Private Novelist (17 page)

That last sentence was enough to provoke a response from Taylor's widow, which Mary received two weeks later when Yigal brought it to her as she lay naked on the balcony, enjoying the midday sun.

Dear Mary,

I must let you know that Taylor has died. He was struck by a car and did not suffer. The funeral was held two weeks ago. Please don't be sad. Ask a grown-up if you don't understand. Happy New Year!

“Happy New Year?” Mary said, rolling over.

“She means the Jewish new year.” Yigal tapped a disposable pen on the table and added, “Someday I should buy a real pen.”

“Taylor's dead—I met him in New York.”

“What did he do?”

“He sold toothpaste, I think.” She rolled over on her back again. “Yigal, I'm bored.”

“Fine, do something.”

She stared up at the sky. “Let's go to the beach.”

“I hear there are jellyfish.”

“Okay, let's not go to the beach.”

“I'm fine where I am.” Yigal turned a page in his notebook.

“Let's kill Mr. Pickwick. Nell said the next missile will come any day now. Missile attacks are so annoying! I hate them.”

“We can if you'll let me do it. You shouldn't take risks when you're pregnant. I think it's dangerous.”

“So why would you do it either? Besides, you don't know
how to talk to dolphins. You can't even read Dolphin!” She assumed a superior air. “Nobody could possibly do this job better than me! You know mothers are very fierce. Dolphins are scared of us. You'd probably shoot at them, and then be eaten by a shark.”

Yigal looked at his watch. “Can we do it tomorrow? I want to go to this reading.”

“A poetry reading? Can I see?”

“Sure.” He gave her the notebook, which was filled with random lines and dots.

“Show me how to write ‘Moshe Dayan.'” He complied, and she took the pen and copied it several times.

“Do you want a blanket? The sun is making you purple.” She wrapped up in a woolen comforter, arranged her pillow and went to sleep. Yigal put on a shirt and pants and walked to the North Tel Aviv art center, where a crowd was already gathering to hear Elad Manor read from his critically acclaimed new work,
South Lebanon Nocturnes.

Elad had lost most of his hair and was wearing a white suit, flamenco boots, and aviator glasses. Yigal sat near the back and waited for the first poet to begin.

A matronly woman tried to introduce her, but as soon as the crowd saw that she was eighteen, with fine, wispy short hair and the body of a twelve-year-old, it burst into cheers and she began.

        
Kiss of the Spider Woman

        
Raúl Juliá and William Hurt are together in jail.

        
William tells Raúl the plots of movies to pass the time.

        
The prison warden is not nice, he makes William give Raúl poison.

        
But William wants to do it because that way he gets to see his mother.

        
Raúl almost dies and then they have sex.

        
At the end, William gives his life for Raúl.

        
The end, by Oria.

The crowd was silent for a moment, then leaped to its feet, applauding wildly. She smiled and spoke again.

        
One Million B.C.

        
Raquel Welch wears a leather bikini.

        
What else? I don't know.

        
The end, by Oria.

This time the applause was more subdued, but the young poet was unfazed and launched into an epic:

        
Babe, the Gallant Pig

        
Babe is a cute little pig who has no mom.

        
He lives on a farm with lots of animals.

        
There is a sheep, actually lots of sheep, a cat, a dog. . . .

Yigal saw that Elad was beaming with pride and guessed that the current poet must be his student.

        
Easy Rider

        
Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper go riding to New Orleans.

        
They have big motorcycles, especially Dennis.

        
Bruce's jacket has an American flag.

        
They go to a wild party in the desert and meet girls.

        
They take acid in a cemetery with a different girl.

        
They meet Jack Nicholson, but these peasants bash his head in.

        
Look out, Bruce, here come the peasants!

        
They put the shotgun in Dennis' face and blow him away!

        
Bruce rides back to check on Dennis and they kill him too.

        
It's sad because Bruce is so dreamy.

        
The end, by Oria.

He looked at Elad again. Elad seemed not to know or care that it was Peter Fonda and not Bruce Dern.

At last she reached her climax:

        
Fantasia

        
It's really hard to explain but it's nice.

        
The end, by Oria.

Yigal turned to a woman sitting near him and said, “What is with this girl?”

The woman kept clapping and whispered, “Don't you see? She never allows the sign to obscure the thing signified. She'll surpass anything we've ever done.”

