The Impossibly (8 page)

I think that each time it was the tall, thin woman.

But it was impossible to be sure.

Those are just kisses, the boss would say, stuttering on the kisses part, so that it seemed to me, each time she never quite finished saying it, that I had received several kisses instead of just the one.

Once, I went to a circus, the clowns and animals kind.

Once I say, but this was not really all that long ago. It was a small circus just outside a city or, rather, outside the old borders of the city, when the city had ended, or had had an end, and then there had been some area, then more area and who knows what, the maps went blank, before you reached another city or the sea, but what we are talking about here was inside the city, as the city, is what I mean, had been extended into the area. I had stumbled upon the circus by accident as I was following someone, and when I had finished following that someone, I went back to it, bought a ticket, and went in. Inside the orange and ochre tent it was all bright lights and flashes and drums and choreographed roars and clowns and odd movements and frightening voices and a woman standing on top of a horse and an elephant, finally, the feature, sitting in a car. Put your hands together, said the announcer, a dwarf on stilts, for Kisses the Driving Elephant, who was, in fact, driving, so to speak, an appropriately enormous convertible, using her trunk to turn the wheel.

Eventually, Kisses drove her car into a small pyramid of very short clowns.

Which hadn’t been meant to happen and hadn’t been all that funny.

In various parts of the world, at various times, they have used elephants to execute people. One way was the elephant would rear back and you would be tied to something and then it would come down on your head. Brave people, it was said, wouldn’t close their eyes. Those elephants were painted with all kinds of patterns. I forget who told me about that. But at any rate I used to imagine it sometimes—lying there, eyes open, being brave, with the painted elephant rearing back.

I don’t think any of the very short clowns were badly hurt. Kisses, certainly, was not hurt, and she kept driving, around and around.

It was of this Kisses the Driving Elephant, at any rate, that I thought, and of elephants in general, and of those painted elephants, as they applied, for perhaps the sixth or seventh time, of great big elephants and of jeering onlookers, one of their kisses to the back of my neck.

Insofar as I was able to think.

Then they made me ingest the onions, the stewed apples, and the meat.

I wished they would not make me eat the stewed apples.

They had been our stewed apples—for the shelves, in our jar, etc.

Chew, I was reminded by someone close to my head.

I chewed.

It was very sweet. Sweeter than just the fact of the stewed apples.

Honey sweet.

I had seen all this process, from a small remove, on that previous occasion, the latter portion of which, involving the bag and the rocks, I have already mentioned. But that had all transpired in an almost empty room, empty except for a small blue appliance that sizzled and sucked away at an outlet in one corner. The process went on long enough for me to notice that the walls, which I had taken for white, were really a very pale green, another effective—I knew something about the subject—technique. The woman with the cigar, my boss, had not conducted that exercise. The tall, thin woman plus one or two others had. My job, at the first, had been to stand at the door, which I did until all of them had left and it became my job to sit in the room and watch him. Part of my stupidity, you will note, consisted in having been a party to this previous process, and having, nonetheless, taken the course it has been part of the purpose of this narrative to describe. But I had been in the condition I had been in when I had chosen my course of action. In picking me for the assignment, the boss hadn’t counted on what might become the ramifications of my having fallen in love.

Or perhaps she had.

Preposterous causality.

But at any rate, I was still in that condition.

I am still in that condition.

Where is she? I asked, my mouth full of hot objects and I don’t know what kind of unpleasant tasting meat.

This time I did get some kind of response.

It was the stapler.

Each time its two ends came together there was that fine, crisp clunk.

That was the way John found me, having, as he put it, made his arrangement with them.

We came to an understanding, he told me a little later when I was back on my feet again.

Yeah? I said. An arrangement? I said.

Way for them to reimburse me for breakages.

Which surprised me a little. After all, with the exception of the incident involving my former downstairs neighbor, and one involving one of the waiters from the night of our turkey dinner, as well as another just before his arrival involving a young man on a motor scooter who had, as he had put it, injusticed him, he had all but given that up.

Just temporary, he said.

A little arrangement, I said. One you just made.

That’s right, one I just made, he said, then leaned over and gave me a little pat on the cheek.

I say that was the way John found me, with a piece of onion stuck to my lip, and with the staples.

Ouch! he said.

Looking around at all the shelves.

Then at me.

