My Dog's on FireMy Dog's on Fire
Documents And ...Documents And ...
Novels
Why do people choose to read a novel? How do they decide to take on the burden of going through this intolerably long work of something that eventually turns out to be pure fiction? A better question: why do people write novels?
“No, I really don't know” B. said to himself, looking at Marek's scuffed notebook, which he knew to contain parts of some sort of novel, composed and commented on by Marek himself over the last few months. The whole thing now seemed to be no fun, however. Marek sat there drinking a coffee with large, miserable gulps.
A few months ago he had been like a proud mayor unveiling plans for a new park, full of fountains and wild animals. Now he was always frowning about something, indulging, as it seemed, in a kind of mute kvetching about the world. No newspaper left his hands uncrumpled, no TV interview failed to provoke a faint hiss of revulsion.
What started out as an interesting adventure, thought B., has become his Vietnam!
At about the time that B. was fantasizing about saying, “Well, I've had enough of this”, Marek suddenly pulled his belongings together—his canvas bag, his pens, notebook, plastic refillable lidded coffee mug—and gave a sigh of defeat. It was the sort of sigh that should have been the last of a series.
“I've had enough of this”, said Marek
And so they were going to head out into the winter evening, and the sky was a brilliant mess.
“Aren't you coming?” asked Marek. “I thought we'd go to the Shepherd's Arms for some relaxation.”
“No, that's all right. You go,” said B. “I'll just stay here and, uh ... try to think of something.”
At the Malyi Theatre
One day the handsome prince is hunting in the woods. We live in an age of universal cowardice and hypocrisy.
He cheerfully follows his prey with his expert dogs. He is happy and carefree until he meets Kretschmer, the magician, who startles him with his ancient tricks: he makes a snake appear wrapped around the prince's shoulders, and just as suddenly transforms it into an Italian silk tie; he breathes fire; he turns a mushroom into a nightingale, which he then releases into the woods; and finally he cuts a newspaper into ribbons and restores it to its previous state. “All these things and more,” he says “I shall teach you, if you will come with me. I shall show you wonders and give you power over many things. I shall tell you the names of the stars, and you will know them as well as you know your hounds.”
The prince considers this, thinking: “I have power enough as it is, and my use of it constitutes my honour. And yet, I would like to know - ” No sooner has this thought occurred to him than the magician vanishes. Turning from this prodigy, the prince finds the woods unfamiliar and his path home confused. His dogs are nowhere to be seen. He begins to make his way nonetheless, but the sun proves an unreliable guide. Finally, he sits down and broods on his predicament with the detachment one acquires when nothing seems to work any more. He might have wept, but he was no good at it. He might have prayed, but he had no confidence in his ability to find suitable words. And in a flash he realises that his castle, even if he could say where it was, would not really exist, nor even the village beneath it, because nothing occupies geometrical space any longer. Yet, by the same token, he can also find anything, anywhere, at any time. This he sets out to do.
Cross Section
For some reason the movie date wasn't working out. Kevin had felt this might well be how the thing would play. Something about the agreement itself, the venue where they had hammered out the details (a corridor at work), the particular type of enthusiasm registered by the woman, something like that had, at the very outset, tipped him off. And now there was no sign of her. Fifteen minutes to go and still no sign of her. The people who came dripping down the escalator did not look as if they could possibly include her. Groups and pairs of sedated habitués of the malls, out for an evening of something, looking as if they all came from the same place. They were too - what? Casual? Unheeding? Too under-statedly elegant?
Kevin had things to think about, however. The software at work was acting out. Everyone had had problems this week. He spent the last two days wandering around the halls and talking to people about legendary computer problems. It was amazing how people seemed to open up when the computers were out, almost like people brought together in the wake of a great storm. No one was actually injured, but they all had stories to tell.
And where was she? Five minutes to show time. Go in or not? Of course a movie date is negotiable: the person who is stood up can always go to the movie and have a good time. In fact it is almost an index to a person's maturity how well he amuses himself at the movie when the other party fails to appear. “Oh, don't worry about that - I liked it, but you might have found it a bit dull.” (It is just as important not to pretend to have had too good a time).
Why would she not have turned up? What was the likelihood of each possible reason? Well, if you've time on your hands—
60% - “Something came up”, which is to say something better, even marginally so, was offered - staying at a coffee shop talking to a friend, for example.
23% - “Forces beyond control”, transportation, work, etc.
8% - “There's been a change in plan”, i.e., reconsidered the plan in a lucid moment and was aghast at having agreed to it.
7% - “Forgot all about it”, which could also include confusion, momentary paralysis of the will, etc.
2% - “Death”, probably the only real good excuse.
Where was she? Maybe she was unable to come because ... what if she were like that man at the park on Sunday, in some sort of semi-conscious state, wheeled around by sympathetic relatives? They bought him an ice cream cone and had him eat it. “Lick it!” they cried. “Lick it with your tongue, Mike! There you go. You're doing good. Eat 'er up! Y'finished? Are you? You don't want any more? You had enough, that's okay. You're doing really well, Mike! I say you're doing really well!!” She might be just like that man, alive and conscious, but unable to do anything more than lick an ice cream cone at someone else's instructions.
And if she were dead? Wasn't that a horrifying possibility? What to do? Probably nothing now. It would be revealed the next day, or even later. Kevin reasoned that the terrible impact on her relatives and very close friends would no doubt make this disappointment of his seem puny, and he began to reflect on the possibility of her having died. He sat down at still another coffee bar with a fresh styrofoam container of coffee. He would be shocked, of course. Saddened. To think of this vibrant young woman, who had everything to live for - job, nice apartment, on her way to a critically-acclaimed movie - struck down, never to be heard from again. It was ... how bad was it?
