Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (66 page)

There was a blanket in my car. I threw it over me and drove away. Then I telephoned Rileene, who sounded strangely surprised and resentful to hear from me. She referred me to a discreet doctor who was very
knowledgeable about such cases. He prescribed a diet of beef broth and blood pudding. Within two weeks I felt as right as rain.

Rileene telephoned me to say that her sister missed me very much. What could I do? I drove back to the house. Wenuke was waiting and watching for me up on the widow's walk.

That first dusk we scarcely touched one another, and the darkness came by staccato stages, each as irrevocable as another spurt of India from an inkwell. It became pleasantly cool, and my elbows and shoulders tingled with mosquito bites no matter how much citronella I put on.

Her gaze was like some strange green rainforest pool.

I already knew who I was and what I wanted. I had become nearly as supernatural as she.

When the moon rose, she wrapped her long green fingers around my wrist and led me back into our bedroom.

For a surprise she had dug up some foxed old mirror and propped it up against the wall so that we could watch ourselves make love; and I was interested to see how thin and pale I had become. She looked as perfect as ever, of course. With a single tendril she began to stimulate my prostate; and I looked at myself. My panting reminded me of the way a lungfish's inhalations puff out small sacs next to its anterior fins.

Gazing at me with desperate love, she brought her face close to mine and extended her tongue until it blossomed in my mouth, wrapping round and round my tongue a dozen times and piercing it with suckers until I was happily drinking my own blood.

Just as in Paris they open the long green coffins bolted to the wall of the quai, and the books and prints within get resurrected, so my capacity for affection—I nearly wrote
infection—
got once more disinterred from within my breastbone by Mrs. Wenuke Lei McLeod. I almost believed that she had no heart to hurt me.

But deep underwater in dreams, a nurse shark's belly rising overhead like the moon, I woke to find myself struggling somewhere within her crotch, which was a deep weedy hole with black water shining across it like
morning light on the blue sea. Blood was trickling from my nose and my nipples. I pulled out of her and tried to sit up, but could not.

On the other side of the bed, she knelt and motionlessly watched me, half smiling, silently weeping jasmine-fragrant tears.

I knew even then that she was as rare as a banana-colored eel, which every now and then, on long voyages, I have been lucky to observe languidly flicking its tiny front fins.

I threw myself wildly into her cool green body, and in her magic mirror I saw myself purple-faced and bulging-eyed, with the stuporous gape of a puffer fish, and just then one of her fingers sprouted deep in my anus, at which point I experienced agonizing pleasure and everything went black. When I knew who I was again, I found her sitting on my lap with all her myriad arms wrapped around me; and in the mirror I saw the white cilia of mushroom-gilled anemones wriggling like maggots.

When I finally left her for good, she wrapped herself around the bedpost like a black-and-green spider whose legs swell at the joints into leaf-shapes, clinging to a silk-wrapped victim, hanging in the wind.

After my escape from Wenuke, I wanted somebody more substantial, so I travelled to Greece, a country renowned for vampirism. After a few peasant funerals I found the right situation and was there alone, having bribed the mourners, when the girl's cadaver rose up off the table, stark naked and ready. There may well be nothing on earth (or under it) as delectable as a fresh young corpse with a waxy yellow complexion, sunken eyes, conspicuous ribs and the sweet odor of decay. I was intoxicated by that odor! I fell in love with her.

I think I'm probably not as good a person as you make me out to be, the corpse whispered.

She left for a moment to recompose herself. Returning to the unmade bed, I sought her traces and found upon the pillow a long black hair. When I touched it, my heart raced and my penis stiffened.

I belong to you, I said. I'll love you forever. I'll be yours forever—well, at least for the rest of my life, which is the best I can do.

Oh, I hope not, she whispered in dismay.

I prized her. But whenever she thought that I was not watching, she commenced to make metallic grimaces and jaw-workings similar to those of a coal grouper fish; and I wondered whether she longed to gnaw me up or whether she were simply tormented at not being permitted to rot away in peace. Her kisses had begun to stink.

