Milkbottle H, page 29
No, Kanovsky. How did the rehearsal go?
It was lousy. Actors, shit.
The actresses?
Also.
Well, an industrial film, Kanovsky.
So? he growls. Industrial, it should be good. Its no excuse.
Still, its a start.
All right, Anne, its a start. Cover yourself, will you. Youre not that young any more.
Its very hot.
Yeh, with the Strawberry Mansion delicate odors, steamed piss.
Lately its hard to sleep.
The heart again. He gurgles the beer. This beer is good for a toothbrush. Christ. Anne, let me tell you.
Yes, tell me.
Dont worry about the heart, he waves a flaccidskinned arm expansively and brings it back to wrench the cigar from his mouth and grandly toss it to the street below. Her breastbone sticks out of his mouth: what does he need with a cigar.
Its not my heart Im worrying about, Kanovsky.
Im glad to hear it.
Its you Im worrying about.
The doctors told you not to worry, Anne, am I correct? Anne Kanovsky is chickenbreasted and grayeyed. The gray eyes are grave, widely spaced and unclouded. They are cool, gray and grave in a rednosed pinksplotched and whitepimpled slipperontiptoe face.
Thats true. Anne puts a knuckle to her mouth and gnaws on her chicken breastbone but Kanovsky has already chewed off all the meat. The sky is overcast with overcast, black billowed by purple, the air heavy rustling blackblue taffeta. The eyes of Kanovsky and Anne flash momentarily with heat lightning, at which they gape their mouths, a gold tooth of Kanovsky’s hovering above them, a plump gold ghost, the nerve extracted, the gum the ridge of the Fairmount Park reservoir, and then the goldtooth ghost strangles on the twisting telephone wires, a telephone pole abruptly grounding a forked bent corkscrew of bolt lightning
its got to rain, Kanovsky rumbles from the belly in the striped shorts, beer and piss itll rain in foaming yellow drops, and nobody relieved. Jesus. Bruno Kanovsky, porcupine the quills removed
But in spite of the doctors I cant help worrying about you.
Whats to worry about me he bites off his lower lip and jams it between his teeth, lighting it with the yellowgreen flare of a telephone pole match. Better than a Havana, the Kanovsky panabella. Rolled in my own mouth.
Against my better judgment I love you, Anne whispers.
Nobody has a better judgment for Christ’s sake, he protrudes a thick growl, tilting back the wicker chair and propping his stubby feet on the porch rail its so goddamn dark I cant even smell my feet. Aint I what you want, Anne? In the long run? The short run but I can see her appalachian breastbone, thats clear in any dark, beat them to death with the breastbone of your woman, thatll silence all enemies, Samson Kanovsky, blind with his own blubber and feeling his way through the worlds torrid fat. He jabs and picks at a purple pimple just under the aperture of his left nostril; if it bursts he may be able to see his way whitely clear. Get this through your head, Anne
I dont want to get anything through my head, Kanovsky. She giggles as a parrot might, shrill, giving directiongiggles, giggles taught by a master. Thats very frightening, she says, drawing her legs up on the hammock swing, the iron poles creaking, her chickenbreastedness leaning out of her cotton housecoat, a bony pole seeking support on the porch floor. Thats not what a person’s head is for. A head should stop things, I know youre not talking literally, Kanovsky, but your soul, your soul talks literally, your soul is all body, your soul is real, your soul can be felt, youre the only human being I know with a real soul and believe me thats hard to live with.
Dont you know, Anne, I dont want anything from you?
Yes, I know that, her breath wiggling.
So. That should make you feel secure.
No, on the contrary, thats worse. Im afraid of a man who doesnt want anything from me.
Swinging. You got to swing? That creaking.
Im sorry, Im trying to keep still. She would roll herself into a ball but that damned chickenbreast, that wouldnt curve. Did you remember to mail the premium payment?
I forgot. Its still in my pocket. Tomorrow I’ll mail it.
You already mailed it.
I told you I forg
No.
What do you mean no? How do you know I didnt mail it, I mean what makes you say that?
