The Fatigue Artist Read online

  Besides rescuing my bumper, he had rented a movie we could watch along with the Chinese food I would procure by telephone. The sort of evening that could not have taken place in the pre-electronic age but now took place virtually everywhere, even in the little seaside hamlet that was the setting of the novel I was trying, in my few waking hours, to write. The movie in Tim’s briefcase was Anthony Adverse, which he assured me I would enjoy since it was based on a book and contained everything important: love, war, travel, betrayal and loss, music, suffering, and scenery.

  After we studied the Chinese menu, Tim went off to take a shower and I made the call. Our local restaurant operates with the efficiency of the FBI. I needed only to recite my telephone number, and all my required data popped up on their computer screen, including my previous purchasing record. Tim is the sort of man who doesn’t find this unsettling.

  While he is in the shower, a word or two about Tim might be in order. Not that his excellent qualities don’t deserve lengthier consideration—I appreciate him and show it, believe me—but I have a feeling he may not be a crucial character in this particular story, however it proceeds. I’ll be patching bits and pieces as I go. Even in real life, I sometimes feel I’m making Tim up. He is so useful for the moment and appeared so opportunely in my solitude.

  Tim is a lawyer. An attorney, I guess he’d prefer to be called. He draws up contracts between parties—people or corporate entities. He presides over their arduous creation and frequently over their arduous destruction. He is familiar with the byways and crannies of accommodation, which makes him a good companion. That’s all I know about that part of his life. He doesn’t like to talk about his work, unfortunately, since I love hearing people talk about their work: I store it all in the data bank. Ev was invaluable that way, with sagas of crime, war, and derring-do he picked up as a reporter. He tended to dwell too long on political systems and physical settings, but I was willing to wait for the intrigue, the moral turpitude and outrageous behavior I liked. That source, alas, has dried up.

  Tim is one of those people who divide life into work and recreation, and I fall into his recreation category, especially as he doesn’t associate me with children or family obligations, which he has elsewhere. He’s divorced, gradually growing less bitter about it. So far I’ve been willing to be his recreation. What he offers me in return, aside from companionship and the usual male handyman skills, is an entrée into ordinary middle-class life, where I can carry on my researches. Tim is my analogue of Ev’s press card. Since Ev died I’ve become reclusive, living on the margins. Through Tim I get to spend an occasional weekend out of town, to attend parties and go on excursions I wouldn’t seek on my own.

  In the gatherings Tim has taken me to, sooner or later, after discussing the number of miles they log each morning to outrace mortality, or the relative merits and demerits of butter and margarine, people get around to “serious issues”—the destruction of the rain forests and the depletion of the ozone layer, the aimlessness of the younger generation illustrated by examples from their own children, the scourge of illiteracy, and, inevitably, why is it that some ethnic groups, e.g., Koreans and Jews, have been able to lift themselves out of poverty onto the plateau of the middle class while other ethnic groups, e.g., blacks, have not?

  Four possible approaches are taken to the issues, and they generally appear in fugue-like form: Bemoaning is the opening theme, followed by Blaming the parties involved; next comes Defending the parties involved by examining the problem in its social context—a kind of counterpoint melody—and finally, some form of Temporizing, usually offered by a peaceable person thus far silent. The four themes can go on indefinitely until they’re resolved in the harmony of grateful good-nights. I’ve often thought that on arrival the guests might choose placards representing their positions—for in the nature of things these positions are fixed in advance.

  For the dozen years I shared Ev’s bed, I, too, was diligently concerned and well informed. Ev knew the etiologies and interrelations of all the issues and their positions in the issue hierarchy as well as the range of possible opinions, and where did all his knowledge lead? The data of that conscientious brain spilled on a Bronx street in a shootout. Ever since, I can’t seem to concern myself with issues. It’s not a political reaction. The issues remind me of him and of all the things he didn’t talk about, also spilled and lost. The hollow tunnel of our life together that I’m trying, now, to fill belatedly with words.

