The Fatigue Artist Read online

  “The Fatigue Artist is as wonderfully intelligent and as sexy as all the novels of Lynne Sharon Schwartz.”

  —ALICE ADAMS

  From the acclaimed author of Leaving Brooklyn and Didturbances in the Field comes a witty, sophisticated novel that confirms Lynne Sharon Schwartz as a major voice in American fiction.

  At age forty, Laura is struggling with the violent death of her reporter husband as well as an obsessive on-again-off-again love affair with an elusive actor. Suddenly, she finds herself incapacitated by a mysterious lethargy—a love affair with her bed, as she puts it. Though Western medicine can name her disease, and its cause, it can do nothing to cure her. As time and alternative methods gradually bring Laura back to health, she finds solace and meaning in writing about her encounters with often wrongheaded but well-meaning strangers, friends, lovers, and family.

  Lynne Sharon Schwartz has created a haunting mosaic of a woman adrift in society: Laura’s illness and recovery are a metaphor for the modern urban malaise, and for the spirit that can defeat it.

  “Witty and hopeful and fierce ... she writes of love in a way both surprising and wise.”

  — NICHOLAS DELBANCO

  LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ is the author of nine previous books. including the novels Rough Strife, Disturbanced in the Field, and Leaving Brooklyn. and A Lynne Sharon Schwartz Reader: Selected Prode and Poetry. She lives and works in New York City.

  Cover design by Mary Bess Engel

  Cover photograph by Andrzej Lech/Graphistock,

  courtesy of the Robin Rice Gallery, NYC

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  ALSO BY LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ

  Rough Strife

  Balancing Acts

  Disturbances in the Field

  Acquainted with the Night and Other Stories

  We Are Talking About Homes: A Great University

  Against Its Neighbors (nonfiction)

  The Melting Pot and Other Subversive Stories

  The Four Questions

  (for children; illustrated by Ori Sherman)

  Leaving Brooklyn

  A Lynne Sharon Schwartz Reader:

  Selected Prose and Poetry

  Translation: Smoke Over Birkenau, by Liana Millu

  SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION

  Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in hole or in part in any form.

  First Scribner Paperback Fiction edition 1996

  SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION and design are trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Designed by Songhee Kim

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schwartz, Lynne Sharon.

  The fatigue artist: a novel / Lynne Sharon Schwartz,

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3569.C567F38 1995

  813’.54—dc20 94-48009

  CIP

  ISBN 0-684-80247-3

  0-684-82468-X(Pbk)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2594-6 (ebook)

  Any disease introduces a doubleness into life—an “it,” with its

  own needs, demands, limitations.

  Oliver Sacks

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Acknowledgments

  Illustration Credits

  “Hey, I wish I had a picture of this,” said Tim. “I didn’t think of bringing my camera.”

  1

  The Tai Chi teacher has barely changed in seven years. It’s still hard to tell his age—a youngish old man or an old young one—except that over time he’s developed something of a pot belly. He carries it proudly, for beneath its layers, deep in his center, is the tan tien, “field of the elixir,” he says through the interpreter, where the chi gathers, the vital energy enhanced by breath, to flow through the body, strengthening bones, animating flesh. Like many Chinese terms, chi is hard to define: the presence of chi in the body, the teacher tells us, is what makes the difference between life and death.

  He does seem to have very resilient bones, as far as I can tell through his jeans and T-shirt (in winter he wears a flannel shirt and on very cold days an old gray down jacket), but his general appearance is not muscular but soft, a compressed softness like a bale of rags which, coming at you unexpectedly, could send you reeling.

  He addresses the class in Chinese, giving his instructions through the interpreter. You’d think after years in New York he’d use English, but no. I guess for his purposes he doesn’t need it. He teaches mostly by example and, except for the anecdotes, his instructions tend to be laconic, though I suspect not quite as laconic as the interpreter makes them.

  They take less time in English, and as a result I don’t quite trust the translation.

  “Continue,” he says after bidding us good afternoon. He never says, “Begin.” Always “Continue.”

  “Again,” he says after one round of the form, “and this time paying attention to breathing. Make the breath thin, long, quiet and slow. Start with slow. Sink the weight into the legs. Be heavy. Continue.” All this through the interpreter, of course.