She giggles. The tone of your voice, Kanovsky.
So maybe I didnt forget to mail it. Maybe I mailed it. What difference could it make? I could swear I forgot. Why are you bugging me with such trivia? Whats the matter with you?
Its not trivia, Anne says, her voice twanging with the swings springs. Its very important, its for you, you know its for you but you say you dont want to know its for you and youre lying. Its all right, Kanovsky, you can say my insurance policy is important, its all right for you to say thank god Anne has a policy on her life for ten thousand dollars I wont have to worry if she suddenly dies I wont be thrown out on the street Ill have that money and the money I can get from the sale of the house. You can say that, Kanovsky, I wont mind, I took out the policy for you
But you took it out before you or any doctor knew you had a heart condition or else you couldntve got a policy, aint that right? I never asked you to take out a policy in the first place
I know you didnt
I didnt even know you had a heart condition till you told me. You didnt have to tell me
But I had to, Kanovsky. I was frightened.
It made you feel better to tell me
Yes.
It didnt make me feel better.
Thats why Im even more frightened. Because for you to know there was a good chance for me to die soon and youd have twenty thousand dollars so you could be independent and wait till you could really choose a good film to direct—that would make a real man feel good, I mean a real man who doesnt love the woman who loves him. I dont understand. You should want me to die, Kanovsky. You should hope for it. I know you do hope for it so you must be lying. Its your lying that frightens me more than anything else, Anne lets her legs swing freely now from the swing, the short lumpybodied woman, Im lumpy, she jokes to herself, Ill dissolve easy. Her chickenbreast scratches at her throat. She can hear a lump of thunder dissolving in the distance. It will drift closer. For a moment she presses the palms of her hands against her ears, nothing must dissolve, nothing. Her lumps harden. She can hardly move. What are her babylumps made of in the ancient rhyme. Hearts? Her heart is on her hip, she walks with a limp, the curious cripple. Then, taking her hands from her ears, the nightheat hisses in with mustaches of lightning. Her brain will pop out with little pops, like babythunders, as a reservoir of heavy water rushes in from Fairmount Park, sloshing about in her skull, making it waver from side to side, let it rain outside, outside, outside
Put on your rubbers, she says in a flat dry voice to her husband.
He bulges toward her. What the fucks the matter with you Anne
Dont come any closer, she pleads. She giggles. Cage-direction: stay where you are, dont cross, youll obscure the other actor, if you come any closer Ill stab you with me breastbone, she twirls her mustaches, her upperlip quite heavy with hair, disgusting Kanovsky, why dont you get it plucked
its painful
Shit, his voice greases off.
Ah. Ah, she pleads with him. Why dont you tell me you want me dead? Ill feel a lot safer. I might live, then. I might want very much to live.
Dont be stupid. I want you to live.
But thats not enough, not nearly enough. Because if you want me to die Ill know if you mean that that you want me to live.
Im telling you, Anne, you should drink some beer. Ill go get you a
No, she reaches out with her chickenbreast, a batonwand, gates at a traincrossing, stopping him, the man with the purplebarreled torso and the bludgeonlegs, the purplehaired thighs, the purple pimples more expansive and fullbodied on his back and chest, he flings the crust of the one under his nose down at the porchfloor, Good, good, a snip of pain making him sneeze, but the white clear streamway of pus in a moment followed by blood, obscuring, Goddamn it. You got a cigarette, Anne?
Tickling her housecoat, she proffers a corktip. In the matchlight his eyes are ponderous brown slabs of meat in the sockets. The lightning does a spasmwrench in the blindboys sky shinnying up and down Kanovsky’s spine, up and down
four thousand three hundred and eighty three the whole Strawberry Mansion California beach of Georgian Victorian threestoryed houses counts as the hoops, the iron rings, the quoits, the brass rings of the African negresses, the Victorian dresshoops, the midVictorian bicycle wheels spin round Annes girlbody on the continental porch, somebody has my husband by his hands, I thought he had himself by his own hands, oh my god, my god, what a terrible error Ive made, but Ill establish a world’s record before my heart gives out, my husband is my protruding chickenbreast, he is my cripple
You want me to kill you with my bare hands Kanovsky says, but I dont have bare hands, I cant get them bare, I can keep on stripping and stripping them but theyll never be bare My fathers name is Bruno Canova. My name is Anne Canova Kanovsky. Any husband of mine I have, well, I must prove hes a man, otherwise Im terrified. I dont want to live in terror, Kanovsky, do you understand? So: tell me about the actresses.
