Arcadio (6 page)

Of course they blew off the crown of Joel's blond head. And right before my mother's eyes while she stood in her appointed place looking in Joel's face as he come towards her. He fell at her feet and she fell upon him—and all the bank money that had fallen out—and held him to her. You've blown his brains out she screamed to the Police. Get out of the way lady, the Police shouted to her, you're cradling a dangerous criminal wanted over the entire Valley of the Moon. Well he's not wanted any more my mother said she said, as they pulled her up from the crownless Joel. In her bosom was a hundred-dollar bill and two twenties which she'd slipped there. Said she saw Joel's blue eyes looking green at her through the red blood. Do you know this robber? the Police asked her. No, I'm in the nature of a Good Samaritan, said she told them. Then please go on your way, he's beyond any Good Samaritan, let go of him lady.

That's how my mother Chupa started the next piece of her life, bloodstained with a blond man's blood and with one hundred and forty dollars of stolen bank cash in her bosom in far up Sonoma County in the Valley of the Moon in California, I don know what town. Maybe Vallejo I don know even if it is in the Valley of the Moon or even if tis a town may be a valley, Vallejo is all she told me, Vallejo. My mother was afraid to try to use the one-hundred-dollar bill for fear of being suspicioned and so she kept it in her bosom. The forty dollars got her started with clean clothes and off on her own—to where? Where was she to go, where was my mother to go, so alone? With another man, of course. Who popped right up before the day was over. By nightfall he'd had his hand in her bosom and fingering the hundred-dollar bill. Senseless because a man had his fingers on the nipples of her breast, poor fool of lonesomeness and sex that my mother was, she lost the hundred-dollar bill in that manner, in the fashion that I have just told you.

Coming back to her senses she spied through the hotel window the man hurrying away on the street, and within a flash she was down after him and saw him enter a bar and run in and caught him as he lifted a premium beer to his red lips that recently put her momentarily into a blackout with their kisses. Why don we spend the hundred-dollar bill together,
Señor
, my mother said to him. Or I'll call the cops to throw your butt into the jail of this town you cheap swindler. Her eyes flashed fire at him, I'm quite sure. Baby, said the man, whose name was Joe Schwartzman, what greater pleasure. I was just going to the phone to phone your room and invite you down for a drink at my courtesy. I'll show you courtesy, my mother said, and made as if to go for his throat. And in this way Joe Schwartzman and my mother joined up together. They had each other's number right from the start. A gentle blond robber whose piece of head was blown off the size of a Yarmulke, whose piece of head was dropped like a Yarmulke into my mother's lap, provided Chupa with the means—a hundred-dollar bill—to discover a dark Jewish lover. Life is truly an unusual journey,
verdad? Un viaje maravilloso. A
crazy trip that ofttimes knows not its own name and we forget we are in the hands of God.

Joe Schwartzman was a hot young Jew with good lips who knew how to blackout a woman with lip sucks and tongue lickings. My mother Chupa said never before or after had she ever known such a sex and heat as resided in Joe Schwartzman's fingers lips and sexual member—not to mention his horned tongue, said Joe Schwartzman had a little horn on the end of his tongue. My God, revolting, I cried. You try it you'll see, my mother said. Well it's a dead man's tongue now, so why argue, I told her. And said that Joe Schwartzman had the combination wordflow of a brilliant college professor and a door-to-door salve salesman—a man of such persuasion could convince you that
Jesucristo
was a redheaded woman. He was on the road with Lorco Products, a drummer from town to town of pretty kitchen things. He would give demonstrations in women's homes and, in a kind of a show, sell these women Lorco Products. My mother said she didn't have to mention what she imagined Joe Schwartzman offered—and awarded when he could—as fringed benefits to the women. God knows, she said, women in small towns. Not to mention Joe Schwartzman in a house full of women in a small—or big, for that matter—town. But she had the one hundred dollars on him and it was his debt of this big bill to her that—she honestly said she believed—kept his horned tongue back of his teeth
most
of the time, kept him from any monkey business and true to her—
most
of the time, she said.