Kevin darted up to the box office. By the time he found the individually-wrapped theatre at the end of a plush hallway, the movie was well under way. There were vast explosions. Space stations were harassed with laser weapons fire. Fighter squadrons were scrambled. Many people and many, many aliens were killed. But eventually the problem was solved, and the universe was no longer at war.
Fred Q.: an Appreciation
Fred Q. was an actor whom you will have seen in comparatively small roles on late night television. Typically he is
breaking into an office after hours looking for something. He goes over to the filing cabinet, puts the flashlight in his teeth to facilitate his search. Within seconds he draws the necessary folder from the cabinet. The third sheet of paper in it tells him all he needs to know: so it was a set-up all along! McQaid was just playing for time and had Schaeffer killed to make it look like an accident.
“So it was a set-up all along!”
Suddenly the lights go on. And what do we see?
We see that Fred Q. was in several musical comedies: he was the irrepressible but less attractive friend of the romantic lead who consoles the girl when she thinks she has been rejected. He never seems to have a girlfriend, though, until the very end of the movie, when he starts holding hands with the irrepressible but less attractive friend of the romantic lead's girlfriend.
But Fred Q. had a series on television for a while: he is the bemused father of some children. He has a career, one of those undemanding jobs where you spend most of your time coming home from the office with a briefcase. Sometimes he breakfasts at home, and then sets out for the office, but only if some issue involving his family requires it.
Similarly, Fred Q. played the father of a problematic family in a number of later films: he often feels harassed and lacking in support in these instances; he wants a peaceful life with his hobbies, or he wants simply to enjoy his vacation without interference. To this end he sometimes retreats to his “den”, or goes out to do some “yard work”. He is sometimes seen to take a drink, usually a cocktail, as the social context may dictate, but there is no reason to suppose that he self-medicates with alcohol when alone. Undeniably, Fred Q.'s emotional life is rather thin. He is disinclined to verbalize, however, preferring to make light of his lack of affective connection through harmless-seeming “quips” and witty comeback-making behaviour.
He often muses on those years when, long ago the lights go on without warning. Fred Q. freezes, and then begins to turn around slowly. He has learned something valuable here, but once again the game is up, at least for now. He raises his hands and hopes for courage, ideas, luck, but best of all: a mistake by his enemies.
Inventory
THOMASI'm certain there's nothing in it. You shouldn't be frightened. I don't think they can do anything to you. What can they do? Realistically?
“You know, Marek, I'm sorry about all this.”
Realistically?
THOMASWhat can they do? I don't think they can prove anything. Do they know anything? Is there anything for them to know?
MAREKI don't know what they might know. I don't think there's anything.
THOMASSee, I think they'll fish around and come up empty.
MAREKHm.
THOMASAnd they have to prove things. It's up to them to prove things. It's not enough to just keep repeating what they've heard.
MAREKWhat could they have heard?
THOMASYes, what could they have heard? What could they have heard?
MAREKCould they have heard something?
THOMASDo you know what they've heard so far?
MAREKNo idea.
THOMASIs there anything for them to hear?
MAREKI'm not sure. I mean, how would I know?
THOMASThey may not know anything. But they might have heard something. So far as we know, then, that's all you have to worry about. Them hearing something. See?
MAREKI don't know. I'm worried, anyway. Even if they don't hear anything, it's a problem.
THOMASI know.
MAREKI mean, they could make things up.
THOMASWhat could they make up?
MAREKI don't know.
THOMASHave they made anything up?
MAREKI'm not sure.
THOMASIs there anything for them to make up?
MAREKThey could ... make something up, I suppose.
THOMASOkay. Okay. That's a problem, that could be a problem. You have to try to think what they could make up.
MAREKThey might make just anything up!
THOMASWell, not just anything. It would have to be reasonable. It would have to be something like: they'll say whatever, and people will go “Hm, well, you know - could be”. See? And that's where the trouble could start, not really serious trouble - I mean, you can always disprove stuff - but that's where the work comes in.
MAREKRight.
THOMASThe more reasonable they sound - that's where you'll get the trouble.
MAREKRight. I see.
THOMASIf they made up some story about how you were from outer space or something -
MAREKRight, I see. No one would believe it.
THOMAS- or that you were a vampire - something like that's not reasonable.
MAREKRight. The idea!
THOMASBut they might - I'm not saying they will, but they might come up with something half-way plausible. Something that will just about seem as if it could be.
MAREKWhat would that be?!
THOMASWell, I don't know. There are things - oh, I don't know, use your imagination.
MAREKLike - what do you mean?
THOMASWell - do I have to spell it out?
MAREKYeah! Actually.
(Pause)
THOMASSupposing you had a lot of friends who were on vacation - and they went someplace very different form here - you know, some places are very free and easy, they have less discipline, less individuality, they're very lively - people go out on the beach, drinking, taking drugs, dancing, passing out in the sand dunes - and your friends came back from this place with a lot of contraband - and someone said, “"Hey, I bet - ”
MAREKLook, I don't have any friends. So -
THOMAS - no ... friends?
MAREKI don't have any friends. Not close friends. I mean, I can't afford to talk to people or socialise.
THOMASYou must have some. Even people you don't see too often.
MAREKNo, I don't talk to anybody. The superintendent where I live, I might say a few words to him the odd time. The guy in the corner store. But I can't have friends in the business I'm in.
THOMASRight, right, well, we'll leave that as a question mark for now. Let's see ...
MAREK“Bien oui, malgré tout, si ce n'est déjà fait, il est temps de planifier vos vacances. Hélas. Il vous semble y avoir trois mille raisons de ne pas y penser et/ou en prendre? C'est impossible parce que.. et parce que... . Il vaudrait peut-être mieux vous adapter, changer vos croyances et attentes et penser des vacances selon les réels possibles tout simplement?” Sorry. Just reading the back of this brochure.
