American Genius: A Comedy Read online

  "These are some offhand remarks," the Count started, characterizing them as his "Dead Hand" notes. "I will not be discussing my collection of clocks and timepieces, as you may have imagined. I will talk about other esoterica I have collected. Timepieces are my love and vocation. What follows are pieces from an avocational endeavor.

  "Human beings were once covered with the same material our fingernails are made of, instead of skin. Adam and Eve were originally formed from this. When expelled from the Garden of Eden, their original covering shrank to the tips of their fingers and toes. For this reason we still resemble the gecko, whose nails twinkle like tiny crystals in the night.

  "During the reign of King Ramses III, who lived from 1198 to 1167 BC, laborers went on strike for cosmetics." Hired hands in the Theban necropolis refused to work because the food was lousy, the Count put it, they had no ointment, and it was the first strike in history.

  "Fourteen hundred years later Clement pronounced anathema against the cosmological theories of the Greek philosophers, labeling them astrology not astronomy."

  Contesa snort-laughed, she followed her astrological chart, but the Count persevered, he knew his former lover's objections.

  "Clement of Alexandria stated that cosmology spawned a swarm of bestialities. This he published during the childhood of Heliogabalus, but copies never reached Emesa. It was the Syrian desert city where Heliogabulus received the training that earned him the title `King Catamite.' It also made him the greatest ruler the West has ever known. He ruled from age fourteen until assassinated at age nineteen in 219 AD. Had Heliogabulus taken proper cognizance of the Christian Zombie boom, the course of history would have been reversed. His contempt for Christianity's potential for bad magic was his only serious political error. Like Pythagoras and Allah, `he' was one of his many names. Emesa-then a sort of Syrian equivalent of Lhasa-no longer exists. It was swallowed up by the earth in the year 1219, exactly on the one thousandth anniversary of Heliogabulus's death."

  The Count wished us a good evening and a peaceful rest.

  "But I exhort you," he urged in an afterthought, "remember the ancient Egyptian proverb: `Do not laugh at a blind man nor tease a dwarf nor injure the affairs of the lame."'

  He would take our questions now, he said.

  There were none. Contesa arose, haughtily, and she alone would have words with the Count in private, but rumors flew that a devout Christian was upset by the Count's casual reference to Christianity and the Zombie boom. The Count didn't concern himself with sacred cows or interdiction, he cherished sacrilege, his rational mind insisted on it. I'd never heard of the boom and now thought about Zombies differently, but no one dared interrogate the Count or confront him, except Contesa, who knew him well, too well, she occasionally implied, since he was formidable, removed, and entirely in his own time. His unusual lecture, though short, I believe encouraged his former lover in respects and in a way that I couldn't have predicted, but which contained surprises for me and others and which arrived soon enough to be, in a sense, useful.