When I asked her how to make her happy, she replied that she had always wanted to visit other places. I took her to Paris. In memory of Wenuke I proposed to her in the Jardin de Plantes, where just behind our bench a sandyhaired young cop stood clasping his white-gloved hands just over his buttocks.

The last time I had confessed was at the funeral of my calm and faithful wife. The priest, who appeared to be quite certain of his knowledge, had assured me that in the afterlife I would be placed in a cell, bricked in up to my waist, so that I could see only the top half of my pure and faithful wife, who thanks to celestial virtue would be able to see all of me; she would pity me without missing or needing me. That had made me sad, but I soon consoled myself. Being a good Catholic, I now decided that I had better go to confession again. When I whispered into the little window that I intended to marry a ghoul or vampire, the father assured me that I would be doing no harm since such creatures lack souls. If anything, he said, I would bestow the blessings of God on her through the sacrament of marriage. That night I said a few Hail Marys just in case.

I'm afraid I'll disappoint you, the corpse whispered. I kissed her forehead, which was as waxy as a banana leaf.

The priest sold us holy water, and we both drank it. On our wedding night I stripped my bride, flung her down on the bed and buried my head between her breasts, ravished by the overripe smell of her cleavage. One of her nipples came off in my mouth, and I swallowed it desperately.— I think I have a loose tooth, she giggled in a little-girl voice.— Suddenly I was stung with longing for Wenuke's breasts, which had been like many immature bananas growing upward in their hard green cluster. But what could I do about that now? Here was my lawfully wedded vampire; I drove my stake between her legs.

Where must Wenuke be now? I had sent her to a grey clear sea, calmer than its mosquitoes and raindrops.

By the next morning, my wife's flesh had further discolored into a semblance of the soft yellows and greens of fluorescent corals. I possessed her in a fury, trying to persuade myself that the creaking of the bed might be her sighs.

Once upon a time, in the jungle on the way to Wenuke's house, there had been lemon-colored flowers that smelled like armpits. Wenuke's armpits had smelled like flowers. And now my wife, whom I had thought to be a vampire but who was only a harmless corpse, opened her black mouth to apologize for leaving me, then began choking and retching as ants streamed out of her. What sort of universe is this, that suffering continues even beyond death? Love and pity both demanded that I give her the only gift I could, oblivion. I went to the desk, found a letter opener, and with it sliced off her rotting head. Her yellow arms continued to reach for me, and her breasts wept ichorous tears.

Rushing out of there, I found myself on the Quai des Grands-Augustins, gazing into a bookstore window whose gold-stamped red and black leather merchandise gaped open to drypoints and aquatints. I remember a volume of Villon depicting an old man facing a noose, another
Oeuvres
of Villon open to a longhaired, gloomy medieval fellow gazing out of a dark casement, his hands on his knees; I also recall some NRF volumes of Malraux, whose spines bore luscious blue and orange inlays that reminded me of fungoid domes. Should I take up reading instead of love? But these printed adventures promised me no better happiness.

I walked for hours. Then like a grave there awaited me the empty bed, the rumpled bed, my loneliness a physical illness.

After that, my lovers got worse and worse. One night I found myself trying to pick up a sweetheart at Casa de las Mujeres, which was a closet in a hotel in a hot border town; but there was nothing inside except a yellow old skeleton with long black braids that the moths had been at.

Then there was a bronze woman who turned out to be malevolent; although I certainly have the fondest recollections of her cunt, which was dark, ornate and incense-fumed like the mouth of some Chinese temple encrusted with stone lions from which red balloons dangle like breasts. Slowly, slowly she lowered her head, grinning perpetually. Whenever she
undid her chessboard skirt, it clanged on the floor. She liked to grip my upper lip between her rusty little serrated teeth. I suspected that it would end badly, so I started secreting a blowtorch in my pocket. One night, pale-mottled and -bellied but otherwise nearly stone-colored, she lay pretending to be sleeping, her snout upward as we lay together on our boulder. I knew that when the moment arrived, she would deny me any warning; so I felt almost sick with anxiety. Now my memories of Wenuke came back to me like the sky seen through insect-gnawings in a broadleafed jungle plant. Of course I had then been trapped in the analogous situation of waiting for her to strangle me with her green tendrils; but my distrust of Wenuke no longer felt real to me, being the habits which no longer served, and whose comforting instinctual run suddenly faltered into astonished sorrow. As for my bronze woman, however, when she opened her golden-green eyes and snapped her teeth at me, did she mean to sever my throat or was it merely in her mind to nuzzle me affectionately? I would not harm her on mere suspicion; after all, this was supposed to be a love match. And her cunt was so interesting; it was perfectly smooth and cold; she always oiled it for me.

