Orbit 9 Read online

  I have two heads.

  Flora’s quite a whore.

  The younger sister, not quite willing to touch the ring again, said they’d think about it and Kira, in a quarrel that must have gone back years, began in a low, vapid whisper—

  Why, they’re not bats at all, I said, over at the nearest vitryl panel; I was mistaken, and Lira, Don’t open that! We’ll suffocate!

  No one who is sane, of course, opens anything any more into that hell outside, but this old, old, old place had real locks on the vitryl and real seams between, and a narrow balcony where someone had gone out perhaps fifty years ago (in a diving suit) to admire the updrafts between the dead canyons where papers danced on the driving murk and shapes fluttered between the raw lights; one could see several streets over to other spires, other shafts, the hurricane tearing through the poisoned air. Nighttime makes a kind of inferno out of this and every once in a while someone decides on a gaudy exit: the lungs eaten away, the room reeking of hydrosulfurous acid, torn paper settling on the discolored rug.

  When you have traveled in the tubes as much as I have, when you have seen the playground in Antarctica time after time, when your features have melted enough between black and brown and white, man and woman, as plastic as the lazy twist of a thought, you get notions. You get ideas. I saw once in a much more elegant office building a piece of polished wood, so large, so lovely, a curve fully six feet long and so beautiful that if you could have made out of that wood an idea and out of that idea a bed, you could have slept on that bed. When you put your hand on the vitryl panels at night, the heat makes your hand sweat onto the surface; my hand’s melted through many times, like oil on water. I stood before the window, twisting shapes for fun, seeing myself stand on the narrow balcony, bored with Kira and Lira, poor Kira, poor Lira, poor as-I-once-was, discussing whether they can afford it.

  “... an outlet for creativity . . .”

  “. . . she said it’s only ...”

  What effort it takes, and what an athlete of illusion you become! able to descend to the bottom of the sea (where we might as well be, come to think of it), to the manless moon, to the Southern Hemisphere where the men stay, dreaming about us; but no, they did away with themselves years ago, they were inefficient, the famous Blank and Blank (both men) saw that men were inefficient and did themselves in (I mean all the men except themselves) in blank-blank. Only three percent of the population male, my word!

  “. . . legal . . .”

  “. . . never . . .”

  “Don’t!” cried Miss Kira.

  They know what I’m going to do. Ever since I found out those weren’t bats’ faces. As Miss Kira and Miss Lira sign the contract (thumbsy-up, thumbsy-down) I wrench the lock off the vitryl and squeeze through, what a foul, screaming wind! shoving desperately at the panels, and stumble off the narrow, railless balcony, feeling as I go my legs contract, my fingers grow, my sternum arch like the prow of a boat, little bat-man-woman with sketchy turned-out legs and grasping toes, and hollow bones and fingers down to my ankles, a thumb-and-forefinger grasper at the end of each wing, and that massive wraparound of the huge, hollow chest, all covered with blond fur; in the middle of it all, sunk between the shoulders, is the human face. Miss Kira would faint. I would come up to Miss Lira’s waist. Falling down the nasty night air until I shrug up hard, hard, hard, into a steep upward glide and ride down the currents of hell past the man-made cliff where Kira and Lira, weeping with pain, push the vitryl panel back into place. The walls inside are blackening, the fake marble floor is singed. It is comfy-cold, it is comfy-nice, I’m going to mate in midair, I’m going to give shuddering birth on the ledge of a cliff, I’m going to scream at the windows when I like. They found no corpse, no body.

  Kira and Lira, mouths like O’s, stare out as I climb past. They do a little dance.

  She was a Floradora baby

  With a chance to meet the best,

  But she had to go and marry Abie,

  The drummer with the fancy vest!

  Tampering with the machinery is punishable by law, says Kira.

  Oh my dear, we’ll tinker a bit, says Lira.

  And so they will.