Theres nothing to tell you without a full payment of ten thousand dollars.
Youll get the money, have no doubts.
Look here, Anne, he pats her arm with ponderous gentleness, all this is so much theatrical mumbojumbo. Believe me, whether you know it or not, Im faithful to you.
You dont love me, Kanovsky, her wide gray eyes stray distantly from each other, creating spaces between of expansive beauty, of stupefying serenity, pearlgray stretches in the dark night, cool in the heat. You cant betray me by loving me now.
Youre very excited, I would advise you to lie down, you should remember your heart
Thats not very kind of you to ask me to remember that, she softly remonstrates. If I forget my heart, Kanovsky, it might improve, for it wouldnt be tortured by my solicitude. The heart, my husband, only wants to be let alone, it does not wish to be reminded of me. I alone am the culprit. You must let me be excited To kill yourself?
Ive got rights. Would you yourself rather kill me? Take over, Kanovsky, take over now obliterate my rights.
He regards her quite steadily through a feign of cigarette smoke in the sodden night. His sweat forms crystal pustules on his unshaven wavyfleshed face, his blundering nose, his forehead with its lowlying muscles, his purplepomaded clusterwaves of black hair, his churnchunk of neck, his teats swinging under his ribs. His purplestriped shorts are threaded with soaked belly hair and abdomen hair and groin hair and thigh hair. His testicles, puffed and itching, he would like to air out by hanging them over the porch railing. They can hear the sound of faraway locustdroning that the rain makes falling over Central Philadelphia, a sound modified by the hair growing in Anne’s ears and in Kanovsky’s, a hundred thousand Constellations approaching Philadelphia, the terminus of the nonstop flight from Los Angeles bearing a fatherdeprived young man, Lee Emanuel, flying toward a gravestone, the flight of a highly modified mourning high over the heads of Anne and Kanovsky on the Strawberry Mansion porch, the flight of a buoyant epitaph, of stone hollowed out till it is airborne and met by the incredibly thinnedout remains of airborne cigarette smoke, all graves meeting above the head and beneath the feet
There are many women, Anne says quietly, beginning with the time that I told you my doctor said I have a bad heart. Isnt that so, Kanovsky?
He abruptly shakes an admonitory finger at his wife. You know something, Anne, I have some good advice for you. Its like something I told Lee Emanuel who is a very stubborn young man, I have so many ideas for him, oh that boy, that boy, if he would take only one of my ideas—well, what can you do? Everybodys got to roll his own spitball. Kanovsky laughs heartily. I told Lee like Im telling you in Russia with the Moscow Art Theater and in Israel with the Habima you got months and months for rehearsal, you can rehearse till you get a perfect performance, and you dont have to put the play on till youre satisfied. But the United States—ah, Kanovsky leers grandly, you got a few weeks maximum to rehearse and then the shows got to go on, ready or not regardless. In the United States always its a deadline you cant go over. But I told Lee hes got to take his time, what do I care how long it takes him to write the play so long its right. Im a very patient man, Kanovsky is. After all, Im European. The OSS didnt hire me for nothing, Anne, I mean not just because I speak Russian. You want to know what my point is, heh? My point is just because were in America you dont have to hurry to do anything, because—he pounds the railing—because youre living with Kanovsky the European only it should rain in a hurry, why isnt the rain American he shrugs at the sky. My dear Anne, suppose I did marry you without loving you, theres still plenty of time, dont rush me. After all, when I married you all I knew was your parents were dead but you owned this house clear, and your eyes were a beautiful gray and you adored me for being an oss hushhush hero. Already its different from Othello and Desdemona, aint I right, hah? You were a mature woman when you married me, and Im a white Caucasian, and wheres a Iago Im asking you? Im telling you in the OSS I couldnt even kill a man, you think I was crazy?
