The Laboratory of Love, page 34
Its quarter-century of longing, its known lines.
The seam of scar across his throat.
The butterfly faded upon his left hip, frozen until I kiss breath into its wings, make them flutter with my tongue.
You don’t have to watch, I’m the one who watches, it works best that way, you learned that long ago.
Once certain images would rustle the darkness after each experiment, interfere with required rest, despite recording—a drop of water falling from an oar, a curtain breathing before the balcony, his face against the snow—they would touch me where I didn’t want to be touched, fondle what I didn’t want felt, insist on squirming beneath the chemical blanket slid across my mind.
Until I trained my eyes to stay half-closed while rendering required kisses, while fulfilling fantasies of flesh.
Until I learned that what isn’t seen won’t be remembered.
Until I mastered standard procedure.
I have never stretched my bones around this shape, never curved its contours with my wrists, never sutured its wounds with my stapling lips, never heard my secret name breathed by this scarred throat across twenty or thirty feet of dampening grass as geranium explodes sharp as amyl nitrate through my wires, floods my circuits, overloads their sockets. This body pressed into my body shifts form again and again, transmutes into every form I have inflamed, evolves into every one not sparked. The knowing fingers find the mound of muscle on each of my shoulders, press both springed locks to allow what has lain beneath to unfold, expand, rustle.
Go away.
The words emerge from my mouth as a moan, inspire the shape beneath me to become further excited by this suggestion of passion, cause it to groan itself into my vision. Below me appears the face of a stranger, of any stranger, of every stranger. I squeeze it away with a squint.
Come back.
I stand above a body that lies naked upon the snow of sheets.
Why doesn’t it move? Why doesn’t it breathe?
Look closer.
Find him beside the creek, beyond the wooden bridge, where moss upholsters stones and roots, sponged green clings to winter water. Exposing spring has melted snow that covered him, melted flesh that draped him; his faith in me has faded with his breath, his bones have already bleached with broken trust; they don’t believe in my approach across rusted needles fallen from the towering pines. The creek insists upon the exuberant season, throws itself upon your slate skull, splashes through your silence. Billy, it’s me, remember? In the cage, my knuckles delivered an oath upon the wall between us: even if our escapes are individual, even if survival separates us, even if we alter into unrecognizable forms, I will always find you.
I nudge the body on the mattress with a fearful foot, apply cautious pressure with my heel.
Billy, it’s me, remember?
The scientist’s voice emerges harshly from my mouth. As at certain times of stress, when judging me unequal to the moment, he has decided to intervene, take over.
He spits: “Get up, get dressed, get out.”
Snaps: “No use crying over spilt milk, splattered semen.”
The body doesn’t move.
The scientist’s voice rises in pitch, assumes a shriek of fury, a scream beyond any language I understand, a howled code my mind can’t break.
A sound like the one swelling from the snow, a sound I must stop.
I reach for the precautionary knife concealed beneath the mattress. Sieve my skin, unlock its pores, free its contents from their dark dungeon.
Dig harder, dig deeper.
Release the scent of plasma, sweet and rich and cloying.
Foetuses wriggle in the red pool like amoebae in a Petri dish.
They fight a losing battle for life as the scientist’s scream wanes into a whine, weakens into a whimper.
Then a hum, then silence.
Goodbye, so long, miss you like crazy.
I am standing in a candlelit space which the illumination of leaving exposes to be a sparsely furnished apartment, small and shabby, with illegible graffiti scratched into its walls.
There is a man on the mattress before me; a butterfly pulses his hip. In the morning he will awaken to wonder who and where he is, what happened to him while he slept. With a mop he will eradicate the bloody evidence of an unknown, aborted past. He’ll remove the valise from the closet, hold its contents in his hands, puzzle over which belong to him and which to a stranger. Turn the pages of five books, look for clues within them.
Until the light around him becomes stronger and clearer, until a voice emerges from that light to illuminate the meaning of his surroundings, their purpose.
How they will serve science, defeat memory, lead from life to love.
Before employing the power of my plumes, I wish to leave a message for this new associate of the scientist. Words for him to hold onto during what will be a long, difficult experience within the laboratory. A single sentence that will abbreviate and ease such an experience. I unlock the filing cabinet in the corner. On the round white table, beside the candle burning there, open the notebook to where my efforts to record the truth left off last night. Stare at the red heart beating on the page, then bend to write in the blank space beneath it.
Flame leaps from the candle, my new wings blaze.
Smoke enfolds me like mist at the very beginning of the world from which any original form of life might emerge.
“Love lifts,” promised the belly dancer’s final postcard from the pyramids, her last telegram from Tangier.
Throw open the window, invite air to stream inside the magic door. It feeds and fans my feathers of flame, enlarges and strengthens their span; encourages them to try the sky, to take a leap of faith, to trust in the end.
Ash falls into the alley, sparks ascend.
Sail me and my helium heart above the ocean of sky toward the upper port of peace.
Only the bird knows the wing, only the wing knows flight.