  So we start all over again. It’s easy to sink and be heavy since my body, these last few weeks, feels like sand in a sack. We’re in the park at five-thirty—despite my exhaustion I ordered myself out like a drill sergeant—a dozen of us plus the teacher and the interpreter, practicing amidst the trees, near the sunny playground, not too many children at this hour; the swings wobble in the hot breeze while beyond us the river drifts lazily down from the resplendent bridge. Morning and late afternoon we’re here, not all of us each time, for few people can manage to come twice a day or even every day. For a flat fee we come as often or as seldom as we choose—it’s all the same to the Tai Chi teacher. He accepts our money with the air of accepting a gift (“thank you” is one English phrase he feels comfortable with) and apparently keeps no records, though who knows, he may have detailed ledgers at home, wherever his home is. As in a play, the cast changes but the spectacle remains the same. Breathe, sink, feel the feet rooted in the earth, stay balanced, over and over.

  I used to watch, enthralled, from the living room window when Ev and I first moved into the apartment overlooking the river: a motley group of all ages, mostly in shorts or jeans but a few in business suits, their jackets and attaché cases on a nearby bench, doing a slow-motion dance in unison, yet not quite a dance. A ritual, a meditation, I didn’t know what. One afternoon I went down to see for myself and followed along as best I could. Every few moments, as we held a posture, the teacher would come around to fix us, adjusting a
shoulder or arm or hip, rounding out sharp angles, uncurling tense fingers, the interpreter following along. “The body moves in one piece, head, shoulders and torso in line,” he’d say, or “The foot clings to the pull of gravity like iron to a magnet,” or “Most important of all, relax, no hard force.” It was habit-forming. I even thought I might learn Chinese by exposure and by matching what I heard with the interpreter’s English, but that, alas, didn’t happen. Other things happened. My leg muscles hardened, my feet sank roots deep in the earth. I began to move like a cat, and like a cat could anticipate the movements of others, but out of vanity I resisted letting my stomach droop into a pot belly.

  The second time I came, the teacher demonstrated push hands—the martial art aspect of Tai Chi—with an advanced student. Face to face and standing very erect with one leg placed forward, their hands before them at chest level, palms together, they bowed to each other. Then they stepped closer, and deftly shifting their weight from one leg to the other, began to touch at the forearms and elbows, turning slightly now and then. Nothing much seemed to be happening—mostly I felt their intense absorption. Suddenly the student tottered forward; the teacher reached out an arm to break his fall. They did this several times. The student never seemed disconcerted but smiled and began again. The teacher remained impassive.

  “Yield,” he said to the student. “Stop relying on strength. Just try to adhere and stay balanced. You will fail many times. It doesn’t matter. You are making an investment. You’re investing in loss.”

  “Righto. No complaints whatsoever,” the student said, and everyone laughed as if at some private joke.

  They continued, and soon I saw that it was the teacher’s drawing back slightly, yielding to the weight brought to bear on him, which threw the student off balance. When they were finished they faced each other once more with palms touching and bowed.

  The teacher turned to the group. “What was the most important posture in what you have just seen?” He nodded at me.

  “The bow,” I said.

  It was the right answer. After that he always favored me. He gave me a slim book outlining the philosophy behind Tai Chi—a physical expression of Taoism—with diagrams of the postures so I could study the basics. He told me to read the Samurai’s creed at the back of the book. This was puzzling because I couldn’t see what I might have in common with a Samurai warrior, but I read it anyway. “I have no principles; I make adaptability to all things my principle,” it said, among other things.

  Now he nods to me, to do push hands with him. I step forward and we bow. I’m quite relaxed since I know from experience that I cannot overcome him; strength and effort are of no avail and are to be shunned in any case. I also trust that he’ll break my fall.

  We continue. I stagger and reel a couple of times, but nothing much is happening. “What’s the matter today?” he asks through the interpreter. “Very little chi.”

  “I have no energy. I’m feeling very tired.” As if I have a perpetual flu, but I don’t trouble the interpreter with that. He translates into Chinese, and I have to trust that he’s repeated my words, or some facsimile of my thought.

  “Relaxed is good, but not limp. Like a cat, alert, vital, in a state of readiness. Don’t resist but try to sense my energy and stick to it. Continue.”

  I try harder. I even try pushing him though I know it’s futile. Wherever I apply my weight, he is suddenly not there. It’s like grappling with a shadow. I press, and his substance vanishes, he’s elusive, he’s elsewhere. I keep stumbling through the space he’s vanished from and he catches me before I fall. He regards me with disapproval.

  “I’m investing in loss,” I attempt to joke.

  “You’re investing in nothing,” he says, and we bow.

  At the end he makes a little speech. “My fellow students, the chi of the ancient Tai Chi masters was so powerful that they could repel an attacker with a look alone. They didn’t even need to use their bodies. The energy was all concentrated in the glance.” He glances my way and indeed I find myself stepping back slightly, at which he smiles. The interpreter never smiles.

