Let the Dark Flower Blossom (4 page)

I soon wearied of his happy life. I tired of his nonstop self-reflexive ubiquity. Of his mysterious lack of mystery. If a tree fell in the forest would Salt hear it? How had I ever lived without the knowledge of what he ate at breakfast? How had I existed without knowing about his fascination with ships in a bottle, with lucha libre wrestling, or his guilty pleasure of Black Jack chewing gum? Week by week, the evidence against him collected in my box at the postal station.

Babylon Must Fall
was Benjamin Salt's favorite novel. It had inspired him. Ro was his hero. After reading the book the boy knew that he was meant to be a writer. When he took the book from the shelf—he felt as though he had pulled the sword from the stone.

What has any of this to do with me?

Or my island? Or the habits of a hermit crab?

Scuttling across a sea of floors?

I grew to hate Salt.

I have grown to hate Salt.

He seems to rise up out of my nightmares—

Is he real? Is there—in reality, in italics; with quotation marks or sugared like a Santa Fe cake—a living breathing being named Benjamin Salt?

Who could create such a monster?

It's rumored that he is rewriting the Old Testament. That he's adapting Heidegger's
Time and Being
as a buddy film. That he's going to be the Mets' new starting shortstop. That he does riotous stand-up comedy at Laffers in Hoboken.

The two a.m. set really kills.

Please remember to tip your waiter.

I'll be here all week folks.

I'll be waiting out eternity.

I'll be waiting for Salt.

With my camp stove, tinned meat, and paraffin candles.

With the peregrine falcons and double-crested cormorants.

With the wood warblers, bittern, grackle, rock doves, and red-winged blackbirds.

It is now dark. I do not pull the chain on the lamp to banish the darkness. I have sat for a long time between this sentence and the last. Like Dr. Lemon with his trembling hand upon the carvedivory queen.

Out the window—

I see Beatrice walking along the water's edge with the dogs in the dusk.

Eloise Sarasine sat upon the velvet sofa reading
Babylon Must Fall
.

“Be true,” my father told me.

This is the first rule of storytelling.

Her book fell to the floor.

Evening fell against the rich tones of the room: the velvet sofa; the crème de cassis draperies; the forest green
this;
the jacquard
that;
the jade leaf and plum japonica; the scarlet vine; the sage in jardinières arabesque and mosaic; the story in morocco; she in cashmere; and oh oh oh that Shakespeherian rug down onto which the book tumbled, losing its page and her place in it. Remember that chimpanzee who wrote poetry for tossed coins and wrapped toffee in a Paris train station? What had become of him? In Hollywood a boy in a Frankenstein mask once asked for her autograph; he had mistaken her for a movie star. It was not entirely wrong, was it? that she had signed his paper with someone else's name? Each thing became the next thing. The dinosaurs had turned to oil. Ink was made of burnt bones, pitch, and tar. The bones of the children of the czar were lost in the woods. Birds carried twigs and seeds. Birds flew from bough to branch. Children turned to monsters. Eloise rested her cheek against a velvet cushion. Her memories, her moods, her maudlin inclinations were muted by pomegranate miniatures and majolica teapots. Her house was quiet. The rooms were ornamented with oddities and keepsakes from curio shops and her travels with her husband: the plaster parrot they called Flaubert; a ballet-class photograph of her daughter in black leotard and pink tights; a grinning cupid statuette with arrow pointed upward; a green-patinaed bronze figurine of ravished Leda; and oh, the Persian rosette that they had discovered in that market stall in Marrakech. Upon the mantel over the fireplace rested a row of antique clocks, none of which worked: an ironic pursuit, her collection of lost time.

In the violet hour, between despondency and decadence, she considered bathing; then she decided against it. The feminine rituals meant to be luxuries had turned into chores. Things for which one felt an obligation. One had to exfoliate; one had to clarify. One had to keep up. It wasn't a matter of vanity. It—this perpetual
obligatory self-clarification—was part of something greater: a narrative of one's life. You were the story of your life. And a story could—and would—take an unforeseen twist or turn just when one was feeling utterly expendable. This was called drama—wasn't it? The expectation, not of the future in the abstract, but of one's own future and what will happen tomorrow. Though some might have the vulgarity to call it
hope
—

The clocks on the mantel had no claim to chronology.