Compromise
That we’ve ended up in this salt-spiced house surrounded by wild gardens and crumbling stone walls presents a fresh surprise each day. Was it ever our wish to move over the earth’s skin with such caution, always fearing further loss in an unlikely landscape? On May mornings I watch you descend the cliff to gather feathers fallen from Icarus’s foolish wings. They float at the edge of the sea, they fill pillows upon which we no longer dare to dream. My arms can never hold you tightly enough and you will never look at me with Jesse’s eyes. We have agreed not to ask each other for much; there is little left to give. Perhaps I offer you more coffee in the afternoon, or you wonder if I need anything in town. During restless nights, we refuse to hear wind stir the apple trees. At least it’s peaceful, we think—while in darkness beyond our walls crickets shrilly complain against quiet. A newspaper delivered daily to the door describes distant battles; our nearest neighbours are far away. Jesse sails yachts around Adriatic islands or tosses lucky dice in Monte Carlo.
First he loved you, then he loved me; for a single season he loved us both. Of what was fleeting, photographs remain: Jesse always poses in the middle, careless arms around our shoulders, evasive eyes already shifting toward a summer absent of us—bleached Saturdays in Sicily, say. On that famous Barcelona balcony, our heartstrings vibrate beneath the same expert touch that strums his guitar, that commands an audience of other gypsies to gather in the street below. Jesse throws red and yellow roses down through flamenco darkness, one false flower for each of his betrayals in another Las Ramblas alley. Later, on the midnight ship to Formentera, his white teeth part to serenade the present with premature nostalgia, to wish on the starry wake for more and more. Even the two of us together are not enough for Jesse, as even Paris cannot satisfy his senses. He will leave no farewell note behind, he will leave us to each other: this was an act of compassion, I finally understand. Now I pass an open doorway to glimpse you sitting on the edge of our bed. Your arms emerge brown and veined from white sleeves, your large hands hold snapshots of Spain and Andorra. I continue toward the kitchen without intruding on the time and place to which you have boomeranged back. No, we never stride into each other’s secrets; we share silent seasons separately. You don’t mention how often I call out in sleep, and I don’t ask if your lips on my throat hunger for taste of him. Waking beside empty space on hot August nights, I am spared the fear that you have obeyed a summons to search for Jesse in crowded California bars or on some beach in Mexico. I know you have only slipped past the rotting barn and entered our orchard to shift the sprinklers that keep grass lush and green even when there is no rain.
On Monday I do the laundry, and you steer the spitting iron through Tuesday, and every Wednesday we wash the windows that stare upon the sea. Already another year has passed. Waves do not stop breaking on the rocks below, the horizon has not neared. Sometimes town children come to play in these haunted gardens; their calls draw you out to wander through the long grass on the rise. We can bear no heirs. So it startles me to notice that suddenly—already—your Levis have faded like the sky before dusk. I try to smooth away lines etched around my mirrored eyes. Aren’t we still young and strong? Haven’t countless others survived defeat to continue fighting? I would tell Jesse that we do what we are able. We don’t forget to wind the clocks or to split the wood for winter. Mail arrives at noon, and supper is at six. In June we tread the dusty lane, our sleeves brushing lightly, to where the stream still rages with spring.
Rorschach V: The Last Word
I long for the last word so badly I can taste it.
Feel its weight and shape and texture in my mouth. Float the promise like a wafer on my tongue. Savour its sweet certainty. In advance, relish the reward.
Practice patience, advises Allah. Trust in time. After holding on for decades, you can cling a little longer to the surface of this planet. A multitude of additional words—as many as several hundred thousand—must be written before you reach the liberating one. Sustain yourself with the knowledge that each syllable placed on the page—including these few here—carries you nearer to release from the laboratory of love, closer to the end of the lonely dream.
It is hunger that prolongs our lives. Appetite for light compels us to waken at morning; yearning for beauty induces starving eyes to open. We continually crave the next breath, we thirst always for another day, we ache ceaselessly for solace. At the end of desire, I’ve discovered, one need remains. More urgent than all those preceding it, more essential than any already relinquished, my longing to leave our planet is so powerful it enthrals me in its sway. I shiver with anticipation of the moment of farewell, play it over and over in my mind, swoon before that seductive slow-motion vision.
I understand that my transmutation from dross into essence will not be permitted until the last word has been transcribed. I won’t be free to dissolve beyond matter until I’m much lighter, when my spirit has been unburdened of all the stony words which currently anchor it here.
I will be released. My spirit will escape its sieve of skin, pass through a million imprisoning pores, ascend into the accepting sky.
I’ll be paroled from paragraphs, freed from sentences, unchained from language.
Cold calculation suggests it should take three years, perhaps four, to complete the work required of me.
At that point, I’ll have spoken sufficiently.
Enough, at least, to bargain my way out of the world.
With the movement of this pen, I’m writing a one-way ticket.
Goulimine, Tan-Tan, Laâyoune, I chant while some cold Canadian city mutters in sleep beyond the window.
My lips caress like beads the names of places which mark the route of the holy way home.
Smoura, Boukra, Galtat Zemmour.
Those various Stations of the Cross.
Here is the long goodbye.
