makes to go on… the weight of hours. I will tell her and avoid confusion. Her eyes will budge from left to right and back, study each of my eyes in turn, compare them for honesty or shift in intent, dip intermittently to my mouth and round and round to make a meaning of a face, and likewise my eyes in hers, round and round our eyes will dance and chase.
I sit wedged between the two standing men and the Director repeats his instructions, impatiently leaves us, and when he reaches the door turns to look back and smiles indulgently. Yes! I have never seen him smile. I see what he sees—twins as posed for a formal photograph. One stands, his hand settled forever on the shoulder of the other who sits; possibly a confusion, a trick of the lens, for if we turn this bright metal ring their images coalesce and there is only one. Name of? Hopeful and with good reason… anxious.
To and fro is my clock, will make the earth turn, the dawn come, bring her daughters to her bed… to and fro laughs at the stillness, to and fro drops her children between the spicy adult warmth, attaches them to her sides like starfish, do you remember … the thrill of seeing what you are not intended to see, the great rock thrust across the wet, striated sand, the water’s edge receding against its will to the horizon, and in the rock-thrust the hungry pools sucked and slopped and sucked. A fat black boulder hung across a pool and beneath it there it hung, and stretched its legs and arms, you saw it first, so orange, bright, beautiful, singular, its dripping white dots. It clung to the black rock it commanded, and how the water slapped it against its rock while far away the sea receded. The starfish did not threaten like the bones for being dead, it threatened for being so awake, like a child’s shout in the dead of night.
The body warmth they transmit. Are we the same? Leech, are we? Leech stretches, answers, bats, pushes, pretends, consults, flatters, stoops, checks, poses, approaches, salutes, touches, examines, indicates, grips, murmurs, gazes, trembles, shakes, occurs, smiles, faintly, so very faintly, says, Open your… the warmth?… open your eyes, open your eyes.
Is it true? I lie in the dark… it is true, I think it is over. She sleeps, there was no end, the suspension came unnoticed like sleep itself. Yes, the ancient to and fro rocked her to sleep, and in sleep she drew me to her side and placed her leg over mine. The dark grows blue and gray and I feel on my temple, beneath her breast, the ancient tread of her heart to and fro.
Psychopolis
Mary worked in and part-owned a feminist bookstore in Venice. I met her there lunchtime on my second day in Los Angeles. That same evening we were lovers, and not so long after that, friends. The following Friday I chained her by the foot to my bed for the whole weekend. It was, she explained to me, something she “had to go into to come out of.” I remember her extracting (later, in a crowded bar) my solemn promise that I would not listen if she demanded to be set free. Anxious to please my new friend, I bought a fine chain and diminutive padlock. With brass screws I secured a steel ring to the wooden base of the bed and all was set. Within hours she was insisting on her freedom, and though a little confused I got out of bed, showered, dressed, put on my carpet slippers and brought her a large frying pan to urinate in. She tried on a firm, sensible voice.
“Unlock this,” she said. “I’ve had enough.” I admit she frightened me. I poured myself a drink and hurried out onto the balcony to watch the sun set. I was not at all excited. I thought to myself, If I unlock the chain she will despise me for being weak. If I keep her there she might hate me, but at least I will have kept my promise. The pale orange sun dipped into the haze, and I heard her shout to me through the closed bedroom door. I closed my eyes and concentrated on being blameless.
A friend of mine once had analysis with an elderly man, a Freudian with a well-established practice in New York. On one occasion my friend spoke at length about his doubts concerning Freud’s theories, their lack of scientific credibility, their cultural particularity and so on. When he had done the analyst smiled genially and replied, “Look around you!” And indicated with his open palm the comfortable study, the rubber plant and the
In the same manner I said to myself as I returned indoors (the sun now set and the bedroom silent), the bare truth of the matter is that I am keeping my promise.
All the same, I felt bored. I wandered from room to room turning on the lights, leaning in doorways and staring in at objects that already were familiar. I set up the music stand and took out my flute. I taught myself to play years ago and there are many errors, strengthened by habit, which I no longer have the will to correct. I do not press the keys as I should with the very tips of my fingers, and my fingers fly too high off the keys and so make it impossible to play fast passages with any facility. Furthermore my right wrist is not relaxed, and does not fall, as it should, at an easy right angle to the instrument. I do not hold my back straight when I play, instead I slouch over the music. My breathing is not controlled by the muscles of my stomach, I blow carelessly from the top of my throat. My embouchure is ill-formed and I rely too often on a syrupy vibrato. I lack the control to play any dynamics other than soft or loud. I have never bothered to teach myself the notes above top G. My musicianship is poor, and slightly unusual rhythms perplex me. Above all I have no ambition to play any other than the same half-dozen pieces and I make the same mistakes each time.
Several minutes into my first piece I thought of her listening from the bedroom and the phrase “captive audience” came into my mind. While I played I devised ways in which these words could be inserted casually into a sentence to make a weak, light-hearted pun, the humor of which would somehow cause the situation to be elucidated. I put the flute down and walked towards the bedroom door. But before I had my sentence arranged, my hand, with a kind of insensible automation, had pushed the door open and I was standing in front of Mary. She sat on the edge of the bed brushing her hair, the chain decently obscured by blankets. In England a woman as articulate as Mary might have been regarded as an aggressor, but her manner was gentle. She was short and quite heavily built. Her face gave an impression of reds and blacks, deep red lips, black, black eyes, dusky apple-red cheeks and hair black and sleek like tar. Her grandmother was Indian.
“What do you want?” she said sharply and without interrupting the motion of her hand.
“Ah,” I said. “Captive audience!”
“What?” When I did not repeat myself she told me that she wished to be left alone. I sat down on the bed and thought, If she asks me to set her free I’ll do it instantly. But she said nothing. When she had finished with her hair she lay down with her hands clasped behind her head. I sat watching her, waiting. The idea of asking her if she wished to be set free seemed ludicrous, and simply setting her free without her permission was terrifying. I did not even know whether this was an ideological or psychosexual matter. I returned to my flute, this time carrying the music stand to the far end of the apartment and closing the intervening doors. I hoped she couldn’t hear me.
On Sunday night, after more than twenty-four hours of unbroken silence between us, I set Mary free. As the lock sprang open I said, “I’ve been in Los Angeles less than a week and already I feel a completely different person.”
Though partially true, the remark was designed to give pleasure. One hand resting on my shoulder, the other massaging her foot, Mary said, “It’ll do that. It’s a city at the end of cities.”
“It’s sixty miles across!” I agreed.
“It’s a thousand miles deep!” cried Mary wildly and threw her brown arms about my neck. She seemed to have found what she had hoped for.
But she was not inclined to explanations. Later on we ate out in a Mexican restaurant and I waited for her to mention her weekend in chains and when, finally, I began to ask her she interrupted with a question. “Is it really true that England is in a state of total collapse?”
I said yes and spoke at length without believing what I was saying. The only experience I had of total collapse was a friend who killed himself. At first he only wanted to punish himself. He ate a little ground glass washed down with grapefruit juice. Then when the pains began he ran to the tube station, bought the cheapest
