Mortals

Candles are perfect for this. He thought, I am guttering… at fifty she’ll be fine but at sixty I won’t unless I relax. It was time to think about retirement. It was almost too late, in fact, so it was definitely time. He needed a new way to get significantly ahead.

He said, “What you’re telling me… this is good. It’s great. And you do seem fine. Of course you always did, but, this is wonderful. Kiss me when you get a moment. I love you. I’m grateful to this man, truly.”

“He really does go beyond,” she said. “You may not want to hear this but it illustrates something.”

She hesitated, then said, “He really studies you. Okay, he smells you, studies that aspect. He feels your hair. He smells your breath, something no doctor I ever heard of does. He looks at the whites of your eyes…”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I’m not crazy about it. It’s a little theatrical for me, but what do I know? So. So does it involve any touching along the way? Just curious.”

“Oh please. He feels your trapezius muscles for a second. But listen to this. The way he deduced I might have hypoadrenia was by looking at my hands. People who are the most likely to experience adrenal problems have certain physical characteristics, such as being long-waisted like me, and miscarriages, a history of miscarriages. But a main indication is that the index finger is more rounded than the others and longer than the ring finger. Which again is me. Realize that this is not an extended process. It’s brisk. There are people around, in and out all the time. Also, if I may say this, the fact is that regular doctors do not look at you. They look at your history while they’re talking to you. There is nothing intimate about this examination he does. It’s the same for men, I’m sure. That’s it. I wanted you to know about this from me before you hear about it from someone else, because it’s different, what he does, and it’s going to be talked about, God knows. That’s really it.”

He thought, I am burning with love, what can I do?… She loves him, I think.

The fact was, he loved talking to her, the sheer talking, whatever the subject was. It didn’t matter that they were at odds and that she was extracting his heart from his chest like an Aztec. Her voice was a gift to him when it was aimed his way. “I am leaving you!” she could be saying and he would still want to hear it.

“So in effect this is a onetime thing he does, not something that gets repeated time after time, as I understand you.”

“Of course not.”

“So that part of this is in the past.”

“Absolutely.”

“I love you.”

She loved him too. He said, “So that covers the physical part, I guess. So now we come, briefly as we can, to, to, anything you can tell me about these sessions…” No way could he say what he wanted to say, which was What is wrong with me that this is happening, for God’s sake, and what was the Hauptsache, the main thing, a German term that came to him from his Introductory German, for God’s sake. Maybe we are lost, he thought. He continued his thought, “… I won’t ever ask you again, but anything you can say about why you are going and what I should assume you’re talking about in the most general way, I would appreciate, Iris, and I beg you to God to forgive me for asking you this. But anything you can tell me about what is going on here, tell me, and I apologize. But tell me…”

“It’s conversation.”

“But what should I assume? Conversation about what? About your disappointments in life?”

“It’s conversation. It’s partly about philosophy. He gives me things to read as part of it. From time to time. Homework.”

“That’s interesting. Are those things I could know about, your syllabus, the things he recommends.”

“I don’t know. I can tell you what I’d prefer.”

“Not to. Not to tell me.”

“Right. And if you see me reading something, since I’m not going to put brown paper jackets on everything, just let me proceed with it without any commentary being elicited.”

“That’s fine. I don’t know a lot of what you read normally, anyway. You go into your sanctum.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing, what I want.” She got up and stood away from the tub, her arms folded. She wanted him to understand the seriousness of what she was about to say, although the stance she was taking, with her legs slightly apart, meant that the bottom of her pubic fringe was backlit. It was the main feature in the silhouette she was presenting to him. He didn’t need to be reminded that they were a couple of animals, however civilized they were in a situation like this. He turned his gaze away, up toward the geyser, again willing it to fall and crush him.

There was a substantial pause while she calmed herself with a breathing exercise he’d seen her perform a couple of times lately, a new thing.

“This is what I want. What I want for myself is like that line in the Bible, ‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no.’ I want my life to be like that, this is yes, this is no. Yes I am your friend. No I’m not your enemy. I want clarity. You remember when everybody was talking about that religious fanatic who’s dragging a cross around the world, when he showed up in South Africa? He’s been at it for years. This is supposedly his mission. But in the photograph in the paper, it was obvious there was a twelve-inch wheel attached to the foot of the cross, meaning he isn’t really dragging his cross around the world, he’s rolling it, which a person might think was still pretty admirable… but it isn’t the same thing. Nobody referred to the presence of the wheel. I want clarity. And I want to feel really good, not just physically. This is turning into a collage, isn’t it? And I want us to get to a new level, which I don’t have a definition of. But I want us to be at a new level. And I want to stop chopping ashes…”

She was so animated. “Chopping ashes?”

“Kgabatlela melora. It’s what the Batswana say about someone who’s doing something really pointless. I guess our closest equivalent would be ‘pounding sand,’ but that doesn’t really capture it in the same way.”

“Everything you want is what I want, Iris.”

“I know. I believe that.” She returned to her seat at the foot of the tub.

He said, “Could you, though, give me just an indication of the kinds of things he’s giving you to read?”

She sighed at him.

“Literature,” she said. “You are so relentless.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I love you.”

“But I’ll tell you something he wanted me to read that I absolutely gave up on. It was Thoreau’s Journal, Volume Six, and I said no after I’d read fifty pages because I’d gotten the point. Davis thinks it’s the greatest literary work of art of the whole period, I don’t know, since Shakespeare. I got the point, which is that Thoreau is really paying attention to the world, in detail, seeing everything there is. I said to him that there was no development. Maybe he thinks I’m shallow, I don’t know. He was nice about it. And please don’t give me your opinion of Thoreau or get into that whole thing you have on English Literature versus American Literature.”

“I won’t. Okay.”

“Also, out of fairness I ought to tell you that some of what he’s giving me is writing of his own. Chapters, drafts, for something he’s writing, a book of essays called Idol Meat.”

“What? Meat? Idle?”

“It’s i-d-o-l meat, Ray.”

He felt like a fool. And the title hurt him. He liked it. He thought of his own unwritten books, with pain, his book plans, all embryonic. He had ideas. There was no time.

She said, “Idol meat is…”

He interrupted her, saying, “I know what it is.”

He hadn’t meant to say it the way he had. “Idol meat is the leftovers, isn’t it? The burnt offerings made by the pagans and the Jews, cooked animals, meat, that Christians weren’t supposed to partake of if it came their way. Taboo meat.”

“Right.”

“Are you making suggestions as you read?”

“If something strikes me. But don’t get the idea I’m editing him or anything remotely resembling that.”

“He appreciates your contributions, though.”

“He seems to.”