The Autobiography of Red Page 8

  Geryon photographed the yellowbeard beneath one that read

  NIGHT ES SELBST ES

  TALLER AUTOGESTIVO

  JUEVES 18–21 HS

  Then they made their way to a bare loft

  called Faculty Lounge. No chairs. A long piece of brown paper nailed to the wall

  had a list of names in pencil and pen.

  Help Us Keep Track of Professors Detained or Disappeared, read the yellowbeard.

  Muy impressivo, he said to a young man

  standing nearby who merely looked at him. Geryon was trying to keep his eye

  from resting on any one name.

  Suppose it was the name of someone alive. In a room or in pain or waiting to die.

  Once Geryon had gone

  with his fourth-grade class to view a pair of beluga whales newly captured

  from the upper rapids of the Churchill River.

  Afterwards at night he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of

  the whales afloat

  in the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall—as alive as he was

  on their side

  of the terrible slopes of time. What is time made of? Geryon said suddenly

  turning to the yellowbeard who

  looked at him surprised. Time isn’t made of anything. It is an abstraction.

  Just a meaning that we

  impose upon motion. But I see—he looked down at his watch—what you mean.

  Wouldn’t want to be late

  for my own lecture would I? Let’s go.

  Sunset begins early in winter, a bluntness at the edge of the light. Geryon

  hurried after the yellowbeard

  through dimming corridors, past students huddled in conversation who stubbed

  their cigarettes underfoot

  and did not look at him, to a bare brick-walled classroom with a muddle of small desks.

  Empty one at the back.

  It was a tight fit in his big overcoat. He couldn’t cross his knees. Presences hunched

  darkly in the other desks.

  Clouds of cigarette smoke moved above them, butts lay thick on the concrete floor.

  Geryon disliked a room without rows.

  His brain went running back and forth over the disorder of desks trying to see

  straight lines. Each time finding

  an odd number it jammed then restarted. Geryon tried to pay attention.

  Un poco misterioso, the yellowbeard

  was saying. From the ceiling glared seventeen neon tubes. I see the terrifying

  spaces of the universe hemming me in.…

  the yellowbeard quoted Pascal and then began to pile words up all around the terror

  of Pascal until it could scarcely be seen—

  Geryon paused in his listening and saw the slopes of time spin backwards and stop.

  He was standing beside his mother

  at the window on a late winter afternoon. It was the hour when snow goes blue

  and streetlights come on and a hare may

  pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book. In this hour he and his mother

  accompanied each other. They did not

  turn on the light but stood quiet and watched the night come washing up

  towards them. Saw

  it arrive, touch, move past them and it was gone. Her ash glowed in the dark.

  By now the yellowbeard had moved

  from Pascal to Leibniz and was chalking a formula on the blackboard:

  [NEC] = A}B

  which he articulated using the sentence “If Fabian is white Tomás is just as white.”

  Why Leibniz should be concerned

  with the relative pallor of Fabian and Tomás did not come clear to Geryon

  although he willed himself

  to attend to the flat voice. He noted the word necesariamente recurring four times

  then five times then the examples

  turned inside out and now Fabian and Tomás were challenging each other’s negritude.

  If Fabian is black Tomás is just as black.

  So this is skepticism, thought Geryon. White is black. Black is white. Perhaps soon

  I will get some new information about red.

  But the examples dried away into la consecuencia which got louder and louder as

  the yellowbeard strode up and down

  his kingdom of seriousness bordered by strong words, maintaining belief

  in man’s original greatness—

  or was he denying it? Geryon may have missed a negative adverb—and ended

  with Aristotle who had

  compared skeptic philosophers to vegetables and to monsters. So blank and

  so bizarre would be

  the human life that tried to live outside belief in belief. Thus Aristotle.

  The lecture ended

  to a murmur of Muchas gracias from the audience. Then someone asked a question

  and the yellowbeard

  began talking again. Everybody lit another cigarette and clenched down in the desks.

  Geryon watched smoke swirl.

  Outside the sun had set. The little barred window was black. Geryon sat wrapped

  in himself. Would this day never end?

  His eye traveled to the clock at the front of the room and he fell into the pool

  of his favorite question.

  XXX. DISTANCES

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  “What is time made of?” is a question that had long exercised Geryon.

  ————

  Everywhere he went he asked people. Yesterday for example at the university.

  Time is an abstraction—just a meaning

  that we impose upon motion. Geryon is thinking this answer over as he kneels

  beside the bathtub in his hotel room

  stirring photographs back and forth in the developing solution. He picks out

  one of the prints and pins it

  to a clothesline strung between the television and the door. It is a photograph

  of some people sitting at desks

  in a classroom. The desks look too small for them—but Geryon is not interested

  in human comfort. Much truer

  is the time that strays into photographs and stops. High on the wall hangs a white

  electric clock. It says five minutes to six.

  At five minutes after six that evening the philosophers had adjourned the classroom

  and made their way to a bar

  down the street called Guerra Civil. The yellowbeard rode proudly at the front

  like a gaucho leading his infernal band

  over the pampas. The gaucho is master of his environment, thought Geryon

  clutching his camera and keeping to the rear.

  Bar Guerra Civil was a white stucco room with a monk’s table down the middle.

  When Geryon arrived the others were

  already deep in talk. He slid into a chair across from a man

  in round spectacles.

  What will you have Lazer? said someone on the man’s left.

  Oh let’s see the cappuccino is good here

  I’ll have a cappuccino please lots of cinnamon and—he pushed up his spectacles—

  a plate of olives.

  He glanced across the table. Your name is Lazarus? said Geryon.

  No my name is Lazer. As in laser beam—but

  do you wish to order something? Geryon glanced at the waiter. Coffee please.

