The Impossibly (12 page)

We were upstairs. It was all already happening. But then I called her back. I’m definitely not me, I said. And the truth is I’m not her, she said. So that was finally settled. Before we parted ways, she said, incidentally, whoever I am, I’m in trouble—I’ve been in trouble for a while and now it’s time, I’ve been told, for me to pay for it. What did you do? I don’t know, something, it’s been years—I double-crossed someone. The boss? No, not the boss. You’re being disaffirmed? You could put it that way. Do I have anything to do with it? You’re here, aren’t you? I was. She had blue eyes. I was placing duct tape over someone’s mouth. We were holding hands. I got out the feather duster. I’m coming, I said. Or at any rate I was thinking something, I must absolutely have been thinking something as I drifted through the dark where there was the sound of breathing and whispering and I thought, this is something and I am something and that is something and she is standing before me or she is not standing before me and now she is taking my hand and afterward I went back to selling cakes they are good cakes and I am quite happy that is the strange part and even fatter and there is more although none of this has happened and tonight I had my cards read again and the prediction was not pleasant and I thought this is how things seem these days they seem not pleasant it is raining it is cold I have long since given up on shorts and fine sunshine I heard breathing and I thought, I thought to myself, at any rate, all this is long past.

N
OT LONG AFTER THAT IS WHEN I LEFT. They came one night, shook my hand, and gave me a ticket. The next evening I was on a train, and late that night I got on a boat. The passage took several days. The captain would make announcements over the intercom. Then one evening at dusk I saw a great white city and the boat docked. In addition to the ticket, they had given me an envelope. In it I found a stack of bills, an address, and a set of keys. A taxi dropped me off on a poorly lit street in front of a building draped in black netting. The downstairs lock turned easily. I went up a flight of stairs. Another. The door was open. Come in, a voice said. The room I went into was large with high ceilings and several windows. A woman was sitting at a small round table under a handsome metal floor lamp. She had very high cheekbones. She looked very young. As I entered, she placed her hands on the table and stood. My instructions were to verify your arrival, she said. She walked past me. She had a slight limp. She said something I couldn’t catch and was gone.

The apartment was well-furnished, but lacked a view—the three windows in the main room looked out through the netting onto a high white wall and the bedroom window gave onto an airshaft. The kitchen was painted bright yellow and had counters long enough to recline on. I know this because I reclined on them. One day a group of individuals, associates they called themselves, came in and found me on one. You won’t get anywhere like that, they said. Get anywhere with what? I said. Several days went by. I sat at the table. Also I sat on the various sofas and couches, as well as on several of the chairs. The dining room I mainly used for pacing, and the den I entered only once. It was mainly in the early evenings that I ate the food they left in the refrigerator—meat, soup, boiled vegetables, soft, salted cheese. Dogs barked all night and sometimes kittens mewled. In the early mornings I slept.

After a week, at dusk, I ventured out. As I walked by them, the walls, if they were white, went gray then dark gray then the streetlights came on. The city was reasonably well-lit. My street, of course, was not very well-lit, but most of the city was. Or not most—much. Significant parts of it, I discovered, were full of shadows and haphazard sounds. One wondered where they came from. Where they went. But generally, as I say, was the fact of more or less adequate civil illumination.

So in the late evenings I walked. Past structures with or without balconies, across empty plazas, under crumbling arches, and through the public gardens where old men sat on benches under tall, flowering trees and young men lurked in the bushes. There were also lovers on the benches in those curious configurations, and the sound and clipped shadows of night birds, and usually, after walking for a time, I would stop at a small fountain, take off my shoes, submerge my feet, and let the cool water ease the swelling. There were many narrow, twisting streets in the city and any number of large, rocky eminences, and I soon discovered small paths that led by houses where old women sat beneath birdcages remembering, I imagined, the old men. If I went far enough, and a few times in the early going I did, it was possible to leave the city and to walk out into the surrounding hills. But in the hills, of course, there were no lights at all, and the paths were treacherous for an old man like me, lit only, as they were, by the moon.