  I am allowed to attend all of the lectures, which are held at 4 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., but I prefer those scheduled after dinner, when the day is over, and others may inject into it what they wish, with less damage to me. Massages are available but not facials, because massages, like hot baths, soothe the mind and tend the body, and a massage can have a salutary effect upon a tense body and fraught mind. Yesterday, after I saw the deer, I underwent a therapeutic massage during which tissue was manipulated, the resident therapist pressing on and into invisible fibers of my body, to release knots, and, as my tension released and fibers unknotted, I felt the painful pleasure I trust. There are some who can't hear being touched, even by a mate, to whom a massage would be torture, and it is said, though this may be apocryphal, that George Washington, a formal man, an American aristocrat, who wore a powdered wig, read little, according to his Vice President Adams, and kept hundreds of slaves, couldn't hear to be touched, even a hand briefly on his shoulder provoked his presidential ire, and in some this sensitiveness is extreme and extensive-most sounds, fabrics, voices, foods, and smells disturb them-and their new condition hears the name Sensory Defensiveness. The vexed head cook finds it almost impossible to feed them, since these characters are typically both sensation seeking and sensation avoiding. With the resident massage therapist, I may also talk, though not with the Japanese masseuse who greets my exclamations of pain with silence, but the resident masseuse encourages me to explain where my pain is, with what feeling or event it may be associated, to what other part of my body it may have fled, or where it may have come from, historically, then her fingers follow the line I draw with words to the spot, and invariably she locates the source of the trouble. Her skin is translucent, like alabaster, unclouded by worry lines, peerless and unscathed, and, with her, I feel attended to. Her hands are softer than the Polish woman's, though strong, too, and both of them tell me I have sensitive skin, but the resident massage therapist listens closely to every word I utter or every sound my body emits, while the Polish woman doesn't. She is invariably absorbed in her own life, which she relates indirectly in our many encounters, so that I experience or sense her increasing discontent in the place she works, because when she rushes for the ringing telephone and expels a sigh, it is more exhausted and bigger, like a diva's intake of breath before hitting the highest note in her range, and then I fear she may not return to me, in all senses, though I was never abandoned as a child, only forgotten or neglected in ordinary ways. On one visit, when the telephone rang, she set my head and face over the steaming chamomile brew and left, and I heard her speaking in Polish, but this time vociferously, and my regular twenty minutes of steam turned into forty-five, so my back hurt as I bent forward in an awkward position, wanting to lift my head but fearing I'd anger her and lose the benefits of the treatment, and when she returned, she said only, "That was my mother," and I surmised hastily, without having much reason, that the glowering man had no chance with her. She had been married once, she admitted during my next visit, which now came in three-week intervals, since it was winter, and my skin was perniciously dry, my hands chapped so badly that two fingers bled as if I had stigmata, and white flaky skin dusted my cheeks and forehead, so sometimes it was hard to smile, because my tight lips cracked and bled. She'd married when she was a teenager, she told me like closing a book, and I told her I'd been married, also, to encourage her further, but even so she didn't say more, and neither did I. Some women want nothing to do with men ever, some quit intercourse only after abysmal episodes with them, some say they can't be bothered anymore, or don't want to be what they become with men, some lose any desire. I've had one marriage, several serious involvements and lust-filled relationships, many light affairs of the heart, and other playful as well as potent nonaffairs, or romantic friendships, and sometimes it was I who withdrew, often I didn't know what I wanted or if I wanted anything, or what or who could make a difference. I wasn't sure about the Polish woman, suspecting that at the age of thirty-eight or forty, she had left them behind, though her studied appearance, even in a synthetic white cloth uniform, seemed staged for the advent of the right man. I admired her appearance, which could never be mine, because her eyebrows never had a stray hair that needed plucking, the eyebrow pencil she applied with a firm, sure hand created neat, thin lines that never went farther than they should, and drew two light-brown half-moons on her forehead, so her face had a look of expectation, when otherwise it might appear vacant, her full lips were painted with a lipstick that didn't smear or fade, her nails, shaped modestly, were never too long, otherwise she couldn't give facials or massages without clawing or gouging a client's skin, and her nail polish, blush pink, orange pearl, or sunny tangerine, never chipped. I once wore black nail polish to the cramped salon, and, though she said nothing, I could sense the Polish woman's disapproval, but I don't think it was on the day she abandoned me for more than fortyfive minutes with my face over the steaming chamomile potion. The doorb
ell also rings from time to time, and she must answer it, since she's the only one there, except on weekends when her boss shows up, and they banter in Polish, but the ringing doorbell is a less frequent interruption than the telephone. I have learned a little about her former husband, her mother liked him and he was also Polish, but each time I visit I hope she'll divulge more, but then she never asks me anything much, except about my skin, which I don't moisturize enough, because I don't like cream on my skin at night, when it might suffocate it and me, and she asks perfunctorily about my various jobs, but since she's not interested in these various projects, I tell her enough to he polite. She never inquires about my friends or enemies, my cat, my aging mother, and her discretion sculpts our routine conversations, which are social but impersonal, though her work supplies a tenderness that most friendships don't.