THOMASI wonder how reasonable that is. Have you seen this play, L'après-midi d'un déprimé? It's just chock-a-block with -
MAREKNo, I haven't. I don't have much time for plays and things since all this trouble broke out. No, I'm frightened, Thomas. And it's funny, this is the first time I've ever been truly frightened. No, what I'm most afraid of is finding myself on vacation without knowing how that happened. I can remember, when my brain was no bigger than a baseball, the one thing I could discern was the face of a sister or mother or father - that's odd. You don't know anything, at that age, but you know that.
THOMASThere's really no time for ... reminiscing. I'm surprised at you, shocked - yes. There - it's not really, really, really serious, not grave and, you know - desperate. But you could cause a lot of trouble to yourself and others if you don't clear this up. And you want to do it in a timely manner.
MAREKI'm just getting to that. I was thinking of vacations and things. There's something there.
...
THOMASRemember: we haven't broken any laws yet.
MAREKRight. This is just all talk.
THOMASAnd we haven't even talked about breaking any laws. You understand? Nothing we've said in fact comes even anywhere close - anywhere close - to a violation, or an infraction, or anything implying any attempt to circumvent a law or statute or regulation anywhere in the penal (or, indeed, any other) code.
MAREKRight. But I was thinking -
THOMASNo. You weren't thinking about anything.
MAREKWell, surely there's no harm in -
THOMASThat's a - that's a sort of myth you people cling to, but the old saw holds true: thought becomes speech becomes intent becomes action. The neat little equation is unassailable.
MAREKWell. I don't know.
THOMASThere is no firewall, if you will, between any of these things. And this equation, although perfectly true, somehow escapes notice by people like you, all the time - to your sorrow!
MAREKYes, I know, I know. I know what you mean. I'm not saying I was thinking of doing anything - I just meant I was trying to think my way around this trouble.
THOMASExactly. Now, as your lawyer -
MAREKBut you're not a lawyer - remember?
THOMAS... No, that's true. And we've so far done nothing illegal, right. Right. Let me think.
THOMASSo what I need for you to do for me is to stop doing things. What are you doing later?
MAREKWell, I was planning on -
THOMASWell, don't do that. Okay?
MAREKSure. Okay.
THOMASWhat are up to tomorrow, anything?
MAREKHm -
THOMASBut you won't do that either. Right?
MAREKRight. I guess.
THOMASLook - I know how hard that must sound. But I can't emphasize enough how important this is. You've got to do nothing. I can't see any way around it, I can't see anything you could do at this point that would be completely free of -
THOMASYou know, Marek, I'm sorry about all this. I didn't think it would get this far. Well, that's not true: I mean I thought we had a chance, a better chance. We've pretty much run out of options now, and I think - you agree?
MAREKYes, I do see that.
THOMASYou do. That's, you know, the most humane way of looking at it, and I'm glad you agree. It would just - I don't think it would serve any purpose to try to explore more avenues. I am kind of experienced in this, and I have to say there is no real possible way this could be turned around.
MAREKI do understand that, Thomas. I think you've done a real good job. You've also been very, uh, understanding, very sympathetic. I do feel that.
THOMASWell, as I say - I've seen quite a few cases like this. In general practice you'll sometimes come across a patient who - presents, shall we say - with -
MAREKBut you're not a doctor. Are you, Thomas?
THOMASNo. No. That's true.
THOMASBut - you've actually written things down? What got into you?
Man of Tomorrow
A man found a bag of money. He was rich.
“Teach the blind to fish, and you will have accomplished something.”
People asked, “Where did you get all your money?” “I found it!” he said, and he would tell the story of his coming upon one of those aluminium briefcases full of fresh stacked bills, which soon became a familiar topos in the movies. He grinned and posed for pictures, and the magazine articles were pitted with his remarks. People wanted to know what his life was like, and what sort of advice he could give about making a fortune.
He seldom gave interviews, but a typical one contained something like: “Teach the blind to fish, and you will have accomplished something.”
It's hard to say, but people may have felt he had the power to restore us to our original nature, heal us, and make us happy and blessed.
He set about the obscure business of revitalizing the city. He renamed it “Skytop”, just to get things moving. Then he looked through newspaper editorials in search of advice and, indeed, guidance. Probably the education system needed a thorough rebooting. Also parking regulations were obviously outdated.
It seems he might build a gap to the next century!
Ordnance
His effects were transparent and I was tired of them. He thought those stupid Mooooobius strips (or whatever) meant
“He thought those stupid Mobius strips (or whatever) meant something.”
something; he thought sex meant something; he thought anyone's doing anything meant something; he thought television meant something. He was always trying to uncover the unique in the ordinary (and vice versa), and usually in a powerful way. He tried to be passionate and provocative, and then, finally, he went and did something or other with language and ritual, and that was the last straw: I had to slap him. Three, four times. And then I had to slap him some more. I had to slap him back and forth. It was a job of work.
“Stop it”, he said.
“No,” I said, “I don't think so. I think we're just beginning to get somewhere”.
Despite myself, I end up imagining him at his desk, transcribing some notes and thinking: “This really seems to make no sense, but I think if I insert some commas it will at least be easier to read. And if I take some commas out, it will become a poem. And now I will go and teach others to do the same.”
Certain corrosion-
resistant steel sheet
products originating in or emanating from
the United States
of Amerika
—he writes, feeling good about the enjambement. It's so good when things work out. Emanating?
Of course, these were all his just-in-time poems. Yes. Centralized planning, decentralized initiative. Produced on demand. Immediately disposable. Both the poems and the paper they are printed on can be tossed and recycled without qualm.
