Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (8 page)

it didn’t matter because he hadn’t come about himself, he’d say, but about his wife, Ella, who was in dreadful danger, he felt, he’d say, danger of conspiring, was it? with the Devil. She was a goddamned witch, that’s what she was … a witch. She said sometimes her real name was Pamphila, Father, and I looked it up at the library, with a little help in the library, and it’s the name of a witch—who would believe—? She said it with a small smile—true—a small smile, but in the bathroom one day he’d overheard her singing in her thin thin seldom songful singing voice:
I Conjure and Confirm upon you
, something like
ye holy Angels
, though she never encountered any, what pretensions, what a liar,
and by the name Cados, Cados, Cados
, he remembered, it was like “cadence, cadence, cadence,” a birdcall,
Eschereie, Eschereie, Hatim, Ya, strong founder of the worlds
, in that direction, it filled his feet with immobility just to hear her,
Cantine, Jaym, Janic, Auie, Calbot, Sabbad, Berisay, Alnaym
, noises she accompanied by clapping,
and by the name Adonay, who created Fishes, and creeping things in the waters, and Birds upon the face of the earth, and by the names of the angels serving in the sixth host
, better she’d been masturbating, Father, when I barged in,
before Pastor
, she sang, as if undisturbed,
a holy Angel, and a great Prince
, and she said she was only trying out a conjuration of Thursday that she’d got from Madame Betz, and which amused her … amused her!
by all the names aforesaid, I conjure thee, Sachiel, a great Angel, who are the chief ruler of Thursday, that for me thou labor
, Father listen to that—my god! Thursday—and he’d lowered his fist like a flag at taps. A witch. A ghoul. Ha, never put a broomstick between those thighs, though, no sir, no siree, she’d ride nothing so phallic as that; she traveled in her mind, rode another wind; and he’d tell the Father how it was, and that although she was spiritual to the point of lily-wilting, she wasn’t spiritual in the churchly chichi sort of way; on the contrary, she was the only cunt he ever knew to
wear galoshes, the kind that buckle, that swallow your shoe, and he, Hess, who sold insurance and knew about investments in a modest, even humble fashion—money, Father, is my métier—knew she put great stock in all those lives she planned to lead beyond the grave, took great store from them, took … tock … Who had his hat? He had his hat. The feather and the felt. Then ran for fun—he could do that. Who would be missed, the missus or himself? The label and the lining: silk. There was a sign above the hooks which always warned him to watch his coat, and Hess would watch so wrathfully, on celebration Sundays, sometimes, when they went out, he could have swallowed worms and felt well fed, been none the wiser for a wedge of mud. No, no, he’d have proud pie and royal cheese. And take a poster boat to distant cities, see famous landmarks done in strident inks, shape a shy smile of gratitude for the frank solicitations of dark and unintelligible tongues. Then outdoors, what? leafy trees, new green, a breeze. Play catch as catch can there. Watch. She might have been the hook itself he’d hung his hat from, her nose in the band above the brim. Outdoors, what? not the rush and the roar of a wind but the light lift, the almost imperceptible touch, of elevating air. For if Ella looks before, I after, if I left who would replace me? the present has already gone, though in a way it lay around his wrist still, keeping tabs, perhaps more perfectly now it had no need to tick continually and mill its hands or waste its face by glowing in the darkness. Go. Though catch would come after. Either. It’s just that, well, he, Hess, her husband, was worried about her chances since she lately seemed so sick and was this minute stiffer than most corpses, open and empty-eyed, and he had noticed recently (that is, in the few moments previous to his present speaking) several brief breaks in her oh-so-shallow breathing, ominous interruptions of the ceiling readings, and little lapses in reception which caused her silence to fall short of itself, toward
another silence, like a broken arc, and now her pauses had a puff and stutter to them like that bird of hers when it was angry, and he thought she might be about to Kick the Habit and Cross Over, or whatever one did. Li ……. ve. Die. He couldn’t settle his heart about it, couldn’t get his guts to decide. The Universal Insurance Company of North America presents to Mr. Edgar Hess this Electronically Prepared Personal Proposal of … The blue folder contained no certificate, no diploma, no golden seal, no ribbon like a panting tongue, but a promise of protection: the Estate Builder, Econo-matic Life. Reality broke in like a burglar and stole his dreams before he could etch his name. He would raise the hue and cry. He would never be out of work. His desk was littered with