  In another place I lived for some months, in the South, near to former, thriving plantations on which cotton was picked by enslaved Africans, there was a florid-faced man who'd been a farmer, and in his late sixties, after retirement, decided to learn massage therapy, so he went to school and once a week offered his novice services free to everyone in the small town. I offered myself regularly to him. His farmer's hands were rough and big as hams, he read the Bible daily, he moved fastidiously, he kept the room very warm, and every time he worked on me, also very slowly, I melted into the professional table he brought with him, and under his rough-skinned, gentle hands and fresh sheets smelling of wildflowers his wife laundered, I let my mind wander as far as it could, since I mean always to untether it from its ordinary course, but habits were established early, in the neural routes of the brain, about which I had no choice. The apprentice masseur spent hours on me practicing his trade, and his efforts tired me, but also I had hardly a care in the world by the time he finished, and the big, tender man was also exhausted, when darkness had fallen in the place where wildflowers sprouted, bloomed in abundance, and the air smelled sweeter than the freshly laundered sheets, and no more was expected of either of us. I could return to my home, careful to avoid a man who, because I refused his seduction, would later take revenge, though I didn't know that then, when my fate was, in some way, enjoined to his unfulfilled, temporary desire. I remember the masseur's hulk, his benign face and large frame, I can assemble the sweet infinitude of those long nights in that overheated room where he practiced on me, where his tender concern and his religious convictions showed themselves, by acknowledging, in long, stroking motions and studious pummeling, his belief that the body was holy.

  Today I'm determined to walk briskly and avoid the main house and to keep to the road. I wonder if facing the traffic, when it rounds the bend, or having my back to it, is safer, as I also watch for deer, birds, squirrels, and wild turkeys. If it is 3 p.m., the yellow schoolbus will wind around the road and drop off children, big and little, in a familiar scene that verges on a gluttonous, almost pornographic sentimentalism, so I hope to make my way to town before its nostalgic appearance. It is probably 2:00, not even, and there is hardly a car that passes and only a few trucks, and by the side of the road beer cans and used condoms are strewn, but not too many, and sometimes from the thick forest a hidden animal moans or a bird sings or screeches, or the trees and branches, some bare, shake from a sudden breeze, but it is mostly remarkably quiet. I can hear my heart beat and my second heart contract, and also hear my breathing, which I adjust to my steps, in, step; out, step; in, step; out, step, and while I try not to worry, only to breathe in and out, to think, what a day, since it is a beautiful day, but I do worry, also about how well I'm breathing. I keep up a pace but am passed by two women jogging who wave exuberantly; by the tall balding man running even faster, with his mouth hanging open, so he looks vulnerable and stupid, when he is neither; then the kitchen helper, who whizzes by on his bicycle, hits the brakes, turns to look at me, gets off, and stops to talk. Now I remember that I appear to be something.

  -How you doing? he asks.

  He kicks his bicycle tire.

  -OK, I say.

  -How was lunch?

  -Spaghetti in cold tomato soup.

  He laughs.

  -What are you going to do in town? he asks.

  -I need something, I needed a walk. Then I might have a coffee. Nothing much.

  -Me too. Nothing. I'm going to hang out, then go home.

  -Have fun.

  -Yeah, you too. Bye.

  -Bye. See you tomorrow.

  I'm busy ignoring his long legs, I do want to buy something, and also I hunger for the taste of coffee and its pungent aroma, though I don't often drink coffee, and he rides off, jauntily, and I breathe again and march on, shaking my underexercised arms which hang from my sides uselessly, and realize the sun is strong for this time of day and season. The tall, old fir trees block its rays, and, when they don't, it casts a brilliant swath on the darkened road. Two chipmunks scurry across, darting forward then freezing in the middle of the two-lane blacktop road, but each scrambles to safety, and a bearded man drives up in an old pickup truck, rolls down his window to ask directions I can't give, but doesn't make small talk, and I go on. I pass the high school. Luckily the students are still inside, it may even be earlier than I thought, so I don't have to watch them flee its corridors, burst out of swinging doors, yelling and whooping, to escape into a transient liberation, or see mothers and a few fathers waiting for them, recalling a similar time in my life, which is present under my skin and which no massage releases. I don't need anything, but I'm at the perimeter of the town whose quaint buildings and shops appeal to locals as well as tourists, since it's old and celebrated for its early American history that the townsfolk superintend like a garden, the way Richard II didn't tend his, but I don't know why Richard II occurs again to me, when Richard III is more convenient, since this may be the winter of our discontent, or at least mine.

