American Genius: A Comedy Read online

  -Einstein said, and I quote, "The imagination is more important than knowledge," says the Count.

  Contesa glows.

  The Count plucks his pocketwatch from his jacket pocket and looks at it with affection, while I'm considering saying I miss my cat or another remark that might establish a point of departure or even misdirection. Last night some of us engaged in an intense discussion about domestic and wild animals who'd performed extraordinary feats, a skunk who unzipped tents and stole food, a cat who turned doorknobs, a wild bird who bathed in a kitchen washbasin, a pet mouse who frowned and smiled, a cat who mothered a parrot, a large dog who lay on its owner and saved her from hypothermia, and I told the story of our family cat who, in addition to her other miraculous feats, was once left alone in our house, whose den had the six Eames chairs and table I loved, which were sold over my protests with the house I also loved, and when she couldn't go out, instead of fouling the floor, she defecated on the drain of my parents' bathtub, after which she tore sheets of toilet paper from the roll and placed them in a mound on top of her unsightly mess, and all of this was especially pleasing to my mother, who nonetheless killed her later. Usually no one is wrong or mistaken about animals to whom an unqualified love is due.

  A jarring crash and shrieks disrupt us, erupting from the kitchen, and I jump up, as do several other residents, we run in and discover the kitchen helper on the floor surrounded by broken glasses and crockery, plates, cups, saucers, and near him the head cook is screaming, but when we enter, she claps both hands over her mouth, because the residents are meant to live in peace and quiet here, and no one but we can demonstrate distress, and the head cook must restrain herself on our account. The kitchen helper's hand is cut, his unblemished skin torn, there is a gash, blood on his pants leg, his long legs, and I feel as weak as a kitten drained by fleas. Wobbly, I walk out of the kitchen, hump into someone, experience additional pressure or a tighter grip around my heart, then collapse in a faint on the dining-room floor. I never know where I am when I faint, when the blood rushes from my head, flees, my brain empties, I can feel it until I feel nothing but a lightheaded coolness, and I can only hope my end is similar to fainting, since to die like this would he nearly pleasant. Then, as I awaken on the floor, the coolness leaves, I open my eyes and sense the Count kneeling beside me, with his pocketwatch near his face, he drifts around in soft focus, and I hear him say, "Helen, you lost consciousness for forty or fifty seconds. Are you well enough to sit up? Your friend will be fine, it's not deep, he'll be all right. Tea and cognac will fix you right up."

  After I faint or swoon, I must always rush to a sink and splash cold water on the pressure points, wrists, at the pulse, on the neck, the jugular vein specifically, then all over my face, where the skin appears drained and blanched, and, when color returns, with blood to my brain, so do I. I return to the dining room, where, by now, my table, relieved to see me up and conscious, or almost conscious, is all sympathy for a bit, but also showing restraint because they are loath to interfere with me, to my detriment, and also they're ready for dessert, which tonight is chocolate pudding with chocolate chips and fresh whipped cream. I drink black tea and swallow a shot of cognac. This anaglyphic scene reforms and becomes again one room with just four walls and just three dimensions, the chairs and table return to their regular shapes, and the residents' disparate triple noses, eyes, lips, and brows congeal into single features and recognizable faces, my lightheadedness dissipates, a process I'm used to, and then Contesa rises from the table, and, in her spirited manner, announces to the room, first ringing a bell, that she has written a short play or spectacle, and hopes all assembled will attend a dramatic reading of it, but that is our decision, and she will understand our need for solitude, especially after what's happened, looking at me and toward the kitchen, which could be embarrassing but somehow isn't. It is tonight at nine in the Rotunda Room, she declares and sits down again. The tall balding man and disconsolate woman immediately leave, which the demanding man notes, sullenly, as the Turkish poet searches my face for explanation, so it is a moment to appear enigmatic.

  "Wait, I'll do a trick for you," the Magician says sharply. He's looking at me. "You wanted to learn about tricks, I'll show you one, and it'll get your mind off it." It, I ask myself, what is it?

  The Magician displays a quarter and sets it on the table near me. I look and then hear him say something and it's gone. The quarter's gone. "It's under the plate. Move it," the Count demands. The Magician pushes the plate slightly and says, "No, see, it's not." Then the Magician produces three more quarters and moves them around on the table, he slides them effortlessly, one after another, like baby silver mice, through his fingers, he holds them up to show the table, while he asserts: "I'm not good at doing magic acts, I'm really bad at it, but I belong to the International Brotherhood of Magicians, I don't know how they let me in, and the American Society of Magicians, and to the Magic Castle in L.A., it's been there in Los Angeles since 1906. But I'll make mistakes, so watch me very closely, I'll make a mistake, but do you know anything about physics, because there's a theory about the third dimension that . . ." As he talks, boldly and fast, he walks around the table, stopping at each chair, to demonstrate to each of us that the coins are real, he has us touch them and look at them, he bites all of them, after which most at the table wipe their hands and mouths, and, when he sits down again, having performed his patter without a lapse, he pulls out, from his sleeve or pocket, I can't tell, several items.

