The Autobiography of Red (12 page)

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.

 

“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 flashing 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. Y
ou 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.