  The battleship-gray cashmere scarf, wrapped around my neck, of fine soft wool from the undercoat of a cashmere goat, anomalously tickles the areas where yesterday the massage therapist pressed persistent knots and pummeled ropey fibers and, when she did, arcane images popped up, but I can't recall them. I stroll past a waterfall, though it's not the fastest route, since I'm trying to appreciate natural settings, but as I walk past, I forget the waterfall, since I'm easily distracted, and instead visualize the Count, who must be sleeping, and who, when he arrived, his darkbrown, thinning hair tousled, wore around his neck an antique timepiece that, I learned, was valuable and rare, and at which he looked with concern during the first dinner, sometimes the best meal of the day, but inconsistent. The regard he showed it was superior to his apparent feeling for anything or anyone else, but then he stopped wearing it, suddenly, and carried instead a pocket-watch that he took out gently, considering its face as I might a photograph of a dead friend. He was never rude. As I came to know him, he declared scant passion except for his timepieces, caring more about time in the abstract, its formation of daily life, and the watches and clocks by which regulation was set and followed, than anyone I have ever known or probably will know. The Count is a reticent polymath and keeps secrets the way a fine timepiece does time, quietly and in a subdued fashion, though about some he was profligate, like telling me early in our acquaintance that he was married, in a way, as he put it, but then never mentioned his wife and set a question in motion, maybe guilelessly, but perhaps there was something I just hadn't noticed. As I strolled past the waterfall that I also hadn't noticed, I reconsidered the words on a plaque near the entrance to the town: "The spirit of liberty spread where it was not intended. "-John Adams

  The kitchen helper's bicycle is thrown on the ground in front of the cafe I don't usually frequent, so he's there, and I could talk with him, learn what makes him tick, as my father liked to say, though that would be more literally true for the Count, and near this cafe is the town's sole antique and thrift store, which I enter instead, in hopes of finding something, if only a trinket or a dainty teacup. The shopkeeper glances up from behind
a glass vitrine or cabinet, which houses an assortment of Americana and small, mostly brown or rusty objects, all of which seem dirty but may be relatively old, to note my appearance and bellows hello, because people are friendly here, though not as welcoming to guests as Greeks, whose love of strangers is the basis of their generous hospitality, or philoxenia, of which I have sometimes been the grateful object. I head for the shelves of used books, which I know well, since I walk to town about three times a week, and mostly they won't have changed, though a new one might have been inserted yesterday, or I could notice one I hadn't, the way I didn't notice the waterfall as I walked past, absorbed elsewhere, and today my eye lands on a hook about the origins of the English language, in which I could learn about runic writing, for instance, but I first open to a chart, "The Organs of Speech," which diagrams the mouth, epiglottis, uvula, hard palate, parts of tongue, larynx and vocal cords, and so on, whose terms connect to places in me, and, also, to those of the demanding man, whose tongue is coated with nicotine slime, and suddenly my second heart is discomforted. The origin of the word "skin," like most beginning with "sk," is Scandinavian, skin is a loanword, and there are many such in English, and I wonder if when you borrow words, you return them in any sense. The kitchen helper has flawless skin. In adolescence, my dermatologist taught me, acne can deform the course of a young person's life so badly that its physical traces will be less severe even than its psychic scars, though its physical effects may be visible for years. Actors who play villains often have pockmarked skin. Acne vulgaris occurs primarily in the oily or seborrheic areas of the skin, and in severe cases, even the ears may be involved, with large comedones in the concha and cysts in the lobes; the comedo, commonly known as the blackhead, is the basic lesion in acne, produced by the faulty function of the sebaceous follicular orifice, when the plugging produced by the comedo dilates the mouth of the folicule and papules are formed by inflammation around the comedones. Atrophic acne is characterized by tiny residual atrophic pits and scars from deeply involved papular acne. My dermatologist insists acne is the single greatest cause of neurosis and distress in teenagers and young adults, but the kitchen helper's skin is free of depressions, pits, scars, and bloody wounds, and he clearly didn't and doesn't, the way some do, usually women, pick at his skin, a neurotic excoriation or self-induced illness, also known as dermatitis artefacta. The kitchen helper drinks beer, cokes, and eats chocolate, and is remarkably unmarred by what he ingests, as his genes have set his skin's design at least as much as his diet and environment, so he can guzzle all the Cokes he wants and never suffer unsightly pimples, though his teeth may be rotten.