Anne cries softly, her chin resting comfortably on her chickenbreast.
My gray dove, he says thickly, grunting his chair down on all fours and cradling the back of his wife’s neck with a calloused throatpalm, cry, cry, its good for us both. That could be why I married you in the first place, I knew all of a sudden here was a woman who could cry for both of us and that was enough because Kanovsky could never again bring up a tear because his eyes would never again get seasick. Forever dry land eyes Kanovsky. Yes. For a Kanovsky to know that, to marry a woman for that, is better than love
I love your Russian accent, Anne says softly, I love your hush-hush oss heroism, I love you being a director, I love you being born a Russian, I love you because you have pimples, too, bigger than mine, because you speak five languages, because you saw me with gray eyes, because you were charming to me out of habit to all women but why should I so ugly be included I thought because my gray eyes couldnt be everything what did they tell you about me? They told you I had a house in the clear, no mortgages. All right, but that a gifted director could bow to me, court me because I had no mortgages wasnt that wonderful? Could a man’s need be so great he could court a woman only for her lack of mortgages? Some women have beauty, youth. So it was all right for me to have a house clear because what does a man see in a woman after the vagina? I had a right to be taken by a moneyless man, I have a right to love you even if you are not gifted. More so if neither moneyed nor gifted. But they told you also my mother and father both died of heart attacks.
They told me, Kanovsky states heavily.
And they told you I was a virgin.
That too they told me.
Piquant, eh Kanovsky? Dead heartattacked parents and a virgin fortyyearold daughter. Piquant, with the relish of a house in the clear added. I was saucy.
I have no complaints about you in bed, he fumbles deeply in his throat. He sighs. He tilts back the wickerchair once again, groaningly raises his feet to the porch rail once again.
Would you like me to be silent?
He shovels up his shoulders. Be quiet, be talkative, either way. Im good in bed, Kanovsky.
Yes youre good in bed he all but roars, except your breastbone hurts me.
You dont have to lean so heavy.
I get tired, what the hell do you want I should do, be an angel, be a queer? I got to lay on you, Im not so young anymore, I dont feel like I should fracture my elbows
I could get on top
No. No. Im not a woman yet, you got to lay underneath is that clear Anne? He squats under his anger, an aged and castrated bull using the bullfighter for his penis.
Nothing is clear, Kanovsky. Nothing.
Thats a lie, youre lying, you got to thrash around in confusion you think, you got to be desperate goddamn you he smashes down the chair and stands, roundshouldered, goddamn you youre making me angry I dont want I should get angry its too fucking hot you understand me? You got no right to make a man angry on such a hot night after I wrestle with those fucking actors and actresses.
She huddles, dryeyed. Im not crying, Kanovsky, she says sharply.
Jesus I got to think of your heart.
Yes. It beats slower.
You sure?
Yes. Thats when its worse, when it beats slower. When youre angry, that happens. When you fuck me, that happens. But you think it beats faster
I can feel it
Thats your heart you feel. So you better not fuck me or be angry. Either way you take a chance of killing me. You better start having affairs with other women and getting angry with them. I give you permission
I dont need anybodys permission, Anne, I tell you.
Then what are you going to do?
Doing is out of all proportion to whats necessary, he slyly remarks. Like what youre doing in a field of Kanovsky. You have more than one name, it is Anne Kanovsky, not merely Kanovsky. Youre envying me, you assume you can be Kanovsky as all women assume they can be anything they like at any time so that they say it doesnt matter if theyre women. Youre the hero in marrying me, what could be a more heroic act? My mother and father died when I was very young and Anne Kanovsky conveniently becomes the Kanovsky orphan, for a woman by definition is always born an orphan. Once I surprised you smoking a cigar, you giggled, said you wanted to see what it was like. You started dressing in mannish clothing not long after we were married, and yet when I met you you wore the most feminine of garments
