American Genius: A Comedy Page 14

  One of the Count's unimportant secrets, divulged to tease me, I now think, was how best to start a fire. He taught me, as an uncle does a nephew or niece, on a moonless night after a lackluster dinner, the cook pleasing hardly anyone, in his studio where books on clocks and watches, mostly, but also of ancient history and poetry-Rumi, especiallytragedies and comedies, and mythologies lay stacked in the corners of his room and also lined two long shelves. Whenever he gave me the time, I asked him about his collection and interests, and his answers were brief, though responsible. Always, he looked at some clock, actual or imagined, while his lightly pocked skin never was anything but grayish-green, from lack of sunshine, and I could feel his horror of losing time, it slipping from him in perilous minutes and seconds, and yet I also knew how it augmented his daily drama by punctuating and compelling action and opinion. Day was night, night day, and this difference set him apart, as he was impelled to thwart time, which probably bore down on him with a unique force, pressuring his willowy, aging body, but he was someone, unlike the tall man and the disconsolate women, who didn't complain, and like Contesa, he refrained from ordinary disclosures and responses, having lived long enough to understand the futility of certain communications. I always believe I'll remember the best technique to start a fire, his method, but I don't. Today the fire caught easily, but I don't know why. Yesterday I placed the kindling in approximately the same way, and it didn't. There is a blazing fire now when yesterday the fire died out, because of the wetness of the wood or a slight difference in the configuration of the kindling or small logs with which I always begin, or because I became absorbed in other matters. Actually, I'd forgotten I'd started a fire, and because I didn't tend it the way the Polish woman tends me and remembers to return to the room where I sometimes lie with a heat lamp above my face, the fire died. If the Polish woman didn't remember, and I have at times worried that she wouldn't, when she speaks especially fast in Polish to people who telephone her, probably some of the men she is or is not dating, because of her mother's objections, my dry skin might crack or be singed by the heat, or I might develop a rash or be burned and disfigured, and if the rash were chronic, full body atopic eczema or psoriasis, or if I had a type of recurrent dermatitis that was difficult to treat, I would probably visit her salon even more frequently, for other kinds of treatments, which might have no medical value, but which might help me, in some way. The salon offers a Glycolic Smoothing Treatment, an Intensive Lifting Treatment, a 100% Collagen and Elastin Mask, a Back Cleansing Treatment, and an Aromatherapy Treatment, which lasts one hour and twenty minutes and costs eighty dollars, and provides "deep hydration and proper nourishing of the skin, improves circulation and regeneration of supporting fibers in the deeper layers of the skin." A Collagen and Elastin Treatment requires the same amount of time and money and "helps to enrich the skin with Collagen and Elastin. It nourishes and relaxes, rejuvenates and exfoliates skin impurities. This treatment will create a younger-looking skin." Just reading these descriptions comforts me, since a word like "nourish" is soothing, because of its open vowels, a diphthong, since to pronounce the word, I must purse my lips, opening them as if I were about to kiss a lover, and though pursing my lips might etch lines around my mouth, I still like to say the word "nourish" aloud, but more I like to hear and read it. Also these descriptions, found in many catalogues or on salon wall signs, whether accurate or not, whether they actually produce what they proffer, are comforting, for I can immediately imagine a more pleasant future for myself when I read the delicious words.