  -Anyone missing anything? the Magician asks.

  Each of us pats our pockets, even if we don't have any, looks down and up, looks at him, and then at each other. He sets on the table the Count's Breguet pocketwatch, Spike's hemp purse, the Turkish poet's slim purple notebook, Contesa's dark glasses, Arthur's and Henry's 1960s designer wristwatches, and my silver Bauhaus button I carry in my pants pocket. Everyone gasps, but the Count looks as if he might faint, too.

  -What about the coins? Spike asks.

  -I can do that another time.

  -I hate being manipulated, numbers never do that, Spike says.

  -I applaud it, the Turkish poet says.

  -Jean Cocteau would choose the thief over the cops, says Arthur.

  -I'm not stealing, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just showing you that the hand is faster than the eye.

  -It's amazing, I say.

  -You distracted me, says the Count.

  -I practice the art of misdirection, I told you that, the Magician reiterates.

  The Magician remains calm, but the Count fidgets in an active state of confusion that I'd never witnessed in him, he could jump out of his skin, but Contesa addresses him, talks softly, and strokes his arm. He pulls himself together and asks the Magician to hand over his treasured Breguet, and, with its return, his demeanor rejigs, but he must now experience the Magician as an enemy or an obstacle to his peace of mind, which was just shattered, while Contesa, though not delighted by the Magician's attitude toward spirits, asks to speak with him privately, later, and gracefully excuses herself from the table and leaves the room. The head cook, who rarely steps into the dining room, she keeps to her domain, except for special occasions or holidays, when she takes our applause for an elaborate meal, which she cooked for us when she wished to be home with her husband and grown children, if they're still on speaking terms, is now among us. She claims the room's attention by clanging a small triangle. Her long apron wears stains of recent meals, including splatters of the kitchen helper's blood, so I have to avert my eyes, otherwise I'll become lightheaded again. Finally, when everyone stops speaking, except the stout Wineman who is mostly audible throughout, she says she's very, very sorry for the commotion, that the kitchen helper is fine and probably won't need stitches, and we should just pretend it never happened. "Please pretend it never happened," she repeats, and her hands flutter absentmindedly. My tablemates shrug, their shoulders shunting off the immediate past, but I've never been able to pretend something never happened.
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  The Magician touches my shoulder, "Watch this, Helen," he demands, and sets a playing card in front of me. He moves it around on the table, lifts both his hands, and, in that instant, the card disappears. His sleeves are up, they're well above his bony elbows, often an unattractive part of the body, often plastered with elephant skin, psoriasis is frequently found there, and the card has vanished.

  -Thanks, that's terrific, just what I needed, I say.

  He looks into my eyes, nakedly taking my measure, and it's a little weird, as if he has imperceptible sightlines into me, but it's not creepy, because his eyes are warm, like the friendly dog's up the street.

  -I'm glad, Helen, because the truth is, I'm not going to be here long, it's a pit stop, so to speak.

  The Magician continues to look at me but in an especially kindly way and appears to have reached a decision.

  -You know, I have a feeling about you, I'd like to get to know you better, as a friend, he explains, with some urgency.

  While this is unnerving, it is also pleasant and a surprise, since he has seen something in me that I don't see in myself, I'm sure, but instantly I hope he isn't going to compromise me in some way or make my time here more complicated than it already is, become too demanding, or like a rejected suitor be disappointed and want to harm me. We all saunter into the main lounge for after-dinner talk and drinks, offered by the staff, who serve us with a casual propriety, and then the Turkish poet bundles my arm in his, whisks me away, and asks, "You are truly all right?" because he's nervous for me, since people don't faint "hugely in these times," and, while patting my back solicitously, observes, "You are 19,h century woman in trousers." It's a funny idea, he's wrong, I feel no kinship to the 19,h century, except that it preceded and fomented reaction in the 20th, whose difficult progeny I am, but then I remember my Polish cosmetician, who wouldn't say that, and instead would repeat in her thudding English, "Your skin is very sensitive," then she'd slather cream on my face and tell me to close my eyes, while moving her fingertips lightly across my cheeks, forehead, and chin, never touching the thin skin beneath my eyes, which is too fragile even for her trained touch. "A sexual act is perforce and perchance a fainting," the Turkish poet stage-whispers dramatically, as we are joined by Spike and the Count who sit close to us. The fire rages. The Count hears the Turkish poet's commentary, and, from his store of knowledge, pulls out, like a rabbit, the word faineant, an adjective, which means given to doing nothing, of which I am frequently guilty, but it's also close to feigning, faignant, from the French for idler, he explains, and faindre, to feign. "It's the word closest to fainting in most good dictionaries," the Count says, after which Spike adds that John Cage became an expert in mushrooms, since it was the word in the dictionary closest to music, so Cage kept seeing it, became intrigued and maintained an interest for life. Spike, too, may often look at the M's because she is a mathematician. The Count strolled along the Seine and saw an antique blue watch, fell in love with it, and still loves and collects timepieces, Contesa read Kafka's Amerika and, because he hadn't visited it, she fell in love with his writing and mind, next with his brilliant cat-and-mouse letters to Felice, who may be Contesa's Amerika, because she couldn't visit her even in letters, whose symmetry she might enjoy, but I don't remain faithful long to my person, others, and my interests, except I have habits, but I resent them.

  The present into which I've landed from my swoon might be a fine one, I feel this maybe illogically, having just returned from the oneiric empire and been released here, so I can listen to other voices, while the fire throws heat on my sensitive skin, it prickles, but I want more, sensation of any kind. I don't actually mind fainting, except for the feeling of added pressure or weight on my heart, fainting is a habit about which I have no choice, when I lose consciousness, which relieves me in the moment from worse sensations or in short consciousness. But the Count takes out his Breguet and announces, "It's time." Even where our days and nights are relatively unstructured, it's always time for something, with too much or too little of it, everyone complains, then asserts, it may be my time, or I had my time, but what would that have been, yet it's said people live beyond their time, which seems on the face of it a worthless idea, I don't know what it serves, like a cheap design. A neurotic often realizes it is better to live in time, and some of the residents cajole each other, Be present to your experience, get over it, get past it, or just move on, metaphorical phrases that proselytize a physical approach to static mental conditions, practical if mostly useless. The staff encourages the residents similarly with ambiguous regulations and rules that rest on flexibility, except no one knows when that relaxation will occur: for instance, the inventor was allowed to be with his dog when I couldn't bring my young wild cat, and they probably know he dropped his jeans and exposed his rosy ass, and nothing happened, but if the demanding man did it, his act might incur a negative reaction from the administration. Certain fellows' complaints are handled by the staff but others they expect the residents to sort out among themselves, but none of us knows exactly why, since their reasons and rationales are their own, and while we are encouraged also to be ourselves and to be inquisitive, there are some things we must accept, because that is the way things are, it is life. If I could cleanse myself of memory, I would, if I could abandon the sensible or rational world, I would, I'd like to, I think I'd like to. I'd also like to be unafraid and full of faith, like Samantha, who was here two years ago, who followed various teachers to the ends of the earth and never again returned to our ordinary one. Instead she wanders, untethered from any single person or place, in a dayto-day existence of happenstance. If I could, I might be able to pretend that our cat and my dog had found good homes, that beloved dead friends hover like guardian angels or are alive, which happens in dreams, and that I'm not alone and without purpose, subject to forces bigger than myself, about which I have no choice. At my mother's grand age, with her damaged brain, whose irascibility none can predict, her memory's extraction occurs daily, but she forgets and remembers the same things, so even loss has a pattern. She never forgets her husband, my father, only that he is dead and not waiting for her in his car, she forgets she killed our cat and my dog, she forgets my brother or remembers him as a child, she remembers her mother, whom she believes was perfect, and when she awakens from a dream, she's believes she's in prison, trapped in an apartment that is not hers, and nothing reassures her.