As I had sat there, stapled, and I had apparently sat there, stapled, for two days, I had been thinking about, when it had been possible to think, those early days in the autumn when we would sit together at the café in the park. She had very nice hands, that’s what I thought. They were nice in their movement, which was unusually fluid and precise, and they were nice to look at and also to consider as they held up some object or other, of which there were, absurdly it now seems, so very many. Also there was her mouth, which was really just her mouth, but I had liked to watch it, desperately, as I had liked, strangely, to watch her shoulders, which she had held almost impossibly straight, like, I had always thought, some impressive individual in a painting, but just as likely, I had also thought, not.

She came across the room toward me.

She had come across the room toward me.

The end.

Sitting on the shelves, or perhaps I’ve already said this, were several of the objects we had collected in the country, as the world, even as it wrapped itself tighter and tighter around our throats, was made to seem to vanish.

Was made to seem to vanish, I say to myself, pathetically.

Actually, of what I thought, as I sat there, was nothing.

Or not nothing.

But not quite something either.

Exquisite.

The caged animals were now, after two days, all moving more slowly, if at all, and all of it, including me, now stunk.

They’re done with you, Sport, said John.

That’s it?

That’s it.

Where is she?

Who?

What do you mean, who?

He shrugged.

My tongue, at this point, was very swollen, and John suggested I not speak anymore, and for quite some time I couldn’t, so that was that, and now me alone in this fucking apartment, the end.

It is not, however, quite the end with her, there is still this. As we were standing on the sidewalk in front of her apartment beside the rental car, just after she had insisted I not accompany her upstairs, she told me two things. The first was about a woman, once, very long ago, who had lived in the country and had done some very nice things and some things that were not so nice. The things that were not so nice had been done most recently, and had involved much weeping and sobbing and kneeling. There had been a man involved, a man of similar background—nice and not nice plus a little dumb, is how she put it. His involvement was, in fact, what all the weeping and sobbing and knees were about, somehow. Then the man was no longer in the picture.

It was rather a long story to be told out there on the curb, and Deau had already gone breezing up into the building, or out shopping for dinner, my dinner, and John was waiting for me in the car so that we could return it to the agency before we were charged for another day. John did not, however, seem too impatient. So:

The woman went into one of those buildings one goes into and knelt, as one does, and sobbed a little, according to custom, all the while talking up at the ceiling while looking down. Then the ceiling, which was quite unusual, she was told by everyone else in the building, talked back down at her.

Here is what you must do, said the ceiling.

Okay, the woman said.

So she did those things, all successfully, then the ceiling reached down in a great flash of light and swept her up off the earth—the end.

The other thing she said to me, just after we had kissed, was that, for what it was worth, she was sorry.

For what? I said.

Good-bye, she said.

Actually she didn’t say any of that to me and the last thing I remember is swishing my hands around in the backseat of someone’s car.

Quite effectively, in this instance, it would seem.

Most stories have built onto them some kind of epilogue, this one, the end I say, does not.