  In my Zulu language manual, it says that "the acquisition of a vocabulary is a primary and inescapable consideration in learning a language. Without words we are dumb." The magnitude of the second, simple five word sentence plagued me yesterday, and now today I learn the words for my father ubaba and my mother nnama, baba and mama ... while eat and enjoy are the same word, dla. Chair is isihlalo, isifo is disease, umzimba the body, hleba to tell tales. The English/Zulu dictionary gives no word for skin, the largest organ of the body. People who suffer from eczema may have to be restrained from scratching off their perniciously itchy skin and some suffer a daily agony. It is impossible to feel another's agony the way the sufferer feels it, and nothing makes someone feel more alone than suffering, whether it is mental or physical, pain is unbearable but borne. I could have talked, this morning, to the woman with psoriasis, who needed attention, and given her the name of my dermatologist, and told her about treatments available that might soothe or temporarily remedy her skin, even if she and it were never cured. The young woman's psoriasis was in full bloom this morning, livid as the complexion of an ancient alcoholic, so that for her it appeared being in love assaulted her calm, the idea of love had attacked her peace of mind, as symptoms flourished on her cheeks, her elbows, and the backs of her hands. The tall balding man, it's rumored, has had many lovers, sometimes simultaneously, but when he is in love, Contesa generously explained, he is intense and engaged, so that the woman he directs himself toward in that moment feels she alone exists for him; and no matter that he has left many a woman brokenhearted, all of whom have felt the way the young woman might now, her hands blazing with discomfort, and reason demands that this will happen again, each woman thinks she will be the one to change him, as she does now.

  I don't like tending a fire, since I'm easily distracted, I have many ideas, which are spread about the room and on the floor, and none I want to realize, but most I'd like to undo, if I could, like relationships and many experiences, and I don't like having to check on a fire to verify that it's burning well and not going out of control, the way the Polish woman tends to me and makes sure that, because my skin's sensitive, there's not too much heat coming from the chamomile concoction over which I lower my face, to absorb its cleansing and rejuvenating goodness, steaming open my pores, since too much heat is had for such sensitive skin as mine, she tells me. Sometimes she won't permit me to place my face above this potion but instead positions me under a heat lamp, which is supposedly kinder to skin like mine. Then she leaves the room. I can hear her making phone calls, writing notes or opening nail-polish bottles, because she also gives manicures, though I have never had one from her, because during a manicure, you sit face to face, and I don't want to see her face that long. She speaks in Polish to those she calls or who call her, though not to clients like myself who don't know the language, but especially to the owner who phones often; I don't understand what she's saying, I don't seriously imagine she is talking about me, yet it's not impossible, since there are many things we don't say to each other. We talk about the same things again and again when I visit, rarely diverging from these by now familiar subjects, and I have no way of knowing what she is saying in her native language, her mother tongue, but she returns to the room within twenty-five minutes, to lift my head from the benevolent vapors of the chamomile potion and dote on me like a baby.

  I once tried to imagine, to the extent I could, because I had scant knowledge of it, having a baby and caring for it. I didn't give it a sex, I wanted to see if I would ever want one, or if I could care for one, because I don't want one, yet women are supposed to want one, and if you've had the fate to be born a female, about which I had no choice, you have no choice about the most important things in life, it's expected and encouraged that you should want a child, that it's unnatural not to want a child, and that in some way you're selfish to have life without bringing more life into it, offspring who will be dependent for years. Human beings care for their young longer and longer, prolonging their infancy and effecting a mature infantilism in them, who will probably disdain those who raised them for a good part of that dependency and also later, tied to them with a hatred that's also love. My mother and my (lead father live, in a significant way, with me, and lodge in an abstract section of me that I can't excise, mostly because I have no control over it, since I don't know where it's located or what its function is, unlike my relationship to other objects which I understand better and whose design, l
ike a chair's, either pleases or displeases me, but unlike a chair I have no choice about its position.

  When I first arrived, intent upon settling in, becoming as comfortable as I could, I spent several days finding a chair I could sit upon and look at, too, but there was only one, finally, that served, though I never really loved it, it was never comfortable enough, and it was certainly not beautiful to my eye, and also I had to get a cushion for it, so sitting on it was awkward, I had to keep adjusting the cushion. It was serviceable, so I accepted the chair and its limits, just as I learned not to hate my mother, to accept her more or less, or maybe even love her in the way an animal might, for warmth and comfort, which I never really received from her, she merely represents those qualities, but it doesn't matter anymore, since she's old, too old to fault, though my brother does, presumably, because he never contacts her, though our father is dead, my brother hated him more than he hated me, I think. My brother and father fought, I watched them, my mother took her husband's side, I was too young to know what the subject of their endless argument was. My brother hid, he slammed his door, locked it, I don't know what he was doing in his bedroom, he must have grown inward like a stubborn, short leg hair and become inflamed with pus, his furious objections never pierced and placated, and, as I record him now, his mouth is cast in a grimace. Scowling, he disappeared. I've known his kind of anger in others, I may seek it out, but I don't want to look for him.

