charity. Someone told me Allan
said that Christianity wasn't about tolerance, it was about sin,
and the Bible said homosexuality was perverse, wrong.
Did you know that the first Halloween hell-house was in Roswell,
New Mexico? Right where that UFO was supposed to have crashed in
1947. Does that mean anything? I don't think so, but I'm always
on the lookout for coincidences.
No matter. I registered for Tom Thomas's most popular class:
Overview of Twentieth-Century Physics for Non-Physicists. It was
held in a sterile room with painted gray cinder block walls and
a wall-to-wall blackboard at the front. Tom strode back and
forth, tossing a piece of chalk in his hand. He wore chinos and
a gray turtleneck and he moved his trim body in way that
suggested he was fit and well-muscled.
"There's physics," he said, "and then there's the rest of
science."
Physics was all about matter and energy, space and time, the
stuff from which the universe is made. Chemistry, biology and so
on were all derived from the principles of physics. Understand
physics and you could compute the rest of science, at least in
theory, and if you believed that mind was nothing more than a
manifestation of certain complex arrangements of matter such as
the human brain then you could explain everything, if only you
knew your physics. Of course, it might take a few billion years
to derive, say, the total subjective experience of a Rolling
Stones concert from first principles of quantum mechanics and
general relativity, but the class got the idea.
The problem, as Tom explained in that first class, was that
physics was obviously incomplete, which is a nice way to say
that current knowledge is not quite right. The two great
theories of the twentieth century -- quantum mechanics and
general relativity -- were contradictory and, especially in the
case of quantum mechanics, incomprehensible. Quantum mechanics
works, but what does it mean? Energy is a wave that spreads to
fill the whole universe -- or it's a particle confined to a tiny
region of space. Which one it is depends on the experiment you
choose to do. An electron may or may not be in a particular
place. It's not anywhere until you do an experiment and find it.
And when you find it, you might instantaneously affect another
electron at the other end of the galaxy.
The most tested theory in the history of science, correct to ten
decimal places, reduces the world to a series of random events
that require a conscious observer to know what really happened
and seem to be linked instantaneously to other events somewhere
else.
Tom ended the class with a quotation from the physicist Wigner:
"It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics
without reference to the consciousness.... The very study of the
external world led to the conclusion that the content of the
consciousness is the ultimate reality." At the time, I didn't
pick up on Tom's burning interest in this last phrase.
2.
----
Later, Tom talked about the other great enigma of twentieth
century physics, the appearance of order in the universe. Chaos
gives rise to simple systems and simple systems engender more
complex systems. "While you're walking down to your local bar on
a starry night, look up at the sky and wonder. You're looking
back in time, to when the universe was nothing but clouds of hot
gas, and when you get to the bar, go inside and look around." He
laughed. "You might think you've moved from order to chaos, but
you've just seen how the universe has evolved from the random
movements of atoms in ancient clouds of gas into wonderful,
intricate life. It's moved from blind chaos to beautiful
complexity." He taught physics as if he was a poet, which he
was. He was a poet of science, and I loved him for it.
Trino's. That's where I really got to know Tom Thomas. In a bar.
I'm not talking about the topless bar across from the recycling
center, I'm talking about _our_ bar. Straights ignore Trino's.
Trino's is where the gay community struggled with what to do
about AIDS in the early eighties, where they planned the Great
July 4th Parade-In of 1991, where they went to drink after the
big fight over the flag. Trino's is the one place in town where
we can be ourselves. Not that it's a leather bar or anything
like the bars they have in Atlanta; it's just an ordinary
neighborhood bar except the people in there are gay and lesbian.
Anyway, that's where I really got to know Tom, and now he's
dead, hit-and-run in the early morning while he was out running
on a country road. A random event, atoms banging together in a
primeval cloud of gas.
I didn't have class on Monday afternoons that semester, so I
spent the afternoon in my room, examining the contents of the
hard drive. There were twenty thousand files on the drive, a lot
of stuff, but most of it was routine -- word-processor files,
calculations and graphs, letters, papers, quizzes and tests, the
sort of thing any professor has on their drive, archives of
articles from the online versions of Physical Reviews, and
several folders crammed with shareware utilities that claim to
make work easier but in most cases aren't really necessary. And
there were two folders that turned out to be very important. One
was named PGP and the other QC.
PGP first. I knew what was in there, of course. Pretty Good
Privacy is an encryption program written by a guy called Phil
Zimmerman who arranged to have it made available for free on the
Internet and the Feds threatened to prosecute him for exporting
munitions. So you get the idea -- it's a dynamite piece of
software. That's all you need to know about how well this
program works, but if you're a geek like me, then you'll want to
know exactly how it does work.
The basic idea's simple. Get a very large prime number, multiply
it by another very large prime number and you get a very, very
large number that has only two factors. You can use these three
numbers to create two related keys for encrypting messages. You
make one key public and tell everyone to use it when they send
you e-mail, and you keep the other key very, very secret because
that is the only way anyone can decrypt messages encrypted with
the public key. This is important -- you can't decrypt messages
with the public key, only the private key. If you make the keys
large enough, there isn't enough computing power on the whole
planet to break the code because the only way to find the
factors of a very, very large number, I mean one with thousands
of digits, is to do billions and billions of divisions, which
would take years, decades, or even centuries. So PGP isn't
unbreakable; it's actually easy to see how to break it, but
breaking it takes an impossibly long time.
Now imagine this in the hands of terrorists. That's why PGP
looked like a munition to the government. Of course, the
mathematics was available to anyone. Anyone, anywhere, could
have cobbled together some code and do what Phil Zimmerman did.
Once an idea's out there, it's out there. But more later of the
idea that ideas that are out there have a life of their own. Now
back to Tom.