She could not speak; she only roared. In the end I decided that she was harmless. But I never slept easily beside her. When I left her, tears hissed and squeaked down her mottled cheeks.

Back in the time when I used to pass my evenings in Wenuke's house it sometimes took quite awhile for the sky to actually get black. When it was still a pale blue color, Wenuke would show me the first star, which was big and round and bright, and then the next two stars winked on quite suddenly, and often a firefly traversed a tree-silhouette, sometimes grey and blurry, and perhaps a bat came almost to my nose.

I remember the indefatigable screeching of insects, the gravelly voices of rivers and sometimes, when we climaxed, the clattering wings of disturbed birds.

Occasionally I considered writing a letter to Rileene, but inevitably concluded that she would think badly of me, or, worse yet, that she had conspired with her sister to kill me. But what if Wenuke had never meant me any harm?

Word came that my Greek corpse-bride had been resurrected, her skeleton-hands thrusting out of the ground like some Parisienne's high-riding breasts. I received indisputable evidence that she was sucking children's blood. That was low of her, but don't we all decay? I remember for instance Wenuke, whose crotch became a deep weedy hole with black water shining across its depths.

Of all of them, that Greek corpse had loved me the most. But my grief at losing her had dissipated. It was gradually being revealed to me that Wenuke was the one I had been meant for. And we were parted.

If I could only avoid ever seeing Wenuke again, no matter how much I missed her, then I would not be forced to experience my new relationship to her, which must resemble the viewing of a lover's corpse; she would still be there, but she could never be to me what she once had been. Each love has its habits, as I've said; and when that love breaks, the memories of those habits, or the attempted practice of them, comprise a skeleton of pain.

Meanwhile, there came a night event, a funeral, in fact; as you remember, I had met my Greek corpse at one of those; she knew that I would be at this new convocation, so I sent word to her by vampire bat to keep away; scanning the faces with a dread which would have erupted into anger had she been present in that cemetery of verdegrised urns on plinths, wilting marble mushrooms, I quickly began to feel her absence although I inspected each skull and mourner with an ever firmer despair; and when I saw that my ex-wife wasn't there, I felt a patient ancient sadness.

The bronze woman was present, but I avoided her green frog's grimace; later I heard that she had ripped a man's heart out.

I went to California and stalked a high dark ocean-horizon from behind palms and
bungalows; until one stormy night I spied a sea goddess whose garters were frilly white wave-tops and lacy sea-spittle. I especially remember a pointed brown-green breast gushing white froth. Swimming in her foamy white petticoats and her long green seaweed hair, she sang me the same melody she'd sung Ulysses, which made little impression on me; I'd heard it all before. Needless to say, I finally penetrated her, which was quite a trick, as you would know if you'd ever looked down
through the foam, deep down into a green vulva. She had eyes like mirror-wet sand. Wringing out her dark sea-black skirt afterward, on her tiny lava-islet decorated with skulls, she offered me eternal life beneath the water; unfortunately, I was already diseased by that curse.

The elongated reflection of a seagull on wet sand kept me company once she swam away (she was hungry, she said). Then I was very much alone; and
then,
just as a dark wave rises suddenly out of the darkness, breaks open into spume and sprays you, longing for Mrs. Wenuke Lei McLeod came to me, and in my vision she was as humidly cool and perfect as jungleside sea air.

After that, there were slow late night sounds of heels on the just-shined tiles of hotel lobbies whose inset patterns now receded ever more vividly to ever greater distances. Beneath a potted plant, a longhaired slendernecked woman waited for midnight, her hands in her lap. I approached her, almost weeping. When she caressed my arm, her fingers reminded me of a crested iguana, slowly drawing itself along a branch.