Glyph (20 page)

HJELMSLEV

F

1

Clockwise is a direction and so is south, but if one continues in a clockwise direction no progress will be made. And no one ever comes from clockwise, though people often turn south or to the south or from the south. The words on the page always travel in the same direction, whether left to right or right to left or up to down or, as in the case of short-cut seeking, bad poets, clockwise or counterclockwise in the shape of a gull.
¹
But there is no direction simply because the words are on the page and meaning knows no orientation and certainly no map. Meaning is where it is and only where it is, though it can lead to anyplace. Confusion, however, is necessarily only in one place and looks the same regardless of where it stands in relation to meaning. Being confused always looks the same and it comes from clockwise.

2

From shopping, Mauricio drove us down the road to a restaurant where we sat in a booth in the back near the kitchen door. The waitress came and said something baby-friendly to me, then to Rosenda and Mauricio, “My name is Trudy, if you need me.” And I thought, “and even if we don’t.” Rosenda ordered fruit and crackers and milk for me. I didn’t protest. I was starving. I actually enjoyed the intensity of the desire. But I never got to eat. The burning in the pit of my middle made me consider, through my discomfort, a connection with the world, wondering where bananas came from and what kinds of boats transported them.

3

Is there a circularity that has us pass into the
other
indefinitely? Are we in fact changed by the nonchange that traveling forever in a circle creates? Is a change of orientation, but not of spatial location, a real change? As I circle the bee on the flower with my net and the bee dances around to continue facing me, do I ever really get around the bee? With all the movement, there is no movement. For all the repetition, nothing happens. The circle displaces change, and this change from the presence of change becomes the absence of change, becomes negativity, nonbeing, lack, silence. Counterclockwise.

What am I doing with this child? My wife is thrilled that he is with us, but what am I doing? He is trouble. What was he doing in the prison? Is he a devil-child? I thought I was helping. He wrote me a note. How could he write me a note? He’s a baby. It took me a longtime to get that job. That was a nice house. But a baby shouldn’t be locked up. It is not right for a baby to be locked up. But why was he locked up? Maybe he is a devil-child. Rosenda is so happy, though. A devil-child could not bring such happiness. Where are we going to go? That man who would come and talk to the baby was important, from the government. I could tell by the way I was no one to him. He was afraid of the baby. I could tell that, too. Maybe he is a devil-child. Or maybe the devil wants him.

My poor Mauricio, he is so scared. He makes me scared, too. It is a miracle that we finally have a little one. So long we have tried. I have prayed and prayed. I wonder why he was in the jail? He is a beautiful baby. His eyes tell me he is very smart. I hope he is smart like my Mauricio. I hope we can find a place where Mauricio will not be afraid. I hope we get to Mexico soon. My little boy. He is so beautiful. I loved him the moment I saw him for the first time. He is a miracle. I will protect him.

Humans invented language. So says the innocent. Language invented humans. So says the cynic. My parents made an offspring. Or was it the case that I made them parents? There I was again, making parents of people. Chicken? Egg? Omelette? The beginning of sense is to realize that the term
sense
is a stand-in for whatever
sense
can be made within a particular context, just as
thing
serves for any noun substantive, just as
quality
serves for some adjective.
Aliquid pro aliquo.
To say that in some sense that thing has a certain quality means nothing, except here where it works to make my point.
He was making sense
tells you nothing of what he was saying.
He had a certain quality. He came in waving this thing.

I was sick of the whole mess. I had no private language,
²
but language for me was, in the strictest sense, a private affair. Somewhere the government was seeking me, but of course they could not make it public. They could have perhaps intensified their hunt for the missing Townsend baby, but that would not have served them. I was safe to that extent from any outsider turning me in. It being the case that no normal person would have been able to recognize me from the poor photograph so briefly flashed on the television two or three times.

Mauricio and Rosenda sucked up all the food that came to the table while managing to shove a banana and a bottle of apple juice down my throat. Watching them eat was a bit frightening, hands constantly reaching, jaws constantly working, lips smacking. Fried potatoes dipped in blood red sauce, grease dripping from buns and fingers. Their napkins were balled up and good for nothing at the end of their exercise. Rosenda slurped up the last of her frothy drink and smiled at me with a white mustache.

“How’s my li’l Pepe?” she asked.

Mauricio looked at me, but didn’t smile.

Outside, Mauricio paused before getting into the car. He seemed to listen to the wind. Then he fell in behind the wheel and looked back at me.

“What’s wrong, Mauricio?” Rosenda asked.

Mauricio just shook his head and squeezed the steering wheel, staring ahead through the windshield. “Need to hide,” he said.

“Hide?”

“Looking for us.”

“Where are we going to go?”

“Father Chacón,” Mauricio said.

“Father Chacón?”

“Father Chacón.”

“I think dinner made me sick, Mauricio.”