  <>

  * * * *

  James Sallis

  BINARIES

  critical mass

  It’s happened again, I’m in bed with a stranger. Don’t know her name. If I want to remember the curve of the bottom of her breasts, the way they rest on her ribs or rise to her shoulder, I’ll have to reach out and touch them. Do I know her? She has a name, an address (which she refuses to give me), three telephone numbers at which I might reach her. Along with the last she has given me a chart showing the time of day I’m most likely to find her at each number. She has long hair. She is wearing a tight violet dress. Her eyes are violet. She is overweight but that’s something you always forget until you look at her again.

  Also: I am being pursued. I saw the frost of his breath on the glass just a moment ago. Her lover, husband, father, a mutual friend? How am I to know? even that there is a connection? Each time I try and confront him, he flees. Last week in the press of crowds at 14th Street he took the only way open to him and was crushed to death in the doors of one of the uptown trains. His last words were I kept my promise, Tell them. My suit is still stained with his blood. And for a moment I envied the dead man: he kept his promise, I have to live up to mine. The next morning there was a certain wariness to his movements.

  She has small breasts. When she lies down they hardly exist. Her hips are wide and solid, her thighs large, full, the whole lower half of her body out of proportion to the upper—the breasts, the slender torso, the fragile arms. Her legs are short. Her feet small, delicate. She is nude in the photograph, I can’t remember what clothes she wore.

  Someone has written a collection of short stories and published them under my name; they have even put my photograph on the back cover. I received a copy in the morning post. Anonymous, no return address, postmarked Grnd Cntrl Stn. The stories reveal my deepest secrets. The most intense and intimate movements, relations of my life. Only one person could have written them. Or had reason to. My attorney is investigating the possibility of a lawsuit against the publisher but, as the work was copyrighted in my own name, there seems little we can do. The publisher expressed to my attorney his desire to meet the author, his admiration for the book. He relayed an invitation to a party at his home last night. Which is how I met this girl.

  He follows me everywhere. Perhaps I am looking for associations where there are none. Perhaps he is nothing more than a hired assassin. Plotting my rotation around the events of the day. The occasions of the moment. Then, certain, he will strike. Perhaps he has nothing to do with what I am doing.

  She was standing in a group and she said You’re here, You finally came, and took my arm. She was in the park by the fountain and we watched the pigeons dive for pennies then silently, without words, walked away together. We were afraid of words. It was a clear blue day. The water was silver. It would never rain again. She was in the library. We had requested the same book and sat side by side at one of the long tables in the Special Collections room reading it. She was working at a restaurant, to show me the way to the table where I never arrived. I ate, instead, on the bed in my single room. With her beside me. In the Village. She was sitting beside me on the plane from London and we never got off. She was sitting on the fire escape, crying softly, and I opened the window.

  They are moving the city again and I am occasionally lost somewhere between her house and mine. It was at one of these times, coming up out of the subway into what I thought to be midtown Manhattan, and finding myself in the open space of Queens, that I first approached my pursuer. He turned and threw himself onto the back of a truck which was just then pulling away, carrying off the skating rink from Rockefeller Plaza.

  Her face is fine and precise as an etching. No part of it could ever be changed. It was drawn with a crow-quill pen and always grins. Her eyes a
re astonished. Her hair is a different length and colour each time I see her. Her neck is a perfect curve, the wing of a sparrow. Her shoulders are narrow. Her hands are soft. And strong. Her eyes are astonished. They move slowly, as though sliding through oil. When they touch you, you smile.

  Ice is crashing off the roof and onto the ground outside. There are pigeons frozen alive inside it. She is gone. He has taken away the photograph. He has gone away himself. And I am sitting here saying-------------. Her name. And it all makes sense.

  It does, it does.