  Anyway, Tim is more fun alone, and as I listened to the pleasant brooky music of the shower, I found myself thinking, This is not so bad. Not bad at all. So what if Ev is dead? And Jilly miles away and Tony doesn’t like me. So what if Q. . . . No, leave us not even think of Q. at a moment of relative contentment. So what if something is wrong with me, so wrong that I’m too tired to write a sentence of the modem-day fable I’m struggling with, set in an idyllic town washed by the sea and lulled by the rhythms of the tides, a salty-aired benevolent town where, aside from the explosive vagaries of nature—gales and storms—nothing ever goes much awry, a keen contrast to my city, guarded by rivers and shaken by car alarms and shrieking sirens. And if I don’t write a few sentences pretty soon I’ll run out of money. I have this clever, well-built man splashing around in my shower in that energetic way they have. Later in my bed. I don’t love him except in the mildest way and chances are he doesn’t love me no matter what he professes in bed. So what? We behave well to each other. Surely that counts for something? He rescues my car, he brings a good movie. Soon we’ll be eating steamed dumplings in garlic sauce, shrimp in black bean sauce, sesame chicken, and the little extras like toasted pecans and oranges they throw in to beat the competition. No complaints whatsoever.

  I set up a couple of stacking tables in the living room so we could enjoy our feast while watching Anthony Adverse, featuring the young Fredric March.

  “All set?” asked Tim, his finger aimed at the Play button. His graying blond hair was smoothed down, and he was less formal in shorts and a striped T-shirt.

  “No, wait a minute. Something’s wrong here.” I was undoing the cardboard cartons, putting aside the fortune cookies and teabags. Some packets of soy sauce and mustard slipped from my grasp. “Shit, I drop everything lately. Maybe I have a brain tumor.”

  “Nonsense. What are you fussing with?”

  “Come and look. This isn’t shrimp in black bean sauce, is it?”

  “No, it looks like lamb or beef.”

  “And this. It isn’t sesame chicken.”

  “It could be.” He smelled it.

  “No, I know what their sesame chicken looks like. Little nuggets. This is sesame something else. Let’s see what that other one is. We can certainly tell if it’s dumplings.”

  “It’s sesame noodles,” said Tim.

  “That’s a bonus. Open this. Maybe it’s the dumplings.”

  “Spare ribs.”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes. They sent the wrong order. I knew this would happen one day. It’s because they’ve got everything on the damn computer.”

  “Why don’t we eat it anyway? It looks fine. And it all tastes more or less the same.”

  “But it’s not what we wanted. Someone else is having what we wanted.”

  Tim faced me wearily. “Would you like me to call and have them straighten it out?”

  “Oh .. . no. I guess it doesn’t pay. You’re very hungry, aren’t you?”

  “I could wait, if it’s important to you.”

  “Never mind. You’re right, let’s eat it. That’s the secret of life, isn’t it? To like what you get.”

  “I don’t know about life in general, but this looks okay to me. Come on, Laura, don’t take it so hard.” He filled his plate eagerly. “And now for the show.”

  “Tim, you’d make a great Buddhist. You remind me of a story my Tai Chi teacher tells. It’s become sort of a joke in the class.”

  “So, am I going to have to beg you?”

  “I wasn’t sure you’
d be interested. Okay. Long ago there was this Japanese woman who was known far and wide for her wisdom and integrity. Another Buddhist—this one was not so calm—traveled for days to consult her and when he arrived he said, ‘What can I do to put my heart at rest?’ She told him, ‘Every morning and every evening, and whenever anything happens to you, say, “Thanks for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever.”’ Well, the man went home and did that for a year, but his heart was still agitated. So he went back, very dejected. ‘I did exactly what you said,’ he reported, ‘but nothing has changed. I’m just as discontented as ever. What should I do?’ She said, ‘Thanks for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever.’ And then, naturally, he was transformed by her wisdom and lived happily ever after.”

  Tim chuckled. “Very good. I’m in total agreement. No complaints whatsoever, at least about the food.”

  Ten minutes later he nudged me with his foot. “It’s good, isn’t it? Admit it, it is good.”

  “The movie or the food?”

  “The food. You’re eating it, I see.”

