The Diviners (2 page)
As if to indicate metamorphosis. Light upon the twin halves of Cyprus, the Turkish half and the Greek half, the middle of the middlemost body of water in the middle of the world, center of the things. Omphalos. Ruins everywhere, ruins of Cyprus, Turkish and Greek. And then ruins in Turkey and ruins in Greece. Light upon the ruins, light upon the ferment of Turkey, and then light upon the islands of the Aegean, light upon Patmos, where Saint John hallucinated his revelation, light upon these allegories and riddles; light upon Rhodes, light upon Lesbos, light upon the islands through which Ulysses circulated, in loneliness and exile, to the very brink of Purgatorio. Light upon Crete, light upon Knossos, the knowledge of the light, the knowledge of the dawn, light upon the Neolithic past there, upon archaeologists with their tiny paintbrushes, creeping down ladders into the sites of their digging, light upon the dynasty of Minos, light upon the Minotaur and the labyrinth, the solution to which is simply to follow the light as it moves through the labyrinth. Light upon the westernmost edge of Crete, the city of Falassarna, light upon the occasional Albanian still trying to make it across the Adriatic on a rubber raft, light upon the Albanians ditching rafts on the coast of Puglia, light upon the beaches at Brindisi and near Bari, light upon the beached rafts of Brindisi, Albanians fleeing inland like the stray cats of Lecce wandering the Roman ruins, light upon the oft-conquered Puglia, and light upon Sicily now, with its light and darkness, its history of blood feud, light upon its hills, and light upon the Tyrrhenian Sea, and thus light upon Rome, all of the light beginning to peek through the streets of Rome, so that light is now visible, beginning to shine upon the Pantheon, that massive structure of such permanence that even a McDonald’s just across the square from it cannot spoil its perfection, light upon St. Peter’s, where the pope is trembling, light upon the Coliseum, light upon the piazzas and their Berninis, light opening its lens wider now, light hurtling up the longitudes, light upon Western Europe and a history founded on light as a mythological tool, light as a separation from night, light upon Milano, Firenze, Venezia, Nice, Monaco, Barcelona, light upon the church in all its incarnations, light upon all the cities of Western Europe and upon those up early to get to work in these cities, light upon those who wake to read the paper, a Parisian at a café, light upon a Spaniard in Pamplona, drinking a Turkish espresso, light upon Madrid, city encircled by fire, light upon Lisbon, and light farther north, in London, light upon the pigeons of Trafalgar, and light upon the pickpockets of Piccadilly Circus, light upon the orderly shops of the Fulham Road, light upon the bobbies and light upon the lorries and the black taxis, light upon the disenchanted royal family. Light upon Belfast, light upon the coils of barbed wire in Belfast, light upon lads scraping themselves up from the paving stones in front of a pub, a bit worried about an ominous van parked in front of that nearby bank, dawn breaking over the opera house, where there is considerable hope for improvement.
Cold and severe dawn falls upon the ocean once again, ricocheting in the play of waves; another ocean, stretching down toward the Falklands, down toward the Cape of Good Hope, this ocean of nuclear submarines whispering along ocean floors, this ocean of imperial vessels, of Erik the Red, of Christopher Columbus, of Leif Eriksson. Light upon the arctic frigidness of the North Atlantic, too, light upon the perpetual north of the North Atlantic, and light upon Iceland, therefore, light upon Mount Hekla, the volcanic peak of Iceland, held for many years to contain the mouth of hell. This time of year, dawn is late; the fishermen of Iceland are well into their tasks. In Reykjavík the prodigious revelers of the city square are just getting up from another binge, heading for thermal baths to try to blunt that sickness; light upon the expanses of volcanic rock between here and Keflavik, light upon the hot springs, the geysers, the black beaches of the south coast, light upon the mouth of hell.
Light upon the open sea, the Winslow Homer green of the North Atlantic, upon the blue whale, the right whale, the songs of North Atlantic whales, light upon the fish coming to the surface, light upon the currents of this well-traveled sea, light upon the circulations of the Gulf Stream, the North Equatorial Current, clockwise, into the light now, these currents, light upon Greenland, the light of the Inuits, the light of the many names for light, light upon the Nunavut territory, upon Baffin Island and Baffin Bay, light upon the coming of winter in the arctic, light upon the very end of the hurricane season, light upon the fishing boats coming back empty-handed from the Grand Banks, light coming down the coast now, where Leif Eriksson landed and turned back, light upon Newfoundland, light upon moose frozen in headlights on the highways of Newfoundland, light upon Cape Breton, light upon Nova Scotia, where the tides are so violent that the coast can come and go seventy feet in an afternoon, light upon Campobello, and light upon Eastport, state of Maine, United States of America.