  Turned back to Lazer. Unusual name.

  Not really. I am named for my grandfather. Eleazar is a fairly common Jewish

  name. But my parents

  were atheists so—he spread his hands—a slight accommodation. He smiled.

  And you are an atheist too? said Geryon.

  I am a skeptic. You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God

  with the good sense to doubt me.

  What is mortality after all but divine doubt f
lashing over us? For an instant God

  suspends assent and poof! we disappear.

  It happens to me frequently. You disappear? Yes and then come back.

  Moments of death I call them. Have an olive,

  he added as the waiter’s arm flashed between them with a plate.

  Thank you, said Geryon

  and bit into an olive. The pimiento stung his mouth alive like sudden sunset.

  He was very hungry and ate seven more,

  fast. Smiling a bit Lazer watched him. You eat like my daughter. With a certain

  shall I say lucidity.

  How old is your daughter? asked Geryon. Four—not quite human. Or perhaps

  a little beyond human. It is

  because of her I began to notice moments of death. Children make you see distances.

  What do you mean “distances”?

  Lazer paused and picked an olive from the plate. He spun it slowly on the toothpick.

  Well for example this morning

  I was sitting at my desk at home looking out on the acacia trees that grow beside

  the balcony beautiful trees very tall

  and my daughter was there she likes to stand beside me and draw pictures while

  I write in my journal. It

  was very bright this morning unexpectedly clear like a summer day and I looked up

  and saw a shadow of a bird go flashing

  across the leaves of the acacia as if on a screen projected and it seemed to me that I

  was standing on a hill. I have labored up

  to the top of this hill, here I am it has taken about half my life to get here and on

  the other side the hill slopes down.

  Behind me somewhere if I turned around I could see my daughter beginning to climb

  hand over hand like a little gold

  animal in the morning sun. That is who we are. Creatures moving on a hill.

  At different distances, said Geryon.

  At distances always changing. We cannot help one another or even cry out—

  what would I say to her,

  “Don’t climb so fast”? The waiter passed behind Lazer. He was moving at a tilt.

  Black outside air tossed itself

  hard against the windows. Lazer looked down at his watch. I must go, he said

  and he was winding his yellow scarf

  about his neck as he rose. Oh don’t go, thought Geryon who felt himself starting

  to slide off the surface of the room

  like an olive off a plate. When the plate attained an angle of thirty degrees

  he would vanish into his own blankness.

  But then his glance caught Lazer’s. I have enjoyed our conversation, said Lazer.

  Yes, said Geryon. Thank you.

  They touched hands. Lazer bowed slightly and turned and went out. A gust of night

  pushed its way in the door

  and everyone inside wavered once like stalks in a field then resumed their talk.

  Geryon subsided into his overcoat

  letting the talk flow over him warm as a bath. He felt for the moment concrete

  and indivisible. The philosophers

  were joking about cigarettes and Spanish banks and Leibniz, then politics.

  One man recounted how

  the governor of Puerto Rico had recently proclaimed it an injustice to exclude

  citizens from the democratic process

  merely because they were insane. Apparatus for voting was transported

  to the state asylum. Indeed

  the insane proved to be serious and creative voters. Many improved the ballot

  by writing in candidates

  they trusted would help the country. Eisenhower, Mozart, and St. John of the Cross

  were popular suggestions. Now

  the yellowbeard spoke up with a story from Spain. Franco too had understood

  the uses of madness.

  He was in the habit of busing large groups of supporters to his rallies.

  On one occasion the local madhouses

  were emptied for this purpose. Next day the newspapers reported cheerfully:

  SUBNORMALS BEHIND YOU ALL THE WAY FRANCO!

  Geryon’s cheekbones hurt from smiling. He drained his water glass and chewed

  the bits of ice then reached

  across for Lazer’s glass. He was ravenous. Try not to think about food. No hope

  of dinner till probably ten p.m.

  Willed his attention back to the conversation which had wandered to tails.

  It is not widely known,

  the yellowbeard was saying, that twelve percent of babies in the world are born

  with tails. Doctors suppress this news.

  They cut off the tail so it won’t scare the parents. I wonder what percentage

  are born with wings, said Geryon

  into the collar of his overcoat. They went on to discuss the nature of boredom

  ending with a long joke about monks

  and soup that Geryon could not follow although it was explained to him twice.

  The punch line contained

  a Spanish phrase meaning bad milk which caused the philosophers to lean

  their heads on the table in helpless joy.

  Jokes make them happy, thought Geryon watching. Then a miracle occurred

  in the form of a plate of sandwiches.

  Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread

  filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.

  He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how

  slipperiness can be of different kinds.

  I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.

  He would like to discuss this with someone.

  And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.

  When he got back to the hotel room

  he set up the camera on the windowsill and activated the timer, then positioned

  himself on the bed.

  It is a black-and-white photograph showing a naked young man in fetal position.

  He has entitled it “No Tail!”

  The fantastic fingerwork of his wings is outspread on the bed like a black lace

  map of South America.

  XXXI. TANGO

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  Under the seams runs the pain.

  ————

  Panic jumped down on Geryon at three a.m. He stood at the window of his hotel room.

  Empty street below gave back nothing of itself.

  Cars nested along the curb on their shadows. Buildings leaned back out of the street.

  Little rackety wind went by.

  Moon gone. Sky shut. Night had delved deep. Somewhere (he thought) beneath

  this strip of sleeping pavement

  the enormous solid globe is spinning on its way—pistons thumping, lava pouring

  from shelf to shelf,

  evidence and time lignifying into their traces. At what point does one say of a man

  that he has become unreal?

  He hugged his overcoat closer and tried to assemble in his mind Heidegger’s