  An infant's tiny fingers and toes are terrifying, the least thing might damage them, and I don't want to look at photographs of their tiny toes and fingers, each toe is too little, the nails on their fingers like thin ice, and I hate to think of their nails being cut by scissors or clippers that are bigger than their feet and fingers. Their nails are dead skin, oddly, a newborn arrives with dead skin, hair, also, both shooting from delicate fingers or heads, the skulls of which are not yet closed at the crown, the crown covered by a membrane or slither of cells of alarming fragility. Their neurological systems are also not yet complete, so infants arrive unfinished and at risk. I once fell hard on the hack of my head, by jumping backward down the poured concrete stairs leading to the patio of the house I loved, because I was curious if I could jump backward down stairs, but I never mentioned my fall to anyone, though my head hurt for months, because the act embarrassed me, and, after it I was less curious about feats that might incur physical injury. I believe my crown has never entirely closed. Adam and Eve acquired a knowledge of death for their human curiosity, the pair weren't innocent of sex but of mortality. Einstein said both human stupidity and the universe were infinite, but he was less sure about the universe's infinitude, and, as the very first humans couldn't have known about death, it still existed outside their experience of the future, it must have been an eternal punishment to suffer its awareness, which distinguishes people from other animals, except maybe elephants. Over a hunk of raw meat, which they tore with their hands and teeth before the invention of tools and fire, one of the cavedwellers-bush people were the first humans-clutched his heart and fell to the floor, lifeless. Or, Eve's death came first, maybe during a painful childbirth, though some people die in their sleep, and then it's intoned, "They just went." Death lives, but only for others, as Duchamp said, it's an impossible idea, the gravest in life, and every day I stare at pictures of my dead friends with wonder at their perpetual absence. But creatively, I believe, which is my will to bring into existence something I have not grasped before, both literally and figuratively, since even in undoing, there is a making, at least for me, I forge them into my life, and, also, looking at them, inert, I rehearse my end. I'd like to be prepared for it. Though change confounds fate, there it is, even death is a change, but also hope persists because there is change, but about hope and its virulent partner disappointment I am querulous.

  I had rashes often when I was a child. In the winter, where I lived, near the ocean, which was a desolate gray-green, the cold wind whipped the sand in circles, and I was forced to wear heavy woolen pants and sweaters. My body felt on fire. I was uncomfortable and itchy, the inside of my thighs were hot and sticky, and unsightly rashes, little red bumps, would spread on my inner thighs, around my neck, and on my chest. In the winter, the harsh wool of sweaters and pants plagued me. Even the thought of a heavy wool sweater or a pair of pants stiff to the touch could bring discomfort, and I'd start to feel warm, my forehead would become hot, I'd sweat and turn beet red. Now I try never to wear clothes that cause me to itch or that irritate my skin. I can barely stand to touch materials that could torment my flesh, like a hair shirt, which was worn voluntarily, to cause discomfort, and instead I search for fabric that's gentle, one hundred percent cotton, or a silk or cashmere, and whenever I choose something to wear, or when I'm in a store surrounded by clothes hanging on racks or decorously displayed on shelves, surrounded also by women and men, or just women, who want something new to cover their bodies, to make them feel differently about themselves, even for a moment, one that evaporates so quickly they will soon need to visit a store again and buy something else to wear, first I notice colors, then I touch fabric, twisting the material between my fingers, to test its gentleness, and sometimes I press it to my face, to see if it is soft enough. I also breathe in the material, hoping to like its smell, and, in doing so, use a sense with no sense, though with consequences and blind motivations, since the senses have no insight, but a smell triggers the recurrence of a past moment or a scene which dissolves as fast as mercury slides, like the vainglorious past, and with it comes the realization of its loss, and these are called sense memories.