It’s possible that the sleepers just beginning to wake know nothing beyond Eastport; they have stuff on their mind, there are car payments, there are mortgage payments, there are utilities, there is heat to worry about. It has gotten cold down east already. International concerns are not pressing. On the pier in Eastport, next to that deep water, a pair of teenagers in a pickup, having made out all night, having slept in the truck, hand in hand, are now watching the dawn fretfully. They are going to get yelled at. What a sunrise. The crimson sun beginning to dash itself on the islands. Autumn on the coast of the state of Maine, in New England. The light only tarries here for a brief spell. There have been snow flurries. The best autumn colors are in the past. People are getting their boats out of the harbors, up on stilts, in the Casco and Penobscot bays. Light upon the mariners of the eastern seaboard, light upon the mariners from here down the coast, light upon the fishermen of Kittery and Portsmouth and Newburyport, light upon Provincetown. Light upon the scrub pines. Light upon the towns of the Cape, from which the mariners of yore set out to hunt the whale, light upon the mansions of Newport and the designers of sailboats, and light on the lighthouse, for example, of Narragansett Bay, at Point Judith, the lonely lighthouses whose job was once to augur the dawn, light upon surfers of Point Judith, light upon Watch Hill, and then light upon the casinos of Connecticut, and light upon the nuclear submarine base at Groton, and from here dawn has a straight shot down the coast, a straight shot on the interstate clogged with truckers on amphetamines, infernal all the way through New Haven and Bridgeport. These towns are dead, and the light does nothing but show up the rubble. The light shows up their corrupt politicians, their pedophile mayors, their distracted suburbanites; everybody’s just trying to get past the cities of the dead, bent upon the gates of New York City.
How fast does it happen on this particular day? How fast does the sunlight rush westerly, dappling the world? The figure is
1,670
kilometers an hour, or about .23 miles per second, which is the speed of the rotation of the third rock from the sun. Day leaves no latitude behind. Therefore, twenty-four hours have elapsed, or twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes, all of this according to the quantum theory of light, as described by Feynman. Suddenly there is the behavior of sunrise on waves, like the light over the Whitestone Bridge, where commuters are trying to get a jump on rush-hour traffic heading in on the Van Wyck, past the airports, the dawn on their left. You can see morning from the bridge. Light upon the Empire State Building, light upon the Chrysler Building, light upon the World Trade Center. Light upon those gruff, show-offy digits. Light upon Shea Stadium, site of the recent Subway Series. Light upon LaGuardia Airport, the most congested airport in the country, light upon the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, light upon Floral Park, light upon Maspeth, light upon Inwood, light upon the Bronx Zoo, light upon Riverdale, light upon Yankee Stadium, light moving apparently instantaneously from here to the isle of Manhattan, its office buildings still illuminated with emergency fluorescence. Manhattan, New York City, beginning of another day.
New York City, noteworthy for its insomniacs. Light upon all the insomniacs, across this city, metropolis of insomniacs. They are there, in the despair of another night, out on the couch in the living room to avoid waking their husbands or wives, or insomniacs are in the tub, and they are reading, or they are thinking, or the insomniacs are regretting at the instant of the dawn. No one asks how they spend the middle of the night, no one who doesn’t suffer with insomnia wants to know. The insomniacs are the witnesses to the dawn, they are in the tub and looking out on the air shaft, through the one tiny window, where a tiny patch of sky is visible, or they are at the breakfast table, trying to read something so boring that it will put them back to sleep. Every block has insomniacs, and here’s the first light of a day in November breaking over them. A woman whose car is going to be repossessed, a guy who falsified his résumé to get an adjunct teaching position, an artist who cannot make her rent, a dot-com programmer whose company is about to exhaust its financing. The insomniacs! They welcome the day! One of them is about to take the dog out for a walk. One of these insomniacs is listening to the international news to see if the Japanese markets are up. A long, low moan escapes him when the intensity of the decline becomes clear. Whoever it is who made the dawn made it as a gift to these insomniacs, that they wouldn’t feel so alone, that they would have something to do in their apartness, namely watch the celestial display of first light. Some of them do it, some of them go up to the roof just to see the light caroming off the buildings in Jersey City. Even the insomniac will feel some hope at dawn, even the homeless man on the grates in front of the Eye and Ear Hospital may feel a bit of relief, even the guy who hasn’t been out of his apartment in years, even the racially oppressed, even the poor, even the unemployed, even they feel a transitory joy. Even the woman on the ground floor of the brownstone in Park Slope, who yanks back her blindfold, recognizing that she can put off rising no longer, rushes unsteadily from her full-size mattress, and makes a run for it, for the bathroom. A day of dawns. A jubilee. Morning, just after the election, year two thousand.