electronically prepared proposals. His appointment book was black. His tie was parched, his coat was dry. Hey there, stop—stop wife, stop life. Ha ha. Hess wondered just who had his hat. The rug rose, wetting his knees. Perhaps you might sprinkle her with something, Father, water and oil, stuff like that, to snuff her evil emanations out and sail her off to heaven in a paper plane. Fold her. They were blue, with a red stripe, in soft tabbed paper, privacy assured. The last business was his business, UNICONA’s deep concern, he always said, and his clients would nod submission, extend their hands, shake like canisters of ice. Now this moment she might … she might go Hence, cut from his face like a whisker, and Hess wondered whether it might have been otherwise, whether their life together had been so totally enformulated that they couldn’t
help rubbing wrongly together and consequently being in a constant state of mutual exasperation like the sawing legs and so the laughing screams of the cicada—an ill mix from the first, bad match, poor pair, punk job, odd lot, and so forth, a complete and perfect botch; but if she were oil, then he was water, and if she lay quietly in a skirt of colorful iridescence, he fell slowly into darkness and into the depths of himself, beyond all light, beyond the last fish, stonily to stony bottom, or perhaps beyond that, bottomlessly un ……. der … no, he didn’t th ……. ink so; he thought rather that they might have made it with a little counseling—right—maybe that’s all it would have taken—sure—just some authority figure to tell her to V her legs and buck a bit, chuck his balls under her chin, to come down out of the cumulus and clown around a little, a lot of ladies like to go to the games, scream for the team, lap up a beer, some bowl, and—my gosh—many will respond to a nibble or a twiddle even, consequently square up, Missus Hess, therefore straighten around, don’t endeavor to be exceptional, to see camels in clouds or become what we call cipher silly, what do you say? that’s zero, the cipher, zerrr-oh, the cold, the
o
in
obliteration
.
I’ve known several like you in my time and practice who sought clues to the future in the daily crossword, games of that kind—the
x
in
eccentric
is a cancellation, remember—how did they fare? well, they went up, then down, across, or desperately took diagonals like last-minute shoppers at Lazarus’, in the Christmas rush at Macy’s or Marshall Field’s, but black blocks cut them off eventually, hemmed them in on every hand like smudges on a diner’s napkin—Ella, Ella—backed into byways, uneasy always, and there to remain as cats are caught at the hairs’ ends of alleys, illumined by doglight—Ella, Ella, Missus, Madame—or compelled to live on a letter like
k
—what a coffin—so placidate yourself, ma’am, run for calm like a carrot, resign, accept—we know you want to know only because you’re curious, but tomorrow will be along never fear … and Hess felt he could have been content, the conviction had grown on him—indeed was a callus—he could have been content, his length in his Barcalounger, mag open in his lap, listening for the fry of dinner, the pitpat of the cat; for what had he asked for? honey in the comb? had it been much? … so much? perhaps if he gave her a book of some kind, one which explained marriage and contained diagrams and pictures, anatomy and arrows, though she never had much interest in words laid to rest like that: in so many glassy-eyed rows like results of a gunning. What he wanted was calm, calm was quiet, the stillness of a world which spoke about as often as an onion. Chewing on a hard roll, for instance, the sweet work of the teeth, he thought, sufficiently contained itself. It didn’t need to broadcast the news of the world, or—well—as Ella said, be a checklist of his day-dreamy desires. Yes. He felt he could have been content. Ella, however … She never joked, never saw the funny side of life; when was the last time they’d had a good ho ho together? no, she was always, what? grim? serious at any rate, intense, anxious, fearful, pitched past every la ti do they’d so far found a line
for, prim. Pris ……. sy. Cold. Patronizing. She gave him the length of her nose, not a hair—not a fart—from her quim. Ha. Ha ha. Flighty. Notional. Picky. Poky too. Thin. A shoe stirred ever so slightly beneath the level of the rug. Was it his? hat? Step on a slat, make your mother fat. Five, six, pull your pricks. Why did he remember that? His memory was mostly reluctance. And then she was also so sickly. Sickness in a skinny woman is particularly … Splaugh. What would happen? malnutrition? cancer? kidney failure, then? Cold. Consider it: ummmmmm. What could he do? Die. Live. I just don’t know. Headstrong but bowelweak. Ran in the family. Distant. Cold. Hearthard but tummytender. Normal, then. Cold. While I only wanted … What was it I once wanted? honey in the comb? Still, I wish, Mr. Hess said … Anyhow, Ella, really, I wish you wou …