A cedar box, a cloisonné egg, a footed vase.

An orange, a postcard, a mystery novel.

She liked stories in which the good were rewarded and the bad were punished.

Languid, long-armed, she lifted from the table the ovoid Etruscan vase. A museum piece; a find; a relic.

She gave a sudden laugh—

At the idea of herself as the only real historical inevitability.

And what next?

What
now
and
now
and
now?

The vase was beautiful.

No, the thing was ugly.

What if she smashed it?

She set the vase back upon the table.

And wondered if the walls could do with a coat of paint?

Was she weary of the marbled warmth of ambergris? Had she lost her fondness for aubergine? Should she have the place redone in stark unblemished white? Retro-minimalism was the rage, but, no, the bleached-bones concept of cleanliness being next to stylistic godliness was just too too too exhaustingly fascistic—

One could suffer only so much less-is-more symbolism.

The inevitabilities had turned into luxuries; the luxuries had turned into necessities; and the necessities were utterly expendable.
She needed—depended on—her cell phone, but she didn't answer its questioning ring. She supposed that she could live without it. She had no feeling for plastic. When offered the option, she chose paper. She was, of course, of course, concerned with the ozone layer, the oceans, the melting polar ice caps, and her carbon footprint. She recycled. A satellite in space could find her anywhere on the planet. Wasn't this the point? One had to be a citizen of the eternal-now. Or else risk being outpaced and outmoded. She knew which handbag was the must-have of the moment, and she had it. She replaced each thing with the next: apricot for apple; pica for elite; ash for candle; sign for symbol; the myth of Sisyphus for the fact of gravity. Each season brought a new vicissitude in the height of hemlines and heels. If she didn't keep up she might fall out of the world. And once out; how would she get back in?

Her cashmere robe was chocolate brown; beneath it, her silk nightdress was patterned in black-and-white William Tell toile. She had stainless steel countertops, Italian tile, and an authentic eighteenth-century executioner's table in her kitchen. Her affection for an object did not rise in proportion to the expense of that thing's acquisition. She had no love, or hate either, for her cast-iron enameled cookware. She had no sentiment for her ornate silver espresso machine; not even half so much as she did for a chipped pink seashell painted garishly with the words in carnival script,
I hear the mermaids calling!
Mrs. Sarasine's eyes were seaside blue. Her hair was a color called Caramel. Each year her stylist took it a gradual confectionary shade lighter. She had gone from Licorice to Cocoa to Truffle to Toffee to Caramel, and imagined that when they lowered her down in the ground she would be wrapped in a linen shroud to match exactly her Dulce de Leche up-done chignon.

Oh well, it was all right to think about such things in November; wasn't it?
How death is that remedy all poets dream of
?
About a plague on the other side of the world? About the messages that birds carry from one place to the next? About apes swapping their sticks for pens and inkpots? About Saul becoming Paul on the Damascus road? About the rain-weary commuters in Paris teeming the Gare du Nord with black umbrellas? And the mud and bloodied white dress of the blindfolded czarina as she fell in the woods? Or the velocity of a four-seamed fastball as it speeds to its fate? About Charon rowing his passengers across the waters of forgetfulness; what a joke, she sighed. Keep a coin for the ferryman. He demands payment. He will have his due. It happens whether you like it or no; and what you like is of little consequence.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Sarasine poured a cup of coffee and at her executioner's table (well, that's what it was—) prepared a spare evening meal of a cold hard-boiled egg. If the comedies were not so funny as they once were, neither were the tragedies as sad. Her hands were small. Her shoulders were narrow. She was very nearly an anatomy lesson: the bones of clavicle and hip; the slender fingers, those expressive metacarpals; the long femur and lengthy shin were elegantly formed and entirely visible. Her hair was Caramel. Her rooms were quiet. In her coffee, she stirred cream and spooned sugar. Snow fell and was falling. She knew noble accents and lucid inescapable rhythms. She knew that just as she had been hated she had been loved. And though she had certain theories about why the caged bird sings, she was undecided as to whether existence preceded essence. Or why it so happened that year by year, as there was more
to
her; there was less and less
of
her.