  Longing to be sure but without the cunning for certain kinds of pretending, which allow for ecstatic drifting or dour certainty, I can imagine and fantasize, I can even will myself toward something like hope when I'm doing and undoing things, which is why Contesa appeals to me, also the Count, both of whom dwell in made-up elsewheres, my dinner partners, also, with their resilience, will, or fortitude, like the Magician, who, though a new resident, responded so graciously to a stranger, me. My incapacities and limits must be internal truths, which is why I do what I do and don't do. I can't unring the bell, I can remove the clangor, I will take apart a hell tomorrow, I can see it, the clangor lying on its side, useless, but if I set many clangors on their sides, and have many, many bowls on a table or on the floor, the patterns could achieve something. A staggering number strewn on the floor, so many inert, disentangled, disconnected objects might become something, or only things on a floor taking up space, but that is what everything does, take up space, all things need room, so I might try the experiment, since nothing succeeds without failure, failure has many charms, a mistake might bear a thrilling offspring. I want sensation, even though I don't know what I'm looking for, while scientists, whom I admire, know what they seek, so their experiments are conducted with an aim, an order, a logic, purpose, as they are interested in outcomes and in proofs. I am mostly interested in ways to the end, processes closer to living, whose outcome is always the same, a reliable fact of life, so there's reason to be curious only about when it comes, and for most there will be no proof of anything, another reason to follow, yet also question, science, with its
assurance of repeatable outcomes. History repeats itself, but differently, people repeat themselves, there is a compulsion to repeat, which is not chosen, and few actually appreciate conscious repetition, except psychoanalysts, scientists, salespeople, and shopkeepers, who depend on regular customers, and artists, who might find elegance or beauty in it. Many repetitions are numbing, some might be propitious mistakes, or just useless error, though eating the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner has a certain beauty or intelligence because you could have more time for other thoughts, though they may be plaintive and less sensual than deliberating about food, when, and only if, it is plentiful. The abundance of recipes and menus can be a bounty or a burden, but it can be stupid to hold the same position toward things, because you have always held it, or as a principle. I ruefully acknowledge mistakes, as well as episodes of stupidity, as Contesa called them, which aren't only sexual, but some have been and continue to be, and wrongness lumbers on in a range from pathetic, poorly conceived, or subtly incorrect acts or thoughts, to indifferent, crude, and manipulative ones, sometimes similar to cruelty, whose sting is worse than being struck dumb, or being incapable of knowing what to do or why. The sprites who forgive and forget taunt me, and some obsessive thinking is disheartening, while most is a mistake.

  There was a time when I wanted people to like me, but now I want to like people, once I believed them capable of what they espoused, I suppose I wanted to believe them, now I like them if I do, despite what they espouse, and, as I look around me, I marvel at the characters here, yet still long to he in my room, lying on my bed, drawing a chair, reading or musing, listening to the radio, or taking apart a tape recorder, scattering its tiny innards in the air and seeing where they fall, as if they might be an omen, but it's probably good to be with people, not to avoid them, which I mostly want to do, because I'm not sure what they hold in store, yet when the Count recounts how, in the 4th century AD, it was Clement, Ignatius, and Tertullian who determined the twelve books of the New Testament, after years of dispute, or Spike expands on her riotous, ingenue's repertoire, or the Turkish poet sighs about sex and life's recondite treacheries, I am also at home. I can believe that I am supposed to be here, a curious feeling, one that has been growing in me, maybe since I've been here, that it's right that I'm here, or I'm right to be here, that I shouldn't be anywhere else, a sense I don't often have, though I am usually aware of being in or being a body, because I'm encased in dry, sensitive skin, and during the winter, especially, it cracks and bleeds, but anytime a detergent touches my hands, my skin will immediately react to its poisons and for many days afterward the affected fingers, usually the middle and index fingers and thumb, will be inflamed, the skin flaky and tough, tearing and bleeding, and very painful until it heals in the requisite four days. The disconsolate woman with psoriasis opines that her problem is solely environmental, a word I abjure, though my dermatologist told me that most doctors think psoriasis and many other skin diseases have a genetic and psychic origin, because their outbreaks can be triggered by trauma, for instance, shingles, or the chicken pox virus, or herpes complex might live but lie dormant in the spine for many years and break out when a person is under extreme duress. The disconsolate woman has her ups and downs, mood swings, which are marked by patches and flares of red and lakes of pus on her arms and hands, and the world is increasingly poisonous, or toxic, as she'd say, but psoriasis has been around longer than laundry detergents and emissions that have destroyed the ozone layer, though its cause is still unknown. Hippocrates described the disease in the 4th century BC, but it wasn't named until much later. Heredity appears to be significant, and it appears equally in both sexes, but it's uncommon in black people, and I've read that the American Indian and native Fijians don't have psoriasis, and, I guess, must, with assimilation, change, unless they have resistant genes, and then they should be studied. I know my body is in a place, either when it hurts or has pleasure, otherwise I may forget it. The other disconsolate woman, who has asthma, hates her body or hates bodies, a common phenomenon here and in the place I call home. The word for body in Zulu is um-zimba, and if some Zulus hate their bodies, their reasons may be different from those of us in America, where women were historically free to choose their husbands and damned for it, and for whom men, whatever a woman's sexual desire, are an important subject.