The Autobiography of Red (13 page)

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

 

argument about the use of moods.

 

We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods.

 

It is state-of-mind that discloses to us

 

(Heidegger claims) that we are beings who have been thrown into something else.

 

Something else than what?

 

Geryon leaned his hot forehead against the filthy windowpane and wept.

 

Something else than this hotel room

 

he heard himself say and moments later he was charging along the hollow gutters

 

of Avenida Bolívar. Traffic was sparse.

 

He moved past shuttered kiosks and blank windows. Streets got narrower, darker.

 

Sloping down.

 

He could see the harbor blackly glittering. Cobblestones grew slick. Smell of salt fish

 

and latrines furred the air.

 

Geryon turned his collar up and walked west. Dirty river slapped along beside him.

 

Three soldiers observed him from a porch.

 

There was a sound of dripping behind the dark air—a voice. Geryon looked around.

 

Down the quay he could see

 

a dim square of light like a café or a shop. But there were no cafés down here.

 

What kind of shop would be open at four a.m.?

 

A big man stepped straight out into Geryon’s path and stood adjusting the towel

 

on his arm.
Tango?
he said

 

and stepped back with a sweeping bow. Over the door Geryon read
Caminito

 

in white neon as he stumbled down

 

into the soggy black interior of what (he later realized) was the only authentic

 

tango bar left in Buenos Aires.

 

Through the gloom he saw very old concrete walls lined with bottles and a circle

 

of tiny round red kitchen tables.

 

A gnome in an apron was darting about among the tables delivering the same tall

 

orangeish drink to everyone

 

in a glass like a test tube. A low stage at the front of the room was lit by spotlight.

 

Three ancient musicians hunched there—

 

piano, guitar, accordion. None of them looked less than seventy years old,

 

the accordion player so frail

 

each time he swayed his shoulders around a corner of the melody Geryon feared

 

the accordion would crush him flat.

 

It gradually became clear that nothing could crush this man. Hardly glancing

 

at one another the three of them played

 

as one person, in a state of pure discovery. They tore clear and clicked and locked

 

and unlocked, they shot

 

their eyebrows up and down. They leaned together and wove apart, they rose

 

and cut away and stalked

 

one another and flew up in a cloud and sank back down on waves. Geryon could not

 

take his eyes off them

 

and was rather annoyed when a man, no it was a woman, parted a curtain

 

and came onto the stage.

 

She wore a tuxedo with black tie. Detached a microphone from somewhere inside

 

the spotlight and began to sing.

 

It was a typical tango song and she had the throat full of needles you need to sing it.

 

Tangos are terrible—

 

Your heart or my death!
—and they all sound the same. Geryon clapped every time

 

the other people clapped then

 

a new song started then they all began to blur into a stream that ran

 

down over the dirt floor

 

and then he was asleep, burning, yearning, dreaming, streaming, asleep.

 

Awoke with his cheekbone scraping the wall.

 

Looked around dully. Musicians gone. Tables empty. No lights on. Tango woman

 

leaning over a glass while the gnome

 

swept around her feet with a broom. He was dozing off again when he saw her rise

 

and turn towards him.

 

He jolted awake. Pulled his body upright inside the overcoat and tried to organize

 

his arms casually on the front of his person.

 

There seemed to be too many of them. In fact there were three since he had,

 

as usual, woke up with an erection

 

and today had no pants on (for reasons he could not immediately recall) but there

 

wasn’t time to worry about this,

 

she was drawing a chair up to the table.
Buen’día,
she said.

 

Hi,
said Geryon.

 

You American? No. English? No. German? No. Spy? Yes.
She smiled.

 

He watched her extract

 

a cigarette and light it. She didn’t speak. Geryon had a bad thought. Suppose

 

she was waiting for him

 

to say something about the music. Should he lie? Bolt? Try to distract her?

 

Your singing
— he began and stopped.

 

The woman glanced up.
Tango is not for everyone,
she said. Geryon did not hear.

 

The cold pressure of the concrete wall

 

against his back had tumbled him into a recollection. He was at a Saturday night

 

high school dance. Basketball nets cast

 

their stretchy shadows high up the walls of the gym. Hours of music had crashed

 

on his ears while he stood

 

at the wall with his back pressed against cold concrete. Jolts from the stage

 

threw lit strips of human limbs

 

across the dark. Heat bloomed. Black night sky weighed starlessly on the windows.

 

Geryon stood upright

 

within the rayon planes of his brother’s sports jacket. Sweat and desire ran

 

down his body to pool

 

in the crotch and behind the knees. He had been standing against the wall

 

for three and a half hours in a casual pose.

 

His eyes ached from the effort of trying to see everything without looking at it.

 

Other boys stood beside him

 

on the wall. The petals of their colognes rose around them in a light terror.

 

Meanwhile music pounded

 

across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being

 

a self in a song.

 

Well?
said his brother when Geryon came through the kitchen at five past midnight.

 

How was it? Who did you dance with? Do any dope?

 

Geryon paused. His brother was layering mayonnaise, bologna, and mustard onto

 

six pieces of bread laid out

 

on the counter beside the sink. Overhead the kitchen light shone sulfurous.

 

The bologna looked purple.

 

Geryon’s eyes were still bouncing with images from the gym.
Oh this time I decided

 

to sort of just watch you know.

 

Geryon’s voice was loud in the too-bright room. His brother looked at him quickly

 

then went on piling up sandwiches

 

into a tower. He cut the tower diagonally in half with a downthrust of the bread knife

 

and piled it all onto a plate.

 

There was one piece of bologna left in the plastic which he shoved into his mouth as he

 

picked up the plate

 

and headed for the stairs leading down to the TV room.
Jacket looks good on you,

 

he said thickly as he passed.

 

Clint Eastwood movie on the late show bring me down a blanket when you come.

 

Geryon stood thoughtful for a moment.

 

Then he replaced the lids on the mayonnaise and the mustard and put them back

 

in the fridge. Threw the bologna wrapper

 

in the garbage. Took a sponge and wiped the crumbs carefully across the counter

 

into the sink and ran water

 

until they disappeared. From the stainless steel of the kettle a small red person

 

in a big jacket regarded him.

 

Shall we dance?
he said to it—
KRRAAK
—Geryon came abruptly awake

 

to gritty daylight in a tango bar.

 

The gnome was slamming chairs upside down on the red tables. Geryon could not

 

for the moment recall who she was

 

this woman sitting across from him knocking her cigarette on the edge of the table

 

and saying
Tango is not for everyone.

 

She looked around the vacant room. The gnome was sweeping cigarette butts into a pile. Original daylight trickled

 

weakly through gaps in the stiff little red curtains that hung at the windows.

 

She watched it. He

 

was trying to remember a line of a poem.
Nacht steigt ans Ufer …

 

What did you say?
she asked.

 

Nothing.
He was very tired. The woman smoked in silence.
Do you ever

 

wonder about beluga whales?

 

Geryon asked. Her eyebrows were startling, like two ascending insects.

 

It is an endangered species?

 

No I mean in tanks in captivity just floating.

 

No—why?

 

What do they think about? Floating in there. All night.

 

Nothing.

 

That’s impossible.

 

Why?

 

You can’t be alive and think about nothing.
You
can’t but you’re not a whale.

 

Why should it be different?

 

Why should it be the same? But I look in their eyes and I see them thinking.

 

Nonsense. It is yourself you see—it’s guilt.

 

Guilt? Why would I be guilty about whales? Not my fault they’re in a tank.