Often, during this period, when I returned from my walks, I would find that the refrigerator had been filled and that the apartment, if not cleaned exactly, had at least been dusted and sprayed. Different scents were used for this spraying. The pine scent was far and away my favorite. The citrus, used liberally until I put out a note, I could not tolerate. Much of it, then, was what I had asked for—the food, the furnishings, the windows, the large bed, some kind of a cleaning crew, the city by the sea. I had, of course, requested a view and for all the streets of the city to be well-lit. I had also requested and not received a certain amount of reading material, a copy of my file, and a large handgun. Generally though I was satisfied. I had heard stories of retired assets receiving none of what they had asked for, even assets who had enjoyed relatively glittering careers and had never been disaffirmed. I, of course, had been disaffirmed twice. Although I should probably say straight away that the second disaffirmation, upon review, was found to have been unmerited and the following note was placed in my file, which I still do not have—“granted: the motion to vacate judgment.” It was perhaps, I more than once speculated as I sat under the handsome floor lamp with its gold trim and metallic brown shade, because of this reassessment, this determination that my actions had, in fact, been justified, that so many of the requests I made in my retirement interview were provided for. Perhaps.

The days, as I discovered, were nearly as pleasant as the nights. The white city, with its orange roofs and endless terraces, shimmered in the sun or glimmered in the proxy of it. As I have noted, the city was surrounded by hills and broken up by rocky eminences, on one of which stood ancient battlements topped by a columnar structure, in the center of which sat a crane. There were endless motorized vehicles in the streets, and large insects in the air, and the pine trees shared the earth beneath the pavement with the root systems of palms and various blossoming fruit trees. Everywhere, too, there were rusty antennas and white satellite dishes and establishments where it was possible to sample grilled meats and various aquatic comestibles and to drink chilled resinous wines. Also worth noting were the numerous unfinished structures, structures that had stood unfinished for many years and that, I was told by a garrulous individual on a bench one evening, would continue to stand unfinished for many years—ruins, as it were, in reverse. No one in this city wore hats or capes, although sunglasses were nearly omnipresent. When I say that no one wore hats, I am of course referring to a certain variety of hats, or, rather, to a certain way of wearing them. I had requested that too. I no longer, I had said in my interview, wish to see or wear hats or capes. What about sunglasses? I don’t care about sunglasses, I had said. Also, I had given up on shorts. I had, before the reversal of my second disaffirmation, which was largely passed at the bottom of a not-quite-dried-up well, lost a tremendous amount of weight—of which, admittedly, there was much to lose, but still—and had found, upon my release, that none of my lovely pairs of short pants fit any longer. Lovely is perhaps overstating it.

And yet I rarely went out during the daytime. In fact, once was enough. After a bout of unsuccessful swimming at a beach not far enough away from the city and its septic mechanism, I saw what I have already set down and I saw some other things, including: a cat simultaneously hissing and relieving itself on a broom and a three-legged, sore-infested dog chasing a pigeon that could not completely fly and had no feet, and after these and other observations, once home, I found myself exhausted, unwell, unable, in fact, to leave my apartment for a considerable time, and so decided to restrict my circumambulations, insofar as this was possible, to the dark hours. This was possible—it has been fifty-five days since I was last outside in the daylight, and while at times the stray lines of light that make it through the netting and the shutters to fall across my floor and, occasionally, across my hands or arms, are able to elicit certain emotions and to stimulate certain memories, I find I am happier this way.

Happier is not the word. Happier is definitely not the word.

Along those lines, before I completely leave daylight behind, it would be just as well, I think, to clarify that the city, setting metaphor aside, is really almost anything but white. This is not to say that many of the buildings are not white—many are or are clearly meant to be. It is just that, upon more careful inspection, carried out on that day of diurnal exploration, from the precinct of a large hill at the southern end of the city, I discovered that the city has more that is gray or tan about it than anything, and if one counts the endless and variegate colors of the awnings drawn over the terraces and rooftops and balconies (green and blue and yellow could be said to predominate), and the above-mentioned orange roofs, all seen through a considerable haze of pollution, then the city ceases, far from being, even to seem white. Years ago, in the company of friends, I visited another city by the sea, and I have made several attempts these last days to remember what color it was. I do remember, of course, walking arm in arm, and I remember the slightly waving fronds on the trees and the generally sloping aspect of the streets and the gentle curve of the hills. I remember, too, setting the events of my first disaffirmation in motion, the disaffirmation that was justified and of which, however perversely, I maintain a certain measure of pride. The second disaffirmation, the one that didn’t hold, the one during which I lost so much weight, I find I cannot feel proud of, although I have no doubt she deserved it. Why this? I asked her. Why this, after everything you’ve put me through? Why now? She made an attempt to answer, couldn’t get past the stutter, gave up, and lifted her gun. But I was faster.

