American Genius: A Comedy Page 28

  The disconsolate woman and tall balding man come to the center of the stage, hold hands, and stare into each other's eyes. They embrace and slide back and forth across the stage, wordlessly, and, with each movement, Kafka tightens his grip, so her anorectic body disappears inside his embrace, she is affixed to his body like a stamp, then he pushes her away from him, and this happens again and again. At last, Felice shakes her head and disengages, wrests her painfully thin person from him, while she covers her face with her hands and then, in or out of character, weeps softly.

  The Narrator: If Felice could fly. If she had wings! They'd be clipped by her Kafka. He created her for himself. He didn't talk about her to his friends. In fact he didn't talk about her ever. When her name came up in conversation, he pretended he didn't know her. He hoped a visiting friend would bring news of her, unaware.

  Then Felice, or the disconsolate young woman, heaves and sobs, she weaves in place, circles the stage, and stops short, then she collapses, still weeping convulsively. Her breath comes in fast bursts, she can't rise. "She's hyperventilating," shouts the stout Wineman, as he approaches the stage. Her wailing can't have been scored in Contesa's play, though it is spectacular and would be a feat if the disconsolate woman were acting, but now an anxious staff member rises from his chair and the Magician as well as the Count rush forward to help, I move forward also, and everyone is clustering around her downcast, skinny shape on the floor. The Wineman turns her over deftly, strokes her forehead, breathes into her mouth, counting one two three four, then breathes into her mouth again, until her breathing regulates itself, and she settles down, her body released. The residents spread out and give her more room to breathe and orient herself, as well as themselves, while the tall balding man caps his hand over his bald spot, rubbing it in circles, and the Count and I stand by, not knowing what to do, or if anything more is required of us. Usually, I believe, a paper bag is slapped over a hyperventilator's mouth.

  Silence sounds like a clap of thunder.

  At last, Contesa calls out that her play is over, even if it's not finished, and please everyone return to the lounge or your rooms, have a drink or a tea, and then she declares that our Felice will be fine. Each of the emerald green tufted-velvet chairs is empty, except for the Frenchman's, who remains and glares in her direction, also the site of the unplanned spectacle. He doesn't seem to be at a loss the way the rest of us are, he appears miffed or outraged, as if he might be a sophomaniac, which, according to the Medical Sex Dictionary in the library, is a form of insanity characterized by a belief in one's own supreme wisdom. He approaches the stage area with a saturnine visage and confronts the Count and me, asserting, in a still-charming French accent, that when Galileo was tried during the Inquisition, as he rose from his knees after he swore the earth was the center of the universe, not to be a liar, he muttered, "E put si muove." With force, the Count repeats in English, "Nevertheless it does move." "He was a fool to die for this idea, it would be found true, anyway," the Frenchman spits out, and takes off, looking back at me, daring me to rebuke or despise him, a look that might have sexual connotations. The Count remarks, casually, "I've met others like him."

  I have also, and in the past I might have wanted to have sex with him, a bitterly provocative man, whose active disdain for common things and a love of evil might have carried the day and myself to his bed, briefly. But I don't like his skin, which is rough with large pores and a few blackheads around his nostrils, his tidy moustache, which hyphenates his lower from his upper face, and his height, he's too short for me. Imagining myself with him feels athletic and tiring, as if we'd played sex against each other in the Olympics. I once regularly used to carry a torch, but I no longer want to die for love, I might for an idea, but maybe that's also a romance, because I'd like to die for something and not nothing, which is probably my fate, and I'm here, with time off and on my hands, as well as the ambiguous luxury to consider such questions.

  On July 3, 1826, Thomas Jefferson was in a coma and awoke long enough to ask, "Is it the fourth?" They were supposedly his last words, he died on July 4, 1826, at 12:20 p.m., and John Adams fell ill and died later the same day, at 6 p.m. His last words were: "Thomas Jefferson survives." At my finale, I'd like to have inspiring words like those on my dry, feverish lips, and someone to hear them and care enough to write them down, the way my dermatologist writes about my skin in his file that grows bigger and bigger. The Frenchman also has a regrettable brown mole on his cheek, its border is regular, if it were irregular, especially a new brown lesion, I might be compelled, though I wouldn't want to interfere or importune, to advise him to see a dermatologist, but I believe it is benign, even if he's marred in my eyes by an indefinable unsightliness and by his stupid beliefs. I can't understand why he, and many others with ugly growths on the face, especially when there is more than one, doesn't have it removed.

  The residents amble, reluctantly or moodily, toward the thick, wooden double doors, where the Turkish poet looks distressed, so I wave at him wanly, he returns the wave, then disappears with Henry and Arthur to discuss this local and other more exotic scandals over cognac. But I feel suspended or caught and don't leave, or can't, so time passes, and, like much of time, I can't remember its passage, where it went, what occurred to me, only that for a while my legs were wooden and dense as a chair by Wright, and I stared into the room, not seeing, and, as in a dream when a monster appears, I couldn't budge, but I didn't faint or even come close to swooning. A former enemy once turned her back on me, and I couldn't move, but then she died, one of the three enemies to die, extraordinarily, within the same year, which left a vacuum or more space, and then I could travel safely in territories where once they might also have been, inhibiting my movements and spurious sense of freedom.

  The disconsolate young woman's heaving sobs bother me. Her rebellious body intimidated and stunned us with its bursting, explicit urgency, exceeding the bounds by which we residents are circumscribed, and, while Kafka and Felice were subject to exquisite conflicts, the disconsolate woman's, involuntarily revealed, disconcerts me more in the moment. Curiously, her self-exposure awakens the balcony scene in which the inventor was displaying his peachy ass, though the two events had different causes, motives, and held very different excitements. I become aware of myself alone in the Rotunda Room, surrounded by empty, plush green velvet cushions on black wood chairs, and, in a sense, its many ghost stories, as well as Kafka's and Felice's, so when a loud crash at a window startles me, though probably just a stiff wind, the sudden sound jars me, and I shoot out of the room through the rustic, dark and heavy double doors downstairs to the main room, where some residents linger, JJ, the demanding man, one of the disconsolate women, not our Felice, and others. They are also confounded by her naked collapse and talk about it among themselves, but I require quiet and need to be in my room quickly, to undo the unforeseen, unsettling events, though I know that's impossible, so I turn toward the external door, stepping lightly and keeping to an imaginary line on the wooden floor, hoping to be invisible, to leave without further contact, since there's been enough socializing and vivacious or rigorous content to last for days. Perhaps I should round up Contesa for a heart-to-heart, but she must he with her actors, and the Count and she, more than anyone, will understand my need for flight, as she regularly flees, and, with that, I escape with relief, but outside on a pathway leading either to the library or one of the guest or resident houses, I notice the Magician, who is scowling or concen trating hard, with an incandescent light from a lamppost illuminating him. He crooks an index finger at me. I walk over without thinking about why he beckons me; actually I don't think at all, I walk over, drawn too easily.

  -Helen, like I said, I have this feeling about you, you were the only one who didn't freak out when I did my trick. Did you see their faces? They wuz robbed.

  He contorts his face to mime comic displeasure, then waits a second for me to speak, but I don't, so he goes on.

  -Anyway, here's the proposit
ion, it came to me in the room, with Violet's stuff going on and all, the play or whatever it was. Would you like me to conduct a seance?

  I say nothing.

  -I'm serious. Violet would, I mean, the room's perfect. If I'm ever going to do it again, it'd be right for me to do it here. The room has that history. I'm ready to give it a shot. What do you say?

  -A seance?

  -I told you I'm not staying here long, so now's the time.

  -But I don't believe in spirits or seances.

  -I'm a skeptic, too. Big deal. Why not give it a shot? How about a genuine experience? Isn't that why you're here?

  An excellent question, I tell myself, not the Magician, and it also doesn't matter what I think, since I also believe it's good to change my mind or open it, and I'm not willing to doubt everything all the time, because then doubt isn't doubt, but a form of certainty. What I may need is greater than my capacity for doubt or knowledge, for instance, about the workings of the universe, about which scientists can't rest, driven day and night to fit its entire machinations inside a total theory. I might try a seance, since the most improbable experiment could beget auspicious progeny, and, even though I don't believe in the dead returning and speaking, the idea draws me to it. I like surprises, and I can't stop myself.