In class Tom mentioned the importance of consciousness in
physics, but it was in Trino's that he explained to me just why,
in Wigner's words, "The content of consciousness is the ultimate
reality."
As usual, he began with a story.
"Once, when I was a graduate student in New York," he said, "I
was invited to a party to celebrate a christening in an Italian
family. It was a wet Sunday in November and the party was a big
one in a big house on Long Island. In addition to the baby, who
played a very small role in the party, there was a pianist, a
student from Juliard, who played the piano in a room at one end
of the house with lots of windows that looked over the garden.
He played all through the party, effortlessly. After an hour or
so, and few glasses of wine, the men in the family gathered
round the piano and started to sing. They sang to celebrate the
baby and their family, and as an affirmation that they were
alive. They sang alone and they sang together, they sang Italian
folk songs and operatic arias in Italian and Spanish about
pretty girls and love and longing and sadness and joy. It was a
celebration of their past and a recognition of the uncertainty
and the promise of the future. I sat by one of the tall windows
and the men's voices filled the seamless space around me and
inside me and I thought about quantum mechanics."
I must have laughed because he said, "That's not as ridiculous
as it sounds. At moments like that, which are the most wonderful
moments of life, there is an overwhelming sense of belonging, of
oneness, of wholeness, and these are glimpses of the ultimate
underlying reality. There are tantalizing hints of that unity in
quantum mechanics. For instance, Bells' Theorem describes a
fundamentally new kind of togetherness, undiminished by spatial
or temporal separation, a mingling of distant things, a mingling
that reaches instantly across the galaxy as forcefully as it
reaches across a sodden garden or across a room. The mathematics
is such that, even when we replace quantum mechanics with a
deeper understanding of reality, Bells' supraluminal non-local
reality will survive because this is truly the way things are."
This was the first time I realized that Tom was working on
something to replace quantum mechanics, the theory that was
almost right.
"In quantum mechanics, there is no reality until reality is
measured by someone. The idea that there's nothing there until
an intelligent ape from a small planet at the edge of one of ten
trillion galaxies makes a measurement is a foolish idea. Someone
or something else is watching, observing, making measurements
all the time. That's why there's a reality in the first place."
Abruptly, he changed focus. "In San Francisco, the cable cars
are pulled up and down the hills by cables that run in a slot
under the street. The machinery to drive all the cables is in a
single building called the Cable Car Barn. You can go there and
look down on the machinery from the tourist balcony. You see
motors and huge pulleys, cables are sliding through the air, the
place smells of oil and ozone, and the loud hum of the mechanism
tells you that everything's working perfectly, that miles away
the cars are climbing California Street or rattling down to
Ghirardelli Square.
"But the universe is not like the Cable Car Barn. John Wheeler,
who was a physicist with a remarkable imagination, said that
there is no such thing as the glittering central mechanism of
the universe to be seen behind a glass wall. `Not machinery, but
magic, may be the treasure that is waiting.' Well, Carl, I
intend to find that central magical mechanism."
That's when he told me he'd already written a paper, a
speculative essay, on the role of consciousness in science. This
paper was the real start of the conflict with Dean Allan, chair
of the university's Publications Committee.
Tom's basic idea was simple. Quantum mechanics has no meaning
without a conscious observer; in general relativity each
conscious observer interprets time and space differently. The
universe is moving from chaos to complexity, from matter to
mind, and mind is an essential part of the two great theories of
physics. That was his first point.
He pointed out next that truth and beauty seem to have a life of
their own in the two worlds of science and of art. Both truth
and beauty are intrinsic, and essential, to the human
experience, but science has nothing formal to say about beauty
and art has nothing formal to say about truth, although science
is beautiful and the best art is truthful.
Finally, he said, scientists -- biologists, physicists,
philosophers -- were all skirting around the issue of
consciousness. They wanted to deal with its central role but
couldn't address it because they had no clear hypothesis to
test, no research agenda to pursue. Tom wanted to propose a
hypothesis that would link physics and biology and philosophy
and everything else. Here's his argument:
The universe is made of quanta of matter/energy and space/time.
That's all there is. Tiny bits of inanimate stuff. And a couple
of force fields -- gravity and another field that may be a
combination of electromagnetism and some other forces that work
within the nucleus. "Here we are, squishy molecular machinery
made of atoms that are themselves merely twists in the fabric of
space-time; we're assembled and fuelled by the energy of
sunlight, which is rain of massless photons; and from the ground
we stand on comes a tide of neutrinos that has swept through the
earth as if it didn't exist. Out of this flux of nothingness
comes the realization that, say, E=mc^2, and this knowledge is
beautiful. Where does this thought come from? There has to be
more to this than random torrents of energy surging pointlessly
through space and time.
"Our theories are wrong," said Tom. "Incomplete because our
assumptions are incomplete. There is more to the basic stuff of
the universe that matter/energy and space/time and a couple of
forces. Each quantum of stuff has more than mass/energy and
location/momentum, it also has a quantum of consciousness." This
simple idea, which Tom called his Theory of Quantum
Consciousness, cast a lot of problems in a new light.
Right away, you're probably thinking this is a load of bull, but
bear with me. You're going to see that this idea is not as dumb
as it sounds.
First of all, quanta of consciousness, like quanta of matter,
energy, electrical charge and magnetism, are so small that you
don't notice them on a daily basis. You're totally unaware of
the single charge on an electron, but when you're hit by
lightning, the charge on a few trillion electrons gets your
attention.
So the quantum of consciousness associated with every elementary
particle is way too small to notice. But these quanta combine in
subtle ways and Tom proposed some properties that characterized
the combination of quanta of consciousness. Here's the whole
proposition as he might have scribbled it on the back of an
envelope at Trino's: