Our Strangers, page 3
Here in the Country
* * *
Here in the country there are yards full of rusting cars, kept for spare parts. A pale little girl sticks her fingers in her ears at the roar of a family engine.
The same people appear at every store because here they all do their shopping on the same afternoon at the same stores.
A raffle prize is a chain saw, and this already seems desirable to us.
All the neighbors have too much lettuce to use, in their gardens—and so do we.
Birds nest under the air conditioner and on the back porch inside a bamboo shade that we rolled up early in the spring to let more light into the bathroom.
Bats spend a few days, maybe longer, behind the chimney. In the evening we see them fly out, one by one, at short intervals, five or six of them, like carrier pigeons starting off on a race. They dive in the air and fly low over the lawn. Later they squeak by an upstairs window and scratch the wooden clapboards going in and out of the attic.
Hornets have built a conical nest under the front porch eave. One evening at dusk, we knock it down. It is in layers like fine pastry.
There are tidy little homes with thriving gardens and lawns perfectly smooth, dark green and unblemished. Stiff, short evergreen shrubs hug this tidy house, and one brown goose walks down the driveway followed by two white geese. But the people who come out of the house have a scowling, proprietary air, as stout and scruffy as old dogs.
Sheets of plastic cover the windows of other houses, and the back porches are crowded with junk.
Bees live in a hollow tree at the end of the driveway, behind a black-painted sheet of metal that was nailed over the hole long ago. In hot weather, more and more of them cling to the trunk by their hive, walking over one another until they have formed a thick golden beard on the tree.
When the cooler weather comes again, the beard is gone.
A black butterfly fans its wings slowly to dry them, riding on a leaf of pachysandra. Powder-blue spots line the lower edges of its wings, and the undersides, like a peacock’s tail, have iridescent eyes.
At the back of our backyard we hear the screams of the neighbor children and the clear, logical shouts of the mother: “I’m giving you fair warning: Get off my back!”
On some days, mysterious vibrations shake the house as though some enormous person were throwing himself against the front door.
On the way to the general store we pass an overgrown lot with four tall poles forming a rectangle. Parked in the rectangle is a small, unused trailer.
The neighbors’ two dogs bark and bark. They may be barking at each other, but they may be barking together at some third thing.
The hardworking old man two houses away from us cannot be idle. If he is not tending someone else’s property, he rakes his own gravel, or weeds his own vegetable garden. We hear the metal wheelbarrow rattling over his lawn. Sometimes he comes to the house next door to feed the cats on the side porch: “C’mon, kitty kitty,” he calls gently. “C’mon, kitty kitty. You hungry? You hungry?”
Egg
* * *
The word for egg in Dutch is ei. In German it is Ei, in Yiddish ey, in Old English ey. The word for egg in Norwegian is egg, in Icelandic it is egg, in Faroese egg, in Swedish ägg, in Danish æg. In Old Norse the word is egg, in Middle English egge. (In French it is oeuf.) (In Scots Gaelic it is ugh.)
Two American babies, long ago, are learning to speak—they are learning English, they have no choice. They are close to eighteen months old, one is a week older than the other. Sometimes they fight over a toy, at other times they play quietly by themselves in the same room.
On the living room floor, today, one baby sees a round white thing on the rug. He gets to his feet, with some difficulty, and toddles over to it. He says “Eck?” At this, the other one looks up, interested, gets to his feet, also with some difficulty, toddles over to see, and says “Ack!” They’re learning the word, they’ve almost got it. It does not matter that the round white object is not an egg but a ping-pong ball. In time, they will learn this, too.
The Afternoon of a Translator
* * *
Although she is late, she has stopped, before coming up out of the subway, to look at herself in the mirror of the subway toilet. She had thought she was well dressed when she left home, but decides that she is not. She is carrying a folder of work and two books. She walks west from the subway toward the home of the wealthy anthropologist who may have work for her. She is thinking nervously of other things and does not look where she is walking. She steps in a large soft turd that a dog has deposited on the sidewalk. As she tries to remove what is on her shoe, a young man who appears to be simpleminded stops to offer advice, then stays to watch with friendly interest as she scrapes her foot on the curb.
When she arrives at the pretty town house, she rings the doorbell down in the areaway below ground level. The German housekeeper who answers the door has been ironing shirts in the kitchen. The man who lives alone here comes running down the stairs to shake her hand. He has dark eyes and locks of loose dark hair that fall over his forehead as he talks. He is wearing a white shirt and black pants.
The phone rings almost immediately, and as he answers it and speaks in Italian, she goes into the nearby bathroom to wash her hands and inspect her shoe. On the wall next to her hangs a small painting of a piece of bread.
When she comes out, he is still talking, and she crosses the room to look through the plate glass wall at the bare garden. When he is finished talking, he leads her upstairs to a hall filled with African sculptures. As they then climb higher up in the house, passing other rooms, she sees in one of the bedrooms a child’s crib. He later tells her he has a two-year-old son who lives in Mexico.
At the top of the house, the walls of the man’s study are lined with white-jacketed books, so clean they look as if they have never been opened. She spends a cordial hour with him discussing a piece of translation work that he would like her to do, as well as, more generally, languages, writing, life in the city, and life in the country.
She leaves feeling stimulated by the visit and the prospect of work, and goes to a nearby department store to shop. She stays there for three hours, but buys only a single pair of red shorts for eleven dollars, before going back down into the subway to return home.
At the Movies Last Night
* * *
At the movies last night,
we saw,
along with two van-loads of inmates
from the Wingdale Psychiatric Center:
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.
Sunday Night at the
Summer Cottages
* * *
It is Sunday night and some weekend guests who have been visiting the people in the little cottages by the lake are leaving now for the city in the dark, and a few people, the people who stay in the cottages all summer, are walking them down to their cars. They aren’t many but they have all come down at the same time and in this still, silent place it makes for some confusion. Leah the vegetarian from deep inside her neck brace says, Look at this, Look how many people. And little enough happens here so that this has an air of something happening. Flashlights from out of the dark beam over the ground, the boulders shining in the road, and the many moving legs, but the faces are hidden. Leah’s white bra straps escape her dress and fall over her thick arms. She is a small woman full of warnings, about the stones and roots in the path, and her husband Henry chides her gently.
A Theory
* * *
Off the shores of our land are clods of earth like stepping stones in great numbers. From each clod rises a thin metal pole. Between the poles stretch loosely hung wires connecting each pole to more than one other, so that there is a great web of silver wires in the air about fifteen feet above the water. We are not sure what purpose the structure served in earlier times. It might have been a way of generating electricity. Perhaps a bolt of lightning struck one pole, at random, then traveled through the wires, which are haphazardly interconnected. In its search for an outlet, it increased in velocity so much that when an outlet was finally provided, the electricity was powerful enough to light several houses. This is my theory—though I have never actually seen the outlet. Then again, there are rarely any thunderstorms here, when I come to think of it, perhaps seven or eight every August and one in July.
Community Notice:
Example of Redundancy
* * *
This is a reminder
that today
the community
will be gathering
this afternoon
to come together
as a community.
Conversation at Noisy Party on Snowy
Winter Afternoon in Country
* * *
Airline pilot:
—I found a very small owl by the road, this big. (He holds his hands eight inches apart.) It was very beautiful, perfect.
Birder is quick to respond:
—So what.
Pilot is puzzled. He thought she would be interested.
—So what? he says.
Birder laughs. Others are there, listening. They laugh.
—No, I said saw whet. I’d have to look in the book, but I think that’s what it is.
He is still puzzled.
—A what?
—A saw whet. S-a-w. W-h-e-t.
—Oh! Well. (Pause.) I thought it might be a screech owl.
—It might be. I’ll have to look.
—They’re small too, aren’t they?
—Yes, they’re very small. But they make a very loud noise.
—It has no blood on it. I think it must have been hit by a car. (The others nod.) It must have broken its neck. (The others nod again.) I can give it to you if you want.
—Sure, I’ll put it in my freezer.
He laughs. They laugh.
Birder goes on:
—I once had a weasel in my freezer.
He laughs again. They all laugh again.
—It was in my freezer for two years.
They laugh again.
—I was waiting for John Berry to come pick it up.
One woman asks:
—Is he a taxidermist?
—No, he’s just interested in weasels. (They wait to hear more.) It was a small weasel. It was the only thing in my freezer. Besides the vodka.
They laugh again. Another woman adds:
—Well, as long as you could still get to the vodka …
A Question for the
Writing Class Concerning
a Type of Furniture
* * *
Can you create
a tragic scene
in which you mention
the bibelots and whimsies
on the whatnot?
In a Hotel Room in Ithaca
* * *
April, the housekeeper,
has left a message for me
hand-written in red ink on a piece of paper.
It is lying next to the coffee maker.
She has written: “Wisdom begins in wonder.”
The quotation is from Socrates.
But the smiley face has been added by April.
Incident on the Train
* * *
I’m on the train, traveling alone, with two seats to myself. I have to use the restroom. Without thinking about it carefully, I ask a couple across the aisle if they would please watch my things for me for a moment. Then I take a closer look at them and have second thoughts: they are young, for one thing. Also, they seem very nervous, the guy’s eyes are bloodshot, and the girl has a lot of tattoos. Still, it’s done now. I get up and start moving back. But, as a precaution, I ask someone, a man a few seats behind me, who is dressed in a suit and looks like a businessman, to please keep an eye on that young couple for me, because I have had to leave my seat for a moment and all my things are on it. I could just go back and retrieve my bag, giving an excuse—in fact, this is suggested by the man, who objects to being put in that position, the position of having to stop what he is doing and watch a young couple who have done nothing wrong—so far anyway. But I feel it is too awkward to go and get my bag, and even if I went and got my bag, I would still be leaving on my seat a valuable coat.
—Can’t you wait? asks the man, though it’s none of his business.
—No. Then I have another idea: Maybe you could go sit in my seat while I’m gone?
—No, says the man—then I’d have to leave my things.
He is not being very cooperative. I say, But that lady across the aisle could watch them for you—she looks trustworthy. She’s old and she’s sitting very still.
—She’s asleep.
—You could wake her up.
—I wouldn’t want to do that.
The old lady is sitting next to a younger woman. The younger woman is slumped over, asleep, and the old lady is also slumped over, leaning against her.
—Just nudge her a little.
—No, I won’t. In fact, I don’t think she’s asleep—she may be dead.
I think he’s joking, though I’m not sure.
Our voices have been rising. Now the people around us are disturbed by our conversation and by me standing over him in the aisle. All except for the old lady, who really might be dead. Her mouth is open but I can’t see if her eyes are open.
—Can you keep it down? someone says. It’s the woman on the far side of the old lady. She has woken up and is glaring at us. My mom is sleeping, she says.
I don’t like her tone. Now I get a little aggressive.
—I thought she was dead, I say.
The woman elbows the old lady, and says, Mom, tell this goofball you’re not dead.
The old lady opens her eyes and looks blankly at her daughter. I’m not your mother, she says.
—Oh brother, says the daughter.
Meanwhile, someone behind them is beginning to hum. It’s a teenage girl, or maybe she’s a little younger, maybe twelve. The humming is getting to me, given all the commotion that is already going on. I’m sensitive to noise.
—Why is she humming? I ask the woman next to her, who seems to be her mother.
Her mother says, It’s you guys—you’re making her nervous, she hums when she’s nervous or people talk too much, when anyone talks too much.
She stares at us, though peacefully, while the girl continues humming. Now I am interested. Some other people have turned around to look at her. The old lady tries to turn her head, but she can’t turn it very far.
The girl’s mother continues to explain her daughter’s neurosis. The girl is humming louder.
The old lady is becoming agitated. She looks at each person around her and then glares at the woman next to her, saying, I don’t know you from Adam!
I still have to go to the bathroom, though I forgot it for a while.
Now the businessman, having lost patience, gets up and says, All right, I’ll go sit in your seat. Just get going and come back. Let’s get this brouhaha over with.
I think that’s a strange choice of word, especially for a businessman, but I don’t say so.
He pushes past me and goes to my seat. I want to make sure he sits in the right place. I have taken two seats, as I said, and they’re on the side by the river. He bends over, moves my coat, and sits down in the aisle seat. Now, through the noise of the old lady and the girl behind her, who is still humming, though her mother has stopped talking, I hear the young man with the bloodshot eyes saying loudly, Hey man, there’s someone sitting there.
The businessman says he knows, and that she asked him to hold her seat.
The young man is surprised. Why would she do that? he asks. The businessman is silent, probably thinking what he should say.
The young man waits. Then he says, Really?
—She asked me to sit here while she was in the restroom, says the businessman.
—Why, man? That doesn’t make sense, says the young man. He seems a little defensive.
The businessman is still silent. Finally he just shrugs.
—Oh, for Christ’s sake, says the young man, for Christ’s sake. Goddamn.
But he says it quietly. He is still saying it when I walk away up the aisle. And I’m feeling a little bad about making such a fuss, since, after all, he is trying to defend my seat, so maybe I was wrong about him in the first place, him and his tattooed girlfriend. I didn’t trust them, just because they were young. On the other hand, his language was pretty bad.
Letter to the Father
* * *
Celan, talking about Kafka, says: “A poem is always a letter to the father.”
I tell this to my friend the poet.
My friend the poet responds:
“Celan must have had a different father than I did.”
He stops to think and then asks, “Than I do? …”
His father is dead.
“Do I have a father, or did I have a father?”
I can’t answer that question.
Conversation at Noisy Party
on Snowy Winter Afternoon
in Country (Short Version)
* * *
Airline pilot: I found a little owl by the side of the road, about this big. (Holds hands about eight inches apart.)
Birder: Say what?
Pilot: I said I found a little owl, a very beautiful thing, dead by the side of the road.
Birder: Saw what?