  -I have reservations, I admit.

  -Me, too, for dinner. Lighten up, Helen. I have to find Moira before she leaves.

  -Who's Moira?

  -Moira was the narrator in Violet's thing, I met her in town the last time I was here.

  Lighten up. One easy reservation is that I question his sanity, my sanity, and my need to question sanity, a concept I hold in abeyance, then I question his reason, as sanity and reason are often synonymous, which can make for deadly dull days and nights. I wonder who else will join us, apart from Contesa and Moira, that odd inquisitive woman, whose appearance in my life has been accidental, but this encounter will be deliberate, a seance with Moira and unnamed others, but I don't ask the Magician to reveal them, because he might name the demanding man or someone else about whom I'm uneasy.

  He wants to meet in the Rotunda Room at midnight, which is in less than two hours, and he'll gather other sitters-a sitting, he informs me, is a seance-and exhorts me not to worry, because he'll make sure they're sympathetic people, and, it's an adventure, he insists.

  -Why are you doing this? It's strange. We just met.

  -Violet started something in my head, she started me thinking.

  He repeats vigorously, his jowls shaking, that he has a sense about me, he explains that he acts on his impulses, because he writes obituaries for a living, and death is in his face every day, and the fact is you never know when you're going to buy it, unless you kill yourself, you never know. He's adamant.

  -If the spirit moves me, I just do it. Life is short. Hell, there's no time to lose.

  He rushes off to find Moira.

  I wish he hadn't said that, No time to lose. I'm in his sights, his excited behavior disallows time's unfolding casually, to be crafted carelessly or by pondering and reflection, but now his impulse crashes into me, so I may have to let things drop or get out of control, I may let myself go or not go but I can't stop, it's hard to stop when something has been set irresistibly in motion. I may want a genuine experience, whatever that is, as everything is in some sense experiential, and also there could be an obstacle I might overcome, I'm mindful of that, and in a curious way a seance, which appears nonsensical, might make sense. Wittgenstein said, "If no one ever did anything silly, nothing intelligent would ever be done." Plainly, it is an accident, a cosmic joke, whatever that means, that I'm in the Magician's path, since our conjunction is unplanned, which idea instantly delights me, its novelty supplants others that raise caution, and my impatience festers, while anxiety blooms. But time drags before the adventure, time to kill, that's all there is, I hate killing it, but I'm not averse to killing other things. I heard about a woman here last year who refused to kill a living creature, who'd taken a vow in a ceremony at the peak of a local, snow-capped mountain, and then allowed cockroaches to thrive and encouraged mice to breed in her room, until there was an infestation of cockroaches and hundreds of mice, since a breeding pair can produce fifty thousand in a year, and the stench and filth required the town authorities and residential staff to remove her forcibly. She is a purist and would not, rumor had it, listen to reason and kill the creatures mercifully, but her ethical position, logical if not reasonable when taken to an extreme, also distinguishes saints, activists, and visionaries. I protect some animals and not others, I eat some and not others, some vegetarians eat fish, most wear leather, to be stylish or warm, most are indifferent to some types of killing, particularly the kind that inconveniences them, and, when a cat I owned turned vicious and stalked me, after employing various tactics to subdue its fury, behavior modification training, exotic music, unearthly sounds, and tranquilizers, I had it killed. If I participate in this seance, it will not be as a purist, but a temporary renegade from categories of reason. I'm free not to submit to the experiment or experience, but experience is what I want, or it is the only thing I have, I'm its sum, a vaporous being, since, like time, it disappears and leaves only memory, which is unreliable and about which I have no choice, and, when I pile up more experiences, I'll have more history that I will forget or inaccurately render, so I'll also be the sum of more regrets and mistakes. It could be the reason not to do anything, which I also do, nothing. I incline toward the new and also bend back toward the old, to an appreciation of history, though in recent years I prefer the study of design, but neither is escapable, and I would like to imagine communication with the dead, my dead friend explaining how he died on a mountain, my father advising me to tell my mother he still loves her, that he didn't want to leave her alone, or that he applauds my quitting history for the study of design and to make or unmake objects. I don't believe or expect any of this, but I'm susceptible to what I don't know or believe, too, since after my father died, on the same night he was taken without saying a last word, a mist of steam or vapor rose and hovered over my mother's body, I watched the little cloud from a chair, because I couldn't sleep, and I thought it was him, bidding us farewell, his spirit having departed his body, leaving just a mistiness, which I don't believe, so then I locked myself in the bath room, read the Farmer's Almanac for 1994, and scrawled lines about dying that in the morning were illegible or made no sense, but uncannily also made sense, since death takes everything, every sense, apart and renders everything indecipherable. If my father visits, I might voice what I couldn't or never did before, but I scarcely can let myself think of the impossible and also don't visit cemeteries, sit on graves and talk to my friends' tombstones, as if they could hear me, though I'd like to believe they do and that if I spoke to them and they heard, it would reassure them of their not being forgotten, that somehow they live in death. But I refuse to talk to a tombstone, I reject its efficacy, reject the fantasy, although paradoxically I acknowledge the truth of the fantastic, since imagination is also knowledge, before it knows itself as useful.