Talk about a talker, my mother Chupa talking could charm a rattlesnake to rattle
La Paloma
. Wait a minute I sometimes had to say, Chupita, could we have a moment's silence?
Que tienes, muchachito?
she'd ask. You sick?
Chico chiquito!
And she'd grab me to her and clutch me.
Que tienes? Que tienes?
Shhhh, she'd whisper, shhhh, as though
I
was the one to be quietened, and gently rock me. Why did I cry when she rocked me, why did I cry upon that breast of my mother that I'd sought all these years in so many places, cursing her with my vile tongue—that breast that smelled of my mother's smell which had been captured in my nose for my lifetime, only my mother had that smell in her breast that's what I'd been waiting for,
madre sagrada, madre diabólica, madre mia
.

Anyway, my mother Chupa told me that Joe Schwartzman had sold his last dishpan the day he met her, though he did not yet know this—nor did she. For on that very midnight she found him making love to a local housewife, standing up, in the corner of a parking lot and stabbed him in the back on his forward movement, said the reflex of his muscles went on after she sunk into his lung the blade of a knife she carried against treachery and his cry of death was his cry of love, two stabbings one of love and one of death; and the housewife fell over onto his face-up body still hunching and wriggling and my wicked mother Chupa said to him, better get it quick it's goin to be your last one and said the housewife leapt up and went crazed and ran around the parking lot howling in the dark. My mother confessed this killing to me and her teeth gnashed white in the darkness with an old vicious jealousy, but her tears dropped hot on me when she told that she was never apprehended by the authorities, but God apprehended me, she told me, God caught me and only He knows my debt, God knows; and she my mother Chupa was a heaving vessel of mixed feelings and sank into her lightless fringe like a musty hen, both wanting my sympathy and daring me to give it to her. I let my mother alone until she struggled through the tempest of her feelings. After which she chanted a long bunch of words in the Mescan speech of her forefathers and which translated told me that I had a half brother in this world somewhere, given her by Joe Schwartzman's wild loving on the only day she knew him and born of her, under evil airs of murder and guilt and suffering, nine months later in a jail in Missoura where she had been locked up seven months pregnant not for the crime of killing but for stealing the green-fringed, diamond-tipped dress that hid her seven-months child; under a swaddle cover of soft fringe and silver shiners this child swelled up his mother and mine until he burst out of her in her cell of the Missoura jail—she never told what town—to the surprise of the jailer and the judge, an old drunken fool with a harelip but he let her go free, she said;
mi madre
brought this bursting child out of her with her own hands, in secret in the night. The name of my brother that my mother gave him when he was born was Tomasso. She left Tomasso in the Missoura jailhouse for adoption and he was brought up in a Missoura jailhouse in an unnamed town adopted by the jailer and his wife. My God, I called, I have somewhere a brother. And you have a dead Jewish stepfather, stop grieving over completely lost things she told me, stop taking everything I tell you so hard, I want to forget it all. But my half-brother Tomasso is not lost, I said, and for God's sake who are
you
to tell me to stop taking everything so hard. And besides I am not taking it so hard I am only listening attentively as I have been accustomed to for years in the Show. But now I will have to begin to wonder how to find Tomasso. Why don't you look in Missoura? Chupa asked me. Because I am sure he has excaped by now, I says to her. And anyways, where is Missoura? Don't ask me, Chupa said. I was only in jail in it. How do you know that Tomasso is not dead like his Jewish father and besides how many can you look for, father, half brother, mother? Well, I found you, I told my crazy mother. Who answered I found
you
. In a Sideshow. It was my home, I spat back; something
you
never gave me. It was a Show, she spat at me. For deformities. Fake deformities. What is this world, I cried out,
what in damnation is this world?
It was not an
act
, I said, pulling back from what was going to be a fight between us. It was a cheap act and one to humiliate your mother, my mother shouted, until I came to get you out, and I shouted, it was not an act! And she cried humiliation! Cheap humiliation she screamed from a face that was wild with her feelings of fear and self-hate and run off a ways and turned her face from me and cried into her hands, bitterly and for herself, for all her life that she had just told me—and for more than I could know, but not for me. And while she sobbed her lonesome anguish, cut away, again, from the world, and by her own hands had done it, again, cut herself away, with one hand, you wan hear it, I opened my pants and with both hands pulled down my pants to my ankles and lay back.
Look
, I said softly,
Mama look
, I said softly with softness and love, without blame or anger, I don know why it wasn't anger but I guess because it was the work of God, I said
Mama look
. I am revealed. My mother turned, whimpering, and gazed upon me lying revealed in the firelight; and then she came closer and looked down upon me and then my mother Chupa stepped back from me, and back, stepped back whispering O
Dios O Dios O Dios
and vanished into the trees, someplace way back, and the night was silent, where was my mother was she praying was she going to steal back and kill me? And then I heard her crying. Mama, I called, why you cryin; don cry for me. I already cried enough, God knows, tears enough to fill a hundred buckets. Nobody ever cried for me but me and tears enough I've cried to fill a bowl to wash your long black hair; don cry for me. There was no answer. And I laid on there, as alone as ever; quiet, though, now; and finally revealed the final mystery; the final mystery that Old Shanks could never get from me in the Show; and now felt older and more of myself, don know why exactly; and laid on, laid on awake and under the eternal stars, naked as God made me and revealed to Him; and the night passed. You wan hear it.