B
UT THEN ONE MORNING I THOUGHT I saw her again. I was walking along a street near my apartment carrying a bag that contained three warm pastries or, rather, two and one-half warm pastries—I had already started eating one of them. It had a light, sweet glaze that would have gone well with steamed milk, and I was vaguely touching the tip of my tongue to the center of my upper lip and feeling very happy, thoroughly contented, perhaps even a little smug, when I saw her again, or thought I did. She was standing quite near me on a corner, looking in the direction of a man coming rapidly across the street toward her. The man was wearing a hat with a wide rim and sunglasses, as, I might add, was she. The man approached and kept approaching and then, although his speed broke for a moment, had passed her and continued along the street, and she turned and stood looking toward me, or seemed to be. I greeted her. She didn’t respond. She did, however, continue to seem to look at me, so I approached and said, would you like a pastry? They’re very good. How true: in addition to being finely glazed, these pastries contained a fresh pear filling blended with an almond paste and one could smell this aspect of their preparation even through the bag. When she didn’t respond I leaned forward a little and asked her if she wanted to smell the bag. Good God, she said. It was a bright, warm day in early summer, and there were birds in the trees and on the cars and on the building fronts, very pretty birds. I tried to come up with something to say about the birds but couldn’t, so instead I complimented her on the shorts she was wearing. Thank you, she said. This seemed more promising. After a moment, however, it occurred to me that she might just as well have complimented me, in return, on mine, as I had just purchased them the previous day in a store we had once walked by together on the way to the cinema, but she did not, even when I reminded her of these details, which, I have to say, did not seem to me to be entirely devoid of interest, it had been quite a successful evening, the one I was remembering, we had often had such successful evenings together. How’s that little rash? I asked her. That little rash? she said. Her mouth had changed, seemed somehow elongated, the lips were a touch thinner, paler. Her nose, too, looked different, was somewhat wider, a slight flaring of the nostrils, just a touch. It’s good to see you, I said. Umm, likewise, she said. Several cars went by. She looked at her watch. Somewhere in the distance a gun went off. On the job? I said. I’m not sure, she said. At this she smiled, almost bitterly it seemed, showing me teeth that were not quite as lovely as the teeth I remembered, but it had been some months, perhaps, in truth, somewhat longer, and I am not unwilling to admit that my own teeth, in that interval, had also undergone a not unremarkable measure of decline. I was preparing, in fact, to broach that subject when, somewhat abruptly and without further comment, she began to walk off. Hey, I said, and when, my interpolation having had no effect, I began to follow her, she sped up, and when I sped up, she started running, and when I started running, she ran faster than me. Never a fast runner, I had put on several pounds and had become something of a fatty at that time. This was not just a function of a regular intake of glazed pastries with pear and almond filling, it was also a function of cakes. I liked a good deal of chocolate in a cake and I could not go lightly on the butter. It was not, in fact, a cake at all for me during that period unless it was heavily iced, and it was not fit for consumption unless it was very large. Also, I had become fond of nuts and of oils and of cream and of cheeses and when I slept, during that period, it was with dark visions of rich dainties occupying my head. I watched her run for a time, then went home. Walking home, I thought to myself, well, that was strange, and I thought to myself several other things, and I remembered a few things, and I thought about her nose, it was a nice nose, both versions of it, and I began to feel a bit moved and I had not felt moved for some time, and it was rather nice to feel moved and to feel, also, somewhat relieved, that she had reappeared, had reentered my life, although the nose was troubling, and I heard some more shots and fought my way through a crowd which had gathered, there was something that looked a lot like blood but I couldn’t tell if this one was real, then said hello to the old woman with ochre hair who sells pictures of roses near my building, and who at other times works in liquidation, and then I was in my building. I went up some stairs then took a short break, then went up some more stairs and, a little surprised to see that the door was open, into my apartment. The gentleman with the hat and sunglasses was there. I hope you don’t mind, he said. Not at all, would you care for a pastry? I said. He ate very neatly with one hand cupped against his chest to catch stray crumbs and flecks of icing. I liked the delicate action of his jaw and the way his tongue came out to probe his lips between bites. It is a fine pastry, he said. It is, I said. They don’t skimp on the custard. No they don’t. So often, he said, they skimp on the custard, and the fruit and paste is left to fend for itself; one should not have to feel sorry for the fruit that passes one’s lips. I nodded. This seemed like useful information. He asked if he might trouble me for a glass of milk. I apologized for not having offered him one. It is so infrequently, I said, that I entertain. But you do occasionally? he said. Very occasionally, although once I had an event here. An event? Yes. Were there any casualties? One. We both looked around the room. Did you come to it? I asked him. It’s possible, he said. It was a great event, I said, there was a magician present and my sweetheart came. Your sweetheart? he said. We sat quietly a moment. I could see myself in his sunglasses. Yuck, basically. Well, what are you doing here? I said. Actually, first I said, excuse me, then got up, went to the bedroom, took my own pair of sunglasses off the dresser, returned to the kitchen table, and put them on. Well, what are you doing here? I said. Those are very nice shorts you are wearing, he said. He smiled. I smiled. Are you still hungry? I asked. He nodded. In that case why don’t I make us something more substantial, which I did, some excellent omelets, and when we had eaten them we ate some more, I had a good piece of sausage on hand. After a while, I began to feel sleepy and suggested that before continuing our conversation, which up to that point, I assured him, had been very interesting, we have some coffee, which we did, quite