He persists in sending me these poems. They would seem to concern some emotional contretemps he is supposed to have had. I can't tell, a woman that dumped him, something like that. It sounds at first as if he has been dumped by a series of women, and has done nothing in life other than get dumped, but a closer reading suggests that perhaps the culprit is a single woman acting alone.
There's usually the name of some artist or poet stirred in. Dante. Cézanne. Chekhov. Then, a little way below the poem, the name of the place where it is meant to have been written, in italics: Bangkok. Prague. Uttar Pradesh. London. Did he go to all those places? I have to ask. What for? To write poems? Sometimes the date is noted there as well, as if that might add poignance for the knowledgeable reader.
Sometimes famous bombings and massacres are dropped in. That's a bit like adding barbecue sauce to an otherwise tough and bland piece of charred stuff. It's a bit like one of his non-viable metaphors.
The poet lives in some place that you'll have heard of and enjoys parenting with his partner, So-and-So. Yet his book is dedicated to someone described as “my lover and companion”. What if his partner finds out about this lover and companion? She might be too busy parenting to read any of his dumb books, of course, but you never know when even the dullest person will surprise you, and it turns out they can pick up a book and read it. Let's not rule out the possibility that perhaps this lover and companion is actually his wife; he may just feel uncomfortable saying that. (Legal implications).
The poet teaches at the University. So there. He teaches creative writing. It's not that difficult. Give it a try.
Lenin said that in the future a cook would be able to run the country, or something, and that everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes, so what's stopping you? Here's a good idea for a poem: refer to yourself as “i”, use the present tense, talk about something disturbing that happened to you.
He blames foreign intelligence operatives for the world's problems, and is very concerned about the world. All death and pestilence is obviously caused by the enemy. If there is anything to get angry about, it is the enemy. The enemy may be known among you because his value system is all screwed up. When will people learn? one asks oneself with a knowing but rueful shake of the head, time and again.
He gets angry with television and the media. “They keep selling us things!” he cries in anguish. It's horrible, horrible, the way people buy and sell things and get rich, it shouldn't be allowed.
Angry, and just a little depressed, because once again the machinations of foreign intelligence operatives and their dupes are apparent in the latest deeds of our government and in events worldwide. It's sad, really.
But every evening ends with wine and Thai food at somebody's really nice apartment. What's a man supposed to do?
The Man Who Loved Kafka's Niece
My dreams mean nothing. I am almost worn out by their idiocy. Sometimes I dream about people I know or things that have happened, only to find that the details become more and more inaccurate as the dream continues, and I have to wake up and revise them. I dream that the wide roads of a Manitoba village lead to downtown Toronto or, just as easily, the Lenin Library. Lying still in the gloom I might say: That's not quite right, or: There is no such person, and anyway - they certainly wouldn't have done that. This must be a common experience, and I should hardly have remarked on it but for a chance encounter with a man I knew years ago as a student.
My first impression of Lambert, when we met at the Technical College, was of the sort of youngish man about whom almost anything is plausible because he is such a liar. Had he really taken those courses? Could his prof have said that? Did he actually know that person? Was he really short of cash, and for the reasons given? After spending a couple of evenings with Lambert it seemed as if the sum of what he had said called for rigorous debugging. Or perhaps (as we failed philosophy students liked to say) his statements merely lacked falsifiability. No separate part was demonstrably wrong, or in obvious contradiction to any other part, but the whole thing ultimately made no sense. If he were in the process of breaking up with his girlfriend, why then did he have to keep phoning her? If he was going to have to keep phoning her all evening, why ask another woman to join him? If he had a woman there in the bar, why insist on my coming out? The ramifications, in short, never looked like the right ramifications. In any case, to be his confessor was to be torn between pity and bafflement. There was no very purposeful malice in him: with his pale face and tiny eyes he would have done well in the role of a myopic, self-involved hit-man, who needs several tries to get the job done, assuming he feels up to tackling it. I sometimes used to wonder if his character could not actually be improved by a measure of outright moral turpitude.
Some weeks after we had both finished our courses, I saw him in a newly-opened grocery store, a sort of Jet Propulsion Lab hangar that sold, in addition to groceries, almost everything you could think of weighing less than sixty pounds. He overtook me near the bulk foodstuffs area and said: "Come and meet my cousin, she's having a coffee in the atrium! This way."
"Oh," I said. "Okay. You know, I haven't been in here yet. It's pretty impressive. All this food. They even have lawn furniture."
"Yeah. That's right. I've told her about you. She's anxious to meet you."
"What? What do you mean?"
"She's only here for a week. Might be going to school here next year."
In this special "Atrium" - actually a lot of high tables and stools near some windows - I could see a woman in her mid-twenties wearing a pea-jacket and stirring her coffee as if it were a new yet somehow unpromising activity for her. She looked up at our approach, forced herself to smile, and then lay her head on the table. She continued to stir her coffee, which was about five inches from her face. I noticed she also wore a pair of silver hoops through the covering of one nostril, the one that was now uppermost.
"This is Janet," said Lambert, and then to his cousin he said: "We're just going to get a coffee, and then we'll come and sit with you - if that's, you know, no problem."
"No problem," said Janet.
When we had returned to the table with our coffees, Janet managed to pull herself together and the pair of them sat there waiting for me to say something.
"So, Janet," I said, "Lambert tells me you're thinking about going to school? What sort of thing are you interested in?" But at that moment, and throughout the rest of the small talk, or micro talk, that followed, the suggestion that she might be interested in anything - that she could be cozened into interesting herself in anything, that she could be forced, even at gunpoint, to conceive of anyone's taking an interest in anything - that had to have been in very poor taste, I felt. Lambert, however, was studying me with genuine curiosity, even as his cousin vanished down a spiral of ennui. And that was the last I saw of Lambert or his cousin for a few years.