I thought about that, of course, as I sat beneath the handsome floor lamp or lay sleepless in the large bed. I thought about it as I walked the well-lit streets after dark or sat, in company as it were, among the old men on the benches in the gardens, and sometimes as I thought about it my hand, which often itched anyway, itched to be holding a gun. And yet all of that was over, long over. It’s best to make some effort to let these things go, I said to an old man sitting beside me on a bench. Hah! he said. Which pleased me greatly, but seemed also to preclude any sort of elaboration. And in fact when he continued it was in a completely different vein, so that after several minutes of regarding his unhealthy gums, I moved on. It occurred to me, following this interaction, to climb the narrow streets and consider the old women a little as they sat in their doorways or stood talking in small groups. Some of these conversations, I discovered, were quite interesting. One old woman, for example, was describing her recent efforts to have the asbestos removed from her son’s place of work, efforts, she said, that were being hampered both by her son and her son’s boss. At this, one of the old women, who stood almost completely wrapped in shadow, suggested that if removal of the asbestos was the first old woman’s primary concern, and her son and her son’s boss were interfering, then she might simply dispose of them. There was a silence. I leaned a little closer. Yes, I’d thought of that, the first old woman said. They began to discuss methods. One of them suggested cocktails and powdered glass. Another, arson—if you did it right it could look, she said, like spontaneous combustion. After this, the conversation grew unfocused and I walked off. Just as I’d entered a nearby path bordered by a double line of flowering bushes and had begun to think about the endlessly shifting arabesques and the variety of browns and greens of the small dark leaves and stems, which would certainly be more clearly determined in the daylight, someone came up beside me and took my arm. It’s a lovely night, I said. Yes, she said. I recognized the voice —it belonged to the woman who had intervened in the conversation a moment before. Should I be alarmed? I asked her. She laughed. She had a very pretty laugh, perhaps a little loud, but clear and rich in the warm evening air. I started to turn my head to look at her, but she told me to keep looking straight ahead. By now we were walking along a slightly wider path. Above us, beautifully illuminated, was the enormous eminence at the top of which stood, or in some cases barely stood, the ruins of temples or who knows what. You should take a tour, she said. I don’t get out during the daytime lately, I said. An evening tour could be arranged. That’s a thought. I’ve taken such a tour myself—the moon and starlight do wonders with polished stone. Why are you walking with me? My house is just over there. So? So that’s where we’re going. Is this it then? Is what it? Because I thought I had an agreement. What are you talking about? I started to look at her. She lifted her hand and placed it, firmly, against the side of my face. We walked a little farther. So this doesn’t have anything to do with anything? I said. I didn’t say that. What did you say? I didn’t say anything, she said, squeezing my arm. I started, I thought, to get the picture. Well then, yes, I’d like to take a tour, I said. I’ll arrange it. She did. A couple of nights later. No one was there but the gates were open and for several hours I wandered amidst the ruined structures. In the meantime, though, we entered a small house and then a small bedroom. I will just ask you to let me place this blindfold over your eyes. I think I’m too old for this. For what? Aren’t you going to tie me up? I hadn’t thought of it, do you want me to tie you up? Well, no, I guess not. Because if you want me to I will. No, that’s okay. She put the blindfold over my eyes. You look much better than you used to, she said. What do you mean? Just that. Who are you? Never mind. Well anyway, I don’t look better, I look terrible, I couldn’t look worse. Yes you could. I was about to reply to this, when she kissed me lightly and, none too gently, shoved me onto the bed.