the time of spiders arrived. spiders in high corners of rooms. cocoons wrapped in spiderwork. silvery dancingstrands that seemed the pure play of light, light as evanescent news, ideas borne on light. the voice upstairs said:
"now watch this. joanie is trying to snap ralph's patella with a bushido stun kick. she makes contact, he crumples,she runs."denise passed word to babette that steffie was routinely examining her chest for lumps. babette told me.
murray and i extended the range of our contemplative walks. in town one day he went into small embarrassedraptures over diagonal parking. there was a charm and a native sense to the rows of slanted vehicles. this form ofparking was an indispensable part of the american townscape, even when the cars were foreign-made. thearrangement was not only practical but avoided confrontation, the sexual assault motif of front-to-back parking inteeming city streets.
murray says it is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.
the two-story world of an ordinary main street. modest, sensible, commercial in an unhurried way, a prewar way,with prewar traces of architectural detail surviving in the upper stories, in copper cornices and leaded windows, inthe amphora frieze above the dime-store entrance.
it made me think of the law of ruins.
i told murray that albert speer wanted to build structures that would decay gloriously, impressively, like romanruins. no rusty hulks or gnarled steel slums. he knew that hitler would be in favor of anything that might astonishposterity. he did a drawing of a reich structure that was to be built of special materials, allowing it to crumbleromantically—a drawing of fallen walls, half columns furled in wisteria. the ruin is built into the creation, i said,which shows a certain nostalgia behind the power principle, or a tendency to organize the longings of futuregenerations.
murray said, "i don't trust anybody's nostalgia but my own. nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. it's asettling of grievances between the present and the past. the more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come toviolence. war is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country."a humid spell of weather. i opened the refrigerator, peered into the freezer compartment. a strange crackling soundcame off the plastic food wrap, the snug covering for half eaten things, the ziploc sacks of livers and ribs, allgleaming with sleety crystals. a cold dry sizzle. a sound like some element breaking down, resolving itself intofreon vapors. an eerie static, insistent but near subliminal, that made me think of wintering souls, some form ofdormant life approaching the threshold of perception.
no one was around. i walked across the kitchen, opened the compactor drawer and looked inside the trash bag. anoozing cube of semi-mangled cans, clothes hangers, animal bones and other refuse. the bottles were broken, thecartons flat. product colors were undiminished in brightness and intensity. fats, juices and heavy sludges seepedthrough layers of pressed vegetable matter. i felt like an archaeologist about to sift through a finding of toolfragments and assorted cave trash. it was about ten days since denise had compacted the dylar. that particularround of garbage had almost certainly been taken outside and collected by now. even if it hadn't, the tablets hadsurely been demolished by the compactor ram.
these facts were helpful in my efforts to believe that i was merely passing time, casually thumbing through thegarbage.
i unfolded the bag cuffs, released the latch and lifted out the bag. the full stench hit me with shocking force. was thisours? did it belong to us? had we created it? i took the bag out to the garage and emptied it. the compressed bulk satthere like an ironic modern sculpture, massive, squat, mocking. i jabbed at it with the butt end of a rake and thenspread the material over the concrete floor. i picked through it item by item, mass by shapeless mass, wondering whyi felt guilty, a violator of privacy, uncovering intimate and perhaps shameful secrets. it was hard not to be distractedby some of the things they'd chosen to submit to the juggernaut appliance. but why did i feel like a household spy?
is garbage so private? does it glow at the core with personal heat, with signs of one's deepest nature, clues to secretyearnings, humiliating flaws? what habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? what solitary acts, behavioral ruts? ifound crayon drawings of a figure with full breasts and male genitals. there was a long piece of twine that containeda series of knots and loops. it seemed at first a random construction. looking more closely i thought i detected acomplex relationship between the size of the loops, the degree of the knots (single or double) and the intervalsbetween knots with loops and freestanding knots. some kind of occult geometry or symbolic festoon of obsessions.
i found a banana skin with a tampon inside. was this the dark underside of consumer consciousness? i came across ahorrible clotted mass of hair, soap, ear swabs, crushed roaches, flip-top rings, sterile pads smeared with pus andbacon fat, strands of frayed dental floss, fragments of ballpoint refills, toothpicks still displaying bits of impaled food.
there was a pair of shredded undershorts with lipstick markings, perhaps a memento of the grayview motel.
but no sign anywhere of a shattered amber vial or the remains of those saucer-shaped tablets. it didn't matter. i wouldface whatever had to be faced without chemical assistance. babette had said dylar was fool's gold. she was right,winnie richards was right, denise was right. they were my friends and they were right.
i decided to take another physical. when the results were in, i went to see dr. chakravarty in his little office in themedical building. he sat there reading the printout, a man with a puffy face and shadowy eyes, his long hands set flaton the desk, his head wagging slightly.