Rosa Elisabetta Meandro, in insubstantial light, entrails in flames. Rosa Elisabetta of the hammertoe, Rosa Elisabetta of the corns. Rosa Elisabetta of the afflictions. She has hinted about the nature of her sufferings to certain persons up the block, certain persons on Eleventh Street, Brooklyn. Emilia, whose son sells the raviolis, for example. She has whispered to Emilia about the colitis. She has indicated problems relating to her gallbladder. Stones. Also headaches. These headaches begin with visitations, with rainbows, celestial light, an inability to remember numbers. Rosa Elisabetta might smell the overpowering perfume of cocktail onions, after which there is Technicolor. Two or three days sick in bed, lower than a dog is low. If she’s enumerating the complaints for Emilia, there is the colitis, there are the corns, there is the pancreas, there are the headaches. At least four things. Gas, though it’s not proper to talk about it. On nights when the garlic has not been properly sautéed according to the cuisine of her ancestral homeland, Tuscany, then there is also the gas. Perhaps it is correct to include this in the list of complaints, assembled at
6:13 AM
, as she burrows down further into bedcovers, into the folds of her four-poster. She doesn’t know how much longer she can resist the cramps, the pressurized evacuation of her last meal and everything else eaten in the past twenty-four hours, everything, at least, that has not already been evacuated.
Best to be pleasant about it;
this is what Emilia said when Rosa Elisabetta Meandro was telling her about the scabs. There are these scabs that don’t heal; when she gets a cut, saws into herself accidentally in the kitchen, dicing vegetables, there is the mineralization of the cut. The cut doesn’t heal, not as it should. What’s that all about? She was also going to tell Emilia about the halitosis, that day, which she can smell by cupping her hands and attempting to exhale and inhale quickly, while lying in the four-poster. It is no longer the smell of the garlic sautéed, nor is it the smell of the cocktail onions, nor is it the smell of port wine, nor is it stewed peppers. It’s some new smell, and this is what Rosa was trying to tell Emilia the other day, no doubt about it. The look in the eyes of Emilia was a look of pity, which is a look that makes Rosa Elisabetta Meandro irritable, though she tries to be pleasant, and this righteous anger, even in the dawn light ebbing into the garden apartment through the windows facing the street, is a refreshing sentiment, a motivator, as she breathes out cupping her hands.
Consider the formidable Rosa Elisabetta of the past. Consider the archaeology of her phases. Kingmaker in the civic politics of the Fourth Ward, parader with infant ghouls and vampires on Halloween, soup kitchen volunteer; Rosa Elisabetta, institution. Dignified mother of the block, guardian of the parking spaces of longtime residents of the neighborhood, protector of the community, of local parishes, registrar of voters. Once she was all these things. A lover of families. As she enumerates them, however, Rosa Elisabetta can feel the sweat pooling in the folds of her abdomen; she can feel cramps beckoning from south of her equator. What was it that Emilia surely wanted to say about her bad breath? Maybe nothing. Her father had bad breath. Foul breath. It was his guts. She was there with the priest, such a nice priest, and the breath of her father smelled like a gizzard. She won’t talk to Emilia anymore. How can anyone think such a thing? The cupping-hands experiment does not bear out results. Nothing at all like the smell of death.
She held the little children in the day care center while their mothers worked in Manhattan. She sang songs to these children, songs by important American singers from the age of big bands. Not one of these little children said to her:
Your breath smells like something died in your mouth.
She liked to present the boys with chocolates; she liked to warn them about the dangers of amorous contact. She told the little boys and girls: Avoid becoming inflamed. Never be alone in a room with a man who is too thin. Never walk near an idling automobile if it has tinted windows. Next she would speak of the constellations, how the constellations were catalogued during the Roman Empire. She knows about the Roman Empire from her father and his father, and she knows about it from the priests in the schoolyard of Dyker Heights, where she lived as a girl. She also once watched a miniseries on the subject of the Roman Empire. The emperors poisoned one another. The emperors knew a lot about poisons. She lifted and carried children, kissed them on their dirty necks. It is not right that Emilia from the ravioli store should even consider saying anything about the colitis, the gas, the headaches, the corns, the scabs, the breath, or the hair that is falling out. Or the blindness, or the incipient deafness, or the fact that Rosa is too skinny. Her dresses hang off her, like sheets draped over furniture in shuttered houses.