  “It’s tasting bitter,” I muttered.

  “What do you mean? What’s bitter?”

  “Nothing. You’re right. It’s good. But it still isn’t what we wanted.”

  The movie was superb, offering all Tim had promised plus opera, Napoleon, the evils of the slave trade, and many stars in their youth. Afterward we cleaned up the remains of the wrong Chinese dinner and went to bed and made love. “I love you, I love you,” Tim whispered. That was quite nice. It always adds something to hear it, even if I was fairly sure he was only temporarily deluded. Or else saying it out of courtesy, a sense that it was necessary or expected. I didn’t expect it. Q. rarely said it at those moments but rather when we were up and about. In bed he said other things.

  I felt a bit ungracious. “I love you, too,” I whispered back. When in Rome. . . . Don’t get me wrong. It was fine making love with Tim. Just fine. Not bad at all.

  We lay in each other’s arms for a while. Outside, a whirring motorcycle tore through the night. “Did you happen to bring the paper with you?” I asked. “I thought I might read for a while.”

  “It’s in my briefcase. Aren’t you sleepy?”

  “I slept on and off all day.”

  “Did you call the doctor yet? Well, what are you waiting for? It’s not like you to sleep so much. When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

  I shrugged. No point bringing up Dr. A.

  “You should get some blood tests and find out what’s going on.” He shifted around. “Come on, put your head here. I’ll hold you and you’ll fall asleep and in the morning you’ll call a doctor.”

  Other times he had lulled me to sleep. Tim was good that way. Not tonight, though. “I want to read the New York Times,” I said sulkily.

  Ev and I often read the paper after we made love. Companionably—neither of us felt rejected. The dire events of the day were more palatable in a sexual afterglow. Sometimes after the page-turning and exchanging of sections we made love again.

  Tim seemed to be asleep. I got the paper out of his briefcase and took it into the dark living room, where I stood at the window gazing at the park and the river. At first they were indistinguishable masses of shadow, but soon I could make out billowy treetops and ripples in the water beyond, and above that the Palisades, and above that the night sky punctured with stars. I enjoyed the rare stillness and the night landscape taking shape as my vision cleared, and I would like to say that a feeling of peace descended and penetrated me, but it didn’t. Peace didn’t enter me but drew me. I wanted to drift through the screened window, rise and be part of the night, just another puff of darkness dispersing. I even stood on tiptoe, as if waiting to be lifted off my feet. I wondered if this was what Jilly had felt last year when she burrowed into my chest—as she used to do long ago, frightened of monster shadows on the wall—and moaned that if Jeff, her boyfriend, died after his motorcycle accident, she would like to die, too. I doubt it. It didn’t seem something a girl of eighteen could feel. I had had enough, that was all. I wanted an assumption. When Ev died I hadn’t wanted to die. I was stunned and listened mutely to what people around me said. The gist of it was, Don’t be afraid, you’re strong, you’ll manage. After a while I began repeating to myself, You’re strong, you’ll manage. I think now that true or not, it was the wrong message. I don’t know what the right message would have been, only that that was wrong.

  Suddenly I heard scraping, scratching noises from the south wall, where a streetlight cast a lurid glow on the glass of the French door. Ev used to keep plants on the narrow ledge outside, but they had died shortly after he did. Now the ledge was strewn with leaves, for in summer the building was draped in ivy, and in the leaves a squirrel rustled. I could barely make it out, but the glass reflected the hunched shape and the tiny, distinct hairs of its tail. The hairs shimmered in the light with the stirring of the air. The squirrel’s reflection in the door was clearer than the squirrel itself, as if reality were a subsidiary order of things, whose use was to provide the stuff of images.

  Squirrels often darted across the ledge with a sense of purpose and destination, perhaps the park across the street or all the way to the river beyond. If they lingered, I had only to tap on the window or the screen and they would skitter off—I don’t want them to start feeling at home on my ledge. This time when I tapped, the squirrel looked about bemused, like an old scholar at his desk perturbed at the interruption. Then it walked logily back and forth across the ledge. I thought of those indecisive suicides in movies, tottering while eager spectators gather below. The squirrel was bald in places, its fur patchy and matted. Only the tail was full and plump, like a plume richly feathered in every shade of gray. I had to tap several times before it slunk off.

