The Autobiography of Red Read online

  was wafting through the aeroplane. He looked up. Rows away at the front

  servants were distributing

  dinner from a cart. Geryon was very hungry. He forced himself to stare out

  the cold little window and count

  to one hundred before looking up again. The cart had not moved. He thought

  about harpoons. Does a man with a harpoon

  go hungry? Even a harpoon made of a jawbone could hit the cart from here.

  How people get power over one another,

  this mystery. He moved his eyes back to the Fodor’s Guide. “Among

  the indigenous folk of Tierra del Fuego

  were the Yamana which means as a noun ‘people not animals’ or as a verb

  ‘to live, breathe, be happy, recover

  from sickness, become sane.’ Joined as a suffix to the word for hand

  it denotes ‘friendship.’ ”

  Geryon’s dinner arrived. He unwrapped and ate every item ravenously seeking

  the smell he had smelled

  a few moments ago but it was not there. The Yamana too, he read, were extinct

  by the beginning of the twentieth century—

  wiped out by measles contracted from the children of English missionaries.

  As night darkness glided across the outer world

  the inside of the aeroplane got colder and smaller. There were neon tracks

  in the ceiling which extinguished themselves.

  Geryon closed his eyes and listened to engines vibrating deep in the moon-splashed

  canals of his brain. Each way

  he moved brought his kneecaps into hard contact with punishment.

  He opened his eyes again.

  At the very front of the cabin hung a video screen. South America glowed

  like an avocado. A live red line

  marked the progress of the aeroplane. He watched the red line inch forward

  from Miami

  towards Puerto Rico at 972 kilometers per hour. The passenger in front of him

  had propped his video camera

  gently against the sleeping head of his wife and was videotaping the video screen,

  which now recorded

  Temperatura Exterior (−50 degrees C) and Altura (10,670 meters)

  as well as Velocidad.

  “The Yamana, whose filth and poverty persuaded Darwin, passing in his Beagle,

  that they were monkey men unworthy

  of study, had fifteen names for clouds and more than fifty for different kinds

  of kin. Among their variations of the verb

  ‘to bite’ was a word that meant ‘to come surprisingly on a hard substance

  when eating something soft

  e.g. a pearl in a mussel.’ ” Geryon shifted himself down and up in the molded

  seat trying to unclench

  knots of pain in his spine. Half turned sideways but could not place his left arm.

  Heaved himself forwards again

  accidentally punching off the reading light and knocking his book to the floor.

  The woman next to him moaned

  and slumped over the armrest like a wounded seal. He sat in the numb dark.

  Hungry again.

  The video screen recorded local (Bermuda) time as ten minutes to two.

  What is time made of?

  He could feel it massed around him, he could see its big deadweight blocks

  padded tight together

  all the way from Bermuda to Buenos Aires—too tight. His lungs contracted.

  Fear of time came at him. Time

  was squeezing Geryon like the pleats of an accordion. He ducked his head to peer

  into the little cold black glare of the window.

  Outside a bitten moon rode fast over a tableland of snow. Staring at the vast black

  and silver nonworld moving

  and not moving incomprehensibly past this dangling fragment of humans

  he felt its indifference roar over

  his brain box. An idea glazed along the edge of the box and whipped back

  down into the canal behind the wings

  and it was gone. A man moves through time. It means nothing except that,

  like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

  Geryon leaned his forehead against the cold hard hum of the double glass and slept.

  On the floor under his feet

  Fodor’s Guide lay open. THE GAUCHO ACQUIRED AN EXAGGERATED NOTION

  OF MASTERY OVER

  HIS OWN DESTINY FROM THE SIMPLE ACT OF RIDING ON HORSEBACK

  WAY FAR ACROSS THE PLAIN.

  XXVII. MITWELT

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  There is no person without a world.

  ————

  The red monster sat at a corner table of Café Mitwelt writing bits of Heidegger

  on the postcards he’d bought.

  Sie sind das was betreiben

  there are many Germans in

  Buenos Aires they are all

  soccer players the weather

  is lovely wish you were here

  GERYON

  he wrote to his brother now a sportscaster at a radio station on the mainland.

  Over at the end of the bar

  near the whiskey bottles Geryon saw a waiter speaking to another behind his hand.

  He supposed they would

  soon throw him out. Could they tell from the angle of his body, from the way

  his hand moved that he was

  writing German not Spanish? It was likely illegal. Geryon had been studying

  German philosophy at college

  for the past three years, the waiters doubtless knew this too. He shifted his upper

  back muscles inside

  the huge overcoat, tightening his wings and turned over another postcard.

  Zum verlorenen Hören

  There are many Germans

  in Buenos Aires they are

  all psychoanalysts the

  weather is lovely wish you

  were here

  GERYON

  he wrote to his philosophy professor. But now he noticed one of the waiters

  coming towards him. A cold spray

  of fear shot across his lungs. He rummaged inside himself for Spanish phrases.

  Please do not call the police—

  what did Spanish sound like? he could not recall a single word of it.

  German irregular verbs

  were marching across his mind as the waiter drew up at his table and stood,

  a brilliant white towel

  draped on his forearm, leaning slightly towards Geryon. Aufwarts abwarts

  ruckwarts vorwarts auswarts einwarts

  swam crazy circles around each other while Geryon watched the waiter extract

  a coffee cup smoothly

  from the debris of postcards covering the table and straighten his towel

  as he asked in perfect English

  Would the gentleman like another expresso? but Geryon was already blundering

  to his feet with the postcards

  in one hand, coins dropping on the tablecloth and he went crashing out.

  It was not the fear of ridicule,

  to which everyday life as a winged red person had accommodated Geryon early in life,

  but this blank desertion of his own mind

  that threw him into despair. Perhaps he was mad. In the seventh grade he had done

  a science project on this worry.