"here you are again, mr. gladney. we see you so often these days. how nice it is to find a patient who regards hisstatus seriously.""what status?""his status as a patient. people tend to forget they are patients. once they leave the doctor's office or the hospital,they simply put it out of their minds. but you are all permanent patients, like it or not. i am the doctor, you the patient.
doctor doesn't cease being doctor at close of day. neither should patient. people expect doctor to go about thingswith the utmost seriousness, skill and experience. but what about patient? how professional is he?"he did not look up from the printout as he said these things in his meticulous singsong.
"i don't think i like your potassium very much at all," he went on. "look here. a bracketed number withcomputerized stars.""what does that mean?""there's no point your knowing at this stage.""how was my potassium last time?""quite average in fact. but perhaps this is a false elevation. we are dealing with whole blood. there is the question ofa gel barrier. do you know what this means?" '"no.""there isn't time to explain. we have true elevation and false elevations. this is all you have to know.""exactly how elevated is my potassium?""it has gone through the roof, evidently.""what might this be a sign of?""it could mean nothing, it could mean a very great deal indeed.""how great?""now we are getting into semantics," he said.
"what i'm trying to get at is could this potassium be an indication of some condition just beginning to manifest itself,some condition caused perhaps by an ingestion, an exposure, an involuntary spillage-intake, some substance in theair or the rain?""have you in fact come into contact with such a substance?""no," i said.
"are you sure?"positive. why, do the numbers show some sign of possible exposure?""if you haven't been exposed, then they couldn't very well show a sign, could they?"'then we agree," i said.
"tell me this, mr. gladney, in all honesty. how do you feel?""to the best of my knowledge, i feel very well. first-rate. i feel better than i have in years, relatively speaking.""what do you mean, relatively speaking?""given the fact i'm older now."he looked at me carefully. he seemed to be trying to stare me down. then he made a note on my record. i might havebeen a child facing the school principal over a series of unexcused absences.
i said, "how can we tell whether the elevation is true or false?""i will send you to glassboro for further tests. would you like that? there is a brand-new facility called autumnharvest farms. they have gleaming new equipment. you won't be disappointed, wait and see. it gleams,absolutely.""all right. but is potassium the only thing we have to watch?""the less you know, the better. go to glassboro. tell them to delve thoroughly. no stone unturned. tell them to sendyou back to me with sealed results. i will analyze them down to the smallest detail. i will absolutely pick them apart.
they have the know-how at harvest farms, the most delicate of instruments, i promise you. the best of third-worldtechnicians, the latest procedures."his bright smile hung there like a peach on a tree.
"together, as doctor and patient, we can do things that neither of us could do separately. there is not enoughemphasis on prevention. an ounce of prevention, goes the saying. is this a proverb or a maxim? surely professor cantell us.""i'll need time to think about it.""in any case, prevention is the thing, isn't it? i've just seen the latest issue of american mortician. quite a shockingpicture. the industry is barely adequate to accommodating the vast numbers of dead."babette was right. he spoke english beautifully. i went home and started throwing things away. i threw away fishinglures, dead tennis balls, torn luggage. i ransacked the attic for old furniture, discarded lampshades, warped screens,bent curtain rods. i threw away picture frames, shoe trees, umbrella stands, wall brackets, highchairs and cribs,collapsible tv trays, beanbag chairs, broken turntables. i threw away shelf paper, faded stationery, manuscripts ofarticles i'd written, galley proofs of the same articles, the journals in which the articles were printed. the more thingsi threw away, the more i found. the house was a sepia maze of old and tired things. there was an immensity ofthings, an overburdening weight, a connection, a mortality. i stalked the rooms, flinging things into cardboard boxes.
plastic electric fans, burnt-out toasters, star trek needlepoints. it took well over an hour to get everything down tothe sidewalk. no one helped me. i didn't want help or company or human understanding. i just wanted to get the stuffout of the house. i sat on the front steps alone, waiting for a sense of ease and peace to settle in the air around me.
a woman passing on the street said, "a decongestant, an antihistamine, a cough suppressant, a pain reliever."