[Any sort of database work - at least, the sort I have encountered -
grinds very slowly but exceeding fine]
I was toiling as a peon, supposedly refining the databse which, it was
hoped, would one day resemble a city directory]
For I hadn't actually had to go out collecting people's phone numbers
The integrity of this knowledge.
Work is
Very little that you can do to counter this, but it has to be done all the
time.
Not like celestial bodies, which appear to move unbidden, but betray a
desire to slow down and stop. Databases want to fudge up.]
One evening I was sitting in a bar after work, too bemused by a day's worth of corrupt data to go home immediately. And there he was, recognizable by the facial expression of someone trying to extract an important article from the interior of an unyielding drawer. He sat down next to me with a modest beam of triumph.
"Lambert!" I said. "How have you been? Up to anything?"
"I'm great," he said. "I've got this job - sysadmin at, uh - " and here he lit a cigarette with a flourish.
"Where?"
"Yeah! I was even in New England for a few years, but it's great to be back. So, where's that fool's paradise I keep hearing about?"
"This is it, I suppose."
He looked around the bar, noted the decor, the sequestered couples. Then he said: "I've been seeing this woman - she lives here in town, I think you met her a few years ago - we used to hang out together back then. She's involved with galleries and all that stuff. Anyway, after this I have to go and pick her up!"
"Good, good," I said, "you sound excited."
"I am - for once. It's all been really good. You know - man, I was - just a second, I have to make a phone call. Back in a second."
"Okay."
I watched him glide back to where the pay phones were. This contrasted well with his former habit of shuffling off like a man in leg-irons to touch base with some discontented girlfriend. I used to keep hearing about his rash dealings with other people, and marvelled at rumours of all kinds of trouble - drugs, fistfights, other men's wives - but there again, what to believe? We failed philologists like to say: go with the lectio difficilior. This means that if there are two versions of a passage, the one that makes less sense is the one to trust, on the assumption that a scribe who did not understand it is likely to have emended the passage to something simpler and, therefore, further from the original. And so I was inclined to discredit the obvious; and here was my friend reemerging from perdition and blind folly, and I began to think: What a good thing! People can and do work changes in their lives, and probably with their head in the clouds the whole time. If you've a clear picture of what you are doing, it's probably nothing. And I could do that too! Instead of going from a good job to a worse, and losing one thing after another.
Lambert came back from the pay phones with a broad smile, finished his beer, and said: "Well, good to see you, gotta go - I'll give you a shout soon."
And so he dropped out of sight for a good while. I find I have no trouble remembering our conversations almost verbatim, and without inhibition; yet, at the same time, I have almost never given the man a second thought. He's there when he's there, and not when he's not.
It is no more than an illusion, this trick one's memory has of isolating a single past event from others, as if it would be more faithfully preserved for being unreachable. If I am not careful, a kind of panic sets in when happy scenes come to mind: I run into a protective hedge, which both keeps the memory clear and cuts me off from it, almost taking it out of my possession and into the glass case of a public museum, or into the region of unrewarding, common fantasy. To think of myself, for instance, teasing the 12-year-old son of a colleague one summer afternoon, letting on to be disappointed at his reluctance to play a difficult piece on the piano:
"C'mon, just play it!"
"I'm not, uh ... I'm working on another piece, let's see ... Oh! Sorry."
"I can hear that on the radio. Quit stalling. Play that Bach thing. Full speed ahead. I know you can do it. Begin."
"Listen to this, first ... whoops. Sorry." He went stumbling through a pop tune from the sixties.
I said, "What do you mean by eating chocolate and then playing the piano without washing your hands first? Look at those keys! Who'd want to play after you?"
He went on playing, and the left hand sounded as if it were coming from the next room, which tempered the performance and even made something consoling of it. Gusts of rain were hitting the windows behind us, and I imagined that if the house were to come loose from its foundation and slide down the hill, no one would care.
Whatever ironic friendship we had then was quite different from the merely emblematic goodwill we would show each other years later, when he had grown into a morose geologist full of political concerns, the family scattered, and his parents' house - I'm afraid that sunny house smelling of cold tea and varnish must have been torn down, to join the rows of many such houses in my mind. Still, it was undeniably there and, if I make the effort, the memory should be neither beyond my reach nor compromised.
With Lambert things were quite different. Talking to him now was the same as talking to him at any time, in the distant past or the remote future. It was difficult to form any static picture of him. We had very little in common, but I sensed that he had been a mild disappointment to parents and teachers and, along the way, to other people as well, if not to everyone. You can see something of this in a person's face, a resigned, helpless expression that comes of having to keep apologising.
Once he showed me a little toy he had made called "Elugbo". Its heart was a small executable file called "elugbo.exe", which, when placed in a directory, could then read any text file and transform it into an image. "I got the idea from that famous Chinese saying about painting and poetry," he explained. I am not very expert with that sort of thing, but I tried it out. In addition to the executable, there were some other files and a dictionary. You typed in the name of your text file (and its path, if necessary), hit "enter", and very soon a .gif file was produced. The programme had read the file, noted the number of words and their length, used the dictionary to ascertain what parts of speech they were, even made some calculation about periods per number of words (Lambert did tell me that the presence of colons altered the whole thing considerably), and then translated all this into numerical data. I would guess one of the "Elugbo" files contained a template of some ready-made image - probably pornographic - and that the data gleaned from the text were used to modify it in some arbitrary fashion. Anyway, the pictures turned out by this thing were rather curious: bleached moonscapes and repeated cactus patterns. I unleashed it on a tedious paper about database architecture I was trying to write. The paper was never finished, but I framed the picture Lambert's toy had produced - an enormous cashew shape on a pink background, with an intriguing blank trapezoid at the top - and visitors to my place would invariably ask me about it.