Mrs. Sarasine, hair unwashed, mysteries insolvent, ablutions unaccomplished, skeleton unadorned, white skin unannointed, in her flowing robe and flowered gown, with cup and plate in hand, with nothing behind her and nothing before her, sat at her escritoire. Atop her stack of cards lay an envelope, addressed in a
familiar hand. It had arrived yesterday. She hadn't yet opened it. Something about it had struck her as ominous. It troubled her from the first. Perhaps she had hoped it would simply disappear. Of course, it did not. And now the continued presence of this envelope, unopened, was darkening her mood. It seemed to be the thing that was coloring the walls gloomy; that was making her feel ossuary-weary; that was causing her to ponder graveyard poetics. She took her pearl-handled letter-knife and cut open the envelope.

H
E HAD ALREADY BEGUN
. He talked about television. He made us, made everyone in the auditorium feel smart, because he was smart, and he was talking about television. He talked about things that people liked. Things like celebrities and baseball and murder. He used the words
algorithm
and
lacunae
. He said, “We all have a homesickness for the generation in which we were born.” And I wondered what it would be like to sleep with him. After the lecture there was a reception in a room with high old windows, and girls poured wine and lighted candles. He was signing books. It was evening. It was summer. I was wearing a black dress. Girls carried trays of grapes and chocolates and dark little espresso cakes. He took a chocolate from the tray. He took my hand. He called me the day after the lecture. He was at his hotel. He had missed his flight out. He had overslept. The heat made him lazy. He wanted me to meet him at his hotel. He asked me if I knew where it was? He always stayed at the place when he was in Chicago. I heard the sound of
ice in a glass. “Do you know the place?” he said. He said, “I want to tell you a story.” The afternoon was hot. The heat had turned thick and gloomy. I found him in the hotel bar. He was at a table in the corner. He ordered a drink for me. We sat in silence. He drank whiskey. He flipped a coin on the table. He asked me, “Do you like tragedy? or comedy?” He asked me did I like the place? He said, “Do you want to know the beginning of the story or hear the ending first?” He covered the coin with his hand. When he lifted his hand the coin was gone. He said that he liked this old ruined monument of a hotel, where once years ago he saw a ghost pass him in the hallway so close that she might have been a hand touching his sleeve. “Of all the gods nailed to the cross,” he said, “Discord was the most beautiful.” He drank his whiskey and ordered with a gesture of two fingers to the barman another. He liked basements and places without windows, because he didn't have to try to remember where he was. At any moment he was, he could be, he could have been—anywhere in the world. “And I won't fall out,” he said. “Of what?” I said. “The world,” he said. I didn't understand, and I wasn't used to drinking in the afternoon. I placed my hands flat, palms down on the table against the white cloth. He looked at my hands. He took my hand in his. He slipped the ring from my finger. I let him. He held the ring in his palm, jokingly weighing, appraising the diamond. He said that I could get a lot for it. The ring rolled across the table. He was playing the magician, shifting the ring from palm to palm. It appeared in his empty glass. It spun. It was spinning on the white cloth. He held it between his teeth. It disappeared under a linen napkin. In its place the coin appeared. The ring was gone. And suddenly though I don't know how—it was back on my finger. I was drinking plum brandy. He had ordered it for me. I thought that it would be sweet, but it was not. It was thick like the afternoon. I said then, I told him that I had been here in this place when
I was a girl and there had been a lady sitting, I pointed, over there right over there, with a little dog. I knew the place. I did. I had gone there long ago with my mother. In winter. I remember that it was snowing. My mother had promised me cake. Whatever kind I liked, she had said. My mother had a coat with a faux fur collar and her hair fell against it. She had sat with her dark hair in the dark room. She held a china cup with roses, at the table with a white cloth, upon which was set a dish of sugar cubes, the silver, a pitcher of cream, and we had little iced violet cakes. There was an old lady wearing a velvet beret sitting with a tiny dog on her lap, and she fed the dog now and again a rolled bit of bread and butter. I didn't tell him about my mother. I told him how I had had chocolate in a cup with roses on it. And that there were violet cakes on a plate. They were violet cakes, but they tasted like licorice. “Isn't that funny,” I said, “how everything that one so longs for tastes of licorice?” He looked at me. It occurred to me that maybe I looked too much like my mother. That we had read too many of the same books. Or not read enough of them. I did not know what to do. I looked around for the lady with the little dog or or or for hills like white elephants. He drank. He said