Drs. Steimmel and Davis were being transported from the federal holding facility to what they were told was a remote federal reformatory, which was no reformatory at all, where they would have no contact with anyone, especially the press because they had not only witnessed the capabilities of a particular baby, but might also be able to piece together who might want him and why he might be wanted, and told also that the society was simply fed up with miscreants who sought out and made victims of children, that people were sick of having to be reminded of the problem with every use of milk from a carton and so they, Drs. Steimmel and Davis, were going to be put away, out of view, without a trial, without due process, without a second thought, but Steimmel and Davis were not concerned with this because the child still lived and was out there somewhere, waiting to be studied, waiting to be figured out, waiting to serve their desire for scientific fame and immortality, out there in the world, though they were in shackles, shuffling their feet through a long corridor from their cell, single file, toward the heavy door that led to the loading dock and to the yellow van that would take them to a helicopter that would in turn take them to a bastille that no one outside of the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI had ever heard of, Siberia, St. Helena, where they and, no doubt, Boris and perhaps even Ronald the ape, would spend the rest of their lives, reflecting on freedom and the days when they were so close to unlocking the secret of language and on the threshold of fame, where they might in time turn to each other or to whomever else the government had seen fit to lock away in similar fashion, seeking all those things that people need in a life, love, affection, struggle, sympathy, and scorn, especially scorn, because scorn was perhaps the most close-making of human feelings, it being, even in art, the one thing that brought audience into the work, and so in science, Steimmel thought as they closed the yellow van doors, her wrists chained to her sides, Davis beside her on the metal bench, the male guard across from her, not in a uniforn but in a brown suit, his black pistol sheathed on his worn belt, staring ahead at Steimmel’s face, but not reacting nearly quickly enough when the desperate psychoanalyst threw her body across the space between them, her head leading the way, her skull feeling as though it might crack and split wide open as it struck the man’s chin, driving his jawbone up into his brain and causing him to black out so that he fell over and Davis reached into his pocket, found the key, and undid their cuffs and leggings, Steimmel pulling free the man’s pistol and testing the weight of it in her hand, glancing forward toward the van’s cab, thinking, then chanting, “Brute force, brute force, with all our brains, brute force.”

Colonel Bill flew his Phantom south and landed on the U.S.S.
Theodore Roosevelt,
which was floating idly in the ocean off Miami. He climbed down from his cockpit and was given a gift by an adoring young sailor, a blue cap with the insignia CVN 71. Colonel Bill, however, barely acknowledged the gift, and the young sailor not at all, but he did toss a salute up to the ship’s commanding officer before boarding a helicopter that would take him to Key Biscayne and the President’s orgy to which he so looked forward. From the helicopter, he looked down at the water and the approaching land, the helipad, and the sprawling complex of buildings. Where was that boy? He shook his head, stymied, angry at himself because he did not quite know how to proceed. But there was the President’s party below and that would at least take his mind off his problem. There would be women down there for the using. Maybe some of them were even enemy spies who had sneaked in hoping to gather secrets during intimate moments or while a senator or a general slept and talked in his dreams. He was excited by the prospect. He defied any of the commie bimbos to make sense of anything he said, awake, asleep, or climaxing or drugged into a stupor by a deftly planted Mickey Finn.

The helicopter landed and Colonel Bill held his hat in place until he was well clear of the blades. He was met by a server with a tray of glasses of champagne and a slight man in a suit. Colonel Bill sipped a glass of champagne.

“The President is very glad you could make it, Colonel,” the suited man said as they walked toward the house.

“The President can’t wipe his own ass,” Colonel Bill said.

“The President would like a quick briefing on the baby situation.”

“The President can go put his tongue on an ice tray for all I care. Are you reading me, mister?”

The suited man stopped. “Mr. President,” he said.

Colonel Bill snapped to attention and slapped his forehead with a salute. “Mr. President, sir!” he barked.

The President stepped down the steps toward them, tripping on the way and being caught by Colonel Bill. “Thank you, Colonel. I’m going to have to get that step fixed. Glad you could make it.”

“You wanted to talk about the baby matter, sir?”

“Oh, yeah. Is the baby still lost?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Now, let’s go have sex with young, simple-minded women we’ll never see again after tonight.”

1. Laura stands in the kitchen of her apartment. Douglas looks older to her now than he did the first time she kissed him. She looks at how his stomach pushes at his belt. She folds her arms and leans back against the refrigerator.
   
2. Douglas feels Laura staring at him. He says, “Austin is a great town. They tell me there’s a lot of great music there. Is there anything you’d like me to find out about the program?” When she just looks away, he says, “I leave for the interview tomorrow.”
   

   “It’s Texas,” she says.
   

   “So?”
   

   “Why would I leave California for Texas?”
   

   Douglas sits in one of the ladder-back chairs and holds his face in his hands.
   

3. Clyde is stunned by Eve’s new paintings. “I can’t believe it,” he says. He walks around the room and then steps back from a four-by-five-foot canvas rich in blues and greens. “I have no idea how you did this. The composition, the color, the texture. It’s all here.” Clyde sits on Eve’s stool, rubs his eyes. He is moved by the work. “I was expecting the work to be, you know, sad or something. But it’s not. It’s full of pain, but it’s so alive. I’m sounding really corny.”
   
4. Eve walks over to Clyde and kisses him on the mouth.