China Blues (7 page)

Tonight I want to set fire to this barn.

                                                  She turns

away in the moonlight & looks back her face looks

like a famous painting or a great perfume advertisement

in a glossy magazine but subdued by shadow.

                                                             Her sweet

brown nipples ache in my throat like bitter elm buds.

Her blue eyes singe the back of my throat.

I put the bottle back in my jacket pocket & keep

walking, head way back, toward the barn. Her skirt rips

at my stomach like a dark blue knife.

For example last night, it was Thursday, I said to Paula, “I just can’t make the good things happen here.” I was speaking of Tobacco Heaven, the city with the big stock exchange on the north shore of a lake. There was a large pot of soup on the stove. Paula is an old friend. She was sympathetic and made drinks. I told her I thought it would be better in New York or Chicago; New York is pretty gay, and I have always had romantic ideas about Chicago, because of Sandburg perhaps, that one poem.

And she says, “It’s not working in Toronto.” She usually calls it hogtown although there haven’t been any hogs lapping up acorns down by the lake since 1790. “Maybe that’s because it’s a
big
city,” she says, “so why try another one?” She sips her drink, just a splash of red, she never drinks liquor, but the woman she lives with loves Martinis.

“Small towns are nowhere,” I tell her.

Paula is slim and wiry with short cropped thick ash-blonde hair and a smile as big as your shoulders. “Maybe,” she says, “you’re asking for the same things …”

O yes mama I want the same things, the same things to happen over again. I love to be enthralled, and I loahv to have my heart broken.

“Whatever they are …” she leers at me with a wonderful pleasant raisiny cinnamonny smile.

Then we got into tasting the soup, tomato & dill, yum yum, it sure is good with that calabrese bread; she gets out some black olives and some green olives, and I make myself another drink.

Carol would be home around 11, no point in holding supper until then. Paula says, “There’s nothing wrong with the city,
Deuxmains
, a big museum, a great university, lots of art galleries.” She calls me
Deuxmains
because when I come for supper I always have seconds. The black olives are good with a mouthful of red soup, the fat green olives are good if you let the scotch slosh around over them until you think of green birds in the jungle, lifting their wings and settling down on tables.

She says the problem is with me. Yo, I’m bad. I’m bad. I take it out of my pants and I don’t know what to do with it. I wish to God I could find a decent teaching job at Louisiana State, and then I could go fishing on the gulf on Sundays. My other alternative right now is Algonquin Park, but I favour southern Louisiana.

“No,” Paula says, “you’re a really wonderful guy; but,” she says, licking the soup ladle, “you’re innocent,
innocente, innocente, innocente.
” Paula has an
MA
in Italian Studies. She says, “You’re a small town boy, and you just won’t admit it to yourself.”

I once memorized the corporate histories of the 50 largest companies with head offices in Manhattan, and here I am wondering if I have enough money to go away for the hot period of the summer, so I don’t know why anybody would call me a small town boy.

Then she leans over the chair and kisses me on the mouth. Warm and wet. That’s Paula. Great soup, great smile. Guess I’m just an unemployed
train man stealing kisses in the midnight tinsel-ceiling ballroom, after everyone else has gone home to frolic in the respectable dark.

           The night air is clear and soft.

                                                      You can walk

north of Casa Loma and south down Huron,

the people who gave us the word Toronto,

and think about anything you want, housekeeping

or Willem de Kooning.

The bag ladies are down on Bloor Street. The

muggers are drinking wine in Christie Pits far to the west.

You notice the renovated Edwardian houses more reflectively

at night. The

stars to the south over the Toronto Dominion Bank

building are clear and almost pale yellow;

the accountants of BrasCan are sitting up late at night

in their shirt-sleeves counting the month’s receipts.

BrasCan is a multi-billion company with a base in Brazil,

where Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote

the Charlie Chaplin poem, where African-descent Brazilians

invented the Lambada. This is Ontario. The grass grows

freely and the flowers are burning dark

as smudged coal against the unpainted wooden fences

in darkness. Cocker spaniels were the most

popular dogs in Massachusetts in the 1950s. Toronto

has one of the best music conservatories in America. I think

that butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth of this city.

            These are details at night; some of them

in afternoon light. A leaded window pane, a semi-Gothic

brick arch around a doorway.

                                      Victorian gable, chipped green,

deep flat cement window sills. They represent an infinity

spectrum. The cement porch where a painter was murdered

in 1926, the year that Hemingway published

The Sun Also Rises
.

I am quite young, but some of these houses go back

to the 1860s, approximately the period of the Civil War.

The police used to raid a frat house on Lowther

on Friday nights in the 1930s. Whoever owns that completely

rebuilt house across the street has an extraordinary skylight.

The bourgeoisie are a problem. More so than the squirrels

on the roof of my house,

                                or the raccoon who comes across back

yards from Madison and begs for pieces of bacon.

          The backyards are larger than you might

expect. Those raccoons have a fair bit of room. So

a large back deck gives observation.

                                               I saw

3 species of hornet, one reddish, & a pair of nuthatches

in May. I try to understand the world as it happens

around me in forms of light.

                                     The hamburgers

at the Food Works 3 blocks south are the best in Toronto.

Le Bistingo has one of the best bars in Ontario.

My Croatian friend with a festival mask tumbling

from her head has gone to sleep for the night

almost, but not quite, with a small white cup

of dark Turkish coffee in one hand.

I have given my whole life, okay, a big piece,

to the contemplation of certain images. And where

does that leave me?