nothing. He finished his glass. Outside it began to rain, but I did not yet know this. I was wearing a brown dress. He told me that I was beautiful, that maybe I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. It was raining. When did I realize that it had been raining? It wasn't as we walked from the darkness of the bar to the lobby to the elevator. It wasn't in the elevator. Or in his room where the curtains were drawn against the heat. The elevator door opened. We walked down the hallway. On the flowers, the black roses, on the carpet. We were in his room. He closed the door. There was a table, on it: a bottle, a glass, an overflowing ashtray, his latest book. He took off his jacket. He saw me looking at the book. He asked me if I had read his books. I said, “I'm tired of books
where one thing happens and then another and then a girl is naked.” I said, “I hate it in the movies when the girl takes off her dress, and and a man is sitting on the bed looking just just just gazing at her. I hate that,” I said. He said, “It's supposed to make you envious.” I asked him, “Envious of the girl? I just feel bad for the actress,” I said. He said, he unbuttoned a cuff of his sleeve, “Not the girl,” he said. “The man,” he said. His arm bent at the elbow; he fumbled with the other sleeve. He couldn't get the button. He held his arm, his sleeve out to me, the way a child will. I undid the button. He said, “Do you want to be an actress?” I said, “No.” I said, “I don't want to be an actress or write a book or be on television or or dance or sing or or or.” I was drunk. I had never been drunk before at four in the afternoon. It was raining, but I did not know that it was raining or that the heat had broken and shattered and smashed, that it was raining all over the city, raining on the pigeons and bricks and flowers and dirt and on gardens and graves and shops and cars and umbrellas and children and dogs and cats in doorways. I did not know so many things. He looked at me. I sat on the bed. I fell back against the bed. I said, “I have to tell you something.” He said, “What? a confession?” He said, “Already?” He said, “Could you wait? I have the confession scene planned for the last chapter.” He loosened his tie. He undid his collar. He took off his wristwatch and set it on the table. I looked around the room. His jacket was thrown over a chair. His jacket fell, had fallen to the floor. I saw the bottle and glass, a chocolate bar wrapper, a newspaper and ashtray, a pen and books, the mirror. I saw his face in the mirror. I said, “I've never read any of your books, but I saw the movie. The one with the blonde girl. The movie with the blonde girl. I cried at the ending,” I said. I said, “Why did the girl have to die in the end? Why'd you have to go and kill the girl?” He lighted a cigarette and sat beside me on the bed. He said that I didn't look well. He asked did I want
anything from room service? He said we could order anything we liked. What did I like? Did I like marshmallow? Did I like caramel? It was absurd the things that they would bring you. It didn't have to be on the menu. He said that sometimes people could be unreasonably kind. He ashed his cigarette. Did it bother me, he asked, his smoking? “Vulgar habit,” he said; his wife hated it. He looked at me. He asked me if I was ill? The day was hot thick oppressive. I wished that it would rain. It was already raining. I did not know yet that it was raining. It would have been nice to know that it was raining on the flowers and the dogs, on the houses and the windows. He pulled the chain on the lamp. The room was dark. He said, “Close your eyes.” He sat beside me, his shirt cuffs undone. Then he lay back, one hand under his head the other holding the cigarette. He lay on his back on the bed beside me, smoking. It was quiet. It was dark. He said, “You have a very silly name. Are you ever called anything else?” I said that he could call me what he liked. I said that I liked marshmallow and caramel and that I had never been drunk in the afternoon, and that the smoke of cigarettes did not bother me, and that I liked television. That I was not afraid of snakes or spiders. That I liked dogs. That I was named after my mother who was named after her mother. That one day I would live by the sea. That I liked cheeseburgers and chocolate cake. That I was vengeful. That I was true. That I liked movies in which the good were rewarded and the bad were punished. That whatever it was that he wanted from me, he only had to ask. That he had only to ask. And not even. That he did not need to ask. That he did not even have to ask. That I would do whatever he wanted me to do. I said that my ring was a diamond. I said that a diamond was only a rock. I said that I had a white dress with a black shadow on it. I said, “Tomorrow I'm going to be married.” It was dark and quiet and raining. He said that the girl had died at the end of the book because that was how the story
went. It was only a book. And he had written it a long time ago. Perhaps if he wrote it now it would end differently, but it was hard to know a thing like that, and what difference did it make? He said that he killed the girl because that was how the story had to go.