At daybreak I built a fire, and my mother Chupa come back, smelling the fire. We was quiet and then I said to her quietly, and loving her, what'd you expect, the
Dallas Morning News?
And then to my surprise I felt myself breaking into crying, so full, for the whole story of my mother, and for my whole story, all what happened to me, for the whole troubled thing, our lives, that just suddenly drownded me down like heavy water over me. Then my mother swept like a wave of water into her sobbing and we cried deep and full together,
lágrimas de dolor lágrimas dolorosas, negro es el color de nuestras tristezas
, like the Mescan song says. I'm sorry for your black life of shit, I told my mother, rubbing off tears with the back of my hand for some reason laughing now.

I've had some good of it, I heard her say while she begun to comb down her black bitter hair.

Don you think I haven't out of mine? I said.
Corazón
…? Sweetheart?

You seem to be getting ready to go someplace? I asked, sensing the old abandonment, the way she used to brush her hair before she went out.

To relieve myself, she said.

I never saw my mother Chupa again. You wan hear it? Twas later said to me by somebody that twas the sin of uncovering, of revealing, that put a curse on my mother Chupa—or another one, seems to me, she was born already with a curse—as in the White Bible when Noah was looked upon uncovered and a curse fell upon the viewer of his nakedness—his very son. Sent my mother wandering away, the uncovering of my nakedness. God knows, I don't. But although I will be telling you of hunts for her and espectations of her you might as well know now that never again did I find my mother Chupa. That morning by the fire I waited and waited long after the fire had sunken into ashes and cold. But
mi madre
Chupa never did come back to me. To relieve herself indeed, well she relieved herself that morning, relieved herself of me forever. That was her swan song with me, though I did not know it then.

Since it was my mother cause me to excape from the Show to meet her then run away from me again, I decided to remain excaped and search for Tomasso who had swollen up my mother and burst out of her in a jail in Missoura, I do not even know which town. In searching for my half brother, I might just come upon my mother Chupa now excaped from me; and, who knew, might even come upon my father Hombre somewhere, running his long member up somebody; or sitting blue and old somewhere with a bottle of beer. Maybe I could bring us all together.