I knew that after finishing up at the Technical College, Lambert had found a job as a systems analyst with a telephone company, and that he had begun to develop his own particular ideas about books and movies. For example, one evening, shortly before he was to leave for this big job, I was at the apartment he shared with his brother in the slightly gentrified North End. When I drew attention to a videocassette of Madame Bovary lying on the floor, he said: "Some people read Madame Bovary and think - it's a story about some French woman who has an affair that turns out badly, which is highly improbable. But what else could happen? In a movie like that?"
"Yes?"
"Well," he said, "That's exactly how every story goes: things are normal, then all Hell breaks loose. Then they get back to normal' again,I except - it's a different normal'! That's just confusing. I don't like the idea of anything being normal'. I've had some really weird people k tell me I'm not normal. It just makes me want to reverse-engineer the human soul."
"H'm, well," I said, "I think you have to bear in mind that it is a story - not an executable file."
"Well, yeah!" he said, "If you think that way."
I had a look at the digital clock in the mirror over the mantelpiece: it appeared to read 52:50. When I turned to look at it, the clock itself showed 02:52, which, I decided, was late enough.
I left his place convinced that one of us didn't know what we were talking about. His stupidity, in a word, was stupefying. It made other people stupid. It threatened to make hysterical morons of all who heard him. The most coherent thing I ever heard him say was: "If you get a system to do something, then you get all the problems associated with not being able to fail to do that thing - and that might not be reversible." There is unutterable wisdom in this.
It was a good few weeks later that he introduced me to his cousin at the grocery store. I don't think it even occurred to me to ask why he hadn't left for the job he was supposed to be getting. It would have seemed banal, or unsporting.
Around Christmastime I was at a run-down mall, practically vacant except for a delicatessen and a bookstore. I was using one of the payphones and there, right at the corner of the hallway containing elevators and payphones, was Lambert, inexplicably talking on a cell phone.
"Like, signing a contract for next year," he said. "Yeah. Cool. Excellent. Okay, I'll talk to you later. Right. Bye. Okay! Bye. Yeah." I was still on the phone and he was in a hurry, so we just nodded to each other. On my way out of the mall I thought about this scrap of a conversation, and it occurred to me: One day there might be a fresh series of buildings here, named for an obscure benefactor who is named, in turn, after a still more obscure actor. That is one of the ways of commerce.
A year later, it seems, Lambert introduced me to Janet again, this time as his fiancee. I was at a small art gallery, wondering what to do with myself one afternoon, having seen all the unobjectionable movies and some of the cartoons at the local multiplex. The gallery next door suggested itself as a place to loiter. It had the attraction of being housed in a former bank with neo-classical touches, and you could still picture brisk young men inviting important clients in pince-nez into their inner sanctum for a chat about debentures. The building also contained several bars and a shop full of clothes and knick-knacks produced by remote peoples.
Lambert was in the middle of the main gallery, surrounded by crockery and ceramic things, staring into space. Janet was at his side, evidently waiting for a reply from him. As I drew near, I saw that she was almost out of breath.
"Lambert!" I said.
"Oh," he said. "How are you?"
"Fine. Quite a - I didn't think you'd be - "
"Janet!" said Lambert. "Yeah! I don't think you've met -"
I said, "I think - "
And Janet said: "Okay. Okay. I'll be over at Caf Vienna. I'm going now."
We watched her leave methodically: gathering her coat, checking her watch, her keys, her purse. "Well, I hope I - " "She was just leaving," said Lambert. "You met her before, right? Janet? She's my fiancee. We're going to be married this summer."
I congratulated him and knew, rather than guessed, that she was not his cousin. We spoke a bit more about their plans, and then I asked him if he shouldn't be joining his fiancee at the Caf Vienna. "You should go," I said, "I think I'll stick around here and have a look upstairs."
"Oh, no. No."
"Won't she be expecting you, or something?"
"No."
We reviewed the contents of the main gallery.
"Lots of pots in here," I said.
"Pots, yeah! Pots - you know, you think - pots? Huh? - but - the thing I like about pots is the idea that they're intended to contain other things. She also makes little crates out of clay, and tiny containers."
"Who? Janet?"
"Oh yes," said Lambert.
"I thought you said she work with galleries and things? I had no idea she actually made pots."
"No, no. She's a potter. She makes pots. Flings them, or hurls them. Throws them. This is just some of her work."
"Yes, I see." We inspected a table top of tiny brown boxes and jugs.
"That's a special technique", I said, pointing to a cylinder, " with salt or something."
"Yeah yeah yeah. Textures. You can get some really bizarre effects, so if you were in a dark room and picked it up, this amphora - you'd go, Whoah!', and you'd throw it down, probably - it's that rebarbative."
"Yes, it looks prickly."
"Yeah! And so - you see - crash! - that's the whole point."
We looked at some more blobs of shiny beige clay with other features.
"So," I said, "This wedding of yours - "
"Yes - but - excuse me for a moment?"
"Sure, sure."
"No, just - I'll be back in two secs." He begged for credulity. "Really."
"Okay." I said, and when he was three lengths away I left. On my way back home I had to pass the Caf Vienna. It was crammed between a yoghurt stand and a small Tim Horton's, and one wall boasted a mural of the Danube, looking a bit like the Musquodoboit with a Disney castle on its bank. Curiously enough, I have seen employees of the Caf Vienna come on shift carrying large containers of Tim Horton's coffee. I didn't look inside. I felt sure that Lambert would be there, listening to Janet and looking for a way out.
And so he told me about his fiancee's dumping him. Well, this was undoubtedly so, because there was no fiancee at his side.
He said: "I was completely in love with her, we'd been together for about a year and we were planing to get married. I even bought engagement rings, very expensive. And I don't know what happened. She decided, with the help of our good friends, that there were all these things wrong with me."
I thought: Is it really my business to ask people what they're up to, how they're doing, whether I can be of any assistance, all that? No. I think, if I've learned anything lately (and in life one learns things the way a rat in a maze does, exclusively through failure), it would have to be that you should never get people to explain anything.
"Her friends would do that? Your friends?"
"I was out for the evening, and when I came home she was gone. They told her, you know, spent the entire evening telling this and this about me. You know."
"Yes. This and this. That's bad."
"So. You know."
"Yes."
That must be true. Her friends had gone and told her this and this about him. And this and this implies a great many serious failings in any human being. It's the this and this that undoes the weave we are so careful to supervise, and this keeps our life in the experimental stages. By way of epilogue, he explained that she came from an illustrious family, who had no use for idlers. "She's Kafka's niece", he said.
"Kafka? Franz Kafka?"
"Right. Her father was Kafka's younger brother."
It's not an uncommon surname. And I do know there was a novelist and screenwriter called John (or Hans) Kafka, who wrote Dead Men Tell No Tales, or something like that.
"You'd think people would know about that. Kafka's having a younger brother," I said.
"Yeah! Funny. It's funny how people are," said Lambert. He quickly explained:
It was an unknown younger brother named Felix who, as a sickly child, was taken by relatives to Palestine. He remained there throughout his youth, eventually becoming an electrical engineer. During the Partition he was wounded when a generator he was inspecting came under heavy fire; he spent some months in a sanatorium, mulling over his future, and then took it into his head to go to America. Here he worked initially as an electrician, but within a few years found himself behind a television camera on Your Show of Shows.
At this I felt it was incumbent on me to say something, anything - some kind of oral punctuation - though whether to stem this tide of hogwash or promote it, I wasn't certain. It was easier to believe that the story was true than that he had made it up.
"Ah," I said, "Sid Caesar, eh? Your Show of Shows. That was quite a show."
Lambert nodded encouragingly. "He worked a few other shows, you know. The early days of television."
I, too, nodded briskly to convey that it was a time to be regretted fondly.
"Although, I don't know," said Lambert, "some of that old stuff, you see it on cable - it doesn't seem that funny to us. Except The Honeymooners, of course."
We spent the rest of the evening talking about old television shows, movies, exotic Internet sites. Talking nonsense in the hope of making sense.
Of course, immediately afterwards there formed in my mind, unbidden, a picture of this bogus Kafka brother as a vigorous, balding man with a sandy moustache. I imagined him doing fairly well out of his television work and living in a natty suburb with two cars, a wife, and several exasperated children. The children have to be driven places, entertained, given expensive sweaters, a car each on their sixteenth birthdays. "Oh, Dad!" they protest, whenever he indulges in the crude whimsy of one of his practical jokes. And he just laughs proudly, the raucous master of their split level. And why not?
As for the more famous brother, his stories also seem to take flight into an odd dimension, becoming something patently not what they started out to be. A man, finding himself out of coal in the winter, rides his coalscuttle through the air to the coal dealer. People rush from an ordinary life to seek a punishment they cannot begin to fathom. Who has not puzzled over the curious freedom from explanation in the midst of a glut of reasoning? One could turn to the Book of Job and find, there too, that the universe is baffling and human undertakings pure knavery, and that even a mortal sin can be pretty much winked at, in the long run; but in these stories no relevant point, be it ever so minor, is ever left untreated, and the reader feels he is perusing a very conscientious affidavit. And what writer has not toyed with imitations of that quasi-legalese style for his own ramblings? What reader hasn't looked for clues hidden in there? But the seamlessness of those twisting arguments, the skill in assembling the unassemblable are the inimitable thing, and its intention is not to bamboozle but to summarize. (I ought to point out that the exact opposite is true of a database, a humble example of which is the telephone book. Here the only goal is prompt and orderly accuracy, and one hopes no spurious meaning will pop up). But do these briefs of the elder Kafka brother go any distance toward mapping this life we have? This life of running into Lambert and his stories? Does anything? Is there a cartographer who can do that?
I wouldn't put my hand in the fire for this, but it could be that Kafka's brother and niece now have their tenuous existence somewhere. And from time to time I am tempted to believe there is something worthwhile in the relaxed world of dreams, where the dead can live and one can go home by impossible, familiar, half-forgotten streets.
Reveille
There was a miniature Fascist dictator in the departure lounge of the airport, Ted noticed. About four feet high, eighty pounds, sallow complexion, neatly trimmed black moustache, wearing a khaki uniform of some kind.
“There was a miniature Fascist dictator in the departure lounge ... ”
Was he planning a small Putsch? A Measure? What pint-sized dreams of conquest did he have? “Our National party is stronger - we are in no way diminished,” he may have imagined himself saying. “Now, if I say to you that our Party's goal is nothing less than to revendicate that which we have lost, that which is historically our due; to reclaim our patrimony ...” Is that what was going on in his head? Was he on his way somewhere, or coming from somewhere? Going into exile, or returning from it? Escaping? Seeking?
Ted decided to follow him until he could come up with some further course of action. But the man wasn't really doing anything. Just wandering around with a container of coffee, keeping an eye on the brown satchel and shopping bags he had left on one of the naugahyde-and-aluminium benches. He paused in front of the windows that looked onto the airfield. His nostrils flared at the sight of massed passenger aircraft. Then he sauntered over to the other side of the lounge and studied some posters. Ted pretended to inspect a model lobster trap in a display case nearby.