Walt Riff examined the books which, behind glass as if grand, filled the top half of the secretary. Beneath its slanting lid, the desk was empty except for one of the narrow drawers Riff had pulled out, with an accountant’s curiosity, to disclose a small glass ashtray, hidden as all smoking equipment was then, discreetly out of sight. Turning the key in the door and entering the room, he had tossed his valise on the bed and gone at once to the corner where the case stood uneasily the way large things do in secondhand shops. Its fake dark mahogany finish was as embarrassed as its posture, thin and crazed like a plate. It had no companionable chair, and the lines of lead in its panels of glass appeared painted there by a hand that shook.

Traveling as frequently as he did, with an expense account so limited it would scarcely butter his breakfast toast, Riff normally stopped at budget motels. There he could enjoy a clean sheet and watch a one-watt bulb gloomily befog walls already saddened by a coating of thickly textured paint. Except for a rubber-banded stash of twenties hidden in a plastic sack beneath the spare—he didn’t trust banks—Riff carried little of value in his car—what were a few cartons of yellowed ledgers to anyone?—otherwise he could have kept tabs on the car’s contents
through windows masked by misaligned venetian blinds and floralized drapes, curtains which had never known a breeze.

Riff would sock the middle of the bed with his fist. The blow always left the same spongy dent. There’d be a pair of skimpy pillows trapped beneath its plaid spread. Across the room—only a few steps—he saw a TV, lacking its remote, trying to remain steady on a tippy stand. Not quite centered behind the bed’s shiny headboard might hang the stylized portrait of a leafless tree or, occasionally, the phiz of a happy unshaven sot said to be
The Laughing Philosopher
. Perhaps in answer to an overwhelming longing, in the middle of Iowa, or in prairie Illinois, a seascape would show up: foamy waves rolling toward a welcoming beach.

Well, what is it this time? a red-winged blackbird perilously perched on a cattail. He’d seen them—cat and bird—while driving toward town, in drainage ditches awash with weeds. Such tedious and tasteless furnishings were what he expected, and if they hadn’t been there he would miss ignoring them: a desk the width of a window ledge, closet crossed by a sagging rod where three wire hangers dangled in a darkness left behind by the last guest, a lamp whose gleam was smothered by a ruffled satin shade and whose switch was nowhere to be found, neither on the cord nor by its base nor at its neck. Riff frequently stared into featureless ceiling corners until he fell asleep. A gray tarp-type rug covered the floor like a faint uncertain shadow. Suddenly he remembered how, rising early one morning, he had slid a bare foot to the floor and into someone’s forgotten slipper.

What’s this doing here, Riff said, as if Eleanor were sitting on the bed, rolling down her hose. He was trying to pry the glass doors open with his fingers since the knob was missing, the key was lost. Perhaps locked, perhaps stuck, the doors wouldn’t budge, making the books look jailed, dim and desirable.

Riff kept a Swiss Army knife in a side pocket of his case, and because Eleanor wasn’t rolling off her socks he could curse
when the zipper refused to move. His bag was made of a plastic cloth pretending to be canvas, so why should the zipper’s course be smooth? Using two of his long thin fingers, he fished for the knife through a bit of parted track, slid the instrument out with a modest cry of triumph. It fell on the bed without a skid. Riff unclasped one blade—wrong shape—he wanted the thin pointy one, the one you might use to bore an additional hole in your belt. He’d owned this marvel of Swiss efficiency for some time, but he had never become familiar with its workings, since he rarely used anything but the corkscrew, which was in plain view, giving the knife the barbed appearance of a fishing lure; although sometimes, after another meal of stringy beef, he’d call on the toothpick which slid out like a sliver, and once he pulled out the scissors, but only in order to pretend to cut. There the little devil is, Riff said, hiding in the backside of the knife.

He thrust a narrow mean-looking blade into the keyhole of the secretary and the doors sprang slightly apart. Open sesame, he said, returning the nasty thing to its clasp with a sound which Riff believed the glass doors would make should he shut them: a sharp snick. And that’s the noise they did make when he tested his hypothesis, which meant drawing the blade from the knife case once more to pry the doors open again. This time the doors didn’t budge. Oh number two all over you, Riff said. Eleanor didn’t know what number two was, so she didn’t object. Riff gave the frame a whack with the flat of his hand and wiggled the pick in the lock. Nope. After some fumbling he found a blade the size of a penknife’s and slipped it in at the latch. Which popped. Open sesame, he said. He may have made a mar but chose not to take a closer look. Then he dropped the knife back into its place in the suitcase. Sat on the edge of the bed beside it as if winded or overcome by disinterest. Just sat. Sat.