I
HUNTED
THEN
Tomasso. But some feeling rises up into my head from the old White Bible to tell you about. Did you know about the time they were fishing, right after
Jesucristo
had been crucified some of his disciples was afishing, and a stranger on the shore called out to them have you got anything to eat?
Tiene algo de comer?
Well this rises up out of
La Biblia
to me. When one of the fishermen saw who it was he was so excited that he jumped out of the boat and run through the water to him. Twas Peter,
querido Pedro
. What love they had! How glad they were to see this friend that had been nailed and killed and put in the tomb and then come up to life only a few days before. That is a wondrous story about the beautiful man that was believed now to be dead, the very man that had already told these fishermen insomuch as you do it to the least of these you do it to me. Some days after they had killed him,
Jesucristo
come to the shore and asked for something to eat. I think
Jesucristo
is hungry, too,
compadre
. That he needs us all to feed him, too. Oh I would be very happy to give
Him
something to eat, and oh I think that probably I have given Him my whole body, that I have turned over my whole body of flesh to Him. That is, if He will have it. But I think,
amigo
, that if the Holy Spirit that I told you about cared so much about
el rey orgulloso
that ate grass, about Daniel among the
feroz
lions and about the paralyzed man that walked after thirty-eight years of paralysis and got arrested, and about oh so many others like you and me with holy wishes and wild feelings, I think, then, that that Holy Spirit,
Espíritu Santo
, would care as much for me, an older runaway at large in the world and looking for God and for his mother. Because you see,
Señor
, I live in a dangerous possibility of giving myself to myself,
comprendes?
Is possible. Sometimes in true love, tender and soft, other times,
Señor, Señora, Señorita
, in plain wild
chingando
, that is the word for it,
con permiso
, have to tell you that, have to be honest, have to tell you the truth. This is the possibility that always hovers over me. Flexo, the boneless acrobat in the Show, was able to kiss hisself, bent his body into a wheel of hisself and kissed it, Shanks charged extra for men to see it, but I'm not talking about that.
Comprendes?
You wan hear? If you was to lift my shirt you would find a sight, and I bet your feelings would be so mixed up that you would run away from me, too, like my mother Chupa did. Being all things in one,
I
was made self-sufficient. I am equipped for lust, just sitting down or standing in one place, tantalized by my own very body, sometimes itching and burning, sometimes soft open and hard, lip and cod, one part hungering for the other, and it available and welcoming and no hunt necessary, hunter and hunted I hunt myself, the hunt leads me no farther than the distance of a reach across my own body, what I seek in my maddened quest is at hand, a simple journey of my fingers, merely within grasp, yet I have gone almost
loco
in the game of it, the tricks and games, I became cunning, I became shifty and secret and coy and
macho
and
galán
. I was the battleground of myself I almost tore myself in two. I could go mad. I would get a streak going. When I used to get a streak going, look out. Then I was a common piece and got a streak in me, all connected to my wildness, wildness of words and wildness of feelings. And oh my
Jesucristo
sometimes wildness of action. Sometimes when I got a streak I didn't give one flying
chinga. Muñeco! Muñequito!
Little Mescan doll. Oho! That old name they tenderly called me in the days of yore;
Muñequito. Muñequito mejicano, bésame bésame bésame
, gimme a Mescan kiss. When my streak streaked through me seems like I flamed into something way beyond, listen to me listener
Oyente
, oh how then I loved to regard myself, to look at my beauty, revealed to myself, the extraordinary
miraglo
of myself, sometimes I looked and looked in that Show-gaze people used on me sitting still and perfect like a perfect statue or a perfect figure of wax, me perfect and still before the eyes of gazers in the perfect stillness of the Show, of being looked at, still, by still figures all struck still. Myself! A figure of wonder! How I love to turn that cold serene and intense gaze upon myself. And this self-looking, this glaring gaze turned upon myself, has given me a wisdom of the flesh,
chiquito
, given me a gift of soul in the flesh. For I was always in close touch with myself, you understand. I've had a long, deep association with myself. Only
I