  Material is rarely soft enough, it's rare to find good cotton. There are many kinds of cloth, material that is made of natural fibers, like the four basic, earliest fibers-cotton, wool, silk, and linen-and material from artificial or synthetic matter, like nylon and rayon, and later polyester. Rayon was the first synthetic material, the generic term for manufactured textile fibers or yarn produced chemically from cellulose or with a cellulose base, and for threads, strands or fabric made of it. Cellulose is a substance constituting the chief part of the solid framework of plants, of cotton, linen, rayon, paper. In its pure form, it's a white amorphous mass. The chemistry of cellulose is quite complicated. My father understood it and told me about yarns, synthetic and natural, when I was little. During World War II, my father and his younger brother innovated synthetics, nylon threads, because cotton was scarce and required for the war effort, but historically cotton is associated with enslaved African men and women toiling in cotton fields on Southern plantations, though I wear it usually without recalling that, and, even in the winter, a heavy cotton feels good close to the skin, because I don't like being too warm, and good cotton, of a higher denier, is usually comfortable.

  There could easily be a mishap when clipping an infant's tiny toenails, with their uncountable and inherent vulnerabilities that immature or unfinished adults still feel, but I forgot that the fantasy baby I supposedly bore was in the room. I had become absorbed in what I was doing, I was busy, and when I realized I had forgotten the imaginary baby, it had already crawled to an electrical socket, stuck a tiny, pink finger into it, and was severely shocked, its toenails burned, or it was killed, for which I was to blame. Sometimes no one is to blame, terrible things happen, accidents and illnesses, and no one is to blame, yet I always want to bring something to account, or someone, often myself. I'd like to blame my father for the disappearance of my brother, or my brother for the death of my father, I'd like to blame one friend's sickness on another, I blame the ocean, which I love, for its riptides that pull hapless swimmers out to its depths and swallow them, I blame a mountain for a friend's accidental death, but with silly blame, there is added futility. I can't do anything about riptides and incessant desire, so I usually try to make lunch last, though there is a limited quantity, and today I fail again, yet I always hope to invent new ways to make it last, but rarely do, except to choose not to eat it or to eat it an hour later, which is an option people with f
ood disorders select. If they don't eat now, when they are supposed to, they can eat later, which prolongs the possibility of a satisfaction that escapes them, just as the head cook escapes satisfying the residents here. If I like the soup that comes in the thermos, or even if I don't, I pour it into a white china mug and sit before the fire, stir it, and then take a spoonful, attempting everything in a leisurely way, as if I weren't hungry and had all the time in the world, which is what there is, nothing but time, and as languorously as I spoon the soup and stir the fire, as quickly does the fire wane and the mug empty. No matter how measured I am, how I alternate or retard my actions, eventually the lunch is eaten, finished, and the fire, if I don't throw a log on it, burns out. Here is the death of lunch, I think, bemused, but nonetheless a subsequent apathy arrives, the dreariness of uncertainty, and the dread about what to do with myself, since now there's nothing to do but face the afternoon and wait for dinner, though I'm not hungry, only perplexed and unsatisfied.

  The residents often remark, at dinner, that they hope to make their lunch last, though there is a limited quantity of it, because it's a long time until dinner, and like me they need to find ways to make it last. Some do, but I never do. My brother played a game with me, one of the few we had, including Monopoly, though I wasn't good at it, when I was seven, he eighteen, called: Who can eat ice cream the slowest? No matter how slowly I licked the vanilla ice as it melted over the side of the snow cone, how I juggled the sugar cone and walked fast, because we always competed walking back to the house I loved, he won, he would never let me win, though I was many years younger, and then he was triumphant. We would reach the front door to the house that was sold over my protests, but my brother was already long gone from it and us then, and he would still be eating his ice cream and enjoying his victory, and, strangely enough, though I was frustrated and had lost again, since he was bigger, I believed it was his right to win.