  I sat in the armchair facing the river, with the newspaper on my lap, remembering another rodent skittering across the window ledge, the west ledge, seven years ago. It was spring, soon after we’d moved into this apartment high above the water. I was on the phone with Q. I hadn’t spoken to him in months; he’d been away on tour. His voice—Laura, my love—spread through me like honey. Warm, viscous. I took the phone to this same chair and curled up. I wanted to feel through every sense: to bask in the voice and be embraced by the soft chair and fill my eyes with the trees, newly green and spread like lace over the gray, gleaming river. Ev was at his desk in the study; when he worked I didn’t exist for him, but that didn’t matter now. He, too, had ceased to exist. There was only Q.’s voice, this time from California. I leaned back and gave myself up to its spell.

  I’ve been thinking of you, came the voice. I miss you. All the time I was away, I thought of you.

  He told me stories of his travels. He had been to China, to Japan, to Hong Kong. They were doing Antony and Cleopatra.

  The Chinese stared at us on the street, he said. They kept wanting to take pictures of us. Do you know the two things I longed for most? A glass of orange juice in the morning and the sight of a woman in a short skirt. They do Tai Chi in the parks in the morning, Laura, just like you. You would like that. You could join in. Whenever I saw them waving their arms and legs in that serene and powerful way I thought of you. What did you once tell me it was supposed to feel like? That nice image?

  Like pulling silk from a cocoon, I said. One smooth unbroken motion all the way through. If you pull too hard, the teacher says, the strand breaks. You lose the rhythm and the flow of energy breaks.

  Yes, yes, I like that, said Q. That’s how they all looked. Proprio così. Like they were pulling silk from a cocoon.

  As he went on and I basked, a rat ran across the window ledge and burrowed in a comer. Not a squirrel; its tail was long and thin, not rich and bushy. I hated it because it distracted me from my pleasure in Q.’s voice.

  I went to Tokyo, the voice murmured. I took a bath with hot coals heating up the water. There were piles of fresh towels and a robe waiting for me. I ate in a noodle shop. I watched them cut
up the sushi. They are amazingly quick with the blade. Flick, flick, flick.

  Normally I would have been horrified at the rat. I would have dashed over to bang on the window and shoo it away, but now I tried not to pay attention. Besides, Q. had called me serene and powerful, more or less. Go away, rat, let me enjoy this.

  I went to a Zen temple and tried to meditate, he said, but I can’t meditate. I just watch the others. I can look like I’m meditating but I’m really not. I wonder if the Zen masters can tell. What am I saying? Of course they can tell. That’s why they’re masters.

  Make that rat go away, I prayed silently. Not a Taoist prayer, which is a simple affirmation of the way things are, but the ordinary kind, a personal demand. The rat skittered away. It had been there only two or three minutes, time enough to adulterate my pleasure. I wanted to tell Q., so as to rid my mind of it, but I also didn’t want to interrupt the spell of his voice. It had been so long since I’d heard it.

  I did Antony again in Hong Kong, he said. Everyone there speaks English, you know. It’s a British territory, for a little while longer, at any rate. They loved it. They were rapt. When I died there was a hush in the theatre like I’d never heard before. It was my best death ever. The streets are a maze. The whole city is like a carnival. Honky-tonk. Hongy Kong. I miss you, cara.

  When are you coming to New York? I asked.

  I don’t know. Next month, maybe.

  Did you fall in love lately?

  No. I’m never in love. Or always—it’s the same thing. He laughed. Not right now. Someone is in love with me, though, a young woman working on the sets. Believe me, I never encouraged her, I don’t want any part of it. . . . Her boyfriend is in the cast, which makes it all rather—

  Oh, don’t, I said. It’s just too boring.

  You’re right. Look, Laura, I want to talk to you. In person, I mean. I have so many things to tell you. I want to hear everything about you. Did you get pregnant again?