Elad took center stage. “I'd like to thank Oria again for sharing herself with us.” Oria glowed with a look of gratified lust and took off her sweater. Elad began promptly.

        
Fifty-Gallon Drum of Toxic Chemicals Lying Forgotten in a

        
Stream and Cow Entangled in Barbed Wire at the Edge of

        
a Minefield by Fendi

        
This year the look is sleeker, more refined.

        
Gone are last year's fringes and that tattered look in the cuffs.

        
This time of austerity calls for a narrower silhouette.

        
Skirts are tapered, over the knee.

        
Heels are stacked on a medium platform.

        
Earth textures are giving way to a more elegant satiny finish.

        
Key colors: russet and celadon.

He gestured, palm down, to hold the applause and continued:

        
Electrical Fire Still Smoldering in the Disabled

        
Jeep, Near It, an Abandoned Boot by Chanel

        
Oversized accessories, interchangeable between outfits

        
Create a look of funky chic. . . .

Yigal began to squirm. He looked around for a way out, but the hall was too crowded. He did not want Elad to recognize him. The woman he had spoken to leaned over to make a comment. “Isn't Karl Lagerfeld dead? Or was that Armani?”

“Versace,” Yigal said. He put on sunglasses and stumbled out into the evening twilight.

WHEN YIGAL GOT BACK FROM THE
poetry reading he knocked on our door. “Hi, Nell, is Zohar back yet?”

I invited him in. “No, actually. He was called to Chicago for a musicological emergency.”

“What kind?”

“Something to do with the organ at Wrigley Field. The Cubs are going to the playoffs, so he's helping them develop a new tuning and some chord changes for their fanfares, and then there's something with these parabolic disks on rooftops. He said the Yankees had a similar system in the Bronx, but they got caught after the super-low frequencies they were using made one of the upper decks collapse, or something like that. Coffee?”

“Sure—maybe you can help me.”

I ignored him and started some water on the stove. “I think the Yankees' mistake was being too influenced by La Monte Young and Phill Niblock, or the CIA or whatever it was—they were thinking in terms of mind control on an organic level, when you can do the same thing using musical effects. Like, if you were in the fifth inning of a no-hitter on a full
count, would you want to be hearing Penderecki's
Tren ofiarom Hiroszimy
?”

“No.”

“And the beauty part is, no one but the target has any idea what's going on, and the whole system is passive. What did you say?”

“You're talking a lot. Are you lonely?”

“Not at the moment.”

“I have some questions about Rafi,” Yigal said. His boss happened to be Zohar's uncle. In compliance with Zohar's request, I am putting him in Avner's book, even though John le Carré already put him in another book. “I'm concerned that he may be disappointed by what I'm planning for tomorrow.”

“Do you want a tarot reading?” Yigal shook his head. “Do you want my advice? Asking Zohar won't get you anywhere. The whole family just thinks Rafi is cute.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, here's the scenario: Rafi Eitan vs. the name of Moshe Dayan. Who wins?”

“I see your point. Thanks, Nell, you've been a big help, as always.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and took his coffee with him downstairs.

In the morning I went along to the port. We were in a festive mood. Mary seemed especially full of life, fidgeting in the backseat of the taxi. Yigal looked nervous. After a long and difficult discussion, he had agreed to hold the video camera while Mary did all the work. She wanted to get a nice film of what went on above the water, in case she missed something.

The seawall was nearly empty. Only a few tired ravers were left, drooling and hiccuping on the concrete, while a cadre of religious men said their prayers. With the sun behind us, we could see the submarine's outline clearly. Yigal and Mary
crossed the seawall. He squatted with the camera, out of sight, while Mary took off her jeans. I stayed behind, in my arms what could turn out to be our mission's most important element: a forlorn, threadbare, one-eyed teddy bear known as “Meyer.” It belonged to Yigal and might once have been intended to represent Winnie-the-Pooh.

“Rolling,” Yigal said, and she leaped into the waves. Barely a minute later she was back, carrying a tiny strip of parchment. “Here,” she said, still climbing up the rocks, and gave it to Yigal. He read it (“Moshe Dayan” was all it said), rolled it up, and punched it with his thumb through a hole in the neck-seam of the neglected toy. The effect was dramatic. The bear, Meyer, whom we were later to come to know so well, immediately turned his head, gave Yigal a despairing look, raised his arms, brought his blunt paws together like pincers, and ripped off his one remaining eye.