  The class is over and breaks into small chatty groups. I sit down on a bench next to a new woman, Grace, who’s come only once or twice before. She’s rubbing her calf muscles. I know how she feels; it’s quite hard on the legs at first. It never really eases but you get used to it. A student once asked when his legs would stop hurting. “Never,” said the teacher. “If your legs stop hurting, then it’s not Tai Chi.”

  “It’s all a matter of discipline, isn’t it?” she says. “I thought it would be easy because I’m used to that kind of discipline in what I do, but this is different.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a performance artist.” She’s slightly older than I, mid-fortyish, a holdover from the late sixties, dressed all in black, with short dark hair nicely streaked with gray. Soho, I bet. Gay, I bet, from something carefree and staunch in the way she moves and speaks.

  “Oh, my stepdaughter is very involved in performance art at school,” I tell her. “She’s always describing the bizarre projects her group does. Do you do theatrical pieces?”

  “Not exactly. What I do is more a cross between theatre and visual arts. But really the best thing is to erase the line between the two. Erase all the lines. Forget the idea of a product, a beautiful object. Lots of times we don’t come up with any products. We might just take a piece of ordinary life out of context and exaggerate it.” She pulls off her sneakers and curls her legs under her on the bench. “For instance, someone I know lived in a cage without speaking to anyone for a year. He also lived outdoors for a year. He’s into tests of psychological endurance but he’s also doing social commentary. Like about homeless people, you know?”

  “Living outdoors by choice is different from being homeless, though, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. That’s what makes it art. It’s a metaphor for a real condition, not the thing itself. It calls attention to the condition. By the way,” and she lowers her voice, “doesn’t this guy speak any English at all?”

  “It doesn’t seem so. Except thank you and good-bye.”

  She looks dubious. “I bet he understands what we say. He looks very tricky. I’ve heard some of these Taoist guys do magic. Has he shown you any magic?”

  I shake my head, no.

  “I don’t know,” Grace goes on. “I heard this was great but frankly I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s about, all these people paired off and sticking to each other like he says, pushing each other around and feeling each other’s energy.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It takes months even to begin to do what he’s asking.”

  “You know what the pairs remind me of? The couple-tied-together piece. That was a while ago. The guy who lived outdoors had himself tied to another artist. For a whole year they had an eight-foot rope looped around their waists, with about four feet of slack between them. The woman was into Zen. She was a nun for a while, too.”

  “Was that performance art, being a nun?”

  “I think so. But I’m sure she was a sincere nun. That’s the whole idea.”

  “Odd,” I comment, “that a nun would have herself tied to a man for a year.”

  “Oh, she wasn’t a nun anymore, at the time. Besides, it wasn’t the way you’re thinking. Just the opposite—the discipline part was that they weren’t allowed to touch for the whole year. They had to do everything together, cook, shop, walk the dog, go to the movies, you name it, without touching. They kept a chart of the times they accidentally touched. They had everything in the apartment arranged so they could manage. The desks were near the kitchen so one could cook while the other worked. He did more of the cooking. He was very good at Chinese dishes.”

  “What was the point?”

  “The point?” Grace stares at me in surprise. “It’s about awareness. Training the mind. You begin to notice all the daily little things—where the borders are between people, and where t
hey can connect or merge. Plus the dynamics of gender in domestic life. They did it for so long that it became their real life. Of course, there were a lot of places they couldn’t go, and they decided not to sleep with other people—more trouble than it was worth, I suppose. Personally”—Grace sighs—“I think the greatest danger would be getting bored to death with each other.”

  “Not necessarily. Not if they weren’t bored with each other to begin with. I can imagine a couple of people I could be tied to and never get bored,” I say.

  You are the only person, Q. told me so many times, who never bores me. You never know, I said. Someday I might. No, he said, never. And what would happen if I bored you? I asked. It’s academic, he said. It could never happen.

  “The couple tied together,” says Grace, “didn’t complain about being bored, but they did say they dreamed a lot.”

  “Did they dream of being alone or of touching?”

  “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

  The teacher, who’s been chatting with a few students, passes by. “Good-bye,” he says in English, and the interpreter adds, perhaps on his own, “He hopes you feel better next time, Laura. Eat watercress.”

  “Watercress? Okay. Thanks a lot. See you soon.”

  “I don’t see how you could ever defend yourself on the subway with Tai Chi,” says Grace as we trudge up the hill, away from the river. “Always yielding? How would it work with a mugger? Do you think you could do it?”

  “Probably not. But I’m not in it for self-defense. The teacher says it’s the one martial art you have to know very well in order to use. Otherwise it’s a risk.”

  “I’ll bet. Some performance artists are into risk. They design dangerous projects to make a point. There was a show downtown where a man covered the floor with broken glass and slithered through it on his belly with his hands tied behind his back.”