                         With a large & very specialized

vocabulary. I have 47 different words for darkness

including
scuro
, as in
rosso scuro
, a
deep
red.

What do you nuthatches think? Do you think
rosso scuro

is a darker red than those cardinals we saw

yesterday? I sit out on the deck after late supper

with my feet up on the white pine crossbar

& read back issues of
LIFE
magazine.

I suppose I could be making love, or going for a walk,

I still haven’t seen
Ju-Dou

or that new German film by Paul Verhoeven.

           Sun streams through the front living-room

windows and makes patterns on the board floor. The pictures

of Willie Shoemaker standing beside Wilt Chamberlain

are a study of two different sports.

Willie is grinning, the mouth beautiful;

Wilt is balancing the ball on one fingertip.

The greyhound is the most beautiful dog in America.

They have long legs, deep chests,

& truly wonderful faces.

My favourite novels are very often

about people in new cities.

My friend criticizes me occasionally

for leaving criss-cross stacks of papers

on various tables, or bureaus,

& for shaving every
other
day, but we reach

an agreement fairly easily.

I am happy in a deep inner sense

like the comforter on the bed or

the peach on a white saucer on the kitchen table.

The Chinese family across from my backyard

have built an amazingly wide 2-stairway porch

out of fresh pale lumber that glows

in the after-supper light.

It was a good hour – we sat in the living room on the broadloom and had beer, and apple pie that Carol had made earlier in the evening. John warmed it up and there was cheese. Clips from Rita Hayworth’s films but also 1000s of very effective still photographs with voiceover: New York, Los Angeles; Frank Sinatra, Aly Khan, who was quite a good polo player, Orson Welles, I like
Citizen Kane
but I’ve never seen
The Magnificent Ambersons.
She had a beautiful face and she was a great sex symbol. I enjoyed the film, I like documentaries better than a lot of feature films, but it didn’t give me any special feeling of what it must have been like to be her, although all the guys, myself, John, Frank, agreed that those dresses, and she had great legs, were a key aspect of her image. Sure, Frank says, but what if she shaved her head like Sinéad O’Connor and put on some Wrangler jeans. Different period, says John, totally different period. I try to stay out of this conversation, I want some more apple pie, some ice cream, but Frank pushes it, he says he thinks Rita strikes him as being very much like a guy in drag, but, sure, she was having fun. I think he misses the point a little bit and say so. Carol says, Shave her head, put her in Wranglers, she’d still be one hell of a powerful woman.

        Most of the women I know are into psychology, film production and, in one case, botany. She wants to go to the Sahara to study desert flowers. I might go too, but I don’t think so. How would you feel about a documentary on Steve McQueen? asks Carol, she’s annoyed, she picked out the tape. And I say I wouldn’t bother watching it. I like a lot of American films,
Five Easy Pieces, Body Heat
, look, this could be a long list. But Steve McQueen was just a klutz, besides he was rough on Debra Winger.

            Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel,

when they were still together

                                      made a song called

“The Sounds of Silence.”

                               That’s what my sadness

is like, dark, light,

                      I saw the video in b&w;

& it’s like a bowl of raspberries. You know what a

delicate sweetness raspberries have when they’re fresh,

just faintly bruised

                       & you pour Ontario cream over them.

Hello darkness,

                  my old friend,

that’s how it began. The song has a welcoming quality

to the first 5 words,

& then an effect of almost happy sadness. Art Garfunkel

who,

  (& look, I don’t know if either one of them

liked raspberries, for that matter,

                                           maybe yes,

maybe no) did an excellent job of singing

the high notes on that song.

                                   Art was disturbed as a child.

He had funny hair & he was Jack Nicholson’s

roommate in Mike Nichol’s film
Carnal Knowledge.

Boy, are you sorry you missed that one,

                                                     you know

you can still see it.

            Anyway that’s what my sadness is like,

dark, light,

           & it’s like a bowl

of raspberries. You know what a delicate sweetness

raspberries have when they’re fresh,

                                               just faintly

bruised & you pour Ontario cream over them. I lower

my face over the bowl &

                               the fresh country earth scent

of the raspberries rises up to my big nose.

                                                       Jack?

I’ve no idea of how Jack is,

he was really excellent in
The Two Jakes
,

although the reviews were poor.

But these raspberries fresh & almost as red

as Carol’s undone tomato-red shirt

with the yellow leaf patterns,

the round bowl, the fresh Ontario cream,

                                                      I picked them

in the dark with my bare hands, no blue&grey canvas

gloves for me,

                but I confess to a certain lack of

moroseness; I am constant but indifferent, & hungry,

so I lift the bowl up gently,

                                   looking out at you

from under my thick eyebrows, fresh cream, no evening

gnats in this bowl

                     & let the raspberries tumble into my throat.

Summer’s here & tons of light pours hot butter sun waffles through the big leaded windows of my dining area/front hall & the living room wide arch to my left. Always a good idea to have the living room to your left, I suppose. It’s white, fresh, with a good floor & the sun pours in. I have a 7′ × 3′ table that I bought from Wilkie, a friend, up against the front hall rad. Tons of space for papers, folders, unread books, typewriter, the works. Much better than the middle room I used for a study. I shower in the morning & work all day in my underwear. I don’t need very much after all. Rent, of course, but not much else. I don’t even eat that much in the summer. It was always my best time when I was a child. Steaks & mashed potatoes are winter food. So I’m regressing & advancing at the same time. I’m becoming slimmer & more relaxed & civil with my friends.