  * * * *

  momentum

  I am waiting for a train. To take me a little farther away. Here at Paddington Station. Out of the taxi with my single bag. Ducking. Halfcrown tip, smile, Ta. Now I’m larger. On the pavement walking away from the cab. Before that was a coach from Brighton, whatever I was doing in Brighton and an 82 bus. Now I’m smaller. Inside the station. Waiting for a train etc. I’d like a ticket please. Certainly your destination sir. Anywhere. Ailleurs. Just a little farther away. I see and would that be return fare. No. God no never. I see sir that there is a departure from Gate D at eight o five that would be a halfhour from now sir the train arrives I forget where he said at ten twelve if that would be satisfactory sir. Yes. That would be two pounds eight sir. Stamp rubber ink. Thank you have a pleasant journey sir I hope you enjoy wherever he said. Politeness, that much politeness. A weapon. Now down through Gate D and onto a coach and tea and to look out at the backs of all these houses. And to take me a little farther away. To wonder how much further can I go. To check do I have my passport. To realise the train is going to Paris. To be more careful what I say from now on.

  I am French. I was born in a large house off the rue de Tournon, in the 6th arrondissement. Of a Polish mother who died before she saw what I was. Of a father born in Paris, 32 and he’d spent a total of three of them there. Of a father who belonged too much to France to stay there. He read to me, peering over the slats of my petit berceau, Cendrars’ Prose du transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France and Les Pâques à New York, and when I was 6 it was to New York that, bundled up, with my French abécédaires and my grammaires anglaises, I was sent pour faire de l’éducation. To that place that could never exist. That was something created in Cendrars’ poems. That about to acquire a History possessed already its ruins. From which I would never return. Or wish to.

  Are you still sitting on the beach with your book and the tiny glass of green tea. You’ll never finish the book you know. With the old people all around you. The people from Hove who come to stare at the sea and wait to die. That strange beach without sand. Rocks. Where I told you one day Your ears are like shells and you turned back to me in the sun and your copper sweater and you smiled. And looked in the water. And it took your face away, to Greece and Istanbul. Where we watched a weary father lift an arm and point to the water and say to his two little girls France is just over there. Both of us smiling at that, we could no more believe him than could the children. To an American France can never be just over there. France is thousands of miles away. A hundred years away. Ten hours by plane. We find it hard enough to believe France exists at all. Do you still believe, you said it once, that I’m “always returning.” And each morning do you still set a place for me and make the tea very strong because I might come. With my eyes blurred, I’ve worked all night. With my hands trembling. Do you still keep cigarettes in the flat for me. And do you go down to the London trains each weekend, still. Because. I might come.

  None of you could ever understand, perhaps even believe, my impotence while writing. You always ... go away. You said. I didn’t want to hurt you. But you always had to come too close. And incredible, the unerring instinct by which you’d know whenever I set to work. Get randy and turn up at my flat. Compete, demand attention, you probably wanted to tear up the pages. Crawl under the desk and fondle me as I wrote. And to say again and again I have only so much energy. Not enough for it all. Not enough—even as it drained into you on the studio bed and stained the coverings. And that little shout of yours to tell me I was empty again.

  I am English. Turning over my passport. At the Embassy. Impossible to say is this an American or Briton smiling at me now, I trust you’ve given this matter serious consideration young man it is of grave import, I cannot stress strongly enough the profound significance and implications of your action I can only hope that you are yourself fully aware of it. And. And of what you are doing. Yes sir I’m quite aware thank you. And you wish to carry on. Most assuredly. I see. Well I should think yes everything seems to be in order. The girl is. French. O yes of course French. And both. Yes both of us. Quite, well then as I say everything is in order, You should be receiving the new passport within the fortnight. Through the other Embassy of course. They should I suppose be requiring new photographs. Yes sir I’m off to that now the little shop just up the way on Oxford. That would be the one across from Heals. Yes. Splendid. Best of luck young man. And to go down the steps now. Cold.

  He won’t be coming round anymore. You can take your Joan Baez records out of the cupboard and put them back on the shelf with the others. You can stop putting new paper in the typewriter every day. You can put away the notebooks for your novel. You can get rid of the French books on Fourth Avenue or in Soho and you don’t have to dust off Heidegger any longer, you can just let it sit there on the table till it turns to dust. And. And you can tear down those wretched Cézanne reproductions. He hated them too.

  I am in hospital. In Poland. Dying. They have scraped out the inside of my chest like a curetage till there’s nothing more they can scrape out but moi-meme. Which for some reason they’re reluctant to do. I have donated the organs of my body to others. Whatever they can salvage. Three times a day doctors gather at the foot of my bed and talk quietly among themselves, glancing up towards me from time to time. I lie here smoking and reading Bergson. Duration. I have the general impression that they are bargaining for the various pumps vehicles containers of my body. Wypuśc mu flaki. I am 24. Led to slaughter. I almost survived. That when it comes, not much longer now, I will hear far away in the corridors, the corridors where they would all be waiting, friends, attorneys, publishers, a few young writers, perhaps even a family, the quiet firm sound of applause.

  Bump bump bump. Down the stairs. Bag slapping on your bare leg. Snow on the bottom now, I mean it this time. You always mean it. And a cab waiting. Black. And the snow. And two cups of tea on the table inside.

  “I’m an American. It’s a complex fate, to be an American, Henry James. And it doesn’t matter. Any train, plane, coach, cab, that’s where I’ll always arrive. This is New York say hello. To New York. Again. No. No I don’t remember whose picture that is on the passport with me. It should say, page 9 I think. America say hello to one of your own. You’ll never lose him and he can’t get rid of you. America knows how to welcome a failure. It should. Les statues meurent aussi. And the French lady is crying into the sea. Si lourde. Sourde. Rain in the City. Noise. Smoke. Wheels. The low sob of a million machines and machinations. A thousand new plots. I am as far away as I can get now, from you. From everything. And it’s not even snowing. And there’s no beach.

  Here.

  * * * *

  centre

  The car died again today.

  Each morning the grocer leaves a pound of coffee and a carton of cigarettes outside the door for me. Mail is delivered with the morning papers. Today none were there.

  There is nothing on the radio. Even static.

  Or maybe last night. In the dark and cold. Dying in snow. In the bright sun I gently pried open its hood, cleaned the plugs and checked they were firmly in place. Dried out the carburetor and blew into the fuel pump, opened the feed a bit wider. Scraped the battery terminals and choked it manually. It wouldn’t come around.

  I can get nothing on the phone but recordings. I’ve listened to Let It Bleed four times now.

  K came. As always, punctually, at ten. With breakfast in a paper bag. S
he is 45, close to that, old enough to be my mother but when I think of her it’s only her body I remember, her legs in tight jeans, the perfect curve of her bottom like an inverted heart, her short colourless hair and the smallness of her. Her smile and the eyes too light and soft to be blue. So much energy, so calm I think she’s never been unhappy before this. She leaves herself behind in rooms from Kensington to Mayfair. The sense of her presence so strong you hardly realise she’s gone. When she is. But she’s stopped all that. Now, she comes only to this room. Only here. And sits on the grey unmade bed. And smiles whenever I look up at her. Why. Why do you keep coming here. I ask her. A whale’s penis even in repose is taller than I am.

  Next week I am being sent to another country, to learn the language. After which I am to return and teach others. I have no idea why. Nor do I seem to have much choice.

  I have moved away from the window. K is painting them black and she’s turned on the radio, to listen as she works. Black. Like a bat, penis libre, tail. Jumper stretching tight to show the bra, strap and buckle, the pinch of her waist and an inch of bare skin. I think we once had a discussion of something or another.

  A call from D/K. Quite upset. They were unable to pay the bill. Hospital policy, no discharge of patients until such time as the bill is met. D standing at the desk. On the white floor. In his corduroy jacket. And a bargain struck. The hospital allowed K to leave but insists upon keeping the baby. They are permitted to visit it. From 2 to 4 in the afternoon. From 6 to 8 at night. K spoke to me. I could hear D crying softly in the background.