When did the promise of the last word first appear? At what point did earthly existence become a state which needs to be eschewed rather than a precious gift that must be held onto and treasured for as long as possible? Aren’t I still quite young—surely not old enough to begin considering the end? Isn’t there some fatal flaw in my thinking? A gaping hole in my logic? Am I committing a crime, both moral and philosophical, against God, against myself? Does my choice insult all those who battle disease and stave off starvation and otherwise employ extraordinary efforts for the opportunity to draw one more breath? Finally, will my premeditated act be punished?
Allow me to explain that once I too fought with every available weapon for the chance to experience tomorrow. I’ve survived stroke and conquered cancer. Defeated poverty and triumphed over loneliness.
Please don’t believe I’m giving up, throwing in the towel, cashing in my chips.
This is no headlong rush toward self-destruction. On the contrary, I take pains to preserve my physical and mental well-being in these circumstances. I don’t smoke or drink. I attend a gym daily, practice yoga as frequently, eat only raw grains and fruits and vegetables. I need to be clean as sand in order to pursue my path.
It happens to lead into the desert; there the last word waits to be written.
(For me, it must be Africa, where my eyes were first opened; for you, it could be elsewhere, anywhere.)
Call this my scripture.
It seems my journey was embarked upon long before I realized a first step had been taken. I can see now that withdrawal from social structures, the severing of attachments to community, began well in advance of my comprehension of the purpose served by these actions. At the outset, before I had even an incomplete grasp of my destination, it was difficult to forsake family, painful to abandon friends, wrenching to relinquish each human relationship. Only gradually did I comprehend the importance, to a successful leaving, of there being no one to mourn my absence and, in return, no one for me to miss. It is essential that all grieving be completed in order to effect the transition from an ungainly bodily form to a more essential state; there is no space for anguished adieu, for a bathetic goodbye.
Yes, it was hard to break the habit of reaching out, of connecting, of sharing. It presented a formidable challenge to enter into and preserve myself within the lonely dream. You must grow accustomed to not hearing your name spoken, to never being glimpsed by eyes privy to your identity, to no longer feeling your skin touched by even careless hands. During the early phase of this withdrawal, full of appalling self-pity, I cried quantities of foolish tears for loss of the world outside the window; gave into unproductive nostalgia for the tinniest tunes and the cheapest of souvenirs to haunt my memory; spilled sloppy sentimentality for what was still visible, apparently within reach, yet at the same time, far removed, beyond my grasp. I learned it is possible to miss what is still present. At the beginning, against my will, I would sometimes feel drawn to a certain pair of slitted eyes, the timbre of a particular voice, a shoulder’s specific line. I had to steel myself against the urge to move toward temptation. Lighten up, insinuated my rebellious shadow. What harm can come from one last kiss?
Each time my resolve threatened to waver, I would pack my bags and return to the desert to receive, through the medium of sky and sand and silence, an affirmation of my intentions: their validity, correctness, truth.
Each time my pen completes another text, I venture slightly farther into the expanse of sand, in anticipation of the ultimate expedition, when I will go too far to re-emerge.
Not yet, instruct the prophets whose voices bend like waves of heat beyond the last oasis, past the final palm.
There were times I became impatient.
If I already know the last word—it’s so simple, common—why can’t I write it immediately, and spare myself this protracted leave-taking? The answer, of course, is that I must understand the last word more fully before I am able to write it. I will gain such knowledge by creating the work which remains to be completed before I may depart. Say that through literary composition I learn to ascend. These words, however flimsy, represent my only choice, a single option, the sole route to the enticing end. I concede that my sincerity may be questioned; it will be assumed that I am playing with metaphor, engaging in literary conceits. After all, every previous attempt to tell my truth has been interpreted as fiction. Unpalatable as invention, my unvarnished vision will likely fail to find acceptance, will surely invite scorn. Mocking laughter echoing from the future has no power to bother me. Only submit, advises Allah.
It’s been a quarter-century since I began to move purposefully from here to there upon the globe, always toward the end of placing greater distance between myself and every human to have known me. I’m careful to only open mail that appears completely safe; that is, impersonal, related strictly to business concerns. I have no telephone service or only an unlisted number, which is frequently changed. Just those individuals entrusted with the publication of my words are aware of my location at any given moment. Nothing except the production of those books implies that my existence continues.
With time, it has become easier to pass through the world without being pulled into its greedy arms. As if my corporeal dematerialization has already commenced, I seem to grow invisible already and exist beyond the power of human sight, transformed into an intangible entity. What is a ghost, after all, but a being who is never seen, never addressed, never touched?
“Are you still there?” I ask aloud, in a room on this side of the ocean or that, here or there, then or now.
(At the sound of my voice, I’m surprised it still works.)
Say finally I adhere to equations to achieve my ends.
The less contact I have with the world, the more powerful my yearning to leave it.
The more intent I become on reaching the last word, the less any activity except composition occupies my waking hours. My experiences away from my desk (currently an unsteady card table, always on the verge of collapse, discovered in the alley) have long been superfluous. I don’t fear a lack of further human contact will negatively impact the task still to be completed; material has already been accumulated; it can be fulfilled in isolation, behind closed curtains, where my heart grows huge with clumsy attempts to convey through my remaining words what it was like to be alive.