  It was the year he began to wonder about the noise that colors make. Roses came

  roaring across the garden at him.

  He lay on his bed at night listening to the silver light of stars crashing against

  the window screen. Most

  of those he interviewed for the science project had to admit they did not hear

  the cries of the roses

  being burned alive in the noonday sun. Like horses, Geryon would say helpfully,r />
  like horses in war. No, they shook their heads.

  Why is grass called blades? he asked them. Isn’t it because of the clicking?

  They stared at him. You should be

  interviewing roses not people, said the science teacher. Geryon liked this idea.

  The last page of his project

  was a photograph of his mother’s rosebush under the kitchen window.

  Four of the roses were on fire.

  They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets

  and howling colossal intimacies

  from the back of their fused throats. Didn’t your mother mind—

  Signor! Something solid landed

  against his back. Geryon had come to a dead halt in the middle of a sidewalk

  in Buenos Aires

  with people flooding around his big overcoat on every side. People, thought Geryon,

  for whom life

  is a marvelous adventure. He moved off into the tragicomedy of the crowd.

  XXVIII. SKEPTICISM

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  A paste of blue cloud untangled itself on the red sky over the harbor.

  ————

  Buenos Aires was blurring into dawn. Geryon had been walking for an hour

  on the sweaty black cobblestones

  of the city waiting for night’s end. Traffic crashed past him. He covered his mouth

  and nose with his hand as five old buses

  came tilting around the corner of the street and halted one behind the other,

  belching soot. Passengers streamed

  on board like insects into lighted boxes and the experiment roared off down the street.

  Pulling his body after him

  like a soggy mattress Geryon trudged on uphill. Café Mitwelt was crowded.

  He found a corner table

  and was writing a postcard to his mother:

  Die Angst offenbart das Nichts

  There are many Germans in

  Buenos Aires they are all

  cigarette girls the weather

  is lov—

  when he felt a sharp tap on his boot propped against the chair opposite.

  Mind if I join you?

  The yellowbeard had already taken hold of the chair. Geryon moved his boot.

  Pretty busy in here today,

  said the yellowbeard turning to signal a waiter—Por favor hombre!

  Geryon went back to his postcard.

  Sending postcards to your girlfriends? In the midst of his yellow beard

  was a pink mouth small as a nipple. No.

  You sound American am I right? You from the States?

  No.

  The waiter arrived with bread and jam to which the yellowbeard bent himself.

  You here for the conference? No.

  Big conference this weekend at the university. Philosophy. Skepticism.

  Ancient or modern? Geryon

  could not resist asking. Well now, said the yellowbeard looking up,

  there’s some ancient people here

  and some modern people here. Flew me in from Irvine. My talk’s at three.

  What’s your topic? said Geryon

  trying not to stare at the nipple. Emotionlessness. The nipple puckered.

  That is to say, what the ancients called

  ataraxia. Absence of disturbance, said Geryon. Precisely. You know ancient Greek?

  No but I have read the skeptics. So you

  teach at Irvine. That’s in California? Yes southern California—actually I’ve got

  a grant next year to do research at MIT.

  Geryon watched a small red tongue clean jam off the nipple. I want to study the erotics

  of doubt. Why? Geryon asked.

  The yellowbeard was pushing back his chair—As a precondition—and saluting

  the waiters across the room—

  of the proper search for truth. Provided you can renounce—he stood—that

  rather fundamental human trait—

  he raised both arms as if to alert a ship at sea—the desire to know. He sat.

  I think I can, said Geryon.

  Pardon? Nothing. A passing waiter slapped the bill down onto a small metal

  spike on the table.

  Traffic was crashing past outside. Dawn had faded. The gas-white winter sky

  came down like a gag on Buenos Aires.

  Would you care to come and hear my talk? We could share a cab.

  May I bring my camera?

  XXIX. SLOPES

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  Although a monster Geryon could be charming in company.

  ————

  He made an attempt as they hurtled across Buenos Aires in a small taxi.

  The two of them

  were crushed into the back seat with their knees against their chests,

  Geryon unpleasantly aware

  of the yellowbeard’s thigh jolting against his own and of breath from the nipple.

  He stared straight ahead.

  The driver was out the window aiming a stream of rage at passing pedestrians

  as the car shot across a red light.

  He pounded the dashboard in joy and lit another cigarette, wheeling sharp left

  to cut off a bicyclist

  (who bounced onto the sidewalk and dove down a side street)

  then veered diagonally in front

  of three buses and halted shuddering behind another taxi. BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK.

  Argentine horns sound like cows.

  More blasphemy out the window. The yellowbeard was chuckling.

  How’s your Spanish? he said to Geryon.

  Not very good what about you?

  Actually I am fairly fluent. I spent a year in Spain doing research.

  Emotionlessness?

  No, law codes. I was looking at the sociology of ancient law codes.

  You are interested in justice?

  I’m interested in how people decide what sounds like a law.

  So what’s your favorite law code?

  Hammurabi. Why? Neatness. For example? For example:

  “The man who is caught

  stealing during a fire shall be thrown into the fire.” Isn’t that good?—if

  there were such a thing

  as justice that’s what it ought to sound like—short. Clean. Rhythmical.

  Like a houseboy.

  Pardon? Nothing. They had arrived at the University of Buenos Aires.

  The yellowbeard and the taxi driver

  denounced one another for a few moments, then a pittance was paid over

  and the taxi rattled off.

  What is this place? said Geryon as they mounted the steps of a white concrete

  warehouse covered with graffiti on the outside.

  Inside it was colder than the winter air of the street. You could see your breath.

  An abandoned cigarette factory, said the yellowbeard.

  Why is it so cold?

  They can’t afford to heat it. The university’s broke. The cavernous interior

  was hung with banners.