  On a serviceable, dark-brown wooden bureau or dresser against one of the walls in my bedroom is an array of creams and potions, to reduce or lessen wrinkles, to smooth, lubricate, or moisturize, to coddle the body and face, and I might relax that way. I watch them, inanimate containers of soothing, energizing hope. New anti-aging creams claim to do as much as medical procedures, these contain pentapeptides, small groups of longchain amino acids that function as medical messengers throughout the body, initially developed to help in the healing of wounds. As part of the body's natural response to helping skin heal, peptides were found instrumental in increasing cells to generate more collagen, and collagen is critical to how the skin ages. My Polish cosmetician sometimes applies a collagen mask to my face, during which I lie under a pink or blue fluffy blanket for at least twenty minutes while it nourishes my skin, and she talks on the telephone in Polish, so that I don't know what she's saying, whi
ch is a blessing probably, but because my skin is sensitive, she avoids dramatic changes, oils and creams, treatments that might cause a rash or, worse, hives, or urticaria, but a collagen mask isn't an irritant. It is supposed to supplant or augment the natural collagen I've lost as I've grown older, it's supposed to replenish it and plump up the cheeks, and for some hours after the mask, I believe my cheeks are plumper. She says so, she insists on the beneficial effects of her work, as everyone does, few want to believe that what they are doing is insufficient, ineffective, or actually damaging, parents slap their children in the child's interest, surgeons perform unnecessary hysterectomies, people abandon dependent pets in parks and on streets, because they've become a nuisance, pets bring out the best and worst human behavior, and the Polish beautician believes in her work and in herself, and I do also, since much well-being is facilitated and benefited by a placebo effect. On a rare occasion, when she was nearly garrulous, she told me that she took care of her elderly mother, who wanted her to live with her, which didn't surprise me, that she cooks meals in advance for her, places each one wrapped in aluminum foil in a freezer, when she goes on an outing with her friends, and that every Sunday the two attend church together. She sighed and then patted my forehead with a potion that smelled of honeysuckle. Occasionally I desire an orderly life such as the one the Polish cosmetician narrates, designed with weekly appointments with her mother, by a religious faith and a God who watches her mostly with love and sometimes disapprobation to whom she can confess and by whom be forgiven, by an adherence to discipline, by strenuous outings with like-minded, robust friends, and a regular job during which every day but Sunday and Monday she waxes legs and moustaches, cleans, shapes and cuts nails, polishes them with a full range of brilliant hues and colors, applies soothing masks and salubrious if worthless creams to women's faces, but I can also imagine she dislikes her boss, who is rarely there and who calls from home and gives her orders, who is married and has children, and that my cosmetician also seethes at her mother's strict regulation of her, a woman of thirty-eight, who doesn't want to marry again or have glum men visiting her unasked in her place of work, or who may want their sexual advances, but whose deepest interests or dissatisfactions lie in areas she'd never express to me. Or, she may have none. Next to the creams on the plain, wooden dresser, a crystal ball, a gift from a dead friend, insinuates itself now as an omen.