“Did you film that?” I asked.

Yigal was looking at the wall of a building. He seemed distracted. Quickly he shouldered the camera and aimed at the bubbling sea. Mr. Pickwick broke the surface in a slick of brown ooze. A layer of slime, crowded with bubbles, began to form on the dancing blue waves as the spiral casing of the sub unwound slowly, like one of those long, twisted bagels flipping itself in boiling water. The dowels popped out one by one and floated on the surface. Something like an airplane cockpit rose and then fell, dragged down by the massive osmium skeleton of the Leviathan, which came to rest on the shallow bottom, still oozing brown bubbles. A religious guy tapped on my shoulder.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“I don't know, it's doing something.”

He looked over the wall. “Hi,” he said to Mary and Yigal.
“Were you swimming?” he said, noticing Mary's wet hair. “Don't swim around here, it's not safe. Look at that—the sewer pipe's leaking again.”

“Nasty!” Yigal said. “Let's get you into a shower.” We thanked him and moved away. I asked Yigal if he wanted to hold Meyer. “No, no . . .” he said slowly. “I—there's something—I have a feeling he doesn't like me.”

“Who doesn't like you?”

Yigal took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes as we crawled into the taxi. “I don't deserve to live,” he said, looking far away out the window.

“What's wrong?” Mary asked. “Why aren't you happy? What's going on? Is there something between you and Meyer?” I pulled on her sleeve and indicated the taxi driver. “Do you speak English? No? Okay. Tell me, Yigal, I can't take this. I thought we'd have fun.”

Yigal's voice became low and husky as he struggled to speak. “It's Meyer—I think I had sex with him, just once, and then I put him at the bottom of the laundry hamper for . . .” He paused and seemed to be counting. “For thirty-one years. I punished him—I didn't remember it until he looked at me—” Yigal opened his fist and there was the little black button, Meyer's eye. “My mother made his eyes, and his nose, and he used to have this little red shirt that said ‘Meyer.'”

“Poor Meyer!” Mary cried, taking him in her arms. He inclined his head against her, and she felt the gentle pressure of his stubby arms. “Poor little Meyer,” she repeated, before introducing herself at length.

“I thought there was some sentimental reason I was saving him,” Yigal said to me. “I just always thought there was something like that, like I wanted to show him to my kids, I don't know. I idealized our whole relationship. It had nothing to
do with reality.” He looked at Meyer. “Is he—is he suffering? Should we take the parchment out and put it somewhere else?”

“Yigal, how could you say that?!” Mary cried. “Meyer is going to be fine!”

“Mary's right,” I opined. “This is the best possible thing for him. Now he can take an active role in his life. He'll be able to grow and change and recover. He's a very lucky bear.” Mary and I huddled together, stroking Meyer's somewhat truncated head and his tattered ears, from which all the plush had worn off.

Yigal retied his shoelaces for no reason and frowned. “I also remember this book I once saw that attracted me very much, and it makes me feel more than ever like shooting myself.”

“What book?”

“It was in a bookstore, I only saw the cover. About these little yellow aliens with one eye—”

“
Runts of 61 Cygni C,
” Mary said. “I know that book. I talk about it all the time. I relate it to the way men are fascinated by silkies.”

“Maybe,” I whispered, “we shouldn't talk about this in front of Meyer.”

Meanwhile, Zohar sat quietly facing the chimpanzees in the Lincoln Park Zoo. Near him on the bench were a small electronic keyboard and a cassette recorder. A small child approached and asked what he was doing.

“Musicological research—this is my control group. Have you ever tried to find graduate student volunteers who can demonstrate an authentic lack of musical education?”

“No,” the child said.

“Have you taken music lessons?”

“No.”

“Can you spare twenty minutes?”

The child shook his head. “No, my dad just went to the bathroom. He said we have to go and ride the train.”

Zohar was lucky he had not gone to the zoo with anyone from Chicago. A Chicago native will always point up to a certain tall building from whose roof, one hot Fourth of July, a man fell and was bisected, leaving a vertical smear hundreds of feet long, in front of a crowd approaching one million. Zohar was not fated to hear this grotesque story: His Lincoln Park Zoo trauma was to be of a different order. Packing up, he walked toward the koala house. How he loved the gentle, peaceful koalas. There, a small crowd was admiring a new arrival. “What's he doing?” Zohar asked the zookeeper. “Is that baby koala doing what I think he's doing?”

“Yes, that's why the pouch faces toward the rear. There are also a few burrowing marsupials with pouches opening at the bottom, but that's just to keep the dirt—”

Zohar ran, covering his ears.

Due to my literary digressions—

I should point out, in case the reader has not already noticed, that economy and brevity are not what I value most in literature. I suspect many readers of having been suckered by the high school standard, usually introduced in a reading of “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “Hills Like White Elephants,” that there is no idea worth expressing that is not worth expressing in 250 words.

Due to my digressions, Shats has expressed some concern that I appear to have read “everything.” I share his concern to some degree and refer the reader to a loose legal-pad page floating in a notebook entitled “Ulan Bator and the New Schemata” dating from around 1987. The page originated as a note from a friend:

Hello—Nell—

came by to

drag a captive

off for breakfast

but there were

no prisoners to

be had

Mary

Three notes in my handwriting surround this amiable missive.

Sideways:

Gide's
acte gratuit
< = > surrealist activity?

“where abstract potentiality achieves pseudo-realization.”

Right side up:

(24) “Thus Cesare Pavese notes . . . a sharp

oscillation between ‘superficial
verisme
' and

‘abstract Expressionist schematism'”

like in Robbe-Grillet/Joyce static and sensational

vs. dynamic & developmental (
Lotte in Weimar
)

Upside down:

In Hegel—inner & outer world form

“objective dialectical unity”

With a different pen, obviously at some later date, I have written:

Lukács notes, I think?

—
Realism in Our Time
, “Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann?”

In other words, not only was I reading Lukács for fun, but I was capable of remembering, even after several days, that I had done so. I was passionately attached to Adorno and other thinkers who reasoned carefully and wrote clearly, especially if they managed to mention Kafka, which all the good ones do sooner or later, and the bad ones too. The citation tends to support my claim, which I make at least once every five years whenever I feel I am in the presence of somebody who might give a flying fuck or have any clue what I am talking about, that between 1987 and 1989 I read nothing but Kafka, Kafka-related primary material, Kafka's favorite authors (e.g., Robert Walser), and Kafka scholarship. I fantasized about entering a Kafka trivia contest and coming away with the top prize for naming his Hebrew teacher. My to-do lists of this period bring me nothing but joy. For example:

Read more Hamsun

Janz, FN

Pay income taxes!

I take
FN
to mean
Friedrich Nietzsche
. Hamsun was another favorite author of Kafka's, frequently recommended to his younger sisters. A Scandinavian, he wrote eloquently about things like shooting dogs in the head from close range. Similar lists still play a role in my life. For example, this spring I read Spengler. I expect to go cheerfully to my grave never having met another human being who has read a word of Spengler. The prospect does not frighten me.

Tucked into the same notebook is an unmailed letter to my mother about a class I had attended (December 1, 1987), taught by my friend Alberto Bades Fernandez Arago.

Went to Albert's contemporary lit class yesterday—it was lots of fun, the students were very sluggish, so sluggish that when some of them said very funny things, I was the only one giggling. Reading “The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me,” Delmore Schwartz about the body in general, & A. asks, “So what IS the heavy bear?” Student has a quick answer of which he is obviously sure: “The penis.” A: “So how do you explain ‘breathing at my side'? How do you explain ‘kicks the football'?” Most males in the class seemed sure, at any rate, that it was a poem by and for males, which is like saying that
Bambi
is a book by and for deer. The penis proponent stuck to his guns for a while, while A. gently urged a more “consistently consistent” interpretation—then a sixteenish blondette in a ponytail says, “It's the conscience.” She immediately had a legion of supporters, eager to believe that the conscience is the seat of aggression and lust. The moral I drew from most of this is that these are people raised on ambiguous (a.k.a. meaningless) contemporary poetry who thus have no respect for straightforward language . . . or any poem that isn't a Rorschach blot/riddle.

As well as a postcard from her (November 4):

For two days now I've dashed out when the mail arrived, all set to settle down and enjoy the letter you said you were going to write on Sunday. Have I been put out of mind again? What a blow! If you don't plan to write, say so. Love, I think, Mom.

The notebook contains a single poem.

        
Your face is like a coin to me