know the long journey with myself that I have had, the untold life of me…which now I tell: I fulfill myself. My right side turns to my left. I couple. I unite myself. I am a wholeness whose parts have struggled with each other. I bear mortal enemies upon my person. I tease and seduce. I alone am a conversation of two heard in parks and alleys and doorways and upon beds, the ancient beg, the ancient refusal,
give it to me; no, not now, not yet
. Always there, it is not always available; my parts bargain; hot and bargaining they strive upon my body; I could go mad from the negotiation, be torn apart by the old negotiation, proud cock and subtle cunt working at the old negotiation. You wan hear, you wan hear? I know
them!
You wan hear? I got a very special knowledge. Almost as if I made them I know these two, I got a close acquaintance; like a watchmaker knows a watch I know their workings. Yet I have almost died in my knowledge of their workings, obsessed with myself, possessing myself long days on hidden beds, a tormented wheel, a howling acrobat, my body assailing my body, I have almost died; in the end I have known no knowledge I have been almost torn asunder in ignorance, degraded and abused and exhausted of myself but could not excape from my pursuer, lost in the most strangest love in all the world, the haunted love of myself. Oh I know that nowadays anybody wants to can have something taken away from their bodies or can have something added onto their bodies, can have more or can have less of something on their bodies so long as they've got a course of blood and a heart that pushes it through their veins, hear tell of, in cities—and once a man slipped a card to me in the Show that said he was such a doctor of repairs—of those that have new bosoms and new noses, all doctor-made. But not Arcadio, not Arcadio, not him. God told me to bring my separate parts to peace,
reconciliación
was the word,
Jesucristo
said I am a man of
reconciliación, un hombre de reconciliación
, that's why he was knocking on the door in the nighttime with the lantern in his hand. Oh many times when I have been afighting with myself and in a terrible fighting I have heard a knocking on my door. And so I begun to live in a truce between my tormented parts close together day and night, understand, closest of neighbors, else I'd have long ago been pulled apart, torn in two, a crazy man, or self-destroyed. Which I almost was, as you have heard me tell a little bit of. For that long time my spirit was damned because of my body. Isn't it surprising that what you have on your body can cause such tumult in your soul? Yet it twas my body got me to my soul, to
Jesucristo. Señor
that is aknocking, I cried out, how can I live with
este cuerpo
this body that you gave to me? It tears apart my soul. Well then give me your body,
Jesucristo
said. And so he reconciled. This is what happened to me,
Señor, Señora, Señorita
. I know all this that I tell you. If you wan hear. The Holy Spirit that I told you about has reconciled me whole and I am peaceful. So do you see that
Jesucristo
gave up his
cuerpo
for me, that his flesh was nailed to wood, that on the wood his flesh died forever, do you see what I'm saying,
comprendes?
And now knocks when there is trouble beyond the door where you and I sit weeping
llorando
or drinking
bebiendo
gin, dying
muriendo
alone, or in trouble with somebody, fighting at them and screaming in the terrible dance of death with them. And you will hear the knocking if you hold quiet and listen you will hear the soft knocking. And had I not found the White Bible, had that hand not handed it down to me, I would be dead I would be nailed dead by my own
cuerpo
, my own body, my own flesh, and had not my mother come, sent by
Jesucristo
to set me free from the Show where there was no real revealing. I will not look no longer for it. I could have been a dog beneath my clothes. People looked at an appearance, something that
looked like
something. There was no revelation. I would be in bondage,
Señor
, had I not excaped, and run from the Show under my
madre's
auspices,
mi madre
before who I revealed myself at last, had I not turned over my body
mi cuerpo
—a very precious thing,
Señor
, to turn over to anybody—to the Holy Spirit. It would have damned me to the hell of feeling nailed to death on that wood, I know what I am talking about, you wan hear, I have come up living from those nails, the woman part has closed up like a flower closes and the man has given up its bitter sting on me. They are
espléndido
, at splendid rest. Reconciled, that is the word. I'm handiwork of God, I will be chaste, I will be a saint, I have been too much for myself and for the world, I will surrender my body to God, I'm handiwork of God, I'm looking for God, I'm on my way to God, I don miss the Show no more, I won't go back. You wan hear, you wan hear.