They toured the lounge in stages and, even before the small man glanced back at him, Ted was already lost in thought beneath an departure-and-arrivals screen. “Am I supposed to do something?” he wondered. “Is there some history going on here, somewhere?” But how would one know?
Ted then discreetly followed him back to the coffee bar. Apparently he wanted another coffee. There were several customers before them, and in the time it took for them to be served, Ted was almost able to identify the small man's scent: Lancôme for Men? His choice of coffee, too, was unusual, a decaffeinated Ethiopian flavour. He went back to his original bench. Ted loitered just behind him, undecided. Unprepared. Shall I say something? What's he doing?
Looking at his ticket again.
Sipping his coffee, sucking a great deal of air between pursed lips just over the steaming surface of the coffee. Too hot.
Consulting the contents of his satchel once again, just to verify that he had everything he would need for his trip. Ted, peering over his shoulder, caught sight of a volume of Pablo Neruda, Jane Eyre, and a stuffed toy rabbit.
Putting his coffee down, digging with both hands in one of the shopping bags, the one that had some sort of environmentalist logo on it. Nous recyclons!
Recovering a pair of sunglasses. Putting them on! Expensive ones!
“Excuse me - okay if I sit down?”
“Eh? Oh, please. Yes, yes - you are quite welcome.”
Ted sat down wearily. “I've been travelling all day, I hope you don't mind.”
The other nodded rapidly. “It is very tiresome, all this travelling,” he said. “I myself have been up since very early, making connecting flights. And still my day is not over.”
Ted seized the thing roundly. “What sort of business are you in, if it's no harm to ask?”
“I am a consultant. Specialising in pharmaceutical trade.” The little dictator removed his sunglasses and began to polish them on his handkerchief.
Well, at least he wasn't a jack-booted thug!
“I am not used to talking to fewer than five thousand people at a time”, he continued, “for fear of being misunderstood. However, I shall make a beginning.
“It is horrifying to think of the consequences of chance. One man begins a great career as an officer in the European Theatre; another, no less gifted, has his head blown off as soon as he steps out of the landing craft. Why does that happen? Who is to blame? Who will account for it?”
Here the little man swigged his coffee. Ted noted that his hair, seemingly dark brown, was really an artificial boot-brown colour. Ted formed a reply: “Well, I suppose it would depend how you look—”
But the other man was not to be denied: “It is no accident that the corporate hegemony of a small group of - ”
Ted sprang into action.
“Have you heard the latest?”
“Pardon me?”
“Oh, yes. It was the discovery of printing and the availability of books that created modern empires. And that's how it is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but by the 18th century, every soldier or sailor could afford a few books, which they would keep in their kit. And between times - ”
“If you had empirical proof - ”
“Look: no one's trying to make you angry here: I'm just trying to give you a way out.
Together We Can Accomplish so Much
Ah yes, but the work must continue. The work. Not for nothing Dominic puts aside his friends at the restaurant and
makes a furious pair of phone calls, stabbing at the buttons on his cellular phone as if entering his part of the secret code needed to launch a nuclear weapons attack. The work continues unabated. People who don't know anything are consantly throwing objections at Dominic: You can't be leaving, you just got here! We're waiting for Anne! It's your mother's birthday! You told me you'd get that done today! It's a holiday! Do you have any idea what time it is?
“My work”, thinks Dominic...
“My work”, thinks Dominic, “Nobody fully comprehends it. I can't waste time explaining to people that the work is going on at all times, that I have to be there for it. It is like a wound. It is a sensitive plant. It is a bored child.”
Everyone heads for the door, people are struggling into their coats and laughing, finally—it's time to get ready and go! Everyone's here, let's head out the door!
“No”, says Dominic, “I must stay and watch the next cartoon. An important part of my work.”
Coming out of the public lavatory in the park, he pauses and thinks: “That's all very well, but what about the work? What else will it require?”
In the vast grocery store, near a palm tree, he says into a small recorder: “I may need to know the author of 'Moralists and Sycophants against Marxism'. For my work.”
He sits with his friend Lucy at an open-air café. Their first day off together in well over a month! They have planned so many things: A shopping expedition to several places, a trip down the coast in a rented car, a quiet lunch somewhere, a concert. Lucy levers her sunglasses onto her brow to look at the menu. “Ain't it great, old pal?” she asks. “A day off? I am just so tired of bagels. I want to get a—let's see, they have—”
“A day off—”says Dominic slowly—“I can't really have a day off. no. Not really. Not now. Not today.”
“But you said, you ... we're going to ... you, you took the day off. I took the day off!”
“No”, concludes Dominic. “The work will suffer.” he gets up to leave. “And now I must go, and deliver surplus pumpkins.”
“No”, says Lucy, reshuffling the contents of her knapsack, “You have to come and help carry stuff. Otherwise ... well, you know.”
“No”, says Dominic, “No. You don't understand. You just don't understand. No; you don't understand.”
“The work will suffer?”
“No”, says Dominic, “You don't get to say that. Only I can say that. 'The work will suffer.'”
Lucy leans back in her chair and looks at him searchingly. Then she says: “You know, I think you ought to think things through. Go if you want, I'm going
to stay right here and have a drink and something to eat, and then I might give Marusya a call. We might go see a movie or something. And then—I might phone you later. I don't know. I'll see how I feel. But I think you've got to sort of get some things straightened out, there, you know? I mean, really,
Dominic. Because this isn't working.” She resumes her sunglasses.
Dominic stands at the table for several seconds, and then goes off in search of a payphone. He frowns and says to himself: “Next, I shall have to eat a large bag of ranch-flavoured corn chips.”