a lot of coffee, this is excellent coffee, he said. Thank you, I said, and told him that I was pleased to have made the acquaintance of someone as pleasant as he was and as interested in comestibles as I, myself, had become. I am not against the occasional calorie, he admitted, there is something so very satisfying in those beautiful bits of heat. I thought it an admirable answer. In fact, I thought him, generally, admirable and told him so. This was not to remain the case, not even for very much longer, but at that juncture that was how things stood. In the throes of this soon-to-be reversed sentiment I told him that he, too, was in possession of quite fine shorts, and I asked if he could let me know where he had gotten them, and he did. I wrote it down and some weeks later, when I had recovered, I went to the address I had noted and found only an old watchmaker’s shop, and an old watchmaker’s assistant, something of a humorist, who asked me for the time. You need a watch, son, he said. I need very many things, I said. Well, what we have here, son, are watches, now let me see, I’ll find you one. We sat there. In my kitchen. That was her, out there on the street, wasn’t it? I said. No, he said. Are you sure? Absolutely. Do you know who I mean when I say her? He shook his head. I told him who I meant. Ah, he said. How long has she been back? I’m not sure. I thought … Yes, we all thought. No, I mean I very deeply believed … We all very deeply believed. So she is back. Yes, definitely. You’re not lying are you? He didn’t answer. I repeated my question. He smiled, and I decided I’d just learned nothing. At this point, the telephone began to ring. I do not like telephones. I asked him if he would be kind enough to answer it for me. He was kind enough, and, in fact, swung the phone out of its cradle with great panache. Yes, hello? he said. Yes, I’m fine, just had some breakfast. Who? Yeah, fatso. Yeah, yeah, big as a fucking balloon. I was looking at him, waving my hands around to indicate that he should tell whoever it was that I wasn’t there, and perhaps take a message, but a moment later I found myself, receiver pressed against my ear, saying, yes I’m available, tonight, 11:30, yes, I understand, you’ll send someone to take me. I always feel proud of myself once I’ve actually been on the phone, have made it through whatever it is there is to make it through and have set the receiver down. You will understand, then, why it was that when I replaced the receiver, I grinned, or smiled, I think it was a smile, no, it was a grin, a gesture which, at any rate, was meant for him, only he was no longer there. Hello? I said. No answer. It occurred to me that he might have taken the opportunity to excuse himself to the facility: we had, after all, consumed quite a bit of coffee. Hello? I said, positioning myself near the bathroom door. No answer. I decided that this lack of a response was inconclusive, that there simply wasn’t enough evidence to make an informed judgment, and that it would be best, until further evidence presented itself, to wait. As I stood waiting, I thought about things. I thought about my breakfast and about my teeth, which really were spectacularly in need of care, someone had just recently made a remark to that effect, there had also, recently, been a remark about my breath, probably not unrelated, and I thought about one or two other things like my need for a new bookshelf and my difficulty in acquiring such things and generally how strange the day had become, and how it was just beginning. A former acquaintance of mine once told me over a dinner that beginnings were quite extraordinary things, there being nothing and then there being something, a prelude and an aftermath. On top of that, he said, many beginnings were a positive morass of the unlikely, the bizarre, the insignificant but intriguingly odd, the innocently calamitous, the highly charged mundane. All the great stories, he continued, began strangely, often stupidly, and ended incomprehensibly, and then there were all those elements in between. How do you feel, I asked him, about a story that begins with someone seeing someone again, but there being certain differences in the person’s physical makeup, like their nose has changed, so you are not entirely sure who it is? I see, said my acquaintance, who is she and when did she get back? No one, I said, and she hasn’t even left yet. She hadn’t. Days lay ahead of us, perhaps even weeks. Within that interval we would take pleasant walks together and travel to a small coastal city and picnic in a grove of olive trees. There would be an event for us to attend and some business for me to mishandle, to choose to mishandle, to believe I had chosen to mishandle, and a large bathtub in an old house in the country, and a cold windowpane onto which we would breathe our mingled breaths. But all that was years ago. It must have been years ago. How old was I now? I was fat. My hair was curly and touched with gray. It had occurred to me, in the interval, to take up singing. I had even performed the lead male role in a small production of a famous opera. I think this is true. I have just tried singing. I can sing. Also I thought—I was still standing there, still thinking—of a proof of the infinite nature of the series of prime numbers, it employed the following equation Q = (2 * 3 * 5 * 7 … P) + 1, quite pretty, this was the work of one of the very old mathematicians, though transmitted by one less old, or at least one more recent, if I am remembering correctly, possibly. Then I worked a few problems in my head. Simple ones. Small acts of division, of slicing apart. In my youth I was known to be quicker than average with a figure; in fact, I was once first runner-up in a contest. The prize was pizza with the school’s math teacher. It was this teacher who told me about prime numbers and also about irrationals—not as pretty but much more powerful, very deep. Having at this point waited for some time, needs of my own had become pressing, so that—I should not have chosen such a course otherwise—as I had stood with my ear against the cold wood for some seconds and heard nothing, I gingerly opened the door. Empty. I registered, however, as I rushed forward, that he must have been there, had either washed his hands or used the facility or had entered as part of a sweep, we often make sweeps, because an object, a memento, my green duck, a gift I had kept despite a troubling defect in its buoyancy, was out of place. Its place was on the porcelain soap dish next to the bathtub. Now it sat on the shelf opposite the toilet. This was troubling. And curious. But little more. At any rate, I sat. I stood. I resisted the temptation to bathe. Then returned to the kitchen and found a note: