water and shower. I wondered if there were other rules that would be more difficult to follow because, like anyone, I worry about unconscious behaviors, those which I cannot control, and then I worry that I am too old to change.
I don’t see well, said the friend apropos of nothing. We were walking down some avenue or other — I should say sliding down some avenue or other, because it had of course recently snowed and the road held the tracks of sleds and skis as well as snow tires and chains — but there was really nothing to see, I wanted to point out to my friend, everything was white, the sky, the street, and all the things that might have been visible on a day without snow were now covered with snow — rows of automobiles to the point that I wasn’t sure they were automobiles. For all I knew, they might have been great hulking sea monsters who had lost the sea like the rest of us.
Nevertheless, I gave my friend my arm, and he clutched my red windbreaker, which probably did the opposite of keeping me warm, it was of such a weird, cold material, and in this manner we eventually arrived at his apartment.
I was perfectly comfortable in my new surroundings; they beat the hell out of wandering the icy streets homeless, running into bands of thieves and drug addicts, my son not among those I’d encountered, thank god. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d seen my pathetic son. My heart no longer bleeds for him, though there was a time when my heart was smashed to smithereens. Enough said. Every time I try to banish him from memory here he comes again with his tilted gray eyes, even in the guise of who I did not see in the past month, as he who was conspicuously absent from my wanderings.
Being homeless is no picnic and, unlike my son, I did it drug-free, with only my thoughts for comfort, my belief (mistaken) that the sea lurked somewhere, waiting to restore me to my bearings.
My friend had a sofa, a TV, a lamp, a rug, a stove, a fridge, a double bed, a closet full of shoes, and a cat. I hadn’t realized he was such an austere fellow. He didn’t have a reputation for warmth or kindness, but inviting me to his apartment suggested that this reputation was not entirely warranted.
I slept on the sofa, as instructed. It was foamy, not lumpy, and its velvet material a cocoon of sorts. We all like to feel swathed, I think. Also, my friend gave me a blanket — a nice blue blanket which I wrapped around myself multiple times — and a pillow that used to belong to the cat. In fact, the cat shared the pillow with me at night, which I didn’t mind, the paddling and purring of the cat next to my ear as I slept, though I believe it colored my dreams.
The cat was cream-colored with large irregular splotches on its back, giving it the appearance of a small cow.
As cats go, it was medium-sized.
I dreamed of cows, therefore, and human infants who were pitched into dark holes and drug addicts sleeping on sofas belonging to other drug addicts.
The last time I saw my son he informed me that he was living in a “squat.” I told him that that fact struck me as kind of ignominious.
I remember the ocean as being a deep gray color laden, on good days, with streaks of white, which gave it its characteristic shimmer. The sky on such days was lit with what looked to be rags hanging from a celestial clothesline. Very beautiful, but spooky.
My friend was christened Frederick von Schlegel, after the German philosopher of the same name, but everyone called him Hans. My name was G, just the initial deprived of the clothing, I liked to say. The cat’s name was Fur and I won’t tell you my son the drug addict’s name.
I had been away for an indeterminate amount of time during which I completed a great deal of work. I kept residuals in a suitcase which, until I met Hans in Borders bookstore, I lugged around with me through the city. The bulk was housed elsewhere. I had no idea if any of it was successful. In more optimistic moments, I liked to think so; but eventually something would happen — the tiniest alteration in the atmosphere, such as the time when the crow who frequented the fire-escape railing growled at me through the window — and then I would be in despair over my accomplishments. At such times I felt I understood the impulses of those who scourged themselves with cato’-nine-tails and slept on beds of nails. I, too, craved punishment for the unworthiness of my effort, indeed the unworthiness of my being.
Other than the sofa, Hans’s apartment was replete with artificial flowers of every denomination. In the mornings, he would tend to these thousands with a translucent spray bottle, which would take a full hour. I could not shake the feeling that these flowers were about to speak, that there was more to them than twists of colored plastic or, in some cases, starched fabric. The cluster of pink ranunculus that sat stiffly on the coffee table in front of the sofa on which I slept seemed always about to discourse about psychology. The narcissist, they always seemed about to say, is generally a happier person than the comparatively hysterical borderline personality. Here they seemed to nod pointedly toward the daffodils, and I of course was reminded of my encounter with my friend at Borders bookstore when we each held those books on personality disorders only to abandon them (thankfully) for fiction. The tulips, I thought, seemed about to agree with me that the idea of personality disorders was kind of creepy and attractive at the same time, the notion that something surprising lurks under the surface of a person always a thrill, but perhaps, at times, an unwelcome thrill. On and on, the flowers seemed about to yak, and I admired their stamina. The fact that they all persisted in a season of profound winter was, I suppose, cause for celebration of some sort — or perhaps they were merely stir crazy, as was I.
Even so, I rarely left the apartment, but settled myself by the window where I indulged in an on-and-off sprightly communication with the crow. The crow would bring me news of my son, not welcome news, and much as I tried to dissuade him (or her) from these reports, she seemed to insist upon delivering them. You never know about the sensibilities of other species that are possibly impervious to that which we hold dear as humans. In this case, I was holding dear the absence of my son from my life. I cherished this absence as some might cherish inhabiting the premises of one who collected artificial flowers of every denomination and harbored a spotted cat.
The cat was not a communicator and, aside from our sleep time, kept its distance. There were times when I felt it was “giving me a look,” but many feel this way about cats on account of the shapes of their eyes and the fact that they rarely blink. Perhaps, though, they have the capacity to stare into the soul; if this one had been able to gaze into mine, I doubt it would have insisted on sleeping with me. It would have discovered a clotted mess of conflicting desires and repugnancies, all of which I hid behind my usual sangfroid.
Hans and I spoke rarely, and when we did our conversation tended to get caught up in snarls of misunderstanding. He was, as I’ve said, blind in one eye, and this was the central fact of his life, to hear him talk about it. Once I tried to tell him that being blind in one eye was not all that disabling and he nearly bit my head off. You have no idea, do you? he said incredulously, and we went on from there, back and forth, like a Ping-Pong tournament I remember participating in (and losing) as a ten-year-old. Nerve-wracking to see that little white ball — innocuous as it may have been — barreling toward you, as if it might cripple you for life, which is the spirit in which we fought, Hans and I. You are the most self-indulgent person I’ve ever met, he shouted, and I shouted, At least I’m not deluded, and he shouted, You could at least tidy up a little around here, and I shouted, I can’t hear myself think around here!
This last was a mean-spirited reference to Hans’s incessant theremin playing, the spooky sounds reminiscent of bad sci-fi or a copulating cat or, less frequently, a flock of warbling mourning doves. Hans had not yet mastered the instrument, which was a difficult instrument to master, though if you asked me, anyone with a decent soprano could mime the sounds pretty accurately by intoning ooooo and eeeee to the tune of something plaintive.
When he played O mio bambino cara, though, in spite of myself, I was moved. There he would stand, at the helm of his peculiar instrument, a lumpen figure of a man with a large square head, his mouth pressed in a grim line, his hands like big roast beefs paddling the air — and the tender spectacle of this sad, blind-in-one-eye man, along with the Puccini — all the more poignant for being a little off-key — would unfailingly bring tears to my eyes.
I was settling in like a cat settles in, surrendering myself to unfamiliar surroundings, marking my own tiny territory, as it were, which consisted of the sofa and a plastic chair I had moved to the window for the purpose of looking outside. It was always snowing or about to snow and it fascinated me to watch the snowflakes, which resembled swarms of large white bees.
I began to dread the crow’s visits, however, the news of my son always discouraging — he was caught
